Research now provides participants greater indications of genetic risk for disease, even for conditions incidental to the research study. Given this development, should such information also be disclosed to the family of research participants? There has been some indication at the national level that genetic risk information can be disclosed to participants' families; however, limited attention has been given to returning research results to family. Thus, we have also incorporated the discussion surrounding the disclosure of genetic risk discovered in the (...) clinic (e.g., genetic testing). A number of important questions are examined: Should genetic research results be provided to family? Are there differences between clinical and research findings that would prevent research results from being disclosed to family? Who should make the disclosure, if in fact it is done at all? We conclude by noting that the return of results is increasingly accepted as technology permits the discovery of more and more medically useful data. However, debates of whether results should be returned to participants must first be settled before moving to familial disclosure. (shrink)

While I deeply appreciate the painstaking and often generous remarks in R.N. Berki’s review of my book Hegel’s Retreat From Eleusis, [OWL, September 1978], I should like to correct two of his misapprehensions. First, the point is not that I try to “steer a middle course between ‘antiquaries’ who relegate Hegel to history books and ‘renovators’ who believe that Hegel is directly relevant,” but between the former and those who warp Hegel out of context in support of their preferred vision (...) of social and political action and/or explanation. Second, I do not conclude negatively about “the contemporary value of Hegel’s doctrine of the state;” If I had, the book would scarcely have been worth writing. It is simply that, in line with the first point, I counsel caution and salutary “archaeological” reflection. Current reality is messy: Hegel guides us and teaches us, but he furnishes no coup de foudre for solving our institutional problems. If this is irresolute, so be it. Does Mr. Berki propose bringing back monarchy, estates, and early 19th century municipal life? My own position is stated on pp. 109, 142–144, 183, 222–223. Although this may be, in Hayden White’s language, a Rankean trope, my option is surely not for “the historical dustbin.”. (shrink)

The past thirty years have seen a surge of empirical research into political decision making and the influence of framing effects--the phenomenon that occurs when different but equivalent presentations of a decision problem elicit different judgments or preferences. During the same period, political philosophers have become increasingly interested in democratic theory, particularly in deliberative theories of democracy. Unfortunately, the empirical and philosophical studies of democracy have largely proceeded in isolation from each other. As a result, philosophical treatments of democracy have (...) overlooked recent developments in psychology, while the empirical study of framing effects has ignored much contemporary work in political philosophy. In Framing Democracy, Jamie Terence Kelly bridges this divide by explaining the relevance of framing effects for normative theories of democracy. -/- Employing a behavioral approach, Kelly argues for rejecting the rational actor model of decision making and replacing it with an understanding of choice imported from psychology and social science. After surveying the wide array of theories that go under the name of democratic theory, he argues that a behavioral approach enables a focus on three important concerns: moral reasons for endorsing democracy, feasibility considerations governing particular theories, and implications for institutional design. Finally, Kelly assesses a number of methods for addressing framing effects, including proposals to increase the amount of political speech, mechanisms designed to insulate democratic outcomes from flawed decision making, and programs of public education. (shrink)

The proto-code of ethics and conduct for European nurse directors was developed as a strategic and dynamic document for nurse managers in Europe. It invites critical dialogue, reflective thinking about different situations, and the development of specific codes of ethics and conduct by nursing associations in different countries. The term proto-code is used for this document so that specifically country-orientated or organization-based and practical codes can be developed from it to guide professionals in more particular or situation-explicit reflection and values. (...) The proto-code of ethics and conduct for European nurse directors was designed and developed by the European Nurse Directors Association’s (ENDA) advisory team. This article gives short explanations of the code’ s preamble and two main parts: Nurse directors' ethical basis, and Principles of professional practice, which is divided into six specific points: competence, care, safety, staff, life-long learning and multi-sectorial working. (shrink)

Kelly, Gerard Review(s) of: Sunday Matters: Reflections on the Lectionary Readings for Year A, by Mark O'Brien OP (Hindmarsh SA: ATF Press, 2010), pp.201, $34.95.

