This study is based on the 1983 Rural Health Survey of Ethiopia. Patterns and levels of child morbidity by age, sex, geographic region, and sanitary facilities are examined. Morbidity levels peak in the second year of life. Diarrhoeal diseases are of major importance, especially among infants and toddlers. Parasitic diseases, and respiratory diseases other than pneumonia, become increasingly important with age.There are no significant sex differentials in morbidity except for higher rates of diarrhoeal diseases among female children. Geographic differentials are (...) quite marked with particularly high morbidity levels from all disease types in the western mountainous regions of Ethiopia. Access to high quality drinking water, a latrine, and garbage disposal, are strongly related to reduced overall morbidity levels, though not necessarily to reduced diarrhoeal disease levels. (shrink)

The person-organization fit (P-O fit) literature suggests that job seekers are attracted to organizations that match their personal values; but, to date, little is known about how individuals’ personal values might affect their preferences for particular job attributes when seeking a job. In this paper, using data from 351 job seekers at several employment agencies in Haute-Normandie, France, we examine possible connections between certain personal values and job attribute preferences among job seekers.

Après avoir présenté les « réformes » de la dialectique hégélienne par Croce et Gentile, nous examinons leur critique par Gramsci : les penseurs néo-idéalistes nieraient, contrairement à Hegel, les contradictions réelles – négation liée à certains égards à la logique des révolutions passives. Nous nous arrêtons ensuite sur les conceptions de l’État de Croce et de Gentile, dont les perspectives – respectivement libérale et étatiste – pêchent toutes deux par abstraction pour Gramsci. Ce dernier s’attache à penser l’État en (...) son sens intégral (dans son unité dialectique avec la société civile), et juge pour cela nécessaire, ici aussi, de revenir à Hegel. (shrink)

Cet article part de la remise en cause radicale de la croyance en l’histoire dans la pensée et les représentations contemporaines, que Fredric Jameson a étudiée sous la notion de postmodernité. Nous montrons ici que les réflexions de Gramsci sont précieuses pour affronter cette crise de l’historicité moderne, à plusieurs égards. D’abord, il conçoit l’histoire comme un processus de luttes et parvient ainsi à en saisir la consistance propre sans en nier l’ouverture. Ensuite, grâce aux concepts qu’il forge, comme celui (...) d’hégémonie, il analyse les différentes manières dont les représentations de l’histoire expriment les situations historiques concrètes, et y produisent en retour des effets immanents. Enfin, en comprenant le lien entre crise d’hégémonie et crise de l’historicité, il pense la possibilité, pour les subalternes, de retrouver et de réaliser un sens de l’histoire. (shrink)

The notion of passive revolution is nowadays recognised as one of Gramsci’s most important theoretical contributions. Not only has it been the subject of extensive work in foreign languages, this concept is also used to analyse various historical phenomena or present concrete situations. The aim of this article is to provide a synthetic study of the development and uses of the notion of passive revolution in the Prison Notebooks. To this end, we follow the notion through its various phases of (...) development, tracking the shifts in meaning according to the cases for which it is used (the Risorgimento, nineteenth-century Europe, Fascism, Americanism, etc.). For Gramsci, the contributions of this notion seem to be positioned on at least two levels, linked dialectically: To conceive a modality of historical change that cannot be reduced to revolutionary upheavals in the strict sense; and to critically highlight the dominant classes’ political strategies to advance the emancipation of subaltern autonomous activity. (shrink)

Much innovation has taken place in the development of medical schools and licensure exam processes across the African continent. Still, little attention has been paid to education that enables the multidisciplinary, critical thinking needed to understand and help shape the larger social systems in which health care is delivered. Although more than half of medical schools in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States offer at least one medical humanities course, this is less common in Africa. We report on (...) the “liberal arts approach” to medical curricula undertaken by the University of Global Health Equity beginning in 2019. The first six-month semester of the curriculum, called Foundations in Social Medicine, includes courses in critical thinking and communication, African history and global political economy, medical anthropology and social medicine, psychology and health, gender and social justice, information technology and health, and community-based training. Additionally, an inquiry-based pedagogy with relatively small classes is featured within an overall institutional culture that emphasizes health equity. We identify key competencies for physicians interested in pursuing global health equity and how such competencies relate to liberal arts integration into the African medical school curriculum and pedagogical approach. We conclude with a call for a research agenda that can better evaluate the impact of such innovations on physicians’ education and subsequent practices. (shrink)

