Nurses are increasingly faced with situations in practice regarding the prolongation of life and withdrawal of treatment. They play a central role in the care of dying people, yet they may find themselves disempowered by medical paternalism or ill-equipped in the decision-making process in end-of-life situations. This article is concerned with the ethical relationships between patient autonomy and medical paternalism in end-of-life care for an advanced cancer patient. The nurse’s role as the patient’s advocate is explored, as are the differences (...) between nursing and medicine when confronted with the notion of patient autonomy. The impetus for this discussion stems from a clinical encounter described in the following scenario. (shrink)

John Mackie's stimulating book is a complete and clear treatise on moral theory. His writings on normative ethics-the moral principles he recommends-offer a fresh approach on a much neglected subject, and the work as a whole is undoubtedly a major contribution to modern philosophy.The author deals first with the status of ethics, arguing that there are not objective values, that morality cannot be discovered but must be made. He examines next the content of ethics, seeing morality as a functional (...) device, basically the same at all times but changing significantly in response to changes in the human condition. He sketches a practical moral system, criticizing but also borrowing from both utilitarian and absolutist views. Thirdly, the frontiers of ethics, areas of contact with psychology, metaphysics, theology, law and politcs, are explored.Throughout, his aim is to discuss a wide range of questions that are both philosophical and practical, working within a distinctive version of subjectivism-an "error" theory of the apparent objectivity of values. John Mackie has drawn on the contributions of such classic thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Kant and Sidgwick, and on more recent discussions, to produce a thought-provoking account that will inspire both the general reader and the student of philosophy. (shrink)

First Published in 1980. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Annotation In this book Mr. Mackie selects for critical discussion six related topic which are prominent in John Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding: ...

A novel treatment of an issue central to much current work in metaphysics: the distinction between the essential and accidental properties of individuals. Mackie challenges widely held views, and arrives at what she calls "minimalist essentialism," an unorthodox theory according to which ordinary individuals have relatively few interesting essential properties. Mackie's clear and accessible discussions of issues surrounding necessity and essentialism mean that the book will appeal as much to graduate students as it will to seasoned metaphysicians.

Speed, flexibility, negotiated control of outcomes, savings and absence of future enmity. Why lose all this in litigation when a new user‐friendly alternative is on the increase? The author is Chief Executive of the Centre for Dispute Resolution, 7 St. Katharine's Way, London E1 9LB, and Special Professor in ADR in the University of Birmingham, England.

In this book, J. L. Mackie makes a careful study of several philosophical issues involved in his account of causation. Mackie follows Hume's distinction between causation as a concept and causation as it is ‘in the objects’ and attempts to provide an account of both aspects. Mackie examines the treatment of causation by philosophers such as Hume, Kant, Mill, Russell, Ducasse, Kneale, Hart and Honore, and von Wright. Mackie's own account involves an analysis of causal statements (...) in terms of counterfactual conditionals though these are judged to be incapable of giving a complete account of causation. Mackie argues that regularity theory too can only offer an incomplete picture of the nature of causation. In the course of his analysis, Mackie critically examines the account of causation offered by Kant, as well as the contemporary Kantian approaches offered by philosophers such as Bennett and Strawson. Also addressed are issues such as the direction of causation, the relation of statistical laws and functional laws, the role of causal statements in legal contexts, and the understanding of causes both as ‘facts’ and ‘events’. Throughout the discussion of these topics, Mackie develops his own complex account of the nature of causation, finally bringing his analysis to bear in regard to the topic of teleology and the question of whether final causes can be justifiably reduced to efficient causes. (shrink)

I attempt to rebut Dean Zimmerman's novel argument (2010), which he presents in support of substance dualism, for the conclusion that, in spite of its popularity, the combination of property dualism with substance materialism represents a precarious position in the philosophy of mind. I take issue with Zimmerman's contention that the vagueness of 'garden variety' material objects such as brains or bodies makes them unsuitable candidates for the possession of phenomenal properties. I also argue that the 'speculative materialism' that is (...) available to a substance materialist property dualist who abandons the identification of persons with such garden variety objects is significantly more attractive than Zimmerman allows. Although I do not attempt to refute its substance dualist rival, I conclude that the combination of property dualism with substance materialism can withstand Zimmerman's objections. (shrink)

