Subjective idealism can be defined as the view that ‘the objective world independent of man does not exist; it is the product of man's subjective cognitive abilities, sensations, and perceptions’. George Berkeley often is said to be the founder of this species of idealism, and when someone wants to offer an example of a subjective idealist, Berkeley is usually the first person who comes to mind. However, those making this claim largely seem to be only passingly familiar with Berkeley’s work, (...) sometimes to the point that there have been doubts they had even read him. Meanwhile, many serious readers of Berkeley have rejected this reading of Berkeley, showing that it relies on a neglect of many of Berkeley’s own claims. How has this gulf between the common impression of Berkeley and the views of many of his most attentive readers arisen and been sustained? This paper suggests that, to a large extent, it has been due to neglecting to set Berkeley’s work in its proper historical context. (shrink)

Letters commenting on Hardwig, J "Is There a Duty to Die?" with a reply to those letters by the author.

Feminist philosophy emerged in earnest in the 1970s. With that emergence and the latest surge of the Women's Movement now a quarter of a century old and with the turn of the century approaching quickly, the Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs and the Pacific Society for Women in Philosophy invited a group of feminist philosophers to reflect on feminism and philosophy as we approach the millennium. A roundtable was held at the 1995 meeting of the Pacific Division of the (...) American Philosophical Association, and much of the content of that session is included in this Symposium. The discussants include scholars with research interests across the traditional areas of philosophy (e.g., metaphysics and epistemology, ethics, social and political philosophy, history of philosophy, and philosophy of science), as well as not so traditional areas (e.g., lesbian philosophy). Each participant was asked to take ten minutes to focus on whatever she thought might be useful to discuss in a forum designed for taking stock of feminism and philosophy in the mid‐1990s. The contributors are Louise Antony, Joan Callahan (introduction), Claudia Card, Ruth Ginzberg, Martha Nussbaum, Naomi Scheman, Laurie Schrage, Nancy Tuana, Margaret Walker, and Charlotte Witt. (shrink)

ONE OF THE MOST prominent theorists of anarcho-capitalism is Hans- Hermann Hoppe. In what is perhaps his most famous result, the argumentation ethic for libertarianism, he purports to establish an a priori defense of the justice of a social order based exclusively on pri- vate property. Hoppe claims that all participants in a debate must presuppose the libertarian principle that every person owns himself, since the principle underlies the very concept of argumentation. Some libertarians (e.g., Rothbard 1988) have celebrated Hoppe’s (...) argument as the final nail in the coffin for collectivism of any type; following Hoppe, they believe that to deny the libertarian ethic is not only wrong, but also internally contradictory. On the other hand, a number of other prominent libertarians characterized Hoppe’s initial statement of his case as “one muddle after another” (Steele 1988, p. 47) or “a tissue of bald assertions” (Yeager 1988, p. 45). (shrink)

This paper advances a continuing line of research investigating the potential of web-based educative curriculum materials (ECMs) to facilitate teachers’ development of professional teaching knowledge (PTK). Our ECMs consisted of online lesson plans scaffolded with embedded digital resources to promote teacher understanding of a particular wise-practice pedagogy: problem-based historical inquiry (PBHI). Our research question was: Can a 2nd generation of web-based ECMs encourage social studies teachers’ development of PTK for PBHI? Participants reacted positively to several educative scaffolds, especially videocases of (...) experts modeling historical thinking. Evidence suggested that multiple experiences with planning and implementing instruction with our ECMs helped teachers recognize value in some of the materials’ underpinning concepts (e.g., scaffolding and inquiry-based instruction). However, planning instruction individually, the novelty of planning resources enhanced with digital resources, and certain contextual features of schooling such as inadequate focused time for planning seemed to frustrate the ECMs potential to promote teacher-learning. Here we suggest that ECMs function less effectively as stand-alone supports; however, employed in more formal contexts that feature collaboration, they may be able to provide valuable support for teachers’ professional development. (shrink)

