Firearm injuries are a significant public health problem. Prior studies have analyzed firearm death data or adult firearm injury data, but few studies have analyzed firearm injury data specifically among youth. To inform the current debate surrounding gun policy in the United States, this study aims to provide an estimate of the immense burden of youth firearm injury and its associated risk factors. Therefore, we performed a descriptive analysis of the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample, the largest all-payer emergency department database (...) in the United States, from January 2006 to September 2015. All patients age < 21 who presented with any diagnosis of firearm-related injuries were included. There were an estimated 198,839 incidents of firearm-related emergency department visits for patients age < 21 from 2006 through 2015. After presenting to the ED, an estimated 11,909 cases resulted in death. The population adjusted rate of firearm-related emergency department visits was highest in the South and Midwest. This study demonstrates the significant burden of firearm injury among youth. Having a reliable estimate of the number of children harmed by firearms each year is a critical tool for policymakers — and may make common-sense gun safety measures more politically possible. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Prugovečki offered a theory of simultaneous measurements based upon an axiomatic description of the measurement act which excludes certain illustrations of simultaneous measurement previously discussed by the present writers. In this article, the fundamental conceptions of state preparation, state determination, and measurement which underlie our research are compared to Prugovečki's interpretations of the analogous constructs in his theory of measurement.

Introduction.--The Puritan heresy.--Emerson.--Paul Elmer More.--William James.--John Dewey.--Nietzsche.--Bergson.--The limitations of Marxism.--T. S. Eliot.--Christopher Dawson.--Kenneth Burke.--Jeffersonian democracy.

To honor Henry Margenau on the occasion of his 90th birthday, we attempt in this essay to integrate certain aspects of the physics, philosophy, and pedagogy of quantum mechanics in a manner very much inspired by Margenau's idealist scientific epistemology. Over half a century ago, Margenau was perhaps the first philosopher of science to recognize and elaborate upon the essential distinction between thepreparation of a quantum state and themeasurement of an observable associated with a system in that state; yet (...) in contemporary quantum texts that distinction rarely receives adequate emphasis even though, as we demonstrate, it may be explicated through a series of simple illustrations. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of the birth and growth of scientific creationism in South Korea by focusing on the lives of four major contributors. After creationism arrived in Korea in 1980 through the global campaign of leading American creationists, including Henry Morris and Duane Gish, it steadily grew in the country, reflecting its historical and social conditions, and especially its developmental state with its structured mode of managing science and appropriating religion. We argue that while South Korea’s creationism (...) started with the state-centered conservative Christianity under the government that also vigilantly managed scientists, it subsequently constituted some technical experts’ efforts to move away from the state and its religion and science through their negotiation of a new identity as Christian intellectuals ( chisigin). Our historical study will thus explain why South Korea became what Ronald Numbers has called “the creationist capital of the world.”. (shrink)

“The Ethics of Belief,” by W.K. Clifford, explains the potential harm of believing just anything. In this chapter Stan Marsh shows off his critical thinking skills as he takes on TV psychics, various cults, and unsupported religious beliefs in a way that would've made Clifford proud. The chapter examines how Stan exposes the frauds and harms they bring, while defending scientific thinking and a healthy skepticism. Beliefs are acquired in various ways, most notably by observation and authority. Many people say (...) their beliefs, especially their religious beliefs, are based on faith. Stan realizes it's wrong to dismiss someone with unsupported beliefs as being stupid. He reminds us of Clifford's point that settling for easy answers not only weakens the mind, it prevents from finding real answers. In science, philosophy, and every rational pursuit where we require answers to questions, the spirit of inquiry—combined with hard work—is what leads to progress. (shrink)

This collection of essays focuses on the concepts of tolerance and intolerance as it commemorates the life of James Parkes - the man who pioneered the study of antisemitism and Jewish-non-Jewish relations. The essays analyse many different examples of antisemitism, ambivalence and philosemitism.

Researchers do not owe their subjects the same level of care that physicians owe patients, but they owe more than merely what the research protocol stipulates. In keeping with the dynamics of the relationship between researcher and subject, they have limited but substantive fiduciary obligations.

