All professional ethics are dependent on the epistemology of the profession. The possibility of following a code of ethics, whether the official one or an alternative code, is dependent on being able to obtain knowledge and understand the world. Professional knowledge has to be based on inferences from limited information. Statistics provides the optimal methods for making such inferences, and thus ethical professional conduct requires individual or collective understanding of some statistical thcory and practice. This is demonstrated using the medical (...) profession as an example. Statistical methods are essential in all areas of medicine, in routine medical practice, in screening for disease and in research. Evidence from medical journals, textbooks and research bodies shows that the statistical basis for ethical conduct is lacking. However, there are attempts to improve the situation. (shrink)

This paper outlines the approaches of two apparently competing schools of statistics. The criticisms made by supporters of Bayesian statistics about conventional Frequentist statistics are explained, and the Bayesian claim that their method enables research into new treatments without the need for clinical trials is examined in detail. Several further important issues are considered, including: the use of historical controls and data routinely collected on patients; balance in randomised trials; the possibility of giving information to patients; patient choice and patient (...) autonomy; and how widely the results of clinical trials can be used. It is concluded that good statistical techniques in the design and analysis of medical studies are essential, but the statistical school used in developing such techniques is relatively unimportant. (shrink)

A patient's informed consent is required by the Nuremberg code, and its successors, before she can be entered into a clinical trial. However, concern has been expressed by both patients and professionals about the beneficial or detrimental effect on the patient of asking for her consent. We examine advantages and drawbacks of popular variations on consent, which might reduce the stress on patients at the point of illness. Both informed and uninformed responses to particular trials, and trials in general, are (...) discussed. The selection by doctors of patients, to whom entry to trials will be offered, is explored. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century, and: Anne Conway: A Woman PhilosopherJane DuranWomen Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century, by Jacqueline Broad; 204 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. $65.00. Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher, by Sarah Hutton; 280 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. $75.00.Recent work on women philosophers has, in general, approached the topic from two vantage points: on the one hand, a number of anthologies (...) have been published, wherein commentators present a small portion of the woman thinker's work, often without the background necessary for a fuller understanding. On the other hand, some few women philosophers have been the subject of full-length works, but these have tended, by and large, to be women thinkers of the twentieth century, with whose work we are already familiar. Two recent books, one by Jacqueline Broad and the other by Sarah Hutton, go a long way toward improving the situation.Work by Eileen O'Neill, Sarah Hutton and Margaret Atherton, among others, has helped familiarize us with the notion that the seventeenth century—that era so commonly associated with Descartes and the rise of modern philosophy—was also a time of rich theorizing by women philosophers. Jacqueline Broad's book possesses many virtues: it has the finely-tuned style of the careful historian, while at the same time not failing to demonstrate acquaintance with a range of contemporary feminist commentary. Part of the problem in addressing women thinkers of the past is another version of what we are now tempted to call the essentialism problem: does it make sense to think that there is a style that might be demarcated as "feminine," or that might, in some way, pertain uniquely to women theorists? These are difficult issues, but a partial response to the question is to try to remember that it is not for no reason that women thinkers have, indeed, been left out of the canon. As Broad herself says, women philosophers "are now mere footnotes to the standard historical-intellectual accounts of the early modern period" (p. 1).Broad does a superb job of navigating between the need to set out the plain tenets of the thinker's philosophy, and the desire to try to tie it into these larger questions. In six chapters, she addresses the work of Elizabeth of Bohemia, [End Page 200] Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Astell, Damaris Masham and Catharine Trotter Cockburn The chapters on Elizabeth, Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell are particularly strong—here part of the difficulty is that we do have familiar commentaries addressing the work of these women, and it is hard to try to see them in a new light. We are accustomed, for example, to think of Elizabeth merely as Descartes's correspondent. As is the case with information that is currently coming to bear on the question of Harriet Taylor Mill's input into the work of John Stuart Mill, it is difficult for us to see Elizabeth as a thinker in her own right, or, indeed, to give her the credit that Descartes himself gave her; as Broad notes, he had described her as "the only person I have so far found who has completely understood all my previous works" (p. 13). Margaret Cavendish's reputation has suffered from the somewhat scattered approach of her writings, and Broad cites her "reputation for eccentricity" (p. 38). Nevertheless, the sheer volume of her work and its allusion to the problems addressed by the Cambridge Platonists (areas also worked on by Anne Conway) demands that she be taken far more seriously than she has in the past. Astell has become known largely for her more overtly feminist works, such as A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, but she was also the author of several other pieces addressing issues in metaphysics, and again the amount of her work and its citation during her own time would militate against the notion that it should not receive thorough examination.Broad does a wonderful job of setting out the main philosophical questions found in these theorists' works, and she excels at pitting their views against those of the various male philosophers whose work—according to... (shrink)

