INTRODUCTION STATEMENT OF THE THESIS To the student of the social sciences it is interesting to observe the process by which, in one respect at least, ...

This paper examines the role of clinical practitioners and clinical researchers internationally in establishing the utility of harm-reduction approaches to substance use. It thus illustrates the potential for clinicians to play a pivotal role in health promoting structural interventions based on harm-reduction goals and public health models. Popular media images of drug use as uniformly damaging, and abstinence as the only acceptable goal of treatment, threaten to distort clinical care away from a basis in evidence, which shows that some ways (...) of using drugs are far more harmful than others and that punitive approaches and insistence on total abstinence as the only goal of treatment often increases the harms of drug use rather than reducing drug use. Therefore the leadership and scientific authority of clinicians who understand the health impact of harm-reduction strategies is needed. Through a review of harm-reduction interventions in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, we identify three ways that clinicians have helped to achieve a paradigm shift from punitive approaches to harm-reduction principles in clinical care and in drug policy: through clinical research to provide data establishing the effectiveness and feasibility of harm-reduction approaches, by developing innovative clinical programmes that employ harm reduction, and thereby changing the standard of care to include routine use of these evidence-based approaches in their practices. We argue that through promotion of harm-reduction goals and methods, clinicians have unique opportunities to improve the health outcomes of vulnerable populations. (shrink)

Heyes's literature review of deception, imitation, and self-recognition is inadequate, misleading, and erroneous. The anaesthetic artifact hypothesis of self-recognition is unsupported by the data she herself examines. Her proposed experiment is tantalizing, indicating that theory of mind is simply a Turing test.

The Dictionary of World Philosophy covers the diverse and challenging terminology, concepts, schools and traditions of the vast field of world philosophy. Providing an extremely comprehensive resource and an essential point of reference in a complex and expanding field of study the Dictionary covers all major subfields of the discipline. Key features: * Cross-references are used to highlight interconnections and the cross-cultural diffusion and adaptation of terms which has taken place over time * The user is led from specific terms (...) to master entries which provide valuable historical and cultural context * Each master entry is followed by at least two suggestions for further reading on the subject, creating a substantial bibliography of world philosophy * References extend beyond philosophy to related areas such as cognitive science, computer science, language and physics Subdisciplines covered include: * aesthetics * ethics * sociopolitical philosophy * the philosophy of law * epistemology * logic * the philosophy of science * the philosophy of mind * the philosophy of culture and history * metaphysics * the philosophy of religion Entries are drawn from West Africa, Arabic, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Jewish, Korean, Latin American, Maori and Native American philosophy including the important and so far largely neglected instance of Pre-Hispanic thought: Nahua philosophy. (shrink)

This article explores the enterprising act of socially constructing fatness, or overweight and obesity, as an individual and collective problem. We argue that this process is complex and hence draw liberally on and extend an eclectic range of scholarship (e.g. the sociology of the body, moral panic theory, critical weight studies) when presenting a typology of obesity epidemic entrepreneurs, that is, those who actively make fatness into a correctable health problem. Using a variety of data, we consider six main ideal (...) typical entrepreneurs: creators, amplifiers/moralizers, legitimators, supporters, enforcers/administrators and the entrepreneurial self. We conclude with a critique of obesity epidemic entrepreneurship and underscore the broader salience of our work for the sociology of the body/embodiment. The relevance of social studies of the body for the obesity debate and critical weight studies is also highlighted. (shrink)

Akira Kurosawa is arguably known as the director who opened up Japanese film to Western audiences and following his death in 1998, a process of reflection has begun about his life's work as whole and its legacy to the cinema and its global audiences. Rashomon has arguably become the best known Japanese film, ever. After this, his twelfth film, Kurosawa's reputation was firmly established in international cinema, and Rashomon continues to be discussed and imitated more than sixty years after its (...) first screening. This volume addresses issues beyond the realm of Rashomon within film studies, and to do with the Rashomon effect which itself has become a widely recognized English term referring to significantly different perspectives and interpretations of different eyewitnesses to the same dramatic event. The dual figures of ripples and circles comprise the organizing image and principle of this book as each chapter addresses either the movement of ripples, representing the continuing and vibrant influence of Rashomon effects into the twenty-first century, or of circles, representing specific events, such as the publication of a new script, a particular production, or a remake. (shrink)

R. Lanier Anderson presents a new account of Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, and provides it with a clear basis within traditional logic. He reconstructs compelling claims about the syntheticity of elementary mathematics, and re-animates Kant's arguments against traditional metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason.

‘The problem with simulations is that they are doomed to succeed.’ So runs a common criticism of simulations—that they can be used to ‘prove’ anything and are thus of little or no scientific value. While this particular objection represents a minority view, especially among those who work with simulations in a scientific context, it raises a difficult question: what standards should we use to differentiate a simulation that fails from one that succeeds? In this paper we build on a structural (...) analysis of simulation developed in previous work to provide an evaluative account of the variety of ways in which simulations do fail. We expand the structural analysis in terms of the relationship between a simulation and its real-world target emphasizing the important role of aspects intended to correspond and also those specifically intended not to correspond to reality. The result is an outline both of the ways in which simulations can fail and the scientific importance of those various forms of failure. (shrink)

A brief history and description of this project.

I argue that we need not accept Quine's holistic conception of mathematics and empirical science. Specifically, I argue that we should reject Quine's holism for two reasons. One, his argument for this position fails to appreciate that the revision of the mathematics employed in scientific theories is often related to an expansion of the possibilities of describing the empirical world, and that this reveals that mathematics serves as a kind of rational framework for empirical theorizing. Two, this holistic conception does (...) not clearly demarcate pure mathematics from applied mathematics. In arguing against Quine, I present a formal account of applied mathematics in which the mathematics employed in an empirical theory plays a role that is analogous to the epistemological role Kant assigned synthetic a priori propositions. According to this account, it is possible to insulate pure mathematics from empirical falsification, and there is a sense in which applied mathematics can also be labeled as a priori. (shrink)

Argues there is a program of five-word utterances that imitate fallen language in Dante’s Commedia.