Dorian Gray pays a hefty price for years of sin and vice in this completely unabridged edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Despite the attempts to promote the inclusion of pregnant women into clinical research, this group is still widely excluded. An analysis of the “vulnerability of pregnant women” that questions deeply internalized stereotypes is necessary for finding the right balance in the protection of pregnant women as research participants. Criticism of the traditional account of vulnerability will lead to an alternative that focuses on situations rather than groups and on the obligations of responsible parties. The paper adds to the current general (...) discussion of vulnerability and at the same time addresses the specific problem of drug treatment during pregnancy. (shrink)

The author of this text argues that the methodological issues in bioethics mirrors the experience of moral pluralism in a secular society. The different methods that have been used in the field reflect the different moral views found in a pluralistic society.

Several recent attempts to develop models of moral reasoning have attempted to use some form of casuistry as a way to resolve the moral controversies of clinical ethics. One of the best known models of casuistry is that of Jonsen and Toulmin who attempt to transpose a particular model of casuistry, that of Roman Catholic confessional practice, to contemporary moral disputes. This attempt is flawed in that it fails to understand both the history of the model it seeks to transpose (...) and the morally pluralistic context of secular, postmodern society. The practice of casuistry which Jonsen and Toulmin wish to revive is a practice set in the context of a community with a shared set of moral values and structures of moral authority. Without a set of common moral values and rankings, and a moral authority to interpret cases the casuistry of the postmodern age will be pluralistic; that is, there will be many casuistries not just one. Keywords: casuistry, common morality, kinetics, moral authority, moral pluralism, morphology, paradigm cases, taxonomy CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The author of Look Back in Anger, Inadmissible Evidence, and The Entertainer has created a brilliant dramatization of this classic about a man who retains his youth while the decay of advancing years and moral corruption appears on a portrait painted by one of his lovers.

Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J.; Living out the Tradition, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 9, Issue 2-3, 1 January 2003, Pages 29.

A particular tradition in medicine claims that a variety of evidence is helpful in determining whether an observed correlation is causal. In line with this tradition, it has been claimed that establishing a causal claim in medicine requires both probabilistic and mechanistic evidence. This claim has been put forward by Federica Russo and Jon Williamson. As a result, it is sometimes called the Russo–Williamson thesis. In support of this thesis, Russo and Williamson appeal to the practice of the International Agency (...) for Research on Cancer. However, this practice presents some problematic cases for the Russo–Williamson thesis. One response to such cases is to argue in favour of reforming these practices. In this paper, we propose an alternative response according to which such cases are in fact consistent with the Russo–Williamson thesis. This response requires maintaining that there is a role for mechanism-based extrapolation in the practice of the IARC. However, the response works only if this mechanism-based extrapolation is reliable, and some have argued against the reliability of mechanism-based extrapolation. Against this, we provide some reasons for believing that reliable mechanism-based extrapolation is going on in the practice of the IARC. The reasons are provided by appealing to the role of robustness analysis. (shrink)

Why would Rene Descartes, the father of modern rationalist philosophy, choose "meditations" -- a term and genre associated with religious discourse and practice -- for the title of his magnum opus that lays the metaphysical foundations for his reform of all knowledge, including mathematics and sciences? Why did he believe that the immortality of the soul and the existence of God, which the Meditations on First Philosophy set out to demonstrate, can only be made self-evident through meditating? These are the (...) question that Christopher Wild's book answers. Descartes discovered the "foundations of a marvelous science" through a dramatic conversion in southern Germany in the winter of 1619. The spiritual and cognitive exercises, derived from ancient philosophy and the Christian meditative tradition, which Descartes deployed in the Meditations, enable readers to discover metaphysical truths with the same degree of self-evidence with which Descartes did during his own conversion. Descartes' meditative turn, Wild argues, brings to a culmination a life-long preoccupation with the practice or craft of thinking, known as Cartesian method. By joining meditation to method the Meditations becomes the founding document for a Cartesian "art of turning," a new practice of both thought and life. (shrink)

How do the pictures Wittgenstein and his relatives took during his life relate to his philosophical work? The exhibition at the Leopold Museum in Vienna in 2021 demonstrated a complex network of resemblances, overlaps, and cross-references between Wittgenstein’s way of working and the pictures he collected. In this essay, the network is used as an example to argue that a combination of philosophy and artistic sensibility might be a fruitful enrichment for a philosophical practise.

