The concept of 'levels of organization' has come under fire recently as being useless for scientific and philosophical purposes. In this paper, we show that 'levels' is actually a remarkably resilient and constructive conceptual tool that can be, and in fact is, used for a variety of purposes. To this effect, we articulate an account of the importance of the levels concept seen in light of its status as a major organizing concept of biology. We argue that the usefulness of (...) ‘levels’ is best seen in the heuristic contributions the concept makes to treating and structuring scientific problems. We illustrate this with two examples from biological research. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility in developing countries has recently received increasing attention, and scholars have pointed to the strong contextuality of CSR in the respective regions. Regarding the latter, however, sub-Saharan Africa has been scrutinized only marginally by academia. Moreover, empirical research on the impact of the institutional context has been scant, despite its attributed importance for CSR. Our article seeks to fill a part of this research gap by investigating CSR website reporting of 211 companies in seven sub-Saharan countries. The (...) study’s aim is twofold: First, we identify to what extent sub-Saharan companies report on CSR and which contents they disclose. Second, by building on institutional theory, we investigate how the socio-economic and political environments influence CSR reporting. For this purpose, we examine the impact of country-level and company-level determinants. We find that the sample African companies’ CSR efforts focus strongly on local philanthropy and therefore differ substantially from Western CSR approaches. Furthermore, we evidence that GDP and level of governance standard positively affect CSR reporting. Our study contributes to the literature by empirically evidencing the contextuality of CSR in Africa and by explaining how specific country- and company-level determinants contribute to or hamper the development of CSR in developing countries. (shrink)

We report on the deliberations of an interdisciplinary group of experts in science, law, and philosophy who convened to discuss novel ethical and policy challenges in stem cell research. In this report we discuss the ethical and policy implications of safety concerns in the transition from basic laboratory research to clinical applications of cell-based therapies derived from stem cells. Although many features of this transition from lab to clinic are common to other therapies, three aspects of stem cell biology pose (...) unique challenges. First, tension regarding the use of human embryos may complicate the scientific development of safe and effective cell lines. Second, because human stem cells were not developed in the laboratory until 1998, few safety questions relating to human applications have been addressed in animal research. Third, preclinical and clinical testing of biologic agents, particularly those as inherently complex as mammalian cells, present formidable challenges, such as the need to develop suitable standardized assays and the difficulty of selecting appropriate patient populations for early phase trials. We recommend that scientists, policy makers, and the public discuss these issues responsibly, and further, that a national advisory committee to oversee human trials of cell therapies be established. **NB we did not reccommend a NAC, we think it might be appropriate**. (shrink)

State governments provide preprinted advance directive forms to the general public. However, many adults in the United States (US) lack the skills necessary to read and comprehend health care-related materials. In this study, we sought to determine the readability of state government-sponsored advance directive forms.

Volume 20, Issue 2, February 2020, Page 49-50.

The past 20 years have seen dramatic rises in suicide rates in the United States and other countries around the world. These trends have been identified as a public health crisis in urgent need of new solutions and have spurred significant research efforts to improve our understanding of suicide and strategies to prevent it. Unfortunately, despite making significant contributions to the founding of suicidology – through Emile Durkheim’s classic Suicide (1897/1951) – sociology’s role has been less prominent in contemporary efforts (...) to address these tragic trends, though as we will show, sociological theories offer great promise for advancing our understanding of suicide and improving the efficacy of suicide prevention. Here, we review sociological theory and empirical research on suicide. We begin where all sociologists must: with Durkheim. However, we offer a more comprehensive understanding of Durkheim’s insights into suicide than the prior reviews provided by those in other disciplines. In so doing, we reveal the nuance and richness of Durkheim’s insights that have been largely lost in modern suicidology, despite being foundational to all sociological theories of suicide – even those that have moved beyond his model. We proceed to discuss broadly acknowledged limitations to Durkheim’s theory of suicide and review how more recent theoretical efforts have not only addressed those concerns, but have done so by bringing a larger swatch of sociology’s theoretical and empirical toolkit to bare on suicide. Specifically, we review how recent sociological theories of suicide have incorporated insights from social network theories, cultural sociology, sociology of emotions, and sociological social psychology to better theorize how the external social world matters to individual psychological pain and suffering. We conclude by making explicit bridges between sociological and psychological theories of suicide; by noting important limitations in knowledge about suicide – particularly regarding the roles of organizations, inequality, and intersectionality in suicide – that sociology is well situated to help address. (shrink)

