We argue that Aged Residential Care (ARC) facilities should be allowed to create and adopt an informed “No Chest Compression” (NCC) policy. Potential residents are informed before admission that staff will not provide chest compressions to a pulseless resident. All residents would receive standard choking care, and a fully discussed advance directive would be utilized to determine if the resident wanted a one-minute trial of rescue breaths (to clear their airway) or utilization of the automatic defibrillator in case of arrest. (...) The benefits of chest compressions for residents in ARC are dubious, and the burdens are high. For frail elderly people without a pulse, chest compressions are arguably unethical because the chance of benefit is minuscule, the procedure is violent, painful, and challenging to perform correctly, and procedures detract from a peaceful end of life. These burdens fall on residents, their families, ARC facilities providers, and society. We further argue that limitations on universal invasive resuscitation, such as advance directives, need to be more consistently sought and applied. The goals of an informed NCC policy are twofold: removing added suffering from a person’s end-of-life experience and increasing ARC residents’ understanding of the burdens of ineffective treatments for pulselessness. (shrink)

A leading evangelical thinker offers this brand-new way of addressing life's most important questions: Does God exist, and can we know Him? J.P. Moreland, distinguished professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, abandons traditional didactic apologetics and entices skeptics and dissatisfied believers into a conversation about the emptiness and anxiety so many feel today. He invites them to the abundant life Jesus offers but that so few seem to be experiencing. Moreland shows that people are created by a benevolent (...) God and given a life-enhancing purpose. He empowers readers to... overcome obstacles to faith, including questions about science and religion embrace an enticing view of Jesus and the kingdom of God replace unhelpful images of God with the truth Readers will find practical and effective ways to experience intimacy with God, an effective life of prayer, and a confident hope in life after death. (shrink)

Between 1787, and the end of his life in 1832, Bentham turned his attention to the development and application of economic ideas and principles within the general structure of his legislative project. For seventeen years this interest was manifested through a number of books and pamphlets, most of which remained in manuscript form, that develop a distinctive approach to economic questions. Although Bentham was influenced by Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he (...) neither adopted a Smithian vocabulary for addressing questions of economic principle and policy, nor did he accept many of the distinctive features of Smith's economic theory. One consequence of this was that Bentham played almost no part in the development of the emerging science of political economy in the early nineteenth century. The standard histories of economics all emphasize how little he contributed to the mainstream of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century debate by concentrating attention on his utilitarianism and the psychology of hedonism on which it is premised. Others have argued that the calculating nature of his theory of practical reason reduced the whole legislative project to a crude attempt to apply economics to all aspects of social and political life. Put at its simplest this argument amounts to the erroneous claim that Bentham's science of legislation is reducible to the science of political economy. A different but equally dangerous error would be to argue that because Bentham's conception of the science of legislation comprehends all the basic forms of social relationships, there can be no science of political economy as there is no autonomous sphere of activity governed by the principles of economics. This approach is no doubt attractive from an historical point of view given that the major premise of this argument is true, and that many of Bentham's ‘economic’ arguments are couched in terms of his theory of legislation. Yet it fails to account for the undoubted importance of political economy within Bentham's writings, not just on finance, economic policy, colonies and preventive police, but also in other aspects of his utilitarian public policy such as prison reform, pauper management, and even constitutional reform. All of these works reflect a conception of political economy in its broadest terms. However, this conception of political economy differs in many respects from that of Bentham's contemporaries, and for this reason Bentham's distinctive approach to problems of economics and political economy has largely been misunderstood. (shrink)

In his paper ‘Has the Ontological Argument Been Refuted?’, 97–110) William F. Vallicella argues that my attempt to show that the Ontological Argument begs the question is unsuccessful. 1 I believe he is wrong about this, but before endeavouring to vindicate my position I must first make clear what precisely is the point at issue between us. The Ontological Argument is not a single argument, but a family of arguments. Newly devised formulations of the argument are frequently put forward by (...) philosophers in an effort to avoid difficulties that have been pointed out in previous versions. As a consequence there is no possibility of a conclusive proof that every form of the argument embodies the same fallacy. Nevertheless, one can, I believe, prove that all the standard versions of the argument embody a certain fallacy and that, given the nature of the argument, it is therefore unlikely that the argument can be formulated in such a way as to avoid this difficulty. What I tried to show in my paper is that the six best-known versions of the argument all beg the question and that they do so at the same point in the argument, namely when it is asserted that it is possible that an absolutely perfect being exists. It is difficult to see how an ontological argument could be formulated without including this claim as one of its premises, since the distinguishing badge of the argument is the inference from the possibility of an absolutely perfect being to its actuality. It must be unlikely then, if my criticism of these six versions is correct, that there is any way of formulating the argument that avoids this fallacy. (shrink)

Theism, according to David O'Connor, has in recent centuries been on trial for its life, the charge being that the existence of so much evil in the world is incompatible with belief in a benevolent creator. But this trial, he claims is incapable of producing a reasoned verdict.

‘To Gödel via Babel’, MIND, July 1966.In (1), the last clause should read: ‘then the GN of the resulting P-sentence is x100.y’ In (21), the expression in Roman numerals should read: ‘$$Y.\frac{\hbox{ L }Y}{\hbox{ XIX }}$$’ In (25) and (27), the expression in Roman numerals should read: ‘$${(\hbox{ C }}^{\hbox{ XVII }}.\hbox{ D })\hbox{ . }\frac{\hbox{ L }\left({\hbox{ C }}^{\hbox{ XVII }}.\hbox{ D }\right)}{\hbox{ XIX }}$$’.

Religion and the external world -- Projection, religion, and the external world -- The senses, reason and the imagination -- Realism, meaning and justification : the external world and religious belief -- Modality, projection and realism -- 'Our profound ignorance' : causal realism, and the failure to detect necessity -- Spreading the mind : projection, necessity and realism -- Into the labyrinth : persons, modality, and Hume's undoing -- Value, projection, and realism -- Gilding : projection, value and secondary qualities (...) -- The gold : good, evil, belief and desire -- The golden : relational values, realism and a moral sense. (shrink)

For long stretches of Greek history in the classical period, Diodorus Siculus provides the only surviving continuous narrative of events. For this narrative he summarized, however incompetently, the work of earlier and greater historians whose original texts are lost to us. This makes Diodorus an invaluable quarry of the historian and the historiographer alike, but one that can only be used with discretion. We need to get as clear an idea as we can of the way his mind worked, where (...) his account is most likely to be useful, and what sort of distortions to expect when he goes astray. Research into his methods and procedures is thus an urgent necessity. The present study, the fullest ever undertaken for any part of Diodorus, aims to meet the needs of both history and historiography. In the introduction, necessarily substantial, the aims, sources, and methods of Diodorus are examined in detail. The findings of this investigation are then applied in commenting on Book 15, a particularly important book which deals with the crucial years between the King's Peace, concluded in 387/6 BC, and the aftermath of the battle of Mantinea fought in 362 BC. (shrink)

On Buddhist metaphsical approach to suffering; a study, with some reference to George Grimm's works.

The metaphysical problem of individuation requires an answer to two different but intimately related questions: 1) How are we to characterize individuality ontologically? To what ontological category or logical type does individuality belong? 2) What sort of distinction is there between the individuality and nature of an individual, e.g., a real distinction, a modal distinction, a distinction of reason, or some other distinction My purpose in this article is to clarify a bare particular account of individuation and respond to objections (...) that have been raised against bare particulars as individuators. (shrink)