In Wrong Medicine, Lawrence J. Schneiderman, M.D., and Nancy S. Jecker, Ph.D., address issues that have occupied the media and the courts since the time of Karen Ann Quinlan. The authors examine the ethics of cases in which medical treatment is offered--or mandated--even if a patient lacks the capacity to appreciate its benefit or if the treatment will still leave a patient totally dependent on intensive medical care. In exploring these timely issues Schneiderman and Jecker reexamine the doctor-patient relationship and (...) call for a restoration of common sense and reality to what we expect from medicine. They discuss economic, historical, and demographic factors that affect medical care and offer clear definitions of what constitutes futile medical treatment. And they address such topics as the limits on unwanted treatment, the shift from the "Age of Physician Paternalism" to the "Age of Patient Autonomy," health care rationing, and the adoption of new ethical standards. (shrink)

Recent policy developments in the area of livestock husbandry have suggested that, from the perspective of optimizing animal welfare, new animal husbandry systems should be developed that provide opportunities for livestock animals to be raised in environments where they are permitted to engage in “natural behavior.” It is not known whether consumers regard animal husbandry issues as important, and whether they differentiate between animal husbandry and other animal welfare issues. The responsibility for the development of such systems is allocated jointly (...) between farmers, regulators, different actors in the food chain, and consumers. This research focuses on understanding consumer attitudes and preferences regarding the development and introduction of such systems, to ensure that they are acceptable to consumers as well as producers, regulators, and scientists. Consumer perceptions of animal welfare and animal husbandry practices were evaluated using quantitative consumer survey, which focused on two animal husbandry issues – farmed pigs and farmed fish. Following pilot work, 1000 representative Dutch consumers were sampled about their attitudes to either pig or fish husbandry. The results indicated that consumers think about animal welfare in terms of two broad categories related to their health and living environment, but do not think about welfare issues at a more detailed level. Greater concern was expressed about the welfare of pigs compared to fish. Consumer trust in labeling also emerged as an important issue, since consumers need to trust different food chain actors with responsibility for promoting animal welfare, and are reluctant to consider the details of animal husbandry systems. As a consequence, a transparent, enforceable, and traceable monitoring system for animal welfare friendly products is likely to be important for consumers. (shrink)

Health care services increasingly face patient populations with high levels of ethnic and cultural diversity. Cultures are associated with distinctive ways of life; concepts of personhood; value systems; and visions of the good that affect illness experience, help seeking, and clinical decision-making. Cultural differences may impede access to health care, accurate diagnosis, and effective treatment. The clinical encounter, therefore, must recognize relevant cultural differences, negotiate common ground in terms of problem definition and potential solutions, accommodate differences that are associated with (...) good clinical outcomes, and manage irresolvable differences. Clinical attention to and respect for cultural difference (a) can provide experiences of recognition that increase trust in and commitment to the institutions of the larger society, (b) can help sustain a cultural community through recognition of its distinct language, knowledge, values, and healing practices, and (c) to the extent that it is institutionalized, can contribute to building a pluralistic civil society. (shrink)

A brief discussion of the origins of Marx's philosophy.--R. L. J.

A social realist discussion of art.--R. L. J.

This detailed monograph deals with such problems as "The Unity of the Finite and Infinite," "Logic and the Concept of Function," "Mathematical Logic," "Formal and Dialectical Logic." The author mentions the work of Reichenbach and Lukasiewicz.--R. L. J.

The author sets out to show the "unique features of the idealistic dialectical method with its positive and negative elements, in order to show the various, often contradictory tendencies which are contained in them." Designed for "students, teachers and a broad circle of intellectuals." --R. L. J.

