Because the number of organs available for transplantation does not meet the needs of potential recipients, some have proposed that a potentially effective way to increase registration is to offer a self‐benefit incentive that grants a 'preferred status' or some degree of prioritization to those who register as potential donors, in case they might need organs. This proposal has elicited an ethical debate on the appropriateness of such a benefit in the context of a life‐saving medical procedure. In this paper (...) we review arguments and ethical concerns raised by scholars, and studies of views of members of the public regarding the prioritization incentive system. We also report on our study of the views of those involved in organ transplant and of other medical professionals in Israel, as over half a decade ago Israel implemented a prioritization incentive system. Bioethicists propose that key stakeholders' views can provide additional arguments and perspectives on controversial issues. Proponents justify the prioritization incentive drawing mainly on arguments related to its potential effectiveness, reciprocity and fairness. Opponents point to the fact that registering is not binding and not an actual donation, and raise concerns regarding equity, autonomy and gaming the system. Ethical concerns raised by the practitioners in the study were examined in light of scholars' arguments and actual registration and donation data. Practitioners involved in transplantation raised ethical concerns corresponding to those raised by scholars as well as additional concerns. They also challenged proponents' assumptions regarding the utility of the incentive system from their own experience and argued that proponents obscure the meaning of reciprocity. (shrink)

Als Fritz Linder, Schtiler und Nachfolger von K. H. Bauer auf dem Heidelberger Lehrstuhl rur Chirurgie, am 12. Juli 1978 am Grabe seines Lehrers im Namen aller Freunde und Schuler sprach, erfuh­ ren wir, daB der Entschlafene "auf dem todlichen Krankenlager" noch seinen Briefwechsel mit Karl Jaspers las und ordnete. Diese letztwillige Vergegenwartigung einer freundschaftlichen Ver­ bindung aus den Jahren nach 1945 schien uns groBe menschliche Bedeutung zu haben, und wir waren erfreut, spater von Frau Bauer und Heinz Gotze, Mitinhaber (...) des Springer-Verlages, den Auftrag zur Herausgabe der Briefe zu erhalten, zumal sich mit beiden Kor­ respondenzpartnern eigene, dankbare Erinnerungen seit 1940 ver­ banden. Der Briefwechsel begann unmittelbar nach der ersten Begegnung yom 5.4. 1945 im Hause von Jaspers, als der Krieg rur Heidelberg vorbei war und politisch unbelastete Professoren vor der Aufgabe standen, die inzwischen geschlossene Universitat im Einvernehmen mit der Besatzungsbehorde wieder zu eroffnen und die Vorausset­ zungen rur die Wiederaufnahme freier Forschung und Lehre zu schaff en. Fur diesen Neubeginn, der natiirlich ein Neubeginn im Geiste des unveranderlich Gultigen sein sollte, war die daran anknupfende Freundschaft zwischen Bauer und Jaspers entscheidend. Die Person­ lichkeiten erganzten sich, und was beide damals suchten, war jeweils beim Partner zu finden: bei Jaspers die lebendige Idee in ihrem kla­ ren, wenn auch geschichtlich wandelbaren Wahrsein, bei Bauer die anpassungsfahige Vitalitat und die Gabe, Denken und Handeln zu verbinden. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the medical conceptualization of gender identity in the United States has entered a “new regime of truth.” Drawing from a mixed-methods analysis of medical journals, I illuminate a shift in the locus of gender identity from external genitalia and pathologization of families to genes and brain structure and individualized self-conception. The sexed body itself has also undergone a transformation: Sex no longer resides solely in genitalia but has traveled to more visible parts of the (...) body, implicating racialized aesthetic ideals in its new formulation. The re-imagining of gender identity as genetically and neurologically inscribed and the expanding locus of sex correspond to an inversion of the relationship between gender identity and the sexed body as well as shifts in medical jurisdiction. Whereas psychiatrists in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s understood gender as stemming from genital sex, the less popular idea that gender identity precedes the sexed body has gained traction in recent decades. If gender identity once derived from the sexed body, the sexed body must now be brought into alignment with gender identity. The increasing legitimacy of self-defined gender identity, the expanding definition of racialized sex, and the inversion of the sex–gender identity relationship elevates the role of surgeons in producing racialized and sexed bodies. (shrink)

