The genes involved in methionine biosynthesis are scattered throughout the Escherichia coli chromosome and are controlled in a similar but not coordinated manner. The product of the metJ gene and S‐adenosylmethionine are involved in the repression of this ‘regulon’.

When the COVID-19 surge hit New York City hospitals, the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College, and our affiliated ethics consultation services, faced waves of ethical issues sweeping forward with intensity and urgency. In this article, we describe our experience over an eight-week period (16 March through 10 May 2020), and describe three types of services: clinical ethics consultation (CEC); service practice communications/interventions (SPCI); and organizational ethics advisement (OEA). We tell this narrative through the prism of time, (...) describing the evolution of ethical issues and trends as the pandemic unfolded. We delineate three phases: anticipation and preparation, crisis management, and reflection and adjustment. The first phase focused predominantly on ways to address impending resource shortages and to plan for remote ethics consultation, and CECs focused on code status discussions with surrogates. The second phase was characterized by the dramatic convergence of a rapid increase in the number of critically ill patients, a growing scarcity of resources, and the reassignment/ redeployment of staff outside their specialty areas. The third phase was characterized by the recognition that while the worst of the crisis was waning, its medium- and long-term consequences continued to pose immense challenges. We note that there were times during the crisis that serving in the role of clinical ethics consultant created a sense of dis-ease as novel as the coronavirus itself. In retrospect we learned that our activities far exceeded the familiar terrain of clinical ethics consultation and extended into other spheres of organizational life in novel ways that were unanticipated before this pandemic. To that end, we defined and categorized a middle level of ethics consultation, which we have termed service practice communication intervention (SPCI). This is an underappreciated dimension of the work that ethics consult services are capable of in times of crisis. We believe that the pandemic has revealed the many enduring ways that ethics consultation services can more robustly contribute to the ethical life of their institutions moving forward. (shrink)

This paper considers whether Rawls' theory of justice as fairness may be used to justify a human right to health care. Though Rawls himself does not discuss health care, other writers have applied Rawls' theory to the provision of health care. Ronald Green argues that contractors in the original position would establish a basic right to health care. Green's proposal, however, requires considerable relaxation of the constraints Rawls places on the original position and thus jeopardizes Rawls' arguments for the (...) two principles of justice. Norman Daniels claims that health care is best understood as a means for helping to achieve Rawls' goal of equality of fair opportunity. Daniels acknowledges, however, that his interpretation cannot justify a basic right to health care; rather, it would at best require that certain kinds of care be made available to certain kinds of individuals. Finally, in place of the notion of health care is a human right, it is suggested that the provision of health care is a social ideal which may inspire the creation of specific legal rights. On this view, social provision of health care may properly vary significantly from culture to culture. Despite this variability, social systems may still be criticized on moral grounds. Keywords: justice, right to health care, equality, fair opportunity. (shrink)

The startle reflex provides a revealing model for examining the ways in which evolved neurophysiology shapes personal experience and patterns of recurrent social interaction. In the most diverse cultural contexts, in societies widely separated by time and space, the inescapable physiology of the reflex both shapes the experience of startle and biases the social usages to which the reflex is put. This book describes ways in which the startle reflex is experienced, culturally elaborated, and socially used in a wide variety (...) of times and places. It offers explanations both for the patterned commonalities found across cultural settings and for the differences engendered by diverse social environments. Boo! will intrigue readers in fields such as psychological anthropology, medical anthropology, general cultural anthropology, social psychology, cross-cultural psychiatry, evolutionary psychology, and human ethology. (shrink)

This chapter attempts to show how ancient Greek Heraclitus' and Parmenides' radical rejection of some common “mortal beliefs” resulted from their different views of time. Granting that common mortals are likely to persist in their “dazed” “two‐headedness,” the issues morphed into challenges for science and philosophy. This chapter poses the question of whether mortals achieve an explanation for the human experience of time and passage, one that coheres with a more comprehensive image of reality. It also explores whether science can (...) settle on a tenseless, relational (Parmenidean) image or will something like Heraclitius' logos rule the collapse of wave functions, the evolution of quantum worlds. The chapter concludes with a glimpse at mortal cosmologies. (shrink)

The underlying thesis of the research in ethical autonomy for lethal autonomous unmanned systems is that they will potentially be capable of performing more ethically on the battlefield than are human soldiers. In this article this hypothesis is supported by ongoing and foreseen technological advances and perhaps equally important by an assessment of the fundamental ability of human warfighters in today's battlespace. If this goal of better-than-human performance is achieved, even if still imperfect, it can result in a reduction in (...) noncombatant casualties and property damage consistent with adherence to the Laws of War as prescribed in international treaties and conventions, and is thus worth pursuing vigorously. (shrink)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1996.

