The question whether rights to health care should be altered by smoking behaviour involves wideranging implications for all who indulge in hazardous behaviours, and involves complex economic utilitarian arguments. This paper examines current debate in the UK and suggest the major significance of the controversy has been ignored. That this discussion exists at all implies increasing division over the scope and purpose of a nationalised health service, bestowing health rights on all. When individuals bear the cost of their own health (...) care, they appear to take responsibility for health implications of personal behaviour, but when the state bears the cost, moral obligations of the community and its doctors to care for those who do not value health are called into question. The debate has far-reaching implications as ethical problems of smokers' rights to health care are common to situations where health as a value comes into conflict with other values, such as pleasure or wealth. (shrink)

The British Government is implementing some major alterations to the way health services in Great Britain are organised. As well as the introduction of competition between health care providers, their financial interests are to be linked to their output, in efforts to use market forces to increase efficiency and cut costs. This paper looks at the possible impact of these changes of health care organisation on ethical medical practice. This is investigated with particular reference to the country whose health service (...) has embraced most closely these elements of the market--the United States of America. The question to be answered is whether high standards of ethical care are ensured by factors somehow intrinsic to the medical profession, and are therefore immune to changes in the economics of health care. This assumption is shown to be questionable in light of what is known about the determinants of ethical medical practice. (shrink)

We briefly presented either the letter ‘b’ or the letter ‘h’ to participants who were instructed to respond by saying the letter that was not shown. This binary version of the exclusion task avoids problems with assessing baseline completion rates. When the letters were shown for 5–10 ms participants erroneously responded with the shown letter at a rate greater than chance. They were capable of following the instructions when the letter was shown for longer . Given the chance to wager (...) low or high on their choices after short duration stimuli, participants declined to wager high even when they were correct. Taken together these results suggest that the briefly presented stimuli were processed subconsciously. (shrink)

Experimenters generally infer whether participants have visual experiences based on metacognitive responses. We showed a well-studied blindsight participant, GY, several definitions of the term “qualia” and then questioned him about whether he felt or he experienced qualia in his normal and blind fields. We found, contrary to others who have used different methods for measuring qualia, that GY does not have qualia for stationary stimuli in his blind field. This novel method for directly assessing qualia embraces the idea that experiences (...) should be related by the experiencer, not the experimenter. (shrink)

We explored whether information processed subconsciously in blindsight is qualitatively different from normal conscious processing. On each trial the blindsight patient GY was presented with a square-wave grating either in an upper or lower quadrant of his visual field and was asked to report the opposite of its location . We found that while GY was able to follow these exclusion instructions in his normal field, he tended to erroneously respond with the real location when the grating appeared in his (...) blind field. Remarkably, his error rate actually increased with increasing grating contrast in his blind field. The interpretation of these results does not rely on subjective reports and thus cannot be criticized on the grounds that subjective reports are unreliable. We conclude that blindsight is unlike normal conscious vision. (shrink)

Descriptive Experience Sampling is a clever method for determining the form of everyday thoughts. Results using this method show that people report that some of their thoughts are unsymbolic. Here I ask three questions: Does this merely show that people know what they are thinking about but not what they are thinking? Why do people have difficulty determining the form of their thoughts? How does the act of reporting the form of thoughts affect the recall of those thoughts?

Background Medical schools are grappling with how best to manage industry involvement in medical education.Objective To describe a case study of industry-supported undergraduate medical education related to opioid analgesics.Method Institutional case study.Results As part of their regular curriculum, Canadian medical students attended pain pharmacotherapy lectures that contained questionable content about the use of opioids for pain management. The lectures were supported by pharmaceutical companies that market opioid analgesics in Canada and the guest lecturer was a member of speakers bureaus of (...) the same companies. These conflicts of interests were not fully disclosed. A reference book that reinforced some of the information in the lectures and that was paid for by a sponsoring company was made available to students. This is the first report of an association between industry sponsorship and the dissemination of potentially dangerous information to medical students.Conclusions This case demonstrates the need for better strategies for preventing, identifying and dealing with problematic interactions between the pharmaceutical industry and undergraduate medical education. These might include the avoidance of unnecessary conflicts of interest, more disclosure of conflicts, an open process for dealing with recognised problems and internationally harmonised conflict of interest policies. (shrink)

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable (...) presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

The binary exclusion task involves “subtle priming effects” and a measure of awareness that is reliable, relevant, immediate, and sensitive. This task, which meets the criteria outlined in the target article, has been used to demonstrate subconscious processing.

