In her introduction to this collection, Tymieniecka presents her phenomenology of life - the leitmotif of the three-volume anniversary publication of Analecta Husserliana - as something that stands out from preceding historical attempts to investigate life in an 'integral' or 'scientific' way. After an incubation lasting throughout the 2000 years of Occidental philosophy, this scientific phenomenology/philosophy of life at last uncovers the entire area of the 'inner workings of Nature', exposing the way in which the 'sufficient reason' and the 'ground' (...) of beingness as such crystallise out of the 'onto poietic' process. This onto-poietic process, continuing as it does in the human creative condition, also reveals the authentic genius of the works of the human spirit. This new and original philosophy, free of fallacious simplifications, speculations and reductionism, opens up a basic starting point for all philosophy. Life, 'the theme of our times', at last receives a profound philosophical treatment. (shrink)

Charles James William Pfoundes (1840?1907), a young emigrant from Southeast Ireland, spent most of his adult life in Japan, received a Japanese name ?Omoie Tetzunostzuke?, first embraced and then turned against Theosophy and, from 1893, was ordained in several Japanese Buddhist traditions. Lacking independent means but educated, intellectually curious, entrepreneurial, fluent in Japanese and with a keen interest in Asian culture, Pfoundes subsisted as a cultural intermediary, explaining Japan and Asia to both Japanese and foreign audiences and actively seeking involvement (...) in global expositions and congresses, in Asia and beyond. Drawing on a previously unstudied collection of Pfoundes' personal documents, this paper first outlines Pfoundes' unusual career and then focuses on his engagement, in the last 15 years of his life, in actual or proposed international congresses and expositions in London, Chicago, Japan, Hanoi, St Louis and Oregon. The paper thereby draws attention, through the forgotten figure of Charles Pfoundes, to the distinctive nineteenth century phenomenon of great international expositions and their associated congresses, viewing these complicated events as another kind of crossroads; innovative nodes and material stimuli to the kinds of travel, cultural communication and interaction which, like monastic, trade, political and ethnic networks, helped to exchange and promote modern representations of Buddhism. (shrink)

An International Fichte Congress was held at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat in Jena, September 26 to October 1, 1994, under the auspices of the Internationale Johann-Gottlieb-Fichte-Gesellschaft, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Wissenschaftslehre. Participants came from all corners of Eastern and Western Europe, Canada, Japan, and the United States. Well over one hundred papers were read on all aspects of Fichte’s philosophy and Fichte’s heritage. Among the participants from North America some were well known faces from the HSA, (...) such as Daniel Breazeale, George di Giovanni, Tom Rockmore, Jere Surber, and Michael Vater. They all made presentations. An excursion to Weimar proved an enjoyable diversion from the otherwise strict discipline of Fichtean science. (shrink)

The Solar City Daegu 2050 Project represents a comprehensive model for shaping the future of this city of 2.5 million residents with a mixed industrial and services economic base. Its specific aims are as follows: realization of a carbon footprint consistent with standards of global sustainability and equity; the development of a renewable-energy - based urban community and economy; and the pursuit of economic development that meets the needs of Daegu’s citizens in a manner that is culturally and ecologically sound. (...) A long-term master plan like SCD 2050 is necessary to reach these transformative goals. At the same time, 50-year planning enables the citizens of Daegu to envision their city’s intergenerational future. SCD 2050 cannot simply lead to an urban energy transition. Conscious efforts to change social structure will also be essential to realizing the plan’s goals. (shrink)

