The ethical principle of respect for autonomy has come into its own In American medicine since World War II as equal in importance to the traditional medicomoral principles of nonmaleficence and beneficence. Respect for autonomy provides the ethical underpinning for the patient's right to exercise an informed choice – whether to consent to or to refuse recommended medical treatment. However, an informed choice demands a certain level of competence. Typical criteria for patient competence to accept or to refuse medical treatments (...) Include ability to make a choice and ability to comprehend the nature of the treatment, as well as the risks and benefits of accepting or refusing the treatment. (shrink)

"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface. It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx's thought. This circumstance led Lukács, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian antecedents in (...) the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of though. Four phases of Hegel's intellectual development are examined: "Hegel's early republican phase," "the crisis in Hegel's views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method," "rationale and defense of objective idealism," and "the breach with Schelling and _ The Phenomenology of Mind_." Lukács completed this study in 1938, but because of the imminent outbreak of war, it was not published until the late 1940s. A revised German edition appeared in 1954, and it is this text that is the basis of this first English translation of the work. (shrink)

Rodney G. Peffer argues that Karl Marx cannot be considered a utilitarian, a consequentialist, or a nonutilitarian consequentialist. Based on ethics of social consequences as one of the versions of nonutilitarian consequentialism, the author examines Marx’s early journalistic articles concerning the common good published mainly in the Rheinische Zeitung. The author verifies the hypothesis that Marx was a nonutilitarian consequentialist in the given period with regard to the common good. By examining Marx’s views on freedom of the press and (...) censorship, as well as his criticism of the feudal experiences of Prussia, the author came to the conclusion that Marx’s views expressed in early journalism are close to ethics of social consequences and thus to nonutilitarian consequentialism. (shrink)

This latest work from one of the world's leading political philosophers will appeal to audiences from a variety of fields, including philosophy, political science, women's studies, ethnic studies, sociology, and communications studies.

The spiritual geography of Russian cosmism. General characteristics ; Recent definitions of cosmism -- Forerunners of Russian cosmism. Vasily Nazarovich Karazin (1773-1842) ; Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749-1802) ; Poets: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, (1711-1765) and Gavriila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816) ; Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky (1803-1869) ; Aleksander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817-1903) -- The Russian philosophical context. Philosophy as a passion ; The destiny of Russia ; Thought as a call for action ; The totalitarian cast of mind -- The religious and spiritual (...) context. The kingdom of god on earth ; Hesychasm: two great Russian saints ; The Third Rome ; Pre-Christian antecedents -- The Russian esoteric context. Early searches for "deep wisdom" ; Popular magic ; Higher magic in the time of Peter the Great ; Esotericism after Peter the Great ; Theosophy and anthroposophy -- Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829-1903), the philosopher of the common task ; The one idea ; The unacknowledged prince ; The village teacher ; First disciple: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy ; The Moscow librarian ; Last years: Askhabad: the only portrait -- The "common task" ; Esoteric dimensions of the "common task" ; Fedorov's legacy: projectivism, delo, regulation -- The religious cosmists. Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) ; Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) ; Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) ; Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) -- The scientific cosmists. Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) ; Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) ; Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (1897-1964) ; Vasily Feofilovich Kuprevich (1897-1969) -- Promethean theurgy. Life-creation ; Cultural immortalism ; God-building ; Re-aiming the arrows of Eros ; Technological utopianism ; Occultism -- Fedorov's twentieth century followers. Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson (1844-1919) and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kozhevnikov (1852-1917) ; Svyatogor and the biocosmists ; New wine and the universal task ; Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky (1886-1943) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Setnitsky (1888-1937) ; Valerian Nikolaevich Muravyov (1885-1932) ; Vasily Nikolaevich Chekrygin (1897-1922) -- Cosmism and its offshoots today. The N.F. Fedorov museum-library ; The Tsiolkovsky museum and Chizhevsky center ; ISRICA - Institute for Scientific Research in Cosmic Anthropoecology ; Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912-1992) and neo-eurasianism ; The hyperboreans ; Scientific immortalism: Igor Vishev, Danila Medvedev ; Conclusions about the Russian cosmists. (shrink)

