Informed consent is reviewed as it applies to psychiatric patients. Although new legislation, such as the Mental Health Act 1983, provides a useful safeguard for the protection of the civil rights of patients, it could actually reduce their humane care unless applied with sensitivity for the nature of their unique difficulties. In order to guard against this possibility, we suggest that legal requirements should be considered in light of the ethical principles which underlie them. Three principles are considered: those of (...) autonomy (freedom); beneficence (paternalism); and the fiduciary principle (partnership). Psychotherapy is offered as a model for informed consent, which might be generalised to other clinical situations. (shrink)

In the climate of concern about high medical costs, the relationship between the trade and professional aspects of medical practice is receiving close scrutiny. In the United Kingdom there is talk of increasing privatisation of health services, and in the United States the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has attempted to define medicine as a trade for the purposes of commercial regulation. The Supreme Court recently upheld the FTC charge that the American Medical Association (AMA) has been in restraint of trade (...) because of ethical strictures against advertising. The concept of profession, as it has been analyzed in sociological, legal, philosophical, and historical perspectives, reveals the importance of an ethic of service as well as technical expertise as defining characteristics of professions. It is suggested that the medical profession should pay more attention to its service ideal at this time when doctors are widely perceived to be technically preoccupied. (shrink)

Post-modernism is receiving much attention, but it is often seen as merely an extrapolation of modernism. Michael Polanyi’s post-critical epistemology offers a useful way of understanding post-modernism. The modern objectivism of critical thought leads to a dead-end dehumanization. Polanyi offers a recovery of the human dimension by demonstrating the ways in which all knowing, especially scientific discovery, requires human participation. An analogy is drawn with post-modern art and architecture, which similarly attempt to recover the human form and traditional or classical (...) ornamentation in a way which goes beyond the sterile abstractness of modernism. (shrink)

Jung said that all human beings have a religious instinct, a longing for wholeness, and that God is a part of every human being. This volume organizes more than 6,000 references to "God" in Jung's work and contains a chronology of his writing on the subject.

Supporting students to develop transferable skills and gain employment is a vital function of Universities in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. A key area is work readiness, which has steadily grown in importance over the last 2 decades as tertiary institutions increasingly aim to produce graduates who perceive and are perceived as work ready. However, a large majority of graduates report a lack of skills and confidence needed for the effective transition from study to work. This may be (...) particularly problematic for disciplines that impart both discipline-specific and transferrable skills, such as psychology. The aim of this paper is to addresses the concept of work readiness within Australian psychological training and explores the need to shed light on and integrate work readiness within the pedagogy of psychology within Australia. Specifically, this paper calls for a review of work readiness skills developed in psychological courses to ensure industry needs are met. Beyond such a review, it is suggested that tertiary centres need to facilitate students in capturing and reflecting upon the transferable skills that they develop; and build assessments that allow students to demonstrate transferable skills in a meaningful way. Further, this paper proposes that work readiness skills be routinely mapped onto graduate attributes and course learning outcomes to be readily available by students so as to increase students’ potential to articulate their learnt work readiness skills once in the workplace. (shrink)

What is "critical thinking"? -- What is "law"? : thinking critically about legal perspectives -- Putting critical thinking into legal practice -- Thinking critically about assessments -- Thinking critically in the workplace and beyond.

It is good to have Huggard's translation of the Theodicy back in print. This book can find excellent use in philosophy of religion courses which attempt to follow the history of the theodical and predestination problems. Since the Theodicy is not otherwise available, however, the fact that this edition is a fifty percent abridgment is very disappointing. Repetitions and digressions could have been bracketed rather than deleted, and the appendices ought to have been retained since some of Leibniz' most concise (...) and subtle argumentation is contained in them. It is even quite a shame that Farrar's superb introduction in the original English edition was not retained. The situation is further aggravated by the fact that $2.75 is a lot to pay for an abridgment.--E. A. R. (shrink)

Ferm's expanded Christian Theology makes Christianity scarcely distinguishable from the best of all possible ethical systems—and nothing more. But Christianity has always claimed to be much more, as have most religions. This claim can be challenged of course, but not by Ferm's uncritical and outdated use of biblical scholarship and criticism. He is careful to state that most of what he says about the historical status of Christianity is his opinion, and we can leave it at that.—E. A. R.

