The debate about whether misoprostol should be distributed to low resource communities to prevent post-partum haemorrhage, recognised as a major cause of maternal mortality, is deeply polarised. This is in spite of stakeholders having access to the same evidence about the risks and benefits of misoprostol. To understand the disagreement, we conducted a qualitative analysis of the values underpinning debates surrounding community distribution of misoprostol. We found that different moral priorities, epistemic values, and attitudes towards uncertainty were the main factors (...) sustaining the debate. With this understanding, we present a model for ethical discourse that might overcome the current impasse. (shrink)

While ethics and evidence‐based medicine are often viewed as separate domains of inquiry and practice, what we know influences what we can ethically justify doing, and what we see as our moral obligations shapes the way we interpret evidence. The boundaries between the moral and epistemic spheres become particularly blurred when the health of people is at stake and even more so when no “officially” recommended medical intervention is available to help a patient in need. The treatment of major hemorrhages (...) using recombinant factor VIIa (rFVIIa), which was originally approved under orphan drug legislation to treat hemophilia, is a case in point.Following reports in the late 1990s that rFVIIa was success­fully used to stop bleeding in gunshot trauma, there was much excitement about its potential to help patients with uncontrolled bleeding in other clinical settings, leading to wide‐spread off‐label use of the drug. In recent years, new evidence has raised questions about the off‐label use of rFVIIa for severe bleeding. Nonetheless, while some clini­cians are now adamantly opposed to prescribing rFVIIa for massive bleed­ing, many remain determined to continue the practice. This raises the question: why do clinicians have such variable responses to the same body of evidence?We analyzed the debate around off‐label use of rFVIIa and character­ized its main conceptual features and tensions. We did not seek to provide a normative analysis as to whether the evidence supports the case for off‐label prescribing, nor did we try to provide a historical analysis of how attitudes and clinical practice have changed. Rather, we sought to make visible the moral and epistemic values underpinning stakeholders’ opinions and practices. On the basis of our analysis, which is described in this ar­ticle, we suggest that debates such as those surrounding rFVIIa will not be resolved simply by conducting more studies and that, therefore, there is also a need for conceptual and pro­cedural frameworks that more sys­tematically incorporate values into clinical policy‐making. (shrink)

In 1966 Richard Levins argued that applications of mathematics to population biology faced various constraints which forced mathematical modelers to trade-off at least one of realism, precision, or generality in their approach. Much traditional mathematical modeling in biology has prioritized generality and precision in the place of realism through strategies of idealization and simplification. This has at times created tensions with experimental biologists. The past 20 years however has seen an explosion in mathematical modeling of biological systems with the (...) rise of modern computational systems biology and many new collaborations between modelers and experimenters. In this paper I argue that many of these collaborations revolve around detail-driven modeling practices which in Levins’ terms trade-off generality for realism and precision. These practices apply mathematics by working from detailed accounts of biological systems, rather than from initially idealized or simplified representations. This is possible by virtue of modern computation. The form these practices take today suggest however Levins’ constraints on mathematical application no longer apply, transforming our understanding of what is possible with mathematics in biology. Further the engagement with realism and the ability to push realistic models in new directions aligns well with the epistemological and methodological views of experimenters, which helps explain their increased enthusiasm for biological modeling. (shrink)

