We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

The theme of the third annual Spring workshop of the HUPO-PSI was proteomics and beyond and its underlying goal was to reach beyond the boundaries of the proteomics community to interact with groups working on the similar issues of developing interchange standards and minimal reporting requirements. Significant developments in many of the HUPO-PSI XML interchange formats, minimal reporting requirements and accompanying controlled vocabularies were reported, with many of these now feeding into the broader efforts of the Functional Genomics Experiment data (...) model and Functional Genomics Ontology ontologies. (shrink)

Summarya) Bell tries to formulate more explicitly a notion of “local causality”: correlations between physical events in different space‐time regions should be explicable in terms of physical events in the overlap of the backward light cones. It is shown that ordinary relativistic quantum field theory is not locally causal in this sense, and cannot be embedded in a locally causal theory.b) Clauser, Home and Shimony criticize several steps in Bell's argument that any theory of local “beables” is incompatible with quantum (...) mechanics. It is contended that the Clauser‐Horne derivation of a Bell‐type inequality circumvents his weak steps. The Clauser‐Horne derivation must assume that there are no undetected correlations between choices of controllable variables in two space‐like separated regions. Methodological considerations support this assumption.c) In response to criticism by Shimony, Home, and Clauser, Bell tries to clarify the argument of “The theory of local beables”, and to defend as permissible the hypothesis of free variables.d) Bell's reply to an earlier criticism by Shimony, Clauser, and Home is answered. The convergence of Bell's position towards theirs is noted. (shrink)

Motivational and emotional changes across adulthood have a profound impact on cognition. In this registered report, we conducted an experimental investigation of motivational influence on remembering intentions after a delay (prospective memory; PM) in younger, middle-aged, and older adults, using gain- and loss-framing manipulations. The present study examined for the first time whether motivational framing in a PM task has different effects on younger and older adults’ PM performance (N = 180; age range: 18–85 years) in a controlled laboratory setting. (...) Based on lifespan theories of motivation, we assumed that the prevention of losses becomes more relevant with increasing age: We expected that older adults show relatively higher PM performance in a task with loss-related consequences following PM failure than in a task in which successful PM leads to gains. The opposite pattern of performance was expected for younger adults. The findings suggest that the relevance of reward and positive gain-related consequences for successful remembering appears to decrease with age. As hypothesised, a motivational framing × age interaction indicated that age differences in memory performance were smaller with loss-related than gain-related consequences, supporting a loss-prevention view on motivated cognition. (shrink)

The current Medicare prospective payment system has many positive incentives for hospitals to control costs. Hospitals are increasing outpatient surgery, decreasing admissions, decreasing length of stay, and decreasing use of ancillary services. These are just the effects that Congress and the Health Care Financing Administration hoped for to save the Medicare trust fund. However, there has been evidence of some adverse outcomes including premature discharge, “dumping” sicker patients and patients without insurance, and adverse impact on hospitals with specialty centers. We (...) examine these issues and present a possible solution based on a new Computerized Severity Index. (shrink)

Between 1960 and 1999, it was quite common for philosophers to rely almost completely on a priori methods to advance their arguments ; in a recent study by Knobe, the majority of papers sampled from this period used strictly a priori methods. In contrast, in the last decade and a half, many philosophers' strategy for making progress on philosophical questions has changed. Philosophers are now relying more heavily on empirical data—including running their own observational and experimental studies—in order to support (...) their arguments. Without a doubt, part of this shift was due to the rise of experimental philosophy – roughly a methodological approach to addressing philosophical questions wherein the researcher uses psychological methods to investigate the parameters that affect the deployment of philosophically significant concepts. This dissertation raises methodological problems with work in experimental philosophy and then proposes solutions to these problems. My focus in this dissertation is on two subfields in philosophy – epistemology and moral psychology – both of which have witnessed increased uses of psychological methods to investigate philosophical questions. (shrink)

Introduction: Religious experience in modernity : faith itself as the "unknown God" -- Fides qua creditur : the Enlightenment mind and the theology of the heart -- Within the bounds of reason alone : the subjective justification of religious belief in the thought of Immanuel Kant -- Schleiermacher's "higher order Pietism" : subjectivity and Protestant liberal thought -- Søren Kierkegaard and the paradox of faith : subjectivity in Christian existentialism -- Subjectivity and religious belief in Anglo-American revivalism : Jonathan Edwards (...) and John Wesley -- Subjectivity and religious belief in Anglo-American revivalism : George Whitefield and Charles G. Finney. (shrink)

