We use Homer and Sun Tzu as a background to better understand and reformulate confrontation, anger and violence in medicine, contrasting an unproductive ‘love of war’ with a productive ‘art of war’ or ‘art of strategy’. At first glance, it is a paradox that the healing art is not pacific, but riddled with militaristic language and practices. On closer inspection, we find good reasons for this cultural paradox yet regret its presence. Drawing on insights from Homer's The Iliad and The (...) Odyssey, we argue for better understanding of confrontation, anger, bullying, intimidation and violence in medicine in order to change the culture. For example, equating medicine with war is not a given condition of medicine but a convenient metaphor with historical origins and a historical trajectory. Other, non-martial metaphors, such as medicine as collaboration, may be more appropriate in an age of team-based care. Taking lessons from Homer, we suggest three key ways in which cold-hearted confrontation and anger in medicine can be transformed into productive, warm-hearted engagement: the transformation of angry impulse into reflection, moral courage and empathy. Thinking with Homer can offer an aesthetically and morally charged alternative to the current body of literature on topics, such as anger in doctors, and how this may be ‘managed’, without recourse to an instrumental economy where emotions are viewed as commodities, and emotional responses can be ‘trained’ through communication skills courses. (shrink)

Background: Increasing collaboration between industrialised and developing countries in human research studies has led to concerns regarding the potential exploitation of resource deprived countries. This study, commissioned by the former National Bioethics Advisory Commission of the United States, surveyed developing country researchers about their concerns and opinions regarding ethical review processes and the performance of developing country and US international review boards .Methods: Contact lists from four international organisations were used to identify and survey 670 health researchers in developing countries. (...) A questionnaire with 169 questions explored issues of IRB review, informed consent, and recommendations.Results: The majority of the developing country researchers were middle aged males who were physicians and were employed by educational institutions, carrying out research on part time basis. Forty four percent of the respondents reported that their studies were not reviewed by a developing country IRB or Ministry of Health and one third of these studies were funded by the US. During the review process issues such as the need for local language consent forms and letters for approval, and confidentiality protection of participants were raised by US IRBs in significantly higher proportions than by host country IRBs.Conclusion: This survey indicates the need for the ethical review of collaborative research in both US and host countries. It also reflects a desire for focused capacity development in supporting ethical review of research. (shrink)

In 1956, a few writings of Wittgenstein that he didn't publish in his lifetime were revealed to the public. These writings were gathered in the book Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956). There, we can see that Wittgenstein had some discontentment with the way philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians were thinking about paradoxes, and he even registered a few polemic reasons to not accept Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

In Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy, C.D. Broad advanced a distinctive ontology of things and processes. He argues that neither things nor processes are reduced to each other but instead are reduced to some further kind of entity: “absolute process.” This paper will present Broad's theory of absolute processes and argue that they are best understood as tropes by developing a version of Donald C. Williams's trope ontology. This process ontology of tropes is then defended against objections in the contemporary metaphysics (...) literature. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to find out to what demand of philosophical and scientific thinking is culturology a response, treating culturology from two aspects: as a set of approaches to culture and as a school subject in the system of education. The task is not to define the subject boundaries of some science . I am interested in the "metaphysical location" of the interest in culture, in the lacuna of man's understanding of the world and of himself it (...) seeks to fill. (shrink)