This article discusses cosmopolitanism as the moral foundation for access to health care for migrants. The focus is on countries with sufficiently adequate universal health care for their citizens. The article argues for equal access to this kind of health care for citizens and migrants alike—including migrants at special risk such as asylum seekers or undocumented migrants. Several objections against equal access are raised, such as the cosmopolitan approach being too restrictive or too permissive, or the consequences being undesirable; but (...) the objections are largely refuted. Some special cases in which a restriction of equal access to health care might be justified are described: humanitarian crisis, short term tourism, and the case of a migrant or refugee who will stay only very briefly on a state's territory. (shrink)

What do we mean by ‘reality’? Merging philosophical insights with contemporary art, Tine Wilde lets us consider and contemplate who and what we ‘really’ are. Working on artists’ book Zero Point, the article presents a brief overview of her thoughts, relating a spatial-geometrical perspective to the quest for self-knowledge, and subsequently extrapolating the findings to the notion of unknown knowledge.

This paper examines the connection between Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existence and Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology. The claim is that Harman’s position provides a conceptual apparatus that can beneficially address some basic ontological points in Kierkegaard about actuality, the self and the reality of individual subsisting mind-independent entities. On the other hand, Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the human self as a place situated in existence can provide a supplement to Harman’s realism which implicitly relies on topological notions. If we define an entity, (...) in a broad sense of the term, as something in its own right irreducible to its being-in-a-relation, but we do not want to end up in a frozen universe of isolated monads, we must revisit the notion of relationality in terms of vicarious causation (Harman) or indirect communication (Kierkegaard). (shrink)

How does a coloured bird end up on a TUGboat? This is the story of an artist who studied philosophy and combined her skills in a PhD at the University of Amsterdam (NL). In order to write her dissertation, she had to learn the LaTeX typesetting programme. Many years later, she still makes art and still writes down her thoughts in LaTeX, with the Memoir class and XeLaTeX as first choice. Always trying to stretch the limits of the programme to (...) her convenience. -/- This essay is not a technical article written by a developer conjuring up ingenious innovations to the LaTeX programme. By contrast, it discusses the relationship between LaTeX, art (photography) and the concept of 'measurability' from the perspective of a philosophising artist. (shrink)

Ethical frameworks are often used in professional fields as a means of providing explicit ethical guidance for individuals and institutions when confronted with ethically important decisions. The notion of an ethical framework has received little critical attention, however, and the concept subsequently lends itself easily to misuse and ambiguous application. This is the case with the ‘ethical framework’ offered by Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), the crown-corporation which owns and is responsible for the long-term management of Canada’s high-level nuclear (...) fuel waste. It makes a very specific claim, namely that it is managing Canada’s long-lived radioactive nuclear fuel waste in an ethically responsible manner. According to this organization, what it means to behave in an ethically responsible manner is to act and develop policy in accordance with its ethical framework. What, then, is its ethical framework, and can it be satisfied? In this paper I will show that the NWMO’s ethical and social framework is deeply flawed in two respects: (a) it fails to meet the minimum requirements of a code of ethic or ethical framework by offering only questions, and no principles or rules of conduct; and (b) if posed as principles or rules of conduct, some of its questions are unsatisfiable. In particular, I will show that one of its claims, namely that it seek informed consent from individuals exposed to risk of harm from nuclear waste, cannot be satisfied as formulated. The result is that the NWMO’s ethical framework is not, at present, ethically acceptable. (shrink)

A fundamental and bold claim of Portmann’s philosophy of biology is a thesis about the autonomy of self-representation of all living beings: “Self-presentation has to be understood as a basic fact of life, on a par with self-maintenance and the preservation of the species.” In other words, the perceivable appearance of organisms cannot be reduced to its chemical, physiological, morphological or functional causes, but must be understood as a phenomenon in its own right. The aim of the following contribution is (...) threefold. First, it aims at establishing the relevant context for the bold claim by embedding the claim in Portmann’s broader view of biology. Secondly, it aims at reconstructing Portmann’s rather scattered argument for the bold claim by recasting it as an appeal to what Portmann calls “unaddressed authentic appearances”. Finally, it presents Portmann’s partly phenomenological approach to biological phenomena as a reluctant relative of Goethe’s approach, thereby claiming that Portmann is no advocate of a genuine Goethean science of nature. (shrink)

Proposed models of closed timelike curves have been shown to enable powerful information-processing protocols. We examine the simulation of models of CTCs both by other models of CTCs and by physical systems without access to CTCs. We prove that the recently proposed transition probability CTCs are physically equivalent to postselection CTCs, in the sense that one model can simulate the other with reasonable overhead. As a consequence, their information-processing capabilities are equivalent. We also describe a method for quantum computers to (...) simulate Deutschian CTCs. In cases for which the overhead is reasonable, it might be possible to perform the simulation in a table-top experiment. This approach has the benefit of resolving some ambiguities associated with the equivalent circuit model of Ralph et al. Furthermore, we provide an explicit form for the state of the CTC system such that it is a maximum-entropy state, as prescribed by Deutsch. (shrink)

