Many have begun to despair that climate justice will prevail even in a minimal form. The affective dimensions of such despair, we suggest, threaten to make climate action appear too demanding. Thus, despair constitutes a moral challenge to individual climate action that has not yet received adequate attention. In response, we defend a duty to act in hope for a more just (climate) future. However, as we see it, this duty falls differentially upon the shoulders of more and less (...) advantaged agents in society. From arguments by Black thinkers like Derrick Bell, we draw a set of distinctions between two types of hope: one for ideal justice, and one for more modest change; and between two types of hopeful actions, those undertaken through formal political channels and those we call 'extra-political' actions; and between two sites of differential moral burdens, those of the privileged and those of the oppressed. Ours is a case for facing even bleak realities, demanding otherwise, and acting in hope to achieve a better future. (shrink)

Patients have received experimental pharmaceuticals outside of clinical trials for decades. There are no industry-wide best practices, and many companies that have granted compassionate use, or ‘preapproval’, access to their investigational products have done so without fanfare and without divulging the process or grounds on which decisions were made. The number of compassionate use requests has increased over time. Driving the demand are new treatments for serious unmet medical needs; patient advocacy groups pressing for access to emerging treatments; internet platforms (...) enabling broad awareness of compelling cases or novel drugs and a lack of trust among some that the pharmaceutical industry and/or the FDA have patients’ best interests in mind. High-profile cases in the media have highlighted the gap between patient expectations for compassionate use and company utilisation of fair processes to adjudicate requests. With many pharmaceutical manufacturers, patient groups, healthcare providers and policy analysts unhappy with the inequities of the status quo, fairer and more ethical management of compassionate use requests was needed. This paper reports on a novel collaboration between a pharmaceutical company and an academic medical ethics department that led to the formation of the Compassionate Use Advisory Committee. Comprising medical experts, bioethicists and patient representatives, CompAC established an ethical framework for the allocation of a scarce investigational oncology agent to single patients requesting non-trial access. This is the first account of how the committee was formed and how it built an ethical framework and put it into practice. (shrink)

This essay explores a series of sovereign ‘machines’ – slaves, puppets, automata – in political theory from Benjamin to Agamben. It is now well-documented that the philosophical question of ‘the machine’ – of whether a complex system requires a human operator or whether it can function autonomously – is also a crucial political question that haunts every discussion of sovereignty from Hobbes onwards. However, my wager in what follows is that this machine is not just a metaphor for a (...) metaphysical situation – whether it be rationality, bureaucratization, neutralization, historicism or governmentality – but a material phenomenon that carries transformative political promise and threat. To summarize the argument of this essay, I contend that ‘sovereign machines’ like slavery, puppets, automata or clockwork, lens, optics and mirrors (Hobbes, Kantorowicz, Benjamin, Lacan,... (shrink)

Our comment is based on a simple but, we believe, compelling principle. The proposed cognitive processes and functions that are components of Jablonka and Ginsburg’s Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL) are real and are fundamental elements in the varieties of consciousness, cognition, problem solving, and sentience in the species they identify. But, from our perspective, they didn’t function as the metaphoric biomolecular ship that brought consciousness into being. The UAL functions are, and should be viewed as, evolutionary steps that built upon (...) a deeper and much older cognitive foundation. The appearance of UAL didn’t allow consciousness to emerge. It allowed it to change the manner in which sentience was instantiated − just as a host of other evolutionary developments did. In short, the emergence of UAL is a _token_ on a continuum of mental experience and not a distinct _type_ of mentation. (shrink)

In 1992, the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) passed a mandate that all its approved hospitals put in place a means for addressing ethical concerns.Although the particular process the hospital uses to address such concernsmay vary, the hospital or healthcare ethics committee (HEC) is used most often. In a companion study to that reported here, we found that in 1998 over 90% of U.S. hospitals had ethics committees, compared to just 1% in 1983, and that (...) many have some and a few have sweeping clinical powers in hospitals. (shrink)

THE CONCEPT of basic action rests upon a not especially controversial observation and a standard sort of philosophical argument. The observation is that there occur a great many actions in which what is said to be done—say a—is not done directly but rather through the agent doing something b, distinct from a, which causes a to happen. Thus I move a stone by pushing against it, and the pushing, itself an action, causes the locomotion of the stone when all relevant (...) conditions are supposed benign. Sometimes an agent m performs an action in which b is done and another occurrence a is caused by b, but as a is only a consequence of b and is not itself said to be done, such cases fall outside the circumference of the observation just described. What falls within that circumference I designate nonbasic actions, leaving it open that there may be species of nonbasic actions other than those specified by this observation. (shrink)

The realist programme has degenerated by now to the point where it is quite beyond salvage. A token of this degeneration is that there are altogether too many realisms. It is as though by splitting into a confusing array of types and kinds, realism has hoped that some one variety might yet escape extinct. I shall survey the debate, and some of these realisms, below. Here I would just point out the obvious; that in so far as the successes (...) of science mount while realism continues to decline we must conclude that scientific success lends no support to realism. Since it is unlikely to support anti-realism, we have some reason to suspect that the philosophical debate over realism does not concern issues that can be settled by developments in the sciences, no matter how successful science may be. Further, since that success grounds a culture of acceptance for science and its entities, we have reason to believe that the existence of those entities is also not actually the issue that concerns realism. Afortiori, it is not the issue that concerns anti-realism either; nor, I might add, is anti-realism the winner in the philosophical debate that realism has lost. (shrink)

What term is most appropriate in describing the limits of medicine? That depends on who determines the limits and the bases on which those limits are delineated and communicated. Schneiderman, Jecker, and Jonsen critique two recent policy statements by critical care providers—Bosslet et al. and Nates et al. —for their rejection of the use of the term futile for treatment. Both statements recommend using the adjective inappropriate for the problematic treatment, rather than futile, based on the lack of consensus of (...) just what constitutes futility. Schneiderman, Jecker, and Jonsen also assert that, despite a lack of consensus about the determination of futility, the definitions they have... (shrink)

In this paper, I first present an overview of Asay’s _A Theory of Truthmaking_, highlighting what I take to be some of its most attractive features, especially his re-invigoration of the ontological understanding of truthmaking and his defence of ontology-first truthmaking over explanation-first truthmaking. Then, I articulate what I take to be a puzzling potential inconsistency: (a) he appeals to considerations to do with aboutness in criticising how well ontological views account for truth while (b) ruling out aboutness from the (...) right account of truthmaking. He argues, instead, that necessitation is both necessary and sufficient for truthmaking (§3.3). I suggest that adding aboutness to one’s account in the right way is not just compatible with but important for ontology-first truthmaking. I do all this to invite Asay to clarify his position on these matters. Overall, Asay’s worldview displays the fruitfulness of an ontologically serious approach to metaphysics that puts truthmaking centre-stage. (shrink)

Ripstein's lectures, which constitute the central texts of this book, focus on the two bodies of rules governing war: the jus ad bellum, which regulates resort to armed force, and the jus in bello, which sets forth rules governing the conduct of armed force and applies equally to all parties. The lectures argue that both sets of rules constitute prohibitions rather than permissions, and that recognizing them as distinctive prohibitions can reconcile the seeming tension between them. By understanding that the (...) central wrong of war is that war is the condition which force decides, Ripstein contends that the law and morality of war are in fact aligned; the rules governing the conduct of hostilities must apply equally to parties in the right and parties in the wrong in an armed conflict, because the prohibitions outlined in the rules governing war are prohibitions that restrain war. Ripstein's method of analysis and the substantive argument he puts forward offer an opportunity for rigorous critical engagement in subsequent essays by commentators Hathaway, Kutz, and McMahan, followed by a response from Ripstein. (shrink)

From the 1990s until just before his death, the legendary art critic and philosopher Arthur C. Danto carried out extended conversations about contemporary art with the prominent Italian critic Demetrio Paparoni. Their discussions ranged widely over a vast range of topics, from American pop art and minimalism to abstraction and appropriationism. Yet they continually returned to the concepts at the core of Danto’s thinking—posthistory and the end of aesthetics—provocative notions that to this day shape questions about the meaning (...) and future of contemporary art. Art and Posthistory presents these rich dialogues and correspondence, testifying to the ongoing importance of Danto’s ideas. It offers readers the opportunity to experience the intellectual excitement of Danto in person, speculating in a freewheeling yet erudite style. Danto and Paparoni discuss figures such as Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Franz Kline, Sean Scully, Clement Greenberg, Cindy Sherman, and Wang Guangyi, offering both insightful comments on individual works and sweeping observations about wider issues. On occasion, the artist Mimmo Paladino and the philosopher Mario Perniola join the conversation, enlivening the discussion and adding their own perspectives. The book also features an introductory essay by Paparoni that provides lucid analysis of Danto’s thinking, emphasizing where the two disagree as well as what they learned from each other. (shrink)

