In spite of recent efforts to promote cooperation between universities and industry, Germany still lacks a sufficient legal framework for regulating potential conflicts of interest resulting from university-industry cooperation. Prospective regulation of conflicts of interest has to take into account specific constraints imposed by the German constitution. It has to follow stringent procedural and material requirements and carefully weigh the individual researcher’s right to academic freedom against the public demand for objectivity in research. Because of this cautious consideration of the (...) conflicting interests constitutionally mandated in Germany, a potential regulation legitimate in this country may serve as a model for other countries facing the need of the adoption of such a regulation. (shrink)

In spite of recent efforts to promote cooperation between universities and industry, Germany still lacks a sufficient legal framework for regulating potential conflicts of interest resulting from university-industry cooperation. Prospective regulation of conflicts of interest has to take into account specific constraints imposed by the German constitution. It has to follow stringent procedural and material requirements and carefully weigh the individual researcher’s right to academic freedom against the public demand for objectivity in research. Because of this cautious consideration of the (...) conflicting interests constitutionally mandated in Germany, a potential regulation legitimate in this country may serve as a model for other countries facing the need of the adoption of such a regulation. (shrink)

At the heart of Peter Singer’s utilitarianism is the impartial weighing of the interests of those affected by our actions. Singer calls this the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests. This paper argues that Singer’s Principle does not accord with our moral intuitions and the logic of our moral thinking. It discusses the Principle in the context of the parable of the Prodigal Son and his Brother – a parable that raises the issue of impartiality in a (...) particularly challenging way. What the parable shows is, first, that our moral thinking often turns on judgements of fairness that are prior to any impartial weighing of interests; and, second, that impartial fairness itself is sometimes transcended by compassionate love. Both of these points have important implications for bioethics. (shrink)

Conflicts of interest are receiving increased attention in medical research, clinical practice and education. Criticism of, and penalties for, conflicts of interest have been insufficiently discussed and have been applied without adequate conceptual backing. Genuine conflicts of interest are situations in which alternative courses of action are ethically equivalent, decision-making being less a matter of moral deliberation than of personal weighing of interest. In contrast, situations usually thought of as conflicts of interest are mostly temptations to follow an attractive (...) but undue option that causes harm by failing to uphold well-entrenched ethical standards. Examples of moral quandaries that pose as ethically neutral conflicts of interest are healthcare providers enticed to favour certain products; patients being referred to non-therapeutic trials entailing risks and non-optimal healthcare; industry-supported scientists failing to deliver unbiased research results and reports or participating in ghost-writing; and sponsored educators who praise their supporters beyond objective evidence. All these are moral blemishes, where integrity gives way to material incentives at the cost of provoking risky and harm-producing situations, thus constituting false conflicts of interest when they are in fact ethical misdemeanours. Disclosure has been the most widely recommended response to avoid the concealment of conflicting and ethically suspect interests. Regulations regarding disclosure reveal a utilitarian stance that shows more concern for the magnitude of support or sponsorship than for the underlying ethical transgression. Education and oversight should directly address and help correct the moral attitude towards undue influence of inducements and marketing strategies falsely posing as conflicts of interest. (shrink)

One of the central normative questions regards a decision between conflicting moral values. A decision of this nature is often required in disciplines such as philosophy, economics and law. According to common terminology, a decision between conflicting values reflects a balance of values, considerations or interests. Several types of questions arise in this context. One category includes substantive questions: which values exist, which considerations should be derived from these values, what is the degree of importance of these considerations, and (...) which principles should be established for deciding between conflicting considerations? Another category includes institutional questions: which individual or body should decide normative questions, and should the normative nature of the decision be manifest or concealed? This paper is an abstract of a book that considers general aspects concerning these questions. (shrink)

It is generally thought that there are certain persons to whose welfare we should give special weight. It is commonly held, for example, that we should give special weight to our own welfare. On the strongest version of this view, we should always give overriding weight to our own welfare, and so, in considering any set of alternatives, we should always prefer the one in which we fare best. Many people would reject this strong view, for two reasons. First, many (...) people would hold that impersonal reasons (such as reasons of total utility) can sometimes outweigh, or at least counterbalance, reasons of self-interest. Further, many people think that reasons deriving from special personal relations can sometimes outweigh, or at least counterbalance, reasons of self-interest. We can, however, formulate a much weaker, and much more plausible, version of the self-interest view that avoids both these problems. Let’s first define a person’s kin as anyone in the person’s extended family (including himself). And let’s define a person’s kith very broadly as anyone with whom that person has ever interacted. We can now formulate the weak version of the self-interest view as follows. (shrink)

