In the case of an intellectually disabled patient, the attending physician was restricted from writing a Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR) order. Although the rationale for this restriction was to protect the patient from an inappropriate quality of life judgment, it resulted in a worse death than the patient would have experienced had he not been disabled. Such restrictions that are intended to protect intellectually disabled patients may violate their right to equal treatment and to a dignified death.

Faced with the choice between creating a risk of harm and taking a precaution against that risk, should I take the precaution? Does the proper analysis of this trade-off require a maximizing, utilitarian approach? If not, how does one properly analyze the trade-off? These questions are important, for we often are uncertain about the effects of our actions. Accordingly, we often must consider whether our actions create an unreasonable risk of injury — that is, whether our actions are negligent.

Ever since the Proslogion was first circulated , critics have been bemused by St Anselm's brazen attempt to establish a matter of fact, namely, God's existence, from the simple analysis of a term or concept. Yet every critic who has proposed to ‘write the obituary’ of the Ontological Argument has found it to be remarkably resilient . At the risk of adding to a record of failures, I want to venture a new method for attacking this durable argument. Neither the (...) common version of Anselm's argument from Chapter II of the Proslogion nor the previously unrecognized modal version uncovered by Norman Malcolm from Pros , III can possibly get under way without Anselm's celebrated assertion that God is that than which no greater can be conceived. (shrink)

EDITED BY SLAVENKO ŠLJUKIĆBOOK SYMPOSIUM ON KENNETH R. WESTPHAL’S HOW HUME AND KANT RECONSTRUCT NATURAL LAW.

Part intellectual autobiography and part exposition of complex yet contemporary economic ideas, this lively conversation with renowned scholar and public intellectual Kenneth J. Arrow focuses on economics and politics in light of history, current events, and philosophy as well. Reminding readers that economics is about redistribution and thus about how we treat each other, Arrow shows that the intersection of economics and ethics is of concern not just to economists but for the public more broadly. With a foreword by (...) Amartya Sen, this book highlights the belief that government can be a powerful force for good, and is particularly relevant in the current political climate and to the lay reader as well as the economist. (shrink)

The Oxford English Dictionary says that a rite is ‘a formal procedure or act in a religious or other solemn observance’. The word comes into English through the French rite from the Latin ritus . Its original meaning escapes etymologists; and this is a mixed blessing, for we neither can nor must attempt a retrieval of its hidden roots. We are told by respectable etymologists that the word is associated from earliest times with Latin religious usage, but that even in (...) the early Latin it was already extended to ‘custom, usage, manner or way’ of a non-religious sort. [Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary .] So, too, in modern languages the terms ‘rite’ and ‘ritual’ have specifically religious meaning, but they are also used in social and cultural settings that we would not call religious. What first strikes us about the terms ’ and ‘ritual’ is an emphasis upon a certain formality, upon a regular and stable way in which an action or set of actions is to be performed. A ritual is more than a formalism, however, since there are formalisms that are not rites, such as the logical rules for making a valid argument. Moreover, the term is frequently associated with the terms ‘myth’, ‘symbol’ and ‘faith’. These, too, are primarily religious, but are also extended to non-religious contexts. Indeed, there seems to be a network of such terms whose usage touches upon some extraordinary quality in things. Like them, the term ‘ritual’ shares both a wide variety of meanings and a certain hint of impropriety. The variety of ritual forms is notorious, ranging from the most sacred religious liturgies to the absurdities of a fraternity initiation; and the impropriety of the term breaks out whenever we brand a certain action ‘ritualistic’, just as we sometimes refer slightingly to an assertion, saying it is ‘mythical’, ‘merely symbolic’ or ‘credulous’. (shrink)

Throughout his literary career Walker Percy read and studied the philosophical thought of Charles Sanders Peirce in an attempt to re-present in language the world as Percy knew it. Beginning in 1984 and ending in 1990, the year of his death, Percy corresponded with Kenneth Laine Ketner about the "semiotic" of Peirce. Their letters - honest, instructive, and often filled with down-home humor - record an epistolary friendship of two men both passionately interested in Peirce's theory of signs. This (...) volume of letters provides a rich philosophical perspective for better understanding the fiction and nonfiction of Walker Percy. (shrink)

Since something cannot be conscious without being a conscious subject, a complete physicalist explanation of consciousness must resolve an issue first raised by Thomas Nagel, namely to explain why a particular mass of atoms that comprises my body gives rise to me as conscious subject, rather than someone else. In this essay, I describe a thought-experiment that suggests that physicalism lacks the resources to address Nagel's question and seems to pose a counter-example to any form of non-reductive physicalism relying on (...) the mind–body supervenience thesis, which would include William Hasker's emergent dualism. Since the particular thought-experiment does not pose any problems for classical substance dualism and since the problem, as I call it, of explaining subjectivity is the central problem of mind, I conclude that CSD is better supported than any form of non-reductive physicalism. (shrink)

The existence of a Richter–Peleg multi-utility representation of a preorder by means of upper semicontinuous or continuous functions is discussed in connection with the existence of a Richter–Peleg utility representation. We give several applications that include the analysis of countable Richter–Peleg multi-utility representations.