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scientific and technological developments made surgery safer, more reliable, and, with the corresponding increase in experimentation permitted, more exploratory and successful than ever before. The age of the heroic surgeon, however, obscured procedures that relied on the patient’s cooperation for a final, positive outcome. This essay focuses on the debates surrounding cleft palate surgery in Britain, Europe, and North America between about 1800 and 1930, where the constancy of failure dogged the surgeon, even (...) with improved operative surroundings. Although an anatomical correction could eventually be secured by surgery, without the patient’s participation in learning “normal” speech, the ultimate result was unsuccessful. Patient responsibility and self-control became, therefore, the key to success. By exploring what this meant for patients, their families, and surgeons, a new way of thinking about surgical outcomes, even during a period of increasing confidence in surgery, can be posited. -/- . (shrink)

Though it is an attractive popular book dealing with some major episodes in the history of nineteenth‐century vertebrate paleontology, The Dragon Seekers fails to establish the connection between Darwin and his predecessors promised by its title. As scholarship, it is seriously deficient except when dealing with ichthyosaurs, about which its Canadian author, a paleontologist, is thoroughly knowledgeable.Of the several persons central to Christopher McGowan's topic, Mary Anning, William Conybeare, and Thomas Hawkins had little or no role in the discovery of (...) dinosaurs. All three of them were instead devoted to ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs; McGowan writes confidently and reliably about each of these impressive prehistoric families. Despite his subtitle, the fossil reptile depicted on McGowan's title page is not a dinosaur but an ichthyosaur—and an excessively “made up” one at that . He begins and ends the book with Mary Anning and her famously fossiliferous hometown. In the Blue Lias cliffs of Lyme Regis, both ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs were found—but no dinosaurs. Though Lyell, Agassiz, and Darwin appear as dragon seekers also, none of them was associated importantly with saurians. Cuvier, a French seeker of dragons and much else, is mentioned only in passing.The three dinosaur discoverers important to McGowan's book are William Buckland, Gideon Mantell, and Richard Owen . A more energetic researcher than some, McGowan actually visited the Kirkdale and Paviland caves made famous by Buckland. He provides up‐to‐date information about each cave, as he does about other topics throughout the text. Unfortunately, his exploration of the available literature on Buckland, Mantell, and Owen is less impressive. McGowan is clearly unacquainted with major publications by all three; their later thinking in particular is generally ignored. More broadly, McGowan has too obviously written in haste. He never provides the more coherent reading of Victorian vertebrate paleontology and associated sciences that his audience‐seeking thesis requires.Persons familiar with early dinosaur discoveries will notice the absence from McGowan's book of many useful sources and studies. The weak notes and “further reading” bibliography that he provides are inadequate. Only direct quotations have been identified; all other matters of substance, frequently controversial, are left to be taken on faith. In some introductory remarks , McGowan tells us that fossils have been known since the time of classical Greece. They have actually been found among the grave goods of Neanderthals. Some persons, Greeks among them, realized the significance of fossils long before the latter eighteenth century. McGowan even fails to acknowledge that there were evolutionary theories before Vestiges . He ignores James Secord's recent facsimile of the latter and is apparently unaware that a magnificent new edition of Darwin's correspondence is appearing.A number of factual mistakes are disconcerting. Cuvier's seminal Recherches is dated 1799 . No other foreign publication is considered, though there were several of importance. Mantell and Owen are described as physicians, which they were not; both were instead surgeons, an occupation not involving university education. Mantell joined the Geological Society in 1818, not 1820. McGowan is significantly misleading when he describes the financing of Mantell's first book and the chronology of its writing. It appeared in May 1822, not four months later . The first chapter of Mantell's book was contributed by the Rev. Henry Hoper, not Harper . Mantell was surgeon to three parishes, not just one . McGowan fails to realize that the name “Megalosaurus” had been published by James Parkinson in 1822 . He also distorts the history of Buckland's famous 1824 paper on Megalosaurus by assuming that some later additions were already in it at the time of presentation . Once again, however, he includes some useful modern knowledge.On page 87 McGowan insists that Mantell and Conybeare had not yet met, though they were both present at the meeting of 20 February 1824 and had corresponded earlier. Mantell did not receive Conybeare's most recent letter “shortly after” 10 February 1825 but on 24 November 1824 . On page 89 Robert Trotter is not fully identified, and his later generosity to Mantell is ignored. Though Lyell's geological views influenced Mantell's, they would never be entirely congruent. Mantell was still very much a catastrophist in 1832 . On page 111 McGowan's explanation of British money is erroneous. According to page 113, Mantell and Benjamin Silliman never met. Yet they spent several days together in 1851. In January 1837 Darwin was actually living at Cambridge . On page 179 McGowan claims that “our present preoccupation with dinosaurs dates back less than three decades.” Finally, there is some inadequate editing, as with “their's” and “Gooses” . On page 229 a note from Lyell to Owen is quoted but not cited.Though many of these lapses will be of no consequence to the general reader, scholars should be forewarned. This is not a book on which one can rely, despite occasionally useful points. It should not be recommended to students, for whom better sources are available. It should not be taken as a model. Several would‐be popularizations of the history of the earth sciences have appeared recently, none of them based on sound historical arguments. The writing of defensible history is not so simple a task as these facile popularizers would like the public to believe. (shrink)

