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A leader in the modern commentary on ethics and philosophy, Mary Warnock casts a critical eye over her life and times.

Fundamental principles : the nature of the dispute -- Types of euthanasia -- Psychiatric assisted suicide -- Neonates -- Incompetent adults -- Human life is sacred -- The slippery slope -- Medical views -- Four methods of easing death and their effect on doctors -- Looking further ahead.

How is hope to be found amid the ethical and political dilemmas of modern life? Writer and philosopher Mary Zournazi brought her questions to some of the most thoughtful intellectuals at work today. She discusses "joyful revolt" with Julia Kristeva, the idea of "the rest of the world" with Gayatri Spivak, the "art of living" with Michel Serres, the "carnival of the senses" with Michael Taussig, the relation of hope to passion and to politics with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto (...) Laclau. A dozen stimulating minds weigh in with their visions of a better social and political order. The result is a collaboration - of writing, of thinking, and of politics - that demonstrates more clearly than any single-authored project could how ideas encountering one another can produce the vision needed for social change. (shrink)

Johannes Corrodi Katzenstein offers a contribution to the current debate on Kierkegaard, mostly concerning the rationality of religious belief and the presumed religious neutrality (autonomy) of philosophical and scientific thought. More specifically, his book is an attempt to relate Kierkegaard's theory of the stages of life (aesthetic, ethical, religious) to issues that have been of utmost concern to Anglo-American (analytical) philosophy, such as the nature of truth, rational knowledge, objectivity, etc. From this angle, Kierkegaard turns out to be not (...) the irrationalist he has often been made into but rather the outspoken witness of a passion that guides all thinking, i.e. the passion to think what cannot be thought. An attempt is made to show that for Kierkegaard, anticipating some of the arguments of contemporary postsecular philosophy, the ideal of pure or autonomous reason inevitably has its basis in a pre-rational, often tacit commitment to an origin whose primary home is in religious faith. Rather than precluding dialogue, awareness of these deeper forces and starting-points of our various philosophical and scientific outlooks is a critical requirement for mutual understanding between secularist and religious perspectives and traditions competing for cultural and political dominance. (shrink)

This chapter first distinguishes between originality and creativity. True originality is rare, whether in art, science, or LEGO, because to be truly original means to have done something that no one has ever done before, and that no one could have anticipated. Most LEGO creations will not meet that condition, for with the exception of serious hobbyists who undertake massive builds, most players who make original creations are making creations that are commonplace. Painting or remolding or placing stickers on the (...) bricks counts against the spirit of LEGO creation. The chapter then discusses The LEGO Movie embodies the paradox that presents three conflicting models of creative LEGO play, illustrated by the Master Builders, Finn's father, and Emmet. The movie's creators were deliberately playing around with conflicting popular conceptions of creativity: creativity as madness, creativity as thinking outside the box, and creativity as vision. (shrink)

This selection consists of extracts from writings of women concerned solely with the pursuit of abstract ideas, historically contextualized. The texts, for the most part, reflect issues widely debated in their contemporary societies. Extracts from lesser-known writers are also included, providing a diversity of arguments spanning four centuries and including some notable contemporary philosophers.

Nature and Mortality is a challenging look at some of the major public issues of our time through the eyes of one of our most influential and probing liberal humanists. It is a frank account on where we stand today on such controversial matters as human embryology, genetic engineering, euthanasia and abortion. Warnock's views may seem like a red rag to a bull to some, but her contribution to the debate is always stimulating. Enlivened by autobiographical anecdote and some delicious (...) side-swipes, Nature and Mortality is Mary Warnock at her most perceptive, wise and entertaining. (shrink)

The works of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) ranged from the early _Thoughts on the Education of Daughters_ to _The Female Reader_, a selection of texts for girls, and included two novels. But her reputation is founded on _A Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ of 1792. This treatise is the first great document of feminism—and is now accepted as a core text in western tradition. It is not widely known that the germ of Wollstonecraft’s great work came out of an (...) earlier and much shorter vindication—A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), written in the context of the issues raised by the French Revolution. This edition, which follows the model of other Broadview Editions in including a range of materials that help the reader to see the work in the context of its era out of which it emerged, is arranged chronologically, opening with Wollstonecraft’s “other vindication.” It also includes a wide range of other documents in appendices, as well as a comprehensive and authoritative introduction, chronology, and full index. (shrink)

