The peak-end rule predicts that retrospective evaluations of affective events heavily depend on their most intense and last moment and imply duration neglect. It was originally proposed for negativ...

Several influential psychologists have attempted to estimate to what extent human happiness levels are directly controlled by genes by comparing the happiness levels of identical twins raised apart. If we discover that the happiness levels of identical twins raised apart tend to be closer than the happiness levels of fraternal twins raised apart, this is taken as evidence that average happiness levels are largely controlled by genes. However, if it turns out that identical twins' happiness levels tend to be substantially (...) different, as different as fraternal twins raised apart, it has been argued that this implies that the environment largely determines happiness levels. I contend that this interpretation of the data rests on a set of questionable, closely related assumptions: a) that pairs of identical twins raised apart are raised in substantially different environments; b) that genetically identical twins aren't identical in other pertinent ways; and c) that average levels of affect that are correlated with certain sets of genes in the environments the twin studies were conducted in will be correlated with those genes in other relevant environments because those genes govern average affect levels. In this paper, I will show that these assumptions are false and explain how to properly go about investigating the contingent causal links between genes and happiness. In the end, I argue that there is no good evidence that our genes delimit our hedonic potential and that the fact that this misinterpretation of the data has been widely disseminated is potentially harmful to human well-being. (shrink)

The question of how the pursuit of happiness affects an individual’s actual well-being has received much scholarly attention in recent years. However, few studies have investigated the associations of happiness orientation with people’s subjective experience and objective functioning simultaneously. The current research examines the possibility that hedonic and eudaimonic orientations have different relationships with college students’ affective well-being and academic achievement, while taking into consideration the behavioral mechanism that underlies the process. We conducted online surveys to collect data including (...) hedonic and eudaimonic orientations at the beginning of the semester and academic behavioral engagement, procrastination, and affective well-being at the end of the semester with a final sample of 566 Chinese undergraduate students. Their official grade point average for the semester was extracted from the university records system. The results confirmed that overall hedonic orientation was negatively associated with affective well-being and academic achievement, whereas eudaimonic orientation was positively associated with these outcomes. The study further found that both academic behavioral engagement and procrastination played mediating roles in the associations of happiness orientation with positive affect and academic achievement. However, only procrastination mediated the relationship between happiness orientation and negative affect. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed. (shrink)

Sharing economy platforms mediate exchanges between service providers and consumers. The experiences of service providers in the sharing economy have been extensively studied. Nevertheless, our knowledge in regard to the extent to which providers’ participation influences their wellbeing remains incomplete. This study focuses on the peer-to-peer accommodation platform Airbnb and explores why and how different aspects involved in hosting can contribute to or hinder hosts’ hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. To that end, I conducted a netnography and depth interviews with (...) Airbnb hosts. Based on a qualitative analysis of the overall dataset, I identify three sources of positive affect associated with hosting, namely, the sociability involved in the host-guest interaction, the act of providing hospitality, and positive feedback from guests. However, I also identify four conditions, which can turn hosting into a source of negative affect, namely, customer misbehavior, high volumes of guests, negative reviews, and income dependency. In addition, I elaborate on the relationship between hosting and life satisfaction in regard to the income that hosts generate through hosting and the working conditions of Airbnb hosts. Last but not least, I show that being a provider on Airbnb can contribute to eudaimonic wellbeing, focusing on four dimensions of eudaimonia, namely, self-realization, personal growth, a sense of purpose and meaning, and relationships. Theoretical and managerial implications for service providers and sharing economy platforms are discussed. (shrink)

What is the origin and goal of man? In this lecture to a small audience I will pursue this question by comparing passages from Platonic Philebus with those from Aristotle's Nicomachian Ethics and comparing both together with a passage from the Letter to Menoikeus. It turns out that the Aristotelian idea of eudaimonia (happiness) is not so far removed from Epicurus, since eudaimonia also includes hedone, lust.

