In The Kingdom and the Glory, Giorgio Agamben traces a genealogy of the concept of ‘economy’ through the development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.1 While the more detailed metaphysics of the Trinity—the distinctions between ‘being,’ ‘nature,’ ‘essence,’ and ‘persons’ that drove the debates at Nicea and Chalcedon—were still in the process of development, Agamben argues that the concept of economy formed a kind of ‘placeholder’ for these concepts, holding together the mystery of the Trinity with the seeming (...) ambivalence of the world. Through a series of genealogical twists, this ‘economic’ paradigm in theology turns out to form the basis of modern economic governmentality—the ‘Petersonian’ counterpart to the ‘Schmittian’ shape of modern sovereignty. While Agamben links the language of ‘economy’ in early Trinitarian thought to the problem of the Trinitarian unity, he does so by delinking its use from the economy of salvation. As a result, the later history of the Trinitarian doctrine is characterized (on Agamben’s reading) by an increasing separation of the ‘economy’ and the ‘ontology’ of the Trinity; an inseparable division is opened up in Christian thought between ‘being’ and ‘acting,’ one which haunts Trinitarian doctrine and spills over into the history of Western political, philosophical, and economic thinking. In this paper, I intend to retrace this ‘economic’ lineage, but in order to re-link the questions of the Trinity and salvation; it is clear that the stakes for patristic writers, in working out a Trinitarian theology, were precisely salvation. The lines between heresy and orthodoxy are consistently argued in terms of their relationship to the possibility of salvation—the possibility of a triumph over sin and death. Only once re-situated in this way can the economic ‘theodicy’ of divine administration and the mature formulation of the ‘immanent’ metaphysics of the Trinity be read—as Karl Rahner famously claims—as the same thing. I will proceed first of all by retracing Agamben’s own steps—reconstructing his argument about the centrality of the category of ‘economy’ within Trinitarian theology. Secondly, I will intervene within Agamben’s genealogy at a key juncture, one that is passed over by Agamben’s own text: the Arian controversy. It is with the Arian controversy and the articulation of Nicene Trinitarianism that Agamben locates the break between ‘being’ and ‘activity’ or ‘economy,’ and so it is by re-narrating this controversy that an alternative account of the relationship between these terms in Trinitarian thought can be narrated. Finally, I will draw out a different, intrinsic relationship between Trinitarian ‘being’ and ‘activity’ than the one presumed by Agamben; one in which a relative break is conditioned by a more fundamental soteriological unity. This has, in turn, consequences for how the ‘economic paradigm’—in both its earlier Christian context and in its modern governmental instantiations—operates: the economic-theological paradigm produces the political-theological or ‘ontological’ paradigm of sovereignty to which it is linked. (shrink)

Background/Aim: The law on consent has changed in Scotland with the introduction of the Adults with Incapacity Act 2000. This Act introduces the concept of proxy consent in Scotland. Many patients in intensive care are unable to participate in the decision making process because of their illness and its treatment. It is normal practice to provide relatives with information on the patient’s condition, treatment, and prognosis as a substitute for discussion directly with the patient. The relatives of intensive care patients (...) appeared to believe that they already had the right to consent on behalf of an incapacitated adult. The authors’ aim was to assess the level of knowledge among relatives of intensive care patients of both the old and new law using a structured questionnaire.Methods: The next of kin of 100 consecutive patients completed a structured questionnaire. Each participant had the questions read to them and their answers recorded. Patients were not involved in the study.Results: Few were aware of the changes. Most thought that they previously could give consent on behalf of an incapacitated adult. Only 13% have ever discussed the preferences for life sustaining treatment with the patient but 84% felt that they could accurately represent the patient’s wishes.Conclusions: There appeared to be a lack of public awareness of the impending changes. The effectiveness of the Act at improving the care of the mentally incapacitated adult will depend largely on how successful it is at encouraging communication and decision making in advance of incapacity occurring. (shrink)

According to the evidence-relative view of liability to defensive harm, a person is so liable if and only if she acts in a way that provides sufficient evidence to justify a (putative) victim’s belief that the person poses a threat of unjust harm, which may or may not be the case. Bas van der Vossen defends this position by analyzing, in relation to a version of Frank Jackson’s famous drug example, a case in which a putative murderer is killed (...) by a putative victim. Van der Vossen submits that the putative murderer is liable to be killed, which is a verdict that can be accommodated only by the evidence-relative view. We argue that Van der Vossen’s attempt to ground the evidence-relative view of liability to defensive harm fails. We also argue that this notion should be construed in fact-relative terms. This, however, does not mean that the notion of permissibility should necessarily also be understood in such a way in all possible cases. So, we explore whether the evidence-relative view of permissibility may be used in some contexts. (shrink)

Borowski ("identity and personal identity," "mind", Volume lxxxv, Number 340, October 1976, Pages 481-502) claims that if x's brain were successfully transplanted into y's body, Our judgment of who the survivor z really is would be relative to our interest in z: for example, If the body y is that of an athlete or film actor, We would say it is y if we are athletic coaches or film directors. This view completely overlooks that acting talents and athletic skills (...) are also stored in the brain. If my brain controlled pele's body, Or laurence olivier's, I could not play football or act well. (shrink)

A theory is agent neutral if it gives every agent the same set of aims and agent relative otherwise. Most philosophers take act-consequentialism to be agent-neutral, but I argue that at the heart of consequentialism is the idea that all acts are morally permissible in virtue of their propensity to promote value and that, given this, it is possible to have a theory that is both agent-relative and act-consequentialist. Furthermore, I demonstrate that agent-relative act-consequentialism can avoid the (...) counterintuitive implications associated with utilitarianism while maintaining the compelling idea that it is never wrong to bring about the best outcome. (shrink)

