Sixty‐one million Americans and approximately a billion people worldwide live with some form of disability that limits one or more major life activities. The field of precision medicine continues to grapple with how to best serve disability communities. In this paper, we suggest that precision medicine faces an ethical tension between its goal to treat or cure disabling conditions and views that consider disability as a marginalized identity. We appeal to the concepts of recognition justice and distributive justice to argue (...) that the ELSI community should take a more proactive role in promoting disability inclusion in precision medicine's practice and research. We also highlight two priorities for the ELSI community moving forward: facilitating greater collaboration between genetics and genomic professionals and disability communities and advocating for inclusive research design and disability accommodations in the research process. (shrink)

In Kant’s Groundwork II, the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) seems to be the argumentative link between the notion of a categorical imperative and later formulae (e.g. of humanity), its function as this link dependent on its equivalence to both. Some commentators have denied this equivalence and read the section as a failure. Others have abandoned its expository development by reading later formulae into the FUL. I argue that we need do neither if we distinguish the universality of the FUL (...) from that of the will of all and read Groundwork II as extracting the latter from common moral cognition. (shrink)

Buddhist ethics on environment protection.

For many commentators, Confucian ethics is a kind of virtue ethics. However, there is enough textual evidence to suggest that it can be interpreted as an ethics based on rules, consequentialist as well as deontological. Against these views, I argue that Confucian ethics is based on the roles that make an agent the person he or she is. Further, I argue that in Confucianism the question of what it is that a person ought to do cannot be separated from the (...) question of what it is to be a person, and that the latter is answered in terms of the roles that arise from the network of social relationships in which a person stands. This does not mean that Confucian ethics is unlike anything found in Western philosophy. Indeed, I show that many Western thinkers have advanced a view of ethics similar to the Confucian ethics as I interpret it. (shrink)

1. Mafhūm al-Tarbiyah al-Islāmīyah -- 2. Mfhm uṣūl al-Tarbiyah al-Islāmīyah -- 3. Mafhūm al-naẓarīyah al-Tarbawīyah al-Islāmīyah -- 4. Mafhūm al-naẓarīyah al-Tarbawīyah al-Islāmīyah -- 5. Mafhūm al-Fikr al-tarbawī al-Islāmī Mafhūm al-Turāth al-tarbawī al-Islāmī -- 6. Mafhūm Falsafat al-Tarbiyah al-Islāmīyah.

Supercommentary on portion of Tattvacintāmaṇi of Gaṅgeśa, dealing with an argument liable to a valid objection (satpratipakṣa), one of the five forms of fallacious middle term hetvābhāsa.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:39 HUME'S JUSTICE AS A COLLECTIVE GOOD David Hume would probably regard his 'system of morals' as the most important part of his treatise of human nature. Yet his moral theory, particularly his theory of justice, continues to baffle commentators. Many have found it difficult to follow his line of reasoning to the conclusions that it is an artificial virtue to obey the rules of justice, and that such (...) rules command our respect even though we do not have any natural tendencies to respect them. The most troubling claim seems to be the claim that justice is ultimately based on self-interest, the motive that, on the surface at least, tends to induce people to ignore justice, particularly justice of the kind Hume is talking about. Jonathan Harrison, for instance, goes through a series of examples in an attempt to get close to Hume's meaning. In this paper I wish to argue that by justice Hume has in mind something very much like what modern economists call collective good. In the economic theory of public finance, which was born in the late Fifties, a distinction is made between collective goods and private goods. I wish to argue that this distinction can be employed to elucidate the nature of Hume's concept of justice, as well as to pinpoint the source of the moral force making justice a virtue rather than just a matter of prudence. I Most goods (and services) bought and sold in any economy have the following characteristics. First, as one person purchases (and consumes) a quantity of a particular good, there is less of it available for others to consume (that is, before more is produced). If the market is cleared (i.e. all that is produced is bought and sold), the total production or supply (X_, say) is the sum of individual purchases (X =X +X + etc.). 40 Second, the benefit of consumption is confined largely to the person who consumes the good. The overall benefit is said to be divisible among consumers. Third, the cost of production is also divisible and can be calculated for each unit of the good (which is not to say that such calculation can be easily or accurately carried out). Goods such as bread and butter, shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages, and so on, are of this nature. There are also certain goods and services which do not have these characteristics. John Stuart Mill was actually the first to notice the fact that a good such as a lighthouse, once provided, confers benefits equally on all "consumers" (i.e. ships that navigate by it). Unlike the goods in the class above, the amount of service generated by a lighthouse does not diminish as more of it is "consumed." The total X available is actually what is available for each and every consumer, so that X =X =X = etc. Once available, the benefit is not confined to any one user: to make it available to one user is to make it available to other users. The overall benefit is not divisible among consumers. Finally, it is often meaningless to speak of units of the good, hence meaningless to speak of cost per unit. Costs are also not divisible. In this class of goods we can include, in addition to the lighthouse, national defense, clean air, pleasant surroundings, etc. In the economic literature of public finance, these goods are referred to as 2 collective goods (and those above, private goods). The nature of collective goods poses a number of problems. One is that it is difficult to extract payments from consumers, once the good has been provided. Since it is difficult, if not impossible, to exclude those who refuse to pay from consuming the good or service, it is unrealistic to expect any payments, or full payments. This being so, no private entrepreneur would be willing to produce collective goods. Generally, 41 they will not be provided unless there is some collective effort, hence the name collective goods. The second problem, as economists see it, is to work out the optimum level of production. This turns out to be theoretically simple, assuming that potential consumers truly reveal their... (shrink)

