Many families refuse to consent to donation from their deceased relatives or over-rule the consent given before death by the patient, but giving families more information about the potential recipients of organs could reduce refusal rates. In this paper, we analyse arguments for and against doing so, and conclude that this strategy should be attempted. While it would be impractical and possibly unethical to give details of actual potential recipients, generic, realistic information about the people who could benefit from organs (...) should be provided to families before they make a decision about donation or attempt to over-rule it. (shrink)

Hundreds of thousands of individuals experience traumatic injuries each year. Some are mild to moderate in nature and patients experience full functional recovery and little change to their physical appearance. Others result in enduring, if not permanent, changes in physical functioning and appearance. Reconstructive plastic surgical procedures are viable treatments options for many patients who have experienced the spectrum of traumatic injuries. The goal of these procedures is to restore physical functioning and reduce the psychosocial burden of living with an (...) appearance that may be viewed negatively by the patient or by others. Even after receipt of reconstructive procedures, many patients are left with residual disfigurement. In some, disability and disfigurement may be so profound that individuals are candidates for vascularized composite allotransplantation procedures, i.e., the transplantation of a vascularized human body part containing multiple tissue types as an anatomical and/or structural unit. This narrative review paper summarizes the literature on the psychosocial burden experienced by those who have visible disfigurement. While many of these individuals experience stigma and discrimination, relatively few studies have employed a stigma framework to understand the psychosocial sequelea. This paper briefly addresses this framework. Last, particular focus is given to the psychosocial issues of individuals with particularly severe injuries who are potential candidates for VCA procedures. (shrink)

In this volume, Stephen M. Gardiner and David A. Weisbach present arguments for and against the relevance of ethics to global climate policy. Gardiner argues that climate change is fundamentally an ethical issue, since it is an early instance of a distinctive challenge to ethical action, and ethical concerns are at the heart of many of the decisions that need to be made. Consequently, climate policy that ignores ethics is at risk of.

Buddhist maṇḍala that are made of colored sand or are painted on cloth have been well represented in Asian art circles in the West. Discussions of the role that they can play in stimulating religious contemplation or even as sacred icons charged with power have also appeared in English scholarship. The metaphorical meaning of the term maṇḍala, however, is less commonly referenced. This paper discusses how the founder of the Japanese school of Shingon Buddhism, the Buddhist monk Kūkai of the (...) ninth century, uses this term in a metaphorical sense to convey the transformed nature of awareness that is the ultimate goal of Buddhist practice. Emphasis is also placed on the importance of metaphorical thinking to the religious path of transformation itself. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Debating Climate Ethics, David Weisbach and I offer contrasting views of the importance of ethics and justice for climate policy. I argue that ethics is central. Weisbach advocates for climate policy based purely on narrow forms of self-interest. For this symposium, I summarize the major themes, and extend my basic argument. I claim that ethics gets the problem right, whereas dismissing ethics risks getting the problem dangerously wrong, and perpetuating profound injustices. One consequence is that we should (...) reject the alleged “feasibility constraint” of short-term, economic self-interest. (shrink)

Recently, I argued against framing geoengineering—understood here in terms of the paradigm example of stratospheric sulfate injection ('SSI')—as a global public good. My main claim was that this framing is seriously misleading because of its neglect of central ethical concerns. I also suggested that 'global public good' is best understood as an umbrella term covering a cluster of distinct, but interrelated ideas. In an effort to be charitable, I adopted an inclusive approach, considering two general attitudes to the technical definition, (...) six interpretations of the universal benefit claim, three of nonrivalness, and two of nonexcudability. I then argued that SSI as such does not fit the canonical definition, and that the more relaxed versions are unhelpful. Noticing that I agree that SSI is a global public good in one relaxed sense, David Morrow insists that this is the only acceptable interpretation, that describing SSI in this way is useful, and that it becomes misleading only when the concept is misunderstood by "non-economists", and that it is uncharitable to attribute such confusion to those presenting SSI as a global public good. I will suggest that Morrow's markedly exclusive approach is uncharitable, that his relaxed interpretation remains unhelpful, that there are good reasons to respect other uses, and most importantly that the definitional dispute is an unfortunate distraction that leaves my central point about the framing of SSI largely untouched. This discussion reinforces my suggestion that it is time to excise the term 'global public good' from the framing of SSI, and perhaps more generally. (shrink)

Climate change and similar problems pose a profound ethical challenge to existing institutions and theories. A human rights approach can play a role in addressing this challenge through its articulation, development and defense of a basic but often neglected ethical intuition. However, early work tends to overplay the initial advantages of human rights as such, and underestimate the role played by specific conceptions of human rights that are more controversial and ambitious. Moreover, current human rights paradigms are not directed to (...) the central characteristics of the profound challenge. Given all this, a practical and theoretical reorientation is needed. This has implications for the evolving project of political philosophy on a global, intergenerational and ecological scale. (shrink)

Stephen Gardiner argues that geoengineering does not meet the “canonical technical definition” of a global public good, and that it is misleading to frame geoengineering as a public good. A public good is something that is nonrival and nonexcludable. Contrary to Gardiner’s claims, geoengineering meets both of these criteria. Framing geoengineering as a public good is useful because it allows commentators to draw on the existing economic, philosophical, and social scientific literature on the governance of public goods.

