Considering various arguments in Hume’s Treatise, I reconstruct a Humean argument against personal identity or unity. According to this argument, each distinct perception is separable from the bundle of perceptions to which it belongs and is thus transferable either to the external, material reality or to another psychical reality, another bundle of perceptions. Nevertheless, such transference (Hume’s word!) is entirely illegitimate, otherwise Hume’s argument against causal inference would have failed; furthermore, it violates private, psychical accessibility. I suggest a Humean thought (...) experiment clearly demonstrating that, to the extent that anything within a psychical reality is concerned, no distinction leads to separation or transference and that private, psychical accessibility has to be allowed in the Humean argument for personal identity or unity. Private accessibility and psychical untransferability secure personal identity and unity. Referring to the phenomenon of multiple personality along the lines of the Humean argument for personal identity or unity, I illustrate both private accessibility and a possible notion of one and the same person distinct from his/her alters or psychical parts. Finally, I show why Parfit’s Humean argument against personal identity must fail. (shrink)

August 2006 marked the 10th anniversary of landmark legislation when Israel’s parliament passed the unique Patient’s Rights Law. This law underscores the importance of medical ethics in Israeli society. During a seminar at the Shaare Zedek School of Nursing, third-year students performed a qualitative research study investigating ethical issues arising in the field of nursing, and how nursing staff dealt with these issues in relation to the law. The research was conducted using semistructured questionnaires. The results showed that the staff (...) participants knew the law, but did not differentiate between legal and ethical problems. The establishment of a framework for dealing with these issues would help to promote professional ethics, encourage broad-based agreements related to ethical decisions, reduce ethical conflict, and increase implementation of the law on patients’ rights. (shrink)

This text was conceived as an attempt to describe the organizational field of veterinary medicine of companion animals in Russia and its impact on the processes of formation of the profession of veterinarians of companion animals as a separate professional group. Having emerged in the early 1990s in Russia as a separate branch of veterinary medicine, veterinary medicine of companion aimals has gone from intuitive practices of treating dogs and cats to a complex organizational field with many actors. Despite such (...) rapid development, this area, unlike agricultural veterinary medicine, still considerably lacks strong institutional regulation. The profession of a veterinarian of companion animals does not live in the conventional continental model of professionalization for our region but it is market-oriented and develops through the veterinarians' own efforts while they do not exist outside veterinary clinics - their own organizational field. The article offers a description of this organizational field and analyzes the influence of its structure on the processes of professionalization of veterinarians of companion animals. (shrink)

Altruistic behavior and motivation has traditionally been regarded as a defense mechanism defined by the vicissitudes of instinctual gratification. In this article, we suggest that there exists a substantial body of evidence from the fields of ethology, infant research, and experimental psychology to support the existence of an independently motivated altruism that is nondefensive in nature. We attempt to show how the view of altruism as a universal motivational system stems from the recent developments in evolutionary theory and contributes to (...) our understanding of intrapsychic factors influencing human behavior in general and the process of psychotherapy in particular. It is not our goal to prove the existence of "pure altruism" that can never be derived from selfish motives. Rather, our thesis is that self-oriented and altruistic motivations are equal and essential partners in human evolution and development. It is the optimal balance of these two forces that is necessary for evolutionary advancement and for psychological health. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to reveal the scientific inconsistency and reactionary political essence of traditional and modern concepts that distort the truth about the Great Patriotic War and the most common techniques used for this, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to propose measures to ensure an offensive strategy to protect historical truth. The scientific novelty consists in the unique author's classification of Russophobic concepts and techniques into two directions, and within their framework in the (...) analysis of their content through relevant aspects and discourses. The result of the analysis carried out are proposals to neutralize hostile propaganda, provide an offensive strategy to combat falsifiers and protect historical truth. (shrink)

