Abstract BACKGROUND: Anonymity remains the more common practice in gamete donations, but legislation prohibiting anonymity with a goal of protecting donor-conceived children's right to know their genetic origins is becoming more common. However, given the dearth of research investigating the function of anonymity for donors and recipients, it is unclear whether these policies will accomplish their goals. The aim of this study was to explore experiences with anonymity among oocyte donors and recipients who participated in an anonymous donor oocyte program (...) and to understand the ways in which anonymity functions for them. -/- METHODS: Semistructured interviews were conducted with 50 women: 28 oocyte donors and 22 recipients who were recruited from an academic center for reproductive medicine in the United States. -/- RESULTS: Donors and recipients view anonymity both as a mechanism to protect the interests of all parties (recipients, donors, and donor-conceived children) and as a point of conflict. Specifically, three key areas were identified where both donors and recipients saw anonymity as having an important role: relieving anxieties about family structures and obligations; protecting their interests and those of donor-conceived children (while acknowledging where interests conflict); and managing the future. -/- CONCLUSION: As gamete donation increasingly moves away from the practice of anonymity, examining why anonymity matters to stakeholders will be helpful in devising strategies to successfully implement identity-release options. (shrink)

Contributed articles on Indic philosophy, Vedic grammer, and classical Sanskrit literature; includes some on the life of Kr̥ṣṇa Mādho Jha, Sanskrit scholar.

The language comprehension system preferentially assumes that agents come first during incremental processing. While this might reflect a biologically fixed bias, shared with other domains and other species, the evidence is limited to languages that place agents first, and so the bias could also be learned from usage frequency. Here, we probe the bias with electroencephalography (EEG) in Äiwoo, a language that by default places patients first, but where sentence-initial nouns are still locally ambiguous between patient or agent roles. Comprehenders (...) transiently interpreted nonhuman nouns as patients, eliciting a negativity when disambiguation was toward the less common agent-initial order. By contrast and against frequencies, human nouns were transiently interpreted as agents, eliciting an N400-like negativity when the disambiguation was toward patient-initial order. Consistent with the notion of a fixed property, the agent bias is robust against usage frequency for human referents. However, this bias can be reversed by frequency experience for nonhuman referents. (shrink)

Hadith; Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Islamic ethics.

al-Juzʼ al-awwal. al-Taʼsīs al-Qurʼānī al-muʻāṣir li-ʻilm uṣūl al-fiqh al-muqāran, dirāsah istiqrāʼīyah fī al-manjhaj wa-al-athar al-qānūnī -- al-Juzʼ al-thānī. Handasat al-insān al-qānūnī, dirāsah iṭārīyah fī mutatāliyat al-muthul wa-taṭwīʻ al-insān al-muntaẓim -- al-Juzʼ al-thālith. Tiknūlūjyā al-taʻāẓum al-insānī, ruʼyah fikrīyah iṭārīyah fī al-handasah wa-ṣināʻat al-insān al-qānūnī -- al-Juzʼ al-rābiʻ. al-Lā yaqīn al-ẓarfī, dirāsah fī al-masārāt al-falsafīyah al-ʻilmīyah wa-al-qānūnīyah lil-zamakān -- al-Juzʼ al-khāmis. Lughat ṣināʻat al-naṣṣ al-qānūnī, dirāsah fī al-naẓarīyah wa-al-taṭbīq -- al-Juzʼ al-sādis. Ibtikār al-manhaj al-qānūnī bayna al-usus al-ʻilmīyah wa-al-taṣawwurāt al-naẓarīyah wa-al-ʻilmīyah -- al-Juzʼ (...) al-sābiʻ. al-istidlāl al-istiqrāʼī li-qānūn al-mustaqbal fī al-nānū tiknūlūjī -- al-Juzʼ al-thāmin. Naẓarīyāt muʻāṣirah fī ḍawʼ al-manhaj al-Sanhūrī lil-ʻalāqah al-baynīyah lil-qānūn wa-al-sharīʻah -- al-Juzʼ al-tāsiʻ. al-Ḥayāh al-shakhṣīyah wa-al-mawt, naẓarāt qānūnīyah falsafīyah fī al-mafhūm, al-tamyīz, al-miʻyār -- al-Juzʼ al-ʻāshir. Falsafat al-qānūn fī ʻālam al-ḥadāthah wa-mā baʻda al-ḥadāthah. (shrink)

