Unanswered questions and ethical issues associated with US biodefence medical research over the past five decades are discussed. Objective scientific standards are essential for making policy decisions that can stand the test of time. For decades, scholars have reported that the human anthrax vaccine field trials conducted in the 1950s by Brachman and his colleagues were single-blind rather than double-blind. Nevertheless, in March 2005, Dr Philip S Brachman reported in a letter to the US Food and Drug Administration that his (...) study had been double-blind. It is here argued that, rather, the field trial of a human anthrax vaccine should continue to be deemed as single-blind unless more detailed information is provided to explain exactly how the investigators were kept unaware of which subjects were in the treatment and control groups. Moreover, a number of other questions about the details of this critically important study have remained unanswered and are discussed. More recently, similar concerns have arisen with respect to more contemporary biodefence research, especially with reference to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s allegations that Dr Bruce Ivins, a US government biodefence researcher, was responsible for the anthrax letter attacks of fall 2001. The medical ethics and related issues involved with continuing to base national biodefence and public health policy on unclear, if not contradictory, research are discussed. (shrink)

Does Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics give one consistent answer to the question what life is best or two mutually inconsistent answers? In the First Book he says that we can agree to say that the best life is eudaimonia or eupraxia but must go on to say in what eudaimonia consists. By considering the specific nature of man as a thinking animal he reaches a conclusion: eudaimonia, the human good, is the activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and (...) if there are more than one virtue in accordance with the best and most complete, and in a complete life. Aristotle states that his formula is no more than a sketch or outline, but that a good sketch is important since, if the outline is right, anyone can articulate it and supply details. He seems to be thinking here not just of the rest of his own treatise but of the work of pupils and successors; he speaks, as at the end of the Topics, of progress in a science. (shrink)

The paper „F. W. Bessel and Russian science by K. K. Lavrinovich published in NTM-Schriftenreihe contains several errors coming mainly from re-translations of German names and texts from Russian into German. The correct spelling of names and original texts are given here. Beside this, some additional information from sources not mentioned by the author is presented, and the kind of relationship between Bessel and W. Struve is discussed on the basis of their correspondence.

Two recent papers by Michael Burke bearing upon the persistence of people and commonplace things illustrate the fact that the quest for synchronic ontological economy is likely to encourage a disturbing diachronic proliferation of entities. This discussion argues that Burke's promise of ontological economy is seriously compromised by the fact that his proposed metaphysic does violence to standard intuitions concerning the persistence of people and commonplace things. In effect, Burke would have us achieve synchronic economy (rejection of coincident entities) by (...) postulating strongly counterintuitive transtemporal claims of numerical diversity. The argument is made that the price of Burkean economy is too high. (shrink)

This selection of papers that were presented (or nearly so!) to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science during the seventies fairly re presents some of the most disturbing issues of scientific knowledge in these years. To the distant observer, it may seem that the defense of rational standards, objective reference, methodical self-correction, even the distin guishing of the foolish from the sensible and the truth-seeking from the ideological, has nearly collapsed. In fact, the defense may be seen to (...) have shifted; the knowledge business came under scrutiny decades ago and, indeed, from the time of Francis Bacon and even far earlier, the practicality of the discovery of knowledge was either hailed or lamented. So the defense may be founded on the premise that science may yet be liberating. In that case, the analysis of philosophical issues expands to embrace issues of social interest and social function, of instrumentality and arbitrary perspective, of biological constraints (upon knowledge as well as upon the species-wide behavior of human beings in other relationships too), of distortions due to explanatory metaphors and imposed categories, and of radical comparisons among the perspectives of different civilizations. Some of our contributors are frankly programmatic, showing how problems must be formulated afresh, how evasions must be identified and omissions rectified, but they do not reach their own completion. (shrink)

Este artículo se centra en describir la problemática acerca de si los humanos deben seguir atrapados en una ciega evolución biológica o bien ellos deben pasar a elegir qué desean asumir. Ante tal disyuntiva se recuerdan la hipótesis optimista y la hipótesis pesimista. Al parecer, la especie humana, como el resto de las especies vivas, ha surgido en un proceso de evolución; es la única con capacidad de ser consciente de ello y, en parte, ha sido capaz, mediante las técnicas, (...) de poder adaptarse y de planificar en parte su futuro. Las biotecnologías están utilizándose cada vez más para el mejoramiento y perfeccionamiento de lo humano, convirtiéndose de ese modo en antropotecnias. Así, al orientarse estas nuevas tecnologías hacia y sobre su autor, el ser humano puede también convertirse en un peligro para él mismo. Los «transhumanistas » estiman, sin embargo, que los humanos deben arrebatar su destino biológico al proceso ciego de la evolución de la variación aleatoria y la adaptación, y pasar a la siguiente etapa como especie: la elección de nuestro ser. En la conclusión se patentizan las implicancias y consecuencias del hecho de ser humano y racional. (shrink)

Originally published in 1986. Wittgenstein, William James, Thomas Kuhn and John Wisdom share an attitude towards problems in the theory of knowledge which is fundamentally in conflict with the empiricist tradition. They encourage the idea that in understanding the central concepts of epistemology – objectivity, certainty and reasoning – people and their practices matter most. This clash between orthodox empiricism and a freshly inspired pragmatism forms the background to the strands of argument in this book. With these philosophers as a (...) guide, it points to new directions by showing how the theory of knowledge can be shaped around our actions without sacrificing reason’s control over our beliefs. (shrink)