A significant and controversial 1996 news story was Dm% Alliance, a 3-part series wkitten by reporter Gary Webb fm the San Jose Mercury News. In the series, which appeared August 18-20, Webb reported links during the 1980s among the Central Intelligence Agency, a California drug ring, and US.-backed Nicaraguan rebels. Critics raised ethical questions about how Webb obtained information and about how he and the Mercury News presented the story. This essay examines those questions and discusses journalists' virtues. Guidelines for (...) cultivating virtues are presented. (shrink)

Background Although the importance of clinical ethics in contemporary clinical environments is established, development of formal clinical ethics services in the Australia health system has, to date, been ad hoc. This study was designed to systematically follow and reflect upon the first 18 months of activity by a newly established service, to examine key barriers and facilitators to establishing a new service in an Australian hospital setting. Methods: how the study was performed and statistical tests used A qualitative case study (...) approach was utilised. The study gathered and analysed data using observations of service committee meetings, document analysis of agendas and minutes, and semi-structured interviews with committee members to generate semantic themes. By interpreting the thematic findings in reference to national capacity building resources, this study also aimed to provide practice-based reflections for other health agencies. Results: the main findings An overarching theme identified in the data was a strong commitment to supporting clinicians facing difficult patient care decisions and navigating difficult discussions with patients and families. Another key theme was the role of the new clinical ethics support service in providing clinicians with a pathway to raise system-wide issues with the organisation Executive. While there was strong clinical engagement, consumer and community participation remained a challenge, as did unresolved governance issues and a need for clearer policy relationship between the service and the organisation. Conclusions: brief summary and potential implications Considering these themes in relation to the national capacity building resources, the study identifies three areas likely to require ongoing development and negotiation. These are: the role of the clinical ethics support service as a link between the workforce and the Executive; the incorporation of consumers and patients; and ethical reasoning. To improve the effectiveness of the service, it is necessary to increase clarity on the service’s role at the governance and policy level, as well as develop strategies for engaging consumers, patients and families. Finally, the capacity of the service to reflect on complex cases may be enhanced through explicit discussions of various different ethical frameworks and ways of deliberating. (shrink)

