In 1982, without waiting for the findings of the National Hospice Study, Congress passed legislation enabling certified hospices to receive Medicare reimbursement. What emerged is a reimbursement program that differs substantially from the movement that spawned it. Hospices now face many dilemmas, among them shifting the burden of care to the family, determining who controls the course of patient care, and breaking even financially.

Tailoring the design of robot bodies for control purposes is implicitly performed by engineers, however, a methodology or set of tools is largely absent and optimization of morphology (shape, material properties of robot bodies, etc.) is lag- ging behind the development of controllers. This has become even more prominent with the advent of compliant, deformable or "soft" bodies. These carry substantial potential regarding their exploitation for control – sometimes referred to as "mor- phological computation" in the sense of offloading computation (...) needed for control to the body. Here, we will argue in favor of a dynamical systems rather than com- putational perspective on the problem. Then, we will look at the pros and cons of simple vs. complex bodies, critically reviewing the attractive notion of “soft” bodies automatically taking over control tasks. We will address another key dimension of the design space – whether model-based control should be used and to what extent it is feasible to develop faithful models for different morphologies. ----- This paper was also published in the 2014 AISB proceedings http://aisb50.org/representation-of-reality-humans-animals-and-machines/ - http://doc.gold.ac.uk/aisb50/. (shrink)

Cancer viewed as a programmed, evolutionarily conserved life‐form, rather than just a random series of disease‐causing mutations, answers the rarely asked question of what the cancer cell is for, provides meaning for its otherwise mysterious suite of attributes, and encourages a different type of thinking about treatment. The broad but consistent spectrum of traits, well‐recognized in all aggressive cancers, group naturally into three categories: taxonomy (“phylogenation”), atavism (“re‐primitivization”) and robustness (“adaptive resilience”). The parsimonious explanation is not convergent evolution, but the (...) release of an highly conserved survival program, honed by the exigencies of the Pre‐Cambrian, to which the cancer cell seems better adapted; and which is recreated within, and at great cost to, its host. Central to this program is the Warburg Effect, whose malign influence permeates well beyond aerobic glycolysis to include biomass interconversion and genomic heuristics. Warburg‐type metabolism and genomic instability are targets whose therapeutic disablement is a major priority. (shrink)

Luck egalitarians think that considerations of responsibility can excuse departures from strict equality. However critics argue that allowing responsibility to play this role has objectionably harsh consequences. Luck egalitarians usually respond either by explaining why that harshness is not excessive, or by identifying allegedly legitimate exclusions from the default responsibility-tracking rule to tone down that harshness. And in response, critics respectively deny that this harshness is not excessive, or they argue that those exclusions would be ineffective or lacking in justification. (...) Rather than taking sides, after criticizing both positions I also argue that this way of carrying on the debate – i.e. as a debate about whether the harsh demands of responsibility outweigh other considerations, and about whether exclusions to responsibility-tracking would be effective and/or justified – is deeply problematic. On my account, the demands of responsibility do not – in fact, they can not – conflict with the demands of other normative considerations, because responsibility only provides a formal structure within which those other considerations determine how people may be treated, but it does not generate its own practical demands. (shrink)

Could neuroimaging evidence help us to assess the degree of a person’s responsibility for a crime which we know that they committed? This essay defends an affirmative answer to this question. A range of standard objections to this high-tech approach to assessing people’s responsibility is considered and then set aside, but I also bring to light and then reject a novel objection—an objection which is only encountered when functional (rather than structural) neuroimaging is used to assess people’s responsibility.

