Background: It is often claimed that a regulated kidney market would significantly reduce the kidney shortage, thus saving or improving many lives. Data are lacking, however, on how many people would consider selling a kidney in such a market. Methods: A survey instrument, developed to assess behavioural dispositions to and attitudes about a hypothetical regulated kidney market, was given to Swiss third-year medical students. Results: Respondents’ median age was 23 years. Their socioeconomic status was high or middle. 48 considered selling (...) a kidney in a regulated kidney market, of whom 31 would sell only to overcome a particularly difficult financial situation. High social status and male gender was the strongest predictor of a disposition to sell. 32 of all respondents supported legalising a regulated kidney market. This attitude was not associated with a disposition to sell a kidney. 5 respondents endorsed a market and considered providing a kidney to a stranger if and only if paid. 4 of those 5 would sell only under financial duress. Conclusions: Current understanding of a regulated kidney market is insufficient. It is unclear whether a regulated market would result in a net gain of kidneys. Most possible kidney vendors would only sell in a particularly difficult financial situation, raising concerns about the validity of consent and inequities in the provision of organs. Further empirical and normative analysis of these issues is required. Any calls to implement and evaluate a regulated kidney market in pilot studies are therefore premature. (shrink)

How do people make sense of their experiences? How do they understand possibility? How do they limit possibility? These questions are central to all the human sciences. Here, Vincent Crapanzano offers a powerfully creative new way to think about human experience: the notion of imaginative horizons. For Crapanzano, imaginative horizons are the blurry boundaries that separate the here and now from what lies beyond, in time and space. These horizons, he argues, deeply influence both how we experience our lives (...) and how we interpret those experiences, and here sets himself the task of exploring the roles that creativity and imagination play in our experience of the world. (shrink)

Invariance of the class of algorithms expressible with respect to changes in computational formalism have provided extremely stable foundations for the Church-Turing thesis, according to which a number of—equivalent—computational mechanisms each fully capture the intuitive notion of algorithm. Thanks to the stability and elegance of the Church-Turing thesis, the notion of computation defined by these mechanisms is etched in stone as the theoretical essence of computation. In particular, this notion has been extensively used as an abstract tool to model natural (...) phenomena. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beyond Ratzinger's Republic:Communio's Postliberal TurnSam Zeno Conedera S.J. and Vincent L. Strand S.J.Is the political future of the West a postliberal one? For the past decade, numerous prominent thinkers in America and Europe have been debating this question. Matters that not long ago were merely of historical interest, such as Pope Gelasius I's understanding of the relation between sacral authority and royal power, Thomas Aquinas's thought on monarchy (...) and Robert Bellarmine's theory of the pope's indirect authority in temporal matters are now increasingly studied for their potential answers to contemporary political questions. This development, which would have been nearly unimaginable just a decade earlier, unsurprisingly has been led by Catholics. We say "unsurprisingly" in view of the long pre-modern tradition of Catholic political thought, as well as the Church's long struggle against liberalism during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of the current postliberal writers explicitly connect themselves to both of these aspects by using the term "integralist" to describe their position.1 [End Page 889]This "new integralism" represents a radical departure from the mainstream of Catholic political discourse of the last half century, which has largely sought rapprochement with Western liberalism. A group of writers, led by John Courtney Murray, George Weigel, Michael Novak, and Robert George, have held that the American constitutional order is rooted in the natural law tradition, and therefore is basically friendly to Catholic political thought. The Church's role in American life, they say, is upholding the natural law as a public moral philosophy, while embracing the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment as a matter of principle, in accordance with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. This "Whig Thomism," which for decades represented the predominant outlook of conservative American Catholics, must now face the challenge of a different sort of Thomism represented by the integralists.2While the engagement between Whig Thomists and integralists has received most of the attention from scholars and journalists alike, another postliberal option has emerged in recent years. Its source is a group of Catholic thinkers associated with the Communio theological movement. Their political vision, which has no single name or label, has a complex and subtle relationship with the thought of earlier Communio writers, most of whom shared the Whig Thomist desire for reconciliation with Western liberalism. [End Page 890] The appearance of a Communio postliberalism therefore represents a significant development within this intellectual tradition. The most important representative of the earlier Communio perspective on political questions is Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI, who has recently been lauded as the "most important Catholic thinker of the twentieth century" on matters at the intersection of theology and politics.3In an article titled "Ratzinger's Republic" that appeared in these pages in 2020, we identified a significant tension in his thought about the Church's contribution to political life.4 Exploring Ratzinger's writings on natural law, we demonstrated that two currents are present. In accord with his fundamental theological commitments about nature and grace and about faith and reason, Ratzinger often questioned the effectiveness of arguments from natural law. He claimed that, since reason is historically conditioned, and therefore in the current order marked by sin, reason needs grace and faith to function properly. Yet, on other occasions, Ratzinger strongly endorsed arguments from natural law, highlighting its role as the foundation of a just democratic political order. We traced this ambivalence about natural law back to a dilemma at the heart of Ratzinger's political thought. On the one hand, in accord with his thinking about the relations of nature and grace and faith and reason, Ratzinger argued that the state needs the Church to supply moral values that the state cannot furnish on its own. On the other hand, he believed it belongs to the very nature of the Church to be separate from the state, and he endorsed nonconfessional, religiously pluralistic states.5 In light of these two commitments, Ratzinger argued that the contribution Christians are to make to the state is to supply moral values that were discerned under the influence of grace and divine revelation but... (shrink)

