But Williams had created a field of historical study, where his white counterparts had not. Single-handedly and without the blessing or approval of the academic community, Williams had called attention to the importance of including Afro-Americans in any acceptable and comprehensive history of the nation long before the historians of various groups of European-Americans or Asian-Americans had begun to advocate a similar treatment for their groups. And if Williams did not impress the white professional historians, he gave (...) heart and encouragement to future Afro-American historians. When the History of the Negro Troops appeared in 1887, nineteen-year-old W. E. B. Du Bois was a college senior at Fisk University and editor-in-chief of the student magazine, The Fisk Herald. In the columns of the Herald Du Bois wrote, "At last we have a historian; not merely a Negro historian, but a man who judged by his merits alone has written a splendid narrative. The Herald congratulates George W. Williams, and the race, which may justly be . . . [proud] of him."1 Many years later, Carter G. Woodson, the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and of the Journal of Negro History, described Williams' History of the Negro Troops as "one of the most valuable accounts of the Civil War."2 With words like these from Du Bois and Woodson, on whose shoulders much of the second stage of Afro-American historiography would rest, it is not too much to say that George Washington Williams was responsible for the beginnings of Afro-American historiography. · 1. The Fisk Herald, January 1888, p. 8.· 2. Woodson's appraisal of Williams was found among his papers and made available to me by Dr. Charles H. Wesley when he was executive director of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which had been founded by Woodson in 1915. John Hope Franklin, president-elect of the American Historical Society, has written a biography of George Washington Williams. He is the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago and the author of, among other works, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North. (shrink)

As readers of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics undoubtedly know, edited books can be highly uneven in their quality, with some chapters excelling in content, depth, and readability while others languish in mediocrity. Volumes in an annually issued series run an even greater risk of suffering the plague of inferiority, especially after many years of fame and success. End-of-Life Ethics: A Case Study Approach clearly overcomes these maladies and provides readers with an excellent collection of well-written, thought-provoking essays.The Hospice Foundation of (...) America launched its annual bereavement teleconference two decades ago, publishing a book each year to accompany that educational event. Dubbed the “Living with Grief” series, every volume includes chapters written by a diversity of clinicians and scholars in the care of the dying and bereaved. The series has been unique in its approach to bridge scholarly understandings with practical clinical application.This volume takes a unique .. (shrink)

If Milton is the grand expositor of human culture as a middle realm, Williams can be seen as in many respects his secular heir, an heir careful to work out how the poetic imagination serves to make man's expulsion from Edenic origins bearable and even invigorating. Williams' poetics begins, as Riddel makes clear, in the awareness that there is no inherent or even recoverable correspondence between words and facts in the world, but Williams then devotes most of (...) his energies to denying the metaphysical alternative to that position—the claim that all language can do is reflect on and play with the emptiness or fictiveness of its signifiers. If words do not copy but produce meanings, then they can be used significantly to focus our attention on the activities of the artist and his constructed characters as they engage in that process of production. The act of producing meanings can be the process by which to achieve another kind of reference, for the act of expression can itself become the focus generating a poem's significance by calling attention to the various ways authors and characters station themselves in relation to specific situations. Fiction then is not so much a term describing the ontological status of certain kinds of language but a term characterizing a particular way of using language to reflect upon forms of behavior in which we are not fully conscious of the quality of our activities. Williams' position on the artist's language is clearest in his frequent metaphor of the artist as farmer. The initial activity of both men is a kind of violence, an assertion of the difference between human desires and indifferent "blank fields." But what begins as antagonism does not result in the creation of self-referential fictive structures or the gay wisdom of maintaining and disseminating differences. Rather antagonism is the precondition for what Williams richly labels "composition": the farmer-poet organizes the blank field into a fertile, life-sustaining set of relationships which are not simply linguistic.1 · 1. Williams, Imaginations, ed. Webster Schott , pp. 98-99. Williams' image of arts as antagonistic composing has important parallels with the Russian Formalist concept of "defamiliarization," but for Williams it is not simply a scene but a total human act that is revealed by this process. Charles Altieri teaches modern literature and literary theory in the English department at the University of Washington. The author of Enlarging the Temple: New Directions in American Poetry of the 1960s, he has just completed a study of literary meaning. "Culture and Skepticism: A Response to Michael Fischer" was contributed to Critical Inquiry in the Winter 1979 issue. (shrink)

