National legislation, as well as arguments of experts, in Germany and Israel represent opposite regulatory approaches and positions in bioethical debates concerning end-of-life care. This study analyzes how these positions are mirrored in the attitudes of laypeople and influenced by the religious views and personal experiences of those affected. We qualitatively analyzed eight focus groups in Germany and Israel in which laypeople were asked to discuss similar scenarios involving the withholding or withdrawing of treatment, physician-assisted suicide, and euthanasia. In both (...) countries, respect for patient autonomy and patients’ wishes to die with dignity found broad consent. Laypeople argued in favor of accepting such wishes when they were put down in an advance directive. Laypeople in non-religious groups in both countries argued on the basis of a respect for autonomy for the possibility of euthanasia in severe cases but, at the same time, cautioned against its possible misuse. National contrast was apparent in the moral reasoning of lay respondents concerning the distinction between withholding and withdrawing treatment. The modern religious laypeople in Israel, especially, argued strongly, on the basis of the halakhic tradition, against allowing the withdrawal of treatment in accord with a patient’s wish. We conclude by discussing the emergent notion of shared responsibility and views of professional responsibility, which we connect through relevant cultural themes such as religion and national culture. (shrink)

The Israeli law of abortions (1977) legally authorises hospital committees to decide upon women's requests for selective abortion. One of the law's clauses determines that abortions can be approved in cases of an embryopathy. However, the law does not provide any clear definitions of those fetal ‘physical or mental defects’ in terms of severity and/or likelihood, which remain open to interpretation by the committee members. This paper aimed to determine which ethical methodologies are used by committee members and advisors as (...) they face the dilemma of abortion approval due to mild to moderate possible embryopathy. Twenty interviews demonstrated that they use mainly a combination of deontology and a contextual–relational model. Their ethical considerations are both contextual such as the family's/woman's relational network and are influenced by the ethical principles of autonomy and in cases of late abortions the value of life. The findings reveal a paradoxical picture: on the one hand, committee members hold liberal perceptions and in practice abortion requests are very seldom rejected. On the other hand, the Israeli abortion law and practice of abortion committees is still problematical from liberal and feminist rights perspectives. This paradox is discussed further by reflecting upon the relevant theory as well as the Israeli context. The paper concludes by suggesting that within the specific Israeli sociopolitical climate the requirement for committee approval of what should be a private decision might be necessary in order to placate religious or other opposition to abortion. (shrink)

Mifgash rishon. ʻAl ha-nefesh ṿe-ʻal ha-ʻarakhim -- Mifgash sheni. Pitui, akhzariyut ṿe-nashiyut -- Mifgash shelishi. Shomre ha-ḥayim, shomre ha-maṿet ṿe-shomre ha-seder, torat ha-yetsarim shel Zigmond Froid.

Egg freezing has led to heated debates in healthcare policy and bioethics. A crucial issue in this context concerns the distinction between “medical” and “social” egg freezing —contrasting objections to bio-medicalization with claims for oversimplification. Yet such categorization remains a criterion for regulation. This paper aims to explore the “regulatory boundary-work” around the “medical”–”social” distinction in different egg freezing regulations. Based on systematic documents’ analysis we present a cross-national comparison of the way the “medical”–”social” differentiation finds expression in regulatory frameworks (...) in Austria, Germany, Israel, and the Netherlands. Findings are organized along two emerging themes: the definition of MEF and its distinctiveness—highlighting regulatory differences in the clarity of the definition and in the medical indications used for creating it ; and hierarchy of medical over social motivations reflected in usage and funding regulations. Blurred demarcation lines between “medical” and “social” are further discussed as representing a paradoxical inclusion of SEF while offering new insights into the complexity and normativity of this distinction. Finally, we draw conclusions for policymaking and the bioethical debate, also concerning the related cryopolitical aspects. (shrink)

Assistive reproductive technologies are increasingly used to control the biology of fertility and its temporality. Combining historical, theoretical, and socio-empirical insights, this paper aims at expanding our understanding of the way temporality emerges and is negotiated in the contemporary practice of cryopreservation of reproductive materials. We first present an historical overview of the practice of cryo-fertility to indicate the co-production of technology and social constructions of temporality. We then apply a theoretical framework for analysing cryobiology and cryopreservation technologies as creating (...) a new epistemic perspective interconnecting biology and temporality. Thereafter, we focus on the case of ‘social egg freezing’ to present socio-empirical findings illustrating different reproductive temporalities and their connection to the social acceptance of and expectations towards the practice. SEF is a particularly interesting case as it aims to enable women to disconnect their reproductive potential from their biological rhythms. Based on 39 open interviews with Israeli and German SEF users, the cross-cultural comparative findings reveal three types of attitudes: postponing motherhood/reproductive decisions ; singlehood and “waiting” for a partner ; and the planning of and hope for multiple children. For theory building, this analysis uncovers temporality formations embedded in gender and reproductive moral values; including the ‘extended present’, ‘waiting’, and ‘reproductive futurism’. We conclude by discussing the contribution of our findings by advancing the theoretical framework of ‘cryopolitics’ highlighting the theoretical implications and importance of gendered and cultural imaginaries constructing medical technological innovations and related temporalities. (shrink)