This article offers a unified theory of the licensing of Negative and Positive Polarity Items, focusing on the acceptability conditions of PPIs of the some-type, and NPIs of the any-type. It argues that licensing has both a syntactic and a semantic component. On the syntactic side, the acceptability of PIs is checked in constituents; in fact, for any given PI, only some constituents, referred to as `domains', are eligible for the evaluation of that PI. The semantic dimension of licensing consists (...) in the sensitivity of PIs to the monotonicity properties of the syntactic environments they find themselves in. Two pieces of evidence support the semantic dimension of what I call the ‘environment-based’ approach defended here: PIs are subject to flip-flop and certain inferences affect their acceptability by modifying the monotonicity of their environment. A third property, called ‘entanglement’ and so far unnoticed, is described: the acceptability of PIs depends on the acceptability of other PIs in the same syntactic environment. The latter property is exploited to determine what semantic property some is sensitive to: it turns out that, contrary to the consensus among researchers, some is acceptable in the complement of the set of environments in which any is acceptable, and vice versa. (shrink)

Between 1869 and 1871, D. I. Mendeleev, a teacher at the University at St Petersburg published a textbook of general chemistry intended for his students. The title, Principles of Chemistry was typical for the time: it meant that chemistry was no longer an inquiry on the ultimate principles of matter but had become a science firmly established on a few principles derived from experiment.

This book provides a valuable look at the work of up and coming epistemologists. The topics covered range from the central issues of mainstream epistemology to the more formal issues in epistemic logic and confirmation theory. This book should be read by anyone interested in seeing where epistemology is currently focused and where it is heading. - Stewart Cohen , Arizona State University..

Everybody assumes (1) that musical performances are sonic events and (2) that their expressive properties are sonic properties. This paper discusses recent findings in the psychology of music perception that show that visual information combines with auditory information in the perception of musical expression. The findings show at the very least that arguments are needed for (1) and (2). If music expresses what we think it does, then its expressive properties may be visual as well as sonic; and if its (...) expressive properties are purely sonic, then music expresses less than we think it does. And if the expressive properties of music are visual as well as sonic, then music is not what we think it is—it is not purely sonic. (shrink)

Der Denkstil der Chemiker. Der Aufsatz diskutiert die Tragfähigkeit des Begriffes “Denkstil”, wie er von Alistair Crombie eingeführt und Ian Hacking aufgegriffen wurde, für das Verständnis dessen, wie das Fach Chemie historisch seine Identität ausgeprägt hat. Obwohl weder Crombie noch Hacking den Begriff “Denkstil” in Bezug auf einzelne Disziplinen verwendet haben, erscheint im Fall der Chemie seine Anwendung besonders vielversprechend, weil er hier hilft, ein zentrales Problem zu thematisieren – nämlich die Frage, wie es Chemikern trotz wechselnder Gegenstandsbereiche und theoretischer (...) Umbrüche gelang, eine eigenständige und stabile Identität auszubilden. Nach einer Einführung in den Begriff “Denkstil”, argumentiert der Aufsatz, dass die Beständigkeit der Chemie als eines Faches wesentlich in ihren Laborpraktiken gründet, die ihrerseits wiederum die spezifische Art der Fragen bestimmten, die Chemiker in ihren Forschungen stellten bzw. die Form der Antworten, nach denen sie suchten. Folgende Merkmale kennzeichnen diesen “chemischen Denkstil” (1) eine spezifische, im Herstellen begründete Form des Wissens, (2) die Befassung mit einzelnen Stoffen und Materialien statt mit Materie im Allgemeinen und (3) eine Beobachtung von Natur besonders im Hinblick auf Transformationsprozesse.The Chemists' Style of Thinking. This paper discusses the relevance of the notion of “styles of scientific thinking” introduced by Alistair Crombie and revisited by Ian Hacking, for understanding how chemistry shaped its identity. Although neither Crombie nor Hacking applied this notion to individual disciplines, it seems appropriate to use it in the case of chemistry because it helps to address a puzzling issue: how did chemists manage to shape an identity of their own, despite shifting territories and theoretical transformations? Following a presentation of the notion of style, I will argue that the stable identity of chemistry is rooted in laboratory practices, which determined the specific questions that chemists put to nature as well as the answers to their questions. The “chemical style of thinking” is characterized by i) a specific way of knowing through making, ii) the concern with individual materials rather than matter in general and iii) a specific commitment to nature. (shrink)

