Online research in philosophy

Graduate students often lack concrete advice on publishing. This essay is an attempt to fill this important gap. Advice is given on how to publish everything from book reviews to articles, replies to book chapters, and how to secure both edited book contracts and authored monograph contracts, along with plenty of helpful tips and advice on the publishing world (and how it works) along the way in what is meant to be a comprehensive, concrete guide (...) to publishing that should be of tremendous value to graduate students working in any area of the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Academic publishing is a world filled with more mystery than revelation. Often the best advice is made available only to those lucky enough to hear it by word of mouth. This is no less true with editing academic journals. I have enjoyed the honour of launching the Journal of Moral Philosophy and serving as its editor for the last ten years. I actively sought out the best advice on a number of issues from editors serving on leading (...) journals as well as their publishers. Despite the fact that most of the conversations focused on journals in the areas of law, philosophy, and political science, I believe that much of the general advice remains true for most disciplines. This editorial brings together some lessons learned over the years and reveals some secrets about the trade. My purpose is to improve the information available to share best practice and offer some insight into the minds of academic journal editors. This is a task I have performed previously on the topics of publishing advice and referee guidelines that I extend now to journal editing. I begin with a brief note about my background experiences before moving to advice on how to successfully propose a new journal to a publisher. I then discuss topics such as managing a journal launch before considering advice on the effective management of submissions received and further advice on journal development. (shrink)

Should those who work on ethics welcome or resist moves to open access publishing? This paper analyses arguments in favour and against the increasing requirement for open access publishing and considers their implications for bioethics research. In the context of biomedical science, major funders are increasingly mandating open access as a condition of funding and such moves are also common in other disciplines. Whilst there has been some debate about the implications of open-access for the social sciences and (...) humanities, there has been little if any discussion about the implications of open access for ethics. This is surprising given both the central role of public reason and critique in ethics and the fact that many of the arguments made for and against open access have been couched in moral terms. In what follows I argue that those who work in ethics have a strong interest in supporting moves towards more open publishing approaches which have the potential both to inform and promote richer and more diverse forms of public deliberation and to be enriched by them. The importance of public deliberation in practical and applied ethics suggests that ethicists have a particular interest in the promotion of diverse and experimental forms of publication and debate and in supporting new, more creative and more participatory approaches to publication. (shrink)

Monists, pluralists, and particularists disagree about the structure of the best explanation of the rightness (wrongness) of actions. In this paper I argue that the availability of good moral advice gives us reason to prefer particularist theories and pluralist theories to monist theories. First, I identify two distinct roles of moral theorizing—explaining the rightness (wrongness) of actions, and providing moral advice—and I explain how these two roles are related. Next, I explain what monists, pluralists, and particularists disagree about. (...) Finally, I argue that particularists and pluralists are better situated than monists to explain why it is a good idea to think before we act, and that this gives us reason to favor particularism and pluralism over monism. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that ad hominem arguments are not always fallacious. More explicitly, in certain cases of practical reasoning, the circumstances of a person are relevant to whether or not the conclusion should be accepted. This occurs, I suggest, when a person gives advice to others or prescribes certain courses of action but fails to follow her own advice or act in accordance with her own prescriptions. This is not an instance of a fallacious tu quoque (...) provided that such circumstantial ad hominem arguments are construed as rebuttals to appeals (administrative) authority (of expertise), or so I argue. (shrink)

As part of the conference commemorating Theoria's 75th anniversary, a round table discussion on philosophy publishing was held in Bergendal, Sollentuna, Sweden, on 1 October 2010. Bengt Hansson was the chair, and the other participants were eight editors-in-chief of philosophy journals: Hans van Ditmarsch (Journal of Philosophical Logic), Pascal Engel (Dialectica), Sven Ove Hansson (Theoria), Vincent Hendricks (Synthese), Søren Holm (Journal of Medical Ethics), Pauline Jacobson (Linguistics and Philosophy), Anthonie Meijers (Philosophical Explorations), Henry S. Richardson (Ethics) and Hans Rott (...) (Erkenntnis). (shrink)

Peer review and publication is one of the factors proposed in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. as indicia of the reliability of scientific testimony. This Article traces the origins of the peer-review system, the process by which it became standard at scientific and medical journals, and the many roles it now plays. Additionally, the Author articulates the epistemological rationale for pre-publication peer-review and the inherent limitations of the system as a scientific quality-control mechanism. The Article explores recent changes in (...) science, in scientific publishing, and in the academy that have put the system under strain. The Author argues that Justice Blackmun's advice to courts - that peer-reviewed publication is relevant, but is not dispositive - is of little practical help. Instead, the Author suggests questions that courts should ask in assessing the significance of the fact that testimony is, or is not, based on peer-reviewed publication and illustrates with reference to another Bendectin case, Blum v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where some of these questions were asked. (shrink)

