The Consolations of Philosophy by Boethius, whose English translators include King Alfred, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I, ranks among the most remarkable books to be written by a prisoner awaiting the execution of a tyrannical death sentence. Its interpretation is bound up with his other writings on mathematics and music, on Aristotelian and propositional logic, and on central themes of Christian dogma. -/- Chadwick begins by tracing the career of Boethius, a Roman rising to high office under the (...) Gothic King Theoderic the Great, and suggests that his death may be seen as a cruel by-product of Byzantine ambitions to restore Roman imperial rule after its elimination in the West in AD 476. Subsequent chapters examine in detail his educational programme in the liberal arts designed to avert a threatened collapse of culture and his ambition to translate into Latin everything he could find on Plato and Aristotle. -/- Boethius has been called `last of the Romans, first of the scholastics'. This book is the first major study in English of a writer who was of critical importance in the history of thought. (shrink)

Despite the recent increased emphasis on ethics in health care, the subject of community health care is rarely specifically addressed. Yet it is in the community that many ethical issues arise, both in the particular practice situation and in the wider social issues connected with changes in government policy. This edited text discusses these questions and looks at the whole range of community health nursing in the UK. The multidisciplinary group of contributors explore the issues of theory and practice that (...) arise in community health care. They encourage critical reflection on the differences between hospital-based care and community care. Everyday issues are addressed that confront health practitioners working in the community, such as discrimination, mental health, standard setting, rationing in health care, public health, health promotion and discharge decision making. This book will be essential reading for practitioners on post-registration courses in community health and students following courses in health care ethics and nursing studies. (shrink)

The demand for bodily parts such as organs is increasing, and individuals in certain circumstances are responding by offering parts of their bodies for sale. Is there anything wrong in this? Kant had arguments to suggest that there is, namely that we have duties towards our own bodies, among which is the duty not to sell parts of them. Kant's reasons for holding this view are examined, and found to depend on a notion of what is intrinsically degrading. Rom Harré's (...) recent revision of Kant's argument, in terms of an obligation to preserve the body's organic integrity, is considered. Harré's view does not rule out all acts of selling, but he too ultimately depends on a test of what is intrinsically degrading. Both his view and Kant's are rejected in favour of a view which argues that it does make sense to speak of duties towards our own bodies, grounded in the duty to promote the flourishing of human beings, including ourselves. This provides a reason for opposing the sale of bodily parts, and the current trend towards the market ethic in health care provision. (shrink)

