The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has killed thousands across the world. SARS-CoV-2 is the latest but surely not the last such global pandemic we will face. The biomedical response to such pandemics includes treatment, vaccination, and so on. In this paper, though, we argue that it is time to consider an additional strategy: the somatic enhancement of human immunity. We argue for this approach and consider bioethics objections we believe can be overcome.

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 2, Page 10-14, March‐April 2022.

This essay discusses the new report, Heritable Human Genome Editing, by the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society. After summarizing the report, we argue that the report takes four quite bold steps away from prior reports, namely (1) rejecting an omnibus approach to heritable human genome editing (HHGE) in favor of a case‐by‐case analysis of possible uses of HHGE, accepting that HHGE is acceptable in some cases; (2) recognizing that the interest in having (...) children who are genetically related to both would‐be rearing parents is one that the regulation of HHGE should honor; (3) patterning a regulatory model for HHGE on the United Kingdom's approach to regulating mitochondrial replacement techniques; and (4) conveying skepticism that international regulation is possible while showing a strong preference for a default into national regulatory regimes for HHGE. (shrink)

This essay discusses the new report, Heritable Human Genome Editing, by the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society. After summarizing the report, we argue that the report takes four quite bold steps away from prior reports, namely (1) rejecting an omnibus approach to heritable human genome editing (HHGE) in favor of a case‐by‐case analysis of possible uses of HHGE, accepting that HHGE is acceptable in some cases; (2) recognizing that the interest in having (...) children who are genetically related to both would‐be rearing parents is one that the regulation of HHGE should honor; (3) patterning a regulatory model for HHGE on the United Kingdom's approach to regulating mitochondrial replacement techniques; and (4) conveying skepticism that international regulation is possible while showing a strong preference for a default into national regulatory regimes for HHGE. (shrink)

When prospective parents use in vitro fertilization, many of them hope to generate more embryos than they intend to implant immediately. The technology often requires multiple attempts to reach a successful pregnancy, and couples can cryopreserve any excess embryos so that they have them on hand for later attempts. As part of obtaining informed consent for IVF or cryopreservation, clinics typically ask patients to specify their preferences for the embryos in the event of divorce or death, offering options such as (...) use of the embryos by a specified partner, donation to research, or discarding the remaining embryos. Still, many courts face a recurring problem: the partners dissolve their relationship, and one party wants to use the frozen embryos over the objections of the other. Courts and legislatures have struggled with how to handle these cases, which seem to pit one partner's right to procreate against the other's right not to procreate. In this essay, we use one of the most recent decisions in this line of cases—the Appellate Court of Illinois's decision in Szafranski v. Dunston—to explain the current state of the law and make recommendations for changes. The issue is ripe for revisiting because in the last year, embryo disputes have become a battlefront for larger conflagrations over the moral status of embryos. (shrink)

What does it mean to be an individual and how can an individual exist within society? Serious Leisure and Individuality examines the circumstances in the modern world that make for individual distinctiveness, and the role of these conditions in personal and social life. "The individual," said Friedrich Nietzsche, "has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay (...) for the privilege of owning yourself." Elie Cohen-Gewerc and Robert Stebbins explore the road to finding that privilege. They approach individuality by examining its relationship to freedom and being free, and by defining and elaborating on the concept of leisure space. They also look at individuality's place in community, citizenship, and globalization. The complex relationship between individuality and alienation is put under the microscope to highlight the negative side of being distinctive, which has adverse consequences for the individual and society. There are many studies on the modern individual that centre almost entirely on the person facing his local community and broader society. What is missing in the literature - and what Serious Leisure and Individuality provides - is a broad, comprehensive examination of individuality, particularly as it is rooted in leisure and the leisure-like areas of work. (shrink)

The problem of Cartesian dualism is viewed as falling under a more general problem: the problem of human unity. This problem is both ancient and modern: whether a human being is a substantial unity of soul and body or merely a contingent one. I compare Aristotle's and Descartes's response to this problem. My thesis is that an important factor in generating Cartesian dualism is the rejection implicit in Descartes's metaphysical codification of the new mathematical science of nature, namely, the rejection (...) of Aristotle's radical teleological concept of nature. It is argued that the modern intractable problem of the relation of mind to body turns historically and metaphysically on the Cartesian substitution of the mathematically refined concept of body--three-dimensional extension--for the once-influential Aristotelian teleological concept of corporeal substance. (shrink)

Professor Sparrow’s (2022) Target Article helpfully elucidates the question of when the ordinary person-affecting conception of harm and benefit should apply to discussions of germline genome editi...

