Lynch’s book should take its place as an important study of late 13th century Franciscan cognition theory. Vital du Four is an important figure in the regard that he bridges the gap between Bonaventura and Duns Scotus. Moreover, he is one of the earliest Franciscan writers to have come to grips with Henry of Ghent. Even more important is the fact that much of Vital’s work was for some time mistakenly held to be that of Duns Scotus. Hence the (...) need for a clarification of Vital’s own doctrine is necessitated by the demand for separating out what is Scotus from what is not. Finally, Vital du Four is a pioneer thinker in the area of intuitive knowledge. A proper understanding of intuitive knowledge would seem to require seeing it in its complete historical perspective; and Vital du Four inevitably plays a part in that perspective. Vital du Four shows remarkable anticipations of classical modern formulations of the problems involved in cognition theory, particularly the problem of self-knowledge. The recent discussion regarding the inference and performance aspects of the Cartesian cogito is anticipated in Vital’s distinction between reasoned self-knowledge and intuitive self-knowledge. (shrink)

One of the most influential analytic philosophers of the late twentieth century, William P. Alston is a leading light in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of language. In this volume, twelve leading philosophers critically discuss the central topics of his work in these areas, including perception, epistemic circularity, justification, the problem of religious diversity, and truth.

One of the most influential analytic philosophers of the late twentieth century, William P. Alston is a leading light in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of language. In this volume, twelve leading philosophers critically discuss the central topics of his work in these areas, including perception, epistemic circularity, justification, the problem of religious diversity, and truth.

One of the most influential analytic philosophers of the late twentieth century, William P. Alston is a leading light in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of language. In this volume, twelve leading philosophers critically discuss the central topics of his work in these areas, including perception, epistemic circularity, justification, the problem of religious diversity, and truth.

This chapter contains sections titled: Moral Argument Science and Health Argument Social Policy Argument.

https://revistes.uab.cat/enrahonar/article/view/v35-lynch.

The purpose of this paper is to explain Hume's account of the way both the scope and the degree of benevolent motivation is limited. I argue that Hume consistently affirms, both in the _Treatise<D> and in the second _Enquiry<D>, (i) that the scope of benevolent motivation is very broad, such that it includes any creature that is conscious and capable of thought, and (ii) that the degree of benevolent motivation is limited, such that a person is naturally inclined to feel (...) benevolence more strongly for one with whom he or she has a 'connexion', e.g., a family member or friend. (shrink)

Le pluralisme aléthique est la conception suivant laquelle il y a plus d’une manière pour des propositions d’être vraies. Cet article étudie trois manières de comprendre cette idée et argumente que chacune a des faiblesses significatives. Je conclus en suggérant une issue au pluraliste qui lui permette de construire une position plus plausible.

For every k ∈ ω, there is an infinite set $A_k \subseteq \omega$ and a d(k) ∈ ω such that for all $Q_0, Q_1 \subseteq A_k$ where |Q 0 | = |Q 1 or $d(k) , the structures $\langle \omega, +, Q_0\rangle$ and $\langle \omega, +, Q_1\rangle$ are indistinguishable by first-order sentences of quantifier depth k whose atomic formulas are of the form u = v, u + v = w, and Q(u), where u, v, and w are variables.

What mental and physical distress do actors, camerapersons, and reporters experience when working on reenactments of traumatic moments in history? In Political Camerawork, D. Andy Rice theorizes that the intense feelings produced while creating these performed scenarios, called "simulation documentaries," connect difficult pasts to the present. Building on his background as a nonfiction film director, producer, editor, and cinematographer, Rice analyzes performance techniques to gain insight into the emotional toll of simulation documentaries, including those reliving the Vietnam War, the US (...) military's embodied training in California during the Iraq War, and an annual quadruple lynching reenactment organized by Black civil rights activists in Georgia. Investigating the lasting impact of these productions, Political Camerawork reveals that, by performing a simulation of a traumatic event they didn't directly experience, those involved become carriers of the trauma. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the case of psychedelic medicine for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD). These “mind-altering” drugs are not currently offered as treatments to persons with AD/ADRD, though there is growing interest in their use to treat underlying causes and associated psychiatric symptoms. We present a research agenda for examining the ethics of psychedelic medicine and research involving persons living with AD/ADRD, and offer preliminary analyses of six ethical issues: the impact of psychedelics on autonomy and consent; (...) the impact of “ego dissolution” on persons experiencing a pathology of self; how psychedelics might impact caregiving; the potential exploitation of patient desperation; institutional review boards’ orientation to psychedelic research; and methods to mitigate inequity. These ethical issues are magnified for AD/ADRD but bear broader relevance to psychedelic medicine and research in other clinical populations. (shrink)

Agency and Imagination in the Films of David Lynch: Philosophical Perspectives offers a sustained philosophical interpretation of the filmmaker’s work in light of classic and contemporary discussions of human agency and the complex relations between our capacity to act and our ability to imagine.

