At times scientists manipulate their community's perception of scientific discoveries. The following case study illustrates the extent to which a community's understanding of a discovery was influenced by one of its members. In the 1870s the British physiologist Arthur Gamgee undertook a campaign to insure Andrew Buchanan of Glasgow credit for his blood clotting research, conducted from the early 1830s to the mid-1840s. Gamgee endeavored to establish Buchanan as the discoverer of fibrin ferment, a clotting factor first isolated and (...) named in 1872 by Alexander Schmidt of Dorpat. Gamgee's campaign included the solicitation of support for Buchanan from contemporary physiologists, by discussing Buchanan's work in his publications and by demonstrating through experimentation that the material extracted from Buchanan's washed blood clots was similar, if not identical, to Schmidt's fibrin ferment. Gamgee's influence on the scientific community's perception of the discovery was effective, and Buchanan is generally considered the discoverer of the clotting factor and Schmidt its rediscoverer. However, examination of Buchanan's research in blood coagulation and the context in which he conducted the research reveals that Buchanan is neither the discoverer of fibrin ferment nor even a precursor to Schmidt. (shrink)

This book combines approaches from science, literary theory, and philosophy to examine the canon of Stephen King’s fiction from a Darwinist hermeneutic perspective in one critical study.

Each chapter in Encountering the Medieval in Modern Jewish Thought addresses a different Jewish return to the medieval by using a language of renewal.

: What does one do when the death of a parent demands reentry into an abandoned religious formalism? Raised in an orthodox Jewish home, schooled in the intricate discourse of rabbinic texts and yet long estranged from the ritualism of Jewish law, the prospect is maddening. Filial love compels a yearlong daily synagogue attendance where one recites a mourning prayer laden with myth and superstition. Kaddish is an exquisitely maneuvered headlong plunge into Judaism's expansive intellectual tradition. Thereby the current literary (...) editor of the New Republic fulfils his duty both as a Jew and a son, while never turning his back on another imperative he so cherishes "the moral obligation to be intelligent.". (shrink)

Every work on Jewish thought and law since the twelfth century bears the imprint of Maimonides. A.N. Whitehead's famous dictum that the entire European philosophical tradition 'consists of a series of footnotes to Plato' could equally characterize Maimonides' place in the Jewish tradition. The critical studies in this volume explore how Orthodox rabbis of different orientations--Shlomo Aviner, Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv), Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Joseph Kafih, Abraham Isaac Kook, Aaron Kotler, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Elhanan Wasserman--have read and provided footnotes (...) to Maimonides in the long twentieth century. How well did they really understand Maimonides? And where do their arguments fit in the mainstream debates about him and his works? Each of the seven core chapters examines a particular approach. Some rabbis have tried to liberate themselves from the influence of his ideas. Others have sought to build on those ideas or expand them in ways which Maimonides himself did not pursue, and which he may well not have agreed with. Still others advance patently non-Maimonidean positions, while attributing them to none other than Maimonides. Above all, the essays published here demonstrate that his legacy remains vibrantly alive today. (shrink)

Hume held that we have no rational justification for our inductive beliefs. A more radical view is that we have no rational justification for any of our beliefs. This dissertation has two goals pertaining to this more radical view. // The first goal is to find a basis for constructive epistemology that is consistent with this view. This goal is first sought by considering externalist theories of knowledge since these do not require rational justification for knowledge. Externalist theories are defended (...) against the usual objections, partly via a strategy of immunizing them from counterexample-based objections by arguing that epistemologies can be successful even if they fail to explicate ordinary epistemic notions. But a new objection to externalist theories is then brought to light. The objection begins as an attack against a dogma of contemporary epistemology, that the chief benefit of possessing knowledge is having a true belief. It is argued that there are many other benefits to having knowledge , and that externalist theories are defective because externalist knowledge lacks these benefits. A mixed internalist/externalist theory, bilevel reliabilism, is then presented as a solution to this difficulty. //The second goal is to provide an explanation of the function and origin of human epistemic practices that is consistent with the no-rational-justification view. Providing such an explanation is problematic for holders of this view because, if it is correct, it seems, prima facie, that there is no reason to have epistemic practices. This goal is achieved by arguing that epistemic practices, despite appearing to have rational justification as their goal, chiefly function to promote the existence of bilevel reliabilist knowledge, a very useful type of belief that is not rationally justified. It is then argued that the explanation of the origin of epistemic practices is that they arise from natural human inductive tendencies. (shrink)

