Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

This volume focuses on the question of whether it is appropriate and inevitable that higher education systems are becoming so large and so diverse that the only realistic way they can be analysed is as aggregates of market-like transactions.

Book reviewed in this article: Practical Medical Ethics. By Alastair Campbell, Grant Gillett, and Gareth Jones. If I Were a Rich Man Could I Buy a Pancreas? and Other Essays on the Ethics of Health Care. By Arthur L. Caplan. Bloomington Ethics on Call: A Medical Ethicist Shows How to Take Charge of Life and Death Choices in Today's Health Care System. By Nancy Dubler and David Nimmons.

Recent magnetic resonance imaging and pathological studies have indicated that axonal loss is a major contributor to disease progression in multiple sclerosis. 1 H magnetic resonance spectroscopy, through measurement of N -acetyl aspartate, a neuronal marker, provides a unique tool to investigate this. Patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis have few lesions on conventional MRI, suggesting that changes in normal appearing white matter, such as axonal loss, may be particularly relevant to disease progression in this group. To test this hypothesis (...) NAWM was studied with MRS, measuring the concentration of N -acetyl derived groups. Single-voxel MRS using a water-suppressed PRESS sequence was carried out in 24 patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis and in 16 age-matched controls. Ratios of metabolite to creatine concentration were calculated in all subjects, and absolute concentrations were measured in 18 patients and all controls. NA/Cr was significantly lower in NAWM in patients than in controls, as was the absolute concentration of NA. There was no significant difference in the absolute concentration of creatine between the groups. This study supports the hypothesis that axonal loss occurs in NAWM in primary progressive multiple sclerosis and may well be a mechanism for disease progression in this group. (shrink)

Extensive research has demonstrated that rs1360780, a common single nucleotide polymorphism within the FKBP5 gene, interacts with early-life stress in predicting psychopathology. Previous results suggest that carriers of the TT genotype of rs1360780 who were exposed to child abuse show differences in structure and functional activation of emotion-processing brain areas belonging to the salience network. Extending these findings on intermediate phenotypes of psychopathology, we examined if the interaction between rs1360780 and child abuse predicts resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between the amygdala (...) and other areas of the salience network. We analyzed data of young European adults from the general population (N = 774; mean age = 18.76 years) who took part in the IMAGEN study. In the absence of main effects of genotype and abuse, a significant interaction effect was observed for rsFC between the right centromedial amygdala and right posterior insula (p <.025, FWE-corrected), which was driven by stronger rsFC in TT allele carriers with a history of abuse. Our results suggest that the TT genotype of rs1360780 may render individuals with a history of abuse more vulnerable to functional changes in communication between brain areas processing emotions and bodily sensations, which could underlie or increase the risk for psychopathology. (shrink)

French translation of Gareth Evans' paper "Identity and Predication".