Examining those risk and benefit perceptions utilised in the formation of attitudes and opinions about emerging technologies such as nanotechnology can be useful for both industry and policy makers involved in their development, implementation and regulation. A broad range of different socio-psychological and affective factors may influence consumer responses to different applications of nanotechnology, including ethical concerns. A useful approach to identifying relevant consumer concerns and innovation priorities is to develop predictive constructs which can be used to differentiate applications of (...) nanotechnology in a way which is meaningful to consumers. This requires elicitation of attitudinal constructs from consumers, rather than measuring attitudes assumed to be important by the researcher. Psychological factors influencing societal responses to 15 applications of nanotechnology drawn from different application areas were identified using repertory grid method in conjunction with generalised Procrustes analysis. The results suggested that people differentiate nanotechnology applications based on the extent to which they perceive them to be beneficial, useful, necessary and important. The benefits may be offset by perceived risks focusing on fear and ethical concerns. Compared to an earlier expert study on societal acceptance of nanotechnology, consumers emphasised ethical issues compared to experts but had less concern regarding potential physical contact with the product and time to market introduction. Consumers envisaged fewer issues with several applications compared to experts, in particular food applications. (shrink)

The literature on public perceptions of, and attitudes towards, nanotechnology used in the agrifood sector is reviewed. Research into consumer perceptions and attitudes has focused on general applications of nanotechnology, rather than within the agrifood sector. Perceptions of risk and benefit associated with different applications of nanotechnology, including agrifood applications, shape consumer attitudes, and acceptance, together with ethical concerns related to environmental impact or animal welfare. Attitudes are currently moderately positive across all areas of application. The occurrence of a negative (...) or positive incident in the agri-food sector may crystallise consumer views regarding acceptance or rejection of nanotechnology products. •Acceptance of agrifood nanotechnology based on perceptions of risk, benefit and ethics.•Attitudes towards nanotechnology in general are currently moderately positive.•Occurrence of a major nanotechnology-related "event" may crystallise consumer attitude. (shrink)

The question I shall deal with is often put in the form “What is the meaning of life?” I shall consider this form later on, but I do not want to begin with it, partly because it assumes that life has a meaning which can be called “the” meaning, an assumption which will have to be looked into, and partly because I want to start with something which looks very much more vague.

Reale points out that the good and the demiurgic intelligence are radically distinct, a conclusion denied by J. Seifert in the last paper of the book. Fourteen characteristics of the idea of the good are listed by T. A. Szlezák. It is obvious, he argues, that the theory of principles of Plato’s unwritten doctrines is not identical with what Republic 6 and 7 say about the good, but there is no real opposition. In the next paper, however, H. W. Ausland, (...) after a sober evaluation of the esoteric teachings, suspects that Reale and Szlezák succumb to a certain romanticism. According to L. Brisson, the good belongs to the sphere of being, even if it is not being ; it is not in every way beyond being. Plotinus was the first to place it above being. M. Erler shows what must be the attitude of the philosopher with regard to the information orally received by him. Although Plato did not want to define the good, he pointed out several of its characteristics. The good, M. Migliori notes, combines in itself beauty, proportion, and unity. The Philebus pursues the doctrine of the Republic and goes into the direction of the unwritten doctrines. The ultimate reality, however, is beyond our understanding. E. Cattanei attempts to explain how for Plato mathematics is a way of access to the knowledge of the good. R. Ferber, on the other hand, stresses that Plato nowhere directly says that the essence of the good is the one. Beauty, symmetry, and truth are not the good itself. According to C. Gill, Gadamer demystified the idea of the good, a view which shows some common ground with the position of analytical philosophy: the good is not a transcendent entity. M. Vegetti, however, upholds the transcendent character of the good as a cause of being. G. A. Press argues that over the past hundred years Plato was considered a dogmatic philosopher, and it was believed that the leading speaker in the dialogues states Plato’s own views, but the situation is far more complex. Plato wants us to acquire a vision rather than propositional knowledge. The idea of the good should not be accorded a special position. C. Rowe tries to demystify some current interpretations, whereas F. Ferrari insists on the causality of the good, and sees Plato’s teaching as the origin of the entire tradition of negative theology. Yet some texts give the impression that the good belongs to the ontological order. C. Porebski reminds us that problems of ethics are the starting point of what Plato says about the good in the Republic. According to F. Trabattoni, Aristotle’s description of Plato’s theory of principles is wrong and his philosophy differs fundamentally from Plato’s. The School of Tübingen is a prisoner of Aristotle’s interpretation. Plato’s reluctance to describe the good in detail may mark the beginning of a skeptic trend in the Academy. The Parmenides tells us, E. Berti says, that one has first to remove all hypotheses before a definition of the Good can be given. E. Moutsopoulos draws attention to some simplistic and wrong qualifications of Plato’s thought as related to idealism and mentions Kant and Hegel’s attitudes with regard to Platonism. J. F. Crosby points to a clear leaving behind of the Socratic “no one knowingly does wrong” in the Alcibiades 216b: as Plato explains in the Protagoras, one may live according to one’s lower appetite or follow the insight of the rational soul. G. Santos makes a strong stand in favor of the identity of goodness and reality. L. P. Gerson examines theories of Platos’s development: there is no evidence of a theory of the form of the good earlier than the Republic. Aristotle, J. Dudley writes, upheld an ethical ideal resembling that of Plato, substituting the contemplation of the unmoved mover for that of the idea of the good. In the last paper J. Seifert argues that Plato identified the demiurge and the good. (shrink)