"From beginning to end, art is bent upon making; this book says nothing else." Fortunately, we need not take the author at his word. But if the reader sees this, maintains Gilson, he will see the errors in those philosophical approaches to art which mistake esthetics for the philosophy of art, and mistake what is a mode of being simply as production with what is a mode of being as knowledge. The foe is "noematism" and Gilson is tireless in exposing (...) its occurrence in all philosophical views of art since Plato—even in Aristotle, for whom he, otherwise, has a decided preference. Only with Nietzsche does art assert its independence of anthrôpos théôrétikos and ally itself with the Will to Power. Gilson does not approve of this extreme but he does recognize it as the inevitable result of trying to cast art in the role of the messenger of meaning, be that meaning the highest, as with the intuitionism of the Romantics, or the lowest, as in the "imitation of an imitation" notion propounded by Plato. Not that there is no meaning to be had from works of art; but concentration on the contemplation of a work of art—the province of esthetics—distracts from the recognition of the purpose of art itself, namely the activity of subordinating matter to form in the well-making of a sensible product whose being is "conceived in beauty." This latter is the proper function of the philosophy of art.—E. A. R. (shrink)

In the Arthur Stanley Eddington Memorial Lecture for 1965 Eccles uses his considerable knowledge to argue that neurophysiology can give clues to the physical requirements of the unity of conscious experience, but it cannot fully account for it. The way is thus left open to postulate or believe in the special creation of the soul as the principle of self-identity. Specifically, Eccles argues that self-identity is not reducible to gene identity. He does not, however, go into the problems surrounding the (...) origin of the employment of the notion of self-identity; and in this respect his analysis is uncritical from a philosophical point of view. Interestingly enough, some of the positive bits of neurophysiological theory that Eccles puts forth in this short lecture, in particular, the theory of hemispheric localization of the higher functions, have been shaken considerably in the past few months by the results of the Coe hemispherectomy.—E. A. R. (shrink)

An attempt on the part of one of the pioneer neurophysiologists to summarize and relate the evidence for a correlation between psychic processes and the functional organization of the brain as expressed in neural processes. The thesis of the book is that the subjective contents of consciousness are both correlated with and dependent upon cerebral structure and processes, a relatively uncontroversial thesis these days. From a philosophical point of view, it is interesting that Hess never speaks of the possible reduction, (...) logical or otherwise, of psychic contents to brain processes, but, in fact, implies that such a thesis is meaningless given the present methodology of neurophysiology. An extensive bibliography has been included along with an index.—E. A. R. (shrink)

