Background In an effort to improve the quality of medical care, the philosophy of patient-centered care has become integrated into almost every aspect of the medical community. Despite its widespread acceptance, among patients and practitioners, there are concerns that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence may threaten elements of patient-centered care, such as personal relationships with care providers and patient-driven choices. This study explores the extent to which patients are confident in and comfortable with the use of these technologies when it (...) comes to their own individual care and identifies areas that may align with or threaten elements of patient-centered care. Methods An exploratory, mixed-method approach was used to analyze survey data from 600 US-based adults in the State of Florida. The survey was administered through a leading market research provider (August 10–21, 2023), and responses were collected to be representative of the state’s population based on age, gender, race/ethnicity, and political affiliation. Results Respondents were more comfortable with the use of AI in health-related tasks that were not associated with doctor-patient relationships, such as scheduling patient appointments or follow-ups (84.2%). Fear of losing the ‘human touch’ associated with doctors was a common theme within qualitative coding, suggesting a potential conflict between the implementation of AI and patient-centered care. In addition, decision self-efficacy was associated with higher levels of comfort with AI, but there were also concerns about losing decision-making control, workforce changes, and cost concerns. A small majority of participants mentioned that AI could be useful for doctors and lead to more equitable care but only when used within limits. Conclusion The application of AI in medical care is rapidly advancing, but oversight, regulation, and guidance addressing critical aspects of patient-centered care are lacking. While there is no evidence that AI will undermine patient-physician relationships at this time, there is concern on the part of patients regarding the application of AI within medical care and specifically as it relates to their interaction with physicians. Medical guidance on incorporating AI while adhering to the principles of patient-centered care is needed to clarify how AI will augment medical care. (shrink)

The most common complaints against Kant by religious readers center around various challenges he poses to the way many people practice their religion or conceive of their theological commitments. Thinking Kant is out to destroy their most cherished beliefs, many readers remain unaware that he poses these challenges in the hope of leading us to a religiously healthy way of meeting these very challenges. Here I briefly mention three of Kant’s most important challenges and how he thought religious persons ought (...) to respond; I then devote more attention to explaining a fourth challenge in greater detail. (shrink)

One of the largest ongoing debates in scholarship on Avicenna concerns his epistemology of the first acquisition of intelligible forms or concepts. “Emanationists” hold that intelligibles are emanated by the separate Active Intellect directly into human minds. “ionists” hold that intelligibles are abstracted by the human intellect from sensory images. Neither of these positions has a satisfactory grip on Avicenna’s philosophy. I propose that the two positions can be reconciled because Avicenna states in many texts that what the AI emanates (...) is a power, and not the various intelligible forms. I argue that this can only be the power of abstraction itself. This new interpretation does greater justice to Avicenna’s system and reveals his unique place in the history of epistemology. (shrink)

After summarizing the content of Philip Rossi’s book, The Ethical Commonwealth in History: Peace-Making as the Moral Vocation of Humanity, I pose two main questions. First, does politics or religion play a more important role in Kant’s philosophy when it comes to the task of ushering humanity to the realization of its ultimate vocation, the establishment of a lasting peace for human society? I argue that Kant portrays politics as a means to a religious end, whereas Rossi tends to reverse (...) their Kantian order of priority. Second, what concrete details does Kant give in defense of his theory that establishing an ethical community is a universal duty of humankind? As Rossi tends to overlook Kant’s details, I provide an overview. Kant argues that the ethical community can only be established in the form of a church and that the rational content constituting the core of the true church consists of four requirements: universality, integrity, freedom, and unchangeableness. After challenging Rossi’s claim that Kantian hope is necessarily social, I conclude with two minor questions: Is Kant’s theory of human nature dualist or monist? and Must the church create a political form of peace that applies to all human beings? (shrink)

After summarizing the content of my book, Kant and Mysticism, I warn against four preliminary misconceptions. The book never argues that Kant viewed himself as a mystic, fully acknowledges Kant’s negative view of mysticism, offers no comprehensive overview of mystical traditions, and aims to initiate a dialogue, not to have the final word. I then respond to the foregoing essays by the five critics.

This essay deals with property rights in body parts that can be exchanged in a market. The inquiry arises in the following context. With some exceptions, the laws of many countries permit only the donation, not the sale, of body parts. Yet for some years there has existed a shortage of body parts for transplantation and other medical uses. It might then appear that if more sales were legally permitted, the supply of body parts would increase, because people would have (...) more incentive to sell than they currently have to donate. To allow sales is to recognize property rights in body parts. To allow sales, however, makes body parts into “commodities”—that is, things that can be bought and sold in a market. And some view it as morally objectionable to treat body parts as commodities. (shrink)

We welcome and applaud Wilkinson’s impressive and subtle exploration of the possible considerations of frailty as a criterion for triage in times of pandemic-dr...

