The aim of this study was to synthesize the concepts from empirical studies and analyze, compare and interrelate them with normative ethics. The International Council of Nurses (ICN) and the Health and Medical Service Act are normative ethics. Five concepts were used in the analysis; three from the grounded theory studies and two from the theoretical framework on normative ethics. A simultaneous concept analysis resulted in five outcomes: interconnectedness, interdependence, corroboratedness, completeness and good care are all related to the empirical (...) perspective of the nurse’s interaction with the older patient, and the normative perspective, i.e. that found in ICN code and SFS law. Empirical ethics and normative ethics are intertwined according to the findings of this study. Normative ethics influence the nurse’s practical performance and could be supporting documents for nurses as professionals. (shrink)

When von Neumann's and Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior appeared in 1944, one thought that a complete theory of strategic social behavior had appeared out of nowhere. However, game theory has, to this very day, remained a fast-growing assemblage of models which have gradually been united in a new social theory - a theory that is far from being completed even after recent advances in game theory, as evidenced by the work of the three Nobel Prize winners, John (...) F. Nash, John C. Harsanyi, and Reinhard Selten. Two of them, Harsanyi and Selten, have contributed important articles to the present volume. This book leaves no doubt that the game-theoretical models are on the right track to becoming a respectable new theory, just like the great theories of the twentieth century originated from formerly separate models which merged in the course of decades. For social scientists, the age of great discover ies is not over. The recent advances of today's game theory surpass by far the results of traditional game theory. For example, modem game theory has a new empirical and social foundation, namely, societal experiences; this has changed its methods, its "rationality. " Morgenstern (I worked together with him for four years) dreamed of an encompassing theory of social behavior. With the inclusion of the concept of evolution in mathematical form, this dream will become true. Perhaps the new foundation will even lead to a new name, "conflict theory" instead of "game theory. (shrink)

Philosophers of science traditionally have ignored the details of scientific research, and the result has often been theories that lack relevance either to science or to philosophy in general. In this volume, leading philosophers of biology discuss the limitations of this tradition and the advantages of the "naturalistic turn"—the idea that the study of science is itself a scientific enterprise and should be conducted accordingly. This innovative book presents candid, informal debates among scholars who examine the benefits and problems of (...) studying science in the same way that scientists study the natural world. Callebaut achieves the effect of face-to-face engagement through separate interviews with participants. Contributors include William Bechtel, Robert Brandon, Richard M. Burian, Donald T. Campbell, Patricia Churchland, Jon Elster, Ronald N. Giere, David L. Hull, Philip Kitcher, Karin Knorr Cetina, Bruno Latour, Richard Levins, Richard C. Lewontin, Elisabeth Lloyd, Helen Longino, Thomas Nickles, Henry C. Plotkin, Robert J. Richards, Alexander Rosenberg, Michael Ruse, Dudley Shapere, Elliott Sober, Ryan Tweney, and William Wimsatt. "Why can't we have both theoretical ecology and natural histories, lovingly done?"—Philip Kitcher "Don't underestimate the arrogance of philosophers!"—Elisabeth Lloyd. (shrink)

The contributions of few contemporary scientists have been as far reaching in their effects as those of Nobel Laureate Werner Heisenberg.

Equipped with the ultimate query answering system, computers would finally be in a position to address all our information needs in a natural way. In this paper, we describe how Language and Computing nv (L&C), a developer of ontology-based natural language understanding systems for the healthcare domain, is working towards the ultimate Question Answering (QA) System for healthcare workers. L&C’s company strategy in this area is to design in a step-by-step fashion the essential components of such a system, each component (...) being designed to solve some one part of the total problem and at the same time reflect well-defined needs on the prat of our customers. We compare our strategy with the research roadmap proposed by the Question Answering Committee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), paying special attention to the role of ontology. (shrink)

