Expanded from the Chief Rabbi of South Africa's doctoral thesis, Defending the Human Spirit explores the Torah's legal system compared to Western law.

The idea of 'holiness' is central to religion, but it is also one of the hardest concepts to define. Is 'holiness' a synonym for Godliness, one of God's attributes, or does it have independent existence? What does it mean to say that both God and man are holy? What is the proper understanding of 'Be holy, because I the Lord your God am holy'? A Theology of Holiness analyzes the meaning of the Hebrew root k-d-sh from ancient sources, throughout Tanakh, (...) the Talmud, Rashi, Maimonides, Nachmanides, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Ultimately, it is a work of theology, and helps the reader achieve a deeper understanding of holiness"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Are science and religion compatible when it comes to understanding cosmology (the origin of the universe), biology (the origin of life and of the human species), ethics, and the human mind (minds, brains, souls, and free will)? Do science and religion occupy non-overlapping magisteria? Is Intelligent Design a scientific theory? How do the various faith traditions view the relationship between science and religion? What, if any, are the limits of scientific explanation? What are the most important open questions, problems, or (...) challenges confronting the relationship between science and religion, and what are the prospects for progress? These and other questions are explored in Science and Religion: 5 Questions--a collection of thirty-three interviews based on 5 questions presented to some of the world's most influential and prominent philosophers, scientists, theologians, apologists, and atheists. Contributions by Simon Blackburn, Susan Blackmore, Sean Carroll, William Lane Craig, William Dembski, Daniel C. Dennett, George F.R. Ellis, Owen Flanagan, Owen Gingerich, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, John F. Haught, Muzaffar Iqbal, Lawrence Krauss, Colin McGinn, Alister McGrath, Mary Midgley, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Timothy O'Connor, Massimo Pigliucci, John Polkinghorne, James Randi, Alex Rosenberg, Michael Ruse, Robert John Russell, John Searle, Michael Shermer, Victor J. Stenger, Robert Thurman, Michael Tooley, Charles Townes, Peter van Inwagen, Keith Ward, Rabbi David Wolpe. (shrink)

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)

Drawing on a landscape analysis of existing data-sharing initiatives, in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders, and public deliberations with community advisory panels across the U.S., we describe features of the evolving medical information commons. We identify participant-centricity and trustworthiness as the most important features of an MIC and discuss the implications for those seeking to create a sustainable, useful, and widely available collection of linked resources for research and other purposes.

The increasing use of cluster randomised trials in low-resource settings raises unique ethical issues. The Ottawa Statement on the Ethical Design and Conduct of Cluster Randomised Trials is the first international ethical guidance document specific to cluster trials, but it is unknown if it adequately addresses issues in low-resource settings. In this paper, we seek to identify any gaps in the Ottawa Statement relevant to cluster trials conducted in low-resource settings. Our method is to analyse a prototypical cluster trial conducted (...) in a low-resource setting with the Ottawa Statement; to identify ethical issues in the design or conduct of the trial not captured adequately and to make recommendations for issues needing attention in forthcoming revisions to the Ottawa Statement. Our analysis identified six ethical aspects of cluster randomised trials in low-resource settings that require further guidance. The forthcoming revision of the Ottawa Statement should provide additional guidance on these issues: streamlining research ethics committee review for collaborating investigators who are affiliated with other institutions; the classification of lay health workers who deliver study interventions as health providers or research participants; the dilemma experienced by investigators when national standards seem to prohibit waivers of consent; the timing of gatekeeper engagement, particularly when researchers face funding constraints; providing ancillary care in health services or implementation trials when a routine care control arm is known to fall below national standards and defining vulnerable participants needing protection in low-resource settings. (shrink)

In this case report, we describe a woman with advancing dementia who still retained decisional capacity and was able to clearly articulate her request for deactivation of her implanted cardiac pacemaker—a scenario that would result in her death. In this case, the patient had the autonomy to make her decision, but clinicians at an outside hospital refused to deactivate her pacemaker even though they were in unanimous agreement that the patient had capacity to make this decision, citing personal discomfort and (...) a belief that her decision seemed out of proportion to her suffering. We evaluated her at our hospital, found her to have decision-making capacity, and deactivated her pacer resulting in her death about 9 days later. While some clinicians may be comfortable discussing patient preferences for device deactivation in patients who are imminently dying, we can find no reports in the literature of requests for device deactivation from patients with terminal diagnoses who are not imminently dying. (shrink)

The thymus gland, which plays a key role in the maturation and functioning of the lymphoid system, is implicated in the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). The observation that the thymic hormone, thymosin α1, is elevated in individuals at risk for AIDS (as opposed to being depressed in other immunodeficient states) has provided the first direct evidence that the thymus is malfunctioning early in the course of this deadly disease. These observations have been valuable in screening for the syndrome with (...) a rapid radioimmunoassay and in the initiation of the first clinical trials with thymosin in high risk homosexuals and hemophiliacs. If the progressive immune paralysis in AIDS is due to a dying thymus, the early identification of asymptomatic carriers of AIDS or individuals with modest AIDS‐related dysfunction may lead to therapy with thymosin or other thymomimetic agents that can restore immune function and prevent the onset of frank AIDS. (shrink)

