GPs usually care for their patients for an extended period of time, therefore, requests to not only discontinue a patient’s treatment but to assist a patient in a suicide are likely to create intensely stressful situations for physicians. However, in order to ensure the best patient care possible, the competent communication about the option of physician assisted suicide as well as the assessment of the origin and sincerity of the request are very important. This is especially true, since patients’ requests (...) for PAS can also be an indicator for unmet needs or concerns. Twenty-three qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted to in-depth explore this multifaceted, complex topic while enabling GPs to express possible difficulties when being asked for assistance. The analysis of the gathered data shows three main themes why GPs may find it difficult to professionally communicate about PAS: concerns for their own psychological well-being, conflicting personal values or their understanding of their professional role. In the discussion part of this paper we re-assess these different themes in order to ethically discuss and analyse how potential barriers to professional communication concerning PAS could be overcome. (shrink)

Advance directives are written documents that give patients the opportunity to communicate their preferences regarding treatments they do or do not want to receive in case they become unable to make decisions. Commonly used pre-printed forms have different formats. Some offer space for patients to appoint a surrogate decision maker, and/or to determine future medical treatments and/or give a statement of personal values. So far it is unknown which forms GPs preferably use and why they decide to do so. 23 (...) semi-structured interviews with GPs were analysed using content analysis. Interviewees mainly use short templates and medium length templates with checkboxes to indicate patients’ preferences in regards to life prolonging measures. Especially when patients faced the progression of a disease, participants use the latter version. Only then, the interviewees remarked, patients are capable to rate concrete situations reliably. GPs also realize the importance of the verbal assessment of patients’ preferences; however they rarely keep a written form of the conversation. Some GPs hand out one or more templates and ask their patients to read and think about them at home with the option to talk to them about it later on, while others prefer their patients to fill them out alone at home. Regardless of template usage, most GPs emphasize that ADs require regular updates. GPs tend to see standardized advance directives mainly as a tool to start a conversation with their patients and to identify their real preferences and values. When the patient is still not facing the progression of an already existing disease it could be sufficient to only appoint a surrogate decision maker instead of creating a full AD. However, in all other situations, appointing a surrogate decision maker should be backed up by a written statement of a patient’s general values. Patients and their relatives should always have the opportunity to ask their GP for medical advice when drafting an AD. It is crucial to regularly verify and update existing ADs within the course of a disease. (shrink)

Food security is becoming an increasingly relevant topic in the Global North, especially in urban areas. Because such areas do not always have good access to nutritionally adequate food, the question of how to supply them is an urgent priority in order to maintain a healthy population. Urban and peri-urban agriculture, as sources of local fresh food, could play an important role. Whereas some scholars do not differentiate between peri-urban and urban agriculture, seeing them as a single entity, our hypothesis (...) is that they are distinct, and that this has important consequences for food security and other issues. This has knock-on effects for food system planning and has not yet been appropriately analysed. The objectives of this study are to provide a systematic understanding of urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North, showing their similarities and differences, and to analyse their impact on urban food security. To this end, an extensive literature review was conducted, resulting in the identification and comparison of their spatial, ecological and socio-economic characteristics. The findings are discussed in terms of their impact on food security in relation to the four levels of the food system: food production, processing, distribution and consumption. The results show that urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North indeed differ in most of their characteristics and consequently also in their ability to meet the food needs of urban inhabitants. While urban agriculture still meets food needs mainly at the household level, peri-urban agriculture can provide larger quantities and has broader distribution pathways, giving it a separate status in terms of food security. Nevertheless, both possess (unused) potential, making them valuable for urban food planning, and both face similar threats regarding urbanisation pressures, necessitating adequate planning measures. (shrink)