Epistemological realists have long struggled to explain perceptual error without introducing a tertium quid between perceivers and physical objects. Two leading realist philosophers, Thomas Reid and Everett Hall, agreed in denying that mental entities are the immediate objects of perceptions of the external world, but each relied upon strange metaphysical entities of his own in the construction of a realist philosophy of perception. Reid added ‘visible figures’ to sensory impressions and specific sorts of mental events, while Hall utilized an array (...) of ways that he maintained properties may participate in the world. This paper assesses each realist's attempt to explain perceptual relativity and illusion without contradicting either the science of his time or the structure of common sense. (shrink)

Trenton Merricks has recently argued that substance dualist accounts of embodiment and humanness do not cohere well with the Incarnation. He has also claimed that physicalism about human persons avoids this problem, which should lead Christians to be physicalists. In this paper, I argue that there are plausible dualist accounts of embodiment and humanness that avoid his objections. Furthermore, I argue that physicalism is inconsistent with the Incarnation.

A brief poll of my scientific colleagues confirmed that, to a person, they regard addiction as a disease, whereas most non-science acquaintances consider it to be a failure of willpower. Reconciliation of these polarized views seems difficult and rather than finding a middle path, such as suggested by Foddy and Savulescu. I am an entrenched supporter of the view that addiction can be a disease. I first should declare my position as a card-carrying biologist, holding the view that behavior emanates (...) from the brain and, accordingly, that behavior and emotions result from brain function. This brain function also produces addiction and related behaviors, whereas Foddy and Savulescu seem to credit humans with a greater capacity to choose than biological evidence suggests. The second problem relates to definitions of disease: I argue that there are at least three ways addiction might be considered a disease. 1.? ? ? Addiction is a disease because it results in pathology. For example, hypertension is a disease. Hypertension per se does not cause dysfunction, but leads to pathologically definable conditions such as stroke and myocardial infarction. Smoking, like hypertension, can result in pathologies such as emphysema and cancer. The problem is not smoking per se, or even addiction to nicotine, rather it is the consequent diseases caused by tobacco. Nevertheless, if hypertension is a disease, so is smoking. The question of “choosing‘ to persist with smoking has no bearing on whether it is disease. Whether a person chooses to care for their hypertension or ignore it does not alter the fact that they have hypertension; it is still a disease and it will still harm them. Whether addiction affects the capacity to choose is not relevant because it does not alter the fact that smoking causes pathology and hence is a disease. 2.? ? ? Foddy and Savulescu argue that addiction leaves no tell-tale pathology to set it aside from. (shrink)

I contend that influential, computational theories have failed to relate the subjective and information processing dimensions of imagery. Hampson and Morris′s account of the phenomenology of imagery is evaluated, and I reject the proposal that the sensuous quality of images is reducible to the specificity of corresponding representations. A selective literature review suggests necessary information processing conditions for sensuous objects-for-awareness to emerge, and these conditions inform development of a theory explicating conscious perception and sensuous imagery in terms of a self-regulating (...) cognitive system employing a verification procedure to control resource allocation. Functions of sensuous imagery are discussed. (shrink)

Trenton Merricks has recently argued that substance dualist accounts of embodiment and humanness do not cohere well with the Incarnation. He has also claimed that physicalism about human persons avoids this problem, which should lead Christians to be physicalists. In this paper, I argue that there are plausible dualist accounts of embodiment and humanness that avoid his objections. Furthermore, I argue that physicalism is inconsistent with the Incarnation.

This paper maintains that, for all his ethical interests, his philosophical and theological essays, political treatises and linguistic studies, Dante was primarily a poet; a poet who, moreover, believed that poetry could change the world, and that the Comedy must be read, first, as a poem. This is not a trivial point, because the Comedy remains a text that is endlessly fascinating to philosophers and theologians as well as moralists who read it for its philosophy, theology and ethics and who (...) sometimes fail to see that a poet's imagination, even one as egregiously rational as Dante's, is synthetic rather than analytic. This paper offers an examination of the moral universe of the Comedy, paying particular attention to his presentation of the virtues. It endeavours to show how Dante's entry into the moral universe is by way of beauty through the operation of love, and considers how, for Dante, the inevitability of beauty, when properly understood, opens out on to truth and goodness, which, in turn, fold back upon beauty as the Beatific Vision is reached. (shrink)