Here I speak in favor of the view that life's meaning can be found in the pursuit of pleasure. I first present an argument for this view that is grounded in a traditional concept of meaning. To help ease remaining concerns about accepting it, I then draw attention to four things the view does not imply: (1) that we have a reason to take hedonistic theories of meaning seriously; (2) that meaning can be found in the deeply immoral, the deeply (...) ignorant, or the deeply repulsive pursuit of pleasure; (3) that there is a significantly easier route to meaning than the pursuit of morality, the pursuit of knowledge, or the pursuit of art; and (4) that meaning can be found in pursuits that involve only baser aspects of human nature. (shrink)

In his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Friedrich Schiller draws a striking connection between aesthetic value and individual and political freedom, claiming that, ‘it is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom’. However, contemporary ways of thinking about freedom and aesthetic value make it difficult to see what the connection could be. Through a careful reconstruction of the Letters, we argue that Schiller’s theory of aesthetic value serves as the key to understanding not only his (...) view of aesthetic engagement, but also his distinctive account of individual and political freedom. In Part I, we develop a reconstruction of Schiller's view that aesthetic value is the only path to individual freedom and in Part II we analyze how Schiller connects aesthetic value to political freedom. In the end, we show that Schiller defends a non-hedonic, action-oriented, communitarian theory of aesthetic value and a theory of freedom that makes the aesthetic not just supererogatory but fundamental for any fully autonomous life. Although we have lost touch with this way of thinking about aesthetic value and freedom, we submit that it is illuminating for contemporary thinking about both. (shrink)

In his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Friedrich Schiller draws a striking connection between aesthetic value and individual and political freedom, claiming that, ‘it is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom’. However, contemporary ways of thinking about freedom and aesthetic value make it difficult to see what the connection could be. Through a careful reconstruction of the Letters, we argue that Schiller’s theory of aesthetic value serves as the key to understanding not only his (...) view of aesthetic engagement, but also his distinctive account of individual and political freedom. Whereas in Part I, we developed a reconstruction of Schiller's view that aesthetic value is the only path to individual freedom, in Part II we analyze how Schiller connects aesthetic value to political freedom. In the end, we show that Schiller defends a non-hedonic, action-oriented, communitarian theory of aesthetic value and a theory of freedom that makes the aesthetic not just supererogatory but fundamental for any fully autonomous life. Although we have lost touch with this way of thinking about aesthetic value and freedom, we submit that it is illuminating for contemporary thinking about both. (shrink)

This paper examines pain states (and other intransitive bodily sensations) from the perspective of the problems they pose for pure informational/representational approaches to naturalizing qualia. I start with a comprehensive critical and quasi-historical discussion of so-called Perceptual Theories of Pain (e.g., Armstrong, Pitcher), as these were the natural predecessors of the more modern direct realist views. I describe the theoretical backdrop (indirect realism, sense-data theories) against which the perceptual theories were developed. The conclusion drawn is that pure representationalism about pain (...) in the tradition of direct realist perceptual theories (e.g., Dretske, Tye) leaves out something crucial about the phenomenology of pain experiences, namely, their affective character. I touch upon the role that introspection plays in such representationalist views, and indicate how it contributes to the source of their trouble vis-à-vis bodily sensations. The paper ends by briefly commenting on the relation between the affective/evaluative component of pain and the hedonic valence of emotions. (shrink)

It is striking that for each major theory of well-being, there exists a companion theory of the emotions. Thus, to classical hedonic views of well-being, there corresponds no less classical pure feeling views of the emotions; to desire views that conceive of well-being in terms of desire satisfaction, there corresponds a variety of theories approaching the emotions in terms of the satisfaction/frustration of desires; and finally, to so called objective list theories of well-being, there corresponds a variety of theories (...) that conceive of the emotions as evaluations. Exploring these parallels constitutes a privileged route for understanding the intuitive appeal of the thoughts that a life without emotions is not worth living and that having plenty of positive emotions must be good. In the first part of our discussion, we review the key insights that are pursued within companion approaches to well-being and the emotions that respectively appeal to feelings and to desires. We explain how emotions end up being good as ends for the individual if one endorses one or the other of these combinations of views. Yet, we argue that the problems faced by these approaches favour a third combination of views: an objective list theory of well-being and a companion theory of the emotions as evaluations. Yet, this approach faces significant worries of its own: it appears to force upon us the deflationary conclusion that emotions are only instrumentally good for the individual and to promote an understanding of the emotions which makes them incapable of accounting for the insights fuelling hedonist and conativist approaches. The task of the second part of our discussion is to dissipate these worries. We explain why conceiving of emotions as evaluations allows to revisit the insights underpinning the three accounts of well-being and promotes a rich understanding of why emotions are valuable as ends for objective, hedonic and conative reasons. (shrink)

