According to recent approaches in the philosophy of medicine, biomedicine should be replaced or complemented by a humanistic medical model. Two humanistic approaches, narrative medicine and the phenomenology of medicine, have grown particularly popular in recent decades. This paper first suggests that these humanistic criticisms of biomedicine are insufficient. A central problem is that both approaches seem to offer a straw man definition of biomedicine. It then argues that the subsequent definition of humanism found in these approaches is problematically reduced (...) to a compassionate or psychological understanding. My main claims are that humanism cannot be sought in the patient–physician relationship alone and that a broad definition of medicine should help to revisit humanism. With this end in view, I defend what I call an outcomes-oriented approach to humanistic medicine, where humanism is set upon the capacity for a health system to produce good health outcomes. (shrink)

In some quarters within philosophy of medicine, more particularly in the phenomenological approaches, naturalism is looked upon with suspicion. This paper argues, first, that it is necessary to distinguish between two expressions of this attitude towards naturalism: phenomenological approaches to illness disagree with naturalism regarding various theoretical claims and they disapprove of naturalism on an ethical level. Second, this paper argues that both the disagreement with and the disapproval of naturalism are to a large extent confused. It then offers some (...) proposals to set up an agenda for future collaboration. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed an increasing growth in mutual funds that invest according to social criteria. As a consequence, the financial performance of these portfolios has attracted the interest of academics and practitioners. This paper investigates the performance of a sample of socially responsible mutual funds from seven European countries investing globally and/or in the European market. Using unconditional and conditional models, we assess the performance of these funds in comparison to conventional and socially responsible benchmark portfolios. The results show (...) that European socially responsible funds present in general neutral performance in relation to both conventional and socially responsible benchmarks. However, performance estimates seem to be slightly higher when funds are evaluated in relation to socially responsible indices. Our results also show that socially responsible funds are more exposed to conventional than to socially responsible indices. Furthermore, conventional benchmarks are better able to explain fund returns than socially responsible benchmarks. These findings are robust to both unconditional and conditional models of performance. We also observe that conditional models lead to a slight improvement of performance estimates and to the explanatory power of the models, both when conventional and socially responsible benchmarks are considered. This is consistent with most previous empirical findings on conditional performance evaluation. Our results show that investors who wish to hold European funds can add social screens to their investment choices without compromising financial performance. (shrink)

Cirocco, Josie My mini thesis of 'Finding God in Art: Karl Rahner on the Nature of Religious Art' was part of my master's project with the Flinders University, South Australia, completed in December 2014. With my research topic, 'Finding God in Art', in mind, I was seeking to go beyond the classical idea of sacred art to explore the way other art may genuinely be religious even though it is not overtly about a religious subject. To do this I (...) adopted some of the insights of Karl Rahner's theology. The immense success of Rahner's work is a tribute to his ability to speak profoundly about the everyday life of ordinary men and women. I explored Rahner's thought about art, both verbal and non-verbal, within a Christian context. (shrink)