The term “industrial action” includes any noncooperation with management, such as strict “working to rule,” refusal of certain duties, going slow, and ultimately withdrawal of labor. The latter form of action, striking, has posed particular problems for professional ethics, especially in those professions that provide healthcare, because of the potential impact on patients' well-being. Examination of the issues, however, displays a difference in response between the healthcare professions, in particular between doctors and nurses. In considering the ethics of industrial (especially (...) strike) action there are various aspects of professional ethics to consider: (1) whether there is a tension between industrial action and the very notion of professional ethics; (2) what specific issues arise in the case of healthcare professions; (3) what, if anything, can explain and/or justify different responses from the medical and nursing professions? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.4 (2004) 299-301 [Access article in PDF] The Right Not to Know: A Challenge for Accurate Self-Assessment Ruth F. Chadwick Anderson and Lux present a very interesting and thought-provoking argument for the view that accurate self-assessment is a requirement for personal autonomy. What I want to suggest is that although this may be helpful in the context with which these authors are primarily concerned, (...) namely psychiatry and brain dysfunction, it is of less value to an account of autonomy more widely construed. I want to look at a possible counterexample, taken from another area of medicine, namely genetics.Toward the end of their article Anderson and Lux consider three objections to their position. I shall not discuss them all. My concern is with the third, that inaccurate self-assessment sometimes promotes autonomy, because knowing the truth about one's weaknesses is sometimes very debilitating. It is commonly argued that "you can if you think you can" and vice versa. As they point out, there are some complex issues involved here, in that if the result of the positive thinking is the ability to do the thing in question, then how can the self-assessment be deemed to have been inaccurate in the first place? They go on, however, to say that "it is unclear that inflated self-assessments yield benefits in contexts where what is required is not just effort but competence" (290).Now it has been argued, by some, in the context of genetics, that the proper understanding of autonomy may imply a "right not to know" facts about oneself. In other words, this is not just a matter of accurate or inaccurate assessment of the relevant facts about oneself; rather, what may be involved is a deliberate decision not to have access to facts that may be relevant to that assessment. There are clearly cases in which genetic information appears to be pertinent to an accurate self-assessment, as the following example suggests. Suppose there is information "available", through genetic testing, that would affect one's chances of having children, or of having children without a particular genetic disorder, and, knowing that such information is available, a couple decides not to avail themselves of this. This is clearly an inaccurate self-assessment, but is their autonomy compromised?It might be thought that the reasons for this decision not to know could be relevant. If they have no family history of any particular genetic disorder, it could be regarded as subjectively reasonable to decline such testing as might be offered. Anderson and Lux, however, argue that whether or not a self-assessment is accurate depends on externalities. In other words, A's self-assessment is not to be assessed as accurate, or [End Page 299] not, according to what it is subjectively reasonable to believe; it has to be measured against the facts. The more that the possibilities of genetic testing increase, the more that "facts" of this nature will be available, including in the context of psychiatry.It might be objected that genetic information is not the type of information that is relevant in this context. In so far as it is predictive and probabilistic it is, arguably, different from the type of diagnostic information involved in the cases discussed by Anderson and Lux. It is not the place here, however, to discuss in general terms the thesis of "genetic exceptionalism" with regard to medical information. The important point is refusal of access to information that may be relevant to an accurate self-assessment. Historically, people have been mistaken in their self-assessment because of lack of information—for example, lack of understanding of facts about the reproduction process has led individuals automatically to blame the woman partner of a couple for infertility. And, as Anderson and Lux rightly point out, being autonomous is compatible with making mistakes, and indeed requires the freedom to make mistakes, it would look rather different if a person continued to hold this without any attempt to avail himself of the relevant—and now available—information... (shrink)

A collection celebrating some of the best essays from the Blackwell journals, Bioethics and Developing World Bioethics. Contributors include Helga Kuhse, Michael Selgelid and Baroness Mary Warnock, former Chair of the British Government’s Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology’s. Traces some of the most important concerns of the 1980s, such as the ethics of euthanasia, reproductive technologies, the allocation of scarce medical resources, surrogate motherhood, through to a range of new issues debated today, particularly in the field of (...) genetics. Includes contributions that are still as hotly debated today as they were 20 years ago and serves as a salutary reminder that free and open discussion is vital to the health of the discipline itself. Includes eight sections comprising some of the journals' best publications in methodological issues, the health care professional-patient relationship, public health ethics, research ethics, genetics, as well as beginning- and end-of-life issues. Will serve the academic bioethicists as well as students of bioethics as an excellent source book. (shrink)

Boethius was a Roman senator who rose to high office under the Gothic king Theoderic the Great. He translated into Latin all he knew of Plato and Aristotle, and was profoundly interested in the issues of theology and philosophy. The Consolations were written while he awaited the execution of a tyrannical death sentence. The Consolations of Philosophy have been translated into English by King Alfred, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I. This scholarly study by Henry Chadwick, the first this (...) century since the War, has stimulated new interest in these remarkable works. (shrink)

For Descartes, knowledge exists as ideas in the mind that represent the world. In a radical critique, Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor argue that knowledge consists of much more than the representations we formulate in our minds. They affirm our direct contact with reality—both the physical and the social world—and our shared understanding of it.

