The Hiero is an account in Socratic conversational form of a meeting between Simonides the poet and Hiero the tyrant of Syracuse; it was written by Xenophon of Athens in the fourth century b.c., but is set in the fifth, when the historical Simonides and Hiero lived and met. The subject they are portrayed discussing is the relative happiness of the tyrant and private individual. Plato also makes this a topic of discussion in his Republic. However, whereas Plato writes a (...) regular Socratic dialogue, Xenophon does not, for though he represents his characters using Socratic conversation, Socrates himself does not appear; the characteros of the Hiero are Simonides and Hiero, poet and tyrant. This is the problem of the Hiero. It requires explanation. The action of the Hiero is initiated by Simonides and begins in the following way: Simonides the poet once came to the court of Hiero the tyrant. When they were both at leisure, Simonides said, ‘Would you be willing to tell me, Hiero, something you are likely to know better than I?’ And Hiero said, ‘What is it that I should know better than you, who are such a wise man?’ He replied, ‘I know that you were once a private individual and are now a tyrant. Since you have experienced both conditions, you are likely to know better than I how tyrannical life differs from private life in respect of men's pleasures and griefs’ . The identification of Simonides as a wise man who nevertheless seeks wisdom from others establishes his Socratic nature from the start. (shrink)

Objective: To compare the attitudes of patients with cancer toward making changes in lifestyle, according to their awareness of the diagnosis.Method: Personal interviews with 50 patients with breast cancer, 24 patients with prostate cancer and 50 patients with colorectal cancer were conducted in a cancer hospital in Athens, Greece.Analysis: Multiple logistic regression models were used to estimate the odds ratio as a measure of the association of the characteristics of participants with changes in lifestyle.Results: Overall, 22.6% of the patients were (...) not aware of the diagnosis. Among the changes in lifestyle, 41.1% reported changing their diet to a healthier one, 22.6% of the smokers reduced or stopped smoking and 13.7% added new physical activity. Compared with uninformed patients, those who were aware of the diagnosis, after adjusting for the confounding effect of educational status , were 2.5 times as likely to make dietary changes . Among the other characteristics under study, older patients were less likely to add new physical activity than younger ones , and newly diagnosed patients were more likely to stop or reduce smoking than patients with a diagnosis made more than 12 months previously.Conclusion: Patients with cancer are motivated to attempt changes in lifestyle and can benefit from more factual information about the diagnosis. (shrink)

"We must tell the truth," a favorite writer of mine once commented. "In Russia in our day, it is very rarely that one can meet a satisfied person. … No matter whom you listen to, everyone is dissatisfied about something, complaining, moaning. One will say that they're giving too much freedom, another will say that they're giving too little; one complains that the authorities do nothing, another that the authorities are doing too much; some find that stupidity has overpowered us, (...) others that we have become too clever; finally, still others participate in every kind of dirty business and laughingly add: 'Where have you seen such bad manners!?' Even filchers of state property, even they are dissatisfied, because soon there will be nothing more to steal. …". (shrink)

The use of dialogue in Xenophon's Hellenica is a phenomenon that needs explanation. Among previous historians, Herodotus had used it frequently but Thucydides hardly at all. In Xenophon's own time, Ctesias had used it but not the author of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia nor Ephorus to any great extent, as far as we can tell. Theopompus had plagiarized one of the Hellenica dialogues as well as adding others of his own. Generally, dialogue occurred less frequently in history writing than the set (...) speech. Yet there have been no serious studies of dialogue in the Hellenica, and where opinions are expressed they often vary. Sordi considered that the purpose of dialogue was decorative and agreed with the estimates of ancient critics about the liveliness of the conversations. Breitenbach also thought they had literary merit but suggested that their purpose was moral and didactic. Henry agreed that their purpose was didactic but thought them flat and lifeless and lacking in literary merit. Bruce thought their purpose was to illustrate personality. These differences of opinion should be settled. Moreover, Sordi's view that the content, style and purpose of dialogue is quite different from that of the set speech, and that this reflects a difference of genre within the Hellenica, dialogue being typical of memoir and the set speech of ‘serious’ history, cannot go unchallenged. Herodotus used dialogue in what was clearly not memoir. Further, there has been no serious attempt to place dialogue in the Hellenica in the tradition of dialogue writing in history or to examine its relationship to dramatic dialogue or the philosophical dialogue. This needs to be attempted. Such are the aims of this paper. (shrink)

