Replying to the criticisms of Lebech, the author tries, regarding the issue of embryo research, to draw a line between what could be an international legal approach and what is a philosophical ontological quest. It is then up to the reader to decide if, and how far, these two different approaches can be complementary.

The objective of this paper is to stimulate academic debate on embryo and fetal research from the perspective of the drafting of a protocol to the European Convention on Biomedicine. The Steering Committee on Bioethics of the Council of Europe was mandated to draw up such a protocol and for this purpose organised an important symposium on reproductive technologies and embryo research, in Strasbourg from the 16th to the 18th of December 1996.

I am grateful to the commentators for their deep engagement with the issues raised in my paper. They raise a number of important challenges and questions about the use of frailty i...

In his discussion note ‘J. J. C. Smart, Materialism and Occam's Razor’ Peter Glassen argues that it was inconsistent of me both to assert that realism is true and that Occam's razor is a reason for the materialist thesis. Glassen says that Occam's razor ‘ is not a physical thing, state or process at all ’. A little further down on the same page he uses the phrase ‘material or physical thing, state, or process’. It is possible, therefore, that Glassen (...) regards the distinction between ‘material’ and ‘physical’ as unimportant in the present context. I think however that one way of replying to Glassen turns on this distinction. (shrink)

The traditional view was that a concept must be immediate if anything is, i.e., it must be something possessed directly by my mind. To deny this seems to be saying "I think but I don't have ideas." This is of course what the proponents of the linguistic philosophy are in effect saying, and perhaps for them it is all right. Professor Price has argued ingeniously against the whole linguistic position: against the possibility of a purely linguistic solution to the problem. (...) Yet whether we follow Price or the language philosophers we are forced into a rather puzzling situation. One likes to say that one has ideas, thoughts, concepts, but there is a serious question as to whether we can ever actually cognize such entities. Indeed Price introspects and does not find them. Most of us--including our linguistic colleagues--would be quick to agree. A thought cannot be introspected like an image. There just does not seem to be anything there. As thinkers of thoughts, we are looking inward toward nothing; we are indeed living examples of "hollow men." So it is that we are faced with a dilemma. Either we say we think but do not really have ideas, or we must somehow show that such concepts are actually immediate after all. Neither alternative seems the least bit welcome. The latter seems utterly impossible. (shrink)

As an immediate reply, meanwhile, I should like to make a remark or two about what is perhaps the central issue raised in the foregoing Comment. This is whether Price's dispositional reduction, or anyone's dispositional reduction can adequately render the act of thinking. Alternatively, the question could, I think, be stated in more presently-favoured language. One could ask whether statements about universals, thoughts, concepts, or ideas can be logically deduced from dispositional statements not containing these "mentalistic" terms. If one is (...) inclined to prefer this more lengthy formulation one may then take this to be my meaning; whenever "dispositional solution" or "dispositional reduction" is mentioned one may translate it into this longer form. (shrink)

According to Mark 6:14–29, John the Baptist was beheaded by the order of Herod Antipas. This dramatic event became inevitable after a cunning interplay between Herodias and her daughter, who remains nameless in the New Testament. According to Flavius Josephus, she was called Salome ( Jewish Antiquities XVIII, 5.4 § 136–137), and under that name, she went down in history. For the sake of convenience, I also call her ‘Salome’ in this article. Salome is the Greek form of the Hebrew (...) name Shlomith, which was very popular in early Judaic times and means ‘she who brings peace and tranquillity’. Unlike the faithful women elsewhere in Mark’s gospel (5:21–43; 7:24–30; 14:3–9), Herodias and her daughter are not exactly models of virtue. Yet, it is questionable as to whether they are both thoroughly bad and whether they are both equally responsible for the murder of John. This article does not provide a historical reconstruction of what exactly happened at the court of Herod Antipas, but it contains a narrative analysis of what happened in the court of Herod Antipas. This narrative analysis is followed by an intertextual approach in the second part of this article. Firstly, I will compare Mark’s story with what Flavius Josephus tells about the beheading of John. Thereafter, I will highlight the roles of Herodias and Salome in the play Salome by Oscar Wilde from 1894, which, in turn, forms the basis of the libretto for the opera Salome by Richard Strauss from 1905. Do we encounter in these modern artistic recreations (Neuschöpfungen) only transformations of Mark’s story, or also transgressions in which Wilde and Strauss have largely replaced the original meaning of the story with new meaning? (shrink)

Williamson claims that we are cognitive homeless, and for most aspects of our cognitive life it is not the case that if we are in the mental state S we know or are in a position to know that we are in said mental state. In this paper, I critically examine Williamson’s argument, some common misconceptions, and provide a different understanding of the way we relate to our own mental states that shows how we are not always in a condition (...) of cognitive homelessness. (shrink)

The influence of age and formal education on the development of moral reasoning in a Spanish sample of students was assessed by using a Spanish translation of Rest's Defining Issues Test. Our results support the hypothesis that moral development is highly related to both variables in our cultural context, although more so with formal education than with age.

This commentary is intended to illuminate Gold's & Stoljar 's main contentions by exploiting a favorite comparison, namely, that between biology and electronics. Roughly, and leaving out Darwinian theory and the like, biology is physics and chemistry plus natural history just as electronics is physics plus wiring diagrams. Natural history contains generalizations, not laws. Psychology and cognitive science typically give more abstract explanations, as do “block diagrams” in electronics, and are less dispensable.

Inleiding in het denken van drie vroeg-christelijke auteurs, zoals dat zich ontwikkelde tijdens de confrontatie van het christendom met het jodendom en de hellenistische filosofie.