We standardly believe that people are morally responsible for at least some of their conduct. We think, for example, that we are praiseworthy for some of our deeds and blameworthy for others. Traditionally it has been thought that at least two conditions must be satisfied for a person to be responsible for her intentional actions: a control condition which says, loosely, that the person acts voluntarily; and an epistemic one which requires, roughly, that the person not be relevantly ignorant of (...) what she is doing. -/- In this paper, I shall confine attention to a core element of the epistemic condition. After clarifying this element, I’ll motivate the suggestion that specifically moral goals, concerns, or ideals in the everyday lives of very many of us do not take pride of place. This simple fact, in association with the core epistemic element of responsibility, I believe, reveals that the ‘scope’ of moral responsibility is restricted. Next, I propose and attempt to defend the view that though people are not morally responsible for much of their behaviour in the day-to-day business of living, they are responsible — not just causally — but ‘normatively’ as I shall say, for a good deal of what they do. I shall end by producing a sketch of the concept of ‘normative responsibility’. (shrink)

We standardly believe that people are morally responsible for at least some of their conduct. We think, for example, that we are praiseworthy for some of our deeds and blameworthy for others. Traditionally it has been thought that at least two conditions must be satisfied for a person to be responsible for her intentional actions: a control condition which says, loosely, that the person acts voluntarily; and an epistemic one which requires, roughly, that the person not be relevantly ignorant of (...) what she is doing.In this paper, I shall confine attention to a core element of the epistemic condition. After clarifying this element, I’ll motivate the suggestion that specifically moral goals, concerns, or ideals in the everyday lives of very many of us do not take pride of place. This simple fact, in association with the core epistemic element of responsibility, I believe, reveals that the ‘scope’ of moral responsibility is restricted. Next, I propose and attempt to defend the view that though people are not morally responsible for much of their behaviour in the day-to-day business of living, they are responsible — not just causally — but ‘normatively’ as I shall say, for a good deal of what they do. I shall end by producing a sketch of the concept of ‘normative responsibility’. (shrink)

In this paper I describe and analyze an economic situation involving two competitive organizations. I put forth the argument that because of the systemic nature of decision making relative to managing the requirements of utilizing a descriptive equation that determines how many people an economic system can support, that even if all the players in the situation act ethically, the results will still be harmful, and necessarily so, to the system and to many innocent people. I will demonstrate that (...) harming innocent people is required and morally defensible given the choices available. The best one can do is slow down the increase in disutilities and possibly operate the system within a range of acceptable behavior that minimizes the resulting harm to innocent people, even if we cannot entirely remove this harm. In this context ethics becomes the study of the acceptable as opposed to the preferable. (shrink)

Genetic testing has familial implications. Counsellors find themselves in (moral) conflict between medical confidentiality (towards the patient) and a potential right or even duty to warn at-risk relatives. Legal regulations vary between countries. English literature about German law is scarce. We reviewed the literature of relevant legal cases, focussing on German law, according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. This article aims to familiarise counsellors with their responsibilities, compare the situation between countries and point out (...) legally unresolved areas.According to the German Genetic Diagnostics Act (Gendiagnostikgesetz) in case of an ‘avoidable or treatable’ genetic disorder, geneticists ought to confine themselves to the obligated advice to the patient. Whether a breach of the duty of confidentiality can be justified in exceptional cases by ‘necessity as justification’ for actively informing relatives at risk remains legally unclear. In case of a ‘neither avoidable nor treatable’ genetic disease, geneticists should also refrain from actively informing relatives as the justifiable state of emergency does not permit to break the duty of confidentiality. (shrink)

Attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias -the leading ancient commentator on Aristotle -the Quaestiones exemplify the process through which Aristotle's thought was organized and came to be interpreted as "Aristotelianism." This volume of R.W. Sharples's translation, together with his earlier translation of Quaestiones 1.1-2.15, makes the Quaestiones available in its entirety for the first time in a modern language. The Quaestiones are concerned with problems of physics and metaphysics, psychology and divine providence. Readers interested in Aristotle's psychological views will find the (...) second half of the Quaestiones particularly valuable. Ten of the problems discussed involve issues raised in Aristotle's On the Soul, including the unity of apperception and the transition from first to second actuality in the act of contemplation. An additional twelve problems relate to aspects of physical theory such as infinity, necessity, and potentiality. Quaestio 2.21 concerns divine providence and helps supplement our knowledge of Alexander's position. A study of the Quaestiones also suggests how interpretations of Aristotle were influenced by doctrines of Hellenistic philosophy. Translated first into Arabic and then into Latin, excerpts from the Quaestiones played a significant role in the transmission of ancient Greek philosophy to the medieval world. (shrink)

