First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

_Derrida_ (2002) Directed by Amy Ziering Kofman and Kirby Dick UK Premiere: 31 January 2003.

This paper explores the filmic trajectories experienced by the protagonists in two case studies: Lightning Over Water by Nicholas Ray and Wim Wenders, and Sick, The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist by Kirby Dick. In both films, the limitexperience, caused by a disease, becomes an active device, one that produces knowledge for the protagonists. In this radical experience, what is revealed is the link between selfrepresentation and a will to self-destruction, and the normative margins of rationality (...) are questioned. Based on the studies of Jean-Luc Nancy, Jean Baudrillard and Clément Rosset, this essay examines an approach to terminal illness and self-representation both in the context of pain and the voyeuristic process of death as a spectacle. (shrink)

Žižek! Directed by Astra Taylor. Zeitgeist Films, 2005, 71mins Derrida Directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman. Zeitgeist Films, 2002, 84mins.

There are many touch points between the work of Jacques Derrida and René Girard. To me, as a student of literature, these two writers particularly stand out as great readers or great exegetes.1 The way they handle and combine texts, the way they dare to break with reading conventions, has proved to be really fruitful.Some time ago I watched a documentary about Derrida, made by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman, published in 2002, carrying the simple title Derrida.2 (...) I found that this experimental documentary at the same time reflected Derrida’s many reservations, not to say his skepticism, as to the possibility of making portraits—and—proved to be far more revealing, even intimate, than a conventional documentary... (shrink)

Anthropology diffracted : originary humanicity -- Just figures?: forensic clairvoyance, mathematics, and the language question -- Enumerating language : "The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" -- Natural convers(at)ions : or, what if culture was really nature all along? -- (Con)founding "the human" : rethinking the incest taboo -- Culpability and the double-cross : Irigaray with Merleau-Ponty.

Overby and colleagues (2015) draw our critical attention to a variety of ethical challenges associated with the practice of controlled donation after circulatory determination of death (cDCDD). Alt...

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 52, Issue 4, Page 500-531, Fall 2024.