Context Physicians are regularly confronted with research that is funded or presented by industry. Objective To assess whether physicians discount for conflicts of interest when weighing evidence for prescribing a new drug. Design and setting Participants were presented with an abstract from a single clinical trial finding positive results for a fictitious new drug. Physicians were randomly assigned one version of a hypothetical scenario, which varied on conflict of interest: ‘presenter conflict’, ‘researcher conflict’ and ‘no conflict’. Participants 515 randomly (...) selected Fellows in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' Collaborative Ambulatory Research Network; 253 surveys (49%) were returned. Main object measures The self-reported likelihood that physicians would prescribe the new drug as a first-line therapy. Results Physicians do not significantly discount for conflicts of interest in their self-reported likelihood of prescribing the new drug after reading the single abstract and scenario. However, when asked explicitly to compare conflict and no conflict, 69% report that they would discount for researcher conflict and 57% report that they would discount for presenter conflict. When asked to guess how favourable the results of this study were towards the new drug, compared with the other trials published so far, their perceptions were not significantly influenced by conflict of interest information. Conclusion While physicians believe that they should discount the value of information from conflicted sources, they did not do so in the absence of a direct comparison between two studies. This brings into question the effectiveness of merely disclosing the funding sources of published studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Re-examining Empirical Data on Conflicts of Interest Through the Lens of Personal NarrativesEmily E. Anderson and Elena M. KrausIntroductionThe personal stories submitted by physicians and researchers for this symposium add much–needed dimension to conversations on conflicts of interest in medicine and research. Narratives from individuals living with conflicts of interest can serve as a unique lens through which to consider psychological and economic theories and survey data on physician (...) and patient views. In our reading of these personal narratives, we identified four primary themes that will serve as springboards for our commentary. We aim to triangulate clusters of meaning drawn from the narratives with relevant data from published empirical studies and identify gaps in knowledge where more research is needed. These themes are: the unique environments of medicine and research; weighing the potential benefits of conflicts of interest against the risks; conflict of interest management; and the roles and responsibilities of diverse stakeholder groups.The Unique Challenges of the Medical and Research EnvironmentsThe reflections of the narrative authors draw attention to many of the unique environmental aspects of medicine and medical research that make physicians and researchers especially vulnerable to conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest may be more ubiquitous in medicine than in any other industry (Kassirer, 2006). As the narratives demonstrate, conflicts of interest emerge across a range of health care delivery and research activities. Surveys have shown that 94 percent of physicians have some kind of relationship with industry (Campbell, Gruen, Mountford, et al., 2007). There is also evidence that physician interactions with medical industry begin early and are a regular part of a physician’s professional practice along the career continuum (Wazana, 2000).Medicine as a profession is distinct from banking or law. It is often said that medicine is an art; in treating patients, creative individualized solutions and gut instinct are as (if not more) important than the application of scientific knowledge. Uncertainty surrounds medical decision making. There is limited precision with respect to diagnoses and prognoses, limited data regarding the effectiveness of many treatments, and a range of patient values and preferences. Because of this uncertainty, rules about practice standards, especially with respect to avoidance and management of conflicts of interest, cannot be as explicit as they are in law or business. As demonstrated by the story presented by Sal Cruz–Flores, research and practice often intersect. And, there is no system in greater need of reform—and no system about which there are more divergent opinions as to what shape that reform should take—than the United States health care [End Page 91] system. The narratives of Tony Mikulec, Govind Nagaldinne, and David M. Zientek demonstrate how various aspects of the structure of healthcare service provision and third–party payer arrangements have the potential to harm patients. Conflicts of interest comprise more than relationships with pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers.The narratives of Laura Jean Bierut and David M. Zientek also discuss examples of conflicts of interest that arise from factors beyond relationships with industry or the direct potential for financial gain. This may be somewhat unique to the medical milieu. Non-financial conflicts such as a desire for the prestige bestowed upon scientists who make key discoveries, a requirement to publish for tenure and promotion, the need to maintain one’s license or other privileges, or simply the pressure of a competitive environment can influence physician and researcher behavior. As noted by Bierut, more research on how to identify and manage non-financial conflicts is needed.The Potential Benefits and Harms of Conflicts of InterestConflicts of interest are usually presented in a negative light, particularly those that involve physician relationships with the pharmaceutical industry. To “have a conflict of interest” is to be in a situation or role where there is potential for personal interests to be prioritized over professional responsibilities. However, in terms of public perception, it seems that conflicts of interest have become almost synonymous with wrongdoing. Perhaps this is due to the barrage of media reports during the last decade on significant harms caused by financial conflicts of interest in business, journalism, and sports as well as in medicine (Steinbrook, 2004). Amidst... (shrink)

This paper is a response to two sets of published criticisms of the 'Reasons as Evidence’ thesis concerning normative reasons, proposed and defended in earlier papers. According to this thesis, a fact is a normative reason for an agent to Φ just in case this fact is evidence that this agent ought to Φ. John Broome and John Brunero have presented a number of challenging criticisms of this thesis which focus, for the most part, on problems that it appears to (...) confront when it comes to the topic of the weighing of reasons. Our paper responds to all of the criticisms that these critics have provided, shedding fresh light on this interesting topic in the process. (shrink)

In this article, I distinguish between 4 models for thinking about how to balance the interests of parents, families, and a sick child: (1) the oxygen mask model; (2) the wide interests model; (3) the family interests model; and (4) the direct model. The oxygen mask model – which takes its name from flight attendants' directives to parents to put on their own oxygen mask before putting on their child's – says that parents should consider their own (...) interests only insofar as doing so is, ultimately, good for the sick child. The wide interests model suggests that in doing well by my child I am at the very same time doing well by myself. My interests can, and plausibly do, encompass the interests of others; they are, to that extent, wide. There is, then, no sharp separation between the interests of the sick child and the interests of other family members. In the family interests model, families themselves are seen as having interests that are neither identical to the sum, nor a simple function, of the interests of individual family members. The family has goals, values, and aspirations that are essentially corporate rather than individual. According to this model, these family interests can explain why sacrifices can sometimes be demanded of some family members for the sake of others in a medical setting. Finally, the direct model takes a simpler view of family members' interests; it claims that these interests matter simply on their own and should be taken into account in making treatment decisions for a sick child. This model openly considers the competing interests that parents and other family members often have when caring for a sick child, and advocates for weighing those interests when making decisions for and about the sick child. While there is room for all four models at the bedside, I argue that the direct model should be highlighted in clinical decision-making. (shrink)

How should liberal-democratic governments deal with emerging vaccination hesitancy when that leads to the resurgence of diseases that for decades were under control? This article argues that vaccination policies should be justified in terms of a proper weighing of the rights of children to be protected against vaccine-preventable diseases and the rights of parents to raise their children in ways that they see fit. The argument starts from the concept of the ‘best interests of the child involved’. The (...) concept is elaborated for this context into the dual regime structure in which parents have fiduciary authority over what they consider to be best for their child, and the state has fiduciary authority over a child’s basic interests. This argument leads to conditional mandatory vaccination programs that should be informed by a correct balancing of the two legal principles of proportionality and precaution. This results in contextual childhood vaccination policies of upscaling interference: a three-tiered approach of increased intrusion, from voluntary program when possible and mandatory or even compulsory programs when necessary to protect the child’s basic interests. (shrink)

Opt-out systems of postmortem organ procurement are often supposed to be justifiable by presumed consent, but this justification turns out to depend on a mistaken mental state conception of consent. A promising alternative justification appeals to the analogical situation that occurs when an emergency decision has to be made about medical treatment for a patient who is unable to give or withhold his consent. In such cases, the decision should be made in the best interests of the patient. The (...) analogous suggestion to be considered, then, is, if the potential donor has not registered either his willingness or his refusal to donate, the probabilities that he would or would not have preferred the removal of his organs need to be weighed. And in some actual cases the probability of the first alternative may be greater. This article considers whether the analogy to which this argument appeals is cogent, and concludes that there are important differences between the emergency and the organ removal cases, both as regards the nature of the interests involved and the nature of the right not to be treated without one’s consent. Rather, if opt-out systems are to be justified, the needs of patients with organ failure and/or the possibility of tacit consent should be considered. (shrink)

Opt-out systems of postmortem organ procurement are often supposed to be justifiable by presumed consent, but this justification turns out to depend on a mistaken mental state conception of consent. A promising alternative justification appeals to the analogical situation that occurs when an emergency decision has to be made about medical treatment for a patient who is unable to give or withhold his consent. In such cases, the decision should be made in the best interests of the patient. The (...) analogous suggestion to be considered, then, is, if the potential donor has not registered either his willingness or his refusal to donate, the probabilities that he would or would not have preferred the removal of his organs need to be weighed. And in some actual cases the probability of the first alternative may be greater. This article considers whether the analogy to which this argument appeals is cogent, and concludes that there are important differences between the emergency and the organ removal cases, both as regards the nature of the interests involved and the nature of the right not to be treated without one’s consent. Rather, if opt-out systems are to be justified, the needs of patients with organ failure and/or the possibility of tacit consent should be considered. (shrink)

