Revision of author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Chicago, 2008 under title: The word made flesh and the mazy page: symbol and allegory in Coleridge's philosophy of faith.

Part of the Renaissance genius was to look at familiar things in unfamiliar ways.1 Although a variety of approaches to the study of leadership are becoming familiar, it still helps to consider new ones. Of use in such moments are the works of unfamiliar writers who have spent considerable energy thinking from an alien perspective. One does not have to accept their assertions uncritically in order to profit from reading them, yet it does take courage sometimes to start down a (...) strange path. In the spirit of applying new ideas to familiar themes, this article interprets volume one of Georges Bataille’s The Accursed Share2 in the light of the phenomenon we refer to as leadership. Bataille, who was born in 1897 and died in 1962, certainly qualifies as a writer with an alien perspective. He has the potential to offend. At times, he becomes positively cryptic, as in asserting ‘that the sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space’. Nonetheless, the book itself develops a plausible line of reasoning. Society, it argues, is determined by how it disposes of energy. And since energy that cannot be used will be squandered, it matters how a society chooses to do this. Bataille argues further that moments of true ‘sovereignty’ occur when we squander what would otherwise have been useful. This paper summarizes the argument of The Accursed Share and applies it to the outpourings that followers make to leaders. Rather than regard these uneven relationships as examples of utilitarian reciprocity, perhaps we can tap into the idea that attentiveness to leadership is more in the form of an offering or sacrifice to something that expresses us, as an excuse to display exuberance. This approach promises insight into issues of charisma, followership as self-denial, and mass psychology. It also pertains to the tendency of followers to turn against leaders in ritual sacrifice as meaningful superfluity.3. (shrink)

This narrative symposium examines the relationship of bioethics practice to personal experiences of illness. A call for stories was developed by Tod Chambers, the symposium editor, and editorial staff and was sent to several commonly used bioethics listservs and posted on the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics website. The call asked authors to relate a personal story of being ill or caring for a person who is ill, and to describe how this affected how they think about bioethical questions and the (...) practice of medicine. Eighteen individuals were invited to submit full stories based on review of their proposals. Twelve stories are published in this symposium, and six supplemental stories are published online only through Project MUSE. Authors explore themes of vulnerability, suffering, communication, voluntariness, cultural barriers, and flaws in local healthcare systems through stories about their own illnesses or about caring for children, partners, parents and grandparents. Commentary articles by Arthur Frank, Bradley Lewis, and Carol Taylor follow the collection of personal narratives. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 95-97.

Most arguments about conscientious objections in medicine fail to capture the full scope and complexity of the concept before drawing conclusions about their permissibility in practice. Arguments favoring and disfavoring the accommodation of conscientious objections in practice tend to focus too narrowly on prima facie morally contentious treatments and religious claims of conscience, while further failing to address the possibility of moral perspectives changing over time. In this paper, I argue that standard reasons against permitting conscientious objections in practice—that their (...) permission may result in harm to patients, the idea that medical providers willingly enter into the medical field, and that conscientious objections stand contrary to medical professionalism—do not apply in all cases and that the medical field and health systems in which many physicians now practice should continue to tolerate conscientious objections in practice. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 9, Page 12-13, September 2011.

Joan Maragall es representante del modernismo catalán, afín al simbolismo y al parnasianismo de Francia. En el poesía y vida van estrechamente ligados. Acentúa la dimensión ética y cultural de exigencia de fidelidad a la experiencia personal de sinceridad. Llega a la cuestión última sin dejar de profundizar la absoluta relación del sujeto con el mundo. Combina la profundidad unamuniana y la mundanidad orteguiana.

Top-down dynamical models of cognitive processes, such as the one presented by Thelen et al., are important pieces in understanding the development of cognitive abilities in humans and biological organisms. Unlike standard symbolic computational approaches to cognition, such dynamical models offer the hope that they can be connected with more bottom-up, neurologically inspired dynamical models to provide a complete view of cognition at all levels. We raise some questions about the details of their simulation and about potential limitations of top-down (...) dynamical models. (shrink)

