If stem cell-based therapies are developed, we will likely confront a difficult problem of justice: for biological reasons alone, the new therapies might benefit only a limited range of patients. In fact, they might benefit primarily white Americans, thereby exacerbating long-standing differences in health and health care.

2. Regimentation in Action. That these words of Quine's are unfortunate can best be shown by looking at two examples of regimentation in action and by considering how we might very naturally first appraise the regimenter's success with a metaphysical problem. One example will be taken from Paul Weiss's Modes of Being and the other from Quine himself.

By exploring which Fathers interested Newman most and when, using both published and archive material, Benjamin J. King demonstrates the influence of the..

AT LEAST ONE MODEL OF THE RATIONAL RELIGIOUS BELIEVER EXISTS: PRIMARY COMMITMENT TO DISCOVERING TRUTH AND ACTING RIGHTLY; COMMITMENT TO A RELIGION FLOWING FROM THOSE PRIMARY ONES; SOME DEGREE OF TENTATIVENESS ABOUT FAITH; SEARCHING FOR PROBABILITY, MORE THAN CERTAINTY; FAITH CONSTITUTING A PARTLY MORAL WAGER AIMED AT MAXIMIZING EXPECTED UTILITIES OF CERTAIN KINDS; A TOLERANT WISDOM ABOUT COMMITMENTS (AND ORDERINGS) PARTLY PLEASING TO SUCH SECULAR THINKERS AS MILL, QUINE AND POPPER, ALSO AQUINAS, BARTLEY AND WILLIAM JAMES; PRIMARY LOVE FOR GOD (...) AS THE SUPREME JUSTIFIER OF HUMAN JUSTIFIER OF HUMAN HISTORY--GOD’S POWER BEING TREATED AS SECONDARY TO HIS GOODNESS. (TOPICS INCLUDE: MIRACLES, IS AND OUGHT, PROBABILITY, WAGERS, PROOFS, TIME, WAR). (shrink)

Tarski's equivalence, as he allows, applies only roughly to assertions in ordinary language. Some of the relevant exceptions are of merely grammatical importance but others leave scope for interesting metaphysical pronouncements on science, mathematics and other fields of assertion. To understand these latter exceptions is to gain insight into Baylis' and Lukasiewicz' views on the question "Are some Propositions neither True nor False?" (this journal, 1936). From different standpoints each is right and each is wrong. This comment also applies to (...) some later contributions to their controversy. (shrink)

The SRL of King is a sound, complete and decidable logic designed specifically to support formalisms for the HPSG of Pollard and Sag. The SRL notion of modellability in a signature is particularly important for HPSG, and the present paper modifies an elegant method due to Blackburn and Spaan in order to prove that – modellability in each computable signature is 1 0 – modellability in some finite signature is 1 0 -hard, and – modellability in some finite signature (...) is decidable. (shrink)

Sustainability and sustainable development have become key phrases of the politics of the environment. They are at the centre of much environmental discourse and indeed of the series of which this collection is a part. This volume brings together a number of recent papers that address the ethical and political assumptions that underlie different uses of those concepts.

In some practical uncertain situations decision makers are presented with described events that are out of sequence when having to make a causal attribution. A theoretical perspective concerning the causal coherence of the explanation is developed to predict the effect of this on causal attribution. Three experiments investigated the effect on causal judgement when the described order of events did not correspond to their causal order. Participants had to judge the relative probability of two possible causes of an outcome in (...) scenarios in which presentation order varied. All three experiments found that there was a preference to judge that the cause associated with events described in causal order was more responsible for the outcome when events associated with one cause were interleaved in their presentation order with those from a second cause. This occurred when there was a strong causal relationship between events. The results were consistent with the causal coherence explanation. (shrink)

