The clinical ethics literature is striking for the absence of an important genre of scholarship that is common to the literature of clinical medicine: systematic reviews. As a consequence, the field of clinical ethics lacks the internal, corrective effect of review articles that are designed to reduce potential bias. This article inaugurates a new section of the annual "Clinical Ethics" issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy on systematic reviews. Using recently articulated standards for argument-based normative ethics, we provide (...) a systematic review of the literature on concealed medication for the management of psychiatric disorders. Four steps are completed: identify a focused question; conduct a literature search using key terms relevant to the focused question; assess the adequacy of the argument-based methods of the papers identified; and identify conclusions drawn in each paper and whether they apply to the focused question. We identified seven papers and provide an assessment of them. While none of the papers fully meet the standards of argument-based ethics, they did provide rationales for the use of concealed medications, with the important requirement such a practice be accountable in explicit organizational policy to prevent abuse of patients with mental illness or dementia. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 54-56.

Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-226-97861-3 (alk. paper) — isbn 0-226-97862-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Science — Philosophy. 2. Science — History. 3. Progress. I. Title. Q175 .Z25 2004 501 — dc2i 200301 1970 ...

This book explores how and when biology emerged as a science in Germany. Beginning with the debate about organism between Georg Ernst Stahl and Gottfried Leibniz at the start of the eighteenth century, John Zammito traces the development of a new research program, culminating in 1800, in the formulation of developmental morphology. He shows how over the course of the century, naturalists undertook to transform some domains of natural history into a distinct branch of natural philosophy, which attempted not (...) only to describe but to explain the natural world and became, ultimately, the science of biology. (shrink)

One of the most peculiar features of the belief in God is the accompanying claim that God is an indescribable mystery, an object of faith but never an object of knowledge. In certain contexts – in worship, for example – this claim undoubtedly serves a useful purpose; and so I do not want to dismiss the idea altogether. But when pious remarks about the ineffable nature of God are taken out of context and turned into philosophy, the result is usually (...) an epistemological muddle. The trouble, of course, is that those who insist on God's mysteriousness still manage to say all sorts of things about him; he is an incorporeal spirit, he created the world, he loves his creatures, and so on. To assert these things is to presume some understanding of God, but no understanding is possible if God is completely incomprehensible. So if that is how it is, if the object of religious belief is utterly incomprehensible, then it makes no sense to say – or believe – anything about God. (shrink)

This book is intended for scholars and students of sociology, social science methodology, business, economics, and social researchers.

The paper by Susan M. Wolf and Jeffrey P. Kahn published in this issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics notes that we are members of the Working Group on Genetic Testing in Disability Insurance and that the members of the Working Group do not necessarily subscribe to its recommendations. Although we agree with some of Wolf and Kahn's recommendations, we do not agree with recommendations 1, 3, 4, and 5 for individual disability insurance and recommendations 1, 2, (...) and 3 for group disability insurance. We use this paper to delineate our areas of disagreement, but we do not discuss areas such as employment law as they are not our areas of expertise.First, understanding our roles on the Working Group is important. As members, we provided technical expertise on disability insurance. Our input to the Working Group represents our individual opinions. (shrink)

A veritable tidal shift in Herder scholarship has taken place over the last quarter century, primarily but not exclusively in German. This review essay seeks to evoke the richness and vitality of this revival with the hope of persuading American academics that some ill-founded opinions still circulating concerning Herder's "irrationalism" and chauvinistic, even racist nationalism, and his philosophical naivety and literary effrontery, might at last be put to rest. The recent revival has brough sharply to the fore two crucial aspects (...) of Herder. First, there is the contribution of Herder's thought to the emergent cultural and social sciences. Second, for Herder the "science of man" was also a natural science: the division between the humanities and the natural sciences that has been such a hallmark of the age from Kant until very recently did not exist for Herder. (shrink)

Exploring the relationship between morality and professional ideals, Kultgen examines the structure and organization of occupations and the ideals and ideology associated with professions. He argues that professionalization of occupations can both harm and benefit society, and that by converting occupations into organized special interest groups, the professions serve some sectors of society at the expense of others. On the other hand, he highlights the positive points of the professional ideal and explores ways in which it can be used to (...) advance the physical and moral welfare of society. Kultgen also shows how it is the practices within the professions that determine whether rules and ideals are used as masks for self-interest or for genuinely moral purposes. ISBN 0-8122-8094-6: $14.95. (shrink)

