This book is the most comprehensive treatment available of one of the most urgent - and yet in some respects most neglected - problems in bioethics: decision-making for incompetents. Part I develops a general theory for making treatment and care decisions for patients who are not competent to decide for themselves. It provides an in-depth analysis of competence, articulates and defends a coherent set of principles to specify suitable surrogate decisionmakers and to guide their choices, examines the value of advance (...) directives, and investigates the role that considerations of cost ought to play in decisions concerning incompetents. Part II applies this theoretical framework to the distinctive problems of three important classes of individuals, many of whom are incompetent: minors, the elderly and psychiatric patients. The authors' approach combines a probing analysis of fundamental issues in ethical theory with a sensitive awareness of the concrete realities of health care institutions and the highly personal and individual character of difficult practical problems. Its broad scope will appeal to health professionals, moral philosophers and lawyers alike. (shrink)

This book, written by four internationally renowned bioethicists and first published in 2000, was the first systematic treatment of the fundamental ethical issues underlying the application of genetic technologies to human beings. Probing the implications of the remarkable advances in genetics, the authors ask how should these affect our understanding of distributive justice, equality of opportunity, the rights and obligations as parents, the meaning of disability, and the role of the concept of human nature in ethical theory and practice. The (...) book offers a historical context to contemporary debate over the use of these technologies by examining the eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The questions raised in this book will be of interest to any reflective reader concerned about science and society and the rapid development of biotechnology, as well as to professionals in such areas as philosophy, bioethics, medical ethics, health management, law, and political science. (shrink)

This important new study offers a powerful exposition of the ethical theory underlying Hegel's philosophy of society, politics, and history. Professor Woodshows how Hegel applies his theory to such topics as human rights, the justification of legal punishment, criteria of moral responsibility, and the authority of individual conscience. The book includes a critical discussion of Hegel's treatment of other moral philosophers, provides an account of the controversial concept of 'ethical life', and shows the relation between the theory and Hegel's critical (...) assessment of modern social institutions. The book is nontechnical and should interest anyone concerned with Hegel's ethical and political thought, including philosophers, political scientists, intellectual historians and students of German culture. (shrink)

Computers are already approving financial transactions, controlling electrical supplies, and driving trains. Soon, service robots will be taking care of the elderly in their homes, and military robots will have their own targeting and firing protocols. Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach argue that as robots take on more and more responsibility, they must be programmed with moral decision-making abilities, for our own safety. Taking a fast paced tour through the latest thinking about philosophical ethics and artificial intelligence, the authors (...) argue that even if full moral agency for machines is a long way off, it is already necessary to start building a kind of functional morality, in which artificial moral agents have some basic ethical sensitivity. But the standard ethical theories don't seem adequate, and more socially engaged and engaging robots will be needed. As the authors show, the quest to build machines that are capable of telling right from wrong has begun. -/- Moral Machines is the first book to examine the challenge of building artificial moral agents, probing deeply into the nature of human decision making and ethics. (shrink)

Kant's Moral Religion argues that Kant's doctrine of religious belief if consistent with his best critical thinking and, in fact, that the "moral arguments"--along with the faith they justify--are an integral part of Kant's critical thinking.

Many philosophers have held that we cannot say what it is like to be a bat as they present a fundamentally alien form of life. Another view held by some philosophers, bat scientists, and even many laypersons is that echolocation is, somehow, at least in part, a kind of visual experience. Either way, bat echolocation is taken to be something very mysterious and exotic. I utilize empirical and intuitive considerations to support an alternative view making a much more mundane contention (...) about bat phenomenology: echolocatory experience probably just has an auditory character. These points also call for further reflection on our intuitions about animal consciousness and standard arguments for the explanatory gap. (shrink)

This book explores Kant's views on the concept of God and on the attempt to demonstrate God's existence as a means of understanding Kant's work as a whole and of achieving a proper appreciation of the contents of Kant's moral faith.

