Acting for the good of the patient is the most fundamental and universally acknowledged principle of medical ethics. However, given the complexity of modern medicine as well as the moral fragmentation of contemporary society, determining the good is far from simple. In his philosophy of medicine, Edmund Pellegrino develops a conception of the good that is derived from the internal morality of medicine via the physician-patient relationship. It is through this healing relationship that rights, duties, and privileges are defined for (...) both physicians and patients. Moreover, this relationship determines the characteristics or virtues that are necessary to engage in the medical telos. This paper addresses the role of the moral virtues in clinical medicine and the physician-patient relationship. First, it provides a brief background of the Aristotelian foundations of virtue-ethics. Second, it delves into Pellegrino’s philosophy of medicine understood as a practice oriented towards a teleological goal. Third, it relates the telos of medicine to the notion of the medical community as a fundamentally moral community. Finally, it concludes with a section that creates a dialogue between virtue ethics and principlism. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary collection of essays highlights the relevance of Buddhist doctrine and practice to issues of globalization. From philosophical, religious, historical, and political perspectives, the authors show that Buddhism—arguably the world’s first transnational religion—is a rich resource for navigating todays interconnected world.

Sono certo sarebbe stato più prudente iniziare e concludere questa mia lectio prestando fede – e mettendo in pratica – quanto scrive Ludwig Wittgenstein nel 1932 in Pensieri diversi, quando dice: «In arte è difficile dire qualcosa che sia altrettanto buono del non dire niente». Ma tant’è: nelle cose del mondo, quando non si può negare una certa vanità, ci si inerpica spesso per sentieri difficili e impervi. M’incammino quindi, con qualche titubanza, nel tentativo di indicare il mio modo di (...) e... (shrink)

This study investigates the role of parental and peer relationships’ quality on homophobic victimization and possible consequences on mental health during adolescence. Participants were 394 adolescents, (41.6% male and 58.4 % female) aged 15-20 years (M = 16.55; SD =.85), attending the third and fourth classes of public high schools in Italy. Participants completed the Homophobic Bullying Scale to evaluate homophobic victimization toward gays and lesbians or assumed homosexuals, the Symptom Check-list-90 to evaluate mental health, and the Inventory of Parent (...) and Peer Attachment to investigate quality of peer and parental relationships (in term of communication, disaffection and trust). Results show how quality of peer relationships is not connected with victimization, as well as quality of parental relationships is linked with homophobic victimization, that is also connected with anxiety and somatization problems. Theoretical and educational implications were discussed. (shrink)

Ugo Spirito (1896–1979) was a philosopher who changed his mind, repeatedly and sometimes radically, about many of his major commitments. At different times he called himself a fascist and a communi...

In her reply to Baylis the author takes the opportunity to “clarify, and in some cases to correct, some facts”I am pleased to see Dr Baylis’s article relating to the Olivieri case at the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto. I thank her for the many facets of that case that she has articulated. Nonetheless, as the bioethicist most closely connected with the case at the clinical level I would like to take this opportunity to clarify, (...) and in some cases to correct, some facts.Dr Baylis entitles her section on the role of bioethics as “Stories of silence”. I differ from this view. Perhaps the stories are less stories of silence than stories to which others have not listened.I wish to make it quite clear that I have always supported Dr Olivieri and her colleagues in their actions with respect to the research that is at the centre of this case. I have been public in my support and I continue to be so.My departure from the Hospital for Sick Children was in no way caused by the Olivieri case. I was offered a challenging position at another Ontario …. (shrink)

