Examining a fragment of interaction that occurred during a surgery at a teaching hospital, we explore how particular instructed experiences are produced for two trainees, a surgeon in the residency program and a medical student in a surgical clerkship. We are concerned with what is produced as learnable in each case. Stated slightly differently, we are interested in the ways in which the attending surgeon uses demonstrations as instruction and the ways in which recipients of that instruction, in this case (...) the resident and the clerk, respond with enactments of those demonstrated actions. The recipients of this kind of instruction participate in a form of experiential learning in which they enact their own versions of the instructor’s demonstrated actions to be observed and assessed by the instructor. These enactments provide learners with experiential access to the instructor’s demonstrated actions. They are designed to be experiences that learners may draw upon to make experientially warranted claims at some later time. (shrink)

Mrs. F, seventy‐five, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She and her spouse often discussed how to handle the progression of the disease. She was adamant about not coming to the point where she would be unable to recognize herself, her husband, or their son and daughter. The manner she chose was voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED), and she chose a specific date on which to carry out her plan. She asked her husband to promise, should she ever waver and request (...) nutrition or hydration, to remind her of the reasons she had chosen for pursuing this path.Mrs. F's ability to function was beginning to wax and wane. Sometimes she was her old self, and sometimes she had no recollection of her past identity. After she voluntarily stopped eating and drinking, the couple's promise created a dilemma for her professional caregivers. She asked for food and drink. Her husband and family reminded her of the reasons she had chosen VSED: “Remember, you didn't want to live in a nursing home, and you didn't want us to be responsible for caring for you at home. You believe that stopping eating and drinking will allow you to die with dignity.” Although they also asked Mrs. F, “What do you want to do?” the family asked the professional caregivers to respect her original choice to stop eating and drinking. Mrs. F still evidenced decision‐making capacity but often did not recall having chosen VSED. She again requested food and drink, from family and the professional caregivers.Can VSED be carried out for a patient whose advanced dementia makes disciplined voluntary action difficult? (shrink)

Alan Donagan, in The Theory of Morality, famously claims that the principles of “common morality” (i.e., the morality of the Judeo-Christian tradition) form a consistent system that can be derived from a single fundamental principle: It is impermissible not to respect every human being, oneself or any other, as a rational creature. In particular, I want to show that the prohibition contained in the fundamental principle is interpreted by appeal to prior convictions about particular sorts of cases, whether they (...) involve the violation of “respect” or not, and that this has unfavorable consequences for Donagan’s claim that the principles of common morality form a truly deductive system of morality. (shrink)

The amygdala is a key brain area regulating responses to stress and emotional stimuli, so improving our understanding of how it is regulated could offer novel strategies for treating disturbances in emotion regulation. As we review here, a growing body of evidence indicates that the gut microbiota may contribute to a range of amygdala-dependent brain functions from pain sensitivity to social behavior, emotion regulation, and therefore, psychiatric health. In addition, it appears that the microbiota is necessary for normal development of (...) the amygdala at both the structural and functional levels. While further investigations are needed to elucidate the exact mechanisms of microbiota-to-amygdala communication, ultimately, this work raises the intriguing possibility that the gut microbiota may become a viable treatment target in disorders associated with amygdala dysregulation, including visceral pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and beyond. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/O5gvxVJjX18 The amygdala plays a central role in regulating many aspects of behavior in rodents and humans, from pain responding to social interaction and psychiatric function. Accumulating evidence suggests microbiota-to-amygdala communication along the gut-brain axis is a key modulator of these amygdala-dependent behaviors, with critical implications for health and disease. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists have frequently criticized ancient Greek philosophy as anti-environmental for a view of philosophy that is counterproductive to environmental ethics and a view of the world that puts nature at the disposal of people. This provocative collection of original essays reexamines the views of nature and ecology found in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Plotinus. Recognizing that these thinkers were not confronted with the environmental degradation that threatens contemporary philosophers, the contributors to this book find that (...) the Greeks nevertheless provide an excellent foundation for a sound theory of environmentalism. (shrink)

Careful attention to the social situations implied in the passages of First Timothy about women indicates there is nothing there that would limit the role of women in the church.

