The book contains original essays by distinguished moral and political philosophers on the topic of the moral and political status of children. It covers the themes of children's rights, parental rights and duties, the family and justice, and civic education.

In this co-authored article, one contributor presents a case story from an interview with a social worker in Slovenia, while five others offer commentaries on ethical aspects of the case. The story comes from a practitioner working with a pregnant young woman, arranging for adoption following birth. The social worker respected the woman’s request to keep her identity secret, hence not registering her in the institutional records. However, whilst the social worker was on holiday, the baby was born and anonymity (...) was not maintained. Commentaries 1 and 2 evaluate the story through its form: as a narrative with a tempo and plot; and as a performance that creates its narrator as an agent with an ethical identity. Commentary 3 uses a normative moral philosophical framework (virtue ethics), while the final two commentaries take a more grounded approach. Commentary 4 views the social worker as using discretion to act in a space void of rules (there is no provision for anonymous birth), whereas Commentary 5 foregrounds the Slovenian code of ethics as a source of ethical standards unremarked upon by the social worker. The article ends with reflections on the value of exploring multiple perspectives and engaging in dialogue in developing ethical understandings and actions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 517 she does on these issues; this is hardly the case. And lastly she fails to discern that some feminist christology does not spring from a love for Jesus and what he has done through his cross and resurrection; rather, Jesus is merely used (and thus abused) to further a theological and political agenda. [Men obviously are not immune from this either.] Despite my disagreements with some (...) of Johnson's arguments and conclusions, and despite my disappointment at the way she addresses the feminist issues, I found this hook to he a basically reliable and clear summary of the christology of the last forty years. Whether it has all been true development, as Johnson maintains, is a debatable question. Nonetheless, this book does elaborate the contemporary issues and possible answers that confront christology today, and for this makes it a book well worth reading. Mother of God Community Washington. D.C. THOMAS WEINANDY, O.F.M. Cap. The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus. By ALLAN B. WOLTER, O.F.M. Ed. Marilyn McCord Adams. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990. Pp. ix+ 356. $47.50. Duns Scotus was a brilliant light that flashed a brief time across the medieval sky hut was destined ultimately to he outshone by other luminaries immediately preceding him (Aquinas) and following him (Ockham). Perhaps no individual in the past half century has done more to illuminate the Subtle Doctor's thought and times than Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. Both his editing and his translating of primary sources as well as his detailed readings and expositions of Scotus's theories have put medieval scholars in his debt. The present volume is a collection of thirteen essays on particular aspects of Scotus's work, preceded by an introduction. Ten of the essays have been previously published in other sources ranging from.the late 1940s to the present. But as editor Marilyn McCord Adams points out in her forward, many of these can be found only with difficulty in often inaccessible journals and books. Thus the value of this single volume. The essays are grouped under three headings: metaphysics and epistemology, action theory and ethics, and philosophical theology. As is often true with any volume spanning a number of topics and years, the quality of exposition and analysis is uneven. Obviously, in a limited space, I cannot hope to treat all subjects in a volume as comprehensive 518 BOOK REVIEWS as Wolter's. Permit me, however, to begin by making some general comments and then to narrow my remarks to one particular issue. Wolter's introduction to the volume is as clear and concise an overview of Scotus's ideas as one is likely to find anywhere in the literature. In general, the essays in the first part of the book on matters meta· physical and epistemological are quite solid. Here we find explicated many of the concepts which have become identified with Scotus: the formal distinction, univocity of being, the common nature and the hraecceity that constitutes distinct individuals. Wolter does justice to the subtlety and brilliance of Scotus's thinking and allows readers both old and new to Scotus to acknowledge him as a metaphysician for the ages. The author is particularly adept at explicating with helpful analogies some of the Subtle Doctor's most difficult concepts. I benefitted from his thought-provoking comparison between the formal distinction and a spotlight on a stage which can illuminate different and distinguishable aspects of the same reality. The next section on action rtheory and ethics draws in part on Wolter's work which culminated in the 1986 publication of Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. Wolter has been in the forefront of those who urge that Scotus's description of an innate affection for justice in the will is crucial in understanding the freedom Scotus thought proper to humans. What remains unclear to me is how this strand in Scotus's writing relates to others which clearly imply a libertarian view of free• dom emphasizing the will's utter self-determination. The problem I see is this: if the will truly is self-determining, then an innate affectio justitiae seems to... (shrink)

