This book is a philosophical discussion of moral, legal, and medical issues related to aging, dying, and death. One of its aims is to decide whether and when it might make sense to not resist or bring about the end of one's life. To answer this question it considers views about meaning in life and what makes life worth living. It also evaluates recent attempts to help the general public plan in advance for the end of life. It also considers (...) whether or not physician-assisted suicide is morally permissible and if it should be legalized. (shrink)

This chapter first presents two arguments for the permissibility of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia (E) to eliminate physical suffering. I then present a third argument for PAS and E on grounds other than eliminating suffering. The chapter next considers several objections to these arguments that might be raised by Neil Gorsuch, now a US Supreme Court Justice. In the course of this I present a fourth argument for PAS and E. (I assume throughout that a patient’s free and informed (...) consent is required and present.). (shrink)

This chapter considers the relation between supererogation and duties (also here referred to as obligations) from a nonconsequentialist point of view. It first considers whether supererogation may sometimes take precedence over positive and negative duties and how this relates to personal costs (including efforts) required to perform one’s duty. It then considers how acquiescence to having large costs imposed on one (even permissibly) can be supererogatory. Finally, it considers how what are usually duties can become supererogatory and how what is (...) usually supererogatory can become a duty. The relation between these topics and the trolley problem, the so-called ‘all or nothing problem,’ and the issue of abortion are examined. (shrink)

Kamm’s response to Tse’s comments deals with the following issues (among others): (1)the relevance of empirical facts to moral arguments about physician assisted suicide (PAS); (2) the moral relevance of the difference between foreseen risk and certainty of death as well as the difference between certain death and immediate death; (3) whether intention matters to the permissibility of giving morphine for pain relief (MPR) and whether objective factors can be the same whether one intends MPR or death in giving morphine; (...) (4) the relevance of the permissibility of MPR or terminating life-saving treatment for the permissibility of PAS. (shrink)

Some of the commentators on Intricate Ethics complain of my method. One finds the main ideas ‘Kammouflaged’ because the relevant causal distinctions are so fine-grained and the cases that illustrate them so numerous. Some say that they do not have the intuitions about many cases that I have, that I concoct dubious and ad hoc distinctions and invest them with moral significance; I am Ptolemaic in that new crystalline spheres and epicycles are constantly being added in an attempt to fix (...) the appearances. (shrink)

This article describes a practical example of the predicate grue, examining the economic relationship between the percentage rate of unemployment and the percentage change of money wage rates known as the simple Phillips curve which exhibited regular behaviour before 1969 and erratic behaviour thereafter. It is proposed that such practical examples of grue from the real world be redescribed as regulatic. i.e. regular before time t and erratic thereafter. In the instance of a scientific model or theory being falsified it (...) is proposed to describe the predicate as tralse, i.e true before time t and false thereafter. The example to be discussed is a stronger example since entities in the real world started to behave in an extremely unpredictable fashion. (shrink)

Bioethical Prescriptions collects F.M. Kamm's articles on bioethics -- revised for publication in book form -- which have appeared over the last 25 years and which have made her among the most widely-respected philosophers working in this field.

In the following article we make an analysis of the paper of the First World War in a possible “philosophy of the history” of the British historian Eric Hobsbawm. To achieve this we first give three axial arguments to defend our position that asserts that Hobsbawm developed, in a certain way, a philosophy of history. Then we move on enumerate the causes that the historian found triggered the Great War, in order to comprehend the nature and functionality of them inside (...) of his philosophy of history. We end reflecting on the meaning of the First War inside the global historical evolution, in so far as that specific strife, according to Hobsbawm, signified for mankind both progresses and regressions on various areas of the life. It was a strife that seems to simultaneously mean, therefore, a hope and a deception for the rationalistic objectives of the Enlightenment and the ends of Marxism. (shrink)

I begin by reconsidering the arguments of John Taurek and Elizabeth Anscombe on whether the number of people we can help counts morally. I then consider arguments that numbers should count given by F. M. Kamm and Thomas Scanlon, and criticism of them by Michael Otsuka. I examine how different conceptions of the moral method known as pairwise comparison are at work in these different arguments and what the ideas of balancing and tie-breaking signify for decision-making in various types of (...) cases. I conclude by considering how another moral method that I call virtual divisibility functions and what it helps reveal about an argument by Otsuka against those who do not think numbers count. (shrink)

