The Many Faces of Patriotism debate the consequences of the 21st century's patriotic resurgence, examining it both in theoretical and comparative terms that draw on examples of patriotism from ancient Greece to post-apartheid South Africa.

We create a database of company codes of ethics from firms listed on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and, separately, a sample of small firms. The SEC believes that "ethics codes do, and should, vary from company to company." Using textual analysis techniques, we measure the extent of commonality across the documents. We find substantial levels of common sentences used by the firms, including a few cases where the codes of ethics are essentially identical. We consider these results (...) in the context of legal statements versus value statements. While legal writing often mandates duplication, we argue that value-based statements should be held to a higher standard of originality. Our evidence is consistent with isomorphic pressures on smaller firms to conform. (shrink)

"Margaret L. King has put together a highly representative selection of readings from most of the more significant—but by no means the most obvious—texts by the authors who made up the movement we have come to call the 'Enlightenment.' They range across much of Europe and the Americas, and from the early seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth. In the originality of the choice of texts, in its range and depth, this collection offers both wide coverage and (...) striking insights into the intellectual transformation which has done more than any other to shape the world in which we live today. It is _simply the best introduction to the subject now available_."_ —Anthony Pagden, UCLA, and author of _The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters_ Contents:_ Chronology, Introduction _Chapter One - Casting Out Idols: 1620–1697_ _Idols, or false notions: _Francis Bacon, _The New Instrument_ _I think, therefore I am: _René Descartes, Discourse on Method _God, or Nature: _Baruch Spinoza, _Ethics_ _The system of the world: _Isaac Newton, _Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_ _He searched for truth throughout his life: _Pierre Bayle, _Historical and Critical Dictionary_ _Chapter Two - _The Learned Maid: 1638–1740 _A face raised toward heaven:_ Anna Maria van Schurman, _Whether the Study of Letters Befits a Christian Woman_ _The worlds I have made:_ Margaret Cavendish, _The Blazing World_ _A finer sort of cattle:_ Bathsua Makin, _An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen_ _I warn you of the world:_ Madame de Maintenon, _Letter: On the Education of the Demoiselles of Saint-Cyr_, and _Instruction: On the World_ _The daybreak of your reason:_ Émilie Du Châtelet, _Fundamentals of Physics_ _Chapter Three - _A State of Perfect Freedom: 1689–1695 _The chief criterion of the True Church:_ John Locke, _Letter on Toleration_ _Freedom from any superior power on earth:_ John Locke, _Second Treatise on Civil Government_ _A white paper, with nothing written on it:_ John Locke, _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_ _Let your rules be as few as possible:_ John Locke, _Some Thoughts Concerning Education_ _From death, Jesus Christ restores all to life:_ John Locke, _The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures_ _Chapter Four - All Things Made New: 1725–1784_ _In the wilderness, they are reborn:_ Giambattista Vico, _The New Science_ _Without these Names, nothing can be known,_ Carl Linnaeus, _System of Nature_ _All the clouds at last are lifted:_ Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, _The Successive Advancement of the Human Mind_ _A genealogical or encyclopedic tree of knowledge:_ Jean le Rond d’Alembert, _Preliminary Discourse_ _Dare to know! :_ Immanuel Kant, _What Is Enlightenment?_ _Chapter Five - Mind, Soul, and God: 1740–1779_ _The narrow limits of human understanding:_ David Hume, _Anof a Book Lately Published_ _The soul is but an empty word:_ Julien Offray de La Mettrie, _Man a Machine_ _All is reduced to sensation:_ Claude Adrien Helvétius, _On the Mind_ _An endless web of fantasies and falsehoods:_ Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d’Holbach, _Common Sense_ _Let each believe that his own ring is real:_ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, _Nathan the Wise_ _Chapter Six - Crush That Infamous Thing: 1733–1764_ _This is the country of sects:_ Voltaire, _Philosophical Letters_ _Disfigured by myth, until enlightenment comes:_ Voltaire, _The Culture and Spirit of Nations_ _The best of all possible worlds:_ Voltaire, _Candide_ _Are we not all children of the same God?:_ Voltaire, _Treatise on Tolerance_ _If a book displeases you, refute it! :_ Voltaire, _Philosophical Dictionary_ _Chapter Seven - Toward the Greater Good: 1748–1776_ _Things must be so ordered that power checks power,_ Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, _The Spirit of the Laws_ _Complete freedom of trade must be ensured:_ François Quesnay, _General Maxims for the Economic Management of an Agricultural Kingdom_ _The nation's war against the citizen: Cesare_ Beccaria, _On Crimes and Punishments_ _There is no peace in the absence of justice:_ Adam Ferguson, _An Essay on the History of Civil Society_ _Led by an invisible hand:_ Adam Smith, _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_ _Chapter Eight - Encountering Others: 1688–1785_ _Thus died this great man:_ Aphra Behn, _Oroonoko: or The Royal Slave_ _Not one sins the less for not being Christian: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, _Embassy Letters_ _Do you not restore to them their liberty?:_ Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, _Philosophical and Political History of European Colonies and Commerce in the Two Indies_ _Some things which are rather interesting:_ Captain James Cook, _Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World_ _The inner genius of my being:_ Johann Gottfried von Herder, _Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humankind_ _Chapter - Nine Citizen of Geneva: 1755–1782_ _The most cunning project ever to enter the human mind: _Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Human Inequality_ _The supreme direction of the General Will:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract _Two lovers from a small town at the foot of the Alps,_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Julie, or the New Heloise_ _Build a fence around your child’s soul:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Emile, or On Education_ _This man will be myself:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Confessions_ _Chapter Ten - Vindications of Women: 1685–1792_ _No higher design than to get her a husband:_ Mary Astell, _Reflections on Marriage_ _The days of my bondage begin:_ Anna Stanisławska, _Orphan Girl_ _A dying victim dragged to the altar:_ Denis Diderot, _The Nun_ _Created to be the toy of man:_ Mary Wollstonecraft, _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ _Man, are you capable of being just?:_ Olympe de Gouges, _Declaration of the Rights of Woman as Citizen_ _Chapter Eleven - American Reverberations: 1771–1792_ _I took upon me to assert my freedom:_ Benjamin Franklin, _Autobiography_ _Freedom has been hunted round the globe:_ Thomas Paine, _Common Sense_ _Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights:_ Thomas Jefferson and Others, _Declaration of Independence_ _A safeguard against faction and insurrection:_ James Madison, _Federalist No. 10_ _An end to government by force and fraud:_ Thomas Paine, _The Rights of Man_ _Chapter Twelve - Enlightenment's End: 1790–1794_ _A partnership of the living, the dead, and those unborn:_ Edmund Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ _The future destiny of the human species:_ Nicolas de Condorcet, _A Sketch of a Historical Portrait of the Progress of the Human Mind_ Texts and Studies, Index. 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Teaching chemistry remains a profoundly challenging activity. This paper arises from reflection on the challenges of creating meaningful assessments. Herein a simple framework to assist in making more visible the different kinds of knowledge required for mastery of chemistry is described. Building from a realist foundation the purpose of this paper is to lay the intellectual scaffolding for the framework. By situating the framework theoretically, it is intended to highlight the value of engaging with philosophy for the project of knowledge (...) building in chemistry. Use of this framework has laid bare some significant limitations to the ways in which organic chemistry has been assessed. Making the visible to students aids in their engagement with knowledge and for a small minority has developed their understanding of science more generally. The framework provides a simple, easily usable tool for the evaluation of chemistry assessments. (shrink)

