1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

This paper examines methodological issues associated with the theory of planned behaviour and explains that an alternative account of data used to support this theory can be provided by positioning theory. A case is presented that shows tests of the theory of planned behaviour fail to eliminate the possibility of alternative explanations for co-variation in its data. An agency or person-centered alternative shows how a causal interpretation can be reinterpreted as evidence of the actions of a person. Unlike the conceptualisation (...) of the individual as behaving in keeping with postulated underlying cognitive laws or rules we assume that the person has, through socialisation, acquired the skills necessary to initiate and manage their own actions. Unlike the interest in TPB data as a causal explanation of action we draw attention to the interpretation of patterns in these data as an aggregate of each person using a common mode of explanation to justify and explain their intentions. (shrink)

This article explains how data associated with attitude change and persuasion in mainstream psychology and social psychology can be reinterpreted as evidence of the agentive ability of taking a position. A critical review is made of the elaboration likelihood model and a position model is adapted from positioning theory. The postulates of the elaboration likelihood model are then subjected to critical scrutiny by means of comparison with our position model. In this way regularities associated with attitude change and persuasion are (...) interpreted as evidence of a deliberative process, involving negotiation and the use of supporting and opposing arguments. We present this as evidence of the commonly held agentive ability to position oneself and anticipate the positions of others. (shrink)

Drawing on a landscape analysis of existing data-sharing initiatives, in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders, and public deliberations with community advisory panels across the U.S., we describe features of the evolving medical information commons. We identify participant-centricity and trustworthiness as the most important features of an MIC and discuss the implications for those seeking to create a sustainable, useful, and widely available collection of linked resources for research and other purposes.

1. Introduction. Sources of difficulty in the investigation.–II. Dr. Monro′s pitch theory. The passage in Heraclides. Supplementary evidence from the Problems.–III. Prof. Macran′s theory. Evidence against this theory. Prof. Macran′s answer to this evidence. Further objections. Criticism of the evidence in favour of Prof. Macran′s theory.–IV. Prof. Cook-Wilson′s theory. Platonic and Aristotelian evidence against Dr. Monro. Objections to this theory.–V. Recapitulation. Statement of the antinomies in the evidence.–VI. Conclusion. The nucleus of certainty. The Greek, as contrasted with the modern, musical (...) sense. (shrink)