Randomized controlled trial trial designs exist on an explanatory-pragmatic spectrum, depending on the degree to which a study aims to address a question of efficacy or effectiveness. As conceptualized by Schwartz and Lellouch in 1967, an explanatory approach to trial design emphasizes hypothesis testing about the mechanisms of action of treatments under ideal conditions, whereas a pragmatic approach emphasizes testing effectiveness of two or more available treatments in real-world conditions. Interest in, and the number of, pragmatic trials has grown substantially (...) in recent years, with increased recognition by funders and stakeholders worldwide of the need for credible evidence to inform clinical decision-making. This increase has been accompanied by the onset of learning healthcare systems, as well as an increasing focus on patient-oriented research. However, pragmatic trials have ethical challenges that have not yet been identified or adequately characterized. The present study aims to explore the views of key stakeholders with respect to ethical issues raised by the design and conduct of pragmatic trials. It is embedded within a large, four-year project that seeks to develop guidance for the ethical design and conduct of pragmatic trials. As a first step, this study will address important gaps in the current empirical literature with respect to identifying a comprehensive range of ethical issues arising from the design and conduct of pragmatic trials. By opening up a broad range of topics for consideration within our parallel ethical analysis, we will extend the current debate, which has largely emphasized issues of consent, to the range of ethical considerations that may flow from specific design choices. Semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, across multiple jurisdictions, identified based on their known experience and/or expertise with pragmatic trials. We expect that the study outputs will be of interest to a wide range of knowledge users including trialists, ethicists, research ethics committees, journal editors, regulators, healthcare policymakers, research funders and patient groups. All publications will adhere to the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications. (shrink)

Suicidal Thoughts is a compilation of some of the most moving and insightful writing accomplished on the topic of suicide. It presents the thoughts and experiences of fifteen writers who have contemplated suicide-some on a professional level, others on a personal level, and a few, both personally and professionally. Through this collection, the reader is able to bear witness to the struggle between life and death and to the devastating aftermath of suicide. Suicidal Thoughts provides readers with a better understanding (...) of the reasons why some individuals give serious consideration to killing themselves. (shrink)

We expand on the article “Ethical Challenges Arising in the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Overview from the Association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD) Task Force” to consider the ways in which rural...

Laurence Goldstein gives a straightforward and lively account of some of the central themes of Wittgenstein's writings on meaning, mind, and mathematics.

You omega know something when you know it, and know that you know it, and know that you know that you know it, and so on. This paper first argues that omega knowledge matters, in the sense that it is required for rational assertion, action, inquiry, and belief. The paper argues that existing accounts of omega knowledge face major challenges. One account is skeptical, claiming that we have no omega knowledge of any ordinary claims about the world. Another account embraces (...) the KK thesis, and identifies knowledge with omega knowledge. This position faces counterexamples, and struggles to make sense of inexact knowledge. The paper then develops a new account of knowledge, by proposing the principle of Reflective Luminosity: if you know that you know something, then you omega know it. I argue that Reflective Luminosity allows for omega knowledge while avoiding the problems for KK. (shrink)

Drawing from the critical phenomenology of Alia Al-Saji, Christina Sharpe’s notion of “the wake,” and Jan Slaby’s work on affect, this paper offers a critique of George Ciccariello-Maher’s (2017) formulation of Frantz Fanon’s decolonized dialectic. I argue that Ciccariello-Maher’s formulation, while excellent in most respects, nevertheless contains a significant lacuna. While he is correct to point out that Fanon’s critique of universal reconciliation forces his dialectical activity to remain firmly rooted in the present, by failing to fully draw out how (...) the past always already weighs on the present, Ciccariello-Maher runs the risk of obscuring the affective weight of Fanon’s historical critique. This is problematic for the way it obscures the full range of ethical possibilities that stem from this particular affective experience—possibilities that Jan Slaby (2020: 189–95) makes clear via Christina Sharpe’s notion of “the wake.” In other words, while Ciccariello-Maher seems to frame Fanon’s recourse to infinitely deferred reconciliation as a reflection of the “ethical nihilism” (2017: 62) that characterizes the system of oppression he is responding to, a reformulation of Ciccariello-Maher’s observations with respect to affectivity re-frames this infinite deferral as an “embodied ethics of being and knowing” (Slaby 2020: 189). I will ultimately argue that this reformulation helps us understand Fanon’s parting words in Black Skin White Masks—“Oh my body, always make me a man who questions!” (Fanon 2008b: 206; 1952: 188)—as a call for the type of ethics suggested by Sharpe’s notion of “the wake” (2016). (shrink)

Examines an ethic of sexuality rooted in black queerness, including ethnographic interviews that help to trace the development of black queer ethics and sexual ethics.

