Imagine that you are a teenager and have cancer. You undergo a year of chemotherapy and after a brief return to normal life, you have a relapse. Your physician says that chemotherapy and radiation therapy could be tried, but a bone marrow transplant is your only chance of a real cure. He tells you and your parents that you could die as a result of complications from the transplant, but without it you would only be expected to live one year. (...) You and your family discuss the alternatives and decide to have the transplant. You ask what will happen if the BMT fails, but both your physician and your family tell you that right now you must fight to get better and not think negative thoughts. You do not ask any more questions. (shrink)

Imagine that you are a teenager and have cancer. You undergo a year of chemotherapy and after a brief return to normal life, you have a relapse. Your physician says that chemotherapy and radiation therapy could be tried, but a bone marrow transplant is your only chance of a real cure. He tells you and your parents that you could die as a result of complications from the transplant, but without it you would only be expected to live one year. (...) You and your family discuss the alternatives and decide to have the transplant. You ask what will happen if the BMT fails, but both your physician and your family tell you that right now you must fight to get better and not think negative thoughts. You do not ask any more questions. (shrink)

Argues that materialism, specifically eliminative materialism, is dependent on the immaterial language and immaterial experiential realm for its meaning. The mind/body dualism has been a bane to psychology. Eliminative Materialists eliminate the immaterial mind from study, thereby rejecting the dualism. However, in assuming biology reveals everything about human experience, eliminative materialists are faced with a presupposed dualism: biological language, which is supposed to replace any psychological language, is necessarily correlated with and dependent upon meaning in the psychological language. Further, the (...) nature of identity between the biological and psychological is either meaningless tautology or a dualism of explanatory realms. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The non-identity problem is really a collection of problems having distinct logical features. For that reason, non-identity problems can be typed. This article focuses on just one type of non-identity problem, the problem, which includes Derek Parfit's depletion example and many others. The can't-expect-better problem uses an assessment about the low probability of any particular person's coming into existence to reason that an earlier wrong act does not harm that person. This article argues that that line of reasoning is unusually (...) treacherous in that it makes not just one hard-to-detect error in what is done with the relevant probability assessments but rather alternates between two. We sort out one fallacy only to fall, against all odds (as it were), into a second. By avoiding both errors, we become able to discern harm in cases in which the can't-expect-better problem argues there is none. We will then be in a position to set aside the can't-expect-better problem as an objection against the person-based intuition that acts that are must be at least some existing or future person. (shrink)

According to the Asymmetry, it is wrong to bring a miserable child into existence but permissible not to bring a happy child into existence. When it comes to procreation, we don’t have complete procreative liberty. But we do have some discretion. The Asymmetry seems highly intuitive. But a plausible account of the Asymmetry has been surprisingly difficult to provide, and it may well be that most moral philosophers – or at least most consequentialists – think that all reasonable efforts to (...) provide such an account have by now been exhausted. In this paper, I argue that, despite the difficulties, the Asymmetry is too important to be set aside. I also note a handful of accounts of the Asymmetry that have been proposed and why they fail. It seems, for example, that it will not do to say that some people matter morally and others don’t, or that a person matters morally in some worlds but not others. My own conclusion is that, while we are bound to say all people matter morally – you, me and the merely possible – we are not bound to say that all their losses– or all ours– matter morally. We can instead distinguish between morally significant and insignificant losses, with the distinction between the two being a matter of where the loss is incurred in relation to the person who incurs it. This way of looking at things – which I call Variabilism– provides the basis for a plausible account of the Asymmetry. The availability of such an account suggests, I think, that our prospects for rescuing the Asymmetry are bright. (shrink)

There is a parallel between Plato's argument for the forms at 74b7-c5 in the Phaedo and Frege's argument for the claim that proper names express senses. There is also, I claim, an important asymmetry. The asymmetry explains why it is consistent to accept the conclusion of the Phaedo argument without accepting the conclusion of Frege's argument. The Phaedo argument turns on the possibility of a specific kind of mistaken judgement that may be termed "brute error". Frege's argument does not so (...) depend on the possibility of brute error. (shrink)