Is cultural evolution needed to explain altruistic selfsacrifice? Some contend that cultural traits (e.g. beliefs, behaviors, and for some “memes”) replicate according to selection processes that have “floated free” from biology. One test case is the example of suicide kamikaze attacks in wartime Japan. Standard biological mechanisms—such as reciprocal altruism and kin selection—might not seem to apply here: The suicide pilots did not act on the expectation that others would reciprocate, and they were supposedly sacrificing themselves for country and emperor, (...) not close relatives. Yet an examination of both the historical record and the demands of evolutionary theory suggest the kamikaze phenomenon does not cry out for explanation in terms of a special non-biological selection process. This weakens the case for cultural evolution, and has interesting implications for our understanding of altruistic self-sacrifice. (shrink)

Kant’s position on the problem of free will can be perplexing and frustrating: all the real questions about human agential capacities or even about issues of moral imputability are empirical questions, which have empirical answers. But there remains a metaphysical or transcendental problem about the possibility of freedom, which is forever insoluble. Ian Proops’ discussion in The Fiery Test of Critique is to be commended for displaying the rare virtue of appreciating this last point and presenting Kant’s position about it (...) accurately. The only questionable part has to do with the standard terminology – ‘determinism’, ‘libertarianism’, ‘compatibilism’, and ‘incompatibilism’. I argue that it would be better to say, as Kant does, and Proops also does most of the time, that practical freedom, hence transcendental freedom, must be presupposed whenever we act or even judge, but how freedom is possible is both unknowable and even incomprehensible to us. (shrink)

We are surrounded by communication of many kinds whose aim is to persuade rather to convince, to manipulate rather than to reason. Advertising and much public discourse is like this. How should we react to this fact? Perhaps even more importantly: What does this fact mean about modern society? Not all persuasion is regrettable or to be disapproved. Not all persuasion is propaganda. And perhaps not even all propaganda is necessarily bad. This last point was the focus of a controversy (...) between W. E. B. Du Bois, who held that propaganda could be used for good, and Alain Locke, who held that all propaganda corrupts our thinking. My own view is that propaganda can be used for good, but Locke was perfectly right to be worried about it.Estamos rodeados de muchos tipos de comunicación, cuya finalidad es persuadir antes que convencer, manipular antes que razonar. La publicidad y gran parte del discurso público es así. ¿Cómo deberíamos reaccionar a este hecho? Quizá más importante aún: ¿qué dice este hecho acerca de la sociedad moderna? No toda persuasión es lamentable o debería desaprobarse. No toda persuasión es propaganda. E incluso quizá no toda propaganda es necesariamente mala. Este último punto centró la controversia entre W.E.B. du Bois, quien sostenía que la propaganda podría utilizarse para un buen fin, y Alain Locke, quien sostenía que toda propaganda corrompe el pensamiento. Mi propio punto de vista es que la propaganda puede utilizarse para un buen fin, pero que Locke tenía razón al preocuparse por ella. (shrink)

'Evidentialism' is the conventional name (given mainly by its opponents) for the view that there is a moral duty to proportion one's beliefs to evidence, proof or other epistemic justifications for belief. This essay defends evidentialism against objections based on the alleged involuntariness of belief, on the claim that evidentialism assumes a doubtful epistemology, that epistemically unsupported beliefs can be beneficial, that there are significant classes of exceptions to the evidentialist principle, and other shabby evasions and alibis (as I take (...) them to be) for disregarding the duty to believe according to the evidence. Evidentialism is also supported by arguments based on both self-regarding and other-regarding considerations. (shrink)

Taking a thematic approach to Butler as a political thinker, this text develops Butler's theory of the political through an exploration of her politics of troubling.

