Experimental philosophy is often presented as a new movement that avoids many of the difficulties that face traditional philosophy. This article distinguishes two views of experimental philosophy: a narrow view in which philosophers conduct empirical investigations of intuitions, and a broad view which says that experimental philosophy is just the colocation in the same body of (i) philosophical naturalism and (ii) the actual practice of cognitive science. These two positions are rarely clearly distinguished in the literature about experimental philosophy, both (...) pro and con. The article argues, first, that the broader view is the only plausible one; discussions of experimental philosophy should recognize that the narrow view is a caricature of experimental philosophy as it is currently done. It then shows both how objections to experimental philosophy are transformed and how positive recommendations can be provided by adopting a broad conception of experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Should a brain-dead woman be artificially maintained for the sake of her fetus? Does a physician have the right to administer a life-saving transfusion despite the patient's religious beliefs? Can a family request a hysterectomy for their retarded daughter? Physicians are facing moral dilemmas with increasing frequency. But how should these delicate questions be resolved and by whom? A Casebook of Medical Ethics offers a real-life view of the central issue involved in clinical medical ethics. Since the analysis of cases (...) plays a critical role in this study, the authors have assembled a broad collection of histories encountered in their work as medical ethics educators and consultants. The cases are developed in substantial detail to reflect the rich medical and psychosocial complexity involved, and each is brought to a decision point at which a course of action must be chosen. Among the issues examined are conflicts between patients' wishes and respect for their well-being, tensions concerning duties to patients unable to care for themselves and obligations to family members, and clashes between patient care obligations and the interests of other persons, including physicians, third parties, and the general public. The book also includes commentaries that combine general discussion of ethical principles with specific analysis of the cases examined in the text, as well as various options for resolving conflicts. Readers are invited to assess the comparative merits and liabilities of these approaches. An ideal text for undergraduate and medical school courses, A Casebook of Medical Ethics brings readers to the forefront of medicine, where they share in the determination of crucial ethical decisions. (shrink)

This book fundamentally challenges the radical credentials of post-structuralism. Though Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze claim to have 'deconstructed' metaphysics, their work has much in common with previous attempts to 'end' the metaphysical tradition, from Kant to Nietzshe and Heidegger, and by sociology in general. Gillian Rose shows that this anti-metaphysical writing always appears in historically specific jurisprudential terms, which themselves found and recapitulate metaphysical categories. She reconsiders post-structuralism in this light and assesses the relationship between deconstruction and the earlier (...) structuralism of Saussure and Levi-Strauss. She argues in conclusion that the choice between post-structuralist nihilism and Hegelian and Marxist dialectic is spurious. (shrink)

A radical new assessment of Hegel revealing the problems and limitations of sociological method.

Biological individuality is a notoriously thorny topic for biologists and philosophers of biology. In this paper we argue that biological individuality presents multiple, interconnected questions for biologists and philosophers that together form a problem agenda. Using a case study of an interdisciplinary research group in ecology, behavioral and evolutionary biology, we claim that a debate on biological individuality that seeks to account for diverse practices in the biological sciences should be broadened to include and give prominence to questions about uniqueness (...) and temporality. We show that broadening the problem agenda of biological individuality draws attention to underrecognized philosophical issues and discussions and thereby organizes and enriches the existing debate. (shrink)

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

This work focuses on the conception of God of the medieval Jewish philosopher and legal scholar, Hasdai Crescas (1340-1410/11). It demonstrates that Crescas’ God is infinitely creative and good and explores the parallel that Crescas implicitly draws between God as creator and legislator.

We live, according to some, in the century of biology, where we now understand ourselves in radically new ways as the insights of genomics and neuroscience have opened up the workings of our bodies and our minds to new kinds of knowledge and intervention. Is a new figure of the human, and of the social, taking shape in the 21st century? With what consequences for the politics of life today? And with what implications, if any, for the social, cultural and (...) human sciences? These are the issues that are discussed in this article, which argues that a new relation is requred with the life sciences, beyond commentary and critique, if the social and human sciences are to revitalize themselves for the 21st century. (shrink)

Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays challenges the philosophical presentation of Judaism as the sublime 'other' of modernity. Here, Gillian Rose develops a philosophical alternative to deconstruction and post-modernism by critically re-engaging the social and political issues at stake in every reconstruction.

