The discipline of knowledge translation (KT) emerged as a way of systematically understanding and addressing the challenges of applying health and medical research in practice. In light of ongoing and emerging critique of KT from the medical humanities and social sciences disciplines, KT researchers have become increasingly aware of the complexity of the translational process, particularly the significance of culture, tradition and values in how scientific evidence is understood and received, and thus increasingly receptive to pluralistic notions of knowledge. Hence, (...) there is now an emerging view of KT as a highly complex, dynamic, and integrated sociological phenomenon, which neither assumes nor creates knowledge hierarchies and neither prescribes nor privileges scientific evidence. Such a view, however, does not guarantee that scientific evidence will be applied in practice and thus poses a significant dilemma for KT regarding its status as a scientific and practice-oriented discipline, particularly within the current sociopolitical climate. Therefore, in response to the ongoing and emerging critique of KT, we argue that KT must provide scope for relevant scientific evidence to occupy an appropriate position of epistemic primacy in public discourse. Such a view is not intended to uphold the privileged status of science nor affirm the “scientific logos” per se. It is proffered as a counterbalance to powerful social, cultural, political and market forces that are able to challenge scientific evidence and promote disinformation to the detriment of democratic outcomes and the public good. (shrink)

Defending Life is arguably the most comprehensive defense of the pro-life position on abortion - morally, legally, and politically - that has ever been published in an academic monograph. It offers a detailed and critical analysis of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey as well as arguments by those who defend a Rawlsian case for abortion-choice, such as J. J. Thomson. The author defends the substance view of persons as the view with the most explanatory power. The substance (...) view entails that the unborn is a subject of moral rights from conception. While defending this view, the author responds to the arguments of thinkers such as Boonin, Dworkin, Stretton, Ford and Brody. He also critiques Thomson's famous violinist argument and its revisions by Boonin and McDonagh. Defending Life includes chapters critiquing arguments found in popular politics and the controversy over cloning and stem cell research. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss Beauchamp and Childress’s treatment of the issue of moral status. In particular, we introduce the five different perspectives on moral status that Beauchamp and Childress consider in Principles of Biomedical Ethics and explain their alternative to those perspectives, raise some critical questions about their approach, and offer a different way to think about one of the five theories of moral status that is more in line with what we believe some of its leading advocates affirm.

We introduce the horizontal and vertical topologies on the product of topological spaces, and study their relationship with the standard product topology. We show that the modal logic of products of topological spaces with horizontal and vertical topologies is the fusion S4 ⊕ S4. We axiomatize the modal logic of products of spaces with horizontal, vertical, and standard product topologies.We prove that both of these logics are complete for the product of rational numbers ℚ × ℚ with the appropriate topologies.

Advances in genetic and genomic research have introduced challenges in obtaining informed consent for research in low and middle-income settings. However, there are only few studies that have explored challenges in obtaining informed consent in genetic and genomic research in Africa and none in South Africa. To start filling this gap, we conducted an empirical study to investigate the efficacy of informed consent procedures for an H3Africa genomic study on Rheumatic Heart Disease at the University of Cape Town in South (...) Africa. The main aim of the study was to understand ethical challenges in obtaining informed consent in the RHDGen study. We used a qualitative study methodology involving in-depth interviews and participant observations. Our study participants were RHDGen cases, healthy controls and research staff involved in the recruitment of RHDGen cases and controls. In total, we conducted 32 in-depth interviews with RHDGen cases and controls, 2 in-depth interviews with research staff and 57 direct observations of the consent procedures of RHDGen cases and controls. The interviews were conducted in English, audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis. The study was conducted in 3 sites within Cape Town, South Africa. Most healthy controls joined the RHDGen study in order to be screened for rheumatic heart disease. A majority of RHDGen cases decided to join the RHDGen study because of therapeutic misconception. The ethical challenges that impacted on obtaining informed consent in the RHDGen study were complex. In this study, the main challenges were diagnostic misconception among RHDGen controls and therapeutic misconception among RHDGen cases. (shrink)