La admirable riqueza cultural y artística del Renacimiento esconde una desoladora miseria y aquella "edad de la abundancia" contrasta con una inmensa pobreza. Lejos de ser una broma o una pesadilla, la celebrada Utopía de Tomás Moro fue antes que nada un desafío insoslayable, pues proponía que ninguna sociedad merece tal nombre si tolera la miseria de un solo pobre. Rico y pobre explora la cuestión en ese libro de 1516 y en otros del escritor londinense para concluir con un (...) esbozo de su vida a la luz de la pobreza como virtud indispensable y libertadora. He aquí un hombre afortunado que no fue indiferente ante el infortunio de tantos y que vio en la humanitas la virtud por excelencia que lleva a una constante atención y cuidado del prójimo. Inspirado por un cambio de actitud en su época, así como por su fe cristiana y la mejor tradición estoica, mostró una robusta preocupación sobre el tema subrayando el valor social que debe tener toda riqueza, tanto a nivel estatal como individual, destacando la grave obligación cívica de los ricos y la necesidad que tienen todos, ricos y pobres, de empeñarse en la práctica de cierto desprendimiento y generosidad si no quieren mermar su propia humanidad y fallecer en su avaricia. La percepción de la miseria había cambiado de tal manera que su remedio ya no podía estar en una u otra limosna en plazas e iglesias, sino en la acción bien pensada y perentoria de todo gobierno que se tenga por justo. Sir Tomás Moro, privilegiado desde la cuna y seguro en su trabajo profesional, vio la pobreza de tantos como un desastre social, pero uno que, al mismo tiempo, debería llevar a todo ser humano a ver en el desprendimiento y generosidad una excelencia o virtud que alumbra la "otra" libertad, y tan íntima y valiosa que en su caso brilló aun en la prisión y ante el horror de una muerte injusta y atroz." -- Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Based on the extended conceptualization of corporate citizenship, as provided by Matten and Crane :166–179, 2005), this paper examines the new role of corporations in society. Taking the ideas of Matten and Crane one step further, we argue that the status of corporations as citizens is not solely defined by their factual engagement in the provision of citizenship rights to others. By analysing political and sociological citizenship theories, we show that such engagement is more adequately explained by a change in (...) the self-conception of corporate citizens from corporate bourgeois to corporate citoyens. While the corporate bourgeois acts primarily for private business purposes, the corporate citoyen engages in society, performing civil and political rights and duties. As an intermediate actor in society, shaped by the principle of subsidiary task-sharing, the corporate citoyen undertakes co-responsibility for social and civic affairs and actively collaborates with fellow citizens below, beside and beyond governmental regulation. (shrink)

The problem of antimicrobial resistance is so dire that people are predicting that the era of antibiotics may be coming to an end, ushering in a ‘post-antibiotic’ era. A comprehensive policy response is therefore urgently needed. A part of this response will require framing the problem in such a way that adequately reflects its nature as well as encompassing an approach that has the best prospect of success. This paper considers framing the problem as a slowly emerging disaster, including its (...) potential benefits and difficulties, from a conceptual and policy perspective. (shrink)

The issue of sexual relations between spouses is a major cause of broken homes in Nigeria and Christian couples are not an exception. People believe that a large percentage of broken homes have the root of their problem traced to sex. The preponderance of broken homes notwithstanding, most studies in this area have been from the socio-scientific and medical cum psychological point of view and many more have focused on teenagers and young people to the exclusion of married couples that (...) need healing in this regard. This article is aimed at bringing out biblical instruction concerning the issue of sex that could help to restore peace to many homes at the verge of breaking down. The focal passage is 1 Corinthians 7:1–5, which was Paul’s instructions to the Corinthian church when they faced a similar problem. This article is an exegetical analysis of the passage and is read rhetorically with the Nigerian situation in mind. It concludes that sex must be enjoyed within the ambits of marriage and within this ambit, the only reason for abstinence is mutual agreement for the purpose of prayer.Contribution: The article upholds gender equality in initiating and enjoying sex and rejects looking down on women who request sex. It also calls for the eradication of female genital mutilation, a tradition based on making women not enjoy sex. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: Life-sustaining treatment at the end of life gives rise to many ethical problems in Japan. Recent surveys of Japanese physicians suggested that they tend to treat terminally ill patients aggressively. We studied why Japanese physicians were reluctant to withhold or withdraw life-support from terminally ill patients and what affected their decisions. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: A qualitative study design was employed, using a focus group interview with seven physicians, to gain an in-depth understanding of attitudes and rationales in Japan regarding (...) medical care at the end of life. RESULTS: Analysis revealed that physicians and patients' family members usually make decisions about life-sustaining treatment, while the patients' wishes are unavailable or not taken into account. Both physicians and family members tend to consider withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment as abandonment or even killing. The strongest reason to start cardiopulmonary resuscitation- and to continue it until patients' family members arrive-seems to be the family members' desire to be at the bedside at the time of death. All physicians participating in our study regarded advance directives that provide information as to patients' wishes about life-sustaining treatment desirable. All expressed concern, however, that it would be difficult to forego or discontinue life-support based on a patient's advance directive, particularly when the patient's family opposed the directive. CONCLUSION: Our group interview suggested several possible barriers to death with dignity and the appropriate use of advance directives in Japan. Further qualitative and quantitative research in this regard is needed. (shrink)

