ABSTRACT Despite being generally recognised as Camus’ most important philosophical essay, L’Homme révolté is rather neglected in the scholarship and enjoys a limited readership, especially among Anglophone critics and readers – a fact brightly reflected in the questionable quality of the only English translation, by Anthony Bower, and in the decision of Hamish Hamilton and Penguin, Camus’ publishers in the UK, to cut about thirty pages of text from their edition, ‘in the interests of economy.’. This essay examines one brief (...) but crucially important section of L’Homme révolté concerned with Rousseau’s Du contrat social. It explores the centrality of Camus’ analysis of Rousseau’s essay and its influence on the French Revolution to the arguments of L’Homme révolté, especially as these pertain to political or revolutionary violence. It also examines in close detail some striking parallels between Camus’ analysis of Rousseau and that found in essays by Isaiah Berlin and Philip Pettit. (shrink)

Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, encompassing philosophy, literature, politics and history, John Foley examines the full breadth of Camus' ideas to provide a comprehensive and rigorous study of his political and philosophical thought and a significant contribution to a range of debates current in Camus research. Foley argues that the coherence of Camus' thought can best be understood through a thorough understanding of the concepts of 'the absurd' and 'revolt' as well as the relation between them. This book (...) includes a detailed discussion of Camus' writings for the newspaper "Combat", a systematic analysis of Camus' discussion of the moral legitimacy of political violence and terrorism, a reassessment of the prevailing postcolonial critique of Camus' humanism, and a sustained analysis of Camus' most important and frequently neglected work, "L'Homme revolte". (shrink)

As John Henry Newman reflected on 'The Idea of a University' more than a century and a half ago, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together some of the nation's most eminent thinkers on higher education to reflect on the nature and purposes of the American university today. Their mordant reflections paint a picture of the American university in crisis. This book is essential reading for thoughtful citizens, scholars, and educational policymakers.

Objective To develop an ethically, legally, and clinically appropriate ventilator allocation policy for AdventHealth Tampa and AdventHealth Carrollwood in Tampa, Florida, which could be enacted swiftly during the Covid-19 pandemic. Methods During Spring 2020, a subcommittee of the Medical Ethics Committee established consensus on the fundamental principles of the policy, then built on existing ethical, legal, and clinical guidance. Results The plan was finalized in May 2020. The plan triages patients based on exclusion criteria (imminent mortality), prognosis and expected benefit (...) of ventilation (using the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment), and change in prognosis over time. Decisions are made by committee in order to minimize moral distress among individual patient care providers. Conclusions Due to international concerns about healthcare resource shortages during the Covid-19 pandemic, hospitals need allocation policies informed by the crisis standard of care, the hospital’s ethical duty to plan for an emergency, and federal civil rights laws Policy Implications: This type of policy can serve as a model for other institutions to develop crisis standards of care resource allocation policies, which are a necessary component of disaster planning. (shrink)