Interest in the future, clinical implementation of uterus transplantation for uterine factor infertility was recently boosted by the demonstration of proof-of-concept for deceased uterus donation/transplantation. The ethical dimensions of living and deceased uterus transplantation are explored and addressed in the paper through their comparison to the ethical elements of an existing, legal, assisted reproduction practice in some high-income countries, i.e., gestational surrogacy. A set of six ethics lenses is used in the comparative analysis: reproductive autonomy and rights, informed choice/consent, relevant (...) critical relational theories, health equity, theoretical application of the accepted living donation standard, and comparative benefits and burdens considerations. Gestational surrogacy, as currently practiced in some high-income countries, is the assumed, theoretical base-threshold for determination of ethical acceptability in assisted reproduction practices. The analysis demonstrates that : 1) the ethical acceptability of living uterus donation/transplantation is less than that of gestational surrogacy in high-income countries, and 2) the ethical acceptability of deceased uterus donation/transplantation is roughly equivalent to that of gestational surrogacy. This leads to the conclusion that, at the present time, only one version of uterus transplantation practice, i.e., deceased uterus transplantation, should be considered ethically acceptable for possible clinical implementation in high-income countries. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 29, Number 2, November 2003, pp. 305-325 Hume, Sympathy, and the Theater BRIAN KIRBY Every movement of the theater, by a skillful poet, is communicated, as it were by magic, to the spectators; who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions, which actuate the several personages of the drama. (EPM 5.2.26; SBN 221-2) Much has been written recently about (...) the role of sympathy in Hume's moral theory. That may indeed be its most important use. But it seems from a number of illustrations he uses that it has broader applications, in particular, application to a spectator's appreciation of drama. The problem some see with this broader application is that it conflicts with the basic definition of sympathy as a process by means of which impressions are shared. The actors on the stage would not seem to have the same passions which "inflame" the spectators. Worse, the spectators do not believe in their hearts that the passions which inflame them have real correlates. At first blush, "sympathy" might mean any one of several things. In "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn," for example, Jonathan Bennett says, "As for 'sympathy': I use this term to cover every sort of fellow-feeling, as when one feels pity over someone's loneliness, or horrified compassion over his pain, and when one feels a shrinking reluctance to act in a way which will bring misfortune to someone else."1 However, fellow-feeling is not a sharing of feelings in Hume's sense. Alvin I. Goldman comes closer to Hume's meaning in a narrow description of empathy: "To empathize with someone, in its Brian Kirby, Associate Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at St. Lawrence University, is at 172 Miner Street Road, Canton, NY 13617, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 306 Brian Kirby most frequent sense, is to sympathize or commiserate, which involves shared attitudes, sentiments, or emotions."2 Still, Hume's sympathy is not the commiseration but rather what is involved in the commiseration, the shared attitudes, sentiments, and emotions. "No quality of human nature," says Hume, "is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own" (T 2.1.11.2; SBN 316). The principle of sympathy as he describes it in his technical sense is as follows: When any affection is infus'd by sympathy, it is at first known only by its effects, and by those external signs in the countenance and conversation, which convey an idea of it. This idea is presently converted into an impression, and acquires such a degree of force and vivacity, as to become the very passion itself, and produce an equal emotion, as any original affection. However instantaneous this change of the idea into an impression may be, it proceeds from certain views and reflections, which will not escape the strict scrutiny of a philosopher, tho' they may the person himself, who makes them. (T 2.1.11.3; SBN 317) If sympathy has to do with the sharing of impressions, what can one say about possible broader applications in which the correlate impression is absent? One tack to take is to dismiss the illustrative examples as aberrations or at least minor inconsistencies on Hume's part. A second is to argue that the broader applications follow reasonably, given Hume's description of the mechanism of sympathy. I propose, in this paper, to take the second tack. The above description characterizes what one might call sympathy in its normal social context in which the feelings of another are identifiable from his verbal and bodily behavior. Of course, the identification is not infallible. The other person may intend to deceive by lying or mimicking the behavior associated with a feeling. But such occasions are parasitic on normal contexts. But beyond the normal social context, there are other occasions which elicit sympathy, situations in which passions are aroused in the sympathizers for good cause, but which have no correspondent in the objects of sympathy. The case... (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that limitarian policies are a good means to further political equality. Limitarianism, which is a view coined and defended by Robeyns, is a partial view in distributive justice which claims that under non-ideal circumstances it is morally impermissible to be rich. In a recent paper, Volacu and Dumitru level two arguments against Robeyns’ Democratic Argument for limitarianism. The Democratic Argument states that limitarianism is called for given the undermining influence current inequalities in income and wealth (...) have for the value of democracy and political equality. Volacu and Dumitru’s Incentive Objection holds that limitarianism places an excessive and inefficient burden on the rich in ensuring political equality. The Efficacy Objection holds that even if limitarianism limits excessive wealth it still fails to ensure the preservation of political equality. In this paper, I will argue that both of these objections fail, but on separate grounds. I argue that the Incentive objection fails because one could appeal to limitarian policies that are different from the ones discussed by Volacu and Dumitru and which escape the problem of reduced productivity. I argue against the Efficacy Objection that limitarian policies are a partial but highly valuable step towards establishing political equality, and that they can and should complement or be complemented by other strategies. (shrink)

The jurist A. V. Dicey’s study of the Law of the Constitution (1885) has been since its publication the dominant analysis of the British constitution and the source of orthodoxy on such subjects as parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. This canonical status has obscured the originality of Dicey’s ideas in the history of legal and political thought. Dicey reworked the traditional idea of sovereignty into two separate concepts – legal and political sovereignty – in order to square the (...) common law notion of the sovereignty of parliament with the democratic idea of the sovereignty of the people. He forged a new concept – ‘the rule of law’ – to explain the legal basis of liberty in common law countries in a manner that was both Benthamite and constitutionalist. Finally, he provided a democratic and anti-federalist rationale for maintaining the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. This majoritarian, centralist and utilitarian constitutionalism has been one of the most enduring products of Victorian scholarship. This article seeks to recover it in its original context and, in so doing, to show the value of reintegrating legal thought into the mainstream of modern British history and the history of political thought. (shrink)