Ethical training in graduate programs is an important part of the professional development process. Such training has taken a position of prominence in both counseling and clinical psychology but seems to be lagging behind in the field of sport psychology. A debate exists about whether such training is necessary and, if so, how it should be provided. An important step in better understanding these issues is to identify how such training is currently taking place. This study surveyed the program directors (...) of sport psychology programs listed in the Directory of Graduate Programs in Applied Sport Psychology about the ethical training that takes place in their programs and their perceptions of the preparedness of the students in their programs. Of those contacted, 54% responded to the e-mail based survey. The results from these respondents indicated that 64.4% of programs require training in ethics and that the training was most commonly integrated into other nonethics courses. Overall, respondents did not feel as if students were completely prepared for either the ethical or legal issues that they will face in their professional careers. The importance of ethical training and suggestions for improving ethical training are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nonviolence—A Brief History: The Warsaw Lectures by John Howard YoderCarter AikinNonviolence—A Brief History: The Warsaw Lectures John Howard Yoder Edited By Paul Martens, Matthew Porter, and Myles Werntz Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2010. 150 pp. $29.95This helpful collection of lectures, delivered during a 1983 Polish Ecumenical Council (PEC) conference in Warsaw, displays John Howard Yoder’s emerging conviction that nonviolent action is not only a faithful response but (...) also an anthropologically natural and effective instrument of social change. Yoder constructively narrates the joining of theological and philosophical clarity about the importance of nonviolence with realizations of its social effectiveness as this connection blossomed in the turmoil of the twentieth century.The introduction nicely situates these lectures in their original social and ecumenical contexts, both of which turn out to be tremendously important. Yoder gave these lectures just weeks before Pope John Paul II met with the PEC for the first time and during the period when the US Catholic Bishop’s letter, “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response” was being formed. Additionally, in 1983 the vulnerable Polish Communist Party was trying to suppress the rising Solidarity Movement, the country’s first noncommunist trade union. The movement’s protests and strikes had only recently gained media attention [End Page 216] and had, thus far, stopped short of violence. In its setting alone, the collection offers a Yoder rarely seen through his modern interpreters: Yoder is socially relevant in the highest degree, concerned with the effectiveness of non-violence as a means of change, more than willing to incorporate the wisdom of non-Christian masters, and attentive to the response of the entire church catholic. Here Yoder is no more the resident alien than Martin Luther King Jr. was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.Yoder begins with a three-lecture equation: Tolstoy + Gandhi = MLK. Tolstoy’s corrective interpretations of the Gospels—emphasizing the personhood of Jesus and “the ‘key’ to the Scripture message: the cure for evil is suffering” (21)—used nonviolence and the suffering of the persecuted as the fabric of moral progress. Gandhi “moves with Tolstoy, but beyond him” (24); he sees the power of truth and suffering as a natural force of good. Martin Luther King Jr. becomes Tolstoy + Gandhi, championing the power of love and non-violence as faithful but also practical and metaphysically natural. Much of the book provides theological, scriptural, socioanthropological, and historical arguments for why this is the case. Yoder’s treatments of the “powers” (chap. 8), just war (chap. 4), and the political nature of Jesus (chap. 7) are all paralleled elsewhere, but their inclusion is important to the modern reader who wishes to trace the logic of Yoder’s present argument and the evolution of his overall thought.In the closing chapters Yoder turns to flourishing nonviolence movements in Roman Catholicism that exhibit a “restoration of original Christianity” (120). He highlights several facets of Catholic nonviolent spirituality including the valuing of the cultivation of virtues (and the people who best exhibit them), the growth of the nonviolence movement among American Catholics, and the emergence of the Catholic Worker movement. In the final two chapters, Yoder brings into conversation a few Western theologians, the “increasingly important” products of American bishops (especially in their argument for the limits of just war thinking in the nuclear age), and two prophetic Latin American theologians: Dom Hélder Câmara and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel. Together this assembled chorus expresses the unique and hope-giving character of modern Catholic theologies of nonviolence: “love, not violence... will have the last word in history” (145).As a collection these lectures represent a part of Yoder’s emerging hope in the natural logic of nonviolence and its potential for effective social change. The fact that these lectures were delivered in such a highly charged setting provides a courageous and pastoral backdrop for what amounts to a rich metaphysics of nonviolence. [End Page 217]Carter AikinHastings CollegeCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Addiction is increasingly described as a “chronic and relapsing brain disease”. The potential impact of the brain disease model on the treatment of addiction or addicted individuals’ treatment behaviour remains uncertain. We conducted a qualitative study to examine: (i) the extent to which leading Australian addiction neuroscientists and clinicians accept the brain disease view of addiction; and (ii) their views on the likely impacts of this view on addicted individuals’ beliefs and behaviour. Thirty-one Australian addiction neuroscientists and clinicians (10 females (...) and 21 males; 16 with clinical experience and 15 with no clinical experience) took part in 1 h semi-structured interviews. Most addiction neuroscientists and clinicians did not uncritically support the use of brain disease model of addiction. Most were cautious about the potential for adverse impacts on individuals’ recovery and motivation to enter treatment. While some recognised the possibility that the brain disease model of addiction may provide a rationale for addicted persons to seek treatment and motivate behaviour change, Australian addiction neuroscientist and clinicians do not assume that messages about “diseased brains” will always lead to increased treatment-seeking and reduced drug use. Research is needed on how neuroscience research could be used in ways that optimise positive outcomes for addicted persons. (shrink)

This article describes, analyzes, and advocates for management of clinical healthcare conflict by a process commonly referred to as bioethics mediation. Section I provides a brief introduction to classical mediation outside the realm of clinical healthcare. Section II highlights certain distinguishing characteristics of bioethics mediation. Section III chronicles the history of bioethics mediation and references a number of seminal writings on the subject. Finally, Section IV analyzes barriers that have, thus far, limited the widespread implementation of bioethics mediation.