Ethics for Enemies comprises three original philosophical essays on torture, terrorism, and war. F. M. Kamm deploys ethical theory in her challenging new treatments of these most controversial practical issues. First she considers the nature of torture and the various occasions on which it could occur, in order to determine why it might be wrong to torture a wrongdoer held captive, even if this were necessary to save his victims. In the second essay she considers what makes terrorism wrong--whether it (...) is the intention to harm civilians, rather than harm to them being 'collateral damage,' or something else--and whether terrorism is always wrong. The third essay discusses whether having a right reason, in the sense of a right intention, is necessary in order for a war to be just. Kamm then examines ways in which the harms of war can be proportional to the achievement of the just cause and other goods that war can bring about, so as to make the declaration of war permissible. (shrink)

This article considers the possible relation between the idea of parity and some past work on the allocation of scarce resources. Parity of value is first connected with the idea of some goods being irrelevant in interpersonal comparisons. The notion of moral parity is introduced to describe the recognition that people who are moral equals (even when they are not on a par in terms of value) as not substitutable. The relation between a Separability Test and nonsubstitutability of persons is (...) considered. These ideas are then used to discuss various cases in which one must choose to whom to provide medical assistance, including whether and when to distinguish morally between a disabled and a nondisabled person. (shrink)

This study is concerned with processes for discovering new theories in science. It considers a computational approach to scientific discovery, as applied to the discovery of theories in cognitive science. The approach combines two ideas. First, a process-based scientific theory can be represented as a computer program. Second, an evolutionary computational method, genetic programming, allows computer programs to be improved through a process of computational trialand-error. Putting these two ideas together leads to a system that can automatically generate and improve (...) scientific theories. The application of this method to the discovery of theories in cognitive science is examined. Theories are built up from primitive operators. These are contained in a theory language that defines the space of possible theories. An example of a theory generated by this method is described. These results support the idea that scientific discovery can be achieved through a heuristic search process, even for theories involving a sequence of steps. However, this computational approach to scientific discovery does not eliminate the need for human input. Human judgment is needed to make reasonable prior assumptions about the characteristics of operators used in the theory generation process, and to interpret and provide context for the computationally generated theories. (shrink)

A few results generalizing well-known classical model theory ones have been obtained in institution theory these last two decades (e.g. Craig interpolation, ultraproduct, elementary diagrams). In this paper, we propose a generalized institution-independent version of the Beth definability theorem.

