La comparaison de la teneur en étain de trois groupes d'échantillons, bronzes grecs géométriques, bronzes orientaux, bronzes grecs orientalisants, montre que c'est ύ partir de la date de leurs contacts avec le Proche-Orient que les métallurgistes grecs du Ier millénaire ont utilisé le bronze proprement dit, Cu+Sn. La comparaison des teneurs en fer et en plomb montre que les Grecs ont appris des Orientaux un certain nombre de procédés de travail du métal, lors de la réduction du métal ou du (...) martelage. L'étude métallographique confirme cette hypothèse. (shrink)

Change is one of experience's most evident data. The man who has finished reading is different from the same man before he started; the book he has read was once a tree. But if the fact is clear, it hides a very profound problem. Examining change, we see from experience that things do not come to be out of nothing; other things turn into them. The principle of sufficient reason confirms this, since a pure negation can never be a sufficient (...) reason for anything. But if this is true, then neither can the negation of an attribute provide a sufficient reason for its emergence in an already existing thing; this would be tantamount to saying that the attribute came from nothing. Nor, if the thing really changes, can we say simply that an external agent "pours in" some of its perfection, since then it would not change, but only receive a metaphysical coat of paint. And so, we seem to have forced ourselves into a dilemma: things must be what they are, and yet they must themselves be in some sense what they are not. If we deny the first part there is nothing to change; if the second, change is unintelligible, and hence impossible. (shrink)

Lowering the standard of care in a pandemic is a recipe for inferior care and discrimination. Wealthy white patients will continue to get “standard of care” medicine, while the poor and racial mino...

Hypocretin regulates brain reward function and cocaine consumption in rats. The hypocretinergic (Hcrt) system is implicated in energy homeostasis, feeding and sleep regulation. Hypocretinergic cell bodies are located in the lateral hypothalamus (LH) and project throughout the brain. The aim of the present studies was to investigate the role of the Hcrt system in regulating brain reward function and the reinforcing properties of cocaine in rats. Intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) thresholds provide an accurate measure of brain reward function in rats. Here (...) we show that a single injection of Hcrt-1 (5 µg icv) induced persistent, long-lasting elevations in ICSS thresholds in drug-naïve rats. Indeed, Hrct-1 elevated ICSS thresholds for 36 h, with peak elevations between 6 and 12 hours after injection. Hrct-1-induced threshold elevations were attenuated by an antibody known to neutralize the binding of hcrt-1 to its receptors. Taken together, these observations suggest that Hrct-1 negatively regulates brain reward function in rats. Because Hrct-1 negatively regulates brain reward function, we hypothesized that it may attenuate the increased brain reward function usually observed after cocaine consumption, and thereby alter cocaine self-administration behavior. A daily injection of Hrct-1 (1 µg icv), for 4 consecutive days, slightly increased cocaine self-administration (0.25 mg/infusion) in rats. Overall, these data demonstrate that Hrct-1 negatively regulates brain reward function, and as such may indirectly alter cocaine self-administration. Given the well-established role of hypocretin neurons in regulating feeding behavior and sleep, we hypothesize that hypocretinergic regulation of brain reward function may provide a mechanism by which appropriate and competing behaviors (e.g. sleep or feeding) may be engaged to maintain energy homeostasis. (shrink)

Objective: Inhibitory control training has shown promise for improving health behaviours, however, less is known about its mediators of effectiveness. The current paper reports whether ICT reduces smoking-related outcomes such as craving and nicotine dependence, increases motivation to quit and whether reductions in smoking or craving are mediated by response inhibition or a devaluation of smoking stimuli.Method: Adult smokers were randomly allocated to receive 14 days of smoking-specific ICT or active control training. Participants were followed up to 3-months post-intervention. This (...) trial was preregistered.Results: There were no significant differences between ICT and active control training groups. Specifically, participants in both groups showed significant reductions in craving, nicotine dependence, motivation and a devaluation of smoking-stimuli up to 3-months follow-up compared to baseline. Inhibition and devaluation of smoking stimuli did not act as mediators. Devaluation of smoking stimuli was an independent predictor of smoking and craving at follow-up.Conclusion: Inhibitory control training was no more effective at reducing smoking-related outcomes compared to the active control group, however, significant improvements in craving, dependence indicators and evaluation of smoking stimuli were observed across both groups. A return to basic experimental research may be required to understand the most effective ICT approach to support smoking cessation. (shrink)