Much of knowing what to do is knowing what to do for ourselves, but knowing how to act in our best interest is complex---we must know what benefits us, what burdens us, and how these facts present and constitute considerations in favor of action. Additionally, we must know how we should weigh our interests at different times---past, present, and future. Dale Dorsey argues that a theory of prudence is needed: a theory of how we ought to act when we (...) are acting for ourselves. A Theory of Prudence provides a comprehensive account of prudence, including the metaethics of prudential value, the nature of the personal good, the reasons of prudence, and the structure of prudential normativity over time. (shrink)

Determining whether a person who appears to have committed an offence should then be prosecuted for it requires a number of assessments and weighing of interests. Yet, to read the latest Code for Crown Prosecutors, one would think that the exercise of prosecutorial discretion is a relatively unstructured process. This is because the Code does not require prosecutors to identify an aim in seeking the punishment of the accused, and because it does not distinguish between the harms caused (...) to the defendant by punishment and the distinct harms which are caused to him by prosecution. I shall argue that the aim of the prosecutor (assuming that guilt will be proven) should be to decide whether the aims of punishment of the accused would be justified by the likely costs of the proceedings, but that this aim may be constrained by considering the harms which may be caused to the defendant by prosecution. If this structure were to be accepted, then it would both be easier to draft a Code for Crown Prosecutors which has useful guiding value and to identify to whom the prosecutor should be accountable for his decisions. (shrink)

Richness theory offers an alternative to the paradigms that have dominated the short history of environmental ethics as a self-conscious field. This alternative theoretical paradigm defines intrinsic value as “richness”—a synonym for “organic unity” or “unity in diversity.” Richness theory can handily reconcile two kinds of ideas that seem to be in tension with each other:that (1) an individual human being has a greater worth than an individual organism of just about any other species; and (2) yet the world would (...) be a better place with substantially fewer humans and/or less consumption per capita, thus leaving more resources for other species.The mutual compatibility of such ideas within the framework of richness theory can be demonstrated both verbally and through a simplified mathematical model. (shrink)

Beneficence is a foundational ethical principle in medicine. To provide benefit to a patient is to promote and protect the patient’s wellbeing, to promote the patient’s interests. But there are different conceptions of wellbeing, emphasizing different values. These conceptions of wellbeing are contrary to one another and give rise to dissimilar ideas of what it means to benefit a patient. This makes the concept of beneficence ambiguous: is a benefit related to the patient’s goals and wishes, or is it (...) a matter of objective criteria that constitute wellbeing? This paper suggests a unified conception of wellbeing for use in medicine to determine what counts as a benefit. Two components of wellbeing are identified: (1) objective functioning/health and (2) the patient’s view of her own good. The paper explores how to apply, balance, and weigh these components in clinical situations to determine what counts as a benefit to a patient. (shrink)

Human and animal interests are often in conflict. In many situations, however, it is unclear how to evaluate and weigh competing human and animal interests, as the satisfaction of the interests of one group often inevitably occurs at the expense of those of the other group. Human-animal conflicts of this kind give rise to ethical questions. If animals count morally for their own sake, then we must ask in which cases the satisfaction or frustration of the (...) class='Hi'>interests of humans and animals in conflict situations is justified or unjustified from an ethical perspective. In this article, we argue that limited aggregation accounts represent a promising means for resolving interspecies conflicts. The reason for this is that they can appropriately consider the qualitative relevance of interests, their relative importance to each other, and the number of individuals affected. For our argument, we start from the premise that animals count morally for their own sake, albeit to a lesser extent than humans. That is, we accept the view that animals may be used, for example, as a source of food or in animal research. However, as we will show, many basic interests of animals are sufficiently similar to human interests and can thus be compared to them. Hence, they ought to be aggregated in cases of conflict with human interests. We illustrate our account and its practical implications with the real-world example of a human-animal conflict during the outbreak of a zoonotic disease among farmed animals. We conclude that, in many cases, animal interests ought to be given more importance than they currently receive, which includes distributing the burdens and risks of farming practices more fairly. (shrink)

This paper advances a novel conception of the child’s best interest in regard to pediatric surgeries that do not promote the preventive or therapeutic health needs of children, or elective pediatric surgeries (EPS). First, children’s capacity for decision-making is examined, and the best decision-making model for EPS is identified as the Best Interest Standard. What follows is a discussion of the interests of children in the context of EPS, the correlation of fundamental interests to rights, and guidelines for (...) weighing children’s competing interests. Next, the rights and duties of parents as proxy decision makers are considered. Finally, a reinterpretation of the Best Interest Standard is proposed, identifying as paramount a child’s ability to make elective medical decisions for herself when she reaches maturity. (shrink)

Many philosophers and jurists believe that individuals should sometimes be granted religiouslygrounded exemptions from laws or rules. To determine whether an exemption is merited in a particular case, the religious claim must be weighed against the countervailing values that favour the uniform application of the law or rule. This paper develops and applies a framework for assessing the weight of religious claims to exemption, across two dimensions. First, the importance of the burdened religious practice, which is determined by its level (...) of obligatoriness and centrality, according to the beliefs of the individual claimant. Second, the extent of the burden on the practice, which depends on the cost the individual bears if she both undertakes the religious practice and obeys the law or rule, where costs are assessed using an impartial account of individual interests. Exemptions should be granted when claims are weighty on either of these dimensions and the countervailing value is relatively weak. The final section of the paper responds to an important objection to this approach, which concerns administrability. (shrink)

When it comes to climate change, the greatest difficulty we face is that we do not know the likely degree of change or its cost, which means that environmental policy decisions have to be made under uncertainty. This book offers an accessible philosophical treatment of the broad range of ethical and policy challenges posed by climate change uncertainty. Drawing on both the philosophy of science and ethics, Martin Bunzl shows how tackling climate change revolves around weighing up our (...) class='Hi'>interests now against those of future generations, which requires that we examine our assumptions about the value of present costs versus future benefits. In an engaging, conversational style, Bunzl looks at questions such as our responsibility towards non-human life, the interests of the developing and developed worlds, and how the circumstances of poverty shape the perception of risk, ultimate developing and defending a view of humanity and its place in the world that makes sense of our duty to Nature without treating it as a rights bearer. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental studies, philosophy, politics and sociology as well as policy makers. (shrink)

'[T]he good man should be a lover of self.' Aristotle wrote. 'For he will both himself profit by doing noble acts, and will benefit his fellows … '. Yet in much of contemporary moral philosophy, concern for one's own interests is considered a non-moral issue, while concern for the interests of others is paradigmatically moral. Indeed, a central issue in ethical theory involves the proper balance to be struck between prudence and morality, between the pursuit of one's own (...) good and the pursuit of the good of others. When deliberating over what action to take, should one weigh one's own interests more heavily than those of others? Or is it possible to accommodate both self-interest and regard for others, to show that we have self-regarding reasons for helping others? The twelve essays in this volume - written from a range of perspectives - address these questions and examine related issues. (shrink)

Genetic testing raises concerns that individuals will be denied health insurance (and thus, effectively, access to health care), or that employers will screen to eliminate potentially costly workers. Although we as a society do not yet concur on the degree to which private businesses have a responsibility to promote social justice, several different policy alternatives might allow us to weigh the interests of insurers, as businesses, against the interests of citizens in a responsible manner.

