Honor walks are ceremonies that purportedly honor organ donors as they make their final journey from the ICU to the OR. In this paper, we draw on Ronald Grimes’ work in ritual studies to examine honor walks as ceremonial rituals that display medico-technological power in a symbolic social drama (Grimes, 1982). We argue that while honor walks claim to honor organ donors, ceremonies cannot primarily honor donors, but can only honor donation itself. Honor walks promote the quasi-religious idea of donation (...) as a “good death,” and mask the ambiguity and discomfort inherent in organ donation to promote greater acceptance by the medical community. While some goods may be achieved through honor walks, particularly for donor families, it is still important to examine the negative work done by this practice. (shrink)

Recently published consensus recommendations on pediatric decision-making by Salter and colleagues (2023) did not address neonatal decision-making, due to the unique complexities of neonatal care. This essay explores three areas that impact neonatal decision-making: legal and policy considerations, rapid technological advancement, and the unique emotional burdens faced by parents and clinicians during the medical care of neonates. The authors evaluate the six consensus recommendations related to these considerations and conclude that the consensus recommendations apply to neonates.

In recent years, increasingly advanced artificial intelligence (AI), and in particular machine learning, has shown great promise as a tool in various healthcare contexts. Yet as machine learning in medicine has become more useful and more widely adopted, concerns have arisen about the “black-box” nature of some of these AI models, or the inability to understand—and explain—the inner workings of the technology. Some critics argue that AI algorithms must be explainable to be responsibly used in the clinical encounter, while supporters (...) of AI dismiss the importance of explainability and instead highlight the many benefits the application of this technology could have for medicine. However, this dichotomy fails to consider the particular ways in which machine learning technologies mediate relations in the clinical encounter, and in doing so, makes explainability more of a problem than it actually is. We argue that postphenomenology is a highly useful theoretical lens through which to examine black-box AI, because it helps us better understand the particular mediating effects this type of technology brings to clinical encounters and moves beyond the explainability stalemate. Using a postphenomenological approach, we argue that explainability is more of a concern for physicians than it is for patients, and that a lack of explainability does not introduce a novel concern to the physician–patient encounter. Explainability is just one feature of technological mediation and need not be the central concern on which the use of black-box AI hinges. (shrink)

Objectives To characterize the prevalence and content of pediatric triage policies.Methods We surveyed and solicited policies from U.S. hospitals with pediatric intensive care units. Policies were analyzed using qualitative methods and coded by 2 investigators.Results Thirty-four of 120 institutions (28%) responded. Twenty-five (74%) were freestanding children’s hospitals and 9 (26%) were hospitals within a hospital. Nine (26%) had approved policies, 9 (26%) had draft policies, 5 (14%) were developing policies, and 7 (20%) did not have policies. Nineteen (68%) institutions shared (...) their approved or draft policy. Eight (42%) of those policies included neonates. The polices identified 0 to 5 (median 2) factors to prioritize patients. The most common factors were short- (17, 90%) and long- (14, 74%) term predicted mortality. Pediatric scoring systems included Pediatric Logistic Organ Dysfunction-2 (12, 63%) and Score for Neonatal Acute Physiology and Perinatal Extensions-II (4, 21%). Thirteen (68%) policies described a formal algorithm. The most common tiebreakers were random/lottery (10, 71%) and life cycles (9, 64%). The majority (15, 79%) of policies specified the roles of triage team members and 13 (68%) precluded those participating in patient care from making triage decisions.Conclusions While many institutions still do not have pediatric triage policies, there appears to be a trend among those with policies to utilize a formal algorithm that focuses on short- and long-term predicted mortality and that incorporates age-appropriate scoring systems. Additional work is needed to expand access to pediatric-specific policies, to validate scoring systems, and to address health disparities. (shrink)