BackgroundDuring extensive outbreaks of infectious diseases, people who are impacted, particularly the subgroups of the community who are at an increased risk of mental health problems, may experience increased stress and mental health difficulties. University students are one such susceptible population and are prone to experiencing high levels of stress as compared with the general population. Therefore, this study aimed at assessing perceived stress and identifying its associated factors among university students in Ethiopia during the late stage of the COVID-19 (...) pandemic.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted among university students in Ethiopia from 30 May to 30 June 2021. Students were asked to fill out an online survey on Google Forms that included consent, sociodemographic information, the UCLA-8 Loneliness Scale, the standard validated stress scale questionnaire, and the three-item Oslo Social Support Scale to assess social support. The collected data were exported to SPSS 26. Descriptive and analytical statistics were carried out. Binary and multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to find associated factors, and variables with a p-value of 0.05 were considered statistically significant variables.ResultsA total of 426 university students were included in the survey, among whom 268 were male participants. The age of the participants ranged from 18 to 37 years. Health-related departments accounted for 37.1% of the participants, while non-health-related departments accounted for 62.9%. The prevalence of stress was 18.3% in the study population. In this study, extreme susceptibility to COVID-19, sleeping problems, poor self-efficacy to prevent COVID-19, and loneliness were significantly associated with perceived stress.ConclusionStress was prevalent among university students in Ethiopia during the late stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Extreme susceptibility to COVID-19, sleeping problems, poor self-efficacy, and loneliness were identified as factors for stress. Therefore, we suggest that universities should provide opportunities for safe social connection, counseling, and guidance for students. (shrink)

« Les Cahiers de prison ne sont pas un manuel contenant des recettes stratégiques prêtes à l’emploi » (p. 296). Ces mots de conclusion ne signifient pas que Yohann Douet cherche à arracher Gramsci à ses interprètes militants. Bien au contraire, il souhaite le leur rendre dans toute son originalité et son épaisseur. Pour cela, il entame un ample dialogue avec les lieux communs qui ont cours aujourd’hui. Loin d’opposer les usages courants à la discipline savante, il cherche, au fil (...) d’un travail... (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce the notion of intuitionistic fuzzy PMS-subalgebras under homomorphism and Cartesian product and investigate several properties. We study the homomorphic image and inverse image of the intuitionistic fuzzy PMS-subalgebras of a PMS-algebra, which are also intuitionistic fuzzy PMS-subalgebras of a PMS-algebra, and find some other interesting results. Furthermore, we also prove that the Cartesian product of intuitionistic fuzzy PMS-subalgebras is again an intuitionistic fuzzy PMS-subalgebra and characterize it in terms of its level sets. Finally, we consider (...) the strongest intuitionistic fuzzy PMS-relations on an intuitionistic fuzzy set in a PMS-algebra and demonstrate that an intuitionistic fuzzy PMS-relation on an intuitionistic fuzzy set in a PMS-algebra is an intuitionistic fuzzy PMS-subalgebra if and only if the corresponding intuitionistic fuzzy set in a PMS-algebra is an intuitionistic fuzzy PMS-subalgebra of a PMS-algebra. (shrink)

Ce livre réunit les actes du colloque qui s’est tenu le 30 octobre 2013 à Nérac dans le cadre des agoras nationales de l’Association des Professeurs d’Histoire & de Géographie, auxquelles ont participé Éric Bonhomme, Yohann Chanoir, Franck Collard, Maurice Daumas, Didier Foucault, Thierry Issartel, Thierry Labarthe, Céline Piot et Yann Prouillet. Pour paraphraser l’humour de sa préface, ce colloque pourrait s’intituler « Et si Lysistrata était un homme…. » Car du masculin et du viril, il en e...