The Report of the Ad Hoc Adivisory Group on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees has resulted in a strange mixture of the timid, the revolutionary, and the bizarre.The Report of the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees is a curious document.1 The remit of the review was focused on the workings and effectiveness of NHS research ethics committees and the multicentre committees ). The Group was primarily set up in response to a (...) series of complaints from medical researchers about the new research governance regime in the UK as a result of the Clinical Trials Directive2 and the Governance Arrangements for NHS Research Ethics Committees.3 The opportunity was also taken to consider the role of research ethics committees in a wider context, and take account of recent developments in relation to the ethics review of social care research,4 student projects,5 as well as recent legislation such as the Human Tissue Act,6 and the Mental Capacity Act.7 However, the resulting report is a strange mixture of the timid, the revolutionary, and the bizarre.A good example of the report’s timidity is its reluctance to propose fundamental change to the process of review or seriously limit the type of research that requires REC review. To its credit AHAG does suggest that some research ‘especially surveys and many studies on NHS staff, could normally be conducted safely without a requirement for REC review’ .1 This is, of course, to be welcomed. However, the report ultimately seems dismissive of the general complaint from researchers that the current process is inappropriately uniform. For example, in section 3.2, it is argued that the ‘common perception that the NHS REC system is dominated …. (shrink)

Strategic Reliabilism is a framework that yields relative epistemic evaluations of belief-producing cognitive processes. It is a theory of cognitive excellence, or more colloquially, a theory of reasoning excellence (where 'reasoning' is understood very broadly as any sort of cognitive process for coming to judgments or beliefs). First introduced in our book, Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment (henceforth EPHJ), the basic idea behind SR is that epistemically excellent reasoning is efficient reasoning that leads in a robustly reliable fashion (...) to significant, true beliefs. It differs from most contemporary epistemological theories in two ways. First, it is not a theory of justification or knowledge – a theory of epistemically worthy belief. Strategic Reliabilism is a theory of epistemically worthy ways of forming beliefs. And second, Strategic Reliabilism does not attempt to account for an epistemological property that is assumed to be faithfully reflected in the epistemic judgments and intuitions of philosophers. If SR makes recommendations that accord with our reflective epistemic judgments and intuitions, great. If not, then so much the worse for our reflective epistemic judgments and intuitions. (shrink)

Esta sección temática constituye la segunda discusión sobre el desafío de la adopción de reglas lógicas publicado en Análisis Filosófico. Al igual que la primera, esta colección de artículos puede verse como el resultado de la colaboración internacional que durante más de dos décadas hemos mantenido entre el Saul Kripke Center (SKC) y el IIF-SADAF-CONICET. Y más precisamente, entre Saul, Romina y el grupo de lógica de Buenos Aires (BA-Logic). Visitas, seminarios, workshops, proyectos internacionales, y fundamentalmente mucho afecto y pasión (...) por los problemas filosóficos fundamentales han marcado este proceso. Tanto Romina como Saul han apoyado sistemáticamente los esfuerzos desde Argentina para producir conocimiento en el área de lógica. Ambos han estado involucrados no solo institucionalmente en el apoyo al desarrollo de nuestro grupo, sino también a nivel personal. Fueron muchos los momentos que compartimos juntos. Muchos recuerdos e historias. Es importante destacar, solo para mencionar un simple aspecto de nuestras historias comunes, que Saul participó activamente en el proceso de elaboración de la propuesta de ambos números, en la lectura de gran parte del material, e incluso como réferi de algunos trabajos. Saul y Romina asistieron por Zoom a varias reuniones en el marco de los seminarios que generaron parte del material aquí publicado. Recuerdo la alegría de Saul, sus comentarios y la sorpresa de muchos de los participantes de ver aparecer en sus pantallas al filósofo más importante del mundo y uno de los más importantes de la historia. Para ellos quizás era Kripke, para mi ya era Saul. Nos hubiera gustado celebrar juntos. Podría haber sido en Buenos Aires o en Nueva York. Lamentablemente, ya no podrá ser. Aunque también es cierto que esta sección temática es una manera de volver a reunirnos y de expresar el profundo agradecimiento que todos los integrantes del BA-Logic tenemos por Saul. Te vamos a extrañar… Ya te estamos extrañando…. (shrink)