How should billions of species observations worldwide be shared and made reusable? Many biodiversity scientists assume the ideal solution is to standardize all datasets according to a single, universal classification and aggregate them into a centralized, global repository. This ideal has known practical and theoretical limitations, however, which justifies investigating alternatives. To support better community deliberation and normative evaluation, we develop a novel conceptual framework showing how different organizational models, regulative ideals and heuristic strategies are combined to form shared infrastructures (...) supporting data reuse. The framework is anchored in a general definition of data pooling as an activity of making a taxonomically standardized body of information available for community reuse via digital infrastructure. We describe and illustrate unified and pluralistic ideals for biodiversity data pooling and show how communities may advance toward these ideals using different heuristic strategies. We present evidence for the strengths and limitations of the unification and pluralistic ideals based on systemic relationships of power, responsibility and benefit they establish among stakeholders, and we conclude the pluralistic ideal is better suited for biodiversity data. (shrink)

Advance care planning allows patients to articulate preferences for their medical treatment, lifestyle, and surrogate decision-makers in order to anticipate and mitigate their potential loss of decision-making capacity. Written advance directives are often emphasized in this regard. While these directives contain important information, there are several barriers to consider: veracity and accuracy of surrogate decision-makers in making choices consistent with the substituted judgement standard, state-to-state variability in regulations, literacy issues, lack of access to legal resources, lack of understanding of medical (...) options, and cultural disparities. Given these issues, it is vital to increase the use of patient and healthcare provider conversations as an advance care planning tool and to increase integration of such discourse into advance care planning policy as adjuncts and complements to written advance directives. This paper reviews current legislation about written advance directives and dissects how documentation of spoken interactions might be integrated and considered. We discuss specific institutional policy changes required to facilitate implementation. Finally, we explore the ethical issues surrounding the increased usage and recognition of clinician–patient conversations in advance care planning. (shrink)

This is the second of four online Companions to Velmans, M. (ed.) (2018) Consciousness (Critical Concepts in Psychology), a 4-volume collection of Major Works on Consciousness commissioned by Routledge, London. -/- The Companion to Volume 2 Part 1 focuses on the detailed relationship of phenomenal consciousness to mental processing described either functionally (as human information processing) or in terms of neural activity, in the ways typically explored by cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Beginning with reviews of functional differences between unconscious, (...) preconscious and conscious processing and the different senses in which mental processing can be said to be “conscious”, the readings turn to seminal work on blindsight and related phenomena, experimental evidence of perception without awareness, ways to combine “subjective” and “objective” measures of awareness, evidence for distinct neural pathways governing visual awareness and visual control of motor acts, and the complex ways in which consciousness of action relates to both voluntary and involuntary acts. The readings then focus on the intimate links between attention and consciousness, starting with the writings of William James and surveying the extensive work on this subject over the last 60 years that explores the relationships between and attended and non-attended processing, preconscious and conscious processing, and attention, primary (working, short-term) memory and consciousness. The readings go on to survey the evidence that attention contributes to the “neural binding” required for an integrated conscious experience and evidence that attention (in humans) is dissociable from consciousness, necessary for consciousness, but not sufficient for consciousness. The readings then turn to research on “inattentional blindness”, and conclude with a review of Baars’ global workspace theory, which integrates many theories and findings in this area into a coherent, global model. The Companion then summarises seminal readings on learning, memory and consciousness; the extensive research on mental imagery, long thought to epitomize private, subjective conscious experience—and consequently ruled out of science by reductive, materialist philosophies of mind; the complex relations of consciousness to sleep and dreaming; the development of consciousness in human infants; and the debates surrounding, and extensive evidence for consciousness in non-human animals, with attendant consequences for their humane treatment. -/- As with the other Companions to these Volumes there are many links to background resources (marked in pink) and to the selected readings themselves (marked in blue). (shrink)

This is the third of four online Companions to Velmans, M. (ed.) (2018) Consciousness (Critical Concepts in Psychology), a 4-volume collection of Major Works on Consciousness commissioned by Routledge, London. -/- The Companion to Volume 3 introduces major phases and findings in the search for the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) starting with the time it takes for these to form and the wider research program that might lead to their discovery. This includes the search for mechanisms responsible for “neural (...) binding”—how widely dispersed neural activities support integrated conscious experiences, and the search for neural markers of consciousness that can serve to distinguish conscious from preconscious and unconscious activities in the brain. We then turn to global disorders of consciousness that indirectly reveal the conditions that support consciousness by establishing what abolishes it or impairs it, and conclude this section with reviews of the major challenges in the search for NCCs that still remain. This survey then continues with research on the divided brain with cerebral commissurotomy patients, which proved to be very useful in determining the respective functions of the left and right halves of the brain. It also raised philosophical questions. Could consciousness itself be divided by this operation? And, if so, would such patients have a distinct left-brain and right-brain consciousness? Philosophical issues also combine with methodological and experimental developments in the following sections on the reintroduction of first-person methods and how to combine these with complementary, third-person methods in neurophenomenology and experiential neuroscience—two well-developed research programs for both investigating consciousness and understanding its functions. This Companion (and associated Volume) then concludes with a survey of research on free will, covering both the major findings arising from neuropsychological research and a way to understand these that is consistent with a natural understanding of volition, ethics, and legal responsibility. -/- As with the other Companions to these Volumes there are many links to background resources (marked in pink) and to the selected readings themselves (marked in blue). -/- . (shrink)