Biological individuality is without a doubt a key concept in philosophy of biology. Questions around the individuality of organisms, species, and biological systems can be traced throughout the philosophy of biology since the discipline’s inception, not to mention the sustained attention they have received in biology and philosophy more broadly. It’s high time the topic got its own Cambridge Element. McConwell’s Biological Individuality falls short of an authoritative overview of the debate on biological individuality. However, it sends a welcome message (...) to new and seasoned scholars to reorient the debate towards practically and politically relevant themes. (shrink)

A standard view in contemporary philosophy is that belief is involuntary, either as a matter of conceptual necessity or as a contingent fact of human psychology. We present seven experiments on patterns in ordinary folk-psychological judgments about belief. The results provide strong evidence that voluntary belief is conceptually possible and, granted minimal charitable assumptions about folk-psychological competence, provide some evidence that voluntary belief is psychologically possible. We also consider two hypotheses in an attempt to understand why many philosophers have been (...) tempted to view belief as involuntary: that belief is a prototype concept and that belief is a dual character concept. Altogether, our findings contribute to longstanding philosophical debates about the relationship between the will and the intellect, while also advancing scientific understanding of important social judgments. (shrink)

Anyone who thinks contemporary American society is hopelessly contentious and lacking in shared values has probably not been paying attention to the way the popular media portray the hospice movement. Over and over, we are told such things as that “Humane care costs less than high-tech care and is what patients want and need,” that hospices are “the most effective and least expensive route to a dignified death,” that hospice personnel are “heroic,” that their “compassion and dedication seem inexhaustible,” and (...) that “few could argue with the powerful message that it is better [for dying patients] to leave wrapped in the love of family and care givers than locked in the cold, metallic embrace of a machine.“. (shrink)

Consider these three positions about physician-assisted suicide:Physician-assisted suicide should be illegal for everyone.Physician-assisted suicide should be legal for only the terminally ill.Physician-assisted suicide should be legal for all competent adults.So far, the debate in America has been primarily between positions 1 and 2. I think it should be between positions 1 and 3. Both those positions embody reasonable viewpoints, and I will not try to decide between them in this chapter. But I will argue that the double standard embodied in (...) position 2 is morally untenable. (shrink)

Anyone who thinks contemporary American society is hopelessly contentious and lacking in shared values has probably not been paying attention to the way the popular media portray the hospice movement. Over and over, we are told such things as that “Humane care costs less than high-tech care and is what patients want and need,” that hospices are “the most effective and least expensive route to a dignified death,” that hospice personnel are “heroic,” that their “compassion and dedication seem inexhaustible,” and (...) that “few could argue with the powerful message that it is better [for dying patients] to leave wrapped in the love of family and care givers than locked in the cold, metallic embrace of a machine.“. (shrink)

In Mourning Becomes the Law, Gillian Rose takes us beyond the impasse of post-modernism or 'despairing rationalism withour reason'. Arguing that the post-modern search for a 'new ethics' and ironic philosophy are incoherent, she breathes new life into the debates concerning power and domination, transcendence and eternity. Mourning Becomes the Law is the philosophical counterpart to Gillian Rose's highly acclaimed memoir Love's Work. She extends similar clarity and insight to discussions of architecture, cinema, painting and poetry, through which (...) relations between the formation of the individual and the theory of justice are connected. At the heart of this reconnection lies a reflection on the significance of the Holocaust and Judaism. Mourning Becomes the Law reinvents the classical analogy of the soul, the city and the sacred. It returns philosophy, Nietzsche's 'bestowing virtue', to the pulse of our intellectual and political culture. (shrink)

We have a mentalistic view of objects. This is due to the interdependence of folk psychology and folk physics, where these are interconnected by what I call Teleological Commingling. When considering events that don’t involve agents, we naturally default to tracking intentions, goal-directed processes, despite the fact that agents aren’t involved. We have a deep-seated intentionality bias which is the result of the pervasive detection of agency cues, such as order or non-randomness. And this gives rise to the Agentive Worldview: (...) we view nature as a whole as being infused with agency and purpose. Teleological Commingling and the Agentive Worldview it gives rise to are at the core of our conception of objects. I maintain that the ordinary view of material objects is rooted in an implicit, false theory. It should be given no weight in metaphysical debates about the nature of material objects. And this problematizes the central methodological assumption that metaphysical theories of material objects should be beholden to common sense. (shrink)

Fiction can help make students better thinkers about some philosophical issues, but this does not mean it will make them morally better people.

