It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it (...) would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision, and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices. (shrink)

Critics of contemporary metaphysics argue that it attempts to do the hard work of science from the ease of the armchair. Physics, not metaphysics, tells us about the fundamental facts of the world, and empirical psychology is best placed to reveal the content of our concepts about the world. Exploring and understanding the world through metaphysical reflection is obsolete. In this paper, I will show why this critique of metaphysics fails, arguing that metaphysical methods used to make claims about the (...) world are similar to scientific methods used to make claims about the world, but that the subjects of metaphysics are not the subjects of science. Those who argue that metaphysics uses a problematic methodology to make claims about subjects better covered by natural science get the situation exactly the wrong way around: metaphysics has a distinctive subject matter, not a distinctive methodology. The questions metaphysicians address are different from those of scientists, but the methods employed to develop and select theories are similar. In the first section of the paper, I will describe the sort of subject matter that metaphysics tends to engage with. In the second section of the paper, I will show how metaphysical theories are classes of models and discuss the roles of experience, common sense and thought experiments in the construction and evaluation of such models. Finally, in the last section I will discuss the way these methodological points help us to understand the metaphysical project. Getting the right account of the metaphysical method allows us to better understand the relationship between science and metaphysics, to explain why doing metaphysics successfully involves having a range of different theories, to understand the role of thought experiments involving fictional worlds, and to situate metaphysical realism in a scientifically realist context. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the spatiotemporalist approach way of modeling the fundamental constituents, structure, and composition of the world has taken a wrong turn. Spatiotemporalist approaches to fundamental structure take the fundamental nature of the world to be spatiotemporal: they take the category of spatiotemporal to be fundamental. I argue that the debates over the nature of the fundamental space in the physics show us that (i) the fact that it is conceivable that the manifest world could be (...) exactly as it appears to us, even though spatiotemporal entities are not fundamental, means that a central premise of spatiotemporalism, that we may assume, given ordinary experience, that the world is fundamentally spatiotemporal, is false. (ii) Spatiotemporalism must be seen as a contingent, a posteriori physical truth. Finally, (iii) I argue that a metaphysically deeper conclusion follows from the debate over the nature of the fundamental space. The debate in physics over which sort of space is the fundamental space suggests that physicists have discovered that, even if a spacetime is an actual constituent of the world-space category, there is a world-space category that is more fundamental than the category of spacetime. (shrink)

In this timely book L.W. Sumner addresses these issues within the wider context of palliative care for patients in the dying process.

The Preface and the General Introduction to the book set the debate within the wider philosophical context and show why the subject of temporal becoming is a perennial concern of science, religion, language, logic, and the philosophy of ...