Observations of a sea urchin larvae show that most species adopt one of two life history strategies. One strategy is to make numerous small eggs, which develop into a larva with a required feeding period in the water column before metamorphosis. In contrast, the second strategy is to make fewer large eggs with a larva that does not feed, which reduces the time to metamorphosis and thus the time spent in the water column. The larvae associated with each strategy (...) have distinct morphologies and developmental processes that reflect their feeding requirements, so that those that feed exhibit indirect development with a complex larva, and those that do not feed form a morphologically simplified larva and exhibit direct development. Phylogenetic studies show that, in sea urchins, a feeding larva, the pluteus, is the ancestral form and the morphologically simplified direct‐developing larva is derived. The current hypothesis for evolution of the direct‐developing larval form in sea urchins suggests that major developmental changes occur by neutral loss of larval features after the crucial transition to a nonfeeding life history strategy. We present evidence from Clypeaster rosaceus, a sea urchin with a life history intermediate to the two strategies, which indicates that major developmental changes for accelerated development have been selected for in a larva that can still feed and maintains an outward, pluteus morphology. We suggest that transformation of larval form has resulted from strong selection on early initiation and acceleration of adult development. BioEssays 29:566–571, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Testimony of Sense: Empiricism and the Essay from Hume to Hazlitt by Tim MilnesMargaret WatkinsTim Milnes. The Testimony of Sense: Empiricism and the Essay from Hume to Hazlitt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. viii + 278. Hardback. ISBN: 9780198812739. $91.00.In his brief autobiography, “My Own Life,” Hume reports that “almost all [his] life has been spent in literary pursuits and occupations” (E-MOL: xxxi). This is one (...) of at least ten places in this brief work in which he associates himself with “letters” or “literature”—as compared to at most four associations with philosophy. The moral to be inferred is not that Hume considered himself not to be a philosopher. Rather, he conceived of philosophy as a kind of literature. The Treatise was itself a “literary attempt.” Indeed, opposition between the “literary” and “philosophical” aspects of a text would have been foreign to Hume and his contemporaries—a notion for a later age, despite his occasional loose distinction between the relevant genres, as in his list of writings “historical, philosophical, or literary” in “My Own Life” (E-MOL: xxxvi).Yet despite Hume’s own understanding of the continuity between philosophy and literature, broadly conceived, it is still common for contemporary philosophers to ignore literary questions in their examination of Hume’s work, or to presume that one can easily distinguish the “philosophical” parts from the “literary” ones. Tim Milnes’s The Testimony of Sense is therefore a welcome addition to the Hume literature (pun intended). With a particular focus on the essay—a genre of great importance to Hume—Milnes contributes to the small set of engagements with Hume from the disciplinary perspective of English literature. With training in both philosophy and literature, as well as established expertise on Romanticism and its own essays, Milnes is well-qualified for the task. The Testimony of Sense includes sustained engagement with Hume’s contemporaries and successors, but for the purposes of this review, I engage the book primarily as a Hume scholar for Hume scholars.Milnes’s story plays out in three acts. The first establishes the need for public trust created by a skeptical crisis, itself a product of Hume’s criticism of the epistemic program of thinkers in the Cartesian and Lockean traditions. The second explains how the essays of the long eighteenth century constitute a response to that need in various ways. The third reveals in detail how the Romantic essayists, particularly William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb, both respond to and deviate from the “neoclassical” essayists, typified by Hume and Samuel Johnson.The first chapter, “Self and Intersubjectivity,” lays the groundwork by articulating how Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, and Dugald Stewart identify the need for what we now call intersubjectivity. Milnes describes the common thread as a kind of “natural transcendentalism.” In what sense are these thinkers properly understood as [End Page 175] transcendentalists? The central idea seems to be that all posit things other than reason as “conditions of meaningful thought” (72). For Hume, it is the social, linguistic experience of a community of virtuous judges. The intricate relations between self and other essential to such a community get “internalized within the specular drama of the impartial spectator” (72) in Smith’s writing, which itself takes part in the drama through his “halting, qualified syntax” that mimics “everyday speech” (44). Reid posits a “prescience” of trust, which grounds our reliance on both human testimony and the uniformity of nature, itself undergirded by the design of a benevolent God. Stewart, who posits axiomatic truths that help constitute the “stamina of intellect,” goes furthest, actually calling these truths transcendental (55). This chapter also puts these eighteenth-century thinkers in conversation with twentieth-century theorists, including Habermas, Davidson, and Rorty.Chapter 2, “The Subject of Trust,” deepens the analysis by situating these “natural transcendentalisms” in the broader enlightenment context. In contrast to Descartes, Bacon, and Locke, who were suspicious of our reliance on the opinions of others, the eighteenth-century thinkers understand trust as prior to reason in various ways—though not prior to solidarity. The particulars in each case depend on their responses to skepticism and their accounts of the relation between... (shrink)

