De Neys offers a welcome departure from the dual-process accounts that have dominated theorizing about reasoning. However, we see little justification for retaining the distinction between intuition and deliberation. Instead, reasoning can be treated as a case of multiple-cue decision making. Reasoning phenomena can then be explained by decision-making models that supply the processing details missing from De Neys's framework.

The purpose of Donald Winch’s "historiographic revision" is to show that most recent interpretations of Smith have distorted his meaning because they have misread the intention of Smith’s work, treating it either as the first great justification of the nascent liberal capitalist polity, or as such a justification infiltrated by intimations of the Marxian notion of alienation. In Winch’s view, either account of Smith’s project is misleading by virtue of imposing nineteenth-century perspectives and categories upon "what is quintessentially a work (...) of the eighteenth century." The problem, then, is to determine the historically appropriate context or problematic within which the complex and at times paradoxical thought of the Wealth of Nations, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, and the Lectures on Jurisprudence can reasonably be situated. As Winch notes, his study is an application of the contextualist methodological principles of Quentin Skinner and J. G. A. Pocock, and is similar in design to recent works on Locke by John Dunn and on Hume by Duncan Forbes. (shrink)

Identifying Consumption illustrates how an individual’s buying habits are shaped by the dynamics of the consumer marketplace—and thus how consumption and identity inform each other. Robert Dunn brings together the various theories of spending and develops a mode of analysis concentrating on the individual subjectivity of consumption. By doing so, he addresses how we spend and its relationship with status and lifestyle. Dunn provides a comprehensive guide to the study of modern consumer behavior before summarizing and critiquing the (...) major theories of consumption. At this juncture, he proposes a method of analysis that focuses on the significance of status and lifestyle in social relations that can help explain how the consumer marketplace is shaped. He concludes by raising issues about different ways of consuming and the relationship between consumption and identity. (shrink)

Surrogate (proxy) decision makers must make research decisions for people with dementia who lack decision-making capacity. Proxies’ decision-making processes are minimally understood. We randomly assigned 82 proxies of AD patients to informed consent for one of three hypothetical protocols with differing levels of risk and benefit. Proxies answered questions about potential benefits of the described research to the patient and society, as well as about whether they would enroll their relative and why or why not. Proxies interested in enrolling their (...) relative cited the potential for direct benefit to their relative, altruism, and trust in researchers. Those declining cited risks, inconvenience, and stage of illness. Proxies weighed numerous factors, incorporating both substituted judgment and best interests standards in their decision-making processes. Although further empirical work is needed to understand the influences on and adequacy of proxies’ decision making regarding research, these findings can help inform policy regarding surrogate consent. (shrink)

Biblical descriptions of Christ's second coming are diverse and metaphorical. To read them literally is to diminish the resilient power of Christian hope, which is centered in the revelation of Christ already given.

Significant to Dunn's critique of poststructuralist and postmodern theories is his application of George Herbert Mead as a means of theorizing identity and difference. The focus on postmodernity, rather than postmodernism grounds his analysis of identity and difference both materially and socially.

Researchers from diverse disciplines, including organismal and cellular physiology, sports science, human nutrition, evolution and ecology, have sought to understand the causes and consequences of the surprising variation in metabolic rate found among and within individual animals of the same species. Research in this area has been hampered by differences in approach, terminology and methodology, and the context in which measurements are made. Recent advances provide important opportunities to identify and address the key questions in the field. By bringing together (...) researchers from different areas of biology and biomedicine, we describe and evaluate these developments and the insights they could yield, highlighting the need for more standardisation across disciplines. We conclude with a list of important questions that can now be addressed by developing a common conceptual and methodological toolkit for studies on metabolic variation in animals. (shrink)