Many families of patients hold the view that it is their right to be present during a loved one's resuscitation, while the majority of patients also express the comfort and support they would feel by having them there. Currently, family presence is more commonly accepted in paediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation than adult CPR. Even though many guidelines are in favour of this practice and recognise potential benefits, healthcare professionals are hesitant to support adult family presence to the extent that paediatric family (...) presence is supported. However, in this paper, we suggest that the ethical case to justify family presence during paediatric resuscitation is weaker than the justification of family presence during adult resuscitation. We go on to support this claim using three main arguments that people use in clinical ethics to justify FPDR. These include scarcity of evidence documenting disruption, psychological benefits to family members following the incident and respect for patient autonomy. We demonstrate that these arguments actually apply more strongly to A-FPDR compared with P-FPDR, thereby questioning the common attitude of healthcare professionals of allowing the latter while mostly opposing A-FPDR. Importantly, we do not wish to suggest that P-FPDR should not be allowed. Rather, we suggest that since P-FPDR is commonly allowed, so should A-FPDR. This is because the aforementioned arguments that are used to justify FPDR in general actually make a stronger case for A-FPDR. (shrink)

This paper is a critical assessment of the epistemological impact of the systematic quantification of nature with the accumulation of big datasets on the practice and orientation of ecological science. We examine the contents of big databases and argue that it is not just accumulated information; records are translated into digital data in a process that changes their meanings. In order to better understand what is at stake in the ‘datafication’ process, we explore the context for the emergence and quantification (...) of biodiversity in the 1980s, along with the concept of the global environment. In tracing the origin and development of the global biodiversity information facility we describe big data biodiversity projects as a techno-political construction dedicated to monitoring a new object: the global diversity. We argue that, biodiversity big data became a powerful driver behind the invention of the concept of the global environment, and a way to embed ecological science in the political agenda. (shrink)

Black Natural Law offers a new way of understanding the African American political tradition, and it argues that this tradition has collapsed into incoherence. Vincent William Lloyd revives Black politics by telling stories of its central figures in a way that exhibits the connections between their religious, philosophical, and political ideas.

This book'¬"s chapters deal with a range of theoretical problems discussed in classic compatibilist literature '¬ ; e.g. the relationship between ...

En plus d'un excellent ouvrage analytique sur Proust, cette thèse dépasse son objet en distinguant bien la pensée du romancier de celle du théoricien. Ainsi la notion de philosophie du roman est profondément explorée et la proposition d'une réforme de la théorie du récit (narratologie) est esquissée. Suppose lecture de la ##Recherche##.

Epistemic logic is the logic of knowledge and belief. It provides insight into the properties of individual knowers, has provided a means to model complicated scenarios involving groups of knowers and has improved our understanding of the dynamics of inquiry.

La chimie est délaissée des philosophes et historiens des sciences. Cette discipline ne serait-elle pas bonne à penser? Qu’est-ce que ce silence, ce mépris ou cette méconnaissance nous enseignent sur le régime du savoir en chimie? Inversement, la chimie méprisée, méconnue ou simplement ignorée ne signalerait-elle pas les travers des philosophes et les limites de leur pouvoir de conceptualiser et de penser? Cet ouvrage donne un aperçu de la complexité de ces questions en adoptant un point de vue symétrique où (...) se croisent les regards des chimistes et des philosophes. En abordant les problématiques posées par les théories de la matière et en étudiant la question du corps du chimiste et de son statut social, ce volume s’interroge aussi sur l’image de la chimie et sur le rejet du « chimique » au profit du « naturel » très en vogue aujourd’hui. (shrink)

Philosophical compatibilism reconciles moral responsibility with determinism, and some neurolaw scholars think that it can also reconcile legal views about responsibility with scientific findings about the neurophysiological basis of human action. Although I too am a compatibilist, this paper argues that philosophical compatibilism cannot be transplanted “as-is” from philosophy into law. Rather, before compatibilism can be re-deployed, it must first be modified to take account of differences between legal and moral responsibility, and between a scientific and a deterministic world view, (...) and to address a range of conceptual, normative, empirical and doctrinal problems that orbit its capacitarian core. (shrink)

