The integration of normative analysis with empirical data often remains unclear despite the availability of many empirical bioethics methodologies. This paper sought bioethics scholars’ experiences and reflections of doing empirical bioethics research to feed these practical insights into the debate on methods. We interviewed twenty-six participants who revealed their process of integrating the normative and the empirical. From the analysis of the data, we first used the themes to identify the methodological content. That is, we show participants’ use of familiar (...) methods explained as “back-and-forth” methods (reflective equilibrium), followed by dialogical methods where collaboration was seen as a better way of doing integration. Thereafter, we highlight methods that were deemed as inherent integration approaches, where the normative and the empirical were intertwined from the start of the research project. Second, we used the themes to express not only how we interpreted what was said but also how things were said. In this, we describe an air of uncertainty and overall vagueness that surrounded the above methods. We conclude that the indeterminacy of integration methods is a double-edged sword. It allows for flexibility but also risks obscuring a lack of understanding of the theoretical-methodological underpinnings of empirical bioethics research methods. (shrink)

„E o plăcere să citeşti o carte filosofică în care este atât de evidentă preocuparea autorului pentru a se face cât mai bine înţeles, iar rezultatele sunt pe măsura acestei preocupări. Sobrietatea scrierii este, în acest caz, expresia unei onestităţi intelectuale lipsite de cusur. Sunt atribute, din păcate mai rar întâlnite, care constituie apanajul acelora care îşi pot permite să renunţe la orice încercări de a-şi impresiona cititorii prin efecte exterioare. şi aceasta deoarece ei pot convinge pe deplin numai şi (...) numai prin substanţa ideilor şi forţa argumentelor.” Mircea Flonta. (shrink)

_Zettel, _ an en face bilingual edition, collects fragments from Wittgenstein's work between 1929 and 1948 on issues of the mind, mathematics, and language.

The emergence of Latin monks, and then the spread of the monastic orders of the Catholic Church in Rus-Ukraine occurred in the conditions of political-religious transformations of the nineteenth century. Acceptance of baptism from Byzantium did not mean separation from Rome. The Eastern and Western churches were still in unity at that time. The Pope remained the formal head of all Christianity. In 988, as the Nikon Chronicle attests, the ambassadors from Rome and the relics of the saints were brought (...) to the Prince of Kiev during his march to Korsun. It was about the relics of St. Clement, the Pope, found by Cyril and Methodius in the same Korsun on his return from a missionary journey to Khazaria. Two years earlier, according to a chronicle, Vladimir had received ambassadors from Rome who had invited him to adopt Christianity in Latin. There are reports that Vladimir also sent ambassadors to Rome. (shrink)

This article proposes a geostatistical solution for area-to-point spatial prediction (downscaling) taking into account boundary effects. Such effects are often poorly considered in downscaling, even though they often have significant impact on the results. The geostatistical approach proposed in this article considers two types of boundary conditions (BC), that is, a Dirichlet-type condition and a Neumann-type condition, while satisfying several critical issues in downscaling: the coherence of predictions, the explicit consideration of support differences, and the assessment of uncertainty regarding the (...) point predictions. An updating algorithm is used to reduce the computational cost of area-to-point prediction under a given BC. In a case study, area-to-point prediction under a Dirichlet-type BC and a Neumann-type BC is illustrated using simulated data, and the resulting predictions and error variances are compared with those obtained without considering such conditions. (shrink)

Il «nuovo» pensiero non è più cronologicamente nuovo ad oltre ottant’anni dalla sua nascita e, tuttavia, forse oggi manifesta un carattere di novità e di urgenza maggiore di allora, come si suol dire una «rinascita» che giustifica l’interrogativo sul suo «futuro». La particolare situazione in cui ci troviamo a pensare e soprattutto a vivere, le nuove domande che le mutate condizioni storico-culturali pongono alla filosofia, possono trovare un modello di risposta se ci si volge indietro a quella particolare stagione della (...) filosofia tedesca che abbraccia i primi tre decenni del Novecento e che fu tragicamente strozzata e azzittita dal nazionalsocialismo. Non si tratta di affermare un ysteron-proteron, sarebbe troppo semplicistico, decisamente acritico e storicamente e filosoficamente inaccettabile. Accade però, nella storia, che dei fermenti non riescano a produrre frutti perché la temperie del tempo non lo permette oppure perché «inattuali», non pienamente adeguati al tempo, e rimangono quindi latenti finché non si verificano le condizioni ottimali per il loro sviluppo, divenendo in tal modo «adeguati » al tempo. È appunto quanto si è verificato con tutti gli autori che si ritrovano accomunati da un «dialogisches Prinzip», se vogliamo riprendere l’espressione di Martin Buber e che si è concretizzato nelle varie figure rappresentative e nei vari pensatori a cui lo stesso Rosenzweig farà riferimento nel suo breve excursus storico, come, neues Denken, Begegnungsphilosophie, Beziehungsphilosophie, Sprachdenken. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage se propose de mener l'enquête tant sur les accusations de scepticisme et sur les modes de défenses spécifiques que ces dernières imposent de mettre en place, que sur la façon dont les mêmes arguments circulent et peuvent servir à des projets contraires. Cette perspective polémique permet ainsi de s'interroger sur les étiquettes philosophiques, sur la circulation des arguments, et sur leur force et leur portée, non seulement au sein du corpus sceptique, mais aussi à l'intérieur des systèmes sommés (...) de répondre aux questions qu'ils posent."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Resenha: KARASCH, Mary C. Before Brasília: frontier life in Central Brazil. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016.

Reflections on death, chiefly reminiscences on the death of some Malayalis, author's associates, including Malayalam authors.

Linguistic study of Mongolian traditional classical translation.

In Alabaster v. Barclays Bank plc and Secretary of State for Social Security (No. 2: [2005] E.W.C.A Civ. 508, [2005] I.R.L.R. 576.) Michelle Alabaster won a grand total of £204.53 (plus £65.86 interest) after eight years of litigation, which included two visits to the Court of Appeal and one to the European Court of Justice. This marathon resulted from the sex discrimination which Alabaster had alleged in relation to the calculation of her Statutory Maternity Pay (S.M.P.) whilst she was pregnant (...) 10 years earlier. The technicalities of the statutory schemes involved should not be allowed to disguise the important principle which finally emerges in the Court of Appeal and which underlines one of the longstanding criticisms of the equality legislation, namely the requirement that a woman must compare herself with a man in order to establish unlawful sex discrimination. (shrink)