During the COVID-19 epidemic, the name of the 19th-century English physician John Snow (1813-1858) has cropped up to a surprising extent, notably in connection with the severe cholera epidemic of 1854 in the district of Golden Square, London. It is repeatedly stated that Snow brought this epidemic of waterborne disease to an end by removing the handle of the Broad Street pump. It is also widely known that this story is a myth. Nonetheless, the Broad Street pump story as told (...) by Snow's close friend Benjamin Ward Richardson remains embedded, partly, it is argued, because of its appeal to areas of the cultural consciousness. In America, Snow and his work on the epidemiology of cholera, including the Broad Street pump story, achieved a serious status which has endured, in one form or another, to the present day. In contrast to Britain, the heroic age of public health in America coincided with the optimism of the bacteriological revolution and higher hopes for medical science. However, this rapidly changing environment exacerbated differences of opinion as to what the small and emergent specialty of epidemiology should look like, what its project was, and where it should be based. Different versions of Snow's persona came to represent basic and often conflicting conceptions of epidemiology and the status (or lack of it) of its practitioners. For many, consciously or otherwise, the removal of the Broad Street pump handle remained an individualistic triumph, a single human intervention which resembled modern medicine in providing a “cure.”. (shrink)

This article explores decision making about social-ethical values issues by members of the public in the context of the recent Canadian federal election, held in late June 2004. All of these issues are sensitive and controversial, and I hesitated to address them in an article that I dedicate, with respect and admiration, to my friend and fellow medical lawyer-ethicist, Bernard Dickens. Over the years Bernie and I have discussed, debated and disagreed on many of them. It speaks to his tolerance, (...) reasonableness and wisdom that those occasions were for me always ones of learning and respect, colored by his inimitable sense of humor. I hope that Bernie feels that, in some small measure, this article reflects those same characteristics, ones that he has modeled for so many of us over the years of his distinguished career. (shrink)