Indoleamine 2,3‐dioxygenase (IDO) is the rate‐limiting enzyme in conversion of tryptophan to kynurenines, feeding de novo nicotinamide synthesis. IDO orchestrates materno‐foetal tolerance, increasing human reproductive fitness. IDO mediates immune suppression through depletion of tryptophan required by T lymphocytes and other mechanisms. IDO is expressed by alternatively activated macrophages, suspected to play a key role in tuberculosis (TB) pathogenesis. Unlike its human host, Mycobacterium tuberculosis can synthesize tryptophan, suggesting possible benefit to the host from infection with the microbe. Intriguingly, nicotinamide analogues (...) are used to treat TB. In reviewing this field, it is postulated that flux through the nicotinamide synthesis pathway reflects switching between aerobic glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation in M. tuberculosis‐infected macrophages. The evolutionary cause of such shifts may be ancient mitochondrial behavior related to reproductive fitness. Evolutionary perspectives on the IDO pathway may elucidate why, after centuries of co‐existence with the Tubercle bacillus, humans still remain susceptible to TB disease. (shrink)

Can it be better or worse for a person to be than not to be, that is, can it be better or worse to exist than not to exist at all? This old 'existential question' has been raised anew in contemporary moral philosophy. There are roughly two reasons for this renewed interest. Firstly, traditional so-called “impersonal” ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, have counter-intuitive implications in regard to questions concerning procreation and our moral duties to future, not yet existing people. Secondly, (...) it has seemed evident to many that an outcome can only be better than another if it is better for someone, and that only moral theories that are in this sense “person affecting” can be correct. The implications of this Person Affecting Restriction will differ radically, however, depending on which answer one gives to the existential question. Melinda Roberts (2003) and Matthew Adler (2009) have defended an affirmative answer to the existential question using an assumption that one can asribe a zero level of wellbeing to a person in a world in which that person doesn't exist. Contrariwise, Derek Parfit (1984), John Broome (1999), and others have worried that if we take a person’s life to be better for her than non-existence, then we would have to conclude that it would have been worse for her if she did not exist, which is absurd: Nothing would have been worse or better for a person if she had not existed. The paper suggests that an affirmative answer to the existential question can avoid such absurdities: One can claim that, say, it is better for a person to exist than not to exist, without implying that it would have been worse for a person if she had not existed or that her level of wellbeing would then have been lower. (shrink)

In Child versus Childmaker Melinda Roberts provides an enlightening analysis and a cogent defense of a version of the person-affecting restriction in ethics. The rough idea of this restriction is that an action, state of affairs, or world, cannot be wrong, or bad, unless it would wrong, or be bad for, someone. I shall focus solely on Roberts’s core principles, and thus shall not address her interesting chapter-length discussions of wrongful life cases and of human cloning cases. The person-affecting (...) intuition can be spelled out in a deontic and in an axiological form: -/- Deontic Person-Affecting Restriction: An action, state of affairs, or world is wrong only if it would wrong someone. Axiological Person-Affecting Restriction: An action, state of affairs, or world is worse than another only if it is worse for someone. -/- Roberts develops and defends the deontic version of the person-affecting restriction. Indeed, as her discussion (and those of others) makes clear, it is quite unlikely that there is a coherent version of the axiological form of the intuition (e.g., because of problems of transitivity). Roberts rightly rejects any appeal to impersonal ranking of worlds, and appeals only to the (many) personal rankings of worlds of the individuals involved. Roberts defends the view that worlds in which a person does not exist can be ranked in terms of that person’s well-being (how good that world would be for him/her) along with the worlds in which he/she does exist. Worlds in which the person has a life worth living are ranked more highly for that person than worlds in which he/she doesn’t exist (along with some worlds with indifferent existence), and the latter worlds are ranked more highly than worlds in which the person exists but doesn’t have a life worth living. Although this is somewhat controversial (some would deny that we can assess how good a world is for a person who doesn’t exist in it), it seems exactly right to me. Throughout I shall assume, as does Roberts, that non-existence has a value of zero (and thus that lives worth living have positive values, and that lives not worth living have negative values). In what follows I shall formulate Roberts’s theory as a theory of the permissibility of actions. In most of the book, Roberts formulates her theory as one of the permissibility of worlds, but, as I shall argue below, such assessments have little normative relevance, since they ignore the probabilities of realization (which depend on what actions are performed). The core of Roberts’s theory is just as plausible, and in some ways more powerful, when (as is sometimes the case in the book) it takes actions to be the objects of assessment. To start with, however, I shall make a highly restrictive assumption (not made by Roberts) that will effectively eliminate the difference between assessing actions and assessing worlds within the sort of welfaristic consequentialist framework that Roberts presupposes. I shall assume that if a given action were performed, then a specific world would be realized. We shall assume, that is, that there are no uncertainties involved. Everything is completely determined by which of the feasible actions is performed. Later in this paper, I will address the problems that arise once this simplifying assumption is dropped. (shrink)