Medical trainees should learn from the actions of Nazi physicians to inform a more just contemporary practice by examining the subtle assumptions, or moral orientations, that led to such heinous actions. One important moral orientation that still informs contemporary medical practice is the moral orientation of elimination in response to suffering patients. We propose that the moral orientation of presence, described by theologian Stanley Hauerwas, provides a more fitting response to suffering patients, in spite of the significant barriers to enacting (...) such a moral orientation for contemporary trainees. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has inquired into the socio-historical, discursive genesis of trauma. Trauma and the Ontology of the Modern Subject, however, seeks what has not been actualized in trauma studies - that is, how the necessity and unassailable intensity of trauma is fastened to its historical emergence. We must ask not only what trauma means for the individual person's biography, but also what it means to be the historical subject of trauma. In other words, how does being human in this current (...) period of history implicate one's lived possibilities that are threatened, and perhaps framed, through trauma? Foucauldian sensibilities inform a critical and structural analysis that is hermeneutically grounded. Drawing on the history of ideas and on Lacan's work in particular, John L. Roberts argues that what we mean by trauma has developed over time, and that it is intimately tied with an ontology of the subject; that is to say, what it is to be, and means to be human. He argues that modern subjectivity - as articulated by Heidegger, Levinas, and Lacan - is structurally traumatic, founded in its finitude as self-withdrawal in time, its temporal self-absence becoming the very conditions for agency, truth and knowledge. The book also argues that this fractured temporal horizon - as an effect of an interrupting Otherness or alterity - is obscured through the discourses and technologies of the psy-disciplines (psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy). Consideration is given to social, political, and economic consequences of this concealment. Trauma and the Ontology of the Modern Subject will be of enduring interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists as well as scholars of philosophy and cultural studies. (shrink)

The consensus recommendations by Salter and colleagues (2023) regarding pediatric decision-making intentionally omitted adolescents due to the additional complexity their evolving autonomy presented. Using two case studies, one focused on truth-telling and disclosure and one focused on treatment refusal, this article examines medical decision-making with and for adolescents in the context of the six consensus recommendations. It concludes that the consensus recommendations could reasonably apply to older children.

Loneliness in medicine is a serious problem not just for patients, for whom illness is intrinsically isolating, but also for physicians in the contemporary condition of medicine. We explore this problem by investigating the ideal physician-patient relationship, whose analogy with friendship has held enduring normative appeal. Drawing from Talbot Brewer and Nir Ben-Moshe, we argue that this appeal lies in a dynamic form of companionship incompatible with static models of friendship-like physician-patient relationships: a mutual refinement of embodied virtue that draws (...) both persons together. The ideal physician-patient relationship has a dialectical character that fosters each member's improvement of phenomenologically recognizing and embodying moral virtues. A key component of this dynamic is a commitment to the common goal of the patient's health, realized through joint interactivities and conversations over time. The physician's presence to the patient's suffering—understood best as an alienating phenomenological condition for the patient—orients and discloses possibilities for virtuous caregiving by structuring the meanings of the goals, conversations, and joint narrative constitutive of their relationship. Presence to suffering, paradoxically, is perhaps an important prerequisite for this dynamic partnership. These activities dialectically build an interpretive horizon of understanding through which moral goods and character refinement—in and for the other—may become revealed for both persons in their shared being-in-the-world. This analysis of suffering, mood, and revealing of (possible) moral goods has implications for addressing the modern problem of loneliness for patients and physicians, who are increasingly inhibited from building flourishing relationships with each other. (shrink)

Three ethical conflicts in particular are paradigmatic of what we define as “clerkship ethics.” First, a distinction that differentiates the clerkship student from the practicing physician involves the student’s principal role as a learner. The clerkship student must skillfully balance her commitment to her own education against her commitment to patient care in a fashion that may compromise patient care. While the practicing physician can often resolve the tension between these two goods when they come into conflict, the clerkship student (...) is left with a more ambiguous set of choices. Second, evaluative scrutiny during clinical clerkships often forces medical students to balance doing what is morally fitting against the perceived expectations of the medical teams in which they work. Third and finally, a deeply entrenched culture of medical hierarchy presents a particular challenge to innovation and improvement in ethics education during the clerkship years. Students regard faculty as exemplars, but are not provided with the tools to assess when technical medical competence is not matched by moral competence; moreover, these faculty are unlikely to have experienced the ethics education in which students are asked to demonstrate mastery. (shrink)

