What Neoplatonism and scholasticism did for Plato and Aristotle, Renaissance humanism did for Cicero and Epicurus. Renaissance humanists were critical of efforts to reconcile Plato and Aristotle with Christianity, yet their own efforts to reconcile philosophy with Christianity were hardly faith­ful to the originals. Plato’s idealism was easily appropriated for Neoplatonist dualism. Aristotle’s metaphysics became orthodoxy for the scholastics. The Renaissance humanists transformed Stoic constancy into acquiescence, aca­demic skepticism into learned ignorance, and Epicureanism into an affirma­tion of material pleasure without (...) the philosophical materialism. The further from Plato’s idealism, the more obscurantism was required to reconcile phi­losophy with dualist theology. (shrink)

It feels like there’s two of you inside—like there’s another half of you, which is my anorexia, and then there’s the real K [own name], the real me, the logic part of me, and it’s a constant battle between the two. The anorexia almost does become part of you, and so in order to get it out of you I think you do have to kind of hurt you in the process. I think it’s almost inevitable. We came to the (...) concept of authenticity belatedly, one might say. We had been talking to people who had a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa about their experiences of living with their condition, and though we had not raised issues of authenticity or identity ourselves, they often did. They struggled with questions of .. (shrink)

This article argues that "gratitude to" and "gratitude that" are fundamentally different concepts. The former (prepositional gratitude) is properly a response to benevolent attitudes, and entails special concern on the part of the beneficiary for a benefactor, while the latter (propositional gratitude) is a response to beneficial states of affairs, and entails no special concern for anyone. Propositional gratitude, it is argued, ultimately amounts to a species of appreciation. The tendency to see prepositional gratitude and propositional “gratitude” as two species (...) of the same genus results from several deep-seated social and psychological factors, but must be resisted if we are to engage in constructive philosophizing about both gratitude and appreciation. (shrink)

Circumscribed delusional beliefs can follow brain injury. We suggest that these involve anomalous perceptual experiences created by a deficit to the person's perceptual system, and misinterpretation of these experiences due to biased reasoning. We use the Capgras delusion (the claim that one or more of one's close relatives has been replaced by an exact replica or impostor) to illustrate this argument. Our account maintains that people voicing this delusion suffer an impairment that leads to faces being perceived as drained of (...) their normal affective significance, and an additional reasoning bias that leads them to put greater weight on forming beliefs that are observationally adequate rather than beliefs that are a conservative extension of their existing stock. We show how this position can integrate issues involved in the philosophy and psychology of belief, and examine the scope for mutually beneficial interaction. (shrink)

The non-identity problem arises when an intervention or behavior changes the identity of those affected. Delaying pregnancy is an example of such a behavior. The problem is whether and in what ways such changes in identity affect moral considerations. While a great deal has been written about the non-identity problem, relatively little has been written about the implications for physicians and how they should understand their duties. We argue that the non-identity problem can make a crucial moral difference in some (...) circumstances, and that it has some interesting implications for when it is or is not right for a physician to refuse to accede to a patient's request. If a physician is asked to provide an intervention (identity preserving) that makes a person worse off, then such harm provides a good reason for the physician to refuse to provide the intervention. However, in cases where different (identity-altering) interventions result in different people having a better or worse life, physicians should normally respect patient choice. (shrink)

Gratitude is the proper or called-for response in a beneficiary to benefits or beneficence from a benefactor. It is a topic of interest in normative ethics, moral psychology, and political philosophy, and may have implications for metaethics as well. Despite its commonness in everyday life, there is substantive disagreement among philosophers over the nature of gratitude and its connection to other philosophical concepts. The sections of this article address five areas of debate about what gratitude is, when it is called (...) for, and what implications it has for other debates in moral philosophy and philosophy generally. (shrink)

