South Africa has the highest rate of foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) in the world. The problem of alcohol abuse in pregnancy has very deep historical roots that are intertwined with the injustices of both apartheid and pre-apartheid colonialism. Much of the research that is being done in these communities is focused on identifying the epidemiological variables associated with these patterns of alcohol abuse. The underlying reasons as to why these patterns continue seem to remain largely obscured from view. In this (...) article, I apply the theory proposed by Powers and Faden of social justice as a ‘moral foundation for public health and health policy’ to the problem of FAS in South Africa. The objective of this application is two-fold: first, to critically explore the additional insights and alternative perspectives to the problem of FAS that this approach may provide and second, to assess the utility of the theory when applied directly to a specific public health problem. I conclude by noting that although this approach could result in the kind of ‘public health scope creep’ that has been criticized by various authors, it does provide fresh insights to the problem of FAS in South Africa. (shrink)

Disorders of Consciousness (DoCs) raise difficult and complex questions about the value of life for persons with impaired consciousness, the rights of persons unable to make medical decisions, and our social, medical, and ethical obligations to patients whose personhood has frequently been challenged and neglected. Recent neuroscientific discoveries have led to enhanced understanding of the heterogeneity of these disorders, and focused renewed attention on the medical and ethical problem of misdiagnosis. -/- This book examines the entanglement of epistemic and ethical (...) uncertainty in DoCs and other medical contexts, and how they interact to create both epistemic and ethical risks. Philosopher and bioethicist L. Syd M Johnson pulls together multiple threads in this work: the ontological mysteries of consciousness, medical uncertainty about unconsciousness, ableist bias, withdrawal of treatment in neurointensive care, and the rarely questioned view that consciousness is essential to personhood and moral status. Johnson challenges longstanding bioethical dogmas about DoC patients, and argues for an ethics of uncertainty for contexts where there is a need for decisive action in the presence of unavoidable uncertainty. The ethics of uncertainty refocuses ethical inquiry concerning persons with DoCs, placing less emphasis on their contested personhood, and more on inductive risk and uncertainty, on respect for autonomy, and especially on epistemic justice. With applications to various decisional contexts where uncertainty and ethical risk interact, this ethical approach enables surrogate decision makers facing fraught and risky choices to fulfill their obligations as moral and epistemic agents. (shrink)

Moral Case Deliberations are reflective dialogues with a group of participants on their own moral dilemmas. Although MCD is successful as clinical ethics support, it also has limitations. 1. Lessons learned from individual MCDs are not shared in order to be used in other contexts 2. Moral learning stays limited to the participants of the MCD; 3. MCD requires quite some organisational effort, 4. MCD deals with one individual concrete case. It does not address other, similar cases. These limitations warrant (...) research into complementary ways of providing CES to healthcare professionals. Our research objective was therefore to develop a low threshold CES tool based on a series of MCDs on autonomy in long-term care. We used a qualitative research design in which we analyzed the process and content of a series of MCDs, combined with reflections on the theoretical background of MCD. In total 28 MCDs were analyzed by means of a thematic content analysis. In various rounds of development, the results of the analysis were combined with theoretical reflections on CES. Consequently, the tool was evaluated in three focus groups and adjusted. The CES tool, called ‘moral compass’, guides the users through a series of six subsequent questions in order to methodically reflect on their concrete moral dilemma, in the form of a booklet of 23 pages. It combines a methodical element that encourages and structures a reflection process with a substantive element, including norms, values, options, strategies, and insights regarding dealing with client autonomy. By using data from a series of MCDs, combined with theoretical reflections on MCD, ethics support and moral learning, we developed a thematic, low-threshold CES tool that supports healthcare professionals in daily practice in dealing with moral questions regarding client autonomy. It integrates examples and insights from earlier MCDs on the same topic. The moral compass is not a replacement of, but can be used complementary to MCD. The feasibility and impact of the moral compass need to be investigated in an evaluative follow-up study. The methodology presented in this paper may be used to develop moral compasses on different topics in various healthcare organizations. (shrink)

We have arrived at an inflection point, a moment in history when the sentience, conscious- ness, intelligence, agency, and even the moral agency of many nonhuman animals can no longer be questioned without ignoring centuries of accumulated scientific knowledge. Nowhere is this more true than in our understanding of nonhuman primates (NHPs). A neu- roethics committed to probing the ethical implications of brain research must be able to respond to and anticipate the challenges ahead as brain projects globally prepare to (...) increase the use of NHPs in research. This requires adopting a less anthropocentric focus that includes nonhuman animals within its scope. But the Neuroethics Roadmap represents a missed opportunity to critically examine the future direction of research with NHPs in an ethically-responsive neuroscience. (shrink)

this paper offers a critical discussion of Martial Gueroult's philosophical conception of the history of philosophy as a discipline. Gueroult was among the most influential French historians of philosophy in the twentieth century and the author of a long list of monographs on a host of modern philosophers. Gueroult's first book, on Maimon, was published in 1929, quickly followed in 1930 by a monograph on Fichte. In the English-speaking world, he is probably best known for his two-volume Descartes selon l'ordre (...) des raisons and the volumes on parts I and II of Spinoza's... (shrink)

