Ten years have passed since the National Council of Catholic Bishops presented their pastoral letter Economic Justice for All. For a democratic society to succeed, it must cultivate moral attachments. The following three questions are asked of all Americans regarding social ethics: l) How do my economic choices contribute to a sensitivity to those in need? 2) With what care, human kindness and justice do I conduct myself at work? 3) How do I strike a balance between labor and leisure (...) that enlarges my capacity for friendships, for family life, for community? The importance of a sense of shared humanity is discussed and recommendations are made regarding emotions as strategies in the process of moral decisionmaking. The task of sensitizing both the intellectual convictions and the emotional feelings of Americans towards a more compassionate stance vis-a-vis the disinherited in our midst is presented. (shrink)

In studying the thinkers discussed, we have generally used (translations of) their writings. The very breadth of this study makes one dependent upon ...

Medical screening is justified on the strength of the assumption that the earlier disease is detected, the better it is for the patient. On examination, however, the assumption turns out to be severely flawed, and inadequate anyway, since it is not only the patient with whom we should be concerned, but healthy people as well. Instead of making assumptions about the ill, we should prove a test's overall benefit to the individual taking it before we recommend it.

Spinoza speculated on how ethics could emerge from biology and psychology rather than disrupt them and recent evidence suggests he might have gotten it right. His radical deconstruction and reconstruction of ethics is supported by a number of avenues of research in the cognitive and neurosciences. This paper gathers together and presents a composite picture of recent research that supports Spinoza’s theory of the emotions and of the natural origins of ethics. It enumerates twelve naturalist claims of Spinoza that now (...) seem to be supported by substantial evidence from the neurosciences and recent cognitive science. I focus on the evidence provided by Lakoff and Johnson in their summary of recent cognitive science in Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (1999); by Antonio Damasio in his assessment of the state of affective neuroscience in Descartes’ Error (1994) and in The Feeling of What Happens (1999) (with passing references to his recent Looking for Spinoza (2003); and by Giacomo Rizzolatti, Vittorio Gallese and their colleagues in the neural basis of emotional contagion and resonance, i.e., the neural basis of primitive sociality and intersubjectivity, that bear out Spinoza’s account of social psychology as rooted in the mechanism he called attention to and identified as affective imitation. (shrink)

In the first Critique Kant introduced the analytic/synthetic distinction and illustrated it with theoretical propositions. As his main aim in that work was to justify synthetic a priori propositions, Kant was able to bring his central questions into relief and discuss the methodology of their solution by contrasting synthetic propositions, such as: “Every event has a cause” with analytic propositions, such as: “Every effect has a cause.” Consequently, few commentators have any difficulty in stating as propositions the propositions Kant is (...) justifying in the first Critique or in pointing out the difficulty of justifying such propositions. (shrink)

Objectives: This study investigated Finnish physicians’ experiences of decisions concerning living wills and do not resuscitate orders and also their views on the role of patients and family members in these decisions.Design: A questionnaire was sent to 800 physicians representing the following specialties: general practice ; internal medicine ; neurology , and oncology .Results: The response rate was 56%. Most of the respondents had a positive attitude toward , and respect for living wills, and 72% reported situations in which such (...) a will would have been helpful, although experience with their use was limited. The physicians reported both benefits and problems with living wills. Thirteen per cent had completed a living will of their own. Half did not consider living wills to be reliable if they were several years old. Do not resuscitate orders were interpreted in two ways: resuscitation forbidden or only palliative care required . The respondents also documented DNR orders differently. Seventy two per cent discussed DNR decisions always or often with patients able to communicate, and even 76% discussed DNR orders with the family members of patients unable to communicate. Most respondents were able to approach a dying patient without difficulty. They also felt that education in general was needed.Conclusions: In general Finnish physicians accept living wills, but find they are accompanied by several problems. Many problems could be avoided if physicians and patients conducted progressive discussions about living wills. The differing interpretations of DNR orders are a matter of concern in that they may affect patient treatment. The promotion of patient autonomy with respect to treatment seems rather good, but the limitations of the study need to be kept in mind. (shrink)

Social entrepreneurship has received considerable recognition from universities in recent years. This study aimed to examine the mediating effect of the entrepreneurial social network on entrepreneurship education and social entrepreneurial intention of students at the university level. This study adopted a cross-sectional quantitative approach. A convenience sampling method was utilized to choose 392 students studying at the public and private universities in Chattogram, Bangladesh, who then completed a self-administered survey. The data were then analyzed through partial least squares structural equation (...) modeling. Results revealed a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurship education and students’ social entrepreneurial intention on the one hand and between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial social network on the other hand. It was also found that entrepreneurial social networks had a significantly positive link with students’ SEIs. Furthermore, the study found that entrepreneurial social networks significantly mediate the relationship between entrepreneurship education and students’ SEI. Based on these outcomes, it is suggested to pay attention to entrepreneurship education further and strengthen the entrepreneurial social network to enhance SEI among students. Research findings have provided valuable insights regarding how entrepreneurship education can significantly impact SEI and emphasize the importance of entrepreneurial social networks as a mediator in social entrepreneurship. This study aims to contribute to the relevant social entrepreneurial literature by providing insights on practical issues related to the role of the entrepreneurial social network at the entrepreneurship education level. (shrink)

