The day-to-day work of clinical ethics consultants and healthcare ethics committees can easily become overly routine. Too much routine, however, comes with a risk that morally important practices will be reduced to mere bureaucratic formalities, while practitioners become desensitized to ethically significant distinctions between cases. Clinical ethics consultation and organizational ethics must be set within the broader social and cultural context of the healthcare environment. This practice requires looking beyond mere legal compliance and the routinely false assumption that there are (...) unambiguous ethical norms that easily govern clinical ethics and hospital policy formation. Together the essays in this issue of HEC Forum challenge readers to rethink taken-for-granted assumptions regarding patient care, physician obligation, clinical ethics consultation, and organizational ethics. (shrink)

In this paper I will give some provisional answers to the questions how one can be a Christian philosopher rather than just a philosopher who happens to be a Christian, how one can be a Reformation philosopher rather than just a Christian philosopher whohappens to be a Reformation Christian, and how one can be a Baptist philosopher rather than just a Reformation philosopher who happens to be a Baptist. A good way to be a philosopher is to, like Socrates, seek (...) wisdom concerning spiritual good. A good wayto be a specifically Christian philosopher is to, like Augustine, seek that wisdom in Jesus Christ. A good way to be a specifically Reformation philosopher is to recognize and reflect on a distinction between two inseparable spiritual goods on which we are seeking wisdom: justification and sanctification. A good way to be a specifically Baptist philosopher, taking some inspiration from the likes of Locke and Kierkegaard, is to also recognize and reflect on some signs of these spiritual goods which Baptists emphasize: resistance to the idea of a state church and believer’s baptism. -------------------------- Received: 20/03/2023. Reviewed: 18/04/2023. Accepted: 24/04/2023. (shrink)

Examines the political significance of ideas about happiness through the work of utilitarian philosophers William Thompson and Jeremy Bentham. Happiness is political. The way we think about happiness affects what we do, how we relate to other people and the world around us, our moral principles, and even our ideas about how society should be organized. Utilitarianism, a political theory based on hedonistic and individualistic ideas of happiness, has been dominated for more than two-hundred years by its founder, Jeremy Bentham. (...) In Happiness, Democracy, and the Cooperative Movement, Mark J. Kaswan examines the work of William Thompson, a friend of Bentham’s who nonetheless offers a very different utilitarian philosophy and political theory based on a different conception of happiness, but whose work has been largely overlooked. Kaswan reveals the importance of our ideas about happiness for our understanding of the basic principles and nature of democracy, its role in society and its character as a social institution. In what is the closest examination of Thompson’s political theory to date, Kaswan moves from philosophy to theory to practice, starting with conceptions of happiness before moving to theories of utility, then to democratic theory, and finally to practice in the first detailed account of how Thompson’s ideas laid the foundations for the cooperative movement, which is now the world’s largest democratic social movement. Mark J. Kaswan is Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Brownsville and J. Robert Beyster and Michael W. Huber Fellow, Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations. (shrink)

We give an extension of de Finetti’s concept of coherence to unbounded random variables that allows for gambling in the presence of infinite previsions. We present a finitely additive extension of the Daniell integral to unbounded random variables that we believe has advantages over Lebesgue-style integrals in the finitely additive setting. We also give a general version of the Fundamental Theorem of Prevision to deal with conditional previsions and unbounded random variables.

Review article on Alexander Schnell’s book “Hinaus: Entwürfe zu einer phänomenologischen Metaphysik und Anthropologie” (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011). According to Schnell, an exclusively descriptive phenomenology is not enough; phenomenology must also be constructive. He thus outlines an ambitious project for constructive phenomenology that promises (1) to provide an ultimate justification for knowledge and (2) to ground a phenomenological metaphysics and anthropology, each of which is centered on the “image” (Bild). Insofar as Schnell fills in the details of this outline, (...) his analysis is careful, provocative, and filled with insight. (shrink)

