Child custody evaluators frequently encounter 3 complex problems: assessment of highly contested cases; how to help the court, attorneys, and clients struggle with the ambiguity of the "best interest" standard; and ethical issues in assessing the children's preferences for their primary custodial parent. The purpose of this article is to describe the methodological implications of recent custody evaluation guidelines and recent research. Recommendations include reliance on family-process oriented diagnostic approaches and functional assessment methods, use of evaluation methods in which relevant (...) parties have an opportunity to state their views and rationale concerning the children's best interests, and understanding of the content areas relevant to assessing children's custodial preferences at different developmental levels. (shrink)

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)

Neural fetal tissue transplantation offers promise as a treatment for devasting neurologic conditions such as Parkinson's disease. Two types of issues arise from this procedure: those associated with the use of fetuses, and those associated with the use of neural tissue. The former issues have been examined in many forums; the latter have not. This paper reviews issues and arguments raised by the use of fetal tissue in general, but focuses on the implications of the use of neural tissue for (...) basic concepts of personnood and personal identity. (shrink)

The Chinese ethical tradition has often been thought to oppose Western views of the self as autonomous and possessed of individual rights with views that emphasize the centrality of relationship and community to the self. The essays in this collection discuss the validity of that contrast as it concerns Confucianism, the single most influential Chinese school of thought. Alasdair MacIntyre, the single most influential philosopher to articulate the need for dialogue across traditions, contributes a concluding essay of commentary. This is (...) the only consistently philosophical collection on Asia and human rights and could be used in courses on comparative ethics, political philosophy and Asian area studies. (shrink)

The dynamic changes in American health care are significiantly deeper than technological advancement alone. Consumers, physicians, and third party payors are all assuming new roles in the system. The balance of medical control is radically shifting. Unless the three parties come together in a mutual partnership, needed improvements will not occur and what is currently good in the system will be lost. The key to this important partnership is the consumer.

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

We discuss external and internal graphical and linguistic representational systems. We argue that a cognitive theory of peoples' reasoning performance must account for (a) the logical equivalence of inferences expressed in graphical and linguistic form, and (b) the implementational differences that affect facility of inference. Our theory proposes that graphical representation limit abstraction and thereby aid “processibility”. We discuss the ideas of specificity and abstraction, and their cognitive relevance. Empirical support both comes from tasks which involve the manipulation of external (...) graphics and tasks that do not. For the former, we take Euler's (1772) circles, provide a novel computational reconstruction, show how it captures abstractions, and contrast it with earlier construals and with Johnson‐Laird's (1983) mental models representations. We demonstrate equivalence of the graphical Euler system, and the nongraphical mental models system. For tasks not involving manipulation of external graphics, we discuss text comprehension, and the mental performance of syllogisms. By positing an internal system with the same specificity as Euler's circles, we cover the mental models data, and generate new empirical predictions. Finally, we consider how the architecture of working memory explains why such specific representations are relatively easy to store. (shrink)

Luciano Floridi was not the first to discuss the idea of group privacy, but he was perhaps the first to discuss it in relation to the insights derived from big data analytics. He has argued that it is important to investigate the possibility that groups have rights to privacy that are not reducible to the privacy of individuals forming such groups. In this paper, we introduce a distinction between two concepts of group privacy. The first, the “what happens in Vegas (...) stays in Vegas” privacy (in the following: WHVSV privacy), deals with confidential information shared with the member of a group and inaccessible to (all or a specific group of) outsiders. The second, to which we shall refer as inferential privacy, deals with the inferences that can be made about a group of people defined by a feature, or combination thereof, shared by all individuals in the group. We show why we unreservedly agree with Floridi that groups can have a form of privacy that amounts to more than the mere fact of being sets of individuals each of whom has individual privacy; moreover, like Floridi, we find it plausible that at least some groups (those satisfying our definition of type-a groups) may have a right to a species of group privacy (that is, WHVSV privacy) as groups (and not just as individuals who belong to those groups). However, by turning our attention to the context of big data analytics, we show that the relevant, new notion of group privacy is one of inferential privacy. We argue that an absolute right (either of individuals or groups) to inferential privacy is implausible. We also show that many groups generated algorithmically (those satisfying our definition of type-b groups) cannot be right holders as groups (unless they become type-a groups). (shrink)