El artículo expone dos visiones acerca de la legitimidad del castigo en contextos de exclusión social. En la primera parte, uno de los autores defiende la idea de que los Estados que incumplen con obligaciones legales previas no pueden inculpar a quienes cometan delitos vinculados con ese incumplimiento. No pueden hacerlo porque no tienen el estatus moral para hacerlo de acuerdo a dos objeciones: la de complicidad y la de hipocresía. En la segunda parte, la segunda autora critica esta solución (...) al sostener que la falta de reciprocidad que caracteriza a la relación política vuelve inaplicables las objeciones de hipocresía y complicidad al ámbito del castigo penal estatal. (shrink)

The analysis presented in this article shows that overarching conceptual systems, such as the metaphor “NATIONS ARE A FAMILY,” often bring together expressions with dissimilar intentions, ideologic...

Recent scholars have called into question the categories “science” and “religion” because they bring metaphysical and theological assumptions that theologians should find problematic. The critique of the categories “science” and “religion” has above all been associated with Peter Harrison and his influential argument in The Territories of Science and Religion (2015). This article evaluates the philosophical conclusions that Harrison draws from his antiessentialist philosophy in the two volumes associated with his “After Science and Religion Project.” I argue that Harrison's project (...) is too skeptical toward the categories “science” and “religion” and places too much emphasis on naturalism being incompatible with Christian theology. One can accept the lessons of antiessentialism—above all, how meanings of terms shift over time—and still use the terms “science” and “religion” in responsible ways. This article defends the basic impulse of most scholars in science and religion who promote dialogue and argues for a more moderate reading of the lesson of Territories. (shrink)

We have surveyed various recent European opinions on Germ-Line engineering. The majority express more or less severe reservations about any interventions on the human Germ-Line, including therapeutic ones. However, they are divided over the pragmatic, or categorical-ethical nature of the relevant arguments. This split reflects two competing views of technology. The ‘pessimistic’ one is deeply concerned by the slippery slope leading from bona fide therapeutic applications of genetic engineering to eugenic practices. It insists that, if anything can defend us against (...) these evils, it must be a set of strong, ethically-based prohibitions. The other, ‘optimist’ view is more confident in the discriminating powers of societal regulation. We argue for the latter view and suggest that the pragmatic arguments brought to this debate are less problematic than the ethical ones. (shrink)

В настоящей книге представлен анализ внутренней логики и социокультурного контекста существования Московского методологического кружка - одной из самых влиятельных мыслительно-практических контркультурных традиций советской эпохи.

Contemporary psychiatry maintains the myth that it is value neutral by appeal to modern medical science for both its diagnostic categories and its therapeutic interventions, leaving the impression that it relies on reason—that is to say, reason divorced from tradition—to master human nature. Such a practice has a certain way of characterizing and defining humanity's lapses from acceptable human behavior—a lapse from human being. The modern practice of psychiatry applies a particular notion (largely influenced by Enlightenment ideals) of scientific instrumentation (...) to the human person in order to diagnose the ailment and manufacture a corresponding treatment in keeping with a hidden conception of human biological flourishing. This covert vision is an impoverished (and possibly dangerous) one. As much as the practice of psychiatry is constrained by the goals of the dominant moral tradition of our day, it becomes a tool (or technique) for achieving the transient and partial ends of modern individualism. Given this truncated view of human nature and human end, modern psychiatry fails to attend comprehensively to the unity of a life, missing altogether the essential relevance of character formation, and thereby forfeiting excellence in human flourishing. (shrink)

The overgeneration argument attempts to show that accepting second-order validity as a sound formal counterpart of logical truth has the unacceptable consequence that the Continuum Hypothesis is either a logical truth or a logical falsehood. The argument was presented and vigorously defended in John Etchemendy’s The Concept of Logical Consequence and it has many proponents to this day. Yet it is nothing but a seductive fallacy. I demonstrate this by considering five versions of the argument; as I show, each is (...) either unsound or lacks a troubling conclusion. (shrink)