Gil R, Arroyo-Anllo EM, Ingrand P, Gil M, Neau JP, Ornon C, Bonnaud V. Self-consciousness and Alzheimer’s disease. Acta Neurol Scand 2001: 104: 296–300. # Munksgaard 2001. Objectives – To propose a neuropsychological study of the various aspects of self-consciousness (SC) in Alzheimer’s disease. Methods – Forty-five patients with probable mild or moderate AD were included in the study. Severity of their dementia was assessed by the Mini Mental State (MMS). Fourteen questions were prepared to evaluate SC. Results – No (...) significant correlations were found between SC score and educational level, age, and duration of disease. A significant correlation was found between SC score and the severity of dementia, whereas frontal disturbances were just short of the significance threshold. The various aspects of SC were not impaired to the same degree. The most disturbed ones were awareness of cognitive deficiencies, moral judgements and prospective memory. The least disturbed aspects were awareness of identity and of mental representation of the body. Items relating to anosognosia and moral judgements were significantly correlated with the MMS score, whereas affective state, body representation disorders, prospective memory, and capacities for introspection were not related to the severity of the dementia. Consciousness of identity was sound, regardless of MMS score. Conclusions – AD clearly induces an heterogeneous impairment of SC. SC requires a convergence of many neural networks. In AD, neuronal alterations involve many cortical areas and information sent to the associative frontal cortex from memory, language and visuospatial areas is lacking or disturbed. Thus, the sequential order of successive stimuli cannot be maintained by the heteromodal associative cortex (dorsal convexity of the prefrontal cortex), and the supramodal associative cortex (located rostrally in the frontal lobes) is unable to provide reliable monitoring and assessment of simultaneous neural cognitive networks carrying insufficient and inadequate input. The core deficiency in AD patients might be impaired SC equated with the disability to maintain sequential and simultaneous ‘‘attention to life’’. The Self-Consciousness Questionnaire, a clinical scale providing multidimensional measurement, indicates that different aspects of consciousness are not correlated with overall cognitive deficiency as determined by the MMSE. (shrink)

Sounding the Abyss achieves an analysis that extends Cavell's already rich range of work into surprising new directions in postcolonialism, multiculturalism, and general cultural criticism. The work never strays from its concern with reassessing the divide between philosophy's analytic and Continental factions.

This paper scrutinizes two research programs that advocate respectively for the existence of a universal moral grammar and a predisposition to moralize behaviours with certain contents. It focuses on how the arguments commonly used to ground each program fare at relevant contemporary research in cognitive science and how well they meet constructivist arguments proposed by Jesse Prinz and Kim Sterelny, among others. We argue that there is little evidence that our moral judgements follow the model of principles and parameters. At (...) the same time, ‘ease of learning’ suggests that the human brain is somehow prepared to learn moral rules.Cet article analyse deux programmes de recherche qui soutiennent, respectivement, l’existence d’une grammaire morale universelle et d’une prédisposition à assigner des valeurs morales à des comportements liés à certains contenus. Nous proposons d’évaluer les arguments utilisés par chaque programme en regard de la recherche contemporaine en sciences cognitives, et aussi de vérifier s’ils répondent aux objections constructivistes proposées entre autres par Jesse Prinz et Kim Sterelny. Nous montrons qu’il n’y a pas de preuves suffisantes comme quoi nos jugements moraux suivent le modèle des principes et des paramètres. La «facilité d’apprentissage» suggère, néanmoins, que le cerveau humain est en quelque sorte préparé à apprendre les règles morales. (shrink)

The health benefits of male circumcision are wide rangingIn this issue, John Hutson has reiterated the conventional Western medical view that “the surgical argument for circumcision of all neonatal males at present is very weak” and he criticises many of the circumcisions performed in later childhood, without anaesthesia, as “physically cruel and potentially dangerous” [see page 238].1 He is also of the opinion that “the diseases which circumcision is able to prevent are uncommon or even rare”. But therein he errs, (...) and greatly errs.He cites only two publications dealing with the protective effect of male circumcision against HIV infection, and makes no mention of the important recent meta-analysis of Weiss, Quigley, and Hayes2 which shows conclusively from a large number of studies that …. (shrink)

