Recently a number of complex electrophysiological responses to neurotransmitters have been observed that cannot be described as simple excitation or inhibition. These responses are often characterized as modulatory, although there is no consensus on what defines modulation. Morphological studies reveal certain neurotransmitters stored in what might be release sites without synaptic contact. There is no direct evidence for nonsynaptic release from CNS sites, although such release does occur in the periphery and in invertebrates. Nonsynaptic release might provide a basis for (...) diffuse one-cell-to-many communication, but it might also simply be a means of sending the transmitter to a broader area of a single neuron than occurs in typical synapses. Several kinds of macromolecules have been found to be transported in a retrograde direction – and in some cases transsynaptically. There have been suggestions that some neurons may release more than one type of transmitter. Particularly intriguing is the possibility of release of substances that modulate actions of a primary transmitter. Taken together this range of evidence suggests that neurons may use a variety of forms of molecular communication in addition to traditionally described synaptic transmission.Several authors have suggested modes of communication distinct from classical synaptic transmission and have classified released substances using terms such as neurohumor, neurohormone, neuroregulator, and modulator. These suggestions have the heuristic value of drawing together diverse kinds of data, but it remains to be established that the pieces fit together in that fashion – for example, that complex electrophysiological effects are associated with substances released nonsynaptically. In order to reduce confusion, a flexible, generic approach to nomenclature for substances released from neurons and for hypothetical modes of communication is recommended. Some behavioral implications of nonconventional transmission are considered. (shrink)

Healthcare ethics consultants in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) document consults in an enterprise-wide web-based database entitled IEWeb, serving as a system of record for healthcare ethics documentation at 1300 VA facilities. The need arose to evolve the database from an ethics process training resource into a more streamlined documentation repository that captures essential consult elements. A VHA National Center for Ethics in Health Care (NCEHC) Improvement Team convened for three tasks: (1) Specify and prioritize IEWeb changes (occurred via six (...) focus groups composed of “new user” and “super user” cohorts with analysis of existing documentation patterns); (2) Pilot the changes regionally (via regional communication, training, and reviews of pre-post use patterns); and (3) Measure the impact of national change implementation on user perspectives (via pre-and post-change implementation polls). Focus groups identified six implementable priority areas for ethics consult documentation improvement, including the development of a usable consult summary note for ready conversion from IEWeb fields into the electronic health record. Post-IEWeb updates showed an increased number of consults documented, a reduction in “time to consult documentation closure” by a mean of 4.5 days, and a clinically-meaningful improvement in the quality of documentation (78% of ethics questions scored “above-bar” on the validation tool pre- vs. 89% scored “above-bar” post-IEWeb changes, n = 140). According to national survey findings, the number of consultants documenting “all” consults in IEWeb increased, satisfaction increased, and perception of documentation difficulty decreased. IEWeb simplification enabled ethics consultants to re-focus their documentation completion efforts by decreasing perception of documentation burden while improving documentation frequency and quality in a clinically-meaningful way. (shrink)

Five faculty members in the College of Business at Northern Illinois University received a grant from the James S. Kemper Foundation to integrate ethics into the graduate business curriculum. This was the second phase of a comprehensive program to integrate ethics into the business curriculum. Each faculty member taught a required course in the MBA program. The faculty members represented each of the five functional departments in the College of Business.This paper describes the ethics content, materials, and approaches that were (...) used to cover ethics by each of the five faculty members. Hopefully, this description will help other faculty and universities integrate ethics more effectively into the business curriculum. (shrink)

Previous studies conducted in the United States indicate that people associate numbers with gender, such that odd numbers are more likely to be considered male and even numbers considered female. It has been argued that this number gendering phenomenon is acquired through social learning and conditioning, and that male-odd/female-even associations reflect a general, cross-cultural human consensus on gender roles relating to agency and communion. However, the incidence and pattern of number gendering in cultures outside the United States remains to be (...) established. Against this background, the purpose of this study was to determine whether people from a culture and country very different from the United States also associate numbers with gender, and, if they do, whether the pattern of these associations is the male-odd/female-even associations previously observed. To investigate this issue, we adopted the Implicit Association Test used frequently in previous research, where associations between numbers and gender were examined using male and female Arabic participants native to, and resident in, the United Arab Emirates. The findings indicated that the association of numbers with gender does occur in Arabic culture. But while Arabic females associated odd numbers with male faces and even numbers with female faces, Arabic males showed the reversed pattern of gender associations, associating even numbers with male faces and odd numbers with female faces. These findings support the view that number gendering is indeed a cross-cultural phenomenon and show that the phenomenon occurs across very different countries and cultures. But the findings also suggest that the pattern with which numbers are associated with gender is not universal and, instead, reflects culture-specific views on gender roles which may change across cultures and gender. Further implications for understanding the association of numbers with gender across human societies are discussed. (shrink)

