What is the nature of children's trust in testimony? Is it based primarily on evidential correlations between statements and facts, as stated by Hume, or does it derive from an interest in the trustworthiness of particular speakers? In this essay, we explore these questions in an effort to understand the developmental course and cognitive bases of children's extensive reliance on testimony. Recent work shows that, from an early age, children monitor the reliability of particular informants, differentiate between those who make (...) true and false claims and keep that differential accuracy in mind when evaluating new information from these people. We argue that this selective trust is likely to involve the mentalistic appraisal of speakers rather than surface generalizations of their behavior. Finally, we review the significance of children's deference to adult authority on issues of naming and categorization. In addition to challenging a purely inductive account of trust, these and other findings reflect a potentially rich set of tools brought by children to the task of learning from people's testimony. (shrink)

Psychologists have emphasized children's acquisition of information through firsthand observation. However, many beliefs are acquired from others' testimony. In two experiments, most 4yearolds displayed sceptical trust in testimony. Having heard informants' accurate or inaccurate testimony, they anticipated that informants would continue to display such differential accuracy and they trusted the hitherto reliable informant. Yet they ignored the testimony of the reliable informant if it conflicted with what they themselves had seen. By contrast, threeyearolds were less selective in trusting a reliable (...) informant. Thus, young children check testimony against their own experience and increasingly recognise that some informants are more trustworthy than others. (shrink)

How do children acquire beliefs from testimony? In this chapter, we discuss children's trust in testimony, their sensitivity to and use of defeaters, and their appeals to positive reasons for trusting what other people tell them. Empirical evidence shows that, from an early age, children have a tendency to trust testimony. However, this tendency to trust is accompanied by sensitivity to cues that suggest unreliability, including inaccuracy of the message and characteristics of the speaker. Not only are children sensitive to (...) evidence of unreliability, but they are also sensitive to the positive reasons a speaker may have for the reliability of their testimony. This evidence is discussed in relation to reductivist and non-reductivist viewpoints. (shrink)

Paul Appelbaum and colleagues propose four models of informed consent to research that deploys whole genome sequencing and may generate incidental findings. They base their analysis on empirical data that suggests that research participants want to be offered incidental findings and on a normative consensus that researchers incur a duty to offer them. Their models will contribute to the heated policy debate about return of incidental findings. But in my view, they do not ask the foundational question, In the (...) context of genome sequencing, how much work can consent be asked to do? (shrink)

[1] The phenomenology of Edmund Husserl -- The existential philosophy of Albert Camus -- The existenz philosophy of Karl Jaspers -- The philosophy of Gabriel Marcel -- The philosophy of Martin Heidegger -- v. 2. The existential philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard -- The existential philosophy of Ortega y Gasset -- The philosophy of Martin Buber -- The existential philosophy of Nicolas Berdyaev -- The philosophy of Paul Ricoeur.

Table of Contents Volume I Preface to Volumes I and II: A Guide to the Primer Chapter 1, Basic Ideas and Tools Chapter 2, Transcription between English and Sentence Logic Chapter 3, Logical Equivalence, Logical Truths, and Contradictions Chapter 4, Validity and Conditionals Chapter 5, Natural Deduction for Sentence Logic: Fundamentals Chapter 6, Natural Deduction for Sentence Logic: Strategies Chapter 7, Natural Deduction for Sentence Logic: Derived Rules and Derivations without Premises Chapter 8, Truth Tree for Sentence Logic: Fundamentals Chapter (...) 9, Truth Trees for Sentence Logic: Applications Index for Volume 1 Solutions Manual for Volume 1 Table of Contents to Volume II Introduction to Predicate Logic Notes Chapter 1, Predicate Logic: Syntax Chapter 2, Predicate Logic: Semantics and Validity Chapter 3, More about Quantifiers Chapter 4, Transcription Chapter 5, Natural Deduction for Predicate Logic: Fundamentals Chapter 6, More on Natural Deduction for Predicate Logic Chapter 7, Truth Tress for Predicate Logic: Fundamentals Chapter 8, More on Truth Tress for Predicate Logic Chapter 9, Identity, Functions, and Definite Descriptions Chapter 10, Metatheory: The Basic Concepts Chapter 11, Mathematical Induction Chapter 12, Soundness and Completeness for Sentence Logic Trees Chapter 13, Soundness and Completeness for Sentence Logic Derivations Chapter 14, Koenig’s Lemma, Compactness, and Generalization to Infinite Sets of Premises Chapter 15, Interpretations, Soundness, and Completeness for Predicate Logic Index for Volume II Solutions Manual for Volume II Diagrammatic Summary of Rules Corrections to the Text. (shrink)