One of the most intuitive concepts of truth is the classical correspondence theory of truth. Aside from the theoretical cogency and plausibility, this truth theory has two fundamental problems. I shall explore both of these problems. This will not be to reveal the problematic nature of the classical correspondence theory of truth itself, but to demonstrate the implications it has on Islam. I shall establish that the problems of this truth theory contribute in the failure to determine the (...) truth of a particular notion of an Islamic God. Consequently this truth theory would prove inconsistent with a particular notion of God within the Islamic tradition. (shrink)

Organizational research constitutes a differentiated, complex and fragmented field with multiple contradicting and incommensurable theories that make fundamentally different claims about the social and organizational reality. In contrast to natural sciences, the progress in this field can’t be attributed to the principle of truthlikeness where theories compete against each other and only best theories survive and prove they are closer to the truth and thus demonstrate scientific knowledge accumulation. We defend the structural realist view on the nature of organizational theories (...) in order to demonstrate that despite the multiplicity of isolated and competing explanations of organization-environment relations these theories are still logically compatible and mutually consistent which, in turn, assures theoretical progress in the field. Although postulating different and incompatible ontologies, three most successful organization-environments theories, namely, contingency theory, new institutionalism and population ecology share the same explanations of the relations between organizations and environments at the structural level. Without this principle one would say that what occurs in the field of organization theory is a change rather than a progress. (shrink)

This volume is a critical edition of the ten-year correspondence between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of Europe’s most influential early modern thinkers, and Bartholomew Des Bosses, a Jesuit theologian who was keen to bring together Leibniz’s philosophy and the Aristotelian philosophy and religious doctrines accepted by his order. The letters offer crucial insights into Leibniz’s final metaphysics and into the intellectual life of the eighteenth century. Brandon C. Look and Donald Rutherford present seventy-one of Leibniz’s and Des Bosses’s letters (...) in the original Latin and in careful English translation. Few of the letters have been translated into English before. The editors also provide extensive annotations, deletions, and marginalia from Leibniz’s various drafts, and a substantial introduction setting the context for the correspondence and analyzing the main philosophical issues. (shrink)

The problem that motivates me arises from a constellation of factors pulling in different, sometimes opposing directions. Simplifying, they are: (1) The complexity of the world; (2) Humans’ ambitious project of theoretical knowledge of the world; (3) The severe limitations of humans’ cognitive capacities; (4) The considerable intricacy of humans’ cognitive capacities . Given these circumstances, the question arises whether a serious notion of truth is applicable to human theories of the world. In particular, I am interested in the questions: (...) (a) Is a substantive standard of truth for human theories of the world possible? (b) What kind of standard would that be? (shrink)