Two of the most important topics in the field of medical ethics today are insemination by donor (AID) and in-vitro fertilization. The conclusions of a working party set up by the British Association for the Advancement of Science are embodied in a small book reviewed on pate 108 of this issue, but we feel that more discussion than can be set out in the space allocated to book reviews is justified. Also, this journal in its first number has already devoted (...) a group of papers to the issue of abortion, so the conclusions of the working party and our own comments overlap and we hope illuminate further the problems enunciated. (shrink)

Roger North's The Musicall Grammarian 1728, first published in 1990, is a treatise on musical eloquence in all its branches. Of its five parts, I and II, on the orthoepy, orthography and syntax of music, constitute a grammar; III and IV, on the arts of invention and communication, form a rhetoric; and V, on etymology, consists of a history. Two substantial chapters of commentary introduce the text, which is edited here for the first time in its entirety: Jamie Kassler (...) places his treatise within the broader context not only of North's musical and non-musical writings but also their relation to the intellectual ferment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and Mary Chan describes physical and textual aspects of the treatise as evidence for North's processes of thinking about musical thinking. (shrink)

Benedict de Spinoza was at once the father of the Enlightenment and the last sad guardian of the medieval world. In his brilliant synthesis of geometrical method, religious sentiment, and secular science, he attempted to reconcile the conflicting moral and intellectual demands of his epoch, and to present a vision of humanity as simultaneously bound by necessity and eternally free. Roger Scruton presents a clear and systematic analysis of Spinoza's thought, and shows its relevance to today's intellectual preoccupations.

Professor Sir Roger Penrose's work, spanning fifty years of science, with over five thousand pages and more than three hundred papers, has been collected together for the first time and arranged chronologically over six volumes, each with an introduction from the author. Where relevant, individual papers also come with specific introductions or notes. Many important realizations concerning twistor theory occurred during the short period of this third volume, providing a new perspective on the way that mathematical features of (...) the complex geometry of twistor theory relate to actual physical fields. Following on from the nonlinear graviton construction, a twistor construction was found for (anti-)self-dual electromagnetism allowing the general (anti-)self-dual Yang-Mills field to be obtained. It became clear that some features of twistor contour integrals could be understood in terms of holomorphic sheaf cohomology. During this period, the Oxford research group founded the informal publication, Twistor Newsletter. This volume also contains the influential Weyl curvature hypothesis and new forms of Penrose tiles. (shrink)

Discover for yourself the pleasures of philosophy! Written both for the seasoned student of philosophy as well as the general reader, the renowned writer Roger Scruton provides a survey of modern philosophy. Always engaging, Scruton takes us on a fascinating tour of the subject, from founding father Descartes to the most important and famous philosopher of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He identifies all the principal figures as well as outlines of the main intellectual preoccupations that have informed western (...) philosophy. Painting a portrait of modern philosophy that is vivid and animated, Scruton introduces us to some of the greatest philosophical problems invented in this period and pursued ever since. Including material on recent debates, _A Short History of Modern Philosophy_ is already established as _the_ classic introduction. Read it and find out why. (shrink)

The word 'hypocrisy' has its root in the classical Greek verb 'hupokrinesthai', 'to answer'. In Attic Greek, the verb could mean 'to speak in dialogue' and hence 'to play a part on the stage'. From here it was a short route to the 'hypokrisia' with which the Pharisees are charge in the Gospel of St. Matthew. Accusations of hypocrisy are surprisingly common in our culture, both at the personal and the political level. Judith Shklar goes so far as to (...) characterise our age as that in which 'hypocrisy...alone is...inexcusable'. But, perhaps equally surprisingly, the nature of hypocrisy is hard to grasp. In this paper, we shall suggest that recent discussion of hypocrisy has foundered through a failure to recognise distinct forms of hypocrisy. We shall outline these different forms, and then consider various views on what they have in common. (shrink)

Roger L. Taylor; V—Sexual Experiences, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 June 1968, Pages 87–104, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotel.

