The validity of the double effect doctrine is examined in euthanasia and abortion. In these two situations killing is a method of treatment. It is argued that the doctrine cannot apply to the care of the dying. Firstly, doctors are obliged to harm patients in order to do good to them. Secondly, patients should make their own value judgments about being mutilated or killed. Thirdly, there is little intuitive moral difference between direct and indirect killing. Nor can the doctrine apply (...) to abortion. Doctors kill fetuses as a means of treating the mother. They also kill them as an inevitable side effect of other treatment. Drawing a moral distinction between the direct and the indirect killing gives counterintuitive results. It is suggested that pragmatic rules, not ethics, govern practices around euthanasia and cause it to be more restricted than abortion. (shrink)

Some approaches to the assessment of moral intuitions are discussed. The controlled ethical trial isolates a moral issue from confounding factors and thereby clarifies what a person's intuition actually is. Casuistic reasoning from situations, where intuitions are clear, suggests or modifies principles, which can then help to make decisions in situations where intuitions are unclear. When intuitions are defended by a supporting principle, that principle can be tested by finding extreme cases, in which it is counterintuitive to follow the principle. (...) An approach to the resolution of conflict between valid moral principles, specifically the utilitarian and justice principles, is considered. It is argued that even those who justify intuitions by a priori principles are often obliged to modify or support their principles by resort to the consideration of consequences. (shrink)

Non-therapeutic ventilation of potential organ donors would increase the supply of kidneys for transplantation. There are no major ethical objections to it. The means of permitting it are forbidden by laws with an ethical basis. A law permitting it would need an ethical basis. Introducing a third legal method of diagnosing death would be unethical. Expanding the power of the advance directive to permit procedures involving minimal harm would be ethical but not helpful. Extending the power of proxies to permit (...) specific non-therapeutic procedures which caused or risked minimal harm to incompetent patients is the best way forward. (shrink)

Health care should be preferentially allocated to younger patients. This is just and is seen as just. Age is an objective factor in rationing decisions. The arguments against 'ageism' are answered. The effects of age on current methods of rationing are illustrated, and the practical applications of an age-related criterion are discussed. Ageist policies are in current use and open discussion of them is advocated.

Health care should be preferentially allocated to younger patients. This is just and is seen as just. Age is an objective factor in rationing decisions. The arguments against 'ageism' are answered. The effects of age on current methods of rationing are illustrated, and the practical applications of an age-related criterion are discussed. Ageist policies are in current use and open discussion of them is advocated.

Although we agree with Hommel et al. that perception and action refer to one another, we disagree that they do so via a code. Gibson (1966; 1979) attempted to frame perception-action as a field phenomenon rather than as a particle phenomenon. From such a perspective, perception and action are adjoint, mutually interacting through an information field, and codes are unnecessary.

Hollywood has yet to produce a BusinessEthics epic. Between the special effects andcartoon characters, however, ethical issues dosurface, and, on occasion, Hollywood featuresintriguing and complex characters and plotsladen with moral freight. Some of these can beturned to student advantage, and this articlewill explore films that may become excellentteaching tools.

Contemporary engineering education recognises the need for engineering ethics content in undergraduate programmes to extend beyond concepts that form the basis of professional codes to consider relationality and context of engineering practice. Yet there is debate on how this might be done, and we argue that the design and pedagogy for engineering ethics has to consider what and to whom ethics is taught in a particular context. Our interest is in the possibilities and challenges of pursuing the dual imperatives of (...) socialization and critique. Socialization involves creating opportunities for all, in a diverse cohort of students, to access and engage with the dominant professional engineering ethics knowledge, while critique involves engaging with a range of ways of knowing, valuing, being and using language as relevant in contemporary engineering practice. We identify conceptual tools from engineering ethics and ethical pedagogy in education scholarship for our context. We illustrate how we use these tools systematically to strengthen our reflective practice in a first-year university engineering ethics module to a deeper form of reflexivity. Specifically, we explore the ways in which we attend to the dual imperatives and also highlight opportunities that we miss. We identify as key opportunities design choices such as how we formulated questions and prompts, and how we attended to content, context and language in selecting classroom texts. Other key opportunities were pedagogical choices of when and how to use student contributions in discussion, and what was made explicit in the classroom and assessment. We share our plans to take our learnings forward in our practice and consider the generative possibilities of these learnings and the concepts in other contexts. (shrink)

This book is a qualitative, interpretive, phenomenological, and interdisciplinary, examination of food and food practices and their meanings in the modern world. Each chapter thematically focuses upon a particular food practice and on some key details of the examined practice, or on the practice’s social and cultural impact.

