A Palestinian administrative detainee in Israel asked for the author to care for him as an independent physician while in hospital on two hunger strikes, lasting 66 and 55 days, respectively. Hunger striking is placed in the context of other forms of food refusal and artificial feeding. The various perspectives on the challenge of the medical care of hunger strikers are reviewed, as seen by the state, the public, the doctor and the patient. Institutional statements on the management of hunger (...) strikers are reviewed and the local political considerations are highlighted. In conclusion, a trusting doctor–patient relationship is presented as the crucial element for securing a successful outcome, preserving the prisoner's life and dignity with no significant political damage incurred by the State. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE THE WORLD AS WILL TO POWER /. What there is for Nietzsche Any philosophical system which claims to be at all comprehensive must answer, ...

The character of the scholarly patronage community of Jixia in the Warring States polity of Qi has been hotly debated. Was it indeed an “academy,” as it has been retrospectively dubbed? What kind of activities did resident scholars engage in? What teachings did they propound, what writings did they compose? Following the lead of research by Nathan Sivin and Andrew S. Meyer, the present article does not treat Jixia as an academy proper, but assumes that it was a patronage community (...) sponsored by the Tian/Chen clan. Rather than indulge in more speculations about institutional arrangements and the activities of specific scholars, however, it is argued that intertextual relationships are more likely to shed light on the intellectual concerns of scholars at Jixia. To demonstrate the viability of such an approach, this article analyzes dialogues between King Xuan of Qi and Master Meng in the book Mengzi, demonstrating that they can be divided into hostile and supportive ones, the latter propounding the principle of “sharing pleasures.” Dialogues included in other compilations that advocate the same principle are then shown to be almost invariably associated with Jixia scholars. The notion of sharing pleasures, it is finally argued, was part of a wider political debate on princely wastefulness that was characteristic of Qi and is likewise reflected in such compilations as Guanzi, Yanzi chunqiu, and Liu tao. (shrink)

This paper discusses five MM III(B?) roundels from Malia, four of which display unusual inscriptions and/or sealing procédures, and considers what thèse variations imply for administration in the early neopalatial period. We also publish two roundels' seal impressions each depicting a Minoan Genius at a hitherto unknown stage in the demon's iconographical development.

This chapter addresses the distinction between private and public and the difference between ‘public’ and ‘official’. Drawing on a comparative analysis of Asian cities, it looks at the ways in which the local, the national and the global levels, which serve different, sometimes contrasting, interests, are negotiated and reconciled in the city. The chapter suggests that different forms of reconciliation have brought about an alternative ‘insitutionalisation’ of the public space. Such an institutionalisation is reflected in the access to, and dissemination (...) of, information—e.g., access to the media—and, above all, in the control over the common goods. The public sphere is used to voice discontent, leading to a new definition of the ‘common good’; that is, the inclusion, or non-exclusion, of large sections of the population which, though initially marginal, can become significant in shaping urban politics. (shrink)

Barsalou's theory of perceptual symbol systems is considered from a metacognitive perspective. Two examples are discussed in terms of the proposed perceptual symbol theory. First, recent results in research on feeling-of-knowing judgement are used to argue for a representation of familiarity with input cues. This representation should support implicit memory. Second, the ability of maintaining a theory of other people's beliefs (theory of mind) is considered and it is suggested that a purely simulation-based view is insufficient to explain the available (...) evidence. Both examples characterize areas where Barsalou's theory would benefit from additional detail. (shrink)

Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol. By David Z. Moster. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Pp. xv + 144, illus. $54.99. The Etrog Citron : Tradition and Research. Essays on the Scientific, Halachic and Historical Significance of the Etrog. Edited by eliezer goldSchmidT and moShe bar-JoSeph. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 2018. Pp. 24 + 14 + 480, illus. IS96. [Hebrew with English abstracts].

This article investigates textual representations of the Confucius figure outside the philosophical mainstream, in writings such as apocrypha (chenwei), records of the strange (zhiguai), and popular narratives from Dunhuang. It argues that Confucius's predictive capacities and his comprehensive knowledge of natural and supernatural phenomena played an important and hitherto neglected role in early imperial times. Simultaneously, a sense of close familiarity with the Confucius figure gave rise to various playful depictions which transcended any clear intellectual distinctions between “Confucians” and “anti‐Confucians” (...) and which appropriated initially serious tropes and motifs for ludic purposes. (shrink)

Ethical theories have been largely focused on finding and clarifying certain amoral principles. However fruitful the communication of moral principles for providing orientation in modern society might be, a serious omission has been made in that the problem of implementation is not addressed. Two fundamental question have neither been raised nor answered: Why should self‐interested individuals follow the proposed moral principles in their daily conduct? Are societal institutions of such a design that is in the power of the individuals to (...) follow these moral principles? It is shown in this article that an economic theory of morals does systematically address these two questions and therefore provides a firm basis for discussing the possibilities and boundaries of following the moral principles inherent in the long history of moral philosophy. (shrink)

