It has recently been argued that a person’s moral judgments (about both their own and others’ actions) are constrained by the nature and extent of their relevant ignorance and, thus, that such judgments are determined in the first instance by the person’s epistemic circumstances. It has been argued, in other words, that the epistemic is logically prior to other normative (e.g., ethical, prudential, pecuniary) considerations in human decision-making, that these other normative considerations figure in decision-making only after (logically and temporally) (...) relevant ignorance has constrained the decision-maker’s menu of options. If this is right, then a person’s moral judgments in some set of circumstances should vary with their knowledge and ignorance of these circumstances. In this study, we test the hypothesis of the logical priority of the epistemic. We describe two experiments in which subjects’ knowledge and ignorance of relevant consequences were manipulated. In the second experiment, we also compared the effect of ignorance on moral judgments with that of personal force, a factor previously shown to influence moral judgments. We found broad empirical support for the armchair arguments that epistemic considerations are logically prior to normative considerations. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that a person’s moral judgments (about both their own and others’ actions) are constrained by the nature and extent of their relevant ignorance and, thus, that such judgments are determined in the first instance by the person’s epistemic circumstances. It has been argued, in other words, that the epistemic is logically prior to other normative (e.g., ethical, prudential, pecuniary) considerations in human decision-making, that these other normative considerations figure in decision-making only after (logically and temporally) (...) relevant ignorance has constrained the decision-maker’s menu of options. If this is right, then a person’s moral judgments in some set of circumstances should vary with their knowledge and ignorance of these circumstances. In this study, we test the hypothesis of the logical priority of the epistemic. We describe two experiments in which subjects’ knowledge and ignorance of relevant consequences were manipulated. In the second experiment, we also compared the effect of ignorance on moral judgments with that of personal force, a factor previously shown to influence moral judgments. We found broad empirical support for the armchair arguments that epistemic considerations are logically prior to normative considerations. (shrink)

Background Cancer patients are at risk of developing blood clots in their veins - venous thromboembolism - which often takes the form of a pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis. The risk increases with advanced disease. Evidence based treatment is low molecular weight heparin by daily subcutaneous injection. The aim of this research is to explore the barriers for doctors in the UK when diagnosing and treating advanced cancer patients with VTE. Method Qualitative, in-depth interview study with 45 doctors. Doctors (...) were from three specialties: oncology, palliative medicine and general practice, with a mixture of senior and junior staff. Framework analysis was used. Results Doctors opinions as to whether LMWH treatment was ethically appropriate for patients who were symptomatic from VTE but at end of life existed on a shifting continuum, largely influenced by patient prognosis. A lack of immediate benefit coupled with the discomfort of a daily injection had influenced some doctors not to prescribe LMWH. The point at which LMWH injections should be stopped in patients at the end of life was ambiguous_._ Some perceived ‘overcaution’ in their own and other clinicians’ treatment of patients_._ Viewpoints were divergent on whether dying of a PE was considered a “good way to go”. The interventionalism and ethos of palliative medicine was discussed. Conclusions Decisions are difficult for doctors to make regarding LMWH treatment for advanced cancer patients with VTE. Treatment for this patient group is bounded to the doctors own moral and ethical frameworks. (shrink)

Urban dwellers’ food and nutritional wellbeing are both dependent on infrastructure and can be indicative of wider wellbeing in urban contexts and societal health. This paper focuses on the multiple relationships that exist between food and infrastructure to provide a thorough theoretical and empirical grounding to urgent work on urban food security and nutrition in the context of rapid urban and nutrition transitions in the South. We argue that urban systems and food systems thinking have not been well aligned, but (...) that such alignment is not only timely and overdue but also fruitful for both thematic areas of research and policy. We draw in particular on work within wider urban political economy and political ecology that can be classified as part of the ‘infrastructural turn’ that is influential with urban studies but little acknowledged within food studies. Drawing on these literatures helps us to better understand the interrelationships between people, things and ideas that make up both infrastructure and food systems. Policy, planning and research relating to both food and urban systems cannot afford to ignore such interlinkages, though much policy still operates on the neat assumptions of progressive connectivity to ‘the grid’ and formal food retail. Instead we argue how in many urban governance systems, a variety of hybrid mechanisms—on and off the grid, public and private formal and informal—better represent how urban residents, particularly the most marginalised, meet their everyday food and infrastructural needs along a continuum of gridded and off-grid access. (shrink)

