This essay is a critical response to Loren Lomasky's essay in this volume: The essay argues that Lomasky both overestimates the value of eating meat and underestimates the harms to animals of practices surrounding meat eating. While Lomasky takes the fact that an animal would not have lived at all if it were not being raised for food to constitute a benefit for animals being so raised, this essay argues that it would be better for animals raised on factory farms (...) to have never been born. It also contends that Lomasky overstates his case regarding the benefits of meat eating for human well-being. While gastronomic experiences can enrich our lives, it would be a mistake to think that meat eating is indispensable to the enrichment of our lives; one canexperience the flourishing of eating well without eating animals. (shrink)

Michael B. Gill offers a new account of Humean moral pluralism: the view that there are different moral reasons for action, which are based on human sentiments. He explores its historical origins, and argues that it offers the most compelling view of our moral experience. Together, pluralism and Humeanism make a philosophically powerful couple.

Some children living with life-shortening medical conditions may wish to attend school without the threat of having resuscitation attempted in the event of cardiopulmonary arrest on the school premises. Despite recent attention to in-school do-not-attempt-resuscitation (DNAR) orders, no assessment of state laws or school policies has yet been made. We therefore sought to survey a national sample of prominent school districts and situate their policies in the context of relevant state laws. Most (80%) school districts sampled did not have policies, (...) regulations, or protocols for dealing with student DNARs. A similar majority (76%) either would not honor student DNARs or were uncertain about whether they could. Frequent contradictions between school policies and state laws also exist. Consequently, children living with life-shortening conditions who have DNARs may not have these orders honored if cardiopulmonary arrest were to occur on school premises. Coordinated efforts are needed to harmonize school district, state, and federal approaches in order to support children and families' right to have important medical decisions honored. (shrink)

Moral cognitivists hold that in ordinary thought and language moral terms are used to make factual claims and express propositions. Moral non-cognitivists hold that in ordinary thought and language moral terms are not used to make factual claims or express propositions. What cognitivists and non-cognitivists seem to agree about, however, is that there is something in ordinary thought and language that can vindicate one side of their debate or the other. Don Loeb raises the possibility — which I will call (...) “the variability thesis” — that ordinary moral thought and language contains both cognitivist and non-cognitivist elements, and that there is no principled reason for thinking that either the cognitivist or non-cognitivist elements are conceptually more primary or aberrant than the other. According to the variability thesis, cognitivists accurately capture some aspects of what we think and say when we use moral terms and non-cognitivists capture other aspects, but neither side provides a correct analysis of ordinary moral thought and language as a whole. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a novel, conservative solution to the puzzle of Tibbles the cat. I do not criticize the existing solutions or the theories within which they are embedded. I am content to offer an alternative, one that relies on the recently resurgent doctrine of Aristotelian essentialism. My solution, unlike some of its competitors, is applicable to the full range of cases in which, as with Tib and Tibbles, there is the threat of coinciding objects. In section 1, (...) I present the solution. In sections II-IV, I defend it against four objections. (shrink)

This article explores how economic inequality in the United States has led to growing levels of poverty, food insecurity, and obesity for the bottom segments of the economy. It takes the position that access to nutritious food is a requirement for living and for participating fully in the workplace and society. Because of increasing economic inequality in the United States, growing segments of the U.S. economy have become more food insecure and obese, eating unhealthy food for survival and suffering an (...) erosion of “equality of capabilities” that undermines their ability to play a “full and active part in the functioning of community.” Unequal access to nutritious foods in the United States is attributable in part to an industrial food system that is designed to produce short-term profits for industrial food producers, processors, and distributors that extract surplus labor value through market concentration and opportunistic behavior at the expense of the long-term benefits for consumers, food workers, and ecosystems. Economic inequality, food insecurity, and the erosion of equality of capabilities in the United States have given rise to protest movements, social movements, social innovations, and some modest strengthening of regulations to make access to and consumption of healthy food a right for every person. Implications for business and society research are explored. (shrink)

An engaging account of how Shaftesbury revolutionized Western philosophy At the turn of the eighteenth century, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, developed the first comprehensive philosophy of beauty to be written in English. It revolutionized Western philosophy. In A Philosophy of Beauty, Michael Gill presents an engaging account of how Shaftesbury’s thought profoundly shaped modern ideas of nature, religion, morality, and art—and why, despite its long neglect, it remains compelling today. Before Shaftesbury’s magnum opus, Charactersticks of (...) Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, it was common to see wilderness as ugly, to associate religion with fear and morality with unpleasant restriction, and to dismiss art as trivial or even corrupting. But Shaftesbury argued that nature, religion, virtue, and art can all be truly beautiful, and that cherishing and cultivating beauty is what makes life worth living. And, as Gill shows, this view had a huge impact on the development of natural religion, moral sense theory, aesthetics, and environmentalism. Combining captivating historical details and flashes of humor, A Philosophy of Beauty not only rediscovers and illuminates a fascinating philosopher but also offers an inspiring reflection about the role beauty can play in our lives. (shrink)

