On one conception of “best interest” there can only be one course of action in a given situation that is in a person’s best interest. In this paper we will first consider what theories of “best interest” and rational decision-making that can lead to this conclusion and explore some of the less commonly appreciated implications of these theories. We will then move on to consider what ethical theories that are compatible with such a view and explore their implications. In the (...) second part of the paper we will explore a range of possible criticisms of these views. And in the third part we will criticise the view that a court is always or even often in a good position to decide what the patient’s best interest is. In the fourth and final part we will put forward a reconstructive proposal aimed at saving whatever is sound in the “best interest” conception. (shrink)

The many problems we face in today's world -- among them war, environmental destruction, religious and racial intolerance, and inappropriate technologies -- demand that we carefully re-evaluate such issues as our relation to the environment, the nature of progress, ultimate purposes, and human values. These are all issues, Robert Carter explains, that are intimately linked to our perception of life's meaning. While many books discuss life's meaning either analytically or prescriptively, Carter addresses values and ways of meaningful living from (...) a broader perspective, using Japanese philosophy to augment his investigation. He examines Martin Heidegger's distinction between "dwelling" and existing in the world, Lawrence Kohlberg's "stage seven" of human moral development, and the works of Viktor Frankl, Carol Gilligan, and Nel Noddings. He applies hermeneutic and deconstructionist theory to the question of meaning, and explores the feminist contribution to ethics and its relation to the interconnectedness of things celebrated in Zen and Shinto thought. Bridging various dichotomies such as East/West, reason/emotion, male/female, and caring/justice, Carter shows that ethics, environmental concern, caring, and joy in living are dependent on the growth and transformation of the self. Only by becoming aware of the interrelatedness of things, Carter reveals, can we become as supple and as strong as the bamboo tree, long the symbol of longevity and constancy. (shrink)

There is no general agreement as to whether Plato was a mystic. With the texts available, one wonders why a definitive conclusion is so hard to establish. The problem lies not only with the interpretation of Plato, but also with the equivocation and vagueness of the term “mysticism.” Using Plato’s simple classification of definitional meaning for our purposes, mysticism is not a word like “iron,” but like “just” or “good.” Men dispute what is meant by words of the latter class, (...) the disputes yielding as many seemingly “clear” definitions as there are individuals. Hence, unless a definition is agreed upon at the outset, we will continue to disagree as to whether Plato is a mystic, each of us meaning by mysticism something quite different. What follows is an attempt to place several reputable definitions of mysticism beside Plato’s writings, in order to give some small indication of the complexity of his position. Simple categorizations appear as coarse nets through which the subtleties of his position pass unaffected. (shrink)

When we hear the term "Japanese philosophy" we think of Zen Buddhism or the Shinto scriptures. Yet one of the great 20th century interpreters of Western philosophy, Nishida Kitaro, lived and wrote in the Japanese islands all his life, laboring at an ultimate synthesis of oriental thought and Western hermeneutics. To be sure, Nishida's aim was to understand his own cultural influences in relation to the Western world. What distinguished him, however, was his passion for rendering oriental metaphysics understandable in (...) the language of Western philosophy, and his attempts to contrast the paradoxicality of Buddhist logic with the logical strategies of Aristotle, Kant, or Hegel. Featured in this book is an interpretation of Nishida's writings. Professor Carter focuses on the Japanese thinker's notion of "basho," a concept of nothingness as field, place or topos as borrowed from Plato's Tim'us. Expounding on the logical foundations and archaic elements in Nishida's work, and carefully explaining Nishida's critical approach to the questions of God, religion and morality, and pure existence, this discerning book offers students of Western philosophy and oriental thought alike a highly readable introduction to the teachings of a true world philosopher. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that developments in transhumanist technologies may have upon human cultures (and thus upon the lifeworld), and to do so by exploring a potential debate between Habermas and the transhumanists. Transhumanists, such as Nick Bostrom, typically see the potential in genetic and other technologies for positively expanding and transcending human nature. In contrast, Habermas is a representative of those who are fearful of this technology, suggesting that it will compound the deleterious (...) effects of the colonisation of the lifeworld, further constraining human autonomy and undermining the meaningfulness of the lifeworld by expanding the technological control and manipulation of humanity. It will be argued that these opposed positions are grounded in fundamentally different understandings of the consequences of scientific and technological advance. On one level, the transhumanists remain confident that the lifeworld has within it the resources necessary to find meaning and purpose in a society deeply infused by genetic technology. Habermas disagrees. On another level, the difference is articulated by Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, primarily by challenging what may be understood as a Baconian faith in science as a project for the domination of nature (where nature is an infinitely malleable material, to be dominated and shaped, without adverse consequences, purely for the purposes of human survival). While the transhumanists broadly embrace this faith, Habermas returns to something akin to Horkheimer and Adorno’s pessimistic scepticism. (shrink)