This paper opens a critical conversation about the ethics of international bioethics conferencing and proposes principles that commit to being anti-discriminatory, global, and inclusive. We launch this conversation in the Section, Case Study, with a case example involving the International Association of Bioethics’ (IAB’s) selection of Qatar to host the 2024 World Congress of Bioethics. IAB’s choice of Qatar sparked controversy. We believe it also may reveal deeper issues of Islamophobia in bioethics. The Section, Principles for (...) class='Hi'>International Bioethics Conferencing, sets forth and defends proposed principles for international bioethics conferencing. The Section, Applying Principles to Site Selection applies the proposed principles to the case example. The Section, Applying Principles Beyond Site Selection addresses other applications of the proposed principles. The Section, Objections responds to objections. We close (in the Section, Conclusion) by calling for a wider discussion of our proposed principles.One-Sentence Capsule Summary: How should bioethicists navigate the ethics of global bioethics conferencing? (shrink)

The Belmont Report was written by a US Commission charged by the US Congress to advise on research supported by the US government. Its focus was understandably domestic. In the 40 years since its publication, clinical research has become increasingly international. Many clinical trials have sites in multiple countries, and many of the host countries are relatively impoverished. Such research raises some distinctive ethical issues. This paper outlines some of the key ethical challenges that have been raised by (...) clinical research conducted in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and sponsored by high-income country (HIC) institutions. It then considers whether the Belmont Report has the resources to address these problems and argues that it does not. The article closes by noting some parallels between this international research and domestic US research, which suggest that the US might benefit from the discussions abroad. (shrink)

I discuss the nature and genesis of international development ethics as well as its current areas of consensus, controversies, challenges, and agenda. A relatively new field of applied ethics, international development ethics is ethical reflection on the ends and means of socioeconomic change in poor countries and regions. It has several sources: criticism of colonialism and post-World War II developmental strategies; Denis Goulet's writings; Anglo-American philosophical debates about the ethics of famine relief; and Paul Streeten's and Amartya Sen's (...) approaches to development. Development ethicists agree that the moral dimension of development theory and practice is just as important as the scientific and policy components. What is often called "development" may be bad for people, communities, and the environment. Hence, the process of development should be reconceived as beneficial change, usually specified as alleviating human misery and environmental degradation in poor countries. (shrink)

According to a classical work on experimental design internal validity “refers to the approximate validity with which we infer that a relationship between two variables is causal or that the absence of a relationship implies the absence of cause”. External validity “refers to the approximate validity with which we can infer that the presumed causal relationship can be generalized to and across alternate measures of the cause and effect and across different types of persons, settings, and times”. Since then, these (...) have been the accepted definitions, with slight variations, of both concepts. However, there have been deep differences in interpreting the scope and limits of validity concepts in economics. From theory-driven experimental designs that defend the priority of the internal over the external validity to those researches that are demanding the importance of external validity in economics, we can find the most diverse points of view. What can experimental ethics learn, then, from recent debates on external and internal validity in experimental economics? If we want to elicit moral intuitions into the lab, are we testing moral theories that way? Could intuitions be generalized “across different types of persons, settings, and times”? Is that really possible? (shrink)