The unity of aesthetic and teleological judgment, the third and earlier Critiques, is based on Kant′s discovery of a “heuristic method” for applying judgments regarding sense phenomena to abstract thought, a “second attention” which enables an “idea of the whole”. Synthetic judgment, basis for cognition and human action, depends on efficacy of non-empirical insights: the transcendental standpoint, “regulative” ideas, consciousness of “ought” and the reality of freedom, universality of natural mechanism, the principle of “fortuitous” purposiveness. The activity of reflective judgment (...) in the encounter with the beautiful, sublime, living, and two paradigmatic types of explanation, inspired by Spinoza′s distinction of extensio and cogitatio, permit Kant to bridge the gap between freedom and necessity, theoretical knowledge and morality. (shrink)

All religion and much philosophy has been concerned with the contrast between the ephemeral and the eternal. Human beings have always sought ways to overcome time, and to prove that death is not the end. This book consists then in an exploration of certain closely related ideas: personal identity, time, history and our commitment to the future, and the role of imagination in life.

Racial capitalism depends on the reproduction of an existing racialized economic order. In this article, I argue that the disavowal of past injustice is a central way in which this reproduction is ensured and that market-based forms of knowledge production, such as for-profit predictive practices, play a crucial role in facilitating this disavowal. Recent debates about the fairness of algorithms, data justice, and predictive policing have intensified long-standing controversies, both popular and academic, about the way in which statistical and financial (...) modes of accounting and predicting articulate, represent and produce ascriptive categories of hierarchically ordered social difference, and reproduce unjust social hierarchies and inequalities. These debates have productively problematized the racial lives of seemingly apolitical predictive technologies and demanded the re-politicization of predictive practices. What has been missing from these debates so far, however, is a more explicit engagement with ways in which anti-racist movements and activists themselves have contested the entanglements of prediction and race making. I turn to a recent prominent example, namely the contestation over racial discrepancies in subprime lending to examine how fair lending activists have conceptualized and troubled the reproduction of a racialized economic order through for-profit predictive practices in the decade before the Great Financial Crisis. I situate this particular example in the broader historical and political context of politicizing prediction that first emerged with the ascendancy of a liberal, individualist-proprietary conception of risk, and the political problem space to which this has given rise. My analysis shows that actuarial conceptions of fairness continue to reverberate in anti-racist contestations of for-profit predictive practices, and that they tend to marginalize and undercut more radical strands of critique of the racialization of financial markets. Insofar as these modalities of contestation implicitly reproduce a liberal, proprietary-individualist conception of risk, I argue, they fail to effectively challenge the quasi-alchemical transformation of injustice into personal responsibility, and thus contribute to the disavowal of past injustice. (shrink)

This volume provides the first major study of worldviews in international relations. Worldviews are the unexamined, pre-theoretical foundations of the approaches with which we understand and navigate the world. Advances in twentieth century physics and cosmology and other intellectual developments questioning anthropocentrism have fostered the articulation of alternative worldviews that rival conventional Newtonian humanism and its assumption that the world is constituted by controllable risks. This matters for coming to terms with the uncertainties that are an indelible part of many (...) spheres of life including public health, the environment, finance, security and politics – uncertainties that are concealed by the conventional presumption that the world is governed only by risk. The confluence of risk and uncertainty requires an awareness of alternative worldviews, alerts us to possible intersections between humanist Newtonianism and hyper-humanist Post-Newtonianism, and reminds us of the relevance of science, religion and moral values in world politics. (shrink)

Scientific culture in Europe and the refugee generation -- Germany and Weimar Berlin as the City of Science -- Origins of a social perspective: doing physical chemistry in Weimar Berlin -- Chemical dynamics and social dynamics in Berlin and Manchester -- Liberalism and the economic foundations of the "Republic of Science" -- Scientific freedom and the social functions of science -- Political foundations of the philosophies of science of Popper, Kuhn, and Polanyi -- Personal knowledge: argument, audiences, and sociological engagement (...) -- Epilogue: SSK, scientific constructivism, and the paradoxical legacy of Polanyi and the 1930s generation. (shrink)