The joke among scientists is that ‘philosopher’ is the last stage of one’s scien- tific career, to be arrived at when one can no longer get grants funded or graduate stu- dents to advise. Despite the fact that some of the greatest minds in evolutionary biology (from Darwin to Ernst Mayr) were very much interested in the philosophical aspects of what they were doing, the bad joke persists in the halls of academia.

Despite its public visibility and impact on policy, the activity of expert communication rarely receives more than a passing mention in codes of scientific integrity. This paper makes the case for an ethics of expert communication, introducing a framework where expert communication is represented as an intrinsically ethical activity of a deliberative agent. Ethical expert communication cannot be ensured by complying with various requirements, such as restricting communications to one's area of expertise or disclosing conflicts of interest. Expert communication involves (...) morally laden trade‐offs that must be weighed by a deliberative agent. A basic normative framework is introduced, and concrete provisions are proposed for codes of scientific integrity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Psychiatric Treatment and the Problem of Equality:Whose Justice, Which Rationality?Floris Tomasini (bio)KeywordsInvoluntary treatment, democracy, equality, impartialityCraig Edwards in his article "Ethical Decisions in the Classification of Mental Conditions As Mental Illness" provides the reader with a socially normative, rather than a naturalistic understanding of mental illness, one that, in particular, promotes a normative understanding of mental illness as a form of evaluating dysfunctional personhood. In doing so, Edwards is (...) not interested in undermining psychiatric expertise, but exploring some of the practical consequences that flow from it, such as involuntary psychiatric treatment.My concern about psychiatric treatment in general and involuntary psychiatric treatment in particular, is three-fold, the third concern adding to the arguments already rehearsed by Edwards and others. The first concern is about the value neutrality of mental illness. Any dysfunctional conception of mental illness is not value neutral according to Fulford; dysfunction is, straightaway, a normative concept and is heavily influenced by a patient's desires and values. The second concern is about competing and conflicting values that arise in a person's psychiatric treatment. Again, there exists a legitimate variation in people's evaluative judgments about mental health conditions, for which a degree of democratic compromise might be required in negotiating conflicting values in a person's psychiatric treatment (Fulford and Colombo 2004). Without wishing to examine any of the philosophical foundations or counter-arguments to these claims in this short discussion paper, my third concern is about how to ethically negotiate between conflicting values in a person's psychiatric treatment. In other words, what might democratic compromise consist in? How might democratic compromise be implemented in terms of an ethically relevant principle?Any democratic enterprise, by definition, favors or is characterized by social equality and is egalitarian in nature (New Oxford English Dictionary 1999, 490). To be able to negotiate in the spirit of democratic compromise between competing and conflicting values in the process of psychiatric treatment, a principle of equal consideration of interests is vital.The essence of the principle of equal consideration of interests is that we give equal weight in our [End Page 101] moral deliberation to the like interests of all those affected by our actions (Singer 1979, 19). In other words, an interest is an interest whoever's interest that may be. So, for example, if the principle is about relieving pain, then the moral principle is about relieving the undesirability of pain as such, and not the undesirability of A's pain, which might be different from the undesirability of B's pain. Naturally, one may be able to distinguish that A's pain is greater than B's pain, in which case, under the equal consideration of interests principle, A's pain should be given greater weighting than B's pain in any conflict of interests. In short, in the evaluation of like interests, major interests outweigh minor interests.The significance of the principle of equal consideration of interests in decisions about mental health treatment in general, and about involuntary psychiatric detention and treatment more specifically, is that it should be possible (in theory at least) to able to democratically arbitrate on the basis of utility, whose interests take precedence when legitimate conflicts arise. The great practical advantage to the principle of equal consideration of interests is that it weighs' interests impartially—like well-balanced weighing scales; they favor where the interest is stronger or where several interests combine to outweigh a smaller number of similar interests. Most important, in the case of psychiatric treatment, it is a principle that takes no account of whose interests they are, avoiding any discriminatory stigma that may arise because of having made certain assumptions about being mentally ill. From the point of view of the equal consideration of interests, who the bearer is and how they are classified is, in itself, incidental to what the actual bearer's interests are and how they compete and conflict with others who have like interests. There are a number of practical consequences that flow from the principle of equal consideration when applied to psychiatric treatment (voluntary and involuntary) that need to be pinned down.Simple Negative DiscriminationClearly... (shrink)

Some in public relations have suggested that practitioners adopt a philosophy of enlightened self-interest as an ethical baseline. The author contends that such a theory must be rejected because even the enlightened variety does not adequately weigh the needs of significant others - a central consideration in any effort to define ethical behavior. The author maintains that genuine sacrifice - at times required of those desiring to do the right thing - clearly can conflict with any theory espousing self-interest as (...) a baseline. Further, there is a social dimension to ethics. By virtue of occupational title, the author holds that public relations practitioners have a particular responsibility to advance the social order. Ethical behavior - especially as it relates to public relations - must go well beyond a narrow concern that no injustice is done to individual persons. (shrink)

Whether any non-human animal can attribute mental states to others remains the subject of extensive debate. This despite the fact that several species have behaved as if they have a ‘theory of mind’ in various behavioral tasks. In this paper, we review the reasons of skeptics for their doubts: That existing experimental setups cannot distinguish between ‘mind readers’ and ‘behavior readers’, that results that seem to indicate ‘theory of mind’ may come from studies that are insufficiently controlled, and that our (...) own intuitive biases may lead us to interpret behavior more ‘cognitively’ than is necessary. The merits of each claim and suggested solution are weighed. The conclusion is that while it is true that existing setups cannot conclusively demonstrate ‘theory of mind’ in non-human animals, focusing on this fact is unlikely to be productive. Instead, the more interesting question is how sophisticated their social reasoning can be, whether it is about ‘unobservable inner experiences’ or not. Therefore, it is important to address concerns about the setup and interpretation of specific experiments. To alleviate the impact of intuitive biases, various strategies have been proposed in the literature. These include a deeper understanding of associative learning, a better knowledge of the limited ‘theory of mind’ humans actually use, and thinking of animal cognition in an embodied, embedded way; that is, being aware that constraints outside of the brain, and outside of the body, may naturally predispose individuals to produce behavior that looks smart without requiring complex cognition. To enable this kind of thinking, a powerful methodological tool is advocated: Computational modeling, namely agent-based modeling and, particularly, cognitive modeling. By explicitly simulating the rules and representations that underlie animal performance on specific tasks, it becomes much easier to look past one’s own biases and to see what cognitive processes might actually be occurring. (shrink)