Training in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) is required for many research trainees nationwide, but little is known about its effectiveness. For a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of a short-term course in RCR, medical students participating in an NIH-funded summer research program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) were surveyed using an instrument developed through focus group discussions. In the summer of 2003, surveys were administered before and after a short-term RCR course, as well as to (...) alumni of the courses given in the summers of 2002 and 2001. Survey responses were analyzed in the areas of knowledge, ethical decision-making skills, attitudes about responsible conduct of research, and frequency of discussions about RCR outside of class. The only statistically significant improvement associated with the course was an increase in knowledge, while there was a non-significant tendency toward improvements in ethical decision-making skills and attitudes about the importance of RCR training. The nominal impact of a short-term training course should not be surprising, but it does raise the possibility that other options for delivering information only, such as an Internet-based tutorial, might be considered as comparable alternatives when longer courses are not possible. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To study the resources available and resources needed for ethics teaching to medical students in UK medical schools as required by the new GMC core curriculum. DESIGN: A structured questionnaire was piloted and then circulated to deans of medical schools. SETTING: All UK medical schools. RESULTS: Eighteen out of 28 schools completed the questionnaire, the remainder either indicating that their arrangements were "under review" (4) or not responding (6). Among those responding: 1) library resources, including video and information technology (...) were found to be fairly well developed; 2) many schools had a good supply of handouts and sample cases for teaching; 3) most had a written syllabus, and 4) two-thirds examined in the subject. However, many schools indicated that there was an urgent need for: 1) full-time teachers (most ethics teaching is still by part-time and voluntary staff); funding for books and journals, and 3) additional teaching materials (including further case vignettes, handouts and sample exam questions). CONCLUSIONS: There has been a considerable overall improvement in resources for medical ethics teaching since the time of the last national survey (The Pond Report). However, provision varies widely from medical school to medical school. The particular needs identified were for full-time teachers, library resources and teaching materials. Wider use of existing organisations concerned with medical ethics could help to meet these needs. (shrink)

On the controversial questions between al-Rāzī and al-Ṭūsī, Islamic philosophy; Islamic history to 1800; dissertation.

Open peer commentary on the article “Developing a Dialogical Platform for Disseminating Research through Design” by Abigail C. Durrant, John Vines, Jayne Wallace & Joyce Yee. Upshot: The experimental conference format described by Durrant et al. is intended to create an open platform for dissemination and knowledge creation. The field of open design, in which designers create structures to support creative action by others, offers relevant insights and alternative approaches. For example: while it is logical to see openness as open (...) choice, it can be productive to instead think of openness as constructed through a balance of structure and choice. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that people of Asia, particularly the ethnic Chinese, subscribe to values which are not conducive to economic progress. The gap between the capitalist West and Asia is often attributed to the 'cultural' factor. Behind such perception is the supposition that capitalism is wholly a product of the West, alien to Asia and cannot be successfully embraced without doing violence to its cultural traditions. Against this position, I argue that classical capitalism is perfectly compatible with the key (...) elements of Chinese philosophy. Whether or not there is anything in the suggestion of some historians that Quesnay borrowed from Confucianism, I argue that his economic doctrine could have developed from the fundamentals of Chinese philosophy. If I am right, the economic gap between the West and Asia has to be explained in terms other than the 'cultural' factor, such as, perhaps, colonialism and post-colonialist ideologies. (shrink)