The threat of bioterrorism, the emergence of the SARS epidemic, and a recent focus on professionalism among physicians, present a timely opportunity for a review of, and renewed commitment to, physician obligations to care for patients during epidemics. The professional obligation to care for contagious patients is part of a larger "duty to treat," which historically became accepted when 1) a risk of nosocomial infection was perceived, 2) an organized professional body existed to promote the duty, and 3) the public (...) came to rely on the duty. Physicians' responses to epidemics from the Hippocratic era to the present suggests an evolving acceptance of the professional duty to treat contagious patients, reaching a long-held peak between 1847 and the1950's. There has been some professional retrenchment against this duty to treat in the last 40 years but, we argue, conditions favoring acceptance of the duty are met today. A renewed embrace of physicians' duty to treat patients during epidemics, despite conditions of personal risk, might strengthen medicine's relationship with society, improve society's capacity to prepare for threats such as bioterrorism and new epidemics, and contribute to the development of a more robust and meaningful medical professionalism. (shrink)

This study aims to examine the development of diversity and inclusion (D&I) literature and identify its prominent themes and blind spots. The research was conducted using bibliometric analysis on the Web of Science database and included 2510 publications. Results showed that the development of D&I literature had increased exponentially since the 1960s, mainly due to different political and societal events. The geographic development showed that research was primarily conducted in developed countries where quotas and other legislation are implemented. The thematic (...) development revealed a stable but narrow focus on diversity management, board diversity, and team diversity, with little attention to inclusion. The keyword analysis strongly emphasized surface-level diversity, such as gender, race, and cultural diversity, while deep-level diversity received less attention. This study concludes that previous D&I literature has mainly focused on the financial effects of D&I and neglected other elements, such as the effects on social performance, its ethical implications, and the relationship between diversity and inclusion. The study recommends future research to expand the interpretation of diversity, examine the relationship between diversity and inclusion, and explore the effects of diversity on non-financial outcomes such as social performance and ethics. This study provides a valuable contribution to the field of business ethics by highlighting the blind spots in D&I literature and encouraging future research to consider the ethical implications of diversity in the workplace. (shrink)

There are several reasons which suggest that the role of nuclear weapons for deterrence in Europe is gradually diminishing. Thus, Europeans are confronted with the question whether and under what conditions strategic stability can be obtained in a post-nuclear world. From the analysis of a simple conceptual model of military conflict the conclusion is reached that, in order to preserve crisis stability in a non-nuclear world and to dampen the arms race, the antagonistic land forces in Europe need to be (...) gradually restructured in a manner so that neither side may perceive the other as a potential threat to its territorial integrity. The requisite structural changes ought to be brought about before nuclear weapons become altogether invailable for deterrence in Europe, otherwise the War saw Pact’s conventional superiority would, in a serious crisis, leave Western Europe only the choice between military defeat and a priori capitulation. There should be military as well as economic incentives for the implementation of structural changes toward a reduction of the offensive capabilities of conventional forces, if the so-called ‘defense efficiency hypothesis’ were to be validated. Otherwise, a deterioration of crisis stability must be expected during the transition period. (shrink)

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

Medicine in a Neurocentric World: About the Explanatory Power of Neuroscientific Models in Medical Research and Practice Content Type Journal Article Category Editorial Notes Pages 307-313 DOI 10.1007/s12376-009-0036-2 Authors Lara Huber, University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Institute for History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine Am Pulverturm 13 55131 Mainz Germany Lara K. Kutschenko, University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Institute for History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine Am Pulverturm 13 55131 Mainz Germany (...) Journal Medicine Studies Online ISSN 1876-4541 Print ISSN 1876-4533 Journal Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 4. (shrink)

This article uses a Latina/o critical theory framework (LatCrit), as a branch of critical race theory (CRT) in education, to understand how discourses of racist nativism?the institutionalized ways people perceive, understand and make sense of contemporary US immigration, that justifies native (white) dominance, and reinforces hegemonic power?emerge in California public K?12 education for Chicana students. I use data from 40 testimonio interviews with 20 undocumented and US-born Chicana students, to show how racist nativist discourses have been institutionalized in California public (...) education by English hegemony, that maintains social, political, and economic dominance over Latina/o students and communities, regardless of actual nativity. Teacher practices of English dominance is a manifestation of this hegemony that can be articulated by the concept of racist nativist microaggression?systemic, everyday forms of racist nativism that are subtle, layered, and cumulative verbal and non-verbal assaults directed toward People of Color. (shrink)

Various theories try to give accounts of how measures of this confidence do or ought to behave, both as far as the internal mental consistency of the agent as ...