Recent studies show that psychiatry residents express a relatively greater need for ethics curricula than their colleagues in other specialties. Such studies have been limited in their generalizability because they were conducted at one site. This study of 151 psychiatry residents at seven U.S. psychiatry programs aims to address that limitation. Residents were surveyed on issues pertaining to ethics and professionalism education. Participants were found to support such curricula during training and to value its relevance to the practice of psychiatry. (...) Gender differences and the influence of the “hidden curriculum” on such results merit further study. (shrink)

The incident at Antioch described in Galatians 2:11–14 features in a number of Augustine’s works: Expositio epistulae ad Galatas, his correspondence with Jerome, De mendacio, Sermo 162C, and in De baptismo contra Donatistas. While a few scholars have seen Augustine’s anti-Donatism as a driving force behind all his comments about this encounter between Peter and Paul, this article argues that, while the idea of Peter’s humility is to be found in his commentary, the sermon, one of the letters, and the (...) treatises, Augustine interpreted the scriptural passage in a variety of different ways, depending upon his situation. In the commentary, Augustine wanted to defend the reality of the argument between Peter and Paul because of his belief that scriptural authors would not lie. The same idea occurs in his letters, e.g., Epistula 82, where he adds that his interpretation was supported by Cyprian. Contrary to the aforementioned scholars, it is only in De baptismo that Augustine applies the Galatians passage, which he takes as referring to Peter’s humility, to Cyprian himself as an imitator of Peter. Thus, it is only in this treatise that Augustine seeks to redeem Cyprian from the clutches of the Donatists. A close reading of this variety of interpretation by Augustine contributes to an appreciation of the complexity of his reception of Cyprian, a topic of ever-increasing importance in Augustinian studies. (shrink)

In this paper two different formulations of Robinson's arithmetic based on relevant logic are examined. The formulation based on the natural numbers (including zero) is shown to collapse into classical Robinson's arithmetic, whereas the one based on the positive integers (excluding zero) is shown not to similarly collapse. Relations of these two formulations to R. K. Meyer's system R# of relevant Peano arithmetic are examined, and some remarks are made about the role of constant functions (e.g., multiplication by zero) in (...) relevant arithmetic. (shrink)

To date, both the United States federal government and twenty-one individual states have passed Religious Freedom Restoration Acts that aim to protect religious persons from having their sincere beliefs substantially burdened by governmental interests. RFRAs accomplish this by offering a three-pronged exemption test for religious objectors that is satisfied only when (1) an objector has a sincere belief that is being substantially burdened; (2) the government has a very good reason (e.g., health or safety) to interfere; and (3) there is (...) a reasonable alternative to serve the compelling interest. Legal balancing tests like those found in RFRA are content neutral insofar as they sideline the belief-content of conscientious objections as irrelevant when determining the permissibility of granting legal accommodations. However, some theorists worry that this legal picture may be backward: perhaps balancing tests should be content non-neutral given the usual features of conscientious objections. For example, Yossi Nehushtan contends that, contrary to their typical codification, religious conscience beliefs seem undeserving of special legal accommodations because they possess uniquely strong empirical and theoretical ties to intolerance. Thus, the illiberally intolerant content of these conscientious objections might actually give the state a reason to refuse to grant legal exemptions. In this paper, I offer a cursory defense of content neutrality with respect to balancing tests like those found in RFRA. To begin, I outline Nehushtan’s argument for content non-neutrality. The cornerstone of his argument is that illiberal intolerance is intolerable such that conscientious objections that are based upon illiberally intolerant values provide the state with strong, normally prevailing reason not to grant an exemption. I argue that, even when the illiberally intolerant content of one’s conscience constitutes a weighty and relevant factor in determining the permissibility of granting a legal exemption, there remain significant problems. It is difficult, for example, to determine which views are illiberally intolerant and difficult to say whether illiberally intolerant views can effectively serve as the principled demarcating line in balancing tests. To conclude, I offer several cursory arguments in favor of adopting content-neutral approaches without necessarily making a comprehensive case. By drawing on the work of Amy Sepinwall, Nadia Sawicki, and Nathan Chapman, I show that content-neutral approaches can help to safeguard robust protections for conscience by permitting atypical exercises of conscience, protect minority thoughts and practices from being coercively supplanted by majoritarian understandings of morality, appropriately maintain the skepticism and humility that we owe each other as compatriots in a pluralistic society, and allow the kind of justifiable civil disobedience that has an important place in political history among other things. (shrink)

