BackgroundOne of the next frontiers in HIV research is focused on finding a cure. A new priority includes people with HIV with non-AIDS terminal illnesses who are willing to donate their bodies at the end-of-life to advance the search towards an HIV cure. We endeavored to understand perceptions of this research and to identify ethical and practical considerations relevant to implementing it.MethodsWe conducted 20 in-depth interviews and 3 virtual focus groups among four types of key stakeholders in the United States (...) to obtain triangulated viewpoints because little was known about the ethics of this topic. Each group was queried as to ethical considerations, safeguards, and protections for conducting HIV cure-related research at the EOL to ensure this research remains acceptable.ResultsAll four key stakeholder groups generally supported HIV cure-related research conducted at the EOL because of the history of altruism within the PWH community and the potential for substantial scientific knowledge to be gained. Our informants expressed that: Strong stakeholder and community involvement are integral to the ethical and effective implementation, as well as the social acceptability of this research; PWH approaching the EOL should not inherently be considered a vulnerable class and their autonomy must be respected when choosing to participate in HIV cure-related research at the EOL; Greater diversity among study participants, as well as multi-disciplinary research teams, is necessitated by HIV cure-related research at the EOL; The sensitive nature of this research warrants robust oversight to ensure a favorable risk/benefit balance and to minimize the possibility of therapeutic misconception or undue influence; and Research protocols should remain flexible to accommodate participants’ comfort and needs at the EOL.ConclusionBecause of the ethical issues presented by HIV cure-related research at the EOL, robust ethical safeguards are of utmost importance. The proposed ethical and practical considerations presented herein is a first step in determining the best way to maximize this research’s impact and social value. More much inquiry will need to be directed towards understanding context-specific and cultural considerations for implementing EOL HIV cure research in diverse settings. (shrink)

The Last Gift is an observational HIV cure-related research study conducted with people with HIV at the end of life at the University of California San Diego. Participants agree to voluntarily donate blood and other biospecimens while living and their bodies for a rapid research autopsy postmortem to better understand HIV reservoir dynamics throughout the entire body. The Last Gift study was initiated in 2017. Since then, 30 volunteers were enrolled who are either terminally ill with a concomitant condition and (...) have a prognosis of 6 months or less or chronically ill with multiple comorbidities and nearing the EOL.Multiple ethical and logistical challenges have been revealed during this time; here, we share our lessons learnt and ethical analysis. Issues relevant to healthcare research include surrogate informed consent, personal and professional boundaries, challenges posed conducting research in a pandemic, and clinician burnout and emotional support. Issues more specific to EOL and postmortem research include dual roles of clinical care and research teams, communication between research personnel and clinical teams, legally required versus rapid research autopsy, identification of next of kin/loved ones and issues of inclusion. Issues specific to the Last Gift include logistics of body donation and rapid research autopsy, and disposition of the body as a study benefit.We recommend EOL research teams to have clear provisions around surrogate informed consent, rotate personnel to maintain boundaries, limit direct contact with staff associated with clinical care and have a clear plan for legally required versus research autopsies, among other recommendations. (shrink)

Should a theory of meaning state what sentences mean, and can a Davidsonian theory of meaning in particular do so? Max Ko¨lbel answers both questions affirmatively. I argue, however, that the phenomena of non-homophony, non-truth-conditional aspects of meaning, semantic mood, and context-sensitivity provide prima facie obstacles for extending Davidsonian truth-theories to yield meaning-stating theorems. Assessing some natural moves in reply requires a more fully developed conception of the task of such theories than Ko¨lbel provides. A more developed conception is also (...) required to defend his positive answer to the first question above. I argue that, however Ko¨lbel might elaborate his position, it can’t be by embracing the sort of cognitivist account of Davidsonian semantics to which he sometimes alludes. (shrink)

John Finnis's powerfully and deservedly influential modern classic, Natural Law and Natural Rights, expounds a theory of law and morality that is based on a picture of “persons” using practical reason to pursue certain “basic goods.” While devoting much attention to practical reason and to the goods, however, Finnis says little about the nature of personhood. This relative inattention to what “persons” are creates a risk—one that Finnis himself notices—of assuming or importing an inadequate anthropology. This essay suggests that the (...) “new natural law” developed by Finnis suffers in places from the inadvertent adoption of a flawed anthropology—an anthropology under the thrall of modern individualistic commitments. To explain this suspicion, this article discusses three difficulties in his natural law theory: difficulties in accounting for the basic good of friendship, for obligations we owe to others, and for legal authority. These difficulties may seem disconnected, but this article suggests that they may all reflect an inadequate anthropology—one that Finnis does not exactly embrace but that is pervasive today and that in places may affect his theorizing. (shrink)