Scaling of pattern with size has been described and studied for over a century, yet its molecular basis is understood in only a few cases. In a recent, elegant study, Inomata and colleagues proposed a new model explaining how bone morphogenic protein (BMP) activity gradient scales with embryo size in the early Xenopus laevis embryo. We discuss their results in conjunction with an alternative model we proposed previously. The expansion‐repression mechanism (ExR) provides a conceptual framework unifying both mechanisms. Results of (...) Inomata and colleagues implicate the chordin‐stabilizing protein sizzled as the expander molecule enabling scaling, while we attributed this role to the BMP ligand Admp. The two expanders may work in concert, as suggested by the mathematical model of Inomata et al. We discuss approaches for differentiating the contribution of sizzled and Admp to pattern scaling. (shrink)

‘Contract cheating’ has recently emerged as a form of academic dishonesty. It involves students contracting out their coursework to writers in order to submit the purchased assignments as their own work, usually via the internet. This form of cheating involves epistemic and ethical problems that are continuous with older forms of cheating, but which it also casts in a new form. It is a concern to educators because it is very difficult to detect, because it is arguably more fraudulent than (...) some other forms of plagiarism, and because it appears to be connected to a range of systemic problems within modern higher education. This paper provides an overview of the information and literature thus far available on the topic, including its definition, the problems it involves, its causal factors, and the ways in which educators might respond. We argue that while contract cheating is a concern, some of the suggested responses are themselves problematic, and that best practice responses to the issue should avoid moral panic and remain focussed on supporting honest students and good academic practice. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine recent critiques of the debate about defining disease, which claim that its use of conceptual analysis embeds the problematic assumption that the concept is classically structured. These critiques suggest, instead, developing plural stipulative definitions. Although we substantially agree with these critiques, we resist their implication that no general definition of “disease” is possible. We offer an alternative, inductive argument that disease cannot be classically defined and that the best explanation for this is that the concept (...) is structured as a cluster. We further argue that we do not need to reject the possibility of defining the general concept “disease” to legitimate developing stipulative definitions of disease that are relative to particular purposes. A cluster definition of disease is compatible with contextually motivated definitions, which may be considered précisifications of the more general cluster concept. (shrink)

Recently, concerns have been raised about the phenomenon of ‘overdiagnosis’, the diagnosis of a condition that is not causing harm, and will not come to cause harm. Along with practical, ethical, and scientific questions, overdiagnosis raises questions about our concept of disease. In this paper, we analyse overdiagnosis as an epistemic problem and show how it challenges many existing accounts of disease. In particular, it raises ques- tions about conceptual links drawn between disease and dysfunction, harm, and risk. We argue (...) that ‘disease’ should be considered a vague concept with a non-classical structure. On this view, overdiagnosed cases are ‘borderline’ cases of disease, falling in the zone between cases that are clearly disease, and cases that are clearly not disease. We then develop a pre ́cising definition of disease designed to provide practical help in preventing and limiting overdiagnosis. We argue that for this purpose, we can define disease as dysfunction that has a significant risk of causing severe harm to the patient. (shrink)

Sexual abuse by clergymen, poisoned water, police brutality—these cases each involve two wrongs: the abuse itself and the attempt to avoid responsibility for it. Our focus is this second wrong—the cover up. Cover ups are accountability failures, and they share common strategies for thwarting accountability whatever the abuse and whatever the institution. We find that cover ups often succeed even when accountability mechanisms are in place. Hence, improved institutions will not be sufficient to prevent accountability failures. Accountability mechanisms are tools (...) that people must be willing to use in good faith. They fail when people are complicit. What explains complicity? We identify certain human proclivities and features of modern organizations that lead people to become complicit in the wrongdoing of others. If we focus exclusively on the design of institutions, we will fail to constrain the perpetrators of wrongdoing. Understanding complicity is key to understanding accountability failures. (shrink)

