A recent legal case involving an ambiguous diagnosis in a woman with a severe disorder of consciousness raises pressing questions about treatment withdrawal in a time when much of what experts know about disorders of consciousness is undergoing revision and refinement. How much should diagnostic certainty about consciousness matter? For the judge who refused to allow withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration, it was dispositive. Rather than relying on substituted judgment or best interests to determine treatment decisions, he ruled that (...) withdrawal was categorically prohibited, even as he concluded that Hannah Capes was more likely than not in a permanent vegetative state. In many jurisdictions, his decision would likely be consistent with existing law. Evolving technological advances have demonstrated that biologically distinct diagnoses incorporated into state laws may be difficult to establish even under ideal conditions. We offer the Capes case for purposes of examining the consequences of enshrined legal distinctions between permanent vegetative state and other severe disorders of consciousness. Insistence on proof of the permanent absence of consciousness before treatment withdrawal is allowed fails to respect the rights of persons with disorders of consciousness. Even the well-established rights to treatment withdrawal for those in a permanent vegetative state may be in jeopardy if reform is not undertaken. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

Largely neglected today, the work of Karl Philipp Moritz was a highly influential source for Early German Romanticism. Moritz considered the form of myth as essential to the absolute nature of the divine subject. This defence was based upon his aesthetic theory, which held that beautiful art was “disinterested”, or complete in itself. For Moritz, Myth, like art, constitutes a totality providing an idiom free from restriction in the imitation of the divine. This examination offers a consideration of Moritz’s aesthetics (...) and mythography, before turning briefly to consider his influence on the authors of Early German Romanticism. An understanding of the role of Moritz’s thought supports a number of recent claims that challenge the conventional reading of Romanticism. At the same time it allows us to see Romanticism’s unconventional realist theological programme, permitting us to overcome the problematic secularising readings of the movement. I would like to thank Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, as well as Fredrick Beiser and Lars Fischer for their help with this project. (shrink)

What is African American Politics? What form should it take? How does it conceptualize white supremacy? In In the Shadow of Du Bois, Robert Gooding-Williams uses the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and Fredrick Douglass to provide answers to these questions. While the choices of Douglass and Du Bois make a great deal of sense, they reproduce the tendency of confining political theory to literature – a move that bounds the genre in problematic ways. In this article, (...) I in effect attempt to “unbound” the genre by considering Ella Baker, a civil rights era political organizer. (shrink)

Routledge is proud to reissue these nine pivotal titles from the acclaimed series Studies in Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion. Including key works by Ahern, Beardsmore, Pike, and others, these books are essential for all serious collections. Available as single volumes or as a nine-volume set, the titles in this collection were originally published between 1950-1960 by Routledge and Kegan Paul: Volume 1: The Problem of Evil M.B. Ahern Hb: 0-415-31841-6 Volume 2: Moral Reasoning R.W. Beardsmore Hb:0-415-31842-4 Volume (...) 3: Theology and Intelligibility Michael Durrant Hb: 0-415-31843-2 Volume 4: Humanism and Ideology James R. Flynn Hb: 0-415-31844-0 Volume 5: The Five Ways: St.Thomas Aquinas' Proofs of God's Existence Anthony Kenny Hb: 0-415-31845-9 Volume 6: Moral Practices D.Z. Phillips Hb: 0-415-31846-7 Volume 7: God and Timelessness Nelson Pike Hb: 0-415-31847-5 Volume 8: Without Answers Rush Rhees Hb: 0-415-31848-3 Volume 9: Morality and Purpose J.L. Stocks Hb: 0-415-31849-1. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta los fonemas segmentales del mapudungun hablado en Icalma y un perfil fonético-fonológico de parte importante del cordón cordillerano de habla pewenche. El marco de referencia utilizado es el descriptivismo norteamericano, cuyas propuestas provienen de Pike y se actualizan en los trabajos de Burquest y Salamanca, Cifuentes y Figueroa. El instrumento utilizado fue una lista léxica de 108 ítems y la cantidad de colaboradores entrevistados fue de nueve. Con respecto a la descripción fonético-fonológica del mapudungun hablado en (...) la zona, destacan los siguientes resultados: a) predominan las realizaciones fricativas áfonas [ f ] y [ θ ]; b) los fonos interdentales [ t̟ ], [ n̟ ] y [ l̟ ], y el fono fricativo velar [ ɣ ], tienen estatus fonémico; y c) el fono [ ʃ ] no ocurre en la zona. Por otra parte, si se compara el mapudungun hablado en Icalma con el de Alto Bío-Bío, Lonquimay y Curarrehue, se aprecia, en general, una mayor afinidad con el mapudungun hablado en esta última zona. (shrink)

This book takes a bold new look at ways of exploring the nature, origins, and potentials of consciousness within the context of science and religion.