The prelims comprise: Half‐Title Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations.

Offering a detailed study of early 20th-century essayist, poet, novelist, political campaigner, and theologian G.K. Chesterton, author Stephen R.L. Clark ...

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 5, Page 4-5, September–October 2022.

In this chapter, Immanuel Kant's account of the history of the true (universal) church has a clear progression. It moves from a discussion of Jesus’ radical break with all that was nonuniversal in Judaism, to the tendency of Christians down through the ages to shape their faith into something just as nonuniversal as Judaism. Kant's account concludes with reflections on why we have good reason to be optimistic for the future, because Kant's own interpretation of pure moral religion portrays the (...) message of the coming of God's kingdom in symbolic terms that can be applicable to all good‐hearted people. Kant also focuses on the shortcomings not of Judaism, but of Christianity itself, when interpreted as just another historical faith‐particularly in the hands of biblical scholars. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's Fourth Piece Religion has two main parts that further develop the distinction between two “experiments”. Part One titled “On the Service of God in a Religion Generally” has sections dealing with natural religion and scholarly religion, and the four sections of Part Two titled “On the Pseudoservice of God in a Statutory Religion” focus on themes that alternate between the first and second experiments. Given the importance of immortality to Kant's conception of the highest good, one should not (...) be surprised that, after he interprets Jesus’ gospel as being thoroughly consistent with his moral theory, he devotes a new paragraph to demonstrating that Jesus also acknowledged the “natural” (rational) need for moral persons who have lived this life in a way that requires numerous “sacrifices of happiness” to be able to look forward to a better situation in the afterlife. (shrink)

In this foundational work on the theory of linguistic and mental representation, Stephen Schiffer surveys all the leading theories of meaning and content in the philosophy of language and finds them lacking. He concludes that there can be no correct, positive philosophical theory or linguistic or mental representation and, accordingly advocates the deflationary "no-theory theory of meaning and content." Along the way he takes up functionalism, the nature of propositions and their suitability as contents, the language of thought and (...) other sententialist theories of belief, intention based semantics, and related issues in ontology. Stephen Schiffer is Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

Given his emphasis on deontological ethics, Kant is rarely regarded as a friend of prudence. For example, he is often interpreted as an opponent of so-called “historical faiths”. What typically goes unnoticed is that in explaining the legitimate role of historical faiths in the moral development of the human race, Kant appeals explicitly to their prudential status. A careful examination of Kant’s main references to prudence demonstrates that the prudential status of historical faith is the key to understanding both its (...) limitations and its real value. The wise person adopts some form of historical faith, because to abandon any and all prudential appeals to a faith-based vehicle for morality would render the goal of living a good life virtually impossible for embodied beings to achieve. (shrink)

What is it for marks or sounds to have meaning, and what is it for someone to mean something in producing them? Answering these and related questions, Schiffer explores communication, speech acts, convention, and the meaning of linguistic items in this reissue of a seminal work on the foundations of meaning. A new introduction takes account of recent developments and places his theory in a broader context.

After briefly recounting a strange, quasi-mystical experience I had while first reading Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, I devote most of this article to exploring various similarities between theories Kant developed and ideas more commonly associated with Paul Tillich. Hints are drawn from Chris Firestone’s book, Kant and Theology at the Boundaries of Reason, which argues that my interpretation of Kant echoes themes in Tillich’s ontology. Among the themes whose Kantian roots I explore are Tillich’s theories of: God as (...) the Ground of Being; faith as ultimate concern; courage as the proper life-choice in the face of the anxiety that naturally arises out of an honest response to the human situation, given our fundamental alienation from the divine; the crucial role of cultural symbols in bringing faith into historically realistic expressions; political forms as ideally self-negating; and love as a gift that we must express with power and justice in order to be efficacious. After considering whether Kant influenced Tillich more than Tillich ever admitted, I conclude by wondering if my own effort to develop an “affirmative” interpretation of Kant’s theory of religion may have itself had a hidden influence from my prior reading of Tillich. * Professor of Philosophy, Dept. of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China ׀ [email protected]. (shrink)

The seven numbered sections in Division One of the Third Piece of Religion present a systematic argument regarding the founding, the establishment, and the implementation of an ethical community. This chapter first examines Immanuel Kant's argument that the idea of such a community has objective reality because it arises out of a universal human duty. Next, it is shown that how he argues that the inability of human beings to fulfil this duty independently, thereby giving rise to the need to (...) assume that God is the community's ultimate founder. What this means is that the ethical community must be a church (an ethical community under God's guidance) in order to succeed. The chapter discusses Kant's claim that the true church inevitably begins with an appeal to revelation even though it is a rational reality. It concludes with an analysis of Kant's account of different types of churches. (shrink)

This invited paper answers three questions about the present state and future prospects of philosophy in Hong Kong and Macau.

