The scientific successes of the last 400 years strongly suggest a view on which things are organized into layers, with phenomena in higher layers dependent on and determined by what goes on below. Philosophers have recently explored the idea that we can make sense of this idea by appeal to a relation called grounding. This book develops the rudiments of a theory of grounding, and applies that theory to questions of independent interest. The theorizing consists in saying in more detail (...) what grounding is and how it relates to explanations of the relevant sort, discussing objections to the deployment of a notion of grounding, and drawing points of contrast between a grounding-centered approach to relative fundamentality and other approaches in the literature. The book then turns to a demonstration of how this theorizing bears fruit in the investigation of other interesting questions. The applications are to central questions concerning (i) how to distinguish between truths that say how objective reality is in itself, quite independently of us, and truths that do not; (ii) the nature of truth; and (iii) the relation between fundamental physical facts and the rich panoply of other facts that depend on and are determined by them, including facts concerning our own doings. The aim is to advance our understanding of one of the deepest and thorniest questions which the stunning scientific achievements of the last 400 years pose: how higher-level phenomena, including ourselves, fit into an ultimately physical world. (shrink)

Purpose of review This review considers the literature on ethical and conceptual issues in eating disorders from the last 18 months. Some reference to earlier work is necessary in order to provide context for the recent findings from research that is ongoing. -/- Recent findings Empirical ethics research on anorexia nervosa includes novel ethical and conceptual findings on the role of authenticity and personal identity in individuals’ reports of their experience, as well as new evidence on the role of affective (...) states and values in decision making at later stages of the illness. Evidence points to the hypothesis that anorexia nervosa may be a distinct affective syndrome that organizes feelings and emotions in accordance with a fixed idea. -/- Summary There has been impressive progress in empirical ethics research on anorexia nervosa, with important implications for ethical and conceptual issues that surround decision-making capacity and our understanding of the illness. (shrink)

In many Western jurisdictions, the law presumes that adult persons, and sometimes children that meet certain criteria, are capable of making their own health care decisions; for example, consenting to a particular medical treatment, or consenting to participate in a research trial. But what exactly does it mean to say that a subject has or lacks the requisite capacity to decide? This last question has to do with what is commonly called “decisional capacity,” a central concept in health care law (...) and ethics, and increasingly an independent topic of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

After examining these decisions in their one-period setting, they devote most of the book to a multiperiod context, which adds the long-term perspective most risk management analyses require.

This commentary on the argument by Jablonka & Ginsburg ( 2022 ) that unlimited associative learning (UAL) provides an evolutionary marker for the transition to consciousness raises the question, “Transition to what?” The proposal that a level of consciousness required for UAL would embody eight specific criteria is credible, but can a limited degree of sentience still exist in animals that lack some of the criteria? The article makes a compelling case that UAL could serve as a marker for the (...) transition to an evolutionarily sustainable level of consciousness, but this may be different from _minimal_ consciousness. Nonetheless, the insight of these authors provides an exemplary roadmap for research on the evolutionary emergence of subjective experience in early animal evolution. (shrink)

John Searle has proposed one of the most influential contemporary accounts of social ontology. According to Searle, institutional facts are created by the collective assignment of a specific kind of function —status-function— to pre-existing objects. Thus, a piece of paper counts as money in a certain context because people collectively recognize it as money, and impose a status upon it, which in turn enables that piece of paper to deliver certain functions (means of payment, etc.). The first part of this (...) essay presents Searle’s theory of social ontology and summarizes his views on money. The second part centers on criticisms of his views and compares his theory with its main competitors, including the theories of Tuomela, Guala and Hindriks, and Smit, Buekens and Duplessis. The conclusion attempts to see what may remain of Searle’s theory after careful examination. (shrink)

This book is based on the premise that the realm of being is meaningful to the extent that we are able to view it comprehensively. Our understanding, in its degree, depends on the breadth of our knowledge; for everything, as we shall see, tends to shed light on everything else. But the knowledge we have today, although far exceeding that of our predecessors, does not serve this purpose of illumination insofar as it remains unassembled, partitioned among the minds of the (...) specialists who respectively represent the fields into which it is divided. ... In one of its aspects, this book is an exercise in perspective. As such, it will have much to say of the very small and the very large, of analysis and synthesis.--Preface. (shrink)

Comment le silence agit-il au cinéma? Qu'est-ce qui permet d'identifier ce phénomène? Implique-t-il la disparition intégrale de la matière sonore ou seulement sa minimalisation à l'intérieur d'un film? Son intervention, ponctuelle ou durable, tend à engager une raréfaction, voire une suppression, des paroles et de la musique, mais pas forcément de tout bruit. Des lieux particulièrement silencieux, ainsi que le mutisme ou la surdité d'un personnage, sont également propices à l'instauration de telles situations audiovisuelles. Cet ouvrage analyse, à travers une (...) approche généalogique et herméneutique, la présence du silence dans le cinéma contemporain sur le double principe d'héritages figuratifs et de ruptures discursives. Il s'appuie sur un corpus de films réalisés entre autres par Robert Bresson, Marguerite Duras, Andrei Tarkovski, Theo Angelopoulos, Tsaï Ming-liang, Béla Tarr, Pedro Costa ou Sharunas Bartas. Au-delà des considérations esthétiques, le livre interroge aussi les valeurs anthropologiques, morales, sociales et/ou politiques qui se glissent derrière ces manifestations concrètes du silence. Celui-ci nous invite, tant sur le plan éthique que sensible, à repenser notre rapport fondamental au monde."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

De filosofie heeft de cultuur als symbolische aktiviteit van de mens pas laat ontdekt. Pas Giambattisto Vico trachtte de geschiedenis als een organisch proces in zijn filosofie te betrekken. Kant en Herder ontwikkelden op eigen wijze deze cultuurfilosofie verder. In de afgelopen eeuw zijn de theorieën zover uitgewaaierd dat er nauwelijks meer een metafysische synthese te vinden is, die alles kan bevatten.

