Veterinarians play an essential role in the animal-based food chain. They are professionally responsible for the health of farm animals to secure food safety and public health. In the last decades, food scandals and zoonotic disease outbreaks have shown how much animal and human health are entangled. Therefore, the concept of One Health is broadly promoted within veterinary medicine. The profession embraces this idea that the health of humans, animals and the environment is inextricably linked and supports the related call (...) for transdisciplinary collaboration. Especially in zoonotic disease control, the benefits of the cooperation between veterinarians and human doctors seem evident. However, applying a One Health approach also makes moral problems explicit. For instance, how should veterinarians deal with situations in which measures to protect public health negatively affect animal health? This creates a conflict of professional responsibilities. To deal with such moral problems and to strengthen the veterinarian’s position, the starting point is a holistic perspective on One Health. We will argue for an ‘encapsulated health’ argument: the best way to safeguard human health is to promote the health of animals and the environment. This also holds for the responsibility of the veterinary profession: to serve public health, the central responsibility of veterinarians should be to be experts in animal health and welfare. We elaborate this point by using a case study on the role of the veterinary profession in antimicrobial resistance policies in the Netherlands. (shrink)

The use of genomic selection in agricultural animal breeding is in academic literature generally considered an ethically unproblematic development, but some critical views have been offered. Our paper shows that an important preliminary question for any ethical evaluation of genomic selection is how the scope of discussion should be set, that is, which ethical issues and perspectives ought to be considered. This scope is determined by three partly overlapping choices. The first choice is which ethical concepts to include: an ethical (...) discussion of genomic selection approaches may draw on concepts central to applied ethics, but some critical views have been based on concepts from critical animal studies and continental philosophy. A related choice is to what extent discussion should focus on new ethical issues raised or on existing ethical issues that will be ameliorated, perpetuated or aggravated by an innovation in genomic selection. The third choice is to treat an innovation in genomic selection either as a technique on itself or as a part of specific practices. We argue that ethical discussion should not limit attention to new issues or ignore the implications of particular ways of applying genomic selection in practice, and this has some consequences for which ethical concepts ought to be included. Limiting the scope of discussion may be defensible in some contexts, but broader ethical discussion remains necessary. (shrink)

Some breeding technology applications are claimed to improve animal welfare: this includes potential applications of genomics and genome editing to improve animals’ resistance to environmental stress, to genetically alter features which in current practice are changed invasively, or to reduce animals’ capacity for suffering. Such applications challenge how breeding technologies are evaluated, which paradigmatically proceeds from a welfare perspective. Whether animal welfare will indeed improve may be unanswerable until proposed applications have been developed and tested sufficiently and until agreement is (...) reached on how to conceptualize animal welfare. Moreover, even if breeding technologies do improve animal welfare, they might be objected to on other ethical grounds. Ethical perspectives on earlier animal biotechnologies are relevant for today’s breeding technologies and their proposed applications, but may need reinterpretation. The current paper applies the concept of telos, which previously figured mainly in debates on classical genetic engineering, to genomic selection and genome editing aimed at improving animal welfare. It critiques current accounts of telos and offers an alternative conceptualization that applies to recently proposed applications of breeding technologies. This account rejects both removing the desire to pursue characteristic activities and altering animal bodies in ways that compromise their ability to perform such activities, but conditionally allows increasing robustness against environmental stress. Our account of telos enriches ethical debate on these breeding technology applications by insisting on the connection between the good life, an animal’s constitution, and its activities, thus countering reductive conceptions of welfare. (shrink)

This book is basically a translation of the volume Philosophie of the Fischer Lexicon series, with some articles and supplementary material by English-speaking scholars. It consists of brief articles on various aspects of philosophy. Much of the material tends to be too condensed and technical for the general reader, and too cursory for the advanced student. As a general reference volume for English-speaking readers, the book is sometimes hampered by its heavy emphasis on Continental and particularly German writers and philosophic (...) traditions.—P. F. L. (shrink)

Five essays on various aspects of Peirce's philosophy, first delivered as a series of lectures at Yale University, plus a brief biography of Peirce by Paul Weiss. The essays are: "Charles S. Peirce as an American," by Rulon Wells, "Notes Toward a Logic of Discovery," by N. R. Hanson, "Action, Conduct, and Self-Control," by R. J. Bernstein, "Community and Reality," by J. E. Smith, and "Charles S. Peirce, Philosopher," by Paul Weiss. Several of these essays contain concise, perceptive summaries and (...) evaluations of Peirce's thought in various areas; the book is an excellent introduction to Peirce's philosophy.—P. F. L. (shrink)

este artigo objetiva apresentar um panorama sobre o modo como Habermas aborda a relação entre capitalismo, democracia e crise no marco de suas análises sobre o Estado de Bem-Estar Social. Para tanto, divide-se sua obra em 4 momentos: o primeiro de 1962 a 1971; o segundo de 1973 a 1981; o terceiro de 1985 a 1992; e o último de 1992 até os dias de hoje. Sua principal justificativa é a relevância contemporânea dessa discussão, em face das recentes ameaças autoritárias (...) na América Latina e no mundo. A hipótese fundamental é que com esses três elementos conceituais – capitalismo, democracia, crise, Jürgen Habermas coloca a si mesmo em uma encruzilhada paralisante, pois ele enxerga as tensões inevitáveis entre tais elementos, mas hesita diante das opções para sair do amálgama que eles hoje formam. Dois são os motivos principais para essa hesitação: um reducionismo empiricista e um paradoxal déficit de complexidade em sua teoria social. (shrink)

This book, one of the "Great American Thinkers" series, seems primarily intended for the reader with no previous knowledge of James or of philosophy in general. The author discusses James's psychology, pragmatism, philosophy of religion, and metaphysics, and makes some attempt to trace common themes and present James's thought as a unified whole. The exposition is generally clear and straightforward, and Moore avoids many of the clichés and misunderstandings common in discussions of James and pragmatism. Within this rather small book (...) the author attempts not only to present James's treatment of some of the classic problems of philosophy, but also to give an elementary introduction to those problems. Unfortunately, the simplified and schematic presentation which results often fails to capture effectively the flavor, subtlety, and excitement of James's thought.—P. F. L. (shrink)

There is a Mexican, as well as a Canadian version of the American Dream. What drives political idealism in Mexico is less the idea of individual right, or respect for the rights of communities, than it is the 'indigenous' right of an historically oppressed people to a political culture and life wholly their own.

Corruption is consciously taking advantage of one's special position, power or wealth for personal gain. It is spreading because there is ignorance and absence of adequate knowledge on the subject and how to correct and control it. Added to this is the innocence of the believers in the infallibility of the legal, political, bureau cratic and other social systems. They become the victims of the exploiters of the system who know the system weaknesses and how to take advantage of it (...) for their personal gain. There are two levels of corruption—the grand corruption of those in power and the petty corruption of the lower levels. Corruption is a malady affecting both affluent and poor nations. while affluent nations do not exhibit much evidence of petty cor ruption, poor nations are subject to the effects of both grand and petty corruption from within their own bor ders and the effects of the grand corruption by the affluent. Social systems, value education, spiritual leam ing and character building are necessary to eradicate this cancer. (shrink)