It is often challenging for mental health‐care providers and health organizations to perform their various roles and to meet their varied obligations. In complex mental health‐care circumstances the concurrent application of relevant ethical principles and values often leads to the emergence of completing obligations that need to be carefully weighed and balanced in the making of care‐related decisions. Although some clinical circumstances, such as those potentially triggering the duty to warn, are adequately guided by existing rules based on legal precedents, (...) there is a gap in decision‐making support in other mental health‐care domains. This article proposes that a set of targeted, decision‐making approaches be developed to assist in the handling of specific, challenging circumstances. By way of illustration, two novel approaches are introduced; that is, choosing to work within a moral relational space of optimal therapeutic engagement (at the micro level of clinical practice), and the use of a health policy development approach that instantiates deliberative engagement (at the meso and macro levels of health organization). (shrink)

While the contemporary biomimicry movement is associated primarily with the idea of taking Nature as model for technological innovation, it also contains a normative or ethical principle—Nature as measure—that may be treated in relative isolation from the better known principle of Nature as model. Drawing on discussions of the principle of Nature as measure put forward by Benyus and Jackson, while at the same time situating these discussions in relation to contemporary debates in the philosophy of biomimicry : 364–387, 2011; (...) Dicks in Philos Technol, doi: 10.1007/s13347-015-0210-2, 2015; Blok and Gremmen in J Agric Environ Ethics 29:203–217, 2016), the aim of this paper is to explore the relation between the principle of Nature as measure and environmental ethics. This leads to the argument that mainstream formulations of environmental ethics share the common trait of seeing our ethical relation to Nature as primarily involving duties to protect, preserve, or conserve various values in Nature, and that, in doing so, they problematically either overlook or dismiss as anthropocentric the possibility that Nature may provide measures, understood in terms of ecological standards, against which our own practices, or at least some of them, may be judged—a way of thinking I call “biomimetic ethics”. The practical consequences of this argument are significant. Whereas mainstream environmental ethics has been applied above all to such issues as wilderness preservation, natural resource management, and animal rights and welfare, biomimetic ethics is applicable rather to the question of how we produce, use, and consume things, and, as such, may potentially provide the basic ethical framework required to underpin the transition to a circular, bio-based, solar economy. (shrink)

Bianchi, Stanley, and Sutander argue in an insightful, cogent manner for the consideration of harm reduction as an ethically-defensible, non-paternal management approach for capable persons...

In a recent paper I discussed the origin of the concept of the climata in Greek geography, and adduced reasons for attributing the formulation and elaboration of the concept to Hipparchus . The above passage in Strabo was naturally mentioned in the course of the argument, and I drew attention in a footnote to the unsatisfactory nature of the account given by him of the climata. I now propose to examine the passage in more detail.

For use in applied settings, the melioration model will need to incorporate changes in the shapes of local value functions over time, treat current value as a continuous function of time since previous choices, and take into account discounting of the effects of current behavior on future value. The policy implications of the model for regulating drugs are limited.