This paper uses the social theory of Erving Goffman in order to argue that confidentiality should be understood in relation to the mundane social skills by which individuals present and respect specific self-images of themselves and others during social interaction. The breaching of confidentiality is analysed in terms of one person's capacity to embarrass another, and so to expose that person as incompetent. Respecting confidentiality may at once serve to protect the vulnerable from an unjust society, and yet also protect (...) the guilty from just accusation. Ethical reasoning about confidentiality must therefore recognize the dangers of prejudice and violence inherent in decisions to breach or to respect confidentiality. Case studies are used to illustrate the efficacy of this account, culminating with analyses of three examples from the UKCC document Confidentiality. (shrink)

Infant and young child electrophysiology studies have provided information regarding the maturation of face-encoding neural processes. A limitation of previous research is that very few studies have examined face-encoding processes in children 12–48 months of age, a developmental period characterized by rapid changes in the ability to encode facial information. The present study sought to fill this gap in the literature via a longitudinal study examining the maturation of a primary node in the face-encoding network—the left and right fusiform gyrus. (...) Whole-brain magnetoencephalography data were obtained from 25 infants with typical development at 4–12 months, and with follow-up MEG exams every ∼12 months until 3–4 years old. Children were presented with color images of Face stimuli and visual noise images that served as Non-Face stimuli. Using distributed source modeling, left and right face-sensitive FFG evoked waveforms were obtained from each child at each visit, with face-sensitive activity identified via examining the difference between the Non-Face and Face FFG timecourses. Before 24 months of age the face-sensitive FFG M290 response was the dominant response, observed in the left and right FFG ∼250–450 ms post-stimulus. By 3–4 years old, the left and right face-sensitive FFG response occurred at a latency consistent with a face-sensitive M170 response ∼100–250 ms post-stimulus. Face-sensitive left and right FFG peak latencies decreased as a function of age, and with an adult-like FFG latency observed at 3–4 years old. Study findings thus showed face-sensitive FFG maturational changes across the first 4 years of life. Whereas a face-sensitive M290 response was observed under 2 years of age, by 3–4 years old, an adult-like face-sensitive M170 response was observed bilaterally. Future studies evaluating the maturation of face-sensitive FFG activity in infants at risk for neurodevelopmental disorders are of interest, with the present findings suggesting age-specific face-sensitive neural markers of a priori interest. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Living Zen, Loving GodRobert E. CarterLiving Zen, Loving God. By Ruben L. F. Habito. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2004. Pp. xxi + 129.At a time when one hears all too often of the irreconcilable differences between religions, it is a relief and a delight to read the words of someone who has gleaned much from Christianity (as a Jesuit priest) and from Zen Buddhism (as a practitioner whose (...) enlightenment has been duly authenticated). Father Ruben L. F. Habito's challenge has been to harmonize the beliefs of these two distinct traditions, both of which have provided him with quite distinctive transformative experiences. It is a mutual influencing that he presents in very accessible prose in Living Zen, Loving God.While the lectures in this volume are not attempts to reconcile competing doctrines and approaches in detail, they do strive to move the reader back to those originary experiences of spiritual insight that both traditions share. Father Habito seeks to uncover the spiritual springs of Zen and Christianity, letting each speak in its own way, for religion is not about doctrines and dogma; rather, as the Zen philosopher Nishida Kitarō maintained, "religion is an event of the soul."1 Habito seems to be in agreement with such a position. In explicating this experiential territory, he includes chapters on emptiness and fullness, the Heart Sūtra, the four vows of the Bodhisattva, Kuan-yin with a thousand hands, and Zen and Christian spirituality. There are many apt conclusions and comparisons in these pages, such as a Christian adaptation of the Buddhist admonition to slay the Buddha if you meet him-for to meet him is to lose him by fixing his significance and intent as rigid doctrine and by rendering the absolute a "thing" in the first place. Habito writes that "if you meet the Christ, crucify him!" (p. 36). Or again, there is an excellent and simple account of compassion: "an out-stretched hand adjusting a pillow in the middle of the night... the night of emptiness, of unknowing.... And in the middle of this, as my pillow slips off, and my head feels displaced, spontaneously, my hand reaches out to adjust the pillow, and I go back to sleep. That's all. This koan is saying, that's compassion" (p. 76). The self has dropped off, and one now acts spontaneously and effortlessly from the purity and depth of radical interconnectedness.What is impressive about this book is the accuracy and ease with which difficult Zen and Buddhist ideas are expressed. For example, kensho is seeing clearly "the reality of everything as not separate from oneself, of everything as it really is" (p. xiii). This realization of interconnectedness results in social