Michel Foucault n'aura cessé, à mesure qu'il élaborait son oeuvre, de repenser sa démarche, ses problèmes, de rompre avec ses propres paradigmes et concepts. Ne peut-on pas voir son oeuvre comme une succession de ruptures et de discontinuités? Impliqué dans des mouvements politiques qu'il a plus tard remis en question, se revendiquant " structuraliste " pour ensuite s'en défendre, moquant parfois ses propres ouvrages, Foucault s'est, à chaque étape de son travail, construit contre lui-même. C'est d'ailleurs ainsi qu'il définit l'attitude (...) créatrice : la création est inséparable d'une volonté de se " déprendre " de soi. Dans cet ouvrage, Arlette Farge, Georges Didi-Huberman, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie et Leo Bersani s'interrogent sur ce geste foucaldien. Quelle place la rupture a-t-elle prise dans le travail philosophique de Foucault, mais aussi dans son rapport aux mouvements politiques ou dans sa vie? En quoi la rupture constitue-t-elle une catégorie d'analyse centrale pour appréhender l'oeuvre de Foucault mais aussi, plus généralement, pour penser le champ intellectuel et des politiques émancipatrices toujours nouvelles? Le présent ouvrage est issu des entretiens réalisés par François Caillai pour son film Foucault contre lui-même (The Factory/Arte France/Ina). (shrink)

al-Risālah 1. Risālah fī Ithbāt al-mufāraqāt -- al-risālah 2. Risālah fi Aghrāḍ mā baʻda al-ṭabīʻah -- al-risālah 3. Kitāb Taḥṣīl al-saʻādah -- al-risālah 4. Risālah fī al-Taʻlīqāt -- al-risālah 5. Kitāb al-Tanbīh ʻalá sabīl al-saʻādah -- al-risālah 6. al-Tajrīd ʻalá Risālat al-Daʻāwá al-qalbīyah -- al-risālah 7. Sharḥ Risālat Zaynūn al-Kabīr al-Yūnānī -- al-risālah 8. Kitāb al-Fuṣuṣ -- al-risālah 9. -- Risālah fī Faḍīlat al-ʻulūm wa-al-ṣināʻāt -- al-risālah 10. Rasāʼil fī masāʼil mutafarriqah.

Education is important in shaping professional identity, including how one approaches norms and normalisation. In the analysis presented in this study, nursing students' own constructions of norms and normality from the outlook of their education are highlighted and problematised. To deepen the understanding of these matters, the aim of this study was to explore constructions of norms and normality among students in nursing education. Students studying in a nursing department at a Swedish university college were approached and asked to consider (...) open survey questions targeting their views on norms and normality; 154 of them replied. After a discourse analytic approach to the data, we could see how the students constructed norms and normality as (a) instrumental instructions, consisting of easy‐to‐digest statements grounded in the profession's obvious moral and ethical values, (b) limiting and frustrating obstacles for personal freedom that were important to challenge, (c) rules to be obeyed for the stability of society and (d) a matter of reflection, with each individual being responsible for understanding differences in norms, perspectives and opinions. We conclude that nursing education would benefit from norm‐critical perspectives, problematising students' own positions to norms, power and privilege. (shrink)

_Raritan: A Quarterly Review_ , IX, 68-98, Summer 1989. Reprinted (with footnotes), _Occasional Paper #8_ , Center on Violence and Human Survival, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 1991; Daniel Kolak and R. Martin, eds., _Self & Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues_ , Macmillan, 1991.

Conceptualization and measurement of organizational commitment involve different dimensions that include economic, affective, as well as moral aspects labelled in the literature as: ‘continuance’, ‘affective’ and ‘normative’ commitment. This multidimensional framework emerges from the convergence of different research lines. Using Aristotle’s philosophical framework, that explicitly considers the role of the will in human commitment, it is proposed a rational explanation of the existence of mentioned dimensions in organizational commitment. Such a theoretical proposal may offer a more accurate definition of ‘affective (...) commitment’ that distinguishes feelings from rational judgments. The use of a philosophical explanation coherent with psychological findings also allows the discovery of a wider moral concept of ‘normative commitment’. (shrink)

Ravelingien et al1 argue that, given the restrictions that must be imposed on recipients of xenotransplanted organs, we should conduct clinical trials of xenotransplantation only on patients in a persistent vegetative state. I argue that there is no ethical barrier to using terminally ill patients instead. Such patients can choose to waive their rights to the liberties that xenotransplantation would probably restrict; it is surely rational to prefer to waive your rights rather than to die, and permissible to allow patients (...) to make this choice.Perhaps the single most important advance in the history of moral thought occurred when it came to be generally recognised that all people are protected by rights that are inviolable, at least without their consent. The precise nature and content of these rights is controversial, but there is a consensus among reasonable people over their core. We all have a right to life, to liberty, to security of person and to equality before the law. Other rights—so-called positive rights, such as the right to economic security, or cultural rights, for instance—may be controversial, but we all agree at least on these.Ravelingien et al1 therefore seem to be on solid ground when they conclude that it would not be permissible to use living persons as subjects in clinical trials of xenotransplantation, as such trials, potentially or actually, result in the violation of the core human rights of the subjects. Their argument is as follows:" Xenotransplantation carries with it a currently unquantifiable risk of the transmission of viruses, from the animal that is the source of the organ transplanted, to the human recipient. Such viruses could have potentially catastrophic consequences, up to and including triggering a global and devastating pandemic. Therefore, it would be necessary to monitor the health status of recipients of … ". (shrink)

León-Portilla, M. El pensamiento prehispánico.--O'Gorman, E. América.--Gallegos Rocafull, J. M. La filosofía moderna en la Nueva España.--Villoro, L. Las corrientes ideológicas en la época de la Independencia.--Zea, L. El positivismo.--Salmerón, F. Los de filósofos mexicanos del siglo XX.--Villegas, A. El liberalismo mexicano.

