How is it that we think and refer in the first-person way? For most philosophers in the analytic tradition, the problem is essentially this: how two apparently conflicting kinds of properties can be reconciled and united as properties of the same entity. What is special about the first person has to be reconciled with what is ordinary about it. The range of responses reduces to four basic options. The orthodox view is optimistic: there really is a way of reconciling these (...) apparently contradictory properties as contained within the same thing. The heretical views are pessimistic and content to be so: there is no such way, and that is because there is simply nothing to reconcile – because there is really nothing special about what is in question; or there is really nothing ordinary about it; or there is really nothing …. (shrink)

Lucy Allais presents an original interpretation of Kant's transcendental idealism. She argues that his distinction between things in themselves and things as they appear to us has both epistemological and metaphysical components. Kant is committed to a genuine idealism about things as they appear to us, but this is not a phenomenalist idealism. He is committed to the claim that there is an aspect of reality that grounds mind-dependent spatio-temporal objects, and which we cannot cognize, but he does not (...) assert the existence of distinct non-spatio-temporal objects. On Allais's account, we cannot understand Kant's idealism without a clear account of his notion of intuition and of the role of intuition in cognition: she understands Kantian intuitions as representations that give us acquaintance with the objects of thought. This enables us to make sense of Kant's central argument for his idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic, and to see why he takes the complete idealist position to be established there. (shrink)

In this book, Lucy Jane Ward argues that although contemporary scholarship tends to divide Agnes Heller's work chronologically in terms of her “Marxist” and subsequent “post-Marxist” periods, a closer reading reveals her work as a continuing engagement both with and against Marx's idea of the human being rich in need.

Iris Murdoch was not only one of post-war Britain's most celebrated and prolific novelists - she was also an influential philosopher, whose work was concerned with the question of the good and how we can see our moral worlds more clearly. Murdoch believed that paying attention to art is a way for us to become less self-centred, and this book argues that cinema is the perfect form of art to enable us to do this. Bringing together Murdoch's moral philosophy and (...) contemporary cinema to build a dialogue about vision, ethics and love, author Lucy Bolton encourages us to view cinema as a way of studying other worlds and moral journeys, and to reflect upon their ethical significance in the world of the film and in our daily lives. (shrink)

A new therapeutic strategy could break the stalemate in the war on cancer by targeting not all cancerous cells but the small fraction that lie at the root of cancers. Lucie Laplane offers a comprehensive analysis of cancer stem cell theory, based on an original interdisciplinary approach that combines biology, biomedical history, and philosophy.

How could the initial, drastic decisions to implement “lockdowns” to control the spread of COVID-19 infections be justifiable, when they were made on the basis of such uncertain evidence? We defend the imposition of lockdowns in some countries by first, and focusing on the UK, looking at the evidence that undergirded the decision, second, arguing that this provided us with sufficient grounds to restrict liberty given the circumstances, and third, defending the use of poorly-empirically-constrained epidemiological models as tools that can (...) legitimately guide public policy. (shrink)

Lucy Allais’s Manifest Reality offers an attractive new interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism. Kantian appearances are known through essentially manifest properties, but those properties are construed as belonging ultimately to things in themselves with intrinsic natures. This position can offer a nice account of the sense in which appearances and things in themselves are identical and a metaphysically plausible way to construe appearances as strictly partially mind-dependent. The position is less convincing when it comes to explaining the sense in (...) which appearances and things in themselves remain non-identical. I argue that such a non-identity thesis was in fact crucial to Kant’s use of idealism to explain the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge, to his account of the apriority of the representation of space, and to his anti-Leibnizian point that our mathematical and scientific cognition provides not confused representation of underlying things in themselves, but perfectly exact and strictly true cognition of something else. In closing, I suggest that the hylomorphic nature of Kant’s idealism points toward an alternative conception of the partial mind-dependence of appearances. (shrink)

Before David Chalmers’ new book Reality+ even hit the shelves, media outlets were showering it with praise, dubbing it a “mind-bending philosophical investigation” (The Guardian) and “the most alar...

