The placebo drug reactions from controlled trials were studied for the first time systematically for efficacy and the safety in drug data pooled from randomized, placebo-controlled, multicentre studies. Results: The efficacy of placebo on clinical symptoms and outcome varied between the therapeutic indications. However, no placebo effects on laboratory values, as e.g. blood glucose or Hb1c in diabetics, were noted. The frequency and type of placebo-induced adverse reactions also varied between indication groups. The placebo side effect profile was largely similar (...) to the side effect profile of the active treatment. The mechanisms of placebo effects are manyfold and varied (e.g. endorphin release, conditioning), much lacks explanation. Conclusion: Since the prescription of non-evidence based medicines (= pseudoplacebos) may clearly also result in serious adverse effects, such practice may not only be non-beneficial but may even be harmful. In clinical research, the judicious use of placebo remains essential to establish the efficacy and safety, safeguarding that patients receiving placebo will not be subject to harm and are fully informed. (shrink)

The placebo drug reactions from controlled trials were studied for the first time systematically for efficacy and the safety in drug data pooled from randomized, placebo-controlled, multicentre studies. Results: The efficacy of placebo on clinical symptoms and outcome varied between the therapeutic indications. However, no placebo effects on laboratory values, as e.g. blood glucose or Hb1c in diabetics, were noted. The frequency and type of placebo-induced adverse reactions also varied between indication groups. The placebo side effect profile was largely similar (...) to the side effect profile of the active treatment. The mechanisms of placebo effects are manyfold and varied (e.g. endorphin release, conditioning), much lacks explanation. Conclusion: Since the prescription of non-evidence based medicines (= pseudoplacebos) may clearly also result in serious adverse effects, such practice may not only be non-beneficial but may even be harmful. In clinical research, the judicious use of placebo remains essential to establish the efficacy and safety, safeguarding that patients receiving placebo will not be subject to harm and are fully informed. (shrink)

Nietzsche was famously an atheist, despite coming from a strongly Protestant family. This heritage influenced much of his thought, but was it in fact the very thing that led him to his atheism? This work provides a radical re-assessment of Protestantism by documenting and extrapolating Nietzsche's view that Christianity dies from the head down. That is, through Protestantism's inherent anarchy. In this book, Nietzsche is put into conversation with the initiatives of several powerful thinking writers; Luther, Boehme, Leibniz, and Lessing. (...) Using Nietzsche as a critical guide to the evolution of Protestant thinking, each is shown to violate, warp, or ignore gospel injunctions, and otherwise pose hazards to the primacy of Christian ethics. Demonstrating that a responsible understanding of Protestantism as a historical movement needs to engage with its inherent flaws, this is a text that will engage scholars of philosophy, theology, and religious studies alike. (shrink)

In this important book, Thomas R. Flynn reinterprets and evaluates Sartre's social and political philosophy, arguing that the existential ethics of Sartre's ...

Codes of ethics exist in many, if not the majority, of all large U.S. companies today. But how the impact of these written codes affect managerial attitudes and behavior is still not clearly documented or explained. This study takes a step in that direction by proposing that attention should shift from the codes themselves as the sources of ethical behavior to the persons whose behavior is the focus of these codes. In particular, this study investigates the role of code familiarity (...) as a factor impacting the influence of an ethics code on manager behavior. Data collected from 286 executives from companies in the direct selling industry are used to test hypotheses (1) that the perceived usefulness of ethics codes is positively related to the degree of familiarity with the code, and (2) that ethical climate as assessed by managers is positively related to the code''s perceived usefulness. Both hypotheses are supported, and their implications and further research directions are discussed. (shrink)

Sartre and Foucault were two of the most prominent and at times mutually antagonistic philosophical figures of the twentieth century. And nowhere are the antithetical natures of their existentialist and poststructuralist philosophies more apparent than in their disparate approaches to historical understanding. A history, thought Foucault, should be a kind of map, a comparative charting of structural transformations and displacements. But for Sartre, authentic historical understanding demanded a much more personal and committed narrative, a kind of interpretive diary of moral (...) choices and risks compelled by critical necessity and an exacting reality. Sartre's history, a rational history of individual lives and their intrinsic social worlds, was in essence immersed in biography. In Volume One of this authoritative two-volume work, Thomas R. Flynn conducts a pivotal and comprehensive reconstruction of Sartrean historical theory, and provocatively anticipates the Foucauldian counterpoint to come in Volume Two. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Regarded as the father of existentialist philosophy, he was also a political critic, moralist, playwright, novelist, and author of biographies and short stories. Thomas R. Flynn provides the first book-length account of Sartre as a philosopher of the imaginary, mapping the intellectual development of his ideas throughout his life, and building a narrative that is not only philosophical but also attentive to the political and literary dimensions (...) of his work. Exploring Sartre's existentialism, politics, ethics, and ontology, this book illuminates the defining ideas of Sartre's oeuvre: the literary and the philosophical, the imaginary and the conceptual, his descriptive phenomenology and his phenomenological concept of intentionality, and his conjunction of ethics and politics with an 'egoless' consciousness. It will appeal to all who are interested in Sartre's philosophy and its relation to his life. (shrink)

