The European project European and Latin American Systems of Ethics Regulation of Biomedical Research Project (EULABOR) has carried out the first comparative analysis of ethics regulation systems for biomedical research in seven countries in Europe and Latin America, evaluating their roles in the protection of human subjects. We developed a conceptual and methodological framework defining ‘ethics regulation system for biomedical research’ as a set of actors, institutions, codes and laws involved in overseeing the ethics of biomedical research on humans. This (...) framework allowed us to develop comprehensive national reports by conducting semi-structured interviews to key informants. These reports were summarised and analysed in a comparative analysis. The study showed that the regulatory framework for clinical research in these countries differ in scope. It showed that despite the different political contexts, actors involved and motivations for creating the regulation, in most of the studied countries it was the government who took the lead in setting up the system. The study also showed that Europe and Latin America are similar regarding national bodies and research ethics committees, but the Brazilian system has strong and noteworthy specificities. (shrink)

On the translator's second visit to Dolpo in western Tibet he came across these four autobiographies of Tibetan lamas, three from the fifteenth century and one from the seventeenth century. Though the biographies appear superficially to be repetitious, they provide good insights into the lives of Tibetan holy men. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book, however, is the translator's introduction where he relates the story of his own journey to Dolpo and provides background material for the biographies. (...) The translator's own hardships in finding these texts in such a remote area give a good picture of life in the isolated areas of Tibet. For the Tibetan scholar there are indices of divinities, texts and rituals, personal names, and place names. The general index is followed by forty-five pages of black and white photographs of the area, the lamas, the art-work, etc. Last are two fold-out maps, one of Dolpo and the other of western and central Tibet.--P. J. H. (shrink)

Here in volume II are the Tibetan texts of the biographies of four Lamas of Dolpo of western Tibet. They are written in the headless form of Tibetan script with both clarity and beauty with the Khams-pa style of cursive script. It includes four appendixes: transliterated extracts without translation, transliterated extracts with translation, two pages of notes to the first volume, a lay-out of the Tibetan alphabet together with the system of transliteration, and a table of abbreviated words to (...) facilitate reading the text. This is a beautiful edition, especially helpful in that it provides a good example of Tibetan cursive writing. The transliteration scheme also accords with that gaining wide acceptance amongst Tibetan scholars, even though not chosen by the Library of Congress. --P. J. H. (shrink)

On the translator's second visit to Dolpo in western Tibet he came across these four autobiographies of Tibetan lamas, three from the fifteenth century and one from the seventeenth century. Though the biographies appear superficially to be repetitious, they provide good insights into the lives of Tibetan holy men. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book, however, is the translator's introduction where he relates the story of his own journey to Dolpo and provides background material for the biographies. (...) The translator's own hardships in finding these texts in such a remote area give a good picture of life in the isolated areas of Tibet. For the Tibetan scholar there are indices of divinities, texts and rituals, personal names, and place names. The general index is followed by forty-five pages of black and white photographs of the area, the lamas, the art-work, etc. Last are two fold-out maps, one of Dolpo and the other of western and central Tibet.--P. J. H. (shrink)

This is the introductory essay for the first of two special issues of Radical Philosophy Review marking the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of one of the twentieth century’s most provocative, subversive, and widely read works of radical theory—Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, which we now reassess in an effort to contribute to the critical theory of our time. What are the possibilities and limits of our current situation? What are the prospects for moving beyond one-dimensionality? A summary (...) of each of the articles featured in this special issue is also provided. (shrink)

The mexican democracy faces challenges as how to assimilate reclaims of specific groups such as feminism. Feminist movement used to have a “revolutionary” ideology, and has difficulties to adapt itself to a new political environment in Mexico.

In this article I will analyze whether the so-called Extended Evolutionary Synthesis represents a synthesis and an extension with respect to its predecessor, Modern Synthesis. It will be argued that the MS proposes an externalist approach to evolution while the EES considers it necessary to overcome the internalism/externalism dichotomy by proposing more integrative approaches. It will be concluded that the EES cannot be considered an extension of MS and that the appeal to that extension is related to sociological aspects and (...) the epistemic value of theoretical unification that was always present in biological evolutionary thinking. (shrink)

Medical students will face ethical issues throughout their lives as doctors. The present study aims to investigate medical students’ opinions on controversial ethical issues and factors associated with these opinions.

G.E. Moore, more than either Bertrand Russell or Ludwig Wittgenstein, was chiefly responsible for the rise of the analytic method in twentieth-century philosophy. This selection of his writings shows Moore at his very best. The classic essays are crucial to major philosophical debates that still resonate today. Amongst those included are: * A Defense of Common Sense * Certainty * Sense-Data * External and Internal Relations * Hume's Theory Explained * Is Existence a Predicate? * Proof of an External World (...) In addition, this collection also contains the key early papers in which Moore signals his break with idealism, and three important previously unpublished papers from his later work which illustrate his relationship with Wittgenstein. (shrink)

An important contribution to the foundations of probability theory, statistics and statistical physics has been made by E. T. Jaynes. The recent publication of his collected works provides an appropriate opportunity to attempt an assessment of this contribution.

