One of the most important debates in jurisprudence is on the nature of law. On the one hand we are faced with the assertion of those who adhere to the positivist school of thought that law is based on the will of the sovereign; on the other hand, with the assertion of the natural lawyers that the basis of law is reason, not will.

XLRI, in association with a few Tata Group companies, established the XLRI-JRD Tata Foundation in Business Ethics in 1991 to mark their long-standing commitment and contribution to business ethics in India. The foundation seeks to address this by publicly affirming the urgent need for ethics in business and the need to bring about a conducive culture in which it can thrive.

Introduction: Early recognition of prediabetes may prevent progression to diabetes, yet not all adults are aware of their prediabetes risk. To reach all adults unaware of their risk, additional risk assessment strategies are warranted. Objectives: The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential scope of benefit from prediabetes risk assessment in the dental care setting and to identify characteristics of dental patients likely to unknowingly have prediabetes or diabetes. Methods: Data from 10,472 adults in the National Health and (...) Nutrition Examination Survey from 2013 to 2014 and 2015 to 2016 were analyzed for associations among prediabetes/diabetes risk factors, health care use, and hemoglobin A1C levels according to chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression. Results: A total of 7.73% of US adults had seen a dentist but not a medical provider in the past 12 mo. The composition of this subpopulation was significantly different from that who saw a medical provider, in ways that might affect their diabetes risk. In addition, 31.27% of this subpopulation would be identified as being at high risk for prediabetes according to the CDC Prediabetes Screening Test, and 15.83% had hemoglobin A1C levels indicative of undiagnosed prediabetes or diabetes. Screening in a dental setting would have the highest odds of identifying someone unaware of his or her diabetes risk among those who were non-White, obese, or ≥45 y old. Conclusion: Extrapolation from this analysis indicates that screening for prediabetes at dental visits has the potential to alert an estimated 22.36 million adults of their risk for prediabetes or diabetes. Incorporating prediabetes or diabetes risk assessment into routine dental visits may enable 1) those with prediabetes to take action to decrease their risk of developing diabetes and 2) those with diabetes to engage in treatment to decrease their risk of diabetes-related complications. Knowledge Transfer Statement: Screening for prediabetes and diabetes during dental visits has the potential to raise patients’ awareness of diabetes risk and prevent prediabetes from progressing to diabetes. For some patients, the dental visit may be the only point of contact with the health care system, which heightens the importance of including diabetes risk assessment for patient well-being. (shrink)

We show there is only one consistent way to update a probability assignment, that given by Bayes's rule. The price of inconsistent updating is a loss of efficiency. The implications of this for the problem of induction are discussed.

Open peer commentary on the article “Exploring the Depth of Dream Experience: The Enactive Framework and Methods for Neurophenomenological Research” by Elizaveta Solomonova & Xin Wei Sha. Upshot: A neurophenomenological approach to the enactive account of consciousness in general is supported by an account of how the brain functions in creating imagery of non-present objects and situations. Three types of non-sensory imagery are needed to ground our consciousness of sensory imagery: proprioceptive imagery, motor imagery, and what Eugene Gendlin calls the (...) “felt sense” of a situation. Dreams show clearly how we image situations without sensory input, a process that is clearly enactive rather than reactive. This enactive account of imagery then supports Gendlin’s method of interpreting dreams by comparing their “felt sense” to the felt sense of waking situations. (shrink)

Requests by patients or their families for treatment which the patient's physician considers to be "inappropriate" are becoming more frequent than refusals of treatment which the physician considers appropriate. Such requests are often based on the patient's religious beliefs about the attributes of God (sovereignty, omnipotence), the attributes of persons (sanctity of life), or the individual's personal relationship with God (communication, commands, etc). We present four such cases and discuss some of the basic religious tenets of the three Abrahamic faith (...) traditions as they relate to such requests. We suggest that religious reasons for requesting "inappropriate" treatment are "special" and deserve serious consideration. We offer guidance to assist clinicians and clinical ethicists as they attempt to resolve these conflicts, emphasising the importance of understanding the religious beliefs of the patient/surrogate and suggesting the assistance of a religious interpreter. We suggest open discussion with patients and families of both the clinical situation and the theological basis for these requests. We also suggest that clinicians use additional religious doctrines or principles from patients' own traditions to balance the reasons behind the requests. We conclude that most persistent requests for "inappropriate" treatment should be honoured. (shrink)

The general topic is morality, divided into three notions, Action, Wisdom and Grace. The lectures are lively historical reflections on these notions seen in the context of Greek thought, especially that of Plato and Aristotle.--R. D. P.