Personalised medicine has been discussed as a medical paradigm shift that will improve health while reducing inefficiency and waste. At the same time, it raises new practical, regulatory, and ethical challenges. In this paper, we examine PM strategies epistemologically in order to develop capacities to address these challenges, focusing on a recently proposed strategy for developing patient-specific models from induced pluripotent stem cells so as to make individualised treatment predictions. We compare this strategy to two main PM strategies—stratified medicine and (...) computational models. Drawing on epistemological work in the philosophy of medicine, we explain why these two methods, while powerful, are neither truly personalised nor, epistemologically speaking, novel strategies. Both are forms of correlational black box. We then argue that the iPSC models would count as a new kind of black box. They would not rely entirely on mechanistic knowledge, and they would utilise correlational evidence in a different way from other strategies—a way that would enable personalised predictions. In arguing that the iPSC models would present a novel method of gaining evidence for clinical practice, we provide an epistemic analysis that can help to inform the practical, regulatory, and ethical challenges of developing an iPSC system. (shrink)

Bathos - remarque -- Pt. 1. Le champ de bataille -- Pt. 2. Kant et ses juges -- Pt. 3. Traité de bathologie.

Known as the “Mother of Tibetan Buddhism” and the “Mother of Knowledge,” Yeshe Tsogyal built upon indigenous Bön philosophy and Mahāyāna Buddhism to bring about a Buddhism that is identifiably Tibetan. I report on her life, her works and teaching. Then summarize her significance as a philosopher of Tibetan Buddhist metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Lastly, I append portions of several writings attributed to her.

Recently, concerns have been raised about the phenomenon of 'overdiagnosis', the diagnosis of a condition that is not causing harm, and will not come to cause harm. Along with practical, ethical, and scientific questions, overdiagnosis raises questions about our concept of disease. In this paper, we analyse overdiagnosis as an epistemic problem and show how it challenges many existing accounts of disease. In particular, it raises questions about conceptual links drawn between disease and dysfunction, harm, and risk. We argue that (...) "disease" should be considered a vague concept with a nonclassical structure. On this view, overdiagnosed cases are 'borderline' cases of disease, falling in the zone between cases that are clearly disease, and cases that are clearly not disease. We then develop a précising definition of disease designed to provide practical help in preventing and limiting overdiagnosis. We argue that for this purpose, we can define disease as dysfunction that has a significant risk of causing severe harm to the patient. (shrink)

Neil Levy argues that while addicts who believe they are not addicts are self-deceived, addicts who believe they are addicts are just as self-deceived. Such persons accept a false belief that their addictive behaviour involves a loss of control. This paper examines two implications of Levy's discussion: that accurate self-knowledge may be particularly difficult for addicts; and that an addict's self-deceived belief that they cannot control themselves may aid their attempts at self-control. I argue that the self-deceived beliefs of addicts (...) in denial and of self-described addicts differ in kind. Unlike the self-deception of an addict in denial, that of the self-described addict allows them to acknowledge their behaviour. As such, it may aid an addict to develop more self-control. A paradoxical implication is that this self-deception may allow an addict more self-knowledge. (shrink)

An increasing number of patients receive diagnoses of disease without having any symptoms. These include diseases detected through screening programs, as incidental findings from unrelated investigations, or via routine checks of various biological variables like blood pressure or cholesterol. In this article, we draw on narrative identity theory to examine how the process of making sense of being diagnosed with asymptomatic disease can trigger certain overlooked forms of harm for patients. We show that the experience of asymptomatic disease can involve (...) ‘mismatches’ between one’s beliefs about one’s health status on the one hand, and bodily sensations or past experience on the other. Patients’ attempts to integrate these diagnoses into their self-narratives often involve either forming inaccurate beliefs about bodily sensations and/or past experience, or coming to believe that feelings and experience do not necessarily track or predict health status, leading to an ongoing sense of vulnerability to ill health. These resulting alterations in self-understanding can sometimes be considered harmful, in view of their implications for ascriptions of responsibility and ongoing anxiety. (shrink)

Mary Anne Warren investigates a theoretical question that is at the centre of practical and professional ethics: what are the criteria for having moral status? That is: what does it take to be an entity towards which people have moral considerations? Warren argues that no single property will do as a sole criterion, and puts forward seven basic principles which establish moral status. She then applies these principles to three controversial moral issues: voluntary euthanasia, abortion, and the status of (...) non-human animals. (shrink)

