This paper investigates a sibling metaphor central to Rosenzweig’s reading of the Song of Songs in The Star of Redemption, in which the lovers yearn to be united in societal fraternity. His interpretation is marked by fraternal tropes and the subsequent effacement of gender. Rosenzweig transposes the erotic energy in the Song from a celebration of difference to a longing for sameness, a move that has exegetical, philosophical, and theological implications. Ultimately, the erotic sphere of revelation is surpassed by neighborly (...) “brotherliness” in communal redemption. (shrink)

Logicians and theoretical physicists will also benefit from this book.

Recent new paradigms of computation, based on biological and physical models, address in a radically new way questions of efficiency and challenge assumptions ...

We prove the following three theorems on the enumeration degrees of ∑20 sets. Theorem A: There exists a nonzero noncuppable ∑20 enumeration degree. Theorem B: Every nonzero Δ20enumeration degree is cuppable to 0′e by an incomplete total enumeration degree. Theorem C: There exists a nonzero low Δ20 enumeration degree with the anticupping property.

We show that every nonzero $\Delta _{2}^{0}$ e-degree bounds a minimal pair. On the other hand, there exist $\Sigma _{2}^{0}$ e-degrees which bound no minimal pair.

We prove that there exists a noncappable enumeration degree strictly below 0' e.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate, revise, and extend the Informed Consent Ontology (ICO) for expressing clinical permissions, including reuse of residual clinical biospecimens and health data. This study followed a formative evaluation design and used a bottom-up modeling approach. Data were collected from the literature on US federal regulations and a study of clinical consent forms. Eleven federal regulations and fifteen permission-sentences from clinical consent forms were iteratively modeled to identify entities and their relationships, followed by community (...) reflection and negotiation based on a series of predetermined evaluation questions. ICO included fifty-two classes and twelve object properties necessary when modeling, demonstrating appropriateness of extending ICO for the clinical domain. Twenty-six additional classes were imported into ICO from other ontologies, and twelve new classes were recommended for development. This work addresses a critical gap in formally representing permissions clinical permissions, including reuse of residual clinical biospecimens and health data. It makes missing content available to the OBO Foundry, enabling use alongside other widely-adopted biomedical ontologies. ICO serves as a machine-interpretable and interoperable tool for responsible reuse of residual clinical biospecimens and health data at scale. (shrink)

This paper examines the Gricean view that quality maxims take priority over other conversational maxims. It is shown that Gricean conversational implicatures are routinely inferred from utterances that are recognized to be untruthful. It is argued that this observation falsifies Grice’s original claim that hearers assume that speakers are obeying other maxims only if the speaker is assumed to be obeying quality maxims, and furthermore the related claim that hearers assume that speakers are being cooperative only to the extent that (...) they assume they are being truthful. (shrink)

This paper addresses theoretically the question how virtual communication may affect cooperation in work teams. The degree of team virtualization, i.e. the extent to which interaction between team members occurs online, is related to parameters of the exchange. First, it is assumed that in online interaction task uncertainties are higher than in face-to-face contacts. Second, the gratifying value of peer rewards is assumed to be lower in online contacts. Thirdly, it is assumed that teams are different in the extent to (...) which members depend on their peers for positive affections, operationalized by the extent to which team members are interested in social relationships for their own sake, independently from their work interactions. Simulation results suggest both positive and negative effects of team virtualization on work-cooperation. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

English summary: The field of business ethics concerns itself with the question of corporate responsibility. Andreas Suchanek equates this responsibility with fulfilling reasonable expectations of trust. He shows why expectations concerning trust are so important, why they are often not met and what companies can do to comply with them within the bounds of possibility - and their own well meaning self interest. As an ethical guiding principle the following golden rule prevails: Invest in the conditions of social cooperation for (...) the purposes of mutual gain! German description: Unternehmensethik befasst sich mit der Frage der Verantwortung von Unternehmen. Andreas Suchanek setzt diese Verantwortung mit der Erfullung berechtigter Vertrauenserwartungen gleich. Er zeigt, warum diese Vertrauenserwartungen so wichtig sind, weshalb sie oft enttauscht werden und was Unternehmen tun konnen, um sie - im wohlverstandenen Eigeninteresse - im Rahmen ihrer Moglichkeiten zu erfullen. Als ethische Leitmaxime gilt hierfur die folgende Goldene Regel: Investiere in die Bedingungen der gesellschaftlichen Zusammenarbeit zum gegenseitigen Vorteil! (shrink)