Existential phenomenologists hold that the two most basic forms of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action, can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. This claim is expressed in two central notions in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: the intentional arc and the tendency to achieve a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between body and world, such that, as the active body acquires skills, those skills are “stored”, not as representations in the mind, (...) but as dispositions to respond to the solicitations of situations in the world. A phenomenology of skill acquisition confirms that, as one acquires expertise, the acquired know-how is experienced as finer and finer discriminations of situations paired with the appropriate response to each. Maximal grip names the body's tendency to refine its responses so as to bring the current situation closer to an optimal gestalt. Thus, successful learning and action do not require propositional mental representations. They do not require semantically interpretable brain representations either.Simulated neural networks exhibit crucial structural features of the intentional arc, and Walter Freeman's account of the brain dynamics underlying perception and action is structurally isomorphic with Merleau-Ponty's account of the way a skilled agent is led by the situation to move towards obtaining a maximal grip. (shrink)

Existential phenomenologists hold that the two most basic forms of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action, can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. This claim is expressed in two central notions in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: the intentional arc and the tendency to achieve a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between body and world, such that, as the active body acquires skills, those skills are stored, not as representations in the mind, (...) but as dispositions to respond to the solicitations of situations in the world. A phenomenology of skill acquisition confirms that, as one acquires expertise, the acquired know-how is experienced as finer and finer discriminations of situations paired with the appropriate response to each. Maximal grip names the body's tendency to refine its responses so as to bring the current situation closer to an optimal gestalt. Thus, successful learning and action do not require propositional mental representations. They do not require semantically interpretable brain representations either.Simulated neural networks exhibit crucial structural features of the intentional arc, and Walter Freeman's account of the brain dynamics underlying perception and action is structurally isomorphic with Merleau-Ponty's account of the way a skilled agent is led by the situation to move towards obtaining a maximal grip. (shrink)

Arguing that the importance of painting and other visual art for Benjamin's epistemology has yet to be appreciated, Weigel undertakes the first systematic analysis of their significance to his thought. She does so by exploring Benjamin's dialectics of secularization, an approach that allows Benjamin to explore the simultaneous distance from and orientation towards revelation and to deal with the difference and tensions between religious and profane ideas. In the process, Weigel identifies the double reference of 'life' to both nature and (...) to a 'supernatural' sphere as a guiding concept of Benjamin's writings. Sensitive to the notorious difficulty of translating his language, she underscores just how much is lost in translation, particularly with regard to religious connotations. The book thus positions Benjamin with respect to the other European thinkers at the heart of current discussions of sovereignty and martyrdom, of holy and creaturely life. It corrects misreadings, including Agamben's staging of an affinity between Benjamin and Schmitt, and argues for the closeness of Benjamin's work to that of Aby Warburg, with whom Benjamin unsuccessfully attempted an intellectual exchange. (shrink)

The possibilities of genetic engineering, particularly as applied to human beings, have provoked considerable debate for over two decades, but more recently the focus of public concern, at least, has turned to genetically modified food. Food has occasionally caught the attention of philosophers and bioethicists but is now ripe for further attention in the light of the implications of GM for policy in health, economics and politics. Macer has identified opposing reactions to novel foods—to prefer to eat down the food (...) chain, on the one hand, and to embrace technology, on the other. One question that has given rise to some interest is why consumer attitudes to genetically modified food have been so much more strongly adverse in Europe, particularly in the UK, than in the USA. This paper explores the ways in which the food ethics debate has been constructed in recent debates in the UK, with special reference to the similarities to and differences from what are on the face of it analogous debates in medical ethics. What is special about food, as opposed to drugs, which makes it appropriate or inappropriate to construct the arguments in the terms that currently predominate? This will involve looking in particular at the application of the principle of autonomy and the argument from consumer choice. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that there are significant ethical problems with nonmedical sex selection, and that prohibitive legislation is justified. The central argument put forward is that nonmedical sex selection is a sexist practice which promotes socially restrictive conceptions of sex, gender and family. Several steps are taken to justify this position: background information on technology and legislation is provided, the neoliberal position that is supportive of nonmedical sex selection is described, and preliminary reasons for rejecting (...) this approach are given. A detailed description of how a harm/benefit based analysis contributes to the argument against nonmedical sex selection, and how it successfully counters most criticism, is provided. The paper concludes by suggesting that virtue ethics further strengthens the moral argument against nonmedical sex selection. (shrink)