V.K.: Vladislav Aleksandrovich, you have come a long way in your scientific career: from a student of the class of 1955 in the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow State University to a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head of the sector of the theory of knowledge and head of the division of epistemology and logic at the Institute of Philosophy of the RAS, and editor in chief of our country's leading philosophy journal Voprosy filosofii. Your field of research (...) is the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of science or, to be more specific, the cultural-historical analysis of knowledge from the point of view of the activity approach. As far as I know, the psychological aspect of the activity approach to the study of consciousness and knowledge was developed by the psychologists Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, his student Aleksei Nikolaevich Leontiev, Aleksandr Romanovich Luria, and Petr Iakovlevich Galperin. Leontiev, Luria, and Galperin were professors at the Philosophy Faculty of MGU at the time you were studying there. Tell me, did you develop your scientific interests under the influence of the Moscow school of cultural-historical psychology? (shrink)

Peut-on fonder logiquement différents mondes culturels et penser une culture spécifique à la raison universelle? Est-il possible de comprendre la raison à sujets multiples des divers mondes culturels comme la raison en tant que telle? Pour accéder au fondement de l’être rationnel en accord avec notre monde global et multiculturel, il faut que soit pensable une telle notion de raison pure à sujets multiples. L’unité logique d’une telle raison à sujets multiples n’est pas un simple principe, mais un dialogue principiel, (...) philosophique par nature. (shrink)

How could perceptual experiences reveal matters of essentiality? Answering this question is crucial for vindicating a thesis about the epistemic import of experience, commonly known as Revelation. The thesis comes in a weak and a strong version. Only on the strong one could it make up an authoritative piece of common sense. But this version also seems to demand too much of our experiences, namely that they can reveal essentiality. However, the impression that our experiences are not suited for this (...) turns out to be due to a non-mandatory assumption about how the revelation of essentiality would work. (shrink)

The king therefore went down to the village, since the Wise Men's rule did not permit him to spend more than a day with them, but Iarchas said to the messenger, ‘Damis too we consider worthy of the secrets here, so tell him to come, while you look after the others in the village.’ When Damis had come, the Wise Men formed their usual circle and gave Apollonius permission to put questions. So he asked what they thought the universe consisted (...) of, to which they replied, ‘Elements.’ ‘Four, do you think?’ he said. ‘Not four’, said Iarchas, ‘but five.’ ‘What could a fifth one be’, said Apollonius, ‘besides water, air, earth, and fire?’ ‘Ether’, said Iarchas, ‘which we must consider to be the origin (γένεσιν) of the gods. All that breathes air is mortal, but what breathes ether is immortal and divine.’ Next Apollonius asked which of the elements came into existence first. ‘All came together’, said the other, ‘since a living being is not born one piece at a time.’ ‘Am I to consider the universe living?’, asked Apollonius. ‘Yes, if you reason correctly’, said Iarchas, ‘since itself it gives life to everything.’ ‘Should we then call it female’, asked Apollonius, ‘or of the contrary, male sex?’ ‘Of both’, was the answer, ‘since it has intercourse with itself, and performs both the mother's and the father's role with respect to generation. It feels a desire for itself more intense than that of any two other beings, and this joins and unites it, and there is nothing unreasonable about its coalescence. And just as the action of the hands and feet in a living creature comes from mobility and the intelligence (διὰ τὸν ἐκείνου νοῦν) that causes it, so also we must suppose that, because of the intelligence of the universe (κατὰ τὸν ἐκείνου ϕοιτᾷ νοῦν), its parts accommodate themselves to everything that undergoes birth and conception. For instance, the sufferings resulting from drought arise from the mind of the universe, when justice is banished from mankind and treated with dishonor. And this being guides itself not by one hand alone but by many unseen ones that it uses; though too large to be restrained, it moves obediently and tractably.’The doctrine contained in this extract – the only passage ofThe Life of Apollonius of Tyanatreating matters of ‘cosmogony’ – could be summarized in the six following propositions. First, the universe consists of five, not four elements, the fifth being the ether, the γένεσις θεῶν. Just as mortals breathe air, gods breathe ether. Secondly, there is no ‘primordial element’; all five came into being simultaneously. Thirdly, the universe is a living being. In the fourth place, the universe is both male and female at the same time. In the fifth place, as the universe is androgynous it feels desire (ἔρως) towards itself and it is this desire that makes it whole and united. And finally, the passion of the universe for itself is governed by Intelligence (ἐκείνου νοῦς). (shrink)

