It is a common complaint against moral philosophers that their abstract theorising bears little relation to the practical problems of everyday life. Professor Braithwaite believes that this criticism need not be inevitable. With the help of the Theory of Games he shows how arbitration is possible between two neighbours, a jazz trumpeter and a classical pianist, whose performances are a source of mutual discord. The solution of the problem in the lecture is geometrical, and is based on the formal analogy (...) between the logic of the situation and the geometry of a parabola. But an appendix provides the alternative algebraic treatment of a general two-person collaboration situation. (shrink)

The question of whether or not children may be used as subjects in non-therapeutic research projects has generated a great deal of debate and received answers varying from 'no, never' to 'yes, if societal interests are served'. It has been claimed that a Kantian, deontological ethics would necessarily rule out such research, since valid consent would be impossible. The present paper gives a deontological argument for allowing children to be subjects in certain types of research.

One area in which the moral philosopher might say something useful for the thinking of economists is that of welfare economics – not by improving formalizations or criticizing proofs as to conditions necessary or sufficient for an optimum situation, much less by suggesting what particular state of society would be optimal. Rather, he can do this by pointing out some distinctions, by suggesting how some terms used by economists can profitably be defined, and by questioning some assumptions which seem to (...) lie behind the thinking of some economists. The following discussion is aimed along these lines. The main goal of the argument will be to produce helpful definitions of “increase the welfare of an individual” and “increase social welfare.”. (shrink)

Professor Card is not disposed to object to the main argument of my paper, which was intended to reply to Professor Lyons’ suggestion that a utilitarian cannot explain how legal rights have moral force, and at the same time to urge that the particular form of utilitarianism espoused by Professor Hare in his recent work does seem to be open to the difficulty Professor Lyons alleges. Professor Card says she is ‘not dissatisfied’ with this reasoning. I suspect that Card views (...) my criticism of Professors Lyons and Hare as part of an in-house squabble among philosophers all of whom have utilitarian leanings of one sort or another; and she is not disposed to intervene in this. She does, however, have serious reservations about utilitarian views of rights in general, and about mine in particular; her paper consists almost entirely of her statement of these reservations. I find her remarks very welcome, since they express some objections which may be widely felt, and a response to which may therefore contribute to philosophers’ thinking about these issues. (shrink)

I describe how gravitational entropy is intimately connected with the concept of gravitational heat, expressed as the difference between the total and free energies of a given gravitational system. From this perspective one can compute these thermodyanmic quantities in settings that go considerably beyond Bekenstein's original insight that the area of a black hole event horizon can be identified with thermodynamic entropy. The settings include the outsides of cosmological horizons and spacetimes with NUT charge. However the interpretation of gravitational entropy (...) in these broader contexts remains to be understood. (shrink)

We develop the concept of a volitional disability as an aid in understanding those patients who behave in ways that are harmful to themselves in spite of their desire to do otherwise. Using this concept enables us to describe their behavior as intentional but ‘unvoluntary’. We demonstrate the clinical reality of such behavior by giving clinical examples of the behavior of those with phobic, compulsive, and addictive disorders. We then attempt to show how some kinds of self-harming behavior of noncompliant (...) patients are similar to phobic and compulsive behavior. We propose use of the concept of volitional disability to make it easier for physicians to work with these noncompliant patients and thus to improve their ability to provide better care for them. (shrink)

Professor MacIntyre has here collected twenty-three of his essays. They range in topics from discussions of psychoanalysis to the relation between reasons and causes in accounts of human action. Indeed, the very range of such issues is part of the point of the book itself. In part 1 of the book, MacIntyre has collected some of the articles he has written over the last fifteen years or so for Encounter, New York Review of Books, and Partisan Review; in part 2, (...) the more traditionally philosophic pieces which first appeared in Philosophy, Philosophical Review, and Journal of Philosophy; by collecting both sets of essays within one set of covers, he has tried to make a point about the relation between such apparently different intellectual contexts. Most broadly, that point has to do with the common problem of "ideology" as it is found in each arena, whether as some explicit, historically achieved "self-image" by means of which individuals struggle "to provide the light that our individual and social lives need", or as the problem of the general role beliefs, reasons, desires, and the like should be said to play in human action, in what way such factors are related to causal explanations of action, and how decisions about such questions affect any view of what a social science is. MacIntyre believes that these somewhat more practical and more theoretical contexts need to be thought together, first because reflection on current, dominant ideologies greatly needs the benefit of "detailed, analytical conceptual inquiries," and because that analysis itself has often paid insufficient attention to its own broader, historical, even ideological context, and the effect such a context can have on methodology. Thus, while it is of the utmost importance to analyze thoroughly and as clearly as possible the language of morals, the methodology of that analysis alone cannot help in determining whether such a language is indeed the language only within which moral discourse can take place, and might also fail to appreciate historical alterations in the meaning of important terms. (shrink)

This chapter is an Introduction to this volume, presenting in brief each of the contributed chapters. We also indicate how the chapters relate to each other and how they connect to themes to be found in the philosophy of Décio Krause.

This book reinvents the philosophy of religion, investigating how social actors perceive necessities and grapple with accidents that disrupt them. Loewen draws upon on the work of Derrida and critical theorists of religion to argue that the usual commitments to categories structured by theism no longer prevent cross-cultural studies of “evil.”.

