A large collection of materials, subtitled "An Introduction to Philosophy," and divided into the three parts suggested by the title. "Philosophy," "Religion," and "Science" are treated by the editor as attitudes or ways of thinking. There are biographical sketches before each selection, and questions for discussion and bibliographies after. The editor also includes an introduction, a glossary, an index, and a concluding chapter entitled "Towards a Philosophy of Life."--N. S. C.

The editor of this anthology discusses the distinction between normative ethics and meta-ethics, and provides lucid organizational prefaces to each of the five chapters. The first four are arranged on a "thesis-reply" model. For example, essays by Ayer and Stevenson present an 'emotive-imperative' account of moral judgments, while essays by Blanshard and Baier afford critical replies. There are similarly arranged treatments of objectivism, subjectivism and instrumentalism. The final chapter is given over to "new directions" in meta-ethical theory, and contains readings (...) on the use of moral words and the logic of moral reasoning.--N. S. C. (shrink)

A source book offered chiefly as a text for courses in the philosophy of science, containing 27 specimen explanations by historical and contemporary figures grouped under five headings: Pre- and early-scientific explanations ; Physics ; Biology ; Motivation, Behavior and Personality ; and Sociology and History. The editor provides brief introductions for each section and a bibliography. The collection, strange to say, includes no philosophical studies of the nature of explanation.--N. S. C.

The results of the Oberlin Colloquium of 1962, featuring papers by Warnock on Austin's correspondence theory of truth, Prior on some epistemic puzzles, symposia papers by Searle on speech-act theories of meaning, Garver on Wittgenstein's use of criteria, and Castañeda on the private language argument. Commentators on the latter include Vendler, Benacerraf, Ginet, Siegler, Ziff, Chappell and J. F. Thomson.—N. S. C.

This book contains detailed Colet scholarship, translations of marginalia in Colet's copy of Ficino's Epistolae and correspondence between the two men, an essay on their intellectual and biographical relations, and supporting appendices. The author describes Colet's career, suggests an ordering of his works, and argues that Colet neither met Ficino nor agreed with his theology.—N. S. C.

A discussion of the development of the idea of history in Western thought, some current views of the nature of history and the condition of contemporary American academic history. The author rejects such views as that history is a science and that historical interpretation improves with greater distance in time from past events, and criticizes excessive specialization in the structure of graduate education in history and the prevailing canons of historical writing. He writes that today we have "better training, more (...) resources, more monographs, more historians, and, generally speaking, worse history."—N. S. C. (shrink)

This paper sets forth and defends a pluriversal approach to religion in the context of an increasingly global bioethics. Section I introduces a pluriversal view as a normative technique for engaging across difference. A normative pluriversal approach sets five constraints: civility, change from within, justice, non-domination, and tolerance. Section II applies a pluriversal approach to religion. It argues that this approach is epistemically just, recognizes diverse standpoints, and represents a productive, preferred, way to tackle global bioethics concerns. Section II also (...) considers an opposing viewpoint, which holds that religious perspectives have no place in bioethics. We show that this viewpoint would have adverse effects on bioethics publishing, conferencing, and training programmes. The paper concludes (in Section III) that bioethicists should engage with people who hold different worldviews, including religious worldviews, and should do so in accordance with pluriversal ethical constraints. (shrink)

A collection of 19 essays by 16 philosophers critical of the merits of linguistic analysis. Everything has appeared previously. The editor's hope is to provide samples of criticism which might "create a somewhat less one-sided impression of the course of recent philosophy than prevails in many quarters at present." The essays settle, roughly, around two themes: the worth of appeals to ordinary language, and consequences for problems in the philosophy of mind. Contributors include Broad, Blanshard, Quine, Kneale, Black, Campbell, Findlay, (...) Hampshire, Ayer.--N. S. C. (shrink)

Social philosophy with heady aims. The author sets out to "reconstruct the ontology of natural society," i.e., to develop a scheme that copes with all aspects of man qua social being. The chief influences are perhaps Whitehead and Aristotle. The upshot seems largely a program, leaning on a "functional" view of the mind, and a principle of evolution.—N. S. C.

The paper is devoted to a conceptual model of cell patterning, based on a generalized notion of the epigenetic code of a cell determining its state. We introduce the concept of signaling depending both upon the spatial distance between cells and the distance between their cell states (s-distance); signaling can repel cells in the space of cell states (s-space) or attract them. The influence of different types of repelling signaling on the evolution of cells is considered. Stabilizing signaling, namely a (...) signaling monotonically decreasing with s-distance, causes the restoring of cell states after perturbations; destabilizing signaling, i.e., the one in which the signaling monotonically increases with s-distance, causes the appearance of pairs of cells with alternating cell states (one close to the state conventionally called “head”, and another close to the “tail” state). Non-monotonic (in s-space) signaling splits the cells into groups. The model shows that different types of signaling may provide different types of cellular patterns. General principles for applying this model to complex cellular structures are discussed. (shrink)

The Lindley Lecture, in which Brandt argues against the view that the proper business of moral philosophy is chiefly the descriptive analysis of everyday uses of ethical terms.—N. S. C.