In Veritas, Gerald Vision defends the correspondence theory of truth -- the theory that truth has a direct relationship to reality -- against recent attacks, and critically examines its most influential alternatives. The correspondence theory, if successful, explains one way in which we are cognitively connected to the world; thus, it is claimed, truth -- while relevant to semantics, epistemology, and other studies -- also has significant metaphysical consequences. Although the correspondence theory is widely held today, Vision (...) points to an emerging orthodoxy in philosophy that claims that truth as such carries no significant weight in philosophical explanations. He devotes much of the book to a criticism of that outlook and to a less vulnerable formulation of the correspondence theory.Vision defends the correspondence theory by both presenting evidence for correspondence and examining the claims made by such alternative theories as deflationism, minimalism, and pluralism. The techniques of the argument are thoroughly analytic, but the problem confronted is broadly humanistic. The question examined -- how we, as thinking beings, are connected to and manage to cope in a world that was not designed for our comfort or convenience -- is more likely to be raised by continentalists, but is approached here with the tools of clarity and precision more highly prized in analytic philosophy. The book seeks to avoid both the obscurantism that infects much continental thought and the overly technical concerns and methodology that limit the interest of much work in analytic philosophy. It thus provides a rigorous but largely nontechnical treatment of the topic that will be of interest not only to readers familiar with philosophy but also to those with a background in literary theory and linguistics. (shrink)

The paper delineates a new approach to truth that falls under the category of “Pluralism within the bounds of correspondence”, and illustrates it with respect to mathematical truth. Mathematical truth, like all other truths, is based on correspondence, but the route of mathematical correspondence differs from other routes of correspondence in (i) connecting mathematical truths to a special aspect of reality, namely, its formal aspect, and (ii) doing so in a complex, indirect way, rather than in (...) a simple and direct way. The underlying idea is that an intricate mind is capable of creating intricate routes from language to reality, and this enables it to apply correspondence principles in areas for which correspondence is traditionally thought to be problematic. (shrink)

The paper argues that Bohr understood his correspondence principle, or at least an aspect of it expressed by the notion of rational generalization, as grounded in Hankel's principle of permanence.

It is often thought that instances of the T-schema such as snow is white is true if and only if snow is white state correspondences between sentences andthe world, and that therefore such sentences play a crucial role in correspondence theories oftruth. I argue that this assumption trivializes the correspondence theory: even a disquotationaltheory of truth would be a correspondence theory on this conception. This discussionallows one to get clearer about what a correspondence theory does claim, (...) and toward the end of thepaper I discuss what a true correspondence theory of truth would involve. (shrink)

Scholarly correspondence can be as insightful as scholarly work itself, as it often documents the motivating forces of its writers’ intellectual ideas while illuminating their lives more clearly. The more complex the authors’ scholarly works and the more troubled the eras in which they lived, the more substantial, and potentially fascinating, their correspondence. This is especially true of the letters between Alfred Schutz and Eric Voegelin. The scholars lived in incredibly dramatic times and produced profound, complex works that (...) continue to confound academics. The communication between these two giants of the social sciences, as they sent their thoughts to one another, was crucial to the work of both men. _A Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime: The Correspondence between Alfred Schutz and Eric Voegelin _demonstrates that Schutz and Voegelin shared a remarkable friendship: they first met as students in Vienna in the 1920s and found themselves great partners in discussion; years later they were pushed out of Europe by Nazi pressure and went to work at separate American universities. For twenty years they wrote each other, developing their respective scientific works in that dialogue. The letters bear witness to their friendship during the years they spent in exile in the United States, and they document the men’s tentative attempts at formulating the theories of “lifeworld” and “gnosis” associated with Schutz and Voegelin today. The entire collection of 238 letters was printed in German in 2004, but this edited volume is the first to present their correspondence in English and offers a selection of the most important letters—those that contributed to the thinkers’ theoretical discussions and served as background to their most significant thoughts. Editors Gerhard Wagner and Gilbert Weiss do not analyze Schutz’s and Voegelin’s works in light of the correspondence—rather, they present the collection to create a framework for new interpretations. _A Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime_ takes a unique look at two major social scientists. This volume is a valuable resource in the study of Voegelin’s political philosophy and Alfred Schutz’s contribution to American sociology and marks an important addition to the literature on these remarkable men. Showing how scholarly discourse and the dialogue of everyday life can shed light on one another, the book finally presents this correspondence for an American audience and is not to be missed by scholars of philosophy and sociology. (shrink)

Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is a private notebook of philosophical reflections with universal significance. Drawing on Stoic philosophy, Marcus confronts challenges that affect us all in our struggle to live meaningful lives. This edition includes a selection of Marcus' correspondence with his tutor Fronto which complements the Meditations.