Recent critics of the coherence theory of truth (notably Ralph Walker) have alleged that the theory is incoherent, since its defence presupposes the correctness of the contrary correspondence theory of truth. Coherentists must specify the system of propositions with which true propositons cohere (the specified system). Generally, coherentists claim that the specified system is a system composed of propositions believed by a community. Critics of coherentism maintain that the coherentist’s assertions about which system is the specified system must be true, (...) not because they cohere with a system of beliefs, but because of facts about what a community believes. I argue that coherentists can admit that there are facts about what systems of beliefs communities accept, without being committed to the claim that these facts are the truth conditions of sentences about what communities accept. (shrink)

Contemporary neuroscientific theories of consciousness are typically based on the study of vision and have neglected olfaction. Several of these (e.g. Global Workspace Theories, the Information Integration theory, and the various theories offered by Crick and Koch) claim that a thalamic relay is necessary for consciousness. Studies on olfaction and the olfactory system's anatomical structure show this claim to be incorrect, thus showing these theories to be either false or inadequate as general and comprehensive accounts of consciousness. Attempts to rescue (...) these theories by claiming that there is a structure in the olfactory system that is functionally equivalent to the thalamus in the visual system, such as the olfactory bulb or the olfactory cortex, are also shown to fail. If we wish to understand consciousness, we have to wake up and smell it. (shrink)

Evidence has long suggested that ‘hardwiring’ is a poor metaphor for brain development. But the metaphor may be an apt one for the dominant paradigm for researching sex differences, which pushes most neuroscience studies of sex/gender inexorably towards the ‘discovery’ of sex/gender differences, and makes contemporary gender structures appear natural and inevitable. The argument we forward in this paper is twofold. In the first part of the paper, we address the dominant ‘hardwiring’ paradigm of sex/gender research in contemporary neuroscience, which (...) is built on broad consensus that there are important ‘original’ sex differences in brain structure and function, organized by sex-differentiating prenatal hormone exposures. We explain why this consensus is both unscientific and unethical. In the second part of the paper, we sketch an alternative research program focused not on the origins of sex/gender differences but on variability and plasticity of brain/behavior. We argue that interventional experiments based on this approach will address more tractable questions, and lead to much more satisfactory results than the brain organization paradigm can provide. (shrink)

Contemporary moral psychology has focused on the notion of a universal moral sense, robust to individual and cultural differences. Yet recent evidence has revealed individual differences in the psychological processes for moral judgment: controlled cognition, mental-state reasoning, and emotional responding. We discuss this evidence and its relation to cross-cultural diversity in morality.

Moral judgments, whether delivered in ordinary experience or in the courtroom, depend on our ability to infer intentions. We forgive unintentional or accidental harms and condemn failed attempts to harm. Prior work demonstrates that patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex deliver abnormal judgments in response to moral dilemmas and that these patients are especially impaired in triggering emotional responses to inferred or abstract events, as opposed to real or actual outcomes. We therefore predicted that VMPC patients would deliver (...) abnormal moral judgments of harmful intentions in the absence of harmful outcomes, as in failed attempts to harm. This prediction was confirmed in the current study: VMPC patients judged attempted harms, including attempted murder, as more morally permissible relative to controls. These results highlight the critical role of the VMPC in processing harmful intent for moral judgment. (shrink)

Philosophers often contrast personal authority to authority vested in offices. Some such distinction is traditional and sometimes useful. But it does not provide us with an exhaustive classification of the types of authority, for there is a third type of authority that I shall argue is more fundamental than these two. Let us start with the types marked out by the usual distinction.Consider first the sort of authority illustrated by the following sentences:Smith is an authority on physics.Smith has authority as (...) a physicist.Smith's views on physics have authority.O.K., I believe you—after all, you're the authority on physics!A person is an authority in virtue of possessing extensive knowledge of a field or subject-matter. There seem to be no limits on what the field or subject-matter can be—for instance, one can be an authority on trivia. (shrink)

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Volume 19, Issue 2, Page 285-293, May 2011.