The modern theoretical physicist is a strange creature. Perhaps in every age the theoretical physicist has seemed so to his contemporaries who took the trouble to observe and think about him. There seems, for example, something almost too magical in the uncanny way in which he pulls a brand new atomic particle out of a theory, a way that reminds us of a rabbit being produced out of a hat. This is usually done in an off-hand manner with a considerable (...) amount of patter of a highly abstract symbolic character but with a few words inserted in the right places for the benefit of the experimental physicist and a final prediction that if the experimenter does thus and so in the laboratory he will find a certain result. No wonder the observer marvels when the answer comes out right. But as he thinks further he is inclined to wonder whether it is necessary or desirable for the details of the process which led to the result to be so unintelligible. For unintelligible they seem to be to a great many people who are directly concerned with their understanding, to the people who for years have been laboring under the belief that they are engaged in the task of finding out how Nature works. What is this curious process whose whole task, according to one distinguished exponent of it, is merely to predict experimental results, and what is its future likely to be? These are the questions we are setting for ourselves in the present discussion. It is unlikely that the answers given here will satisfy everybody, but it is reasonably certain that nobody who aspires to an interest in science can fail to attach some meaning to them whether or not he agrees. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:69 WILLIAM ROBERTSON AND DAVID HUME: THREE LETTERS The relationship between David Hume and his fellow Scottish historian William Robertson has always seemed one-sided. Despite the existence of fifteen letters to Robertson in the standard volumes of Hume's correspondence,1 Hume scholars have long had reason to regret the lack of a single extant letter from Robertson to Hume. None are to be found, for example, where one would most (...) expect them to be — in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, alongside the letters to Hume from various other Moderate clergymen and literati in Robertson's circle, such as Hugh Blair and Adam Ferguson. Fortunately, however, two of Robertson's letters to Hume (numbered II and III below) have now turned up where one would not expect them to be — among Robertson's own correspondence in the Robertson2 Macdonald Papers, National Library of Scotland. They are not mere drafts, such as one is accustomed to find among an author's private papers; rather, they are autograph signed letters that appear to have actually been posted. How and when they found their way back to Robertson's personal papers, and what became of the rest of Robertson's letters to Hume, are questions open to speculation. For the moment we are grateful for the letters we now have, neither of which is known to have been published before in whole or in part. Nor has Hume been identified before as the recipient of either of these letters, though internal evidence makes it clear that he was. Both letters date from the late 1760s, when Hume was living in London and Robertson was at the peak of his multi-faceted career in Edinburgh as university principal, parish minister, ecclesiastical leader, and man of letters. The first of them, dated 27 March 1767, was sent to Hume in his capacity as under- 70 secretary of state in the Northern Department (an office he held from February 1767 to January 1768). It is plainly a reply to a letter of 19 March, in which Hume had discussed three topics to which Robertson was 5 responding: Robertson's efforts to secure a military chaplaincy for a certain Scottish minister (evidently named Brodie); Conway's role in the famous dispute between Hume and Rousseau; and the public response to Adam Ferguson's newly published Essay on the History of Civil Society. In addition Robertson addresses a matter that Hume had apparently broached with him at some earlier time: the attempt to find a suitable Scottish church to which Hume might obtain a crown presentation for his nephews' tutor, the Rev. Christopher Tait. The letter concludes on a note of admiration that is characteristic not only of Robertson but of most of Hume's other "Protestant Pastors" in Scotland. The second letter to Hume, dated 31 January 1769, is chiefly concerned with the forthcoming publication of Robertson's History of Charles V and the French translation of it by J.-B.-A. Suard — subjects that had been treated in two letters from Hume to 7 Robertson of autumn 1768. It also contains a strong recommendation for a bright young Scottish writer (in both the legal and literary senses of that term) who would one day become Robertson's most vitriolic critic: Gilbert Stuart. On the personal side, there is encouragement for the now unemployed Hume to return to Edinburgh, as he was then threatening to do, after his "great glut of society" at Paris and London, and there are allusions in the closing paragraph to Hume's part in introducing his friend to polite society when Robertson had visited London to arrange the publication of Charles V in the spring of 1768. 71 To these two letters from Robertson we have prefixed a third from earlier in the same decade, one Q not actually addressed to Hume but largely about him. Robertson wrote it to their common friend Gilbert Elliot (later Sir Gilbert Elliot) on 8 March 1762, two days before the Town Council elected Robertson principal of Edinburgh University. The first paragraph deals with the principalship and relates to Hume only indirectly, as we point out in a footnote. The second paragraph, however, contains interesting... (shrink)