This article presents an examination of the ethical code of nursing in Israel, focusing on the nurse-patient, nurse-colleague, and nurse-professional leadership relationships. This article offers for the first English translation of the Israel Nursing Association’s Code of Ethics to facilitate international scholarly discussion, and to critique this Code through the lens of Asa Kasher’s philosophical test, thereby examining its completeness and practical utility. As it stands today, the code lacks clarification of the professional ethical uniqueness of nursing. To address this (...) gap, the article adopts a philosophical approach using Kasher’s test named the Three Components of the Practical Ideal to distill the distinctive ethical obligations imposed on nursing professionals. The article highlights the importance of professionalism in nursing, encompassing expertise, autonomy, and recognition, as emphasized in the Code of Ethics. However, the current code does not explicitly delineate the unique requirements specific to nursing. Thus, the article proposes the integration of these explicit requirements into the Code of Ethics through collaborative efforts. Furthermore, it emphasizes the crucial role of nursing education and training programs in fostering professional identity formation based on the strengthening of the commitment to relevant ethical principles. The article contributes to the advancement of nursing ethics by providing a comprehensive framework for understanding and implementing proper ethical conduct within the nursing profession. (shrink)

The Cramér–Rao bound, satisfied by classical Fisher information, a key quantity in information theory, has been shown in different contexts to give rise to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. In this paper, we show that the identification of the mean quantum potential, an important notion in Bohmian mechanics, with the Fisher information, leads, through the Cramér–Rao bound, to an uncertainty principle which is stronger, in general, than both Heisenberg and Robertson–Schrödinger uncertainty relations, allowing to experimentally test the validity (...) of such an identification. (shrink)

In a recent paper (Berry in Eur J Phys 42: 015401, 2020), the boundaries of superoscillatory regions (the regions where a function oscillates faster than its fastest Fourier component) of waves described by the Helmholtz equation in a uniform medium were related to zeros of the quantum potential, arising in the Madelung formulation of quantum mechanics. We generalize this result, showing that the relativistic counterpart, which is, essentially, a Klein-Gordon equation, exhibits the same behaviour, but in spacetime, giving rise to (...) anomalous values for the local mass (instead of local momenta, in the classical case). This amounts to the generalization of the condition for superoscillations from the magnitude of a vector, to the norm of a four-vector. For a photon, boundaries of superoscillatory regions are surfaces on which the photon’s trajectory is locally light-like, separating time-like and space-like regions, which correspond to real and imaginary local mass, respectively. (shrink)

