Between 1983 and 1990, at least 163 Western drugs were tested in the GDR. On the basis of archival documentation, relevant literature, and interviews we examined the clinical trials of five drugs more thoroughly; two of these individual case studies are introduced in this article. In the case of the clinical trials of the synthetic human growth hormone Saizen we found extensive trial and patient documentation, which allows for a detailed analysis of ethical aspects such as parent information and informed (...) patient consent. In the case of the clinical trials of the „abortion pill“ Mifepristone for the World Health Organization we uncovered irregularities with regard to the ethical evaluation. However, taken together, we could not find any serious violation of ethical norms in connection with our cases studies. (shrink)

Students of Thomas Aquinas have so far lacked a comprehensive study of his doctrine of the transcendentals. This volume fills this lacuna, showing the fundamental character of the notions of being, one, true and good for his thought. The book inquires into the beginnings of the doctrine in the thirteenth century and explains the relation of the transcendental way of thought to Aquinas's conception of metaphysics. It analyzes 'Being', 'One', 'True', 'Good' and 'Beautiful' individually and discusses their importance for the (...) philosophical knowledge of God. Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas is intended as a contribution to the question 'What is philosophy in the Middle Ages?' It argues that the doctrine of the transcendentals is essential for understanding medieval philosophy. (shrink)

Francois Recanati has recently argued that each perceptual state has two distinct kinds of content, complete and explicit content. According to Recanati, the former is a function of the latter and the psychological mode of perception. Furthermore, he has argued that explicit content is temporally neutral and that time-consciousness is a feature of psychological mode. In this paper it is argued, pace Recanati, that explicit content is not temporally neutral. Recanati’s position is initially presented. Three desiderata for a theory of (...) time-consciousness are subsequently introduced. It is then argued that a theory locating time-consciousness as a feature of psychological mode will fail to satisfy these desiderata. In the last section the intentionality of memories is discussed. Using the notion of shiftable indexical, it is argued that memories have the same explicit content as perceptions, but that they nevertheless can have different conditions of satisfaction since they are entertained in different modes. (shrink)

The 13th century is often regarded as the epitome of the Middle Ages. The present volume aims to demonstrate new perspectives in research into this century. The main topics in the book are questions from the fields of theoretical and practical philosophy, theology, the history of institutions, problems in literature, art, learning and education, and cultural contact. This 27th volume of the Miscellanea Mediaevalia contains the papers delivered to the 31st Medievalists’ Conference held in Cologne in September 1998, together with (...) a number of additional contributions. In keeping with the basic idea of the Cologne Medievalists’ Conferences, the volume is divided into 10 sections containing the 38 papers from philosophy and history, literary history and theology, and the history of learning and the arts. (shrink)

The larger part of Yearbook 6 of the Institute Vienna Circle constitutes the proceedings of a symposium on Alfred Tarski and his influence on and interchanges with the Vienna Circle, especially those on and with Rudolf Carnap and Kurt Gödel. It is the first time that this topic has been treated on such a scale and in such depth. Attention is mainly paid to the origins, development and subsequent role of Tarski's definition of truth. Some contributions are primarily historical, others (...) analyze logical aspects of the concept of truth. Contributors include Anita and Saul Feferman, Jan Wolenski, Jan Tarski and Hans Sluga. Several Polish logicians contributed: Gzegorczyk, Wójcicki, Murawski and Rojszczak. The volume presents entirely new biographical material on Tarski, both from his Polish period and on his influential career in the United States: at Harvard, in Princeton, at Hunter, and at the University of California at Berkeley. The high point of the analysis involves Tarski's influence on Carnap's evolution from a narrow syntactical view of language, to the ontologically more sophisticated but more controversial semantical view. Another highlight involves the interchange between Tarski and Gödel on the connection between truth and proof and on the nature of metalanguages. The concluding part of Yearbook 6 includes documentation, book reviews and a summary of current activities of the Institute Vienna Circle. Jan Tarski introduces letters written by his father to Gödel; Paolo Parrini reports on the Vienna Circle's influence in Italy; several reviews cover recent books on logical empiricism, on Gödel, on cosmology, on holistic approaches in Germany, and on Mauthner. (shrink)

Józef M. Bocheński began his philosophical career as an eclectic philosopher, then switched to Thomism and finally became a representative of the analytic school. As a Thomist he wanted to reform this orientation by the resources of modern formal logic. This tendency culminated in the establishment of the Cracow Circle (established in 1936) whose members were Bocheński, Jan F. Drewnowski, Jan Salamucha, and Bolesław Sobociński. However, the program of the Cracow Circle was rejected by most Thomists who considered traditional logic (...) as an entirely sufficient device of philosophy. Bocheński was very disappointed by this attitude of his Thomist fellows. His evolution toward analytic philosophy, free of any ideological pressure, can be regarded as his reaction to the conservatism of Thomism. (shrink)

Please note that this article belongs to the Special Issue on “New Styles of Thought and Practices: Biology in the Interwar Period,” guest editors Jan Baedke and Christina Brandt, but was included in volume 52, issue 2, Summer 2019 by mistake. It should be regarded as part of this special issue collection of articles.

The book series Linguistische Arbeiten (LA) publishes high-quality work in linguistics that addresses current issues in synchrony and diachrony, theoretically or empirically oriented.

‘The mathematisation of time has limits,’ writes Derrida in ‘Ousia and Gramme.’ Taking this quote in all possible senses, this paper considers Derrida’s definition of limit as gramme, trace, and ap...