This paper analyses self-declared aims and representation of dementia patient organizations and advocacy groups in relation to two recent upheavals: the critique of social stigmatization and biomedical research focusing on prediction. Based on twenty-six semi-structured interviews conducted in 2016–2017 with members, service recipients, and board representatives of POs in Germany and Israel, a comparative analysis was conducted, based on a grounded theory approach, to detect emerging topics within and across the POs and across national contexts. We identified a heterogeneous landscape, (...) with the only Israeli PO focusing strongly on caretakers, whereas in Germany several POs claim to represent this patient collective. Shared aims of all POs were fighting social stigma, balancing the loss of patients’ individual autonomy, and the well-being of caretakers. By highlighting the emergence of new groups of dementia self-advocacy against the more traditional advocacy by others, this study highlights how advocacy and representation in the context of AD are embedded in the discursive context of stigmatization and revised disease conception. Future developments in early diagnosis and prediction of dementia, with more affected people likely to conduct dementia self-advocacy, might challenge existing representation structures even more. (shrink)

Healthcare collectives, such as patient organizations, advocacy groups, disability organizations, professional associations, industry advocates, social movements, and health consumer organizations have been increasingly involved in healthcare policymaking. Such collectives are based on the idea that individual interests can be aggregated into collective interests by participation, deliberation, and representation. The topic of collectivity in healthcare, more specifically collective representation, has only rarely been addressed in bioethics. This symposium, entitled: “Collective Representation in Healthcare Policy” of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry draws attention (...) to this understudied topic from a variety of disciplines, within a variety of socio-cultural contexts. We draw attention to important ethical, cultural, and social questions, and into the practices, justifications for, and implications of collective representation of patients in healthcare policy. (shrink)

Bringing together scholars from philosophy, bioethics, law, sociology, and anthropology, this topical collection explores how innovations in the field of biomedicine and the life sciences are challenging and transforming traditional understandings of human temporality and of the temporal duration, extension and structure of human life. The contributions aim to expand the theoretical debate by highlighting the significance of time and human temporality in different discourses and practical contexts, and developing concrete, empirically informed, and culturally sensitive perspectives. The collection is structured (...) around three main foci: the beginning of life, the middle of life, and later life. This structure facilitates an in-depth examination of specific technological and biographical contexts and at the same time allows an overarching comparison of relevant similarities and differences between life phases and fields of application. (shrink)

The book presents the most relevant theories of truth (correspondence, semantic, deflational, pragmaticist, coherentist, constructivist, evidential), with the emphasis of analytical approaches. The author develops a version of the realist correspondence concept of truth while distinguishing various criteria of truth. He is skeptical in regard of any, complete or certain truth but he does not accept epistemic skepticism either, but argues for a moderate realism where objective orientation towards truth suffices as catching (ever) more truth than falsity.

In this study, the researchers investigated the relationships between character strengths and ethical engagement in online faculty. One of the ethical duties for higher education faculty is to engage in effective teaching practices. As online higher education becomes increasingly popular, online faculty also bear this duty. Numerous studies have shown that character strengths cultivate ethical behavior. Hence, we sought to determine the relationship between character strengths and ethical engagement in online faculty. Specifically, we focused on intellectual character strengths, interpersonal character (...) strengths, and emotional character strengths because of their relevance to online faculty’s teaching practices. Through correlational analyses, we learned that interpersonal and emotional character strengths were positively and moderately related to ethical engagement, whereas intellectual character strengths were weakly related to ethical engagement. The findings of this study provide insight into online faculty’s character strengths and ethical engagement. However, further research is needed to understand the role of character strengths and ethical engagement in promoting effective teaching practices in online higher education classrooms. (shrink)

Extraterrestrial Altruism examines a basic assumption of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI): that extraterrestrials will be transmitting messages to us for our benefit. This question of whether extraterrestrials will be altruistic has become increasingly important in recent years as SETI scientists have begun contemplating transmissions from Earth to make contact. Technological civilizations that transmit signals for the benefit of others, but with no immediate gain for themselves, certainly seem to be altruistic. But does this make biological sense? Should we (...) expect altruism to evolve throughout the cosmos, or is this only wishful thinking? Is it dangerous to send messages to other worlds, as Stephen Hawking has suggested, or might humankind benefit from an exchange with intelligence elsewhere in the galaxy? Would extraterrestrial societies be based on different ethical principles, or would we see commonalities with Earthly notions of morality? Extraterrestrial Altruism explores these and related questions about the motivations of civilizations beyond Earth, providing new insights that are critical for SETI. Chapters are authored by leading scholars from diverse disciplines—anthropology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science, cosmology, engineering, history of science, law, philosophy, psychology, public policy, and sociology. The book is carefully edited by Douglas Vakoch, Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute and professor of clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The Foreword is by Frank Drake. This interdisciplinary book will benefit everybody trying to understand whether evolution and ethics are unique to Earth, or whether they are built into the fabric of the universe. (shrink)

While there are numerous doubts, controversies and lack of consensus on alternative definitions of human death, it is argued that it is more ethical to allow people to choose either cessation of cardio-respiratory function or loss of entire brain function as the definition of death based on their own views. This paper presents the law of organ transplantation in Japan, which allows people to decide whether brain death can be used to determine their death in agreement with their family. Arguably, (...) Japan could become a unique example of individual choice in the definition of death if the law is revised to allow individuals choose definition of death independently of their family. It suggests that such an approach is one of the reasonable policy options a country can adopt for legislation on issues related to the definition of death. (shrink)

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)