Liberal societies are characterized by respect for a fundamental value pluralism; i.e., respect for individuals’ rights to live by their own conception of the good. Still, the state must make decisions that privilege some values at the cost of others. When public ethics committees give substantial ethical advice on policy related issues, it is therefore important that this advice is well justified. The use of explicit tools for ethical assessment can contribute to justifying advice. In this article, (...) I will discuss one approach to ethical assessment, the ethical matrix method. This method is a variant of intuitionist balancing. Intuitionism is characterized by stressing the existence of several (at least two) fundamental prima facie moral principles, between which there is no given rank order. For some intuitionist approaches, coherentism has been proposed as a model of justification. This article will discuss justification of ethical advice and evaluate the appropriateness of coherentism as a justificatory approach to intuitionist tools. (shrink)

Beware of economists bearing advice. Though some of it is valuable, the framework of theoretical welfare economics from which economic advice usually issues has serious normative limitations and distortions. When economists go beyond identifying consequences of policies to making recommendations, they typically rely on a theory whose only normative concern is welfare and its distribution and that mistakenly identifies welfare with the satisfaction of preferences. Their advice about how to increase welfare must accordingly be regarded with caution, (...) and policy makers must not forget that increasing welfare should not be their only goal. (shrink)

This paper defends a model of the internalism requirement against Michael Smith's recent criticisms of it. On this "example model", what we have reason to do is what we would be motivated to do were we rational. After criticizing the example model, Smith argues that his "advice model", that what we have reason to do is what we would advise ourselves to do were we rational, is obviously preferable. The author argues that Smith's criticisms can quite easily be accommodated (...) by the example model. Moreover, to the extent that his model connects reasons to advice, it is not a model of the internalism requirement at all. Yet, to the extent that it connects reasons to motivation, his model collapses into the example model. The author ends by arguing that Smith's view simply proposes an unambitious conception of practical rationality, not an alternative construal of the internalism requirement. (shrink)

Is there a mode of sincere advice in which the standards of the adviser are put aside in favor of the standards of the advisee? I consider two sorts of cases that appear to be such that the adviser is evaluating things from within the advisee’s system of standards even though this system conflicts with her own; and I argue that these cases are best interpreted in ways that dissolve this appearance. I then argue that the nature of sincere (...) advice precludes an adviser’s putting aside her own system of standards in favor of a competing system of standards. It follows that, contrary to what some have suggested, it cannot be that practical reason judgments—which are concerned with what an agent has reason to do or not to do and which can figure as advice— evaluate actions from within the agent’s (as opposed to the judger’s) system of standards. (shrink)

This paper launches a new criticism of Michael Smith's advice model of internalism. Whereas Robert Neal Johnson argues that Smith's advice model collapses into the example model of internalism, the author contends that taking advice seriously pushes us instead toward some version of externalism. The advice model of internalism misportrays the logic of accepting advice. Agents do not have epistemic access to what their fully rational selves would advise them to do, and so it is (...) necessary for a model of practical reason based upon advice to reflect the fact that agents take advice only from other people. This fact may or may not support internalism. Whether it does depends upon the content of the good adviser's advice, something we cannot know unless we ourselves are fully rational. We see in a new way, then, how the internalism/externalism debate depends upon the content of practical reason. (shrink)

One of our purposes here is to expose something of the elementary logical structure of abductive reasoning, and to do so in a way that helps orient theorists to the various tasks that a logic of abduction should concern itself with. We are mindful of criticisms that have been levelled against the very idea of a logic of abduction; so we think it prudent to proceed with a certain diffidence. That our own account of abduction is itself abductive is methodological (...) expression of this diffi- dence. A second objective is to test our conception of abduction’s logical structure against some of the more promising going accounts of abductive reasoning. We offer our various suggestions in a benignly advisory way. The primary targets of our advice is ourselves, meant as guides to work we have yet to complete or, in some instances, start. It is possible that our colleagues in the abduction research communities will find our counsel to be of some interest. But we repeat that our first concern is to try to get ourselves straight about what a logic of abduction should encompass. (shrink)

In order to explore public views on nanobiotechnology (NBT), convergence seminars were held in four places in Europe; namely in Visby (Sweden), Sheffield (UK), Lublin (Poland), and Porto (Portugal). A convergence seminar is a new form of public participatory activity that can be used to deal systematically with the uncertainty associated for instance with the development of an emerging technology like nanobiotechnology. In its first phase, the participants are divided into three “scenario groups” that discuss different future scenarios. In the (...) second phase, the participants are regrouped into three “convergence groups”, each of which contains representatives from each of the three groups from the first phase. In the final third phase, all participants meet for a summary discussion. This pilot project had two aims: (1) to develop and assess the new methodology and (2) to gather advice and recommendations from the public that may be useful for future decisions on nanobiotechnology (NBT). Participants emphasized that they wanted the technology to focus on solutions to environmental and medical problems and to meet the needs of developing countries. The need for further public participation and deliberation on NBT issues seemed to be acknowledged by all participants. Many of them also raised equality concerns. Views on the means by which NBT should be steered into socially useful directions were more divided. In particular, different views were expressed on how much regulation of company activities is needed to curb unwanted developments. The participants’ responses in a questionnaire indicate that the methodology of the convergence seminars was successful for decision-making under uncertainty. In particular, the participants stated that their advice was influenced both by access to different possible future developments and by the points of view of their co-participants, which is what the method is specifically intended to achieve. (shrink)