Existential phenomenologists hold that the two most basic forms of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action, can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. This claim is expressed in two central notions in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: the intentional arc and the tendency to achieve a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between body and world, such that, as the active body acquires skills, those skills are “stored”, not as representations in the mind, (...) but as dispositions to respond to the solicitations of situations in the world. A phenomenology of skill acquisition confirms that, as one acquires expertise, the acquired know-how is experienced as finer and finer discriminations of situations paired with the appropriate response to each. Maximal grip names the body's tendency to refine its responses so as to bring the current situation closer to an optimal gestalt. Thus, successful learning and action do not require propositional mental representations. They do not require semantically interpretable brain representations either.Simulated neural networks exhibit crucial structural features of the intentional arc, and Walter Freeman's account of the brain dynamics underlying perception and action is structurally isomorphic with Merleau-Ponty's account of the way a skilled agent is led by the situation to move towards obtaining a maximal grip. (shrink)

Augustine was arguably the greatest early Christian philosopher. His teachings had a profound effect on Medieval scholarship, Renaissance humanism, and the religious controversies of both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. Here, Henry Chadwick places Augustine in his philosophical and religious context and traces the history of his influence on Western thought, both within and beyond the Christian tradition. A handy account to one of the greatest religious thinkers, this Very Short Introduction is both a useful guide for the one (...) who seeks to know Augustine and a fine companion for the one who wishes to know him better. (shrink)

McDowell's claim that "in mature human beings, embodied coping is permeated with mindedness",1 suggests a new version of the mentalist myth which, like the others, is untrue to the phenomenon. The phenomena show that embodied skills, when we are fully absorbed in enacting them, have a kind of non-mental content that is non-conceptual, non-propositional, non-rational and non-linguistic. This is not to deny that we can monitor our activity while performing it. For solving problems, learning a new skill, receiving coaching, and (...) so forth, such monitoring is invaluable. But monitoring what we are doing as we are doing it degrades performance to at best competence. On McDowell's view, there is no way to account for such a degradation in performance since the same sort of content would be involved whether we were fully absorbed in or paying attention to what we were doing. McDowell claims that it is an advantage of his conceptualism that it avoids any foundationalist attempt to build up the objective world on the basis of an indubitable Given or any other ground-floor experience. And, indeed, if the world is all that is the case and our minds are unproblematically open to it, all experience is on the same footing. But one must distinguish motor intentionality, and the interrelated solicitations our coping body is intertwined with, from conceptual intentionality and the world of propositional structures it opens onto. The existential phenomenologist can then agree with McDowell in rejecting traditional foundationalisms, while yet affirming and describing the ground-floor role of motor intentionality in providing the support on which all forms of conceptual intentionality are based. (shrink)

This collection examines how the field of ethics has developed over the past fifty years, by bringing together those articles that have been seminal in the development of the subject. Each of the six volumes carries an introduction presenting the historical context of the material, and a new index is provided to identify key philosophical themes and trends within the collection. The volumes are organized thematically, and include: * Vol.1: Nature and Scope * Vol. 2: Ethical Issues in Medicine, Technology (...) and the Life Sciences * Vol. 3: Ethical Issues in Medicine, Technology and the Life Sciences II * Vol. 4: Environment * Vol. 5: Business/Economics * Vol. 6: Politics. (shrink)

MICHAEL WHEELER Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005432 pages, ISBN: 0262232405 (hbk); $35.001.When I was teaching at MIT in the 1960s, students from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory would come to...

A Critique of Artificial Reason Hubert L. Dreyfus . HUBERT L. DREYFUS What Computers Still Can't Do Thi s One XZKQ-GSY-8KDG What. WHAT COMPUTERS STILL CAN'T DO Front Cover.

