In a sense Maimonides identifies his views on the subject of divine providence with those of Epicurus. He does so by implying an analogy between this Greek philosopher’s atheistic opinions and those put forth by Elihu in the Book of Job. Despite the fact that commentators have discussed Maimonides’ views on providence for eight hundred years the only one to refer to the connection between Elihu and Epicurus was Joseph Ibn Kaspi in the fourteenth century. One of the consequences of (...) this analogy is a modification of our understanding of Maimonides’ concept of “providence according to the intellect.” Whereas Moshe Narboni and other commentators have understood Maimonides’ concept of providence to involve a unification of the human intellect with the Active Intellect, the association with Epicurus suggests an emphasis on the human individual’s material faculties such as the imagination. Indeed, it is possible that, following Al-Fārābī, Maimonides rejected the possibility of conjunction with the Active Intellect altogether, and that “providence according to the intellect” consists of nothing more than the activity of the human individual’s material faculties. (shrink)

A philosopher, rabbi, religious historian, and Gnostic, Jacob Taubes was for many years a correspondent and interlocutor of Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), a German jurist, philosopher, political theorist, law professor--and self-professed Nazi. Despite their unlikely association, Taubes and Schmitt shared an abiding interest in the fundamental problems of political theology, believing the great challenges of modern political theory were ancient in pedigree and, in many cases, anticipated the works of Judeo-Christian eschatologists. In this collection of Taubes's writings on Schmitt, the two (...) intellectuals work through ideas of the apocalypse and other central concepts of political theology. Taubes acknowledges Schmitt's reservations about the weakness of liberal democracy yet distances himself from his prescription to rectify it, arguing the apocalyptic worldview requires less of a rigid hierarchical social ordering than a community committed to the importance of decision making. In these writings, a sharper and more nuanced portrait of Schmitt's thought emerges, as well as a more complicated understanding of Taubes, who has shaped the work of Giorgio Agamben, Peter Sloterdijk, and other major twentieth-century theorists. (shrink)

ArgumentUntil the fifteenth century, celibacy was the rule among Christian scholars of northwestern Europe. Celibacy was a major element of the codified cultural representation of the scholar and his specific way of life, sustained by peculiar institutional arrangements and daily routines. Founding family households implied therefore a major reorganization of the scholar’s way of life. Broadly speaking, this involved refashioning the scholarly habitus, redefining social relations, and developing the necessary material infrastructure. The paper focuses on three aspects of this process (...) during a period characterized by uncertainty and experimentation. It discusses the structure of scholars’ families, arguing that at least until the middle of the sixteenth century, received models still persisted, while new viable models for articulating family reproduction with the transmission of scholarly dispositions had not yet crystallized. It then turns to the reorganization of domestic space, focusing on the different uses of the study to manage social distance and regulate domestic relations. Finally, among the different manifestations of the scholarly habitus, it argues that the emotional detachment of learned men was itself a learned habit. The well-documented discussion of competing options for organizing scholars’ family households and cultivating an acquired nature in academic settings provides an exceptional occasion to examine the way a group habitus is reshaped and, explore the cultural work involved in this process. (shrink)

Kepler’s intricate trajectory, his self-reflective comments about the conditions of production of knowledge in his time, and the wealth of materials preserved make it possible to reconstruct a whole set of regimes of scholarly work around 1600, each with its typical mode of control, forms of subordination, temporal economy, and means of remuneration. Kepler’s maneuvering in this landscape was shaped by his attempts to carve out spaces for the kind of work he considered his very own – his “speculations” or (...) “private studies” – within work relationships involving service and subordination. Thus, we find nonalienated, self-directed scholarly work embedded, constrained, and enabled by heteronomous regimes of work, a field of tensions that I seek to capture in the formula “work within work.” A labor history of science could thus offer us an opportunity for exploring historically documented, nonincidental and partly institutionalized forms of less alienated work, and trace the ways in which they related to and interacted with dominant relations of production. (shrink)

This article considers the design and ideation of early modern Palermo’s urban waterscape, which traced the contours of a hybrid fluvial-maritime system surviving from antiquity. Framing the city’s port as a repository of collective memory and a site of self-construction, it questions how interventions undertaken between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries - culminating in the ill-fated construction of the Molo Nuovo - recalibrated the interface between city and sea, and with it, Palermo’s identity. The port anchored the city’s cultural and (...) political ecologies, challenging the traditional divide between urban morphology and port planning. Using early modern Palermo as a guide, the article proposes a reinvestment in the interdisciplinary model of the urban waterscape, which regards water as a contested, socio-natural space. (shrink)

Jewish parables from the Hasidic masters and their lessons are illustrated by the interactions of Fishel the beggar, the slick thief, the rich businessman, the fat governor, the Russian soldiers, and other village characters.