Background: Health researchers must weigh the benefits and risks of publishing their findings.Objective: To explore differences in decision making between rural health researchers and managers on the publication of research from small identifiable populations.Method: A survey that investigated the attitudes of Australian rural general practitioners to nurse practitioners was explored. Decisions on the study’s publication were analysed with bioethical principles and health service management ethical decision-making models.Results: Response rate was 78.5% . 84–94% of GP responders considered it to be undesirable (...) for nurse practitioners to initiate referrals to medical specialists , to initiate diagnostic imaging and to prescribe medication .Bioethical analysis: It was concluded that the principle of beneficence outweighed the principle of non-maleficence and that a valid justification for the publication of these results existed.Decision-making models of health service managers: On the basis of models of ethical decision making in health service management, the decisions of the area’s health managers resulted in approval to publish this project’s results being denied. This was because the perceived risks to the health service outweighed benefits. Confidentiality could not be ensured by publication under a regional nom de plume.Conclusions: A conflict of interests between rural researchers and health managers on publication of results is shown by this case study. Researchers and managers at times owe competing duties to key stakeholders. Both weigh the estimated risks and benefits of the effect of research findings. This is particularly true in a rural area, where identification of the subjects becomes more likely. (shrink)

Competent adults should be permitted to determine the course of their own lives. We may try to influence them. We may ask them, perhaps even implore them, to change their minds. But in the end, they are in charge of their lives. They get to choose their careers, whether and whom to marry, whether to exercise, and whether to have surgery.This emphasis on respect for patients’ autonomy may seem to imply that allowing patients to make their own decisions should always (...) take precedence over other considerations. Given this presumption, there has been almost no discussion in the medical literature or elsewhere about how important this value is and whether it should sometimes be balanced against and give way to other values. This absence of guidance is especially problematic in cases where respect for patient autonomy conflicts with promoting patients’ clinical interests. (shrink)

In his article ‘Better Communication Between Engineers and Managers: Some Ways to Prevent Many Ethically Hard Choices’1 Michael Davis analyzes the causes of the disaster in terms of a communications gap between management and engineers. When the communication between (representatives of) both groups breaks down, the organization is in (moral) trouble. Crucial information gets stuck somewhere in the organization prohibiting a careful discussion and weighing of all (moral) arguments. The resulting judgment has therefore little (moral) quality. In this paper (...) I would like to comment on some of Michael Davis’s interesting and thought-provoking insights and ideas. A company which implements Davis’s recommendations at least shows some sensitivity to organizational moral issues. But it might miss the point that moral trouble can also result from a common understanding between managers and engineers. Organizational members sometimes tend to be myopic with regard to safety issues. This paper: 1. describes different meanings of safety Managers and engineers, as Davis mentions, are sometimes willing to compromise quality, but do sacrifice safety. It is my contention that safety—in the sense of putting people’s lives on the line—will always be compromised, and that the discussion is about the ways to negotiate the risks./li 2. focuses on a shared understanding of the situation and its implications for safety Using examples from a case study I did on behalf of a commercial airline,2 I will try to show that it is not always the communications gap between managers and engineers which poses a risk to the stakeholders involved, but a common understanding of the situation. 3. focuses on a ‘timely concatenation of both active and latent failures’ as a cause for accidents I will argue that—in spite of our efforts to strengthen ethical consciousness and organizational practices—there will always be accidents. They are part of the human condition, since we cannot completely control the complexity of the situations in which they occur. One can, however, make them less costly. (shrink)

Most bills of rights allow for the restriction of rights in the interests of the public. But how should courts decide when the public interest should prevail? This article draws on philosophical work on practical reasoning to argue against the popular view that courts should use a balancing test which weighs the consequences of protecting the right against the consequences of restricting it. It argues that there are good reasons to 'overprotect' rights: judges, in their reasoning, should assign more (...) weight to rights and less weight to the public interest than they would on an application of the balancing model. (shrink)

The prevalent view in animal ethics is that speciesism is wrong: we should weigh the interests of humans and non-humans equally. Shelly Kagan has recently questioned this claim, defending speciesism against Peter Singer’s seminal argument based on the principle of equal consideration of interests. This critique is most charitably construed as a dilemma. The principle of equal consideration can be interpreted in either of two ways. While it faces counterexamples on the first reading, it makes Singer’s argument question-begging (...) on the second. In response, Singer has grasped the first horn of this dilemma and tried to accommodate Kagan’s apparent counterexamples. In my opinion, this attempt is unpersuasive: the principle of equal consideration is inconsistent with common-sense intuitions on Kagan’s cases. Worse, Singer’s argument begs the question anyway. It therefore faces two serious objections. This is not to say that there is nothing wrong with speciesism, however. In the second half of the paper, I propose another, better argument against speciesism, which I argue is immune to both objections. According to this other argument, speciesism is wrong because it involves discriminating on the basis of a merely biological property. (shrink)

Whether any non-human animal can attribute mental states to others remains the subject of extensive debate. This despite the fact that several species have behaved as if they have a ‘theory of mind’ in various behavioral tasks. In this paper, we review the reasons of skeptics for their doubts: That existing experimental setups cannot distinguish between ‘mind readers’ and ‘behavior readers’, that results that seem to indicate ‘theory of mind’ may come from studies that are insufficiently controlled, and that our (...) own intuitive biases may lead us to interpret behavior more ‘cognitively’ than is necessary. The merits of each claim and suggested solution are weighed. The conclusion is that while it is true that existing setups cannot conclusively demonstrate ‘theory of mind’ in non-human animals, focusing on this fact is unlikely to be productive. Instead, the more interesting question is how sophisticated their social reasoning can be, whether it is about ‘unobservable inner experiences’ or not. Therefore, it is important to address concerns about the setup and interpretation of specific experiments. To alleviate the impact of intuitive biases, various strategies have been proposed in the literature. These include a deeper understanding of associative learning, a better knowledge of the limited ‘theory of mind’ humans actually use, and thinking of animal cognition in an embodied, embedded way; that is, being aware that constraints outside of the brain, and outside of the body, may naturally predispose individuals to produce behavior that looks smart without requiring complex cognition. To enable this kind of thinking, a powerful methodological tool is advocated: Computational modeling, namely agent-based modeling and, particularly, cognitive modeling. By explicitly simulating the rules and representations that underlie animal performance on specific tasks, it becomes much easier to look past one’s own biases and to see what cognitive processes might actually be occurring. (shrink)

