Are there universal structures or stages of experience, so-called contemplative landmarks, that unfold during meditative practice? As commonly described in contemplative manuals or handbooks, there is a transition from a form of meditation where the subject must exert continual effort in order for consciousness to remain focused. As Kenneth Rose has recently shown, these manuals, stemming from the Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian traditions, agree that a transition will take place from effortful meditation into a state where attention is fixed or (...) locked in on the meditation object. This article describes the micro-phenomenology of this phenomenon, sometimes called dhyana or access concentration, from the first-person perspective. This study both confirms and refines the traditional account, engaging with certain difficulties involved in establishing a correspondence between traditional, clear-cut, and sometimes contradictory concepts and actual experiences, which can be hard to conceptualize precisely. (shrink)

Explores mind-body philosophy from an Asian perspective.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 225 Seiten: 1-18.

abstract This paper examines, from a philosophical point of view, the ethics of the role of the family and the deceased in decisions about organ retrieval. The paper asks: Who, out of the individual and the family, should have the ultimate power to donate or withhold organs? On the side of respecting the wishes of the deceased individual, the paper considers and rejects arguments by analogy with bequest and from posthumous bodily integrity. It develops an argument for posthumous autonomy based (...) on the liberal idea of self‐development and argues that this establishes a right of veto over donation. It claims, however, that whether the family's power to veto would conflict with posthumous autonomy rights depends on how it comes about. On the side of respecting the family's wishes, the paper first considers an argument from family distress. This supports a contingent, non‐rights‐based reason for the family's power that is trumped by the deceased's rights. It then outlines and criticises an argument based on family autonomy. The conclusion is that the individual has the right to veto the family's wish to donate and that, while the family has no right to veto the individual's wishes to donate, it can legitimately acquire this power and has done so in practice. (shrink)

This classic study of Santayana was the first book to appear in the _Arguments of the Philosophers_ series. Growing interest in the work of this important American philosopher has prompted this new edition of the book complete with a new preface by the author reassessing his own ideas about Santayana and reflecting the new interest in the philosopher's work. A select bibliography of works published about Santayana since the book's first appearance is also included.

In this paper I shall speak sympathetically of a hedonistic theory of intrinsic value which, ignoring any other such theories, I shall simply call the hedonistic theory of value. How far I am finally committed to it will partly appear at the end.

Principlism aims to provide a framework to help those working in medicine both to identify moral problems and to make decisions about what to do. For it to meet this aim, the principles included within it must express values that all morally serious people share (or ought to share), and there must be no other values that all morally serious people share (or ought to share). This paper challenges the latter of these claims. I will argue that as a descriptive (...) claim about what values morally serious people do in fact share, principlism is inadequate; more principles would be needed to make this claim true. Furthermore, I will argue that while, taken as a claim about what principles we ought to share, principlism could turn out to be correct, it is either unsupported or unable to meet its aims. The only way in which principlists can avoid these problems is to add to the current four principles. (shrink)

If the work carried out to gain a detailed understanding of the process of photosynthesis, and probably other types of bioenergetic conversions as well, fulfills the criteria of a molecular biology, and if the groups funding this research and those who worked in the laboratory regarded it as such, why has it been necessary for me to argue here that bioenergetics should always have been counted as part of - indeed, may have been in the forefront in establishing — the (...) molecular biology tradition? Why have the investigators themselves not insisted on correcting the historical record that has emerged thus far? I would like to offer two reasons: one institutional, the other scientific. (shrink)

Gametes, tissue, and organs can be taken from the dying or dead for reproduction, transplantation, and research. Whole bodies as well as parts can be used for teaching anatomy. While these uses are diverse, they have an ethical consideration in common: the claims of the people whose bodies are used. Is some use permissible only when people have consented to the use, actually wanted the use, would have wanted the use, not opposed the use, or what? The aim of this (...) article is to make progress in answering these questions. Initially I assume knowledge of people’s desires in order to test whether consent is directly required by their rights without worrying about mistaken uses against their wishes. I claim consent is not directly required by people’s rights. If we know people wanted or would want a use, their rights permit the use, but if we know they wanted or would want not to be used, their rights do not permit the use. The knowledge assumption is then dropped and the question becomes how to decide what to do when the wishes of rightholders are not known. I suggest working out what to do when wishes are known and then adjusting, on the basis of whatever evidence there is, for probability and strength of desire. There are other considerations too, for instance about default rules. The key general comment here is that, in setting rules, the costs to rightholders in not getting what they want needs to be taken into account. The final section tries to show that, in setting these rules, mistaken uses are not to be taken as worse than mistaken failure to use. (shrink)

T H Mclaughlin; Peter Gardner on Religious Upbringing and the Liberal Ideal of Religious Autonomy, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 1, 30 Ma.

