The twenty‐six‐year‐old patient requested a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction because of an extensive family history of cancer. She reported that she had developed melanoma at twenty‐five; that her mother, sister, aunts, and a cousin all had breast cancer; that a cousin had ovarian cancer at nineteen; and that a brother was treated for esophageal cancer at fifteen. The treating team was skeptical about this history, and they could find no documentation of the patient's reported melanoma. The surgeon wrote the (...) patient's primary care physician, explaining that he had seen the patient and planned to proceed with the bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction. The primary care physician responded that he was unable to substantiate several of the patient's claims; some of his colleagues believed the family history to be fabricated. Trying to make sense of the discrepancies, the genetic counselor called a counselor colleague who had met with this patient. The colleague suggested that the in‐house genetic counselor “google” the patient. The search revealed two Facebook pages linked to the patient. In one, apparently a personal profile, the patient stated that in addition to battling stage four melanoma, she had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. She provided a link to a site where she solicited donations to attend a summit for young cancer patients. The other Facebook page featured numerous pictures of her with a bald head, as though she has been through chemotherapy. The genetic counselor showed the Facebook pages to the surgeon, who then decided not to operate. Should health care professionals “google” their patients? (shrink)

How physicians approach patients and the problems they present is much influenced by the conceptual models around which their knowledge is organized. In this paper the implications of the biopsychosocial model for the study and care of a patient with an acute myocardial infarction are presented and contrasted with approaches used by adherents of the more traditional biomedical model. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

Criticism and recommendations are very much welcome. Please don't hesitate to contact me with them. -/- .

Agency is the human capacity to freely choose one’s thoughts, motivations and actions without undue internal or external influences; it is distinguished from decisional capacity. Four well-known conditions that can deeply affect agency are depression, demoralization, existential distress, and family dysfunction. The study reviews how they may diminish agency in persons whose circumstances may lead them to consider or request euthanasia or assisted suicide. Since agency has been a relatively neglected dimension of autonomous choice at the end of life, it (...) is argued that to respect the autonomy of individuals, it is essential to establish their agency. (shrink)

Wang Yangming (1472-1529) and his School of Mind dominated the intellectual world of sixteenth-century Ming China (1368-1644), and his Confucian philosophy has since remained an essential component of East Asian philosophical discourse. Yet, the volume of publications on him in the Western-language literature has consistently paled in comparison to the volume of scholarship on classical Chinese philosophy, modern Chinese philosophy, Buddhism, and Daoism. Studying Wang Yangming: History of a Sinological Field explains the history of writing in the West about the (...) famed Ming dynasty scholar-official. From eighteenth-century French Jesuit books to English-language publications in 2020, this book provides a historical overview and summary of a literature published by scholars attempting to grapple with one of the most influential Confucians in the history of China, East Asia, and the world. (shrink)

Ethical theory in business ethics texts lacks sufficient specificity to be used as a tool of analysis. The result is that business faculty do not see the course in business ethics as helpful to their students, and the students do not see the course as helpful in their careers.A further difficulty is the inclusion of material which is not seen by business faculty, as appropriate or germane to the practice of decision-making. Issues such as the legitimacy of the corporation, or (...) capitalism versus Marxism, are of Iittle interest or help to the person in business.Finally, the text cases are too often of a policy nature, and do not deal with issues faced by a majority of those in business. The result is the lack of engaging the moral imagination of the students.Unless the course is redesigned so that it is seen by business faculty as more relevant, it will continue to be required by only a small number of business programs. (shrink)

Ethical theory in business ethics texts lacks sufficient specificity to be used as a tool of analysis. The result is that business faculty do not see the course in business ethics as helpful to their students, and the students do not see the course as helpful in their careers.A further difficulty is the inclusion of material which is not seen by business faculty, as appropriate or germane to the practice of decision-making. Issues such as the legitimacy of the corporation, or (...) capitalism versus Marxism, are of Iittle interest or help to the person in business.Finally, the text cases are too often of a policy nature, and do not deal with issues faced by a majority of those in business. The result is the lack of engaging the moral imagination of the students.Unless the course is redesigned so that it is seen by business faculty as more relevant, it will continue to be required by only a small number of business programs. (shrink)

Current psychological research on causal inference is dominated by two basic approaches: the covariation approach and the mechanism approach. This article reviews these two approaches, evaluates the contributions and limitations of each approach, and suggests how these approaches might be integrated into a more comprehensive framework. Covariation theorists assume that cognizers infer causal relations from conditional probabilities computed over samples of multiple events, but they do not provide an adequate account of how cognizers constrain their search for candidate causes and (...) relevant evidence. Mechanism theorists assume that cognizers use their knowledge of potential mechanisms to infer the causes of individual events, but they do not account for the origins of this kind of knowledge. Theorists might integrate these approaches into a framework that overcomes these limitations by (1) examining important relations between cognizers' beliefs about the nature of causality, the logic of causal inference, and the processes cognizers use to make causal inferences, and (2) providing a more complete account of cognizers' conceptions of causality and the origins of those conceptions. (shrink)

Draft Chapter for Chinese Philosophy and Its Thinkers: From Ancient Times to the Present Day .