Adrian Viens, Guest Editor of this Olivieri symposium, and Julian Savulescu, the Editor of JME, set the scene for the symposium."In failing...[her] when she needed them most, it is now clear that some members of the University’s Faculty of Medicine heard her muffled cries of academic freedom from the back room, yet their response was to serve another round of drinks and turn the music up louder. With the bombshell revelations in the...affair, the plug may have been pulled on (...) this business sponsored party, and hopefully a sober re-examination of the university’s neglected role and responsibility toward independent inquiry and academic freedom can begin.1" "These guys don’t get one thing—we’re not going away. This isn’t a personal vendetta. This is something I want patients to be protected from when I’m dead, fifty years from now.2" "[The Olivieri affair is] not a mystery novel, but instead the latest skulduggery at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.1" "The legal assaults which you have endured in your battle against the drug company, and in your battle against the medical establishment appear to have been fought with the type of uncommon bravery that is rarely seen. It is for this reason that our trustees have unanimously chosen to recognise you for this most prestigious award.3" "[The Olivieri affair resulted from] a fundamental misreading of the issue as a mere contractual and scientific dispute...[it is] Canada’s worst academic and research scandal in decades...[Since 1998, Olivieri has been] demoted, then restored, then harassed. She has been smeared with allegations attacking her competence, integrity, sanity and personality....4"The Olivieri affair is one of the most important events to occur in research ethics. From its dominance in the Canadian and international news media, to changes in the governance of public health, academic medicine, …. (shrink)

The Olivieri symposium offers an opportunity to reflect on the Canadian regulatory climate and public governance. Baylis’s paper raises a concern about the Canadian bio-ethics community’s collective silence and stewardship regarding the Olivieri case.1 A similar collective silence greeted the recent McDonald report2 on research governance in Canada. The McDonald report assessed the integrity and effectiveness of research governance arrangements and concluded that serious reform was required.Curiously, although the McDonald report was recently referred to in a Canadian Medical (...) Association Journal editorial as an example of Canadian leadership,3 it has never received an editorial commentary in the CMAJ. Nor has any article in the CMAJ ever addressed the McDonald report. Yet the CMAJ created an ethics editorship and a senior Canadian bioethicist was chosen for the position in light of the growing importance of ethics in public policy.4 A chapter of the McDonald report also focused on the mandate of the Canadian Medical …. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:194 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY and properly, in a consideration of Bradley, although it is a little like citing Bradley in his own behalf. In all, Mr. Saxena's book is carefully researched and judicious, selecting Bradley's chief metaphysical themes for explication and defence. As one slight criticism: Bradley's doctrine of truth is treated as coherence, which it indeed was on the level of reality; but he dealt with truth quite (...) differently in immediate experience and on the level of appearance (elaborating those levels in his Essays on Truth and Reality), and hia metaphysics would appear richer if those theories of truth were discussed and applied to their appropriate realms. It~J~ Ross Scripps College Filosofia e SLoria nel Pensiero Crociano. By Adriano Bausola. (Milano: SocietA editrici Vitae Pensiero, 1965. Pp. 280. Paper. L. 4~500.) Etica e Politica nel Pensiero dl Benedetto Croce. (Milano: SocietA editrici Vitae Pensiero, 1966. Pp. 265. Paper. L 3,500.) Theee two volumes examine respectively Croce's doctrines of the theoretic and of the practical spheres of experience and thus treat of many of the main tenets of Croce's entire philosophy. For within these spheres, Adriano Bausola critically discusses important views which occur in the areas of logic, gnoseology, theory of history, as well as in ethics, economic and political doctrine. The scope of Bausola's treatment is in accord with Croce's own approach to philosophy, since strictly speaking, neither the theoretic nor the practical sphere can be correctly understood in abstraction from the other. Moreover, in his treatment of Croce's view, Bausola frequently discusses the criticisms of other contemporary Italian Crocean critics,as for example, of Gentile, Guido Calogero and Ugo Spirito, and this method of exposition has the advantages of making Croce's own position clear and of giving us some idea of very recent Italian philosophy. According to Bausola, the essential character of Croce's philosophy is shown in his rejection of every view which admits of transcendent experience or of abstract ideas. Thus, Filosofia e Storia critically traces this rejection as it occurs throughout the theoretic sphere of experience and attempts to make explicit the "positive" Crocean doctrine which accompanies his denial of the transcendent and of the abstract. Here Bausola concludes that despite Croce's claim to the contrary, there is more than one "logical" reason for Croce's refutation of the transcendent. Among these reasons are Croce's view of the identity of subject and object, his refutation of every mediate cognitive process, of every inference, and of every experience which issupposed to be neither theoretic nor practical. Chapter i ol Filosofia c Storia discusses the foundation of Croce's philosophy which Bausola maintains should be described as "spiritualism" (spiritualismo) rather than as "idealism" (idealismo), since for Croce, reality is fundamentally "spirit" and not "pure thought." Chapters 11 and 111 treat specifically of epistemic problems, such as, the nature of philosophic or pure concepts and the judgments to which they give rise, the nature of scientific or pseudoconcepts and the relations between philosophy and science. Chapters IV and v treat of Croce's view of the nature of "the real" and of the relations between the categories---their autonomy and their unity. Here Bausola attempts to show that Croce's transcendental deduction of the four forms of experience (aesthetic, logical, economic and ethical) has failed and that his demonstration shows merely that the distinction between these forms are empirical. Chapter IV then discusses Croce's view of philosophy as history. The next three chapters present a critical analysis of Croce's doctrine of error which forms one of his most interesting contributions to philosophy. Here Bausola's task is not to consist of an explication of the central Crocean view on error, but rather of an examination of its "concrete" development and its validity. At the outset of his discussion, Bausola asks: Does error ever result from non-practical as well as from practical acts? BOOK REVIEWS 195 Does error invariably result from conscious volition? And Bausola tries to show contrary to Croce% view that there are instances of error which do not involve conscious volition, but that Croce% denial of such instances follows... (shrink)