In this tribute to Steven T. Katz on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Michael Zank and Ingrid Anderson present sixteen original essays written by senior and junior scholars in comparative religion, philosophy of religion, modern Judaism, and theology after the Holocaust, fields of inquiry where Steven Katz made major contributions over the course of his distinguished scholarly career. The authors of this volume, specialists in Jewish history, especially the modern experience, and Jewish thought from the Bible to (...) Buber, offer theoretical and practical observations on the value of the particular. Contributions range from Tim Knepper's reevaluation of the ineffability discourse to the particulars of the Settlement Cookbook, examined by Nora Rubel as an American classic. (shrink)

A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though possibly well-founded or essentially true’. In this article I shall try to show that the classical orthodox Marxist view of morality is a paradox. I shall seek to resolve the paradox by trying to show that it is only seemingly self-contradictory or absurd. But I shall not claim the standard Marxist view of morality to be well-founded or essentially true. On the contrary, I shall suggest that, (...) though coherent, it is ill-founded and illusory. (shrink)

1. Introduction The policy of deterrence, at least to avert nuclear war between the superpowers, has been a controversial one. The main controversy arises from the threat of each side to visit destruction on the other in response to an initial attack. This threat would seem irrational if carrying it out would lead to a nuclear holocaust – the worst outcome for both sides. Instead, it would seem better for the side attacked to suffer some destruction rather than to retaliate (...) in kind and, in the process of devastating the other side, seal its own doom in an all-out nuclear exchange. Yet, the superpowers persist in their adherence to deterrence, by which we mean a policy of threatening to retaliate to an attack by the other side in order to deter such an attack in the first place. To be sure, nuclear doctrine for implementing deterrence has evolved over the years, with such appellations as “massive retaliation,” “flexible response,” “mutual assured destruction”, and “counterforce” giving some flavor of the changes in United States strategic thinking. All such doctrines, however, entail some kind of response to a Soviet nuclear attack. They are operationalized in terms of preselected targets to be hit, depending on the perceived nature and magnitude of the attack. Thus, whether U.S. strategic policy at any time stresses a retaliatory attack on cities and industrial centers or on weapons systems and armed forces, the certainty of a response of some kind to an attack is not the issue. (shrink)

The article contests Affeldt's critique of Mulhall's "Stanley Cavell: Philosophy's Recounting of the Ordinary," by asking how deep the conflict between what Affeldt proposes as Cavell's account of Wittgenstein's notion of grammar and that of Baker and Hacker really goes. It argues that Affeldt's critique is successful against one interpretation of the claims that grammar consists of a framework of rules and that criteria function as a basis for judgment, but that other interpretations of these claims are available and appear (...) consistent with both Cavell's and Wittgenstein's positions. It concludes by suggesting that the real issue is how to combine a sense of the normativity of grammar with that of the role of the personal in grounding grammatical remarks. (shrink)

The work of Arthur de Gobineau has presented scholars with a number of interpretive problems concerning his status as a race theorist, his place in the history of racial thought, and the influence of his work on subsequent thinkers. This essay addresses the particularly vexing issue of the origins of Gobineau's racism from the perspective of his affiliation with French royalists in the 1840s and challenges the existing scholarship on the derivation of L'Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines by placing (...) the Essai in the context of his international experience as a member of the French diplomatic corps. Although disillusioned with legitimist politics during the July Monarchy, Gobineau never abandoned his youthful ideological priorities. From the perspective of his royalist past, the Essai appears as part of an extended rumination on the decadence of the French aristocracy and its failure to stem the tide of revolution and bureaucratic centralization. As such, Gobineau's racism can best be understood as a royalist heresy rather than a continuation of his aristocratic elitism or a clean break with his earlier preoccupations. (shrink)

Though Kierkegaard never explicitly formulated a theory of religious doctrine, he did have a clear position on the role that Christian doctrine ought to play in the lives of believers. Briefly stated, he maintained that Christianity, as a human activity, involves more than merely believing certain propositions about matters of fact. The doctrines of Christianity take on a true religious significance only when they are given the power to transform the lives of those who accept them; only when they are (...) given expression in the existence of the believer. This was, however, far from evident to Kierkegaard's theological contemporaries who, in the collective absentmindedness of the age, sought to replace the Christian virtue of faith with the philosophical ideal of objective knowledge. (shrink)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- What will English be like a hundred years from now? No one has ever observed what happens when a language is used for a century in a global village. Will MTV and CNN infiltrate every yurt and houseboat and drive out all other languages? Will regional accents go extinct, leaving everyone sounding like a Midwestern newscaster? Some language lovers worry that e-mail and chat rooms will influence writing & F2F (face-to-face) lang. & leadd it 2 loose it's (...) grammer spllng etc. :-(. (shrink)

A collection of essays on civil religion in modern political philosophy, exploring the engagement between modern thought and the Christian tradition.

Theists believe that God is eternal, but they differ as to just what God's eternality means . The traditional, historic view of most Christian philosophers is that eternality means that God is timeless. He is ‘outside’ of time and not subject to any kind of temporal change. Indeed, God is the creator of time. Lets call this view divine timelessness.

