In considering the development and course of the American welfare state, there are some places which are better starting points than others. One such place is the State Street corridor, the series of high-rise Chicago Housing Authority public-housing projects which loom over Lake Michigan. Most Chicagoans, like their counterparts in other cities, have become inured to conditions there: a murder rate far in excess of that of the city as a whole, a society of unemployed single mothers, deferred maintenance that (...) makes stairwells, plazas, and elevators places of danger. Author Alex Kotlowitz decribes the situation of a mother of two boys in Chicago's Henry Horner Homes: “She lived in daily fear that something might happen to her young ones.… Already that year, 57 children had been killed in the city, five in the Horner area, including two, aged eight and six, who died from smoke inhalation when firefighters had to climb the 14 stories to their apartment. Both of the building's elevators were broken.”. (shrink)

The authors of three examinations of the problem all see the homelessness phenomenon chiefly through the prism of the housing market, rather than focusing on the personal pathologies of the homeless themselves. The three diverge, however, as to the role which government intervention has played in causing the crisis or should play in solving it. James D. Wright argues there has been insufficient public intervention and subsidy; William Tucker contends that intervention causes homelessness; Charles Hoch and Robert A. Slayton imply (...) that a less regulated market may prevent homelessness, if not necessarily by providing the safest or most comfortable dwellings. (shrink)

Kendler addresses three basic and interrelated questions that face all psychologists: What is the subject matter of psychology? What are the criteria for understanding psychological events? What ethical principles underlie the use of psychological knowledge? "[The book's] structure.... only hints at the literate and responsible handling of these current issues.... [it] would be enjoyable to use in teaching." --Psychological Report.

The relationship between mission and spirituality for sincere disciples of Jesus involves dimensions that include the biblical, the theological, the historical, the missiological, the spiritual, and the practical. This article will offer a contribution to the biblical discussion, specifically from the Fourth Gospel and through the lens of the motif of agency. This motif can inform what Jesus meant when he said, “Just as the Father has sent me, so I send you”.1 As a result, conclusions can be drawn in (...) regard to the place of mission in Johannine spirituality and discipleship. (shrink)

Employing the National Institute of Mental Health-funded Prevention of Suicide in Primary Care Elderly Collaborative Trial as a case study, we discuss 2 sets of ethical issues: obtaining informed consent for a clinic-based intervention study and using treatment as usual (TAU) as the control condition. We then address these ethical issues in the context of the debate about the quality improvement efforts of health care organizations. Our analysis reveals the tension between ethics and scientific integrity involved with using TAU as (...) a control condition and the difficulty in designing high-quality research in a community-based setting. (shrink)

Published in 1981, “The Maximin Strategy in Modern Obstetrics” offered two claims—first, that obstetrical interventions ought to be assessed not singly, but rather as packages of interconnected measures that could cumulatively increase risks of harm; and second, that many of these interventions, considered either singly or as a package, lacked a sound evidence base. The first claim has been well supported by later literature, although the term “cascade effect” has proven a more felicitous descriptor for the phenomenon of interventions that (...) trigger the use of other interventions to monitor, prevent, or treat possible side-effects. The second claim was initially supported in a very inadequate way, since the “Maximin” article appeared before an understanding of the methods of systematic reviews of medical evidence had been widely promulgated. Despite these defects, subsequent, rigorously conducted systematic reviews have tended to confirm the impression first offered in 1981, that practices that support physiologic childbearing and the innate, hormonally driven capacities of childbearing women and their fetuses/newborns are much more in keeping with the available evidence than practices involving common or routine high-technology interference with physiologic processes. Harm may occur either directly, through high-technology interventions, or when such procedures distract attention and resources from safe, effective biological processes and lower-technology measures. Surveys indicate a lack of knowledge of this evidence among childbearing women, signaling a serious ethical deficiency in shared decision-making processes and perhaps the skills and knowledge of maternity care clinicians. (shrink)

Froom and Froom all attention to referral bias as a frequent cause for misinterpreting the medical literature. This is particularly a source of false certainty, and therefore false science, in U.S. practice, where referral centers are often seen as the only legitimate source of medical knowledge and where primary care is discounted as a source of scientific observations. Appreciation of the primary care setting is therefore a critical element in theoretical understanding of medical epistemology.