In his article ‘A Cavalry Unit in the Army of Antigonus Monophthalmus: Asthippoi’, N. G. L. Hammond argues that the reading of the manuscript R at Diodorus 19. 29. 2 should be retained and that we should read ⋯π⋯ π⋯σι δ⋯ το⋯ς τε ⋯σθ⋯ππους ⋯νομαζομ⋯νους κα⋯ τοὺς ⋯κ τ⋯ν ἄνω κατοικο⋯ντων ⋯κτακοσιο⋯ς. The readings of F and its copy X, ⋯νθ⋯ππους, and the commonly accepted conjecture of Wesseling ⋯μɸ⋯ππους, should both be abandoned. Hammond's arguments for retaining this reading are that (...) between the variant readings of R and F, R ‘is the more often correct’ ; ⋯σθ⋯ππους, the reading of R, is preferable to F's ⋯νθ⋯ππους on the principle of ‘lectio difficilior’; the ‘difficulty’ of his lectio difficilior is made less by the arguments presented by A. B. Bosworth, 245 ff.), for the restoration at several places in the text of Arrian's Anabasis the word ⋯σθ⋯ταιροι, in place of the editorial emendation of πεζ⋯ταιροι. ‘For just as asthetairoi meant an élite group of Macedonian infantrymen,’ says Hammond, ‘so asthippoi should mean an élite group of Macedonian cavalrymen.’ He then proceeds to examine the passage and its context in an attempt to find confirmation of this proposition and comes to the conclusion that Diodorus' text says that there were 800 cavalrymen, broken into two groups, the asthippoi and ‘the men from the up-country settlers’; these, though having different names, had a close relationship to each other, as is shown by their being brigaded together. Following his derivation of asthetairoi as meaning ‘townsmen-companions’, i.e. companions recruited from the towns of Upper Macedonia, he argues that asthippoi were cavalry recruited from the towns of Upper Macedonia and that τοὺς ⋯κ τ⋯ν ἄνω κατοικο⋯ντων means ‘the sons of settlers in up-country Macedonia’. These 800, says Hammond, were both among Antigonus' best troops and ‘were Macedonians from Europe’. We thus appear, on Hammond's interpretation, to have here a group of 800 Macedonian élite cavalrymen, all of whom were recruited in Upper Macedonia's townships, but of whom some were chosen to be the cavalry-equivalent of the élite ‘townsmen-companions’ by their title of ‘townsmen-cavalry’, whilst the others, similarly recruited – but perhaps of a younger generation? – had no particular distinguishing title beyond ‘sons of settlers in up-country Macedonia’.Now, while it would be exciting to be able to add another one, possibly two Macedonian cavalry units to the Macedonian army of Philip, Alexander and the Successors, there are several aspects of Hammond's arguments that, it seems to me, are less than convincing. Thus, whilst it seems beyond reasonable doubt that ⋯σθ⋯ταιροι should be retained in the text of Arrian, appearing, as it does, six times, this is not an argument that ⋯σθ⋯ππους should be read in Diodorus' text. Both it and F's reading of ⋯νθ⋯ππους are hapax legomena and it is possible that both readings are wrong. But even if we retain ⋯σθ⋯ππους as the correct reading, Hammond's explanation of its meaning is open to objection on several counts. (shrink)

People who trust modern indexes will suppose that the name of Sex. Clodius, the disreputable henchman of Publius, comes twice in the Ad Atticum letters, 14. 13. 6 and 14. 13 A. 2. The manuscripts give it as follows.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.4 (2005) 301-305 [Access article in PDF] The Beauty of Psychotherapy R. D. Hinshelwood Keywords awe, psychotherapy, representation, self-esteem The Enlightenment was devoted to clear uncontaminated reason; its success has given us the terrific achievements of science and technology. However, it has bequeathed problems too. Untrammeled reason has led to the devaluing and exclusion of emotions. Emotions are irrational—self-deception, akrasia, and so on. They were (...) a problem for the eighteenth-century philosopher Kant and right through to the modern therapist Aaron Beck. Callender rightly looks around the edges of rationalist thought to see what can be said about the emotional and subjective side of mankind. He argues that there is more to the human mind than cognition. Something has been left out. What can be found to fill the gap?Callender has searched for the missing link that might complete our view of human nature. And he came back with aesthetics. Meaning The Enlightenment failing is writ large for therapists who are confronted with people who feel things. So we need to ask what place the emotions have in understanding the nature of man? It is not a hypothetical question, but a very practical one for a therapist. Emotions, Callender says, and most people would agree with him, are what gives meaning to life, a sense of purpose in living, even an ill-defined or delusional purpose.He presents Kant's description of aesthetics. Aesthetic judgements have a number of features, the most enigmatic and perhaps profound is a "purposiveness without purpose." A work of art, say a portrait, may have a purpose insofar as it represents a person for his aggrandizement or for his descendents through many generations, but the aesthetic quality does not come from that purpose. The aesthetic purpose involves a different set of judgements. They are about the painting as a piece of art in itself. If it is possible to compare this kind of aesthetic judgement with a judgement of a person's life, then I find myself reminded of Wollheim's definition of a person: The simplest way of putting the matter, which is not to be taken as a metaphysical claim, is this: There are persons, they exist; persons lead lives; and as a result, in consequence—in consequence that is, of the way they do it—there are lives, of which those who lead them may, for instance, be proud, or feel ashamed. So there is a thing, and there is a process, and there is a product. (Wollheim 1984, 2) Although many things do not lead lives, we do. And our lives have a process and a product. Like an aesthetic product, our lives have a sense of emotional meaning, without it having a clear purpose.Aesthetic judgements are therefore of a particular and somewhat peculiar kind. They judges talent for producing "that for which no determinate [End Page 301] rules can be given," as the paper quotes Kant. Other kinds of judgements do have determinate rules. First are empirical judgements for getting practical things done; and moral judgements for assessing ethical good from bad. Aesthetic beauty does not have clear rules, although many systems of rules have been proposed starting with the rules of perspective as they were laid out by renaissance painters, through to systems of color, such as that proposed by Paul Klee, once color was correlated with electromagnetic wavelengths. However, artists have always kept one jump ahead and evaded imprisonment in codified rules. So too it is with leading a life, perhaps. The really creative life is not lead according to rules. The art of life is to live meaningfully without simply running along tramlines. Although moral conduct and the practicalities of life remain significant, perhaps leading a life implies simply a "flare for living." Representation Of these three kinds of judgements that a mind makes, two do have sets of rules. Only one based on rationality, empirical evidence, and reason. Reason judges what can be done and achieved in the real physical world. It is about pragmatics and the usefulness of action. Moral judgements, about what... (shrink)