Primary research on HIV/AIDS in India has predominantly focused on known risk groups such as sex workers, STI clinic attendees and long-distance truck drivers, and has largely been undertaken in urban areas. There is evidence of HIV spreading to rural areas but very little is known about the context of the infection or about issues relating to health and social impact on people living with HIV/AIDS. In-depth interviews with nineteen men and women infected with HIV who live in rural areas (...) were used to collect experiences of testing and treatment, the social impacts of living with HIV and differential impacts on women and men. Eight focus group discussions with groups drawn from the general population in the four villages were used to provide an analysis of community level views about HIV/AIDS. While men reported contracting HIV from sex workers in the cities, women considered their husbands to be the source of their infection. Correct knowledge about HIV transmission co-existed with misconceptions. Men and women tested for HIV reported inadequate counselling and sought treatment from traditional healers as well as professionals. Owing to the general pattern of husbands being the first to contract HIV women faced a substantial burden, with few resources remaining for their own or their children’s care after meeting the needs of sick husbands. Stigma and social isolation following widowhood were common, with an enforced return to the natal home. Implications for potential educational and service interventions are discussed within the context of gender and social relations. (shrink)

This is a compilation of extracts from instructive cases, as well as authoritative commentary, on the roles of language and ethics in law. The book touches on aspects of language and ethics, including professional responsibility, decision making, methods of perception, and concepts of reality.

PurposeTo use the power of knowledge acquisition and machine learning in the development of a collaborative computer classification system based on the features of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).MethodsA vocabulary was acquired from four AMD experts who examined 100 ophthalmoscopic images. The vocabulary was analyzed, hierarchically structured, and incorporated into a collaborative computer classification system called IDOCS. Using this system, three of the experts examined images from a second set of digital images compiled from more than 1000 patients with AMD. Images (...) were annotated, and features were identified and defined. Decision trees, a machine learning method, were trained on the data collected and used to extract patterns. Interrelationships between the data from the different clinicians were investigated.ResultsSix drusen classes in the structured vocabulary were largely sufficient to describe all the identified features. The decision trees classified the data with 76.86% to 88.5% accuracy and distilled patterns in the form of hierarchical trees composed of 5 to 15 nodes. Experts were largely consistent in their characterization of soft, and to a lesser extent, hard drusen, but diverge in definition of other drusen. Size and crystalline morphology were the main determinants of drusen type across all experts.ConclusionsMachine learning is a powerful tool for the characterization of disease phenotypes. The creation of a defined feature set for AMD will facilitate the development of an IDOCS-based classification system. (shrink)

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)

This paper discusses the philosophical doctrine of moral luck, as described by Bernard Williams in his book of the same name. It first describes Williams' account and then uses the case of Michael Stone, a convicted murderer with a long history of mental disorder, and mental health practitioners’ interventions in his case, to test and debate Williams’ views. It examines four major areas of these, including the classical notion of moral luck, retroactive judgement, agent regret and justifiable and unjustifiable decision‐making. (...) It concludes that, in view of what has been said, whilst Williams’ views are applicable and appropriate to many areas of the Stone case, ‘traditional’ moral views on rights, obligations and principles cannot be entirely laid aside in evaluating this. (shrink)

Technology, according to Derry and Williams's Short History, ‘comprises all that bewilderingly varied body of knowledge and devices by which man progressively masters his natural environment’. Their casual, and unconscious, sexism is not unrelated to my present topic. Women enter the story as spinners, burden bearers and, at long last, typists. ‘The tying of a bundle on the back or the dragging of it along upon the outspread twigs of a convenient branch are contributions [and by implication the only contributions] (...) to technology which probably had a feminine origin’. Everything else was done by men, and what they did was master, conquer, and control. It is also significant that Derry and Williams take it for granted that ‘the men [sic] of the Old Stone Age, few and scattered, developed little to help them to conquer their environment’: until the advent of agriculture, and settled civilization, there was, they say, neither leisure nor surplus. (shrink)

Technology, according to Derry and Williams's Short History, ‘comprises all that bewilderingly varied body of knowledge and devices by which man progressively masters his natural environment’. Their casual, and unconscious, sexism is not unrelated to my present topic. Women enter the story as spinners, burden bearers and, at long last, typists. ‘The tying of a bundle on the back or the dragging of it along upon the outspread twigs of a convenient branch are contributions [and by implication the only contributions] (...) to technology which probably had a feminine origin’. Everything else was done by men, and what they did was master, conquer, and control. It is also significant that Derry and Williams take it for granted that ‘the men [sic] of the Old Stone Age, few and scattered, developed little to help them to conquer their environment’: until the advent of agriculture, and settled civilization, there was, they say, neither leisure nor surplus. (shrink)

In this paper, I use insights from post-structuralist anarchism to consider the relationship between a sense of the future, or “futurity”, and the notion of utopia for anarchist movements. At issue is whether anarchism requires a vision or sense of the future at all and, if so, whether that futurity should be utopian. Drawing from the post-structuralist anarchism of Todd May, Saul Newman, and Lewis Call, I consider the problems with utopia, as well as the potential irrelevance or impossibility of (...) even thinking the future. I then argue for the necessity of both and contend that post-structuralist anarchism does not preclude either futurity or provisional forms of utopia. I conclude by sketching the outlines of a utopia that would be acceptably post-structuralist and acceptably anarchist. (shrink)