Despite its long history of investigating sociality, phenomenology has, to date, said little about online sociality. The phenomenological tradition typically claims that empathy is the fundamental way in which we experience others and their experiences. While empathy is discussed almost exclusively in the context of face-to-face interaction, I claim that we can empathetically perceive others and their experiences in certain online situations. Drawing upon the phenomenological distinction between the physical, objective body and the expressive, lived body, I: (i) highlight that (...) empathy involves perceiving the other’s expressive, lived body, (ii) show that the lived body is not tied to the physical body and that empathy can take place outside of face-to-face interactions, and (iii) argue that the lived body can enter online space and is empathetically available to others there. I explore two ways in which the other’s lived body enters online space and can be empathetically perceived: first, in cases where our face-to-face encounter is technologically-mediated over video link and, second, by showing how the other’s texts, as speech, can form part of the other’s lived body. Investigating empathy online not only furthers our understanding of online encounters but also leads to a refined conception of empathy more generally. (shrink)

A compelling and incisive book that questions the overuse of mental health terms to describe universal human emotions Public awareness of mental illness has been transformed in recent years, but our understanding of how to define it has yet to catch up. Too often, psychiatric disorders are confused with the inherent stresses and challenges of human experience. A narrative has taken hold that a mental health crisis has been building among young people. In this profoundly sensitive and constructive book, psychologist (...) Lucy Foulkes argues that the crisis is one of ignorance as much as illness. Have we raised a 'snowflake' generation? Or are today's young people subjected to greater stress, exacerbated by social media, than ever before? Foulkes shows that both perspectives are useful but limited. The real question in need of answering is: how should we distinguish between 'normal' suffering and actual illness? Drawing on her extensive knowledge of the scientific and clinical literature, Foulkes explains what is known about mental health problems-how they arise, why they so often appear during adolescence, the various tools we have to cope with them-but also what remains unclear: distinguishing between normality and disorder is essential if we are to provide the appropriate help, but no clear line between the two exists in nature. Providing necessary clarity and nuance, Losing Our Minds argues that the widespread misunderstanding of this aspect of mental illness might be contributing to its apparent prevalence. (shrink)

Lucy O'Brien argues that a satisfactory account of first-person reference and self-knowledge needs to concentrate on our nature as agents. Clearly written, with rigorous discussion of rival views, this book will be of interest to anyone working in the philosophy of mind and action.

This book examines the promise of and issues related to preparing teachers for cultural diversity through community engagement in the liberal arts colleges. The field of teacher education and small liberal arts colleges will find in Teacher Education, Diversity, and Community Engagement in Liberal Arts Colleges an excellent reason to enact purposeful change and transformation.

This article is concerned with a discussion of the plausibility of the claim that GM technology has the potential to provide the hungry with sufficient food for subsistence. Following a brief outline of the potential applications of GM in this context, a history of the green revolution and its impact will be discussed in relation to the current developing world agriculture situation. Following a contemporary analysis of malnutrition, the claim that GM technology has the potential to provide the hungry with (...) sufficient nourishment will be discussed within the domain of moral philosophy to determine whether there exists a moral obligation to pursue this end if and only if the technology proves to be relatively safe and effective. By using Peter Singer’s duty of moral rescue, I argue that we have a moral duty to assist the third world through the distribution of such GM plants. I conclude the paper by demonstrating that my argument can be supported by applying a version of the Precautionary Principle on the grounds that doing nothing might be worse for the current situation. (shrink)

Respect for autonomy and beneficence are frequently regarded as the two essential principles of medical ethics, and the potential for these two principles to come into conflict is often emphasised as a fundamental problem. On the one hand, we have the value of beneficence, the driving force of medicine, which demands that medical professionals act to protect or promote the wellbeing of patients or research subjects. On the other, we have a principle of respect for autonomy, which demands that we (...) respect the self-regarding decisions of individuals. As well as routinely coming into opposition with the demands of beneficence in medicine, the principle of respect for autonomy in medical ethics is often seen as providing protection against beneficial coercion (i.e. paternalism) in medicine. However, these two values are not as straightforwardly opposed as they may appear on the surface. In fact, the way that we understand autonomy can lead us to implicitly sanction a great deal of paternalistic action, or can smuggle in paternalistic elements under the guise of respect for autonomy. -/- This paper is dedicated to outlining three ways in which the principle of respect for autonomy, depending on how we understand the concept of autonomy, can sanction or smuggle in paternalistic elements. As the specific relationship between respect for autonomy and beneficence will depend on how we conceive of autonomy, I begin by outlining two dominant conceptions of autonomy, both of which have great influence in medical ethics. I then turn to the three ways in which how we understand or employ autonomy can increase or support paternalism: firstly, when we equate respect for autonomy with respect for persons; secondly, when our judgements about what qualifies as an autonomous action contain intersubjective elements; and thirdly, when we expect autonomy to play an instrumental role, that is, when we expect people, when they are acting autonomously, to act in a way that promotes or protects their own wellbeing. I then provide a proposal for how we might work to avoid this. I will suggest that it may be impossible to fully separate paternalistic elements out from judgements about autonomy. Instead, we are better off looking at why we are motivated to use judgements about autonomy as a means of restricting the actions of patients or research subjects. I will argue that this is a result of discomfort about speaking directly about our beneficent motivations in medical ethics. Perhaps we can reduce the incentive to smuggle in these beneficent motivations under the guise of autonomy by talking directly about beneficent motivations in medicine. This will also force us to recognise paternalistic motivations in medicine when they appear, and to justify paternalism where it occurs. (shrink)

