Each of the following papers gives an account of a different UK clinical ethics committee. The committees vary in the length of time they have been established, and also in the main focus of their work. The accounts discuss the development of the committees and some of the ethical problems that have been brought to them. The issues raised will be relevant for other National Health Service (NHS) trusts in the UK that wish to set up such a committee.

What happens when an entire group of human beings is excluded from the definition of humanity? How is the power of language used to distort reality? What happens when a comprehensive economic plan is based on theft, brainwashing, slave labor, and murder? These and other philosophical questions about the Holocaust are contemplated in Contemporary Portraits of Auschwitz. In 1988, a group of philosophers who had survived the Holocaust, or had known people at the Auschwitz death camp, decided to found an (...) organization that would examine the philosophical implications of Shoah: the Society for the Philosophic Study of Genocide and the Holocaust. Noting that the history and the personal horror stories had been told and retold, SPSGH's founders Sander Lee, Berel Lang, and Alan Rosenberg argued that too little study had been so far devoted to the philosophy of Hitler's final solution and other genocides. Auschwitz problematized the Enlightenment concept of humanity, and other concepts. The perfection of state-sponsored and -administered mass death issued in new forms of language, moral indifference, and forgetting. Philosophy often even fails to mention the Holocaust in discussions of National Socialism. And the disaster of Auschwitz has been largely neutralized by the normalization of a "ruined" language. This volume includes essays in several areas: Witnesses and Testimonies; Morality and Ethics; Art and Poetry; History and Memory; and The Crisis of Representation. Contributors are Karyn Ball, Eve Bannet, Debra Bergoffen, James Bernauer, Klaus Dorner, Jennifer N. Fink, Roger Fjellstrom, Ruth Liberman, Burkhard Liebsch, Alan Milchman, Raj Sampath, Paul Sars, Hans Seigfried, Thomas W. Simon, Dan Stone, Peter Strasser, Frans van Peperstratten, Erik M. Vogt, Andrew Weinstein, and others. (shrink)

The most prevalent approach to understanding recreation experiences in resource management has been a motivational research program that views satisfaction as an appropriate indicator of experience quality. This research explores a different approach to studying the quality of recreation experiences. Rather than viewing recreation experiences as a linear sequence of events beginning with expectations and ending with outcomes that are then cognitively compared to determine experience quality, this alternative approach views recreation as an emergent experience motivated by the not very (...) well-defined goal of acquiring stories that ultimately enrich one's life. Further, it assumes that the nature of human experience is best characterized by situated freedom in which the environment sets boundaries that constrain the nature of the experience, but that within those boundaries recreationists are free to experience the world in unique and variable ways. Therefore this alternative approach seeks a more context specific description of the setting/experience relationship that is intended to complement more general management frameworks (e.g., the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum) developed in conjunction with the motivational research program. (shrink)

Alan R. White; I*—The Presidential Address: Shooting, Killing and Fatally Wounding, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 80, Issue 1, 1 June 1980, Pa.

This manuscript reviews the background of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) as well as the ethical foundations of individual privacy. This includes a historical perspective on personal privacy, a review of the United States Constitutional privacy interpretations, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, European Union Regulations, as well as the positions of industry and advocacy groups. A brief review of the information technology ethics literature is also included. The RFID privacy concerns are three-fold: pre-sales activities, sales transaction activities, and post-sales (...) uses. A proposal to address these privacy concerns is detailed, generally based on past philosophical frameworks and specifically on the Fair Information Practices that the Federal Trade Commission has outlined for the electronic marketplace (e-commerce). It is proposed that by application of these Fair Information Practices, the major privacy issues of RFID can be addressed. (shrink)

In 'Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature' Richard Rorty presented his provocation and influential vision of the post-philosophical culture, calling upon professional philosophers to accept that epistemology is dead, that the analytic method is a myth, and that philosophy and science are merely forms of literature.