Philosophers generally agree that gratitude, the called-for response to benevolence, includes positive feelings. In this paper, I argue against this view. The grateful beneficiary will have certain feelings, but in some contexts, those feelings will be profoundly negative. Philosophers overlook this fact because they tend to consider only cases of gratitude in which the benefactor’s sacrifice is minimal, and in which the benefactor fares well after performing an act of benevolence. When we consider cases in which a benefactor suffers severely, (...) we see the feelings associated with gratitude can be negative, and even quite painful. I conclude with a discussion of the implications negative feelings of gratitude have for the normative question of when gratitude is owed, and for the descriptive claim in positive psychology that gratitude enhances wellbeing. (shrink)

Ethics, communication skills, and the law ('practice skills') are important in all aspects of modern health care. Doctors and nurses must be sensitive to the ethical aspects of their work and understand the legal framework within which clinical decisions are made. Well developed skills of communication, with patients, their relatives and other members of the clinical team, are a key feature of good clinical practice Until recently, the important of practice skills has been relatively neglected in health care education. This (...) situation is changing. The UK General Medical Council, for example, has recently identified three aspects as part of the core of the medical course, and the move to degree courses in nursing has led to an increasing focus of practice skills in nurse education. The Oxford Practice Skills Project (OPSP) team have developed a course, within the University of Oxford Clinical School, which covers the teaching of practice skills in an integrated manner. This course is widely recognized as one of the most systematic developments of education in these areas. This manual describes the OPSP course in detail and provides teaching materials. Although developed initially for medical students, it should be helpful to all those involved in teaching ethics, communication skills, and law in health care. Each Seminar is described in detail Tutors' guides are provided Student handouts are included Contains guidelines for introducing 'practice skills' into a busy clinical curriculum Includes over forty case histories for teaching and examination Gives details of many useful sources and resources Details a variety of teaching methods together with their advantages and disadvantages Provides an ethics teaching toolkit for clinical teachers new to this area Readers are welcome to photocopy any part of this manual for their own teaching. (shrink)

Using the lives of the three outstanding French intellectuals of the twentieth century, renowned historian Tony Judt offers a unique look at how intellectuals can ignore political pressures and demonstrate a heroic commitment to personal integrity and moral responsibility unfettered by the difficult political exigencies of their time. Through the prism of the lives of Leon Blum, Albert Camus, and Raymond Aron, Judt examines pivotal issues in the history of contemporary French society—antisemitism and the dilemma of Jewish identity, political (...) and moral idealism in public life, the Marxist moment in French thought, the traumas of decolonization, the disaffection of the intelligentsia, and the insidious quarrels rending Right and Left. Judt focuses particularly on Blum's leadership of the Popular Front and his stern defiance of the Vichy governments, on Camus's part in the Resistance and Algerian War, and on Aron's cultural commentary and opposition to the facile acceptance by many French intellectuals of communism's utopian promise. Severely maligned by powerful critics and rivals, each of these exemplary figures stood fast in their principles and eventually won some measure of personal and public redemption. Judt constructs a compelling portrait of modern French intellectual life and politics. He challenges the conventional account of the role of intellectuals precisely because they mattered in France, because they could shape public opinion and influence policy. In Blum, Camus, and Aron, Judt finds three very different men who did not simply play the role, but evinced a courage and a responsibility in public life that far outshone their contemporaries. "An eloquent and instructive study of intellectual courage in the face of what the author persuasively describes as intellectual irresponsibility."—Richard Bernstein, _New York Times_. (shrink)

This article investigates a puzzle about gratitude—the proper response, in a beneficiary, to an act of benevolence from a benefactor. The puzzle arises from three platitudes about gratitude: 1) the beneficiary has certain obligations of gratitude; 2) these obligations are owed to the benefactor; and 3) the benefactor has no right to the fulfillment of these obligations. These platitudes suggest that gratitude is a counterexample to the “correlativity thesis” in the moral domain: the claim that strict moral obligations correlate to (...) moral rights on the part of the person to whom the obligation is owed. The goal of this chapter is to determine whether the three gratitude platitudes are true, and, if they are, what they tell us about the correlativity thesis. Sections 1 through 3 argue for the truth of each of the platitudes. It is then argued that while benefactors lack standing to demand, they do possess an imperfect right to gratitude: a special and morally significant standing to remonstrate with ungrateful beneficiaries. These facts suggest the following modification of the standard correlativity thesis: moral obligations entail moral rights on the part of the person to whom they are owed, which may be perfect (demandable) or imperfect. (shrink)