What is the role of self-concept in motivating moral behavior? On one account, when people are primed to perceive themselves as “do-gooders”, conscious access to this positive self-concept will reinforce good behavior. On an alternative account, when people are reminded that they have done their “good deed for the day”, they will feel licensed to behave worse. In the current study, when participants were asked to recall their own good deeds (positive self-concept), their subsequent charitable donations were nearly twice that (...) of participants who recalled bad deeds, or recent conversation topics, consistent with an account of moral reinforcement. In addition, among participants reporting good deeds, those who did not note whether they were recognized or unrecognized by other people donated significantly more than participants who took note of others’ responses. In sum, when people are primed to see themselves as good people, who do good for goodness’ sake, not to obtain public credit, they may be motivated to do more good. (shrink)

In this paper I propose to give close attention to two recent discussions of the relation between theism and morality. It will be helpful first to sketch some of the considerations that have emerged from the many discussions of the relation between theism and morality and which form the background to the two recent contributions I shall discuss.

Currently, boys growing up in urban poverty remain severely under-represented in Australian higher education. To explore this phenomenon, we draw on recent research with boys in Year 12 who will potentially be first-in-family as well as their teachers. The overarching research question framing the chapter is: “How do the school experiences of marginalized young men, living in one of the poorest urban regions in Australia, influence their transition to university?” Research on social mobility has documented that schooling plays a (...) significant role in how students transition to university, where school experiences can significantly influence the success of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. We draw on case study data from one school site, Chipple Senior College, located in the western suburbs of Sydney, to show how certain learner identities are cultivated through institutional tracking as well as teacher–student relationships concerning career guidance counselling and mentorship. Specifically, we identify certain divergences between how teachers view the transition journey of these boys, compared with how the boys themselves see it. The findings indicate discourses of gender—as well as institutional practices—play a significant role in orienting these young men toward their futures. (shrink)

What do we understand by God’s goodness? William Alston claims that by answering this question convincingly, divine command theory can be strengthened against some major objections. He rejects the idea that God’s goodness lies in the area of moral obligations. Instead, he proposes that God’s goodness is best described by the phenomenon of supererogation. Joseph Lombardi, in response, agrees with Alston that God does not have moral obligations but says that having rejected moral obligation as the content of divine goodness, (...) Alston cannot help himself to supererogation as a solution to the content of God’s moral goodness. If God has no moral obligations and does not perform supererogatory acts, Lombardi suggests that God’s goodness may be explicated through concentrating on God’s benevolence, but he does not develop this theme. I propose that Alston’s idea of divine supererogation without obligation is sustainable, but that a reshaping of the concept of supererogation is required; one in which love, rather than benevolence, plays an important part. If the love associated with supererogation is characterised in a certain way, I suggest this adds a new angle to the understanding of divine goodness. (shrink)

This is a description and analysis of the intellectual culture of the eighteenth-century Church of England. Challenging conventional perceptions of the Church as an intellectually moribund institution, the study traces the influence of thinkers such as Locke, Newton, Burke, and Gibbon on theological debate in England during this period.

In this paper I proceed on the assumption that moral philosophers can and should contribute to the resolution of perplexing moral problems. The ones considered here relate to decisions concerning the distribution of scarce medical resources as between those in need of treatment. I draw on considerations of egalitarianism and concern for the maximization of the use of scarce resources in the task of satisfying basic human needs (such as for good health). I propose certain principles and offer some supporting (...) suggestions as guidelines or rules for medical decisions with a view to providing a helpful decision procedure for the various persons (doctors, community panels and so on) whose task it is to make the life-or-death decisions involved in allocating certain scarce medical resources. -/- . (shrink)

For both Spinoza and Zhuang-zi, the goal of life is attaining freedom, namely, human freedom. What do they mean by “human freedom”? What are the necessary conditions for humans to attain freedom? Seeking for answers to these questions, I’ve noted that Spinoza and Zhuang-zi suggest remarkably similar answers to these questions. First, both Spinoza and Zhuang-zi understand human freedom as a form of complete independence from externals: self-determination in Spinoza and union with the Dao in Zhuang-zi. Second, both Spinoza and (...) Zhuang-zi assert that human freedom is attainable when one sees things truly or adequately: in Spinoza, when one sees things from the viewpoint of eternity, and in Zhuang-zi, when one sees things from the viewpoint of the Dao. (shrink)