There is a form of intellectual controversy, exhibited throughout the nineteenth century and into our own, which is less accessible because of a radically different order than certain controversies it appears to resemble, namely those which sprang up dramatically between science and religion in this era. Those latter controversies developed chiefly because it was at first supposed that religion was in possession of factual truths which entailed answers incompatible with those offered by science, to just the same factual questions: (...) the age of the universe, the mutability of species, the community of men and beasts or, for the matter, the historicity of sacred writ itself. On the basis of criteria supposed appropriate to the resolution of scientific controversies as such, the factual claims of religion were one by one infirmed, and it seemed then a reasonable projection that more or less the same would happen in any future such collisions. This left certain options open for religionists. They could, like adherents of any infirmed theory, simply give them up like good scientists are supposed to do. Or they could attempt to shun refutation by regarding religious statements as mere mythic paraphrases of recoverable literal scientific statements which were in fact true. Or religion could constitute itself a specialized science, concerned with an area of reality the "other" sciences did not touch upon, purging itself of any statements which then could conflict with those of the "other" sciences. Or finally, it could radically redefine its own scope and office by foreswearing any claim at all to factuality, so that questions of truth or falsity simply no longer would apply, and controversies between it and any discipline to which such questions did apply would be as inconceivable as a truth-contest between chemistry and opera. The Wittgensteinian suggestion that it is not the purpose of religious language to state facts may be seen as a late response to a dilemma which is then resolved by assigning religious utterance to one language game and physics to another. Were this a suitable disposition of the matter, religionists might be grateful for the suffering undergone, for though in the light of it the dilemma need never have arisen, still, had it not done so, religion might never have arrived at a proper consciousness of its own deep character. So the recent history of religion recapitulates its own favorite episodes of trial and purified renascence. (shrink)

1. A short analysis of the institutional reform legislation of August 1980 allows the ascertainment that the competences «granted» by the central power to the regions are truncated.2. Financial means are also «granted». They consist in merely listing sources of revenues : receipts other then tax, black grants, tax shares, limited tax entitlement and borrowing power. Those financial means are arbitrary chosen, they are not related to the competences granted, they are insufficient.3. Anyway, the existing budgeting system does not allow (...) connecting policies and financial means. A new classification should be of more adequacy to achieve this end.4. Actual regional sovereignty implies that all competences explicitely attributed to the federal level should belong to the regions. In the countries where such a system exists, the regions are mastering 40 to 60 % of the revenues. The kind of regionalisation implemented in Belgium only grants about 8 % to the regions.It is pointed out that 65 % of the current revenues and 46 % of the expenditures could technically be subject to federalisation. Should also the financial system of social security be federalized, then should the part of both ressources and expenditures belonging to the regions increase to 7 5 %.On the long way to federalism in Belgium, the new legislation is just a step, not an arrival. The forthcoming years will probably confirm it. (shrink)

According to a philosophical tradition, it is trivial to speak about dissensus: the incompatibility of meaning and the dispute are charcteritics of the life of the philosopical reflection. In its most radical sense, though, the notion of dissensus is not only opposed to the possibility of reaching consensus, but concerns the possibility of discourse itself. As such, dissensus confronts philosophy with an impossibility that challenges its evidence. How to approach this impossibility? I argue that the problem of dissensus is not (...) just a question of language, but that it is necessary to take into consideration the relation between language and subjectivity. This relation is a central issue in the writings of Maurice Blanchot as well as in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas: for both of them, ‘language’ is in the phenomenological sense of the word an ‘experience’ in which the whole problem of subjectivity is involved. But at the same time, this experience is the origin of a profound difference between the two friends. Analysing the question of subjectivity in its relation to the other, Levinas is able to show why language plays a fundamental role in the promotion and the constitution of a subjectivity that is obliged to respond in the first person. Blanchot, however, approaches language in the experience of writing where subjectivity looses grip and cannot but disappear. The distinction between written language and oral discourse therefore seems to be crucial with regard to the problem of subjectivity. The explicitation of this distinction enables me to specify the condition of dissensus. (shrink)

I WISH to defend the claim that imagining what it would be like to be in "someone else's shoes" can serve to explain that person's actions. This commonsense view has considerable plausibility, but requires clarification to be philosophically defensible; discussions of explanation often assume that understanding requires a theory of the thing understood. If understanding requires a theory, then however much imagining what it would be like to be in another person's situation might sooth one's curiosity, it cannot provide real (...) understanding. I shall argue that imagining oneself in someone else's situation does more than that: it allows actions to be explained without recourse to a theory of human behavior. The resulting explanations are real explanations, not just some reassuring facsimile thereof. (shrink)

Arthur Madigan presents a clear, accurate new translation of the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with two related chapters from the eleventh book. Madigan's accompanying introduction and commentary give detailed guidance to these texts, in which Aristotle sets out the main questions of metaphysics and assesses the main answers to them, and which serve as a useful introduction not just to Aristotle's own work on metaphysics but to classical metaphysics in general.

Arthur Madigan presents a clear, accurate new translation of the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with two related chapters from the eleventh book. Madigan's accompanying introduction and commentary give detailed guidance to these texts, in which Aristotle sets out the main questions of metaphysics and assesses the main answers to them, and which serve as a useful introduction not just to Aristotle's own work on metaphysics but to classical metaphysics in general.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 1, April 1998, pp. 53-70 Hume on Justice to Animals, Indians and Women ARTHUR KUFLIK I. The Circumstances of Humean Justice For Hume, the virtue of justice is its "usefulness" to the support of society.1 To help prove this point, he guides us through a series of imaginative thought-experiments. Suppose that resources were infinitely available or that human beings were generous and kind (...) without limit: in such unusual circumstances, nobody would have even "dreamed of" the various property restrictions associated with justice. If the supposition seems too fanciful, the same point can be illustrated, at least to some extent, by special real-life circumstances as well: e.g., by the way that air or water or land go unregulated in those places where they are super-abundant or the way in which the line between what is "mine" and "thine" blurs in loving families or between intimate friends. Moving to the opposite extreme: suppose that resources were so scarce as to render it impossible for most people (regardless of their cooperative exertions) even to subsist. Or suppose that people were not merely limited in their benevolent concern but "perfectly malicious"! Once again, there would be little or no point to the observance of rules of justice. On Hume's account, such rules define a scheme of social cooperation. But by hypothesis, extreme scarcity makes even well-meaning cooperative effort unproductive. Extreme villainy makes it pointlessly dangerous. Indeed, in a world wholly villainous, just cooperative schemes would be altogether impossible. Arthur Kuflik is at the Department of Philosophy, The University of Vermont, 70 South Williams Street, Burlington, Vermont 05401-3404 USA. email: [email protected] 54 Arthur Kuflik What can we conclude? There is a range of circumstances within which schemes of justice make sense: (1) moderate scarcity (resources are adequate to sustain people, but not so extensive that everyone could have as much as might be desired); and (2) limited benevolence (people are neither saintly nor satanic; though clearly concerned about themselves, they are not incapable of caring about what happens to others). John Rawls has dubbed these conditions "the Humean circumstances of justice."2 Hume wants us to notice that they are the very conditions under which justice is both practically possible and socially necessary. Fortunately, they are also the conditions that most commonly prevail. ("The common situation of society is a medium amidst all these extremes" [EPM 188].) II. A More Puzzling Thought-experiment Suppose we grant that the foundation of justice is its usefulness to society. This raises a certain worry: aren't there groups whose members ought to be treated justly even though "society" could flourish just as well if they weren't? (Another way to put the point is to ask: just who are the members of "society"?) This very issue underlies one more puzzling, and even disturbing, Humean thought-experiment: Were there a species of creatures intermingled with men, which, though rational, were possessed of such inferior strength, both of body and mind, that they were incapable of all resistance, and could never, upon the highest provocation, make us feel the effects of their resentment; the necessary consequence, I think, is that we should be bound by the laws of humanity to give gentle usage to these creatures, but should not, properly speaking, lie under any restraint of justice with regard to them, nor could they possess any right or property, exclusive of such arbitrary lords. Our intercourse with them could not be called society, which supposes a degree of equality; but absolute command on one side, and servile obedience on the other.... And as no inconvenience ever results from the exercise of a power, so firmly established in nature, the restraints of justice and property, being totally useless, would never have place in so unequal a confederacy. (EPM 190-191) What can we learn from this thought-experiment? What insight into justice do we gain by imagining a "species of creatures intermingled" among us who, though endowed with some ability to think and to reason, are: (i) greatly inferior to us both physically and mentally; (ii) "incapable of all resistance" to our provocations; and... (shrink)

With an increasing awareness of what they eat and the provenance of their food, people nowadays often raise such questions as where does the food come from? How is it produced? This concern over food ingredients and origins has resulted in a burgeoning interest in growing one's own food, both for the satisfaction in having done it oneself and for the assurance of food quality and safety. But how to grow one's own food in the midst of an urban metropolis? (...) How to do it without a real garden?This book points the way, especially for beginners and those who may only have a balcony or a rooftop and are limited to growing in containers. It is not just about gardening in a narrow sense. It delves into the growing of plants as a multidisciplinary activity involving not only botany, but also zoology, geology, meteorology, philosophy, ornithology, and more. The book sends a strong environmental message for a reevaluation of modern lifestyle. (shrink)

In a recent note in this review (Leibniz e gli Zenonisti, n. 3, 2001, pp. 15-22) Paolo Rossi stresses the importance of a philosophical sect that he claims has been unjustly ignored in accounts of the history of modern philosophy, the Jesuit philosophers of Louvain and Spain of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century known as the Zenonists. The occasion for his complaint is Massimo Mugnai’s admirable new introduction to Leibniz’s thought (Introduzione alla filosofia di Leibniz, Torino, Einaudi, 2001), (...) which in all other respects than its failure to mention the Zenonists, Rossi compliments and commends: justly, for in my opinion it is the best introduction to Leibniz yet written. (shrink)