Se e in che modo il piacere abbia a che fare con il modello di vita preferibile è argomento centrale, sia nella cultura greca, sia nel dibattito filosofico antico. Questo articolo confronta le differenti soluzioni che Platone e Aristotele hanno dato alla questione del piacere, rispettivamente nel Filebo e nell’Etica Nicomachea, registrando una significativa divergenza nel metodo e nella concezione antropologica.Whether and in what way pleasure has to do with a desirable lifestyle is a main topic both in Greek culture (...) and in ancient philosophical debate. This article compares the different solutions that Plato and Aristotle gave to the question of pleasure, in Philebus and in Nicomachean Ethics respectively, pointing out an important divergence in method and anthropological conception. (shrink)

The myth of Helen runs through the poetic and philosophical tradition of the ancient world. Her defense is a paradox for legal tradition and the opportunity for a triumph of rhetoric. Through her name Greeks discuss the enchantment of beauty and desire as a driving force, which can have a destructive or constructive effect, or even act as a medium for great ideals. With Helen, a controversial power is at issue, which emanates from beauty and which presents itself differently to (...) the gaze of men and women, raising a “gender” question that has clear traces in ancient texts. All this gives reason to appreciate, once again, the usefulness of intertextual comparison to investigate themes transversally present in poetic, rhetorical, legal, historical and philosophical texts. The revisiting of myths is already an elective place for a consciously intertextual practice on the part of tragic poets, in which Plato finds a model for his philosophical theatre. Among the detectable intersections, it still deserves investigation that precisely the “rewriting (palinodia)” of the myth of Helen offers Plato the opportunity to introduce a decisive turning point in the Phaedrus, where his Socrates deals with the power of eros by dueling with rhetoric: here a poetic quotation becomes a philosophical place, in which the threads of a distant comparison, sometimes explicit, sometimes underground, intertwine between the intellectuals active in the first half of the 4th century. The ambiguity of the myth of Helen is the underlying theme of this essay, which aims to identify connections between the texts and implications that are not always declared. The themes examined are the praise or denigration connected to the image of Helen in Homer, the double rewriting of the myth in Euripides (The Trojan women and Helen), the different virtuosities of its defense in Stesichorus, Gorgias and Isocrates, the philosophical metamorphosis of the myth in Plato’s Phaedrus, where for the first time the quality of desire is questioned together with the type of love that derives from it. This essay is intended to be a tribute to Livio Rossetti, who made intertextual study an indispensable exegetical model for understanding what is talked about in the literature of the ancient world. (shrink)

Il saggio si propone di mostrare come dalla Repubblica di Platone emerga un progetto di felicità “relazionale”, basato cioè sulla buona qualità delle relazioni sociali e sulla consonanza armonica tra equilibrio interiore e valori civili. L’idea-guida è che la logica costruttiva della kallipolis rappresenti anche il superamento di una certa immagine socratica, legata all’autosufficienza della virtù e ad una prospettiva di felicità più eroica e solitaria.The essays wants to show how from Plato’s Republic emerges a project of a “relation-based” happiness, (...) which is based on the good quality of social relationships and the harmonious consonance between inner balance and social values. The key idea is that the constructive logic of the kallipolis also represents the overcoming of a certain Socratic image, linked to the self-sufficiency of virtue and to a perspective of happiness more heroic and solitary. (shrink)

Against the background of current reforms in higher education, we analyze the traditional education of Japanese doctoral students in philosophy of education from Western and Japanese perspectives by focusing on learning as self-education, on being and learning with others, on the socialization into the profession, and on the study of the foreign subject. Imai's explication of the Japanese construction of the adult self as instrumental is compared to Gadamer's ideas on self-education and education with others. A significant element of doctoral (...) education in Japan involves the learning of certain forms ( kata ) of professional conduct: belonging to a group, occupying a clear position in the social hierarchy, and developing a close mentoring relationship that fosters strong feelings of loyalty, harmony and respect. Furthermore, reciprocal dependence ( amae ) is analyzed and contrasted with the Western ideal of autonomy and maturity. Finally, the study of the foreign subject is considered in light of Gadamer's and Hegel's notion of making a home in the alien. Saito affirms a cross-cultural reading of foreign philosophical texts, claiming that they destabilize the native culture and turn a teacher in philosophy of education into a translator and prophet of her own as well as the foreign culture. (shrink)