The best-interests standard is a widely used ethical, legal, and social basis for policy and decision-making involving children and other incompetent persons. It is under attack, however, as self-defeating, individualistic, unknowable, vague, dangerous, and open to abuse. The author defends this standard by identifying its employment, first, as a threshold for intervention and judgment (as in child abuse and neglect rulings), second, as an ideal to establish policies or prima facie duties, and, third, as a standard of reasonableness. Criticisms of (...) the best-interests standard are reconsidered after clarifying these different meanings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spinoza’s Cosmological Argument in the EthicsMogens Lærke (bio)1. IntroductionIn this paper,1 i discuss Spinoza’s version of the cosmological argument for the existence of God (hereafter CA), specifically as it can be found in EIP11D3.2 By a CA, I broadly understand an argument which infers a posteriori the existence of an independent, necessary being, usually identified as God, from the experience that there exists some other being, often oneself, whose (...) existence is dependent on this independent, necessary being.3 Generally, I will speak of the dependence [End Page 439] relation that any CA relies on in terms of “existential dependence.” Such a dependence relation can be considered as causal, conceptual, or other. Much of the following will be a discussion of what kind of existential dependence relation governs Spinoza’s CA. The CA in EIP11D3, as we shall see, explicitly turns on a relation of “being in” (i.e. the fact that all finite things are in some way in God and that God is in himself). I argue however that the context of the argument makes this “in-relation” inseparable from both Spinoza’s theory of causation and his theory of power, and that it consequently must be understood in the context of what Alexandre Matheron dubbed Spinoza’s “ontology of power.”4The study attempts to fill a lacuna in the study of Spinoza’s arguments for the existence of God. Don Garret, in his classic “Spinoza’s Ontological Arguments,” and Martin Lin, in his “Spinoza’s Arguments for the Existence of God,” discuss Spinoza’s various arguments for the existence of God.5 None of them, however, consider the passage in EIP11D3 which contains Spinoza’s CA, but focus exclusively on other proofs. There is something to be said for not attaching too much importance to the CA in EIP11D3. Spinoza himself, as we shall see, did not consider it his principal argument for the existence of God. Moreover, there is good reason to think that at least part of Spinoza’s argument in EIP11D3 is unsound. One could then reasonably argue for not giving it any consideration on the grounds that it is both unimportant and unsound.Nonetheless, studying the argument helps clarify what Spinoza thought in general about the necessary existence of God6 and about the relations between the infinite being, God, and finite beings such as ourselves. There is thus something to add to the existing accounts. Indeed, I believe that when we do include [End Page 440] considerations regarding this argument, we must considerably revise the general metaphysical framework that especially Lin argues underlies Spinoza’s other arguments for the existence of God. Lin’s approach is strongly informed by Michael Della Rocca’s reading of Spinoza, developed in a multitude of articles over the last decade and recently presented in full in Spinoza from 2008. Della Rocca’s work constitutes the broader context and motivation for this article. His book is an impressive and already hugely influential attempt to account for the systematic unity and fundamental principles of Spinoza’s metaphysics. To my mind, however, some of its basic interpretative choices are problematic. I have chosen to discuss the CA and the form it takes in the Ethics as a good point of departure for arguing this and for suggesting what I take to be a better approach. Following Della Rocca’s account, all dependence relations in Spinoza can be reduced to conceptual ones, including the sort of relations that the CA relies on. I maintain to the contrary that Spinoza’s version of the CA is inextricably linked to his theories of causation and power. Thus, the CA in EIP11D3 provides a good example of how Spinoza’s philosophy is an ontology of power grounded in a theory of causation, and not the sort of conceptualist ontology that Della Rocca attributes to him.72. The Cosmological Argument in Eip11d3Before scrutinizing in detail Spinoza’s CA in EIP11D3, it is important to note the subsidiary role of the argument in relation to Spinoza’s various other demonstrations of the existence of God. Contrary to Thomas Aquinas, for example, who denies that a... (shrink)

US Supreme Court rulings concerning sanctions for juvenile offenders have drawn on the science of brain development and concluded that adolescents are inherently less mature than adults in ways that render them less culpable. This conclusion departs from arguments made in cases involving the mature minor doctrine, in which teenagers have been portrayed as comparable to adults in their capacity to make medical decisions. I attempt to reconcile these apparently incompatible views of adolescents’ decision-making competence. Adolescents are indeed less mature (...) than adults when making decisions under conditions that are characterized by emotional arousal and peer pressure, but adolescents aged 15 and older are just as mature as adults when emotional arousal is minimized and when they are not under the influence of peers, conditions that typically characterize medical decision-making. The mature minor doctrine, as applied to individuals 15 and older, is thus consistent with recent research on adolescent development. (shrink)

Next SectionObjective The purpose of this article is to investigate the need for ethics support in Dutch healthcare institutions in order to understand why ethics support is often not used in practice and which factors are relevant in this context. Methods This study had a mixed methods design integrating quantitative and qualitative research methods. Two survey questionnaires, two focus groups and 17 interviews were conducted among board members and ethics support staff in Dutch healthcare institutions. Findings Most respondents see a (...) need for ethics support. This need is related to the complexity of contemporary healthcare, the contribution of ethics support to the core business of the organisation and to the surplus value of paying structural attention to ethical issues. The need for ethics support is, however, not unconditional. Reasons for a lacking need include: aversion of innovations, negative associations with the notion of ethics support service, and organisational factors like resources and setting. Conclusion There is a conditioned need for ethics support in Dutch healthcare institutions. The promotion of ethics support in healthcare can be fostered by focusing on formats which fit the needs of (practitioners in) healthcare institutions. The emphasis should be on creating a (culture of) dialogue about the complex situations which emerge daily in contemporary healthcare practice. (shrink)

