The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith’s Dignitas personae does not offer a definitive rejection of the practice of human embryo adoption as intrinsically evil, but neither does it simply leave the matter an “open question.” The document does indeed oppose the practice, but its reasons for doing so are not clearly stated and seem to be in tension with its own affirmations of the personal dignity of embryos and the goodness of adoption. The Congregation’s opposition is therefore best (...) read as a prudential judgment that embryo adoption cannot be justified in the present circumstances due to the potential for scandal and the cooperation with the fertility industry which it involves. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.2 (Summer 2010): 307–328. (shrink)

To help eliminate perinatal HIV transmission, the US Department of Health and Human Services recommends against breastfeeding for women living with HIV, regardless of viral load or combined antiretroviral therapy status. However, cART radically improves HIV prognosis and virtually eliminates perinatal transmission, and breastfeeding's health benefits are well-established. In this setting, pregnancy is increasing among American women with HIV, and a harm reduction approach to those who breastfeed despite extensive counseling is suggested. We assess the evidence and ethical justification for (...) current policy, with attention to pertinent racial and health disparities. We first review perinatal transmission and breastfeeding data relevant to US infants. We compare hypothetical risk of HIV transmission from breastmilk to increased mortality from sudden infant death syndrome, necrotizing enterocolitis and sepsis from avoiding breastfeeding, finding that benefits may outweigh risks if mothers maintain undetectable viral load on cART. We then review maternal health considerations. We conclude that avoidance of breastfeeding by women living with HIV may not maximize health outcomes and discuss our recommendation for revising national guidelines in light of autonomy, harm reduction and health inequities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Full Collection of Personal NarrativesJake Beery, Neethi Pinto, Marcia King, Laura Wachsmuth, Alisha, Katie L. Gholson, T.S. Moran, Calvin R. Gross, Joanne Alfred, Cindy Bitter, Jenna Bennett, Nadia Khan, Clarice Douille, Kristen Carey Rock, Adrienne Feller Novick, Andrea Eisenberg, Japmehr Sandhu, Katherine Bakke, Heer Hendry, Karan K. Mirpuri, and Katerina V. Liong• Being the Difference• Grieving One More Time• Echoes of Grief: Tales from an Emergency Medicine and (...) Critical Care Nurse• Searching for Peace in Death• “I’d Love to go Off the Grid and Never Come Back”• “A Mother’s Love”• Tiny Person, Big Impact• Night Shift• Cracked Armor• Who Tells the Story• Navigating Hard Situations that Medical School Cannot Prepare You For• The Wish• Break• Five More Minutes• I Saw My Reflection• The Aftermath• Where the Journey Begins• Lessons Learned in Room 208• Joint and Grief Aches• My First Loss: Carrying His Legacy• Grieving the Loss of What Medicine Was Supposed to BeCopyright © 2024 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In the USA, there are missed opportunities to diagnose hepatitis C virus (HCV) in pregnancy because screening is currently risk-stratified and thus primarily limited to individuals who disclose history of injection drug use or sexually transmitted infection risks. Over the past decade, the opioid epidemic has dramatically increased incidence of HCV and a feasible, well-tolerated cure was introduced. Considering these developments, recent evidence suggests universal HCV screening in pregnancy would be cost-effective and several professional organisations have called for updated national (...) policy. Historically, universal screening has been financially disincentivised on the healthcare system level, particularly since new diagnoses may generate an obligation to provide expensive treatments to a population largely reliant on public health resources. Here, we provide ethical arguments supporting universal HCV screening in pregnancy grounded in obligations to respect for persons, beneficence and justice. First, universal prenatal HCV screening respects pregnant women as persons by promoting their long-term health outside of pregnancy. Additionally, universal screening would optimise health outcomes within current treatment guidelines and may support research on treatment during pregnancy. Finally, universal screening would avoid potential harms of risk-stratifying pregnant women by highly stigmatised substance use and sexual behaviours. (shrink)