Increasing ethical attention and debate is focusing on whether individuals who take part in clinical trials should be given access to post-trial care. However, the main focus of this debate has been upon drug trials undertaken in low-income settings. To broaden this debate, we report findings from interviews with individuals (n = 24) who participated in a clinical trial of a closed-loop system, which is a medical device under development for people with type 1 diabetes that automatically adjusts blood glucose (...) to help keep it within clinically recommended ranges. Individuals were recruited from UK sites and interviewed following trial close-out, at which point the closed-loop had been withdrawn. While individuals were stoical and accepting of the requirement to return the closed-loop, they also conveyed varying degrees of distress. Many described having relaxed diabetes management practices while using the closed-loop and having become deskilled as a consequence, which made reverting back to pre-trial regimens challenging. Participants also described unanticipated consequences arising from using a closed-loop. As well as deskilling, these included experiencing psychological and emotional benefits that could not be sustained after the closed-loop had been withdrawn and participants reevaluating their pre- and post-trial life in light of having used a closed-loop and now perceiving this life much more negatively. Participants also voiced frustrations about experiencing better blood glucose control using a closed-loop and then having to revert to using what they now saw as antiquated and imprecise self-management tools. We use these findings to argue that ethical debates about post-trial provisioning need to be broadened to consider potential psychological and emotional harms, and not just clinical harms, that may result from withdrawal of investigated treatments. We also suggest that individuals may benefit from information about potential nonclinical harms to help make informed decisions about trial participation. (shrink)

Big data biology—bioinformatics, computational biology, systems biology (including ‘omics’), and synthetic biology—raises a number of issues for the philosophy of science. This article deals with several such: Is data-intensive biology a new kind of science, presumably post-reductionistic? To what extent is big data biology data-driven? Can data ‘speak for themselves?’ I discuss these issues by way of a reflection on Carl Woese’s worry that “a society that permits biology to become an engineering discipline, that allows that science to slip into (...) the role of changing the living world without trying to understand it, is a danger to itself.” And I argue that scientific perspectivism, a philosophical stance represented prominently by Giere, Van Fraassen, and Wimsatt, according to which science cannot as a matter of principle transcend our human perspective, provides the best resources currently at our disposal to tackle many of the philosophical issues implied in the modeling of complex, multilevel/multiscale phenomena. (shrink)

The role of chance in historiography is a major question for the analysis of cultural transformations. Its main subject are the transformations of contingentia itself, which has undergone substantial changes in its mythical forms (as Tyche or Fortuna) as well in its historical expressions in philosophy, theology, politics, sciences, literature and art.

This volume has its already distant or1g1n in an inter national conference on Evolutionary Epistemology the editors organized at the University of Ghent in November 1984. This conference aimed to follow up the endeavor started at the ERISS (Epistemologically Relevant Internalist Sociology of Science) conference organized by Don Campbell and Alex Rosen berg at Cazenovia Lake, New York, in June 1981, whilst in jecting the gist of certain current continental intellectual developments into a debate whose focus, we thought, was in (...) danger of being narrowed too much, considering the still underdeveloped state of affairs in the field. Broadly speaking, evolutionary epistemology today con sists of two interrelated, yet qualitatively distinct inves tigative efforts. Both are drawing on Darwinian concepts, which may explain why many people have failed to discriminate them. One is the study of the evolution of the cognitive apparatus of living organisms, which is first and foremost the province of biologists and psychologists (H. C. Plotkin, Ed. , Learning, Development, and Culture: Essays in Evolu tionary Epistemology, New York, Wiley, 1984), although quite a few philosophers - professional or vocational - have also felt the need to express themselves on this vast subject (F. M. Wuketits, Ed. , Conce ts and Approaches in Evolutionary Epistemology, Dordrecht Boston, Reidel, 1984). The other approach deals with the evolution of science, and has been dominated hitherto by (allegedly) 'naturalized' philosophers; no book-length survey of this literature is available at present. (shrink)

Successful biomedical data mining and information extraction require a complete picture of biological phenomena such as genes, biological processes, and diseases; as these exist on different levels of granularity. To realize this goal, several freely available heterogeneous databases as well as proprietary structured datasets have to be integrated into a single global customizable scheme. We will present a tool to integrate different biological data sources by mapping them to a proprietary biomedical ontology that has been developed for the purposes of (...) making computers understand medical natural language. (shrink)

Die Kontroversen um Imre Lakatos' "Methodologie wissenschaftlicher Forschungsprogramme" haben zu der Frage geführt, ob auf Basis der von Lakatos entwickelten Standards für die Bewertung von konkurrierenden Theorien und Forschungsprogrammen auch heuristische Empfehlungen begründet werden können, die die von Wissenschaftlern auszuführenden Handlungen im Interesse der Maximierung von Erkenntnisfortschritt normieren. Eine solche Frage steht im Zusammenhang mit einem zentralen Anliegen der Popperschen Wissenschaftstheorie: "Wir wollen die Regeln, oder, wenn man will, die Normen aufstellen, nach denen sich der Forscher richtet, wenn er Wissenschaft (...) treibt, wie wir es uns denken". Ob die Methodologie wissenschaftlicher Forschungsprogramme, die Lakatos als Weiterentwicklung des kritisch-rationalistischen Falsifikationismus verstanden wissen will, diesen Ansprüchen genügt, wurde zuerst von Paul K. Feyerabend und Thomas S. Kuhn bezweifelt. Im folgenden werden zunächst deren Kritiken, die Antworten von Lakatos sowie Analysen von J. J. C. Smart, Wolfgang Stegmüller und Philip Quinn diskutiert. Anschließend wird ein neuer Versuch Alan Musgraves kritisch überprüft, unter Rückgriff auf die Bewertungskriterien der Methodologie wissenschaftlicher Forschungsprogramme heuristische Empfehlungen zu begründen. (shrink)

