El artículo expone el proceso de transición demográfica haciendo una referencia a los conceptos teóricos que lo sustentan para enmarcar a la Argentina dentro del contexto general. Posteriormente, se profundiza en las variaciones acaecidas durante el último período intercensal conforme un agrupamiento de las jurisdicciones, al que hemos denominado regiones. El método que se utilizó es el Análisis de Componentes Principales seguido de un Análisis de Cluster. Particularmente se examina el comportamiento de las principales variables demográficas en el marco de (...) las transiciones específicas: mortalidad, fecundidad y movilidad. Se muestran las desigualdades y los distintos estadios por los que transitan esas regiones del país en el proceso transicional. Para el análisis a largo plazo se utilizan las tasas brutas de mortalidad y fecundidad y las tasas de migración neta, mientras que para el análisis de las variaciones del período intercensal se calcula y analiza el comportamiento de la Esperanza de Vida y el índice Años de Esperanza de Vida Perdidos, la Tasa Global de Fecundidad y Saldos de Migración Internos e Internacionales. El núcleo de la regionalización efectuada en el trabajo implica un esfuerzo por recuperar el concepto de región y emular un recurso que permita analizar diferencias y similitudes entre esos recortes territoriales, para coadyuvar en el proceso de modelar y entender realidades básicamente desiguales. Ello patentiza la necesidad de estrategias diferentes para afrontar las particularidades de cada una y así poder mitigarlas. En términos generales y en el marco del proceso de transición demográfica, el país se encuentra en una etapa de transición avanzada, con bajas tasas de mortalidad y fecundidad, y en una fase de movilidad de la cuarta etapa de acuerdo a la caracterización de Zelinsky. A su interior, y acorde a las regiones propuestas (aunque con distintos niveles de mortalidad y fecundidad), la tasa bruta de mortalidad muestra una especie de “amesetamiento”, acompañada por tasas de natalidad que marcan la directriz del crecimiento natural y tienden hacia la baja en las regiones más rezagadas. (shrink)

This article re-evaluates the role of the manuscript tradition of the Historia Augusta in debates over the original contents and authorship of the text. Evidence for physical disruptions to the text before our oldest surviving manuscripts points to an earlier manuscript distributed across multiple codices. A multi-volume archetype eliminates critical arguments against the author's claims about lives missing before the Life of Hadrian as well as in the lacuna for the years a.d. 244–260. Other multi-volume codices of the eighth and (...) ninth centuries show that loss of an initial volume would have disrupted the textual tradition for the index, titles and authorial attributions. Comparison of our most complete early witness, Pal. lat. 899, to the independent branches of the textual tradition shows discrepancies between these paratextual elements as expected in a disrupted tradition. Ultimately, this article concludes that the current debates on authorship and the original scope of the Historia Augusta rest on paratextual elements from a single branch of the manuscript tradition, raising doubts about the centrality of these controversies to understanding the work. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Checklists have been used to improve quality in many industries, including healthcare. The use of checklists, however, has not been extensively evaluated in clinical ethics consultation. This article seeks to fill this gap by exploring the efficacy of using a checklist in ethics consultation, as tested by an empirical investigation of the use of the checklist at a large academic medical system (Cleveland Clinic). The specific aims of this project are as follows: (1) to improve the quality of ethics consultations (...) by providing reminders to ethics consultants about process steps that are important for most patient-centered ethics consultations, (2) to create consistency in the ethics consultation process across the medical system, and (3) to establish an effective educational tool for trainers and trainees in clinical ethics consultation. The checklist was developed after a thorough literature review and an iterative process of revising and testing by a group of experienced ethics consultants. To pilot test the checklist, it was distributed to 46 ethics consultants. After a six-month pilot period in which ethics professionals used the checklist during their clinical activities, a survey was distributed to all of those who used the checklist. The 10-item survey examined consultants’ perceptions regarding the three aims listed above. Of the 25 survey respondents, 11 self-reported as experts in ethics consultation, nine perceived themselves to have mid-level expertise, and five self-reported as novices. The majority (68 percent) of all respondents, regardless of expertise, believed that the checklist could be a “helpful” or “very helpful” tool in the consultation process generally. Novices were more likely than experts to believe that the checklist would be useful in conducting consultations. The limitations of this study include: reduced generalizability given that this project was conducted at one medical system, utilized a small sample size, and used self-reported quality outcome measures. Despite these limitations, to the authors’ knowledge this is the first investigatation of the use of a checklist systematically to improve quality in ethics consultation. Importantly, our findings shed light on ways this checklist can be used to improve ethics consultation, including its use as an educational tool. The authors hope to test the checklist with consultants in other healthcare systems to explore its usefulness in different healthcare environments. (shrink)

