We introduce a distinct type of choice that has yet to be addressed by self-control research: Choosing between activities that offer both delayed and immediate rewards. We describe when and why such mixed-reward choices pose challenges to self-control, and suggest that self-control in mixed-reward choices may be supported by delay discounting.

Next SectionWhilst there has been considerable debate about the fit between moral theory and moral reasoning in everyday life, the way in which moral problems are defined has rarely been questioned. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with 15 general practitioners (GPs) in South Australia to argue that the way in which the bioethics literature defines an ethical dilemma captures only some of the range of lay views about the nature of ethical problems. The bioethics literature has (...) defined ethical dilemmas in terms of conflict and choice between values, beliefs and options for action. While some of the views of some of the GPs in this study about the nature of their ethical dilemmas certainly accorded with this definition, other explanations of the ethical nature of their problems revolved around the publicity associated with the issues they were discussing, concern about their relationships with patients, and anxiety about threats to their integrity and reputation. The variety of views about what makes a problem a moral problem indicates that the moral domain is perhaps wider and richer than mainstream bioethics would generally allow. (shrink)

According to theological consensus at least from the thirteenth century, at the End of Times our body will be resurrected and reunited with our soul. The resurrected body, although numerically identical to our present one, will be quite different: it will possess clarity, agility, subtility, and the inability to suffer. It is the last of these characteristics that will be of most concern in the present article. There are two reasons why impassibility presents a problem in the medieval framework. The (...) first has to do with how to characterize impassibility more precisely; the second arises because at first it may seem that impassibility is not metaphysically possible at all. The article will look at three attempts to tackle these problems: those of Thomas Aquinas, Durand of St.-Pourçain, and Peter of Palude. As the article aims to show, looking at how causal powers work on the New Earth may shed some light on how medieval thinkers thought they worked on the present one. (shrink)

This paper takes a virtuist approach to medical ethics to explore, from an empirical angle, ideas about settled ways of living a good life. Qualitative research methods were used to analyse the ways in which a group of 15 general practitioners articulated notions of good doctoring and the virtues in their work. I argue that the GPs, whose talk is analysed here, defined good general practice in terms of the ideals of accessibility, comprehensiveness, and continuity. They regarded these ideals significant (...) both for the way they dealt with morally problematic situations and for how they conducted their professional lives more generally. In addition, I argue that the GPs who articulated these ideals most clearly were able to, in part, because they shared the experience of working in rural areas. This experience helped them to develop an understanding of the nature of general practice that their urban colleagues were less able to draw on. In that sense, the structural and organisational framework of general practice in rural areas provided the context for their understanding of ideals in general practice. (shrink)

According to most medieval thinkers, whenever something causally acts on another thing, God also acts with it. Durand of St.-Pourçain, an early fourteenth-century Dominican philosopher, disagrees. This paper is about a fourteenth-century objection to Durand’s view, which I will call the Fiery Furnace Objection, as formulated by Durand’s contemporary, Peter of Palude. Although Peter of Palude is not usu- ally regarded as a particularly original thinker, this paper calls attention to one of his more interesting controversies with his fellow friar, (...) while it also clarifies how some medieval thinkers understood the broadly speaking Aristotelian conviction that causes and effects are necessarily related. (shrink)

This collection of essays, which includes a revised version of a famous article on the "male lesbian," addresses such issues as race, gender, and sexuality, and explores the body as a physical, psychological, and cultural construct.

This essay explores the criteria for lesbian identity attribution through the case study of "male lesbians": biological males who claim to be lesbians. I analyze such sex/gender identity attribution through the lens of postmodernism, which provides a workable theoretical framework for "male lesbian" identities. My conclusions explore the historicity and cultural constructedness of the body's sex/gender identities, revealing the limitations of both "the postmodernized body" and "the essentialized modernist body.".

Criminal law is one of the regulatory tools being used in the United States to influence risk behavior by people who have HIV/AIDS. Several different types of laws have been or could be used in this way These include:HIV-specific exposure and transmission laws — i.e., laws that explicitly mention and exclusively apply to conduct by people with HIV;public health statutes prohibiting conduct that would expose others to communicable diseases and/or sexually transmitted diseases ; andgeneral criminal laws governing attempted murder and (...) assault. (shrink)

Criminal law is one of the regulatory tools being used in the United States to influence risk behavior by people who have HIV/AIDS. Several different types of laws have been or could be used in this way These include:HIV-specific exposure and transmission laws — i.e., laws that explicitly mention and exclusively apply to conduct by people with HIV;public health statutes prohibiting conduct that would expose others to communicable diseases and/or sexually transmitted diseases ; andgeneral criminal laws governing attempted murder and (...) assault. (shrink)