AI-based algorithms are used extensively by public institutions. Thus, for instance, AI algorithms have been used in making decisions concerning punishment providing welfare payments, making decisions concerning parole, and many other tasks which have traditionally been assigned to public officials and/or public entities. We develop a novel argument against the use of AI algorithms, in particular with respect to decisions made by public officials and public entities. We argue that decisions made by AI algorithms cannot count as public decisions, namely (...) decisions that are made in the name of citizens and that this fact should be taken into consideration when utilizing AI to replace public officials. (shrink)

For the purposes of this paper, realism is defined as the belief that in visual perception there is a direct perception of material bodies existing in space external to the perceiver's body. Most contemporary positivists and analytical philosophers are realists in this sense. Included in this classification would be all those who argue from the character of seen relations of bodies to the uniformity view of causation; those who oppose public to private experience; those who believe that one can point (...) to facts; those who believe in the real existence of objects like extended solid tables and chairs; and those who distinguish in terms of verifiability between judgments of color and judgments of value. (shrink)

Biobanks and biospecimen collections are becoming a primary means of delivering personalized diagnostics and tailoring individualized therapeutics. This shift towards precision medicine requires interactions among a variety of stakeholders, including the public, patients, healthcare providers, government, and donors. Very few studies have investigated the role of healthcare students in biobanking and biospecimen donations. The main aims of this study were to evaluate the knowledge of senior healthcare students about biobanks and to assess the students’ willingness to donate biospecimens and the (...) factors influencing their attitudes. A cross-sectional study was conducted among senior healthcare students at King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. The data were obtained using a self-administered questionnaire in English. In addition to the respondents’ biographical data section, the questionnaire assessed the respondents’ general knowledge about biobanking, the factors influencing their willingness to donate biospecimens to biobanks and their general attitudes towards biomedical research. A total of 597 senior healthcare students were included in the study. The general knowledge score was 3.2 out of 7. Only approximately 44% and 27% of students were aware of the terms “Human Genome Project” and “biobank,” respectively. The majority of the students were willing to donate biospecimens to biobanks. Multiple factors were significantly associated with their willingness to donate, including their perceived general health, past experience with both tissue testing and tissue donation, biobanking knowledge score and biomedical research attitude score. The main reasons for students’ willingness to donate were advancement of medical research and societal benefits, whereas misuse of biospecimens and confidentiality breaches were the main reasons for a reluctance to donate. Despite their strong willingness to donate biospecimens, students exhibited a notable lack of knowledge about biobanking and the HGP. To expedite the transition towards PM, it is highly recommended to enhance healthcare curricula by including more educational and awareness programmes to familiarize students with OMICs technologies in addition to the scope of research and clinical applications. (shrink)

À la croisée des institutions, des marchés et des discours, l’expertise artistique sous Louis XIV cor stitue un angle mort de la recherche. Les « experts » ainsi désignés relèvent alors di; domaine judiciaire: ils sont appelés à décrire, attribuer et évaluer peintures et sculptures dans des procédures contentieuses ou amiables et lors de la rédaction des inventaires après décès. Nommés par un acte performatif, à la discrétion des parties ou du juge, ils sont souvent, mais pas toujours, artistes, et (...) indifféremment maîtres ou académie ens. (shrink)

