As practicing clinicians, physicians are expected to uphold the ethical norms of their profession, including fidelity to patients and respect for patients’ self-determination. At the same time, as individuals, physicians are moral agents in their own right and, like their patients, are informed by and committed to diverse cultural, religious, and philosophical traditions and beliefs. In some circumstances, the expectation that physicians will put patients’ needs and preferences first may be in tension with the need to sustain the sense of (...) moral integrity and continuity that grounds a physician’s personal and professional life. This article examines the implications for patients, physicians, and the medical profession when tensions arise between a physician’s professional commitments and his or her deeply held personal moral beliefs. It offers guidance on when a physician’s professional commitments should outweigh personal beliefs as well as when physicians should have freedom to act according to the dictates of conscience while still protecting patients’ interests. (shrink)

The result is nothing less than a fundamental reorientation of moral theory that enables it at last to account for morality's supreme authority--an account that ...

This paper introduces Leo Strauss’s thematic question, “Progress or return?” to the context of psychoanalysis. the conversation within psychoanalysis. Progress signifies development or advancement, a mode that Freud embraced wholeheartedly. Strauss’s pursuit of a return questions the presumption of the goodness of progress. Freud’s thinking forecloses critical considerations within religion and metaphysics, circumscribing his consideration to adaptation within a given particular time and place. By contrast, a return transcends the particular setting. I address the question, “Progress or Return?” to historical (...) and individual development. If a life of progress points away from nature toward civilization, the life of return points away from civilization and toward nature. Freud epitomizes the idea of progress and pathologizes the notion of return, consequently foreclosing the questioning of authority as well as the quest for a natural law that would supersedes authority. True progress, I argue, is not linear but dependent on return. (shrink)

It has normally been assumed that whatever empirical and metaphysical problems it may raise, mind-body dualism would satisfy a number of deeply engrained intuitions about the mental for which nondualist theories have no plausible account. In what follows I shall argue that this is true only for a special class of dualist theories. I distinguish transcendental dualism from the other forms that dualist theories may take. And I argue that where the intuitions about subjectivity that have seemed to motivate and (...) support dualism are concerned, only transcendental dualism has an advantage over nondualist theories; nontranscendental versions of dualism are open to the same objections that have made nondualist accounts of the mind seem implausible. Moreover, I argue that the usual objections to transcendental dualism are inconclusive. I shall argue, however, that with regard to a crucial intuition concerning the subjective point of view - that we have a form of privileged access to our own qualitative mental states - transcendental dualism is at a disadvantage relative to some nondualist and nontranscendental theories. And I shall argue that if a theory fails to satisfy this intuition, its other advantages carry very little weight. Thus I claim that transcendental versions of dualism do not offer viable alternatives to nontranscendental theories of mind. (shrink)

In _The New Constitutionalism_, seven distinguished scholars develop an innovative perspective on the power of institutions to shape politics and political life. Believing that constitutionalism needs to go beyond the classical goal of limiting the arbitrary exercise of political power, the contributors argue that it should—and can—be designed to achieve economic efficiency, informed democratic control, and other valued political ends. More broadly, they believe that political and social theory needs to turn away from the negativism of critical theory to consider (...) how a good society should be "constituted" and to direct the work of designing institutions that can constitute a "good polity," in both the economic and civic senses. Stephen L. Elkin and Karol Edward Soltan begin with an overview of constitutionalist theory and a discussion of the new constitutionalism within the broader intellectual and historical context of political and social thought. Charles Anderson, James Ceaser, and the editors then offer different interpretations of the central issues regarding institutional design in a constitutionalist social science, consider various ways of performing the task, and discuss the inadequacy of recent political science to the job it ought to be doing. The book concludes with essays by Ted Lowi, Cass Sunstein and Edwin Haefele which apply these themes to the American regime. (shrink)

This is reflected, but not always made transparent, Stephen Gardner asserts, in the myths of freedom that govern modern culture and the basic framework of ...

Two characterizations are given of those structural consequence operations on a propositional language which can be defined via proofs from a finite number of polynomial rules.

A review article on Bruce Anderson and Philip McShane, Beyond Establishment Economics: No Thank-You Mankiw (Nova Scotia: Axial Press, 2002).

Displays of dead nonhuman animals are a common sight on the walls of many American homes and commercial establishments. Taxidermists are the individuals who preserve and attempt to re-create dead animals, birds, and fish so they can be displayed. Little is known about those employed in the profession, including characteristics of individuals who enter this line of work. Using a qualitative approach to data collection, this exploratory research examined motivations for becoming a taxidermist in Montana. Findings suggest that Montana taxidermists (...) entered the profession for one of five main reasons: an interest in wildlife, a desire to mount their own trophies, a hobby that became a job, the necessity of changing jobs, and miscellaneous motivations. (shrink)

My aim in what follows is to sketch with a broad brush fundamental changes involving the concept of obligation in British ethics of the early modern period, as it developed in the direction of the view that obligatory force is a species of motivational force – an idea that deeply informs present thought. I shall also suggest, although I can hardly demonstrate it conclusively here, that one important source for this view was a doctrine which we associate with Kant, and (...) which it may seem surprising to find in British ethics, especially of the early modern period, viz., that rational agents are obligated by motives available through a form of practical thinking necessary for rational autonomy. (shrink)