Vice essentialism is the view that epistemic vices have robustly negative effects on our epistemic projects. Essentialists believe that the manifestation of epistemic vices can explain many of our epistemic failures, but few, if any, of our epistemic successes. The purpose of this paper is to argue that vice essentialism is false. In §1, I review the case that some epistemic vices, such as closed-mindedness and extreme epistemic deference, have considerably beneficial effects when manifested in collectivist contexts. In §2, I (...) add that there are putative epistemic vices whose repeated manifestation leads to significant epistemic achievements over time. Epistemic recklessness is one such unstable vice. Though Sosa argues that epistemically reckless judgements cannot constitute knowing full well, the repeated manifestation of epistemic recklessness is essential to our becoming fully well knowledgeable in the long run. Without making incompetent judgements in environments that offer unambiguous, actionable feedback, we could not develop the intuitive and reflective competences and meta-competences required for knowing full well. (shrink)

The explanatory/pragmatic-trial distinction enjoys a burgeoning philosophical and medical literature and a significant contingent of support among philosophers and healthcare stakeholders as an important way to assess the design and results of randomized controlled trials. A major motivation has been the need to provide relevant, generalizable data to drive healthcare decisions. While talk of pragmatic and explanatory trials could be seen as convenient shorthand, the distinction can also be seen as harboring deeper issues related to inferential strategies used to evaluate (...) causal claims regarding medical treatments. A comprehensive, critical analysis of the distinction and underlying epistemological framework upon which the distinction is based, particularly with respect to treatment effectiveness, has yet to be forthcoming. I provide this, analyzing the distinction’s relationship to generalizability and cognate distinctions between ideal conditions and real-world practice, internal and external validity, and efficacy and effectiveness. I also analyze recent philosophical work that relies on the explanatory/pragmatic-trial distinction and that advocates for more pragmatic trials. I conclude that as an organizing principle for trial-design decisions and trial evaluation, the explanatory/pragmatic-trial distinction is conceptually problematic and not as useful as its proponents seem to think. Since some pragmatic-trial features can be inimical to establishing treatment effectiveness, pragmatic-trial features should not be conflated with pragmatic trials’ avowed goals. If the distinction is to be useful, it and some associated concepts, including generalizability, should be reformulated, lest they continue to underlie a medical epistemology that could contribute to methodologically flawed and potentially unethical advice for the design and interpretation of trials. (shrink)

The physics and metaphysics of identity and individuality Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9463-7 Authors Don Howard, Department of Philosophy and Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA Bas C. van Fraassen, Philosophy Department, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA Otávio Bueno, Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA Elena Castellani, Department of Philosophy, University of Florence, Via Bolognese 52, 50139 (...) Florence, Italy Laura Crosilla, Department of Pure Mathematics, School of Mathematics, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT UK Steven French, Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK Décio Krause, Department of Philosophy, Federal University of Santa Catarina, 88040-900 Campus Trindade, Florianópolis, SC Brazil Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796. (shrink)

This paper argues that ethical propositions can legitimately be used as evidence for and against empirical conclusions. Specifically, I argue that this thesis is entailed by several uncontroversial assumptions about ethical metaphysics and epistemology. I also outline several examples of ethical-to-empirical inferences where it is extremely plausible that one can rationally rely upon their ethical evidence in order to gain a justified belief in an empirical conclusion. The main upshot is that ethical propositions can, under perfectly standard conditions, play both (...) direct and indirect evidential roles in (social) scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Joanna Crosby and Dianna Taylor: The theme of this special section of Foucault Studies, “Foucauldian Spaces,” emerged out of the 2016 meeting of the Foucault Circle, where the four of you were participants. Each of the three individual papers contained in the special section critically deploys and/or reconceptualizes an aspect of Foucault’s work that engages and offers particular insight into the construction, experience, and utilization of space. We’d like to ask the four of you to reflect on what makes a (...) space Foucauldian, and whether or not you’d consider the space created by the convergence of and intellectual exchanges among an international group of Foucault scholars at the University of New South Wales in the summer of 2016 to be Foucauldian. (shrink)

The following article has two parts. The first part recounts the history of a series of discoveries by Otto Neugebauer, Bartel van der Waerden, and Asger Aaboe which step by step uncovered the meaning of Column $$\varPhi $$ Φ, the mysterious leading column in Babylonian System A lunar tables. Their research revealed that Column $$\varPhi $$ Φ gives the length in days of the 223-month Saros eclipse cycle and explained the remarkable algebraic relations connecting Column $$\varPhi $$ Φ to other (...) columns of the lunar tables describing the duration of 1, 6, or 12 synodic months. Part two presents John Britton’s theory of the genesis of Column $$\varPhi $$ Φ and the System A lunar theory starting from a fundamental equation relating the columns discovered by Asger Aaboe. This article is intended to explain and, hopefully, to clarify Britton’s original articles which many readers found difficult to follow. (shrink)

This article discusses interactive minimum cost spanning tree problems and argues that the standard approach of using a transferable utility game to come up with a fair allocation of the total costs has some flaws. A new model of spillover games is presented, in which each player’s decision whether or not to cooperate is properly taken into account.