I have so far argued in terms of general principles. But they are not worth very much unless they help explain how a cultural account of values can preserve a public sphere of judgments that is not subject to Fischer's charges of arbitrariness, relativism, or confusing value and fact. I assume that I will have gone a long way toward answering Fischer if I can provide an adequate response to his question, "where [does] Williams' poem get its presumably public (...) ideas of honesty, self-knowledge, and faith," without relying on an external order of values human reason can know. For, Fischer suggests, without reference to that order of values there is no defensible way to justify combining objective description of details and evaluative predicates like "honest" and "self-aware." Charles Altieri, professor of English at the University of Washington, is the author of Enlarging the Temple: New Directions in American Poetry of the 1960s. "Presence and Reference in a Literary Text: The Example of [William Carlos] Williams' 'This is Just to Say'" was contributed to Critical Inquiry in the Spring 1979 issue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 155 Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later. By JANET SMITH. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991. Pp. xvi + 425. $42.95 hardcover; $17.95 paper. This is an ambitious and important study. I will first offer an overview of the volume to indicate its scope and note some of its major features. I will then respond briefly to some of the major criticisms Smith makes (...) of the argument against contraception advanced by Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and myself. The work contains 8 chapters and 4 appendices. Chapters 3 and 4, as Smith says, "provide an analysis of Humanae Vitae itself and thus constitute the heart of the hook" (p. xi). Since this is so I will first summarize briefly Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 and then center atten· tion on the two central chapters and the four appendices. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the context for Humanae Vitae. The first chapter is devoted largely to an account of the so-called " Minority " and "Majority" documents of the Papal Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population, and Birth Rate, while the second seeks to summarize Catholic teaching on Christian marriage prior to the encyclical. This summary draws principally from Pius XI's Casti Connubii and from nn. 47-52 of Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes. Smith takes up in some detail the issue of the" primacy" of procreation, concluding that Gaudium et Spes " seems to sidestep " this issue which, in her judgment, is irrelevant to the question of contraception. She thinks that this central document of Vatican II sent " mixed signals " on the question of contraception, although she believes that several passages " can very plausibly he read to support the position that contraception is portrayed as a violation not only of the procreative good of marriage hut also of the values of conjugal love" (p. 66). Chapter 5 deals with a wide range of theological issues: the biblical foundations for the teaching found in Humanae Vitae, the relevance of the concept of munus for this teaching, the possibility of acting " in good conscience " in a way contrary to its teaching, and the infallibility of the teaching. Of special value is the extended discussion of the con· cept expressed by the Latin term munus. Smith examines the rich meaning of this term in several magisterial documents, including Gaudium et Spes as well as Humanae Vitae. While a munus implies duties, it is essentially a noble, honor-bringing "gift" or "reward," signifying a vocation and sublime honor. Paul VI, in developing the integral vision of marriage in his encyclical, uses this concept to show that God, in giving to spouses the munus of handing on new life, has conferred on them the honor of sharing with him in the work of bring· 156 BOOK REVIEWS ing new life into the world. Smith shows beautifully how the rich theological meaning of this term helps " illuminate and enrich " the teaching of the encyclical. Chapters 6 and 7 investigate the arguments presented by dissenting theologians after Humanae Vitae to justify their repudiation of its teaching. In Chapter 6 Smith considers the views of Charles Curran and Bernard Haering, while in Chapter 7 she examines the proportionalist approach to moral issues developed by Joseph Fuchs, Richard McCormick and others. She provides intelligent criticism both of Curran and Haering and of proportionalist thought, focusing on the repudiation of specific moral absolutes. In Chapter 8 Smith provides a very helpful summary of Pope John Paul II's understanding of the human person, human sexuality and marriage. In particular, she takes up his notion that in marriage and in the act proper rto it man and woman make a " gift " of themselves to one another. Simultaneously to choose to give themselves to each other in the marital act and to contracept is then seen to involve an inner contradiction, a falsification of the " language of the body " (pp. 230258 ). Smith also takes up some of the major criticisms levelled against John Paul II's thought, in particular Lisa Sowle Cahill's, which charges him with an overromantic view of love and a failure to recognize that... (shrink)