In L. Frank Baum's story, Ozma of Oz, which is a sequel to Baum's much more famous story, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her companion come upon a wound-down mechanical man bearing a label on which are printed the following words: Smith and Tinker's Patent Double-Action, Extra-Responsive, Thought-Creating Perfect-Talking MECHANICAL MAN Fitted with our Special Clock-Work Attachment Thinks, Speaks, Acts, and Does Everything but Live As Dorothy and her companion are made to discover when they wind up this (...) man, he is indeed capable of doing all the things of which his label boasts—acting, speaking and even thinking. But as Tik-Tok himself insists, and no one in the story casts doubt on the matter, he is not alive. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophical Adventures in the Lands of Oz and EvGareth B. Matthews (bio)Charles Dodgson, using the pen name “Lewis Carroll,” was the first author in English to write philosophical fantasy for children. In naming his first Alice book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,1 Lewis Carroll may have been inspired by the famous saying of Aristotle that philosophy begins in wonder. More exactly, what Aristotle said was this: “For it is owing (...) to their wonder (thaumazein) that people both now begin, and first began to philosophize (philosophein)” (Metaphysics I, 1982b12-13). Plato expresses a similar idea in his dialogue Theatetus: “This is an experience characteristic of philosophy,” Plato has Socrates say, “this wondering: this is where philosophy begins and nowhere else” (155d).A reader might suppose that the wonder Plato and Aristotle thought could stimulate us to do philosophy was a Kantian awe at “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”2 But, in fact, the wonder Plato and Aristotle allude to is a surprised recognition that something we thought we understood perfectly well actually presents a challenging perplexity (aporia). So for both Plato and Aristotle, philosophy begins in the wonder at a philosophically interesting perplexity.3 And, indeed, Alice’s adventures in Wonderland are adventures in philosophical perplexity.The first American writer of philosophical fantasy for children was L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz4 and a number of other Oz books. For Baum philosophical fantasy took a rather different form from the fantasy of Lewis Carroll. This should hardly be surprising. After all, Carroll was a philosopher and an Oxford don whose specialty was logic. The hallmark of his fantasy is clever and thought- provoking [End Page 37] repartee, such as one might hope to hear at high table in an Oxford college. Consider this passage from chapter 7 (“A Mad Tea-Party”) of Alice in Wonderland:“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.”“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”5As this passage helps us realize, “A has had more tea than B” is normally taken to imply that, although both A and B have had some tea, the amount that A has had is more than the amount that B has had. However, it can also be taken to mean simply that the amount A has had is more than the amount B has had, even where, in the case of B, that amount is zero. Or consider this exchange from chapter 6 (“Humpty-Dumpty”) of Through the Looking-Glass:“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously, “Of course you don’t—till I tell you.I meant ‘There’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,“it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”6This characteristically clever and amusing exchange forces readers to make a distinction between lexical meaning and speaker meaning. Of course the word “glory” does not mean “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you,” but what a speaker might mean to communicate by using the word “glory” is another issue. Moreover, the relationship between lexical meaning and speaker meaning is a very interesting issue in linguistics and the philosophy of language.Nothing like this clever repartee is to be found in the Oz books. Nor should that fact be very surprising. Frank Baum never took a philosophy course; he never even went to college. He was a theater producer and journalist. Yet, despite this lack of academic background, perhaps the most striking feature7 of Baum’s writing—something almost universally ignored in the scholarly literature on Baum... (shrink)

To think about how to anchor abstract symbols to objects in the world is to become part of a tradition in philosophy with a long history, and an especially rich recent past. It is to ask, with Wittgenstein, “What makes my thought about him, a thought about him?” and thus it is to wonder not just about the nature of referring expressions or singular terms, but about the nature of referring beings. With this in mind I hereby endeavor—briefly, incompletely, but (...) hopefully still usefully—to introduce what in my judgment is the single best philosophical starting-point for those interested in understanding the referential connections between symbols and the world, and the cognitive, epistemic, and linguistic capacities which support them: The Varieties of Reference by Gareth Evans.1 It is worthwhile first of all to note, as the title indicates, that it is the varieties of reference that are of interest. It is Evans’ contention that no single theory can account for our various use of singular terms; although the different kinds of reference share certain features, and rely on related cognitive, linguistic and epistemic capacities, it appears that, rather than being a class defined by necessary and sufficient criteria for membership, they form a family of abilities, united, like a thread, by its overlapping fibers. Evans does not defend this claim so much as display it in his account. Much of the underlying variety in reference can be brought out by considering the guiding principle of the work as a whole, which Evans.. (shrink)

Gareth Matthews suggests that we can better understand the nature of philosophical inquiry if we recognize the central role played by perplexity. The seminal representation of philosophical perplexity is in Plato's dialogues; Matthews examines the intriguing shifts in Plato's attitude to perplexity and suggests that these may represent a course of philosophical development that philosophers follow even today.

