Digital Commons Network^™

Review Of Lonergan's Quest: A Student Of Desire In The Authoring Of "Insight" By William A. Mathews, Richard M. Liddy

Richard M Liddy

No abstract provided.

Obligations In Offering To Disclose Genetic Research Results, Conrad Fernandez, Charles Weijer

Charles Weijer

No abstract provided.

Justice And Justification In The War On Terrorism, Emma Norman

Emma R. Norman

This paper offers a few preliminary reflections on some ethical implications stemming from the disconnect between the moral rhetoric and the reality of the War on Terrorism. I suggest that the Bush Administration certainly shares a large part of the responsibility for constantly attempting to justify a war that, by the standards of traditional just war theory, is almost impossible to see as just. However, I also suggest that part of the responsibility lies with a public that demands high ethical standards of its public officials, but appears to be ultimately unprepared to face the full consequences of acting ethically …

Opinion Shaper: Dead Guinea Pigs Have Their Own Mausoleum, Raleigh Muns

Raleigh Muns

"Inferno" By Charles Bowden, Scott Abbott

Scott Abbott

No abstract provided.

The Confucian Ideal Of Harmony, Chenyang Li

Chenyang Li

No abstract provided.

Abstractions Come Home: A Review Of "Interstices," By Laurelyn Whitt And "Sound Weave," By Theta Naught And Alex Caldiero, Scott Abbott

Scott Abbott

No abstract provided.

Trust-Based Obligations Of The State And Physician-Researchers To Patient-Subjects, Paul Miller, Charles Weijer

Charles Weijer

When may a physician enroll a patient in clinical research? An adequate answer to this question requires clarification of trust-based obligations of the state and the physician-researcher respectively to the patient-subject. The state relies on the voluntarism of patient-subjects to advance the public interest in science. Accordingly, it is obligated to protect the agent-neutral interests of patient-subjects through promulgating standards that secure these interests. Component analysis is the only comprehensive and systematic specification of regulatory standards for benefit-harm evaluation by research ethics committees (RECs). Clinical equipoise, a standard in component analysis, ensures the treatment arms of a randomised control trial …

Mormon Civilization And Its Schizophrenic Discontents "The Open Curtain" Brian Evenson, Scott Abbott

Scott Abbott

No abstract provided.

Revisiting The Ethics Of Hiv Prevention Research In Developing Countries, Charles Weijer, Guy Leblanc

Charles Weijer

Issues: We present key aspects of our paper, commissioned by UNAIDS in 2005, entitled, “Revisiting the ethics of HIV prevention research in developing countries.” In 2004 and 2005 we witnessed the closure or suspension of three international clinical trials testing tenofovir in the prevention of HIV infection in high risk groups due to the failure to provide free treatment to those who seroconvert during the conduct of the study. We examine critically moral claims for the provision of treatment to those who seroconvert in HIV prevention trials and ask whether it is a matter of moral obligation or moral negotiation? …

Review Of Metaethical Subjectivism By Richard Double, Matthew Pianalto

Matthew Pianalto

"There are no objective values." Thus begins J.L Mackie's classic Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), in which metaethical error-theory was originally expounded. Error-theory holds that although moral judgments appear to be about objective matters (e.g. what is really valuable, what we really ought to do), there is no good reason to believe that there are objective values, and so all moral judgments are false because they fail to refer. In Metaethical Subjectivism, Richard Double again makes the case for error-theory by focusing upon the fragmentary character of our moral intuitions and the apparent impossibility of corralling all of these …

Angels As Spiritual Guides, David San Filippo Ph.D.

David San Filippo Ph.D.

The existence of angels has been discussed for centuries in legendary, philosophical, and religious writings. Many people have reported encounters with angels at different times in their life. Near-death research has recorded angelic encounters, during near-death experiences, by describing encounters with beings of light or angelic forms recognizable to the experiencer. This essay will discuss some legendary, theological, and philosophical beliefs that support the belief in the reality of angels as messengers, guides, and guardians to human beings and their function as spiritual guides during near-death experiences.

666, The Antichrist And Satan, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins

The Efficient Recalcitrance Assumption plagues [(Star of David Set), (N: N+1)] transition, begetting scripture's "666," "Antichrist" and "Satan" metaphorical references.

Moral Lumps, Samantha Brennan

Samantha Brennan

Can all goods or bads be broken down into smaller and smaller pieces? Can all goods or bads be added together with some other good or bad to get a larger amount? Further, how does moral significance track the disaggregation and the aggregation of moral goods and bads? In Part 1, I examine the limits placed on aggregation by moderate deontological moral theories. This paper focuses in particular on the work of Judith Thomson and T.M. Scanlon as well as on some of my own past work on the question of aggregation in the context of overriding rights. In Part …

The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment In The Land Of The Tattered Buddha, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

Asma, a professor of Buddhism at Columbia College in Chicago and the author of Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads (2001), recounts his intense and revelatory Cambodian adventures while teaching at Phnom Penh's Buddhist Institute. In an electrifying and frank mix of hair-raising anecdotes and expert analysis, he explicates the vast difference between text-based Buddhist teachings and daily life in a poor and politically volatile Buddhist society. Amid tales of massage parlors, marijuana-spiced pizza, and bloodshed, he cogently explains how Theravada Buddhism, the form practiced throughout Southeast Asia, differs from the Buddhism Westerners are familiar with, and how entwined it is …

Revenge, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

This paper discusses, in a preliminary manner, what revengeis. (It does not address the rationality or moral standing of revenge.) In particular, it proposes four elements of revenge —an agent, a recipient, a harm intended by the former, and a harm done by the latter which provokes the revenge. Based on these four elements, it highlights both agent-internal conditions forgetting revenge, and agent external ones. Along the way, the paper contrasts revenge with related phenomena like merely getting even, and retribution.