Kelly, Gerard Review of: Imagining the ecumenical: A personal journey, by John D'Arcy May, Northcote, VIC: Morningstar, 2016, pp. 192, paperback, $24.95.

When summarizing the findings of his 1896 Matter and Memory, Bergson claims: “That every reality has... a relation with consciousness—this is what we concede to idealism.” Yet Bergson’s 1896 text presents the theory of “pure perception,” which, since it accounts for perception according to the brain’s mechanical transmissions, apparently leaves no room for subjective consciousness. Bergson’s theory of pure perception would appear to render his idealistic concession absurd. In this paper, I attempt to defend Bergson’s idealistic concession. I argue that (...) Bergson’s account of cerebral transmissions at the level of pure perception necessarily entails a theory of temporality, an appeal to a theory of time-consciousness that justifies his idealistic concession. (shrink)

Of the major modernist poets, T.S. Eliot received the most extended academic training in philosophy, yet it is Wallace Stevens whose work has been most scrutinized from a philosophical perspective. Attempting to highlight those salient features which facilitate or advance philosophical thought, I question whether there is a significant development (between his first volume of poetry, Harmonium [1923], and his final volume, The Rock [1954]), of Stevens’ philosophical voice. Continuing with an analysis of the most recent and influential attempts to (...) read Stevens’ poetry philosophically (Simon Critchley’s Things Merely Are [2005], Stanley Cavell’s “Reflections on Wallace Stevens at Mount Holyoke” [2006] and Gregory Brazeal’s “Wallace Stevens’ Philosophical Evasions” [2007]), I argue that these readings raise interesting questions not only about philosophical poetry but about philosophical form as it is traditionally perceived. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the relationship between epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality, and I attempt to delineate their respective roles in typical instances of theoretical reasoning. My primary concern is with the instrumentalist conception of epistemic rationality: the view that epistemic rationality is simply a species of instrumental rationality, viz. instrumental rationality in the service of one's cognitive or epistemic goals. After sketching the relevance of the instrumentalist conception to debates over naturalism and 'the ethics of belief', I argue (...) that, despite enjoying considerable popularity among both epistemologists and philosophers of science, it is ultimately indefensible. Having thus argued for the distinctness of epistemic and instrumental rationality, I attempt to clarify the role played by each in typical instances of theoretical reasoning. I suggest that being theoretically rational--that is, being proficient with respect to theoretical reasoning--is best construed as a hybrid virtue, inasmuch as it involves manifesting sensitivity to two very different kinds of reasons. (shrink)

In his most recent book, Philip Pettit presents and defends a “republican” political philosophy that stems from a tradition that includes Cicero, Machiavelli, James Harrington, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Madison. The book provides an interpretation of what is distinctive about republicanism—namely, Pettit claims, its notion of freedom as nondomination. He sketches the history of this notion, and he argues that it entails a unique justification of certain political arrangements and the virtues of citizenship that would make those arrangements possible. Of (...) historical and philosophical interest, he stresses, is the fundamental contrast between freedom as nondomination and slavery. Joseph Priestly, for instance, invoked this contrast in defending the cause of the American Revolution, and in 1769 declared, incredibly, that if the parliament of Great Britain continued to tax the American colonies, “the colonists will be reduced to a state of as complete servitude, as any people of which there is an account in history”. Those opposed to American independence, among them Jeremy Bentham, relied instead on a Hobbesian notion of freedom as noninterference, using it to argue that the colonists were no more interfered with by the British government than were citizens of Britain. Drawing out this contrast, Pettit aims to establish that a republican view of freedom better supports the institutions of a constitutional democracy than does liberalism. His account of the distinguishing characteristics and strengths of republicanism is, however, only partially successful. Neither his case that a republican notion of freedom provides for a more solid defense of democratic institutions and constitutional protections than is available within liberalism, nor his argument that republicanism can better address “private” injustices, is convincing. (shrink)

Practically every contemporary mainstream scientist presumes that all aspects of mind are generated by brain activity. We demonstrate the inadequacy of this picture by assembling evidence for a variety of empirical phenomena which it cannot explain. We further show that an alternative picture developed by F. W. H. Myers and William James successfully accommodates these phenomena, ratifies the common sense view of ourselves as causally effective conscious agents, and is fully compatible with contemporary physics and neuroscience.