The relationship between traumatic experiences and subsequent distress is not well understood, and little research focuses on the lived experience of psychological trauma. I draw on Louis Sass’s phenomenological taxonomy to address this lacuna. I present his differentiation between relations of phenomenological causality and implication and demonstrate that his taxonomy can be applied to experiences of trauma. Relations of phenomenological causality and implication can be identified in the genesis and constitution of post-traumatic distress. My adaptation of Sass’s taxonomy will furthermore (...) offer an extension and development of his account, applying it to the study of post-traumatic experiences and elaborating it in the process. I shall demonstrate that whether experiences occur synchronically or diachronically is not essential to their categorization in terms of phenomenological implication and causality, respectively. I will show that an alteration in perception or behavior post trauma might temporally succeed the traumatizing event while, at the same time, being implied in the experience of the event. Thereby, I demonstrate how phenomenology may contribute to a detailed understanding of experiences of trauma. Scrutiny of traumatic experiences furthermore promises to contribute to the philosophical discourse on causality, implication, and temporal experience. (shrink)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau devoted an important chapter of his Social Contract to the dictatorship. Carl Schmitt interpreted Rousseau’s chapter as marking the transition from ‘commissarial’ to ‘sovereign dictatorship’. This article argues that Schmitt’s interpretation is historically and conceptually inaccurate. Instead of paving the way for sovereign dictatorship, Rousseau carefully distinguished the dictatorship from the people’s sovereign authority. Taking position in the ‘debate’ between Bodin and Grotius on the relation between dictatorship and sovereignty, he argued that the dictator could provisionally suspend the (...) people’s sovereign authority, but not abolish it. More particularly, the dictator did not possess the power to make generally binding laws, which had to remain the exclusive authority of the popular assembly. However, this did not prevent Rousseau from recognizing the dictatorship as a means for democratic reform. Rousseau thus conceived of the dictatorship as a time-limited and revocable commission to protect the constitution and to provide for a more stable and effective state organization based on the principle of popular sovereignty. (shrink)

This article seeks to explain how it was possible that, until the first century BC, the Roman dictatorship was never abused and turned against the constitution itself. The traditional explanation is that, contrary to its first century imitations, the dictatorship was subject to formal restrictions, such as the six months' tenure, which were strictly applied. By contrast, this article suggests that informal constraints on the dictator's powers, such as moral and religious norms, were as important as formal constraints. It shows, (...) more particularly, how the fides, or the requirement of trust, was essential for preventing an abuse of dictatorial powers. (shrink)

Embodied knowledge in chronic illness and injury When people experience chronic illness or serious injury, changes occur not just within their physical bodies but also in their embodiments, that is, how they view the world through their bodies. For such patients, dualistic (mind–body) notions of the body as object and the mind as subject can devalue experiences that are necessary for healing and for managing everyday problems related to their illness or injury. Nurses need to be able to guide people (...) with illness or injury to new levels of wellness, but may lack appropriate theoretical conceptualizations. Philosophies that underlie embodied knowledge — in particular, philosophies of Merleau‐Ponty and Polanyi — were explored yielding two new ways to understand the body. The body as ‘silent partner’ fosters an appreciation of the body's own subjectivity that can be enhanced in nursing care through sensitivity, listening, and creative coaching. Nurses can assist their patients to identify new and positive understandings of what their bodies mean to them after bodily changes. The body as ‘informant’ holds much promise for solving some of the everyday problems that people with chronic illness or injury experience. By using phenomenological and other naturalistic methods, researchers and patients can find clues to solving such problems, clues that are known through daily living but hidden beneath conscious awareness. As a result, some of the practical know‐how of the body as ‘informant’ can be transformed into testable nursing interventions. (shrink)

: Bioethics has focused on the areas of individual ethical choices--patient care--or public policy and law. There are, however, important arenas for ethical choices that have been overlooked. Health care is populated with intermediate arenas such as hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, and health care systems. This essay argues that bioethics needs to develop a language and concepts for institutional ethics. A first step in this direction is to think about institutional conscience.