The present text contains a critical edition of Peter of Palude’s question of divine concurrence, found in his Sentences commentary, book II, d. 1, q. 4. The question concerns whether God is immediately active in every action of a creature, and if yes, how we should understand this divine concurrence. Peter, just as elsewhere in his commentary, considers at length the opinions of other thinkers — especially those of Giles of Rome, Durand of St.-Pourçain, and Thomas Aquinas — and develops (...) his own answer as a response to theirs. Thus, while Giles maintained that God acts uniformly in every instance of natural causation just as the sun acts uniformly by giving the same light to everything, Peter (following Durand) argues that this is incompatible with the divine creation of multiple things. Second, while Durand maintained that God is only mediately active in the actions of creatures, Peter rejects this opinion because it cannot account for miracles contra naturam (such as the three young men in Nebuchadnezzar’s fire), and because he thinks that God’s immediate action follows from his immediate conservation of creatures. Third, Peter presents Aquinas’s position in detail, and defends it against Durand’s objections; according to this position, God immediately conserves and concurs with every creature, with an action that is numerically distinct from that of the secondary agent. Although as a result of his extensive borrowing, Peter’s text might not be regarded as immensely original, it provides an interesting case study of the Dominican reaction against Durand in the early 1300’s. (shrink)

The concept of noncombatant immunity prohibits the intentional targeting of noncombatants. The availability of nonlethal weapons (NLW) may weaken this prohibition, especially since using NLWs against noncombatants may, in some cases, actually save the noncombatants' lives. Given the advancement of NLWs, I argue that their probable appearance on the battlefield demands close scrutiny due to the moral problems associated with their use. In this paper, I examine four distinct cases and determine whether the use of NLWs is morally permissible. While (...) it seems that the reduced harm caused by NLWs makes their use more acceptable, adhering to noncombatant immunity requires more than not killing noncombatants. It also requires that military forces treat noncombatants a certain way. In the cases I present, to use NLWs against noncombatants treats them as combatants and coerces them to do something against their will. While a consequentialist foundation for noncombatant immunity may permit this action, a rights-based concept of noncombatant immunity does not. I contend that only a rights-based concept of noncombatant immunity is viable, and that the availability of NLWs should not significantly alter the prohibitions prescribed by noncombatant immunity. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is Ockham's stance on the question of divine concurrence---the question whether God is causally active in the causal happenings of the created world, and if so, what God's causal activity amounts to and what place that leaves for created causes. After discussing some preliminaries, I turn to presenting what I take to be Ockham's account. As I show, Ockham, at least in this issue, is rather conservative: he agrees with the majority of medieval thinkers (including (...) Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and others) that both God and created agents are causally active in the causal happenings of the world. Then I turn to some texts that may suggest otherwise; I argue that reading Ockham as either an occasionalist or a mere conservationist based on these texts originates from a misunderstanding of his main concern. I conclude with raising and briefly addressing some systematic worries regarding Ockham's account of concurrence. (shrink)

In this commentary on Joyce Trebilcot's "Dyke Methods or Principles for the Discovery/Creation of the Withstanding," I discuss four areas of difficulty in Trebilcot's proposed methods: (1) an overly negative view of "the intention to persuade," (2) a tendency towards epistemological relativism and loss of cultural authorities, (3) a circularity in defining the proposed methods as dyke methods, and (4) a hint of repressive tolerance towards differences among lesbians by avoidance of painful confrontation involving those differences. Unlike Trebilcot, I make (...) a distinction between the abuse of persuasion and the art of persuasion, re-claiming the latter as a caring and challenging strategy, rather than an invasion of adversarial heteropatriarchal tactics. (shrink)

In the foundational piece in this issue of the journal, “Integrating Law and Social Epidemiology,” Burris, Kawachi, and Sarat present a model for understanding the relationship between law and health. This article uses the case of a specific health condition, the human immunodeficiency virus infection, as an opportunity to flesh out this schema and to test how the model “fits” the world of the HIV pandemic. In applying the model to this communicable disease, we hope to illustrate the multitude of (...) ways that laws affect the course of the pandemic as well as the course of an individual’s vulnerability or resilience to the disease, and how the complexities of an individual’s life dealing with the virus interface with the world of laws and legal institutions. (shrink)

In the foundational piece in this issue of the journal, “Integrating Law and Social Epidemiology,” Burris, Kawachi, and Sarat present a model for understanding the relationship between law and health. This article uses the case of a specific health condition, the human immunodeficiency virus infection, as an opportunity to flesh out this schema and to test how the model “fits” the world of the HIV pandemic. In applying the model to this communicable disease, we hope to illustrate the multitude of (...) ways that laws affect the course of the pandemic as well as the course of an individual’s vulnerability or resilience to the disease, and how the complexities of an individual’s life dealing with the virus interface with the world of laws and legal institutions. (shrink)