To ensure that the information resulting from research is relevant to patients, the Patient‐Centered Outcomes Research Institute eschews the “traditional health research” paradigm, in which investigators drive all aspects of research, in favor of one in which patients assume the role of research partner. If we accept the premise that patient engagement can offer fresh perspectives that shape research in valuable ways, then at least two important sets of questions present themselves. First, how are patients being engaged—and how should they (...) be engaged? Second, which patients are being engaged—and which patients should be? This set has received relatively less attention, and the neglect is surprising, given that the “who” question is conceptually prior to the question of “how.”This article focuses attention on the “who” of patient engagement in research. First, we provide background on the rationale for patient engagement, underscoring the importance of ensuring the representativeness of engaged patients. Second, we present what little is known about patients engaged in PCORI‐funded research. Third, we identify and discuss the ethical implications of ways in which current practices of patient identification and recruitment may lead to a lack of representativeness. These practices include reliance on the well‐connected and well‐informed, reliance on patients who are not well trained or well‐informed, and reliance on patient advocacy organizations. Finally, we consider several strategies for addressing these pitfalls in order to maximize the positive goals of patient engagement. Patient engagement is intended to address the inability of researchers, funders, and others to fully represent patient views and priorities, but without sufficient attention, the patients selected for this role may still leave important gaps. (shrink)

Lexical Semantics is about the meaning of words. Although obviously a central concern of linguistics, the semantic behaviour of words has been unduly neglected in the current literature, which has tended to emphasize sentential semantics and its relation to formal systems of logic. In this textbook D. A. Cruse establishes in a principled and disciplined way the descriptive and generalizable facts about lexical relations that any formal theory of semantics will have to encompass. Among the topics covered in depth are (...) idiomaticity, lexical ambiguity, synonymy, hierarchical relations such as hyponymy and meronymy, and various types of oppositeness. Syntagmatic relations are also treated in some detail. The discussions are richly illustrated by examples drawn almost entirely from English. Although a familiarity with traditional grammar is assumed, readers with no technical linguistic background will find the exposition always accessible. All readers with an interest in semantics will find in this original text not only essential background but a stimulating new perspective on the field. (shrink)

LYNCHING, A MORAL PROBLEM THAT PROVIDES INSIGHT INTO AMERICA'S past and present, is more than "a rope and a bundle of sticks." Lynching was always intended as a metaphor to understand race relations in the United States. How, then, might we interpret the proliferation of nooses in various American locales in 2006 and 2007? In this essay I examine whether responses to a cultural symbol—the noose—can result in ethical possibilities that contribute to the common good.

The question of providence and contingency in contemporary Western thought: a critical study from an Islamic perspective.

Claudian's poem In Rufinum is a historical epic with at least two unusual features: the first book contains many of the standard elements of a formal invective, and the two books were composed and recited some eighteen months apart, since Book One celebrates the death of Rufinus on 27 November 395 as a very recent event, while the preface to Book Two refers explicitly to Stilicho's expedition to Greece in 397. The interval in composition is matched by a gap in (...) content: Book One treats Rufinus' career down to 393, with some forward references to 395, explicitly marked as such, while the narrative of Book Two begins from the death of Theodosius on 17 January 395 and ends with the lynching of Rufinus on 27 November 395. Claudian thus omits any account of Rufinus' activities during the campaign of Theodosius against Eugenius in 394 and the emperor's last months in Italy. Claudian's careful chronological ordering of his material is deliberate, but since it has been obscured in recent discussions of the In Rufinum, it needs to be reinstated. (shrink)

Claudian's poem In Rufinum is a historical epic with at least two unusual features: the first book contains many of the standard elements of a formal invective, and the two books were composed and recited some eighteen months apart, since Book One celebrates the death of Rufinus on 27 November 395 as a very recent event , while the preface to Book Two refers explicitly to Stilicho's expedition to Greece in 397. The interval in composition is matched by a gap (...) in content: Book One treats Rufinus' career down to 393, with some forward references to 395, explicitly marked as such , while the narrative of Book Two begins from the death of Theodosius on 17 January 395 and ends with the lynching of Rufinus on 27 November 395. Claudian thus omits any account of Rufinus' activities during the campaign of Theodosius against Eugenius in 394 and the emperor's last months in Italy. Claudian's careful chronological ordering of his material is deliberate, but since it has been obscured in recent discussions of the In Rufinum, it needs to be reinstated. (shrink)