It seems to have been assumed that Lucretius elides final s promiscuously, as Ennius does, at any part of the line. The following statement of facts will show that the truth is very different: I take all cases where the reading appears certain. He has twenty-eight such elisions at the end of the fifth foot, including the emended ii. 623, 975, 986, v. 1410; ten at the weak caesura of the fifth foot, including the emended iii. 198, 1016, v. 949, (...) 1106. But except in these two positions the elison is quite rare and exceptional. I will begin the exceptions by giving a peculiar group: ii. 5, omm' sit. 458, omnibu' sunt , 1079, aliquoiu' siet , iv. 493, coloribu' sint, 1152, corpori' sunt, 1268, opu' sunt, v. 456, minoribu' sunt, 1445, priu' sunt; all these are from the first four feet, but evidently to Lucretius a combination like opu' sunt is very different from, say, opu' fit. Indeed, I take it that opusit was to him just one word like necessest; the following s in sit and sunt helps, perhaps, and so the solitary instance in Catullus is before s; at any rate, this group is obviously exceptional. There remain only two elisions at the end of the fourth foot, iv. 1035 and the emended vi. 972; two at the end of the second foot, immutabili' in i. 591, and immortalibu' in v. 53, both due to correctors and both words of a form which is rare at the opening of a line; one in weak fourth caesura, iii. 905; one at end of first foot, i. 978. You will hardly believe me, but those are all. (shrink)

There are many cases of conduct for which responsibility can plausibly be ascribed to a group, in addition to any responsibility ascribable to the group's constituent members. It is important to be able to make such ascriptions because without them we are unable to assign responsibilities for many sorts of humanly-caused harms for which responsibility cannot reasonably be ascribed to individuals alone. Two recent theories of collective responsibility advance our understanding of why it is important to be able to hold (...) groups accountable, but they apply only to a limited spectrum of groups, and rely on the plausibility of importing unnecessary individualistic assumptions into discussions of collective responsibility. ;I argue that we can justify ascription of collective responsibility without engaging in difficult metaphysical or ontological disputes. In particular, in order legitimately to ascribe collective responsibility we need not demonstrate that groups are capable of exhibiting intentions, or that groups can be considered 'moral persons'. We may reasonably consider organized groups to take action, and we may justly blame or praise them, when their members engage in what I call 'joint purposive behavior', as when an automobile manufacturer knowingly markets faulty vehicles. I argue, further, that certain unorganized groups, or 'random collectivities', can justly be blamed for promoting values and attitudes conducive to harmful behavior, as when a hate group advocates violent actions against minorities, or praised as groups for promoting values that encourage laudable behavior. ;I argue that most objections to collective responsibility rely on various misunderstandings of what it means for a group to be collectively responsible, notably, the belief that if a group is responsible its members cannot also be individually responsible, and the belief that collective responsibility 'distributes' among the individuals in the responsible group. In addition, I argue that large-scale environmental problems such as global warming lend themselves to a collectivist analysis, and that a view of collective responsibility that balances the harm-prevention and fault-finding purposes of responsibility ascription may help us to resolve such problems. (shrink)

Constantin Reliu had been working for twenty years as a cook in Turkey when he returned to his hometown of Barlad, Romania, to discover that, there, he was dead. His former wife had, unbeknownst to him, at some point during his stay in Turkey registered him as deceased in Romania. He has since been living a legal nightmare trying to prove to Romanian authorities that he is, in fact, alive. Reliu is not alone in finding out that the legal system (...) is not as attuned to physiological activity or biological assessment by doctors in determining death as one might think. If one starts with the assumption that death is a purely biological concept, solely the province of doctors, Reliu's story seems entirely unrelated to the concept of death in the medical context. A brain scan would not lead to a reversal of his being assessed as dead. The story is a reminder, however, that how death is used is not just biological, and therefore that the standard of death even in the clinic must answer to cultural considerations. Values, the law, and custom matter a great deal in determining who is alive and who is not, whether in the courtroom, the coroner's office, or the clinic. (shrink)

We are often told that quantum phenomena demand radical revisions of our scientific world view and that no physical theory describing well defined objects, such as particles described by their positions, evolving in a well defined way, let alone deterministically, can account for such phenomena. The great majority of physicists continue to subscribe to this view, despite the fact that just such a deterministic theory, accounting for all of the phe nomena of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, was proposed by David (...) Bohm more than four decades ago and has arguably been around almost since the inception of quantum mechanics itself. Our purpose in asking colleagues to write the essays for this volume has not been to produce a Festschrift in honor of David Bohm or to gather together a collection of papers simply stating uncritically Bohm's views on quantum mechanics. The central theme around which the essays in this volume are arranged is David Bohm's version of quantum mechanics. It has by now become fairly standard practice to refer to his theory as Bohmian mechanics and to the larger conceptual framework within which this is located as the causal quantum theory program. While it is true that one can have reservations about the appropriateness of these specific labels, both do elicit distinc tive images characteristic of the key concepts of these approaches and such terminology does serve effectively to contrast this class of theories with more standard formulations of quantum theory. (shrink)

We tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients (...) than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery. The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours. Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. _Shame and Necessity_ gives a new account of our relations to the Greeks, and helps us to see what ethical ideas we need in order to live in the modern world. (shrink)

Metaphysics and Transcendence takes up this story for the future. Arthur Gibson presents a new metaphysics with a genealogy based on counter-intuition and locates counter-intuition and complexity at the foundations of truth. Having devised fresh concepts on the basis of the new frontiers of science and philosophy, the author presents original explanations of transcendence arguing that just as we need revolutionary and original ways of depicting the physical world, so it is with such topics as God, miracles, the (...) resurrection, the source and identity of consciousness and reason itself. (shrink)

In the book Exploiting Hope: How the Promise of New Medical Interventions Sustains Us—and Makes Us Vulnerable, Jeremy Snyder takes on the dominant theory that exploitation in research ethics involves culpable inequity in transactions between parties. He rightly dismisses that economic explanation as inadequate. His theory of exploitation argues that it happens when those who have a duty of beneficence to someone take advantage of their hope. Exploitation is not just an unfair transaction; it is a betrayal of an (...) obligation owed to the vulnerable, weak, or dependent to protect them. Snyder is persuasive. But only to a point. He helps us understand the betrayal involved in exploiting hope. But much more remains to be debated about hope and exploitation. Exploitation in health care is not just a matter of schemers and ne'er‐do‐wells playing fast and loose with ever‐hopeful patients. Sometimes it involves patient groups looking for the right to try any intervention, no matter how dangerous or outlandish, at government expense. (shrink)

Just below the surface of public life in the United States, a biblically based theory of rights vies with a theory that first appeared in the work of Bentham and Mill, and the latter is gaining increasing dominance. The resolution of this conflict has implications for a host of legal matters and public policy decisions, including life and death issues like physician-assisted suicide. Though the ascendancy of the Millian tradition reflects widespread skepticism concerning the possibility of developing a basis (...) for a common morality or defending a conception of natural inalienable rights, the author argues that a plausible account of common human morality can be developed from attention to the relationships that are requisite for sustaining the communities that are the condition of moral agency. (shrink)

Law students are usually told that the purpose of damages is to make it as if a wrong had never happened.3 Although torts professors are good at explaining this idea to their students, it is the source of much academic perplexity. Money cannot really make serious losses go away, and it seems a cruel joke to say that money can make an injured person “whole.” Worse still, if money could make an injured person whole, injuring someone and then paying them (...) seems just as good as not injuring them at all. (shrink)

This book focuses on justice and its demands in the way of providing people with medical care. Building on recent insights on the nature of moral perceptions and motivations from the neurosciences, it makes a case for the traditional medical ethic and examines its financial feasibility. The book starts out by giving an account of the concept of justice and tracing it back to the practices and tenets of Hippocrates and his followers, while taking into account findings from the neurosciences. (...) Next, it considers whether the claim that it is just to limit medical care for everyone to some basic minimum is justifiable. The book then addresses finances and expenditures of the US health care system and shows that the growth of expenditures and the percentage of the gross national product spent on health care make for an unsustainable trajectory. In light of the question what should be changed, the book suggests that overdiagnosis and medicalizing normal behavior lead to harmful, costly and unnecessary interventions and are the result of unethical behavior on the part of the pharmaceutical industry and extensive ethical failures of the FDA. The book ends with suggestions about what can be done to put the U.S. health care system on the path to sustainability, better medical care, and compliance with the demands of justice. (shrink)

IN THE FIRST EDITION TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION of the categories Kant does not mention the logical functions of judgment. In the second edition the Deduction can be said to be dominated by the logical functions of judgment. A transcendental deduction supplies a method for showing that pure concepts can have applicability. My contention is that the two deductions constitute exactly the same method, and so are the exact same deduction. The difference between them, rather, is in the characterization of the pure (...) concepts that the method is supposed to be a method for. The undifferentiated categories of the A edition become the logical functions together with their schemata in the B edition. This does not mean that Kant has split the A edition notion of categories since the A edition categories are equivalent to just the schemata themselves. (shrink)

I have never been able to swallow the explanation that this means οίσθ' ὃ τɩ ἒστɩ τ⋯ν κακ⋯ν ⋯ποῖον κ.τ.λ. The order of words is dead against it, since Zεύς ought to be in the ⋯ποῖον clause; it may be safely said that there is no shadow of a parallel to such an order in Sophocles, and probably not in anyone else either. Look at line 2 by itself and consider whether any hearer could possibly suppose that δτɩ Ζεὺς could (...) mean anything but ‘that Zeus’ is doing or will do something or other. So Aristophanes seems to have thought; in a passage crammed with reminiscences of tragedy he declaims :ἆρ' οἶσθ' ὃτɩ Ζεύς εἳ με λυπήσεɩ πέρα μέλαθρα μ⋯ν αύτο⋯ κα⋯ δόμοѵς' AμΦ⋯ονος καταɩθαλώσω πυρΦόροɩσѵν ⋯ετοῖς;Moreover, I flatly deny that οἶσθ' ⋯ τɩ κακ⋯ν όποῖον ού τελεῖ is possible Greek even when the order has been corrected. οὐĸ οἶδα ὃστɩς τ⋯ν ‘Eλλήνων όποῖος ούκ ᾀπαρνοῖτ’ ἂѵ τοȖτο μ⋯ οὺκ εἶναɩ ⋯ληθ⋯ς. Just look at it! (shrink)