Background: There are numerous benefits to ethics consultation services, but little is known about the reasons different professionals may or may not request an ethics consultation. Inter-professional differences in the perceived utility of ethics consultation have not previously been studied.Methods: To understand profession-specific perceived benefits of ethics consultation, we surveyed all employees at an urban tertiary children’s hospital about their use of ethics committee services (n = 842).Results: Our findings suggest that nurses and physicians find ethics consultations useful for different (...) reasons; physicians were more likely to report normative benefits, while nurses were more likely to report communicative and relational benefits.Conclusions: These findings support an open model of ethics consultation and may also help ethics committees to better understand consultation requests and remain attuned to the needs of various professional groups. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE GERMAN MARTINEZ Fordham University Bronx, New York VIEWED FROM the institutional, interpersonal, or religious standpoint, marriage is not a distinctively Christian phenomenon, but it is a human partnership with inherently religious symbolism. Consider the complexity of its dimensions : it is a personal bond that is consummated in a sexual relationship; yet its full human reality contains different levels of meaning which point (...) to a transcendent mystery; it is secular and social and at the same time spiritual and personal. Philosophical anthropology and the phenomenology of religion explore these dimensions and stress the complexity of marriage. An entire range of questions stem from the nature and mystery of the conjugal bond as well as from the multiplicity of forms in which this human partnership has been realized in different historical periods and cultures. Precisely because marriage actually takes place in a concrete historico-cultural context, theological reflection must recognize the complexity of this human experience, and this calls for interdisciplinary study. Theological anthropology sees a profound meaning in the created reality of marriage, for it recognizes therein the essential components of a community of love open toward God. An understanding of human values reveals how the experience of marriage touches the roots of people's lives; an understanding of redemption reveals how marriage belongs to both the order of creation and the order of redemption. An anthropological approach is essential. " In good theology one can no longer adopt the simplistic distinction between ' natural mar451 452 GERMAN MARTINEZ riage' and 'sacramental marriage....'" 1 Marriage is not only a meaningful sign of an anthropological reality but also the expression of the human response toward transcendence. Furthermore, the lived experience of marriage in modern society makes us more and more conscious of human existential needs, and theology has to interpret and respond to them in correlation with the content of faith. Against the background of the human sciences and our awareness of the present historical reality, study of this complex experience that is marriage calls for constructive reflection on its anthropological roots. That is where the sacramental mystery is anchored. The crisis in the theological understanding of marriage stems primarily from a crisis of culture, and new anthropological perspectives can establish the possibility of a more personal theology. In fact, the underestimation of its human values or, more precisely, the lack of a personalist anthropology and of an adequate theological consideration of sexuality has been at the root of the weakness of the traditional approach to marriage.z As Theodore Mackin puts it, " The marriage sacrament, like all sacraments, has as its matrix a complex human experience. And there is no understanding of the sacrament unless we first understand its 1 W. Ernst, "Marriage as Institution and the Contemporary Challenge to It," in Contemporary Perspectives on Christian Marriage, ed. R. Malone and J. R. Connery (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1984), p. 69. The following studies are especially valuable in terms of an anthropological approach to Christian marriage: J. Ratzinger, "Zur Theologie der Ehe,'' in Theologie der Ehe, ed. H. Greven (Regensburg 1972), pp. 81-115; H. Doms, "Zweigeschlechtlichkeit und Ehe,'' in Mysterium Salutis, ed. J. Feiner and M. Lohrer, vol. 2, pp. 707-750; T. Mackin, "How to Understand the Sacrament of Marriage,'' in -Commitment to Partnership; Explorations of the Theology of Marriage, ed. W. P. Roberts (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 34-60. z Two major Catholic documents of the magisterium insist on the need for further theological reflection in terms of the personalistic reason behind the theology of marriage: John Paul II, The Apostolic Exhortation on the Family (see Origins, 2 (1981): 438-467); Gaudium et Spes, 47-52 (ed. W. M. Abbot, pp. 249-259). " The beginning, the subject and the goal of social institutions is and must be the human person, which for its part and by its very nature stands completely in need of social life" (Gaudium et Spes, 25; Abbott ed., p. 224). VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 453 matrix-experience." 3 In theological terms, the covenant v1s1on governs the partnership reality, but that divine call without this created reality would be meaningless. While the present essay does not include all the... (shrink)

Introduction, by J.R. Strayer.--History, popular and unpopular, by Jacques Barzun.--The science of history, by Hajo Holborn.--The economic impact on history, by Herbert Heaton.--Biography and history, by Dumas Malone.--Theology of history, by George La Piana.