This is the first book to focus on the role of education in relation to music and gender. Invoking a concept of musical patriarchy and a theory of the social construction of musical meaning, Lucy Green shows how women's musical practices and gendered musical meanings have been reproduced, hand-in-hand, through history. Dr. Green views the contemporary school music classroom as a microcosm of the wider society, and reveals the participation of music education in the continued production and reproduction of (...) gendered musical practices and meanings. (shrink)

This book places the European Referendum of 2016 into a historical context that began in the late nineteenth century through to the present day. It provides a constitutional and international perspective, and ask how far the original ideas lying behind the referendum were fulfilled in practice.

The tacit standard view that development ends once reproductive capacity is acquired (reproductive boundary, or ‘‘RB,’’ thesis) has recently been challenged by biologists and philosophers of biology arguing that development continues until death (death boundary, or ‘‘DB,’’ thesis). The relevance of these two theses is difficult to assess because the fact that there is no precise definition of development makes the determination of its temporal boundaries problematic. Taking into account this difficulty, this article tries to develop a new species-dependent perspective (...) on temporal boundaries of development. This species-dependent account stands against both RB and DB theses since neither of them reflects the differences between species in the temporality of their development. In this perspective, I propose to use stem cells as a tool to analyze (1) the different developmental capacities of an organism during its life; and (2) the different developmental temporal capacities between species. In particular, I will show that stem cells enable four distinct temporal developmental patterns to be distinguished, i.e., four distinct temporal boundaries of development in the living. I show how these four patterns can be interpreted differently depending on the perspective one has on the definition of development. (shrink)

This essay discusses the use of analogies drawn from the Holocaust in cultural representations and critical scholarship on dementia. The paper starts with a discussion of references to the death camp in cultural narratives about dementia, specifically Annie Ernaux’s account of her mother’s dementia in I Remain in Darkness. It goes on to develop a critique of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s work on biopolitics and “bare life,” focusing specifically on the linguistic foundations of his thinking. This underpins a consideration of (...) the limitations of his philosophy and ontologically derived notions of weakness and passivity in imagining life with dementia as a potential site of agency or as the locus for transformative ideas about care, community, and non-instrumentalist conceptions of human value. (shrink)

This book considers the thought and personalities of two popular icons of twentieth century philosophical and psychological thought - Nietzsche and Jung - and reveals the extraordinary connections between them. Through a thorough examination of their work, Nietzsche and Jung succeeds in illuminating complex areas of Nietzsche's thought and resolving ambiguities in Jung's reception of these theories. This demonstration of how our understanding of analytical psychology can be enriched by investigating its philosophical roots will be of great interest to students (...) in psychology, philosophy and religion as well as practising Jungian analysts. (shrink)

Sexual politics at the turn of the last century caused public outcry, demonstrations and petitions, and serious debate among concerned men and women. Now available again in paperback, Lucy Bland's richly textured book vividly details the private and public debates, campaigns, and struggles among feminists to resolve the key areas of sexual politics, encompassing marriage, prostitution, birth control, and sex education.