Recent Hegel scholarship has increasingly emphasized the question of language in Hegel’s philosophy. In this work, Cook outlines the major elements of Hegel’s theory of language, and of the relation of natural language to philosophical thinking. Cook draws upon Hegel’s early writings, particularly the Jena texts, and shows their importance for comprehending Hegel’s mature statements on language, such as those in the Encyclopedia. And he shows the importance of the theory of language for central Hegelian themes. Language is a significant (...) theme in Hegel’s doctrines of individual consciousness, collective or social consciousness, and absolute knowledge. Through sign making, the individual at once donates meaning to objects given in experience, appropriates those objects for himself, and objectifies himself as consciousness in the world. Language is a motive force in the dialectic of the experience of consciousness. Consciousness achieves successive integrations of its experience by revising the language whereby it utters knowledge claims regarding that experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bernard Mandeville and the Therapy of “The Clever Politician”Harold J. CookAs the institutional authority of the learned physicians of Augustan London waned, new threats to the classical foundations of medical practice appeared. 1 Patients had more freedom to chose from a variety of practitioners and practices, giving both consumer demand and the advertising skills of suppliers an even more powerful hand in medical affairs. While the burgeoning medical marketplace (...) developed mostly because of the profound socio-economic and political changes of the late Stuart period, intellectual transformations were at play, too. The new science appeared to encourage empiricism and the development of new remedies based on experimentation, devaluing university education in medical classics, but conversely the new science could strengthen physicians’ claims to superiority over mere patients and practitioners. Medical materialists, for instance, could turn the classical advisor/client relationship into that of an expert contolling a passive recipient (patient) for his or her own good.One contemporary debate that shows the implications of materialism for medical relationships is the theory of the passions. The passions linked mind and body. According to most classical accounts, one could (or should) control the passions by applying reason, resulting in both a virtuous and a healthy life. But according to a strong version of materialism, the mind could not hope to control the passions. A doctor therefore could no longer appeal to patients’ reason; rather, he had to manipulate the patient’s passions for his or her own good. Hence for a materialist, the doctor was not an adviser to the patient but an expert therapist, not a teacher of health and virtue but a “clever politician” who ordered bodily passions. Some versions of the new science, then, favored [End Page 101] the expertise of physicians while undermining older views about learned authority. Such an outlook is clear in the work of Dr. Bernard Mandeville, whose famous Fable of the Bees shows how the “clever politician” played on passions to make the body politic run smoothly. Mandeville held coherent views on politics, economics, moral philosophy, and medicine. Like many doctors of his time, he fought to establish his expertise in the new science. His views are expressed most clearly in the theory of the passions. By examining his discussion of the passions in both his social commentary and his medical dialogues, we can note similarities among his various writings and glimpse one of his fundamental positions on medicine and humanity.The Fable and its CriticsTo many English minds of the early eighteenth century, no one exemplified materialism’s threat better than Dr. Bernard Mandeville. Mandeville’s famous slogan, the subtitle of his Fable of the Bees—“private vices, public benefits”—seemed to epitomize materialism’s inherent immorality. The book seemed to argue that what most people recognized as human vices were the main engines of the collective good. Mandeville’s famous book pictured human nature as animalistic, in which the passions held sway over reason. In Mandeville’s world, it appeared, reason became little more than the ability to rationalize, the instrument of hypocrisy, merely letting people cover their true motives (grounded as they were in the passions) with empty words pretending to more exalted ends.His Fable had begun as a little, anonymous, satirical poem in 1705, titled “The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn’d Honest.” It began by speaking of “A Spacious Hive well stockt with Bees, / That liv’d in Luxury and Ease.” Many of the bees were knaves, with no calling free of deceit, but while “every Part was full of Vice, / Yet [was] the whole Mass a Paradise; /... Such were the Blessings of that State; / Their Crimes conspir’d to make them Great.” Avarice, prodigality, luxury, pride, envy, vanity, folly, fickleness, and inconstancy employed millions, encouraging ingenuity and industry and creating pleasures and comforts “To such a Height, the very Poor / Liv’d better than the Rich before.” But many of the thriving bees complained, shouting for honesty and virtue. When Jove “rid / The bawling Hive of Fraud,” economic collapse followed, with the consequent end of arts and sciences as well; population declined; the hive’s territory decreased; and the remaining bees toiled long and... (shrink)

This paper presents an overview of the dimensions of unsafe motherhood, contrasting data from economically developed countries with some from developing countries. It addresses many common factors that shape unsafe motherhood, identifying medical, health system and societal causes, including women's powerlessness over their reproductive lives in particular as a feature of their dependent status in general. Drawing on perceptions of Jonathan Mann, it focuses on public health dimensions of maternity risks, and equates the role of bioethics in conscientious medical care (...) to that of human rights in public health care. The microethics of medical care translate into the macroethics of public health, but the transition compels some compromise of personal autonomy, a key feature of Western bioethics, in favour of societal analysis. Religiously‐based morality is seen to have shaped laws that contribute to unsafe motherhood. Now reformed in former colonizing countries of Europe, many such laws remain in effect in countries that emerged from colonial domination. UN conferences have defined the concept of ‘reproductive health’ as one that supports women's reproductive self‐determination, but restrictive abortion laws and practices epitomize the unjust constraints to which many women remain subject, resulting in their unsafe motherhood. Pregnant women can be legally compelled to give the resources of their bodies to the support of others, while fathers are not legally compellable to provide, for instance, bone‐marrow or blood donations for their children's survival. Women's unjust legal, political, economic and social powerlessness explains much unsafe motherhood and maternal mortality and morbidity. (shrink)

Available in paperback for the first time, this landmark volume examines the course of Western philosophy over the past 2,500 years. A Critical History of Western Philosophy focuses on the most significant thinkers and philosophical movements while emphasizing key ideas of permanent interest and relevance. Arranged chronologically from early Greece to the twentieth century, this comprehensive work includes expert histories of all major figures from Socrates and Plato to G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, and of every important school from the (...) Epicureans to the Existentialists. (shrink)