Le volume que nous présentons ici est le résultat d’un travail collectif entrepris pour la première fois exclusivement sur la notion de reprise, telle que l’a proposée Eric Weil (1904-1977), par des chercheurs venus du Portugal, de France, du Brésil, d’Italie, de Roumanie, du Burkina Faso et du Chili. Né en Allemagne, Eric Weil a étu­dié avec Ernst Cassirer qui l’a dirigé sur des recherches concernant les philosophes de la Renaissance, comme Pietro Pomponazzi et Marsile Ficin. Naturalisé fran...

Prominent thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas and Michael Sandel are warning that biomedical enhancements will undermine fundamental political values. Yet whether biomedical enhancements will undermine such values depends on how biomedical enhancements will function, how they will be administered and to whom. Since only few enhancements are obtainable, it is difficult to tell whether these predictions are sound. Nevertheless, such warnings are extremely valuable. As a society we must, at the very least, be aware of developments that could have harmful (...) consequences. Indeed, if important values were to be jeopardized, we should take appropriate measures to protect them. This paper focuses on four central values: solidarity, personal responsibility, equality and autonomy. It delineates the conditions under which biomedical enhancements would undermine these values. It also details the circumstances under which these values would be unaffected by enhancements as well as those under which they would be promoted. Specifying these conditions is valuable; it would enable society to prepare appropriate ethical guidelines and policy responses in advance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Silent Screams; Lily's StoryEva V. Regel"Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated, the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the scream, healing can begin."—Danielle Bernock, "Emerging Wings; A true story of Lies, Pain and the Love that Heals."Some patients stay with you long after they leave. (...) They appear in your mind when you walk by the hospital room they occupied or when someone mentions their name. There is [End Page 19] something about the narrative of their life and illness that makes you hold on to them. Lily is one such patient for me.Lily was a 45-year-old paraplegic woman who was well known to many providers in the hospital. She had a complex trauma history (childhood physical and sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, domestic violence), homelessness, and multiple psychiatric admissions. In addition, she had a complex medical history, including chronic pain issues and substance use disorder. Many providers considered her to be a "very difficult" or "challenging" patient because she would "dictate" her care, had low distress tolerance and would have explosive angry outbursts requiring frequent visits from Police and Security. To top it off, after months of a challenging stay on a unit, she would eventually leave against medical advice. Everyone involved in her care felt that discharge to a safe setting such as a skilled nursing facility would be her best option. Yet, she was a very "hard" sell to any facility because of her behavioral issues, relatively young age, extensive history of drug use, and medication non-compliance. Even though the unit I worked in was familiar with "difficult" patients like Lily, the floor staff was anxious and concerned about the effect Lily would have on patients, staff, and providers. The combined anticipatory anxiety worsened after we were told that Lily left against medical advice three days before her admission to our unit as a reaction to the staff's attempt to develop a behavioral plan.I remember the day I met Lily. I was working as the clinical social worker on the floor, helping patients with adjustment to coping with hospitalization, addressing mental health issues that usually exacerbate in the acute care setting, and providing support to the staff caring for a psychosocially complex patient population. It was the second day after Lily arrived on the floor, and Police and Security had already come up three times. As I walked out of another patient's room, a bedside nurse stopped me in the hallway. "Can you please talk to her? … Please, just talk to her, or sit with her. I just need a break. I have been in that room since I started my shift. I am exhausted." The nurse had an exasperated and pleading look, and even though I was rushing to a meeting, I decided to meet with Lily instead. When I walked into her room, I saw a thin, small-framed woman with brown hair pulled back into a tight bun. She had freckles peppered all over her round face, neck, and chest. Her features were delicate and small, and her almond-shaped green eyes were her most prominent feature. She was wearing a white tee and jeans. She was sitting in her wheelchair; her makeup bag was lying on the table next to her. I introduced myself and my role on the team, trying not to stumble under a very heavy glare. "Tell them to leave me alone. That nurse is always in my room. Spying. I might not be able to walk, but I can still use my hands. I can call if I need help."And so I did. And when I came back, Lily and I talked a little about her life. And the next day, we talked a little more. And then again. Lily was giving me small glimpses of who she was and the events in her life. Then, one day, in the middle of the conversation about her day and telling me how much she hated to be confined to her hospital room, she looked... (shrink)