I am going to be discussing a mode of moral responsibility that anglophone philosophers have largely neglected. It is a type of responsibility that looks to the future rather than the past. Because this forward-looking moral responsibility is relatively unfamiliar in the lexicon of analytic philosophy, many of my locutions will initially strike many readers as odd. As a matter of everyday speech, however, the notion of forward-looking moral responsibility is perfectly familiar. Today, for instance, I said I would be (...) responsible for watching my nieces while they swam. Neglecting this responsibility would have been a moral fault. When people marry, they undertake responsibilities, of moral import, of fidelity and mutual support. When people have children, they accrue moral responsibilities to feed, rear, and educate them. Not all forward-looking responsibilities are moral. While finishing this essay, I have had to keep an eye on a number of my administrative responsibilities, and, while reading it, you may well be occasionally distracted by some of your own. The notion of a responsibility that we accrue or take on, to look out for some range of concerns over some range of the future, is, then, perfectly familiar. Because this common notion of forward-looking responsibility has not been integrated into recent moral theory, however, my philosophical discussion of it will initially seem strange. (shrink)

Henry S. Richardson is Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. From 2008-18, he was the editor of Ethics. His previous books include Practical Reasoning about Final Ends, Democratic Autonomy, and Moral Entanglements. He has held fellowships sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.

David Estlund’s Democratic Authority develops a novel doctrine of “normative consent,” according to which the nonconsent of those with a duty to consent is null. This article suggests that this doctrine can be defended by confining it to contexts involving consent to an authority, which raise distinctive normative challenges, but argues that Estlund’s attempt to deploy the doctrine fails, for it does not provide convincing reasons to think that citizens have any duty to consent. In closing, the article suggests that (...) the doctrine of normative consent might yet do some useful work in a quite different theoretical setting. (shrink)

This paper aims to establish three major theses: (1) Not only declarative sentences, but also interrogatives and imperatives, may be classified as true or as false. (2) Declarative, imperative, and interrogative utterances may also be classified as honest or as dishonest. (3) Whether an utterance is honest or dishonest is logically independent of whether it is true or is false. The establishment of the above theses follows upon the adoption of a principle for identifying what is meant by any sentence, (...) declarative, interrogative, or imperative. The analysis aims to show that meaning is to be attributed to the uttered or written sentence-token, rather to the thereby exhibited sentence-type. Further, the meaning of the sentential token is to be identified with a purpose of the speaker, that the speaker would reveal to the addressee by uttering the sentence. The to be revealed purpose is analysed into two components: an ultimate concern (that the addressee stand in such and such a relation--e.g., of believing, or informing the speaker about, or making it true that) and an ultimate topic of concern (the state of affairs, i.e., proposition, relative to which the speaker would have the addressee stand in the specified relation). Sentential utterances "signify" different purposes by "expressing" different ultimate concerns and "indicating" different ultimate topics of concern. Variations in expressed concern are correlated with variations in sentential form, such as declarative, interrogative and imperative. Variations in indicated topic of concern are correlated with variations in the subject and predicate of the uttered sentence. Thus, for example, utterances of "Johnny will jump in the lake," "Will Johnny jump in the lake?" and "Johnny, go jump in the lake!" all indicate one and the same ultimate topic of concern but express different ultimate concerns with this topic. A sentential utterance is true or false according as its indicated topic of concern is true or false. Hence, declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives may all be classified as true or as false. But honesty or dishonesty is a function (explained in the paper) of the expressed concern, rather than of the topic of concern. Hence, although utterances of all sentential forms are honest or dishonest, their honesty or dishonesty is logically independent of their truth or falsity. (shrink)

Morain and Largent’s (2023) thorough and thoughtful article concludes that the partial-entrustment model of medical researchers’ ancillary-care obligations (Richardson and Belsky 2004; Belsky and R...

In various contexts, it is thought to be important that we reason together. For instance, an attractive conception of democracy requires that citizens reach lawmaking decisions by reasoning with one another. Reasoning requires that reasoners survey the considerations that they take to be reasons, proceed by a coherent train of thought, and reach conclusions freely. De facto reliance on experts threatens the possibility of collective reasoning by making some reasons collectively unsurveyable, raising questions about the coherence of the resulting train (...) of thought. De jure reliance on experts threatens the possibility of collective reasoning by seeming to make some conclusions irreversible. The paper argues that collective reasoning that relies on experts would nonetheless be possible if the unsurveyable reasons "mesh," if the expert considerations are at least in principle publicly recoverable, and if de jure authority of expert decision is always subject to appeal. (shrink)