Numerous philosophers, among them Carl G. Hempel and Wesley C. Salmon, have attempted to explicate the notion of explanatory relevance in terms of the statistical relevance of various properties of an individual to the explanandum property itself (or what is here called narrow statistical relevance). This approach seems plausible if one assumes that to explain an occurrence is to show that it was to be expected or to exhibit its degree of expectability and the factors which influence its expectability. But (...) considerations of narrow statistical relevance do not provide an adequate basis for explanatory classification, and the aforementioned views of explanation are accordingly mistaken. Explanatory classification must provide at least a partial account of the nature of a thing, and such an account will generally go beyond what is required as a basis for correct expectation. (shrink)

Man an Organic Community - Vol. 1 is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1893. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has (...) become rare and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)

My real intention, however, is not to praise Wilson but to harry him. His argument seeks to give us substances, concrete individuals, without the prop of a Lockean substrate and without the Humean stigma of reducibility to bundles of properties. Wilson explicitly aims at doing justice in his doctrine to our rather hazy ordinary beliefs about individuals. He writes: "Goodman's language is remote from our ordinary ways of looking at the world and our ordinary ways of speaking about it. At (...) the risk of being subsequently hoist with my own petard I should be inclined to suggest that these ordinary ways should be treated with respect and, if possible, vindicated. At any rate we may quite properly be suspicious of gratuitous and unnecessary departures from our common sense views." Here Wilson stands in the tradition of Aristotle's attempt to resolve puzzles about common sense concepts and so to forestall the motivation for a revisionary metaphysics like Plato's. And much more blatantly than does the De Anima account of souls as simply the forms of organisms, Wilson's treatment of substances succeeds in distorting important differences in our ways of thought about personal identity and about non-personal identity. Without ignoring the fact that non-personal individuals themselves form a heterogeneous class from an identifier's point of view, I do suggest that certain identification puzzles about people and near-people tend to diverge sharply from those about things and near-things. Anthony Flew has brought out several quite peculiar difficulties concerning 'same person' in a paper on 'Locke and Personal Identity'. For instance, the problem of finding criteria for personal identity, as Flew commends Locke for showing, is quite crucial to questions about the concepts of fair reward and punishment and about the notion of 'survival.' Recall the obvious: it is people and near-people that we worry about both as having the possibility of a reincarnation or hereafter--be it theological, theosophical or parapsychological--and as being the proper recipients of praise and blame. Insofar as we worry about dogs, ships and ideals in these respects they are treated as what I call 'near-people.' Insofar as people do not invite such queries they are 'near-things.' Locke's probe into the logical grammar of personal identity points to common sense intuitions about individuals which Wilson here and elsewhere has contrived to slur over. Of course such apparent intuitions may lead to error or even nonsense, but let us for the moment cleave to Wilson's intention of vindicating them. (shrink)

Putative resolutions of the sorites paradox in which the major premise is declared false or illegitimate, Including max black's treatment in terms of the alleged illegitimacy of vague attributions to borderline cases, Are rejected on semantical grounds. The resort to a non-Bivalent logic of representational "accuracy" with a continuum of accuracy values is shown to resolve the paradox, And the identification of accuracy values as truth values is defended as compatible with the central insight of the correspondence theory of truth (...) and with the practical legitimacy of most applications of ordinary, Bivalent logic to statements involving vague predicates. (shrink)

While euthanasia and assisted suicide have been the subject of continuing public debate, few studies have examined the attitudes of relevant patient groups. This study systematically reviews the research literature on patients’ attitudes from 1989 to 2003, to i) identify the number of studies, ii) evaluate study methods and measures, and iii) examine prevalence of favourable attitudes. A systematic search was undertaken across five databases. Methods of the 21 studies identified varied considerably. General support for euthanasia and assisted suicide was (...) substantial across patient groups, with lower support for these as a personal option. The cancer / terminally ill / palliative care patient group had the lowest median general support for euthanasia (60% [IQ1=47, IQ3=65]) and assisted suicide (50% [IQ1=38, IQ3=71]), while the general/older/younger patient group had the lowest median personal preference for these (18% [IQ1=14, IQ3=27]). The effect of question context on level of support was unclear, due to the variety and number of contexts used across questions. There is still work that needs to be done in this controversial area before any robust conclusions can be made concerning the attitudes of patients to euthanasia and assisted suicide, and the adoption of a minimum set of standard questions would enhance this work. (shrink)