In this article, we discuss some of the challenges related to formulating and adopting a realist position regarding non-relativistic quantum mechanics. In a standard approach to ontology, the ontological commitments of scientific theories can be extracted from them. Scientific realism is the standpoint that our best scientific theories are approximately true, and thus, their ontological commitments, roughly speaking, correspond to reality. Quantum mechanics complicates this view by introducing an interpretational requirement that links a particular conception of how reality should be (...) to the theory. This generates comprehensive difficulties: when we separate theory and interpretation, we have a clear conception of theory but not of interpretation and how to extract its ontology. On the other hand, if we somehow identify theory and interpretation, we have a reasonably clear conception of the desired ontology but lose our best characterizations of theory, rendering our methods for extracting ontology ineffective. Our aim is to map out the challenges for future rigorous realist approaches to quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The eight essays assembled under this title were originally presented at the 1965 Great Thinkers Forum sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Georgia. These essays are now being published in the conviction that they all make "valuable contributions toward the understanding and resolution of the contemporary challenge to theology and religion." The challenge in question is the one that comes from neopositivism and linguistic analysis. By the time the reader comes to the end of (...) his own effort he finds himself wondering in what sense the 1965 papers are to count as valuable contributions. No doubt they are valuable in the sense that it is worthwhile watching a single-minded philosopher pouring his soul out in an attempt at showing how the "disguised nonsense" of religious language is "patent nonsense," or how the "putatively factual assertions" of religious language are "bogus, pseudo-factual statements, devoid of the kind of intelligibility that believers rightly demand of them." Along the way one may collect pearls of rare beauty, such as the statement that "There is no convention in English or logical rule which makes ‘there is no God’ a contradiction," or questions such as "Who has observed him under controlled conditions?" Another contribution of the same general usefulness may well be that the thoughtful reader is being initiated to the exertions of that transformational hermeneutics by which pseudo-assertive religious statements are being rescued from wholesale meaninglessness, and accorded the innocuous meaningfulness of emotive or convictional language, or of disguised moral discourse. Professor Frank H. Harrison III makes an interesting attempt at injecting into the landscape, linguistically and epistemologically so bleak, what he calls "knowledge by acquaintance," which is in his vocabulary the equivalent of what mysticism calls amor Dei, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry describes as a seeing with the heart. The discussion of myth by Professor Robert H. Ayers ignores what happens to be the heart of the matter in mythic thinking, namely the absence of the distinction between object and subject, but does provide a good introduction to the "profusion of confusion" that flourishes around myth, "one of the most traveled hobos in our times.". (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the role of pluralistic ignorance in perceptions of unethical behavior. Buckley, Harvey, and Beu (2000) suggested that pluralistic ignorance plays a role such that individuals mistakenly believe that others are more unethical than they actually are. In two studies, we confirmed that pluralistic ignorance influences perceptions of ethics in a manner consistent with what Buckley et al. suggested. The implications of pluralistic ignorance in perceptions of ethics are discussed with suggestions for (...) how pluralistic ignorance might be reduced and how research in this area may be extended. (shrink)

Much philosophical thinking about religion in the Anglophone world has been hampered by the constraints of Eurocentrism, colonialism and orientalism. Addressing such limitations head-on, this exciting collection develops models for exploring global diversity in order to bring philosophical studies of religion into the globalized 21st century. Drawing on a wide range of critical theories and methodologies, and incorporating ethnographic, feminist, computational, New Animist and cognitive science approaches, an international team of contributors outline the methods and aims of global philosophy of (...) religion. From considering the importance of orality in African worldviews to interacting with Native American perspectives on the cosmos and investigating contemplative studies in Hinduism, each chapter demonstrates how expertise in different methods can be applied to various geographical regions, building constructive options for philosophical reflections on religion. Diversifying Philosophy of Religion raises important questions regarding who speaks for and represents religious traditions, setting the agenda for a truly inclusive philosophy of religion that facilitates multiple standpoints. (shrink)

This volume insists that, if we are to properly face the challenges of the coming century, we need to re-examine international politics and development through the prism of ethics and morality. International relations must now contend with a widening circle of participants reflecting the diversity and unevenness of status, memory, gender, race, culture and class. Contributors to this volume challenge North America's privileged position in world politics, suggest initiatives for improving the quality of human existence in tangible ways, and critique (...) the conventional wisdom on how we think we can create peace and justice. Re-Framing the International shows that, when we develop projects for world reform, we must remember that the most basic prevailing assumptions of modern law, politics, and culture are by no means as obvious, natural, or progressive as we formerly thought. (shrink)

Company–community agreements are widely considered to be a practical mechanism for recognising the rights, needs and priorities of peoples impacted by mining, for managing impacts and ensuring that mining-derived benefits are shared. The use and application of company–community agreements is increasing globally. Notwithstanding the utility of these agreements, the gender dimensions of agreement processes in mining have rarely been studied. Prior research on women and mining demonstrates that women are often more adversely impacted by mining than men, and face greater (...) challenges in accessing development opportunities that mining can bring. Nonetheless, there is currently little guidance for companies, government or communities in bringing a gender perspective to the fore in mining and agreement processes. It is undisputed in human development literature that investment in women and sensitivity to gender delivers long-term health, education and local development outcomes. In mining and development, a number of key factors remain unexplored. These include: women’s participation in agreement processes, the gendered distribution of agreement benefits, and the extent to which impacts and benefits influence women’s development and economic inclusion. This paper presents the results of the first phase of an applied research project undertaken by the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining at The University of Queensland and funded by the Minerals Council of Australia and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The project sought to connect with experienced practitioners who had been directly involved in mining and agreement processes to document and analyse grounded perspectives on gender dynamics and agreements, and connect those experiences with the broader literature. Findings from this study have implications for the role of mining companies and governments in promoting gender equality and empowerment as part of their commitments to sustainable development. They also have implications for community groups and their representatives in terms of how they might engage in agreement processes to maximise women’s participation and influence. In many social contexts, a key challenge will be navigating the territory of cultural norms and gender equality, particularly in cultures where women’s influence in the public sphere is not strong. The authors argue that without consideration of a gender perspective, including gender’s intersection with other factors such as class, race, poverty level, ethnic group and age, mining agreements will not be inclusive, may exacerbate gender inequalities, and fail to contribute to long-term sustainable development. (shrink)