This six-volume set contains virtually all of the published work of Cairnes; it brings together, for the first time, all of his major works and almost all his uncollected articles, pamphlets and published letters. It is an essential resource for those studying the man himself, the tradition of Classical economy, and Irish intellectual history in the nineteenth century.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.3 (2001) 415-428 [Access article in PDF] Brief Mention Tantalus Helene P. Foley John Barton's Tantalus bills itself repeatedly as "leftovers from the epic cycle." 1 Although his cycle of plays--nine in the stage performance and ten, with prologue and epilogue, in the published script--also remakes some late Euripidean plays, the spirit of the piece as a whole is far more reminiscent of (...) what we know of cyclic epic than tragedy or even the Iliad and Odyssey themselves, which, as Aristotle's Poetics points out, are plotted in a distinctively tragic manner with a single unifying action. Sir Peter Hall and Edward Hall's performance version, which premiered in fall 2000 at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and then traveled to England, is conveniently divided into hour-long segments with intermissions and meal breaks that cater to the sensibilities and attention spans of viewers accustomed to televised series like Masterpiece Theater. Any attempt to recapture the tight plotting, intensity, complexity, and tension of tragedy would inevitably fail in a performance of this scale. Instead, the viewer is drawn into a long and varied narrative replete with surprising shifts in tone, ranging from ironic to lyrical, from painful to comic; episodes drawn from obscure mythological sources or, occasionally, invented, take center stage, while episodes familiar from Homer and tragedy are deliberately deleted. Viewers can follow characters and children of characters over the series of plays and see the traits of siblings and parents emerge with variation in close relatives--an effect enhanced onstage by the fact that these relatives are often played by the same actors. Like cyclic epic, Tantalus fills in the gaps left by Homer [End Page 427] in the Trojan saga and aspires to tantalize its viewers with the possibi415lity of multiple and unstable versions of mythic truth. In addition, although the play repeatedly evokes the image of the rock of Tantalus poised to crash with finality on everyone's head, it largely espouses a cyclic and inconclusive view of history, in which events and human errors relentlessly repeat themselves without acquiring accessible meaning. "Until the great rock falls / What has happened already / Will happen again: / That is god-law, Agamemnon, / As it's man-law on earth. / Epikou Kuklou leipsana" (362).Playwright Barton and the directors fell out during the rehearsal process; the Irish playwright Colin Teevan shortened, revised, and in some critical ways transformed and trivialized Barton's original script. The stage version retains Barton's concern with the futility of war and human action but radically revises the major point of the original. Barton's script above all engages its audience in the myth-making process and the elusive truth of stories: "Who is to Blame? What is the Truth? Could it be Otherwise?" His script opens with a group of twelve "girls" (Barton's term) sleeping on barren ground. Nine (in the performance, ten) of the girls become a chorus, and the remaining ones (the script says four, though the total of twelve demands three, so there may be an error in the script here) play various female parts throughout the cycle. The group has missed the (real or mythical) boat and begins to tell one another conflicting myths about the origin of the world. The chorus, which claims to know all the traditional Greek myths, wants to know which version is true. It debates whether to drink from the nearby oracular streams of Trophonius. (One stream makes one forget the present moment; the other makes one remember even things one does not consciously know.)A poet (and tutor to Dionysus) enters with a wine bag. The skeptical chorus, which at first prefers its own stories and one truth, is lured into testing out the poet's bag of masks and engaging with multiple conflicting stories. "If you want to know the future / You must go into the past" (511). The poet and the four women don new roles and reenact story fragments for the increasingly engaged chorus. The chorus women toss stones over their shoulders in imitation of the Greek creation... (shrink)

The Burford Nursing Development Unit Holistic Model offers a conceptually radical alternative to 'traditional' models, emphasizing the nurse-patient relationship, which is considered essential for therapeutic nursing. This has led to questions as to whether aspects of psychosocial care is adequately framed within the nursing process format or whether it can in fact be continued by 'other' nurses. Part One of this book describes the original philosophy behind this innovative model and how it was adapted for use. Part Two outlines (...) the practical use of the model in the form of case studies, using critical analysis to test its current validity. Its use is also compared against previous models. (shrink)