L’articolo si propone di mostrare alcuni aspetti della strategia platonica nella Repubblica. L’analisi è condotta ricostruendo in primo luogo il modo in cui si presentava a Platone la questione della giustizia, con particolare riferimento alla tradizione relativa a Dike e alla crisi della cultura cittadina ateniese, tra V e IV secolo; in secondo luogo segnala il rapporto ambivalente che Platone intrat¬tiene con la cultura socratica della giustizia interiore; si indirizza infine a mostrare le modalità costruttive con cui Platone propone di (...) risolvere il conflitto nell’anima e nella città, ricorrendo ad una poli¬tica delle emozioni che non necessariamente esclude la compas¬sione.This article intends to illustrate some aspects of the platonic strategy in the Republic. The analysis is carried out at first by revising the way in which Plato was faced with the question of justice, with particular emphasis on the Dike’s tradition and on the crisis of the Athenian urban culture, between the Vth and IVth centuries; secondly, it points out Plato’s ambivalent relationship with the Socratic culture of inner justice; it finally underlines the structural procedures according to which Plato intends to solve the conflict in the soul and in the city and to realize forms of social identity, resorting to a policy of emotions which does non necessarily exclude compassion. (shrink)

In the context of item response theory, linking the scales of two measurement points is a prerequisite to examine a change in competence over time. In educational large-scale assessments, non-identical test forms sharing a number of anchor-items are frequently scaled and linked using two− or three-parametric item response models. However, if item pools are limited and/or sample sizes are small to medium, the sparser Rasch model is a suitable alternative regarding the precision of parameter estimation. As the Rasch model implies (...) stricter assumptions about the response process, a violation of these assumptions may manifest as model misfit in form of item discrimination parameters empirically deviating from their fixed value of one. The present simulation study investigated the performance of four IRT linking methods—fixed parameter calibration, mean/mean linking, weighted mean/mean linking, and concurrent calibration—applied to Rasch-scaled data with a small item pool. Moreover, the number of anchor items required in the absence/presence of moderate model misfit was investigated in small to medium sample sizes. Effects on the link outcome were operationalized as bias, relative bias, and root mean square error of the estimated sample mean and variance of the latent variable. In the light of this limited context, concurrent calibration had substantial convergence issues, while the other methods resulted in an overall satisfying and similar parameter recovery—even in the presence of moderate model misfit. Our findings suggest that in case of model misfit, the share of anchor items should exceed 20% as is currently proposed in the literature. Future studies should further investigate the effects of anchor item composition regarding unbalanced model misfit. (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende demostrar que, en la filosofía de Bruno, la vicisitud universal es la explicación metafísica del devenir cósmico y su constitutiva movilidad. La materia infinita del universo es una unidad vital al amparo de la ley de la mutación cíclica, cuya consecuencia ineludible es la armonía de los contrarios. El destino del hombre es hallar la verdad subyacente en el ritmo vícisitudinario de lo real, y para ello deberá alcanzar la sabiduría y transcenderla por el amor heroico.

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 2, Page 174-183, February 2022. This article is a commentary on Asger Sørensen's book Capitalism, Alienation and Critique, especially his definition and delimitation of neoliberalism. Overall, I sympathize with Sørensen's aim and critical project and also acknowledge the contribution of his particular approach to a critique of capitalism, political economy and more specifically neoliberalism. However, I shall discuss whether his definition of neoliberalism is the most appropriate from a critical perspective, i.e. as a (...) Critical Theory approach to the role of neoliberalism in contemporary capitalism. This commentary aims to provide a perspective to certain themes in Sørensen's text by discussing his approach in comparison with other ways of defining and understanding neoliberalism. (shrink)

Il saggio si propone di mostrare la compresenza di aspetti collaborativi e competitivi all'interno della pratica del dialogo. Risalendo al di qua dell'esempio di Socrate, cui si riconosce in qualche modo l'invenzione di una ‘tecnica' del confronto tra interlocutori interessati alla ricerca della veritÀ, l'autrice intende mostrare le radici conflittuali della forma-dialogo e le implicazioni meno rassicuranti della dialettica discorsiva. Il tema del dialogo indica certo l'emergere di una possibilitÀ evolutiva nel cammino politico della civiltÀ: dalle passioni distruttive degli eroi (...) omerici all'impegno a perfezionare se stessi esponendosi a un pacifico confronto. Senza dimenticare, perň, che la natura dell'uomo si rispecchia in molti animali diversi e che il dialogo con lupi e sparvieri resta difficile. (shrink)