Eine zentrale Intention, die Platon in den Frühdialogen verfolgt, liegt darin, dass die Errungenschaft des wahren Wissens ausschliesslich aufgrund der auf der Vernunft basierenden Selbsterkenntnis möglich ist. Der, Charmides' stellt eine Auseinandersetzung über den Umfang und die Rolle der auf der Vernünftigkeit beruhenden sokratischen Selbsterkenntnis dar, wie sie in dezidierter Gegenüberstellung zur sophistischen Wissenskonzeption entwickelt wird. Also geht es in diesem Dialog darum, einerseits die sokratische Selbsterkenntis als Möglichkeitsbedingung des Wissenserwerbs zur Diskussion zu stellen, andererseits aber auch ersichtlich zu machen, (...) dass sie die Ahnung ihres eigenen Mangels und die prinzipielle Fehlbarkeit in sich begreift. Mit Augenmerk darauf verfolgt der Autor den Gesprächsverlauf und beachtet dabei, wie sich Sokrates je nach Situation im Gespräch verhält, mit den betreffenden Problemen umgeht und schliesslich seine eigenen Lösungsvorschläge zur Diskussion stellt. (shrink)

This paper is premised on the idea that cyberspace permits the user a degree of somatic flexibility?a means of transcending the physical body but not, importantly, embodiment. Set within a framework of progressive embodiment (the assumption that individuals seek to exploit somatic flexibility so as to extend the boundaries of their own embodiment?what we call the supermorphic persona), we examine the manner of this progression. Specifically, to what extent do components of embodiment?the self-as-object, the phenomenal self, and the body-schema?find authentic (...) expression within cyberspace? In addition, we also consider ways in which the issue of authenticity might impact on the psychological well being of the individual who seeks to transcend domains and present their supermorphic persona on- and offline. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Politics of Aristotle by AristotleCharles M. YoungAristotle. The Politics of Aristotle. Translated by Peter L. Phillips Simpson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Pp. xliv + 274. Cloth, $39.95. Paper, $12.95.Peter Simpson’s attractively produced, readable, and generally accurate new translation offers much of assistance to the student of Aristotle’s Politics. In addition to providing [End Page 356] titles to books and chapters, Simpson has broken (...) chapters into sections, which he also titles and briefly summarizes. The summaries allow Simpson to give indications as to the flow of Aristotle’s thought without building them into the translation itself. The sections of the translation also correspond to the sections of Simpson’s still newer A Philosophical Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); notes to the translation also sometimes point to the line of argument in the commentary. Simpson also includes a translation of the last book of the Nicomachean Ethics, which many see as an introduction or transition to the Politics, a brief discussion of the translations of certain key terms, a glossary of significant terms, and an analytical outline of the argument of the Politics. The result is a welcome and useful translation and set of tools.Two of Simpson’s decisions in preparing his translation are regrettable. First, Simpson places the discussion of the best polis in books 7 and 8 between the discussion of the nature of the polis and its kinds in book 3 and the discussion of other sorts of polis in books 4–6, thus printing the books in the order 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 4, 5, 6. There are good reasons for believing that this is how Aristotle intended the Politics to be read. But in deciding the order in which to print the books, these reasons must be weighed against the inconvenience and confusion produced by departing from the normal, manuscript ordering of the books. In my view this is not even a close call. One can easily indicate one’s belief about the correct order of the books, as Simpson does (xvi–xx), and avoid all inconvenience by printing the books in their manuscript order.More to be regretted is Simpson’s decision (made, I imagine, for aesthetic reasons) not to follow the increasingly common and laudable practice of printing Bekker numbers in the margins of translations of Aristotle. These numbers are a great convenience to readers, for they make it easy to locate specific passages in different translations and in the Greek original. Simpson does give the Bekker number of the beginning of each of his sections, and he may think that this is enough to allow readers to locate specific passages easily (he says as much in his Commentary, xiii). But Simpson’s sections are sometimes as big as a Bekker page, and many of them are as many as ten to fifteen lines long; I speak from experience in reporting that it is more difficult and time-consuming to find one’s way around Simpson’s translation than it should be. [End Page 357]Charles M. YoungClaremont Graduate UniversityCopyright © 1999 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