This chapter offers an overview of the phenomenological approach to delusions, emphasizing what Karl Jaspers called the "true delusions" of schizophrenia. Phenomenological psychopathology focuses on the experience of delusions and the delusional world. Several features of this approach are surveyed, including emphasis on formal qualities of subjective life and questioning of standard assumptions about delusions as erroneous belief. The altered modalities of world-oriented and self-oriented experience that precede and ground delusions in schizophrenia, especially the experiences of revelation that Klaus Conrad (...) termed the outer and inner apophany, are then discussed. The chapter first considers the famous "delusional mood", then the role of ipseity-disturbance. In both cases it is explained how delusions can develop out of these distinctive alterations of perception and feeling. The classic question of the understandability or comprehensibility of schizophrenic delusion, together with the related issues of wish-fulfillment and rationalizing motives are then considered. The chapter addresses the crucial but neglected issue of the felt reality-status of delusions or the delusional world, discussing derealization, "double bookkeeping", and "double exposure". The chapter concludes by discussing delusions typically found in paranoid and affective psychoses, and monothematic delusions found in certain organic conditions. (shrink)

1. ptie. Le besoin de rédemption.--2. ptie. La rédemption religieuse.--3. ptie. La rédemption métaphysique.--4. ptie. La rédemption positiviste.--5. ptie. La rédemption individualiste.

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 1 Seiten: 59-78.

Signifiance du monde propose une "harmonisation intégrale" entre la linguistique saussuro-guillaumienne des langues naturelles et la pensée phénoménologique heideggérienne de la vérité de l'être en tant qu'alètheia, dans son sens grec de "ce qui sort de la latence" et que Jean-Louis Tristani nomme illatence. En d'autres termes, cet essai donne accès à une compréhension des "relations grammaticales évidentes qui articulent l'être, dans sa vérité, et la pensée, telles qu'elles sont a priori données dans le système linguistique de n'importe quelle (...) langue naturelle". Cette mise au jour de la co-originarité de la langue et de la pensée corrobore la formule du linguiste français Antoine Meillet, maintes fois citée par Gustave Guillaume, selon laquelle, en ce lieu intelligible de la langue "tout se tient et a un plan d'une pleine rigueur". Une rigueur qui intègre le système morpho-lexical d'une langue, en tant qu'intégrale des conditions d'effection du discours, avec les conditions existentiales de possibilité du Dasein en tant qu'être-au-monde. D'où Signifiance du monde, ce titre qui annonce la composante linguistique de notre présence au monde."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

SNODENT is a dental diagnostic vocabulary incompletely integrated in SNOMED-CT. Nevertheless, SNODENT could become the de facto standard for dental diagnostic coding. SNODENT's manageable size, the fact that it is administratively self-contained, and relates to a well-understood domain provides valuable opportunities to formulate and test, in controlled experiments, a series of hypothesis concerning diagnostic systems. Of particular interest are questions related to establishing appropriate quality assurance methods for its optimal level of detail in content, its ontological structure, its construction and (...) maintenance. This paper builds on previous–software-based methodologies designed to assess the quality of SNOMED-CT. When applied to SNODENT several deficiencies were uncovered. 9.52% of SNODENT terms point to concepts in SNOMED-CT that have some problem. 18.53% of SNODENT terms point to SNOMED-CT concepts do not have, in SNOMED, the term used by SNODENT. Other findings include the absence of a clear specification of the exact relationship between a term and a termcode in SNODENT and the improper assignment of the same termcode to terms with significantly different meanings. An analysis of the way in which SNODENT is structurally integrated into SNOMED resulted in the generation of 1081 new termcodes reflecting entities not present in the SNOMED tables but required by SNOMED's own description logic based classification principles. Our results show that SNODENT requires considerable enhancements in content, quality of coding, quality of ontological structure and the manner in which it is integrated and aligned with SNOMED. We believe that methods for the analysis of the quality of diagnostic coding systems must be developed and employed if such systems are to be used effectively in both clinical practice and clinical research. (shrink)

The fundamental argument of this book is that the evasion of epistemology-centered philosophy—from Emerson to Rorty—results in a conception of philosophy as a form of cultural criticism in which the meaning of America is put forward by intellectuals in response to distinct social and cultural crises. In this sense, American Pragmatism is less a philosophical tradition putting forward solutions to perennial problems in the Western philosophical conversation initiated by Plato and more a continuous cultural commentary or set of interpretations that (...) attempt to explain America to itself at a particular historical moment.The goal of a sophisticated neopragmatism is to think genealogically about specific practices in... (shrink)