Since the publication of Edmund Gettier's challenge to the traditional epistemological doctrine of knowledge as justified true belief, Roberts and Wood claim that epistemologists lapsed into despondency and are currently open to novel approaches. One such approach is virtue epistemology, which can be divided into virtues as proper functions or epistemic character traits. The authors propose a notion of regulative epistemology, as opposed to a strict analytic epistemology, based on intellectual virtues that function not as rules or even as skills (...) but as habits of the heart. To that end, they divide the task of clarifying and expounding their notion in the book's two parts.In the first part, Roberts and Wood examine various components that constitute their notion of regulative epistemology. The first are the epistemic goods or goals that drive the epistemic process. What is needed, claim Roberts and Wood, is an enriched notion of these goods rather than the restricted notion of justified true belief. Epistemic agents are more than calculating devices in that …. (shrink)

l. There is an antinomy in Hare's thought between Ought-Implies-Can and No-Indicatives-from-Imperatives. It cannot be resolved by drawing a distinction between implication and entailment. 2. Luther resolved this antinomy in the l6th century, but to understand his solution, we need to understand his problem. He thought the necessity of Divine foreknowledge removed contingency from human acts, thus making it impossible for sinners to do otherwise than sin. 3. Erasmus objected (on behalf of Free Will) that this violates Ought-Implies-Can which he (...) supported with Hare-style ordinary language arguments. 4. Luther a) pointed out the antinomy and b) resolved it by undermining the prescriptivist arguments for Ought-Implies-Can. 5. We can reinforce Luther's argument with an example due to David Lewis. 6. Whatever its merits as a moral principle, Ought-Implies-Can is not a logical truth and should not be included in deontic logics. Most deontic logics, and maybe the discipline itself, should therefore be abandoned. 7. Could it be that Ought-Conversationally-Implies-Can? Yes - in some contexts. But a) even if these contexts are central to the evolution of Ought, the implication is not built into the semantics of the word; b) nor is the parallel implication built into the semantics of orders; and c) in some cases Ought conversationally implies Can, only because Ought-Implies-Can is a background moral belief. d) Points a) and b) suggest a criticism of prescriptivism - that Oughts do not entail imperatives but that the relation is one of conversational implicature. 8. If Ought-Implies-Can is treated as a moral principle, Erasmus' argument for Free Will can be revived (given his Christian assumptions). But it does not 'prove' Pelagianism as Luther supposed. A semi-Pelagian alternative is available. (shrink)

Local food systems can have economic and social benefits by providing income for producers and improving community connections. Ongoing global climate change and the acute COVID-19 pandemic crisis have shown the importance of building equity and resilience in local food systems. We interviewed ten stakeholders from organizations and institutions in a U.S. midwestern city exploring views on past, current, and future conditions to address the following two objectives: 1) Assess how local food system equity and resilience were impacted by the (...) COVID-19 pandemic, and 2) Examine how policy and behavior changes could support greater equity and resilience within urban local food systems. We used the Community Capitals Framework to organize interviewees’ responses for qualitative analyses of equity and resilience. Four types of community capital were emphasized by stakeholders: cultural and social, natural, and political capital. Participants stated that the local food system in this city is small; more weaknesses in food access, land access, and governance were described than were strengths in both pre- and post-pandemic conditions. Stakeholder responses also reflected lack of equity and resilience in the local food system, which was most pronounced for cultural and social, natural and political capitals. However, local producers’ resilience during the pandemic, which we categorized as human capital, was a notable strength. An improved future food system could incorporate changes in infrastructure (e.g., food processing), markets (e.g., values-based markets) and cultural values (e.g., valuing local food through connections between local producers and consumers). These insights could inform policy and enhance community initiatives and behavior changes to build more equitable and resilient local food systems in urban areas throughout the U.S. Midwest. (shrink)

Festschrift honoring Kalyāṇasundaraśāstrī; comprises articles on Advaita in Hindu philosophy.

R. E. Heinaman; XI*—Communion of Forms, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 83, Issue 1, 1 June 1983, Pages 175–190, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristot.

