It is not clear whether breast cancer screening is a public health intervention or an individual clinical service. The question is important because the concepts best suited for ethical reasoning in public health might be different to the concepts commonly employed in biomedical ethics. We consider it likely that breast screening has elements of a public health intervention and used an empirical ethics approach to explore this further. If breast screening has public health characteristics, it is probable that policy and (...) practice experts will employ socially embedded concepts when reasoning about it. We gathered data on whether and how these concepts existed in the discussion and reasoning of Australian breast screening experts. We found that experts employed these concepts when talking about the purpose and practices of breast screening, and the behaviour of breast screening professionals and consumers. Experts gave varied judgements about breast screening based on reasoning with these concepts, considering it to be more or less successful in contributing to the public interest and in incorporating socially embedded concepts into its operational agenda. Our findings are compatible with breast screening having public health characteristics. We advocate for the incorporation of socially embedded concepts in breast screening policy and practice. (shrink)

We shall proceed as follows: In section ii, we shall give a brief over-view of the literature on Gilbert, more to indicate general directions of interest than to present any in-depth analysis. Then, in the main body of this presentation, section iii, we will present three ways in which we think it is accurate to claim that Gilbert influenced Descartes. These are: (1) Gilbert gave Descartes a new definition of an organ; (2) Gilbert gave Descartes a new definition of what (...) constitutes life and animation; (3) Gilbert gave Descartes a new view of natural motion. (shrink)

Ce numéro est dédié à l’étude des corrélations entre les éléments initiaux ou leur absence, et certains « faits linguistiques » qui se produisent dans la phrase d’accueil ainsi que dans la séquence textuelle (phrases qui suivent et qui précèdent). Par élément initial nous désignons un élément situé dans la zone initiale de la phrase, c’est-à-dire avant le sujet, ou avant le verbe en cas d’inversion du sujet : expression adverbiale ou adjectivale, prédication seconde, connecteur, etc. S’il exi...

In The Nature of Necessity, Alvin Plantinga asserts that “the number 7 exists necessarily and Socrates does not.” This is, to my way of thinking, reasonable enough. Unhappily, cannot be reconciled with Plantinga's further claims that an object x has a property P essentially or necessarily if and only if x has P in every world in which x exists and existence is itself, although not “an ordinary property,” nevertheless a property.

Catalog of an exhibition at the Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, April 19-July 28, 1996.

On the basis of our apparent obligations to future generations, it would seem that we are morally obliged to reduce the risk our environmentally destructive behaviour poses for their well-being. But if, rather than choosing to destroy the environment, we are in fact driven to do so, then any obligation to reduce our environmental impact requires an understanding of the mechanism driving our behaviour. This article argues that the State-Primacy Theory provides a plausible explanation for the nature of that mechanism, (...) and concludes that the most common strategies offered as a response to our environmental impact are most likely to be insufficiently radical to meet our seeming obligations effectively. (shrink)