Mental and behavioral disorders represent a significant portion of the public health burden in all countries. The human cost of these disorders is immense, yet treatment options for sufferers are currently limited, with many patients failing to respond sufficiently to available interventions and drugs. High quality ontologies facilitate data aggregation and comparison across different disciplines, and may therefore speed up the translation of primary research into novel therapeutics. Realism-based ontologies describe entities in reality and the relationships between them in such (...) a way that – once formulated in a suitable formal language – the ontologies can be used for sophisticated automated reasoning applications. Reference ontologies can be applied across different contexts in which different, and often mutually incompatible, domain-specific vocabularies have traditionally been used. In this contribution we describe the Mental Functioning Ontology (MF) and Mental Disease Ontology (MD), two realism-based ontologies currently under development for the description of humanmental functioning and disease. We describe the structure and upper levels of the ontologies and preliminary application scenarios, and identify some open questions. (shrink)

This volume contains the invited lectures and a selection of the contributed papers and posters of the workshop on "Fluctuations and Sensitivity in Nonequil ibrium Systems", held at the Joe C. Thompson Conference Center, Un i vers ity of Texas at Austin, March 12-16, 1984. The workshop dealt with stochastic phenomena and sensi­ tivity in nonequilibrium systems from a macroscopic point of view. Durin9 the last few years it has been realized that the role of fluctuations is far less trivial (...) in systems far from equilibrium than in systems under thermodynamic equilibrium condi­ tions. It was found that random fluctuations often are a determining factor for the state adopted by macroscopic systems and cannot be regarded as secondary effects of minor importance. Further, nonequilibrium systems are also very sensitive to small systematic changes in their environment. The main aims of the workshop were: i) to provide scientists with an occasion to acquaint themselves with the state of the art in fluctuation theory and sensitivity analysis; ii) to provide a forum for the presentation of recent advances in theory and experiment; iii) to bring toge­ ther theoreticians and experimentalists in order to delineate the major open problems and to formulate strategies to tackle these problems. The organizing committee of the workshop consisted of W. Horsthemke, O. K. Konde­ pudi, G. Dewel, G. Nicolis, I. Prigogine and L. Reichl. (shrink)

The integration of information resources in the life sciences is one of the most challenging problems facing bioinformatics today. We describe how Language and Computing nv, originally a developer of ontology-based natural language understanding systems for the healthcare domain, is developing a framework for the integration of structured data with unstructured information contained in natural language texts. L&C’s LinkSuite™ combines the flexibility of a modular software architecture with an ontology based on rigorous philosophical and logical principles that is designed to (...) comprehend the basic formal relationships that structure both reality and the ways humans perceive and communicate about reality. (shrink)

Este artículo se refiere a la doctrina práctica de Aquino sobre dos dificultades filosóficas que subyacen en gran parte del debate ético contemporáneo. Una es la Is-ought thesis de Hume y la otra es su consecuencia radical la Open-question argument de Moore. Estas paradojas éticas parecen tener sus raíces en un scepticismo epistemológico y en una antropología deficiente. La posible respuesta a ellas se puede encontrar en que: a) Tomás de Aquino defiende la esencial racionalidad y unidad del ser humano; (...) b) La ley natural tomista es una consecuencia natural del ser racional; c) La razón humana es esencialmente teórica y práctica al mismotiempo. El intelecto humano de Aquino naturalmente realiza tres operaciones principales: 1º) Aprehender las nociones inteligidas y universales ens, verum y bonum. 2º) Formular los primeros principios teóricos y prácticos. 3º) Ordenar que se haga el bien inteligido y universal y se evite lo contrario. Por estas razones,la respuesta filosófica de Aquino a ambas dificultades no es exclusivamente ética, sino que abarca armónicamente la ontología, antropología y epistemología. La ética de Tomás de Aquino es fundamentalmente diferente de las éticas que califican las acciones como buenas o por mero consenso social (contractualismo) o simplemente calculando sus consecuencias (consecuencialismo). (shrink)