Background: There is a shortage of reports on what potential recipients of implantable cardioverter–defibrillators need to be informed about and what role they can and want to play in the decision-making process when it comes to whether or not to implant an ICD.Aims: To explore how patients with heart failure and previous episodes of malignant arrhythmia experience and view their role in the decision to initiate ICD treatment.Patients and methods: A qualitative content analysis of semistructured interviews was used. The study (...) population consisted of 31 outpatients with moderate heart failure at the time of their first ICD implantation.Setting: The study was performed at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Göteborg, Sweden.Results: None of the respondents had discussed the alternative option of receiving treatment with anti-arrhythmic drugs, the estimated risk of a fatal arrhythmia, or the expected time of survival from heart failure in itself. Even so, very little criticism was directed at the lack of information or the lack of participation in the decision-making process. The respondents felt that they had to rely on the doctors’ recommendation when it comes to such a complex and important decision. None of them regretted implantation of the ICD.Conclusions: The respondents were confronted by a matter of fact. They needed an ICD and were given an offer they could not refuse, simply because life was precious to them. Being able to give well-informed consent seemed to be a matter of less importance for them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 121-122 [Access article in PDF] Harold Tarrant. Plato's First Interpreters. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. Pp. viii + 263. Cloth, $55.00. This is Tarrant's third book on the ancient Platonist tradition, following his Scepticism or Platonism? (1985) and Thrasyllan Platonism (1993). In those earlier volumes his focus was on the first centuries bc and ad. Here his scope is much (...) wider. Stating that "Platonic interpretation is today at a crossroads," he has written a book that explores "ancient attempts to wrestle with this corpus," with the ultimate objective "to encourage a fresh, almost primitive reading of Plato himself" (vii).He begins engagingly by confronting the ancients with questions any modern reader of Plato must ask: What kind of text is this? Are there doctrines here? Where do I look for Plato's doctrines? The second part of his book is a historical survey, taking us from Plato, the early Academy and Aristotle, through the Hellenistic and early Roman Imperial period, and concluding with the principal Neoplatonist interpreters. In the third and longest part, he focuses on the interpretation of specific dialogues, giving most space to the Gorgias and Theaetetus, but also dealing in particular detail with the Meno, Parmenides, and Philebus. Something is said about every dialogue, but Tarrant writes only briefly about such major works as the Republic and Timaeus. He explains his selectivity (not very convincingly) as due to his wish to "discuss issues of meta-interpretation, with emphasis on the period before Plotinus" (198).Taking his book as a whole, one realizes that few strands of modern interpretation were not prefigured to quite a large extent in antiquity. The two most obvious exceptions are the chronological and developmental approach (Early, Middle, and Late), at present under strong attack from some quarters, and the theological, numerological, and allegorical readings practiced by Neoplatonists. Plato's ancient interpreters were doctrinal unitarians, but they implicitly anticipated our tendency to distinguish "Socratic dialogues," which some of them called "gymnastic" and "inquisitive," from such "canonical" works as the Phaedo,Republic, Symposium, and Timaeus, to which they applied the labels "dogmatic" and "expository." And they recognized that both types of characteristics could be found in the same dialogue, as in the Meno and Theaetetus. Plato himself, they proposed, spoke primarily through the voices of Socrates, Timaeus, and the Eleatic and Athenian strangers; but other characters, such as Pausanias in the Symposium, or Protagoras in the dialogue of that name, utter thoughts with some philosophical value. In explaining difficult passages of one dialogue, they would typically refer to passages from other parts of the corpus. An especially intriguing instance is the strategy of the Anonymous Commentator on the Theaetetus, who reads the Meno into the dialogue on which he is officially commenting.Ancient scholars, just like ourselves, asked questions about the unifying themes of complex dialogues. Hence the sub-titles given to certain works: "On the soul" for the Phaedo, and "On justice" for the Republic, etc. For Olympiodorus (whose commentary on the Gorgias Tarrant has recently co-edited [Leiden, 1998]), earlier interpreters have seriously erred by giving too limited an account of that dialogue's scope. It is not, he says, simply about rhetoric, nor about justice and injustice; nor is its theme the divine demiurge (as some Neoplatonists had strangely proposed, on the basis of the concluding myth). Rather, the subject of the Gorgias is "the ethical principles that lead to constitutional well-being" (125). [End Page 121] However, Olympiodorus's eminently "sensible" reading (as Tarrant calls it) is deeply embedded in the Neoplatonic contrast between the "purificatory virtues" of the Phaedo and the "constitutional virtues" of Republic4.Strong or weak scepticism, esotericism, unwritten doctrines, spurious versus genuine, a canon of central dialogues, dramatic considerations, and the philosophical importance or non-importance of the dialogues' prologues—all of these are interpretive approaches that Tarrant surveys in this immensely learned book, and all of them continue to resonate for us. Modern scholars, who emphasize the literary and philosophical unity of each dialogue, are walking... (shrink)

During recent years we have seen and assisted at a significantly increased number of twin births. The main reason for this increase in the frequency of twin births is the increasing number of so called “induced pregnancies”, whether through hormonal stimulation or artificial insemination techniques.It is well known1 that twins have high mortality and morbidity rates during the perinatal and the following period. The characteristics of conception and pregnancy can determine the development of several pathologies, including prematurity and intrauterine growth (...) retardation, …. (shrink)