This wide-ranging anthology of philosophical writings on the concept of God presents a systematic overview of the chief conceptions of deity as well as skeptical and atheistic critiques of theological ideas. The selections cover key philosophic developments in this subject area from ancient times to modern in both the East and West. Editors Hartshorne and Reese-two of the most highly respected scholars in the philosophy of religion-have not only selected many arresting passages from the world's great thinkers but have also (...) analyzed and evaluated the underlying ideas, showing how they fit into major, overarching systems of thought. Part One, "Classical Views," includes passages from ancient Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, and Judeo-Christian scriptures as well as philosophical writings from ancient Greece, the medieval church, and the Enlightenment. Part Two, "Modern Views," considers the ideas of more recent influential thinkers from diverse cultures and philosophical schools: Schelling, Peirce, Whitehead, Schweitzer, Buber, Radhakrishnan, and Watts, among others, are represented and discussed. Part Three, "Skeptical or Atheistic Views: Ancient and Modern," examines various kinds of skepticism and includes selections from Carneades, Buddha, Hume, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Dennes, and Freud. Throughout their presentation the editors analyze and contrast theistic, atheistic, pantheistic, and panentheistic systems of thought. Philosophers Speak of God is a richly varied selection of high-quality writing on a perennial subject that will provide the serious student a thorough foundation in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Informed consent in medical practice is essential and a global standard that should be sought at all the times doctors interact with patients. Its intensity would vary depending on the invasiveness and risks associated with the anticipated treatment. To our knowledge there has not been any systematic review of consent practices to document best practices and identify areas that need improvement in our setting. The objective of the study was to evaluate the informed consent practices of surgeons at University teaching (...) Hospitals in a low resource setting. (shrink)

The myf5 and myoD genes are implicated in the specification of vertebrate skeletal muscle. These genes have been thought to be functionally redundant because neonatal mice bearing homozygous null mutations in either gene show grossly normal muscle development. By analyzing the early embryonic development of the mutants, Michael Rudnicki and coworkers show that trunk muscle development is retarded in embryos bearing myf5 null mutations, while early limb and branchial arch muscle development is retarded by myoD null mutations.1 These results indicate (...) that the myoD and myf5 genes are not redundant but that each controls the early specification of distinct muscle cell lineages. BioEssays 20:357–362, 1998.© 1998 John Wiley & Sons Inc. (shrink)

The field of behavioral ethics has seen considerable growth over the last few decades. One of the most significant concerns facing this interdisciplinary field of research is the moral judgment-action gap. The moral judgment-action gap is the inconsistency people display when they know what is right but do what they know is wrong. Much of the research in the field of behavioral ethics is based on early work in moral psychology and American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s foundational cognitive model of moral (...) development. However, Kohlberg’s model of moral development lacks a compelling explanation for the judgment-action gap. Yet, it continues to influence theory, research, teaching, and practice in business ethics today. As such, this paper presents a critical review and analysis of the pertinent literature. This paper also reviews modern theories of ethical decision making in business ethics. Gaps in our current understanding and directions for future research in behavioral business ethics are presented. By providing this important theoretical background information, targeted critical analysis, and directions for future research, this paper assists management scholars as they begin to seek a more unified approach, develop newer models of ethical decision making, and conduct business ethics research that examines the moral judgment-action gap. (shrink)

Charles Avison's Essay on Musical Expression, first published in 1752, is a major contribution to the debate on musical aesthetics which developed in the course of the 18th century. Considered by Charles Burney as the first essay devoted to 'musical criticism' proper, it established the primary importance of 'expression' and reconsidered the relative importance of harmony and melody. Immediately after its publication it was followed by William Hayes's Remarks (1753), to which Avison himself retorted in his Reply. Taken (...) together these three texts offer a fascinating insight into the debate that raged in the 18th century between the promoters of the so-called 'ancient music' (such as Hayes) and the more 'modern' musicians. Beyond matters of taste, what was at stake in Avison's theoretical contribution was the assertion that the individual's response to music ultimately mattered more than the dry rules established by professional musicians. Avison also wrote several prefaces to the published editions of his own musical compositions. This volume reprints these prefaces and advertisements together with his Essay to provide an interesting view of eighteenth-century conceptions of composition and performance, and a complete survey of Avison's theory of music. (shrink)