The philosopher Henry Richardson's short book is a defense of a position on a neglected topic in medical research ethics. Clinical research ethics has been a longstanding area of study, dating back to the aftermath of the Nazi death-camp doctors and the Tuskegee syphilis study. Most ethical regulations and institutions have developed in response to those past abuses, including the stress on obtaining informed consent from the subject. Richardson points out that that these ethical regulations do not address one (...) of the key dilemmas faced by medical researchers -- whether or not they have obligations towards subjects who need care not directly related to the purpose of the study, termed 'ancillary care obligation'. (shrink)

Frances Kamm has for some time now been a foremost champion of non-consequentialist ethics. One of her most powerful non-consequentialist themes has been the idea of inviolability. Morality's prohibitions, she argues, confer on persons the status of inviolability. This thought helps articulate a rationale for moral prohibitions that will resist the protean threat posed by the consequentialist argument that anyone should surely be willing to violate a constraint if doing so will minimize the overall number of such violations. As Kamm (...) put it in a 1992 article, ‘If morality permitted minimizing violations of persons by violating other persons, then each of those saved as well as those persons used to save others would be less inviolable. It is the permission, not any actual violation of persons, that makes this so.’ Now, as thus baldly asserted, this claim borders on the conclusory. It is almost as if the claim were that morality conferred on persons the following status: that of being protected from consequentialism. One wants to hear in what inviolability consists, in more detail, so that we can understand it independently of the negation of consequentialism. And there is also an opposite problem: if inviolability is a good, then why can't consequentialism take it into account? Hence, one also wants to hear why this would not be the case. (shrink)

This paper explores the convergence of two recent and growing streams of bioethical work and concern. Each has originated independently, but each arises from the fact that the Common Rule that has shaped medical research ethics, as institutionalized in the United States and also abroad, is largely silent about what needs to be done in response to researchers’ positive obligations. One stream concerns what to do about the sometimes vast range of findings that may arise incidentally to performing research procedures. (...) The other asks whether medical researchers owe their study participants any “ancillary care” — that is, medical care that their study participants need but that goes beyond what is required to do the science safely. (shrink)

His 1971 masterpiece, A Theory of Justice, permanently changed the landscape of moral political theory, revitalizing the normative study of social issues and ...

Martha Nussbaum has powerfully argued in Frontiers ofJustice and elsewhere that John Rawls’s sort of social-contract theory cannot usefully be deployed to deal with issues pertaining to justice for the disabled. To counter this claim, this article deploys Rawls’s sort of social-contract theory in order to deal with issues pertaining to justice for the disabled—or, since, as Nussbaum stresses, we all have some degree of disability—for the severely disabled. In this way, rather than questioning one by one Nussbaum’s interpretive claims (...) about Rawls’s view, one can simply see how the Rawlsian framework can work in application to this issue. Following Rawls’s lead, the paper utilizes the idealized “initial choice situation” as an analytic and comparative device for examining alternative principles of justice, developing three different interpretations of the initial choice situation that each correspond to a different set of principles that apply to people of all levels of disability. One of these sets of principles is a simple extension of Rawls’s, one is very close to what Nussbaum herself recommends, and the third is a kind of hybrid. In this way, it is shown not only that Rawls’s social-contract device can usefully be applied to these issues, but also that it is helpful for exploring the deep commitments underlying each of these competing sets of principles. (shrink)