Ein textnaher, fortlaufender Kommentar zu Kants Lehre von organisierten Wesen in der „Kritik der Urteilskraft“ ist ein Desiderat sowohl der Kantforschung als auch der Philosophie und Geschichte der Lebenswissenschaften. Auch gibt es bisher nur wenige Lesarten, die Kants Philosophie der Biologie im Ganzen erschließen und versuchen, sie in die vielschichtigen historischen Kontexte der frühneuzeitlichen Naturforschung einzuordnen. Das vorliegende Buch schließt diese Lücken. Es verteidigt die Thesen, dass Kant organisierte Wesen durch drei Arten von Kräften und Gesetzen charakterisiert – durch mechanische, (...) physisch teleologische und moralteleologische Krätfe und Gesetze – deren Vereinbarkeit im Bewusstsein des Menschen, und in der Erfahrungswelt, so, wie sie dem Menschen erscheint, auf der regulativen Idee ihrer Einheit im schöpferischen, theoretisch praktischen Bewusstsein Gottes beruht. Kants Lehre von organisierten Wesen kann als Verbindung einer gemäßigten, weder animalkulistisch noch ovistisch vereinseitigten, Präformationslehre mit einer vitalistischen Spielart der Epigenesislehre verstanden werden. – Weiterführende und provokative Einsichten für eine der bewegtesten Debatten der gegenwärtigen Kantforschung. (shrink)

The permanent preservation of objects in global custodianship is a captivating ideal that informs countless museums’ corporate identities and governs collection guidelines as well as politics. Recent research has challenged the alleged perpetuity of collections and collected items, revealing their coherence as fragile and dependent on historically, politically and culturally specific conditions. Duplicates offer an instructive point of entry to explore the idea of collection permanence, museum politics, and the mobility of museum objects. The history of duplicates, moreover, comprises a (...) constellation of practises, concepts and debates that can be found in various forms throughout the intertwined histories of natural-scientific, ethnographic and artistic collections. This history, however, has rarely been questioned or explored. By introducing the issue of duplicates, this paper opens up a discussion that not only connects different forms of collections, but also situates the history of collecting institutions across the disciplinary spectrum within broader political, economic and epistemic frameworks. (shrink)

In 1985, Swiss legal philosopher Walter Ott visited Herbert Hart in Oxford and made this record of their meeting, which casts novel light on some of Hart’s ideas. Ott engaged Hart in a fresh encounter with the legal philosophy of Gustav Radbruch, particularly Hart’s and Radbruch’s reasons for a minimum content of justice in law. They also discussed the grudge informer, state responsibility under laws of an earlier régime, and questions of the definition and falsifiability of legal theories. Hart surprisingly (...) reported Hans Kelsen as stating, when they had met at Berkeley in 1961, that Hume (and not Kant, and certainly not Wittgenstein) was the greatest philosopher who had ever lived. The translation is accompanied with annotations explaining references, assumptions and contexts. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue against Ginsborg's (2014) rejection of divine design in Kant's account of organisms that Kant develops a variety of physico-theological arguments throughout his career whereby he changes the premises of the physico-theological argument in accordance with his changing concepts of the order of nature. In the first part of the paper, I will reconstruct Kant’s ealier attempts to develop a valid physico-theological argument. While Kant recognizes marks of divine design in the unity of the major (...) mechanical orders of the macrocosmos in his early "Theory of the Heavens", in the "Ground of Proof" essay, Kant claims that marks of divine design appear in the unity of the highly complex minor mechanisms in the microcosmos also, in what he later calls ‘organized’ beings. But although the inclusion of organic orders as marks of divine design improves the strength of the physico-theological argument, Kant, as Hume before him, at the same time realizes its syllogistic defectiveness. Its main logical failure consists in the derivation of a non-empirical conclusion, the idea of God, from empirical premises, the observable beauty and order of nature. Consequently, Kant follows a destructive path in the first "Critique", now claiming that the physico-theological argument relies on the ontological argument, whereby the latter is false, and finally avoids the physico-theological argument in the second "Critique". But in the third "Critique", Kant reintroduces a new variant of the physico-theological argument beside the ethicotheological argument. Why so? I will argue in the second part of the paper, that Kant’s new attitude towards the physico-theological argument in the third "Critique" relies, again, on a new insight into the order of nature: Kant’s detection of teleological laws of nature and of the necessary unity of a natural purpose. Both allow Kant to no longer ground the physico-theological argument on a posteriori, empirical premises related to the mechanical macrocosmic or microcosmic orders of nature alone, but on a priori premises instead related to the teleological order of nature and the necessary unity of a natural purpose. The concept of the necessary unity of a natural purpose, though a posteriori and empirical, implies the non-empirical, a priori necessary unity of all properties that can be subordinate to the idea of a natural purpose. Moving the premise of the physico-theological argument from the empirical a posteriori into the non-empirical a priori realm enables Kant to close the logical gap in the earlier versions of his physico-theological argument and to validly derive a conclusion from the a priori moment in the notion of the designed to the a priori notion of its designer. But this argument is not without flaws either. (shrink)

