The importance of communities in strengthening the ethics of international collaborative research is increasingly highlighted, but there has been much debate about the meaning of the term ‘community’ and its specific normative contribution. We argue that ‘community’ is a contingent concept that plays an important normative role in research through the existence of morally significant interplay between notions of community and individuality. We draw on experience of community engagement in rural Kenya to illustrate two aspects of this interplay: (i) that (...) taking individual informed consent seriously involves understanding and addressing the influence of communities in which individuals’ lives are embedded; (ii) that individual participation can generate risks and benefits for communities as part of the wider implications of research. We further argue that the contingent nature of a community means that defining boundaries is generally a normative process itself, with ethical implications. Community engagement supports the enactment of normative roles; building mutual understanding and trust between researchers and community members have been important goals in Kilifi, requiring a broad range of approaches. Ethical dilemmas are continuously generated as part of these engagement activities, including the risks of perverse outcomes related to existing social relations in communities and conditions of ‘half knowing’ intrinsic to processes of developing new understandings. (shrink)

BackgroundThe potential contribution of community engagement to addressing ethical challenges for international biomedical research is well described, but there is relatively little documented experience of community engagement to inform its development in practice. This paper draws on experiences around community engagement and informed consent during a genetic cohort study in Kenya to contribute to understanding the strengths and challenges of community engagement in supporting ethical research practice, focusing on issues of communication, the role of field workers in 'doing ethics' on (...) the ground and the challenges of community consultation.MethodsThe findings are based on action research methods, including analysis of community engagement documentation and the observations of the authors closely involved in their development and implementation. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis has been used for documentation of staff meetings and trainings, a meeting with 24 community leaders, and 40 large public and 70 small community group meetings. Meeting minutes from a purposive sample of six community representative groups have been analysed using a thematic framework approach.ResultsField workers described challenges around misunderstandings about research, perceived pressure for recruitment and challenges in explaining the study. During consultation, leaders expressed support for the study and screening for sickle cell disease. In community meetings, there was a common interpretation of research as medical care. Concerns centred on unfamiliar procedures. After explanations of study procedures to leaders and community members, few questions were asked about export of samples or the archiving of samples for future research.ConclusionsCommunity engagement enabled researchers to take account of staff and community opinions and issues during the study and adapt messages and methods to address emerging ethical challenges. Field workers conducting informed consent faced complex issues and their understanding, attitudes and communication skills were key influences on ethical practice. Community consultation was a challenging concept to put into practice, illustrating the complexity of assessing information needs and levels of deliberation that are appropriate to a given study. (shrink)

In refutation of Cajetan, the sixteenth century commentator who is still considered an authority on Thomas' doctrine of analogy, it is argued that "the analogy of names is, for St. Thomas, a logical intention, and in speaking of it we must observe the general rule that the logical and real orders must not be confused. St. Thomas does not see any peculiar significance of analogy for metaphysics--apart, i.e., from the significance it has for science and ordinary discourse." The thesis is (...) closely argued for and painstakingly documented.--A. P. D. M. (shrink)

Employing the tools of logical analysis, Åquist presents a very careful, though cumbrously formalistic, reassessment of Price's Review of the Principal Questions in Morals, a treatise which he considers as the best in its field before Sidgwick and Moore.--A. P. D. M.

An up-to-date exposition and critique of classical and modern philosophies of mathematics leads to the author's thesis: applied mathematics with its perceptual, inexact concepts is logically disconnected from pure mathematics which is idealized and exact. The author introduces the notion of non-unique synthetic a priori propositions and explores the differences and similarities between the logic of exact and that of inexact concepts. A lucid and stimulating essay which combines accuracy and sophistication with a minimum of technical language.--A. P. D. M.

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

Truths are determined not by what we believe, but by the way the world is. Or so realists about truth believe. Philosophers call such theories correspondence theories of truth. Truthmaking theory, which now has many adherents among contemporary philosophers, is the most recent development of a realist theory of truth, and in this book D. M. Armstrong offers the first full-length study of this theory. He examines its applications to different sorts of truth, including contingent truths, modal truths, truths about (...) the past and the future, and mathematical truths. In a clear, even-handed and non-technical discussion he makes a compelling case for truthmaking and its importance in philosophy. His book marks a significant contribution to the debate and will be of interest to a wide range of readers working in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

Breaking new ground in the debate about the relation of mind and body, David Armstrong's classic text - first published in 1968 - remains the most compelling and comprehensive statement of the view that the mind is material or physical. In the preface to this new edition, the author reflects on the book's impact and considers it in the light of subsequent developments. He also provides a bibliography of all the key writings to have appeared in the materialist debate.

