Ideas can define and transform society, but how healthy is intellectual life today? In a period when Big Brother refers not to George Orwell but to a reality TV show, and when bright young things are developing gameshow formats rather than scribbling essays; when thinkers join think tanks to design short-term government policy rather than reflecting on and challenging the status quo, and when the ever growing number of graduates seem more interested in job prospects than academic endeavour, is intellectual (...) life in terminal decline? This book looks at the idea of the public intellectual, considering whether such thinkers are becoming an endangered species. It also looks at the legacy of relativism and ethical doubts about the pursuit of knowledge, and the effect of such developments on intellectual life. The final section considers the expansion of higher education and the changing role of the academic. Taken together, the essays in this collection form a comprehensive overview of the intellectual climate today, and the possibilities for the future. This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal _Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy _. (shrink)

Public investments in genomic and precision medicine have begun to yield clinically useful interventions, most recently, for example, two new, FDA-approved gene therapies for sickle cell disease (F...

For Hannah Arendt, spontaneous, ‘initiatory’ human action and interaction are suppressed by the normalizing pressures of society once ‘life’ - that is, sheer life - becomes the primary concern of politics, as it does, she finds, in the modern age. Arendt’s concept of the social is indebted to Martin Heidegger’s analysis of everyday Dasein in Being and Time , and contemporary political philosophers inspired by Heidegger, such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Giorgio Agamben, tend to reproduce her account of (...) the withdrawal of the political in modernity. In this article, I complicate Arendt’s theory by turning to Michel Foucault’s parallel but diverging understanding of the nature of power in modern society to show, surprisingly, that Foucault’s narrative of the emergence of modern power pictures a society that is more, not less, politicized. Key Words: Hannah Arendt • bio-power • Michel Foucault • Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe • modernity • Jean-Luc Nancy • pastoral power • the social • rulership. (shrink)

A cross-disciplinary dialogue among writers who are sympathetic to the humanist tradition, and interested in developing a new humanist project through debate. The book emerges from the Institute of Ideas' festival, the Battle of Ideas.

Although deductive reasoning is a closed system, one's beliefs about the world can influence validity judgements. To understand the associated functional neuroanatomy of this belief-bias we studied 14 volunteers using event-related fMRI, as they performed reasoning tasks under neutral, facilitatory and inhibitory belief conditions. We found evidence for the engagement of a left temporal lobe system during belief-based reasoning and a bilateral parietal lobe system during belief-neutral reasoning. Activation of right lateral prefrontal cortex was evident when subjects inhibited a prepotent (...) response associated with belief-bias and correctly completed a logical task, a finding consistent with its putative role in cognitive monitoring. By contrast, when logical reasoning was overcome by belief-bias, there was engagement of ventral medial prefrontal cortex, a region implicated in affective processing. This latter involvement suggests that belief-bias effects in reasoning may be mediated through an influence of emotional processes on reasoning. (shrink)

This paper compares and contrasts three different substantive principles of justice for making health care priority-setting or “rationing” decisions: need principles, maximising principles and egalitarian principles. The principles are compared by tracing out their implications for a hypothetical rationing decision involving four identified patients. This decision has been the subject of an empirical study of public opinion based on small-group discussions, which found that the public seem to support a pluralistic combination of all three kinds of rationing principle. In conclusion, (...) it is suggested that there is room for further work by philosophers and others on the development of a coherent and pluralistic theory of health care rationing which accords with public opinions. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that one of the main objectives of government expenditure on health care is to generate health. Since health is a function of both length of life and quality of life, the quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) has been developed in an attempt to combine the value of these attributes into a single index number. The QALY approach - and particularly the decision rule that healthcare resources should be allocated so as to maximise the number of QALYs generated - (...) has often been equated with the utilitarian philosophy of maximising `the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. This paper considers the extent to which the measurement and aggregation of QALYs really is utilitarian by developing a new taxonomy in order to classify utilitarianism and the different aspects of the QALY approach. It is shown that the measurement of QALYs is consistent with a number of different moral positions and that QALYs do not have to be aggregated according to the maximisation rule. Therefore it is inappropriate to necessarily equate QALYs with utilitarianism. It is shown that much turns on what in principle the QALY represents and how in practice it can be operationalised. The paper highlights the category confusion that is often present here and suggests possible avenues for future theoretical and empirical research. (shrink)

(2003). Introduction: ideas, intellectuals and the public. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 6, The Public Role of Intellectuals, pp. 1-7. doi: 10.1080/1369823042000241221.