The authors in this edited volume reflect on their experiences with culturally relevant pedagogy-as students, as teachers, as researchers-and how these experiences were often at odds with their backgrounds and/or expectations.

Several major breakthroughs in the history of physics have been prompted not by new empirical data but by thought experiments. James Robert Brown and John Norton have developed accounts of how thought experiments can yield such advances. Brown argues that knowledge gained via thought experiments demands a Platonic explanation; thought experiments for Brown are a window into the Platonic realm of the laws of nature. Norton argues that thought experiments are just cleverly disguised inductive or deductive arguments, (...) so no new account of their epistemology is needed. In this paper, I argue that although we do not need to invoke any Platonic insight to explain thought experimentation, Norton’s eliminativist account fails to capture the unique epistemological importance of thought experiments qua thought experiments. I then present my own account, according to which thought experiments are a particular type of inductive inference that is uniquely suited to generate new breakthroughs. (shrink)

In this essay, we discuss Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul from an interdisciplinary perspective. Constituting perhaps the longest treatise on the evolution of consciousness, Ginsburg and Jablonka unite their expertise in neuroscience and biology to develop a beautifully Darwinian account of the dawning of subjective experience. Though it would be impossible to cover all its content in a short book review, here we provide a critical evaluation of their two key ideas—the role of Unlimited (...) Associative Learning in the evolution of, and detection of, consciousness and a metaphysical claim about consciousness as a mode of being—in a manner that will hopefully overcome some of the initial resistance of potential readers to tackle a book of this length. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:My StoryDawn Ruggeroli–CollinsMy story starts on October 17, 1981. I was 17–years–old and was riding home from a night with friends at the Roundup Rodeo in Simonton, Texas. The girl who was driving was a friend of a friend, so unfortunately I did [End Page E5] not know her well enough to realize that she was drunk. I have very little recollection of the accident, nor of the few (...) days that followed. However, I do recall being very aware that I was paralyzed.For some reason, I had for the previous few years been reading books by women who had spinal cord injuries as a result of some type of accident. I read Joni Eareckson’s book “Joni” and “The Other Side of the Mountain” about Jill Kinmont, and saw the movies about both women. Additionally, my mother bought me “Karen,” and “With Love, from Karen” the story of Karen Killalea, who has cerebral palsy. It seemed to me that reading these books prepared me for dealing with my disability in a positive way rather than “woe is me.”I’m actually one of the luckiest people you’ll ever know! While I have a C–4/C–5 SCI, it is pretty incomplete and as a result I’m pretty mobile. I wear an ankle–foot orthotic (AFO) on my right foot and use a cane. I do have Brown–Séquard syndrome, with better sensation on my right side and better function on the left. So, I was right–handed the first 17 years of my life and I’m now a leftie.A couple of days after my accident, while I was still in the intensive care unit (ICU), one of the nurses felt that it was important for me to realize that I would probably be paralyzed for the rest of my life; never to walk again. So she took it upon herself to deliver this message personally. Well, I wasn’t having any of that! I yelled and screamed and threw the biggest tantrum that one can throw while one’s head is clamped down by Gardner–Wells tongs. Given how well I have recovered, I have often thought how it would be to find Judy, walk up to her, and ask if she remembers me.My dad has often told me that he thinks I went through the grieving process pretty quickly after my accident. It wasn’t always easy, and I did have my down moments, but for the most part I think he’s right. I’ve always been a positive person and that helped get me through this and many other trying times in my life. I think at the time I also had a fear that no one would want to be around me if I was stuck in a wheelchair and was a Debbie Downer. I was only 17 after all.When I went away to college I was still mainly using a wheelchair. When I told a friend that I didn’t want to be in a dorm with all of the disabled students, she laughed and asked me why I didn’t want to be with “my people.” Aside from playing some wheelchair basketball, I had never really hung out with other people with disabilities. I was briefly involved with a disabled support type of group but many of them had really negative attitudes. I didn’t stick around for very long after I learned that one of the guys said to one of the women that she would be really attractive if it weren’t for “that wheelchair.” This coming someone in a wheelchair himself!During my second year at Michigan State I had my first realization that people don’t just see me as someone with a disability. A friend was talking with an acquaintance from the other side of our dorm and she mentioned me. The acquaintance said “oh, Dawn in the wheelchair?” and her response was “yeah, I guess she is in a wheelchair.” When she relayed this conversation to me later I was really moved that she didn’t see me as someone in a wheelchair first... (shrink)

