This paper explores the use of advance directives in clinical dementia research. The focus is on advance consent to participation of demented patients in non-therapeutic research involving more than minimal risks and/or burdens. First, morally relevant differences between advance directives for treatment and care, and advance directives for dementia research are discussed. Then attention is paid to the philosophical issue of dementia and personal identity, and the implications for the moral authority of research advance directives. Thirdly, a number of practical (...) shortcomings of advance directives for non-therapeutic dementia research are explored and attention is paid to the role of proxies. It is concluded that upon a closer look the initial attractiveness of advance directives for dementia research is lessened, and that it is doubtful whether these instruments can compensate for the lack of subject consent in case of non-therapeutic dementia research involving more than minimal risks and/or burdens for the incompetent demented subject. (shrink)
This article presents an overview ofregulations, guidelines and societal debates ineight member states of the EC about a)embryonic and fetal tissue transplantation(EFTT), and b) the use of human embryonic stemcells (hES cells) for research into celltherapy, including `therapeutic' cloning. Thereappears to be a broad acceptance of EFTT inthese countries. In most countries guidance hasbeen developed. There is a `strong' consensusabout some of the central conditions for `goodclinical practice' regarding EFTT.International differences concern, amongstothers, some of the informed consent issuesinvolved, and the (...) questions whether anintermediary organisation is necessary, whetherthe methods of abortion may be influenced bythe possible use of EFT, and whether EFTTshould only be used for the experimentaltreatment of rare disorders. The potential useof hES cells for research into cell therapy hasgiven a new impetus to the debate about (human)embryo research. The therapeutic prospects withregard to the retrieval and research use of hEScells appear to function as a catalyst for theintroduction of less restrictive regulationsconcerning research with spare embryos, atleast in some European countries. It remains tobe seen whether the prospect of treatingpatients suffering from serious disorders withtransplants produced by therapeutic cloningwill decrease the societal and moral resistanceto allowing the generation of embryos for`instrumental' use. (shrink)
I propose to begin with some fairly unexciting and uncontroversial remarks about possibility-statements, and then in their light to examine two problems philosophers have raised about certain statements of this kind which might be made in Christian theology where it touches on the doctrine of the Incarnation.
When philosophers approach philosophy of religion, they typically ask two questions: are there any sound arguments to prove the existence of God; and is talk about God even rationally intelligible? Theologians, for their part, primarily expound the meaning and relevance of Christianity. I am by profession a philosopher, but apart from Secs. VI and VII I am here writing as a puzzled twentieth-century man. My prime worry is whether we philosophers and theologians are beginning with the right questions.
Mr D. H. Mellor, in his article of this title in Religious Studies , Vol. 5 , distinguishes three senses of words such as ‘probable’ which might be used in a religious context, especially in that of attempted theistic proofs: statistical, subjective, and inductive probability. In each case he concludes that it is misleading to use these words in such contexts at all. With his discussion of the second I do not wish to quarrel; but there seem to me to (...) be serious defects in his discussions of the first and third. (shrink)
The ‘traditional’ view among philosophical theologians, that God is eternal not merely in the sense of being everlasting but in the sense of being outside time altogether, has come under sharp criticism in recent years, both from biblical theologians and from philosophers. It is against the latter form of attack, particularly as represented by the detailed criticisms of Professor Nelson Pike, that I wish to try and defend the notion of a divine timelessness.
I have come to believe that the whole framework of our current thought is about to begin a long and radical transformation, based on what I shall call a new science of pure consciousness. The content of most of the matters to be considered by this science have hitherto been the concern of some areas of religion, particularly what in our culture we call ‘mysticism’; but the treatment of it would legitimately be called scientific. Thus one aspect of the transformation (...) would be to overcome that apparent conflict between ‘science’ and ‘religion’, which has been so characteristic of our culture over the last few centuries. (shrink)
Anyone who wishes to talk about angels has to respond to the mocking question, how many of them can dance on the point of a pin. The answer is: ‘just as many as they please’. Angels being immaterial intellects do not occupy space to the exclusion of any other such intellectual substance, and their being ‘on’ the point of a pin can only mean that they attend to it. The question, however, is not one that concerned our mediaeval predecessors, although (...) it seems as difficult to persuade anyone of this as it is to clear Canute of the charge of insane conceit. (shrink)
Practitioners of disciplines whose problems are debated by moral philosophers regularly complain that the philosophers are engaged in abstract speculation, divorced from ‘real-life’ consequences and responsibilities, that it is the practitioners who must take the decisions, and that they cannot act in accordance with strict abstract logic.
