The Epicurean philosophical system has enjoyed much recent scrutiny, but the question of its philosophical ancestry remains largely neglected. It has often been thought that Epicurus owed only his physical theory of atomism to the fifth-century BC philosopher Democritus, but this study finds that there is much in his ethical thought which can be traced to Democritus. It also finds important influences on Epicurus in Democritus' fourth-century followers such as Anaxarchus and Pyrrho, and in Epicurus' disagreements with his own (...) class='Hi'>Democritean teacher Nausiphanes. The result is not only a fascinating reconstruction of a lost tradition, but also an important contribution to the philosophical interpretation of Epicureanism, bearing especially on its ideal of tranquillity and on the relation of ethics to physics. (shrink)

The objective of this study is the delineation of a philosophical tradition linking Epicurus’ ethical philosophy to Democritus. Specifically, Warren seeks to demonstrate that there is an ethical tradition of Democriteanism, anchored in atomism. Tracing its outlines demands extensive philosophical and philological sleuthing. It is inevitable that such a project will tell only a likely story for it is beset with challenges at virtually every stage. The challenges begin with Democritus himself. His ethical fragments, extensive in number, rest on the (...) insecure foundation of Stobaeus’ anthology and a collection known as The Sayings of Democrates. Is Democrates the familiar atomist from Abdera or someone else? Further, do the ethical fragments have any foundation in Democritean atomism? Warren admits that any claim of a foundation of Democritean ethics in his physics is only a conjecture. (shrink)

The objective of this study is the delineation of a philosophical tradition linking Epicurus’ ethical philosophy to Democritus. Specifically, Warren seeks to demonstrate that there is an ethical tradition of Democriteanism, anchored in atomism. Tracing its outlines demands extensive philosophical and philological sleuthing. It is inevitable that such a project will tell only a likely story for it is beset with challenges at virtually every stage. The challenges begin with Democritus himself. His ethical fragments, extensive in number, rest on the (...) insecure foundation of Stobaeus’ anthology and a collection known as The Sayings of Democrates. Is Democrates the familiar atomist from Abdera or someone else? Further, do the ethical fragments have any foundation in Democritean atomism? Warren admits that any claim of a foundation of Democritean ethics in his physics is only a conjecture. (shrink)

Epicurus’ debt to Democritus’ metaphysics is obvious. Even where Epicurus feels the need to modify Democritus’ metaphysics because of its skeptical or fatalist implications, he is working within Democritus’ general framework. The situation is quite different in ethics. Ancient critics of Epicurus claim that the Cyrenaics’ hedonism is the inspiration for his ethics, and in modern times, Epicurus’ ethics is usually viewed in the context of Aristotle’s eudaimonism.

Critics have alleged that Democritus’ ethical prescriptions (“gnomai”) are incompatible with his physics, since his atomism seems committed to necessity or chance (or an awkward combination of both) as a universal cause of everything, leaving no room for personal responsibility. I argue that Democritus’ critics, both ancient and contemporary, have misunderstood a fundamental concept of his causality: a cause called “spontaneity”, which Democritus evidently considered a necessary (not chance) cause, compatible with human freedom, of both atomic motion and human actions. (...) Some influential contemporary compatibilists have argued that freedom and responsibility are compatible with causal determinism, but not intentional constraint where some other agent is intentionally manipulating or coercing one’s actions. In line with this, Democritus holds that humans should not blame their actions on other agents like the gods, or agent-like external forces like fate or chance, but should assume ultimate intentional control over their own choices and actions. The famous remark of his associate Leucippus that “everything happens for a reason and out of necessity” is a fitting slogan of their atomistic philosophy, for Democritus pursued what can without anachronism be recognized as a causal theory of freedom. (shrink)

Both Heraclitus and Democritus, as the philosophers of historia peri phuseôs, consider nature and human character, habit, law and soul as interrelated emphasizing the links between phusis, kinesis, ethos, logos, kresis, nomos and daimon. On the one hand, Heraclitus’s principle of change (panta rhei) and his emphasis on the element of fire and cosmic motion ultimately dominate his ethics reinforcing his ideas of change, moderation, balance and justice, on the other, Democritus’s atomist description of phusis and motion underlies his (...) principle of moderation and his ideas of health and measured life. In this series, particularly referring to the main principles of motion, moderation and justice, I attempt to describe a coherent pre-Socratic ethical perspective based on the Heraclitean and Democritean fragments. I explore the connections between their physics and ethics also borrowing from Nietzsche’s lectures and writings on the Pre-Socratics. I redefine such Heraclitean and Democritean concepts as harmony, order, perfection, health, self-control, contentment, cheerfulness, concord, sound judgment, wisdom, measure and balance and discuss them under the principles of motion (phusis), moderation (sophrosyne) and justice. In doing so, I also expose the relevance of the Heraclitean notion of logos (interpreting it as the underlying categorical principle of transition between phusis and ethos) in bringing together these ideas and principles. Finally, based on this pre-Socratic Weltanschauung, I assess the possibility of a coherent picture of humanity, its nature and conduct as extending from or fitting into or extending-from-when-fitting-into the cosmos of moving forces and atoms. (shrink)

Zemyarska MS. Is it ethical to provide IVF add-ons when there is no evidence of a benefit if the patient requests it? J Med Ethics 2019;45:346–50. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2018-104983. The Acknowledgements section of ….