The existence of neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) is not enough for philosophical purposes. On the other hand, there's more to NCC than meets the sceptic's eye. (I) NCC are useful for a better understanding of conscious experience, for instance: (1) NCC are helpful to explain phenomenological features of consciousness – e.g., dreaming. (2) NCC can account for phenomenological opaque facts – e.g., the temporal structure of consciousness. (3) NCC reveal properties and functions of consciousness which cannot be elucidated either (...) by introspective phenomenology or by psychological experiments alone – e.g., vision. (II) There are crucial problems and shortcomings of NCC: (1) Correlation implies neither causation nor identity. (2) There are limitations of empirical access due to the problem of other minds and the problem of self-deception, and (3) due to the restrictions provided by inter- and intraindividual variations. (4) NCC cannot be catched by neuroscience alone because of the externalistic content of representations. Therefore, NCC are not sufficient for a naturalistic theory of mind, (5) nor are they necessary because of the possibility of multiple realization. (III) Nevertheless, NCC are relevant and important for the mind-body problem: (1) NCC reveal features that are necessary at least for behavioral manifestations of human consciousness. (2) But NCC are compatible with very different proposals for a solution of the mind-body problem. This seems to be both advantageous and detrimental. (3) NCC restrict nomological identity accounts. (4) The investigation of NCC can refute empirical arguments for interactionism as a case study of John Eccles' dualistic proposals will show. (5) The discoveries of NCC cannot establish a naturalistic theory of mind alone, for which, e.g., a principle of supervenience and a further condition – and therefore philosophical arguments – are required. (shrink)

This essay examines the theory of maternal impressions, the belief that a woman’s experiences or emotions during pregnancy could explain congenital disability or emotional/ behavior differences in her child and asks why this theory circulated as an explanation for disability seen at birth by both medical doctors and in literature for far longer than it did across the Atlantic. By presenting examples from nineteenth-century medical literature, popular fiction, maternal handbooks, and two canonical works of literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (...) and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave, I argue that maternal impressions worked to maintain anxiety for women, and particular white women, to ensure they felt responsible if anything was “wrong” with their child. Ultimately, I show how maternal impressions was both an ableist and racialized understanding of inheritance that wouldn’t be discarded until the emergence of eugenics in the early twentieth century. (shrink)

Beginning with the Everett–DeWitt many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there have been a series of proposals for how the state vector of a quantum system might split at any instant into orthogonal branches, each of which exhibits approximately classical behavior. Here we propose a decomposition of a state vector into branches by finding the minimum of a measure of the mean squared quantum complexity of the branches in the branch decomposition. In a non-relativistic formulation of this proposal, branching occurs repeatedly (...) over time, with each branch splitting successively into further sub-branches among which the branch followed by the real world is chosen randomly according to the Born rule. In a Lorentz covariant version, the real world is a single random draw from the set of branches at asymptotically late time, restored to finite time by sequentially retracing the set of branching events implied by the late time choice. The complexity measure depends on a parameter b with units of volume which sets the boundary between quantum and classical behavior. The value of b is, in principle, accessible to experiment. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that the responsibility for systematic community-based preventive medicine should not be made part of the role of the general practitioner (GP). Preventive medicine cannot be shown to be more effective than curative or supportive medicine. Therefore, the allocation of the large amount of general practice staff time and resources required for systematic preventive medicine should not come at the expense of the care of the sick and the suffering. The traditional healing role of the GP (...) requires a cooperative patient-centred approach, whereas systematic preventive medicine is driven by rigid pre-set protocols and is intrinsically paternalistic. Trying to merge the two approaches is detrimental to the doctor-patient relationship. Furthermore, a number of potential pitfalls are identified that may be encountered in the implementation of preventive medicine programmes in general practice: interference with the course of the consultation; inadequate explanation and consent; distortion of practice priorities as reflected in quality indicators; temptation to record inaccurate data; conflict of interests where the doctor is rewarded for performance; patient blaming; exacerbation of the health gap. We suggest that a more justifiable strategy would be for GPs to identify patients at high risk and offer them specific preventive advice when the opportunity presents itself and at a time when the patient is likely to be most amenable to cooperate. Opportunistic health promotion offers higher expectations of benefit, as well as a more equitable allocation of the risks associated with preventive medicine, than a systematic community-based approach. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the four guiding principles of medical ethics—autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice—reflect the values of western culture, but do not necessarily apply outside of it. Western medical practitioners faced with the care of nonwestern patients need to examine their own prejudices in order to accept, not merely tolerate, other values. Acceptance of the other requires that the doctor welcome the patient as one welcomes a guest, openly and equally, with a willingness to listen and to (...) be changed by the encounter. It is through the nurture of trusting relationships that ethical dilemmas in clinical medicine may be resolved, without recourse to the colonial moral hegemony of the principlist approach. (shrink)