This study develops a pedagogy for the teaching of ethical principles in information systems (IS) classes, and reports on an empirical study that supports the efficacy of the approach. The proposed pedagogy involves having management information systems professors lead questioning and discussion on a list of ethical issues as part of their existing IS courses. The rationale for this pedagogy involves (1) the maturational aspects of ethics, and (2) the importance of repetition, challenge, and practice in developing a personal set (...) of ethics. A study of IS ethics using a pre-post test design found that classes receiving such treatment significantly improved their performance on an IS ethics questionnaire. (shrink)

Levinas Faces Biblical Figures captures the drama of the encounter between a great philosopher and a text of primary importance. The book considers the ways in which Levinas's thoughts can open up the biblical text to requestioning, and how the biblical text can inform our reading of Levinas.

Title: Die Demokratische FragePublisher: SuhrkampISBN: 3518115723Author: Ulrich Rödel, Günter Frankenberg, Helmut Dubiel,Title: Autonome Gesellschaft und Libertäre DemokratiePublisher: SuhrkampISBN: 3518115731Author: Ulrich Rödel Title: Civil Society and Political TheoryPublisher: The MIT PressISBN: 0262031779Author: Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato.

This is a philosophical and historical study of the German Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig. It is argued that Rosenzweig's thought is best understood within the horizon of German interwar philosophy alongside the thought of his contemporary, Martin Heidegger. The two philosophers are presented as offering divergent articulations of a larger, shared project; and they are understood as participants within a philosophical movement that the author calls "philosophical expressionism" after the various other expressionist movements of the 1920s. The affinity between Rosenzweig (...) and Heidegger is traced from Rosenzweig's earliest study of Hegel's statist theory through his engagement with Hermann Cohen's neo-Kantianism as well as the Bible-translation. The dissertation culminates in a detailed reconstruction of the famous Davos disputation between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, which Rosenzweig interpreted as a symbolic encounter between the older, idealist mode of philosophy and his own "new thinking" . It is argued that the affinities between Heidegger and Rosenzweig are far deeper than has been formerly acknowledged. (shrink)

What does it mean to"do theory" in America? In what ways has "French Theory" changed American intellectual and artistic life? How different is it from what French intellectuals themselves conceived, and what does all this tell us about American intellectual life? Is "French Theory" still a significant force in America, raising conceptual questions not easily answered? In this volume of new work--including the French writers Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and Gilled Delezue, as well as essays by Sylvere Lotringer (...) and Sande Cohen, Mario Biagoli, Elie During, Chris Kraus, Alison Gingeras, and Kriss Ravetto, among others--French theorists assess the impact and reception of their work in America, and American-based critics account for their effects in different areas of cultural criticism and art over the last thirty years. (shrink)

Modern Jewish philosophy emerged in the seventeenth century, with the impact of the new science and modern philosophy on thinkers who were reflecting upon the nature of Judaism and Jewish life. This collection of new essays examines the work of several of the most important of these figures, from the seventeenth to the late-twentieth centuries, and addresses themes central to the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy: language and revelation, autonomy and authority, the problem of evil, messianism, the influence of Kant, (...) and feminism. Included are essays on Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, Fackenheim, Soloveitchik, Strauss, and Levinas. Other thinkers discussed include Maimon, Benjamin, Derrida, Scholem, and Arendt. The sixteen original essays are written by a world-renowned group of scholars especially for this volume and give a broad and rich picture of the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy over a period of four centuries. (shrink)

