This paper provides a new rationale for equating brain death with the death of the human organism, in light of well-known criticisms made by Alan D Shewmon, Franklin Miller and Robert Truog and a number of other writers. We claim that these criticisms can be answered, but only if we accept that we have slightly redefined the concept of death when equating brain death with death simpliciter. Accordingly, much of the paper defends the legitimacy of redefining death against objections, before (...) turning to the specific task of defending a new rationale for equating brain death with death as slightly redefined. (shrink)

In donation after the circulatory-respiratory determination of death, the dead donor rule requires that the donor be dead before organ procurement can proceed. Under the relevant limb of the Uniform Determination of Death Act 1981, a person is dead when the cessation of circulatory-respiratory function is ‘irreversible’. Critics of current practice in DCDD have argued that the donor is not dead at the time organs are procured, and so the procurement of organs from these donors violates the dead donor rule. (...) We offer a new argument here in defence of current DCDD practice, and, in particular, of the interpretation of the requirement of ‘irreversibility’ as permanence. (shrink)

This article defends the criterion of permanence as a valid criterion for declaring death against some well-known recent objections. We argue that it is reasonable to adopt the criterion of permanence for declaring death, given how difficult it is to know when the point of irreversibility is actually reached. We claim that this point applies in all contexts, including the donation after circulatory determination of death context. We also examine some of the potentially unpalatable ramifications, for current death declaration practices, (...) of adopting the irreversibility criterion. (shrink)

When we consider some controversies among scholars about whether brainstem death is death, we should clearly identify what the controversy is about. Is it about whether the brainstem dead can be ca...

Two questions are central to the ethics of geoengineering. The justificatory question asks ‘Under what future conditions might geoengineering become justified?’, where the conditions to be considered include, for example, the threat to be confronted, the background circumstances, the governance mechanisms, individual protections, compensation provisions, and so on. The contextual question asks ‘What is the ethical context of the push toward geoengineering, and what are its implications?’ Unfortunately, early discussions of geoengineering often marginalize both questions because they tend to focus (...) on arguments from emergency that illegitimately brush them aside. One sign of this is that some emergency arguments are ethically short-sighted, and morally schizophrenic. In this paper, I illustrate this problem by appeal to two abstract examples. Although both are extreme and idealized, even the imperfect analogies provide reasons for concern about our current predicament. Ethically serious discussion of geoengineering should confront such worries, rather than hide behind overly simplistic appeals to moral emergency. As Michael Stocker puts it in his seminal discussion of moral schizophrenia, “to refuse to do so bespeaks a malady of the spirit.” . (shrink)

Soren Kierkegaard, one of the most original thinkers of the nineteenth century, wrote widely on religious, psychological, and literary themes. This book shows how Kierkegaard developed his views in emphatic opposition to prevailing opinions. His arresting but paradoxical conception of religious belief is critically discussed, and Patrick Gardiner concludes this lucid introduction by showing how Kiekegaard has influenced contemporary thought.

We all face death, but how many of us are actually ready for it? Whether our own death or that of a loved one comes first, how prepared are we, spiritually or practically? In Preparing to Die, Andrew Holecek presents a wide array of resources to help the reader address this unfinished business. Part One shows how to prepare one's mind and how to help others, before, during, and after death. The author explains how spiritual preparation for death can (...) completely transform our relationship to the end of life, dissolving our fear and helping us to feel open and receptive to letting go in the dying process. Daily meditation practices, the stages of dying and how to work with them, and after-death experiences are all detailed in ways that will be particularly helpful for those with an interest in Tibetan Buddhism and in Tibetan approaches to conscious dying. Part Two addresses the practical issues that surround death. Experts in grief, hospice, the funeral business, and the medical and legal issues of death contribute chapters to prepare the reader for every practical concern, including advance directives, green funerals, the signs of death, warnings about the funeral industry, the stages of grief, and practical care for the dying. Part Three contains heart-advice from twenty of the best-known Tibetan Buddhist masters now teaching in the West. These brief interviews provide words of solace and wisdom to guide the dying and their caregivers during this challenging time. Preparing to Die is for anyone interested in learning how to prepare for death from a Buddhist perspective, both spiritually and practically. It is also for those who want to learn how to help someone else who is dying, both during the time of illness and death as well as after death. (shrink)

