Stoic concepts of ekpyrosis and diacosmesis are examined in light of later Platonic, Aristotelian and Epicurean critiques of Stoic determinism. Questions emerge out of this debate centered on the problem of evil. A series of theodicies are proposed ending in a later Stoic interpretation of the cosmic cycle that equates each phase of the cosmic cycle with an ethical one allegorized as periods of Satiety and Dearth.

Characterize several lines of intellectual development by which some of the fundamental features of ancient, medieval, and modern pictures of God, Nature, Beauty, the State, and the Self came to be accepted as common knowledge in the Mediterranean world today.

One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of Behave, plumbs the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making to mount a devastating case against free will, an argument with profound consequences Robert Sapolsky's Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but (...) that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do. Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works-the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody's "fault"; for example, for centuries we thought seizures were a sign of demonic possession. Yet, as he acknowledges, it's very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. By the end, Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the versatile LEGO minifigure to introduce some major themes, questions, and problems tackled in the "philosophy of the human person". It begins with the question of just what parts are involved in making a human person. After that, the chapter considers the problems surrounding any individual's continued existence over time, and also discusses the philosophical view according to which the acts of decision‐making and imaginative creation are the very things. The cheerful yellow LEGO minifig presents a wonderful (...) tool for exploring the human person, who similarly appears unique within the complicated systems of reality. The issue of personal identity is as problematic as it is important for understanding our nature as human individuals in an ever‐changing world. The chapter further provides examples that focus on the problem of personal identity, particularly identity over time. (shrink)

A model for ethical problem solving -- Values in health and illness -- What is the source of moral judgments? -- Benefiting the patient and others : duty to do good and avoid harm -- Justice : allocation of health resources -- Autonomy -- Veracity : honesty with patients -- Fidelity : promise-keeping, loyalty to patients, and impaired professionals -- Avoidance of killing -- Abortion, sterilization, and contraception -- Genetics, birth, and the biological revolution -- Mental health and behavior control (...) -- Confidentiality : ethical disclosure of medical information -- Organ transplants -- Health insurance, health system planning, and rationing -- Experimentation on human subjects -- Consent and the right to refuse treatment -- Death and dying. (shrink)

Every pharmacist, aware or not, is constantly making ethical choices. Sometimes these choices are dramatic, life-and-death decisions, but often they will be more subtle, less conspicuous choices that are nonetheless important. Assisted suicide, conscientious refusal, pain management, equitable and efficacious distribution of drug resources within institutions and managed care plans, confidentiality, and alternative and non-traditional therapies are among the issues that are of unique concern to pharmacists. One way of seeing the implications of such issues and the moral choices they (...) pose is to look at the experiences of practitioners and the kinds of choices they have had to make in situations typically faced by pharmacists. This book is a collection of those situations based on the real experiences of practicing pharmacists. The use of case studies in health care ethics is not new, but in pharmacy it is. This text is an important teaching tool that will help pharmacy students and pharmacists address the increasing number of ethical problems arising in their profession. It is not merely a compilation of cases, but rather is organized for the systematic study of applied ethics. Part I shows how to distinguish ethical problems from other kinds of evaluative judgments and examines the sources of values in pharmacy, posing basic questions about the meaning and justification of ethical claims. Part II explores the basic principles of ethics as they have an impact on pharmacy. Specific cases from clinical settings present in a systematic way the various questions raised by each of the major ethical principles -- benefiting the patient, distributing resources justly, respecting autonomy, dealing honestly with patients, keeping promises of confidentiality, and avoiding harm. Part II examines some of the special problems of contemporary pharmacy such as the linkages between pharmaceutical care and professional practice, human experimentation, reproductive issues, genetic technology, death and dying, and mental health. (shrink)

"M. F. Simone Roberts's A Poetics of Being-Two is animated by a lively and engaging voice, drawing readers in with a sense of serious purpose working (delightfully) in tandem with a sense of humor. Roberts's aesthetics and her close readings of Yves Bonnefoy, St-John Perse, and Jorie Graham clearly demonstrate the literary effectiveness of Irigarayan sexual difference as an analytic trope, even as they emphasize the philosophical and political possibilities sexual difference opens up for feminism, environmentalism, and all levels of (...) contemporary cultural critique and activism."—Gail M. Schwab, Hofstra University -/- In An Ethics of Sexual Difference, Irigaray calls for a new poetics in the sense of both art and life. Rather than a critique from within philosophy, A Poetics of Being-Two tests Irigaray's ethics by extending it to other sites of cultural production. Where Irigaray's method finds stirrings and repressions of sexual difference in philosophy, this project explores that tension in poetics. Building from Irigaray's ethics, the book describes a poetics of being-two as concerns gendered subjectivity in literary poetics and then traces the on-going emergence of a poetics of being-two in the post-symbolist poetic tradition. Irigaray scholars will be interested in the sustained interpolation of Irigaray's ethical concepts as principles for a critical aesthetics and in their hermeneutic application in reading a literary tradition. Readers in comparative literature will find the first sustained feminist engagements with the major French poets Bonnefoy and Perse and an elucidation of their influence on the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jorie Graham. (shrink)

As this book richly and entertainingly demonstrates, philosophy is as much the search for the right questions as it is the search for the right answers. Robert M. Martin’s popular collection of philosophical puzzles, paradoxes, jokes, and anecdotes is updated and expanded in this third edition, with dozens of new entries.

Written in a straightforward and explanatory way and filled with examples, this text provides a comprehensive introduction to the field, suitable for students with no background in the philosophy of language or formal logic.