In non‐literal uses of language, the content an utterance communicates differs from its literal truth conditions. Loose talk is one example of non‐literal language use (amongst many others). For example, what a loose utterance of (1) communicates differs from what it literally expresses: (1) Lena arrived at 9 o'clock. Loose talk is interesting (or so I will argue). It has certain distinctive features which raise important questions about the connection between literal and non‐literal language use. This paper aims to (i.) (...) introduce a range of novel data demonstrating certain overlooked features of loose talk, and (ii.) develop a new theory of the phenomenon which accounts for these data. In particular, this theory is motivated by the need to explain minimal pairs such as (2)-(3): (2) Lena arrived at 9 o'clock, but she did not arrive at 9 o'clock exactly. (3) ?? Lena did not arrive at 9 o'clock exactly, but she arrived at 9 o'clock. (2) and (3) agree in their truth conditions. Yet they differ in felicity. As such, they constitute a problem for any account which hopes to predict the acceptability of the loose use of a sentence from its truth conditions and the context of utterance alone. Instead, it will be argued, to explain loose talk phenomena we must posit an additional layer of meaning outstripping truth conditions. This layer of meaning is shown to exhibit a range of properties, all of which point to its being semantically encoded. Thus, if correct, the theory provides a new example of how semantic meaning must extend beyond literal, truth‐conditional content. (shrink)

Moving from an historical analysis of the Catholic Church's gradual endorsement of liberal democracy to an explication of the ethical and political thought of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, Persons and Liberal Democracy concisely explains the relatively recent shift in the Church's political theory and, in the process, defends what could be deemed a non-statist form of welfare liberalism. This book offers a systematic account of John Paul's philosophical and theological ethics and their relationship to the key elements of his political (...) thought and then brings this thought into conversation with some important strands of Christian and secular political theory deliberating the nature and legitimacy of liberalism. (shrink)

In a series of recent works, Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson insist that, given the ease by which irreversible destruction is achievable by a morally wicked minority, (i) strictly cognitive bio‐enhancement is currently too risky, while (ii) moral bio‐enhancement is plausibly morally mandatory (and urgently so). This article aims to show that the proposal Savulescu and Persson advance relies on several problematic assumptions about the separability of cognitive and moral enhancement as distinct aims. Specifically, we propose that the underpinnings of (...) Savulescu's and Persson's normative argument unravel once it is suitably clear how aiming to cognitively enhance an individual will in part require that one aim to bring about certain moral goods we show to be essential to cognitive flourishing; conversely, aiming to bring about moral enhancement in an individual must involve aiming to improve certain cognitive capacities we show to be essential to moral flourishing. After developing these points in some detail, and their implication for Savulescu's & Persson's proposal, we conclude by outlining some positive suggestions. (shrink)

In a series of recent works, Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson insist that, given the ease by which irreversible destruction is achievable by a morally wicked minority, (i) strictly cognitive bio-enhancement is currently too risky, while (ii) moral bio-enhancement is plausibly morally mandatory (and urgently so). This article aims to show that the proposal Savulescu and Persson advance relies on several problematic assumptions about the separability of cognitive and moral enhancement as distinct aims. Specifically, we propose that the underpinnings of (...) Savulescu's and Persson's normative argument unravel once it is suitably clear how aiming to cognitively enhance an individual will in part require that one aim to bring about certain moral goods we show to be essential to cognitive flourishing; conversely, aiming to bring about moral enhancement in an individual must involve aiming to improve certain cognitive capacities we show to be essential to moral flourishing. After developing these points in some detail, and their implication for Savulescu's & Persson's proposal, we conclude by outlining some positive suggestions. (shrink)