The transhumanist project of reshaping human beings by promoting their improvement through technological innovations has a broad agenda. This study focuses on the enhancement of the human organism through genetic modification techniques. Transhumanism values and a discussion of their philosophical background provide a framework to understand its ideals. Genetics and ethics are employed to assess the claims of the transhumanist program of human enhancement. A succinct description of central concepts in genetics and an explanation of current techniques to edit the (...) human genome serve to assess the capabilities and limitations of editing techniques. Potential benefits and liabilities of human enhancement through genome editing are discussed to appraise its feasibility. Ethical considerations of genome editing inform a reflection on the implications of introducing heritable changes in the genome of individuals. It is concluded that the transhumanist program is underpinned by a large number of hypotheses rather than by sufficient evidence. (shrink)

Energy concepts in theology and natural science are studied to see how they may aid the science‐theology dialogue. Relationships between divine and human energies in classical Christology and energy ideas in process theology are significant. In physics, energy has related roles as something conserved and as the generator of temporal development. We explore ways in which God and the world may interact to produce evolution of the universe. Possible connections between the double role of physical energy and the bipolar character (...) of God in process theology are noted. Energy helps to describe God's relationship with the world in both theological viewpoints and, thus, may bridge them. (shrink)

Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea, demonstrates extensive antigenic heterogeneity in its surface components. The organism has the capacity to switch on and off the synthesis of different versions of components such as pili, outer membrane proteins, and lipopolysaccharide. Recent studies have shown that the gonococcus uses novel and complex mechanisms, of types not described previously, to store different versions of genetic information for surface proteins, and to regulate expression of those genes.

Keywords: A theological approach to understanding time and change in a modern way must consider the relationships between thermal physics and time as elucidated during the past century and a half. The fact of temporal change, including death and decay, has been a religious problem since antiquity, so that some traditions have simply attempted to transcend the world of change. However, a major current of the Christian tradition has seen change as a fundamental aspect of God's creation, and one with (...) which God becomes identified in the Incarnation. This implies approval of history, as having an ultimate value, rather than transcendence of it.We examine thermodynamics, and especially its Second Law, in order to understand more precisely the issues of temporal change. The Second Law states a universal tendency toward increasing disorder, and several implications of this law are discussed. Of particular significance, however, is the work of Prigogine and others on nonequilibrium thermodynamics, drawing attention to such phenomena as the enhancement of chemical reaction rates and the formation of “dissipative structures” in nonequilibrium situations. Such possibilities may be of considerable importance for understanding chemical and biological evolution.These ideas can be included in an evolutionary picture in which, following Teilhard de Chardin, the Body of Christ is seen as the future of evolution‐an “ultimate dissipative structure” in which the world of time and change is united with God. Suffering, death, and decay receive their meaning from the future. Within this framework it is therefore possible to believe that the material world of history may be part of the eschatological future and that science provides hints, though not predictions, of how that may happen. (shrink)

Ian Barbour has distinguished eight theologies of God's role in nature, together with corresponding models of divine activity. This essay examines these ideas in the light of a theology of the cross. Three of Barbour's approaches—the neo‐Thomist, the kenotic, and the existentialist—are able to provide different aspects of a theology of divine action that is consistent with belief that God's definitive revelation takes place in the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. These approaches encourage attention to a part of (...) traditional doctrines of Providence, the idea that God acts by “cooperation” with natural processes. The kenotic character of divine involvement in the world means that the regularities of the basic interactions of physics are maintained. The idea of cooperation can be extrapolated into the past, to give some insight into ways of understanding God's activity in originating the universe. (shrink)

The revival of Confucianism in China since the Reform and Opening is a topic that has received much scholarly attention. Beginning in the 1980s, this revival has included the establishment of a multitude of research institutes and study societies; local, national, and international conferences and symposiums; the restoration of historical sites; the introduction of a Confucian curriculum into schools; and an increasingly voluminous scholarship.1 Reasons for the revival include government policy and the search for “a new source of ideological legitimacy (...) for the state”; “a renewed academic interest” among intellectuals searching “for ways of dealing with China’s current social and political predicament”; the... (shrink)

I know about you only from your valuable books and from the little that was communicated to me by telephone in Moscow in September. Nevertheless, we share a warm interest in Greek culture generally and philosophy in particular.

The course in business ethics is required by an increasing number of business programs. Accordingly, it seems appropriate to evaluate the text materials used from the perspective of the business student.Relative to early criticisms, recent texts represent considerable improvements in their use of case materials and in the manner by which they involve the student in decision-making situations. However, there are two distortions present in all of the texts examined. First, they concentrate too heavily on cases of a policy, or (...) general management, nature. The result is an inadequate coverage of the functional areas of the firm in which graduates begin their employment. Second, they concentrate too heavily on manufacturing firms, and thus do not introduce students to the ethical problems found where they are most likely to work, in service firms. (shrink)