The opening sentence of Christopher Meyers’ Target Article is “Lying to one’s patient is wrong”. The author continues, “This truism is one that bioethicists have heartedly endorsed fo...

To paraphrase Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” from his Through the Looking Glass, “The time has come to talk of many things.” Not as the Walrus did in the nursery rhyme, “of sho...

This paper examines and critiques the ethical issues in postmortem sperm retrieval and the use of postmortem sperm to create new life. The article was occasioned by the recent request of the parents of a West Point cadet who died in a skiing accident at the Academy to retrieve and use his sperm to honor his memory and perpetuate the family name. The request occasioned national media attention. A trial court judge in New York in a two-page order authorized both (...) the retrieval and use of the postmortem sperm. (shrink)

A central principle of bioethics is “subject autonomy,” the acknowledgement of the primacy of the informed consent of the subject of research. Autonomy requires informed consent — the assurance that the research participant is informed about the possible risks and benefits of the research. In fact, informed consent is difficult when a single drug is being tested, although subjects have a baseline understanding of the testing of a pharmacological agent and the understanding that they can stop taking the drug if (...) there were an adverse event. However, informed consent is even less easily achieved in the modern arena of complex new molecular and cellular therapies. In this article, we argue that as science confronts new issues such as transplantation of stem cell products, which may live within the participant for the rest of their lives, researchers must carefully consider and constantly re-examine how they properly inform subjects considering participation trials of these novel therapeutic strategies.For example, the manufacture of a vial of a cell product that consists of a collection of growing cells is very different than the production of a vial of identical pills, which can be presumed to be identical. The scientific concepts on which these cellular approaches are based may seem alien and incomprehensible to a research subject, who thinks of a clinical trial as simply the selection and testing of the most efficacious pharmaceutical agent already proven to work in preclinical animal studies. The research subject would be wrong. (shrink)

The children were nestled all snug in their beds.While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.Clement Moore's cherished ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas captures the hopes, dreams and visions...

It took nearly two thousand years for society to recognize the Hippocratic insistence that “the doctor knows best”1 was an inadequate approach to medical decisionmaking. Today, patient-centered medicine has come to understand that the individual patient has a significant role in the decisionmaking process.2.

The opinion of Mr. Justice Francis of the English High Court which denied the parents of Charlie Gard, who had been born with an extremely rare mutation of a genetic disease, the right to take their child to the United States for a proposed experimental treatment occasioned world wide attention including that of the Pope, President Trump, and the US Congress. The case raise anew a debate as old as the foundation of Western medicine on who should decide and on (...) what standard when there is a conflict between a family and the treating physicians over a possible treatment. This paper will explore the different approaches of the British and American courts on the issue and the various proposals from that of John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice to a processed-based approach for resolving such disputes. As carefully crafted as the opinion of Mr Justice Nicholas Francis in the Gard case proved to be, it left commentators unsatisfied. A widespread criticism, captured in an article by Michael Dougherty in The National Review was for the state to ‘get out of the way of the parents trying to act in the best interests of the child’.1 Although he conceded the parents could be adding to the suffering of the child by taking Charlie to America for an experimental therapy and agreed that such a choice ‘may be the wrong decision,’ in Dougherty’s view, it should still be ‘their decision’. Dougherty’s stand was the popular response to the question of ‘Who should decide?’ It fails, however, to propose any rationale for the decision. It provided no norms, no standards and no guidelines for the parents. Their motive could equally well be indifference to the suffering of the child as concern for his well-being. Furthermore, even good, loving parents may make …. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 12, December 2019, Page 49-51.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 147-150.

The healthcare industry generates significant waste and carbon emissions that negatively impact the environment. Intensive care units are a major contributor to the production of waste, due t...

In section 1 I present a case for understanding Cicero as a radical Academic skeptic, based on evidence from the Academica. In section 2 I offer an explanation of the concept of skeptical fideism and present a way to taxonomize various versions of the view. The material in sections 1 and 2 positions us to ask, was Cicero, the Academic augur, a sincere orthopraxic skeptical fideist? In section 3 I attempt to answer that question, beginning with an examination of De (...) divinatione. Reading that work in a skeptical light, as I do, we are led to an impasse on our central question. However, in section 4 I consider two lines of argument that might enable us to determine Cicero’s own views. (shrink)