In the outpatient ultrasound suite of a major urban medical center, the mood is somber. A young woman lies tense and anxious. Pregnant for the first time, she has experienced early first-trimester bleeding. The radiologist relates the ultrasound findings: there has been a small hemorrhage, but there is a six-week-size fetus with normal cardiac activity. Translation: the baby is alive! The woman quietly sobs, happy but apprehensive.Across the drive, in the main hospital building, a young boy lies unresponsively comatose (...) in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. He was hit by a car while riding his bicycle. He is relying on a ventilator to breath, but his cardiovascular system is supporting itself. After a series... (shrink)

The health care needs of rural populations often differ from those of their urban counterparts. And the ethical dilemmas that caregivers face are distinctively shaped in rural settings, not only by resource constraints, but by the nature of life in small, close-knit communities as well.

The nation is usually taken to be an expression, and ?nationalism? a defence, of culture. But we may have sanguinary national conflict (as in Northern Ireland or the former Yugoslavia) where cultural difference is small; and we may have minimal conflict (as in Switzerland or Belgium) where cultural difference is great. This essay proposes a shift, away from seeing nations as grounded in culture, to seeing them as grounded in ?identity? ? often forged by historical forces having nothing to (...) do with culture per se. This essay rejects a cultural argument for liberal nationalism (associated with the work of Raz, Miller and Kymlicka among others) precisely because it confounds national identity with common culture. Since nations diverge despite a common culture, ?common culture? cannot explain them. Identity is more fundamental. It persists where culture changes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionParenting Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders During the Transition to AdulthoodKelly Dineen and Margaret Bultas, Symposium EditorsThis issue of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics is devoted to the personal stories of parents or guardians whose children with ASDs are transitioning or have transitioned to adulthood. The same parents who navigated the educational and health systems with little support twenty years ago once again find themselves as pioneers in somewhat (...) unchartered territory. Transition to adulthood, again, presents new terrain without well–defined parameters or reliable expectations for individuals with ASD and the parents who support them. At current, very little has been studied or written about the unique perspectives of parents during transition. What does exist suggests that parents of individuals with autism perceive their experiences as novel, even as compared with parents of children with other kinds of disabilities (Woodgate, Ateach, & Secco, 2008).One in 88 children is estimated to have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 2012, a 78% increase since 2007 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012). Although a variety of factors are certainly involved, the rate of diagnosis of individuals with ASDs has increased dramatically over the last twenty years and by all accounts the level and quality of support in health and social systems have lagged behind.While support and interventions have progressed significantly over time, attention on older populations has played a secondary role to early interventions. The proliferation of young people with ASD has outpaced supportive efforts at all levels. ASDs are usually diagnosed in childhood and funding for and access to research and interventions for children have resulted from, in no small part, the zealous efforts of parents. As this growing population of individuals with ASDs transitions to adulthood, finding appropriate supports and interventions have proven more elusive and more complicated. The hallmark symptoms of ASDs include social skill deficits and communication and behavioral difficulties—all traits that especially strain typical teenage and young adult relationships. Recent research backs up these difficulties and indicates that individuals with ASDs fare relatively poorly in traditional measures of independence such as employment, education and social relationships. Parents like the authors in this symposium continue to work to help their teenage and adult children navigate the demands, challenges and rewards of adulthood and independence with all its uncertainties and surprises.The editors of this issue of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics solicited the personal stories of the parents who have navigated this transition. The call for stories was distributed to autism awareness groups, autism list–serves, bloggers, and social media outlets. Personal appeals to thought leaders and advocacy groups to distribute the call for stories also produced a number of responses. The [End Page 147] people and organizations that passed along our request and responded are too numerous to list here but our gratitude is sincere: their help made this issue possible.We hope the stories will give readers a sense of what parents find rewarding as well as especially challenging during this time and what actions and supports make a difference for the better. Stories about any aspect of the transition were welcome, ranging from navigating the health system to issues surrounding romantic relationships. We welcomed parents’ thoughts on any topic, including gender, level of function, provider behavior, stigma, friendship, services (existing or needed), decision making, independent living, co–morbidities, expectations, work, school or relationships.These topics and more emerged. Stories primarily came from mothers; however one father and one uncle also contributed. Consistent with diagnostic trends, most tell stories of parenting young men. The 12 stories that were selected for this edition represent just a fraction of the diverse set of issues, needs and commonalities of this growing population of adults. We received more stories than we could put in print. Twelve were selected to represent a range of experiences. Many other stories were so powerful that they will appear on–line in the Project MUSE edition of the journal.Commentators also represent a diverse group of professionals whose work includes direct care and support of individuals with ASD and their families, education, research, scholarship and advocacy. Some of our commentators also have a child or a loved one with ASD.Patricia Bashe... (shrink)

