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)

abstract: In 1880s Britain, Constance Naden defended “hylo-idealism,” a theory aiming to unify materialism with idealism. This paper offers the first sustained study of Naden’s metaphysical system. On this new reading of Naden’s hylo-idealism, her materialism is carefully qualified; and her idealism is distinctively Kantian, her construal of the external cosmos as Unknown placing her within the Victorian school of metaphysical agnostics. I distinguish Naden’s system from that of fellow hylo-idealist Robert Lewins and argue it (...) lies closer to that of evolutionist Thomas Henry Huxley. Against various critics, I show that Naden has the resources to rebuff objections facing hylo-idealism. This paper seeks to open further avenues for Naden scholarship and help us better understand Victorian metaphysics more generally. (shrink)

We address the problem of musical variation (identification of different musical sequences as variations) and its implications for mental representations of music. According to reductionist theories, listeners judge the structural importance of musical events while forming mental representations. These judgments may result from the production of reduced memory representations that retain only the musical gist. In a study of improvised music performance, pianists produced variations on melodies. Analyses of the musical events retained across variations provided support for the reductionist account (...) of structural importance. A neural network trained to produce reduced memory representations for the same melodies represented structurally important events more efficiently than others. Agreement among the musicians' improvisations, the network model, and music‐theoretic predictions suggest that perceived constancy across musical variation is a natural result of a reductionist mechanism for producing memory representations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 87 c:\users\arlene\documents\rj issues\type3501\rj 3501 061 red.docx 2015-07-10 4:07 PM RUSSELL AS “SPANISH ASTRONOMER” (A RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW) Sheila Turcon Russell Research Centre / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4l6 [email protected] Constance Malleson. The Coming Back. London: Jonathan Cape, 1933. Pp. 328. 7s. 6d. ublished in 1933 and never reprinted, The Coming Back is Constance Malleson’s first novel. She had been publishing shorter fiction as well as (...) articles since 1919.1 Her lover, Bertrand Russell, had encouraged her writing career, assisting with the placement of her first short story in The English Review.2 He thought a writing career preferable to acting. Using the stage name “Colette O’Niel”, she had a successful career on the stage.3 The novel is a fictional account of the love affair between Russell and Colette.They appear as Gregory del Orellano and Konradin Waring. It was not, however, recognized as a roman à clef when it was published, as their affair was not known by anyone except their closest friends and family members. John Slater recognized it for what it was.4 Three of the four Russell biographers mention the novel.5 Presumably all three relied on Slater’s article. Ronald Clark quotes one sentence from the novel, a summation of Gregory’s character by one of the other characters who shared the view of many. Gregory was seen as “a man exhausting other men by his intellect; exhausting women by his intensity; wearing out his friends, sucking them dry, passing from person to person, never giving any real happiness—or finding any” (Coming Back, p. 307; Clark, p. 583). Caroline Moorehead quotes several sentences about the 1 Turcon, “A Bibliography of Constance Malleson” (2012). 2 Malleson, “The End” by “Christine Harte” (1919). 3 Turcon, op. cit., appendix, acting roles, pp. 188–90. 4 John G. Slater, “Lady Constance Malleson, ‘Colette O’Niel’” (1975), pp. 10–11. 5 Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell (1975); Moorehead, Bertrand Russell (1992); Monk, Bertrand Russell,Vol. 1 (1996). m= 88 Reviews c:\users\arlene\documents\rj issues\type3501\rj 3501 061 red.docx 2015-07-10 4:07 PM importance of work to Konradin—work that Gregory deplored (Coming Back, p. 105; Moorehead, p. 264). Only Ray Monk undertakes a detailed description of the novel, even naming the last chapter of The Spirit of Solitude, “The Coming Back”. He identifies, as did Slater, several other characters with their real life counterparts: Ottoline Morrell is Magdalena de Santa Segunda; T. C. Maynard is T. S. Eliot; Jevons is Clifford Allen; Marcus Beazley is Maurice Elvey; Gertrude West is Dora Black. He quotes the sentence that Clark had used earlier (Monk 1: 607). Monk writes that “Russell claimed never to have read The Coming Back (or any of Colette’s other books). Perhaps he knew it would make painful reading” (1: 608). Monk provides no source for this judgment, and in fact it is untrue. Although The Coming Back is not specifically discussed in their correspondence, her other three books are.6 My reading of the novel is coloured by an attempt to identify what is true in the novel. My knowledge of the truth is based on editing their correspondence.The novel is a fascinating portrait of the Russell and Colette relationship, far more revealing to those in the know than her autobiographies, where libel concerns were always at the forefront. Her first autobiography, AfterTenYears, had been published two years earlier, in 1931, to great acclaim. The Coming Back’s dust-jacket reads: Here is the first novel from the author of that vivid and successful autobiography, After Ten Years. And as might be expected, it shows the same vitality, integrity, and the same passion for beauty as the earlier work. Constance Malleson presents a portrait of a young girl of our times, and of her stand for freedom, through all its stages from selfishness to a fine renunciation. Before the novel begins Colette includes four things. She dedicates the book to “Joneen when he is grown up”. Colette was very fond of Russell’s son John, and this may well refer to... (shrink)