This article seeks a new way to conceptualise the 'classic' work in the history of science, and suggests that the use of publishing history might help avoid the antagonism which surrounded the literary canon wars. It concentrates on the widely acknowledged concept that the key to the classic work is the fact of its being read over a prolonged period of time. Continued reading implies that a work is able to remain relevant to later generations of readers, and, although (...) some of this depends upon the openness of the original text, much more depends on the actions of subsequent publishers and editors in repackaging the work for later audiences.This is illustrated through an examination of the long publishing history of William Paley's Natural theology (1802). Over the course of the century, Natural theology was read as a work of gentlemanly natural theology, as a work which could be used in a formal or informal education in science, and as a work of Christian apologetic. These transformations occurred because of the actions of the later publishers and editors who had to make the work suit the current interests of the literary marketplace. Comparisons are made to Constitution of man, Vestiges of the natural history of creation and Origin of species. (shrink)

This article by one of the Editors of Bioethics, published in the 25th anniversary issue of the journal, describes some of the revolutionary changes academic publishing has undergone during the last decades. Many humanities journals went from typically small print-runs, counting by the hundreds, to on-line availability in thousands of university libraries worldwide. Article up-take by our subscribers can be measured efficiently. The implications of this and other changes to academic publishing are discussed. Important ethical challenges need to (...) be addressed in areas such as the enforcement of plagiarism-related policies, the so-called ‘impact factor’ and its impact on academic integrity, and the question of whether on-line only publishing can currently guarantee the integrity of academic publishing histories. (shrink)

Since its founding in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has occupied a special niche in the complex ecology of advice-giving in the United States. Established as a small, private organization with special responsibilities and obligations vis à vis the American people and government, the Academy has expanded considerably in the past century and a half and now releases, through the National Research Council (NRC), its operating arm, more than 200 reports per year, on topics covering nearly the (...) entire range of science, engineering, health, and education. The development of the organization, its basic ethos, and its evolving structures and processes can be seen as examples of what Herbert Simon called procedural rationality : the pursuit of reasonably good solutions to complex problems based on appropriate deliberation. (shrink)

In two experiments, we investigated how people interpret and reason with realistic conditionals in the form of inducements (i.e., promises and threats) and advice (i.e., tips and warnings). We found that inducements and advice differed with respect to the degree to which the speaker was perceived to have (a) control over the consequent, (b) a stake in the outcome, and (c) an obligation to ensure that the outcome occurs. Inducements and advice also differed with respect to perceived (...) sufficiency and necessity, as well as the degree to which these statements were perceived to be effective in changing the behaviour described in the antecedent of the conditional. Multiple regression analyses indicated that perceived control over the consequent, necessity, and sufficiency emerged as the best predictors of (a) the degree to which statements were perceived to be effective in changing the behaviour of the addressee, and (b) inference patterns on a conditional arguments task. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), a French Philosopher and a Jew, became known first for his role in the introduction of Husserl’s phenomenology to France, and later for his criticisms of Husserl and Heidegger. As the Holocaust gave a significant impact on many theologians and philosophers to establish their theoretical systems, Levinas realized how ethic of responsibility was important through his personal tragic experience. What most peculiar character of his experience is that it leads him to cast a doubt a subject-oriented modern (...) reason. I will explore the modern subjectivity through the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. As Nietzsche mentioned earlier in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is subject dead? Is it no longer meaningful to discuss the modernity in the postmodern ear?Should the trend of anti-subjectivity in the postmodernity be the only alternative? Those questions are underlain this study. For him, the preeminence of the inviolability of the human being must be regarded as the initial point of departure and final destiny. According to Levinas, philosophy is open to its role of significance only insofar as it describes the ethical situation of the responsible self that precedes the metaphysical subject. A bold assertion against the modern perquisite of theory becomes a signature aphorism of Livinas’ work: “ethics is first philosophy.” For Levinas, ethics is not a question of adjusting one’s adherence to transcendent or historical laws or inner principles. Whereas philosophy traditionally gives priority to inner subjectivity and treats ethics as derivative, Levinas’ philosophy stresses that knowing occurs within and is a result of the intersubjective relation. The subject as hostage to the Other, he writes, “has been neither the experience nor the proof of the infinite, but the witnessing of the infinite.” This subjective condition of the ‘I’ is what Levinas calls the responsible self. This article explores whether Emmanuel Levinas's ethic of the Other can be regarded as a theological discourse. After publishing Totality and Infinity, there have been manyserious questions of the relationship between transcendence and immanence; infinity and the finite among many philosophers and theologians. Interestingly enough, Levinas tries to mediate these concepts by his ethic of the Other. I examine how Levinas deals with the tension and difficulty of these two areas in his ethic of the Other. As a French phenomenologist, Jean-Luc Marion already mentioned, this kind of attempt has confronted a double-bind dilemma. One is that it would be a question of phenomena that are objectively definable but lose their religious specialty; and the other is that it would be a question of phenomena that are especially religious but cannot be described objectively. In this sense, Levinas’s ethic of the Other gives us an insight that what philosophy of religion would be. A great deal of information about such great philosophers does not always guarantee sound philosophical reflection. As Levinas’ philosophy was developed in his struggle with Heidegger’s philosophy in the matrix of Husserl’s phenomenology, my philosophical reflection on Levinas’ ethics has to be examined by those who are experts in various philosophical areas. Many members of WCP from all around the world will provide me more mature philosophical thinking, and their advice and expertise will be invaluable. In addition, chances to meet great visiting scholars who will come from all over the world will be also one of the prestigious privileges to articulate my thinking. I look forward to interacting with the great scholars who will visit Seoul National University, and in these interactions, to clarify and better articulate my ideas. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have employed the notion of advice to tackle a variety of philosophical problems. In particular, Michael Smith and Nomy Arpaly have in different ways related the notion of advice to the notion of a reason for action. Here I argue that both accounts are flawed, because each operates with a simplistic picture of the way advice works. I conclude that it would be wise to take more time to analyze what advice is and how (...) it in fact works, before putting it to particular philosophical uses. (shrink)