The cover page of John Gribbin's The Birth of Time, listing more than thirty books he has written on astronomy, physics, and general science, shows the success this author has had in making these subjects interesting to and understandable by the general public. The eight chapters of The Birth of Time, ending with a useful list of books for further reading and a well‐compiled index, do indeed present a readable account of a difficult subject: man's attempts, from the time of (...) the ancient Greeks onward, to understand what is out in the sky and our place in that world. The book contains no mathematics and can be enjoyed by general readers, high school students, and teachers.The first chapter is historical: an account of the progression from Arabic science at the end of the first millennium, including the discovery and recognition of fossils as indicators of a geological history of the earth, through the seventeenth century's beginnings of an attempt to understand this history. The second chapter provides an account of the twentieth century's growing knowledge of the physics of stars, with nuclear energy as the source of their outpouring radiation. The fundamental work of Sir Arthur Eddington at the University of Cambridge is described here, and a simple account is given of the evolution of stars, from their formation from clouds of gas and dust to their eventual death as spectacular explosions or as cold, inert lumps of mass.Only in Chapter 3 does the author get to the real basic techniques of distance measurement, starting with triangulation by surveyors on the earth's surface and proceeding with ever‐increasing baselines, as Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Galileo made their impact on our understanding of the solar system and measurement of the earth's distance from the sun made this baseline the tool for distance measurements of stars.The concept of “standard candles”—stars whose intrinsic luminosities could be determined and whose apparent brightness could be measured, thus yielding their distances—is described next. A fair description is given of the epochal discovery in 1912 by Henrietta Leavitt, working at the Harvard College Observatory on routine measurement of variable stars on photographic plates, of our nearest neighbor galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud. She discovered a tight relationship between the periods of variation of a certain class of variable stars, the Cepheids, with their overall brightness, thus giving posterity the most important starting tool for distance measurements of galaxies outside the Milky Way.As Gribbin takes readers through the history of the gradual understanding of the place of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, in the universe at large, the work of various heroes of these progressive discoveries and the pitfalls encountered by others are described, somewhat unevenly. The astronomer Vesto Slipher, observing the spectra of galaxies with the twenty‐four‐inch telescope at Lowell Observatory in northern Arizona, receives due credit for the first measurement of line‐of‐sight recession velocities of galaxies, from the Doppler shift of atomic lines in their spectra toward the red end of the spectrum. The role of Milton Humason, former mule driver, janitor, and eventually the famous associate of Edwin Hubble, in the discovery from these redshifts of the expansion of spacetime is well described. Allan Sandage, a former Hubble pupil who is clearly Gribbin's hero, might himself demur at the enthusiasm with which his work is described; while Gerard de Vaucouleurs, were he still with us, would not be pleased with the account of his work that led to a value for the Hubble Constant—the quantity that converts measured recession velocities of galaxies to their distances from us—twice that determined by Sandage.The description of Gribbin's own recent research , which he describes as “just one minor brick in the scientific edifice” , based as it was on his belief that our sun and solar system exist in a very ordinary average‐sized spiral galaxy, is quite interesting. It follows a chapter giving an account of recent additions to the arsenal of astronomers' tools for distance measurement in the universe—and also the nasty systematic biases that can slant the result away from what one hopes is correct.The book is illustrated by eight nicely printed pages of images obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is easy to read and tells its story in a friendly, chatty style. Though it concludes by suggesting a value of some 13 billion years ago as the epoch of “the birth of time,” the discerning reader will realize that the story is still evolving and that surprises can be expected. (shrink)

Most participatory strands of democratic theory hold a conception of the transformative potential of democratic participation. According to those theories, involvement in deliberative or decision-making processes makes better citizens by teaching them political skills and orienting them towards the common good. This article draws from original interviews with residents of housing coops to argue that this phenomenon can also be found outside formal decision-making forums, in menial and quotidian tasks undertaken for the preservation and maintenance of the organization. Using the (...) political theory of Mary Parker Follett, we suggest that involvement in practical concrete activities is an overlooked but significant element of democratic life. Residents of the coops we studied grew ‘power-with’ by joining others in accomplishing everyday tasks, such as blowing snow, gardening, or fixing shelves, and this collective power made them feel responsible for the organization they were a part of. Broadening our understanding of political participation to include those practical activities could be useful in assessing and devising plans for participatory reforms in small-scale local democracies, but also possibly at a larger scale that would produce the benefits of participation without requiring individuals to overly engage in demanding and complex procedures. (shrink)

Although many people choose to sign consent forms and participate in research, how many thoroughly read a consent form before signing it? Across 3 experiments using 348 undergraduate student participants, we examined whether personality characteristics as well as consent form content, format, and delivery method were related to thorough reading. Students repeatedly failed to read the consent forms, although small effects were found favoring electronic delivery methods and traditional format forms. Potential explanations are discussed and include participant apathy, participants (...) trying to save time by not reading the consent form, and participant assumptions about consent forms. (shrink)