This article develops the idea of ‘ecological freedom’ from Aldo Leopold’s account of ecological relations in terms of the dual notions of the “freedom from want and fear” and the “freedom to make mistakes.” Through an analysis of Leopold’s thought on technology and civilization, I develop and argue for the claim that direct experience of ecological relations, or ecological freedom, is vital to meaningful human life. The absence of ecological freedom constitutes a form of ecological alienation, which is paired with (...) social alienation. Ecological freedom is then used as a way to understand environmental injustice and critique contemporary environmentalism. (shrink)

In Arthur Danto’s The Seat of the Soul: Three Chairs, the chair is a source of power and authority. This paper explores the aesthetic importance of chairs and their designers and determines why people from various cultures create different designs that all perform the same function: seating. Here, the chair is examined as an artwork and design phenomenon from historical, cultural, stylistic, and aesthetic perspectives. Data were gathered through a comprehensive literature review, reports, archival materials, and museum visits. Descriptive, historical, (...) and analytical methods were used to explore the religious, symbolic, spiritual, artistic, competitive, and academic legacies of the chair. Despite the similarity in function, the chair is more important than a sofa, bed, or bench. It displays one’s status, education, knowledge, and artistic taste. However, practicality, low-cost materials, and money have trumped aesthetics in recent years. The findings may help young chair designers highlight their competitiveness and inventiveness. (shrink)

This article considers the sexual politics of animal evidence in the context of German sexology around 1920. In the 1910s, the German-Jewish geneticist Richard B. Goldschmidt conducted experiments on the moth Lymantria dispar, and discovered individuals that were no longer clearly identifiable as male or female. When he published an article tentatively arguing that his research on ‘intersex butterflies’ could be used to inform concurrent debates about human homosexuality, he triggered a flurry of responses from Berlin-based sexologists. In this article, (...) I examine how a number of well-known sexologists affiliated with Magnus Hirschfeld, his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, and later his Institute of Sexology attempted to incorporate Goldschmidt’s experiments into their sexological work between 1917 and 1923. Intersex butterflies were used to discuss issues at the heart of German sexology: the legal debate about the criminalisation of homosexuality under paragraph 175; the scientific methodology of sexology, caught between psychiatric, biological, and sociological approaches to the study of sexual and gender diversity; and the status of sexology as natural science, able to contribute knowledge about the sexual Konstitution of the organism. This article thus shows that butterfly experiments function as important and politically charged evidence for a discussion at the heart of the sexological project of those involved in the founding of the Institute of Sexology: the question of the nature and naturalness of homosexuality (and sexual intermediacy more broadly) and its political consequences. In doing so, this article makes a case for paying attention to non-human actors in the history of sexology. (shrink)

In place of traditional approaches in environmental ethics, I suggest an improved approach, with respect to the goal of improving the condition of the natural environment, called 'world mediation' through the use of Hannah Arendt's theory of the vita activa . This approach focuses on the relationship between human made worlds and nature, from which a theory of value is suggested. Intrinsic value theory and nature-culture monism are both criticized for an insufficient attention paid toward the human-nature relationship.