This fourth article in a six-part series correlating Kant’s philosophy with the Yijing begins by summarizing the foregoing articles: both Kant and the Yijing’s 64 hexagrams (gua) employ “architectonic” reasoning to form a four-level system with 0+4+12+(4x12) elements, the fourth level’s four sets of 12 correlating to Kant’s model of four university “faculties”. This article explores the second twelvefold set, the law faculty. The “idea of reason” guiding this wing of the comparative analysis is immortality. Three of Kant’s “quaternities” correspond (...) to three sets of four gua in the Yijing: the fourfold nature of the soul in rational psychology (as substantial, simple, unified, spatially related) corresponds to gua 47, 6, 58, 10, respectively; the three “Definitive Articles” and fourth, “Secret Article”, in Perpetual Peace correspond to gua 16, 35,51, 21; and the four objective relations of law to duty in Metaphysics of Morals correspond to gua 45, 12, 17, 25. (shrink)

The Value of Life is an exploration of the actual and perceived importance of biological diversity for human beings and society. Stephen R. Kellert identifies ten basic values, which he describes as biologically based, inherent human tendencies that are greatly influenced and moderated by culture, learning, and experience. Drawing on 20 years of original research, he considers: the universal basis for how humans value nature differences in those values by gender, age, ethnicity, occupation, and geographic location how environment-related activities (...) affect values variation in values relating to different species how vlaues vary across cultures policy and management implications Throughout the book, Kellert argues that the preservation of biodiversity is fundamentally linked to human well-being in the largest sense as he illustrates the importance of biological diversity to the human sociocultural and psychological condition. (shrink)

Bosnian translation of "How 'Chinese' Was Kant?" (abridged version).

Illness has a way of disorientating us, as if we are cast adrift in a foreign land. Like strangers in a dessert we seek oasis to recollect ourselves, find refuge and learn to build our own shelters. Using the philosophy of Levinas and Derrida, we can interpret health care providers (HCP), and the sites from which they act (e.g. hospitals), as _dwelling hosts_ that offer hospitality to strangers in this foreign land. While often the dwellings are physical (e.g. hospitals), this (...) is not always the case. Language represents a mobile home of refuge to the sick. Using language the HCP has built a shelter so as to dwell in the land of illness. However, while hospitality is an inviting concept, it also implies hostility. The door that opens may also be slammed shut. This article explores the paradox of the linguistic mobile home offered to patients. It highlights the power of language to construct a safe place in a strange land, but also explores the inherent violence. It ends with an exploration of the ways language can be used by HCP to assist patients to construct their own mobile shelters. (shrink)

In the United States, while it is legal for physicians to prescribe drugs for “off-label” indications (uses for which the drugs do not have Food and Drug Administration approval), it is largely—though not entirely—illegal for drug manufacturers to promote off-label uses of their drugs to physicians. In recent months, the rules against off-label marketing have been rigorously enforced: in October, Allergan reached a $375 million settlement over off-label promotion of Botox; in September, Novartis settled an off-label marketing dispute for $422.5 (...) million, and Forest Laboratories settled one for $313 million. These were only the latest in a series of criminal and civil settlements on off-label promotion, the most .. (shrink)

Early in 2018, the Trump administration's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a guidance letter outlining a new and controversial kind of Medicaid waiver proposal. The administration invited states to propose waivers that would impose work (or other “community engagement”) requirements as a condition of eligibility for Medicaid. The Trump administration and state proponents of work requirements want to force able‐bodied Medicaid beneficiaries into the workplace. Critics allege that this is because they mistakenly believe that low‐income individuals are not (...) working because they're lazy or because aid programs provide them with a disincentive to work. Proponents respond that the requirements can lower the public programs' costs while helping its recipients. Medicaid data seems to show that the work‐requirement proposals are a solution in search of a real‐life problem. (shrink)