A variety of approaches have appeared in academic literature and in design practice representing “ethics-first” methods. These approaches typically focus on clarifying the normative dimensions of design, or outlining strategies for explicitly incorporating values into design. While this body of literature has developed considerably over the last 20 years, two themes central to the endeavour of ethics and values in design (E + VID) have yet to be systematically discussed in relation to each other: (a) designer agency, and (b) the (...) strength of normative claims informing the design process. To address this gap, we undertook a structured review of leading E + VID approaches and critiques, and classified them according to their positions on normative strength, and views regarding designer agency. We identified 18 distinct approaches and 13 critiques that met the inclusion criteria for our review. Included papers were distributed across the spectrum of views regarding normative strength, and we found that no approaches and only one critique represented a view characteristic of “low” designer agency. We suggest that the absence of “low” designer agency approaches results in the neglect of crucial influences on design as targets of intervention by designers. We conclude with suggestions for future research that might illuminate strategies to achieve ethical design in information mature societies, and argue that without attending to the tensions raised by balancing normatively “strong” visions of the future with limitations imposed on designer agency in corporate-driven design settings, “meaningful” ethical design will continue to encounter challenges in practice. (shrink)

In this article, we perform a thought experiment about living donor kidney transplantation. If a living kidney donor becomes in need of renal replacement treatment due to dysfunction of the remaining kidney after donation, can the donor ask the recipient to give back the kidney that had been donated? We call this problem organ restitution and discussed it from the ethical viewpoint. Living organ transplantation is a kind of ‘designated donation’ and subsequently has a contract-like character. First, assuming a case (...) in which original donor wishes the return of the organ which had been transplanted into B, and the original recipient agrees, organ restitution will be permissible based on contract-like agreement. However, careful and detailed consideration is necessary to determine whether this leaves no room to question the authenticity of B’s consent. Second, if B offers to give back the organ to A, then B’s act is a supererogatory act, and is praiseworthy and meritorious. Such an offer is a matter of virtue, not obligation. Third, if A wishes B to return the organ, but B does not wish/allow this to happen, it is likely difficult to justify returning the organ to A by violating B’s right to bodily integrity. But B’s refusal to return the donated organ cannot be deemed praiseworthy, because B forgets the great kindness once received from A. Rather than calling this an obligation, we encourage B to consider such virtuous conduct. (shrink)

Validity is a central principle of assessment relating to the appropriateness of the uses and interpretations of test results. Usually, one of the inferences that we wish to make is that the score reflects the extent of a student?s learning in a given domain. Thus, it is important to establish that the assessment tasks elicit performances that reflect the intended constructs. This research explored the use of three methods for evaluating whether there are threats to validity in relation to the (...) constructs elicited in international A level geography examinations: (a) Rasch analysis; (b) analysis of processes expected and apparent when students answer questions; and (c) qualitative analysis of responses to items identified as potentially problematic. The results provided strong evidence to support validity with regard to the elicitation of constructs although one question part was identified as a threat to validity. Strengths and weaknesses of the methods can be identified. (shrink)

This essay situates the major works of W.E.B. Du Bois and some of his minor work between the 1880s and 1940 in the historical context of black people's writing about race since the eighteenth century. In offering examples of the evolution of black thinking and writing on this topic, it views Du Bois's work in the context of Moral and Ethical Philosophy (rather than the more obvious History, Sociology, and Political Economics) in order to reveal his efforts as a disruption, (...) deliberately designed to shift the discussions of race and race relations from defense to offense, which he did most explicitly and profoundly in Dusk of Dawn (1940) but had been doing much more subtly throughout his scholarly career. (shrink)

