Provability, Computability and Reflection.

The sudden emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic brought global disruption to every aspect of society including healthcare, supply chain, the economy, and social interaction. Among the many emergent considerations were the safety and public health of the public, patients, essential workers, and healthcare professionals. In certain locations, clinical research was halted—or terminated—in deference to the immediate needs of patient care, and clinical trials focusing on the treatment and prevention of coronavirus infection were prioritized over studies focusing on other diseases. Difficult (...) decisions were made rapidly; flexibility and reconsideration were necessary not only because the intensity and severity of infection varied over time and by locale but also because knowledge of the disease and understanding of its treatment grew. Here we discuss the ethical challenges in decision-making and competing ethical tensions during the pandemic in an effort to advance future preparedness. (shrink)

This essay, as the title suggests, is not just a reply to Richard Ashcraft -- although it is certainly that too. Its intention is to say something about the political theory of Locke, about his historical context and about the methodological question of contexts in general. About his political theory, I want to make two or three main points which, I think, have important consequences for our understanding of Locke: that he both appropriates and, on critical issues, deliberately neutralizes the (...) radical �discourses� of his time -- so that, for example, he adopts Leveller premises to arrive at something more like Cromwell's (or even more conservative) conclusions; and that he deprives these radical discourses of their most democratic implications less by excluding people from membership in the political nation than by restricting the rights of membership itself. This means, among other things, that the relevant debate is not the one that has so preoccupied Locke scholars -- namely, the controversy about who is a �freeman� or who belongs to the �people�. The decisive question is rather what political rights the �people� have. (shrink)

Based on two workshops held February 1990 in New York and March 1990 in San Francisco. Following the presentation and discussion of three clinical case histories, psychotherapists James F. Masterson, Marian Tolpin, and Peter E. Sifneos compare and contrast developmental, self, and object relations.

A landslide inventory is a detailed register of the spatial distribution, geometry, and attributes of landslides and is essential for landslide hazard analysis, risk management, regional planning, and land use management and development, especially in landslide-prone regions. However, the development of a national landslide inventory is time-consuming and costly. Accordingly, most developing countries, including Sri Lanka, have basic landslide databases, which identify the location, date, and time of occurrence on a point map. This study, therefore, aimed to introduce a new (...) method to report landslide information via a mobile application based on a participatory approach with information recorded in a web portal called the participatory landslide inventory. Twenty-one landslide site locations and their attributes were captured on the PLI web portal using the PLI mobile app. The system administrator then demarcated the landslide boundaries and performed geometrical calculations for each landslide to complete the inventory. Finally, the landslide information was published through the PLI web portal. The PLI is an effective and efficient tool for developing a landslide inventory economically. (shrink)

Individuals sometimes do things that they know will violate the terms of a statute. Most scholars deny that such actions are always morally wrong, but a coherent theoretical account of the relationships between 1) moral obligation, 2) legal obligation, and 3) criminal wrongdoing that can robustly classify hard cases has been elusive. This article starts with a Kantian account of the relationship between law and morality, and it proposes two closely related standards: one for legal obligation, and another for criminal (...) wrongdoing. It then tests the plausibility and resilience of these standards by using them to generate illuminating new analyses of classic hypothetical cases involving alleged crimes committed under circumstances of necessity. These analyses offer reason to believe that the standards proposed in this article can anchor a Kantian theory of criminal responsibility that is simultaneously rigorous and humane. (shrink)

A guide for everyone involved in medical decision making to plot a clear course through complex and conflicting benefits and risks.