We report on an interview-based study of decision-making capacity in two classes of patients suffering from depression. Developing a method of second-person hermeneutic phenomenology, we articulate the distinctive combination of temporal agility and temporal inability characteristic of the experience of severely depressed patients. We argue that a cluster of decision-specific temporal abilities is a critical element of decision-making capacity, and we show that loss of these abilities is a risk factor distinguishing severely depressed patients from mildly/moderately depressed patients. We explore (...) the legal and clinical consequences of this result. (shrink)

Invited media scholars and journalists examine the general issue of nuclear waste, risk and the sicentific promises that were made, but not kept, about safe disposal. The mass media uncovered and reported on nuclear waste problems at Rocky Flats in Colorado and Hanford in Washington. Two environmental journalists review efforts to expose problems at these sites, how secrecy hampered reporting, and the effects of media coverage on nearby residents. An environmental communications scholar evaluates media coverage, the role of the U.S. (...) Department of Energy, and the impact of secrecy on public risk perceptions and attitudes toward government nuclear waste policies. (shrink)

In Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, leading figures in the fields of virtue ethics and ethics come together to present the first ...

In a recent paper, Jc Beall has employed what he calls ‘shriek rules’ in a putative solution to the long-standing ‘just false’ problem for glut theory. The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, I distinguish the ‘just false’ problem from another problem, with which it is often conflated, which I will call the ‘exclusion problem’. Secondly, I argue that shriek rules do not help glut theorists with either problem.

With the waves of reform occurring in mental health legislation in England and other jurisdictions, mental capacity is set to become a key medico-legal concept. The concept is central to the law of informed consent and is closely aligned to the philosophical concept of autonomy. It is also closely related to mental disorder. This paper explores the interdisciplinary terrain where mental capacity is located. Our aim is to identify core dilemmas and to suggest pathways for future interdisciplinary research. The terrain (...) can be separated into three types of discussion: philosophical, legal and psychiatric. Each discussion approaches mental capacity and judgmental autonomy from a different perspective yet each discussion struggles over two key dilemmas: whether mental capacity and autonomy is/should be a moral or a psychological notion and whether rationality is the key constitutive factor. We suggest that further theoretical work will have to be interdisciplinary and that this work offers an opportunity for the law to enrich its interpretation of mental capacity, for psychiatry to clarify the normative elements latent in its concepts and for philosophy to advance understanding of autonomy through the study of decisional dysfunction. The new pressures on medical and legal practice to be more explicit about mental capacity make this work a priority. (shrink)

This volume collects thirteen papers by one of the leading philosophers of his generation, who died prematurely in 1980.

Theoria, EarlyView. -/- In his recent book Thin Objects, Øystein Linnebo (2018) argues for the existence of a hierarchy of abstract objects, sufficient to model ZFC, via a novel and highly interesting argument that relies on a process called dynamic abstraction. This paper presents a way for a nominalist, someone opposed to the existence of abstract objects, to avoid Linnebo's conclusion by rejecting his claim that certain abstraction principles are sufficient for reference (RBA). Section 1 of the paper explains Linnebo's (...) argument for RBA. It offers a reading of Linnebo's work upon which he has two arguments for RBA: one deductive and one abductive, and argues that whilst the deductive argument is unsound the abductive one is prima facie plausible. The nominalist must therefore find a way to respond to the abductive argument. Section 2 outlines just such a response, by offering an alternative explanation of the cases Linnebo wishes to argue from. Most interestingly, it shows that abstraction in Linnebo's most difficult case (the “reference to ordinary bodies” case) can be achieved using mereological means, rather than relying on RBA. (shrink)

‘A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.’ This paper is an attempt to follow Russell’s advice by using a puzzle about the contingent a priori to test and explore certain theories of reference and modality. No one could claim that (...) the puzzle is of any great philosophical importance by itself, but to understand it, one has to get clear about certain aspects of the theory of reference; and to solve it, one has to think a little more deeply than one is perhaps accustomed about what it means to say that a statement is contingent or necessary. (shrink)

Whom should we credit for the discovery of isotopes? The first suggestion of an idea, the first experimental proof, or the development of a new method that clearly reveals the isotopes? Strömholm and Svedberg, Fajans and Soddy interpreted patterns of radioactive decay, which became confirmed theory on the solid basis of the very accurate atomic weight determinations by Richards and his coworkers. The mass spectrograph measurements by Aston provided major extension of the concept of isotopes to much of the rest (...) of the periodic table. Thus, Strömholm and Svedberg, Fajans and Soddy provided an idea, which Richards proved, and Aston made generally useful. Richards should be listed along with Fajans, Soddy, and Aston for fundamental contributions to establishing isotopes as part of the modern language of science. As much credit should be given to the experimental proof as to the suggestion or naming of the concept. (shrink)