The search for spaces of cooperation between the methodology of natural sciences (cognitive sciences in particular) and the phenomenological approach has gained importance over time. However, it is necessary not to lose sight of the fact that Husserlian phenomenology was first and foremost characterized by a profound critique of ontological naturalism, a critique crucial for understanding the ethical sense of the phenomenological operation. To clarify this point, it is necessary to clarify the problematic role that naturalism has played - and (...) continues to play - on the ethical level, and the way in which phenomenological criticism is able to neutralize it. In the following pages we will first try to illustrate the impact of ontological naturalism on the contemporary ethical vision and then to show how the phenomenological perspective is best understandable as a way to reveal the blind spots of naturalism, to denounce its implicit reductionism, and to reopen an ethical perspective that the historical establishment of a naturalistic worldview had artificially closed. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a conception of joint practical deliberation as a special type of shared cooperative activity, through which co-deliberators jointly accept reasons as applying to them as a pair or group. I argue, moreover, that the aspiration to deliberative “pairhood” is distinguished by a special concern for mutuality that guides each deliberator’s readiness to accept a given consideration as a reason-for-us. It matters to each of us, as joint deliberators, that each party’s (individual) reasons for accepting something (...) as a reason-for-us support a conception of our relationship as one characterized by mutual, non-instrumental concern for one another. (shrink)

Current debates on collective intentionality focus on the cognitive capacities, attitudes, and mental states that enable individuals to take part in joint actions. It is typically assumed that collective intentionality is a capacity which is added to other, pre-existing, capacities of an individual and is exercised in cooperative activities like carrying a table or painting a house together. We call this the additive account because it portrays collective intentionality as a capacity that an individual possesses in addition to her capacity (...) for individual intentionality. We offer an alternative view according to which the primary entity to which collective intentionality has to be ascribed is not the human individual, but a “form of life.” As a feature of a form of life, collective intentionality is something more than the specific capacity exercised by an individual when she cooperates with others. Collective intentionality transforms all the capacities of the bearers of this specific form of life. We thus call our proposal the transformative account of collective intentionality. (shrink)

The aim of this paper, is to provide a logical framework for reasoning about actions, agency, and powers of agents and coalitions in game-like multi-agent systems. First we define our basic Dynamic Logic of Agency ( ). Differently from other logics of individual and coalitional capability such as Alternating-time Temporal Logic (ATL) and Coalition Logic, in cooperation modalities for expressing powers of agents and coalitions are not primitive, but are defined from more basic dynamic logic operators of action and (historic) (...) necessity. We show that STIT logic can be reconstructed in . We then extend with epistemic operators, which allows us to distinguish capability and power. We finally characterize the conditions under which agents are aware of their capabilities and powers. (shrink)

In chapter 7 of her 2008 book, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, Saidiya Hartman writes, “I too am trying to save the girl, not from death or sickness or a tyrant but from oblivion. [...] These words are the only defense of her existence, the only barrier against her disappearance”. Hartman’s project in Lose Your Mother is a search for a life beyond the archive; it is a search for a living narrative, written on, in, (...) and by the body—an act of re-membering. The same sentiment is echoed in Brittney C. Cooper’s Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women. Cooper offers a sympathetic rejoinder to Hartman’s investigation of what it means to be the contemporaries of the enslaved, and what it means to theorize: to produce a living history by a loving engagement in, with, and through the body. Cooper’s approach is to utilize the practice of listing. Listing is the “intentional calling of names [that] create[s] an intellectual genealogy for race women’s work and was a practice of resistance against intellectual erasure”. Beyond Respectability engages with some key thinkers in early Black feminist thought: Anna Julia Cooper, Fannie Barrier Williams, Mary Church Terrell, and Pauli Murray. In this review, I briefly summarize the key theories described in the book. I conclude by arguing that Cooper’s reading is limited when it comes to reading Pauli Murray as a “race woman.”. (shrink)

In times of digitalization and globalization, social expectations change at an increasing pace. In order to provide orientation in times of frequent change, this article argues to reinforce the meaning of moral principles, norms, or values as focal points, which build the basis of mutually aligned behavioral expectations. Accordingly, the paper explains the abstract meaning of focal points – having reciprocal expectations as foundation for social cooperation – as well as the particular relevance of the focal point ‘do no harm’.