This paper develops and explores the idea of moral entanglements: the ways in which, through innocent transactions with others, we can unintendedly accrue special obligations to them. More particularly, the paper explains intimacy-based moral entanglements, to which we become liable by accepting another's waiver of privacy rights. Sometimes, having entered into others' private affairs for innocent or even helpful reasons, one discovers needs of theirs that then become the focus of special duties of care. The general duty to warn them (...) of their need cannot directly account for the full extent of these duties, but does indicate why a silent retreat is impermissible. The special duties of care importantly rest on a transfer of responsibilities that accompanies the privacy waivers. The result is a special obligation of beneficence that, while grounded in a voluntary transaction, was never voluntarily undertaken. Impartialist views of beneficence cannot capture the relevant phenomena well. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Measurement, Pleasure, and Practical Science in Plato's Protagoras HENRY S. RICHARDSON 1. INTRODUCTION TOWARDS THE END OF THE PROTAGORAS Socrates suggests that the "salvation of our life" depends upon applying to pleasures and pains a science of measurement (metr$tik~techn~).Whether Plato intended to portray Socrates as putting forward sincerely the form of hedonism that makes these pleasures and pains relevant has been the subject of a detailed and probably (...) interminable debate, to which this paper will not directly contribute. By contrast, it seems to be supposed by almost all who have written on the topic that this hedonism, whoever is espousing it, puts forward pleasure as a single, homogeneous yardstick of value to serve as the basis of a supremely simple standard of choice. This standard simply directs one to seek the maximal amount of pleasure. The underlying supposition is that the hedonism put forward in the Protagorasallows one to define a maximum because all goods are commensurable. But, as I shall emphasize in the sequel, hedonism does not imply commensurability, nor does commensurability imply hedonism. The interpretive thesis of this essay is that the common presumption that the dialogue's hedonism carries commensurability with it has impeded our ability to understand the Protagor~'s relation to the other dialogues, and has distorted the fundamental purpose of Socrates's practical science. These matters are of more than textual interest. My reasons for trying to remain neutral as to the longstanding debate about attributing the dialogue's hedonism are not limited to wanting to avoid quagmires and remove confusions that have resulted from unwarranted interpretive assumptions. To many, the Protagorasis of tremendous importance as an early articulation of a calculative ideal for ethical or practical decisionmaking, whether or not Plato or Socrates was committed to that ideal. Looking [7] 8 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:1 JANUARY x99 o back at the Protagorasfrom our twentieth-century perspective encourages the expectation that we might find there some argument for the crucial features of such a calculative ideal, as we have come to understand it. One such feature, prominent especially in the classical utilitarians, is that of the commensurability of goods, which in turn allows the precise definition of a maximizing rule. If the Protagoraspresented a calculative conception involving commensurability, then we might expect to find in the dialogue some argumentfor the rational necessity of commensurability. My claim will be that since there is no compelling evidence that the idea of commensurability is found in the dialogue, there is'hardly likely to be an argument for it there. In fact, it is of philosophical interest to see how far the arguments against weakness of will and for the unity of virtue (whoever is making them) can proceed without relying upon commensurability; This way of putting the philosophical points at issue here underlines the relative modesty of what I am claiming about commensurability. I argue that there is nothing in the dialogue that requires us to see commensurability as part of its hedonism, that the arguments proceed without relying upon commensurability, and that in some respects the problem of understanding the relationship of the Protagorasto Plato's other dialogues is eased if we refrain from attributing any commensurability here. I will show that a clearer picture of what is doing the argumentative work in the last secdon of the dialogue will result if we thus separate commensurability from hedonism, and that an illuminatingly different way of understanding the role of the science of measurement is thereby suggested. None of this amounts to a compelling argument that the idea of commensurability is not to be found in the dialogue. Rather, my case simply undermines the positive reasons for finding the idea there. Apart from the greater clarity which separating hedonism and commensurability allows, this modest negative case links up with the deeper philosophical moti,~ation I have mentioned by casting cold water on any hopes that the Protagorascould be made to yield an argument specifically linking commensurability to rationality. In one respect, my interpretive strategy is akin to that of commentators who have attempted to ease the tension between the Protagorasand the Gorgias by arguing that the form of hedonism... (shrink)

Henry Richardson argues that we can determine our ends rationally. He constructs a rich and original theory of how we can reason about our final goals. Richardson defuses the counter-arguments for the limits of rational deliberation, and develops interesting ideas about how his model might be extended to interpersonal deliberation of ends, taking him to the borders of political theory. Along the way Richardson offers illuminating discussions of, inter alia, Aristotle, Aquinas, Sidgwick, and Dewey, as well as the work (...) of several contemporary philosophers. (shrink)

This article develops a uniform interpretation of "pursuit for the sake of an end", explaining what an "unqualified final" end (sought solely for its own sake) offers that a (merely) final one does not and providing an improved account of what Aristotle means by an "ultimate end". This interpretation sheds light on (1) the regress argument at the outset of "N.E." I.2, (2) the way Aristotle argues for the existence of a highest good, (3) the special contribution of "self-sufficiency" (autarkeia) (...) within that good, and (4) the potential flexibility of Aristotle's view about the content of the highest good. (shrink)