Sartre and Foucault were two of the most prominent and at times mutually antagonistic philosophical figures of the twentieth century. And nowhere are the antithetical natures of their existentialist and poststructuralist philosophies more apparent than in their disparate approaches to historical understanding. In Volume One of this authoritative two-volume study, Thomas R. Flynn conducted a pivotal and comprehensive reconstruction of Sartrean historical theory. This long-awaited second volume offers a comprehensive and critical reading of the Foucauldian counterpoint. A history, theorized (...) Foucault, should be a kind of map, a comprehensive charting of structural transformations and displacements over time. Contrary to other Foucault scholars, Flynn proposes an "axial" rather than a developmental reading of Foucault's work. This allows aspects of Foucault's famous triad of knowledge, power, and the subject to emerge in each of his major works. Flynn maps existentialist categories across Foucault's "quadrilateral," the model that Foucault proposes as defining modernist conceptions of knowledge. At stake is the degree to which Sartre's thought is fully captured by this mapping, whether he was, as Foucault claimed, "a man of the nineteenth century trying to think in the twentieth.". (shrink)

The concept of an ecological niche (econiche) has been used in a variety of ways, some of which are incompatible with a relational or functional interpretation of the term. This essay seeks to standardize usage by limiting the concept to functional relations between organisms and their surroundings, and to revise the concept to include epistemic relations. For most organisms, epistemics are a vital aspect of their functional relationships to their surroundings and, hence, a major determinant of their econiche. Rejecting the (...) traditional dualism of organism and environment, an econiche is defined as the reciprocal (dual) of a functionally specified class of organisms (FSTU). From this perspective, an econiche necessarily implies a certain type of organism, and a class of functionally similar organisms implies a special econiche.The econiche concept is also discussed in relation to other ecological terms that reflect the distributional patterns of organisms, such as habitat, and the concept of an empty niche is criticized. (shrink)

University of Utrecht, Department of Philosophy, Heidelberglaan 6, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 30 253 28 74, Email: Thomas.Nys{at}phil.uu.nl ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//-->Measures in public health care seem vulnerable to charges of paternalism: their aim is to protect, restore, or promote people's health, but the public character of these measures seems to leave insufficient room for respect for individual autonomy. This paper wants to explore three challenges to these charges: Measures in (...) PHC are aimed to protect, restore or promote ‘deep autonomy’, Measures in PHC are directed at the public and, as such, they do show respect for autonomy, and Some measures in PHC can be justified on grounds of justice and need not be defended as cases of ‘justified paternalism’. Although charges of unjustified paternalism in PHC might still be relevant, we should at least face these different challenges. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Covering the entire trajectory of his religious life, this book identifies and analyzes the foundations of political and social order in the philosophy of Pope Benedict XVI. Thomas R. Rourke explains Benedict's belief in the value of the Christian tradition's contribution to a contemporary politics of reason.

Covering the entire trajectory of his religious life, this book identifies and analyzes the foundations of political and social order in the philosophy of Pope Benedict XVI. Thomas R. Rourke explains Benedict's belief in the value of the Christian tradition's contribution to a contemporary politics of reason.

This textbook brings the humanities to students in order to evoke the humanity of students. It helps to form individuals who take charge of their own minds, who are free from narrow and unreflective forms of thought, and who act compassionately in their public and professional worlds. Using concepts and methods of the humanities, the book addresses undergraduate and premed students, medical students, and students in other health professions, as well as physicians and other healthcare practitioners. It encourages them to (...) consider the ethical and existential issues related to the experience of disease, care of the dying, health policy, religion and health, and medical technology. Case studies, images, questions for discussion, and role-playing exercises help readers to engage in the practical, interpretive, and analytical aspects of the material, developing skills for critical thinking as well as compassionate care. (shrink)