This essay combines information on the recent ISUD Sixth World Congress Humanity at the Turning Point: Rethinking Nature, Culture, and Freedom and some reflections inspired by presentations and discussions at the congress. It is focused on the presentation of one of the keynote speakers, Karl-Otto Apel, entitled “Discourse Ethics, Democracy, and International Law: Toward a Globalization of Practical Reason”. Apel argued that the transcendental-pragmatic foundation of morality serves as the ultimate basis for the universal conception of law, (...) e.g., of human rights. It establishes the transcendental basis of the idea of democracy, and at the same time establishes a regulative principle for a possible critique of the democratic states. Apel discussed the question of a political order of law able to represent the idea of human rights. In his approach to it, he referred to Kant’s idea of “a federation of free states” (as opposite to a “world state”) in the solution of the problem of a cosmopolitan system He noticed the tension between two orientations of international law: one towards “human rights” and hence a cosmopolitan law of single citizens and the other towards the sovereignty of single states. He asserted that the universal conception of law cannot be reduced to the legislative autonomy of any state. Consequently, the universal conception of human rights cannot be adequately realized either by particular democratic states or by a world state as a despotic superpower. Apel concluded that an adequate institution for the current debate regarding the issues of global peace and security can only be a federation of nations like the UN, the meta-institution of global discourse and the political representation of international law. At the heart of the essay is Kant’s cosmopolitan ideal and its relevance for today’s discussions about peace and security. Attention is paid to the attempts to rethink Kant by Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas, Jaques Derrida, Martha Nussbaum, and David Held, among others. Some of the authors indicate the tension between the sovereignty ofstates and the universality of human rights. Other authors criticize cosmopolitanism as overly unifying in contrast to the socio-cultural diversity of societies. The essay draws a contrast between two tendencies concerning international relations. One is the current neoconservative course toward American domination throughout the world. An alternative to this is the philosophers’ call for “the cosmopolitan model of democracy” and strengthening the network of transnational grass-roots movements and international institutions, including the UN. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper is about the context of Albert Einstein's concerns at the time of a most intense intellectual effort — his own and that of a small group of scientists concerned with classical quantum theory. I describe contemporaneous interactions and differing views about the prospects for and the significance of the First Solvay Congress of 1911 as voiced by major participants. There are two axes around which the paper evolves: the Einstein-Nernst-Lorentz dialogue and the public institutional creation of (...) the “Solvay” stage. In certain ways, this paper is about personal and institutional patronage: the working out of a difficult theoretical impasse requires individual and collective moral support. It is about the forging of the identity of a scientific problem and the personal and institutional setting, the public space, in which this problem was collectively addressed. But I also uncover heuristic playfulness and flexibility which accompanies theoretical change. (shrink)

In institutional settings affecting the formulation and implementation of international foreign and security policy, nation-states are influenced by Western standards of jurisprudence without explicit concern for religiously grounded legal frameworks. The question at issue here is whether there is a role for Islamic law in the formulation of international law, given recent literature examining this conjunction. For some, cultural symmetry requires attention to Islamic law, e.g., the Islamic law of nations, in the same way Western modernity evolved contemporary (...) international law out of a concept of a “law of nations”. In a historical period of asserted fundamentalist Islamic ideology as well as post-9/11 neo-conservative political ideology, there is ample need for negotiation of culture, including philosophical foundations of law, in which case attention to Islamic jurisprudence may well be a positive development to advance the cause of an evolving international legal order. (shrink)