We propose that the fundamental mechanism underlying resilience is the integration of novel or negative experiences into internal schemata. This process requires a switch from reactive to predictive control modes, from the brain's salience network to the default mode network. Reappraisal, among other mechanisms, is suggested to facilitate this process.

Soviet attitude towards Bohr reflects changes in the ideological approach to science. During the last period before Stalin's death ?danov proclaimed the campaign against Western influence in Soviet philosophy and science. Nevertheless the physicist M. A. Markov tried to introduce complementarity as a materialistic interpretation of quantum?mechanics in 1948. He was officially condemned. This was followed by a period (1948?54) during which heavy attacks were made against the Copenhagen school. In 1958, after a personal exchange of thoughts with Bohr, academician (...) Fock declared complementarity and probability to be irreversible steps towards a new insight into physical reality, at the same time correcting some of Bohr's epistemological conceptions. (shrink)

Kapitel XV von Über Annahmen beginnt mit einigen bitteren Bemerkungen über den Mangel an Einsicht unter Logikern und Philosophen über das Wesen logischen Schließens. Meinong beklagt, daß man sich mit der Klassifizierung von Schlußformen aufgehalten habe, ohne den Versuch einer Analyse des Folgerungsbegriffs zu unternehmen. Es überrascht wenig, daß Meinong auch bei der Analyse des Folgerungsbegriffs der Annahme eine Schlüsselrolle zuweist. Seine Diskussion führt ihn dabei zu einer UntersuChung des Verhältnisses von Schlüssen aus Urteilen, hypothetischen Urteilen und „Annahmeschlüssen", d.h. Argumenten, (...) deren Prämissen Annahmen sind.Meinongs These, daß es so etwas wie Annahmeschlüsse gibt, erscheint selbstverständlich genug. Die Einführung von Annahmen als Prämissen ist heutzutage nicht nur in Kalkülen natürlichen Schließens eine Standardprozedur, die keiner Rechtfertigung bedarf. Umso mehr muß es daher überraschen, daß Russell in seiner ansonsten enthusiastischen Rezension in Mind vorgibt, für Schlüsse aus Annahmen nichts übrig zu haben: „I cannot understand how the notion of assumptive inference ... can be maintained." Daß es hier in der Tat nicht um einen bloßen Streit um Worte oder ein Mißverständnis geht, wird spätestens dadurch offenkundig, daß auch Frege in diesem Punkt mit Russell vollkommen übereinstimmt. Wie sich jedoch herausstellt, ist der eigentliche Streitpunkt das korrekte Verständnis hypothetischer Urteile: Nach Meinong sind hypothetische Urteile keine Urteile, sondern verkappte Annahmeschlüsse, während Russell genau umgekehrt Annahmeschlüsse als verkappte hypothetische Urteile auffassen. (shrink)

Despite its enduring insights, Durkheim’s theory of suicide fails to account for a significant set of cases because of its overreliance on structural forces to the detriment of other possible factors. In this paper, we develop a new theoretical framework for thinking about the role of culture in vulnerability to suicide. We argue that by focusing on the cultural dynamics of excessive regulation, particularly at the meso level, a more robust sociological model for suicide could be offered that supplements structure-heavy (...) Durkheimian theory. In essence, we argue that the relevance of cultural regulation to suicide rests on the (1) degree to which culture is coherent in sociocultural places, (2) existence of directives related to prescribing or proscribing suicide, (3) degree to which these directives translate into internalized meanings affecting social psychological processes, and (4) degree to which the social space is bounded. We then illustrate how our new theory provides useful insights into three cases of suicide largely neglected within sociology: specifically, suicide clusters in high schools, suicide in the military, and suicides of “despair” among middle-aged white men. We conclude with implications for future sociological research on suicide and suicide prevention. (shrink)