Research on bounded rationality has two cultures, which I call ‘idealistic’ and ‘pragmatic’. Technically, the cultures differ on whether they build models based on normative axioms or empirical facts, assume that people's goal is to optimize or to satisfice, do not or do model psychological processes, let parameters vary freely or fix them, aim at explanation or prediction and test models from one or both cultures. Each culture tells a story about people's rationality. The story of the idealistic culture is (...) frustrating, with people in principle being able to know what they should do, but in practice systematically failing to do it. This story makes one hide in books for intellectual solace or surrender to the designs of someone smarter. The story of the pragmatic culture is empowering: If people are educated to use the right tool in the right situation, they do well. (shrink)

In this article, I consider a set of contextual questions related to the social and economic influences on the construction and use of Capernaum’s great limestone synagogue, and ask what these influences might tell us about Jewish–Christian relations in this village during the fifth and sixth centuries CE. After a survey of current scholarship, I address issues of method and engage in the interpretation of the relevant primary sources, some of which have only very recently been discov­ered, while others have (...) been overlooked in discussion of the question, or are deserving of reinterpret­ation. Building upon previous proposals, and in places revising them, I argue that we should see a dynamic interplay at work between local and non-local sources of funding for the synagogue and an intensely interactive and relational setting for the town’s Jews and Christians. (shrink)

This study looks at the lives of the most famous "wild children" of eighteenth-century Europe, showing how they open a window onto European ideas about the potential and perfectibility of mankind. Julia V. Douthwaite recounts reports of feral children such as the wild girl of Champagne (captured in 1731 and baptized as Marie-Angelique Leblanc), offering a fascinating glimpse into beliefs about the difference between man and beast and the means once used to civilize the uncivilized. A variety of educational experiments (...) failed to tame these feral children by the standards of the day. After telling their stories, Douthwaite turns to literature that reflects on similar experiments to perfect human subjects. Her examples range from utopian schemes for progressive childrearing to philosophical tales of animated statues, from revolutionary theories of regenerated men to Gothic tales of scientists run amok. Encompassing thinkers such as Rousseau, Sade, Defoe, and Mary Shelley, Douthwaite shows how the Enlightenment conceived of mankind as an infinitely malleable entity, first with optimism, then with apprehension. Exposing the darker side of eighteenth-century thought, she demonstrates how advances in science gave rise to troubling ethical concerns, as parents, scientists, and politicians tried to perfect mankind with disastrous results. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to offer a general outline of my views on the origin and evolution of language. I do not pretend in any way to a completely new conception of language evolution. It seems to me that all the most important and productive hypotheses about the origin of language have already been made before, and it is only a matter of putting the pieces of the puzzle together correctly. As far as I can see it, the evolution (...) of language is directly related to the embedded and embodied emotional types, which served as the basis for the subsequent categorization of perceived objects, and thus laid the ground for the formation of first an internal language (of thought), and then an external verbal language. Consistent with this, the paper is organized as follows. In the Introduction I briefly describe the problem I am facing in this article and outline a plan for solving it. Next section comprises a survey of relevant empirical findings related primarily to the processing and understanding of abstract terms and concepts. In my view, it supports the idea of the close connection of abstract terms proceeding, and thus language comprehension, with emotional states. The third section provides relevant theoretical considerations of the relationship between emotions, cognition, and language. Consistently considering various theories of emotions and concepts of language formation, I pay attention to the connection between affective states and language as a sign system. In the fourth section, my views are presented directly. In so doing, I illustrate my approach with a telling example that shows how, in the course of evolution, embedded and embodied emotional responses and reactions could become the building blocks first for the internal language of thought, and then for the external natural language. (shrink)