Several important questions in applied ethics – like whether to switch to a plant-based diet, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or vote in elections – seem to share the following structure: if enough people ‘cooperate’ and become vegan for example, we bring about a better outcome; but what you do as an individual seems to make no difference whatsoever. Such collective action problems are often thought to pose a serious challenge to consequentialism. In response, I defend the Reactive Attitude Approach: rather (...) than focus only on the deontic status of (non-)cooperative acts – as existing consequentialist responses mostly do – consequentialists should also focus on when to praise or blame individuals. For example, even if your veganism does not change the overall outcome, consequentialists might still recommend praising you for your cooperative behavior. I make a consequentialist case for including praise and blame in our ethical practices around collective action and argue that doing so helps us capture important intuitions. I develop and defend these arguments by drawing on recent instrumentalist theories of blame and responsibility. (shrink)

Several scholars argue that Aristotle's character friendship occurs only between completely virtuous moral agents. Oppositely, others seem to be more skeptical about such an interpretation. Especially John Cooper (1980) has given to us an original and creative understanding of the matter at hand. Particularly, he argues that not only the completely virtuous agents can engage in virtuous friendship; less morally developed agents can do so as well. The key advantage of Cooper’s account is that it allows agents of (...) unequal moral development to take part in character friendship. That is, if an agent A has advanced high in the levels of moral excellence, this does not mean that he necessarily has to find someone with the same level of moral excellence to befriend. I will argue that this agent can also be friends with a less morally developed agent. I will call this relationship: character friendship between unequally developed moral agents. In fact, I will not only follow Cooper’s argument, but I will also try to extend it. Specifically, I will argue that the most significant upshot of his argument is that Aristotle has found a way for the less morally developed agents to improve in moral excellence, throughout the help of their friends of higher moral status. I will suggest then, that this interpretation of character friendship, can not only give an answer to scholars that support the ‘completely virtuous agents’ presupposition; and especially those who reject character friendships between unequally developed agents (Cocking & Kennett, 1998). Cooper’s interpretation can be the stepping stone in understanding character friendship as a mechanism in Aristotle’s hands for his less morally developed agents to further advance in virtue. If we accept the ‘completely virtuous agents’ argument about character friendship then the circumstance just mentioned is impossible. In order for Cooper’s argument to work, however, we have to give a solution to what I will call the Reciprocity Problem. Unfortunately, he does not discuss this matter. I will suggest though, that Aristotle covers this potential gap of Cooper’s theory in his discussion based on superiority. In this manner we can have a less problematic version of the extended view of character friendship. I will thus deploy this paper in the subsequent order. I will first explore the ‘completely virtuous agents’ view of character friendship. I will argue there that despite the merits of such an interpretation, Aristotle seems to offer a more extended view of character friendship. My next task will be to demonstrate why Cooper’s position covers this extended view. Before I move one, I will give a solution to the Reciprocity Problem. After that, I will try to show that Cooper’s view can be extended, so as to explain the prospect of less morally developed agents to advance in the sphere of virtue, by participating in character friendship between unequally developed moral agents. Lastly, I will try to show how the extended view of character friendship can work as an anti-luck shield against the vulnerability of the human character. (shrink)

In this paper, we show that Case-based decision theory, proposed by Gilboa and Schmeidler :605–639, 1995), can explain the aggregate dynamics of cooperation in the repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma, as observed in the experiments performed by Camera and Casari. Moreover, we find CBDT provides a better fit to the dynamics of cooperation than does the existing Probit model, which is the first time such a result has been found. We also find that humans aspire to a payoff above the mutual defection (...) outcome but below the mutual cooperation outcome, which suggests they hope, but are not confident, that cooperation can be achieved. Finally, our best-fitting parameters suggest that circumstances with more details are easier to recall. We make a prediction for future experiments: if the repeated PD were run for more periods, then we would be begin to see an increase in cooperation, most dramatically in the second treatment, where history is observed but identities are not. This is the first application of Case-based decision theory to a strategic context and the first empirical test of CBDT in such a context. It is also the first application of bootstrapped standard errors to an agent-based model. (shrink)

We present experimental data on a simple market game. Several solution concepts from cooperative game theory are applied to predict the observed payoff distributions. Notably, a recently introduced solution concept meant to capture the influence of outside options on the payoff distribution within groups fares better than most other solution concepts under consideration. Our results shed some light on the effects of scarcity relations on markets on bargaining outcomes within negotiating dyads.

