In the modern moral luck debate, Kant is standardly taken to be the enemy of moral luck. My goal in this paper is to show that this is mistaken. The paper is divided into six sections. In the first, I show that participants in the moral luck literature take moral luck to be anathema to Kantian ethics. In the second, I explain the kind of luck I am going to focus on here: consequence luck, a species of resultant luck. In (...) the third, I explain why philosophers have taken Kantian ethics to reject moral luck and, in particular, consequence luck. In the fourth, I explain why these philosophers are mistaken, and I set out Kant’s theoretical framework for consequence luck. In the fifth, I clarify and defend this framework, and in the sixth, I interrogate and attack it. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s Categorical Imperative should be applied to individual maxim tokens rather than abstract maxim types. The article is divided into five sections. In the first, I explain my thesis. In the second, I show that my thesis disagrees with Rawls. In the third, I argue for my thesis on the basis of the wording of the Categorical Imperative and on the basis of considerations about autonomy. In the fourth, I argue for my thesis on the basis of (...) considerations about the ‘ought implies can’ principle. In the fifth, I provide a summary of the main argumentative moves and also explain some of the philosophical advantages of my thesis. (shrink)

At its core, public health introduces tensions between individuals' autonomy and the need to account for the perspectives and needs of communities and populations. It further raises social justice issues, including fair allocation of limited resources. This article examines and elaborates on these tensions and their resolutions using specific public health examples. Experiences in the 1980s and 1990s with HIV/AIDS provide a particularly rich collection of issues that brought ethical issues in public health to the public's attention, and in so (...) doing challenged previously held assumptions about the appropriate consideration of individual rights in the context of population health objectives. Lastly, the article examines some of the ethical challenges arising in public health applications of recent science and technology advances, specifically the emerging area of public health genomics and the large scale collection and analysis of health information. (shrink)

The philosophy of the Presocratics still governs scholarly discussion today. This important volume grapples with a host of philosophical issues and philological and historical problems inherent in interpreting Presocratic philosophers.

The cosmological-meteorological writings of Paracelsus (1493-1541), presented here for the first time in the most reliable German versions with facing-page translations and thorough text-based and historical commentary, are essential documents of the transition from the medieval to the modern era.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionAnna Mastroianni (bio) and Jeffrey Kahn (bio)In this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, we subject the work of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments to examination from many angles. Nearly one year has passed since the release of the Committee’s final report and recommendations, and it seems an appropriate time to invite discourse and reflection on the influence and impact of the Committee and (...) its efforts. Our intent is to advance understanding of the Committee and its work, its place in the evolution of bioethics and public policy, as well as the broader legacy of restoring trust in the conduct of human subjects research.In 1993, President Clinton and Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary initiated an investigation of America’s involvement in radiation experiments on its citizens during the Cold War. The investigation resulted in the appointment of the Committee in January 1994. Some issues raised by these radiation experiments were brought to the attention of the nation by revelations contained in a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of newspaper stories about plutonium injections carried out by the government on allegedly unsuspecting subjects during the Cold War. The Committee faced a broad mandate, which included piecing together the history of Cold War radiation experiments and human subjects research, as well as recommending remedies for past wrongs and mechanisms to ensure that such wrongs could not be repeated in the future.This issue of the Journal consists of articles and accompanying commentaries on historical, philosophical, policy, and political aspects of the Committee’s work that are important to bioethics. This collection of articles, authored by Committee members, staff, and leading scholars, is designed to paint a picture of the breadth and complexity of the Committee’s efforts and to provide context and to stimulate discussion of significant issues.In the first article, Ruth Faden provides her unique perspective as chair of the Committee. She goes beyond the necessary overview and background of the Committee to reflect on the impact and meaning of the Committee’s work to bioethics and public policy.Much of the Committee’s effort was directed at gathering and uncovering information about the history of Cold War radiation experiments, an endeavor fairly foreign to bioethics but critically important to understanding the context in which to make moral judgments about the past. Jonathan Moreno and Susan Lederer discuss how the Committee’s work changed some of the traditional views of the history of research ethics. The commentary by Allan Brandt and Lara Freidenfelds further illuminates the value of understanding this recovered history. [End Page ix]In making moral judgments about the past, the Committee confronted complex questions about how to assess wrongdoing and the culpability of the government and its agents. Allen Buchanan explains why this was such a difficult but crucial task and how the Committee worked through some of the answers to these questions. His discussion illustrates the challenges to consensus in the committee decision-making process described in Ruth Macklin’s article in this issue on committees and consensus. Tom Beauchamp analyzes the frameworks for making retrospective moral judgments developed by two committees, the Advisory Committee and the University of California at San Francisco Ad Hoc Fact Finding Committee on World War II Human Radiation Experiments, and critiques their applications of the frameworks in the case of the plutonium injection experiments.The Committee recognized that in order to prevent wrongs seen in the past from occurring in the future, it would be necessary to understand the human subjects protections now in place. Nancy Kass and Jeremy Sugarman discuss the results of the Committee’s attempts to measure the operation and effectiveness of the current system for protection of human subjects. Paul Appelbaum comments on the relevance and value of the Committee’s empirical projects to contemporary human subjects research.The Committee’s work, and the products of any commission’s work, must be viewed partly in light of the place of commissions in bioethics scholarship and policymaking. Appointed commissions can have significant impacts on scholarly and public thinking, policymaking, and future direction, and bring high visibility to issues. It is important to realize that the conclusions of the Committee... (shrink)

Journal Name: The Law & Ethics of Human Rights Issue: Ahead of print.

