On the twentieth anniversary of the death of one of the most important contemporary political and social philosophers, John B. Rawls (1921–2002), in this paper the authors deal with his understanding of the relationship between civil disobedience and freedom within the framework of a liberal constitutional democracy based on the rule of law. The fundamental starting point of Rawls’s theory, and thus of this work, is that civil disobedience expresses disobedience to the law within the limits of fidelity to the (...) law, although it is at the outer edge thereof. If the freedom of thought expressing disobedience to unjust laws is one of the fundamental freedoms, then civil disobedience can be understood not only as a corrective to liberal constitutional democracy but also as a realistic attempt to “save” it. This is an important topic of contemporary political philosophy, considering the increasingly widespread discourse about the crisis of liberalism in general today, and the impact of that crisis on the institutions of liberal constitutional democracy, among which the state stands out, but in fact law and the legal system as a whole. (shrink)

This paper addresses the changing ideology regarding reproduction, an evolving American, and potentially worldwide, value system regarding children and parenthood. Children are increasingly being seen as products, and the new technology of reproduction, including the sale of reproductive material and services and especially prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion, encourage this commodification of the fetus. While the new technology does indeed offer new choices, it also creates new structures and new limitations on choice. In the contemporary American social structure, these choices (...) are inevitably couched in terms of production and commodification, and thus do not offer individuals genuine choice or control. (shrink)

Movies have a striking aesthetic power: they can draw us in and induce a peculiar mode of involvement in their images – they absorb us. While absorbed in a movie, we lose track both of the passage of time and of the fact that we are sitting in a dark room with other people watching the play of light upon a screen. What is the source of the power of movies? Noël Carroll, who cites Maurice Merleau-Ponty as an influence on (...) his account of the power of movies, agrees with Merleau-Ponty that our perceptual experience of movies draws on many of the capacities at work in our perceptual experience of everyday situations. Yet Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception shows that Carroll’s emphasis on intellectual inference and the entertaining of unasserted thoughts is a distortion of the phenomenology of cinematic absorption. According to Merleau-Ponty, such intellectual operations come into play in cases of breakdown but should not be read back into the primary absorbed experience as being implicitly operative all along. After presenting and criticizing Carroll’s view, I interpret and expand upon Merleau-Ponty’s position, showing that his version of the analogy between cinematic perception and everyday perception is more convincing than Carroll’s. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Observing Environments” by Hugo F. Alrøe & Egon Noe. Upshot: We discuss the environmental terminology of Jakob von Uexküll in the context of Alrøe Egon Noe’s reflections, and to examine more deeply the multi-perspectivity that arises from a combination of von Uexküll’s and Luhmann’s systems theories. The complexity yielded by an unpacking of the term “environment” sheds light on the difficulties in finding common understandings for solving wicked problems.

Journal of the History of Biology provides a fifty-year long record for examining the evolution of the history of biology as a scholarly discipline. In this paper, we present a new dataset and preliminary quantitative analysis of the thematic content of JHB from the perspectives of geography, organisms, and thematic fields. The geographic diversity of authors whose work appears in JHB has increased steadily since 1968, but the geographic coverage of the content of JHB articles remains strongly lopsided toward the (...) United States, United Kingdom, and western Europe and has diversified much less dramatically over time. The taxonomic diversity of organisms discussed in JHB increased steadily between 1968 and the late 1990s but declined in later years, mirroring broader patterns of diversification previously reported in the biomedical research literature. Finally, we used a combination of topic modeling and nonlinear dimensionality reduction techniques to develop a model of multi-article fields within JHB. We found evidence for directional changes in the representation of fields on multiple scales. The diversity of JHB with regard to the representation of thematic fields has increased overall, with most of that diversification occurring in recent years. Drawing on the dataset generated in the course of this analysis, as well as web services in the emerging digital history and philosophy of science ecosystem, we have developed an interactive web platform for exploring the content of JHB, and we provide a brief overview of the platform in this article. As a whole, the data and analyses presented here provide a starting-place for further critical reflection on the evolution of the history of biology over the past half-century. (shrink)

This paper traces the background to R. A. Fisher's multi-factorial theory of inheritance. It is argued that the traditional account is incomplete, and that Karl Pearson's well-known pre-Fisherian objections to the theory were in fact overcome by Pearson himself. It is further argued that Pearson's stated reasons for not accepting his own achievement has to be seen as a rationalization, standing in for deeper-seated metaphysical objections to the Mendelian paradigm of a type not readily discussed in a formal scientific paper. (...) The apparent, post-Fisherian, continued acceptance of Pearson's objections is presented as an interesting problem for the historian and sociologist. (shrink)

Business theory and management practices are outgrowths of basic economic principles. To evaluate the proper place of ethics in business, the meaning of ethics as defined by economic theory must be assessed. This paper contends that classical economic thought advocates a nonethical decision-making context and is not functional for a modern complex, interdependent environment.