Since 1981 AIDS has illuminated, like a roving searchlight, a series of ethical questions, which extend far beyond the apparently narrow limits of one disease. It has revealed, one by one, human attitudes and behaviours that were previously unquestioned, or unobserved - based on unidentified but shaky pre-suppositions.This commentary offers two contrasting perspectives on the problems facing developing countries. In the first part, I comment on the preceding article, from the perspective of a clinician who has worked for many years (...) in Africa, and who witnessed the emergence of AIDS in the early 1980s and its medical, social, political and economic consequences.1 In the second, I comment on a conference in Lusaka in September 1999 that addressed many of the issues.Narrowing the gap?“Narrowing the gap” raises questions about truth or transparency in the activities of multinational companies, the ethics and economics of health care in global society and the distribution of responsibility for unwanted side effects of new treatments. The scale of HIV infection in developing countries draws attention to weaknesses or instability in theoretical and practical structures, which serve - or should serve - human wellbeing, whenever it is disturbed by disease.Truth and transparencyDuring the last 60 years, combined with improved standards of living, the products of pharmaceutical effort and ingenuity have resulted in large gains in life expectancy. These were most marked in rich northern societies, but even poor southern countries had seen it extended by 15 to 20 years, until recently.However, “the costs of drug development are not small”.2 A detailed study of costs of clinical trials found that the total cost of new drug development can be as high as $500 million per drug.3 Patent laws allow a temporary monopoly for the production and sale for a number of years. During this “protected” …. (shrink)

Objective: To explore the relationship between the presentation of suffering and support for euthanasia in the British news media.Method: Data was retrieved by searching the British newspaper database LexisNexis from 1996 to 2000. Twenty-nine articles covering three cases of family assisted suicide were found. Presentations of suffering were analysed employing Heidegger’s distinction between technological ordering and poetic revealing.Findings: With few exceptions, the press constructed the complex terrain of FAS as an orderly or orderable performance. This was enabled by containing the (...) contradictions of FAS through a number of journalistic strategies: treating degenerative dying as an aberrant condition, smoothing over botched attempts, locating the object of ethical evaluation in persons, not contexts, abbreviating the decision making process, constructing community consensus and marginalising opposing views.Conclusion: The findings of this study support the view that news reporting of FAS is not neutral or inconsequential. In particular, those reports presenting FAS as an orderly, rational performance were biased in favor of technical solutions by way of the legalisation of euthanasia and/or the involvement of medical professionals. In contrast, while news reports sensitive to contradiction did not necessarily oppose euthanasia, they were less inclined to overtly support technical solutions, recognising the importance of a trial to address the complexity of FAS. (shrink)

In this book, I will discuss three main topics: the roots and aims of scientific knowledge, scientific knowledge in society, and science and values I understand scientific knowledge as being a planned and continuous production of the general and common knowledge of scientific communities. I begin my discussion with a brief analysis of the main differences between sciences, on the one hand, and everyday experience, philosophies, religions, and ideologies, on the other. I define the concept of science as a set (...) of family resemblances (in Wittgenstein's sense). The sciences can be distinguished along three lines, in terms of the difference between empirical and non-empirical sciences, differences in degrees of theoretical and methodological structure among individual sciences and scientific disciplines. Scientific knowledge is based upon some grounds, paradigmatic knowledge bases. Scientific knowledge is founded on a unified paradigmatic knowledge base. The latter includes fundamental theories, basic facts, generally accepted empirical regularities (laws), scientific research methods, scientific explanations, and established relations to other sciences. Scientific knowledge in general is defined well in classical terms by the definition that knowledge is a true and rationally-justified belief. In this connection, scientific truth is relative, depending on the given paradigmatic knowledge base and on the precision and accessibility of the measurements and observations involved. In the book's first part, I consider the production and testing of scientific hypotheses, scientific explanations, the structure of scientific theories, and the problem of scientific realism. I consider explanation an integral part of a wider nexus of heuristic and theoretical activities in science like giving reasons, understanding, clarification, and founding. Continuous production of scientific explanations is a necessary condition for the systematic reproduction of scientific knowledge. Accordingly, it does not suffice to describe them in terms of the logical structure of the arguments on which they are based, but rather, scientific explanations ought to be given complete with an epistemic and pragmatic context of the explanation. I consider especially deductive-nomological, inductive-statistical, dispositional, teleological-functional, and genetic explanations. I emphasize the ever-increasing importance of explanations by analogy and by model. Orthogonal to these distinctions lies the distinction between causal and epistemic explanation. Epistemic explanations relate scientific discoveries to epistemic progress, and causal explanations are these epistemic explanations that relate scientific discoveries to reality too. Causal explanations inform us that certain changes occur in the world as agents of other changes, or rather, that certain changes are real consequences of other changes. Thus, by having explanations of causes, we can intervene in the world to induce by design certain changes in some course of phenomena. I consider scientific theories as logically and epistemically ordered wholeness of scientific knowledge in a realm of research that enables us to construct useful models of reality. After the discussion of different 'statement' views on theories and different interpretations of the theory-experience relation, I introduce the 'model' theoretical (non-statement) views on theories, especially the structural theory of science. The model views on theories transcend the realism-antirealism dualism by introducing models between theory and reality. Therefore, the question of scientific realism is not merely whether and, if so, which element(s), of scientific theories represent reality, but rather which conditions suffice to infer from a theory that one of its models truly expresses reality. In other words, under which conditions do models of a theory represent models of reality? Generally, models are just as much images of reality in a theory as they are images of a theory in reality. The actual problem of scientific realism doesn't originate in the observable-unobservable distinction (even if this distinction is otherwise theoretically loaded), but rather in ontological quandaries, of the sort especially encountered in modern physical theories such as quantum mechanics, relativity theory, and cosmological theories, although they are known to arise in other sciences as well. Scientific theories may be real, even if they describe nothing about the world. However, such theories can be given this status only if their formal, mathematical postulates exhibit some formal homology between reality and mathematical forms. The very fact that it is possible to describe reality with the help of mathematics even in cases, where every (representational, conceptual) language and thought fall short, would indicate that even mathematics itself is, in some sense, a part of reality, although 'outside' of the empirical world. It follows we have to distinguish the non-empirical reality and the empirical world. Formal objectivity and non-arbitrariness of theories do not emerge from either our language or thoughts, or from the world of facts, causes, and effects, but rather from non-empirical reality, which frames the world as some kind of objective transcendental condition for the possibility of the existence of the world, thoughts, and language. In the second part of the book, I consider the incorporation of scientific work and scientific knowledge into modern society and its relations to values and ethics. Production of scientific knowledge goes on as a parallel distributed process of a special kind of social (shared) cognition. The central part of this cognition is the presentation of parts of the world by scientific (theoretical) models which are warranted by the shared and public practice of justification, and in reflective acting in the world as it would. I consider various formal concepts of collective propositional knowledge (distributed, mutual, common knowledge). Scientific knowledge is an achievement to be ascribed to a scientific community or, indirectly, to all those who apply or expand it, rather than to individuals per se. It presents the continuous and partially planned production of non-trivial common knowledge of the research communities in modern societies. However, besides common knowledge, shared dispositional knowledge (knowledge how of scientific teams) and shared knowledge by acquiring (knowledge of fundamental similarities and differences in scientific teams) are parts of the real body of scientific knowledge. Scientific common knowledge implies the projection into idealized universal knowledge of all real or potentially rational and well-informed individuals. The respect of scientific knowledge thus presents the norm of rationality. Science as the intensively shared and socially distributed kind of cognition enters into modern society as a special kind of work (general work), as a productive force (social invention drive), and as a form of capital (human, social, cultural, informational, etc.). However any of these categories can adequately represent the socio-economical role of science in modern societies, and we are still waiting for a more adequate general concept that would theoretically cover the 'scientification' of modern societies. My thesis is that the most important general effect of scientification is (and will be) the growth of social processes that structurally resemble parallel distributed shared social cognition of science, and not so much the rise of the use of scientific knowledge and scientifically based information in all kinds of production. Scientification of modern societies inevitably includes a much stronger need for moral and social responsibility of scientists for their work and its effects in their local society and the global world. This need comes in contradiction with the quite large accepted idea (and even the 'norm') on value-free research. I discuss to some degree different arguments for the absence of non-epistemic values and ethical reasoning from science and find them non-convincing. The sound idea of value-free research lies in the need for the absence of categorical value statements from scientific explanations and theoretical deductions. Values and ethical judgment have, and sometimes they even have to play an important role in another part of research and its application in science or outside it. Not the value-loudness of research is a danger for science but its blind, non-reflective use. It leads to the ideologization and politicization of science. A similar danger lies in the purely value-neutrality of research. It leads to the instrumentalization of science to the technical or bureaucratic means for 'any' aims. (shrink)

