As an alternative to rights theory, John Ladd proposes an ethics of responsibility based on interpersonal relationships. These relationships, described as friendships, are personal in nature, founded on trust, and obtain between doctor and patient, parent and child, etc. Ladd presents his views in a most appealing way – helping the needy, being friends with the doctor. We argue that Ladd's ethics of responsibility is plausible only because he ignores the facts of power which rights theory was designed to take (...) into account, and that rights and the corresponding institutional model of medicine are indeed appropriate to the physician/patient relationship. (shrink)

Background: Despite a gradual shift in the focus of medical care among terminally ill patients to a palliative model, studies suggest that many children with life-limiting chronic illnesses continue to die in hospital after prolonged periods of inpatient admission and mechanical ventilation.Objectives: To examine the characteristics and location of death among hospitalised children, investigate yearwise trends in these characteristics and test the hypothesis that professional ethical guidance from the UK Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health would lead to significant (...) changes in the characteristics of death among hospitalised children.Methods: Routine administrative data from one large tertiary-level UK children’s hospital was examined over a 7-year period for children aged 0–18 years. Demographic details, location of deaths, source of admission , length of stay and final diagnoses were studied. Statistical significance was tested by the Kruskal–Wallis analysis of ranks and median test , χ2 test and Cochran–Armitage test .Results: Of the 1127 deaths occurring in hospital over the 7-year period, the majority were among infants. The main diagnoses at death included congenital malformations , perinatal diseases , cardiovascular disorders and neoplasms . Most deaths occurred in an intensive care unit environment , with a significant increase over the years . There was a clear increase in the proportion of admissions from in-hospital among the ICU cohort . Infants with congenital malformations and perinatal conditions were more likely to die in an ICU , and older children with malignancy outside the ICU . Children stayed for a median of 13 days on a hospital ward before being admitted to an ICU where they died.Conclusions: A greater proportion of hospitalised children are dying in an ICU environment. Our experience indicates that professional ethical guidance by itself may be inadequate in reversing the trends observed in this study. (shrink)

One of the most significant philosophical doctrines of Buddhism, and an idea that has remained at the centre of its theory and practice in virtually all historical times and places, is karma. The motivations for being involved in the accumulation of karmic merit in early medieval China were diverse, but one frequently mentioned goal was the health of the physical body. This brief article examines several facets of the relationship between karma and well-being, providing a few examples of the wide (...) range of sources on this subject and reflecting on its role in the popularization of Buddhism in China. I argue that medical metaphors were central to how the doctrine of karma was explained to diverse audiences, that the translation of these ideas emphasized connections with indigenous beliefs and social practices and that medical karma encouraged the self-regulation of behaviour and thoughts in conformity with Buddhist ideology. (shrink)

The close relationship between Buddhism and medicine that has become so visible thanks to the contemporary ‘mindfulness revolution’ is not necessarily unique to the twenty-first century. The ubiquitous contemporary emphasis on the health benefits of Buddhist and Buddhist-inspired practice is in many ways the latest chapter in a symbiotic relationship between Buddhism and medicine that is both centuries-long and of global scope. This article represents the first steps toward writing a book that explores the global history of Buddhism and medicine (...) ‘from Sarnath to Silicone Valley’. It identifies patterns in the transmission and reception of texts and ideas, networks of circulation, and intersections with local and regional histories that shaped the history of Buddhist ideas and practices concerning physical health and healing. (shrink)

ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters Along the Silk Roads, by Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim. Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. xvi+236 pp.; Hb $115.00 USD; Pb $39.95. ISBN-13: 9781472512574.

Pierce challenges the argument that economic sanctions are always morally preferable to the use of military force. He argues that such sanctions inflict suffering and physical harm on noncombatants and that small-scale military operations are sometimes preferable.