Heracles had gone to Arcadia to fetch the Erymanthian boar; when he had just returned he heard of the voyage of Argo, and, hastily depositing the boar at Mycenae, departed to join Jason without the knowledge of Eurystheus. λυρκήιον Αργος άμείψας is supposed to mean ‘having come to Lyrceian Argos’. But, first, άμείβω Αργος ought not to mean ‘I come to Argos’; άμείβω and άμείβομαι alike mean either change or pass or leave; enter they do not mean. The lexica (...) quote passages as meaning enter which do not mean any such thing; Θύρας or βαλόν άμείβω is ‘I pass’ the door or threshold, πόλιν έκπόλεως άμείβω or άμείβομαι is ‘I change one city for another,’ άμείβομαι έρκοςόδότων ‘I pass the hedge of the teeth,’ and so on. Until I see an instance of it I shall not believe that πόλιν άμείβω can mean merely I enter or come to a city. Nor can we take it to mean pass in this place, because the road from Arcadia to Mycenae does not pass Argos. Secondly, what is Lyrceian Argos ? Whether a river or a mountain be implied by Lyrceian, it is not a Greek expression; we do not speak of Hymettian Athens or Cephisian Athens, of Cithaeronian or Asopian Thebes or Boeotia. There is indeed found the expression Πηλιωτιν 'Ιωλκόν in Euripides, Medea 484, and the scholiast on iv. 131 says that Τιτνίδος Αίης means Aea of the river Titen, referring to Eratosthenes as his authority for the river, but no one else knows anything about it, and it is more than probable that Mr. Mooney is right in regarding it with suspicion. (shrink)

Plato’sPhilebusfamously combines a deliberation on the virtuous life as a balancing act between prudence and pleasure with a theory of the composition of mixtures from limit and limitedness. The latter aspect of the dialogue is used by the Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus as a basis for his own metaphysical analysis of the ultimate first principle, the One, and the manner in which it produces all things which exist. Multiple scholarly analyses have been provided of Proclus’ use of the Phileban theory of (...) limit and the unlimited for his description of the first principle’s creation process. However, this paper shows that Proclus reads thePhilebusnot merely for its discussion of limit and unlimited, but also for its description of the good life. After all, the Neoplatonic One is also the Good from Plato’sRepublic. InPhil. 20d1–11, Socrates suggest that the good is perfect, sufficient, and desirable. Proclus’Commentary on the RepublicandPlatonic Theologyreveal that these three aspects of the good provide Proclus with a framework to describe the Neoplatonic first principlequaGood. In Proclus’ view, the three Phileban concepts constitute the base elements of the good which reappear in all of its manifestations, and thus link the good in us to the transcendent and unqualified Good: the desirable element represents the good’s singularity and its position as the centre around which all beings circle; the sufficient element represents the non-reciprocal bestowal of existence and generative power by any form of the good upon its participants; lastly, the perfect element reverts all creatures to the good in which they participate, even when not all genera of beings in the Neoplatonic universe are equally capable of such participation. Furthermore, Proclus uses the description of the good life as not merely intellectual from thePhilebusto fortify his arguments in disagreements with other Neoplatonic commentators regarding the transcendence of the Good over the intelligible principles, and conversely employs the Neoplatonic definition of the first principle to affirm the ethics of the Platonic dialogue. Thus, although Proclus’ primary goal in reading thePhilebusis to obtain knowledge of the ultimate first principle, Socrates’ analysis of the virtuous life in the dialogue is just as important for his purposes as the theory of mixtures. (shrink)

During the last hundred years the notion of time flow has been held in low esteem by philosophers of science. Since the metaphor depends heavily on the analogy with motion, criticisms of time flow have either attacked the analogy as poorly founded, or else argued by analogy from a “static” conception of motion. Thus (1) Bertrand Russell argued that just as motion can be conceived as existence at successive places at successive times without commitment to a state of motion (...) at an instant, so duration can be conceived as existence at each of the times at which a thing exists without any commitment to a becoming or flow from one instant to another. I call this the “at-at” objection to time flow. A second objection (2) is that the sufficiency of the “B-theoretic” conception of time for physics makes the concept of time flow otiose. On this rendering the existence of a thing through time is just the “tenseless existence” of the thing at each instant of the duration (or at each spacetime point), without any flow from one instant or point to another. A third objection (3) is that in relativity theory, owing to the relativity of simultaneity, there is no unique invariant ‘now’, or hyperplane of simultaneously occurring events. If time flow is conceived in terms of the flow of such a ‘now’, then the non-existence of a worldwide instant of occurrence appears to be refuted. Lastly, (4) a capstone to these criticisms is the objection famously raised by Jack Smart: if rate of flow of any quantity can only be reckoned with respect to time, then with respect to what does time flow? If it does not even make sense to ask how fast time flows, then surely the metaphor should be abandoned as confused. (shrink)

Child's play? Certainly Alison Gopnik is in good company in pointing to connections between science and child development. To mention just a few luminaries: in psychology, Freud looked at the developmental connection between children's play and adult work; in philosophy, Thomas Reid may have been the first to ground the faculty of reasoning in developmental stages that “unfold themselves by degrees; so that it [the child] is inspired with the various principles of common sense”. As for connecting commonsense reasoning (...) and science, according to Einstein, “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking”. Quod erat demonstrandum. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Power of “Pliant Stuff”: Fables and Frankness in Seventeenth-Century Dutch RepublicanismArthur WeststeijnIn the preface to his 1609 collection of classical fables entitled De sapientia veterum (On the Wisdom of the Ancients), Francis Bacon vindicated his choice for such a playful genre. Although the writing of fables might seem just an “exercise of pleasure for my own or my reader’s recreation,” Bacon stressed that that was not the (...) case. On the contrary, he argued that “beneath no small number of the fables of the ancient poets there lay from the very beginning a mystery and an allegory.” Therefore, he continued, through such fables, “as sacred relics and light airs breathing out of better times,” hidden meanings can be exposed and made understood to unskilled ears and eyes. Indeed, “the employment of parables as a method of teaching, whereby inventions that are new and abstruse and remote from vulgar opinions may find an easier passage to the understanding,” shows that the fable serves as a very appropriate expedient for instruction and persuasion, the higher goals of rhetoric beyond simple entertainment and delight.1 [End Page 1]Yet, for all these noble purposes, Bacon could not hide his unease with those aspects of the fable which seemed to escape his pen’s command. Embarrassed by the “levity and looseness with which people indulge their fancy in the matter of allegories,” he acknowledged himself to have trod slippery ground. As he asserted: “I know very well what pliant stuff fable is made of, how freely it will follow any way you please to draw it, and how easily with a little dexterity and discourse of wit meanings which it was never meant to bear may be plausibly put upon it.” For Bacon, this intrinsic ambivalence of the fable gave rise to discomfort, and from the start he sought to remove any potential misunderstandings about his intentions. However, not all seventeenth-century writers of fables shared his concerns. Instead, the very nature of the fable as “pliant stuff,” as a genre which necessarily conveys meanings in an ambiguous, suggestive, and indirect manner, made it a particularly useful rhetorical device for those who would not or could not articulate their opinions openly.This article shows that a number of seventeenth-century authors deliberately employed the fable for its political expediency as an opaque prism to diffuse unconventional ideas that could undermine authority. Central in this overview are the Dutch merchants and fervent republican theorists Johan and Pieter de la Court, the main representatives of the radicalization of Dutch republicanism in the decades following the Peace of Westphalia. While most mainstream republicans in the Netherlands emphasized the need of a monarchical figure, a Stadholder, in the ideally balanced republican regime, the brothers De la Court claimed that such a monarchical element would necessarily entail tyranny.2 Their writings employed two different types of fables to substantiate this fundamental claim: the first based on the political allegories of the Italian satirist Traiano Boccalini, the second following the Aesopian tradition as exemplified by the famous [End Page 2] Dutch poet and playwright Joost van den Vondel. Through an analysis of the rhetorical role of these fables, this article attempts to shed more light on the reasons why fables were used in seventeenth-century republican thought. It will argue that the literary aspects of the fable cannot be separated from its political function, a function that eventually can be characterized as highly paradoxical: not in spite but because of its openness to different readings, the fable involved a disguised rhetorical plea for frankness and liberty of speech.Rhetoric and Fables: The Standing of an Emblematic GenreIn classical antiquity, when authors such as Aesop and Phaedrus had created a distinct genre of allegorical tales, the use of such fables had been as much reproved as their particular rhetorical force had been recognized. According to Quintilian, fables should not be a part of the linguistic armory of the truly decent orator, for fables “are specially attractive to rude and uneducated minds, which are less suspicious than others in their receptions of fictions and, when pleased, readily agree with the arguments from which their pleasure is derived... (shrink)

We tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients (...) than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery. The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours. Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. _Shame and Necessity_ gives a new account of our relations to the Greeks, and helps us to see what ethical ideas we need in order to live in the modern world. (shrink)

