Philosophy has much to offer psychiatry, not least regarding ethical issues, but also issues regarding the mind, identity, values, and volition. This has become only more important as we have witnessed the growth and power of the pharmaceutical industry, accompanied by developments in the neurosciences. However, too few practising psychiatrists are familiar with the literature in this area. -/- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry offers the most comprehensive reference resource for this area ever published. It assembles challenging and (...) insightful contributions from key philosophers and others to the interactive fields of philosophy and psychiatry. Each contributions is original, stimulating, thorough, and clearly and engagingly written - with no potentially significant philosophical stone left unturned. Broad in scope, the book includes coverage of several areas of philosophy, including philosophy of mind, science, and ethics. For philosophers and psychiatrists, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry is a landmark publication in the field - one that will be of value to both students and researchers in this rapidly growing area. (shrink)

Ethics support staff help others to deal with moral challenges. However, they themselves can also experience moral challenges such as issues regarding (breaching) confidentiality when practicing ethics support. Currently there is no insight in these confidentiality issues and also no professional guidance for dealing with them. To gain insight into moral challenges related to Moral Case Deliberation (MCD), we studied a) beliefs and experiences of MCD facilitators regarding breaching confidentiality, b) considerations for (not) breaching confidentiality, and c) needs for an (...) ethics support tool. Data collection consisted of qualitative research methods: six semi-structured interviews; analyses of a) two recorded MCD sessions, and b) a focus group with MCD facilitators. Findings: MCD facilitators mention different conceptions and interpretations of confidentiality and various moral challenges. Questions concerning confidentiality ultimately cause reflections on roles and responsibilities of facilitators. Needs for ethics support vary from seeking advice to procedural and sometimes normative guidance for MCD facilitators. Education for MCD facilitators should focus on developing a concrete tool that stimulates awareness and reflection(skills). (shrink)

Organic chemists have been able to develop a robust, theoretical understanding of the phenomena they study; however, the primary theoretical devices employed in this field are not mathematical equations or laws, as is the case in most other physical sciences. Instead it is diagrams, and in particular structural formulas and potential energy diagrams, that carry the explanatory weight in the discipline. To understand how this is so, it is necessary to investigate both the nature of the diagrams employed in organic (...) chemistry and how these diagrams are used in the explanations of the discipline. I will begin this paper by characterizing some of the major ways that structural formulas used in organic chemistry. Next I will present a model of the explanations in organic chemistry and describe how both structural formulas and potential energy diagrams contribute to these explanations. This will be followed by several examples that support my abstract account of the role of diagrams in the explanations of organic chemistry. In particular, I will consider both the appeal to ‘hyperconjugation’ in the explanation of alkene stability and how the idea of ‘ring strain’ was developed to explain the relative stability of cyclic compounds. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is the organized expression of a growing intent among philosophers and scientists to clarify, perhaps unify, the programs, methods and results of the disciplines of philosophy and of science. The examination of fundamental concepts and presuppositions in the light of the positive results of science, systematic doubt of the positive results, and a thorough-going analysis and critique of logic and of language, are typical projects for this joint effort. It is not necessary to be committed to a (...) belief that science and philosophy are or should be one, or else that “never the twain shall meet.” If anything, there is to be expected a wholesome regard for the value of established science in furnishing a foil for philosophy and a check on its old extravagances. This does not mean that even the best-established science may not be subject to most devastating criticism by analysis of its foundations. In fact, despairing of the philosophy of the schools, science has done it largely for itself. The theories of gravitation, atomicity, electro-magnetism, evolution, relativity and quanta have all arisen through drastic revisions of complacent fundamental “truths.”. (shrink)

In his pioneering work of moral phenomenology, K. E. Løgstrup offered a phenomenological articulation of a central moment of ethical life: the experience in which “one finds oneself with the life of another more-or-less in one’s hands”. In such circumstances we encounter what Løgstrup calls simply the ethical demand. Løgstrup’s preferred formulation of the content of that demand is taken from the Bible: Love thy neighbor. This neighborly love is expressed in the form of spontaneous, selfless care for the other. (...) We shall have occasion in what follows to return to the content that Løgstrup associates with the ethical demand, but my primary focus here is not its content but its distinctive modality. Løgstrup specifies that modality in a fourfold analysis: the ethical demand is radical, silent, one-sided, and unfulfillable. My concern in what follows will be with the fourth element in this analysis – or what I shall refer to simply as Løgstrup’s unfulfillability thesis. My discussion addresses three specific questions: Is it coherent to suppose that the ethical demand is unfulfillable? Why does Løgstrup hold that the ethical demand is unfulfillable? What kind of response is appropriate in the face of an unfulfillable ethical demand? (shrink)

