This article focuses mainly on (1) the policy of Delft University of Technology since 1992 as regards the university-wide introduction of a compulsory course on ethics and engineering, and (2) the ideal structure of such a course, including the educational goals of the course.

But beyond doubt also, the primacy that Plato gives to the imitation of, or participation in the Ideas, apparently substantially existing, is the main reason why critics have refused to recognize or consider possible any mode of conceptual immanence in the mind of the Demiurge or whomever they regard as the Platonic God. Text on text could be cited to exemplify the role of the Ideas as archetypes. Yet it seems rather strange that Plato should conceive of two simultaneous objects (...) of imitation, the Supreme Being and the Ideas. Despite the plurality of Ideas, however, some critics have recognized a centripetal tendency in the dialogues toward the primacy of the Good, or the One, or the Beautiful, or Being, over subordinate Ideas. Was there possibly some similar tendency toward unity of some sort between the Supreme Intellect and the Intelligibles, his archetypes, which in the Timaeus are the ideal Living Exemplar of the cosmos? (shrink)

Before we take up the arguments directly, there is one general point about Socrates' position that he considered essential to everything he said in the Crito. Also, he thought that this point was easily missed. He calls it his "starting point." It is that "we ought neither to requite wrong with wrong nor to do evil to anyone, no matter what he may have done to us." And Socrates warns Crito not to accept this position too quickly or without full (...) consideration, "for I know that there are few who believe or ever will believe this". Yet this moral principle is so essential to his arguments that "those who believe this, and those who do not, have no common ground of discussion, but they must necessarily, in view of their opinions, despise one another". This position, never to harm others in any circumstance, is "the starting point of our discussion...". (shrink)

The informed consent process presents challenges for psychological trauma research (e.g. Institutional Review Board [IRB] apprehension). While previous research documents researcher and IRB-member perspectives on these challenges, participant views remain absent. Thus, using a mixed-methods approach, we investigated participant views on consent guidelines in two convenience samples: crowdsourced (N = 268) and undergraduate (N = 265) participants. We also examined whether trauma-exposure influenced participant views. Overall, participants were satisfied with current guidelines, providing minor feedback and ethical reminders for researchers. Moreover, (...) participant views for consent were similar irrespective of trauma-exposure. Our study has implications for IRBs and psychological researchers. (shrink)

After a period during which the theological categories of sin and forgiveness were ignored or trivialized, presently these notions are being rediscovered. What could their impact be on bioethics, either in the narrow sense of medical ethics, or in the more encompassing sense of the ethics of the life sciences? This essay begins with describing the processes of transcending and ethitization, which gave rise to the biblical notion of sin. It portrays the theological foundation of sin in terms of a (...) twofold refusal of proper relations to God and other humans. Through the practise of confession in the face of God (coram deo), sin is placed into a horizon of hope for forgiveness and reconciliation. The heuristic and hermeneutical significance of these categories results from their introducing a “surplus value,” which transcends biological and ethical considerations. This additional dimension is illustrated in view of care (cura) for the injured, and in view of individual as well as collective willingness to forgive. (shrink)

To this end, I propose to follow a somewhat unusual pattern, in that there will be no point-by-point consideration of issues raised by Taylor and Kullman. Instead, I intend to outline Merleau-Ponty's position on language, speech, and meaning as presented in the Phénoménologie de la Perception, and proceed from there to a discussion of the pre-objective.

It is obvious that bringing to light the founding murder completely rules out any compromise with the principle of sacrifice, or indeed with any conception of the death of Jesus as sacrifice.If anyone says that a true and proper sacrifice is not offered to God in the Mass … let him be anathema.René Girard's thought has produced both admiration and unease among Catholic sacramental theologians struggling to come to grips with what his theory of scapegoating and sacrifice implies for "the (...) holy sacrifice of the Mass." The language of sacrifice permeates the liturgy itself, official Church teaching—including the documents of Vatican II—and centuries of Eucharistic theology, so Girard's critique has the potential to... (shrink)

This article considers how legislators should respond to evidence that identifies a common and widely accepted parental practice as a potential source of harm to children, using domestic exposure to environmental tobacco smoke as a test case. It is claimed that children are parties to the Harm Principle, and that the State has an obligation to protect children from exposure to harm. Parental prerogative is limited by the need to avoid harming children. That said, there is considerable uncertainty about what (...) is harmful to children. Several sources of uncertainty, both empirical and conceptual, are explored, in order to demonstrate the complexity of the task legislators face. Seven considerations that are relevant to decisions about legislation of harmful parental practices are outlined, and these considerations are then employed to assess the case in favour of legislating to prohibit the exposure of children to environmental tobacco smoke in domestic settings. (shrink)

Despite the long controversy on the date and composition of the First Philippic, we are no nearer, it would seem, to a satisfactory solution. F. Focke, apparently following a suggestion in Gercke-Norden, developed what is perhaps the most reasonable presentation of the view that the speech was delivered in the spring of 350 B.C.; but what vitiates his argument in the long run is Focke's constant presumption that all the various datable references must belong to one and the same speech (...) or stratum of composition. For although the view of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that the First Philippic really comprises two distinct speeches, has not in its extreme form won acceptance with modern scholars, other more moderate solutions are not impossible; and it would seem that Blass's revision theory suggests a more subtle way of handling the various inconsistencies between the first and the second parts of the speech. (shrink)

The toy model used by Spekkens (Phys. Rev. A 75, 032110, 2007) to argue in favor of an epistemic view of quantum mechanics is extended by generalizing his definition of pure states (i.e. states of maximal knowledge) and by associating measurements with all pure states. The new toy model does not allow signaling but, in contrast to the Spekkens model, does violate Bell-CHSH inequalities. Negative probabilities are found to arise naturally within the model, and can be used to explain the (...) Bell-CHSH inequality violations. (shrink)