Using medical advances to enhance human athletic, aesthetic, and cognitive performance, rather than to treat disease, has been controversial. Little is known about physicians? experiences, views, and attitudes in this regard. We surveyed a national sample of physicians to determine how often they prescribe enhancements, their views on using medicine for enhancement, and whether they would be willing to prescribe a series of potential interventions that might be considered enhancements. We find that many physicians occasionally prescribe enhancements, but doctors hold (...) nuanced and ambiguous views of these issues. Most express concerns about the potential effects of enhancements on social equity, yet many also believe specific enhancements that are safe and effective should be available but not covered by insurance. These apparently contradictory views might reflect inherent tensions between the values of equity and liberty, which could make crafting coherent social policies on medical enhancements challenging. [Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of American Journal of Bioethics for the following free supplemental resource(s): An additional table (Table 5) referred to on p. 5]. (shrink)

Zdravko Planinc’s Odyssean reading of the Sophist and Statesman presents a radical critique of claims that these dialogues present developments of Plato’s thought. His claim that Plato intends us to see the Stranger as no more than an outrageous sophist, however, is undermined by the quality of at least some of Stranger’s arguments and insights.

This paper addresses religious epistemology in that it concerns the assessment of the credibility of certain claims arising out of religious experience. Developments this century have made the world’s rich religious heritage accessible to more people than ever. But the conflicting religious claims tend to undermine each religion’s central claim to be a vehicle for opening persons to ultimate reality. One attempt to overcome this problem is provided by "perennial philosophy," which claims that there is a kind of mystical experience (...) common to all religious traditions, an experience which is an immediate contact with an absolute principle. Perennialism has been attacked by "contextualists" such as Steven Katz who argue that particular mystical experiences are so tied to a particular tradition that there are no common mystical experiences across traditions. In turn, Robert Forman and the "decontextualists" have argued that a certain kind of mystical experience and process are found in diverse traditions, thereby supporting one of the key elements of perennialism. I review the contextualist-decontextualist debate and suggest a research project that would pursue the question of whether the common ground of the world’s mystical traditions could be expanded beyond what has been established by the decontextualists. The extension of this common ground would add credibility to the claims arising out of mystical experience. (shrink)

This is a response to Val Plumwood's critique of Plato and an overview of the way in which Plato provides a viable environmental vision. This vision sees the realm of nature as rooted in the realm of logos, and human beings as sojourners who are nonetheless integral parts of nature and whose vocation is to act as mediators between the two realms thereby bringing nature into even greater participation in logos. To fulfill the human vocation, one must come to an (...) awareness of the logos by purging oneself of the sham values which permeate society and distort one's understanding of reality. (shrink)

In this article we describe our approach to understanding wrongdoing in medical research and practice, which involves the statistical analysis of coded data from a large set of published cases. We focus on understanding the environmental factors that predict the kind and the severity of wrongdoing in medicine. Through review of empirical and theoretical literature, consultation with experts, the application of criminological theory, and ongoing analysis of our first 60 cases, we hypothesize that 10 contextual features of the medical environment (...) (including financial rewards, oversight failures, and patients belonging to vulnerable groups) may contribute to professional wrongdoing. We define each variable, examine data supporting our hypothesis, and present a brief case synopsis from our study that illustrates the potential influence of the variable. Finally, we discuss limitations of the resulting framework and directions for future research. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists have frequently criticized ancient Greek philosophy as anti-environmental for a view of philosophy that is counterproductive to environmental ethics and a view of the world that puts nature at the disposal of people. This provocative collection of original essays reexamines the views of nature and ecology found in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Plotinus. Recognizing that these thinkers were not confronted with the environmental degradation that threatens contemporary philosophers, the contributors to this book find that (...) the Greeks nevertheless provide an excellent foundation for a sound theory of environmentalism. (shrink)

