According to pragmatic encroachment, whether an epistemic attitude towards p has some positive epistemic status (e.g., whether a belief is epistemically rational or justified, or it amounts to knowledge) partially depends on practical factors such as the costs of being wrong or the practical goals of the agent. Pragmatic encroachment comes in many varieties. This survey article provides an overview of different kinds of pragmatic encroachment. It focuses on three dimensions under which kinds of pragmatic encroachment differ: the type of (...) epistemic status affected by practical factors, the type of practical factors affecting the epistemic status, and the type of normative considerations encroaching on the epistemic status. (shrink)

Background: It has been widely reported that medical trainees experience situations with profound ethical implications during their clinical rotations. To address this, most U.S. medical schools include ethics curricula in their undergraduate programs. However, the contents of these curricula vary substantially. Our pilot study aimed to discover, from the students’ perspective, how ethics pedagogy prepares medical students for clerkship and what gaps might remain. Methods: This qualitative study organized focus groups of third- and fourth-year medical students. Participants recounted ethical concerns (...) encountered during clerkship rotations and reflected on how their medical school ethics curriculum informed their responses to these scenarios. Transcripts of the focus-group sessions were analyzed using a grounded theory approach to identify common themes that characterized the students’ experiences. Results: While students’ accounts demonstrated a solid grasp of ethical theory and attunement to ethical concerns presented in the clinic, they also consistently evinced an inability to act on these issues given clerks’ particular position in a complex learning hierarchy. Students felt they received too little training in the role-specific application of medical ethics as clinical trainees. We found a desire among trainees for enhanced practical ethics training in preparation for the clerkship phase of medical education. Conclusion: We recommend several strategies that can begin to address these findings. The use of roleplaying with standardized patients can enable students to practice engagement with ethical issues. Conventional ethics courses can focus more on action-based pedagogy and instruction in conflict management techniques. Finally, clear structures for reporting and seeking advice and support for addressing ethical issues can lessen students’ apprehension about acting on ethical concerns. (shrink)

Courts have determined that adaptive management does not satisfy the Endangered Species Act's requirement to use the 'best available science'. This is due, in part, to the failure to recognise the role of non-epistemic values in science. We examine the role of values in the legal controversy over the scientific reports and adaptive management plans for endangered salmon in the Columbia River Basin. To do this, we employ philosophical concepts related to risk and uncertainty that demonstrate how non-epistemic values are (...) internal to science. We describe how, because adaptive management is a method for dealing with inductive risk, by remaining flexible, responsive and adaptive in those circumstances where the costs of making a mistake are very high, it requires special attention to ensure that it remains useful. We conclude that, because non-epistemic values will inevitably influence the 'best available science', it is critical that they are clarified in any adaptive management planning so that we can ensure the salmon conservation that the ESA mandates. Fortunately, because adaptive management is iterative in nature and includes opportunities for engagement between policymakers and scientists, it enables clarification of non-epistemic values through making standards of evidence transparent, acknowledging aims and goals and dealing with uncertainty at the institutional level. (shrink)

What exactly is that quality of resilience that carries people, organizations, and communities through traumatic times? As a construct, resilience is built on the underlying assumption that an individual or organization has undergone a situation of ‘significant adversity’ and has adapted positively, returning to or increasing in performance and psychological wellbeing : 227–233, 2003; Sutcliffe and Vogus 2003). Definitions of resilience range on a continuum from survival to adaptation to competence to healing to hardiness to robustness to wellness : 205–220, (...) 1998; Luthar et al. Child Development, 71: 573–575, 2000; Coutu Harvard Business Review, 80: 46–52, 2002; Maddi 2002). Resilience is an important quality for leaders who are committed to the health of organizations. Organizational health is negatively impacted by organizational trauma; parallel to individuals’ experiences, group and organizational cultures and dynamics are wounded by trauma. While leaders cannot always protect organizations from trauma, leaders can strengthen resilience, recognize when trauma occurs, address the trauma effectively, and protect the system from spiraling into traumatization : 52–57, 2002). This paper offers recommendations for addressing organizational trauma as well as strengthening resilience, individually and collectively. Stories are shared from several organizations, demonstrating the importance of leadership and resilience in the face of trauma. (shrink)