According to “the asymmetry”, the fact that a future person would have a life not worth living counts against bringing that person into existence but the fact that a future person would have a life worth living does not count in favour of bringing that person into existence. While this asymmetry seems intuitive, it is also puzzling: if we think that it is of moral importance to prevent people from living lives not worth living, shouldn't we also that it is (...) of moral importance to create people with lives worth living? Melinda Roberts has suggested a view, “Variabilism”, which she argues solves this problem. I argue that Variabilism fails as a solution to the asymmetry. First, Variabilism relies on a particular distinction between gains and losses which is at least as puzzling as the asymmetry itself. Second, in some cases Variabilism is incompatible with the asymmetry. In these cases, the fact that a person would have a life worth living does count in favour of creating her. (shrink)

Transhumanists and other proponents of enhancement have been criticized for their attitude to disability. Melinda Hall argues that transhumanists denigrate disabled people by devaluing interdependence and vulnerability, and implying that disabled people are dangerous. It might also be thought that further development of enhancement technologies would have bad consequences within current, ableist and otherwise oppressive social contexts. This paper responds to these objections, arguing that enhancement needn't be in conflict with disability justice. While enhancements can be used and promoted (...) in ways that reinforce ableism and other oppression, ways of mitigating these problems might be found by drawing on ideas from the disability rights movement, and social justice movements more broadly. The development of more accessible environments, and a general openness to surprises about which traits promote well-being, can help to create conditions under which people have genuine choice over which enhancement technologies, if any, to use. (shrink)

How can clinical ethics consultants best assist patients and their family members when patients may be dying? In this introduction, I consider this concern in light of four articles that appear in this issue of The Journal of Clinical Ethics, by Jeffrey T. Berger; Mary T. White; Linying Hu, Xiuyun Yin, Xiaolei Bao, and Jin-Bao Nie; and Thaddeus Mason Pope and Melinda Hexum.Patients and family members experience extreme stress at the end of life, a high-stakes situation in which few (...) of us have extensive experience. This stress can make us less able to process new information, cripple decision making, and even lead to long-term harm.I provide a number of practical approaches that clinical ethics consultants can use to help patients and family members in these situations, so that their decisions may reflect more what they really want and so that, after this stress has diminished, they may then do better. (shrink)

Transplantation is a medically successful and cost-effective way to treat people whose organs have failed--but not enough organs are available to meet demand. T. M. Wilkinson explores the major ethical problems raised by policies for acquiring organs. Key topics include the rights of the dead, the role of the family, and the sale of organs.

Partial grounding is often thought to be formally analogous to proper parthood in certain ways. Both relations are typically understood to be asymmetric and transitive, and as such, are thought to be strict partial orders. But how far does this analogy extend? Proper parthood is often said to obey the weak supplementation principle. There is reason to wonder whether partial grounding, or, more precisely, proper partial grounding, obeys a ground-theoretic version of this principle. In what follows, I argue that it (...) does not. The cases that cause problems for the supplementation principle for grounding also serve as counterexamples to another principle, minimality, defended by Paul Audi. (shrink)

A very clear and powerfully argued defence of a most important and surprisingly neglected view."--Derek Parfit, All Souls College, Oxford. "If Dr. Olson is right, we are living animals and what goes on in our minds is wholly irrelevant to questions about our persistence through time....[Should] transform philosophical thinking about personal identity."--Peter van Inwagen, University of Notre Dame.

