The term, “bioethics” was coined in 1970 by American cancerologist V. R. Potter. In the few decades since, the field of bioethics has emerged as an important discipline. The field has attained a remarkable degree of public recognition in a relatively short period of time. The “right to die” cases such as In re Quinlan placed bioethical issues on the front pages. Although the discipline is of recent vintage, the past quarter century has witnessed a flurry of scholarly activity, creating (...) a substantial body of bioethical literature. Moreover, the bioethics movement has manifested itself in institutional expressions. Universities and medical schools have added courses in bioethics to their curricula. In 1974, federal legislation and regulations mandated that federal grantees conducting human subjects research establish institutional review boards to safeguard subjects’ welfare, and even absent a legislative mandate numerous hospitals created ethics committees. Centers and institutes, devoted exclusively to the study of bioethical issues, have been founded. (shrink)

This case describes a recent iteration of the Ponzi scheme originated in 1920 by Charles Ponzi: creating a plausible investment, attracting investors, using the money from more recent investors to pay off earlier investors, and earning a substantial profit, estimated to be $15 million (worth $220 million today).1 While not as big as Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, as a result of which he was sentenced to 150 years in prison and ordered to pay restitution of $170 billion to his victims,2 (...) the Federal district court in Miami was asked to order Par Funding’s cofounders, Joseph W. LaForte and his wife, Lisa McElhone, to pay $337 million to Par Funding investors and to declare they engaged in a Ponzi scheme in defrauding those investors.3 Ultimately the Federal district court in Miami ordered Par cofounders to pay “$219 million in ‘ill-gotten gains,’ fines and interest so the funds can be used to help reimburse 1,200 investors who were duped into buying the risky, unregistered securities used to finance the high-fee loan company.”4 How LaForte and McElhone executed their scheme is an intriguing story which provides helpful insight into ethical and U.S. securities law principles. (shrink)

This article describes, analyzes, and advocates for management of clinical healthcare conflict by a process commonly referred to as bioethics mediation. Section I provides a brief introduction to classical mediation outside the realm of clinical healthcare. Section II highlights certain distinguishing characteristics of bioethics mediation. Section III chronicles the history of bioethics mediation and references a number of seminal writings on the subject. Finally, Section IV analyzes barriers that have, thus far, limited the widespread implementation of bioethics mediation.

Although the Catholic philosophical tradition speaks of the generative faculty as one of the vital powers of the soul, this power is not described, in its own right, as either male or female. The generative faculty exists generically within the soul and only manifests as male or female in a given body. That is, the generative power may be male or female depending on the body in which the soul is infused. If we do not take this view, then we (...) must either assert that it is possible for God to infuse a sexed soul into the wrong body or hold that the body–soul union does not bring the individual substance into existence. The doctrinal teachings of the Church and the Catholic philosophical tradition would seem to bar any claim that the soul can be infused into the wrong body. (shrink)