Some environmental ethicists and economists argue that attributing infinite value to the environment is a good way to represent an absolute obligation to protect it. Others argue against modelling the value of the environment in this way: the assignment of infinite value leads to immense technical and philosophical difficulties that undermine the environmentalist project. First, there is a problem of discrimination: saving a large region of habitat is better than saving a small region; yet if both outcomes have infinite value, (...) then decision theory prescribes indifference. Second, there is a problem of swamping probabilities: an act with a small but positive probability of saving an endangered species appears to be on par with an act that has a high probability of achieving this outcome, since both have infinite expected value. Our paper shows that a relative concept of infinite value can be meaningfully defined, and provides a good model for securing the priority of the natural environment while avoiding the failures noted by sceptics about infinite value. Our claim is not that the relative infinity utility model gets every detail correct, but rather that it provides a rigorous philosophical framework for thinking about decisions affecting the environment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Convention for Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with Regard to the Application of Biology and Biomedicine: Convention on Human Rights and BiomedicineCouncil of EuropePreambleThe Member States of the Council of Europe, the other States and the European Community signatories hereto,Bearing in mind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948;Bearing in mind (...) the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 4 November 1950;Bearing in mind the European Social Charter of 18 October 1961;Bearing in mind the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 16 December 1966;Bearing in mind the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data of 28 January 1981;Bearing also in mind the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 20 November 1989;Considering that the aim of the Council of Europe is the achievement of a greater unity between its members and that one of the methods by which that aim is to be pursued is the maintenance and further realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms;Conscious of the accelerating developments in biology and medicine;Convinced of the need to respect the human being both as an individual and as a member of the human species and recognising the importance of ensuring the dignity of the human being; [End Page 277]Conscious that the misuse of biology and medicine may lead to acts endangering human dignity;Affirming that progress in biology and medicine should be used for the benefit of present and future generations;Stressing the need for international co-operation so that all humanity may enjoy the benefits of biology and medicine;Recognising the importance of promoting a public debate on the questions posed by the application of biology and medicine and the responses to be given thereto;Wishing to remind all members of society of their rights and responsibilities;Taking account of the work of the Parliamentary Assembly in this field, including Recommendation 1160 (1991) on the preparation of a Convention on bioethics;Resolving to take such measures as are necessary to safeguard human dignity and the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual with regard to the application of biology and medicine;Have agreed as follows:Chapter IGeneral provisionsArticle 1. (Purpose and object)Parties to this Convention shall protect the dignity and identity of all human beings and guarantee everyone, without discrimination, respect for their integrity and other rights and fundamental freedoms with regard to the application of biology and medicine.Each Party shall take in its internal law the necessary measures to give effect to the provisions of this Convention.Article 2. (Primacy of the human being)The interests and welfare of the human being shall prevail over the sole interest of society or science.Article 3. (Equitable access to health care)Parties, taking into account health needs and available resources, shall take appropriate measures with a view to providing, within their jurisdiction, equitable access to health care of appropriate quality. [End Page 278]Article 4. (Professional standards)Any intervention in the health field, including research, must be carried out in accordance with relevant professional obligations and standards.Chapter IIConsentArticle 5. (General rule)An intervention in the health field may only be carried out after the person concerned has given free and informed consent to it.This person shall beforehand be given appropriate information as to the purpose and nature of the intervention as well as on its consequences and risks.The person concerned may freely withdraw consent at any time.Article 6. (Protection of persons not able to consent)1. Subject to Articles 17 and 20 below, an intervention may only be carried out on a person who does not have the capacity to consent, for his or her direct benefit.2. Where, according to law, a minor does not have the capacity to consent to an intervention, the intervention may only be carried out with the authorisation of his or her representative or an authority or a person or... (shrink)

This essay looks at the relationship between formative aesthetics, language and the historical anticipation that begins with Antonio Gramsci's discussion of Kant's idea of noumenon. In Gramsci both education (as formazione) and aesthetics stem from a concern for power in terms of the hegemonic relations that are inherent to history as a political horizon. The title cites Gramci's suggestion that Kant's noumenon should be read as a proviso set apart by a ‘relative ignorance’ of reality [‘relativa ignoranza’ della realtà] (...) to be resolved by a future science. Yet far from another epistemological layering, a future science must also resolve those hegemonic relations of power that emerge from formation as a political act figured in the agonistic character of language as lingua and linguaggio. Further down the lane of our ‘relative ignorance’ we are confronted by a Post-Taylorist condition that precludes any false hopes of a reversal of society's educational, economic and political misfortunes. Yet, while Post-Taylorism confirms that this state of affairs is irreversible, a deeper inquiry into the aesthetic-agonistic character of formation could afford us answers that are in no way solutions but, because adept to struggle and are characteristically aesthetical, might provide an understanding of the logic of irreversibility. Because it remains conscious of its ‘relative ignorance’, this assumption offers a hopeful approach that comes to us sideways; thereby avoiding the predicament of what Lyotard and Thébaud regarded as a condition where ‘the prescriptive is derived from the descriptive’. (shrink)

Saying so can make it so, J. L. Austin taught us long ago. Famously, John Searle has developed this Austinian insight in an account of the construction of institutional reality. Searle maintains that so-called Status Function Declarations, allegedly having a “double direction of fit”, synchronically create worldly institutional facts, corresponding to the propositional content of the declarations. I argue that Searle’s account of the making of institutional reality is in tension with the special theory of relativity—irrespective of whether the account (...) is interpreted as involving causal generation or non-causal grounding of worldly institutional facts—and should be replaced by a more modest theory which interprets the results of Status Function Declarations in terms of mere Cambridge change and institutional truth. I end the paper by indicating the import of this more modest theory for theorizing about the causal potency of institutional phenomena generated by declarations. (shrink)

The quality of doctoral-level biochemistry (N=139), botany (N=83), cellular/molecular biology (N=89), microbiology (N=134), physiology (N=101), and zoology (N=70) programs at United States universities was assessed, using 16 measures. These measures focused on variables related to: (1) program size; (2) characteristics of graduates; (3) reputational factors (scholarly quality of faculty, effectiveness of programs in educating research scholars/scientists, improvement in program quality during the last 5 years); (4) university library size; (5) research support; and (6) publication records. Chapter I discusses prior attempts (...) to assess quality in graduate education, development of the study plans, and the selection of disciplines and programs to be evaluated. Chapter II discusses the methodology used, focusing on each of the assessment measures. Chapters III to VIII present, respectively, findings from the analyses of the biochemistry, botany, cellular/molecular biology, microbiology, physiology, and zoology programs. Chapter IX includes a summary of results, correlations among measures, several additional analyses, and suggestions for future studies. Among the findings reported are those indicating that cellular/molecular biology programs had, on the average, the largest number of faculty and that students in cellular/molecular biology, biology, biochemistry, microbiology, and physiology received a relatively high fraction of financial support. (Survey instruments and supporting documentation are included in appendices.) (JN). (shrink)

