Our aim in this article is to define the difficulties that clinical ethics services encounter when they are asked to demonstrate the value a clinical ethics service (CES) could and should have for an institution and those it serves. The topic emerged out of numerous related presentations at the Un- Conference hosted by the Cleveland Clinic in August 2018 that identified challenges of articulating the value of clinical ethics work for hospital administrators. After a review these talks, it was apparent (...) that the field of clinical ethics may be at a crisis of sorts due to increased pressure to provide explicit measures to healthcare institutions to concretely demonstrate that CESs make a valuable difference in healthcare delivery. In this article, we grapple with how to satisfy the need for demonstrable value in a field in which metrics alone may not capture the scope of clinical ethics practice. We suggest that capturing the value of a CES has been difficult because the benefits of ethics consultation may be overt or attributable to the CES, but are often hidden due to the systems-level and process-oriented nature of clinical ethics work. Part of the difficulty in demonstrating the value of CESs is capturing and conveying all of the ways the integration of a CES throughout an institution positively affects patients, families, visitors, healthcare professionals, administrators, and the institution itself. Our aim is to (1) elucidate the multifaceted value added by a CES, including value that tends to be hidden and (2) suggest how to demonstrate value to others in a way that is not simplistic or reductionistic. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultants (CECs) often face some of the most difficult communication and interpersonal challenges that occur in hospitals, involving stressed stakeholders who express, with strong emotions, their preferences and concerns in situations of personal crisis and loss. In this article we will give examples of how much of the important work that ethics consultants perform in addressing clinical ethics conflicts is incompletely conceived and explained in the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics Consultation and (...) the clinical ethics literature. The work to which we refer is best conceptualized as a specialized type of interviewing, in which the emotional barriers of patients and their families or surrogates can be identified and addressed in light of relevant ethical obligations and values within the context of ethics facilitation. (shrink)

George Boolos has described an interpretation of a fragment of ZFC in a consistent second-order theory whose only axiom is a modification of Frege's inconsistent Axiom V. We build on Boolos's interpretation and study the models of a variety of such theories obtained by amending Axiom V in the spirit of a limitation of size principle. After providing a complete structural description of all well-founded models, we turn to the non-well-founded ones. We show how to build models in which foundation (...) fails in prescribed ways. In particular, we obtain models in which every relation is isomorphic to the membership relation on some set as well as models of Aczel's anti-foundation axiom (AFA). We suggest that Fregean extensions provide a natural way to envisage non-well-founded membership. (shrink)

History of science has developed into a methodologically diverse discipline, adding greatly to our understanding of the interplay between science, society, and culture. Along the way, one original impetus for the then newly emerging discipline—what George Sarton called the perspective “from the point of view of the scientist”—dropped out of fashion. This essay shows, by means of several examples, that reclaiming this interaction between science and history of science yields interesting perspectives and new insights for both science and history of (...) science. The authors consequently suggest that historians of science also adopt this perspective as part of their methodological repertoire. (shrink)

Historians have emphasized the appearance of a productive research program in genetics after 1910, and philosophers and biologists have considered endorsement of genetics as a progressive move, indeed as a starting point for modern experimental biology. These efforts focus on what biology had changed to. This paper examines the condition from which biology moved, stressing the way in which Americans held heredity and development as a natural, intimately intertwined couple. Heredity accounts for likenesses, development for variation, and the two act (...) together throughout an individual's life. This discussion establishes the antecedent conditions necessary to explain the split of genetics and embryology and addresses the reasons for the split. (shrink)

In this paper an attempt is made to present Skolem's argument, for the relativity of some set-theoretical notions as a sensible one. Skolem's critique of set theory is seen as part of a larger argument to the effect that no conclusive evidence has been given for the existence of uncountable sets. Some replies to Skolem are discussed and are shown not to affect Skolem's position, since they all presuppose the existence of uncountable sets. The paper ends with an assessment of (...) the assumptions on which Skolem's argument rests from a present-day perspective. (shrink)

The phrase “regenerative medicine” is used so often and for so many different things, with such enthusiasm or worry, and often with a sense that this is something radically new. This paper places studies of regeneration and applications in regenerative medicine into historical perspective. In fact, the first stem cell experiment was carried out in 1907, and many important lines of research have contributed since. This paper explores both what we can learn about the history and what we can learn (...) from the history of regenerative medicine research. (shrink)

This case study examines how journalists at Britain's Guardian newspaper and affiliated Web site are assessing and incorporating user-generated content in their perceptions and practices. A framework of existentialism helps highlight constructs and professional norms of interest. It is one of the first data-driven studies to explore how journalists are negotiating personal and social ethics within a digital network.