Common hospital and surgical center responses to the Covid‐19 pandemic included curtailing “elective” procedures, which are typically determined based on implications for physical health and survival. However, in the focus solely on physical health and survival, procedures whose main benefits advance components of well‐being beyond health, including self‐determination, personal security, economic stability, equal respect, and creation of meaningful social relationships, have been disproportionately deprioritized. We describe how female reproduction‐related procedures, including abortion, surgical sterilization, reversible contraception devices and in vitro fertilization, (...) have been broadly categorized as “elective,” a designation that fails to capture the value of these procedures or their impact on women's overall well‐being. We argue that corresponding restrictions and delays of these procedures are problematically reflective of underlying structural views that marginalize women's rights and interests and therefore threaten to propagate gender injustice during the pandemic and beyond. Finally, we propose a framework for triaging reproduction‐related procedures during Covid‐19 that is more individualized, accounts for their significance for comprehensive well‐being, and can be used to inform resumption of operations as well as subsequent restriction phases. (shrink)

Disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality for Latinx populations are a paradigmatic example of the now widely acknowledged structural racism in U.S. health care that predisposed minorities to...

Through an absorbing investigation into recent, high-profile scandals involving one of the largest kosher slaughterhouses in the world, located unexpectedly in Postville, Iowa, Aaron S. Gross makes a powerful case for elevating the category of the animal in the study of religion. Major theorists have almost without exception approached religion as a phenomenon that radically marks humans off from other animals, but Gross rejects this paradigm, instead matching religion more closely with the life sciences to better theorize human (...) nature. Gross begins with a detailed account of the scandals at Agriprocessors and their significance for the American and international Jewish community. He argues that without a proper theorization of "animals and religion," we cannot fully understand religiously and ethically motivated diets and how and why the events at Agriprocessors took place. Subsequent chapters recognize the significance of animals to the study of religion in the work of Ernst Cassirer, Emile Durkheim, Mircea Eliade, Jonathan Z. Smith, and Jacques Derrida and the value of indigenous peoples' understanding of animals to the study of religion in our daily lives. Gross concludes by extending the Agribusiness scandal to the activities at slaughterhouses of all kinds, calling attention to the religiosity informing the regulation of "secular" slaughterhouses and its implications for our relationship with and self-imagination through animals. (shrink)

Prenatal ultrasound use is skyrocketing despite limited evidence of improved outcomes. One factor driving this trend is the widely recognized psychological appeal of real-time fetal imaging. Meanwhile, considering imperfect safety evidence, U.S. professional guidelines dictate that prenatal ultrasound—a screening test—should be governed by expected clinical benefits—an opportunity for intervention. However, when women’s healthcare professionals themselves are pregnant, their access to ultrasound technology permits informal, personal use that may deviate from standard-of-care, e.g., for reassurance. Highlighting a poignant case wherein a pregnant (...) obstetrician’s personal ultrasound use had unforeseen negative consequences, we explore this issue within context of professional ethics and informal medical care. We discuss how women’s health professionals’ self-care may influence and inform prenatal care at large. We advocate curtailing informal prenatal ultrasound use, but also potentially broadening accepted indications for or relaxing proscriptions against ultrasounds for patients. Further research and updated, evidence-based, ethically-sound guidelines are needed. (shrink)

Background: Little is known about U.S. healthcare provider views and practices regarding evidence, counseling, and shared decision-making about in-hospital versus out-of-hospital birth settings. Methods: We conducted 19 in-depth, semistructured, qualitative interviews of eight obstetricians, eight midwives, and three pediatricians from across the United States. Interviews explored healthcare providers’ interpretation of the current evidence and their personal and professional experiences with childbirth within the existing medical, ethical, and legal context in the United States. Results: Themes emerged concerning risks and benefits, decision-making, (...) and patient-provider power dynamics. Collectively, the narratives illuminated fundamental ideological tensions between in- and out-of-hospital providers arising from divergent assignment of value to described risks and benefits. The majority of physicians focused on U.S.-specific data demonstrating increased neonatal morbidity and mortality associated with delayed access to hospital-based interventions, thereby justifying hospital birth as the standard of care. By contrast, midwives emphasized data demonstrating fewer interventions and superior maternal and neonatal outcomes in high-income European countries, where out-of-hospital birth is more common for low-risk birthing people. A key gap in counseling was revealed, as no interviewees offered anticipatory counseling regarding birth setting options. Providers directly and indirectly illustrated the propensity for asymmetric power relations between birth providers and pregnant people, especially in hospital settings. Conclusions: The narratives highlight the common goal of optimizing maternal and neonatal outcomes despite tensions arising from divergent prioritization of specific maternal and neonatal risks. Our findings suggest opportunities to foster collaboration and optimize outcomes via mutual respect and improved integration of care. (shrink)