In questa sua nuova forma il libro, mentre non cessa di rivolgersi agli studenti, acquista l'ulteriore ambizione di rivolgersi ai cultori della materia, non per cercare un loro acritico consenso, ma certamente con la speranza di dar spunti di pensiero e di discussione. Le difficoltà sono quelle proprie di una riflessione che necessariamente si allontana dal senso comune, per farci prestare attenzione a ciò che ordinariamente facciamo, senza però rendercene conto. Per questo sono da sempre convinto che non esiste in (...) filosofia un unico metodo, che dia accesso all'intera complessità del nostro operare come soggetti intelligenti. Tra quelli proposti nel secolo appena trascorso, ho trovato particolarmente proficui l'analisi linguistica del secondo Wittgenstein, utilizzato soprattutto nelle prime parti del libro, e l'analisi della intenzionalità della fenomenologia di Husserl, utilizzata soprattutto nelle sue parti centrali. (shrink)

This book argues that formation lies at the heart of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ethical project. Ryan Huber examines Bonhoeffer's life story and his most influential ethical writings, from his encounter with Jesus Christ in the early 1930s until his arrest in 1943, to illustrate the centrality of Christological formation in both.

The white coat ceremony is a common practice at many American and European medical schools. Current justification for the ceremony is mainly based on the good will felt by participants and an assumed connection between the ceremony and encouraging humanistic values in medicine. Recent critiques of the ceremony faults its use of oaths, premature alignment of students and faculty, and the selective appropriation of meaning to the white coat itself. This paper responds to recent critiques by addressing their misconceptions and (...) arguing that the white coat ceremony is a contemporary medical ritual with a key role for students and faculty in developing a professional identity.Since its inception in 1993, the white coat ceremony has become a national and international phenomenon. It is now practised at the beginning of the year at more than 100 American medical schools and is supported by foundation grants dedicated to endorsing and encouraging professional development and humanism in medicine.1 While some literature addresses the symbolism and history of the white coat itself, few sources consider the meaning of the ceremony.2–4 A common appeal is to the emotion and good will felt at the event.1,5 Although feelings are important, a deeper justification is called for.Criticism of the WCC is more explicit, charging that the ceremony: uses the Hippocratic Oath inappropriately or, at best, prematurely; fosters improper student faculty relationships, and; interprets the meaning of the white coat selectively.6,7 Critics suggest either that students not be asked to swear an oath together because it might conflict with personally held beliefs, or that students not be allowed to take the oath until they have demonstrated competence as physicians.6 Some also say that the WCC aligns students with faculty and against patients.6 The third …. (shrink)

Das Werk des vorsokratischen Philosophen Parmenides, das nur fragmentarisch erhalten ist, kann als Lehrgedicht beschrieben werden. In diesem Buch werden zum ersten Mal die pädagogischen Aspekte des Gedichtes aufgrund einer detaillierten Diskussion von ausgewählten Fragmenten systematisch untersucht. Es werden u. a. folgende Fragen behandelt: Wie kommt der Suchende oder Lernende zur philosophischen Erkenntnis? Welche 'Wege' oder Methoden führen dorthin? Was für Lernstufen gibt es? Wie verhält sich der Lernende (der Kuros) zur Belehrenden (der Göttin)? Welcher geistige Zustand soll den Erkennenden (...) kennzeichnen? Parmenides' Ontologie wird hier als Beschreibung des Erkennenden in Betracht gezogen, insofern das erkennende Subjekt seinem Objekt entsprechen soll. Parmenides' philosophische Pädagogik wird im Rahmen der Erziehungstheorie und Praxis der antiken Philosophie dargestellt und mit dem Thema der Philosophie als Lebenskunst verglichen. (shrink)

A series of writings describes Hellenistic philosophy as spiritual guidance. Starting from a selection of Heraclitean fragments, this essay considers whether it is possible to read pre-Socratic philosophy as spiritual guidance. Its conclusion is that one cannot talk about spiritual guidance in the case of Heraclitus since he does not accompany the scholar in his search for understanding and because his teachings are not meant to be followed strictly and diligently. Finally, Heraclitus sets the impersonal Logos as a teacher; he (...) himself does not accept any human teachings. The only accepted learning comes through one's own experience; no-one can pass his wisdom on to anyone else. Moreover, the teachings of Heraclitus do not soothe man's grief or offer any eschatol-ogy; on the contrary, they are meant to deprive his listeners of all security. His teaching goes no further than to encourage the scholar in his own search for understanding. Only insofar as Heraclitus' teachings lead to psychic autonomy can we call them therapeutic. (shrink)