A review of the philosophical debate on theoretical models for the physician-patient relationship over the past fifteen years may point to some of the more productive questions for future research. Contractual models have been criticized for promoting a legalistic and minimalistic image of the relationship, such that another form of model (such as convenant) is required. Shifting from a contractual to a contractarian model (in keeping with Rawls' notion of an original position) provides an adequate response to many criticisms of (...) this type. A deeper criticism, however, is one that advocates a shift to a virtue-based approach. A creative amalgam between a contractarian model and elements of the virtue-based approach, combined with appropriate empirical investigation, may yield richer models in the future. (shrink)

An exploration of Immanuel Kant's account of war and the controversies that have arisen from its interpretation. This book brings the ideas of Kant's critical philosophy to bear on one of the leading political and legal questions of our age: under what circumstances, if any, is recourse to war legally and morally justifiable?

• When one reflects on the range of actual cases in which forgiveness seems appropriate, it’s really a subset of them that involve moral wrongdoing. When one thinks of the domestic context, e.g., where forgiveness, apology, and the like are very common, painfully common, much of what is at issue are not serious moral wrongs but rather slights, insensitivities like inappropriate tones of voice (sometimes even marginally so). Or consider philosopher’s reactions to the slights involved in how their work is (...) criticized or underappreciated. (shrink)

This study looks at the relationship between the two thinkers and demonstrates the viable alternative to Hobbes' orthodoxy that can be found in Kant's political writings. It also shows how Kant anticipated the development of a world-wide political order.

Responding to the rash of books supporting a "new atheism" in recent years, some excellent rebuttals and refutations by Berlinski, Novak, Hart, Day, and others have also been published. The present book, however, is not a continuation of these critical salvos against the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, and Harris, but engages in a fresh reexamination of several important aspects of the "God-question," along with an exploration of the theory of the "faith-instinct"---a theory that emerges from a respectably long tradition, (...) but in recent years has been largely relegated to the sidelines in theology and philosophy. In the first chapter, scientific, metaphysical, and theological approaches are utilized and integrated in relationship to the question of God's existence. The second chapter is devoted to the "problem of evil," differentiated into the special categories often lumped into that all-too-generic term---moral evils, natural evils, suffering as an evil. Chapter 3 concerns the obvious follow-up question concerning what sort of characteristics, personal or otherwise, we can attribute to God---going beyond the question of God's mere "existence," even if and when we are intellectually convinced of this existence. In the second half of the book, the various meanings of "faith" are considered; and the apparent discrepancy of many New Testament descriptions of faith with the conventional Catholic and Protestant concepts of faith is investigated. Some "family resemblances" of supernatural faith seem to emerge. Then a monograph by Tubingen theologian Max Seckler, Instinkt und Glaubenswille ("Instinct and the Will to Believe"), which comments on thought-provoking texts concerning a "faith-instinct" in the works of Thomas Aquinas, is considered; Seckler brings out the philosophical and theological basis for this concept, as well as its reverberations for modern theology. The theory of a faith-instinct, however, leads to the question of the proper and improper, real or substitute, "objects," of the proposed instinct. Finally, if this instinct is, as hypothesized, implanted in human nature itself, for all places and all times, what is the function of the various religions in "activating" or placing obstacles to, the activation of this instinct? How are "false prophets," who may be instrumental in redirecting or misdirecting this instinct, to be recognized? Is faith bolstered or hindered by miracles---do miracles have any important relationship to faith? The book ends with a final consideration of the probable mental outlook of the atheist confronted with claims by theists of varying persuasions. (shrink)

Parallel to Koriat & Goldsmith's accounting of human memory, there are two distinct approaches in animal learning. Behaviorist approaches focus on quantitative aspects of conditioned response probability, whereas cognitive and ethological approaches focus on qualitative aspects of how memory is used in real life. Moreover, in animal research these distinguishable measures of memory are dissociated in experimental amnesia.

The chapter examines the political arcanum historically and conceptually and reflects on the implications of digital technology for the state and civil society relation.

Chapter traces the theme of hyperaesthesia and its correlates throughout Bergson’s work, arguing for a reading of his contributions to psychic research in the context of his theory of perception. It also shows that the experience of expanded perception was central to Bergson’s expansive understanding of inherent human powers and their development.