Writing about the intellectual development of a philosopher is a delicate business. My own endeavor to reinterpret the influence of Hegel on Dewey troubles some scholars because, they believe, I make Dewey seem less original.1 But if, like Dewey, we overcome Cartesian dualism, placing the development of the self firmly within a complex matrix of social processes, we are forced to reexamine, without necessarily surrendering, the notion of individual originality, or what Neil Gross calls “discourse[s] of creative genius.”2 To (...) use a mundane example, I can recall several conversations with Dewey scholars about his dislike for his home state of Vermont, all of which revolved around personal reasons he may.. (shrink)

Context: Josef Mitterer’s non-dualism advocates a method of analysis as distinct from a metaphysical position. As such it bears resemblance to my earlier work. Problem: Is there only the world of discourse or is there a sense in which some facts and some theories are beyond argument and will remain so? Approach: In my analysis I try to apply Mitterer’s ideas to science, philosophy, and literary criticism. Results: I claim that it is not possible to argue against certain scientific facts (...) or against scientific progress. The same holds for philosophy and literature. Implications: Some claims about science appear to be inconsistent with Mitterer’s non-dualist model, according to which validity-claims are limited to interpretations. Also, in literature, Mitterer’s claim that “text is neutralistic” does not apply. (shrink)

Given santayana's educational background in the united states, he could hardly fail to have been influenced by the pragmatic attitude, despite his protestations to the contrary. after a discussion of some of the main tenets of pragmatism, i show that they are present in the ontology of the realms of matter, truth, and spirit. while i do not make santayana into a pragmatist i do indicate the importance of pragmatism for his thought.

The assumption in current U.S. mainstream medicine is that birthing requires hospitalization. In fact, while the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists supports the right of every birthing person to make a medically informed decision about their delivery, they do not recommend home birth owing to data indicating greater neonatal morbidity and mortality. In this article, we examine the evidence surrounding home birth in the United States and its current limitations, as well as the ethical considerations around birth setting.

Fiona Cowie’s What’s Within consists of three parts. In the first, she examines the early modern rationalist-empiricist debate over nativism, isolating what she considers the two substantive “strands” that truly separated them: whether there exist domain-specific learning mechanisms, and whether concept acquisition is amenable to naturalistic explanation. She then turns, in the book’s succeeding parts, to where things stand today with these issues. The second part argues that Jerry Fodor’s view of concepts is continuous with traditional nativism in that it (...) precludes a naturalistic story of concept acquisition. Cowie objects, however, to Fodor’s path to this conclusion and thus sees no reason to endorse it. The third part assesses Chomskyan nativism as a contemporary instance of positing domain-specific learning mechanisms. Though she is highly critical of how “poverty of the stimulus” arguments and the like have been used to lend credence to stronger conclusions, she holds that such arguments do indeed support the nativist’s domain-specificity claim. Cowie’s reconsideration of nativism thus limits itself to concepts and language. The terrain she does cover, however, is vast; and Cowie’s illuminating discussions will stimulate anyone interested in the area. As I focus on a few large-scale qualms in what follows, let me mention in particular that much of what is of interest in Cowie’s book is to be found in her detailed consideration of specific arguments. (shrink)