In the thesis literature review, an engineering graduate student is expected to place original research in the context of previous work by other researchers. However, for some students, particularly those for whom English is a second language, the literature review may be a mixture of original writing and verbatim source text appropriated without quotations. Such problematic use of source material leaves students vulnerable to an accusation of plagiarism, which carries severe consequences. Is such textual appropriation common in engineering master’s writing? (...) Furthermore, what, if anything, can be concluded when two texts have been found to have textual material in common? Do existing definitions of plagiarism provide a sufficient framework for determining if an instance of copying is transgressive or not? In a preliminary attempt to answer these questions, text strings from a random sample of 100 engineering master’s theses from the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database were searched for appropriated verbatim source text using the Google search engine. The results suggest that textual borrowing may indeed be a common feature of the master’s engineering literature review, raising questions about the ability of graduate students to synthesize the literature. The study also illustrates the difficulties of making a determination of plagiarism based on simple textual similarity. A context-specific approach is recommended when dealing with any instance of apparent copying. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE FATE OF THEISM REVISITED I THEISM SEEMS to be caught in a dilemma. Speaking persuasively to the surrounding culture seems to demand hat theism sacrifice its own integrity as a significantly distinctive world-view; affirming its distinctiveness seems to result in moving itself to the periphery of the culture. Briefly, then, either theism acquires relevance at the price of forfeiting any claim to distinctiveness or it takes seriously precisely (...) those things that make it seem significantly distinctive and thereby isolates itself from the rest of the culture. Such is the fate of theism as portrayed by (friendly?) critics of theism like Jeffrey Stout, Alasdair Macintyre, and Van A. Harvey.1 The main question addressed in this paper is whether or not the theist (or his more specific variant, the Christian theist) has a sound response to this dilemma? How, if at all, can the Christian theist avoid the horns of the dilemma of redundancy and irrelevance? 1 Jeffrey Stout, The Flight from Authority: Religion, Morality, and the Quest for Autonomy (London and Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), especially Part 2. Alasdair Macintyre, "God and the theo· logians," in Against the Self-Images of the Age (London: Duckworth, 1971), pp. 12-26; see also Macintyre's essay, "The Fate of Theism," originally delivered as one of his Bampton Lectures at Columbia University in 1966. Macintyre's lectures were published in The Religious Si,qnificance of Atheism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969). For "The Fate of Theism," see pp. 3-29. Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Belie1Jer: The Morality of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief (New York: Macmillan, 1966); see also Harvey's essay, "The Pathos of Liberal Theology," Journal of Religion 56 1976: 382-391. For an illuminating discussion of the fate of theism, see Peter L. Berger, The Heretical Imperatives: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (New York: Doubleday 1980). 63~ THE FATE OF THEISM REVISITED 633 The practical relevance of this dilemma for Christian doctrine was recently evidenced in Thomas Sheehan's review of Hans Kiing's latest book in the New York Review of Books.2 After summarizing Kiing's views on the Christian doctrine of eternal life, Sheehan writes: Kiing... has pushed Catholic theology to the limits of its own language. In fact, he has brought it to the point where one can ask what its teachings have to offer that cannot be found outside the scope of its experience and discourse. For example, the hope in immortality he evokes is certainly not peculiar to Catholicism or Christianity. Nor is it an exclusively religious doctrine: we find it in pagan philosophy from the Greeks onward, even in thinkers who did not believe in a personal god.... On a broader scale, it is clear that religious experience is available outside Catholicism and Christianity; and for many people natural human experience, with no religious or transcendent dimension, is satisfying enough. What, then, does Catholicism claim to provide that cannot be found beyond its boundaries? I am not asking about the subjective aspects of experience, be it natural or religious (its felt quality, psychological genesis, personal meaning, and so on). I am asking an objective theological question: what does Catholicism claim that makes it unique, essentially different from non-Catholic religions and non-religious humanisms? 3 Sheehan's answer to this last question is clear. That which makes Christianity unique and essentially distinctive and which traditional believers sought to clarify and defend moves Christianity to the periphery of the culture. By identifying themselves primarily with the tradition in terms of classical Christianity, no one hears what Christians have to say but themselves. The only alternative to this self-imposed isolation, holds Sheehan, is to be intelligible to contemporary educated, secularminded men and women: in which case Christian theism may well have interesting things to say, but these will not be significantly distinctive in any Christian sense. To put this last 2 Thomas Sheehan, "Revolution in the Church," The New York Review of Books, June 14, 1984, pp. 35-39. s Ibid., p. 38. 634 EDWARD J. ECHEVERRIA point another way, the strategy of accommodation raises the question why one should be Christian at all... (shrink)

A unique multilevel perspective-structural social psychology-is explicated to help build theoretical bridges between micro and macro levels of analysis in sociology. The perspective portrays actors (human or corporate) as having minimal properties of purposiveness and responsiveness, encounters as interaction episodes between multiple actors, microstructures as local patterns of interaction emerging from and subsequently influencing encounters, and macrostructures as networks of social positions. These levels of analysis are connected via mutually contingent processes. Applying these assumptions, we illustrate the ability of the (...) framework to strengthen the macrosociological import of micro theories of power, status, and justice. We argue that structural social psychology is an important metatheoretical strategy for developing testable connections between individual and collective units of sociological analysis. (shrink)

In the famous Correspondence with Clarke, which took place during the last year of Leibniz's life, Leibniz advanced several arguments purporting to refute the absolute theory of space and time that was held by Newton and his followers. The main aim of this book is to reassess Leibniz's attack on the Newtonian theory in so far as he relied on the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. The theological side of the controversy is not ignored but isolated and discussed in (...) the last three chapters, which deal with problems connected with the notions of omnipotence and omniscience. (shrink)