The various roles proposed for emotion, whether psychological such as preparing for action or serving prior concerns, or biological such as protecting and promoting well-being, are easily shown to have an awkward number of exceptions. This paper attempts to explain why. To this end it undertakes a Husserlian phenomenological examination of first-person experience of two types of responses, the various somatic responses elicited by sensations (pain, cold, pleasure, sudden intensity) and the various personal directed emotions (grief, fear, affection, joy). The (...) analysis brings out the overall close structural symmetry between the two types of response and the strong hedonic, dynamic, and topological similarity between particular members from each of the two groups. The findings strongly suggest that emotions evolved from the more rudimentary involuntary somatic responses. The hypothesis finds further support in the fact that it explains both the biological unsoundness and anomalous archaic features that emotions often display. It also explains why emotions have no tidy function. (shrink)

Thomas Metzinger has diagnosed the need for a Bewusstseinskultur, a ‘consciousness culture’: a culturally implemented way in which a society as a whole engages with the dawning natural science of consciousness, with phenomenal experiences themselves, and with our increasing capability to manipulate them. A Bewusstseinskultur is an achievement, built by a society-wide orientation on empirical evidence, thorough scientific theorizing and rational deliberation. It affects a broad range of issues from animal ethics, drug policy, end-of-life-care, and robo-ethics to post-humanism. However, this (...) notion has not yet been presented in English, and is so far unconnected to other discussions in philosophy. Here, I remedy this: I present Metzinger's notion of a Bewusstseinskultur and connect it to discussion on transformative experiences, Parfit's meta-hedonic states, and the Access vs. Phenomenal Consciousness distinction. (shrink)

The growth of Sweden’s urban population necessitates new approaches for increasing the sustainability and energy efficiency of multifamily buildings. The development of such approaches will require a holistic and integrated understanding of the factors driving the decision making of both professionals who design buildings and end-users who live in them. This paper, therefore, uses the goal framing theory to determine which aspects of multifamily buildings are considered important by these two groups of actors. An empirical study based on semi-structured interviews (...) with professionals involved in building design and development was conducted to identify goals affecting the choices made during building design and development. In parallel, a questionnaire survey of building end-users was conducted to determine which factors guided their choice of dwelling. It was found that professionals’ design choices were primarily governed by normative goals relating to environmental benefits but were also influenced by the other goals. These included gain goals relating to budgetary constraints and keeping the building’s operational and maintenance costs low. Hedonic goals were also important; some design choices were made with the aim of providing pleasant, comfortable, and convenient living environments, or of giving the buildings a distinct aesthetic or some other special features. By comparing the professionals’ responses to the end-user surveys, it was found that the two groups had similar views concerning gain goals; both considered it important for apartments to be affordable and easy to maintain. However, their views on hedonic and normative goals differed markedly. The professionals sought to strike an optimal balance between different related aspects, whereas end-users placed greater importance on aspects relating to hedonic and gain goals when choosing dwellings. The findings provide a basis for constructive discussions on building design and development, and the scope for creating buildings that encourage end-users to adopt sustainable living practices while also satisfying their needs and preferences. (shrink)

This article explores emotions and their relationship to ‘somatic responses’, i.e., one’s automatic responses to sensations of pain, cold, warmth, sudden intensity. To this end, it undertakes a Husserlian phenomenological analysis of the first-hand experience of eight basic emotions, briefly exploring their essential aspects: their holistic nature, their identifying dynamic transformation of the lived body, their two-layered intentionality, their involuntary initiation and voluntary espousal. The fact that the involuntary tensional shifts initiating emotions are irreplicatable voluntarily, is taken to show that (...) all emotions have an innate core, a conclusion corroborated by their strong similarities to somatic responses in dynamics, hedonic tone, and topology. The fact that emotions may be culturally reworked, is shown to be explicable in terms of their complex nature: their dependence on belief, their voluntary espousal, and their ready social transmittability. Finally, it is argued that emotions may plausibly be deemed the evolutionary descendants of somatic responses. (shrink)