The revelation that menstruation tracking apps share sensitive data with third parties, like Facebook, provoked a sense of violation among users. This case highlights the need to address ethics and governance of health data created outside of traditional healthcare contexts. Commodifying health data breaches trust and entails health and moral risks. Through the metaphor of The Wizard of Oz, we argue that these apps approximate healthcare without the professional competency, fiduciary duties, legal protections and liabilities such care requires and thus (...) represent an innovation in the annals of snake-oil salesmanship and the systematic devaluing of women’s bodies, lives, and work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.4 (2000) 319-335 [Access article in PDF] Rhetoric as a Technique and a Mode of Truth: Reflections on Chaïm Perelman Alan Gross In memoriam: Henry Johnstone, fons et origo.In one of his many criticisms of The New Rhetoric, the philosopher Henry W. Johnstone Jr. complains about its chapter "The Dissociation of Concepts" that "one is never sure whether [Chaïm Perelman is] thinking of rhetoric primarily (...) as a technique or primarily as a mode of truth. One wonders, too, what status [he is] claiming for the book itself" (1978, 99). 1 Since the chapter in question largely concerns philosophical argument, the doubt is very much apropos. But the response to Johnstone's implied question--a response that Johnstone does not think available--is that the correct answer legitimately varies in a systematic way. While in philosophical contexts, and, incidentally, in scientific ones, rhetoric is invariably a mode of truth, in contexts of public address it need not be. To see how this systematic variation might be the case, I will focus, as does Johnstone, on the dissociation of concepts as a test case of the robustness of a rhetoric oriented toward truth. To do so, I must first define dissociation and then come to terms with the way in which concepts are dissociated in public address, in philosophy, and in science. In treating these examples, however, I must be wary. While they will vary systematically according to field, they are not each instances of any general "law" of dissociation. Johnstone is surely right to "doubt whether there is any general logic of dissociation; there is only the logic of each particular dissociation, generated in each case by a particular problem" (99). When I have run through my examples, I can return to Johnstone's question about the status of rhetoric and of Perelman's study of it.Suppose that, in a campaign for the United States Senate, my opponent says that the central issue is high taxes, not the rise of medical costs, while I say that the central issue is medical costs, not high taxes. Neither of us [End Page 319] need be engaged in the dissociation of concepts; we may simply be excluding taxes and medical care, respectively, from political matters that deserve our immediate and full attention; we may simply be breaking the link between these issues and those of high political salience. In Perelman's words, "[T]he technique of breaking up a liaison consists... in asserting that elements that should remain separated and independent are improperly associated" (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, 411). Yet, if we think that adequate medical care for all Americans is a moral issue, that it transcends politics, we are dissociating this issue from the category of campaign issues of the ordinary sort, those that deal "merely" with expediency. In the process, we are devaluing matters of mere expediency. Dissociation is a way of taking the argumentative high ground, of putting an issue on a different plane, an act that in this case turns a political race into a moral contest. In Perelman's words, "[T]he dissociation of notions brings about a more or less profound change in the conceptual data that are used as a basis of argument. It is then no more a question of breaking the links that join independent elements, but of modifying the very structure of these elements" (412).To illustrate this difference, I will use two parallel passages on the same topic: one from Stephen Douglas and the other from Abraham Lincoln, both from the debate between them in Alton, Illinois, on 15 October 1858. In his passage, Douglas stoutly defends states' rights: This government was made on the great basis of the sovereignty of the States--the right of each state to regulate its own domestic institutions to suit itself, and that right was conferred with the understanding and expectation that inasmuch as each locality had separate and distinct interests, each state must have different and distinct local and domestic institutions, corresponding to the wants... (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Rimé makes the important observation that the literature on adult emotion and emotion regulation has largely focused on the individual level of analysis. He argues, we believe correctly, that emotion research would benefit by addressing the fact that emotional events provoke not only individual responses, but systematic social responses as well. We present examples of our own research that are in accord with Rimé's central claims, and that demonstrate the benefits of considering the goals that are provoked and satisfied by (...) emotions, as well as the social context of emotional responding. We conclude by advocating a dynamic systems approach that would allow an integration of individual and social levels of analysis in the study of adult emotion and emotion regulation. (shrink)

In this collection edited by Alan G. Gross and Arthur E. Walzer, scholars in communication, rhetoric and composition, and philosophy seek to “reread” Aristotle’s Rhetoric from a purely rhetorical perspective.

Jackendoff defends a mentalist approach to semantics that investigates conceptual structures in the mind/brain and their interfaces with other structures, including specifically linguistic structures responsible for syntactic and phonological competence. He contrasts this approach with one that seeks to characterize the intentional relations between expressions and objects in the world. The latter, he argues, cannot be reconciled with mentalism. He objects in particular that intentionality cannot be naturalized and that the relevant notion of object is suspect. I critically discuss these (...) objections, arguing in part that Jackendoff’s position rests on questionable philosophical assumptions. (shrink)

The "' New History" of which James Harvey Robinson's book of that name was the manifesto, has itself become a proper object of historical inquiry, which needs to investigate the attitudes and premises which underlay it. One important assumption was that adaptation to the world as given is the only "reasonable" position. Robinson argued that the historian must select and construct a "usable past," but the past he constructed was designed to make industrial efficiency the overriding contemporary value and to (...) reconcile the working population to the lot it "'must" accept. One can see by contrast with the "' New History" the possibility of a history which leads to re-thinking rather than accepting the givenness of the present. (shrink)