What does one do when the death of a parent demands reentry into an abandoned religious formalism? Raised in an orthodox Jewish home, schooled in the intricate discourse of rabbinic texts and yet long estranged from the ritualism of Jewish law, the prospect is maddening. Filial love compels a yearlong daily synagogue attendance where one recites a mourning prayer laden with myth and superstition. Kaddish is an exquisitely maneuvered headlong plunge into Judaism's expansive intellectual tradition. Thereby the current literary editor (...) of the New Republic fulfils his duty both as a Jew and a son, while never turning his back on another imperative he so cherishes "the moral obligation to be intelligent.". (shrink)

This volume is a scholarly tribute to Fackenheim’s memory. It covers a wide spectrum of Fackenheim’s work including biographical, philosophical, and theological aspects of his thought that have not been addressed adequately in the past. Elie Wiesel, a close personal friend to Fackenheim for over 30 years, has provided the Foreword for the volume.

Fackenheim's combination of erudition and generosity served to inspire a lifetime of philosophical inquiry, and a number of his students are represented in this ...

Thomas S. Kuhn Thomas Samuel Kuhn, although trained as a physicist at Harvard University, became an historian and philosopher of science through the support of Harvard’s president, James Conant. In 1962, Kuhn’s renowned The Structure of Scientific Revolutions helped to inaugurate a revolution—the 1960s historiographic revolution—by providing a new image of science. For … Continue reading Kuhn, Thomas S. →.

In 1964 the Wisconsin virologist Howard Temin proposed the DNA provirus hypothesis to explain the mechanism by which a cancer-producing virus containing only RNA infects and transforms cells. His hypothesis reversed the flow of genetic information, as ordained by the central dogma of molecular biology. Although there was initial opposition to his hypothesis it was widely accepted, after the discovery of reverse transcriptase in 1970. Most accounts of Temin's hypothesis after the discovery portray the hypothesis as heretical, because it challenged (...) the central dogma. Temin himself in his Nobel Prize speech of 1975 narrates a similar story about its reception. But are these accounts warranted? I argue that members of the virology community opposed Temin's provirus hypothesis not simply because it was a counterexample to the central dogma, but more importantly because his experimental evidence for supporting it was inconclusive. Furthermore, I propose that these accounts of opposition to the DNA provirus hypothesis as heretical, written by Temin and others after the discovery of reverse transcriptase, played a significant role in establishing retrovirology as a specialized field. (shrink)

In this book the author explores the shifting philosophical boundaries of modern medical knowledge and practice occasioned by the crisis of quality-of-care, especially in terms of the various humanistic adjustments to the biomedical model.

We are often told that quantum phenomena demand radical revisions of our scientific world view and that no physical theory describing well defined objects, such as particles described by their positions, evolving in a well defined way, let alone deterministically, can account for such phenomena. The great majority of physicists continue to subscribe to this view, despite the fact that just such a deterministic theory, accounting for all of the phe nomena of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, was proposed by David Bohm (...) more than four decades ago and has arguably been around almost since the inception of quantum mechanics itself. Our purpose in asking colleagues to write the essays for this volume has not been to produce a Festschrift in honor of David Bohm or to gather together a collection of papers simply stating uncritically Bohm's views on quantum mechanics. The central theme around which the essays in this volume are arranged is David Bohm's version of quantum mechanics. It has by now become fairly standard practice to refer to his theory as Bohmian mechanics and to the larger conceptual framework within which this is located as the causal quantum theory program. While it is true that one can have reservations about the appropriateness of these specific labels, both do elicit distinc tive images characteristic of the key concepts of these approaches and such terminology does serve effectively to contrast this class of theories with more standard formulations of quantum theory. (shrink)

The concepts of health and disease play pivotal roles in medicine and the health professions This volume brings together the requisite literature for understanding current discussions and debates these concepts. The selections in the volume attempt to present a wide range of views concerning the nature of the concepts of health and issues using both historical and contemporary sources -- Back cover.