Academic accounting researchers often offer anecdotal evidence that the publishing process is rife with unfair and unethical practices, and similar contradictory evidence supports accounting journal editors' claims that the process is fair and ethical. This study compares the perceptions of accounting authors and editors on the ethicacy and frequency of specific author, editor and reviewer practices. Both authors and editors are in general agreement about the ethical nature of editors and author practices. However, there are significant differences between the (...) groups regarding reviewer behavior, and regarding the frequency of occurrence of questionable author, editor and reviewer practices. Additionally, the majority of authors believe that codes of publishing ethics are needed, while editors do not. Women authors are significantly more supportive of such ethical codes when compared to their male counterparts. (shrink)

During the coming decades, life scientists will become involved more than ever in the public and private lives of patients and consumers, as health and food sciences shift from a collective approach towards individualization, from a curative to a preventive approach, and from being driven by desires rather than by technology. This means that the traditional relationships between the activities of life scientists – conducting research, advising industry, governments, and patients/consumers, consulting the public, and prescribing products, be it patents, drugs (...) or food products, information, or advice – are getting blurred. Traditional concepts of the individual, role, task, and collective responsibility have to be revised. This paper argues, from a pragmatic point of view, that the concept of public responsibility can contribute considerably in delineating new gray zones between the various roles of the life scientist: conducting research for governments or industry, giving advice, prescribing and selling products, and doing public consultation. The main issues are where new Chinese walls (not Berlin walls) need to be built between these activities, thereby increasing trust between life scientists and the public at large, and how to organize research agendas and to decide upon research topics. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of an experiment on mutual versus common knowledge of advice in a two-player weak-link game with random matching. Our experimental subjects play in pairs for thirteen rounds. After a brief learning phase common to all treatments, we vary the knowledge levels associated with external advice given in the form of a suggestion to pick the strategy supporting the payoff-dominant equilibrium. Our results are somewhat surprising and can be summarized as follows: in all our (...) treatments both the choice of the efficiency-inducing action and the percentage of efficient equilibrium play are higher with respect to the control treatment, revealing that even a condition as weak as mutual knowledge of level 1 is sufficient to significantly increase the salience of the efficient equilibrium with respect to the absence of advice. Furthermore, and contrary to our hypothesis, mutual knowledge of level 2 induces, under suitable conditions, successful coordination more frequently than common knowledge. (shrink)

Company directors and executives seek legal advice outside the company on a regular basis. This advice is meant to be given within the context of the lawyers’ professional obligations and ethical practise. What clients may not appreciate is there is often a conflict of interest between the lawyers’ professional and ethical concerns and the legal advice business. If lawyers follow their business interests, their advice may be incomplete especially in relation to the ethical consequences of that (...) advice. This could lead to a compromise of the clients’ commercial interests and even raise doubts in relation to the legality of the clients’ proposed course of action. (shrink)

Are codes of ethics needed to guide author, reviewer and editor publishing practices in accounting journals? What practices are considered unethical, and to what extend do they occur? A survey of ninety-five journal editors who publish accounting articles rated author, reviewer and editor practices as ethical or unethical, and estimated the frequency with which these practices occur. Respondents also commented on current publishing practices regarding the double-blind review process, payments for reviews, confirmatory bias, and whether codes of ethics (...) are needed for the publication process. More than half the editors supported the status quo, and felt that that codes were not necessary for editors and reviewers. They were evenly split on the question of an author code of ethics. (shrink)

This paper discusses the criticisms that exist about corporate use of ethics advice by bioscience companies and offers suggestions on how ethics advisors can be used so as to maximize their utility and avoid the criticism.