China's Philosophical Studies: Rediscovery of Chinese Spiritual Essence collects essential research findings of China's philosophical studies conducted by the academics at East China Normal University (ECNU) in recent years. The book covers topics including thoughts in China's Spring and Autumn Period, Chinese virtue of trust, establishing morals, historical studies of Chinese philosophy, etc. This book is the fifth volume of the WSPC-ECNU Series on China. This Series showcases the significant contributions to scholarship in social sciences and humanities studies about China. (...) It is jointly launched by World Scientific Publishing, the most reputable English academic publisher in Asia, and ECNU, a top University in China with a long history of exchanges with the international academic community. (shrink)

Some weeks ago, we learned that the matriarch of a family, my good friend Anna, is dying. She is 75 and has inoperable esophageal cancer, and the doctors say it will only take a few more weeks or months. Anna is dying the way I want to die–at home, surrounded and lovingly tended by her family: her devoted husband of 54 years, her three daughters, her three worshipful sons-in-law, her adoring granddaughters. All of them see her every day. All of (...) them are a part of a mutual struggle to give Anna a “good death” Anna, too, is a part of it. And, in a very small way, I am part of it, because I have been invited to be. Every few days, I walk next door and spend a few minutes talking to Anna. (shrink)

This symposium examines how various discursive frameworks inform Jewish and non-Jewish interpretations of Jewishness. Although the specific characteristics of these frameworks are context-dependent, the underlying themes remain the same: Jewish identification entails identifying “difference,” and this process of drawing distinctions between Jews and non-Jews gets developed in discursive frameworks of temporality, “race thinking,” nationalism, and genetics, among others. In the broader contexts within which Jewish identification is formulated, these frameworks serve to: delineate categories of people on the basis of socially (...) salient qualities associated with human and other bodies; evaluate these categorical “types” in regard to their determined “desirable” and “undesirable” qualities; implement institutionally sanctioned measures that facilitate the privileging of the people who apparently embody desired qualities; and enforce structural constraints within which people may choose to contest, re-inscribe, re-appropriate, and/or attempt to transform components of the other three networks mentioned above. It also emphasizes the significance of who mobilizes these discourses, with what objectives in mind, and how both factors instantiate discursive and discursively informed concretized outcomes. (shrink)

Laozi zhe xue -- Zhuangzi zhe xue za lun -- Xian Qin zhu zi yan jiu wen xian mu lu.

During the past few years information has increasingly become a commodity. As a commodity the atypical cost structure of information goods in competitive markets result in the price of reproduction of information goods tending to zero implying that market failure is highly likely. Intellectual property rights prevent such market failure by protecting the ability of creators and/or distributors to charge for information goods and as such serve to stimulate and support the creation of information. But information also plays a vital (...) role in enabling people‘s human rights in their everyday lives and it is therefore of paramount importance that such information be accessible. Pricing of information is one of the main factors determining accessibility and pricing strategies should aim to maximise access not just profit and thereby contribute to a socially just world. This paper examines the nature and pricing of information goods and suggests differential pricing of information goods based Rawls‘ principles of social justice. (shrink)

Background: The classical symptom specificity hypothesis (Blatt, 1974) links obsessional symptoms to autonomous interpersonal behavior. Inconsistent findings from cross-sectional group studies on symptom specificity have previously been associated with several conceptual and methodological limitations intrinsic to nomothetic research. Previous empirical case research reported ambivalences between autonomous and dependent interpersonal behavior in obsessional pathology. Aim and Method: The present ‘theory-building’ case study specifically aims at further refinement of the classical symptom specificity hypothesis by testing specific operationalizations within an empirical single case (...) design. Consensual Qualitative Research for Case studies is used to quantitatively and qualitatively describe the longitudinal, clinical interplay between obsessional symptoms and interpersonal dynamics throughout the process of a psychodynamic therapy. Interpersonal functioning is assessed by means of the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme method. The classical symptom specificity hypothesis is contrasted to an alternative hypothesis of interpersonal ambivalences as determinants of obsessional symptoms. Results: Close associations between obsessions and interpersonal dynamics are observed. Findings predominantly affirm the ambivalence hypothesis rather than the classical symptom specificity hypothesis. Psychodynamic interventions focusing on interpersonal conflicts are related to symptomatic changes. Conceptual and methodological considerations, limitations and future research indications are discussed. (shrink)

