BackgroundECMO is a particularly scarce resource during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its allocation involves ethical considerations that may be different to usual times. There is limited pre-pandemic literature on the ethical factors that ECMO physicians consider during ECMO allocation. During the pandemic, there has been relatively little professional guidance specifically relating to ethics and ECMO allocation; although there has been active ethical debate about allocation of other critical care resources. We report the results of a small international exploratory survey of ECMO (...) clinicians’ views on different patient factors in ECMO decision-making prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We then outline current ethical decision procedures and recommendations for rationing life-sustaining treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic, and examine the extent to which current guidelines for ECMO allocation (and reported practice) adhere to these ethical guidelines and recommendations.MethodsAn online survey was performed with responses recorded between mid May and mid August 2020. Participants (n = 48) were sourced from the ECMOCard study group—an international group of experts (n = 120) taking part in a prospective international study of ECMO and intensive care for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey compared the extent to which certain ethical factors involved in ECMO resource allocation were considered prior to and during the pandemic.ResultsWhen initiating ECMO during the pandemic, compared to usual times, participants reported giving more ethical weight to the benefit of ECMO to other patients not yet admitted as opposed to those already receiving ECMO, (p < 0.001). If a full unit were referred a good candidate for ECMO, participants were more likely during the pandemic to consider discontinuing ECMO from a current patient with low chance of survival (53% during pandemic vs. 33% prior p = 0.002). If the clinical team recommends that ECMO should cease, but family do not agree, the majority of participants indicated that they would continue treatment, both in usual circumstances (67%) and during the pandemic (56%).ConclusionsWe found differences during the COVID-19 pandemic in prioritisation of several ethical factors in the context of ECMO allocation. The ethical principles prioritised by survey participants were largely consistent with ECMO allocation guidelines, current ethical decision procedures and recommendations for allocation of life-sustaining treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

It is the purpose of this paper to carry out a partial syntactical analysis of imperatives. Imperatives form a large body of linguistic expressions, appearing, e.g. in mathematical proofs be a continuous function!”), laws, moral injunctions, instruction, etc. For analytical purposes we distinguish between two forms of imperatives, the fiat and the directive. By a directive we mean an imperative which includes an indication of the agent who is to carry it out. For example, “Henry, don't forget to stop at (...) the grocery!” is a directive. By a fiat we mean an imperative which includes no reference to an agent who is to carry it out. For example, “Let there be light!” is a fiat. This is a distinction made in terms of meaning. If, however, proper symbolic devices were introduced for the formalization of imperatives, it could be made in a syntactical manner. Thus we could distinguish between imperatives which possess a certain operator—the directive operator formed by putting a name within square brackets—as “[Henry]!”, and imperatives which do not possess this operator, e.g. “Let it be the case that Henry does not forget to stop at the grocery!” In the following we pay attention only to fiats. This, of course, involves a great limitation of subject matter and excludes topics of great interest. (shrink)

C W Evers, J C Walker; Knowledge, Partitioned Sets and Extensionality: a refutation of the forms of knowledge thesis, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume.

C W Evers, J C Walker; Pyrotechnics Defended: a reply to Jim Mackenzie, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 139–142, http.

There is a strong need to connect agricultural research to social movements and community-based food system reform efforts. Participatory research methods are a powerful tool, increasingly used to give voice to communities overlooked by academia or marginalized in the broader food system. Plant breeding, as a field of research and practice, is uniquely well-suited to participatory project designs, since the basic process of observing and selecting plants for desirable traits is accessible to participants without formal plant breeding training. The challenge (...) for plant breeders engaged in participatory research is to consider not only how their work incorporates farmer input in developing new varieties, but also how it interacts with broader questions of food sovereignty, food justice, diversity and democratization in the food system. This article examines these issues in the context of the Seed to Kitchen Collaborative, a participatory variety evaluation and breeding project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (shrink)

Can metaphysics yield the consolations of philosophy? One possibility, defended by Derek Parfit, is that reflection on the nature of identity and time could diminish both fear of death and grief. In this paper, I assess the prospect of such consolation, focussing especially on attempts to console a grieving third party. A shift to a reductionist view of personal identity might mean that death is less threatening. However, there is some evidence to suggest that such a shift does not necessarily (...) translate into less death anxiety. Moreover, applied to grief at loss of another, such a perspective may be misdirected. A temporally neutral perspective offers a theoretically powerful way of reducing the sense of loss at being separated in time from a loved one. However, it is unclear whether it is psychologically possible to achieve. Even if it were possible, it may not diminish the pain of separation.I identify a serious challenge to philosophical consolation for grief. The greater the consolation that is offered, the greater the risk of losing important attachments and the less it may be psychologically accessible. (shrink)