Major Philosophers of Jewish Prayer in the Twentieth Century addresses the troubling questions posed by the modern Jewish worshiper, including such obstacles to prayer as the inability to concentrate on the words and meanings of formal liturgy, the paucity of emotional involvement, the lack of theological conviction, the anthropomorphic and particularly the masculine emphasis of prayer nomenclature, and other matters. In assessing these difficultites, Cohen brings to the reader the writings on prayer of some seminal 20th century Jewish theologians. (...) These include Herman Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Avraham Yitzhak, Hoakohen Kook, Mordecai M. Kaplan, R. Arele, Aaron Rote, Elie Munk, Abraham J. Heschel, Jakob J. Petuchowski, Eugene B. Borowitz, and Lawrence A. Hoffman. (shrink)

Language -- Image -- Time -- Body -- Dream -- Myth -- Baudelaire -- Rescue -- Remembrance.

Color provides an instance of a general puzzle about how to reconcile the picture of the world given to us by our ordinary experience with the picture of the world given to us by our best theoretical accounts. The Red and the Real offers a new approach to such longstanding philosophical puzzles about what colors are and how they fit into nature. It is responsive to a broad range of constraints --- both the ordinary constraints of color experience and the (...) more theoretical constraints of color science, psychology, semantics, and ontology. (shrink)

This book presents G. A. Cohen's Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1996. Focusing on Marxism and Rawlsian liberalism, Cohen draws a connection between these thought systems and the choices that shape a person's life. In the case of Marxism, the relevant life is his own: a communist upbringing in the 1940s in Montreal, which induced a belief in a strongly socialist egalitarian doctrine. The narrative of Cohen's reckoning with that inheritance develops through a (...) series of sophisticated engagements with the central questions of social and political philosophy. In the case of Rawlsian doctrine, Cohen looks to people's lives in general. He argues that egalitarian justice is not only, as Rawlsian liberalism teaches, a matter of rules that define the structure of society, but also a matter of personal attitude and choice. Personal attitude and choice are, moreover, the stuff of which social structure itself is made. Those truths have not informed political philosophy as much as they should, and Cohen's focus on them brings political philosophy closer to moral philosophy, and to the Judeo-Christian ethical tradition, than it has recently been. (shrink)

Scientists often diverge widely when choosing between research programs. This can seem to be rooted in disagreements about which of several theories, competing to address shared questions or phenomena, is currently the most epistemically or explanatorily valuable—i.e. most successful. But many such cases are actually more directly rooted in differing judgments of pursuit-worthiness, concerning which theory will be best down the line, or which addresses the most significant data or questions. Using case studies from 16th-century astronomy and 20th-century geology and (...) biology, I argue that divergent theory choice is thus often driven by considerations of scientific process, even where direct epistemic or explanatory evaluation of its final products appears more relevant. Broadly following Kuhn’s analysis of theoretical virtues, I suggest that widely shared criteria for pursuit-worthiness function as imprecise, mutually-conflicting values. However, even Kuhn and others sensitive to pragmatic dimensions of theory ‘acceptance’, including the virtue of fruitfulness, still commonly understate the role of pursuit-worthiness—especially by exaggerating the impact of more present-oriented virtues, or failing to stress how ‘competing’ theories excel at addressing different questions or data. This framework clarifies the nature of the choice and competition involved in theory choice, and the role of alternative theoretical virtues. (shrink)

Students of perception have long puzzled over a range of cases in which perception seems to tell us distinct, and in some sense conflicting, things about the world. In the cases at issue, the perceptual system is capable of responding to a single stimulus — say, as manifested in the ways in which subjects sort that stimulus — in different ways. This paper is about these puzzling cases, and about how they should be characterized and accounted for within a general (...) theory of perception. After rehearsing the sort of case at issue (§1), I’ll examine critically some of the strategies by which philosophers and perceptual psychologists have attempted to account for them (§2). Finally, I’ll present an alternative computational account of the puzzle cases, argue that this view is superior to its competitors, and examine some of its implications (§3). (shrink)