This book brings a new understanding to one of the great documents of American and black history. While most scholarly discussions of The Souls of Black Folk focus on the veils, the color line, double consciousness, or Booker T. Washington, this book reads Du Bois' work as a profoundly nuanced interpretation of the souls of black Americans at the turn of the twentieth century. Demonstrating the importance of the work as a socioh-istorical study of black life in America at the (...) turn of the twentieth century and offering new ways of thinking about many of the topics introduced in Souls, this book charts Du Bois' successful appropriation of Hegelian idealism in order to add America, the nineteenth century, and black people to the historical narrative in Hegel's philosophy of history. It adopts Du Bois' point of view to delve into the social, cultural, political, and intellectual milieus that helped to create The Souls of Black Folk. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Theory ofMotivation — Part 2 Daniel Shaw Introduction and Summary of Part 1 In an earlier paper of the same title1 1 defended a Humean theory of motivation against rationalist views ofB. Stroud and T. Nagel.2 In this paper I shouldlike to relate my theory tomore recent writings, explain its implications for the topic ofmoral motivation and provide further support for the main argument ofmy original paper. (...) To begin with, a summary of my previous discussion: while two critics of Hume's theory, B. Stroud and T. Nagel, disagree about the role ofreason inaction(Stroudaccepts, Nagelrejectsthe Humeanclaim thatreason alone can never produce action) theyboth agree inrejecting Hume's view thatmotivating desire essentially involves feelings which are identifiable by the agent, in his conscious experience, by introspection, as something extra, something over and above any purely rational considerations he may have for taking action. As an alternative to this Humean, experiential view ofmotivating desire, Stroud argues that the concept of motivating desire should be analysednotinterms ofanyintrinsic propertyknowablein experience, butratherin terms ofits function in leading, along withbelief, to action. In Stroud's words: "It might well be that to have a desire for or a propensity towards E is simply to be in a state such that when you come to believe that a certain action will lead to E you are moved to perform that action."3 In a similar spirit4 Nagel claims, contrary to Hume, that there do exist at least some cases (for example, actions motivated by a person's prudential consideration of his own future interests) in which reason alone—that is, the agent's grasp of certain purely rational considerations—is all that motivates action. In the context of these purely rationally motivated actions, Nagel argues, our talk of desire does not refef to anyadditional inclination towards, or preferences for, or sentiment about some goal that we have, but is either just another way of saying that the act is motivated, that is, that we are in some state which disposes us to do whatever we think will lead to a certain result, or else indicates some structural feature ofthe reasoningbehind our behaviour; for example, indicates the fact that in view of purely rational considerations which confront us, it would be irrational of us not to perform the act in question. Volume XVII Number 2 19 DANIEL SHAW Against any such account ofmotivating desire which denies the necessity of the experiential component (that is, of Hume's introspectible sentiment), I argued that all such accounts have a false implication. They all falsely imply that some purely rational consideration, a bare behef, could, all on its own (unaccompanied by any actual or potential pro- or con-attitude), motivate a purposive action. With the help ofa counter-example I argued5 that although it is logically possible for bare beliefs of that kind to produce overt behaviour, such pure rationalist 'action' never in fact happens; and, more importantly, ifwe carefully consider what such 'action' would be like ifit didhappen, we findit would not count as voluntary, purposive action, in the fullest sense. So Hume, I concluded, was right to maintain that motivating desire essentially involves introspectible feehngs. However, the standard interpretation of Hume's view about the relation between desires and feelings yields an indefensible theory of motivated action. On the standard reading, desires simply are feehngs, and the Humean is left with no adequate reply to the obvious objection that, often enough, for example, when acting after calm deliberation, or when performing routine habit-actions, we are not aware of the occurrence of any such feehng immediately prior to or at the time of action. Hume tells us that in all such cases there is—in addition to the operation of reason—a calm passion present—a passion so calm as to be readily confused with and mistaken for the determinations of reason. But on the standard reading of 'calm passions' as very faint or imperceptible feelings, this is a lame argument. As Stroud points out,6 not only is there no independent justification for the claim that in all such cases there always are such faint or imperceptible feehngs,7 but also that claim is inconsistent... (shrink)