Traditional Christianity teaches that the Bible's primary referent is Jesus Christ, the Messiah, and Christians have long looked for ways to connect every passage in the Bible to the Christ. One venerable strategy is the allegorical or figurative approach of creatively interpreting any unit of biblical meaning, sometimes down to the individual words, as referencing Christ. Alternatively, we might take the biblical narrative itself as referencing Christ and find the connection of smaller units of meaning to Christ through their place (...) in that narrative. My article clarifies this topic through interaction with an exemplary practitioner of the strategy of figurative reading, the Church Father Augustine. I will first explain Augustine's reasons for his hermeneutics, which stem largely from his focus on smaller units of reference such as the word and the sentence. Then I will argue that his reasons are not persuasive if indeed the Bible does refer to Christ at a broader level, the level of narrative. (shrink)

The Enarrationes in Psalmos is the collection of Augustine’s commentaries and sermons on the Psalms. Although Augustine is often at his philosophical best here, bearing various resemblances to the Platonists and other philosophers, he also articulates a distinctively Christian view on what we should desire, on how desire has gone wrong, and on how it is healed. The renewal of desire takes place as a result of and through the unity of Christ and the church, which is the guiding theme (...) of the Enarrationes. Augustine’s Preaching and the Healing of Desire in the Enarrationes in Psalmos traces this theology of desire as it connects to Augustine’s Christology, his ecclesiology, his account of happiness and well-being, and his eschatology. The book closes with some suggestions on what the church can learn today from the Enarrationes in the areas of psychology and wellbeing, biblical exegesis, and homiletics. (shrink)

Augustine’s sermons on the Psalms of Ascent, part of the Enarrationes in Psalmos, are a unique entry in the venerable tradition of those writings that aim to help us ascend to a higher reality. These sermons transform the ascent genre by giving, in the place of the Platonic account of ascent, a Christian ascent narrative with a Trinitarian structure. Not just the individual ascends, but the community that is the church, the body of Christ, also ascends. The ascent is up (...) to God, the Idipsum or the Selfsame, the ultimate reality, confessed by the church as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Through the grace of the Incarnation, God the Son enables us to ascend, making himself the way of ascent from the humility we must imitate at the beginning of the ascent all the way up to Heaven, where he retains his identity as Idipsum. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit works in the ascending church to convert our hearts to the love of God and neighbor. I review the Platonic ascent tradition in Plato’s Republic and Plotinus’ Enneads; overview ascent in some of Augustine’s earlier writings; introduce the narrative setting of the sermons on the Psalms of Ascent; and analyze the Trinitarian structure of their ascent narrative. I close with some reflections on the difference between a preached Trinitarianism that encourages ascent and a more academic effort to understand God such as we find in Augustine’s de Trinitate. (shrink)

In the study of American law, originalism is primarily a theory about the meaning of the Constitution-that its meaning can only change when its words change. Originalism also appears in biblical theology as a theory on the meaning of the Biblethat its meaning is that intended by the original authors. Originalism in Theology and Law: Comparing Perspectives on the Bible and the Constitution offers a study of originalism in both the Bible and the Constitution. While there are significant connections between (...) originalism as a theory of biblical interpretation and as Constitutional interpretation, there are also differences in the type of text as well as its purpose, function, origins, or authority, which may affect which nuanced version of originalism best fits a particular text, or the best method of interpreting it. (shrink)

Bioethics functions within a world of deep moral pluralism; a universe of discourse debating ethical analysis, public policy, and clinical practice in which a common, generally accepted morality does not exist. While religious thinkers are often approached within a hermeneutic of suspicion for assuming moral standards that cannot be justified in rational terms, secular bioethicists routinely find themselves in exactly the same intellectual predicament. That ethical theory, proposed values, or normative content is secular, that it does not invoke God or (...) any particular religious perspective, does not mean that it is rationally grounded, necessarily true, or universally binding. As the authors in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy make clear, this normative reality directly impacts debates regarding concepts of health, illness, and disease, accounts of socially acceptable health-risky behaviors, and the political frameworks that shape public policy. As a result, honest discussion of diverse moral, religious, and political perspectives remains essential in clarifying the intellectual challenges, ethical intuitions, and ideological judgments that shape clinical practice and healthcare policy. Depending on which moral, political, or scientific concepts are guiding bioethical analysis, careful scrutiny will tend to support rather different policies and practices, each of which is likely to be worth careful consideration. (shrink)