This article attempts to add a corrective to the exclusive focus of the academic historiography of republicanism on the mainstream of the tradition in Italy and north-western Europe by bringing a perspective from the European south-east on the transmission and evolution of republican ideas. An illustration of this broader perspective on the history of republicanism is provided by the treatise Hellenic Nomarchy anonymously published in Italy in 1806. The article examines the origins of Modern Greek republicanism, the meaning of ‘nomarchy’ (...) and the context and sources of the work. It stresses its social and political radicalism and points to its affinities with the ideas of 18th-century Tuscan republicanism and with the work of Vittorio Alfieri and Ugo Foscolo. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:194 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY and properly, in a consideration of Bradley, although it is a little like citing Bradley in his own behalf. In all, Mr. Saxena's book is carefully researched and judicious, selecting Bradley's chief metaphysical themes for explication and defence. As one slight criticism: Bradley's doctrine of truth is treated as coherence, which it indeed was on the level of reality; but he dealt with truth quite (...) differently in immediate experience and on the level of appearance (elaborating those levels in his Essays on Truth and Reality), and hia metaphysics would appear richer if those theories of truth were discussed and applied to their appropriate realms. It~J~ Ross Scripps College Filosofia e SLoria nel Pensiero Crociano. By Adriano Bausola. (Milano: SocietA editrici Vitae Pensiero, 1965. Pp. 280. Paper. L. 4~500.) Etica e Politica nel Pensiero dl Benedetto Croce. (Milano: SocietA editrici Vitae Pensiero, 1966. Pp. 265. Paper. L 3,500.) Theee two volumes examine respectively Croce's doctrines of the theoretic and of the practical spheres of experience and thus treat of many of the main tenets of Croce's entire philosophy. For within these spheres, Adriano Bausola critically discusses important views which occur in the areas of logic, gnoseology, theory of history, as well as in ethics, economic and political doctrine. The scope of Bausola's treatment is in accord with Croce's own approach to philosophy, since strictly speaking, neither the theoretic nor the practical sphere can be correctly understood in abstraction from the other. Moreover, in his treatment of Croce's view, Bausola frequently discusses the criticisms of other contemporary Italian Crocean critics,as for example, of Gentile, Guido Calogero and Ugo Spirito, and this method of exposition has the advantages of making Croce's own position clear and of giving us some idea of very recent Italian philosophy. According to Bausola, the essential character of Croce's philosophy is shown in his rejection of every view which admits of transcendent experience or of abstract ideas. Thus, Filosofia e Storia critically traces this rejection as it occurs throughout the theoretic sphere of experience and attempts to make explicit the "positive" Crocean doctrine which accompanies his denial of the transcendent and of the abstract. Here Bausola concludes that despite Croce's claim to the contrary, there is more than one "logical" reason for Croce's refutation of the transcendent. Among these reasons are Croce's view of the identity of subject and object, his refutation of every mediate cognitive process, of every inference, and of every experience which issupposed to be neither theoretic nor practical. Chapter i ol Filosofia c Storia discusses the foundation of Croce's philosophy which Bausola maintains should be described as "spiritualism" (spiritualismo) rather than as "idealism" (idealismo), since for Croce, reality is fundamentally "spirit" and not "pure thought." Chapters 11 and 111 treat specifically of epistemic problems, such as, the nature of philosophic or pure concepts and the judgments to which they give rise, the nature of scientific or pseudoconcepts and the relations between philosophy and science. Chapters IV and v treat of Croce's view of the nature of "the real" and of the relations between the categories---their autonomy and their unity. Here Bausola attempts to show that Croce's transcendental deduction of the four forms of experience (aesthetic, logical, economic and ethical) has failed and that his demonstration shows merely that the distinction between these forms are empirical. Chapter IV then discusses Croce's view of philosophy as history. The next three chapters present a critical analysis of Croce's doctrine of error which forms one of his most interesting contributions to philosophy. Here Bausola's task is not to consist of an explication of the central Crocean view on error, but rather of an examination of its "concrete" development and its validity. At the outset of his discussion, Bausola asks: Does error ever result from non-practical as well as from practical acts? BOOK REVIEWS 195 Does error invariably result from conscious volition? And Bausola tries to show contrary to Croce% view that there are instances of error which do not involve conscious volition, but that Croce% denial of such instances follows... (shrink)

