Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal our unit was accused of a number of errors of judgment in applying covert video surveillance (CVS) to infants and children suspected of life-threatening abuse. The article implied, that on moving from the Royal Brompton Hospital in London to North Staffordshire Hospital, we failed to present our work to the Research Ethics Committee (REC). We did send our protocol to the REC though we did not consider that, after a total of 16 patients (...) had been documented as being the subject of life-threatening abuse, this was research. The REC in Staffordshire agreed with us. We were also accused of undertaking work that should be pursued by the Police. We agree with this. However, unlike the Metropolitan Police the Staffordshire Police would not undertake CVS. We fail to agree that 'working together' with parents is necessarily practical or safe when trying to protect children from life-threatening abuse of this kind. (shrink)

Background and methods: Psychiatric research can occasionally present particular ethical dilemmas, but it is not clear what kind of problems local research ethics committees actually experience in this field. We aimed to assess the type of problems that committees encounter with psychiatric research, using a postal survey of 211 LRECs.Results: One hundred and seven of those written to replied within the time limit. Twenty eight experienced few problems with psychiatric applications. Twenty six emphasised the value of a psychiatric expert on (...) the committee. The most common issues raised were informed consent and confidentiality . The use of placebos , the validity of psychiatric questionnaires and overuse of psychiatric “jargon” in psychiatric applications also raised concern.Conclusions: Our results suggest that LRECs have specific concerns regarding methodology, consent, and confidentiality in psychiatric research, and that they find psychiatric input invaluable. (shrink)

Horace, Janus, and Pighius' Acta In PBSR 54 , 213–28 Andrew Lintott dusts down the fragments of the Acta Urbana published by S. V. Pighius in 1615 and universally supposed today to be a forgery. Lintott himself, after a most learned discussion, concurs, but one senses a wistful longing for the fragments to be genuine. The purpose of this note is to offer another reason why sadly this is unlikely.

Assessments of the acceptability of new transplantation practices require a pinpointing of not only the meaning of death, but also the timing of death. They typically perceive elective ventilation as occurring just prior to death and non-heart-beating donor protocols as operative just after death. However, such practices in fact highlight the general vagueness and ambiguity surrounding these issues in both law and ethics. Supply-side dilemmas in transplantation lend real urgency to this "life or death" debate.

A laboratory-testable, solid-state Maxwell demon is proposed that utilizes the electric field energy of an open-gap p-n junction. Numerical results from a commercial semiconductor device simulator (Silvaco International–Atlas) verify primary results from a 1-D analytic model. Present day fabrication techniques appear adequate for laboratory tests of principle.

Anselm saw theology as fides quaerens intellectum, faith searching for understanding. Theology concerns itself with human awareness of something that transcends humanity. It starts where we are and involves a given-ness which forms its fundamental basis. Human experience or awareness of God is interpreted from within this agreed framework. Theology is a way of experiencing and interpreting life but it is also dynamic body of knowledge. Within the Christian tradition, this can be seen in the theologies from the so-called ‘margins’. (...) The study of such a dynamic body of knowledge has been the concern of theology and religious studies degree programmes in modern Universities. Theology is however, not the preserve of the elite professionals. The professional theologians need to stand alongside ordinary people and learning from their experiences as much as theirs. (shrink)

