The Human Genome Project is an expensive, ambitious, and controversial attempt to locate and map every one of the approximately 100,000 genes in the human body. If it works, and we are able, for instance, to identify markers for genetic diseases long before they develop, who will have the right to obtain such information? What will be the consequences for health care, health insurance, employability, and research priorities? And, more broadly, how will attitudes toward human differences be affected, morally and (...) socially, by the setting of a genetic “standard”? The compatibility of individual rights and genetic fairness is challenged by the technological possibilities of the future, making it difficult to create an agenda for a “just genetics.” Beginning with an account of the utopian dreams and authoritarian tendencies of historical eugenics movements, this book’s nine essays probe the potential social uses and abuses of detailed genetic information. Lucid and wide-ranging, these contributions will interest bioethicists, legal scholars, and policy makers. Essays: “The Genome Project and the Meaning of Difference,” Timothy F. Murphy “Eugenics and the Human Genome Project: Is the Past Prologue?,” Daniel J. Kevles “Handle with Care: Race, Class, and Genetics,” Arthur L. Caplan “Public Choices and Private Choices: Legal Regulation of Genetic Testing,” Lori B. Andrews “Rules for Gene Banks: Protecting Privacy in the Genetics Age,” George J. Annas “Use of Genetic Information by Private Insurers,” Robert J. Pokorski “The Genome Project, Individual Differences, and Just Health Care,” Norman Daniels “Just Genetics: A Problem Agenda,” Leonard M. Fleck “Justice and the Limitations of Genetic Knowledge,” Marc A. Lappé. (shrink)

I explore the main features and historical pedigree of antimodern environmental declinism, a prominent family of contemporary critiques that ascribes responsibility for environmental ills to the legacy of the Scientific revolution or “modernity” more generally. I argue that each of its three central oppositions are part of a long-standing rhetorical tradition, and are neither unique nor unprecedented. I stress the communicative, narrative, persuasive, and political nature of the environmental project, rather than its claims to have arrived at an objective description (...) of unprecedented ecological damage in late modernity. This view is perhaps less convincing to an audience looking for certainty in an age of science, but it is more faithful to the attenuated, mediated ways in which we experience and make sense of the world around us. (shrink)

Political theorists can at times forget that the origins of political theory lie in the struggles of concrete political life. This paper focuses on one arena of political contestation: the collision between dissenters and their communities’ legal systems. It focuses on The Peoples Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted, a purported transcript of the trial of William Penn and William Mead for disturbance of the peace. The trial plays an important role in the emergent principle of jury independence and a key (...) role in Penn’s career as a political actor during the 1670s, culminating in his American colonizing enterprise. After a few remarks about the trial itself, the paper proceeds in two parts, each emphasizing an aspect of the text’s performative nature. First, akin to canonical works of the Anglo-American tradition, Peoples presents embedded principles: coherent and substantive visions of legitimate government, justified by reference to authoritative texts, arguments, and practices. But the defendants in Peoples also enact and embody political dissent in ways other than overt and explicit argumentation: Penn and Mead themselves appear as characters performing a politics of dissent. As a work of both political theory and political theater, Peoples offers insights into Deleuze’s notion of “dramatization,” and can lead us to a broader appreciation of the many different genres that constitute political theory. (shrink)

This volume is a continuation of Robert Greystones on the Freedom of the Will: Selections from His Commentary on the Sentences. From this, five of the most relevant questions were selected for editing and translation in this timely volume. This edition should prompt not just a footnote to, but a re-writing of the history of philosophy.

Introduction Understanding the views of the public is essential if generally acceptable policies are to be devised that balance research access to general practice patient records with protection of patients' privacy. However, few large studies have been conducted about public attitudes to research access to personal health information. Methods A mixed methods study was performed. Informed by focus groups and literature review, a questionnaire was designed which assessed attitudes to research access to personal health information and factors that influence these. (...) A postal survey was conducted of an electoral roll-based sample of the adult population of Ireland. Results Completed questionnaires were returned by 1575 (40.6%). Among the respondents, 67.5% were unwilling to allow GPs to decide when researchers could access identifiable personal health information. However, 89.5% said they would agree to ongoing consent arrangements, allowing the sharing by GPs of anonymous personal health information with researchers without the need for consent on a study-by-study basis. Increasing age (by each 10-year increment), being retired and primary level education only were significantly associated with an increased likelihood of agreeing that any personal health information could be shared on an ongoing basis: OR 1.39 (95% CI 1.18 to 1.63), 2.00 (95% CI 1.22 to 3.29) and 3.91 (95% CI 1.95 to 7.85), respectively. Conclusions Although survey data can be prone to response biases, this study suggests that prior consent agreements allowing the supply by GPs of anonymous personal health information to researchers may be widely supported, and that populations willing to opt in to such arrangements may be sufficiently representative to facilitate valid and robust consent-dependent observational research. (shrink)