The fact that early visual processing has a larger capacity than later visual processing can be explained without positing distinct systems for phenomenology and cognitive accessibility. While phenomenology may overflow forced-choice reports, the later can also overestimate the former, as in the case of blindsight. Metacognitive measures of awareness offer a way to address the of consciousness research.

R.I.G Hughes offers the first detailed and accessible analysis of the Hilbert-space models used in quantum theory and explains why they are so successful.

The Nature of God explores a perennial problem in the philosophy of religion.

In this first paperback edition, a new introduction by Tom Burke establishes the ongoing importance of Sleeper's analysis of the integrity of Dewey's work and ...

This book is not a study of Plato's philosophy, but a contribution to the literary interpretation of the dialogues, through analysis of their formal structure, ...

While it might seem prima facie plausible that divine foreknowledge is all that is needed for prophecy, this seems incorrect. To issue a prophecy, God hasto know not just how someone will act, but how someone would act were the prophecy issued. This makes some think that Middle Knowledge is required.I argue that Thomas Flint’s two Middle Knowledge based accounts of prophecy are unsatisfactory, but one of them can be repaired. However the resources needed for repair also yield a sketch (...) of a foreknowledge-only account of prophecy. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that there is a causal condition on perception, and that this condition is a conceptual truth about perception. A highly influential argument for this claim is based on intuitive responses to Gricean style thought experiments. Do the folk share the intuitions of philosophers? Roberts et al. (2016) presented participants with two kinds of cases: Blocker cases (similar to Grice’s case involving a mirror and a pillar) and Non-Blocker cases (similar to Grice’s case involving a clock and brain (...) stimulation). They found that a substantial minority agreed that seeing occurs in the Non-Blocker cases, and that in the Blocker cases significantly less agreed that seeing occurs. They thus hypothesized that folk intuitions better align with a no blocker condition than with a causal condition. This paper continues this line of enquiry with two new experiments. The paper investigates the generality and robustness of Roberts et al.’s findings by expanding the sense modalities tested from only vision to audition and olfaction as well. The paper also uses Gricean style thought experiments as a case study for investigating the “reflection defense” against the negative project in experimental philosophy. Our results replicate and extend Roberts et al.’s study and support their hypothesis that folk intuitions better align with a no blocker condition. They also provide an empirical reason to doubt the reflection defense. (shrink)

The author demonstrates that certain forms of irrationality - incontinent action and self-deception - which many philosophers have rejected as being logically or psychologically impossible, are indeed possible.

The Hellenistic philosophers and schools of philosophy are emerging from the shadow of Plato and Aristotle and are increasingly studied for their intrinsic philosophical value. They are not only interesting in their own right, but also form the intellectual background of the late Roman Republic. This study gives a comprehensive and readable account of the principal doctrines of the Stoics, Epicureans and various sceptical traditions from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. to around 200 A.D. Discussions are (...) arranged topically in order to address underlying issues and to make clear what the different schools have in common and how they differ. At the same time the coherence of each system as a whole is emphasized. (shrink)

Determining what has gone wrong in a malfunctioning body and proposing an effective treatment requires expertise. Since antiquity, philosophers and doctors have wondered what sort of knowledge this expertise involves, and whether and how it can warrant its conclusions. Few people were as qualified to deal with these questions as Galen of Pergamum. A practising doctor with a keen interest in logic and natural science, he devoted much of his enormous literary output to the task of putting medicine on firm (...) methodological grounds. At the same time he reflected on philosophical issues entailed by this project, such as the nature of experience, its relation to reason, the criteria of truth, and the methods of justification. This volume explores Galen's contributions to epistemology, as they arise in the specific inquiries and polemics of his works, as well as their legacy in the Islamic world. (shrink)

R. G. Swinburne; XIII*—Personal Identity, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 74, Issue 1, 1 June 1974, Pages 231–247, https://doi.org/10.1093/arist.

