The widespread confusion of Nature with God and "natural" with holy has far-reaching negative consequences, from misinformation about everyday food and health choices to mistaken justifications of sexism, racism, and flawed economic policies.

Laura Specker Sullivan's article “Trust, Risk, and Race in American Medicine” is a philosophically grounded and highly practical call for medical professionals to take on the task of comprehending the sources of patients’ mistrust. This is not only a clinical competence but also a moral obligation, in particular, when mistrust is warranted—as with African American patients who rely on medical institutions that have breached and continue to breach the trust of their communities. While Specker Sullivan focuses on how clinicians can (...) signal comprehension once it has already been attained, I wish to step back and examine the nature of the efforts to gain knowledge. The effort to comprehend requires, at a minimum, the following actions: educating oneself about medical racism, examining one's implicit biases, and engaging, with empathic curiosity, with the patient or family members in the clinical encounter at hand. (shrink)

The core thesis of Malebranche’s doctrine of occasionalism is that God is the sole true cause, where a true cause is one that has the power to initiate change and for which the mind perceives a necessary connection between it and its effects. Malebranche gives two separate arguments for his core thesis, T, based on necessary connection and on divine power respectively. The standard view is that these two arguments are necessary to establish T. I argue for a reinterpretation of (...) Malebranche’s strategy, according to which the Necessary Connection Argument alone is sufficient to establish T. The Divine Power Argument, which is anyway weaker, is needed not to support T but to bridge the gap between T and full-fledged occasionalism. Specifically, it is needed to rule out the existence of causal powers in nature, a scenario which is consistent with T but inconsistent with occasionalism. (shrink)

From the time of the earliest self-conscious emergence of modern painting around 1905, there have not been widely accepted criteria by which to judge the artistic significance and value of the abstract and nonobjective styles that displaced the traditions of representational art. This circumstance has made the education of artists problematic. For the arts of literature and music, modernism was a relatively short-lived phase of innovation and experimentation that was played out in works that defied easy appreciation. The attention of (...) readers was soon exhausted by literary works such as James Joyce’s Ulysses, as was the attention of listeners exhausted by Arnold Schoenberg’s serialism. Authors returned to writing... (shrink)

It is difficult to say in a few words how much I owe to Hans Albert. It all began with invitations to the wonderful Alpbach European Forum, where for many years Hans helped to organize [i. e. organized] the regular Philosophy Seminar. He first invited me there in 1975, and again in 1980, 1987, 1993, 1995, 1998 and 2001. Hans really was the ‘Spirit of Alpbach’, as somebody once described him to me, and these were all memorable occasions in many (...) ways. I also met Gretl there, and their sons. I played tennis with Gretl and had wonderful walks and talks with all of them. (shrink)

In this case, it is noted that while DNA testing and methylation are being studied as biomarkers for high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions in the anal canal, their efficacy is no...

The paper argues that modern 'linguistic nationalism' has intellectual roots in Renaissance humanist thought. In their study of classical antiquity, the humanists found a powerful model of the relationship between language and politics, one which had eloquence as its central concept and theorized language as a source of social and political power and as a vehicle for glorifying the deeds of statesmen. This model was originally revived by the humanists in the context of their belief that the Latin language had (...) been badly degraded and corrupted since the fall of Rome. Emphasizing the power and glory that would accompany a return to Latin eloquence, they advocated a programme of Latin revival. By the sixteenth century, poets and intellectuals who were immersed in Renaissance humanism, and who were oriented to the political problems of emerging European nation-states, began applying this model to the vernacular. The view eloborated here suggests a factor that is ignored by both modernist accounts of nationalism and their critics: the importance at the threshold of modernity of a specific pre-modern conception of language and politics that had been retrieved and adapted to contemporary circumstances by Renaissance humanists. (shrink)

The past 25 years have seen an increasing interest in later medieval logic and in the theory of supposition. a review of literature reveals, however, wide differences of interpretation of supposition-theory. taking the theory in the widest sense as a contribution to semiotic or the theory of signs, this study shows how supposition has been variously treated as a syntactical, semantical and even pragmatical theory. the main views of p. boehner, e. moody, p. geach, d. p. henry, w. c. kneale (...) and l. m. de rijk are examined, compared and appraised with respect to overall progress in the elucidation of supposition-theory. (shrink)

A recent statement of consensus held that the principle of double effect would allow the induction of a previable fetus in order to eliminate a grave and present danger to the life of a mother suffering from peripartum cardiomyopathy. The author responds to this declaration, points out some limitations preventing it from being a vehicle for broader agreement, and offers an alternative, namely, medical induction of labor in cases of maternal–fetal vital conflict can be justified if the fetus has at (...) least a fair chance of survival. This support of induction in cases of periviability considers the interests of both fetus and mother and, unlike the earlier consensus statement, can be defended by those who hold that one’s moral intention includes both the ultimate and proximate ends, or the immediate consequences of one’s act. (shrink)

This commentary welcomes the work of Ives et al. on Standards of practice in Empirical Bioethics, and especially the dialogical spirit in which the standards have been constructed and offered. It also raises some questions about the consistent interpretation and use of such standards.

Ethics in Public Policy and Management: A global research companion showcases the latest research from established and newly emerging scholars in the fields of public management and ethics. This collection examines the profound changes of the last 25 years, including the rise of New Public Management, New Public Governance and Public Value; how these have altered practitioners' delivery of public services; and how academics think about those services. Drawing on research from a broad range of disciplines, Ethics in Public Policy (...) and Management looks to reflect on this changing landscape. With contributions from Asia, Australasia, Europe and the USA, the collection is grouped into five main themes: theorising the practice of ethics; understanding and combating corruption; managing integrity; ethics across boundaries; expanding ethical policy domains. This volume will prove thought-provoking for educators, administrators, policy makers and researchers across the fields of public management, public administration and ethics. (shrink)

Carroll's uniqueness is to have allowed nothing to pass through sense, but to have played out everything in nonsense, since the diversity of nonsenses is enough to give an account of the entire uni...

David Lewis was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century working in the Anglo-American analytic tradition. His corpus is extraordinary for its breadth of subject matter and for its systematicity. For both these reasons, it is difficult to do justice to his work in a short space—there are rich interconnections among his myriad writings, and numerous possible entry points. This article approaches Lewis and his work in three passes: first, a biographical tracing of his intellectual influences; second, (...) a summary of his metaphilosophy; third, a survey of his more specific philosophical views, mostly following their order of conceptual dependence. (shrink)

Cochrane (2009) presents a fairly typical case of an elderly woman (Mrs. H), who had previously expressed her wishes not to be functionally dependent, who suffers a disabling stroke. As in many rea...