This article reports on considerable variety and diversity among discourses on their own jobs of boundary workers of several major Dutch institutes for science-based policy advice. Except for enlightenment, all types of boundary arrangements/work in the Wittrock-typology (Social knowledge and public policy: eight models of interaction. In: Wagner P (ed) Social sciences and modern states: national experiences and theoretical crossroads. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991) do occur. ‘Divergers’ experience a gap between science and politics/policymaking; and it is their (...) self-evident task to act as a bridge. They spread over four discourses: ‘rational facilitators’, ‘knowledge brokers’, ‘megapolicy strategists’, and ‘policy analysts’. Others aspire to ‘convergence’; they believe science and politics ought to be natural allies in preparing collective decisions. But ‘policy advisors’ excepted, ‘postnormalists’ and ‘deliberative proceduralists’ find this very hard to achieve. (shrink)

This article discusses the future of quality control in an academic publication system that will be largely based on electronic publishing. Information and communication technologies both challenge traditional ways and open remedies for existent problems of present gate-keeping. New forms of ex-ante and of ex-post quality control may partly replace and partly amend peer review, citation indices and quality filters based on the reputation of the publisher. Open peer review, online commenting, rating, access counts and use tracking are evaluated (...) and put in perspective. Refuting the common argument that e-publishing leads to less quality, this paper puts forward scenarios of the future quality control system. Most likely, we shall see mixed systems, combining old and new elements, of different shapes in the different research fields. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays with commentary and evaluative bibliography on Plutarch. Advice to the Bride and Groom and Consolation to His Wife along with the Greek texts and English translations. It is designed to help readers understand and appreciate two important documents for the study of gender and the family in the Graeco-Roman world and in later Western history. -/- To populate the dearth of prior scholarly discussion of Plutarch's works on the family, Pomeroy has assembled (...) a team of experts in Plutarch, the Hellenistic World, religion, cultural studies, and the family and gender, who use various historical and theoretical approaches in discussing the wide range of issues and questions raised by these texts. For example, what does one mean by "Roman" or "Greek" marriage in a Hellenistic context when Greeks and Romans were mutually influential? To begin to answer this question, it is imperative to take notice of Greek traditions, the Roman Imperial context, and the changing views of the family in Greek philosophy and early Christianity. Furthermore, for an understanding of the Consolation to His Wife it is necessary to understand Roman demography and to examine contemporary Latin consolatory literature. Though Plutarch addressed both these essays to individual Greeks whom he knew personally, he had a much wider audience in mind. -/- The commentary, essays, and bibliography are written so as to be accessible to those who are reading the English translation. (shrink)

Modern information technology allows academics many new ways to enhance their research activities. This article suggests that one of the most important changes in recent years has been the overwhelming proliferation of academic research. It proposes that many new developments in online publishing have been, and will continue to be, in response to this proliferation of research. It also offers some general principles based on six years' working for a series of innovative online journals, including examples of where new (...) technologies have been used successfully to enrich a journal's content without adding substantively to the workloads of authors and editors. (shrink)

Hypertext publishing, the integration of a large body (perhaps billions) of public writings into a unified hypertext environment, will require the simultaneous solution of problems involving very wide database distribution, royalties, freedom of speech, and privacy. This paper describes these problems and presents, for criticism and discussion, an abstract design which seems to solve many of them. This design, called LinkText, is presented both as a specification and as design approaches grouped around various levels of electronic publishing.

The ability of 3- and 4-year-old children to disregard advice from an overtly misleading informant was investigated across five studies (total n = 212). Previous studies have documented limitations in young children's ability to reject misleading advice. This study was designed to test the hypothesis that these limitations are primarily due to an inability to reject specific directions that are provided by others, rather than an inability to respond in a way that is opposite to what has been (...) indicated by a cue. In Studies 1 through 4, a puppet identified as The Big Bad Wolf offered advice to participants about which of two boxes contained a hidden sticker. Regardless of the form the advice took, 3-year olds performed poorly by failing to systematically reject it. However, when participants in Study 5 believed they were responding to a mechanical cue rather than the advice of the Wolf, they were better able to reject misleading advice, and individual differences in performance on the primary task were systematically correlated with measures of executive function. Results are interpreted as providing support for the communicative intent hypothesis, which posits that children find it especially difficult to reject deceptive information that they perceive as being intentionally communicated by others. (shrink)