According to the ethical system of eudaimonism, a philosophy that predates Aristotle, individuals have a responsibility to recognize and live in accordance with their daimon or "true self." The daimon refers to the potentialities of each person, the realization of which represents the greatest fulfillment in living of which each is capable. The daimon is an ideal in the sense of being an excellence, a perfection toward which one strives and, hence, it can give meaning and direction to one's life. (...) Eudaimonia, then, is activity in accordance with one's daimon. This is what is considered worth having in life. Since Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics is concerned with the proper ends of human functioning, he rejects the view of eudaimonia as a subjective state equivalent to, or similar to, hedonic enjoyment. But if psychologists are to be able to make productive use of the Aristotle's conception of eudaimonia, it must be rendered in a form more congenial to the field. In pursuing this goal, I have found it necessary to take several significant departures from the Aristotelian perspective, while I have endeavored to remain true to Aristotle's ethical objectives. The most important of these departures is to consider eudaimonia to have a subjective component embodying the experiences that flow from efforts to live in truth to one's daimon by striving to develop one's aptitudes and talents for purposes deemed worth having in life. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Nous pouvons tous, je crois, reconnaître la justesse de la thèse d'Aristote à l'effet que le véritable raisonnement pratique a pour résultat non pas une simple croyance à propos du caractère désirable, ou même du caractère obligatoire, d'un acte, mais plutôt l'initiation effective d'une action. Cette thèse donne lieu à une énigme : comment la délibération, archétypiquement une inférence propositionnelle rationnelle , peut-elle logiquement aboutir à un acte ? L'action présuppose la motivation, mais la motivation est une force appétitive active, (...) et non pas une proposition concernant le désir ou le caractère désirable d'un acte . La raison pratique n'est pas similaire aux substances qui peuvent manifestement être mélangées les unes aux autres, mais elle est censée constituer une fusion normative régie par des principes — le choix est un appétit délibéré , comme le dit Aristote. Comment ceci est-il possible ? Les premiers pas vers une réponse peuvent être trouvés à un endroit surprenant : chez Kant. Dans la Métaphysique des Moeurs , Kant présente une théorie du désir comme appétit pour un objet par le biais d'une idée non-sensorielle de cet objet, et ce, par opposition à une inclination , un appétit direct basé sur la sensation. Kant emploie cette notion du désir pour expliquer à la fois la volonté et la possibilité d'une action accomplie par devoir : la volonté appartient à la faculté de désirer, et le devoir est l'action motivée par un désir pour un acte par le biais d'une idée appropriée de cet acte. Kant nomme notre susceptibilité à ce type de désir laquelle constitue une condition nécessaire à la moralité le sentiment moral . Ce sentiment rend compte du caractère pratique de la délibération morale et de son rapport au plaisir et à la douleur pratiques d'une façon qui aurait, je crois, plu à Aristote. Le devoir est donc un exemple d'un appétit délibératif . Ce schème kantien n'est pas simplement intéressant d'un point de vue historique : il s'accorde remarquablement bien avec certains travaux récents en psychologie motivationnelle et hédonique.We all can, I think, appreciate the justness of Aristotle's view that genuine practical reasoning ends not in a mere belief about the desirability, or even obligatoriness, of an act, but in the actual initiation of action. This yields a puzzle: how can deliberation, archetypically a rational, propositional inference , logically terminate in an act? Action presupposes motivation, yet motivation is an active appetitive force, not a proposition about desire or desirability . Unlike substances can obviously be mixed together, but practical reason is supposed to a principled, normative fusing — choice is deliberated appetite , as Aristotle puts it. How is this possible? The beginnings of an answer can be found in a surprising place: Kant. In The Metaphysics of Morals Kant gives a theory of desire as appetite for an object through a non-sensory idea of it, in contrast to inclination , a sensation-based direct appetite. Kant uses this notion of desire to explain both will and the possibility of action from duty : will belongs to the faculty of desire, and duty is action motivated by a desire for an act through an appropriate idea. Kant terms our susceptibility to this sort of desire moral feeling , a necessary condition for morality. It accounts for the practicality of moral deliberation, and its linkage to practical pleasure and pain, in a way Aristotle would, I think, have found congenial. Duty, then, is an example of deliberated appetite . The Kantian scheme is not merely of historical interest: it fits surprisingly well with recent work in motivational and hedonic psychology. (shrink)

