The concept ‘hereditary breast cancer’ is commonly used to delineate a group of people genetically at risk for breast cancer—all of whom also having risk for other cancers. People carrying pathogenic variants of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are often referred to as those having predisposition for ‘hereditary breast cancer’. The two genes, however, are when altered, associated with different risks for and dying from breast cancer. The main risk for dying for carriers of both genes is from ovarian cancer. (...) These biological facts are of philosophical interest, because they are the facts underlying the public debate on BRCA1/2 genetic testing as a model for the discussion of how to implement genetic knowledge and technologies in personalized medicine. A contribution to this public debate describing inherited breast cancer as ‘biological citizenship’ recently printed in Med Health Care and Philos illustrated how fragmented and detached from the biological and socio-political facts this debate sometimes is. We here briefly summarize some of the biological facts and how they are implemented in today’s healthcare based on agreed philosophical, ethical and moral principles. The suggestion of a ‘biological citizenship’ defined by hereditary breast cancer is incorrect and ill-advised. ‘Identity politics’ focusing hereditary breast cancer patients as a group based on a bundle of ill-defined negative arguments is well known, but is supported neither by scientific nor philosophical arguments. To those born with the genetic variants described, the philosophical rule of not doing harm is violated by unbalanced negative arguments. (shrink)

IntroductionDrug-related deaths are a major public health challenge. Losing a child to a DRD can be a very stressful life event, which places parents at risk of mental and physical health problems. However, traumatic experiences like losing a child to DRD can paradoxically also lead to positive psychological changes. A mixed-method approach was used to understand the complexity of the phenomenon of post-traumatic growth experienced by parents following a DRD.MethodBy combining data from a survey and interviews, we explored positive growth (...) experiences among Norwegian parents. We conducted descriptive analyses of the sample’s demographic characteristics and mean scores for Post-traumatic Growth Inventory items. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to examine the influence of the ability to perform daily activities, self-efficacy, social support, and symptoms of prolonged grief on the outcome variable of post-traumatic growth. Reflexive thematic analysis was applied to analyze the qualitative data. Finally, we integrated the results of the survey and the interviews.ResultsFor items measuring post-traumatic growth, parents scored highest on the item “I discovered that I’m stronger than I thought I was” and lowest on the item “I am able to do better things with my life.” Self-efficacy and social support had a statistically significant relation with post-traumatic growth. Two themes were generated from the interviews: new perspectives on life and new paths in life. Even though the “New Possibilities” subscale had the lowest mean score for the PTGI-SF, new paths in life were important for many of the interviewed parents.DiscussionParents described traumatic stressors associated with having a child who uses narcotics and hence experienced positive changes even before losing their child. We argue that on an individual level, the consequences of spillover stigma, low self-efficacy, and intrusive rumination can hinder potential post-traumatic growth. On a group level, enhancing network support may increase post-traumatic growth experiences. Hence, parents who have experienced a DRD can benefit from help to activate their social networks and strengthen their self-efficacy. (shrink)

This book analyzes for the first time in English the ethical theory that underpins Qur’anic legislation by providing a classification of specific verses in which Islam’s holy book discusses moral issues. The principal purpose of this book is to demonstrate the ways in which the Qur’an theoretically and practically provides the moral code to which Muslims around the world adhere. The author divides his analysis into a survey of Qur’anic attitudes towards the basic ethical issues of obligation and responsibility, issues (...) of moral psychology such as motivation and intention, as well as matters of social ethics such as the function of law in society. He then explores the meanings of individual morality, morality within the family and civil society, and the relationship of morality to the idea of the state. (shrink)

The manuscript tradition of Proba’s "Cento" was investigated by K. SCHENKL, whose edition (CSEL 1888) remains the basis of every further inquiry. He knew some 25 manuscripts, only eleven of which are reported in his apparatus. Going through catalogues I have discovered about 40 new manuscripts, most of which belong to the humanistic age. After listing all the manuscripts, I try to establish their relationships. Although I consider restricted evidence (I have collated systematically about 100 verses), some facts seem to (...) be plain. The humanistic tradition originates from three old manuscripts (Cantabrig. Sanctae Trinitatis O.7.7; Parisinus Lat. 13048; Vaticanus Pal. Lat. 1753), while another very important old manuscript (Parisinus Lat. 7701) has no progeny. I try to place all the manuscripts in a stemma. (shrink)

In this paper, I plan to show that the use of a specific population concept—Millstein’s Causal Interactionist Population Concept (CIPC)—has interesting and counter-intuitive ramifications for discussions of the reality of biological race in human beings. These peculiar ramifications apply to human beings writ large and to individuals. While this in and of itself may not be problematic, I plan to show that the ramifications that follow from applying Millstein’s CIPC to human beings complicates specific biological racial realist accounts—naïve or otherwise. (...) I conclude with the notion that even if biological races do exist—by fulfilling all of the criteria needed for Millstein’s population concept (which, given particular worries raised by Gannett (Synthese 177:363–385, 2010), and Winther and Kaplan (Theoria 60:54–80, 2013) may not)—the lower-bound limit for the scope of biological racial realism is at the level of populations, and as such they cannot say anything about whether or not individual organisms themselves have races. (shrink)

This text explores how human beings construe experience: experience as a resource, as a potential for understanding, representing and acting on reality.