In the “Principles of the Civil Code,” Jeremy Bentham identifies four “principles subsidiary to utility”: subsistence, abundance, equality, and security. Whereas these subsidiary principles form part of the bedrock of classical liberalism, in this essay I show that in the hands of his friend and disciple William Thompson, they are transformed into the foundations for socialism. Where Bentham prioritizes security over equality, and security of property takes a preeminent role, Thompson shows that the system of individual competition and private property—his (...) way of describing capitalism—is best characterized by the “inequality of security.” Based on the labor theory of property, Thompson argues that the system that assigns ownership to the providers of capital violates the workers’ security—the right to have the full produce of their labor secured to them. Thompson then reconciles security and equality, understanding them as mutually constitutive instead of in conflict. From his work... (shrink)

This book is a new interpretation of Schelling's path-breaking 1809 treatise on freedom, the last major work published during his lifetime. The treatise is at the heart of the current Schelling renaissance—indeed, Heidegger calls it "one of the most profound works of German, thus of Western, philosophy." It is also one of the most demanding and complex texts in German Idealism. By tracing the problem of ground through Schelling's treatise, this book provides a unified reading of the text, while unlocking (...) the meaning of its most challenging passages through clear, detailed analysis. This analysis shows how Schelling's implicit distinction between senses of ground is the key to his project of constructing a system that can satisfy reason while accommodating objects that seem to defy rational explanation—including evil, the origins of nature, and absolute freedom. This allows Schelling to unite reason and mystery, providing a rich model for philosophizing about freedom and evil today. (shrink)

This book analyses some of the key problems explored in Paul Virilio's theorising on war and security.Virilio is one of the most challenging and provocative critics of technology, war and globalisation. While many commentators focus on the new possibilities for mobility and communication in an interconnected world, Virilio is interested in the role that technology and security play in the shaping of our bodies and how we come to see the world -- what he terms the 'logistics of perception'. Security, (...) Technology and Global Politics explores Virilio's work in this area, with each chapter using examples from popular culture -- from video games and on-line graphic novels, to films from around the world - as a starting point from which the author goes on to develop a critical engagement with Virilio's work. One of the key themes that emerge from this analysis is the importance of the idea of 'disappearance' -- the aesthetics of disappearance or the politics of disappearance. The book argues that the politics of disappearance provides a disturbing and insightful introduction to the key questions posed by politics of security in the twenty-first century.This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, political theory, sociology, political geography, cultural studies and IR in general. (shrink)

Aristotle sets the horizons of our inquiry: What is it when we say we know something? And is the object of knowledge a universal or particular [tode ti] object? Aristotle's critique of Plato's theory of form/Forms in light of his notion of actuality has generated a variety of topics that frame our inquiry: "Understanding Eidos as Form in the Works of Aristotle as Plato's Critical Student"; "Aristotle on Plato's Forms as Causes"; "Notes on the Relationship between Plato's Parmenides and Aristotle's (...) Metaphysics Alpha"; "'Separate' and 'Inactive'? Aristotle's Most Challenging Critique of Plato's 'Forms'"; "Too Much Unity in a City Is Destructive of the City: Aristotle against Plato's Unification Project of the Polis"; "Aristotle on the Soul as Actuality"; "Delphic Piety in the De Anima of Alexander of Aphrodisias"; "Aristotle and Plotinus: Act and Potency and the Two Acts"; and "Al-Fārābīon Habit and Imagination." Here, the Peripatetic readings of form and actuality are parsed from the precipice of historical, analytic, and continental approaches to the mind/language/object problem, with advocacy of the importance of Aristotle's contribution to this inquiry for the present age. (shrink)

This chapter explores the experiential reality of the family and its role in securing human well-being. I argue that the family is an epistemic category as well as an ontological category: it reveals the being of the phenomenological life-world in ways that are necessary for adequately appreciating the embodiment of human health and well-being. Without the family, there are significant areas of human flourishing about which one can neither know nor experience. The family uncovers categories of moral duties and virtues (...) central to the creation and maintenance of core areas of human well-being. Familial interactions, for example, routinely demonstrate significant forms of altruistic behavior and other-directed personal costs at levels that are atypical of nonfamilial relationships. Moreover, significant cross-cultural sociobiological data support the conclusion that family life provides social, emotional, adaptive, and financial advantages, as well as the development of affective autonomy, increased longevity, improved physical and psychological health. Conversely, traumatic changes to family life, such as the death of a spouse, are well-documented as negatively impacting personal stability, life-expectancy, and overall well-being. In short, to focus unduly on the individual in isolation from the family is to diminish this rich and significant category of human good and well-being. (shrink)