Hunger continues to be one of humanity's greatest challenges despite the existence of a more-than-adequate global food supply equal to 2,800 kilocalories for every person every day. In measuring progress, policy-makers and concerned citizens across the globe rely on information supplied by the Food and Agriculture Organization , an agency of the United Nations. In 2010 the FAO reported that in the wake of the 2007–2008 food-price spikes and global economic crisis, the number of people experiencing hunger worldwide since 2005–2007 (...) had increased by 150 million, rising above 1 billion in 2009. However, in its State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 the FAO presented new estimates, having revamped its methods and reinterpreted its hunger data back to 1990. The revised numbers for the period 1990–1992 to 2010–2012 reverse the trend to a steadily falling one. Based on the FAO's new calculations, extreme undernourishment peaked in 1990 at a record-breaking one billion, followed by a significant decline through 2006, when progress stalled but did not reverse. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Questioning the Motives of Habituated Action:Burke and Bourdieu on PracticeDana AndersonThe British official's habit, in the Empire's remotest spots, of dressing for dinner is in effect the transporting of an idol, the vessel of a motive that has its sanctuary in the homeland.—Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives, 44In his recent Kenneth Burke and the Conversation after Philosophy, Timothy Crusius locates Burke in the context of "PostPhilosophical" thought (...) by describing Burke's expansive Dramatistic project as a praxis—as a program encompassing "any act whatsoever, including symbolic action (i.e., expression, whether artistic or discursive), in behalf of a better life." When praxis is conceived broadly as a dialectical perspective on human action—that agents and structures interact in mutually determining ways—the term becomes, in fact, an accurate summary of the entire Burkean corpus: "If we understand it as Burke does," Crusius continues, "all that he wrote is praxis" (1999, 198). This panoramic scope of Burke's dialectical inquiry is certainly one reason it remains rhetorical theory's perhaps most flexible and productive framework for considering human action; the Dramatistic pentad and its ratios for discussing the attribution of motive continue to invite theoretical "ways of placement" as multifaceted as human motives themselves.Speaking of Burke's work in terms of praxis, however, at least in the term's contemporary critical usage,1 raises a question regarding a cognate concept that the idea of praxis entails: in what sense is Burke's pentadic grammar of action equipped to consider the habituated actions characteristic of human practice?Practice, as a conceptual descendant of Marxian praxis, retains a connection with what Marx called "human sensuous activity" (1968, 28-30).2 In its most general sense, practice refers to the regular and repeated activities of agents that, in their quotidian enactment, dialectically [End Page 255] constitute an agent's sense of self and of reality in relation to external conditions of existence. While the activities of agents will tend to reify the dominant external conditions in which agents act, these external conditions are nonetheless open to change inasmuch as the evolving practices of individuals might come to challenge them. This perspective of the determined, yet determining nature of human practice is aptly summarized in The German Ideology, where Marx and Engels famously argue that "circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances" (2000, 189).3 As Michel de Certeau's seminal studies of practice have demonstrated (de Certeau 1984; de Certeau, Giard, and Mayol 1998), the power of this relationship of mutual constitution between individuals and their worlds of external circumstances owes directly to the banality of the actions through which such constitution is accomplished—actions ranging from the way bread is served in a given household, to the way cosmetics are purchased in department stores, to the general "ways of operating" in urban spaces, including simply walking in one's own neighborhood (de Certeau, Giard, and Mayol 1998; Mayol 1998, 7-13). As Judith Butler very poignantly summarizes, it is through precisely such "embodied rituals of everydayness," however "taken-for-granted" they may be, that "a given culture produces and sustains belief in its own 'obviousness' " (1999, 113-14).The constitutive dynamics of such practical actions should surely figure prominently into any conception of Burke's work as praxis. Indeed, this dynamic is already implicit in the fact that, for Burke, it is only through the possibility of mutually transforming both ourselves and our worlds through actions material and symbolic that we might begin to move toward a better life. But while Dramatism and practice rest on similar perspectives of the dialectically constitutive nature of human action, several aspects of the grammar through which Burke investigates motive might appear to limit, or even to preclude, the Dramatistic examination of practice as a kind of motivated action. More specifically, Burke's consistent "anti-Behaviorist" emphasis on the conscious or purposive nature of action questions the extent to which Dramatism can account for the dispositional and habituated actions characteristic of practice, actions for which agents would be least able to articulate conscious purposes. To cast the issue in the context of my epigraph above... (shrink)

