The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has for decades been a locus of dispute between ardent defenders of its scientific validity and vociferous critics who charge that it covertly cloaks disputed moral and political judgments in scientific language. This essay explores Alasdair MacIntyre's tripartite typology of moral reasoning—"encyclopedia," "genealogy," and "tradition"—as an analytic lens for appreciation and critique of these debates. The DSM opens itself to corrosive neo-Nietzschean "genealogical" critique, such an analysis holds, only (...) insofar as it is interpreted as a presumptively objective and context-independent encyclopedia free of the contingencies of its originating communities. A MacIntyrean tradition-constituted understanding of the DSM, on the other hand, helpfully allows psychiatric nosology to be understood both as "scientific" and, simultaneously, as inextricable from the political and moral interests—and therefore the moral successes and moral failures—of the psychiatric guild from which it arises. (shrink)

We report two experiments on temporal reasoning with problems, such as: John has cleaned the house. John is taking a shower. John is going to read the paper. Mary always does the dishes when John cleans the house. Mary always drinks her coffee when John reads the paper. What for Mary is the relation between doing the dishes and drinking coffee? The experiments showed that problems such as this one, which require one mental model, elicited correct answers more often than (...) did those requiring multiple models (e.g. with the second premise modified to "John has taken a shower", so that the order between the events in the first two premises is not fixed). These multiple-model problems, in turn, elicited more correct answers than did multiple-model problems with no valid answers (e.g. with the second premise modified to "John has taken a shower", and the fifth premise modified to "Mary always drinks her coffee when John takes a shower"). One-model problems were also solved more quickly than multiple-model problems, which were solved more quickly than problems with no valid answers. These results corroborated the predictions of the mental model theory of reasoning. (shrink)

In this paper we present six criteria for assessing proposed solutions to environmental risk problems. To assess the final criterion-the criterion of ethical responsibility-we suggest another series of criteria. However, before these criteria can be used to address ethical problems, business persons must be wiIling to discuss the problem in ethical terms. Yet many decision makers are unwilling to do so. Drawing on research by James Waters and Frederick Bird, we discuss this “moral muteness”-the inability or unwillingness to use morallanguage (...) to solve moral problems-and suggest some underlying causes of moral muteness. (shrink)

The aim of the study was to determine the acceptance and perception of Nigerian patients to medical photography. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed among Nigerian patients attending oral and maxillofacial surgery and plastic surgery clinics of 3 tertiary health institutions. Information requested included patients' opinion about consent process, capturing equipment, distribution and accessibility of medical photographs. The use of non-identifiable medical photographs was more acceptable than identifiable to respondents for all purposes (P = 0.003). Most respondents were favourably disposed to (...) photographs being taken for inclusion in the case note, but opposed to identifiable photographs being used for other purposes most especially in medical websites and medical journals. Female respondents preferred non-identifiable medical photographs to identifiable ones (P = 0.001). Most respondents (78%) indicated that their consent be sought for each of the outline needs for medical photography. Half of the respondents indicated that identifiable photographs may have a negative effect on their persons; and the most commonly mentioned effects were social stigmatization, bad publicity and emotional/psychological effects. Most of the respondents preferred the use of hospital-owned camera to personal camera/personal camera-phone for their medical photographs. Most respondents (67.8%) indicated that they would like to be informed about the use of their photographs on every occasion, and 74% indicated that they would like to be informed of the specific journal in which their medical photographs are to be published. In conclusion, non-identifiable rather than identifiable medical photography is acceptable to most patients in the studied Nigerian environment. The use of personal camera/personal camera-phone should be discouraged as its acceptance by respondents is very low. Judicious use of medical photography is therefore advocated to avoid breach of principle of privacy and confidentiality in medical practice. (shrink)

Las reflexiones en torno al concepto de abducción de Peirce no han estado exentas de controversias, debido a la dificultad para determinar con claridad la naturaleza y la función epistémica de esta inferencia. Se examinan tres formas de acceso a la comprensión del concepto de abducción que el propio..

These suggestions for the betterment and elucidation of the text of the De Beneficiis are additional to those already published in the Classical Quarterly in January, 1934. They are based on a conviction much deepened since that time that Buck1 is right when he says: N allein, und zwar ohne seine Ueberarbeitungen von späteren Händen, darf die Grundlage des Textes von de beneficiis bilden. Préchac3, the latest critical editor in this field, substantially confirms Buck's sweeping conclusion by an independent survey (...) of the evidence. The readings designated in the Teubner text3 as N2 and N3 are themselves conjectures, not readings drawn from independent sources of testimony, and as conjectures they must be judged. Gertz4 had long before discerned the truth even if he seemed somewhat cavalier in his attitude toward other manuscripts than N. (shrink)

It would be natural to expect, after all these years, that the language of an author so important as Livy would be adequately represented in the dictionaries. Unfortunately this is very far from being the case. It is disquieting to find numerous Livian words cited without any mention of Livy or of any other writer of the Ciceronian or the Augustan Age. It is equally disquieting to find Livian idioms or constructions attributed only to writers remote from Livy both in (...) time and in genre. To crown all, we find a good many of Livy's notable usages entirely ignored. Perhaps a humble service may be rendered both to Livy and to the history of the Latin language by indicating a few deficiencies, especially in the parts of the alphabet not yet covered by the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. (shrink)

Faith and sin prior to the Fragments -- Sin and salvation in the Philosophical fragments -- Anxiety and beyond -- Sin and salvation from the Three discourses -- To the three stages -- Sin and salvation in the Concluding unscientific postscript -- Sin, society, and the individual in the Two ages.

In this article I have tried to rebut certain types of arguments which purport to show not merely that God does not exist but that the notion of necessary existence is itself either self-contradictory or senseless. In showing that it is not self-contradictory I have allowed myself the luxury of a negative and a positive approach. Negatively, I have had to show that when the accusation of self-contradiction is made, it is often accompanied, not by an argument but by a (...) sheer assertion. On the rare occasions when an argument is forthcoming, the arguments, I have tried to show, have been invalid, not even, inconclusive. And to the extent that Kant may be said to have argued not simply the impossibility of a genuine proof of the existence of God, but indeed the impossibility of the concept of necessary existence, I have argued out the weakness of Kant's arguments, the most notable of which I have discussed in some detail. Finally, to establish the genuineness of the concept of necessary existence, positively, I have paradoxically made use of a notion from Russell's logic. (shrink)

The idea of organism, which of recent years has bulked so largely in scientific, and especially in biological, theory has been developed mainly in reference to living organisms, and has been extended to cover such systems as human societies, crystals, molecules and atoms—and indeed the whole universe has been interpreted as an organism. This use of the term, however, includes different ways in which parts may be together in a system. The belief that the principle of organism has been wrongly (...) extended to explain certain co-ordinations of vital processes which require a different type of explanation is the reason for this addition to the immense literature on the subject of organism. (shrink)

(2008). Medicine and Statecraft in The Book of the Courtier ∗. Intellectual History Review: Vol. 18, Humanism and Medicine in the Early Modern Era, pp. 75-89.