Individuals who are overweight or obese encounter frequent weight-related stigma experiences, which are associated with negative health outcomes. In this regard, the Brief Coping Responses Inventory was developed as a measure of core coping responses to weight stigma, with 10 items loading on two subscales of reappraisal and Disengagement coping. The current study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Persian BCRI with 253 Iranian school-attending youth who had BMI score over 30. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis (...) supported the originally proposed two-factor model, which yielded acceptable internal consistency based on various reliability measures such as Cronbach’s alpha coefficients and demonstrated the expected convergent and divergent associations with external correlates of interest. This study was also the first one worldwide to examine and report that the originally proposed two-factor model of the BCRI is invariant across gender groups, which allows for examining mean differences in BCRI scores across gender groups. Overall, our results indicated that the BCRI is a valid and reliable measure with a solid factor structure, which could be used to examine the coping reactions to weigh related stigma experiences among youth samples in Iran. Our results may encourage future studies on the psychometrics of the BCRI with other Iranian samples. (shrink)

The concept of deliberation in the Ukrainian philosophical discourse is both underestimated and overestimated. Underestimated — as a self-sufficient category that is not reducible to another con- cept, even if it is the concept of consensus or the concept of democracy. Deliberation appears pri- marily as a careful weighing and selection of arguments when making an important decision. Collegiality may or may not be present here, as well as openness. Therefore, the concept of deliber- ation is somewhat overestimated as (...) something that necessarily improves the quality of democratic procedures, and therefore, supposedly, deliberation itself is something democratic in nature. American political philosopher Joshua Cohen drew attention to the fact that deliberation can be of at least three types: individual deliberation, jury deliberation, and oligarch deliberation. The article analyzes these three types of deliberation and found that the closest to the democratic type of government is individual deliberation, or rather, joint deliberation of responsible citizens. While the deliberation of the jury is mostly closed, it is naturally limited access to the extent of the necessary competence of its possible participants. The deliberation of the oligarchs is even more closed and often even secret. However, the article states that it is more appropriate to replace the name «oligarchs» with the term «captains of business»: then the deliberation of the oligarchs ceases to be a cartel conspiracy, and turns into a coordinated protection of the interests of the national economy. However, for this, de- liberation itself is not enough, so not procedural, but other, namely, value factors of decision-making are needed. Democracy benefits from deliberation when the latter is complemented by the liberal and patriotic values of the participants in the deliberation. Already John Locke convincingly argues the importance of citizens achieving a common conscious agreement in state matters. However, for Locke, the very fact of having property was important, while in practice, achieving an effective agreement requires mechanisms for reconciling the positions of owners with very different amounts of property. To some extent, this problem can be solved by John Rawls` concept of justice. (shrink)

In light of technology that may reveal the content of a person’s innermost thoughts, I address the question of whether there is a right to ‘brain privacy’—a right not to have one’s inner thoughts revealed to others–even if exposing these thoughts might be beneficial to society. I draw on a conception of privacy as the ability to control who has access to information about oneself and to an account that connects one’s interest in privacy to one’s interests in autonomy (...) and associated reputational interests, and preserving one’s dignity. Focusing on the controversial case of Gilberto Valle, known as the ‘cannibal cop’, who faced legal punishment and moral reproach for deeply disturbing thoughts of doing violence to women, thoughts he claimed were mere fantasies, I argue that Valle has a right to brain privacy if he has a legitimate privacy interest that is not outweighed by competing societal interests in avoiding harm. Our weighing of competing privacy and societal interests will depend on the magnitude of the privacy interests in autonomy and dignity, and on how reliable the technology used to expose inner thoughts is in predicting future harmful behavior and identifying true threats. (shrink)

Despite the central place of suffering in medical care, suffering in infants and nonverbal children remains poorly defined. There are epistemic problems in the detection and treatment of suffering in infants and normative problems in determining what is in their best interests. A lack of agreement on definitions of infant suffering leads to misunderstanding, mistrust, and even conflict amongst clinicians and parents. It also allows biases around intensive care and disability to affect medical decision-making on behalf of infants. In (...) this paper, I propose the concept of suffering pluralism, which is a novel multidimensional view of infant suffering based on subjective and objective components. The concept of suffering pluralism is more inclusive of the multiple ways in which infant suffering can occur. It acknowledges and defines a subjective component to infant suffering, while also focusing moral attention on objective well-being by describing it using the language of suffering. This concept allows us to better weigh up subjective and objective components of well-being. It also encourages clarity and consistency in claiming suffering, which is likely to improve communication and reduce conflict in medical decision-making for unwell infants and children. I will end by exploring possible critiques and limitations of this concept. (shrink)

It is often challenging for mental health‐care providers and health organizations to perform their various roles and to meet their varied obligations. In complex mental health‐care circumstances the concurrent application of relevant ethical principles and values often leads to the emergence of completing obligations that need to be carefully weighed and balanced in the making of care‐related decisions. Although some clinical circumstances, such as those potentially triggering the duty to warn, are adequately guided by existing rules based on legal precedents, (...) there is a gap in decision‐making support in other mental health‐care domains. This article proposes that a set of targeted, decision‐making approaches be developed to assist in the handling of specific, challenging circumstances. By way of illustration, two novel approaches are introduced; that is, choosing to work within a moral relational space of optimal therapeutic engagement (at the micro level of clinical practice), and the use of a health policy development approach that instantiates deliberative engagement (at the meso and macro levels of health organization). (shrink)