Two attitudes are possible: one, that the world is an absolute jungle and that the exercise of coercive power by rulers is only a manifestation of this; and the other, that it is both necessary and right that there should be this exercise of power, that through it the world is much less of a jungle than it could possibly be without it, so that one should in principle be glad of the existence of such power, and only take exception (...) to its unjust exercise. (shrink)

The current prevailing view is that participation in biomedical research is above and beyond the call of duty. While some commentators have offered reasons against this, we propose a novel public goods argument for an obligation to participate in biomedical research. Biomedical knowledge is a public good, available to any individual even if that individual does not contribute to it. Participation in research is a critical way to support an important public good. Consequently, all have a duty to participate. The (...) current social norm is that individuals participate only if they have a good reason to do so. The public goods argument implies that individuals should participate unless they have a good reason not to. Such a shift would be of great aid to the progress of biomedical research, eventually making society significantly healthier and longer lived. (shrink)

While philosophers are often concerned with the conditions for moral knowledge or justification, in practice something arguably less demanding is just as, if not more, important – reliably making correct moral judgments. Judges and juries should hand down fair sentences, government officials should decide on just laws, members of ethics committees should make sound recommendations, and so on. We want such agents, more often than not and as often as possible, to make the right decisions. The purpose of this paper (...) is to propose a method of enhancing the moral reliability of such agents. In particular, we advocate for a procedural approach; certain internal processes generally contribute to people’s moral reliability. Building on the early work of Rawls, we identify several particular factors related to moral reasoning that are specific enough to be the target of practical intervention: logical competence, conceptual understanding, empirical competence, openness, empathy and bias. Improving on these processes can in turn make people more morally reliable in a variety of contexts and has implications for recent debates over moral enhancement. (shrink)

In _Violence and Civility_, Étienne Balibar boldly confronts the insidious causes of violence, racism, nationalism, and ethnic cleansing worldwide, as well as mass poverty and dispossession. Through a novel synthesis of theory and empirical studies of contemporary violence, the acclaimed thinker pushes past the limits of political philosophy to reconceive war, revolution, sovereignty, and class. Through the pathbreaking thought of Derrida, Balibar builds a topography of cruelty converted into extremism by ideology, juxtaposing its subjective forms and its objective manifestations. Engaging (...) with Marx, Hegel, Hobbes, Clausewitz, Schmitt, and Luxemburg, Balibar introduces a new, productive understanding of politics as antiviolence and a fresh approach to achieving and sustaining civility. Rooted in the principles of transformation and empowerment, this theory brings hope to a world increasingly divided even as it draws closer together. (shrink)

The right to withdraw from participation in research is recognized in virtually all national and international guidelines for research on human subjects. It is therefore surprising that there has been little justification for that right in the literature. We argue that the right to withdraw should protect research participants from information imbalance, inability to hedge, inherent uncertainty, and untoward bodily invasion, and it serves to bolster public trust in the research enterprise. Although this argument is not radical, it provides a (...) useful way to determine how the right should be applied in various cases. (shrink)

The concept of facticity denotes conditions of experience whose necessity is not logical yet whose contingency is not empirical. Although often associated with Heidegger, Fichte coins ‘facticity’ in his Berlin period to refer to the conclusion of Kant’s metaphysical deduction of the categories, which he argues leaves it a contingent matter that we have the conditions of experience that we do. Such rhapsodic or factical conditions, he argues, must follow necessarily, independent of empirical givenness, from the I through a process (...) of ‘genesis.’ I reconstruct Fichte’s argument by tracing the origin of his neologism, presenting his Jena critique of Kant’s rhapsodic appeal to the forms of judgment, and illustrating the Jena period’s continuity with the Berlin period’s genetic method, while noting a methodological shift whereby Fichte directs his critique against his own doctrine of intellectual intuition in order to eliminate its ‘factical terms.’. (shrink)