PHOTO ID 121339257© Designer491| Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT When physicians use their clinical knowledge and skills to advance the well-being of their patients, there may be apparent conflict between patient autonomy and physician beneficence. We are skeptical that today’s medical ethics education adequately fosters future physicians’ commitment to beneficence, which is both rationally defensible and fundamentally consistent with patient autonomy. We use an ethical dilemma that was presented to a group of third-year medical students to examine how ethics education might be causing (...) them to give undue deference to autonomy, thereby undermining their commitment to beneficence. INTRODUCTION The right of patients to choose which treatments they prefer is rooted in today’s social mores and taught as a principle of medical ethics as respect for autonomy. Yet, when physicians use their clinical knowledge and skills to advance the well-being of their patients, there may be a conflict between patient autonomy and physician beneficence. We are skeptical that today’s medical ethics education adequately fosters a commitment to beneficence, which is both rationally defensible and fundamentally consistent with patient autonomy. I. An Ethical Dilemma The impetus for this paper arose when students who were completing their third clinical year discussed a real-life ethical dilemma. A middle-aged man developed a pulmonary hemorrhage while on blood thinners for a recently placed coronary stent. The bleeding was felt to be reversible, but the patient needed immediate intubation or he would die. The cardiologist was told that the patient previously expressed to other physicians that he never wanted to be intubated. However, the cardiologist made the decision to intubate the patient anyway, and the patient eventually recovered.[1] Students were asked if they believed that the cardiologist had acted ethically. Their overwhelming response was, “No, the patient should have been allowed to die.” We looked into how students applied ethical reasoning to conclude that this outcome was ethically preferred. To explore how the third-year clinical experience might have formed the students’ judgment, we presented the same case to students who were just beginning their third year. Their responses were essentially uniform in recommending intubation. While there is likely more than one reasonable view in this case, we agree with the physician and the younger medical students that intubation was the ethically appropriate decision and will present an argument for it. But first, we explain the reasoning behind the more advanced medical students’ decision to choose patient autonomy at the expense of beneficence. II. Medical Ethics Education and the Priority of Autonomy Beauchamp and Childress’s Principles of Biomedical Ethics, first published in 1979 and now in its 8th edition, is a significant part of the formal ethics education in medical school.[2] Students learn an ethical decision-making approach based on respect for four ethical principles: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. While Beauchamp and Childress officially afford no prima facie superiority to any principle, the importance of respect for patient autonomy has increased through the editions of their book. For example, early editions of their book opposed the legalization of physician-assisted death compared to recent editions that defended it.[3] As another example, Beauchamp and Childress make paternalism harder to justify by adding an autonomy-protecting condition to the list of conditions for acceptable paternalism.[4] Authority, they contend, need not conflict with autonomy—provided the authority is autonomously chosen.[5] “The main requirement,” they write, “is to respect a particular patient’s or subject’s autonomous choices, whatever they may be.[6] In the principlism of Beauchamp and Childress, autonomy now seems to have a kind of default priority.[7] However, the bioethics discourse has strong counternarratives, noting some movement to elevate the role of beneficence and to respect the input of stakeholders, including the family and the healthcare team. Ethics education achieves particular relevance in the third clinical year when students become embedded in the care of patients and learn from what has been called the informal curriculum. They observe how attending physicians approach day-to-day ethical problems at the patient’s bedside. In this context, students observe the importance of informed consent for serious treatments or invasive procedures, a practice that highlights the principle of patient autonomy. In both the formal and informal curriculum, medical students observe how, in the words of Paul Wolpe, “patient autonomy has become the central and most powerful principle in ethical decision-making in American medicine.”[8] In short, students appear to learn a deference for patient autonomy. This curricular shift in favor of autonomy coincides with legal developments that protect patients’ rights and decision-making with respect to their healthcare choices. The priority of autonomy in medicine benefits patients by reflecting their choices and, in some cases, their fundamental liberty. III. The Practice of Medicine and the Commitment to Beneficence There are many critiques of the dominant place that autonomy has in biomedical ethics,[9] especially considering that autonomy seems to be biased toward individualistic, Western, and somewhat American culture-driven values.[10] In addition, many bioethical dilemmas are cast as a conflict between autonomy and beneficence. Our point is that medical students bring to their study of medicine a commitment to beneficence that seems to be suppressed by practical ethics education. We think this commitment is rationally defensible and should be nurtured. It is striking that young medical students have a pre-reflective commitment to beneficence at all. For, as we mentioned, it is not just medicine but Western culture generally that prioritizes autonomy in settling ethical dilemmas. In wanting to act for the good of others (rather than simply agreeing to what others want), physicians are already swimming somewhat against the cultural tide.[11] However, doing so makes sense, given the nature of medicine and the profession of healing. When prospective medical students are asked why they wish to become physicians, the usual answer is some variation on caring for the sick and preventing disease. It is unlikely that a reason to become a physician is to respect a patient’s autonomy. It would be easy to dismiss medical students’ commitment to beneficence as a mere intuition and contrary to a more reasoned and deliberative approach. Beauchamp and Childress seem to minimize the value of physician intuition, stating that justifications for certain procedures are “…supported by good reasons. They need not rest merely in intuition or feeling.”[12] Henry Richardson writes that “situational or perceptive intuition…leaves the reasons for decision unarticulated.”[13] We think this is a crude and rather thin way of understanding intuition. Some bioethicists have defended intuition as essential to the practice of medicine and not something opposed to reason.[14] In the case we describe, we believe the ethical justifications s for the patient’s intubation are fundamentally sound: the patient did not have a “do not intubate” order written in the chart, the emergency intubation had not been foreseen, so the patient did not have the opportunity to consent to or reject intubation; the patient had consented to the treatment for his cardiac disease so his consent for intubation could have been assumed;[15] and the consequences of respecting his autonomy did not justify allowing him to die.