How we integrate the astounding advances that genetics makes possible into our language, our conceptions of health and disease, and our systems to collect, control, and protect health-related information is a key question facing health law and policy-makers this decade.For example, the prospect that all of us may harbor the genetic seeds of our own demise forces us to confront the blurring of the lines between “health,” “predisposition,” and “disease.” How will we modify our conceptions of health and disease in (...) response to this new distinction?That these questions must be answered using, at least in part, new approaches seems unassailable. Yet, we run the risk of becoming mired in an old debate—exceptionalism—in which we haggle over the precise nature and scope of the similarities and differences between genetic information and all other health-related information. (shrink)

How we integrate the astounding advances that genetics makes possible into our language, our conceptions of health and disease, and our systems to collect, control, and protect health-related information is a key question facing health law and policy-makers this decade.For example, the prospect that all of us may harbor the genetic seeds of our own demise forces us to confront the blurring of the lines between “health,” “predisposition,” and “disease.” How will we modify our conceptions of health and disease in (...) response to this new distinction?That these questions must be answered using, at least in part, new approaches seems unassailable. Yet, we run the risk of becoming mired in an old debate—exceptionalism—in which we haggle over the precise nature and scope of the similarities and differences between genetic information and all other health-related information. (shrink)

Copyright © 2008 by International Union for Health Promotion and Education.

For theological reasons, medieval thinkers maintained that sacraments “effect what they figure”—that is, they are more than mere signs of grace; and yet, they also maintained that they are not proper causes of grace in the way fire is the proper cause of heat. One way to reconcile these requirements is to explicate sacramental causation in terms of sine qua non causes, which were distinguished from accidental causes on the one hand, and from proper efficient causes on the other hand. (...) This article traces the development of this concept, as discussed in the context of the sacraments, from Scotus and Auriol, via Ockham and Peter of Ailly, to Gabriel Biel. It shows how the discussion, in its later stages, opened up concerns about occasionalism, offering thereby a case study of how particular theological issues led to metaphysical ones in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider Richard Rufus’ account of generation and corrup- tion. This is a fundamental metaphysical question in the Aristotelian framework. Given that there are things that are corruptible (such as trees and cats and the human body), and things that are incorruptible (such as the celestial bodies and angels), what is it that makes one one, and the other the other? In other words, what is the ultimate explanation (in Rufus' terminology, the principle or principles) of corruptibility (...) and incorruptibility? Do corruptible and incorruptible things have the same principles – the same fundamental metaphysical constitution – or are their principles different? Richard Rufus was among the first ones lecturing on Aristotle’s _Metaphysics_ at the University of Paris. He addresses these questions in book 4 (Gamma), lectio 1, question 2 of his longer commentary on Aristotle’s work (the _Scriptum_), which will provide the main textual basis of this paper. The other textual basis is an anonymous commentary on Aristotle’s _On generation and corruption_, found in Oxford, Corpus Christi MS 119, whose treatment of these issues is remarkably similar to Rufus’. As I show, we can learn a great deal about Rufus’ general metaphysical commitments by looking at this particular question, especially concerning his view of prime matter and his view of the qualities of the resurrected bodies. (shrink)

This paper reflects on masculinist biases affecting scientific research on the Premenstrual Syndrome. Masculinist bias is examined on the level of observation language and in the choice of explanatory frameworks. Such bias is found to be further reinforced by the social construction of “the clinical body” as an object of medical interrogation. Some of the political implications of the medicalization of women's premenstrual changes are also discussed.

This review essay covers the lesbian writing of philosopher Jeffner Allen, contrasting her fiercely separatist earlier work with her more recent experimental writing. A quest for a separate ontic space-defining difference qua Lesbian and consistently characterized by Allen as "the open"-links her earlier work with her more recent atonalities richly coded with ritual, myth, memory, and play.

Feminist philosophical writing on sexuality is both concentrated in specific areas and dispersed throughout feminist philosophy. This is because feminist philosophers usually incorporate in their writing some notion of what sexuality is and its relevance to women's social oppression and liberatory projects. Feminist thinking on sexuality can also be found in many writings on sexual violence, reproductive and erotic rights, sexual ethics, sexual politics, sexual law, sexual harassment, sexual deviance, sexual practices, sexual commerce, sexual identity, and sexual pleasure. Additionally, feminist (...) thinking on sexuality appears in the critical rethinking of biological and social sciences and in a variety of new discourses seeking their interdisciplinary homes in women's studies, gender studies, queer theory, and cultural studies. To carve out from all of this a domain of feminist philosophical work on sexuality seems difficult if not perilous. (shrink)

This paper reflects on masculinist biases affecting scientific research on the Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS). Masculinist bias is examined on the level of observation language and in the choice of explanatory frameworks. Such bias is found to be further reinforced by the social construction of "the clinical body" as an object of medical interrogation. Some of the political implications of the medicalization of women's premenstrual changes are also discussed.