Background The ethical principle of justice demands that resources be distributed equally and based on evidence. Guidelines regarding forgoing of CPR are unavailable and there is large variance in the reported rates of attempted CPR in in-hospital cardiac arrest. The main objective of this work was to study whether local culture and physician preferences may affect spur-of-the-moment decisions in unexpected in-hospital cardiac arrest. Methods Cross sectional questionnaire survey conducted among a convenience sample of physicians that likely comprise code team members (...) in their country. The questionnaire included details regarding respondent demographics and training, personal value judgments and preferences as well as professional experience regarding CPR and forgoing of resuscitation. Results Of the 675 questionnaires distributed, 617 were completed and returned. Country of practice and level of knowledge about resuscitation were strongly associated with avoiding CPR performance. Mexican physicians were almost twicemore likely to forgo CPR than their Israeli and Indonesian/Malaysian counterparts [OR1.84, p = 0.038]. Mexican responders also placed greater emphasison personal and patient quality of life. In multivariate analysis, degree of religiosity was most strongly associated with willingness to forgo CPR; orthodox respondents were more than twice more likely to report having forgone CPR for apatient they do not know than secular and observant respondents, regardless of the country of practice [OR 2.12, p = 0.003]. Conclusions In unexpected in-hospital cardiac arrest the decision to perform or withhold CPR may be affected by physician knowledge and local culture as well as personal preferences. Physician CPR training should include information regarding predictors of patient outcome at as well as emphasis on differentiating between patient and personal preferences in an emergency. (shrink)

Presents a plethora of approaches to developing human potential in areas not conventionally addressed. Organized in two parts, this international collection of essays provides viable educational alternatives to those currently holding sway in an era of high-stakes accountability.

This highly original interpretation of Paul by the Jewish philosopher of religion Jacob Taubes was presented in a number of lectures held in Heidelberg toward the end of his life, and was regarded by him as his “spiritual testament.” ...

Based on a general review of international, representative tissue banking policies that were described in the medical, ethics, and legal literature, this paper reviews the range of standards, both conceptually and in existing regulations, relevant to four main factors:(1) commercialization, (2) confidentiality, (3) informed consent, and (4) quality of research. These four factors were selected as reflective of some of the major ethical considerations that arise in the conduct of tissue banking research. The authors emphasize that any policy or ethical (...) guidelines designed to regulate tissue bank research should address all four factors. Whenever this sort of research is conducted between several institutions or several countries, the paper suggests that the relevant entities work collaboratively to harmonize their standards. (shrink)

This paper is intended first for the formal argumentation community (see https://comma.csc.liv.ac.uk/). This community develops logics and systems modelling argumentation and dialogues. The community is in search of major applications areas for their models. One such application area e.g. is Law. The message of this paper is that there is another major application area for formal argumentation. There is an international community of sex offender therapist that is well established and well funded, and their therapy methods use (methods that can (...) be modelled by) formal argumentation and logic. This community presents a natural application area for formal argumentation. We thus describe in this paper how the sex offender therapists work, to give the formal argumentation researcher a view of this application area. What is especially important about this application area is that in order to model it and learn from it, the formal argumentation community have to evolve their formal methods and adapt to this new application. Part of this enhancement is to modify and import certain methods from other areas of Logic e.g. from Non-Monotonic logic. The members of the formal argumentation community are not familiar, on average, with other areas of logic, and so we also describe in this paper, what we need from neighbouring logics. This makes this paper of interest also to sex offender therapist as well. They may be already familiar with their own practices, but the additional logics described will be of interest to them. (shrink)

We explore the extent to which ancient Greek authors formulated concepts that approximate or encompass our modern notions of precision and accuracy. First, we focus on estimates and measurements of geographic features, astronomical times and positions, and weight. These raise further questions about whether the quantities reported were measured, estimated, or rounded. While ancient sources discuss the use of instruments, it is not always clear that the aim was to achieve what we would today regard as ‘precision’. Next, we briefly (...) consider round numbers, observing that they could carry symbolic meaning, while unrounded numbers could give an impression of hard-won achievement. Finally, we examine uses of the word akribeia. This is often translated as ‘precision’ or ‘exactness’, and Greek writers sometimes used akribeia to denote an ideal for their inquiries. A brief look at its uses by a number of Greek writers will on the one hand show the mismatch with our term ‘precision’, and on the other hand throw some light on the aims of Greek investigators. (shrink)

In February 1975, a group of leading scientists, physicians, and policymakers convened at Asilomar, California, to consider the safety of proceeding with recombinant DNA research. The excitement generated by the promise of this new technology was counterbalanced by concerns regarding dangers that might arise from it, including the potential for accidental release of genetically modified organisms into the environment. Guidelines developed at the conference to direct future research endeavors had several consequences. They permitted research to resume, bringing to an end (...) the voluntary moratorium that the National Academy of Sciences had instituted several months earlier. They also served to illustrate that the scientific community was capable of self-governance, thereby securing public trust and persuading Congress not to institute legislative restrictions. Finally, they underscored the importance of weighing unforeseen risks inherent in some research against potential benefits that may arise from these same endeavors. (shrink)