Revisiting African philosophy’s classic questions, D. A. Masolo advances understandings of what it means to be human—whether of African or other origin. Masolo reframes indigenous knowledge as diversity: How are we to understand the place and structure of consciousness? How does the everyday color the world we know? Where are the boundaries between self and other, universal and particular, and individual and community? From here, he takes a dramatic turn toward Africa’s current political situation and considers why individual rights and (...) freedoms have not been recognized, respected, demanded, or enforced. Masolo offers solutions for containing socially destructive conduct and antisocial tendencies by engaging community. His unique thinking about community and the role of the individual extends African philosophy in new, global directions. (shrink)

In debates about criteria for human death, several camps have emerged, the main two focusing on either loss of the "organism as a whole" (the mainstream view) or loss of consciousness or "personhood." Controversies also rage over the proper definition of "irreversible" in criteria for death. The situation is reminiscent of the proverbial blind men palpating an elephant; each describes the creature according to the part he can touch. Similarly, each camp grasps some aspect of the complex reality of death. (...) The personhood camp, in contrast to the mainstream "organism" camp, recognizes that a human organism can still be a biological living whole even without brain function. The mainstream camp, in contrast to the personhood camp, recognizes that a person can be permanently, even irreversibly unconscious, and still be a living person so long as his/her body is alive. The author proposes that hylomorphic dualism incorporates both these key insights. But to complete the picture of the entire "death elephant," a fundamental paradigm shift is needed to make sense of other seemingly conflicting insights. The author proposes a "semantic bisection" of the concept of death, analogous to the traditional distinction at the beginning of life between "conception" and "birth." To avoid the semantic baggage associated with the term "death," the two new death-related concepts are referred to as "passing away" (or "deceased") and "deanimation," corresponding, respectively, to sociolegal ceasing-to-be (mirror image of birth) and ontological/theological ceasing-to-be of the bodily organism (mirror image of conception). Regarding criteria, the distinguishing feature is whether the cessation of function is permanent (passing away) or irreversible (deanimation). If the "dead donor rule" were renamed the "deceased donor rule" (both acronyms felicitously being "DDR"), the ethics of organ transplantation from non–heart-beating donors could, in principle, be validly governed by the DDR, even though the donors are not yet ontologically "deanimated." Thus, the paradigm shift satisfies both those who insist on maintaining the DDR and those who claim that it has all along been receiving only lip service and should be explicitly loosened to include those who are "as good as dead." Even so, a number of practical caveats remain to be worked out for non–heart-beating protocols. (shrink)

" -- Africa Today "The excellence of this book lies in the wealth of perspectives that it brings to the discussion on what constitutes philosophy, rationality, ...

A three-valued propositional logic is presented, within which the three values are read as ?true?, ?false? and ?nonsense?. A three-valued extended functional calculus, unrestricted by the theory of types, is then developed. Within the latter system, Bochvar analyzes the Russell paradox and the Grelling-Weyl paradox, formally demonstrating the meaninglessness of both.

In some languages every statement must contain a specification of the type of evidence on which it is based: for example, whether the speaker saw it, or heard it, or inferred it from indirect evidence, or learnt it from someone else. This grammatical reference to information source is called 'evidentiality', and is one of the least described grammatical categories. Evidentiality systems differ in how complex they are: some distinguish just two terms (eyewitness and noneyewitness, or reported and everything else), while (...) others have six or even more terms. Evidentiality is a category in its own right, and not a subcategory of epistemic or some other modality, nor of tense-aspect. Every language has some way of referring to the source of information, but not every language has grammatical evidentiality. In English expressions such as I guess, they say, I hear that, the alleged are not obligatory and do not constitute a grammatical system. Similar expressions in other languages may provide historical sources for evidentials. True evidentials, by contrast, form a grammatical system. In the North Arawak language Tariana an expression such as "the dog bit the man" must be augmented by a grammatical suffix indicating whether the event was seen, or heard, or assumed, or reported. This book provides the first exhaustive cross-linguistic typological study of how languages deal with the marking of information source. Examples are drawn from over 500 languages from all over the world, several of them based on the author's original fieldwork. Professor Aikhenvald also considers the role evidentiality plays in human cognition, and the ways in which evidentiality influences human perception of the world.. This is an important book on an intriguing subject. It will interest anthropologists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers, as well as linguists. (shrink)

Physicians have developed a number of implicit and explicit approaches to complex medical decisions. Decision analysis is an explicit, quantitative method of clinical decision making that involves the separation of the probabilities of events from their relative values, or utilities. Its use can help physicians make difficult choices in a manner that promotes true patient participation. Decision analysis also provides a framework for the incorporation of data from multiple sources and for the assessment of the impact of uncertain data on (...) the final decision. Although this approach is imperfect, it represents a significant advance in clinical decision making. (shrink)

Signals to the brain from the flows of energy around the body, varied primarily by declining amounts of food energy in the stomach, can explain the pattern of meals in the laboratory rat, the differences between dark and light phases, and the development of obesity ion the rat wioth VMH lesions but normal sating.