Queen Christina of Sweden was unconventional in her time, leading to hypotheses on her gender and possible hermaphroditic nature. If genetic analysis can substantiate the latter claim, could this bring the queen into disrepute 300 years after her death? Joan C. Callahan has argued that if a reputation changes, this constitutes a change only in the group of people changing their views and not in the person whose reputation it is. Is this so? This paper analyses what constitutes change (...) and draws out the implications to the reputation of the dead. It is argued that a reputation is a relational property which can go through changes. The change is “real” for the group changing their views on Queen Christina and of a Cambridge kind for the long dead queen herself. Cambridge changes result in new properties being acquired, some of which can be of significance. (shrink)

The standard argument in favor of the practice of voluntary physician-assisted death, by means of assisted suicide or active euthanasia, rests on liberal, individualistic grounds. It appeals to two moral considerations: (1) personal self-determination—the right to choose the circumstances and timing of death with medical assistance; and (2) individual well-being—relief of intolerable suffering in the face of terminal or incurable, severely debilitating illness. One of the strongest challenges to this argument has been advanced by Daniel Callahan. Callahan has (...) vigorously attacked the practice of physician-assisted death and the goal of legalization as deep affronts to values of community: “By assuming that the relief of suffering is a goal important enough to legitimate killing as a way of achieving it, we corrupt the idea of such relief as a social goal and duty. We cease helping to bear one another's suffering, but eliminate altogether the person who suffers. We thereby jeopardize both the future of self-determination and the kind of community that furthers its members' capacity to bear one another's suffering. Why bear what can be eliminated altogether?” In another passage Callahan remarks, “For there is a deep sense in which suicide and euthanasia are likely to represent, at least in part, a failure of the community, whether that of the intimate community of family and friends, or the larger civic community, to respond to the needs of another.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.4 (2000) 283-286 [Access article in PDF] Introduction This Issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal focuses on "Aristotelianism in Contemporary Bioethics." It is an unusual topic for this journal as it is seemingly very theoretical. But, I assure the reader that the theoretical topics explored are of the most practical and pressing kind. The questions addressed concern what kind of knowledge and (...) skill there can be in deliberating about particular cases and issues, whether this knowledge is culturally relative, and how bioethics can balance the rights of the individual in making health care decisions with responsibilities to the community.Authors in bioethics, especially those working in clinical ethics, have long sought to address particular problems with the fewest theoretical commitments possible so as to make broad consensus more plausible. Since theoretical foundations are often disputed, keeping the discussion pragmatic has seemed the more likely road to agreement. Similarly, our American heritage has lent the rhetoric of the rights of the individual to the scholarly dialogue in bioethics. Although no one wishes to do away with such language completely, it sometimes has seemed inadequate to the moral phenomena. To address these concerns, the philosophy of Aristotle has been recruited. Aristotelianism in contemporary bioethics has become identified with two claims: (1) there is such a thing as the ability to reason wisely about particular problems and cases, and (2) there is a need to supplement the American emphasis on the individual with a richer notion of the person or a concept of the common good. Both of these claims address concerns arising from the doctrine of informed consent, the fundamental framework of medical decision making.Contemporary American biomedical ethics is now more than 25 years old. It has been marked by some important successes. For instance, it has evolved an ethical and legal consensus that the doctrine of informed consent is the primary way to make operational the value of respect for the patient. And this doctrine extends to all areas of medical treatment and biomedical research. The doctrine is minimalist in that it relies simply on [End Page 283] the right of a competent patient to refuse unwanted interventions. This approach naturally raises questions concerning whether it can adequately settle the more difficult moral questions society faces without recourse to a grander philosophical theory. Similarly, the doctrine of informed consent places the rights of the individual front and center, and this causes us to ask whether bioethics is intrinsically individualistic. Although some might find individualism unobjectionable, many claim that such individualism does not capture the moral phenomenon of the family's role in ethical medical decision making (Nelson and Nelson 1995) or the need to see particular choices in light of the health care schema we wish for society (Callahan 1990).Aristotelianism has not presented itself as just another competing theory among other approaches to bioethics. Through the notions of practical wisdom and the common good, Aristotelianism can be seen as a metaethical way of tying together the methodological progress in bioethics that has resulted from a rich debate among various methods. For instance, bioethics has seen the flourishing of two important methods: the principles approach and casuistry. Virtue theory has also received much attention. The representatives of each have often argued that the philosophical concepts and principles behind ethical decision making in medicine are minimal.Whether one is talking about the four principles approach of Beauchamp and Childress (1994), the case-based approach (casuistry) of Jonsen and Toulmin (1988), or the virtue theory of Pellegrino and Thomasma (1993), one immediately notices that each method is fairly dependent on the judgment or practical wisdom of a competent practitioner of the method in order to be effective. The four principles approach depends upon someone being able to balance or to specify its mid-level principles in difficult cases; casuistry requires the discrimination of a person of practical wisdom to identify relevant features of cases and reason analogically between paradigm cases and their less clear particular instances, and virtue theory places the competent practitioner of the clinical art at the center of its method and makes... (shrink)