Epicurus’ appeal to nature to show that our final end is pleasure is less crude than often thought. Instead of formulating a hedonic calculus, he distinguishes between desires in terms of what is natural and what is necessary. He produces a revisionary, ideal account of nature, illustrated by Philodemus’ work on anger.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Paradoxical Pleasures of Human ImaginationOmar Sultan HaqueHow Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like, by Paul Bloom. W. W. Norton, 2010, 280 pp., $26.95.Have you heard about that chump who dished out $48,875 for John F. Kennedy's dusty old tape measure? The rock star who allegedly snorted his father's ashes with some cocaine? The creepy German guy who put out an advertisement for (...) someone who would let themselves be eaten by him (only to have hundreds volunteer)? The story about the man who was tired with his wife, but powerfully aroused when he was convinced he was with an exact duplicate of her? How can a staunch atheist also believe in the numinous? Why do people buy expensive wines, and bottled water, even though in blind taste tests, they can't distinguish them from the cheap stuff? Why buy pâté when your palate can't distinguish it from dog food? Why do people pay hundreds of dollars to hear the famous violinist Joshua Bell perform, but then cannot even spare a dime when a disguised Bell plays the same music on the subway in regular garb? Why might someone who trains people to prevent falls and injury enjoy watching a comedian fall and hurt himself? Why would someone pay a few hundred thousand dollars for art that consisted of someone else's unmade bed?It may be is easy to feel smug when thinking about this panoply of apparent irrationality in individual decisions and general human propensities. But the things that uniquely delight us may not be as [End Page 182] capricious as they seem. Many of the pleasures (curious or ordinary) that we get from our relationships with food, sex, irreplaceable objects, performances, safety and pain, music, literature and the imagination may have a deeper logic. They may be explicable by a better understanding of how our evolved minds work, and don't work, amidst our historically novel environments. Or so argues Paul Bloom—a cognitive developmental psychologist at Yale University—in How Pleasure Works, a brilliant and articulate synthesis of philosophy, psychology, evolutionary biology and the arts that elucidates the seemingly whimsical and once mysterious sources of our uniquely human hedonic satisfactions.The theory Bloom utilizes to systematize aspects of a number of pleasure phenomena is called psychological essentialism. This is an idea that has been developed in the last two decades by Bloom and the psychologists Douglas Medin, Andrew Ortony, Frank Keil, and Susan Gelman, among others.1 Psychological essentialism claims that, as Bloom puts it, people reliably, at a very young age, cross-culturally and throughout history, think that "things have an underlying reality or true nature that one cannot observe directly and it is this hidden nature that really matters." We assume that objects, artifacts, non-human animals, people and groups have invisible essences and unseen orders that account for their surface properties. In one of Keil's experiments, for instance, children thought that a dog made to look like a toy dog, a porcupine that had a surgery to make it look like a cactus, and a tiger stuffed into a lion suit were still a dog, porcupine and tiger, respectively. However, when each animal had its 'innards' altered, children said the animals changed into different categories, like objects or plants.2 Psychological essentialism for artifacts or tools is somewhat different from that for animate entities; the essence of artifacts is their history and the intentions of their creators.3According to How Pleasure Works, because of psychological essentialism, many human delights seem to arise that cannot be explained by simply appealing either to their low-level sensual qualities or their practical utility. Thus, the theory helps clarify some of pleasure's paradoxes. Like parents who affectionately keep tokens of their children's time as a baby, someone can enjoy owning a tape measure from a famous person because of its history of uses or other associations with important places or people. Snorting dad's ashes (however noxious to the nostrils), or pigging out on someone whom you admire, can be deeply meaningful because it feels as if one is... (shrink)