This text presents a few preliminary results of research currently being conducted at the Université de Sherbrooke’s Research Institute on Educational Practices. The study seeks to understand how situations presented in teacher education can support the functioning and success of trainee teachers’ professional learning. The article’s aim is to identify the points of convergence between situations of professional activity, situations of professional learning, and training situations. The text will attempt to analyze the role that can be played by certain training (...) structures that seek to support a professionalization process that we define in terms of a general aim: the construction of professional knowledge. The originality of this research lies in that it draws on the work of Gaston Bachelard to develop a theoretical frame enabling a reading and interpretation of the results. Ce texte présente quelques résultats préliminaires d’une recherche menée présentement à l’Institut de recherche sur les pratiques éducatives de l’Université de Sherbrooke. Cette recherche vise à comprendre comment les situations présentes dans la formation à l’enseignement peuvent soutenir le fonctionnement et la réussite de l’apprentissage professionnel des enseignants en formation. Nous cherchons à identifier les points de rencontre entre les situations d’activité professionnelle, les situations d’apprentissage professionnel et les situations de formation. Nous tenterons d’analyser le rôle que peuvent jouer certains dispositifs visant à soutenir un processus de professionnalisation que nous définissons au regard d’une finalité : la construction de savoirs professionnels. L’originalité de cette recherche est la convocation des travaux de Gaston Bachelard pour élaborer le cadre théorique permettant la lecture et l’interprétation des résultats. (shrink)

Penseur de l'éthique et théoricien du ± face à face?, Levinas n'aborderait la dimension politique que de manière subsidiaire. A considérer le contexte de son œuvre, le rôle fondamental joué par la catastrophe de la Shoah dans son parcours personnel et intellectuel, toute sa réflexion apparait pourtant orientée par la nécessité d'une nouvelle pensée de la communauté humaine à l'épreuve du XXe siècle.00Cette lecture fait l'hypothèse d'une centralité de la question sociale dans la philosophie levinassienne. Ce sont les enjeux collectifs (...) qui imposent la reconsidération de l'approche humaniste du sujet et de l'éthique quelle s'efforce de mener. A ce titre, l'influence de la tradition socialiste pourrait s'y avérer plus importante qu'il n'y parait. En reconstituant le dialogue implicite que Levinas entretient avec Marx tout au long de son œuvre, ses propositions trouvent un écho inattendu au sein des pensées révolutionnaires.00Comment les notions de visage ou d'Autrement qu'être peuvent-elles renouveler nos réflexions sur la justice et le changement social? Au-delà de l'intérêt historique de l'étude, il s'agit de donner à l?œuvre de Levinas une nouvelle pertinence politique, au service d'un champ théorique qui se l'est encore trop peu appropriée. (shrink)

Callender claims that `time is the great informer', meaning that the direction in which our `best' physical theories inform are temporal. This is intended to be a metaphysical claim, and as such expresses a relationship between the physical world and information-gathering systems such as ourselves. This paper gives two counterexamples to this claim, illustrating the fact that time and informative strength doubly dissociate, so the claim cannot be about physical theories in general. The first is a case where physical theories (...) inform in directions that we have no reason to regard as temporal. The second is a case where our best physical theories fail to inform in directions that we have independent reasons to regard as temporal. Taking these two cases into account suggests that the connection Callender makes between time and informativeness is perspectival. The second case demonstrates that, although scientists often seek information in temporal directions, the behaviour of the physical world can present serious difficulties for finding it. In response, this paper proposes a perspectival reading of Callender's claim, according to which the connection between time and informative strength has more to do with the aims and objectives of science than the workings of the physical world. (shrink)

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, high hopes were put on digital contact tracing, using mobile phone apps to record and immediately notify contacts when a user reports as infected. Such apps can now be downloaded in many countries, but as second waves of COVID-19 are raging, these apps are playing a less important role than anticipated. We argue that this is because most countries have opted for app configurations that cannot provide a means of rapidly informing users of (...) likely infections while avoiding too many false positive reports. Mathematical modelling suggests that differently configured apps have the potential to do this. These require, however, that some pseudonymised data be stored on a central server, which privacy advocates have cautioned against. We contend that their influential arguments are subject to two fallacies. First, they have tended to one-sidedly focus on the risks that centralised data storage entails for privacy, while paying insufficient attention to the fact that inefficient contact tracing involves ethical risks too. Second, while the envisioned system does entail risks of breaches, such risks are also present in decentralised systems, which have been falsely presented as ‘privacy preserving by design’. When these points are understood, it becomes clear that we must rethink our approach to digital contact tracing in our fight against COVID-19. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

