Following the 1980 US Supreme Court decision to allow a patent on a living organism, debate has continued on the moral issues involved in biotechnology patents of many kinds and remains a contentious issue for those opposed to the use of biotechnology in industry and agriculture. Attitudes to patenting in the life sciences, including those of the research scientists themselves, are analysed. The relevance of morality to patent law is discussed here in an international context with particular reference to the (...) law of the European Patent Convention administered by the European Patent Office (EPO). The EPO has been the principal forum for opposition to such patents and the few cases under dispute in the EPO are reviewed, including patents for the onco-mouse, human relaxin gene, and the PGS herbicidally resistant plant (gmo). Morality provisions in the European Parliament and Council Directive 98/44/EC are also summarised. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, the ethical implications of patents for biological materials and processes have been the subject of spirited public debate between the many individuals and groups on which the patent system impacts. Whereas copyright, trade marks, and other species of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are widely acceptable, the patent system evokes criticism from many quarters, especially in relation to the legal protection of inventions in the Life Sciences. Some of these criticisms expressed by prestigious public organisations are (...) addressed here from the patent professional standpoint. (shrink)

In the course of his interesting paper ‘The Morality of Killing’ , Mr. T. Goodrich apparently seeks to prove that decisions about population control cannot be based on the utilitarian principle. More exactly, I think, he wishes to show that such decisions cannot be based on this principle by making appeal either to the interests of those persons who would be brought into existence as a result of a decision to add to the population or to the interests, at times (...) subsequent to carrying out the decision, of those persons who would cease to exist as a result of a decision to subtract from the population. I believe that the arguments he uses to support this thesis are not good ones, and I will try to show that they are not. (shrink)

The book Why Science? is written for the millions of science teachers, students and the public who want evidence for their views. Society must make important choices in health and medicine, the environment, energy sources, the courts and in risk and safety. These issues and many other problems facing us require knowledge of science for their solution. Polls show that nearly half of the US population believes the myths, superstition and paranormal delivered by TV and the press. Despite the great (...) advances of science in the 20th century, pseudoscience and antiscience are still around--even growing in some of the greatest universities and institutions in the land. (shrink)

The influence of direct-to-consumer advertising and physician promotions are examined in this study. We further examine some of the ethical issues which may arise when physicians accept promotional products from pharmaceutical companies. The data revealed that direct-to-consumer advertising is likely to increase the request rates of both the drug category and the drug brand choices, as well as the likelihood that those drugs will be prescribed by physicians. The data further revealed that the majority of responding physicians were either neutral (...) or did not feel that accepting some types of gifts from pharmaceutical companies affected their ethical behaviors. (shrink)

"Biophilia" is the term coined by Edward O. Wilson to describe what he believes is humanity's innate affinity for the natural world. In his landmark book Biophilia, he examined how our tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes might be a biologically based need, integral to our development as individuals and as a species. That idea has caught the imagination of diverse thinkers. The Biophilia Hypothesis brings together the views of some of the most creative scientists of our time, (...) each attempting to amplify and refine the concept of biophilia. The variety of perspectives -- psychological, biological, cultural, symbolic, and aesthetic -- frame the theoretical issues by presenting empirical evidence that supports or refutes the hypothesis. Numerous examples illustrate the idea that biophilia and its converse, biophobia, have a genetic component: fear, and even full-blown phobias of snakes and spiders are quick to develop with very little negative reinforcement, while more threatening modern artifacts -- knives, guns, automobiles -- rarely elicit such a response people find trees that are climbable and have a broad, umbrella-like canopy more attractive than trees without these characteristics people would rather look at water, green vegetation, or flowers than built structures of glass and concrete The biophilia hypothesis, if substantiated, provides a powerful argument for the conservation of biological diversity. More important, it implies serious consequences for our well-being as society becomes further estranged from the natural world. Relentless environmental destruction could have a significant impact on our quality of life, not just materially but psychologically and even spiritually. (shrink)

After coining the term “philopsychy” to describe a “soul-loving” approach to philosophical practice, especially when it welcomes a creative synthesis of philosophy and psychology, this article identifies a system of geometrical figures (or “maps”) that can be used to stimulate reflection on various types of perspectival differences. The maps are part of the author’s previously established mapping methodology, known as the Geometry of Logic. As an illustration of how philosophy can influence the development of psychology, Immanuel Kant’s table of twelve (...) categories and Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types are shown to share a common logical structure. Just as Kant proposes four basic categories, each expressed in terms of three subordinate categories, Jung proposes four basic personality functions, each having three possible manifestations. The concluding section presents four scenarios illustrating how such maps can be used in philosophical counseling sessions to stimulate philopsychic insight. (shrink)