The essay collection "Kant on Proofs for God's Existence" provides a highly needed, comprehensive analysis of the radical turns of Kant's views on proofs for God's existence.— In the "Theory of Heavens" (1755), Kant intends to harmonize the Newtonian laws of motion with a physico-theological argument for the existence of God. But only a few years later, in the "Ground of Proof" essay (1763), Kant defends an ontological ('possibility' or 'modal') argument on the basis of its logical exactitude while he (...) praises the physico-theological argument for its beauty and appeal to the common sense. In the first "Critique" (1781/7), Kant replaces traditional constitutive ontological, cosmological, and physico-theological proofs with his own regulative theoretical and moral-practical religious arguments. He continues to defend a moral argument in the second "Critique" (1788). But in the third "Critique" (1790), Kant reintroduces a physico-theological besides an ethicotheological argument in order to unify the critical system of philosophy. Kant develops further moral arguments and arguments from evil in the "Theodicy" essay (1791) and the "Religion" (1793/4), and still searches for the right kind of proof for God's existence in the "Opus postumum" (1796–1804).—Part one of this volume is dedicated to an analysis of Kant's proofs for God's existence in their historical order that explains which proofs Kant favors or rejects in various periods of his thought. Part two contains a systematic classification of main kinds of proof for God's existence in Kant that outlines the argumentative structure of particular kinds of proof and discusses Kant's potential reasons for their variations and modifications. The essay collection speaks to Kant specialists, philosophers, and theologians, but introduces the topic to non-academic readers also. -/- Contributers: Uygar Abaci (Pennsylvania State University), Craig Bacon (University of South Carolina), Andrew Chignell (Princeton University), Eckart Förster (Humboldt University, Johns Hopkins University), Ina Goy (Beijing Normal University) Paul Guyer (Brown University), Graham Oppy (Monash University), Lara Ostaric (Temple University), Stephen Palmquist (Independent Scholar), Lawrence Pasternack (Oklahoma State University), Konstantin Pollok (University of Mainz), Oliver Sensen (University of Tulane), Allen Wood (Bloomington University, Stanford University). (shrink)

Verse treatises on Advaita Jaina, and Nyaya philosophy.

In this paper, I investigate the relation of Kant's theory of biology to epigenetic accounts of organic generation and development. In the literature, a dispute about similarities between Blumenbach's epigenetic account and Kant dominated the debate for many years (see Lenoir 1980, 1981, and 1982, 17–34, Richards 2000; 2002, 207–37; Look 2006, and van den Berg 2009). Some more recent interpreters claim that Wolff's, more than Blumenbach's account plays the pivotal role in the development of a vitalistic conception of epigenesis (...) in Kant (see Dupont 2007 and Huneman 2007). Although I myself hold the view that Kant's position contains preformistic and epigenetic characteristics, in the current paper I focus solely on an investigation of epigenetic elements in Kant's account and compare them to the corresponding epigenetic elements in Wolff's theory. Section I of the paper is devoted to an analysis of Wolff's most important epigenetic theorems: the notion of the essential power (vis essentialis) and the conception of the part-whole composition of organized matter. Although Wolff describes the essential power vitalisticly, as a principle of life, he understands it as the cause of mechanical motions explaining the generation, nourishment, and the growth of an organism. Wolff's model of the part-whole composition of organic matter is subtle, but committed to fundamental mechanistic assumptions, such as that the organism as a whole is composed of inorganic parts. In section II, I analyze the corresponding elements in Kant's theory: the notion of the formative power and the conception of the whole-part composition of organized materials. Kant describes the formative power as a principle that causes the purposive form of an organized being such that matter and mechanism are the means to the purpose of the being as their end. The purpose of the whole is a functional unit which is in principle superior to the form and matter of the subordinate parts. The parts are combined into such a whole in being mutually cause and effect of each other and in being related to the superior whole. In section III, I respond to the debate in the literature. Against Dupont (2007) and Huneman (2007) I argue that, according to Wolff, the vis essentialis accounts for mechanic effects in matter, whereas, according to Kant, the formative power explains the intentional order (form, end, purpose) of an individual organized being, its parts, and its species. Since this view is closer to Blumenbach than to Wolff, the ongoing comparison between Kant and Blumenbach in the literature is justified. However, the emphasis on the specific part-whole composition that Kant considers to be the determining feature of an organized being can be found only in Wolff and not in Blumenbach—though Wolff and Kant describe it in opposing ways. This increases the systematic importance of Wolff for Kant. Thus, a fresh look on the historical debate is required. (shrink)