It may be concluded that Mitchell's peace evolutionism incorporated most of the features of the cooperationist and Novicovian traditions. He questioned the conflict paradigm that underpinned biological militarism, and reinforced a holistic and more peaceful model of nature by reference to the emerging discipline of ecology. His “restrictionist” objections to the deterministic tendencies of much prevailing biosocial thought combined philosophical with biological arguments to assert that human history was sui generis, based upon the unique development of human consciousness and the (...) cultural transmission of knowledge. Mitchell's opposition to biological militarism reflected Victorian anxieties about the legitimacy of evolutionary ethics. However, he introduced an innovatory note, linked to the “modernist” intellectual milieu of the time, when he put objections to the use of analogy on the grounds (1) that the Darwinist paradigm had not been properly established, and (2) that scientific laws themselves were uncertain and subjective.The first objection related to the bitter controversies that racked the biological world in the 1900s when mutation theory thrust the Darwinian concept of natural selection into temporary disrepute. In this respect Mitchell encoutered continuing Darwinist orthodoxy, not least from peace biology itself, while confusion was added by his personal devotion to Darwinism and his sociopolitical suspicion of Mendelian hereditarianism. The later triumph of a new Darwinian synthesis under men like R. A. Fisher made Mitchell's criticisms seem outmoded. In the second respect, Mitchell's attack on the primacy of naturalistic science echoed the epistemology of the “new physics” and movements such as German neo-Kantianism. However, positivism was still deeply embedded in Britain, indeed enjoying a resurgence from the last decade of the nineteenth century.79 Mitchell's critique of the Darwinist version of it seems to have been too novel and puzzling to influence a generation still convinced of the soundness of the science.Mitchell made more impact when he put his objections to the use of analogy on the grounds of professional methodology. As a naturalist, he could argue:It is impossible to make correct comparisons even between an insect and spider, two creatures so closely allied that only zoologists would separate them, unless we could trace the qualities of the insect and of the spider respectively down to their common ancestor, and in so doing we should almost certainly lose all that made the comparison interesting and significant, and be left with little more than the qualities common to all protoplasm..., It is quite true that the whole web of life is in physical and physiological community, but considerations drawn from any part of it require so much modification before they can be applied to any other part, that they become merely verbal.80This type of criticism was to have a more lasting heritage. Chalmers Mitchell is worth remembering as an articulate early spokesman of a persistent, if often embattled, modern tradition that has resisted interpretations of human nature and history based upon genetic determinants or immutable biological laws, or upon the use of animal analogies to generalize too freely about human aggression and war. (shrink)

Notions of purity, perfection, or immaculateness have powered our imagination over the ages. Various images of perfection have held sway in their hallowed times, providing secure streams for channelling human energy. Unfortunately, with the unfolding of the human drama on the world stage, all the images of perfection have suffered damage, epoch on epoch. Different responses have emerged to attempt a restoration. Revival of some of the old images is one such response. Production of new images to serve as worthwhile (...) anchors of value and meaning is another common response. For reasons possibly known only to philosophers and historians, the enterprise called modern science has got thickly embroiled in this civilisational process--first, as the culprit behind the decline of some of the established images, then as the producer of new images, and now, perhaps, as a constant reminder of the perpetual lack of purity and immaculateness in all things human. (shrink)

Cultural space knows no official boundary. Civilizational interaction, recorded and unrecorded, is an ongoing process. Diffusionism and parallelism get interfused in civilizational studies. To think of one-sided borrowing or lending in the realm of culture rests on bias or prejudice, perhaps both. To think that originally there was only one culture (Egypt or India or China) and that all other cultures are its diffused or dispersed form is incorrect, both theoretically and evidentially. Comparably incorrect is the anthropological hypothesis that different (...) cultures, in response to diverse social and natural stimuli or conditions, developed quite independently and in parallel manner. Once we believe, as I think we must, that cultural space is a continuum, the parallelistic thesis is bound to collapse. If, on the other hand, we totally reject the possibility of independent, relatively independent, origin and development of different cultures, we are obliged to deny the differentiable identity and personality and distinct cultures. To deny cultural pluralism is psychologically untenable and ideologically pernicious, and I have argued the point at length elsewhere. (shrink)

First published in 1966. Professor Dryer has furnished a highly illuminating account of Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason _by unfolding its central argument. _Kant’s Solution for Verification in Metaphysics _brings out the light which Kant has to throw on central topics of philosophy. It takes its place as an indispensable guide to every student of the _Critique of Pure Reason. _.

Review:Geeks & Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders. Book by Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas. Published by Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 2002, 224 pp., ISBN: 1 57851 582 3,.

Many medical ethicists accept the thesis that there is no moral difference between withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining therapy. In this paper, we offer an interesting counterexample which shows that this thesis is not always true. Withholding is distinguished from withdrawing by the simple fact that therapy must have already been initiated in order to speak coherently about withdrawal. Provided that there is a genuine need and that therapy is biomedically effective, the historical fact that therapy has been initiated entails a (...) claim to continue therapy that cannot be attributed to patients who have not yet received therapy. This intrinsic difference between withholding and withdrawing therapy is of moral importance. In many instances, patients will waive this claim. But when one considers withdrawing therapy from one patient to help another in a setting of scarce resources, this intrinsic moral difference comes into sharp focus. In an era of shrinking medical resources, this difference cannot be ignored. (shrink)