Over the past decade, a number of accounting and financial reporting frauds have led to lost stock wealth, destroyed public trust, and a worldwide recession that called for necessary reform. Regulatory responses and systemic reforms quickly followed, and we show that, while necessary, these reforms are insufficient. The purpose of this paper is to forward virtuous professionalism as a necessary path toward restoring financial reporting systems. We take the position of external observer and analyze the accounting profession over time to (...) assess what has transpired within our financial reporting systems. Our analysis reveals that the combined influence of commercialism and regulatory response has led to a systemic decline in accounting’s professional ideals and, as a result, an erosion of public trust. We then propose virtuous professionalism as a necessary process for restoring financial reporting systems based on sociological, professional, and philosophical theories. We argue that virtuous professionalism is necessary for restoring the public servant identity of the accounting professional. We conclude that efforts to restore financial reporting systems should begin with reforms that restore professional identity shaped by virtues. (shrink)

A definitive and authoritative guide to a vibrant and growing discipline in current philosophy, The Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Medicine presents an overview of the issues facing contemporary philosophy of medicine, the research methods required to understand them and a trajectory for the discipline's future. -/- Written by world leaders in the discipline, this companion addresses the ontological, epistemic, and methodological challenges facing philosophers of medicine today, from the debate between evidence-based and person-centered medicine, medical humanism, and gender (...) medicine, to traditional issues such as disease, health, and clinical reasoning and decision-making. Practical and forward-looking, it also includes a detailed guide to research sources, a glossary of key terms, and an annotated bibliography, as well as an introductory survey of research methods and discussion of new research directions emerging in response to the rapid changes in modern medicine. -/- “Philosophy needs medicine', Hillel Braude argues, 'to become more relevant'. By showing how modern medicine provides philosophers with a rich source of material for investigating issues facing contemporary society, The Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Medicine introduces the opportunities medicine offers philosophers together with the resources and skills required to contribute to contemporary debates and discussions. (shrink)

Health, Disease, and Illness brings together a sterling list of classic and contemporary thinkers to examine the history, state, and future of ever-changing "concepts" in medicine.

Today, modern Western medicine is facing a quality-of-care crisis that is undermining the patient–physician relationship. In this paper, a notion of the epistemically virtuous clinician is proposed in terms of both the reliabilist and responsibilist versions of virtue epistemology, in order to help address this crisis. To that end, a clinical case study from the literature is first reconstructed. The reliabilist intellectual virtues, including the perceptual and conceptual virtues, are then discussed and applied to the case study. Next, a similar (...) method is employed to examine the responsibilist intellectual virtues, including curiosity, courage, honesty, and humility, and to apply them to the case study. To round out the discussion, the love of knowledge and both theoretical and practical wisdom are explored and applied to the case study. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how the notion of an epistemically virtuous clinician addresses the quality-of-care crisis, in terms of the connection between ethical and intellectual virtues, and of the notion’s implications for medical education. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged both medicine and governments as they have strived to confront the pandemic and its consequences. One major challenge is that evidence-based medicine has struggled to provide timely and necessary evidence to guide medical practice and public policy formulation. We propose an extension of evidence-based corona medicine to an organismic systems corona medicine as a multilevel conceptual framework to develop a robust concept-oriented medical system. The proposed organismic systems corona medicine could help to prevent or mitigate (...) future pandemics by transitioning to a bifocal medicine that extends an empirical evidence-based medicine to a theory-oriented organismic systems medicine. (shrink)

The Jubilee Centre’s new report, Virtuous Medical Practice, examines the place of character and values in the medical profession in Britain today. Its findings are drawn from a UK-focused multi-methods study of 549 doctors and aspiring doctors at three career stages, first and final year students and experienced doctors.