It is increasingly fashionable to attack McTaggart's arguments about the Unreality of Time with a minimum of attention to what he was trying to establish. Those who have only read his one still famous paper ‘The Unreality of Time’ [III] are too likely to assume from professional philosophers' current counter-arguments that the man was a sceptic with only a single idea in his head, rather than an ingenious, constructive metaphysician. Since so much formal and informal analysis has been directed against (...) so few of McTaggart's comments on Time, and mainly against his destructive claim that the vulgar concept of Time requires as explicans an incoherent ‘A-series’ of becomings with ever-shifted pasts, presents and futures, perhaps it is time to encourage some redirection of analytical assessment to what he was arguing for. I say this not only for historical reasons, though I shall draw historical comparisons, but because rationally assessing what McTaggart really denies about Time may require some serious interest in what he so interestingly asserts about our experience of what we call ‘Time’. Trousers, pace Austin, normally have one wearer but two legs. If McTaggart's negative points deserve such a plethora of analysis, then the positive view needs attention or the analysis is ill-aimed. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article:MEANING AND SAYING: Essay in the Philosophy of Language By Frank B. EbersoleGOD AND THE SOUL By Peter GeachTHE MORAL MEANING OF REVOLUTION By Jon P. Gunnemann.

This article considers two related and fundamental issues about morality in a virtual world. The first is whether the anonymity that is a feature of virtual worlds can shed light upon whether people are moral when they can act with impunity. The second issue is whether there are any moral obligations in a virtual world and if so what they might be. -/- Our reasons for being good are fundamental to understanding what it is that makes us moral or indeed (...) whether any of us truly are moral. Plato grapples with this problem in book two of The Republic where Socrates is challenged by his brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon. They argue that people are moral only because of the costs to them of being immoral; the external constraints of morality. -/- Glaucon asks us to imagine a magical ring that enables its wearers to become invisible and capable of acting anonymously. The ring is in some respects analogous to the possibilities created by online virtual worlds such as Second Life, so the dialogue is our entry point into considering morality within these worlds. These worlds are three dimensional user created environments where people control avatars and live virtual lives. As well as being an important social phenomenon, virtual worlds and what people chose to do in them can shed light on what people will do when they can act without fear of normal sanction. -/- This paper begins by explaining the traditional challenge to morality posed by Plato, relating this to conduct in virtual worlds. Then the paper will consider the following skeptical objection. A precondition of all moral requirements is the ability to act. There are no moral requirements in virtual worlds because they are virtual and it is impossible to act in a virtual world. Because avatars do not have real bodies and the persons controlling avatars are not truly embodied, it is impossible for people to truly act in a virtual world. We will show that it is possible to perform some actions and suggest a number of moral requirements that might plausibly be thought to result. Because avatars cannot feel physical pain or pleasure these moral requirements are interestingly different from those of real life. Hume’s arguments for why we should be moral apply to virtual worlds and we conclude by considering how this explains why morality exists in these environments. (shrink)

In his well known paper ‘Wittgenstein’s Builders’ Professor Rush Rhees has rightly criticized some appeals that Wittgenstein made to certain so-called ‘primitive languages’ while developing the early sections of the Philosophical Investigations. These appeals are taken by Wittgenstein to expose the shortcomings of an account given by Augustine at Confessions I, 8 of meaning and of learning language. I shall try first in this discussion to make it clear that at least some of Rhees’ criticisms and complaints are made for (...) very dubious reasons. Then I shall try to show that there are much better reasons for dissatisfaction, reasons which may tie up with recurrent muddles in Wittgenstein’s later thought. It will be contended that there is real point in construing several Wittgensteinian appeals to primitive languages as being somewhat vitiated by a systematic mistake. For, if I am right, a curious ambivalence arises in the text which results from confusion about what is largely false, because it is so inadequate, and what is wholly in error, because it is so fundamentally incoherent as to invite the label ‘Nonsense’. (shrink)