Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski propose a framework whereby different referring forms conventionally signal different cognitive statuses on an implica-tional 'givenness hierarchy'. Interaction of the hierarchy with Grice's Maxim of Quantity gives rise to scalar implicatures which further constrain the choice among forms and their interpretations when necessary conditions for more than one form are met. Wilson and Matsui show that reference assignment for NPs introduced by the definite article is constrained within Relevance Theory by the automatic selection of an (...) interpretation that yields adequate contextual effects for minimal processing effort. This paper proposes that an optimal account of how people understand the intended referent of an NP must appeal to both the Givenness Hierarchy and Relevance Theory. Such an account still requires the first part of the Quantity Maxim, however, either as a socially based assumption or as part of the Principle of Relevance itself. (shrink)

This article revisits long-standing questions about consent, membership and emigration in Locke’s thought. Commentators such as A John Simmons have argued that Locke opens political membership to both express consenters and some kind of tacit consenters, and not just to the former, as some have suggested. Simmons’s reading seems to render Locke more sensible in that it does not exclude large numbers of people from membership or burden the few members with all the civic duties, and also in that it (...) allows at least tacit-consenting members the right to relocate, while this right is denied to express-consenting members. Against this reading, the article shows, by resolving seemingly conflicting claims in the text, that people become members only by express consent. It also responds to the criticism that the express-consent-only reading would limit membership to a few and so would render Locke’s account implausible from a practical point of view. The article then addresses the purported restriction Locke imposes on express consenters’ right to emigrate, arguing that the restriction concerns the change of membership and not the right to relocate. (shrink)

This new edition of Law and Medical Ethics continues to chart the ever-widening field that the topics cover. The interplay between the health caring professions and the public during the period intervening since the last edition has, perhaps, been mainly dominated by wide-ranging changes in the administration of the National Health Service and of the professions themselves but these have been paralleled by important developments in medical jurisprudence.

We critically evaluate the ways in which competence in medical ethics has been evaluated. We report the initial stage in the development of a relevant, reliable and valid instrument to evaluate core critical thinking skills in medical ethics. This instrument can be used to evaluate the impact of medical ethics education programmes and to assess whether medical students have achieved a satisfactory level of performance of core skills and knowledge in medical ethics, within and across institutions.

Objective We sought to understand ethics and education needs of emergency nurses and physicians in paediatric and adult emergency departments in order to build ethics capacity and provide a foundation for the development of an ethics education programme. Methods This was a prospective cross-sectional survey of all staff nurses and physicians in three tertiary care EDs. The survey tool, called Clinical Ethics Needs Assessment Survey, was pilot tested on a similar target audience for question content and clarity. Results Of the (...) 123 participants surveyed, 72% and 84% of nurses and physicians fully/somewhat agreed with an overall positive ethical climate, respectively. 69% of participants reported encountering daily or weekly ethical challenges. Participants expressed the greatest need for additional support to address moral distress, conflict management with patients or families and resource issues. Of the 23 reported occurrences of moral distress, 61% were associated with paediatric mental health cases. When asked how the ethics consultation service could be used in the ED, providing education to teams was the most desired method. Conclusions Nurses report a greater need for ethics education and resources compared with their physician colleagues. Ethical challenges in paediatric EDs are more prevalent than adult EDs and nurses voice specific moral distress that are different than adult EDs. These results highlight the need for a suitable educational strategy, which can be developed in collaboration with the leadership of each ED and team of hospital ethicists. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus in Britain on the importance of character, and on the belief that the virtues that contribute to good character are part of the solution to many of the challenges facing modern society. Parents, teachers and schools understand the need to teach basic moral virtues to pupils, such as honesty, self-control, fairness, and respect, while fostering behaviour associated with such virtues today. However, until recently, the materials required to help deliver this ambition have been missing in (...) Britain. The Knightly Virtues Programme, devised by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, aims to help solve this challenge. The programme, designed for 9 to 11 year olds, draws on selected classic stories to help teach moral character in schools. This approach has proved to be popular with children and teachers, with more than 5,000 pupils from one hundred schools having participated in the programme so far. Fifty-five of these schools and 3,272 pupils were directly involved in different stages of the research. Based at the University of Birmingham, the Jubilee Centre houses leading academics dedicated to researching the various ways in which good character, which underpins the building blocks of society, can be developed. Recent research from the Centre has shown that the qualities that make up character can be learnt and taught, and suggests that we need a new emphasis on their importance in schools and in professional education. This report from the Centre into the use of classic literature within schools sets out the ways in which the Knightly Virtues Programme is able to develop the virtue literacy of school pupils, and the extent to which an understanding and awareness of good moral character can make positive changes to behaviour. The impact of the programme has been tested using several rigorous research methods, detailed in this report alongside their findings, which provide substantial empirical evidence for the effectiveness of using stories to develop virtue literacy. (shrink)