I wish, in this article to take the opportunity to present some of the preliminary results of my preparatory investigations towards a first edition of Richard FitzRalph's Commentary on the Sentences. FitzRalph later became famous (or infamous) because of his criticism of the incursions of the religious orders into what he regarded as the proper preserve of the secular clergy. Much of the attention of scholars has concentrated upon the figure of Armachanus contra omnes, and little has been devoted to (...) his university career. The work of G. Leff was rather negative regarding his originality as a lecturer; he depicted our 'Ybernicus' as a traditionalist, as someone who ignored or was unaware of new ideas. In fact, the truth is rather different: FitzRalph was an extremely successful and influential lecturer. A close reading of his Commentary on the Sentences shows him not only to be one most representative of the Oxford tradition of the late 1320s but also to be one of its foremost protagonists. For this reason, my concern here will be with his earlier 'scholastic' work and, in particular, with the philosophical themes which he developed in the course of the surviving records of his teaching as a lecturer in Oxford. (shrink)

Epistemic consequentialists maintain that the epistemically right (e.g., the justified) is to be understood in terms of conduciveness to the epistemic good (e.g., true belief). Given the wide variety of epistemological approaches that assume some form of epistemic consequentialism, and the controversies surrounding consequentialism in ethics, it is surprising that epistemic consequentialism remains largely uncontested. However, in a recent paper, Selim Berker has provided arguments that allegedly lead to a ‘rejection’ of epistemic consequentialism. In the present paper, it is shown (...) that reliabilism—the most prominent form of epistemic consequentialism, and one of Berker’s main targets—survives Berker’s arguments unscathed. (shrink)