The seventeenth century witnesses the demise of two core doctrines in the theory of perception: naive realism about color, sound, and other sensible qualities and the empirical theory, drawn from Alhacen and Roger Bacon, which underwrote it. This created a problem for seventeenth century philosophers: how is that we use qualities such as color, feel, and sound to locate objects in the world, even though these qualities are not real? -/- Ejecting such sensible qualities from the mind-independent world at once (...) makes for a cleaner ontology, since bodies can now be understood in purely geometrical terms, and spawns a variety of fascinating complications for the philosophy of perception. If sensible qualities are not part of the mind-independent world, just what are they, and what role, if any, do they play in our cognitive economy? We seemingly have to use color to visually experience objects. Do we do so by inferring size, shape, and motion from color? Or is it a purely automatic operation, accomplished by divine decree? -/- This volume traces the debate over perceptual experience in early modern France, covering such figures as Antoine Arnauld, Robert Desgabets, and Pierre-Sylvain Regis alongside their better-known countrymen Rene Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche. (shrink)

Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology consisting of thirty-six classes, designed to support information integration, retrieval, and analysis across all domains of scientific investigation, presently employed in over 350 ontology projects around the world. BFO is a genuine top-level ontology, containing no terms particular to material domains, such as physics, medicine, or psychology. In this paper, we demonstrate how a series of cases illustrating common types of change may be represented by universals, defined classes, and relations employing the (...) BFO framework. We provide discussion of these cases to provide a template for other ontologists using BFO, as well as to facilitate comparison with the strategies proposed by ontologists using different top-level ontologies. (shrink)

Au cours du séminaire Arts, appareils et diffusion de la MSH de 2003-2004, furent explorés les rapports entre les appareils modernes projectifs et leurs époques, suivant une hypothèse benjaminienne : ce sont les appareils dits, au ...

Absolute and relative outcome measures measure a treatment’s effect size, purporting to inform treatment choices. I argue that absolute measures are at least as good as, if not better than, relative ones for informing rational decisions across choice scenarios. Specifically, this dominance of absolute measures holds for choices between a treatment and a control group treatment from a trial and for ones between treatments tested in different trials. This distinction has hitherto been neglected, just like the role of absolute and (...) baseline risks in rational decision-making that my analysis reveals. Recognizing both aspects advances the discussion on reporting outcome measures. (shrink)

Background: More and more adults in their fifties and sixties are confronted with the need to support their ageing parents. Although many aspects of filial caregiving have been researched, a well-documented and comprehensive overview of the caregiving experience is lacking. Aim: This study aims for a better understanding of the caregiving experience of adult children by generating an overview of main themes in international research. Method: A literature review of qualitative studies, focusing on the experiences of adult children caring for (...) their ageing parents, was performed. The electronic EBSCO databases Academic Search Premier, CINAHL and PsycINFO, and Google Scholar were searched to identify relevant qualitative studies published between 2000 and 2017. The ‘SPIDER’ eligibility criteria directed the approach. The quality of studies included was screened with the assessment sheet designed by Hawker and colleagues. The experiences reported were analysed and themes were synthesized. Ethical consideration: Ethical requirements were respected in every phase of the research process. Findings: Nineteen qualitative studies met the inclusion criteria. The quality of the relationship with the parent appears to be an important determinant of the children’s caregiving experience. Within this context, three themes were found: caregiving as an emotional rollercoaster, a normatively demanding experience and an opportunity for personal development. Discussion: Children caring for their ageing parents have to deal with a wide range of contradicting and conflicting norms and values. Implications for healthcare professionals and future research have been discussed. Conclusion: Caring for ageing parents is a continuous quest for giving the best possible care and living up to one’s personal values, within the context of the parent’s declining health. Professionals who support filial caregivers should address not only practical responsibilities but also the normative questions and moral considerations caregivers are dealing with. (shrink)