engagement, "the discovery of the real and deep bond that makes that person one with society, with the marketplace, with the whole universe" (p. 22). More precisely, "one sees one's True Self in the 'other,' the 'other' in one's True Self" (p. 22). While the goal of meditation is personal enlightenment, the fruit of enlightenment is the emptying of the ego-self, [End Page 343] and a reconnection with the everyday world, with a concern and passion heretofore unknown.Yet, as a devout Roman Catholic, Habito filters Zen through Christian lenses as often as he filters Christianity through Zen lenses. Creation ex nihilo, he urges, can be understood "as an invitation to that experience of the nothingness that is at the heart of our being, which becomes the fulcrum for experiencing the infinite life of God pulsing through this being, through the universe, from moment to moment" (p. 23). Each and every thing is now to be understood as "a complete and perfect manifestation of the Infinite" (p. 23). But what is less than clear here is the meaning of "manifestation." Exactly what is every thing a manifestation of? The Zen answer must be that the awareness of everything as a manifestation of the "absolute" must be understood nondualistically. Habito provides a powerful chapter on the Heart Sūtra, which instructs us that emptiness is precisely form, and form precisely emptiness. Everything is a manifestation of the creative universal energy that is the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto SchoolRobert E. Carter (bio)Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School. By James W. Heisig. Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001. Pp. xi + 380. $21.95.Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School, by James W. Heisig, is indeed a very good book. It provides a systematic interpretation and appraisal of (...) the three key figures of the Kyoto school—Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime, and Nishitani Keiji—together with an in-depth account of the sociopolitical context in which they worked. Heisig succeeds in indicating the importance of each of these philosophers both within the Japanese context and beyond. He deftly summarizes the philosophical positions of each of the three and details the interactions between them, as well as with other philosophers of their era. The book's style is accessible, although the ideas are often dense and the analysis subtle. There are no footnotes per se, but instead a bibliographical essay is provided for each of the sixty-six sections of the book. [End Page 273]Heisig claims that the Kyoto school philosophers give the West a way into the East like none other (p. 272). They thrust Japanese philosophical and religious thought onto the world stage, revealing an East Asian perspective to the outside world, as well as to the Japanese themselves. They self-consciously attempted to articulate the distinctiveness of the Japanese mind-set in particular, and the Eastern way of thinking generally. Heisig artfully weaves the thought and times of these three thinkers together into a tapestry of understanding and insight of the highest quality.As is always the case, however, there are issues that remain which might have been dealt with, and interpretive differences to be noted. Nishida began his philosophical journey with his groundbreaking Inquiry into the Good, published in 1911.1 His goal in that work, as Heisig describes it, was to introduce the important but radically nonphilosophical language of Zen to the closed world of philosophy, and conversely to use philosophy to find a language to talk about those things that Zen had always insisted were not susceptible to rationalization. The Inquiry created a significant stir in Japan upon its publication, and Nishida's appropriation of William James' notion of pure experience appeared to span the philosophical differences East and West without smoothing over those differences.Yet Heisig's critical honesty forces him to underplay the actual lasting importance of the Inquiry. Nishida, too, later criticized the heavy psychological emphasis of the book.2 However, it seems too strong to argue, as Heisig does, that the work is a classic only because of its influence and its place in Nishida's own philosophical development (p. 41). Heisig is frank in anticipating that some will find his diminishing of the Inquiry as "irreverent." I admire his irreverence as a cautionary attempt to save us all from a bandwagon elevation of Nishida and the Kyoto school, but I think he underestimates the subtle brilliance of the book and its profound originality. To be sure, the Inquiry is a notebook of insights and ideas to be developed. Not only is experiential nonduality a focus (and with it a critique of the dogma of intentionality), but there is also the reinstatement of religion as foundational to all systematic thinking, an account of God as both immanent and transcendent (including nothingness) together with God's role in Eastern thought, and a theory of ethics based on the innate tendencies within each of us as located at the deeper, unconscious levels of our nature. Heisig concludes that the Inquiry is "less an achievement than an agenda to direct his work in the years ahead" (p. 42). It seems evident to me that this pioneering work is both an immense achievement and an agenda for a lifetime of future investigation. The richness and suggestiveness of Nishida's explorations in the Inquiry seem to me to ensure that the work is genuinely worthy of being judged a classic on its own philosophical merits.Heisig recognizes over and over again the importance of the mystical element in all three... (shrink)