Char et al. describe an interesting and useful approach in their paper, “Identifying ethical considerations for machine learning healthcare applications.” Their proposed framework, which see...

B. Rundle; X—Transitivity and Indirect Speech, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 June 1968, Pages 187–206, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

Denne artikkelen tar utgangspunkt i et skille mellom samfunnsstrukturer som avgrenser legers skjønnsmessige utfoldelse på den ene siden, og profesjonens tilrettelegging for kultiveringen av erkjennelsesmessige ferdigheter på den annen. Ved å videreføre H. Grimen og A. Molanders anvendelse av S.E. Toulmins modell for praktisk resonnering i en klinisk kontekst redegjør jeg for legeskjønnets multidimensjonale, epistemiske struktur. Gjennomgangen viser hvordan skjønnsanvendelse i legerollen kan analyseres i henhold til en fagteknisk, en distributiv og en relasjonell dimensjon. Mot denne bakgrunnen diskuterer jeg så (...) spenninger som oppstår i skjæringspunktet mellom strukturering og kultivering av skjønnets ulike dimensjoner. Diskusjonen tydeliggjør at den medisinske profesjonen ikke kan betraktes som en selvtilstrekkelig premissleverandør når det gjelder å sikre adekvat kultivering av medlemmenes skjønnsutøvelse i en klinisk kontekst. Ved å synliggjøre og vektlegge de relevante profesjonseksterne bidragene i profesjonens pågående selvregulering kan befolkningens berettigete tillit til profesjonen styrkes ytterligere.Nøkkelord: strukturelt skjønn, epistemisk skjønn, profesjon, selvregulering, tillitEnglish summary: In Between Structures of Society and Profession: On Delimitation, Cultivation and Premises for Adequately Exercising Judgment in the Role as PhysicianThe point of departure of this article is a distinction between societal structures that delimit the discretion of the physician on the one hand and the profession's arrangements for the cultivation of the physician's judgment on the other. By developing H. Grimen and A. Molander's application of S.E. Toulmin's model for practical reasoning in a clinical context, the multi-dimensional epistemic structure of the physician's judgment in terms of technical, distributive, and relational judgment is accounted for. Against this backdrop, tensions emerging in the intersection between delimitation and cultivation of professional judgment in its various dimensions are discussed. The discussion clarifies that the medical profession is not a self-sufficient provider when it comes to ensuring an adequate cultivation of its members' judgment in a clinical context. It is argued that by emphasising and implementing the relevant external contributions to the profession's ongoing self-regulation, the public's justified trust in the medical profession can be strengthened. (shrink)

Modern science developed in the interflow of culture between west and east. Combing of pratice technology with philosophic thoughts formed experimental method. Holistic views contacting atomism produced system theory. System thoughts are applicated in the science and engineering of biosystems, and the cencepts of system biomedicine (Kamada T.1992), systems biology (Zieglgansberger W, Tolle TR.1993), system bioengineering and system genetics (Zeng BJ. 1994) were established. From positive to synthetic thoughts, philosophy have been developed ontology, cosmology, organism theories. Structurity is structure logic (...) system founded on entity, develop, exist axioms, tolerance, adaptation, fluctuate, interweave, transform theorems and integrate, adaptation, construct laws. Structurity be discussed on the cosmos, life, culture system, creation, hologram theories of structure ontology, construct mutation, simi-structure organism and entity emergence, symbol implication. From the relation of structure, function and development, the structurity put forward the cycle, spiral, triangle structure stability patterns of self-organization in structure complement each other and stratification, functional couple and interflow bounds growth, coordinativetransformation and holographic symmetry. (shrink)

Addictive behaviour has qualities that make it ideal for study using implicit techniques. Addictive behaviours are mediated in part by automatic responses to drug cues, and there is sometimes social pressure to distort self-reports. However, relationships between implicit attitudes and addictive behaviours have been inconsistent. Using a new implicit measure, the affect misattribution procedure (AMP), we found consistent evidence that drinking-related behaviours are systematically related to implicit attitudes. The procedure predicted a behavioural choice to drink beer and self-reported typical drinking (...) tendencies, including hazardous drinking and alcohol-related problems. The AMP showed larger relationships with drinking behaviour than other implicit measures, and explained unique variance in drinking beyond those measures and beyond explicit measures. Though self-presentation distorted self-reports, it did not affect AMP scores. These studies highlight the importance of automatic affective responses in addictive behaviour and suggest a useful means for measuring those responses. (shrink)