This is the ninth volume of translations of major works by Martin Heidegger to be published by Indiana University Press. It is the second translation of one of his lecture courses by the late Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz. No other thinker who wrote in German brings to the fore more seriously the problems of the translation of his texts into English than Martin Heidegger. In a certain sense, one of the major themes of his work is translation. In (...) a lecture series given a few years after Basic Questions of Philosophy, he said: "Tell me what you think about translating and I will tell you who you are." Though we do not hear anything about the basis of their translation decisions, in the translators' foreword we learn something about the Gesamtausgabe [Collected Works] edition of Heidegger's texts as they are currently being brought out by Vittorio Klostermann Verlag: "The words of Heidegger are reconstructed with as much faithfulness as the editor can bring to the task, and they are then simply left to speak for themselves". All translation is, however, transformation and interpretation, and the bridging of two linguistic worlds. There is no choice but to read Heidegger's text with the original German nearby. The present translation of the course Heidegger gave during the Winter Semester of 1937 at the University of Freiburg retains the tempo of Heidegger's delivery in class, even though the German editor, Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, who worked with several revised and emended versions of the lectures, "deleted epithets and interjections, characteristic of the lecture style but disturbing in a printed text, to the extent that they were not already stricken by Heidegger himself'. A good many of Heidegger's emphases have not been carried over by the translators. There are frequent repetitions, reviews and recapitulations, which were part of Heidegger's pedagogic style in his steady pursuit of a topic. In addition to the text of the lectures themselves, there is an appendix which includes an outline of the course as Heidegger initially envisioned it. His original plan was abandoned, but a fairly substantial and thoroughly worked out portion of the first two sections and part of the third section of the course as originally outlined are also contained in the appendix. Finally, supplements to the last two sections of the lecture course as it was given are included. The editor notes that this course, first published in 1984, is of particular importance for understanding Heidegger's 1936-38 Beiträge zur Philosophie [Contributions About Philosophy ], which will also appear in translation in the near future from Indiana University Press. The theme of the course is the essence of truth. Heidegger had first given a public lecture with that title in 1930. Much of what is implied in the lecture, which was published only in 1943, is made explicit in these lectures. Therefore, they supplement and clarify that key text. In the course, Heidegger explores the characterization of truth as correctness, which obscures the early Greek experience of ἀλήθεια, understood as unconcealedness. Heidegger's phenomenological studies of wonder, admiration, astonishment, marvelling, and awe in §37 are masterly. The event about which there has been so much speculation is quite simply the possibility of a fresh start for thinking. This would emphatically not be a repetition of the Greek experience from which Western metaphysics originated, but requires a broad jump, an existential Quantensprung, à la Lessing and Kierkegaard, for which there must be a great deal of preparation of a certain kind since there is nothing leading up to it, neither introduction nor transition. Heidegger looks forward to an unprecedented event comparable to the emergence of philosophy out of early Greek life. At long last, Schuwer and Rojcewicz are prepared to render "Dasein" as "existence," which is correct. It has always been possible to dispense with the original German term, providing we bear in mind the place of another key term in Heidegger's vocabulary with which "Dasein" is easily confused, "Existenz". Heidegger's lecture courses, which he left behind fully written out and in most cases continued to annotate and revise through the years, provide the reader with a feel for what this remarkable teacher of thinking must have been like.--Miles Groth, Wagner College. (shrink)