A couple may have a child to provide stem cells for another child. They may also use preimplantation testing—even, troubling though it is, prenatal testing and selective abortion—to ensure a close tissue match.

Concepts and Cases in Nursing Ethics is a case-based exploration of the core principles of health care ethics applied to nursing. The book is a collaboration between philosopher-ethicist Michael Yeo and nurse-ethicist and educators Anne Moorhouse, Pamela Khan, and Patricia Rodney. It thus combines philosophical and ethical analysis with extensive knowledge and experience in nursing and health care. The book is organized around six main concepts in health care ethics: beneficence, autonomy, truthfulness, confidentiality, justice, and integrity. A chapter is devoted (...) to the elucidation of each of these concepts. In each chapter, historical background and conceptual analysis are supplemented by case studies that exemplify issues and show how the concept applies in health care and nursing practice. In this new edition, the conceptual analysis throughout has been updated and reworked in view of changes in the health care system. In addition, there is a new chapter specifically devoted to recent developments affecting nursing and other health professions. Previous case studies have been modified and new ones added to address current and emerging issues. Although the text focuses mainly on the social and political situation of nursing, the analysis has relevance also for medicine and the allied health professions, and indeed for anyone working in the health system. (shrink)

_Concepts and Cases in Nursing Ethics_ is a case-based exploration of the core principles of health care ethics applied to nursing. The book is a collaboration between philosopher-ethicist Michael Yeo and nurse-ethicist and educators Anne Moorhouse, Pamela Khan, and Patricia Rodney. It thus combines philosophical and ethical analysis with extensive knowledge and experience in nursing and health care. The book is organized around six main concepts in health care ethics: beneficence, autonomy, truthfulness, confidentiality, justice, and integrity. A chapter is devoted (...) to the elucidation of each of these concepts. In each chapter, historical background and conceptual analysis are supplemented by case studies that exemplify issues and show how the concept applies in health care and nursing practice. In this new edition, the conceptual analysis throughout has been updated and reworked in view of changes in the health care system. In addition, there is a new chapter specifically devoted to recent developments affecting nursing and other health professions. Previous case studies have been modified and new ones added to address current and emerging issues. Although the text focuses mainly on the social and political situation of nursing, the analysis has relevance also for medicine and the allied health professions, and indeed for anyone working in the health system. (shrink)

We argue that the rapid eye movement dream experiences owe their structure and meaning to inherent self-organizing properties of the brain itself. Thus, we offer a common meeting ground for brain based studies of dreaming and traditional psychological dream theory. Our view is that the dreaming brain is a self-organizing system highly sensitive to internally generated influences. Several lines of evidence support a process view of the brain as a system near the edge of chaos, one that is highly sensitive (...) to internal influences. Such sensitivity is due to several factors. First, the dreaming brain normally gates out external input and thus operates without the stabilizing influences of external feedback. Second, the pre-frontal cortex is only minimally activated during REM sleep, and hence the brain operates with weakened volition, reduced logic, and diminished self-reflection. Third, because the neuromodulatory inhibition mechanism is turned off during REM, the brain responds spontaneously to the least provocation. In addition, the dreaming brain is also subject to powerful intermittent cholinergic stimulation which may stimulate creative patterns of dream activity. (shrink)

Qualitative research poses ethical issues and challenges unique to the study of human beings. In developing the interpersonal relationship that is critical to qualitative research, investigator and participant engage in a dialogic process that often evokes stories and memories that are remembered and reconstituted in ways that otherwise would not occur. Ethical issues are raised when this relationship not only provides qualitative research data, but also leads to some degree of therapeutic interaction for the participant. The purpose of this article (...) is to examine some of the controversies inherent in the researcher's dilemma when this occurs, set within the context of a nursing caring theory (Swanson), and the International Council of Nurses Code of ethics for nurses, which provides guidance on global nursing practice. (shrink)

Public health raises critical ethics issues and concerns, making public heath ethics an essential topic for students and public health professionals. The 73 chapters in this volume examine public health ethics across a broad range of public health topics both in the U.S. and globally. It is the first ever comprehensive collection devoted to public health ethics.