This book offers a critical introduction to the work of American philosopher D. G. Leahy (1937-2014). Leahy's fundamental thinking can be characterized as an absolute creativity in which all creating is 'live' -- a happening occurring now that manifests a supersaturated polyontological actuality that is essentially created by the logic that characterizes it. Leahy leaves behind the categorial presuppositions of modern thought, eclipsing both Cartesian and Hegelian subjectivities and introducing instead an essentially new form of thinking founded in a nondual (...) logic of creation. The new thinking delineates the absolute unicity of existence as a creative interactivity beyond all traditional dichotomies (such as one vs. many, unity vs. plurality, identity vs. change): a fully "digitized" actuality that is nothing but newness, which inherently implies nothing but change. Through this new form of thinking, change itself is revealed to be the very essence of reality and mind. Any reader looking for a quantum leap beyond the thrall of modern and postmodern fixations is invited to hear and apprehend this new thinking that refuses to be conditioned by paradigms, categories, species, genera, walls, bridges, boundaries, or abstractions: an essentially free thinking that embodies creative novelty itself. (shrink)

Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 to 180 A.D., is renowned for his just rule and long frontier wars. But his lasting fame rests on his Meditations, a bedside book of reflections and self-admonitions written during his last years, that provide unique insights into the mind of an ancient ruler and contain many passages of pungent epigram and poetic imagery. This study is designed to make the Meditations more accessible to the modern reader. Rutherford carefully explains the historical and philosophical (...) background, charts the main themes and tendencies of Marcus's thought, and relates stylistic detail to the intellectual and moral outlook of the author. His goal is to define Marcus's aims, attitudes, and styles more precisely and restore his work to the position it held in the past, that of a spiritual classic which can be read and enjoyed by people who are not professional scholars. (shrink)

Shoemaker (1996) presenteda prioriarguments against the possibility of ‘self‐blindness’, or the inability of someone, otherwise intelligent and possessed of mental concepts, to introspect any of her concurrent attitude states. Ironically enough, this seems to be a position that Gopnik (1993) and Carruthers (2006, 2008, 2009a,b) have proposed as not only possible, but as the actual human condition generally! According to this ‘Objectivist’ view, supposed introspection of one's attitudes is not ‘direct’, but an ‘inference’ of precisely the sort we make about (...) the attitudes of others, an inference that has the advantage in our own case ofonlyour own sensory data and memories, our behavior, and of the context we are in; i.e. we are all substantially self‐ blind. After sorting out a number of methodological and verbal issues, I argue, first, that thea prioriarguments against Objectivism don't succeed, and that Gopnik and Carruthers are right to regard the issue as an empirical one. On the other hand, I think they seriously underestimate the difficulty of establishing Objectivism. It is unlikely there is an inferential procedure from the data of pure sensation, behavior and context to the relevant self‐attributions that would be as spectacularly reliable as people manifestly seem to be. Moreover, there is a simpler model: the mind very likely consists of a panoply of sub‐routines some of whose outputs are ‘tagged’ for their having been so processed, rather in the way that software ‘documents’ are on standard computers. Introspection plausibly consists in a person's simply attending to distinctive constellations of these tags, even though they may lack phenomenal feels. This draws attention to an important independent fact: that much of phenomenology (or ‘what it's like’ to be in a certain state) may be constituted by facts that are not phenomenal. (shrink)

