Ethics consultation is a familiar concept to clinicians, and there are site-specific guidelines detailing procedures for both obtaining and performing these consults. Evaluative data about clinician experiences with ethics consults are becoming more extensive but information about family experiences, especially parent perceptions, of the same is lacking. Without a better understanding of those family experiences, an evidence base for ethics consultations cannot be built. This manuscript describes the reasons for obtaining this necessary information, details prior research designed to obtain knowledge (...) about family experiences with pediatric ethics consultations, and suggests mechanisms for acquiring it. (shrink)

During the first few decades of the twentieth century, legal theory on both sides of the Atlantic was characterized by a tremendous amount of skepticism toward the private law concepts of property and contract. In the United States and France, Oliver Wendell Holmes and François Gény led the charge with withering critiques of the abuse of deduction, exposing their forebears' supposedly gapless system of private law rules for what it was, a house of cards built on the ideological foundations of (...) laissez faire capitalism. The goal was to make the United States Constitution and the French civil code more responsive to the realities of industrialization. Unlike the other participants in this transatlantic critique, François Gény simultaneously insisted on the immutability of justice and social utility. His “ineluctable minimum of natural law” would guide judges and jurists toward the proper social ends, replacing deduction with teleology. The problem was that nearly all of Gény's contemporaries were perplexed by his conception of natural law, which lacked the substance of the natural rights tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the historicist impulse of the early twentieth. No one was more perplexed than Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose more thorough going skepticism led him to see judicial restraint as the only solution to the abuse of deduction. The ultimate framework for this debate was World War I, in which both Holmes and Gény thought they had found vindication for their views. Events on the battlefield reaffirmed Gény's commitment to justice just as they reignited Holmes' existential embrace of the unknown. In a sense, the limits of their skepticism would be forged in the trenches of the Great War. (shrink)

Introduction: Conversion and the practice of transformation -- The philosophical structure of Jonathan Edwards's religious affections -- Habit, habit change, and conversion in C.S. Peirce -- Reconstructing faith : religious overcoming in Dewey's pragmatism -- Transforming obligation in William James -- Dwelling in absence: the reflective origin of conversion -- Creative transformation : the work of conversion -- The evasion of conversion in recent American philosophy.

What is it to be an agent? One influential line of thought, endorsed by G. E. M. Anscombe and David Velleman, among others, holds that agency depends on practical rationality—the ability to act for reasons, rather than being merely moved by causes. Over the past 25 years, Velleman has argued compellingly for a distinctive view of agency and the practical rationality with which he associates it. On Velleman’s conception, being an agent consists in having the capacity to be motivated by (...) a drive to act for reasons. Your bodily movements qualify as genuine actions insofar as they are motivated in part by your desire to behave in a way that makes sense to yourself. However, there are at least two distinct ways of spelling out what this drive towards self-intelligibility consists in, both present in Velleman’s work. It might consist in a drive towards intelligibility in causal-psychological terms: roughly, a drive to maximize the rational coherence of your psychological states. Alternatively, it might consist in a drive towards narrative intelligibility: a drive to make your ongoing activity conform to a recognizable narrative structure, where that structure is understood emotionally. Velleman originally saw these options as basically equivalent, but later came to prioritize the drive towards causal-psychological intelligibility over that towards narrative intelligibility. I argue that this gets things the wrong way round—we should instead understand our capacities to render ourselves intelligible in causal-psychological terms as built upon a bedrock of emotionally suffused narrative understanding. In doing so, we resolve several problems for Velleman’s view, and pave the way for an embodied, embedded and affective account of practical rationality and agency. According to the picture that emerges, practical rationality is essential to agency, narrative understanding is essential to practical rationality, and the rhythms and structures patterning the ebb and flow of our emotional lives are essential to narrative understanding. (shrink)

Discussions of sexual ethics often focus on the wrong of treating another as a mere object instead of as a person worthy of respect. On this view, the task of sexual ethics becomes putting the other’s subjectivity above their status as erotic object so as to avoid the harms of objectification. Ward and Anderson argue that such a view disregards the crucial, moral role that erotic objecthood plays in sexual encounters. Important moral features of intimacy are disclosed through the (...) experience of being an erotic object for another, as well as in perceiving another as an erotic object. Drawing on phenomenology, especially the insights of Simone de Beauvoir, Ward and Anderson argue that erotic encounters are shaped by the human condition of ambiguity, where being an object for others is intertwined with bodily agency. Because sexual agency is complex in this way, theories of sexual ethics and responsibility must widen their focus beyond transparent communication and authoritative expressions of will. (shrink)

A short definitive account of Keith Ward's theology, based on the philosophy of Personal Idealism. It records Ward's views about God, revelation, the kingdom of God, life after death, the incarnation, atonement, and Trinity. In summary, it is a concise and clear account of most central Christian doctrines, formed in the light of modern science and Idealist philosophy.

Blanton Ward traces the current critical engagement of Agamben, Derrida and Zizek, among others, back to the 19th and early 20th century philosophers of early Christianity.