Supernatural fans often associate Season 3's popular “Jus in Bello” episode with the world's quintessential zombie movie, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Romero's zombie films, beginning with Night, fill the survival space with multiple, diverse survivalists who are forced to work through personal differences stemming from jealousy and petty annoyance to racism and bigotry, issues of morality, theology, and other social and cultural differences. Indeed, the setting is the first link to Romero's Night, whose cramped Pennsylvanian farmhouse is (...) little different than the poorly fortified police station holding Sam and Dean. The demons congregate listlessly around the jail. This is an obvious visual homage to the isolated Pennsylvanian farmhouse in Night. The work of the demons in “Jus in Bello” like the zombies in Night and Dawn, is ceaseless and instinctual. (shrink)

Centered on the five immutable characteristics of the United States that Brown outlines, America's Way With the World focuses on the cultural impetus behind America's foreign policy. As the new millennium dawns, bringing with it an increase in global competitiveness, Brown demonstrates how America is at an age of maturity, where self-definition in the international paradigm is essential. The book, intended as a catalyst for discussion in its home country and abroad, seeks to be a voice in the (...) dialogue to shape the emerging character of the United States. Scholars focusing on American Foreign Policy or International Studies, as well as those studying American culture, will find this book a valuable read. (shrink)

It is well known that in early Greek epic old age was something that could be scraped off a man, and it is the purpose of this note to explore the image and to suggest a possible origin. The idea is first attested in a counterfactual conditional sentence in Phoenix's speech atIl.9.445–6: ‘nor even if [a god] himself were to undertake to render me young and flourishing after scraping off old age …’ (οὐδ' εἴ κέν μοι ὑποσταίη αὐτός | γῆρας (...) ἀποξύσας θήσειν νέον ἡβώοντα …); in a description of Medea's magical rejuvenation of Aeson in theNostoi(fr. 7.2 Bernabé = 6.2 Davies, γῆρας ἀποξύσας); and in the account of Eos' botched attempt to make Tithonus immortal in theHomeric Hymn to Aphrodite(223–4):οὐδ' ἐνόησε μετὰ ϕρεσὶ πότνια Ἠώςἥβην αἰτῆσαι, ξῦσαί τ' ἄπο γῆρας ὀλοιόν.Nor did lady Dawn think in her mind to ask for youth and to scrape off ruinous old age.This language also occurs in Late Antiquity, and Andrew Faulkner in his commentary on theHymn(ad loc.) cites Greg. Nanz.Carm.1.2.2.483 (PG37.616) in the fourth centurya.d.and the much later Cometas,Anth. Pal.15.37.2. So far as the imagery implicit in these passages is concerned, S. D. Olson writes, ‘old age is imagined as a scurf or patina that can be scoured off a person’. Faulkner, however, prefers a more precise reference: ‘Griffin … relates it to the idea of old age as a skin that can be shed, as that of a snake’, and he helpfully cites Theodoros Prodromos,Carmina historica24.18, ἀπόξυσαι τὸ γῆρας ὥσπερ ὄϕις (‘to scrape off old age like a snake’). (shrink)

