This is the first book to offer the best essays, articles, and speeches on ethics and intelligence that demonstrate the complex moral dilemmas in intelligence collection, analysis, and operations. Some are recently declassified and never before published, and all are written by authors whose backgrounds are as varied as their insights, including Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John P. Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown (...) University; and Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia and recipient of the Owens Award for contributions to the understanding of U.S. intelligence activities. Creating the foundation for the study of ethics and intelligence by filling in the gap between warfare and philosophy, this is a valuable collection of literature for building an ethical code that is not dependent on any specific agency, department, or country. (shrink)

Background and objectives: Physicians are exposed to matters of existential character at work, but little is known about the personal impact of such issues. Methods: To explore how physicians experience and cope with existential aspects of their clinical work and how such experiences affect their professional identities, a qualitative study using individual semistructured interviews has analysed accounts of their experiences related to coping with such challenges. Analysis was by systematic text condensation. The purposeful sample comprised 10 physicians (including three women), (...) aged 33–66 years, residents or specialists in cardiology or cardiothoracic surgery, working in a university hospital with 24-hour emergency service and one general practitioner. Results: Participants described a process by which they were able to develop a capacity for coping with the existential challenges at work. After episodes perceived as shocking or horrible earlier in their career, they at present said that they could deal with death and mostly keep it at a distance. Vulnerability was closely linked to professional responsibility and identity, perceived as a burden to be handled. These demands were balanced by an experience of meaning related to their job, connected to making a difference in their patients’ lives. Belonging to a community of their fellows was a presupposition for coping with the loneliness and powerlessness related to their vulnerable professional position. Conclusions: Physicians’ vulnerability facing life and death has been underestimated. Belonging to caring communities may assist growth and coping on exposure to existential aspects of clinical work and developing a professional identity. (shrink)

It is standardly assumed that there are three — and only three — ways to solve problem of temporary intrinsics: (a) embrace presentism, (b) relativize property possession to times, or (c) accept the doctrine of temporal parts. The first two solutions are favoured by endurantists, whereas the third is the perdurantist solution of choice. In this paper, I argue that there is a further type of solution available to endurantists, one that not only avoids the usual costs, but is structurally (...) identical to the temporal-parts solution preferred by perdurantists. In addition to providing a general characterization of this new type of solution, I discuss certain of its anticipations in the literature on bundle theory, as well as provide a detailed development of it in terms of my own preferred metaphysics of ordinary objects — namely, a distinctive form of substratum theory tracing to Aristotle. (shrink)

Desmosomes are junctions involved in intercellular adhesion of epithelial cells and hemidesmosomes are junctions involved in adhesion of epithelia to basement membranes. Both are characterised at the ultrastructural level by dense cytoplasmic plaques which are linked to the intermediate filament cytoskeleton of the cells. The plaques strongly resemble each other suggesting a relationship between the two kinds of junctions, as implied by their names. Recent characterisation of the molecular components of the junctions shows they are, in fact, quite unrelated implying (...) that structural similarity is fortuitous. The molecular biology raises many fascinating problems relating to their structure and function. (shrink)

Citing of previous publications is an important factor in knowledge development. Because of the great amount of publications available, only a selection of studies gets cited, for varying reasons. If the selection of citations is associated with study outcome this is called citation bias. We will study determinants of citation in a broader sense, including e.g. study design, journal impact factor or the funding source of the publication. As a case study we assess which factors drive citation in the human (...) literature on phthalates, specifically the metabolite mono phthalate. A systematic literature search identified all relevant publications on human health effect of MEHP. Data on potential determinants of citation were extracted in duplo. Specialized software was used to create a citation network, including all potential citation pathways. Random effect logistic regression was used to assess whether these determinants influence the likelihood of citation. 112 Publications on MEHP were identified, with 5684 potential citation pathways of which 551 were actual citations. Reporting of a harmful point estimate, journal impact factor, authority of the author, a male corresponding author, research performed in North America and self-citation were positively associated with the likelihood of being cited. In the literature on MEHP, citation is mostly driven by a number of factors that are not related to study outcome. Although the identified determinants do not necessarily give strong indications of bias, it shows selective use of published literature for a variety of reasons. (shrink)