Uncovering the historical roots of naturalistic, secular contemporary ethics, in this volume Michael Gill shows how the British moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries completed a Copernican revolution in moral philosophy. They effected a shift from thinking of morality as independent of human nature to thinking of it as part of human nature itself. He also shows how the British Moralists - sometimes inadvertently, sometimes by design - disengaged ethical thinking, first from distinctly Christian ideas and then from (...) theistic commitments altogether. Examining in detail the arguments of Whichcote, Cudworth, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson against Calvinist conceptions of original sin and egoistic conceptions of human motivation, Gill also demonstrates how Hume combined the ideas of earlier British moralists with his own insights to produce an account of morality and human nature that undermined some of his predecessors' most deeply held philosophical goals. (shrink)

Nach einem Überblick über die Unterscheidung von Pausen, Schweigen und Stille und einer knappen Diskussion älterer Auffassungen zum Schweigen in therapeutischen Sitzungen wird ein theoretischer Bezugsrahmen entworfen. Danach sind Pausen nicht Gegensatz, sondern Element der Konversation und sie können nicht individuell zugerechnet werden, weil der andere sie gewährt. Das unterscheidet sie vom Schweigen. Es werden Transkriptbeispiele therapeutischer Situationen analysiert, in denen Pausen vorkommen. Sie lassen sich als Folgen von Ereignissen vor der Pause analysieren. Der theoretische Hintergrund ist die Konversationsanalyse, die (...) Anschluss an neurowissenschaftliche Überlegungen zu Sprechpausen gewinnt. Gesprächsstrukturelle Momente und motivationale Zusammenhänge lassen sich auf der Annahme von Harvey Sacks, des Begründers der Konversationsanalyse, zusammenführen: Jede Konversation wird von einer stillen Dimension, die er »my-mind-is-with-you« nannte, begleitet. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper explicates Shaftesbury’s idea that we ought to live our lives as though they are works of art. I show that this idea is central to many of Shaftesbury’s most important claims, and that an understanding of this idea enables us to answer some of the most contested questions in the scholarship on Characteristics.

Shaftesbury believed that the height of virtue was impartial love for all of humanity. But Shaftesbury also harboured grave doubts about our ability to develop such an expansive love. In The Moralists, Shaftesbury addressed this problem. I show that while it may appear on the surface that The Moralists solves the difficulty, it in fact remains unresolved. Shaftesbury may not have been able to reconcile his view of the content of virtue with his view of our motivational psychology.

Typische problematische Situationen (TPS), die makroanalytisch beschreibbar sind, kennen Therapeuten sehr gut: Wenn der Patient zu spät kommt, die Rechnung nicht bezahlt wird, Ferien-Regelungen nicht zustimmt, den Kassenantrag lesen möchte, eine Stunde verlegt werden soll. Daneben lassen sich TPS erkennen, die nur mikroanalytisch erfasst werden können. Sie zeichnen sich dadurch aus, dass sie weitaus schwerer zu erkennen sind, doch wenn man sie einmal erkannt hat, erkennt man sie wieder. Solche Situationen sind Klippen, an denen sich Gelingen oder Scheitern des Prozesses (...) entscheiden kann; sie fordern besonderes Können und ein erhöhtes Maß an Empathie. Empathie wird im vorliegenden Beitrag als etwas beschrieben, das aus verschiedenen Komponenten besteht, die in einem bestimmten Verhältnis zueinander stehen; für den Autor kann – und muss – sie sich immer in der Konversation bewähren, nie anders. (shrink)

In the most comprehensive examination to date of Heidegger’s Nazism, Emmanuel Faye draws on previously unavailable materials to paint a damning picture of Nazism’s influence on the philosopher’s thought and politics. In this provocative book, Faye uses excerpts from unpublished seminars to show that Heidegger’s philosophical writings are fatally compromised by an adherence to National Socialist ideas. In other documents, Faye finds expressions of racism and exterminatory anti-Semitism. Faye disputes the view of Heidegger as a naïve, temporarily disoriented academician and (...) instead shows him to have been a self-appointed “spiritual guide” for Nazism whose intentionality was clear. Contrary to what some have written, Heidegger’s Nazism became even more radical after 1935, as Faye demonstrates. He revisits Heidegger’s masterwork, _Being and Time_, and concludes that in it Heidegger does not present a philosophy of individual existence but rather a doctrine of radical self-sacrifice, where individualization is allowed only for the purpose of heroism in warfare. Faye’s book was highly controversial when originally published in France in 2005. Now available in Michael B. Smith’s fluid English translation, it is bound to awaken controversy in the English-speaking world. (shrink)