How can we definitively determine which biomedical choices are morally correct and which engage in seriously wrongful acts? Depending on whom one asks, one is informed that choices such as abortion, euthanasia, and significant body modification involve real moral harm (either as forms of murder or as denying the goodness of the body that God has provided), or that disallowing such “medical care” violates the basic rights of persons (where abortion, active euthanasia, and body modification are appreciated as positive expressions (...) of personal autonomy). Secular bioethics appears no longer able to appreciate what could possibly be wrong with such activities, provided that the individuals involved consent in some fashion. Indeed, many actions that were once openly and easily recognized as sinful have become so commonplace, as well as politically desirable, as to appear as if they were obviously good. As the authors in this issue of Christian Bioethics explore, fully to appreciate the serious moral issues raised by modern medicine requires a foundational orientation to the Christian God. (shrink)

This book represents a unique contribution to the field of clinical ethics consultation. What might seem at first glance to be an anthology, that is, a collection of independent essays, is actually more akin to a conversation, a shared engagement, a mutual undertaking. At the center of this conversation is a steadfastness, abiding and serious in its orientation – exemplified in these voices and contributions collected from colleagues – to explore, identify, and examine the actual conduct of individuals who engage (...) in ethics consultation practice. Although there is some helpful resemblance to an anthology, for example in the variety of ways these essays describe and depict a complex array of different standpoints regarding the practical and conceptual commitments in this growing field, more important to the Zadeh Project is the deliberate focus on explicating and probing the ways these commitments influence how a particular individual acting as an “ethics consultant” might understand and interpret the roles and prevalent expectations represented by those differing standpoints. In that light, and perhaps more urgently, this book is motivated by a mutual recognition that part and parcel with the responsibility of doing clinical ethics is an ongoing and clear need to describe and consider what clinical ethics consultants actually encounter when actively working with physicians, nurses, social workers, and other healthcare providers as well as with patients, families, and others who care about patients. As a contribution to that necessity of being accountable, this Project and the resulting book represent much more than merely collecting together the thoughts and perspectives of a group of colleagues from within a common field: this book is an attempt to display, to model through written text, a set of practices and what is at stake in these practices. (shrink)

This issue of Christian Bioethics explores foundational debates regarding the orientation and application of Christian bioethics. Should Christian bioethics be approached as essentially a human activity, grounded in scholarly study of theological arguments and religious virtues, oriented toward practical social ends, or should Christian bioethics be recognized as the result of properly oriented prayer, fasting, and asceticism leading to an encounter with God? The gulf between these two general perspectives—the creation of immanent human goods versus submission to a fully transcendent (...) God—is significant and, as ongoing debate in Christian Bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality over the past nearly three decades has made clear, the implications are both intellectually engaging and spiritually profound. (shrink)

Traditionalism is a shadowy philosophy that has influenced much of the twentieth century and beyond: from the far-right to the environmental movement, from Sufi shaykhs and their followers to Trump advisor and right-wing provocateur Steve Bannon. It is a worldview that rejects modernity and instead turns to mystical truth and tradition as its guide. Mark Sedgwick, one of the world's leading scholars of Traditionalism, presents a major new analysis, pulling back the curtain on the foundations of Traditionalist philosophy, its (...) major proponents-René Guénon, Julius Evola, and Frithjof Schuon-and their thought. One of Traditionalism's fundamental pillars is perennialism, the idea that beneath all the different forms of religion there lies one single timeless and esoteric tradition. A second is the view that everything is getting worse, rather than better, over time, leading to the Traditionalist critique of modernity. Sedgwick details Traditionalism's unique ideas about self-realization, religion, politics, and many other spheres. Traditionalism provides an expansive guide to this important school of thought-one that is little-known and even less understood-and shows how pervasive these ideas have become. (shrink)