The health of a nation tells much about the nature of a social contract between citizen and state. The way that health care is organised, and the degree to which it is equitably accessible, constitutes a manifestation of the effects of moments and events in that country's history. Research around health inequalities often focuses on demonstrating current conditions, with little attention paid to how the conditions of inequality have been achieved and sustained. This article presents a novel approach to inequalities (...) research that focuses on examining powerful historical discourses as legitimising processes that serve to sustain unequal conditions. The use of this Foucauldian historical genealogical approach in a study of the Irish health care system is explored and proposed as a novel approach to the research of health inequities. (shrink)

John Howard Yoder's reclamation of Christ's law of love as normative for Christian ethics makes important contributions to the field, but this pacifist legacy is tainted by his sexual violence against women. Prominent "witness" and "feminist" ethicists either defend or condemn Yoder, reflecting retributive approaches to wrongdoing. Restorative justice models—with their emphasis on truth-telling, particularity, and communal responses to violence—illuminate common ground between these often antagonistic groups of ethicists, whose specific resources are needed to "do justice" to Yoder's legacy. Yoder (...) claimed that "Christian identity itself calls for feminist engagement," but he failed to fully develop this claim in his theology or embody it in his life. By collaborating in such a truly feminist pacifist politics, witness and feminist ethicists not only strengthen their own internal projects with respect to the church's mission and the promotion of women's flourishing but also more effectively address sexual violence. (shrink)

The idea of the constructed character of social reality implies human contribution to institutional arrangements and cultural patterns that determine the shape of collective existence. The article examines the specific features of social construction seen and studied in phenomenological approach by A. Schutz, P. Berger, Th. Luckmann. The concept reveals significance of daily cognitive style which enables people to structure and understand the world they share with others, escaping situations fraught with gaps of meanings and anomy. The author of the (...) article analyzes the process of social construction, distinguishing it from imaginary building of reality that goes beyond the existed order. Reality of daily life is compared with fictional society represented in J.L. Borges’ “Lottery in Babylon”. Telling about the social construction as it may be, the story demonstrates the similarities between the mental procedures that underlie real and antiutopian routines. The article also centers on peculiarities of phenomenological beholder’s attitude towards sociality. On the one hand, it tends to be free from any theoretical abstractions, imaginary constructions or critical destruction of reality, on the other - inclines to transcend the reified forms of social being and engenders a certain critical message. (shrink)

Clinical ethics takes on a special cast in a rehabilitation clinic for psychosis where many patients come from severely disadvantaged backgrounds and many suffer from fluctuating decisional capacity. This paper illustrates several ethical issues—truth telling and partiality, prescribing concealed medication, questionable billing practices, industry collaboration, limits of confidentiality, grounds for abandonment and the primacy of autonomy—in the hope that discussing such matters will lead to a clearer framework for work with this population.

This is a remarkably well-written, accurate, and understanding survey of philosophy in the West from Augustine to Ockham. The author carefully traces the influence of Greek philosophy and of the three great religious traditions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, on the great medieval scholastics. Prof. Weinberg's book is a real contribution toward a sympathetic grasp of a tradition which he tells us must be retained and reexamined incessantly if we are to learn from the past.—V. J. P.

Mr. Berlin offers, with characteristic brilliance and insight, a compelling indictment of the modern tendency to deny the relevance of moral considerations to history: to minimize the influence of human individuals upon--and their responsibility for--historical events, as well as to eliminate evaluation and moral judgment from the writing of history. History, it is maintained, neither can be nor should try to be "objective," i.e., free from evaluations, in the way that physics is "objective." Mr. Berlin's points are not always clearly (...) organized, but they are sensible and telling; his running critique of the prevalent naive "scientism" of contemporary social scientists is especially effective.--V. C. C. (shrink)

In the mushrooming literature on the late Heidegger, Pugliese's book stands with the distinction of an immense and sometimes almost exasperating amount of learned notes and excurses [[sic]]. On the other hand, the speculative core of the work is a highly original one. It treats the famous "Kehre" in the continuity of Heidegger's thought and proves quite convincingly that it can be organically developed from the original thesis of "historicity" as it stands in Sein und Zeit. Making use of the (...) earliest texts as well as of a number of unpublished lecture-notes, Pugliese tries to back those interpretations which claim that the "Kehre" is indeed a turning-point in the history of metaphysics--even though it represents no break or revolution in Heidegger's own thought. This is a difficult book but fortunately devoid of the affected mannerism of so many Heidegger admirers, and a telling example of the frequent success of French and Spanish "translations" of German speculation.--M. J. V. (shrink)