Many women wrote philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain, and they wrote across the full range of philosophical topics. Yet these important women thinkers have been left out of the philosophical canon and many of them are barely known today. The aim of this book is to put them back on the map. It introduces twelve women philosophers - Mary Shepherd, Harriet Martineau, Ada Lovelace, George Eliot, Frances Power Cobbe, Helena Blavatsky, Julia Wedgwood, Victoria Welby, Arabella Buckley, Annie Besant, Vernon Lee, and (...) Constance Naden. Alison Stone looks at their views on naturalism, philosophy of mind, evolution, morality and religion, and progress in history. She shows how these women interacted and developed their philosophical views in conversation with one another, not only with their male contemporaries. The rich print and periodical culture of the period enabled these women to publish philosophy in forms accessible to a general readership, despite the restrictions women faced, such as having limited or no access to university education. Stone explains how these women became excluded from the history of philosophy because there was a cultural shift at the end of the nineteenth century towards specialised forms of philosophical writing, which depended on academic credentials that were still largely unavailable to women. (shrink)

Engineers encounter difficult ethical problems in their practice and in research. In many ways, these problems are like design problems: they are complex, often ill-defined; resolving them involves an iterative process of analysis and synthesis; and there can be more than one acceptable solution. This book offers a real-world, problem-centered approach to engineering ethics, using a rich collection of open-ended scenarios and case studies to develop skill in recognizing and addressing ethical issues.

It is widely held that free speech is a distinctive and privileged social kind. But what is free speech? In particular, is there any unified phenomenon that is both free speech and which is worthy of the special value traditionally attached to free speech? We argue that a descendent of the classic Millian justification of free speech is in fact a justification of a more general social condition; and, via an argument that 'free speech' names whatever natural social kind is (...) justified by the best arguments, that free speech is therefore this more general condition. This condition involves not merely the orthodox freedom (in some sense) of speakers to distribute words, but also two less frequently acknowledged dimensions of free speech: audience understanding and consideration. We conclude with some discussion of the policy implications of this conception of free speech. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In ‘Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm: An Overview and an Application’, Mary Kate McGowan argues that some racist speech in public places should be made unlawful in the United States for the same reason that sexist behaviour in the workplace is already legally actionable—namely, to protect individuals from a hostile discriminatory environment. While McGowan may be correct that some public racist speech may constitute an act of discrimination in some morally significant sense, I present several reasons for (...) doubting that such speech constitutes a hostile discriminatory environment in the relevant legal sense. (shrink)

A leading critic of the disruptive force of technology in education, Bernard Stiegler saw the counter-effects of artificial intelligence in undermining human agency, autonomy and individuality, rendering the role of education ever more critical. Stiegler believes that our goal is not to abandon technology but to focus our attention on its power and direction in a hypercapitalist economy. While he did not foresee the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GAI), its rapid acceleration raises important issues for his notion of digital (...) writing as a pharmakon. In this essay, we examine Stiegler’s view on intelligence, digital writing, technological memory, and neuropower, focusing specifically on his Shanghai lecture and Nanjing Lectures. We compare Stiegler with Catherine Malabou, who examines the nature of intelligence primarily through the lens of neuroscience. We argue that Malabou’s view of neuroplasticity in human and artificial brains, and her critique of techno-narcissism in the control over technology, add an important dimension to Stiegler’s political critique of education. Finally, we examine how best to construe AI as part of a hyper-materialist epistemology that Stiegler espouses in the conclusion of his Nanjing Lectures, to bring about neganthropic knowledge through a therapeutics of care. (shrink)