This paper is not so much concerned with the question under which circumstances self-defense is justified, but rather with other normative features of self-defense as well as with the source of the self-defense justification. I will argue that the aggressor’s rights-forfeiture alone – and hence the liberty-right of the defender to defend himself – cannot explain the intuitively obvious fact that a prohibition on self-defense would wrong victims of attack. This can only be explained by conceiving of self-defense also as (...) a claim-right. However, I will also argue that a claim-right cannot ground the self-defense justification either. Rather, what grounds the self-defense justification and its particular strength and scope is the fact that self-defense is an act-specific agent-relative prerogative: a defender is allowed to give particularly grave weight to his interest in engaging in self-defense, which distinguishes self-defense from most other acts. This is not the same as saying that he has a right or a liberty to engage in self-defense. Thus, self-defense, understood as a normative concept, is a claim-right, a liberty-right, and an act-specific agent-relative prerogative. (shrink)

NPs with intensional relative clauses such as 'the book John needs to write' pose a significant challenge for semantic theory. Such NPs act like referential terms, yet they do not stand for a particular actual object. This paper will develop a semantic analysis of such NPs on the basis of the notion of a variable object. The analysis avoids a range of difficulties that a more standard analysis based on the notion of an individual concept would face. Most importantly, (...) unlike the latter, the proposed analysis can be carried over NPs such as 'the number of people that fit into the bus', which describe tropes (particularized properties). (shrink)

Clinical biobanks processing data of participants in the European Union fall under the scope of the General Data Protection Regulation, which among others includes requirements for consent. These requirements are further specified by the Article 29 Working Party —an EU advisory body currently known as the European Data Protection Board. Unfortunately, their guidance is cause for some confusion. While the GDPR allows participants to give broad consent for research when specific research purposes are still unknown, the WP29 guidelines suggest that (...) additional consent for specific uses should be obtained in addition to broad consent when this becomes applicable. This discrepancy elicits the question whether clinical biobanks can fail the requirement of consent if they obtain broad consent, but not a specific consent for each biomedical study. We analysed this discrepancy within the framework of contextual integrity, in order to describe the context-relative informational norms that govern information flows in clinical biobanks. However, our analysis demonstrates that there is no uniform set of norms that can be applied to all clinical biobanks. As such, neither the GDPR nor the WP29 guidance can act as a “one size fits all” approach to all clinical biobanks. Rather, differences between clinical biobanks—especially regarding the scientific aims and patient populations—make the case for context-relative norms that determine the appropriate type of consent. (shrink)

Deontic buck-passing aims to analyse deontic properties of acts in terms of reasons. Many authors accept deontic buck-passing, but only few have discussed how to understand the relation between reasons and deontic properties exactly. Justin Snedegar has suggested understanding deontic properties of acts in terms of both reasons and reasons to require: A is required to φ iff A has most reason to φ, and there is most reason to require A to φ. This promising proposal faces two open questions: (...) the question of why there can only be most reason to require A to φ if A has most reason to φ, and the question of what role agent-relative reasons play in generating requirements. In this paper, I address these questions and argue that the key to answering them is to reject evaluative buck-passing and accept a value-based theory of practical reasons instead. The result is a two-level theory of moral explanation: on the first level, practical reasons are explained in terms of appropriate responses to value; on the second level, deontic properties of acts are explained in terms of reasons: reasons to act as well as reasons to require. (shrink)

Principlism, the bioethical theory championed by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, is centered on the four moral principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, respect for autonomy, and justice. Two key processes related to these principles are specification—adding specific content to general principles—and balancing—determining the relative weight of conflicting principles. I argue that both of these processes necessarily involve an appeal to human goods and evils, and therefore require a theory of the good. A significant problem with principlism is that it lacks (...) a theory of the good and consequently does not have an adequate solution to the problems of specification and balancing. My conclusion is that principlism must adopt some account of human well-being in order to be a satisfactory bioethical framework. (shrink)

How do modal expressions determine which possibilities they range over? According to the Modal Anchor Hypothesis (Kratzer in _The language-cognition interface: Actes du 19_ _e_ _congrès international des linguistes_, Libraire Droz, Genève, 179–199, 2013 ), modal expressions determine their domain of quantification from particulars (events, situations, or individuals). This paper presents novel evidence for this hypothesis, focusing on a class of Spanish relative clauses that host verbs inflected in the subjunctive. Subjunctive in Romance is standardly taken to be licensed (...) only in a subset of intensional contexts. However, in our relative clauses, subjunctive is exceptionally licensed in extensional contexts. At the same time, the interpretation of these relative clauses still involves modality, a type of modality that targets the goals of the agent of the main event. We argue that the pattern displayed by these relative clauses follows straightforwardly if subjunctive is associated with a modal operator that, like modal indefinites (Alonso-Ovalle and Menéndez-Benito in _Journal of Semantics_ 35(1):1–41, 2017 ), can project its domain from a volitional event. Overall, our proposal supports the event-based analysis of mood (Kratzer in Evidential mood in attitude and speech reports. Talk delivered at the 1st Syncart Workshop, Siena, July 13, 2016 ; Portner and Rubinstein in _Natural Language Semantics_ 28:343–393, 2020 ) and extends its application beyond attitudinal and modal complements. (shrink)