An exposition of John 17 and Ephesians 4, the two Biblical texts that have served as the locus classicus for much recent ecumenical discussion. The book intends to reject a superficial ecumenism which remains doctrinally indifferent or subordinates doctrinal unity to evangelical effort. The author shows that the Johannine and, especially, the Pauline notions of unity presuppose a prior unity of faith with a determinate Scripturally-determined content. This unity in faith must never be sacrificed to the "quantitative, visible, inclusivist, hierarchical, (...) institutional" unity characteristic of the solution by absorption.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Six papers by theoretical and clinical psychologists, a psychiatrist, and a neurologist, including, in addition to the editors, Seymour Fisher, Herman Witkin, Macdonald Critchley, J. de Ajuriaguerra, and Sidney E. Cleveland. The four middle papers present various findings of clinical psychology on the way in which the individual perceives and identifies with his body. Werner's introduction sets the discussion—albeit sketchily—within the context of recent work in phenomenology on the "body schema" or "body image." Merleau-Ponty is the prime example. In the (...) final paper de Ajuriaguerra returns to the philosophical conclusions which might receive explication and support on the basis of the four middle papers: egological unity is manifested in and mediated through corporeal unity, but in such a way that corporeal unity is not a logically sufficient guarantee of itself and requires an ontological account to ground its characteristic unity—though not necessarily another entity, substantialistic or otherwise. epistemologically, the bogey of psychologism must be rejected in the face of the facts that emerge from the studies in this book and elsewhere: namely, that the perceived world is grasped primordially in relation to the self as necessarily mediated through the body. The implications of this analysis are obviously far-reaching, and the only regret is that they could not be carried out more systematically and extensively in this book.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This volume can be considered a supplement to A. Plantinga's similar book on the Ontological argument, and includes classic texts and contemporary commentary on both the Cosmological and the Teleological arguments, though there is no extended consideration of the problem of evil as it bears particularly on the Teleological argument. Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume and Kant give the classic arguments for and against the Cosmological argument. Geach, Edwards, Plantinga, and Penelhum provide the contemporary commentary. Paley, Hume, Mill, and Kant state (...) and criticize the classical Teleological argument, while A. E. Taylor, Ducasse, and Broad provide the contemporary rejoinder. A concluding postscript includes articles by Smart and Taylor, with a brief selection from Tillich. It is helpful to have as much of the material as is possible on the theistic arguments under one cover. It is unfortunate, however, that editorial limitations and imagination were not stretched or reapportioned to provide some contemporary commentary from outside the orbit of Anglo-American philosophy. In addition, the editor's introduction contains some serious misstatements about the classical Cosmological arguments. The classical argument did not maintain in any sense that God is a "self-causing cause" or that the "Prime Mover is not only the initial member in a temporal series..." ; God is not "the initial member in a temporal series" at all. Nor does the editor distinguish between natural theology and the philosophy of religion; something close to obfuscation is the consequence of this failure in his remark that linguistic analysis has "demonstrated that a definition of God is the starting point for the philosophy of religion."—E. A. R. (shrink)

This is number 18 in Herder's Quaestiones Disputatae series. It is made up of four chapters from Rahner's Schriften zur Theologie, VI. The first and fourth essays, "The Changing Church" and "The Teaching of Vatican II on the Church and the Future Reality of Christian Life," complement one another, in a rough sort of way, in their treatment of the issue of continuity and change within the Church. The former tackles the problem from the limited point of view of the (...) authoritative and magisterial church. The latter has the more plenary notion of the Church as the solidarity of the faithful and consequently offers a more satisfying treatment of the theme. The second essay covers the topic "Situation Ethics in Ecumenical Perspective" in a non-surprising but quite elegant fashion. Rahner's characteristic sense of proportion is most evident in the essay "The Church's Limits Against Clerical Triumphalists and Lay Defeatists." He resists the all-or-nothing logic which says the Church must completely overlap and transform--at least in intention--the secular domain or be condemned to impotence and irrelevance. The true role of the Church, for Rahner, is found rather in witness: the Church as the sign of the salvation of the world.--E. A. R. (shrink)

Kemp Smith was preeminently a philosopher of philosophers, which is something a bit more than an historian of philosophy. Representing this side of his work in this volume we have "The Naturalism of Hume, I and II," "Avenarius' Philosophy of Pure Experience, I and II," "Whitehead's Philosophy of Nature," "John Locke," and "Bergson's Manner of Approach to Moral and Social Questions." At other times Kemp Smith could turn his attention to "The Nature of Universals, I, II, and III," "Immortality," "The (...) Moral Sanction of Force," and the question from which the volume takes its title, "Is Divine Existence Credible?" The editors inform us that Kemp Smith took this latter question to be the central problem of philosophy. In addition to the papers mentioned, there are five other essays by Kemp Smith and a sizeable introduction by the editors: Porteous provides a biographical sketch of Kemp Smith, Maclennan a consideration of the centrality of the question of Divine existence, and Davie an account of what he takes to be the significance of Kemp Smith's philosophical papers.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Over six hundred entries, each bearing the stamp, in an immensely concise fashion, of that unique synthesis of traditional and contemporary categories of theological understanding that one has learned to associate, particularly, with the name of Rahner. For the beginning student of Catholic theology, this book is a must; nor will the advanced readily exhaust its store of theological perceptiveness.—E. A. R.