Panenmentalist possibilities are individual pure possibilities existing independently of any mind, actual reality, and possible-world conception. These possibilities are a priori accessible to our intellect and imagination. In this paper, I attempt to shed some panenmentalist light on the discovery of chemical branched chain reactions and its implications on biology and cancer research. I also examine the case of the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction which, at first, was believed to be impossible. Finally, I proceed to examine through a panenmentalist lens Szilard’s discovery (...) of the possibility of physical chain reactions and Mullis’s discovery of a polymerase chain reaction. All these major actual discoveries clearly depend on the discovery of the relevant panenmentalist possibilities and the ways in which they relate to one another. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 436-443 [Access article in PDF] How Does Love Make the Ugly Beautiful? Amihud Gilead IT IS OBVIOUS TO SEE how greatly Gideon loves his wife, who is physically quite an ugly old lady. Nothing about her physical appearance or gait seems beautiful, at least to the extent of what meets your eye. Physically, she seems not to be considered beautiful at all. Still, (...) Gideon is quite sure that his beloved wife is the most beautiful woman in the entire world. He cannot fathom why other people do not realize that obvious truth: Mira is a real, fascinating, unique beauty. "But, dear Gideon," says one of his friends, "you cannot deny a very simple fact, Mira is a most beautiful person, and it is a great fortune to know her, all the more to know her intimately. Still, physically judging, she is not beautiful at all. It is an undeniable, objective fact." Gideon's answer does not fail in its directness: "Well, those who are blind to her physical, actual beauty, should discover it. Like the Michelangeloean sculptors, who must reveal and disclose the sculpture hidden in the marble, those people should expose and realize her physical, actual beauty." For Gideon, beauty, physical or mental, is an objective matter, which should be discovered, not invented. For him, beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder, but it lies there waiting to be uncovered and revealed to the world. For Gideon, those whose eyes meet Mira's ugliness are not ready or fit to remove the superfluity that covers her beauty, whether mental or physical. Removing all that is superfluous in the marble is necessary to give birth to the sculpture. Like a midwife, the artistic gaze gives birth, and this gaze is not just the property of customary artists, but also of lovers. To love means to reveal, to create or discover beauty. [End Page 436]I believe that William Butler Yeats put this in the most adequate words: "All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born." The lover's gaze exposes such a beauty, even as regards the husband of the woman that the poet loved for so many years but in vain: "This other man I had dreamed / A drunken, vainglorious lout. / He had done most bitter wrong / To some who are near my heart, / Yet I number him in the song; / He, too, has been changed in his turn, / Transformed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born" ("Easter, 1916"). The artistic, poetic gaze redeems the "direct object" of his love, but also redeems what is so ugly, like the "drunken, vainglorious lout," about her. After all, her decision to maintain her miserable marriage instead of accepting the poet's love, is quite ugly or contemptuous, to say the least, in the eyes of the poet-lover. But this is the strength of his poetic, artistic revelation: to give birth even to the hidden beauty of that vainglorious lout who, unfortunately, happened to be her husband. All the more so, to reveal the real beauty of the loved woman, "the loveliest woman born" ("A Prayer for my Daughter"). Another gaze, by those who do not love her or were indifferent to her, could not realize her beauty at all, physically as well as mentally.Yet others believe that we can love somebody who is physically ugly, even the "ugliest woman born"—as a person she may be considered "the loveliest woman born." I would like to challenge this commonplace. In the eyes of the artist-lover she is physically beautiful, no matter how ugly or lacking in beauty she may be in the eyes of others looking at her indifferently, as though nothing has happened, there is nothing to stay with, and nothing has left its impression. Indeed, Gideon's love reveals that Mira is physically beautiful no less than mentally. Her gaze, gait, even clumsiness, all her physical "flaws," and other attributes are considered beautiful in his eyes as a lover-artist. To be more precise, all of her traits are so considered. The... (shrink)

This book presents a philosophy of science, based on panenmentalism: an original modal metaphysics, which is realist about individual pure (non-actual) possibilities and rejects the notion of possible worlds. The book systematically constructs a new and novel way of understanding and explaining scientific progress, discoveries, and creativity. It demonstrates that a metaphysics of individual pure possibilities is indispensable for explaining and understanding mathematics and natural sciences. It examines the nature of individual pure possibilities, actualities, mind-dependent and mind-independent possibilities, as well (...) as mathematical entities. It discusses in detail the singularity of each human being as a psychical possibility. It analyses striking scientific discoveries, and illustrates by means of examples of the usefulness and vitality of individual pure possibilities in the sciences. (shrink)

This book argues that the irreducible singularity of each person as a psychical subject implies the privacy of the psychical and that of experience, and yet the private accessibility of each person to his or her mind is compatible with interpersonal communication and understanding. The book treats these major issues against the background of the author's original metaphysics--panenmentalism."--Publisher's website.

I suggest two valid and sound arguments refuting physicalism, whether it is reductive or supervenience physicalism. The first argument is a self-referential one that is not involved with any self-referential inconsistency. The second argument demonstrates that physicalism is inescapably involved with self-referential inconsistency. Both arguments show that arguments and propositions (to be distinguished from sentences) are not physical existents. They are rather mental existents that are not reducible to any physical existent and do not supervene on anything physical. From these (...) two arguments, it clearly follows that any physicalist argument or proposition, as a mental existent, is self-refuting. (AN PHL2326365) Subjects: EXISTENTS; INCONSISTENCY; METAPHYSICS; MIND; PHYSICALISM; SELF-REFERENCE. (shrink)

This book elaborates the author's original metaphysics, panenmentalism, focusing on novel aspects of the singularity of any person. Among these aspects, integrated in a systematic view, are: love and singularity; private, intersubjective, and public accessibility; multiple personality; freedom of will; akrasia; a way out of the empiricist-rationalist conundrum; the possibility of God; and some major moral questions.