This essay addresses two growing edges of the just war tradition. First, theorists have been accused of focusing narrowly on justifying war and governing its conduct, neglecting wider considerations that encompass justice during the years prior to and after war. Second, calling a war "just" allegedly makes it seem "good" so that it is easier to fight a war and to bend or set aside the rules. Based on "imperfect justice," we argue for a "justified" war theory, taking all criteria (...) and categories seriously, including jus ante bellum and jus post bellum. (shrink)

The success of the early music movement has long raised questions about performing historical works: Should musicians perform on period instruments and try to reconstruct the original style? If a historically “authentic” performance is impossible or undesirable, what should be the goal of the early music movement? I turn to Gadamer to answer these questions by constructing the outlines of a hermeneutics of early music performance. In the first half of the paper, I examine Gadamer’s critique of historical reconstruction and (...) argue that this critique sheds light on mistaken tendencies and misunderstandings within the early music movement, but it does not discredit the movement as such. In the second half of the paper, I attempt to show how Gadamer’s dialogical account of historical consciousness provides a framework for understanding what historically informed performance is seeking to accomplish, as well as its advantage over a Nietzschean approach. (shrink)

We investigate differences between a simple Dominance Principle applied to sums of fair prices for variables and dominance applied to sums of forecasts for variables scored by proper scoring rules. In particular, we consider differences when fair prices and forecasts correspond to finitely additive expectations and dominance is applied with infinitely many prices and/or forecasts.

Furthermore, adults with decision-making capacity, including pregnant women, can currently accept interventions with moderate net risks for themselves in other settings (e.g., open f...

Biomedical research today can be generally classified as human-based or nonhuman animal-based, each with separate and distinct review boards that must approve research protocols. Researchers wishing to work with humans or human tissues have become frustrated by the required burdensome approval panel, the Institutional Review Board. However, scientists have found it is much easier to work with the animal-based research review board, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Consequently, animals are used for investigations even when scientists believe these studies (...) should be performed with humans or human tissue. This situation deserves attention from society and more specifically the animal protection and patient advocate communities, as neither patients nor animals are well served by the present situation. (shrink)

Medicalization was the theme of the 29th European Conference on Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care that included a panel session on the DSM and mental health. Philosophical critiques of the medical model in psychiatry suffer from endemic assumptions that fail to acknowledge the real world challenges of psychiatric nosology. The descriptive model of classification of the DSM 3-5 serves a valid purpose in the absence of known etiologies for the majority of psychiatric conditions. However, a consequence of the “atheoretical” (...) approach of the DSM is rampant epistemological confusion, a shortcoming that can be ameliorated by importing perspectives from the work of Jaspers and McHugh. Finally, contemporary psychiatry’s over-reliance on neuroscience and pharmacotherapy has led to a reductionist agenda that is antagonistic to the inherently pluralistic nature of psychiatry. As a result, the field has suffered a loss of knowledge that may be difficult to recover. (shrink)

This excellent book focuses on a decisive moment in Schelling's philosophical development: his 1801 dispute with Eschenmayer shortly before publishing Presentation of My System, the inaugural text of his identity philosophy. Carl August Eschenmayer was a German physician whose Kant-inspired writings in the philosophy of nature greatly influenced Schelling, especially with respect to the doctrine of the potencies. As Berger and Whistler demonstrate, the 1801 controversy has significant implications for understanding the trajectory of German Idealism and its debates on methodology, (...) the meaning of identity, and the place of nature in philosophy. (shrink)

England and Wales are moving toward a model of ‘opt out’ for use of personal confidential data in health research. Existing research does not make clear how acceptable this move is to the public. While people are typically supportive of health research, when asked to describe the ideal level of control there is a marked lack of consensus over the preferred model of consent. This study sought to investigate a relatively unexplored difference between the consent model that people prefer and (...) that which they are willing to accept. It also sought to explore any reasons for such acceptance. (shrink)

This broad ranging and thought provoking set of readings stresses the diversity of responses in the way the natural environment has been understood and questioned in the modern world.

We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a scoring rule to be proper for a quantile if utility is linear, and the distribution is unrestricted. We also give results when the set of distributions is limited, for example, to distributions that have first moments.

