Lack of guidance and regulation for authorizing medical cannabis for conditions involving the health and neurodevelopment of children is ethically problematic as it promulgates access inequities, risk-benefit inconsistencies, and inadequate consent mechanisms. In two virtual sessions using participatory action research and consensus-building methods, we obtained perspectives of stakeholders on ethics and medical cannabis for children and youth. The sessions focused on the scientific and regulatory landscape of medical cannabis, surrogate decision-making and assent, and the social and political culture of medical (...) cannabis. We found that evidence-gathering and data dissemination, pressures on clinical relationships, and the lack of integration of culturally diverse perspectives and Indigenous knowledges were key areas of concern. Participants emphasized the importance of utilizing adaptive study designs, highlighted the importance of trust-building between clinicians, patients and caregivers, and discussed barriers including historical and ongoing stigmatization of medical cannabis. We conclude that continued public consultation and strength-based research that integrate diverse perspectives are critical steps forward. (shrink)

In this volume, leading philosophers of psychiatry examine psychiatric classification systems, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, asking whether current systems are sufficient for effective diagnosis, treatment, and research. Doing so, they take up the question of whether mental disorders are natural kinds, grounded in something in the outside world. Psychiatric categories based on natural kinds should group phenomena in such a way that they are subject to the same type of causal explanations and respond similarly to (...) the same type of causal interventions. When these categories do not evince such groupings, there is reason to revise existing classifications. The contributors all question current psychiatric classifications systems and the assumptions on which they are based. They differ, however, as to why and to what extent the categories are inadequate and how to address the problem. Topics discussed include taxometric methods for identifying natural kinds, the error and bias inherent in DSM categories, and the complexities involved in classifying such specific mental disorders as "oppositional defiance disorder" and pathological gambling. -/- Contributors George Graham, Nick Haslam, Allan Horwitz, Harold Kincaid, Dominic Murphy, Jeffrey Poland, Nancy Nyquist Potter, Don Ross, Dan Stein, Jacqueline Sullivan, Serife Tekin, Peter Zachar. (shrink)

This book explores the thought of Jacques Derrida as it relates to the tradition of apophatic thought--negative theology and philosophy--in both Western and Eastern traditions. Following the Introduction by Toby Foshay, two of Derrida's essays on negative theology, Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy and How to Avoid Speaking: Denials, are reprinted here. These are followed by essays from a Western perspective by Mark C. Taylor and Michel Despland, and essays from an Eastern perspective by David Loy, a (...) Buddhist, and Harold Coward, a Hindu. In the Conclusion, Jacques Derrida responds to these discussions. (shrink)

Humans are experts in cooperating with each other when trying to accomplish tasks they cannot achieve alone. Recent studies of joint action have shown that when performing tasks together people strongly rely on the neurocognitive mechanisms that they also use when performing actions individually, that is, they predict the consequences of their co‐actor’s behavior through internal action simulation. Context‐sensitive action monitoring and action selection processes, however, are relatively underrated but crucial ingredients of joint action. In the present paper, we try (...) to correct the somewhat simplified view on joint action by reviewing recent studies of joint action simulation, monitoring, and selection while emphasizing the intricate interrelationships between these processes. We complement our review by defining the contours of a neurologically plausible computational framework of joint action. (shrink)

Aesthetic internalism claims a link between judgement and motivation: aesthetic judgements bring with them motivations to act in characteristic ways. Critics object that there is a difference between merely liking something and judging it to be aesthetically good, and that it is our likings, not our aesthetic judgements, that motivate us. This paper develops a version of aesthetic internalism that can respond to this criticism. Wholehearted aesthetic judgements are characterized by stability, attention, and motivation. Making such judgements is an important (...) part of a good life, and so at least some aesthetic judgements are motivating. So we have reason to think that this version of aesthetic internalism is true. This paper defends wholehearted aesthetic internalism against objections, and assesses an argument from aesthetic internalism to aesthetic non-cognitivism. While wholehearted aesthetic internalism can only offer qualified support to non-cognitivism, it nonetheless offers a number of fruitful avenues for further work. (shrink)

An attempt to reduce disability discrimination can do more harm than the ostensible discrimination itself. Such is the case with Shavelson et al.’s (2023) argument for equal access to medical aid i...