Utilitarian ethics and metaphysical idealism, especially of a Bradleyan sort, are not usually thought of as natural allies. Yet when one considers that it is a crucial part of utilitarian doctrine that the only genuine value is experienced value and almost the definition of idealism that for it the only genuine reality is experienced reality one should surely suspect that the two views have a certain affinity. The essential impulse behind utilitarianism is the sense that the only criterion of something (...) really being intrinsically good is that it feels good. To the ordinary man to say that something feels good is much the same as saying that it is a pleasure, so that for him it is a small step from identifying good with what feels good to identifying it with pleasure. It suggests itself, then, that the utilitarian is essentially one who thinks that, so far as the good goes, esse ispercipi. In that case the utilitarian is an idealist about value. It does not follow that he should be an idealist about things in general, but it does suggest the converse, that the idealist about things in general might be expected to be a utilitarian in his ethics. (shrink)

Originally published in 1988, this landmark study develops its own positive account of the nature and foundations of moral judgement, while at the same time serving as a guide to the range of views on the matter which have been given in modern western philosophy. The book addresses itself to two main questions: Can moral judgements be true or false in that fundamental sense in which a true proposition is one which describes things as they really are? Are rational methods (...) available in ethics which can be expected to produce convergence on shared moral views on the part of those who use them intelligently? (shrink)

According to much modern social psychology, behavioural economics and common sense, people's actions and beliefs are frequently the result of rapid intuitive thought rather than careful deliberation. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, in their influential book, Nudge, synthesised the literature and used it as the basis for numerous policy ideas.1 Not least, they gave the word ‘nudge’ as a handy term to apply to all sorts of ways of taking advantage of people's psychological quirks without coercing or bribing them. But (...) while Nudge was long on ideas and enthusiasm, it was short on conceptual clarity. The idea of a nudge was inconsistent with some of the policies Thaler and Sunstein endorsed and their account of nudging's relation to freedom and paternalism was flawed.In Salvaging the concept of nudge, Yashar Saghai acts as a friendly critic who thinks nudging has plenty to offer the policy world but sees that it needs both conceptual clarity and ethical defence.2 He wants to show how some of ways of taking advantage of people's psychology could leave them as free as before and he is especially concerned with what I would describe as a question of manipulation: …. (shrink)

This book gives a general survey of political thought from Homer to the beginning of the Christian era. To the evidence of the philosophers is added that of Herodotus, Euripides, Thucydides, Polybius and others whose writings illustrate the course of Greek political thinking in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. This re-issues the second, updated edition of 1967.

Among many reasons for which contemporary philosophers take coherentism in epistemology seriously, the most important is probably the perceived inadequacy of alternative accounts, most notably misgivings about foundationalism. But coherentism also receives straightforward support from cases in which beliefs are apparently justified by their coherence. From the perspective of those against coherentism, this means that an explanation is needed as to why in these cases coherence apparently justifies beliefs. Curiously, this task has not been carried out in a serious way (...) in the anti-coherentist literature although there is no scarcity of objections to coherentism. The traditional charge has been that justification by coherence is circular. More recently the isolation problem allegedly reveals that coherentism justifies beliefs that should not be justified. Questions have also been raised with respect to the basing relation and feasibility.1 However, these objections do not explain why some beliefs appear to be justified by their coherence. This paper fills this gap in the anti-coherentist literature by offering a noncoherentist account of justification by coherence. The paper proceeds as follows. Section I delineates the framework of discussion and develops some conceptual tools needed in later analyses. Section II argues that there are genuine cases of an increase in existing empirical justification by coherence, but that it does not require coherence to generate additional justification—coherence serves as a channel of justification among beliefs, which is no more problematic than channeling of justification from basic to derived beliefs in foundationalism. Section III makes a stronger case for justification by coherence, where each of the coherent beliefs has no independent empirical justification; but Section IV argues that even in these cases coherence need not generate justification—coherence licenses the channeling of justification from outside sources.. (shrink)

It would be pleasant to start with a paradox. Santayana was an American philosopher, but he was not an American, and he was not a philosopher. The first of these two qualifying propositions is legally true, the second is a glaring, but sometimes asserted, falsehood.

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Everyone interested in Bradley will be delighted at this excellently edited edition of his correspondence. My remit as a reviewer is to comment on the first of the two volumes of correspondence, which covers the years June 1872 to December 1904. My only complaint is that it would have been convenient to have a list of the letters, each with dates and correspondent, in the prefatory material.

ABSTRACT This paper considers what should be done about offers of organs for transplant that come with racist strings attached. Saving lives or improving their quality seem powerful reasons to accept the offer. Fairness, justice, and rejecting racism seem like powerful reasons against. This paper argues that conditional allocation should occur when it would provide access to organs for at least one person without costing others their access to organs. The bulk of the paper concentrates on defending this claim against (...) these objections: (i) that the good that might come about through conditional allocation does so through wrongful complicity in the racist's wrongdoing; (ii) that conditional allocation symbolizes support for racism; and (iii) that conditional allocation is unjust or unfair and is, for that reason, impermissible. The final section, on conditional allocation as a policy, considers the speculative possibility that conditional allocation would reduce access to organs for some, but it argues that, even then, conditional allocation could be justified. (shrink)

Questions about knowledge, and about the relation between logic and language, are at the heart of philosophy. Eleven distinguished philosophers from Britain and America contribute papers on such questions. All the contributions are examples of recent philosophy at its best. The first half of the book constitutes a running debate about knowledge, evidence and doubt. The second half tackles questions about logic and its relation to language.