An historical survey of Thomas Kuhn's 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, charting the development of this influential work throughout Kuhn's career and exploring the continuing impact of Kuhn on the philosophy of science.

. From a proper class of supercompact cardinals, we force and obtain a model in which the proper classes of strongly compact and strong cardinals precisely coincide. In this model, it is the case that no strongly compact cardinal \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $\kappa$\end{document} is \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $2^\kappa = \kappa^+$\end{document} supercompact.

The predominant model of the body in modern western medicine is the machine. Practitioners of the biomechanical model reduce the patient to separate, individual body parts in order to diagnose and treat disease. Utilization of this model has led, in part, to a quality of care crisis in medicine, in which patients perceive physicians as not sufficiently compassionate or empathic towards their suffering. Alternative models of the body, such as the phenomenological model, have been proposed to address this crisis. According (...) to the phenomenological model, the patient is viewed as an embodied person within a lived context and through this view the physician comes to understand the disruption illness causes in the patient’s everyday world of meaning. In this paper, I explore the impact these two models of the patient’s body have had on modern medical practice. To that end I first examine briefly the historical origins of the biomechanical and phenomenological models, providing a historical context for the discussion of each model’s main features in terms of machine-world and life-world. Next, I discuss the impact each model has had on the patient–physician relationship, and then I examine briefly the future development of each model. The meaning of illness vis-à-vis each model of the patient’s body is finally examined, especially in terms of how these two models affect the patient’s interpretation of illness. The paper concludes with a discussion of the biomechanical and phenomenological models, in terms of the quality of care crisis in modern western medicine. (shrink)

Metaphysical presuppositions are important for guiding scientific practices and research. The success of twentieth-century biology, for instance, is largely attributable to presupposing that complex biological processes are reducible to elementary components. However, some biologists have challenged the sufficiency of reductionism for investigating complex biological phenomena and have proposed alternative presuppositions like organicism. In this article, contemporary cancer research is used as a case study to explore the importance of metaphysical presuppositions for guiding research. The predominant paradigm directing cancer research is (...) the somatic mutation theory, in which mutated genes are presumed to be ultimately responsible for explaining carcinogenesis. This reductionistic approach to cancer has been criticised recently, and an organistic approach has been proposed. The article concludes with a discussion of the reciprocal interaction of metaphysical presuppositions and scientific practices for investigating cancer's complex nature. (shrink)

It is now—at least loosely—acknowledged that most health and clinical outcomes are influenced by different interacting causes. Surprisingly, medical research studies are nearly universally designed to study—usually in a binary way—the effect of a single cause. Recent experiences during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic brought to the forefront that most of our challenges in medicine and healthcare deal with systemic, that is, interdependent and interconnected problems. Understanding these problems defy simplistic dichotomous research methodologies. These insights demand a shift in our (...) thinking from ‘cause and effect’ to ‘causes and effects’ since this transcends the classical way of Cartesian reductionist thinking. We require a shift to a ‘causes and effects’ frame so we can choose the research methodology that reflects the relationships between variables of interest—one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one or many-to-many. One-to-one (or cause and effect) relationships are amenable to the traditional randomized control trial design, while all others require systemic designs to understand ‘causes and effects’. Researchers urgently need to re-evaluate their science models and embrace research designs that allow an exploration of the clinically obvious multiple ‘causes and effects’ on health and disease. Clinical examples highlight the application of various systemic research methodologies and demonstrate how ‘causes and effects’ explain the heterogeneity of clinical outcomes. This shift in scientific thinking will allow us to find the necessary personalized or precise clinical interventions that address the underlying reasons for the variability of clinical outcomes and will contribute to greater health equity. (shrink)