This thesis considers two allegations which conservatives often level at no-fault systems — namely, that responsibility is abnegated under no-fault systems, and that no-fault systems under- and over-compensate. I argue that although each of these allegations can be satisfactorily met – the responsibility allegation rests on the mistaken assumption that to properly take responsibility for our actions we must accept liability for those losses for which we are causally responsible; and the compensation allegation rests on the mistaken assumption that tort (...) law’s compensatory decisions provide a legitimate norm against which no-fault’s decisions can be compared and criticized – doing so leads in a direction which is at odds with accident law reform advocates’ typical recommendations. On my account, accident law should not just be reformed in line with no-fault’s principles, but rather it should be completely abandoned since the principles that protect no- fault systems from the conservatives’ two allegations are incompatible with retaining the category of accident law, they entail that no-fault systems are a form of social welfare and not accident law systems, and that under these systems serious deprivation – and to a lesser extent causal responsibility – should be conditions of eligibility to claim benefits. (shrink)

This collection focuses primarily on Peirce’s realism, pragmatism, and theism, with attention to his tychism and synechism.

Nationalism has had a complex relation with the discipline of political theory during the 20th century. Political theory has often been deeply uneasy with nationalism in relation to its role in the events leading up to and during the Second World War. Many theorists saw nationalism as an overly narrow and potentially irrationalist doctrine. In essence it embodied a closed vision of the world. This article focuses on one key contributor to the immediate post-war debate—Karl Popper—who retained deep misgivings about (...) nationalism until the end of his life, and indeed saw the events of the early 1990s (shortly before his death) as a confirmation of this distrust. Popper was one of a number of immediate post war writers, such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, who shared this unease with nationalism. They all had a powerful effect on social and political thought in the English-speaking world. Popper particularly articulated a deeply influential perspective that fortuitously encapsulated a cold war mentality in the 1950s. In 2005 Popper's critical views are doubly interesting, since the last decade has seen a renaissance of nationalist interests. The collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989, and the changing political landscape of international and domestic politics, has seen once again a massive growth of interest in nationalism, particularly from liberal political theorists and a growing, and, at times, immensely enthusiastic academic literature, trying to provide a distinctively benign benediction to nationalism. (shrink)

Scientists and engineers who extensively use the term “nanomachine” are not always aware of the philosophical implications of this term. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of nanomachine through a distinction between three major paradigms of machine. After a brief presentation of two well-known paradigms - Cartesian mechanistic machines and Von Neumann's complex and uncontrolled machines – we will argue that Drexler's model was mainly Cartesian. But what about the model of his critics? We propose a (...) third model - Gilbert Simondon's notion of concrete machines – which seems more appropriate to understand nanomachines than the notion of “soft machines”. Finally we review a few strategies currently used to design nanomachines, in an effort to determine which paradigm they belong to. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Why Authority? The Forms and Limits of Authority The Paradoxes of Authority The Justification of Authority Authority and the Obligation to Obey the Law Legal Authority Conclusion References.

The mental and the social are ‘two sides of the same coin’. In other words, ‘social relations are internal relations’. In showing how this was the point of Wittgenstein’s discussion of the practice of ‘following a rule’, Peter Winch has made an important contribution to social philosophy.