The relation-theory of mental acts proposes that a mental act is a kind of relative entity founded upon the mind and directed at the object of perception or thought. While most medieval philosophers recognized that there is something importantly relational about thought, they nevertheless rejected the view that mental acts are wholly relations. Rather, the dominant view was that a mental act is either in whole or part an Aristotelian quality added to the mind upon which such a relation (...) to the object can be founded. In this paper, I examine Durand of St.-Pourçain's defense of the relation-theory of mental acts against two objections raised against it: the first from John Duns Scotus, among others, and the second from an anonymous Thomist and Adam Wodeham. -/- . (shrink)

Scheler called “material ethics of value” his own phenomenological ethics. Therefore, to clarify the concept of “value” is the most important step for a good understanding of his phenomenological material ethics of value. In the whole framework of the phenomenological movement, many phenomeno-ogists such as Husserl, Scheler, and N. Hartmann and so on developed their own ethics of value. But we can see the fundamental difference between Husserl’s or Hartmann’s ethics of value and Scheler’s one. The reason for this is (...) that they prescribed “value” differently. In Scheler’s phenomenological material ethics of value, there are two basic formulations of value: the former is the value a priori as material a priori , and the latter, the value being as a ultimately basic form of being . On the one hand, in contrast with Husserl, Scheler regarded value a priori as primal-phenomenon; On the other hand, unlike N. Hartmann, Scheler prescribed value-being as “the relative being of act”. In this sense, Scheler’s phenomenological material ethics of value is founded neither merely on the value a priori in the sense of thing-phenomenology, nor merely on emotional a priori in the sense of the act-phenomenology, but on a “material apriorism”. There are three kinds of a priori in such a “material apriorism”: value a priori, emotional a priori and the relevant a priori between fact and act. (shrink)

Decreasing unintended teenage pregnancy, especially repeat teenage pregnancy, is an important public health goal. Unfortunately, legal barriers in the USA impede this goal as all minors are unable to consent for birth control in 24 states, and only 10 of those states allow consent after the minor has given birth according to state statutory law. Placement of long-acting reversible contraception is one of the most effective methods of preventing rapid repeat pregnancies. However, restrictions are placed on adolescents who may not (...) have the option of parental consent if the parents are unwilling, or not present, to give consent. A predicament arises when healthcare professionals are willing to place the contraceptive for the patient, but cannot due to the restrictions and guidelines outlined by each state. Even though these adolescents are legally viewed as minors, adolescent mothers should be able to consent to the placement of LARC. Notably, adolescents have the legal ability to give consent for the healthcare of their child starting in the prenatal period. I argue that this ability should be extended to include adolescent consent for their own healthcare. Additionally, the procedure to place LARC is relatively low risk and highly effective, which is an opportune situation to allow minors to consent. Allowing adolescents to consent to LARC after delivery is a simple and effective way to decrease rapid repeat pregnancy rates in the USA. All data relevant to the study are included in the article. (shrink)

I sympathetically explore the thesis that God literally forgets sins. I articulate some altruistic God might have for forgetting certain sins. If so, then God may have altruistic reasons to relinquish a great-making trait (omniscience). But according to traditional Anselmian perfect being theology, God is necessarily perfect and so incapable of acting on these altruistic reasons. More broadly, a God who necessarily has all the perfections is a God who is incapable of making a certain kind of sacrifice: God (...) can never make tradeoffs that diminish God’s overall greatness, even when those diminishments are relatively small (like forgetting a particular proposition) and the (altruistic) rewards of making the tradeoff substantial. I argue that God’s inability to make such tradeoffs is not a trivial cost for traditional perfect-being theologians who also believe that God is in loving relationships with creatures. Along the way, I explore the prospects for a less traditional form of perfect being theology, perfect being kenoticism, and different models for divine forgetting. (shrink)

What makes Book Lambda the most important book of Metaphysics is to mention the fundamental substance of being. Therefore, Book Lambda is a book that has been regarded as valuable and has been studied extensively. Arabic translations of this book were in high demand in the Islamic world. We have also considered Arabic metaphysical translations, especially the translation of Book Lambda. The translation you will read is a commentary of the ninth chapter of Book Lambda by Themistius. The Greek (...) original commentary of Lambda was lost, and after the Arabic translation, it was transferred to Latin and Hebrew. However, later parts of the Arabic text were also lost. In this chapter, Themistius comments on the part in which Aristotle discusses the difficulties on the nature of divine intellect and tries to prove that the object of reason, the act of thinking and the object of thinking are the same things. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that maximizing act-consequentialism (MAC)—the theory that holds that agents ought always to act so as to produce the best available state of affairs—can accommodate both agent-centered options and supererogatory acts. Thus I will show that MAC can accommodate the view that agents often have the moral option of either pursuing their own personal interests or sacrificing those interests for the sake of the impersonal good. And I will show that MAC can accommodate the idea that (...) certain acts are supererogatory in the sense of not being morally required even though they are what the agent has most moral reason to do. These two theses are surprising in themselves, but even more surprising is how I arrive at them. I argue that anyone generally concerned to accommodate, in some coherent fashion, our pre-theoretical moral intuitions at both the normative and meta-ethical levels will have to give a certain account of agent-centered options and supererogatory acts and that this account is the very one that allows for the maximizing act-consequentialist to accommodate both. So my paper will not only be of interest to those concerned with the tenability of consequentialism, but also to anyone interested in giving a coherent account of our pre-theoretical moral intuitions. (shrink)