Heidegger's Being and Time: Critical Essays provides a variety of recent studies of Heidegger's most important work. Twelve prominent scholars, representing diverse nationalities, generations, and interpretive approaches deal with general methodological and ontological questions, particular issues in Heidegger's text, and the relation between Being and Time and Heidegger's later thought. All of the essays presented in this volume were never before available in an English-language anthology. Two of the essays have never before been published in any language ; three of (...) the essays have never been published in English before , and two of the essays provide previews of works in progress by major scholars. (shrink)

Blackwell Companions to Philosophy This outstanding student reference series offers a comprehensive and authoritative survey of philosophy as a whole. Written by todays leading philosophers, each volume provides lucid and.

This is a case study of a program to address professionalism at the Universidad de la República in Uruguay. We describe a five-year ongoing international collaboration. Relevant characteristics of the context, the program components, activities, and results were analyzed. The expected outcomes were to introduce standards of professional practices in the curricula of medical students and residents and the implementation of a program that might lead to a significant change in the culture of medicine in the University. Traditional didactics, interactive (...) theater, and professional development workshops, issues such as teamwork and communication, professional behavior, and the culture of medicine, and physician wellness were addressed. A total of 359 faculty members, general practitioners, stakeholders, and other healthcare professionals participated in the intervention. The process led to specific achievements including new content in the curricula, the use of educational innovations to address issues of professionalism, a growing institutional culture of accountability, and the establishment of new rules and regulations. The strategies and interventions followed in the case of Uruguay can serve as a model to other developing countries to promote physician professionalism, wellness, and joy. (shrink)

A rich literature in public health has demonstrated that health is strongly influenced by a host of environmental factors that can vary according to social, economic, geographic, cultural or physical contexts. Bioethicists should, we argue, recognize this and – where appropriate – work to integrate environmental concerns into their field of study and their ethical deliberations. In this article, we present an argument grounded in scientific research at the molecular level that will be familiar to – and so hopefully more (...) persuasive for – the biomedically-inclined in the bioethics community. Specifically, we argue that the relatively new field of molecular epigenetics provides novel information that should serve as additional justification for expanding the scope of bioethics to include environmental and public health concerns. We begin by presenting two distinct visions of bioethics: the individualistic and rights-oriented and the communitarian and responsibility-oriented. We follow with a description of biochemical characteristics distinguishing epigenetics from genetics, in order to emphasize the very close relationship that exists between the environment and gene expression. This then leads to a discussion of the importance of the environment in determining individual and population health, which, we argue, should shift bioethics towards a Potterian view that promotes a communitarian-based sense of responsibility for the environment, in order to fully account for justice considerations and improve public health. (shrink)

The last two decades have seen two significant trends emerging within the philosophy of science: the rapid development and focus on the philosophy of the specialised sciences, and a resurgence of Aristotelian metaphysics, much of which is concerned with the possibility of emergence, as well as the ontological status and indispensability of dispositions and powers in science. Despite these recent trends, few Aristotelian metaphysicians have engaged directly with the philosophy of the specialised sciences. Additionally, the relationship between fundamental Aristotelian concepts—such (...) as "hylomorphism", "substance", and "faculties"—and contemporary science has yet to receive a critical and systematic treatment. _Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science _aims to fill this gap in the literature by bringing together essays on the relationship between Aristotelianism and science that cut across interdisciplinary boundaries. The chapters in this volume are divided into two main sections covering the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of the life sciences. Featuring original contributions from distinguished and early-career scholars, this book will be of interest to specialists in analytical metaphysics and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

The volume contains studies by eleven distinguished scholars, concerning changes in ethical and religious consciousness during this important era of Western ...

