Ethics of Spying: A Reader for the Intelligence Professional, Volume 2 seeks to define an intelligence professional while utilizing various theoretical and practical perspectives. Prominent scholars explore ethics through the intelligence cycle and how ethics is evolving and viewed in a post-9/11 world. The book concludes with a survey on ethical conduct by interrogators, a brief history of intelligence reform, and a bibliography on this subject.

Does the real world, defined as a world of objects that exist independent of human interests, concerns, and cognitive activities, really exist? Jan Westerhoff argues that we have good reason to believe it does not. His discussion considers four main facets of the idea of the real world, ranging from the existence of a separate external and internal world, to the existence of an ontological foundation that grounds the existence of all the entities in the world, and the existence of (...) an ultimately true theory that provides a final account of all there is. As Westerhoff discusses the reasons for rejecting the postulation of an external world behind our representations, he asserts that the internal world is not as epistemically transparent as is usually assumed, and that there are good reasons for adopting an anti-foundational account of ontological dependence. Drawing on conclusions from the ancient Indian philosophical system of Madhyamaka Buddhism, Westerhoff defends his stance in a purely Western philosophical framework, and affirms that ontology, and philosophy more generally, need not be conceived as providing an ultimately true theory of the world. (shrink)

The concept of an ontological category is central to metaphysics. Metaphysicians argue about which category an object should be assigned to, whether one category can be reduced to another one, or whether there might be different equally adequate systems of categorization. Answers to these questions presuppose a clear understanding of what precisely an ontological category is, an issue which is rarely addressed; Jan Westerhoff presents the first in-depth analysis both of the use made of ontological categories in the metaphysical literature, (...) and of various attempts at defining them. He also develops a new theory of ontological categories which implies that there will be no unique system, and that the ontological category an object belongs to is not an essential property of that object. Systems of ontological categories are structures imposed on the world, rather than reflections of a deep metaphysical reality already present. All metaphysicians should find Westerhoff's book highly stimulating. (shrink)

This volume offers a critical re-assessment of the thought of Ernst Bloch, best-known for his groundbreaking study The Principle of Hope and one of the most significant European thinkers and public intellectuals of the twentieth century. It explores Bloch's life, work and reception; his debt to Marx and Hegel; his central concepts of hope and utopia; his affinities with philosophers such as Gramsci and Zizek; and his radical reframing of our understanding of history, society and culture. Above all, this volume (...) examines the relevance of Bloch's ideas today, in a world still shot through with economic inequality and social injustice. Contributors are: Agata Bielik-Robson, Ivan Boldyrev, Henk de Berg, Sam Dolbear, Vincent Geoghegan, Holger Glinka, Loren Goldman, Douglas Kellner, Cat Moir, Jan Rehmann, Nina Rismal, Johan Siebers, and Peter Thompson. (shrink)

Background and aim Healthcare professionals are regularly exposed to moral challenges in patient care potentially compromising quality of care and safety of patients. Preventive clinical ethics support aims to identify and address moral problems in patient care at an early stage of their development. This study investigates the occurrence, risk factors, early indicators, decision parameters, consequences and preventive measures of moral problems. Method Semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with 20 interprofessional healthcare professionals from 2 university hospitals in Basel, Switzerland. A (...) Likert scale questionnaire was completed by the interviewees and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results Healthcare professionals are frequently exposed to a variety of moral problems, such as end-of-life decisions, resource allocation and assessing the patient's will or decisional capacity. Thirty-four different risk factors for moral problems are identified, e.g. patient vulnerability, divergent values or world views, inadequate resources or poor ethical climate. Twenty-one early indicators are recognised such as disagreement between healthcare professionals, patients and relatives, emotional disturbances, gut feeling or conflict of conscience. A variety of preventive measures are suggested and presented in a preventive clinical ethics support process model. The most helpful measures are early ethical conversations with colleagues, early team-internal ethical case discussions and an ethics-trained contact person on the ward. Ethics training, kerbside consultations, proactive ethics consultations, ethics screening and rounds are also considered helpful. Conclusions Clinical ethics support services should not only offer reactive and complex, but also proactive and low-threshold support for healthcare professionals, patients and relatives. (shrink)