Recently, novel lines of research have developed to study the influence of identity processes in sport-related behaviours. Yet, whereas emotions in sport are the result of a complex psychosocial process, little attention has been paid to examining the mechanisms that underlie how group membership influences athletes’ emotional experiences. The present narrative review aims at complementing the comprehensive review produced by Rees et al. (2015) on social identity in sport by reporting specific work on identity-based emotions in sport. To that end, (...) we firstly overview the different terminology currently used in the field of emotions in groups to clarify the distinct nature of emotions that result from an individual’s social identity. Secondly, we discuss key concepts of social identity to better understand the mechanisms underlying identity-based emotions. Thirdly, we address existing knowledge on identity-based emotions in sport. We close the present narrative review by suggesting future research perspectives based on existing meta-theories of social identity. Evidence from the social psychology literature is discussed alongside existing works from the sport literature to propose a crucial theoretical approach to better understand emotions in sport. (shrink)

Is there a public good? A prevalent view in political science is that democracy is unavoidably chaotic, arbitrary, meaningless, and impossible. Such scepticism began with Condorcet in the eighteenth century, and continued most notably with Arrow and Riker in the twentieth century. In this powerful book, Gerry Mackie confronts and subdues these long-standing doubts about democratic governance. Problems of cycling, agenda control, strategic voting, and dimensional manipulation are not sufficiently harmful, frequent, or irremediable, he argues, to be of normative (...) concern. Mackie also examines every serious empirical illustration of cycling and instability, including Riker's famous argument that the US Civil War was due to arbitrary dimensional manipulation. Almost every empirical claim is erroneous, and none is normatively troubling, Mackie says. This spirited defence of democratic institutions should prove both provocative and influential. (shrink)

Newcomb's paradox was first presented by Robert Nozick and has been discussed by a considerable number of writers. You are playing a game with a Being who seems to have extraordinary predictive powers. Before you are two boxes, in one of which you can see $1,000. The other is closed and you cannot see what it contains, but you know that the Being has put a million dollars into it if he has predicted that you will take it only, but (...) nothing if he has predicted that you will take both boxes; you may take either both boxes or the closed one only. The Being has correctly predicted the choices of all who have so far played with him. What should you do?Let us call the Being the seer, and his opponent the player. I should also like to reduce the amount that may, or may not, be in the closed box to $10,000. Nearly everyone could make good use of $1,000 and better use of $10,000 or $11,000, but it is hard to say whether a million dollars would be a blessing or a curse. (shrink)

Schumpeter's redefinition of representative democracy as merely leadership competition was canonical in postwar political science. Schumpeter denies that individual will, common will, or common good are essential to democracy, but he, and anyone, I contend, is forced to assume these conditions in the course of denying them. Democracy is only a method, of no intrinsic value, its sole function to select leaders, according to Schumpeter. Leaders impose their views, and are not controlled by voters, and this is as it should (...) be, he says. I respond that his leadership democracy is implausible, both descriptively and prescriptively. Competitive election is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition of democracy, not sufficient even for the limited empirical purpose of regime classification. Any adequate definition of democracy must make reference to the common will, the common good, and other values, I submit. (shrink)

I discuss a thesis that I call ‘The Appearance of Mind-Independence’, to the effect that, to the subject of an ordinary perceptual experience, it seems that the experience involves the awareness of a mind-independent world. Although this thesis appears to be very widely accepted, I argue that it is open to serious challenge. Whether such a challenge can be maintained is especially relevant to the assessment of any theory, such as Berkeley’s idealism, according to which the only objects of which (...) we are aware in perception are mind-dependent. But the issue is of significance for the philosophy of perception more generally. In the course of my sceptical discussion, I argue that recent work by Campbell and Cassam may be flawed by a failure to take sufficiently seriously the requirements for genuine mind-independence. (shrink)

