Prominent thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas and Michael Sandel are warning that biomedical enhancements will undermine fundamental political values. Yet whether biomedical enhancements will undermine such values depends on how biomedical enhancements will function, how they will be administered and to whom. Since only few enhancements are obtainable, it is difficult to tell whether these predictions are sound. Nevertheless, such warnings are extremely valuable. As a society we must, at the very least, be aware of developments that could have harmful (...) consequences. Indeed, if important values were to be jeopardized, we should take appropriate measures to protect them. This paper focuses on four central values: solidarity, personal responsibility, equality and autonomy. It delineates the conditions under which biomedical enhancements would undermine these values. It also details the circumstances under which these values would be unaffected by enhancements as well as those under which they would be promoted. Specifying these conditions is valuable; it would enable society to prepare appropriate ethical guidelines and policy responses in advance. (shrink)

In 2035 global egg demand will have risen 50% from 1985. Because we are not able to tell in the egg whether it will become a male or female chick, billons of one day-old male chicks will be killed. International research initiatives are underway in this area, and governments encourage the development of an alternative with the goal of eliminating the culling of day-old male chicks. The Netherlands holds an exceptional position in the European egg trade, but is also the (...) only country in the European Union where the downside of the egg sector, the practice of killing day-old male chicks, is a recurrent subject of societal debate. ‘Preventing the killing of young animals’ and ‘in ovo sex determination’ are the two alternative approaches available to solve this problem. It is clear that both approaches solve the problem of killing day-old male chicks, either by keeping them alive or by preventing them from living, but they also raise a lot of new animal welfare-related dilemmas. A thorough analysis was undertaken of these dilemmas and the results are presented in this article. The analysis resulted in an ethical framework based on the two main approaches in bioethics: a consequentialist approach and a deontological approach. This ethical framework was used to develop an online survey administered to ascertain Dutch public opinion about these alternative approaches. The results show that neither alternative will be fully accepted, or accepted by more than half of Dutch society. However, the survey does provide an insight into the motives that are important for people’s choice: food safety and a good treatment of animals. Irrespective of the approach chosen, these values should be safeguarded and communicated clearly. (shrink)

Mr. Berlin offers, with characteristic brilliance and insight, a compelling indictment of the modern tendency to deny the relevance of moral considerations to history: to minimize the influence of human individuals upon--and their responsibility for--historical events, as well as to eliminate evaluation and moral judgment from the writing of history. History, it is maintained, neither can be nor should try to be "objective," i.e., free from evaluations, in the way that physics is "objective." Mr. Berlin's points are not always clearly (...) organized, but they are sensible and telling; his running critique of the prevalent naive "scientism" of contemporary social scientists is especially effective.--V. C. C. (shrink)

