Introduction, by H. J. Cargas.--St. Paul and Teilhard de Chardin, by J. H. Adams.--Teilhard and Dante, by M. Gable.--Tennyson and Teilhard, by E. R. August.--Teilhard, neo-Marxism, existentialism, by M. Barthelemy-Madaule.--Whitman, Teilhard, and Jung, by R. Benoit.--C. G. Jung and Teilhard de Chardin, by N. Braybrooke.--Camus and Teilhard, by P. Rosazza.--Bonhoeffer and Teilhard, by C. M. Hegarty.--Voices of convergence: Teilhard, McLuhan, and Brown, by D. J. Leary.

Correspondence to: John Harris The Centre for Social Ethics and Policy, Institute of Medicine Law and Bioethics, School of Law, University of Manchester, Williamson Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 0JH, UK; [email protected] and Culyer1 have written an interesting and considered response, as people intimately connected to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence , to the two editorials that I wrote on recent NICE decisions. Before commenting on their response, I would like to consider a point they made, which (...) echoes a point already made by Rawlins and Dillon,2 about the tone of my editorials. Claxton and Culyer accuse me of making “personally abusive charges”. In my original editorial, I criticised an institution, NICE, in robust terms, but in doing so I was continuing a long and respected tradition in English philosophy. Consider the following extract from Jeremy Bentham:" In English law, fiction is a syphilis, which runs in every vein, and carries into every part of the system the principle of rottenness...Fiction of use to justice? Exactly as swindling is to trade...It affords presumptive and conclusive evidence of moral turpitude in those by whom it was invented and first employed.3"My remarks were not an ad hominem criticism of anyone but directed at the published, but anonymous statements of an institution—a body corporate. In robustly criticising NICE, I no more attacked any individual associated with NICE than I attacked Tony Blair or the various ministers of state who are ultimately responsible for NICE. And, contra Claxton and Culyer’s claims, I have not denigrated the views of people who beg to differ from me.i If the apologists for NICE, whether they are Tony Culyer or Tony Blair, choose to identify themselves with criticism of NICE, that is entirely a matter for them. The only ad hominem remarks in this entire exchange have been made by Rawlins and Dillon, and Claxton and Culyer. The idea that criticism of the anonymously authored publications of …. (shrink)

Intuitionists and classical logicians use in common a large number of the logical axioms, even though they supposedly mean different things by the logical connectives and quantifiers — conquans for short. But Wittgenstein says The meaning of a word is its use in the language. We prove that in a definite sense the intuitionistic axioms do indeed characterize the logical conquans, both for the intuitionist and the classical logician.

Biomedical research is so important that there is a positive moral obligation to pursue it and to participate in itScience is under attack. In Europe, America, and Australasia in particular, scientists are objects of suspicion and are on the defensive.i“Frankenstein science”5–8 is a phrase never far from the lips of those who take exception to some aspect of science or indeed some supposed abuse by scientists. We should not, however, forget the powerful obligation there is to undertake, support, and participate (...) in scientific research, particularly biomedical research, and the powerful moral imperative that underpins these obligations. Now it is more imperative than ever to articulate and explain these obligations and to do so is the subject and the object of this paper.Let me present the question in its starkest form: is there a moral obligation to undertake, support and even to participate in serious scientific research? If there is, does that obligation require not only that beneficial research be undertaken but also that “we”, as individuals and “we” as societies be willing to support and even participate in research where necessary?Thus far the overwhelming answer given to this question has been “no”, and research has almost universally been treated with suspicion and even hostility by the vast majority of all those concerned with the ethics and regulation of research. The so called “precautionary approach”9 sums up this attitude, requiring dangers to be considered more likely and more serious than benefits, and assuming that no sane person would or should participate in research unless they had a pressing personal reason for so doing, or unless they were motivated by a totally impersonal altruism. International agreements and protocols—for example, the Declaration of Helsinki10 and the CIOMS Guidelines11—have been directed principally at …. (shrink)

_Formal Ethics_ is the study of formal ethical principles. The most important of these, perhaps even the most important principle of life, is the golden rule: "Treat others as you want to be treated". Although the golden rule enjoys support amongst different cultures and religions in the world, philosophers tend to neglect it. _Formal Ethics_ gives the rule the attention it deserves. Modelled on formal logic, _Formal Ethics_ was inspired by the ethical theories of Kant and Hare. It shows that (...) the basic formal principles of ethics, like the golden rule, are very similar to principles of logic, and gives a firm basis for our ethical thinking. As an introduction to moral rationality, _Formal Ethics_ also considers non-formal elements, and is applied to areas of practical concern such as racism and moral education. (shrink)

Abstract:Work on stakeholder theory has proceeded on a variety of fronts; as Donaldson and Preston (1995) have noted, such work can be parsed into descriptive, instrumental, and normative research streams. In a normative vein, Phillips (1997) has made an argument for a principle of fairness as a means of identifying and adjudicating among stakeholders. In this essay, I propose that a reconstructed principle of fairness can be combined with the idea of consent as outlined in integrative social contract theory (ISCT) (...) to bring about a more normative stakeholder theory that also has ramifications for corporate governance. (shrink)

Harry Gensler engages the reader with the basics of logic through practical examples and important arguments in the history of philosophy and from contemporary philosophy.