In Part One of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Kant repeatedly refers to a “proof” that human nature has a necessary and universal “evil propensity,” but he provides only obscure hints at its location. Interpreters have failed to identify such an argument in Part One. After examining relevant passages, summarizing recent attempts to reconstruct the argument, and explaining why these do not meet Kant's stated needs, I argue that the elusive proof must have a transcendental form (called quasi‐transcendental (...) because Kant never uses “transcendental” in Religion). With deceptive simplicity, the section titles of Part One, viewed as components in an architechtonic system of religion, constitute steps in just such a proof. (shrink)

Kant’s pre-1770 philosophy responded to the mind-body problem by applying a theory of “physical influx”. His encounter with Swedenborg’s mysticism, however, left him disillusioned with any dualist solution to Descartes’ problem. One of the major goals of the Critical philosophy was to provide a completely new solution to the mind-body problem. Kant’s new solution is “perspectival” in the sense that all Critical theories are perspectival: it acknowledges a deep truth in both of the controversy’s extremes (i.e., what we might nowadays (...) call eliminative materialism and an absolutely ideal folk psychology), by viewing both as ways of considering the issue, rather than as the only correct approach. Once we take into account its perspectival character, a new way of understanding Kant’s philosophy of mind emerges. The mind is no longer separate from the body, but is a manifestation of it, viewed from another (specifically human, rational) perspective. Kant’s transcendental conditions of knowledge (spatio-temporal intuition, categorial conception, and principled schematization) do not portray the mind as somehow creating the physical world; rather, they imply the opposite, that knowledge of objects is necessarily structured by a set of unconscious assumptions about the physical world. Our pre-conscious (or pre-mental, in Descartes’ sense of “mental”) encounter with an assumed spatio-temporal, causal nexus is entirely physical. A reincarnated Kant’s solution to today’s mind-body problem would be: eliminative materialism is good science; but only the “explanatory idealist” can consistently be an eliminative materialist. Philosophically, multiple perspectives are necessary in order to understand anything we say or do. (shrink)

This article examines the plausibility of regarding altruism in terms of universal friendship. Section 1 frames the question around Aristotle’s ground-breaking philosophy of friendship. For Aristotle, most friendships exist for selfish reasons, motivated by a desire either for pleasure(playmates) or profit (workmates); relatively few friendships are genuine, being motivated by a desire for shared virtue (soulmates). In contrast to this negative answer to the main question, Section 2 examines a possible religious basis for affirming altruism, arising out of the so-called (...) “love command” – the biblical maxim that we ought to love others as we love ourselves. Many theologians have cited this maxim to justify altruism, with some (such as Aelred of Rievaulx) explicitly portraying it as a form of friendship. Section 3 examines Kant’s view of friendship, arguing that, although at first his position seems disappointingly limited, it actually captures the essence of the only possible form of friendship that could be regarded as a universal ideal without imposing unrealistic expectations onto friends. The article concludes in section 4 by offering a new, Kant-inspired interpretation of Jesus’ parable of the GoodSamaritan: Jesus’ appeal to the love command does enjoin friendship, but not as altruism; rather, love requires a selective form of friendship that is closer to Kant’s position. (shrink)

This second part of a two-part series exploring implications of the natural differences between the sexes for the cultural evolution of marriage considers how the institution of marriage might evolve, if Kant’s reasons for defending monogamy are extended and applied to a future culture. After summarizing the philosophical framework for making cross-cultural ethical assessments that was introduced in Part I and then explaining Kant’s portrayal of marriage as an antidote to the objectifying tendencies of sex, I summarize Kant’s reasons for (...) rejecting polygamy and for viewing monogamy as the only ethically acceptable form of marriage. Finally, I argue that if we apply Kantian principles to the real situation of marriage in many modern cultures, and if we wish to maintain a legitimate place for marriage in the future evolution of human culture, then the future evolution of marriage laws must recognize polyfidelity (i.e., plural marriages for both men and women) as being just as legitimate as monogamy. (shrink)

This first part of a two-part series exploring implications of the natural differences between the sexes for the cultural evolution of marriage assesses whether Kant should be condemned as a sexist due to his various offensive claims about women. Being antithetical to modern-day assumptions regarding the equality of the sexes, Kant’s views seem to contradict his own egalitarian ethics. A philosophical framework for making cross-cultural ethical assessments requires one to assess those in other cultures by their own ethical standards. Sexism (...) is inappropriate if it exhibits or reinforces a tendency to dominate the opposite sex. Kant’s theory of marriage, by contrast, illustrates how sexism can be egalitarian: given the natural differences between the sexes, different roles and cultural norms help to ensure that females and males are equal. Judged by the standards of his own day and in the context of his philosophical system, Kant’s sexism is not ethically inappropriate. (shrink)

