This compact and innovative book tackles one of the central issues in drug policy: the lack of a coherent conceptual structure for thinking about drugs. Drugs generally fall into one of seven categories: prescription, over the counter, alternative medicine, common-use drugs like alcohol, tobacco and caffeine; religious-use, sports enhancement; and of course illegal street drugs like cocaine and marijuana. Our thinking and policies varies wildly from one to the other, with inconsistencies that derive more from cultural and social values than (...) from medical or scientific facts. Penalties exist for steroid use, while herbal remedies or cold medication are legal. Native Americans may legally use peyote, but others may not. Penalties may vary for using different forms of the same drug, such as crack vs. powder cocaine. Herbal remedies are unregulated by the FDA; but medical marijuana is illegal in most states. Battin and her contributors lay a foundation for a wiser drug policy by promoting consistency and coherency in the discussion of drug issues and by encouraging a unique dialogue across disciplines. The contributors are an interdisciplinary group of scholars mostly based at the University of Utah, and include a pharmacologist, a psychiatrist, a toxicologist, a trial court judge, a law professor, an attorney, a diatary specialist, a physician, a health expert on substance abuse, and Battin herself who is a philosopher. They consider questions like the historical development of current policy and the rationales for it; scientific views on how drugs actually cause harm; how to define the key notions of harm and addiction; and ways in which drug policy can be made more consistent. They conclude with an examination of the implications of a consistent policy for various disciplines and society generally. The book is written accessibly with little need for expert knowledge, and will appeal to a diverse audience of philosophers, bioethicists, clinicians, policy makers, law enforcement, legal scholars and practitioners, social workers, and general readers, as well as to students in areas like pharmacy, medicine, law, nursing, sociology, social work, psychology, and bioethics. (shrink)

We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. We reject arbitrary distinctions that deny adequate protections to other animals who share with protected humans relevantly similar vulnerabilities to harms and relevantly similar interests in avoiding such harms. We strongly urge this Court, in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice, to recognize that, as a nonhuman person, Happy should be (...) released from her current confinement and transferred to an appropriate elephant sanctuary, pursuant to habeas corpus. (shrink)

In this brief, we argue that there is a diversity of ways in which humans (Homo sapiens) are ‘persons’ and there are no non-arbitrary conceptions of ‘personhood’ that can include all humans and exclude all nonhuman animals. To do so we describe and assess the four most prominent conceptions of ‘personhood’ that can be found in the rulings concerning Kiko and Tommy, with particular focus on the most recent decision, Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc v Lavery.

Three types of concern for animal welfare are widelyheld: Animals should feel well, they should function well, andthey should lead natural lives. The paper deals with a well-knownanswer to the question of why such concerns are morallyappropriate: Human beings have direct duties towards animals,because animals are beings that can flourish, the flourishing ofanimals is intrinsically or inherently valuable, and that whichis conducive to their flourishing is a legitimate object of moralconcern. Looking for a tenable conception of direct dutiestowards animals, the (...) following questions are discussed: Whatshould we take it to mean that ``animal flourishing isintrinsically or inherently valuable?'''' Under what conditions doesa living being''s ability to flourish create direct duties towardsthis being? Is awareness or sentience required for there to bedirect duties towards a living being? Does such a requirementimply that moral concerns for animals would be limited to theirfeeling well, or does it also give way to having moral concernsfor their functioning well and leading natural lives? Can onetake into account considered judgements that claim that towardsdifferent animals we have moral duties that differ in kind and/orstrength? If environmental ethics cannot be based on theconception of direct duties here discussed, should one draw adistinction between duties towards ourselves, our fellow humanbeings, or animals, and duties regarding plants, or collectiveentities such as populations, species, and ecosystems? (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

He then proceeds with an examination of the picture theory developed by Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Goodman, and concludes with an examination of Patricia Churchland, Ruth Millikan, Robert Cummins, and Mark Rollins. The use of the historical development of representationalism to pose a central problem in contemporary cognitive science is unique.

This paper explores the relationship between eugenics, disability, and dehumanization, with a focus on forms of eugenics beyond Nazi eugenics.

The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has (...) been a focus in some recent discussions by both philosophers and biologists on how evolutionary individuals are created and regulated, as well as continuing work on the evolution of individuality. (shrink)

This is a superb anthology that questions the value and even the existence of honor in the contemporary world. Although readers have had the benefit of excellent works on this concept from mainly a...

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, Page 549-550, July 2012.

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 3, Page 416, June 2012.

