Although suicide has traditionally carried a negative sanction in Western societies, this is now being challenged, and while there remains substantial public concern surrounding youth and elder suicide, there is a paradoxical push to relax the prohibition under certain circumstances. Central to the arguments behind this are the principles of respect for autonomy and the importance of rationality. It is argued here that the concepts of rationality and autonomy, while valuable, are not strong enough to substantiate a categorical "right to (...) suicide" and that the concepts of "understandability" and "respect" are more useful and able to provide the foundation for responding to a person expressing a wish to die. Roman suicide, sometimes held as an example of "rational suicide", illustrates the effects of culture, tradition and values on the attitudes to, and the practice of, suicide. (shrink)

In this bold, challenging book, D. S. Clarke outlines reasons for accepting panpsychism and defends the doctrine against its critics.

An anthology of readings in panpsychism, spanning two millennia.

Objectives: To analyse legislation and medical professional positions concerning the doctor’s role in assisted dying in western Europe, and to discuss their implications for doctors.Method: This paper is based on country-specific reports by experts from European countries where assisted dying is legalised , or openly practiced , or where it is illegal .Results: Laws on assisted dying in The Netherlands and Belgium are restricted to doctors. In principle, assisted suicide is not illegal in either Germany or Switzerland, but a doctor’s (...) participation in Germany would violate the code of professional medical conduct and might contravene of a doctor’s legal duty to save life. The Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill proposed in the UK in 2005 focused on doctors, whereas the Proposal on Assisted Dying of the Norwegian Penal Code Commission minority in 2002 did not.Professional medical organisations in all these countries except The Netherlands maintain the position that medical assistance in dying conflicts with the basic role of doctors. However, in Belgium and Switzerland, and for a time in the UK, these organisations dropped their opposition to new legislation. Today, they regard the issue as primarily a matter for society and politics. This “neutral” stance differs from the official position of the Royal Dutch Medical Association which has played a key role in developing the Dutch practice of euthanasia as a “medical end-of-life decision” since the 1970s.Conclusion: A society moving towards an open approach to assisted dying should carefully identify tasks to assign exclusively to medical doctors, and distinguish those possibly better performed by other professions. (shrink)

This is a criticism of quine's treatment of mass terms such as "water", "gold", Etc. In word and object. Instead of becoming singular terms referring to a "scattered object", It is argued that they either become general terms as subjects of sentences or retain their unique status as ascribed to an indicated place.

This paper attempts to outline the logical structure of imperatives. It criticizes the prevailing view that this structure is isomorphic with that for indicatives. For "mixed" imperatives with constituents in both indicative and imperative moods (e.G., Conditional imperatives with indicative antecedents) there are features unique to imperatives. These features are specified, And consequences of them are traced. Finally, Formation rules for imperatives are stated.

The dominant emphasis in medical ethics during the last decade has been on specific moral problems of individual or small group decision-making. Justice and Healthcare attempts to correct the imbalance of focus by 1) examining the health care institutions within which micro problems arise; 2) investigating the larger array of institutions of which the health care sector is only one part.

Dolores Dooley Clarke describes how the course in medical ethics at University College, Cork is structured, how it has changed and how it is likely to change as time goes on. Originally, the students seemed to view it as an intrusion 'to be tolerated' in their programme of 'strictly medical' studies. However, having moved on from that and away from the lecturer always being a Roman Catholic priest as well as a member of the Philosophy Department, the students now appear (...) to view it as producing a stimulus for a new interest in the area of ethics for physicians. This seems to have come about through the more extensive participation of students in researching and presenting issues of medical ethics. (shrink)