Research on bias in peer review examines scholarly communication and funding processes to assess the epistemic and social legitimacy of the mechanisms by which knowledge communities vet and self-regulate their work. Despite vocal concerns, a closer look at the empirical and methodological limitations of research on bias raises questions about the existence and extent of many hypothesized forms of bias. In addition, the notion of bias is predicated on an implicit ideal that, once articulated, raises questions about the normative implications (...) of research on bias in peer review. This review provides a brief description of the function, history, and scope of peer review; articulates and critiques the conception of bias unifying research on bias in peer review; characterizes and examines the empirical, methodological, and normative claims of bias in peer review research; and assesses possible alternatives to the status quo. We close by identifying ways to expand conceptions and studies of bias to countenance the complexity of social interactions among actors involved directly and indirectly in peer review. (shrink)

L'impérieux amour de Pascal. - Discours sur les passions de l'amour. - Lettres de Pascal à Charlotte de Roannez. - Pensées de Pascal sur l'amitié. - Pensées de Pascal sur le coeur. - Pensées de Pascal sur l'amour. - Pensées de Pascal sur la concupisence.

Pascal was a scientist and man of the world who came to be a passionately devout Christian. The fragments of his great defense of Christianity, left unfinished at his death in 1662, survive in the form of the Pensees. This series of brief, dramatic notes on his religious convictions are here translated into English. These thoughts expose Pascal's vision of the world and display powerful reasoning and a profound faith.

edited by Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff Since its appearance in English translation in 1996, Jürgen Habermas's Between Facts and Norms has become the focus of a productive dialogue between German and Anglo-American legal and political theorists. The present volume contains ten essays that provide an overview of Habermas's political thought since the original appearance of Between Facts and Norms in 1992 and extend his model of deliberative democracy in novel ways to issues untreated in the earlier work.Habermas's (...) theory of democracy has at least three features that set it apart from competing positions. First, it combines a concern with questions of normative justification with an empirical analysis of the social conditions necessary for the realization of democratic institutions. Second, at the heart of his model is the assertion of an internal relationship between liberalism and democracy. On this account, the rights of the individual that are central to liberalism can be guaranteed only within a constitutional framework that at the same time fosters democratic rights of political participation through the public sphere. Finally, Habermas defends a conception of universal human rights that is not only sensitive to cultural differences but also calls for legal and political institutions that facilitate the cultivation of cultural and religious identities within pluralistic societies.These essays demonstrate the extraordinary power of Habermas's theory of democracy through a further engagement with Rawls's political liberalism and through original contributions to current debates over nationalism, multiculturalism, and the viability of supranational political institutions. (shrink)

"I know of no religious writer more pertinent to our time."—T. S. Eliot, Introduction to Pensees Intended to prove that religion is not contrary to reason, Pascal's Pensees rank among the liveliest and most eloquent defenses of Christianity. Motivated by the seventeenth-century view of the supremacy of human reason, Pascal (1623–1662) had intended to write an ambitious apologia for Christianity in which he argued the inability of reason to address metaphysical problems. His untimely death prevented the work's completion, but the (...) fragments published posthumously in 1670 as Pensees remain a vital part of religious and philosophical literature. W. F. Trotter translation. Introduction by T. S. Eliot. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

AESTHETICS OF “PURE SIGN” ADORNO, MERLEAU-PONTY AND ART AS AN ENDLESS REINVENTION OF REALITY Contemporary painting has often dealt with signs, graffiti, calligraphy, and more precisely with aesthetic objects that take the form and appearance of signs, but which do not belong to any existing alphabet. These are forms that imitate signs but are what we might call “pure signs”, i.e. signifiers without a signified. This form of artistic experimentation has elicited parallel and convergent analyses by Merleau-Ponty and Adorno. These (...) authors show the ways in which this kind of artistic experimentation at once renews reflection on language and reflection on art, through a more fundamental reflection on the cognitive actions that they necessarily share, namely deciphering and interpretation. By asking how signs that have no conventional meaning can still be identified as signs–the “decryption” of which is therefore impossible–we re-actualize a question that goes back to Plato and Augustine. How can we begin to investigate and understand what we do not know yet? How does the decryption and interpretation process arise for one who does not yet know if there is something to understand? This type of artwork actually has a meaning, but not in the traditional sense. Although they are unreadable and untranslatable, such works clarifying the meaning of interpretation for us, they free us from a naive and simplistic conception of the process of understanding. They show us that interpretation is always a process of inventing and producing a new meaning, but never of actually finding a pre-existing meaning. In doing so, these kinds of artwork are inseparable from ontological and political issues. Against a conservative view of our relationship to reality, they make us aware that the sense of reality is never simply given nor definitive, and that our relationship to reality contains much more potential than we commonly believe. (shrink)