1. I am grateful to the respondents for the opportunity provided, to clarify the concept of a libertarian right to test and its normative implications. To sum up, I concede that genomes have a normatively salient informational aspect, that exercising the LRT may cause informational harm and violate rights of genetically related individuals, and that this is relevant to the regulation of genetic testing. But such considerations are logically compatible with a non-absolute LRT and its libertarian justification. The LRT is (...) practically relevant because it inverts the burden of justification and recognising a LRT may affect the way in which other rights are protected in a conflict of rights case. I will try to clarify this further, in what follows. 2. Consider B, an individual who is, and is aware of being, genetically related to A. Admittedly, while person A has a LRT, the interests of person B should also be protected.1 …. (shrink)

The title of this book is too modest. In his Disputationes on the text of the Summa of St. Thomas, Gabriel Vazquez draws upon a very wide reading of the theological literature of his own and previous ages. His conclusions present a synthesis, not without originality, of the speculation of the 15th and 16th centuries. The problem here considered, that of the obligation of civil law, raises the great issues of civil obedience and the limits of human authority. The book, (...) then, is more than a monograph on a single author; it is an important study in the history of moral philosophy and theology. (shrink)

EDITORS' INTRODUCTION B he Vedas tell of a conversation between a young man, Shvetaketu, and his father concerning what the son had learned in his education ...

Recensión de A. Gutmann, La educación democrática. Una teoría política de la educación, Paidós, Barcelona, 2001 y B. Brick, En defensa de la política, Tusquets, Barcelona, 2001.

The issue of conceptual templates of Western philosophy has been prominently put forth by Kwong-loi Shun. This paper seeks to establish additional perspectives adopted in traditional concepts involving anger and compassion by both Confucianist and Western scholars to reconcile purported differences between Confucianist and Western interpretations of key concepts utilised in philosophical thought. Through reinforcing similarities between the different concepts, the author serves to highlight the inter-compatibility of Confucianist and Western interpretations of basic notions of anger and compassion and the (...) need to explore the relevance of both facets in the complex modern world. (shrink)

These days the two most popular approaches to belief ascription are Millianism and Contextualism. The former approach is inconsistent with the existence of ordinary Frege cases, such as Lois believing that Superman flies while failing to believe that Clark Kent flies. The Millian holds that the only truth-conditionally relevant aspect of a proper name is its referent or extension. Contextualism, as I will define it for the purposes of this essay, includes all theories according to which ascriptions of the (...) form ‘S believes that a is F’ and ‘S believes that b is F’, where ‘a’ and ‘b’ are coreferential proper names, may, depending on the context, differ in truth-value even though in those very contexts each ascription relates the same believer to the very same proposition. What the two theories have in common is the claim that names are Millian. What separates the two theories is what they say about belief contexts. In this essay I prove that Millianism is true, Contextualism is true, or our intuitions regarding belief ascriptions are hopelessly inaccurate. As a consequence, my argument is a proof that either names and many general terms are Millian or our intuitions regarding belief ascriptions are hopelessly inaccurate. (shrink)

Bastiat claims that the individual rights to life, liberty, and property are natural rights. Further, he claims that these natural rights are a matter of natural law and are not mere conventions. However, he never offers a detailed account of the connection between natural law and natural rights. By outlining a neo-Aristotelian theory of natural law that consists of two poles—an individualized vision of human flourishing and a conception of individual rights as metanormative principles—it is argued that Bastiat’s core insight (...) is correct. Individual rights are the proper political expression of a natural law approach to ethics. They determine the ultimate purpose of human law.Bastiat affirme que les droits individuels à la vie, à la liberté et à la propriété sont des droits naturels. De plus, il envisage ces droits naturels comme relevant du Droit Naturel plutôt qu’étant de simples conventions. Cependant, il n’offre nulle part une explication détaillée des liens entre le Droit Naturel et les droits naturels. En mettant en avant une théorie néo-aristotélicienne du Droit Naturel composée de deux pôles — une version individualisée de l’épanouissement humain et une conception des droits individuels en tant que principes métanormatifs — cet article soutient que l’idée centrale de Bastiat est juste. Les droits individuels sont l’expression politique adéquate d’une approche de l’éthique en termes de Droit Naturel. Ils déterminent la finalité ultime de la loi humaine. (shrink)