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself. This interdisciplinary book - the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk - aims to better (...) understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain. Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter. This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. (shrink)

Taking Parenting Public makes a compelling case that parenting has become dangerously undervalued in America today. It calls for a new investment—both personal and public—into the work of raising children and argues that we are all "stockholders" in the next generation. With a foreword by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, Taking Parenting Public crosses boundaries to bring together thinkers from diverse fields spanning the political spectrum. It features contributions from distinguished experts in economics, political science, public policy, child development, (...) public health, history, and the media. While recent books have focused on working mothers or absent fathers, Taking Parenting Public is the first volume to take a comprehensive look at the common struggles of parents. These essays go beyond the usual chest-beating about busy parents torn between work and family demands to suggest bold solutions. Instead of the typical call for "parent replacement"—more child care, more after school programs and more mentors—the contributors offer fresh strategies for "parent replenishment," ways to put mothers and fathers back into the lives of their children not only as economic providers, but also as emotional and moral providers. (shrink)

Over the past forty years, economists associated with the University of Chicago have won more than one-third of the Nobel prizes awarded in their discipline and have been major influences on American public policy. Building Chicago Economics presents the first collective attempt by social science historians to chart the rise and development of the Chicago School during the decades that followed the Second World War. Drawing on new research in published and archival sources, contributors examine the people, institutions and ideas (...) that established the foundations for the success of Chicago economics and thereby positioned it as a powerful and controversial force in American political and intellectual life. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the importance that real patients attach to their right to withdraw from an on-going feasibility randomised trial (RCT) evaluating types and timings of breast reconstruction (two parallel trials) following mastectomy for breast cancer. Our results show that, while some respondents appreciated that exercising the right to withdraw would defeat the scientific objective of the trial, some patients with a surgical preference consented only given the knowledge they could withdraw if they were not (...) allocated to their preferred treatment. (shrink)

This book offers a unique synthesis of past and current work on the structure, meaning, and use of negation and negative expressions, a topic that has engaged thinkers from Aristotle and the Buddha to Freud and Chomsky. Horn's masterful study melds a review of scholarship in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics with original research, providing a full picture of negation in natural language and thought; this new edition adds a comprehensive preface and bibliography, surveying research since the book's original publication.

We propose a Bayesian framework for the attribution of knowledge, and apply this framework to generate novel predictions about knowledge attribution for different types of “Gettier cases”, in which an agent is led to a justified true belief yet has made erroneous assumptions. We tested these predictions using a paradigm based on semantic integration. We coded the frequencies with which participants falsely recalled the word “thought” as “knew” (or a near synonym), yielding an implicit measure of conceptual activation. Our experiments (...) confirmed the predictions of our Bayesian account of knowledge attribution across three experiments. We found that Gettier cases due to counterfeit objects were not treated as knowledge (Experiment 1), but those due to intentionally-replaced evidence were (Experiment 2). Our findings are not well explained by an alternative account focused only on luck, because accidentally-replaced evidence activated the knowledge concept more strongly than did similar false belief cases (Experiment 3). We observed a consistent pattern of results across a number of different vignettes that varied the quality and type of evidence available to agents, the relative stakes involved, and surface details of content. Accordingly, the present findings establish basic phenomena surrounding people’s knowledge attributions in Gettier cases, and provide explanations of these phenomena within a Bayesian framework. (shrink)

Bioethics scholarship considering the possibility of gestating an embryo to full term in an artificial womb (ectogenesis) often overstates the capacities of current technologies and underestimates the barriers to the development of full ectogenesis. Moreover, this debate causes harm by (1) neglecting more immediate problems in the development of artificial wombs, (2) treating abortion as a “problem with a technological solution,” bolstering anti-abortion rhetoric, and (3) presuming the stability of women’s reproductive rights. The ectogenesis conversation must consider anticipated uses of (...) the technology (neonatal intensive care) and acknowledge the immediate context (recognizing abortion as essential healthcare and existing reproductive inequities). (shrink)

