Although a central construct for sociologists, the concept of institution continues to elude clear and full specification. One reason for this lack of clarity is that about 50 years ago empirical researchers in the field of sociology turned their gaze downward, away from macro-sociological constructs in order to focus their attention on middle-range empirical projects. It took almost 20 years for the concept of the institution to work its back onto the empirical research agenda of mainstream sociologists. The new institutional (...) project in organizational sociology led the way. Since then, scholars in this tradition have achieved a great deal but there is still much more to accomplish. Here, future directions for research are considered by reviewing how the concept of the institution has come to be treated by mainstream philosophers, sociologists of science and technology studies, and social network theorists. (shrink)

Previous research conducted in 1999 highlighted ethical concerns behind challenge studies inducing psychosis with ketamine and made recommendations to enhance ethical standards. Recently, a plethora of clinical trials have evaluated the efficacy of ketamine to treat mood disorders, which lead to complex ethical issues. Pharmaceutical companies and researchers hope to profit by developing patentable variations on ketamine for treating depression. Media have labeled ketamine as a “miracle” antidepressant. Some clinics offer expensive off-label use of ketamine to treat mood disorders. This (...) article examines the ecological validity of ketamine trials, measures to protect patients, informed consent procedures, financial inducements to participants and conflict of interest of researchers, therapeutic misconception, concealment, and deception. Further recommendations are purposed to improve ethical standard of clinical research involving ketamine. (shrink)

Traditional scientific views of the conscious self and world we live in are challenged by an unprecedented outburst of emerging new paradigms, theories of consciousness, perceptions of reality, new sciences, new philosophies, epistemologies, and a host of other transformative approaches. This still expanding outburst can be traced, on both logical and chronologic grounds, not to chaos theory, ecology, the new physics, or dozens of other currently ascribed sources, but rather to the cognitive (consciousness) revolution that immediately preceded. These new approaches (...) all share one key feature in common, namely, they all depend, directly or indirectly, upon a refutation and successful overthrow of the long dominant materialist paradigm. This is what was required to shift consciousness from an acausal or "eliminable" status to a functionally indispensable role. Traditional "bottom‐up" micro‐determinism had to be supplemented by a reciprocal, "top‐down" control exerted by mental emergents over lower‐level components. This does not dispose of behaviorism or reductionism, as methodology, but simply incorporates these within a more comprehensive explanatory framework. With the long reign of materialist constraints finally broken, other antireductive views have proliferated but with little regard for what the new paradigm allows. (shrink)

This paper sketches an account of public health ethics drawing upon established scholarship in feminist ethics. Health inequities are one of the central problems in public health ethics; a feminist approach leads us to examine not only the connections between gender, disadvantage, and health, but also the distribution of power in the processes of public health, from policy making through to programme delivery. The complexity of public health demands investigation using multiple perspectives and an attention to detail that is capable (...) of identifying the health issues that are important to women, and investigating ways to address these issues. Finally, a feminist account of public health ethics embraces rather than avoids the inescapable political dimensions of public health. (shrink)

Conceptual foundations for the changeover from behaviorism to mentalism are reviewed in an effort to better clarify frequently contested and misinterpreted features. The new mentalist tenets which I continue to support have been differently conceived to be a form of dualism, mind-brain identity theory, functionalism, nonreductive physical monism, dualist interactionism, emergent interactionism, and various other things. This diversity and contradiction are attributed to the fact that the new mentalist paradigm is a distinctly new position that fails to fit traditional philosophic (...) dichotomies. Formerly opposed features from previous polar alternatives become merged into a novel unifying synthesis, an unambiguous description of which demands redefinition of old terms or/and the invention of new terminology. The present analysis and interpretation are backed by statements from the early papers. (shrink)

The mentalist mind-brain model is defended against alleged weaknesses. I argue that the perceived failings are based mostly on misinterpretation of mentalism and emergent interaction. Considering the paradigmatic concepts at issue and broad implications, I try to better clarify the misread mentalist view, adding more inclusive detail, relevant background, further analysis, and comparing its foundational concepts with those of the new cognitive paradigm in psychology. A changed "emergent interactionist" form of causation is posited that combines traditional microdeterminism with emergent "top-down" (...) control. This emergent form of causation has wide application to causal explanation in general and is hypothesized to be the key common precursor for the consciousness revolution and subsequent boom in new worldviews, "systems thinking," emerging new paradigms, and other transformative developments of the 1970s and 1980s. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that it is morally important for doctors to trust patients. Doctors' trust of patients lays the foundation for medical relationships which support the exercise of patient autonomy, and which lead to an enriched understanding of patients' interests. Despite the moral and practical desirability of trust, distrust may occur for reasons relating to the nature of medicine, and the social and cultural context within which medical care is provided. Whilst it may not be possible to trust (...) at will, the conscious adoption of a trusting stance is both possible and warranted as the burdens of misplaced trust fall more heavily upon patients than doctors. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur and the Lived Body’s explorations into the ethical, social, cultural, and affective dimensions of our corporeal existence draw on Paul Ricoeur’s reflection on the lived body. Starting with the fact that one’s own body is irreducible to an object, these essays critically contribute to discourses on the body.

The Companion focusses on the international intellectual movement of the Enlightenment, and the individuals who shaped it. A number of substantial essays survey the main topics of dictionaries, encyclopedias, art, music and theatre, while central philosophical concepts such as human nature are also examined. Specialized topics receive short definitions and there are several hundred biographies. Chronology. 100 halftones. Bibliographies. Index.