If the author has for his purpose clarifying the hitherto obscured history of seventeenth century Hermetic and Cabalistic teachings on universal salvation, he is to be commended for his painstakingly accurate summaries. If he has wanted to raise theological and philosophical issues concerning the Christian doctrine of Hell—as the title and first part of the book indicate—his spokesmen were poorly chosen and his logic is inadequate.—E. A. R.

This is the first volume of Findlay's Gifford Lectures; the second will be published as The Transcendence of the Cave. Employing a well-sustained Platonic metaphor and a modified Husserlian method, Findlay argues that the task of philosophy is to explore and find some systematic order among the "furnishings of the cave," i.e., the various types of phenomena which are irreducibly given in the Lebenswelt: bodies, sensible appearances, minds, universals, values, and the supreme value God. An overemphasis on any one of (...) these phenomena leads to some form of reductionism: God—pantheism, minds—idealism, sensible appearances—phenomenalism, bodies—materialism. Adding a dash of Hegelian dialectic to his Husserlian method, Findlay embarks on his own exploration of the cave, an exploration which leads him through an examination of material reality to the necessity of speaking of a second order of phenomena, namely minds. In the wake of this dialectical push, Findlay engages in exceptionally sensitive analyses of sensation as the transitional point to mind, intentionality, the mind-body relation, the life of the ego, privacy, the pre-reflective, and the possibly of disembodied intelligence. One eagerly awaits the sequel in which Findlay promises to move to the successively higher viewpoints of values and God.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Adler has skillfully focussed the extensive research of his Institute for Philosophical Research into this work in philosophical anthropology and has come up with a working framework within which to discuss the question of man's comparative identity vis-à-vis the other members of the natural universe. The comparative question approach is methodologically behavioristic in the sense that it eschews appeal to evidence drawn from man's interior life, from his presence to himself in consciousness, and erects hypotheses about man's sameness and/or difference, (...) in degree and/or kind, from other things solely on the basis of man's similar or unique behavior. The comparative question is a "mixed-question" in the sense that it is answerable only on the basis of scientific evidence and philosophical argument. On this basis Adler thinks that it is at present decidable that man differs in kind from all other things, especially animals; the primary evidence here is man's unique behavior as a language-user and, hence, concept-employer. The question remains whether this is a radical or superficial difference in kind. The latter would be the case if man's use of concepts could be exhaustively explained in neurophysiological terms or if artificial intelligence is perfected to the point where a robot could pass Turing's conversational test. If success were not forthcoming in either of these enterprises, the traditional notion that there is an immaterial dimension to man's nature would be strengthened. Adler is sympathetic to an Aristotelian version of the traditional answer to the comparative question, but he is careful not to let his sympathies interfere with the exposition of the alternatives; and he constantly reminds the reader that the decision between the radical-difference-in-kind and the superficial-difference-in-kind alternatives is very much an open question. Many useful distinctions are made and certainly the literature is more extensively and meaningfully covered than anywhere else since Feigl's "The 'Mental' and the 'Physical'." Taxonomy does, however, cloud a few important issues--consider the possibility that methodological behaviorism is a logically dependent approach, presupposing the standpoint of interiority. And criticism is often sacrificed to coverage. But the book fulfills the intention of the author and could function well as a survey introduction to philosophical anthropology.--E. A. R. (shrink)