Henry Beecher was a distinguished professor of anesthesia and clinical investigator at Harvard Medical School. He became an iconic figure in bioethics, best known for his 1966 article describing 22 examples of unethical clinical research. This is one of the most frequently cited articles on ethics in the medical literature. Indeed, it may be seen as marking a watershed in the moral climate of medical research. In his history of bioethics, Albert Jonsen characterized Beecher as one of the “stars in (...) the bioethical firmament”. Daniel Callahan, founder of the Hastings Center, explained Beecher’s impact in a 1991 interview:“I think the role of Henry Beecher was very important in the mid 60s when he blew the... (shrink)

What is a good death? How does one live well in the face of (potentially) terminal illness? Philosophical analysis has a great deal to offer in approaching these puzzling and deep questions. Perhaps more can be gleaned of cultural and personal significance, however, from narratives of those who have been forced to face these questions in their lives and in their writings. The greatest yield, I suggest, comes from combining narrative with philosophical reflections.Commentators have frequently contrasted the way we die (...) today with deaths in the past (Callahan 1993, 2003; Hardwig 2009). Before the first half of the 20th century, people mainly died from infectious diseases, with a rapid onset and swift progression to .. (shrink)

In the long-running debate on the interest of the dead, Joan C. Callahan argues against such interests and although Søren Holm for practical reasons is prepared to consider posthumous interests, he does not see any moral basis to support such interests. He argues that the whole question is irresolvable, yet finds privacy interests where Tutankhamen is concerned. Callahan argues that there can be reasons to hold on to the fiction that there are posthumous interests, namely if it is (...) comforting for the living and instrumental for society. Thus, despite arguing against the position that the dead have any interests or for any moral basis for such interests, these “interests” are still taken into consideration in the end. This shows the unsatisfactory basis of their positions and indicates the tenacity of the moral intuition that the dead can have moral claims on the living. One example of a posthumous interest is the interest in one’s good name. Here we argue that it is an interest of moral significance. This implies that if individuals restrict use of their sample when they are still alive, those restrictions apply after their death. Further, it implies that one should be concerned with the reputation of historic persons. Research that defeats these interests calls for justification. We have suggested two lines of thinking along which such a discussion could go: investigating the truth-value of the good name and the relevance of bringing it into possible disrepute. (shrink)

In this paper I try to defend the notion that the dead can be harmed, in opposition to Callahan and in accord with some ideas of Feinberg. In agreement with Parlit, I argue that the existence of a person has degrees. I suggest that properlies of a subject, such as “reputations” and claims, can persist after death, aIthough the subject as such does not and that these can be harmed. A promise, e.g., can be frustrated merely by being ignored; (...) in that sense a dead person can be wronged, and if wronged, s/he can be harmed. (shrink)

