Since Mill's seminal work On Liberty, philosophers and political theorists have accepted that we should respect the decisions of individual agents when those decisions affect no one other than themselves. Indeed, to respect autonomy is often understood to be the chief way to bear witness to the intrinsic value of persons. In this book, Sarah Conly rejects the idea of autonomy as inviolable. Drawing on sources from behavioural economics and social psychology, she argues that we are so often irrational in (...) making our decisions that our autonomous choices often undercut the achievement of our own goals. Thus in many cases it would advance our goals more effectively if government were to prevent us from acting in accordance with our decisions. Her argument challenges widely held views of moral agency, democratic values and the public/private distinction, and will interest readers in ethics, political philosophy, political theory and philosophy of law. (shrink)

A compelling argument for the morality of limitations on procreation in lessening the harmful environmental effects of unchecked populationWe live in a world where a burgeoning global population has started to have a major and destructive environmental impact. The results, including climate change and the struggle for limited resources, appear to be inevitable aspects of a difficult future. Mandatory population control might be a possible last resort to combat this problem, but is also a potentially immoral and undesirable violation of (...) human rights. Since so many view procreation as an essential component of the right to personal happiness and autonomy, the dominant view remains that the government does not have the right to impose these restrictions on its own citizens, for the sake of future people who have yet to exist.Sarah Conly is first to make the contentious argument that not only is it wrong to have more than one child in the face of such concerns, we do not even retain the right to do so. In One Child, Conly argues that autonomy and personal rights are not unlimited, especially if one's body may cause harm to anyone, and that the government has a moral obligation to protect both current and future citizens. Conly gives readers a thought-provoking and accessible exposure to the problem of population growth and develops a credible view of what our moral obligations really are, to generations present and future. (shrink)

I argue that it can be morally permissible to coerce people into doing what is good for their own health. I discuss recent initiatives in New York City that are designed to take away certain unhealthy options from local citizens, and argue that this does not impose on them in unjustifiable ways. Good paternalistic measures are designed to promote people's long-term goals, and to prevent them from making short-term decisions that interfere with reaching those, and New York's attempts to ban (...) the sale of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces and the use of trans fats fall within those parameters. Given our tendency to cognitive bias, we need help in making choices that truly instantiate our values. (shrink)

In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the innocent Tess is the object of Alec d’Urberville’s dishonorable intentions. Alec uses every wile he can think of to seduce the poor and ignorant Tess, who works keeping hens in his mother’s house: he flatters her, he impresses her with a show of wealth, he gives help to her family to win her gratitude, and he reacts with irritation and indignation when she nonetheless continues to repulse his advances, causing her to feel shame at (...) her own ingratitude and confusion as to what is right. Tess, anchored both by her own sense of virtue and her distrust of Alec’s character, continues to hold out until one fatal night when, through Alec’s machinations, they are lost together in a wood. At Tess’s insistence Alec leaves her to scout out the path home. When he returns, he finds her asleep under a tree. Hardy does not go into detail at this critical juncture. Rather, he reflects “why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order.”. (shrink)

The right to health care is a right to care that is not too costly to the provider, considering the benefits it conveys, and is effective in bringing about the level of health needed for a good human life, not necessarily the best health possible. These considerations suggest that, where possible, society has an obligation to provide preventive health care, which is both low cost and effective, and that health care regulations should promote citizens’ engagement in reasonable preventive health care (...) practices. (shrink)

Too often, we as individuals do things that harm us, that seriously interfere with our being able to live in the way that we want. We eat food that makes us obese, that promotes diabetes, heart failure and other serious illness, while at the same time, we want to live long and healthy lives. Too many of us smoke cigarettes, even while acknowledging we wish we had never begun. We behave in ways that undercut our ability to reach some of (...) our most valued goals, despite education and despite incentives to choose the right thing. What should be done?If I were to try to harm someone else in a way that alters his future seriously and perhaps irrevocably for the worse, I would be stopped. When it comes to hurting myself, though, we have a common belief that it is wrong to interfere, even if I foresee that I will very much regret what I have done, often when it is too late to fix what I have let happen. I think this makes no sense. If it is permissible, even obligatory, to stop me when I do something that seriously interferes with someone else's chances of achieving the life he wants, I think …. (shrink)