Importation in fictional discourse is the phenomenon by which audiences include information in the story over and above what is explicitly stated by the narrator. This paper argues that importation is distinct from generation, the phenomenon by which truth in fiction may outstrip what is made explicit, and draws a distinction between fictional truth and fictional records. The latter comprises the audience’s picture of what is true according to the narrator. The paper argues that importation into fictional records operates according (...) to principles that also govern ordinary conversation. An account of fictional records as a species of common ground information is proposed. Two sources of importation are described in detail, presupposition accommodation and conversational implicatures. It is shown that presuppositions are both mandatorily imported and mandatorily generated. By contrast, conversational implicatures are neither mandatorily imported nor mandatorily generated. The paper distinguishes conversational implicatures from contextual inferences. Both rely on background assumptions, yet conversational implicatures moreover depend on assumptions concerning Gricean cooperation. (shrink)

While contemporary accounts understand esteem and self-esteem as essentially competitive phenomena, early modern natural law theorists developed a conception of justified esteem and self-esteem based on naturally good character traits. This article explores how such a normative conception of esteem and self-esteem is developed in the work of Christian Wolff. Two features make Wolff’s approach distinctive: He uses the analysis of common notions that are expressed in everyday language to provide a foundation for the aspects of natural law on which (...) his conception of natural duties of esteem depends. He develops a non-competitive conception of esteem and self-esteem into a cooperative conception, according to which enhancing the esteem in which others are held is seen as a tool for promoting self-perfection. Wolff’s ideas offer a solution to the well-known problems connected with competitive life-styles, and at the same time assign a central role in moral motivation to the desire of being esteemed and of having high self-esteem. Moreover, due to his emphasis on presenting a philosophical analysis based on common notions, he offers a solution that is meant to be persuasive from the perspective of everyday morality. (shrink)

Like other key terms in the medical and health humanities—empathy, creativity, and reflection, to name just a few—wellness has become a weasel word, rife the language of optimization, duty, and self-perception. While alternative vocabularies exist—well-being and quality of life among them—these options usually privilege the objectives of academic (often psychological) research, health institutions, and the economic state apparatus, rather than people themselves. In mind of these concerns, why attempt to make a case for wellness at all? We present a historically (...) informed, theoretically driven, praxis-guided framework for a renewed vision of social wellness (a concept first defined in the late 1950s). While definitions since Bill Hettler’s “hexagonal” model (1980) have included mutual respect for others and the assumption of cooperative behaviors, conspicuously absent from contemporary definitions and usage is any mention of the aesthetic realm, which we—alongside philosophers like Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum—take as a central human capability. How can the relational possibilities of arts engagement be understood as not just a means of promoting individual wellness, but also as a method and outcome of social wellness? We propose that social wellness is ultimately premised on the interplay between wellness of the collective and the strength of the relational encounters it engenders. We turn to a key practice paradigm—community arts engagement—as both a vehicle for and site of social wellness. With brief reference to a Canadian exemplar, we conclude with concrete recommendations for addressing critical opportunities for advancing arts-led social wellness initiatives involving academic and community partners. (shrink)

Analysing the profession of ministers in terms of sociologically and ethically funded profession ethics makes a mode of regulation and control in knowledge-based professional action - profession ethics - describable which is closely linked to trust. To adopt trust as an imperative of figuration however, it must be discussed ethically. A theoretical discourse of implementation in an institutional ethics perspective leads to alternative recommendations for figuration: Trust in the profession of ministers is no longer generated by conscious intransparancy, by smothering (...) up mistakes and fallacies and the concealment of control of ministers but by transparancy, feeling obliged to visions, having clear aims, common identity and cooperation structures between professionals and parishioners. (shrink)