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

The central insight of Darwin's Origin of Species is that evolution is an ecological phenomenon, arising from the activities of organisms in the 'struggle for life'. By contrast, the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution, which rose to prominence in the twentieth century, presents evolution as a fundamentally molecular phenomenon, occurring in populations of sub-organismal entities - genes. After nearly a century of success, the Modern Synthesis theory is now being challenged by empirical advances in the study of organismal development and (...) inheritance. In this important study, D. M. Walsh shows that the principal defect of the Modern Synthesis resides in its rejection of Darwin's organismal perspective, and argues for 'situated Darwinism': an alternative, organism-centred conception of evolution that prioritises organisms as adaptive agents. His book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

Background: There is general consensus internationally that unfair distribution of the benefits of research is exploitative and should be avoided or reduced. However, what constitutes fair benefits, and the exact nature of the benefits and their mode of provision can be strongly contested. Empirical studies have the potential to contribute viewpoints and experiences to debates and guidelines, but few have been conducted. We conducted a study to support the development of guidelines on benefits and payments for studies conducted by the (...) KEMRI-Wellcome Trust programme in Kilifi, Kenya. Methods: Following an initial broad based survey of cash, health services and other items being offered during research by all programme studies (n = 38 studies), interviews were held with research managers (n = 9), and with research staff involved in 8 purposively selected case studies (n = 30 interviewees). Interviews explored how these ‘benefits’ were selected and communicated, experiences with their administration, and recommendations for future guidelines. Data fed into a consultative workshop attended by 48 research staff and health managers, which was facilitated by an external ethicist.FindingsThe most commonly provided benefits were medical care (for example free care, and strengthened quality of care), and lunch or snacks. Most cash given to participants was reimbursement of transport costs (for example to meet appointments or facilitate use of services when unexpectedly sick), but these payments were often described by research participants as benefits. Challenges included: tensions within households and communities resulting from lack of clarity and agreement on who is eligible for benefits; suspicion regarding motivation for their provision; and confusion caused by differences between studies in types and levels of benefits. Conclusions: Research staff differed in their views on how benefits should be approached. Echoing elements of international benefit sharing and ancillary care debates, some research staff saw research as based on goodwill and partnership, and aimed to avoid costs to participants and a commercial relationship; while others sought to maximise participant benefits given the relative wealth of the institution and the multiple community needs. An emerging middle position was to strengthen collateral or indirect medical benefits to communities through collaborations with the Ministry of Health to support sustainability. (shrink)

In this short text, a distinguished philosopher turns his attention to one of the oldest and most fundamental philosophical problems of all: How it is that we are able to sort and classify different things as being of the same natural class? Professor Armstrong carefully sets out six major theories—ancient, modern, and contemporary—and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each. Recognizing that there are no final victories or defeats in metaphysics, Armstrong nonetheless defends a traditional account of universals as the (...) most satisfactory theory we have.This study is written for advanced students, but as Armstrong goes considerably beyond his earlier work on this topic, it will interest professional scholars as well. Carefully plotted and clearly written, Universals is both a paradigm of exposition and a case study on the value of careful analysis of fundamental issues in philosophy. (shrink)

Working from an integration of Michael Polanyi‘s image of learning as self-destruction and Max Weber’s analysis of the ethics of scholarship, the author explores the implications of Polanyi’s argument concerning “the depth to which the... person is involved even in... an elementary heuristic effort”. In the process, the author raises questions about current expectations concerning faculty “performance” and current methods of assessing faculty success in the classroom.

Moral inversion, the fusion of skepticism and utopianism, is a preoccupying theme in Polanyi’s work from 1946 onward. In part 1, the author analyzes Polanyi’s complex account of the intellectual developments that are implicated in a cascade of inversions in which the good is lost through complicated, misguided, and unrealistic dedication to the good. Parts 2 and 3 then address two of the most basic of the objections to Polanyi’s theory voiced by Zdzislaw Najder. To Najder’s complaint that Polanyi is (...) not clear in his use of the term “moral,” the author replies that the pivotal distinction in Polanyi’s moral theory is not the moral against the intellectual, but the passions against the appetites. In considering Najder’s complaint that Polanyi’s argument represents a naive instance of ethnocentric absolutism, the author undertakes to show Polanyi’s consistency and perspectival self-awareness by focusing on Polanyi’s account of authority and dissent within a tradition, as well as on Polanyi’s treatment of persuasion as a heuristic passion. (shrink)

The globalized societies of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are de-composing, according to Bernard Stiegler. This decay is expressed by breakdown in the compositional pr...