This paper takes up Richard Kearney's work The God Who May Be, specifically in the context of postmodern debates concerning epistemological claims regarding the other. Kearney's hermeneutics of religion attempts to forge a middle path between ontotheological philosophies of religion and various quasi-religious manifestations of postmodernism; however, my main concern is to address certain points of disagreement between Kearney and proponents of a deconstructive "religion without religion" principally Jacques Derrida and John D. Caputo. The main issue at stake is just (...) how other God is, which is itself a specific case of a broader question concerning otherness per se. Caputo et al. claim that religious assertions about God are fundamentally undecidable, which means that they are "infinitely translatable" and "substitutable," that we can never tell what is a translation of what, but the ultimate point is that it "does not matter" The undecidable nature of religious claims includes the very claim that religion is a discourse about God, which is why deconstructive religion without religion is a messianic hope for "the impossible" devoid of any content. Kearney objects that such radical undecidability leaves us lost in the desert ofkhora with no way to distinguish, even imperfectly and provisionally, between God and Satan, good and evil, the widow and the terrorist. In this paper I claim that Kearney succeeds in finding this via tertia between the Scylla of dogmatism and the Charybdis of complete indeterminacy by thinking God in two important ways: as persona-prosopon (which avoids confusing God with khora or monstrosity) and as posse (which keeps us from dogmatism). /// O presente artigo toma em particular consideração a obra de Richard Kearney The God Who May Be, especificamente no contexto dos debates pós-modernos acerca do estatuto epistemológico da alteridade. A abordagem hermeneutica que Kearney faz da religião procura estabelecer um caminho médio entre as filosofias ontoteológicas da religião e várias manifestações quase-religiosas do pós-modernismo. O autor do artigo, contudo, pretende estabelecer alguns pontos de desacordo entre Kearney e os defensores da "religião sem religião" típica do movimento da desconstrução, tendo em vista, sobretudo, as aportações de Jacques Derrida e de John D. Caputo. Em questão está especificamente a alteridade de Deus, ou seja, um caso específico da questão mais alargada acerca da alteridade em si mesma. Caputo, por exemplo, defende que as asserções religiosas sobre Deus são fundamentalmente indecidíveis, o que significa que elas são "infinitamente traduzíveis "e "substituíveis ", enfim, que nós nunca sabemos o que pwpriamente é tradução de quê, sendo que, no fundo, a questão em si mesma "não importa". O carácter indecidível das propostas religiosas inclui a ideia de que a religião constitui um discurso sobre Deus, razão pela qual a desconstrutora "religião sem religião "constitui uma esperança messiânica pelo "impossível" desprovida de qualquer conteúdo. Kearney objecta que uma tal indecidibilidade radical nos deixa perdidos no meio do deserto da Chora sem capacidade de distinguir, ainda que imperfeita e provisoriamente, entre Deus e Satanás, entre o bem e o mal, entre a viúva e o terrorista. Assim, o autor do artigo defende que Richard Kearney é bem sucedido em sua busca de uma via tertia entre a Cila do dogmatismo e a Caríbdis da completa indeterminação graças ao seu modo de pensar Deus por dois caminhos distintos: como pessoa-prosopon (o que impede confundir Deus com Chora ou monstruosidade) e como posse (o que nos resguarda do dogmantismo). (shrink)

In mid-February 45b.c.e., in a tragedy that was to plunge the orator into seemingly irreparable despair, Cicero's beloved daughter Tullia died. She had given birth nearly a month before and at first seemed to be doing well. Soon, however, her health gave out and Cicero took her to his Tusculan villa to recover. In the end, there was little that could be done. After her funeral, Cicero stayed for about three weeks with Atticus in Rome, but the constant stream of (...) visitors offering condolences became too much to bear, and on the sixth of March the heartbroken father retired to a villa he owned on the coast at Astura, some 45 miles south of Rome. Three days later he dispatched the following anguished epistle (Att. 12.15):Apud Appuleium, quoniam in perpetuum non placet, in dies ut excuser videbis. in hac solitudine careo omnium colloquio, cumque mane me in silvam abstrusi densam et asperam, non exeo inde ante vesperum. secundum te nihil est mihi amicius solitudine. in ea mihi omnis sermo est cum litteris. eum tamen interpellat fletus; cui repugno quoad possum, sed adhuc pares non sumus. Bruto, ut suades, rescribam. eas litteras cras habebis. cum erit cui des, dabis. (shrink)