When making moral judgments, people are typically guided by a plurality of moral rules. These rules owe their existence to human emotions but are not simply equivalent to those emotions. And people’s moral judgments ought to be guided by a plurality of emotion-based rules. The view just stated combines three positions on moral judgment: [1] moral sentimentalism, which holds that sentiments play an essential role in moral judgment,1 [2] descriptive moral pluralism, which holds that commonsense moral judgment is guided by (...) a plurality of moral rules2, and [3] prescriptive moral pluralism, which holds that moral judgment ought to be guided by a plurality of moral rules. In what follows, we will argue for all three positions. We will not present a comprehensive case for these positions nor address many of the arguments philosophers have developed against them. What we will try to show is that recent psychological work supports sentimentalist pluralism in both its descriptive and prescriptive forms. (shrink)

Das szenische Verstehen kann mit philosophischen Auffassungen verbunden werden, die dem Menschen eine »szenische Existenzform« zusprechen. Das schließt die Interaktion, v.a. aber die »Konversation« ein, die nach Freuds Vorschlag Ausgangslage aller Theoriebildung ist. Dazu lassen sich die Mittel der Konversationsanalyse nutzen. Die Konversationsanalyse wird mit ihren beiden »Zweigen«, einem sozialwissenschaftlichen und einem linguis­tischen, vorgestellt und an transkribierten Beispielen erläutert. Die Verbindung von szenischem Verstehen und Konversationsanalyse kann das Unbewusste, wie gezeigt wird, um die Dimension der aktuellen Gesprächsdynamik erweitern und damit (...) eine Empirie wissenschaftlich bearbeiten, die anderen, derzeit dominanten empirischen Methoden entgeht. (shrink)

This book is a resource for providers and students, integrating germane basic science information with clinical-medicine insights. The goal is to improve primary-care outpatient interactions for physicians, APRNs, and PAs. It is unique, integrating germane basic-science information with clinical-medicine. Unlike other resources that introduce these concepts more distinctly, this book bridges the gap and provides insights for providers and students. Also, there are succinct, yet comprehensive, presentations on managing the more common out-patient problems. The book is designed for primary care (...) providers and students, e.g., physicians, APRNs, and PAs, who desire to improve their patient-education, diagnostic, and treatment skills. The PEARLS are instruments to embellish and emphasize important concepts. The focus of the book is to improve outpatient medicine delivery, and better informed and confident providers are keys to the process. (shrink)

Vegetius' Epitoma rei militaris, in its discussion of Roman military recruitment in the Late Empire, provides a list of professions deemed unsuitable for military service. Among those groups associated with a lack of manly virtus are piscatores. This article aims to provide a rationale for Vegetius' ostensibly puzzling rejection of men involved in fishing activity by analyzing the antiquarian sources that colored his perception of Roman morality. The treatment of the piscatores thus reinforces the notion of Vegetius as a continuator (...) of reactionary discourse on traditional Roman mores, even though late antique attitudes towards masculinity were clearly changing. (shrink)