ArgumentDuring the first half of the nineteenth century, the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle was both workplace and home to functionalist Georges Cuvier and morphologist Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, whose doctrinal differences became enmeshed with political dialogues regarding social reform. Surprisingly, the public not only viewed the arrangement of the collections in terms of the social platforms they were understood to be supporting, but critiqued the Muséum's buildings as expressions of their anatomical dispute. The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 pushed these critiques forward, (...) suggesting to some observers that true reform of the natural sciences would begin by reforming the Muséum's architectural program, thereby placing the goals of Comparative Anatomy in correct relationship to human progress. (shrink)

All forms of beauty create appeal or enticement with moral significance. Sublime beauty draws one into a deep relationship that properly promotes the good and true. Parents tend to experience such beauty in their children, as eloquently described in works such as the 14th-century poem ‘The Pearl’, and they see this even when their children are desperately ill or dying. The experience of beauty in one’s child creates or reinforces the morality of caring. Unfortunately, at the end of modernity, the (...) framing of beauty as only instrumental and subjective generally works against any recognition of dignity or respect for the very small pediatric patient. Practitioners who believe in the intrinsic value and dignity of persons as general concepts should recognize parental drawing toward their children as a particularization of a transcendental value. (shrink)

A collection of essays representing diverse approaches to feminist ethical analysis of social policy. Subjects include the Family and Medical Leave Act, combat exclusion and the role of women in the military, unwed fathers' rights, mail-order brides, pornography, breast implants, and sex-selective abortion. Paper edition (unseen), $17.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The main objective of this book is to present the theory of general relativity in a direction that will be intelligible, informative, and interesting to the individual reader. Many of the texts about general relativity are either too thin on detail or too narrow in scope; this book was written with the aim of rectifying these shortcomings.

Qiyās, or “correlational inference” (often glossed as “analogy”), comprises a primary set of methodological tools recognized by a majority of premodern Sunnī jurists. Its elements, valid modes, and proper applications were the focus of continual argument and refinement. A particular area of debate was the methodology of determining or justifying the ʿilla: the legal cause (or occasioning factor, or ratio legis) giving rise to a ruling in God’s Law. This was most often discussed (and disputed) under the rubric of “the (...) modes of causal justification” (masālik al-taʿlīl). Among these modes was the much debated test of dawarān (concomitance of presumed cause and effect). In brief, proponents of dawarān employed it to justify claims that a property (waṣf) occasioned the ruling (ḥukm) in an authoritative source-case (aṣl). In concert with other considerations, the demonstrated co-presence (ṭard) and co-absence (ʿaks) of property and ruling—that is, their concomitance “in existence” (wujūdan) and “in nonexistence” (ʿadaman)— was taken as an indication that the property was the ruling’s ʿilla. Delving further into dawarān and causation (ʿilliyya), the current study interprets “in existence” and “in nonexistence” not as a kind of metaphor for true and false (within the framework of a classical truth-functional formal semantics), but as an accurate terminology vis-à-vis the meaning of causality statements, fully compatible with dominant Islamicate views on causal agency. In brief, a deeper logical and linguistic analysis of the different existential modes of dawarān strongly suggests that we should distinguish property (or phenomenon) and ruling (or effect) as types (concepts or propositions linguistically expressed by a sentence) as opposed to tokens (instantiations of the type; the real, ontological events that verify the proposition). Our reading of dawarān as shaped by a finer-grained structure not only allows us to identify the efficient occasioning process as a function which takes some particular token of the ʿilla (arguably, the property or properties which provide the ruling’s material cause) and renders a token of the general ruling type, but it allows us to elucidate the role of taʿlīl (causal justification) in shaping an epistemological theory of argument to the best explanation: a sophisticated, premodern manifestation of abductive reasoning. (shrink)

Excerpt from A New Approach to Philosophy Occasionally he expressed discouragement, alleging that professional philosophers would smirk at a poet's attempt to open new vistas in philosophy. At such times I seconded the urgings of others, realizing that sheer good fortune had enabled him to discover a new vein of thought, the Opening of which should yield golden returns. As he was not one to ask Odds, I crave for him no posthumous favor at the hands of critics, merely that (...) judicial consideration which an unhackneyed thesis should receive from the open-minded. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)