'It would ... be a pity if the sketch of religious controversy in the 1670s contained in Richard Ashcraft's bold and exhilarating attempt to reconstruct the argument and intellectual framework of Locke's political thinking and activity should be thought to represent the entire debate accurately.' (Spurr 1988, 567 n. 17) 'has also taken the view that Locke equated the dissolution of government with the state of nature [pp. 576–6]. Important opponents of this view include Dunn [1969, p. 181] and (...) Franklin [1978, p. 107].' (Levitin MPhil diss., p. 32). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The King and the Crowd: Divine Right and Popular Sovereignty in the French Revolution Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly Stanford University We French cannot really think about politics or philosophy or literature without remembering that all this— politics, philosophy, literature—began, in the modem world, under the sign of a crime. A crime was committed in France in 1793. They killed a good and entirely likable king who was the incarnation of (...) legitimacy. We cannot not remember that this crime was horrible... When we speak about writing, the accent is on what is necessarily criminal in writing. (Jean-François Lyotard, "Discussion Lyotard-Rorty" 583; quoted in Dunn 165) The condemnation ofthe king is at the crux ofour contemporary history. It symbolizes the secularization of our history and the disincarnation of the Christian God. (Albert Camus, The Rebel 120; quoted in Dunn 140) Susan Dunn makes a well-documented case that the death of Louis XVI was unconsciously understood, especially by the Jacobins, as a human sacrifice that was necessary for the founding of the republic. "Louis must die because the patrie must live," said Robespierre at the king's trial, and the representative Carra considered Louis "the source of corruption and servitude... the fatal talisman ofall our ills" whose death would cause the people to be "regenerated in morality and virtue" (Dunn 15-37). The king was a monster and the source ofall the ills, and his death 68Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly had the power to alleviate those ills and regenerate the nation. This image of the king as sacrificial victim persisted throughout the first half of the nineteenth century in French literature and politics, sometimes assimilating itself to the image of Jesus Christ who died for the sins of the world. Legitimist writers like Joseph de Maistre saw his death precisely in this light as a great Christian sacrifice that would do France and the world good (Dunn 28-37). The king as a sacred monster whose life causes all ill and whose death brings healing is the classic figure of the scapegoat or sacrificial victim identified by René Girard. Susan Dunn recognizes this but because she does not know Girard's mimetic theory she is not able to explain the significance of the scapegoat king. Her work is, indeed, as Conor Cruise O'Brien says in the foreword, a work ofdemonstration rather than argument, of evidence rather than interpretation. I offer a mimetic interpretation ofthe Jacobin claim that the death ofthe king was the human sacrifice that founded the republic, and an argument that a universally operative generative mechanism forged the historical events of the revolution.1 There is no essential difference between the sovereignty ofthe king and the sovereignty of the people. In both cases sovereignty arises from a metaphorical contract that threatens death to anyone who violates it. The royal metaphors are organic while the revolutionary metaphors are legal and rational, but they all express the sacrificial structure ofpolitical power. Revolutionary democracy imports the fiction ofrationality to obscure its sacrificial structure. The desire ofthe general will for contractual equality is a transformation of mimetic desire in search of a victim around which the bad violence ofmimetic rivalry can coalesce into the good violence of sacred order. Sovereignty, therefore, is structurally single and simple; it is violence transformed through the sacred into the powers oforder. Max Weber understood this in general ifnot in its particulars when he defined sovereignty as the monopoly of the means of violence within a single territory.2 1 Mimetic theory was discovered by René Girard. I have given an account of my understanding of it in 7Ae Gospel and the Sacred 129-52. The idea of a mechanism universally operative in human history isjustified in the emerging discipline ofevolutionary psychology. Such mechanisms are the result ofthe interaction ofgenetic and environmental factors in the process of evolution (see Robert Wright). 2 The precise quotation from Weber is as follows: "The state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a The King and the Crowd69 The transition from royal to popular sovereignty is a transformation of the basic pattern of victim and group. The... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 282-287 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Wrestling with the Ox: A Theology of Religious Experience Wrestling with the Ox: A Theology of Religious Experience. By Paul O. Ingram. New York: Continuum, 1997. 276 pp. Paul Ingram has set out a formidable task for himself. Even though he identifies himself as an historian of religion, he has chosen to push beyond phenomenological description of the (...) religious enterprise to make a prescriptive proposal, a theology that can illuminate and guide the great faith traditions. Simultaneously, his proposal aims at interpreting the necessity and the outlines of interreligious dialogue. Such dialogue, he argues, is not a peripheral enterprise reserved for a handful of religious exotics. It is central to understanding any and all religious traditions in the postmodern world.All religions have been discovered to reflect inescapable historical and cultural relativization. The old assumptions of unconditional claims and absolute assertions are no longer tenable. The world shared by all the religions today is characterized by an unavoidable religious pluralism. It is in this context that religious affirmations must be expressed and religious life embraced. According to Ingram, this is no accident. It is an ontological inevitability. As process philosophy and its roots in modern physics [End Page 282] --and, interestingly, the Buddhist recognition of dependent co-arising (pratitya samutpada)--understand, reality is unending process. This entails the inevitable relativization and contextualization of everything--including the religions. The theological questions that emerge are crucial ones. Among them: Is there an ultimate unity underlying this diversity, generic features common to all conditioned forms of religious faith and practice? What does religious pluralism show about the nature of the Sacred and of being human? Is any one religious Way best or is this even a question worth pursuing?Ingram proposes that the answers to these questions and the