BackgroundConcurrent with efforts to establish national and regional biorepositories in Africa is widespread endorsement of ethics committees as stewards of the interests of individual donors and their communities. To date, ethics training programs for IRB members in Botswana have focused on ethical principles and international guidelines rather than on the ethical dimensions of specific medical technologies and research methodologies. Little is known about the knowledge and concerns of current and prospective IRB members in Botswana with respect to export, reuse, storage, (...) and benefit-sharing of biospecimens.MethodsThis qualitative study examined perspectives of IRB members in Botswana about the collection and use of biospecimens in research. Forty-one IRB members representing five committees in Botswana participated in discussions groups in March 2013. Transcriptions of audiotapes and field notes were analyzed to identify issues of concern that might be alleviated through education and capacity-building, and areas that required ongoing discussion or additional regulatory guidance.ResultsAreas of concern included lack of understanding among patients and providers about the use of biospecimens in clinical care and research; reuse of biospecimens, particularly issues of consent, ownership and decision-making; export of specimens and loss of control over reuse and potential benefits; and felt need for regulatory guidance and IRB-member training. Local belief systems about bodily integrity and strong national identity in the construct of benefits may be at odds with initiatives that involve foreign biorepositories or consider such collections to be global public goods.ConclusionEducation is needed to strengthen IRB-member capacity to review and monitor protocols calling for the collection and use of biospecimens, guided by clear national policy on priority-setting, partnerships, review, and oversight. Engagement with local stakeholders is needed to harmonize fundamentally different ways of understanding the human body and community identity with the aims of contemporary biomedicine. (shrink)

The debate on the European Union's democratic deficit usually operates within a national-democratic framework of analysis. This article argues for a change in methodology. It follows the thesis that the EU is a ‘demoicracy’– a polity of multiple demoi– and has to be evaluated as such. Core principles of demoicracy are developed and the EU is assessed accordingly. Such an evaluation is not only more adequate, but also provides original insights: it is found that, whereas the constitutional development of the (...) EU has approached demoicratic standards in general, major deficits remain at the national level. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to offer support for the substance view of persons, the philosophical anthropology defended by Patrick Lee in his essay. In order to accomplish this the author presents a brief definition of the substance view; argues that the substance view has more explanatory power in accounting for why we believe that human persons are intrinsically valuable even when they are not functioning as such, why human persons remain identical to themselves over time, and why it (...) follows from these points that the unborn are human persons; and responds to two arguments that attempt to establish the claim that the early human being is not a unified substance until at least fourteen days after conception. (shrink)

Catholics and Evangelical Protestants often find themselves on the same side on a variety of issues in bioethics. However, some Evangelicals have expressed reluctance to embrace the natural law reasoning used by Catholics in academic and policy debates. In this article, I argue that the primary concerns raised by Evangelicals about natural law reasoning are, ironically, concerns expressed by and intrinsic to the natural law tradition itself. To show this, I address two types of Protestant critics: the Frustrated Fellow Traveler (...) and the Solo Scripturist. (shrink)

This article responds to Giubilini and Minerva’s article ‘After birth abortion: why should the baby live?’ published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. They argue for the permissibility of ‘after-birth abortion’, based on two conjoined considerations: (1) the fetus or newborn, though a ‘potential person’, is not an actual person, because it is not mature enough to appreciate its own interests, and (2) because we allow parents to terminate the life of a fetus when it is diagnosed with a deformity (...) or fatal illness because of the burden it will place on the child, parent, family or society we should also allow parents to do the same to their newborn, since it is no more a person than the fetus. The author critiques this case by pointing out (a) the metaphysical ambiguity of potential personhood and (b) why the appeal to burdens is irrelevant or unnecessary. (shrink)

Engelhardt is correct in thinking that potentiality implies continuity. The central purpose of the Aristotelian notion of potency is to explain continuity, both in becoming and in generation-corruption. If one denies continuity in change, he will have little use for potentiality, at least little use for the Aristotelian types. And there are types that should not be conflated: one to account for continuity in becoming and generation, another to account for continuity of a being going from not acting to acting. (...) The first type, where something happens to a being, is called passive potency; the second type, where a being itself actively does something, is predictably called active potency. (shrink)

The provision of social services by Pentecostal/charismatic churches in Ghana is discussed in this article. Focusing on four selected Pentecostal/charismatic churches in Ghana, it is argued that Pentecostal/charismatic churches are not only concerned with the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ but are also actively engaged in the provision of social and welfare services aimed at transforming the lives of their constituents. This development, in the author’s view, points to a paradigm shift from the well-known otherworldly nature of the (...) Pentecostal/charismatic movements and projects a rather new movement whose growing social sensitivity has implications for national development. (shrink)