The subject I intend to discuss deals with a problem which is central in the debate of ancient greek philosophy: the quest for happiness as the final end, the highest good for a human being. Fixing in the achievement of a life worth living the strategic aim of actions, ancient philosophers tried to define as well what a man should desire for himself to fully develop all the capabilities which lie inside human nature. On the one side they proposed major (...) normative models of wisdom, on the other side they gave an important practical indication: the “care of the self”, as a self-control discipline that aims to build a virtuous form of subjectivity, that is able to design and deserve the eudaimonia. In this context, my analysis will focus on the issue of pleasure. The hedone surely represents the critical point of all happiness models of Socratic origin, centred in different ways on the practice of the “care of the self”. While this practical proposal appears to be a complex and demanding alternative in the search for a life worth living, the hedonistic way seems to be much easier and simpler, as far as pleasure is intended as an unequivocal sign of goodness and wellness, immediately recognisable in the experience of happiness. The hedonism of the many appears to the philosophers as a serious menace to society and to the individual, because it conveys unlimited desires and interior disharmony, though, on the other hand, it not possible to deny the value of pleasure without making philosophical happiness unattractive. In the field of the important contemporary re-evaluation of bios models of ancient philosophers (Hadot, Foucault, Nussbaum, Annas) to test their strength and operative capabilities in human subject’s condition in the present days, I would like to outline a comparison between Plato’s and Aristotle’s views on the dilemmas set by pleasure in the enterprise of self-construction: their positions appear, as usual, close and at the same time opposite in the well-known “gigantomachy”. (shrink)

Modern medicine provides unprecedented opportunities in diagnostics and treatment. However, in some situations at the end of a patient’s life, many physicians refrain from using all possible measures to prolong life. We studied the incidence of different types of treatment withheld or withdrawn in 6 European countries and analyzed the main background characteristics.

"End-Of-Law week drinkS @ ACT Magistrates Court: Friday 20 May 2005." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (198), pp. 24.

This book follows hard upon Korsgaard's The Sources of Normativity. Both present the author's influential version of a Kantian theory of normative ethics and metaethics. Whereas The Sources of Normativity was a systematic investigation of "normativity" written as a single unit, the present volume is a collection of previously published papers, some of them already well known and much discussed, dating between 1983 and 1993. By the nature of the case, one might expect less thematic unity in this book than (...) in the other one, but the present book is a deeper and more wide ranging presentation of the author's views. Korsgaard's historical focus in The Sources of Normativity is less on Kant and more on the British moralists. Creating the Kingdom of Ends deals quite explicitly with the interpretation of Kant's moral philosophy. The papers in this book contain, in my judgment, the heart of Korsgaard's work: a variety of fresh and illuminating insights into Kant's moral theory and its relation to contemporary ethical theory which have helped to reshape the image of Kant's ethics and to refocus the issues dealt with in current moral philosophy. Or to make claims less grand but of more immediate relevance to this review, there is no question that some of the papers in this book have helped to reshape both the present writer's image of Kant's ethics and his conception of the way questions of ethical theory should be addressed. I hope below to say something both about where I think Korsgaard has gotten these matters right, and where I find her position either unclear or dubious. (shrink)

Knepper criticizes existing efforts in the philosophy of religion for being out of step with, and therefore useless to, the academic study of religion, then forwards a new program for philosophy of religion that is in step with, and therefore useful to, the academic study of religion.

Cette communication proposee a un colloque franco-Americain est l'analyse de la situation philosophique francaise actuelle. Apres quelques considerations sur la signification politique et historique d'un colloque international de philosophie, L'auteur pose la question de l'homme et de ses fins (au sens a bigu de mort et de finalite), Telle qu'elle fascine la philosophie francaise aujourd'hui. Pour comprendre en quels termes se pose aujourd'hui cette question en france, Il faut tenir compte de la lecture qui a ete faite par les deux (...) dernieres generations de kant, Hegel, Husserl et heidegger. A un premier niveau, Cette lecture a meconnu, De maniere tres significative, La critique de l'anthropologisme, Sinon de l'humanisme, Qui est a l'oeuvre chez ces quatre philosophes. Les principaux arguments de cette critique sont reconstitues au cours d'une premiere etape. Mais a un deuxieme niveau, Il apparait qu'un humanisme profond soutient cette critique. Demonstration en est faite, Avec une attention particuliere en ce qui concerne heidegger, Dont la situation est plus difficile et plus decisive. C'est cette dermiere analyse qui est presupposee par toute la critique de l'humanisme qui domine aujourd'hui en france. (shrink)