The language of hope is a ubiquitous part of political life, but its value is increasingly contested. While there is an emerging debate about hope in political philosophy, an assessment of the prevalent scepticism about its role in political practice is still outstanding. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of historical and recent treatments of hope in political philosophy and to indicate lines of further research. We argue that even though political philosophy can draw on recent (...) analyses of hope in analytic philosophy, there are distinct challenges for an account of hope in political contexts. Examples such as racial injustice or climate change show the need for a systematic normative account that is sensitive to the unavoidability of hope in politics as much as its characteristic dangers. (shrink)

Any theory of confirmation must answer the following question: what is the purpose of its conception of confirmation for scientific inquiry? In this article, we argue that no Bayesian conception of confirmation can be used for its primary intended purpose, which we take to be making a claim about how worthy of belief various hypotheses are. Then we consider a different use to which Bayesian confirmation might be put, namely, determining the epistemic value of experimental outcomes, and thus to decide (...) which experiments to carry out. Interestingly, Bayesian confirmation theorists rule out that confirmation be used for this purpose. We conclude that Bayesian confirmation is a means with no end. 1 Introduction2 Bayesian Confirmation Theory3 Bayesian Confirmation and Belief4 Confirmation and the Value of Experiments5 Conclusion. (shrink)

The automatic tendency to anthropomorphize our interaction partners and make use of experience acquired in earlier interaction scenarios leads to the suggestion that social interaction with humanoid robots is more pleasant and intuitive than that with industrial robots. An objective method applied to evaluate the quality of human–robot interaction is based on the phenomenon of motor interference (MI). It claims that a face-to-face observation of a different (incongruent) movement of another individual leads to a higher variance in one’s own movement (...) trajectory. In social interaction, MI is a consequence of the tendency to imitate the movement of other individuals and goes along with mutual rapport, sense of togetherness, and sympathy. Although MI occurs while observing a human agent, it disappears in case of an industrial robot moving with piecewise constant velocity. Using a robot with human-like appearance, a recent study revealed that its movements led to MI, only if they were based on human prerecording (biological velocity), but not on constant (artificial) velocity profile. However, it remained unclear, which aspects of the human prerecorded movement triggered MI: biological velocity profile or variability in movement trajectory. To investigate this issue, we applied a quasi-biological minimum-jerk velocity profile (excluding variability in the movement trajectory as an influencing factor of MI) to motion of a humanoid robot, which was observed by subjects performing congruent or incongruent arm movements. The increase in variability in subjects’ movements occurred both for the observation of a human agent and for the robot performing incongruent movements, suggesting that an artificial human-like movement velocity profile is sufficient to facilitate the perception of humanoid robots as interaction partners. (shrink)

This is a pdf of a Mathematica calculation that supplements the paper "Presentist Fragmentalism and Quantum Mechanics" forthcoming in Foundations of Physics. In that paper the Born rule (or at least a progenitor) is derived from experimental conditions on the mutual observations of two fragments. In this pdf the experimental conditions are applied to Hilbert space dimensions 3, 4, and 5. It turns out each of these have a 1-dimensional solution space which, it is hoped, can be interpretated as the (...) phase. (shrink)

This paper contains a positive development and a negative argument. It develops a theory of function loss and shows how this undermines an objection raised against the etiological theory of function in support of the modal theory of function. Then it raises two internal problems for the modal theory of function.

Os objetivos do presente estudo foram: realizar uma série histórica dos procedimentos realizados pelos serviços odontológicos na Atenção Primária em Saúde (APS) no município de Canoas e verificar a redução da proporção de procedimentos de exodontia. Os dados foram coletados do Departamento de Informática do SUS (DATASUS) e foram agrupados em blocos de procedimentos odontológicos: exodontias, restauradores, preventivos, periodontais, endodônticos/urgências e outros procedimentos. Verificou-se que houve redução da proporção de exodontias e quando foram calculadas as médias do período de 10 (...) anos, utilizando os critérios específicos da APS e do IDSUS, as proporções de exodontias foram 4,46% e 4,83%. Neste contexto, conclui-se que a série histórica evidencia a redução das proporções de exodontias no município e as médias das proporções das exodontias no período avaliado foram maiores quando comparadas com a meta estabelecida pelo Plano Anual de Saúde (2,8). (shrink)