The period March 2020–March 2021 marks the time reference for this theoretical study as it denotes the initial surge of the Pandemic, where whole societies were destabilized by the ferocity of Covid-19. Within this context, I posit COVID-19 as a transforming event: one that exhausts worlds. Drawing from Jan Masschelein’s works on Arendt and the architecture of public education, the question at hand is how does Covid-19, as a transforming event, affect and change the very essence of education? I begin (...) by comparing two definitions of crisis, Arendt’s notion of krisis, with philosopher Peter Pal Pelbart’s thinking around crisis, illness, and ‘exhaustion.’ I conclude by identifying an ‘inconsequential’ architectural space, a ‘spandrel.’ This spatial by-product, revealed during the Pandemic, is located within the very design of the ‘perfect’ public school, schole: the Arendtian ‘table.’ This spandrel aligns with Fernand Deligny’s ‘primordial communism.’. (shrink)

Recognized in his day as a man of letters equaling Rousseau and Voltaire in France and rivaling Samuel Johnson, David Hume passed from favor in the Victorian age--his work, it seemed, did not pursue Truth but rather indulged in popularization. Although Hume is once more considered as one of the greatest British philosophers, scholars now tend to focus on his thought rather than his writing. To round out our understanding of Hume, M. A. Box in this book charts the interrelated (...) development of Hume's literary ambitions, theories of style, and compositional practice from his Treatise in 1739 through the Enquiries. In so doing, Box makes the case for Hume's career-long concern with the presentational modes of reaching an audience for his philosophical writings. Hume reacted to the popular failure of his masterpiece, A Treatise of Human Nature, Box suggests, by self-consciously exploring strategies in his subsequent works for agreeably bringing his readership to participate in the act of philosophizing. Combining a sensitive grasp of the ways Restoration period and eighteenth-century writers conceived the relations between rhetoric and philosophy with sound readings of particular texts, Box shows how Hume's literary concerns went beyond matters of style to involve persona, structure, and doctrine. While this book helps explain long-standing ambiguities surrounding Hume, especially by pointing out the tension between his created persona and his own voice, it also serves as an excellent introduction to his philosophy. (shrink)

Metabolism is a criterion of life. Three senses are distinguished. The weakest allows strong A-Life: virtual creatures having physical existence in computer electronics, but not bodies, are classes as 'alive'. The second excludes strong A-Life but allows that some non-biochemical A-Life robots could be classed as alive. The third, which stresses the body's self-production by energy budgeting and self-equilibrating energy exchanges of some (necessary) complexity, excludes both strong A-Life and living non-biochemical robots.

The study presents the broad outlines for a relationalist interpretation of the Indian epistemological doctrine svataḥ prāmāṇya. Due to the inadequacy of the main western interpretations thereof, the paper’s approach can be considered an inference to the best explanation. Its main part is devoted to the typologization of various epistemological doctrines based on the svataḥ prāmāṇya principle in terms of strong and weak disjunctivism. Three paradigm cases of strong disjunctivism and a special variety of weak disjunctivism have thus been identified (...) in Indian epistemology, which allowed to draw a conclusion that strong disjunctivism constituted one of its general paradigms. (shrink)

M A B Degenhardt; Sartre, Imagination and Education1, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 9, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 72–92, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.

Is there an effect of depressed mood on the interpretation of ambiguity? Are depressed individuals biased to interpret ambiguous information in a negative manner? We used a cross-modal semantic priming task to look for evidence of a negative interpretative bias. Participants listened to ambiguous prime sentences (e.g., Joan was stunned by her final exam mark) and made lexical decisions to target words presented immediately after the sentence offset or after a delay of 1000 ms or 2000 ms. For the semantically (...) related targets, the target was negatively related (distress), positively related (success), or neutrally related (grades) to the ambiguous prime. The experiment was conducted with and without a negative mood induction. The expectation was that depressed participants would be more likely to consider the negative interpretations of the ambiguous primes and would therefore experience larger priming effects for negatively related targets. Although there were large priming effects for all semantically related targets, there was no evidence of a negative interpretative bias. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Philosophies and Philosophers Peters' Authenticity Why Value Authenicity? An Apparent Paradox: Peters' Expressed Disdain for Authenticity Conclusion References.