Query: international journal of the philosophy of science

title: Convergence of philosophy and science: the third international congress on vegetarian nutrition.
abstract: Populations of vegetarians living in affluent countries appear to enjoy unusually good health, characterized by low rates of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and total mortality. These important observations have fueled much research and have raised 3 general questions about vegetarians in relation to nonvegetarians: Are these observations the result of better nondietary lifestyle factors, such as lower prevalences of smoking and higher levels of physical activity? Are they the result of lower intakes of harmful dietary components, in particular meat? and Are they the result of higher intakes of beneficial dietary components that tend to replace meat in the diet? Current evidence suggests that the answer to all 3 questions is "Yes." Low smoking rates contribute importantly to the low rates of cardiovascular disease and many cancers, probably including colon cancer, in Seventh day Adventists and other vegetarian populations. Also, avoidance of red meat is likely to account in part for low rates of cardiovascular disease and colon cancer, but this does not appear to be the primary reason for general good health in these populations. Evidence accumulated in the past decade emphasizes the importance of adequate consumption of beneficial dietary factors rather than just the avoidance of harmful factors including an abundance of fruit, vegetables, and whole grains and regular consumption of vegetable oils, including those from nuts. Although current knowledge already provides general guidance toward healthy diets, accumulated evidence now strongly indicates that diet has a powerful yet complex effect on health and that further investigation is needed.

title: Delivering sustainable urban water management: a review of the hurdles we face.
abstract: Sustainable urban water management (SUWM) requires an integrated, adaptive, coordinated and participatory approach. Current urban water policies are beginning to reflect this understanding yet the rhetoric is often not translated to implementation. Despite the 'new' philosophy, urban water management remains a complex and fragmented area relying on traditional, technical, linear management approaches. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the barriers to change, there has been little systematic review of what constitutes the scope of such barriers and how these should be addressed to advance SUWM. To better understand why implementation fails to occur beyond ad hoc project interventions, an extensive literature review of observed and studied barriers was conducted. Drawing on local, national and international literature from the field of integrated urban water management and other similar fields, 53 studies were assessed, resulting in a typology of 12 barrier types. The analysis revealed the barriers are largely socio institutional rather than technical, reflecting issues related to community, resources, responsibility, knowledge, vision, commitment and coordination. Furthermore, the meta analysis demonstrated a paucity of targeted strategies for overcoming the stated institutional barriers. Evaluation of the typology in relation to capacity building suggests that these systemic issues require a sophisticated programme of change that focuses on fostering social capital, inter sectoral professional development, and inter organisational coordination.

title: A transdisciplinary review of the role of economics in life cycle sustainability assessment
abstract: PurposeThis paper reviews the use of economic values in life cycle assessment (LCA) and the justification for environmental life cycle costing (ELCC) as the 'economic pillar' of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA).MethodsA transdisciplinary review of economic values in LCA was undertaken and structured with a series of research questions. The review considered the philosophy of science and focussed on the concept of value as a point of synthesis among the disciplines of LCA, economics and ethics. An example from the ELCC Code of Practice was reviewed to highlight the challenges and alternative approaches explored.Results and discussion'Value choices' and the role of decision makers have been a long standing and largely unresolved discussion in LCA. Over the past two decades, LCA has been dominated by a utilitarian concept of ethics and valuation based on willingness to pay. This has a number of limitations which are further exacerbated in ELCC and its accounting definition of cost. ELCC struggles to address social costs, and the focus on the decision maker may define values that are not compatible with sustainability. John Rawls' 'justice as fairness' and Amartya Sen's capability approach were considered to reappraise the use of UN Conventions considered in early LCA literature on values. It was argued that there is an ethical basis to prioritise minimum standards in LCSA to address primary social goods as well as uncertainty in evaluations.ConclusionsThis paper questioned the reliance of LCA on utilitarianism and valuation using willingness to pay and, in particular, the claim of ELCC as the economic pillar of LCSA. Concepts of fairness and capability may overcome some of these limitations and provide a basis for integration of social, economic and environmental pillars of sustainability. Although the ethical justification of prescriptive values may only reach agreement on minimum conditions for social and economic cooperation, it was argued that this may provide a reasonable starting point given the global sustainability challenges over the coming decades. A two stage approach for the implementation of economic values in LCSA was suggested for further debate and discussion.

title: Philosophical determinants of obesity as a disease
abstract: Is obesity a disease? Much ink has been spilled over this debate and for good reasons. The global prevalence of obesity has more than doubled since the 1980s and is now of pandemic proportions. Whether obesity is a disease has consequences for what kind of treatments are appropriate, as well as how we ought to allocate funding and access to healthcare resources. In most cases, there is no dispute over the medical facts, yet disagreement persists. This is because whether obesity is a disease is not determined by medical facts alone; the issue is, in part, conceptual. Science relies on careful argumentation and conceptual analysis as part of its armamentarium. In this review, we will examine the two concepts of disease most often employed in the philosophy of medicine: the naturalistic and constructivist. We will argue that, whichever definition of a disease is used, obesity fits the criteria for disease definition. Those seeking to meet the challenge of managing obesity will, therefore, need to embrace chronic disease models of care suited to addressing the lifelong challenge posed by this disease and its associated complications.