Should our commitment to freedom of speech extend to freedom of hate speech: speech that promotes hatred toward an individual or group on the basis of a characteristic such as race, gender, sexuality, nationality, or religion—often, although perhaps not exclusively, using slurs and epithets? Drawing on philosophy of language and empirical research, this essay outlines five theoretical models of how hate speech may function, and explores their implications for this issue. I argue that (some) hate speech can be regulated without (...) compromising freedom of expression; and furthermore that, under certain circumstances, considerations of free speech may favour regulating hate speech. (shrink)

It is argued that the common definition of diagnosis as the determination of the nature of a disease is misleading. Many diagnoses are not the names of disease entities. This finding reflects the integral relation of the diagnostic task to the rest of clinical reasoning. Diagnosis has no separate goal of its own, in particular it does not have the goal of determining the nature of a disease. Instead, diagnosis contributes to the general goals of clinical medicine. Any attempt to (...) model diagnostic reasoning abstracted from the rest of clinical reasoning will yield an inadequate representation of diagnosis. Such a distortion of medical reasoning will blind us to whatever implications an adequate epistemology of medicine may have for an understanding of the relation between theoretical and practical knowledge in other contexts. (shrink)

Solving actual moral problems is not simply a matter of choosing the “best” of several possible responses. It is also a matter of devising possible responses. Design practice in engineering affords important lessons about addressing practical problems.

Dans cet article, la pairepros ta alla/pros heautodans leParménidede Platon est analysée dans les termes d’une distinction entre la prédication ordinaire (où un individu présente une qualité) et la prédication en arborescence (fondée sur la relation qui s’établit entre un X et un Y lorsque la nature X fait partie de la nature Y). J’engage une discussion avec mes critiques en soutenant que cette interprétation donne tout leur sens aux remarques méthodologiques de Platon, tout en rendant son argumentation plus efficace. (...) LeParménidefait le pont entre les dialogues de maturité et les développements techniques des derniers dialogues de Platon. (shrink)

In this paper the authors seek to contribute to a new ontology of an embodied, desiring subject through an exploration of their own subjectivities and of the ways in which subjectivities are produced and transformed through affective attachments to place. Using the method of collective biography (Davies, Gannon 2006) and drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of desire and territorialization they examine their affective responses and attachments to place: Australia and the Czech Republic. As a point of departure for their (...) analysis, the authors ask: What does it mean to be homesick for a place which is not one’s home? What does it mean to desire a place? What of the other place is inscribed in the body? In asking this, the authors show the extent to which place is a zone of immanence in which a continual play of de- and re-territorialization occurs. (shrink)

It is claimed that medicine is concerned with the prevention and treatment of certain types of psychophysiological processes and states which frequently compromise health, namely with disease, injuries, and (occasionally) impairments, rather than with health. It is argued that the normative component in the concepts, disease, injury and impairment, consists in each being a type of process or state which people wish to be able to prevent or effectively treat, because it interferes with the capacity to do something that people (...) commonly want to be able to do, without also being necessary for such a capacity. One advantage of viewing the normative component as consisting in the judgment that it is desirable to collectively possess the means to control certain types of processes and states, is that it renders non-paradoxical the fact that it may not be in anyone's interest to prevent or treat a given case of disease, injury, or impairment. (shrink)

Certain attributes are particularly desirable for public educational websites, and websites for ethics education in particular. Among the most important of these attributes is wide accessibility through adherence to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for HTML code. Adherence to this standard produces webpages that can be rendered by a full range of web browsers, including Braille and speech browsers. Although almost no academic websites, including ethics websites, and even fewer commercial websites are accessible by W3C standards, as illustrated (...) by the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science 〈http://onlineethics.org〉, even websites created on limited budgets and with an undergraduate student staff can fulfill these standards. Other desirable attributes, such as provision of annotation for all links and the use of annotated links to give the user alternate ways of ordering and organizing content, are important for making full use of the educational possibilities of hypermedia for websites. (shrink)