L. Nathan Oaklander is one of the leading philosophers of time defending the tenseless or B-Theory of time. He has remained at the forefront of this field since the early 1980s and today he is arguably the most formidable opponent of the tensed or A-theory of time. Much of the direction of the debate in this field for the past twenty years or so, especially in regards to the new tenseless theory of time, has been influenced by Oaklander's work. This (...) book presents a carefully argued defense of the tenseless theory of time. The topics discussed include: the ontology of A- and B-theories of time; presentism; the open future theory; the A/B theory; defending the B-theory of time; temporal experience; temporal semantics; and time, identity, responsibility, and freedom. (shrink)

This paper sketches an answer to the question how we, in our arithmetical practice, succeed in singling out the natural-number structure as our intended interpretation. It is argued that we bring this about by a combination of what we assert about the natural-number structure on the one hand, and our computational capacities on the other hand.

Researchers and ethicists have long been concerned about the expectations for direct medical benefit expressed by participants in early phase clinical trials. Early work on the issue considered the possibility that participants misunderstand the purpose of clinical research or that they are misinformed about the prospects for medical benefit from these trials. Recently, however, attention has turned to the possibility that research participants are simply expressing optimism or hope about their participation in these trials. The ethical significance of this therapeutic (...) optimism remains unclear. This paper argues that there are two distinct phenomena that can be associated with the term ‘therapeutic optimism’—one is ethically benign and the other is potentially worrisome. Distinguishing these two phenomena is crucial for understanding the nature and ethical significance of therapeutic optimism. The failure to draw a distinction between these phenomena also helps to explain why different writers on the topic often speak past one another. (shrink)

In an era of rapidly rising health care costs, physicians and policymakers are searching for new and effective ways to contain health care spending without sacrificing the quality of services provided. These proposals are increasingly articulated in terms of an ethical duty of stewardship. The duty of stewardship in medicine, however, is not at present well understood, and it is frequently conflated with other duties. This article presents a critical analysis of the notion of stewardship, which shows that it has (...) an important and distinctive place in medical ethics. It claims that stewardship in medicine concerns the responsible use of a society’s medical resources and it discusses the extent to which medical professionals are the proper stewards of these resources. The article argues that the duty of stewardship is best understood as a duty that applies in a space between the obligations of health care providers to provide beneficent care to their patients on the one hand and the obligations of citizens to bring about and support a just health care system on the other. Seen with clear eyes, stewardship in medicine is neither a consequence of beneficent medical care nor a substitute for justice. (shrink)

(2013). Spinoza and the Cosmological Argument According to Letter 12. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 57-77. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.696052.

Les arts de la ruse constituent un champ exploratoire où se tissent et se recroisent des pratiques tant réflexives que non-réflexives: des tactiques animales de chasse ou de camouflage aux adresses agiles de scientifiques pour construire des théories pertinentes. Michel de Certeau, jésuite érudit, au carrefour des tournants linguistique et pragmatique de la fin du XXe siècle, a travaillé ce tissage insolite de pratiques à travers les sciences humaines, questionnant et braconnant tour à tour les ruses du théoricien et celles (...) de l'objet qu'il convoque : l'historien et le passé, l'ethnologue et la culture, le sociologue et le quotidien, le théologien et la mystique... L'étendue et la diversité des thèmes rigoureusement abordés par cet auteur inclassable lance un jeu d'adresses à ses lecteurs : Michel de Certeau nous demande à notre tour de ruser, autrement dit de saisir l'occasion de transformer le champ du savoir en évitant de tomber de Charybde en Scylla. Pour relever ce défi et y inviter, à leur tour, les lecteurs, cet ouvrage propose un "tango philosophique", danse par excellence d'une ruse permanente entre technique sophistiquée de pas et improvisation envoûtée, à partir des traces de pieds nus, laissés par Michel de Certeau, sur le bord de nos savoirs conquérants. Cette étude développe une expérimentation épistémologique des sciences humaines contemporaines. (shrink)

Concussion is a common, serious injury in youth ice hockey, affecting up to 25% of players per season by one estimate. • Bodychecking is a major cause of injury and concussion in hockey, yet some Canadian provinces allow players as young as nine years to engage in bodychecking. • Reducing rates of concussion requires eliminating bodychecking for all except elite hockey players aged 16 years and older, as per the recommendations of the Canadian Academy of Sports and Exercise Medicine.

