In the light of increasing public mistrust, there is an urgent need to clarify the moral status of the medical profession and of the relationship of the clinician to his/her patients. In addressing this question, I first establish the coherence, within moral philosophy generally, of the concept of supererogation (the doing of more than one’s duty). I adopt the notion of an act of “unqualified” ...

This paper considers the Greenspan/Summers/IMF (GSI) argument that the Asian way of doing business was the deep cause of the Asian crisis. The IMF reform programme for the crisis-affected Asian countries suggested they should abandon the Asian business model and adopt the US corporate model. The main findings are: a) contrary to GSI doctrine, poor corporate governance and lack of competition ar...

Just how different are objects and agents? Some developers consider agents to be objects, but with more bells and whistles. This approach tends to define agents beginning with the phrase, "An agent is an object that ..."—where the definers add their favorite discriminating features. Then, there are those who see agents and objects as different even though they share many things in common. Both ...

"IA7E can truly say that Sherlock Holmes lived * * in Baker Street, and that he liked to show off his mental powers. We cannot truly say that he was a devoted family man, or that he worked in close cooperation with the police. It would be nice if we could take such descrip? tions of fictional characters at their face value, ascribing to them the same subject-predicate form as parallel descripti...