Neglected and tropical diseases, pervasive in developing countries, are important contributors to global health inequalities. They remain largely untreated due to lack of effective and affordable treatments. Resource-poor countries cannot afford to develop the public health interventions needed to control neglected diseases. In addition, neglected diseases do not represent an attractive market for pharmaceutical industry. Although a number of international commitments, stated in the Millennium Development Goals, have been made to avert the risk of communicable diseases, tropical diseases still remain (...) neglected due to delays in international assistance. This delay can be explained by the form international cooperation has generally taken, which is limited to promoting countries’ national interests, rather than social justice at a global level. This restricts the international responsibility for global inequalities in health to a humanitarian assistance. We propose an alternative view, arguing that expanding the scope of international cooperation by promoting shared health and economic value at a global level will create new opportunities for innovative, effective and affordable interventions worldwide. It will also promote neglected diseases as a global research priority. We build our argument on a proposal to replace the patenting system that currently regulates pharmaceutical research with a global fund to reward this research based on actual decreases in morbidity and mortality at a global level. We argue that this approach is beneficent because it will decrease global health inequalities and promote social justice worldwide. (shrink)

Truth-conditional semantics is by far the best-known philosophical contribution of Donald Davidson. The main idea of this approach is to explain the concept of meaning by appeal to the concept of truth. Accordingly, we understand a sentence s of a natural language L, if and only if, we know its truth-conditions. Challenging in its nature, this proposal immediately caught the attention of the philosophical community, being equally appreciated and criticized. The aim of this paper is to argue that Davidson’s approach (...) is too optimistic in its goals. In my view, truth-conditional semantics is unlikely to be the best way to shed light on the concept of meaning. By appealing to Tarski’s semantic conception of truth and assuming a primitive concept of truth, this perspective leaves too many questions unanswered and thus proves its limits. (shrink)

This collection of articles pays homage to the creativity and scientific rigor Jerome Singer has brought to the study of consciousness and play. It will interest personality, social, clinical and developmental psychologists alike.

Entrer dans la pensée de François Jullien -- L'ailleurs chinois -- Tribulations d'un jeune philosophe en Chine -- La langue-pensée chinoise -- Une stratégie philosophique -- Dissidence -- De la cohérence au concept -- D'un dérangement l'autre -- Vivre en existant -- Une philosophie du vivre -- La ressource de l'intime -- De la dé-coïncidence -- L'inouï -- Une pensée du politique -- Un chantier politique -- Du dialogue des cultures -- L'Europe en panne d'idéal -- L'identité culturelle en question.

Comment témoigner d’une espérance religieuse dans le droit contemporain ? Par l’obéissance et l’humilité de l’inculturation, ou par l’objection et la résistance propre au signe de contradiction ? Si les périodes barbares du XXe siècle ont relancé l’analyse théologique de la tension entre ces deux voies, qu’en est-il aujourd’hui des contextes apparemment pacifiés de nos droits démocratiques ? Si le moment juridique y colonise progressivement la société, c’est au nom de sa nature de « droit commun » qu’il estime acquérir (...) de sa prétention croissante à la « neutralité ». À cet égard, la prise de parole religieuse dans l’espace public est aujourd’hui vivement débattue. Il serait cependant erroné de n’y viser que le seul moment de l’élaboration formelle de la loi. Cette prise de parole peut aussi viser les modalités d’application et de mise en contexte du droit. Cet article entend montrer l’importance de ce nouveau moment pour une prise de parole religieuse, entendue comme une troisième voie : celle de l’attestation évangélique au cœur de la pratique du droit. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

This study examines a recurrent scenario in Roman poetry of the first-person genres: the separation of the poet from his writing tablets. Catullus' tablets are stolen ; Propertius' are lost ; Ovid's are consigned to disuse and decay by their disappointed owner. Martial, who does not reproduce the specific narrative of loss, nonetheless engages with the tradition of lost tablets from within the fiction of festive gift-exchange in his Apophoreta : rather than losing or rejecting the tablets, he gives them (...) away to guests/readers at his Saturnalian party. I argue that the representation of writing tablets and their loss is involved in the production of authorial presence. The scene of lost tablets demonstrates how the poet retains the capacity for poetic speech even when deprived of the aid of his material medium. The ostensibly accidental and sometimes lamented loss of the poet's tablets thus contributes to a sophisticated strategy of authorial self-representation. The tablets do not so much stand for the literary text as provide a focus for metapoetic concerns with voice and writing, author and text, presence and absence, immortal ingenium and expendable materia. Examination of the shifting representation of writing tablets from Catullus to Martial will provide insight into the invention of the Roman poetic author. (shrink)