The Treatment Escalation Plan (TEP) was introduced into our trust in an attempt to improve patient involvement and experience of their treatment in hospital and to embrace and clarify a wider remit of treatment options than the Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order currently offers. Our experience suggests that the patient and family are rarely engaged in DNR discussions. This is acutely relevant considering that the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) now obliges these discussions to take place. The TEP is a form (...) that the doctor completes, ideally with the competent patient or close relative, documenting what treatment options would be appropriate if that patient were to become acutely unwell. Ventilation of the lungs, cardiac resuscitation, renal replacement therapy, intravenous fluids and antibiotics are all discussed. The study evaluated patient and relative experiences with the TEP. 55 patients or their relatives were interviewed regarding their experience of the TEP and thoughts regarding the process. 96% of patients and relatives evaluated thought that the TEP was a good idea. Free text comments were all positive and only 34% of patients claimed to feel anxious when completing the form. Following this study, the TEP has been expanded hospital wide and into the community within our trust. Discussions are currently taking place in hospitals within our region to introduce the TEP form into other local trusts. (shrink)

It has recently been shown by Vargas, (4) that the passive coordinate transformations that enter the Robertson test theory of special relativity have to be considered as coordinate transformations in a seven-dimensional space with degenerate metric. It has also been shown by Vargas that the corresponding active coordinate transformations are not equal in general to the passive ones and that the composite active-passive transformations act on a space whose number of dimensions is ten (one-particle case) or larger (more than one (...) particle).In this paper, two different (families of) electrodynamics are constructed in ten-dimensional space upon the coordinate free form of the Maxwell and Lorentz equations. The two possibilities arise from the two different assumptions that one can naturally make with respect to the acceleration fields of charges, when these fields are related to their relativistic counterparts. Both theories present unattractive features, which indicates that the Maxwell-Lorentz framework is unsuitable for the construction of an electrodynamics for the Robertson test theory of the Lorentz transformations. It is argued that this construction would first require the formulation of Maxwell-Lorentz electrodynamics in the form of a connection in Finsler space. If such formulation is possible, the sought generalization would consist in simply changing bases in the tangent spaces of the manifold that supports the connection. In addition, the number of dimensions of the space of the Robertson transformations would be ten, but not greater than ten. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to describe variations in patient participation in decisions about care planning during the final phase of life for a group of gravely ill patients, and how the different actors’ manner of acting promotes or impedes patient participation. Thirty-seven qualitative research interviews were conducted with relatives of the patients. The patients’ participation in the decisions could be categorized into four variations: self-determination, co-determination, delegation and nonparticipation. The manner in which patients, relatives and caregivers acted (...) differed in the respective variations; this seemed either to promote or to impede the patients’ opportunities of participating in the decision making. The possibility for participation seems to be context dependent and affected by many factors such as the dying patient’s personality, the social network, the availability of different forms of care, cultural values, and the extent to which nurses and other caregivers of the different forms of care can and want to support the wishes of the patients and relatives in the decision-making process. (shrink)

There are a number of obstacles to increasing the supply of cadaveric organs for transplantation. These include reluctance on the part of relatives to agree to the so called harvesting of organs from their deceased relative, and the unwillingness of some doctors to approach grieving families and ask consent for this harvesting to take place. In this paper I will focus on the altruistic act of asking that the latter entails, and will argue that failure to acknowledge the personal (...) cost of this act to physicians is having an adverse impact on the supply of organs. I will draw analogies with the almost equally neglected altruistic act of undertaking anatomy dissection and all of the related breaking of societal taboos. I will examine the language used in discussions about increasing organ supply and conclude that the terms cadaveric and harvest are unhelpful in gaining public confidence. A process and vocabulary that openly acknowledges and validates the altruistic acts demanded of all the human beings involved—donors, recipients, their respective relatives, and the health professionals who mediate between them—is needed if the supply of organs is to be increased. (shrink)

It is argued that if, with Dummett, we see assertion as an act governed by conditions of correctness which makes a claim to the effect that these conditions are met, then the conditions of correctness that determine its content must have the impersonal character of a requirement of truth, rather than the speaker-relative character of a requirement of justification or assertibility. For otherwise it would be impossible for different speakers to use the same words to make an assertion with (...) the same content. (shrink)

Einstein knew and accepted some philosophical ideas similar to Bridgman's operationalism, at the time when he developed the theory of relativity. It is possible to detect the influence of those ideas both in the special and the general theories. Some of the basic steps taken by Einstein were essentially operationalistic: they could not be justified without epistemological principles of that kind. The common opinion is held that the special theory of relativity embodied a complete and coherent operational elucidation of physical (...) magnitudes. This paper, however, points out some instances of physical magnitudes used in special relativity – such as the force that acts upon a moving body, its mass and its temperature – that could not be measured. It is claimed that this shows an early empistemological inconsistency in Einstein's work. RESUMO: Einstein conhecia e aceitava idéias filosóficas aparentadas ao operacionalismo de Bridgman na época em que desenvolvia a teoria da relatividade. Pode-se detectar essa influência nas teorias especial e geral da relatividade. Alguns dos passos básicos de Einstein foram essencialmente operacionalistas. Assim, é comum a opinião que supõe ter sido completamente efetuada, na teoria especial, de modo coerente, a elucidação operacional das grandezas físicas. Neste artigo, porém, apresentam-se exemplos de grandezas físicas utilizadas na relatividade especial – como a força que age sobre um corpo em movimento, sua massa e sua temperatura – que não eram mensuráveis. Isso revela uma inconsistência epistemológica no trabalho inicial de Einstein. (shrink)

