It is the impression of neurologists who deal with cancer patients that the incidence of neurologic complications of cancer is increasing (Posner 1995). ...

This volume presents twenty-two uncollected philosophical essays by Sir Peter Strawson, one of the leading philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. The essays (two of them previously unpublished) are drawn from seven decades of work, from 1949 to 2003. They span the broad range of Strawson's work: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, ethical theory, and history of philosophy, along with metaphilosophical reflections and intellectual autobiography.

Reflection Principles are commonly thought to produce only strong axioms of infinity consistent with V = L. It would be desirable to have some notion of strong reflection to remedy this, and we have proposed Global Reflection Principles based on a somewhat Cantorian view of the universe. Such principles justify the kind of cardinals needed for, inter alia , Woodin’s Ω-Logic.

At the heart of the underdetermination of scientific theory by evidence is the simple idea that the evidence available to us at a given time may fail to determine what beliefs we should hold in response to it. In a textbook example, if I all I know is that you spent $10 on apples and oranges and that apples cost $1 while oranges cost $2, then I know that you did not buy six oranges, but I do not know whether (...) you bought one orange and eight apples, two oranges and six apples, and so on. A simple scientific example can be found in the rationale behind the sensible methodological adage that “correlation does not imply causation”. If watching lots of cartoons causes children to be more violent in their playground behavior then we should (barring complications) expect to find a correlation between levels of cartoon viewing and violent playground behavior. But that is also what we would expect to find if children who are prone to violence tend to enjoy and seek out cartoons more than other children, or if propensities to violence and increased cartoon viewing are both caused by some third factor (like general parental neglect or excessive consumption of jellybeans). So a high correlation between cartoon viewing and violent playground behavior is evidence that (by itself) simply underdetermines what we should believe about the causal relationship between these two activities. As we will see, however, the challenge of distinguishing correlation from causation is far from the only important circumstance in which underdetermination is thought to arise in scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Aan de hand van een breed scala aan actuele onderwerpen worden de praktische, medische en psychologische aspecten belicht van de onderlinge samenhang tussen lichaam en geest.

The author clarifies the existential philosophy that is implicit in Kurt Goldstein's philosophy of organism (Goldstein, 1963; 1995). Situated in response to the growing trend that psychological phenomena are reducible to the nervous system, the author argues for the reverse: that the significance of nervous system activity can only be understood by viewing it as background to foreground performances. Like the organization of perception into meaningful figure-- ground Gestalts, the existential modes of embodiment, sociality, temporality, spatiality, and attunement are organized (...) together to accomplish foreground performances. It is only within this context that the activity of the nervous system may be understood as significant or insignificant. Speech is given as an example. The article concludes with a commentary on how the trend of reducing psychological phenomena to neurological phenomena has impaired our understanding of brain disorders and psychological disorders. (shrink)

El artículo muestra la complejidad y multidimensionalidad de la interculturalidad y realiza algunas consideraciones partiendo de las disciplinas de la ética, psicología, educación y política. Nos interesa subrayar la inserción como un modo de ser y de relacionarse y su papel en el plano de las relac..

The widely cited Nuffield Council on Bioethics ‘Intervention Ladder’ structurally embodies the assumption that personal autonomy is maximized by non-intervention. Consequently, the Intervention Ladder encourages an extreme ‘negative liberty’ view of autonomy. Yet there are several alternative accounts of autonomy that are both arguably superior as accounts of autonomy and better suited to the issues facing public health ethics. We propose to replace the one-sided ladder, which has any intervention coming at a cost to autonomy, with a two-sided ‘Balanced Intervention (...) Ladder,’ where intervention can either enhance or diminish autonomy. We show that not only the alternative, richer accounts of autonomy but even Mill’s classic version of negative liberty puts some interventions on the positive side of the ladder. (shrink)