There is an increasing interest in how managers describe and respond to what they regard as moral versus nonmoral problems in organizations. In this study, forty managers described a moral problem and a nonmoral problem that they had encountered in their organization, each of which had been resolved. Analyses indicated that: (1) the two types of problems could be significantly differentiated using four of Jones' (1991) components of moral intensity; (2) the labels managers used to describe problems varied systematically between (...) the two types of problems and according to the problem's moral intensity; and (3) problem management processes varied according to the problem's type and moral intensity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beyond Ratzinger's Republic:Communio's Postliberal TurnSam Zeno Conedera S.J. and Vincent L. Strand S.J.Is the political future of the West a postliberal one? For the past decade, numerous prominent thinkers in America and Europe have been debating this question. Matters that not long ago were merely of historical interest, such as Pope Gelasius I's understanding of the relation between sacral authority and royal power, Thomas Aquinas's thought on monarchy and (...) Robert Bellarmine's theory of the pope's indirect authority in temporal matters are now increasingly studied for their potential answers to contemporary political questions. This development, which would have been nearly unimaginable just a decade earlier, unsurprisingly has been led by Catholics. We say "unsurprisingly" in view of the long pre-modern tradition of Catholic political thought, as well as the Church's long struggle against liberalism during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of the current postliberal writers explicitly connect themselves to both of these aspects by using the term "integralist" to describe their position.1 [End Page 889]This "new integralism" represents a radical departure from the mainstream of Catholic political discourse of the last half century, which has largely sought rapprochement with Western liberalism. A group of writers, led by John Courtney Murray, George Weigel, Michael Novak, and Robert George, have held that the American constitutional order is rooted in the natural law tradition, and therefore is basically friendly to Catholic political thought. The Church's role in American life, they say, is upholding the natural law as a public moral philosophy, while embracing the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment as a matter of principle, in accordance with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. This "Whig Thomism," which for decades represented the predominant outlook of conservative American Catholics, must now face the challenge of a different sort of Thomism represented by the integralists.2While the engagement between Whig Thomists and integralists has received most of the attention from scholars and journalists alike, another postliberal option has emerged in recent years. Its source is a group of Catholic thinkers associated with the Communio theological movement. Their political vision, which has no single name or label, has a complex and subtle relationship with the thought of earlier Communio writers, most of whom shared the Whig Thomist desire for reconciliation with Western liberalism. [End Page 890] The appearance of a Communio postliberalism therefore represents a significant development within this intellectual tradition. The most important representative of the earlier Communio perspective on political questions is Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI, who has recently been lauded as the "most important Catholic thinker of the twentieth century" on matters at the intersection of theology and politics.3In an article titled "Ratzinger's Republic" that appeared in these pages in 2020, we identified a significant tension in his thought about the Church's contribution to political life.4 Exploring Ratzinger's writings on natural law, we demonstrated that two currents are present. In accord with his fundamental theological commitments about nature and grace and about faith and reason, Ratzinger often questioned the effectiveness of arguments from natural law. He claimed that, since reason is historically conditioned, and therefore in the current order marked by sin, reason needs grace and faith to function properly. Yet, on other occasions, Ratzinger strongly endorsed arguments from natural law, highlighting its role as the foundation of a just democratic political order. We traced this ambivalence about natural law back to a dilemma at the heart of Ratzinger's political thought. On the one hand, in accord with his thinking about the relations of nature and grace and faith and reason, Ratzinger argued that the state needs the Church to supply moral values that the state cannot furnish on its own. On the other hand, he believed it belongs to the very nature of the Church to be separate from the state, and he endorsed nonconfessional, religiously pluralistic states.5 In light of these two commitments, Ratzinger argued that the contribution Christians are to make to the state is to supply moral values that were discerned under the influence of grace and divine revelation but... (shrink)

“Why is there something rather than nothing?” This is perhaps one of the most annoying questions posed in recent times by and to philosophers. It has troubled at least two major thinkers in the last and in this century, namely the romantic idealist Friedrich Schelling and the contemporary existentialist Martin Heidegger, since it was first formulated by Leibniz. We can easily get rid of the question as being simplistic; since although it may be true that nothing is simpler than something, (...) we have no notion of what the simplicity of nothing might consist in. Or we can say that the question is related to the theological answer of a benevolent creator, and hence is not able even to be asked within the ambient of the finite human understanding. Or we may say that the question is supremely hypothetical, in that it would presuppose what is not, in fact, the case; and philosophy can be concerned only with what is. Furthermore, to ask the question in any genuine fashion, the nonexistence of the questioner would seem to be required. The question, therefore, appears Zen-like: “What is the answer to a question posed by a nonexistent questioner?”. (shrink)

For over a century, the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard has been at the center of a number of important discussions, concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently, fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary aesthetics, especially literary theory. Despite his relatively short life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested to by the 26-volume Princeton University Press edition of all of his published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, most of which (...) consists of what are called his "journals and notebooks." Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one of history's great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term "diaries." By far the greater part of Kierkegaard's journals and notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of subjects--philosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his published works, to be sure--but we can also see whole galaxies of concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with his times and with himself. Volume 5 of this 11-volume series includes five of Kierkegaard's important "NB" journals, covering the months from summer 1848 through early May 1849. This was a turbulent period both in the history of Denmark--which was experiencing the immediate aftermath of revolution and the fall of absolutism, a continuing war with the German states, and the replacement of the State Church with the Danish People's Church--and for Kierkegaard personally. The journals in the present volume include Kierkegaard's reactions to the political upheaval, a retrospective account of his audiences with King Christian VIII, deliberations about publishing an autobiographical explanation of his writings, and an increasingly harsh critique of the Danish Church. These journals also reflect Kierkegaard's deep concern over his collision with the satirical journal Corsair, an experience that helped radicalize his view of "essential Christianity" and caused him to ponder the meaning of martyrdom. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being reproduced. (shrink)