John Locke proposed a straightforward relationship between qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions: belief corresponds to a sufficiently high degree of confidence. Richard Foley has further developed this Lockean thesis and applied it to an analysis of the preface and lottery paradoxes. Following Foley's lead, we exploit various versions of these paradoxes to chart a precise relationship between belief and probabilistic degrees of confidence. The resolutions of these paradoxes emphasize distinct but complementary features of coherent belief. These features (...) suggest principles that tie together qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions. We show how these principles may be employed to construct a quantitative model - in terms of degrees of confidence - of an agent's qualitative doxastic state. This analysis fleshes out the Lockean thesis and provides the foundation for a logic of belief that is responsive to the logic of degrees of confidence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Euripides' Escape-Tragedies: A Study of Helen, Andromeda, and Iphigenia among the TauriansHelene P. FoleyMatthew Wright. Euripides' Escape-Tragedies: A Study of Helen, Andromeda, and Iphigenia among the Taurians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. viii + 433 pp. Cloth, $125.Due to their putatively lighter tone, exotic foreign settings, and concluding "resolutions" of past misfortunes, Euripides' Helen, fragmentary Andromeda, and Iphigenia Among the Taurians (henceforth IT) have often been described as (...) proto-romances or tragi-comedies. Wright's study follows recent trends in defining ancient Greek dramatic genres above all through their performance context; he argues that the plays belong firmly in the tragic camp and develop serious philosophical and religious themes that deliberately leave their audience in a state of aporia. The plots of these plays share an escape from disaster/remote and threatening environments. Although we cannot firmly date IT, Wright tries to make the case that these apparently unique shared elements suggest that the plays were performed as a coherent trilogy in 412 B.C.E. The book does not [End Page 465] attempt to address in detail many aspects of these (relatively neglected) plays that have been extensively discussed by other critics. Instead Wright focuses on the plays' generic status, their possible mythical innovations, their remote settings, and their philosophy and theology.Although there are many unusual mythical elements in these plays, Wright makes a detailed case that Euripides most probably recombined elements previously known in the tradition to a novel effect, rather than inventing them. He casts considerable doubt on Stesichorus' palinode and Herodotus as origins for Euripides' innocent Egyptian Helen, however. Wright challenges previous assumptions by arguing that Euripides does not develop the plays' barbarian settings. Indeed, there is little ethnic or geographical detail beyond a few initial sketchy references, and the plays blur the differences between Greeks and barbarian "others." The Egyptians Proteus, Theoclymenus, and Theonoe are, genealogically speaking, Greek (183). After a lengthy discussion of the problems of defining philosophical elements in tragedy, Wright links the plays' extensive treatment of the unreliable nature of human language and knowledge of reality to discussions of comparable themes in the fragments of the Sophists, especially Gorgias and Democritus. Finally, Wright argues that the plays, by stressing the impossibility of understanding the divine forces that govern the universe, represent an unusually bleak theological picture. The dei ex machina that conclude Helen and IT belatedly outline mysterious divine patterns governing the confusing dramatic events, but humans can only repeatedly misinterpret their experience and name the divine forces governing their lives, erroneously in Wright's view, as tuche\.These issues, above all the themes of illusion and reality and the nature of divinity in the plays, have in fact been discussed before, but Wright attempts a fuller (with the exception of his attenuated discussion of ritual) and methodologically tighter discussion. This represents both the book's strength and weakness. Without its exhaustive review of dated and (putatively) weakly argued earlier critical views, the book could, and in my view ideally should, have made its positive case more forcefully in half the length. At the same time, by failing to engage with important earlier treatments of central topics, Wright leaves the reader with the impression that scholarly work on these issues is far less nuanced than it has in fact been. To give a few examples that he neglects altogether, his discussion of Aristophanes' parody of Euripides in Thesmophoriazusae (120, n. 196; see also 50–51) does not take advantage of Zeitlin's seminal article on the topic ("Travesties of Gender and Genre in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae," published most recently in her Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature [Chicago, 1996], 375–416); he does not make use of John H. Finley's extensive study of Euripides, Thucydides, and the sophists (Three Essays on Thucydides, [Cambridge, Mass., 1967]); other important methodologically sophisticated work on philosophy and tragedy, such as that of Mary Whitlock Blundell (Helping Friends and Harming Enemies: A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics [Cambridge, 1989]) or Christopher Gill (Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy: The Self in Dialogue [Oxford, 1996]), does not even appear in the notes. [End Page 466... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines in detail the quality of the relationship the Catholic Church in its Sydney Archdiocese had with its lawyers in the John Ellis matter as revealed in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse inquiry. It identifies the particular moral perspective embedded in its lawyers' adversarial approach and asks whether a different approach involving explicit moral conversations might have better served the Church's avowed pastoral ethos.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.3 (2001) 429-432 [Access article in PDF] John Miles Foley. Homer's Traditional Art. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. xviii + 363 pp. Bibl., indexes. Cloth, $48.50. With Homer's Traditional Art, which may well prove his most popular book, Foley attempts a synthesis of his theory of traditional oral aesthetics, which has been under construction for a decade, since Traditional Oral (...) Epic (Berkeley 1990) and Immanent Art (Bloomington 1991). Because substantial passages in the book have lived past lives, and the fresh material adapts arguments made elsewhere, we are looking here for a statement that gives coherence and new force to a program of study; one that cultivates, rather than breaks, new theoretical ground. That this is Foley's aim is confirmed by a description of his audience: "a wide spectrum of readers, from the advanced undergraduate to the professional scholar" (xv), representing "the greatest number and variety of readers" possible (317 n. 1). Foley offers three main justifications for this new synthesis. First is the doctrine of the Homeric sêma (a key sign open to interpretation), which Foley ingeniously cites as evidence for a Greek concept similar to that of the South Slavic rec=, or "word." This he takes from Parry's interviews with Yugoslav epic singers in which they proclaim the term's application to various levels of traditional discourse, from the formula to the proverb to larger narrative patterns. The second--if I read the book's stylistic motives correctly--is a new "Homeric" technique in scholarly prose. Homer's Traditonal Art is a rhetorical juggernaut that creates inevitable momentum by frequently signaling the progress of Foley's argument, often rewording parts of the theory, and, as if to demonstrate in prose the referential power of Homer's "traditional register" of speech, offering some sêmata of his own (5-7): six "proverbs" of his own coining that encapsulate the main findings of his previous studies (e.g., "Oral tradition works like language, only more so"). These recur steadily throughout, often in closing paragraphs or summing up evidence, and are lightly varied according to context, but always point back to larger critical vistas. Third is the début of the apparatus fabulosus, or running cues to the "traditional referentiality" of a passage; here some lines from Odyssey 23 (reproduced 254-55; cf. the similar printing of the Old English poem Deor, 275). This is an attempt to approximate an "original" experience of a traditional text in performance, though Foley has no illusions about its perfection. Again, the effort requires that he supply conventions of his own (introduced in chapter 7), which he promises to refine for future "editions" on traditional principles.The book is laid out in four large sections, subdivided into an introduction, eight main chapters, an afterword on Old English poetics, two appendices, a large [End Page 429] apparatus of notes, and a rich bibliography (with few serious omissions, such as Manetti's Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity [Bloomington 1993]), a good general index (including scholars cited), and index locorum. If this does not sound like a work for a general readership, that is because Foley has expressly sought to divide his voice in two: the main discussion was to be plainly worded and clearly laid out; the scholarly audience to be addressed in the notes. On the whole, this technique works well, only occasionally failing one side or the other. The editors made the strange and regrettable decision of omitting non-Greek works from the index locorum, so that you have to check all entries in the general index for discussions of key passages in Beowulf, Deor, the many recorded South Slavic epics discussed, and so on. Greek traditional phrases are indexed in translation, so that for a discussion of (e.g.) chlôron deos, you need to know how Foley happens to translate it. The Pennsylvania State University Press has atoned for such lapses by producing a handsome volume, printed on good paper and bound in signatures with linen thread, a delight to hold. (Teachers will want... (shrink)