This article offers a novel, conservative account of material constitution, one that incorporates sortal essentialism and features a theory of dominant sortals. It avoids coinciding objects, temporal parts, relativizations of identity, mereological essentialism, anti-essentialism, denials of the reality of the objects of our ordinary ontology, and other departures from the metaphysic implicit in ordinary ways of thinking. Defenses of the account against important objections are found in Burke 1997, 2003, and 2004, as well as in the often neglected six paragraphs (...) that conclude section V of this article. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NABER on Embryo SplittingMichael B. BurkeMadam:In its interesting Report on Human Cloning through Embryo Splitting: An Amber Light (KIEJ, September 1994), NABER (the National Advisory Board on Ethics in Reproduction) discusses ten potential clinical uses of embryo splitting. With one member dissenting, NABER finds two of the uses to be acceptable in principle: (1) “to improve the chances of initiating pregnancy in those individuals undergoing IVF who produce only (...) a limited number of embryos for transfer and implantation” (p. 267) and (2) “to minimize the number of egg retrieval procedures for those undergoing IVF by providing embryos for cryopreservation and future transfer” (p. 268).However, some members of NABER limit their support for these uses to cases in which none of the embryos into which the originals are split are intentionally destroyed (see pp. 266–68). I find their position puzzling. They consider it “ethically unacceptable to discard cryopreserved embryos” (p. 268). In general, they object to intentional destruction of embryos resulting from embryo splitting. Yet they accept intentional destruction of the original embryos.Does the splitting of an embryo truly destroy it? Yes, it does, at least if the embryo is split into two equal parts—or into more than two parts, none of which contains a majority of the cells contained by the original. Suppose, for instance, that a two-cell embryo has been split into two one-cell embryos. Then the original embryo, although it may not have “died” and although its cells have both survived, has nonetheless ceased to exist. Even though the resulting one-cell embryos are identical genetically to the original embryo, neither of them is that embryo. (There is nothing to confer this honor on one of them rather than the other.) The original embryo has undergone what I will call “destructive splitting.”Now it is possible, even likely, that some splittings are not destructive splittings. Suppose that a four-cell embryo is spilt into a three-cell embryo and a one-cell embryo. At least from my perspective as an identity theorist, there is nothing to stop us from identifying the three-cell embryo with the four-cell original: we could say that the original embryo, although diminished, still exists. In any case, there is no indication that any members of NABER intended to limit their acceptance of embryo splitting to cases in which the original embryo survives.How are we to understand the apparent indifference of conservative members of NABER to the embryo that is split, given their concern for the embryos that result from the split? Perhaps the explanation is found in the following passage:NABER members represent a broad spectrum of views on the moral status of the embryo, and yet virtually all of them find embryo splitting per se ethically permissible if the resulting embryos are not damaged or destroyed in the process. These members maintain that there is nothing inherently wrong with creating several embryos [End Page 210] from a single embryo, providing all the embryos involved [except the original!] remain intact at the conclusion of the procedure. Embryo splitting parallels the spontaneous production of identical twins or triplets at this stage of embryo development, an occurrence that is accepted in our society with equanimity. The fact that embryo splitting is deliberately used to produce multiple embryos does not make it inherently wrong to employ the procedure.(Report, pp. 266–67)This argument appears to rely on the following principle: if something is properly viewed with equanimity when it happens spontaneously, then it is not inherently wrong to bring it about deliberately. At least in its full generality, this is a principle generally and rightly viewed with suspicion (by moral conservatives above all). Although it is proper to view with equanimity, even with relief, the natural deaths of terminally ill patients in great pain, many hold that active euthanasia is inherently wrong.When NABER has occasion to revisit the issue of embryo splitting, those members who object to destruction of embryos resulting from embryo splitting should make clear whether they accept the destructive splitting of embryos. If they do, they should clarify their reasons for accepting it.Michael B. BurkeDepartment of Philosophy Indiana... (shrink)

The Boston-Theory about Now-Moments, Moments-of-Meeting and “present moments” up-to-date has not founded this impressive theory in a precise transcript. What are these moments in detail? How to recognize them? There are strong affinities between the microanalytic work of the Boston-Group and social-scientific conversation analysis, but there are deviations, too. In a first part, I will sound out affinities and differences intending to become able to more precisely determine what these moments are and how they can be detected. In a second (...) paper, I will turn to an interview with a holocaust-survivor with the methodological goal to find more methodological precise determinations of what now-moments are. (shrink)

Peter Forrest argues that theism is warranted by an inference to the best explanation that does not posit God as a supernatural entity. Lest theists fear that Forrest settles for an ersatz naturalistic conception of God, let me reassure them that his view might be captured by the slogan, "Neither a naturalist nor a supernaturalist be!" Both naturalism and supernaturalism attempt to understand what Forrest calls the "familiar"—the things observable by humans, including the phenomena of consciousness—but they differ about the (...) constraints on acceptable explanations. Naturalism accepts, while supernaturalism rejects, the following constraints: don't posit an "unfamiliar" entity unless a well-confirmed scientific theory provides a "precedent" for it, and don't violate any well-confirmed laws of nature. Forrest's antisupernaturalism accepts, but weakens to : don't posit an unfamiliar kind of entity unless there is some precedent for it, either in the familiar entities we already believe in, or in a well-confirmed scientific theory. Thus, every naturalistic explanation is antisupernaturalist, but some antisupernaturalist ones are not naturalistic because they posit unfamiliar entities on the basis of a commonsense nonscientific theory. (shrink)

On the most popular account of material constitution, it is common for a material object to coincide precisely with one or more other material objects, ones that are composed of just the same matter but differ from it in sort. I argue that there is nothing that could ground the alleged difference in sort and that the account must be rejected.