Henry Richardson argues that we can determine our ends rationally. He constructs a rich and original theory of how we can reason about our final goals. Richardson defuses the counter-arguments for the limits of rational deliberation, and develops interesting ideas about how his model might be extended to interpersonal deliberation of ends, taking him to the borders of political theory. Along the way Richardson offers illuminating discussions of, inter alia, Aristotle, Aquinas, Sidgwick, and Dewey, as well as the (...) work of several contemporary philosophers. (shrink)

There is extensive discussion in current Just War literature about the normative principles which should govern the initiation of war (jus ad bellum) and also the conduct of war (jus in bello), but this is the first book to treat the important and difficult issue of justice after the end of war. Larry May examines the normative principles which should govern post-war practices such as reparations, restitution, reconciliation, retribution, rebuilding, proportionality and the Responsibility to Protect. He discusses the emerging international (...) law literature on transitional justice and the problem of moving from a position of war and possible mass atrocity to a position of peace and reconciliation. He questions the Just War tradition, arguing that contingent pacifism is most in keeping with normative principles after war ends. His discussion is richly illustrated with contemporary examples and will be of interest to students of political and legal philosophy, law and military studies. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultations are sometimes deemed complete at the moment when the consultants make a recommendation. In CECs that involve actual ethical conflict, this view of a consult's endpoint runs the risk of overemphasizing the conflict's resolution at the expense of the consult's process, which can have deleterious effects on the various parties in the conflict. This overly narrow focus on reaching a decision or recommendation in consults that involve profound moral disagreement can result in two types of adverse, lingering (...) sequelae: moral distress or negative moral emotions. The problem, succinctly named, is that such consults have insufficient “closure” for patients, families, and providers. To promote closure, and avoid the ills of moral distress and the moral emotions, I argue that CECs need to prioritize assisted conversation between the different stakeholders in these conflicts, what is often referred to as “bioethics mediation.”. (shrink)

Kant speaks repeatedly about the relations between ends or aims and scientific research, but the topic has mostly been ignored. What is the role of ends, especially (though not exclusively) practical ones, in his views on science? I will show that while Kant leaves ample space for recognizing a function of ends both in the definition and the pursuit of inquiry, and in the further practical application of scientific cognition, he does not claim that science is simply (...) an instrument for achieving practical ends. I explain his complex conception, pointing out that Kant argues (1) that the sciences require ends for their very definition, (2) that ends come in fundamentally different kinds, (3) that the relation between science and ends requires the rational determination and hierarchization of all our ends, with “wisdom” as the highest, and (4) that this determination and hierarchization – which ought to be done by metaphysics – has itself to be carried out in a “scientific way”. I show further that (5) Kant gives sui generis weight to the epistemic aims and standards of science and to the autonomy of science from our practical lives. This places his position between separatism and anti-separatism with regard to the relation between science and our ends or values. (shrink)

Christine Korsgaard has become one of the leading interpreters of Kant's moral philosophy. She is identified with a small group of philosophers who are intent on producing a version of Kant's moral philosophy that is at once sensitive to its historical roots while revealing its particular relevance to contemporary problems. She rejects the traditional picture of Kant's ethics as a cold vision of the moral life which emphasises duty at the expense of love and value. Rather, Kant's work is seen (...) as providing a resource for addressing not only the metaphysics of morals, but also for tackling practical questions about personal relations, politics, and everyday human interaction. This collection contains some of the finest current work on Kant's ethics and will command the attention of all those involved in teaching and studying moral theory. (shrink)