Este artículo académico trata sobre cómo Aquino entendía: a) la aprehensión de las primeras nociones intelectas universales: ens, verum et bonum simpliciter; b) la fructificación de los primeros preceptos y de los segundos preceptos prácticos en la persona genuinamente humana o racional; c) la ética, ley moral natural, como esencialmente derivada de la ontología. Ens compuesto de naturaleza humana, entendida metafísicamente y acto del ser, ordenado al bonum; d) por tanto, la ley natural solo tiene sentido desde una visión metafísica, (...) no meramente física o material. (shrink)

This article explains how Aquinas understood: a) apprehension of the first intellectual concepts ens, verum et bonum simpliciter; b)establishment of the first and second commandments of natural law in a person, genuinely human or rational; and c) ethics as essentially derived from ontology.Metaphysically understood, Ens is a compound of human nature and act of being; d) therefore, natural law only makes sense from a metaphysical point of view, not a physical or material one.

Summary Since its definition at the council of Nicea the date of Easter had been calculated on a cyclical basis. The Easter formula publicized by C. F. Gauss in 1800 has neither achieved recognition with the chronologists nor with the officials of the papal curia, responsible for the fixing of Easter. In the paper being presented here the elements of medieval computus are transformed on an arithmetical basis and from this a formula for the fixing of Easter is developed. With (...) the help of these two components it is possible to calculate the Julian as well as the Gregorian dates of Easter and, in addition the calendar of any given year. The formula for the date of Easter being submitted here can be traced back exclusively to the elements of the medieval computus and can be ratified by the chronologists. Thus it renders possible the fixing of every Easter date with the help of a pocket calculator or the use of two small tables. This demonstrates that the history of methodology contains tools in order to develop a ‘new’ solution of a systematical problem. (shrink)

Werner Beierwaltes n'est pas seulement un des très grands et sûrs spécialistes du néoplatonisme, comme suffirait à l'attester son livre de 1965 : Proclus. Traits fondamentaux de sa métaphysique, ou ses éditions commentées de Plotin, mais c'est aussi un historien animé de préoccupations systématiques directement en prise sur la philosophie contemporaine et son rapport hypercritique à la tradition métaphysique. Le présent ouvrage, qui est comme le premier volet d'une trilogie dont les deux autres parties sont encore inédites en français (...) (Identität und Differenz, Denken des Einen), en fournit une éclatante illustration : ce qui caractérise en effet ce style d'enquête, ce n'est pas seulement une érudition qui se révèle toujours irréprochable dans la diversité de ses domaines d'application (l'antiquité tardive, Jean Scot Erigène, le moyen âge, Nicolas de Cues, l'idéalisme allemand, ou encore la pensée contemporaine : Adorno, Heidegger), ce n'est pas non plus seulement une parfaite maîtrise du "comparatisme", comme pourrait le laisser croire à tort la juxtaposition des deux termes "platonisme" et "idéalisme", dans l'intitulé du présent volume, mais c'est bien plutôt l'originalité d'une méthode herméneutique qui s'attache à dégager des structures de pensée et à confronter, au-delà d'une problématique étroite de la "réception", des philosophèmes majeurs dont la continuité finit par dessiner une histoire entièrement différente de la mise en perspective historiale heideggérienne ou des simplifications de l'antiplatonisme commun de l'époque. Se trouvent ainsi interrogées, dans le cadre d'une nouvelle histoire-en -effet (ou "histoire de l'efficience"), la problématique des noms divins et du Nom exodique, de Philon d'Alexandrie à Maître Eckhart, en passant par Augustin ; la problématique plotinienne et néoplatonicienne de l'Un, de la pensée et de la réflexivité constitutive de la conscience de soi ; la question de la proposition spéculative à la lumière des interprétations d'Exode III, 14. Ce qui jette une lumière, aussi vive que neuve, sur l'appropriation du néoplatonisme par l'idéalisme allemand (Schelling, Hegel), et éclaire en retour, avec la notion même de dialectique, de négativité, et de dialectique négative, l'ensemble de la problématique fondamentale de l'ontothéologie. Actualité du néoplatonisme, entendu comme "forme de vie", tel pourrait être l'enseignement critique et positif d'une reconstruction de longue haleine, jalonnée par sept ouvrages, et dont on trouvera ici comme le portique. (shrink)

This lecture by Professor Werner Marx, of Freiburg University, was presented at the Moscow Hegel Convention on November 2, 1974. It is here translated for the first time by Professor James C. Risser, of Seattle University.