Traditionally, being a realist about something means believing in the independent existence of that something. In this line of thought, a scientific realist is someone who believes in the objective existence of the entities postulated by our best scientific theories. In metaphysical terms, what does that mean? In ontological terms, i.e., in terms of what exists, scientific realism can be understood as involving the adoption of a scientifically informed ontology. But according to some philosophers, a realistic attitude must go beyond (...) ontology. The way in which this requirement has been understood involves providing a metaphysics for the entities postulated by science, that is, answering questions about the nature of what ontology admits to exist. We discuss how two fashionable approaches face the challenge of providing a metaphysics for science: a form of naturalism and the Viking/Toolbox approach. Finally, we present a third way, which adopts the best of both approaches: the meta-Popperian method, which focuses on discarding the wrong alternatives, or better saying, the metaphysical profiles incompatible with certain theories. We present the meta-Popperian method, a metametaphysical method capable of objectively assessing which metaphysical profiles are incompatible with certain scientific theories. For this, we will use quantum mechanics as a case study, presenting some previously obtained results. As our focus is on methodological questions about the relationship between metaphysics and science; with this method, we can see how science can be used to avoid error in metaphysical issues. In our opinion, this would be a way to develop a productive relationship between science and metaphysics. (shrink)

Translational ethics (TE) has been developed into a specific approach, which revolves around the argument that strategies for bridging the theory‐practice gap in bioethics must themselves be justified on ethical terms. This version of TE incorporates normative, empirical and foundational ethics research and continues to develop through application and in the face of new ethical challenges. Here, I explore the idea that the academic field of bioethics has not yet sufficiently analysed its own philosophical foundation for how it can, and (...) should, be practically relevant; neither has it comprehensively discussed the limitations on what impacts bioethicists should pursue. As a result, there has not been adequate training on how to suitably and appropriately impact real‐world practices. Moreover, bioethical perspectives are often competing with other strong interests, for example, economic and political, which may weaken their impact on policy‐making. The TE approach I propose can not only facilitate practical impacts of academic bioethics by being better informed by real‐world ethical issues but it also supports targeted and ethical justifications of the actual impact of academic work in real‐world contexts. In this paper, I clarify the premises for this TE approach, identify further challenges and sketch out potential solutions for the implementation of this methodological framework. (shrink)

Oral healthcare is attracting much attention after decades of neglect from policymakers. Recent studies have shown a strong association between oral and overall health, which can lead to serious health problems. Availability of oral healthcare services is an essential part of ensuring universal healthcare coverage. More importantly, current gaps in its accessibility by minority or marginalized population groups are crucial public health as well as ethical concerns. One notable effort to address this issue comes from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), which offer (...) oral healthcare services for non-insured refugees. However, the challenge remains that these care services are not comprehensive, which has implications for the refugees’ oral and general health. In this article, we discuss this complex issue in the German healthcare context by including ethical reflections. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to discuss the ethical challenges related to oral healthcare services provided by NGOs for refugees in Germany. First, we will introduce the general oral healthcare context worldwide and in Germany. Second, we will provide a general description of the oral healthcare services provided by NGOs for refugees in Germany, as well as an overview of existing gaps. This will provide us with the context for our third and most important task—discussing the ethical implications of the gaps. In doing so, and since the ethical implications can be several, we demarcate the scope of our analysis by focusing on the specific ethical issues of justice, harm, and autonomy. Finally, we offer some recommendations for how to move forward. (shrink)

The paper illustrates how organic chemists dramatically altered their practices in the middle part of the twentieth century through the adoption of analytical instrumentation - such as ultraviolet and infrared absorption spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy - through which the difficult process of structure determination for small molecules became routine. Changes in practice were manifested in two ways: in the use of these instruments in the development of 'rule-based' theories; and in an increased focus on synthesis, at the expense (...) of chemical analysis. These rule-based theories took the form of generalizations relating structure to chemical and physical properties, as measured by instrumentation. This 'Instrumental Revolution' in organic chemistry was two-fold: encompassing an embrace of new tools that provided unprecedented access to structures, and a new way of thinking about molecules and their reactivity in terms of shape and structure. These practices suggest the possibility of a change in the ontological status of chemical structures, brought about by the regular use of instruments. The career of Robert Burns Woodward (1917-1979) provides the central historical examples for the paper. Woodward was an organic chemist at Harvard from 1937 until the time of his death. In 1965, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. (shrink)

In order to illuminate the similarities and differences between science and theology, we consider an epistemology and methodology for each that can be characterised as a dialectical critical realism. Our approach is deeply indebted to the work of the great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth. Key points are that the object under study determines the method to be used, the community of investigators and the nature of the possible knowledge to be gained; the necessity of a posteriori, rather than a priori (...) reasoning; and that the dialogue between theology and science should account for both the similarities and differences between the two disciplines. The counterintuitive nature of quantum physics is used to illustrate how in science the dialectic element should lead to a critical dimension to realism, and one is forced to engage with reality on its own terms. (shrink)

There is growing interest in clinical ethics. However, we still have sparse knowledge about what is actually going on in the everyday practice of clinical ethics consultations. This paper introduces a descriptive evaluation tool to present, discuss and compare how clinical ethics case consultations are actually carried out. The tool does not aim to define ‘best practice’. Rather, it facilitates concrete comparisons and evaluative discussions of the role, function, procedures and ideals inherent in clinical ethics case consultation practices. The tool (...) was developed during meetings of the European Clinical Ethics Network. Based on written reports and participation in the network meetings, the development and the content of the tool and the results of its application in presenting and discussing 10 case consultations are summarized. The tool facilitated understanding of the details of clinical ethics case consultations across individuals and institutions with various experiences and cultures, and comparison between various practices. (shrink)