A physician and spokesman for the French Ideologues, Pierre-JeanGeorges Cabanis (1757-1808) stands at the crossroads of several influential developments in modern culture--Enlightenment optimism about human perfectibility, the clinical method in medicine, and the formation and adaptation of liberal social ideals in the French Revolution. This first major study of Cabanis in English traces the influences of these developments on his thought and career. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously (...) out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

In der Vorlesung des Sommersemesters 1927 unter dem Titel Die Grundprobleme der Phanomenologie nimmt Martin Heidegger eine Neue Ausarbeitung des 3. Abschnitts des I. Teiles von 'Sein und Zeit' in Angriff. Der Gesamtbestand der Grundprobleme der Phanomenologie in ihrer Systematik und Begrundung besteht in der Diskussion der Grundfrage nach dem Sinn von Sein uberhaupt und der aus ihr entspringenden Probleme. Die so gekennzeichnete Thematik von Zeit und Sein wird auf dem Umweg einer phanomenologischen Erorterung von vier geschichtlichen Thesen uber das (...) Sein behandelt. Die phanomenologisch-kritische Diskussion dieser Thesen fuhrt zu der Einsicht, dass allem zuvor die Grundfrage nach dem Sinn von Sein uberhaupt beantwortet sein muss, um die aus den vier geschichtlichen Thesen herausgeschalten vier Grundprobleme in zureichender Weise systematisch ausarbeiten zu konnen. Wer Sein und Zeit als einen Weg zur Ausarbeitung der Seinsfrage uberhaupt als dem Ziel studiert, bleibt auf Die Grundprobleme der Phanomenologie verwiesen. (shrink)

For regular sets in Euclidean space, previous work has identified twelve ‘basic’ computability notions to which many previous notions considered in literature were shown to be equivalent. With respect to those basic notions we now investigate on the computability of natural operations on regular sets: union, intersection, complement, convex hull, image, and pre-image under suitable classes of functions. It turns out that only few of these notions are suitable in the sense of rendering all those operations uniformly computable.

We congratulate Fox and her colleagues (2007) for contributing to the published empirical literature on ethics consultation in United States hospitals. Their study demonstrates the continued wide v...

Eric Martin and Daniel N. Osherson present a theory of inductive logic built on model theory. Their aim is to extend the mathematics of Formal Learning Theory to a more general setting and to provide a more accurate image of empirical inquiry. The formal results of their study illuminate aspects of scientific inquiry that are not covered by the commonly applied Bayesian approach.

The vast majority of research in nursing ethics over the last decade indicates that nurses may not be fully prepared to ‘deliver the good’ for their patients, or to contribute appropriately in the wider current health care climate. When suitable research projects were evaluated for this article, one key question emerged: if nurses are educationally better prepared than ever before to exercise their ethical decision-making skills, why does research still indicate that the expected practice-based improvements remain elusive? Hence, a number (...) of ideas gleaned from recent research about the current nature of nursing ethics, and especially teaching nursing ethics to student nurses, are analysed and critiqued in this article, which concludes with a cluster of ideas and conclusions based on that analysis. It is hoped that such a review may serve as a catalyst for nurse educators to re-examine their teaching practices with a view to enhancing good nursing practice through educational means. (shrink)

The history of the Euclidean Steiner tree problem, which is the problem of constructing a shortest possible network interconnecting a set of given points in the Euclidean plane, goes back to Gergonne in the early nineteenth century. We present a detailed account of the mathematical contributions of some of the earliest papers on the Euclidean Steiner tree problem. Furthermore, we link these initial contributions with results from the recent literature on the problem.

Recognize the “philo- sophia ” as such, this side of Postmodernism, means, starting from the surprising studies of Heribert Boeder, see it as a thought epochally built on a Wisdom, that is, on a initial Knowledge about the Destiny of Man. For the philo-sophical thought of the so-called “German Idealism”, that Wisdom is neither that of the Muses, as in the First epoch, neither the “Christian sapientia”, as in the Middle epoch, but the “Civil Consciousness” about Duty and Freedom.

I propose a novel way to understand the stringency of Kant’s conception of beneficence. This novel understanding can ground our intuition that we do not have to forego (almost) all pursuit of our personal ends. I argue that we should understand the application of imperfect duties to specific cases according to the framework set by the adoption and promotion of ends. Agents have other ends than obligatory ones and they must weigh obligatory ends against these other ends. Obligatory ends are (...) special among ends only insofar as their adoption is not optional. My reading of the normative status of imperfect duties affords a way of thinking about beneficence modelled on the everyday ways in which agents pursue their personal projects and weigh different ends against each other. This establishes a middle-ground between an extremely demanding conception of beneficence and an overly latitudinarian one. Furthermore, it helps us understand why we do not have to be maximally beneficent and why there is a bias towards the near in our thinking about rescue cases. (shrink)