What a breath of fresh air to find a philosopher learning in a detailed way from the sciences! His "Ethnocentrism and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Philosophy" is a tour de force in using findings from scientific psychology to address moral and political problems in academic philosophy in America. I thoroughly agree with his cumulative findings that philosophical ethnocentrism, which marginalizes or even wholly ignores non-Western philosophies, stems from evolutionarily reinforced psychological and sociological proclivities to ethnocentrism. I also agree with his argument (...) that ethnocentrism is not the most successful... (shrink)

Authors have a lot of leeway with regard to what they can make true in their story. In general, if the author says that p is true in the fiction we’re reading, we believe that p is true in that fiction. And if we’re playing along with the fictional game, we imagine that, along with everything else in the story, p is true. But there are exceptions to these general principles. Many authors, most notably Kendall Walton and Tamar Szabó Gendler, (...) have discussed apparent counterexamples when p is “morally deviant”. Many other statements that are conceptually impossible also seem to be counterexamples. In this paper I do four things. I survey the range of counterexamples, or at least putative counterexamples, to the principles. Then I look to explanations of the counterexamples. I argue, following Gendler, that the explanation cannot simply be that morally deviant claims are impossible. I argue that the distinctive attitudes we have towards moral propositions cannot explain the counterexamples, since some of the examples don’t involve moral concepts. And I put forward a proposed explanation that turns on the role of ‘higher-level concepts’, concepts that if they are satisfied are satisfied in virtue of more fundamental facts about the world, in fiction, and in imagination. (shrink)

Normative Externalism argues that it is not important that people live up to their own principles. What matters, in both ethics and epistemology, is that they live up to the correct principles: that they do the right thing, and that they believe rationally. This stance, that what matters are the correct principles, not one's own principles, has implications across ethics and epistemology. In ethics, it undermines the ideas that moral uncertainty should be treated just like factual uncertainty, that moral ignorance (...) frequently excuses moral wrongdoing, and that hypocrisy is a vice. In epistemology, it suggests we need new treatments of higher-order evidence, and of peer disagreement, and of circular reasoning, and the book suggests new approaches to each of these problems. Although the debates in ethics and in epistemology are often conducted separately, putting them in one place helps bring out their common themes. One common theme is that the view that one should live up to one's own principles looks less attractive when people have terrible principles, or when following their own principles would lead to riskier or more aggressive action than the correct principles. Another common theme is that asking people to live up to their principles leads to regresses. It can be hard to know what action or belief complies with one's principles. And now we can ask, in such a case should a person do what they think their principles require, or what their principles actually require? Both answers lead to problems, and the best way to avoid these problems is to simply say people should follow the correct principles. (shrink)

We provide a new interpretation of Zeno’s Paradox of Measure that begins by giving a substantive account, drawn from Aristotle’s text, of the fact that points lack magnitude. The main elements of this account are (1) the Axiom of Archimedes which states that there are no infinitesimal magnitudes, and (2) the principle that all assignments of magnitude, or lack thereof, must be grounded in the magnitude of line segments, the primary objects to which the notion of linear magnitude applies. Armed (...) with this account, we are ineluctably driven to introduce a highly constructive notion of (outer) measure based exclusively on the total magnitude of potentially infinite collections of line segments. The Paradox of Measure then consists in the proof that every finite or potentially infinite collection of points lacks magnitude with respect to this notion of measure. We observe that the Paradox of Measure, thus understood, troubled analysts into the 1880’s, despite their knowledge that the linear continuum is uncountable. The Paradox was ultimately resolved by Borel in his thesis of 1893, as a corollary to his celebrated result that every countable open cover of a closed line segment has a finite sub-cover, a result he later called the “First Fundamental Theorem of Measure Theory.” This achievement of Borel has not been sufficiently appreciated. We conclude with a metamathematical analysis of the resolution of the paradox made possible by recent results in reverse mathematics. (shrink)

This paper explores the type of stakeholder engagement currently being undertaken by many organisations as part of social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting processes. Specifically, the paper seeks to determine the extent to which current corporate practice iteratively promotes stakeholder participation in collaboratively designing accountability programmes, or whether it merely is a new term for canvassing stakeholder opinions. Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation is used as a conceptual model for positioning contemporary methods of stakeholder dialogue. The findings from interviews (...) with representatives from twenty‐nine UK and transnational organisations actively engaged in stakeholder dialogue are presented. This paper concludes that contemporary organisations seem to be seeking to engage with stakeholders in partnerships, yet their attempts still fall short of what Arnstein called Citizen Control, the level of achievement that non‐governmental organisations would like stakeholder engagement to attain. (shrink)