At present, in the UK, live lobe donation of the lung is generally considered in the context of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) which is a life-threatening, inherited disease.1 However, if this technique is successfully developed it may be applicable to other patients with end stage lung disease. Cystic fibrosis is a disease where the major morbidity and mortality is due to pulmonary infection and respiratory failure.2 In l938 70% of patients born with CF died within one year of birth, (...) but now the average survival has improved to 32 years.1 The improved survival has been due to improved medical care, but also, and in very large measure, to the devotion of the families who have carried out time-consuming daily treatments such as chest physiotherapy, nebuliser treatment, high calorie diets etc. To these patients and their families lung transplantation brought new hope.3 The first successful transplant for CF was performed in the UK in 1985 and we now have patients alive and well more than ten years after transplantation. However, sadly, nearly 50% of patients with CF die on the transplant waiting list because of a shortage of donor organs from brain stem dead donors. This is a tragedy for the individual patient, the families and those who care for them. Is there a way forward? Education of the public so that a relative of a brain dead individual will give permission for the organs to be used has been carried out for many years but only with a small increase in the number of available organs. “Required request” where doctors would be required, by law, to ask relatives of brain dead patients to consider transplantation and “assume consent” where consent to donation is assumed unless there is evidence to the contrary, do not have the …. (shrink)

This modest volume provides an abridgement of the City of God and a small selection of other passages relating to political affairs, broadly conceived. It has a twenty-page introduction by Ernest L. Fortin; and there are brief introductions to specific sections. The bulk is taken up with the City of God. By including chapters from each book, the editors avoid the danger of distorting the theological shape of the work by over-concentrating on the overtly political passages of book 19 (...) in particular. That is important. This very comprehensiveness, however, leads one to ask whether it would not be better to let students loose on the whole text; for any selection will entail some significant omissions. (shrink)

Fair Trade coffee campaigns have improved the lives of small-scale coffee farmers and their families by raising wages, creating direct trade links to farming cooperatives, and providing access to affordable credit and technological assistance. Consumer demand for Fair Trade certified coffee is at an all-time high, yet cooperatives that produce it are only able to sell about half of their crops at the established fair trade price. This article explores the reasons behind this gap between supply and demand and (...) suggests ways to close it. The authors also offer some perspective on the limits of ethical consumption campaigns such as Fair Trade coffee. (shrink)

This paper addresses whether, how, and to what extent social studies student teachers who have been introduced to inquiry-oriented teaching (as manifest in the National Council for the Social Studies C3 Framework) in their secondary social studies methods course incorporate this approach into the planning for their practicum experience. Based on analysis of lesson plans used in the practicum and follow-up interviews with a small subset of student teachers, this paper analyzes the factors that promote or inhibit use of (...) this approach to teaching in their practicum experience. Results indicate the C3-oriented teaching approach, as taught in the methods course, did appear in the student teachers’ lesson plans. A small subset of student teachers used the framework competently while two smaller subsets were less adept in their application. The degree of application was affected by student teachers’ perceptions of their school placements and students’ needs. (shrink)

Small family businesses have generally been shown to exhibit significant concern for social responsibility, especially at the community level. Despite the reported heterogeneity of family firms in their preferences for and participation in social responsibility, the drivers of such differences are not agreed upon in the literature. We draw from enlightened self-interest and social capital theories by exploring their complementary and competing implications for the effect of duration and community satisfaction on participation in community-oriented social responsibility. Additionally, drawing on (...) the association between gender and self-construal and evidence that gender shapes helping and giving behaviors, we assess the moderating role of the gender of the firm manager in these relationships. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 279 family businesses and find support that gender moderates the relationship between community duration and satisfaction and measures of CSR. (shrink)

This paper focuses on ethics in community-based participatory research (CBPR) from inception to post-publication. Central to CBPR is a collaborative, partnership approach that recognises the strengths of partners and engages their distinctive voice and knowledge in the research process. While the ethical complexities that arise in the course of research practice in CBPR can transcend individual projects, they are also grounded in the particularity of the project, community, and research partners. This paper reflects on the experiences of two participatory social (...) policy research projects on housing in Ireland, conducted over the past three years. These projects involved collaborating with older people living in rural areas nationwide and with residents of small communities on offshore islands. The paper explores the ethics of engagement (regarding methods of involvement and access), and the ethics of representation (incorporating the depiction and sharing of research findings) and argues that researchers must pay attention to the specificity of each project and be alive to generating an organic research ethics in how research is set up, conducted, represented, and disseminated. In so doing, we can better foster agency and authenticity in the relationships developed throughout research processes and reflect on and meet shared values and responsibilities. (shrink)