To raise the question of the possibility of a covenantal relation between God and man from the standpoint of cultural theology is another way of asking the critical question, only now, in terms of a particular object, namely, whether thought in the sense of reason is commensurate with the reality that is God. Schleiermacher thought it was, though not in a way which would allow abstract reason, or dialectic, as he called it, to exhaust the intelligibility of its object either (...) in itself or even for man from his finite standpoint. The knowing of God through dialectic must be complemented through the experience of God in feeling. Dialectic without feeling turns in the direction of Hegel's Absolute Idealism or some less sophisticated form of anthropomorphic historicism, while feeling without dialectic becomes pantheistic and mystical in the extreme. Through an examination of Schleiermacher's dialectic Spiegler shows that Schleiermacher's major problem was to preserve the proper tension between God as immanent and God as transcendent. Spiegler thinks that Schleiermacher would have been more successful in this attempt if he had given up the traditional notion of God as absolute. Though he mentions Hartshorne only once and Whitehead not at all, it seems clear that it is a conception of God along the lines developed by these two philosophers that Spiegler thinks would have made Schleiermacher's project of dialectic more consistent with itself. Once the necessary revision has been made in the traditional notion of God's absoluteness, a revitalized cultural theology along the general lines laid down by Schleiermacher could successfully resist being pushed in either the direction of Hegel or the direction of mysticism, and so would not lead to a Feuerbachian-type negative reaction with its consequent theological reaction in the form of Barthian dialectical theology and the doctrine of God as wholly other. Spiegler's presentation of Schleiermacher is for the most part fair, though he does give a rather narrow treatment to the doctrine of feeling: e.g., he hardly touches on the doctrine at all as it receives its pristine formulation in the speeches On Religion. In addition, he tends to dismiss too easily the suggestion that thought may be commensurate with the infinite through the mediation of a symbolics strongly fortified by a doctrine of analogy. But on the whole, the English-speaking student of the history of theology will be grateful to Spiegler for providing this new look at Schleiermacher.--E. A. R. (shrink)

The translation is that of G. C. Richards with a number of incidental changes. The Introduction is valuable for providing an historical perspective on More's classic. The notes are reduced in the paperback edition.—E. A. R.

A formal exposition of the author’s controversial views for which Warren Burger, then on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, attempted unsuccessfully to have him disbarred. The second half of the book consists of a reprint in full of the ABA’s Code of Professional Responsibility, its Canons of Professional Ethics and Standards Relating to the Prosecution and Defense Functions.

Biologically, pain is neither intrinsically good nor bad, but is a communication mechanism designed to serve organismal ends. Pain for any given person at any given time should be evaluated on the basis of “success” (or not) in serving those purposes. Yet, the physiological, psychological, and cultural complexity of the experience makes moral consideration of pain complicated. This is especially the case with infants in pain. The competence of the infant as a “decision maker” cannot, of course, be assumed. Even (...) if the child “thinks” about pain, an epistemological barrier exists in that the child cannot clearly communicate about the pain experience. Furthermore, any expressions of pain from the child may be necessary for diagnosis. Just coercion criteria provide a means of evaluating when and to what extent pain in infants should be controlled under the authority of surrogate decision makers. (shrink)

This paper examines the perceived ethical values of Malaysian managers. It is based on the opinions of 15 hypothetical ethical/unethical business situations from the 81 managers who agreed to participate in the survey. The findings of this study showed that these Malaysian managers have high ethical values. However 53% of the respondents believed that the ethical standards of today are lower than that of 15 years ago. Apparently, this is related to the existence of many unethical business practices prevalent in (...) the modern business world. The behavior of one's immediate superior is the most important factor in influencing managers to commit unethical practices. The results also indicate only a slight variation among the managers in terms of perceived ethical values by virtue of job position, job specialization, type of business activity or the size of the business organization. (shrink)

Because metaphysics aims for absolute generality, its primary job is to tell us what are the fundamental particulars, of which one may say that is ultimately all there is, and yet be assured of an unabridged version of reality. It should be clear that such a search for the fundamental particulars is totally different from the enterprise of determining which particulars are basic from the point of view of particular-identification, which though it has recently been labeled "metaphysics," albeit "descriptive metaphysics," (...) might less confusingly be called "descriptive epistemology.". (shrink)