The attitudes of the Greeks, a Mediterranean population, to the issue of telling the truth to the patient have been studied. There is no clear answer to the question: 'Do the Greeks wish to be informed of the nature of their illness?'. The answer is: 'It depends'. It depends on age, education, family status, occupation, place of birth and residence and on whether or not they are religious people. However, it does not depend on their sex--men and women have similar (...) reactions to the issue of truth-telling. Although the present study shows lower percentages of those who wish to know the truth than studies on other populations, the conclusion is that, emphasising the need for good communication between doctors and patients, doctors should not lie, but should disclose to their patients the part of the truth they are ready to accept. (shrink)

This essay explores the preferences, anticipations and expectations of the elderly regarding the role of family members in making health care decisions for them should they become decisionally incapacitated. Findings are presented from a series of in-depth interviews of men and women aged 67–91 years. Following a discussion of the uncertain legal status of familial surrogate decision-making, we argue that the family unit's autonomy is sufficient to justify the elderly's preferred reliance on their own family. Further, we suggest that social (...) and legal policy changes should facilitate, rather than impede, familial decision-making. (shrink)

In light of the allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment made against Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men in recent months, this paper will examine how men might take on responsibility for themselves and a culture that enables these patterns of abuse. It will draw primarily on the work of Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Emmanuel Levinas to develop a model of responsibility that has three primary stages: taking ownership of past actions, critiquing gendered power relations, and learning how to (...) foster relationships that are “intersubjective.”. (shrink)

Dallas G. Denery - Croire et savoir: Les principes de la connaissance selon Nicolas d'Autrecourt - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.1 119-120 Christophe Grellard. Croire et savoir: Les principes de la connaissance selon Nicolas d'Autrécourt. Paris: J. Vrin, 2005. Pp. 313. Paper, €38,00. Nicholas of Autrecourt has often seemed to be one of those philosophers doomed to be best known for everything but their own ideas. Famously, if inaccurately, dubbed "the (...) Medieval Hume" by one of his first modern critics, the threat or fear of skepticism has in one way or another shaped most subsequent studies of Nicholas's work. While understandable, this really is unfortunate. Nicholas himself clearly states that his philosophical goal was to avoid the skeptical consequences that he believed were latent in the writings of his scholastic peers. In this excellent new work, the first monograph-length study devoted to Nicholas's thought in nearly 60 years, Christophe Grellard goes a... (shrink)

For the Society of Christian Philosophers, APA San Francisco, April 4, 2007.

Based on an unfinished manuscript by the late philosopher Dallas Willard, this book makes the case that the 20th century saw a massive shift in Western beliefs and attitudes concerning the possibility of moral knowledge, such that knowledge of the moral life and of its conduct is no longer routinely available from the social institutions long thought to be responsible for it. In this sense, moral knowledge--as a publicly available resource for living--has disappeared. Via a detailed survey of main (...) developments in ethical theory from the late 19th through the late 20th centuries, Willard explains philosophy's role in this shift. In pointing out the shortcomings of these developments, he shows that the shift was not the result of rational argument or discovery, but largely of arational social forces--in other words, there was no good reason for moral knowledge to have disappeared. The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge is a unique contribution to the literature on the history of ethics and social morality. Its review of historical work on moral knowledge covers a wide range of thinkers including T.H Green, G.E Moore, Charles L. Stevenson, John Rawls, and Alasdair MacIntyre. But, most importantly, it concludes with a novel proposal for how we might reclaim moral knowledge that is inspired by the phenomenological approach of Knud Logstrup and Emmanuel Levinas. Edited and eventually completed by three of Willard's former graduate students, this book marks the culmination of Willard's project to find a secure basis in knowledge for the moral life. (shrink)

In Part II of Husserl’s “great last work,” as the Crisis is sometimes called, we find two passages in which he comments upon what he took to be an important and utter failure on the part of “die modernen Logistiker”—or, as Carr well translates it, “modern mathematical logicians.” At the end of subsection 36 he says.