Written and directed by Paul-Thomas Anderson, Punch-Drunk Love exposes the complexity and kitsch superficialities of masculine gender constructions. The following essay provides a summary of gender theory in order to uncover and better understand the film's post-patriarchal vision of masculinity.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Questioning the Motives of Habituated Action:Burke and Bourdieu on PracticeDana AndersonThe British official's habit, in the Empire's remotest spots, of dressing for dinner is in effect the transporting of an idol, the vessel of a motive that has its sanctuary in the homeland.—Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives, 44In his recent Kenneth Burke and the Conversation after Philosophy, Timothy Crusius locates Burke in the context of "PostPhilosophical" thought (...) by describing Burke's expansive Dramatistic project as a praxis—as a program encompassing "any act whatsoever, including symbolic action (i.e., expression, whether artistic or discursive), in behalf of a better life." When praxis is conceived broadly as a dialectical perspective on human action—that agents and structures interact in mutually determining ways—the term becomes, in fact, an accurate summary of the entire Burkean corpus: "If we understand it as Burke does," Crusius continues, "all that he wrote is praxis" (1999, 198). This panoramic scope of Burke's dialectical inquiry is certainly one reason it remains rhetorical theory's perhaps most flexible and productive framework for considering human action; the Dramatistic pentad and its ratios for discussing the attribution of motive continue to invite theoretical "ways of placement" as multifaceted as human motives themselves.Speaking of Burke's work in terms of praxis, however, at least in the term's contemporary critical usage,1 raises a question regarding a cognate concept that the idea of praxis entails: in what sense is Burke's pentadic grammar of action equipped to consider the habituated actions characteristic of human practice?Practice, as a conceptual descendant of Marxian praxis, retains a connection with what Marx called "human sensuous activity" (1968, 28-30).2 In its most general sense, practice refers to the regular and repeated activities of agents that, in their quotidian enactment, dialectically [End Page 255] constitute an agent's sense of self and of reality in relation to external conditions of existence. While the activities of agents will tend to reify the dominant external conditions in which agents act, these external conditions are nonetheless open to change inasmuch as the evolving practices of individuals might come to challenge them. This perspective of the determined, yet determining nature of human practice is aptly summarized in The German Ideology, where Marx and Engels famously argue that "circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances" (2000, 189).3 As Michel de Certeau's seminal studies of practice have demonstrated (de Certeau 1984; de Certeau, Giard, and Mayol 1998), the power of this relationship of mutual constitution between individuals and their worlds of external circumstances owes directly to the banality of the actions through which such constitution is accomplished—actions ranging from the way bread is served in a given household, to the way cosmetics are purchased in department stores, to the general "ways of operating" in urban spaces, including simply walking in one's own neighborhood (de Certeau, Giard, and Mayol 1998; Mayol 1998, 7-13). As Judith Butler very poignantly summarizes, it is through precisely such "embodied rituals of everydayness," however "taken-for-granted" they may be, that "a given culture produces and sustains belief in its own 'obviousness' " (1999, 113-14).The constitutive dynamics of such practical actions should surely figure prominently into any conception of Burke's work as praxis. Indeed, this dynamic is already implicit in the fact that, for Burke, it is only through the possibility of mutually transforming both ourselves and our worlds through actions material and symbolic that we might begin to move toward a better life. But while Dramatism and practice rest on similar perspectives of the dialectically constitutive nature of human action, several aspects of the grammar through which Burke investigates motive might appear to limit, or even to preclude, the Dramatistic examination of practice as a kind of motivated action. More specifically, Burke's consistent "anti-Behaviorist" emphasis on the conscious or purposive nature of action questions the extent to which Dramatism can account for the dispositional and habituated actions characteristic of practice, actions for which agents would be least able to articulate conscious purposes. To cast the issue in the context of my epigraph above... (shrink)

The conventional approach to international development by civil society—that is, the installation of “Western” programs and institutions by “Western” groups in “underdeveloped” regions—has remained largely unchanged since global poverty reduction, whether for political or social justice motivations, gained prominence in public discourse after World War II. Yet poverty rates, literacy, life expectancy, and unemployment in one of the poorest regions of the world, sub-Saharan Africa, has remained the same if not worsened since the 1970s . And, still, the great Development (...) Project continues: Problems in under-resourced areas are identified by well-meaning people from well-resourced areas, proposals to solve those problems are crafted by project managers and submitted to government and nongovernmental agencies, and successful projects are implemented by other well-meaning people who, for the most part, honestly want to make a difference. This is the system in which Priya seems to .. (shrink)