Background The literature on the ethics of biobanking often overlooks the practical operations of biobanks. The ethics of stewardship requires that biobank resources are used to conduct beneficial science. Networked biobanks have emerged to increase the scientific benefit of biobank resources, but little is known about whether and how operations of networking may accomplish this goal.Methods As part of a larger study on the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of networked biobanking, we conducted 38 interviews with representatives of 31 (...) networked biobanks. Interviews explored operations of the networks. We used thematic analysis to examine how respondents describe three topics associated with stewarding biobank resources—funding, utilization, and sustainability.Results Our results highlight that funding, utilization, and sustainability are critical not only to the operation of biobanks, but also to the ethical obligations that biobankers owe to stakeholders to steward the resources. Based on prior research, we hypothesized that respondents would describe networking as beneficial to increasing funding, utilization, and sustainability of the network. Respondents generally found value in networked biobanking, but networking did not necessarily increase funding, utilization, and sustainability.Conclusion The results presented here support inclusion of funding, utilization, and sustainability as topics of ethical concern in the practice of biobanking and networked biobanking. These issues are rooted in the stewardship obligations that biobankers feel to their partners, client investigators, and participants. The goal of promoting stewardship through networking requires significant time and effort to build governance models that honor the obligations of each individual biobank to their donors and advance the collective goals of the network. We conclude with suggestions offered by respondents to address improving these aspects of stewardship. (shrink)

In the paper “Translational Neuroethics: A Vision for a More Integrated, Inclusive, and Impactful Field,” Wexler and Sullivan provide an insightful analysis of challenges within the field and how t...

Background: Moral case deliberation is increasingly becoming part of various Dutch healthcare organizations. Although some evaluation studies of moral case deliberation have been carried out, research into the results of moral case deliberation within aged care is scarce. Research questions: How did participants evaluate moral case deliberation? What has moral case deliberation brought to them? What has moral case deliberation contributed to care practice? Should moral case deliberation be further implemented and, if so, how? Research design: Quantitative analysis of a (...) questionnaire study among participants of moral case deliberation, both caregivers and team leaders. Qualitative analysis of written answers to open questions, interview study and focus group meetings among caregivers and team leaders. Participants and research context: Caregivers and team leaders in a large organization for aged care in the Netherlands. A total of 61 moral case deliberation sessions, carried out on 16 care locations belonging to the organization, were evaluated and perceived results were assessed. Ethical considerations: Participants gave informed consent and anonymity was guaranteed. In the Netherlands, the law does not prescribe independent ethical review by an Institutional Review Board for this kind of research among healthcare professionals. Findings: Moral case deliberation was evaluated positively by the participants. Content and atmosphere of moral case deliberation received high scores, while organizational issues regarding the moral case deliberation sessions scored lower and merit further attention. Respondents indicated that moral case deliberation has the potential to contribute to care practice as relationships among team members improve, more openness is experienced and more understanding for different perspectives is fostered. If moral case deliberation is to be successfully implemented, top-down approaches should go hand in hand with bottom-up approaches. Conclusion: The relevance of moral case deliberation for care practice received wide acknowledgement from the respondents. It can contribute to the team’s cohesion as mutual understanding for one another’s views is fostered. If implemented well, moral case deliberation has the potential to improve care, according to the respondents. (shrink)

Understand the challenges faced by university based EAPs and the strategies to effectively meet needs&#;and discover what works and what does not Academia is a diverse workplace unlike any other, and subsequently, employee assistance program issues are unique. Employee Assistance Programs in Higher Education focuses on the unique challenges of employee assistance service delivery in a university setting. This handy resource discusses the evolution, development, and strategies in managing an EAP in academia while comparing the substantial differences in program application (...) between academic settings and corporate settings. Discussions include outsourcing, support groups, implementation of services, and effective model frameworks. Employee Assistance Programs in Higher Education explores in depth how the difference of being an academic institution influences the administration of an EAP. Reducing costs, assessing the value of an EAP, faculty resistance to accessing EAPs, organizational and interpersonal problems, manager support groups to reduce stress, developing ’soft skills’, and addressing the deaths of faculty, staff, and students are examined in detail. This unique resource is extensively referenced and includes tables to clearly present data. Topics in Employee Assistance Programs in Higher Education include: the evolution of the IAEAPE university EAP response to traumas on campus enhancing faculty access university EAPs and outsourcing creating a specialized EAP program comparison between academic and corporate cultures case study of the University of Saskatchewan EAP _and more! _ Employee Assistance Programs in Higher Education is a comprehensive resource for academic administrators; benefit plan managers; university based EAP managers and directors; EAP, work/life, and wellness professionals; members of International Association of Employee Assistance Professionals in Education; Employee Assistance Professionals Association; Employee Assistance Society of North America; Association of Work Life Professionals; Society for Human Resource Management Schools of Social Work; educators in schools of social work, psychology, counseling education, and business. (shrink)

A person experiences and functions in two worlds – the external material world, and the internal mental world – whose objects differ in their nature, constitution, and reality. The 20th century scientists confess that hitherto the sciences were examining with their sophisticated apparatuses merely the observable externalappearances of phenomena, and that behind these lie a sensorily unobservable universe and the observer oneself! Exploring the external world for truth, through experiment and experience, contemporary scientists at their quest’s farthest end confront Consciousness (...) – the ineffable transcendental greatest mystery/Reality. The paper explains how while modern science is still grappling with Consciousness; the ancient philosophy of Advaita‐Vedanta has succeeded in identifying and isolating Consciousness – Brahman – through its psycho-physical-ethical spiritual praxis for “appropriating” it from the web of experience in the lived-world environing one and the all, to encapsulate the contemporary conclusions of the sciences (physics, biology, and psychology) in its holistic hypothesis which declares: Consciousness alone is real; the world is illusory; and oneself - no other than Consciousness/Brahman! (shrink)