This chapter examines the traditional understanding of Horkheimer and Adorno's dialectic of enlightenment (exemplified by Jürgen Habermas and others), arguing that the traditional reading – with its stress on instrumental rationalization and a regressive or self‐destructive history – misses Horkheimer and Adorno's deepest aspirations, which are to offer an argument against a particular conceptualization of human agency (as apperceptive). Stressing instead, that Kant is the central interlocutor, the chapter shows how understanding this Kantian inheritance allows us to bring into focus (...) the radical nature of Horkheimer and Adorno's argument: that it is meant to bring into focus the problematic nature of conceiving human agency as dependent on apperception. In presenting this problem, the chapter shows how the ontogenetic origin of self‐consciousness becomes a crucial issue, and the thought of Sigmund Freud is marshaled both to make this clear and to show how Horkheimer and Adorno's account can benefit from making explicit its potential debt to Freud. (shrink)

In this paper, we prove the correspondence between complete extensions in abstract argumentation and 3-valued stable models in logic programming. This result is in line with earlier work of [6] that identified the correspondence between the grounded extension in abstract argumentation and the well-founded model in logic programming, as well as between the stable extensions in abstract argumentation and the stable models in logic programming.

This article elaborates Theodor W. Adorno’s understanding of ‘negation’ and ‘negative theology.’ It proceeds by introducing a typology of negation within modern philosophy roughly from Descartes onwards, showing how Adorno both fits and also stands out in this typology. Ultimately, it is argued that Adorno’s approach to negation and thereby to negative theology is throughout distinguished and infused by an ethical commitment.

This path-breaking approach to Thomas Aquinas interprets the Five Ways in the context of his theory of science. Aquinas is the leading medieval philosopher and his work is of continuing contemporary relevance. Addressing all the critical themes of authority and reason, Christopher Martin examines the role of science and definitions in medieval thought, and how to deal with the big question: is there a God? Rigorous and challenging, Martin's clear exposition compares and contrasts Aquinas' arguments with those of other philosophers, (...) Anselm, Descartes and Kant. (shrink)

Opposition to inducement payments for research subjects is an international orthodoxy amongst writers of ethics committee guidelines. We offer an argument in favour of these payments. We also critically evaluate the best arguments we can find or devise against such payments, and except in one very limited range of circumstances, we find these unconvincing.

What is the proper relation between the scientific worldview and other parts or aspects of human knowledge and experience? Can any science aim at "complete coverage" of the world, and if it does, will it undermine--in principle or by tendency--other attempts to describe or understand the world? Should morality, theology and other areas resist or be protected from scientific treatment? Questions of this sort have been of pressing philosophical concern since antiquity. The Proper Ambition of Science presents ten particular case (...) studies written by prominent philosophers, looking at how this problem has been approached from the ancient world right up to the present day. Contributors: Bob Sharples, M.W.F. Stone, G.A.J. Rogers, J.R. Milton, Aaron Ridley, Christopher Hookway, Dermot Moran, Thomas E. Uebel, David Papineau, and Nancy Cartwright. (shrink)

In selecting the papers for this volume I have excluded all physics papers proper. I have further omitted all book rev.iews. Instead, I have included two papers not published previously; they are marked by an asterisk (*) in the table of contents. Since many of the papers were occasioned by Symposia or similar gatherings their chronological order is rather accidental. Hence I have tried to group the papers thematically into four parts. Within each part the order of sequence is from (...) the more general to the more special, or from a more popular to a more technical treatment. The same principle has been applied to the sequential order of the parts. The foundational papers on quantum mechanics have been arranged in a somewhat dif ferent manner. Chapters XVI-XIX are concerned with the logic of complementarity while in Chapters XX-XXII a more radical recon ceptualization is carried out. Two of the older papers (Chapters VI and VIII) have been revised to bring them more into line with present terminology. Other papers have been corrected by additions and omissions. Additions are marked by square brackets [ ], while double square brackets [[ II signify omis sions or parts to be omitted. Hence [[A]] [B] means that 'A' should be replaced by 'B'. The heading of one paper (Chapter XX) has been changed to make it more descriptive. (shrink)

Are the workings of the international world to be explained scientifically, or are they to be understood through their inward meaning? In Explaining and Understanding International Relations philosopher Martin Hollis and international relations scholar Steve Smith join forces to analyse the dominant theories of international relations and to examine the philosophical issues underlying them. The book has three parts. In the first the authors review the growth of the discipline since 1918, pose the 'level of analysis' problem of whether to (...) account for a sytem in terms of its units or vice versa, and contrast the demand of scientific method with those of interpretative understanding. In the second they apply the contrast to four factors often cited in accounting for international behaviour - the international system, the state, bureaucracies, and decision-making individuals. Rival accounts of the games nations play are offered in readiness for the final part, where the authors propose a theoretical agenda, air their differences, and invite readers to take sides. By tackling deep theoretical issues with lucidity and verve this book will excite debate among theorists and students of international relations while also engaging thought about the philosophical character of the social sciences. (shrink)

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