In making the following suggestions I have assumed the chronological possibility of allusions in the Aetia Prologue on the one hand to the quarrel with Apollonius Rhodius, and on the other to Arsinoe II. . That such a combination is possible is maintained by Rostagni in Rivista di Filologia, 1928, pp. 1 sqq. The textual supplements offered here, while intended to support the double hypothesis, differ from his in some points; notably in regard to the question of where the allusion (...) to Arsinoe is to be introduced into the text of Callimachus . It need hardly be said that the supposed allusions to the queen and to the rival poet do not necessarily stand or fall together. In the case of the former it might not be altogether incredible that such an allusion should have been made after her death; whilst the most obvious consequence in regard to Apollonius would be that, if a date before 270 B.C. be accepted for the Prologue, his birth would have to be placed as early as possible—say, 295–290 B.C. However this may be, it is here sought to complete, in the above sense, certain passages in the Prologue with the aid of the British Museum Scholiast . In regard to the latter a fresh study of the original text by the editor has been utilized, to say nothing of his valuable suggestions and criticisms; in the case of P. the facsimile in Ox. Pap. XVII. is depended upon. The silence of S. on some of the supposed points may fairly be adduced in objection to them; but it may be noted that he does not comment on Πυγμαίων , and that his exposition, where it can be checked, seems to be somewhat hasty and unbalanced. Further, we do not know what may have preceded the portion of his work which has survived. (shrink)

The construction assumed for the first sentence in this passage is that adopted by Verrall and Headlam, apart from some differences in detail. It seems unlikely that δών can refer to what precedes, as some have thought; for it can hardly be supposed that the poet, who is using speed and economy , would pause to tell us that the great Seer merely ‘sees’ two distinctively coloured birds which ‘have appeared near by in a conspicuous station’ compare Homer's method . (...) Also it would involve us in the doubtful construction Ατρεϊδας έδάη λαγοδαίτας for ‘he knew the . to be the λ.’ ; the nearest parallel to this would appear to be Xen. Anab. 1. 7. 4 οους γνώσεσθε τοùς νθρπονς, where the adjective makes some difference. (shrink)

It is customary to identify transcendental philosophy as the distinctive and original invention of Immanuel Kant. Certainly this was a view that Kant himself did much to encourage. But this chapter argues that traces of the transcendental strategy can be found already among the ancients. One such ancient precedent is associated with the Stoic doctrine of oikeiosis. It is argued that oikeiosis is best understood as a form of normative orientation associated with 'being at home ' in one's body and (...) environment, and that it involves a distinctive form of ontological self-consciousness. This chapter assesses the merits of Stoic claims that oikeiosis figures as a condition on the possibility of desire, pleasure, and even perception, and the chapter considers the case for describing these arguments as examples of transcendental investigation. (shrink)

THE PROBLEM OF THE INTERPRETATION OF HAMANN Johann Georg Hamann is an intriguing but poorly known figure in the contemporary intellectual world. Yet this is the man whom Kierkegaard saluted as "Emperor!", whose writings were to have been arranged for publication by none other than Goethe himself, and whom Dilthey numbered among the primordial figures in the rise of modern historical consciousness. There are reasons for the persistence of this general ignorance. Hamann is deep. And, in addition, there is his (...) forbidding style. The readers of Kierkegaard and Dilthey, two other giants who them selves achieved late recognition, have not had to face this kind of imposing obstacle. Not only does Hamann expect his readers to handle themselves in deep water, but to intuit their way between his ideas which bob up like islands with no visible connection between them. Like Kierkegaard too, Hamann has had his troubles with the public. He himself referred to the hope that he would be understood by a "better posterity". In fact only the last few years have seen the printing of some of his more controversial writings, in particular his theories on the nature of human sexuality. (shrink)

The axiomatic approaches of quantum mechanics and relativity theory are compared with approaches in which the theories are thought to describe readings of certain measurement operations. The usual axioms are shown to correspond with classes of ideal measurements. The necessity is discussed of generalizing the formalisms of both quantum mechanics and relativity theory so as to encompass more realistic nonideal measurements. It is argued that this generalization favours an empiricist interpretation of the mathematical formalisms over a realist one.