Moral enhancement is an ostensibly laudable project. Who wouldn’t want people to become more moral? Still, the project’s approach is crucial. We can distinguish between two approaches for moral enhancement: direct and indirect. Direct moral enhancements aim at bringing about particular ideas, motives or behaviors. Indirect moral enhancements, by contrast, aim at making people more reliably produce the morally correct ideas, motives or behaviors without committing to the content of those ideas, motives and/or actions. I will argue, on Millian grounds, (...) that the value of disagreement puts serious pressure on proposals for relatively widespread direct moral enhancement. A more acceptable path would be to focus instead on indirect moral enhancements while staying neutral, for the most part, on a wide range of substantive moral claims. I will outline what such indirect moral enhancement might look like, and why we should expect it to lead to general moral improvement. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A THEORY OF BASIC GOODS: STRUCTURE AND HIERARCHY* I. FTEN, PERHAPS ALWAYS, moral theory emerges from particular problems. Just how is obscure. The logic of discovery is elusive; and it is harder to explain how we have come to see matters rightly than to recognize that we do, in fact, see them rightly. What counts as a theory, moreover, calls for explication as much as does a theory's emergence. (...) When we have in mind a theory that shapes our social vision, there is a progression from a central set of propositions, keyed to a range of paradigm cases and seen as a logical structure, to a " way of thinking " widely enough embraced to have political significance, at least for a given oommunity. In this essay I want to explore some fundamental questions raised by Germain Grisez's theory of natural law ethics.1 These questions are chiefly conceptual. But neither they nor Grisez's theory should be seen in a vacuum. Rather, I would begin by suggesting that the importance of his work, its emergence in some Catholic circles, is linked with two specific moral and political problems. The first is abortion; the second is the superpowers' policy of nuclear deterrence. *I thank David Blake, Robert Gordh, Carroll Kearley, Gary Mar. Martin Woods, and Linda Zagzebski for their comments on an earlier version of this essay. 1 For the theory's fullest presentation, see Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. one, Ohristian Moral Principles, with the help of Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., Basil Cole, O.P., John Finnis, John A. Geinzer, Robert G. Kennedy, Patrick Lee, William E. May, and Russell Shaw (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983). Especially critical are chapters two through twelve. 221 JAMES G. HANINK As a point of chronology, Grisez's early study of rubortion was the context for one of the first formulations of his natural law ethics.2 But why should this have been so? And why should abortion so engage Catholic thinkers, some of whom had felt a distance from explicitly Catholic positions, that Grisez's work should become pivotal? Answers to such questions must be tentative, but they include the following considerations. In a brief period, no more than a decade, legal abortion in the West became entrenched social policy.8 It was a policy, too, supported by dominant intellectual forces. But the new policy, defended in terms of individual freedom and a right to privacy, struck many Catholicsand non-Catholics-as vicious and tragic. It was vicious in that it made expendable the weakest and most vulnerable human beings. Human rights somehow became restricted to the strong and self-sufficient. The policy was tragic in its denial of human community. We are not, however much radical individualism supposes, merely a collection of separate egos. l/Ve are, rather, a community tied to a past and pledged to a future, so pledged, in part, by the children we bear and nurture.4 For in hearing and nurturing children we carry on the love of parents who have done as much for us; and we carry ourselves into a future where we hope our own love will be thus extended. But abortion, and surely unrestricted abortion, betrays this community of trust. Still, a policy so vicious and tragic can make us look for a fresh moral vision. And, of course, to the extent that we have contributed to,a climate in which abortion could become entrenched -either by our failures to support women in need or 2 Germain Grisez, Abortion: The Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments (New York and Cleveland: Corpus Books, 1970). a A milepost, of course, was the United States Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, in 1973. Recent U.S. Government figures indicate that there are now well over a million legal abortions annually in this country. 4 For a provocative discussion of this theme, see Stanley Hauerwas's " The Moral Value of the Family " in his A Commimity of Character (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). A THEORY OF BASIC GOODS: STRUCTURE & HIERARCHY 223 by an acquiescence in our culture's individualism-the call for theoretical reconstruction is all the more urgent... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Incoherence of Determining Death by Neurological Criteria: A Commentary on Controversies in the Determination of Death, A White Paper by the President’s Council on Bioethics*Franklin G. Miller** (bio) and Robert D. Truog (bio)Traditionally the cessation of breathing and heart beat has marked the passage from life to death. Shortly after death was determined, the body became a cold corpse, suitable for burial or cremation. Two technological changes in (...) the second half of the twentieth century prompted calls for a new, or at least expanded, definition of death: the development of intensive care medicine, especially the use of mechanical ventilators, and the advent of successful transplantation of vital organs. Patients with profound neurological damage, leaving them incapable of breathing on their own and in an irreversible coma, could be maintained for some period of time with the aid of mechanical ventilation. The situation of these patients posed two ethical questions. Is it appropriate to stop life-sustaining treatment? If so, is it acceptable to retrieve vital organs for transplantation to save the lives of others before stopping treatment?In 1968, the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death proposed that death could be determined on the basis of neurological criteria, thus providing a positive answer to these two questions (Ad Hoc Committee 1968). According to the position of this committee, patients diagnosed with the cessation of brain function are dead, despite the fact that they breathe and circulate blood with the aid of mechanical ventilation. [End Page 185] Because they are dead, it is appropriate, indeed imperative, to stop mechanical ventilation. And because they are dead, it becomes ethical to procure vital organs for transplantation before stopping what otherwise would be life-sustaining treatment. Remarkably, this innovative neurological determination of death became, with little debate or controversy, the established position in medical ethics and the law throughout the United States.The Harvard Committee articulated the diagnosis of “irreversible coma,” but merely asserted that this condition constituted death. No explanatory rationale was provided. It fell to the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research to provide an authoritative rationale in its 1981 report, Defining Death. The second paragraph of the report set the stage as follows: “The question addressed here is not inherently difficult or complicated. Simply, it is whether the law ought to recognize new means for establishing that the death of a human being has occurred” (President’s Commission 1981, p. 3). The Commission claimed that “death is a unitary phenomenon” (p. 7) and that the determination of death by neurological criteria, in terms of the absence of all brain function, is consistent with the traditional conception of death as the cessation of vital functioning of the organism as a whole. The key issue is the integrative functioning of the human organism, which ceases to exist, according to the Commission, when the whole brain, including higher cortical areas and the brain stem, fails to function. Although “brain-dead” patients do not appear to be dead—i.e., the reality of their death is “masked” by the activity of mechanical ventilation—the patient’s body has irreversibly lost all capacity for integrative functioning. In the words of the Commission: “When artificial means of support mask this loss of integration as measured by the old methods [cessation of respiration and heart beat], brain-oriented criteria and tests provide a new window on the same phenomenon” (p. 33). The President’s Commission was instrumental in developing and establishing “The Uniform Definition of Death Act”: “An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead” (p. 2).Although the question posed by the President’s Commission was easy to articulate, the answer, over time, has proved complicated and controversial. The coherence and cogency of determining death by neurological criteria has been challenged. Various experts have demonstrated that “brain-dead” patients maintained on mechanical ventilation display a range of vital, integrative, functioning, which conflicts with the judgment that they are dead (Truog and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Incoherence of Determining Death by Neurological Criteria: A Commentary on Controversies in the Determination of Death, A White Paper by the President’s Council on Bioethics*Franklin G. Miller** (bio) and Robert D. Truog (bio)Traditionally the cessation of breathing and heart beat has marked the passage from life to death. Shortly after death was determined, the body became a cold corpse, suitable for burial or cremation. Two technological changes in (...) the second half of the twentieth century prompted calls for a new, or at least expanded, definition of death: the development of intensive care medicine, especially the use of mechanical ventilators, and the advent of successful transplantation of vital organs. Patients with profound neurological damage, leaving them incapable of breathing on their own and in an irreversible coma, could be maintained for some period of time with the aid of mechanical ventilation. The situation of these patients posed two ethical questions. Is it appropriate to stop life-sustaining treatment? If so, is it acceptable to retrieve vital organs for transplantation to save the lives of others before stopping treatment?In 1968, the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death proposed that death could be determined on the basis of neurological criteria, thus providing a positive answer to these two questions (Ad Hoc Committee 1968). According to the position of this committee, patients diagnosed with the cessation of brain function are dead, despite the fact that they breathe and circulate blood with the aid of mechanical ventilation. [End Page 185] Because they are dead, it is appropriate, indeed imperative, to stop mechanical ventilation. And because they are dead, it becomes ethical to procure vital organs for transplantation before stopping what