A provocative question has emerged since the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision on assisted dying: Should Canadians who request, and are granted, an assisted death be considered a legitimate source of transplantable organs? A related question is addressed in this paper: is controlled organ donation after assisted death (cDAD) more or less ethically-problematic than standard, controlled organ donation after circulatory determination of death (cDCDD)? Controversial, ethics-related dimensions of cDCD that are of relevance to this research question are explored, and morally-relevant (...) distinctions between cDAD and cDCD are identified. In addition, a set of morally-relevant advantages of one practice over the other is uncovered, and a few potential, theoretical issues specifically related to cDAD practice are articulated. Despite these concerns, the analysis suggests a counterintuitive conclusion: cDAD is, overall, less ethically-problematic than cDCDD. The former practice better respects the autonomy interests of the potential donor, and a claim regarding irreversibility of cessation of the donor’s circulatory function in the cDAD context can be supported. Further, with cDAD, there is no possibility that the donor will have negative sensory experiences during organ procurement surgery. Although the development of appropriate policy-decision and regulatory approaches in this domain will be complex and challenging, the comparative ethical analysis of these two organ donation practices has the potential to constructively inform the deliberations of relevant stakeholders, resource persons and decision makers. (shrink)

Carl Knight argues that lexical sufficientarianism, which holds that sufficientarian concerns should have lexical priority over other distributive goals, is ‘excessive’ in many distinct ways and that sufficientarians should either defend weighted sufficientarianism or become prioritarians. In this article, I distinguish three types of weighted sufficientarianism and propose a weighted sufficientarian view that meets the excessiveness objection and is preferable to both Knight’s proposal and prioritarianism. More specifically, I defend a multi-threshold view which gives weighted priority to benefits directly above (...) and below its thresholds, but gives benefits below the lowest threshold lexical priority over benefits above the highest threshold. (shrink)

Modernity is founded on the belief that the world we build is a human invention, not a part of nature. The ecological consequences of this idea have been catastrophic. We have laid waste to natural ecosystems, replacing them with fundamentally unsustainable human designs. With time running out to address the environmental crises we have caused, our best path forward is to turn to nature for guidance. In this book, Henry Dicks explores the philosophical significance of a revolutionary approach to sustainable (...) innovation: biomimicry. The term describes the application and adaptation of strategies found in nature to the development of artificial products and systems, such as passive cooling techniques modeled on termite mounds or solar cells modeled on leaves. Dicks argues that biomimicry, typically seen as just a design strategy, can also serve as the basis for a new environmental philosophy that radically alters how we understand and relate to the natural world. By showing how we can imitate, emulate, and learn from nature, biomimicry points us toward a genuinely sustainable way of inhabiting the earth. Rooted in philosophy, The Biomimicry Revolution has profound implications spanning the natural sciences, design, architecture, sustainability studies, science and technology studies, and the environmental humanities. It presents a sweeping reconception of what philosophy can be and offers a powerful new vision of terrestrial existence. (shrink)

The contentious, topical debate about whether faith-based health care organizations should be granted accommodation on the basis of institutional conscientious objection to medical assistance is dying (MAiD) is addressed through a comparative analysis of arguments on both sides of the issue that references such relevant considerations as: claimed ‘moral-authority’, competing rights-based claims, obligations arising from patient welfare principles, formal justice, dissimilarity in consequences, and two illustrative arguments from analogy. The analysis leads to the conclusion that nonconditional accommodation on the basis (...) of institutional conscientious objection to MAiD is not ethically acceptable in Canada. A compromise mechanism, consisting of a suggested set of pragmatic conditions, is proposed that could effectively balance the competing moral responsibilities that arise from this conclusion and a core assumption of the paper, i.e., that some dominant faith-based health institutions can legitimately request, and expect, that provincial/territorial governments pay them a measure of respect in their operational, health-care-delivery decision making because of these institutions’ long history of providing high quality, health care in Canada. It is further suggested that provincial/territorial governments only allow large, publicly funded, faith-based health care organizations to enact a conditional version of accommodation on the basis of institutional conscientious objection to MAiD in circumstances where the organization has entered into a formal agreement with the relevant health department to meet the proposed, compromise conditions (or a relevantly-similar set of conditions). (shrink)

