Theories of spatial cognition are derived from many sources. Psychologists are concerned with determining the features of the mind which, in combination with external inputs, produce our spatialized experience. A review of philosophical and other approaches has convinced us that the brain must come equipped to impose a three-dimensional Euclidean framework on experience – our analysis suggests that object re-identification may require such a framework. We identify this absolute, nonegocentric, spatial framework with a specific neural system centered in the hippocampus.A (...) consideration of the kinds of behaviours in which such a spatial mapping system would be important is followed by an analysis of the anatomy and physiology of this system, with special emphasis on the place-coded neurons recorded in the hippocampus of freely moving rats. A tentative physiological model for the hippocampal cognitive map is proposed. A review of lesion studies, in tasks as diverse as discrimination learning, avoidance, and extinction, shows that the cognitive map notion can adequately explain much of the data.The model is extended to humans by the assumption that spatial maps are built in one hemisphere, semantic maps in the other. The latter provide a semantic deep structure within which discourse comprehension and production can be achieved. Evidence from the study of amnesic patients, briefly reviewed, is consistent with this extension. (shrink)

Kant's ethics, like others, has unavoidable anthropocentric starting points: only humans, or other 'rational natures', can hold obligations. Seemingly this should not make speciesist conclusions unavoidable: might not rational natures have obligations to the non-rational? However, Kant's argument for the unconditional value of rational natures cannot readily be extended to show that all non-human animals have unconditional value, or rights. Nevertheless Kant's speciesism is not thoroughgoing. He does not view non-rational animals as mere items for use. He allows for indirect (...) duties 'with regard to' them which afford welfare but not rights, and can allow for indirect duties 'with regard to' abstract and dispersed aspects of nature, such as biodiversity, species and habitats. (shrink)

BackgroundBiobanks are considered to be key infrastructures for research development and have generated a lot of debate about their ethical, legal and social implications. While the focus has been on human genomic research, rapid advances in human microbiome research further complicate the debate.DiscussionWe draw on two cystic fibrosis biobanks in Toronto, Canada, to illustrate our points. The biobanks have been established to facilitate sample and data sharing for research into the link between disease progression and microbial dynamics in the lungs (...) of pediatric and adult patients. We begin by providing an overview of some of the ELSI associated with human microbiome research, particularly on the implications for the broader society. We then discuss ethical considerations regarding the identifiability of samples biobanked for human microbiome research, and examine the issue of return of results and incidental findings. We argue that, for the purposes of research ethics oversight, human microbiome research samples should be treated with the same privacy considerations as human tissues samples. We also suggest that returning individual microbiome-related findings could provide a powerful clinical tool for care management, but highlight the need for a more grounded understanding of contextual factors that may be unique to human microbiome research.ConclusionsWe revisit the ELSI of biobanking and consider the impact that human microbiome research might have. Our discussion focuses on identifiability of human microbiome research samples, and return of research results and incidental findings for clinical management. (shrink)

The Lancet–O’Neill Institute/Georgetown University Commission on Global Health and Law published its report on the Legal Determinants of Health in 2019. The term ‘legal determinants of health’ draws attention to the power of law to influence upstream social and economic influences on population health. In this article, we introduce the Commission, including its background and rationale, set out its methodology, summarize its key findings and recommendations and reflect on its impact since publication. We also look to the future, making suggestions (...) as to how the global health community can make the best use of the Commission’s momentum in relation to using law and legal tools to advance population health. (shrink)

When The Sound of One Hand Clapping came out in Japan in 1916 it caused a scandal. Zen was a secretive practice, its wisdom relayed from master to novice in strictest privacy. That a handbook existed recording not only the riddling koans that are central to Zen teaching but also detailing the answers to them seemed to mark Zen as rote, not revelatory. For all that, The Sound of One Hand Clapping opens the door to Zen like no other book. (...) Including koans that go back to the master who first brought the koanteaching method from Japan to China in the eighteenth century, this book offers, in the words of the translator, editor, and Zen initiate Yoel Hoffmann, "the clearest, most detailed, and most correct picture of Zen" that can be found. What we have here is an extraordinary introduction to Zen thought as lived thought, a treasury of problems, paradoxes, and performance that will appeal to artists, writers, and philosophers as well as Buddhists and students of religion. (shrink)

Персонажем предлагаемого годового семинара является современный словенский политик, психоаналитик, философ Славой Жижек, работы которого получили широчайший отклик как в современной Европе, так и в Америке.