This paper aims to demonstrate how public disclosure can be used to balance physicians9 conscientious objections with their professional obligations to patients – specifically respect for patient autonomy and informed consent. It is argued here that physicians should be permitted to exercise conscientious objections, but that they have a professional obligation to provide advance notification to patients about those objections. It is further argued here that public disclosure is an appropriate and ethically justifiable limit to the principle of advance notification. (...) The argument for publicly disclosing physicians9 conscientious objections is made in this paper by discussing three practical benefits of public disclosure in medicine, and then addressing how publicly disclosing physicians9 conscientious objections is not an undue invasion of privacy. Three additional concerns with public disclosure of physicians9 conscientious objections are briefly addressed – potential harassment of physicians, workplace discrimination, and mischaracterising physicians9 professional aptitude – concluding that each of these concerns requires further deliberation in the realm of business ethics. (shrink)

The debate of nativisim versus empiricism is over the relative importance of evolutionary versus ontogenetic mechanisms. This is mostly seen today as a false dichotomy. The synthesis of these positions provides a modern viewpoint of grounded category formation. This combined view places equal importance on feedback between these levels in guiding development, and is more appropriately compared to culturalist positions.

The Modern Synthesis has dominated biology for 80 years. It was formulated in 1942, a decade before the major achievements of molecular biology, including the Double Helix and the Central Dogma. When first formulated in the 1950s these discoveries and concepts seemed initially to completely justify the central genetic assumptions of the Modern Synthesis. The Double Helix provided the basis for highly accurate DNA replication, while the Central Dogma was viewed as supporting the Weismann Barrier, so excluding the inheritance of (...) acquired characteristics. This article examines the language of the Modern Synthesis and reveals that it is based on four important misinterpretations of what molecular biology had shown, so forming the basis of the four Illusions: 1. Natural Selection; 2. The Weismann Barrier; 3. The Rejection of Darwin’s Gemmules; 4. The Central Dogma. A multi-level organisation view of biology avoids these illusions through the principle of biological relativity. Molecular biology does not therefore confirm the assumptions of the Modern Synthesis. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 139-141.

What is Life? This is the question asked by Denis Noble in this very personal and at times deeply lyrical book. Noble is a renowned physiologist and systems biologist, and he argues that the genome is not life itself: to understand what life is, we must view it at a variety of different levels, all interacting with each other in a complex web. It is that emergent web, full of feedback between levels, from the gene to the wider (...) environment, that is life. (shrink)

Organismal death has long been considered the irreversible ending of an organism's integrated functioning as a whole. However, the persistence of functionality in organs, tissues, and cells postmortem, as seen in organ donation, raises questions about the mechanisms underlying this resilience. Recent research reveals that various factors, such as environmental conditions, metabolic activity, and inherent survival mechanisms, influence postmortem cellular functionality and transformation. These findings challenge our understanding of life and death, highlighting the potential for certain cells to grow and (...) form new multicellular entities. This opens new avenues in biology and medicine, expanding our comprehension of life's complexity. (shrink)

Michel Foucault, one of the most cited scholars in the social sciences, devoted his last three lectures to a study of leader development. Going back to pagan sources, Foucault found a persistent theme in Hellenistic antiquity that, in order to qualify for leadership, a person must undergo processes of subjectivation, which is simply the way that a person becomes a Subject. From this perspective, an aspiring leader first becomes a Subject who happens to lead. These processes depend on a condition (...) of _parresia_, which is truth-telling at great risk that is for the edification of the other person. A leader requires a mentor and advisors in order to lead successfully, while also developing the capacity in one’s own mind to heed the truth. In other words, a leader must learn how to guide oneself. A valuable contribution to the field of leadership studies, this book summarizes these last lectures as they pertain to the study and practice of leadership, emphasizing the role of ethics and truth-telling as a check on power. It then presents several other contexts where these same lessons can be seen in practice, including in the life of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose career as a writer epitomized speaking truth to power, and somewhat surprisingly in the United States military, in response to its twenty-first century mission of counterinsurgency. (shrink)

What is Life? To answer this question, Denis Noble argues that we must look beyond the gene's eye view. For modern 'systems biology' considers life on a variety of levels, as an intricate web of feedback between gene, cell, organ, body, and environment. He shows how it is both a biologically rigorous and richly rewarding way of understanding life.