This paper deals with an important strand of nihilistic arguments to be found in the works of two philosophers who have so far never been studied comparatively: the sophist Gorgias and the Buddhist monk Nāgārjuna. After having reconstructed Gorgias' moves in the first section of On What is Not (Sections 1-4), the paper shows how the nihilist arguments Gorgias uses mostly feature, under a new light, in the philosophy of emptiness developed by Nāgārjuna (Sections 5-8). The paper ends with a (...) hermeneutical suggestion: that is, to replace traditional ‘sceptical’ interpretations of Gorgias and Nāgārjuna with an alternative one, which takes them as possibly committed to nihilism. (shrink)

In this contribution, I explore the treatment that Plato devotes to Protagoras’ relativism in the first section of the Theaetetus (151 E 1–186 E 12) where, among other things, the definition that knowledge is perception is put under scrutiny. What I aim to do is to understand the subtlety of Plato’s argument about Protagorean relativism and, at the same time, to assess its philosophical significance by revealing the inextric¬ability of ontological and epistemological aspects on which it is built (for this (...) latter aspect, I refer to contemporary discussions of relativism, mainly to Margolis’ robust relativism). I then turn to Aristotle’s treatment of Protagoras’ relativism in Metaphysics Γ, sections 5 and 6, in order to show that Plato and Aristotle surprisingly share the same view as regards the philosophical content of Protagoras’ relativism (in doing so, I take position against the standard opinion among scholars that Plato and Aristotle understand Protagoras’ relativism in different, even incompatible, ways). What I ultimately aim to demonstrate is that Protagoras’ relativism, as understood by both Plato and Aristotle, is a coherent, even attractive, philosophical position. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a reconstruction of the account of meaning and language the Cyrenaics appear to have defended on the basis of a famous passage of Sextus, as well as showing the philosophical parentage of that account.