title: In Praise of the Humanities in Academic Medicine
abstract: As the world looks to the promise of biomedical science against the backdrop of fi scal austerity, policymakers are ever more prone to look to quantitative outcome measures to steward resources and assess programs. Such review is necessary but certainly not suffi cient given the complexity of the tasks ahead. We will need more than the quantitative language of outcome measures to talk about values and not numbers, patient care and not effi ciency, and the balance between access and quality. Although policymakers have enveloped themselves in jargon that purports to answer such questions, the language of the clinic and health policy is often ill equipped to deal with these themes. Philosophy, history, literature, and the arts already offer a discourse instrumental to refl ective practice. These disciplines encourage introspection and a deeper understanding of how medicine operates within society. Such refl ection has a "transformative power," enabling practitioners to, in John Dewey's words, "reconstruct" the world. 1 In order to learn from the humanities, as profound organizational changes in the healthcare system begin, we must take several steps to sustain these disciplines in the healthcare setting. First, we must remind our medical and academic colleagues of the importance of the humanities writ large. Regaining a proper place for the humanities in medical school poses a signifi cant challenge, as some think it is achieved by displacing the sciences or by being oppositional to them. This is an unfortunate misinterpretation, and it must be stressed that the additional perspective offered by the humanities is not a zero sum gain. It enriches, and grows from, scientifi c discovery. A deeper perspective on our shared work is achieved not by denigrating the sciences but by responding to them and by adopting a more inclusive approach that engenders support from our friends and colleagues in the sciences. Second, in order to garner this widespread support, we must assert the evolving place of the humanities, while sustaining the beachhead that medical or clinical ethics has already secured. We do not want to swap out one soft discipline for

title: Can social research paradigms justify the diversity of approaches to social life cycle assessment?
abstract: PurposeThe present paper aims to offer an explanation for the diversity of methodological approaches proposed up to the present for social life cycle assessment (sLCA) tracking down its roots in the cultural and scientific heritage of social sciences and especially management sciences. A second aim is to shift the current debate on methodologies to an epistemological level, presenting the first results of an ongoing critical review about which underlying paradigms have been applied in sLCA literature.MethodsThis paper moves from the hypothesis that the diversity of positions in philosophy of science and the "multiparadigmatic" character of social sciences have had repercussions on sLCA literature since its beginnings, probably in an unconscious manner. Therefore, a discriminating reflection on the scientific and disciplinary inheritance that can represent the roots of sLCA has been conducted. The philosophy of science and the role of different research paradigms in social sciences have been deepened to provide an overview of the main elements of a paradigm (in terms of ontology, epistemology, and methodology) Finally, a brief but critical review of 133 selected scientific contributions on sLCA has been conducted to highlight which paradigms have been applied in sLCA studies.Results and discussionRecognizing that boundaries between paradigms are subtle and that researchers are rarely conscious of which paradigm underpins their works, a distinction between the interpretivist and post positivist approaches used by the studies has been carried out on the basis of a text analysis conducted by identifying the main "literal" criteria. From an initial population of 209 studies, we excluded those concerning reviews of sLCA literature and those with selected criteria that were insufficient to catch the epistemological viewpoint of the authors. Among the remaining papers (133) 73 has been ascribed to the group of interpretivism oriented paradigms and only 24 could be ascribed to the post positivist one; the remaining 3 is represented by studies with both characteristics. This data deserves some attention because, since the beginnings of sLCA methodologies, most sLCA publications explicitly suggest having the same underlying perspectives as environmental life cycle assessment (eLCA).ConclusionsIn light of the reflections carried out, we argue that it is important, before going into methodological questioning issues, to be aware of which paradigm is underlying. Indeed, in this phase of sLCA development, scholars should go beyond the simple methodological debate and recognize the "multilayered" nature of social phenomena and the multiparadigmatic characteristics of social and management sciences.

title: A confusion of tongues between psychoanalysis and philosophy: Is the controversy over drive versus relational theory a philosophical one?
abstract: In recent years the controversy over Drive versus Relational models of the psyche has become entangled in a philosophical controversy over epistemology. Some have argued that the Drive model was a relic of an age of positivistic science, while Relational models are a product of a postmodern condition. This paper argues that the controversy need not be a philosophical one, and that Relational views are not, in fact, a product of postmodernism, nor are they necessarily dependent on a postmodern epistemology. Separating the epistemological from the psychological more carefully may help return the debate to its proper, psychoanalytic domain, and perhaps contribute to a more fruitful dialogue across what, at times, seems like an abyss between Relational views and Drive theory.

title: What can philosophy do for psychiatry?
abstract: This article illustrates the practical impact of recent developments in the philosophy of psychiatry in five key areas: patient centred practice, new models of service delivery, neuroscience research, psychiatric education, and the organisation of psychiatry as an international science led discipline focused on patient care. We conclude with a note on the role of philosophy in countering the stigmatisation of mental disorder.

title: How is the brain working? Research on brain oscillations and connectivities in a new "Take Off" state.
abstract: The present report is a trial to survey analysis and applications of brain oscillations in cognitive impairment for opening the way to a new take off in research on brain oscillation. Although the number of papers related to brain oscillations rapidly increases, it is important to indicate the common principles governing the functioning of brain oscillations in the brain and body. Research scientists need a global view on the types of analysis, applications and existing oscillations. Further, scientists dealing with brain oscillations must have some knowledge from theoretical physics, system theory, and also general philosophy. The neuroscientists working on brain oscillations can mentally integrate several papers in the present report, and try to discover new avenues to augment knowledge on brain functions. A new take off in the search of brain oscillations indicates the strong need to survey this brunch of neuroscience in a broad panoply of science.

title: Genetics and right: a methodology
abstract: The theme of the free availability of genetic information is, by its nature, the heart of attention in most areas of investigation. From biology to medicine, from philosophy to law, from theology to biotechnology there isn't an area of science that cannot be said to be interested in the subject, nor has not, in recent years, tried to deepen it.