Our team at the Centre for Clinical Ethics has long been engaged in internal discussion about the purpose and value of ethics debriefs and their purported role in reducing moral distress (Morley an...

Popper's short essay about the rationality principle has been the target of many criticisms which have raised serious doubts about its consistency. How could the well-known promoter of falsificationism suggest that we not reject a principle that he himself describes as false? Nonetheless, the essay can be read in a way that makes it appear much more consistent. Better sense can be made of Popper's own examples (the flustered driver, the pedestrian, etc.), by taking seriously his view that the rationality (...) principle might be "approximately true" and falsified only in very rare cases, while also giving proper attention to his four rather elliptical arguments. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethics of using assistive technology such as video surveillance in the homes of people living with dementia. Ideation and concept elaboration around the introduction of a camera-based surveillance service in the homes of people with dementia, typically living alone, is explored. The paper reviews relevant literature on surveillance of people living with dementia, and summarises the findings from ideation and concept elaboration workshops, designed to capture the views of those involved in the care of people living (...) with dementia at home. The research question relates to the ethical considerations of using assistive technologies that include video surveillance in the homes of people living with dementia, and the implications for a person living with dementia whenever video surveillance is used in their home and access to the camera is given to the person’s family. The review of related work indicated that such video surveillance may result in loss of autonomy or freedom for the person with dementia. The workshops reflected the findings from the related work, and revealed useful information to inform the service design, in particular in fine-tuning the service to find the best relationship between privacy and usefulness. Those who took part in the workshops supported the concept of the use of camera in the homes of people living with dementia, with some significant caveats around privacy. The research carried out in this work is small in scale but points towards an acceptance by many caregivers of people living with dementia of surveillance technologies. This paper indicates that those who care for people living with dementia at home are willing to make use of camera technology and therefore the value of this work is to help shed light on the direction for future research. (shrink)

Ethical care is beginning to be recognised as care that accounts for the views of those at the receiving end of care. However, in the context of palliative and supportive district nursing care, the patients’ and their carers’ views are seldom heard. This qualitative research study explores these views. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 26 patients with palliative and supportive care needs receiving district nursing care, and 13 of their carers. Participants were recruited via community nurses and hospices (...) between September 2010 and October 2011. Post-structural discourse analysis is used to examine how discourses operate on a moral level. One discourse, ‘busyness’, is argued to preclude a moral form of nursing care. The discourse of friendship is presented to contrast this. Discussion explores Gallagher’s ‘slow ethics’ and challenges the currently accepted ways of measuring to improve quality of care concluding that quality cannot be measured. (shrink)

This book collects a renowned scholar's essays from the past five decades and reflects two main concerns: an approach to logic that stresses argumentation, reasoning, and critical thinking and that is informal, empirical, naturalistic, practical, applied, concrete, and historical; and an interest in Galileo’s life and thought—his scientific achievements, Inquisition trial, and methodological lessons in light of his iconic status as “father of modern science.” These republished essays include many hard to find articles, out of print works, and chapters which (...) are not available online. The collection provides an excellent resource of the author's lifelong dedication to the subject. Thus, the book contains critical analyses of some key Galilean arguments about the laws of falling bodies and the Copernican hypothesis of the earth’s motion. There is also a group of chapters in which Galileo’s argumentation is compared and contrasted with that of other figures such as Socrates, Karl Marx, Giordano Bruno, and his musicologist father Vincenzo Galilei. The chapters on Galileo’s trial illustrate an approach to the science-vs-religion issue which Finocchiaro labels “para-clerical” and conceptualizes in terms of a judicious consideration of arguments for and against Galileo and the Church. Other essays examine argumentation about Galileo’s life and thought by the major Galilean scholars of recent decades. The book will be of interest to scholars in philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, history of science, history of religion, philosophy of religion, argumentation, rhetoric, and communication studies. (shrink)

Deutsch-Pali Wörterbuch. Helmut Klar. Octopus Verlag, Vienna 1982. 364pp.

Pali Buddhism. Edited by Frank J. Hoffman and Deegalle Mahinda. Curzon Press, Richmond 1996. 233 pp. £40. ISBN 0-7007-0359-4.

Teachings of a Buddhist Monk. Ajahn Sumedho. Edited by Diana St Ruth. Foreword by Jack Kornfield. Sharpham North 1990. 109 pp., illustrated. £4.99.

The Seven Stages of Purification and the Insight Knowledges. Matara Sri Nanarma Mahathera. Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy 1983. xii, 82 pp. $5.00.

For example, from the point of view of pure conceptual analysis, since the reduction of what is not understood to what is understood is new understanding, explanation seems to involve growth of understanding. But is it the only kind of growth of understanding? It seems that explanation is quantitative growth of understanding. Could there be a qualitative growth of understanding and if so what would it be? And how would qualitative growth of understanding relate to explanation?