: Dr. Smith is an internist in private practice who works at an inner city clinic affiliated with a university hospital. He is also a member of the university faculty. Many of Dr. Smith’s patients have type 2 diabetes mellitus and struggle with health care and other costs. Thinking about opportunities to better serve his patients and advance his career, Dr. Smith considers conducting clinical research in his office. ACME is a respected pharmaceutical company that for decades has engaged in (...) research, development, and production of widely used drugs. Several of ACME’s oral agents for type 2 diabetes will soon go off patent. In an effort to retain its market share in this class of drugs, ACME wants to complete clinical trials expeditiously and obtain approval for its new oral hypoglycemic medicine. The company approaches Dr. Smith to be a coinvestigator in its multicenter clinical trial. (shrink)

A survey of Euclid's Elements, this text provides an understanding of the classical Greek conception of mathematics and its similarities to modern views as well as its differences. It focuses on philosophical, foundational, and logical questions — rather than strictly historical and mathematical issues — and features several helpful appendixes.

Kants Theorie des reinen Geschmacksurteils By Christel Fricke Verlag Walter de Gruyter, 1990 (Quellen und Studien zur Philosophie, 26). Pp. 196. ISBN 3?11?012585?4. DM98.00 The Ontology of Physical Objects By Mark Heller Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pp. iv + 162. ISBN 0?521?38544?X. £25.00. Theory of Knowledge By Keith Lehrer Routledge, 1990. Pp. xii + 212. ISBN 0?415?05407?9. £30.00 hbk. £9.99 pbk. Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power and the Body By Jana Sawicki Routledge, 1991. Pp. xii + 130. ISBN 0?415?90187?1. £30.00 hbk. (...) £8.99 pbk. (shrink)

Background Following passage of the Patient Self Determination Act in 1990, health care institutions that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding are required to inform patients of their right to make their health care preferences known through execution of a living will and/or to appoint a surrogate-decision maker. We evaluated the impact of external factors and perceived patient preferences on physicians’ decisions to honor or forgo previously established advance directives (ADs). In addition, physician views regarding legal risk, patients’ ability to comprehend (...) complexities involved with their care, and impact of medical costs related to end-of-life care decisions were explored. Methods Attendees of two Mayo Clinic continuing medical education courses were surveyed. Three scenarios based in part on previously court-litigated matters assessed impact of external factors and perceived patient preferences on physician compliance with patient-articulated wishes regarding resuscitation. General questions measured respondents’ perception of legal risk, concerns over patient knowledge of idiosyncrasies involved with their care, and impact medical costs may have on compliance with patient preferences. Responses indicating strength of agreement or disagreement with statements were treated as ordinal data and analyzed using the Cochran Armitage trend test. Results Three hundred eighty-eight of 951 surveys were completed (41% response rate). Eighty percent reported they were likely to honor a patient’s AD despite its 5 year age. Fewer than half (41%) would honor the AD of a patient in ventricular fibrillation who had expressed a desire to “pass away in peace.” Few (17%) would forgo an AD following a family’s request for continued resuscitative treatment. A majority (52%) considered risk of liability to be lower when maintaining someone alive against their wishes than mistakenly failing to provide resuscitative efforts. A large percentage (74%) disagreed that patients could not appreciate complexities surrounding their care while 69% agreed that costs should never impact a physician’s decision as to whether to comply with a patient’s AD. Conclusions Our findings highlight the impact, albeit small, external factors have on physician AD compliance. Most respondents based their decision on the clinical situation at hand and interpretation of the patient’s initial wishes and preferences expressed by the AD. (shrink)

This book represents a considerable revision and expansion of Public Choice II. Six new chapters have been added, and several chapters from the previous edition have been extensively revised. The discussion of empirical work in public choice has been greatly expanded. As in the previous editions, all of the major topics of public choice are covered. These include: why the state exists, voting rules, federalism, the theory of clubs, two-party and multiparty electoral systems, rent seeking, bureaucracy, interest groups, dictatorship, the (...) size of government, voter participation, and political business cycles. Normative issues in public choice are also examined including a normative analysis of the simple majority rule, Bergson–Samuelson social welfare functions, the Arrow and Sen impossibility theorems, Rawls's social contract theory and the constitutional political economy of Buchanan and Tullock. (shrink)

