The British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has recently released new guidelines for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the psychiatric category antisocial personality disorder. Evident in these recommendations is a broader ambiguity regarding the ontology of ASPD. Although, perhaps, a mundane feature of much of medicine, in this case, ontological uncertainty has significant ethical implications as a product of the profound consequences for an individual categorised with this disorder. This paper argues that in refraining from emphasising uncertainty, (...) NICE risks reifying a controversial category. This is particularly problematical given that the guidelines recommend the identification of individuals “at risk” of raising antisocial children. Although this paper does not argue that NICE is “wrong” in any of its recommendations, more emphasis should have been placed on discussions of the ethical implications of diagnosis and treatment, especially given the multiple uncertainties associated with ASPD. It is proposed that these important issues be examined in more detail in revisions of existing NICE recommendations, and be included in upcoming guidance. This paper thus raises key questions regarding the place and role of ethics within the current and future remit of NICE. (shrink)

Discussions about the aesthetic relation frame are often focused on subject-object relations, on objects of arts, their production and their perception.1 A Christian philosophical anthropology emphasizes human subject-subject relations and human acts, including more than the production of artefacts. According to the philosophy of the cosmonomic idea, any kind of human act has an aesthetic aspect. Yet, I shall restrict myself to types of characters that are aesthetically qualified. I shall discuss characters of acts, which objects are not typically aesthetic; (...) characters of acts, which objects are aesthetically qualified; characters of acts performed in subject-subject relations, and characters of aesthetically qualified associations. (shrink)

Citizens today are increasingly expected to be knowledgeable about and prepared to engage with biomedical knowledge. In this article, I wish to reframe this ‘public understanding of science’ project, and place fresh emphasis on public understandings of research: an engagement with the everyday laboratory practices of biomedicine and its associated ethics, rather than with specific scientific facts. This is not based on an assumption that non-scientists are ‘ignorant’ and are thus unable to ‘appropriately’ use or debate science; rather, it is (...) underpinned by an empirically-grounded observation that some individuals may be unfamiliar with certain specificities of particular modes of research and ethical frameworks, and, as a consequence, have their autonomy compromised when invited to participate in biomedical investigations. Drawing on the perspectives of participants in my own sociological research on the social and ethical dimensions of neuroscience, I argue that public understanding of biomedical research and its ethics should be developed both at the community level and within the research moment itself in order to enhance autonomy and promote more socially robust science. Public bioethics will have to play a key role in such an endeavour, and indeed will contribute in important ways to the opening up of new spaces of symmetrical engagement between bioethicists, scientists and wider publics—and hence to the democratisation of the bioethical enterprise. (shrink)

The idea that the mass m of an elementary particle is explained in the semi-classical approximation by quantum-mechanical zero-point vacuum fluctuations has been applied previously to spin-1/2 fermions to yield a real and positive constant value for m, expressed through the spinorial connection Γ i in the curved-space Dirac equation for the wave function ψ due to Fock. This conjecture is extended here to bosonic particles of spin 0 and spin 1, starting from the basic assumption that all fundamental fields (...) must be conformally invariant. As a result, in curved space-time there is an effective scalar mass-squared term $m_{0}^{2}=-R/6=2\varLambda_{\mathrm{b}}/3$ , where R is the Ricci scalar and Λ b is the cosmological constant, corresponding to the bosonic zero-point energy-density, which is positive, implying a real and positive constant value for m 0, through the positive-energy theorem. The Maxwell Lagrangian density $\mathcal{L} =- \sqrt{-g}F_{ij}F^{ij}/4$ for the Abelian vector field F ij ≡A j,i −A i,j is conformally invariant without modification, however, and the equation of motion for the four-vector potential A i contains no mass-like term in curved space. Therefore, according to our hypothesis, the free photon field A i must be massless, in agreement with both terrestrial experiment and the notion of gauge invariance. (shrink)

Anticipating a future theory of change, this paper comments on the phenomenon of anticipations in Dooyeweerd’s systematic philosophy. The idea that reality itself or human experience of reality has some kind of a layered structure is put forward by several philosophers, but the insight that each aspect refers intimately to the others is uniquely Dooyeweerdian. It concerns an essential property of the structure of the modal aspects, each of which displays a ‘meaning nucleus’, expressive of its original meaning, besides retrocipations (...) and anticipations, referring to the other aspects. Dooyeweerd assigns the aspects a linear temporal order, hence the distinction between retroand anticipations. In fact, each aspect is considered to be an aspect of time as well as an aspect of being, a mode of human experience, and a principle of scientific explanation. (shrink)

De ontsluiting van de kosmos, de dynamiek van de schepping, de onrust in ons bestaan doortrekt de systematiek van Dooyeweerd. Zij is wetmatig, subjectief èn objectief. Zij heeft betrekking op de modale aspecten en op de structuren van de werkelijkheid. We kennen natuurlijke ontwikkeling, de evolutie zoals beschreven door de natuurwetenschappen, we kennen de beschavingsgeschiedenis van de mensheid, we kennen de artistieke ontsluiting in de kunsten, we kennen de juridische ontsluiting in de rechtsvorming, we kennen de wetenschappelijke ontsluiting. De ontsluiting (...) is normatief oorzover mensen er een leidende rol in spelen, het script van die rol is de wereldbeschouwing en het middel is de techniek. (shrink)