This anthology includes twelve essays, the editor's introduction, and a bibliography. Two new or nearly new things here: Warnock's translation of an Austin essay originally written in French, plus a discussion of it by American, English and French philosophers, and Linsky's "Reference and Referents," one part short of being previously unpublished. Also included: a second article by Austin, two essays by Ryle, and articles by Rhees, Strawson, Urmson, Cartwright, Hall, Searle, and Toulmin and Baier. In his introduction, the editor misses (...) his chance to sketch relations among the essays or to put the problems discussed in some type of perspective.--N. S. C. (shrink)

Papers and discussions on the title theme in either English or French from a meeting of the International Institute of Philosophy held at Oxford. There are papers by Ryle, Findlay, Calogero, Ayer, Ingarden, Zaragüeta, Perelman and Passmore, plus a "rapport de synthèse" by Devaux, and the meeting's opening and closing remarks by the President, Kotarbinski. The discussions following the papers are sometimes lively, though at other times they reflect not only philosophical dissension but a lack of communication.--N. S. C.

A useful report on the health and prospects of sixteen disciplines, ranging from such traditional sciences as anthropology and political science to such recent ones as cybernetics and game theory. Each field is examined as to its proper content, methods, current results, present controversies and terminological difficulties. The authors offer assessment and a limited bibliography for each, as well as a guide to more general literature on behavioral science. It is suggested that inadequate understanding of modern scientific methods and confusion (...) over terms prevail, but that hope lies in the direction of interdisciplinary effort.—N. S. C. (shrink)

Chiefly a treatment of two problems in the philosophy of history: the nature of historical understanding, and its bearing upon political life, science and philosophy. As regards the first, the author proposes an account of what it is to follow an "evidenced narrative." The burden of discussion of the second is to argue for positive uses of historical understanding, including its capacities for moral guidance, and its use for appreciating how philosophical problems may be clarified.—N. S. C.

The proceedings of an international colloquium held at Helsinki in 1962, containing twenty papers likely to further debate in the title areas. Contributors include Anderson, Geach, Hintikka, Lemmon, Marcus, Montague, Prior, Rescher and others.—N. S. C.

Background Protecting a person’s right to privacy and confidentiality is important in healthcare services. As future health professionals, nursing students should bear the same responsibility as qualified health professionals in protecting patient privacy. Objectives To investigate nursing students’ practices of patient privacy protection and to identify factors associated with their practices. Research design A cross-sectional study design was adopted. A two-part survey was used to collect two types of data on nursing students: (1) personal characteristics, including demographics, clinical experience and (...) use of information and communication technology and social media and (2) practice of patient privacy protection, collected using the Patient Privacy Scale. Participants and research context: A total of 319 nursing students aged 18 or above, studying pre-registration nursing programmes and who had attended at least one block of clinical placement, were recruited from a university in Hong Kong. Ethical considerations The study received ethical approval from the Survey and Behavioural Research Ethics Committee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The participants were informed of the study aim and written consent was obtained before completing the survey. Findings: The mean total score on the Patient Privacy Scale was 119.7 out of 135. Nursing students who were regular users of Instagram and those who had never taken photographs with patients and hence did not need to obtain patient consent were associated with better practices of patient privacy protection (higher total scores on the Patient Privacy Scale). Conclusions The findings improve our understanding of nursing students’ practice of patient privacy protection and the associated factors. This will inform the development and revision of current strategies to enhance nursing students’ practice of patient privacy protection, especially their use of social media. (shrink)

A major problem in developing an effective gene therapy for the nervous system lies in understanding the principles that maintain or turn off the expression of genes following their transfer into the CNS.