Explaining the connection, if any, between simplicity and truth is among the deepest problems facing the philosophy of science, statistics, and machine learning. Say that an efficient truth finding method minimizes worst case costs en route to converging to the true answer to a theory choice problem. Let the costs considered include the number of times a false answer is selected, the number of times opinion is reversed, and the times at which the reversals occur. It is demonstrated that (1) (...) always choosing the simplest theory compatible with experience, and (2) hanging onto it while it remains simplest, is both necessary and sufficient for efficiency. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University, Baker Hall 135, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890; e-mail: kk3n@andrew.cmu.edu. (shrink)

Hume’s moral philosophy is a sentiment-based view. Moral judgment is a matter of the passions; certain traits of character count as virtues or vices because of the approval or disapproval they evoke in us, feelings that express concern we have about the social effects of these traits. A sentiment-based approach is attractive, since morality seems fundamentally to involve caring for other people. Sentiment-based views, however, face a real challenge. It is clear that our affections are often particular; we favor certain (...) persons over others. This poses a problem when it comes to determining the proper content of morality. The ties of sentiment would seem to be in tension with the aspirations of morality toward impartiality and universality. (shrink)

I am very much in sympathy with the overall approach of John Campbell’s paper, “Reference as Attention”. My sympathy extends to a variety of its features. I think he is right to suppose, for instance, that neuropsychological cases provide important clues about how we should treat some traditional philosophical problems concerning perception and reference. I also think he is right to suppose that there are subtle but important relations between the phenomena of perception, action, consciousness, attention, and reference. I even (...) think that there is probably something importantly right about the main claim of the paper. I take this to be the claim that there is a tight connection – of some sort at any rate – between our capacity to refer demonstratively to perceptually presented objects and our capacity to attend to those objects in our conscious awareness of them. What precisely this connection consists in, however, remains a mystery to me. My goal in these comments is to clarify this result. I will begin, in section 2, with a fairly general statement of the problem I take Campbell to have set himself. Following this, in section 3, I will focus more particularly on what kind of relation Campbell takes to exist, or does exist, or perhaps could exist between attention and demonstrative reference. I examine four options, the first three of which seem to admit of clear counterexamples, and the fourth of which is too weak to be of any real interest. (shrink)

We situate Henrich’s book in the larger research tradition of which it is a part and show how he presents a wide array of recent psychological, physiological, and neurological data as supporting the view that two related but distinct processes have shaped human nature and made us unique: cumulative cultural evolution and culture-driven genetic evolution. We briefly sketch out several ways philosophers might fruitfully engage with this view and note some implications it may have for current philosophic debates in moral (...) and political theory and over the nature of extended cognition. We end by noting how Henrich’s view of the source of cultural design and innovation, and the prominence of place he gives to the extended process of cultural evolution, cuts against a cluster of broad but common views about human minds, recasting putative bugs as features and indicating that many of the distinctive features of our individual minds evolved to allow them to be effective cogs in the larger, more productive cultural machine. (shrink)

Following an analysis of the work of Stanley Cavell, Arthur Danto, Umberto Eco, Susan Sontag, and other philosophers of the 1960s who made aesthetics more responsive to contemporary art, Kelly considers Sontag's aesthetics in greater detail ...