"I know of no religious writer more pertinent to our time."—T. S. Eliot, Introduction to Pensees Intended to prove that religion is not contrary to reason, Pascal's Pensees rank among the liveliest and most eloquent defenses of Christianity. Motivated by the seventeenth-century view of the supremacy of human reason, Pascal (1623–1662) had intended to write an ambitious apologia for Christianity in which he argued the inability of reason to address metaphysical problems. His untimely death prevented the work's completion, but the (...) fragments published posthumously in 1670 as Pensees remain a vital part of religious and philosophical literature. W. F. Trotter translation. Introduction by T. S. Eliot. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

G. E. L. Owen, in his infl uential paper “Inherence,” talks of “vink,” a name he has created for a particular shade of the color pink, and this “vink” serves as an individual in the Aristotelian category of quality. Owen was one of the first to aim to discredit the belief that J. L. Ackrill and his camp espoused, the belief that Aristotle thought that “general attributes are not in individuals, particular attributes are not in more than one individual.” I (...) postulate that there is nothing here that does not preclude the existence of transferable nonsubstantial particulars, and base this view on passages from Aristotle’s Categories and certain examples found in Ammonius’s commentary and On Colors. Given this, a nonsubstantial particular of “vink” would not have to rely on having inhered in just one particular body to have existence, however, it would have to inhere in at least one particular body. (shrink)

The issue of directed donation of organs from deceased donors for transplantation has recently risen to the fore, given greater significance by the relatively stagnant rate of deceased donor donation in the UK. Although its status and legitimacy is explicitly recognized across the USA, elsewhere a more cautious, if not entirely negative, stance has been taken. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Human Tissue Act 2004, and in Scotland the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006, are both silent in this (...) regard. Although so-called conditional donation, donation to (or perhaps withheld from) a specific class, has been outlawed as a product of guidance issued by the Secretary of State for Health issued in the wake of the controversial incident occurring in the North of England in 1998, its intended application to ‘directed’ donation is less certain. Directed and conditional donations challenge the traditional construct of altruistic donation and impartial (equitable) allocation in a very immediate and striking fashion. They implicitly raise important questions as to whether the body or parts of the body are capable of being owned, and by whom. This paper attempts to explore the notion of donor ownership of body parts and its implications for both directed and conditional donation. (shrink)

Philosophy has sometimes been described as the discipline in which you can never be wrong, as the reserve of absentminded professors, aloof academics and purveyors of obscure ideas or interesting opinions. Quite the contrary. Philosophy answers the hard questions: Does everything happen by chance? Is there anything more than matter in the universe? Are humans in the same class as animals? Is there a God? Can we know the correct answer to these questions? The answers to these questions matter. We (...) are all philosophers even though we are not aware of the fact. We each have a set of ultimate priorities and principles, answers to these questions, a big picture that determines our everyday thoughts, decisions, and actions. In this book Brian Cronin uses the ideas of Bernard Lonergan's Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, to argue methodically towards a correct, critical, comprehensive worldview, an answer to those big questions which is the precise task of first philosophy. This book is an accessible and readable presentation of Lonergan's metaphysics, a somewhat neglected topic. Science and philosophy are complementary. Scientists answer the concrete, detailed questions about everything around us: the parts. Philosophy integrates all these into a correct worldview of the whole: of everything. (shrink)

The report from the Organ Donation Taskforce looking at the potential impact of an opt-out system for deceased donor organ donation in the UK, published in November 2008, is probably the most comprehensive and systematic inquiry to date into the issues and considerations which might affect the availability of deceased donor organs for clinical transplantation. By the end of a thorough and transparent process, a clear consensus was reached. The taskforce rejected the idea of an opt-out system. In this article (...) we acknowledge the life saving potential of organ transplants and seek to highlight the difficulties that arise when the issue of organ shortage competes with concerns over choice and authorisation in the context of deceased donor organ donation. (shrink)

Is the possession of taste relevant to the practice of moral and political judgement? For Mary Wollstonecraft and many of her contemporaries, the formation of taste was increasingly significant for...