In a seventeenth-century English landscape populated with towering political and philosophical figures like Hobbes, Harrington, Cromwell, Milton, and Locke, William Penn remains in many ways a man apart. Yet despite being widely neglected by scholars, he was a sophisticated political thinker who contributed mightily to the theory and practice of religious liberty in the early modern Atlantic world. In this long-awaited intellectual biography of William Penn, Andrew R. Murphy presents a nuanced portrait of this remarkable entrepreneur, philosopher, Quaker, and (...) politician.Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration focuses on the major political episodes that attracted William Penn's sustained attention as a political thinker and actor: the controversy over the Second Conventicle Act, the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, the founding and settlement of Pennsylvania, and the contentious reign of James II. Through a careful examination of writings published in the midst of the religious and political conflicts of Restoration and Revolutionary England, Murphy contextualizes the development of Penn's thought in England and America, illuminating the mutual interconnections between Penn's political thought and his colonizing venture in America. An early advocate of representative institutions and religious freedom, William Penn remains a singular figure in the history of liberty of conscience. His political theorizing provides a window into the increasingly vocal, organized, and philosophically sophisticated tolerationist movement that gained strength over the second half of the seventeenth century. Not only did Penn attempt to articulate principles of religious liberty as a Quaker in England, but he actually governed an American polity and experienced firsthand the complex relationship between political theory and political practice. Murphy's insightful analysis shows Penn's ongoing significance to the broader study of Anglo-American political theory and practice, ultimately pointing scholars toward a new way of understanding the enterprise of political theory itself. (shrink)

America's supposed moral decline from an imagined golden age, and the threat of divine punishment for the sin of straying from the path of righteousness, have been consistent themes in its political and religious rhetoric. In Prodigal Nation, Andrew Murphy investigates the jeremiad's historical roots and probes the ways in which it continues to illuminate themes and tensions in American social and political life.

Andrews, Robert M A way of dealing with historical episodes, the consequences of which continue to challenge us, is to ask a counterfactual-a 'what if?' question. Martin Luther's life, his critique of the Catholic Church, his challenge to the social and political hegemony of European Catholicism, the resultant splintering of an ecclesial unity assumed by the medieval mind to be practically impenetrable, is one such historical episode. My counterfactual is as follows: What would have been the consequences to European (...) Catholicism had Luther not rebelled against the church? As this article will later discuss, Luther famously spent many hours in the confessional during his time as an Augustinian friar. Luther's superior, spiritual guide, and confessor, Johann von Staupitz -whose motto was 'I am yours, save me'-often assured Luther that his sins were forgiven, that Christ's work had been done, and that he consequently had no need to despair of the mercy of God. It was advice that Luther ultimately found unsatisfactory. 'I did not love, no, rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners', Luther famously said in 1545, reflecting on his time as a monk, articulating a conscience that found solace only outside of Roman communion. (shrink)

This chapter aims to establish the relation between contemporary VJing and the works of Anton Chekhov and Aeschylus through the philosophical thoughts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It examines the way in which theatre and performance can incline themselves towards a wider distribution of difference in life and argues that the VJing event is a democratising performance-form that engages in combat with the normative configurations of image-culture. It argues that it is more important to evaluate the role of performance (...) in directly adding to, or diminishing, life as lived than to evaluate it in terms of the success or failure of its representation of life. (shrink)

This article explores the founding of Pennsylvania as a window into the complex relationship between political theory and political practice. I argue that this founding illustrates both the importance and the limits of political theory to the study of political life. On the one hand, theorizing new societies is vitally important, because founding documents give shape to the aspirations of both founders and citizens. In this case, the founder's plans for his colony were the product of a great deal of (...) political theorizing, grounded in Penn's Quakerism and his active role in English religious and political life. But theory's importance to the study of actual foundings (and, I argue, politics more generally) is inherently limited, as well, since the colony's theoretical foundations were themselves evolving and unstable, and the translation of ideas into practice is only ever partial. After a careful consideration of the many founding documents produced by Penn between spring 1681 and summer 1682, and a close examination of developments in Pennsylvania from late 1682 through Penn's departure in summer 1684, I close by reflecting on what the case of Pennsylvania might tell us about the broader study of political theory and political practice. I suggest that we need a more flexible understanding of what political theory 'is' if we want to make sense of thinkers like Penn who theorized out of their deep involvement in the thick of actual governing. (shrink)

_The Brain Is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema_ Edited by Gregory Flaxman Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000 ISBN 0-8166-3447-5 395 pp.