In the context of the earlier views of John Haught, I discuss the paradox that while environmental philosophers seek a viable ethics, advocates of the majority view, scientific materialism, deny an intrinsic value to nature. I argue that a new science, just now arising, may set aside this pessimistic view, replacing it with a conception of the cosmos as a self-organizing genesis. Its method is holistic and integrative rather than analytical and divisive. After a survey of its overall outlines, (...) I introduce some salient features of the central trend, a key property, and a universal complementarity and explore their relevance for a scientifically based natural ethics that takes into account an ecological self, animal awareness, and cooperative communities. (shrink)

In the context of the earlier views of John Haught, I discuss the paradox that while environmental philosophers seek a viable ethics, advocates of the majority view, scientific materialism, deny an intrinsic value to nature. I argue that a new science, just now arising, may set aside this pessimistic view, replacing it with a conception of the cosmos as a self-organizing genesis. Its method is holistic and integrative rather than analytical and divisive. After a survey of its overall outlines, (...) I introduce some salient features of the central trend, a key property, and a universal complementarity and explore their relevance for a scientifically based natural ethics that takes into account an ecological self, animal awareness, and cooperative communities. (shrink)

The genetic component of variations in human responses to pharmacological agents is called pharmacogenetics while the molecular basis for these variations are most often identified as pharmacogenomics. Pharmacogenomics as a field of scientific endeavor is so new that in the scientific literature the two terms are often used interchangeably. In fact, the search for new drugs at the molecular level start with the identification of variations in DNA sequences whose products produce alterations in the amino acid structure of the active (...) portion of a protein which are then identified with the clinical disorder in question. This process is just the reverse of standard pharmaceutical approaches which begin with exploration of the physiological and potentially the biochemical basis of the specific disorder under study. The completion of the first draft of the human genome in the first months of the new millenium has increased expectations that molecular genetic approaches to drug disovery and development will significantly shorten the time-frame of new drug testing, significantly reduce the level of adverse events and anable the design of drugs to treat those with unique disorders.Based on such rosy expectations and the potential economic opportunities afforded by those who obtain such patents, there has been a rush of patent applications both in the United States and in Europe by private industry and university laboratories conducting genomic research to secure the rights to specific DNA sequences and federal agencies attempting to place the control of such information in the public domaine. This paper will document and discuss from a historic prospective the public policy and bioethical issues associated with the availability of patents for drug development. (shrink)

This little-known work by the famous German pessimist and critic of Hegel was originally written as a doctoral dissertation when Schopenhauer was just twenty-six, but it was later revised when the philosopher was sixty. So important did he consider this work, originally titled "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason," that he often underscored the fact that no one could hope to understand his magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation, without having first read this (...) work. Schopenhauer takes up where Kant left off in response to Hume, and his insights into the nature of perception and understanding remain amazingly relevant and still unsurpassed. Schopenhauer's analyses of causation and related concepts rival and probably surpass in their depth and brilliance the more celebrated discussions of David Hume. Where Hume grossly oversimplified these problems and left them riddled with paradoxes, Schopenhauer disentangled them and shed light on what had seemed hopelessly dark. (shrink)