:Space is not an empirical concept that has been drawn from outer experiences. For in order for certain sensations to be related to something outside me , thus in order for me to represent them as outside and next to one another, thus not merely different but as in different places, the representation of space must already be their ground. Thus the representation of space cannot be obtained from the relations of outer appearance through experience, but this outer experience is (...) itself first possible only through this representation. 1Abstract:Der Raum is kein empirischer Begriff, der von äußeren Erfahrungen abgezogen worden. Denn damit gewisse Empfindungen auf etwas außer mir bezogen werden, imgleichen damit ich sie als außer und neben einander, mithin nicht bloß verschieden, sondern als in verschiedenen Orten vorstellen können, dazu muß die Vorstellung des Raumes schon zum Grunde liegen. (shrink)

'There is nothing outside the text.' Possibly no single statement has caused such a storm in critical theory as this famous observation by the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida. While it is often misunderstood as meaning that nothing is real and that political actions are therefore pointless, Debating Derrida demonstrates that Derrida's philosophy does not lack political conviction. Niall Lucy examines three key terms - text, writing and differance - as they are used in three famous debates: Derrida's disputes over (...) speech-acts with John R. Searle, over discourse with Michel Foucault and over apartheid. Lucy also takes up the issue of Derrida's relationship to postmodernism and questions the 'political imperative' of the need to justify philosophy and the humanities in general according to a notion of their 'usefulness'. Debating Derrida decisively shows that instead of disagreeing with Derrida, we should rather be defending him. (shrink)

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, high hopes were placed on digital contact tracing. Digital contact tracing apps can now be downloaded in many countries, but as further waves of COVID-19 tear through much of the northern hemisphere, these apps are playing a less important role in interrupting chains of infection than anticipated. We argue that one of the reasons for this is that most countries have opted for decentralised apps, which cannot provide a means of rapidly informing users (...) of likely infections while avoiding too many false positive reports. Centralised apps, in contrast, have the potential to do this. But policy making was influenced by public debates about the right app configuration, which have tended to focus heavily on privacy, and are driven by the assumption that decentralised apps are “privacy preserving by design”. We show that both types of apps are in fact vulnerable to privacy breaches, and, drawing on principles from safety engineering and risk analysis, compare the risks of centralised and decentralised systems along two dimensions, namely the probability of possible breaches and their severity. We conclude that a centralised app may in fact minimise overall ethical risk, and contend that we must reassess our approach to digital contact tracing, and should, more generally, be cautious about a myopic focus on privacy when conducting ethical assessments of data technologies. (shrink)

Résumé Selon la perspective de l’œuvre ouverte développée par Eco, « un texte est un tissu d’espaces blancs, d’interstices à remplir … un mécanisme paresseux qui vit sur la plus-value de sens qui y est introduite par le destinataire » (Eco 1985, Lector in fabula ou la coopération interprétative dans les textes narratifs, Myriem Bouzaher (trad.). Paris: Grasset, 66–67). C’est à cette plus-value de sens, concomitante à l’activité interprétative, que la présente étude s’attardera, et ce, afin d’identifier d’abord des éléments (...) de l’album d’enfance nécessitant l’interprétation d’un lecteur modèle et d’en convoquer par la suite les significations qui peuvent être appliquées au texte. Plus précisément, il s’agira de décrire et d’analyser les mécanismes intertextuels qui enrichissent l’organisation syntaxique et sémantique de quatre albums d’enfance parus au Québec entre 1992 et 2002 et qui nécessitent l’intervention d’un lecteur modèle pour identifier les systèmes de signification et les savoirs qui y sont rattachés. Les albums soumis à l’investigation reprennent le schéma narratif de contes de fée connus et celui d’une nouvelle contemporaine. L’hypothèse est la suivante: si les composantes génériques de l’album dévoilent à un jeune lecteur des univers de références connus et familiers, le processus de l’intertextualité sollicite des contenus qui, soumis à l’interprétation d’un lecteur modèle, font parfois surgir des structures de signification inattendues. (shrink)