Werner Jaeger's classic three-volume work, originally published in 1939, is now available in paperback. Paideia, the shaping of Greek character through a union of civilization, tradition, literature, and philosophy is the basis for Jaeger's evaluation of Hellenic culture.Volume I describes the foundation, growth, and crisis of Greek culture during the archaic and classical epochs, ending with the collapse of the Athenian empire. The second and third volumes of the work deal with the intellectual history of ancient Greece in the (...) Age of Plato, the 4th century B.C.--the age in which Greece lost everything that is valued in this world--state, power, liberty--but still clung to the concept of paideia. As its last great poet, Menander summarized the primary role of this ideal in Greek culture when he said: "The possession which no one can take away from man is paideia.". (shrink)

Tant que l’art fera partie du luxe, c’est-à-dire tant qu’il organisera sa rareté par l’effet de sa spéculation intellectuelle, il vivra une croissance infinie. Pour cela, il ne faut pas qu’il y ait d’inflation, c’est-à-dire qu’il faut respecter un certain numerus clausus d’artistes et d’œuvres. Le Wall Street de nos désirs et nos désillusions, c’est justement l’organisation de cette inflation, c’est – dans la continuité de Beuys – affirmer que chacun d’entre nous est capable d’être un artiste. Nous allons bombarder (...) le réel qui nous est fait de tous les réels qui vivent logés en nous pour en faire Le Wall Street de nos désirs et de nos désillusions, une bourse de nos valeurs inscrites dans une symbolique, jouée à la hausse et à la baisse dans un jeu qui va faire monter votre désir et donc armer une révolution dans le sens des saisons. (shrink)

Werner Jaeger's classic three-volume work, originally published in 1939, is now available in paperback. Paideia, the shaping of Greek character through a union of civilization, tradition, literature, and philosophy is the basis for Jaeger's evaluation of Hellenic culture.Volume I describes the foundation, growth, and crisis of Greek culture during the archaic and classical epochs, ending with the collapse of the Athenian empire. The second and third volumes of the work deal with the intellectual history of ancient Greece in the (...) Age of Plato, the 4th century B.C.--the age in which Greece lost everything that is valued in this world--state, power, liberty--but still clung to the concept of paideia. As its last great poet, Menander summarized the primary role of this ideal in Greek culture when he said: "The possession which no one can take away from man is paideia.". (shrink)

Werner Jaeger's classic three-volume work, originally published in 1939, is now available in paperback. Paideia, the shaping of Greek character through a union of civilization, tradition, literature, and philosophy is the basis for Jaeger's evaluation of Hellenic culture.Volume I describes the foundation, growth, and crisis of Greek culture during the archaic and classical epochs, ending with the collapse of the Athenian empire. The second and third volumes of the work deal with the intellectual history of ancient Greece in the (...) Age of Plato, the 4th century B.C.--the age in which Greece lost everything that is valued in this world--state, power, liberty--but still clung to the concept of paideia. As its last great poet, Menander summarized the primary role of this ideal in Greek culture when he said: "The possession which no one can take away from man is paideia.". (shrink)

When von Neumann’s and Morgenstern’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior appeared in 1944, one thought that a complete theory of strategic social behavior had appeared out of nowhere. However, game theory has, to this very day, remained a fast-growing assemblage of models which have gradually been united in a new social theory — a theory that is far from being completed even after recent advances in game theory, as evidenced by the work of the three Nobel Prize winners, John (...) F. Nash, John C. Harsanyi, and Reinhard Selten. Two of them, Harsanyi and Selten, have contributed important articles to the present volume. This book leaves no doubt that the game-theoretical models are on the right track to becoming a respectable new theory, just like the great theories of the twentieth century originated from formerly separate models which merged in the course of decades. For social scientists, the age of great discoveries is not over. The recent advances of today’s game theory surpass by far the results of traditional game theory. For example, modern game theory has a new empirical and social foundation, namely, societal experiences; this has changed its methods, its “rationality.” Morgenstern dreamed of an encompassing theory of social behavior. With the inclusion of the concept of evolution in mathematical form, this dream will become true. Perhaps the new foundation will even lead to a new name, “conflict theory” instead of “game theory.”. (shrink)