This remarkable collection of period photographs details day-to-day life and changing times in the Deep South. Draffus Lamar Hightower, 1899-1993, spent most of his life in Barbour County, Alabama. For many years he was the owner of a Chevrolet dealership, but he had another occupation as well. From his youth, he was fascinated with photography, and for fifty years he experimented with the craft both technically and artistically. Hightower, while participating fully in the 20th century, was also acutely aware of (...) the passing of the heritage of the last one. From the early 1920s to the late 1960s, he made thousands of negatives of people, events, landscapes, objects, and buildings in Barbour County. His photographs are reminiscent of the documentary work of Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, and other great 20th-century American photographers. Hightower created an incredibly complete and vivid record of the life of a rural Alabama county during a period of profound change-documenting everything from birthday parties and political rallies to farm scenes and the demolition of historic buildings so that future generations would not forget the world of their forebears. In 1990, Michael Thomason, historian and photographic archivist, began the long process of reviewing Hightower's collection of photographs, interviewing family and friends, and salvaging and printing the negatives, which by that time had begun to deteriorate. Thomason restored and printed 195 photographs and prepared accompanying essays that not only reveal the technical details of Hightower's labor of love but also tell the story of the human and economic changes in Barbour County during this period. (shrink)

Cet article explore le potentiel non-institutionnel du concept de communauté tel qu'il a été formulé dans la philosophie française contemporaine. Une attention particulière est accordée à l'expérience historique, particulièrement dans un monde en voie de globalisation. Les fantasmes de l'historique qui témoignent d'une telle expérience sont estimés constitutifs d'une communauté anonyme qui n'est définie ni par une identité fixe ni par une substance donnée. En dépit de son anonymat, la communauté exige d'être exprimée et traduite, en produisant, pour reprendre le (...) terme kantien, diverses "présentations comme-si.". (shrink)

Cet article explore le potentiel non-institutionnel du concept de communauté tel qu'il a été formulé dans la philosophie française contemporaine. Une attention particulière est accordée à l'expérience historique, particulièrement dans un monde en voie de globalisation. Les fantasmes de l'historique qui témoignent d'une telle expérience sont estimés constitutifs d'une communauté anonyme qui n'est définie ni par une identité fixe ni par une substance donnée. En dépit de son anonymat, la communauté exige d'être exprimée et traduite, en produisant, pour reprendre le (...) terme kantien, diverses "présentations comme-si.". (shrink)

Ever so often in the UK, there is a flurry of activity around the information requirements of donor-conceived individuals. In April 2013, it was the launch of a report from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics that brought the issue back to public consciousness.1Since 1991, information about treatment with donor gametes or embryos has been collected by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority . Since then, over 35 000 donor-conceived individuals have been born through treatment in licensed clinics. Medical information and (...) information about donors’ appearance are collected by clinics, and donors are encouraged to put together a ‘pen portrait’ giving information about themselves for any resulting children. One focus of the new report is on improving the quality and quantity of information available about donors.Traditionally, gamete and embryo donations were practised on an anonymous basis, so that those born as a result of such donation may receive only non-identifying information about the donor when they reach the age of 18 . This changed in 2005 when donor anonymity was removed so that anyone donating after that time could be identified to individuals born as a result of the treatment. Those who have donated in the past are also able to reregister as identifiable donors. Much concern was expressed at the time that this would exacerbate the shortage of donors although the Nuffield Council on Bioethics reports that, 8 years on, those clinics that actively recruit donors appear to be successful in finding sufficient donors. The report recommends that the option of anonymous donation should not be reintroduced.A big issue of debate in the UK has been, and continues to be, whether parents should tell their …. (shrink)