Resumen. El siguiente artículo muestra el estado actual de la Responsabilidad Empresarial enMéxico y su efecto en el Riesgo medido a través del Costo de Capital. Para ello, revisamos lasprincipales teorías que muestran que el uso de prácticas sociales en Estados Unidos provocandisminución del riesgo y por ende del Costo de Capital, Aras y Crowther, Richardson yWelker y Diamond y Verrechia. Con el fin de contrastar que las empresas SocialmenteResponsables tienen costos de capital menores consideramos como variable de desempeño social (...) eldistintivo que otorga el Centro Mexicano de Filantropía y por otra parte para calcular elriesgo consideramos el costo de capital a través de la metodología del Capital Asset Price Modelo. Encontramos que las empresas que son socialmente responsables tienen costos de capitalsuperiores que las que no son responsables y que el rendimiento de acciones es superior en lasempresas no responsables, por lo que el diferencial de riesgo vs rendimiento es superior en lasempresas no socialmente responsables. Lo anterior rechaza la hipótesis y contrasta con la realidadempírica de otros estudios.Palabras claves. Distintivo de ESR, CEMEFI, costo de capital, riesgo, rentabilidad de acciones,Bolsa de Valores. The following article shows the current status of the corporate responsibility inMexico and their effect on risk measured by the cost of capital. To do this, we review the maintheories that show that social practices in the United States leads to decrease risk and hence the costof Capital Aras and Crowther, Richardson and Welker and Diamond y Verrechia. In order to contrast that socially responsible companies have lower capital costs we considersocial performance variable the distinction conferred by the Mexican Center for Philanthropy and the cost of capital it estimate on the methodology of the Capital Asset Price model. We find that companies that are socially responsible have capital costs higher than thosethat are not responsible. It rejects the hypothesis and contrasts with the empirical reality of otherstudies.Keywords. CSR distintive, CEMEFI, cost of capital, risk, return in shares, Capital Market Securities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Game ChangeMaximo CortezOn November 17, 1983, I was born with a condition called mixed gonadal dysgenesis, and ambiguous genitalia. My gender was not of a big concern at that time. The more urgent matter was that I had a heart murmur, which was repaired when I was twelve months old. [End Page E5]It was not until I turned five, and by issue of the Texas Children’s Protective Services (CPS), (...) that my mother was forced to authorize providers to perform normalization surgeries on me. An anonymous caller tipped the CPS that my mother was raising a boy as a girl. The state intervened and explained to my mother that she would have to consent to these surgeries or else she would lose custody of me. This included a gonadectomy and a clitorectomy. Without any consent, these surgeries were performed “in my best interests.” My mother was an epileptic, Hispanic, Mormon, single parent.I was raised to be a socially acceptable female, though as early as five, I played with “boy” toys and enjoyed TV programs aimed at male youth, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was not until I had those normalization surgeries performed on me that I felt different. I knew that something major had happened to me. I woke up in a hospital bed in a gown. I raised the covers and noticed that I had an “X” carved in my groin area. Doctors mutilated my clitoris by reducing its size, which made me feel alienated and angry that something was wrong with my body.I had a surgery performed on me that was to be kept secret and never talked about. This sense of fear and shame was instilled in me shortly after the surgery. I do not recall any psychological evaluations or counseling to help me cope with such surgeries. Seeing everyone else my age going through puberty during my teenage years, I felt behind. I wasn’t becoming a boy with a deep voice or facial hair. Instead, I visited the doctor’s office with my mom and was told that I would be taking oral estrogen to become a woman. I wasn’t until that moment that I understood I was seeing a doctor to foster the development of female secondary characteristics. I felt betrayed by the medical community and by my own mother.Just a few years later, I saw a urologist to find out whether I was ready for a vaginal construction surgery (vaginoplasty). Thankfully the urologist suggested that I was not ready to move forward with an invasive and irreversible vaginal construction surgery. I never pursued it as an adult, as I have always felt male gendered.Social sexual relationships have always been difficult for me but more so with my attraction to women. I first realized my attraction to women in early middle school. Being raised Mexican and a Mormon and knowing that I was homosexual created a lot of conflict for me. I felt that I was a male–gendered person forced into a castrated, mutilated, and medically created female body. I suffered through depression from an early age and it continues today. My conservative Mormon upbringing brought me much shame. The Mormon religion, as most people understand it, expresses a great intolerance to homosexuals and transgender people. I felt like I was a heterosexual male in a female’s body, but the Mormons would never accept me.My later teenage years and mid–twenties were a dark time in my life. I even attempted suicide in my early twenties. My depression was treated with antidepressants and talk therapy. Once I began testosterone, I gradually stopped taking antidepressants. When I was only on estrogen, I felt very moody, angry, and in an emotional funk. I would cry easily and would become very irritable and emotional without cause. With testosterone therapy, I began to think more clearly, had balanced emotions, and began to think more logically.I began to research intersex online and found a women’s androgen insensitivity (AIS) support group. At one of their national conferences, I met another intersex individual who was raised as a female and who had transitioned to male. Like me... (shrink)

Smartphones are increasingly entangled with the most intimate areas of everyday life, providing possibilities for the continued expansion of digital self-tracking technologies. Within this context, the development of smartphone applications targeted at female reproductive health are offering novel forms and practices of knowledge production about reproductive bodies and processes. This article presents empirical research from the United Kingdom on women’s use of fertility tracking applications, known more generally as fertility apps, while trying to conceive. Drawing on material from interviews with (...) women who had experience of using fertility apps, I demonstrate the significance of this particular form of fertility tracking for the embodied shift from pregnancy prevention to actively facilitating pregnancy, participants’ sense of self and identity and how they perceived the reproductive potentiality of their bodies. I argue that fertility apps are significantly involved in making fertility cycles known and thus configuring the pre-pregnant reproductive body. (shrink)