Contingencies of the early nuclear arms race Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-23 DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9495-z Authors S. S. Schweber, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Science Center 371, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Alex Wellerstein, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Science Center 371, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Ethan Pollock, Department of History, Box N, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA Barton J. Bernstein, History Department, Building 200, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2024, USA Michael D. Gordin, (...) History Department, 305 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796. (shrink)

International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, Vol. 196. -/- Introduction, S. Hutton; Nicholas of Cusa : Platonism at the Dawn of Modernity, D. Moran; At Variance: Marsilio Ficino Platonism And Heresy, M.J.B. Allen; Going Naked into the Shrine:Herbert, Plotinus and the Consructive Metaphor, S.R.L.Clark; Commenius, Light Metaphysics and Educational Reform, J. Rohls ; Robert Fludd’s Kabbalistic Cosmos, W. Schmidt-Biggeman; Reconciling Theory and Fact:The Problem of ‘Other Faiths’ in Lord Herbert and the Cambridge Platonists, (...) D. Pailin; Trinity, Community and Love: Cudworth’s Platonism and the Idea of God, L. Armour; Chaos and Order in Cudworth’s Thought, J-L. Breteau; Cudworth, Prior and Passmore on the Autonomy of Ethics, R. Attfield; Substituting Aristotle: Platonic Themes In Dutch Cartesianism, H. van Ruler; Soul, Body, And World: Plato’s Timaeus And Descartes’ Meditations, C. Wilson ; Locke, Plato and Platonism, G.A.J. Rogers; Reflections on Locke’s Platonism, V. Nuovo; The Platonism at the Core of Leibniz’s Philosophy, C. Mercer; Leibniz and Berkeley: Platonic Metaphysics and ‘The Mechanical Philosophy’, S. Brown; Which Platonism for which Modernity? A Note on Shaftesbury’s Socratic Sea-Cards, L. Jaffro; Platonism, Aesthetics and the Sublime at the Origins Of Modernity, D. Hedley. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Pilgrimage of the Mass:The Song of All SongsRoger CorlessI remember,long ago,long, long ago,the sun came up at midnight,seen by no one but myself,and my room was filled with lightand grew so huge(Vimalakirti, do you hear?)that nothing was not there.I sang from the Song of Songsand the sun relaxed, and listened,shining and still and blest,and said, "Yes,it is good, it is good, it is good."the earth was made again,the (...) brown earth smiled,and her creatures ran in her robes,and there was great peace.I could have called it Paradise;yet it was but the forecourt—an earnest of that endless day(Abelard, is it true?)in which the Saints embrace—for the sun went down before dawn,falling behind the dew and the birdsong,and I walked on morning mists to Masslike Lao-tzu riding the clouds.long, long ago.+ may all beings be happy + [End Page 151]Copyright © 2007 The University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

Deciphering the neural basis of subjective experience remains one of the great challenges in the natural sciences. The structural complexity and the limitations around invasive experimental manipulations of the human brain have impeded progress towards this goal. While animals cannot directly report first-person subjective experiences, their ability to exhibit flexible behaviours such as motivational trade-offs are generally considered evidence of sentience. The worm _Caenorhabditis elegans_ affords the unique opportunity to describe the circuitry underlying subjective experience at a single cell level (...) as its whole neural connectome is known and moreover, these animals exhibit motivational trade-offs. We started with the premise that these worms were sentient and then sought to understand the neurons that were both necessary and sufficient for a motivational trade-off involving the rewarding experience of food and the negative experience of an aversive odour. A simple hierarchical network consisting of two chemosensory neurons and three interneurons was found to produce an output to motoneurons that enabled worms to respond in a contextually appropriate manner to an aversive odour according to the worm's hunger state. Given that this circuitry is like that found in the human spinal cord, retina, and primary visual cortex, three regions which are neither necessary nor sufficient for subjective experience, we conclude that motivational trade-offs are not a criterion for subjective experience in worms. Furthermore, once the neural substrate for a behaviour is described, we question the explanatory role of subjective experience in behaviour. (shrink)

