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)

What kind of feeling is shame? Why are we ashamed and what are the consequences that this emotion has on the subject? Is it a private or a "social" emotion? How many types of shame exist? Is vicarious shame always shameful? What are the ways in which art has represented shame? What are the relations between shame, guilt, embarrassment and censorship? Is it possible to be immune to shame? Would "Not being ashamed" count as a virtue or is it a (...) morally reprehensible attitude? Sensibilia. Colloquium on Perception and Experience investigated the different ways in which shame can be described and staged, presupposed and understood. The proposals and the points of view collected in this volume relate in an original and interdisciplinary way different areas of research all equally interested in reflecting on a complex and stratified feeling. The result was a heated debate on (ancient and contemporary) inconvenient, thorny and "shameful" issues. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article examines the place of Machiavelli’sPrincein the history of ethics and the history of leadership philosophy. Close scrutiny indicates that Machiavelli advances an ethical system for leadership that involves uprooting corruption and establishing rule of law. He draws on history and current affairs in order to obtain a realistic understanding of human behavior that forms a basis for a consequentialist ethics. While he claims a good leader might do bad things, this is in situations where necessity constrains a prince (...) to choosing the “least bad” course of action. Furthermore, Machiavelli advocates winning the goodwill of followers through leadership as a source of power. Machiavelli’s leadership ethics has a sophistication not fully enjoyed by his reputation in management scholarship. He would not score as especially “Machiavellian” on the Mach IV. Many of his ideas contain seeds for theories that are now considered important for leadership today. (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)

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)

This anthology has contributions about the role of legal perspectives in many countries of the South.

The essays in this volume are the result of a project on Values in Tort Law directed by the Westminster Institute for Ethics and Human Values. We are indebted to the Board of Westminster Col lege for its financial support. The project involved two meetings of a mixed group of lawyers and philosophers to discuss drafts of papers and general issues in tort law. Beyond the principal researchers, whose papers appear here, we are grateful to John Bargo, Dick Bronaugh, Craig (...) Brown, Earl Cherniak, Bruce Feldthusen, Barry Hoffmaster and Steve Sharzer for their helpful discussion, and to Nancy Margolis for copy editing. All of these papers except one have appeared before in the journal Law and Philosophy (Vol. 1 No.3, December 1982 and Vol. 2 No.1, Apri11983). Chapman's paper which was previously published in The University of Western Ontario Law Review (Vol. 20 No.1, 1982) appears here with permission. Westminster Institute for Ethics and Human Values, M.D.B. Westminster College, London, Canada B.C. vii INTRODUCTION The law of torts is society's primary mechanism for resolving disputes arising from personal injury and property damage. (shrink)

We show that the analysis of Keisler’s order can be localized to the study of φ-types. Specifically, if is a regular ultrafilter on λ such that and M is a model whose theory is countable, then is λ+-saturated iff it realizes all φ-types of size λ.

The Birkhoff-Maltsev problem asks for a characterization of those lattices each of which is isomorphic to the lattice L(K) of all subquasivarieties for some quasivariety K of algebraic systems. The current status of this problem, which is still open, is discussed. Various unsolved questions that are related to the Birkhoff-Maltsev problem are also considered, including ones that stem from the theory of propositional logics.

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