[16] While it is possible to have more than one reasonable view on this case, we think the case for beneficence is strong and certainly should not be dismissed out of hand. We do not deny that if a patient makes a clearly documented, well-informed decision to forgo intubation that this decision ought to be respected by the physician (even if the physician disagrees with the patient’s decision). But, in this situation, as in many others in the practice of medicine, the patient’s real wishes and preferences are not well-articulated in advance. There are many cases where a physician acts based on what she believes the patient, or the surrogate, would want, sometimes in situations that do not allow much time for reflection. An example might be resuscitation of a newborn at the borderline of viability. In their ethics education, beneficence would mean acting first to save a life. If the patient or surrogate makes an informed decision to the contrary, a beneficent physician respects that autonomous decision. In the case presented, the patient expressed gratitude to the cardiologist when extubated. But what if he had expressed anger at the physician for violating his autonomy? There are those who could argue that not only was intubation ethically wrong but that the cardiologist put himself in legal jeopardy by his actions (especially if there had been a written refusal applicable to the specific situation). In the example we use, we point out that the cardiologist may not have escaped a lawsuit if the patient had died without intubation. His family, when hearing the circumstances, may have sued for failure to act and dereliction of the cardiologist’s duty to save him. Beyond a potential legal challenge for either action or inaction, there is an overriding ethical question the cardiologist had to address: what course would be most satisfying to his conscience? Would he rather allow a patient to die for fear of recrimination, or act to save his life, regardless of the personal consequences? In the absence of real knowledge about the patient’s considered wishes, it is most reasonable to err on the side of promoting patient well-being. A physician’s commitment to beneficence is not necessarily a way of undermining a patient’s autonomy. In acting for the patient's good, physicians are also acting on what it is reasonable to believe a patient (or most patients, perhaps) would want, which is obviously connected to what a patient does want. Pellegrino and Thomasma argue that beneficence includes respect for a patient’s autonomy since “the best interests of the patient are intimately linked with their preferences.”[17] Instead of conceptualizing ethical dilemmas in medicine as conflicts between autonomy and beneficence, it is possible that medical schools could teach students that truly practicing beneficence is a way of valuing patient autonomy, especially when the patient’s wishes are not specific to the situation and are not clearly expressed. CONCLUSION It is important for students and practicing physicians to understand the principle of respect for patient autonomy in a pluralistic society that demands personal self-determination. However, the role of the physician as a beneficent healer should not be diminished by this respect for autonomy. Respecting a patient’s autonomy is grounded in and manifested by physician beneficence.[18] That is, seeking what is good for the patient can only be good if it respects their personhood and dignity. We propose that a commitment to beneficence, incipient in young medical students, should be developed over time with their other clinical reasoning skills. Such a commitment need not be sacrificed on the altar of patient autonomy. Beneficence needs greater relative moral weight with students as they proceed in their ethics education. - [1] S. Jauhar, “When Doctors Need to Lie,” New York Times, February 22, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/when-doctors-need-to-lie.html. [2] T. L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 8th ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019). [3] Louise A. Mitchell, “Major Changes in Principles of Biomedical Ethics,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14, no. 3 (2014): 459–75, https://doi.org/10.5840/ncbq20141438. [4] Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 8th ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019), 238. [5] Beauchamp and Childress, 103. [6] Beauchamp and Childress, p. 108. [7] For other accounts that prioritize autonomy, see e.g. Allen E. Buchanan and Dan W. Brock, Deciding for Others: The Ethics of Surrogate Decision Making (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 38–39; R Gillon, “Ethics Needs Principles—Four Can Encompass the Rest—and Respect for Autonomy Should Be ‘First among Equals,’” Journal of Medical Ethics 29, no. 5 (October 2003): 307–12, https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.29.5.307. For examples of critiques of these accounts, see footnote 9. [8] P. R. Wolpe, “The Triumph of Autonomy in American Bioethics: A Sociological View,” in Bioethics and Society: Constructing the Ethical Enterprise, p. 43. [9] V. A. Entwistle et al., “Supporting Patient Autonomy: The Importance of Clinician-Patient Relationships,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 25, no. 7 (July 2010): 741–45; C. Foster, Choosing Life, Choosing Death: The Tyranny of Autonomy in Medical Ethics and Law, 1st ed. (Oxford ; Hart Publishing, 2009); O. O’Neill, Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics, The Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh 2001 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002). [10] P. Marshall and B. Koenig, “Accounting for Culture in a Globalized Bioethics,” The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics: A Journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics 32, no. 2 (2004): 252–66; R. Fan, “Self-Determination vs. Family-Determination: Two Incommensurable Principles of Autonomy,” Bioethics 11, no. 3–4 (1997): 309–22. [11] Arguments stressing the importance of beneficence, as ours does here, certainly approach paternalistic arguments. We set aside the complex issue of paternalism for purposes of this paper and simply note that the principle of beneficence as such does not say anything specifically about acting against the patient’s will. In the case study that focuses this paper, we do not believe the patient’s will or wishes were clearly indicated. [12] Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, p. 20, see note 2 above. [13] H. S. Richardson, “Specifying, Balancing, and Interpreting Bioethical Principles,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine 25, no. 3 (January 1, 2000): 285–307, p. 287. [14] H. D. Braude, Intuition in Medicine a Philosophical Defense of Clinical Reasoning (Chicago ; University of Chicago Press, 2012). [15] R. Kukla, “Conscientious Autonomy: Displacing Decisions in Health Care,” The Hastings Center Report 35, no. 2 (2005): 34–44. [16] M. Schermer, The Different Faces of Autonomy: Patient Autonomy in Ethical Theory and Hospital Practice, vol. 13, Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2002). [17] E. D. Pellegrino and D. C. Thomasma, For the Patient’s Good - the Restoration of Beneficence in Health Care (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 29. [18] Pellegrino and Thomasma, For the Patient’s Good. 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Paul Weiss systematically maps creativity in its many manifestations—creative ventures in the arts, in mathematics and the sciences, in moral development, in social movements, and in government.

