The Covid-19 pandemic creates an unprecedented threatening situation worldwide with an urgent need for critical reflection and new knowledge production, but also a need for imminent action despite prevailing knowledge gaps and multilevel uncertainty. With regard to the role of research ethics in these pandemic times some argue in favor of exceptionalism, others, including the authors of this paper, emphasize the urgent need to remain committed to core ethical principles and fundamental human rights obligations all reflected in research regulations and (...) guidelines carefully crafted over time. In this paper we disentangle some of the arguments put forward in the ongoing debate about Covid-19 human challenge studies (CHIs) and the concomitant role of health-related research ethics in pandemic times. We suggest it might be helpful to think through a lens differentiating between risk, strict uncertainty and ignorance. We provide some examples of lessons learned by harm done in the name of research in the past and discuss the relevance of this legacy in the current situation. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage de Victor Goldschmidt, pour la premiere fois en edition de poche, est le seul consacre a une notion centrale de la philosophie platonicienne, le paradigme, a la fois exemple, comparaison et modele.En prenant comme fil conducteur la definition donnee dans le Politique, l'auteur commence par etudier le role joue par ce procede privilegie dans la methode dialectique des derniers Dialogues. S'exercer sur une realite banale permet de decouvrir la structure d'un grand sujet, plus difficile a definir, comme (...) le sophiste ou l'art politique. Cependant la reussite d'une demarche en saurait en fonder la legitimite. En s'interrogeant sur son fondement, Victor Goldschmidt montre que l'usage d'un paradigme obeit a un mouvement profond de la pensee platonicienne, il nous mene du visible a l'invisible. (shrink)

The concept of vulnerability is widely used in bioethics, particularly in research ethics and public health ethics. The traditional approach construes vulnerability as inherent in individuals or the groups to which they belong and views vulnerability as requiring special protections. Florencia Luna and other bioethicists continue to challenge traditional ways of conceptualizing and applying the term. Luna began proposing a layered approach to this concept and recently extended this proposal to offer two new concepts to analyze the concept of vulnerability, (...) namely understanding external conditions that trigger vulnerability and layers of vulnerability with cascading effects. Luna's conception of vulnerability is useful, which we demonstrate by applying her layered view and the new analyses in multiple contexts. We begin by outlining Luna's view and we use vignettes from healthcare involving transgender patients, the care of patients in psychiatric contexts, and research involving prisoners to illustrate how each part of Luna's concept elucidates important moral issues. (shrink)

Many scholars are ready to accept that first person thought involves a special way w such that, for any thinker x, only x can access the first person way w of thinking about x. Standard articulations of this Frege-inspired view involve a rejection of the strict shareability of first person thought. I argue that this rejection eventually forces us to renounce an intuitively plausible characterisation of communication, and specifically, disagreement. This result invites us to explore alternative articulations which, still within (...) an overall Fregean framework, may better explain how first person thoughts reach out into a public, shareable dimension. Here I shape this possibility in terms of perspectives, i.e. ways of thinking that do not individuate concepts or thoughts. Perspectives, I submit, can serve to unproblematically accommodate basic disagreement in indexical cases and to outline the dynamic character of first person thought. (shrink)

This second volume completes the biography of the influential philosopher, following Whitehead's move first from Trinity College, Cambridge to London, and then, at the age of 63, to America, where the focus of his work shifted from mathematics to philosophy. Lowe (philosophy emeritus, Johns Hopkins U.) died in 1988 with this biography not quite completed. Vol.2 was edited and seen through publication by J.B. Schneewind, chairman of the Philosophy Department at Johns Hopkins. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Many theists regard the claim that certain fundamental constants of nature are fine-tuned for life as the best scientific argument for the existence of God since Paley’s watch. Even atheist physicists find these so-called “anthropic coincidences” difficult to explain naturally and many think they need to invoke multiple universes and the so-called “anthropic principle” to do so. Certainly if there are many universes, fine-tuning is simple. Our universe is not fine-tuned for life. Life is fine-tuned to our universe. While multiple (...) universes are expected from modern cosmological theories, theists and some scientists object that invoking the unobservable is not science. Of course, God is unobservable too, so the best theists can claim is a standoff. (shrink)

Bien, Victor This article addresses the importance of science to Humanists, as expressed in an object of the Humanist Society of NSW, namely 'to promote the fullest use of science for human welfare'. Similarly, Humanist support for science is expressed in the Amsterdam Declaration endorsed by the 50th Congress of the International Humanist and Ethical Union in 2002. Paragraph 2 reads: Humanism is rational. It seeks to use science creatively, not destructively. Humanists believe that the solutions to the world's (...) problems lie in human thought and action rather than divine intervention. Humanism advocates the application of the methods of science and free inquiry to the problems of human welfare. But Humanists also believe that the application of science and technology must be tempered by human values. Science gives us the means but human values must propose the ends. (shrink)

Bien, Victor This article gives my views as a co-convenor of the Symposium held on 20 June in the NSW Parliament House. My colleague Dr Affie Adagio was the other convenor. Our use of the House was sponsored by Alex Greenwich, member for Sydney.