In recent years, postgenomic research, and the fields of epigenetics and microbiome science in particular, have described novel ways in which social processes of racialization can become embodied and result in physiological and health-related racial difference. This new conception of biosocial race has important implications for philosophical debates on the ontology of race. We argue that postgenomic research on race exhibits two key biases in the way that racial schemas are deployed. Firstly, although the ‘new biosocial race’ has been characterized (...) as social race entering into biological processes, it is only particular aspects of social race that are taken to cross the biosocial boundary, resulting in a distorted view of the social component of biosocial race. Secondly, racial categories are assumed to be stable across time and space. This assumption is epistemically limiting, as well as indicating a reliance on a fixed racial ontology. However, the causal pathways for the embodiment of social race, and the different possible modes of embodiment, that postgenomic science is uncovering themselves present a challenge for fixed or static racial ontologies. Given these tensions, we argue that the emerging picture of a shifting landscape of entanglement between the social and the biological requires us to increase the complexity of our ontologies of race, or even embrace a deflationary metaphysics of race. (shrink)

Extensionalist theories of the specious present suggest that every perceptual experience is extended in time for a short while, such that they are co-extensive in time with the time experienced in them. Thus, there can be no experience of time, unless the experience itself is extended in time. Accordingly, there must be something that unites the temporal parts of a perceptual experience into temporally extended wholes. I call this the “glue-problem for extensionalism”. In this paper I suggest three desiderata that (...) an extensionalist theory should meet in order to solve the glue-problem. I also distinguish between different versions of extensionalism, and argue that none of them can solve the glue-problem without violating at least one desideratum. (shrink)

BackgroundIn Sweden, individuals with visual field loss have their driving license withdrawn. The literature clearly indicates that individuals with VFL are unsafe drivers on a group level. However, many drivers with VFL can be safe on an individual level. The literature also suggests that self-perception, beliefs, and insights of one’s own capabilities are related to driving performance. This study had three aims: To investigate self-perceived driving capability ratings for individuals with VFL; to compare these ratings between groups with different medical (...) conditions associated with VFL ; and to relate the self-perception ratings to actual driving performance in an advanced driving simulator.MethodsParticipants comprised 723 individuals whose driver’s license had been withdrawn because of VFL and 92 normally sighted elderly individuals. All participants completed a background survey, rated difficulties with different traffic situations, rated their strengths and weaknesses as drivers, and rated aspects that were important for causing traffic accidents. Of the VFL group participants, 264 also completed a simulator-based driving test that they knew could lead to renewal of their driving license. VFL participants and normally sighted was at the same age when they completed the simulator driving test.ResultsOverall, individuals with VFL rated their capabilities as high on all instruments and scales used, even higher than the elderly normally sighted control group. The only VFL etiology group that rated lower than other groups was the diabetes group. Safety orientation and internal control orientation values were best at discriminating between VFL participants in terms of self-perception of driving performance. Participants categorized as “high” in terms of safety skills and internal control were more modest in their ratings. Finally, participants who passed the simulated driving test did not differ from those who failed, in any of the self-perception measures.ConclusionSelf-perception ratings among individuals with VFL were higher than those of normally sighted elderly individuals. Self-assessed skills did not predict driving performance. Groups with different VFL etiologies rated similarly. Self-ratings of driving abilities cannot be used to assess actual driving performance. Actual driving tests are necessary to discriminate between safe and unsafe drivers with VFL. (shrink)

Cancers often express hundreds of genes otherwise specific to germ cells, the germline/cancer (GC) genes. Here, we present and discuss the hypothesis that activation of a “germline program” promotes cancer cell malignancy. We do so by proposing four hallmark processes of the germline: meiosis, epigenetic plasticity, migration, and metabolic plasticity. Together, these hallmarks enable replicative immortality of germ cells as well as cancer cells. Especially meiotic genes are frequently expressed in cancer, implying that genes unique to meiosis may play a (...) role in oncogenesis. Because GC genes are not expressed in healthy somatic tissues, they form an appealing source of specific treatment targets with limited side effects besides infertility. Although it is still unclear why germ cell specific genes are so abundantly expressed in cancer, from our hypothesis it follows that the germline's reproductive program is intrinsic to cancer development. (shrink)