Objective: To explore the accounts and perspectives of junior doctors who were offered an HIV test by their employing National Health Service (NHS) trust and discuss ethical issues posed by this new policy. Design: Qualitative in-depth interview study. Setting: 4 NHS hospital trusts. Participants: 24 junior doctors who had been offered an HIV test as part of their pre-employment occupational health checks. Results: The manner in which HIV tests were offered to junior doctors varied both between and within the NHS (...) trusts. Overall, the doctors were highly critical of the way the HIV test was offered. Recurrent themes surrounding a lack of discussion and information regarding the indications for the test and implications of a positive result influenced the the doctors’ perception of their experiences. As a consequence of the shortcomings of how the test was offered, most of the doctors held the misperception that HIV testing was mandatory and many felt unable to decline the test. The majority of doctors referred to patient protection as adequate justification for being offered an HIV test. Conclusions: Junior doctors offered an HIV test under new Department of Health occupational health guidance were disparaging about how the test was offered. The findings of this study affect thousands of junior doctors in the UK, and the impact of these results is extensive. Participants’ suggestions regarding how the process of offering an HIV test can be improved are discussed and ethical issues regarding the new Department of Health policy are highlighted. (shrink)

Early in the fourth century Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, and at once had reason to regret his having done so; for now not only the Church but the state was convulsed by controversies about the Holy Trinity. These controversies raged for over two hundred years, after which the bishops found new intellectual outlets, if not more rational ones, for their animosities. But Trinitarian trouble was not dead, only sleeping. The Great Schism of the eleventh and (...) twelfth centuries, which split the Western from the Eastern Church, took place, on its theological side, over a question concerning the Trinity. This was, of course, that most famous of all theological questions, the question of the procession of the Holy Ghost, or of the filioque. The Orthodox theory was that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone. The Western bishops, however, were equally adamant that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father filioque - 'and the Son'. (shrink)

In C.Q. xliii , p. 39, Mr. J. H. Quincey quotes the opening lines of Catalepton 5 as, Ite hinc,-inanes, ite, rhetorum ampullae, inflata rhoso* non Achaico verba, and adds, ‘the second line is corrupt and no satisfactory emendation has been proposed’. The MS. readings are: rhorso B, roso Mu, om. in lacuna Ar. In face of these voces nihili many have fallen back on the rore of the Aldine edition of 1517. But this does not really help, for one (...) does not inflate with dew: orators are not dew-bags, but wind-bags. It occurred to me some years ago that what is needed is some word meaning breath or wind to go with inflata, and that in view of the rh in rhorso it was probably a Greek word which a scribe had failed to recognize. I conjectured οζ, and found subsequently that this had been proposed by K. Münscher in Hermes, xlvii , pp. 153–4. οȋζος used of any rushing sound, is applied to speech by Philostratus , and by Pollux . It is easy to see how rhoezo could degenerate into rhoeso-rhoso-roso. (shrink)

Responding to potential hazards is likely to require precaution-related recalibration, the extensive integration of complex variables related to inferred risk and fitness. By swamping working memory with goal-demoted actions and focusing recalibration on the inferred threat, ritualized behaviors may serve to increase the efficacy of precaution-related recalibration. This benefit may be an important mechanism maintaining non-pathological ritualized behavior. (Published Online February 8 2007).

Since the role of the Asian countries is increasing in the modern world, their philosophical traditions attract more and more attention. Due to this trend, a more complete panoramic view of the development of world philosophy as a whole is accessible, and it has become possible to understand that any constructions of the human mind that have arisen in a particular cultural field of experience cannot be regarded as exemplary and absolute. The researchers of Asian philosophies concentrate mostly on studying (...) the texts of individual thinkers. As a rule, they do not set themselves the task of examining these texts from the point of view of intercultural interactions and transformations of significant ideas and concepts in various cultural and historical contexts, defining the direction and mechanisms of cultural borrowing, as well as revealing new approaches and growth points. To achieve these goals, the research should focus at the problem of the self-determination and development of philosophy as a separate science in non-Western cultures, which are based on intellectual traditions with different origin than Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions. This article deals with the consideration of some topics that elucidate the features of the development of philosophical science in Japan, including the emergence of the concept of “philosophy” in this country, the definition of its subject, the formation of philosophical terminology, and various interpretations of what the term “Japanese philosophy” means. The author pays special attention to the characteristic of the main periods of progress of Japanese philosophical thought. In the conclusion, the author argues that the most important characteristic feature of the Japanese philosophy is its involvement in intercultural dialogue throughout its history. (shrink)

