Another Approach to Spinoza’s De Intellectus Emendatione

This paper examines Spinoza’s De Intellectus Emendatione from the standpoint of its place in the rationalist canon, and also with respect to certain lines of feminist thought. It concludes that Spinoza’s wholism, lack of interest in skepticism, and insistence on simples are not inconsistent with a variety of feminist concerns. The commentary of Genevieve Lloyd and Harald Hoffding is alluded to, and notions taken from works of contemporary feminism are cited.     

Early English Empiricism and the Work of Catharine Trotter Cockburn

This article examines the work of the seventeenth‐century thinker Catharine Trotter Cockburn with an eye toward explication of her trenchant empiricism, and the foundations upon which it rested. It is argued that part of the originality of Cockburn's work has to do with her consistent line of thought with regard to evidence from the senses and the process of abstract conceptualization; in this she differed strongly from some of her contemporaries. The work of Martha Brandt Bolton and Fidelis Morgan is cited, and there is an auxiliary argument to the effect that Cockburn is probably better known as a playwright than she is as a philosophical thinker.     

Obligations In Medical Crises: Treatment and Protocols

This article adduces several lines of argument to try to analyze the need for certain sorts of interventions in medical crises. The recent Ebola crisis is taken as exemplary, and other similarly serious medical situations requiring intervention, such as the endemic presence of Valley fever in parts of California, are alluded to. The overall contention is that our duties in medical crises may be somewhat stronger than previously constructed by analysts. The work of Kuhse and Singer is cited, and the article concludes that there are special moral obligations to respond to international medical emergencies when they arise.