_The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics_ offers the reader an informed view of how the brain sciences are being used to approach, understand, and reinvigorate traditional philosophical questions, as well as how those questions, with the grounding influence of neuroscience, are being revisited beyond clinical and research domains. It also examines how contemporary neuroscience research might ultimately impact our understanding of relationships, flourishing, and human nature. The _Handbook_ features easy-to-follow chapters that appear here for the first time in print and—written by (...) 61 key scholars and fresh voices—represent the wide range of viewpoints in neuroethics. The volume spotlights new technologies and historical articulations of key problems, issues, and concepts, and includes cross-referencing between chapters to highlight the complex interactions of concepts and ideas within neuroethics. These features enhance the _Handbook_’s utility by providing readers with a contextual map for different approaches to issues, and a guide to further avenues of interest. (shrink)

The Emerging Issues Task Force (Kellmeyer et al. 2019) identifies several important trends and concerns that neuroethics will encounter and grapple with in the com- ing decades. Among these are ethical issues related to the creation of new nonhuman entities, such as artificial intelligence systems, and human origin entities like brain organoids. The task force briefly mentions animal minds and animal rights, to which neuroethics to date has paid scant attention (Buller et al. 2014). As neuroscientific knowledge and knowledge from (...) other fields, including, to name a few, comparative psychology, primatology, ethology, biology, genetics, and medical sociology, accu- mulate, ethical concerns about the use of nonhuman ani- mals in research, agriculture, entertainment, and elsewhere will grow more visible and more urgent. Turning neuroethical attention toward nonhuman ani- mals also promises to illuminate issues related to specific human populations that are within the purview of a more expansive, forward-looking neuroethics. (shrink)

An adequate conjunction-implication pair is given for complete orthomodular lattices. The resulting conjunction is noncommutative in nature. We use the well-known lattice of closed subspaces of a Hilbert space, to give physical meaning to the given lattice operation.

Jules Janssens a construit une œuvre importante, qui, pour de nombreux chercheurs, a ouvert des perspectives de recherches nouvelles et fécondes. Ses travaux ont fait date. Ils portent principalement sur la philosophie d'Avicenne, ses sources, ses rapports avec la pensée musulmane, son influence sur la théologie ash'arite (al-Ghazālī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī) et sa réception dans le monde latin. Pour lui rendre hommage, quatorze collègues et amis de renommée internationale se sont réunis pour poursuivre ses réflexions sur ces thèmes. L'ouvrage qui (...) en est issu offre un état des lieux de la recherche contemporaine sur Avicenne et sa postérité arabo-latine. (shrink)

The interconnections, common interests, and other linkages between the Jewish and Islamic traditions have long been a matter of interest to academics. Today the need to understand these relationships, and to emphasize commonalities rather than conflicts, is of the greatest public interest. The present volume of studies, likely the first such collection in the scholarly literature, explores the full range of interconnections between Jews and Muslims in all fields (intellectual history, religion, philosophy, social history, etc.) and in all periods, from (...) the Middle Ages till today. The essays have been written by some twenty distinguished scholars from North America, Europe, and Israel. The volume is dedicated to our esteemed colleague Joel L. Kraemer, John Barrows Professor Emeritus in the Divinity School and on the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago. In the course of his distinguished career Professor Kraemer has made major contributions to our understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of the Jews in the Arabic world, Islamic and Jewish philosophy and their sources in ancient philosophy, the humanistic renaissance in Islam (on which he published two seminal monographs), and Maimonides (on which he has published many important papers and is completing a biography and a translation of Maimonides' letters, to appear in the Yale Judaica Series). (shrink)

This study examines a recurrent scenario in Roman poetry of the first-person genres: the separation of the poet from his writing tablets. Catullus' tablets are stolen ; Propertius' are lost ; Ovid's are consigned to disuse and decay by their disappointed owner. Martial, who does not reproduce the specific narrative of loss, nonetheless engages with the tradition of lost tablets from within the fiction of festive gift-exchange in his Apophoreta : rather than losing or rejecting the tablets, he gives them (...) away to guests/readers at his Saturnalian party. I argue that the representation of writing tablets and their loss is involved in the production of authorial presence. The scene of lost tablets demonstrates how the poet retains the capacity for poetic speech even when deprived of the aid of his material medium. The ostensibly accidental and sometimes lamented loss of the poet's tablets thus contributes to a sophisticated strategy of authorial self-representation. The tablets do not so much stand for the literary text as provide a focus for metapoetic concerns with voice and writing, author and text, presence and absence, immortal ingenium and expendable materia. Examination of the shifting representation of writing tablets from Catullus to Martial will provide insight into the invention of the Roman poetic author. (shrink)