‘That in our times a kind of supernumerary person is appearing who is egoless, who in reality is not a human being, is a terrible truth.’ – Rudolf Steiner Are there people on earth today who do not have a self – a human ego or ‘I’? The phenomenon of ‘egolessness’ – the absence of a human being’s core – was discussed by the spiritual teacher Rudolf Steiner in lectures and personal conversations. An egoless individual, he intimated, is an empty (...) sheath through which other spiritual entities could operate. Erdmuth J. Grosse brings together many little-known quotations from Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual research and supports them with a wealth of disquieting reports, testimonies and examples from literature and politics. He places these insights within the broader context of the riddle of the human self, throwing light on the spiritual development of the individual and humanity as a whole. In this thought-provoking study, Grosse goes on to discuss the role of comets, the effects of cyanide on the human constitution – especially in the light of the Holocaust – and the hidden effects of ceremonial magic, occult lodges, cults and sects. In conclusion, he offers positive solutions to humanity’s present predicament by describing the healing impulses of social threefolding, the invisible spiritual beings seeking to help humanity, the role of the gods, the Christ impulse and the true goals of human evolution. (shrink)

Bayesians take “definite” or “single-case” probabilities to be basic. Definite probabilities attach to closed formulas or propositions. We write them here using small caps: PROB(P) and PROB(P/Q). Most objective probability theories begin instead with “indefinite” or “general” probabilities (sometimes called “statistical probabilities”). Indefinite probabilities attach to open formulas or propositions. We write indefinite probabilities using lower case “prob” and free variables: prob(Bx/Ax). The indefinite probability of an A being a B is not about any particular A, but rather about the (...) property of being an A. In this respect, its logical form is the same as that of relative frequencies. For instance, we might talk about the probability of a human baby being female. That probability is about human babies in general — not about individuals. If we examine a baby and determine conclusively that she is female, then the definite probability of her being female is 1, but that does not alter the indefinite probability of human babies in general being female. Most objective approaches to probability tie probabilities to relative frequencies in some way, and the resulting probabilities have the same logical form as the relative frequencies. That is, they are indefinite probabilities. The simplest theories identify indefinite probabilities with relative frequencies.3 It is often objected that such “finite frequency theories” are inadequate because our probability judgments often diverge from relative frequencies. For example, we can talk about a coin being fair (and so the indefinite probability of a flip landing heads is 0.5) even when it is flipped only once and then destroyed (in which case the relative frequency is either 1 or 0). For understanding such indefinite probabilities, it has been suggested that we need a notion of probability that talks about possible instances of properties as well as actual instances.. (shrink)

There is a long tradition of drawing metaphysical conclusions from investigations into language. This paper concerns one contemporary variation on this theme: the alleged ontological significance of cognitivist truth-theoretic accounts of semantic competence. According to such accounts, human speakers’ linguistic behavior is in part empirically explained by their cognizing a truth-theory. Such a theory consists of a finite number of axioms assigning semantic values to lexical items, a finite number of axioms assigning semantic values to complex expressions on the basis (...) of their structure and the semantic values of their constituents, and a finite number of production schemata. The theory enables the derivation of truth-conditions for each sentence of the language: something of roughly the form ‘S is true iff P’.1 The claim that speakers stand in a cognitive relation to such theories is advanced, not as a conceptual analysis of semantic competence or understanding, but rather as an empirical hypothesis about human speakers in particular, one part of a broader empirical account of our linguistic competence and cognition generally. It therefore must mesh with the rest of our theorizing in these areas and whatever relevant data from neighboring inquiries there may be. The precise nature of the cognitive relation a speaker is supposed to bear to a truththeory is a matter of some dispute. I speak of ‘‘cognizing’’ (following. (shrink)

Competent patients who refuse life saving medical treatment present a dilemma for healthcare professionals. On one hand, respect for autonomy and liberty demand that physicians respect a patient’s decision to refuse treatment. However, it is often apparent that such patients are not fully competent. They may not adequately comprehend the benefits of medical care, be overly anxious about pain, or discount the value of their future state of health. Although most bioethicists are convinced that partial autonomy or marginal competence of (...) this kind demands the same respect as full autonomy, Israeli legislators created a mechanism to allow ethics committees to override patients’ informed refusal and treat them against their will. To do so, three conditions must be satisfied: physicians must make every effort to ensure the patient understands the risks of non-treatment, the treatment physicians propose must offer a realistic chance of significant improvement, and there are reasonable expectations that the patient will consent retroactively. Although not all of these conditions are equally cogent, they offer a way forward to assure care for certain classes of competent patients without abandoning the principle of autonomy altogether. These concerns reach past Israel and should engage healthcare professionals wary that respect for autonomy may sometimes cause avoidable harm. (shrink)