Previous analyses of descriptively defined psychotic phenomena have concluded that they can occur in benign spiritual experiences as well as pathological states. Attempts to forge a distinction between psychotic experiences in spiritual and pathological contexts on the basis of the form or content of the experience (broadly described) can be disproved by counterexample; distinguishing on the basis of negative or positive consequences of the phenomena for the individual can be seen to beg the question. In the present paper, it is (...) argued that examining the fundamental conceptual organization of psychotic and mystical mental states not only elucidates the observed similarities between them, but can highlight the differences, and the processes by which negatively evaluated pathological features can be seen to emerge. Oriental philosophical systems such as Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, and Tantric Hinduism, provide conceptualizations of mystical states of mind, from which a model can be drawn, while the epistemologies of these systems provide an illuminating metaphysical perspective on both psychotic and mystical experiences. It is concluded that mystical and psychotic experiences can be distinguished not only by emotional and behavioral consequences, but by real differences in the states themselves; certain features, such as loss of subject/object boundaries and loss of the relative dimensional structure of perception, are common to both processes. (shrink)

This paper explores the meaning attributed to the national group as an entry point into how boundaries between the in-group and the out-group are formed. To do so, it focuses on the representation of the past of the group, taken as a symbolic resource able to produce a raison d’être for national groups, and does so within a dialogical framework. Using the transcripts of the French parliamentary debates on immigration from 2006, it proposes a qualitative analysis of collective narratives of (...) the past along three axes: 1) what meaning do they give to the nation, 2) how is such a meaning produced, and 3) how do the stories told by different groups reply or relate to one another. By identifying the main narratives found in the data and how they relate to each other – within and between groups – it proposes to see collective memory as itself the product of symbolisation processes and, therefore, as a cultural tool especially powerful to produce meaning about the present. This paper also argues that collective memory is a situated construction negotiated with – or contested by – others, made possible by the presence of common historical benchmarks to which different meanings may however be attributed. Finally, it proposes to understand “immigration talk” as potentially the product of the identity questions faced by the national group, rather than the other way around. (shrink)

In this article, I draw on theories of gender performativity and on postcolonial African feminisms to develop an account of femininities in the rural context of northern Ghana. In doing this, I reflect on Judith Butler’s theory of gender as performative, that is, as constituted by the reiterative power of discourse to create and also constrain that which it names. Through an analysis of the findings from my participant observation fieldwork amongst the Dagaaba community in Serekpere in north-western Ghana, I (...) demonstrate that there exists a profound resonance between the theories of performativity of gender and Dagaaba constructions of gender identities and power relations. The key assumptions of performativity theories are instructive in helping to make sense of the subtleties of gendered performance and power relations in this Dagaaba community. This article diverges from Butlerian theories of gender performativity by focusing on heteronormative marriage practices and the role they play in forming gendered identities. In this regard, it participates in acts of cultural translation – between European and North American settings and a West African milieu. Based on my analysis of the performative practices that constitute gender relations amongst the Dagaaba, I argue that femininity can be understood as forming a continuum, namely: ‘ideal woman’, ‘woman’ and ‘beyond woman’. (shrink)

Numerous recent discoveries in China of ancient tombs have greatly increased our knowledge of ritual and religious practices. These discoveries include excavated oracle bones, bronze, jade, stone and pottery objects, and bamboo manuscripts dating from the twelfth to fourth century BCE. Inscribed upon these artifacts are a large number of records of numerical sequences, for which no explanation has been found of how they were produced. Structural links to the Book of Changes, a divination manual that entered the Confucian canon, (...) are evident; yet, the algorithm described therein dates to the slightly later second to first century BCE. By combining archeological and statistical evidence, we propose a new methodology that enables us to reconstruct and test cleromantic techniques which can explain how these numerical sequences were generated. Dice and divination stalk use, either in combination or separately, appear in fact to have been underlying the rather stable numerical patterns in ancient China all the way back to the late Shang dynasty (1300–1046 BCE). Bringing to light such a long-standing technique, which awaits further confirmation from the ever-growing database of newly discovered numerical and textual records, can change drastically our understanding of early Chinese history and of the historical development of sophisticated arithmetical practices and the rationalization of chance. (shrink)

The advent of integration as a feature of contemporary medical curricula can be seen as an advantage for the medical humanities in that it provides a clear implementation strategy for the inclusion of medical humanities content and/or perspectives, while also making its relevance to medical education more apparent. This paper discusses an example of integration of humanities content into a graduate medical course, raises questions about the desirability of an exclusively integrated approach, and argues for the value of retaining a (...) discrete and coherent disciplinary presence for the medical humanities in medical curricula. (shrink)

State and international laws have often been instruments of oppression against Indigenous peoples, enabling and casting a veil of legitimacy over state actions that dispossess, assimilate, and discriminate. In the contemporary setting such law has, at times, come to be harnessed to support or protect Indigenous interests, including addressing Indigenous health deficits and associated injustices.