In Debating Climate Ethics, Stephen Gardiner and I offer our views on how ethics or theories of justice more generally apply to climate change and possibly help inform climate change policy. It is...

Stephen Gardiner and Augustin Fragnière suggest replacing the Oxford Principles for the governance of climate engineering (CE) with their 10 Tollgate Principles (Gardiner & Fragnière, 2018). Like the Oxford Principles, the Tollgate Principles offer abstract, high-level guidance. Translating either set of principles into actual policies or governance mechanisms therefore requires considerable effort. In this commentary, I offer some suggestions for putting the Tollgate Principles into practice, paying special attention to the notions of ‘ethically defensible forms’ of CE and (...) ‘well-founded ethical norms’. (shrink)

This study was designed to investigate the effects of aging on consciousness in recognition memory, using the Remember/Know/Guess procedure . Remembering and Knowing. In E. Tulving & F. I. M. Craik , The Oxford Handbook of Memory. Oxford University Press.). In recognition memory, older participants report fewer occasions on which recognition is accompanied by recollection of the original encoding context. Two main hypotheses were tested: the speed mediation hypothesis . The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition. Psychological Review, (...) 3, 403–428) and the executive-aging hypothesis . An application of prefrontal cortex function theory to cognitive aging. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 272–292). A group of young and a group of older adults took a recognition test in which they classified their responses according to Gardiner, J. M., & Richarson-Klavehn, A. . Remembering and Knowing. In E. Tulving & F. I. M. Craik , The Oxford Handbook of Memory. Oxford University Press. remember-know-guess paradigm. Subsequently, participants completed processing speed and executive function tests. The results showed that among the older participants, R responses decreased, but K responses did not. Moreover, a hierarchical regression analysis supported the view that the effect of age in recollection experience is determined by frontal lobe integrity and not by diminution of processing speed. (shrink)

Stephen Gardiner and David Weisbach's recent Debating Climate Ethics takes up an urgent and important question: is ethics relevant to climate policy? Or rather, the book takes up several, closely related versions of that question we do well to distinguish clearly: 1 Are ethical considerations relevant to climate policy? 2 Do ethical theories philosophers defend have implications regarding climate policy? 3 Does climate ethics provide policy analysts any useful guidance? Or, in other words, should climate policy analysts pay (...) any attention to climate ethics? Weisbach's remarks about the role of ethics in climate policy in §5.4 and about distributive and corrective justice in Chapter 7 suggest he actually... (shrink)

The urgent importance of dealing with the climate crisis has led some influential theorists to argue that at least some demands for justice must give way to pragmatic and strategic considerations. These theorists (Cass Sunstein, Eric Posner, and David Weisbach, all academic lawyers, and John Broome, an academic philosopher) contend that the failures of international negotiations and other efforts to change economic policies and practices have shown that moral exhortations are worse than ineffective. Although Broome's position is similar in (...) these respects to that of Sunstein, Posner and Weisbach, it differs in other important respects, including his understanding of the idea of justice, his disagreement with the policy approach (which he calls "efficiency with sacrifice") favored by the economists Nicholas Stern and William Nordhaus, and his proposal for establishing a new international financial institution, a World Climate Bank, in addition to putting a price on carbon. Elsewhere I offer a critical analysis of the position taken by Posner and Weisbach in their book, Climate Change Justice. Their arguments against allowing principles of distributive justice (narrowly understood) to constrain treaty negotiations fail to rule out the principles of John Rawls' Law of Peoples (which is a conception of the moral basis of a just international order, including states' obligations to secure basic human rights for all). Therefore their arguments against shaping climate treaties to reflect any principles of justice do not succeed in supporting their position. Here I offer a critical analysis of Broome's position. I raise and discuss objections to Broome's proposal for a WCB, and I argue that the continued relevance of these objections is contingent on how the proposal for a WCB may get developed. (shrink)

Understanding enjoys a special kind of value, one not held by lesser epistemic states such as knowledge and true belief. I explain the value of understanding via a seemingly unrelated topic, the implausibility of veritism. Veritism holds that true belief is the sole ultimate epistemic good and all other epistemic goods derive their value from the epistemic value of true belief. Veritism entails that if you have a true belief that p, you have all the epistemic good qua p. Veritism (...) is a plausible and widely held view; I argue that it is untenable. I argue that integration among beliefs possesses epistemic value independent from the good of true belief, and so has value veritism cannot account for. I argue further that this integration among beliefs comprises the distinctive epistemic value of understanding. (shrink)

