A patient is not always told when a student is performing a procedure for the first time. Withholding this information is a form of deception. It is justified on paternalistic grounds (it is in the patient's interest not to know), or on public policy grounds (given the choice, patients would refuse, thus compromising the training of future physicians). Using the spinal tap procedure (lumbar puncture) as a paradigm, 173 patients were surveyed to determine how they felt about first time procedures (...) by medical students, interns, and residents. The patients indicated that they would be willing to be the subject for a student's (52%), intern's (62%), or resident's (66%) first spinal tap. This paper reassesses the ethics of consent for first time procedures based on responses to this survey. (shrink)

In “The Meaning of Rights,” Norman Wilde offers an original account of rights, still of interest. Rights, he contends, are possessed by an individual by virtue of the social function she fulfills. It is because individuals belong to a common social order, in which each has her part to play, that they are “entitled to the conditions necessary for playing it” [288]. This approach allows for a nuanced view, according to which rights are neither absolutely inherent to the individual (...) nor entirely dependent on social conventions. But is such a function-based justification of rights plausible? (shrink)

In Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (6: 61), Kant provided an ethical interpretation of kenosis, the 'self-emptying' of Christ described by St Paul in Philippians 2: 6-8. This type of interpretation is distinct to Hegelian interpretations of Christ's kenosis, which read the 'self-emptying' in ontological terms. In this essay, I explore how the British Idealists received both interpretations of the doctrine, and constructed a range of Christologies of both types. Types of kenosis in the work of Thomas Hill (...) Green and Charles Gore are examined in detail, revealing their dependence on Kant's work. Following thework of DonaldMacKinnon in this area, I argue that Gore eventually adopted a Kantian Christology for political and ethical reasons. (shrink)

Rue, Charles Inserting a Season of Creation into the Catholic liturgical year during September is one way to structurally help implement the vision of Pope Francis given in his encyclical Laudato Si'. As a pastoral initiative a new liturgical season would help believers face the twenty-first-century ecological challenge. This article first looks at the liturgical reform initiated by the Second Vatican Council as an example of reform. The second part explores recent initiatives to express the creation dimension of theology (...) in communal worship. In 1993 the ecumenical association, Church and Environment, proposed a Creation Time running from 1 September to 4 October. In 2004 Norman Habel in Adelaide developed a set of scriptural readings and ecological themes on this timetable. It was adapted by some Protestant communities around the world. Catholic and Orthodox communities wanting to celebrate creation during September have tended to focus on a particular day, often 1 September. Taking a more systematic approach, for the last three years the Columban Mission Institute in Sydney has prepared resources as an ecological reading of the existing lectionary to celebrate a Catholic Season of Creation during September. Creating a new lectionary would be a more radical reform. (shrink)

Against the turbulent backdrop of Enlightenment Scotland, Adam Smith lays out a succinct and highly engaging account of Smith's life and times, reviews his work as a whole and traces his influence over the past two centuries. Dispelling myths and debunking caricatures, this book explores his ideas in detail, from ethics to law to economics and government and the impact of those ideas on thinkers as diverse as Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek. Adam Smith (...) emerges as one of the founders of modern social psychology and behavioural theory, offering a strikingly modern evolutionary theory of political economy, which recognises the often complementary roles of markets and the state. (shrink)

This volume explores the ethical dimensions of a wide selection of philosophical and theological topics in Aquinas's texts.