The term ‘mechanism’ has been used in two quite different ways in the history of biology. Operative, or explanatory mechanism refers to the step-by-step description or explanation of how components in a system interact to yield a particular outcome . Philosophical Mechanism, on the other hand, refers to a broad view of organisms as material entities, functioning in ways similar to machines — that is, carrying out a variety of activities based on known chemical and physical processes. In the early (...) twentieth century philosophical Mechanism became the foundation of a ‘new biology’ that sought to establish the life sciences on the same solid and rigorous foundation as the physical sciences, including a strong emphasis on experimentation. In the context of the times this campaign was particularly aimed at combating the reintroduction of more holistic, non-mechanical approaches into the life sciences . In so doing, Mechanists failed to see some of the strong points of non-vitalistic holistic thinking. The two approaches are illustrated in the work of Jacques Loeb and Hans Spemann. (shrink)

Allen Wood “What is the human being?” Kant sometimes treated this question as the most fundamental question of all philosophy: “The field of philosophy in the cosmopolitan sense can be brought down to the following questions: 1. What can I know? 1. What ought I to do? 1. What may I hope? 1. What is the human being? Metaphysics answers the first question, morals the second, religion the third, and anthropology the fourth. Fundamentally, however, we could reckon all of (...) this to anthropology, because the first three questions refer to the last one”.[i]. (shrink)

In his reading of Kant’s moral philosophy and its grounding in freedom of the will, Allison is best know for giving an exclusively “practical” reading to doctrines about noumenal agency, so that they are taken to have none of the outlandish metaphysical implications often thought to be associated with the Kantian conception of freedom. The central feature of Allison’s interpretation is that Kant operates with a theory of agency in which, from the agent’s standpoint, reasons do not act as causes, (...) but operate only insofar as they are taken up by the agent into principles or “maxims.” According to this “Incorporation Thesis,” sensuous impulses or desires are not causes of an action. So there is no reason to regard the motive of duty as a “noumenal” cause competing with sensuous or “phenomenal” causes. Instead, Kant’s “two standpoints theory” is to be understood as distinguishing the action as viewed from the agent’s practical standpoint from causal conceptions governing the theoretical standpoint. (shrink)

Is exploitation always unjust? Is it by definition unjust? If we answer both these questions negatively, as I do, then we need to ask: when is exploitation unjust and when is it not? Exploitation is the use of a vulnerability for the exploiter's ends. This is sometimes morally wrong, even when it is not unjust. But it is unjust when it violates the exploited person's rightful freedom. When is labor for hire exploitative? Whenever the terms of the labor contract permit (...) either the employer or the employee to make use of the vulnerability of the other. But when is such exploitation unjust? When it involves the ownership by either of the conditions of life of the other, because then one is in a position of control over the other and deprives the other of a free mode of life. In capitalist wage labor, this is often the case—the employer, or a class to which the employer belongs, owns the conditions of life for the employed. When this is so, the employed do not have the free life which is basic to human rights. (shrink)

This paper deals with the motivation behind Kant’s conception of “religion” as “the recognition of all our duties as divine commands”. It argues that in order to understand this motivation, we must grasp Kant’s conception of radical evil as social in origin, and the response to it as equally social - the creation of a voluntary, universal “ethical community”. Kant's historical model for this community is a religious community (especially the Christian church), though Kant regards traditional churches or religious communities (...) as suitable to their moral vocation only if they undergo Enlightenment reform. The paper concludes with a plea for the Enlightenment view of religion, and an indictment of the common failure to understand it correctly. (shrink)

The collected essays in this volume encompass a wide-ranging spectrum of philosophical, scientific, and literary topics as they relate to the theory and strategy of interpretation.

The challenge to philosophy of mind for the past two hundred years has been to overcome the Cartesian conception of mind. This essay explores the attempt to do this by J. G. Fichte, especially regarding intersubjectivity or the knowledge of other minds. Fichte provides a transcendental deduction of the concept of the other I, as a condition for experiencing the individuality of our own I. The basis of this argument is the concept of the "summons", which Fichte argues is necessary (...) for us to form the concept of an end of our own action. (shrink)

Is a world without force possible? William Bluhm believes it is, and this book is an impassioned plea for the revolution in moral philosophy that he thinks is necessary to achieve freedom under law without the use of force. Principal among the questions discussed are whether individual freedom can be made compatible with the demands of public order, and whether any notion of lawful authority can be established if there are no natural norms of moral order.