The coterie of commentators represented in the present volume include some of the clearest voices for Heidegger’s way of thinking among the second and third generations of American Heidegger scholars. Two of the contributors, who are also the volume’s editors, have just published a new translation of Einführung in die Metaphysik, an event that would appear to be one of the reasons for the project published here. Its thirteen essays are organized under three headings: the question of being, Heidegger and (...) the Greeks, and Politics and Ethics. The first part begins with Thomas Sheehan’s “prolegomenon to a fresh reading of Introduction to Metaphysics ” from the perspective of Heidegger’s later ruminations on Ereignis, “what brings about being,” that is “the opening of a clearing in which entities can appear as this or that”. Professor Sheehan’s discussion is both comprehensive of Heidegger’s major concepts and comprehensible to the beginning student. For specialists, the essay challenges the standing interpretation of one of the recurring topics in Heidegger scholarship, the so-called Kehre in which his way of thinking is said to have been implicated. According to Charles Guignon, Introduction to Metaphysics “undertakes the task of recovering the earliest ways of understanding Being for the purpose of revitalizing our contemporary understanding” of Being. He distinguishes in Heidegger’s thinking an “event ontology” that contrasts with the “ substance ontology” of metaphysics in effect since the classic Greek philosophers. Professor Guignon’s comments focus on Heidegger’s understanding of the early Greek concept of phusis and “how such a notion is illuminating in trying to make sense of things that the substance ontology fails to make intelligible”. He observes that history “provides a prime example of an entity whose Being is that of phusis”. Such an interpretation of phusis is in striking contrast to the standard understanding of phusis as physical nature. Later, in part 2, Susan Schoenbohm continues the discussion of Heidegger’s interpretation of phusis, noting that, according to Heidegger, in its fundamental sense, phusis does not mean nature but rather “the emerging, for the fist time, of something out of no determination at all.” It is “a name for the emerging of the originary difference of determination and no determination”, and, as such, must for certain reasons itself be “determinately ambiguous”. For Heidegger, she observes, phusis and Being are the same. Richard Polt, who is one of the volume’s editors, attempts “to lay the foundation for an adequate interpretation of Heidegger’s ‘Nothing’” in the context of the question brought into philosophical focus and prominence by Lebiniz: Why is there something instead of nothing? He notes that “the closest antecedents of Heidegger’s Nothing are to be found in nineteenth-century thought”, but that there are resonances of the topic as Heidegger treats it to be found in Eastern thought as well. In both traditions, “the question of Nothing forms part of the question of Being”, and that “precisely because Nothing is Being’s other, the question of Nothing is included in the question of Being”. Professor Polt points out the rich history of the notion of Nothing in Heidegger’s way of thinking. “We have found,” he writes, “that Heidegger uses ‘Nothing’ to refer to a wide variety of phenomena, including inauthenticity, uncanniness, death, guilt, meaninglessness, and the withdrawal of Be-ing”. He concludes that Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics does not contain a “‘doctrine’ of Nothing,” but rather should be understood as “a voyage and a provocation, not a treatise”, adding that “Heidegger himself did not always view the text as a success”, which may account for why he chose not to publish it for nearly twenty years after first presenting it in public. Daniel Dahlstrom sees Heidegger’s text as “an introduction to the end of metaphysics and [the] beginning of a new way of thinking.” He suggests that Heidegger is in search of understanding “what it means to say that something is at all”. The author’s focus is on Heidegger’s interpretation of the sense of logos in pre-Socratic philosophy. Professor Dahlstrom examines what he terms the “logical prejudice” in Western philosophy as Heidegger construes it and attempts to show why, for Heidegger, such a way of understanding the relation between thinking and being “is understandable but not inevitable”, but, regrettably, “disables thinking about being”. According to the author, Heidegger discovers among the pre-Socratics an understanding of thinking that is “more rigorous and original than judgmental or propositional thinking”. On Dahlstrom’s assessment, Introduction to Metaphysics is, in fact, an introduction to logic. Part 1 of the Companion concludes with a refreshingly challenging analysis of “a complication in Heidegger’s theory of language and its consequences” for his way of thinking about being as a whole. In his text, Dieter Thomä sets out to “turn the tables and claim that shortcomings in both the early and late thinking of Heidegger can be pointed out by means of the Introduction to Metaphysics … in the respective conceptions of language”. He uses “an approach that takes Heideggerian arguments as incentives for a way of thinking that leads beyond him”. Focusing on the philosophical possibility of the declaration “I am,” that is “indexical being”, Professor Thomä discusses changes in Heidegger’s view of language from Being and Time to the Introduction, which he claims, by the way, “is not to be regarded as one of Heidegger’s strongest texts,” in particular “[i]n terms of systematic cohesion and unity”: “The tone of the book is uneven, changing among bold appeals, philological details, simple mistakes and bold arguments”. Thomä’s discussion of Heidegger’s concept of naming is respectful of and fully conversant with the texts, without, however, being reverential in tone, a feature that unaccountably has characterized so much Heidegger scholarship. (shrink)

Heidegger scholars have sometimes assumed that Heidegger’s experience of thinking was unprecedented and that the peculiarity of his idiom was related to the novelty of that experience. Reinhard May’s study suggests that Heidegger’s thought is fundamentally indebted to his early familiarity with Zen Buddhist ideas and to his reading of Taoist classics, including the Tao te Ching of Lao Tse and the works of Chuang Zu, in German translations Heidegger knew by Victor von Strauss, Martin Buber and Richard Wilhelm, (...) and, later, to his contact with Chinese and Japanese philosophers studying in Germany with Rickert, Husserl and Heidegger himself. Many European artists and intellectuals were engrossed by East Asian ideas, of course, but May’s conclusion is that Heidegger was in a sense a Taoist philosopher, and that the peculiarities of his philosophy are the same as those which inhere in East Asian philosophy, which prizes silence and rejects the hegemony of Western logic. While Heidegger’s appreciation for East Asian philosophy and his influence on modern Japanese thinkers have been noted often enough, the suggestion that the heart of Heidegger’s thought was profoundly oriented in the early 1920s by Taoist and Zen Buddhist ideas is provocative. The translator, Graham Parkes, who has supplemented his translation with an essay detailing Heidegger’s contact with Japanese philosophers, was among the first to suggest a deeper connection between Heidegger and East Asian philosophy in a series of essays he edited on Heidegger and Asian Thought, which includes contributions by Japanese and Chinese philosophers who knew Heidegger and were in contact with him for many years. (shrink)