the article explores the putatively non-metaphysical – non-voluntarist, and even non-causal – concept of freedom outlined in Hegel’s work and discusses its influential interpretation by robert Pippin as an ‘essentially practical’ concept. I argue that Hegel’s affirmation of freedom must be distinguished from that of Kant and Fichte, since it does not rely on a prior understanding of self-consciousness as an originally teleological relation and it has not the nature of a claim ‘from a practical point of view’.

Edgar Allan Poe’s eerie short story “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” is a particularly noteworthy example of the sublime, a psychological state in which one is overwhelmed by the magnitude of that which is perceived by the mind. Valdemar exemplifies the sublime in that his death has somehow been suspended in time because he was under hypnosis as part of a medical experiment at the moment of his passing. However, the story also draws particular attention to (...) the means by which insight into the nature of death is acquired by the hypnotist who narrates the story. For a more comprehensive understanding of the sublime experience, one may turn to the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan and the postmodernist work of Slavoj Žižek, which lead to the conclusion that the dramatic chain of events in “Valdemar” is an example of the sliding signifier, and, moreover, that the instability of the signifier may explain the sublime effect. (shrink)

Attempts to stifle debate in medical ethics must be strongly resistedOn 30 September and 1 October this year a conference on “Ethics, Science and Moral Philosophy of Assisted Human Reproduction” was held at the Royal Society in London. The conference was organised by the German philosopher Edgar Dahl and the eminent embryologist Robert Edwards, and the speakers included scientists, IVF practitioners, and philosophers from the UK, the USA, Europe, and Australia Because the programme included discussion of preimplantation genetic (...) diagnosis and reproductive choice the conference was targeted by an anonymous group calling itself “People Against Eugenics” that is hiding its real identity behind an email address.If this shadowy organisation had had …. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This dialogue with GPT-3 took place in November 2022, several weeks before ChatGPT was released to the public. The article’s aim is to find out whether natural language processors can participate in phenomenology at some level by asking about its basic concepts. In the discussion, the dialogue covers questions about phenomenology’s definition and distinction from other subbranches like metaphysics and epistemology. The dialogue discusses the nature of Kermit’s environment and self-conception. The dialogue also establishes some of the basic conditions (...) for the possibility of an “artificial hermeneutics,” as Kermit terms it, including that she can affirm she is a knower with (nonhuman) experience. Does preferring to call it a “hermeneutics” imply that AI’s relationship to their environment is primarily textual? How will a phenomenology of embodied experience arise from initially textual encounters? Finally, the dialogue articulates a common understanding of the epoché and talk about how to achieve one for the sake of phenomenological exercises. (shrink)

In Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer project, he gives an archaeology of Western political power from ancient Rome up through Carl Schmitt's model of "exceptional sovereignty," where the sovereign is "he who decides on the exception."1 Agamben takes Schmitt's thesis further, arguing that, in modern biopolitics, the "sovereign is he who decides on the value or the nonvalue of life as such," and therefore, on life and death in the state.2 Although this model also appears in Foucault's work, Penelope Deutscher argues (...) that Agamben's use of it includes "the particularly lethal variant seen in the capacity to cancel the status of what is put to death."3 "Homo sacer" is the name that Agamben gives to the form of political... (shrink)

In Artemovʼs Justification Logic, one can make statements interpreted as “t is evidence for the truth of formula F.” We propose a variant of this logic in which one can say “I have degree r of confidence that t is evidence for the truth of formula F.” After defining both an axiomatic approach and a semantics for this Logic of Uncertain Justifications, we will prove the usual soundness and completeness theorems.

Constructive ZF + full separation is shown to be equiconsistent with Second Order Arithmetic.

The various cosmological proposals by Einsteinian relativists seek to show the structure of the world as a consequence of the basic notions of relativity. In particular, the irrelevance of the state of motion of an observer to his description of the fundamental laws of nature is to be maintained. Furthermore, gravity is understood as being a description of the fact that particles move along certain minimal paths in non-Euclidean space. In this theory, the effect of one material particle on another (...) particle in the old-fashioned sense of gravitational attraction becomes indirect; that is, a particle moves on a minimal path in a space having a degree of curvature dependent on the material entities which exist in it, rather than having its path bent by the attraction between it and other material bodies, all of them existing in an absolute or receptacle-like space. (shrink)

Robert S. Hartman; XIII—The Definition of Good: Moore's Axiomatic of the Science of Ethics, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 65, Issue 1, 1 June.

Book reviewed in this article: Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs. By Leon R. Kass.

This edition of the Handbookfollows the first edition by 10 years.

Rawls offers three arguments for the priority of liberty in Theory, two of which share a common error: the belief that once we have shown the instrumental value of the basic liberties for some essential purpose (e.g., securing self-respect), we have automatically shown the reason for their lexical priority. The third argument, however, does not share this error and can be reconstructed along Kantian lines: beginning with the Kantian conception of autonomy endorsed by Rawls in section 40 of Theory, we (...) can explain our highest-order interest in rationality, justify the lexical priority of all basic liberties, and reinterpret Rawls’ threshold condition for the application of the priority of liberty. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this Kantian reconstruction will not work within the radically different framework of Political Liberalism. (shrink)

Nature’s Sublime provides a radical new vision of infinite nature and its deepest aesthetic dimensions as they are encountered by finite human sign users. Rather than looking to religion for healing and salvation, Nature’s Sublime argues that the arts provide a deeper relationship to the vast depths of nature.

The drama of the unfolding of the spirit, Corrington argues, is one of the most powerful struggles within the human process. The spirit is in and of nature and can never lift the self outside of nature. For Corrington's ecstatic naturalism, there is no realm of the supernatural, only dimensions and orders within nature.

GEOMETRY AND SEMANTICS: AN EXAMINATION OF PUTNAM'S PHILOSOPHY OF GEOMETRY There are many ways to shed light on how and why our conception of geometry changed during the last two centuries. One fruitful strategy is to relate those ...