Though the title is a bit misleading, this is a splendid collection of essays, five of which are insightful philosophical commentaries on specific American philosophers and one an exercise in philosophical analysis by a distinguished living American philosopher. W. V. Quine maintains that philosophical inquiry should begin with "clear words" rather than "clear ideas" and it would seem that it also ends with words. In an essay remarkable for both its economy and clarity, Quine charts a path which begins with (...) "observation sentences" and the "primacy of bodies," passes through a "brave new ontology" in which bodies disappear and ends with a nonreductionist linguistic physicalism. Quine states that the "physicalist does not insist on an exclusively corporeal ontology. He is content to declare bodies to be fundamental to nature in somewhat this sense: There is no difference in the world without a difference in the position of states of bodies." The crucial question, as Quine readily acknowledges, is "what to count as states of bodies." Physics seems to point in the direction of a "field theory" in which "bodies themselves go by the board" leaving us with a "brave new ontology"—"the purely abstract ontology of set theory, pure mathematics." To which Quine’s response seems to be that this is so much the worse for ontology. Having earlier stressed that "all entities are theoretical," Quine now asserts that "sentences, in their truth and falsity, are what runs deep; ontology is by the way." While his physicalism is admittedly unfinished and incomplete, the direction is set—to reformulate physicalism "by reference not to physical objects but to physical vocabulary." Roland A. Delattre explores "the political implications and resonances" of Edwards’s metaphysics of beauty. Inasmuch as "beauty" is central to the Edwardean vision, Delattre contends that it must have a bearing upon politics. Admittedly going beyond "anything explicitly offered by Edwards," Delattre convincingly argues that "the logic of this vision of reality is to relativize the claim that the political order is to be understood religiously as the scene for a movement through history towards the kingdom of God." A. Robert Caponigri argues quite persuasively that transcendentalism, as expressed by Emerson and Thoreau, affirms an individualism which allows for the state only as a necessary evil. Brownson, however, rescues transcendentalism by distinguishing "civil society" from both the government and the abstract individual and showing how it serves to mediate "the claim and obligation" between state and citizen. In a delightful and informative essay, Max H. Fisch traces pragmatism backwards and forwards from James’s 1898 address to the Philosophical Union of the University of California. It was in this address that the word "pragmatism" was first used publicly but Fisch supplies compelling evidence that the structure of Peirce’s pragmatism was in print as early as 1868. In sketching the development of "pragmatism from Peirce to C. I. Lewis, Fisch gives us perceptive indications of the varieties of pragmatism. Santayana, according to Frederick A. Olafson makes some telling points against a rationalism which isolates reason from its natural conditions and continuities. But Olafson forcefully argues that Santayana jeopardizes the autonomy and significance of reason by reducing it to an esthetic epiphenomenon. Peter Fuss continues his incisive and controversial interpretation of Royce. Centering on Royce’s analysis of Hegel, Fuss maintains that while Royce occasionally flirts with the "correct" understanding of Hegel’s Absolute, he finally surrenders the view of the Absolute as an all-inclusive unity of a community of finite selves in favor of the outmoded view of the Absolute as a transcendent entity. In an unusually clear and focused introduction, the editors have provided useful mini-versions of each essay.—E.F. (shrink)

The concept of free will is fraught with controversy, as readers of this volume likely know. Philosophers disagree about what free will is, whether we have it, what mitigates or destroys it, and what it's good for. Indeed, philosophers even disagree about how to fix the referent of the term 'free will' for purposes of describing and exploring these disagreements. What one person considers a reasonably neutral working definition of 'free will' is often considered question-begging or otherwise misguided by another. (...) Such disputes make it difficult to summarize the problem of free will, roughly the debate over the nature and existence of free will, in a clear and uncontentious way. In generic terms, however, the two basic solutions to the problem of free will are free-willism, the view that we have free will, and free-will denialism, i.e. the view that we do not have free will. As stated here, neither denialism nor free-willism constitutes a complete solution to the problem of free will; to be complete, a proposed solution must also tell us a convincing story about what free will is and that, as it turns out, is a very difficult task indeed. One historically popular way of approaching the problem of free will is to ask about the relationship between free will and determinism: "Does free will stand in relation R to determinism: yes or no?" This is just a template for a question, of course. To transform this template-question into a substantive question with a clear meaning, we need to flesh out the template's free-will relatum, its determinism relatum, and give a precise value to relation R. There is, however, no uncontroversial way to do this. In addition to the standard difficulties raised by fixing the referent of 'free will', philosophers hold radically different views about what is-or should be-meant by 'determinism', Shabo ), and they identify relations which are as substantively different as correlation and causation when characterizing relation R. In practical terms, then, it may be best to think of the problem of determinism as a loose collection of disagreements about how to best spell out and answer the template-question, and how asking and answering such questions would help us to solve the problem of free will. (shrink)