The least infringement principle has been widely endorsed by public health scholars. According to this principle, public health policies may infringe upon “general moral considerations” in order to achieve a public health goal, but if two policies provide the same public health benefit, then policymakers should choose the one that infringes least upon “general moral considerations.” General moral considerations can encompass a wide variety of goals, including fair distribution of burdens and benefits, protection of privacy and confidentiality, and respect for (...) autonomy.In this article, we argue that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's 2006 HIV screening recommendations may violate the least infringement principle. This is a concern because, although not legally binding, the Recommendations appear to have already influenced state laws and will likely continue to do so as legislative proposals continue to be passed. At a minimum, therefore, the Recommendations have important implications for HIV screening within the United States. (shrink)

In an article in this journal [2], A. C. Michalos, while arguing for the normative and empirical inadequacy of the Von Neumann and Morgenstern postulates of rational preference, completely misconstrued the concept of simple additivity contained in the postulates. As a result, the following argument is a non-sequitur.

Developments in Buddhist Thought: Canadian Contributions to Buddhist Studies. Ed. Roy C. Amore. Wilfrid Laurier Press, Waterloo, Canada 1979. 194pp. Can. $7.00 paperback.

Firearm violence in the United States produces over 36,000 deaths and 74,000 sustained firearm-related injuries yearly. The paper describes the burden of firearm violence with emphasis on the disproportionate burden on children, racial/ethnic minorities, women and the healthcare system. Second, this paper identifies factors that could mitigate the burden of firearm violence by applying a blend of key ethical theories to support population level interventions and recommendations that may restrict individual rights. Such recommendations can further support targeted research to inform (...) and implement interventions, policies and laws related to firearm access and use, in order to significantly reduce the burden of firearm violence on individuals, health care systems, vulnerable populations and society-at-large. By incorporating a blended public health ethics to address firearm violence, we propose a balance between societal obligations and individual rights and privileges. (shrink)

This book synthesizes Jacques Derrida’s hauntology and spectrality with affect theory, in order to create a rhetorical framework analyzing the felt absences and hauntings of written and oral texts. The book opens with a history of hauntology, spectrality, and affect theory and how each of those ideas have been applied. The book then moves into discussing the unique elements of the rhetorical framework known as the rhetorrectional situation. Three case studies taken from the Christian tradition, serve to demonstrate how spectral (...) rhetoric works. The first is fictional, C.S. Lewis ’The Great Divorce. The second is non-fiction, Tim Jennings ’The God Shaped Brain. The final one is taken from homiletics, Bishop Michael Curry’s royal wedding 2018 sermon. After the case studies conclusion offers the reader a summary and ideas future applications for spectral rhetoric. (shrink)

Studies in philosophy: I. Tufts, J.H. On moral evolution. II. Willcos, W.F. The expansion of Europe in its influence upon population. III. Woods, R.A. Democracy a new unfolding of human power. IV. Sharp, F.C. An analysis of the moral judgment. V. Woodbridge, F.J.E. The problem of consciousness. VI. Norton, E.L. The intellectual element in music. VII. Raub, W.L. Pragmatism and Kantianism. VIII. Lyman, E.W. The influence of pragmatism upon the status of theology.--Studies in psychology: IX. Delabarre, E.B. Influence of surrounding (...) objects on the apparent direction of a line. X. Swift, E.J. Beginning a language; a contribution to the psychology of learning. XI. Pierce, A.H. An appeal from the prevailing doctrine of a detached subconsciousness. XII. Woodworth, R.S. The cause of a voluntary movement. XIII. Burnett, C.T. An experimental test of the classical theory of volition. (shrink)