An emerging trend in cognitive science is to explore central epistemological questions using psychological methods. Early work in this growing area of research has revealed that epistemologists’ theories of knowledge diverge in various ways from the ways in which ordinary people think of knowledge. Reflecting the practices of epistemology as a whole, the vast majority of these studies have focused on the concept of propositional knowledge, or knowledge-that. Many philosophers, however, have argued that knowing how to do something is importantly (...) different from knowing that something is the case. Hence, in this paper we turn our attention to people’s concept of knowledge-how. We present data from two experiments that employed a sentence recognition task as an implicit measure of conceptual activation. The data from this implicit measure suggest that, contrary to prominent intellectualist theories of know-how, according to which know-how is a species of propositional knowledge, people’s concept of know-how more closely aligns with anti-intellectualism, the view that knowing how to perform some task consists in having the appropriate skills or abilities. (shrink)

On July 2021, the UK High Court of Justice heard the Case CO/2066/2020 on the application of Heidi Crowter who lives with Down’s syndrome, and Máire Lea-Wilson whose son Aidan has Down’s syndrome. Crowter and Lea-Wilson, with the support of the disability rights campaign, ‘Don’t Screen Us Out’, have been taking legal action against the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (the UK Government) for a review of the 1967 Abortion Act: the removal of section 1(1)(d) making termination (...) of pregnancy lawful for ‘severe’ fetal indications detected after 24 weeks' gestation. On 23 September 2021, the High Court dismissed the claim. This action came at a time when non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) was introduced into the NHS England Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme for the trisomies 21, 13 and 18. The implementation of NIPT has been heavily criticised, in particular by ‘Don’t Screen Us Out’ campaigners, for increasing fetal selection and discrimination of people living with disabilities. The case of Crowter and Lea-Wilson echoes debates in other European countries such as in France and Germany, where the introduction of NIPT in the public healthcare system has provoked equally vehement public reactions and discussions. The comparison between these three countries allows contextualising the public discourses around NIPT and the ground for termination of pregnancy in relation to different socio-cultural and political contexts. We examine how each country, and particularly England, deals with the conflict between the principles of promoting the rights of people living with disabilities and preserving women’s reproductive autonomy. (shrink)

A private, for-profit company has recently opened a pair of plasma donation centres in Canada, at which donors can be compensated up to $50 for their plasma. This has sparked a nation-wide debate around the ethics of paying plasma donors. Our aim in this paper is to shift the terms of the current debate away from the question of whether plasma donors should be paid and toward the question of who should be paying them. We consider arguments against paying plasma (...) donors grounded in concerns about exploitation, commodification, and the introduction of a profit motive. We find them all to be normatively inconclusive, but also overbroad in light of Canada’s persistent reliance on plasma from paid donors in the United States. While we believe that there are good reasons to oppose allowing a private company to profit from Canada’s blood supply, these concerns can be addressed if payment is dispensed instead by a public, not-for-profit agency. In short, we reject profiting from plasma while we endorse paying for plasma; we therefore conclude in favour of a new Canadian regime of public sector plasma collection and compensation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 303-321 [Access article in PDF] "The Peak on Which Abraham Stands": The Pregnant Moment of Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling Lasse Horne Kjaeldgaard When Søren Kierkegaard in the 1840s began his one-man crusade against the predominant philosophy of his time and place—the right Hegelianism that was en vogue among his contemporaries in Copenhagen—he chose his weapons with great circumspection. The indirect (...) form of communication, which he later advocated in more direct terms in his "Point of View," 1 was not only a maieutic means that helped the reader conceive of the latent and strictly private messages of the texts; it was also a strategy for Kierkegaard's undercover assaults on the Hegelian turn of the Geistesleben around him. By interweaving many of the Hegelian platitudes and self-confident pronouncements that circulated in the intellectual life of the day into the pseudonymous writings, Kierkegaard contested them with parody rather than argumentation. This is the local background against which these texts are structured and to which they are addressed in multiple and very subtle ways. That also goes for that of the pseudonymous writings which has become the best known but which may also be regarded as the most private and most secretive of them all, Fear and Trembling, published pseudonymously in 1843.Secrecy, silence, and unspeakable messages are abundantly thematized in Fear and Trembling, as one could expect from the name of the narrator, Johannes de Silentio. Silentio is a prominent member of the choir of pseudonymous figures Kierkegaard invented to communicate indirectly with his audience and in [End Page 303] the name of which he published his most celebrated works. The silence that Silentio speaks of is that of Abraham of the Old Testament, who was commanded by God to sacrifice his only son on Mount Moriah. Although Genesis 22 includes fragments of the dialogue between Abraham and Isaac on their way to the mountain, Silentio insists that Abraham remained silent on the essential issue: the command he acts upon. The unmediated message Abraham had received from God could not be conveyed, and he was therefore barred from communication and bereft of his community as he journeyed to the Mountain. Yet Silentio's discourse upon this silence in Fear and Trembling has given impetus to innumerable pages of commentary. The questions and answers he poses in his reflections upon Abraham's ordeal have called for critical attention and controversy since the time of its publication. His obsession with the biblical narrative certainly seems to have been passed on to many readers of Fear and Trembling, which, a recent commentator has remarked, "continues to haunt us like no other of [Kierkegaard's] writings." 2 So far, it would seem, then, that Kierkegaard was right when he predicted, in an undated journal entry, that "Fear and Trembling will be enough to immortalise my name." It has indeed been "read and translated into foreign languages," as he foresaw it would. 3Even so, what has passed unnoticed in its long history of reception is the significance of the titles that the manuscript text bore before it came to be called Fear and Trembling. On the title page the definitive appellation is placed together with two alternatives with less suggestion of pathos: "Movements and Postures" (Bevægelser og Stillinger) and "Between-each-other" (Mellemhver-andre). 4 Not much can be discerned from these unpeculiar phrases in isolation. However, tracing their history and significance through Kierkegaard's writings and beyond, will make it clear that Fear and Trembling was also dispatched to the narrow Hegelian community in Copenhagen for the purpose of questioning their literary and visual aesthetics and philosophy of history. Into the guerrilla warfare against them Fear and Trembling introduces a weapon of such sophistication that it has remained undetected so far: the power of the "pregnant moment." My aim here will be to demonstrate the way in which Fear and Trembling appropriates a principle of selection intended for the... (shrink)