otherwise would be life-sustaining treatment. Remarkably, this innovative neurological determination of death became, with little debate or controversy, the established position in medical ethics and the law throughout the United States.The Harvard Committee articulated the diagnosis of “irreversible coma,” but merely asserted that this condition constituted death. No explanatory rationale was provided. It fell to the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research to provide an authoritative rationale in its 1981 report, Defining Death. The second paragraph of the report set the stage as follows: “The question addressed here is not inherently difficult or complicated. Simply, it is whether the law ought to recognize new means for establishing that the death of a human being has occurred” (President’s Commission 1981, p. 3). The Commission claimed that “death is a unitary phenomenon” (p. 7) and that the determination of death by neurological criteria, in terms of the absence of all brain function, is consistent with the traditional conception of death as the cessation of vital functioning of the organism as a whole. The key issue is the integrative functioning of the human organism, which ceases to exist, according to the Commission, when the whole brain, including higher cortical areas and the brain stem, fails to function. Although “brain-dead” patients do not appear to be dead—i.e., the reality of their death is “masked” by the activity of mechanical ventilation—the patient’s body has irreversibly lost all capacity for integrative functioning. In the words of the Commission: “When artificial means of support mask this loss of integration as measured by the old methods [cessation of respiration and heart beat], brain-oriented criteria and tests provide a new window on the same phenomenon” (p. 33). The President’s Commission was instrumental in developing and establishing “The Uniform Definition of Death Act”: “An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead” (p. 2).Although the question posed by the President’s Commission was easy to articulate, the answer, over time, has proved complicated and controversial. The coherence and cogency of determining death by neurological criteria has been challenged. Various experts have demonstrated that “brain-dead” patients maintained on mechanical ventilation display a range of vital, integrative, functioning, which conflicts with the judgment that they are dead (Truog and... (shrink)

Contemporary Western societies are obsessed with the “obesity epidemic,” dieting, and fitness. Fat people violate the Western conscience by violating a thinness norm. In virtue of violating the thinness norm, fat people suffer many varied consequences. Is their suffering morally permissible, or even obligatory? In this paper, I argue that the answer is no. I examine contemporary philosophical accounts of oppression and draw largely on the work of Sally Haslanger to generate a set of conditions sufficient for some phenomena to (...) count as oppression, and I illustrate the account’s value using the example of gender oppression. I then apply the account to fat people, examine empirical evidence, and argue that the suffering of fat people counts as oppression. (shrink)

*This is a project I hope to come back to one day. It stalled, a bit, on the absence of a positive theory of update I could be satisfied with* When should we believe a indicative conditional, and how much confidence in it should we have? Here’s one proposal: one supposes actual the antecedent; and sees under that supposition what credence attaches to the consequent. Thus we suppose that Oswald did not shot Kennedy; and note that under this assumption, (...) Kennedy was assassinated by someone other than Oswald. Thus we are highly confident in the indicative: if Oswald did not kill Kennedy, someone else did. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Unduly Iterative Ethical Review?”Franklin G. MillerMadam:Renée C. Fox and Nicholas A. Christakis have written a provocative article, “Perish and Publish: Non-Heart-Beating Organ Donation and Unduly Iterative Ethical Review” (KIEJ, December 1995). The language of their argument and some of the implicit assumptions on which it rests deserve critical scrutiny. They describe the articles presenting and commenting on the University of Pittsburgh protocol as “disquieting” because the display “trial-and-error ethics.” (...) To dismiss “trial-and-error ethics” implies that we antecedently possess all the moral knowledge we need to evaluate and regulate developments in medicine. Should we summarily reject experimentation in ethics, particularly with respect to complex issues involving scientific and technological changes? For if we need to reconsider and possibly revise what counts as moral knowledge, the proposing an experimental approach to the ethics of a novel practice, which is presented publicly and made open to revision, as in the Pittsburgh protocol, may be precisely the best way to proceed.Fox and Christakis resort to invidious insinuation in their criticism of ethicists who have written, and journals that have published, articles about non-heart-beating organ donation. Publication on this issue has given ethicists the opportunity of “adding numerous items to their vitae.” Their appraisal of the vitae-boosting behavior represents an interesting rhetorical specimen: “Although there is nothing inherently dishonorable about this it does create tension between two motives: conviction about the importance of perfecting ethical conduct, on the one hand, and the desire to advance one’s professional career, on the other” (p. 340). I am not sure what the authors mean by “perfecting ethical conduct.” Yet they suggest that a group of reputable scholars, who have taken diverse positions on the ethics of non-heart-beating organ donation, have come perilously close to venality.Finally, in order to avoid further legitimating what they consider to be an ethically objectionable practice, the authors advocate that journals exercise “restraint” in publishing articles about this topic. Perhaps in a future pronouncement they will enlighten us about how enforcing a publication policy that avoids the vice of “unduly iterative ethical review” might work without compromising freedom of discussion. Moral dogmatism and censorship have a long history of association.Franklin G. MillerCenter for Biomedical Ethics University of Virginia Charlottesville, VACopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 15.2 (2005) 199-210 [Access article in PDF] Conflict-of-Interest Policy at the National Institutes of Health: The Pendulum Swings Wildly* Evan G. DeRenzo **This article addresses the National Institutes of Health (NIH) employee conflict-of-interest (COI) policy that went into effect February 2005. It is not, however, merely an account of another poorly crafted government policy that cries out for revision. Instead, it is also (...) a story about one of our nation's most important and prestigious institutions and its struggles to navigate the crosscurrents of scientific aspirations, power politics, public ambivalence toward capitalist economics in the biosciences, and the media's inclination to exaggerate problems and under report complicated facts. It is also a tale of greed, politics, purgatory, and redemption. The dramatic and abrupt change in the NIH COI policy demonstrates the difficulty of balancing the production of cutting-edge science with the demands for transparency resulting from work performed in the public interest on the public tab. It is an unhappy chapter in the life of a government agency that is also a national treasure. And, one hopes, it will be an example of how harmful and ill-conceived law can be revised and amended to advance national health and well-being. What is the New NIH COI Policy? The new NIH COI employee policy, more accurately referred to as the Interim Final Rule (Federal Register 2005), is a sweeping set of prohibitions on activities and holdings to reduce the possibility that NIH employees will have any actual [End Page 199] or apparent conflicts of interest. For the most part, the prohibitions are applied across-the-board—i.e., without distinction to employee category or function. The new policy includes prohibitions on outside activities, stock holdings, and awards. It prohibits all NIH employees from engaging in any compensated or uncompensated employment, including consulting, serving on advisory or other such boards, and compensated teaching, speaking, writing, or editing with certain kinds of entities. The first class of such entities is referred to as substantially affected organizations, defined as biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medical device companies, and others with similar interests. But these are not the only entities included in the prohibitions. Other organizations from which NIH employees now are cut off are hospitals, clinics, and other health care institutions; health, science, or health research-related professional associations and consumer and advocacy groups. Included also are educational institutions and not-for-profit independent research institutes that are, or were, recent NIH funding applicants, grantees, contractors, or cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) partners. The only exemptions appear to be for health care institutions at which NIH employees provide clinical care and some forms of writing—e.g., an NIH physician who moonlights at her/his local hospital's emergency room or submits a manuscript to a peer-reviewed journal that receives only unrestricted funding from a prohibited entity. Prohibited and/or restricted holdings include stock in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical device companies and others in research, development, or manufacture of medical devices, equipment, preparations, treatments, or products. The prohibitions apply to senior NIH employees; restrictions in the amount of such holdings apply to all remaining employees. Both apply to the spouses and minor children of NIH employees. If an NIH employee wins an award, the monetary allowance in most cases is limited to $200. In sum, the scope of this policy is vast, too vast to be reasonable. Too many employees are restricted in too many ways. Where appropriate restrictions have been placed on senior NIH employees, even these constructive aspects of the policy are overshadowed by the unfairness and destructiveness of other aspects. This policy far exceeds anything that could be considered sound. Fortunately, the policy has a built-in assessment process to begin at the end of the policy's first year of implementation. One can only hope that a fair and open evaluation will be conducted, the results of which surely must result in major revisions to what is now bad regulation. Why the Policy... (shrink)