This book is a presentation and critical analysis of Hume’s argument against miracles. In addition, this work contains a critique of contemporary rehabilitations of Hume’s argument by Flew, Nowell-Smith, and McKinnon, and a defense of the kalam cosmological argument for God’s existence. The author concludes that the concept of miracle is perfectly coherent and that it is possible that one can enough evidence to be epistemically justified in believing that one has occurred. This book also includes a discussion on the (...) nature of evidential standards and how they are similar to scientific law in their grounding. (shrink)

We share Minkoff et al.’s (2024) concern regarding the potential disavowal of pregnant patients’ right to refuse medical interventions, without or against their explicit consent, aimed at preservin...

Although the notion of physician value neutrality in medicine may be traced back to the writings of Sir William Osler, it is relatively new to medicine and medical ethics. We argue in this paper that how physician value neutrality has been cashed out is often obscure and its defense not persuasive. In addition, we argue that the social/political implementation of neutrality, Political Liberalism, fails, and thus, PVN's case is weakened, for PVN's justification relies largely on the reasoning undergirding PL. For (...) these reasons, we conclude that PVN has no philosophical or ethical warrant and thus should be abandoned. We suggest that the physician present to her patients some type of statement or creed that would give them an idea of where she stands on important axiological issues and how these stands are cashed out clinically. (shrink)

The ascendancy of Christian activism in bioethical policy debates has elicited a number of responses by critics of this activism. These critics typically argue that the public square ought to embrace Secular Liberalism, a perspective that its proponents maintain is the most just arrangement in a pluralist society, even though SL places restraints on Christian activists that are not placed on similarly situated citizens who hold more liberal views on bioethical questions. The author critiques three arguments that are offered to (...) defend SL: the golden rule contract argument, the secular reason argument, and the err-on-the-side-of-liberty argument. The author concludes that each of these arguments fail to support SL. (shrink)

Les nouveaux et nombreux défis de la constellation " postnationale " rendent plus actuelle que jamais une ancienne idée philosophique : le cosmopolitisme. Dans ses variantes modernes, celui-ci pose l'autonomie de l'individu humain comme norme fondamentale de toute construction politique. Le cosmopolitisme représente donc une alternative aussi bien au nationalisme qu'à la théorie normative d'un monde multipolaire de confrontations entre empires. L'ouvrage montre que le cosmopolitisme peut être considéré comme une conséquence des principes de la philosophie politique moderne. Définissant les (...) bases normatives de l'Etat-nation démocratique, elle comprend ce dernier comme une réalisation temporaire des principes cosmopolitiques et la nation comme une entité politique qui doit, graduellement, être intégrée dans une construction intergouvernementale et cosmopolitique. L'étude s'achève sur un aperçu du cosmopolitisme dans la philosophie politique actuelle. L'auteur propose un cosmopolitisme processuel qui défende une intégration graduelle, progressive et pragmatique vers la sécularisation du droit et de l'autonomie de l'individu par l'interconnexion d'institutions nationales, intergouvernementales et supranationales. La cité des peuples n'est donc pas l'anticipation normative d'un Etat mondial, mais la volonté d'un processus d'intégration différenciée entre les peuples démocratiquement constitués. (shrink)

This article critically assesses an account of religious liberty often associated with several legal and political philosophers: Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, and Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager. Calling it the Religion as Comprehensive Doctrine approach, the author contrasts it with an account often attributed to John Locke and the American Founders Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the Two Sovereigns approach. He argues that the latter provides an important corrective to RCD’s chief weakness: RCD eliminates from our vision those aspects of (...) religious belief and practice that most conventional religious believers would consider essential to their faith. (shrink)