Despite the prominence of thresholds in theories of distributive justice, there is no general account of what sort of role is played by the idea of a threshold within such theories. This has allowed an ongoing lack of clarity and misunderstanding around views that employ thresholds. In this article, I develop an account of the concept of thresholds in distributive justice. I argue that this concept contains three elements, which threshold views deploy when ranking possible distributions. These elements are (i) (...) the level of the threshold, (ii) what constitutes the value of the threshold, and (iii) how benefits above and below the threshold must be allocated. I highlight three contributions that this particular account of thresholds makes: it clarifies the nature of the shift that occurs at the threshold; it resolves a common misunderstanding about headcount principles; and it shows how the arbitrariness objection can be met. (shrink)

In this critical commentary, a set of ethical considerations of relevance to the (currently contested) interpretation of irremediability for medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in circumstances where the sole-underlying medical condition is a mental health disorder is explored and analyzed. Based on the application of an ethics lens, a practical description of irremediability is proposed for intended use as guidance by Canadian mental health care clinicians, MAiD assessors and providers, and provincial/territorial professional regulatory authorities.

School principals world-wide report high levels of strain and attrition resulting in a shortage of qualified principals. It is thus, crucial to identify psychosocial risk factors that reflect principals’ occupational wellbeing. For this purpose, we used the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ-II), a widely used self-report measure covering multiple psychosocial factors identified by leading occupational stress theories. We evaluated the COPSOQ-II regarding factor structure and longitudinal, discriminant, and convergent validity using latent structural equation modeling in a large sample of Australian school (...) principals (N = 2,049). Results reveal that confirmatory factor analysis produced marginally acceptable model fit. A novel approach we call set exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM-set), where cross-loadings were only allowed within a priori defined sets of factors, fit well, and was more parsimonious than a full ESEM. Further multitrait-multimethod models based on the set-ESEM confirm the importance of a principal’s psychosocial risk factors; Stressors and depression were related to demands and ill-being, while confidence and autonomy were related to wellbeing. We also show that working in the private sector was beneficial for showing a low psychosocial risk, while other demographics have little effects. Finally, we identify five latent risk profiles (high risk to no risk) of school principals based on all psychosocial factors. Overall the research presented here closes the theory application gap of a strong multi-dimensional measure of psychosocial risk-factors. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a novel characterization of sufficientarianism. I argue that sufficientarianism combines three claims: a priority claim that we have non-instrumental reasons to prioritize benefits in certain ranges over benefits in other ranges; a continuum claim that at least two of those ranges are on one continuum; and a deficiency claim that the lower a range on a continuum, the more priority benefits in that range have. This characterization of sufficientarianism sheds new light on two long-standing philosophical (...) debates, namely about the distinctiveness of sufficientarianism as a distributive principle and about the common objections to sufficientarianism. (shrink)

This article explores Derrida's suggestion in Of Grammatology that deconstruction might be considered a positive science. The implication here is that ‘no outside of text’ does not evoke an enclosure whose limits can't be breached, an enclosure that discovers human exceptionalism in linguistic and technological capacities. Instead, this sense of a system and its involvements (différance) is already entangled in any ‘atom’ of its expression, whereby ‘no outside of text’ can be read as ‘no outside of Nature’. The logic that (...) informs and justifies the conventional separations between nature and culture, ideation and matter, and human and non-human, are thereby confounded; the dimensions of efficacy, as well as the vexed question of intention appear as non-local (systemic); and the very notion of language – what it is and how it works – is distributed in ways that give rise to the same quandaries that surround the quantum problematic. Indeed, at the end of this meditation the difference between the humanities and the sciences, especially in its current configuration as the impasse of ‘the two cultures’, can no longer be sustained. (shrink)

Physicians are increasingly confronted with the consequences of allocation policies. In several countries, physicians have been assigned a gatekeeper role for secondary health care. Many ethicists oppose this assignment for several reasons, concentrating on the harm the intrusion of societal arguments would inflict on doctor-patient relations. It is argued that these arguments rest on a distinction of spheres of values and of rationality, without taking into account the mixing of values and rationalities that takes place in everyday medical practice. If (...) medical practice, then, does not follow a single, pure rationality, can it also incorporate the societal rationality of the gatekeeper role?Using a case from general practice, I try to show how physicians may integrate societal arguments into their practice in a morally acceptable way. A version of the model of reflective equilibrium and especially Beauchamp and Childress's safeguards, may be helpful both to analyse and teach such balancing of values and rationalities. (shrink)