Discussion of the Cambridge Platonists, by Constantinos Patrides and others, is often vitiated by the mistaken contrasts drawn between those philosophers and late antique Platonists such as Plotinus. I draw attention especially to Patrides’s errors, and argue in particular that Plotinus and his immediate followers were as concerned about this world and our immediate duties to our neighbours as the Cambridge Platonists. Even the doctrine of deification is one shared by all Platonists, though it is also here that genuine differences (...) between pre-Christian and Christian exegesis can be found. All, it can be said, hope and expect to join ‘the dance of immortal love’, but Christian Platonists had a deeper sense of God’s ‘humility’ in His Word’s material and temporal manifestation. Not Olympian Zeus but the Crucified Christ was their preferred image of divine involvement, and their better guide to heaven. (shrink)

There is both theoretical and experimental reason to suppose that no-one could ever have learned to speak without an environment of language-users. How then did the first language-users learn? Animal communication systems provide no help, since human languages aren't constituted as a natural system of signs, and are essentially recursive and syntactic. Such languages aren't demanded by evolution, since most creatures, even intelligent creatures, manage very well without them. I propose that representations, and even public representations like sculptures, precede full (...) languages, which were devised by the first human children as secret tongues to create fantasy realms inaccessible to their proto-human parents. Language, in brief, is not required for truth-telling or for the convenience of hunters. It is a peculiar modification of public representation, which permits us to construct new public worlds. (shrink)

Practitioners of disciplines whose problems are debated by moral philosophers regularly complain that the philosophers are engaged in abstract speculation, divorced from ‘real-life’ consequences and responsibilities, that it is the practitioners (doctor, research scientist, politician) who must take the decisions, and that they cannot (and should not) act in accordance with strict abstract logic.

Aristotle is routinely blamed for several errors that, it is supposed, held 'science' back for centuries - among others, a belief in distinct, homogenous and unchanging species of living creatures, an essentialist account of human nature, and a suggestion that 'slavery' was a natural institution. This paper briefly examines Aristotle's own arguments and opinions, and the perils posed by a contrary belief in changeable species. Contrary to received opinion even amongst some of his followers, Aristotle was not a species essentialist (...) and his ethical theory, properly expanded, provides arguments against bioengineering human and other species without a clear view of what should count as beauty. (shrink)

The social and environmental problems that we face at this tail end of twentieth-century progress require us to identify some cause, some spirit that transcends the petty limits of our time and place. It is easy to believe that there is no crisis. We have been told too often that the oceans will soon die, the air be poisonous, our energy reserves run dry; that the world will grow warmer, coastlands be flooded and the climate change; that plague, famine and (...) war will be the necessary checks on population growth. But here we are: sufficiently healthy and well-fed, connoisseurs of far-off catastrophe and horror movies, confident that something will turn up or that the prophecies of doom were only dreams. We are the descendants, after all, of creatures who did not despair, who hoped against hope that there would still be life tomorrow. We no more believe in the world's end than we believe that soldiers could break down the door and drag us off to torture and to death: we don't believe that they could even when we know that, somewhere altogether elsewhere, they did. Even if we can force ourselves to remember other ages, other lands or other classes, we are content enough. (shrink)

Resumo O autor começará por examinar a noção de participação, tal como é aplicada por Platão, primeiro à distinção gramatical entre identidade e predicação e depois às questões metafísicas acerca de sujeitos reais, sendo eles indivíduos contáveis, de um “material” subjacente, ou Formas que aparecem mais ou menos reconhecíveis na nossa experiência. Mesmo os materialistas modernos admitem uma distinção entre a realidade tal como ela “é” e tal como “aparece”. Surge então a questão, mais ainda para os modernos do que (...) para Platão, sobre a possibilidade de conhecer algo do mundo “tal como ele é” além de como “aparece”. O autor conclui, sugerindo a hipótese de um conhecimento “participativo”, de um tipo agora associado ao pensamento “right brain” em vez de “left brain”. Termina reiterando que podemos conhecer a realidade como ela é “a partir do interior”, uma vez que nela estamos inseridos. Palavras-chave: formas, matéria, participação, Plotino, predicaçãoA brief examination of the notion of participation, as it is applied by Plato first to the grammatical distinction between identity and predication, and then to metaphysical questions about the real subjects, whether these are countable individuals, an underlying “stuff”, or the Forms that appear more or less recognizably in our experience. Even modern materialists admit a distinction between the world as it appears, very variously, to us, and the world “as it is”. The question then arises, for moderns even more than for Plato, how we could hope to know anything of the world “as it is”, apart from its appearance to us and others. I conclude by gesturing toward the possibility of “participatory” knowledge, of a kind now associated with “right brain” rather than “left brain” thinking. We can know what reality is “from the inside”, since we ourselves are inside it. Keywords : Participation, predication, Forms, Matter, Plotinus. (shrink)