We have considered two strategies for using native utterances as evidence for assigning native beliefs. We have shown that each of these two strategies (literalism and symbolism) can avoid the logical difficulties mentioned in section 1 — so long, at least, as we employ an account of the logical form of belief sentences developed by Burdick. We have also considered the methodological principles which provide the basis for translational practice. Based on our consideration of these principles, we then argued that (...) we must prefer the literalist strategy for attributing beliefs. Only the literalist strategy enables us to provide a recursive account of the significance of native utterances, and only the literalist strategy enables us to maximize the truth of our claims about native beliefs. (shrink)

This work provides a rigorous analysis of what Tuomela calls ‘the we-perspective’. Tuomela's overarching project is to argue that ‘conceptualizing social life and theorizing about it requires the use of group concepts, indeed the we-perspective and, especially, the we-mode.’ Already some of the complexities of Tuomela's approach will be evident – viz. in the distinction, implied in the above quotation and carried through systematically throughout the work, between the ‘we-perspective’ and the ‘we-mode’. For, indeed, it is possible, on his account, (...) to take up the we-perspective from the I-mode and, indeed, this is probably quite common, but is not adequate to ground the analysis of social and institutional concepts. As Tuomela puts it , ‘The concept of social institution is a we-mode concept, and in actual practice, at least some we-mode thinking and acting is required for institutions to function adequately.’ Since ‘we-mode’ is the more central notion, let us begin with that. It will be instructive to quote Tuomela at length : " Agent A, a member of group g, has ATT, the attitude ATT with content p, in … ". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:President’s Council on BioethicsEdmund D. Pellegrino (bio) and F. Daniel Davis (bio)Approximately two weeks before what was to have been its final meeting, the White House dissolved the President’s Council on Bioethics by terminating the appointments of its 18 members. The letters of dismissal, dated 10 June 2009, informed the members that their service on the Council would end with the close of business the next day.The Council’s term (...) was set to expire on 30 September 2009. After President Obama’s election in November and during the transition, we were advised to proceed on the assumption that the Council would be permitted to cease on that date. Reasons for the abrupt move to disband the Council are unknown. We have accepted the fact that we Council members served at the pleasure of the President and that he simply exercised his rightful prerogative. No explanation is therefore required.Some observers have speculated that the action was retaliatory. They related to the fact that several members of the Council disagreed with the President’s stem cell policy in a signed statement published in the Hastings Center’s Bioethics Forum. Others have speculated that the move was pre-emptive. At its final meeting, scheduled for 25–26 June, the Council was set to sign-off on two of its final publications. One was a comprehensive report on the ethics of organ transplantation, and the other a white paper entitled Health Care and the Common Good. The aim was immediately to release the latter as a contribution to the intensifying debate about health care reform. Health Care and the Common Good could well have aided rather than impeded the President’s drive to better control health care costs and achieve universal coverage. The Council report attempted to ground both goals in the ethical framework of, as the title indicates, the common good of all Americans.In his letter terminating the members’ appointments, Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel Don Gips said that the President “recognizes the values of having a commission of experts in bioethical issues to provide objective and non-ideological bioethics advice to his administration.” Gips went on to say that the President is “currently rethinking the purposes and goals of such a bioethics commission, and is carefully considering a revitalized mission and mandate.” And, [End Page 309] responding to media enquiries, White House press officer Reid Cherlin explained that the President’s Council was terminated because it was a “philosophically leaning advisory group” and, according to a New York Times account by Nicholas Wade, “because it favored discussion over developing a shared consensus.” As for the ultimate outcome of the President’s “rethinking,” Cherlin indicated that President Obama will appoint a new commission with the mandate of offering “practical policy options” in bioethics.In the light of our experiences with the Council, we leave it with hopes that certain questions of national importance will be addressed. In light of the nature of federal advisory commissions, what is or are the proper roles of a national bioethics commission? If the aim is to provide advice and counsel to the President or, perhaps to the U. S. Congress, is that advice best rendered as a group consensus or as an in-depth exploration of the inevitably conflicting ethical perspectives on a given issue? How should such a commission be constituted—with what sorts of individuals? And what is the nature of the expertise that they individually and collectively bring to the commission’s functions? If the commission is to promote public debate and discussion, how exactly should it go about that task? And how is the efficacy of a commission to be assessed? Such questions inevitably lead us deep into contested territory, as the experience of this Council has shown: into the intersections of politics, religion, and science and into the relations between practice and theory—between policy and what some seem to deride as “philosophy.” Indeed, policy without an underlying philosophy is an edifice without a foundation; philosophy without policy is a foundation without an edifice.At the last meeting of the Council in March 2009, we launched a discussion of these questions with the... (shrink)

