This book contributes to current bioethical debates by providing a critical analysis of the philosophy of human death. Bernard N. Schumacher discusses contemporary philosophical perspectives on death, creating a dialogue between phenomenology, existentialism, and analytic philosophy. He also examines the ancient philosophies that have shaped our current ideas about death. His analysis focuses on three fundamental problems: (1) the definition of human death, (2) the knowledge of mortality and of human death as such, and (3) the question of whether (...) death is nothing to us or, on the contrary, whether it can be regarded as an absolute or relative evil. Drawing on scholarship published in four languages and from three distinct currents of thought, this volume represents a comprehensive and systematic study of the philosophy of death, one that provides a provocative basis for discussions of the bioethics of human mortality. (shrink)

A leading Catholic philosopher, he won a wide audience through such books as The Four Cardinal Virtues and About Love.This book is one of few extended studies ...

Deux questions sont abordées : l'individu peut-il conceptualiser sa mort? Celle-ci est-elle un mal? Trois problèmes sont soulevés : la nature de la mort, sa connaissance par l'individu et sa perception, ou non, comme un mal. L'auteur analyse les textes classiques anciens et contemporains traitant de l'approche de la mort, et se livre à une intégration critique des philosophes thanatologues.

Der Autor setzt sicht kritisch mit der Definition des so genannten personalen Todes auseinander und behauptet, dass die Negation der biologischen Dimension des Todes – entsprechend einer von Locke begründeten dualistischen Anthropologie, der sich zahlreiche zeitgenössische Bioethiker verschrieben haben – eine Banalisierung des menschlichen Todes darstellt. Der Autor nimmt einen biologistischen Standpunkt ein, wonach die Zerstörung des Körpers in dieser Welt gleichbedeutend ist mit dem Tod der Person. Er diskutiert in einem zweiten Schritt die Radikalisierung dieser biologischen Todesdefinition, die den (...) menschlichen Tod entpersonalisiert, indem sie ihn auf eine bloße natürliche Dysfunktion des menschlichen Organismus reduziert und sich weigert, in ihm ein Drama beziehungsweise ein Übel an sich zu sehen. (shrink)

Paris, 1943. In a flash, a book is published that will shape post-war Europe like none other. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness discloses utterly new insights about human freedom, about feelings such as shame and desire, and about death. The new edition of the renowned book of commentary on the magnum opus of French existentialism opens access to the work through the latest state of research.

Paris, 1943. In a flash, a book is published that will shape post-war Europe like none other. Jean-Paul Sartre s Being and Nothingness discloses utterly new insights about human freedom, about feelings such as shame and desire, and about death. The new edition of the renowned book of commentary on the magnum opus of French existentialism opens access to the work through the latest state of research.".

Under the sway of the postulate of determinism, sociologists (with some exceptions) have given little direct attention to sheerly fortuitous events. Such events are analytically distinguishable from those which are considered the results of chance only because we currently lack knowledge of their causation. Exemplifications of pure chance abound in the various arts and sciences, including sociology (especially in work by symbolic interactionists). Direct, explicit consideration of random, accidental, or chance phenomena requires approaches that emphasize both the processes of behavior (...) and interaction and the case-study method of investigation. (shrink)

The simplest quantified modal logic combines classical quantification theory with the propositional modal logic K. The models of simple QML relativize predication to possible worlds and treat the quantifier as ranging over a single fixed domain of objects. But this simple QML has features that are objectionable to actualists. By contrast, Kripke-models, with their varying domains and restricted quantifiers, seem to eliminate these features. But in fact, Kripke-models also have features to which actualists object. Though these philosophers have introduced variations (...) on Kripke-models to eliminate their objectionable features, the most well-known variations all have difficulties of their own. The present authors reexamine simple QML and discover that, in addition to having a possibilist interpretation, it has an actualist interpretation as well. By introducing a new sort of existing abstract entity, the contingently nonconcrete, they show that the seeming drawbacks of the simplest QML are not drawbacks at all. Thus, simple QML is independent of certain metaphysical questions. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: A Private Choice: Abortion in America in the Seventies. By John T. Noonan, Jr. Aborting America. By Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., with Richard N. Ostling.

In "Actualism or Possibilism?" (Philosophical Studies, 84 (2-3), December 1996), James Tomberlin develops two challenges for actualism. The challenges are to account for the truth of certain sentences without appealing to merely possible objects. After canvassing the main actualist attempts to account for these phenomena, he then criticizes the new conception of actualism that we described in our paper "In Defense of the Simplest Quantified Modal Logic" (Philosophical Perspectives 8: Philosophy of Logic and Language, Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, 1994). We respond (...) to Tomberlin's criticism by showing that we wouldn't analyze the problematic claim (e.g., "Ponce de Leon searched for the fountain of youth") in the way he suggests. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop an alternative strategy, Platonized Naturalism, for reconciling naturalism and Platonism and to account for our knowledge of mathematical objects and properties. A systematic (Principled) Platonism based on a comprehension principle that asserts the existence of a plenitude of abstract objects is not just consistent with, but required (on transcendental grounds) for naturalism. Such a comprehension principle is synthetic, and it is known a priori. Its synthetic a priori character is grounded in the fact that it (...) is an essential part of the logic in which any scientific theory will be formulated and so underlies (our understanding of) the meaningfulness of any such theory (this is why it is required for naturalism). Moreover, the comprehension principle satisfies naturalist standards of reference, knowledge, and ontological parsimony! As part of our argument, we identify mathematical objects as abstract individuals in the domain governed by the comprehension principle, and we show that our knowledge of mathematical truths is linked to our knowledge of that principle. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate (1) what can be salvaged from the original project of "logicism" and (2) what is the best that can be done if we lower our sights a bit. Logicism is the view that "mathematics is reducible to logic alone", and there are a variety of reasons why it was a non-starter. We consider the various ways of weakening this claim so as to produce a "neologicism". Three ways are discussed: (1) expand the conception of logic (...) used in the reduction, (2) allow the addition of analytic-sounding principles to logic so that the reduction is not to "logic alone" but to logic and truths knowable a priori, and (3) revise the conception of "reducible". We show how the current versions of neologicism fit into this classification scheme, and then focus on a kind of neologicism which we take to have the most potential for achieving the epistemological goals of the original logicist project. We argue that that the "weaker" the form of neologicism, the more likely it is to be a new form of logicism, and show how our preferred system, though mathematically weak, is metaphysically and epistemogically strong, and can "reduce" arbitrary mathematical theories to logic and analytic truths, if given a legitimate new sense of "reduction". (shrink)

The views of David Lewis and the Meinongians are both often met with an incredulous stare. This is not by accident. The stunned disbelief that usually accompanies the stare is a natural first reaction to a large ontology. Indeed, Lewis has been explicitly linked with Meinong, a charge that he has taken great pains to deny. However, the issue is not a simple one. "Meinongianism" is a complex set of distinctions and doctrines about existence and predication, in addition to the (...) famously large ontology. While there are clearly non-Meinongian features of Lewis' views, it is our thesis that many of the characteristic elements of Meinongian metaphysics appear in Lewis' theory. Moreover, though Lewis rejects incomplete and inconsistent Meinongian objects, his ontology may exceed that of a Meinongian who doesn't accept his possibilia. Thus, Lewis explains the truth of "there might have been talking donkeys" by appealing to possibilia which are talking donkeys. But the Meinongian need not accept that there exist things which are talking donkeys. Indeed, we show that a Meinongian even need not accept that there are nonexistent things which are talking donkeys! (shrink)