The treatise known as book Lambda of Aristotle’s Metaphysics has become one of the most debated issues of recent scholarship. Aristotle adresses here fundamental questions of his theory of substance, his idea of causes and principles, and his concept of motions. Furthermore, the importance of the text is due to the fact that it contains an outline of what was traditionally understood as Aristotle’s theology.

1. Implicature: some basic oppositions IMPLICATURE is a component of speaker meaning that constitutes an aspect of what is meant in a speaker’s utterance without being part of what is said. What a speaker intends to communicate is characteristically far richer than what she directly expresses; linguistic meaning radically underdetermines the message conveyed and understood. Speaker S tacitly exploits pragmatic principles to bridge this gap and counts on hearer H to invoke the same principles for the purposes of utterance interpretation. (...) The contrast between the said and the meant, and derivatively between the said and the implicated (the meant-but-unsaid), dates back to the fourth century rhetoricians Servius and Donatus, who characterized litotes—the figure of pragmatic understatement—as a figure in which we say less but mean more (“minus dicimus et plus significamus”; see Hoffmann 1987 and Horn 1991a for discussion). In the classical Gricean model, the bridge from what is said (the literal content of the uttered sentence, computed directly from its grammatical structure with the reference of indexicals resolved) to what is communicated is constructed through implicature. As an aspect of speaker meaning, implicatures are by definition distinct from the non-logical inferences that the hearer draws; it is a category mistake to attribute implicatures either to hearers or to sentences (e.g. P and Q) and subsentential expressions (e.g. some). But we can systematically (at least for generalized implicatures; see below) correlate the speaker’s intention to implicate q (in uttering p in context C), the expression p that carries the implicature in C, and the inference of q induced by the speaker’s utterance of p in C. (shrink)

Bertolt Brecht’s poem “A Worker’s Speech to a Doctor” is frequently cited as a means to raise awareness among health workers of the health effects of living and working conditions. Less cited is his Call to Arms trilogy of poems, which calls for class-based action to transform the capitalist economic system that sickens and kills so many. In this article, we show how “A Worker’s Speech to a Doctor,” with its plea for empathy for the ill, contrasts with the more (...) activist and often militant tone of the Call to Arms trilogy: “Call to a Sick Communist,” “The Sick Communist’s Answer to the Comrades,” and “Call to the Doctors and Nurses.” We also show that, while “A Worker’s Speech to a Doctor” has been applied in the training of health workers, its accusatorial tone towards health workers’ complicity in the system the poem is critiquing risks alienating such workers. In contrast, the Call to Arms trilogy seeks common ground, inviting these same workers into the broader political and social fight against injustice. While we contend that the description of the sick worker as a “Communist” risks estranging these health workers, our analysis of the Call to Arms poems nevertheless indicates that their use can contribute to moving health workers’ educational discourse beyond a laudable but fleeting elicitation of empathy for the ill towards a structural critique and deeper systemic understanding in order to prompt action by health workers to reform or even replace the capitalist economic system that sickens and kills so many. (shrink)