Most anyone interested in such topics as creation mythology, Jungian theory, or the idea of "secret teachings" in ancient Judaism and Christianity has found "gnosticism" compelling. Yet the term "gnosticism," which often connotes a single rebellious movement against the prevailing religions of late antiquity, gives the false impression of a monolithic religious phenomenon. Here Michael Williams challenges the validity of the widely invoked category of ancient "gnosticism" and the ways it has been described. Presenting such famous writings and movements as (...) the Apocryphon of John and Valentinian Christianity, Williams uncovers the similarities and differences among some major traditions widely categorized as gnostic. He provides an eloquent, systematic argument for a more accurate way to discuss these interpretive approaches.The modern construct "gnosticism" is not justified by any ancient self-definition, and many of the most commonly cited religious features that supposedly define gnosticism phenomenologically turn out to be questionable. Exploring the sample sets of "gnostic" teachings, Williams refutes generalizations concerning asceticism and libertinism, attitudes toward the body and the created world, and alleged features of protest, parasitism, and elitism. He sketches a fresh model for understanding ancient innovations on more "mainstream" Judaism and Christianity, a model that is informed by modern research on dynamics in new religious movements and is freed from the false stereotypes from which the category "gnosticism" has been constructed. (shrink)

The idea that reasoning is a singular accomplishment of the human species has an ancient pedigree.Yet this idea remains as controversial as it is ancient. Those who would deny reasoning to nonhuman animals typically hold a language-based conception of inference which places it beyond the reach of languageless creatures. Others reject such an anthropocentric conception of reasoning on the basis of similar performance by humans and animals in some reasoning tasks, such as transitive inference. Here, building on the modal similarity (...) theory of Vigo [J Exp Theor Artif Intell, 2008 (in press)], we offer an account in which reasoning depends on a core suite of subsymbolic processes for similarity assessment, discrimination, and categorization. We argue that premise-based inference operates through these subsymbolic processes, even in humans. Given the robust discrimination and categorization abilities of some species of nonhuman animals, we believe that they should also be regarded as capable of simple forms of inference. Finally, we explain how this account of reasoning applies to the kinds of transitive inferences that many nonhuman animals display. (shrink)

This provocative book paved the way for nursing research informed by f eminist scholarship, critical theory, and post-modern thought. Controv ersial then, relevant today.

" Barry Allen shows what truth has come to mean in the philosophical tradition, what is wrong with many of the ways of conceiving truth, and why philosophers ...

In this paper I defend the claim that quantum theory, Specifically quantum field theory (qft), Is incompatible with leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernibles. This is in response to r. Barnette's criticism ("philosophy of science" 45:466-470) of an argument given by alberto cortes ("philosophy of science" 43:491-505) intended to establish this claim. I show that, Using the qft point of view, Cortes' argument can be restated in a way that leaves it immune to barnette's criticism.

Engaging theories of comedy and of critical and literary theory in general, I consider the function of the buffo within opera, why this trope was an historical necessity for the generic development of opera: the buffo as a specific mechanism in the operatic machine, and what this character made possible in its wake. I take as paradigms the buffi of Mozart and Rossini, citing Don Alfonso and Don Bartolo respectively. It is my belief these operas have suffered from the general (...) misprizing in philosophy of comedy. I claim Il Barbiere di Siviglia as a drama of the letter, as positing a subversive economics. I then offer a reading of Così fan tutte as a staging of Foucauldian relations: combinatorial, topological, tactical, strategic. This brings me to what these operas understand by freedom, the subject, and the Enlightenment. What is it these operas demand of us? (shrink)