Dimensions of character are often overlooked in professional practice at the expense of the development of technical competence and operational efficiency. Drawing on philosophical accounts of virtue ethics and positive psychology, the present work attempts to elevate the role of ‘good’ character in the professional domain. A ‘good’ professional is ideally one that exemplifies dimensions of character informed by sound judgement. A total of 2340 professionals, from five discrete professions, were profiled based on their valuation of qualities pertaining to character (...) and judgement. Profile differences were subsequently examined in the self-reported experience of professional purpose towards a wider societal ‘good’. Analysis of covariance, controlling for stage of career, revealed that professionals valuing character reported higher professional purpose than those overweighting the importance of judgement or valuing neither character nor judgement, F = 7.92, p <.001. No differences were found between the two groups valuing character, irrespective of whether judgement was valued simultaneously. This profiling analysis of entry-level and in-service professionals, based on their holistic character composition, paves the way for fresh philosophical discussion regarding what constitutes a ‘good’ professional and the interplay between character and judgement. The empirical findings may be of substantive value in helping to recognise how the dimensions of character and judgement may impact upon practitioners’ professional purpose. (shrink)

Combining techniques of the first author and Shelah with ideas of Magidor, we show how to get a model in which, for fixed but arbitrary finite n, the first n strongly compact cardinals κ 1 ,..., κ n are so that κ i for i = 1,..., n is both the i th measurable cardinal and κ + i supercompact. This generalizes an unpublished theorem of Magidor and answers a question of Apter and Shelah.

A notion of experimental series is developed, in which experiments or experimental sets are connected through experimental suggestions arising from previous experimental outcomes. To that end, the justification of Howard Temin’s DNA provirus hypothesis is examined. The hypothesis originated with evidence from two exploratory experimental sets on an oncogenic virus and was substantiated by including evidence from three additional experimental sets. Collectively these sets comprise an experimental series and the accumulative evidence from the series was adequate to justify the hypothesis (...) by persuading the virology community of its veracity. The notion of crucial experiment is also discussed in terms of experimental series. (shrink)

Balfour on Green's Prolegomena to Ethics.

A notion of experimental series is developed, in which experiments or experimental sets are connected through experimental suggestions arising from previous experimental outcomes. To that end, the justification of Howard Temin's DNA provirus hypothesis is examined. The hypothesis originated with evidence from two exploratory experimental sets on an oncogenic virus and was substantiated by including evidence from three additional experimental sets. Collectively these sets comprise an experimental series and the accumulative evidence from the series was adequate to justify the hypothesis (...) by persuading the virology community of its veracity. The notion of crucial experiment is also discussed in terms of experimental series. (shrink)

Gathers medical and legal documents, opinions from various perspectives, and a timeline of events in the Terri Shiavo case to provide a resource for examining the moral and ethical issues surrounding end-of-life decisions.

Many Faculties of Education in the UK and elsewhere have ‘social justice’ written into their mission statements. But are they concerned by questions of social justice in education, or has the term become somewhat vacuous and devoid of substantive meaning? The present article subjects recent discourses about social justice in education to scrutiny and finds them wanting in various respects, in particular when juxtaposed with historical accounts of justice by philosophers such as Aristotle or Aquinas. Among the complaints made here (...) is that most educational accounts (a) make do with a ‘negative’ conception of social justice as focused on specific cases of injustices without any positive conception of what social justice means in its entirety, (b) foreground institutional justice at the expense of justice as a moral or civic virtue, (c) fail to connect the identification of justice or injustice to an account of phronesis or practical wisdom for integrating values, (d) shy away from associating social justice with the ‘common good’ and (e) fail to get to grips with some thorny normative questions about the role of justice in the ordering of goods in a hierarchy towards the highest good. Along the way, various remedies are suggested. (shrink)