The initial collaboration and subsequent parting of the ways of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, and the closely related course of the early development of the phenomenological movement, are chronicled in part in the history of a text Husserl wrote for the fourteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The article, “Phenomenology,” which, until 1956, remained an important source of many a general reader’s information about phenomenology, was both one of Husserl’s few attempts to present in a concise way an account (...) of the new fundamental science that he originated and “a programmatic outline for his future endeavors” from 1928 on. The five versions of the article and a set of lectures on phenomenological psychology that Husserl gave in Amsterdam in 1928 are brought together in the present volume. The fifth version of Husserl’s article was finally “done into English” by one of Husserl’s doctoral students, Christopher V. Salmon, whose version was eventually further truncated by the editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The actual Britannica text is not reproduced here. The transmogrifications of this ill-fated text are meticulously illuminated by Thomas Sheehan, who has also prepared a complete edition of the marginalia to Husserl’s copy of Sein und Zeit. Richard E. Palmer has edited and translated the Amsterdam Lectures and Husserl’s marginal remarks in his copy of Heidegger’s Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Both sets of marginalia occupy about two-hundred pages of the volume. Also included are several other documents relevant to the history of the philosophical and personal relationship between Husserl and Heidegger, whom Husserl had chosen to be his academic successor and philosophical heir: remarks made by Heidegger in April 1929 on the occasion of Husserl’s seventieth birthday; Husserl’s letter to Alexander Pfänder from January 1931, in which he reveals his disappointment with Heidegger; and a lecture on “Phenomenology and Anthropology,” given by Husserl in June 1931, in which he publicly rejects Heidegger’s philosophy. The editors have worked with and, at times, updated Walter Biemel’s critical edition of Husserl’s texts on phenomenological psychology, as well as other materials available in the Husserl archives, at Louvain. (shrink)

Queen Mary, University of London, School of Law, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK. Tel: +442078825126, Fax: +442089818733, Email: r.ashcroft{at}qmul.ac.uk ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract Recent doctrine in both national and international organisations concerned with public health planning and resource allocation has it that direct ethical justification of substantive decisions is so difficult as to be impossible. Instead, we should agree on criteria of procedural justice and reach decisions whose justification lies in how (...) they are arrived at, rather than any direct ethical justification on the ground of substantive moral principles. In this polemical article, I argue that this amounts to a serious dereliction of intellectual duty on the part of the bioethics community. Our role in these settings is to produce and defend the best substantive arguments we can. Failing to do this makes bioethicists at best redundant and at worst leads us to seriously defective conclusions. The argument is illustrated by analysis of the ethical frameworks for resource allocation under the UNAIDS ‘3 by 5’ programme and for pandemic influenza planning. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In Midstream, photographer Richard Wasserman documents the entire length of the 156-mile Chicago River and gives readers a glimpse into a mostly hidden landscape. As the twentieth century was drawing to a close and the city's industrial manufacturing era was rapidly waning, Wasserman took note of increased efforts to clean, beautify, and conserve the river, and he felt an urgent need to preserve the memory of Chicago's brawling past. As the project progressed and the photographer found himself captivated by (...) the river's extraordinarily diverse uses and visually rich landscape, he grew determined to capture the river in its entirety, in its varying moods and seasons, and from every possible vantage point during a time of rapid transformation. Midstream is the culmination of this ten-year project, in which there was always one more location to explore and another moment to capture. The result is a remarkable record of the Chicago River, revealing the nature of the waterway as it changed throughout the seasons and in relation to the dramatic extremes of Chicago weather. Scenes that had been hidden by foliage in the summer were unveiled in the winter when the trees shed their leaves. During dry spells when the water level fell, artifacts that were usually submerged became visible and offered tantalizing hints of the past. Wasserman's experiences along the riverbanks varied by location: in forest preserves he captured images of deer, beaver, and muskrats in the midst of idyllic flora; in dense urban areas his subjects were nineteenth-century factories and warehouses, many of which have been converted to offices and apartments, standing shoulder to shoulder with gleaming new office towers and condominium buildings. With an essay by Julia S. Bachrach, Midstream will be a significant resource and a lasting documentation of the Chicago River during the first decade of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Isaac Newton was born on 25 December 1642 in the hamlet of Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, about six miles south of Grantham. The posthumous and only son of Isaac Newton, père, he found himself deposited with grandparents at the age of three when his mother married a second time; he remained with the grandparents for eight years until the death of his stepfather. After successfully resisting his mother's intention that he manage the considerable estate she had inherited from the two husbands, (...) Newton graduated from the grammar school in Grantham and enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge, in June 1661. Trinity was Newton's home for the following 35 years. He received his B.A. in 1665 and his M.A. three years later. Meanwhile he had been elected to a fellowship in the college, and in 1669, upon the resignation of Isaac Barrow, he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. Newton did not strain himself with teaching. During his nearly 30 years as a fellow of Trinity he tutored only three students, all of them wealthy fellow commoners; he formed no perceptible bond with any of them. As Lucasian Professor, he lectured once a week during one term each year, at least early in his tenure. There is testimony that frequently no one attended the lectures, and even later, when he was famous and a connection with him was potentially valuable, only two men claimed to have heard them. He ceased to lecture altogether after 1687, and may have stopped before that. (shrink)