A scientific theory is originally based on a particular set of observations. How can it be extended to apply outside this original range of cases? This question, which is fundamental to natural philosophy, is considered in detail in this book, which was originally published in 1931, and first published as this third edition in 1973. Sir Harold begins with the principle that 'it is possible to learn from experience and to make inferences from beyond the data directly known to (...) sensation'. He goes on to analyse this principle, discuss its status and investigate its logical consequences. The result is a book of importance to anyone interested in the foundations of modern scientific method. His thesis provides a consistent account of how the theories proposed by physicists have been derived from, and are supported by, experimental data. (shrink)

The essays in this volume apply philosophical analysis to address three kinds of questions: What are the implications of genetic science for our understanding of nature? What might it influence in our conception of human nature? What challenges does genetic science pose for specific issues of private conduct or public policy?

The strong word and stance issue only from a strict will, a will that dares the error of reading all of reality as a text, and all prior texts as openings for its own totalizing and unique interpretations. Strong poets present themselves as looking for truth in the world, searching in reality and in tradition, but such a stance, as Nietzsche said, remains under the mastery of desire, of instinctual drives. So, in effect, the strong poet wants pleasure and not (...) truth; he wants what Nietzsche named as "the belief in truth and the pleasurable effects of this belief." No strong poet can admit that Nietzsche was accurate in this insight, and no critic need fear that any strong poet will accept and so be hurt by demystification. The concern of this book, as of my earlier studies in poetic misprision, is only with strong poets, which in this series of chapters is exemplified by the major sequence of High Romantic British and American poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Emerson, Whitman, and Stevens, but also throughout by two of the strongest poets in the European Romantic tradition: Nietzsche and Freud. By "poet" I therefore do not mean only verse-writer, as the instance of Emerson also should make clear. Harold Bloom is DeVane Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. This article is the first chapter of his new book, Poetry and Repression, to be published by the Yale University Press. The book completes a tetralogy, of which the earlier volumes are The Anxiety of Influence, A Map of Misreading, and Kabbalah and Criticism. See also: "Formalism, Savagery, and Care; or, The Function of Criticism Once Again" by Jerome J. McGann in Vol. 2, No. 3; "The Poet as Elaborator: Analytical Psychology as a Critical Paradigm" by David D. Cooper in Vol. 6, No. 1. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bernard Mandeville and the Therapy of “The Clever Politician”Harold J. CookAs the institutional authority of the learned physicians of Augustan London waned, new threats to the classical foundations of medical practice appeared. 1 Patients had more freedom to chose from a variety of practitioners and practices, giving both consumer demand and the advertising skills of suppliers an even more powerful hand in medical affairs. While the burgeoning medical (...) marketplace developed mostly because of the profound socio-economic and political changes of the late Stuart period, intellectual transformations were at play, too. The new science appeared to encourage empiricism and the development of new remedies based on experimentation, devaluing university education in medical classics, but conversely the new science could strengthen physicians’ claims to superiority over mere patients and practitioners. Medical materialists, for instance, could turn the classical advisor/client relationship into that of an expert contolling a passive recipient (patient) for his or her own good.One contemporary debate that shows the implications of materialism for medical relationships is the theory of the passions. The passions linked mind and body. According to most classical accounts, one could (or should) control the passions by applying reason, resulting in both a virtuous and a healthy life. But according to a strong version of materialism, the mind could not hope to control the passions. A doctor therefore could no longer appeal to patients’ reason; rather, he had to manipulate the patient’s passions for his or her own good. Hence for a materialist, the doctor was not an adviser to the patient but an expert therapist, not a teacher of health and virtue but a “clever politician” who ordered bodily passions. Some versions of the new science, then, favored [End Page 101] the expertise of physicians while undermining older views about learned authority. Such an outlook is clear in the work of Dr. Bernard Mandeville, whose famous Fable of the Bees shows how the “clever politician” played on passions to make the body politic run smoothly. Mandeville held coherent views on politics, economics, moral philosophy, and medicine. Like many doctors of his time, he fought to establish his expertise in the new science. His views are expressed most clearly in the theory of the passions. By examining his discussion of the passions in both his social commentary and his medical dialogues, we can note similarities among his various writings and glimpse one of his fundamental positions on medicine and humanity.The Fable and its CriticsTo many English minds of the early eighteenth century, no one exemplified materialism’s threat better than Dr. Bernard Mandeville. Mandeville’s famous slogan, the subtitle of his Fable of the Bees—“private vices, public benefits”—seemed to epitomize materialism’s inherent immorality. The book seemed to argue that what most people recognized as human vices were the main engines of the collective good. Mandeville’s famous book pictured human nature as animalistic, in which the passions held sway over reason. In Mandeville’s world, it appeared, reason became little more than the ability to rationalize, the instrument of hypocrisy, merely letting people cover their true motives (grounded as they were in the passions) with empty words pretending to more exalted ends.His Fable had begun as a little, anonymous, satirical poem in 1705, titled “The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn’d Honest.” It began by speaking of “A Spacious Hive well stockt with Bees, / That liv’d in Luxury and Ease.” Many of the bees were knaves, with no calling free of deceit, but while “every Part was full of Vice, / Yet [was] the whole Mass a Paradise; /... Such were the Blessings of that State; / Their Crimes conspir’d to make them Great.” Avarice, prodigality, luxury, pride, envy, vanity, folly, fickleness, and inconstancy employed millions, encouraging ingenuity and industry and creating pleasures and comforts “To such a Height, the very Poor / Liv’d better than the Rich before.” But many of the thriving bees complained, shouting for honesty and virtue. When Jove “rid / The bawling Hive of Fraud,” economic collapse followed, with the consequent end of arts and sciences as well; population declined; the hive’s territory decreased; and the remaining bees toiled long and... (shrink)