EDITED BY SLAVENKO ŠLJUKIĆBOOK SYMPOSIUM ON KENNETH R. WESTPHAL’S HOW HUME AND KANT RECONSTRUCT NATURAL LAW.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Evolution of Pragmatism in India: Ambedkar, Dewey, and the Rhetoric of Reconstruction by Scott R. StroudAlbert R. SpencerBy Scott R. StroudThe Evolution of Pragmatism in India: Ambedkar, Dewey, and the Rhetoric of Reconstruction Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2023. 302 pp., incl. indexMore scholarly attention needs to be paid to the mutual influences between Asian and American thought, especially with regards to the development, (...) legacy, and future of pragmatism. Fortunately, there have been several notable attempts. Throughout his works, Richard Shusterman frequently incorporates the perspectives of various East Asian philosophies into his articulation of somaesthetics. Multiple scholars have explored John Dewey’s lectures in China and their political and educational impact, such as Jessica Ching-Sze Wang’s John Dewey in China or The Democracy of the Dead by Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall. Still others have highlighted the influence of Indian thought on pragmatism’s forerunners, such as American Philosophy Before Pragmatism (Goodman 2015), American Pragmatism: An Introduction (Spencer 2020), and The Ethics of Oneness (Engles 2021). Perhaps the most interesting inquiries into this influence can be found in a special volume of The Journal of Aesthetic Education (Vol. 43, No. 1) where multiple scholars discuss pragmatism’s connections and comparisons to The Bhagavad Gita, Confucianism, and Taoism. Among these scholars is Scott Stroud whose most recent publication The Evolution of Pragmatism in India (2023) represents the culmination of nearly two decades of research on the subject with special attention to the continuities between pragmatism and Indian thought. In it, he meticulously explores the influence of John Dewey on one of his students, Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891–1956), who was a transformative figure in the founding of the nascent Republic of India. The result is a work of scholarship that shows the global relevance of pragmatism in the 20th Century, [End Page 456] introduces the fascinating philosophy of Ambedkar to a non-Indian audience, and provides an entry for further scholarship on this profound thinker and activist.Bhimrao Ambedkar was a critical figure in the birth of modern India. Born an “untouchable” due to the rigid caste system, he tirelessly advocated for the right of Dalits (“crushed” or “untouchables”). By the mid-20th century, he had greatly influenced Indian politics, safeguarded the interests of the oppressed, and played a key role in drafting the Indian Constitution. Separate to his role as a statesman, Ambedkar promoted Buddhism in the 1950s as an escape from caste oppression, culminating in his publication, The Buddha and His Dhamma (1957). While his name is less familiar outside of India, he was voted the “Greatest Indian” in a 2012 poll due to his profound impact on the nation’s post-independence development. These accomplishments were supported by an extensive education, but unlike most subjects of the British Empire, Ambedkar also studied in the United States. Stroud initiates his study by focusing on this formative period, specifically his time at Columbia University and the influence of the philosopher and psychologist John Dewey. While their relationship has been acknowledged, Stroud is the first to explore this relationship in depth and he not only reconstructs the influence of Dewey on Ambedkar’s Navayana Pragmatism but illuminates the ways that Ambedkar integrated, modified, and even resisted Dewey’s pragmatism.Stroud masterfully builds his reconstruction of this synergy between Dewey’s pragmatism and Ambedkar’s philosophy not out of ephemeral conjecture or pithy textual evidence, but through painstaking, detailed, and exhaustive scholarship. He draws on comparative evidence in their major and minor works, their private correspondence, interviews of Ambedekar’s cohort at Columbia, Dewey’s voluminous lecture notes, and even the marginalia and notecards found between the pages of Ambedkar’s pragmatism bookshelf. Indeed, I often found myself pleasantly distracted as I imagined Stroud’s academic pilgrimage throughout India, Columbia University, and the Center for Dewey Studies to find every scrap of relevant information. In our age of instant information and digital archives, it is refreshing and inspiring to encounter a scholar still willing to trek across the globe for answers to his inquiries. Despite his passion to uncover the influence of Dewey on Ambedekar, Stroud never reduces the... (shrink)

Multi-Task Learning tries to improve the learning process of different tasks by solving them simultaneously. A popular Multi-Task Learning formulation for SVM is to combine common and task-specific parts. Other approaches rely on using a Graph Laplacian regularizer. Here we propose a combination of these two approaches that can be applied to L1, L2 and LS-SVMs. We also propose an algorithm to iteratively learn the graph adjacency matrix used in the Laplacian regularization. We test our proposal with synthetic and real (...) problems, both in regression and classification settings. When the task structure is present, we show that our model is able to detect it, which leads to better results, and we also show it to be competitive even when this structure is not present. (shrink)