On September 18, 1995, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit handed down a decision in Blue Cross & Blue Shield United of Wisconsin v. Marshfield Clinic ) that sets two important precedents regarding the status of health maintenance organizations under antitrust law. Chief Judge Posner, writing for the court, concluded that HMOs do not constitute a market separate from the general market for medical services and that agreements, between HMOs in a region, to operate in separate areas (...) constitute a prohibited form of market splitting.This case primarily involves two HMOs in north central Wisconsin: one a subsidiary of Blue Cross, the other a subsidiary of the Marshfield Clinic. The Blue Cross HMO claimed that the Marshfield HMO had an illegal monopoly in the region's HMO market and therefore violated the Sherman Act ). (shrink)

Chris Tucker's paper on the hiddenness argument seeks to turn aside a way of defending the latter which he calls the value argument. But the value argument can withstand Tucker's criticisms. In any case, an alternative argument capable of doing the same job is suggested by his own emphasis on free will.

Hans Kelsen est, sans conteste, le juriste le plus important de ce siècle. Il n'y a pas une seule question de théorie juridique qu'on puisse traiter aujourd'hui sans examiner d'abord l'analyse qu'il en fait, mais son œuvre ne concerne pas seulement le droit et la philosophie du droit ; elle touche aussi la philosophie politique, l'épistémologie, l'éthique ou la logique. Sa théorie du droit représente, à côté du réalisme, l'une des deux branches du juspositivisme moderne, connue sous le nom de (...) normativisme et que lui-même appelait " Théorie pure du droit ". Elle se donne comme une théorie scientifique qui se borne à décrire son objet, le droit positif, et qui donc est " pure " de tout jugement de valeur. La pureté ne concerne toutefois que la méthodologie. Le droit, lui, n'est nullement pur, car il exprime des choix moraux et politiques. La doctrine kelsenienne pure apparaît ainsi doublement politique : d'une part, elle se donne pour tâche de mettre en évidence la fonction idéologique du droit ; d'autre part, dans la mesure où elle analyse les dispositifs juridiques comme des moyens au service de certaines fins, elle peut servir de fondement à une véritable technologie juridique. C'est cette technologie que Kelsen prétendait appliquer à la politique et qui fonde aussi bien son travail de constituant - il est le père de la Constitution autrichienne et de la première Cour constitutionnelle - que ses écrits sur la démocratie. La Théorie générale du droit et de l'Etat présente à cet égard un intérêt exceptionnel. Elle a été écrite aux Etats-Unis, où Kelsen s'était réfugié au début de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Comme le souligne Stanley L. Paulson dans son introduction, elle constitue une étape marquante dans l'évolution de sa pensée entre le néokantisme des origines et l'empirisme des derniers écrits. C'est aussi une présentation claire, systématique et concentrée de l'ensemble de sa doctrine et c'est le seul ouvrage de Kelsen qui porte à la fois sur les conditions de possibilité d'une science empirique du droit, sur la théorie générale du droit au sens strict - l'analyse structurale de tous les ordres juridiques possibles - et sur la théorie générale de l'Etat - l'analyse des concepts constitutifs de tout Etat possible. (shrink)

1. Hŏryŏng, t'ŏng piŏ yŏnghwarhan maŭm -- 2. Ajik tŭrŏnaji anŭn maŭm esŏ chigak i kanŭng han'ga -- 3. Mibal kwa kijil ŭn ŏttŏn kwan'gye in'ga -- 4. Umjiginŭn maŭm kwa koyohan maŭm -- 5. Chigak ŭi sŏnggyŏk kwa kŭ yŏnwŏn e kwanhan munje.

A standard objection to act utilitarian theories is that they are not helpful in deciding what it is morally permissible for us to do when we actually have to make a choice between alternatives. That is, such theories are worthless as decision procedures. A standard reply to this objection is that act utilitarian theories can be evaluated solely as theories about right-making characteristics and, when so evaluated, their inadequacy as decision procedures is irrelevant. Even if somewhat unappealing, this is an (...) effective reply to the standard objection. (shrink)

There is ongoing ethical and legal debate about withdrawing life sup- port for patients with disorders of consciousness (DOCs). Frequently fu- eling the debate are implicit assumptions about the value of life in a state of impaired consciousness, and persistent uncertainty about the quality of life (QoL) of these persons. Yet there are no validated methods for assessing QoL in this population, and a significant obstacle to doing so is their inability to communicate. Recent neuroscientific discoveries might circumvent that problem (...) and help shed light on QoL in DOCs. There is an ethical imperative to prioritize QoL research in this patient population, to provide evidence to inform treatment, research, and end of life decisions. A minimalist and pragmatic model of QoL is proposed, targeting positive and negative affect as domains for which there is po- tential to reach across the communication gap, and restore to these voiceless persons some measure of control. (shrink)