Examining undergraduate education from the point of view of a philosopher of communication, Ronald C. Arnett takes a positive view of higher education during a time when education is being assailed as seldom before. Arnett responds to this criticism with convincing support of the academy reinforced by his personal experiences as well as those of others scholars and teachers. Arnett's book is an invitation to converse about higher education as well as a reminder of the potential for dialogue between (...) teacher and student, dialogue that the author defines as a "willingness to enter conversation about ideas," to maintain relationships through differences, and to ask value questions. Arnett see education as more than the dispensing of information. He emphasizes the importance of character development as well as the the development of relationships between students and teachers. Arnett stresses the importance of honesty and integrity in students, teachers, and administrators, and he insists that education should focus more on the good of the entire school than on the individual. Arnett does not offer this book as _the_ truth about education nor as a "how to teach" manual. Rather, he regards it as an attempt to understand education from a communication perspective and as a reminder of the positive and constructive aspects of teaching. The book is based on Arnett's belief that educators who care about ideas and people not only improve education but also benefit the community. (shrink)

Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's ethics as first philosophy explicates a human obligation and responsibility to and for the Other that is an unending and an imperfect commitment. In Levinas's Rhetorical Demand: The Unending Obligation of Communication Ethics, Ronald C. Arnett underscores the profundity of Levinas's insights for communication ethics. Arnett outlines communication ethics as a primordial call of responsibility central to Levinas's writing and mission. Arnett analyzes communication ethics through a Levinasian lens with examination of social artifacts ranging from the (...) Heidegger-Cassirer debate to Rupert Murdoch's News of the World story concerning illicit possession of information. Levinas's Rhetorical Demand offers an account of Levinas's project and the pragmatic implications of attending to a call of responsibility to and for the Other. This book yields a rich and nuanced understanding of Levinas's work, revealing the practical importance of his insights, and including a discussion of a constellation of related theorists and thinkers. (shrink)

Some recent physiological data indicate that the “subjective timing” of experiences can be “automatically referred backwards in time” to represent a sequence of events even though the earlier portions of associated neurophysiological activity are themselves insufficient to elicit the experience of any sensation. The challenge, then, is to explain how subjects can experience what they do in the reported ways when, if one looked just at certain neurophysiological activity, it would seem that perhaps subjects should report their sensations differently. The (...) phenomenon has seemed sufficiently remarkable to the neurobiologist John Eccles to count as evidence for mind-body dualism. This dualistic interpretation has resulted in a spirited attack by P. S. Churchland on both the physiological research and the dualistic interpretation. Her attack resulted in an equally spirited defense of the research by the primary investigator, B. Libet, where he reaffirmed his more guarded interpretation that “the temporal discrepancy creates relative difficulties for identity theory, but that these are not insurmountable”. In turn, Churchland has defended her criticism of Libet's research so that, for her, Libet's hypothesis remains “infirm and unconfirmed”. (shrink)