In previous work I urged that the perceptual experience we rational animals enjoy is informed by capacities that belong to our rationality, and - in passing - that something similar holds for our intentional action. In his Presidential Address, Hubert Dreyfus argued that I thereby embraced a myth, "the Myth of the Mental". According to Dreyfus, I cannot accommodate the phenomenology of unreflective bodily coping, and its importance as a background for the conceptual capacities exercised in reflective intellectual activity. (...) My paper responds to this accusation. Dreyfus misreads my invocation of Aristotle, and is thereby led to suppose, wrongly, that I conceive rationality as detached, brought to bear on practical predicaments from a standpoint other than one of immersion in them. I urge that even unreflective bodily coping, on the part of rational animals, is informed by their rationality. Dreyfus mentions Heidegger’s distinction, which is picked up by Gadamer, between being oriented towards the world and merely inhabiting an environment. But he sets it aside, whereas it is crucial for the issue between us. Engaged bodily coping involves responsiveness to affordances, and responsiveness to affordances on the part of rational animals belongs to their relation to the world. I explain how the idea that conceptual capacities are actualized in our perceptual experience is connected with the thought that our perceptual experience opens us to the world. Finally, I suggest that the real myth in this area is the conception of rationality underlying Dreyfus’s resistance to my picture. (shrink)

It is generally argued that if the wave-function in the de Broglie–Bohm theory is a physical field, it must be a field in configuration space. Nevertheless, it is possible to interpret the wave-function as a multi-field in three-dimensional space. This approach hasn’t received the attention yet it really deserves. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, we show that the wave-function is naturally and straightforwardly construed as a multi-field; second, we show why this interpretation is superior to other interpretations (...) discussed in the literature; third, we clarify common misconceptions. (shrink)

This collection brings together many of the most influential criticisms of Kantian philosophy, from his own time to the present day. Volume I is historical, including Kant criticism from Schiller to Buchdahl. It contains some previously untranslated material. Volumes II, III and IV include recent essays on Kant, covering the major aspects of his work. Volume II looks at the Critique of Pure Reason, Volume III at Kant's moral and political philosophy, and Volume IV at the Critique of Judgement and (...) the relation of the third Critique to the other two. The volumes will be of great value to anyone with a serious interest in Kant's philosophy. (shrink)

This collection brings together many of the most influential criticisms of Kantian philosophy, from his own time to the present day. Volume I is historical, including Kant criticism from Schiller to Buchdahl. It contains some previously untranslated material. Volumes II, III and IV include recent essays on Kant, covering the major aspects of his work. Volume II looks at the Critique of Pure Reason, Volume III at Kant's moral and political philosophy, and Volume IV at the Critique of Judgement and (...) the relation of the third Critique to the other two. The volumes will be of great value to anyone with a serious interest in Kant's philosophy. (shrink)

This collection brings together many of the most influential criticisms of Kantian philosophy, from his own time to the present day. Volume I is historical, including Kant criticism from Schiller to Buchdahl. It contains some previously untranslated material. Volumes II, III and IV include recent essays on Kant, covering the major aspects of his work. Volume II looks at the Critique of Pure Reason, Volume III at Kant's moral and political philosophy, and Volume IV at the Critique of Judgement and (...) the relation of the third Critique to the other two. The volumes will be of great value to anyone with a serious interest in Kant's philosophy. (shrink)

The creation and consolidation of a memory can rest on the integration of any number of disparate features and contexts. How is it that these bind together to form a coherent memory? This book offers an unrivalled overview of one of the most debated hotspots of modern memory research: binding, and will instigate innovative and pioneering ideas for future research.

The ArgumentDevelopments in theoretical physics, even when they are revolutionary for physics, usually donotenter public awareness. The reaction to the special relativity theory is one of the few exceptions. The conceptual changes brought by special relativity to our notions of space and time, induced a lively debate not only within intellectual circles but in many strata of the educated middle class. In this article, I focus on a particular moment of public reaction to special and general relativity theory and to (...) its creator Albert Einstein. I try to paint a picture of the anti-Einstein campaign in Germany of 1920, with finer brush strokes than those applied previously by others. My aim is to embed the campaign into the cultural and political climate of the Weimar republic. Without leaving the realm of physics only a superficial understanding of what happened seems possible. My thesis is that the anti-Einstein-campaign was organized, and the physicists involved in it used, mainly in order to rally support for one of the German right-wing parties, the Deutschnationale Volkspartei. (shrink)