In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 249 Girolamo Balduino: Ricerche sulla logica della Scuola di Padova nel Rinascimento. By Giovanni Papuli. (Bark Lacerta, Universith di Bari, Pubblicazioni dell'lstituto di filosofia, 12, 1967. Pp. 313. no price.) The philosophers at the University of Padua during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance arc attracting much renewed interest. This study makes accessible again the logical philosophy of Girolamo Balduino, professor at Padua during the second quarter (...) of the sixteenth century. Like other thinkers of his period, 13alduino follows the logic of Aristotle, and looks for progress within the ancient and mediaeval tradition, not for radically new doctrines. He continues the traditional interpretation of Aristotle by Averroes, for whom logic is only an instrumental habitus, a tool or method of demonstration. About the final contribution of the school of Padua to the improvement of Aristotelian logic was the doctrine of regressive demonstration, where demonstration terminates in or discloses the definition. Zabarella's well-known teaching on this point seems to be derived entirely from Balduino. Contrary to the interpretation of Cassirer, followed by Randall, this regressive demonstration is not a universal method of inquiry and is not at all like, and not the historical source of, the new method of Galileo. Papuli's book is solidly based on the original Latin texts, in notes, which are of great value in view of the fact that Balduino's works have been out of print since 1573. Not all of Papuli's interpretations are beyond criticism (e.g., p. 296), but he has done a service in enabling us to reestablish contact with one of the last significant commentators on Aristotle's logic. PAUL J. W. MILLER University of Colorado Documents sur la vie de Jules-Cdsar Vanini de Taurisano. By Emile Namer. (Bari: Adriatica Editrice, n.d.=Univcrsith degli Studi di Bari, Pubblicazioni delFIstituto di Filosofia, II serie, Testi e Documenti, I. Pp. 196+22 facsimile illustrations) Giulio Cesare Vanini (1585-1619) ranks with Giordano Bruno as a modern hero of freedom of philosophical expression. He was tortured and then burned at the stake in Toulouse at the age of thirty-four, because of the unorthodoxy of his views. For this reason, he has drawn more attention than is perhaps deserved on the basis of his rather mediocre writings, which are little more than a tissue of plagiarisms culled from Pomponazzi, Cardano, J. C. Scaliger, and others. In this volume, Emile Namer has collected the scattered documents dealing with Vanini's life and activities. This is a valuable service, for it should enable scholars to disentangle fact from fiction and reality from myth. There has been so much heated discussion regarding Vanini that it is now time that someone should attempt to establish the precise facts and to reevaluate Vanini's place in intellectual history. In the past, writings about him have been governed more often by emotion than by reason. Namer prints documents from Naples, London, Paris, Simancas, and Toulouse. Some of these have been printed before in various journal articles, but it is valuable to have them all together in a single volume. In addition, he prints relevant excerpts concerning--as one of them put it--le douzi~me apostre de Satan, including material from Mersenne, Garasse, and others. He also includes a series of facsimiles of sample pages from the documents which he prints. All in all Namer's work is competently 250 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY done, though perhaps a bit more annotation to put the documents in historical perspective would have been desirable. In any case this little volume must be one of the bases for any future serious biographical or interpretative studies dealing with Vanini. Moreover, it shouM also be useful for scholars dealing with more general questions of seventeenth-century intellectual, religious, and social history. Unfortunately, there is no index, nor bibliography of earlier literature on Vanini, and the Introduction is perhaps too brief to orient the reader who has little previous knowledge of Vanini. CHARLES B. SCHMITT University oJ Leeds Tommaso Campanella: Renaissance Pioneer o[ Modern Thought. By Bernardino M. Bonansea. (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1969. Pp. xi 421. $14.50) This excellent critical study of the life and... (shrink)