In this paper, the author develops a theory of concepts and shows that it captures many of the ideas about concepts that Leibniz expressed in his work. Concepts are first analyzed in terms of a precise background theory of abstract objects, and once concept summation and concept containment are defined, the axioms and theorems of Leibniz's calculus of concepts (in his logical papers) are derived. This analysis of concepts is then seamlessly connected with Leibniz's modal metaphysics of complete individual concepts. (...) The fundamental theorem of Leibniz's modal metaphysics of concepts is proved, namely, whenever an object x has F contingently, then (i) the individual concept of x contains the concept F and (ii) there is a (counterpart) complete individual concept y which doesn't contain the concept F and which `appears' at some other possible world. Finally, the author shows how the concept containment theory of truth can be made precise and made consistent with a modern conception of truth. (shrink)

Philosophers and geographers have converged on the topic of public space, fascinated and in many ways alarmed by fundamental changes in the way post-industrial societies produce space for public use, and in the way citizens of these same societies perceive and constitute themselves as a public. This volume advances this inquiry, making extensive use of political and social theory, while drawing intimate connections between political principles, social processes, and the commonplaces of our everyday environments.

SummaryThis article examines the international debate over the most appropriate name for what became known as ‘existentialism’. It starts by detailing the diverse strands of the Kierkegaard reception in Germany in the early inter-war period, which were given a variety of labels—Existentialismus, Existenzphilosophie, Existentialphilosophie and existentielle Philosophie—and shows how, as these words were translated into other languages, the differences between them were effaced. This process helps explain how over the 1930s a remarkably heterogeneous group of thinkers came to be included (...) under the same label. The article then shows how the word ‘existentialism’ and its cognates in other languages gained prominence because they were considered to represent best the diversity and richness of the movement. In detailing this process the article helps elucidate how existentialism emerged as an international philosophy in the period immediately following World War II, and sheds light on the ambivalence with which many have viewed both the term and the philosophy it represents. (shrink)

While ethical norms for conducting academic research in the United Kingdom are relatively clear, there is little empirical understanding of how university research ethics committees (RECs) themselves operate and whether they are seen to operate well. In this article, we offer insights from a project focused on the Scottish university context. We deployed a three-sided qualitative approach: (i) document analysis; (ii) interviews with REC members, administrators, and managers; and (iii) direct observation of REC meetings. We found that RECs have diverse (...) operation and vary in terms of what members understand to be the remit of their REC and what should constitute the content of ethics review. Overall, though, most participants perceive university RECs as operating well. When asked what they consider to be areas for further improvement, most commented on: implementation of an online system; more experience with how to evaluate various kinds of research projects; best practice exchange and training opportunities; more accurate reflection of the REC role as part of the university’s workload allocation model; and greater recognition of the importance of research ethics governance in the university’s research environment, and, for the members themselves, their career advancement. Based on our findings and subsequent discussions during an end-of-project roundtable with stakeholders, we propose a model of collaboration that can address some of the identified areas that could benefit from further improvement. This model would facilitate a heightened awareness of the importance of supporting REC members in their own effort in assisting students and staff alike in undertaking as ethically robust research as possible. (shrink)

An assurance theory of trust begins from the act of assurance – whether testimonial, advisorial or promissory – and explains trust as a cognate stance of resting assured. My version emphasizes the risks and rewards of trust. On trust’s rewards, I show how an assurance can give a reason to the addressee through a twofold exercise of ‘normative powers’: (i) the speaker thereby incurs an obligation to be sincere; (ii) if the speaker is trustworthy, she thereby gives her addressee the (...) reason. Each claim is controversial; my contribution lies in how I defend them together, linking the sincerity obligation to the provision of reasons. On trust’s risks, I defend a popular thesis about the nature of trust – that trust differs from mere reliance in how it risks betrayal – against the objection that the thesis ‘moralizes’ trust. Such betrayal need not be moral, I argue, because it may derive entirely from how the assurance purports to provide a reason. (shrink)