The philosophical-psychological Lvov-Warsaw School, derived from the philosophical tradition of Franz Brentano, developed his concept of intentionality for many years in an original way. This is particularly evident in Kazimierz Twardowski’s theory of actions and products and Tadeusz Tomaszewski’s theory of action. Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s semantic epistemology is also an important yet unfinished achievement (though less related to the issue of intentionality), in the light of which cognitive processes are organically embedded in cultural artefacts and, more specifically, in language. Despite the (...) extraordinary wealth of the Lvov-Warsaw School’s achievements, the theoretical findings of Twardowski and his disciples allow for the extraction of relatively consistent conclusions regarding the specifics of human cognition. Achievements of the Polish school of psychology seem to be important in the long ongoing discussion on the topic of the nature of cognitive processes and the mind. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to describe variations in patient participation in decisions about care planning during the final phase of life for a group of gravely ill patients, and how the different actors’ manner of acting promotes or impedes patient participation. Thirty-seven qualitative research interviews were conducted with relatives of the patients. The patients’ participation in the decisions could be categorized into four variations: self-determination, co-determination, delegation and nonparticipation. The manner in which patients, relatives and caregivers acted (...) differed in the respective variations; this seemed either to promote or to impede the patients’ opportunities of participating in the decision making. The possibility for participation seems to be context dependent and affected by many factors such as the dying patient’s personality, the social network, the availability of different forms of care, cultural values, and the extent to which nurses and other caregivers of the different forms of care can and want to support the wishes of the patients and relatives in the decision-making process. (shrink)

Fichte assigns ‘intellectual intuition’ a new meaning after Kant. But in 1799, his doctrine of intellectual intuition is publicly deemed indefensible by Kant and nihilistic by Jacobi. I propose to defend Fichte’s doctrine against these charges, leaving aside whether it captures what he calls the ‘spirit’ of transcendental idealism. I do so by articulating three problems that motivate Fichte’s redirection of intellectual intuition from being to acting: (1) the regress problem, which states that reflecting on empirical facts of consciousness (...) leads only to further facts and so cannot yield a first principle; (2) the rhapsody problem, which states that the categories form a haphazard set and so lack necessity unless they derive from a first principle; and (3) the nihilism problem, which states that a first principle cannot lie outside our cognition of it, lest it be the cause of our cognition and, being first, the cause of all our actions, reducing us to machines. Crucially, Fichte’s three motivating problems are in fact aspects of a single problem. Leaving any aspect unsolved spoils putative solutions to the other two. Consequently, Fichte requires a single unified solution to all three, which his doctrine of intellectual intuition provides. (shrink)

Agent-relative reasons are an important feature of any nonconsequentialist moral theory. Many authors think that they cannot be accommodated within a value-first theory that understands all value as agent-neutral. In this paper, I offer a novel explanation of agent-relative reasons that accommodates them fully within an agent-neutral value-first view. I argue that agent-relative reasons are to be understood in terms of second-order value responses: when an agent acts on an agent-relative reason, she responds appropriately to the (...) agent-neutral value of her own appropriate response to some agent-neutral value. This view helps reconcile important elements of deontology and consequentialism. (shrink)

To be beneficent, that is, to promote according to one's means the happiness of others in need, without hoping for something in return, is every man's duty. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals Almost everyone agrees that we have a moral duty to pull out a drowning child from a shallow pond even if this means getting our clothes muddy. But what are the limits of the duty of beneficence? In “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, which first appeared in 1972, Peter (...) Singer attempted to specify those limits in terms of the following principle: “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.” Singer went on to use this principle to argue that we ought to be doing all we can to prevent Third World hunger. At the same time, he challenged the well-established Western moral viewpoint that makes it an act of charity rather than a duty for a relatively affluent individual to give money to help feed the world's poor. Singer left open the question of whether the traditional distinction between duty and charity should be redrawn or abolished altogether, although he insisted that giving to others who are starving, even at the cost of giving up luxuries such as new clothes or a new car, is not an act of charity, but a duty. (shrink)

New media and technologies such as social media and online platforms are disrupting the way businesses are run and how society functions. This article advises that scholars consider the morality of new media as an area of investigation. While prior literature has given much attention to how social media provides benefits, how it affects society generally, and how it can be used efficiently, research on the ethical aspects of new media has received relatively less attention. In an age where matters (...) such as violence, hate crimes, fake news, etc. are increasingly pervasive, we need to address the role of online technology in aiding or limiting such negative acts. In this regard, this article uses the canvas of a terror attack that was facilitated by online technology to bring to light pressing social and ethical issues in the use of new media. I draw upon 264 news articles focusing on the 2019 Christchurch terrorist attacks to piece together how the attack was orchestrated and focus on technology-enabled facets of the event. I stir discussion on the ethical aspects of technology with regard to online discrimination and highlight business and other stakeholder responsibilities and challenges as technology continues to evolve and pervade our social lives. (shrink)

Andrew Forcehimes and Luke Semrau argue that agent-relative consequentialism is implausible because in some circumstances it classes an act as impermissible yet holds that the outcome of all agents performing that impermissible act is preferable. I argue that their problem is closely related to Derek Parfit's problem of ‘direct collective self-defeat’ and show how Parfit's plausible solution to his problem can be adapted to solve their problem.

