In American philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century there was small interest in Empiricism and almost no interest in Realism.

Surgical training has traditionally involved a lengthy apprenticeship to a series of master surgeons, who teach medical students and residents the techniques of surgery while allowing them to work on patients in the operating room. This article examines surgical training as a structured environment that prepares students for the embodied lessons taught by a surgeon. It argues that even the most seemingly mechanical of surgical techniques contains social lessons when taught by a surgeon within the rich environment of the operating (...) room. (shrink)

The changing world of health care finance has led to a paradigm shift in health care with health care being viewed more and more as a commodity. Many have argued that such a paradigm shift is incompatible with the very nature of medicine and health care. But such arguments raise more questions than they answer. There are important assumptions about basic concepts of health care and markets that frame such arguments.

Introduction: Christian moral action -- Stanley Hauerwas -- Reinhard Hütter -- Common threads -- Thomas Aquinas -- Toward an ecumenical ethic of grace -- Conclusion: A community-centered ecumenical ethic of grace.

In practice, scoring rules elicit good probability estimates from individuals, while betting markets elicit good consensus estimates from groups. Market scoring rules combine these features, eliciting estimates from individuals or groups, with groups costing no more than individuals. Regarding a bet on one event given another event, only logarithmic versions preserve the probability of the given event. Logarithmic versions also preserve the conditional probabilities of other events, and so preserve conditional independence relations. Given logarithmic rules that elicit relative probabilities of (...) base event pairs, it costs no more to elicit estimates on all combinations of these base events. (shrink)

Writing an accessible introduction to process theology is no easy task. As Roland Faber notes, “Process theology is a quite complex phenomenon”. Yet this is the task he sets out for himself in The Becoming of God: Process Theology, Philosophy, and Multireligious Engagement. While Faber describes his book as an introduction to process theology, it would perhaps be better described as an introduction to the thought of Alfred North Whitehead and its theological implications.In typical Faber fashion, this poetic introduction to (...) Whitehead is thorough, complex, and insightful. Ranging across issues of science, religious studies, theology, and philosophy, Faber tackles some of the most complicated thought problems... (shrink)

The history of Physical Science appears to exhibit, periodically, a race between the acmulation of data and the ability of its codification to find a natural place for much of the empirical findings. If the codifying scheme is a mathematical theory, capable of interpolation and extrapolation, according to the rules of the particular branch of mathematics employed, the ablest handlers of the theory are frequently confronted with a situation in which mathematical computation alone does not suffice. In such a situation (...) the introduction of symbols, whose interpretation is not direct and simple is resorted to. This symbol is usually involved in a mathematical relation by a species of reasoning, which may be somewhat unfamiliar and remote from customary habits of thought. It is generally accepted as physically valid, if the mathematical formulation which involves it can produce results which account for the mass of data uncovered by experimenters. As an example of such a procedure we may mention the case of the Schrödinger Ψ-symbol, a symbol which was involved in Schrödinger's famous matter wave equation. The successes which such a theory enjoyed, particularly, in its initial stages, in formally relating the relative positions and intensities of spectral lines, with the atomistic concepts of gross matter which were inferred from the data of macroscopic measurement, such as the atomic mass, the electronic charge, Planck quantum of action, etc.,—these successes, gave a certain physical dignity to the Ψ-function itself. This dignity was further enhanced by the disclosure, by Schrödinger, of four functions of the Ψ-symbol which held the same place in the “continuity equation” as the classical charge density and the three components of current density. The successes accompanying this discovery for spectroscopic problems, in particular, are well known to Physicists. (shrink)

William James répond le 19 mars 1902 à la proposition que lui a faite Joseph Segond de traduire les Principles of Psychology. Il l’invite à se mettre en relation avec d’autres candidats à cette traduction et suggère de traduire plutôt le Briefer Course dont il prépare une nouvelle édition.