Gross goes against the stereotype of New York photographer Diane Arbus as 'Sylvia Plath with a camera' in this examination of Arbus's work within the cultural, literary, and artistic milieu of the 1960s. The author discusses Arbus's portraits, street scenes, images of madness and disability, and her magazine work, including a spread of portraits of children in the magazine Harper's Bazaar, entitled "Auguries of Innocence." Other photographers, artists, and authors under discussion include Robert Frank, Truman Capote, Richard Avedon, Andy (...) Warhol, Roland Barthes, and William Burroughs. The book is for art and photography historians, social and cultural theorists, and lovers of 1960s visual culture. Unfortunately, it contains no photos. (shrink)

Because the goal of military medicine is salvaging the wounded who can return to duty, military medical ethics cannot easily defend devoting scarce resources to those so badly injured that they cannot return to duty. Instead, arguments turn to morale and political obligation to justify care for the seriously wounded. Neither argument is satisfactory. Care for the wounded is not necessary to maintain an army's morale. Nor is there any moral or logical connection between the right to health care (a (...) universal human right) and the duty to defend one's nation (a local political duty). Once badly wounded, soldiers enjoy the same right to medical care as any similarly ill or injured individual. National health care systems grasp this point and offer few additional health care benefits to veterans. In the United States, however, lack of universal health coverage skews the debate to focus on special entitlements for veterans without considering the health care rights that other citizens enjoy. (shrink)

Moving back and forth between the history of philosophy and the contributions of philosophers in his own day, Durkheim takes up topics as diverse as philosophical psychology, logic, ethics, and metaphysics, and seeks to articulate a unified philosophical position. Remarkably, in these lectures, given more than a decade before the publication of his groundbreaking book, The Division of Labour in Society, the 'social realism' that is so characteristic of his later work - where he insists, famously, that social facts cannot (...) be reduced to psychological or economic ones, and that such facts constrain human action in important ways - is totally absent in these early lectures. For this reason, they will be of special interest to students of the history of the social sciences, for they shed important light on the course of Durkheim's intellectual development. (shrink)

Coastal ecosystems are increasingly dominated by humans. Consequently, the human dimensions of sustainability science have become an integral part of emerging coastal governance and management practices. But if we are to avoid the harsh lessons of land management, coastal decision makers must recognize that humans are one of the more coastally dependent species in the biosphere. Management responses must therefore confront both the temporal urgency and the very real compromises and sacrifices that will be necessary to achieve a sustainable coastal (...) ecosystem, one that is economically feasible, socially just, and ecologically sound. (shrink)

Princess Diana’s death was a tragedy that provoked mourning across the globe; the death of a homeless person, more often than not, is met with apathy. How can we account for this uneven distribution of emotion? Can it simply be explained by the prevailing scientific understanding? Uncovering a rich tradition beginning with Aristotle, _The Secret History of Emotion_ offers a counterpoint to the way we generally understand emotions today. Through a radical rereading of Aristotle, Seneca, Thomas Hobbes, Sarah Fielding, and (...) Judith Butler, among others, Daniel M. Gross reveals a persistent intellectual current that considers emotions as psychosocial phenomena. In Gross’s historical analysis of emotion, Aristotle and Hobbes’s rhetoric show that our passions do not stem from some inherent, universal nature of men and women, but rather are conditioned by power relations and social hierarchies. He follows up with consideration of how political passions are distributed to some people but not to others using the Roman Stoics as a guide. Hume and contemporary theorists like Judith Butler, meanwhile, explain to us how psyches are shaped by power. To supplement his argument, Gross also provides a history and critique of the dominant modern view of emotions, expressed in Darwinism and neurobiology, in which they are considered organic, personal feelings independent of social circumstances. The result is a convincing work that rescues the study of the passions from science and returns it to the humanities and the art of rhetoric. (shrink)