The key objectives of this book are to demonstrate the applicability of issues in the philosophy of science to problems in psychiatry and to show how the conceptual issues raised by psychiatry should be considered more closely by philosophers of science. These are worthy aims: the philosophy of psychiatry needs to draw more thoughtfully upon contemporary philosophical debates and stimulating interest within the philosophy of science is a good way to do this.Cooper's book succeeds for both of these desiderata. The (...) first five chapters discuss the central issues in the philosophy of psychiatry: whether mental illness is a disease/natural kind and what follows from this. There is a large literature on these questions, some of which …. (shrink)

The perception of meaningful patterns in random arrangements and unrelated events takes place in our everyday lives, coined apophenia, synchronicity, or the experience of meaningful coincidences. However, we do not know yet what predicts this phenomenon. To investigate this, we re-analyzed a combined data set of two daily diary studies with a total of N = 169 participants (mean age 29.95 years; 54 men). We investigated if positive or negative affect (PA, NA) predicts the number of meaningful coincidences on the (...) following day (or vice versa). By means of a cross-lagged multilevel modelling approach (Bayesian estimation) we evaluated with which of two theoretical assumptions the data are more in line. First, if meaningful coincidences are facilitated by a broader and more flexible thinking style, PA should positively predict meaningful coincidences at the following day. However, if the experience of meaningful coincidences signifies a strategy to cope with negative feeling states, NA should predict the experience of meaningful coincidences during the following day. In favour of a more flexible thinking style, we found that PA predicted the number of perceived coincidences the following day. We did not find any effect for NA, and therefore, no evidence arguing for the coping mechanism hypothesis of meaningful coincidences. (shrink)

This research explores the contextual approach within Christian-Jewish religious education, addressing a notable gap in existing literature and offering fresh insights into the application of the Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL) model within Christian contexts. Through a qualitative literature study employing a three-step methodology, including an in-depth analysis of Deuteronomy 11:19–20, this study reveals that this biblical text provides both educational guidance and theological significance, serving as a foundational support for the CTL model in Christian-Jewish religious education. The integration of (...) digital media into biblical sources holds promise for future research, while the central challenge lies in harmonising life experiences and empirical phenomena with biblical reflections to seamlessly integrate inquiry processes and pedagogical phases, with potential avenues for further exploration in scripture models endorsing CTL. This research provides valuable insights for educators, parents and policymakers in Indonesia and beyond, advancing educational research in contextualised teaching models within religious education.Contribution: This article demonstrates that the CTL model in the digital era has the potential to revolutionise religious education and profoundly impact learners, making it a significant scientific contribution in the context of Christian-Jewish religious education. (shrink)

I Norge er ikke surrogati tillatt, og myndighetene fraråder norske statsborgere å benytte seg av surrogati i utlandet. I denne artikkelen fokuserer vi på kommersiell gestational surrogati og stiller spørsmålet: Bør man tillate at norske statsborgere benytter seg av surrogati i India? De etiske problemstillingene rundt surrogati er mange og sammensatte og blir spesielt utfordrende når tjenesten tilbys i et land med store kulturelle og økonomiske forskjeller både internt og i forhold til Norge. Vi baserer analysen og drøftingen av dette (...) etisk utfordrende spørsmålet på Beauchamps og Childress sin veletablerte metodiske tilnærming innen biomedisinsk etikk. Vi anvender de fire allmennmoralske prinsipper: respekt for autonomi, velgjørenhet, ikke-skade og rettferdighet på sakskomplekset for å synliggjøre spenningene involvert i dette etiske dilemmaet. Med full bevissthet om at det ikke finnes noen lettvinte og omkostningsfrie løsninger på dilemmaer generelt og dette spesielt, konkluderer vi med at interessene til de berørte parter, og spesielt surrogatmødrenes, kan bli bedre ivaretatt om surrogati tillates under omfattende reguleringer. Dersom man velger å gjøre praksisen illegal, vil man også miste mulighetene til å påvirke prosessen og sikre rettighetene til de involverte partene.Nøkkelord: surrogati, Norge–India, utnyttelse, autonomi, regulering av prosessenEnglish summary: Should Norwegian citizens be permitted to use surrogacy in India?Surrogacy is not permitted in Norway, and the government strongly advises against Norwegian citizens travelling abroad to have children through the use of the surrogacy industry. In this article, we focus on commercial gestational surrogacy and debate the question: Should Norwegian citizens be permitted to use surrogacy in India? The ethical concerns regarding surrogacy are complex and are especially challenging when the service is offered in a country with big cultural and economic differences both internal and in comparison to Norway. We base our analysis of this ethical, challenging question on Beauchamp’s and Childress’s well-established approach within biomedical ethics. We apply the four principles of respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice to shed light on the conflicts of interests in this ethical dilemma. With full awareness that there are no simple and correct solutions to dilemmas in general and on this issue, especially, our conclusion is that the interests of the involved parties, and especially those of the surrogate mothers, might be better attended to if surrogacy is allowed with extensive regulations. If this practice is made illegal, the opportunity to influence the process and secure the rights of the involved parties is lost. (shrink)