Bloom leads readers through the labyrinthine paths which link the writers and critics who have informed and inspired him for so many years.

INTRODUCTION Philosophy is a discipline of fundamental diversities and extremely divergent modes of thought some of which occupy center stage in Western ...

Dominant Western discourses of motherhood have depicted disabled women as incapable of being mothers. In contrast to these representations, recent literature in disability studies has argued that disabled women can provide maternal care and should therefore retain custody over their children. This literature is commendable, but its emphasis on custodial rights excludes from the category of “mother” those disabled women who cannot maintain child custody. In this article, I challenge this exclusion via an account of my experience with my two (...) mothers: my biological mother, who relinquished custody over me because of her inability to provide care, and my maternal grandmother, who raised me as her child. Theorizing this account, I argue that disability studies must adopt a conception of motherhood that recognizes both alternative kinship structures and mothers whose disabilities preclude them from fulfilling normative conceptions of maternal care. I develop such a conception by synthesizing Judith Butler's theorization of queer kinship with Donald Winnicott's rethinking of the maternal subject. I conclude by drawing on this flexible conception of motherhood to argue that my disabled mother's relinquishing of custody over me to her own mother was the very gesture in which she accepted and adopted a maternal role. (shrink)

Providing a model for the transformative work that is required going forward, The Crisis of US Hospice Care illustrates the potential of hospice for facilitating a new way of living our last days and for having the best death possible.

Scientism applies the ideas and methods of the natural sciences to the humanities and social sciences. Herbert Spencer applied the law of the conservation of energy to social questions and arrived at formula answers to the issues of the day. The kind of certitude that Spencer aimed for was possible only by ignoring a system of values. Much as he may have believed that he was above personal beliefs, there are values implicit in Spencer's theories and they are the values (...) of the nineteenth-century British middle class. Reasoning by analogy is as valid in social theory as it is in the natural sciences. Spencer's error was in universally applying the idea of the conservation of energy to social systems by means of identity rather than by analogy. Scientists in Britain, where there was a self-assured scientific community, dismissed Spencer's theories as being unscientific, but he enjoyed a vogue in the United States. (shrink)

What issues should bioethics be looking at in the next forty years? Rather than take on new issues, I believe bioethicists should rethink our approach to bioethical topics more generally. Doing so will require refashioning the field itself, but such a reinvention is the only way we can help bioethics live up to its initial ideals and be relevant to our society.Thinking about the future of bioethics should begin with a fundamental question: Is bioethics even necessary? Most bioethicists would certainly (...) think so, and they might find confirmation in histories of the field like David Rothman's Strangers at the Bedside, in which bioethics was a response to the collapse of doctor-patient relations in the midtwentieth .. (shrink)

HAROLD TAYLOR What should be taught to the young? Every age and every culture has a different answer. At various times in Western society it has been Latin, ...

William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, played a major role in the nineteenth century in changing scientific theory from the statical view, associated with imponderables, to the dynamical view which conceived of energy as a separate and convertible entity. Thomson's conversion from the statical to the dynamical view of nature was due to the influence of experimentalists, Michael Faraday and James Prescott Joule. It was Thomson's use of mathematical metaphor that enabled him to interpret on a theoretical level the physical explanation (...) given by Faraday and Joule. (shrink)

Laski, Harold J. The Foundations of Sovereignty and Other Essays.

Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God is concerned with questions about the degree to which and the ways in which religious experiences, especially theistic experiences, can provide epistemic support for Christian beliefs. I adopt a critical trust approach to religious experiences and argue that, with appropriate qualifications, it can be reasonable for someone to believe that he or she has had a veridical experience of God and that this can provide some evidential support for certain Christian claims.

