Editors’ Note: As a matter of policy, the editors believe that publishing several reviews of selected texts is a valuable exercise which will enable a cross-section of views to be aired.Copies of this report can be obtained from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 28 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3EG, U.K. . The report publishes the recommendation of a Working Party set up in January 1995. Following a wide public consultation, the Working Party prepared its report on xenotransplantation which has been (...) endorsed by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. (shrink)

WALTER BURLEIGH, Von der Reinheit der Kunst der Logik. Erster Traktat: Von den Eigenschaften der Termini. Übersetzt und mit Einfuhrung und Anmerkungen herausgegeben von Peter Kunze. Lateinisch-deut...

Patient centred diagnosis is best practised through shared decision making; an iterative dialogue between doctor and patient, whichrespects a patient’s needs, values, preferences, and circumstances. -/- Shared decision making for diagnostic situations differs fundamentally from that for treatment decisions. This has important implications when considering its practical application. -/- The nature of dialogue should be tailored to the specific diagnostic decision; scenarios with higher stakes or uncertainty usually require more detailed conversations.

Übersetzt und mit Einfuhrung und Anmerkungen herausgegeben von Peter Kunze. Lateinisch-deutsch. (Philosophische Bibliothek, Nr. 401.) Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1988. xlvii + 269 pp. 64 DM.

The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.

This paper presents new results regarding six Arts Masters of the Late Middle Ages. First of all, a new search target for the lost work Logica of Thomas of Cleves is suggested: a question commentary on Peter of Spain should be searched for. Second, recent research has shown that John of Hokelem is a prolific author: further findings are added here. A third notable magister artium Parisiensis of the late 14th century is Christian of Ackoy: in addition to his known (...) works, some new findings are discussed as possible or even probable works by him. Finally, the bibliography of an important magister artium Pragensis, Helmold of Salzwedel, as well as that of two Viennese Arts Masters, Conrad Seglauer and John Gossolt, is improved. In this way, the paper offers new insights into the manuscript tradition of late medieval philosophy and provides some corrections to the standard literature (C. H. Lohr, M. Markowski, and others). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Music Education for Social Change–Constructing an Activist Music Education by Juliet HessMartin BergerJuliet Hess, Music Education for Social Change–Constructing an Activist Music Education (New York, Routledge, 2019)Juliet Hess’s book is written with great passion and composed for a very good reason. It is published in troubling times when music educators are looking for new perspectives on old problems and in search of a revived relevance for the subject. (...) Although music educators appear to be better qualified for their jobs than ever before, there is still an underlying concern that we have lost the positive political influence on society we might have had in the past, that our contributions to enhancing tolerance and social justice are at stake again, and that our voices are not being heard. Or, in other words, that we lack relevance if we do not act.Juliet Hess raises her voice, reclaiming this relevance at a time when “[h]ate continually manifests in both new and familiar ways” and “the presence of oppression is consistent across time.”1 According to her, rising-up against oppressive ideologies, injustices, and material violence is imperative and urgent. Hess calls on finding ways for music education to contribute to resistance and hails concepts that allow educators to devise a distinctly anti-oppressive pedagogy. Her purpose is to offer a framework for what she calls an “activist music education,” a pedagogy that “aims to address the sexism, racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, heterosexism, cisgenderism, classism, ableism, anti-immigrant [End Page 207] sentiments, and other oppressions so prevalent in our society.”2 Inspired by the impact of their musicking, Hess conducts interviews with twenty activist musicians, exploring common themes, perceptions, values, philosophies, and ideas. All individuals interviewed are involved in social change movements across the United States and Canada. Hess positions them as “catalysts for change in music education,”3 providing “a means to conceptualize activist music education for school music.”4 Activism and music, says Hess, are “enmeshed and inextricably connected,”5 since both intrinsically involve exploring historical, political, social, and cultural contexts.Inspired by the relevance of activist music to a society, Hess is in search of a similar meaning for music education. As a result, she sketches a possible K-12 curriculum with three essential goals: fostering connection with Others, honoring and sharing lived experience, and enabling critical reflection on the world.6 In search of a conceptualization for her idea, Hess draws mainly on Freirian and critical pedagogy as a theoretical framework, placing lived experience at the center of education, and with conscientization and praxis being her key terms.7 According to Hess, praxis, defined as “the integration of thoughtful reflection and action,”8 is fundamental to any kind of transformation, while conscientization refers to processes through which learners “become aware and reflect upon the conditions that shape their lives.”9 Although Hess acknowledges the valuable scholarly contribution to critical pedagogy in the past, she remains careful in its application, urging music educators to “avert any dogmatic implementation.”10 As a result, she suggests a “tri-faceted pedagogy for future activism,”11 which is connective, communicative, and critical: “a pedagogy of community, based on activist musicians’ emphasis on connectivity, a pedagogy of expression rooted in honoring lived experiences and sharing them through music, and a pedagogy of noticing that emerges from activist-musicians’ work on critical thinking.”12 This combination will, according to her, set “the conditions for future activism among youth and offers a possible practical enactment of critical pedagogy for music education.”13 A valuable and most inspiring read!Although I strongly agree with the intention of this book, I do have some questions. The dream of a classroom that exercises social criticism both through thinking about music and through musicking itself has always been an aspiration. Scholars have regularly encouraged music educators to be public intellectuals and agents of change, ideally striving for social justice (or at the very least for social awareness), and preparing learners to be global citizens, able to think critically and ready to engage with the world.14 It is widely agreed that “music education deserves to be seen as a serious form of cultural... (shrink)