This is the fourth of four online Companions to Velmans, M. (ed.) (2018) Consciousness (Critical Concepts in Psychology), a 4-volume collection of Major Works on Consciousness commissioned by Routledge, London. -/- The Companion (and Volume) begins with a review of mental influences on states of the body and brain (psychogenesis), which are often thought of as theoretically problematic for conventional materialist theories of mind. The evidence is nevertheless extensive, for example in psychosomatic illnesses and studies of the physiological consequences of (...) meditation, imagery, biofeedback and hypnosis. Such effects are also central to developments in psychoneuroimmunology and studies of placebos, dealing not only with how to control for such effects in clinical trials, but with how such effects operate, and how to harness them for the benefit of patients. The Companion then surveys altered states of consciousness, including the conditions for their emergence, their adaptive as well as maladaptive potential, and the influences of culture on how these are understood. The analysis deepens with reviews of the major ways in which consciousness can be usefully transformed, starting with the burgeoning literature on the nature and effects of meditation practices, including their effects on neural dynamics and the varied ways in which they have, in recent years, been incorporated into a range of psychological therapies, focusing particularly on mindfulness and its potential consequences for psychological health. The survey then turns to mystical experiences, which, of all the positive altered states of consciousness, are perhaps the most extraordinary and transformative. Reported over millennia and recognized by William James to combine ineffability with a noetic quality, their generation, effects and interpretation have, once more, become the subject of research. In this connection, we also review the resurgent interest in the use of drugs in the transformation of consciousness focusing particularly on recent research on the clinical and neurophysiological effects of major psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD. It will be apparent that the four Volumes of this Collection cover a vast range of phenomena that cannot comfortably be accommodated into a materialist, reductionist worldview, and so this Companion (and the entire collection) concludes with a diverse sample of non-reductive, integrative theories that offer unifying ways of understanding consciousness, drawing on information theory, neuropsychology, psychodynamics, physics, psychology, parapsychology, and philosophy. -/- As with the other Companions to these Volumes there are many links to background resources (marked in pink) and to the selected readings themselves (marked in blue). -/- . (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

No decurso das últimas décadas, uma notável revolução acadêmica de caráter global vem ocorrendo. Embora suas implicações ainda não tenham sido devidamente exploradas, a sua existência dificilmente poderia ser negada. Tal revolução concerne ao extraordinário crescimento do interesse das mais variadas áreas do conhecimento no estudo das relações entre seres humanos e os membros de outras espécies animais. Inquestionavelmente, a característica mais marcante dessa revolução em andamento é a miríade de publicações científicas sobre essa temática. De fato, a quantidade de (...) escritos é tamanha que a antropóloga norte-americana Margo DeMello se propôs a editar uma compilação bibliográfica com as principais pesquisas produzidas sobre o que ela denomina “estudos humano–animal”1. Human–Animal Studies: A Bibliography é o resultado dos esforços de DeMello. (shrink)

The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) holds that, for everything that exists or occurs or holds true, there is a reason why that is the case. I consider three possible ways of relating physics to the PSR: past states as reasons for present states, reasons why the laws of physics take the form that they do, and reasons why there is anything at all. In each case I suggest that the PSR is not the best way of thinking about how (...) and why physics works. -/- Invited reflection for The Principle of Sufficient Reason (Oxford Philosophical Concepts), Eds. F. Amijee and M. Della Rocca (forthcoming 2024). (shrink)

Pinhas Sadeh was considered as an unorthodox writer as regards his environment, the “State Culture” in Israel. In the first part of this paper I present the biography of the author and his most representative work, Life as a parable, published in 1958, as well as his romantic and frankist roots and his leaning towards Christianity according to the Gospel. In the second part a mythical analysis of this work is made according to the inner journey of hero, through which (...) the main character is looking for his life meaning. In this second part I present my methodology, based on works of the Eranos Society (Mircea Eliade, C.G. Jung, Gilbert Durand). Afterwards, I analyse the mithems that I have found in Life as a parable. Finally, I make a mythical comparison between this novel and Siddharta, of Hermann Hesse. (shrink)