Cronin, Patrick An empirical research project was conducted in the Archdiocese of Adelaide to investigate parish practices of mystagogy in the period after Easter for those involved in the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults). This research established, by statistical and qualitative analysis, support for the thesis of a positive correlation between the quality of mystagogy offered at the parish level, and on-going participation of the newly received in parish life over subsequent years. The data gathering instruments consisted (...) of three questionnaires which were developed and delivered to parishes at the end of the mystagogy period in 2010. This enabled three sets of data to be collected retrospectively from RCIA teams for the period 2008 to 2010 inclusive. Two sets of data from the parish teams were used for ranking purposes and subsequent statistical analysis, while the third set of data from the neophytes and newly-received was used for qualitative analysis. This paper discusses some of the analyses of these sets of data and argues for the utility of empirical research as a source for evidencebased enhancements to ministry practice. (shrink)

Cronin, Patrick Mystagogy is the fourth period of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). This article traces its development since the reforms of Vatican II.

Living-donor kidney transplantation is the “gold standard” treatment for many individuals with end-stage renal failure. Superior outcomes for the graft and the transplant recipient have prompted the implementation of new strategies promoting living-donor kidney transplantation, and the number of such transplants has increased considerably over recent years. Living donors are undoubtedly exposed to risk. In his editorial “underestimating the risk in living kidney donation”, Walter Glannon suggests that more data on long-term outcomes for living donors are needed to determine whether (...) this risk is permissible and the extent to which physicians and transplant surgeons should promote living-donor kidney transplantation.1 In this paper I argue that it is not clear that medical professionals have underestimated this risk, nor is it clear that more data on long-term outcomes are needed in order to determine whether it is permissible for individual autonomous agents to expose themselves to this or, indeed, any risk. The global shortage of organs available for transplantation ultimately means that every year thousands of individuals who value their life die needlessly. This is an unacceptable loss of human life. Saving life is one of the most wonderful things an individual can do for another. Promoting any strategy that will assist in saving life and preventing human suffering within acceptable moral limits is legitimate. (shrink)