This case deals with the corporate response to a crisis and the successful evacuation of approximately 900 hotel guests, staff, and family members of staff whowere stranded in the Fairmont New Orleans hotel by Hurricane Katrina. This rescue effort, spearheaded by managers at the sister Fairmont hotel in Dallas, Texas, was completed shortly after 12 a.m. on Friday, September 2, 2005, when the last bus with evacuees pulled into the Dallas Fairmont after making a round trip of more than 1000 (...) miles — and about 64 hours after planning began. This case is particularly significant for lessons that may be derived about crisis management and leadership, and it also raises several interesting ethical issues. The case, which relies on field research plus secondary sources, is appropriate for business ethics and business strategy courses. (shrink)

In an inspirational act of faith and hope, nearly one hundred contributors--social activists, thinkers, artists and spiritual leaders--reflect with poignant candor on our shared human condition and attempt to define a core set of human values in our rapidly changing socity. Contributors include: * The Dalai Lama * Wilma Mankiller * Oscar Arias * Jimmy Carter * Cornel West * Jack Miles * Mother Teresa * Nancy Willard * Elie Wiesel * James Earl Jones * Joan Chittister * Mary (...) Evelyn Tucker * Vaclav Havel * Archbishop Desmund Tutu What Does It Mean To Be Human? is a vital meditation on the endless possibilities of our humanity. (shrink)

The detection and spread of pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza in the United States led to a complex and multi-faceted response by the public health system that lasted more than a year. When the first domestic case of the virus was detected in California on April 15, 2009, and a second, unrelated case was identified more than 130 miles away in the same state on April 17, 2009, the unique combination of influenza virus genes in addition to its emergence and (...) rapid spread at the end of the typical Northern Hemisphere influenza season suggested the potential for a high morbidity, high mortality event. In response, federal, state, and local public health officials conducted epidemiologic investigations with federal and state laboratory support to help to determine the scope of the H1N1 pandemic. On April 26, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency that was renewed through June 23, 2010. The pandemic that ensued tested virtually every aspect of U.S. public health preparedness and response systems, from laboratory capabilities and capacities to social distancing plans. (shrink)

The detection and spread of pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza in the United States led to a complex and multi-faceted response by the public health system that lasted more than a year. When the first domestic case of the virus was detected in California on April 15, 2009, and a second, unrelated case was identified more than 130 miles away in the same state on April 17, 2009, the unique combination of influenza virus genes in addition to its emergence and (...) rapid spread at the end of the typical Northern Hemisphere influenza season suggested the potential for a high morbidity, high mortality event. In response, federal, state, and local public health officials conducted epidemiologic investigations with federal and state laboratory support to help to determine the scope of the H1N1 pandemic. On April 26, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency that was renewed through June 23, 2010. The pandemic that ensued tested virtually every aspect of U.S. public health preparedness and response systems, from laboratory capabilities and capacities to social distancing plans. (shrink)