only viable response to religious pluralism can be found in interreligious dialogue. He does not even consider religious exclusivism as a viable option. This means only "inclusivist" and "pluralist" approaches are worthy of consideration, approaches that he names the "theology-of-religions model" and the "primordial model" respectively. Both recognize the problem of the relativity of belief and seek to overcome it. Both see the importance of interreligious dialogue as fundamental to religious affirmation. But Ingram rejects the theology-of-religions model because, despite its openness to other religions and its willingness to have interreligious encounter shape the affirmations and life of the believing community, it is self-encapsulated. One moves out from a particular community of faith, "passing over"--to use the language of John Dunne--into another religious Way in order to be creatively transformed, but only to return once again to the original community of faith. One stays within "the theological circle" (Tillich), one does not get beyond it. Some Christians, accordingly, make a blanket assertion about the ultimate and unsurpassable lordship of Christ despite their indebtedness to the creative transformation that interreligious dialogue can produce.Ingram clearly prefers the "primordial model" even though he recognizes that some of its classical proponents have made it vulnerable to criticism. Aldous Huxley's "perennial philosophy" and Sri Ramakrishan's assertion that "all paths lead to the summit" will not do. Huxley assumes that the mystical recognition of the ineffable common root of all religion critiques the historical and culturally relative expressions of this ultimate reality. But Huxley's attempt to make an end run around the problems involved won't work. His approach is ahistorical, makes uncritical assumptions about the nature of mysticism and religious experience, and is totally undialogical. The particularities of the differing religious Ways are dissolved in a universal solvent that is anything but self-evident. The same holds true for Ramakrishnan's subtly imperialistic (and very Hindu) model. It too has no room for religious particularity and imposes a pre-conceived common denominator on the multiplicity of religious phenomena.Ingram derives his term "primordial model" from Huston Smith's argument that a "primordial tradition" can be discerned underlying the multiplicity and variety of religious expressions. His is... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Gospel of Mark: A Mahayana ReadingDonald G. LuckThe Gospel of Mark: A Mahayana Reading. By John P. Keenan. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995.This is the latest effort of society member John Keenan to “pass over” (as John Dunne puts it) from one tradition to another in order to return to one’s point of departure with fresh perspective and heightened awareness. This book reflects impressive scholarship and builds on (...) the theological indebtedness to Madhyamika [End Page 210] and Yogacara thought that shaped Keenan’s earlier work, The Meaning of Christ: A Mahayana Theology, also published by Orbis. The noses of academic purists may be put out of joint by what some might construe as a blurring of boundaries between Buddhism and Christianity, but Keenan places himself right in the thick of current hermeneutical discussions to establish the fruitfulness of Mahayana perspective in interpreting the “charter document of the Christian Gospel” (p. 4). He finds methodological legitimization both in the arguments of narrative criticism and in the lines of connection he discerns between deconstruction and the Mahayana recognition of emptiness. And in so arguing, he finds himself able to account for forms of New Testament criticism such as those advanced by John Dominic Crossan and Werner Kelber that not only undermine forms of essentialism but also resort to conventional modes of thinking and discourse without justifying the latter.What is unwittingly going on, argues Keenan, is parallel to the Mahayana identification of emptiness (shunyata) with dependent co-arising (pratitya samutpada). Like deconstructionist hermenuetics, emptiness destablizes all fixed views by recognizing that ultimate truth is ineffable and silent. However, unlike deconstruction, emptiness avoids the vertigo of a text lost in the interplay of interpretations doubling back on themselves. “That is emptiness ineptly apprehended as itself an essentialist viewpoint that there are no viewpoints” (p. 7). Instead, Mahayana analysis connects recognition of the total otherness of ultimate meaning with the affirmation of worldly convention in its limitation. The result is a hermeneutic of nonabsolutizing suggestiveness shaped by upaya, which leads the reader to the possibility of enlightenment —or, in the case of Mark, disclosure.According to Keenan, this Mahayana recognition of the identity of emptiness and dependent co-arising not only has hermeneutical legitimation but also is the key for unlocking a fresh appreciation of Mark’s contents. Accounting for this is the fact that “the Marcan rhetoric of indirection and irony is the narrative analogue to the Madhyamika dialectical rhetoric employed in Nagarjuna’s Stanzas on the Middle” and the fact that “Mahayana eschews precisely those clarifying elements that Matthew and Luke have added to domesticate Mark’s story and discourse, preferring the opacity of ultimate meaning to the full explication of stated truths, opting for the emptying of all themes and ideas in order to reclaim them with an awakened mind” (p. 4).Keenan’s approach is coherent with Crossan’s observation that while mythos creates a universe of meaning, parable undermines established cosmoi. In this respect, Jesus not only speaks parable, he is parable. Utilizing the Mahayana identification of emptiness with dependent co-arising as a heuristic device and paying close attention to the Greek text, Keenan traces the simultaneously destablizing and restorative effect that Jesus has on his hearers—and that the evangelist potentially can have on his readers. Jesus’ “desert spirituality,” that is, his radically unconventional vision, undermines the expectations and securities of both hearer and reader. But it also reconnects those effected by the liberation he works “not to the ultimate glory of a false kingdom imagined by the disciples and the readers, but to the conventional realm of human living in which alone the kingdom may be established” (p. 73; italics added). Indeed, Jesus’ crucifixion makes clear that the transformation wrought [End Page 211] by the Gospel is an existential reappropriation of ordinary life in the face of ultimate mystery, not some supernatural deliverance within or from it. Appropriately, Mark ends with the women being confronted by both the jarring and ineffable mystery of Jesus’ empty tomb and the promise that he will see the disciples again in the familiar—and open-ended—context of life in Galilee.Keenan has done more... (shrink)