In the context of increased movement across borders, this book examines how key cultural texts and concepts are transferred between nations and languages as well as across different media. The texts examined in this book are considered fundamental to their source culture and can also take on a particular relevance to other cultures. The chapters investigate cultural transfers and differences realised through translation and reflect critically upon the implications of these with regard to matters of cultural identity. The book offers (...) an important contribution to cultural approaches in translation studies, with ramifications across different disciplines, including literary studies, history, philosophy, and gender studies. The chapters offer a range of cultural and methodological frameworks and are written by scholars from a variety of language and cultural backgrounds, Western and Eastern. (shrink)

Özet Şii-İmamiyye’nin usûlde Mu’tezilenin etkisinde kaldığı iddiaları, hicri dördüncü asırdan itibaren dile getirilmektedir. Buna karşılık usûlî düşüncenin ilk mümessili sayılan Şeyh Müfîd’den itibaren mezhep içinden yükselen sesler bu iddiaları şiddetle reddetmişlerdir. Biz bu çalışmada Mu’tezile kelamına sistematik hüviyet kazandıran ve yazdığı eserlerle Mu’tezile kelamının bugüne ulaşmasında büyük pay sahibi olan Kâdî Abdülcebbâr ile İmamiyye’nin kelam düşüncesinin istikrar bulmasında ve Şeyh Müfîd’le başlatılan usûlî yaklaşımın benimsenip yaygınlaşmasında büyük bir yeri olan Ebû Ca’fer et-Tûsî arasında adalet ilkesi üzerinden bir karşılaştırma yaparak, söz (...) konusu iddiaların ne kadar sübut bulduğunu tespit etmeye çalıştık. Kısmi farklı izahları bir kenara bırakırsak, adalet ilkesinin ispat ve yorumlanmasında iki kelamcı arasında kayda değer bir farklılığın olmadığı görülmektedir. Abstract The claim that the Shi’i Imamite thought is heavily influenced by the Mu’tazilite outlook has been alleged since the fouth century of hijra. However, beginning with Shaikh Mufid, the first representative of the Usuli branch of Shi’a, the Shi’is vehemently denied this allegation. In this article, this issue is dealt with by making a comparison between the idea of Qadi Abd al-Jabbar, the prominent Mu’tazilite scholar who made a major contribution to the consolidation of the schools’ theaching and that of al-Tusi, who also made a contrubitued to the integration of the Shi’ite kalam and the spreading of the usuli approach initiated by Shaikh Mufid. Leaving aside the differences in deatil, it seems that there is no noteworthy difference between their approcah to the issue of justice. Key Words: Qâdî Abd al-Jabbâr, Abû Ja’far al-Tûsî, Husn-Qubh, Divine Justice, Free Will. (shrink)

An informative study of the conditions, the strengths, and the weaknesses of Russian totalitarianism by an expert on Russian affairs. The "Keys" are: the necessity of a struggle for power within the totalitarian regime, the necessity for secrecy and the complete control of all activity, the proscription of labor, the contempt for democratic election, the constant need for colonial expansion, and the subordination of the people to the state.--A. R.

1940s was a time of great change in the psychoanalytic world.

In Part I, the author argued for nonreductive individualism (NRI), an account of the individual-collective relation that is ontologically individualist yet rejects methodological individualism. However, because NRI is ontologically individualist, social entities and properties would seem to be only analytic constructs, and if so, they would seem to be epiphenomenal, since only real things can have causal power. In general, a nonreductionist account is a relatively weak defense of sociological explanation if it cannot provide an account of how social properties (...) can participate in causal relations. In this article, the author extends NRI to address this weakness and provides an account of social causation that he refers to as supervenient causation. Key Words: individualism • collectivism • social realism • social causation. (shrink)

In an inductive argument data increase the probability of a hypothesis insofar as the hypothesis makes probable the data, the data are otherwise not likely to occur, and the hypothesis is simple. The Cosmological argument from the existence of the universe, the Teleological argument from its conformity to natural law, and other arguments from more detailed features of the universe each increase the probability that there is a God. I thus summarize in simple form the main points of my book (...) ’The Existence of God’. (shrink)