In this paper we examine ethical issues relevant to conducting mental health research with refugees and immigrant communities that have cultural orientations and social organisation that are substantially different to those of the broader Australian community, and we relate these issues to NH&MRC Guidelines. We describe the development and conduct of a mental health research project carried out recently in Melbourne with the Somali community, focusing on ethical principles involved, and relating these to the NH&MRC National Statement on Ethical Conduct (...) in Research Involving Humans, and the NH&MRC document Values and Ethics: Guidelines for Ethical Conduct in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research.The experience of conducting mental health research with the Somali community highlights the fact that the principles of inclusion and benefit enunciated in the NH&MRC document Values and Ethics are particularly pertinent when conducting research with refugees and immigrant communities that are culturally distant to those of the broader Australian community. These principles inform issues of research design and consent, as well as guiding respectful engagement with the participating community and communication of the research findings. (shrink)

I will divide my discussion into two. In the first part I will discuss Godin and Gingras's delicious claim that the experimenter's regress is anticipated by Sextus Empiricus's formulation of scepticism. In the second part, I will try to deal with Godin and Gingras's ‘critical argument’, that the experimenter's regress would be redundant if we were less concerned with ‘frightening philosophers’.

Background Euthanasia is a topic of intense ethical debate and it is illegal in most countries at present, including Sri Lanka. The aim of this descriptive cross-sectional study of medical students and practicing doctors was to explore the acceptance of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, and factors influencing this opinion. Methods A customised online questionnaire which explored opinions on euthanasia was administered to first and final year medical undergraduates in University of Colombo and practicing doctors with more than 5 years (...) of work experience at The National Hospital of Sri Lanka. Attitudes on euthanasia and PAS were also assessed with the attitudes towards euthanasia Scale, which is a 10-item questionnaire. Results A total of 425 individuals responded, which included 143 first-year medical undergraduates, 141 final-year medical undergraduates and 141 practicing doctors. More participants favoured legalizing euthanasia than those directly opposing it, but a significant proportion remained undecided. The mean scores of ATE questionnaire from the whole sample were generally unfavourable towards euthanasia/PAS. Accepting euthanasia as an option for oneself was the strongest predictor of favouring euthanasia/PAS or supporting its legalization. Conclusion In this cross-sectional survey, more respondents supported legalisation of euthanasia in Sri Lanka than those openly opposing it. Yet, a significant minority that responded as “undecided” for legalisation, were more likely to have unfavourable ATE. (shrink)

In discussions of the date at which Philodemos wrote the treatise περ σημείωѵ κаί σημεώσεωѵ there is general agreement on one point ‘that for this purpose our best evidence is a passage from col. 2, II. 11 sqq., of the papyrus. The author is there explaining the difficulties of induction in allowing for unobserved variations, and in taking Man as an instance he quotes first ‘the Kretan giant’ and then οѷ)ς έѵ՚ Акώρε π∋γμα∕ονς δονσιν νλει δ՚ ν∕αóγο’ Aντώνιος νûν ∕ (...) κ Ʃụρίαμσ(ατ. In the last line the letters of the papyrus are ΕΞΡΙΑΣ, which equally well may represent either § 'ρας or κ Σνρας but κ Σνρας has held the field since it was first suggested by Gomperz. (shrink)

L' auteur distingue entre la philosophie comme attitude mentale et la philosophie comme science. La philosophie dans la première acception regarde, plus ou moins, tous les hommes. La philosophie scientifique est la pensée qui scrute méthodiquement le sens de l' Univers. Le mot "philosophie" indique une attitude mentale, mais ce mot n' est pas un nom qui pourrait désigner la science qu' est la philosophie. Jusqu' ici cette science, n' a pas de nom caractéristique. Car ce nom devrait indiquer le (...) sujet de cette science, comme le font p.e. géologie, anthropologie, psychologie. Une simple analogie logique nous incite à appeler la philosophie scientifique du nom de pantologie. Ce nom la défendrait peut-être contre le dilettantisme verbeux et les rêveries nébuleuses qui ne manquent pas dans la philosophie pour autant qu'elle est et qu'elle doit être l' affaire de tout être humain. (shrink)

In prior work [7] we considered networks of agents who have knowledge bases in first order logic, and report facts to their neighbors that are in their common languages and are provable from their knowledge bases, in order to help a decider verify a single sentence. In report complete networks, the signatures of the agents and the links between agents are rich enough to verify any deciderʼs sentence that can be proved from the combined knowledge base. This paper introduces a (...) more general setting where new observations may be added to knowledge bases and the decider must choose a sentence from a set of alternatives. We consider the question of when it is possible to prepare in advance a finite plan to generate reports within the network. We obtain conditions under which such a plan exists and is guaranteed to produce the right choice under any new observations. (shrink)

In terms of intervening in embodied experience, medical treatment is wonder-full in its ambition and its metaphysical presumption; yet, wonder’s role in clinical medicine has received little philosophical attention. In this paper, I propose, to doctors and others in routine clinical life, the value of an openness to wonder and to the sense of wonder. Key to this is the identity of the central ethical challenges facing most clinicians, which is not the high-tech drama of the popular conceptions of medical (...) ethics but, rather, the routine of patients’ undramatic but unremitting demands for the clinician’s time and respectful attention. Wonder (conceived as an intense and transfiguring attentiveness) is a ubiquitous ethical source, an alternative to the more familiar respect for rational autonomy, a source of renewal galvanizing diagnostic imagination, and a timely recalling of the embodied agency of both patient and clinician. (shrink)