The scope and importance of the present work is manifest even to a casual glance; the actual heights of scholarly penetration and disinterestedness to which it rises can only be appreciated by the detailed examination of its text. From this latter examination, it readily appears that we are confronted with no ad hoc construction, no work cut, so to say, to fit a present need, however valid and cogent; but a work reflecting a near lifetime of application and animated by (...) a relentless devotion to documentary truth. For this reason, any account of it must, in simple justice, begin with a brief historical notice of the work itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Status of the Person in the Humanism of Giovanni Gentile" A. ROBERT CAPONIGRI THE HUMANISMOf Giovanni Gentile has gradually come to be recognized as one of the major speculative achievements of our time. The great strength and appeal of this position lie chiefly in the manner in which it meets the exigencies of the modem analysis of man and human existence while retaining the basic classical insights (...) of western thought. It achieves a synthesis which possesses at once historical, speculative, and cultural value and which rectifies many of the unilateral analyses so much in evidence. At the same time, serious limitations have been alleged to mar the Gentilean view of man. The most important of these allegations concerns the notion most intimately associated with the humanism of the west: the person. Strangely, it has been charged that the humanism of Gentile not only fails to develop an adequate concept of the person but directly involves the diminution and constriction of this concept as it has developed historically and influenced the western view of man. His, it is asserted, is a humanism without the person, which is but a small remove from the paradoxical assertion that it is a humanism without man? In many ways this charge is most perplexing. Were it correct, it would certainly have the limiting and constrictive effects his critics have pointed out. The real perplexity resides, however, not in spelling out the probable consequences of the allegation, but in determining how it might ever have arisen and gained such credence and championship. The fact is that nothing could be further from Gentile's intention and (what is more important) more alien to the burden of his text than the least diminution of the person. On the contrary, the person constitutes the central and pivotal notion of the entire structure of Gentilean humanism. The constructive effort of his thought is directed principally to the elaboration and validation of this * This paper was read before the Thirteenth International Congress of Philosophy, Mexico City (September, 1963), but has not been included in the Proceedings of the Congress. 1 M. F. Sclacca, II XX Secolo (1947), Vol. I, pp. 400 ft.; R. Holmes, The Idealism of Giovanni Gentile (1957), passim; H. S. Harris, The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile (1960), passim. [6q 62 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY concept of the person. Once established, this concept becomes the cardinal principle upon which all his subsequent explorations and assertions in the areas of art, ethics, social and political theory, and education hinge. Consequently, it seems of utmost importance, for the comprehension of his thought and of its place in the total prospect of contemporary philosophy, to place in clear relief the basic lineaments of the concept of the person as it emerges from the critical stages of Gentile's thought as well as the role it plays in all subsequent constructive efforts. Formation of the Concept of the Person in Gentile's Thought To understand the emergence of the concept of the person in actualism, it is necessary to determine clearly Gentile's basic point of departure. This is established firmly in the history of philosophy: a fact which corroborates Harris's perception that Gentile's thought is essentially an historical enterprise? One of Gentile's chief and most sustained fields of effort is the history of philosophy and his work in this area served a double purpose. The first was the properly historical and critical work of establishing an interpretation of the course of the history of western philosophy; s the second was to locate his own thought in the context of the history of philosophy as thus established and thus to endow it with a firm scientific and "public" character, to assign it a "public" basis. This public basis was the achievement of western philosophy which his analysis had recognized as solid and beyond cavil. This achievement, he reasoned, must constitute the point of departure of any further relevant speculation. Gentile took the philosophical position of Hegel as representing this indubitable achievement of western thought in its most salient features. This statement must be correctly understood to be of any help and importance in approaching his thought. Gentile did not... (shrink)

A re-newed interest in, and appreciation of, the problems of history, both as the theory of historical process and as historiography became one of the marked characteristics of twentieth century thought and this book discusses Benedetto Croce's historical writings in that context.

The theoretical problems of historiography derive chiefly from an ambiguity at the heart of the historian's task; historiography is uncertain as to its own theoretical character, that is, its character and status as a mode of knowing. On the one hand, historiography is oriented wholly toward the concrete, toward its rich and inexhaustible determination in quality; moreover, the concrete toward which it is oriented, is not statuesque, substantively plural and fixed, but fluid, dynamic, continuous. Such concretion can be fixed and (...) rendered for expression and communication only in narration, in images, therefore; as a consequence, written history appears in its own self-consciousness, that is to historiography, most immediately as art. The subsumption of history under the general concept of art as a form of knowing, however, is attended by insuperable difficulties. Chief among these is the fact that the concrete to which history, that is, written history, is addressed is the existent concrete; but the images of art, patently, are unsusceptible of the character of existence, save obliquely and typically. The forms of art, its images, are structures of pure quality, devoid of any determination of real and unreal, of any determination of existence, while the images of history are images of the real. But the character of existence cannot be intrinsic to any image, it cannot be simply a quality among qualities: it is rather the determination of quality to actuality which it does not possess simply as quality. The character of existence cannot consequently pertain to the images of history as images but must accede to them by a further theoretical act beyond that by which the image is evoked. This further act can only be logical. Existence must enjoy the status of logical predicate, not of esthetic quality. (shrink)

PROVIDENCE » 1 mm, doctrine of the modifications of the human mind con- 1 stitutes the first principle of the synthesis of time and idea A and, therefore, the first positive element of the Vichian theory of history. This synthesis is achieved in ...