"The philosophy of mind is unique among contemporary philosophical subjects," writes John Searle, "in that all of the most famous and influential theories are false." In Mind, Searle dismantles these famous and influential theories as he presents a vividly written, comprehensive introduction to the mind. Here readers will find one of the world's most eminent thinkers shedding light on the central concern of modern philosophy. Searle begins with a look at the twelve problems of philosophy of mind--which he calls "Descartes (...) and Other Disasters"--problems which he returns to throughout the volume, as he illuminates such topics as the freedom of the will, the actual operation of mental causation, the nature and functioning of the unconscious, the analysis of perception, and the concept of the self. One of the key chapters is on the mind-body problem, which Searle analyzes brilliantly. He argues that all forms of consciousness--from feeling thirsty to wondering how to translate Mallarme--are caused by the behavior of neurons and are realized in the brain system, which is itself composed of neurons. But this does not mean that consciousness is nothing but neuronal behavior. The main point of having the concept of consciousness, Searle points out, is to capture the first person subjective features of the phenomenon and this point is lost if we redefine consciousness in third person objective terms. Described as a "dragonslayer by temperament," John Searle offers here a refreshingly direct and open discussion of philosophy, one that skewers accepted wisdom even as it offers striking new insights into the nature of consciousness and the mind. (shrink)

Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm al-Zāhid al-Ṣaffār is one of the important representatives of the Kalām thought of the Ḥanafī-Māturīdī School. He was born in A.H. 450/ C.E. 1058 in Bukhara that is one of the city of Transoxiana/Mawara al-nahr where Maturidi School has emerged around this socio-cultural environment. He completed his education and served as a leader (rais/ ṣadr) of the Hanafite scholars there until he was exiled to the city of Marv. Upon his return from exile, he passed away in (...) Bukhara in A.H. 534/ C.E. 1139. The present study aims to determine his method in Kalām. The introduction outlines the subject, significance, purpose, method, and sources of the research. In this study, it was employed a method that focuses on a person in which he/she is examined with his/her views and thoughts by taking into account his/her socio-cultural factors. By doing this, the first chapter of this study deals with the political, socio-economic, and scientific situation in Transoxiana, and the activities of diverse religions, sects, and philosophical schools in this region in A.H. V-VI/C.E. XI-XII. In the second chapter, it studies al-Ṣaffār’s life, scientific personality, works as well as the sources that he made references to in his works in detail. In the third chapter, the kalām method of al-Ṣaffār has been tried to be determined. For this purpose, it analyzes his extant works, Talkhīṣ al-adilla li-qawāʿid al-tawḥīd and Risālah fī al-kalām and elaborates first on his defense of the Kalām that gives great importance to reason (ʿaql) and to intellectual debates, if necessary, in theological issues. Then it explores his theory of knowledge with his ideas on the definition, possibility, sources, and types of knowledge, and the epistemological understandings he defensed or criticised. Furthermore, to determine his Kalām method, it evaluates his approach towards the value of ‘aql and naql (Qurʾān-Ḥadīth) as sources of knowledge. Since this issue is a distinctive tool for unveiling the kalām methods of different mutakallims and Muslim sects. Finally, it finds out the types of istidlāl, meaning inference of one thing from the other that he used when he argues and defends his views, and illustrates with examples. (shrink)

Overdenkingen in proza en poëzie over filosofische vraagstukken door de in ongenade gevallen Romeinse ex-consul (480-524).

Opstellen eerder verschenen in het Nederlands Tijdschrift voor rechtsfilosofie en rechtstheorie en in andere periodieken.

This is the second of the three volumes comprising, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe. Focussing on the period from c.1090-1212, the volume explores the lives, scholarly resources, and contributions of a wide sample of people who either took part in the creation of the scholastic system of thought or gave practical effect to it in public life. The second volume of a compelling, original work which will redefine our perceptions of medieval civilization, the renaissance and the evolution of (...) modern Europe. Written by a man who was widely regarded as the greatest medieval historian. (shrink)