I am grateful to the Journal of Medical Ethics for asking these critics to discuss my book, and am grateful to each of the critics themselves for raising interesting and often difficult issues for me to think about.Alan Wertheimer makes a number of good points. One of the most significant, to me, is how paternalism might function at what I will call an institutional level. In my book, I endorse paternalistic actions by the state, when the cost benefit analysis justifies (...) that. I have not supported paternalistic interventions by private individuals, though. For one thing, private individuals will make decisions without public input, and without their justification being examined by experts in the field, and for these reasons they are too likely to make mistakes as to when intervention is appropriate. For another, the interventions by random individuals haranguing us about our failure to eat our broccoli is likely to drive us crazy—unexpected interference from people with no particular authority will give us just that sense of harassment I say paternalists need to avoid.However, between the public, authorised actions of a democratic state and the private actions of individuals with no authority lies the significant area of non-state institutions. Such institutions develop regulations and standards their members are expected to act in accordance with, and these in turn can have a significant impact on private persons. Of course, there have also been legal actions, notably court decisions, that have played a role here, but much of the specific interpretation of things like consent has been determined by the medical community developing what it believes to be an appropriate ethic for itself. And we know, here, that in recent years there has been a movement away from the paternalism that was once common, and a reorientation towards respect for …. (shrink)

Bryan Hall is dean of the College of Contemporary Liberal Studies and Professor of Liberal Arts at Regis University, USA. An Ethical Guidebook to the Zombie Apocalypse, his first foray into fiction...

It has apparently become fashionable of late to criticize utilitarianism for what is thought to be, in a word, its insensitivity. Utilitarianism is said to ignore the complexities of character of its agents, and because of this to impose upon them a burden they cannot well bear—a failure which, in the end, renders the adoption of the utilitarian goal fundamentally unappealing, since the more utilitarian agents try to maximize utility the more happiness is destroyed. More traditional criticisms have, of course, (...) centered around the issue of rights, obligations, and justice. The claim that utilitarianism must tolerate such unappealing practices as the punishment of the innocent has led many to reject it. At the same time, of course, perhaps just as many have defended it, demonstrating that no form of utilitarianism would allow much of this; some forms would allow none of it; and that lastly, and most importantly, it is question-begging to reject the theory for failing to acknowledge the existence of a thing when it is the very aim of that theory to call that existence into question. The debate over justice, although stirring, has often seemed destined to end in stale-mate. (shrink)

This is a really good book. Brettschneider’s When the State Speaks is both provocative and persuasive, resolving a stubborn conflict within democratic theory in a way many will initially reject, but which he argues for so effectively that, by the end, the controversial appears the commonsensical.The problem Brettschneider addresses is one with which we are all familiar. In democracies we believe in the right to free speech. We believe that this right is implied by the underlying principles of democracy, and (...) believe that the exercise of this right is essential for democracy to function. We are presented with a conflict when some people use their right to free speech to advocate values that are contradictory to democracy: to argue that not everyone should be allowed to speak, to argue that not all citizens are equal, to argue that some people should be discriminated against for reasons of race, religion, sex, or other distinctions that, in a democracy, we hold to be irrelevant. The probl. (shrink)

Critics have argued that utilitarians, by the very nature of the system they endorse, cannot maintain their integrity; and that they cannot, in the end, be individuals of the sort human beings want to be. In my dissertation I explore this criticism and argue that utilitarianism need not endanger integrity, that it need not undercut autonomy, and that it need not deny individuality of any sort. ;Bernard Williams is the major proponent of this criticism. Williams argues that a utilitarian cannot (...) maintain the commitment to projects and principles which is necessary for a person to be an individual. He cannot have what Williams calls "ground projects," projects which are so central to him that they are what give point to his life. The reasons Williams gives for this are varied, and the connections between his various criticisms are not always clear. In the thesis I first analyze the arguments Williams uses against utilitarianism. I show that Williams' arguments that a utilitarian cannot have ground projects depends on a false assumption about the emotional attachment required for a person to be committed to his projects in a way that individuates. I argue that Williams demands an emotional attachment that blinds one to rational consideration, in a way that we will find unacceptable. ;Williams offers an account of individuality which claims that utilitarianism does not allow the proper sort of emotional attachment to projects because it is too necessarily rational a system. W. D. Falk, on the contrary, offers a theory which if correct will show utilitarianism to be an insufficiently rational system. Falk argues that any moral system which declares that there are universal moral rules by which all people's behavior should be regulated undercuts the autonomy of the agents to whom it dictates. If one is to be autonomous, one must do only what one has reason to do. An agent has reason to do something only if he would be motivated to do it upon reflection. If utilitarianism does not motivate some particular agent, that agent, in order to preserve rationality and autonomy, ought not to follow utilitarianism. ;In response to these criticisms I suggest a more plausible notion of individuality which requires neither irrational emotional attachment nor Falk's subjective standard of rational choice. I then advocate a modified form of utilitarianism which does not pose the dangers to individuality which traditional forms of utilitarianism may. In this version, we broaden the notion of utility so that our evaluative beliefs are of special importance in our determination of what things have utility. When utility-maximization is construed in this way it does not pose special dangers for individuality. (shrink)