The key objectives of this book are to demonstrate the applicability of issues in the philosophy of science to problems in psychiatry and to show how the conceptual issues raised by psychiatry should be considered more closely by philosophers of science. These are worthy aims: the philosophy of psychiatry needs to draw more thoughtfully upon contemporary philosophical debates and stimulating interest within the philosophy of science is a good way to do this.Cooper's book succeeds for both of these desiderata. The (...) first five chapters discuss the central issues in the philosophy of psychiatry: whether mental illness is a disease/natural kind and what follows from this. There is a large literature on these questions, some of which …. (shrink)

Post-globalization trends have left many people with a sense of insecurity—on both the economic and the employment fronts. Business re-engineering, downsizing, lay-offs, excessive consumerism and greed have altered the rules of the business game. Skewed attention to mere economic criteria in many business organizations, even at the cost of societal and environmental factors, is leading to a sense of hollowness, ‘something missing’, in the organization and its employees. People are making every attempt to discover this ‘missing component’ in their lives, (...) with particular reference to their work lives. This ‘missing component’ is referred to as ‘spirit at work’ in management literature. Bringing in spirit at work has become a matter of priority for many business organizations, in their drives for sustained success. Spirit at work is about care, compassion, integrity, and about attempting to live one’s values at the workplace. It is about employees who are passionate and energized by their work, who find meaning and purpose and pursue excellence in their work, and who feel that they can express their complete selves at work. It is about individuals and organizations that see work as an opportunity to grow and to contribute to society in a meaningful way. Spirit at work can be better understood by gaining clarity about the key aspects that constitute this concept. This article reviews the extant litera-ture on spirit at work, highlights the key dimensions of spirit at work, and elaborates on each of them. A number of Indian scholars like S.K. Chakraborty, Subhash Sharma, M.B. Athreya, Panduranga Bhatta and others have proposed an Indian perspective of spirit at work and have elaborated on it since a decade and a half. This article extends the Indian perspective further, based on Indian psychophilosophy, and establishes its comprehensive and inclusive nature that enables incorporation of most of the key dimensions of spirit at work as identified in literature. (shrink)

Originally published in 1942, this widely read book appears now in its third edition. In a brief prefatory note, Mrs. Langer describes it as "frankly a prelude to Feeling and Form," her more recent book on aesthetics, which, she indicates, may itself eventually prove to be a prelude to a more comprehensive work which will include ethical problems in its scope.--D. R.

Heidegger’s early project aims to articulate the form of our being as Dasein, and he says that for this usually hidden form to become accessible, a certain kind of “mood” is required of the philosopher. This “ground-mood” he identifies in Sein und Zeit as anxiety. He also, however, presents anxiety as a mood anyone, philosopher or not, experiences when there is some significant breakdown in the living of her life. I argue here that there are largely unrecognized problems with this (...) conflation of methodological and “existential” moods, but that there is nevertheless a compelling methodological account of anxiety that can be teased apart from the existentialist one: methodologically understood, anxiety is a self-affected state of the ontologist, one that results from her asking ontological questions of herself, and, by imagining crisis or breakdown, withdrawing from her determinate situation to a position where she can see the form of her own activity as questioner and imaginer. I draw out some consequences this has for how we should understand the place of ontological understanding in living one’s life, and I conclude by briefly showing how my reading helps us see Heidegger as developing key elements in the work of Descartes and Kant. (shrink)

This mini review examines the impact of tropical climate on motivational factors during aerobic performance and proposes the tracks of an integrative theoretical model to better understand the direct and indirect motivational mechanisms that can operate on athletic performances. TC is detrimental for aerobic performance and, although it clearly induces physiological constraints, these do not seem to be the only factors that explain the performance decline. Indeed, TC performance researchers have developed a theory of anticipation, which suggests that the brain (...) commands a reduction in effort to protect the body from probable harm and heatstroke risk. The objective of this mini review is thus to examine the possibility that motivation may be a key factor in TC performance. The main psychological impacts of TC on aerobic performance are reviewed and an integrative theoretical model is presented that may help to better understand the mechanisms of motivation. (shrink)

__Nietzsche: The Key Concepts__ is a comprehensive guide to one of the most widely-studied and influential philosophers of the nineteenth century. This invaluable resource helps navigate the often challenging and controversial thought outlined in Nietzsche’s seminal texts. Fully cross-referenced throughout and in an accessible A-Z format with suggestions for further reading, this concise yet thorough introduction explores such ideas as: decadence epistemology modernity nihilism will to power This volume is essential reading for students of philosophy and will be of interest (...) to those studying in the fields of literature, religion and cultural theory. (shrink)

Business is undergoing a conceptual revolution. Since the Global Financial Crisis there are many new ideas and proposals to make capitalism more responsible. The purpose of this paper is to identify key flaws in the “old story” of capitalism. Six principles are explained that taken together form the basis for a new story of business, one of responsible capitalism.