Michael Rawlins and Andrew Dillon start their defence of Nice in fine polemical style, unfortunately polemics is all they have to offer. They totally fail to justify the Nice proposals on dementia treatments nor do they make any more plausible than formerly their use of the notorious QALY. They say:"Harris’s recent editorial, It’s not NICE to discriminate, is long on both polemic and invective – but short on scholarship. He offers nothing to illuminate the debate about allocating healthcare in circumstances (...) of finite resources; he has no understanding of the quality adjusted life year and its use in health economic evaluation; and he makes ill-researched, unsubstantiated and offensive charges against the Institute and its advisory bodies."Accusations are easy to make, difficult to substantiate. There are a number of claims here, only one of which is true. It is true that my editorial was robust, polemical if you like, but editorials are not the same as research papers and these are important issues which deeply affect real lives. Although Rawlins and Dillon affect to take the high ground their own article contains even more vigorous and much more personal invective than my editorial, I make no complaints. But as to the rest of what they say, well, let’s just see!They claim I offer nothing to illuminate resource allocation and that I have no understanding of the QALY. Both of these claims may well be true, but nothing they say goes any way to support these claims or even towards making them plausible. I have studied and written about the QALY for almost 20 years1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15 and Rawlins and Dillon show no evidence of any awareness or indeed any understanding of the issues, whether …. (shrink)

The bottom line is that Claxton and Culyer believe, and are on record as saying, that a therapy or procedure is not cost effective if “the health benefits that it is estimated could be gained from the technology are less than those estimated to be forgone by other patients as other procedures are necessarily curtailed or not undertaken. It is this comparison of health gained and health forgone that is at the heart of the rationale of cost-effectiveness analysis”. To estimate (...) whether the gains made …. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as a social conception of disability? Recently two writers in this journal have suggested not only that there is a coherent social conception of disability but that all non-social conceptions, or “medical models” of disability are fatally flawed. One serious and worrying dimension of their claims is that once the social dimensions of disability have been resolved no seriously “disabling” features remain. This paper examines and rejects conceptions of disability based on social factors but notes (...) that physical and mental conditions which disadvantage the individual have social dimensions. (shrink)

"Introduces the issues and controversies of contemporary moral philosophy. It gets students to struggle with the big questions of morality while it also relates these questions to practical issues, especially racism, global warming, moral education, and abortion. Providing a practical method for thinking about moral issues--a method based largely on the golden rule--it is written simply and clearly throughout."--Provided by publisher.

It is commonly accepted that the golden rule—most often formulated as "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"—is a unifying element between many diverse religious traditions, both Eastern and Western. Its influence also extends beyond such traditions, since many non-religious individuals hold up the golden rule as central to their lives. Yet, while it is extraordinarily important and widespread, the golden rule is often dismissed by scholars as a vague proverb that quickly leads to absurdities when (...) one attempts to formulate it in clear terms. In this book, Harry J. Gensler defends the golden rule and addresses all of the major philosophic objections, pointing out several common misunderstanding and misapplications. Gensler first discusses golden-rule reasoning and how to avoid the main pitfalls. He then relates the golden rule to world religions and history, and to areas like moral education, egoism, evolution, society, racism, business, and medicine. The book ends with a discussion of theoretical issues . Ethics and the Golden Rule offers two introductory chapters, the first is simpler and the second more technical; a reader may start with either or both. One can then read any combination of further chapters, in any order, depending on one’s interests; but Chapters 13 and 14 are technical and assume one has read Chapter 2. This is "a golden-rule book for everyone," accessible to a wide readership. (shrink)

“Values and Cultures” argues against cultural relativism (which denies objective values and holds that good and bad are relative to culture) and argues for cultural objectivism (which holds that cultures tend to share a common core of objective values). I begin by trying to make a plausible case for cultural relativism; then I point out problems with this view. I argue for three objective values that are widely shared across cultures. Consistency claims that we ought to be consistent in thought (...) and action; this includes things like consistency in beliefs, ends and means, living in harmony with our moral beliefs, evaluating similar cases similarly, and treating others only as we’re willing to be treated in the same situation (the golden rule). Knowledge claims that we need to be informed and that false beliefs are to be avoided. Imagination claims that we need a vivid and accurate awareness of what it would be like to be in the place of those affected by our actions. Further sections deal with our evolutionary origins, various metaethical justifications, religion and ethics, and my experience of teaching ethics in the United States and China. (shrink)

This paper begins to examine the question of where societal expectations about the nature of corporate social responsibility come from. In particular, we begin to consider arguments about how a country’s stage of economic development affects the kinds of social responsibility expectations that firms face and then how the nature of a country’s civil society might affect CSR expectations. The factors that should be taken into account for future empirical research are also considered.