Alan R. White; IX—Attending and Noticing, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 63, Issue 1, 1 June 1963, Pages 103–126, https://doi.org/10.1093/arist.

Alan R. White; IV—Seeing What is Not there1, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 61–74, https://doi.org/10.1093/aris.

Alan R White; Needs and Wants, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 159–180, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1974.tb004.

Alan R. White; IV—Seeing What is Not there1, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 61–74, https://doi.org/10.1093/aris.

Alan R White; Needs and Wants, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 159–180, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1974.tb004.

For humanists the perfect language was a revived Classical Latin. For scholastics it was a practical logic adapted to the needs of education. Though they have long been portrayed as arch rivals, Alan Perreiah here argues that humanists and scholastics were working in complementary ways toward some of the same goals: most significantly, the early modern search for the perfect language. The study advances research on language pedagogy in the Renaissance by clarifying the connections between truth and translation.

This essay examines and compares two paradigms of technology, nature, and social life, and their associated environmental impacts. I explore moving from technocratic paradigms to the emerging ecological paradigms of planetary person ecosophies. The dominant technocratic philosophy's guiding policy and technological power is mechanistic. It conceptualizes nature as a resource to be controlled for human ends. Its global practices are drastically altering the integrity of the planet's ecosystems. In contrast, the organic, planetary person approaches respect the intrinsic values of all (...) beings. Deep ecology movement principles give priority to community and ecosystem integrity. These deep ecology movement principles guide the design and applications of technology by principles following from ecological understanding. I describe this shift in philosophical paradigms and how it affects our perceptions, values, and actions. (shrink)

Parents can benefit their offspring by conserving resources that the offspring stand to inherit. Thus, inheritance of resources should promote the evolution of propensities to conserve. But inheritance also has another, less obvious effect: it can reduce the fertility of the conserver’s grandchildren, thus reducing the expected number of great-grandchildren. Consequently, inheritance of resources promotes the evolution of conservation less than might be supposed.

The truthmaker objection to presentism (the view that only what exists now exists simpliciter) is that it lacks sufficient metaphysical resources to ground truths about the past. In this paper I identify five constraints that an adequate presentist response must satisfy. In light of these constraints, I examine and reject responses by Bigelow, Keller, Crisp, and Bourne. Consideration of how these responses fail, however, points toward a proposal that works; one that posits God’s memories as truthmakers for truths about the (...) past. I conclude that presentists have, in the truthmaker objection, considerable incentive to endorse theism. (shrink)

Informed consent is central to the bioethical principle of respect for persons, a process that involves a discussion between the physician and patient with disclosure of information sufficient to allow the patient to make an informed decision about her or his care. However, despite the importance of informed consent in clinical practice, the process is often ritualized, perfunctory, and performed by individuals with little or no training in the consent process. This article discusses the lack of medical students’ and residents’ (...) training in informed consent and questions the practice of allowing untrained residents and surrogates to obtain consent from patients. (shrink)

This article investigates the challenge of developing a robot capable of determining if a social situation demands trust. Solving this challenge may allow a robot to react when a person over or under trusts the system. Prior work in this area has focused on understanding the factors that influence a person’s trust of a robot (Hancock, et al., 2011). In contrast, by using game-theoretic representations to frame the problem, we are able to develop a set of conditions for determining if (...) an interactive situation demands trust. In two separate experiments, human subjects were asked to evaluate either written narratives or mazes in terms of whether or not they require trust. The results indicate aΦ1= +0.592 andΦ2= +0.406 correlation respectively between the subjects’ evaluations and the condition’s predictions. This is a strong correlation for a study involving human subjects. (shrink)

This is the address given by Alan R Johnson, an alumnus of OCMS, to inaugurate the J. Philip Hogan Chair of World Mission. The Hogan chair represents a connection between Assemblies of God World Missions and the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary where in a proactive and catalytic fashion the process of engaging with subjects of missiological importance can be undertaken. The author argues that thinking about missions is a communal activity that requires continual reflection.