Standard models of concept learning generally focus on deriving statistical properties of a category based on data (i.e., category members and the features that describe them) but fail to give appropriate weight to the contact between people's intuitive theories and these data. Two experiments explored the role of people's prior knowledge or intuitive theories on category learning by manipulating the labels associated with the category. Learning differed dramatically when categories of children's drawings were meaningfully labeled (e.g., “done by creative children”) (...) compared to when they were labeled in a neutral manner. When categories are meaningfully labeled, people bring intuitive theories to the learning context. Learning then involves a process in which people search for evidence in the data that supports abstract features or hypotheses that have been activated by the intuitive theories. In contrast, when categories are labeled in a neutral manner, people search for simple features that distinguish one category from another. Importantly, the final study suggests that learning involves an interaction of people's intuitive theories with data, in which theories and data mutually influence each other. The results strongly suggest that straight‐forward, relatively modular ways of incorporating prior knowledge into models of category learning are inadequate. More telling, the results suggest that standard models may have fundamental limitations. We outline a speculative model of learning in which the interaction of theory and data is tightly coupled. The article concludes by comparing the results to recent artificial intelligence systems that use prior knowledge during learning. (shrink)

Drawing on rare sources, many of which have not previously been translated into English, the view of Piaget and his work that emerges in this book is very different from the atheistic view of Piaget that is commonly held in psychology and transpersonal psychology. In both his early and later career Piaget held to an evolutionary view of spirituality reminiscent of the work of Hegel and Bergson. The spiritual future could be precursed by the individual in this life through the (...) experience of "Immanence."Piaget underwent a spiritual emergency in adolescence, reported in early autobiographical writing, in which he encountered an array of experiences described in Eastern and Western mystical cannons. For reasons discussed in this book, Piaget attempted to conceal his spiritual inclinations while tacitly confirming them in informal exchanges. This book not only describes the spiritual aspects of Piaget's life and work, it also builds bridges to both the contemporary transpersonal project and to contemporary psychology, by extending Piaget's own ideas to shed new light on transpersonal psychology and transpersonal philosophy, and on the future orientation of general psychology. The book validates the transpersonal project by showing its concerns to be germane to psychology's most influential figure. The reader will learn as much about the history, present, and future of transpersonal thought as they do about Piaget. (shrink)

If beliefs are a map by which we steer, then, ceteris paribus, we should want a more accurate map. However, the world could be structured so as to punish learning with respect to certain topics—by learning new information, one’s situation could be worse than it otherwise would have been. We investigate whether the world is structured so as to punish learning specifically about moral nihilism. We ask, if an ordinary person had the option to learn the truth about moral nihilism, (...) ought she to take it? We argue, given plausible assumptions about ordinary human preferences, she should not. (shrink)

This case study examines five dimensions of the 2007–2009 financial crisis in the United States: the devastating effects of the financial crisis on the U.S. economy, including unparalleled unemployment, massive declines in gross domestic product, and the prolonged mortgage foreclosure crisis; the multiple causes of the financial crisis and panic, such as the housing and bond bubbles, excessive leverage, lax financial regulation, disgraceful banking practices, and abysmal rating agency performance; the extraordinary efforts of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve Bank (...) of New York, and the Department of the Treasury to stem the financial freefall triggered by the crisis and resuscitate financial institutions, the ethical implications of the unprecedented actions by government institutions to rescue financial institutions and drag the country back from the brink of global financial collapse, and the conduct of the various parties contributing to the financial crisis, such as the shoddy behavior of mortgage brokers, the massive securitization of mortgages into overly complex bonds, the excessive leverage of financial institutions, the disgraceful work of bond rating firms, the abysmal risk management systems employed by financial institutions, and the massive operations of the shadow banking and over-the-counter derivatives markets; and the major provisions of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law to in response to the financial crisis and for the purpose of correcting the egregious conduct of major financial institutions. (shrink)

(2013). Sickle Cell Disease and the “Difficult Patient” Conundrum. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 3-10. doi: 10.1080/15265161.2013.767954.