The migration of elder-care workers appears to be a zero-sum game. This naturally offends our sense of justice, especially when the host populations are richer. In this article, I argue that we ought to look beyond the short run. Once we look at the long run, we will see possibilities of non-zero-sum games that are mutually beneficial.

Why did Hume drop sympathy as a key concept of his moral philosophy, and why—on the other hand—did Smith make it into the ‘didactic principle’ of his Theory of Moral Sentiments? These questions confront us with the basic issue of ethical theory concerning human nature. My point in dealing with these questions is to show what views of human nature their respective choices involved. And my procedure will be to take a close look at the revisions they made to their (...) ethical theories to bring out the contrasting aspects of their views of human nature. (shrink)

One means for raising the effectiveness of atheistic work is to effect a prompt response to changes taking place in religious ideology. Some substantial modifications have been introduced into Orthodox theology, in particular, in the recent years. And it should be stressed that many theological "innovations" to one degree or other rest on the intellectual heritage of Russian religious philosophy, among the representatives of which P. A. Florenskii occupies a special place.

This paper examines the ontological commitments of the second-order language of arithmetic and argues that they do not extend beyond the first-order language. Then, building on an argument by George Boolos, we develop a Tarski-style definition of a truth predicate for the second-order language of arithmetic that does not involve the assignment of sets to second-order variables but rather uses the same class of assignments standardly used in a definition for the first-order language.

The concept of alienation has taken firm root in the field of esthetics. One cannot say that its content is identical in everything one reads. Nonetheless, employment of this concept is always for the purpose, so to speak, of "clarification." It is often employed on the assumption that its use permits one to make clear whatever may be incomprehensible in the form and content of a work of art. It has become customary to have recourse to the concept of alienation (...) in esthetic analysis of modern foreign works of literature and art. As an example, we may cite the international discussion around the work of Franz Kafka, many participants in which hold that Kafka is a "product of alienation," "a prisoner of alienation," and that his work either expresses "his self-alienation" or involves depiction of the "consequences of alienation.". (shrink)

Ignorance is essential to life as we know it. Foreknowledge of the future would preclude choice, responsibility, individuality—even history. True knowledge of the past would obviate historiography. Without human ignorance of God's larger plan, His omnipotence and benevolence would not make sense, given the evils of the world. Full knowledge is the enemy of both intimate and impersonal relationships; for that matter, even less important personal decisions are made in ignorance. Military strategy and natural science both depend on ignorance, as (...) do the law and politics—especially inasmuch as the latter requires myths that divide the world into good and evil forces. (shrink)

Aleksei Fedorovich Losev's first work was published in 1916, and his last writings still continue to be published to this day. Over seventy years of a person's active scholarly work could not but contain substantial shifts and distinct periods, although at the same time they could not turn into a series of completely unconnected stages, separated by historical-biographical circumstances and semantically self-contained. The following is an outline of the initial period of Losev's creative work, with brief accompanying biographical information and (...) points of reference to the substantive and stylistic aspects of subsequent periods. It is superfluous to say that this outline in no way claims to give a full portrait of Losev; on the other hand, however, without an analysis of the initial period of his activity, one cannot pose the question of the general foundations of Losev's thought. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 10, Page 9-10, October 2011.

Study on poetry, political and social views of Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1877-1938, national Urdu poet and philosopher.

Priority setting presents one of the biggest challenges policy makers in low-income countries have to deal with on a daily basis. Extreme lack of resources in these contexts introduces non-state stakeholders whose priorities may not necessarily reflect the national priorities. This raises concerns about the legitimacy of the non-state stakeholders' involvement in priority setting. To date, the meagre literature on priority setting in low-income countries has not focused on the question of the legitimacy of the non-state stakeholders, specifically, the development (...) partners. This article fills this gap in the literature. We provide an overview of some of the health sector priority setting approaches, of relevance to low-income countries, including the processes, the stakeholders and their roles, and the priority setting challenges. These factors are explored, in-depth, using the case of Uganda. The sources of legitimacy of development assistance partners' involvement in priority setting is assessed based on current literature on sources of legitimacy and legitimacy in priority setting. The article concludes that both the government and development assistance partners need to work together to foster and maintain their legitimacy through; having fair priority setting processes with wide representation of all relevant stakeholders, explicit priority setting processes and a balance of decision making powers with commitment to accountability and transparency. (shrink)