Co-production, in the field of mental health, aims to bring together academic and clinical researchers and those with lived experience. Often, research projects informed by this methodology involve the meeting of opposing attitudes, whether to the legitimacy of psychiatry, determinants of mental ill health, or the most appropriate interventions. This has meant that whilst some have reported positive experiences of co-production, many people with lived experience of mental ill health, sometimes referred to as ‘experts by experience’ (EbE), report harms which (...) have taken place or been perpetuated during co-produced research projects. In the literature, nearly always, this is understood as a kind of epistemic injustice in Miranda Fricker's sense. In this paper, I argue that whilst Fricker's view does provide a plausible explanation of what's at play, we can gain more insight into the structural factors which exclude EbE by applying a framework of epistemic oppression. By highlighting the systemic and structural factors which work to keep certain knowers and their contributions out of our collective epistemic resources, we begin to understand the enormity of the task required to redress injustices in our knowledge production systems. (shrink)

This article poses a question for Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) in general and Harman’s position in particular. It is Heidegger’s question: “How do matters stand with nothingness?” First, I present the basic outline of Harman’s OOO which is presented as a theory of everything. In order to pin down the question of nothing, I begin by asking about “something”: what is an object? And what does it mean that objects exist? Then I pursue by identifying two notions of nothing in OOO: (...) the withdrawal of objects and the in-between of two objects. The first, I call infrastructural nothing. The second, I call interrelational nothing. The latter is derived from the former. I argue that OOO is very close to Kierkegaard’s account of nothing as the space of possibility of possibilities, since an object is defined as its own interior space which must hold something in reserve in order to allow for change and emergence. Nothing is not merely nothing but something – a bounded openness. (shrink)

Practices such as physician assisted suicide, even if legal, engender a range of moral conflicts to which many are oblivious. A recent proposal for physician assisted suicide provides an example by calling upon physicians opposed to suicide to refer patients to other, more sympathetic, physicians. However, the proposal does not address the moral concerns of those physicians for whom such referral would be morally objectionable. Keywords: collaboration, euthanasia, intrinsic evil, material cooperation, projects, referral, toleration CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

"Die anthropologische Differenz" befasst sich mit dem Geist der Tiere in der frühneuzeitlichen Philosophie und dem Problem der anthropologischen Differenz zwischen Mensch und Tier. Anhand des Gemäldes Las Meninas werden einleitend die Antwortstrategien auf die Frage nach der Mensch-Tier-Unterscheidung aufgezeigt. Montaignes Verteidigung der Tiervernunft setzt sich skeptisch von einem aristotelischen Hintergrund ab. Descartes schlägt eine folgenreiche Betrachtungsweise vor: Tiere als Maschinen. Humes naturalistischer Betrachtungsweise unseres Geistes setzt sich von Descartes ab und greift auf montaignesche Überlegungen zurück. In der Neuzeit etablieren (...) sich zwei grundsätzliche Positionen, die Tier und Mensch entweder weit voneinander entfernt oder eng zusammenführt. Diese Positionen beherrschen auch einen wichtigen Teil der gegenwärtigen Debatte. Der Geist der Tiere ist philosophisch kein Seitenthema, im Gegenteil. (shrink)

When many people think of bioethics, they think of gripping issues in clinical medicine such as end-of-life decision-making, controversies in biomedical research such as that over work with stem cells, or issues in allocating scarce health-care resources such as organs or money. The term “bioethics” may evoke images of moral controversies being discussed on news programs and talk shows. But this “controversy of the day” focus often treats ethical issues in medicine superficially, for it addresses them as if they could (...) be examined and discussed in isolation from the context in which they are situated. Such a focus on the latest controversies fails to take into account that medicine is a social institution and that the controversies in bioethics often reflect deeper social and moral issues that transcend the boundaries of medicine and ethics. If one moves beyond the issue-of-the-day approach to bioethics, one can see that the field must address these deeper issues. (shrink)

Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J.; Religion in Bioethics: A Rebirth, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 January 2002, Pa.

We are living in an increasingly complex world. How are we able to cope with this complexity and the difficulties that arise from it? Can philosophy and art, classified as the two utmost useless and pointless disciplines, have any (positive) influence on the urgent and pressing problems at hand? And, related to this, if the two have more than just their uselessness in common, how, then, are philosophy and art related? In this article, I will argue that although ‘useless’ disciplines (...) such as philosophy and art have no direct influence on our complex world, they are nonetheless the most important ones, because those working within them practice their insights in an indirect way. Indirect influence may take a little longer, but the impact is much stronger, affecting our thinking and our attitudes from within, as it were. This indirect approach has everything to do with the sort of questions philosophers and artists occupy themselves with. I will show how both address, albeit each in their own way, fundamental questions, and thereby make use of thought experiments. Intuition and imagination play a decisive part in the creative processes that are involved in thought experiments and thinking. It is argued that we all are able to learn a ‘delayed unconscious thinking’ that leads to an artistic attitude; one that will activate an artistic turn. (shrink)