Foley and Turri have recently given objections to the defeasibility theory of propositional knowledge. Here, I give an objection of a quite different stripe by looking at what the theory must say about knowing that you know. I end with some remarks on how this objection relates to rival theories and how this might be a worry for some of these.

Introduction, W G Runciman Social Evolution in Primates: The Role of Ecological Factors and Male Behaviour, Carel P van Schaik Determinants of Group Size in Primates: A General Model, R I M Dunbar Function and Intention in the Calls of Non-Human Primates, Dorothy L Cheney & Robert M Seyfarth Why Culture is Common, but Cultural Evolution is Rare, Robert Boyd & Peter J Richerson An Evolutionary and Chronological Framework for Human Social Behaviour, Robert A Foley Friendship and the Banker?s (...) Paradox: Other Pathways to the Evolution of Adaptations for Altruism, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides The Early Prehistory of Human Social Behaviour: Issues of Archaeological Inference and Cognitive Evolution, Steven Mithen The Emergence of Biologically Modern Populations in Europe: A Social and Cognitive ?Revolution??, Paul Mellars Responses to Environmental Novelty: Changes in Men?s Marriage Strategies in a Rural Kenyan Community, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder Genetic Language Impairment: Unruly Grammars, M Gopnik, J Dalalakis, S E Fukuda, S Fukuda & E Kehayia The Emergence of Cultures among Wild Chimpanzees, Christophe Boesch Terrestriality, Bipedalism and the Origin of Language, Leslie C Aiello Conclusions, John Maynard Smith. (shrink)

"Dr. Rubin has brought cognitive psychology into a wholly unprecedented dialogue with studies in oral tradition. The result is a truly new perspective on memory and the processes of oral tradition." --John Miles Foley, University of Missouri.

John Locke proposed a straightforward relationship between qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions: belief corresponds to a sufficiently high degree of confidence. Richard Foley has further developed this Lockean thesis and applied it to an analysis of the preface and lottery paradoxes. Following Foley's lead, we exploit various versions of these paradoxes to chart a precise relationship between belief and probabilistic degrees of confidence. The resolutions of these paradoxes emphasize distinct but complementary features of coherent belief. These features (...) suggest principles that tie together qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions. We show how these principles may be employed to construct a quantitative model - in terms of degrees of confidence - of an agent's qualitative doxastic state. This analysis fleshes out the Lockean thesis and provides the foundation for a logic of belief that is responsive to the logic of degrees of confidence. (shrink)

John Broome and Duncan Foley have proposed an ingenious way to transfer benefits backwards in time, from people who are not here yet to people who will not be here in the future. Present people can crowd out conventional, and often brown, investments by issuing global climate bonds (GCBs). The debate about GCBs has focused on whether it is justified to use this financial instrument to allow future people to buy off present people for climate mitigation. In this (...) article, I ask whether it is fair to use GCBs to share the cost of a global carbon price between present and future people. My answer is that it depends on the approach used to calculate the carbon price and, of course, on the normative claims underlying the different approaches. Specifically, I argue that the internalisation principle underlying the cost-benefit approach does not justify intergenerational cost-shifting if, as in most cases, the social cost of carbon is determined using, inter alia, a social discount rate. Instead, the conservative justifications underlying a cost-effective carbon price consistent with the Paris mitigation target allow for intergenerational cost-shifting, but only to the extent of the difference (if any) between the Paris-consistent and the Pareto-efficient carbon price. (shrink)

John Broome and Duncan Foley have argued that it is a ‘misperception’ that the ‘control of global warming is costly’ and that we can make ‘sacrifices unnecessary’. There are a number of assumptions that are essential for this idea to work. These assumptions can be challenged. Furthermore, my claim is not merely that the Broome/Foley argument is flawed, and therefore unlikely to be successful. I will argue that it is potentially harmful, leading to harms for the present (...) generation and for future generations. (shrink)

