2014-05-06

Derek Hockaday interviews Tony Hope, Professor of Medical ethics and honorary consultant psychiatrist, 6 May 2014. Topics discussed include: (00:00:16) first degree at Oxford prior to Medicine and early academic career; (00:06:58) physiology department, Oxford, and colleagues; (00:09:15) clinical years, including remembering Jim Holt; (00:12:34) interest in psychiatry during house jobs; (00:17:00) the Middlesex Hospital teaching compared to Oxford; (00:18:46) move into psychiatry, the Phoenix Unit at Littlemore Hospital; (00:22:00) diagnosis in psychiatry; (00:23:54) Cognitive Behavioural Therapy; (00:27:40) medical ethics, Sid Bloch, student society The Oxford Medical Forum, developing teaching practice skills in Oxford, change of ethical management of patients in the 1970s; (00:41:45) teaching role in ethics and communications; (00:47:25) assessing success of teaching ethics; (00:51:51) working on dementia; (00:56:55) interaction between hospital and community relating to psychiatry; (01:01:13) Oxford university lectureship; (01:06:58) setting up the Ethox Foundation; (01:09:31) clinical work from 2005 onwards; (01:12:38) ethics research including on anorexia nervosa; (01:18:29) changes in student interest in medical ethics; (01:20:47) publications; (01:21:53) the Oxford Medical Forum; (01:23:47) proudest contribution to clinical work; (01:25:35) final thoughts, the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Note the following sections of audio are redacted: 00:59:56-1:01:12 and 01:04:54-1:06:58.

How and how far did orality play a part in the circulation of literature in early modern Italy? A lecture by Professor Brian Richardson. The literary culture of the period can be seen, in the terms of Walter Ong, as ‘residually oral’, since many kinds of compositions were diffused through the voice, in speech or song, as well as, or rather than, in writing. This paper will consider which kinds of texts might be performed, the occasions on which they were performed in public or in private, the professionals or amateurs who performed them, how and in which varieties of languages they were performed, using evidence from contemporary accounts and from the texts themselves. It will also suggest possible answers to the more difficult question of what the perceived benefits of performance might have been for the performer and the audience.

How and how far did orality play a part in the circulation of literature in early modern Italy? A lecture by Professor Brian Richardson. The literary culture of the period can be seen, in the terms of Walter Ong, as ‘residually oral’, since many kinds of compositions were diffused through the voice, in speech or song, as well as, or rather than, in writing. This paper will consider which kinds of texts might be performed, the occasions on which they were performed in public or in private, the professionals or amateurs who performed them, how and in which varieties of languages they were performed, using evidence from contemporary accounts and from the texts themselves. It will also suggest possible answers to the more difficult question of what the perceived benefits of performance might have been for the performer and the audience.

Richard G. Swinburne, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Oxford, gives a talk for the New Insights and Directions for Religious Epistemology seminar series. Abstract: Epiphenomenalism is the scientific theory that conscious events never cause physical events (and so intentions never cause brain events). The Libet programme seeks to prove epiphenomenalism by showing that it never makes any difference to a sequence of brain events whether or not an intention occurs during the course of it. To show that, it needs to show when (relative to brain events) some intention occurs; and to show that it relies on the reports of subjects about when and whether they form any intention. But while we are always justified in believing claims based on apparent experience, memory, or testimony in the absence of defeaters, it is a defeater to any such claim that some event occurred, that the apparent experience, memory, or testimony was not caused by the event. So we would only be justified in believing these reports if we were justified in believing that the reports were caused by subjects' having an intention to make words come out of their mouths which correctly report their other intentions. So the programme to prove epiphenomenalism relies on evidence about subjects' intentions on which it would only be justified in relying if epiphenomenalism is false. Hence the programme is self-defeating; and so is any other programme purporting to show that we can have a justified belief in epiphenomenalism and so in the causal closure of the physical.