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Bloom provides a masterful synthesis of recent advances in word-learning, placing them within the framework of abiding theoretical issues. I will augment and challenge his approach by underscoring the significance of word extension for questions concerning (a) the origin and evolution of infants' expectations, and (b) domain-specificity in word-learning.

Corporate social responsibility is a recognised and common part of business activity. Some of the regularly cited motives behind CSR are employee morale, recruitment and retention, with employees acknowledged as a key organisational stakeholder. Despite the significance of employees in relation to CSR, relatively few studies have examined their engagement with CSR and the impediments relevant to this engagement. This exploratory case study-based research addresses this paucity of attention, drawing on one to one interviews and observation in a large UK (...) energy company. A diversity of engagement was found, ranging from employees who exhibited detachment from the CSR activities within the company, to those who were fully engaged with the CSR activities, and to others who were content with their own personal, but not organisational, engagement with CSR. A number of organisational context impediments, including poor communication, a perceived weak and low visibility of CSR culture, and lack of strategic alignment of CSR to business and personal objectives, served to explain this diversity of employee engagement. Social exchange theory is applied to help explore the volition that individual employees have towards their engagement with CSR activities, and to consider the implications of an implicit social, rather than explicit economic, contract between an organisation and its employees in their engagement with CSR. (shrink)

T. M. Scanlon's magisterial book What We Owe to Each Other is surely one of the most sophisticated and important works of moral philosophy to have appeared for many years. It raises fundamental questions about all the main aspects of the subject, and I hope and expect that it will have a decisive influence on the shape and direction of moral philosophy in the years to come. In this essay I shall focus on four sets of issues raised by Scanlon's (...) systematic argument, with the aim of clarifying some of Scanlon's central assumptions and presenting alternatives at several key points. The perspective from which I offer these comments is that of a reader who is sympathetic to Scanlon's general approach but not yet convinced on various points of detail. (shrink)

Quantum cognition is an emerging field that uses mathematical principles of quantum theory to help formalize and understand cognitive systems and processes. The topic on the potential of using quantum theory to build models of cognition (Volume 5, issue 4) introduces and synthesizes its new development through an introduction and six core articles. The current issue presents 14 commentaries on the core articles. Five key issues surface, some of which are interestingly controversial and debatable as expected for a new emerging (...) field. (shrink)

This article presents a network perspective on whistleblowing. It considers how whistleblowing affects, and is affected by, the preexisting distribution of power inside and outside an organization, where power is conceptualized as deriving from the network positions of the key actors. The article also highlights four characteristic features of whistleblowing: third‐party detriment, local subversion, appeal to central or external power, and reasonable expectation of concern. The feature of local subversion succinctly explains why whistleblowing is difficult. The feature of appeal to (...) central or external power highlights that contrary to the perception of a democratizing phenomenon, whistleblowing tends to redistribute discretion away from local power toward more central power. This suggests a need for caution about institutional measures to promote whistleblowing in contexts where governance is already highly centralized. (shrink)

What is the direction of South African theological ethics as that country moves out of the apartheid era into a new democratic future? Following its struggle against apartheid, how will theology respond to the new challenge of making clear its distinctive stance in a democratic, multi-faith society with a secular constitution? A danger, similar to that previously discussed in the United States, exists in South Africa as theology evolves from a mode of resistance to that of compliance and accommodation, especially (...) under the guise of "nation-building." The essay plots a trajectory by means of a consideration of four works representing nonracial liberationist theology which emerged at key points in the past fifteen years—the Kairos Document, and works by Albert Nolan, Charles Villla-Vicencio, and James Cochrane. For all their contextual sensitivity and strength, these works appear to offer little of a distinctively theological nature, and little of Christian substance to church and society. The way lies open for the development of an African Christian ethics. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s perspectivism has received restricted and unrestricted interpretations. The latter take the cognitive effects of ‘perspectives’ to be pervasive and general; the former argue they are restricted to special subject matters, have limited effects, or are not essentially cognitive at all. I argue on textual grounds that Nietzsche was committed to the unrestricted view. Comparison to A.W. Moore’s treatment of perspectival representation in Points of View illuminates both the nature of perspectivism and key arguments needed to defend it. Nietzschean perspectivism (...) must deny the very possibility of absolute representations (sensu Moore), and to do so, it must block a form of argument that promises to integrate perspectival representations into progressively less restricted, and ultimately absolute, representations of the world. Such arguments depend on a strong assumption about the unity of the independent world, which Moore accepts and Nietzsche denies. Nietzsche’s pluralism about perspectives thereby turns out to rely on pluralism about the world, which shapes his understanding of us as essentially bounded cognitive agents. Nietzsche holds that the longing for absolute representation manifest in Moore, Leibniz, and many other philosophers, which aspires to overcome the limitations of perspective, amounts to ascetic self-denial about our cognitive condition. (shrink)