Currently, any dentist in the UK who is HIV-seropositive must stop treating patients. This is despite the fact that hepatitis B-infected dentists with a low viral load can continue to practise, and the fact that HIV is 100 times less infectious than hepatitis B. Dentists are obliged to treat HIV-positive patients, but are obliged not to treat any patients if they themselves are HIV-positive. Furthermore, prospective dental students are now screened for hepatitis B and C and HIV, and are not (...) allowed to enrol on Bachelor of Dental Surgery degrees if they are infectious carriers of these diseases. -/- This paper will argue that: (i) the current restriction on HIV-positive dentists is unethical, and unfair; (ii) dentists are more likely to contract HIV from patients than vice versa, and this is not reflected by the current system; (iii) the screening of dental students for HIV is also unethical; (iv) the fact that dentists can continue to practise despite hepatitis B infection, but infected prospective students are denied matriculation, is unethical; and (v) that the current Department of Health protocols, as well as being intrinsically unfair, have further unethical effects, such as the waste of valuable resources on ‘lookback’ exercises and the even more damaging loss of present and future dentists. Regulation in this area seems to have been driven by institutional fear of public fear of infection, rather than any scientific evidence or ethical reasoning. (shrink)

In New Philosophy for New Media, Mark Hansen defines the image in digital art in terms that go beyond the merely visual. Arguing that the "digital image" encompasses the entire process by which information is made perceivable, he places the body in a privileged position -- as the agent that filters information in order to create images. By doing so, he counters prevailing notions of technological transcendence and argues for the indispensability of the human in the digital era.Hansen examines new (...) media art and theory in light of Henri Bergson's argument that affection and memory render perception impure -- that we select only those images precisely relevant to our singular form of embodiment. Hansen updates this argument for the digital age, arguing that we filter the information we receive to create images rather than simply receiving images as preexisting technical forms. This framing function yields what Hansen calls the "digital image." He argues that this new "embodied" status of the frame corresponds directly to the digital revolution: a digitized image is not a fixed representation of reality, but is defined by its complete flexibility and accessibility. It is not just that the interactivity of new media turns viewers into users; the image itself has become the body's process of perceiving it.To illustrate his account of how the body filters information in order to create images, Hansen focuses on new media artists who follow a "Bergsonist vocation"; through concrete engagement with the work of artists like Jeffrey Shaw, Douglas Gordon, and Bill Viola, Hansen explores the contemporary aesthetic investment in the affective, bodily basis of vision. The book includes over 70 illustrations from the works of these and many other new media artists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Being a Moral Agent in Shakespeare's ViennaRobert B. PierceIn one sense we are all moral agents because we make decisions that in some degree take account of what we think we should do and what sorts of selves we want to be. But the problem of moral agency as more than just a theoretical set of philosophical issues, as the lived experience of acting morally in a contingent world, (...) is especially acute for those who set out deliberately to try to uphold some moral ideal, for the idealist in that popular sense of the term. In describing moral agency, philosophers may tend to exaggerate the importance of reflective rationality in the human task of being moral, elevating their own habits of mind into the apex of human striving, but at least the experience of the intellectual idealist is of a special kind, and as such it is an endlessly fascinating subject for artistic contemplation in fiction and drama. That interest raises the issue of what kind of text a philosophical play or novel is. Does it constitute a kind of argument for some set of ideas? Does it show how those ideas play out in lived experience? Or are there other possible ways for a text to count as philosophical?One may also ask why Shakespeare is a good subject for such an enquiry. He is not first and foremost a dramatist of ideas. Bernard Shaw and Tom Stoppard, for example, are far more likely to dramatize the encounter of ideas than he; but for a few years after 1599 or so, beginning with the creation of Brutus, Shakespeare seems to have devoted considerable attention to portraying how ideas impinge on the human experience, and especially to studying moral idealists. Leonato may doubt the importance of philosophical moralizing when he protests that "there was never yet philosopher / That could endure the toothache patiently" (Much Ado 5.1.35–36),1 but in Julius Caesar Brutus is determined to cure the toothaches of the Roman political world by the power [End Page 267] of thought and to govern his own life by the precepts of Stoicism. A group of Shakespeare's plays over the next few years are unusually idea-centered for him and are especially concerned with characters who try to apply moral ideas in the world. Hamlet with its intellectual protagonist comes to mind of course, but perhaps the most systematic exploration of idealists trying to live by their ideas is Measure for Measure. Angelo, Isabella, and the Duke set out on that project in a world that the play analytically divides into four environments for their moral testing: the court, the convent, the tavern-brothel, and the prison.The dramatic richness of this topic of practical ethics lies in how terribly difficult it is to live by a morality worthy of respect. Most of us share the admiration for Brutus's idealism in Antony's tribute, "This was the noblest Roman of them all" (5.5.68), but we may also share the irony, even contempt, in the sarcastic catchphrase of his oration, "Brutus is an honorable man" (3.2.84 and following). The tragedy of Brutus's fate emerges from the difficulties of living out any idealism in our tangled and terribly imperfect world. First, moral principles like the categorical imperative and the Golden Rule, admired character traits like constancy and benevolence, even intuitions (or, as it may be, divine inspirations) about duty do not apply themselves automatically and unambiguously to a decision how to act in a specific situation.2 What does treating human beings as ends, not means entail in your quotidian dealings with your wife, your boss, the dealer who sells you a newspaper? Second, rival values may conflict with a good you are trying to uphold. How can you devote yourself to your work and also give your family the love and attention they need? Third, the demands of the ideal may extend past the limits of your will power or even attention. How many teachers are as patient and understanding of the eightieth student paper as of the first? And, finally, living up to an ideal can be painful... (shrink)