The view that organized social communities or associations differ from unorganized communities by having a kind of government or management exerting authority over the community appears almost obvious. Nevertheless it contradicts Dooyeweerd’s view, distinguishing organized communities from natural communities because of their being founded in the technical relation frame respectively the biotic one. This paper discusses the dual character of associations, requiring the introduction of a new relation frame. Determined by authority and discipline, the political relation frame succeeds the frames (...) of social intercourse and economic relations, and precedes the frames of justice and loving care. It qualifies the generic character of any association, founded in that of social intercourse. Besides, each association has a specific character, distinguishing various types of associations. These insights shed new light upon the dual character of a state as the guardian of the public domain. Constituting various networks of human relations, the public domain does not have the character of a community. (shrink)

In recent years, we have seen a new concern with ethics training for research and development professionals. Although ethics training has become more common, the effectiveness of the training being provided is open to question. In the present effort, a new ethics training course was developed that stresses the importance of the strategies people apply to make sense of ethical problems. The effectiveness of this training was assessed in a sample of 59 doctoral students working in the biological and social (...) sciences using a pre–post design with follow-up and a series of ethical decision-making measures serving as the outcome variable. Results showed not only that this training led to sizable gains in ethical decision making but also that these gains were maintained over time. The implications of these findings for ethics training in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

The Greeks and Romans have been charged with destroying the ecosystems within which they lived. In this book, however, M. D. Usher argues rather that we can find in their lives and thought the origin of modern ideas about systems and sustainability, important topics for humans today and in the future. With chapters running the gamut of Greek and Roman experience – from the Presocratics and Plato to Roman agronomy and the Benedictine Rule – Plato's Pigs brings together unlikely bedfellows, (...) both ancient and modern, to reveal surprising connections. Lively prose and liberal use of anecdotal detail, including an afterword about the author's own experiments with sustainable living on his sheep farm in Vermont, add a strong authorial voice. In short, this is a unique, first-of-its-kind book that is sure to be of interest to anyone working in Classics, environmental studies, philosophy, ecology, or the history of ideas. (shrink)

In a brief article under the present title, Adam Parry raised a simple but profound question: were there certain things that the inherited vocabulary of oral poets did not allow them to sayF; The mere raising of this question, whatever his answer, is enough to make the article one of the more important contributions to Homeric studies in the last fifty years. As it happens, his answer was affirmative, and it has not been contested. Contested it will now be.

In his last book, David Armstrong sets out his metaphysical system in a set of concise and lively chapters each dealing with one aspect of the world. He begins with the assumption that all that exists is the physical world of space-time. On this foundation he constructs a coherent metaphysical scheme that gives plausible answers to many of the great problems of metaphysics. He gives accounts of properties, relations, and particulars; laws of nature; modality; abstract objects such as numbers; and (...) time and mind. (shrink)

Statius' Silvae owe their preservation to a copy made in Switzerland for Poggio in 1417 by a local scribe. This copy, brought to light by G. Loewe in 1879, was recognized for what it was by A.C. Clark and A. Klotz twenty years later, and since then its descendants have had at best historical interest. To extract much of that from them an editor must endeavour to survey all the extant material, and A. Marastoni in the recent Teubner edition claims (...) to have done just that: ‘omnes manuscriptos libros veteresque editiones iterum contuli’ he says at the opening of his preface, and the reviewers echo his words. (shrink)

"Parts of Classes" tries to separate the unproblematic part of set theory (mereology) from the problematic part (singletons). In the process several things get lost: an empty set which is really empty; a satisfying account of the paradoxes; and the motivation for the iterative conception of set. Lewis' attack on the coherence of singletons makes it puzzling what he sees his book as doing. Nor is it clear that mereology is as ontologically innocent as Lewis would have us believe.

At the law side of the creation, the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea distinguishes between natural laws, values and norms. Natural laws are coercive both for human beings and for any other subject or object. Like natural laws, values or normative principles belong to the creation, being universal and invariable. Both people and associations are subject to values, which they can obey or disobey. Values characterize the relation frames following the natural ones. Norms are man-made realizations of values, historically and (...) culturally different. Philosophical ethics investigates the normativity of human acts. This paper argues that ethics cannot be related to a single relation frame and that the designation ‘ethical’ or ‘moral’ modal aspect is a misnomer. (shrink)

Thomas Marshall, who became Rector of Lincoln College in 1672 and died in 1685, left to the Bodleian his collection of books and manuscripts. Two lists of the manuscripts appear in Edward Bernard's Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae , i . 272–3, 373–4, but both omit what is now called MS. Marshall 140, which F. Madan in the Summary Catalogue describes as follows.

Recent months have brought forth a new edition of Nemesianus and a 294-page study of the textual tradition that he shares with Calpurnius. The edition, prepared by P. Volpilhac for Budé , offers nothing new on the tradition beyond reports of a few manuscripts known to previous editors; but Luigi Castagna's book I bucolici latini minori: una ricerca di critica testuale makes an earnest attempt at solving once and for all the problems that survived the last contribution of any weight, (...) Giarratano's edition . Though most of what Castagna says is true, however, his readers may be cushioned against the sharper points by an undue amount of padding, which also fails to hide gaps. Before he proceeds to his own edition of Nemesianus, therefore, a few things can usefully be said. (shrink)

This article identifies two trends in Dooyeweerd’s conception of ‘cosmic time’, and elaborates their consequences for the philosophy of history. The first trend, connecting time to modal diversity and the order of the modal aspects, prevails in Dooyeweerd’s analysis. The application of the second trend, emphasizing that in each relation frame the temporal order governs subject-subject relations and subjectobject relations, sheds a new light on the interpretation of history conceived of as development of the culture and civilization of mankind. The (...) distinction of faith and religion and the position of the aspect of faith in the order of the modal aspects play important parts in this discussion, in particular with respect to the possibility of transcending time. (shrink)