ABSTRACT Global biodiversity declines are increasingly recognized as profound ecological and social crises. In areas subject to colonialization, these declines have advanced in lockstep with settler colonialism and imposition of centralized resource management by settler states. Many have suggested that resurgent Indigenous-led governance systems could help arrest these trends while advancing effective and socially just approaches to environmental interactions that benefit people and places alike. However, how dominant management and conservation approaches might be decolonized (i.e., how their underlying colonial structure (...) might be addressed, transformed, and replaced) is not always clear. Here, we describe a ‘Decolonial Model of Environmental Management and Conservation’ as an alternative paradigm to dominant approaches of conservation and management. The tenets of the model describe characteristics that might be expected of decolonized management, contrasted with those of dominant state-led approaches such as those embedded in the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. The model does not prescribe how Indigenous governments or communities ought to govern their own territories, but instead offers insights into how external management and conservation agencies and practitioners might support (or stop impeding) Indigenous-led governance. We illustrate the model with a conservation ‘bright spot’: grizzly bear stewardship in the area now referred to as the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, Canada, with a focus on work led by or in collaboration with, and within the territories of, the Haíɫzaqv, Kitasoo/xai’xais, Nuxalk, and Wuikinuxv First Nations. While acknowledging the important context-specific variability among place-based management and conservation applications, we also discuss the model’s broader applicability. (shrink)

Avoiding whinges from various and potentially conflicting stakeholders is a major challenge for sustainable development and for the identification of sustainability scenarios or policies for biodiversity and ecosystem services. It turns out that independently complying with whinge thresholds and constraints of these stakeholders is not sufficient because dynamic ecological-economic interactions and uncertainties occur. Thus more demanding no whinge standards are needed. In this paper, we first argue that these new boundaries can be endogenously exhibited with the mathematical concepts of viability (...) kernel and viable controls. Second, it is shown how these no whinge kernels have components, such as harvesting of resources, that should remain within safe corridor while some other components, in particular biodiversity, have only lower conservation limits. Thus, using radar charts, we show how this no whinge kernels can take the shape of a tree that we name viability tree. These trees of viability capture the idea that the unbounded renewal potential of biodiversity combined with a bounded use of the different ecosystem services are crucial ingredients for the sustainability of socio-ecosystems and the design of no whinge policies reconciling the different stakeholders involved. (shrink)

In “Two Concepts of Liberty” Berlin notes the protean nature of the word “freedom” and then systematically proceeds to narrow its range of meanings. In the process, Berlin eliminates much of what most people, in everyday communication, regard as freedom, believing that this is in the best interest of intellectual clarity. As he puts it: [N]othing is gained by a confusion of terms. To avoid glaring inequality or widespread misery I am ready to sacrifice some, or all, of my freedom: (...) I may do so willingly and freely: but it is freedom that I am giving up for the sake of justice or equality or the love of my fellow men. I should be guilt‐stricken, and rightly so, if I were not, in some circumstances, ready to make this sacrifice. But a sacrifice is not an increase in what is being sacrificed, namely freedom, however great the moral need or the compensation for it. Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience. (Emphasis added). Berlin's other, perhaps overarching, aim is to show how inattention to the specificity of the meanings of concepts might have potentially dangerous political repercussions. He implicitly argues that the intellectuals who promoted the idea of positive freedom as opposed to that of negative freedom contributed to the emergence of totalitarianism and fascism in Europe. (shrink)

This paper uses the term “ surveillance ” in its widest sense to include data sharing and the revealing of identity information in the absence of consent of the individual concerned. It argues that the current debate about the nature of a “ surveillance society” needs a new structural framework that allows the benefits of surveillance and the risks to individual privacy to be properly balanced. To this end, the first part of this article sets out the reasons why reliance (...) on the current framework of data protection or human rights legislation, or on the current regulatory regime does not necessarily protect privacy. The second part sets out nine principles that can be used to assess whether individual privacy is comprehensively considered when surveillance policy is developed. These principles are applied to surveillance in the UK to identify the structural improvements that could create an effective balance. These principles are not legislative proposals but provide a means of exploring possible deficiencies in information law governance and, in particular, Parliament’s role in scrutinising the executive and the powers needed by a regulator when engaging with the Parliamentary process. As most European countries adopt a democratic, human rights framework, it is suggested that these principles are not limited in an application in the UK environment. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own. (shrink)

We consider Berezin's algebraic considerations regarding the quantization of phase space polynomials. After making a connection with Prugovečki's stochastic quantization approach, we give a particular construction of Berezin's L-Kernel in terms of Prugovečki's ξ-functions.