Book jacket/back: 'Being and Other Realities, ' by our greatest living metaphysician, pushes Paul Weiss's philosophy to new subtlety. It moves on two fronts. On one, it further refines the categorial scheme Weiss has been developing over 50 years. On the other, it is a shining example of radical questioning and exploration. This is an important book, especially for philosophers like myself, who believe being is not another reality. --Robert C. Neville, Boston University, Author of Normative Cultures and The (...) Truth of Broken Symbols. (shrink)

:The “new institutionalist revolution” in social sciences has led to a repositioning of social norms to the forefront of the pre-analytic vision in institutional theory and to the consolidation of the contextual analysis approach. That has significant epistemological, methodological, and political philosophy implications. This essay follows the logic of these developments showing: why they inherently lead to the feasibility problem, the key of applied theory, toward which both contemporary philosophy and institutional analysis converge from different venues; how feasibility is a (...) nexus of empirical, counterfactual, normative, and contextual elements, that is, something more complex than a mere matching between empirical reality and institutional design; what are the governance implications of all of the above, with an emphasis on an alternative approach and in which the public choice process is seen mainly as endogenized, socialized, and institutionalized, as opposed to formalized, intellectualized, and externalized. (shrink)

This article is a revised version of a lecture delivered at the Colloque ‘Histoire des Mentalités, Histoire des résistances, ou les Prisons de longue durée, Aix-La Baume, 20–21–22 septembre 1980.