Against Transcendentalism: The Meaning Of Life And Buddhism, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

From the 1970s cult TV show, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, to the current hit musical Spamalot, the Monty Python comedy troupe has been at the center of popular culture and entertainment. The Pythons John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam are increasingly recognized and honored for their creativity and enduring influence in the worlds of comedy and film. Monty Python and Philosophy extends that recognition into the world of philosophy. Fifteen experts in topics like mythology, Buddhism, feminism, logic, ethics, and the philosophy of science bring their expertise to bear on Python movies such …

What Does Vulnerability Mean?, Barry Hoffmaster

C. Barry Hoffmaster

No abstract provided.

Cooperation, ‘Ought Morally’, And Principles Of Moral Harmony, Brian Kierland

Brian Kierland

There is a theory that one ought morally to do the best one can, when ‘best’ is suitably interpreted. There are also some examples in which, although every agent involved does the best she can, the group composed of them does not. Some philosophers think that these examples show the theory to be wrong. In particular, they think that such examples motivate a view which incorporates a requirement of cooperativeness in a particular way, though they disagree as to the exact nature of this requirement. This paper will argue both that such views are problematic and that the examples do …

Bert Bender, Evolution And The Sex Problem (Review), David Depew

David J Depew

No abstract provided.

Insensitive Semantics, By Herman Cappelen & Ernie Lepore, Robert J. Stainton, Catherine Wearing

Robert J. Stainton

No abstract provided.

A Penetrating Question In The History Of Ideas: Space, Dimensionality And Interpenetration In The Thought Of Avicenna, Jon Mcginnis

Jon McGinnis

Review Of David J. Buller, Adapting Minds, Steven J. Scher

Steven J. Scher

A review of David J. Buller's Adapting Minds.

Mind, Development, And Evolution. (Review Of Evolution And Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered), Steven J. Scher

Steven J. Scher

No abstract provided.

Wittgenstein And The Metaphysics Of Ethical Value, Julian Friedland

Julian Friedland

This paper develops Wittgenstein’s view of how experiences of ethical value contribute to our understanding of the world. Such experiences occur when we perceive certain intrinsic attributes of a particular being, object, or location as valuable irrespective of any concern for personal gain. It is shown that experiences of ethical value essentially involve a characteristic ‘listening’ to the ongoing transformations and actualizations of a given form of life—literally or metaphorically speaking. Such immediate impressions of spontaneous sympathy and agreement reveal ethics and aesthetics as transcendental. Ultimately, I will attempt to show that from this point of view, forms of life …

The Alleged Pragmatism Of T.S. Eliot, Gregory Brazeal

Gregory Brazeal

Before gaining recognition as a poet, T.S. Eliot pursued a doctoral degree in philosophy. His dissertation on the philosophy of F.H. Bradley has been a source of longstanding critical dispute. Some read the dissertation as a defense of Bradley’s views, while others read it as a repudiation of Bradley in favor of a kind of American philosophical pragmatism. This essay considers whether the dissertation can be properly characterized as pragmatist, despite Eliot’s enthusiastic and repeated dismissals of William James’ philosophy of truth. Eliot comes closest to a Jamesian view of belief when he writes of the endless ways we can …

Faculty And Male Football And Basketball Players On University Campuses: An Empirical Investigation Of The "Intellectual" As Mentor To The Student Athlete, Keith Harrison

Dr. C. Keith Harrison

No abstract provided.

Aristotle On The Mechanisms Of Inheritance, Devin Henry

Devin Henry

In this paper I address an important question in Aristotle’s biology, What are the causal mechanisms behind the transmission of biological form? Aristotle’s answer to this question, I argue, is found in Generation of Animals Book 4 in connection with his investigation into the phenomenon of inheritance. There we are told that an organism’s reproductive material contains a set of ‘‘movements’’ which are derived from the various ‘‘potentials’’ of its nature (the internal principle of change that initiates and controls development). These ‘‘movements,’’ I suggest, function as specialized vehicles for com- municating the parts of the parent’s heritable form during …

Reply To Bermudez And Bonjour, Hilary Kornblith

Hilary Kornblith

No abstract provided.

The Five Levels Of Inventions- A Classification Of Patents From Triz Perspective, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The Five levels of Inventions is a popular concept in the study of TRIZ. Generally patent databases (like USPTO) classify inventions according to their topics or areas of invention. But they don’t classify inventions according to their easiness or usefulness or inventiveness. Altshuller classified patents into five levels according to their levels of inventiveness. The higher levels of inventions are difficult (and rare) while the lower levels of inventions are easy and plenty in number. This article attempts to explain the five levels of inventions in simple terms and the purpose behind such a classification. Although there are limitations and …