In this philosophy classic, which was first published in 1951, E. R. Dodds takes on the traditional view of Greek culture as a triumph of rationalism. Using the analytical tools of modern anthropology and psychology, Dodds asks, "Why should we attribute to the ancient Greeks an immunity from 'primitive' modes of thought which we do not find in any society open to our direct observation?" Praised by reviewers as "an event in modern Greek scholarship" and "a book which it would (...) be difficult to over-praise," _The Greeks and the Irrational _was Volume 25 of the Sather Classical Lectures series. (shrink)

Is God's foreknowledge compatible with human freedom? One of the most attractive attempts to reconcile the two is the Ockhamistic view, which subscribes not only to human freedom and divine omniscience, but retains our most fundamental intuitions concerning God and time: that the past is immutable, that God exists and acts in time, and that there is no backward causation. In order to achieve all that, Ockhamists distinguish ‘hard facts’ about the past which cannot possibly be altered from ‘soft facts’ (...) about the past which are alterable, and argue that God's prior beliefs about human actions are soft facts about the past. (shrink)

The lung allocation score system in the United States and several European countries gives more weight to risk of death without transplantation than to survival following transplantation. As a result, centers transplant sicker patients, leading to increased length of initial hospitalization. The care of patients who have accumulated functional deficits or additional organ dysfunction during their prolonged stay can be ethically complex. Disagreement occurs between the transplant team, patients and families, and non-transplant health care professionals over the burdens of ongoing (...) intensive intervention. These cases highlight important ethical issues in organ transplantation, including the nature and requirements of transplant informed consent, the limits of physician prognostication, patient autonomy and decision-making capacity following transplant, obligations to organ donors and to other potential recipients, and the impact of program metrics on individualized recipient care. We outline general ethical principles for the care of lung transplant recipients with prolonged hospitalization and give regulatory, research, and patient-centered recommendations for these cases. (shrink)

La problemática adaptativa constituye un tema central para la teoría evolutiva. Uno de los principales cuestionamientos está dado por aquellos procesos que tradicionalmente se han considerado como adaptativos y que a la luz de la evidencia actual deben ser redefinidos. El estudio de la adaptación en el caso del parasitismo reviste especial importancia por sus aspectos epidemiológicos, ecológicos y evolutivos, además de su impacto en medicina evolutiva. El objetivo del presente trabajo es hacer un estudio de casos en cestodes con (...) el propósito de contrastar el grado de aplicación de la definición de adaptación propuesta por Dressino y discutir su viabilidad, limitaciones y alcances para el fenómeno parasitario. Se analizan numerosas definiciones y conceptos de adaptación y se advierte que muchas de ellas no cuentan con los requerimientos formales necesarios para su corroboración empírica. En base al análisis de casos de cestodes y teniendo en cuenta los conceptos de “interrelación de eslabones del ciclo biológico” y “potencialidad del fenómeno parasitario”, se propondrá el concepto de “concatenación de adaptaciones”. En razón de las particularidades adaptativas observadas en parásitos y de la inviabilidad de las definiciones de adaptación aplicadas a estos grupos, este nuevo concepto supone una multiplicidad de adaptaciones que se enlazan unas con otras y que la modificación de cualquiera de ellas tiene profundas consecuencias en las restantes.Adaptative issues constitute a central topic in evolutionary theory. One of the main questions concerns the processes that have traditionally been considered as adaptative and that should be redefined in the light of current evidence. The study of the adaptation in the case of parasitism was especially important for its epidemiological, ecological and evolutionary aspects, besides its impact on evolutionary medicine. The purpose of this work is a study of cases in cestodes in order to contrast the degree of application of the definition of adaptation proposed by Dressino and to discuss its feasibility, limitations and reaches for the phenomenon of parasites. A large number of definitions and concepts of adaptation is analyzed and it is observed that many of them do not fulfill the necessary formal requirements for their empiric corroboration. Based on the analysis of cases of cestodes and keeping in mind the concept of “interrelationship of links in the biological cycle” and “potential of the parasitic phenomenon”, we proposed the concept of “concatenation of adaptations”. Due to the adaptative particularities observed in parasites and the non feasibility of the definitions of adaptation applied to these groups, this new concept assumes that there is a multiplicity of adaptations that are linked to each other and that the modification of any one of them has profound consequences on the remaining adaptations. (shrink)

What is a natural kind ? As we shall see, the concept of a natural kind has a long history. Many of the interesting doctrines can be detected in Aristotle, were revived by Locke and Leibniz, and have again become fashionable in recent years. Equally there has been agreement about certain paradigm examples: the kinds oak, stickleback and gold are natural kinds, and the kinds table, nation and banknote are not. Sadly agreement does not extend much further. It is impossible (...) to discover a single consistent doctrine in the literature, and different discussions focus on different doctrines without writers or readers being aware of the fact. In this paper I shall attempt to find a defensible distinction between natural and non-natural kinds. (shrink)

If one is an egalitarian, what should one want to equalize? Opportunities or outcomes? Resources or welfare? These positions are usually conceived to be very different. I argue in this paper that the distinction is misconceived: the only coherent conception of resource equality implies welfare equality, in an appropriately abstract description of the problem. In this section, I motivate the program which the rest of the paper carries out.