De Marco and colleagues claim that the standard account of invasiveness as commonly encountered ‘...does not capture all uses of the term in relation to medical interventions 1 ’. This is open to challenge. Their first example is ‘non-invasive prenatal testing’. Because it involves puncturing the skin to obtain blood, De Marco _et al_ take this as an example of how an incision or insertion is not sufficient to make an intervention invasive; here is a procedure that involves an incision, (...) but it is regarded as non-invasive. However, this ignores the context, and the term should really be understood in reference to the fetus. It is hard to believe healthcare professionals regard taking blood to measure, for example, ferritin levels as invasive but taking blood to look for fragments of fetal DNA as not. If anyone uses the term thinking it is not invasive to the mother, the... (shrink)

Abstracct The present article expands our empirical and theoretical knowledge of conative animal calls (CACs) in the languages of the world. By drawing on canonical typology and prototype theory – and by contrasting the original evidence related to the category of CACs in Arusa Maasai with the evidence concerning CACs in other languages that is currently available in scholarship – the authors design a cross-linguistic prototype of a CAC and enumerate its 18 prototypical non-formal (semantic-pragmatic) and formal (phonetic, morphological, and (...) syntactic) features. (shrink)

This essay offers an overview of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's distinct theology of conformation in Christ. His work is unique both in form and content. Formally, Bonhoeffer, as a systematic theologian, emphasizes doctrinal relationships as well as biblical exegesis. This leads him to develop a distinct content of Christian formation. This essay investigates how he works and the specific benefits of an exhaustive theological accounting of formation in Christ. To do this, this essay investigates Bonhoeffer's “upstream” theological commitments, beginning with anthropology, in (...) order to illumine his distinct starting position. These are then put into conversation with doctrines of sanctification and holiness to draw attention to their import for Christian formation. It will then review Bonhoeffer's unique understanding of conformation in Christ and what it means for Christ to take form among the community. All of this will be done in order to place him in conversation with more dominant models of formation and look forward to how his theology might push the current dialogue further. (shrink)

Philosophical Dilemmas: A Pro and Con Introduction to the Major Questions, 2/e, is a lucidly written and comprehensive introduction to philosophy featuring sixty brief essays arranged in pairs. Each pair answers one of the standard philosophical questions, such as "Does God exist?" or "Is morality relative?," with affirmative and negative responses. Each essay takes a definite stand and promotes it vigorously, creating a sharp contrast between the two positions and giving each abstract theory a more personal and believable "voice." While (...) the essays often employ traditional arguments of great philosophers, they present the ideas in contemporary language with vivid examples. The accessible style and conflicting answers encourage students to examine the different positions and to think carefully about which essay makes the stronger case. While other textbooks present a series of excerpts and theories without attempting to coordinate them into a larger picture, Philosophical Dilemmas teaches students about the process of thinking philosophically and encourages them to construct their own coherent worldviews. This second edition features new sections on race, gender, euthanasia, and Buddhist philosophy, showing students how philosophy applies to issues that they may encounter in their own lives. The text incorporates numerous pedagogical features including a list of historical parallels, key terms, chapter summaries, a glossary, an introduction to each issue, and critical questions following each essay. Brief sections throughout the book describe numerous critical thinking techniques demonstrated by the essays. An annotated bibliography of historical examples for each issue and useful lists of contemporary sources further enhance the text's utility. An Instructor's Manual, including chapter summaries, writing assignments, and test questions, is available. (shrink)