One version of the free-will argument relies on the claim that, other things being equal, a world in which free beings exist is morally preferable to a world in which free beings do not exist . I argue that this version of the free-will argument cannot support a theodicy that should alleviate the doubts about God's existence to which the problems of evil give rise. In particular, I argue that the value thesis has no foundation in common intuitions about morality. (...) Without some sort of intuitive support, the value thesis lacks the resources to serve as the foundation for a theodicy that addresses the powerful intuition, which affects believers and non-believers alike, that a perfect God would not allow so much evil. (shrink)

This book marks Kenneth Burke's breakthrough in criticism from the literary and aesthetic into social theory and the philosophy of history. In this volume we find Burke's first entry into what he calls his theory of Dramatism and here also is an important section on the nature of ritual.

INTRODUCTION In an age of specialists, Kenneth Burke's writings offend those who are content with a partial view of human motivation. ...

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 76 - 97 This article presents an account of those works, related to conceptual history and historiographical issues, written by the American historian of political thought Melvin Richter. The attention is primarily directed toward the reception of the German historiographical style called “_Begriffsgeschichte_”, and especially on its reception among Anglophone scholars. Therefore, the main objective of the article is to throw light on Richter’s understanding of _Begriffsgeschichte_, and to sum up his (...) efforts to put in contact Koselleck’s “history of concepts” with the works of authors such as Quentin Skinner and John G. A. Pocock, who are associated with the so-called “_Cambridge school contextualists_”. Thus, the aim is to point out their direct thought about _Begriffsgeschichte_, and consequently, to see how they’ve reacted to Richter’s proposals concerning the possibility of adopting that “history of concepts” as the frame for future historical researches. By doing so, and relying mainly on the extensive contributions appeared on the pages of the specialized periodicals, this article highlights some of the principal reactions to the theoretical and practical implications of “conceptual history”; in particular as they are emerging in the midst of what is indeed a recent and still ongoing international debate. Furthermore, the article tries to compare Koselleck’s _Begriffsgeschichte_ with some works of “analytical bibliography”. It is also interesting to note that these bibliographical studies are associated with Cambridge University as well as the historical researches of Skinner and Pocock. (shrink)

Mental health professionals who care for asylum seekers in Western European countries increasingly encounter problems for which standard diagnostic and therapeutic protocols and institutional healthcare policies offer no ready answers. In the following case vignettes some of these problems can be identified.

Benjamin Buchloh’s two interviews with Gerhard Richter, which bookend this slim volume, are fascinating glimpses into the artist’s interior life, and thus rewarding. Unfortunately, jargon and proli...

The contributors to this book rewrite Richter's history to include his pivotal role in the development of the early twentieth-century avant-garde and his political activism.

Bertrand Russell’s professional philosophical reputation rests mainly on his mathematical logic and theory of knowledge. In this study, first published in 1985, however, Kenneth Blackwell considers Russell’s writings on ethics and metaethics and uncovers the conceptual unity in Russell’s normative ethic. He traces that unity to the influence of Spinoza’s central ethical concept, the ‘intellectual love of God’, and then evaluates the ethic which he terms ‘impersonal self-enlargement’. The introduction discusses the metaethical background to Russell’s ethic and the difficulties (...) inherent in Russell’s view that ethical knowledge is not possible. The first section then examines Russell’s writings on Spinoza from 1894 to 1964, dividing them into three periods, the second part analyzes Russell’s two interpretations of the main concept, traces 'impersonal self-enlargement' in Russell’s own ethical writings, and evaluates the ethic in relation to other ethical theories and on its own merits as a ‘way of living’. This book provides a foundation for a positive re-evaluation of Russell’s status in the major philosophical field of ethics and will be welcomed by students of moral philosophy as well as those interested in Bertrand Russell’s works. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 3 Seiten: 587-588.

Elizabeth Anscombe's paper ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ 1 seems clearly to have failed in its task. Kurt Baier describes the paper as ‘widely discussed and much admired’ 2 and Peter Winch has called one of its three theses ‘enormously influential’ 3 within moral philosophy.

To examine the ethical issues involved in governmental decisions with potential health risks, we review the history of the decision to raise the interurban speed limit in Israel in light of its impact on road death and injury. In 1993, the Israeli Ministry of Transportation initiated an “experiment” to raise the interurban speed limit from 90 to 100 kph. The “experiment” did not include a protocol and did not specify cut-off points for early termination in the case of adverse results. (...) After the raise in the speed limit, the death toll on interurban roads rose as a result of a sudden increase in speeds and case fatality rates. The committee's decision is a case study in unfettered human experimentation and public health risks when the setting is non-medical and lacks a defined ethical framework. The case study states the case for extending Helsinki type safeguards to experimentation in non-medical settings. (shrink)

The first step in planning a lexicon of European political and legal concepts is to decide upon how it is to be organised. Among the principal alternatives are the formats of three German reference works on the history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) and the methods associated with John Pocock and Quentin Skinner. Although these German and Anglophone styles are often regarded as incompatible, on closer inspection, they turn out to be in many respects complementary, as Skinner has recently acknowledged. What would (...) such a format look like? Is it possible to overcome the difficulties inherent in attempting a lexicon combining continental and Anglophone political and legal concepts? (shrink)