There are few examples in the literature of objective measures for the assessment of donor willingness. The author describes the scoring system in use at his own renal transplant unit which has brought objectivity to the process of determining the willingness of living related donors. In this system, a total score to determine the degree of willingness or unwillingness is calculated based on responses to a series of questions. The author believes that with minor modifications this system could be implemented (...) by transplant units in different countries and cultures to screen out donors who are acting under duress. (shrink)

Postpartum mood disorders develop shortly after childbirth in a significant proportion of women and have severe effects. Two evolutionary explanations are currently available. The first is that poor postpartum mental health is a consequence of an evolutionary trade-off – a compromise of neurological changes in the maternal brain during pregnancy which, on the one hand, maintain pregnancy, and on the other, increase the likelihood for postpartum women to develop psychopathology. The second explanation is that poor postpartum mental health is a (...) disease of civilization. This theoretical paper demonstrates that both explanations ignore the crucial event of childbirth. I elaborate on environmental features of childbirth, a physiological process that is substantially different in the current versus evolutionary childbirth and postpartum setting, and argue that maternal brain neuroplasticity and biochemical alterations are not an evolutionary trade-off, but an adaptation. Additionally, the incidents of poor postpartum mental health are better viewed as a maladaptation of the typical modern environments – an evolutionary mismatch. Thus, the potential to suffer from poor mental health in postpartum is an external, contingent happening, dependent on contemporary childbirth and postpartum environments, and not due to any essential property women possess as a result of evolutionary compromise. In fact, women are probably adapted to feel like superwomen right after birth, a state of mind that is an aid in adapting to motherhood. Distinguishing between evolutionary concepts in the context of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood is vital for developing more accurate preventions and interventions. (shrink)

The present study investigated whether individual differences between psychologists in thinking styles are associated with accuracy in diagnostic classification. We asked novice and experienced clinicians to classify two clinical cases of clients with two co-occurring psychological disorders. No significant difference in diagnostic accuracy was found between the two groups, but when combining the data from novices and experienced psychologists accuracy was found to be negatively associated with certain decision making strategies and with a higher self-assessed ability and preference for a (...) rational thinking style. Our results underscore the idea that it might be fruitful to look for explanations of differences in the accuracy of diagnostic judgments in individual differences between psychologists (such as in thinking styles or decision making strategies used), rather than in experience level. (shrink)