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash ABSTRACT The coverage of healthcare costs allegedly brought about by people’s own earlier health-adverse behaviors is certainly a matter of justice. However, this raises the following questions: justice for whom? Is it right to take people’s past behaviors into account in determining their access to healthcare? If so, how do we go about taking those behaviors into account? These bioethical questions become even more complex when we consider them in the context of (...) a commitment to publicly funded, universal healthcare coverage. INTRODUCTION Healthcare coverage of lifestyle-related conditions is certainly a matter of justice. However, this raises the following justice-related question: Is it right to consider people’s past behaviors in determining their access to healthcare? If so, the methods of taking those behaviors into account must be fair and justifiable. This bioethical question becomes even more complex when we consider it in the context of a commitment to publicly funded, universal healthcare coverage. This paper takes an old, classic debate, evaluates newer approaches, and offers an argument favoring a combined approach which alters the liberal-egalitarian solution to account for social justice. ANALYSIS I. Causes of Disease If healthcare coverage were universal, irrespective of socioeconomic status and lifestyle, people would contribute to the cost of remedying the lifestyle-induced health problems of others. In the West, lifestyle-related diseases are burdensome.[i] This paper approaches this concern from a western lens that incorporates both a European tradition of “social safety nets” and an American tradition of personal freedoms. By taking such an approach, solutions to the consequences of one’s past behavior burdening others must consider an individual’s personal freedom to choose to act as he or she wishes, with the distributive social and economic equality of the many. The concept of disease caused by lifestyle and diet is proven. Many health conditions include behavioral risk factors. Multi-pack smoking increases the risk of chronic lung disease, while obesity increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. Inattention to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and a lack of exercise leads to increased risks of coronary artery disease.[ii] While poor lifestyle choices certainly influence these conditions, their causes are multifactorial, and it is difficult to say that any single string of poor choices led to their development. In a scenario where two men excessively eat fast food for 20 years, several discrete factors impact whether any of them might suffer an ischemic-embolic stroke or not. Genetics, circumstances, and activity will also contribute to outcomes. II. Alcohol-Related End-Stage Liver Disease One paper suggests that alcohol-related end-stage liver disease (ARESLD) differs from other multifactorial disorders as alcohol alone causes the disease.[iii] It justifies attributing personal responsibility to patients with ARESLD because the condition develops only after the cumulative effects of large quantities of alcohol consumed from years to decades.[iv] However, the paper undermines its position by admitting that even the susceptibility to becoming an alcoholic has some degree of genetic predisposition.[v] Given the extreme scarcity of donor livers, some patients may be prioritized over others on the transplant waiting list. Since donor livers cannot be given to everyone, transplanting a liver into an alcoholic may result in death for competing candidates whose liver disease was not their fault. All else being equal, if bioethicists avoid claiming moral deficiency or judgment, those with apparently self-inflicted ARESLD will not be deprived of treatment but will have a lower priority for transplant.[vi] In contrast, another position suggests that it is often difficult to define what behaviors are punishable as these are largely personal and value-laden.[vii] Still, people do not support using their own resources to support the consequences of others’ poor choices, no matter how objective.[viii] In democratic societies, one must take into consideration community morals and values.[ix] Even if we were to punish people for their health-adverse behaviors, we could not logistically employ the vigorous and sustained efforts necessary to determine whose actions are morally weak.[x] III. The Liberal-Egalitarian Proposal One past argument proposes a liberal-egalitarian solution to manage personal responsibility for so-called “lifestyle diseases.”[xi] This Rawlsian system combines the European-style “social safety net” commitment to social and economic equality with the American liberal notion of pluralist toleration and personal freedoms. This idealized system aims to hold people responsible for their choices rather than the consequences to mitigate the downside of blaming those who might not be blameworthy. The approach avoids determining the questionable nature of luck and personal responsibility for health outcomes, fairness in the distribution of economic burden, and the intrusiveness required to practically determine who acts in a morally wrong and health-adverse way. The liberal-egalitarian model, a theory of distributive justice, has two facets: the liberal principle that people should be held accountable for their choices and the egalitarian principle that people who make the same choices should have the same outcomes.[xii] This model attempts to fuse responsibility with equity by seeking to reward good behavior and tax bad behavior rather than punish the consequences of the action and navigate who deserves treatment. For instance, the hospital bedside is not the appropriate place to introduce responsibility for one’s health outcomes.[xiii] This appeals to the reality that, at that time, discerning the true causes of disease was not plausible and to humanity in avoiding a heartless and cruel approach. An argument in favor of the liberal-egalitarian model considers its method of implementation. This approach assumes that the healthcare system treats all individuals regardless of their choices or ability to cover costs. The liberal-egalitarian model also assumes that a certain adverse health condition is related, statistically speaking, to the consumption of a certain good and that good can be taxed. As such, it proposes to tax the consumption of that good to finance the collective burden which arises from that good’s consumption rather than require individuals to pay for their own treatment. In the example of ARESLD, the recommended solution would be taxing all alcohol. While a systematic infrastructure is not explicit, there is the implication that a per-unit tax can be imposed on alcohol so the total tax revenue would make up for the additional healthcare costs due to consumption.[xiv] Upholding the principle that all people who make the same choices should face the same costs, all consumers of alcohol would pay the same tax, regardless of factors such as genetic predisposition to alcoholism, lifestyle, or expected cost of treatment. Upholding the principle of individual responsibility, this model does not deny treatment to anyone, neutralizing factors outside that individual’s control by imposing the tax ex-ante. Other people are not burdened by those who consume the good. People who consume alcohol face a burden proportional to the amount consumed. This tax-based implementation is justified so long as the tax is not prohibitively high for the average consumer. Further, the model mitigates concerns over the intrusiveness of ascribing morality to health-adverse behaviors. IV. Moral and Social Arguments Against the Liberal-Egalitarian Position Arguments against the liberal-egalitarian model concerns its many assumptions. First, this model assumes that consumption of such goods is directly related to the health outcome and that these goods can be taxed.[xv] Certain people genetically predisposed to alcoholism would be predisposed to consume more alcohol. The model falls short when applied to scenarios where health outcomes are not consumption-based, such as engaging in unsafe sex or abstaining from healthy lifestyle choices like exercise. Second, some might argue that the liberal-egalitarian model fails to remain neutral. Residual moral judgments tied to consumption choices introduce non-neutrality. Although taxation in free societies is determined by democratic procedures rather than by individuals in the healthcare system, moral and value-based judgments will be implicit in deciding what behaviors are taxable, such as the purchase of cigarettes. Third, the liberal-egalitarian model fails to determine whether one’s behavior is autonomous, as socio-cultural-economic factors may influence it and behavior is more a product of society, peer pressure, or income. Those also may reflect systemic inequalities. Therefore, this model, which rewards, or taxes based solely on decisions, regardless of their consequences and motivations, fails to consider that a person’s decisions may not be completely autonomous. V. Libertarian Arguments Against the Liberal-Egalitarian Model a. State Intrusiveness as Counter to the Liberal-Egalitarian Model Last, there is a libertarian worry that if the state guarantees universal healthcare coverage to all people, the state will have to become highly intrusive and investigate people’s morals.[xvi] At least one-third of all disease burden in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific is attributable to lifestyle measures such as tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, high cholesterol, and obesity.[xvii] With these various lifestyles, it is not likely to agree on what conduct to tax or condemn.[xviii] The fine-toothed comb required to determine whether each citizen has been engaging in these behaviors would intrude on daily life and personal freedom. Libertarians champion the argument that impractical intrusiveness would result from universal healthcare, and such a degree of intrusiveness would likely be universally unacceptable.[xix] The liberal-egalitarian model mitigates the libertarian worry about state intrusiveness as it does not involve prying into one’s life and choices other than taxing goods. A liberal state should ideally be neutral to how people decide to live their lives. In all, libertarians can rest assured that the liberal-egalitarian tax-based model, through its ex-ante implementation, will require no prying state eyes. States that provide universal healthcare coverage and wish to condemn certain misconduct do not need to become overly intrusive to carry out measures to hold individuals accountable. b. Fairness Another libertarian worry regarding the guarantee of universal healthcare coverage in the context of lifestyle-driven diseases is that the public will be burdened unfairly with covering others’ ill-advised mistakes or bad luck. An ideal system to address this worry would link treatment or payment for treatment with whatever behavior caused that need.[xx] The distribution of burdens should be linked to how different individuals contributed to the creation of those burdens. Applied to health policy, we should ask how the need for a certain treatment arose when determining how to distribute its cost.[xxi] The liberal-egalitarian model aspires to hold individuals responsible for their choices, not for the consequences of such choices. This model significantly mitigates the libertarian worry over unfair burdens for covering other people’s mistakes or social conditions, which lead to those bad outcomes, by ensuring to not burden others with any of the costs for the treatment of people who decide to engage in certain health-adverse behaviors. The aforementioned taxation-based system would only tax those who also engage in the health-adverse behavior through consumption, and that tax directly pays for the necessary collective treatment. As such, those who do not consume the good are not involved with the payment scheme, while those who do consume the good are responsible for payment in a matter proportional to the amount of the good they have consumed. VI. Universal Coverage Taking a step back, one should consider whether these worries regarding the coverage of apparently self-inflicted health conditions in the context of universal healthcare are worthwhile issues. One perspective raises what is called the culturally imagined objection — an idea erroneously held by many that sick people, especially those who are poor and uneducated, bring these illnesses upon themselves due to poor decision-making and irresponsible risk-taking.[xxii] This perspective critiques the uniquely American view that, since individuals are free to choose their lifestyles, they should bear the costs of their lifestyle.[xxiii] Taking this argument further, some (perhaps the strongly libertarian) would say that the poor health status among many individuals is the price individuals must pay for their American way of life and the liberty and freedom to live as they wish. However, people should not completely punish individuals for their health-adverse behaviors because these choices are largely pre-determined by a person’s socioeconomic influences.[xxiv] The outcomes from these allegedly ill-advised behaviors, which largely affect poorer people, are not just poor behavior but rather a public health crisis. Perhaps the state and its people should take collective responsibility and cover the costs of treatment for those health outcomes without question, as a form of public service. Rather than worrying about accountability and taxing bad behavior or intrusiveness into personal decisions, some might argue that people need to collectively take responsibility for reducing the overarching systemic inequalities and covering the associated treatment costs as a measure of public health. VII. Proposed Solution Given the strengths of the liberal-egalitarian model and taking into account libertarian and social justice-oriented objections, an ideal solution for the coverage of lifestyle-related health problems needs to consider the complex relationship between a person’s behaviors and their apparent health outcomes. It must consider how society as a whole passes judgment on behaviors and how to take into account that many health-adverse decisions are not truly autonomous decisions, as various genetic and socioeconomic factors influence them. An ideal solution combines the liberal-egalitarian tax-based model with the social justice concerns of universal coverage. Whatever the cost for the treatment of medical issues resulting in part or entirely from lifestyle and diet, taxes collected from spending associated with the behavior (like the purchase of alcohol, junk food, and cigarettes) ex-ante should fund 50 percent of the cost of treatment, while the universal healthcare taxation scheme should include the other 50 percent. Such a system would provide an incentive to avoid the purchases that can lead to unhealthy consumption and make healthier choices, slightly punish and discourage such purchases through taxation, yet not overly punish people whose outcomes may have more to do with socioeconomic factors and genetics. Adding public responsibility demonstrates acknowledgement that health care is in the public interest and can mitigate public health inequalities. This solution would fuse personal responsibility with the public responsibility of state-sponsored social improvement while ensuring that all people have fair access to necessary treatment, no matter their ability to pay. CONCLUSION The 50-50 system this paper proposes reflects both justice and personal responsibility in covering healthcare costs allegedly brought about by people’s own health-adverse behaviors. By allocating tax revenue from consumption that contributes or even alone causes poor health outcomes, such a system incorporates personal responsibility. By using general tax revenue for health care, such a system would meet the libertarian requirement of providing care without any moral investigation of past behaviors and the social justice consideration of providing health care to those who may have unwittingly ventured into ill-health due to systemic injustice, socioeconomics, or genetics. - [i] Cappelen, A. W. (2005). Responsibility in health care: A liberal egalitarian approach. Journal of Medical Ethics, 31(8), 476–480. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2004.010421 [ii] Moss, A. H. (1991). Should alcoholics compete equally for liver transplantation? JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 265(10), 1295–1298. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1991.03460100097032 [iii] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [iv] Moss, p. 1296. [v] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [vi] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [vii] Cohen, C. IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE COHEN AND BENJAMIN (1991). Alcoholics and liver transplantation. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 265(10), 1299–1301. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1991.03460100101033 [viii] Cohen, p. 1299-1301. [ix] Moss, p. 1297. [x] Cohen, p. 1300. [xi] Cappelen, p. 478-480. [xii] Cappalen, p. 478-480. [xiii] Cappelen, p.479. [xiv] Cappelen, p. 479. [xv] Cappelen, p. 479 [xvi] Cohen, p. 1301. [xvii] Cappelen, p. 478. [xviii] Cohen, p. 1299-1301. [xix] Cohen, p. 1301. [xx] Cappelen, p. 476-480. [xxi] Cappelen, p. 476-480. [xxii] Kawachi, I. (2005). Why the United States is not number one in Health. Healthy, Wealthy, and Fair, 18–33. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195170665.003.0013 [xxiii] Kawachi, p. 18-33. [xxiv] Kawachi, p. 18-33. (shrink)