Le XIIe siecle, celui des renaissances, est une periode d'echanges multiformes entre traditions, cultures, ecoles. Sans doute aucun siecle n'est-il plus difficile a unifier que celui-ci: l'appropriation des doctrines greco-arabes voisine avec le developpement autonome des arts du langage, le temps d'Abelard est aussi celui de Bernard de Clairvaux, la dialectique s'elabore dans l'affrontement des multiples ecoles ou sectes. Ce foisonnement que n'encadre pas encore l'institution universitaire recoit ici divers eclairages portant sur la conception de la philosophie, sur la cosmologie (...) et les mathematiques ou sur les arts du langage. (shrink)

Bio-heteronormative conceptions of the family have long reinforced a nuclear ideal of the family as a heterosexual marriage, with children who are the genetic progeny of that union. This ideal, however, has also long been resisted in light of recent social developments, exhibited through the increased incidence and acceptance of step-families, donor-conceived families, and so forth. Although to this end some might claim that the bio-heteronormative ideal is not necessary for a social unit to count as a family, a more (...) systematic conceptualization of the family—the kind of family that matters morally—is relatively underexplored in the philosophical literature. This paper makes a start at developing and defending an account of the family that is normatively attractive and in line with the growing prevalence of non-conventional families and methods of family-formation. Our account, which we call a constitutive-affirmative model of the family, takes the family to be constituted by an ongoing process of relevant affective and affirmative relations between the putative family members. (shrink)

Faire le point, à la lumière des connaissances actuelles de l'histoire des sciences et de la philosophie médiévales, sur les rapports de Desccartes et du Moyen Âge, tel étaitt l'objet du colloque orgganisé à Paris du 6 au 9 juin 1997, auquel cet ouvrage fait suite. Les innovations et mutations conceptuelles de Descartes font l'objet de mises en perspective et de comparaisons, dans des contributions qui couvrent la pluparty des aspects de la pensée cartésienne. L'originalité de Descartes n'en est pas (...) atténuée, mais reçoit de nouveaux éclairages, en suivant les transformations de concepts et de problèmes, par delà les séparations habituelles entre le Moyen Âge, la Renaissance et l'Âge classique. (shrink)

This meta-analysis synthesizes quantitative findings of the gender differences in moral sensitivity retrieved from 19 primary studies. We found the average effect size of 0.25, favoring women, with a standard deviation of 0.14. The variation in the observed effect sizes could not be attributed to differences in participants' educational level, the utilized measure of moral sensitivity, or the publication format in which the study was reported. This suggests that gender differences in moral sensitivity are consistent across different levels of participants' (...) education regardless of the instrument used to assess moral sensitivity or the format in which the research was reported. (shrink)

Rest's hypothesis that the components of morality (i.e., sensitivity, reasoning, motivation, and implementation) are distinct from one another was tested using evidence from a dental ethics curriculum that uses well-validated measures of each component. Archival data from five cohorts (n = 385) included the following: (1) transcribed responses to a measure of ethical sensitivity collected at the end of the third year; (2) pre- and post-test moral judgment scores; (3) pre- and post-test motivation scores; and (4) implementation scores – performance (...) on eight cases completed during the third and fourth years. Because the ethical sensitivity test had been scored by multiple raters, and interrater reliability did not meet acceptable standards, 120 portfolios were randomly selected from the five cohorts and responses were rescored prior to analysis. Correlations among the measures were low, ranging from −.08 to.34, supporting Rest's contention that the processes are distinct from one another and competence in one does not predict competence in another. The findings have implications for moral and character education programs. (shrink)