The present work is substantially a dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Toronto. While aware of the numerous imperfections of the work I have decided, on the urging of many colleagues, to publish it at this time because of the current relevance of the subject-matter and especially of the collection of texts. I am happy to acknowledge my indebtedness to the faculty of the Pontifical Mediaeval Institute of Toronto and especially to the Reverend (...) Ignatius Eschmann, O.P., who first suggested the idea of this study and whose encouragement and assistance brought it to completion. My thanks are due also to the Reverend George Klubertanz, S.J., and Mr. Paul Mathews, both of the Department of Philosophy of Saint Louis University, and" for invaluable secretarial assistance, to Mrs. Savina Tonella and Miss Agnes Kutz. R. J. HENLE, S.j. Saint Louis December, 1954 TABLE OF CONTENTS GENERAL INTRODUCTION... (shrink)

My argument will be that our understanding of human beings, which is what I take the Christian doctrine of man to be concerned with, will benefit considerably from an examination of two different but related clusters of human attitudes which can be found respectively under the headings ‘optimism’ and ‘pessimism’. There are many pitfalls in the way of such an enterprise, and occasionally some prejudices to be overcome. For example L. E. Loemker in the relevant articles in the Encyclopedia of (...) Philosophy concludes a fairly lengthy discussion with the rather terminal judgement. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between political revolutions and the evolution of politics. It discusses the circularity within the concept of revolution through Jacques Derrida’s theory of sovereignty as particularly per Rogues – Two Essays on Reason and The Beast and the Sovereign. Derrida’s notions of wheel and ipseity display ontological prerogatives and evolutionary limits of political revolutions possibly coinciding with reversals hard to turn into linear evolutions, excluding rather than reaffirming circularity. Political revolutions show such incapacity to become evolutionary (...) for politics when lacking ontological substance and resting upon formal contingencies such as new techniques. An ‘alturnative’ notion of sovereignty is proposed as a heuristic criterion to gauge political events’ ‘revolutionary’ quality. This undermines the (r)evolutionary nature of political turns, like those associated with the contemporary digitalisation of politics. The Italian Five Stars Movement’s parable is a case in point of digital political turns whose effect is non-evolutionary for politics. (shrink)

It is my intention in this paper to highlight the dangers which arise when people appeal to moral intuitions to settle questions in political, and in general in applied, philosophy. But first I want to ask why all or nearly all of us are in favour both of liberty and of equality – why all our intuitions are on their side. In the case of liberty it is easy to understand why. Although philosophers have held diverse theories about the concept (...) of liberty – theories which have been drawn together into two main groups in a famous lecture by Sir Isaiah Berlin – there cannot be much doubt that in the mind of the ordinary man to have liberty is to be under no constraint in doing what one wants to do. This, at any rate, is a main constituent of the concept of liberty as all of us understand it. Since, therefore, it seems self-evidently true that we want to be able to do what we want, we are bound to want liberty and, in general, to be in favour of it. We want it for ourselves; if we universalize our prescriptions, this constrains us to be in favour of it for others as well. That explains why, if any politician can claim that he is fighting for liberty, he is likely to win a large following. In the case of equality the matter is not so clear cut. (shrink)

Comments on:Charles T. Mathewes, Agency, Nature, Transcendence, and Moralism: A Review of Recent Work in Moral Psychology.