Monrad JT. Ethical considerations for epidemic vaccine trials. J Med Ethics 2020;46:465–9. doi:10.1136/medethics-2020-106235 This ….

Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value-bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite (...) amount of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? (shrink)

Ost S. Drs Bramhall and Bawa-Garba and the rightful domain of the criminal ….

Sheldon S, Lord J. Guest editorial: Care not criminalisation; reform of British abortion law is ….

Savulescu J. Is current practice around late termination of pregnancy eugenic and discriminatory? Maternal interests and abortion. J Med Ethics 2001;27:165–71. Lachlan de Crespigny contributed in a major way to the conceptualisation, design, administration of surveys, ….

Dubin S, Lane M, Morrison S, et al. Medically assisted gender affirmation: when children and parents disagree. ….

Douglas T. Going above and beneath the call ….

Dheensa S, Fenwick A, Lucassen A.‘Is this knowledge mine ….

Wilkinson D. What has philosophy got to do with it? ….

A set of basic static predicates, 'in itself, 'existing through itself, 'free', and others are taken to be (at least) extensionally equivalent, and some consequences are drawn in Parts A and? of the paper. Part C introduces adequate causation and adequate conceiving as extensionally equivalent. The dynamism or activism of Spinoza is reflected in the reconstruction by equating action with causing, passion (passive emotion) with being caused. The relation between conceiving (understanding) and causing is narrowed down by introducing grasping (λ (...) μβ?νω) as a basic epistemological term. Part D, 'The road to freedom through active emotion', introduces a system of grading with respect to the distinctions introduced in the foregoing, including 'being in itself, 'freedom', etc. Active emotions are seen to represent transitions to a higher degree of freedom, the stronger and more active ones being the more conducive to rapid increase in degree of freedom. Elementary parts of the calculus of predicates are used in order to facilitate the survey of conceptual relations and to prove some theorems. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 293-302.

A textbook designed for the mandatory semester ethics course at the United States Naval Academy by USNA Ethics Section, with contributions by the Distinguished Chair in Ethics.

"The Bush administration and Congress are in concert on the goal of developing a fleet of unmanned aircraft that can reduce both defense costs and aircrew losses in combat by taking on at least the most dangerous combat missions. Unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) will be neither inexpensive enough to be readily expendable nor-- at least in early development-- capable of performing every combat mission alongside or in lieu of manned sorties. Yet the tremendous potential of such systems is widely (...) recognized, and allies as well as potential adversaries are moving quickly to mount their own research and development programs. The United States is committed to fielding UCAV capabilities by 2010, principally for the missions of suppression of enemy air defense and deep strike, which are among the highest risk tasks for the Air Force and naval aviation."--Overview. (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive and unique text and reference in medical ethics. By far the most inclusive set of primary documents and articles in the field ever published, it contains over 100 selections. Virtually all pieces appear in their entirety, and a significant number would be difficult to obtain elsewhere. The volume draws upon the literature of history, medicine, philosophical and religious ethics, economics, and sociology. A wide range of topics and issues are covered, such as law (...) and medicine, truth-telling by the physician, research, population policy, genetics, abortion, dying, and individual rights in medical care. The selections span the centuries, beginning with material from the works of Hippocrates, continuing through Thomas Percival, John Stuart Mill, and Claude Bernard, down to modern commentators like Henry K. Beecher, Walsh McDermott, David L. Bazelon, Paul Freund, H. L. A. Hart, John Rawls, Paul Ramsey, Richard McCormick, Rashi Fein, and Bernard Barber. The text has eight major divisions, beginning with sections on the ethical dimensions of the physician-patient relationship in history; the moral bases of medical ethics; and regulation, compulsion, and protection of the consumer in clinical medicine and public health. Each of these sections includes key essays that appear for the first time. All of the book's major divisions contain primary documents: codes such as the Hippocratic Oath, Medieval Law for the Regulation of Medicine, and the first as well as the most recent code of the American Medical Association; court decisions, including those on Karen Quinlan and on abortion in the United States and West Germany; government documents such as the statement of the National Commission on the Protection of Human Subjects, the Tuskegee Syphilis Report, the British Parliamentary debate on euthanasia, and the Council of Europe on rights of the sick and dying; and various published guidelines such as the Harvard Medical School brain death criteria, the American Hospital Association on patient's rights, and Pope Pius XII on the prolongation of life. Cases that illustrate moral dilemmas are provided for discussion purposes. Each section is preceded by a succinct editor's introduction. The documents and essays are of practical value for practitioners and students in medicine, law, ethics, and counselling, and for individual patients and groups concerned with medical care. Through encompassing divergent viewpoints, the essays and primary documents were selected to encourage humane practices and deepen understanding of the multiple traditions that shaped and do shape the development of medicine. (shrink)

For decades a debate has played out in the literature about who bioethicists are, what they do, whether they can be considered professionals qua bioethicists, and, if so, what professional responsibilities they are called to uphold. Health care ethics consultants are bioethicists who work in health care settings. They have been seeking guidance documents that speak to their special relationships/duties toward those they serve. By approving a Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities for Health Care Ethics Consultants, (...) the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) has moved the professionalization debate forward in a significant way. This first code of ethics focuses on individuals who provide health care ethics consultation (HCEC) in clinical settings. The evolution of the code's development, implications for the field of HCEC and bioethics, and considerations for future directions are presented here. (shrink)