McKillop explores the thought of a number of English-Canadian thinkers from the 1860s to the 1920s, decades that saw Canada’s entry into the modern age.

For the role of utilitarianism in the ethics of war and peace, Shaw suggests there is a Utilitarian War Principle (UWP) and argues that the principles of the just war theory should be treated as intermediate principles that are subordinated to UWP. He also argues that the state should be the primary legitimate authority to wage war and holder of the right of national defense. I argue that the utilitarian approach should be specifically linked with contingent pacifism, a new (...) understanding of pacifism from within the just war tradition, and the utilitarian contingent pacifism only endorses individual self-defense but not national defense. This finding is not only theoretically important but has practical implications for the debate on Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. Utilitarian contingent pacifism supports the idealist position that Article 9 is morally significant because it makes Japan a pioneer of the new kind of pacifism. (shrink)

A book chapter for the volume Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope: Experiencing the Twin Disasters of COVID-19 and Climate Change using Nietzsche's philosophy and primarily based on archival research done by William A. B. Parkhurst.

This chapter contains sections titled: Philosophies and Philosophers Peters' Authenticity Why Value Authenicity? An Apparent Paradox: Peters' Expressed Disdain for Authenticity Conclusion References.

In The Global Financial Crisis, contributors argue that the complexity of the Global Financial Crisis challenges researchers to offer more comprehensive explanations by extending the scope and range of their traditional investigations.

This book is a study of the second-edition version of the 'Transcendental Deduction', which is one of the most important and obscure sections of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. By way of a close analysis of the B-Deduction, Adam Dickerson makes the distinctive claim that the Deduction is crucially concerned with the problem of making intelligible the unity possessed by complex representations - a problem that is the representationalist parallel of the semantic problem of the unity of the proposition. Along (...) the way he discusses most of the key themes in Kant's theory of knowledge, including the nature of thought and representation, the notion of objectivity, and the way in which the mind structures our experience of the world. (shrink)

Concentrating on the thought of Canada's major scientists, philosophers, and clerics - men such as William Dawson and Daniel Wilson, John Watson and W.D. LeSeur, G.M. Grant and Salem Bland - A Disciplined Intelligence begins by reconstructing the central strands of intellectual and moral orthodoxy prevalent in Anglo-Canadian colleges on the eve of the Darwinian revolution. These include Scottish common sense philosophy and the natural theology of William Paley. The destructive impact of evolutionary ideas on that orthodoxy and the major (...) exponents of the new forms of social evolution - Spencerian and Hegelian alike - are examined in detail. By the twentieth century the centre of Anglo-Canadian thought had been transformed by what had become a new, evolutionary orthodoxy. The legacy of this triumphant intellectual movement, British idealism, was immense. It helped to destroy Protestant denominationalism, provide the philosophical core of the social gospel movement, and constitute a major force behind the creation of the United Church of Canada. Throughout the nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth, however, the moral imperative in Anglo-Canadian thought remained a constant presence. (shrink)

The Groningen protocol allows for the euthanasia of severely ill newborns with a hopeless prognosis and unbearable suffering. We understand the impetus for such a protocol but have moral and ethical concerns with it. Advocates for euthanasia in adults have relied on the concept of human autonomy, which is lacking in the case of infants. In addition, biases can potentially influence the decision making of both parents and physicians. It is also very difficult to weigh the element of quality of (...) life on the will to live. We feel an important line has been crossed if the international medical community consents to the active euthanasia of severely ill infants and are concerned about the extension of the policy to other at risk groups. (shrink)