Leo Strauss (1899-1973) a inscrit sa pensée dans l'héritage de la tradition grecque, mais également dans celui de la tradition biblique. Se rapportant au judaïsme comme à une révélation de la Loi (pour laquelle la dimension de la foi est secondaire), il fait retour à une pensée juive (Pourquoi nous restons juifs) et tente de prolonger la réflexion de Maïmonide dans les conditions nouvelles des temps présents. Il s'oppose ainsi à sa rénovation par l'approche phénoménologique de Franz Rosenzweig comme à (...) la pensée de Martin Buber, tout en se tenant à distance de la réflexion sur le mysticisme juif de Gershom Scholem avec lequel il dialogue. Cet ouvrage interroge la manière dont Strauss pense les relations de corrélation et de conflit entre philosophie et judaïsme. En quoi la réflexion sur la Loi, dont il poursuit l'élaboration dans la lignée de la pensée médiévale et à contre-courant de la modernité des Lumières, représente- t-elle un approfondissement de la pensée juive et jette-t-elle une lumière crue sur la situation du judaïsme dans le monde? Quels sont les termes du débat avec les penseurs contemporains du judaïsme avec lesquels il est en relation? Quelles sont aujourd'hui les possibilités et les limites d'une telle réflexion pour la vitalité du judaïsme et de la philosophie? Les études présentes ouvrent des voies différentes, voire divergentes, essentiellement heuristiques, sur les possibilités et les limites de la réflexion straussienne pour la vitalité du judaïsme et de la philosophie. Elles s'accompagnent de la parution d'un texte inédit en français : " La situation religieuse actuelle " (1930), qui représente un moment décisif de la réflexion de Strauss sur la question. (shrink)

Découverte près d'Alivéri en Eubée, cette importante inscription du milieu du IVe siècle av. J.-C. est demeurée longtemps inédite. Il s'agit d'une grande stèle amputée en haut et à gauche, où se lisent encore 35 lignes gravées stoichédon (à raison de 51 lettres par ligne après restitution). Sur la base du lieu de trouvaille, de la langue et du contenu, on peut rapporter à la même stèle le fragment IG XII 9, 190, en dépit du fait que ce petit morceau (...) — perdu depuis longtemps — n'a pas été présenté comme un texte stoichédon par son unique copiste. Ce rapprochement permet de restituer le frag ment en question (A) plus sûrement qu'on n'avait pu le faire jusqu'ici : c'est le début de la loi, avec l'énoncé des récompenses prévues pour le tyrannoctone, modulées en fonction de son statut politique et social. Le texte du nouveau morceau (B) se compose lui-même de deux sections distinguées par une asyndète significative. La première section (1. 1-17) comporte une série de clauses ayant pour objet la protection de la constitution démocratique contre toute tentative de mise en place d'un régime tyrannique, notamment par le biais d'une motion subversive : le contrevenant se verra non seulement privé de ses droits civiques (discussion sur la notion d'atimia à cette date) et de ses biens (confiscation par l'État — avec une dîme pour Artémis Amarysia, dont la prééminence dans le panthéon érétrien est ainsi confirmée), mais proscrit à perpétuité (interdiction d'inhumer ses restes dans l'Érétriade ou Érétrias gê; impunité et même récompense accordées à son meurtrier). Cette première section s'achève par une imprécation solennelle visant à décourager toute atteinte contre les dispositions de la loi elle-même (rôle intéressant des prêtres et des prêtresses — avec le mot rare, sinon même nouveau, hiéris pour hiéreia — lors des Dionysia et des Artémisia) ; entre les termes de cette imprécation et le libellé des grands serments « internationaux » (attestés à partir du IVe siècle précisément) il y a plus d'un point commun à relever. (shrink)