This study examines a moderated/mediated model of ethical leadership on follower job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment. We proposed that managers have the potential to be agents of virtue or vice within organizations. Specifically, through ethical leadership behavior we argued that managers can virtuously influence perceptions of ethical climate, which in turn will positively impact organizational members’ flourishing as measured by job satisfaction and affective commitment to the organization. We also hypothesized that perceptions of interactional justice would moderate the ethical (...) leadership-to-climate relationship. Our results indicate that ethical leadership has both a direct and indirect influence on follower job satisfaction and affective commitment. The indirect effect of ethical leadership involves shaping perceptions of ethical climate, which in turn, engender greater job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment. Furthermore, when interactional justice is perceived to be high, this strengthens the ethical leadership-to-climate relationship. (shrink)

In response to recent critics, this is a vigorous defence of realism. The roles of abstraction, abstract objects and a priori methods are explored, demonstrating the ways in which science mirrors the world.

_What is psychotherapy about?_ _What are the similarities and differences of its many forms?_ _What are the most recent developments in the field?_ _Introduction to Psychotherapy_ has been an essential reference book since its publication in 1979, and is regularly included in reading lists for trainee psychotherapists, psychiatrists and other professionals. It is often recommended to interested lay people and prospective patients. This third edition takes into account recent changes in psychotherapy theory, practice and research. The authors are all psychoanalysts. (...) The first edition arose from the experiences of Dennis Brown and Jonathan Pedder working and teaching together as Consultant Psychotherapists at St Mary's Hospital and Medical School, London. (shrink)

In his long-awaited new edition of Philosophy of Mathematics, James Robert Brown tackles important new as well as enduring questions in the mathematical sciences. Can pictures go beyond being merely suggestive and actually prove anything? Are mathematical results certain? Are experiments of any real value?" "This clear and engaging book takes a unique approach, encompassing nonstandard topics such as the role of visual reasoning, the importance of notation, and the place of computers in mathematics, as well as traditional topics (...) such as formalism, Platonism, and constructivism. The combination of topics and clarity of presentation make it suitable for beginners and experts alike. The revised and updated second edition of Philosophy of Mathematics contains more examples, suggestions for further reading, and expanded material on several topics including a novel approach to the continuum hypothesis."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

It describes and explains the patient-centered model examining and evaluating qualitative and quantitative research. It comprehensively covers the evolution and the six interactive components of the patient-centered clinical method, taking the reader through the relationships between the patient and doctor and the patient and clinician. All the editors are professors in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.

This book investigates the potential role that states can play in cosmopolitan thinking and how states could be agents for the advancement of cosmopolitan responsibilities.

In their article in the September-October 2010 issue of IRB: Ethics & Human Research, Chris Kaposy and Françoise Baylis argue that the contraception policy of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s institutional review board fails to meet an ethically ideal standard in establishing the criteria investigators should follow when including women of childbearing potential in clinical research. In this response, we argue that the UNMC IRB’s policy is evidence-based and pragmatically oriented and that it therefore better safeguards women’s autonomy than (...) an ideal policy could. We also offer some of our experiences with the policy since it was implemented six years ago. (shrink)

In a new interpretation, Garrett Wallace Brown considers Kant's cosmopolitan thought as a form of international constitutional jurisprudence that requires minimal legal demands. He explores and defends topics such as cosmopolitan law, cosmopolitan right, the laws of hospitality, a Kantian federation of states, a cosmopolitan epistemology of culture and a possible normative basis for a Kantian form of global distributive justice.