Abstractionists claim that the only bearers of intrinsic value are abstract, necessarily existing states of affairs. I argue that abstractionism cannot succeed. Though we can model concrete goods such as lives, projects, and outcomes with abstract states, conflating models of goods with the goods themselves has surprising and unattractive consequences. I suggest that concrete states of affairs or facts are the only bearers of intrinsic value. I show how this proposal can overcome the concerns lodged against abstractionism and, in the (...) process, reconnect us with the good. (shrink)

This short work examines what the Hippocratic Oath said to Greek physicians 2400 years ago and reflects on its relevance to medical ethics today. Drawing on the writings of ancient physicians, Greek playwrights, and modern scholars, each chapter explores one passage of the Oath and concludes with a modern case discussion. This book is for anyone who loves medicine and is concerned about the ethics and history of the profession.

SummaryThis article presents a transcription of three brief unpublished essays written by Richard Cobden on Spain, Russia and Venice, along with a critical introduction. These three essays were written during Cobden's European tour, between 1846–47. Excluded from Miles Taylor's edition of the European Diaries, published in 1994, they have escaped scholarly attention. In the introduction I argue that the three essays deserve further study, either by themselves or as part of the European Diaries. Going beyond an anecdotal record (...) of Cobden's activities, the essays concerning Spain, Venice, and Russia examine different economic and political issues of each context. Particularly since Cobden planned to write a theoretical work about free trade as linked to other aspects of society and politics, they can help to revise some interpretations of Cobden's liberalism where his ideas on free trade are overpowering. (shrink)

Part one : early translations of fundamental words -- Introduction -- Mistranslations in the early critical literature (1929-1949) -- The first Heidegger in English -- Part two : hermeneutics and philosophy of translation -- Elements of a theory of translation -- Paratactic method : translating parmenides, fragment VI -- Bibliography -- Part I : works by Heidegger cited in the text -- Part II : other sources -- A research bibliography of Heidegger in English translation.

Written across the disciplines of art history, literature, philosophy, sociology, and theology, the ten essays comprising the collection all insist on multidimensional definitions of evil. Taking its title from a moment in Shakespeare's Tempest when Prospero acknowledges his responsibility for Caliban, this collection explores the necessarily ambivalent relationship between humanity and evil. To what extent are a given society's definitions of evil self-serving? Which figures are marginalized in the process of identifying evil? How is humanity itself implicated in the production (...) of evil? Is evil itself something fundamentally human? These questions, indicative of the kinds of issues raised in this collection, seem all the more pressing in light of recent world events. The ten essays were originally presented at the First Global Conference on Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness, held in March 2000 in Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. (shrink)

The theory of action underlying Immanuel Kant's ethical theory is the subject of this book.

Conditionalists say that the value something has as an end—its final value—may be conditional on its extrinsic features. They support this claim by appealing to examples: Kagan points to Abraham Lincoln’s pen, Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen to Lady Diana’s dress, and Korsgaard to a mink coat. They contend that these things may have final value in virtue of their historical or societal roles. These three examples have become familiar: many now merely mention them to establish the conditionalist position. But the widespread (...) faith in such cases is, I believe, unjustified. This is because, surprisingly, the pen, the dress, and the coat cannot have final value. I argue that the problem is internal: these cases are ruled out by every conditionalist account of final value. Further, the problem with these well-known cases applies to most other supposed examples of extrinsic, final goods. Thus nearly all cases given to support the conditionalist view cannot succeed. I suggest a kind of diagnosis: I claim that these examples are best seen as instances of sentimental value, rather than final value. I close by providing a brief account of sentimental value and explain how it relates to instrumental, intrinsic, and final goodness. (shrink)

This book offers students a philosophical introduction to the ethical foundations of business management. It combines lessons from Kant with virtue ethics and also touches upon additional approaches such as utilitarianism. At the core of the book lies the concept of the nexus of imperfect managerial duty: building and reinforcing the virtuous managerial team, engaging in reasoned discourse among all stakeholders, and diligently pursuing business responsibilities, including the creative efforts necessary for modern organizations. Case illustrations of these applications are presented (...) throughout the book, including chapter appendices. Ancillary videos, test and answer banks and sample syllabi are available online via the author’s website. (shrink)