Advocacy has become an accepted and integral attribute of nursing practice. Despite this adoption of advocacy, confusion remains about the precise nature of the concept and how it should be enacted in practice. The aim of this study was to investigate general nurses’ perceptions of being patient advocates in Ireland and how they enact this role. These perceptions were compared with existing theory and research on advocacy in order to contribute to the knowledge base on the subject. An inductive, qualitative (...) approach was used for this study. Three focus group interviews with a total of 20 practising nurses were conducted with a sample representing different grades in a general hospital setting. Data analysis was carried out using elements of Strauss and Corbins’ approach to concept development. The findings indicate that the principal role of the nurse advocate is to act as an intermediary between the patient and the health care environment. The results highlight that advocacy did, however, result in nurses becoming involved in conflict and confrontation with others and that it could be detrimental to nurses both professionally and personally. It was also clear that when enacting advocacy, nurses distinguished between ‘clinical advocacy’ and organizational advocacy. (shrink)

What is the optimal size of a democratic society? While not taking an explicit stand on this issue, Hélène Landemore's model of democracy in Democratic Reason suggests that democracies ought to be small, certainly smaller than many existing states. If, as Landemore argues, we must rely on the random selection of representatives, then we should be concerned about both the size of the population and the way cognitive diversity is distributed within it. Given the realities of party politics and media (...) framing, this means that smaller political societies will yield wiser decisions than very large ones. (shrink)

Between 1787, and the end of his life in 1832, Bentham turned his attention to the development and application of economic ideas and principles within the general structure of his legislative project. For seventeen years this interest was manifested through a number of books and pamphlets, most of which remained in manuscript form, that develop a distinctive approach to economic questions. Although Bentham was influenced by Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he (...) neither adopted a Smithian vocabulary for addressing questions of economic principle and policy, nor did he accept many of the distinctive features of Smith's economic theory. One consequence of this was that Bentham played almost no part in the development of the emerging science of political economy in the early nineteenth century. The standard histories of economics all emphasize how little he contributed to the mainstream of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century debate by concentrating attention on his utilitarianism and the psychology of hedonism on which it is premised. Others have argued that the calculating nature of his theory of practical reason reduced the whole legislative project to a crude attempt to apply economics to all aspects of social and political life. Put at its simplest this argument amounts to the erroneous claim that Bentham's science of legislation is reducible to the science of political economy. A different but equally dangerous error would be to argue that because Bentham's conception of the science of legislation comprehends all the basic forms of social relationships, there can be no science of political economy as there is no autonomous sphere of activity governed by the principles of economics. This approach is no doubt attractive from an historical point of view given that the major premise of this argument is true, and that many of Bentham's ‘economic’ arguments are couched in terms of his theory of legislation. Yet it fails to account for the undoubted importance of political economy within Bentham's writings, not just on finance, economic policy, colonies and preventive police, but also in other aspects of his utilitarian public policy such as prison reform, pauper management, and even constitutional reform. All of these works reflect a conception of political economy in its broadest terms. However, this conception of political economy differs in many respects from that of Bentham's contemporaries, and for this reason Bentham's distinctive approach to problems of economics and political economy has largely been misunderstood. (shrink)

A revised edition of John Rawls’s classic work A Theory of Justice has recently been published in English. The revisions appeared in the first foreign translation in 1975 and Rawls has made no further revisions to the text since that date, with the exception of a second preface, written for the French edition in 1987 and modestly revised in 1990. Changes are found on approximately 130 of the book’s 600 pages. Most are minor stylistic changes. About 25 percent of the (...) changes made are to some extent substantive. They do not alter the presentation of the central arguments significantly, but they do introduce some important new ideas. Replacement of the original by the revised edition is, of course, somewhat inconvenient, since the voluminous literature on Rawls refers to the page numbers in the original edition. Also, the new ideas presented in the revisions are more fully developed in Rawls’s later writings. Nevertheless, the emergence of several themes may deepen our understanding of his political philosophy. (shrink)