This paper criticizes the account of desire defended by Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder in their recent book, In Praise of Desire. It contrasts their account with one that I favor, a cluster analysis listing various criteria that are together sufficient for having paradigm desires, but none of which is necessary or sufficient for desiring. I argue that their account fails to state necessary or sufficient conditions, that it is explanatorily weaker than the cluster account, that it fails to (...) provide a neat reduction of desires to neurophysical terms, and that in any case such a reduction is not required for the preservation of the concept of desire in mature psychology. Implications are drawn for the broader debate between reductionists, eliminativists, and defenders of folk psychological concepts. (shrink)

The Morality of Happiness By Julia Annas, Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. x + 502. ISBN 0–19–507999‐X. £45.00 (hbk), £13.99 (pbk).Dimensions of Creativity By Margaret A. Boden (ed.) MIT Press, 1994. Pp. 242. ISBN 0–262–02368–7. £24.95.Thomas Hobbes and the Science of Moral Virtue By David Boonin‐Vail, Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. 219. ISBN 0–521–46209–6. £37.50.Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes By Quentin Skinner, Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. 477. ISBN 0–521–55436–5. £35.00.Being and the Between By William Desmond, State (...) University of New York Press, 1995. Pp. 557. ISBN 0–7914–2271–2. $19.95.Perplexity and Ultimacy By William Desmond, State University of New York Press, 1995. Pp. 263. ISBN 0–7914–2387–5. $19.95.Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology By Susan Haack, Blackwell Publishers, 1994. Pp. x + 259. ISBN 0–631–19679‐X/£14.99 (pbk).Kant's Intuitionalism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic By Lorne Falkenstein, University of Toronto Press, 1996. Pp. xvii + 465. ISBN 0–8020–2973–6. $70.00.The Metaphysics of Free Will By John Martin Fischer, Blackwell, 1995. Pp. ix + 273. ISBN 1–55786–8573. £14.99.Identification Papers By Diana Fuss, Routledge, 1995. Pp. 179. ISBN 0–415–90886–8. $16.95.Rorty and Pragmatism: The Philosopher Responds to his Critics Edited by Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr., Vanderbilt University Press, 1995. ISBN 0–8265–1263–1 $24.95.Nietzsche's French Legacy: a Genealogy of Poststructuralism By Alan D. Schrift, Routledge, 1995. Pp. xviii + 198. ISBN 0–415–91146‐X. £40.00.Causal Cognition ‐ A Multidisciplinary Debate Edited by Dan Sperber, David Premack, and Ann James Premack, Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. 670. ISBN 0–19–852314–9. £00.00. (shrink)

Introduction: Natural necessity, being, and becoming -- Accentuate the negative -- Diffracting dialectic -- Opening totality -- Constellating ethics -- Metacritique I : philosophy's primordial failing -- Metacritique II : dialectic and difference -- Conclusion: Natural necessity and the grounds of justice : natural necessity as material meshwork.

The concept of evolvability—the capacity of a population to produce and maintain evolutionarily relevant variation—has become increasingly prominent in evolutionary biology. Paleontology has a long history of investigating questions of evolvability, but paleontological thinking has tended to neglect recent discussions, because many tools used in the current evolvability literature are challenging to apply to the fossil record. The fundamental difficulty is how to disentangle whether the causes of evolutionary patterns arise from variational properties of traits or lineages rather than being (...) due to selection and ecological success. Despite these obstacles, the fossil record offers unique and growing sources of data that capture evolutionary patterns of sustained duration and significance otherwise inaccessible to evolutionary biologists. Additionally, there exist a variety of strategic possibilities for combining prominent neontological approaches to evolvability with those from paleontology. We illustrate three of these possibilities with quantitative genetics, evolutionary developmental biology, and phylogenetic models of macroevolution. In conclusion, we provide a methodological schema that focuses on the conceptualization, measurement, and testing of hypotheses to motivate and provide guidance for future empirical and theoretical studies of evolvability in the fossil record. (shrink)

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

On method, discursive logics, and epistemology -- Questions of medieval discursive practice -- From the middle ages to the (w)hole of Utopia -- Kepler, his Dream, and the analysis and pattern of thought -- Campanella and Bacon: concerning structures of mind -- The masculine birth of time -- Cyrano and the experimental discourse -- The myth of sun and moon -- The difficulty of writing -- Crusoe rights his story -- Gulliver's critique of Euclid -- Emergence, consolidation, and dominance of (...) a discourse. (shrink)

This book aims to give a coherent interpretation of the whole dialogue, paying particular attention to these etymologies.The book discusses the rival theories ...