The "four-wave mixer", a laser technique for reversing the motion direction of light waves so that they can be turned around and returned to their point of origin was the subject of my last Alternate View column (ANALOG, June-1985). In this AV column I want to go one step further by examining a hypothetical kind of time-reversed light wave which should actually go backward in time. As we shall see, such backward waves could be used to send information from the (...) present to the past, resulting in a sort of "poor man's" time travel. Recent science fiction novels like Jim Hogan's Thrice in Time and Greg Benford's Timescape have been based on backwards-in-time communication and the situations that might arise from it. In both books a world disaster is averted by sending a message to the past. In Timescape a side-effect of the signalling prevents Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating President Kennedy, irreversibly altering the course of events after 1963. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.4 (2000) 283-286 [Access article in PDF] Introduction This Issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal focuses on "Aristotelianism in Contemporary Bioethics." It is an unusual topic for this journal as it is seemingly very theoretical. But, I assure the reader that the theoretical topics explored are of the most practical and pressing kind. The questions addressed concern what kind of (...) knowledge and skill there can be in deliberating about particular cases and issues, whether this knowledge is culturally relative, and how bioethics can balance the rights of the individual in making health care decisions with responsibilities to the community.Authors in bioethics, especially those working in clinical ethics, have long sought to address particular problems with the fewest theoretical commitments possible so as to make broad consensus more plausible. Since theoretical foundations are often disputed, keeping the discussion pragmatic has seemed the more likely road to agreement. Similarly, our American heritage has lent the rhetoric of the rights of the individual to the scholarly dialogue in bioethics. Although no one wishes to do away with such language completely, it sometimes has seemed inadequate to the moral phenomena. To address these concerns, the philosophy of Aristotle has been recruited. Aristotelianism in contemporary bioethics has become identified with two claims: (1) there is such a thing as the ability to reason wisely about particular problems and cases, and (2) there is a need to supplement the American emphasis on the individual with a richer notion of the person or a concept of the common good. Both of these claims address concerns arising from the doctrine of informed consent, the fundamental framework of medical decision making.Contemporary American biomedical ethics is now more than 25 years old. It has been marked by some important successes. For instance, it has evolved an ethical and legal consensus that the doctrine of informed consent is the primary way to make operational the value of respect for the patient. And this doctrine extends to all areas of medical treatment and biomedical research. The doctrine is minimalist in that it relies simply on [End Page 283] the right of a competent patient to refuse unwanted interventions. This approach naturally raises questions concerning whether it can adequately settle the more difficult moral questions society faces without recourse to a grander philosophical theory. Similarly, the doctrine of informed consent places the rights of the individual front and center, and this causes us to ask whether bioethics is intrinsically individualistic. Although some might find individualism unobjectionable, many claim that such individualism does not capture the moral phenomenon of the family's role in ethical medical decision making (Nelson and Nelson 1995) or the need to see particular choices in light of the health care schema we wish for society (Callahan 1990).Aristotelianism has not presented itself as just another competing theory among other approaches to bioethics. Through the notions of practical wisdom and the common good, Aristotelianism can be seen as a metaethical way of tying together the methodological progress in bioethics that has resulted from a rich debate among various methods. For instance, bioethics has seen the flourishing of two important methods: the principles approach and casuistry. Virtue theory has also received much attention. The representatives of each have often argued that the philosophical concepts and principles behind ethical decision making in medicine are minimal.Whether one is talking about the four principles approach of Beauchamp and Childress (1994), the case-based approach (casuistry) of Jonsen and Toulmin (1988), or the virtue theory of Pellegrino and Thomasma (1993), one immediately notices that each method is fairly dependent on the judgment or practical wisdom of a competent practitioner of the method in order to be effective. The four principles approach depends upon someone being able to balance or to specify its mid-level principles in difficult cases; casuistry requires the discrimination of a person of practical wisdom to identify relevant features of cases and reason analogically between paradigm cases and their less clear particular instances, and virtue theory places the competent practitioner of the clinical art at the center of its method and makes... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Unduly Iterative Ethical Review?”Franklin G. MillerMadam:Renée C. Fox and Nicholas A. Christakis have written a provocative article, “Perish and Publish: Non-Heart-Beating Organ Donation and Unduly Iterative Ethical Review” (KIEJ, December 1995). The language of their argument and some of the implicit assumptions on which it rests deserve critical scrutiny. They describe the articles presenting and commenting on the University of Pittsburgh protocol as “disquieting” because the display “trial-and-error ethics.” (...) To dismiss “trial-and-error ethics” implies that we antecedently possess all the moral knowledge we need to evaluate and regulate developments in medicine. Should we summarily reject experimentation in ethics, particularly with respect to complex issues involving scientific and technological changes? For if we need to reconsider and possibly revise what counts as moral knowledge, the proposing an experimental approach to the ethics of a novel practice, which is presented publicly and made open to revision, as in the Pittsburgh protocol, may be precisely the best way to proceed.Fox and Christakis resort to invidious insinuation in their criticism of ethicists who have written, and journals that have published, articles about non-heart-beating organ donation. Publication on this issue has given ethicists the opportunity of “adding numerous items to their vitae.” Their appraisal of the vitae-boosting behavior represents an interesting rhetorical specimen: “Although there is nothing inherently dishonorable about this it does create tension between two motives: conviction about the importance of perfecting ethical conduct, on the one hand, and the desire to advance one’s professional career, on the other” (p. 340). I am not sure what the authors mean by “perfecting ethical conduct.” Yet they suggest that a group of reputable scholars, who have taken diverse positions on the ethics of non-heart-beating organ donation, have come perilously close to venality.Finally, in order to avoid further legitimating what they consider to be an ethically objectionable practice, the authors advocate that journals exercise “restraint” in publishing articles about this topic. Perhaps in a future pronouncement they will enlighten us about how enforcing a publication policy that avoids the vice of “unduly iterative ethical review” might work without compromising freedom of discussion. Moral dogmatism and censorship have a long history of association.Franklin G. MillerCenter for Biomedical Ethics University of Virginia Charlottesville, VACopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

I. G. McFetridge; VII*—Propositions and Davidson's Account of Indirect Discourse, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1 June 1976, Page.

I. G. McFetridge; VII*—Propositions and Davidson's Account of Indirect Discourse, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1 June 1976, Page.

R.I.G. Hughes presents a series of eight philosophical essays on the theoretical practices of physics. The first two essays examine these practices as they appear in physicists' treatises (e.g. Newton's Principia and Opticks ) and journal articles (by Einstein, Bohm and Pines, Aharonov and Bohm). By treating these publications as texts, Hughes casts the philosopher of science in the role of critic. This premise guides the following 6 essays which deal with various concerns of philosophy of physics such as laws, (...) disunities, models and representation, computer simulation, explanation, and the discourse of physics. (shrink)

R.I.G Hughes offers the first detailed and accessible analysis of the Hilbert-space models used in quantum theory and explains why they are so successful.

Intended for high school and college students studying ancient Greece and Rome as part of a larger world history curriculum, this book's coverage of key wars and battles; important leaders, armies, organizations, and weapons; and other aspects of conflict will enable readers to better understand the complex role warfare played in ancient Western civilization.

Battin et al examined data on deaths from physician-assisted suicide in Oregon and on PAS and voluntary euthanasia in The Netherlands. This paper reviews the methodology used in their examination and questions the conclusions drawn from it—namely, that there is for the most part ‘no evidence of heightened risk’ to vulnerable people from the legalisation of PAS or VE. This critique focuses on the evidence about PAS in Oregon. It suggests that vulnerability to PAS cannot be categorised simply by reference (...) to race, gender or other socioeconomic status and that the impetus to seek PAS derives from factors, including emotional state, reactions to loss, personality type and situation and possibly to PAS contagion, all factors that apply across the social spectrum. It also argues, on the basis of official reports from the Oregon Health Department on the working of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act since 2008, that, contrary to the conclusions drawn by Battin et al, the highest resort to PAS in Oregon is among the elderly and, on the basis of research published since Battin et al reported, that there is reason to believe that some terminally ill patients in Oregon are taking their own lives with lethal drugs supplied by doctors despite having had depression at the time when they were assessed and cleared for PAS. (shrink)

Posidonius was a major intellectual figure of the Hellenistic world whose interests and contribution spread over the whole intellectual field: philosophy, history, the sciences. His writings are of interest not only to philosophers and classicists, but also to historians and history of science. His work survives only in fragments. The text of these fragments, collected and edited by L. Edelstein and I. G. Kidd, was published in 1972, with a second edition in 1989. This collection, along with Vol. II The (...) Commentary by I.G. Kidd, has become established as the definitive modern edition. However, many of the fragments are extremely difficult to translate, and this volume of translations has been compiled to make this interesting material more easily accessible to scholars and students. The translations are accompanied by contextual introductions and explanatory notes where necessary. An Introduction summarises the importance of Posidonius and his work. (shrink)