OBJECTIVES: To study the ethical reasoning of nurses and physicians, and to assess whether or not modified focus groups are a valuable tool for this purpose. DESIGN: Discussion of cases in modified focus groups, each consisting of three physicians and three nurses. The discussion was taped and analysed by content analysis. SETTING: Five departments of internal medicine at Danish hospitals. SAMPLE: Seven discussion groups. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: Ethical content of statements, style of statements, time used by each participant. RESULTS: Danish physicians (...) and nurses do not differ in the kind of ethical reasoning they use, but physicians use more of the discussion time than nurses, they use a more assertive style of argumentation, and the solutions chosen are usually first put forward by physicians. CONCLUSION: The results and informal comparisons with similar data from long qualitative interviews indicate that groups of this kind are a useful tool for gathering data on ethical reasoning. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To study the ethical reasoning of nurses and physicians, and to assess whether or not modified focus groups are a valuable tool for this purpose. DESIGN: Discussion of cases in modified focus groups, each consisting of three physicians and three nurses. The discussion was taped and analysed by content analysis. SETTING: Five departments of internal medicine at Danish hospitals. SAMPLE: Seven discussion groups. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: Ethical content of statements, style of statements, time used by each participant. RESULTS: Danish physicians (...) and nurses do not differ in the kind of ethical reasoning they use, but physicians use more of the discussion time than nurses, they use a more assertive style of argumentation, and the solutions chosen are usually first put forward by physicians. CONCLUSION: The results and informal comparisons with similar data from long qualitative interviews indicate that groups of this kind are a useful tool for gathering data on ethical reasoning. (shrink)

K. E. Boxer explores moral responsibility, and whether it is compatible with causal determinism. She suggests that to answer this question we must focus on responsibility in the sense of liability, and that an incompatibilist view may only be preserved on an understanding of the moral desert of punishment that many find morally problematic.

In this paper I have tried to clarify the meaning of two very different sets of characteristics which philosophers have had in mind when they claimed that ethical terms were objective. I gave a very tentative answer to the question whether it is true to say that, in any of the distinguished senses, ethical statements are objective. Lastly, I indicated how the failure to make the distinction I draw was responsible for a number of confusions and unnecessary difficulties. More precisely, (...) in (1) I defined the first set of the characteristics in question, which together I have called solidity ; in (2) I give reasons why it is misleading to claim that ethical statements are solid and also misleading to claim they are not; in (3) I defined the second set of these characteristics, namely, proper contentiousness and proper complexity; in (4) I explained what I thought were the fundamental differences between these two sets of characteristics; in (5) I suggested that the solidity of an expression is normally a good reason for holding that the expression is properly contentious and properly complex; in (6) I claim that the failure to understand (4) and, therefore, also (5) leads to the following errors: (a) that, if an expression is solid , it must be properly contentious and properly complex ; that, if an expression is non-solid , it must be either properly contentious and properly simple , or properly non-contentious . (5) That, if an expression is properly contentious and properly complex , it must be solid ; if it is properly contentious and properly simple or if it is properly non-contentious , then it must be non-solid ; and lastly in (7) I have mentioned some common reasons for holding that ethical expressions have one or the other of the above-mentioned characteristics. (shrink)

Over one hundred genes have been isolated from the human genome and shown to be causally related to specific human genetic diseases. Studies with gene‐specific probes have demonstrated that the mutations resulting in a particular phenotype are highly heterogeneous as a group, ranging from alterations in transcription or RNA processing in the nucleus, through to errors in mRNA translation in the cytoplasm. Even where the gene‐specific probe is not available, defects have been localized to chromosomal regions by family studies. Recently (...) developed methods for moving along the chromosome from a linked marker to the mutation are resulting in rapid advances in the understanding of many monogenic disorders. (shrink)