This article begins with an overview of the fourfold epistemological framework that arises out of Kant’s distinctions between analyticity and syntheticity and between apriority and aposteriority. I challenge Kant’s claim that the fourth classification, analytic aposteriority, is empty. In reviewing three articles written during the third quarter of the twentieth century that also defend analytic aposteriority, I identify promising insights suggested by Benardete (1958). I then present overviews of two 1987 articles wherein I defend analytic aposteriority, first as a classification (...) highlighting the epistemological status of several crucial (and easily misunderstood) features of Kant’s own philosophy, and second as a way of expressing some of Kripke’s claims about naming in more authentically Kantian terminology. The paper concludes with suggestions of several other important philosophical developments that also make advances precisely insofar as they expound the nature and implications of the epistemological classification that Kant assumed to be empty. (shrink)

Aside from bioethics, the main theme of Ronald Green's lifework has been an exploration of the relation between religion and morality, with special emphasis on the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Søren Kierkegaard. This essay summarizes and assesses his work on this theme by examining, in turn, four of his relevant books. Religious Reason (1978) introduced a new method of comparative religion based on Kant's model of a rational religion. Religion and Moral Reason (1988) expanded on this project, clarifying that (...) religious traditions cannot be reduced to their moral grounding. Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt (1992) offered bold new evidence that Kant, not Hegel, was the philosopher whose ideas primarily shaped Kierkegaard's overtly religious philosophy ; both philosophers focused on the problem of how to understand the relation between moral reasoning and historical religion. And Kant and Kierkegaard on Time and Eternity (2011) republished ten essays that explore various aspects of this theme in greater depth. I argue that throughout these works Green defends a " paradox of inwardness " : principles or ideals that are by their nature essentially inward end up requiring outward manifestation in order to be confirmed or fully justified as real. (shrink)

This is a Turkish translation (by by Necmettin Tan) of Stephen Palmquist, ‘Immanuel Kant: A Christian Philosopher?’, Faith and Philosophy 6:1 (January 1989), pp.65-75. For abstract, see the English version, located in the "Kant 2. Phil. of Religion articles" portion of this website.

This fourth article in a six-part series correlating Kant’s philosophy with the Yijing begins by summarizing the foregoing articles: both Kant and the Yijing’s 64 hexagrams (gua) employ “architectonic” reasoning to form a four-level system with 0+4+12+(4x12) elements, the fourth level’s four sets of 12 correlating to Kant’s model of four university “faculties”. This article explores the second twelvefold set, the law faculty. The “idea of reason” guiding this wing of the comparative analysis is immortality. Three of Kant’s “quaternities” correspond (...) to three sets of four gua in the Yijing: the fourfold nature of the soul in rational psychology (as substantial, simple, unified, spatially related) corresponds to gua 47, 6, 58, 10, respectively; the three “Definitive Articles” and fourth, “Secret Article”, in Perpetual Peace correspond to gua 16, 35,51, 21; and the four objective relations of law to duty in Metaphysics of Morals correspond to gua 45, 12, 17, 25. (shrink)

The notion that metaphorical statements are strictly false suggests that all statements, even those that seemed ‘literal’, are false, as none can ‘literally’ reflect reality. Statements about what we perceive or could perceive rely on evoking sensory images of such ‘visibles’, even though we have no direct access to what others, may perceive. In addition to what is visible, we must also deal with ‘invisibilia’ (both the fantasms that respectable moderns now reject and the realities that lie beyond or before (...) all sentient experience). Talking about such distant or long-ago realities must always be ‘metaphorical’, as they cannot have any of the merely ‘subjective’ properties of experience, nor do they explain those latter properties. Is there some way of confirming the brute conviction that there is a ‘real and intelligible world’, and that we can find it out or describe it ‘literally’? May ‘Reason’ be a route to understanding? But this too is an illusion: we seem never in practice to escape contradictions and had perhaps better turn again to consider the worlds of experience to which we are confined. What we experience is conditioned by our imagination: whether that metaphorical imagination points beyond experience remains uncertain. (shrink)

Kant’s enigmatic term, “Gesinnung”, baffles many readers of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Detailed analysis of Kant’s theory of Gesinnung, covering all 169 occurrences of cognate words in Religion, clarifies its role in his theories of both general moral decision-making and specifically religious conversion. Whereas the convention of translating “Gesinnung” as “disposition” reinforces a tendency to interpret key Kantian theories metaphysically, and Pluhar’s translation as “attitude” has psychological connotations, this study demonstrates that Kantian Gesinnung is volitional, referring to (...) a person’s principle-based choice to live a certain way. Interpreted as principled “conviction”, Kantian Gesinnung is a religiously-manifested, moral form of Überzeugung (“convincing”). (shrink)