Despite increased efforts to ensure diversity in genomic research, the exclusion of minority groups from data analyses and publications remains a critical issue. This paper addresses the ethical implications of these exclusions and proposes accountability for reasonableness (A4R) as a framework to promote fairness and equity in research. Originally conceived by Norman Daniels and James Sabin to guide resource allocation in the context of health policy, A4R emphasizes publicity, relevance of reasons, enforcement, and revision as essential for legitimacy and (...) trust in the decision‐making process. The authors argue that A4R is also relevant to resource allocation in research and that, if adequately informed and incentivized by funding agencies, institutional review boards, and scientific journals, researchers are well‐positioned to assess data‐selection justifications. The A4R framework provides a promising foundation for fostering accountability in genomics and other fields, including artificial intelligence, where lack of diversity and pervasive biases threaten equitable benefit sharing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Concepts, Judgments, and Unity in Kant's Metaphysical Deduction of the Relational Categories CHARLES NUSSBAUM 1. INTRODUCTION TO ANY ATTENTIVEREADERof the section of the Critique of Pure Reason' known as the "Metaphysical Deduction of the Categories" (A67/B92-A83/B to9), one paragraph in that section stands out particularly by virtue of its special importance for Kant's developing argument: The same function Which gives unity to the various representations in ajudgment also (...) gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representations in an intuition; and this unity, in its most general expression, we entitle the pure concept of the understanding. The same understanding, through the same operations by which in concepts, by means of analytical unity, it produced the logical form of a judgment, also introduces a transcendental content into its representations, by means of the synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in general.... (CPR A79/B loS) The importance of this paragraph is, however, more than equaled by its difficulties, which center on the question of how the function which operates by means of analytical unity can be the same as one that operates by means of the synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in general. Put shortly, the problem is this. If the functions are really the same, then how do we distinguish at all between analytic and synthetic operations? But if they are different, then how can these forms of judgment serve as a clue for the discovery of the categories? ' Immanuel Kant, Critiqueof Pure Reason, trans. Norman KempSmith (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1963).Hereafter CPR. [89] 9~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:1 JANUARY 1990 The results of this dilemma which can be observed in the literature are not surprising: commentators tend to grasp one horn or the other. They either emphasize the difference between analysis and synthesis, and reject or dilute the claims as to sameness of function; or they take seriously Kant's argument concerning sameness of functions, and try to minimize the difference between analysis and synthesis. The major twentieth-century representant of the former approach is Kemp Smith," and of the latter, Paton. 3 This latter approach has found a formidable contemporary champion in the person of Henry Allison. By Allison's own admission,4 however, his position on this controversial topic was suggested (in part) by arguments first put forward over fifty years ago by Klaus Reich in a most remarkable book entitled Die Volls~ndigkeit der Kantischen Urteilstafel, 5 a book, by the way, also greatly admired by Paton. 6 In the first section of this paper I will try to show that Reich's arguments are rather more subtle than Allison apparently takes them to be, and that Reich is one commentator who attempts to go between the horns of the dilemma described above, and who essays an interpretation of our crucial paragraph that unifies its seemingly divergent tendencies. In the second section of the paper I will introduce some interpretive elements of my own. 2. Let us begin by reacquainting ourselves with Kant's notion of analytical unity, one aspect of this debate which is not particularly controversial and is largely agreed upon by all parties. For Kant, analytical unity is the sort of unity achieved by all general concepts (conceptus communes) insofar as they abstract from all differences that subsist between the objects under them, or the lower concepts subordinated to them. 7 A general concept unifies these objects or concepts by means of a common mark or set of marks. Thus Kant's example at CPR A69/B94 of the unification of bodies under the concepts 'body' and 'divisible' is a perfectly representative instance of unification via analytical unity, as the function upon which such concepts "rest." Let us note that the " Norman KempSmith,A CommentarytoKant's "Cr/t~rueofPureReason"(NewYork:HumanitiesPress, 196~). 3 H.J. Paton, Kant's MetaphysicofExperience, 2 vols.(London:George Allenand Unwin,Ltd., 1936). 4 Henry Allison,Kant's TranscendentalIdealum (NewHaven:YaleUniversityPress, 1983), 144 n. 3o. Hereafter KTI. 5 KlausReich,Die Vollst~ndigkeitderKantischenUrteilstafel,3rd. ed. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1986). Hereafter VKU. 6 Paton, Kant's Metaphysic, 1:302. Kant, we should note, does not makethis important logicaldistinctionbetweensubordination... (shrink)