E-Z Reader 7 is a processing model of eye-movement control. One constraint imposed on the model is that high-level cognitive processes do not influence eye movements unless normal reading processes are disturbed. I suggest that this constraint is unnecessary, and that the model provides a sensible architecture for explaining how both low- and high-level processes influence eye movements.

O presente texto procura acompanhar alguns aspectos da reconstrução sartreana das relações entre indivíduo e história, tentando mostrar que a fenomenologia e o materialismo dialético comparecem nessa proposta de conhecimento e que é a convergência das duas perspectivas que permite, contemplando adequadamente a universalidade e a singularidade, descrever e compreender dialeticamente o modo histórico de produção da identidade individual.

How could the self be a substance? There are various ways in which it could be, some familiar from the history of philosophy. I shall be rejecting these more familiar substantivalist approaches, but also the non-substantival theories traditionally opposed to them. I believe that the self is indeed a substance—in fact, that it is a simple or noncomposite substance—and, perhaps more remarkably still, that selves are, in a sense, self-creating substances. Of course, if one thinks of the notion of substance (...) as an outmoded relic of prescientific metaphysics—as the notion of some kind of basic and perhaps ineffable stuff —then the suggestion that the self is a substance may appear derisory. Even what we ordinarily call ‘stuffs’—gold and water and butter and the like—are, it seems, more properly conceived of as aggregates of molecules or atoms, while the latter are not appropriately to be thought of as being ‘made’ of any kind of ‘stuff’ at all. But this only goes to show that we need to think in terms of a more sophisticated notion of substance—one which may ultimately be traced back to Aristotle's conception of a ‘primary substance’ in the Categories , and whose heir in modern times is W. E. Johnson's notion of the ‘continuant’. It is the notion, that is, of a concrete individual capable of persisting identically through qualitative change, a subject of alterable predicates that is not itself predicable of any further subject. (shrink)

In this paper I shall venture into an area with which I am not very familiar and in which I feel far from confident; namely into phenomenology. My main motive is not to get away from standard, boring, methodological questions like those of induction and demarcation; but the conviction that a phenomenological account of the empirical basis forms a necessary complement to Popper's falsificationism. According to the latter, a scientific theory is a synthetic and universal, hence unverifiable proposition. In fact, (...) in order to be technologically useful, a scientific hypothesis must refer to future states-of-affairs; it ought therefore to remain unverified. But in order to be empirical, a theory must bear some kind of relation to factual statements. According to Popper, such a relation can only be one of potential conflict. Thus a theory T will be termed scientific if and only if T is logically incompatible with a so-called basic statement b, where b is both empirically verifiable and empirically falsifiable. In other words: T is scientific if it entails ¬b; where b, hence also ¬b, is an empirically decidable proposition. (shrink)

Ancient moral philosophers, especially Aristotle and his followers, typically shared the assumption that ethics is primarily concerned with how to achieve the final end for human beings, a life of “happiness” or “human flourishing.” This final end was not a subjective condition, such as contentment or the satisfaction of our preferences, but a life that could be objectively determined to be appropriate to our nature as human beings. Character traits were treated as moral virtues because they contributed well toward this (...) ideal life, either as means to it or as constitutive aspects of it. Traits that tended to prevent a “happy” life were considered vices, even if they contributed to a life that was pleasant and what a person most wanted. The idea of “happiness” was central, then, in philosophical efforts to specify what we ought to do, what sort of persons we should try to become, and what sort of life a wise person would hope for. (shrink)

The strong weak truth table (sw) reducibility was suggested by Downey, Hirschfeldt, and LaForte as a measure of relative randomness, alternative to the Solovay reducibility. It also occurs naturally in proofs in classical computability theory as well as in the recent work of Soare, Nabutovsky, and Weinberger on applications of computability to differential geometry. We study the sw-degrees of c.e. reals and construct a c.e. real which has no random c.e. real (i.e., Ω number) sw-above it.

Characterizations of philosophy abound. It is ‘the queen of the sciences’, a grand and sweeping metaphysical endeavour; or, less regally, it is a sort of deep anthropology or ‘descriptive metaphysics’, uncovering the general presuppositions or conceptual schemes that lurk beneath our words and thoughts. A different set of images portray philosophy as a type of therapy, or as a spiritual exercise, a way of life to be followed, or even as a special branch of poetry or politics. Then there is (...) a group of characterizations that include philosophy as linguistic analysis, as phenomenological description, as conceptual geography, or as genealogy in the sense proposed by Nietzsche and later taken up by Foucault. (shrink)