This volume brings together eleven essays that address a range of issues extending from broader questions of social justice to the sexual intimacy that bears the mark of our fleshly existence. Collectively, these essays extend the reach of Paul Ricoeur’s early to late works by taking up some of the major social, political and religious challenges facing us in a postmodern, ultrapluralistic world.

This article examines the implicit promises of fairness in evidence based medicine , namely to avoid discrimination through objective processes, and to distribute effective treatments fairly. The relationship between EBM and vulnerable groups is examined. Several aspects of EBM are explored: the way evidence is created , and the way evidence is applied in clinical care and health policy. This analysis suggests that EBM turns our attention away from social and cultural factors that influence health and focuses on a narrow (...) biomedical and individualistic model of health. Those with the greatest burden of ill health are left disenfranchised, as there is little research that is relevant to them, there is poor access to treatments, and attention is diverted away from activities that might have a much greater impact on their health. (shrink)

Aesthetics, hermeneutics, criticism -- Social Werktreue and the subjectivization of aesthetics -- From musike to metaphysics -- Formalist aesthetics and musical hermeneutics -- Deconstructing the disciplinary divide -- The question of metaphor -- Mimesis and the hermeneutics of music -- Political critique and the politics of music criticism -- Toward a hermeneutics of music criticism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Father’s Will: Christ’s Crucifixion and the Goodness of God by Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P.Roger W. NuttThe Father’s Will: Christ’s Crucifixion and the Goodness of God. By Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 270. $99.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-19-968858-6.The centrality that Christ’s death by crucifixion has in Christian life, doctrine, and culture is scarcely in need of elaboration. Nevertheless, the relation between the (...) will of the Father and the violent and humiliating manner of Christ’s death raises substantive questions concerning the internal coherence of Christian claims about the love, goodness, and justice of God. In The Father’s Will: Christ’s Crucifixion and the Goodness of God, Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P., confronts these questions, openly acknowledging their difficulty and seriousness, and provides a philosophically precise and theologically fresh response to the challenges they pose to the credibility of the Christian message.The ten chapters of The Father’s Will are divided into tripartite units that progress in logical sequence from “philosophical prolegomena” (part 1) to “New Testament evidence” (part 2), culminating with a “theological [End Page 317] evaluation” (part 3). The question at the heart of the book is how to reconcile the Christian doctrine that God and evil are incompatible with the theology of the Cross, which seems to require that God’s will is implicated in the evil actions that bring about Christ’s death.The first five chapters (part 1) provide a philosophical analysis of intention (chap. 1), value and obligation (chap. 2), double-effect reasoning (chap. 3), the ethical problems associated with self-sacrifice (chap. 4), and God’s will in relation to the crucifixion (chap. 5). Drawing on his analysis of intention and employing the principle of double effect, Lombardo establishes that it is not necessary to conclude that God wills the evils that are attendant on Christ’s death. “Actions performed by rational intentions,” Lombardo explains, “are not only intended; they are also willed. Rational intending implies rational choice, and rational choice is an act of the will” (32). This understanding of intention and willing, as distinguishable from intentional action, provides a foundation upon which the moral goodness of actions can be determined. “For an action to be good,” Lombardo argues, “it must do more than simply advance our natural inclinations: it must also avoid frustrating them. Only actions that both advance our natural inclinations and avoid frustrating them are morally good” (49). When moral actions have good effects and nonintended bad effects that do not outweigh the good effects—as in cases of self-defense or the use of medicine and medical procedures—these complex actions retain their moral goodness, notwithstanding the bad effects. The reason for this is that the bad effects are not included in the agent’s intention. Lombardo presents the crucifixion of Christ as one of these complex cases in which the bad effects can be separated from the agent’s intention. Chapter 3 explores the reasoning associated with the principle of double effect to clarify how actions implicated in bad or evil effects can be judged to be morally good. Lombardo is hesitant to identify double effect as an isolated principle that is applicable within unique circumstantial cases. Rather, he presents double effect as “merely an algorithm for applying basic concepts to morally ambiguous actions” (72). For example, in addition to affirming that the intended effects of the action are consistent with our natural inclinations, in cases of double-effect reasoning “the action’s positive, intended effects [must] outweigh the action’s negative, nonintended effects” (73). This material, in turn, connects logically with the conclusion of chapter 4 on the ethics of self-sacrifice: “double effect reasoning shows that it can be acceptable, and even heroic, to cause our own death non-intentionally for the sake of some greater good” (79). The last chapter in part 1 applies these distinctions to the problem of God’s will and the moral evil involved in Christ’s crucifixion. Here, the basic dilemma that the book addresses is succinctly restated: “Being all good, God never wants... (shrink)

In this paper we consider the use of cases in medical ethics research and teaching. To date, there has been little discussion about the consent or confidentiality requirements that ought to govern the use of cases in these areas. This is in marked contrast to the requirements for consent to publish cases in clinical journals, or to use personal information in research. There are a number of reasons why it might be difficult to obtain consent to use cases in ethics. (...) Many cases concern people who are incompetent, and thus unable to give consent. Often the material is of a sensitive nature, it is not clear who should give consent, or the ethicist has no access to those involved. We argue that the use of cases in ethics research and teaching can be justified by appeal to the public interest argument, and suggest a number of areas for discussion and clarification. (shrink)