"Roger-Pol Droit's book is a reassessment of our day-to-day engagement with life. In 101 short texts, Droit invites us to reconsider our most ordinary actions as unexpected philosophical events: peeling an apple, trying to lie in a hammock, watching someone sleep, hearing your voice on an answering machine, playing with a small child - activities that, when considered outside of their routine, invite us to experience the familiar in startling new ways. Droit encouarges us to go further: pretend (...) to be an animal of your choice, create a wall with your hands, try to walk around your room in total darkness, spend time in the Underground - and observe your oddity."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Kant is arguably the most influential modern philosopher, but also one of the most difficult. Roger Scruton tackles his exceptionally complex subject with a strong hand, exploring the background to Kant's work, and showing why the Critique of Pure of Reason has proved so enduring.

W. V. Quine was quite simply the most distinguished analytic philosopher of the later half of the twentieth century. His celebrated attack on the analytic/synthetic tradition heralded a major shift away from the views of language descended from logical positivism. His most important book, Word and Object, introduced the concept of indeterminacy of radical translation, a bleak view of the nature of the language with which we ascribe thoughts and beliefs to ourselves and others. Quine is also famous for the (...) view that epistemology should be naturalized, that is conducted in a scientific spirit with the object of investigating the relationship between the inputs of experience and the outputs of belief. The eleven essays in this volume cover all the central topics of Quine's philosophy: the underdetermination of physical theory, analycity, naturalism, propositional attitudes, behaviorism, reference and ontology, positivism, holism and logic. (shrink)

(1) is an example of an adjectival comparative. In it, the adjective important is flanked by more and a comparative clause headed by than. This article is a survey of recent ideas about the interpretation of comparatives, including (i) the underlying semantics based on the idea of a threshold; (ii) the interpretation of comparative clauses that include quantifiers (brighter than on many other days); (iii) remarks on differentials such as much in (1) above: what they do in the comparative and (...) what they do elsewhere in the language; (iv) the relationship between comparatives and other Degree constructions (e.g. as important, too impor- tant); and (v) the types of phrases in which comparatives are found (adjective: tighter versus noun: more water). Given the nature and purpose of this essay, I have tried not to presuppose background in formal semantics and I have departed from standard practice in journal articles by, as much as possible, not interrupting the flow with footnotes and references. There are two appendices. The first provides more analytical detail and there I do rely on formal techniques of natural language semantics. The second covers the sources for the ideas surveyed here. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and Pragmatism.

Molecular genetic testing has increasingly been incorporated into clinical medicine, and this trend is likely to accelerate in the future. The introduction of genetic testing into medical practice is beginning to collide head on with patents that claim ownership of correlations between human genetic variants and predisposition to disease, response to therapeutic drugs, and susceptibility to pharmacologic side effects. Patent holders or licensees of genes, genetic variants, and their genotype-phenotype correlations are already using the threat of litigation to monopolize genetic (...) tests for important well-known syndromes like Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and inherited breast and ovarian cancer, in addition to a host of less commonly discussed conditions. (shrink)

The Greek constructions of Zoroaster relate to the historical Zoroaster and to the Zoroaster of the Zoroastrian faith in one respect only. The Greeks knew that Zoroaster was the “prophet,” in the sense of the human founder, of the national Persian religion of their times. That, of course, is a cardinal fact, but it is one fact only. For the rest, the Greek Zoroasters — for there were many — were fantasies of their own imaginations. Since the Greeks were a (...) curious and inventive people, these multiple Zoroasters are interesting creations in their own right. Of more importance, they are elements in the “West’s” construction — or misconstruction — of a major “oriental” religion. -/- . (shrink)