Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and other psychiatric disorders can interfere with a person’s capacity to control the nature of his mental states and how they issue in his decisions and actions. Insofar as this sort of control is identified with free will, and psychiatric disorders can impair this control, these disorders can impair free will. The will can be compromised by dysregulated neural networks that disable the mental mechanisms necessary to regulate thought, motivation, and action. Neural and mental dys-function result in (...) the maladaptive and pathological behaviors associated with these disorders. In “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Free Will, and Control,” Gerben Meynen (2012) rightly .. (shrink)

Neuroscientific evidence has educated us in the ways in which the brain mediates our thought and behavior and, therefore, forced us to critically examine how we conceive of free will. This volume, featuring contributions from an international and interdisciplinary group of distinguished researchers and scholars, explores how our increasing knowledge of the brain can elucidate the concept of the will and whether or to what extent it is free. It also examines how brain science can inform our normative judgments of (...) moral and criminal responsibility for our actions. Some chapters point out the different respects in which mental disorders can compromise the will and others show how different forms of neuromodulation can reveal the neural underpinning of the mental capacities associated with the will and can restore or enhance them when they are impaired. (shrink)

David Friedman attacks deontological or principled libertarianism from a utilitarian point of view. The present essay is an attempt to refute his critique of this philosophy, and to cast aspersions on the utilitarian version of libertarianism he favors.

Aims to show graduate students and researchers the vital benefits of integrating mathematics into their study and experience of the physical world. This book details numerous topics from the frontiers of modern physics and mathematics such as convergence, Green functions, complex analysis, Fourier series and Fourier transform, tensors, and others.

In their thoughtful article, Malm and Navin (2020) raise concerns about a potentially unjust generational welfare tradeoff between children and adults when it comes to chicken pox. We share their c...

What are the differences between cosmopolitanism and globalization? Are they “natural” historical processes or are they designed for specific purposes? Was Kant cosmopolitanism good for the entire population of the globe or did it respond to a particular Eurocentered view of what a cosmo-polis should be? The article argues that, while the term “globalization” in the most common usage refers and correspond to neo-liberal globalization projects and ambitions, and the Kantian concept of “cosmopolitanism” responded to the second wave, “de-colonial cosmopolitanism” (...) refers to global processes and conceptualizations delinking from both neo-liberal globalization and liberal cosmopolitan ideals. But it delinks also from theological and Marxist visions of a homogenous world center around religious ideals or state socialist regulations. De-colonial cosmopolitanism is a cosmopolitanism of multiple trajectories aiming at a trans-modern world based on pluriversality rather than on a new and good universal for all. (shrink)

Attempts to comprehend the traumatic significance of Hiroshima in order to construct a new theory of history.

The mining period in Pennsylvania came to a close in 1970 after a long period of decline. This volume includes photographs and excerpts from the words of miners and their chroniclers.

The author nationally recognized for the quality and depth of his teaching in religious studies has written the first full-scale introduction to the history and methods of the study of religion.

Paulo Freire está hoje no meio de uma acirrada disputa ideológica. Mas este não é um livro sobre a ideologia ou a política partidária de Paulo Freire. Aqui não se entende por política o que se faz dentro da lógica do sistema democrático representativo, mas sim, num sentido mais amplo, o modo como se exerce o poder nas relações estabelecidas com outros e outras numa trama social e, mais especificamente, os modos de exercer o poder ao ensinar e aprender. Paulo (...) Freire nos ajuda a pensar as possibilidades da filosofia em conexão muito próxima com a educação e a política. E é nesse sentido que ele é um filósofo: pela forma como faz de sua vida um problema filosófico e de sua filosofia uma questão existencial na busca de um mundo sem opressores e oprimidos. Nesse contexto, o livro é construído em torno de cinco princípios inspirados na vida de Paulo Freire: a vida (como inseparável de qualquer prática educativa); a igualdade (no início, como pressuposto, e não como finalidade da educação); o amor (não apenas pelas pessoas, mas também pela posição educadora que se ocupa); a errância (no duplo sentido de equivocar-se e de viajar sem destino predeterminado) e a infância (como impulso vital, e não apenas idade cronológica). A obra traz também duas entrevistas reveladoras, uma com filho caçula de Paulo Freire, Lutgardes Costa Freire, e outra com a educadora e amiga Esther Pilar Grossi; além de um apêndice que trata da relação de Paulo Freire com a filosofia com crianças. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In Block I offered a compromise between the pro choice position that fervently supports stem cell research, and the pro life philosophy which bitterly opposes it. The compromise was a contest: allow would be researchers to create as many fertilized eggs as they wished. But, also, these should be offered up to would be parents to adopt all of these “children” as they wanted. If and only if there were any unadopted fetuses remaining in the laboratories of the nation would (...) it be licit, on libertarian grounds, for research on them to take place. In the present paper I respond to several objections to this “modest proposal.”. (shrink)

Reflections on the Conference on First-Person Methodologies in the Study of Consciousness, Ratna Ling Retreat Center, Cazadero, California, March 29-April 2, 2007.

This paper intends to open a discussion on how certain dangerous kinds of deceptive reasoning can be defined, in which way it is achieved in a discussion, and which would be the strategies for defense against such deceptive attacks on the light of some principles accepted as fundamental for rationality and logic.

Argument for the role of the human conscience in determining right and wrong, good and evil.