Whether institutions and not just individual doctors have a right to not participate in medical assistance in dying (MAID) is controversial, but there is a tendency to frame the issue of institutional non‐participation in a particular way. Conscience is central to this framing. Non‐participating health centres are assumed to be religious and full participation is expected unless a centre objects on conscience grounds. In this paper we seek to reframe the issue. Institutional non‐participation is plausibly not primarily, let alone exclusively, (...) about conscience. We seek to reframe the issue by making two main points. First, institutional non‐participation is primarily a matter of institutional self‐governance. We suggest that institutions have a natural right of self‐governance which, in the case of health centres such as hospitals or hospices, includes the right to choose whether or not to offer MAID. Second, there are various legitimate reasons unrelated to conscience for which a health centre might not offer MAID. These range from considerations such as institutional capacity and expertise to a potential contradiction with palliative care and a concern to not conflate palliative care and MAID in public consciousness. It is a mistake to frame the conversation simply in terms of conscience‐based opposition to MAID or full participation. Our goal is to open up new space in the conversation, for reasons unrelated to conscience as well as for non‐religious health centres who might nonetheless have legitimate grounds for not participating in MAID. (shrink)

Since the financial crisis, there has been much discussion about the importance of ethics in economic life. An important contribution to this discussion was a 2018 Vatican letter on the financial system which reiterated and further developed Catholic social teaching. This article argues that the Catholic Church is correct to unite the disciplines of economics and ethics. However, it is proposed that, as Catholic social teaching in this field develops further, there should be more focus on the importance and development (...) of the virtues. The letter reaffirmed earlier Catholic Church teaching on the regulation of markets. Once again, the formation in the virtues, especially the virtue of prudence, can help us make discerning judgments about the place of regulation in economic life. Furthermore, an understanding of human anthropology and the economic history of financial institutions can help us make prudent judgments in relation to these issues. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: * A Neuroscientific Theory of Cognition: The Global Workspace Model * The Burden of Proof and the Loss of Innocence * The Harshest Attack on Freedom and Consciousness: Daniel Dennett * A More Radical Entailment? * Consciousness as an Emergent Property * Conclusion * Notes.

This article explores the effect of women’s movement into the labor market on the gender segregation of work, using the Current Population Survey from 1972 to 1993. The author includes as working those respondents who were “keeping house” and codes keeping house as an occupation. The results show higher estimates of gender segregation, and slightly steeper declines over time, than were seen in previous studies. Analysis of one-year longitudinal changes reveals less movement out of female-dominated occupations when keeping house is (...) included as an occupation. Finally, a decomposition of the segregation trend shows that the movement of women away from keeping house contributed as much to the overall decline in gender segregation as did the desegregation of paid occupations. The author concludes that the movement of women’s work from the household to the labor market has been a driving force in the changing nature of gender inequality. (shrink)

In this Open Peer Commentary, we draw on our clinical experience to argue that instrumental paternalism carves a pathway to competent refusal of medical intervention. Whether C successfully navigat...

One of the deepest problems in philosophical theology is that of divine causality and human freedom. The analogy between God and the author of a work of fiction can shed light on this and many other thorny problems in philosophical and dogmatic theology.

Explores the nature of scientific theory and how we search for answers, drawing from examples such as Thomas Jefferson's surveying techniques and mathematics, map-making, and geology.

This book examines the U.S economy from 1967 to 2011 and utilizes a new method to predict the future of the economy as far ahead as 2030. Projections using estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Census are used to further project personal income, personal income annual change, and disposable personal income to 2030.

We draw a distinction between defensive and predatory forms of aggression, and how these forms relate to basic neuropsychological systems, especially the Fight-Flight-Freeze-System (FFFS; putatively related to defensive aggression), and the Behavioural Approach System (BAS; putatively related to predatory aggression). These systems may help further to account for proximal brain processes and personality influences in the context of sex differences.

In recent years, analytically trained philosophers have given extensive attention to various issues involved in the “culture wars,” including abortion, same-sex marriage, stem-cell research, and assisted suicide. There are, however, moral judgments that virtually no one questions. Defenses of adult-child sex, for example, are rare. There is also “conventional immorality”—the breach of conventional moral standards within roughly defined limits that at least limit the resulting damage to third parties and social institutions. These phenomena frame moral discussion even when, as often (...) happens, conventional people are in serious moral disagreement. In this essay I try to make sense of the phenomenon; in a subsequent essay I will show how conventional morality contains within itself the seeds of its collapse, and hence requires support from human nature, either rationally discovered or understood through revelation accepted in faith. (shrink)

Revised versions of papers presented at the 1994 Tyndale Fellowship jubilee conference held in Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick.

Jeremy Bentham identifies and criticizes around fifty fallacious arguments used by politicians to thwart measures of reform, and exposes the sinister interests that lead to their employment. This edition restores Bentham's original structure and previously-omitted sections, and remains as relevant to political debate today as it was in his time.

Reviews the basic Catholic moral principles that apply to health care, then uses them to assess three major current trends in the health care industry.

This article addresses ethical issues in conducting randomized clinical trials with youth. Ethical considerations that occur prior to treatment, during treatment, and following treatment are reviewed. Recommendations, based on empirical evidence and clinical experience, are offered for conducting ethical treatment research with youth and future directions for carrying out research on the ethics of conducting RCTs with youth are offered.

Here we give a semantical account of propositional quantification that is intended to formally represent Russell’s view that one cannot express a proposition about "all" propositions. According to the account the authors give, Russell’s view bears an interesting relation to the view that there are no sets which are members of themselves.