Open theists argue that God's relationship to time, as conceived in classical theism, is erroneous. They explain that it is contradictory for an atemporal being to act in a temporal universe, including experiencing its temporal successions. Contrary to the atemporalists, redemptive history has shown that God interacts with humans in time. This relational nature of God nullifies the classical notion of God as timelessly eternal. Therefore, it lacks a philosophical and theological basis. Because God is in time, He does not (...) know all future contingencies and, therefore, changes. This study examines open theism's appropriation of the A and B theories of time to the divine-human relationship. The study argues that divine temporality does not solve the tension of divine-human relationships, especially in relation to the future. Further, historical divine temporality does not negate the fact of divine atemporality. It mainly stems from God's choice to create temporal creatures and His relationship with them. Furthermore, if it is not logically and metaphysically contradictory for an omnipresent being to act in space, then it follows that an atemporal being can act in time. Whether time is understood from the metric or psychological point of view, it does not transcend God, and therefore, the limitation it places on human creatures with respect to the future does not apply to God. Lastly, although a few philosophers reject the notion of eternity as timelessly eternal, the doctrine has a philosophical and theological basis in the Scripture. (shrink)

It is widely asserted that we are now living in a post-truth society. What that means, this book argues, is that the contemporary global world is thoroughly infested not only with trickster figures but an entire and operational trickster logic; or, that we now live in a Trickster Land - an argument advanced by the claim that in modernity liminality has become permanent; or that modern life is patently absurd. The first part of the book presents a series of 'guides' (...) to this condition, in the form of key thinkers and writers who can help us understand and navigate our Trickster Land. Such guides include Hermann Broch, Lewis Hyde, Roberto Calasso, Michel Serres, Sándor Márai, Colin Thubron, and Albert Camus. The second part goes on to discuss five main regions of Trickster Land: art, thought, the economy, politics, and society. This last, central chapter of the book contrasts trickster logic with the basic, foundational logic of social life, presented as gift-giving by Marcel Mauss and as sociability by Georg Simmel, and which is expressed here, combining Heraclitus and Plato with the Gospel of John, by three basic terms of ancient Greek culture, as arkhé charis logos: meaningful social life originally and in its essence is animated by the power of kind benevolence. This volume will appeal to scholars of social theory, anthropology and sociology with interests in political thought and contemporary culture. (shrink)

In this benchmark five-volume study, originally published between 1922 and 1955, Surendranath Dasgupta examines the principal schools of thought that define Indian philosophy. A unifying force greater than art, literature, religion, or science, Professor Dasgupta describes philosophy as the most important achievement of Indian thought, arguing that an understanding of its history is necessary to appreciate the significance and potentialities of India's complex culture. Volume I offers an examination of the Vedas and the Brahmanas, the earlier Upanisads, and the six (...) systems of Indian philosophy. (shrink)

In recent papers, Eric Schwitzgebel argues that if physicalism is true, then the United States is probably conscious. My primary aim here is to demonstrate that the source of Schwitzgebel’s conditional argument is the “Problem of Other Minds,” which is a general problem; wherefore, Schwitzgebel’s conclusion should be revised and applied not only to physicalism, but to most contemporary theories of the mind. I analyze the difference between Schwitzgebel’s argument and other arguments against functionalism, arguing that the difference between them (...) is rooted in referring to the causal role of the whole system, rather than referring to the casual role of the system’s parts. This key difference between functionalism and behaviorism explains why the source of Schwitzgebel’s argument stems from the problem of other minds. I conclude that however counterintuitive from a metaphysical point of view, the United States may have its own stream of consciousness, but it has nothing to do with physicalism in particular. (shrink)

In his new book Origins of Order: Project and System in the American Legal Imagination, Paul Kahn uses a conceptual array that consists of two concepts: system and project. These two concepts are c...

Hannah Arendt was fearful not only of a populist President speaking in the name of the people and unbound by legality. She was also concerned that popular support could be harnessed by those responsible for limiting it. In other words, she was fearful of the American Supreme Court relying on popular support. This is the meaning of her obscure depiction of the American Supreme Court as “the true seat of authority in the American Republic” but unfit to power. I argue (...) that Arendt's characterization of authority as requiring “neither coercion nor persuasion” means that the Court's source of legitimacy is expertise rather than public support. Yet the current dominant understanding among American Justices as well as scholars is that public support is the source of the Court's authority. In Arendt's mind, such an understanding means that the Court has become the seat of power. The corruption of the Court's authority and constitutional law as a language of expertise capable of resisting public opinion will inevitably follow. (shrink)

The problem of multiple-computations discovered by Hilary Putnam presents a deep difficulty for functionalism (of all sorts, computational and causal). We describe in out- line why Putnam’s result, and likewise the more restricted result we call the Multiple- Computations Theorem, are in fact theorems of statistical mechanics. We show why the mere interaction of a computing system with its environment cannot single out a computation as the preferred one amongst the many computations implemented by the system. We explain why nonreductive (...) approaches to solving the multiple- computations problem, and in particular why computational externalism, are dualistic in the sense that they imply that nonphysical facts in the environment of a computing system single out the computation. We discuss certain attempts to dissolve Putnam’s unrestricted result by appealing to systems with certain kinds of input and output states as a special case of computational externalism, and show why this approach is not workable without collapsing to behaviorism. We conclude with some remarks about the nonphysical nature of mainstream approaches to both statistical mechanics and the quantum theory of measurement with respect to the singling out of partitions and observables. (shrink)

Philosophers of physics have long debated whether the Past State of low entropy of our universe calls for explanation. What is meant by “calls for explanation”? In this article we analyze this notion, distinguishing between several possible meanings that may be attached to it. Taking the debate around the Past State as a case study, we show how our analysis of what “calling for explanation” might mean can contribute to clarifying the debate and perhaps to settling it, thus demonstrating the (...) fruitfulness of this analysis. Applying our analysis, we show that two main opponents in this debate, Huw Price and Craig Callender, are, for the most part, talking past each other rather than disagreeing, as they employ different notions of “calling for explanation”. We then proceed to show how answering the different questions that arise out of the different meanings of “calling for explanation” can result in clarifying the problems at hand and thus, hopefully, to solving them. (shrink)

