In this paper, I argue that, on a reductionist reading of Buddhist no-self ontology, Buddhists could not have sincere ethical intentions toward persons. And if Buddhists cannot have sincere intentions toward persons, they cannot have second-personal moral reasons for acting. From this I conclude that Buddhists fail to qualify as genuine members of the moral community if, as some contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophers argue, such membership depends on an individual agent’s having the capacity to be motivated by second-personal moral reasons.

This article aims to deconstruct the concept of dignity in a way that is meaningful, in particular to nurses and other health workers who seek to promote the dignity of children in their care. Despite the emphasis in a variety of codes and policies to promote dignity, there is a lack of a clear definition of dignity in the literature. In particular there is little reference to dignity, theoretically or empirically, as it relates to children. Without clarity it is not (...) possible to act in an ethical way on behalf of children whose dignity could otherwise be compromised. The theoretical position taken has evolved from the medico-nursing and philosophical discourse concerning the nature of human dignity and more recent sociological texts that discuss the social construction of the child and childhood. The article is further influenced by additional insights derived from an ethnographic pilot study at a large district general hospital. This study was undertaken in an attempt to appreciate the subjective experience of dignity by children, and to begin to address the empirical gap in the literature and promote discussion. The concept of a macro and a micro dignity is discussed, together with the role of the nurse in articulating the relationship between the two. The importance of control and witnesses in the experience of dignity is discussed and, finally, also the ethical implications when seeking to promote the dignity of children. (shrink)

This paper attacks an account of Kant's controversial distinction between "free" and "dependent" beauty. I present three problems—The Lorland problem, The Crawford Problem, and the problem of intrinsic relation—that are shown to be a consequence of various interpretations of Kant's distinction. Next, I reconstruct Robert Wicks' well-known account of dependent beauty as "the appreciation of teleological style" and point out a key equivocation in the statement of Wicks' account: the judgment of dependent beauty can be thought to consist in comparing (...) any two objects' teleological styles either in respect of how or in respect of how well each realizes a common purpose. I argue that this equivocation forces Wicks into a dilemma: either he must assert the impossibility of ugliness or he must assert that the judgment of dependent beauty is reducible to the judgment of perfection. Either way, he denies important theoretic desiderata. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Open Letter to Certified Nursing Assistants:Lessons from a Life Well Lived1Margaret FletcherI can't be sure what I want to say, or how to say it. Seeing as how I'm now eighty years old, and somewhat forgetful, I cease remembering the good old days.I have written a lot of short articles for the Nursing Assistant Program. My journey of life has been very interesting, very wonderful and fully blessed.My (...) career as a nursing assistant started in my 16th year back in 1947. Once I was involved in the work, [End Page 155] I understood about the journey of life and all the things that living brings into a life of a human being.I learned being a nursing assistant is not just a job and a paycheck. It's a beautiful and wonderful life of kindness, honesty, courtesy, fairness, pity, help, trust and forgiveness.Its principles will take hold of your lifestyle and future. If we realize we are a valuable and unique person, then accepting life with optimism, making sure of our goals, striving to give our best, and growing in awareness helps us learn to be productive and efficient in our work.Understand that everyone and every thing around us has something to teach us. It's not just the classroom learning that's going to put us on the road of good caregiving with a kind loving heart.It's going to take desire, concern and total devotion with lots of hard work. We must learn from the day-to-day needs and expectations of our patients or residents, doctors, wing nurses and the patients' or residents' families.There will be changes, and these changes can be frequent. Therefore, we will need to know and be aware what is expected of us.Now as an old fogy, I'd like to point out that experience is required for developing expertise. And that a sound educational base is necessary for acquiring advanced skills because it forms the best position for developing our ability to sort through concepts and facts. And to focus on the aspects of the various types of patient care situations. It will indicate priorities and offer guidelines for action. Even in seemingly routine situations the nursing assistant must be alert to special circumstances and adapt their care accordingly.Never once did I regret my choice of becoming a caregiver. I can remember one kindhearted doctor who always had his special way for chitchats, telling me, "What you leave behind is not engraved in stone, but what is woven into the lives of other human beings, you must always make the right connections." Then, jokingly, the good doctor asked, "If a cabbage, a tomato, and a faucet ran a race, who would win?" His answer, "The cabbage would be a head, the tomato would ketch up, and the faucet would still be running. Which would you be most like?" My answer, "but doctor, I'm not running a race, I'm on a journey." That journey is life and love. Life is so precious. Where there is love, love makes us whole.No matter what obstacles we face, love gives us the strength to overcome them. As a writer, I'll share in this story. It should be as though we're all family now. Our world is as great as we make it.Realize we all deserve a little lift now and then, but we also need to realize there is no cosmetic for beauty, like happiness. A very personal happiness is what you say and do as a nursing assistant making life better for those entrusted in our care.Down through the years my patients and residents have taught me well what love is really all about. I want to share my lesson with you. Love is friendship that has caught fire, it is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. Love settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses. Love is content with the present, love hopes for the future, but doesn't brood over the past. Love: it's the day-in... (shrink)

Post-millennial scholarship in Buddhist studies reflects increasing interest from Anglophone philosophers working within the analytic tradition.1 Within this emerging body of work the aim has been not merely to bring the conceptual toolkit of analytic philosophers to bear on topics traditionally of interest to Buddhist philosophers but also to enlist the theories that analytic philosophers have developed on core topics within epistemology and metaphysics as frameworks within which to interpret the work of major Buddhist philosophers. Two recent notable examples of (...) this interpretative enterprise are seen in the work of Siderits and Hayashi. These Anglophone commentators utilize theories... (shrink)