The cinematographic successes of Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan and Lars Von Trier's Manderlay are contingent upon the palpability of tension and attraction created by their respective, many racial and sexual relations, thus both films aggressively bring them to the fore by excessively rehearsing old stereotypes and taboos, and inverting the expected agents therein, to reveal their persistent, still-relevant power. Both films similarly test our convictions and squeamishness, but do so from entirely different moral stances. Brewer explores how an act (...) of charity and humanitarian openness can save lives, literally and spiritually. Von Trier explores how similar acts of openness can smother appreciation of the other and reenact the worst oppression. The former tells a persuasive story with wide appeal, while the latter tells a story that will make even the most desensitized viewers cringe. Using these pictures as paradigms, is either approach better for bringing prejudice into the light for thought and film? (shrink)

Ever so often in the UK, there is a flurry of activity around the information requirements of donor-conceived individuals. In April 2013, it was the launch of a report from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics that brought the issue back to public consciousness.1Since 1991, information about treatment with donor gametes or embryos has been collected by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Since then, over 35 000 donor-conceived individuals have been born through treatment in licensed clinics. Medical information and information (...) about donors’ appearance are collected by clinics, and donors are encouraged to put together a ‘pen portrait’ giving information about themselves for any resulting children. One focus of the new report is on improving the quality and quantity of information available about donors.Traditionally, gamete and embryo donations were practised on an anonymous basis, so that those born as a result of such donation may receive only non-identifying information about the donor when they reach the age of 18. This changed in 2005 when donor anonymity was removed so that anyone donating after that time could be identified to individuals born as a result of the treatment. Those who have donated in the past are also able to reregister as identifiable donors. Much concern was expressed at the time that this would exacerbate the shortage of donors although the Nuffield Council on Bioethics reports that, 8 years on, those clinics that actively recruit donors appear to be successful in finding sufficient donors. The report recommends that the option of anonymous donation should not be reintroduced.A big issue of debate in the UK has been, and continues to be, whether parents should tell their …. (shrink)

The constantly accelerating progress of contemporary natural science is indissolubly associated with the development and use of mathematics and with the processes of mathematical modeling of the phenomena of nature. The essence of this diverse and highly fertile interaction of mathematics and natural science and the dialectics of this interaction can only be disclosed through analysis of the nature of theoretical notions in general. Today, above all in the ranks of materialistically minded researchers, it is generally accepted that theory possesses (...) a value of its own. Contrary to positivist concepts of the nature of our knowledge, the meaning and significance of theory do not consist merely of the recording of experimental data, their classification and notation in abbreviated form. The meaning of theory is considerably more significant and is revealed, above all, in its explanatory and predictive functions. Contemporary theoretical knowledge is quite advanced and comprises a highly complex system, relatively self-contained and capable of internal development. Mathematics is the most interesting and distinctive phenomenon in the system of theoretical knowledge, in the system of science in general. It is in its dialectical development that the internal force and dynamics of the development of theory, in the very broadest sense of that word, find expression. Paul Lafargue tells us that Karl Marx held that "science only attains perfection when it succeeds in making use of mathematics" . In many fields of research the formulation of new ideas and concepts rests upon mathematics, its concepts and notions, and "is suggested" by the latter. "Mathematics," writes F. Dyson, "is the main source of the notions and principles out of which new theories are created" . The basic significance of mathematics to theory has been noted by outstanding thinkers over the course of the entire history of development of science. Today the expressive phrase, "the mathematization of knowledge," has come into general currency as a description of the principal direction of growth of theoretical notions in natural science. However, with respect to the growth of modern theoretical physics in general, the statement that it develops primarily by the method of the mathematical hypothesis has general validity. For example, the principal findings and discoveries of quantum theory and particle physics, starting from the corpuscularwave dualism and terminating with the omega minus hyperon and hypothetical quarks, were obtained or made "at the tip of a mathematician's pen.". (shrink)

In his 2011 article “Global Bifurcation: The Decision Window” Ervin Laszlo notes that “we have reached a watershed in our social and cultural evolution. The sciences of systems tell us that when complex open systems … approach a condition of critical instability, they face a moment of truth: they either transform or break down.” In this article we provide our own vision of this Global Bifurcation. This work stems naturally from the research highlighted in the article titled “Transition to Crisis-Free (...) Development: A Myth or Reality?” that was published in World Futures in 2014. In our new article, we move forward suggesting that crises-free development is not only possible but is also very likely, and paradoxically the world is now going through the most challenging transition from one paradigm of development to another. Based on our previous research as well as the findings of the Fifth Report to the Club of Rome, we suggest reasons for the development and implementation of a megaproject featuring a new model of life so as to make the paradigm shift possible, exclude negative implications of the upcoming technological “singularity,” and foster the achievement of an objectively defined goal of development, and this should reasonably require support from and direct involvement of the United Nations. The mechanism for implementation of this model suggests coordinating interests of the government, society, and business communities on each level with interests of particular individuals. (shrink)