The legal basis of informed consent in Texas may on first examination suggest an unqualified affirmation of persons as the source of authority over themselves. This view of individuals in the practice of informed consent tends to present persons outside of any social context in general and outside of their families in particular. The actual functioning of law and medical practice in Texas, however, is far more complex. This study begins with a brief overview of the roots of Texas law (...) and public policy regarding informed consent. This surface account is then contrasted with examples drawn from the actual functioning of Texas law: Texas legislation regarding out-of-hospital do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders. As a default approach to medical decision-making when patients lose decisional capacity and have failed to appoint a formal proxy or establish their wishes, this law establishes a defeasible presumption in favor of what the law characterizes as “qualified relatives” who can function as decision-makers for those terminal family members who lose decisional capacity. The study shows how, in the face of a general affirmation of the autonomy of individuals as if they were morally and socially isolated agents, space is nevertheless made for families to choose on behalf of their own members. The result is a multi-tier public morality, one affirming individuals as morally authoritative and the other recognizing the decisional standing of families. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate the relationship between the serious and the playful elements in Socrates’ character as these unfold within the context of Xenophon’s Symposium. For the Greeks, the concept of value is attached to the meaning of seriousness, and this accounts for the natural preference for the serious over the playful. Despite the potential rivalry of the playful and philosophy, Socrates mixes the playful with the serious in such a way as to conceal their boundary. This mixing serves (...) the purpose of education, by both attracting us to Socrates and placing us at a distance from the intended meaning of his words. (shrink)

Debates over health care have focused for so long on economics that the proper goals for medicine seem to be taken for granted; yet problems in health care stem as much from a lack of agreement about the goals and priorities of medicine as from the way systems function. This book asks basic questions about the purposes and ends of medicine and shows that the answers have practical implications for future health care delivery, medical research, and the education of medical (...) students. The Hastings Center coordinated teams of physicians, nurses, public health experts, philosophers, theologians, politicians, health care administrators, social workers, and lawyers in fourteen countries to explore these issues. In this volume, they articulate four basic goals of medicine — prevention of disease, relief of suffering, care of the ill, and avoidance of premature death — and examine them in light of the cultural, political, and economic pressures under which medicine functions. In reporting these findings, the contributors touch on a wide range of diverse issues such as genetic technology, Chinese medicine, care of the elderly, and prevention and public health. The Goals of Medicine clearly demonstrates the importance of clarifying the purposes of medicine before attempting to change the economic and organizational systems. It warns that without such examination, any reform efforts may be fruitless. (shrink)

This book aims to present a richer alternative to the popular conception of freedom as the power to choose by giving an account of freedom in Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel. Despite my points of criticism (especially with regard to moral responsibility and the freedom to do evil), the contributions of the book are significant. By posing and developing the question of the relationship between freedom and actuality, Schindler introduces a problem that any complete account of freedom must address. At the (...) same time, Schindler provides us with a useful framework for relating Schelling and Hegel on freedom. Finally, the book gives an overview of the potential richness that a fuller conception of freedom provides. (shrink)

An understanding of human nature has been central to the work of some of the greatest philosophical thinkers including Plato, Descartes, Hume, Hobbes, Rousseau, Freud and Marx. Questions such as 'what is human nature?', 'is there such a thing as an exclusively human nature?', 'through what methods might we best discover more about our nature?', and 'to what extent are our actions and beliefs constrained by it?' are of central importance not only to philosophy, but to our general understanding of (...) ourselves as part of the human species. This volume addresses such questions through the inclusion of special commissioned essays by specialists including John Cottingham, Hans-Johann Glock, P. M. S. Hacker, Wolfram Hinzen, Rosalind Hursthouse, Peter Kail, Sarah Patterson and Richard Samuels. (shrink)

