A number of philosophers maintain that the destruction of an embryo in the first 2 weeks after fertilization is not morally problematic as it is metaphysically impossible for any human organism to then have existed. We contend that the typical adult human organism was once a zygote so there is no metaphysical shortcut to justify early abortion. We show that five arguments against human organisms ever having been zygotes fail. All of the arguments have to do with one variant or (...) another of the zygote or early embryo dividing. They do not provide any reason to believe that since some adult organisms are not identical to zygotes due to earlier divisions, none could have been. (shrink)

Philosophers have been long interested in delusional beliefs and in whether, by reporting and endorsing such beliefs, deluded subjects violate norms of rationality (Campbell 1999; Davies & Coltheart 2002; Gerrans 2001; Stone & Young 1997; Broome 2004; Bortolotti 2005). So far they have focused on identifying the relation between intentionality and rationality in order to gain a better understanding of both ordinary and delusional beliefs. In this paper Matthew Broome and I aim at drawing attention to the extent (...) to which deluded subjects are committed to the content of their delusional beliefs, that is, to whether they can be regarded as authors of their beliefs (Moran 2001). We consider several levels of commitment one can have to a reported belief, delusional or otherwise, and we distinguish between _ownership_ and _authorship_ of beliefs (Gallagher 2000). After examining some examples of belief authoring (or lack thereof) in psychopathology, we argue that there is no straight-forward and unitary answer to the question whether deluded subjects author their beliefs. Nevertheless, introducing the notion of authorship in the debate can significantly contribute to the philosophical literature on the rationality of delusions and can also have important implications for diagnosis and therapy in psychiatry. (shrink)

This paper sets out to answer four apparently unconnected questions, which, however, I hope to show to be parts of one question: Why did Haimon kill himself over the body of Antigone? Why did Philinnion return for three nights to her father's house? Why is it unlawful to leave a story unfinished? Why is a magician sometimes torn in pieces by his own devils, or otherwise destroyed by his own magic?

No one has as yet done for Italy what Rohde's Psyche did for Greece, and the reason is not far to seek. Rohde had at his disposal a large amount of literary material, of which no one could doubt that it represented Greek feeling and practice of various ages; but the investigator of the corresponding Italian field is met with a twofold difficulty. He must in the first place discard a great deal of the written records, because they clearly reflect, (...) not native ideas, but those which were common to the ancient world in Hellenistic times. He is then left with a very few scanty documents, which refer, not to Italy as a whole, but practically without exception to Rome, or, at any rate, to districts strongly Romanized. To add to his perplexities, he has a great mass of archaeological evidence for all ages, from the palaeolithic onwards, which, as it is unwritten, he must interpret as best he may, bearing in mind the very wide margin of error in all such attempts, and reconcile, if he can, with what the classical authors tell him. (shrink)

In this commentary, I would like to do three things: First, reflect on Voronka’s engagement with the critique of experience as a foundational concept and her answers to this; second, comment on how we, as both activists and user/survivor researchers, engage with other critical discourses emerging from excluded groups; and finally, offer some of my own perspectives and history as a user/survivor researcher and activist in the United Kingdom to illustrate the first two points.I agree with much of what Voronka (...) has to say about the risks of relying on ‘experience’ as an unquestioned category and how those risks are embodied today in the increasing reliance on terms such as ‘experts by experience’ and ‘people... (shrink)

So far as I am aware, the commentators on the above passageall say that it is imitated from Euripides, Bacchae 492 sqq., and the commentators on Euripides, loc. cit., agree. It seems to me, however, that there is reason to suppose them all wrong; not of course that there is no connexion between the two passages, for there most obviously is, but that Horace is not imitating the Greek directly, but an imitation or adaptation of it by Pacuvius.

Having recently chosen to lecture on the Pythian Odes, and coming in due course to the ninth, I naturally consulted Dr. Farnell's translation and his article in the Classical Quarterly with regard to the puzzling question of the connexion in thought between lines 76–96 and the rest of the ode. Being more or less dissatisfied both with his views and with those of such other commentators as were known to me, I am now attempting to analyze the poem myself in (...) hopes of showing that it is a more continuous whole than has been generally supposed. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to indicate the slightness of the foundation on which a commonly received doctrine about Roman funerals rests, and to discuss a point in connexion with the ritual of funera acerba.