There are good reasons for being suspicious of the very concept of ‘a religion’, let alone a ‘world religion’. It may be useful for a hospital administrator to know a patient's ‘religion’ – as Protestant or Church of England or Catholic or Buddhist – but such labels clearly do little more than identify the most suitable chaplain, and connote groupings in the vast and confusing region of ‘religious thought and practice’ that are of very different ranks. By any rational, genealogical (...) taxonomy ‘Protestant’, ‘Anglican’, ‘Catholic’ connote species, genera or families within Christianity, which is in turn a taxon within the multivariant tradition traced back to Abraham. ‘Buddhism’ includes as many variants as would ‘Abrahamism’. Most Abrahamists, traditionally, have been theists, but it is difficult not to suspect that Marxist socialism is an atypical variant which has inherited a linear view of time, a contest between the chosen agents of justice and the doomed powers-that-be, and the prospect of a future in which ‘there shall be no more sea’. (shrink)
Thomas Hill Green was one of the most influential English thinkers of his time, and he made significant contributions to the development of political liberalism. Much of his career was spent at Balliol College, Oxford: having begun as a student of Jowett, he later acted effectively as his second-in-command at the college. Interested for his whole career in social questions, Green supported the temperance movement, the extension of the franchise, and the admission of women to university education. He became Whyte's (...) professor of moral philosophy at Oxford in 1878, and his lectures had a lasting influence on a generation of students. Much of Volume 1, edited by Green's pupil R. L. Nettleship and published in 1885, consists of Green's work on David Hume . In his essay, 'Introductions to Hume's Treatise of Human Nature' , Green gives a detailed critique of Hume's metaphysical thought. (shrink)
Thomas Hill Green was one of the most influential English thinkers of his time, and he made significant contributions to the development of political liberalism. Much of his career was spent at Balliol College, Oxford: having begun as a student of Benjamin Jowett, he later acted effectively as his second-in-command at the college. Interested for his whole career in social questions, Green worked on the commission which led to the Endowed Schools Act of 1869, and supported the temperance movement, the (...) extension of the franchise, and the admission of women to university education. He became Whyte's professor of moral philosophy at Oxford in 1878, and his lectures had a lasting influence on a generation of students of philosophy and political thought. This collection of Green's writings, published in three volumes from 1885 to 1888, was edited by R. L. Nettleship, one of his Balliol students. (shrink)
Thomas Hill Green was one of the most influential English thinkers of his time, and he made significant contributions to the development of political liberalism. Much of his career was spent at Balliol College, Oxford: having begun as a student of Jowett, he later acted effectively as his second-in-command at the college. Interested for his whole career in social questions, Green supported the temperance movement, the extension of the franchise, and the admission of women to university education. He became Whyte's (...) professor of moral philosophy at Oxford in 1878, and his lectures had a lasting influence on a generation of students. Much of Volume 1, edited by Green's pupil R. L. Nettleship and published in 1885, consists of Green's work on David Hume. In his essay, 'Introductions to Hume's Treatise of Human Nature', Green gives a detailed critique of Hume's metaphysical thought. (shrink)
This detailed monograph deals with such problems as "The Unity of the Finite and Infinite," "Logic and the Concept of Function," "Mathematical Logic," "Formal and Dialectical Logic." The author mentions the work of Reichenbach and Lukasiewicz.--R. L. J.
The author sets out to show the "unique features of the idealistic dialectical method with its positive and negative elements, in order to show the various, often contradictory tendencies which are contained in them." Designed for "students, teachers and a broad circle of intellectuals." --R. L. J.