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash ABSTRACT The coverage of healthcare costs allegedly brought about by people’s own earlier health-adverse behaviors is certainly a matter of justice. However, this raises the following questions: justice for whom? Is it right to take people’s past behaviors into account in determining their access to healthcare? If so, how do we go about taking those behaviors into account? These bioethical questions become even more complex when we consider them in the context of (...) a commitment to publicly funded, universal healthcare coverage. INTRODUCTION Healthcare coverage of lifestyle-related conditions is certainly a matter of justice. However, this raises the following justice-related question: Is it right to consider people’s past behaviors in determining their access to healthcare? If so, the methods of taking those behaviors into account must be fair and justifiable. This bioethical question becomes even more complex when we consider it in the context of a commitment to publicly funded, universal healthcare coverage. This paper takes an old, classic debate, evaluates newer approaches, and offers an argument favoring a combined approach which alters the liberal-egalitarian solution to account for social justice. ANALYSIS l. Causes of Disease If healthcare coverage were universal, irrespective of socioeconomic status and lifestyle, people would contribute to the cost of remedying the lifestyle-induced health problems of others. In the West, lifestyle-related diseases are burdensome.[1] This paper approaches this concern from a western lens that incorporates both a European tradition of “social safety nets” and an American tradition of personal freedoms. By taking such an approach, solutions to the consequences of one’s past behavior burdening others must consider an individual’s personal freedom to choose to act as he or she wishes, with the distributive social and economic equality of the many. The concept of disease caused by lifestyle and diet is proven. Many health conditions include behavioral risk factors. Multi-pack smoking increases the risk of chronic lung disease, while obesity increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. Inattention to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and a lack of exercise leads to increased risks of coronary artery disease.[2] While poor lifestyle choices certainly influence these conditions, their causes are multifactorial, and it is difficult to say that any single string of poor choices led to their development. In a scenario where two men excessively eat fast food for 20 years, several discrete factors impact whether any of them might suffer an ischemic-embolic stroke or not. Genetics, circumstances, and activity will also contribute to outcomes. ll. Alcohol-Related End-Stage Liver Disease One paper suggests that alcohol-related end-stage liver disease (ARESLD) differs from other multifactorial disorders as alcohol alone causes the disease.[3] It justifies attributing personal responsibility to patients with ARESLD because the condition develops only after the cumulative effects of large quantities of alcohol consumed from years to decades.[4] However, the paper undermines its position by admitting that even the susceptibility to becoming an alcoholic has some degree of genetic predisposition.[5] Given the extreme scarcity of donor livers, some patients may be prioritized over others on the transplant waiting list. Since donor livers cannot be given to everyone, transplanting a liver into an alcoholic may result in death for competing candidates whose liver disease was not their fault. All else being equal, if bioethicists avoid claiming moral deficiency or judgment, those with apparently self-inflicted ARESLD will not be deprived of treatment but will have a lower priority for transplant.[6] In contrast, another position suggests that it is often difficult to define what behaviors are punishable as these are largely personal and value-laden.[7] Still, people do not support using their own resources to support the consequences of others’ poor choices, no matter how objective.[8] In democratic societies, one must take into consideration community morals and values.[9] Even if we were to punish people for their health-adverse behaviors, we could not logistically employ the vigorous and sustained efforts necessary to determine whose actions are morally weak.[10] lll. The Liberal-Egalitarian Proposal One past argument proposes a liberal-egalitarian solution to manage personal responsibility for so-called “lifestyle diseases.”[11] This Rawlsian system combines the European-style “social safety net” commitment to social and economic equality with the American liberal notion of pluralist toleration and personal freedoms. This idealized system aims to hold people responsible for their choices rather than the consequences to mitigate the downside of blaming those who might not be blameworthy. The approach avoids determining the questionable nature of luck and personal responsibility for health outcomes, fairness in the distribution of economic burden, and the intrusiveness required to practically determine who acts in a morally wrong and health-adverse way. The liberal-egalitarian model, a theory of distributive justice, has two facets: the liberal principle that people should be held accountable for their choices and the egalitarian principle that people who make the same choices should have the same outcomes.[12] This model attempts to fuse responsibility with equity by seeking to reward good behavior and tax bad behavior rather than punish the consequences of the action and navigate who deserves treatment. For instance, the hospital bedside is not the appropriate place to introduce responsibility for one’s health outcomes.[13] This appeals to the reality that, at that time, discerning the true causes of disease was not plausible and to humanity in avoiding a heartless and cruel approach. An argument in favor of the liberal-egalitarian model considers its method of implementation. This approach assumes that the healthcare system treats all individuals regardless of their choices or ability to cover costs. The liberal-egalitarian model also assumes that a certain adverse health condition is related, statistically speaking, to the consumption of a certain good and that good can be taxed. As such, it proposes to tax the consumption of that good to finance the collective burden which arises from that good’s consumption rather than require individuals to pay for their own treatment. In the example of ARESLD, the recommended solution would be taxing all alcohol. While a systematic infrastructure is not explicit, there is the implication that a per-unit tax can be imposed on alcohol so the total tax revenue would make up for the additional healthcare costs due to consumption.[14] Upholding the principle that all people who make the same choices should face the same costs, all consumers of alcohol would pay the same tax, regardless of factors such as genetic predisposition to alcoholism, lifestyle, or expected cost of treatment. Upholding the principle of individual responsibility, this model does not deny treatment to anyone, neutralizing factors outside that individual’s control by imposing the tax ex-ante. Other people are not burdened by those who consume the good. People who consume alcohol face a burden proportional to the amount consumed. This tax-based implementation is justified so long as the tax is not prohibitively high for the average consumer. Further, the model mitigates concerns over the intrusiveness of ascribing morality to health-adverse behaviors. lV. Moral and Social Arguments Against the Liberal-Egalitarian Position Arguments against the liberal-egalitarian model concerns its many assumptions. First, this model assumes that consumption of such goods is directly related to the health outcome and that these goods can be taxed.[15] Certain people genetically predisposed to alcoholism would be predisposed to consume more alcohol. The model falls short when applied to scenarios where health outcomes are not consumption-based, such as engaging in unsafe sex or abstaining from healthy lifestyle choices like exercise. Second, some might argue that the liberal-egalitarian model fails to remain neutral. Residual moral judgments tied to consumption choices introduce non-neutrality. Although taxation in free societies is determined by democratic procedures rather than by individuals in the healthcare system, moral and value-based judgments will be implicit in deciding what behaviors are taxable, such as the purchase of cigarettes. Third, the liberal-egalitarian model fails to determine whether one’s behavior is autonomous, as socio-cultural-economic factors may influence it and behavior is more a product of society, peer pressure, or income. Those also may reflect systemic inequalities. Therefore, this model, which rewards, or taxes based solely on decisions, regardless of their consequences and motivations, fails to consider that a person’s decisions may not be completely autonomous. V. Libertarian Arguments Against the Liberal-Egalitarian Model a. State Intrusiveness as Counter to the Liberal-Egalitarian Model Last, there is a libertarian worry that if the state guarantees universal healthcare coverage to all people, the state will have to become highly intrusive and investigate people’s morals.[16] At least one-third of all disease burden in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific is attributable to lifestyle measures such as tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, high cholesterol, and obesity.[17] With these various lifestyles, it is not likely to agree on what conduct to tax or condemn.[18] The fine-toothed comb required to determine whether each citizen has been engaging in these behaviors would intrude on daily life and personal freedom. Libertarians champion the argument that impractical intrusiveness would result from universal healthcare, and such a degree of intrusiveness would likely be universally unacceptable.[19] The liberal-egalitarian model mitigates the libertarian worry about state intrusiveness as it does not involve prying into one’s life and choices other than taxing goods. A liberal state should ideally be neutral to how people decide to live their lives. In all, libertarians can rest assured that the liberal-egalitarian tax-based model, through its ex-ante implementation, will require no prying state eyes. States that provide universal healthcare coverage and wish to condemn certain misconduct do not need to become overly intrusive to carry out measures to hold individuals accountable. b. Fairness Another libertarian worry regarding the guarantee of universal healthcare coverage in the context of lifestyle-driven diseases is that the public will be burdened unfairly with covering others’ ill-advised mistakes or bad luck. An ideal system to address this worry would link treatment or payment for treatment with whatever behavior caused that need.[20] The distribution of burdens should be linked to how different individuals contributed to the creation of those burdens. Applied to health policy, we should ask how the need for a certain treatment arose when determining how to distribute its cost.[21] The liberal-egalitarian model aspires to hold individuals responsible for their choices, not for the consequences of such choices. This model significantly mitigates the libertarian worry over unfair burdens for covering other people’s mistakes or social conditions, which lead to those bad outcomes, by ensuring to not burden others with any of the costs for the treatment of people who decide to engage in certain health-adverse behaviors. The aforementioned taxation-based system would only tax those who also engage in the health-adverse behavior through consumption, and that tax directly pays for the necessary collective treatment. As such, those who do not consume the good are not involved with the payment scheme, while those who do consume the good are responsible for payment in a matter proportional to the amount of the good they have consumed. Vl. Universal Coverage Taking a step back, one should consider whether these worries regarding the coverage of apparently self-inflicted health conditions in the context of universal healthcare are worthwhile issues. One perspective raises what is called the culturally imagined objection — an idea erroneously held by many that sick people, especially those who are poor and uneducated, bring these illnesses upon themselves due to poor decision-making and irresponsible risk-taking.[22] This perspective critiques the uniquely American view that, since individuals are free to choose their lifestyles, they should bear the costs of their lifestyle.[23] Taking this argument further, some (perhaps the strongly libertarian) would say that the poor health status among many individuals is the price individuals must pay for their American way of life and the liberty and freedom to live as they wish. However, people should not completely punish individuals for their health-adverse behaviors because these choices are largely pre-determined by a person’s socioeconomic influences.[24] The outcomes from these allegedly ill-advised behaviors, which largely affect poorer people, are not just poor behavior but rather a public health crisis. Perhaps the state and its people should take collective responsibility and cover the costs of treatment for those health outcomes without question, as a form of public service. Rather than worrying about accountability and taxing bad behavior or intrusiveness into personal decisions, some might argue that people need to collectively take responsibility for reducing the overarching systemic inequalities and covering the associated treatment costs as a measure of public health. Vll. Proposed Solution Given the strengths of the liberal-egalitarian model and taking into account libertarian and social justice-oriented objections, an ideal solution for the coverage of lifestyle-related health problems needs to consider the complex relationship between a person’s behaviors and their apparent health outcomes. It must consider how society as a whole passes judgment on behaviors and how to take into account that many health-adverse decisions are not truly autonomous decisions, as various genetic and socioeconomic factors influence them. An ideal solution combines the liberal-egalitarian tax-based model with the social justice concerns of universal coverage. Whatever the cost for the treatment of medical issues resulting in part or entirely from lifestyle and diet, taxes collected from spending associated with the behavior (like the purchase of alcohol, junk food, and cigarettes) ex-ante should fund 50 percent of the cost of treatment, while the universal healthcare taxation scheme should include the other 50 percent. Such a system would provide an incentive to avoid the purchases that can lead to unhealthy consumption and make healthier choices, slightly punish and discourage such purchases through taxation, yet not overly punish people whose outcomes may have more to do with socioeconomic factors and genetics. Adding public responsibility demonstrates acknowledgement that health care is in the public interest and can mitigate public health inequalities. This solution would fuse personal responsibility with the public responsibility of state-sponsored social improvement while ensuring that all people have fair access to necessary treatment, no matter their ability to pay. CONCLUSION The 50-50 system this paper proposes reflects both justice and personal responsibility in covering healthcare costs allegedly brought about by people’s own health-adverse behaviors. By allocating tax revenue from consumption that contributes or even alone causes poor health outcomes, such a system incorporates personal responsibility. By using general tax revenue for health care, such a system would meet the libertarian requirement of providing care without any moral investigation of past behaviors and the social justice consideration of providing health care to those who may have unwittingly ventured into ill-health due to systemic injustice, socioeconomics, or genetics. - [1] Cappelen, A. W. (2005). Responsibility in health care: A liberal egalitarian approach. Journal of Medical Ethics, 31(8), 476–480. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2004.010421 [2] Moss, A. H. (1991). Should alcoholics compete equally for liver transplantation? JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 265(10), 1295–1298. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1991.03460100097032 [3] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [4] Moss, p. 1296. [5] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [6] Moss, p. 1295-1298. [7] Cohen, C. IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE COHEN AND BENJAMIN (1991). Alcoholics and liver transplantation. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 265(10), 1299–1301. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1991.03460100101033 [8] Cohen, p. 1299-1301. [9] Moss, p. 1297. [10] Cohen, p. 1300. [11] Cappelen, p. 478-480. [12] Cappalen, p. 478-480. [13] Cappelen, p.479. [14] Cappelen, p. 479. [15] Cappelen, p. 479 [16] Cohen, p. 1301. [17] Cappelen, p. 478. [18] Cohen, p. 1299-1301. [19] Cohen, p. 1301. [20] Cappelen, p. 476-480. [21] Cappelen, p. 476-480. [22] Kawachi, I. (2005). Why the United States is not number one in Health. Healthy, Wealthy, and Fair, 18–33. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195170665.003.0013 [23] Kawachi, p. 18-33. [24] Kawachi, p. 18-33. (shrink)