Fichte argues that the conclusion of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories is correct yet lacks a crucial premise, given Kant’s admission that the metaphysical deduction locates an arbitrary origin for the categories. Fichte provides the missing premise by employing a new method: a genetic deduction of the categories from a first principle. Since Fichte claims to articulate the same view as Kant in a different, it is crucial to grasp genetic deduction in relation to the sorts of deduction that (...) Kant offers. I propose to interpret genetic deduction as the simultaneous fulfillment of two tasks: answering the question quid facti by deriving the categories from the I and answering the question quid juris by establishing our entitlement to the categories as conditions of experience. While the second task represents Fichte’s agreement with Kant’s transcendental deduction, the first reflects his correction of Kant’s metaphysical deduction. (shrink)

It is now nearly axiomatic among Platonic scholars that the Timaeus and its unfinished sequel the Critias belong to the last stage of Plato's writings. The Laws is generally held to be wholly or partly a later production. So, by many, is the Philebus, but that is all. Perhaps the privileged status of the Timaeus in the Middle Ages helped to fix the conviction that it embodies Plato's maturest theories.

SummaryExtremism in the environment‐versus innateness controversy in the behavioural sciences and in human sociobiology is being examined. Genetic effects can be severely modified or overruled by environmental factors, but may, nevertheless, be important. Dawkins' view that we are survival machines programmed to subserve selfish genes seems untenable and is a root of racialism. It is also argued that morality is compatible with mixed genetic and environmental control of brains via existing biological machinery.

In the Vocation of Man, Fichte makes the striking claim that life is eternal, rational, our true being, and the final cause of nature in general and of death in particular. How can we make sense of this claim? I argue that the public lectures that compose the Vocation are a popular expression of Fichte’s pre-existing commitment to what I call immortalism, the view that life is the unconditioned condition of intelligibility. Casting the I as an absolutely self-active or living (...) power enables his philosophical account of both the intelligibility of objects and of what it means to die. This explains his characterization of the Wissenschaftslehre as a system in which ‘all is act, movement, and life’. In Sect. 1, I explain the context of Jacobi’s use of ‘caput mortuum’ as a term for the thing in itself. In Sects. 2 and 3, I reconstruct two immortalist arguments from Fichte’s Jena period. The first is that the I’s self-activity rules out the existence of the thing in itself and thereby vanquishes ‘death’s head’. The second is that, insofar as the I charges us with the moral perfection of nature, it is the final cause of our entire life, including its end. This is to say that the I puts our every moment into question, even our last. In Sect. 4, I use these immortalist arguments to interpret the striking claim from the Vocation. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Schelling assigns knowledge of the absolute first principle of philosophy to intellectual intuition. Schelling's doctrine of intellectual intuition raises two important questions for interpreters. First, given that his doctrine undergoes several changes before and after his identity philosophy, to what extent can he be said to “hold onto” the same “sense” of it by the 1830s, as he claims? Second, given that his doctrine of intellectual intuition restricts absolute idealism to what he calls a “science of reason”, (...) which he says cannot prove the absolute’s existence, what other doctrine does he require in order to prove this? I will answer these questions by tracing the shifts in Schelling’s doctrine of intellectual intuition from the 1790s to the 1830s and drawing out its evolving methodological role within his science of intelligibility. (shrink)

While second-order quantifiers have long been known to admit nonstandard, or interpretations, first-order quantifiers (when properly viewed as predicates of predicates) also allow a kind of interpretation that does not presuppose the full power-set of that interpretationgeneral” interpretations for (unary) first-order quantifiers in a general setting, emphasizing the effects of imposing various further constraints that the interpretation is to satisfy.