The present article examines Contra Academicos 2.5 in which Augustine seems to detail the influence of the libri Platonicorum on his conversion. In the first part of the paper, I argue that Michael P. Foley is correct to interpret Augustine’s phrase “libri quidam pleni” as a reference to the libri Platonicorum. I advance the further claim that Augustine primarily has in mind Ennead I.6. This is in contrast to the argument alluded to by Pierre Courcelle and formally given by (...) John J. O’Meara where such a reading of Contra Academicos misconstrues the relationship between Augustine and Plotinus. In response to O’Meara, I advance a threefold argument, a corollary of which is a novel reading of a Latin phrase (bonas res Arabicas) that has perplexed scholars. In the second part of the paper, I use my reading of Contra Academicos along with two considerations from Ennead I.6 to motivate a deeper understanding of Augustine’s conversion. The present study develops recent lines of thought in Augustine scholarship and seeks to open new avenues for understanding the libri Platonicorum and their influence on Augustine’s conversion. (shrink)

The Human Psyche is an in-depth exploration of dualist-interactionism, a concept Sir John Eccles developed with Sir Karl Popper in the context of a wide...

As awareness of global warming has spread during the past couple of decades and developed into the realization that humanity faces an existential threat, a number of more or less Kantian liberal or cosmopolitan moral and political theorists have attempted to address questions of justice raised by the climate crisis. David Held was among the most prolific and influential of them. Here I discuss Held's cosmopolitan perspective on climate governance and consider its bearing on certain recent proposals for new institutions, (...) including in particular a proposal offered by John Broome and Duncan Foley for establishing a World Climate Bank. I argue that such a WCB may be endorsable from Held's perspective, depending how the initial proposal may get further developed. Held's approach to politics is similar to Kant's in certain significant respects, including the role of hope. Both approaches are valuable and important in relation to the climate crisis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Annual Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesSandra Costen Kunz and Jonathan A. SeitzThe Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies (SBCS) is one of more than two dozen scholarly societies that have been formally recognized by the American Academy of Religion as Related Scholarly Organizations. The pattern for many years has been for the SBCS to hold its annual meeting in conjunction with the annual meeting of the AAR. On (...) the Friday before the AAR’s Annual Meeting begins, the Society’s board meets in the morning and early afternoon, followed by an AAR-advertised session late that afternoon. On Saturday, another paper session or panel is followed by the Society’s annual members’ meeting.A highlight of the 2012 SBCS annual meeting was the unanimous approval, first by the governing board and later by the membership in attendance, of a major revision of the society’s bylaws. This revision focused largely on updates necessitated by changes in the ways scholars communicate day-to-day and in scholarly publications, and in international banking practices, because of the expanding use of electronic media. This revision was well over a year in the making, with particularly generous input of time and thought by former board member Grace Burford and Treasurer Guy McCloskey, and with efficient guidance by President Terry Muck.Another highlight of this 2012 gathering was the announcement at the board meeting that the SBCS’s reapplication for formal status as a Related Scholarly Organization of the AAR was accepted for another five years. Among other privileges, this status makes it possible for us to communicate our calls for papers, session plans, and annual meeting schedule through AAR’s website and print publications.At the governing board meeting, Treasurer McCloskey noted an increase of more than 7 percent in paying members, but it was agreed that the society could carry [End Page 193] out its purposes more effectively if we were to welcome more new members. One especially notable new member is C. Denise Yarbrough (University of Rochester), who was unanimously approved at the members meeting as the Christian co-editor of this journal, along with Buddhist co-editor Wakoh Shannon Hickey (Notre Dame of Maryland University), who signed on in 2011.Rita Gross, who formerly co-edited the journal and was president of the Society, was elected to the board, replacing Amos Yong, whose term ended in 2012. We are extremely grateful for his leadership in many areas, including the Streng Book Award Committee. Abraham Vélez de Cea was unanimously approved to chair the Streng Book Award Committee, with Mary Jeanne Larabee continuing on the committee and David Gardiner being approved as the third member. Alice Keefe, in her vice presidential role as program chair, took note of the lively discussion about possible topics for next year’s panel sessions.The Friday afternoon seminar was titled “Contemplative Pedagogy: Pitfalls and Potentials.” Panelists included John D. Copenhaver (Shenandoah University), Kristine T. Utterback (University of Wyoming), Andrew O. Fort (Texas Christian University), and Judith Simmer-Brown (Naropa University). The respondent was William H. Green (Tougaloo College), and Wakoh Shannon Hickey (Notre Dame of Maryland University) presided. Versions of the four panelists’ papers are included in this volume of the journal, as well as additional papers on the topic by other authors.In lieu of its customary field trip, this year the SBCS encouraged participants to attend the new film Jesus & Buddha: Practicing across Traditions (Old Dog Documentaries, 2012), screened on Friday night before the AAR Annual Meeting. In the film, three leading figures in Buddhist-Christian dialogue were interviewed: Paul F. Knitter (Union Theological Seminary), Robert Kennedy, SJ (St. Peter’s College), and Chung Hyun Kyung (Union Theological Seminary). A discussion, over which Knitter presided, followed the film.The Saturday panel was “The Ethics of Wealth in a World of Economic Inequality: Buddhist and Christian Perspectives.” Panelists included Joerg Rieger (Southern Methodist University), Alan Jay Richard (Realistic Living, Inc.), and Carol S. Anderson (Kalamazoo College). The respondent was Mark Wood (Virginia Commonwealth University), and Alice A. Keefe (University of Wisconsin) presided. At the end of this session, before the member’s meeting, we enjoyed P. J. Johnston’s... (shrink)