Every country's law permits medical experimentation on animals. While some countries protect particular kinds of animals from being subject to experimentation—notably great apes and endangered species—very few place concrete limitations on what researchers may cause animals to suffer, given sufficient scientific justification. What laws do, instead, is establish standards for the humane treatment and housing of animals in labs, and they encourage researchers to limit or seek alternatives to the use of animals, when doing that is consistent with the scientific (...) goals of their research.The system that has evolved in the United States combines elements of sometimes competing regulatory philosophies. The result is a complex, multilayered system that addresses the most important concerns, but, partly because of historical accident, also leaves some gaps. Even proponents of medical research on animals can see obvious ways in which the regulatory structure could be changed to benefit animals. Perhaps more important, though, is the fact that the existing regulatory structure, imperfect though it may be, is elastic enough to accommodate substantial changes that could reduce unnecessary animal suffering. (shrink)

A Chinese translation of an essay entitled "Paradox in Perspective: A Liar’s Guide to Humor".

This paper argues that professionals who make boundary-related decisions should be guided by relationship-based practice. In our roles as service users and professionals, drawing from our lived experiences of professional relationships, we argue we need to move away from distance-based practice. This includes understanding the boundary stories and narratives that exist for all of us – including the people we support, other professionals, as well as the organisations and systems within which we work. When we are dealing with professional boundary (...) issues, we should centre relationship-building skills that are central to many other aspects of our work. Skills that foster relationships at all levels – between professionals, service users, and services – need to be revalued. Our final recommendation is to create, develop, and foster safer spaces within and outside of organisations, as well as inter-professionally, for the discussion and exploration of boundary-related issues and practice. We are interested in hearing from those with experiences of being marginalised by boundaries so that they can inform a reshaping of our collective ideas around boundary related practices. To foster relationship-based practices in organisations, we have outlined several recommendations here; however, we recognize that these do not go far enough, and that collective action is needed to inform systemic change. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Half‐Title Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations.

This article engages critically and constructively with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s biblical study ‘Temptation’ (1938). His study does not always do justice to the text of the New Testament or the theodicean and hamartiological issues pertaining to temptation. And his position that biblically temptation is not the testing of strength, but rather the loss of all strength and defenceless deliverance into Satan’s hands, is hard to defend. However, Bonhoeffer’s idea of Christ-reality undergirds his suggestion that all persons can find in Christ participation, (...) help, and grace in resisting temptation. Bonhoeffer’s most important insight, which requires some unpacking, is that ‘my temptation is nothing other than the temptation of Jesus Christ in me.’. (shrink)

Stephen Schiffer presents a groundbreaking account of meaning and belief, and shows how it can illuminate a range of crucial problems regarding language, mind, knowledge, and ontology. He introduces the new doctrine of 'pleonastic propositions' to explain what the things we mean and believe are. He discusses the relation between semantic and psychological facts, on the one hand, and physical facts, on the other; vagueness and indeterminacy; moral truth; conditionals; and the role of propositional content in information acquisition and (...) explanation. This radical new treatment of meaning will command the attention of everyone who works on fundamental questions about language, and will attract much interest from other areas of philosophy. (shrink)

The autobiographical essay, "Thirty-five Years of Research on Kant: a Retrospective Overview", is here translated into Portuguese by Henrique Azevedo. The English version has not been published, but can be provided to interested readers, upon request.

What is it for marks or sounds to have meaning, and what is it for someone to mean something in producing them? Answering these and related questions, Schiffer explores communication, speech acts, convention, and the meaning of linguistic items in this reissue of a seminal work on the foundations of meaning. A new introduction takes account of recent developments and places his theory in a broader context.

In this foundational work on the theory of linguistic and mental representation, Stephen Schiffer surveys all the leading theories of meaning and content in the philosophy of language and finds them lacking. He concludes that there can be no correct, positive philosophical theory or linguistic or mental representation and, accordingly advocates the deflationary "no-theory theory of meaning and content." Along the way he takes up functionalism, the nature of propositions and their suitability as contents, the language of thought and (...) other sententialist theories of belief, intention based semantics, and related issues in ontology. Stephen Schiffer is Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

This second volume in the Limits and Renewals trilogy is an attempt to restate a traditional philosophy of mind, drawing on philosophical and poetical resources that are often neglected in modern and postmodern thought, and emphasizing the moral and political implications of differing philosophies of mind and value. Clark argues that without the traditional concept of the soul, we have little reason to believe that rational thought and individual autonomy are either possible or desirable. The particular topics covered include the (...) political context of identity claims, the possibility of knowledge and the dangers of curiosity, the fear of death, the philoprogenitive gene, and the mind-body problem. (shrink)