The second part of this publication deals with 1. 17-36 in the unpublished fragment (B), which without doubt form the most original part of the law. For it was not only a question of creating an obstacle to a coup d'État that that would overturn a genuine democracy (represented by a boule and prytaneia of Athenian type, whose members were chosen by lot among the Eretrians), but also of henceforth reestablishing this constitution if a tyranny or oligarchy — interesting association (...) — was imposed by violence. Each citizen was invited to take up arms spontaneously (this clause offered a remarkable dialectical form, a semi-passive participation of Northwestern origin). An eventuality is envisaged of the People being no longer in control of the civic centre, in particular the zone of the boukuterion designated there probably by the term Agoraion (= Metroon at Athens?), or even of them being kept outside the town : in this case the democratie elements should regroup in some part of the territory, a tactic well attested in Greece and even Eretria (the role of the maritime fortress of Porthmos) in order to retake the power. Lastly, sanctions are envisaged against citizens who had not served the cause of the People, while its defenders would be rewarded by the grant of lands and goods belonging to those who had been guilty. A considerable conduding section reviews the principal problems posed by this document : the date, circumstances of its promulgation, place(s) it was exhibited, identity of the legislator, and possible juridical and/or philosophical models. Today it seems certain that the law (necessarily before 336) has to be related to the liberation of Eretria in the autumn of 341, a relatively well documented event. As is a priore probable, an influence by Athenian legislation can be detected in the first part of the text. But a comparison with the celebrated law proposed by Eucrates of Piraeus in 337/6 shows that the Attic model would not account for ail its particularities. The Eretrian law — which is, moreover, the oldest of its kind to have survived on stone — appears radier to be the fruit of an unhappy political experience undergone in the recent past. (shrink)

À partir des ouvrages de B. Binoche (1998) et J.-P. Courtois (1999), l’article relit le livre I de L’Esprit des lois. On y examine la question des variantes, du plan du chapitre I, de la nature de la loi, du mode d’engendrement des rapports d’équité, de leur relation au droit naturel ; du statut de l’état de nature, du nombre de ses lois, de l’existence ou pas d’une religion et d’une raison naturelles ; de la relation inédite entre (...) état de nature et état social, guerre et paix, qui escamote le contrat et contribue à vider l’état de nature d’une bonne part de sa substance et de sa nécessité. Au profit d’une déduction des normes transcendantes à partir de Dieu et de la loi comme rapport. (shrink)

SummaryHistorians of science have repeatedly, and justly, pointed to the discrepancy between theory and practice in the writings of Cuvier. This discrepancy is especially conspicious in his palaeontological works. No satisfactory analysis of the relation between theory and practice in Cuvier's palaeontology has appeared as yet. In this paper I shall point out the shortcomings of the interpretations of E. S. Russell, H. Daudin, W. Coleman, M. J. S. Rudwick and B. Balan. These authors either overrated or underestimated the role (...) Cuvier's anatomical rules played in his research. Next I shall argue that theory, as embodied in the anatomical rules, played an important role in Cuvier's study of fossil animals. However, the rules were not used as abstract principles of reconstruction. It is a persistent misconception that Cuvier's main concern in the Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles was the reconstruction of extinct animals. Most memoirs deal only with the identification, description and classification of fossil remains. It was mainly on this level that Cuvier—successfully—applied the anatomical rules. As an example of the use he made of the rules, Cuvier's study of the fossil mosasaur from Masstricht will be discussed. This example will also provide a clue to an alternative explanation of the discrepancy between theory and practice in the Recherches. I shall argue that Cuvier's theoretical claims must in part be qualified as examples of his great talent for image-building. (shrink)

Max Kistler’s first book, based on his Paris Ph.D. thesis, is an elaborate defence of a transference theory of causation. Such a theory conceives of causality as the transfer of a conserved quantity. A transference theory of causation is thus one form that a regularity account of causation, as opposed to a counterfactual account, might take. Kistler’s original contribution consists (a) in the way in which he develops an account of causation based on transference and (b) in relating a theory (...) of causation to a specific view of natural laws. Kistler first considers what a relation of causation is and thereby contrasts the transference theory with other explanations (Ch. 1). He then develops a view of natural laws (Ch. 2) and combines this view with his transference theory of causation (Chs. 3 & 4). The second part of the book focuses on causally efficacious properties. Kistler employs the notion of properties that are responsable for a relation of causation. The function of such properties in laws of causation is examined (Chs. 5 & 6). The last chapter discusses examples that are to show how this theory of causation works (Ch. 7). Kistler argues for a realistic view: there is causation in the world independently of whether and how people conceptualize causal relations. The relata of a causal relation are events. An event is the content of a continuous space–time region (which may be as small as being pointlike) (18, 64–68). Events are in space–time what objects are in space (196): An object has spatial parts, whereas an event has spatio–temporal parts. To give an example, a volcano has spatial parts such as a top, whereas an eruption of a volcano can be gentle and limited to its northern side first and then become violent and extending to all sides. There is a relation of causation between two events if and only if at least one conserved quantity is transferred between them (39–40, 100). That is to say: an event x has a certain value of a physical quantity, and that individual value is transferred to another event y.. (shrink)