It was of course impossible for Mr. Miller within the limits of his paper to follow out all the implications of his position, and I merely want to raise some questions with regard to a few of the more important of these implications. If Plato assumed the role of historian, intent on giving an "accurate representation" of his characters in conversations that actually took place, it would clearly be incumbent on him to keep any independent philosophical interest of his own, (...) if he had any, completely out of the picture-his interest in philosophy was limited to reporting what Socrates, Protagoras, Gorgias, and the others had said on various subjects. Now, the only dialogues in which Socrates does not do the constructive thinking are a small group, consisting of the Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus, Critias, Laws, and Epinomis, written towards the end of Plato's life; but I am not certain whether Mr. Miller holds that these represent a continuance of the reporting function, or a sudden outburst of originality by Plato. The question that I would ask therefore is whether Mr. Miller's thesis would imply that Plato was merely an accurate reporter of other men's opinions either all his life or at least down to the last ten or fifteen years. (shrink)

Andrew Bailey’s highly-regarded introductory anthology has been revised and updated in this new concise edition. Mindful of the intrinsic difficulty of the material, the editors provide comprehensive introductions both to each topic and to each individual selection. By presenting a detailed discussion of the historical and intellectual background to each piece, the editors enable readers to approach the material without unnecessary barriers to understanding. Helpful explanatory footnotes are provided throughout, and new sections on philosophical puzzles and paradoxes and philosophical terminology (...) have been added. (shrink)

First Philosophy: God, Mind, and Freedom brings together classic and ground-breaking readings on metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of religion. Andrew Bailey's highly regarded introductory anthology has been revised and updated in this new edition. The comprehensive introductory material for each chapter and selection remains, and new sections on philosophical puzzles and paradoxes and philosophical terminology have been added. New to this edition are readings from Alvin Plantinga, Frank Jackson, David Chalmers, A.J. Ayer, Bernard Williams, and Thomas (...) Nagel. (shrink)

_First Philosophy: God, Mind, and Freedom_ brings together classic and ground-breaking readings on metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of religion. Andrew Bailey's highly regarded introductory anthology has been revised and updated in this new edition. The comprehensive introductory material for each chapter and selection remains, and new sections on philosophical puzzles and paradoxes and philosophical terminology have been added. New to this edition are readings from Alvin Plantinga, Frank Jackson, David Chalmers, A.J. Ayer, Bernard Williams, and Thomas (...) Nagel. (shrink)

Andrew Bailey's highly-regarded introductory anthology has been revised and updated in this new concise edition. First Philosophy: Knowing and Being brings together over thirty classic and contemporary readings in epistemology and metaphysics. Mindful of the intrinsic difficulty of the material, the editors provide comprehensive introductions both to each topic and to each individual selection. By presenting a detailed discussion of the historical and intellectual background to each piece, the editors enable readers to approach the material without unnecessary barriers to understanding. (...) A brief introduction to arguments is included, as are appendices on terminology and philosophical puzzles and paradoxes. (shrink)

_First Philosophy: Knowledge and Reality_ brings together classic and ground-breaking readings on epistemology and the philosophy of science. Andrew Bailey’s highly regarded introductory anthology has been revised and updated in this new edition. The comprehensive introductory material for each chapter and selection remains, and new sections on philosophical puzzles and paradoxes and philosophical terminology have been added. New readings include Edmund Gettier on justified true belief, Wesley Salmon on induction, and Helen Longino on feminist science.

_First Philosophy: Values and Society_ brings together classic and ground-breaking readings on ethics and political philosophy. Andrew Bailey’s highly regarded introductory anthology has been revised and updated in this new edition. The comprehensive introductory material for each chapter and selection remains, and new sections on philosophical puzzles and paradoxes and philosophical terminology have been added. New to this edition is an article by Susan Moller Okin on justice and gender.

Martin provides fascinating discussions of each problem or puzzle, and appends suggestions for further reading. Where the puzzle or problem admits of a right answer, Martin provides it in a separate section. But he also often ends with a question; as this book richly and entertainingly demonstrates, philosophy is as much the search for the right questions as it is for the right answers. There are many new entries in this edition, including "God as the Tortoise on the Bottom," "Free (...) Beer," "How to Win a Camel Anti-Race," "Watch out for Extreme Politeness," and "The Enormous Tiddly-Wink Tournament.". (shrink)

Assesses the ethical problems that doctors face every day and advocates a more universal code of medical ethics, one that draws on the traditions of religion and philosophy.

It is not too great an exaggeration to claim that On the Origin of Species was, along with Das Kapital, one of the two most significant works in the intellectual history of the nineteenth century. As George Henry Lewes wrote in 1868, ‘No work of our time has been so general in its influence’. However, the very generality of the influence of Darwin’s work provides the chief problem for the intellectual historian. Most books and articles on the subject assert the (...) influence but remain very imprecise about its nature. It is very difficult indeed to assess what it was about the Darwinian theory which was so influential and how its influence was felt. This problem in Victorian intellectual history intersects with a related one in the history of science. There has been a tendency on the part of historians of science to isolate Darwin in two related ways. The first is to single him out from the mainstream of nineteenth-century naturalism in Britain and allow ‘Darwinism’ to stand duty for the wider movement of which it was in fact but a part. The second is the tendency to single out his evolutionary theory and to demarcate it sharply from those of his predecessors and contemporaries. According to this interpretation Darwin stood alone as a real, empirical scientist and provided the first genuinely scientific hypothesis for the process by which evolution might have occurred. The theories of the other main evolutionists—Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Chambers, Spencer, and Wallace—were more or less besmirched by ideological, anthropomorphic, or other ‘non-scientific’ factors or by the uses to which they were put by their authors. Charles Darwin is thus made to stand out as a figure of comparatively unalloyed scientific status and is treated in relative isolation from the social and intellectual context in which he worked and into which his theory was received. (shrink)