This analysis examines fundamental questions at the intersection of social science and social technology as well as problems of disciplinary divisions and the challenge of cross-disciplinary cooperation. Its theoretical-empirical context is provided by post-communist transformations, a set of profound societal changes in which institutional design plays a central role. The article critically reappraises the contribution of Karl Popper's philosophy to this problem context, examines neoliberalism as social science and social technology, and examines the role of experts and disciplinary divisions in (...) the reform process. Building on Mario Bunge's social philosophy, it sketches basic elements of a cross-disciplinary approach to "social change by design." Key Words: post-communist transformation • social change • institutional design • Karl Popper • Mario Bunge. (shrink)

Coleman’s Foundations devotes much attention to the role of ‘social capital’ in solving problems of cooperation in dilemma situations. In contrast to the human capital approach, however, there is no stringent theory of social capital allowing for the deduction of empirically testable hypotheses from a set of general principles. This article demonstrates by means of various examples that social capital is an important exogenous factor inducing the evolution of cooperation and the stabilization of cooperation in N-person dilemmas. Some preliminary suggestions (...) are made concerning the measurement of social capital and its ‘rate of return’ as a productive factor contributing to the cooperative solution in dilemma situations. (shrink)

This article describes Chester Barnard, the author of The Functions of the Executive, one of the twentieth century’s most influential books on management and leadership. The book emphasizes competence, moral integrity, rational stewardship, professionalism, and a systems approach, and was written for posterity. Barnard emphasized the role of the manager as both a professional and as a steward of the corporation. His teachings drew on personal insights as a senior executive of AT&T, which saw good governance as the primary means (...) of winning public acceptance of its telecommunications monopoly. Barnard provided a conceptual scheme of the theory of organization based on the following structural concepts: the individual and bounded rationality, cooperation, formal organization, and informal organization. The principal dynamic concepts include communication, consent theory of authority, free will, the decision process, dynamic equilibrium and the inducement–contributions balance, and leadership, executive responsibility, and moral codes. (shrink)

Both individuals and governments around the world have willingly sacrificed a great deal to meet the collective action problem posed by Covid-19. This has provided some commentators with newfound hope about the possibility that we will be able to solve what is arguably the greatest collective action problem of all time: global climate change. In this paper we argue that this is overly optimistic. We defend two main claims. First, these two collective action problems are so different that the actions (...) that individuals have taken to try to solve the problem posed by Covid-19 unfortunately provide little indication that we will be able to solve the problem posed by climate change. Second, the actions that states have taken in response to Covid-19 might—if anything—even be evidence that they will continue to fail to cooperate towards a solution to the climate crisis. (shrink)

The Hannover qualifying programme ‘ethics consultation in hospitals’, conducted by a four-institution cooperation partnership, is an interdisciplinary, scientifically based programme for healthcare professionals interested in ethics consultation services and is widely acknowledged by hospital managements and healthcare professionals. It is unique concerning its content, scope and teaching format. With its basic and advanced modules it has provided training and education for 367 healthcare professionals with 570 participations since 2003 (until February 2010). One characteristic feature is its attractiveness for health professionals (...) from different backgrounds. Internationally, the Hannover programme is one of the few schedules with both academics and non-academics as target groups and a high participation rate of physicians. The concept of the Hannover programme is in great demand, and its schedule is continuously optimised through evaluation. The goals of enabling healthcare professionals from different professional backgrounds to define and reflect ethical problems, to facilitate and support the process of decision-making and to work out structures for their own institutions seem to have been achieved. However, in order to obtain effective and sustainable results, participation in the programme should be supplemented regularly by in-house training sessions or individual expert consultations. Future challenges include new thematic courses and providing a network for former participants, especially when they come from non-academic hospitals. The network is a reasonable platform to discuss participants' experiences, successes and pitfalls. A further task will be research on how the programme's concept can support the sustainability of ethics structures in the various institutions. (shrink)