Psychoanalysis has traditionally had difficulty in accounting for the existence of evil. Freud saw it as a direct expression of unconscious forces, whereas more recent theorists have examined the links between early traumatic experiences and later ‘evil’ behaviour. _Humanizing Evil: Psychoanalytic, Philosophical and Clinical Perspectives _explores the controversies surrounding definitions of evil, and examines its various forms, from the destructive forces contained within the normal mind to the most horrific expressions observed in contemporary life. Ronald Naso and _Jon Mills_ (...) bring together an international group of experts to explore how more subtle factors can play a part, such as conformity pressures, or the morally destabilizing effects of anonymity, and show how analysts can understand and work with such factors in clinical practice._ _Each chapter is unified by the view that evil is intrinsically linked to human freedom, regardless of the gap experienced by perpetrators between their intentions and consequences. While some forms of evil follow seamlessly from psychopathology, others call this relationship into question. Rape, murder, serial killing, and psychopathy show very clear links to psychopathology and character whereas the horrors of war, religious fundamentalism, and political extremism resist such reductionism. Humanizing _Evil_ is unique in the diversity of perspectives it brings to bear on the problem of evil. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, philosophers, and Jungians. Because it is an integrative depth-psychological effort, it will interest general readers as well as scholars from a variety of disciplines including the humanities, philosophy, religion, mental health, criminal justice, political science, sociology, and interdisciplinary studies. Ronald Naso, Ph.D., ABPP is psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist in independent practice in Stamford, CT. The author of numerous papers on psychoanalytic topics, he is an associate editor of _Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies_, and contributing editor of _Division/Review _and _Journal of Psychology and Clinical Psychiatry_. His book, _Hypocrisy Unmasked: Dissociation, Shame, and the Ethics of Inauthenticity_, was published by Aronson in 2010. Jon Mills, Psy.D., Ph.D., ABPP is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. He is Professor of Psychology & Psychoanalysis at Adler Graduate Professional School, Toronto. A 2006, 2011, and 2013 Gradiva Award winner, he is Editor of two book series in psychoanalysis, on the Editorial Board for _Psychoanalytic Psychology_, and is the author and/or editor of thirteen books including his most recent works, _Underworlds: Philosophies of the Unconscious from Psychoanalysis to Metaphysics_, and _Conundrums: A Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysis_, which won the Goethe Award for best book in 2013. (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mild Cognitive Impairment Is RelevantRonald C. Petersen (bio)Keywordsaging, Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, mild cognitive impairment, pharmaceutical industryGraham and Ritchie (2006) have contributed a scholarly document that implores us to reexamine nosological categories and certain diagnostic outcomes. They have chosen mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as the target of their scrutiny and have raised several interesting issues. I would like to comment on their approach and suggest that MCI is a useful (...) clinical entity that does serve a practical function and hopefully will lead to a better quality of life for aging persons.There are several clarifications concerning the construct of MCI that need to be emphasized. Graham and Ritchie have asserted that all persons with MCI eventually evolve to Alzheimer's disease (AD) and have claimed that this is the inevitable outcome of the disorder. Although it is true that many of the early studies on MCI focused on the amnestic subtype as a precursor to AD (Bennett et al. 2002; Ganguli, Dodge, Shen, and DeKosky 2004; Lopez et al. 2003; Petersen et al. 1999), subsequent work has expanded the construct to include prodromal forms of other disorders (Petersen 2004; Winblad et al. 2004). As such, the construct of MCI has become flexible in recent years to account for alternative types of intermediate cognitive impairment.The authors state that MCI addresses those individuals speculated to have an inevitable dementia. Certainly, we do not presume that dementia is inevitable in the aging process; rather, we posit that if certain criteria are fulfilled in persons who are aging, the likelihood of a person progressing to a certain type of dementia is quite high. As such, this is an important precondition about which to learn, because interventional strategies may be available.Graham and Ritchie argue that some cognitive changes with aging are "normal" and trying to classify these individuals as "abnormal" is performing a disservice to much of the aging population. We draw an important distinction between the cognitive changes of normal aging, as they are recognized to exist, and what we feel constitutes the pathologic changes of MCI. We believe that the abnormal cognitive function found in MCI has a high probability of progressing to a greater degree of cognitive dysfunction in a relatively short period of time and these behavioral changes are accompanied by pathologic brain changes that are manifested on magnetic resonance imaging scans, positron emission tomography scans, cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers, and autopsy studies (Hampel et al. 2004; Jack et al. 1999; Markesbery et al. [End Page 45] 2006; Petersen et al. 2006). This type of progression is in contradistinction to other individuals who are experiencing cognitive changes of normal aging. These individuals do not progress rapidly to greater degrees of impairment and autopsy studies reveal that their brains do not harbor the pathologic changes found in the MCI population (Knopman et al. 2003).The cognitive and behavioral changes accompanying persons with MCI are devastating and cannot be ascribed to "senility" or "He is just getting old." It is a mistake to imply that by labeling people with a condition such as MCI we are doing them a disservice. Most of these individuals are seeking medical attention for their perceived difficulties. Consequently, addressing these concerns and educating the individuals on the implications of their symptoms are important services. Although we may not have adequate therapies at present, this does not imply that we should ignore the symptoms.We cannot treat many conditions at present, yet we do not avoid the opportunity to characterize the condition and make a diagnosis. Even if this were part of the aging process, this does not mean that we should ignore the disability and refuse to treat it. Most individuals develop an inflexibility of their optical lenses as they age, yet corrective lenses of one type or another are believed to be extremely beneficial at alleviating this disability associated with the aging phenomenon. No one would argue that it is inappropriate to treat this condition because it is "just a part of aging."It should be noted that I have stressed the situation in which individuals are seeking medical attention for their cognitive concerns. It is quite a different situation if an... (shrink)