With the development of Ukraine as an independent state, interest in its history and especially in the turning points of history is increasing. One such period was the famine of 1921-1923. At this time, contradictions between the Soviet government and the Russian Orthodox Church were particularly acute. In 1922-1923, a campaign was taken to seize church values ​​to help the hungry, in which the Church was unable to increase its authority through active assistance to the population and which significantly reduced (...) the role of religion in the lives of Soviet people. The consequences of these events are still relevant today. (shrink)

(2012). Murray Rothbard: Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers series, Volume 15. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 584-589.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 142-154 [Access article in PDF] Critical Discussions The Fortunes of Avant-Garde Poetry Mary Anne O'Neil Invisible Fences. Prose Poetry as a Genre in French and American Literature, by Steven Monte; xii & 298 pp. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000, $50.00. Modern Visual Poetry, by Willard Bohn; 321 pp. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000, $47.00. The situation of French poetry at the turn (...) of the twenty-first century is far different from what it was during the last fin de siècle. In 1900, poetry was a booming art, and France was home to numerous poets of varied inspiration and expression. The religious verse of Claudel and Péguy shared the attention of the reading public with the philosophical poetry of Valéry and the futuristic celebrations of Paris and modern life found in Apollinaire's Alcools and Calligrammes. Long poems, short poems, poems written in standard verse, free verse, prose, and even published as drawings, suggested that the golden age of poetry begun in the early nineteenth century by the Romantics and continued after 1850 by Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé, would not soon come to an end. This indeed proved to be the case, for the heirs of the Symbolist tradition of the first decade of the twentieth century were soon followed by the Surrealist revolutionaries of the 1920s and 1930s, many of whom directed their talents to the composition of political verse at the time of the Second World War. Political poetry by and large disappeared from France after 1950, only to be [End Page 142] succeeded over the next two decades by two very different types of verse. On the one hand, writers like St. John Perse and Pierre Jean Jouve produced difficult works whose appeal was limited to a sophisticated audience, while lyricists, such as Jacques Prévert and even the songwriter Georges Brassens, made poetry more accessible to the general public, often through popular songs. The fact that, during the days of May 1968, students scrawled verses of the Surrealist-Communist poet Paul Eluard on the walls of the Sorbonne to encourage efforts to bring down the social order attests to the power exerted by poetry on the intellectual life of France well into the second half of the twentieth century. Such, however, is no longer the case today. There are only two well-known living French poets, Francis Ponge and Yves Bonnefoy. While reviews dedicated to original poetry do still exist, especially in the south of France where the poetic arm of the French Resistance was most active in the 1940s, poetry attracts many fewer readers--and fewer writers--than it did even fifty years ago.Such a radical change merits some reflection. What has happened to French poetry since the mid-twentieth century? In a sense, all good things must come to an end sometime, and a century and a half of inventiveness and poetic energy may simply have run its natural course. French publishing houses, well aware that prose sells better than verse, have done little to encourage young poets. However, certain trends in the subject matter and form of contemporary French poetry have probably contributed to the current lack of interest. Since the end of the Second World War, French poets have concerned themselves almost uniquely with everyday life--common objects, geographical locales, and ordinary people. This obsession with the ordinary has produced some excellent poetry, especially René Char's evocations of Provençal landscapes and Yves Bonnefoy's treatments of childhood. Yet, this concentration on everyday life has severed poetry from the traditional subjects that have sustained it ever since classical antiquity, such as the celebration of heroic figures and heroic deeds, philosophical and religious inquiry, love, loss, prophetic vision. This very narrow range of subject risks consigning poetry to the status of a minor art. At the turn of the twenty-first century, French poetry also finds itself at the end of a very long period of formal experimentation that began in the second half of the nineteenth century and which includes... (shrink)

À la croisée de la philosophie et de l’histoire de l’art, Bernard Teyssèdre a ouvert des champs de recherche très divers, ce qui a suscité l’enthousiasme de ses étudiants, mais aussi déconcerté ceux qui restaient attachés à leur pré carré disciplinaire. Présenter aujourd’hui son parcours intellectuel revient à faire redécouvrir certains de ses travaux oubliés en esthétique afin de montrer leur singularité et leur cohérence profondément hégélienne, bien que ses recherches aient pris des formes très différentes et abordés avec érudition (...) des domaines très éloignés les uns des autres. Sans oublier de situer philosophiquement des aspects moins connus de ses activités, littéraires, artistiques et aussi institutionnelles avec sa contribution déterminante au développement de la discipline esthétique et à l’introduction des arts plastiques à l’université. Ce panorama n’aurait pas été complet si n’était pas signalée la place de ses recherches en paléontologie restées longtemps secrètes et a priori fort éloignées de l’esthétique. Alors que Bernard Teyssèdre avait publié en 2007 une nouvelle édition de son Roman de l’Origine revue et augmentée (et que Thierry Savatier était sur le point de publier une nouvelle édition de L’Origine du monde, Histoire d’un tableau de Gustave Courbet ), Jean Da Silva lui apprit qu’une photographie du tableau exposé au musée d’Orsay avait circulé en France pendant une vingtaine d’années avant d’être publiée en 1953 dans des revues oubliées ; ce qui bouleversait l’idée que l’on avait encore en 2009 de la connaissance de ce tableau. S’ensuivit ensuite un jeu de piste à deux, sur le blog, par courriels et au téléphone. (shrink)