In 2014, the editorial board of BMC Medical Ethics came together to devise sections for the journal that would give structure to the journal help ensure that authors’ research is matched to the most appropriate editors and help readers to find the research most relevant to them. The editorial board decided to take a practical approach to devising sections that dealt with the challenges of content management. After that, we started thinking more theoretically about how one could go about classifying (...) the field of medical ethics. This editorial elaborates and reflects on the practical approach that we took at the journal, then considers an alternative theoretically derived approach, and reflects on the possibilities, challenges and value of classifying the field more broadly. (shrink)

Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) helps researchers understand how cognitive skills and strategies make it possible for people to act effectively and get things done. CTA can yield information people needemployers faced with personnel issues, market researchers who want to understand the thought processes of consumers, trainers and others who design instructional systems, health care professionals who want to apply lessons learned from errors and accidents, systems analysts developing user specifications, and many other professionals. CTA can show what makes the workplace (...) workand what keeps it from working as well as it might.Working Minds is a true handbook, offering a set of tools for doing CTA: methods for collecting data about cognitive processes and events, analyzing them, and communicating them effectively. It covers both the "why" and the "how" of CTA methods, providing examples, guidance, and stories from the authors' own experiences as CTA practitioners. Because effective use of CTA depends on some conceptual grounding in cognitive theory and researchon knowing what a cognitive perspective can offerthe book also offers an overview of current research on cognition.The book provides detailed guidance for planning and carrying out CTA, with chapters on capturing knowledge and capturing the way people reason. It discusses studying cognition in real-world settings and the challenges of rapidly changing technology. And it describes key issues in applying CTA findings in a variety of fields. Working Minds makes the methodology of CTA accessible and the skills involved attainable. (shrink)

In the face of environmental crises such as climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss—which all adversely impact on health—Gils-Schmidt and Salloch explore whether physicians can be justified in taking climate issues into account in clinical care.1 While their approach centres on the ‘climate-sensitive’ decisions, physicians can carry out on the micro-level of clinical decision-making, they encourage further discussions on how climate-related issues can be included across different levels of decision-making in healthcare. We propose a list of tasks and a model (...) to assist with navigating the range of factors and structural elements an environmentally sensitive ethics must address. Stephen Gardiner’s notion of a perfect moral storm is central to understanding these issues.2 Gardiner describes how a perfect moral storm occurs in the centre of three overlapping conditions for human action and policymaking in the face of climate change. This storm is driven by: (1) a lack of interest among current generations to meet global needs and accommodate the well-being of future generations, (2) a lack of ecological concerns for other parts of nature than humans and (3) weak ethical and political theories and institutions shaping policy decisions on issues with severe implications across borders and generations. Moreover, these conditions are embedded in the existing, complex world of ethically unjustified power imbalances and social injustice. The growing awareness of healthcare’s climate footprint has amplified and accelerated global, grassroots action to make healthcare more environmentally friendly. This includes incorporating environmental impacts into quality improvement methodologies, building communities of practice to explore how to make …. (shrink)

Evidence suggests that psychedelics bring about their therapeutic outcomes in part through the subjective or qualitative effects they engender and how the individual interprets the resulting experiences. However, psychedelics are contraindicated for individuals who have been diagnosed with certain mental illnesses, on the grounds that these subjective effects may be disturbing or otherwise counter-therapeutic. Substantial resources are therefore currently being devoted to creating psychedelic substances that produce many of the same biological changes as psychedelics, but without their characteristic subjective effects. (...) In this article, we consider ethical issues arising from the prospect of such potential “nonsubjective” psychedelics. We are broadly supportive of efforts to produce such substances for both scientific and clinical reasons. However, we argue that such nonsubjective psychedelics should be reserved for those special cases in which the subjective effects of psychedelics are specifically contraindicated, whereas classic psychedelics that affect subjective experience should be considered the default and standard of care. After reviewing evidence regarding the subjective effects of psychedelics, we raise a number of ethical concerns around the prospect of withholding such typically positive, meaningful, and therapeutic experiences from most patients. (shrink)

Clinical ethical support services (CESS) represent a multifaceted field of aims, consultancy models, and methodologies. Nevertheless, the overall aim of CESS can be summed up as contributing to healthcare of high ethical standards by improving ethically competent decision-making in clinical healthcare. In order to support clinical care adequately, CESS must pay systematic attention to all real-life ethical issues, including those which do not fall within the ‘favourite’ ethical issues of the day. In this paper we attempt to capture a comprehensive (...) overview of categories of ethical tensions in clinical care. We present an analytical exposition of ethical structural features in judgement-based clinical care predicated on the assumption of the moral equality of human beings and the assessment of where healthcare contexts pose a challenge to achieving moral equality. The account and the emerging overview is worked out so that it can be easily contextualized with regards to national healthcare systems and specific branches of healthcare, as well as local healthcare institutions. By considering how the account and the overview can be applied to i) improve the ethical competence of healthcare personnel and consultants by broadening their sensitivity to ethical tensions, ii) identify neglected areas for ethical research, and iii) clarify the ethical responsibility of healthcare institutions' leadership, as well as specifying required institutionalized administration, we conclude that the proposed account should be considered useful for CESS. (shrink)