The contribution of inherited non‐genetic factors to complex diseases is of great current interest. The ways in which mothers and fathers can affect their offspring's health clearly differ as a result of the intimate interactions between mother and offspring during pre‐ and postnatal life. There is, however, potential for some overlap in mechanisms, particularly epigenetic mechanisms. A small number of epidemiological studies and animal models have investigated the non‐genetic contribution of the parents to offspring health. Discovering new mechanisms of (...) disease inheritance is technically difficult, especially in genetically, socially and environmentally heterogeneous human populations. Therefore, rigorous experimental design, appropriate sample numbers and the use of high‐throughput technologies are necessary to provide convincing evidence. Based on recent examples from the literature, here we propose several ways to improve human studies that aim to identify the underlying mechanisms of transgenerational inheritance of metabolic disease. (shrink)

Is the universe really governed by a small set of unifying fundamental laws, as many thinkers have claimed since ancient times? Philosophers who call themselves naturalists believe that the way to settle such questions is to look carefully at what empirical science tells us. In this book, Margaret Morrison argues that if we really do this, we find that science currently does not give us any reason to believe the common picture of the world in which everything can (...) be reduced to a vanishingly small set of entities and forces. Like Nancy Cartwright and John Dupree, Morrison believes that science reveals a world of numerous different sorts of entities and processes, described by different sorts of explanation. Trying to come up with unified descriptions of phenomena does play an important role in science, says Morrison, but there are different types of unification. The sort in which one set of entities can be reductively identified with another occurs rarely. What we find more often are various ways of subsuming different phenomena under similar mathematical formalisms. An urge to unify, in different guises, is an important research motivator, Morrison argues, but it is not the sort of monolithic engine of science that many make it out to be. (shrink)

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had an enormous influence on twentieth-century philosophy even though only one of his works, the famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, was published in his lifetime. Beyond this publication the impact of his thought was mainly conveyed to a small circle of students through his lectures at Cambridge University. Fortunately, many of his ideas have survived in both the dictations that were subsequently published, and the notes taken by his students, among them Alice Ambrose and the late Margaret (...) Macdonald, from 1932 to 1935. These notes, now edited by Professor Ambrose, are here published, and they shed much light on Wittgenstein's philosophical development. Among the topics considered are the meaning of a word and its relation to common usage, rules of grammar and their relation to fact, the grammar of first person statements, language games, and the nature of philosophy. This volume is indispensable to any serious discussion of Wittgenstein's work. (shrink)

With the advent of the 21st century, the way characters and identities interact under the influence of dominant powers has brought a new world into existence, a world dubbed by Manuel Castells as the ‘Fourth World’. Within the Castellsian theoretical matrix of the Fourth World and politics of identity, the present study seeks to investigate the true nature of the futuristic world Margaret Atwood has created in the MaddAddam trilogy. The trilogy literarily reflects a global crisis that ultimately leads (...) to dystopia and the destruction of the human race: what remains of humanity is a small group of survivors who must struggle to conserve what remains of humanity. Identity as the main determining factor in the Fourth World represents personal and public privileges, characteristics, and means of differentiating oneself from others. The Fourth World and its political peculiarities reflect contemporary powers, i.e. the power of the network society, network communication and media. Humankind, in this wheel, is just a toy in the hands of an intelligence broker. What exactly happens to human and semi-human characters in Atwood’s trilogy is the result of Fourth World structures and values, and how they shape and reconstruct identities to lead the world toward fabricated truths and values, and terminate in dystopia. (shrink)

Cases of modest sociality are cases of small scale shared intentional agency in the absence of asymmetric authority relations. I seek a conceptual framework that adequately supports our theorizing about such modest sociality. I want to understand what in the world constitutes such modest sociality. I seek an understanding of the kinds of normativity that are central to modest sociality. And throughout we need to keep track of the relations—conceptual, metaphysical, normative—between individual agency and modest sociality. In pursuit of (...) these theoretical aims, I propose that a central phenomenon is shared intention. I argue that an adequate understanding of the distinctiveness of the intentions of individuals allows us to provide a construction of attitudes of the participants, and of relevant inter-relations and contexts that constitutes shared intention. I explain how shared intention, so understood, differs from a simple equilibrium within common knowledge. And I briefly contrast my views with aspects of views of John Searle and Margaret Gilbert. (shrink)

In 1665–1666, both Margaret Cavendish and Robert Hooke wrote about the beard of a wild oat. After looking through the microscope at the wild oat, Hooke describes the nature of what he is seeing in terms of a “small black or brown bristle” and believes that the microscope can improve the human senses. Cavendish responds to him regarding the seeing of the texture of a wild oat through the microscope and critiques his mechanistic explanation. This paper takes up (...) the controversy between Cavendish and Hooke regarding the wild oat as two forms of a broadly Baconian enterprise. Challenging Lisa Walters and Eve Keller, who suppose that Cavendish was against the “Baconian enterprise as a whole,” the argument in this paper is that Cavendish is opposed to Hooke’s defense of instruments as recovering Edenic glory in the Micrographia, but not to the Baconian enterprise as a whole. (shrink)