Students coming into a third-year business ethics course I teach are often confused about the use and meaning of the terms social responsibility and ethics. This motivated me to take a closer look at a sample of the management and business ethics literature for an explanation of their confusion. I found that there are inconsistencies in the way the two terms are employed and the way the concepts are defined. This paper identifies the different ways the relationship between social responsibility (...) and ethics has been represented, the various uses of these two terms, and the contrasting views regarding the connection between morality and ethics. While this analysis does not resolve any difficult substantive questions, it does provide conceptual clarity as a necessary first step towards facilitating students critical engagement with the substantive issues. (shrink)

Aujourd’hui délaissées, parfois devenues gênantes, les collections médicales furent pourtant à l’avant-garde du renouveau de la médecine au début du XIXe siècle, avant que celle-ci ne devienne la médecine telle que nous la connaissons aujourd’hui. Selon une vision courante de l’histoire de la médecine, les collections médicales auraient perdu de leur utilité lorsque la médecine a accédé au statut de science expérimentale, les musées d’anatomie faisant alors place aux laboratoires. Les collections d’anatomie-pathologie comme le musée Dupuytren ne seraient que le (...) reliquat de cette histoire, le témoignage d’un échec méthodologique à opposer aux succès de la physiologie expérimentale. Cette narration de l’histoire de la médecine est-elle cependant correcte ? Dans quels buts épistémologiques les médecins ont-ils créé ces collections ? Quelles connaissances cherchaient-ils à obtenir par ce biais ? Plus généralement, pourquoi collecter en médecine – et en science – et pourquoi collectionner ? Pour répondre à ces questions, je m’intéressai principalement dans cette contribution aux pratiques de collecte et de collection chez les médecins de la Société Anatomique de Paris au XIXe siècle et au rôle joué par ces pratiques dans la construction de la collection Dupuytren. (shrink)

This paper is mainly a provisional survey of the engagement of the Filipinos with the thoughts of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and philosopher. It presents first the main tenets of Freire’s liberating pedagogy. Then, it explores the Filipinos’ engagement with his ideas. Then, it gives some observations on the said engagement. Finally, it suggests a possible way on how philosophical researches in the Philippines can continually appreciate the relevance of Freire’s liberating pedagogy especially in relating it to a form (...) of Filipino philosophy that is involved in a critique of the society. -/- Keywords: Freire, liberating pedagogy, Philippine education, Filipino philosophy. (shrink)

This paper describes the scientific practices of the anatomists from the Société Anatomique de Paris (1803–1873) who were collecting anatomical and pathological specimens in Nineteenth-Century Paris and which led to the building of the anatomy and pathology Musée Dupuytren (1835–2016). The framework introduced by Robert Kohler to describe collecting sciences (2007) is useful as a tool to identify the set of diverse practices within pathological anatomy in nineteenth-century Paris. However, I will argue that anatomy and pathology collecting had specific features (...) compared to most collecting sciences. Two main collecting practices could be distinguished: first, “finding” anatomical specimens and second, keeping these specimens. The first kind of practices were at least rhetorically and explicitly motivated by Auguste Comte’s positive philosophy. But “finding” an anatomy or pathology specimen could not be completely compared to finding an object or making a simple observation, as dissecting as well as some experimental practices were also involved. Heterogeneous practices thus coexisted within collecting in anatomy and pathology. Epistemological as well as pragmatic tensions arose. On top of Kohler’s framework, I introduce Sabina Leonelli’s concept of “data journey” to offer a narrative of the diversity of collecting practices involved in the Société Anatomique de Paris and the Musée Dupuytren. I use the concept to analyse how this diversity of practices impacted knowledge production. (shrink)

Este artigo é parte do estudo de mestrado que investigou a concepção de educação e pessoa à luz do personalismo de Emmanuel Mounier. Para o personalismo mounieriano a pessoa não nasce perfeita, ou seja, pronta. O homem é chamado a “amadurecer livremente” como pessoa. Isso envolve dois aspectos fundamentais para o seu desenvolvimento – a liberdade, que lhe confere a possibilidade de escolha, e o protagonismo, que o coloca como principal responsável por seu desenvolvimento. O desenvolvimento da pessoa, em Mounier, (...) é um processo que depende, sobretudo, da própria pessoa. Tal protagonismo evidencia que a educação, para o personalismo é, na verdade, autoeducação. (shrink)