In The Value Gap, Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen addresses the distinction between what is finally good and what is finally good-for, two value notions that are central to ethics and practical deliberation. The first part of the book argues against views that claim that one of these notions is either faulty, or at best conceptually dependent on the other notion. Whereas these two views disagree on whether it is good or good-for that is the flawed or dependent concept, it is argued, as (...) against both approaches, that goodness and goodness-for are independent value notions that cannot be fully understood in terms of one another. The second part provides an analysis of good and good-for in terms of a fitting-attitude analysis. By elaborating a more nuanced understanding of the key elements of this analysis—reasons and pro-attitudes—Rønnow-Rasmussen challenges the widespread idea that there are no genuine practical and moral dilemmas. The result is that the gap between favouring for a reason what is good and favouring for a reason what is good for someone appears insurmountable. (shrink)

Are fictional characters such as Sherlock Holmes real? What can fiction tell us about the nature of truth and reality? In this excellent introduction to the problem of fictionalism R. M. Sainsbury covers the following key topics: what is fiction? realism about fictional objects, including the arguments that fictional objects are real but non-existent; real but non-factual; real but non-concrete the relationship between fictional characters and non-actual worlds fictional entities as abstract artefacts fiction and intentionality and the problem of irrealism (...) fictionalism about possible worlds moral fictionalism. R. M. Sainsbury makes extensive use of examples from fiction, such as Sherlock Holmes, Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary and examines the work of philosophers who have made significant contributions to the topic, including Meinong, David Lewis, and Bas Van Fraassen. Additional features include chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary of technical terms, making _Fiction and Fictionalism_ ideal for those coming to the issue for the first time. (shrink)

The Rhetorical Fabric of the Traditional Arabic Qaṣīda in Its Formative Stages: A Comparative Study of the Rhetoric in Two Traditional Poems by ʿAlqama l-Faḥl and Bashshār b. Burd. By Ali Ahmad Hussein. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 98. Wiesbaden: Harraaaowitz, 2015. Pp. xv + 292. €78.

Context: The interest of communication scholars in constructivism is fuelled by the need to radically rethink the theoretical assumptions that have governed most media and communication research for the past three or four decades. Problem: On at least two points, constructivism poses difficulties that need to be overcome by scholars of communication. These are the attitudes of many radical constructivists towards “reality” and the constructivist position with regard to “society.” The article seeks to clarify the constructivist position with regard to (...) social interaction and society by determining how successful communication among individuals is possible, despite their cognitive autonomy. Method: In order to contribute to a discussion about the current situation in communication and media studies, the article takes up the author’s argument that communication cannot be understood unless models describing it are centred on the individual. Based on this conceptualisation, considerations about the ontological assumptions of constructivism and the constructivist position with regard to social interaction are revisited. Results: It is argued that cognition is not pure self-reference; society cannot be considered simply as an individual construct; self-organisation also occurs at the supra-individual level, where shared knowledge and socio-cultural meanings emerge in the operatively closed motion of the successive communicative elements. Implications: Clarifying the constructivist position with regard to society can contribute to innovative theory building and research in communication science, and in the social sciences more broadly. (shrink)