Anton Dohrn rejected the popular Amphioxus-ascidian theory of vertebrate origin, which saw Amphioxus as the most primitive vertebrate and ascidians as vertebrate ancestors. Instead he argued for the segmented annelids as the more likely candidate. Attacked for being 'unscientific' by such popular morphologists as Carl Gegenbaur and Ernst Haeckel, Dohrn countered with similar accusations. Since the debate peaked as Dohrn was establishing his Stazione Zoologica in Naples at the end of the nineteenth century, it gained him valuable attention and may (...) have encouraged him to retain his view even in the face of new and problematic evidence. This paper explores Dohrn's contributions and the underlying commitments revealing what he regarded as important in science. (shrink)

Abstract“Development” suggests that there is something that is developing, or changing over time. We can ask about temporal boundaries of that developmental process, asking when development begins or ends and whether it has defined stages along the way, for example. We can ask about spatial boundaries as well: where does the developing object start and end? For this article, I ask about the boundary definition of the developing organism in particular. What is an individual organism, and what defines it as (...) the same organism as it changes over time? In particular, how has this been answered historically: how have researchers described and explained what an individual developing organism is? This article explores ideas and approaches especially starting in the late 19th century, and in particular looks at the role of “organization.”. (shrink)

All professional ethics are dependent on the epistemology of the profession. The possibility of following a code of ethics, whether the official one or an alternative code, is dependent on being able to obtain knowledge and understand the world. Professional knowledge has to be based on inferences from limited information. Statistics provides the optimal methods for making such inferences, and thus ethical professional conduct requires individual or collective understanding of some statistical thcory and practice. This is demonstrated using the medical (...) profession as an example. Statistical methods are essential in all areas of medicine, in routine medical practice, in screening for disease and in research. Evidence from medical journals, textbooks and research bodies shows that the statistical basis for ethical conduct is lacking. However, there are attempts to improve the situation. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Missing Women A Case Study of Cultural Loss Cultural Wealth Regained Making the Cultural Wealth Work Agenda for the Future.

Several recent papers dealing with Plato's position on the imperfection of the phenomenal world draw heavily on the differences between two kinds of predicates in order to show the following: In the middle dialogues, Plato posits Forms only as referents of what the writers call incomplete predicates. He does not posit Forms as referents for complete predicates. When interpreters ignore the differences between these kinds of predicates, they ascribe too radical a view regarding the imperfection of the phenomenal world to (...) the middle dialogues. The ontology of these dialogues includes sensible particulars which retain their identity over time even though they are continually changing in some respect or other. (shrink)

The remarkable growth in interest in aesthetic gardens in the late Ming period has been recognized in Chinese garden culture studies. The materialist historical approach contributes to revealing the importance of gardens’ economic functions in the shift of garden culture, but is inadequate in explaining the successive burgeoning of small plain gardens in the 17th century. This article integrates the aesthetic and materialist perspectives and situates the cultural transition in the concrete social and cultural context in the late Ming period. (...) Beginning with describing a taste change and an expansion in the number of gardens, this article focuses on the small plain garden phenomenon by exploring the unique role that the arts (e.g., poetry and painting) played. A series of artistic criteria were established in the late Ming period. The application of these aesthetic rules to gardens enabled more people to own gardens. This is process that economic requirements for owning gardens were lowered, giving way to the aesthetic appreciation and exploration of literati individuals’ artistic talents. Gardens thus became more widely accessible and provided enhanced pleasure to the middle and lower class families. The conclusion is that the ‘major shift’ in garden culture was closely associated with the change of garden owners’ aesthetic tastes, in addition to the economic conditions in the Jiangnan area. In the increased popularity of gardens, the arts played a significant role. (shrink)

In this paper, Tarskis notion of Logical Consequence is viewed as a special case of the more general notion of being a theorem of an axiomatic theory. As was recognized by Tarski, the material adequacy of his definition depends on having the distinction between logical and non logical constants right, but we find Tarskis analysis persuasive even if we dont agree on what constants are logical. This accords with the view put forward in this paper that Tarski indeed captures the (...) more inclusive notion of theoremhood in an axiomatic theory. The approach to logical consequence via axiomatic theories leads us to grant centrality to inference schemas rather than to full-fledged arguments and to view the logically valid schemas as a subclass of generally valid schemas. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine some contentions advanced by B. A. O. Williams in his books Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry and Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy . In particular I shall be concerned with the claims he makes about the nature of ethics—namely that it cannot be ‘objective’ or ‘realistic’ and that we may not hope for rational convergence in ethical judgments. My claims will be that Williams's case on these matters is importantly unclear (...) and incomplete and that we lack cogent reasons to accept the conclusions he offers us. But a good deal of scene-setting is necessary before we can pose the questions I wish to address. (shrink)

Garland E. Allen’s 1978 biography of the Nobel Prize winning biologist Thomas Hunt Morgan provides an excellent study of the man and his science. Allen presents Morgan as an opportunistic scientist who follows where his observations take him, leading him to his foundational work in Drosophila genetics. The book was rightfully hailed as an important achievement and it introduced generations of readers to Morgan. Yet, in hindsight, Allen’s book largely misses an equally important part of Morgan’s work – his study (...) of development and regeneration. It is worth returning to this part of Morgan, exploring what Morgan contributed and also why he has been seen by contemporaries and historians such as Allen as having set aside some of the most important developmental problems. A closer look shows how Morgan’s view of cells and development that was different from that of his most noted contemporaries led to interpretation of his important contributions in favor of genetics. This essay is part of a special issue, revisiting Garland Allen's views on the history of life sciences in the twentieth century. (shrink)

Each book covers all the necessary information a beginner needs to know about a particular topic, providing an index for easy reference and using the series' ...

This article, which was originally presented at the annual conference of the Venerable John Henry Newman Association at Villanova University in July 2005, examines the “religious formation” of students at the Catholic University of Ireland as presented by Newman in his university sermons and discourses. Newman wanted the students to develop not only intellectually, but also religiously and morally. He saw tutors as critical to this process of formation.