Public health ethics, like the field of public health it addresses, traditionally has focused more on practice and particular cases than on theory, with the result that some concepts, methods, and boundaries remain largely undefined. This paper attempts to provide a rough conceptual map of the terrain of public health ethics. We begin by briefly defining public health and identifying general features of the field that are particularly relevant for a discussion of public health ethics.Public health is primarily concerned with (...) the health of the entire population, rather than the health of individuals. Its features include an emphasis on the promotion of health and the prevention of disease and disability; the collection and use of epidemiological data, population surveillance, and other forms of empirical quantitative assessment; a recognition of the multidimensional nature of the determinants of health; and a focus on the complex interactions of many factors—biological, behavioral, social, and environmental—in developing effective interventions. (shrink)

Dual-track assessment directs research ethics committees to assess the risks of research interventions based on the unclear distinction between therapeutic and non-therapeutic interventions. The net risks test, in contrast, relies on the clinically familiar method of assessing the risks and benefits of interventions in comparison to the available alternatives and also focuses attention of the RECs on the central challenge of protecting research participants.Research guidelines around the world recognise that clinical research is ethical only when the risks to participants are (...) reasonable.1 Appropriate implementation of this requirement is vital to protecting research participants and allowing research to proceed when it poses acceptable risks. Unfortunately, as the US National Bioethics Advisory Commission notes: “current regulations do not further elaborate how risks and potential benefits are to be assessed, and little additional guidance is available to IRBs.”1The NBAC, as well as numerous commentators, recommend that research ethics committees , ethics review committees and institutional review boards should adopt what may be called dual-track risk assessment.2–5 Yet, dual-track assessment unnecessarily divides research interventions into two different categories before assessing their risks and relies on the unclear distinction between therapeutic and non-therapeutic interventions. As a result, dual-track assessment provides RECs with confusing guidance and has the potential to block valuable research that poses acceptable risks. This paper describes one alternative, the net risks test, and argues that this approach offers a better method for assessing research risks, one that puts RECs in a position to protect participants without blocking appropriate research studies.BACKGROUNDClinical research exposes participants to interventions and procedures to gather systematic data that may be used to improve overall health and well-being. To ensure that research is ethical, RECs must ensure that the risks and burdens to participants are not excessive and that …. (shrink)

Hierarchical Bayesian models (HBMs) provide an account of Bayesian inference in a hierarchically structured hypothesis space. Scientific theories are plausibly regarded as organized into hierarchies in many cases, with higher levels sometimes called ‘paradigms’ and lower levels encoding more specific or concrete hypotheses. Therefore, HBMs provide a useful model for scientific theory change, showing how higher‐level theory change may be driven by the impact of evidence on lower levels. HBMs capture features described in the Kuhnian tradition, particularly the idea that (...) higher‐level theories guide learning at lower levels. In addition, they help resolve certain issues for Bayesians, such as scientific preference for simplicity and the problem of new theories. *Received July 2009; revised October 2009. †To contact the authors, please write to: Leah Henderson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, 32D‐808, Cambridge, MA 02139; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

A comprehensive empirical study of value, explicitly indebted to the work of R. B. Perry, but brought up-to-date by considerable refinement of method and by the inclusion of much recent material from anthropology, psychology, and the social sciences. Pepper considers the question of "how to make well-grounded decisions in human affairs". His analysis yields the concept of "selective systems" as the organizing principle of types of value and of value selection. Among these are personal, social, and cultural valuation patterns; the (...) system of natural selection is superimposed upon all the others.--J. F. D. (shrink)

