Stem cell science is advancing at an unprecedented rate, with thousands of research papers being published every year and many clinical trials for a wide range of conditions underway as registered on ClinicalTrials.gov. This rapidly expanding and alluring field has brought with it ever more complex and multifaceted ethical issues, many of which require new guidelines, consent protocols and even change in legislation, since they do not fit comfortably in the existing bioethical regulations and protocols. Keeping up with the ethical (...) implications of stem cell research is daunting to the expert and non-expert. We review the various types of stem cells and then focus on multipotent and pluripotent cell types, since it is these cell types that bring with them the greatest research and therapeutic potential, while concurrently delivering novel ethical conundrums. Certain key considerations are currently lacking and what is needed is how to obtain permission from individuals who donate their biological material for both scientific inquiry and eventually, for their potential therapeutic utility. (shrink)

In «The Normativity of Meaning», Eric Gampel argues that the capacity to justify a linguistic usage is essential to meaning and suggests that this fact entails that naturalistic theories of meaning must take a non-reductive form if they are to be viable. I will argue that reductive and non-reductive naturalisms stand or fall together in the face of Gampel's argument that meaning plays an essential justificatory role. I will further argue that, if they fall, the lesson to be learned is (...) not that we should avoid reductionism, but rather, that we should steer clear of physicalism in our meaning theory; if Gampel's argument is cogent, any theory of meaning will have to make reference to at least some abstract objects. (shrink)

As late-1990s developments in higher education suggest that a concept of a university will continue to be redefined, this text looks at the past, present and possible future changes in the nature of universities.