This article examines some of the main tenets of competition theory in light of the theory of evolution and the concept of an ecological niche. The principle of competitive exclusion and the related assumption that communities exist at competitive equilibrium - fundamental parts of many competition theories and models - may be violated if non-equilibrium conditions exist in natural communities or are incorporated into competition models. Furthermore, these two basic tenets of competition theory are not compatible with the theory of (...) evolution. Variation in ecologically significant environmental factors and non-equilibrium in population numbers should occur in most natural communities, and such changes have important effects on community relations, niche overlap, and the evolution of ecosystems. Ecologists should view competition as a process occurring within a complexdynamic system, and should be wary of theoretical positions built upon simple laboratory experiments or simplistic mathematical models.In considering the relationship between niche overlap and competition, niche overlap should not be taken as a sufficient condition for competition; many factors may prevent or diminish competition between populations with similar resource utilization patterns. The typically opposing forces of intraspecific and interspecific competition need to be simultaneously considered, for it is the balance between them that in large part determines niche boundaries. (shrink)

Founders of Western Indology: August Wilhelm von Schlegel and Henry Thomas Colebrooke in Correspondence 1820–1837. By Rosane Rocher and Ludo Rocher. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlands, vol. 84. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013. Pp. xvi + 205, plates. €48.

This distinctive and contemporary departure from hackneyed discussions of political theory introduces readers to a contemporary personalism rooted in the work of Bartolome de Las Casas and emerging again in the contributions of Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin as well as the liberation theology of Gustavo Guiterrez and Jon Sobrino. Thomas R. Rourke and Rosita A. Chazarreta Rourke introduce readers to new sources of personalism by investigating and revising the intellectual history of this theory and its development.

Sartre and Foucault were two of the most prominent and at times mutually antagonistic philosophical figures of the twentieth century. And nowhere are the antithetical natures of their existentialist and poststructuralist philosophies more apparent than in their disparate approaches to historical understanding. A history, thought Foucault, should be a kind of map, a comparative charting of structural transformations and displacements. But for Sartre, authentic historical understanding demanded a much more personal and committed narrative, a kind of interpretive diary of moral (...) choices and risks compelled by critical necessity and an exacting reality. Sartre's history, a rational history of individual lives and their intrinsic social worlds, was in essence immersed in biography. In Volume One of this authoritative two-volume work, Thomas R. Flynn conducts a pivotal and comprehensive reconstruction of Sartrean historical theory, and provocatively anticipates the Foucauldian counterpoint to come in Volume Two. (shrink)

Global GDP is more than 100 trillion dollars, yet 10 % of the world’s population still live in extreme poverty on less than $1.90 per day. No one should have to live like that: alleviating poverty is a minimal moral obligation implied by nearly every secular and religious moral system. Unfortunately, neither economic growth nor conventional international aid can be relied upon to fulfil this obligation. A global basic income programme that transferred $1 per day from the rich world to (...) each poor person would eliminate extreme poverty directly and at negligible cost. It is the least we should do. (shrink)

Bibliotheca Malabarica: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg’s Tamil Library. Edited and translated by Will Sweetman with R. Ilakkuvan. École française d’Extrême-Orient, Collection Indologie 119. Pondicherry: Institut FrançaiS de Pondichéry and École Française d’ExtrêmE-Orient, 2012. Pp. 153. €17.

The Making of Western Indology: Henry Thomas Colebrooke and the East India Company. By Rosane Rocher and Ludo Rocher. Royal Asiatic Society Books. London: Routledge, 2012. Pp. xv + 238, 5 plates. $145.

Adam Smith is respected as the father of contemporary economics for his work on systemizing classical economics as an independent field of study in The Wealth of Nations. But he was also a significant moral philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, with its characteristic concern for integrating sentiments and rationality. This article considers Adam Smith as a key moral philosopher of commercial society whose critical reflection upon the particular ethical challenges posed by the new pressures and possibilities of commercial society remains (...) relevant today. The discussion has three parts. First I address the artificial separation between self-interest and morality often attributed to Smith, in which his work on economics is stripped of its ethical context. Second I outline Smith’s ethical approach to economics, focusing on his vigorous but qualified defence of commercial society for its contributions to prosperity, justice, and freedom. Third I outline Smith’s moral philosophy proper as combining a naturalistic account of moral psychology with a virtue ethics based on propriety in commercial society. (shrink)