This article examines some arguments in favor of taking peace as a political obligation that can be found in one of the most important founders of the pacifist movement, Jane Addams. The main focus is on her 1907 book Newer Ideals of Peace, which has often been read as idealistic and outdated, and above all, as more of an activist’s manifesto than a serious contribution to either political philosophy or political theory. I point out that this owes much to an (...) ambiguity of Addams’ criticisms of the traditional and Kantian cosmopolitan defense of peace as a political ideal, the ambiguity between practical-political and conceptual problems. However, Addam’s succeeds in identifying one profound problem for traditional, even enlightended institution-centered ideals of peace, the collapse of the very ideal in cases of breaches of explicit peace-agreements among nations, because breaches of agreements are tantamount to the loss of all commitment to the other nation’s rights. It reveals that the conditions imposed by such ideals are at most necessary, but not sufficient for peace, and hence that the concept based on them is not a complete concept of lasting peaceful conditions among humans. Once it is seen as dedicated to resolving the problems entailed by this fundamental problem, Addams’ work, and in particular her focus on resources of solidarity and right-granting practices beyond and outside explicit agreements between governments can be understood as the development of a more adequate, coherent and comprehensive, while also a more actionable conception of peace. In the course of this development, Addams can also be observed to make use of crucial epistemological and more technical philosophical tools that are most closely associated with classical pragmatism, but which partly appear (albeit largely obliquely in the course of their application to a particular case) for the first time Addams’ treatise. Addams’ work is therefore of more than merely political activist interest for philosophers. Nonetheless, the article also explains her status as an important contributor to proper conceptions of world peace and the understanding of certain phenomena in the organization of public will formation precisely by pointing out that without some of her future-oriented proposals, like the inseparability of peace-policies and development, or the need to institutionally protect and foster spontaneous solidary action, the best contemporary work on peace would not have been possible. (shrink)

Philodemus’s On Frank Criticism offers a unique conception of friendship that relies on frank speech, or truth-telling. The ability to have frank conversations with one another is the heart of a conception of friendship in which we are seen, heard, and acknowledged. This is the friendship through which we become better citizens and better selves. In particular, Philodemus is offering this truth-based friendship to students and their mentors. Yet, one would be hard put to find such trust and deep friendship (...) in the university philosophy classrooms of today. Our professionalized and content acquisition focused culture in the academy all too often inhibits fostering these kinds of relationships with our students. We begin the essay by tracing the roots of this kind of frank friendship in Plato’s Lysis, and then contextualize its emerging role in the ancient philosophical classroom by exploring its place in Philodemus’ Epicurean philosophical community at Herculaneum. We do so to see how such friendship moves beyond discourse and into practice. Next, we use Arendt and Foucault to unpack the public and private dimensions of frank friendship in the philosophical learning environment and its role in a good life and good politics. Finally, we show how the classroom practice of Modern Socratic Dialogue (MSD) can re-enliven frank friendship as a spiritual exercise in the contemporary university-philosophy classroom. Specifically, we argue that MSD is a particular method of dialogue suited for the public realm of friendship and that it contributes to the care of one’s soul, thus modeling in our classrooms a method of dialogue for both the public and private dimensions of life. (shrink)

In his study “On the Concept of Irony” Kierkegaard characterizes irony several times as pedagogue. This alludes to Galatians 3,24f., according to which the law has been a pedagogue (‘Zuchtmeister’ in the relevant German translation, Luther 1984) in relation to Christian faith, and alludes further to the three uses of thelaw in Protestantism. Presented on this background the pedagogue becomes an important figure for the interpretation of irony and its negative dialectics in philosophy, religion and art. Drawing attention to the (...) pedagogue in the emphatic sense might be helpful for a reading of Kierkegaard’s writings (both the pseudonymic and the edifying works) as well as for a genealogy of negative dialectics with all its modern and contemporary actualizations, e.g. in Adorno’saesthetical theory or in Danto’s considerations concerning art and philosophy after Duchamp. (shrink)

In this note i argue against harold n. lee's assertion ("mind," october, 1965) that resolution of zeno's paradoxes is closely connected with the modern mathematical distinction between density and continuity. zeno's paradoxes would arise as much if space or time is dense as they do if it is continuous. in fact the paradoxes only arise if one combines a mathematical analysis of space and time with a non-mathematical conception of motion.