This paper defends an in principle understanding of the authority of persons over themselves and, in consequence, argues for significant limits on morally permissible state authority. It also defends an account of the limits of permissible state action that distinguishes between the ability of persons to convey authority to common projects and what may be judged virtuous, good, safe, or proper to do. In terms of organ transplantation policy, it concludes that it is morally acceptable, and should be legally permissible, (...) for individuals to sell one of their kidneys while living, pocketing the cash to use as that person sees fit to advance their own understanding of their own best interests. Morally objectionable policy proposals, I argue, are not those that encourage individuals to sell a redundant kidney while living or families to sell the organs of a recently deceased loved one, but those that seek coercively to confiscate the organs of the recently deceased. Recognizing the authority of persons over themselves, and their ability to convey moral authority to common projects, including the sale of human organs for transplantation, would shed light on the medical marketplace and clarify public policy, while increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of procuring human organs for transplantation. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor is one of the most important philosophers of mind in recent decades. He has done much to set the agenda in this field and has had a significant influence on the development of cognitive science. Fodor's project is that of constructing a physicalist vindication of folk psychology and so paving the way for the development of a scientifically respectable intentional psychology. The centrepiece of his engagement in this project is a theory of the cognitive mind, namely, the computational (...) theory of mind, which postulates the existence of a language of thought. Fodor: Language, Mind and Philosophy is a comprehensive study of Fodor's writings. Individual chapters are devoted to each of the major issues raised by his work and contain extensive discussion of his relationships to key developments in cognitive science and to the views of such philosophical luminaries as Dennett, Davidson and Searle. (shrink)

Creation of for-profit markets in organs for transplantation ignites in many deep moral repugnance. Proposals to broker organs have been denounced by the US Congress and professional groups alike. Financial incentives are believed to undermine consent, coercing the poor into selling their organs, violating human dignity, and improperly commodifying the human body; such concerns are held to trump the possibility of increasing life-sustaining transplants. While such views summarize the apparent global consensus which marks worldwide prohibition of the sale of human (...) organs, I argue that closer examination reveals significant grounds for concluding that markets would be more successful in preventing exploitation, preserving human dignity, and protecting against improper commodification than governmental bureaucratic procedures for procuring and allocating organs. (shrink)

There is no doubt that the model presented here is incomplete. Many important categories, particularly negation and the adverbials, have been entirely ignored, and the treatment of Tense and the affixes is certainly inadequate. It also remains to be seen how the many constructions that have been ignored here are to be accommodated within the framework that has been outlined. However, the fact that a standard categorial lexicon, plus the four rule schemata, seems to come close to exhaustively specifying the (...) main clause constructions of English, and also seems to explain a number of major constraints on transformations, encourages us to compare the theory with certain alternatives, and to examine its broader implications. (shrink)

This paper defends an in principle understanding of the authority of persons over themselves and, in consequence, argues for significant limits on morally permissible state authority. It also defends an account of the limits of permissible state action that distinguishes between the ability of persons to convey authority to common projects and what may be judged virtuous, good, safe, or proper to do. In terms of organ transplantation policy, it concludes that it is morally acceptable, and should be legally permissible, (...) for individuals to sell one of their kidneys while living, pocketing the cash to use as that person sees fit to advance their own understanding of their own best interests. Morally objectionable policy proposals, I argue, are not those that encourage individuals to sell a redundant kidney while living or families to sell the organs of a recently deceased loved one, but those that seek coercively to confiscate the organs of the recently deceased. Recognizing the authority of persons over themselves, and their ability to convey moral authority to common projects, including the sale of human organs for transplantation, would shed light on the medical marketplace and clarify public policy, while increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of procuring human organs for transplantation. (shrink)

Brain transplants have long been no more than the subject of science fiction and engaging thought experiments. That is no longer true. Neuroscientists have announced their intention to transplant the head of a volunteer onto a donated body. Response has been decidedly mixed. How should we think about the moral permissibility of head transplants? Is it a life-saving/life-enhancing opportunity that appropriately expands the boundaries of medical practice? Or, is it a bioethical morass that ought not to be attempted? For the (...) purposes of this paper, I set aside questions regarding the surgical operation’s technological plausibility so as to focus on very basic questions regarding personal identity and the morality of head transplantation. The analysis begins with an exploration of the embodiment of persons. It considers whether persons can be conceptually distinguished from all parts of their body, even if they cannot be physically separated from some parts without loss of personhood. It argues that in most cases replacing body parts with reasonably similar parts will not destroy the conditions for sustaining personhood. However, as I explore, the phenomenology of personhood is such that some physical changes may prove to be too significant to maintain personal identity successfully over time. Given such complexity and the significance of the costs involved, the moral permissibility of head transplantation likely depends on recognizing that persons may give permission to collaborate in common activities, including projects with which others deeply disagree, provided that they only utilize the services and resources of free and consenting others. (shrink)