In its most basic form, Simple Reliabilism states that: a belief is justified iff it is formed as the result of a reliable belief-forming process. But so-called New Evil Demon cases have been given as counterexamples. A common response has been to complicate reliabilism from its simplest form to accommodate the basic reliabilist position, while at the same time granting the force of NED intuitions. But what if despite initial appearances, Simple Reliabilism, without qualification, is compatible with the NED intuition? (...) What we can call the Dispositionalist Response to the New Evil Demon problem is fascinating because it contends just that: Simple Reliabilism is fully compatible with the NED intuition. It is claimed that all we need to do to recognize their compatibility is appreciate that reliability is a dispositional property. In this paper I shall critically evaluate the Dispositionalist proposal. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to respond to Thomas Uebel’s criticisms of my comments regarding the current revisionism of Carnap’s work and its relations to Kuhn. I begin by pointing out some misunderstandings in the interpretation of my article. I then discuss some aspects related to Carnap’s view of the history of science. First, I emphasize that it was not due to a supposed affinity between Kuhn’s conceptions and those of logical positivists that Kuhn was invited to write the (...) monograph on the history of science for the Encyclopedia. Three other authors had been invited first, including George Sarton whose conception was entirely different from Kuhn’s. In addition, I try to show that Carnap attributes little importance to the history of science. He seldom refers to it and, when he does, he clearly defends a Whig or an ‘old’ historiography of science, to which Kuhn opposes his “new historiography of science”. It is argued that this raises serious difficulties for those, like Uebel, who hold the view that Carnap includes the historical or the social within the rational. (shrink)

According to Mark 6:14–29, John the Baptist was beheaded by the order of Herod Antipas. This dramatic event became inevitable after a cunning interplay between Herodias and her daughter, who remains nameless in the New Testament. According to Flavius Josephus, she was called Salome ( Jewish Antiquities XVIII, 5.4 § 136–137), and under that name, she went down in history. For the sake of convenience, I also call her ‘Salome’ in this article. Salome is the Greek form of the Hebrew (...) name Shlomith, which was very popular in early Judaic times and means ‘she who brings peace and tranquillity’. Unlike the faithful women elsewhere in Mark’s gospel (5:21–43; 7:24–30; 14:3–9), Herodias and her daughter are not exactly models of virtue. Yet, it is questionable as to whether they are both thoroughly bad and whether they are both equally responsible for the murder of John. This article does not provide a historical reconstruction of what exactly happened at the court of Herod Antipas, but it contains a narrative analysis of what happened in the court of Herod Antipas. This narrative analysis is followed by an intertextual approach in the second part of this article. Firstly, I will compare Mark’s story with what Flavius Josephus tells about the beheading of John. Thereafter, I will highlight the roles of Herodias and Salome in the play Salome by Oscar Wilde from 1894, which, in turn, forms the basis of the libretto for the opera Salome by Richard Strauss from 1905. Do we encounter in these modern artistic recreations (Neuschöpfungen) only transformations of Mark’s story, or also transgressions in which Wilde and Strauss have largely replaced the original meaning of the story with new meaning? (shrink)

No presente artigo, defendemos que uma constelação é formada por gêneros que se diferenciam em seus propósitos comunicativos específicos, mas que podem ser agrupados por razões diversas, como para a realização de uma tarefa para a qual seja necessária uma cadeia de gêneros. (SWALES, 2004). Com base na perspectiva teórica acima, objetivamos discutir as implicações pedagógicas do conceito de constelação de gêneros, tomando como referência o ensino da língua materna. Acreditamos que a compreensão do citado fenômeno, por parte dos professores, (...) pode ser útil para este ensino na medida em que a competência sociodiscursiva dos alunos pode ser ampliada em relação a um determinado elemento motivador da constelação. Isto se justifica porque os gêneros que se constelam se tornam distintos entre si graças à teia de propósitos comunicativos que eles formam dentro da constelação, a fim de atender às mais diversas funções sociais dentro da tarefa maior em função da qual eles se encadeiam. Portanto, o estudo de cadeia de gêneros dentro de uma tarefa escolar maior pode proporcionar aos estudantes uma visão mais ampla da função social dos gêneros, não limitando a compreensão acerca dos modos como a sociedade organiza seus processos comunicativos nos diversos tipos de constelação que podem existir. (shrink)

There is a strong need to connect agricultural research to social movements and community-based food system reform efforts. Participatory research methods are a powerful tool, increasingly used to give voice to communities overlooked by academia or marginalized in the broader food system. Plant breeding, as a field of research and practice, is uniquely well-suited to participatory project designs, since the basic process of observing and selecting plants for desirable traits is accessible to participants without formal plant breeding training. The challenge (...) for plant breeders engaged in participatory research is to consider not only how their work incorporates farmer input in developing new varieties, but also how it interacts with broader questions of food sovereignty, food justice, diversity and democratization in the food system. This article examines these issues in the context of the Seed to Kitchen Collaborative, a participatory variety evaluation and breeding project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (shrink)