Three widely accepted principles – autonomy, beneficence and justice – provide a useful analytic framework for considering controversies and conflicts in bioethics. Since these principles capture key concepts found in diverse normative theories they provide a starting point from which consistent ethical analysis and comparison can begin. While justice is commonly discussed in the business ethics literature, the other two principles are not widely discussed. This paper investigates whether the principles of autonomy and beneficence provide a framework that is equally (...) useful for framing issues in business ethics. It is argued that they do. First, the principle of autonomy, with its associated notions of informed consent, privacy, confidentiality, voluntariness, self-mastery, and so on, provides a consistent approach to the analysis of diverse issues that arise in business ethics from market research to recruitment practices. Second, it is argued that the relationships between a business and its stakeholders ground duties of beneficence. The principle of beneficence provides a framework for considering the issues that arise in these relationships. (shrink)

Plusieurs aspects du modèle biopsychosocial promeuvent une approche humaniste en médecine. Cependant, Engel a explicitement rejeté un humanisme médical qui s’opposerait à la science. En adoptant une approche fondée sur la science des systèmes pour étudier les êtres humains, la santé et la maladie, Engel défend une approche scientifique pour améliorer la qualité des soins cliniques, ou autrement dit, une approche qui se prête à un examen scientifique de cette question.

Empathy is often described as a virtue which that could help in making medicine more humanistic. This paper argues that there are two limits to this thesis. First, it is unclear whether a lack of empathy can be attributed to the biomedical education. Second, empathy itself is not without issues, and another concept, compassion, can be put forward instead. Humanism based on compassion is more minimalist, but integrated with an approach focused on health systems, it makes humanism more tangible and (...) radical. -/- . (shrink)

The current voluntary posthumous organ donation policy fails to provide sufficient organs to meet the demand. In these circumstances xenografts have been regarded as an expedient solution. The public perception seems to be that the only impediments to this technology are technical and biological. There are, however, important ethical issues raised by xenotransplantation that need to be considered as a matter of urgency. When the ethical issues raised by using non-human animals to provide replacement organs for human beings are considered (...) in a wider context and the possible alternatives to xenotransplantation are taken into account, a new dimension is added to the debate. In this broader context it is argued that a less ethically problematic solution is to adopt a presumed consent or opt-out organ procurement policy to regulate posthumous organ harvesting from humans. If there are still too few organs available, then the whole question of transplantation must be reassessed. (shrink)

Selon l’une des thèses les plus répétées de la médecine narrative, la théorie littéraire, ou plus largement, la narration, permettrait aux membres du personnel médical d’appréhender les récits des patients et par là, de prendre en considération leurs expériences dans leur singularité absolue. Dans ma contribution, je soulignerai quelques limites de cette thèse. J’appuierai mon analyse sur un exemple de récit dominant de maladie, les récits portant sur le cancer du sein aux États-Unis au XXe siècle, à partir des analyses (...) féministes qui en ont été faites. Ainsi je montrerai d’une part qu’il est peu plausible que les récits des patients soient absolument singuliers et uniques, en un sens pertinent, et d’autre part que certains récits peuvent devenir dominants et marginaliser des récits qui voudraient s’en démarquer. (shrink)

While there is increasing pressure on scarce health care resources, advances in medical science have blurred the boundary between life and death. Individuals can survive for decades without consciousness and individuals whose whole brains are dead can be supported for extended periods. One suggested response is to redefine death, justifying a higher brain criterion for death. This argument fails because it conflates two distinct notions about the demise of human beings--the one, biological and the other, ontological. Death is a biological (...) phenomenon. This view entails the rejection of a higher brain criterion of death. Moreover, I claim that the justification of the whole brain (or brain stem) criterion of death is also cast into doubt by these advances in medical science. I proceed to argue that there is no need to redefine death in order to identify which treatments ought to be provided for the permanently and irreversibly unconscious. There are already clear treatment guidelines. (shrink)

