Largely a response to Lee Basham’s essay “Malevolent Global Conspiracy.” After presenting an update on the status of conspiracy theories surrounding the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, I agree with Basham that falsification and paranoia are not effective ways to criticize conspiratorial thinking. However, I am not convinced with the case Basham presents against worries that conspiracy theories often falter by overestimating the ability of large, public institutions to be secretly and effectively controlled. His appeal to the historical (...) record can be read as suggesting that malevolent global action can be effectively carried out in full public view, obviating recourse to conspiracy. (shrink)

jild-i 1. Āzādī va marzʹhāyash -- jild-i 2. Istiqlāl (farhangī).

Recent preclinical studies have shown the feasibility of specific variants of nuclear transfer to prevent mitochondrial DNA disorders. Nuclear transfer could be a valuable reproductive option for carriers of mitochondrial mutations. A clinical application of nuclear transfer, however, would entail germ-line modification, more specifically a germ-line modification of the mitochondrial genome. One of the most prominent objections against germ-line modification is the fear that it would become possible to alter ‘essential characteristics’ of a future person, thereby possibly violating the child's (...) right to an open future. As only the nuclear DNA would contain the ingredients for individual characteristics, modification of the mtDNA is often considered less controversial than modification of the nuclear DNA. This paper discusses the tenability of this dichotomy. After having clarified the concept of germ-line modification, it argues that modification of the mtDNA is not substantively different from modification of the nuclear DNA in terms of its effects on the identity of the future person. Subsequently the paper assesses how this conclusion affects the moral evaluation of nuclear transfer to prevent mtDNA disorders. It concludes that the moral acceptability of germ-line modification does not depend on whether it alters the identity of the future child—all germ-line modifications do—but on whether it safeguards the child's right to an open future. If nuclear transfer to prevent mtDNA disorders becomes safe and effective, then dismissing it because it involves germ-line modification is unjustified. (shrink)

This paper explores the use of an ethics framework based on the Public Health Code of Ethics to guide rationing decisions during a pandemic flu crisis involving a shortage of ventilators. While the law provides public health officials with authority to act, public health officials, as community leaders and health department managers, must address complex questions about how they should use their legal authority, how they can ethically justify a particular action, how they should engage community stakeholders in decision making, (...) and how the process of public justification should take place. Recognising the need for a tool that could help public health officials manage ethical tensions in practice, such as allocation of scarce resources, the Public Health Leadership Society led efforts to develop a Public Health Code of Ethics. The 12 Principles in the Code were written to express the general norms implicit in the practice of public health professionals. The Code offers no hierarchical weighting of the different principles and anticipates that weights and specification of the principles would take place in the context of each community through a process of engagement between public health officials and community stakeholders about specific cases. We describe how public health officials can use the Code to guide deliberation in helping communities prepare to address the tragic choices when allocating scarce ventilators in an influenza pandemic. (shrink)

В книге продолжается обсуждение тем, представленных в труде "Психология нравственности", изданном в 2010 году. Авторы обсуждают пути решения проблем и преодоления переживаемого нашим обществом глубокого нравственного кризиса.

Although various aesthetic themes have preoccupied many major philosophers, from Plato to Goodman, the central questions of the philosophy of art have remained ill-defined. This book gives a concise and systematic account of the leading philosophical ideas about art and aesthetics from ancient times to the present day, and goes on to propose a new theory of aesthetic satisfaction and artistic abilities.

Издание содержит: теоретические основания субъектного подхода в психологии; основные направления психологического анализа; экспериментальные исследования психологии субъекта и др.

Discussion of the concept of evil in Indian philosophy.

The Johns Hopkins-Fogarty African Bioethics Training Program (FABTP) has offered a fully-funded, one-year, non-degree training opportunity in research ethics to health professionals, ethics committee members, scholars, journalists and scientists from countries across sub-Saharan Africa. In the first 9 years of operation, 28 trainees from 13 African countries have trained with FABTP. Any capacity building investment requires periodic critical evaluation of the impact that training dollars produce. In this paper we describe and evaluate FABTP and the efforts of its trainees.Our data (...) show that since 2001, the 28 former FABTP trainees have authored or co-authored 105 new bioethics-related publications; were awarded 33 bioethics-related grants; played key roles on 78 bioethics-related research studies; and participated in 198 bioethics workshops or conferences. Over the past nine years, trainees have collectively taught 48 separate courses related to bioethics and have given 170 presentations on various topics in the field. Many former trainees have pursued and completed doctoral degrees in bioethics; some have become editorial board members for bioethics journals. Female trainees were, on average, less experienced at matriculation and produced fewer post-training outputs than their male counterparts. More comprehensive studies are needed to determine the relationships between age, sex, previous experience and training program outputs. (shrink)