Various promising claims have been made that business can help alleviate poverty, and can do so in ways that add value to the bottom line. This article begins by highlighting that the evidence for such claims is not especially strong, particularly if business is thought of as a development agent, i.e. an organization that consciously and accountably contributes towards pro-poor outcomes. It goes on to ask whether, if we did know more about either the business case or the poverty alleviation (...) case, would this give cause for greater optimism that business could make a significant contribution to development. By exploring the experiences of producers of Fairtrade tea in Kenya, we reveal the complex nature of what constitutes a beneficial outcome for the poor and marginalized, and the gap that can exist between ethical intentions and the experience of their intended beneficiaries. The lessons of these experiences are relevant for Fairtrade and any commercial initiative that seeks to achieve outcomes beneficial and recognizable to the poor, and raise questions about the integration of social and instrumental outcomes that a future generation of ethical entrepreneurship will need to address. (shrink)

This article examines how on-air conversations between journalists indicate how US television coverage of a race-related crisis can reflect racial ideology. Using critical discourse analysis, we examined interjournalistic discourse about African Americans in national network and cable news programs that aired after Hurricane Katrina reached New Orleans. While we expected conversational semantic items from conservative Fox News to reflect racial ideology, we also found such discursive elements from politically moderate and progressive news organizations such as CBS, CNN, and MSNBC. These (...) findings are consistent with Anxiety Uncertainty Management theory, which predicts that exposure to stressors in unfamiliar settings causes individuals to think in ethnocentric, dichotomous, stereotypical ways. Our research underscores the impact of white privilege on language, communication, and news production, and the need for cultural competence training to enhance journalists’ ability to discuss racial matters with ease. (shrink)

We present the Welleye – a novel and conceptually clear framework that shows how attention links the objective circumstances of people’s lives and selves to how they spend their time and feel day to day. While existing wellbeing frameworks in policy contain many of the factors included in the Welleye, they all lack attention as the “lens” that determines the impact of these factors on how people feel. Policymakers and organizations can use the Welleye to better understand how people are (...) faring and design and evaluate interventions aimed at making people better off. (shrink)

From its inception, genomics has been a speculative endeavor, fixated on a far-off horizon that would deliver on the promise of targeted diagnostics and individualized therapeutics (Fortun 2008). M...

Scarce healthcare resources can be allocated in many ways. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the UK focuses on the size of the benefit relative to costs, yet we know that there is support among clinicians and the general public for reducing inequalities in health. This paper shows how the UK general public trade-off these sometimes competing objectives, and the data we gather allow us to show the weight given to different population groups, for example, 1 extra (...) year of life in full health to someone who would otherwise die at the age of 60 years is worth more than twice as much as an additional year of life to someone who would otherwise die at the age of 70 years. Such data can help inform the rationing decisions faced by all healthcare systems around the world. (shrink)

Background Researchers engaged in the study of the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genetics and genomics are often publicly funded and intend their work to be in the public interest. These features of U.S. ELSI research create an imperative for these scholars to demonstrate the public utility of their work and the expectation that they engage in research that has potential to inform policy or practice outcomes. In support of the fulfillment of this “translational mandate,” the Center for (...) ELSI Resources and Analysis (CERA), funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), aims to facilitate community-informed, ELSI research results synthesis and dissemination. However, little is known about how ELSI research scholars define the goals of translation and imagine the intended users of their research findings.Methodology We distributed a Qualtrics survey to ELSI scholars that aimed to determine: (1) researchers’ expectations for their research findings in relation to policy or practice outcomes, (2) the stakeholder groups researchers believe could benefit from their research findings, and (3) the methods researchers use to foster the uptake of their findings by those stakeholders.Results Most ELSI researchers surveyed thought there were stakeholders that could benefit from their research findings, including health care professionals, at-risk individuals, patients, and their family members, policy-makers, and researchers/scientists, and expected their research findings to inform the creation or revision of laws, policies, or practice guidelines. Most researchers planned to disseminate findings directly to relevant stakeholders, with fewer expecting dissemination support from research funders, universities, or other entities.Conclusion The broad range of research topics, disciplines, and set of potential end users represented in ELSI reseach complicate the work of a knowledge broker. Nonetheless, the CERA can play an important role in disseminating ELSI results to relevant stakeholders. Further research should explore outreach mechanisms. (shrink)

Ethics, Animals and Science provides an introduction to ethics, aimed especially at those who work with animals in a scientific setting. Following an introduction to ethics in general, the book goes on to concentrate on the ethical issues which are closely associated with the most commonly occurring topics in debates on the use of animals in research. An attempt is made to find common premises for discussions which in the past have often proved to be mere dialogues of the deaf.