Stephen Law’s evil-god challenge is the argument that since an evil god is just as likely as the God of theism, there is no reason to believe that theism is true over believing there is a god who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnimalevolent. There have been several attempts to answer the challenge, but recently John Collins has defended the evil-god challenge and also extended the argument past Law’s original formulation. In this article, I defend the classical theism of Thomas Aquinas (...) against the evil-god challenge. In particular, I explain how Aquinas’s theodicy involving God’s goodness and Aquinas’s privation view of evil avoid the challenge. (shrink)

Searle has recently used two adaptations of his Chinese room argument in an attack on connectionism. I show that these new forms of the argument are fallacious. First I give an exposition of and rebuttal to the original Chinese room argument, and then a brief introduction to the essentials of connectionism.

The COVID-19 pandemic shocked the global economy, with numerous companies suffering losses and shutting down. However, some companies proved to be resilient, being able to sustain their economic performance despite the pandemic. The study aims to explain the sustainable economic performance of companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The relationships between empowering leadership, innovative work behavior, organizational readiness to change, and sustainable economic performance were assessed. The data were collected via an online questionnaire from January 2021 to March 2021, during the (...) height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia. The respondents were Russian companies’ employees holding management positions, competent to objectively assess organizational circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 337 was used in the analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with maximum likelihood estimation was conducted using SPSS AMOS. The structural model was tested with standardized parameter estimates, standard errors, and p-values calculated. The findings of the study suggest that innovative work behavior and organizational readiness to learn have a direct influence on sustainable economic performance. The findings also suggest that empowering leadership impacts innovative work behavior but not sustainable economic performance. The mediation analysis indicates that innovative work behavior is a mediator between empowering leadership and sustainable economic performance, whereas organizational readiness to learn is not a moderator. The study adds to the leadership and sustainability body of knowledge and contributes to the research on the COVID-19 pandemic in the organizational context. (shrink)

The destruction of the Egyptian army in the Book of Exodus is the primary story of salvation for Israel; God is the chief combatant in this story. "Yahweh is a warrior!" So goes the victory hymn in Exodus 15:3 after the annihilation of the enemy by Yahweh, marking the importance held by this show of divine power. This unleashing of divine power and its militaristic imagery has long caught the attention of scholars as starkly nationalistic. Thomas B. Dozeman furthers this (...) study by addressing the theological problem of divine power in the Exodus story and, by extension, the Judeo-Christian attempt to deify nationalism by calling its wars holy. He interprets Exodus as liturgy, the Day of Yahweh, celebrating God's defeat of Pharaoh and the ultimate ascendancy of Israelite authority. This liturgy, though, did not remain static, but changed as the national experience of exile changed the practice of Israelite worship. An isolated event evolved into an extended account of salvation history, in which the life of faith becomes a wilderness march to the promised land. Dozeman traces how revisionary embellishments in the plot structure and characters of the Exodus story reflected the new understanding of divine power. By combining literary and historical interpretation this study offers the first serious inquiry into the idea of divine power, and makes a major contribution to resurgent research on the Pentateuch as a whole. No scholar concerned with biblical historiography and its justification of holy wars can afford to ignore this book. (shrink)

La richesse et surtout la variété des images que le mystère de la Trinité de Dieu a suscitées dans l’art au cours des siècles jusqu’au nôtre, notamment en Occident, a de quoi dérouter. L’auteur le sait d’expérience, travaillant depuis plusieurs décennies sur ce sujet, ce qui lui a donnée l’idée de fournir aux chercheurs une manière de boussole leur permettant d’abord de classer ces images en fonction des sept étapes de leur genèse et de leurs principales sources d’inspiration, puis d’évaluer (...) leur pertinence intellectuelle à la lumière de sept critères tirés de la réflexion théologique traditionnelle sur le sujet et de sa conceptualité spécifique, chacun d’entre eux étant illustré, enfin, par trois images emblématiques. (shrink)

Modern science developed in the interflow of culture between west and east. Combing of pratice technology with philosophic thoughts formed experimental method. Holistic views contacting atomism produced system theory. System thoughts are applicated in the science and engineering of biosystems, and the cencepts of system biomedicine (Kamada T.1992), systems biology (Zieglgansberger W, Tolle TR.1993), system bioengineering and system genetics (Zeng BJ. 1994) were established. From positive to synthetic thoughts, philosophy have been developed ontology, cosmology, organism theories. Structurity is structure logic (...) system founded on entity, develop, exist axioms, tolerance, adaptation, fluctuate, interweave, transform theorems and integrate, adaptation, construct laws. Structurity be discussed on the cosmos, life, culture system, creation, hologram theories of structure ontology, construct mutation, simi-structure organism and entity emergence, symbol implication. From the relation of structure, function and development, the structurity put forward the cycle, spiral, triangle structure stability patterns of self-organization in structure complement each other and stratification, functional couple and interflow bounds growth, coordinativetransformation and holographic symmetry. (shrink)