The paper develops a theory of human rights under three main headings: that ways of acting or of being treated require effective normative justification, that they must have authoritative political endorsement or acknowledgement, and that they must be maintained by conforming conduct and, where need be, by governmental enforcement. The paper, then, applies this notion of human rights to two main cases: as constitutional rights within individual states, and as international human rights maintained by confederations of states or by (...) looser international coalitions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 13.1 (2003) 51-52 [Access article in PDF] Congress Considers Incentives for Organ Procurement Alexander S. Curtis [Tables]During the 108th Congressional session, several bills pertaining to ethical incentives for organ donation likely will be introduced. In some cases, they will be similar to bills before the 107th Congress (see Table 1). Bills in both the House of Representatives and the Senate address the (...) establishment and maintenance of donor registries, financial reimbursements for medical and nonmedical expenses incurred by qualifying donors, the presentation of commemorative medals, and tax credits.A bill entitled "Gift of Life Congressional Medal Act" (introduced last year by Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-TN) as Senate Bill 325), and its corresponding bill of the same title (passed in the House of Representatives last year as H.R. 708), would establish a congressional commemorative medal honoring "any organ donor, or the family or family member of any organ donor." The medal is to be designed and struck with "suitable emblems, devices, and inscriptions" by the Secretary of the Treasury. The eligible donor or donor's family member would be presented with the medal by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. This bill would establish qualifying donations as those of human kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, pancreases, or any other organ, but excludes corneas and eyes.Another bill, introduced by Representative Michael Bilirakis (R-FL) entitled "Organ Donation Improvement Act" (H.R. 624), would award grants or contracts to states, transplant centers, and qualified organ procurement organizations for the purpose of providing travel, subsistence, and incidental nonmedical expenses to individuals who make living donations. In order to receive reimbursement, the donating individuals must reside in states other than the states in which the intended recipients reside and the annual income of those receiving the organs cannot exceed $35,000. The bill also would appropriate $15,000,000 to make grants to states and public and nonprofit entities for the purpose of carrying out studies, public education demonstrations, and outreach activities "designed to increase the number of organ donors within the state." The bill would be effective from time of enactment through 2005. [End Page 51]Two other bills proposed within the House of Representatives in 2002 called for amendment to the Internal Revenue Code. The "Gift of Life Tax Credit Act (introduced as H.R. 1872 by Representative James Hansen (R-UT)) and the "Help Organ Procurement Expand Act" (introduced as H.R. 2090 by Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ)) present a refundable credit to individuals or to the estates of those who agree either to be living donors or to donate their organs upon death. The "Gift of Life Tax Credit Act" refunds $10,000 to the estates of eligible individuals "for the taxable year which includes the date of the individual's death." The "Help Organ Procurement Expand Act" offers a refund of $2,500 to qualified persons. Donations of kidneys, livers, pancreases, islet cells, lungs, and intestines are accepted, however several conditions restrict permissible donors. The "Gift of Life Tax Credit Act" requires that the legally competent individual's death not be due to a suicide and that the intention to donate was clearly declared. The "Help Organ Procurement Expand Act" prohibits donations from individuals who were killed with physician assistance, died as a result of a suicide, have been indicted or convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor offense, or are actively under criminal investigation for a possible felony offense. The "Help Organ Procurement Expand Act" also restricts procuring organs from unborn children or human fetuses and under circumstances in which the living donor would be subject to "unacceptable levels of medical risk of death or permanent debilitation." Alexander S. Curtis is a research assistant at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC. He received his bachelor's degree from Miami University.... (shrink)

This volume consists of 21 papers delivered at an international Spinoza conference on Disguised and Overt Spinozism around 1700, held at the Erasmus University ...

Does religion bring peace or war? In order to discuss this fundamental question, it is essential to reflect upon religious education that shapes the views of religion among young generations. This book has developed from the special panel on "Religious Education and Peace" for the 19th World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, the largest international organization in religious studies, which took place in Tokyo in March 2005. Its international contributors discuss the (...) kinds of religious education used for peace education that is attempted or needed, in their respective societies faced with tensions and conflicts, not only between different religions but also between religion and secularism. This is the first book in the field that includes both Asian and Western writers. It is an innovative attempt to build a bridge between the study of religion/religious education and peace education. This book was previously published as a special issue of _British Journal of Religious Education_. (shrink)

Ontological issues are crucial and remarkable for International Relations scholars due to answering main questions of the dicipline as ‘what we observe in world politics’, ‘what’s going on’, ‘how states define who they are’ and ‘how states treat each other in interaction in terms of power and interests’. After Cold War debate on the end of the ideological clashes and the rise of the ‘clash of civilization’ have been begun and all the massacres that have taken place in recent (...) years, like the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks on the World Trade Center in NYC, have been linked to cases of identity. This paper presents social constructivism is as a way of study of IR that fits within Post Cold War International System on account of it focuses on ideas, identities and culture. Social theory argues that social structure and shared ideas and beliefs construct and transform the meaning of who is ally or enemy. Constructivist perspective embodies power and interest is important factors in international relations but their effects are a function of culturally constituted ideas. On the perspective of ‘social constructivism’ as the point of departure, the paper evaluates the great divisions among people arise from the enmities that are constructed by national identity politics rather than cultural differences. (shrink)

Needham, E; Stuart, SN Every three years the International Humanist and Ethical Union sponsors a World Humanist Congress, hosted by one of its member organizations, which this year was the British Humanist Association. The theme of this Congress was 'Freedom of thought and expression - forging a 21st-century Enlightenment'.