Philosophical Dilemmas: A Pro and Con Introduction to the Major Questions and Philosophers, Fourth Edition, outlines the classic arguments made by philosophers through the ages. It features sixty-three brief topical essays by author Phil Washburn organized around thirty-one fundamental philosophical questions like "Does God exist?" "Is morality relative?" and "Are we free?" Each essay takes a definite stand and promotes it vigorously, creating a sharp contrast between the two positions and giving each abstract theory a more personal and believable "voice." (...) The accessible writing style and conflicting answers encourage students to examine the different positions and to think carefully about which essay makes the stronger case. This fourth edition, a major revision, now enriches the discussion of each philosophical question by adding fifty-four brief essays--two in each chapter--on great philosophers who held conflicting viewpoints on the issues covered. Additionally, the chapters have been rearranged so that these essays and the philosophers discussed appear in approximate chronological order, from Plato and Protagoras to Wittgenstein and Searle. The text is enhanced by numerous pedagogical features including an introduction to each issue, key terms, chapter summaries, study questions after each essay, chronologies, a glossary, and an appendix on how to write an essay. A Companion Website at www.oup.com/us/washburn contains online sources and self-test questions for students and numerous instructor resources: introductions to the issues; summaries of the topical essays; summary points, PowerPoint-based slides, and test questions for the historical essays; answers to the critical questions that follow each essay; test questions on the topical essays; suggestions for class discussions; and a list of online resources. (shrink)

Now in a third edition, Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings is a highly acclaimed, topically organized collection that covers five major areas of philosophy--theory of knowledge, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, freedom and determinism, and moral philosophy. Editor Louis P. Pojman enhances the text's topical organization by arranging the selections into a pro/con format to help students better understand opposing arguments. He also includes accessible introductions to each chapter, subsection, and individual reading, a unique feature for an (...) anthology of this depth. While the book focuses on a compelling sampling of classical material--including selections from Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant--it also incorporates some of philosophy's best twentieth-century and contemporary work, featuring articles by Bertrand Russell, Richard Taylor, John Searle, Thomas Nagel, and others. This third edition contains an expanded glossary, more extensive section introductions, and twelve new selections: Karl Popper: "Epistemology without a Knowing Subject" Richard Rorty: "Dismantling Truth: Solidarity Versus Objectivity" Daniel Dennett: "Postmodernism and Truth" Bruce Russell: "The Problem of Evil: Too Much Suffering" David Chalmers: "Against Materialism: Can Consciousness Be Reductively Explained?" Baron Paul Henri d'Holbach: "A Defense of Determinism" Michael Levin: "A Compatibilist Defense of Moral Responsibility" Plato: Socratic Morality: "Crito" Herodotus: "Custom Is King" J. L. Mackie: "The Subjectivity of Values" Louis P. Pojman: "A Critique of Mackie's Theory of Moral Subjectivism" Thomas Nagel: "Moral Luck". (shrink)

Remote work became the new normal during COVID-19 as a response to restrictions imposed by governments across the globe. Therefore, remote work’s impact on employee outcomes, well-being, and psychological health has become a serious concern. However, the knowledge about the mechanisms and outcomes of remote work is still limited. In this study, we expect remote work to be negatively related to bullying and assume that bullying will mediate remote work’s impact on work engagement and loneliness. To test our hypothetical model, (...) we applied a cross-sectional design using data from a large representative sample of 1,511 Norwegian workers. The data were collected in September 2021 during a period of COVID-19 restrictions in Norway. The results confirmed our hypotheses: remote work was positively related to loneliness and work engagement but negatively related to bullying. Further, bullying was positively related to loneliness and negatively related to work engagement. Moreover, bullying was also found to play a partial mediating role, supporting our hypothesis. This study suggests that remote work is related to both positive and negative mechanisms in the workplace. Remote work can potentially reduce bullying and have a protective function in preventing bullying. However, since remote work has positive relations with both loneliness and work engagement, this study illustrates that organizations should be cautious and perhaps consider a moderate level of remote work. Hence, the results have several implications for HR policies and management. (shrink)

In their recent article, Porsdam Mann et al propose to share biomedical research data more widely, securely and efficiently using blockchain technologies. 1 They present compelling arguments for how the blockchain presents both a technological innovation, and a deontologically grounded policy innovation to traditional research consent. Their proposal can be read in conversation with a rich body of evidence to suggest current consent processes are problematic on at least one of tripartite bases in biomedical research: that it be fully informed. (...) This response attempts to further the author’s discussion of social justice discourse in, and of their proposed prosent model to enhance engagement among under-represented and vulnerable populations in research, specifically. Motivating this response is the view that advancing technological capabilities is no doubt necessary, but on its own insufficient to reinvigorate distributive, procedural and social justice as guiding principles for con/prosent processes. I offer three pros and cons to consider in effort to deepen the model’s commitments to social justice to historically marginalised groups in the biomedical research enterprise. (shrink)