This paper argues that the dominance of linear models has led many sociologists to construe the social world in terms of a "general linear reality." This reality assumes (1) that the social world consists of fixed entities with variable attributes, (2) that cause cannot flow from "small" to "large" attributes/events, (3) that causal attributes have only one causal pattern at once, (4) that the sequence of events does not influence their outcome, (5) that the "careers" of entities are largely independent, (...) and (6) that causal attributes are generally independent of each other. The paper discusses examples of these assumptions in empirical work, consider standard and new methods addressing them, and briefly explores alternative models for reality that employ demographic, sequential, and network perspectives. (shrink)

Most moral dilemmas in medicine are analysed using the four principles with some consideration of consequentialism but these frameworks have limitations. It is not always clear how to judge which consequences are best. When principles conflict it is not always easy to decide which should dominate. They also do not take account of the importance of the emotional element of human experience. Virtue ethics is a framework that focuses on the character of the moral agent rather than the rightness of (...) an action. In considering the relationships, emotional sensitivities, and motivations that are unique to human society it provides a fuller ethical analysis and encourages more flexible and creative solutions than principlism or consequentialism alone. Two different moral dilemmas are analysed using virtue ethics in order to illustrate how it can enhance our approach to ethics in medicine. (shrink)

Abstract: Does the evolving influence of humanity on the Earth’s environment call for new virtues? How might such virtues be seen as contributing to human flourishing? In this paper, I develop Aristotle’s discussion of magnificence and magnanimity to provide a framework within which to discuss such claims. I also defend the controversial view that even if genuinely new virtues may be involved, these may be virtues to which we should not aspire (now, or perhaps ever).

Constellations, Volume 29, Issue 2, Page 131-145, June 2022.

This article examines recent scholarly work on boredom by drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s account of modernity, irony, and mass skepticism. In The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin noted that, beginning in the 1840s, Western societies had been gripped by an “epidemic of boredom.” He was referring to a peculiarly modern form of mass boredom, associated with the “atrophy of experience” in a mechanized and urbanized social life—a boredom Elizabeth S. Goodstein has characterized as the “democratization of skepticism.” Although Bakhtin says little (...) about “boredom” directly, he probes the sociocultural conditions that give rise to it. Bakhtin, for example, celebrates the liberatory and egalitarian promise of modern vernacular speech, which displays a healthy suspicion of “monotonic” qualities of elite genres, and which springs not from the pulpit or the palace, but from the street, the marketplace and the public square. Bakhtin is concerned about the nihilistic implications of this disenchantment of the world and the threats it poses—indifference, reification and alienation—to the “participative” mode of social life he favours. (shrink)

The psychiatrist, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff of Emory University, is the most prominent example to date in a series of disclosures that is shaking the world of academic medicine and seems likely to force broad changes in the relationships between doctors and drug makers.

In this paper I shall examine how the pragmatists regarded the context of a single self in time (the problem of personal development over the life course) and the context of a single self in social space (the problem not only of surrounding individuals but also of surrounding and fundamentally different groups). After a quick glance at the ontologies of the earlier pragmatists, I discuss the problems of individual development and social difference as they emerged society-wide during and after the (...) first pragmatist generation. Having specified these problems, I can set the second pragmatist generation in the context they provide. The paper concludes with a discussion of the centrality of accounts of development and difference in a processualized social ontology. (shrink)