Background The early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic affected nursing homes and their residents heavily. Guidelines on how to mitigate the virus’s spread and ensuring safe healthcare delivery were continually evolving. Concurrently, nursing homes faced intense media scrutiny. This challenging environment severely impacted registered nurses and physicians employed within these facilities. Aim To understand the ethical challenges experienced by registered nurses and physicians working in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research design Qualitative descriptive research using thematic analysis. Participants and (...) research context Individual online interviews with four registered nurses and eight physicians clinically active at nursing homes in Sweden. Ethical considerations The study was approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority. All participants provided written consent. Results Registered nurses and physicians working in nursing homes perceived ethical challenges stemming from early COVID-19 pandemic guidelines and media coverage. The main theme generated was ‘Struggling to maintain professional and ethical standards under pressure’ incorporating two subthemes: ‘Guidelines developed without the profession put pressure on staff’ and ‘Media’s biased reporting was perceived as unethical and undermined care’. Guidelines from the authorities were considered as developed without professional involvement. It made them difficult to adhere to without deviating from professional and ethical compasses. Media coverage adversely influenced relatives’ perceptions, resulting in mistrust towards physicians’ and registered nurses’ in delivering optimal care for the residents. Conclusions Resilient care in nursing homes necessitates the collaborative development of guidelines involving registered nurses and physicians, particularly amidst crises. Moreover, it is vital to provide support to registered nurses navigating ethical dilemmas, especially during pandemics. Guidelines and principles for care during a crisis should be development with professional involvement, be transparent, and be available to the public, to promote neutral media coverage. Future research is crucial to enhance ethical standards and tackle challenges in this context. (shrink)

Fire setting is a significant problem for society, costing many human lives and causing great property damage. One important risk factor of fire setting observed in forensic samples is fire interest. However, less is known about the relationship of fire interest and fire setting to other variables such as personality traits in subclinical samples. In this study, we observed the relationship of potentially important personality traits with fire interest and fire setting in a sample of N = 222 students. In (...) addition to zero-order correlations, we calculated path models and a logistic regression including all predictor variables. From the Dark Tetrad, consisting of psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and three facets of sadism, psychopathy, and physical sadism were found to be associated with fire interest and fire setting. Furthermore, vicarious sadism was associated with fire interest. The other Dark Tetrad traits and four sensation seeking facets did not substantially add to the predictions. This confirms the results of previous studies with clinical and forensic samples with psychopathy and sadism as relevant predictors for fire interest and fire setting. Our results also provide evidence for viewing sadism as the multidimensional construct discriminating between vicarious and other forms of sadism, for the distinction of psychopathy and Machiavellianism, and for the Dark Tetrad being linked to object related violence. (shrink)

Legitimation und Musiktheater im Diskurs : politische, wirtschaftliche und ästhetische Narrative -- Material und Methode -- Legitimationsstrategien im Diskurs um das Musiktheater -- Schlussbetrachtung.

A lucid introduction to post-Marxist political philosophy, this work offers a balanced assessment of the philosophy and political thought of Baruch de Spinoza. It explores the influence of Spinoza upon Louis Althusser and some of his contemporaries. The positions of a range of modern political philosophers who think with, beyond, or against Althusser are explored, including Etienne Balibar, Antonio Negri, and Slavjob Zizek. Ideology and political critique, democracy and exclusion, language and power, and imagination and subjectivity are among the topics (...) discussed, arguing that many of Spinoza's ideas find radical expression in Althusserian and post-Althusserian political philosophy. (shrink)

The book deepens our understanding of Arendt's conception of the role of violence in her political theory. But it also uses her work as a provocation to think about how we might engage with, build on, or criticize contemporary ideas of the political that have drawn on Arendtian themes-notably via the notion of "agonal" or "agonistic" politics as theorized in recent years by thinkers such as Chantal Mouffe and Bonnie Honig-and how we can read Arendt in different ways to challenge (...) or further our understanding of the political. (shrink)