In ‘Animalism versus Lockeanism: a Current Controversy’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 48 (1998), pp. 302–18, Harold Noonan examined the relation between animalist and neo‐Lockean theories of personal identity. As well as presenting arguments intended to support a modest compatibilism of animalism and neo‐Lockeanism, he advanced a new proposal about the relation between persons and human beings which was intended to evade the principal animalist objections to neo‐Lockean theories. I argue both that the arguments for compatibilism are without force, and that Noonan’s (...) new neo‐Lockean proposal is inadequate. (shrink)

This collection of John Mackie's papers on personal identity and topics in moral and political philosophy, some of which have not previously been published, deal with such issues as: multiple personality; the transcendental "I"; responsibility and language; aesthetic judgements; Sidgwick's pessimism; act-utiliarianism; right-based moral theories; cooperation, competition, and moral philosophy; universalization; rights, utility, and external costs; norms and dilemmas; Parfit's population paradox; and the combination of partially-ordered preferences.

I argue that David Lewis’s attempt, in his ‘Counterfactual Dependence and Time’s Arrow’, to explain the fixity of the past in terms of counterfactual independence is unsuccessful. I point out that there is an ambiguity in the claim that the past is counterfactually independent of the present (or, more generally, that the earlier is counterfactually independent of the later), corresponding to two distinct theses about the relation between time and counterfactuals, both officially endorsed by Lewis. I argue that Lewis’s attempt (...) is flawed for a variety of reasons, including the fact that his own theory about the evaluation of counterfactuals requires too many exceptions to the general rule that the past is counterfactually independent of the present. At the end of the paper, I consider a variant of Lewis’s strategy that attempts to explain the fixity of the past in terms of causal, rather than counterfactual, independence. I conclude that, although this variant avoids some of the objections that afflict Lewis’s account, it nevertheless seems to be incapable of giving a satisfactory explanation of the notion of the fixity of the past. (shrink)

The paper discusses sortal essentialism': the view that some sortal concepts represent essential properties of the things that fall under them. Although sortal essentialism is widely accepted, there is a dearth of theories purporting to explain why some sortals should have this characteristic. The paper examines two theories that do attempt this explanatory task, theories proposed by Baruch Brody and David Wiggins. It is argued that Brody's theory rests on an untenable principle about "de re" modality, while Wiggins' theory appeals (...) to a thesis about principles of individuation that is either unjustified, or vacuous and incapable of supporting sortal essentialism. (shrink)

This collection of John Mackie's papers on topics in epistemology, some of which have not previously been published, deal with such issues as: incorrigible empirical statements; rationalism and empiricism; the philosophy of John Anderson; self-refutation; Plato's theory of idea; ideological explanation; problems of intentionality; Popper's third world;; mind, brain, and causation; Newcomb's Paradox and the direction of causation; induction; causation in concept, knowledge, and reality; absolutism; Locke and representative perception; and anti-realisms.

I argue against a view of the individuation of actions endorsed most notably by Hornsby and Davidson. This is the view that in, for example, Anscombe’s case of the pumping man, we have a single action which can be described, variously, as a pumping, a poisoning and so on. I argue that, even in the area of the standard arguments against this view, such as that based on the logic of ‘by’ and the argument from temporal dimensions, the case against (...) the Davidson‐Hornsby view has not been made as strong as it ought to have been. I show how those standard arguments can be strengthened; and I argue that the principal considerations adduced in support of the view do not in fact lend it the support that they have been widely thought to lend it. I conclude that the view should be rejected. (shrink)

I attempt to rebut Dean Zimmerman's novel argument (2010), which he presents in support of substance dualism, for the conclusion that, in spite of its popularity, the combination of property dualism with substance materialism represents a precarious position in the philosophy of mind. I take issue with Zimmerman's contention that the vagueness of ‘garden variety’ material objects such as brains or bodies makes them unsuitable candidates for the possession of phenomenal properties. I also argue that the ‘speculative materialism’ that is (...) available to a substance materialist property dualist who abandons the identification of persons with such garden variety objects is significantly more attractive than Zimmerman allows. Although I do not attempt to refute its substance dualist rival, I conclude that the combination of property dualism with substance materialism can withstand Zimmerman's objections. (shrink)