Kant’s notorious remark about the impossibility of there ever being a Newton of a blade of grass has often been interpreted as a misguided pre-emptive strike against Darwin and evolutionary theories in general: 'It would be absurd for humans even to make such an attempt or to hope that there may yet arise a Newton who could make comprehensible even the generation of a blade of grass according to natural laws that no intention has ordered; rather, we must absolutely deny (...) this insight to human beings. (CPJ 5:400) My aim in this chapter is to re-evaluate this claim in the context of Kant’s account of organic generation and argue that, contrary to what is usually thought, it does leave room for the possibility of evolution. After spelling out the constraints Kant identifies for any scientific study of the history of living beings, I examine his theory of generation and draw its implications for biological heredity, species diversity, and the role played by environmental factors in organic development. On this basis, I conclude that first, evolution is a possible albeit far-fetched hypothesis for Kant; second, Darwin’s theory of natural selection would have turned a far-fetched possibility into a plausible candidate; and third, it would not have disposed of the need for teleology. This is why, I argue, Darwin could never have been a Newton of a blade of grass. (shrink)

Did Erasmus of Rotterdam reject all philosophy, or rather did he have a very special understanding of it as, at its best, a way of life? This study attempts to answer this question. The work reconstructs his concept of philosophy.

The ancient Western conception of philosophy as a way of life was eclipsed as philosophy became an academic discipline, a development that peaked under the influence of 13th-century scholasticism. Domański both traces this development and explores how some resisted it.

We live in a market system with much economic inequality. This may not be an essential characteristic of market systems but seems historically inevitable. How we should evaluate it, on the other hand, is contentious. I propose that bleeding heart libertarianism provides the best diagnosis and prescription.

This book provides an analytical and critical appraisal of Rousseau's political thought that, while frank about its limits, also explains its enduring power.

Kant famously identified 'What is man?' as the fundamental question that encompasses the whole of philosophy. Yet surprisingly, there has been no concerted effort amongst Kant scholars to examine Kant's actual philosophy of man. This book, which is inspired by, and part of, the recent movement that focuses on the empirical dimension of Kant's works, is the first sustained attempt to extract from his writings on biology, anthropology and history an account of the human sciences, their underlying unity, their presuppositions (...) as well as their methodology. In exploring his philosophical and epistemological foundation of the human sciences, it reveals an unexpected picture of Kant, a picture of a thinker who is profoundly attentive to the diversity, detail and complexity of the human world. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII Coda Appendix Acknowledgements.

Most scholars have not assigned much interpretive importance to the specific use of the term ‘persuasion’ in the cosmology of Plato’s Timaeus. This paper suggests understanding cosmological ‘persuasion’ in conjunction with ‘force,’ another trait of divine agency in the Timaeus. It analyses the nature of intelligent causation in the cosmology of the Timaeus, particularly in the construction of the cosmic body and soul. Then, it gives a detailed characterization of the causation of necessity, appearing in the Timaeus in three different (...) versions, and relates it to the complex notion of intelligent agency. Ultimately, it claims that the cosmic music in the Timaeus, the primary agent of ordered causation in the cosmos, functions on two levels of conflict with the disorder of the sensible aspect of the world. (shrink)

Counseling Ethics for the 21st Century prepares students to address ethical issues arising in contemporary counseling practice. Drawing on their own clinical and practical experiences, authors Elliot D. Cohen and Gale Spieler Cohen present detailed, realistic, and engaging clinical case studies along with a comprehensive five-step model that can be used to manage the complex ethical problems raised throughout the book. Each chapter focuses on particular virtues in the context of examining a particular counseling issue, including online counseling, (...) digital record keeping, and social media. Students will be empowered to define problems, identify relevant facts, conduct ethical analyses, and make the best decisions for their clients. (shrink)

Deliberation and democratic legitimacy -- Moral pluralism and political consensus -- Associations and democracy (with Joel Rogers) -- Freedom of expression -- Procedure and substance in deliberative democracy -- Directly-deliberative polyarchy (with Charles Sabel) -- Democracy and liberty -- Money, politics, political equality -- Privacy, pluralism, and democracy -- Reflections on deliberative democracy -- Truth and public reason.