Une médecine plus humaniste serait une médecine où les professionnels de santé feraient preuve de plus d’empathie envers leurs patients. Or s’il est difficile d’attester un déclin de l’empathie en médecine en l’attribuant au modèle biomédical, l’empathie n’est pas sans défaut. Cela ne signifie pas la mort de l’humanisme médical. Il est possible de le faire reposer sur un concept minimal de compassion et de lui intégrer une approche basée sur les systèmes de santé. L’humanisme ainsi défendu n’est plus empathique, (...) mais il est aussi plus convaincant. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to critically review the design of methods for ethically robust forms of technology appraisal in the regulation of research and innovation in synthetic biology. It will focus, in particular, on the extent to which cost‐benefit analysis offers a basis for informing decisions about which technological pathways to pursue and which to discourage. A further goal is to consider what (if anything) the precautionary principle might offer in enabling better decisions. And this, in turn, raises (...) questions about why mention of precaution can excite accusations of unscientific bias or irrational, “anti‐innovation” extremism. What does the polarized debate tell us about the politics around synthetic biology? In seeking more rigorous, timely, and practical ways to govern these remarkable new technologies, what might we be missing?The sophistication, diversity, and scope of synthetic biology may seem to make it a rather idiosyncratic area for exploring these general issues. It may seem to be a special case, with the bewildering pace of change amplifying the difficulties. But at root, some of the trickiest issues are just specific instances of familiar and long‐standing conundrums in the governance of science and technology. The basic challenge is how to weigh up, for a wide range of potential options, the various pros and cons, as viewed from divergent perspectives, and find a way to justify the best course of action on behalf of society as a whole. This is the central problem addressed by a number of techniques in CBA. On the face of it, synthetic biology seems to present just one more application of these well‐established and self‐confident prescriptive methods.But there do emerge several obstinate, even prohibitive, difficulties for CBA. Although they are well acknowledged by the scholarly literature on and around this topic, they are often sidelined in practice. Yet all are central to the case for applying the concept of precaution to a field like synthetic biology. This essay will briefly explore multicriteria mapping, an appraisal method for exploring contrasting perspectives on emerging technologies, as one practical way to address them. The essay focuses on MCM, not because it presents any sort of panacea for appraisal, but because it is illustrative of the concrete implications of precaution. Setting out even just one among potentially many practical alternative methods at least refutes the last‐ditch argument that CBA is the only operational choice. (shrink)

Ascendendo no campo teórico desde a virada do milênio, o ateísmo tem sido considerado uma variedade religiosa de relevância social e acadêmica por razões estigmatizantes. Este artigo apresenta um estudo com enfoque nos espaços da etapa incipiente do ateísmo como opção religiosa. Para tanto, analisamos a peça O berço do herói, de Dias Gomes. Essa peça é inspirada em um caso real que aconteceu durante a Guerra dos Canudos. Nela, é possível observar como Dias Gomes, autor que se afirmou publicamente (...) como ateu e marxista, constrói um argumento ateu-marxista baseado em três premissas, demonstradas pela verossimilhança da situação.Palavras-chave: O berço do herói. Argumento ateu. Religião. Nacionalismo. (shrink)

Text and commentary of selected works on Advaita.

ABSTRACT The question of non-Western difference has come to feature prominently across the field of comparative rhetoric, where it is often presupposed that an irreducible difference separates Western from non-Western rhetorical and cultural production. It is on the basis of this presupposition that critics have established a politics of comparative inquiry, whereby restituting the pure consciousness of a non-Western subaltern subject is understood to subvert the hegemony of Western thought. But what exactly is the nature of this difference? In this (...) article I examine the recent turn toward Latin America in the field of comparative rhetoric to argue that this presupposition serves as a constitutive topos—that the object of Latin America is invented rhetorically in the very act of comparative inquiry—and that this presupposition yields a political impasse that the field has yet to think through. Drawing on recent work in Latin American studies, I argue for a rearticulated notion of subalternity as a methodological approach for dealing with this impasse. (shrink)

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of socially responsible funds in Sweden by assessing fund managers' abilities and performances across different market states. These issues are analyzed at the aggregate and individual fund levels. The paper also presents several new statistical tests that allow more precise inferences about differences in performance and the variability in fund returns arising from different benchmarks. In general, SR and conventional funds perform similarly to the market. At the aggregate level, SR funds investing in Sweden (...) and Europe perform similarly to conventional funds, while those investing globally tend to underperform. This underperformance seems to be linked with poor selectivity abilities of global SR fund managers. For individual funds, the performance of both types of funds is more similar. Most funds perform similarly in crisis periods compared to non-crisis periods. Overall, our results are consistent with a mature market for SR investing and support the view that the similar performance of SR and conventional funds is associated with the mainstreaming of SR investment in Sweden. These findings encourage SR investing both by socially conscious investors, who wish to align their social values with their investment decisions, as well as by conventional investors, who will not be penalized by investing in these funds. We also call attention to the difficulties investors face when trying to identify funds with high social standards, considering that there is scarce information on the extent to which each fund holds stocks that comply with ethical and social criteria. (shrink)

There is evidence of persistent inequalities in household financial protection of health and drugs spending in Latin America. Despite the expansion of coverage, strong inequalities persist in access to health and family spending on drugs in the region. Out-of-pocket spending in medicines is regressive in greater need for affordable medicines.