The Post-Modern Reader edited by Charles Jencks An Anthology of a World Movement Post-Modernism has been debated, attacked, and defended for a generation, but only in the last few years has it come into focus as a coherent way of thought embracing all areas of culture. This is the first anthology that presents the synthesising trend in all its diversity, a convergence in architecture and literature, film and cultural theory, sociology, feminism and theology, science and economics. It is however, (...) a synthesis with a difference; it is one which stresses a contested pluralism, the ‘dialogic' that underlies the growth of sciences as well as the development of other art forms such as the novel. Some of the key historical texts are reprinted in part - those of Daniel Bell on the post-industrial society and Jean-François Lyotard on the post-modern condition. The new cultural logic of contested pluralism is analysed in seminal papers by Andreas Huyssen and Jim Collins. The fundamental ideas on post-modern literature are defined by Umberto Eco, John Barth and David Lodge and the theories they present challenge the notion of post-modernism as an ultra avant-garde movement and the expression of a consumer society. New Cultural Theory Late Modernism Literature, Art, Architecture and Film Sociology, Politics and Geography Feminism Science and Religion Tito Arecchi, John Barth, Jean Baudrillard, Daniel Bell, Charles Birch, David Bohm, Jim Collins, Norman K Denzin, Umberto Eco, Edward Goldsmith, David Ray Griffin, Jürgen Habermas, David Harvey, Ihab Hassan, Linda Hutcheon, Andreas Huyssen, Charles Jencks, Heinrich Klotz, Hans Küng, David Lodge, Jean-François Lyotard, Robin Murray, Craig Owens, Paolo Portoghesi, Margaret Rose, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Edward W Soja. (shrink)

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

Chapter I: The Geometry of Visibles 1 . The N on- Euclidean Geometry of Visibles In the chapter "The Geometry of Visibles" in Inquiry into the Human Mind, ...

Some forty years ago, Norman Malcolm and Charles Hartshorne, philosophers from two distinctive schools of thought, championed, independently of each other, a form of ontological argument based on chapter III of Anselm’s Proslogion as well as on various chapters of Reply to Gaunilo.1 While different aspects of the argument are emphasized by Malcolm and Hartshorne, this second form of the ontological argument hinges on the following two points: (1) necessary existence is constitutive of the concept of God,2 and (...) (2) therefore, in understanding the concept of God, one understands that God necessarily exists in fact or in actuality. Whereas Malcolm vacillates between affirming only (1) and both (1) and (2),3 Hartshorne affirms both (1) and (2); however, he holds that Anselm’s formulation of the actual existence of God is somewhat confused. My argument here is that while (1) has some sense, (2) is a confusion arising from confounding the logical or conceptual existence of God with the actual existence of God.4. (shrink)

Charles Crittenden here offers an original solution to one of the traditional dilemmas of philosophy—whether there can be any thing not existing, since to say that some thing does not exist seems to presuppose its existence. Drawing on the tools of Wittgensteinian philosophy and speech act theory, Crittenden argues that we can and often do make reference to unreal objects such as fictional characters, though they do not exist in any sense at all.

The central thesis of this paper is that cost-containment challenges to an Ideal Advocate model of the physician-patient relationship can be met under proper circumstances. More specifically, it is possible for physicians to constrain costs while still making clinical decisions that are free from considerations of the physician's own interests and are uninfluenced by judgements about the patient's worth. But what is required is a closed distributive system, in which savings of resources at one point are applied to others' care (...) of higher priority and a just system, that is, a system whose distributive priorities are consistent with relevant principles of justice under moderate scarcity. The historical context of the argument and a stopgap, palliative, step are also developed. (shrink)

Intercultural Digital Ethics faces the central challenge of how to develop a global IDE that can endorse and defend some set of universal ethical norms, principles, frameworks, etc. alongside sustaining local, culturally variable identities, traditions, practices, norms, and so on. I explicate interpretive pros hen ethical pluralism ) emerging in the late 1990s and into the twenty-first century in response to this general problem and its correlates, including conflicts generated by “computer-mediated colonization” that imposed homogenous values, communication styles, and so (...) on upon “target” peoples and cultures via ICTs as embedding these values in their very design. I contrast different kinds of ethical pluralisms as structural apparatus for understanding what differences may mean and allow for, as these emerged in the 1990s forwards with EP. As interwoven with phronēsis, a form of reflective judgment and virtue, EP more radically preserves irreducible differences and so fosters positive engagements across deep cultural differences. I show how EP emerged in the context of empirical research on “Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication” beginning in 1998, and then in specific applications within Internet Research Ethics beginning in 2000. I summarize its main characteristics and trace how it has further been taken up in ICE, IRE, Intercultural Information Ethics, and virtue ethics more broadly. I respond to important criticisms and objections, arguing that EP thus stands as an important component for a contemporary IDE that seeks an ethical cosmopolitanism in place of computer-mediated colonization. (shrink)