Objectives: To report the attitudes and opinions of subjects in US clinical trials about whether or not, and why, they should receive post-trial access (PTA) to the trial drug, care and information. Design: Focus groups, short self-administered questionnaires. Setting: Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Oklahoma City. Participants: Current and recent subjects in clinical trials, primarily for chronic diseases. Results: 93 individuals participated in 10 focus groups. Many thought researchers, sponsors, health insurers and others share obligations to facilitate PTA to the trial drug, (...) if it benefited the subject, or to a therapeutic equivalent. Some thought PTA obligations include providing transition care (referrals to non-trial physicians or other trials, limited follow-up, short-term drug supply) or care for long-term adverse events. Others held, in contrast, that there are no PTA obligations regarding drugs or care. However, there was agreement that former subjects should receive information (drug name, dosage received, market approval date, long-term adverse effects, trial results). Participants frequently appealed to health need, cost, relationships, reciprocity, free choice and sponsor self-interest to support their views. Many of their reasons overlapped with those commonly discussed by bioethicists. Conclusion: Many participants in US trials for chronic conditions thought there are obligations to facilitate PTA to the trial drug at a “fair” price; these views were less demanding than those of non-US subjects in other studies. However, our participants’ views about informational obligations were broader than those of other subjects and many bioethicists. Our results suggest that the PTA debate should expand beyond the trial drug and aggregate results. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDiffraction gratings are famously associated with Henry Rowland of Johns Hopkins University but there were precursors. Although gratings were first made and used in Europe, reliable machines for ruling gratings were developed in the USA, and two men, Lewis Rutherfurd and William Rogers, tackled the problem before Rowland. Rutherfurd, a wealthy independent astronomer, designed and built the first screw-operated engine for ruling diffraction gratings, the fore-runner of almost all subsequent ruling engines. With it he and his assistant D. C. Chapman (...) ruled many gratings which he generously distributed to practising scientists, thereby materially advancing the science of spectroscopy. Rogers was a Harvard astronomer who developed an interest in the ruling of fine lines on glass that led him to construct a ruling engine with which he investigated the causes of the errors in the rulings he had examined. He continued to seek improvements with a second engine designed for ruling diffraction gratings. He ceased developing this engine when Rowland’s excellent gratings began to be available, concentrating instead on related problems to which he could apply the knowledge and skills he had gained, but his investigations assisted Rowland and other later ruling engine builders. This paper brings together what is known about the ruling engines of Rutherfurd and Rogers, their development, the gratings they produced, their quality and the work that was done with them, and assesses and compares their achievements and the impacts of the work of these two men. (shrink)

Abstract This work is about the viability domain corresponding to a model of fisheries management. The dynamic is subject of two constraints. The biological constraint ensures the stock perennity where as the economic one ensures a minimum income for the fleets. Using the mathematical concept of viability kernel, we find out a viability domain which simultaneously enables the fleets to exploit the resource, to ensure a minimum income and stock perennity. Content Type Journal Article Category Regular Article Pages 1-19 DOI (...) 10.1007/s10441-012-9153-5 Authors C. Sanogo, LIRNE, Mathmatics Engineering Team, Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra, Morocco S. Ben Miled, ENIT-LAMSIN, Tunis el Manar University, Tunis, Tunisia N. Raissi, LAA, Mohamed V University, Rabat, Morocco Journal Acta Biotheoretica Online ISSN 1572-8358 Print ISSN 0001-5342. (shrink)

It is usually believed that the spiritual and physical aspects of existence are tightly integrated in Judaism, but Adler claims that they are as widely separated as they are in Greek thought. Employing this dichotomy, Adler attempts to show how Judaism enables us to be spiritually creative in a physical world governed by law. His discussion is intelligent and acute, sustained by a religious reformer's zeal.--R. C. N.

An impressive display of various modes and levels of argumentation, defending the view that the hypotheses in the Parmenides form an integrated set of indirect proofs that show the necessary presupposition of a doctrine of forms and the inevitable failure of understanding to articulate such a doctrine. To support his interpretation, Brumbaugh appeals to the historical context of the Academy, the aesthetic form of the Parmenides, and the relation of this dialogue to the rest of Plato's thought. Brumbaugh offers his (...) own critical edition and translation of the dialogue. A volume of noteworthy scholarship, offering an incentive for creative thought.--R. C. N. (shrink)

A memorial collection of essays with a bibliography of Pratt's works, a biography by the editor, and some personal notes by W. E. Hocking. Of special interest are Myers' paper on the self and introspection, Kaufmann's provocative, if heated, criticism of theologians for defending their traditions, and R. W. Sellars' commentary on the history of American Realism.--R. C. N.

In this Festschrift some of Paul Weiss's friends, colleagues, and students have produced a splendid collection of original philosophical essays. Contributions by Charles Hendel, Charles Hartshorne, Robert Brumbaugh, Nathan Rotenstreich, A. Boyce Gibson, John Wild, and fourteen others are included. Outstanding are Father Johann's introduction of a contemporary view of experience into Neo-Thomism, William Earle's phenomenological analysis of love, and Father Clarke's discussion of causality. While the doctrines urged are not uniform, the standard of excellence is. I. C. Lieb, whose (...) editorial skill is evident throughout, has produced a distinguished volume which honors Paul Weiss by its contribution to contemporary philosophical inquiry. --R. C. N. (shrink)