The relationship between personal meaning, belief systems, and health and wellbeing is discussed. It is argued that our conceptions of health and wellbeing must incorporate a concern for spirituality. As information is processed via our senses in the course of human development, we gradually construct complex belief systems, including worldviews, life-philosophies, religions, mythologies, and spiritual paths. Though differing in content, these complex belief systems guide our behavior and provide us with a sense of personal meaning. However, meaning-making is not the (...) end point of the process. Rather, meaning-making must be accompanied by the willingness to doubt. It is the dialectical tension between belief and doubt that gives rise to a spiritual sense of being-characterized by awe, reverence, and meaning-that has salutogenic consequences. (shrink)

The report from the Organ Donation Taskforce looking at the potential impact of an opt-out system for deceased donor organ donation in the UK, published in November 2008, is probably the most comprehensive and systematic inquiry to date into the issues and considerations which might affect the availability of deceased donor organs for clinical transplantation. By the end of a thorough and transparent process, a clear consensus was reached. The taskforce rejected the idea of an opt-out system. In this article (...) we acknowledge the life saving potential of organ transplants and seek to highlight the difficulties that arise when the issue of organ shortage competes with concerns over choice and authorisation in the context of deceased donor organ donation. (shrink)

This is the Introduction to the symposium on A. John Simmons, Boundaries of Authority (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). The Symposium contains articles by David Miller, Cara Nine, and Anna Stilz, and a response by the author.

Priest’s 2014 theory of unity and identity, based on a paraconsistent logic, has a wide range of applications. In this paper, I apply his theory to some puzzles concerning mereology and topology. These puzzles suggest that the classical mereotopology needs to be revised. I compare and contrast the Priest-inspired solution with another, based on classical logic, that requires the co-location of boundaries. I suggest that the co-location view should be preferred on abductive grounds.

Newborn screening involves a complex logistical process, which depends on the close cooperation of many professionals, such as midwives, laboratory technicians, general practitioners and pediatricians. These professionals may encounter moral problems in the process, which have not been systematically studied before. This study fills this gap. We conducted interviews with 36 professionals involved in NBS in the Netherlands and made an inventory of the moral problems they encounter, as well as of the ways in which they tend to respond to (...) them. The moral problems professionals encounter stem from interpersonal conflicts and intrapersonal conflicts. Given the complexity of the work of NBS professionals, the study suggests that the moral problems that occur on the work floor cannot easily be solved by means of offering better or more stringent policy guidelines. Rather, it should be appreciated that professionals contribute significantly to shaping the morality of NBS with the help of their daily choices, and they should be supported in carrying out this task—for example with the help of a moral training or regular multidisciplinary moral deliberation, facilitated by an ethicist. (shrink)

Spinoza’s Ethics must contain some of philosophy’s most baffling statements. All things are animate; the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things: what would I be committed to in agreeing with these doctrines? His austere mode of exposition, sparing of illustrations and discursive explanations, ensures that any answer must be highly speculative.His weakness for dark sayings seems to have communicated itself to some of his best-known commentators. Of course where a philosopher’s thought (...) is itself opaque one would be unreasonable to expect lucidity in a commentator’s exposition of it. However he has been described as holding puzzling, to my mind unintelligible opinions on subjects concerning which, as far as I can see, his own statements more naturally suggest a much clearer and more comprehensible interpretation. There are problems enough in understanding his thought without adding needlessly to the list. I think there has been such an addition in discussion of his doctrines about the causal relationship between God and finite creatures, and this paper is devoted to suggesting another account of his thought on that topic which combines, I think, the advantages of being more intelligible and a more natural construction to place on his own statements, than the set of opinions generally laid at his door. (shrink)

Lifelines discusses two approaches to biology, “ultra-Darwinism” which Rose criticises, and the “homeodynamic perspective,” which he offers as an alternative. This review suggests that ultra-Darwinism is a caricature of the theoretical positions Rose wishes to oppose and that the homeodynamic perspective is not an alternative, but is complementary to so-called ultra-Darwinism.

Towards the start of the elegy which prefaces his third book, Propertius rejects lengthy, martial epic in favour of slender poetry : it is on account of the latter that fame elevates him above the earth, his Muse triumphant ; accompanying him in the triumphal chariot are his Amores , and following the wheels is a crowd of writers . The latter, in the race for glory, rival the poet to no purpose . Many writers will praise Rome and sing (...) of future conquests , but Propertius’ pages, a special delivery from the Muses' mount, are the perfect peace-time reading. (shrink)

Book 4 of the Annals, covering the years A.D. 23–8, traces the turning-point in the story of Tiberius' reign. Tacitus prepares us for disaster from the start. After a reference to fortuna in suitably Sallustian language and the deum ira in rem Romanam , we are told that the year A.D. 23 ‘initiated the deterioration in Tiberius’ principate .1 Modern historians are agreed that a decisive factor in this’ deterioration was the emperor's determination to leave Rome in A.D. 26, a (...) move which Tacitus gloomily portends in chapter 41 and eventually records, in due chronological sequence, at 57. 1. Suetonius is our other main source for this momentous event, and it is instructive to compare his treatment of it with that of Tacitus. (shrink)

Although modern scholars have expressed in various ways the view that the Gallus passage is unusual in its context,1 no editor or commentator during the past quarter of a century has questioned the ordering of the lines in which the Gallus passage occurs.2.