If positivism is interpreted as requiring that nothing is law that does not conform to socially accepted criteria, it is inconsistent with positive law. This is because law purports to be morally in order. Hence it is always possible to argue against a certain interpretation of the law that it is morally indefensible and there is always a certain pressure within a legal system to render it morally defensible. In that way critical morality necessarily becomes a persuasive source of law.

Intensive care units are not always able to admit all patients who would benefit from intensive care. Pressure on ICU beds is likely to be particularly high during times of epidemics such as might arise in the case of swine influenza. In making choices as to which patients to admit, the key US guidelines state that significant priority should be given to the interests of patients who are already in the ICU over the interests of patients who would benefit from (...) intensive care but who have not been admitted. We examine four reasons that in principle might justify such a prioritization rule and conclude that none is convincing. We argue that the current location of patients should not, in principle, affect their priority for intensive care. We show, however, that under some but not all circumstances, maximizing lives saved by intensive care might require continuing to treat in the ICU a patient already admitted rather than transferring that patient out of the unit in order to admit a sicker patient who would also benefit more from intensive care. We conclude that further modelling is required in order to clarify what practical policies would maximize lives saved by intensive care. (shrink)

A lesson from cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is that it is possible for people to change their beliefs and attitudes in ways that enhance mood. This chapter discusses mainly how the ideas from positive psychology combined with the therapeutic methods developed in CBT might provide ways of helping individuals to enhance their mood and increase happiness. The best single perspective from which to gain an understanding of positive psychology is that of evolutionary psychology, even though it is underdeveloped and contentious. (...) Evolutionary psychology bridges the gap between individual history and the general features of the human condition that helps to explain both our capacity for happiness and some of the barriers to achieving it. The modern general evolutionary view of emotions is that they help animals in regulating their effort: how they behave at any one time and how they apportion their time and energy between different types of behavior. (shrink)

Conceived through collaboration by activist academics from Israel and Northern Ireland, this book draws from experience to offer practical and theoretical insights and programs for promoting activist pedagogy for shared learning and shared life in divided societies.

The contemporary social science in general and economics in particular are dominated by the method of logical positivism in the British tradition. In contrast to the British philosophy, 'Subjectivism and Interpretative Methodology in Theory and Practice' adopts subjectivism and interpretation methodology to understand human behavior and social action. Unlike positivism, this subjectivist approach, with its root in German idealism, takes human experience as the sole foundation of factual knowledge. All objective facts have to be interpreted and evaluated by human minds. (...) In this approach, experience, knowledge, expectation, plans, errors and revision of plans are key elements. Specifically, this volume uses the subjectivist approach originated in Max Weber's interpretation method, Alfred Schutz's phenomenology, and Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann's sociology of knowledge to understand economic and social phenomena. The method brings human agency back into the forefront of analysis, adding new insights not only in economics and management, but also in sociology, politics, psychology and organizational behavior. (shrink)

The author argues for the use of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel,The Great Gatsby, as a text for studying business ethics. The author presents a documented analysis of the major ethics themes in the book including, for example, moral growth, Gatsby's life of illusion, the withering of the American Dream, and the parallels between the 1920s and the 1980s. Fitzgerald's fiction analysis is then tied to the '90s via current social science and philosophical evidence addressing Fitzgerald's 1920s concerns. Data examining the (...) incidence of lying in contemporary American life, a review of Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development, and data-based studies of wealth distribution in America are among those strands of evidence. The article concludes with a brief look at students' responses toGatsby in a legal and social environment of business course.In effect, the author presents a lesson plan for teachingThe Great Gatsby as a general introduction to ethics and American values. As such, theGatsby discussion is designed to precede a more pragmatic and specific inquiry employing conventional business cases and the like. (shrink)

Smith begins with a comprehensive analysis of social theory, presents a defense of Jurgen Habermas' main contribution to social ethics and contrasts Habermas' rational foundation for ethics with the decisionism defended by Max Weber, and ...