For Thomas Aquinas, the creator of natural law is a personal, substantial, and relational God. For Laozi, it is an impersonal, non-substantial, self-manifesting dao. There are similarities, and this article will consider several of them. For Thomas, the act of creation comes from God, and for Laozi the giving birth of the universe is from the dao’s unconditional generosity. Thus it is possible to compare the way in which the world-originating generosity of God generates the moral law and the way (...) in which the self-manifesting dao generates the moral law. In Thomas’s view the natural law is the rational participation of the human being in God’s eternal law. Laozi’s heavenly dao governs all things in the universe, and for this reason human beings and their techniques should comply with dao. Thomas emphasizes human freedom of will and the responsibility to pursue what is good and to avoid what is evil. Laozi emphasizes the objectivity of heavenly dao without any reference to human freedom of will or individual responsibility. With religious Daoism there develops the idea of collective responsibility and the divinization of dao, a point that invites further comparative study of Thomism and Daoism. (shrink)

A parieto-frontal integration theory (P-FIT) model of human intelligence has been proposed based on a review of neuroimaging literature and lesion studies. The P-FIT model provides an important basis for future research. Future studies involving connectivity analyses and an integrative approach of imaging modalities using the P-FIT model should provide vastly increased understanding of the biological bases of intelligence.

Estudio intertextual del "Llibre d'amic i amat" en los ámbitos de la espiritualidad, de la teología y de la literatura vernacular, sobre todo mediante referencias a la patrística latina, el pensamiento de cistercienses y victorianos, la "legenda" de "Ami et amile", etc. se adopta el método de la filiaciones, pero con rectificaciones notables: no basta con señalar el parentesco de motivos y temas, etapa que debe prolongarse por un estudio de la función y el sentido de dichos elementos en la (...) arquitectura, el sistema de un pensamiento. Se pone de realce, asimismo, la importancia de compaginar filosofía y poética, en torno a lo que pudiera ser una tipología del "exemplum" en el opúsculo luliano. (shrink)

How do people make sense of their experiences? How do they understand possibility? How do they limit possibility? These questions are central to all the human sciences. Here, Vincent Crapanzano offers a powerfully creative new way to think about human experience: the notion of imaginative horizons. For Crapanzano, imaginative horizons are the blurry boundaries that separate the here and now from what lies beyond, in time and space. These horizons, he argues, deeply influence both how we experience our lives (...) and how we interpret those experiences, and here sets himself the task of exploring the roles that creativity and imagination play in our experience of the world. (shrink)

Background Generally, there is unanimity about the value of community engagement in health-related research. There is also a growing tendency to view genetics and genomics research (GGR) as a special category of research, the conduct of which including community engagement (CE) as needing additional caution. One of the motivations of this study was to establish how differently if at all, we should think about CE in GGR. Aim To assess the perspectives of genetics and genomics researchers in Uganda on CE (...) in GGR. Method A cross-sectional qualitative study was conducted at Makerere University and Uganda Virus Research Institute. Twenty-five individuals participated, the majority being male (sixteen). Participants included nineteen genetics and genomics researchers (researchers and research coordinators), two CE officers, three nurses and one nursing counsellor. Data were collected using in-depth interviews and analyzed in a thematic manner using NVivo version 12 Plus. Study findings Thirteen of the respondents had conducted CE in their GGR in either a geographical and disease-specific community. Some respondents said CE principles are the same and there is no need for special consideration for CE in GGR. Others gave ethical issues in GGR that require special consideration for CE in such research and these were categorized into six themes: GGR is new to communities, Difficulty in communicating GGR by the researchers, Genes are shared in communities, Cultural sensitivities against GGR, Community attitude toward GGR, Some GGR studies take long to end, and Negotiation of research benefits. Special considerations for CE when conducting GGR were suggested and categorized into seven themes: creating awareness of GGR in communities, obtaining both community acceptance and individual consent, CE team composition, involve communities in solving GGR challenges, prolong CE in some GGR, develop guidelines for CE in GGR, and legal considerations on GGR. Conclusion GGR was characterized by special issues that require special CE considerations for such research. (shrink)

Targeted transitions in chromatin states at thousands of genes are essential drivers of eukaryotic development. Therefore, understanding the in vivo dynamics of epigenetic regulators is crucial for deciphering the mechanisms underpinning cell fate decisions. This review illustrates how, in addition to its cell memory function, the Polycomb group of transcriptional regulators orchestrates temporal, cell and tissue‐specific expression of master genes during development. These highly sophisticated developmental transitions are dependent on the context‐ and tissue‐specific assembly of the different types of Polycomb (...) Group (PcG) complexes, which regulates their targeting and/or activities on chromatin. Here, an overview is provided of how PcG complexes function at multiple scales to regulate transcription, local chromatin environment, and higher order structures that support normal differentiation and are perturbed in tumorigenesis. (shrink)

Luizzi (philosophy, Southwest Texas State U.) claims both. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portla.

This book is designed to acquaint the reader with C.I. Lewis' ethics by providing critical commentary on Lewis' work in addition to reprinting some of Lewis' writings in ethics. The commentary is not meant to be a substitute for the complete work in ethics that Lewis was preparing before his death but merely a systematic study of some central aspects of his thought in ethics.

People's courts and legal philosophy -- Spotlight on people's courts -- Law -- Judging -- Punishment.

This essay investigates the possibility of veering from an approach of doing bad to the offender as the primary response to crime to one of requiring the offender to do good. This approach, in effect, has us offset the evil which the offender has placed on the scales of justice with good which the offender is required to produce; hence the conception of New Balance. The specific focus here is to identify important deficiencies in the major approaches of retributivism and (...) utilitarian-deterrence theory to pave the way for New Balance. (shrink)