This paper considers the often-expressed fear that medical research may use children merely as means, and not respect them as ends in themselves – especially insofar as they are deemed less able to consent than adults. The main focus is on large-scale genetic, socio-medical and epidemiological research. The theoretical starting point of the paper is that to be treated as an end in oneself is to be regarded as – and to act as – a participant in cooperative endeavours. (...) This participatory status is certainly connected with individual authority to consent and dissent; and there is no doubt that consent plays an important role when adults participate in many research projects. However, insofar as consent is located within structures of human cooperation, the authority to consent is not a straightforward privilege. Rather, consent is bound up with responsibility for one's choices and commitment to shared terms of cooperation. Given this understanding, it is argued that consent should not be our principal concern when we involve children in research. This is not because of children's (possible) incompetence to consent as such, but rather because children are still learning how to respect and assess the cooperative terms involved in our institutional lives. Instead, our leading concern should be with the terms regulating their involvement in research. Given suitable safeguards, research is one way in which children may learn what it is to bear responsibilities and to act as an end in oneself – that is, to cooperate with others on reasonable terms and for worthy ends. (shrink)

Even in the Netherlands, where the practice of physician-assisted death (PAD) has been legalized for over 20 years, there is no such thing as a ‘right to die’. Especially patients with extraordinary requests, such as a wish for PAD based on psychiatric suffering, advanced dementia, or (a limited number of) multiple geriatric syndromes, encounter barriers in access to PAD. In this paper, we discuss whether these barriers can be justified in the context of the Dutch situation where PAD is legally (...) permitted for those who suffer unbearably and hopelessly as a result of medical conditions. Furthermore, we explore whether there are options to address some of the barriers or their consequences, both within the Dutch legal framework or by adjusting the legal framework, and whether these options are feasible. We conclude that although there are insufficient arguments to overrule the doctor’s freedom of conscience in the Netherlands, there are ways to address some of the barriers, mainly by offering support to doctors that would be willing to support a request. Moreover, we believe it is morally required to reduce or mitigate where possible the negative consequences of the barriers for patients, such as the long waiting time for those who suffer from psychiatric disorders, because it is unlikely the adjustments suggested to the system will ensure reasonable access for these patient groups. (shrink)

Means–ends decoupling, the institutionally induced implementation of ineffective practices, has become increasingly common. Extant theory suggests that means–ends decoupling has real consequences, which makes it unstable and difficult for organizations to sustain. Yet little is known of how, and with what outcomes, firms organize such means–ends decoupling. We examine organizing via multiple qualitative and longitudinal case studies of how Swedish fast fashion retailers implement and manage the collection of used garments. We find that firms combine two organizational (...) arrangements: structural and temporal core–compartment separations, which mitigate consequences of means–ends decoupling by obscuring and justifying efficiency gaps. Thereby we provide a theoretical explanation for how means–ends decoupling can persist over time. (shrink)

Aurel Kolnai; XI—Deliberation is of Ends, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 62, Issue 1, 1 June 1962, Pages 195–218, https://doi.org/10.1093/arist.

This essay attempts to address the question, "What makes an improvised jazz solo a maturation of the possibilities of this artform?" It begins by considering the significance of one distinguishable feature of an improvised jazz solo - how it ends - in light of Joseph Kerman's seemingly parallel consideration of the historical development of how classical concertos end. After showing the limits of this comparison, the essay proposes a counter-parallel, between the jazz improviser's attitude toward the solo's end and (...) Ludwig Wittgenstein's attitude toward our (or philosophy's) arriving at the end of justifications. The parallel depends on one's granting that both the improviser and Wittgenstein are, in their distinct ways, doing battle against the recurring human fantasy of the fixity of experience. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The Questions of Medical Ethics Call him Andrew. His face is gaunt and unshaven but peaceful. His eyelids are gently closed. ...

Williams’s arguments against the morality system are given canonical form in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, chapter 10, where he undertakes to describe this particular form of ethical thinking and explain “why we would be better off without it”.

My aims are exegetical rather than critical: I offer a systematic account of Hursthouse's ethical naturalism with an emphasis on the normative authority of the four ends, and try to correct some misconceptions found in the literature. Specifically, I argue that the four ends function akin to Wittgensteinian hinge-propositions for our practice of ethical reasoning and as such form part of a description of the logical grammar of said practice.