There are some things money literally cannot buy. Invariably transformable goods are such things because when they are exchanged for money, they become something else. These goods are destroyed rather than transferred in monetary exchanges. They mark out an impassable limit beyond which money and the market cannot reach. They cannot be for sale, in the strongest and most literal sense. Variably transformable goods are similar. They can be destroyed when offered or exchanged for money, but they differ in their (...) ability to sometimes emerge from financial transactions intact. -/- Analyzing transformable goods reveals informative and surprising results. Like other goods and commodities, they are agent relative, defined by the way particular agents value them. Inside the same transaction, a good could be transformable for one agent and not another, depending on how and what these agents value in the transaction. Applying this conceptual framework can reveal otherwise obscure facets of existing and future debates about the ethics and limits of markets. To demonstrate this, the framework is here applied to Richard Titmuss’s arguments about markets in blood, clarifying and illuminating some of his most confusing claims. Applying this framework to other debates may reveal even more striking results. (shrink)

This book explores issues at the core of modern linguistics and cognitive science. Why are all languages similar in some ways and in others utterly different? Why do languages change and change variably? How did the human capacity for language evolve, and how far did it do so as an innate ability? Simon Kirby looks at these questions from a broad perspective, arguing that they can be studied together. The author begins by examining how far the universal properties of (...) language may be explained by examining the way it is used, and how far by the way it is structured. He then considers what insights may be gained by combining functional and formal approaches. In doing so he develops a way of treating language as an adaptive system, in which its communicative and formal roles are both crucial and complementary. In order to test the effectiveness of competing theories and explanations, Simon Kirby develops computational models to show what universals emerge given a particular theory of language use or acquisition. He presents here both the methodology and the results. Function, Selection, and Innateness is important for its argument, its methodology, and its conclusions. It is a powerful demonstration of the value of looking at language as an adaptive system and goes to the heart of current debates on the evolution and nature of language. (shrink)

A careful exposition of Zilber's quasiminimal excellent classes and their categoricity is given, leading to two new results: the L ω₁ ,ω (Q)-definability assumption may be dropped, and each class is determined by its model of dimension $\aleph _{0}$.

According to the sufficiency theory of justice in health, justice requires that people have equal access to adequate health. In this article, I lay out the structure of this view and I assess its distributive implications for setting priority (i) between health needs across persons and (ii) between health care spending and other societal goods. I argue, first, that according to the sufficiency theory, deficiency in health cannot be completely offset by providing other societal goods. And, second, that it can (...) prevent the medicalization of societies by stressing that improvements beyond the level of adequate health have relatively little weight, if any, from the standpoint of justice. (shrink)

People can have or lack ‘integrity’. But can public institutions? It is common to speak of the ‘integrity’ of such institutions: in popular discourse, legal decisions, law and regulations, and also increasingly, political theory, and proximate disciplines. Such integrity is often said to be at risk of being ‘subverted,’ ‘corroded,’ and ‘corrupted,’ by both forces within and without. Furthermore, the implication is that this is a very worrying thing. The integrity of our institutions, at least, needs to be preserved, supported, (...) and defended; against money, politics, power, and populists. However, despite such common usage, the concept itself has attracted little theoretical reflection. What can it mean, if anything sensible, for an institution itself – instead of a person (or even say, a body, process, territory or a bridge) – to have ‘integrity’? And, why might it be so important? This is the subject of this paper. It puts forward a substantive moral conception of institutional integrity as the robust disposition of an institution to pursue its purpose efficiently, within the constraints of legitimacy, consistent with its commitments. It argues that it is important because it provides the strongest grounding for a ‘duty of support’ owed by citizens to the institution. The strength of such support owed also gives content to a scalar dimension of the institution’s normative legitimacy, that is, the ‘strength’ (or weakness) of such legitimacy. Further, it illustrates how such a conception of institutional integrity will helpfully advance the current debate regarding institutional corruption. (shrink)

" "Jeremy Kirby addresses a difficulty in Aristotle's metaphysics, namely the possibility that two organisms of the same species might share the same matter.

