We read with interest the extended essay published from Riisfeldt and are encouraged by an empirical ethics article which attempts to ground theory and its claims in the real world. However, such attempts also have real-world consequences. We are concerned to read the paper’s conclusion that clinical evidence weakens the distinction between euthanasia and normal palliative care prescribing. This is important. Globally, the most significant barrier to adequate symptom control in people with life-limiting illness is poor access to opioid analgesia. (...) Opiophobia makes clinicians reluctant to prescribe and their patients reluctant to take opioids that might provide significant improvements in quality of life. We argue that the evidence base for the safety of opioid prescribing is broader than that presented, restricting the search to palliative care literature produces significant bias as safety experience and literature for opioids and sedatives exists in many fields. This is not acknowledged in the synthesis presented. By considering additional evidence, we reject the need for agnosticism and reaffirm that palliative opioid prescribing is safe. Second, palliative sedation in a clinical context is a poorly defined concept covering multiple interventions and treatment intentions. We detail these and show that continuous deep palliative sedation is a specific practice that remains controversial globally and is not considered routine practice. Rejecting agnosticism towards opioids and excluding CDPS from the definition of routine care allows the rejection of Riisfeldt’s headline conclusion. On these grounds, we reaffirm the important distinction between palliative care prescribing and euthanasia in practice. (shrink)

Einstein, philosophical belief and physical theory -- Introduction to quantum theory -- Quantum theory, the Bohr-Einstein debate -- Physics and society.

Sir John Fortesque was a leading jurist in fifteenth-century England, and while his works are not rigorously philosophical or theoretical, they are a description and defense of English government at the crucial period when England was moving from medieval to modern times. One reason Fortesque’s work is so fascinating is the tension and contrast between medieval and modern ideas.

Sterba informs his students in the introduction that, "the central task of social and political philosophy is to provide a justification for coercive institutions". He points out that virtually every political philosopher has been concerned with the justification of authority but each school of thought provides a difference justification, so he uses this justification as the touchstone for selections in various philosophers, thus providing both a source of unity and a point of contrast for his anthology. It is an effective (...) way of selecting texts. (shrink)

Cambridge continues its excellent series with a translation of this fifteenth-century French social writer. Attention has been focused on Christine de Pizan in recent years because of her status as one of the few medieval women scholars, and although she does not approach the brilliance of an Aquinas or John of Salisbury, nonetheless her work represents an important chapter in our understanding of traditional medieval social thought. It also has the advantage of being short and easily accessible for undergraduates.

This is the first complete collection of the correspondence of Hobbes and as such fills an important gap in the published writing of the man who is probably the most important political philosopher of the modern age. Noel Malcolm has done an admirable job of assembling and annotating the correspondence. The work contains complete critical apparatus including a detailed index, an extensive bibliography, and a biographical register providing a short description of each of Hobbes's correspondents. Each entry is printed in (...) the original language as well as in English translation. While this pushes the edition over into two volumes, it is certainly well justified in making the work useful for professional philosophers as well as accessible to students. The letters are transcribed as precisely as possible, including margin notes and interliniations. The editor also shows good judgement in excluding certain treatises which appear in epistolary form but which have previously appeared in print. (shrink)

The three discourses collected in this volume are from a collection of twelve essays published anonymously in 1620, which were associated with the Cavendish family—the family that served as patron and employer of Hobbes for many years. It was not until Leo Strauss discovered a manuscript version of these essays in Hobbes’s own hand that it began to be suspected that the essays might have been the work of a young Hobbes. Computer analysis of the text, comparing the various word (...) patterns of a work of questionable authorship with that of known authors, has established that three of the twelve essays match the later work of Hobbes and hence can be attributed to him. (shrink)