This article examines the interpretation of Parmenides’ prologue (28 B 1, 1-30 DK) in Sextus’ account of the Criterion of Truth (M. vii 49-260). It proceeds by three ap- proaches, each telling part of the story regarding Sextus’ sources. The rst identi es two sets of source-material by means of the ideas and language. Here basic features of the interpre- tation of the prologue emerge. The second discusses why 28 B 1, 1-30 and 28 B 7, 2-B 8, 2 DK (...) are treated as one continuous whole, showing the kind of interpretation involved in a deliberate decision: making 28 B 8, 1-2 DK into a natural conclusion, referring to a path and to ambition (thymos) as 28 B 1, 1-2 DK had done. The third compares the prologue’s tech- nique of interpretation with the rst of two interpretations of Xenophanes, the interpretation of Pythagorean verse, and the rst of two interpretations of Empedocles, showing how these contrast sharply with the interpretation of Parmenides 28 B 7, 2-B 8, 2 DK and material linked with the briefer source. The amalgamation had originally helped assimilate Parmenides to Plato. Hence the amalgamator is seen as a Platonist with strong literary interests and skilled in the use of quotation. It is no accident that the discursive source is linked with the tradition of Timaeus-interpretation. (shrink)

Pummer argues against the thesis: Desert. When people culpably do very wrong or bad acts, they deserve punishment in the following sense: at least other things being equal, they ought to be made worse off, simply in virtue of the fact that they culpably did wrong – even if they have repented, are now virtuous, and punishing them would benefit no one. This has strong intuitive appeal and is arguably central to many people’s views of punishment. If Pummer’s arguments succeed, (...) they matter. He argues that what, in certain cases, defenders of Desert must say is the morally right allocation of punishment is intuitively morally unacceptable. He explains that it is only Desert in conjunction with other theses which entails this. But he argues that these are acceptable. I reject this. One additional thesis is Pummer’s ‘Numbers Matter’. This can be rejected by defenders of Desert. Pummer’s case against Desert fails. (shrink)

There is much in the responses by Dolores Morris, Doug Geivett, and Jim Beilby with which I fully agree. But here I try to clarify a few issues and to identify points where we might simply disagree. I focus on the issue of those who experience the world as godless (Dolores); broadening the definition of religious experience (Dolores and Doug); suggested revisions of the argument from fulfilled expectations (Dolores); and especially the vexing questions associated with epistemic peer disagreement (Jim and (...) Doug). (shrink)

Includes summary but substantial accounts of the thought of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Jaspers, Marcel, Heidegger and Sartre, and a concluding essay that attempts to interpret the whole Existentialist movement.

The eukaryotic cytoskeleton appears to have evolved from ancestral precursors related to prokaryotic FtsZ and MreB. FtsZ and MreB show 40–50% sequence identity across different bacterial and archaeal species. Here I suggest that this represents the limit of divergence that is consistent with maintaining their functions for cytokinesis and cell shape. Previous analyses have noted that tubulin and actin are highly conserved across eukaryotic species, but so divergent from their prokaryotic relatives as to be hardly recognizable from sequence comparisons. One (...) suggestion for this extreme divergence of tubulin and actin is that it occurred as they evolved very different functions from FtsZ and MreB. I will present new arguments favoring this suggestion, and speculate on pathways. Moreover, the extreme conservation of tubulin and actin across eukaryotic species is not due to an intrinsic lack of variability, but is attributed to their acquisition of elaborate mechanisms for assembly dynamics and their interactions with multiple motor and binding proteins. A new structure‐based sequence alignment identifies amino acids that are conserved from FtsZ to tubulins. The highly conserved amino acids are not those forming the subunit core or protofilament interface, but those involved in binding and hydrolysis of GTP. BioEssays 29:668–677, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article is an analysis of the relationship between US hospice structure and the feeling of being a burden to others. A goal of US hospice care is to reduce the FBO. But in America, hospice is limited in its ability to do so because of the high caregiver burden it places on family members of dying people. Through a historical study, I show that this burden was excessive when the hospice system was created and has worsened over time. Through (...) three ethnographic vignettes, I demonstrate how this burden inculcates in dying people the FBO. I then examine the bioethical implications of this finding for the existing US debate about physician-assisted suicide. The presence of FBO due to insufficient hospice care supports arguments made by PAS opponents about the social pressure placed on dying people. This finding is not itself sufficient to resolve the “right to die” debate. But it provides the ground for a compromise, across the debate, to reduce the FBO by changing US hospice structure. The resulting consensus will further the goals of both PAS proponents and opponents. (shrink)

How should philosophy of social science proceed? Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9592-7 Authors Harold Kincaid, Department of Philosophy, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 900 13th Street South, Birmingham, AL 35294-1260, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.