What is new here is the detailed discussion of several important results in the classical foundations of mathematics and of the relation of logic to mathematics. As regards logical questions, the central thesis of Wittgenstein's later philosophy is well known, both from the earlier posthumous volume and from the writings of his many disciples. In the Investigations the thesis is applied to the "logic of our expressions" in everyday contexts; here he discusses in the same spirit the more specialized language (...) used in talking about the foundations of mathematics. (shrink)

Antigone’s reasons for being prepared to die make good sense within a tragic world-view; but the Crito turns out to be, in an odd way, aporetic, because Socrates’ professed reasons make no sense within the Platonist world-view that we expect him to use. On Platonist principles, Socrates should have escaped from prison, and acted unjustly in not doing so. But Socrates’ real reasons for being prepared to die are not Platonist: they are tragic. Like Antigone, he regards the narrative of (...) his life as over: this is why he is incapable of taking seriously the option of escape. (shrink)

PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE "What is the meaning of a word?" Thus Wittgenstein begins the set of lecture notes subsequently published as The Blue Book. ...

Moral values are real—we don't just make them up. Beauty is in the world—it's not just in the eye of the beholder. You are free—what you do is not always determined by electrochemical processes in your brain. And the universe we live in is God's creation. These are radical claims. But they are widely rejected in contemporary philosophy because they are almost always considered in relative isolation from one another. This book shows that when they are considered in conjunction, they (...) gain mutual support. And it shows this both clearly and concisely. But its systematic approach to philosophy also reveals that various philosophical positions currently widely accepted and defended can appear plausible and perhaps even compelling only when they are considered in relative isolation—as they, too, almost always are. When the issues on which these positions are taken are considered in conjunction, problems come into view and the alternative positions defended in this book emerge as superior. Toward a Philosophical Theory of Everything is a ground-breaking work that shows the importance of systematic thinking, while also defending positions, on central philosophical issues, that are widely rejected in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Drawing upon ancient Hindu philosophy, the author explores the human psyche and the importance of personal identity.

This dissertation examines Edmund Husserl's call for a "science of the life-world." It is argued that the most appropriate response is to develop such a science in specifically sociological terms. This argument is made by exploring particular themes in sociological theory and the philosophy of the social sciences. The dissertation begins by explicating Husserl's aspiration to understand the "life-world" and ends with the fulfillment of this aspiration in a "sociology of the life-world." ;The initial focus is upon Husserl's ambiguous concepts (...) of "life-world" and "intersubjectivity." These gain coherence when "intersubjectivity" is understood as the content of "life-world" and subject matter of philosophy. Husserl's argument implies that intersubjectivity should supersede subjectivity as the focus of study. Schutz contends that Husserl's conception of the life-world is artificial and that his philosophy is beset by an insurmountable solipsism. Schutz's alternative is to approach intersubjectivity as an empirical fact. This opens up everyday life to sociological investigation. Although Schutz follows Husserl's recommendations, it is argued that he misconstrues the scope of Husserl's philosophy and, subsequently, his own thought terminates in a reification of method and failure to achieve a science of the life-world. Mead provides a way to remedy this failure by beginning with the relationship between individual and society. Yet Mead's conception of intersubjectivity also fails, as it is undermined by an account of meaning premised on the individual alone. ;By introducing the idea of "universal symbol," however, Mead suggests the study of language as the central topic for a sociology of the life-world. In the final chapters this dissertation draws upon the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michael Oakeshott, and Harold Garfinkel to discuss how language can be conceived and studied as a set of practices shared within a society. While realizing Husserl's call, the solution of focusing on language raises the question of the scope and nature of sociological inquiry. The dissertation concludes by arguing that sociology, since its procedures are governed by the everyday character of phenomena it studies, should be understood as a descriptive mode of inquiry. In this way, Husserl's recommendations may be enacted in a sociology of the life-world. (shrink)