The journal acquisition budget of libraries is not increasing at the same rate as subscription rates, creating the serials crisis. Many solutions have been proposed including the freely available electronic journal. However, all the solutions suffer the same Faustian grip--namely that the actors in the academic publishing game have little or no incentive to stop publishing in the current journals. We examine those incentives concluding that even with a better, more efficient technology, the actors will not change from (...) the current academic publishing institution, and the serials crisis will remain. (shrink)

Unlike most of the literature on the contributions of refugees from Nazism to the contemporary intellectual and cultural life of the West, the role of the expatriates in creating today's large biomedical publishing industry has generally been neglected. In fact major scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing came about via this route. In doing so, it was instrumental in changing the international language of pre-World War Two science from German to English. This remains true as the industry evolves (...) rapidly into new corporate and electronic modes. (shrink)

ADVICE TO THE PRIVILEGED ORDERS. INTRODUCTION. 'HE French Revolution is at last not plishment universally acknowledged, beyond contradiction abroad, ...

Jean Hamburger (1909--1992) is considered the founder of the concept of medical intensive care (reanimation medicale) and the first to propose the name Nephrology for the branch of medicine dealing with kidney diseases. One of the first kidney grafts in the world (with short-term success), in 1953, and the first dialysis session in France, in 1955, were performed under his guidance. His achievements as a writer were at least comparable: Hamburger was awarded several important literary prizes, including prix Femina, prix (...) Balzac and the Cino del Duca prize (1979), awarded, among others, to Jorge Luis Borges and Konrad Lorenz.Here we would like to offer a selected reading of a "golden" book, "Conseils aux etudiants en medicine de mon service" ("Advice to the Medical Students in my Service"), the first book dedicated to patient-physician relationship in Nephrology, written when dialysis and transplantation were becoming clinical options (1963). The themes include: the central role of the patient, who should be known by name, profession, life style, and not by disease; the importance of the setting of the care; the need for truth-telling and for leaving hope; the role of research not only in the progression of science, but also in the daily clinical practice. (shrink)

This collection of eminently practical advice from the likes of Socrates, Plato, Diogenes, Pythagoras, and Aristotle covers subjects as diverse as money, child-raising, politics, philosophy, law, and relationships--all aspects of life and how to live it. Thomas Cleary has translated these sayings and aphorisms from the Arabic sources that preserved Greek thought throughout the Middle Ages. Many of the texts no longer exist in the original Greek. Included in the book is an appendix that presents resonant sayings and fragments (...) from Buddhist, Taoist, and Muslim sources, demonstrating the universal quality of the teachings of the Greek sages and hinting at the interaction between Western and Eastern cultures. (shrink)

Since the Public Library of Science launched its first open-access journals and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities has been released in 2003 and found enormous attention, the claim for open access—to make publicly funded journal articles available for the public—started to reach German scientists too. But still no experience has been made with electronic publishing in general and more specifically with open-access publishing. One consequence is that the potential capacity of (...) open access—the (inter) national and (trans) disciplinary visibility and accessibility of scientific output—is not sufficiently used by German researchers. Ways to successfully establish an open-access journal are presented in this article by referring to Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research (FQS) as an example: after introducing the current state of FQS traditional and innovative ways of publishing are being discussed which had been employed while developing FQS and which helped FQS to become the most important electronic journal in the field of qualitative research. (shrink)

(2013). Bad advice, herding and bubbles. Journal of Economic Methodology: Vol. 20, Methodology, Systemic Risk, and the Economics Profession, pp. 45-55. doi: 10.1080/1350178X.2013.774850.

Peer review of manuscripts for biomedical journals has become a subject of intense ethical debate. One of the most contentious issues is whether or not peer review should be anonymous. This study aimed to generate a rich, empirically-grounded understanding of the values held by journal editors and peer reviewers with a view to informing journal policy. Qualitative methods were used to carry out an inductive analysis of biomedical reviewers’ and editors’ values. Data was derived from in-depth, open-ended interviews with journal (...) editors and peer reviewers. Data was “read for” themes relevant to reviewer anonymisation and interactions among editors, reviewers, and authors. Editors and peer reviewers provided three arguments that would support a more open and interactive peer-review process. First, a number of participants emphasised the importance of not only ensuring the scientific quality of published research but also nurturing their colleagues and supporting their communities. Second, many spoke about the ongoing moral responsibilities that reviewers and editors felt toward authors. Finally, participants spoke at length about their enjoyment of social interactions and of the value of collective, rather than isolated, reasoning processes. Whether or not journal editors decide to allow anonymous review , the values of editors and reviewers need to be seriously addressed in codes of publication ethics, in the management of biomedical journals, and in the establishment of journal policies. (shrink)

Journals regulate a significant portion of the communication between scientists. This paper devises an agent-based model of scientific practice and uses it to compare various strategies for selecting publications by journals. Surprisingly, it appears that the best selection method for journals is to publish relatively few papers and to select those papers it publishes at random from the available “above threshold” papers it receives. This strategy is most effective at maintaining an appropriate type of diversity that is needed to solve (...) a particular type of scientific problem. This problem and the limitation of the model is discussed in detail. (shrink)