Buchanan highlighted the inconsistencies that arise when public services are financed by general taxation. Citizens increase their demand for services, even though citizens are reticent to increase taxation. Buchanan invited readers to explore the impact of different assumptions of politicians’ behaviour. In this chapter, attention focuses on the way that vote maximising governments are likely to respond to the divorce between receipt and payment for services. Buchanan illustrated his analysis with reference to the National Health Service in the UK. Predictions (...) are tested with reference to the pattern of excess demand in the National Health Service between 1970 and 2012. (shrink)

Is a human more conscious than an octopus? In the science of consciousness, it’s oftentimes assumed that some creatures (or mental states) are more conscious than others. But in recent years, a number of philosophers have argued that the notion of degrees of consciousness is conceptually confused. This paper (1) argues that the most prominent objections to degrees of consciousness are unsustainable, (2) examines the semantics of ‘more conscious than’ expressions, (3) develops an analysis of what it is for a (...) degreed property to count as degrees of consciousness, and (4) applies the analysis to various theories of consciousness. I argue that whether consciousness comes in degrees ultimately depends on which theory of consciousness turns out to be correct. But I also argue that most theories of consciousness entail that consciousness comes in degrees. (shrink)

A Physicalist Manifesto is a full treatment of the comprehensive physicalist view that, in some important sense, everything is physical. Andrew Melnyk argues that the view is best formulated by appeal to a carefully worked-out notion of realization, rather than supervenience; that, so formulated, physicalism must be importantly reductionist; that it need not repudiate causal and explanatory claims framed in non-physical language; and that it has the a posteriori epistemic status of a broad-scope scientific hypothesis. Two concluding chapters argue (...) in detail that contemporary science provides no significant empirical evidence against physicalism and some considerable evidence for it. Written in a brisk, candid and exceptionally clear style, this 2003 book should appeal to professionals and students in philosophy of mind, metaphysics and philosophy of science. (shrink)

No one would think of denying that literary texts lend themselves to “plural” readings, as we say today: the studies collected in this issue are one more proof, as is the title of the collection. Tens of thousands of pages have already been written on Shakespeare and on Montaigne, which does not preclude the enjoyment of those that are offered us here; and the idea would not occur to anyone that this process of re-writing could ever come to an end, (...) aside from the apocalyptic end of all human things, written and unwritten. (shrink)

The “dead-donor rule” states that, in any case of vital organ donation, the potential donor should be determined to be dead before transplantation occurs. In many countries around the world, neurological criteria can be used to legally determine death (also referred to as brain death). Nevertheless, there is considerable controversy in the bioethics literature over whether brain death is the equivalent of biological death. This international legal review demonstrates that there is considerable variability in how different jurisdictions have evolved to (...) justify the legal status of brain death and its relationship to the dead-donor rule.In this article, we chose to review approaches that are representative of many different jurisdictions—the United States takes an approach similar to that of many European countries; the United Kingdom’s approach is followed by Canada, India, and influences many other Commonwealth countries; Islamic jurisprudence is applicable to several different national laws; the Israeli approach is similar to many Western countries, but incorporates noteworthy modifications; and Japan’s relatively idiosyncratic approach has received some attention in the literature. Illuminating these different justifications may help develop respectful policies regarding organ donation within countries with diverse populations and allow for more informed debate about brain death and the deaddonor rule. (shrink)

Building on the success of the bestselling first edition, the second edition of this textbook provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the major issues in Principles and Parameters syntactic theory, including phrase structure, the lexicon, case theory, movement, and locality conditions. Includes new and extended problem sets in every chapter, all of which have been annotated for level and skill type. Features three new chapters on advanced topics including vP shells, object shells, control, gapping and ellipsis and an additional (...) chapter on advanced topics in binding. Offers a brief survey of both Lexical-Functional Grammar and Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Succeeds in strengthening the reader's foundational knowledge, and prepares them for more advanced study. Supported by an instructor's manual and online resources for students and instructors, available at www.blackwellpublishing.com/carnie. (shrink)