How cool is the philosophy of religion? Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 3-19 DOI 10.1007/s11153-011-9330-5 Authors John Churchill, Phi Beta Kappa National Office, Washington, DC, USA Ingolf Dalferth, Institute of Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion, University of Zurich, Kirchgasse 9, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland Patrick Horn, Claremont Graduate Center, Claremont, CA, USA Jeffery Willetts, Leland School of Ministries, Richmond, VA, USA Journal International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Online ISSN 1572-8684 Print ISSN 0020-7047 Journal Volume Volume 71 Journal (...) Issue Volume 71, Number 1. (shrink)

This discussion revises and extends Jonny Anomaly's ‘public goods’ account of public health ethics in light of recent criticism from Richard Dees. Public goods are goods that are both non-rival and non-excludable. What is significant about such goods is that they are not always provided efficiently by the market. Indeed, the state can sometimes realize efficiency gains either by supplying such goods directly or by compelling private purchase. But public goods are not the only goods that the market may fail (...) to provide efficiently. This point to a way of broadening the public goods account of public health to accommodate Dees' counterexamples, without abandoning its distinctive appeal. On the market failures approach to public health ethics, the role of public health is to correct public health-related market failures of all kinds, so far as possible. The underlying moral commitment is to economic efficiency in the sense of Pareto: if we can re-allocate resources in the economy so as to raise the welfare of some without lowering the welfare of any other, we ought to do so. (shrink)

Werner Jaeger (1888–1961) was at his time the most brilliant and the most influential German classicist. His most important project was a tripartite study that he finally published under the title of Paideia. Die Formung des griechischen Menschen (1933–1947). Paideia was much more than a detailed scholarly book on pedagogy in the ancient world. It was an attempt to interpret the history of ancient thought—from Homeric epics to Attic tragedy and Platonic philosophy—as rooted in the intention to educate (or rather (...) to ‘form’) human beings. And it was the attempt to contribute to a contemporary German movement called ‘Third Humanism’. In this article, I give a critical overview of this work, its strengths and its shortcomings. (shrink)

BackgroundDecisions about appropriate treatment at the end of life are common in modern healthcare. Non-treatment decisions (NTDs), comprising both withdrawal and withholding of (potentially) life-prolonging treatment are in principle accepted in Norway. However, in practice they may give rise to significant moral problems for health professionals, patients and next of kin. Here, patient values must be considered. It is relevant to study the moral views and intuitions of the general population on NTDs and special areas of contention such as the (...) role of next of kin in decision-making.MethodsElectronic survey to members of a nationally representative panel of Norwegian adults. Respondents were presented with vignettes describing patients with disorders of consciousness, dementia, and cancer where patient preferences varied. Respondents answered ten questions about the acceptability of non-treatment decision making and the role of next of kin.ResultsWe received 1035 complete responses (response rate 40.7%). A large majority, 88%, supported the right of competent patients to refuse treatment in general. When an NTD was in line with the patient’s previously expressed preferences, more respondents tended to find NTDs acceptable. More respondents would accept NTDs for themselves than for the vignette patients. In a scenario with an incompetent patient, clear majorities wanted the views of next of kin to be given some but not decisive weight, and more weight if concordant with the patient’s wishes. There were, however, large variations in the respondents’ views.ConclusionThis survey of a representative sample of the Norwegian adult population indicates that attitudes to NTDs are often in line with national laws and guidelines. However, the high variance among the respondents and relatively large weight given to next of kin’s views, indicate a need for appropriate dialogue among all stakeholders to prevent conflicts and extra burdens. Furthermore, the emphasis given to previously expressed opinions indicates that advance care planning may increase the legitimacy of NTDs and prevent challenging decision-making processes. (shrink)