Though it enjoys widespread support, the claim that perceptual experiences possess nonconceptual content has been vigorously disputed in the recent literature by those who argue that the content of perceptual experience must be conceptual content. Nonconceptualism and conceptualism are often assumed to be well-defined theoretical approaches that each constitute unitary claims about the contents of experience. In this paper I try to show that this implicit assumption is mistaken, and what consequences this has for the debate about perceptual experience. I (...) distinguish between two different ways that nonconceptualist (and conceptualist) proposals about perceptual content can be understood: as claims about the constituents that compose perceptual contents or as claims about whether a subject. (shrink)

Neuroscience cannot and should not be allowed to replace normative questions with scientific onesOver the past few years considerable attention has been paid to a variety of issues that are now placed collectively under the heading of “Neuroethics”. In both the academic and the popular press there have been discussions about the possibilities and problems offered by cognitive enhancement and neuroimaging as well as debate about the implications of these emerging “neurotechnologies” for morality and the law. This issue of the (...) journal contains eight papers that discuss a broad range of important topics in neuroethics, from cognitive enhancement and the moral status of animals and cyborgs, to the challenges of neurological consults in end of life cases. As these papers demonstrate, advances in neuroscience raise a number of important ethical questions, but can neuroscience help provide any answers?FACT AND VALUEAccording to the received philosophical wisdom, there is a fundamental distinction between fact and value—between how things are and how they ought to be. On the basis of this distinction one cannot draw normative conclusions from descriptive premises because there is nothing in the premises that would warrant such conclusions: from the fact that happiness is desired it does not follow that it ought to be. This received wisdom applies to neuroethics in the following way: whereas neuroscience might be able to identify the neurophysical correlates for evaluative notions such as preferences and attitudes,1,2 lying,3 and the distinction between in control and out of control behaviour,4 neuroscience cannot, in and by itself, provide the basis for their evaluation. The reason for this is that, in the absence of factors external to these neurophysical states, one neurophysical state is no better or worse than another—internal neurophysical states are logically …. (shrink)

It is clearly impermissible to kill one person because his organs can be used to save five others who are in need of transplants. It has seemed to many that the explanation for this lies in the fact that in such cases we would be intending the death of the person whom we killed, or failed to save. What makes these actions impermissible, however, is not the agent's intention but rather the fact that the benefit envisaged does not justify an (...) exception to the prohibition against killing or the requirement to give aid. The difference between this explanation and one appealing to intention is easily overlooked if one fails to distinguish between the prospective use of a moral principle to guide action and its retrospective use to appraise the way an agent governed him or herself. Even if this explanation is accepted, however, it remains an open question whether and how an agent's intention may be relevant to the permissibility of actions in other cases. \\\ [Jonathan Dancy] My first four sections concentrate on the second section of Professor Scanlon's contribution, where he lays out his conception of moral principles and of the role they play in theory and practice. I will raise questions on the following issues: 1. Scanlon's initial introduction of the notion of a principle. 2. His rejection of the standard view that principles are concerned with the forbidding, permitting and requiring of actions. 3. His rejection of pro tanto conceptions of principles in favour of a conception of them as conclusive. 4. The resulting account of what it is for a principle to face and survive exceptions. Scanlon's discussion of these matters here both appeals to and is in some respects more detailed than the relevant section of his recent What We Owe to Each Other. The topic is interesting both for the role played by principles in Scanlon's present discussion of intention and permissibility, and more generally because of his account of wrongness: an act is wrong iff it is ruled out by principles that nobody could reasonably reject. The remainder of my contribution is concerned with the ostensible focus of IP, namely the relevance of agent-intentions to the permissibility of what is done. (shrink)

Classical text on Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika philosophy; with Āloka Sanskrit commentary.

Critical edition with eight commentaries, on Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika philosophy.

Classical work on the basic concepts and terminology of Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika school in Hindu philosophy; includes Phakkikā commentary by Kṣamākalyāṇagaṇi, 18th cent.

Aphoristic work on Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika school of Hindu philosophy; includes Sanskrit commentary with Hindi translation.

Aphoristic work on Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika school of Hindu philosophy; includes two Sanskrit commentaries.

Discourses on the Bhagavadgītā, Bhakti, and Hindu ethics.

Contributed research papers on Indic philosophy.