This research addresses a lack of evidence on the positive and negative health outcomes of competitive online gaming and esports, particularly among young people and adolescents. Well-being outcomes, along with mitigation strategies were measured through a cross sectional survey of Australian gamers and non-gamers aged between 12 and 24 years, and parents of the 12–17-year-olds surveyed. Adverse health consequences were associated with heavy gaming, more so than light/casual gaming, suggesting that interventions that target moderated engagement could be effective. It provides (...) timely insights in an online gaming landscape that has rapidly evolved over the past decade, and particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, to include the hyper-connected, highly commercialized and rapidly growing online gaming and esports sector. (shrink)

Sarah Conly defends paternalistic public health policies, such as New York City’s soft drink ban, on the grounds that they promote values that people accept but have difficulty realizing, owing to their cognitive biases. In this commentary, I criticize Conly’s defense of the soft drink ban and offer my own view of the justification for paternalistic food and beverage policies. I propose that paternalistic government restrictions on food and beverage choices should address a significant health problem pertaining to a specific (...) type or class of food or beverage. There should also be substantial evidence that the restrictions are likely to be effective at dealing with the problem and that alternative ways of dealing with it, which do not involve coercion, are likely to be ineffective. (shrink)

Here’s what Nicod [23] said about instantial confirmation: Consider the formula or the law: A entails B. How can a particular proposition, or more briefly, a fact, affect its probability? If this fact consists of the presence of B in a case of A, it is favourable to the law . . . on the contrary, if it consists of the absence of B in a case of A, it is unfavourable to this law.

This article provides a critical discussion of the problems raised by Kant’s characterization of reason as having ‘needs’ and ‘interests’. The first part presents two examples of arguments in which this conative characterization of reason plays a crucial role. The rest of the article consists of a discussion of four different interpretations of Kant's talk of reason as having needs and interests. Having identified a number of problems with literal interpretations of the conative characterization of reason, I examine whether a (...) metaphorical reading, suggested by several commentators, can solve these problems. I argue that it is impossible to regard the conative terms in which Kant describes reason as merely decorative metaphors, and that they are better understood as cases of ‛symbolic exhibition' in Kant's own sense. (shrink)

Recent philosophical attention to climate models has highlighted their weaknesses and uncertainties. Here I address the ways that models gain support through observational data. I review examples of model fit, variety of evidence, and independent support for aspects of the models, contrasting my analysis with that of other philosophers. I also investigate model robustness, which often emerges when comparing climate models simulating the same time period or set of conditions. Starting from Michael Weisberg’s analysis of robustness, I conclude that his (...) approach involves a version of reasoning from variety of evidence, enabling this robustness to be a confirmatory virtue.. (shrink)

This article provides a critical analysis of the manner in which prostitution and trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation was ‘framed’ by official discourses in order to support the reforms in England and Wales contained within the Policing and Crime Act 2009. Drawing upon the recent work of Judith Butler, emphasis will be placed on how the schema of the vulnerable prostitute was fundamental to invoking emotional affects, which justified certain political effects, especially the move towards criminalising the purchase (...) of sexual services. However, on closer analysis the article will uncover an agenda influenced by law and order/morality, immigration and a ‘fear of the enemy’. Furthermore, it will be argued that New Labour’s framing of the problematic enabled the State to avoid dealing with the more difficult, but more urgent, issues of the differential distribution of wealth, precarity and the engendering of an ethical and global responsibility for the other. (shrink)

There are too many people on the planet. This isn’t a popular thing to say, but it’s becoming more and more obvious that it’s true, and that we need to do something to address it. Even in our radically unjust world, where billions of people do not have adequate access to food, water, energy, and other resources, we’re still living unsustainably—overcharging our ecological credit card and torching the climate. But discussing the link between these environmental problems and the population is (...) uncomfortable, because many people believe that procreation is an essentially private act that is morally and politically off-limits. In her new book, One Child, Sarah Conly argues that this belief is false: If... (shrink)