Belnap–Dunn’s relevance logic, \(\textsf{BD}\), was designed seeking a suitable logical device for dealing with multiple information sources which sometimes may provide inconsistent and/or incomplete pieces of information. \(\textsf{BD}\) is a four-valued logic which is both paraconsistent and paracomplete. On the other hand, De and Omori, while investigating what classical negation amounts to in a paracomplete and paraconsistent four-valued setting, proposed the expansion \(\textsf{BD2}\) of the four valued Belnap–Dunn logic by a classical negation. In this paper, we introduce a (...) four-valued expansion of BD called \({\textsf{BD}^\copyright }\), obtained by adding an unary connective \({\copyright }\,\ \) which is a consistency operator (in the sense of the Logics of Formal Inconsistency, _LFI_s). In addition, this operator is the unique one with the following features: it extends to \(\textsf{BD}\) the consistency operator of LFI1, a well-known three-valued _LFI_, still satisfying axiom _ciw_ (which states that any sentence is either consistent or contradictory), and allowing to define an undeterminedness operator (in the sense of Logic of Formal Undeterminedness, _LFU_s). Moreover, \({\textsf{BD}^\copyright }\) is maximal w.r.t. LFI1, and it is proved to be equivalent to BD2, up to signature. After presenting a natural Hilbert-style characterization of \({\textsf{BD}^\copyright }\) obtained by means of twist-structures semantics, we propose a first-order version of \({\textsf{BD}^\copyright }\) called \({\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }\), with semantics based on an appropriate notion of four-valued Tarskian-like structures called \(\textbf{4}\) -structures. We show that in \({\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }\), the existential and universal quantifiers are interdefinable in terms of the paracomplete and paraconsistent negation, and not by means of the classical negation. Finally, a Hilbert-style calculus for \({\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }\) is presented, proving the corresponding soundness and completeness theorems. (shrink)