Consider the following dilemma. If it is possible to identify the cause of a person's action and beliefs - causes that are outside the agent's own conscious reasoning - in what sense can we say that the person chooses what she does or she thinks? If the person did not consciously choose, then it is reasonable to ask whether she should be held morally responsible for any of the subsequent consequences of her actions. This is the general territory of the (...) puzzle that Neil Levy's thoughtful and elegantly written new book addresses. He explores what scientific advances in the study of consciousness might tell us about our capacity for choice and, hence, our responsibility for those choices. (shrink)

Since the publication of Jonathan Dancy's 'Moral Reasons' in 1991, many English speaking ethicists have been especially interested in the role of abstract theory in moral life and the extent to which principles analogous to those employed in the hard sciences like physics are central to the development of ethical knowledge. Unlike earlier generations of philosophers who had, on the whole, accepted that principles had an integral role in the life of a morally serious person, contemporary ethicists are largely divided (...) about the merits of such principles and whether ethical knowledge is gained through principles. This debate about the form of ethical knowledge raises questions about the epistemic status of intuitions. Can intuitions about right and wrong provide an alternative source of genuine ethical knowledge? Is reflection upon a belief enough to show that it is true? This edited collection, consisting of 11 essays by distinguished philosophers, pursues and advances that debate. The early chapters of the book are concerned primarily with intuitions and intuitionism. John Cottingham, in an essay that casts doubt on the possibility of secular intuitions, argues that if intuitions are uprooted from their traditional theological foundations then they lose their plausibility. The claim is that theism and moral intuitionism are natural partners and morality is doomed if we reject theistic picture that 'provides a home for these intuitions'. James Lenman provides an indirect response to Cottingham, questioning whether evolutionary explanations of intuitions genuinely debunk them. Explaining the causal origins of intuitions within a naturalistic framework is not damning of them or of morality itself. (shrink)

Noxious markets, inequality and social meanings In this thoughtful and timely book, Debra Satz provides a convincing justificatory framework for our ongoing discomfort at the intrusion of markets into many areas of our lives that hitherto had been free from commercial influence. Her central problem is the commodification of everyday life. We inhabit social worlds which are highly commodified and in which the market is often prescribed as a universal panacea for any social problem we confront. Yet despite such overt (...) marketisation in the culture at large, nonetheless there remains the widespread belief that there are some things that should not be for sale: the very thought of selling certain goods remains repugnant. Satz's task in this book is to explain why such misgivings are correct. How might we best account for the intuition that some things should not be for sale? At the heart of her tale is a concern with the inequality that markets often bring in their wake. (shrink)

This collective paper on radicalization and violent extremism part of the ‘Philosophy of education in a new key’ initiative by Educational Philosophy and Theory brings together some of the leading contemporary scholars writing on the most pressing epistemological, ethical, political and educational issues facing post-9/11 scholarship on radicalization and violent extremism. Its overall aim is to move beyond the ‘conventional wisdom’ associated with this area of scholarly research best represented by its many slogans, metaphors and other thought-terminating clichés. By providing (...) conceptual lenses on issues previously compartmentalized primarily [or even exclusively] in security and intelligence studies or at the fringes of scholarly interest, radicalization and violent extremism turn out to be much more complex than ‘radicalization studies’ has been eager to acknowledge. (shrink)

A. J. Ayer was one of the foremost analytical philosophers of the twentieth century, and was known as a brilliant and engaging speaker. In essays based on his influential Dewey Lectures, Ayer addresses some of the most critical and controversial questions in epistemology and the philosophy of science, examining the nature of inductive reasoning and grappling with the issues that most concerned him as a philosopher. This edition contains revised and expanded versions of the lectures and two additional essays. Ayer (...) begins by considering Hume's formulation of the problem of induction and then explores the inferences on which we base our beliefs in factual matters. In other essays, he defines the three kinds of probability that inform inductive reasoning and examines the various criteria for verifiability and falsifiability. In his extensive introduction, Graham Macdonald discusses the arguments in _Probability and Evidence_, how they relate to Ayer's other works, and their influence in contemporary philosophy. He also provides a brief biographical sketch of Ayer, and includes a bibliography of works about and in response to _Probability and Evidence_. (shrink)