This essay explores small “ordinary” experiences of moral harm as problems of social injustice. Starting with two stories, we first argue against a dominant framework of personal responsibility that assigns responsibility to particular blameworthy agents. Instead we sketch an account of why structural responsibility for social harm must be considered, drawing on the work of Iris Marion Young and Pierre Bourdieu. Finally, drawing on Margaret Walker’s notion of moral repair and Christopher Marshall’s interpretation of the parable of the (...) Good Samaritan, we sketch an account of Christian moral responsibility grounded in restorative justice that seeks to address daily experiences of moral harm through the moral repair work of neighbor-love. (shrink)

Atheism as a belief does not have to present intellectual credentials within academia. Yet to hold beliefs means giving reasons for doing so, ones which may be found wanting. Instead, atheism is the automatic default setting within the academic world. Conversely, religious belief confronts a double standard. Religious believers are not permitted to make truth claims but are instead forced to present their beliefs as part of one language game amongst many. Religious truth claims are expected to satisfy empiricist criteria (...) of evidence but when they fail, as they must, religious belief becomes subject to the hermeneutics of suspicion. This book explores religious experience as a justifiable reason for religious belief. It uniquely demonstrates that the three pillars of critical realism --ontological intransitivity, epistemic relativity and judgemental rationality -- can be applied to religion as to any other beliefs or theories. The three authors are critical realists by philosophical position. They seek to establish a level playing field between religion and secular ideas, which has not existed in the academic world for some generations, in order for reasoned debate to be conducted. (shrink)

The paper presents an argument for treating certain types of computer simulation as having the same epistemic status as experimental measurement. While this may seem a rather counterintuitive view it becomes less so when one looks carefully at the role that models play in experimental activity, particularly measurement. I begin by discussing how models function as “measuring instruments” and go on to examine the ways in which simulation can be said to constitute an experimental activity. By focussing on the connections (...) between models and their various functions, simulation and experiment one can begin to see similarities in the practices associated with each type of activity. Establishing the connections between simulation and particular types of modelling strategies and highlighting the ways in which those strategies are essential features of experimentation allows us to clarify the contexts in which we can legitimately call computer simulation a form of experimental measurement. (shrink)

Forgiveness and Retribution: Responding to Wrongdoing argues that ultimately, forgiveness is always the appropriate response to wrongdoing. In recent decades, many philosophers have claimed that unless certain conditions are met, we should resent those who have wronged us personally and that criminal offenders deserve to be punished. Conversely, Margaret Holmgren posits that we should forgive those who have ill-treated us, but only after working through a process of addressing the wrong. Holmgren then reflects on the kinds of laws and (...) social practices a properly forgiving society would adopt. (shrink)

Involuntary psychiatric commitment for suicide prevention and physician aid-in-dying (PAD) in terminal illness combine to create a moral dilemma. If PAD in terminal illness is permissible, it should also be permissible for some who suffer from nonterminal psychiatric illness: suffering provides much of the justification for PAD, and the suffering in mental illness can be as severe as in physical illness. But involuntary psychiatric commitment to prevent suicide suggests that the suffering of persons with mental illness does not justify ending (...) their own lives, ruling out PAD. Since both practices have compelling underlying justifications, the most reasonable accommodation might seem to be to allow PAD for persons with mental illness whose suffering is severe enough to justify self-killing, but prohibit PAD for persons whose suffering is less severe. This compromise, however, would require the articulation of standards by which persons’ mental as well as physical suffering could be evaluated. Doing so would present a serious philosophical challenge. (shrink)

Volume 18, Issue 5, October 2019, Page 535-544.

In this paper I argue for a distinction between subjective and value laden aspects of judgements showing why equating the former with the latter has the potential to confuse matters when the goal is uncovering the influence of political influences on scientific practice. I will focus on three separate but interrelated issues. The first concerns the issue of ‘verification’ in computational modelling. This is a practice that involves a number of formal techniques but as I show, even these allegedly objective (...) methods ultimately rely on subjective estimation and evaluation of different types of parameters. This has implications for my second point which relates to uncertainty quantification—an assessment of the degree of uncertainty present in a particular modelling scenario. I argue that while this practice also involves subjective elements, in no way does that detract from its status as an epistemic exercise. Finally I discuss the relation between accuracy and uncertainty and how each relates to judgements that embody social/ethical/political concerns, in particular those associated with high consequence systems. (shrink)