In 2035 global egg demand will have risen 50% from 1985. Because we are not able to tell in the egg whether it will become a male or female chick, billons of one day-old male chicks will be killed. International research initiatives are underway in this area, and governments encourage the development of an alternative with the goal of eliminating the culling of day-old male chicks. The Netherlands holds an exceptional position in the European egg trade, but is also the (...) only country in the European Union where the downside of the egg sector, the practice of killing day-old male chicks, is a recurrent subject of societal debate. ‘Preventing the killing of young animals’ and ‘in ovo sex determination’ are the two alternative approaches available to solve this problem. It is clear that both approaches solve the problem of killing day-old male chicks, either by keeping them alive or by preventing them from living, but they also raise a lot of new animal welfare-related dilemmas. A thorough analysis was undertaken of these dilemmas and the results are presented in this article. The analysis resulted in an ethical framework based on the two main approaches in bioethics: a consequentialist approach and a deontological approach. This ethical framework was used to develop an online survey administered to ascertain Dutch public opinion about these alternative approaches. The results show that neither alternative will be fully accepted, or accepted by more than half of Dutch society. However, the survey does provide an insight into the motives that are important for people’s choice: food safety and a good treatment of animals. Irrespective of the approach chosen, these values should be safeguarded and communicated clearly. (shrink)

The concept of free will is fraught with controversy, as readers of this volume likely know. Philosophers disagree about what free will is, whether we have it, what mitigates or destroys it, and what it's good for. Indeed, philosophers even disagree about how to fix the referent of the term 'free will' for purposes of describing and exploring these disagreements. What one person considers a reasonably neutral working definition of 'free will' is often considered question-begging or otherwise misguided by another. (...) Such disputes make it difficult to summarize the problem of free will, roughly the debate over the nature and existence of free will, in a clear and uncontentious way. In generic terms, however, the two basic solutions to the problem of free will are free-willism, the view that we have free will, and free-will denialism, i.e. the view that we do not have free will. As stated here, neither denialism nor free-willism constitutes a complete solution to the problem of free will; to be complete, a proposed solution must also tell us a convincing story about what free will is and that, as it turns out, is a very difficult task indeed. One historically popular way of approaching the problem of free will is to ask about the relationship between free will and determinism: "Does free will stand in relation R to determinism: yes or no?" This is just a template for a question, of course. To transform this template-question into a substantive question with a clear meaning, we need to flesh out the template's free-will relatum, its determinism relatum, and give a precise value to relation R. There is, however, no uncontroversial way to do this. In addition to the standard difficulties raised by fixing the referent of 'free will', philosophers hold radically different views about what is-or should be-meant by 'determinism', Shabo ), and they identify relations which are as substantively different as correlation and causation when characterizing relation R. In practical terms, then, it may be best to think of the problem of determinism as a loose collection of disagreements about how to best spell out and answer the template-question, and how asking and answering such questions would help us to solve the problem of free will. (shrink)

In the mushrooming literature on the late Heidegger, Pugliese's book stands with the distinction of an immense and sometimes almost exasperating amount of learned notes and excurses [[sic]]. On the other hand, the speculative core of the work is a highly original one. It treats the famous "Kehre" in the continuity of Heidegger's thought and proves quite convincingly that it can be organically developed from the original thesis of "historicity" as it stands in Sein und Zeit. Making use of the (...) earliest texts as well as of a number of unpublished lecture-notes, Pugliese tries to back those interpretations which claim that the "Kehre" is indeed a turning-point in the history of metaphysics--even though it represents no break or revolution in Heidegger's own thought. This is a difficult book but fortunately devoid of the affected mannerism of so many Heidegger admirers, and a telling example of the frequent success of French and Spanish "translations" of German speculation.--M. J. V. (shrink)