The paper is divided into two parts, each with subsections. In the first part, I shall discuss some matters that have been extensively examined by Kim, namely what the basic types of supervenience are and how they are pairwise logically related; in the course of this discussion, I shall distinguish a weak from a strong notion of global supervenience. In the second part, I shall examine supervenience in a context in which Kim has not: I shall attempt to solve a (...) puzzle that arises when we consider supervenience relations involving vague properties and/or predicates. This is, of course, not a special case of property/predicate super- venience, but the typical one: for virtually all properties/predicates are vague. The two parts of the paper stand independently of each other. Of the discussion in the first part, essentially all that is presupposed in the second is the notion of “world strong supervenience” defined in section 1 of part I. (shrink)

We present a survey of combinatorial set theory relevant to the study of singular cardinals and their successors. The topics covered include diamonds, squares, club guessing, forcing axioms, and PCF theory.

The paper identifies in the literature two categories of codes of ethics, inspirational and prescriptive, and introduces new classification categories of allodial and decretal. The first classification is based on the identity of the ethics decision‐maker – the authors or the addressees of codes. The second classification is based on whether operational definitions are applied by the codes. Such concrete definitions may be in the rules themselves, in related documents or be known from shared knowledge. The second classification has importance (...) if national associations of accountants use codes as a means for assurance of specific outcomes of defined ethical behaviours. For the study, a survey of 57 codes of ethics issued by national associations of professional accountants was undertaken to determine the basic features of codes and to analyse their content. The areas of ethical concern in national associations were identified and compared to the IFAC model code for professional accountants. The paper reports that national organisations of accountants have promulgated decretal codes in 96% of cases examined. As these codes contain operational definitions, their outcomes can be scientifically measured and sanctions for breaches fairly and reasonably imposed. (shrink)

Scientific Essentialism defends the view that the fundamental laws of nature depend on the essential properties of the things on which they are said to operate, and are therefore not independent of them. These laws are not imposed upon the world by God, the forces of nature or anything else, but rather are immanent in the world. Ellis argues that ours is a dynamic world consisting of more or less transient objects which are constantly interacting with each other, and whose (...) identities depend on their roles in these processes. Natural objects must behave as they do, because to do otherwise would be contrary to their natures. The laws of nature are, therefore, metaphysically necessary, and consequently, there are necessary connections between events. Brian Ellis calls for the rejection of the theory of Humean Supervenience and an implementation of a new kind of realism in philosophical analysis. (shrink)

The paper identifies in the literature two categories of codes of ethics, inspirational and prescriptive, and introduces new classification categories of allodial and decretal. The first classification is based on the identity of the ethics decision‐maker – the authors or the addressees of codes. The second classification is based on whether operational definitions are applied by the codes. Such concrete definitions may be in the rules themselves, in related documents or be known from shared knowledge. The second classification has importance (...) if national associations of accountants use codes as a means for assurance of specific outcomes of defined ethical behaviours. For the study, a survey of 57 codes of ethics issued by national associations of professional accountants was undertaken to determine the basic features of codes and to analyse their content. The areas of ethical concern in national associations were identified and compared to the IFAC model code for professional accountants. The paper reports that national organisations of accountants have promulgated decretal codes in 96% of cases examined. As these codes contain operational definitions, their outcomes can be scientifically measured and sanctions for breaches fairly and reasonably imposed. (shrink)

The relation between the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions is "the great problem" of Western philosophy, according to Emmanuel Levinas. In this book Brian Schroeder, Silvia Benso, and an international group of philosophers address the relationship between Levinas and the world of ancient thought. In addition to philosophy, themes touching on religion, mythology, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, and politics are also explored. The volume as a whole provides a unified and extended discussion of how an engagement between Levinas and thinkers (...) from the ancient tradition works to enrich understandings of both. This book opens new pathways in ancient and modern philosophical studies as it illuminates new interpretations of Levinas' ethics and his social and political philosophy. (shrink)

At the start of the twenty-first century, warnings have been raised in some quarters about how - by intent or by mishap - advances in biotechnology and related ...