Technological developments in areas such as digitization and networking are changing scholarly communication in fundamental ways. This paper describes the most important changes and their impacts on the various actors in the information chain. Its main argument is that the responsibility for scholarly communication is shifting from functional actors such as publishers and libraries to a more integral responsibility held by the academic community itself. Publishers and libraries would then change from product-oriented organizations to service-oriented organizations, supporting scholarly communication in (...) an outsourcing relationship with the academic world. The paper finally explores changes in scholarly communication in the context of Michael Gibbon's concepts of knowledge production. (shrink)

This classic essay on the responsibilities of a doctor was first published in New York in 1769. It remains a perfect gift for a young doctor just starting out or for one who is older and wiser. This classic will be an inspiration to any who read its timeless message.

Electronic publications are not accessible without technical aids and need constant, time consuming attention; a look back at the data media and data formats utilized in the past 25Â years illustrates this. Recently, an increasing number of conferences and studies address the problem. Use of standard data formats, media and platform independence of data, as well as data centering instead of process centering are requirements for long-term availability. For the humanities, texts are not only the sources of information but also (...) objects of scholarly investigation. Therefore publication in a presentation format only is not sufficient. In addition to more sophisticated tools for analysis, search and navigation, a form of publication is required which does not focus on layout but gives easy access to the content and structure of the published document. Both for the creation and the scholarly evaluation of such documents, tools are required which offer additional functions compared to those provided by commercial publication and access tools. The necessary flexibility is guaranteed by the provision of basic functions of text data processing which do not anticipate or preclude any particular questions. This is illustrated by examples for the evaluation and preparation of digital texts. (shrink)

This paper engages with two compelling challenges to physicalism, each designed to show that the nature of experience is elusive from the standpoint of physical science. It is argued that the physicalist is ultimately well placed to meet both challenges.

Objectivists and perspectivists disagree about the question of whether what an agent ought to do depends on the totality of facts or on the agent’s limited epistemic perspective. While objectivism fails to account for normative guidance, perspectivism faces the challenge of explaining phenomena (occurring most notably in advice, but also in first-personal deliberation) in which the use of “ought” is geared to evidence that is better than the evidence currently available to the agent. This paper aims to defend perspectivism (...) by developing a perspectivist account that captures the phenomena in question. (shrink)

We begin by asking what fallibilism about knowledge is, distinguishing several conceptions of fallibilism and giving reason to accept what we call strong epistemic fallibilism, the view that one can know that something is the case even if there remains an epistemic chance, for one, that it is not the case. The task of the paper, then, concerns how best to defend this sort of fallibilism from the objection that it is “mad,” that it licenses absurd claims such as “I (...) know that p but there’s a chance that not p ” and “ p but it there’s a chance that not p .” We argue that the best defense of fallibilism against this objection—a “pragmatist” defense—makes the following claims. First, while knowledge that p is compatible with an epistemic chance that not- p , it is compatible only with an insignificant such chance. Second, the insignificance of the chance that not- p is plausibly understood in terms of the irrelevance of that chance to p ’s serving as a ‘justifier’, for action as well as belief. In other words, if you know that p , then any chance for you that not p doesn’t stand in the way of p ’s being properly put to work as a basis for action and belief. (shrink)

Throughout much of the 20th Century, the relationship between analytic and continental philosophy has been one of disinterest, caution or hostility. Recent debates in philosophy have highlighted some of the similarities between the two approaches and even envisaged a post-continental and post-analytic philosophy. -/- Opening with a history of key encounters between philosophers of opposing camps since the late 19th Century - from Frege and Husserl to Derrida and Searle - the book goes on to explore in detail the main (...) methodological differences between the two approaches. This covers a very wide range of topics, from issues of style and clarity of exposition to formal methods arising from logic and probability theory. The final section presents a balanced critique of the two schools’ approaches to key issues such as Time, Truth, Subjectivity, Mind and Body, Language and Meaning, and Ethics. -/- Analytic Versus Continental is the first sustained analysis of both approaches to philosophy, examining the limits and possibilities of each. It provides a clear overview of a much-disputed history and, in highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of both traditions, also offers future directions for both continental and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This paper re-examines some well-known and commonly accepted arguments for the non-individuality of the embryo, due mainly to the work of John Harris. The first concerns the alleged non-differentiation of the embryoblast from the trophoblast. The second concerns monozygotic twinning and the relevance of the primitive streak. The third concerns the totipotency of the cells of the early embryo. I argue that on a proper analysis of both the empirical facts of embryological development, and the metaphysical importance or otherwise of (...) those facts, all three arguments are found wanting. None of them establishes that the embryo is not an individual human being from the moment of conception. (shrink)

Dutch Book Arguments. B is susceptibility to sure monetary loss (in a certain betting set-up), and F is the formal role played by non-Pr b’s in the DBT and the Converse DBT. Representation Theorem Arguments. B is having preferences that violate some of Savage’s axioms (and/or being unrepresentable as an expected utility maximizer), and F is the formal role played by non-Pr b’s in the RT.