Federal policies on human subjects research have undergone a progressive transformation. In the early decades of the twentieth century, federal policies largely relied on the discretion of investigators to decide when and how to conduct research. This approach gradually gave way to policies that augmented investigator discretion with externally imposed protections. We may now be entering an era of even more stringent external protections. Whether the new policies effectively absolve investigators of personal responsibility for conducting ethical research, and whether it (...) is wise to do so, remains to be seen. (shrink)

Dream reports were collected from normal subjects in an effort to determine the degree to which dream reports can be used to identify individual dreamers. Judges were asked to group the reports by their authors. The judges scored the reports correctly at chance levels. This finding indicated that dreams may be at least as much like each other as they are the signature of individual dreamers. Our results suggest that dream reports cannot be used to identify the individuals who produced (...) them when identifiers like names and gender of friends and family members are removed from the dream report. In addition to using dreams to learn about an individual, we must look at dreams as telling us about important common or generic aspects of human consciousness. (shrink)

In this commentary we argue that evolution of the human brain to host the language system was accomplished by the selective development of frontal and temporal areas in the left hemisphere. The unilateral development of Broca's and Wernicke's areas could have resulted from one or more transcription factors that have an expression pattern restricted to the left hemisphere.

Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age generated a great deal of attention—and has stimulated important debates—among a diverse range of scholars in sociology, history, politics, religious studies and to a lesser extent, anthropologists. Much of the debate has focused on the implications of Taylor’s work for the so-called secularisation thesis and the place of religion in the so-called public sphere. The essays in this volume arise less out of such concerns and more from Taylor’s discussion of secularism in a third, ‘experiential’ (...) sense. Each paper addresses the question of what it is like to ‘believe’ in the modern world. Among other things the authors of the essays published in this Special Issue are concerned to develop better understandings of the conditions under which belief and unbelief may be experienced as open, rather than closed, to the possibility of other ontological construals, thereby building on Taylor’s insights into the phenomenology of modern secularism. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an important case study, on a global scale, of how democracy works - and fails to work - today. From leadership to citizenship, from due process to checks and balances, from globalization to misinformation, from solidarity within and across borders to the role of expertise, key democratic concepts both old and new are now being put to the test. The future of democracy around the world is at issue as today's governments manage their responses to (...) the pandemic. Bringing together some of today's most creative thinkers, these essays offer a variety of inquiries into democracy during the global pandemic with a view to imagining post-crisis political conditions. Representing different regions and disciplines, including law, politics, philosophy, religion, and sociology, eighteen voices offer different outlooks - optimistic and pessimistic - on the future. (shrink)

This book proposes a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues. Rejecting the usual assumption of a distinct 'Socratic' period in the development of Plato's thought, this view regards the earlier works as deliberate preparation for the exposition of Plato's mature philosophy. Differences between the dialogues do not represent different stages in Plato's own thinking but rather different aspects and moments in the presentation of a new and unfamiliar view of reality. Once the fictional character of (...) the Socratic genre is recognised, there is no reason to regard Plato's early dialogues as representing the philosophy of the historical Socrates. The result is a unified interpretation of all of the dialogues down to the Republic and the Phaedrus. (shrink)

This book proposes a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues. Rejecting the usual assumption of a distinct 'Socratic' period in the development of Plato's thought, this view regards the earlier works as deliberate preparation for the exposition of Plato's mature philosophy. Differences between the dialogues do not represent different stages in Plato's own thinking but rather different aspects and moments in the presentation of a new and unfamiliar view of reality. Once the fictional character of (...) the Socratic genre is recognised, there is no reason to regard Plato's early dialogues as representing the philosophy of the historical Socrates. The result is a unified interpretation of all of the dialogues down to the Republic and the Phaedrus. (shrink)

Ces études voudraient inviter le public francophone à la découverte de la philosophie de l'école de Marbourg et de son apport au site pratique de la philosophie. La réflexion morale, juridique et politique s'est trouvée fort enrichie par les écrits de Friedrich Albert Lange, Hermann Cohen et Paul Natorp. Ernst Cassirer a poursuivi la réflexion de ses maîtres en théorie de la connaissance, mais aussi dans le site pratique, ici dominé par un socialisme d'inspiration kantienne.

Despite pronouncements about the inevitable diffusion of artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies, in practice, it is human behavior, not technology in a vacuum, that dictates how technology seeps into—and changes—societies. To better understand how human preferences shape technological adoption and the spread of AI-enabled autonomous technologies, we look at representative adult samples of US public opinion in 2018 and 2020 on the use of four types of autonomous technologies: vehicles, surgery, weapons, and cyber defense. By focusing on these four diverse (...) uses of AI-enabled autonomy that span transportation, medicine, and national security, we exploit the inherent variation between these AI-enabled autonomous use cases. We find that those with familiarity and expertise with AI and similar technologies were more likely to support all of the autonomous applications we tested (except weapons) than those with a limited understanding of the technology. Individuals that had already delegated the act of driving using ride-share apps were also more positive about autonomous vehicles. However, familiarity cut both ways; individuals are also less likely to support AI-enabled technologies when applied directly to their life, especially if technology automates tasks they are already familiar with operating. Finally, we find that familiarity plays little role in support for AI-enabled military applications, for which opposition has slightly increased over time. (shrink)

Drawing on a century of data, Common Enemies reveals why disease campaigns are the battles Americans come together to fight, why certain diseases rose to prominence, and how fighting one disease at a time changes the way we distribute resources, conceptualize problems, and promote health. Combining quantitative and qualitative analyses, Rachel Kahn Best persuasively demonstrates how disease campaigns have created unintended consequences for health policy.