The purpose of the article is to challenge widely accepted views of the relationship among rationality, morality, and prudence. It contends that we cannot understand either the rational or the moral enterprise without a correct philosophical view of the human self, and that such a view of the self is impossible without taking account of the rational and the moral enterprises themselves. The paper concludes that the moral point of view is anchored in the nature of selfhood so that one (...) can be neither rational and immoral nor prudent and immoral. (shrink)

MORALITY is an area of culture that is highly susceptible to philosophical skepticism. This has been so at least since the time of the Greek Sophists. But modern Western civilization seems to be especially prone to philosophical doubts about the moral enterprise because of widely shared assumptions and views in the modern age about the knowledge-yielding powers of the human mind. This particular trouble spot in the culture has received extensive philosophical attention ever since the seventeenth century, but activity in (...) moral philosophy has never been greater than in our own time. (shrink)

Rescher has presented a proof that a completed science is logically impossible; not every truth can be known. I show that the proof is valid only if it is read de re. One of its premises, however, is an obvious truth only on a de dicto reading; read de re it is false. What the proof shows, therefore, is that science has no limits and any true proposition can be known. We can, however, know it only in the meagre de (...) re, and not in the informationally rich de dicto, sense of 'know'. (shrink)

Darwin himself suggested the idea of generalizing the core Darwinian principles to cover the evolution of social entities. Also in the nineteenth century, influential social scientists proposed their extension to political society and economic institutions. Nevertheless, misunderstanding and misrepresentation have hindered the realization of the powerful potential in this longstanding idea. Some critics confuse generalization with analogy. Others mistakenly presume that generalizing Darwinism necessarily involves biological reductionism. This essay outlines the types of phenomena to which a generalized Darwinism applies, and (...) upholds that there is no reason to exclude social or economic entities. (shrink)

BY OVEREMPHASIZING MATERIALISTIC VALUES, we have perverted the culture and set modern Western civilization on a self-destructive course. Some critics have said that the economy, science, and technology are the only healthy aspects of our society. We have what I have called a saber-toothed tiger civilization. In the evolutionary process, the saber-toothed tiger developed great tusks as effective weapons in combat, but perished because they obstructed its eating. We have developed a culture that is highly successful in advancing science and (...) technology and producing wealth and power, but in doing so we have undermined and subjectivized the sectors of the culture that underwrite our identity, the meaning of our existence, and the norms and values by which we live our lives, organize our society, and run our institutions, including even science and the economy. But unlike the saber-toothed tiger, we can discover our error and correct our course. (shrink)

Maria Triassi,1 Elena Giancotti,2 Antonio Nardone,1 Giulia Mancini,3 Fabiana Rubba1 1Public, Preventive and Social Medicine School, University Federico II of Naples, Naples, Italy; 2Procurement and Transplantation Coordination, Naples, Italy; 3Sociology Unit, G D'annunzio University, Chieti-Pescara, Italy Introduction: The growing disparity between organ availability for transplantation and the number of patients in need has challenged the donation and transplantation community to develop innovative processes, ideas, and techniques to bridge this gap. Advances in the sharing of best practices in the donation community (...) have contributed greatly to this aim over the past 5 years. Studies published during the past five years were analyzed to gain insight on the evolving organizational areas and tools that the procurement and transplantation pathways have been focused on. The hypothesis assessed is that networking and efficacious handling of this complex path may be ameliorated by an adaptive organizational toolbox. Methods: A thorough search has been conducted using various databases, ie, Cochrane library, PubMed, EMBASE, Federico II University Open Archive. The evidence was considered following the Effective Practice and Organization of Care Group checklist. Prevalent organizational attitudes and areas were assessed, and various scenarios were analyzed. Initially, all titles and abstracts were screened. In the next phase, the full text of all abstracts considered potentially relevant by at least one of the reviewers was evaluated. Inconsistencies in decision-making within this second phase were solved based on consensus between both reviewers. In this phase, for every study we defined whether the organization was considered relevant and what the scenario was. The information was extracted from each study based on bibliographic details. As many as 1,071 studies were analyzed, and 81 were selected as potentially relevant. Results: We found three prevalent areas of interest focused on organizational elements: global organizational strategies scenario, clinical hospital organization, and citizenship and social scenario. Conclusion: We reached the conclusion that organization has a central role in different scenarios of procurement and transplantation in a continuum from government to hospital and finally among citizens. A standardized hospital pathway definitely remains the essential step in order to ameliorate either procurement or transplantation. Keywords: transplant procurement, management, organizational tool, network. (shrink)