The use of statistics in medical research has been compared to a religion: it has its high priests, supplicants, and orthodoxy. Although the comparison may be more unfair to religion than to research, a useful lesson can nonetheless be drawn: the practice of clinical research may benefit—as does the spirit—from critical self-examination. Arguably, no aspect of the conduct of clinical trials is currently more controversial—and thus in as dire need of critical examination—than the use of placebo controls. The ethical and (...) scientific controversies associated with placebo-controlled trials, never far below the surface, have once again seized public attention. Clearly, concern about these issues within the professional community runs deep and wide, as evidenced by the volume of response generated by Kenneth Rothman and Karin Michels's recent Critique. Criticisms of the use of placebo controls in clinical research are scattered through the literatureo; our objective is to present the case against placebos in a compendious form that takes account of scientific and statistical as well as normative issues. (shrink)

The revelation that data obtained for the US-based National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) from subjects enrolled at Hôpital Saint-Luc in Montreal was falsified has eroded public trust in research. Institutions can educate researchers and help prevent unethical research practices by establishing procedures to monitor research involving human subjects. Research monitoring encompasses four categories of activity: annual reviews of continuing research, monitoring of informed consent, monitoring of adherence to approved protocols and monitoring of the integrity of data. The (...) authors describe characteristics of research projects that may call for monitoring procedures in each category. The form taken by such monitoring depends on the nature of the protocol. Although appropriate research monitoring requires substantial investment of personnel and financial resources, it is required under guidelines regulating research involving human subjects in Canada. Research monitoring is a step forward in re-establishing public confidence in medical research. (shrink)

Chomsky's conservatism, with its explicit distrust of politicians and corporate managers, may explain why his most strident critics are to be found among liberals. Two of Britain's liberal newspapers, The Guardian and The Observer, attack him more regularly than the right-wing press does. Chomsky may have earned their ire by pointing out from time to time mistakes made in their news pages, particularly in war zones. Observer reviewer Rafael Behr summarized Hopes and Prospects and concluded that Chomsky should recognize "the (...) irony that he owes his considerable success to the system he despises." Let us suppose for a moment that Behr is right, that Chomsky's considerable success is an achievement of the system rather than of Chomsky's genius and insights into the nature of language that have transformed modern philosophy and psychology as much as they have linguistic studies. Would he have said that Andrei Sakharov "owes his considerable success to the system he despises"? Sakharov became a victim of the Soviet system after his discoveries in physics, but the importance of Sakharov as political critic (rather than as physicist) was that he criticized a system that he believed was harmful to world peace, human dignity and the society of which he was a beneficiary. The same can, and should, be said of Chomsky. (shrink)

Placebo-controlled trials are held by many, including regulators at agencies like the United States Food and Drug Administration, to be the gold standard in the assessment of new medical interventions. Yet the use of placebo controls in clinical trials has been the focus of considerable controversy. In this two-part article, we challenge a number of common beliefs concerning the value of placebo controls. Part I critiques statistical and other scientific justifications for the use of placebo controls in clinical research. The (...) continued use of placebo controls in clinical trials on diseases for which accepted treatment exists raises equally important ethical, legal, and regulatory issues for which various justifications have been given. Defense of this practice relies on normative as well as empirical myths.In their attack on the prevailing use of placebo controls, Kenneth Rothman and Karin Michels emphasize that this practice stands in violation of the World Medical Association's guidelines on the ethics of human experimentation, most commonly known as the Helsinki Declaration. (shrink)

Wittgenstein, in his famous critique of philosophy, noted that the influence of an idea can be such that it alters the way that we see the world. “It is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at,” he said. “It never occurs to us to take them off.” This view of the power of an idea suggests that the interpretation of an event, and what response this event calls for, can depend upon (...) the view one has of the world. A person who is naive about medical facts may, for example, interpret chest pain upon exertion as a sign that he is “overdoing it”; were he more medically knowledgeable, the same symptom might be interpreted as a possible indicator of coronary artery disease. The naive interpretation calls for rest; the informed interpretation calls for medical attention as well. (shrink)