The idea of paying donors in order to make more human bodily material available for therapy, assisted reproduction, and biomedical research is notoriously controversial. However, while national and international donation policies largely oppose financial incentives they do not treat all parts of the body equally: incentives are allowed in connection to the provision of some parts but not others. Taking off from this observation, I discuss whether body parts differ as regards the ethical legitimacy of incentives and, if so, why. (...) I distinguish two approaches to this issue. On a ”principled” approach, some but not all body parts are inherently special in a way that proscribes payment. On a ”pragmatic” approach, the appropriateness of payment in relation to a specific part must be determined through an overall assessment of e.g. the implications of payment for the health and welfare of providers, recipients, and third parties, and the quality of providers’ consent. I argue that the first approach raises deep and potentially divisive questions about the good life, whereas the second approach invokes currently unsupported empirical assumptions and requires difficult balancing between different values and the interests of different people. This does not mean that any attempt to distinguish between body parts in regard to the appropriateness of payment necessarily fails. However, I conclude, any plausible such attempt should either articulate and defend a specific view of the good life, or gather relevant empirical evidence and apply defensible principles for weighing goods and interests. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Search of FaithKate RowlandSometimes I’m jealous of my patients’ faith. As a former happily religious person I miss the benefits I used to get from an active faith. I know that some of my patients must struggle with their faith, and I know the struggle probably affects their well–being. For those who simply believe or those who simply don’t believe, it’s easy. And for those who do believe, (...) there can be so much serenity and so much reward.As a doctor, I spend a lot of time reading science, weighing evidence, and making recommendations. Religion has been a respite from this. Faith, for me, has never been a series of decisions based on the best available evidence. I could analyze it as much as I wanted, peel its layers apart, question it, but in the end, it was just faith, not a hypothesis. It has always been something that I believe (or don’t), and practicing my faith had always been a relatively pleasant decision of figuring out what kind of community I want to share in.My faith life has been in shambles for the past several years. I feel distant from and unwelcome in the church where I was raised, and I haven’t found anywhere else to land. I cannot decide how to raise my own small children. I want them to have grounding in God, but I can’t decide how much I believe in God anymore, and I am fixated on the idea that I don’t want to be hypocritical or lie to [End Page 210] them. I don’t want them to see me worshipping in a way that is not really authentic to me.My husband is agnostic—literally—on the issue. He is open to introducing a loving, kind, forgiving God, but unsure about a God incarnate. We both worry about the identity with a particular religion usurping the actual relationship with God: I am [religion], therefore I believe [this], therefore my God does [this] or is [this].And so all of these fears and doubts have led us to live with no religion, and no outward faith. Our children attend a parochial nursery school run by a religion other than one where we were raised, and they have an apparently happy but neutral opinion of religion and God. They understand ceremonies. At age four, they have a more active faith life than I do, since they attend weekly services at school. But then, they have fewer choices than I do. They do what the teachers tell them. They would do what I told them to do, if I could ever decide what I believed in.I spend so many hours a week with my patients that they have become my main source of demonstration of active, living faith. I know that they share mostly good parts with me. I see so much of the good because I mostly see patients who get to choose how to practice their own religions; they don’t feel oppressed by religious or culturo–religious demands or expectations. It’s interesting that I see the positive sides of their faith, not the struggle, because I otherwise see a lot of the struggling parts of their lives. I see the flinty, edgy woman, the patient who has spent more time in the hospital in the past month than I have, the woman who is sick of her low platelet count that keeps her from living a normal life. And every day she has some message of faith: she tells our medical team what Bible passage is keeping her strong, she tells us how God watches over her when we tell her that her counts are better, she tells us to have a blessed day. Sometimes she curses at the hospital or her condition or at her medications, sometimes at us. So far her faith is unshaken.I take care of a woman who has burning mouth syndrome, a chronic condition that causes her lips, her tongue, and her palate to feel as though they are on fire. Eating makes it worse, drinking makes it worse, breathing makes it worse... (shrink)

Background Informed consent is considered to be the standard method for respecting the autonomy of individual participants in research and practices and is thought to be based on several conditions: (1) providing information on the purpose of the research or a specific treatment, what it will entail, (2) the participants being mentally competent to understand the information and weigh it in the balance, and (3) the participants to be free from coercion. While there are studies of informed consent in other (...) countries, especially Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs), this study explored the experiences of clinicians regarding the process of obtaining informed consent to participate in a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) in particular and treatment in general in healthcare settings, both general and mental health, specifically focusing on the tension between individualistic concept of autonomy and collectivist values in cultures such as Pakistan. Methods Qualitative interviews with 20 clinicians from healthcare settings in Pakistan who also served as recruiters in a suicide prevention RCT in Pakistan. The interviews were guided by semi-structured topic guide. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Results The interviews revealed that shared decision making was more morally important than individual autonomy, the role of the family played a dominant part in the consent-taking procedure, the decision of the elder and/or family patriarch took prominence, and that clinician-researchers encountered significant challenges in consent process in Pakistan, while recruiting patients into the trial as well as during routine treatment processes in healthcare settings. Four distinct themes emerged which were (1) Family deciding for patients, (2) Benefits of involving family in consent process, (3) Gender disparity in consent process, (4) Challenges experienced by clinician-researchers during consent process in Pakistan. Conclusions The concept of consent is generally considered important in many cultures, however, there are two strands of understanding. There seems to be consensus that participant agreement is necessary to protect the participant but with regards to autonomy there are significant cultural differences whether it is the right for autonomy of the individual (individualistic concept) or family, community, or expert authority in other cultures. In Pakistan clinician-researchers sometimes preferred one approach and sometimes the other as they appreciated the interests of the patient to be. (shrink)

Rapid developments in science and technology have resulted in novel discoveries, leading to new questions particularly related to human values and ethics. Every discovery and technology has positive and negative implications and affects human lives either directly or indirectly, involving all walks of life. Bioethical discourse in Malaysia must consider the multiracial and multireligious background of Malaysia and especially the Islamic view as the majority of Malaysians are Muslims and Islam is the religion of the federation. This article discusses several (...) selected bioethical issues in Malaysia by studying the application of maṣlaḥah (the public good) and mafsadah (evil and harms) in Malaysian Islamic rulings (fatwas). This article uses the critical interpretation approach, as this is an ethical, interpretive, textual, and contextual analysis. In a situation when there is a conflict between maṣlaḥah and avoidance of mafsadah, it is preferred to attempt to address both needs. However, if maṣlaḥah and avoidance of mafsadah are mutually exclusive, the decision to choose must be made by weighing (tarjīḥ) and choosing the one which is superior. The maṣlaḥah and mafsadah concepts play vital and significant roles in bioethical discourse to realize human essential interests, namely faith, life, lineage, intellect, and property, thus achieving maqāṣid al-sharīʿah (the ultimate goal of sharia). This concept helps in guiding bioethical discussions, especially in determining the priority between achieving benefits and avoiding harms. The application of this concept will also assist Malaysian authorities in formulating appropriate rulings, especially bioethical issues related to Malaysian Muslims’ lives. (shrink)

This book covers Husserl’s stance on the philosopher and the history of philosophy, whether or not such a history is part of the philosophical attitude itself, and if so, how Husserl’s phenomenology might weigh in on such matters. Firstly, this text spells out some of the manifold ways in which the history of philosophy works its way in Husserl’s phenomenology, showing how concepts, methods and problems drawn from various Ancient and Modern philosophical traditions (Platonism, Aristotelianism, Sophistry, Stoicism, Scholasticism, Modern Rationalism) (...) are transformed and embedded within transcendental phenomenology itself. Secondly, it shows how a better understanding of the distinctive patterns by means of which Husserl’s phenomenology confronts the history of philosophy could be extremely significant for historians of philosophy who are interested in learning something entirely new about the unexplored horizons of such concepts, methods and problems. Finally, based on such twofold historical and philosophical approach and thanks to a substantial reinterpretation of some key phenomenological concepts such as “multiplicity”, “constitution”, “attitude” and “variation”, this book provides a novel and original reading of Husserl’s overall philosophical project in its full meaning and scope. By doing so, this volume appeals to both students and researchers and critically engages in mainstream interpretations of phenomenology, suggesting a unique take on the idea of transcendental phenomenology as a whole. (shrink)