The overall aim of this article is to discuss the organization of limit setting in healthcare in terms of legitimacy. We argue there is a strong ethical demand that such processes should be arranged to provide adversely affected people well-justified reasons to confer legitimacy to the processes despite favouring a different decision-making outcome. Two increasingly popular approaches, Accountability for Reasonableness (A4R) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), can both be applied to support legitimate decision-making processes. However, the role played by ‘fair-minded (...) people’ in the A4R framework can be shown to undermine an adequate conceptualization of legitimacy according to the ethical demand. We discuss and specify conditions enabling A4R to meet this ethical demand when being implemented in a real-world setting without having to renounce the aim of striving for ‘reasonableness’ and impartiality. The methodological approach MCDA describes how to arrange for transparent resource allocation. This approach does not encompass any normative guidance on how to shape limit settings in terms of ‘reasonableness’; it basically promotes ‘rational’ decisions. We discuss how this practical methodology can be integrated with the theoretical A4R framework to meet the ethical demand while at the same time promoting politically required impartiality of healthcare limit setting. (shrink)

In this paper we show how the dynamics of the Schrödinger, Pauli and Dirac particles can be described in a hierarchy of Clifford algebras, \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}${\mathcal{C}}_{1,3}, {\mathcal{C}}_{3,0}$\end{document}, and \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}${\mathcal{C}}_{0,1}$\end{document}. Information normally carried by the wave function is encoded in elements of a minimal left ideal, so that all the physical information appears within the algebra itself. The state of the quantum process can be (...) completely characterised by algebraic invariants of the first and second kind. The latter enables us to show that the Bohm energy and momentum emerge from the energy-momentum tensor of standard quantum field theory. Our approach provides a new mathematical setting for quantum mechanics that enables us to obtain a complete relativistic version of the Bohm model for the Dirac particle, deriving expressions for the Bohm energy-momentum, the quantum potential and the relativistic time evolution of its spin for the first time. (shrink)

Oliver Heaviside and Sir William Thomson stand in such contrast that the life of each serves to illuminate the life of the other. Thomson's talents, which were recognized at an early age, were cultivated with possibly unsurpassed educational opportunities, whereas Heaviside had scarcely any educational opportunities and was essentially self-taught. Nevertheless, Heaviside's published and unpublished works suggest that the breadth and depth of his learning were more or less comparable to Thomson's. Being an outstanding student at Cambridge brought Thomson in (...) contact with scientists of the first rank, and he learned without effort how to get along with his peers. That pleasing quality was essentially absent in Heaviside, whose personality was as prickly as a porcupine, almost without grace. But underneath this rough exterior was a noble genius who never exploited his rare talents to his own advantage, but instead dedicated them to learning the Truth for its own sake. As to personal temperament, educational opportunities, professional and social activities, Heaviside and Thomson were poles apart. But they maintained a correspondence which is significant, and Thomson's assistance to Heaviside is noteworthy. (shrink)

BackgroundPreprint usage is growing rapidly in the life sciences; however, questions remain on the relative quality of preprints when compared to published articles. An objective dimension of quality that is readily measurable is completeness of reporting, as transparency can improve the reader’s ability to independently interpret data and reproduce findings.MethodsIn this observational study, we initially compared independent samples of articles published in bioRxiv and in PubMed-indexed journals in 2016 using a quality of reporting questionnaire. After that, we performed paired comparisons (...) between preprints from bioRxiv to their own peer-reviewed versions in journals.ResultsPeer-reviewed articles had, on average, higher quality of reporting than preprints, although the difference was small, with absolute differences of 5.0% [95% CI 1.4, 8.6] and 4.7% [95% CI 2.4, 7.0] of reported items in the independent samples and paired sample comparison, respectively. There were larger differences favoring peer-reviewed articles in subjective ratings of how clearly titles and abstracts presented the main findings and how easy it was to locate relevant reporting information. Changes in reporting from preprints to peer-reviewed versions did not correlate with the impact factor of the publication venue or with the time lag from bioRxiv to journal publication.ConclusionsOur results suggest that, on average, publication in a peer-reviewed journal is associated with improvement in quality of reporting. They also show that quality of reporting in preprints in the life sciences is within a similar range as that of peer-reviewed articles, albeit slightly lower on average, supporting the idea that preprints should be considered valid scientific contributions. (shrink)

This paper highlights the importance of inter-relationships between language, context, practice and interpretation. These inter-relationships should be of interest to AI researchers working in multi-disciplinary fields such as knowledge based systems, speech and vision. Attention is drawn to the importance of Part II, Section II of Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical Investigations for understanding the enormous complexity of the concept of seeing and how it is woven into an understanding of language and of human relations.

To what extent is the choice of what to say driven by seemingly irrelevant cues in the visual world being described? Among such cues, how does prior description affect how we process spatial scenes? When people describe where objects are located their use of spatial language is often associated with a choice of reference frame. Two experiments employing between-participants designs ( N = 490) examined the effects of visual cueing and previous description on reference frame choice as reflected in spatial (...) prepositions ( in front of, to the left of, etc.) to describe pictures of object pairs. Experiment 1 examined the effects of visual and linguistic cues on spatial description choice through movement of object(s) in spatial scenes, showing sizeable effects of visual cueing on reference frame choice. Experiment 2 monitored eye movements of participants following a linguistic example description, revealing two findings: eye movement “signatures” associated with distinct reference frames as expressed in language, and transfer of these eye movement patterns just prior to spatial description for different (later) picture descriptions. Both verbal description and visual cueing similarly influence language production choice through manipulation of visual attention, suggesting a unified theory of constraints affecting spatial language choice. (shrink)