This paper reflects on masculinist biases affecting scientific research on the Premenstrual Syndrome. Masculinist bias is examined on the level of observation language and in the choice of explanatory frameworks. Such bias is found to be further reinforced by the social construction of “the clinical body” as an object of medical interrogation. Some of the political implications of the medicalization of women's premenstrual changes are also discussed.

The significance of the complicated numbering of the propositions in the Tractatus has occasioned much speculation. Wittgenstein's own explanation has, following Stenius, been generally regarded as misleading. But an examination of the Prototractatus reveals that the numbering system was for Wittgenstein principally an aid in the composition of his work. It allowed him to mark out certain propositions which required further work or supplementation, without disturbing the basic structure of the treatise. But the reworking of the Prototractatus to form the (...) Tractatus considerably changed the original order in which the ideas were connected, and thus made it more difficult to understand the Tractatus. Several specific examples make it clear that it is essential to look back at the context of the Prototractatus in order to achieve a correct interpretation of many of the propositions in the Tractatus. (shrink)

Objectives: To determine whether authors of scientific publications in molecular biology declare patents and other potential financial interests.Design: Survey of a 6-month sample of papers related to molecular biology in Nature.Methods: The esp@cenet worldwide patent search engine was used to search for patents applied for by the authors of scientific papers in Nature that were related to molecular biology and genetics, between January and June 2005.Results: Of the 79 papers considered, four had declared that certain authors had competing financial interests. (...) Seven papers in which no financial interests were declared had authors with patent applications that were based on the research in the paper or were closely related to it. Another paper had two authors with connections to biotechnology companies that were not disclosed.Conclusion: Two thirds of the papers in which authors had patent applications or company affiliations that might be considered to be competing financial interests did not disclose them. Failure to disclose such information may have negative implications on the perception of science in society and on its quality if the possible bias is hidden. Journals should make greater efforts to ensure full disclosure, and scientific institutions should consider failure to disclose financial interests as an example of scientific malpractice. Establishing a register of interests for scientists is one way to increase transparency and openness. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Can researchers, interested in novel ways to assess HIV seroprevalence among populations which are otherwise hidden, collect condoms that have been discarded on the ground in a public sex environment and test them for HIV? Researchers, who use other types of abandoned samples, such as discarded syringes, hair or saliva samples, or excess biological samples, confront similar issues. This review evaluates whether such abandoned tissues can be studied based on U.S. Code of Federal Regulations and literature on related issues including: (...) research involving banked tissues, blinded seroprevalence studies, and property claims that individuals might make on the samples.It also addresses broader questions of potential for stigma and risk to individuals and communities. The article concludes that the research should be permitted legally because either it does not involve human subjects, or it satisfies the requirements for waiver of consent; and that the research should also be permitted because the ethical principal of avoiding harm to individuals is fully satisfied based on a careful reading of the lessons of the tissue bank, biological property rights, and blinded seroprevalence study debates, as well as a consideration of other potential harms that might be involved. (shrink)

Can researchers, interested in novel ways to assess HIV seroprevalence among populations which are otherwise hidden, collect condoms that have been discarded on the ground in a public sex environment and test them for HIV? Does the Code of Federal Regulations address this question, and if not, what areas of research ethics might provide guidance to an IRB considering such a study? These questions arose as part of a preliminary study to test the feasibility of collecting discarded condoms from a (...) public sex environment in Massachusetts, and testing contained semen for HIV. Although the methodology of this study is somewhat unusual, the questions raised are not. Researchers, who wish to use other types of abandoned samples such as discarded syringes, hair or saliva samples, or even excess biological samples, commonly confront similar issues, and the analysis utilized here could guide design and review of other studies. (shrink)

Behavioral ethics is an emerging field that takes an empirical, social scientific approach to the study of business ethics. In this special issue, we include six articles that fall within the domain of behavioral ethics and that focus on three themes—moral awareness, ethical decision making, and reactions to unethical behavior. Each of the articles sheds additional light on the specific issues addressed. However, we hope this special issue will have an impact beyond that of the new insights offered in these (...) articles, by stimulating evenmore research in this burgeoning field. (shrink)