Whom should we credit for the discovery of isotopes? The first suggestion of an idea, the first experimental proof, or the development of a new method that clearly reveals the isotopes? Strömholm and Svedberg, Fajans and Soddy interpreted patterns of radioactive decay, which became confirmed theory on the solid basis of the very accurate atomic weight determinations by Richards and his coworkers. The mass spectrograph measurements by Aston provided major extension of the concept of isotopes to much of the rest (...) of the periodic table. Thus, Strömholm and Svedberg, Fajans and Soddy provided an idea, which Richards proved, and Aston made generally useful. Richards should be listed along with Fajans, Soddy, and Aston for fundamental contributions to establishing isotopes as part of the modern language of science. As much credit should be given to the experimental proof as to the suggestion or naming of the concept. (shrink)

Whom should we credit for the discovery of isotopes? The first suggestion of an idea, the first experimental proof, or the development of a new method that clearly reveals the isotopes? Strömholm and Svedberg, Fajans and Soddy interpreted patterns of radioactive decay, which became confirmed theory on the solid basis of the very accurate atomic weight determinations by Richards and his coworkers. The mass spectrograph measurements by Aston provided major extension of the concept of isotopes to much of the rest (...) of the periodic table. Thus, Strömholm and Svedberg, Fajans and Soddy provided an idea, which Richards proved, and Aston made generally useful. Richards should be listed along with Fajans, Soddy, and Aston for fundamental contributions to establishing isotopes as part of the modern language of science. As much credit should be given to the experimental proof as to the suggestion or naming of the concept. (shrink)

‘A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.’ This paper is an attempt to follow Russell’s advice by using a puzzle about the contingent a priori to test and explore certain theories of reference and modality. No one could claim that (...) the puzzle is of any great philosophical importance by itself, but to understand it, one has to get clear about certain aspects of the theory of reference; and to solve it, one has to think a little more deeply than one is perhaps accustomed about what it means to say that a statement is contingent or necessary. (shrink)

Much of the literature exploring the intersection between Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy and architecture have focused on abstract theory, experimental projects and practices at the margins of the profession. But, one may ask, what of the mainstream, commercial practices that produce the offices, housing, shops, schools and community buildings that we see and engage with in our day-to-day lives? What of the everyday design decisions made by professional architects and technicians sitting at their desks and drawing boards? Are these to be excluded (...) from architecture's engagement with Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy? As I will show in this paper, Deleuze and Guattari's proposals for the strata and the machinic assemblage are drawn from their underlying attempt to expand Hjelmslev's planar composition from a tool used to analyse language to a conceptual framework used to analyse the formation and evolution of all things. There is nothing within the conceptual framework of the strata/machinic assemblage to suggest, therefore, that they should not be used to analyse such practices. With this in mind, this article considers how these concepts can be translated through and help provide new insight into a real-world design sequence taken from mainstream, commercial architectural practice. In doing so it will show how such practices can offer Deleuzo-Guattarian scholars a more nuanced insight into this conceptual framework and the concepts that form it. (shrink)

Some philosophers, notably Professors Quine and Geach, have stressed the analogies they see between pronouns of the vernacular and the bound variables of quantification theory. Geach, indeed, once maintained that ‘for a philosophical theory of reference, then, it is all one whether we consider bound variables or pronouns of the vernacular'. This slightly overstates Geach's positition since he recognizes that some pronouns of ordinary language do function differently from bound variables; he calls such pronouns ‘pronouns of laziness'. Geach's characterisation of (...) pronouns of laziness has varied from time to time, but the general idea should be clear from a paradigm example: A man who sometimes beats his wife has more sense than one who always gives in to her.The pronouns ‘one’ and ‘her’ go proxy for a noun or a noun phrase in the sense that the pronoun is replaceable in paraphrase by simple repetition of its antecedent. (shrink)