To add without good reason to the already enormous literature surrounding the most fascinating and puzzling of all Vergil's works ought, nowadays, to be regarded as an offence against learning. My excuse for this article is that even the latest work on the subject, Ed. Norden's charming monograph, Die Geburt des Kindes, appears to me wrong on one important point, inadequate on another.

I. It has long been a standing puzzle why the women at the festival of Mater Matuta prayed, not for their own children, but for their sisters' offspring. The attempts to connect it with any sociological phenomenon are purely absurd, and would not have been noticed but for their association with one or two famous names and the complete ignorance of non-European systems of relationship prevailing among the scholars of an older generation. There is no system under which a woman (...) is closer akin to her sister's children than to her own; for under father-right a nephew or niece is further off than an own child, and if the system be pushed to the most logical and most absurd extremity, so as to make a child kin to his father only, not his mother, then he is also no kin to his mother's sister; under mother-right, which Rome never had in any form whatsoever, the mother is still nearer kin than the maternal aunt; while if ever there was, anywhere in the world, a classificatory system so pure and rigorous as to make no distinction between the actual mother and any other woman of the same age-class, then mother and aunt were in the same degree of kinship to every member of the younger generation. No ritual explanation I know will bear investigating. Yet the fact is handed down to us on good authority, probably that of Verrius Flaccus, the most likely common source for Ovid and Plutarch. (shrink)

laudationem ferculum est insecutum plane non pro expectatione magnum: novitas tamen omnium convertit oculos. rotundum enim repositoriurr duodecim habebat signa in orbe disposita, super quae proprium convenien. temque materiae structor imposuerat cibum: super arietem cicer arietinum, super taurum bubulae frustum, super geminos testiculos ac rienes, supei cancrum coronam, super leonem ficum Africanam, super virginem steriliculam super libram stateram in cuius altera parte scriblita erat, in altera placenta super scorpionem † pisciculum marinum, super sagittarium oclopetam, supei capricornum locustam marinam,† super pisces (...) duos mullos. in medio autem caespes cum herbis excisus favum sustinebat. (shrink)

The environment has often been thought to consist of resources that are unowned, and hence subject to the well-known tragedy of the commons. But in recent years, property ideas have been increasingly recruited for environmental protection, in a manner that appears to vindicate the view that property rights evolve along with the needs for resource management. Nevertheless, property regimes have some pitfalls for environmental resources: the relevant parties may not be able to come to agreement; property regimes may be weak (...) or ineffective; they may be aimed at purposes inconsistent with environmental protection; property rights definitions may not work well for environmental resources; modern property regimes may promote monoculture rather than diverse environments. This essay describes these problems and asks to what degree they apply to a new effort to use property rights approaches, namely cap-and-trade programs to control greenhouse gases. It concludes that property rights, while imperfect and something of a retreat from a regime of complete liberty, may offer gains for environmental protection. But success will depend on close attention to the accountability and effectiveness of the governmental institutions necessary to support environmental property regimes. (shrink)

In this article, we focus on a particular kind of emotional impact of the pandemic, namely the phenomenology of the experience of moral injury in healthcare professionals. Drawing on Weber's reflections in his lecture Politics as a Vocation and data from the Experiences of Social Distancing during the COVID-19 Pandemic Survey, we analyse responses from healthcare professionals which show the experiences of burnout, sense of frustration and impotence, and how these affect clinicians’ emotional state. We argue that this may relate (...) to the ethical conflicts they experience when they are forced to make clinical decisions where there are no optimal outcomes, and how in turn that impacts on their own emotional state. We then further examine the notion of ‘burnout’ and the phenomenology of ‘moral injury’. Our argument is that these experiences of moral injury across a range of clinicians during the pandemic may be more prevalent and long-standing in psychiatry and mental health than in other areas of healthcare, where ethically difficult decisions and resource constraints are common outside times of crisis. Hence, in these clinical arenas, moral injury and the phenomenology of emotional changes may be independent of the pandemic. The insights gained during the pandemic may provide wider insights into the challenges of developing services and training the workforce to provide appropriate mental health care. (shrink)

Derek Parfit takes an externalist and cognitivist view about normative reasons. I shall explore this view and add some arguments that support it. But I shall also raise a doubt about it at the end.