This paper argues that there exists a collective epistemic state of ‘Broad Medical Uncertainty’ regarding the effectiveness of many medical interventions. We outline the features of BMU, and describe some of the main contributing factors. These include flaws in medical research methodologies, bias in publication practices, financial and other conflicts of interest, and features of how evidence is translated into practice. These result in a significant degree of uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of many medical treatments and unduly optimistic beliefs about (...) the benefit/harm profiles of such treatments. We argue for an ethical presumption in favour of openness regarding BMU as part of a ‘Corrective Response’. We then consider some objections to this position, including concerns that public honesty about flaws in medical research could undermine trust in healthcare institutions. We suggest that, as it stands, the Anti-Corrective Response is unconvincing. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ethics of public health communication. We argue that a number of commonplace tools of public health communication risk qualifying as non-honest and question whether or not using such tools is ethically justified. First, we introduce the concept of honesty and suggest some reasons for thinking it is morally desirable. We then describe a number of common ways in which public health communication presents information about health-promoting interventions. These include the omission of information about the magnitude of (...) benefits people can expect from health-promoting interventions, and failure to report uncertainty associated with the outcomes of interventions. Next we outline some forms of behaviour which are generally recognised by philosophers as being non-honest, including deception, manipulation, and so on. Finally, we suggest that many of the public health communicative practices identified earlier share features with the non-honest behaviours described and suggest this warrants reflection upon whether such non-honesty is justified by the goals of public health communication. (shrink)

Theorists, historians, and artists address the precarious futurity of the notion of the future. Not long ago, a melancholic left and a manic neoliberalism seemed to arrive at an awkward consensus: the foreclosure of futurity. Whereas the former mourned the failure of its utopian project, the latter celebrated the triumph of a global marketplace. The radical hope of realizing a singularly different, more equitable future displaced by a belief that the future had already come to pass, limiting post-historical society to (...) an uneventful life of endless accumulation. Today, amidst an abundance of neofuturisms, posthumanisms, futurologies, speculative philosophies and accelerationist scenarios, there is as well an expanding awareness of a looming planetary catastrophe driven by the extractionist logic of capitalism. Despite this return to the future, the temporal horizon of our present moment is perhaps more aptly characterized by the “shrinking future” of just-in-time production, risk management, high-frequency trading, and the futures market. In Futurity Report, theorists, historians, and artists address the precarious futurity of the notion of the future itself. Contributors McKenzie Wark, China Miéville, Kerstin Stakemeier, Diedrich Diederichsen, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marina Vishmidt, Johannes Paul Raether, Felicity D. Scott, Silvia Maglioni, Graeme Thomson, Doreen Mende, Pedro Neves Marques, Achille Mbembe, Kodwo Eshun, Haytham El-Wardany, T. J. Demos, Ana Teixeira Pinto. (shrink)

Die Frage, wie sich Aussagen uber Fahigkeiten von Personen zu Aussagen uber Moglichkeiten von Zustanden in der Welt verhalten, ist fur unser menschliches Selbstverstandnis zentral. Der vorliegende Band versammelt unter dieser Frage durchweg Originalbeitrage in historisch-systematischer Absicht; sie behandeln die Geschichte der Metaphysik und Ontologie von Parmenides bis Heidegger.INHALT: VORWORT - Klaus Jacobi: Das Konnen und die Moglichkeiten. Potentialitat und Possibilitat - Mischa von Perger: Moglichkeit, Parmenideisch - Ulrich Nortmann: 'Das Saatkorn ist dem Vermogen nach eine Pflanze'. Uber ontologische und (...) logische Aspekte Aristotelischer Moglichkeitssatze - Sang-Jin Kang: Anselm und die modallogische Betrachtung der gottlichen Notwendigkeit - Michael Astroh: Petrus Abaelardus on Modalities de re and de dicto - Christopher Martin: Peter Abaelard on Modality. Some Possibilities and Some Puzzles - Allan Back: Avicenna and Averroes: Modality and Theology - Seung-Chan (Elias) Park: Die Differenz von personlicher und unpersonlicher Moglichkeit bei Thomas von Aquin - Charles Lohr: 'Art' and Possibility: The Rule Concerning Possibility in the Ars lulliana - Peter King: Duns Scotus on Possibilities, Powers, and the Possible - Matthias Kaufmann: Gottes Allmacht und die Wahrheit modaler Satze. Potentialitat und Possibilitat bei Wilhelm von Ockham - Simo Knuuttila: On the History of Theory of Modality as Alternativeness - Stephan Meier-Oeser: Potentia versus Possibilitas? Posse! Zur cusanischen Konzeption der Moglichkeit - Dominik Perler: Cartesische Moglichkeiten - Hans Poser: Leibniz'sche Handlungsmodi zwischen Ontologie und Deontologie - Wilhelm Metz: Der transzendentale Moglichkeitsbegriff bei Kant und Fichte - Rainer Marten: Heidegger: Die eigenste eigentliche Moglichkeit - Tilman Borsche: Moglichkeiten des Seins, Moglichkeiten des Denkens - Thomas Buchheim: Zwischen Antinomie und Kompatibilitat: Versuch uber die naturliche Einbettung unserer Handlungsfreiheit - Kuno Lorenz: Dynamis und Energeia. Zur Aktualitat eines begrifflichen Werkzeugs von Aristoteles. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 53, Issue 2-4, pp 294 - 321 Manuscript London, British Library, Burney 330 contains an anonymous collection of grammatical sophisms, dating in all probability from early 13th-century France or England, and all based on problematic biblical, liturgical or religious propositions. After a presentation of the manuscript and collection, this article examines two analysis tools that are applied in the majority of the sophisms, viz. a distinction between three layers of grammatico-semantic perfection or completeness, and the grammatical and (...) semantic supposition doctrines. It appears that these sophisms pay prominent attention to improper or figurative supposition, but are not intended for highly advanced readers. These preliminary results suggest that the Burney Sophismata Collection constituted an exercise tool to support textbook-based instruction in theological grammar, which was developed by such masters as Peter the Chanter and William de Montibus in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. (shrink)