Although Justice Scalia purported to be driven by originalism and precedent, his opinions in three education cases—Grutter v. Bollinger, Parents Involved v. Seattle School District, and United States v. Virginia —tell a different tale. In these cases, his arguments are difficult to defend on originalist grounds and, surprisingly, Justice Scalia himself makes no attempt to do so. Similarly, his views are difficult to square with precedent. It is hard to escape the conclusion that, in some of his most noteworthy cases (...) related to education, Justice Scalia was as results-oriented as the justices and judges he loved to criticize. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome, A.D. 407–485F. E. RomerJill Harries. Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome, A.D. 407–485. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. xiv + 292 pp.“It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that the Roman Empire in the West collapsed without a sound in the fifth century, but that nobody understood that the catastrophe had occurred before Byzantine chroniclers woke up belatedly to the fact (...) in the sixth century.” Thus, Jill Harries sets out to prove that the Roman Empire was not a tree in the forest with no one to hear its fall, but that the aristocratic Sidonius Apollinaris heard it. Conversely, Sidonius’ own ambitions, attitudes, and sense of compromise “illustrate the wider political failure [End Page 663] of Rome in Gaul” (v). From the beginning we see her characteristic method of synthesis and analysis, as she proceeds both topically and chronologically to map the history of Sidonius’ Gallic world against his life and his concerns.Like “the death of Socrates,” however, “the fall of Rome” means different things. Harries defines the Roman Empire “purely in terms of a status system based on the ‘gradus dignitatum’ available to the aristocracy and [on] expertise in classical literature” (17). This definition is based on “the single most significant remark made by any contemporary western author on the end of Roman rule: ‘with the removal of the ranks of office, the only means by which the best men can be distinguished from their inferiors, hereafter the only mark of nobility will be knowledge of letters’” (16–17, translating Sid., Ep. 8.2.2). The view here is distinctly from Gaul, and mainly from Clermont: “Rome” is only an idea. Harries avoids the pitfall of writing a history of fifth-century Gaul as a whole, while also avoiding anachronism by adopting Sidonius’ viewpoint. This “fall” is, of course, a process, momentous but not instantaneous. We get a glimpse of a theoretical moment only, for the same process—with or without local awareness—repeated itself all over Gaul and the Western empire.The other terms in the title need clarification, too. The period A.D. 407–485 includes Sidonius’ lifetime (431[432?]-ca. 485) and ends, roughly, at his death, but it begins a generation earlier, the day after tens of thousands of non-Roman peoples crossed the Rhine into the empire on 31 December 406. There is an air of inevitability at first: the Rhine crossing, the political fragmentation of Gaul and Spain, dissensions between Romans and various Gothic leaders, the sack of Rome in 410, and the imposition of the Gothic emperor Attalus, “all had combined to undermine the credibility of Roman rule, and of Roman law, in the West” (66). The eleven chapters proceed chronologically, each weaving in the author’s main themes: the expanding effects of the Gothic arrival, the Gallic experience of Rome’s fall, and Sidonius’ perception of it.Even Sidonius requires definition, since he eludes us in his writings and is, often, an intellectual poseur, wrapped in the literary classicism of his age and social class: “his art mirrored life, but it could also distort it” (11). When he describes his beloved villa Avitacum, for example, we cannot tell what is real or unreal, so much does he echo the younger Pliny’s language. Then, in the 470s, Sidonius stopped classicizing and adopted a simpler, more preacherly style; yet, in the 480s, he changed back as a consolation for the fall of Rome. For these reasons, and because the often hard-to-read Sidonius has not yet found his literary expositor, Harries’ Introduction guides the historian to “what may be termed the political aspects of his technique” (3).The book’s argument is divided into two sections. Part I, “Lyon and Rome,” begins with the family history of the Apollinares and the Aviti, and ends with Sidonius in the urban prefecture at Rome, a scantily attested period, about which Harries writes provocatively. Herein are five chapters discussing (a) Sidonius [End Page 664] at Lyon and Arles, A.D. 430–455, (b) Avitus and the Goths, (c) Majorian, (d) Sidonius as Christian layman, A.D. 461–467... (shrink)