The paradox of hypocrisy -- The call of conscience -- Perversion and moral reckoning -- Compromises of integrity -- Beneath the mask -- Youthful indiscretions -- Dissociation as self-deception -- Multiplicity and moral ambiguity.

This article employs Umberto Eco’s 2004 novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana as an exemplar of the hypertextuality of Eco’s semiotic theory. Eco’s project illustrates existential semiotics, providing a corrective to Euro Tarasti. For Tarasti signs reveal possibilities for transcendence in the lived world with ‘omnipresent’ meaning in an enunciative dialogue between signs and a semiotic subject. Tarasti’s existential signs are communicative alerts that illuminate a semiotic subject’s journey of transcendence, creating meaning via infusion of signs with signification. This (...) article forgoes Tarasti’s insistence on transcendence. The vitality of existential semiotic signs is displayed through Eco’s hypertextual approach to semiotics manifested in The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. Eco’s insights model an existential semiotic, correcting Tarasti’s pragmatically flawed but theoretically significant undertaking. Our rationale for explicating the scope of Tarasti’s work exemplifies an existential disconnect between information accumulation and signification. We present Tarasti’s project due to its fundamental signification for understanding the importance and vitality for existential semiotics. Existential semiotics illuminates the signifying function of communication in the presence of the ineffable. (shrink)

This textbook offers comprehensive coverage of all the essentials of the subject in an accessible yet challenging style, with explanations and examples taken from everyday life. Includes numerous exercises to increase student proficiency and confidence and a unique chapter on Logic and Hope.

From Optimism to Tenacious Hope: Communication Ethics and the Scottish Enlightenment works with the Scottish Enlightenment as the intellectual and performative background for the illustration of the differentiation between optimism and tenacious hope.

Philosophy of Communication Ethics is a unique and timely volume that creatively examines communication ethics, philosophy of communication, and the 'Other.'.

The verb λάω is attested in two passages of early epic poetry, Homeric Hymn to Hermes 360, where the infant Hermes is hiding in a dark cave, and τ 229 ff., of a hound seizing a fawn on the brooch of Odysseus. Of the several meanings suggested by the ancient lexicographers for λάω, seeing, gazing, or crying, screeching would suit. These senses recur in their explanations of, with gripping or devouring as additional possibilities. The most extensive modern treatment of λάω (...) is by Leumann, who explains it as a present falsely formed from the perfect λ⋯ληkα, and originally intended to describe the cry of a bird of prey. The unfamiliarity of the form led to its being associated later on with the sharp-sightedness of such birds, as well as with the bark of a hound fastening on its quarry. (shrink)

Historians should not use their own up-to-date methodologies to judge the rationality or correctness of the research strategies of scientists in history. For the history of science is, in part, the history of the rational growth of methodology and the historian's own up-to-date methodology is, in part, a product of the scientific revolutions of the past. Historians who use their own methodologies to judge the rationality of past research strategies are being too wise after the event. I show, using the (...) case of Charles Darwin, how we can judge the rationality and correctness of research strategies and revolutions without being too wise after the event. I do this by rejecting the idea that methodologies double as rationality theories and by drawing instead on Popper's competing view of rationality as critical debate. (shrink)