Thomas R. Flynn - Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts: Experience and Reflection in Camus and Sartre - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 46.1 179-180 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Thomas R. Flynn Emory University Robert C. Solomon. Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts: Experience and Reflection in Camus and Sartre. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. ii + 241. Cloth, $35.00. This study in existentialist thought is a collection of (...) essays, some previously published, in defense of the thesis that existentialist thought, at least in these works, is the articulation of our pre-reflective experience that yields an immediacy and a richness often sacrificed when one turns to abstract reflection—as Solomon believes Sartre does in Being and Nothingness in.. (shrink)

Abstract Advances in technology now make it possible to monitor the activity of the human brain in action, however crudely. As this emerging science continues to offer correlations between neural activity and mental functions, mind and brain may eventually prove to be one. If so, such a full comprehension of the electrochemical bases of mind may render current concepts of ethics, law, and even free will irrelevant. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s11948-012-9351-1 Authors Thomas (...) R. Scott, San Diego State University, San Diego, California, USA Journal Science and Engineering Ethics Online ISSN 1471-5546 Print ISSN 1353-3452. (shrink)

After presenting the major objections raised against standard formulations of the H-D method of theory testing, I identify what seems to be an important element of truth underlying the method. I then draw upon this element in an effort to develop a plausible formulation of the H-D method which avoids the various objections.

Bryan S. Turner: Can We Live Forever? A Social and Moral Inquiry Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 301-303 DOI 10.1007/s12376-009-0024-6 Authors Thomas R. Cole, University of Texas-Houston School of Medicine McGovern Center for Health, Humanities, and the Human Spirit Houston TX 77030 USA Journal Medicine Studies Online ISSN 1876-4541 Print ISSN 1876-4533 Journal Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 3.

Webmasters are a key moral agent in the issue of privacy. This study attempts to understand the factors underlying their attitudes about privacy based on the theory of moral intensity. Webmasters of high-traffic sites were invited via email to participate in a web-based survey. The results support the application of moral intensity to the domain of privacy and the population of webmasters - both outcomes and social norms have statistically significant main effects on attitudes. The results also suggest a reconfiguration (...) of the dimensions of moral intensity. This is based on the observation that proximity to the organization has a negative main effect on attitudes, and it moderates the relationship between social norms and attitudes. The original theory of moral intensity did not acknowledge the possibility of this moderating role for proximity. These observations have important implications for future research and practice in the areas of privacy, moral intensity, and ethical decision making. (shrink)

I defend three claims regarding Foucault’s historical a priori and the intelligibility of history that counter commonly received accounts of Husserl’s approach to the same. First, Foucault is not a transcendental thinker in the Kantian sense of the term. His use of the HP is contingent, postdictive, regional and hypothetical. Second, the three “axes” of the dyads knowledge/truth, power/government, and subjectivation/ethics along with Foucault’s “history of the present” enclose a space called “experience” Erfahrung as nonreflective and “freed from inner life.” (...) At this point, “experience” and “multiplicity” coalesce to confirm Foucault’s anti-phenomenological bias and nominalist commitment. Finally, the relations of transformation and displacement that define archaeological change support a “fittingness” between the epistemes in question. Neither necessitating nor aleatory, their relation could be called “aesthetic” in a broad sense. I conclude by listing ways Husserl’s approach to historical intelligibility is the inverse of Foucault’s. (shrink)

Hühn and Dierksmeier argue that a better understanding of Adam Smith’s work would improve business ethics research and education. I worry that their approach encourages two scholarly sins. First, anachronistic historiography in which we distort Smith’s ideas by making him answer questions about contemporary debates in CSR theory. Second, treating him as a prophet by assuming that finding out what Smith would have thought about it is the right way to answer such questions.

This article focuses on the philosophical aspects of the Capability Approach and its foundations in the work of Amartya Sen. It discusses the development and structure of Sen’s account, how it relates to other ethical approaches, and its main contributions and criticisms. It also outlines various capability theories developed within the Capability Approach, with particular attention to that of Martha Nussbaum.

A nineteenth-century aristocrat, Nishi Amane (1829-1897) was one of the first Japanese to assert the supremacy of Western culture. He was sent by his government to Leiden to study the European social sciences; on his return to Japan shortly before the climactic Meiji Restoration of 1868 he introduced and adapted European utilitarianism and positivism to his country's intellectual world. To modernize, Nishi held, Japan must cast off the bonds of the Confucian world-view in order to adopt new principles of empirical (...) scholarly investigation and new standards of self-improvement. Though a Confucian by upbringing, Nishi became thoroughly committed to Western intellectual values in his programs for the new Japanese society. In his roles of teacher, writer, and government administrator, he was influential at one of the most critical times in Japan's history. Originally published in 1970. 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)