In this paper I try to defend the notion that the dead can be harmed, in opposition to Callahan and in accord with some ideas of Feinberg. In agreement with Parlit, I argue that the existence of a person has degrees. I suggest that properlies of a subject, such as “reputations” and claims, can persist after death, aIthough the subject as such does not and that these can be harmed. A promise, e.g., can be frustrated merely by being ignored; (...) in that sense a dead person can be wronged, and if wronged, s/he can be harmed. (shrink)

Much has been written about medicine and the market in recent years. This book is the first to include an assessment of market influence in both developed and developing countries, and among the very few that have tried to evaluate the actual health and economic impact of market theory and practices in a wide range of national settings. Tracing the path that market practices have taken from Adam Smith in the eighteenth century into twenty-first-century health care, Daniel Callahan and (...) Angela A. Wasunna add a fresh dimension: they compare the different approaches taken in the market debate by health care economists, conservative market advocates, and liberal supporters of single-payer or government-regulated systems. In addition to laying out the market-versus-government struggle around the world -- from Canada and the United States to Western Europe, Latin America, and many African and Asian countries -- they assess the leading market practices, such as competition, physician incentives, and co-payments, for their economic and health efficacy to determine whether they work as advertised. This timely and necessary book engages new dimensions of a development that has urgent consequences for the delivery of health care worldwide. (shrink)

The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some cases, (...) the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise. (shrink)

Much has been written about medicine and the market in recent years. This book is the first to include an assessment of market influence in both developed and developing countries, and among the very few that have tried to evaluate the actual health and economic impact of market theory and practices in a wide range of national settings. Tracing the path that market practices have taken from Adam Smith in the eighteenth century into twenty-first-century health care, Daniel Callahan and (...) Angela A. Wasunna add a fresh dimension: they compare the different approaches taken in the market debate by health care economists, conservative market advocates, and liberal supporters of single-payer or government-regulated systems. In addition to laying out the market-versus-government struggle around the world -- from Canada and the United States to Western Europe, Latin America, and many African and Asian countries -- they assess the leading market practices, such as competition, physician incentives, and co-payments, for their economic and health efficacy to determine whether they work as advertised. This timely and necessary book engages new dimensions of a development that has urgent consequences for the delivery of health care worldwide. (shrink)

The decline in the interest in ethical theory is first outlined, as a background to the author’s discussion of principlism. The author’s own stance, that of a communitarian philosopher, is then described, before the subject of principlism itself is addressed. Two problems stand in the way of the author’s embracing principlism: its individualistic bias and its capacity to block substantive ethical inquiry. The more serious problem the author finds to be its blocking function. Discussing the four scenarios the author finds (...) that the utility of principlism is shown in the two scenarios about Jehovah’s Witnesses but that when it comes to selling kidneys for transplantation and germline enhancement, principlism is of little help. (shrink)

American bioethics began in the late 1960s, stimulated by a plethora of new medical technologies and biological knowledge and by a scandal-induced interest in human subject research. Although it was understood that there would be ethical debate , no one thought the disputes would be ideological in character, as if part of one's voting pattern as liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. There were arguments, often sharp, but no culture wars.

The possibility of human cloning first surfaced in the 1960s, stimulated by the report that a salamander had been cloned. James D. Watson and Joshua Lederberg, distinguished Nobel laureates, speculated that the cloning of human beings might one day be within reach; it was only a matter of time. Bioethics was still at that point in its infancybioethicsand cloning immediately caught the eye of a number of those beginning to write in the field. They included Paul Ramsey, Hans Jonas, and (...) Leon Kass. Cloning became one of the symbolic issues of what was, at that time, called a biology that would be dominated by molecular genetics. Over a period of five years or so in the early 1970s a number of articles and book chapters on the ethical issues appeared, discussing cloning in its own right and cloning as a token of the radical genetic possibilities. (shrink)

Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist and linguist at Harvard and a savant of big ideas, is one of the latest to take on the idea of progress. He does it under the aegis of “enlightenment,” which comes down to a kind of holy trinity of reason, science, and humanism. His new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, is ambitious and cantankerous and heady with hope. On the whole, Pinker makes a good case for the benefits (...) of progress, but with an overdose of feel‐good prose. His greatest failure comes in exaggerating the threats to science and in avoiding some problems altogether. He ignores its complexity, its shadows, its creation of new problems raised by its solutions to old ones. Pinker has a particular animus against bioethics, and he misses what has been, I would argue, at the heart of bioethics from its beginning fifty or so years ago. Bioethics was prompted by a new class of medical dilemmas that require a difficult balancing of harms and benefits. Most of them are still with us, and most of them are the result of the progress of postwar medical research and fast‐changing clinical practices. (shrink)

A quintessential challenge for any perceptual system is the need to focus on task-relevant information without being blindsided by unexpected, yet important information. The human visual system incorporates several solutions to this challenge, one of which is a reflexive covert attention system that is rapidly responsive to both the physical salience and the task-relevance of new information. This paper presents a model that simulates behavioral and neural correlates of reflexive attention as the product of brief neural attractor states that are (...) formed across the visual hierarchy when attention is engaged. Such attractors emerge from an attentional gradient distributed over a population of topographically organized neurons and serve to focus processing at one or more locations in the visual field, while inhibiting the processing of lower priority information. The model moves towards a resolution of key debates about the nature of reflexive attention, such as whether it is parallel or serial, and whether suppression effects are distributed in a spatial surround, or selectively at the location of distractors. Most importantly, the model develops a framework for understanding the neural mechanisms of visual attention as a spatiotopic decision process within a hierarchy and links them to observable correlates such as accuracy, reaction time, and the N2pc and PD components of the EEG. This last contribution is the most crucial for repairing the disconnect that exists between our understanding of behavioral and neural correlates of attention. (shrink)

When the Karen Ann Quinlan case emerged in the mid-1970s and the New Jersey Supreme Court made mention of the role that ethics committees might play in such cases, no one could have predicted at the time what the consequences of that observation might be. It took a while for momentum to build, but we are now seeing the flowering of what is an important movement in the field of bioethics: the interplay of ethics committees and broader societal issues.

This book provides an overview of some of the most important critics of “Enlightenment rationalism.” The subjects of the volume—including, among others, Burke, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, T.S. Eliot, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, C.S. Lewis, Gabriel Marcel, Russell Kirk, and Jane Jacobs—do not share a philosophical tradition as much as a skeptical disposition toward the notion, common among modern thinkers, that there is only one standard of rationality or reasonableness, and that that one standard is or ought to be taken from the presuppositions, methods, (...) and logic of the natural sciences. The essays on each thinker are intended not merely to offer a commentary on that thinker, but also to place that thinker in the context of this larger stream of anti-rationalist thought. Thus, while this volume is not a history of anti-rationalist thought, it may contain the intimations of such a history. (shrink)

This casebook features ten distinctive and provocative essays in addition to a generous sampling of Ellison's comments on the novel. A number of the latter are from letters never before published; also published here for the first time is Part II of Ellison's "Working Notes on Invisible Man," an undated exposition of his authorial intentions, probably written in 1946 or 1947. The ten essays are a selection of the most perceptive and comprehensive essays written on Invisible Man during the last (...) thirty-five years, including an essay by Kenneth Burke, which began as a letter to Ellison about the novel, written before its publication in 1952. Also among the essays is Larry Neal's "Ellison's Zoot Suit," in which he finds the novel an exemplary enactment in fiction of the "black aesthetic." The essays explore topics of narrative form, classical and vernacular points of reference, and the relationship between the themes of love and politics. Taken together with Ellison's "Working Notes" and later commentary on the novel, these essays account for the continuing appeal of Invisible Man more than fifty years after its publication. An editor's introduction and a full bibliography accompany the essays, selections from Ellison's writings, and informal statements on his novel. The volume offers a rich variety of interpretations of Invisible Man for students and scholars of Ellison. (shrink)