At the beginning of the 16th century in Germany, religious ends and human art joined forces to produce a sacred rhetoric: a rhetoric that could transform human nature, and explain at the same time how such transformation was possible according to both science and scripture. No longer was it enough to ask in Scholastic fashion ‘What is man?’ - his essence and unique faculties, his special place in God’s world. A new question took on urgency in the wake of religious (...) reformation, namely ‘What could man become?’ But theology alone could not provide a practical response to this question. Rhetoric, in its various adopted forms, could. Consequently rhetoric emerged as architectonic of the human sciences in Reformation Germany, shaping pedagogy as a practical art. Whereas scholars have paid a good deal of attention to the way in which the exact sciences such as mathematics influenced Enlightenment human science, the history of human science as practical art has received little attention. This article contributes to such a history by showing how rhetoric as a practical protreptic art structured human scientific initiatives in the wake of Philipp Melanchthon’s Reformation pedagogy. (shrink)

In the context of our recently developed emergent quantum mechanics, and, in particular, based on an assumed sub-quantum thermodynamics, the necessity of energy quantization as originally postulated by Max Planck is explained by means of purely classical physics. Moreover, under the same premises, also the energy spectrum of the quantum mechanical harmonic oscillator is derived. Essentially, Planck’s constant h is shown to be indicative of a particle’s “zitterbewegung” and thus of a fundamental angular momentum. The latter is identified with quantum (...) mechanical spin, a residue of which is thus present even in the non-relativistic Schrödinger theory. (shrink)

On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York Times as “one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers.” Controversial on the left and the right for his critiques of objectivity and political radicalism, Rorty experienced a renown denied to all but a handful of living philosophers. In this masterly biography, Neil Gross explores the path of Rorty’s thought over the decades in order to trace the intellectual and professional journey that led him to that (...) prominence. The child of a pair of leftist writers who worried that their precocious son “wasn’t rebellious enough,” Rorty enrolled at the University of Chicago at the age of fifteen. There he came under the tutelage of polymath Richard McKeon, whose catholic approach to philosophical systems would profoundly influence Rorty’s own thought. Doctoral work at Yale led to Rorty’s landing a job at Princeton, where his colleagues were primarily analytic philosophers. With a series of publications in the 1960s, Rorty quickly established himself as a strong thinker in that tradition—but by the late 1970s Rorty had eschewed the idea of objective truth altogether, urging philosophers to take a “relaxed attitude” toward the question of logical rigor. Drawing on the pragmatism of John Dewey, he argued that philosophers should instead open themselves up to multiple methods of thought and sources of knowledge—an approach that would culminate in the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature , one of the most seminal and controversial philosophical works of our time. In clear and compelling fashion, Gross sets that surprising shift in Rorty’s thought in the context of his life and social experiences, revealing the many disparate influences that contribute to the making of knowledge. As much a book about the growth of ideas as it is a biography of a philosopher, Richard Rorty will provide readers with a fresh understanding of both the man and the course of twentieth-century thought. (shrink)

Aesthetics is today widely seen as the philosophy of art and/or beauty, limited to artworks and their perception. In this paper, I will argue that today's aesthetics and the original programme developed by the German Enlightenment thinker Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in the first half of the eighteenth century have only the name in common. Baumgarten did not primarily develop his aesthetics as a philosophy of art. The making and understanding of artworks had served in his original programme only as an (...) example for the application of his philosophy. What he really attempts to present is an alternative philosophy of knowledge that goes beyond the purely rationalist, empiricist, and sensualist approaches. In short, Baumgarten transcends the old opposition between rationalism and sensualism. His core theme is the improvement (perfectio) of human knowledge and cognition and the ways to reach this goal. The study of Baumgarten's foundational works on aesthetics should not be undertaken merely out of antiquarian interest. I will argue, instead, that Baumgarten's importance and contemporary relevance lies in this: that his Aesthetica may serve as a profound contribution to the philosophy of the cultural sciences and humanities. Revisiting Baumgarten's original idea of aesthetics will lead us to a more inclusive concept of that philosophical discipline. (shrink)

Robert Post's work in constitutional theory is engaging in an exceptional way: it always forces one to rethink and reconsider the basic tenets of the field. In his article The Challenge of Globalization to American Public Law Scholarship, Post discusses American public law and human rights scholarship in the age of globalization. In this comment, I will make a few remarks on some of the points raised in the article.