Aristotle’s solution to Zeno’s arrow paradox differs markedly from the so called at-at solution championed by Russell, which has become the orthodox view in contemporary philosophy. The latter supposes that motion consists in simply being at different places at different times. It can boast parsimony because it eliminates velocity from the ontology. Aristotle, by contrast, solves the paradox by denying that the flight of the arrow is composed of instants; rather, on my reading, he holds that the flight is a (...) unity which is ontologically prior to the temporal parts that may be abstracted from it. I label this position temporal holism; and an entity that is ontological prior to its temporal parts lasting. Lasting, I argue, is the key to Aristotle’s solution to the arrow paradox, but it has received insufficient attention in the relevant literature. I therefore set out here to investigate lasting and highlight its major role in Aristotle’s metaphysics more broadly, and in his solution to other problems of change. I show, too, how lasting within a contemporary context underwrites a parsimonious and intuitive solution to the arrow paradox that retains instantaneous velocity, and hence solves a problem for those who think velocity is required within the ontology to underwrite certain causal roles. (shrink)

Genetic testing has historically been performed in the context of chronic disease and cancer diagnostics. The timelines for these tests are typically measured in days or weeks, rather than in minutes. As such, the concept that genetic information might be generated and then used to alter management in the acute setting has, thus far, not been feasible. However, recent advances in genetic technologies have the potential to allow genetic information to be generated significantly quicker. The m.1555A>G genetic variant is present (...) in one in 500 individuals and predisposes to profound hearing loss following the administration of aminoglycoside antibiotics. These antibiotics are used frequently in cases of neonatal sepsis and it is estimated that approximately 180 neonates in the UK are at risk of antibiotic induced hearing loss each year because of this genetic change. Knowledge of this variant in the acute setting would allow clinicians to prescribe alternative antibiotics. The Pharmacogenetics to Avoid Loss of Hearing study will implement a genetic point of care test (POCT) for the m.1555A>G variant within two major UK based neonatal intensive care units. This represents the first trial of a genetic POCT aimed at altering management in the acute setting. This round table discussion outlines the novel ethical issues faced in the development of this trial and the legal barriers to implementation. We ask five stakeholders to provide their opinions on this trial and their perspectives on the concept of genetic testing in the acute setting.Trial registration numberISRCTN-13704894. (shrink)

In a fair, infinite lottery, it is possible to conclude that drawing a number divisible by four is strictly less likely than drawing an even number; and, with apparently equal cogency, that drawing a number divisible by four is equally as likely as drawing an even number.