A través de la documentación conservada y de una reflexión sobre la cronología, es posible descubrir la existencia de un proyecto político de al-Ghazālī y su discípulo andalusí, Abū Bakr Ibn al-‛Arabī, con el propósito de ganar para al-Gazālī el favor del príncipe almorávide Yūsuf b. Tāšufīn. Los documentos que prueban la existencia de este proyecto se conocían desde hace algún tiempo: la fatwà que al-Gazālī escribió en apoyo de Yūsuf, la carta que le escribió en alabanza de Abū Bakr (...) Ibn al-‛Arabī y la carta que obtuvo del califa, todo lo cual puede compararse con la carta de al-Ṭurṭūšī a Yūsuf sobre los mismos asuntos. La idea que pone todo esto en conexión es que se trataba de un proyecto político con apoyo en la Península, sobre todo de los sufíes y de la elite de los reyes de Taifas. Los escritos de al-Gazālī suministraron una base ideológica a esta alianza política, puesto que alaban el sufismo y critican el taqlīd, la forma usual de interpretar la ley entre los juristas de la jerarquía almorávide. El discurso de al-Gazālī, muy por encima del nivel intelectual del jurista medio, se aceptó finalmente por la elite de los periodos califal y taifa que tenía interés en las ciencias naturales, la filosofía griega y la lógica. Estos temas eran innacesibles para el jurista medio, bien porque no procuraban un provecho inmediato, bien por la dificultad práctica de encontrar libros y profesores expertos en ellos. Por tanto, fue una elite intelectual conocedora del árabe clásico y heredera de las adquisiciones intelectuales de muchas generaciones de andalusíes la que se apropió del discurso gazaliano. Frente a ese grupo, los juristas almorávides representaban a las clases medias urbanas y podían movilizar a su favor a las masas urbanas. El más importante de esos juristas, Ibn Ḥamdīn de Córdoba, temeroso de que la combinación de Ibn al-‛Arabī y al-Gazālī le expulsara del poder, orquestó la quema oficial del Iḥyā' de al-Gazālī por todo el país. Así es posible observar que el conflicto entre esos dos grupos estaba bien definido incluso antes de que la rebelión almohade en el Norte de África proporcionase a la elite intelectual un adalid militar. A cambio, esa elite suministró a los Almohades una ideología y una clase administrativa. Al-Gazālī fue identificado como un enemigo del régimen almorávide incluso antes de que Ibn Tūmart, el fundador del movimiento almohade, volviese de Oriente para lanzar su rebelión contra los almorávides desde el Atlas.Proponemos algunos cambios en el panorama de las estancias de al-Gazālī en diferentes momentos. Se ha aceptado ya una modificación básica de la idea de que abandonó Bagdad definitivamente tras dejar de dar clases a gran número de personas en la Nizāmīya, al observarse que Abū Bakr Ibn al-‛Arabī afirma haber estudiado con él en Bagdad dos años después. Aquí querríamos llamar la atención sobre el hecho de que Ibn Jallikān dice que al-Gazālī estuvo en Alejandría esperando una respuesta de Yusuf b. Tāšufīn. En el contexto de un panorama cambiante de la cronología de los viajes de al-Gazālī, la posibilidad de que Ibn Tūmart estuviera en contacto con él se convierte en una probabilidad. (shrink)

This dissertation aims at forging an archetectonic link between Kant's first and third Critiques within a cognitive-semantic framework. My aim is to show how the major conceptual innovations of Kant’s third Critique can be plausibly understood in terms of the theoretical aims of the first, (Critique of Pure Reason). However, unlike other cognition-oriented approaches to Kant's third Critique, which take the point of contact between the first and third Critique's to be the first Critique's Transcendental Analytic, I link these two (...) works via the first Critique's Transcendental Dialectic, specifically its discussions of the "ideas of pure reason." -/- According to Kant, the “ideas of pure reason” (IPRs) — viz., the notions of self, world-whole, and God — are innate content-bearing entities representing three types of transempirical object, none of which are possible objects of cognition. However, although Kant denies that these rather unique content-bearers can be used for purposes of “speculative cognition,” he does think that they have an internal functional value for human cognitive systems. Although under my analysis of their functional value the IPRs subserve a highest-order aim which derives from theoretical reason — namely, to ground and optimize cognitive systematicity — their directive content in fact renders their implementation(thus their form of intentionality) more characteristic of practical reason. Kant’s positive account of reason’s “interest” in and use of the IPRs exhibits a kind of cognitive pragmatism. -/- Of utmost concern to the cognitive-semantic enterprise, as I conceive it, is the development of (what might be called) a metaphysics of intentionality. A `metaphysics of intentionality', as I use the term, refers to a coherent set of postulative propositional cognitions (or, at any rate, content-bearing entities) implemented, first, for the sake of rationally explaining the phenomenological unity and object-directed character of our perceptual states and, second, to explain why the objects represented in such states are, or must be, law-governed and thus necessarily amenable to scientific investigation. On my view, the discussions in Kant’s third Critique nontrivially contribute to the development of a metaphysics of intentionality and thus to the larger cognitive-semantic enterprise of Kant's first Critique, and it is this link that lends Kant's third Critique a cognitive significance. -/- . (shrink)