Influence of other’s assessments on individuals in society and their reaction is an amusing topic, given Cooley’s Looking Glass Self concept concerning this, simultaneously being the subject of this critical analysis. The fact manifesting an opinion that an individual’s true self changes due to other perceptions is often subjected to various critical considerations, creating the impression that in reality the concept is infeasible. The purpose is determining the “hole” in the third component, proving that the true self is occasionally (...) susceptible to constant change, depending on other’s perceptions and the individual himself. Regarding the methodology, several methods were used to prove the critical attitude towards this topic. Applications of comparative analysis, descriptive and historical methods are present. Our result is concluding the individual develops a certain attitude influenced by different experiences, being crucial to whether he will be ready to change his true self or not. (shrink)

At the beginning of a new reign it seems appropriate to re-assess the meaning of monarchy in modern Britain. The new King heads a fractured royal family, a divided nation, and a disaffected Commonwealth. How can we as scholars make sense of where the monarchy has been, and where it might be going? This article suggests a new scholarly approach is required. Through a critical analysis of three classic studies of monarchy: Walter Bagehot’s The English constitution (1867), Kingsley Martin’s The (...) magic of monarchy (1937) and Tom Nairn’s The enchanted glass (1988), the lecture traces the lineage of modern interpretations of the British monarchy and points up their limitations. Preoccupied with the symbolism of monarchy, conventional scholarship neglects its important political functions. As the lecture argues, in the era of Brexit at home and populist regimes around the world, modern democracies may actually need monarchy more than ever before. (shrink)

Lewis Carroll: Logic Charles L. Dodgson, 1832-1898, was a British mathematician, logician, and the author of the ‘Alice’ books, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. His fame derives principally from his literary works, but in the twentieth century some of his mathematical … Continue reading Lewis Carroll: Logic →.

The myth of the homeland -- The Nietzschean self-assertion of the German University -- The geo-politics of Heidegger's Mitteleuropa -- Heidegger's Greeks and the myth of autochthony -- Heidegger's "Nietzsche".

First published in 2014. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The idea of ‘reversion’ or ‘atavism’ has a peculiar history. For many authors in the latenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries – including Darwin, Galton, Pearson, Weismann, and Spencer, among others – reversion was one of the central phenomena which a theory of heredity ought to explain. By only a few decades later, however, Fisher and others could look back upon reversion as a historical curiosity, a non-problem, or even an impediment to clear theorizing. I explore various reasons that reversion might have (...) appeared to be a central problem for this first group of figures, focusing on their commitment to a variety of conceptual features of evolutionary theory; discuss why reversion might have then ceased to be an interesting phenomenon; and, finally, close with some more general thoughts about the death of scientific problems. (shrink)

There is a widespread assumption that the universe in general, and life in particular, is 'getting more complex with time'. This book brings together a wide range of experts in science, philosophy and theology and unveils their joint effort in exploring this idea. They confront essential problems behind the theory of complexity and the role of life within it: what is complexity? When does it increase, and why? Is the universe evolving towards states of ever greater complexity and diversity? If (...) so, what is the source of this universal enrichment? This book addresses those difficult questions, and offers a unique cross-disciplinary perspective on some of the most profound issues at the heart of science and philosophy. Readers will gain insights in complexity that reach deep into key areas of physics, biology, complexity science, philosophy and religion. (shrink)

Population ethics contains several principles that avoid the repugnant conclusion. These rules rank all possible alternatives, leaving no room for moral ambiguity. Building on a suggestion of Parfit, this paper characterizes principles that provide incomplete but ethically attractive rankings of alternatives with different population sizes. All of them rank same-number alternatives with generalized utilitarianism.