This book discovers areas and themes, especially in philosophical psychology, for novel observations and investigations, the diversity of which is systematically unified within the frame of the author¿s original metaphysics, panenmentalism. The book demonstrates how by means of truthful fictions we may detect meaningful possibilities as well as their necessary relationships that otherwise could not be discovered.

Immunologists use psychological and cognitive terms to describe and explain the behavior of our immune system. Do they use them metaphorically or literally? In this paper I show that on the grounds of some psychophysical assumptions, the uniqueness of each person as an individual organism necessarily corresponds to the singularity of each person as a psychological subject. On the basis of these assumptions, immunologists, irrespective of their various conceptual frames, are entitled to ascribe psychological and cognitive traits to our immune (...) system and its behavior. Immunologists are allowed to do so because each immune system of any higher, unique individual organism corresponds to psychological traits, which are ascribable only to persons, each of whom is a singular being. This correspondence is necessarily compatible with the psychophysical unity or inseparability. Furthermore, the psychological or cognitive traits pertain to the immune system require no consciousness. In the case of artificial immune systems, in contrast, the application of psychological or cognitive terms is only metaphorical, for each such system is not unique but it is duplicable or replicable. Only the immune system of unique individual organisms that as psychological subjects are singular beings—i.e. persons—can be subject, literally or non-metaphorically, to psychological and cognitive terms. (shrink)

This book discusses and analyses the contribution of mind-independent individual literary pure possibilities in exploring and understanding actual reality. The relationship between literary imagination, literary possibilities, and actual reality poses a major philosophical problem in the field of metaphysics of literature. In a detailed analysis of some literary masterpieces (by Proust, Kafka, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner), I attempt to demonstrate that actual reality actualizes or “imitates” literary pure possibilities. Hence, such masterpieces should be treated not (...) as romans a clef but, instead, as paradigm-cases on whose basis we grasp and understand actual reality. (shrink)

What is the relationship between formal, “general” logic and transcendental logic? Is the former prior to the latter or is it the other way round? Can the one be deduced and derived from the other or based upon it? There is a widespread controversy among philosophers concerning these questions. In any case, most of them accept the assumption that one of these logics should be prior to the other. As for me, I don’t accept this assumption at all, and in (...) this paper I attempt to show that such a priority is impossible, since the two logics are but different uses or employments of the same understanding. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that the primary necessary ontological conditions for any existents and for their knowledge are individual pure possibilities. As being such conditions, pure possibilities exist absolutely independently of actualities, possible worlds, or minds. Pure possibilities are exempt from spatiotemporal and causal restrictions or conditions, whereas any actuality is inescapably subject to them. Each actuality is an actualization of an individual pure possibility, which also serves as its identity. The existence of individual pure possibilities is necessary because (...) it is ontologically indispensable for the existence of anything, possible or actual, and because there are some existents instead of nothing. Ignoring or not acknowledging relevant pure possibilities may result in overlooking their actualities without recognizing or identifying them and, thus, this has hindered the progress of science and knowledge. Hence, the knowledge of actual possibilities, too, depends on their pure possibilities. (shrink)

This book introduces a new metaphysics which deals with the psycho-physical problem in philosophical psychology, as well as with problems in the scientific standing of psychoanalysis and chaos theory, the feminine psyche, the possibility of cinematic illusion, meaningful madness, and why machines cannot think.