L'évaluation muséale célèbre en 2011 le centième anniversaire de la publication du premier article sur le sujet par Benjamin Ives Gilman. Le présent livre s'adresse autant aux professeurs et étudiants en muséologie, en patrimoine et culture ainsi qu'en tourisme culturel, qu'aux professionnels et aux gestionnaires de musées et des autres secteurs connexes intéressés par les retombées de l'évaluation. Ce guide méthodologique présente les principaux processus auxquels ont recours les évaluateurs en contexte muséal. Les cas présentés ont été sélectionnés en fonction (...) de leur exemplarité et de leur représentativité : tous les types d'études peuvent être réutilisés ou adaptés pour des études similaires. Peu importe l'institution culturelle, l'objet d'étude ou le genre d'évaluation, des outils sont suggérés pour la mener à bien : devis d'évaluation, questionnaires fermés, schémas d'entrevues ouvertes, grilles d'observation, journal de bord, etc. Tirés de la pratique professionnelle de Lucie Daignault, ils témoignent de 23 ans d'expérience professionnelle continue en évaluation muséale au Musée de la civilisation. Fruit d'une précieuse collaboration, le premier texte a été rédigé par le professeur Bernard Schiele. Il y souligne que l'évaluation est vue comme le garant de l'accessibilité pour tous au musée car elle est la condition du maintien du dialogue entre la production culturelle du Musée et ses publics. (shrink)

The New Rhetoric is founded on the idea that since “argumentation aims at securing the adherence of those to whom it is addressed, it is, in its entirety, relative to the audience to be influenced,” says Chaïm Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, and they rely, in particular, for their theory of argumentation on the twin concepts of universal and particular audiences: while every argument is directed to a specific individual or group, the orator decides what information and what approaches will achieve (...) the greatest adherence according to an ideal audience. This ideal, Perelman explains, can be embodied, for example, "in God, in all reasonable and competent men, in the man deliberating or in an elite.” Like particular audiences, then, the universal audience is never fixed or absolute but depends on the orator, the content and goals of the argument, and the particular audience to whom the argument is addressed. These considerations determine what information constitutes "facts" and "reasonableness" and thus help to determine the universal audience that, in turn, shapes the orator's approach. /// The adherence of an audience is also determined by the orator's use of values, a further key concept of the New Rhetoric. Perelman's treatment of value and his view of epideictic rhetoric sets his approach apart from that of the ancients and of Aristotle in particular. Aristotle's division of rhetoric into three genres–forensic, deliberative, and epideictic–is largely motivated by the judgments required for each: forensic or legal arguments require verdicts on past action, deliberative or political rhetoric seeks judgment on future action, and epideictic or ceremonial rhetoric concerns values associated with praise or blame and seeks no specific decisions. For Aristotle, the epideictic genre was of limited importance in the civic realm since it did not concern facts or policies. Perelman, in contrast, believes not only that epideictic rhetoric warrants more attention, but that the values normally limited to that genre are in fact central to all argumentation. "Epideictic oratory," Perelman argues, "has significant and important argumentation for strengthening the disposition toward action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds.” These values are central to the persuasiveness of arguments in all rhetorical genres since the orator always attempts to "establish a sense of communion centered around particular values recognized by the audience.”. (shrink)

Speech act theorists tend to hold that the illocutionary force of an utterance is determined by one interlocutor alone: either the speaker or the hearer. Yet experience tells us that the force of our utterances is not determined unilaterally. Rather, communication often feels collaborative. In this paper, I develop and defend a collaborative theory of illocutionary force, according to which the illocutionary force of an utterance is determined by an agreement reached by the speaker and the hearer. This theory, which (...) builds upon linguistic and sociological work on adjacency pairs and conversational interaction, can accommodate the complexity of speaker intentions (which may be disjunctive, indeterminate, and/or inconsistent over time), and renders speech act theory more compatible with theories of common ground. (shrink)

Euthanasia and assisted suicide have proved to be very contentious topics in medical ethics. Some ethicists are particularly concerned that allowing physicians to carry out these procedures will undermine their professional obligations and threaten the very goals of medicine. However, I maintain that the fundamental goals of medicine not only do not preclude the practice of euthanasia and assisted suicide by physicians, but can in fact be seen to support these practices in some instances. I look at two influential views (...) of the goals of medicine, one based on the broad guiding principles of autonomy, beneficence and nonmaleficence, and the other focusing on several more concrete aims, concluding that both approaches can be seen to support euthanasia and assisted suicide. I then turn to the popular concern that allowing physicians to carry out euthanasia and assisted suicide will lead to widespread abuse. I argue that the possibility for abuse can be minimised if we make the patient's autonomous consent an essential requirement of the practice. (shrink)