Across cultures people construct spatial representations of time. However, the particular spatial layouts created to represent time may differ across cultures. This paper examines whether people automatically access and use culturally specific spatial representations when reasoning about time. In Experiment 1, we asked Hebrew and English speakers to arrange pictures depicting temporal sequences of natural events, and to point to the hypothesized location of events relative to a reference point. In both tasks, English speakers (who read left to right) arranged (...) temporal sequences to progress from left to right, whereas Hebrew speakers (who read right to left) arranged them from right to left, replicating previous work. In Experiments 2 and 3, we asked the participants to make rapid temporal order judgments about pairs of pictures presented one after the other (i.e., to decide whether the second picture showed a conceptually earlier or later time-point of an event than the first picture). Participants made responses using two adjacent keyboard keys. English speakers were faster to make “earlier” judgments when the “earlier” response needed to be made with the left response key than with the right response key. Hebrew speakers showed exactly the reverse pattern. Asking participants to use a space-time mapping inconsistent with the one suggested by writing direction in their language created interference, suggesting that participants were automatically creating writing-direction consistent spatial representations in the course of their normal temporal reasoning. It appears that people automatically access culturally specific spatial representations when making temporal judgments even in nonlinguistic tasks. (shrink)

Statistical mechanics is a strange theory. Its aims are debated, its methods are contested, its main claims have never been fully proven, and their very truth is challenged, yet at the same time, it enjoys huge empirical success and gives us the feeling that we understand important phenomena. What is this weird theory, exactly? Statistical mechanics is the name of the ongoing attempt to apply mechanics, together with some auxiliary hypotheses, to explain and predict certain phenomena, above all those described (...) by thermodynamics. This paper shows what parts of this objective can be achieved with mechanics by itself. It thus clarifies what roles remain for the auxiliary assumptions that are needed to achieve the rest of the desiderata. Those auxiliary hypotheses are described in another paper in this journal, Foundations of statistical mechanics: The auxiliary hypotheses. (shrink)

This article considers ethical dilemmas that nurse managers may confront and suggests an ethical decision-making model that could be used as a tool for resolving such dilemmas. The focus of the article is on the question: Can nurse managers choose the ethically right solution in conflicting situations when nurses’ rights collide with patients’ rights to quality care in a world of cost-effective and economic constraint? Managers’ responsibility is to ensure and facilitate a safe and ethical working environment in which nurses (...) are able to give quality care to their patients. In nursing it is frequently declared that managers’ main obligations are to patients’ needs and their rights to receive quality care. However, managers’ ethical responsibilities are not only to patients but also to the nurses working in their institution. This article describes a real (but disguised) situation from an Israeli health care context to illustrate the dilemmas that may arise. The question is posed of whether nurse managers can maintain patients’ and nurses’ rights and, at the same time, fulfill their obligation to the conflicting demands of the organization. The article also offers a way to solve conflict by using an ethical decision-making model. (shrink)

In this paper we examine how English and Mandarin speakers think about time, and we test how the patterns of thinking in the two groups relate to patterns in linguistic and cultural experience. In Mandarin, vertical spatial metaphors are used more frequently to talk about time than they are in English; English relies primarily on horizontal terms. We present results from two tasks comparing English and Mandarin speakers’ temporal reasoning. The tasks measure how people spatialize time in three-dimensional space, including (...) the sagittal (front/back), transverse (left/right), and vertical (up/down) axes. Results of Experiment 1 show that people automatically create spatial representations in the course of temporal reasoning, and these implicit spatializations differ in accordance with patterns in language, even in a non-linguistic task. Both groups showed evidence of a left-to-right representation of time, in accordance with writing direction, but only Mandarin speakers showed a vertical top-to-bottom pattern for time (congruent with vertical spatiotemporal metaphors in Mandarin). Results of Experiment 2 confirm and extend these findings, showing that bilinguals’ representations of time depend on both long-term and proximal aspects of language experience. Participants who were more proficient in Mandarin were more likely to arrange time vertically (an effect of previous language experience). Further, bilinguals were more likely to arrange time vertically when they were tested in Mandarin than when they were tested in English (an effect of immediate linguistic context). (shrink)

Statistical mechanics is the name of the ongoing attempt to explain and predict certain phenomena, above all those described by thermodynamics on the basis of the fundamental theories of physics, in particular mechanics, together with certain auxiliary assumptions. In another paper in this journal, Foundations of statistical mechanics: Mechanics by itself, I have shown that some of the thermodynamic regularities, including the probabilistic ones, can be described in terms of mechanics by itself. But in order to prove those regularities, in (...) particular the time asymmetric ones, it is necessary to add to mechanics assumptions of three kinds, all of which are under debate in contemporary literature. One kind of assumptions concerns measure and probability, and here, a major debate is around the notion of “typicality.” A second assumption concerns initial conditions, and here, the debate is about the nature and status of the so-called past hypothesis. The third kind of assumptions concerns the dynamics, and here, the possibility and significance of “Maxwell's Demon” is the main topic of discussions. This article describes these assumptions and examines the justification for introducing them, emphasizing the contemporary debates around them. (shrink)