The authors of this article are previous or current members of the Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs (CECA) Committee, a standing committee of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH). The committee is composed of seasoned healthcare ethics consultants (HCECs), and it is charged with developing and disseminating education materials for HCECs and ethics committees. The purpose of this article is to describe the educational research and development processes behind our teaching materials, which culminated in a case studies book called (...) A Case-Based Study Guide for Addressing Patient-Centered Ethical Issues in Health Care (hereafter, the Study Guide). In this article, we also enumerate how the Study Guide could be used in teaching and learning, and we identify areas that are ripe for future work. (shrink)

This is a description of an avian-shaped feature that rests below a network of cellular structures found on a mound within the Argyre Basin of Mars in Mars Global Surveyor image M14-02185, acquired on April 30, 2000, and released to the public on April 4, 2001. The area examined is located near 48.0° South, 55.1° West. The formation is approximately 2,400 meters long from the tip of its beak to the tip of its farthest tail feather. There is a minimum (...) of six different variations in appearance of the surface material over this small area. Utilizing the public targeting request form provided on the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) website, co-author Miller secured a second image of the area that was obtained on July 3, 2006, showing this feature under different conditions S20-00165. The new image was then released to the public on August 11, 2006. A third image of the formation identified as MGS S13-01480 was acquired on December 15, 2005, and although officially processed on June 20, 2006, it was not made available to the public until August 22, 2009, on NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS) website. All three of the MGS images reveal defining aspects of this avian feature, including a head, beak, body, eye, leg, foot, toes, wing, and feathers. When taken together, these components induce the visual impression of an avian-shaped formation that exhibits a unique set of proportional features. Adjoining this formation is a composite of complex cellular features that form a compartmentalized infrastructure. The three authors who are veterinarians provide a critical analysis of the avian features, and the geologist and geoscientist authors examine natural mechanisms that could contribute to the formation of this feature. An extensive search of comparable regions within and beyond the area of the Argyre Basin was conducted. A list of these sites is provided, and terrestrial comparisons are also offered. (shrink)

Moral leadership matters. As world politics enters a new and dangerous era, judgment, constancy, moral purpose, and a willingness to overcome partisan politicking are essential for America's leaders. Tempered Strength finds the alternative standard of leadership that Americans are seeking in the classical philosophy of prudence. Ethan Fishman's new work brings together leading American political scientists—including Ronald Beiner, Kenneth L. Deutsch, and George Anastaplo—to discuss the evolution of a standard of prudential leadership both reasonable in nature and practical in (...) scope. Section One studies the meaning of prudence and its evolution in the history of political science from Aristotelian phronesis to Xenophon, Thomas Aquinas, Edmund Burke, and Michael Oakeshott. Section Two demonstrates how the theory of prudential leadership can be applied to practical political issues. (shrink)

"Berkeley's Analysis of Perception" is an internal analysis of the development and consequences of Berkeley's interpretation of the perceptual process. It seeks to show that the implications of Berkeley's understanding of perception lead to conclusions later formulated in phenomenalistic theories of perception.

In all facets of our lives, humans construct meaning to understand their place in the world and their relationships to one another and to broader environments. Within this semantic web, words, stor...

A wide-ranging collection of philosophical essays in honor of Hans-Georg Gadamer.

This article discusses the approach of the Clinical Ethics Consultation Advisory Committee (CECA) in developing A Case-Based Study Guide for Addressing Patient-Centered Ethical Issues in Health Care. This article addresses the processes used by the CECA, its use of pivot questions intended to encourage critical reflection, and the target audience of this work. It first considers the salience of case studies in general education and their relevance for training ethics consultants. Second, it discusses the enfolding approach used in presenting the (...) case material designed to engage the trainee in the details of the case while stimulating critical reflection. And, third, this article briefly comments on the target audience with the caveat that even superbly developed cases are prone to misuse, although that prospect should not deter their development. (shrink)

Since at least the advent of Jack Kevorkian’s “suicide machine” the major argument against adopting physician-assisted suicide laws has been that they will lead us down a slippery slope to state-sa...

Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page 1-3.

With this issue George Annas contributes his last At Law to the Hastings Center Report. Since the column was inaugurated in 1976 as Law and the Life Sciences, George has charted the course of biomedical ethics in the courts, challenging readers to come to grips with an emerging body of law in provocative analyses of critical decisions. As he retires from this column we wish him well, and look forward to his continued contributions to our pages. In bidding (...) farewell to one friend we are nonetheless pleased to welcome another as Alexander Morgan Capron, Henry W. Bruce University Professor of Law and Medicine at the University of Southern California and codirector of the Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics, joins the Report in the September‐October issue as a regular contributor to this column. Prof. Capron, formerly executive director of The President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, is a distinguished scholar and writer well known to our readers. We welcome the opportunity to share his insights on issues before courts and legislatures nationwide. (shrink)