Brain-imaging technologies have posed the problem of breaching our brain privacy. Until the invention of those technologies, many of us entertained the idea that nothing can threaten our mental privacy, as long as we kept it, for each of us has private access to his or her own mind but no access to any other. Yet, philosophically, the issue of private, mental accessibility appears to be quite unsettled, as there are still many philosophers who reject the idea of private, mental (...) accessibility. I have attempted to refute such rejections and to establish this idea on firmer grounds. My arguments in this paper show that brain imaging allows no access to our mind and that mind privacy is quite different from brain privacy, as the latter can be breached by brain imaging, whereas the former cannot. A reduction of the mind to the body inescapably fails, as there is a categorial difference between mind and body or brain, which is compatible with their inseparability. Brain imaging cannot enable one to “read” the mind or to breach our mental privacy. There is no external access to one’s mind. Each of us has exclusive access to his or her own mind. (shrink)

Most decisions in life involve ambiguity, where probabilities can not be meaningfully specified, as much as they involve probabilistic uncertainty. In such conditions, the aspiration to utility maximization may be self-deceptive. We propose “robust satisficing” as an alternative to utility maximizing as the normative standard for rational decision making in such circumstances. Instead of seeking to maximize the expected value, or utility, of a decision outcome, robust satisficing aims to maximize the robustness to uncertainty of a satisfactory outcome. That is, (...) robust satisficing asks, “what is a ‘good enough’ outcome,” and then seeks the option that will produce such an outcome under the widest set of circumstances. We explore the conditions under which robust satisficing is a more appropriate norm for decision making than utility maximizing. (shrink)

From Mendeleev’s time on, the Periodic Table has been an attempt to exhaust all the chemical possibilities of the elements and their interactions, whether these elements are known as actual or are not known yet as such. These latter elements are called “eka-elements” and there are still some of them in the current state of the Table. There is no guarantee that they will be eventually discovered, synthesized, or isolated as actual. As long as the actual existence of eka-elements is (...) predicted, they cannot be considered as actual but only as purely possible. Given that eka-elements are chemical pure possibilities, a possibilist approach, entitled “panenmentalism,” can gain support as well as an important implication. (shrink)

In discussing cruelty toward human beings, I argue that disregarding the singularity of any human being is necessary for treating her or him cruelly. The cruelty of Peter the Great, relying upon the intolerance of any human singular individuality, serves me as a paradigm-case to illustrate that. The cruelty of Procrustes and that of Stalin rely upon similar grounds. Relating to a person’s singularity is sufficient to prevent cruelty toward that person. In contrast, a liberal state of mind or solidarity (...) is insufficient to prevent cruelty and, under some circumstances, may even cause it. (shrink)

This book is a detailed study of how Plato constructs his seminal philosophical dialogue, the Phaedo, as a unique tragedy, a poetic masterpiece whose structure is organic and symmetrical. Plato's mental Odyssey leads to the internal drama of the Phaedo plot. The analysis examines how Plato's literary art overcomes the philosophical problem of the separation of Ideas from sensible things. And it traces literary and philosophical offspring of the mental Odyssey, including Joyce and Proust.

Already in 1863, Jules Verne knew about Caselli's "pantelegraphy," which was what he described as a "photographic telegraphy, invented during the last century by Professor Giovanni Caselli of Florence."1 Following the mistaken belief that facsimile machines could not been invented until well after the nineteenth century, and wrongly assuming that Caselli was a fictional inventor, merely a figment of Verne's most productive fertile imagination (as such imaginative elements characterize his latter writings), some of Verne's readers mistakenly ascribed to him the (...) discovery of the possibility of the fax machine. They thus committed what I will call soon "a reversed actualist fallacy."In challenging actualist mistakes .. (shrink)