This article explores how scientists adapt to a changing climate. To do this, we bring examples from a case study of salmon habitat restorationists in the Columbia River Basin into conversation with concepts from previous work on change and stability in knowledge infrastructures and scientific practice. In order to adapt, ecological restorationists are increasingly relying on predictive modeling tools, as well as initiating broader changes in the interdisciplinary nature of the field of ecological restoration itself. We explore how the field (...) of ecological restoration is shifting its conceptual gaze from restoring to past, historic baselines to anticipating a no-analog future and consider what this means in terms of understanding the adaptive capacity of knowledge infrastructures and epistemic communities more broadly. We argue that identifying how scientists themselves conceptualize drivers of change and respond to these changes is an important step in understanding what adaptive capacity in science might entail. We offer these examples as a provocation for thinking about “adaptive epistemologies” and how adaptation by scientists themselves can facilitate or hinder particular environmental or sociotechnical futures. (shrink)

In recent years, Philosophy Departments at universities in China and worldwide have experienced a renaissance in discussion on Confucian thought. As the country draws from indigenous traditions, rather than leaning completely on the importation of Western liberalism and Marxism, Confucianism has critical implications for politics, ethics, and law in modern China. At the same time, democracy never left the conversation. Democratic concepts cannot be ignored and must be disposed of, acknowledged, or incorporated. The relationship between Confucianism and democracy has been (...) described by various authors as one of conflict, critique, compatibility, and hybridity. In this article, we examine a compatibility model, in which compatibility between Confucianism and democracy can be divided into four types: soft, hard, coexistence, and integration. We examine compatibility by examining “what is compatible” and “how compatibility can be achieved” so as to design speculative models for what a contemporary Confucian government would look like. Our focus is mainly political philosophy in order to explain the effect of cross-pollination of Confucian and democratic thought on political society. (shrink)

Xiaojing's authorship and texts -- Related classical teachings -- Ideological foundations -- The social setting -- A persistent for the people -- Special instruction for women -- The impact on neighboring nations -- Comparative discussion -- Concluding reflections.

The relation between quantum collapse, consciousness and superluminal communication is analyzed. As we know, quantum collapse, if exists, can result in the appearance of quantum nonlocality, and requires the existence of a pre- ferred Lorentz frame. This may permit the realization of quantum superluminal communication (QSC), which will no longer result in the usual causal loop in case of the existence of a preferred Lorentz frame. The possibility of the existence of QSC is further analyzed under the assumption that quantum (...) collapse is a real process. We demonstrate that the combination of quantum collapse and the consciousness of the observer will permit the observer to distinguish nonorthogonal states in principle. This provides a possible way to realize QSC. Some implications of the existence of QSC are briefy discussed. (shrink)

This paper analyses social practices within public health services in Morocco, suggesting that current management orientations toward models like New Public Management obscure the social relations that often make under-resourced healthcare effective. Health policy in Morocco has increasingly adopted principles that reflect neoliberal influence in international development. Citing the work of Moroccan philosopher Mohammed Abed al-Jabri and American philosopher John Searle, the paper calls for policymakers to recognise the capacity of institutions to frame social relations. Likewise, policy administration and management (...) should be guided by reflection on the social role of institutions and related social practices at the level of service delivery. (shrink)

This article outlines a theory of subjectivity and social consciousness that complements prevalent debates in cultural studies about marginality and subjectivity. The article suggests that we can interpret the constitution of subjectivity sociologically as between the nation-state and global market integration. More broadly, we can think about social processes in global market capitalism through returning to class formation. The article draws upon research conducted in Morocco from 1995-97 and again in 2000-02 to illustrate social transformation in market reform.

Las confesiones profesionales de Jose Gaos (Espana, 1900-1969) cultivan un genero donde se conjugan relato y reflexion, exposicion filosofica y recuento autobiografico. Se trata de una exposicion organizada y sobre todo organica donde se pone en juego un trasvase de la vida de las ideas de Gaos.

Prólogo, por J. Gaos.--Discurso del método, por R. Descartes.--Sobre Descartes, por A. Baillet y S. de Sorbière.--Vida de Spinoza, por J. Colérus.--Elogio de Leibniz, por B. Le Bovier de Fontenelle.

New Waves of China's Philosophical Studies collects important research findings of China's philosophical studies conducted by the academics at East China Normal University (ECNU) in recent years. The book covers topics including Confucian ethics and virtue ethics, true value semantics vs. commonsensible reasoning semantics, criticisms of dogmatism, consequentialism, among others. This book is the first volume of the WSPC-ECNU Series on China. This Series showcases the significant contributions to scholarship in social sciences and humanities studies about China. It is jointly (...) launched by World Scientific Publishing, the most reputable English academic publisher in Asia, and ECNU, a top University in China with a long history of exchanges with the international academic community. (shrink)