Although the issue of consent in medical practice has grown immensely in recent years, and it is generally believed that historical cases are unknown, our research amongst original ancient Greek and Byzantine historical sources reveals that it is a very old subject which ancient philosophers and physicians have addressed. Plato, in ancient Greece, connected consent with the quality of a free person and even before him, Hippocrates had advocated seeking the patient's cooperation in order to combat the disease. In Alexander (...) the Great's era and later on in Byzantine times, not only was the consent of the patient necessary but physicians were asking for even more safeguards before undertaking a difficult operation.Our study has shown that from ancient times physicians have at least on occasion been driven to seek the consent of their patient either because of respect for the patient's autonomy or from fear of the consequences of their failure. (shrink)

We construct an extension P of the standard language of classical propositional logic by adjoining to the alphabet of a new category of logical-pragmatic signs. The well formed formulas of are calledradical formulas (rfs) of P;rfs preceded by theassertion sign constituteelementary assertive formulas of P, which can be connected together by means of thepragmatic connectives N, K, A, C, E, so as to obtain the set of all theassertive formulas (afs). Everyrf of P is endowed with atruth value defined classically, (...) and everyaf is endowed with ajustification value, defined in terms of the intuitive notion of proof and depending on the truth values of its radical subformulas. In this framework, we define the notion ofpragmatic validity in P and yield a list of criteria of pragmatic validity which hold under the assumption that only classical metalinguistic procedures of proof be accepted. We translate the classical propositional calculus (CPC) and the intuitionistic propositional calculus (IPC) into the assertive part of P and show that this translation allows us to interpret Intuitionistic Logic as an axiomatic theory of the constructive proof concept rather than an alternative to Classical Logic. Finally, we show that our framework provides a suitable background for discussing classical problems in the philosophy of logic. (shrink)

Although treating the elderly occasion the same kinds of ethical issues as treating other patients, specific problems do arise when making decisions for persons, once competent, who no longer can express their values. I examine the problem of decisional incapacity and offer a critique of the principles, such as substituted judgment, and the instruments, such as advance directives, living wills, other instructional directives, as well as surrogate decision-makers.