The emergence of conferences in the late nineteenth century significantly changed the ways in which the international scientific community functioned and experienced itself. In the early modern Republic of Letters, savants mainly related through print and correspondence, and apart from at local and later national levels, scholars rarely met. International conferences, by contrast, brought scientists together regularly, in the flesh and in great numbers. Their previously imagined community now became tangible. This paper examines how conferencing reshaped the collective (...) of international scientists by zooming in on the massive meetings of the International Congress of Applied Chemistry, 1893–1914. Drawing on Emile Durkheim's studies of religious gatherings it analyses the ritualization of routine conference practices, such as plenary ceremonies, toasts, ladies’ programmes and committee meetings. It looks at how roles were distributed as participants performed as hosts and guests, and in masculine and feminine and national and international identities. Importantly, it shows both how the sacralization of chemistry as a higher aim served to instil senses of dedication in order to organize labour and mitigate conflict, and how the self-perception of the international chemical community was based on contemporary understandings of parliament, democracy and representation. (shrink)

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Symbolic Computation, AISC 2000, held in Madrid, Spain in July 2000. The 17 revised full papers presented together with three invited papers were carefully reviewed and revised for inclusion in the book. Among the topics addressed are automated theorem proving, logical reasoning, mathematical modeling of multi-agent systems, expert systems and machine learning, computational mathematics, engineering, and industrial applications.

The papers in this symposium were delivered at the Society of Catholic Social Scientists’ spring conference of the same name on April 17, 1999 at Notre Dame Law School. The Society in its history has given some particular attention to this issue, having sent letters to all the members of Congress opposing the early Clinton Administration initiative to let known homosexuals into the military and to all the U.S. bishops pointing out the serious problems with the homosexual-specific ministries which (...) have sprung up in various dioceses. The latter letter gained attention from a couple of national publications and generated numerous requests for copies. The fact that we have given this focus to the issue of homosexuality accords with the Society’s intention to especially stress family issues. We wish to try to disseminate these papers beyond the confines of this journal, if possible. (shrink)

How does a country repair its harm to a vulnerable minority targeted during times of national fear because of race? How did the United States redress its then popular yet unconstitutional WWII incarceration of 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans in desolate barbed wire prisons without charges, hearings, or bona fide evidence of military necessity? In response to a Congressional inquiry, political lobbying, and lawsuits, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 directed the President to apologize and authorized over one billion dollars in (...) reparations. Congress also created a fund to educate the public about the government’s false assertion of “national security” to restrict civil liberties. Some considered redress a tremendous victory — rewriting history and personal healing. Others questioned reparations for one U.S. group but not others. Japanese American Redress served as a catalyst for reparations movements worldwide. This paper examines its genesis, legal implementation, and apparent effects. It also explores wide-ranging political mobilization and social meanings of redress and “unfinished business”. Reparations cannot be measured by laws alone. Diverse communities must engage contested questions of history, justice, and belonging. Reparations claims face often unforeseen benefits and limitations. The paper concludes with these “lessons learned” to date. (shrink)

This handsomely produced volume contains 22 contributions from international scholars, which were originally presented at the 2000 Conference of the International Society for Phenomenology, Fine Arts, & Aesthetics. The papers center around the theme of gardens and include a wide range of topics of interest to phenomenologists but also, perhaps, to gardeners with a philosophical bent. A sampling of topics: Leonardo's Annunciation Hortus Conclusus and its reflexive intent; hatha yoga--a phenomenological experience of nature; the Chinese attempt to miniaturize (...) the world in gardens; conflating and compressing time in commodified space and architecture; constructing the deconstructive landscape (the ruin aesthetic); and a phenomenological-anthropological aproach to Zen gardens. The volume is lightly indexed by name (mostly philosophers). Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com). (shrink)