Our understanding of Schelling’s internal critique of German idealism, including his late attack on Hegel, is incomplete unless we trace it to the early “Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism,” which initiate his engagement with the problem of systematicity—that judgment makes deriving a system of a priori conditions from a first principle necessary, while this capacity’s finitude makes this impossible. Schelling aims to demonstrate this problem’s intractability. My conceptual aim is to reconstruct this from the “Letters,” which reject Fichte’s claim (...) that the Wissenschaftslehre is an unrivalled system. I read Schelling as charging Fichte with misrepresenting a system’s livability or commensurability with our finitude. My historical aim is to provide a framework for understanding Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift, which argues that a system’s liveability depends on its incompleteness or limitation by our finitude. On my reading, Schelling is early and continually committed to systematicity within the bounds of human finitude. (shrink)

Graduate-level historical study is ideal for students intending to specialize in the topic, as well as those who only need a general treatment. Part I discusses traditional and symbolic logic. Part II explores the foundations of mathematics, emphasizing Hilbert’s metamathematics. Part III focuses on the philosophy of mathematics. Each chapter has extensive supplementary notes; a detailed appendix charts modern developments.

"It is the purpose of this article to attempt to re-examine the account of Thrasymachus' doctrine in Plato's Republic, and to show how it can form a self-consistent whole. [...] In this paper it is maintained that Thrasymachus is holding a form of [natural right]".

In the late 1810s and 1820s the Edinburgh phrenologists were largely concerned with trying to establish phrenology as the true science of mind. They challenged the accepted theories about the nature of mind and the brain; in turn, phrenology was attacked by the proponents of Scottish common-sense philosophy and by some medical men. The ensuing debate, which is discussed as an example of conflict between incommensurable world-views, involved a wide range of contentious theological, philosophical, scientific and methodological issues.

Originally published in 1965. This is a textbook of modern deductive logic, designed for beginners but leading further into the heart of the subject than most other books of the kind. The fields covered are the Propositional Calculus, the more elementary parts of the Predicate Calculus, and Syllogistic Logic treated from a modern point of view. In each of the systems discussed the main emphases are on Decision Procedures and Axiomatisation, and the material is presented with as much formal rigour (...) as is compatible with clarity of exposition. The techniques used are not only described but given a theoretical justification. Proofs of Consistency, Completeness and Independence are set out in detail. The fundamental characteristics of the various systems studies, and their relations to each other are established by meta-logical proofs, which are used freely in all sections of the book. Exercises are appended to most of the chapters, and answers are provided. (shrink)

Background Several jurisdictions, including Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and most recently Ireland, have a public interest or public good criterion for granting waivers of consent in biomedical research using secondary health data or tissue. However, the concept of the public interest is not well defined in this context, which creates difficulties for institutions, institutional review boards and regulators trying to implement the criterion. Main text This paper clarifies how the public interest criterion can be defensibly deployed. We first explain the (...) ethical basis for requiring waivers to only be granted to studies meeting the public interest criterion, then explore how further criteria may be set to determine the extent to which a given study can legitimately claim to be in the public interest. We propose an approach that does not attempt to measure magnitude of benefit directly, but rather takes into account metrics that are more straightforward to apply. To ensure consistent and justifiable interpretation, research institutions and IRBs should also incorporate procedural features such as transparency and public engagement in determining which studies satisfy the public interest requirement. Conclusion The requirement of public interest for consent waivers in secondary biomedical research should be guided by well-defined criteria for systematic evaluation. Such a criteria and its application need to be periodically subject to intra-committee and intra-institution review, reflection, deliberation and amendment. (shrink)

Research examining firm and industry effects on performance has primarily focused on the financial aspects of firm performance. Corporate social performance is a major aspect of firm performance that has been under-examined empirically in the literature to date. Adding to the fundamental debate regarding firm versus industry effects on performance, this study uses data drawn from the Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini Co. database to examine the degree to which CSP is related to firm, industry, and temporal factors. The results of (...) these analyses suggest that CSP tends to change in a linear manner over time; however, the slope of this line varies across firms and industries. These findings are supported by several robustness checks accounting for autocorrelation, alternative measures of industry, different samples commonly used when using KLD data to measure CSP, and alternative measures of CSP when using the KLD database. The authors also directly compare firm, industry, and temporal effects between CSP and financial performance. (shrink)

We argue that the ecological research community should develop a plan for improving the ethical consistency and moral robustness of the field. We propose a particular ethics strategy—specifically, an ongoing process of collective ethical reflection that the community of ecological researchers, with the cooperation of applied ethicists and philosophers of biology, can use to address the needs we identify. We suggest a particular set of conceptual and analytic tools that, we argue, collectively have the resources to provide an empirically grounded (...) and conceptually complete foundation for an ethics strategy for ecological research. We illustrate our argument with information gathered from a survey of ecologists conducted at the 2013 meeting of the Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution. (shrink)