Within each of the great religions there is a well established doxastic practice (DP) of taking experiential inputs consisting of apparent direct perceptions of God (M experiences) as giving prima facie justification, subject to defeat by overriders supplied by that religion, for belief outputs that God exists and is as he presents himself. (This DP is abbreviated as "MP.") William Alston's primary aim in his excellent book, Perceiving God, is to establish that we have epistemic justification for believing that MPs (...) are reliable in that for the most part their belief outputs are true and moreover true of an objective or experience independent reality, unlike the belief outputs of the DPs based on sensations and feelings, along with the introspective DP whose intentional accusatives, although existing independently of being introspected, fail to be objective because they are themselves conscious states. (shrink)

_Practical Bioethics_ offers a mix of theory and readings, presented in a format that is succinct and approachable. Each chapter begins and ends with a case study, illustrating the core issues at play and emphasizing the practical nature of the dilemmas arising in medicine. Primary source texts are provided to flesh out the issues, and each of these is carefully edited and presented with interwoven explanatory comments to assist student readers. Throughout, J.K. Miles shows the importance of health-care ethics (...) to us all, whether we be medical providers, patients, or both. (shrink)

Highlighting key writings from Professor Richard Pring's international career in education, the texts in this book provide a historical perspective in relation to current debates about philosophy of education in the UK and internationally, drawing attention to issues of current concern. The text explores key themes such as critical realism, teachers as researchers and a way forward for policy through carefully selected examples from Richard Pring's writings. A short introduction is provided for each chapter to help readers to (...) understand the significance of what is presented and how this relates to other chapters in the book. (shrink)

Dixon et al. overlook the fact that contact predicts not only favorable out-group attitudes/evaluations, but also cognitions, affect, and behavior. The weight of evidence supporting the benefits of intergroup contact cautions against throwing the (contact) baby out with the bathwater. The goal to “ignite struggles” in pursuit of social equality, we argue, incautiously risks hurling us down the proverbial rabbit hole.

First things -- Emanuel Bach and the allure of the irrational -- Between enlightenment and romance -- Beethoven : confronting the past -- Fragments -- Death masks.

In this chapter we explore basic mathematical and other constraints which limit the often novel uses of computation employed in modern computational system biology. These constraints generate substantial obstacles for one goal prominent in the field; namely, the goal of producing models valid for predictive uses in clinical and other contexts. However on closer examination many applications of computation and simulation in the field have more pragmatic or investigative goals in mind, suggesting an important role for rationalizing uses of computation (...) in systems biology and elsewhere as investigative tools. We discuss the concept of an “investigative tool”, and what insights it might offer our understanding of modern computational strategies and the bases for them. (shrink)

The notion of a "person" is in deep philosophical trouble. And this has posed a deepening crisis for believers: Christian beliefs are, after all, irreducibly about persons. In response to this situation, Prust proposes a new way to reason about persons, one based on identifying persons as characters of action. Employing a phenomenology of action he calls "character logic," he develops a powerful new tool for thinking through some of the intractable dilemmas that have long befuddled belief: - Can we (...) avoid being arbitrary and parochial in claiming that God is the only source of moral value? - Can we reconcile natural evil in the world with God's absolute power? - Can we continue to honor the historicity of faith-based claims in the face of critical history? - Can our personal life be eternal when neither timeless nor everlasting life is conceivable? - Can we accept our personal mortality and still affirm our destiny as eternal? Wholeness: The Character Logic of Christian Belief argues that character logic shows us a reasonable way to think about persons, one that puts theology on a new footing and gives affirmative answers to all these questions! (shrink)

I argue that there are two distinct views called ‘value pluralism’ in contemporary axiology, but that these positions have not been properly distinguished. The first kind of pluralism, weak pluralism, is the view philosophers have in mind when they say that there are many things that are valuable. It is also the kind of pluralism that philosophers like Moore, Brentano and Chisholm were interested in. The second kind of pluralism, strong pluralism, is the view philosophers have in mind when they (...) say there are many values, or many kinds of value. It is also the kind of pluralism that philosophers like Stocker, Kekes and Nussbaum have advanced. I separate and elucidate these views, and show how the distinction between them affects the contemporary debate about value pluralism. (shrink)