This essay examines Aquinas’s analysis of the human desire to know, which plays a central role in his thought. (I.) This analysis confronts him with the Aristotelian tradition: thus, the desire for knowledge is a “natural” desire. (II.) It also confronts him with the Augustinian tradition, which deplores a non-virtuous desire in human beings that is called “curiosity.” (III.) Aquinas connects the natural desire with the Neoplatonic circle motif: principle and end are identical. The final end of the desire to (...) know is the knowledge of God. (IV.) Aquinas also connects the end of the natural desire to know with Christian eschatology, teaching that man’s ultimate end is the visio Dei. This end, however, is “supernatural.” (V.) Duns Scotus severely criticizes central aspects of Aquinas’s account. (VI.) As a rejoinder to Scotus’s objections, we finally consider Aquinas’s view on the proper object of the human intellect. (shrink)

Winnicotts Konzept des »Holding« bezieht sich auf das komplexe psychische Tun und Wirken der Mutter für ihr neugeborenes Kind, also darauf, dass sie sowohl als »Umwelt-Mutter« als auch als »Objekt-Mutter« fungieren muss. Während das Holding mit der Umwelt-Mutter assoziiert ist, möchte ich das »Containing« hier der Objekt-Mutter zuordnen. Es soll gezeigt werden, dass Winnicott diese Konzepte in Anlehnung an Freuds frühe Beobachtungen der für die emotionale Entwicklung des Kindes entscheidenden Rolle der Mutter erarbeitete. Obwohl die Rolle des Vaters ebenso wichtig (...) sei, betonte Winnicott, es liege in der Hand der Mutter, der Psyche des Kindes die Bedeutung des Vaters nahezubringen – oder nicht. Anknüpfend an Winnicotts späte Formulierungen aus »Objektverwendung und Identifizierung« wird vorgeschlagen, dass das psychische Überleben des Objekts die entscheidende interpsychische Dynamik im Kern der Eltern-Kind-Beziehung ist. Das intrapsychisch entstehende subjektiv überlebende Objekt gewinnt im Kontext der analytischen Situation potenziell an Stärke, wenn der Analytiker imstande ist, sein Überleben zu unterstützen. Um diese Themen kreist Winnicotts Objektbeziehungstheorie. (shrink)

In the Middle Ages more than in other periods, eschatology informed the way people understood humankind and the world. The papers in the present volume are devoted to the complexity and interconnectivty of the eschatological orientation of the Middle Ages. Central topics are questions of the influence and formation of eschatological themes in philosophy and the significance of ideas of the final end in medieval political thought. In addition, there is a consideration of further themes from history, theology, art and (...) literature. The 29th volume of the Miscellanea Mediaevalia contains the papers delivered to the 32nd Cologne Medieval Studies Conference plus additional contributions. The volume includes five papers on the 50-year history of the Thomas Institute, which has been organising the Cologne Medieval Studies Conference for the last half century. (shrink)

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA präsentieren seit ihrer Gründung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln. Das Kernstück der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijährigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Kölner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor über 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Gründungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinäre Charakter dieser Kongresse prägt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beiträge aus allen mediävistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaften (...) sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters. (shrink)

In this volume specialists of medieval music and philosophy put the medieval 'musica' into the context of ideas and institutions in which it existed. The significance of 'musica' cannot be understood from a modern point of view since 'music' does not match the medieval 'musica'.

Bundel filosofische essays over kunst en esthetica.

Internalism and the Limits of Twin Earth Scenarios explores visual perceptual experiences and whether nor not visual intentional content is internal or external.

I present an analysis of the dialectic relationship uniting concepts of responsibility and loyalty, on the background of the political question of the right to move (immigration, in a very broad sense of leaving one's native community). I present a thorough analysis of the meanings of the categories of responsibility and loyalty, concentrating on the aspects that reveal their mutual antagonism. It is specially claimed that no responsibility is purely individual (however neither is it collective) and in this respect the (...) concept of responsibility is confronted with the concept of guilt. In conclusion, it's claimed that the universal right of settling in a democratic country is a practical solution of the contradiction between the requirements of loyalty and responsibility on the one hand and freedom and justice on the other. (shrink)

[A dialogue between Kant and Bolzano on mathematical knowledge.].