In mid-Victorian Britain, reconciling elite mathematical expertise with practical mechanical experience presented both engineering and social challenges. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the construction of the Westminster Clock at Britain’s Houses of Parliament. Realizing this scheme engendered the collaboration between Cambridge mathematicians George Biddell Airy and Edmund Beckett Denison, and the clockmaker Edward John Dent. Transforming theoretical mathematical drawings into physical apparatus challenged existing relations between conveyors of privileged scientific knowledge and those with practical experience of what (...) was, and what was not, mechanically possible. My article demonstrates how, within this project, physical models and devices provided material solutions to ambiguities over authority and social disorder in Victorian Britain. (shrink)

Conscious experience has been said to be outside of, or alien to, physics, and unexplained in a physical world. However, it is argued here that experience is entirely expected in a physical world that can only be defined by its power to determine patterns of experience. Something physical is something with the type of causal power that can contribute to determining the content of an experience if a subject is present at the right place and time. Physical powers also interact (...) with other physical powers, distant from any given subject, to form chains, and it is these interactions that physics handles mathematically. Nevertheless, actual causation is always defined by reference to determination of experience. The apparent puzzle of why there should be a link between experience and the physical may relate in part to the fact that experience is always immediately causally proximal, always 'here and now', at least as far as we can ascertain. Proximality, and with it the potential for mentality, cuts across existential/ ontological categories. Experience also requires a concept of an intrinsic individual, in order for there to be individual points of view. The practical problem for consciousness studies is to identify intrinsically individual causal units with event domains in human brains, that can have points of view and content that could fit with human experiences, in a way consistent with current physics. It is suggested that the 'causal diamond' concept of the here and now explored by Savitt (2015) and Arthur (2019), together with principles of field theory, may provide a useful starting point. (shrink)

The moral act consists of object, intention, and circumstances. The word intention, as commonly used, is often mistaken for the technical meaning of the word intention as employed by philosophers. This produces confusion in the description of moral acts. The common use of intention signifies motive, or one's reason for action. We commonly say that someone has a good intention even though what he or she does is wrong. For example, we describe someone who wants to alleviate suffering, and so (...) euthanizes a patient, as having a good intention. To the contrary, in the Catholic moral tradition, intention means an action that is done voluntarily and knowingly. A nurse who kills a patient has a bad intention because he or she acts freely and with knowledge. Alleviating suffering is indeed a good motive for action, but motives are formulated through deliberation prior to action. (shrink)

The materialistic premise supposes that a patient’s reduced brain activity indicates that the mind is beginning to approach nonexistence. Such persons may not be brain dead, but they have a life that is close enough to death to allow us to treat them with a certain disregard. For the Catholic, this overlooks the enduring presence of the soul and its two spiritual powers of intellect and will. St. Thomas Aquinas is our best guide to exploring the implications of this view (...) for patients in states of diminished consciousness. The externally observable activity of the brain, even when dramatically lessened, does not represent any loss of the powers of the soul, which continue to function through a combination of natural and divine influences. (shrink)

The integration of ideas, methods, and data from diverse disciplines has been a transformative force in science and higher education, attracting policy interventions, program innovations, financial resources, and talented people. Much energy has been invested in producing a new generation of scientists trained to work fluidly across disciplines, sectors, and research problems, yet the success of such investments has been difficult to measure. Using the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) program of the U.S. National Science Foundation as a (...) strategic research site, we conducted an experiment to determine whether and how the process and products of research of IGERT-trained scientists differ from those of scientists trained in disciplinary graduate programs. Among scientists in the early years of graduate study we found substantial and consistent differences suggesting that interdisciplinary training improved the quality and process of research, but this pattern was equally strongly reversed among students in the latter years of graduate study. Using systematic observation and other data we suggest why this might be so, then discuss the implications of these results for the design and conduct of graduate education and research. (shrink)

Bioethics mediators manage a wide range of clinical conflict emanating from diverse sources. Parties to clinical conflict are often not fully aware of, nor willing to express, the true nature and scope of their conflict. As such, a significant task of the bioethics mediator is to help define that conflict. The ability to assess and apply the tools necessary for an effective mediation process can be facilitated by each mediator’s creation of a personal compendium of sources that generate clinical conflict, (...) to provide an orientation for the successful management of complex dilemmatic cases. (shrink)