L'auteur veut montrer que la création ou créativité (poiêsis) fait partie de l'essence même du sujet : lequel peut se définir tout entier comme un générateur de création, un être créateur (zôon poiêtikon) qui, de par ses attributs ontologiques mêmes, recrée le monde avec lequel il est en contact et le peuple de ses propres productions. Mais, dans le même temps, il manifeste une tendance constante à s'oublier lui-même derrière ses créations et à doter celles-ci d'une réalité objective, hypostasiée : (...) d'où l'évocation métaphorique proposée du myosotis, cette fleur qu'on appelle couramment « ne m'oubliez pas ». The author wants to show that creation or creativeness (poiêsis) is part of the very intrinsic nature of the subject: which can be wholly defined as a generator of creation, a creative being (zôon poiêtikon) who by his very ontological attributes recreates the world he is in contact with, and fills it with his own productions. But, in the same time, he manifests a constant tendency to forget himself behind his creations and endow them with a substantial objective reality: hence the metaphorical evocation suggested by the myosotis, this flower commonly called « forget me not ». (shrink)

Descartes a occupé le centre de la scène intellectuelle en Angleterre bien que son influence ait été due à des circonstances accidentelles et à de vigoureuses critiques plutôt qu’à des disciples consciencieux. Son rationalisme offrait la certitude en religion et une interprétation de la science. Mélangé à l’expéri- mentalisme anglais, il a créé une ambiguïté dans la méthode scientifique et il a conduit à des controverses sur la nature de la connaissance. Son mécanisme a inspiré une étude critique et il (...) a influencé les théories anglaises de l’espace et du temps. Quand sa science a été employée à la défense de la religion, elle a signifié le développement d’interprétations nouvelles sur Dieu, et elle a conduit aux controverses du déisme. (shrink)

For half a century, Ernest Fortin's scholarship has charmed and educated theologians and philosophers with its intellectual search for the best way to live. Written by friends, colleagues, and students of Fortin, this book pays tribute to a remarkable thinker in a series of essays that bear eloquent testimony to Fortin's influence and his legacy. A formidable commentator on Catholic philosophical and political thought, Ernest Fortin inspired others with his restless inquiries beyond the boundaries of conventional scholarship. With essays on (...) subjects ranging across philosophy, political science, literature, and theology Gladly to Learn and Gladly to Teach reflects the astonishing depth and breadth of Fortin's contribution to contemporary thought. (shrink)

From Nietzsche's pronouncement that "God is dead" to Camus' argument that suicide is the fundamental question of philosophy, the concept of death plays an important role in existential phenomenology, reaching from Kierkegaard to Heidegger and Marcel. This book explores the phenomenology of death and offers a unique way into the phenomenological tradition. Paul Fairfield examines the following key topics: the modern denial of death Heidegger's important concept of 'being-toward-death' and its centrality in phenomenological ideas, such as authenticity and existence (...) the philosophical significance of death rituals: what explains the imperative toward ritual around death, and what is its purpose and meaning? death in an age of secularism the philosophy and ethics of suicide death as a mystery rather than a philosophical problem to be solved the relationship between hope and death. Death: A Philosophical Inquiry is essential reading for students of phenomenology and existentialism, and will also be of interest to students in related fields such as religion, anthropology and the medical humanities. (shrink)

Paul-Hubert Poirier | Résumé : À partir de ce que nous savons de l’exercice de la fonction d’enseignement dans l’Église ancienne, de l’émergence de l’institution conciliaire et de la référence au siège de Rome, l’auteur montre comment se met en place une certaine autorité « magistérielle ». |: From what we know of the conditions of exercise of teaching in the Early Church, of the emergence of the conciliar institution and of the reference to the Roman See, this paper (...) shows how a certain “magisterial” authority appears progressively. (shrink)

The North American Nietzsche Society held the first of its stand-alone conferences at Hunter College’s Roosevelt House in New York City on October 14–17, 2016. The three-day event featured invited keynotes by Bernard Reginster, Christopher Janaway, and Beatrix Himmelmann. In addition, the program committee selected seven blind-reviewed abstracts from a pool of over sixty submissions. The conference concluded with a group discussion on Nietzsche’s conception of philosophy, featuring invited presentations by Paul Loeb, Jacqueline Scott, and Daniel Conway....