Regardless or independent of any actuality or actualization and exempt from spatiotemporal and causal conditions, each individual possibility is pure. Actualism excludes the existence of individual pure possibilities, altogether or at least as existing independently of actual reality. In this paper, I demonstrate, on the grounds of my possibilist metaphysics—panenmentalism—how some of the most fascinating scientific discoveries in chemistry could not have been accomplished without relying on pure possibilities and the ways in which they relate to each other . The (...) discoveries are the following: Dan Shechtman’s discovery of quasicrystals; Linus Pauling’s alpha helix; the discovery of F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario J. Molina concerning the destruction of the atmospheric ozone layer; and Neil Bartlett’s noble gas compounds. On the grounds of the analysis of these cases, actualism must fail, whereas panenmentalism gains support. (shrink)

In spite of some panentheistic traits in his philosophy, Spinoza was clearly a pantheist. Spinoza’s God is not personal and not transcendent but immanent, as God is identical to the world or Nature. There are no miracles in nature, and only because of ignorance, mistakes, and errors do we wonder or feel enchantment about it. What is allegedly above reason, is, in fact, much under it, and Nature’s wisdom is entirely immanent. The laws of Nature are the laws of God, (...) and theology and natural science are identical. There is no need of panentheistic traits to know and understand God-Nature-Substance. Nevertheless, the author expresses some doubts concerning this conclusion about Spinoza’s philosophy, a conclusion that he, too, finally endorses. (shrink)

Challenging the idea of personal identity, Derek Parfit has argued that persons are replicable and that personal identity does not really matter. In a recent paper Parfit again defends the idea of personal replicability. Challenging this idea in turn, I explain why persons are absolutely not replicable. To prove this I rely on two arguments—the Author Argument and the Love Argument. The irreplicability of persons relies upon the singularity of each person and thus entails that personal identity is irreducible and (...) that it really does matter. (shrink)

Surprise and change are the way of the world. Philosophers have known this at least since Thales, and practical men knew it long before. Variety and the continual flux of one thing into another is, for Peirce, a central notion. A very similar conception underlies the information-gap theory of uncertainty and its application to decisions with severely deficient understanding which I have argued for earlier. For Haack, whose treatment of warrant is strongly non-probabilistic, info-gap theory is a natural context. The (...) connection between Peirce, Haack and info-gap theory is explored in this paper. (shrink)

Background: In Israel, caring for people with end-stage dementia confined to home is mainly done by home care units, and in some cases by home hospice units, an alternative palliative-care service. Because life expectancy is relatively unknown, and the patient’s decision-making ability is poor, caring for this unique population raises ethical dilemmas regarding when to define the disease as having reached a terminal stage, as well as choosing between palliative and life-prolonging-oriented care. Objectives: Exploring and describing differences and similarities of (...) professional staff members’ (PSMs’) and family caregivers’ perceptions of caring for people with end-stage dementia in two different settings. Design: Qualitative research, using semi-structured interviews analyzed through a thematic content–analysis approach. Participants: Sixty-four interviews were conducted (24 PSMs and 40 family caregivers) in two care-settings—home hospice unit and home care unit. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee (BBL00118-17). Findings: We found dilemmas regarding palliative care to be the main theme, including definition of the disease as terminal, choosing “comfort” over “life-prolonging,” clarifying patients’ wishes and deciding whether or not to use artificial feeding. Discussion: Both PSMs and family caregivers deal with ethical dilemmas and have reached different conclusions, both legitimate. Comprehending dementia as a terminal disease influenced participants’ perceptions of the relevancy of palliative care for people with end-stage dementia. Discrepancies between PSMs and family caregivers in caring for people with end-stage dementia were found in both home hospice unit and home care unit environments, raising potential conflicts regarding decisions for end-of-life care. Conclusions: Communication between PSMs and family caregivers is crucial for the discussion about the discrepancies regarding the unique dilemmas of caring for people with end-stage dementia and bridging the gap between them. Lack of communication and resources can hamper the provision of an acceptable solution for quality and equality of care in the best interest of people with end-stage dementia. (shrink)