All of our information about the world is derived from the function of our senses, and thus they are the principal source of all our knowledge. This was recognized explicitly by early Greek philosophers, remained an important point of discussion for nineteenth‐century philosophers, and continues to be a key issue for present‐day philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. It is a key issue in cognitive science because, by initiating the processes that store and evaluate information, sensory information transmission can be considered a (...) cognitive initiator. In a very real sense, who we are and how we see the world are the result of the experiences that are mediated by our sensory systems. These are some of the reasons why the study of sensory systems has occupied such a prominent place in modern cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

During the past few years, Smart has published a series of provocative articles in which he has argued for a "tough-minded" scientific materialism. In this book, which makes use of the articles and combines them with new material, he boldly defends the possibility of a synthetic philosophy which attempts to think clearly and comprehensively about the nature of the universe and the principles of conduct. Starting with a critique of phenomenalism, he argues that the physicist's picture of the world is (...) truer that of the language of ordinary common sense. Continuing with a discussion of biology, secondary qualities, and consciousness, he stoutly maintains that man can be understood as a physical mechanism in a non-anthropocentric space-time world. He concludes with some brief remarks about how materialism is compatible with a humane and beneficent ethic. Reflecting extensive command of recent philosophic and scientific literature, Smart's arguments are clear, sustained and stimulating.—R. J. B. (shrink)

There are many signs of a renewed and increasing interest in Hegel. And gradually this is spreading to philosophy students, both graduate and undergraduate. In part, this has been stimulated by the affinity students feel with some of the intellectual orientations that have emerged from, or in reaction to, Hegelianism. In part, it represents a search for a richer intellectual base from which one can explore the pressing issues of our time. Considering the foreignness of the Hegelian idiom from Anglo-Saxon (...) traditions, the problem remains of how to "get into" Hegel. This brief book is intended to serve as an introduction for the uninitiated and it may well serve to whet a student's appetite to study Hegel's own texts. Despite the claim to be an introduction to Hegel's Metaphysics, it is really an introduction to some central themes in Hegel. While its brevity is in some ways an advantage, I am dubious if a student will be able to get very much of a "concrete" idea of what Hegel is "up to." Considering Soll's purpose, he gives too much attention here to commenting on other interpreters of Hegel. For the novice, this will be confusing, and for the serious scholar of Hegel, Soll's almost exclusive concern with English language commentators will seem excessively provincial.--R. J. B. (shrink)

When the original version of this book appeared in 1953, MacIntyre was one of a very few Anglo-Saxon philosophers who exhibited any depth understanding of Marx and Marxism. The course of scholarship since that time both vindicates and supersedes many of the points that MacIntyre makes. He not only shows how Marx secularized the world view ingredient in Christianity, but how Marx moved from the critique of religion to the critique of philosophy. And he nicely sketches for us the move (...) from philosophy to practice. We now have many detailed studies that fill in the gaps of this movement, but MacIntyre's essay still excels as a brief overview. From a contemporary point of view, his final chapter is the most interesting and challenging. Too many thinkers sympathetic with Marx have lost themselves in Marx scholarship or in sloganizing. While MacIntyre sees Marx as bringing down to earth the metaphysical themes of alienation ingredient in Christianity, he also sees Marx as laying himself open to the very reification and false consciousness in his own theorizing that he so bitterly opposed in others. The only way of showing that it is possible to rescue Marxism from its own errors, is to carry out for our own times the sort of critique that Marx himself carried out for nineteenth-century liberal bourgeois society. The essay still stands as a helpful introduction both to Marx and to the problems posed for contemporaries who desire to take Marxism seriously.--R. J. B. (shrink)

It is an interesting fact of our time that some of the best studies of communism and Marxism have been written by Catholic scholars. This book, based on a series of television programs in St. Louis aims at presenting an historical and theoretical understanding of the emergence of Marxism and the development of Communism. Written for the intelligent lay reader as an introduction to a complex subject, the treatment is lucid and balanced.—R. J. B.

Two years ago in two articles in a thematic issue of this journal the three of us engaged in a critique of principlism. In a subsequent issue, B. Andrew Lustig defended aspects of principlism we had criticized and argued against our own account of morality. Our reply to Lustig's critique is also in two parts, corresponding with his own. Our first part shows how Lustig's criticisms are seriously misdirected. Our second and philosophically more important part picks up on Lustig's challenge (...) to us to show that our account of morality is more adequate than principlism. In particular we show that recognition of morality as public and systematic enables us to provide a far better description of morality than does principlism. This explains why we adopt the label “Dartmouth Descriptivism.”. (shrink)

This is much more than a translation of Binswanger's important papers. Needleman's stimulating introduction explicates the core of Binswanger's Daseinanalyse. Focusing his attention on what Needleman calls the "existential a priori," he attempts to show how Binswanger's thought is related to the tradition of Kant, Husserl and Heidegger. In a suggestive analysis of the nature of explanation, Needleman also argues that Binswanger's Daseinanalyse complements Freudian psychoanalysis. A well-designed study which serves as an excellent introduction to the thought of Binswanger and (...) the more general topic of existential psychoanalysis.—R. J. B. (shrink)

Weber-Fechner Law states that the perceived intensity is proportional to the logarithm of the stimulus. Recent experiments suggest that this law also holds true for perception of numerosity. Therefore, the use of a logarithmic scale for the quantification of the perceived intensity may also depend on how the cognitive apparatus processes information. If Weber-Fechner law is the result of natural selection, then the logarithmic scale should be better, in some sense, than other biologically feasible scales. We consider the minimization of (...) the relative error as the target of natural selection and we provide a formal proof that the logarithmic scale minimizes the maximal relative error. (shrink)