This book is part of a bibliographic series on the whole of philosophy by the author. Subsequent volumes will be Philosophy: Its Nature, Methods and Basic Sources and Philosophy: Its Histories, Systems and Specific Settings. The present volume aims at providing "selected and classified bibliographies in the fields of ethics, economics, law, politics, and sociology from the point of view of their relevance to philosophy." It contains a chapter on each of these subjects. Each chapter is in turn divided somewhat (...) as follows: general studies, particular periods and countries, special questions, and periodicals. Each subsection is introduced by a very brief description, when this is appropriate. There is a lengthy index of authors whose works are cited. The work is directed toward English-speaking students and so concentrates on studies in English. It is difficult to evaluate an undertaking of this scope, and one is almost inevitably disappointed when he turns to sections dealing with topics of special interest to him. One example will suffice. Those familiar with the sociology of religion will find that the listings under that heading include no works of Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann or Thomas O'Dea, that of Weber's works on the sociology of religion only The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism is cited, and that none of the journals devoted to religious studies is mentioned among the specialized sociological periodicals. One cannot help but feel that the scope of this work is too ambitious for one man. Perhaps a collaborative effort or a select bibliography of bibliographies would have been a more feasible venture. On the other hand, this bibliography can, as the author intended, supply the student of philosophy with "selected writings which may lead to other treatises," and it may suggest to him "new fields for inquiry or research."--H. F. (shrink)

Berger goes against the prevailing intellectual currents of our age by asking after the truth of the supernatural. Taking his cue, as he has before, from the sociology of knowledge, which would suggest that the all-pervading anti-supernaturalism of our age is more a function of the social support the idea gets than of its innate worth, Berger offers up a program by which his investigation might take place. After a brief historical account of the gradual liberalizing of Protestant, (...) Catholic, and Jewish religious institutions, and after some suggestions on how to avoid following this trend on to what he calls "a surprise-free future," he predicts the indefinite continuation of some vestige of supernatural religion. He gets into the real business of the book by suggesting a "theological" approach that starts with man. By looking carefully at certain commonplace but important aspects of human experience, one can see some "signals of" transcendence. The "little effort" involves what Berger calls inductive faith. It is this radically empirical thrust that protects Berger from the charge that he is pushing for the restoration of conservative theology. Berger suggests that this book is an elaborative and corrective postscript to his The Sacred Canopy, which he felt "read like a treatise on atheism, at least in parts." As usual: Berger's engaging style.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This book is part of a bibliographic series on the whole of philosophy by the author. Subsequent volumes will be Philosophy: Its Nature, Methods and Basic Sources and Philosophy: Its Histories, Systems and Specific Settings. The present volume aims at providing "selected and classified bibliographies in the fields of ethics, economics, law, politics, and sociology from the point of view of their relevance to philosophy." It contains a chapter on each of these subjects. Each chapter is in turn divided somewhat (...) as follows: general studies, particular periods and countries, special questions, and periodicals. Each subsection is introduced by a very brief description, when this is appropriate. There is a lengthy index of authors whose works are cited. The work is directed toward English-speaking students and so concentrates on studies in English. It is difficult to evaluate an undertaking of this scope, and one is almost inevitably disappointed when he turns to sections dealing with topics of special interest to him. One example will suffice. Those familiar with the sociology of religion will find that the listings under that heading include no works of Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann or Thomas O'Dea, that of Weber's works on the sociology of religion only The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism is cited, and that none of the journals devoted to religious studies is mentioned among the specialized sociological periodicals. One cannot help but feel that the scope of this work is too ambitious for one man. Perhaps a collaborative effort or a select bibliography of bibliographies would have been a more feasible venture. On the other hand, this bibliography can, as the author intended, supply the student of philosophy with "selected writings which may lead to other treatises," and it may suggest to him "new fields for inquiry or research."--H. F. (shrink)