It is proved that the relevance logic \ has no structurally complete consistent axiomatic extension, except for classical propositional logic. In fact, no other such extension is even passively structurally complete.

In this moderate realist account of the whole range of issues facing contemporary analytic philosophy, J. K. Swindler aims to fill the gap in the literature between extreme realism and extreme nominalism. He discusses such fundamental concepts as existence, property, universality, individual, and necessity; analyzes the paradoxes of negative existentials and the substitutivity of co-referential terms; and defends objectivity in philosophy. The study moves through three phases: first, an argument that objective philosophical truth is attainable; second, an extended realist analysis (...) of fundamental ontological concepts; and finally, a demonstration of advantages of this ontology over leading alternatives. Weaving: An Analysis of the Constitution of Objects will be of interest to all philosophers working in contemporary philosophy, philosophy of language, logic, and metaphysics, and will serve as an excellent text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in metaphysics. (shrink)

Recent scholarship on technology-induced ‘conceptual disruption’ has spotlighted the notion of a conceptual gap. Conceptual gaps have also been discussed in scholarship on epistemic injustice, yet up until now these bodies of work have remained disconnected. This article shows that ‘gaps’ of interest to both bodies of literature are closely related, and argues that a joint examination of conceptual disruption and epistemic injustice is fruitful for both fields. I argue that hermeneutical marginalization—a skewed division of hermeneutical resources, which serves to (...) diminish the experiences of marginalized folk—does not only transpire because of conceptual gaps, but also because of two other kinds of conceptual disruption: conceptual overlaps and conceptual misalignments. Hence, there are multiple kinds of conceptual disruption that can be usefully studied through the normative lens of epistemic injustice. Technology can play different roles vis-a-vis epistemic injustices, both as a causal trigger of conceptual disruption, but also as a mediator of hermeneutical resources. Its role is normatively significant, in particular because socially disruptive technologies can have different epistemic implications for different groups: they may amplify the epistemic resources of some groups, while diminishing those of others. (shrink)

Clinician gate-keeping is the process whereby healthcare providers prevent access to eligible patients for research recruitment. This paper contends that clinician gate-keeping violates three principles that underpin international ethical guidelines: respect for persons or autonomy; beneficence or a favourable balance of risks and potential benefits; and justice or a fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of research. In order to stimulate further research and debate, three possible strategies are also presented to eliminate gate-keeping: partnership with professional researchers; collaborative research (...) design and clinician education. (shrink)

A set is said to be amorphous if it is infinite, but is not the disjoint union of two infinite subsets. Thus amorphous sets can exist only if the axiom of choice is false. We give a general study of the structure which an amorphous set can carry, with the object of eventually obtaining a complete classification. The principal types of amorphous set we distinguish are the following: amorphous sets not of projective type, either bounded or unbounded size of members (...) of partitions of the set into finite pieces), and amorphous sets of projective type, meaning that the set admits a non-degenerate pregeometry, over finite fields either of bounded cardinality or of unbounded cardinality. The hope is that all amorphous sets will be of one of these types. Examples of each sort are constructed, and a reconstruction result for bounded amorphous sets is presented, indicating that the amorphous sets of this kind constructed in the paper are the only possible ones. The final section examines some questions concerned with the resulting cardinal arithmetic. (shrink)