The Danish theologian-philosopher K. E. Løgstrup is second in reputation in his homeland only to Søren Kierkegaard. He is best known outside Europe for his _The Ethical Demand_, first published in Danish in 1956 and published in an expanded English translation in 1997. _Beyond the Ethical Demand_ contains excerpts, translated into English for the first time, from the numerous books and essays Løgstrup continued to write throughout his life. In the first essay, he engages the critical response to _The Ethical (...) Demand,_ clarifying, elaborating, or defending his original positions. In the next three essays, he extends his contention that human ethics “demands” that we are concerned for the other by introducing the crucial concept of “sovereign expressions of life.” Like Levinas, Løgstrup saw in the phenomenon of “the other” the ground for his ethics. In his later works he developed this concept of “the sovereign expressions of life,” spontaneous phenomena such as trust, mercy, and sincerity that are inherently other-regarding. The last two essays connect his ethics with political life. Interest in Løgstrup in the English-speaking academic community continues to grow, and these important original sources will be essential tools for scholars exploring the further implications of his ethics and phenomenology. “K. E. Løgstrup’s work undoubtedly made in his time an original contribution to the field of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. This translation makes extracts from his later publications on moral philosophy accessible to an English-speaking audience. I am again impressed by the depth of his ideas, which are certainly not outdated and still relevant for contemporary debates in moral philosophy.” —_Bert Musschenga, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam _ “Making a large part of Knud Løgstrup’s legacy accessible to the English-speaking public is an event of enormous cultural, philosophical and political importance—and we are all in debt to his disciple, Kies van Kooten Niekerk, and the University Press of Notre Dame, for making it happen. Løgstrup, alongside few other giants of 20th Century ethical thought, like Emmanuel Levinas or Hans Jonas, anticipated and articulated all the major challenges and urgent tasks with which the coming century is likely to confront the moral self. Our ethical discourse was all the poorer so far for being barred access to his findings and proposition. This will no longer be the case.” —_Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus, University of Leeds_ “The publication of an English translation of Knut Eljert Løgstrup's later works in ethics provides a wider readership with the opportunity to better understand his important contribution to ethics in the second half of the last century. With his notion of the _Sovereign Expressions of Life_ Løgstrup articulates his rejection of moral atomism that has become influential in recent times. The introduction and annotation by Kees van Kooten Niekerk are very helpful to see how Løgstrup's thought developed beyond _The Ethical Demand.” —__Hans S. Reinders, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam_. (shrink)

Art and Authority explores the sources, nature, and limits of artistic freedom. K. E. Gover draws upon real-world cases and controversies in contemporary visual art to offer a better understanding of artistic authorship and authority. Each chapter focuses on a case of dispute over the rights of an artist with respect to his or her artwork.

There is no issue more central to the abortion debate than the controversial issue of whether the fetus is a moral person. Abortion-rights opponents almost universally claim that abortion is murder and should be legally prohibited because the fetus is a moral person at the moment of conception. Abortion-rights proponents almost universally deny the crucial assumption that the fetus is a person; on their view, whatever moral disvalue abortion involves does not rise to the level of murder and hence does (...) not rise to the level of something that should be legally prohibited.In this essay, I argue that, under dualist assumptions about the nature of mind, the fetus is not a person until brain activity has begun.i First, I argue it is a necessary condition for a thing to be a moral person that it is a self. Second, I argue it is a necessary condition for a fetus to be a self, under dualist assumptions, that there has been some electrical activity in the brain. I conclude that a dualist can take the position that abortion ought to be legally permitted at least until the beginning of brain activity in the fetus. (shrink)

In an earlier paper by one of us [K.-E. Hellwig (1981)], elements of discrete quantum stochastic processes which arise when the classical probability space is replaced by quantum theory have been considered. In the present paper a general formulation is given and its properties are compared with those of classical stochastic processes. Especially, it is asked whether such processes can be Markovian. An example is given and similarities to methods in quantum statistical thermodynamics are pointed out.

The aim of this inquiry is to determine whether printmaking is best understood ontologically as analogous to a work-performance relation. Are prints the visual analogue of symphonies? My motivation for pursuing the comparison of printmaking to music is twofold. First, because relatively little has been written on the ontology of fine art prints, our use of an already developed body of scholarship will help us to gain some traction on the question. Second, within the existing literature on the ontology of (...) prints, there seems to be a persistent confusion about the difference between what makes a print an artwork, and what makes it a genuine or authentic artwork, signed or in some other way ratified by a given artist. I conclude by suggesting that prints are indeed ontologically unusual insofar as they occupy an intermediate position between pure multiples, of which there can be an unlimited number of tokens, and singular artworks that consist of one physical object. (shrink)

Concept of cognition in Viśiṣṭādvaita philosophy; a study.

Exhaustive work on fundamentals of Viśiṣṭādvaita philosophy.

Whether or not intellectual property rights ought, as a matter of political morality, to be protected by the law surely depends on what kinds of interests the various parties have in intellectual content. Although theorists disagree on the limits of morally legitimate lawmaking authority, this much seems obvious: the coercive power of the law should be employed only to protect interests that rise to a certain level of moral importance. We have such a significant interest in not being lied to, (...) for example, that ordinary unilateral lies are morally wrong, but the wrongness of lying does not rise to the level of something the state should protect against by coercive criminal prohibition. Indeed, it would clearly be wrong for the law to coercively restrict behaviors in which no one has any morally significant interests whatsoever. Using the coercive power of the law to restrict freedom is not justified unless the moral benefits of restricting the behavior outweigh the moral costs involved in using force to restrict human autonomy and freedom. (shrink)