Approximately twenty years after it was necessary to fight for human rights, the time came when it was necessary to do it again. Or to begin at the very least to protect them very strongly and thoroughly in a preventive manner. Other methods and means will revert to time when human rights were formally anchored but their material establishment is not yet realized, or not at least to the extent expected corresponding to their real substance. The beginning of the 90’s (...) in Central and Eastern Europe was a success in that human rights began to be looked on as natural, forming the basis of democratic State respecting the rule of law. Today we are increasingly more often encountering the reality that human rights, on the contrary, to the same extent that they have been able to be established, they are losing in value. The biggest danger consists in the fact that limiting of human rights often is attended by silence, without wider public discussion or deliberations. The lack of qualified discussion during the limiting of human rights by way of laws and implementing regulations is however a systemic problem. Correction of its results can be often very complex and doing away with the causes a long term effort. It is dependent on the quality of representative democracy and of the civil society as well. This article is devoted to problem of implementation of evidence of data accompanying telecommunications traffic, the so-called data retention, and in its development from lack of legal regulation to roughly unconstitutional legal regulation and finally to hope for a reasonably constitutional solution. (shrink)

The paper discusses the impact of the thought of Stanisław Brzozowski (1878–1911) on several Polish emigré writers, including Józef Czapski and Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, but first of all Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004) and Aleksander Wat (1900–1967). Miłosz’ approach oscillated between early fascination through an unjust rejection during the war, due to the “appropriation” of Brzozowski’s thought by the right wing publicists, to the new phase of fascination after the war, culminating in the publication of a book on Brzozowski ( A Man Among (...) Scorpions , 1962) and prolonged in several important articles till the very end of his life. Wat’s approach shifted from the communist practice of “overcoming” Brzozowski through the affirmation of his criticism and rejection of catholic obscurantism to the process of the internalization of the catholic faith. (shrink)

From the ‘DuPont factory’ case in China, one can see that contemporary ecology is faced with two underlying problems: A lack of responsibility toward the environment beyond being economically profitable, and a lack of care for what is outside of one’s immediate environment. For the purpose of confronting these two problems, I suggest two Confucian concepts: 1. zhengming 正名 and 2. datong 大同 . These two concepts can be used to develop an environmental ethics and thus play a crucial role (...) in solving the two above-mentioned problems. Zhengming is originally a political concept that was put forward by Confucius. According to this concept, everyone should fulfill their duty to the utmost in accordance with their individual roles. Datong is Confucius’ political ideal and emphasizes gong 公 as a spirit for caring for tian xia 天下 . A Confucian-style harmonious society is achieved by ‘letting every being manifest its mandate to the full’ (ge jin xing .. (shrink)

When there are equally strong claimants for a scarce good, lotteries are often argued to be a fair method of allocation. This paper reproduces four of the views on the fairness of lotteries that have been presented in the literature: the distributive view; the preference view; the actual consent view; and the expressive view. It argues that these four views cannot offer plausible explanations for the fairness of lotteries. The distributive view is argued to be inadequate because, even though receiving (...) expectations to a good is of value to the participants, this value cannot plausibly make a contribution to the satisfaction of a participant’s claim. Both the preference and actual consent views are argued to be implausible because they lead to accepting procedures as legitimate that fail to correspond with what a claim is. Finally, it is contended that the expressive view identifies a value that is relevant to respecting equal claimants, but that cannot plausibly be related to a procedure’s fairness. The paper concludes by maintaining that an equal treatment view can accept all the valid insights from these four views without needing to accept their untenable implications. (shrink)

Belgium is generally perceived as being one of the most fervent supporters of European integration. It is supposed that this is equally true for both, the Belgian political elite and the Belgian population. Unlike in other EU member states, no large public discussion on EU integration has taken place. Therefore, it is generally supposed that Lindberg's concept of the permissive consensus applies to the Belgians. This article aims, first, at challenging empirically the existence ofa permissive consensus in Belgium. In 1997 (...) both qualitative and quantitative data on the policy position on EU issues ofabout 130 Belgian social organisations have been collected. Content analysis ofthese positions shows that the existence ofa permissive consensus seems to be dependent on a number of variables and that a general observation of a permissive consensus has to be relaxed. Second, if permissive consensus is declining, why is it, then, that no open political controversy on European integration has emerged? In answering this, thefocus is on two explanatory variables: the resources of those that would liketo mobilise are quite limited and their opinion on European politics is rather heterogeneous and undeveloped. (shrink)

BackgroundExpanded access is the use of investigational drugs (IDs) outside of clinical trials. Generally it is performed in patients with serious and life-threatening diseases who cannot be treated satisfactorily with authorized drugs. Legal regulations of expanded access to IDs have been introduced among others in the USA, the European Union (EU), Canada and Australia. In addition, in the USA an alternative to expanded access is treatment under the Right-to-Try law. However, the treatment use of IDs is inherently associated with a (...) number of ethically relevant problems.Main textThe objective of this article is to present a coherent framework made up of eight requirements which have to be met for any treatment use of an ID to be ethical. These include a justified need for the use of an ID, no threat to clinical development of the ID, adequate scientific evidence to support the treatment, patient’s benefit as the primary goal of the use of an ID, informed decision of a patient, fair access of patients to IDs, independent review, as well as the dissemination of treatment results.ConclusionsWhile this framework is essentially consistent with the legal regulations of expanded access of the USA, the EU, Canada and Australia, it is substantially wider in scope because it addresses some important issues that are not covered by the regulations. Overall, the framework that we developed minimizes the risks and threats, and maximizes potential benefits to each of the four key stakeholders involved in the treatment use of IDs including patients, doctors, drug manufacturers, and society at large. (shrink)