This volume contains papers that represent Leibniz’s early thoughts on the problem of evil, centering on a dialogue, the Confessio philosophi, in which he formulates a general account of God’s relation to sin and evil that becomes a fixture in his thinking. How can God be understood to be the ultimate cause, asks Leibniz, without God being considered as the author of sin, a conclusion incompatible with God’s holiness? Leibniz’s attempts to justify the way of God to humans lead him (...) to deep discussion of related topics: the nature of free choice, the problems of necessitarianism and fatalism, the nature of divine justice and holiness. All but one of the writings presented here are available in English for the first time. (shrink)

Our era is characterized by a significant conflict between populism and anti-populism, both politically and culturally. Populist groups and leaders often portray themselves as the true voices of the common people, gaining electoral support or even taking power by framing society as a battle between the ordinary people and the elite, challenging the political and economic establishment. Conversely, parties within the liberal political spectrum counteract the rise of populism by articulating a strong anti-populist discourse, sometimes successfully dominating the political arena. (...) However, despite the increase in studies on populism, there are not many publications regarding anti-populism. This article seeks to examine the anti-populist discourse in Argentina and Greece, two countries with many similarities in political, economic, and cultural aspects. By analyzing the key ideas of anti-populist discourse, we aim to highlight the common anti-populist logic marked by typical paths of modernization, which not only opposes populism but also frequently disregards or opposes specific social groups, such as minorities. (shrink)

This paper looks at what David Kaplan's work on indexicals can teach us about logic and the philosophy of logic, and also what Kaplan's logic (i.e. the Logic of Demonstratives) can teach us about indexicals. The lessons are i) that logical consequence is not necessary truth-preservation, ii) that that the linguistic doctrine of necessary truth (also called conventionalism about modality) fails, and iii) that there is a kind of barrier to entailment between non-context-sensitive and context-sensitive claims.

Research has demonstrated that employee reactions to monitoring systems depend on both the characteristics of the monitoring system and how it is implemented. However, little is known about the role individual differences may play in this process. This study proposes that individuals have generalized attitudes toward organizational control and monitoring activities. We examined this argument by assessing the relationship between employees’ baseline attitudes toward a set of monitoring and control techniques that span the employment relationship. We further explore the effects (...) of employees’ generalized attitudes toward monitoring and their individual ethical orientations on their attitudinal reactions to an Internet monitoring system implemented in their workplace. Results of a longitudinal study indicate that as expected, prior beliefs and ethical orientation interact to affect employees’ reactions to monitoring systems. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The rise of networked social movements contesting neo-liberal globalization and protesting the summits of global finance and governance organizations has posed an analytical challenge to social movement theorists and called into question the applicability to this global milieu of the familiar concepts and heuristics utilized in social movement studies. In this article, we argue that the self-defining alter-globalization movement(s) might instead be engaged with as an expression and effect of global complexity, and we draw upon a ‘minor’ literature in social (...) movement studies that includes Gregory Bateson, Gilles Deleuze and Alberto Melucci to illustrate our claims. This article uses a Deleuzian reading of complexity to describe the phase space of the ‘movement of movements’, and its perturbation of global civil society through the iteration of sense-making processes (reflexive framing) and the exploration of singularities inhering in social movement ‘plateaux’. Those transnational gatherings, protests and social forums facilitated by computer-mediated communications and the advent of unprecedented mobility which constitute a ‘shadow realm’ that remains largely invisible to political exchange theories operating within the conceptual confines of the nation-state. (shrink)