The Irish poet W. B. Yeats once wrote, with great sapience and perception: Nor dread, nor hope attend A dying animal; A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all. That death has ever been a problem to man is attested as far back as we can trace our species in the archaeological record—indeed, it seems to have been a problem even for that immediate precursor of homo sapiens, the so-called Neanderthal Man; for he buried his dead.

Belnap–Dunn’s relevance logic, \(\textsf{BD}\), was designed seeking a suitable logical device for dealing with multiple information sources which sometimes may provide inconsistent and/or incomplete pieces of information. \(\textsf{BD}\) is a four-valued logic which is both paraconsistent and paracomplete. On the other hand, De and Omori, while investigating what classical negation amounts to in a paracomplete and paraconsistent four-valued setting, proposed the expansion \(\textsf{BD2}\) of the four valued Belnap–Dunn logic by a classical negation. In this paper, we introduce a (...) four-valued expansion of BD called \({\textsf{BD}^\copyright }\), obtained by adding an unary connective \({\copyright }\,\ \) which is a consistency operator (in the sense of the Logics of Formal Inconsistency, _LFI_s). In addition, this operator is the unique one with the following features: it extends to \(\textsf{BD}\) the consistency operator of LFI1, a well-known three-valued _LFI_, still satisfying axiom _ciw_ (which states that any sentence is either consistent or contradictory), and allowing to define an undeterminedness operator (in the sense of Logic of Formal Undeterminedness, _LFU_s). Moreover, \({\textsf{BD}^\copyright }\) is maximal w.r.t. LFI1, and it is proved to be equivalent to BD2, up to signature. After presenting a natural Hilbert-style characterization of \({\textsf{BD}^\copyright }\) obtained by means of twist-structures semantics, we propose a first-order version of \({\textsf{BD}^\copyright }\) called \({\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }\), with semantics based on an appropriate notion of four-valued Tarskian-like structures called \(\textbf{4}\) -structures. We show that in \({\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }\), the existential and universal quantifiers are interdefinable in terms of the paracomplete and paraconsistent negation, and not by means of the classical negation. Finally, a Hilbert-style calculus for \({\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }\) is presented, proving the corresponding soundness and completeness theorems. (shrink)

Theoretical explication of a growing body of empirical data on consciousness-related anomalous phenomena is unlikely to be achieved in terms of known physical processes. Rather, it will first be necessary to formulate the basic role of consciousness in the definition of reality before such anomalous experience can adequately be represented. This paper takes the position that reality is constituted only in the interaction of consciousness with its environment, and therefore that any scheme of conceptual organization developed to represent that reality (...) must reflect the processes of consciousness as well as those of its environment. In this spirit, the concepts and formalisms of elementary quantum mechanics, as originally proposed to explain anomalous atomic-scale physical phenomena, are appropriated via metaphor to represent the general characteristics of consciousness interacting with any environment. More specifically, if consciousness is represented by a quantum mechanical wave function, and its environment by an appropriate potential profile, Schrödinger wave mechanics defines eigenfunctions and eigenvalues that can be associated with the cognitive and emotional experiences of that consciousness in that environment. To articulate this metaphor it is necessary to associate certain aspects of the formalism, such as the coordinate system, the quantum numbers, and even the metric itself, with various impressionistic descriptors of consciousness, such as its intensity, perspective, approach/avoidance attitude, balance between cognitive and emotional activity, and receptive/assertive disposition. With these established, a number of the generic features of quantum mechanics, such as the wave/particle duality, and the uncertainty, indistinguishability, and exclusion principles, display metaphoric relevance to familiar individual and collective experiences. Similarly, such traditional quantum theoretic exercises as the central force field and atomic structure, covalent molecular bonds, barrier penetration, and quantum statistical collective behavior become useful analogies for representation of a variety of consciousness experiences, both normal and anomalous, and for the design of experiments to study these systematically. (shrink)

Over the past two years, debate about the use of data taken from Nazi concentration camp experiments has intensified. Many survivors of the Holocaust have been particularly offended at the publication of hypothermia or other data. This article argues against the use of unethically obtained data, and considers the debate from the perspective of the rights of Holocaust victims.

The scientific, personal, and social implications of this revolutionary work are staggering. MARGINS OF REALITY is nothing less than a fundamental reevaluation of how the world really works.

S. G. Williams; VIII*—Belief, Desire, and the Praxis of Reasoning, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 90, Issue 1, 1 June 1990, Pages 119–142, http.