Male to male unprotected anal sex is the main route of HIV transmission in Australia. The Australian Study of Health and Relationships, a large, representative population survey of sexual health behaviors, found that six percent of males in the general population have engaged in homosexual activity. These findings were consistent with studies in Europeand North America. Condoms have been shown to reduce the transmission of HIV in the community. Barriers to the use of condoms include access,stigma,and cost? Nevertheless, increased condom (...) use has been reported among homosexual males, sex workers and injecting drug users although recent declines in condom use among homosexuals has presented new challenges in HIV prevention.The prevalence of male to male sexual activity may be higher in prison than in the general population. Sexual activity in prison can be consensual and non-consensual involving both homosexual / bisexual and heterosexual men. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt disavowed the title of “philosopher,” and is known above all as a political theorist. But the relationship between philosophy and politics animates her entire oeuvre. We find her addressing the topic in The Human Condition (1958), in Between Past and Future (a collection of essays written in the early 1960s), and in Men in Dark Times (another collection of essays, this one from the late sixties). It is treated in her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, composed during the (...) seventies, and also in the posthumous Life of the Mind, two of three projected volumes of which were complete when she died in 1975. Certainly, Arendt’s thought cannot be understood without taking into account her deep suspicion of and equally deep commitment to philosophy in the context of political reflection. For all that, her writings on this abiding preoccupation do not gel into a systematically articulated theory or programmatic statement. Instead, they reflect Arendt’s appreciation of what remained for her a “vital tension” – an enigma. (shrink)

A large literature documents the correlates and causes of subjective well-being, or happiness. But few studies have investigated whether people choose happiness. Is happiness all that people want from life, or are they willing to sacrifice it for other attributes, such as income and health? Tackling this question has largely been the preserve of philosophers. In this article, we find out just how much happiness matters to ordinary citizens. Our sample consists of nearly 13,000 members of the UK and US (...) general populations. We ask them to choose between, and make judgments over, lives that are high in different types of happiness and low in income, physical health, family, career success, or education. We find that people by and large choose the life that is highest in happiness but health is by far the most important other concern, with considerable numbers of people choosing to be healthy rather than happy. We discuss some possible reasons for this preference. (shrink)

A growing trend toward knowledge workers and more highly educated employees has made effective human resource management a key metric separating the corporate wheat from the chaff. Studies confirm that the way people are managed and developed delivers a higher return on investment than new technology, R&D, competitive strategy or quality initiatives. In this book, the authors contend that the broader management models of Management by Instructions and Management by Objectives fail to position organizations for competitive success. What is needed (...) is a strategic leadership tool whose practical application will mine market potential through its relevance to individual organizational members. With a step by step guide to implementation, Managing by Values is just such a tool. (shrink)

An experimental, conceptually driven foray into the Patrician field, Ireland’s ubiquitous national apostle – a former captive – is utilised as a vehicle through which to explore a trinity of salient and interrelated themes within the Catholic and Protestant hinterlands of the Irish imagination: visions of imprisonment; of the island; and of imperialism. The reader is guided through aspects of Patrician literature, visits the island’s hallowed Patrician shrines, and is thus shown Purgatory. Insights into the imaginations exhibited by a range (...) of influential Irish ideologues and intellectuals – Gerry Adams; J.B. Bury; John Hume; Eóin MacNeill; Michael McCarthy; John Mitchel; Peadar O’Donnell; Tomás Ó Fiaich; John Ryan; William Ryan; Ian Paisley; Patrick Pearse; Oscar Wilde – are generated. The cognitive (and conspicuously Platonic) terraforming of the prison-cell into an island, and of the island into a giant prison – of either British or Vatican construction – that recurs in much Irish political thought and reflection, is observed. The concluding section involves historiographical reflection: Bury’s, and by extension St. Patrick’s, influence with regards the development of the discipline of Irish history is highlighted. That the island exhibits a distinctive intellectual micro-climate, one in which visions of Patrick act as a formidable ideological force, is implicit throughout. (shrink)

The approach adopted by Posner & Raichle in this book, with its strong emphasis on the cognitive level of description, is ideally suited to the study of psychotic illnesses. However, their discussion of depression and schizophrenia is based on a very small number of studies and involves ad hoc arguments derived largely from neuroanatomy. Their conclusions are almost certainly wrong.