This article performs an analysis of Aeschylus’ tragedy the Oresteia within the Lacanian model of the Four Discourses. The author contends that the myth, which dramatizes the transition from the ancient conception of the law based on familial revenge to the modern institution of law, may be viewed as a shift from a failed Master’s Discourse to the University Discourse. The cycle of revenge killings performed throughout the tragedy, culminating in Orestes’ murder of his mother, may be considered signifying acts (...) of self-sovereignty in the name of Dikê, or justice. However, the traumatic “product” of these acts – the murder that signifies the enactment of the law of revenge – parallels the product of the Master’s Discourse, the objet a, or traumatic kernel of the real. Ultimately, with the implementation of Athena’s new legal order based on alienating institutionalized knowledge and practices, this traumatic product is rearticulated in the formation of the superego and in relation to the Sovereign Good. (shrink)

With a book as wide ranging and insightful as Barry's Justice as Impartiality, it is perhaps a little churlish to criticize it for paying insufficient attention to one's own particular interests. That said, in what follows I am going to do just that and claim that in an important sense Barry does not take utilitarianism seriously. Utilitarianism does receive some discussion in Barry's book, and in an important section which I will discuss he even appears to concede that utilitarianism provides (...) a rival though ultimately inadequate theory of justice. Nevertheless, utilitarianism is not considered a rival to ‘justice as impartiality’ in the way that ‘justice as mutual advantage’ and ‘justice as reciprocity’ are. One response, and perhaps the only adequate response, would be to construct a rival utilitarian theory. I cannot provide such a theory in this paper, and I certainly would be very cautious about claiming that I could provide such a theory elsewhere. What I want to suggest is that utilitarianism is a genuine third theory to contrast with ‘justice as mutual advantage’ and ‘justice as impartiality’ – ‘justice as reciprocity’ being merely a hybrid of ‘justice as mutual advantage’, at least as Barry presents it. I also want to argue that it poses a more significant challenge to a contractualist theory such as Barry's than his discussion of utilitarianism reveals. (shrink)

The proto-code of ethics and conduct for European nurse directors was developed as a strategic and dynamic document for nurse managers in Europe. It invites critical dialogue, reflective thinking about different situations, and the development of specific codes of ethics and conduct by nursing associations in different countries. The term proto-code is used for this document so that specifically country-orientated or organization-based and practical codes can be developed from it to guide professionals in more particular or situation-explicit reflection and values. (...) The proto-code of ethics and conduct for European nurse directors was designed and developed by the European Nurse Directors Association’s (ENDA) advisory team. This article gives short explanations of the code’ s preamble and two main parts: Nurse directors' ethical basis, and Principles of professional practice, which is divided into six specific points: competence, care, safety, staff, life-long learning and multi-sectorial working. (shrink)

This paper examines Rosen's claim that Bentham's principle of utility was a distributive rather than an aggregative principle.

Over the past few decades the pace of change in the business environment has been rapid, as the effects of electronic innovations and the acceptance of the globalisation mind-set have occurred. Communism has collapsed and the power of corporations has grown in the global community that has developed. It has become imperative that business decision-makers become aware that their decisions may limit the choices of future generations by irretrievably destroying the currently existing physical and social environment. Decision-making in today's business (...) environment will have a profound affect on human well-being in general and specifically on the breadth of options that are provided to the business decision-makers of tomorrow. Against this background it is argued that senior managers should adopt a new paradigm through which to view the world and assess the import of their decisions. Managers need to consider the effects of their decisions not only on the economy but also on the environment and the social world, which the economy is meant to serve. Managers must ensure their ways of doing business are sustainable. (shrink)

This study traces the history of Newman’s personal papers that are archived at the Birmingham Oratory. Newman was the “master archivist” who spent considerable time during the last two decades of his life in assembling his papers. Subsequently, three major catalogues of Newman’s papers were prepared: the first began in 1920, under the supervision of Richard Garnett Bellasis and Henry Lewis Bellasis; a second catalogue was compiled in the mid-1950s by Yale University Library for microfilming Newman’s papers; the third catalogue (...) was compiled by Gerard Tracey in 1980. (shrink)