"Brian Orend's The Morality of War promises to become the single most comprehensive and important book on just war for this generation. It moves far beyond the review of the standard just war categories to deal comprehensively with the new challenges of the conflict with terrorism. It thoughtfully reviews every major military conflict of the past few decades, mining them for implications of the evolving tradition of just war thinking. It concludes with a critical engagement with the major alternatives (...) to just war thinking: pacifism and 'realism.' It is, in short, the most comprehensive and thoughtful assessment of all aspects of just war since Michael Walzer's classic Just and Unjust Wars." - Martin L. Cook, United States Air Force Academy. (shrink)

What does an Alaskan look like? When asked to visualize someone from Alaska, the image most people conjure up is one of a face lost in a parka, surrounded by snow. Missing from this image is the vibrant diversity of those who call themselves Alaskans, as well as the true essence of the place. Brian Adams, a rising star in photography, aims to change all this with his captivating new collection, I Am Alaskan. In this full-color tribute, Adams entices (...) us to reconsider our ideas of this unique and compelling land and its equally individual residents. He captures subjects on urban streets and in rural villages, revealing what daily life in Alaska is really like. The portraits focus on moments both ordinary and extraordinary, serious and playful, while capturing Alaskans at their most natural. Subjects range from Alaska Native villagers to rarely seen portraits of famous Alaskans, including Sarah Palin, Vic Fischer, and Lance Mackey. Through photographs, Adams also explores his own half-Iñupiat, half-American Alaska identity in the process, revealing how he came to define himself and the state in which he lives. Frame by frame, Adams powerfully and honestly shows what it means to be an Alaskan. (shrink)

Abstract Kant claims that the basis of a judgment of taste is a merely subjective representation and that the only merely subjective representations are feelings of pleasure or displeasure. Commentators disagree over how to interpret this claim. Some take it to mean that judgments about the beauty of an object depend only on the state of the judging subject. Others argue instead that, for Kant, the pleasure we take in a beautiful object is best understood as a response to its (...) qualities, and that, accordingly, feelings of pleasure or displeasure are no different from other representations, such as colors or smells. While I agree that the judgment of taste is best understood as asserting a claim about an object's qualities, I argue that the distinction Kant makes between feelings of pleasure or displeasure and other representations should not be ignored. I show that one's liking or disliking for an object is merely subjective in the sense that its significance depends on what one has made of oneself through one's aesthetic education. The judgment of taste, then, is merely subjective because one must first become the kind of person whose feelings have the right significance at the right time before one can determine whether an object's qualities make it beautiful. (shrink)

When making substituted judgments for incapacitated patients, surrogates often struggle to guess what the patient would want if they had capacity. Surrogates may also agonize over having the (sole) responsibility of making such a determination. To address such concerns, a Patient Preference Predictor (PPP) has been proposed that would use an algorithm to infer the treatment preferences of individual patients from population-level data about the known preferences of people with similar demographic characteristics. However, critics have suggested that even if such (...) a PPP were more accurate, on average, than human surrogates in identifying patient preferences, the proposed algorithm would nevertheless fail to respect the patient’s (former) autonomy since it draws on the ‘wrong’ kind of data: namely, data that are not specific to the individual patient and which therefore may not reflect their actual values, or their reasons for having the preferences they do. Taking such criticisms on board, we here propose a new approach: the Personalized Patient Preference Predictor (P4). The P4 is based on recent advances in machine learning, which allow technologies including large language models to be more cheaply and efficiently ‘fine-tuned’ on person-specific data. The P4, unlike the PPP, would be able to infer an individual patient’s preferences from material (e.g., prior treatment decisions) that is in fact specific to them. Thus, we argue, in addition to being potentially more accurate at the individual level than the previously proposed PPP, the predictions of a P4 would also more directly reflect each patient’s own reasons and values. In this article, we review recent discoveries in artificial intelligence research that suggest a P4 is technically feasible, and argue that, if it is developed and appropriately deployed, it should assuage some of the main autonomy-based concerns of critics of the original PPP. We then consider various objections to our proposal and offer some tentative replies. (shrink)

How do scientific conjectures become laws? Why does proof mean different things in different sciences? Do numbers exist, or were they invented? Why do some laws turn out to be wrong? In this wide-ranging book, Brian Davies discusses the basis for scientists' claims to knowledge about the world. He looks at science historically, emphasizing not only the achievements of scientists from Galileo onwards, but also their mistakes. He rejects the claim that all scientific knowledge is provisional, by citing examples (...) from chemistry, biology and geology. A major feature of the book is its defence of the view that mathematics was invented rather than discovered. While experience has shown that disentangling knowledge from opinion and aspiration is a hard task, this book provides a clear guide to the difficulties.Full of illuminating examples and quotations, and with a scope ranging from psychology and evolution to quantum theory and mathematics, this book brings alive issues at the heart of all science. (shrink)