The word τερθρεία, which L. and S.8 derived from τερατεία and translated ‘the use of claptraps’, is perhaps best known from its occurrence in Isocrates , but the new edition has spread the net more widely, citing Philo, Philodemus, Proclus, Galen, Dion. Hal., and giving its meaning as ‘the use of extreme subtlety, hair-splitting, formal pedantry’. This agrees better with the gloss / κενοσπονδία attributed to Orus of Miletus in Et. Mag. 753. 4. Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Plutarch each use τερθρεύομαι (...) once. In the Helen Isocrates, condemning the futile ingenuity of the Sophists in writing encomia on such unworthy objects as salt and humble-bees, holds that such tours de force are immoral, as tending to deceive, representing a literary form of the vice περιεργία. Τερθρεία, then, should take its place, as a recognized term for the idle over-elaboration of a banausic theme, in the vocabulary of Greek literary criticism. It does not, however, appear in Rhys Roberts's ‘Glossary of Greek Rhetoric’ appended to his edition of D.H.'s On Literary Composition. No doubt this is because τερθρεία does not occur in this or any other of D.H.'s Scripta Rhetorica. But D.H. himself uses the word in Antiq. Rom. . Similarly J. F. Lockwood does not discuss the term in his lists in C.Q. xxxi and xxxii, where he collects words which are used metaphorically by D.H. in literary criticism. The metaphor in τερθρεία is certainly not obvious; but the literary sense must have involved some transference of meaning, for it is not to be expected that the word τερθρεία sprang, in full panoply of critical significance, from the brain of the Muse of Rhetoric; and it is part of the purpose of this paper to point the way to an explanation, or at least to set forth some known facts about the word and its possible congeners. (shrink)

Most accounts of Jeremy Bentham deal with him as a prophet of either utilitarianism or of liberal democracy. This book discusses a less familiar but very important aspect of his political thought: his theory of how government institutions should be organised in order to function as efficient and yet responsive guardians of the community's interests. It thus focuses on his programme for he executive and judicial branches of government rather than for the legislature and the electorate. Dr Hume suggests that (...) eighteenth-century political thought was richer in ideas about government that has usually been allowed, but that Bentham's special qualities of mind enabled him to widen and deepen those ideas much further than his contemporaries could have foreseen. (shrink)

"Although the book draws on art and literature, it is chiefly concerned with themes and ideas relating to the natural world, the body, and gender differences. To this end, Professor Jordanova concentrates on reinterpreting texts and images drawn, mainly, from eighteenth and early nineteenth-century British and French material. Many of the illustrations in the volume are likely to be new to the reader and throughout, the author offers suggestions on how these can be contexualised."--Jacket.

Philosophical Studies Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 163, l. 24 for ‘Pocreon’ read “Creon’ and p. 165, l.4 for “Nereus” read “Nessus”, l. 16 for “Corrolate” read “Correlate” and l. 27 for “ Trachinae ” read “ Trachiniae ”. Proffessor Mackinnon should also have been described as Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Corpus Christi College.

This paper investigates the efficiency of application of medical ethics principles in the practice of artificial insemination by donors in China, in a culture characterised by traditional ethical values and disapproval of AID. The paper presents the ethical approach to AID treatment as established by the Reproduction and Genetics Hospital of CITIC-Xiangya in the central southern area of China against the social ethical background of China and describes its general features. The CITIC-Xiangya Approach facilitates the implementation of ethical relations between (...) clinicians and patients participating in AID treatment procedures in Hunan-Yale. (shrink)