I do not for a moment question the fact that many people have experiences of a special type which may be termed “religious”, The extent to which religious experience may be regarded as a reasonably common phenomenon in present-day Britain is shown clearly by David Hay in his Exploring Inner Space, Harmondsworth 1982. that such experiences often involve reference to something which appears to display a radical unlikeness to all else and that they are therefore in some sense inexpressible. Doubtless (...) the ideas I have put forward about the possible source of such unlikeness and ineffability might suggest models of God which would not find much theological approval, at least within any mainstream theistic tradition, since some sort of pantheism seems inevitably to be implied. But however this might be, the concept of radical unlikeness as it has been analyzed here can, I think, help us towards understanding certain problematic areas in religion quite apart from the issue of intelligibility, which has been the focus of this discussion. To begin with, radical unlikeness suggests a way in which the historical continuity of concepts of the transcendent might be upheld against the discontinuity suggested by the diversity of interpretations through which they have moved. Ancient and modern outlooks on, say, God differ enormously, as indeed do the range of co-temporal accounts at many particular moments. But, by and large, theologians firmly maintain that it is a single and unchanging phenomenon which is being dealt with. Unless we can point to some common element which is both specific enough to create a binding sense of common tradition, yet never completely expressed by any attempt at understanding it within that tradition (thus persistently demanding new attempts to apprehend it), then given the widely differing views of God within, for example, the Christian community, it is difficult to see how we could assume that in fact they all stemmed from the same source and were talking about the same thing. The idea of radical unlikeness could provide an element with just these required characteristics: it could be seen as what all the accounts attempt to net, with varying degrees of adequacy, within their offered interpretations. It could be seen as what remains constant, constantly elusive yet constantly generative of fresh attempts to apprehend it, throughout a history of intra-religious diversity. This sort of explanation could, presumably, be applied to the intra-religious diversity of the non-Christian traditions too.Secondly, radical unlikeness might suggest a possible way of understanding inter-religious diversity in a way which allows that whilst such diversity exists, whilst the differences between religions are real, they are grounded in a similar root-experience. It may, at first sight, seem difficult to continue thinking of the various religious traditions as truly separate phenomena if they are taken as being grounded on experiences whose ineffability stems from the unlikeness of experiencing things as a whole. Here we must stress again that if they are to be considered intelligible, radically unlike experiences cannot be considered completely so - or putting this another way, we cannot more than approach experience of totality. Sense can be given to religious claims of ineffability by suggesting experience of near totality, where we reach the last point on the scale of inclusiveness which complies with the logical criteria demanded of something for it to be possible for us to be aware of it. We might thus attempt an explanation of inter-religious diversity based on the view that Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam etc. acquire their differences from the different elements included in their experience of near totality. Taking totality to be represented by the scale of one to ten, Hinduism might be seen as grounded on experience of 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-9-10, Buddhism on experience of 1-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 and so on. The resulting dissimilarities are thus centred not on different types of experience, but on different areas of inclusiveness. This is, of course, to suppose that the various religious traditions are all based on the same degree (as opposed to the same elements) of inclusiveness, but it is by no means clear that such a supposition is justified. Continuing with our decimal analogy, might it not be suggested that whilst Christianity stemmed from experience of 2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10, Jainism was founded on a less extensive encounter with the divine (say 4-5-6-7-8-9-10)? It is, however, uncertain how we can compare and evaluate different religious traditions in such a way as to be able to comment on such claims. A definite danger of comparative religion is that by concentrating on establishing and exploring inter-religious likenesses, it may obscure the radical unlikeness of religious phenomena. It should be borne firmly in mind that such likenesses as may be established within comparative studies may not win religious phenomena a place within our understanding comparable to objects of more everyday concern. Statements found in the Old Testament, the Qur'an and the Vedas, for example, may, on occasion, be alike, but at the end of the day such things are often alike only, or chiefly, in so far as they display the same radical unlikeness in relation to the non-religious elements in our outlook.The analysis of radical unlikeness and ineffability which has been advanced might also suggest a way in which certain passages in religious writings could be understood, passages which at first sight can be seriously perplexing. If, for example, to return to the quotation given in the introductory section of this paper, we continue to think of accounts of the nature of Shiva as being attempts to describe some discrete, objective entity, then it is inevitable that either we will share the Puranic writer's puzzlement or that much of what we read about Shiva will appear as the muddled and extravagant thinking thrown up by an uncritical and over-fertile mythological imagination, consisting of little more than a hotch-potch of contradictory elements. But if we see such accounts as attempting to say something about everything, as symbols of near totality stemming from experiences which verge on the holistic, then what we read - with all its ambiguities - may become somewhat more meaningful. Thus W.D. O'Flaherty comments that Shiva “embodies all of life in all its detail at every minute” (Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Shiva, London 1973, p. 315). Similarly Alain Dani41ou sees Shiva, ultimately, in terms of his being "the supreme state of reality" beyond whom there is only "non-existence" (Hindu Polytheism, London 1964, p. 190).This analysis of ineffability and intelligibility seeks to introduce for debate a possible way of understanding the radical unlikeness which accounts of religious experience apparently attempt to speak about. It does not, however, claim to present an exhaustive treatment of the issues raised, on the contrary, I am conscious of many shortcomings and omissions. For instance, it remains to be seen under precisely what conditions something counts as being an elucidating likeness (presumably all experiences are, for example, temporal, yet temporality alone would not seem to offer a particularly elucidating comparison). Moreover, the degree to which appeal to likeness is allowed operation in actual accounts of religious experience needs to be explored. In addition, the notion of categorizing experiences according to the extent to which they approach a point of total inclusion requires careful clarification. To begin with, according to what criteria could we establish that one experience was more inclusive than another? However, such issues can only be mentioned here, any adequate consideration of them would require a separate paper.In conclusion, I would suggest that to use radical unlikeness and/or ineffability simply as devices by which to halt any process of investigation, proclaiming that the thing in question is not like anything and so is beyond all words, risks making unintelligible and placing beyond all further inquiry an important and extensive area of human experience. As William Alston put it, to label something ineffable in an unqualified way is to shirk the job of making explicit the ways in which it can be talked about. William P. Alston, “ineffability”, Philosophical Review 65 (1956), 522. It is surely more accurate to take ineffability as a “qualifier”I.T. Ramsey, Models and Mystery (Oxford 1964), p. 60. which “multiplies models without end”Ibid. than as an absolute which prevents the construction of any elucidating models. (shrink)

For much the greater part of Western history, moral and political thinking took fundamental guidance from "natural law," a standard of justice and human flourishing resting ambiguously on the dual foundation of the rational knowledge of human nature and the revelation of divine will. Modern politics and philosophy, by contrast, may be said to have emerged through the rise of a doctrine of "natural rights," which rested ambiguously on the rejection and the transformation of natural law. In the present "postmodern (...) age", as we struggle to comprehend just what modernity was and how it got started, we urgently need to re-examine the complex fate of natural law, especially in the work of such thinkers as Hobbes, Spinoza, and above all John Locke, the father of the modern, liberal, "rights-based" theory of the state. (shrink)

These commentaries will obviously be of interest to students of Aquinas. They should also be of interest to students of Aristotle, but with one caveat. The translators have had the delicate task of rendering into English not Aristotle’s Greek but the Latin translation of it on which Aquinas is commenting. As the Latin translates Aristotle on something close to a word-for-word basis, so the translators have translated the Latin version of Aristotle into English almost word-for-word. Further, as Macierowski explains, they (...) have taken care to preserve the opacity of terms that Aquinas explains in his commentary; to have clarified these opaque terms in the initial translation of Aristotle’s text would have made Aquinas’s later clarifications nugatory. The rationale is clear and the policy defensible, but the resulting translation of Aristotle can be rough going, for example, “for it is not just from a distance, and not close up, that one of the mixed colors appears, but from anywhere” ; “Therefore they seek in this way, and, not seeking, they still recollect in this way, when that motion comes into being after the other one; but it used to come about when the other motions such as we have. (shrink)

Herbert Simon once observed that watching an ant make its way across the uneven surface of a beach, one can easily be impressed—too impressed—with the foresight and complexity of the ant's internal map of the beach. Simon went on to point out that such an attribution of complexity to the ant makes a serious mistake. Most of the complexity is not in the ant but in the beach. The ant is just complex enough to use the features of the (...) beach to find its way. (shrink)