We argue that there is a large class of questions—specifically questions about how to epistemically evaluate environments that currently available epistemic theories are not well-suited for answering, precisely because these questions are not about the epistemic state of particular agents or groups. For example, if we critique Facebook for being conducive to the spread of misinformation, then we are not thereby critiquing Facebook for being irrational, or lacking knowledge, or failing to testify truthfully. Instead, we are saying something about the (...) social media environment. In this paper, we first propose that a new branch of epistemology–Environmental Epistemology–is needed to address these questions. We argue that environments can be proper objects of epistemic evaluation, and that there are genuine epistemic norms that govern environments. We then provide a positive account of these norms and conclude by considering how recognition of these norms may require us to rethink longstanding epistemic debates. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking by Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel P. UmbelDallas J. GinglesBonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel P. Umbel grand rapids, mi: baker academic, 2013. 272 pp. $29.99In their new book Bonhoeffer the Assassin?, Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel P. (...) Umbel painstakingly reread primary texts in order to challenge the widely held belief that Dietrich Bonhoeffer participated in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Their alternative to the usual narrative of Bonhoeffer’s life holds that early in his career, long before the crisis of the Confessing Church and the rise of Nazism, Bonhoeffer made a commitment to [End Page 205] Christian pacifism that endured even through the war years and his resistance to Hitler.To argue for this alternative telling, the authors analyze Bonhoeffer’s three main “ethical” texts: the early “Barcelona lectures,” Discipleship, and finally Ethics. On their telling, while the early ethics lectures were theologically deficient, by the time that Bonhoeffer wrote Discipleship he had developed “integration,” which was “the primary theological catalyst for the ethical transition from Barcelona to Discipleship” (129). Discipleship is, they conclude, the pinnacle of Bonhoeffer’s thought, and anything that comes after it, including Ethics, cannot in any fundamental way differ from it.Alongside this diachronic analysis of Bonhoeffer’s main ethics texts, the authors emphasize two letters that Bonhoeffer wrote in 1935 and 1936. In the first, Bonhoeffer asserts that, because of his theology, he is “sometimes perceived as fanatical” (223). The second he wrote describing his “conversion experience” in 1930, in relation to the Sermon on the Mount and “Christian pacifism.” Read singly, these letters are interesting examples of Bonhoeffer’s thought and life of faith. As the authors present the argument, though, the letters comprise a unified narrative and function as an interpretive lens by which the primary texts should be understood. They think that the “fanaticism” of the first letter refers to the faith brought about in the conversion experience described in the second. The “fanaticism” letter is important because in it he asserts that, “if he were to become more ‘reasonable,’ he would have to ‘chuck [his] entire theology’” (223).Because Bonhoeffer wrote that he would have to “chuck” his theology if he made it more “reasonable,” the authors think that the theology that emerged from the conversion experience has a foundational role in his later works. Whatever Bonhoeffer wrote in Ethics, then, simply cannot disagree with the “fanaticism” that “is most fully articulated in … Discipleship” (223). Because of the importance of the “Christian pacifism” of the conversion and Discipleship, it is thus impossible—or at least highly unlikely—that Bonhoeffer participated in the assassination attempts.Bonhoeffer scholars and nonspecialists alike will find this text provocative and interesting. The conclusions, though, are finally unconvincing. For the authors, the “conversion experience” is the central key to understanding Bonhoeffer, and it is clear that they understand “Christian pacifism” to be of primary importance in the conversion, but they never tell us to what variety of Christian pacifism Bonhoeffer converted. It is very likely that Bonhoeffer’s Christian pacifism was different in kind than the Christian pacifism that the authors seem to endorse. That anachronistic reading alone renders the conclusions of the text suspect.Apart from simple historical questions, the methodology the authors use to construct their hermeneutical lens is also problematic. It is difficult to submit [End Page 206] Bonhoeffer’s entire corpus to two earlier letters that he wrote a full year apart. While readers may understand and agree that Bonhoeffer was not, in reality, an assassin (the minor claim), it will be hard to convince readers of the impassibility of his “Christian pacifism” (the major claim).Dallas J. GinglesSouthern Methodist UniversityCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Published by InterVarsity Press in Faith, Film and Philosophy: Big Ideas on the Big Screen, edited by R. Douglas Geivett & James S. Spiegel, 2007.

A vivid and comprehensive picture of the current state of research in all directions of logic and philosophy of science. The book presents a wide combination of papers containing relevant technical results in the foundations of science and papers devoted to conceptual analyses, deeply rooted in advanced present-day research. Audience: The volume is attractive both for specialists in foundational questions and scholars interested in general epistemology.

The title is meant to emphasize the immense loss of status I take logic to have undergone in recent decades, and to suggest something about its causes. The loss is most obvious in the context of higher education, where almost no post-secondary institutions now have effectual general requirements in standard formal logic, as that was easily understood thirty or more years ago. Courses in so-called 'critical thinking' are, with rare and noble exceptions, only a further illustration of the point, for (...) many of them, if not most, say nothing at all about logical form and formal logic, and proceed as if thought and discourse could be critically understood and appraised in total ignorance of their formal aspects. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation into writing that describes, and in many ways objectifies and marginalises, the queer. Specifically, the paper looks at the fairytale, and discusses how such narratives might be rewritten by authors informed by Queer Theory. This analysis is undertaken to reflect on, theorise, and position the creative writing strategies and practice of queer writers working within the field of fairytale fiction. A major proposition of this paper is that many fairytales feature what will be defined as (...) “Monstrous Queer” figures. A further delineation of this paper is to foreground the moment of narrative closure – the fairytale ending. This is done because fairytale endings routinely involve the Monstrous Queer being destroyed or punished. This paper is concerned with how queer writers have undertaken a positive rewriting of these figures of the Monstrous Queer and how a critical engagement with Queer Theory might further inform this rewriting. It will be shown that writers of queer fairytales have utilised the very familiar figures of the fairytale – narrative clichés as it were – in familiar settings, with familiar plot devices but, significantly, with a shifted emphasis, a revaluation, that has a considerable deconstructive potency. (shrink)