The deflationary aim of this book, which occupies Part I, is to show that a widely held view has little to be said for it. The constructive aim, pursued in Part II, is to make plausible a measure-theoretic account of propositional attitudes. The discussion is throughout instructive, illuminating and sensitive to the many intricacies surrounding attitude ascriptions and how they can carry information about a subject's psychology. There is close engagement with cognitive science. The book should be read by anyone (...) seriously engaged with issues about propositional attitudes.According to the widely held view, which Matthews calls the Received View, the attitude of Φing that p is a matter of standing in a computational/functional relation to an explicit Representation that expresses the proposition that p, and thinking is ‘an inferential computational process defined over one or more of these Representations that eventuates in the production of either another Representation or a behavior’. The representations are understood to be sentences in a language of thought and thus to have a compositional syntax and semantics. The theory that Matthews aims to make plausible has it that ascriptions of propositional attitudes in the form ‘X Φs that p’, ascribe a state to a person by relating that person to an abstract object that is the representative of the state in roughly the way that numbers on a scale are the measure-theoretic representations of certain physical magnitudes. We are to think of the role of ‘Jones believes that interest rates will fall’ by analogy with that of ‘Jones weighs 150lbs’. The latter depends on there being arithmetical relations defined over numbers that enable its particular assignment of a number to Jones's weight to represent physical properties that Jones has in virtue …. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Classics and the Uses of ReceptionJames Bradley WellsCharles Martindale and Richard F. Thomas, eds. Classics and the Uses of Reception. Classical Receptions. Malden: Blackwell, 2006. xiv + 335 pp. 20 black-and-white figs. Paper, $36.95.Passion and parrhesia characterize this collection of twenty-three essays on applications of reception theory and practice to classical studies. Charles Martindale and Richard F. Thomas originally conceived of this project as an invitation to "wider (...) debate about the uses of reception within classics" (2). This volume is the product of an admirably collaborative process, which did not serve to put contributors on message with any particular ideological or theoretical stance but created a forum for sustained dialogue, a sort of salon whose doors are now open to broader participation. Classics and the Uses of Reception throws down challenges to conventional ways of thinking about texts, history, modes of perception, and styles of analysis; this willingness to take a stand gives the collection its passionate quality.Some authors speak to the capacity that reception has for enabling classics to join the fray of contemporary intellectual life with more commitment and to become more attractive to today's students. The essays are intensely self-reflexive and practice a confrontational parrhesia that dismantles assumptions, admits its faults, and prefers open-endedness to gift-wrapped conclusions. This book is a provocation, not a primer, even if there are many fine illustrations of what reception theory and practice look like—and it is not a point of entry for research on, say, pastoral poetry, Sophocles' Antigone, or the Venus de Milo. Prospective readers who hope to find here the footing necessary to make their own receptionalist forays will still need to read their Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, although many essays do describe the intellectual genealogy of reception, both in its theoretical dimensions and in terms of particular topics in classical studies. These topics are appealingly diverse.Diverse too—or divergent in this case?—are the rhetorical strategies of the essays in the collection. In addition to authors who conform to the generic parameters of the expository essay, some authors adopt an insistently centrifugal style that replicates the openendedness of the point of reception, the moment of interaction between a text and its interlocutor. I get that, but I had trouble with the essays that read like theory interloping. I use theory and savor the specificity [End Page 135] of definition, the hyperqualification of thought aspiring to exactitude sans simplicity for its own sake, and complex sentence structure that is a reflex of the ideas it conveys, so if I locate some of the essays in this collection on the spectrum of, at one end, stupefying displays of jargon, and, at the other, postmodern-cute, we are talking about the alienation of an interested reader. In what follows, I summarize, necessarily crudely, the contents of the twenty-three essays in Classics and the Uses of Reception.The first two essays, Martindale's "Introduction: Thinking Though Reception" (1–13) and William W. Batstone's "Provocation: The Point of Reception Theory" (14–20), preface the two sections of the book, "Part I: Reception in Theory" and "Part II: Studies in Reception." A core thread in Classics and the Uses of Reception is the problem of history, which Martindale weighs vis-à-vis reception specifically as it pertains to classics. In light of key tenets of reception theory—first, that meaning is situated but not instantiated and, second, that meaning is a product of the dialogue that emerges in the interface of two horizons of expectations, that of the classical text, broadly conceived to include all communicative media, and that of the reader—reception in classics offers the prospect of retooling how the discipline approaches history so that classicists might more rigorously disclose present dimensions of their encounters with antiquity. Batstone's essay addresses a danger to which virtually any methodology is susceptible: to command an analytical vista impervious to the hints—indeed, responsibility to acknowledge—that what we see has something to do with us. Easing over a palette of thinkers that includes Kristeva, Gadamer, Heidegger, Bakhtin, Lacan, and Freud, Batstone's discussion of subjectivity and... (shrink)

In the United States, the decision of whether to withdraw or continue to provide artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) for patients in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) is placed largely in the hands of surrogate decision-makers, such as spouses and immediate family members. This practice would seem to be consistent with a strong national emphasis on autonomy and patient-centered healthcare. When there is ambiguity as to the patient's advanced wishes, the presumption has been that decisions should weigh in favor of (...) maintaining life, and therefore, that it is the withdrawal rather than the continuation of ANH that requires particular justification. I will argue that this default position should be reversed. Instead, I will argue that the burden of justification lies with those who would continue artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH), and in the absence of knowledge as to the patient's advanced wishes, it is better to discontinue ANH. In particular, I will argue that among patients in PVS, there is not a compelling interest in being kept alive; that in general, we commit a worse violation of autonomy by continuing ANH when the patient's wishes are unknown; and that more likely than not, the maintenance of ANH as a bridge to a theoretical future time of recovery goes against the best interests of the patient. (shrink)

This paper develops a form of transcendental naïve realism. According to naïve realism, veridical perceptual experiences are essentially relational. According to transcendental naïve realism, the naïve realist theory of perception is not just one theory of perception amongst others, to be established as an inference to the best explanation and assessed on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis that weighs performance along a number of different dimensions: for instance, fidelity to appearances, simplicity, systematicity, fit with scientific theories, and so on. (...) Rather, naïve realism enjoys a special status in debates in the philosophy of perception because it represents part of the transcendental project of explaining how it is possible that perceptual experience has the distinctive characteristics it does. One of the potentially most interesting prospects of adopting a transcendental attitude towards naïve realism is that it promises to make the naïve realist theory of perception, in some sense, immune to falsification. This paper develops a modest form of transcendental naïve realism modelled loosely on the account of the reactive attitudes provided by Strawson in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, and suggests one way of understanding the claim that naïve realism is immune to falsification. (shrink)