Dion is a full-bodied man. Theon is that part of him which consists of all of him except his left foot. What becomes of Dion and Theon when Dion’s left foot is amputated? Employing the doctrine of sortal essentialism, I defend a surprising answer last defended by Chrysippus: that Dion survives while the seemingly unscathed Theon perishes. For replies to critics, see my publications of 1997 and (especially) 2003.

It has generally been assumed since the 1950s that the African elephant known to classical antiquity, and thus the one used, inter alia, by Carthage and Ptolemaic Egypt, is the forest elephant, which is even smaller in stature than the Asian or Indian elephant. Yet a recent scientific study using DNA evidence has asserted that it was the larger bush or savannah elephant that was used in antiquity. This study adduces literary sources pertaining to habitat and representational evidence to explore (...) the issue of the most likely species of African elephant known to the ancient Mediterranean world. (shrink)

Is it logically possible to perform a "superfeat"? That is, is it logically possible to complete, in a finite time, an infinite sequence of distinct acts? In opposition to the received view, I argue that all physical superfeats have kinematic features that make them logically impossible.

We argue that constructive maximality [P. Martin-Löf, Notes on Constructive Mathematics, Almqvist and Wicksell, Stockholm, 1970] can with advantage be employed in the study of maximal point spaces, and related questions in quantitative domain theory. The main result concerns partial metrizability of ω-continuous domains.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionCynthia B. CohenThe explosion of genetic information in recent years raises a fundamental question for us as individuals and as members of various communities: Have we an obligation to know as much as possible about our genes—or should we bypass genetic information, leaving it hidden? A terrible ambivalence grips us when it comes to our genes. We want to respond to the Socratic call to know ourselves by learning (...) what lies on the minute threads of the chromosomes spun into the nuclei of our cells. At the same time, we fear obtaining that information, for it seems functionally equivalent to the oracle at Delphi, revealing a distinct and dangerous knowledge we would rather not have.What is it about genetic knowledge that creates such ambivalence in us? Genetic knowledge is empowering. It offers us the freedom to shape the contours of our lives and those of our families. At the same time, genetic knowledge is disempowering. It bears a peculiar mark of inevitability, telling us that we have no control over our present or future in important respects. Better to hide from such overbearing information than to suffer the assaults on our freedom it seems to create.We can see this ambivalence about genetic knowledge appearing again and again as the field of genetics has grown. Initially, genetics emerged as a tool for understanding how traits and diseases are passed from generation to generation. We used genetic testing mostly to enhance our personal decision making about reproductive matters. It was at this time that our hesitancy about pursuing such testing first arose, for we feared being put into a position of asking such painful questions as, “Knowing what we do about our genes, should we have children?” As the scope of genetic information expanded, we learned to test for genes that could signal the development of such terrible conditions as Huntington’s disease. The possibility of gaining access to such disturbing information exacerbated our fear of genetic knowledge—to some, the certainty of knowing seemed worse than the uncertainty of not knowing. As genetic research has disclosed genes associated with conditions that might, but not necessarily will occur, the uncertainty of knowing, to some, seems worse than that of not knowing. Further, questions focused on individuals, although still pertinent, are being supplanted by broader questions about families and [End Page vii] social groups. When added to the personal agony that genetic information can engender, the specter of egregious discrimination seems to some to outweigh the value of knowing. As the net is cast further and further from the initial genetic inquiries, the call to halt or control certain kinds of genetic testing is growing increasingly loud.Ambivalence about whether to obtain genetic information hovers over the pages of this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal. The authors address both the promise and the threat of the information to be derived from genetic tests. Each examines a different facet of the problem of knowing that vexes the terrain of genetic technology and proposes blueprints for resolving it.Cynthia B. Cohen opens by examining whether genetic testing should be used to unearth information about conditions children might develop later in life. She challenges the current trend within the professional genetics community to keep such information hidden, claiming that the putative psychosocial burdens of receiving that information are outweighed by the psychosocial benefits. Moreover, Cohen maintains that having such information can enhance, rather than impair, the adult autonomy of children. She offers a framework for assessing whether to test in individual cases and maintains that it is the responsibility of parents to make the final decision for their children.A similar response to our ambivalence about obtaining genetic knowledge is given by Robert Wachbroit. In discussing the dilemma caused by pleiotropic genetic tests—those in which a single gene mutation is involved in several apparently unrelated diseases—he favors fully disclosing their dual nature to patients before testing. Wachbroit’s emphasis on openness extends beyond informed consent recommendations, for he maintains that patients have an obligation to know as much about their genetic proclivities as possible. He goes on to confute the common wisdom that genetic information is... (shrink)