The article proposes to defend the basic income as a pillar of a socio-cultural revolution. This is done exclusively from a literature review and articulation of different works. The introduction section presents the characteristics of a basic income. Section 2 brings how it would mitigate current capitalism problems, which are: increasing inequality, lack of equality of opportunity, means tested social security and its bureaucracy, narrow definition of paid work and future of labor. On Section 3, the author does a literature (...) review to address two common objections against basic income: the cost, and potential labor decrease. Section 4 presents the author argument on three pillars of the socio-cultural revolution: austerity, active citizenship, and solidarity. The article ends with a general conclusion. (shrink)

Objectives: The aim of this study is to find and compare the current situation between common people and healthcare providers’ preferences for a good death in the context of Chinese culture. Methods: A cross-sectional anonymous questionnaire survey covering 190 ordinary Chinese people and 323 healthcare providers was conducted. An inventory of the good death was translated and the subjects were surveyed about their attitude toward it. Ethical considerations: Permission to conduct the study was granted by department chiefs, nurse managers and (...) the participants themselves. The participants were informed that they took part on a voluntary and anonymous basis, that they could withdraw at any time, that they had the right to ignore questions they did not wish to answer, and that whatever they chose to do would not jeopardize their employment conditions. Results: The attributes that were perceived as important by major respondents for a good death were maintaining hope and pleasure, good relationship with medical staff, good relationship with family, independence, environment comfort, being respected as an individual, preparation for death, physical and psychological comfort, dying in a favorite place, and not being a burden to others. And some relatively less important characteristics were life completion, receiving enough treatment, natural death, controlling over the future, unawareness of death, pride and beauty, feeling that one’s life is worth living, and religious and spiritual comfort. We also found that healthcare providers were more likely than general out-patients to perceive “physical and psychological comfort,” “dying in a favorite place,” “good relationship with medical staff,” and “natural death” as important for a good death. Conclusion: This study offers healthcare providers in China a fundamental understanding of the normal expectations of the general public for a good death. It is believed that these findings in our study are valuable to improve palliative care in China. We compared the attitudes of Chinese and Westerners and found some differences, which suggested that cultural difference should be an important consideration to achieve a good death in China. We also found that healthcare providers see good death differently from general public, indicating that the criteria for good death warrant further study. (shrink)

Die Schrift Peri hermeneias (De interpretatione) nimmt unter den logischen Schriften des Aristoteles einen bedeutenden Platz ein, ist aber an vielen Stellen nicht leicht zu verstehen. Ziel der vorliegenden zweisprachigen Ausgabe ist es, sie dem Verständnis eines modernen Lesers, der sich für die Aristotelische Philosophie und für die Geschichte der Logik interessiert, durch erläuternde Anmerkungen zum Text neu zu erschließen.

As the title indicates, Faith and Knowledge deals with the relation between religious faith and cognitive beliefs, between the truth of religion and the truths of philosophy and science. Hegel is guided by his understanding of the historical situation: the individual alienated from God, nature, and community; and he is influenced by the new philosophy of Schelling, the Spinozistic Philosophy of Identity with its superb vision of the inner unity of God, nature, and rational man. Through a brilliant discussion of (...) the philosophies of Kant, Fichte, and other luminaries of the period, Hegel shows that the time has finally come to give philosophy the authentic shape it has always been trying to reach, a shape in which philosophy’s old conflicts with religion on the one hand and with the sciences on the other are suspended once for all. This is the first English translation of this important essay. Professor H. S. Harris offers a historical and analytic commentary to the text and Professor Cerf offers an introduction to the general reader which focuses on the concept of intellectual intuition and on the difference between authentic and inauthentic philosophy. (shrink)

Autobiographical essay covering the first twenty five years of the author's life.

It has been argued that if an animal is psychologically like us, there may be more scientific reason to experiment upon it, but less moral justification to do so. Some scientists deny the existence of this dilemma, claiming that although there are scientifically valuable similarities between humans and animals that make experimentation worthwhile, humans are at the same time unique and fundamentally different. This latter response is, ironically, typical of pre-Darwinian beliefs in the relationship between human and non-human animals. Another (...) irony is that debate about such issues has facilitated the participation once more of philosophers in questions concerning experimental psychology: ironic because laboratory-oriented psychologists, especially since the turn of the last century, had been eager to establish the independence of their subject from any influence of philosophy and its investigative methods, as well as from any kind of anthropomorphism.In Britain, certainly more so than in the United States, ethical constraints have prevented the development of psychological research with animals along certain routes. By the 1980s British professional and academic societies had published codes of conduct and guidelines for their members, in part responding to public concern about the welfare of animals in the psychological laboratory. What led to the establishment of these codes and guidelines? This paper analyses the historical background against which professional concern for ethical cost in experimental animal psychology began to take shape, leading to the societies' open pronouncements of the 1980s. (shrink)

Physician-assisted suicide offers a moral and theological Rorschach test. Foundational commitments regarding morality and theology are disclosed by how the issue is perceived and by what moral problems it is seen to present. One of the cardinal differences disclosed is that between Western and Orthodox Christian approaches to theology in general, and the theology of dying and suicide in particular. Confrontation with the issue of suicide is likely to bring further doctrinal development in many of the Western Christian religions, so (...) as to be able to accept physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. (shrink)

In Crawford, C. & Krebs, D. (eds.) Foundations of evolutionary psychology: Ideas, issues, applications and findings. (2nd Ed.) Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates.

The book called The Consolation of Philosophy was throughout the Middle Ages, and down to the beginnings of the modern epoch in the sixteenth century, the scholars familiar companion. Few books have exercised a wider influence in their time. It has been translated into every European tongue, and into English nearly a dozen times, from King Alfreds paraphrase to the translations of Lord Preston, Causton, Ridpath, and Duncan, in the eighteenth century.

This paper examines normative elements in Henri Lauener’s “open transcendentalism,” with an eye to evaluate distinctive theses. After setting out some of Lauener’s basic positions in this area, in comparison with related views in Quine’s work, I argue that the views surveyed converge on a normative and contextualist cognitivism in Lauener’s methodological and epistemological perspective. Though he resists similar conclusion in the name of anti-naturalism, I argue that his “open transcendentalism” is plausibly construed as a non reductive naturalism.

In the Frank (1988) model, a small increase in the number of cheaters will soon be reversed. It is not clear that this prediction holds for sociopathy. There are also many attractive evolutionary models that do not admit a small, stable proportion of cheaters. Hence, without definitive evidence about the character of early human society, we cannot conclude that sociopathy has an evolutionary origin.

First published in 1969, The Elusive Mind argues that the mental processes are of a quite different nature from physical ones and belong to an entity which is elusive in the sense that it can only be known, in the first instance, by each person in his own case in the course of having any kind of experience. This 'elusive' self is much involved with the body in any conditions we know, but it could also survive the dissolution of the (...) body. The views of thinkers like Ryle, Hampshire, Malcolm, Feigl, and Ayer are subjected to an exceptionally close and critical scrutiny. In presenting these views, the author offers us the substance of the first series of Gifford Lectures he delivered in the University of Edinburgh; and, in what he says on such topics as dreaming; mysticism; and the 'I-Thou' relation and on Christian Theology. This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of philosophy, philosophy of mind, ethics, and religion. (shrink)