The contribution describes the legal phenomenon as a playing field characterized by a progressive regression of the law, understood as a sovereign will from top to bottom, both in the vision of formalist legal positivisms in continental Europe and in realist terms, in the United States. Soft law represents the main strategy to subordinate the law to the interests of the economy, elasticizing environmental law, making it favorable to the market, reducing ecology to the simplistic metric of CO2 emissions. The (...) consequence is a retreat of the statist vertical normativity of law which is not replaced by a de facto power granted to those who control the technology, built by design to close spaces for pluralism and democratic action, in the interest of surveillance and concentrated power in private and government oligopolies. The author concludes by advocating the urgency for genuinely innovative categories, particularly in the legal education, such as the commons, capable of including sustainability into a “new ecological jurisprudence committed to inclusion and solidarity rather than exclusion and struggle”. (shrink)

This paper is a personal account of the events associated with the author’s work at the University of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children on a drug, deferiprone, for the treatment of thalassaemia. Trials of the drug were sponsored by the Canadian Medical Research Council and a drug company which would have been able, had the trials been successful, to seek regulatory approval to market the drug. When evidence emerged that deferiprone might be inadequately effective in a substantial proportion of patients, (...) the drug company issued legal threats when the author proposed informing her patients and the scientific community. Until protests were made by international authorities in her field of research, the hospital and university did not adequately support the author’s academic freedom and responsibilities as a medical practitioner. It is argued that underlying cause of this, and of other similar cases, is the political philosophy which is driving the commercialisation of universities and bringing about the deregulation of drug approval procedures. Together these changes constitute a serious threat to the public good. (shrink)

The Cyrenaic school of philosophy (named after its founder Aristippus’ native city of Cyrene in North Africa) flourished in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Ugo Zilioli’s book provides the first book-length introduction to the school in English. The book begins by introducing the main figures of the Cyrenaic school beginning with Aristippus and by setting them into their historical context. Once the reader is familiar with those figures and with the genealogy of the school, the book offers an overview (...) of ancient and modern interpretations of the Cyrenaics, to provide readers with alternative accounts of the doctrines they endorsed and of the role they played in the context of ancient thought. Finally, the book offers a reconstruction of Cyrenaic philosophy and shows how the ethical side of their speculation connected with the epistemology and ontology they endorsed and that, as a result, the Cyrenaics were able to offer a quite sophisticated philosophy. Indeed, Zilioli demonstrates that they represented, in ancient philosophy, an important and original metaphysical position and alternative to the kind of realism endorsed by Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

The nature of matter and the idea of indivisible parts has fascinated philosophers, historians, scientists and physicists from antiquity to the present day. This collection covers the richness of its history, starting with how the Ancient Greeks came to assume the existence of atoms and concluding with contemporary metaphysical debates about structure, time and reality. Focusing on important moments in the history of human thought when the debate about atomism was particularly flourishing and transformative for the scientific and philosophical spirit (...) of the time, this collection covers: - The discovery of atomism in ancient philosophy - Ancient non-Western, Arabic and late Medieval thought - The Renaissance, when along with the re-discovery of ancient thought, atomism became once again an important doctrine to be fully debated - Logical atomism in early analytic philosophy, with Russell and Wittgenstein - Atomism in Liberalism and Marxism - Atomism and the philosophy of time - Atomism in contemporary metaphysics - Atomism and the sciences Featuring 28 chapters by leading and younger scholars, this valuable collection reveals the development of one of philosophy's central doctrines across 2,500 years and within a broad range of philosophical traditions. (shrink)

Different disciplines have analyzed binary choices to model collective behavior in human systems. Several situations in which social dilemma arise can be modeled as N-person prisoner’s dilemma games including homeland security, public goods, international political economy among others. The purpose of this study is to develop an analytical solution to the N-person prisoner’s dilemma game when boundedly rational agents interact in a population. Previous studies in the literature consider the case in which cooperators and defectors have the same learning factors. (...) We obtain an analytical equation to find equilibria in the N-person prisoner’s dilemma game in the general case when agents have different learning factors. We also introduce a more realistic approach where probability values are bounded between zero and one and therefore eliminates the possibility of infeasible probability values. Since no analytic solution can be derived in this case, agent based simulation is used to analyze the asymptotic behavior of the resulted dynamical system. (shrink)