El derecho a migrar, como el derecho a la salud del migrante, se encuentran reconocidos en la Ley de Migraciones Nro. 25871/2003 de Argentina. Dicha ley constituye un avance legislativo en derechos humanos; resultado de un largo proceso constituyente, deliberativo, que dio lugar a un modelo inclusivo de migración sin precedentes internacionales en su momento. Sin embargo, recientemente asistimos a un giro en políticas migratorias (DNU 70/2017). Como consecuencia, se produce un retroceso en derechos sociales y políticos. En lo que (...) hace al derecho a la salud, la instauración de políticas neoconservadoras (Cobertura Universal de la Salud –CUS-) impulsó leyes provinciales (Ley 6119/2019) destinadas a exigir seguros pagos de salud para migrantes, contrarios a nuestra constitución. El objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar las raíces de éstos cambios en las normativas citadas sobre migraciones y salud; aplicando un marco de justicia social que nos permita comprender, críticamente, cómo la bifurcación de políticas distributivas y de reconocimiento en las mismas legislaciones habilitó el desarrollo de políticas neoconservadoras impuestas a través de decretos autoritarios; cuyas consecuencias trascienden la esfera de los migrantes, haciendo peligrar al mismo sistema de salud argentino como bien público. (shrink)

Scientifi c theories and hypotheses make claims that go well beyond what we can immediately observe. How can we come to know whether such claims are true? The obvious approach is to see what a hypothesis says about the observationally accessible parts of the world. If it gets that wrong, then it must be false; if it gets that right, then it may have some claim to being true. Any sensible a empt to construct a logic that captures how we (...) may come to reasonably believe the falsehood or truth of scientifi c hypotheses must be built on this idea. Philosophers refer to such logics as logics of confi rmation or as confi rmation theories. (shrink)

Anything within the causal economy of the universe is entirely natural, including values, humans themselves, together with their artifacts and products, and lifespans either as presently the case, or else radically extended. Further, normality of itself is no predicator of normativity. In view of this, arguments concerning the appropriate length of life from naturalness or normalness, are akin to the kind of hardened prejudice manifested by Procrustes in his beliefs concerning the appropriate length of beds, and the sleepers therein. Various (...) modern commentators have taken up the suggestion, initiated in the discourse by Williams, using the example of Karel Capek's opera The Makropulos Secret, that we should not seek to extend life because it will end in boredom. For a person‐process that has achieved self‐resolution, and come to a processual end, for a true Makropulos, there would be no passion, no fear, no affect, no boredom, no disvalue, no wailing. (shrink)

A con-reason is a reason which plays a role in motivating and explaining an agent's behaviour, but which the agent takes to count against the course of action taken. Most accounts of motivating reasons in the philosophy of action do not allow such things to exist. In this essay, I pursue two aims. First, I argue that, whatever metaphysical story we tell about the relation between motivating reasons and action, con- reasons need to be acknowledged, as they play an explanatory (...) role not played by pro- reasons. Second, I respond to an argument recently developed by David-Hillel Ruben to the effect that a causal theory of action – still known as ‘the standard story’ – cannot account for con- reasons. His argument attempts to show that a fundamental principle of the causal theory cannot be reconciled with the role con- reasons play in a certain kind of imagined case. I first argue that a causal theorist is not, in fact, committed to the problematic. (shrink)

Patients who have an oncological disease and are in palliative care belong to a group that is often characterized as highly vulnerable, and their participation in clinical trials poses a number of ethical problems. This study is cross-sectional and analytic. In all, 82% of those who took part consider it ethical to conduct research with patients in palliative care, either to help other patients in the future, in the hope of gaining some improvement or due to confidence in the physician-researcher. (...) The wide acceptance to participate in these research studies shows the potential benefits appear to exceed the merely therapeutic ones. Altruism, hoping to improve or the perception of continuing to "fight" the disease are aspects to bear in mind when evaluating respect for the autonomy of the persons involved. (shrink)

El artículo versa sobre la manera islámica de comprender la muerte a partir del análisis de la narración de seis sueños. El Islam clásico concedía especial importancia a los sueños, que desempeñan un papel esencial en el desciframiento del enigma de la muerte y del morir, a partir de narraciones de sueños que tratan de sucesos cotidianos descritos de una manera sencilla, se traslucen cuestiones de la mayor importancia acerca del proceso de la muerte y del más allá. Aunque cada (...) sueño se refiere a un caso individual, el mensaje se dirige a toda la comunidad. Este artículo trata la naturaleza edificante de los mensajes transmitidos por estas narraciones y al mismo tiempo muestra cómo de anécdotas privadas se hace un medio para transmitir el espíritu de la comunidad y establecer o definir al mismo tiempo ese espíritu comunitario. (shrink)