Analitik psikoloji 20. yüzyılda İsviçreli psikoterapist Carl Gustav Jung tarafından oluşturulmuş kuramdır. Kuram sadece psikoterapi alanını değil psikolojiden teoloji, etnografi, edebiyat ve güzel sanatlara kadar pek çok bilim dalını da etkilemiştir. Jung’un kuramındaki en önemli başarısı; bilinçdışı ile bireysel bilinçdışı ve kolektif bilinçdışının keşfidir. Bu keşifle sadece çeşitli bilim dalları edebî metinlerde geçen kolektif imgeler ve onların kolektif simgelerinin neler olduğunu değil insanlar da ruhun ihtiyacının ne olduğunu öğrenmiştir. Jung’un kuramının birincil maddesi ontolojik açıdan insanın kendisinden daha güçlü bir varlığa (...) bağlanma ihtiyacıyla doğmasıdır. İnsan bu temel ihtiyacını göz ardı ederek yaşamını sürdürdüğünde enerjisini yapısına ters yönde isteklere harcayarak giderir. Nitekim insan doğası gereği hayatın çeşitli yönlerine ilgi duyan, onları gerçekleştirmede istekli olan varlıktır. Bu istekler bazen toplumun refahını engelleyici dolayısıyla dinî emirlere aykırı olabilir. Böylece gerek toplumun kurallarına gerek dinin buyruklarına ters düşülür. Bu durumda dinen istenilen insan olunamadığı gibi psikolojik açıdan da bireyselleşme gerçekleştirilememiş olur. Bireyselliğini gerçekleştirememiş insanlar Jung’un kuramında isimlendirdiği gibi gölgelerinin farkına varamamış kişilerdir. Analitik psikolojide insanlık adına çok önemli olan gölgelerin farkına varılması oldukça zordur. Klinik gözlemlerinden hareketle kuramını oluşturan Jung’a göre hayatı boyunca gölgelerinin farkına varamayan insanlar olduğu gibi hayatlarının bazı evrelerinde yaşadıkları tecrübe neticesinde kendilerini bitkin, yorgun hatta hasta hisseden insanların olması da mümkündür. Jung kuramında gölgelerinin farkına varamayan insanların; bireyselleşmelerinin gerçekleşmediğini belirtir. Ona göre insanlığın en büyük yıkımı bireyselleşmenin gerçekleşmediği toplumlardan kaynaklanacaktır. Makale; analitik psikolojide gölge arketipinin tasavvufî görüşte arzu, istek, hayatın ilkeleri manalarına da gelen nefs teriminin benzeşik oluşu üzerine kaleme alınmıştır. Bu sebeple makalede on bir tane mutasavvıf şairin dîvânında zikredilen nefs kelimesi kuram doğrultusunda titizlikle incelenmiştir. Makale Jung’un kuramı ışığında bir arketip olan gölge ibaresinin mutasavvıf şairlerin dîvânlarında incelenen nefs ibaresine karşılık geldiği elli bir manzumenin açıklanmasından oluşmaktadır. Elde edilen veriler neticesinde makale gölgenin tanımı, bilinçlenmeye başlama, gölgeleri tanıma, bireyselleşme ve gölge çeşitleri olmak üzere beş bölümdür. Makalede yer alan gölge çeşitleri; acelecilik, hırs, kibir ve kin alt bölümlerini ihtiva etmektedir. Bu alt bölümlerde insanın olumsuz özelliklerini anlatan gölge çeşitlerini bildiren manzumelerin aynı zamanda insanın bu kötü hasletleriyle nasıl mücadele edeceğine dair öğütleri, çözüm önerilerini içerdiği tespit edilmiştir. Mutasavvıf şairler tarafından okuyucusuna verilen bu öğütler Jung’un da kuramında özellikle üzerinde durduğu hasletlerdir. Çalışmayla gerek klasik Türk edebiyatı gerek Türk İslâm edebiyatı alanına metinlerde zikredilen kelimelerin sembolik anlamlarının kazandırılması, farklı bir derinlik getirilmesinin yanında teoloji bilim dallarına da katkı sağlaması ümit edilmektedir. (shrink)

Book Information Relativism. By Paul O'Grady. Acumen. Chesham. 2002. Pp. xi + 196. Paperback, £12.95.

In the tradition of Kant, Bergson, and Whitehead, the author analyzes the fundamental concepts of biology in terms of their relation to time. By virtue of distinctions between objective and subjective time, and between causal unities and teleological wholes, the author presents a uniquely dualistic theory of biology in which the notion of teleology can be properly applied only to man, and purpose is exhibited only by the higher animals which possess a partly subjective time structure. --J. F. D.

Advances in life-saving technologies in the past few decades have challenged our traditional understandings of death. Traditionally, death was understood to occur when a person stops breathing, their heart stops beating and they are cold to the touch. Today, physicians determine death by relying on a diagnosis of ‘total brain failure’ or by waiting a short while after circulation stops. Evidence has emerged, however, that the conceptual bases for these approaches to determining death are fundamentally flawed and depart substantially from (...) the established biological conception of death. We argue that the current approach to determining death consists of two different types of unacknowledged legal fictions. These legal fictions were developed for practices that are largely ethically legitimate but need to be reconciled with the law. The considerable debate over the determination of death in the medical and scientific literature has not informed the public that vital organs are being procured from still-living donors and it seems unlikely that this information can remain hidden for long. Given the instability of the status quo and the difficulty of making the substantial legal changes required by complete transparency, we argue for a second-best policy solution: acknowledging the legal fictions involved in determining death to move in the direction of greater transparency. This may someday result in more substantial legal change to directly confront the challenges raised by life-sustaining and life-preserving technologies without the need for fictions. (shrink)