This essay is not about what love is. It is about what self-ascriptions of love do. People typically self-ascribe romantic love when a nexus of feelings, beliefs, attitudes, values, commitments, experiences, and personal histories matches their conception of romantic love. But what shapes this conception? And (how) can we adjudicate amongst conflicting conceptions? -/- Self-ascriptions of love do not merely describe the underlying nexus of attitudes and beliefs. They also change it. This essay describes how conceptions of love affect romantic (...) experience. I limn distinctions between love and obsessive infatuation and explore ways language can cultivate queer romantic preferences. Since conceptions of love are shaped, often implicitly, by terms available in one’s linguistic community, the resulting nexus of concepts and conceptions manifests linguistic luck. I suggest ways we might sculpt the language of love to better understand—and change—ourselves. Love can help us flourish and so can our “love” language. (shrink)

Oxford Philosophical Texts Series Editor: John Cottingham The Oxford Philosophical Texts series consists of authoritative teaching editions of canonical texts in the history of philosophy from the ancient world down to modern times. Each volume provides a clear, well laid out text together with a comprehensive introduction by a leading specialist, giving the student detailed critical guidance on the intellectual context of the work and the structure and philosophical importance of the main arguments. Endnotes are supplied which provide further commentary (...) on the arguments and explain unfamiliar references and terminology, and a full bibliography and index are also included. The series aims to build up a definitive corpus of key texts in the Western philosophical tradition, which will form a reliable and enduring resource for students and teachers alike. David Hume's aim in writing An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding was to introduce his philosophy to a European culture in which many educated people read original works of philosophy. He gives an elegant and accessible presentation of strikingly original and challenging views about the limited powers of human understanding, the attractions of scepticism, the compatibility of free will and determinism, and weaknesses in the foundations of religion. Hume's philosophy was highly controversial in the eighteenth century and remains so today. The text printed in this edition is that of the Clarendon critical edition of Hume's works. A substantial introduction by the editor explains the intellectual background to the work and surveys its main themes. The volume also includes detailed explanatory notes on the text, a glossary of terms, a full list of references, and a section of supplementary readings. (shrink)

This essay is an accessible introduction to the proof paradox in legal epistemology. -/- In 1902 the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine filed an influential legal verdict. The judge claimed that in order to find a defendant culpable, the plaintiff “must adduce evidence other than a majority of chances”. The judge thereby claimed that bare statistical evidence does not suffice for legal proof. -/- In this essay I first motivate the claim that bare statistical evidence does not suffice for legal (...) proof. I then introduce and motivate a knowledge-centred explanation of this fact. The knowledge-centred explanation rests on two premises. The first is that legal proof requires knowledge of culpability. The second is that one cannot attain knowledge that p from bare statistical evidence that p. To motivate the second premise, I suggest that beliefs based on bare statistical evidence fail to be safe—they could easily be wrong—and bare statistical evidence cannot eliminate relevant alternatives. -/- I then cast doubt on the first premise; I argue that legal proof does not require knowledge. I thereby dispute the knowledge-centred explanation of the inadequacy of bare statistical evidence for legal proof. Instead of appealing to the nature of knowledge, I suggest we should seek a more direct explanation by appealing to those more foundational epistemic properties, such as safety or eliminating relevant alternatives. (shrink)

Soren Kierkegaard, one of the most original thinkers of the nineteenth century, wrote widely on religious, psychological, and literary themes. This book shows how Kierkegaard developed his views in emphatic opposition to prevailing opinions. His arresting but paradoxical conception of religious belief is critically discussed, and Patrick Gardiner concludes this lucid introduction by showing how Kiekegaard has influenced contemporary thought.

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the (...) site FAQs. (shrink)

Soren Kierkegaard is remembered chiefly in connection with the development of existentialist philosophy in this century, but that view is misleading. In a short and unhappy life he wrote many books and articles on themes that were literary, satirical, religious and psychological, but the diversity and idiosyncratic style of his writing have contributed to a misunderstanding of his ideas. In this book, the only introduction to the full range of Kierkegaard's thought, Patrick Gardiner demonstrates how Kierkegaard developed his ideas (...) and examines his thoughts in light of the doctrines on society that his contemporaries Marx and Feuerbach were creating. Finally he assesses how original and how important Kierkegaard's ideas were and how profoundly they have influenced modern ways of thinking. (shrink)

From religion to philosophy to science, all human systems of definition are formed by human brains. The nature and limits of the human brain are the nature and limits of those systems. This essay shows how the human brain works normally then unusually, and what this reveals about the limits of human knowledge. There are many conditions and instances where the brain processes information unusually, including mental disorders, physical events, and drug use. This essay focuses on the neurological events called (...) mystical experiences. (shrink)