Near-death experiences are a big challenge to the fields of science and philosophy; termed as hallucinatory by neurologists and “stuff of which fantasies are made off” by sceptics, there are some unique near-death experiences which defy these claims. Memories generated during these experiences are of specific interest as they are created without a body and can be recalled post the experience. Call it the mind, soul, psyche or consciousness, if deliberated as a form of quantum generated energy, a strong correlation (...) under a reductionist based perspective can be obtained. Life at a macroscopic level may not be similar to life at a quantum level, and has been proved in quantum physics through its spooky properties like quantum entanglement. Self-sustaining quantum generated energy through entanglement is the answer to all mystical realties and the answer lies in believing in its existence in and around us. It is this energy that brings in the awareness of one’s existence and which performs tasks beyond the imagination of the current self; an energy created at the creation of all that exists; a true supernatural force. This paper reviews a unique void near-death experience and hypothesizes quantum entanglement to be involved in the conception and storage of these energy-based memories in a quantum subatomic cloud which can be restated if returned back to the body or lost to the environment upon death. (shrink)

People are typically grateful for medical technologies used in the treatment of illness or injury. This chapter explores how Lucas has led Star Wars audiences astray into accepting false beliefs and fallacies about the value of technology, particularly in a medical context. Via the naturalistic fallacy, Lucas conveys the false belief that most technology is “unnatural” and so is bad, harmful, or associated with the dark side. Lucas is not wrong that technology can be fearful, but its value depends in (...) part on how it's intended to be used. Even the use of some medical technologies that can extend life raise questions about whether they should be used in all cases. Many bioethical conflicts center around whether a seriously ill or injured person would want certain medical interventions used to extend their life, given potential trade‐offs. Lucas's portrayal of technology in Star Wars is biased against its true value in societies. (shrink)

Background: This study attempts to understand if medical providers beliefs about the moral permissibility of honoring patient-directed refusals of life-sustaining treatment (LST) are tied to their beliefs about the patient’s decision-making capacity. The study aims to answer: 1) does concern about a patient’s treatment decision-making capacity relate to beliefs about whether it is morally acceptable to honor a refusal of LST, 2) are there differences between provider types in assessments of decision-making capacity and the moral permissibility to refuse LST, and (...) 3) do provider demographics impact beliefs about decision-making capacity and the moral permissibility to refuse LST. Methods: A mixed-methods survey using Likert assessment and vignette-based questions was administered to medical providers within a single health system in the upper Midwest (N = 714) to assess their perspectives on the moral acceptance and decision-making capacity in cases of withholding and withdrawing treatment and suicide. Results: Behavioral health providers report accepting of the moral permissibility of suicide (91.2%) more than either medical providers (77.2%) or surgeons (74.4%) (n = 283). Decision-making capacity was questioned more in the vignettes of the patients refusing life-saving surgery (36%) and voluntarily starvation (40.8%) than in the vignette of the patient requesting to deactivate a pacemaker (13%) (n = 283). Behavioral health providers were more concerned about the capacity to refuse life-saving surgery (55.9%) than medical providers (33.8%) or surgeons (23.1%) (n = 283). Conclusions: Respondents endorse the moral permissibility of persons to withhold or withdraw from treatment regardless of motive. Clinical concerns about a patient’s treatment decision-making capacity do not strongly correlate to views about the moral permissibility of honoring refusals of LST. Different provider types appear to have different thresholds for when to question treatment decision-making capacity. Behavioral health providers tend to question treatment decision-making capacity to refuse LST more than non-behavioral health providers. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that Plotinus denies deliberative forethought about the physical cosmos to the demiurge on the basis of certain basic and widely shared Platonic and Aristotelian assumptions about the character of divine thought. We then discuss how Plotinus can nonetheless maintain that the cosmos is «providentially» ordered. -/- [Note: This paper is a French translation (prepared by Mathilde Brémond) of a paper that appears in A. Marmodoro and B. Prince (eds.), Causation and Creation in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, (...) 2015).]. (shrink)

This article utilises Luhmann's functional analysis to investigate the role played by legal argumentation within the legal system. Luhmann's sociological observations on this subject suggest an alternative to jurisprudential approaches that understand legal arguments and consequent decisions in terms of the relative strengths of the justifications offered in their support. His account examines the role played by legal argumentation in allowing the legal system to evolve in response to society's increasing complexity. The concepts he employs to analyse this evolutionary capacity (...) of law, developed from their origins in information theory, are redundancy and variety. Beginning with the work of Dworkin the article opens up Luhmann's analysis to consider how legal argumentation operates both as a grounded form of communication, capable of identifying weak or unsustainable interpretations of legal texts, and a mechanism for evolving law in the direction of increasing complexity. (shrink)