The thesis of this article is that there has never been any ground for the controversy between the doctrine of free will and determinism, that it is based upon a misapprehension, that the two assertions are entirely consistent, that one of them strictly implies the other, that they have been opposed only because of our natural want of the analytical imagination. In so saying I do not tamper with the meaning of either phrase. That would be unpardonable. I mean free (...) will in the natural and usual sense, in the fullest, the most absolute sense in which for the purposes of the personal and moral life the term is ever employed. I mean it as implying responsibility, merit and demerit, guilt and desert. I mean it as implying, after an act has been performed, that one " could have done otherwise " than one did. I mean it as conveying these things also, not in any subtly modified sense but in exactly the sense in which we conceive them in life and in law and in ethics. These two doctrines have been opposed because we have not realised that free will can be analysed without being destroyed, and that determinism is merely a feature of the analysis of it. And if we are tempted to take refuge in the thought of an "ultimate ", an "innermost" liberty that eludes the analysis, then we have implied a deterministic basis and constitution for this liberty as well. For such a basis and constitution lie in the idea of liberty. -/- The thesis is not, like that of Green or Bradley, that the contending opinions are reconciled if we adopt a certain metaphysic of the ego, as that it is timeless, and identifies itself with a desire by a " timeless act". This is to say that the two are irreconcilable, as they are popularly supposed to be, except by a theory that delivers us from the conflict by taking us out of time. Our view on the contrary is that from the natural and temporal point of view itself there never was any need of a reconciliation but only of a comprehension of the meaning of terms. (The metaphysical nature of the self and its identity through time is a problem for all who confront memory, anticipation, etc.; it has no peculiar difficulties arising from the present problem.) -/- I am not maintaining that determinism is true; only that it is true insofar as we have free will. That we are free in willing is, broadly speaking, a fact of experience. That broad fact is more assured than any philosophical analysis. It is therefore surer than the deterministic analysis of it, entirely adequate as that in the end appears to be. But it is not here affirmed that there are no small exceptions, no slight undetermined swervings, no ingredient of absolute chance. All that is here said is that such absence of determination, if and so far as it exists, is no gain to freedom, but sheer loss of it; no advantage to the moral life, but blank subtraction from it. -- When I speak below of "the indeterminist" I mean the libertarian indeterminist, that is, him who believes in free will and holds that it involves indetermination. (shrink)

Appropriate philosophical language for describing the nature of God took almost two millennia to develop. Parmenides first discovered the language of being. Plato then distinguished the world of changing beings from the world of true being and also from the good “beyond being.” He refused to use being language for the Olympic gods. Aristotle understood a god as a substance (oujsiva). Avicenna described God, not as a substance but as “being,” which transcends thecategories, including substance. For Br. Thomas of Aquino, (...) God was no longer an Aristotelian substance, nor even an Avicennian “necessary being,” but is bestdescribed as “subsistent being itself ” (ipsum esse subsistens). Here the Christian disciple brought to an even higher level of perfection the achievements of his Islamic master, achievements that far surpassed their beginnings in Parmenidean monism. (shrink)

Concepts, Kovesi argued in Moral Notions and elsewhere, are formed from a point of view; they express relevant needs, wants, interests, ideals, and attitudes, and are formed from a point of view that can be anybody’s. The point of view need not be everybody’s (not everybody is interested in chess, for example), but it is a point of view that can be taken by anybody. The point of view expresses our purpose in forming the concept (p. 48)1; it is the (...) point of view of somebody dealing with certain sorts of problems, and that determines which material elements will come under the concept. But Kovesi refuses to explain in any of his writings what the moral point of view is, and says that it is no part of his project to explain that (see especially pp. 105 ff). This is not a matter of his refusing to say whether he is taking a Utilitarian point of view or an Emotivist point of view of anything of that sort. His question is a much more basic one about the logical structure of moral concepts and their relationships to the problems morality is formed to deal with. His refusal to explain the moral point of view is puzzling. The moral point of view that Kovesi envisaged, I think, is the point of view of members of a species the members of which have to get on together, a species members of which have the qualities of character that enable them to get on together. (shrink)

This study represents an improvement in the ethics scales inventory published in a 1988 Journal of Business Ethics article. The article presents the distillation and validation process whereby the original 33 item inventory was reduced to eight items. These eight items comprise the following ethical dimensions: a moral equity dimension, a relativism dimension, and a contractualism dimension. The multidimensional ethics scale demonstrates significant predictive ability.