Richard Landau, the longtime editor of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, died on November 3, 2015. Richard grew up in St. Louis. Like many people of his generation, he was inspired to become a physician by Paul de Kruif ’s book Microbe Hunters. Richard went to college and medical school at Washington University in St. Louis and came to the University of Chicago in 1940 as a resident in medicine. Except for a two-year stint in the army during World War (...) II, he spent the rest of his career at the university, rising through the academic ranks to become Professor of Medicine in 1959. Richard held several important administrative positions at the university; he served as Chief of the Section of Endocrinology.. (shrink)

Purpose: One of my goals in the paper is to investigate why realists reject radical constructivism (RC) as well as social constructivism (SC) out of hand. I shall do this by means of commenting on Peter Slezak’s critical paper, Radical Constructivism: Epistemology, Education and Dynamite. My other goal is to explore why realists condemn the use of RC and SC in science and mathematics education for no stated reason, again by means of commenting on Slezak’s paper. Method: I restrict my (...) comments to Slezak’s paper and leave it to the reader to judge which, if any, of the reasons that I advance for these two states of affairs are not specific to Slezak’s paper. Other readers might not agree with my interpretations of Slezak’s paper, including Slezak himself, but I offer them after having worked with von Glasersfeld in interdisciplinary research in mathematics education for over 25 years. Findings: My findings are that Slezak: (1) rejects RC and SC on the basis of unjustified criticisms, (2) does not explore basic tenets of RC nor of SC beyond the unjustified criticisms, (3) rejects how SC and RC have been used in science and mathematics education, based at least in part on the unjustified criticisms, (3) dislikes how SC has been used in science and mathematics education, a dislike that fuels his rejection of any constructivism, and (4) doesn’t explore how RC has been used in scientific investigations in mathematics education. On the basis of these findings, I conclude that how epistemological models of knowing might be used in science or mathematics education would be better left to the educators who use them in interdisciplinary work. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the target article “Who Conceives of Society?” by Ernst von Glasersfeld. Excerpt: My goal in this commentary is to say enough to suggest that the meanings children impute to the language and actions of other children are based on their current conceptual schemes and that, if the schemes are at different levels of the constructive process, it is no easy feat for children to use their schemes in interactive mathematical communication.

Purpose: My goals in this paper are to comment on some of the roles that Ernst von Glasersfeld played in our work in IRON (Interdisciplinary Research on Number) from circa 1975 up until the time of his death, and to relate certain events that revealed his character in very human terms. Method: Among my recollections of Ernst, I have chosen those that I felt would most adequately portray his impact on the field of mathematics education and his ethics in the (...) field of human affairs. Findings: It has not often been said but, in his work in IRON, it was Ernst’s explicit intention to start a conceptual revolution in mathematics education and beyond. Other than serving as a revolutionary, Ernst also served as a mentor for many investigators in mathematics education, including myself. He excelled as a scientist as well an epistemologist, and his scientific work fueled his epistemological work. Ernst was a very ethical and wonderful human being who was dedicated to the betterment of humankind by means of his revolutionary ideas. (shrink)

This is a book built round an argument. Several variants of the argument are offered, and I shall consider but one of them. It is directed against the following act utilitarian principle:AU: An act is right if and only if it would have best consequences The argument may be freely rendered as follows. Suppose that we have an agent, Smith, in a society, S, such that the following conditions are satisfied:C1: Smith accepts AU and attempts always to act in accordance (...) with itC2: Smith is rational: he understands the implications of accepting AU and applies AU correctlyC3: No other person in S accepts AUC4: All others in S know that C1 and C2 obtainC5: All others in S are rational: they understand the implications of Smith's accepting AUC: All others in S are tolerant of Smith's accepting AU: they do not criticize him for acting in accordance with itC7: Smith knows that C3 – C6 obtainC1 – C7 collectively define the position of an act utilitarian in a non-act utilitarian society, with certain assumptions as to rationality and tolerance. Then the thesis is that under C1 – C7 Smith will sometimes fail to do the act with best consequences. His very acceptance and correct application of AU conspire to prevent the production of certain good consequences which would otherwise be possible. (shrink)