The semantic puzzles posed by propositional attitude contexts have, since Frege, been understood primarily in terms of certain substitution puzzles. We will take as paradigmatic of such substitution puzzles cases in which two coreferential proper names cannot be intersubstituted salva veritate in the context of an attitude verb. Thus, for example, the following sentences differ in truth value: (1) Lois Lane believes Superman can fly. (2) Lois Lane believes Clark Kent can fly. despite the fact that "Superman" and (...) "Clark Kent" pick out the same individual.1 Equivalently, the following sentence may be true: (3) Lois Lane believes that Superman can fly, but that Clark Kent cannot fly. despite the coreferentiality of the names. (It will at times be convenient to appeal to this conjunctive attitude report in order to fix a single context of utterance.) Substitution failures such as these create a puzzle when conjoined with the assumptions (a) that attitude reports report a binary relation between an individual and some object of that individual's attitude and (b) that that object of the attitude is determined by the content of the complement sentence in the attitude report. If all of the terms in two complement sentences (e.g., "Superman can fly" and "Clark Kent can fly") have the same semantic content, then, prima facie, they ought to generate the same object of believe and, a fortiori, materially equivalent attitude reports. Frege, famously, attempts to defuse the puzzle by positing a semantic value of sense in addition to that of reference, and thereby distinguishing the semantic contents of the two complement sentences. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold: to review briefly the main policy implications of Kirzner’s work and to contrast these with the approach that is generally used in public policy. The following issues are discussed in the paper: taxation and entrepreneurial incentives; the effects of regulation on the entrepreneurial process and economic growth; monopoly and monopoly pricing; anti-trust laws and their impact on the market process; the coordination criterion of efficiency; and the notion of economic justice. I argue that (...) the standard criteria of efficiency are often not useful to policy-making and should be replaced by Kirzner’s “coordination criterion”, which states that the institutions of the market economy must be geared toward allowing the capture of profit in order to promote the speed and responsiveness of the market process. One of the main lessons of Kirzner’s work for policy making is that the market process is always competitive and takes place over time.Cet article a deux objectifs : a) passer brièvement en revue les principales implications politiques des contributions de Kirzner et b) distinguer ces implications kirzneriennes de l’approche généralement retenue dans l’élaboration des politiques publiques. Dans ce qui suit, nous discutons des questions suivantes : les impôts et les incitations entrepreneuriales ; les effets de la réglementation sur le processus entrepreneurial et la croissance économique ; les monopoles et leurs modes de fixation des prix ; les lois anti-monopole et leurs conséquences sur le processus marchand ; l’efficience en tant que critère de coordination ; et la notion de justice économique. Le papier soutient que le critère standard d’efficience est rarement utile au niveau politique et devrait être remplacé par le “critère de coordination” de Kirzner qui énonce que les institutions de marché doivent avoir comme point de repère la réalisation de profits de manière à promouvoir la vitesse de capacité d’ajustement du processus marchand. Une des principales leçons des contributions kirzneriennes pour les décisions politiques est que le processus marchand est toujours concurrentiel et s’inscrit dans le temps. (shrink)

This essay reflects on 25 years since Christian Bioethics began publication and, in somewhat autobiographical fashion, engages two core concerns. First, although “non-ecumenism” may often appear a pretext for contention and division, I suggest that a respectful non-ecumenism may provide the opportunity for dialogue and the occasion for employing certain tools from religious studies. Second, although many are skeptical about the possibilities of identifying a “common morality,” a defense of that notion provides a plausible explanation for the development of limited (...) consensus on some issues in bioethics. (shrink)