Protagoras was an important Greek thinker of the fifth century BC, the most famous of the so called Sophists, though most of what we know of him and his thought comes to us mainly through the dialogues of his strenuous opponent Plato. In this book, Ugo Zilioli offers a sustained and philosophically sophisticated examination of what is, in philosophical terms, the most interesting feature of Protagoras' thought for modern readers: his role as the first Western thinker to argue for relativism. (...) Zilioli relates Protagoras' relativism with modern forms of relativism, in particular the 'robust relativism' of Joseph Margolis, gives an integrated account both of the perceptual relativism examined in Plato's Theaetetus and the ethical or social relativism presented in the first part of Plato's Protagoras and offers an integrated and positive analysis of Protagoras' thought, rather than focusing on ancient criticisms and responses to his thought. This is a deeply scholarly work which brings much argument to bear to the claim that Protagoras was and remains Plato's subtlest philosophical enemy. (shrink)

No single moral theory can instruct us as to whether and to what extent we are confronted with legal loopholes, e.g. whether or not new legal rules should be added to the system in the criminal law field. This question on the primary rules of the law appears crucial for today’s debate on roboethics and still, goes beyond the expertise of robo-ethicists. On the other hand, attention should be drawn to the secondary rules of the law: The unpredictability of robotic (...) behaviour and the lack of data on the probability of events, their consequences and costs, make hard to determine the levels of risk and hence, the amount of insurance premiums and other mechanisms on which new forms of accountability for the behaviour of robots may hinge. By following Japanese thinking, the aim is to show why legally de-regulated, or special, zones for robotics, i.e. the secondary rules of the system, pave the way to understand what kind of primary rules we may want for our robots. (shrink)

The following remarks try to trace a scenario of twentieth-century philosophy, which in my opinion shows a new interest in the issue of time. Many have underscored that nineteenth-century philosophy replaces the paradigm of Nature with that of History as an historical a priori in Foucault’s sense, that is, as the horizon within which the problems are to be located and solved. The issue of identifying the dominant nineteenth-century paradigm—further complicated by thedeclining resort to the great narratives of this “short (...) century”—is still open, so I do not believe it improper to point out that many twentiethcentury philosophers suddenly reconsidered the issue of time as a way of defining the nineteenth-century paradigm of time in a new manner. (shrink)

The following remarks try to trace a scenario of twentieth-century philosophy, which in my opinion shows a new interest in the issue of time. Many have underscored that nineteenth-century philosophy replaces the paradigm of Nature with that of History as an historical a priori in Foucault’s sense, that is, as the horizon within which the problems are to be located and solved. The issue of identifying the dominant nineteenth-century paradigm—further complicated by thedeclining resort to the great narratives of this “short (...) century”—is still open, so I do not believe it improper to point out that many twentiethcentury philosophers suddenly reconsidered the issue of time as a way of defining the nineteenth-century paradigm of time in a new manner. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe present study examined the effects of emotions on eye movements, head motion, and iPad motion during reading. Thirty-one participants read neutral, emotionally negative texts and emotio...

In this paper we propose an extension of Defeasible Logic to represent and compute different concepts of defeasible permission. In particular, we discuss some types of explicit permissive norms that work as exceptions to opposite obligations or encode permissive rights. Moreover, we show how strong permissions can be represented both with, and without introducing a new consequence relation for inferring conclusions from explicit permissive norms. Finally, we illustrate how a preference operator applicable to contrary-to-duty obligations can be combined with a (...) new operator representing ordered sequences of strong permissions. The logical system is studied from a computational standpoint and is shown to have linear computational complexity. (shrink)