Ward Blondé ABSTRACT: In this paper, an evolutionary multiverse argument against naturalism is presented: E1. In an evolutionary multiverse, phenomena have variable evolutionary ages. E2. After some time T, the development of the empirical sciences will be evolutionarily conserved. E3. The phenomena with an evolutionary age above T are methodologically supernatural. Entities are classified ….

In this paper, a metaphysics is proposed that includes everything that can be represented by a well-founded multiset. It is shown that this metaphysics, apart from being self-explanatory, is also benevolent. Paradoxically, it turns out that the probability that we were born in another life than our own is zero. More insights are gained by inducing properties from a metaphysics that is not self-explanatory. In particular, digital metaphysics is analyzed, which claims that only computable things exist. First of all, it (...) is shown that digital metaphysics contradicts itself by leading to the conclusion that the shortest computer program that computes the world is infinitely long. This means that the Church-Turing conjecture must be false. Secondly, the applicability of Occam’s razor is explained by evolution: in an evolving physics it can appear at each moment as if the world is caused by only finitely many things. Thirdly and most importantly, this metaphysics is benevolent in the sense that it organizes itself to fulfill the deepest wishes of its observers. Fourthly, universal computers with an infinite memory capacity cannot be built in the world. And finally, all the properties of the world, both good and bad, can be explained by evolutionary conservation. (shrink)

With the advent of CRISPR gene-editing technology, designer babies have become a reality. Françoise Baylis insists that scientists alone cannot decide the terms of this new era in human evolution. Members of the public, with diverse interests and perspectives, must have a role in determining our future as a species.

Since modern physicists made more and more advances in precisely measuring the fundamental constants in nature, cosmologists have been confronted with this problem: how do we declare that nature’s constants are fine-tuned for the emergence of life? Many cosmologists assume nowadays that the big bang universe originates from a multiverse that consists of very many universes. Some of these must be fine-tuned for life. A fascinating question arises: Would there be any chance on a life after our death in this (...) multiverse? In this paper, I show two things about the multiverse. First, universes in the multiverse acquire an unlimited amount of additional fine-tuning for intelligent life over the course of many universe generations. Such additional fine-tuning may consist of travelling between universes and an afterlife on a distant planet. Second, evolutionary conservation in the evolution of universes in the multiverse provides a declaration why we observe a universe that roughly has the minimal fine-tuning to support intelligent life. (shrink)

Since modern physicists made more and more advances in precisely measuring the fundamental constants in nature, cosmologists have been confronted with this problem: how do we declare that nature’s constants are fine-tuned for the emergence of life? Many cosmologists assume nowadays that the big bang universe originates from a multiverse that consists of very many universes. Some of these must be fine-tuned for life. A fascinating question arises: Would there be any chance on a life after our death in this (...) multiverse? In this paper, I show two things about the multiverse. First, universes in the multiverse acquire an unlimited amount of additional fine-tuning for intelligent life over the course of many universe generations. Such additional fine-tuning may consist of travelling between universes and an afterlife on a distant planet. Second, evolutionary conservation in the evolution of universes in the multiverse provides a declaration why we observe a universe that roughly has the minimal fine-tuning to support intelligent life. (shrink)