Avicenna holds that since God has existed from all eternity and is immutable and impassible, he cannot come to have an attribute or feature that he has not had from all eternity. He also claims for the simultaneous causation. A puzzle arises when we consider God’s creating this world. If God is immutable and impassible, then his attributes associated with his creating this world are unchanging. So, God must have been creating the world from all eternity. But then God’s creative (...) act, one might object, seems to be no different from a matter of natural necessity. This is a threat to divine freedom, for God would then have no choice concerning his creative action. Anthony Ruffus and Jon McGinnis argue that this puzzle can be solved in such a way that Avicenna can consistently affirm divine freedom along with divine simplicity. They suggest that Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s interpretation might help to show that it is false that Avicenna’s God cannot choose absolutely. For it is still open to him to choose either to create eternally or to refrain from creating anything at all. Ruffus and McGinnis argue that since creating or not creating anything at all do not correspond to two distinct concepts, Avicenna’s account of divine simplicity, which denies any multiplicity in divine mind, is safeguarded along with divine freedom. I claim that God’s omnirationality requiring that he always acts for reasons is a serious threat to such an interpretation. (shrink)

Auf Grund aller oben erörterten Betrachtungen und Tatsachen können wir jetzt die folgenden allgemeinen Gesetze der organischen Evolution erwähnen, die bzw. sich an die unmittelbaren Ursachen, Mechanismen und Tendenzen der Evolution beziehen: Unmittelbare Ursachen: das Gesetz der Mutation; Mechanismen: das Gesetz der natürlichen Auswahl : Tendenzen: das Gesetz der funktionellen Differenzierung; das Gesetz der Koordinierung der sich differenzierenden Funktionen; das Gesetz der Integrierung der funktionellen Systemen; das Gesetz der funktionellen Verbesserung des Lebens; das Gesetz der Beschleunigung der Evolution.Alle diese Gesetze (...) bilden zusammen ein einheitliches Ganzes und sind eher als Teilaus drücke eines einzelnen allgemeinen Gesetzes der organischen Evolution aufzufassen. Ob der Verfasser eine richtige Interpretation der Tatsachen gefunden hat, darüber darf man diskutieren; — das ist nur die Fragestellung.Das Problem selbst ist sowohl theoretisch wie auch praktisch sehr wichtig, so dass wir kein menschliches Recht haben um seine Lösung den künftigen Generationen zu überlassen.Life is considered as a functional whole, but not in the holistic sense of the word, because of an essentially different interpretation of the role of the individual element in the evolution of the functional system at various levels of the organisation of the life. This paper contains the following chapters: a) introduction, b) the unity of the life, c) the main questions of the theory of evolution, d) some regularities of organic evolution, and e) the general laws of organic evolution.The following general laws, referring to the immediate causes, mechanisms and tendences of evolution are formulated. the law of mutation , the law of selection , the law of functional differentiation, the law of coordination of the differentiating functions, the law of integration of the functional systems, the law of functional perfection of the life, the law of acceleration of the evolution.All this laws form together an internally coherent system, which may be considered as the unitary law of evolution. (shrink)

Auf Grund aller oben erörterten Betrachtungen und Tatsachen können wir jetzt die folgenden allgemeinen Gesetze der organischen Evolution erwähnen, die bzw. sich an die unmittelbaren Ursachen, Mechanismen und Tendenzen der Evolution beziehen: Alle diese Gesetze bilden zusammen ein einheitliches Ganzes und sind eher als Teilaus drücke eines einzelnen allgemeinen Gesetzes der organischen Evolution aufzufassen. Ob der Verfasser eine richtige Interpretation der Tatsachen gefunden hat, darüber darf man diskutieren; — das ist nur die Fragestellung. Das Problem selbst ist sowohl theoretisch wie (...) auch praktisch sehr wichtig, so dass wir kein menschliches Recht haben um seine Lösung den künftigen Generationen zu überlassen. (shrink)

With the help of the natural history of “zero,” and the use of “zero” as a starting point, one may consider two types of metaphysics. On the one hand, the epistemological metaphysics, based on the perceptual/rational dichotomy, is related to the zero as a vacancy between numbers. On the other hand, the genetic metaphysics, based on the dichotomy of source-evolution, has much to do with the zero as a number between negative and positive numbers. In this respect, zero represents the (...) horizon of metaphysics: we can forever approach it, but we cannot ultimately arrive at it. Though serving as the point of convergence and divergence for all relationships, zero has no definable content of its own. Such is the essence of zero, and of metaphysics as well. (shrink)