Facing unpalatable truths: 2

Facing Up to Unpalatable Evidence for the Sake of Our Patients

The paper of Seena Fazel and colleagues published in this week’s PLoS Medicine [1] provides the most extensive and sophisticated analysis to date of the available data on the association between violent behaviour and having been diagnosed with a schizophrenic disorder. The possible association between schizophrenia and violence remains a contentious issue in mental health. This question is part...

Home truths from abroad.

I recently paid a visit to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. My aim was to exchange ideas about postgraduate training with the medical teachers there. Brown is one of America’s leading universities, and I saw a great deal that challenged my preconceptions about medicine in the USA, and also made me question some of our working practices in the UK. Most of my time was spent observing...

'Home Truths' on Intersectionality

In the wake of intersectionality's trans-disciplinary institutionalization, this Article considers how the meaning and practice of intersectionality has changed in different historical moments. This Article studies three periods in black feminism's long history of doing intersectional work: an early period (1968-87) marked by a broad conception of intersectionality, the watershed years (1988-90...

Natural Principles and Fundamental Truths

Truths Containing Empty Names Abstract

On the Direct Reference thesis, proper names are what I call ‘genuine terms’, terms whose sole semantic contributions to the propositions expressed by their use are the terms’ semantic referents. But unless qualified, this thesis implies the false consequence that sentences containing names that fail to refer can never express true or false propositions. (Consider ‘The ancient Greeks worshipped...