The paper offers an explanation of the intuitive appeal of Saul Kripke's necessity of origin thesis, exhibiting it as the consequence of a temporally asymmetrical 'branching model' of possibilities which, in turn, rests on two plausible principles concerning possibility, time, and identity. Unlike some other accounts, my explanation dissociates the necessity of origin thesis from a commitment to individual essences or other sufficient conditions for identity across possible worlds. I conclude that although the branching model is not irresistible, its rejection (...) may necessitate the denial of a plausible principle that requires possibilities for actual individuals to be 'anchored' to their actual characteristics. (shrink)

It seems plausible to say that what changes an entity can or cannot survive depends on its persistence conditions, and that these depend, in turn, on its sortal kind. It might seem to follow that an entity cannot belong to two sortal kinds with potentially conflicting persistence conditions. Notoriously, though, this conclusion is denied by ‘contingent identity’ theorists, who hold, for example, that a permanently coincident statue and piece of clay are identical, although the persistence conditions associated with the kinds (...) statue and piece of clay are potentially conflicting. A clash with Leibniz’s Law is avoided by treating modal predicates as what Harold Noonan has called ‘Abelardian predicates’, as in the version of ‘inconstant’ counterpart theory developed by David Lewis. In addition to other difficulties, however, there is a question whether this ‘Abelardian’ theory does justice to the intuitions expressed in such statements as that the piece of clay could, while the statue could not, have survived a radical reshaping of its matter. I present an argument, which I call ‘the vacuous satisfaction argument’, for the conclusion that the theory does indeed fail to capture the significance of such de re modal statements. (shrink)

Despite the importance of the Judgement of Paris in the story of the Trojan War, the Iliad has only one explicit reference to it. This occurs, rather out of the blue, in the final book of the poem in a dispute among the gods about the treatment of Hector's body. Achilles keeps dragging the body around behind his chariot, but Apollo protects it with his golden aegis. Apollo then speaks among the gods and attacks the conduct of Achilles, claiming at (...) the end that he offends the dumb earth. Other gods too have their concerns about what is going on, and they keep trying to get Hermes to snatch the body away. The three most powerful divine enemies of Troy, however, Hera, Poseidon and Athena, will have none of this. They remain as hostile to Troy and Priam and his people as they ever were, and it is in this context that the Judgement of Paris is mentioned: ἔνθ' ἄλλοις μὲν πᾶσιν ἑήνδανɛν, οὐδέ πoθ' Ἥρῃοὐδὲ Ποσɛιδάων' οὐδὲ γλαυκώπιδι κούρῃ,ἀλλ' ἔχον ὥς σϕιν πρῶτον ἀπήχθɛτο Ἴλιος ἱρὴκαὶ Πρίαμος καὶ λαὸς Ἀλɛξάνδρου ἕνɛκ' ἄτης,ὃς νɛίκɛσσɛ θɛάς, ὅτɛ οἱ μέσσαυλον ἵκοντο,τὴν δ' ᾔνησ' ἥ οἱ πόρɛ μαχλοσύνην ἀλɛγɛινήν.And this was pleasing to all the others, but never to Heranor to Poseidon, nor to the flashing-eyed maiden,but they remained hostile to sacred Ilios as in the beginning,and to Priam and to his people, because of Alexander's folly,he who insulted the goddesses when they came to his inner courtyardand praised her who provided his grievous lust. (shrink)