Objectives: To foster the development of a privacy-protective, sustainable cross-border information system in the framework of a European public health project. Materials and methods: A targeted privacy impact assessment was implemented to identify the best architecture for a European information system for diabetes directly tapping into clinical registries. Four steps were used to provide input to software designers and developers: a structured literature search, analysis of data flow scenarios or options, creation of an ad hoc questionnaire and conduction of a (...) Delphi procedure. Results: The literature search identified a core set of relevant papers on privacy. Technicians envisaged three candidate system architectures, with associated data flows, to source an information flow questionnaire that was submitted to the Delphi panel for the selection of the best architecture. A detailed scheme envisaging an “aggregation by group of patients” was finally chosen, based upon the exchange of finely tuned summary tables. Conclusions: Public health information systems should be carefully engineered only after a clear strategy for privacy protection has been planned, to avoid breaching current regulations and future concerns and to optimise the development of statistical routines. The BIRO project delivers a specific method of privacy impact assessment that can be conveniently used in similar situations across Europe. (shrink)

The European Union Data Protection Regulation will have profound implications for public health, health services research and statistics in Europe. The EU Commission's Proposal was a breakthrough in balancing privacy rights and rights to health and healthcare. The European Parliament, however, has proposed extensive amendments. This paper reviews the amendments proposed by the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and their implications for health research and statistics. The amendments eliminate most innovations brought by the Proposal. Notably, (...) derogation to the general prohibition of processing sensitive data shall be allowed for public interests such as the management of healthcare services, but not health research, monitoring, surveillance and governance. The processing of personal health data for historical, statistical or scientific purposes shall be allowed only with the consent of the data subject or if the processing serves an exceptionally high public interest, cannot be performed otherwise and is legally authorised. Research, be it academic, government, corporate or market research, falls under the same rule. The proposed amendments will make difficult or render impossible research and statistics involving the linkage and analysis of the wealth of data from clinical, administrative, insurance and survey sources, which have contributed to improving health outcomes and health systems performance and governance; and may illegitimise efforts that have been made in some European countries to enable privacy-respectful data use for research and statistical purposes. If the amendments stand as written, the right to privacy is likely to override the right to health and healthcare in Europe. (shrink)

This book argues that God can be found within the edifice of the scientific understanding of physics, cosmology, biology and philosophy. It is a rewarding read that asks the Big Questions which humans have pondered since the dawn of the modern human mind, including: Why and how does the universe exist? From where do the laws of physics come? How did life and mind arise from inanimate matter on Earth? Science and religion have a common interest in the answers to (...) such questions, yet many scientists and believers have been at odds for centuries. The author and contributors present a program for moving beyond the vastly different perspectives of reality offered by science and religion. Historical proofs for the existence of God are considered in light of the possibility that the universe may be only one in an eternal multiverse that contains an infinite number of other universes. Readers will find a modification of St. Augustine’s Argument from Truth for the existence of the necessary, self-sufficient being commonly referred to as God. This book is suited to all with an interest in the crossing points of science and religion, providing much food for thought and reflection. If in the end, you cannot accede to philosophy’s proofs, or theism’s invitation to faith, perhaps you will nevertheless say ‘yes’ to the amazing universe in which we live. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have been remaking the landscape in political theory, and in this important book some of the most important feminist political theorists provide reconstructions of those concepts most central to the tradition of political philosophy. The goal is nothing less than the construction of a blueprint for a positive feminist theory.Many of these papers are completely new; others are extensions of important earlier work; two are reprints of classic papers. The result is a progress report on the continuing feminist (...) project to re-envision traditional political theory. As such, it constitutes essential reading not only for feminist thinkers but also for traditional philosophers and political theorists, who will need to come to terms with these contemporary critiques and re-readings. (shrink)

Recognition of the identity of familiar faces in conditions with poor visibility or over large changes in head angle, lighting and partial occlusion is far more accurate than recognition of unfamiliar faces in similar conditions. Here we used a visual search paradigm to test if one class of social cues transmitted by faces – direction of another’s attention as conveyed by gaze direction and head orientation – is perceived more rapidly in personally familiar faces than in unfamiliar faces. We found (...) a strong effect of familiarity on the detection of these social cues, suggesting that the times to process these signals in familiar faces are markedly faster than the corresponding processing times for unfamiliar faces. In the light of these new data, hypotheses on the organization of the visual system for processing faces are formulated and discussed. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.