«Claros del bosque» es uno de los libros esenciales de la trayectoria filosófica de María Zambrano en el que vemos, por primera vez, en marcha su «razón poética». Nadie mejor que la propia autora para presentarnos el significado de esta obra: “«Claros del bosque» dentro de mi pensamiento vertido en lo impreso, salvo alguna excepción, aparece como algo inédito salido de ese escribir irreprimible que brota por sí mismo y que ha ido a parar a cuadernos y hojas que nadie (...) conoce, ni yo misma, reacia que soy a releerme. Tenía que suceder por fuerza. Mas creo que el carácter de ofrenda de «Claros del bosque» a la persona a quien va dedicado en su tránsito tiene que ver en ello, acentuando así el carácter de ofrenda que todo lo que he publicado tiene desde siempre. Nada es de extrañar que la razón discursiva apenas aparezca. Con anterioridad esbocé una ‘Crítica de la razón discursiva’ que no podría prometerme que salga de ese estado. Creo, pues, que como libro es el que más responde a esa ‘idea’ hace tiempo formulada de que ‘pensar es ante todo –como raíz, como acto–– descifrar lo que se siente’, entendiendo por sentir el ‘sentir originario’, expresión usada por mí desde hace años. Y también que ‘el hombre es el ser que padece su propia trascendencia’ en un incesante proceso de unificación entre pasividad y conocimiento, entre ser y vida. Vida verdadera, sorprendida tan sólo en algunos claros que se abren en la espesura inicial entre cielo y tierra. Y en el remoto horizonte donde cielo y tierra, ser y vida, vida y muerte se anegan”. (shrink)

In 1909, a boy of fourteen years was designated the savior of our age by the mystic leader of the Theosophical Society. Sent from his native India to study at the finest school in Britain, the charismatic youth was groomed for the messianic role of World Teacher--a mantle he would ultimately cast off, unleashing a storm of controversy within the spiritual community. And through inner doubts and physical agony--through bitter trials of the mind, the body, and the soul--he would follow (...) his own path to enlightenment and become a shining beacon of joy and truth to millions the world over. (shrink)

Courses in the history of philosophy which exclude contributions made by women cannot legitimately claim to teach this history. This is true, not merely because those histories are incomplete, but rather because they give a biased account. I sketch the difficulties thus posed for the profession, and offer suggestions for developing a less biased, more accurate understanding of the history of philosophy.

Programs of drug testing welfare recipients are increasingly common in US states and have been considered elsewhere. Though often intensely debated, such programs are complicated to evaluate because their aims are ambiguous – aims like saving money may be in tension with aims like referring people to treatment. We assess such programs using a proportionality approach, which requires that for ethical acceptability a practice must be: reasonably likely to meet its aims, sufficiently important in purpose as to outweigh harms incurred, (...) and lower in costs than feasible alternatives. In the light of empirical findings, we argue that the programs fail the three requirements. Pursuing recreational drug users is not important in the light of costs incurred, while dependent users who may require referral are usually identifiable without testing and typically need a broader approach than one focussing on drugs. Drug testing of welfare recipients is therefore not ethically acceptable policy. (shrink)

Oliva Sabuco's New Philosophy of Human nature (1587) is an early modern philosophy of medicine that challenged the views of the successors to Aristotle, especially Galen and Ibn Sina (Avicenna). It also challenged the paradigm of the male as the epitome of the human and instead offers a gender-neutral philosophy of human nature. Now largely forgotten, it was widely read and influential amongst philosophers of medicine including DeClave, LePois, Harvey,Southey and others, particularly for its account of the role of the (...) nervous system and cerebrospinal fluid in mind-body interaction. In this article I trace its early influence by tracing provenance of the editions produced during the lifetime of its author. (shrink)

First published in 1984, Cultural Analysis is a systematic examination of the theories of culture contained in the writings of four contemporary social theorists: Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. This study of their work clarifies their contributions to the analysis of culture and shows the converging assumptions that the authors believe are laying the foundation for a new approach to the study of culture. The focus is specifically on culture, a concept that remains subject (...) to ambiguities of treatment, and concentrates on questions concerning the definition and content of culture, its construction, its relations with social conditions, and the manner in which it may be changing. The books demonstrates how these writers have made strides towards defining culture as an objective element of social interaction which can be subjected to critical investigation. (shrink)