Most discussions of medical futility try to answer the Futility Question: when is a medical procedure futile? No answer enjoys universal support. Some futility policies say that the health care provider will answer this question when the provider and patient cannot agree. This raises the Decision Question: who has the moral authority to decide what to do in cases where futility is disputed? I look for a procedural answer to this question, an answer that does not turn on whether a (...) given party happens to answer the Futility Question correctly. I argue that these policies get it right; the provider should decide because providers have a right of conscientious refusal that extends to refusing procedures on grounds of futility. This is a procedural answer because providers have this right even if they are sincerely mistaken about whether a procedure is futile. (shrink)

Originally published in 1926, this book attempts to state 'what has been believed with regard to God's incapacity for suffering'. Mozley charts the development of the doctrine from the Apostolic Fathers through the Reformation to the modern influence of metaphysical philosophy and concludes with six questions intended to prompt further theological discussion on this point. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of Christian theology.

_Practical Bioethics_ offers a mix of theory and readings, presented in a format that is succinct and approachable. Each chapter begins and ends with a case study, illustrating the core issues at play and emphasizing the practical nature of the dilemmas arising in medicine. Primary source texts are provided to flesh out the issues, and each of these is carefully edited and presented with interwoven explanatory comments to assist student readers. Throughout, J.K. Miles shows the importance of health-care ethics to (...) us all, whether we be medical providers, patients, or both. (shrink)

IN THE beginning Parmenides sought to deny the void. But he found himself trapped by his language and his thought into admitting what he sought to deny. Wisely, he counseled others to avoid the whole region in which the problem arises, lest they too be unwarily ensnared. Plato, being less easily intimidated and grasping for the first time the urgency of the paradox, unearthed each snare in turn until he felt he had found a safe path through the forbidden terrain (...) in a new conception of being and the derivation of its linguistic consequences in the Sophist. Aristotle evidently took Parmenides’ advice; and save for a few groping scholastics, perhaps Leibniz, Brentano, and Meinong, and Frege only in passing, no one else attempted the crossing before Russell made his spectacular dash through the posted ground from the completely new direction of linguistic reference. Again the problem lay dormant for half a century until Strawson constructed a new low road through ordinary language and Quine improved Russell’s high algebraic pass. Refinements of these routes have been forthcoming, especially from Searle and Kripke, until today it might appear that there are two super highways through Parmenides’ forbidden country of nonbeing. In this essay I will first argue that these new linguistic highways are no more than flimsy camouflage hiding but not resolving the old paradoxes. I will then show how Plato’s ontological way out, though more difficult, is the straight and narrow path. (shrink)

The intuitionistic consequence operation restricted to the language with (equivalence) and (negation) as the only connectives is axiomatized by means of a finite set of sequential rules of inference.

The advent of personal genomics companies offering direct translation of scientific data into personal health information, calls into question traditional policies to refuse disclosure of such scientific data to research participants. This seems especially true for population biobanks, as they collect not only genotype information but also associated phenotype information, and thus may be in a unique position to translate their scientific findings into personal health information for their participants. Disclosure of such information seems mandated by the expectations raised by (...) biobanks and their participants' rights to know health information, to know clinical research results, to life and health and particularly their right to benefit. Refusals to disclose such information can be grounded in the lack of analytical validity and/or clinical utility of most findings, the need to avoid the therapeutic misconception, the complexity and costs involved in translation and disclosure and the disproportionate burden resulting from the obligation to respect participants' right not to know before any disclosure can be made. Currently, any demands by participants in population biobanks for full disclosure of all pertinent personal health information potentially resulting from the biobank's scientific findings are unlikely to be granted by a Dutch court under Dutch and international law. As the law stands now, a population biobank is neither a doctor nor a personal genomics company. However, in view of the rapid scientific, medical, technological, commercial and social developments, population biobanks must prepare to take more care of their participants' legitimate interest in receiving as much validated personal health information as reasonably possible, in a timely fashion, by developing appropriate translation and disclosure mechanisms. This paper examines whether population biobank participants have the right, under Dutch civil law and international law, to full disclosure, i.e. to all information generated by the biobank that is pertinent to their present and future health. It pioneers the format of a hypothetical court case to elucidate the legal and policy arguments" for and against full disclosure. (shrink)