To take the idea of a non-anthropocentric ethic of nature seriously is to abandon morality itself. The idea of humanity is not an optional extra for moral seriousness. Non-anthropocentric environmental ethicists mistake the kind of value non-human entities may bear. It is not moral value, but aesthetic value.

This chapter contains section titled: The Doctrine of Necessity The Doctrine of Liberty Hume's Compatibilism Notes References Further reading.

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 220 Seiten: 249-268.

It is a common enough view that market agents are self-interested, not benevolent or altruistic – call this market egoism – and that this is morally defensible, even morally required. There are two styles of defence – utilitarian and deontological – and while they differ, they confront a common problem. This is the availability problem. The problem is that the more successful the moral justification of self-interested economic activity, the less there is for the justification to draw upon. Religious justifications (...) of market egoism at least make a stab at dealing with the problem; secular accounts typically do not. (shrink)

Animal Ethics has long been a highly contested area with debates driven by unease about various forms of animal harm, from the use of animals in scientific research to the farming of animals for consumption. Animal Ethics: The Basics is an essential introduction to the key considerations surrounding the ethical treatment of animals. Taking a thematic approach, it outlines the current arguments from animal agency to the emergence of the ‘political turn’. This book explores such questions as: Can animals think (...) and do they suffer? What do we mean by speciesism? Are humans special? Can animals be political or moral agents? Is animal rights protest ethical? Including outlines of the key arguments, suggestions for further reading and a glossary of key terms, this book is an essential read for philosophy students and readers approaching the contested field of Animal Ethics for the first time. (shrink)

Cell adhesion complexes are critical for the physical coordination of cell–cell interactions and the morphogenesis of tissues and organs. Many adhesion receptors are anchored to the plasma membrane by a glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) moiety and are thereby partitioned into membrane rafts. In this review, we focus on reciprocal interactions between rafts and adhesion molecules, leading to receptor clustering and raft expansion and stability. A model for a three‐stage adhesion complex assembly process is also proposed. First, GPI‐anchored adhesion molecules are recruited into (...) rafts, which in turn promote receptor cis‐oligomerization and thereby produce precursory complexes primed for avid trans‐interactions. Second, trans‐interactions of the receptors cross‐link and stabilize large amalgams of rafts at sites of adhesion complex assembly. Finally, the enlarged and stabilized rafts acquire enhanced abilities to recruit the cytoskeleton and induce signaling. This process exemplifies how the domain structure of the plasma membrane can impact the function of its receptors. BioEssays 24:996–1003, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Everything that journalists do has ethical implications, and The Ethical Journalist discusses a range of ethical questions likely to confront those studying journalism and/or training to become journalists. The starting point for this engaging and innovative book is that ethical journalism is good journalism. Building on the reflective and questioning approach of the author’s acclaimed Journalism: Principles and Practice (2004), The Ethical Journalist links theory and practice throughout by examining the views of journalists and academics. It places anecdotal experience within (...) the context of relevant critical study, and scrutinizes academic explanations within the context of practitioner accounts. Informed by original research and the author’s own experience within mainstream and alternative journalism, The Ethical Journalist addresses topics issues such as trust, the public interest, undercover reporting, news values, source relationships, crime reporting, regulation, and the Hutton inquiry. This exciting new title discusses ethics as fundamental rather than as a set of problems or an added extra, and it should become essential reading for everyone interested in journalism. (shrink)