In previous work I argued against (i) the likelihood of finding a theoretically sound foundation for the linked/convergent distinction and (ii) the utility of the distinction even if a sound theoretical basis could be found. Here I subject Douglas Walton’s comprehensive discussion of the linked/convergent distinction found in Argument Structure: A Pragmatic Theory to careful scrutiny and argue that at best Walton’s theory remains incomplete and that attempts to fill out the details will run afoul of at least one of (...) the problems adduced above—i.e., result in either a theoretically unsound distinction or a theoretically sound, but unnecessary distinction. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: It can be argued that the ethical conduct of research involves achieving a balance between the rights and needs of three parties-potential research participants, society, and researchers. Local Research Ethics Committees (LRECs) have a number of roles and functions in the research enterprise, but there have been some indications that LREC members, researchers and the public can have different views about these responsibilities. Any such differences are potential sources of disagreement and misunderstanding. OBJECTIVES: To compare the views of LREC (...) members, researchers and the public towards the roles and functions of LRECs. DESIGN: A questionnaire that contained items concerned with a variety of such roles was distributed to general practice patients (as proxies for potential research participants), researchers and LREC members. FINDINGS: While general practice patients believed that the main function of LRECs is to ensure that research participants come to no harm, LREC members were more concerned with the protection of participants' rights. There was also some disagreement between members and researchers with regard to the consideration of proposals on the grounds of scientific merit. CONCLUSIONS: Local Research Ethics Committee members need to be aware of potential differences in views, that they ought to make their priorities clear, and that membership of LRECs ought to reflect the views of both researchers and potential research participants. (shrink)

Plato's Sophist begins with an attempt to arrive by division at a definition of a Sophist. In the course of the attempt six different descriptions are discussed and the results summarized at 231 c-e. A seventh and final account may be said to occupy the whole of the rest of the dialogue, including the long digression on negative statements. The first five divisions characterize with a considerable amount of satire different types of sophist, or more probably different aspects of the (...) sophistic art. The sixth division is very different. To quote Cornford's words, ‘satire is dropped. The tone is serious and sympathetic, towards the close it becomes eloquent’. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the debate over the purported distinction between deductive and inductive arguments can be bypassed because making the distinction is unnecessary for successfully evaluating arguments. I provide a foundation for doing logic that makes no appeal to the distinction and still performs all the relevant tasks required of an analysis of arguments. I also reply to objections to the view that we can dispense with the distinction. Finally, I conclude that the distinction between inductive and (...) deductive arguments is not one of the most important and fundamental ideas in logic, but rather is unnecessary. (shrink)

In this article the validity of transferring the Principle of Double Effect from the just war tradition to the domain of business is critically reviewed. If a case can be built for sufficient analogies between war and business, the principle of double effect can legitimately be transferred from war to business. If, on the other hand it can be shown that there are aspects in which business differs substantially from just war, then the transfer to business of a principle developed (...) within the context of war becomes more problematic. After exploring the nature of arguments of analogy and fallacious arguments of weak analogy some important disanalogies between war and business are highlighted. Given these disanalogies it is then contended that the just war background of the Principle of Double Effect had some bearing on both the content and manner of application of the Principle of Double Effect. Finally it is argued that these disanalogies require some revisions to the Principle of Double Effect with regard to both its content and its manner of application before it can be applied meaningfully to foreseeable negative side-effects of business. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.22(3) 2003: 236–246. (shrink)

In recent years, the practices of work organizations have raised increasing concerns regarding individual privacy at work. It is clear that people expect and value privacy in their personal lives. However, the extent to which privacy perceptions influence individuals’ work attitudes is less clear. Research has explored the extent to which employee perceptions of privacy derive from characteristics of the programs themselves. However, there is a paucity of research that examines how the characteristics of the individual employee may influence perceptions (...) of these programs. In this study we seek to shed light on this issue, as we examine how the individual ethical orientation of employees influences perceptions of a variety of human resource programs that have the potential to be perceived as invasive. Results indicate that ethical orientation exerts direct effects on perceived invasiveness of programs and exerts both direct and indirect effects on perceived appropriateness of programs. Implications for research and for managers adopting privacy-related programs are discussed. (shrink)

The volume also publishes for the first time a part of his Debrecen Ph.D. thesis and it is concluded by a bibliography of his Hungarian writings.