ALTHOUGH I shall be attempting to examine the function of judgment, or what Aristotle called φρόνησις, in moral deliberation, I shall begin by discussing some previous opinions about what kind of importance examples have in moral experience. This strategy is only apparently circuitous. The role which one assigns to examples is symptomatic of the conception one has of judgment in moral decision-making, because the use of examples forms one way in which judgment is exercised. Indirectly, then, I shall be trying (...) to rehabilitate the significance of examples in moral deliberation. But the chief aim of this paper will be to determine both what is the function of judgment in moral deliberation and how we are to understand the activity of exercising it. (shrink)

This volume contains a facsimile reprint of the 1883 Boston edition of Studies in Logic by Members of the Johns Hopkins University, edited by Charles S. Peirce. In relation to this work there are three mutually related aspects of Peirce’s thought which deserve to be particularly emphasized: the community structure of science as propagated and practiced by Peirce; his consideration of the fundamental relationship between logic and semiotics; and his emphatic plea for a historisation of science and, hence, of (...) semiotics. Peirce’s Studies in Logic is preceded in this volume by a portrait of Peirce as scientist, mathematician, historian, logician and philosopher by Max. H. Fisch, and a history of semiotics and Charles S. Peirce by Achim Eschbach. (shrink)

Research involving the vulnerable sick raises difficult challenges for investigators and Institutional Review Boards. Exactly who among the ill counts as vulnerable is a matter of judgement, and involves consideration of susceptibility to harm and capacity to provide free and informed consent. A balanced approach is required when protections are considered, and the benefits as well as the risks of research participation must be carefully weighed. A variety of protections for the vulnerable sick in research are available, including enrolling subjects (...) in a study only with a strong justification, ensuring that consent is free and comprehending, and setting limits on the risk to which they may be asked to endure. Discussion of three contemporary controversies, placebo-controlled trials in the psychiatric setting, phase I clinical trials and oncology patients, and emergency room research involving patients incapable of giving consent, highlights the little recognized prominence of risk-benefit issues in the clinical studies in the vulnerable sick. (shrink)

There are deep and pervasive disagreements today in universities and colleges, and popular culture in general, over the credibility and value of belief in God. This has given rise to an urgent need for a balanced, comprehensive, accessible resource book that can inform the public and scholarly debate over theism. While scholars with as diverse interests as Daniel Dennett, Terry Eagleton, Richard Dawkins, Jürgen Habermas, and Rowan Williams have recently contributed books to this debate, "theism" as a concept remains poorly (...) understood and requires a more thorough and systematic analysis than it has so far received in any single volume. _The Routledge Companion to Theism_ addresses this need by investigating theism's history as well as its relationship to inquiry in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and to its wider cultural contexts. The contents are not confined within the philosophy of religion or even within the more expansive borders of philosophy. Rather, _The Routledge Companion to Theism_ investigates its subject through the lens of a wide variety of disciplines and explores the ramifications of theism considered as a way of life as well as an intellectual conviction. The five parts of the volume indicate its inclusive scope: I. What is Theism?; II. Theism and Inquiry; III. Theism and the Socio-Political Realm; IV. Theism and Culture; V. Theism as a Way of Life. The result is a well ordered and thorough collection that should provide a wide spectrum of readers with a better understanding of a subject that's much discussed, but frequently misunderstood. As the editors note in their Introduction, while stimulating and informing the contemporary debate, a key aim of the volume is to open new avenues of inquiry into theism and thereby to encourage further research into this vital topic. Comprised of 54 essays by leading scholars in philosophy, history, theology, religious studies, political science, education and sociology, _The Routledge Companion to Theism_ promises to be the most useful, comprehensive resource on an emerging subject of interest for students and scholars. (shrink)

This work provides the means for re-establishing the unity of science by interpreting the whole of modern experimental science from the perspective of analogous transfer of the metaphysical principle of unity rather than in terms of efficient causality.

An indispensable and comprehensive resource for students and scholars of philosophy of religion.