The Clarke-Collins correspondence was widely read and frequently printed during the 18th century. Its central topic is the question whether matter can think. Samuel Clarke defends the immateriality of the human soul against Anthony Collins’ materialism. Clarke argues that consciousness must belong to an indivisible entity, and matter is divisible. Collins contends that consciousness could belong to a composite subject by emerging from material qualities that belong to its parts. While many early modern thinkers assumed that this is not (...) possible, this correspondence offers an unusually detailed discussion of this issue. Clarke rejects emergentism because real qualities of a composite must be homogeneous with the qualities of the parts. This rejection is based on considerations about the nature of causation. In addition, the disagreement derives in part from a disagreement between Clarke and Collins about the limits of our knowledge. (shrink)

A supplement to "Metaphysics and Convention in Dimensional Analysis, 1914-1917" in HOPOS. Includes a transcription of the correspondence along with an editorial introduction and expository notes.

This book is a defense of realism about truth.

There is a general conception of levels in philosophy which says that the world is arrayed into a hierarchy of levels and that there are different modes of analysis that correspond to each level of this hierarchy, what can be labelled the ‘Hierarchical Correspondence View of Levels” (or HCL). The trouble is that despite its considerable lineage and general status in philosophy of science and metaphysics the HCL has largely escaped analysis in specific domains of inquiry. The goal of (...) this paper is to take up a recent call to domain-specificity by examining the role of the HCL in cognitive science. I argue that the HCL is, in fact, a conception of levels that has been employed in cognitive science and that cognitive scientists should avoid its use where possible. The argument is that the HCL is problematic when applied to cognitive science specifically because it fails to distinguish two important kinds of shifts used when analysing information processing systems: shifts in grain and shifts in analysis. I conclude by proposing a revised version of the HCL which accommodates the distinction. (shrink)

This volume is a critical edition of the eight-year correspondence between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Burcher de Volder, professor of philosophy and mathematics at Leiden University. Containing the surviving correspondence between Leibniz and De Volder, the volume also presents a generous selection from the letters between Leibniz and his friend Johann Bernoulli, through whose intercession the correspondence began. Bernoulli acted as intermediary throughout, and the often candid discussions between Leibniz and Bernoulli provide illuminating background to the (...) class='Hi'>correspondence proper. Each of the selections appears both in the original Latin and in English translation. (shrink)

Recently we proposed "quantum language" (or, the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics"), which was not only characterized as the metaphysical and linguistic turn of quantum mechanics but also the linguistic turn of Descartes=Kant epistemology. We believe that quantum language is the language to describe science, which is the final goal of dualistic idealism. Hence there is a reason to want to clarify, from the quantum linguistic point of view, the following problems: "brain in a vat argument", "the Cogito proposition", (...) "five-minute hypothesis", "only the present exists", "Copernican revolution", "McTaggart's paradox", and so on. In this paper, these will be discussed and clarified in quantum language. That is, these are not in quantum language. Also we emphasize that Leibniz's relationalism in Leibniz-Clarke correspondence is regarded as one of the most important parts of the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. This paper is the revised version of the paper: Open Journal of Philosophy, 2018 Vol.8, No.5, 466-480). (shrink)

Each had met his match, and happily, in the other. This book is the story of an elective affinity.

The possibility of acting for normative reasons calls for explanation, considering that such reasons are facts. Facing this issue, some argue that to act for a normative reason, the normative reason and the reason we act for (i.e. the motivating reason) need to be identical. Others reject the idea that normative reasons are facts in the first place. A conciliatory proposal is that by appealing to dispositions we can simultaneously accept that normative reasons are facts and that we can act (...) for them, without accepting the identity of the normative reasons and the motivating reason. After sketching an example of such a view, I mention an obstacle on its way. This view relies heavily on the correspondence relation, to make the action connected to the normative reason via a descriptive belief. It is argued that this is challenging since the correspondence relation might not be suitable to play the metaphysical role needed. (shrink)