This study identifies and explores evolving concepts of trust and privacy in the context of user-generated health data. We define “user-generated health data” as data captured through devices or software and used outside of traditional clinical settings for tracking personal health data. The investigators conducted qualitative research through semistructured interviews with researchers, health technology start-up companies, and members of the general public to inquire why and how they interact with and understand the value of user-generated health data. We found significant (...) results concerning new attitudes toward trust, privacy, and sharing of health data outside of clinical settings that conflict with regulations governing health data within clinical settings. Members of the general public expressed little concern about sharing health data with the companies that sold the devices or apps they used, and indicated that they rarely read the “terms and conditions” detailing how their data may be exploited by the company or third-party affiliates before consenting to them. In contrast, interviews with researchers revealed significant resistance among potential research participants to sharing their user-generated health data for purposes of scientific study. The widespread rhetoric of personalization and social sharing in “user-generated culture” appears to facilitate an understanding of user-generated health data that deemphasizes the risk of exploitation in favor of loosely defined benefits to individual and social well-being. We recommend clarification and greater transparency of regulations governing data sharing related to health. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Current theories suggest that the brain is the sole source of mental illness. However, affective disorders, and major depressive disorder (MDD) in particular, may be better conceptualized as brain-body disorders that involve peripheral systems as well. This perspective emphasizes the embodied, multifaceted physiology of well-being, and suggests that afferent signals from the body may contribute to cognitive and emotional states. In this review, we focus on evidence from preclinical and clinical studies suggesting that afferent thermosensory signals contribute to well-being and (...) depression. Although thermoregulatory systems have traditionally been conceptualized as serving primarily homeostatic functions, increasing evidence suggests neural pathways responsible for regulating body temperature may be linked more closely with emotional states than previously recognized, an affective warmth hypothesis. Human studies indicate that increasing physical warmth activates brain circuits associated with cognitive and affective functions, promotes interpersonal warmth and prosocial behavior, and has antidepressant effects. Consistent with these effects, preclinical studies in rodents demonstrate that physical warmth activates brain serotonergic neurons implicated in antidepressant-like effects. Together, these studies suggest that (1) thermosensory pathways interact with brain systems that control affective function, (2) these pathways are dysregulated in affective disorders, and (3) activating warm thermosensory pathways promotes a sense of well-being and has therapeutic potential in the treatment of affective disorders. (shrink)

Lee (2017) calls for greater attention to the shared epistemological and normative grounds of both public health ethics and environmental ethics, and to Potter’s original conception of bioethics, which, as she rightly observes, has been largely disregarded in contemporary North American bioethics scholarship and practice. In a previous publication we also argued in favor of reviving the Potterian approach to bioethics; we built a case grounded in “the relatively new field of molecular epigenetics [that] provides novel information that should serve (...) as additional justification for expanding the scope of bioethics to include environmental and public health concerns.”. (shrink)

By pointing to deep philosophical confusions endemic to cognitive science, Wittgenstein might seem an enemy of computational approaches. We agree that while Wittgenstein would reject the classicist’s symbols and rules approach, his observations align well with connectionist or neural network approaches. While many connectionisms that dominated the later twentieth century could fall prey to criticisms of biological, pedagogical, and linguistic implausibility, current connectionist approaches can resolve those problems in a Wittgenstein-friendly manner. We present the basics of a Vector Symbolic Architecture (...) formalism, inspired by Smolensky, and indicate how high-dimensional vectors can operate in a context-sensitive and object-independent manner in biologically plausible time scales, reflecting Wittgenstein’s notions of language-games and family resemblance; we show how “soft” symbols for such a formalism can be formed with plausible learning cycles using Sparse Distributed Memory, resolving disputes surrounding Wittgenstein’s private language argument; and show how connectionist networks can extrapolate meaningful patterns to solve problems, providing “ways to go on” without explicit rules, which indicates linguistic plausibility. Connectionism thus provides a systematicity and productivity that is more than a mere implementation of a classical approach, and provides Wittgenstein-friendly and Wittgenstein-illuminating models of mind and language for cognitive science. (shrink)