In a previous paper we have shown that in quantum chromodynamics the gluon propagator vanishes in the infrared limit, while the ghost propagator is more singular than a simple pole. These results were obtained after angular averaging, but in the current paper we go beyond this approximation and perform an exact calculation of the angular integrals. The powers of the infrared behaviour of the propagators are changed substantially. We find the very intriguing result that the gluon propagator vanishes in the (...) infrared exactly like p2, whilst the ghost propagator is exactly as singular as 1/p4. We also find that the value of the infrared fixed point of the QCD coupling is much decreased from the y-max estimate: it is now equal to 4π/3. Following a recent study by von Smekal et al.[1], we analyzed in Ref.[2] the coupled Dyson- Schwinger equations for the gluon and ghost form factors F and G. The approximations were two-fold: firstly the vertices were taken bare, and secondly angular averaging was introduced (the so-called y-max approximation). Deferring to later work an improvement of the vertices. (shrink)

Basic disagreements about what makes human life valuable hinder use of the concept of futility to decide whether it is appropriate to continue life support for one in a permanent state of unconsciousness, or to provide intensive medical care to one in the last stages of a terminal illness (the “paradigm cases”). Triage planning (the process of establishing criteria for health care prioritization) is an attractive alternative framework for addressing the paradigm cases. Triage planning permits society to see the cases (...) in the context of diverse moral perspectives, limited resources, and competing health care demands. Furthermore, at least one essential question posed by the paradigm cases is whether treatment is wasteful, and triage planning is a useful model for identifying and eliminating wasteful medical care. The authors describe how triage planning can be implemented to address the paradigm cases, and conclude that it offers one way of moving debate about these cases beyond futility. (shrink)

I do not approach the question of free will as a scientist, like Colin Blakemore, or a lawyer, like David Hodgson, or philosopher, like Daniel Dennett, but as a priest -- someone who feels responsible for my own actions and who is called upon to counsel and absolve such as come to me with their shame and their guilt. Should I say that their sense of responsibility is illusory? Or should I encourage them to accept responsibility, and then to deal (...) with it in the various ways -- religious, psychological and practical -- that are open to them? (shrink)

Since the Global Financial Crisis, a surge of interest in the use of finance as a tool to address social and economic problems suggests the potential for a generational shift in how the finance industry operates and is perceived. J. C. de Swaan seeks to channel the forces of well-intentioned finance professionals to improve finance from within and help restore its focus on serving society. Drawing from inspiring individuals in the field, de Swaan proposes a framework for pursuing a viable (...) career in finance while benefiting society and upholding humanistic values. In doing so, he challenges traditional concepts of success in the industry. This will also engage readers outside of finance who are concerned about the industry's impact on society. (shrink)

Writing in the late 1990s about the tendency of encyclopedists to designate existentialism a finished project, Thomas W. Busch cautions that such hasty periodization risks distorting our understanding of the contemporary philosophical scene and of depriving ourselves of vital resources for critiquing contemporary forms of oppression, what Garbriel Marcel referred to as processes of dehumanization. We should recall that "existentialism made possible present forms of Continental philosophy, all of which assume the existentialist critique of dualism, essentialism, and totality in modern (...) philosophy," and we should acknowledge that "existentialism remains capable of haunting today's scene as an important and relevant critic." Offered in honor of Thomas W. Busch after his more than fifty years of work in philosophy, the essays in this volume attest to existentialism as a living project. The essays are written by scholars who championed existentialism in America and by scholars who now seek to extend existentialist insights into new territory, including into research in cognitive science. The essays range from studies of key figures and texts to explorations of urgent topics such as the nature of freedom and the possibility of what Busch calls "incorporation," a sense of communicative solidarity that respects difference and disagreement. (shrink)

This article indicates some ways in which the fantasy of the brain in the vat has been used in thought experiments to discuss important philosophical problems. The first has to do with scepticism about the external world. The second has to do with Hilary Putnam’s arguments for the indeterminacy of reference and his rejection of metaphysical realism. The third issue to which the brain in the vat is relevant has to do with the difference between broad and narrow content of (...) beliefs and Putnam’s challenging assertion that reference is not ‘in the head’. Though there are brief suggestions for dealing with these problems and saving metaphysical realism, the main purpose is to indicate the relevance of the fantasy of the brain in the vat to discussion of these issues. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes.

In recent years, a revisionist process focused on logical positivism can be observed, particularly regarding Carnap’s work. In this paper, I argue against the interpretation that Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions having been published in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, co-edited by Carnap, is evidence of the revisionist idea that Carnap “would have found Structure philosophically congenial”. I claim that Kuhn’s book, from Carnap’s point of view, is not in philosophy of science but rather in history of science (...) (in the context of a sharp discovery–justification distinction). It could also explain the fact that, despite his sympathetic letters to Kuhn as editor, Carnap never refers to Kuhn’s book in his work in philosophy of science. (shrink)