Recently, American Psychologist published a review of the evidence for parapsychology that supported the general claims of psi (the umbrella term often used for anomalous or paranormal phenomena). We present an opposing perspective and a broad-based critique of the entire parapsychology enterprise. Our position is straightforward. Claims made by parapsychologists cannot be true. The effects reported can have no ontological status; the data have no existential value. We examine a variety of reasons for this conclusion based on well-understood scientific principles. (...) In the classic English adynaton, “pigs cannot fly.” Hence, data that suggest that they can are necessarily flawed and result from weak methodology or improper data analyses or are Type I errors. So it must be with psi effects. What we find particularly intriguing is that, despite the existential impossibility of psi phenomena and the nearly 150 years of efforts during which there has been, literally, no progress, there are still scientists who continue to embrace the pursuit. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Moti Mizrahi (2015) examines whether there are “good arguments” to support Kuhn’s taxonomic incommensurability (TI) thesis. He concludes that there is neither “valid deductive” nor “strong inductive” support for the thesis and that consequently TI should not be believed or accepted. In response, Lydia Patton (2015) claims that the most “influential” arguments within the history of science are abductive or inference to the best explanation (IBE) rather than deductive or inductive arguments. After reviewing and analyzing this exchange, I propose that (...) although argumentation is important for supporting Kuhn’s TI thesis, it is not the only type of support—or possibly even the most persuasive. I contend that the historian’s personal or psychological experience of accessing a revolutionary change in science—as illustrated in Kuhn’s own experience of laboring to understand the Aristotelian idea of motion while assuming a Newtonian idea of motion—represents a compelling type of support for TI. To that end, I reconstruct briefly a case history from the biomedical sciences and discuss how it supports TI vis-à-vis the Mizrahi-Patton exchange. (shrink)

What is medical progress? The answer to this question is often associated with advances in diagnostic technology, with greater understanding of disease or pathological mechanisms particularly at the molecular level, or with the discovery of drugs and the developmental of surgical procedures to treat diseases. However, this facile answer can be problematic. In a New York Times Magazine article, for example, Lisa Sanders (2003) recounts a lecture delivered to her first-year class, at a "white-coat" ceremony, by the medical school dean. (...) Half of what we—the faculty—teach you—the students—is nonsense, she was told, but we don't know which half. She illustrates what the dean said, with the following change in advice for .. (shrink)

The research project described in this report represents one of the most extensive studies of character education ever undertaken, including over 10,000 students and 255 teachers in schools across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Research techniques consisted of a mixture of surveys, moral dilemmas and semi-structured interviews. This report explores: - The current situation in character education, both in the UK and internationally - How developed British students are with respect to moral character and the extent to which they (...) are able to understand and apply moral virtues, especially those aged 14 and 15 - How teachers in the UK understand their role in terms of students’ moral and character development - What helps or hinders the development of children’s characters according to teachers in UK schools. (shrink)

For at least the past several decades, medicine has been embroiled in a crisis concerning the nature of its professionalism. The fundamental questions that drive this ongoing crisis are primarily three. First, what is the nature of medical professionalism? Second, who are medical professionals? Third, what does medicine or these professionals profess or promise? In this paper, the professionalism crisis vis-à-vis these questions is examined and analyzed chiefly in terms of both Francis Peabody’s and Edmund Pellegrino’s writings. Based on their (...) writings, I introduce a conceptual framework for professionalism to address the crisis. In addition, I contend that to address the professionalism crisis adequately, medicine’s position within an evolving health care network must also be considered. To that end, I first discuss the genesis of the crisis in terms of the Flexner Report and especially Peabody’s response to it. Next, I explore how the crisis intensified during the twentieth century, particularly in terms of medicine’s ultimate scientification and eventual commercialization, and how Pellegrino reacted to this. I then propose a health care professionalism cycle and a care-competence cycle to provide a conceptual framework for addressing the crisis. I conclude that medicine’s position is no longer as the center of health care but rather as another node within a wider evolving health care network. And the resolution of medicine’s professionalism crisis depends on medicine’s positioning and defining itself in terms of the professionalism for each of the other professions within the health care network. (shrink)