This article suggests that the notion of an educational ‘trading zone’ is an analytically helpful way of describing a space in which ideas about learning and teaching are shared within and between disciplines. Drawing on our knowledge of anthropology and the Humanities, we suggest three possible reasons for the limited development of such zones within academia in the UK and US. The first is the relatively low status of education as a discipline, and its perceived dependence on individualist theories of (...) learning drawn from psychology. The second is that disciplinary pedagogies are often deeply embedded in academic identity and practice, making engaging with an educational ‘trading zone’ an epistemologically unfamiliar habit. A final, and more overtly political, reason is the strategic resistance of many faculty members to engaging with the new visions of teaching ‘professionalism’ offered by ‘faculty development’ and ‘training’ units within universities. We end by exploring whether the emerging debate around the ‘scholarship of teaching and learning’ might circumvent some of these barriers. (shrink)

We argue that a semantics for counterfactual conditionals in terms of comparative overall similarity faces a formal limitation due to Arrow’s impossibility theorem from social choice theory. According to Lewis’s account, the truth-conditions for counterfactual conditionals are given in terms of the comparative overall similarity between possible worlds, which is in turn determined by various aspects of similarity between possible worlds. We argue that a function from aspects of similarity to overall similarity should satisfy certain plausible constraints while Arrow’s impossibility (...) theorem rules out that such a function satisfies all the constraints simultaneously. We argue that a way out of this impasse is to represent aspectual similarity in terms of ranking functions instead of representing it in a purely ordinal fashion. Further, we argue against the claim that the determination of overall similarity by aspects of similarity faces a difficulty in addition to the Arrovian limitation, namely the incommensurability of different aspects of similarity. The phenomena that have been cited as evidence for such incommensurability are best explained by ordinary vagueness. (shrink)

This paper summarizes (in German) recent tendencies in the philosophy of the life sciences.

The proliferation of multistakeholder initiatives (MSIs) over the past years has sparked an intense debate on the political role of corporations in the governance of global business conduct. To gain a better understanding of corporate political behavior in multistakeholder governance, this article investigates how firms construct a political identity when participating in MSIs. Based on an in-depth case study of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh—an MSI established after the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory complex (...) in 2013 to improve working conditions in the Bangladeshi garment industry—we introduce the construct of a political CSR (corporate social responsibility) identity (PCSRI) and explore how firms construct their PCSRIs in MSIs. Employing a qualitative, inductive theory-building method, we analyze interviews and archival data to develop a framework that elucidates how companies construct their PCSRIs within a continuum ranging from conservative to progressive. We show that constructing a PCSRI involves enacting specific, yet interrelated, political strategies that are themselves shaped by several forces over time. This article contributes to the literature by providing a political perspective on organizational identity construction that extends the emerging integrative perspective in political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) research. We suggest that MSIs should be conceptualized as inherently political governance mechanisms that are driven by multidirectional and dynamic political processes of identity construction. Our study shows that corporate political engagement in MSIs is a more nuanced and complex phenomenon than presently theorized. (shrink)

We hypothesize that in modern societies the striving for high positions in the hierarchy of organizations is equivalent to the striving for status and power in historical and traditional societies. Analyzing a sample of 4,491 US men and 5,326 US women, we find that holding a supervisory position or being in charge of hiring and firing is positively associated with offspring count in men but not in women. The positive effect in men is attributable mainly to the higher proportion of (...) childlessness among men in non-supervisory positions and those without the power to hire and fire. This effect is in accordance with the positive relationship between other status indicators and reproductive success found in men from traditional, historical, and modern societies. In women, we further find a curvilinear relationship between income percentile and offspring number by analyzing US census data, indicating that women may strive for resources associated with advancement rather than for status per se. (shrink)

Gemeinschaft ist ein Begriff, der in den Debatten der Moderne immer wieder infrage gestellt wurde. Im Moment ist eine Renaissance dieser Begriffsdebatte zu beobachten, sie steht in Verbindung zu den Diskussionen um ökologische Nachhaltigkeit und um die Grenzen des Wachstums. In dem Buch werden philosophisches Denken, politische Theorien, Theorien des Ästhetischen und die Künste zusammengeführt, um danach zu fragen, wie „Mit-Sein“ überhaupt denkbar und darstellbar ist, ob Gemeinschaft gegeben ist, wie sie sich ereignet und sich zeigt.

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a (...) compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on. (shrink)