This, the twenty-seventh volume in the annual series of publications by the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, features a number of distinguised contributors addressing the topic of criminal justice. Part I considers "The Moral and Metaphysical Sources of the Criminal Law," with contributions by Michael S. Moore, Lawrence Rosen, and Martin Shapiro. The four chapters in Part II all relate, more or less directly, to the issue of retribution, with papers by Hugo Adam Bedau, Michael Davis, Jeffrie G. (...) Murphy, and R. B. Brandt. In the following part, Dennis F. Thompson, Christopher D. Stone, and Susan Wolf deal with the special problem of criminal responsibility in government-one of great importance in modern society. The fourth and final part, echoing the topic of NOMOS XXIV, Ethics, Economics, and the Law , addresses the economic theory of crime. The section includes contributions by Alvin K. Klevorick, Richard A. Posner, Jules L. Coleman, and Stephen J. Schulhofer. A valuable bibiography on criminal justice by Andrew C. Blanar concludes this volume of NOMOS. (shrink)

How democratic is contemporary Indonesia? While analysts differ, Indonesian citizens, when asked in systematic public opinion surveys conducted regularly by the authors since 1999, consistently express strong support for democratic principles and also believe that their country's democratic performance is high. Support for democratic performance is highly correlated with support for government performance, as measured by perceptions of the condition of the national economy and political system. At the same time, higher levels of education and income, in Indonesia as in (...) other countries, have created a considerable number of critical citizens, that is, citizens who value democracy but are critical of its performance. On our evidence for Indonesia, it is members of this group who are the most motivated and best prepared to demand a higher level of democratic performance from their elected officials. (shrink)

As a patient approaches death, family members often are asked about their loved one’s preferences regarding treatment at the end of life. Advance care directives may provide information for families and surrogate decision makers; however, less than one-third of Americans have completed such documents. As the U.S. population continues to age, many surrogate decision makers likely will rely on other means to discern or interpret a loved one’s preferences. While many surrogates indicate that they have some knowledge of their loved (...) one’s preferences, how surrogates obtain such knowledge is not well understood. Additionally, although research indicates that the emotional burden of end-of-life decision making is diminished when surrogates have knowledge that a loved one’s preferences are honored, it remains unclear how surrogates come to know these preferences were carried out. The current study examined the ways that next of kin knew veterans’ end-of-life preferences, and their ways of knowing whether those preferences were honored in Veteran Affairs Medical Center inpatient settings. (shrink)

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

How closely do the theoretical notions of 'metaphor' and 'allegory' developed by ancient rhetoricians reflect the practice of classical writers? This question is tackled through eleven new essays by a team of distinguished academics. Ancient theories of metaphor are compared with twentieth century alternatives; theory is tested against practice; and allegory - a distinctive though neglected feature of ancient literature and philosophy - is explored against the background of the rhetoricians' claim that it is one form of metaphor.

This innovative volume attempts to bridge the theoretical gulf between the two approaches by providing objective evidence for unconscious conflict in...

A collection of essays exploring the relationship between Plato and the poet Hesiod. The volume covers a wide variety of thematic angles, brings new and sometimes surprising light to a large range of Platonic dialogues, and represents a major contribution to the study of the reception of archaic poetry in Athens.

The last two decades have seen two significant trends emerging within the philosophy of science: the rapid development and focus on the philosophy of the specialised sciences, and a resurgence of Aristotelian metaphysics, much of which is concerned with the possibility of emergence, as well as the ontological status and indispensability of dispositions and powers in science. Despite these recent trends, few Aristotelian metaphysicians have engaged directly with the philosophy of the specialised sciences. Additionally, the relationship between fundamental Aristotelian concepts—such (...) as "hylomorphism", "substance", and "faculties"—and contemporary science has yet to receive a critical and systematic treatment. _Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science _aims to fill this gap in the literature by bringing together essays on the relationship between Aristotelianism and science that cut across interdisciplinary boundaries. The chapters in this volume are divided into two main sections covering the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of the life sciences. Featuring original contributions from distinguished and early-career scholars, this book will be of interest to specialists in analytical metaphysics and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

William Uttal is concerned that in an effort to prove itself a hard science, psychology may have thrown away one of its most important methodological tools—a critical analysis of the fundamental assumptions that underlie day-to-day empirical research. In this book Uttal addresses the question of localization: whether psychological processes can be defined and isolated in a way that permits them to be associated with particular brain regions. New, noninvasive imaging technologies allow us to observe the brain while it is (...) actively engaged in mental activities. Uttal cautions, however, that the excitement of these new research tools can lead to a neuroreductionist wild goose chase. With more and more cognitive neuroscientific data forthcoming, it becomes critical to question their limitations as well as their potential. Uttal reviews the history of localization theory, presents the difficulties of defining cognitive processes, and examines the conceptual and technical difficulties that should make us cautious about falling victim to what may be a "neo-phrenological" fad. (shrink)

William R. Caspary makes the case for Dewey as a more discerning and challenging political theorist than this.

It no longer is true in a metaphorical sense only that a person can have a change of heart. We might grant this much — allow that a person may have one heart at one time and have another heart at still another time — and also resist the idea that a person can have a change of mind in anything other than a qualitative sense. In the discussion that follows, this standard view of the matter is called into question. (...) If the argument presented here is sound, it can happen both that one person has numerically different minds at different times and that different people have the same mind at different times. These possibilities, as I take them to be, call for reassessment of some well entrenched assumptions concerning personal identity and responsibility. In particular, they suggest that it may not be true that person A bears responsibility for making decisions person B previously made only on the condition that A is the same person as B. (shrink)

To promote so-called cultural competence in work of direct-care providers and other health professionals among diverse peoples, cross-cultural training is now widely advised. However, in ethically assessing aims and content of CCT, and surrounding issues and concerns, what should guide us? And if we can elaborate satisfactory moral touchstones, what do they imply for healthcare professionals, overarching structures, and bioethicists? Building on prior work, this paper tries to help answer these questions.