Through the voice of the narrator of Remembrance of Things Past, Proust observes of the painter Elstir that the paintings are bolder than the artist; Elstir the painter is bolder than Elstir the theorist. This book applies the same distinction to Proust; the Proustian novel is bolder than Proust the theorist. By this the author means that the novel is philosophically bolder, that it pursues further The task Proust identifies as the writer's work: to explain life, to elucidate what has (...) been lived in obscurity and confusion. In this, the novelist and the philosopher share a common goal: to clarify the obscure in order to arrive at the truth. It follows that Proust's real philosophy of the novel is to be found not in the speculative passages of Remembrance, which merely echo the philosophical commonplaces of his time, but in the truly novelistic or narrative portions of his text. In Against Sainte-Beuve, Proust sets forth his ideas about literature in the form of a critique of the method of Sainte-Beuve. Scholars who have studied Proust's notebooks describe the way in which this essay was taken over by bits of narrative originally intended as illustrations supporting its theses. The philosophical portions of Remembrance were not added to the narrative as an afterthought, designed to bring out its meaning. What happened was the reverse: the novel was born of a desire to illustrate the propositions of the essay. Why then should we not find the novel more philosophically advanced than the essay? Reversing the usual order following by literary critics, the author interprets the novel as an elucidation, and not as a simple transposition, of the essay. The book is not only a general interpretation of Proust's novel and its construction; it includes detailed discussions of such topics as literature and philosophy, the nature of literary genres, the poetics of the novel, the definition of art, modernity and postmodernity, and the sociology of literature. (shrink)

Comment la philosophie doit-elle traiter de l'actualité? De tous côtés, on invite les philosophes à se prononcer sur le sens de l'époque. Mais en quoi un philosophe serait-il plus qualifié que d'autres pour rédiger l'éditorial de votre journal quotidien? En réalité, la notion d'un " discours philosophique de la modernité " doit être rejetée. Le sujet de la modernité appartient aux écrivains, aux critiques des mœurs, aux sociologues de l'individualisme. C'est d'ailleurs ainsi que Baudelaire l'entendait dans ses pages sur la (...) poésie de la vie moderne. A la racine des confusions sur le sens philosophique du temps présent, il y a une assimilation abusive du moderne au rationnel. Ceux qui ont posé cette équivalence ont été partout placés devant un paradoxe : le rationnel tel qu'ils le définissent ne parvient plus à se distinguer de l'arbitraire que par une différence elle-même arbitraire. Position connue aujourd'hui sous le nom générique de " post-structuralisme ". Il appartient maintenant aux philosophes de concevoir autrement les principes de la raison, de façon à éviter l'outrecuidance d'en réserver l'intelligence à la disposition légitime aux seuls citoyens du monde moderne. (shrink)

The paper centres on a particular pattern of argument in Bernard Bosanquet aesthetic writings. This pattern is one which has roots in a more general Idealist response to Kant's formulation of the problem of aesthetic judgment. In other words, it has roots in thinkers such as Schiller, Schelling and Hegel. The core of the pattern of argument concentrates on the relation, in both artistic production and contemplation, between reason and sensuousness and form and content. The paper tries to show how (...) Bosanquet, in formulating his aesthetic theory, fashions his argument into what I call a 'social aesthetic'. He is helped in this process of formulating a 'social aesthetic' by subtly linking his Hegelian-based arguments with the ideas of both William Morris and John Ruskin. Throughout the paper the various arguments revolve therefore around the central relation of reason and sensuousness and form and content. (shrink)

Americans have recently had thrust into their faces multiple media borne medical and social ethics dilemmas ranging from Dr. Kevorkian's euthanizing a patient on national television to payments by managed care providers for experimental medical treatments,to the nationally telecast situation which this paper will attempt to address. The case at hand concerns a minor in need of a repeat(third) kidney transplant who has been offered a kidney by her father. He also provided a kidney for her second kidney transplant some (...) years ago. The teenage girl went into her current kidney failure/organ rejection state because, feeling well, she stopped taking her antirejection medications. Her father appears to understand the consequences of this offer and is willing nonetheless to donate his remaining kidney to his daughter. His ex-wife and daughter want the kidney and will take it knowing what it will do to him. Of additional interest is that he is incarcerated as a prisoner for a crime for which he will be eligible for parole in the not distant future. This means that although altruistically self-induced, the State will become financially responsible for his medical care and dialysis treatments. This paper will attempt to analyze the competing issues presented by this dilemma and address the underlying conflict between the parameters patient autonomy, parental beneficence and the deontologically based responsibilities of the state and of the health care team. (shrink)