In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Building a FoundationRichard KeidanA guiding principle of Judaism is "tzedakah," which translates as charity but actually means righteousness, reflecting that tzedakah is an obligation, not a choice. This concept of social justice was taught to me at home, at school and at synagogue. I gave to charities and did occasional charitable work. As my parents had taught me, I taught my own children the spirit of giving, but it (...) did come from a place of obligation, not passion. I have since come to learn that there is a world of difference between just fulfilling our obligations to each other and letting them guide the kind of person we become.It is ironic how the process of becoming a doctor—a person society expects to be selfless— requires total self-absorption. Think about it. I was trained to compete with my classmates in order to be accepted to the best university, medical school, residency, and then fellowship. I spent more than one hundred hours each week in the hospital during surgical residency. If I had free time, I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I was so focused on the end result that I had little time to think of others, let alone to ponder the inequities of the world.Several events led to the awakening of my conscience. One was an opportunity to go to Ethiopia and perform a couple weeks' worth of cancer surgery through Mother Teresa's Clinic. Quite frankly, I went because it seemed like an exciting adventure. However, I was completely overwhelmed by the experience. The conditions were abominable. The stories of each of my patients were heart-wrenching. I encountered a 14-year-old boy, the same age as my son, who had a tumor 15 cm in thickness wrapped around his neck. In order to hide the tumor he wore a scarf, but this still did not prevent him from being shunned. He traveled by himself for several days on a bus to reach the clinic. He had no one to advocate on his behalf, was unable to speak the local language, had never been outside his village (let alone in a motor vehicle), and he fearlessly underwent major surgery all by himself.The inequalities in health care compared to my suburban hospital were unfathomable. I cried every night in my hotel room. There seemed to be no solution to this situation. Soon after I returned home, Ethiopia became a distant memory. The experience cut me to the bone, but for whatever reason, I did not rally. I did not see myself as part of the solution. It took an entirely different international experience to open my eyes.There is a saying, "One goes to the Himalayas to see the mountains, but returns for the culture." In 1982, on a sabbatical from my surgical training, I went to Nepal to see the Himalayas, but fell in love with the people. Living in the most basic shelters, eating the most basic diets, with no access to clean water or toilets and little access to health care or education, the people seemed happy. I was invited into their homes and lives, slept on their straw mats, ate their rice and drank their tea. Their spirit and sense of contentment drew me back over the years 15 times. Nepal became a sanctuary for me, a place that gave me time to reflect upon what is truly important, a place that provided energy and inspiration for me. Its public health and education needs were apparent to me, but again, I felt sympathy for my Nepali friends; I did not see that I could—and must—help.It took a chance meeting to change that. Two years ago, I was on an exploratory trek on the Great Himalayan Trail in the Kanchenjunga region of Nepal. Namgyal was our sirdar (head sherpa guide), short in stature, but a giant of a man. Lacking a formal education, but very bright and [End Page 84] motivated, he rose through the ranks from porter all the way to lead sherpa of Everest Expeditions. He had reached the summit of Everest ten times by the age of thirty. He led... (shrink)

A distinguished American physicist and teacher delivers a landmark study thatdevelops three essential scientific themes on each subject.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Ideal of Democracy In Favor of Instrumentalism The Instrumentalist Case against Democracy Democracy and Mutual Respect Rights, Disagreement, and Democracy Political Liberalism The Ideal of Democratic Equality Conclusion Notes.

Machine generated contents note: List of figures. -- Acknowledgments. -- Introduction. -- Part One: Fundamental Issues. -- Part Two: The Transition from the Aristotelian Worldview to the Newtonian Worldview. -- Part Three: Recent Developments in Science and Worldviews. -- Chapter Notes and Suggested Reading. -- References. -- Index.

. Moral systems are described as systems of indirect reciprocity, existing because of histories of conflicts of interest and arising as outcomes of the complexity of social interactions in groups of long‐lived individuals with varying conflicts and confluences of interest and indefinitely iterated social interactions. Although morality is commonly defined as involving justice for all people, or consistency in the social treatment of all humans, it may have arisen for immoral reasons, as a force leading to cohesiveness within human groups (...) but specifically excluding and directed against other human groups with different interests. (shrink)

Richard J. Arneson Word count 6932 Most people believe that partiality toward those near and dear to us is morally required. Parents ought to favor their own children over other people’s children, and friends ought to favor each other over strangers. Partiality toward extended kin, fellow clan members, co-nationals, neighbors, members of one’s own community, and other affiliates is often affirmed, though it is controversial or at least unclear just what sorts of social relationship generate obligations of partiality.

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the decision regret scale. Methods: The data of 704 patients who completed the DRSc were used for the analyses. We evaluated the construct, convergent/discriminant, and known-group validity; internal consistency and test–retest reliability; and the item invariance of the DRSc. A receiver operating characteristic curve was employed to confirm the optimal cutoff point of the scale. Results: A confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a one-factor (...) model fits the data. The internal consistency and test–retest reliability [intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.71] of the DRSc were acceptable. The DRSc demonstrated unidimensionality and invariance for use across the sexes. It was confirmed that an optimal cutoff point of 25 could discriminate between patients with high and low decisional regret during clinical practice. Conclusion: The DRSc is a parsimonious instrument that can be used to measure the uncertainty inherent in medical decisions. It can be employed to provide knowledge, offer support, and elicit patient preferences in an attempt to promote shared decision-making. (shrink)

Academic freedom and tenure, both cherished institutions of higher education, are currently under attack by many both outside and within the academy. Richard DeGeorge argues that they can be defended on ethical grounds only if they are joined with appropriate accountability, publicly articulated and defended standards, and conscientious enforcement of these standards by academic institutions and the members of the academic community.