It has long been theorized that Heidegger’s idea for Dasein was highly influenced by the Chinese notion of the Dao. This is due to a misinterpretation on behalf of Heideggerian scholars and others of what the Dao represents. In fact, Heidegger, in explicating what he thought to be “the most extreme inversion of φύσης-ουσία [phusis-ousia],” made this equal to “Chinese-like ‘constancy,’” which is the basis of the Dao. Taking what Heidegger interpreted phusis to be (derived from Aristotelian metaphysics and an (...) assumption of pre-Socratic thought) as a process of unconcealment from continuing re-concealment which signals a kind of “truth” of being [phusis], that which calls for constant presence is inauthentic Dasein, rather than authentic Dasein. In other words, Heidegger’s idea of what inauthentic Dasein calls for could be explained within Aristotle’s system as equal to aiming to replace phusis with the know-how of τέχνη [techne]. The Dao, as rightfully understood and utilized by the master craftsman and the Sage, is accessible, constant, and knowable. This could not be in more opposition to Heidegger’s notion of phusis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 51-80 [Access article in PDF] Kant's Politics of Enlightenment Ciaran Cronin THE ENDURING RESONANCE OF Kant's brief essay "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" (henceforth "WE") can be traced in large part to the connection it makes between two ideas central to the self-understanding of European modernity. The first is the idea of autonomy implicit in its famous (...) definition of enlightenment: "Enlightenment is the human being's emergence from his self-incurred minority.Minority is the inability to make use of one's own understanding without direction from another... Sapere aude! Have courage to make use of your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment." 1 Kant's rallying cry to independence of thought resonates with the view that individual autonomy is a central component of modern self-identity. The second is the defense of freedom in the public use of reason: "For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but freedom, and indeed the least harmful of anything that could even be called freedom: namely freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters." 2 With this emphatic endorsement of freedom of expression as a precondition of enlightenment, Kant appears to situate the project of enlightenment squarely in the tradition of liberal political thought. [End Page 51]Yet the interpretation of the essay as a defense of a liberal model of freedom of expression proves to be problematic on a closer reading. Even Kant's famous definition of enlightenment is not without its puzzling aspects. He employs the legal term "minority" (Unmündigkeit, often translated as "immaturity"), the condition of a child or dependent who has not reached the legal age of adulthood, to describe the condition of human beings before they have achieved enlightenment; but as some of his contemporaries remarked, the idea of a minority that is "self-incurred" makes no legal sense. That their puzzlement was not just a matter of injudicious terminology is shown by Kant's apparent indecision over whether the failure of individuals to make independent use of their reason is due to lack of courage on their part 3 or whether it is because they have been prevented from doing so by constraining social authorities. 4 Even more perplexing is Kant's idiosyncratic distinction between the private and public uses of reason: "by the public use of one's own reason I understand that use which someone makes of it as a scholar before the entire public of the world of readers. What I call the private use of reason is that which one may make of it in a certain civil post or office with which he is entrusted." 5 What is perplexing in this is not so much the restriction of the public use of reason to scholars addressing a public of readers as the characterization of the use of one's reason in exercising a civil or public office as "private." Moreover, liberal sensibilities cannot fail to be ruffled by the authoritarian cast of some of Kant's remarks. Most troubling is the observation that only a ruler who "hasa well-disciplined and numerous army ready to guarantee public peace" can tolerate complete freedom of public expression and that a lesser degree of civil freedom (bürgerliche Freiheit) is conducive to the fullest expansion of "a people's freedom of spirit" (or intellectual freedom, Freiheit des Geistes). 6 This would seem to lend ammunition to those who argue that Kant ultimately embraces a conservative politicalposition in contradiction to the radical implications of his own critical philosophy. 7 [End Page 52]But an examination of the historical context of the essay reveals that it is neither a clear expression of a liberal nor of a conservative position as these are conventionally understood, or so I will argue. The perplexing features of the essay become intelligible when it is seen as part of a larger project of reconciling the ideal requirements of a republican constitution with the political reality of Prussian absolutism in response to contemporary debates concerning... (shrink)

Afin de clarifier la réalité elle-même, Nietzsche rapporte généalogiquement le « conatus » spinoziste à une volonté de statisme à laquelle il oppose la dynamique expansive de la volonté de puissance. Pourtant, on peut montrer que Nietzsche rejette moins la conservation qu’il ne la réinterprète dans l’ordre d’une grandeur à produire, indissociable du tragique.

This paper engages with debates around transformations in the production and circulation of images and the changes in modes of perception that these offer. Paul Virilio has argued that technological developments have produced a shift in the site of meaning‐production from the material reference space of the image to the time of visual contact by the viewer. I consider what significance these temporalities have in relation to social difference, and I develop debates around the performative to consider how the viewer (...) is constituted in visual performativity. This focus on time and performativity opens up questions of how vision may constitute the agency, intention and responsibility of the viewer. Drawing on an example of visual irony in advertising, I explore how the temporal suspension of meanings allows for a suspension of the terms of intent and responsibility. This visual performative accesses and reworks the terms of social difference and privilege in what I have called ‘retroactive intentionality’. (shrink)

Wilkinson’s discussion of the individual and family consent to organ and tissue donation is to be welcomed because it draws attention to the “incoherent hybrid” of the current position.1 I wish to highlight some areas of his discussion and propose that, in a situation of posthumous organ and tissue donation, the cadaver has no individual rights and family rights should under no circumstances automatically outweigh the potential transplant recipients’ right to a life-saving treatment.Transplant immunobiology and clinical transplantation is a revolutionary (...) area of medicine and has saved thousands of lives. In the UK, between 1 April 2004 and 31 March 2005, organs from 752 people who died were used to save or dramatically improve many people’s lives through 2242 transplants.2 In the US, 23 506 transplants were performed between January and October 2005 from 12 084 donors.3 Information from available databases shows that demand for organs, cells and tissues has outstripped the supply. As of 18 January 2006, 6553 people are still waiting for transplants in the UK and there are 90 636 waiting list transplant candidates in the US.2,3 As of 01 January 2006, there are 15 977 people active on the Eurotransplant waiting list.4 It is likely that non-compulsory posthumous donation of organs has resulted in the loss of many thousands, possibly many …. (shrink)