In a recent article, Wilkinson puts forward the notion of identity-relative paternalism. According to Wilkinson’s final formulation of this principle, ‘[i]ndividuals should be prevented from doing to future selves (where there are weakened prudential unity relations between the current and future self) what it would be justified to prevent them from doing to others’.1 In medical ethics, it is usually assumed that hard paternalism, that is, acting against a competent person’s wishes for their own benefit, is not justified. According (...) to Mill’s harm principle, we may only limit people’s freedom if they cause harm to others.2 Harm to self is not a sufficient reason for overriding competent persons’ decisions. Wilkinson, however, draws on Parfit’s reductionist view of personal identity to argue that sometimes, patients’ future selves are sufficiently disconnected from their present selves to treat future selves like different persons. If a competent person’s medical decision negatively affects a future self, this should be treated like a case of harm to others. Thus, overriding competent persons’ decisions in such cases—and treating them against their will—could be justified. In this commentary, I point out two problems with this approach. First, I demonstrate that the cases Wilkinson’s argument is based on are not examples of harm to others but rather cases of surrogate decision making gone wrong, …. (shrink)

The works of Clive L. Spash provided inspiration to many. In the case of my own theoretical and philosophical journey, Spash's social-ecological economics became an important grounding. However, apart from directing this journey, his works have been a major influence in another domain: the domain of my personal being in and relating with the world. This paper explicates this side of Spash's influence. The paper's roots specifically go back to Spash’s work on new foundations for ecological economics and the (...) invitation he extended to his fellow humans to act personally and consistently with one's environmental and social values. Far from glorifying the mode of being, here referred to as being of deep transformations, I aim to draw others’ attention to the challenges and constraints. (shrink)

In this study, we examine investor and firm response to the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010. The CTSCA requires large retail and manufacturing firms to disclose efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their supply chains and is a rare example of mandated corporate social responsibility disclosure. Based on a sample of 105 retail companies subject to the CTSCA, we find a significant negative market reaction to the passing of the CTSCA. Furthermore, we find that the (...) reaction is significantly more negative for larger firms and companies facing greater supply chain risks, suggesting that investors place a negative value on exposure to legitimacy threats in the social domain. With respect to company disclosure response, we document relatively high compliance with the legislation, although we also find that the disclosure response appeared to be more symbolic than substantive in nature. Finally, our analysis indicates that both disclosure choice and disclosure extensiveness were significantly higher for the high-supply chain risk companies, suggesting that the response was influenced by concerns with strategic legitimation. Overall, the limited quality of disclosure suggests that, without additional rules and guidance, mandates alone may not lead to meaningful social disclosure. (shrink)

The revised Robertson's test theory of special relativity (SR) has been constructed upon a family of sets of passive coordinate transformations in flat space-time [J. G. Vargas and D. G. Torr,Found. Phys., 16, 1089 (1986)]. In the same paper, it has also been shown that the boosts depend in general on the velocities of the two frames involved and not only on their relative velocity. The only exception to this is SR, if one has previously used an appropriate constraint (...) to remove the other relativities—like Galilean relativity—from the family.In this paper we look at these coordinate transformations in the only way there is to do so, namely as transformations in a seven-dimensional “Cartan Space” (Cartan first considered this in his dealings with Newtonian kinematics). In this space, the boosts only depend on the relative velocity of the frames. The passive coordinate transformations in each set are shown to have a nonlinear group structure isomorphic to that of the Poincaré group.The existence of a preferred frame, except in SR, makes the active transformations inequivalent to the passive ones. It is shown that the composite active-passive transformations act on a ten-dimensional space and that each member set of the family also has a group structure. As a result, one ends up with a family of mutually isomorphic 9-parameter (homogeneous) supergroups and a family of mutually isomorphic (9 + 4)-parameter (inhomogeneous) supergroups. The presence of extra parameters could be looked upon as “internal” degrees of freedom, which are, however, an offshoot of the Robertson space-time. (shrink)

Empirical surveys about medical futility are scarce relative to its theoretical assumptions. We aimed to evaluate the difference of attitudes between laypeople and physicians towards the issue. A questionnaire survey was designed. Japanese laypeople (via Internet) and physicians with various specialties (via paper-and-pencil questionnaire) were asked about whether they would provide potentially futile treatments for end-of-life patients in vignettes, important factors for judging a certain treatment futile, and threshold of quantitative futility which reflects the numerical probability that an act (...) will produce the desired physiological effect. Also, the physicians were asked about their practical frequency and important reasons for futile treatments. 1134 laypeople and 401 (80%) physicians responded. In all vignettes, the laypeople were more affirmative in providing treatments in question significantly. As the factors for judging futility, medical information and quality of life (QOL) of the patient were rather stressed by the physicians. Treatment wish of the family of the patient and psychological impact on patient side due to the treatment were rather stressed by laypeople. There were wide variations in the threshold of judging quantitative futility in both groups. 88.3% of the physicians had practical experience of providing futile treatment. Important reasons for it were communication problem with patient side and lack of systems regarding futility or foregoing such treatment. Laypeople are more supportive of providing potentially futile treatments than physicians. The difference is explained by the importance of medical information, the patient family’s influence to decision-making and QOL of the patient. The threshold of qualitative futility is suggested to be arbitrary. (shrink)

Acts of civil disobedience are undertaken in defense of a variety of causes ranging from banning GMO crops and prohibiting abortion to fighting inequality and saving the environment. Recently, Brownlee has argued that the merit of a cause is not relevant to the establishment of a moral right to civil disobedience. Instead, it is the fact that a dissenter believes his cause for protest to be morally right that is salient. We may term her and similar such theories belief-relative (...) theories of civil disobedience. In this paper, I first argue that Brownlee’s important argument from conscientious conviction fails in its aim to establish a belief-relative moral right to civil disobedience. I then provide a more general argument that no purely belief-relative theory of civil disobedience grounded in a basic moral value will be tenable. Any moral warrant of civil disobedience that is derived from a value must be limited by the value from which it is derived, as well as by other similarly weighty values. If the moral warrant of civil disobedience is derived from the value of autonomy, then the warrant does not extend to acts of civil disobedience that violate the autonomy of others, or other similarly weighty values. Furthermore, granting a right to disobey in promotion of a grossly unjust view is problematic because civil disobedience ought to serve the role of promoting justice. (shrink)