The author intends this book to be a theoretical contribution to the sociology of knowledge. Her main effort is to isolate and describe what she takes to be four irreducible systems of knowledge which dictate, for those who share in them, "thinking and action concerned with the nature of the world." The four systems of knowledge, which she calls magical, religious, mystical and scientific, are connected to specific types of thought. There are three basic types of thought connection: empirical, rational, (...) and abstractive. Empirical thought establishes connections at the purely observational level, whereas rational thought, of which mathematical and metaphysical systems are examples, makes connections only at the theoretic level. By contrast, abstractive thinking connects the observational and theoretic levels. Magical thought is purely empirical. Mystical thought accepts the evidence of empirical observation, but seeks to abstract the individual's thought to a theoretic end state which is not rational. Religious knowledge combines rational connections among concepts with abstractive connection of concepts to observables, but the religious concepts are not identified with any empirical objects. Finally, scientific thought combines rational, empirical and abstractive thought. Each of these four systems of knowledge has a characteristic conception of power. In a magical system, power consists of the ability to gain observable ends. For mystical knowledge systems, power is the individual's achievement of escape from empiricism and rationalism. In religious systems individuals may have authority, but power belongs exclusively to "god." In scientific systems of knowledge, power "consists of ability to theoretically anticipate or explain empirical transformations." Likewise, each of the four systems of knowledge is related in some way to certain social situations. In the light of these theoretical distinctions, the author examines a number of theories and developments in social science and the history of thought. She finds Malinowski's distinctions between magic, religion and science quite inadequate. Weber's sociology of religion fares better. She invokes the development of planetary astronomy, of mechanics, and of evolutionary biology to illustrate her definition of science. Finally, the problem of knowledge in the modern world is seen to be due not to an overemphasis on science as she defines it, but to the persistence of magical thought in the political, economic and social spheres. Though the author's efforts at definition are interesting, this is in many ways a difficult and unsatisfying book. Written in a lapidary style, which is lacking both in grace and connectives, the book utilizes historical and sociological data very selectively. No reference is made to what has been done in the sociology of knowledge by Scheler, Mannheim, Berger and Luckmann. Finally, the book bristles with questionable epistemological assumptions and with statements which seem quite incompatible with the findings of recent work in the study of religion.--H. F. (shrink)

Berger goes against the prevailing intellectual currents of our age by asking after the truth of the supernatural. Taking his cue, as he has before, from the sociology of knowledge, which would suggest that the all-pervading anti-supernaturalism of our age is more a function of the social support the idea gets than of its innate worth, Berger offers up a program by which his investigation might take place. After a brief historical account of the gradual liberalizing of Protestant, (...) Catholic, and Jewish religious institutions, and after some suggestions on how to avoid following this trend on to what he calls "a surprise-free future," he predicts the indefinite continuation of some vestige of supernatural religion. He gets into the real business of the book by suggesting a "theological" approach that starts with man. By looking carefully at certain commonplace but important aspects of human experience, one can see some "signals of" transcendence. The "little effort" involves what Berger calls inductive faith. It is this radically empirical thrust that protects Berger from the charge that he is pushing for the restoration of conservative theology. Berger suggests that this book is an elaborative and corrective postscript to his The Sacred Canopy, which he felt "read like a treatise on atheism, at least in parts." As usual: Berger's engaging style.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Pp. xi + 234. H/b £?.??, $?.??, P/b £?.??, $?.??. If asked for an example of a rigid designator it is likely that one would suggest a name, like ‘Aristotle’ or ‘Tony Blair’, or a demonstrative, like ‘that book’ said whilst pointing at a certain text. Intuitively, what these expressions have in common is the central role they accord to perception of an object: you can see the book you want to talk about, there are (...) people around in our community who have bumped into Tony, and, although no one alive today perceived Aristotle directly, it seems plausible to claim that our ability to use the name now relies on the fact that someone, sometime, did perceive him directly. However, as anyone at all familiar with rigid designation knows, not all such expressions follow this model. Kripke himself stressed that certain definite descriptions have a constant extension across all possible worlds (for example, ‘the smallest prime number’, ‘the actual prime minister of Great Britain now’) and thus meet the criterion for being rigid designators; while Kaplan emphasized the role of a descriptive rule in determining the referent for a token utterance of an indexical, like ‘I’ or ‘tomorrow’. (shrink)