In this paper the quantum covariant relativistic dynamics of many bodies is reconsidered. It is emphasized that this is an event dynamics. The events are quantum statistically correlated by the global parameter τ. The derivation of an event Boltzmann equation emphasizes this. It is shown that this Boltzmann equation may be viewed as exact in a dilute event limit ignoring three event correlations. A quantum entropy principle is obtained for the marginal Wigner distribution function. By means of event linking (concatenations) (...) particle properties such as the equation of state may be obtained. We further reconsider the generalized quantum equilibrium ensemble theory and the free event case of the Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein distributions, and some consequences. The ultra-relativistic limit differs from the non-covariant theory and is a test of this point of view. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sophocles’s Enemy Sisters: Antigone and IsmeneWm. Blake Tyrrell (bio) and Larry J. BennettAt the core of the Oedipus myth, as Sophocles presents it, is the proposition that all masculine relationships are based on reciprocal acts of violence. Laius, taking his cue from the oracle, violently rejects Oedipus out of fear that his son will seize his throne and invade his conjugal bed. Oedipus, taking his cue from the oracle, (...) does away with Laius, violently rebuffs the sphinx, then takes their places—as king and “scourge of the city,” respectively. Again, Oedipus, taking his cue from the oracle, plots the death of that unknown figure who may be seeking to usurp his own position. Oedipus, Creon, and Tiresias, each taking his cue from the oracle, seek one another’s downfall.All these acts of violence gradually wear away the differences that exist not only in the same family but throughout the community.—René Girard, Violence and the SacredRené Girard does not include feminine relationships in his assessment of the Oedipus myth, yet the same redundancy that characterizes the males marks the females.1 Jocasta conjoins in one person multiple and redundant social roles: she is the mother and wife of the same person, for which she [End Page 1] hangs herself, leaving for Oedipus “many pains that a mother’s furies fulfilled” (Homer Odyssey 11.279–80). Her daughters, their father’s sisters, manifest kinship redundancy in two persons. Incest produces circularly, reverting to a sibling of the parent rather than moving forward with a descendant. The absence of linear progression from one generation to the next creates a sameness and equilibrium that thwart separation and individuality. Oedipus’s brothers/sons fail in their adult roles, because neither can overcome the other’s right to the throne of Thebes and the mastery of its royal household. They are enemy brothers locked in reciprocal violence.2 Antigone and Ismene have escaped notice not only as enemy sisters but even as products of the same incest. Audiences for Sophocles’s Antigone have viewed them as “normal” women and cooperated with his characters in emphasizing the differences between them. They have assumed from Antigone’s betrothal to Haemon and resistance to Creon that she is the elder, more mature sister.3 They tend to accept without question that Antigone engages in burial rituals with Polyneices’s corpse (241–58) and returns to it (442–35).4 Bernard M. W. Knox’s critically powerful concept of the “Sophoclean hero” has bolstered this view of Antigone while reducing Ismene to a foil, and abetted the tendency of modern producers of the play to cast an older or more famous actress in the role of Antigone.5 Naturalistic readings like that of C. M. Bowra—“seeing that Ismene is her only close relative in the world, Antigone is remarkably cold to her”6—have masked the source and hence the vehemence of Antigone’s fury.That the reciprocity of the violence between Ismene and Antigone has gone unnoticed is understandable in view of the familiarity of the conflict between their brothers. Males in Greek society pursued difference by striving to excel as aristoi (best) in competition for prestige, wealth, and power.7 Whenever Eteocles and Polyneices came together, each asserted a right to Oedipus’s household and throne that was equally matched, and violence ensued from the equilibrium. On the other hand, Greek women were not supposed to compete with one another for distinction. They wove wool for clothes, maintained the household, and cared for the children, the sick, and the dead, activities that required cooperation away from public view.8 Proximity to other women was the norm and desideratum. Moreover, lawgivers like Solon based their funeral legislation on the premise that every woman wanted to participate in mourning.9 For the sake of public tranquillity, legislators tried to limit the numbers of women participants by imposing restrictions according to degrees of kinship, for instance, to children of fifth cousins. In this context, women were interchangeable, and the places they held during birth, coming of age in wedding ceremonies, and death, [End Page 2] were open to more than one woman. Closeness and... (shrink)

Although economists often model decision makers as rational actors, the heuristics and biases literature that springs from the work of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and his late colleague Amos Tversky demonstrates that people make decisions that depart from the optimal model in systematic ways. These cognitive and behavioral limitations not only cause inefficient decision making, but also lead people to make decisions that are unethical. This article seeks to introduce a selected portion of the heuristics and biases and related (...) psychological literature, to highlight its implications for ethical decision making, and to serve as the basis for a lecture that could inform students regarding these matters. If business actors are on guard against errors in their own decision making processes, perhaps they can avoid some of the ethical pitfalls that recently put Enron and so many other companies in the news. (shrink)

Narrative theology views the truths of scripture through an iconographic lens to indicate God's intimate involvement in human life. However, when narrative theology becomes "narrative theological ethics," the transformative power of narrative about God receives more emphasis than the power of God itself. Narrative theology quickly moves toward linguistic idolatry when God's grace is valued merely as an important facet of a powerful narrative rather than as the foundation of Christian moral action.