Theologian, philosopher, teacher. There are few religious figures more Catholic than Saint Thomas Aquinas, a man credited with helping to shape Catholicism of the second millennium. In Never Doubt Thomas, Francis J. Beckwith employs his own spiritual journey from Catholicism to Evangelicalism and then back to Catholicism to reveal the signal importance of Aquinas not only for Catholics but also for Protestants. Beckwith begins by outlining Aquinas' history and philosophy, noting misconceptions and inaccurate caricatures of Thomist traditions. He explores (...) the legitimacy of a "Protestant" Aquinas by examining Aquinas' views on natural law and natural theology in light of several Protestant critiques. Not only did Aquinas' presentation of natural law assume some of the very inadequacies Protestant critics have leveled against it, Aquinas did not, as is often supposed, believe that one must first prove God's existence through human reasoning before having faith in God. Rather, Aquinas held that one may know God through reason and employ it to understand more fully the truths of faith. Beckwith also uses Aquinas' preambles of faith--what a person can know about God before fully believing in Him--to argue for a pluralist Aquinas, explaining how followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can all worship the same God, yet adhere to different faiths. Beckwith turns to Aquinas' doctrine of creation to question theories of Intelligent Design, before, finally, coming to the heart of the matter: in what sense can Aquinas be considered an Evangelical? Aquinas' views on justification are often depicted by some Evangelicals as discontinuous with those articulated in the Council of Trent. Beckwith counters this assessment, revealing not only that Aquinas' doctrine fully aligns with the tenets laid out by the Council, but also that this doctrine is more Evangelical than critics care to admit. Beckwith's careful reading makes it hard to doubt that Thomas Aquinas is a theologian, philosopher, and teacher for the universal church--Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical. (shrink)

This article is a response to Evan Fales’s critique of Francis Beckwith’s chapter ’Philosophia Christi’ Series 2, 3.1 2001) that appeared in the 1997 book, ’In Defense of Miracles’ (InterVarsity Press, 1997). Beckwith argues that Fales seems to misunderstand his argument. In his reply, Beckwith clarifies his original case and then moves on and addresses Fales’s argument that if miracles regularly occur, the reason for believing in miracles would be undermined; they are contrary to the regular course of nature. (...) Beckwith argues that Fales confuses the regularity of agent causation with the regularity of scientific laws. (shrink)

This article is a response by the author of Defending Life, Francis Beckwith, to Kevin Corcoran’s critical review of that book. In his review Corcoran maintains that Beckwith provides only a “typical” genetic code argument for the zygote’s individual humanity, and that Beckwith fails to show that there exists an individual human organism that subsists from conception and develops into a mature version of itself. Beckwith argues that Corcoran is mistaken on both counts.

This article argues that obligatory, simultaneous, and simple Treaty ratification by referenda is the next step in the consolidation of the political core of European citizenship. In the first part, general remarks about the special nature of EU citizenship highlight the relevance of referenda on EU Treaties for EU citizenship. In the second part, the normative and empirical case in favour of direct democracy is put forward. It is followed by the assessment of direct democracy in European integration as we (...) have known it so far. The practice is irreversible and gaining in momentum. But it is in need of substantial reform due to procedural dysfunctions and discriminatory consequences for the citizens. Section V relates this result to a legal analysis of EU citizenship. The suppression of the discriminatory consequences of the Treaty ratification procedure is necessary from a legal point of view, but it cannot be expected from the 'judicial incrementalism' that has characterised the development of EU citizenship regarding free movement and residence. In section VI, the conclusions of the previous sections are drawn into the final proposal of obligatory, simultaneous and simple Treaty reform by referenda in all Member States. At the end, five counter-arguments to the proposal are discussed. (shrink)

The beginning of the 21st century has seen the renewed use of aesthetics as a critical and interpretive method within various discursive spheres. Particularly, and unsurprisingly, this move has been most pronounced in the discursive systems of philosophy and the artworld. It is to this more specific re-discovery that the authors in this journal address their arguments.

In her ground-breaking 1971 article, “A Defense of Abortion,” Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that even if one grants to the prolifer her most important premise—that the fetus is a person—the prolifer’s conclusion, the intrinsic wrongness of abortion, does not follow. However, in her 1995 article, “Abortion: Whose Right?,” Thomson employs Rawlsian liberalism to argue that even though the prolifer’s view of fetal personhood is not unreasonable, the prochoice advocate is not unreasonable in rejecting it. Thus, because we should err on (...) the side of liberty, the right to abortion is vindicated. In this article, I argue that Thomson’s latter reliance on Rawlsian thinking suggests a way of re-reading her earlier essay that casts doubt on whether she really grants the dominant prolife account of unborn human life. (shrink)

Este artigo examina três figuras típicas do discípulo na filosofia antiga: o socrático (“filho ciumento”), o epicurista (“doente curado, mas psitacista”) e o aristotélico (“hermeneuta insatisfeito”).