Epistemological theories of knowledge and justification draw a crucial distinction between one's simply havinggood reasons for some belief, and one's actually basingone's belief on good reasons. While the most natural kind of account of basing is causal in nature--a belief is based on a reason if and only if the belief is properly caused by the reason--there is hardly any widely-accepted, counterexample-free account of the basing relation among contemporary epistemologists. Further inquiry into the nature of the basing relation is therefore (...) of paramount importance for epistemology. Without an acceptable account of the basing relation, epistemological theories remain both crucially incomplete and vulnerable to errors that can arise when authors assume an implausible view of what it takes for beliefs to be held on the basis of reasons. Well-Founded Beliefbrings together seventeen essays written by leading epistemologists to explore this important topic in greater detail. The collection is divided thematically to cover a wide range of issues related to the epistemic basic relation. The first section of essays covers the nature of the basing relation and attempts to articulate defensible accounts of what it takes to believe on the basis of a reason. Section II explores the kind of things that can be reasons on the basis of which we hold beliefs. Finally, the last section addresses the basing relation as it bears on particular problems in epistemology, such as skepticism, the analysis of knowledge, and the contingencies of our epistemic upbringing. (shrink)

The ninth story of the first day, the shortest in Boccaccio's Decameron, tells of una gentil donna di Guascogna, a gentlewoman of Gascony, who stops off at Cyprus on her return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Assaulted and humiliated by a group of ruffians, the woman proposes to seek justice from the king of Cyprus but is told that the king is too weak and pusillanimous either to correct wrongs done to others or to avenge insults to himself. (...) Indeed, when people in the kingdom are angry about anything, they freely insult the king with impunity. The gentlewoman, despairing of justice but now bent on revenge, goes to the king and asks him to explain to her how he is able to bear his great shame, since she would like to learn how to bear her own. Her words sting the king, and, like one roused from a sleep, he avenges the injury to the woman and goes on to become the scourge of all those who have shamed him and dishonored his crown. (shrink)

The lack of knowledge—as Timothy Williamson (2000) famously maintains—is ignorance. Radical sceptical arguments, at least in the tradition of Descartes, threaten universal ignorance. They do so by attempting to establish that we lack any knowledge, even if we can retain other kinds of epistemic standings, like epistemically justified belief. If understanding is a species of knowledge, then radical sceptical arguments threaten to rob us categorically of knowledge and understanding in one fell swoop by implying universal ignorance. If, however, understanding is (...) not a species of knowledge, then three questions arise: (i) is ignorance the lack of understanding, even if understanding is not a species of knowledge? (ii) If not, what kind of state of intellectual impoverishment best describes a lack of understanding? (iii) What would a radical sceptical argument look like that threatened that kind of intellectual impoverishment, even if not threatening ignorance? This paper answers each of these questions in turn. I conclude by showing how the answers developed to (i-iii) interface in an interesting way with Virtue Perspectivism as an anti-sceptical strategy. (shrink)

RRecently, much work has been done on G.E. Moore’s proof of an external world with the aim of diagnosing just where the Proof ‘goes wrong’. In the mainstream literature, the most widely discussed debate on this score stands between those who defend competing accounts of perceptual warrant known as dogmatism and conservativism. Each account implies a different verdict on Moore’s Proof, though both share a commitment to supposing that an examination of premise-conclusion dependence relations will sufficiently reveal what’s wrong with (...) the Proof. Parallel to this debate on Moore stands perhaps an equally interesting debate within which the Proof is critiqued as it stands in the context of the skeptical debate. On this score, Michael Fara and Ernest Sosa have weighed in with a markedly different take on Moore’s anti-skeptical ambitions and on the nature of skeptical challenges more generally. The aim of this paper will be to critically evaluate these two very distinct strands of recent work on Moore’s Proof. Part I of the paper will focus on the mainstream debate, and in Part II of the paper, I’ll focus on the parallel debate about skepticism. My critical discussion will be aimed throughout at showing how the various proposals I’ve taken as representative of these two parallel debates surrounding Moore’s Proof ultimately fall short—each for different reasons—of what a satisfactory diagnosis of the Proof would require. (shrink)