Conditional promises and threats are speech acts that are used to manipulate other people's behaviour. Studies on human reasoning typically use propositional logic to analyse what people infer from such inducements. While this approach is sufficient to uncover conceptual features of inducements, it fails to explain them. To overcome this limitation, we propose a multilevel analysis integrating motivational, linguistic, deontic, behavioural, and emotional aspects. Commonalities and differences between conditional promises and threats on various levels were examined in two experiments. The (...) first shows that both types of inducements are understood as being complementary on the linguistic level, but not reversible, due to the specific temporal order of their actions. In addition, it gives a first assessment of emotional reactions. The second experiment investigated the novel question of whether complementary promises and threats, despite semantic differences, both imply an obligation to cooperate on the deontic level. The data corroborate this hypothesis, and they support various appraisal-theoretical assumptions on the elicitation of emotions. They also reveal that content affects not only the attribution of emotions, but also the deontic interpretation. (shrink)

This paper assesses the ‘power-induced failure of reciprocity’ account of exploitation in the domain of trade. I argue that its proponents face a dilemma. Either the cost variable of reciprocity is understood to include opportunity costs. Then, the account implausibly implies that those with more valuable outside options should get a larger part of the overall benefits of cooperation. Or the cost variable is understood to exclude opportunity costs. Then, the account has awkward implications in cases where direct costs and (...) opportunity costs are substitutable. To evade this dilemma, the account could be amended to include a hypothetical baseline that equalizes opportunity costs. But then, the account ceases to be isolationist. Whether a cooperative interaction counts as exploitative is no longer independent of moral considerations about distributions outside the domain of trade. (shrink)

Tom Finkelpearl is a unique figure in contemporary art. He is the executive director of the Queens Museum of Art. However, for decades, he has been a passionate advocate of unconventional artistic practices that have been flourishing outside the boundaries of the mainstream circuit of museums, biennales, art fairs, galleries, and art schools. In recognition of his involvement in promoting nontraditional forms of art, Public Art Dialogue, one of the most important associations devoted to public art, has recently awarded Finkelpearl (...) their 2015 prize. What We Made follows in the footsteps of Finkelpearl’s previous book, Dialogues in Public Art. With that book, Finkelpearl contributed to.. (shrink)

Current educational policy is leading teachers, schools, and society at large to fixate on the outcomes of learning. In Discontinuity in Learning, I shift the focus to the process of learning and ask, How is it that we come to new ideas, find cooperative ways of interacting with others, or take on a different perspective? Or, more simply, How do we learn? I believe that until we answer this question, we cannot begin to educate another person.My aim in the book (...) is to reveal how our experience of discontinuity is inextricably connected to our ability to question our taken-for-granted knowledge and beliefs, and our ability to critically examine the norms and values of society. Discontinuity points to those moments when we are interrupted by something unexpected, such that our ideas or ways of acting become untenable and need revision. Encounters with the unexpected point to the contingency of human experience; they indicate a blind spot and remind us we are fallible. Such encounters are t. (shrink)