The Moral Target: Aiming at Right Conduct in War and Other Conflicts comprises essays that discuss aspects of war and other conflicts in the light of nonconsequentialist ethical theory. Topics include the relation between conditions that justify starting war and those that justify stopping it, the treatment of combatants and noncombatants in war, collaboration, justice after war and other conflicts, terrorism, resistance to communal injustice, and nuclear deterrence.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NEWMAN'S PSYCHOLOGICAL DISCOVERY: THE ILLATIVE SENSE (V. Continued) 15. The Universals. A long and vehement dispute once raged about the reality of universals. Are they only mental creations, forged by the human brain, without any reality outside them, or have they some independent existence apart from their mental reality? Anyhow, there was an apparent contradiction between die universal character of our ideas and the individual character of concrete things. (...) The Scholastics solved this problem by drawing clear distinctions. An idea is an abstraction; as soon as it becomes applicable to a number of objects or things in the same sense, it is a universal idea. The "direct universal" (universale directum seu metaphysicum) as such has no existence apart from our minds, because an existing thing is always bound up with concrete, determining, individualizing notes, and it is these very circumstances or accidents which are ignored by the mind as it strips the thing of its individual characteristics. When the mind reflects on this "direct universal," i.e., on the abstract essence of the thing, it sees that this is to be found in many more things and that it is identical in all those things, and in this way the "reflex or logical universal" is formed (universale reflexum seu logicum). This same essence or quiddity is not really different from the thing itself, but the mind makes abstraction of all accidents, and this foundation makes it possible to apply this idea in die same sense to all other beings of the same kind, whether they are actually existing or not. In other words the universal as a universal has only reality in the mind but it has a foundation or a ground in the thing itself. Newman was not so well acquainted with Scholasticism that he knew and mastered the solution of the problem. As a matter of fact he approached it from quite another angle. Hence when scholastically trained minds read some of his statements on universals, they may feel shocked. They sound very curious, they seem incon418 DR. ZENO, O.F.M. CAP.419 sistent with each other, they apparenüy imply a negation of the objective reality of universals. This makes it necessary to compare the texts and to explain his meaning. a. Newman Inconsistent. We should never lose sight of the fact that Newman had no intention at all to enter the province of philosophy in the restricted sense of the word. "I am only contemplating the mind as it moves in fact, by whatever hidden mechanism,"1 that is what could be put as a heading to every page of the Grammar of Assent. And when he virtually deals with metaphysics, he wants us to consider his statements as hypotheses, or as propositions stated only by the way, and in this department he always wishes "to speak under correction." This explains how he could refer to the universale metaphy sicum and the universale directum in a very correct way without realizing he was teaching Scholastic doctrine. As far as I know, it is Professor Walgrave who has first drawn attention to this fact,2 when he dealt with Newman's alleged conceptualism. Newman states that "even one act of cruelty, ingratitude, generosity or justice reveals to us at once intensive the immutable distinction between those qualities and their contraries; that is, in that particular instance and pro bac vice."3 The same holds for the opposites: right and wrong, true and false, just and unjust, beautiful and deformed.4 In one experience, therefore, he sees a thing as an immutable, absolute quiddity, which objectively and in the same sense belongs to all possible things of the same kind, although the mind does not yet explicidy confirm this universal applicability. The contemplated quality remains limited to the particular case; but in its absoluteness it is stripped of all individual, changeable and concrete characteristics. This is the metaphysical universal of the Scholastics. But Newman also mentions the logical universal when he says: "As we form our notion of whiteness from the actual sight of snow, a lily or a cloud, so, after experiencing the sentiment of approbation which arises in us on the sight of certain... (shrink)

The object of this paper is to show that, in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., two different and radically opposed systems of thought were elaborated within the Pythagorean school. They may be called respectively the mystical system and the scientific. All current accounts of Pythagoreanism known to me attempt to combine the traits of both systems in one composite picture, which naturally fails to hold together. The confusion goes back to Aristotle, who usually speaks indiscriminately of ‘the Pythagoreans,’ though (...) now and then the phrase ‘some Pythagoreans’ indicates that he was aware of different currents within the school. (shrink)

In this essay, I shall discuss ethical issues that arise with our increasing ability to affect the genetic makeup of the human population. These effects can be produced directly by altering the genotype , or indirectly by aborting, not conceiving, or treating individuals because of their genetic makeup in ways made possible by genetic pharmacology. I shall refer to all of these sorts of procedures collectively as the Procedures. Some of the ethical issues the Procedures raise are old, arising quite (...) generally when we can affect the well-being of people, even in the absence of the ability to affect them in the ways just described. My examination of these issues is prompted by the recent at-length discussion of them, From Chance to Choice , by Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler. (shrink)

In this article, I first compare positions I have taken in the past and those taken by Peter Singer on how the allocation of life-saving resources should be affected by the aggregation of expected quality of life, quantity of life, and need, both within the life of a person and across persons . I then reexamine the specific issue of whether and why differences in expected years of life and quality of life that a scarce resource can provide a disabled (...) and a nondisabled person should affect our allocation decisions. I attend to how the use of the veil of ignorance bears on this issue and also how the conclusions I reach differ in certain ways from my past positions. (shrink)

In this article, I shall present three arguments for thc pcrmissibility 0f physician-assisted suicide (PAS), and then examine several objections 0f 21 "K21nti2m" and non-Kantian nature against them. These are really 0bjcctions against certain types of suicide. I shall focus 0n active PAS (eg., when 21 patient takes 21 lethal drug given by E1 physician, in which case both thc physician and patient are active). I shall assume the patient is 21 competent, responsible, rational agent, who gives his being in (...) physical discomfort (pain, nausea, ctc.) as thc reason for intending his death. I am assuming, therefore, thc pain while 21 sourcc of suffering docs not undermine his rational agency in 21 way that threatens responsibility for choice.] Current legal proposals for permitting PAS focus 0n procedures.. (shrink)