Do you believe it to be impossible that God is infinite, without parts?-Yes. I wish therefore to show you an infinite and indivisible thing. It is a point moving everywhere with an infinite velocity; for it is one in all places, and is all totality in every place. Let this effect of nature, which previously seemed to you impossible, make you know that there may be others of which you are still ignorant. Do not draw this conclusion from your experiment, (...) that there remains nothing for you to know; but rather that there remains an infinity for you to know. (shrink)

For much of his life Pascal (1623-62) worked on a magnum opus which was never published in its intended form. Instead, he left a mass of fragments, some of them meant as notes for the Apologie. These were to become known as the Pensées, and they occupy a crucial place in Western philosophy and religious writing. Pascal's general intention was to confound scepticism about metaphysical questions. Some of the Pensées are fully developed literary reflections on the human condition,, some contradict (...) others, and some remain jottings whose meaning will never be clear. The most important are among the most powerful aphorisms about human experience and behaviour ever written in any language. This translation is the only one based on the Pensées as Pascal left them. It includes the principal dossiers classified by Pascal, as well as the essential portion of the important Writings on Grace. A detailed thematic index gives access to Pascal's areas of concern, while the selection of texts and the introduction help to show why Pascal changed the plan of his projected work before abandoning the book he might have written. (shrink)

This collection of four essays and an interview contains Habermas's most recent contributions to ethical theory. It expands and clarifies the work on discourse ethics presented in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Here, largely in response to criticisms from contemporary neo-Aristotelians, Habermas underscores the claim of discourse ethics to a preeminent position in contemporary moral philosophy with incisive analyses and refinements of the central concepts of his theory that include important developments in his treatment of practical reason and of the (...) problems of application and motivation.The first essay offers a comprehensive analysis of practical rationality, which establishes a clear demarcation between pragmatic, ethical, and moral questions and a corresponding differentiation between forms of volition and spheres of practical discourse. The centerpiece of the book is a multifaceted defense of the central claims of discourse ethics incorporating masterly critiques of the major competing positions, including those of John Rawls, Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Karl-Otto Apel, and Albrecht WellmerThe middle essays defend the basic intention of universalist moral theory in the face of the claims of the neo-Aristotelian ethics of the good and Horkheimer's skepticism toward reason that led him to embrace a religiously inspired ethic of compassion. An interview with Habermas covering such topics as the genesis of discourse ethics, the precise import of some of its more controversial elements, and its interconnections with the theory of communicative actions concludes this important collection.Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. (shrink)

Cette étude considére le § 301 du Gai Savoir, à partir du § 98 même ouvrage. Dans le sillage de la «nouvelle justice» brièvement présentée dans le § 289, ce § 301 remaine en profondeur l'opposition traditionelle entre l'actif et le contemplatif; suivre pas à pas ect aphorisme permet ainsi de constituer «l'homme juste» en problime qui est cet «homme juste»? Brutus? Shakespeare? Le «poète»? Et donc: comment appréhender la «nouvelle justice»?Diese Untersuchung befasst sich mit dem § 301 der Fröhlichen (...) Wissenschaft, gestützt auf § 98 desselben Werks. Im Zuge der "neuen Gerechtigkrit", die in § 289 kurz dargestellt worden war, formt dieser § 301 den traditionellen Gegensatz zwischen dem Aktiven und dem Contemplativen grundlegend um. Die schrittweise Betrachtung dieses Aphorismus erlaubt dann, den "gerechten Menschen" zum Problem zu machen: wer ist dieser "gerechter Mensch"? Brutus? Shakespeare? Der "Dichter"? Und somit: wie ist die "neue gerechtigkeit" aufzufassen? This articles considers § 301 of The Gay Science in the light of § 98 of the same work. In the wake of the "new justice" briefly presented in § 289, § 301 is an in-depth reconsideration of the traditional opposition between the active and the contemplative; thus a step by step approach to this aphorism allows one to establish "the just man" as a problem: who is that "just man"? Brutus? Shakespeare? The "poet"? Hence, how is the notion of "new justice" to be grasped? (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.