What motivates a polemic like Felicia Ackerman's Philosophy of Hospice? Ackerman announces that in addition to analyzing and criticizing hospice principles as embodied in the National Hospice Organization's her article will also present ” She presents, in fact, two examples of hospice practice: one is a dubious anecdote, the meaning of which she apparently misunderstands, and the second is a description of a twenty-year-old policy of St. Christopher's Hospice in England, which, I believe, is no longer strictly adhered to.

Each of these hospice officials makes several criticisms of my paper, Philosophy of Hospice I will treat these criticisms in turn.

Stein & Glasier suggest embryonic neural tissue grafts as a potential treatment strategy for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. As an alternative, we suggest that the family of nerve growth factor-related neurotrophins and their trk (tyrosine kinase) receptors underlie cholinergic basal forebrain (CBF) and dopaminergic substantia nigra neuron degeneration in these diseases, respectively. Therefore, treatment approaches for these disorders could utilize neurotrophins.

This paper defends the idea that there might be vagueness or indeterminacy in the world itself---as opposed to merely in our representations of the world---against the charges of incoherence and unintelligibility. First we consider the idea that the world might contain vague *properties and relations*; we show that this idea is already implied by certain well-understood views concerning the semantics of vague predicates (most notably the fuzzy view). Next we consider the idea that the world might contain vague *objects*; we (...) argue that an object is indeterminate in a certain respect (colour, size, etc.) just in case it is a borderline case of a maximally specific colour (size, etc.) property. Finally we consider the idea that the *world as a whole* might be indeterminate; we argue that the world is indeterminate just in case it lacks a determinate division into determinate objects. (shrink)

This paper defends the idea that there might be vagueness or indeterminacy in the world itself---as opposed to merely in our representations of the world---against the charges of incoherence and unintelligibility. First we consider the idea that the world might contain vague *properties and relations*; we show that this idea is already implied by certain well-understood views concerning the semantics of vague predicates (most notably the fuzzy view). Next we consider the idea that the world might contain vague *objects*; we (...) argue that an object is indeterminate in a certain respect (colour, size, etc.) just in case it is a borderline case of a maximally specific colour (size, etc.) property. Finally we consider the idea that the *world as a whole* might be indeterminate; we argue that the world is indeterminate just in case it lacks a determinate division into determinate objects. (shrink)

IThe so-called enterprise or commercial-bureaucratic university has been with us for some time. To its advocates, it has set higher education on a rational footing and demystified the folkways of cosseted intellectuals. To its detractors, it galls the kibe. For observers and stakeholders alike, the age of the office has introduced a new way of thinking and speaking in campus boardrooms and action sessions. The idiom of markets and corporations—How competitive are we? What are the anticipated returns on investment? Where (...) can payroll efficiencies be found?—frames an instrumental, quantifiable understanding of the vita academica. Corporate clients need to decide…. (shrink)

This paper defends the idea that there might be vagueness or indeterminacy in the world itself--as opposed to merely in our representations of the world--against the charges of incoherence and unintelligibility. First we consider the idea that the world might contain vague properties and relations ; we show that this idea is already implied by certain well-understood views concerning the semantics of vague predicates (most notably the fuzzy view). Next we consider the idea that the world might contain vague objects (...) ; we argue that an object is indeterminate in a certain respect (colour, size, etc.) just in case it is a borderline case of a maximally specific colour (size, etc.) property. Finally we consider the idea that the world as a whole might be indeterminate; we argue that the world is indeterminate just in case it lacks a determinate division into determinate objects. (shrink)

ExcerptFew U.S. Supreme Court decisions in living memory have combined a widespread expectation in verdict with a broad aggrievement of impact as dynamically as SFFA v. Harvard. Anyone remotely concerned with the fortunes of higher education in North America would have had good reason to believe, on or before June 29, 2023, that the “special consideration” of race in university admissions had reached its best-buy date. The key predictive decisions twenty years earlier—Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger—tolled the clock. (...) In the Bollinger cases, several justices opined that, a quarter century out, affirmative action policies might no longer be necessary in university admissions to even the score for the racially disadvantaged. The majority in SFFA changed might to must with five years to spare. (shrink)

This volume offers the first English language collection of academic essays on the post-Holocaust thought of Jean Améry, a Jewish-Austrian-Belgian essayist, journalist and literary author. Comprehensive in scope and multi-disciplinary in orientation, contributors explore central aspects of Améry's philosophical and ethical position, including dignity, responsibility, resentment, and forgiveness.