Timothy Mahoney discovers and champions an ecologically benign account of Plato in opposition to my own critical analysis of the reason-centeredness, reason-nature dualism, and nature and body devaluation in the Platonic dialogues, in which multiple linked dualisms of reason and nature associated with systems of oppression provide major organizing principles for Platonic philosophy. I show first that Mahoney's criticisms of my interpretation involve some careless and mistaken readings of my own text. Second, I argue that Mahoney* (...) s account of nature is significantly different from Plato's. Mahoney's interpretation of Plato is an overly generous and idealized one which plays on the multiplicity and elasticity of the concept of nature and the notorious vagueness of the concept of participation to conflate, among other things, Plato's attitude to celestial nature with his attitude to biological nature. Mahoney's interpretation involves setting aside Plato's gender politics, playing down some of Plato's most offensive and revealing passages of earth disparagement, and ignoring the network of social meanings from which Plato's philosophy emerges. Finally, I give some reasons why Mahoney's accounts of participation and nature, even considered as a reworking of Plato, would be highly problematic as the foundation for an ecological philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 40-57 [Access article in PDF] Bogeyman: Benedict Anderson's "Derivative" Discourse Andrew Parker Between life and death, nationalism has as its own proper space the experience of haunting. There is no nationalism without some ghost. -Jacques Derrida, "Onto-Theology of National-Humanism" Writing a mere decade ago about Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, Timothy Brennan noted that "with the exception of some recent sociological works which use (...) literary theories, it is rare in English to see 'nation-ness' talked about as an imaginative vision--as a topic worthy of full fictional realization.... Even in the underrepresented branch of Third World English studies, one is likely to find discussions of race and colonialism, but not the 'nation' as such" [47]. If these sentences appear astonishing today--if over the past ten years we seem to have done little else but regard the nation as an imaginative construction--our sense of surprise may help to register how rapidly and profoundly Anderson's work has transformed the nature of literary and cultural studies. Viewing the modern nation primarily as an anthropological rather than political category, one that has less inherently to do with ideologies than with kinship, gender, and religion, Anderson argues in Imagined Communities for the irreducibility of material-cultural practices (what he memorably termed "print-capitalism") in creating and sustaining the "imagined community" of a nation whose citizens maintain "deep attachments" to each other in the absence of face-to-face contact: "the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion" [6]. Part of what makes such communities national, Anderson suggests, is a shared experience of simultaneity modeled on the spatio-temporal organization of newspapers and novels, for "these forms provided the technical means for 're-presenting' the kind of imagined community that is the nation" by furnishing their reader-consumers with a "complex gloss on the word 'meanwhile'" [25]. The "old-fashioned novel" especially, through its distinctive structures of address and omniscient point of view, becomes in this schema a "device" for generating a sociologically complex world populated by characters who, even though they "may be largely unaware of each other," nevertheless move together "calendrically through homogeneous, empty time"--a world, in short, that may be considered "a precise analogue of the idea of the nation, which also is conceived as a solid community moving steadily up (or down) history" [25-26]. As Jonathan Culler aptly summarizes in his contribution to this issue, Anderson thus takes the novel to be "a precondition for the nation" [24], "a formal condition of imagining the nation--a structural condition of possibility" [37]. Such strong emphasis on the novel as "a force for imagining the communities that are nations" certainly helps to explain why Imagined Communities so swiftly and pervasively became doxa in literary study--even if, as Culler elaborates, some of Anderson's readers have mistaken his argument for a stronger if less defensible [End Page 40] version that sees the novel as "a force in shaping or legitimating the nation" [37].While Anderson's analogy between novel and nation has been put by literary critics to a multitude of creative uses, what has been acknowledged much less commonly is that his literary interests are by no means exhausted by the paradigm for which he is best known. 1 The very title of his most recent book is, significantly as we shall see, a translated quotation from a novel, and he returns repeatedly for insights into the politics of literary form not only to Walter Benjamin but to certain exemplary "nationalist" novelists, José Rizal and Pramoedya Ananta Toer first and foremost. Where The Spectre of Comparisons is unusual in containing chapter-length readings of literary works (several of them reprinted from the earlier Language and Power), Imagined Communities was no stranger to detailed discussions of fiction. We may be struck, in fact, by the extent to which Anderson's theoretical and historical studies locate themselves persistently over time with reference to "literature... (shrink)