Bioethicists’ attraction to principlism is rooted in a Western view of how matters that affect the public ought to be deliberated and decided: their resolution ought to be so structured and constrained that it can be understood and verified even by those at a remove from the circumstances of the problem. That view of deliberation, itself fostered by the Western view of government, has encouraged principlism to spread from its source in human subjects research into other areas of bioethics discourse.

Second, this collection of cognitive programs evolved in the Pleistocene to solve the adaptive problems regularly faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors-...

In this book, John H. Smith investigates the influences of classical and humanistic rhetoric on Hegel's theory and practice of philosophical representation. Smith focuses on Hegel's concept of Bildung (roughly, education, development, or formation) which occupies a central position in his philosophy.

In recent years, we have experienced some revival of society''s concerns with the ethics of business practices as a result of several scandals. However, severe competitive pressures seem to continue to force executives to resort to marginally ethical ways that would provide knowledge about competitors'' operations. Therefore, an empirical study was conducted during Spring and Summer of 1991 about information gathering methods by businesses regarding operations of competitors. Respondents were employed in a variety of different industries. A convenience sample was (...) administered in two adjoining states, with one group residing in an urban city and the other in smaller predominantly rural communities.Analysis of perceptions held by these two groups supports the hypothesis that rural residents tend to be more conservative and less approving of questionable methods of information gathering. Similarly, within each group and in the sample as a whole, differences in condoning or disapproving information gathering methods were discovered on the basis of demographic characteristics of respondents. (shrink)

How can we develop a global economic architecture which is efficient, morally acceptable, geographically inclusive, and sustainable over time? If global capitalism -- arguably the most efficient wealth-creating system known to man -- is to be both economically viable and socially acceptable, each of its four constituent institutions must be both technically competent and buttressed by a strong moral ethos. Leading thinkers in international business and ethics identify the pressing moral issues which global capitalism must answer.

Kierkegaard occasionally mentions a type of belief which he calls an “existence communication,” and his discussion of such beliefs parallels his discussion of subjective truths (in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript). Existence communications include religious beliefs. I suggest that it is less misleading to focus on this term than it is to wrestle with the difficult and overworked notion of subjective truths; ultimately, his view of religious beliefs can be seen more clearly.His view does not fully emerge, however, without the assistance (...) of some other concepts. My thesis is that existence communications are comparable in their resistance to objective forms of adjudication to first principles, and comparable in their “self-involving” characteristics to teleological principles about the “raison d’etre of existence.This account not only helps to clarify Kierkegaard’s discussion, but it also offers two important hints about modern problems regarding religious belief. It suggest that religious claims may indeed be truth claims, and it suggests that there is more to the justification than comes out in a consideration of evidence. (shrink)

The principle of "organism"—of intrinsic and dynamic unity—and the existence of "organized bodies"—of living things—in the physical world represented crucial preoccupations for philosophers of nature and experimental naturalists across the eighteenth century. How to make sense of these in a manner consistent with a unified scientific understanding of the physical world became the inevitable challenge that accompanied these recognitions. In just this theoretical enterprise, Leibniz emerges to historical scrutiny as an indispensable and pervasive influence. Thus, we are very fortunate to (...) have the body of scholarship that François Duchesneau has devoted to this topic over the course of his illustrious career. In this... (shrink)

William Rehg believes that the ‘science wars’ of recent times make it acutely necessary that ‘reasonable’ or ‘cogent’ standards for the assessment of scientific claims find acceptance among the various constituencies of the debate. He see ‘Kuhn’s gap’ — the mutual estrangement of philosophy of science from empirical science studies — as lamentable and seeks to bridge these disciplines via ‘argumentation theory’ inspired by the philosophy of Jürgen Habermas. While the use of argumentation theory helps illuminate the complexities of scientific (...) practices of assessment, it may not be enough to engineer the interdisciplinary cooperation Rehg desires. (shrink)