The purpose of the present article is to examine the use of Logos as an ontological term in the Plotinian system and to seek to trace its connexion with Stoicism. Although at first the fact that the fundamental meaning metaphysically of Logos for Plotinus is a spiritual activity due, both as created and as creator, to the desire for contemplation may appear to be an obstacle to a close resemblance with the Spermatic Logos of Stoicism, the creative aspect of the (...) elemental Fire, nevertheless abundant and striking similarities in other respects seem to furnish conclusive evidence that the title which I have selected is not mistaken. The full importance of the Plotinian Logos cannot indeed be grasped until the development of the term has been studied not merely in Stoicism but in Philo and early Patristic Literature; for then the common function of Logos in every system, the reconciliation of the transcendent and the immanent views of God, is clearly manifested. But here only a brief indication of the evolution of the Logos doctrine between the diffusion of Stoic thought and the emergence of Neoplatonism is possible. Chief interest will be directed to the use by Plotinus of the spermatic conception, fundamentally Stoic, of a creative Nature which informs and pervades the Cosmos as its immanent Logos. (shrink)

Evidence based medicine has been a topic of considerable controversy in medical and health care circles over its short lifetime, because of the claims made by its exponents about the criteria used to assess the evidence for or against the effectiveness of medical interventions. The central epistemological debates underpinning the debates about evidence based medicine are reviewed by this paper, and some areas are suggested where further work remains to be done. In particular, further work is needed on the theory (...) of evidence and inference; causation and correlation; clinical judgment and collective knowledge; the structure of medical theory; and the nature of clinical effectiveness. (shrink)

What concerns me in this paper is a connection between motivation and various duties, especially duties that arise in the context of an institution such as a police force. I shall want to spread my net wider than that and discuss such issues as the role of loyalty in human life, but the focus will come back to the professional loyalties of police officers and, particularly, the discussion of the police culture in the Fitzgerald Report. What is it that motivates (...) people to perform their duties? Perhaps what matters, in the end, is that the duty is done more than why it is done, but motivation will have a lot to do with whether duty is done at all and with how well it is done. Motivation affects efficiency as well as morality and must, therefore, be given considerable thought by anybody concerned with an organization in which people are to perform their duties. (shrink)

Public health ethics is a relatively new academic field. Crucially, it is distinguished from traditional medical ethics by its focus on populations rather than individuals. Still, the ethics of public health cannot be perceived completely detached from the ethics of individuals, as populations are made up of individuals. One issue that clearly falls within the intersection of a population- and an individual based perspective on ethics is resource allocation. Resource allocation takes place at various stages within the organisation of healthcare, (...) i.e. at the micro-, meso- and macro level [3]. Resources are almost always limited, with the consequence that some healthcare is prioritised while other care is rationed. In this manner, resource allocation creates winners and losers; those who get the best care available, those who do not receive the best care and those who do not receive care at all. It seems prudent to assume that any adequate public health ethics involved in population-based decision-making will have to address all ethical aspects of resource allocation, all the way from the macrolevel policy-making process to the micro-level implementation where it affects specific and identifiable individuals. More specifically, such an ethics must be able to deal with the ethical tensions arising between population-based concerns framing the policy design process, and individual concerns in the realisation of the resource allocations. In the following, I will identify an inherent ethical tension involved in ‘legitimate resource allocation’, which is related to the challenge of meeting the ethical requirements from a population- and an individual based perspective at the same time. (shrink)