In this first complete account of Hartley's thought, Richard C. Allen explains Hartley's theories of physiology, perception and action, language and cognition, emotional development and transformation, and spiritual transcendence. By drawing a biographical portrait of its subject, the book explores the relationship of mind and body in Hartley's system, and surveys Hartley's influence upon later scientists and social reformers, particularly Joseph Priestley.

Reasoning can promote psychological development, so even if the role of philosophical counselor is defined strictly in terms of assisting the reasoning of the client, we can expect client-centered philosophical inquiry to yield psychological benefits. The practices of philosophical counseling and psychotherapy permeate one another to some degree while also diverging in characteristic focus. Philosophical counselors are particularly well suited to helping clients think through their situation in the world.

Although any generalization in matters of such scope is risky, the central issue involved would seem to be this: Can man achieve, and know that he has achieved, a true and adequate philosophy? The Jesuit tendency is to stress the developmental aspects of philosophy and theology, identifying them more closely with the natural sciences. The Dominicans, on the other hand, see in this tendency great dangers, with theological pluralism as perhaps the gravest, short of outright skepticism.

This is the first full exploration of the implications of Wittgenstein's philosophy for understanding the arts and cultural criticism. These original essays by philosophers and critics address key philosophical topics in the study of the arts and culture, such as humanism, criticism, psychology, painting, film and ethics. All exemplify Wittgenstein's method of conceptual investigation and highlight his notion of philosophy as a cure.

The political passages in Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge are an integral part of his arguments against ‘objectivism’ and/or a post-critical, personalist, fiduciary and fallibilist philosophy. This paper elaboratesthe social and political implications of Polanyi’s emphasis upon acceptance of one’s situation and the exercise in it of a sense of responsibility to transcendent ideals, as against attempts to start with a clean slate, to overcome all imperfections and to find some simple rule for political policy. Prescriptive duties and rights, and mutual trust (...) and solidarity, are the bases of politics, anti responsible action must start with them. But much of modern politics expresses a Gnostic impatience of our created and finite existence which results in arbitrary commitment to some radical and destructive ideology. (shrink)

This book brings recent developments in Anglo-American philosophy into engagement with dominant currents in contemporary European social theory in order to articulate a pragmatic account of moral criticism. Presented in a lively and accessible style that avoids technical jargon, Morality and Social Criticism argues that the objectivity of moral discourse can be preserved without recourse to the overweening philosophical ambitions of the Enlightenment.

In this book, Richard Viladesau contrues Christian theology as a "theological aesthetics". He examines Christian revelation and its presuppositions in relationship to three interconnected meanings of the "aesthetic" in modern thought: human cognition as feeling and imagination; the realm of the beautiful; and the arts. In each area, examples from the arts are correlated with classical and contemporary theological themes.

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1963, given by Richard B. Brandt (1910-1997), an American philosopher.

There is a long tradition of considering the lesser Byzantine historical texts - those not written in the classicizing narrative style of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Procopius - as the products of a continuous development from Hellenistic and late antique chronicles. As a result, they are all still called chronicles in spite of the fact that the only characteristics they share with earlier chronicles and one another is their condensed and ‘universal’ approach to history. In reality, there were only a very (...) few true Byzantine chronicles, while all the other so-called chronicles developed from other Hellenistic and Roman genres into six distinct groups of texts that are completely unrelated to chronicles, apart from some content. This analysis is founded primarily upon the structure of and use of chronology by these texts, which are all represented by lengthy quotations that readers can compare for themselves. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend the evidential Argument from Evil from the challenge brought against it by skeptical theists. That challenge is rooted in skeptical theism's assessment that the so-called Noseeum Inference, which is at the heart of the Evidential Argument from Evil, is unsound due to the epistemic gap between God and humans. I will argue that that epistemic gap could be bridged if God were to build the bridge by assisting us to understand his morally (...) sufficient reasons for causing or allowing horrendous suffering of the innocent. I further argue that if God exists, he would be able to assist us, given his omnipotence, and he would want to assist us, given his omnibenevolence manifested in the Summum Bonum for humans. If so, then the soundness of the Noseeum Inference and the Evidential Argument from Evil would be upheld against the epistemic gap challenge from skeptical theists. (shrink)

: "In this paper we compare computerized environments in which students complete proof construction exercises in formal logic. Afterbeing given a pretest for logical aptitude, three matched groups were presented identical course material on logic for approximately five weeks by a computer. During the treatment, all students were required to complete several hundred proof construction exercises. The three groups did the exercises and the midterm in different environments. The group with a more sophisticated interface performed better on the midterm. Nearly (...) all the difference in performance showed up in the harder problems. In a follow up experiment in which flexible strategic problem solving help was added to the environment, performance improved slightly, but the data are inconclusive.". (shrink)