In this paper I want to propose that we see solipsism as arising from certain problems we have about identifying ourselves as subjects in an objective world. The discussion will centre on Wittgenstein’s treatment of solipsism in his Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus. In that work Wittgenstein can be seen to express an unusually profound understanding of the problems faced in trying to give an account of how we, who are subjects, identify ourselves as objects in the world. We have in his (...) compressed remarks, the kernels of a number of arguments which all come together to form what can be called the problem of self-identification. I want to argue that the solipsism of the Tractatus arises at least in part as a solution to, or – to put it less optimistically – as a symptom or articulation of this problem. In approaching Wittgenstein’s early discussion of solipsism in this way I will obviously be in disagreement with some other interpretations of the work. For example, there are those who think that there is no ‘solipsism of the Tractatus’.1 In fact, the Tractarian arguments presented below as motivating solipsism have been seen as fulfilling the quite opposite function of refuting it. I do not intend in this piece to engage with alternative interpretations. Let me say a little bit about why I have granted myself the licence not to do so. First, the focus of my concern with solipsism is on how it connects with what I have called the problem of self-identification. While it is a concern that emerged in an attempt to make sense of Wittgenstein’s remarks in. (shrink)

池上彰氏が各紙誌で紹介、大反響を呼んだ前作『「昔はよかった」と言うけれど戦前のマナー・モラルから考える』の待望の続編!

日本政治の実証分析、レヴァイアサン、自由主義的改革、政界再編、ポピュリズム――日本政治研究をリードした「大嶽政治学」の軌跡。.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Are There Failed Persons?John O'CallaghanIntroductionAre there failed persons? Yes. However, before explaining what a failed person is, it will be good to consider closely a very significant part of our society to get a sense of what it thinks a failed person is, since my account of what a failed person is is markedly different. It is important to think about the question of failed persons because there are (...) growing movements here and abroad aimed at killing by medical means human beings who are judged in some sense to be failed persons, human beings who do not count as persons according to a common societal notion of persons, a social-psychological notion of persons.The question for anyone who lives within this society with its notion of failed persons is whether one will take part in and support this movement toward killing human beings or avoid it, indeed whether one will push back against it. It is easy enough to fall into a trap of thinking about failed persons the way much of our society does. One's complicity in adopting the social-psychological notion of person contributes to enabling the acceptance of such killing, even if one believes one would never perform the killing act. My effort here is precisely to push back against such killing, by pushing back against the notion of persons that animates it.The killing of human beings by our society is not simply confined to abortion, as it has been legally and widely available here in the United States for almost fifty years now. Recent political discussions in the wake of the Dobbs decision have made it clear that many political leaders think such killing ought to be allowed all the way up until birth, and perhaps after. Relatively [End Page 1123] recently there was an article in a mainstream bioethics journal by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva arguing that what most people would take to be cases of infanticide should be renamed, per their title, "After-Birth Abortion."1 The article was not about the moral legitimacy of either infanticide or abortion. The moral legitimacy of those acts for various reasons was taken as a given by the authors. In the case of euthanizing infants, they noted the expanding number of arguments for it among philosophers, the desire for guidelines for doing it among members of the medical profession, and the protocols for it established in places like the Netherlands.The authors argued that in the case of newborns, including healthy newborns, killing them should not be considered infanticide or euthanasia.2 They distinguished abortion from both euthanasia and infanticide. Euthanasia involves killing a human person, where a person is understood to be a being that can experience itself as having interests that can be harmed. "We take 'person' to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her."3 Euthanasia, when justified, is justified by being in the best "interests" of the person killed. Infanticide involves euthanizing children.However, the authors claim that a newborn is not a person in the sense of "person" specified. So, the authors' term "after-birth abortion" is a terminological distinction based upon denying that a newborn is a child, children being persons. They also assume that infants are children as they understand "child." So not being a child, a newborn cannot be an infant. Not being an infant, killing it cannot be infanticide or euthanasia, again as the authors define those terms.4 Instead, killing the newborns, healthy or not, should be thought of as having the same moral weight as an abortion before birth, and thus rather than being called infanticide or euthanasia, it should be called "after-birth abortion."5Killing a newborn then is "ethically permissible" in just the same circumstances and for the same reasons as abortion is ethically permissible. Among [End Page 1124] the "ethically permissible" circumstances for killing newborns, including perfectly healthy newborns, are that the "well-being of the family is at risk" with respect to "social, psychological, economic" factors,6 but also the fact... (shrink)

Abortion is permitted in many jurisdictions after the age at which an infant is viable on the basis of intensive neonatal care techniques. Does this cause special concerns for those involved in perinatal care and termination of pregnancy services or is the overlap mainly an abstract issue fretted over by ethicists and academics? In order to explore this question, a group of clinicians involved in this area of care were interviewed and their interviews analysed using qualitative measures. The clinicians concerned (...) were exercised by the ethical issues and had various ways of resolving them which tended to reflect a gradualist, multifaceted and, to some extent, particularist approach to ethical decision-making in relation to the edges of human life. The ways in which those strands of ethical thought are instanced in the interview material are reported and discussed. (shrink)

The time of the economic crisis, the prolonged collisions between the opposition and the main branches of power, the permanent election process, and the general instability of society, characteristic to modern Ukraine, give birth to the state of emotional and psychological stress - from sorrow, despair, and a sense of hopelessness to complete eclecticism of public opinion and opposition, even within one family.