Debates over health care have focused for so long on economics that the proper goals for medicine seem to be taken for granted; yet problems in health care stem as much from a lack of agreement about the goals and priorities of medicine as from the way systems function. This book asks basic questions about the purposes and ends of medicine and shows that the answers have practical implications for future health care delivery, medical research, and the education of medical (...) students. The Hastings Center coordinated teams of physicians, nurses, public health experts, philosophers, theologians, politicians, health care administrators, social workers, and lawyers in fourteen countries to explore these issues. In this volume, they articulate four basic goals of medicine — prevention of disease, relief of suffering, care of the ill, and avoidance of premature death — and examine them in light of the cultural, political, and economic pressures under which medicine functions. In reporting these findings, the contributors touch on a wide range of diverse issues such as genetic technology, Chinese medicine, care of the elderly, and prevention and public health. The Goals of Medicine clearly demonstrates the importance of clarifying the purposes of medicine before attempting to change the economic and organizational systems. It warns that without such examination, any reform efforts may be fruitless. (shrink)

Over the past several decades in which access to abortion has become increasingly restricted, parents' autonomy in medical decision‐making in the realms of fetal care and neonatal intensive care has expanded. Today, parents can decide against invasive medical interventions at gestational ages where abortions are forbidden, even in cases where neonates are expected to be seriously ill. Although a declared state interest in protecting the lives of fetuses and newborns contributes to justifications for restricting women's autonomy with regards to abortion, (...) it does not fully explain this discrepancy. We believe that social portrayals of women as complying with or shirking their reproductive function play a major role in explaining it. The growing divide between a woman's rights as a reproductive being and as a parent suggest that abortion restriction is rooted in a historical societal desire for women to serve as reproducers and in the corresponding fear of them abandoning this allotted role in pursuit of social equality. The Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) decision is not based in a view of abortion as a medical act occurring between a doctor and patient, as Roe v. Wade (1973) did, but decision‐making about fetal therapy or NICU care is still viewed as occurring between a doctor and patient or surrogate because in this act a woman is seen as fulfilling her role as mother. (shrink)

From the author of Setting Limits comes a challenging exploration of the proper goals of medicine in our rapidly changing society--a work destined to spark debate and influence policy for years to come.

Why is there a felt asymmetry between cases in which agents defer to testifiers for certain moral beliefs, and cases in which agents defer on many other matters? One explanation influential in the literature is that having understanding of a proposition is both in tension with acquiring belief in the proposition by deferring to another's testimony and distinctively important when it comes to moral propositions, as compared with what we might think of as many ‘garden variety’ facts. My project in (...) this paper is to offer a new and more defensible version of this explanation. This will involve re-conceiving understanding as a richer state than it is commonly thought to be, requiring affective and motivational engagement with reasons as well as cognitive facility. I also offer a new explanation of the tension between understanding and deference to testimony. (shrink)

Subjectivist permissivism is a prima facie attractive view. That is, it's plausible to think that what's rational for people to believe on the basis of their evidence can vary if they have different frameworks or sets of epistemic standards. In this paper, I introduce an epistemic existentialist form of subjectivist permissivism, which I argue can better address “the arbitrariness objection” to subjectivist permissivism in general. According to the epistemic existentialist, it's not just that what's rational to believe on the basis (...) of evidence can vary according to agents’ frameworks, understood as passive aspects of individuals’ psychologies. Rather, what's rational to believe on the basis of evidence is sensitive to agents’ choices and active commitments. Here I draw on Chang's work on commitment and voluntarist reasons. The epistemic existentialist maintains that what's rational for us to believe on the basis of evidence is, at least in part, up to us. It can vary not only across individuals but for a single individual, over time, as she makes differing epistemic commitments. (shrink)