Most moral dilemmas in medicine are analysed using the four principles with some consideration of consequentialism but these frameworks have limitations. It is not always clear how to judge which consequences are best. When principles conflict it is not always easy to decide which should dominate. They also do not take account of the importance of the emotional element of human experience. Virtue ethics is a framework that focuses on the character of the moral agent rather than the rightness of (...) an action. In considering the relationships, emotional sensitivities, and motivations that are unique to human society it provides a fuller ethical analysis and encourages more flexible and creative solutions than principlism or consequentialism alone. Two different moral dilemmas are analysed using virtue ethics in order to illustrate how it can enhance our approach to ethics in medicine. (shrink)

In the Phaedrus, Socrates insists that every proper logos must have the unity of an organic living thing. And yet it is hard to say what imposes any such unity on the various speeches and topics that are dealt with in this very dialogue. This chapter situates the view of Hermias of Alexandria in relation to modern debates about what, if anything, unifies the Phaedrus. For the ancient Neoplatonists, the question of unity was bound up with the question of each (...) dialogue's "skopos". We argue that Hermias' answer to this question -- that the skopos of the Phaedrus is 'beauty at every level' -- is not as wildly implausible as Neoplatonic readings of Plato's dialogues are often thought to be. (shrink)

This short peer-reviewed text is a concise look at the psychology of how human beings make decisions, including how they form their worldviews and make arguments.

This paper aims to provide two abductive considerations adducing in favor of the thesis of Necessitism in modal ontology. I demonstrate how instances of the Barcan formula can be witnessed, when the modal operators are interpreted 'naturally' -- i.e., as including geometric possibilities -- and the quantifiers in the formula range over a domain of natural, or concrete, entities and their contingently non-concrete analogues. I argue that, because there are considerations within physics and metaphysical inquiry which corroborate modal relationalist claims (...) concerning the possible geometric structures of spacetime, and dispositional properties are actual possible entities, the condition of being grounded in the concrete is consistent with the Barcan formula; and thus -- in the geometric setting -- merits adoption by the Necessitist. (shrink)

Ethics is highly relevant to grand technological interventions into basic planetary systems on a global scale. Focusing on climate engineering, this chapter identifies a large number of salient concerns but argues that early policy framings often marginalize these and so avoid important questions of justification. It also suggests that, since it is widely held that geoengineering has become a serious option mainly because of political inertia, there are important contextual issues, especially around the paradoxical question, “What should we do, ethically (...) speaking, given that we have not done, and will continue not to do, what we should be doing?” Taking such issues seriously helps to explain why some regard geoengineering as ethically troubling and highlights the largely neglected threat of interventions that discriminate against future generations. We should take seriously the risk that, far from being simply a welcome new tool for climate action, geoengineering may become yet another manifestation of the underlying problem. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the question of why future generations need protecting, and how we might go about providing such protection. I begin by claiming that our basic position with respect to the further future can be characterized by what I call the problem of intergenerational buck-passing. This problem implies that our temporal position allows us to visit costs on future people that they ought not to bear, and to deprive them of benefits that they ought to have. Next, (...) I claim that it is plausible to think that this problem is manifest in the case of two serious intergenerational issues: climate change and nuclear protection. Third, I suggest that the problem is exacerbated by a problem of theoretical inadequacy: at present, we lack the basic conceptual tools with which to deal with problems involving the further future. I illustrate this problem through a discussion of the dominant theoretical approach in public policy, cost benefit analysis. Finally, I consider what is to be done. Here I make two basic proposals. The first is that we should investigate a promising form of the precautionary approach, which I call ‘the Global Core Precautionary Principle’. The second is that we should not lose sight of the fact that the problems of intergenerational buck passing and theoretical inadequacy create an atmosphere in which we are extremely vulnerable to moral corruption. (shrink)

Abstract: Does the evolving influence of humanity on the Earth’s environment call for new virtues? How might such virtues be seen as contributing to human flourishing? In this paper, I develop Aristotle’s discussion of magnificence and magnanimity to provide a framework within which to discuss such claims. I also defend the controversial view that even if genuinely new virtues may be involved, these may be virtues to which we should not aspire (now, or perhaps ever).

Part of the appeal of the biological approach to personal identity is that it does not have to countenance spatially coincident entities. But if the termination thesis is correct and the organism ceases to exist at death, then it appears that the corpse is a dead body that earlier was a living body and distinct from but spatially coincident with the organism. If the organism is identified with the body, then the unwelcome spatial coincidence could perhaps be avoided. It is (...) argued that such an identification would be a mistake. A living organism has a different part/whole relationship and persistence conditions than the alleged body. A case will be made that the concept ‘human body’ is a conceptual mess, vague in an unprincipled manner, and that an eliminativist stance towards dead bodies is the appropriate response. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)