In this article, I explore the relationship between moderation and toleration in early modern England by focusing on William Penn’s 1685 A Perswasive to Moderation. This work, published by Penn in support of James II’s campaign to implement toleration in England by royal decree, explicitly linked moderation and the campaign for liberty of conscience in which Penn had participated for nearly two decades, in both England and America. More broadly, I show how Penn’s Perswasive entered into an ongoing debate over (...) the concept of moderation itself: during the 1680s, a number of authors explored the meanings and limits of moderation, tying it to contested debates in ecclesiastical affairs, civil and religious liberty, and ethical discourse. Yet the aspirations of James II to secure liberty of conscience for the realm’s dissenters failed spectacularly in the Revolution of 1688, and Penn suffered deep public embarrassment (along with significant legal jeopardy) due to his association with that effort. The article closes with some specific reflections on Penn’s Perswasive as well as more general comments on the importance of attending to the practical, historically contingent ways in which moderation discourses unfold. (shrink)

The work of Étienne Balibar—one of France’s leading intellectuals, from his remarkable chapter on historical materialism in Reading Capital, more than fifty years ago, to the present day—needs litt...

This study comprises an analysis of the Categories commentary of Peter of Auvergne, based upon an edition from the manuscripts, and supplemented by a translation. Much information about other Categories commentaries has been included to place the work in its historical and philosophical perspective. ;Peter of Auvergne, active in Paris in the late thirteenth century, had a long career as an Aristotelian commentator and continuator of Thomas Aquinas. His Categories commentary provides me the occasion to survey the genre of Categories (...) commentaries from the early Middle Ages, with special emphasis on those few commentaries known to immediately precede Peter of Auvergne, and on those he influences. Peter is an early representative of the modistae, philosophers who stressed the parallel connections among being, understanding, and signifying, and who are typified by their use of the modi significandi as a tool of analysis. ;This study, the first full-length analysis of a medieval Categories commentary, serves as a guide to the issues generated by Aristotle's Categories. As a comparative study it shows that the genre of Categories commentaries, within a fairly invariant format, allows for a continuous adaptation and development of ideas. As a specific study of an individual commentary, it shows the details of Peter of Auvergne's interests in linguistic analysis, theology, and the exegesis of Aristotle. ;The questions in Peter of Auvergne's commentary are generalizably of two kinds: short, superficial questions which imitate earlier traditions, and more complex questions which attempt original interpretations. Not suprisingly, the latter sort of question finds more parallels in later commentators, including Simon of Faversham, Radulphus Brito, and John Duns Scotus. ;This dissertation, beginning from a thorough exegesis of a central figure, by tracing derivative and influencing themes, gives a dependable picture of the debates conducted in connection with the Categories in the High Middle Ages. I have had the responsibility of editing many of the primary sources I needed. The extensive appendices contain, besides an edition of Peter's Questiones super Praedicamentis, a transcription of another related commentary, Anonymus Matritensis: Questiones super Praedicamentis, and many relevant texts grouped by category. (shrink)

Nurse leaders, including clinical nurse educators, who exercise stewardship at the point of service, may facilitate practising nurses' articulation of their shared value priorities, including respect for persons' dignity and self-determination, as well as equity and fairness. A steward preserves and promotes what is intrinsically valuable in an experience. Theories of virtue ethics and discourse ethics supply contexts for clinical nurse educators to clarify how they may facilitate nurses' articulation of their shared value priorities through particularism and universalism, as well (...) as how they may safeguard nurses' self-interpretation and discursive reasoning. Together, clinical nurse educators and nurses may contribute to management decisions that affect the point of service, and thus the health care organization. (shrink)

This paper uses the social theory of Erving Goffman in order to argue that confidentiality should be understood in relation to the mundane social skills by which individuals present and respect specific self-images of themselves and others during social interaction. The breaching of confidentiality is analysed in terms of one person's capacity to embarrass another, and so to expose that person as incompetent. Respecting confidentiality may at once serve to protect the vulnerable from an unjust society, and yet also protect (...) the guilty from just accusation. Ethical reasoning about confidentiality must therefore recognize the dangers of prejudice and violence inherent in decisions to breach or to respect confidentiality. Case studies are used to illustrate the efficacy of this account, culminating with analyses of three examples from the UKCC document Confidentiality. (shrink)

What is human freedom? By addressing a number of theological 'limit situations', Robert Greystones, while at Oxford University in the 1320s, developed his own philosophical theory. This volume is the first Latin critical edition, with a clear English translation. There is an extensive introduction describing his life and teaching on human freedom.

Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was an Italian Jesuit and one of the first Christian missionaries to China in the modern era. He was a genuine polymath—a translator, cartographer, mathematician, astronomer, and musician. Above all, Ricci was a missionary for the gospel. As we briefly examine his 1603 seminal work, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, our hope is that we, as evangelical educators, will perceive some of the deeper principles necessary for our own missionary work among unreached people.

This volume, surveying a narrow topic over a long expanse of time, is comprised of selections from a trio of international conferences on the title theme. It is an expensive book, but even its most valuable articles are marred by slovenly editing.Börje Bydén’s contribution begins the survey in Byzantium. By linking Photios’s (apparently) original criticism of Aristotle to Plotinus, Bydén gives an interesting hint of how neo-Platonism came to permeate Christianity. But Photios seems to have been “ignored by posterity” (31). (...) Bydén’s commendable remedy: more and updated critical editions of texts from Greek scholasticism. (The Hadot reference on 25n44, missing in the bibliography, is to Hadot’s 1990 French edition of .. (shrink)

This ground-breaking book addresses transformations in the understanding of time and the generation and degeneration of value at the cutting edge of modernity and postmodernity. The book is a multi-disciplinary contribution to current work in the social sciences, in cultural theory and in more pragmatic areas such as advertising and global communication. It brings together the work of distinguished international scholars and new young thinkers. Time and Value contains an exploration of such themes as the timescapes of nature and the (...) impact of disease, ecological catastrophe, and many other issues. In theoretical terms, the collection draws in particular upon writers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Serres, Paul Virilio and Martin Heidegger, whose work is particularly relevant in considering how technology has had a powerful impact upon the construal of time and the explanation of how time constructs human lives in late modernity. The compression of time and its fragmentation correspond with a collapse in and reconstruction of value systems. This deconstruction of time is juxtaposed with a range of possibilities that emerge when the specific times of the media, literature, art, virtuality, nature, performance, fashion, semiotic codings, spirituality, the self and the body are understood as creative opportunity. (shrink)

This book applies Augustine's thought to current questions of teaching and learning. The essays are written in an accessible style and is not intended just for experts on Augustine or church history.

On one conception of “best interest” there can only be one course of action in a given situation that is in a person’s best interest. In this paper we will first consider what theories of “best interest” and rational decision-making that can lead to this conclusion and explore some of the less commonly appreciated implications of these theories. We will then move on to consider what ethical theories that are compatible with such a view and explore their implications. In the (...) second part of the paper we will explore a range of possible criticisms of these views. And in the third part we will criticise the view that a court is always or even often in a good position to decide what the patient’s best interest is. In the fourth and final part we will put forward a reconstructive proposal aimed at saving whatever is sound in the “best interest” conception. (shrink)

Critical Realism and Marxism addresses controversial debates, revealing a potentially fruitful relationship; deepening our understanding of the social world and contibuting towards eliminating barbarism in contemporary capitalism.

Medical-legal partnerships connect legal advocates to healthcare providers and settings. Maintaining effectiveness of medical-legal partnerships and consistently identifying opportunities for innovation and adaptation takes intentionality and effort. In this paper, we discuss ways in which our use of data and quality improvement methods have facilitated advocacy at both patient (client) and population levels as we collectively pursue better, more equitable outcomes.

In the era of “big data,” science is increasingly information driven, and the potential for computers to store, manage, and integrate massive amounts of data has given rise to such new disciplinary fields as biomedical informatics. Applied ontology offers a strategy for the organization of scientific information in computer-tractable form, drawing on concepts not only from computer and information science but also from linguistics, logic, and philosophy. This book provides an introduction to the field of applied ontology that is of (...) particular relevance to biomedicine, covering theoretical components of ontologies, best practices for ontology design, and examples of biomedical ontologies in use. After defining an ontology as a representation of the types of entities in a given domain, the book distinguishes between different kinds of ontologies and taxonomies, and shows how applied ontology draws on more traditional ideas from metaphysics. It presents the core features of the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), now used by over one hundred ontology projects around the world, and offers examples of domain ontologies that utilize BFO. The book also describes Web Ontology Language (OWL), a common framework for Semantic Web technologies. Throughout, the book provides concrete recommendations for the design and construction of domain ontologies. (shrink)