The thirteen essays of this collection converge on the theme of authority in an effort to analyze its general theoretical characteristics, to evaluate its historical development, and to propose solutions to contemporary social, political, and legal problems. Hannah Arendt's contribution, "What was Authority?" best expresses the awareness, reflected in several of the other essays, of a crisis in the understanding and acceptance of authority as a significant concept in political theory; and Carl J. Friedrich and Bertrand de Jouvenel provide perceptive (...) constructive attempts to grasp the nature of authority.--J. F. D. (shrink)

Since philosophy follows science in the modern age. Macmurray holds, the emergence of psychology demands a reformulation of the theory of the Self. In the past physics has led to a substance view of the self and biology to a theory of the self as organism; psychology, as a science of human behavior forms the groundwork for a metaphysics of agency which includes the theoretical and the organic, but as derivative, not as primary modes. These Gifford Lectures are provocative and (...) persuasive, and their historical arguments are subtle and illuminating.--J. F. D. (shrink)

With his usual conciseness and lucidity, Körner attempts to show what philosophy is by looking at what it does, i.e., by investigating its problems, its branches and its history. Körner begins by setting out classic problems ranging from the problem of class-existence to the problem of freedom, and follows this by an investigation of various methodologies. After this introductory material the bulk of the book ranges over the central problems of most branches of philosophy and concludes with a brief sketch (...) of the history of philosophy. Of special note is Körner's treatment of metaphysics to which he gives an entire section of almost seventy pages. Those familiar with Körner's other work will find it a concise summary of his notion of metaphysics as exhibition and/or replacement-analysis of categorial frameworks. Also of note is his refreshing treatment of philosophy of mind. He sees the problem of intentionality as the chief consideration for that branch of philosophy. Although he makes mention of the linguistic approach to philosophy of mind his main thrust is to set the problems in Brentano's terms and show how the mind-body problem and theories of truth are handled from that framework. There are some drawbacks in the book. First: given the length of his treatment of metaphysics one could wish that somewhere Körner in his explication of metaphysics had given some recognition to the realistic alternatives to his transcendental metaphysics. Second: one must wonder to whom the book is addressed. The conciseness of Körner's style allows him to range over an unbelievably large area, but in such a pithy manner that it seems almost unimaginable that the educated layman will be able to follow the presentations and arguments, particularly those interspersed with logical notation. For example, how much value is there in condensing the logic of truth-functions, quantification and axiomatization into less than ten pages? For those in the field it is repetitive, for those not, it must be nearly unintelligible. One feels Körner really wanted to write a defense of metaphysics. This may have been a more efficacious project eliminating the need to write first for one audience then for another. The book is concise, lucid, and illuminating.--R. F. D. (shrink)

A biogenetic structural explanation is offered for the cross‐culturally common mystical experience called portalling, the experience of moving from one reality to another via a tunnel, door, aperture, hole, or the like. The experience may be evoked in shamanistic and meditative practice by concentration upon a portalling device (mirror, mandala, labyrinth, skrying bowl, pool of water, etc.). Realization of the portalling experience is shown to be fundamental to the phenomenology underlying multiple reality cosmologies in traditional cultures and is explained in (...) terms of radical re‐entrainment of the neurological systems mediating experience in the brain. Phenomenological experiments with mirror portalling devices from both the Tibetan and the Tsimshian religious traditions are reported. (shrink)

Late in 1990, the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of Technology (lIT) received a grant of more than $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to try a campus-wide approach to integrating professional ethics into its technical curriculum.! Enough has now been accomplished to draw some tentative conclusions. I am the grant's principal investigator. In this paper, I shall describe what we at lIT did, what we learned, and what others, especially philosophers, can learn (...) from us. We set out to develop an approach that others could profitably adopt. I believe that we succeeded. (shrink)

Contributions in the concept of the divine; influence; Islamic philosophy.

International medical travel occurs when patients cross national borders to purchase medical goods and services. On occasion, physicians in home countries will be the last point of domestic contact for patients seeking healthcare information before they travel abroad for care. When this is the case, physicians have a unique opportunity to inform patients about their options and help guide them towards ethical practices. This opportunity brings to the fore an important question: What role should physicians in more-developed home countries play (...) in promoting or constraining international medical travel towards less-developed destination countries? In our view, critical attention to the decision spaces of patients—defined by the personal circumstances, socio-cultural cues, and legal constraints that inform decision-making—is a useful starting point for evaluating the proper response of physicians to various forms of international medical travel. (shrink)

The articles collected in this special issue were originally presented at two workshops entitled "Ethical Issues of Animal Research" sponsored by Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics and Indiana University's Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institution. Some of the most prominent and influential thinkers in the field present their diverse views.