Search results for "Ethics"

A scientific approach to anti-ageing therapies: state of the art.

2008

A lasting dream of human beings is to reverse or at least postpone ageing. During the last years, an increasing number of scientific meetings, articles, and books have been devoted to anti-ageing therapies. This subject, full of misleading, simplistic, or wrong ideas, is very popular among the general public, whose imagery has been fascinated by all possible tools to delay ageing, getting immortality. Here, we discuss anti-ageing strategies aimed not to rejuvenate but to slow ageing and delay the onset of age-related diseases. These approaches should be able to substantially slow down the ageing process, extending our productive, youthful lives.

Why should We Bother? Ethical and Social Issues in Individualized Medicine

2006

Individualized medicine, methodologically rooted in pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics, is now venturing into clinical application. Prescribing the right drug in the right dose to the right patient according to specific health needs and individual characteristics is a core mission of individualized medicine. The intrinsic values of this mission are so self-evident that--at first glance--the ethical and social issues raised by individualized medicine seem to be negligible. However, the translation of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics into clinical routine not only requires the collection and evaluation of large amounts of individual genetic data, but also heralds the need for further …

Plants mentioned in the Islamic Scriptures (Holy Qur'ân and Ahadith): Traditional uses and medicinal importance in contemporary times.

2019

Abstract Ethnopharmacological relevance Over the past thousand years, Islamic physicians have collected cultural, philosophical, sociological and historical backgrounds for understanding diseases and medications. The Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH) said: “There is no disease that Allah has created, except that Allah also has created its cure.” Therefore, Islamic scholars are encouraged to explore and use both traditional and modern forms of medicine. Aim of the study (1) To identify some of the medicinal plants mentioned in the Holy Qur'ân and Ahadith textbooks of the period 700–1500 AD; (2) to compare them with presently used traditional medicines; (3) to evaluate their value ba…

The Animal Subject. Explorations on the Edge of Subjectivity

2021

Despite their undeniable connection to the body and its physiological processes, the phenomenological account of drives differentiates them from both instinctual behaviour and merely biological forces. They design a characteristic dimension of the personal grasp of the world, necessary for our meaningful orientation in all given situations. My claim is that Husserl’s interpretation of drives presents them not as centrifugal forces, but as centripetal strivings, contributing to the unitary constitution of the person. The conflicting interaction of drives lets emerge the animal subjectivity whose unity is given by a unique style of wishing and striving. The final question is, therefore, how t…

Moral Attitudes Toward Pharmacological Cognitive Enhancement (PCE): Differences and Similarities Among Germans With and Without PCE Experience

2018

Pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE), the use of illicit and/or prescription drugs to increase cognitive performance, has spurred controversial discussion in bioethics. In a semi-structured interview study with 60 German university students and employees, differences and similarities in moral attitudes toward PCE among 30 experienced participants (EPs) vs. 30 inexperienced participants (IPs) were investigated. Substances EPs used most often are methylphenidate, amphetamines, tetrahydrocannabinol and modafinil. Both EPs and IPs addressed topics such as autonomous decision making or issues related to fairness such as equality in test evaluation and distortion of competition. While most…

2013

Are dreams subjective experiences during sleep? Is it like something to dream, or is it only like something to remember dreams after awakening? Specifically, can dream reports be trusted to reveal what it is like to dream, and should they count as evidence for saying that dreams are conscious experiences at all? The goal of this article is to investigate the relationship between dreaming, dream reporting and subjective experience during sleep. I discuss different variants of philosophical skepticism about dream reporting and argue that they all fail. Consequently, skeptical doubts about the trustworthiness of dream reports are misguided, and for systematic reasons. I suggest an alternative,…

Labor as Action: the Human Condition in the Anthropocene

2020

Abstract The Anthropocene has become an umbrella term for the disastrous transgression of ecological safety boundaries by human societies. The impact of this new reality is yet to be fully registered by political theorists. In an attempt to recalibrate the categories of political thought, this article brings Hannah Arendt’s framework of The Human Condition (labor, work, action) into the gravitational pull of the Anthropocene and current knowledge about the Earth System. It elaborates the historical emergence of our capacity to “act in the mode of laboring” during fossil-fueled capitalist modernity, a form of agency relating to our collectively organized laboring processes reminiscent of the…

Etica e politica delle piante

2019

An exploration of the history of the philosophy of plants, with a special emphasis on plant ontology, ethics, and politics.

Normativity all the way down: from normative realism to pannormism

2017

In this paper, I will give an argument for what I call pannormism, the view according to which if x instantiates a metaphysically basic normative property F, then whatever grounds the being of x also instantiates F. In slogan form: if there is normativity, there is normativity all the way down. Such pannormism is in many ways analogous to panpsychism, and my discussion also contains an important lesson for panpsychism, a way to avoid its so-called combination problem. In Sect. 1, I present the argument; in Sect. 2, I discuss its conclusion.

Reconsidering the Role of Research Method Guidelines for Qualitative, Mixed-methods, and Design Science Research

2019

Guidelines for different qualitative research genres have been proposed in information systems (IS). As these guidelines are outlined for conducting and evaluating good research, studies may be denied publication simply because they do not follow a prescribed methodology. This can result in “checkbox” compliance, where the guidelines become more important than the study. We argue that guidelines can only be used to evaluate what good research is if there is evidence that they lead to certain good research outcomes. Currently, the guidelines do not present such evidence. Instead, when it is presented, the evidence is often an authority argument or evidence of popularity with usability exampl…