This book is a major work in the history of ethics, and provides the first study of early modern British philosophy in several decades. Professor Darwall discerns two distinct traditions feeding into the moral philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the one hand, there is the empirical, naturalist tradition, comprising Hobbes, Locke, Cumberland, Hutcheson, and Hume, which argues that obligation is the practical force that empirical discoveries acquire in the process of deliberation. On the other hand, there is (...) a group including Cudworth, Shaftesbury, Butler, and in some moments Locke, which views obligation as inconceivable without autonomy and which seeks to develop a theory of the will as self-determining. (shrink)

What are ethical judgments about? And what is their relation to practice? How can ethical judgment aspire to objectivity? The past two decades have witnessed a resurgence of interest in metaethics, placing questions such as these about the nature and status of ethical judgment at the very center of contemporary moral philosophy. Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches is a unique anthology which collects important recent work, much of which is not easily available elsewhere, on core metaethical issues. Reinvigorated (...) naturalist moral realism and the various versions of moral realism, as well as irrealist, expressivist, and neo-Kantian constructivist theories are all represented in this fine collection, constituting a rich array of approaches to contemporary moral philosophy's most fundamental debates. An extensive introduction by Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton is also included, making this volume the most comprehensive and up-to-date work of its kind. Moral Discourse is ideally suited for use in courses in contemporary ethics, ethical theory, and metaethics. (shrink)

This article offers an exposition and critical discussion of the account of the truth of practical reason in the natural-law theory of Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, and John Finnis. The exposition rests mainly on an article published by these authors in 1987. There they argue that “true” is said of theoretical and practical knowledge in radically diverse senses. They also distinguish, within practical knowledge, between two kinds of truth, practical and moral. This distinction is tied to their understanding of relations (...) that obtain among the first principles of practical reason. The essay’s critical discussion raises problems for the account in all three areas and favors the view that “true” means the same for all knowledge. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 15.2 : 303–329. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe famously argued that "modern moral philosophy" centrally involved unsupported notions of obligation and culpability. Modern Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to Kant exhibits, for the first time, resources that modern moral philosophers had to respond to Anscombe's challenge, also enhancing our own philosophical grasp of morality and its foundations.

In these essays Stephen White examines the forms of psychological integration that give rise to self-knowable and self-conscious individuals who are responsible, concerned for the future, and capable of moral commitment. The essays cover a wide range of basic issues in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, moral psychology, and political philosophy, providing a coherent, sophisticated, and forcefully argued view of the nature of the self. Beginning with mental content and ending with Rawls and utilitarianism, each essay argues a distinctive line. (...) Together they are a unified and powerful philosophical position of considerable scope, one that provides a unique vision of the mind, consciousness, personhood, and morality. White argues that the unity of the self revealed in personal identity and moral responsibility is best understood in normative terms. Basic to such features of the self are the patterns of self-concern in which they are characteristically displayed and the internal justification that supports such concern. The treatment of intentionality and consciousness that grounds this account emphasizes privileged selfknowledge and practical rationality and their corresponding contributions to the unity of the self. A final source of unity emerges from the analysis of our fundamental commitments, an analysis that ensures a central place in moral theory for the notion of the self. (shrink)

"Both Thomistic scholars and analytic philosophers interested in theories of human action and accountability will find this book a welcome addition to their libraries. Truly a substantive addition to both Thomistic scholarship and the ongoing analytic investigation into human action and responsible agency."—American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly "A first-rate book...Brock's lucid and illuminating analysis offers much of value to both intellectual historians and theologians, as well as philosophers."—Theological Studies"Brock's treatment of Aquinas's account of action exhibits a rare combination of rigor and (...) learning. It is, no doubt, the best we have."—The Thomist. (shrink)

We review the argument that latent image formation is a measurement in which the state vector collapses, requiring an enhanced noise parameter in objective reduction models. Tentative observation of a residual noise at this level, plus several experimental bounds, imply that the noise must be colored, and hence frame dependent and non-relativistic. Thus a relativistic objective reduction model, even if achievable in principle, would be incompatible with experiment; the best one can do is the non-relativistic CSL model. This negative conclusion (...) has a positive aspect, in that the non-relativistic CSL reduction model evades the argument leading to the Conway–Kochen “Free Will Theorem”. (shrink)

Political responsibilities for systemic mass violence have been subordinated to the moral guilt and legal liability of perpetrators and collaborators, while the role of the bystander has been narrowly construed in terms of charitable rescue or negligence. This dominant victim–perpetrator framework ignores the complex political dimensions of bystander responsibilities for systemic mass violence, especially those responsibilities that stem from the benefits that bystanders receive. The films of Claude Lanzmann, Rithy Panh, and Yael Hersonski contain elements of an alternative framework of (...) bystander responsibility and also can serve as catalysts for the political education of bystander beneficiaries and those from whom they have benefited. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore Turkish students’ perceived relevance of Facebook, the value of Facebook advertisements and the ethics of Facebook targeting users with advertisements. Design/methodology/approach Latent class cluster analysis is estimated to determine whether segments exist and whether covariates differ among segments. Findings Segments differ on Facebook relevance and advertisement targeting ethics and usefulness and the covariates gender, hours spent on Facebook during the week and personality. The segment that finds Facebook most relevant and uses (...) it the most disapproves of Facebook’s targeted advertisements. Facebook is an organization that relies heavily on advertising dollars for survival. This fact should be emphasized; otherwise, Facebook may not be able to sustain itself. Originality/value The paper provides an understanding of Facebook from a marketing perspective for a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. (shrink)