THE AUDIENCE IS THE REAL or imaginary group of persons who are in fact acquainted, could be acquainted, or are meant to be acquainted with a given text. Etymologically, the term "audience" refers to a group of listeners. This meaning of the term goes back to a time when the primary form of acquaintance with the work of an author was through the spoken word. From the invention of the printing press, however, until the time when the use of the (...) radio became widespread, written texts were the primary way of learning about an author's work. Although contemporary media have changed this to a certain extent, in science and the humanities it is still true that the audience for an author's work consists largely of readers. For my present purposes, the distinction between readers and listeners is immaterial and, hence, I often refer to an audience as a group of readers, although what I say about it will apply, mutatis mutandis, to listeners as well. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book presents a wide range of thinking about how the discipline of philosophy has engaged and might in the future engage with the profound questions raised by rapidly shifting methods of communication. Although social media and telecommunications have dramatically altered the daily lives of people, and no technology has enjoyed the same rapid success as that of the mobile phone, the philosophical underpinnings and consequences of these changes have been insufficiently explored. Clustered in six sections, this book addresses major (...) questions of interest to the thoughtful professional. Section I considers ontology: How should we consider emerging media and what are the categories through which we can organize and understand this new realm of social reality. Section II investigates human nature and its relationship to the social transformations that are occurring through new media. It also considers and compares historical methods of communication such as paper. In Section III, questions of time, narrative voice, and emotions are assessed in relation to emerging media. General issues concerning emergence of meaning, philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, and agency are the focus of Section IV. Symbols and speech acts—including the philosophical ramifications of the communication process itself as viewed through emerging technologies—represent the key concerns of Section V. Section VI probes various interpersonal, institutional, and political/power dimensions stemming from new systems of communication. A coda points forward to outstanding open questions, calling for further research to be done. The book represents a seminal contribution assembling original thoughts from both leading and rising scholars of the field. (shrink)

Nous considérons la structure dans son rapport au temps : sous ce rapport, la structure est normative, et l’avenir aide à constituer le présent et le passé. Des exemples sont empruntés à l’embryologie et à la géologie. On explique pourquoi il est difficile de concevoir une structure cosmique spatio-temporelle, et comment le développement récent de la physique nous y aide ; dans cette physique, la notion de structure cosmique a un rôle éminent. Il en résulte que seules sont viables les (...) combinaisons qui sont dans La ligne historique de la nature. (shrink)

By 1918 Bertrand Russell had well-formed and distinctive opinions on many aspects of economic philosophy, theory and policy. In the second half of his life (1919–70) he wrote at great length on a very wide range of economic issues, including modern technology and the prospects for abolishing scarcity; population growth, eugenics and birth control; the economic development of China; the case for democratic socialism; the case against Soviet communism; the causes of economic crises; and the economic background to war and (...) peace. Russell’s economic writings appeared as chapters of books on subjects as diverse as the philosophy of science, the history of nineteenth-century Europe, the principles of education and the case for world government. Economic themes can be detected even in his most frivolous newspaper articles. He was a great literary stylist, and his popular writings on economics were widely read and possibly quite influential, especially between the wars. (shrink)

According to Quine the inscrutability of reference leads to ontological relativity, or, as Donald Davidson calls it, relativity of reference. Davidson accepts both inscrutability and the indeterminacy of translation which it grounds, but rejects any explicit relativity of reference or ontology. The reasons behind this rejection are set out and explained. Explicit relativization is shown to be at odds with indeterminacy. Some notion of the relativity of reference (or, more generally, interpretation) is nevertheless shown to be both possible and necessary. (...) It is, however, a relativity which is compatible with commensurability — the idea of absolute incommeasurability is ruled out along with the realist ideal of universal commensuration — as well as with indeterminacy. The indeterminacy thesis itself undergoes some slight elaboration, particularly in respect of the notion of empirical equivalence. In general the resulting account is one which retains both the absolute character of truth and some sense of the relativity of ontology against the background of Davidsonian holism. (shrink)