Due to its scope and depth, Moore's Causation and Responsibility is probably the most important publication in the philosophy of law since the publication of Hart's and Honoré's Causation in the Law in 1959. This volume offers, for the first time, a detailed exchange between legal and philosophical scholars over Moore's most recent work. In particular, it pioneers the dialogue between English-speaking and German philosophy of law on a broad range of pressing foundational questions concerning causation in the law. It (...) thereby fulfills the need for a comprehensive, international and critical discussion of Moore's influential arguments. The 15 contributors to the proposed volume span the whole interdisciplinary field from law and morals to metaphysics, and the authors include distinguished criminal and tort lawyers, as well as prominent theoretical and practical philosophers from four nations. In addition, young researchers take brand-new approaches in the field. The collection is essential reading for anyone interested in legal and moral theory. (shrink)

This contribution focuses on three aspects of Nietzsche’s art of living that have become relevant today especially in the United States (but not only here): first, regarding some facets of the economic-political conditions of any contemporary art of living; second, the widespread adoption of Nietzsche’s notion of self-overcoming and artistic self-design in entrepreneurship and individual’s lives; and third, how his notion of ‘incorporation’ has been further developed in current approaches to habit design. Eventually I will show via the example of (...) Anthony Robbins that some notions of Nietzsche’s art of living have become most popular outside of academia, namely in the commercial industries of what has been called ‘self-growth’ or ‘self-development.’. (shrink)

Alvin I. Goldman sees epistemology as a multidisciplinary enterprise that needs help, e.g., from empirical psychology (or cognitive science). He thinks also that such an epistemology should be able to give a response to scepticism without just assuming that scepticism is false. I show here that Goldman's version of naturalistic epistemology can't give such a response. His attempt either leads to circularity or makes psychology irrelevant to epistemology. In other words, it is impossible for his naturalism to give an adequate (...) answer to the question whether our psychological processes are reliable and whether our beliefs are thus justified. (shrink)

BackgroundAn analysis of the position statements of secular US medical and surgical professional societies on physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia have not been published recently. Available statements were evaluated for position, content, and sentiment.MethodsIn order to create a comprehensive list of secular medical and surgical societies, the results of a systematic search using Google were cross-referenced with a list of societies that have a seat on the American Medical Association House of Delegates. Societies with position statements were identified. These statements (...) were divided into 5 categories: opposed to PAS and/or euthanasia, studied neutrality, supportive, acknowledgement without statement, and no statement. Linguistic analysis was performed using RapidMinder in order to determine word frequency and sentiment respective to individual statements. To ensure accuracy, only statements with word counts > 100 were analyzed. A 2-tailed independentttest was used to test for variance among sentiment scores of opposing and studied neutrality statements.ResultsOf 150 societies, only 12 (8%) have position statements on PAS and euthanasia: 11 for PAS (5 opposing and 4 studied neutrality) and 9 for euthanasia (6 opposing and 2 studied neutrality). Although the most popular words used in opposing and studied neutrality statements are similar, notable exceptions exist (suicide,medicine, andtreatmentappear frequently in opposing statements, but not in studied neutrality statements, whereaspsychologists,law, andindividualsappear frequently in studied neutrality statements, but not in opposing statements). Sentiment scores for opposing and studied neutrality statements do not differ (mean, 0.094 vs. 0.104;P = 0.90).ConclusionsFew US medical and surgical societies have position statements on PAS and euthanasia. Among them, opposing and studied neutrality statements share similar linguistic sentiment. Opposing and studied neutrality statements have clear differences, but share recommendations. Both opposing and studied neutrality statements cite potential risks of PAS legalization and suggest that good palliative care might diminish a patient’s desire for PAS. (shrink)