This article is concerned with reminiscences of Homer in Thucydides' History. The principal aim is to raise questions as to what extent Thucydides' account of the Sicilian venture is a conscious response to some Homeric journey narratives. Such questions are worth asking because Thucydides refers to the Cyclopes and Laestrygonians at the beginning of his story . It will be argued that this reference is intended not solely for the sake of mythical history, but to broaden the context in which (...) Athenian actions can be seen. As well as this direct mythical allusion there are other Homeric reminiscences, including topographical features, that help to convey the notion that the expedition to Sicily is a kind of heroic quest into the unknown that goes disastrously wrong. It is a venture of epic proportions with heroic aspirations, but one whose consequences have a grim and immediate reality. In the light of these Homeric associations, it is argued that the expedition to Sicily is to be seen both in its recent historical context and in its mythological context. The Athenians not only fail to learn the lessons of their most glorious military moments, but they also make the mistake of treading on the same disastrous path as Homer's Odysseus. (shrink)

This collection of John Mackie's papers on personal identity and topics in moral and political philosophy, some of which have not previously been published, deal with such issues as: multiple personality; the transcendental "I"; responsibility and language; aesthetic judgements; Sidgwick's pessimism; act-utiliarianism; right-based moral theories; cooperation, competition, and moral philosophy; universalization; rights, utility, and external costs; norms and dilemmas; Parfit's population paradox; and the combination of partially-ordered preferences.

This collection of John Mackie's papers on topics in epistemology, some of which have not previously been published, deal with such issues as: incorrigible empirical statements; rationalism and empiricism; the philosophy of John Anderson; self-refutation; Plato's theory of idea; ideological explanation; problems of intentionality; Popper's third world;; mind, brain, and causation; Newcomb's Paradox and the direction of causation; induction; causation in concept, knowledge, and reality; absolutism; Locke and representative perception; and anti-realisms.

This collection of John Mackie's papers on personal identity and topics in moral and political philosophy, some of which have not previously been published, deal with such issues as: multiple personality; the transcendental "I"; responsibility and language; aesthetic judgements; Sidgwick's pessimism; act-utiliarianism; right-based moral theories; cooperation, competition, and moral philosophy; universalization; rights, utility, and external costs; norms and dilemmas; Parfit's population paradox; and the combination of partially-ordered preferences.

This collection of John Mackie's papers on topics in epistemology, some of which have not previously been published, deal with such issues as: incorrigible empirical statements; rationalism and empiricism; the philosophy of John Anderson; self-refutation; Plato's theory of idea; ideological explanation; problems of intentionality; Popper's third world;; mind, brain, and causation; Newcomb's Paradox and the direction of causation; induction; causation in concept, knowledge, and reality; absolutism; Locke and representative perception; and anti-realisms.

This article is a clarification of different procedures in natural deduction: universal instantiation, Universal generalisation, Existential generalisation, And existential instantiation. The author discusses rules concerning universal generalisation from copi's "symbolic logic". (staff).

In several writings, John Martin Fischer has argued that those who deny a principle about abilities that he calls ‘the Fixity of the Past’ are committed to absurd conclusions concerning practical reasoning. I argue that Fischer’s ‘practical rationality’ argument does not succeed. First, Fischer’s argument may be vulnerable to the charge that it relies on an equivocation concerning the notion of an ‘accessible’ possible world. Secondly, even if Fischer’s argument can be absolved of that charge, I maintain that it can (...) be defeated by appeal to an independently plausible principle about practical reasoning that I call ‘the Knowledge Principle’. In addition, I point out that Fischer’s own presentation of his argument is flawed by the fact that the principle that he labels ‘the Fixity of the Past’ does not, in fact, succeed in representing the intuitive idea that it is intended to capture. Instead, the debate should be recast in terms of a different principle, which I call ‘the Principle of Past-Limited Abilities’. The principal contribution of my paper is thus twofold: to clarify the terms of the debate about the fixity of the past, and to undermine Fischer’s ‘practical rationality’ argument for the fixity of the past. (shrink)

Speed, flexibility, negotiated control of outcomes, savings and absence of future enmity. Why lose all this in litigation when a new user‐friendly alternative is on the increase? The author is Chief Executive of the Centre for Dispute Resolution , 7 St. Katharine's Way, London E1 9LB, and Special Professor in ADR in the University of Birmingham, England.

The Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius deals with a band of heroes one generation before the great warriors at Troy, and the narrative does not really concern itself directly with the later generation. Some of the familiar heroes of Homer may never seem very far from Apollonius' narrative, but they tend not to appear in the poem themselves. One who does is Achilles, twice in fact: once in the first book and once in the last. Both of these passages deal with (...) his early life: the first when he is in the care of Chiron and his wife , the second when he is in the family home with Peleus and Thetis . In the former the gods of heaven and nymphs of Pelion are described as watching the departure of the Argo from Thessaly bound for Colchis. Chiron then comes down from Pelion and waves the heroes goodbye. His wife meanwhile holds Achilles on her arm and shows the child to his father Peleus as he departs with the Argonauts. The later passage describes the failed attempt of Thetis to make her son immortal. In this account Thetis addresses Peleus for the first time since their separation , and then vanishes into the depths of ocean. Their separation occurred some time earlier when she disappeared in anger after her failure to make the young Achilles immortal. She tried to do this by placing him in the fire during the night, and anointing him with ambrosia during the day :The attempt fails when Peleus happens to see his son's immersion in the flames, and gives out a terrible cry, whereupon Thetis throws the boy down, goes away herself, and does not return. (shrink)

“BUT if I suppose that someone has a pain, then I am simply supposing that he has just the same as I have so often had.”—That gets us further. It is as if I were to say: “You surely know what ‘It is 5 o'clock here’ means; so you also know what ‘It's 5 o'clock on the sun’ means. It means simply that it is just the same time there as it is here when it 5 o'clock.”—The explanation by means (...) of identity does not work here. For I know well enough that one can call 5 o'clock here and 5 o'clock there “the same time”, but what I do not know is in what cases one is to speak of its being the same time here and there. (shrink)

According to functionalism, the family internalizes and transmits society’s supposed value consensus from one generation to the next, and such socialization explains morality, social order, and cultural uniformities. I present three investigations that challenge the concept of functionalist socialization, and propose alternative theories that may better explain observations. First, I present evidence from developmental psychology based largely on American subjects and an ethnographic report from Burkina Faso which suggest that the characters of children are not formed by parental socialization. Second, (...) I report data from Europe which suggest that the weaker is family and its supervision, the stronger is character and internalized morality. Third, I report an account of European modernization which suggests that weaker family ties broaden extrafamilial associations and generalize moral orientation. Finally, I suggest that Schelling’s game-theoretic account of social conventions is a better explanation of cultural continuities and discontinuities than is functionalism. (shrink)

The view that people go where their brains go remains popular in discussions of personal identity. But since the brain is only a small part of the body, defenders of that view need to provide an account of what it is that makes the brain specially relevant to personal identity. The standard answer is that the brain is special because it is the carrier of psychological continuity. But Peter van Inwagen has recently offered (in Material Beings) an alternative account of (...) the brain' special relevance. Those who reject the view that we go with our brains obviously need to respond to this new account. According to van Inwagen, there is an important difference between the life-support requirements of a severed head and those of a headless body: whereas a severed head would need only a pump to survive, a headless body would need the functional equivalent of a computer in its life-support system. It follows, according to van Inwagen, that we go with our brains. In this paper I argue that van Inwagen's argument is doubly defective: the inference from his premisses to his conclusion is dubious; and in any case his premisses misrepresent the relevant physiological facts. (shrink)

Kant, in the third paralogism, needs to be rescued from his commentators. His argument that the identity of one's consciousness of oneself is no proof of the numerical identity of a soul-substance, since an indistinguishable identity of consciousness could result from one subject's handing over of memories to another, is sound and complete, and does not need the supplementations offered by Strawson, Bennett and James Anderson. But a possible supplementation is that this identity of consciousness calls for explanation and is (...) partly explained by the continuity of the central nervous system, though this continuity is not guaranteed or conceptually required by that identity. (shrink)