When covering traumatic events, novice journalists frequently face situations they are rarely prepared to resolve. This paper highlights ethical dilemmas faced by journalists who participated in a focus group exploring the news media's trauma coverage. Major themes included professional obligations versus ethical responsibilities, journalists' perceived status and roles, permissible harms, and inexperience. Instructional classroom simulations based on experiential learning theory can bridge the gap between the theory of ethical trauma reporting and realities journalists face when covering events that are often (...) chaotic and unpredictable by their very nature. A simulation outline that can be used by journalism instructors is provided. (shrink)

This article examines discursive strategies used by police and politicians to describe and justify the application of penalty notices to minor criminal offences. Critical discourse analysis is used as an analytical tool to show how neoliberal economic thinking has informed the prism through which infringement notices have been rationalised as a legitimate alternative to traditional criminal prosecution, while also highlighting the contradictions inherent in neoliberalism as an ideology through which to view the embrace of legally hybrid powers in the criminal (...) justice system. Discursive strategies identified in the article include the use of ideological keywords ordinarily associated with free market economics and managerial efficiency; the adoption of militaristic vocabulary and metaphors in representations of policing and space; the strategies of assimilation and formulation to represent police views as uniform and coherent; and the use of nominalisations to legitimise the lack of procedural safeguards attached to infringement notices. The logic of—and the language ordinarily associated with—the domain of private business, the ‘free market’, and deregulation has infiltrated the criminal justice sphere. In addition, the naturalisation of neoliberal economic discourse in political and police representations of infringement notices produces and sustains important ideological effects, by disguising the ways in which the expanded use of administrative sanctions in public order policing intensifies state power at the expense of due process of law. (shrink)

Third World countries are not pursuing scientific and technological policies leading to the development of strong biotechnological industries. Their leaders have been misled into believing that modern biotechnological industries can be built in the absence of strong, intellectually aggressive, and original scientific schools. Hence, they do not strive to reform their universities, which have weak commitments to research, and do not see the importance of having research hospitals able to generate excellent and relevant clinical investigation. These strategic gaps in scientific (...) capability, the lack of governmental and corporate research funding, and the dependent nature of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries of the Third World make the development of competitive biotechnology a highly improbable event. If the present trend continues, underdeveloped countries will continue to be testing grounds for biological materials and agents, sources of valuable germplasm, and markets for high-value-added products and processes invented and manufactured in the First World. This article recommends that the international organizations collaborate in the urgent task of educating the Third World political leaders and administrators in the real problems connected with the generation of high technology. (shrink)

Third World countries are not pursuing scientific and technological policies leading to the development of strong biotechnological industries. Their leaders have been misled into believing that modern biotechnological industries can be built in the absence of strong, intellectually aggressive, and original scientific schools. Hence, they do not strive to reform their universities, which have weak commitments to research, and do not see the importance of having research hospitals able to generate excellent and relevant clinical investigation. These strategic gaps in scientific (...) capability, the lack of governmental and corporate research funding, and the dependent nature of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries of the Third World make the development of competitive biotechnology a highly improbable event. If the present trend continues, underdeveloped countries will continue to be testing grounds for biological materials and agents, sources of valuable germplasm, and markets for high-value-added products and processes invented and manufactured in the First World. This article recommends that the international organizations collaborate in the urgent task of educating the Third World political leaders and administrators in the real problems connected with the generation of high technology. (shrink)

Advances in biotechnologies for human enhancement and designer babies appear to offer us new hope in medicine, but capitalism may incentivize the selection of traits for profit. Engineering Perfection: Solidarity, Disability, and Well-being offers an opposing Marxist view, one that embraces human vulnerability and embodied difference.

We propose developing AIs whose only final goal is being shut down. We argue that this approach to AI safety has three benefits: (i) it could potentially be implemented in reinforcement learning, (ii) it avoids some dangerous instrumental convergence dynamics, and (iii) it creates trip wires for monitoring dangerous capabilities. We also argue that the proposal can overcome a key challenge raised by Soares et al. (2015), that shutdown-seeking AIs will manipulate humans into shutting them down. We conclude by comparing (...) our approach with Soares et al.'s corrigibility framework. (shrink)

Triviality results threaten plausible principles governing our credence in epistemic modal claims. This paper develops a new account of modal credence which avoids triviality. On the resulting theory, probabilities are assigned not to sets of worlds, but rather to sets of information state-world pairs. The theory avoids triviality by giving up the principle that rational credence is closed under conditionalization. A rational agent can become irrational by conditionalizing on new evidence. In place of conditionalization, the paper develops a new account (...) of updating: conditionalization with normalization. (shrink)

This paper clarifies several sources of the epistemological confusion that currently characterize the field of clinical psychology. Using a constructivist framework, it is argued that much of this confusion can be traced to a traditional failure to distinguish among levels of analysis when evaluating and comparing clinical psychology theories. By recognizing certain distinctions among levels of analysis, it becomes clear that efforts to provide epistemological legitimacy for clinical psychology theories have often conflated not only theories with epistemology, but also epistemologies (...) that reside at different levels of analysis. Recognition of these distinctions also permits a more precise definition of the role for which the received view of a natural science epistemology and hermeneutics are competing. This role should be defined as a "superordinate" epistemology. It is demonstrated how this concept provides some of the terms necessary for settling the debate between advocates of the received view and advocates of hermeneutics. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)