This article explores some aspects of the long-standing metaphoric conjunction between the images of the intellectual and that of the stranger in the history of social thought . Recently, this conjunction has re-emerged in the self-complimentary image of the `exilic' or `nomadic' intellectual, who is torn between identities and transgresses cultural and linguistic traditions . The article offers a critical appraisal of the intellectualist presumption lurking behind such self-identifications, and raises the issue of intellectual spokespersonship in the novel conditions of (...) a postmodern `society of strangers'. (shrink)

The Marxian Legacy, first published in 1977 and released in a second edition in 1988, was and remains distinct in its view of Marxian theory as 'critique, ' aware of its own origins and limitations and self-conscious about its own historical rootedness in changing social and political conditions. This new and fully revised third edition retains the original synthesis of the divergent traditions of German, critical, and French Marxisms into a living Marxian legacy that changes and reconceptualizes itself, while also (...) providing a new critical introduction and concluding chapter. Such a re-evaluation of the Marxian legacy, which was urgent in the 1970s when the United States was caught up in imperial wars and domestic as well as racial conflict, remains relevant today when—as was the case nearly half a century ago—Marx’s legacy has largely been forgotten and yet remains as a symbol of radical thinking that could inspire the new movements. The Marxian Legacy, 3rd Edition retains the freshness of discovery from those times while fully updating the text for our contemporary moment, and adding two features: a philosophical closure; and, a perspective on what was possible then, and what remains to be done today. (shrink)

BackgroundConsent for data research in acute and critical care is complex as patients become at least temporarily incapacitated or die. Existing guidelines and regulations in the European Union are of limited help and there is a lack of literature about the use of data from this vulnerable group. To aid the creation of a patient-centred framework for responsible data research in the acute setting, we explored views of patients and next-of-kin about the collection, storage, sharing and use of genetic and (...) health-related data for observational research.MethodsWe conducted qualitative interviews (n = 19) with Dutch sudden cardiac arrest survivors who donated clinical and socio-economic data and genetic samples to research. We also interviewed their next-of-kin. Topics were informed by ethics literature and we used scenario-sketches to aid discussion of complex issues.ResultsSudden cardiac arrest survivors displayed limited awareness of their involvement in health data research and of the content of their given consent. We found that preferences regarding disclosure of clinically actionable genetic findings could change over time. When data collection and use were limited to the medical realm, patients trusted researchers to handle data responsibly without concern for privacy or other risks. There was no consensus as to whether deferred consent should be explicitly asked from survivors. If consent is asked, this would ideally be done a few months after the event when cognitive capacities have been regained. Views were divided about the need to obtain proxy consent for research with deceased patients’ data. However, there was general support for the disclosure of potentially relevant post-mortem genetic findings to relatives.ConclusionsSudden cardiac arrest patients’ donation of data for research was grounded in trust in medicine overall, blurring the boundary between research and care. Our findings also highlight questions about the acceptability of a one-time consent and about responsibilities of patients, researchers and ethics committees. Finally, further normative investigation is needed regarding the (continued) use of participants’ data after death, which is of particular importance in this setting. Our findings are thought to be of relevance for other acute and life-threatening illnesses as well. (shrink)

I argue for the use of the adjunction operator (adding a single new element to an existing set) as a basis for building a finitary set theory. It allows a simplified axiomatization for the first-order theory of hereditarily finite sets based on an induction schema and a rigorous characterization of the primitive recursive set functions. The latter leads to a primitive recursive presentation of arithmetical operations on finite sets.