Die Abhandlung „Immanuel Kant über das moralische Gefühl der Achtung“ legt nach einer Einführung in den historischen und werkgeschichtlichen Hintergrund wesentliche systematische Züge des moralischen Gefühls der Achtung dar. Es wird gezeigt, dass das apriorische Gefühl der Achtung einerseits von allen anderen empirischen Gefühlen unterschieden, dennoch aber ein Gefühl ist und in seiner spezifischen Sonderstellung drei bedeutende moralphilosophische Funktionen übernehmen kann: eine evaluative, eine kausale und eine bildende Funktion. Kants These, dass es im strengen Sinn nur ein rein moralisches Gefühl (...) gibt, wird gegen ein graduierendes Modell der moralischen Relevanz von Gefühlen diskutiert und gegen alternative klassische Deutungen des moralischen Gefühls wie die Liebe, die Sympathie und das Mitleid abgewogen. (shrink)

What is the origin of the concept of a law of nature? How much does it owe to theology and metaphysics? To what extent do the laws of nature permit contingency? Are there exceptions to the laws of nature? Is it possible to give a reductive analysis of lawhood, or is it a primitive? -/- Twelve brand-new essays by an international team of leading philosophers take up these and other central questions on the laws of nature, whilst also examining some (...) of the most important intuitions and assumptions that have guided the debate over laws of nature since the concept's invention in the seventeenth century. -/- Laws of Nature spans the history of philosophy and of science, contemporary metaphysics, and contemporary philosophy of science. Contents: 1. Intuitions and Assumptions in the Debate over Laws of Nature, Walter Ott and Lydia Patton 2. Early Modern Roots of the Philosophical Concept of a Law of Nature, Helen Hattab 3. Laws of Nature and the Divine Order of Things: Descartes and Newton on Truth in Natural Philosophy, Mary Domski 4. Leges sive natura: Bacon, Spinoza, and a Forgotten Concept of Law, Walter Ott 5. Laws and Powers in the Frame of Nature, Stathis Psillos 6. Laws and Ideal Unity, Angela Breitenbach 7. Becoming Humean, John W. Carroll 8. A Perspectivalist Better Best System Account of Lawhood, Michela Massimi 9. Laws: An Invariance Based Account, James Woodward 10. How the Explanations of Natural Laws Make Some Reducible Physical Properties Natural and Explanatorily Powerful, Marc Lange 11. Laws and their Exceptions, Stephen Mumford 12. Are laws of nature consistent with contingency?, Nancy Cartwright and Pedro Merlussi. (shrink)

According to the phenomenal intentionality research program, a state’s intentional content is fixed by its phenomenal character. Defenders of this view have little to say about just how this grounding is accomplished. I argue that without a robust account of representation, the research program promises too little. Unfortunately, most of the well-developed accounts of representation – asymmetric dependence, teleosemantics, and the like – ground representation in external relations such as causation. Such accounts are inconsistent with the core of the phenomenal (...) intentionality program. I argue that, however counter-intuitive it may seem, the best prospect for explaining how phenomenal character represents appeals to resemblance. (shrink)

Gianfrancesco Guarnieri estreou no teatro brasileiro em 1958 com a peça Eles não usem black-tie. Assim como já ocorrera com a obra de dramaturgos europeus mais de meio século antes, nesta peça mais uma vez encena-se a crise formal do drama, na medida em que a forma se desencontra do conteúdo. Não sendo indiferentes estes pontos de vista, observam-se no próprio texto os embates entre forma dramática e conteúdo épico, ora prevalecendo uma, ora outra.

Quando Brecht escreveu que o teatro épico pressupõe a posse dos meios de produção teatral pelo movimento operário, além de indicar as raízes históricas de suas opções estéticas, estava expondo um critério de añálise para o conjunto da produção teatral moderna. Já a tardia importação do teatro moderno pelos brasileiro foi patrocinada por uma burguesia desenvolvimentista geralmente ciosa da necessidade de cortar ou obscurecer os vínculos das obras passíveis de consumo local. Mas no final dos anos cinquenta vamos observar o (...) encontro entre forma importada e adaptada e demandas culturais que ultrapassavam os estreitos limites impostos ao nosso mercado teatral modernzado. (shrink)