This unique publication outlines the development of legal theory from pre-Roman times to the twentieth century. It aims to relate the evolution of legal theory to parallel developments in political history, and accordingly offers the reader an account of relevant contemporaneous political, religious, and economic events. Each chapter commences with a general historical background for the relevant period, and discusses how political events and political and legal theory are both related to one another and occasionally influence one another.No other English (...) publication aims to anchor legal theory to contemporary general history in this way, shunning the more conventional approach to legal theory via the study of 'traditions' or 'schools', and it is hoped that this study will provide a much-needed basic text for students of jurisprudence, legal theory and politics. (shrink)

& How does neuronal activity bring about the interpretation of visual space in terms of objects or complex perceptual events? If they group, simple visual features can bring about the integration of spikes from neurons responding to different features to within a few milliseconds. Considered as a potential solution to the ‘‘binding problem,’’ it is suggested that neuronal synchronization is the glue for binding together different features of the same object. This idea receives some support from correlated- and periodic-stimulus motion (...) paradigms, both of which suggest that the segregation of a figure from ground is a direct result of the temporal correlation of visual signals. One could say that perception of a highly correlated visual.. (shrink)

Bergson scholars such as Leonard Lawlor, Alexander Lefebvre, Philip Soulez, and Frederic Worms have recently argued that Bergson “places the phenomenon of war at the center of his analysis” in Two Sources of Morality and Religion. We want to contribute to this line of interpretation. We claim that Bergson’s account of the causes of, and solution to, the problem of war can be effectively understood in light of a central tenet of classical political philosophy, namely, the City of God, both (...) the concept and Augustine’s great text, de Civitate dei contra paganos. We highlight the shared view of the root of war in Augustine and Bergson, namely the lust for domination, libido dominandi. Our contribution provides a useful heuristic for understanding Bergson’s account of war, not a claim of Augustine’s influence on Bergson. (shrink)

The translator of Scheler’s essay, “On the Rehabilitation of Virtue,” presents an account of the context of this essay in Scheler’s work and of its relevance to his concept of the ordo amoris and to his critique of Kant. The translator discusses the intended audience of the essay, its moral purpose, and the method of its procedure. The postscript further reflects on the essay’s central themes of humility and reverence, suggesting avenues for a critical assessment of Scheler’s conclusions. It ends (...) with some reflections on the contemporary value of Scheler’s contributions in this essay to a historical and philosophical understanding of the conflict between science and religion. (shrink)

We defend a set of acceptance rules that avoids the lottery paradox, that is closed under classical entailment, and that accepts uncertain propositions without ad hoc restrictions. We show that the rules we recommend provide a semantics that validates exactly Adams’ conditional logic and are exactly the rules that preserve a natural, logical structure over probabilistic credal states that we call probalogic. To motivate probalogic, we first expand classical logic to geologic, which fills the entire unit cube, and then we (...) project the upper surfaces of the geological cube onto the plane of probabilistic credal states by means of standard, linear perspective, which may be interpreted as an extension of the classical condition of indifference. Finally, we apply the geometrical/logical methods developed in the paper to prove a series of trivialization theorems against question-invariance as a constraint on acceptance rules and against rational monotonicity as an axiom of conditional logic in situations of uncertainty. (shrink)

Timely, unbiased scientific advice is essential for effective public policy, but the system now operating in the United States is in a state of dangerous disrepair. The danger takes two forms. First, we are missing critical benefits in health, education, economic productivity, national security, and many other areas that more effective management of science could deliver. Second, we risk being overtaken by dangers that could have been avoided or for which we could have been much better prepared, given stronger support (...) for analysis. It is easy to say that all of these problems could be easily corrected with a few elections. But in fact the difficulties are deep and structural. It will not be easy to rebuild the apparatus of science and technical advice in a way that can serve the needs of twenty-first century America. The discussion that follows will review the history of science and technology policy advice and use the lessons learned to propose a practical path forward. Indeed, there are a number of practical paths forward that build on strategies that have proved to be effective in the past and structures already in place. (shrink)