[V]isibility is central to the shaping of political, medical, and socioeconomic decisions. Who will be treated—how and where—are the central questions whose answers are often entwined with issues of visibility … [and] the effects that media visibility has on the perception of particular bodies .In a documentary entitled Paris: The Luminous Years , writer Janet Flanner describes the intense friendship of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Both were inspired by Paul Cézanne and his retrospective at the 1907 Salon d’Automne—which, according (...) to Paris: The Luminous Years, marked in Janus-like fashion the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries in art. Flanner tells of the frequent visits between the two painters, where they “talked and talked … two or three months that they just spent gabbling, gabbling.” And from their camaraderie and gabble emerged someth .. (shrink)

This Companion offers a state-of-the-art survey of the work of John Stuart Mill – one which covers the historical influences on Mill, his theoretical, moral and social philosophy, as well as his relation to contemporary movements. Its contributors include both senior scholars with established expertise in Mill’s thought and new emerging interpreters. Each essay acts as a ‘go-to’ resource for those seeking to understand an aspect of Mill’s thought or to familiarise themselves with the contours of a debate within the (...) scholarship. The Companion is a key reference on Mill’s theory of liberty and utilitarianism, but also provides a valuable resource on lesser-known aspects of his work, including his epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language. The volume is divided into six sections. Part I covers Mill’s life, his immediate posthumous reputation, and his own telling of his life-story. Part II brings together an accessible and comprehensive summary of the various influences on Mill’s thought. Part III offers an account of the foundations of Mill’s philosophy and his thought on key philosophic topics. Parts IV and V tackle issues from Mill’s moral and social philosophy. Part VI concludes with a treatment of the broader aspects of Mill’s thought, tracing his relation to major movements in philosophy. (shrink)

This book challenges the widespread assumption of the incompatibility of evolution and the biological design argument. Kojonen analyzes the traditional arguments for incompatibility, and argues for salvaging the idea of design in a way that is fully compatible with evolutionary biology. Relating current views to their intellectual history, Kojonen steers a course that avoids common pitfalls such as the problems of the God of the gaps, the problem of natural evil, and the traditional Humean and Darwinian critiques. The resulting deconstruction (...) of the opposition between evolution and design has the potential to transform this important debate. (shrink)

This is a progressive text that explores the relationship between psychology, science and morality, to address fundamental questions about the foundations of psychological research and its relevance for the development of these disciplines.

On the basis of definition of the concept ‘methodological potential‘ possibilities of development of the new theoretical and methodical ideas interfaced to the initial concept of collective creative education of Nominative of Ivanov are illustrated. Treatments of such concepts and the phenomena as an education technique, methodical approach of the teacher, methodical system are presented. It is shown as by means of the concept new vision of a problem of productivity and efficiency of educational activity opens. In end the short (...) prospective characteristic of the new pedagogical theory - the theory of a personal choice in pedagogical activity is given. (shrink)

Among the many names violently consigned to oblivion, one cannot omit mentioning the name of Gustav Gustavovich Shpet, a scholar who made a substantial contribution to our country's philosophy, psychology, aesthetics, and linguistics. His rehabilitation in 1956 was not enough to restore his memory in public consciousness, paralyzed by the inertia and fears of the Stalinist years, and the freeze that began soon after, of the sprouts that had just been summoned to life, had its impact in an abrogation of (...) agreements, cessation of publications, and in a number of cases removal of references to the philosopher. And the further thirty years of oblivion that followed were one more period of unjust punishment and a new ordeal in the terrible fate of the scholar and his ideas. His writings, which should have been a new word in science, should have given direction to further investigations, became effectively inaccessible to subsequent generations. References to Shpet in the works of Viach. Vs. Ivanov, Iu. M. Lotman, D. S. Likhachev, A. P. Chudakov, and others, and the article in Philosophical Encyclopedia [Filosofskaia entsiklopediia] written by V. S. Asmus aroused interest in Shpet's writings in Hungary and Germany. In the summer of 1986, an international conference on Shpet was held in Bochum, and his books are being translated. Unfortunately, in his own country the level of research on the philosopher's writings and thoughts is still almost at point zero, but we may hope that interest in Shpet's ideas will grow considerably in connection with the publication of the series From the History of Russian Philosophical Thought [Iz istorii otechestvennoi filosofskoi mysli] and a number of other publications. (shrink)