Algorithms are powerful because we invest in them the power to do things. With such promise, they can transform the ordinary, say snapshots along a robotic vacuum cleaner’s route, into something much more, such as a clean home. Echoing David Graeber’s revision of fetishism, we argue that this easy slip from technical capabilities to broader claims betrays not the “magic” of algorithms but rather the dynamics of their exchange. Fetishes are not indicators of false thinking, but social contracts in material (...) form. They mediate emerging distributions of power often too nascent, too slippery or too disconcerting to directly acknowledge. Drawing primarily on 2016 ethnographic research with computer vision professionals, we show how faith in what algorithms can do shapes the social encounters and exchanges of their production. By analyzing algorithms through the lens of fetishism, we can see the social and economic investment in some people’s labor over others. We also see everyday opportunities for social creativity and change. We conclude that what is problematic about algorithms is not their fetishization but instead their stabilization into full-fledged gods and demons – the more deserving objects of critique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 196-210 [Access article in PDF] On Philosophy as Therapy:Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Autobiographical Writing Garry Hagberg IN HIS LATER PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS Wittgenstein was exquisitely sensitive to the misleading implications housed within the formulations of philosophical questions. The question with which he opened the Blue Book, "What is the meaning of a word?," the question "What is thinking?," and the question "What constitutes understanding?," each put (...) into place presumptions concerning how an answer is going to proceed: in the first, that the meaning will be an entity of some kind—likely of an ontological kind different from the acoustical or calligraphic sensory property of the word (to which we will then think the meaning attached); in the second, that thinking will be in essence a determinate mental process or event—likely one of an ontological kind different from that of speaking (to which we will then picture thinking as prior); in the third, an inner process culminating in a state that is metaphysically hidden from all things outer and that is the inner condition that lies unreachable behind what we will then call the behavior that is contingently correlated with it. It is by now no secret that each of these questions has been subjected to thorough scrutiny throughout the writings in The Blue and Brown Books, Philosophical Investigations, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Zettel, and even more extensively in the typescripts and manuscripts from which these are taken. 1 But it is still perhaps less widely realized than it might be that the very phrase "Wittgenstein's method" can easily prove as misleading as each of the above questions, and there is an aspect of irony waiting to dawn on those who reflect that the modern philosopher most concerned to maintain a philosophically relevant mindfulness about front-loaded [End Page 196] implications is perhaps too often not afforded precisely the mindfulness about his own later philosophical writings that he was most concerned to teach.The phrase "Wittgenstein's method" might well lead us to expect, in the first place, a unitary way of contending with philosophical difficulties that is employed across the board; in the second place, it might lead us to expect an acceptance of a set of perennial problems as framed by philosophers through the ages that are treated with that unitary method; and in the third place, it might lead us to expect a set of solutions to those time-honored questions providing answers formulated in a way parallel to, if different from, those worked out by Frege, Russell, Quine, or many others before and since. Indeed, such an expectation has often outlived the recognition that Wittgenstein's own writings are presented in a piecemeal way that seems not to offer any such overarching method or any such problem-accepting concisely formulated answers; some have simply assumed that, while Wittgenstein himself did not or could not provide such results, the raw material is there, and the task of interpretation, in his case, just comes to the task of argument-and-position formulation. To load a spatial metaphor into epistemology, nothing could be further from the truth. What Wittgenstein's later writings offer us is—to put the matter in a different way misleadingly briefly—a way of seeing philosophical problems that constitutes a radical departure from the approaches of Frege, Russell, Quine, and so many others. And in enacting this departure throughout his writings from the Blue Book and the Cambridge lectures of those years through to his final remarks in On Certainty, he himself, wary of too simply or too conventionally characterizing his own ways of working, appeals to the notion of therapy. This is a fitting concept for a moment in philosophy's history of radical departure and an ensuing process of radical change.It is true that in the Tractatus Wittgenstein wrote "Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language" (4.003), and it would not be wrong to call... (shrink)

Professor Brown in this volume discusses one of the most difficult questions in metaphysics, “what is action?” His analysis proceeds along three main lines of thought: the point of view of the agent, the primacy of inanimate action, and the pervasiveness of explanatory insight in the description of action.