This article discusses the meanings of “creativity”—tvorchestvo—as we encounter it in Georges Florovsky’s thought, first and foremost in his magnum opus Ways of Russian Theology (1937). Tvorchestvo had by this time become a key concept in Russian pre-revolutionary and later émigré thought. It is associated above all with Nikolai Berdyaev’s philosophy, but it also plays an important role in Sergei Bulgakov’s philosophy of economy. In both cases, it stands for the human response to divine creation. Moreover, and somewhat less famously, (...) it was also an epistemological concept in the religious idealism of Vladimir Solovyov as well as in Russian neo-Kantianism (Fyodor Stepun), where it stood for the active, synthetic faculty of our minds. Florovsky, meanwhile, used it as a description of how we should relate to the patristic heritage, but also to history more generally: Our attitude should be “creative,” active, as well as both backward- and forward-looking. This “return to the Fathers” was a central component of Florovsky’s neopatristic program, but, interestingly, in order to conceptualize this return, Florovsky took over a concept from traditions that his own approach otherwise firmly criticized. By analyzing Florovsky’s use of tvorchestvo, this article addresses the broader question as to the differences and parallels between the neopatristic movement and the legacy of the Russian Renaissance (Silver Age). (shrink)

What is the future of Philosophy of education? Or as many of scholars and thinkers in this final ‘future-focused’ collective piece from the philosophy of education in a new key Series put it, what are the futures—plural and multiple—of the intersections of ‘philosophy’ and ‘education?’ What is ‘Philosophy’; and what is ‘Education’, and what role may ‘enquiry’ play? Is the future of education and philosophy embracing—or at least taking seriously—and thinking with Indigenous ethicoontoepistemologies? And, perhaps most importantly, what is that (...) ‘Future’? These debates have been located in the work of diverse scholars: from the West, from Global South, from indigenous thinkers. In this collective piece, we purposefully juxtapose diverse takes on the future of these intersections. We have given up the urge to organise, place together, separate with subheadings or connect the paragraphs that follow. Instead, we let these philosophers of education and thinkers who use philosophical texts and ideas to sit together in one long read as potentially ‘strange and unusual bedfellows’. This text urges us to understand how these scholars and thinkers perceive our educational philosophical futures, and how the work and thinking they have done on thinking about what the future of that new key in philosophy of education may look like is embedded in a much deeper and richer literature, and personal experience. (shrink)

R.K. Elliott's essays on aesthetics put forward a number of common themes that together constitute a unified approach to aesthetics. Throughout his writing, Elliott combines analytic rigour with sympathy for ideas in continental philosophy. This book, the first to gather together Elliott's key essays, powerfully illuminates the unifying role of imagination and the aesthetic in human experience.

The context for biological emergence is modular hierarchical structures; their existence is what enables functional complexity to arise. Because of the openness of organisms to their environment, complete initial data (position, momentum) of all particles making up their structure is insufficient to determine future outcomes, because unpredictable new matter, energy, and information impacts each organism from the exterior. Consequently, through Darwinian evolution, life has developed processes to handle this issue functionally on short time scales as well on longer developmental timescales. (...) Symbolism and technology are the transforming factors handling this issue at the social levels, which is where the most sophisticated outcomes of openness occur. Considering the cosmological context, the issue is, should the universe itself be regarded as an open system over time? I make the case that is indeed so, because radically new outcomes occur such as the existence of aircraft, iPads, and the internet, which could not plausibly have been encoded in some form of data on the Last Scattering Surface in the expanding universe. (shrink)

The key to the euthanasia debate lies in how best to regulate what doctors do. Opponents of euthanasia frequently warn of the possible negative consequences of legalising physician assisted suicide and active euthanasia while ignoring the covert practice of PAS/AE by doctors and other health professionals. Against the background of survey studies suggesting that anything from 4% to 10% of doctors have intentionally assisted a patient to die, and interview evidence of the unregulated, idiosyncratic nature of underground PAS/AE, this paper (...) assesses three alternatives to the current policy of prohibition. It argues that although legalisation may never succeed in making euthanasia perfectly safe, legalising PAS/AE may nevertheless be safer, and therefore a preferable policy alternative, to prohibition. At a minimum, debate about harm minimisation and the regulation of euthanasia needs to take account of PAS/AE wherever it is practised, both above and below ground. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Pippin treats Nietzsche's moral psychology as the key to his philosophy. Three aspects of the psychology are meant to bear this weight: a critical and deflationary, but irreducibly hermeneutic, conception of the nature of moral psychology itself; a thesis that eros is central to Nietzsche's theory of valuing; and an expressivist theory of action, which replaces the causal role of intention with an interpretive notion of expression in explaining action. Pippin's handling of all three, but especially the third, places (...) Nietzsche's philosophy in a Hegelian light, as does his view that genuine action arises from a deep-going self-dissatisfaction. I raise doubts about whether the expressivist theory of action can be adequate to all actions and suggest that the centrality of self-dissatisfaction for Pippin stands in tension with Nietzsche's own construal of the demand for affirmation of life. (shrink)