The age of information, media, and virtuality is transforming every aspect of human experience. Questions that have long haunted the philosophical imagination are becoming urgent practical concerns: Where does the natural end and the artificial begin? Is there a difference between the material and the immaterial? In his new work, Mark C. Taylor extends his ongoing investigation of postmodern worlds by critically examining a wide range of contemporary cultural practices. Nothing defines postmodernism so well as its refusal of depth, its (...) emphasis on appearance and spectacle, its tendency to collapse a three-dimensional world in which image and reality are distinct into a two-dimensional world in which they merge. The postmodern world, Taylor argues, is a world of surfaces, and the postmodern condition is one of profound superficiality. For many cultural commentators, postmodernism's inescapable play of surfaces is cause for despair. Taylor, on the other hand, shows that the disappearance of depth in postmodern culture is actually a liberation repleat with creative possibilities. Taylor introduces readers to a popular culture in which detectives--the postmodern heroes of Paul Auster and Dennis Potter--lift surfaces only to find more surfaces, and in which fashion advertising plays transparency against hiding. Taylor looks at the contemporary preoccupation with body piercing and tattooing, and asks whether these practices actually reveal or conceal. Phrenology and skin diseases, the "religious" architecture of Las Vegas, the limitless spread of computer networks--all are brought within the scope of Taylor's brilliant analysis. Postmodernism, he shows, has given us a new sense of the superficial, one in which the issue is not the absence of meaning but its uncontrollable, ecstatic proliferation. Embodying the very tendencies it analyzes, Hiding is unique. Conceived and developed with well-known designers Michael Rock and Susan Sellars, this work transgresses the boundary that customarily separates graphic design from the story within a text. The product of nearly three decades of reflection and writing, Hiding opens a window on contemporary culture. To follow the remarkable course Taylor charts is to see both our present and past differently and to encounter a future as disorienting as it is alluring. (shrink)

A compilation of selected papers presented at the 1989 Charles S. Pierce International Congress Interest in Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is today worldwide. Ernest Nagel of Columbia University wrote in 1959 that "there is a fair consensus among historians of ideas that Charles Sanders Peirce remains the most original, versatile, and comprehensive philosophical mind this country has yet produced." The breadth of topics discussed in the present volume suggests that this is as true today as it was in 1959. (...) Papers concerning Peirce's philosophy of science were given at the Harvard Congress by representatives from Italy, France, Sweden, Finland, Korea, India, Denmark, Greece, Brazil, Belgium, Spain, Germany, and the United States. The Charles S. Peirce Sesquicentennial International Congress opened at Harvard University on September 5, 1989, and concluded on the 10th—Peirce's birthday. The Congress was host to approximately 450 scholars from 26 different nations. The present volume is a compilation of selected papers presented at that Congress. The philosophy of science and its logic are themes in the work of Charles Peirce that have been of greatest interest to scholars. Peirce was himself a physical scientist. He worked as an assistant at the Harvard Astronomical Observatory from 1869 to 1872 and made a series of astronomical observations there from 1872 to 1875. Solon I. Bailey says of these observations, "The first attempt at the Harvard Observatory to determine the form of the Milky Way, or the galactic system, was made by Charles S. Peirce....The investigation was of a pioneer nature, founded on scant data." Peirce also made major contributions in fields as diverse as mathematical logic and psychology. C. I. Lewis has remarked that "the head and font of mathematical logic are found in the calculus of propositional functions as developed by Peirce and Schroeder." Peirce subsequently invented, almost from whole cloth, semiotics - the science of the meaning of signs. Ogden and Richards, the British critics, say that "by far the most elaborate and determined attempt to give an account of signs and their meanings is that of the American logician C. S. Peirce, from whom William James took the idea and the term Pragmatism, and whose Algebra of Dyadic Relations was developed by Schroeder.". (shrink)

Truth diagrams are introduced as a novel graphical representation for propositional logic. To demonstrate their epistemic efficacy a set of 28 concepts are proposed that any comprehensive representation for PL should encompass. TDs address all the criteria whereas seven other existing representations for PL only provide partial coverage. These existing representations are: the linear formula notation, truth tables, a PL specific interpretation of Venn Diagrams, Frege’s conceptual notation, diagrams from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, Pierce’s alpha graphs and Gardner’s shuttle diagrams. The (...) comparison of the representations succeeds in distinguishing ideas that are fundamental to PL from features of common PL representations that are somewhat arbitrary. (shrink)

ABSTRACT : Alfred Fouillee's doctrine of ideas-forces approximates historically and intellectually William James’s theory of will. But Fouillee's criticism of pragmatism also has connections with Pierce's emphasis on the real and the analysis of concepts, and shows an influence of tychism approaching mysticism. -/- .

Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources, edited by C. Pierce Salguero. Columbia University Press, 2017. 728 pp.; Hb $150. ISBN-13: 9780231179942.