This paper is the reprinting under a new title of the “Foreword” of Paul A. Weiss's Life, Order, and Understanding: A Theme in Three Variations, published in 1970 as volume 8 supplement of The Graduate Journal of the University of Texas (Austin, Texas, #5.00 [hardcover], #2.50 [paperback], 157 pages). We reprint this paper here for two reasons. The first is that its beautiful, scientifically grounded imagery of living systems in relation to wave dynamics provides a significant supplement to this (...) issue of Zygon on human values in the context of thermodynamics. The second is that it is hoped this foreword will serve better than would a book review to introduce Zygon readers to the philosophical and scientific wisdom contained in Life, Order, and Understanding.–Editor. (shrink)

The "Director" controls Ms. B’s life. He flatters her, beguiles her, derides her. His instructions pervade each aspect of her life, including her analytic sessions, during which he suggests promiscuous and dangerous things for Ms. B to say and do, when he suspects that her isolated state is being changed by the therapy. The "Director" is a diabolical foreign body installed in the mind who purports to protect but who keeps Ms. B feeling profoundly ill and alone. The story of (...) Ms. B’s analysis is one of many vivid illustrations presented in this collection of papers by Paul Williams, who shares his lifetime of experience working with severely disturbed patients. As the title suggests, the unifying thread of these papers is the investigation of serious mental disturbance, often characterized by the presence of intrusive and invasive thoughts and fantasies that originate in a traumatic past but which can colonize and destroy the rational mind. The diverse papers are grouped into two related sections. Part one is comprised of papers with a clinical orientation, including a summary of the analysis of Ms. B as well as a speculative paper on the psychosis and recovery of John Nash. In part two, applied psychoanalytic thinking is integrated with Williams’ other professional passion, anthropology, in a paper that exemplifies generative thought through art, poetry, and tribal masks. Other papers in this section include a short essay that takes Freud-bashers to task, a reappraisal of the Rat Man, and a lively discussion of André Green’s "central phobic position" in borderline thinking. Whether engaging in the coconstructed therapeutic relationship or the implications for "madness in society" at large, Williams’ diverse influences – psychoanalytic and otherwise – repeatedly come to the fore in an intellectually stimulating and clinically enriching way. It goes without saying that work with patients whose thinking is psychotic is a challenge, as these papers clearly demonstrate, but Williams reminds us that it is a challenge that psychoanalysis can not only engage but also treat with enduring and impressive therapeutic results. (shrink)

Defective newborn children are to be considered human persons. Thus, primary duty in proxy consent is to act with the infant's best interest in mind. This duty may at times override the otherwise prima facie right to life, but only under restricted circumstances. Refinements of McCormick's “relational potential” criteria and of ordinary-extraordinary means analysis prove useful in such decisions. Utilitarian considerations of social consequences have impact but can be kept subsidiary. The importance for decision making of available child support services (...) is considered. Spina bifida is used throughout as an example of issues discussed. (shrink)

This article assesses some major democratic norms commonly invoked in relation to means of communication or 'media', especially in the context of 'media policy'. The paper argues that freedom of communication provides the most appropriate normative discourse in which to re-articulate the case for the European policy practice of 'regulated pluralism' outside Europe. Recent developments in Australia provide a brief case-study of this thesis.

[First paragraph of article] Among historians of science in the U.S.S.R., discussion of the nature of scientific revolutions has been deeply influenced by Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. First published in 1962 and translated into Russian in 1975, Kuhn's book has been the subject of many articles in Soviet journals, and many of his arguments have found concurrence among Soviet writers. Kuhn's postulated sequence of "normal science-anomalies-crisis/revolution-normal science," for example, fits the dialectical explanation of revolutions. While some Soviet (...) scholars have found fault with Kuhn's perceived historical relativism, his apparent simplification of the mechanisms of scientific revolutions, and his belief in the "incommensurability" of research paradigms, many others believe that he has captured the essence of the struggle between competing scientific theories. These scholars call for the improvement or emendation of Kuhn's theory, not its wholesale rejection. (shrink)