In a wide-ranging, provocative anatomy of modern society and its origins, novelist and historian John Ralston Saul explores the reason for our deepening sense of crisis and confusion. Throughout the Western world we talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet Saul shows that there has never before been such pressure for conformity. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We are obsessed with competition, yet the single largest item of international trade is (...) a subsidized market in armaments. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about "invasive government," yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are breaking down. While most observers view these problems separately, Saul demonstrates that they are largely manifestations of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the last 400 years, our "rational elites" have gradually instituted reforms in every phase of social life. But Saul shows that they have also been responsible for most of the difficulties and violence of the same period. This paradox arises from a simple truth which our elites deny: far from being a moral force, reason is no more than an administrative method. Their denial has helped to turn the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts - "Voltaire's bastards"--Whose cult of scientific management is bereft of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertainment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose peoples increasingly dwell in a world of illusion. Already known to millions of readers as the author of novels which portray the overwhelming effects of this power on the modern individual by weaving together international finance, the oil and arms business, guerrilla warfare, drug traffic, and the world of art, here Saul lays aside the mask of fiction to speak in his own voice. Only by withdrawing from our addiction to "solutions," he argues, reclaiming the citizens' right to question and participate in public life, and recovering a common sense capacity for intelligent panic, can we find a way out of our permanent crisis. (shrink)

Christian miller invites further clarification about the relationship between accountability and autonomy. Whereas embracing accountability to others for one’s responsibilities in those relationships emphasizes relationality, autonomy accents the individual’s own capacities to exhibit agency in enacting one’s decisions. Accordingly, we theorize that relational capacities for empathic concern and perspective-taking are especially important in the virtue of accountability. The capacity for self-regulation may serve both one’s autonomous pursuits and accountability for carrying out one’s responsibilities...

In this article I explore Serres’ idea of science and how it impacted his overall work. This approach to understanding Serres’ idea of science is much like working with Nietzsche. I look at the areas Serres viewed as the dangers of science including what he referred to as a tsunami of data and the primary focus on methods. I end with Serres third way of inventive science.

A formal semantic analysis of the _tough_-construction is provided building on the well-known observation that _events_ play a central role. A close look at the semantic characteristics of the class of _tough_-predicates and the syntactic and semantic properties of nonfinite clauses reveals the link between these pieces, expanding on recent advances in the semantics of clauses (Moulton in Natural selection and the syntax of clausal complementation, PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 2009 ). Building on Salzmann (Reconstruction and resumption (...) in indirect A′-dependencies: On the syntax of prolepsis and relativization in (Swiss) German and beyond, de Gruyter, Berlin 2017b ), a formal semantic and syntactic analysis of prolepsis is provided to explain the antecedent gap chain in the _tough_-construction. In total, this paper offers a description and explanation of (i) the class of _tough_-predicates; (ii) the properties of the nonfinite clause that appears in the _tough_-construction; (iii) why no other predicates or clauses are permitted in the construction; (iv) the many properties of the antecedent gap chain in the _tough_-construction, primarily the fact that the chain is “weakly” unbounded; and (v) the semantic contribution of prolepsis as it applies in the _tough_-construction. (shrink)

This paper draws on the work of Alain Badiou and Martin Heidegger to construct a postructural theory of the firm. The ideal firm is conceived as a technology that facilitates a technology-free void/site of potential. For actors within this firm to be ethical requires their achievement of human subjecthood through aesthetic fidelity to the site-induced events. Heidegger’s concerns regarding the enframing effects of technology and his recognition of the truth-revealing qualities of art, are incorporated here into a theory of the (...) firm as an idealized, technology facilitated, aesthetic void-of-potential revealing. Authentic human being thus implies that firms-as-technology ‘get out of the way’. This theory of the firm is further revealed through Badiou’s concept of event-driven human flourishing. We embrace Badiou’s ‘ethics-of-truths’ in which fidelity to the trace of an event creates human subjecthood. We consider implications of our theory-of-the-firm for social media firms such as Alphabet and Facebook. (shrink)