According to a widespread, broadly Humean consensus, desires and other conative attitudes seem as such to be free from any normative constraints of rationality. However, rational subjects are also required to be attitude-coherent in ways that prima facie hold sway for desire. I here examine the plausibility of this idea by proposing several principlesfor coherent desire. These principles parallel principles for coherent belief and can be used to make a case for a kind of purely conative normativity. I consider several (...) objections to a principle for consistent desiring and reply to them. I conclude that, if attitude-coherence is a mark of rationality, the broadly Humean consensus must be rejected. (shrink)

This is critical review of Richard Dean’ book, The Value of Humanity in Kant’s Moral Theory. Dean’s book was evaluated, and some of his interpretations of Kant were critiqued. However, it concludes that Dean’s book is illuminating especially, as regards the distinction he made between consent and informed consent and their roles in biomedical practice.

Reverse analyses of three proofs of the Sylvester-Gallai theorem lead to three different and incompatible axiom systems. In particular, we show that proofs respecting the purity of the method, using only notions considered to be part of the statement of the theorem to be proved, are not always the simplest, as they may require axioms which proofs using extraneous predicates do not rely upon.

The expression of attachment to the divine in certain places among different groups has been documented by anthropologists and sociologists for decades. However, the psychological processes by which this happens are not yet fully understood. This article focuses on the concept of ‘place spirituality’ as a psychological mechanism, which allows the religious believer or non-believer to achieve an organised attachment strategy, involving the interplay of place and spiritual attachment. First, place spirituality is considered as an experience that satisfies the attachment (...) relationship criteria in that geographic places and divine entities can be perceived as ‘objects’ of attachment. Second, it is proposed that the maturational aspects of the attachment repertoire in adults make the place spirituality experience possible since adults’ cognitive abilities are much wider than those of children and can include relationships to geographical spaces and invisible divine entities. Finally, the theme of place spirituality is explored to further position the concept as a relational paradigm for understanding the relationship between place experiences and spiritual attachment. (shrink)

Can subjects genuinely possess concepts they do not understand fully? A simple argument can show that, on the assumption that possession conditions are taken to fully individuate concepts, this question must be answered in the negative. In this paper, I examine this negative answer as possibly articulated within Christopher Peacocke’s seminal theory. I then discuss four central lines of attack to the view that possession of concepts requires full understanding. I conclude that theorists should acknowledge the existence of indefinitely many (...) cases of genuine concept possession for partially understood concepts and therefore face the determination challenge, namely, the challenge of fully determining concept individuation from concept possession conditions of partially understood concepts. (shrink)

Monica A. Coleman achieves remarkable rigor in bringing together in one volume her long-standing interests in process philosophy and theology, womanist theology and ethics, African diaspora studies, West African religions, and African American women’s literature. Making a way out of No Way (2008) is a tour de force in contemporary African American constructive theology and especially in womanist discourse on the religious experience(s) of African American women. Coleman insists on understanding black women’s religious experience through the lens of their complex (...) subjectivity, which is irreducible to singularity or totality. As typically found in academic womanist theology, Coleman does not begin her theology with .. (shrink)

This book explores three worlds shared by the humans in their collective experiences. It identifies and explores the world of commonsense, the world of religion, and the world of science as three essential dimensions of human experience. The book helps understand that humans can gain comfort and pleasure in commonsense, achieve meaning and purpose from religion, and attain truth and rationality through science. It actively applies theories to and develops theoretical explanations from different domains or situations of human existence. This (...) book is of interest to theorists, researchers, instructors, and students across major academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

In this lucid and insightful study, Stephen Makin investigates a form of argument widespread in ancient Greek philosophy, where the absence of a reason for one alternative to be the case rather than another is used to establish substantive conclusions—where the alternatives are “indifferent”. Examples abound: Anaximander engages in such reasoning to show that the Earth does not move; Zeno of Elea to show that what is cannot be divided; Democritus to argue for finite divisibility, on the one hand, and (...) the infinite variety of atoms and worlds, on the other; not to mention the extensive use of such arguments in ancient skepticism. (shrink)

resumed version of a Philosophycal Anthropology, a PhD Thesis.

We establish some results on the Borel and difference hierarchies in φ-spaces. Such spaces are the topological counterpart of the algebraic directed-complete partial orderings. E.g., we prove analogs of the Hausdorff Theorem relating the difference and Borel hierarchies and of the Lavrentyev Theorem on the non-collapse of the difference hierarchy. Some of our results generalize results of A. Tang for the space Pω. We also sketch some older applications of these hierarchies and present a new application to the question of (...) characterizing the ω-ary Boolean operations generating a given level of the Wadge hierarchy from the open sets. (shrink)