Richard Rorty is notorious for contending that the traditional, foundation-building and truth-seeking ambitions of systematic philosophy should be set aside in favour of a more pragmatic, conversational, hermeneutically guided project. This challenge has not only struck at the heart of philosophy but has ricocheted across other disciplines, both contesting their received self-images and opening up new avenues of inquiry in the process. Alan Malachowski provides an authoritative overview of Rorty's considerable body of work and a general assessment of his (...) impact both within philosophy and in the humanities more broadly. He begins by explaining the genesis of Rorty's central ideas, tracking their development from suggestions in his early papers through their crystallization in his groundbreaking book, "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature". Malachowski evaluates some of the common criticisms of Rorty's position and his ensuing pragmatism. The book examines the subsequent evolution of his ideas, focusing particularly on the main themes of his second major work, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. The political and cultural impact of Rorty's writings on such diverse fields as feminism, cultural and literary theory, and international relations are also considered, and the author explores why Rorty's work has generally found its warmest reception in these areas rather than among mainstream philosophers. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the interconnections between two paradigms of technology, nature, and social life, and their associated environmental impacts. The dominant technocratic philosophy which now guides policy and technological power is mechanistic. It conceptualizes nature as a resource to be controlled fully for human ends and it threatens drastically to alter the integrity of the planet’s ecosystems. Incontrast, the organic, person-planetary paradigm conceptualizes intrinsic value in all beings. Deep ecology gives priority to community and ecosystem integrity and seeks (...) to guide the design and applications of technology according to principles which follow from ecological understanding. I describe this shift in paradigms and how it affects our perceptions, values, and actions. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the interconnections between two paradigms of technology, nature, and social life, and their associated environmental impacts. The dominant technocratic philosophy which now guides policy and technological power is mechanistic. It conceptualizes nature as a resource to be controlled fully for human ends and it threatens drastically to alter the integrity of the planet’s ecosystems. Incontrast, the organic, person-planetary paradigm conceptualizes intrinsic value in all beings. Deep ecology gives priority to community and ecosystem integrity and seeks (...) to guide the design and applications of technology according to principles which follow from ecological understanding. I describe this shift in paradigms and how it affects our perceptions, values, and actions. (shrink)

The ArgumentMany associations have recently been discovered between phenotypic variation and genetic loci, causing some to advocate what Robert Sinsheimer has called “a new eugenics” that would treat genetic “defects” in individuals prone to a disease. The first premise of this vision is that genetic association studies reveal the biological cause of the phenotypic variation. Once the responsible genes are known, the second premise is that we should focus upon changing “nature” rather than “nurture” by correcting the “defective” genes.The first (...) premise is flawed because associations between genetic markers and phenotypes can be spurious, as shown by an example. Moreover, it is shown that using non-causative but associated genetic markers one at a time (the normal practice) can lead to incorrect predictions of disease risk for many individuals. Going from association to causation is a non-trivial step scientifically that has rarely been done in much of the human genetic research.Even when a particular locus does contribute to the phenotypic variation of interest, the first premise remains flawed because phenotypes in general arise from complex interactions among genes and between genes and environments as shown for genes associations with coronary artery disease (CAD). The ability of current molecular genetic tools to “fix” defective genotypes is extremely limited, but even if the technological problems could be overcome, the studies on CAD reveal no obvious “defective” gene to fix because the genetic effects are so context dependent (upon both other genes and environmental factors). Contrary to the second premise of the new eugenics, the more we learn about how different genotypes show variable responses to environments, themoreimportant the environment becomes for individual treatment.The paradigm of a “defective gene” may work for classical Mendelian genetic diseases that are due to loss-of-function mutations. However, such mutations affect only a small portion of humanity. When the focus is changed to common disease and behavioral phenotypes, the “defective gene” paradigm is biologically meaningless and often harmful when applied to individuals. Thus, even when genes clearly do influence common phenotypic variation, the premises of the “new eugenics” are biologically indefensible. (shrink)