Many metaphysicians tell us that our world is one in which persisting objects are four-dimensionally extended in time, and persist by being partially present at each moment at which they exist. Many normative theorists tell us that at least some of our core normative practices are justified only if the relation that holds between a person at one time, and that person at another time, is the relation of strict identity. If these metaphysicians are right about the nature of our (...) world, and these normative theorists are right about what justifies our normative practices, then we should be error theorists about the justification of at least some of our core normative practices and in turn, arguably we should eliminate those practices for which justification is lacking. This paper offers a way of resolving the tension between these two views that does not lead into the grips of error theory. It is a way that is amenable to “exceptionists” about persons: those who think there is something special about persons and the first-person perspective; that personhood cannot be explained naturalistically, and the first-person perspective is naturalistically irreducible. The conclusion is thus a conditional: given that one is an exceptionist, an attractive way to resolve this tension is to embrace the view that persons are sui generis ontological kinds. (shrink)

Jeremy Bentham provided a comprehensive list of the sources of pleasure and pain, rather in the manner of modern researchers into human well-being. He explicitly used the term well-being and made both qualitative and quantitative proposals for its measurement. Bentham insisted that the measurement of well-being should be firmly based on the concerns and subjective valuations of those directly concerned, in the context of a liberal society. Those who wished to superimpose other judgements were dismissed as "ipsedixitists." He also addressed, (...) though of course could not solve, some of the measurement problems more recently tackled by "neo-Benthamites." The paper concludes that many of Bentham’s observations about the measurement of well-being are still relevant to issues in current research. Key Words: utilitarianism • Bentham • well-being • capabilities. (shrink)

A thoughtful and well-designed institutional response to a whistleblower starts long before a problem ever arises. Important elements include efforts by the institution’s leaders to cultivate an ethical environment, provide clear and fair personnel policies, support internal systems for resolving complaints and grievances, and be willing to address problems when they are revealed. While many institutions have well-developed procedures for handling formal grievances, systems for handling complaints at their earliest stages usually receive less attention. This article focuses on systemic elements (...) necessary for cultivating an ethical environment, good practices in responding to complaints, and the role those practices can play in preventing a confrontation with a whistleblower. (shrink)

• Ongoing concerns about time to acceptance/rejection and time to publication. o NB: Schemas kick in when people are rushed. How does this affect the refereeing process? Does it matter for desk rejections, which may be quick and based on nonanonymized papers? Does it also affect referees? How?

I describe conventions not of correct reasoning but of giving and taking advice about reasoning. This article is asn anticipation of part of the first chapter of my forthcoming *Bounded Thinking*, OUP 2012.

duction; so we think it prudent to proceed with a certain diffidence. That our own account of abduction is itself abductive is methodological expression of this diffi- dence. A second objective is to test our conception of abduction’s logical structure against some of the more promising going accounts of abductive reasoning.

The two books reviewed here are different efforts to embrace the vast subject called "social thought." The second edition of The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought, edited by William Outhwaite with Alain Touraine, contains numerous updates; yet it also has some disadvantages compared to the first edition. Social Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Present, edited by Alan Sica, is a bold but controversial attempt at gathering in one anthology as many social thinkers as possible. Key Words: "social" • (...) social thought/theory • William Outhwaite • Alan Sica • explanation. (shrink)

• [Common Sense Informatic Situation] In general a thinking human is in what we call the common sense informatic situation, as distinct from the bounded informatic situation. The known facts are necessarily incomplete. We live in a world of middle-sized object which can only be partly observed and in which the consequences of our actions can only partly be determined.

Rebbetzin Esther Greenberg was famous throughout Israel as a mentor to countless women, including some of the best-known teachers and counselors.

Trust is an important phenomenon to reduce organisational complexity and uncertainty. In the literature many types of trust are distinguished. An important framework to understand the variety and development of trust in organisations is provided by Zucker. She distinguishes three types of trust: process-based trust.

Abstract: St. Augustine's short treatise Instructing Beginners in Faith ( De Catechizandis Rudibus ) is one of his less well known works, but it provides some fascinating insights on pedagogy that are applicable to college teaching. For Augustine, education is best understood as a relationship of love, where teacher and learner function in a reciprocal system. If the teacher is enthusiastic, the students respond, drawing even more energy from the teacher. If the teacher is dull, or if the students are (...) unresponsive, the learning environment spirals downward. Augustine's relational analysis allows him to diagnose and prescribe cures for some of the problems contemporary college and university teachers often encounter in their classrooms. (shrink)