The following demarcates the sense of the human person in Orthodox-Catholic bioethics from the family of senses proper to secular bioethics and philosophy. The radically different sources of knowledge about the senses proper to each discipline suggest that the importation of philosophical and secular psychological distinctions and analyses into true Christianity's concern with the human person, is fundamentally misguided. This suggestion is confirmed by examination of the articles of Crosby, Glannon, Hoswepian, and Meador and Shuman.

This note uses an analysis of Broussais's objection to medical ontology to suggest why Broussais's neologism οντοι is derived not from οντα but from a conflation of οντα and the plural of ογκος. For Broussais medical ontology, in contrast to philosophical ontology, always refers to abstract entities alleged to explain sensible symptoms, ογκοι, in the sense of indivisible particles in the writings of Lucretius and Epicurus, are such particles; οντα are not.

The doctrine of double effect shows that for which the moral agent is responsible, by explicating the relationship between the act directly intended and the consequences of that act. I contend that this doctrine is necessary not only for natural law absolutism, but also for Donagan's Kantianism and for Quinn's revised construal of the doctrine, and even for consequentialism, as bioethical implications of the doctrine make clear. For those who do not accept this necessity, I contend that it is necessary (...) metatheoretically, in order to deal with those moral agents with irreconcilably different notions of the morally good. (shrink)

That the soul of a human person is infused at conception is a metaphysical claim. But given its traditional articulation, it has the empirical consequence that the zygote must have a substantial continuity with the adult person, a continuity which is already determined at conception. This empirical consequence is contradicted by the fact that the zygote may become a hydatidiform mole, or several persons. The metaphysical claim is falsified by the facts. Keywords: abortion, information capacity, metaphysical account, person, zygote CiteULike (...) Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This book examines Hegel's presentation of the absolute as knowing and as spirit. McRae construes this absolute both metaphysically, as a self-sufficient existent, the conceptual articulation of which explains the essence and existence of reality, and as truth-oriented, as the conceptual integration of thought and being. He is not, however, aware of the distinction between these construals. He contends that Hegel fails to show that the theoretically inquisitive reader should accept the standpoint of the absolute, because it is presented as (...) self-explanatory in a way alien to what would serve as an explanation for the reader. But he also contends that Hegel's presentation should be accepted both as explaining reality for his time and culture, and as the basis for understanding our own. The reason to distinguish construals, I think, is that it is the absolute's metaphysical status which for McRae seems to make its articulation in purely systematic terms inaccessible to the reader, and it is the truth-oriented absolute which seems to ground his claim that the reader should seek to know it. (shrink)

These papers, arising from a 1983 conference on one of the last and most acute Neoplatonist commentators on Aristotle, a Christian later condemned for his monophysitism and tritheism, focus on the arguments in which he objects to tenets of Aristotle's philosophy of nature, notably on the eternity of the world and the natures of place and projectile motion.

The first fundamental English-language study in bioethics, this book gives a lucid analysis of, and powerfully argued resolutions to, conflicts of values that arise in medicine. It also provides salutary emphasis upon the obligations of health-care professionals to respect the moral autonomy of patients or their guardians. It is fundamental, however, because it does more: it is concerned with rationally choosing among competing orderings of goods and harms which are involved not only in the proper practice of medicine but in (...) any diversity of views about the good life. Engelhardt frames his concern in terms of universal grounds for ethically obligating rational agents within a peaceable community. In what follows, I largely prescind from issues of bioethics to attend to issues more congenial to the interests of this journal's readers. (shrink)

The traditional distinction between ordinary, i.e., obligatory means to preserve life and extraordinary, non-obligatory means is an especially useful tool for HECs in today's secular pluralist health care system, because it gives factors that can override the prima facie good of preserving the patient's life. I first indicate the need for such a tool. I then demonstrate the present misunderstanding of the distinction and give its proper understanding. Finally, I show the applicability of the distinction for HEC deliberations about three (...) important types of cases: the conscious, irreversibly but not terminally ill patient who requests cessation of curative treatment; the provision of artificial nutrition and hydration to permanently vegetative patients; and the allotment of intensive care and other scarce medical resources. (shrink)