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)

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.

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.

The Stoics maintained that virtue was the only good; everything else, therefore, was not-good. On the other hand, regarded by itself, this huge class was not equally valueless. Vice, of course, was bad; but everything else was thought to be ‘indifferent’: wealth, health, for example; indifferent, that is, with regard to the summum bonum. Of these Intermediates, men, from human nature, had a leaning to some; these were, had value, were called, that is, preferred, and virtue itself lay in choice (...) exercised among them. (shrink)

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 and journal articles. By treating these publications as texts, Hughes casts the philosopher of science in the role of critic. This premise guides the following six essays which deal with various concerns of philosophy and physics such as laws, disunities, models and representation, computer simulation, explanation, and the discourse of physics.

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

In the article, the analysis and philosophical explication of a phenomenon of values as synergetic determinants of culture and cultural-historical process, which is culturogenic development of the person and of his subjective being in socio-cultural space and historical time, is presented. The analysis is carried out on the basis of complex methodology having the synergetic approach as its main part. According to it, the semantic interpretation of a phenomenon of values and axiological understanding of culture as the system, which is (...) self-organized on the basis of values, and human history as the cultural-historical process positioning and approving human being in the world, are offered and proved. The human history is considered as a cultural artifact embodying evolutions and changes of conditions of the culturogenic attitude of the person towards reality. It is offered to consider axiology, the philosophical theory of values as the humanitarian doctrine about value development, assimilation of available reality by the person-subject. The modern importance and relevance of an axiology, which during the era of globalization of cultural-historical process becomes area of knowledge connected with definition of reference points and priorities of existence and development of the modern world, is noted. (shrink)

In the article, a value as the universal anthropological phenomenon acting as the constituting basis and the integrative beginning of human being as conscious and motivated subject activity is studied. The following aspects of the phenomenon were analyzed: ratios of value and valuation, object and subject determination of value, fundamental anthropological characteristics of value as constituting factors of human being and its attributes, value structure as subject and object relation, problem of a ratio of values and human requirements. It agrees (...) with the offered semantic understanding of value are thought by the center of all semantic definiteness of human being as subject valuable relation to reality. The axiology as the philosophical theory of value is thought of the center of a philosophical and anthropological perspective, in which the essence and specifics of human being reveals. (shrink)

Kant’s critique/doctrine distinction tracks the difference between a canon for the understanding’s proper use and an organon for its dialectical misuse. The latter reflects the dogmatic use of reason to attain a doctrine of knowledge with no antecedent critique. In the 1790s, Fichte collapses Kant’s distinction and redefines dogmatism. He argues that deriving a canon is essentially dialectical and thus yields an organon: critical idealism is properly a doctrine of science or Wissenschaftslehre. Criticism is furthermore said to refute dogmatism, by (...) which Fichte means Spinozism. Schelling repudiates Fichte’s position in his Philosophical Letters by reviving Kant’s distinction. First, ‘critique’ for Schelling names a canon that is valid for all systems—including Spinozism—and thus favours none—not even the Wissenschaftslehre. Second, Schelling coins ‘dogmaticism’ to refer to what Kant calls ‘dogmatism’: reason’s uncritical claim to doctrine. Hence, he says all systems—even Fichte’s—are susceptible to the ‘enthusiasm’ of mistaking themselves for doctrines or ‘objects of knowledge’, instead of subjectively valid ‘objects of freedom’. I reconstruct Schelling’s argument for reviving Kant’s distinction, while noting two consequences for German idealism. First, if criticism favours no system, a system’s origin cannot be an act of knowledge, e.g., intellectual intuition, but only an act of endorsement. Second, if dogmaticism entails enthusiasm, a system’s goal cannot be absolute knowledge, but only infinite striving. Hence, by retrieving Schelling’s notion of dogmaticism, we can both gain a better understanding of the Letters and register the impact of a core Kantian distinction on the German idealist project. (shrink)