The draft Code of Conduct for Research is an important initiative towards assisting the scientific community in complying with the provisions of the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA). However, its approach towards cross-border data sharing should be reconsidered to clarify the ambiguities inherent in the legal requirements for the cross-border sharing of health data in the POPIA. These ambiguities include the concept of ‘transfer of information’, the application of adequacy as a legal mechanism for transfer, the (...) nature of consent for cross-border sharing and the scope of the recipient third party. We suggest that the draft Code of Conduct for Research can be improved by: Explaining or defining the concept of ‘transfer of information’ and when it applies to cross-border sharing in research Clarifying the application of adequacy as a legal mechanism for transfer vis-à-vis the other alternatives Expanding on the interpretation and application of consent as a legal mechanism for cross-border transfers Expanding the category of persons who may be recipients of personal information in a third country. (shrink)

Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? Can time have a beginning? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Riddles, paradoxes, conundrums--for millennia the human mind has found such knotty logical problems both perplexing and irresistible. Now Roy Sorensen offers the first narrative history of paradoxes, a fascinating and eye-opening account that extends from the ancient Greeks, through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and into the twentieth century. When Augustine asked what God was doing before (...) He made the world, he was told: "Preparing hell for people who ask questions like that." A Brief History of the Paradox takes a close look at "questions like that" and the philosophers who have asked them, beginning with the folk riddles that inspired Anaximander to erect the first metaphysical system and ending with such thinkers as Lewis Carroll, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and W.V. Quine. Organized chronologically, the book is divided into twenty-four chapters, each of which pairs a philosopher with a major paradox, allowing for extended consideration and putting a human face on the strategies that have been taken toward these puzzles. Readers get to follow the minds of Zeno, Socrates, Aquinas, Ockham, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, and many other major philosophers deep inside the tangles of paradox, looking for, and sometimes finding, a way out. Filled with illuminating anecdotes and vividly written, A Brief History of the Paradox will appeal to anyone who finds trying to answer unanswerable questions a paradoxically pleasant endeavor. (shrink)

Background:Organ donation and transplantation have made it possible to both save life and to improve the quality of life for a large number of patients. In the last years there has been an increasing gap between the number of patients who need organs and organs available for transplantation, and the focus worldwide has been on how to meet the organ shortage. This also rises some ethical challenges.Objective:The objective of this study was to explore healthcare professionals' experience of ethics related to (...) care and interaction with critically ill patients with severe brain injuries and their families.Research design:A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used to explore the participants' experiences. Methods for collecting data were a combination of participant observations and in-depth interviews.Participants and research context:Two ICUs in a Norwegian university hospital were recruited for data collection. A total of 12 cases were observed, and 32 of the healthcare professionals involved were interviewed.Ethical considerations:The study was approved by the Regional Committee for Research Ethics. Permission to the study in the ICUs was obtained from the Chief Physician in the two ICUs respectively. The right of the participants was ensured by written, voluntary, and informed consent.Findings:From the thematic analysis, a structure of the participants' experiences emerged as a process. While the patients' condition was clarified through phases of prognostic ambiguity, gradual clarification and prognostic certainty, interaction with the families was characterized by ambiguity that involved withholding. The prognostic process had a great impact on how the healthcare professionals interacted with the family. The interaction challenged the participants' caring values in various ways and captured an important structure in their experiences of the ethical interaction with the patients' families. These challenges distinguish caring for families in donation situations from caring for relatives of critically ill patients in general.Discussion:In the discussion we have illuminated how professional ethics may be threatened by more pragmatic and utilitarian arguments contained in regulations and transplant act.Conclusion:Ethical questions should be discussed more both in educations of healthcare professionals and in clinical practice. (shrink)

This article offers a case study on the social role of a charismatic shaykh, Abū Bakr al-Mawṣilī (d. 797/1394), in fourteenth-century Damascus and Jerusalem, and on the way he established his saintly reputation and accumulated cultural capital. Based mainly on a to-date unstudied manuscript written by the shaykh’s grandson, it analyzes how the shaykh managed to pass this capital on to his offspring and how they formalized, institutionalized, and consolidated his ṭarīqa into a stable social organization, with the Mawṣilī household (...) at its center, which, although never spreading outside of Greater Syria, continued to flourish locally for centuries. (shrink)

Statistical mechanics is often taken to be the paradigm of a successful inter-theoretic reduction, which explains the high-level phenomena (primarily those described by thermodynamics) by using the fundamental theories of physics together with some auxiliary hypotheses. In my view, the scope of statistical mechanics is wider since it is the type-identity physicalist account of all the special sciences. But in this chapter, I focus on the more traditional and less controversial domain of this theory, namely, that of explaining the thermodynamic (...) phenomena.What are the fundamental theories that are taken to explain the thermodynamic phenomena? The lively research into the foundations of classical statistical mechanics suggests that using classical mechanics to explain the thermodynamic phenomena is fruitful. Strictly speaking, in contemporary physics, classical mechanics is considered to be false. Since classical mechanics preserves certain explanatory and predictive aspects of the true fundamental theories, it can be successfully applied in certain cases. In other circumstances, classical mechanics has to be replaced by quantum mechanics. In this chapter I ask the following two questions: I) How does quantum statistical mechanics differ from classical statistical mechanics? How are the well-known differences between the two fundamental theories reflected in the statistical mechanical account of high-level phenomena? II) How does quantum statistical mechanics differ from quantum mechanics simpliciter? To make our main points I need to only consider non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Most of the ideas described and addressed in this chapter hold irrespective of the choice of a (so-called) interpretation of quantum mechanics, and so I will mention interpretations only when the differences between them are important to the matter discussed. (shrink)