Convinced that reason is far from transparent to itself, Michael Polanyi, even in the earliest of his non-scientific texts, sets about the work of exposing the influence of unacknowledged presuppositions, commitments, and mental dispositions. Beginning in 1950 he identifies certain of those dispositions as “moral passions,” but in earlier texts he explores this feature of experience in a variety of tentative, preliminary ways that mark stages in the shaping of his moral anthropology. Set alongside “To the Peacemakers” (1917) and the (...) final section of Science, Faith and Society (1946), “Forms of Atheism” (1948) offers an instructive moment in this development. The three contrasting analyses all point toward and illuminate the mature account of moral passion (and the associated theory of moral inversion) that supersedes them. (shrink)

Ranging himself against philosophical and theological traditions that he considered “bankrupt,” William H. Poteat sought to set philosophy back on its feet by exemplifying the way one might reason philosophically from a different set of assumptions. His project can, in this respect, be usefully compared to that of F. H. Jacobi two centuries earlier. Poteat and Michael Polanyi offered attuned critiques of philosophical presuppositions and practices. Constructively, both were committed to bringing home the agent and knower who had been evacuated (...) by depersonalized and abstracted accounts of being and knowing. (shrink)

Plotinus is the first Greek philosopher to hold a systematic theory of consciousness. The key feature of his theory is that it involves multiple layers of experience: different layers of consciousness occur in different levels of self. This layering of higher modes of consciousness on lower ones provides human beings with a rich experiential world, and enables human beings to draw on their own experience to investigate their true self and the nature of reality. This involves a robust notion of (...) subjectivity. However, it is a notion of subjectivity that is unique to Plotinus, and remarkably different from the Post-Cartesian tradition. Behind the plurality of terms Plotinus uses to express consciousness, and behind the plurality of entities to which Plotinus attributes consciousness, lies a theory of human consciousness. It is a Platonist theory shaped by engagement with rival schools of ancient thought. (shrink)

D. M. MacKinnon; I *—The Presidential Address: Idealism and Realism: An Old Controversy Renewed, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1.

D. M. Armstrong; II—Does Knowledge Entail Belief?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 21–36, https://doi.org/10.109.

Onderwerp en gezegde, door D. M. Bakker.--Enkele opmerkingen over het Godsbegrip van Justinus Martyr, door J. den Boeft.--Heidegger, Descartes, Luther, door J. van der Hoeven.--"Geschichtlichkeit" bij Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, door G. Horsman.--Menselijke ontmaskering en Bijbels démasqué , door R. Huson.--Kleine geschiedenis van het begrip "niets" in de antieke wijsbegeerte (tot e met de Sofisten en Plato), door P. A. Meijer.--De structuur van opvoeden en opvoedkunde, door J. W. Mojet.--Individualiteit in de fysica, door M. D. (...) Stafleu. (shrink)

It was in 1792 that Kant published the first Book of his most important single work on the philosophy of religion—Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. But it was his very interesting treatment of the biblical material in the second Book that involved the philosopher in his one serious conflict with official authority. Greene and Hudson give a good account of this conflict and its effect on the work as a whole in the introduction to their translation of Religion (...) in the Harper Torchbook Series. (shrink)

Dowsing, water-witching, divining – the procedure seeks a flow or spring beneath the surface of earth. So too this inquiry attempts to locate and sound the meanings associated with the polestar of Thalean considerations, ὕδωρ, that course beneath the interpretative strata of an overly-familiar tradition grounded in the principles of clarity and intelligibility. If these principles are held in suspension, what meanings flow from the Thalean considerations of ὕδωρ? A twofold task guides this inquiry. First is to show opacity as (...) the primary valence of ὕδωρ, challenging the prevailing tendency to imagine Thales and other Milesian thinkers as positing a principle of clarity in the form of what can be brought under the Aristotelean concept of underlying thing and matter. Second, in the course of drawing up the opacity of ὕδωρ form varied archaic sources emerge some connections to important terms for Greek thinking: φύσις, λόγος, ἀλήθεια. (shrink)

I argue that recent advances in developmental biology demonstrate the inadequacy of suborganismal mechanism. The category of the organism, construed as a ’natural purpose’ should play an ineliminable role in explaining ontogenetic development and adaptive evolution. According to Kant the natural purposiveness of organisms cannot be demonstrated to be an objective principle in nature, nor can purposiveness figure in genuine explain. I attempt to argue, by appeal to recent work on self-organization, that the purposiveness of organisms is a natural phenomenon (...) and, by appeal to the apparatus of invariance explanation, that biological purposiveness provides genuine, ineliminable biological explanations. (edited). (shrink)