In this paper a plea is made for an unprincipled approach to biomedical ethics, unprincipled of course just in the sense that the four principles are neither the start nor the end of the process of ethical reflection. While the four principles constitute a useful “checklist” approach to bioethics for those new to the field, and possibly for ethics committees without substantial ethical expertise approaching new problems, it is an approach which if followed by the bioethics community as a whole (...) would, the author believes, lead to sterility and uniformity of approach of a quite mindbogglingly boring kind. Moreover, much of bioethics is not concerned with identifying the principles or values appropriate to a particular issue, but rather involves analysing the arguments that are so often already in play and which present themselves as offering solutions in one direction or another. Here, as I try to show in discussion of these four scenarios, the principles allow massive scope in interpretation and are, frankly, not wonderful as a means of detecting errors and inconsistencies in argument. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Quality Adjusted Life Year or QALY is fatally flawed as a way of priority setting in health care and of dealing with the problem of scarce resources. In addition to showing why this is so the paper sets out a view of the moral constraints that govern the allocation of health resources and suggests reasons for a new attitude to the health budget.

This paper examines some of the arguments advanced and acted upon by doctors concerned in decisions about whether severely handicapped patients should live or die. It criticises the view that 'selective treatment' is morally preferable to infanticide and shows how the standard arguments advanced for this preference fail to sustain it. It argues that the self-deception, which is sometimes cited as a sign of humanity in these cases, and which is implicit in the term 'selective treatment' is more dangerous than (...) is the remote chance of brutalisation which is often cited as the danger of active euthanasia. (shrink)

Editor-in-Chief John Harris discusses the four events that remind us of the concerns about what happens before birth and after death.Four recent events have reminded us that many people are concerned about what happens before birth and after death, even if what happens before birth happens to those who will never be born and even if the near death happenings occur after death and to those who cannot care about them. The recent events involve a decision of the European Court (...) of Human Rights, a decision of the UK Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority , a proposal before the UK Parliament and a book by the most famous living German philosopher.On 8th July 2004 The European Court of Human Rights in Vo v France1 confirmed the view that the scope of legal principles protecting human individuals does not normally extend to the unborn and that in the words of the court “the unborn child is not regarded as a “person” …. (shrink)

Wilkins and Wakefield's hypothesis that language is fundamentally a cognitive rather than cominunicational adaptation is reasonable, but there are flaws in their anatomical and fossil evidence. Their analysis of reorganization also needs clarification. Finally, the origin of language ability must have occurred with australopithecine rather than habiline adaptations on entry into the novel hominid adaptive zone.

There are two well‐known ways of doing arithmetic with ordinal numbers: the “ordinary” addition, multiplication, and exponentiation, which are defined by transfinite iteration; and the “natural” (or “Hessenberg”) addition and multiplication (denoted ⊕ and ⊗), each satisfying its own set of algebraic laws. In 1909, Jacobsthal considered a third, intermediate way of multiplying ordinals (denoted × ), defined by transfinite iteration of natural addition, as well as the notion of exponentiation defined by transfinite iteration of his multiplication, which we denote. (...) (Jacobsthal's multiplication was later rediscovered by Conway.) Jacobsthal showed these operations too obeyed algebraic laws. In this paper, we pick up where Jacobsthal left off by considering the notion of exponentiation obtained by transfinitely iterating natural multiplication instead; we shall denote this. We show that and that ; note the use of Jacobsthal's multiplication in the latter. We also demonstrate the impossibility of defining a “natural exponentiation” satisfying reasonable algebraic laws. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been increasing managerial and academic attention given to a variety of mechanisms for companies to respond to stakeholder concerns about global business ethics. One area that merits further analysis is the role of industry‐level cooperation regarding issues in global business ethics such as labor practices. There are two main issues that we will address in this article: institutional pressures that predict when an industry will create a code of conduct and institutional complements for an industry‐level (...) code of conduct to be “successful” with regard to responding to stakeholder concerns about international business operations. We offer a number of propositions—bringing together work from both the corporate social responsibility and (neo)institutional theory literatures—with regard to both predictors and complements of industry self‐regulation in reference to labor practices. (shrink)

This paper argues that the HFEA’s recent report on sex selection abdicates its responsibility to give its own authentic advice on the matters within its remit, that it accepts arguments and conclusions that are implausible on the face of it and where they depend on empirical claims, produces no empirical evidence whatsoever, but relies on reckless speculation as to what the “facts” are likely to be. Finally, having committed itself to what I call the “democratic presumption”, that human freedom will (...) not be constrained unless very good and powerful reasons can be produced to justify such infringement of liberty, the HFEA simply reformulates the democratic presumption as saying the opposite—namely that freedom may only be exercised if powerful justifications are produced for any exercise of liberty. (shrink)

In his invited essay for Business & Society’s 60th anniversary, Archie B. Carroll refers to human rights as “a topic that holds considerable promise for CSR [corporate social responsibility] researchers in the future.” The objective of this article is to unpack this promise. We discuss the momentum of business and human rights in international policy, national regulation, and corporate practice, review how and why BHR scholarship has been thriving, provide a conceptual framework to analyze how BHR and corporate social responsibility (...) relate to each other, and provide a research agenda outlining how BHR can expand business and society scholarship in general and one of its foundational constructs, CSR, in particular, beyond the current confines of the business and society field. (shrink)