International medical travel occurs when patients cross national borders to purchase medical goods and services. On occasion, physicians in home countries will be the last point of domestic contact for patients seeking healthcare information before they travel abroad for care. When this is the case, physicians have a unique opportunity to inform patients about their options and help guide them towards ethical practices. This opportunity brings to the fore an important question: What role should physicians in more-developed home countries play (...) in promoting or constraining international medical travel towards less-developed destination countries? In our view, critical attention to the decision spaces of patients—defined by the personal circumstances, socio-cultural cues, and legal constraints that inform decision-making—is a useful starting point for evaluating the proper response of physicians to various forms of international medical travel. (shrink)

This paper argues that the choice of backing to certify the authority of a warrant requires a legitimation inference. When brought into question, such an inference becomes a claim defended by showing sound reasons for the selection of backing pertinent to a shared context. Legitimation controversies ensue when an attributed consensus meets objection. It is argued that attention to legitimation controversies renders the Toulmin model a more useful critical paradigm for investigating the development and risks of communicative reasoning in a (...) public forum. The nomination of John Tower as Secretary of Defense is employed to illustrate how critical analysis of legitimation controversies reflexively expands the domain of inquiry for informal reasoning. (shrink)

Three basic political positions on embryo research will be identified as libertarian, conservative, and social-democratic. The Human Embryo Research Panel will be regarded as an expression of the social-democratic position. A taxonomy of the ethical issues addressed by the Panel will then be developed at the juncture of political and ethical modes of reflection. Among the arguments considered will be those for the separability of the abortion and embryo research debates; arguments against the possibility of the preembryo being a person, (...) especially arguments associated with totipotency and the significance of the primitive streak; and the various reasons for regulating embryo research, including those associated with respect for the preembryo, the protection of traditional views of human procreation, and the prevention of commercialization. (shrink)

I want to suggest that Plato arrived at a revised theory of forms in the later dialogues. Or perhaps I might rather say that he constructed a new underpinning for the theory. This can be discerned, I believe, in the Sophist, taken together with certain parts of the dialectic of the Parmenides which use the same language as the Sophist.

“THE ONLY THING NECESSARY IS NOT THEORETICAL LEARNING, but the Bildung of human beings, both in regard to their talents and their character.” Kant’s epigrammatic observation in his 1778 letter to Christian Wolke, director of the Philanthropin, adumbrates not only his mature sense of “enlightenment” but also the pedagogical role of his critical philosophy and his own life’s work. Over a decade earlier, his reading of Rousseau’s Emile: or, On Education had “set him straight” about what constitutes the true dignity (...) of humanity, namely, that it did not consist in the advance of knowledge by scholarly inquiry as he had believed. The primary thing was, instead, the “restoration of the rights of humanity,” an objective articulated in Kant’s mature moral thought as that pedagogical method which facilitates the self-consciousness and efficacy of the moral law in the individual. In another 1778 letter, this time to his former student, Marcus Herz, Kant states that the “main purpose of his academic life,” which he “at all times keeps before him,” is to “cultivate good characters.” In both his lectures on anthropology and on pedagogy, Kant repeatedly emphasizes the need for education and, by extension, for attending to the education of the educator. Human beings are nothing save what education makes of them, but they can only be educated by other human beings who must themselves first be educated. As early as his 1775/ 76 anthropology lectures, Kant observes that “if teachers and priests were educated, if the concepts of pure morality would prevail among them, then... the whole could afterwards be educated.” The resulting task is clear: it is incumbent on every generation to work on the plan of a more purposive education,” a task Kant describes as the “greatest and most difficult problem that can be assigned to humankind.”. (shrink)

Structural Realism (SSR), as embodied in the Ramsey-sentence H of a theory H, is defended against the view that H reduces to a trivial statement about the cardinally of the domain of H, a view which arises from ignoring the central role of observation within science. Putnam's theses are examined and shown to support rather than undermine SSR. Finally: in view of its synthetic character, applied mathematics must enter into the formulation of H and hence to be shown axiomatisable; this (...) is done in the Appendix, which is the most important part of the paper. (shrink)