This article examines a series of Schelling-like models of residential segregation, in which agents prefer to be in the minority. We demonstrate that as long as agents care about the characteristics of their wider community, they tend to end up in a segregated state. We then investigate the process that causes this and conclude that the result hinges on the similarity of informational states among agents of the same type. This is quite different from Schelling-like behavior and suggests that segregation (...) is an instance of macrobehavior that can arise from a wide variety of micromotives. (shrink)

Is voting a duty of democratic citizenship? This article advances a new argument for the existence of a duty to vote. It argues that every normative account of electoral representation requires universal turnout to function in line with its own internal normative logic. This generates a special obligation for citizens to vote in electoral representative contexts as a function of the role morality of democratic citizenship. Because voting uniquely authorizes office holding in representative democracies, and because universal turnout contributes powerfully (...) to representation being fair, to be a good citizen of such democracies requires one to vote. Whereas previous arguments for a duty to vote have invoked basic moral principles like fairness or a Samaritan duty of rescue, this account is based on citizens occupying a vital functional role within electoral representative institutions. This institutional duty solves the “specificity problem” of justifying a duty to vote better than competing accounts and also immunizes the duty to objections that there is no duty to vote when there are only bad choices and that there is a no duty to vote but rather duty to vote well. By emphasizing the tight connection between institutions and individual conduct, the role morality approach used here supplies a less abstract and more realistic framework than much previous research on the ethics of democratic citizenship and brings the debate closer to constitutive features of democratic politics. (shrink)

Recent efforts to argue that nonepistemic values have a legitimate role to play in assessing scientific models, theories, and hypotheses typically either reject the distinction between epistemic and nonepistemic values or incorporate nonepistemic values only as a secondary consideration for resolving epistemic uncertainty. Given that scientific representations can legitimately be evaluated not only based on their fit with the world but also with respect to their fit with the needs of their users, we show in two case studies that nonepistemic (...) values can play a legitimate role as factors that override epistemic considerations in assessing scientific representations for practical purposes. (shrink)

Nietzsche announces his intentions to publish a “physiology of aesthetics”, namely a naturalistic explanation for how aesthetic judgements are grounded in the physiology of both the one experiencing the work, and the creator of it. But as well as the physiological reduction of aesthetic judgements, Nietzsche in many places across his oeuvre frames the apparatus of physiology, especially the prescriptive dimension of self-cultivation, in terms amenable to being treated as ‘aesthetic’. The first section will mount a (re-) defense of the (...) use of aestheticized language for discussing Nietzschean self-cultivation. The second section demonstrates an aesthetic evaluation of capacities that make possible the acquisition and removal of instinctual components, ultimately arguing for Nietzsche’s qualified indeterminism regarding the capacity for self-cultivation. The third section will assess the pres- ence of another aesthetic measure, this time in terms of envisaging one’s psycho-physiology by reference to an external spectacle. The final section discusses metaethical questions stemming from Nietzsche’s prescriptive language regarding the aestheticization of our physiology. (shrink)

Philosophers of science readily acknowledge that nonepistemic values influence the discovery and pursuit of scientific theories, but many tend to regard these influences as epistemically uninteresting. The present paper challenges this position by identifying three avenues through which nonepistemic values associated with discovery and pursuit in contemporary pollution research influence theory appraisal: (1) by guiding the choice of questions and research projects, (2) by altering experimental design, and (3) by affecting the creation and further investigation of theories or hypotheses. This (...) analysis indicates that the effects of these values are sufficiently complex and epistemically significant to merit further attention. †To contact the authors, please write to: Kevin Elliott, Department of Philosophy, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208; e‐mail: [email protected] . Daniel McKaughan, Department of Philosophy, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

If beliefs are a map by which we steer, then, ceteris paribus, we should want a more accurate map. However, the world could be structured so as to punish learning with respect to certain topics—by learning new information, one’s situation could be worse than it otherwise would have been. We investigate whether the world is structured so as to punish learning specifically about moral nihilism. We ask, if an ordinary person had the option to learn the truth about moral nihilism, (...) ought she to take it? We argue, given plausible assumptions about ordinary human preferences, she should not. (shrink)

Possible worlds models of belief have difficulties accounting for unawareness, the inability to entertain (and hence believe) certain propositions. Accommodating unawareness is important for adequately modelling epistemic states, and representing the informational content to which agents have in principle access given their explicit beliefs. In this paper, I develop a model of explicit belief, awareness, and informational content, along with an sound and complete axiomatisation. I furthermore defend the model against the seminal impossibility result of Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini, according (...) to which three intuitive conditions preclude non-trivial unawareness on any possible worlds model of belief. (shrink)

While it is true that health care costs are straining personal and governmental budgets, it does appear to be a manageable problem. There are tools available to moderate costs, efforts are already underway to control costs by modifying the financing of health care. Whether or not these will be effective remains to be seen. There also are efforts to control costs by modifying unhealthy habits. These efforts are showing notable success. Moreover, there are efforts underway to reduce health care costs (...) by altering the overall context of people's lives. This latter effort—to improve the health of whole communities—holds the greatest promise. (shrink)