In a spirit of critical appreciation, this essay challenges several core aspects of the critique of secular morality and the defense of Orthodox Christianity offered by H. Tristram Engelhardt in After God. First, I argue that his procedurally driven approach to a binding morality based solely on a principle of permission leaves morality without any substantive definition in general terms, in ways that are both conceptually problematic and also at odds with Engelhardt’s long-standing distinction between non-malevolence and beneficence. Second, I (...) question the accuracy or adequacy of Engelhardt’s critique of the Enlightenment project for his unwarranted privileging of a particular version of Enlightenment thinking at the expense of other Enlightenment perspectives less amenable to Engelhardt’s working generalizations. Third, I challenge the theoretical cogency of Engelhardt’s insistence on the ubiquity and intractability of moral controversies and his depiction of moral strangers and moral friends as, in effect, mutually exclusive terms. Finally, I question Engelhardt’s embrace of a divine command model of ethics as the appropriate resolution of Euthyphro’s dilemma and suggest that there may be intermediate approaches to the usual starkly drawn contrasts between divine command and naturalist accounts. (shrink)

Professor Kemp Smith in providing a new edition of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , embodying all the author’s additions and corrections, has given expression to the perennial interest and fascination which this work has possessed for many minds during the odd one hundred and fifty years since it was first published by Hume’s nephew. The editor himself has performed a great service by contributing an Introduction and a clear and concise summary of the Dialogues , in both of which (...) he expounds his own view as to how Hume’s discussion is to be interpreted. Hume employs three characters—Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes; and. (shrink)

Reading Kevin Hart’s creative hermeneutic of the ‘basileic’ reduction in his latest book, Kingdoms of God, naturally leads me to consider another eminent linguistic phenomenologist who continually occupies my thoughts. Although I have been reading Hart now for about 25 years, I have been reading Paul Ricoeur for a decade longer than that, and it is his theory of poetic discourse that my mind keeps tenaciously associating with Hart’s perspectives on parable. Granted, Hart never mentions Ricoeur in Kingdoms of God—unless (...) my careful reading is not so careful and I missed it! In Trespass of the Sign, however, he does note Ricoeur’s significance as a hermeneutical philosopher, specifically his emphasis on the distinction between the hermeneutics of faith and the hermeneutics of suspicion. Also, in an article on John Caputo’s postsecular philosophy of ‘religion without religion,’ Hart makes a brief comment on Ricoeur’s apparent Hegelianism with reference to a general theory of revelation as nonreligious and nontheistic. Still, nowhere that I know of does he extensively address Ricoeur’s fascinating discourse theory regarding metaphor, mimesis, narrative, and parable. If great minds think alike, then Hart and Ricoeur are, indeed, great minds, for, truly, Ricoeur’s reflections on parables and the Kingdom offer an intriguing gloss on Hart’s parabolic ‘basileiology.’ Translating Hart into Ricoeur, therefore, is, in my mind, an easy and profitable exercise that may well enhance the provocative character of Hart’s basileic reduction. Such a translation is the central purpose of this essay. (shrink)

Arguing from a sort of reasonable Protestant ethic, Henry offers a worthwhile and sometimes quite practical analysis of a Christian social ideal. In Henry's approach, no "prattling about love" can take the place of justice when the latter is what is needed.—D. J. B.

This work provides an interesting, though sometimes rather sweeping, demonstration that the metaphysical problem of the same and the other is also the central problem of literature and literary criticism. The author defends the analogical imagination as the symbolic counterpart of participation in Platonic metaphysics.--D. C. B.

Joseph Margolis advances a view which he purports to be relativist in both the book and the article “The Truth About Relativism”. He develops this view in opposition to what he calls “relationalism”. Relationalism, however, is very much like what has traditionally been called “relativism”. Thus, in developing his view, Margolis distances himself from relativism as traditionally understood. Given this, the present article aims to determine the following: a) whether and how Margolis’ position is a relativist position; and b) whether (...) Margolis’ position is substantially different from the relationalist view from which he purports to depart. I argue that Margolis’ position is only relativist in part and that the relativistic aspect of his theory is essentially the relationalist position he is determined to avoid. (shrink)

There are numerous challenges posed to Roman Catholic health care institutions by recent developments in health care delivery. Some are practical, involving the acceptable limits of accommodation to and collaboration with secular networks of health care delivery. Others, quite often implicated in the first set, are explicitly theological. What does it mean to be a distinctively Roman Catholic health care institution? What are the nature and the scope of Roman Catholic institutional identity? More broadly, what is the moral relevance of (...) themes in Roman Catholic social teaching to the provision of health care? This issue of Christian Bioethics addresses these questions with a spirited exchange among its authors. They offer noticeably different perspectives on the general cogency of Roman Catholic social teaching and different strategic recommendations for Roman Catholic institutions to maintain, or recover, their distinctive presence in health care delivery. (shrink)

Instead, this book employs a philosophy oriented towards the relationship between self and other. The book gives a critical discussion of religion, the Enlightenment and Romanticism.