Vu l’intérêt croissant que l’on porte aux questions éthiques dans le monde contemporain, on ne s’étonne plus de voir se multiplier les travaux qui discutent la façon dont ces questions se posent dans telle ou telle discipline. Or parmi celles-ci, l’architecture occupe une place assez particulière. Dans la mesure où l’on a affaire à l’un des beaux-arts, il ne va pas de soi que l’on puisse attribuer à l’architecture une fonction éthique, tant il est vrai que l’artiste authentique est en (...) droit de revendiquer une sorte de liberté qui se prête mal au respect inconditionnel d’impératifs d’origine morale. Toutefois, comme l’architecture est un art dont le propre est de répondre à un besoin fondamental de l’être humain, soit celui de trouver un abri et un lieu propice à l’habitation, au travail, à l’étude, au recueillement, à la détente ou à quelque autre activité jugée importante, les architectes ont rarement eu beaucoup de. (shrink)

Le concept de plan utilisé en planification socialiste est rapproché du concept de plan invoqué par diverses philosophies de l'histoire. Pour ce faire, la notion de « plan divin » est analysée à l'aide d'une structure à sept termes qui, s'appliquant également au concept socialiste de plan, permet de fonder ce rapprochement. Les avatars du concept de plan en philosophie de l'histoire sont ensuite examinés de manière à faire ressortir un parallèle entre les dilemmes de cette philosophie et ceux de (...) la planification soviétique, yougoslave ou chinoise.The concept of planning used in socialist experiences is approached by the "plan" concept put forward by diverse philosophies of history. In order to do this, the notion of "divine plan" is analysed with the help of a structure of seven terms which, being equally applied to the socialist concept of planning, allows the foundation of this "rapprochement" . The transformations of the concept of plan in the philosophy of history are next examined in such a manner to manifest a parallel between the dilemmas of this philosophy and those of Soviet, Yugoslav or Chinese planning. (shrink)

C'est bien à la question de savoir s'il est légitime de parler d'une connaissance philosophique, que Gilles-Gaston Granger a voulu répondre, et répondre par l'affirmative, en publiant son dernier livre intitulé Pour la connaissance philosophique. À en juger pourtant par les réactions agaçées que provoque souvent cette enquête constamment réouverte sur la nature de la philosophie, il se pourrait bien que nombre de philosophes trouvent un peu excessif de consacrer encore un ouvrage de près de trois cents pages à justifier (...) la portée cognitive d'une discipline qui, au cours de sa longue histoire, a produit autant d'œuvres dont le moins qu'on puisse dire est qu'elles ont hautement contribué à enrichir le bagage culturel de l'humanité. Qui, parmi ceux qui vouent l'essentiel de leur vie à l'enseignement de la philosophie, accepterait de se voir refuser le droit de prétendre transmettre une connaissance authentique? Pourtant, je voudrais soutenir ici que, compte tenu de son contexte, non seulement l'intervention de Granger n'était pas superflue mais qu'elle n'aura pas été suffisante pour établir de façon convaincante qu'il existe telle chose qu'une connaissance proprement philosophique. (shrink)

Although the fallacy of composition is little studied and trivially illustrated, some view it as ubiquitous and paramount. Furthermore, although definitions regard the concept as unproblematic, it contains three distinct elements, often confused. And although some scholars apparently claim that fallacies are figments of a critic’s imagination, they are really proposing to study fallacies in the context of meta-argumentation. Guided by these ideas, I discuss the important historical example of Michels’s iron law of oligarchy.

Although ethics is an essential component of undergraduate medical education, research suggests current medical ethics curricula face considerable challenges in improving students’ ethical reasoning. This paper discusses these challenges and introduces a promising new mode of graduate and professional ethics instruction for overcoming them. We begin by describing common ethics curricula, focusing in particular on established problems with current approaches. Next, we describe a novel method of ethics education and assessment for medical students that we have devised, the Medical Ethics (...) Bowl. Finally, we suggest pedagogical advantages to MEBs when compared to other ethics curricula. (shrink)

Technology and its interfaces with nursing care, patients and carers, and the home are many and varied. To date, healthcare services research has generally focussed on pragmatic issues such access to and the optimization of technology, while philosophical inquiry has tended to focus on the ethics of how technology makes the home more hospital like. However, the ethical implications of the ways in which technology shapes the subjectivities of patients and carers have not been explored. In order to explore this, (...) poststructural theory, in particular the work of Butler, Foucault, and Deleuze, is used to theorize the relationship between subjectivity and materiality as ethically mandated on producing rather than precluding the development of subjectivities in novel ways. This theoretical understanding is then utilized through a process of ‘plugged in’ as described by Jackson and Massie that aims to link empirical data, research, and philosophical inquiry. Through this process, it is suggested that power, which the empirical data demonstrate, is frequently exercised through medical discourses and restricts patients' and carers' ability to shape the material environment of the home as a place to live and be cared for in palliative stages of illness. Alternative discourses are suggested both from the empirical data as well as other research, which may offer patients and carers the possibility of reclaiming power over the home and their subjectivities. Finally, the dichotomy between the home and hospital, mediated via technology, is posited as being problematic. It is argued the dichotomy is false and should be moved away from in order to allow an ethical embrace of technology in palliative care. (shrink)

Feyerabend's views are construed as formulating the problem of determining the role of rhetoric in scientific rationality and posing the solution-theory that scientific rationality is essentially rhetorical. He is taken to give three arguments against reason, of which the one from the insufficiency of reason and the one from incommensurability are shown to presuppose his historical argument; his historical argument is based on his account of Galileo, which hinges essentially on Feyerabend's analysis of the tower argument. This analysis is insightful (...) in certain important ways but misconceived in others. Feyerabend's main error is to see a conflict between reason and rhetoric, where none exists; it is argued that rhetorical devices have their own standards of propriety and impropriety, different from those of rational arguments, and that at the same time sound rhetorical analysis presupposes sound logical analysis. (shrink)

Mr Dobb examines the history of economic thought in the light of the modern controversy over capital theory and, more particularly, the appearance of Sraffa's book The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, which was a watershed in the critical discussions constituted a crucial turning-point in the history of economics: an estimate not unconnected with his reinterpretation of nineteenth-century economic thought as consisting of two streams or traditions commonly confused under the generic title of 'the classical tradition' against which (...) Jevons so strongly reacted. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.