In this paper, an evolutionary multiverse argument against naturalism (EMAAN) is presented: E1. In an evolutionary multiverse, phenomena have variable evolutionary ages. E2. After some time T, the development of the empirical sciences will be evolutionarily conserved. E3. The phenomena with an evolutionary age above T are methodologically supernatural. Entities are classified according to whether they are (1) physical and spatiotemporal, (2) causally efficacious, and (3) either observed by or explanatorily necessary for the empirical sciences. While the conjunction of (1) (...) and (2) is taken to be sufficient for existence in reality, the negation of (3) defines methodological supernaturalness. EMAAN uses a generalization of evolutionary theory, namely cosmological natural selection, to argue that phenomena evolve that fulfill conditions (1) and (2), but not (3). This shows that methodologically supernatural phenomena have a clear epistemology according to a theory that is grounded in the commitments of naturalism. Supernatural phenomena are not observed by the empirical sciences because the empirical sciences themselves are supernaturally guided and predestined to develop according to an evolutionarily conserved plan. In spite of this scientific plan, there is room for afterlives and supernaturality in the everyday experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 23-26 [Access article in PDF] The Complexity of Evil Behavior David E. Ward I WOULD LIKE TO BEGIN this reply by thanking the commentators. The reports of their clinical experience contained some interesting evidence regarding evil behavior that, I think, supports my thesis and their full frontal criticism has given me a chance to reemphasize how complex the problem of evil behavior (...) is.On the question raised by Steven Sverdlik, as to whether Kant was in possession of the idea of the unconscious: it never occurred to me that Kant's notion of the subreption of the will—the idea that we could somehow be deceived with regard to our true motives (1956, 121)—could be regarded as a reason for assuming that Kant had a concept of the unconscious. Certainly talk of being unsure of one's motives has been common currency in every age that has had the idea of acting out of duty as opposed to desire. This uncertainty allows us to think about unconscious motives and thus of a set of hidden mechanisms that might motivate our actions without our being aware of them. However, I think we would both agree that Kant nowhere articulates this hypothesis. Freud did articulate it. So I agree that I should have said that Kant was not in possession of a concept of unconscious mechanisms that may generate behavior in such a way as to be opaque to the agent involved.Sverdlik has two worries with regard to my thesis. The first concerns my characterization of evil behavior as wrongdoing for wrongdoing's sake. He believes that rather than insisting that all principled behavior must fit this formula, "Ward is really interested in wrongdoing that is non-impulsive and actuated by some principle, but not necessarily the satanic one." This is, indeed, exactly what I was interested in. It is the unconscious adherence to some principle that causes all the trouble for evil people. Sverdlik thinks that my proposal was "to attribute acceptance [of such principles] to the unconscious" and to maintain that though the agent does "not consciously accept it, [it] does do so unconsciously" (my emphasis). What I actually said was: In my account, there is a near-perfect dovetailing of the two different psychological perspectives—that of Kant's moral psychology (which lacks the resources to accommodate the possibility of evil) and that of Peck's psychiatric diagnosis of evil—that explains (on my construal) how an unconscious adherence to unacknowledged principles could be the driving power behind evil behaviour. What is the difference between unconscious acceptance of a principle and unconscious adherence to it? This difference can be illustrated in connection with Sverdlik's continuation of his argument: Ward suggests that the agent does not consciously accept it, but does so unconsciously. But why does the unconscious not see that it is not universalizable? And if it does see this, why does it proceed to act on it? Ward's picture of the unconscious must allow it to be rational enough to understand the narcissistic principle, for example, [protect your self-image at all costs] and to act on it. But if it is that rational, then it is puzzling that it does not draw the same conclusion [End Page 23] that the agent's conscious deliberation can and will draw. Therefore, if consciously acting on a non-universalizable principle is inexplicable, then so is unconsciously acting on it. According to my picture of the unconscious, what the unconscious is rational about are hypothetical principles: it sees the connection between means and ends with perfect rationality. When, in my article, I distinguished between categorical and hypothetical imperatives I pointed out that... it is clear that hypothetical principles like always dress in woolens can only motivate us if we already have a desire to be warm. Strictly speaking, hypothetical principles do not motivate us by themselves. They are only useful in specifying the means to an end that a rational person would follow if she wanted to satisfy a certain desire. (My emphasis.) I was assuming, then... (shrink)

The Higgs mechanism gives mass to Yang-Mills gauge bosons. According to the conventional wisdom, this happens through the spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetry. Yet, gauge symmetries merely reflect a redundancy in the state description and therefore the spontaneous breaking can not be an essential ingredient. Indeed, as already shown by Higgs and Kibble, the mechanism can be explained in terms of gauge invariant variables, without invoking spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this paper, we present a general discussion of such gauge invariant (...) treatments for the case of the Abelian Higgs model, in the context of classical field theory. We thereby distinguish between two different notions of gauge: one that takes all local transformations to be gauge and one that relates gauge to a failure of determinism. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN) claims that if both naturalism (N) and evolutionary theory (E) are true, then all our beliefs are unreliable (premiss 1). Consequently, given N&E, the belief in N&E is unreliable (premiss 2) and N&E is self-defeating (conclusion). The empirical verification argument against naturalism (EVAAN) is more cautious and improves EAAN by withstanding a rejoinder of the evolutionary naturalist to premiss 1. EVAAN claims that non-abstract beliefs that are not empirically verifiable are unreliable, given N&E (...) (premiss 1a). This anticipates the evolutionary naturalist’s claim that empirical verifications play a crucial role in peer assessments and sexual selection of intelligence, and that, therefore, N&E makes empirically verifiable beliefs often reliable (premiss-1 rejoinder). However, even then it can be argued that the belief in N&E is unreliable, given N&E (premiss 2), because N&E is neither abstract, nor empirically verifiable (premiss 1b). EVAAN distinguishes reliably verifiable intelligence from metaphysical intelligence and claims that, if N&E is true, humans are lacking metaphysical intelligence. This paper also contains an argument against EAAN, by supporting the premiss-1 rejoinder. (shrink)

I assume that we find it hard to understand, for example, how a person could harm another person in cold blood. I then set out Kant's reason's for thinking that, strictly speaking, evil behavior is impossible: people may act on wicked desires but deliberate wrong-doing is not a genuine phenomenon. However, Kant's view is at odds with our common sense intuitions about morally evil behavior, namely, that such behavior is possible, albeit difficult to understand. I then suggest how Kant's analysis (...) of the problem of evil behavior can help us to understand under what conditions evil behavior would be possible. Next, I introduce Peck's theory of how evil behavior can manifest itselfwhen a person suffers from malignant narcissism—a complaint that involves acting on principles which are not consciously acknowledged. I conclude that Kant's views on evil can be understood with reference to Peck's theory (and vice versa). (shrink)