El uso del espacio virtual invita a una reflexión ética sobre su impacto moral. Sociólogos, psicólogos y filósofos son incapaces acordar sus implicaciones éticas. El presente artículo examina el espacio virtual a través de la teoría de La Construcción Social de la Realidad de Peter L. Berger y Thomas Luckmann, que sostiene que el otro significante conforma el carácter del individuo. Se argumenta que el ciberespacio produce un progreso moral. Por un lado, la multiplicidad de otros significantes representa un (...) obstáculo en la socialización del individuo. Por otro y más importante, los otros significantes constituyen nuevas verdades que favorecen un nuevo orden moral. Este resultado se explica mediante el concepto de otro generalizado originario del filósofo George H. Mead. En conclusión, se propone que el espacio virtual conforma el carácter moral del individuo de forma positiva. (shrink)

Virtually all the earlier critics — including Sidgwick and the Oxford Idealists — thought J. S. Mill’s arguments for qualities of pleasure and their ranking unacceptable. More recently there has been something of a reversal of this opinion, with commentators such as Skorupski, Donner, Berger and Wilson supporting Mill, and other writers, such as Edwards and Sprigge, arguing that qualitative hedonism is plausible. This paper reconsiders some of the arguments of F.H. Bradley and other earlier critics who dismissed Mill’s (...) quantity-quality distinction. (shrink)

An homage to the men and women of science, and an exposition of Einstein's place in scientific history In this fascinating collection of articles and speeches, Albert Einstein reflects not only on the scientific method at work in his own theoretical discoveries, but also eloquently expresses a great appreciation for his scientific contemporaries and forefathers, including Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Max Planck, and Niels Bohr. While Einstein is renowned as one of the foremost innovators of modern science, (...) his discoveries uniquely his own, through his own words it becomes clear that he viewed himself as only the most recent in a long line of scientists driven to create new ways of understanding the world and to prove their scientific theories. Einstein's thoughtful examinations explain the "how" of scientific innovations both in his own theoretical work and in the scientific method established by those who came before him. This authorized Philosophical Library book features a new introduction by Neil Berger, PhD, and an illustrated biography of Albert Einstein, which includes rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "What place does the theoretical physicist's picture of the world occupy among all these possible pictures? It demands the highest possible standard of rigorous precision in the description of relations, such as only the use of mathematical language can give" -Albert Einstein, "Principles of Research" Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was born in Germany and became an American citizen in 1934. A world-famous theoretical physicist, he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics and is renowned for his Theory of Relativity. In addition to his scientific work, Einstein was an influential humanist who spoke widely about politics, ethics, and social causes. After leaving Europe, Einstein taught at Princeton University. His theories were instrumental in shaping the atomic age. Neil Berger, an associate professor emeritus of mathematics, taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science department from 1968 until his retirement in 2001. He was the recipient of the first Monroe H. Martin Prize (1975), which is now awarded by the University of Maryland every five years for a singly authored outstanding applied mathematics research paper. He has published numerous papers and reviews in his fields of expertise, which include elasticity, tensor analysis, scattering theory, and fluid mechanics. (shrink)

This article generalises the refined A-translation method for extracting programs from classical proofs [U. Berger,W. Buchholz, H. Schwichtenberg, Refined program extraction from classical proofs, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 114 3–25] to the scenario where additional assumptions such as choice principles are involved. In the case of choice principles, this is done by adding computational content to the ‘translated’ assumptions, an idea which goes back to [S. Berardi, M. Bezem, T. Coquand, On the computational content of the axiom (...) of choice, JSL 63 600–622] and has been further elaborated in [U. Berger, P. Oliva, Modified bar recursion and classical dependent choice, in: M. Baaz, S.D. Friedman, J. Kraijcek , Logic Colloquium ’01, in: Lecture Notes in Logic, vol. 20, Springer, Berlin, 2005, pp. 89–107]. We further investigate the applicability of this extension by means of a small but non-trivial example, and discuss the formalisation as well as some optimisations necessary in order to extract terminating programs. Both formalisation and term extraction have been implemented in the interactive proof assistant Minlog. (shrink)