Tomasello argues in the target article that, in generalizing the concrete obligations originating from interdependent collaboration to one's entire cultural group, humans become “ultra-cooperators.” But are all human populations cooperative in similar ways? Based on cross-cultural studies and my own fieldwork in Polynesia, I argue that cooperation varies along several dimensions, and that the underlying sense of obligation is culturally modulated.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:In Search of the Good: A Life in Bioethics by Daniel Callahan, and: Why the Church Needs Bioethics: A Guide to the Wise Engagement with Life’s Challenges ed. by John F. Kilner, and: Respecting Life: Theology and Bioethics by Neil MesserAndrea Vicini SJIn Search of the Good: A Life in Bioethics By Daniel Callahan (edited by Arthur Caplan) CAMBRIDGE, MA: MIT PRESS, 2012. XVII + 206 PP. $29.00Why (...) the Church Needs Bioethics: A Guide to the Wise Engagement with Life’s Challenges Edited by John F. Kilner GRAND RAPIDS: ZONDERVAN, 2011. 304 PP. $26.99Respecting Life: Theology and Bioethics By Neil Messer LONDON: SCM PRESS, 2011. XI + 236 PP. $36.20With their specific styles, targeted readerships, and overall goals, these three volumes provide diverse but synergic ways to articulate and expand bioethical reflection in today’s society. Daniel Callahan is undoubtedly one of the founders of the field of bioethics. In Search of the Good: A Life in Bioethics is a fascinating memoir where, in a very engaging and personal way, Callahan unveils his intellectual development, career, and major interests. At the same time, he provides a critical lens to examine the history of bioethics in the United States. It shows his “abiding fascination with the human nature, scope, and validity of ethics as part of human life, and a similar strong interest in the ways that the scientific knowledge of medicine influences how we think about our health and mortality and shapes the ways we live our lives” (xvi). In particular, he describes how his philosophical training, and philosophical mind, led him to address the burgeoning ethical questions in biology and medicine and, thereby, to contribute to the founding of today’s bioethics.By sharing his intellectual journey with great honesty and transparency, Callahan guides his readers from his initial philosophical questioning to the later critical developments that have shaped bioethics as a theoretical and practical discipline in the last forty years. The list of topics that he has studied is impressive—from birth control to heart transplants, from end-of-life issues to embryonic stem cell research, and from market-driven health care to medical rationing. Drawing on his time as editor of the famous liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal in the 1960s, Callahan narrates his 1969 founding of the Hastings Center in cooperation with the author and psychiatrist Willard Gaylin. He describes the [End Page 196] stages in the life of this first bioethics research institution in the world, focusing on the years of its success (1980–86) and then on the routinization of its charisma (1986–96). More recent years have seen Callahan questioning medical progress and stressing the urgency of critically examining the goals of today’s medicine, even including discussion topics that are often avoided.Bioethics scholars and students will enjoy In Search of the Good. They will be able to integrate their own historical study of this discipline with Callahan’s personal memoir, which gives a human face to issues and debates. Moreover, bioethicists will be stimulated to reassess their own intellectual engagement and reflect on the future developments of this interdisciplinary discipline whose “roots lie in the humanities” (167).John Kilner, director of bioethics programs and professor of bioethics and contemporary culture at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, takes a broader approach in Why the Church Needs Bioethics. The volume includes contributions from an interdisciplinary group of thirty-one Christian leaders with diverse expertise, ranging from medicine, business, and law to biblical studies, theology, counseling, and intercultural and pastoral ministry. Nineteen leaders contributed essays, and twelve offered their critiques to earlier drafts. This collaborative effort is praiseworthy, but at the same time it leaves readers desiring more cohesive reflections and a synthetic theological voice.The volume considers three cases emblematic of major human quests: reproductive technologies for a better birth; enhancing drugs for a better life; and end-of-life care for a better death. Each case is discussed by experts from three different disciplines—biblical theology, practical theology, and other secular professions (business, law, or health care)—followed by a specifically bioethical essay. The volume ends with two conclusive contributions discussing how preaching and wisdom... (shrink)

The present study aims to present a transcription and a commentary of three unpublished letters of the Dutch Cartesian philosopher Johannes de Raey, addressed to his former student Johannes Clauberg. Mainly containing suggestions concerning the defence of Cartesian philosophy and academic affairs, these letters, dating back to 1651, 1652 and 1661, bear witness of a steady friendship and of a certain cooperation in rebuking the critiques moved by Jacob Revius in his Statera philosophiae cartesianae and by Cyriacus Lentulus in his (...) Nova Renati Descartes sapientia, refuted in Clauberg’s Defensio cartesiana. According to these letters, this cooperation had to be kept secret, not to provoke the reaction of Leiden theologians. However, the violation of the correspondence of Clauberg and De Raey occasioned the edition of Lentulus’s book and the rise of the polemics over the new philosophy. Eventually, such cooperation is to be noticed also in some crypto-quotations between the edited texts of Clauberg and De Raey. (shrink)

We focus on collaborative activities that engage computer graphics designers and social scientists in systems design processes. Our conceptual symmetrical account of technology design and theory development is elaborated as a mode of mutual engagement occurring in an interdisciplinary trading zone, where neither discipline is placed at the service of the other and nor do disciplinary boundaries dissolve. To this end, we draw on analyses of mutual engagements between computer and social scientists stemming from the fields of computer-supported cooperative work, (...) human−computer interaction, and science and technology studies. We especially build on theoretical work in STS concerning information technology in health care and extend recent contributions from STS with respect to the modes of engagement and trading zones between computer and social sciences. We conceive participative digital systems design as a form of inquiry for the analysis of cooperative work settings, particularly when social science becomes part of design processes. We illustrate our conceptual approach using data from an interdisciplinary project involving computer graphics designers, sociologists, and neurosurgeons with the aim of developing patient-centered visualizations for clinical cooperation on a hospital ward. (shrink)