Originally published in 1966, this pivotal work of Mikel Dufrenne revises Kant’s notion of _a priori,_ a concept previously given insufficient attention by philosophers, to realize a rich understanding that finally does justice to one of Kant’s most troubling cruxes. Following the Husserlian analytics of phenomenology, Dufrenne postulates a dualistic conception of the _a priori_ as a structure that expresses itself outside the human subject, but also as a virtual knowledge that points to a philosophy of immediate apprehension or feeling. (...) A friend of Paul Ricoeur, with whom he was detained as a prisoner of war during World War II, Dufrenne’s work until now has been sorely overlooked by American philosophers. (shrink)

Cover -- THE WORLD ON EDGE -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Prelude -- PART 1 Sorting Out Edges -- Preface to Part One -- 1. Borders and Boundaries -- Interlude I A Panoply of Edges -- 2. Edges and Surfaces, Edges and Limits -- Interlude II Cusps, Traces, Veils -- 3. Edges of Places and Events -- Interlude III Frames in/of Painting -- PART 2 Constructed versus Naturally Given Edges -- Preface to Part Two (...) -- 4. Natural versus Artifactual Edges -- 5. Wild Edges -- Interlude IV Listening to Edges in Music -- 6. Landscape Edges -- 7. Intermediate Edges: Parks, Gardens, Neighborhoods, Streets -- PART 3 Edges of Body and Psyche, Earth and Sky -- Preface to Part Three -- 8. At the Edges of My Body -- 9. Being on Edge and Falling Apart -- 10. From Earth's Edge to the Sky and Beyond -- PART 4 Parting Thoughts -- A Last Lesson: Not to Put Too Fine an Edge on Things -- Postlude: Why Edges Matter in Their Very Heterodoxicality -- Epilogue: Life on the Edge of Danger, Disaster, and Doom -- Afterword/Foreword: Thinking Edges, Edges of Thinking -- Index. (shrink)

We studied two otherwise normal, synaesthetic subjects who `saw' a speci¢c colour every time they saw a speci¢c number or letter. We conducted four experiments in order to show that this was a genuine perceptual experience rather than merely a memory association. (i)The synaesthetically induced colours could lead to perceptual grouping, even though the inducing numerals or letters did not. (ii)Synaesthetically induced colours were not experienced if the graphemes were presented peripherally. (iii)Roman numerals were ine¡ective: the actual number grapheme was (...) required. (iv)If two graphemes were alternated the induced colours were also seen in alternation. However, colours were no longer experienced if the graphemes were alternated at more than 4 Hz. We propose that grapheme colour synaesthesia arises from `cross-wiring' between the `colour centre' (area V4 or V8)and the `number area', both of which lie in the fusiform gyrus. We also suggest a similar explanation for the representation of metaphors in the brain: hence, the higher incidence of synaesthesia among artists and poets. (shrink)

Cette étude examine cinq principaux changements de méthodologie qui se trouvent dans cinq documents-clé de Vatican II, afin de discerner à quel point ces documents sont cohérents avec ou différents des principales caractéristiques de méthodologie de la période du concile. L'article commence par une introduction à trois approches théologiques en voque dans les écrits catholiques romains au temps du concile: néo-scolastique, transcendantalisme et correlationisme. La conscience historique est aussi examinée comme une note importante de méthode théologique. L'article examine ensuite Sacrosanctum (...) Concilium, Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum, Dignitatis Huamnae et Gaudium et Spes en vue de ces données. L'étude identifie six changements méthodologiques notoires dans les documents: la mise en sourdine de la néo-scolastique du 19e siècle, la transformation de la néo-scolastique grâce aux ressources bibliques, la montée de questions centrales à la méthode transcendentale, des essais tardifs mais importants de raisonnement transcendental, une corrélation toujours croissante de mode confessionel, une conscience historique en développement. En conclusion, les A. affirment une évolution méthodologique dans Vatican II qui pourrait valider une évolution continue de la méthode théologique aujourd'hui. (shrink)