Three eminent scientists analyze the scientific, social, and political roots of biological determinism.

Offers a compelling vision of how to achieve and conduct a liberal but democratic society through the ideal of Neutrality--between people and ideas of the good--and using the tool of Neutral dialogue.

Neuroscientists now approach some of the deepest problems of the human condition - from illnesses and disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, to the search for the nature of consciousness itself - in the belief that their science can say something useful about these processes and how to intervene in them. At the same time, by addressing the biological mechanisms involved in phenomena as varied as street violence, drug addiction and sexual orientation, the new science raises profound ethical, legal, (...) social and medical questions. Over many of these issues there is no clear consensus but rather, intense debate. Is memory a molecular process? Is schizophrenia a genetic disorder? What does the future hold for psychopharmacology? Can consciousness be computed and is artificial intelligence a real prospect? From Brains to Consciousness? brings together fourteen of the world's leading neuroscientists, psychologists, computer modellers and philosophers, in a series of chapters that offer fascinating and up-to-the-minute insight into the debates that are taking place in this exciting area of research. (shrink)

This book is about how we can deepen our understanding of subjectivity through the use of the concept of triangulation. Fundamentally, this book seeks to address the question of how we can be objective about subjectivity. If psychology, as a scientific discipline, is concerned with the study of human experience, which is essentially subjective; then we are faced with the problem of how apply the scientific method, as it is commonly understood. If experience is essentially unique to the experiencer, then (...) there seems to be a basic incompatibility with the scientific method. As currently practised, this method searches for psychic phenomena, which can be validly measured e.g. intelligence; showing a range of individual differences. But this does not enable us to examine individual experience. An individual's experience seems to become impenetrable because generalisation across different individuals' experience entails the loss of individuality in the generalisation. (shrink)

This paper describes a practice innovation: the addition of formal weekly discussions of patients with prolonged PICU stay to reduce healthcare providers’ moral distress and decrease length of stay for patients with life-threatening illnesses. We evaluated the innovation using a pre/post intervention design measuring provider moral distress and comparing patient outcomes using retrospective historical controls. Physicians and nurses on staff in our pediatric intensive care unit in a quaternary care children's hospital participated in the evaluation. There were 60 patients in (...) the interventional group and 66 patients in the historical control group. We evaluated the impact of weekly meetings to establish goals of care for patients with longer than 10 days length of stay in the ICU for a year. Moral distress was measured intermittently and reported moral distress thermometer scores fluctuated. "Clinical situations" represented the most frequent contributing factor to moral distress. Post intervention, overall moral distress scores, measured on the moral distress scale revised, were lower for respondents in all categories, and on three specific items. Patient outcomes before and after PEACE intervention showed a statistically significant decrease in PRISM indexed LOS, a statistically significant increase in both code status changes DNR, and in-hospital death, with no change in patient 30 or 365 day mortality. The addition of a clinical ethicist and senior intensivist to weekly inter-professional team meetings facilitated difficult conversations regarding realistic goals of care. The study demonstrated that the PEACE intervention had a positive impact on some factors that contribute to moral distress and can shorten PICU length of stay for some patients. (shrink)

The third author has shown that Shelah's eventual categoricity conjecture holds in universal classes: class of structures closed under isomorphisms, substructures, and unions of chains. We extend this result to the framework of multiuniversal classes. Roughly speaking, these are classes with a closure operator that is essentially algebraic closure (instead of, in the universal case, being essentially definable closure). Along the way, we prove in particular that Galois (orbital) types in multiuniversal classes are determined by their finite restrictions, generalizing a (...) result of the second author. (shrink)

Foucault is often thought to have a great deal to say about the history of madness and sexuality, but little in terms of a general analysis of government and the state.; This volume draws on Foucault's own research to challenge this view, demonstrating the central importance of his work for the study of contemporary politics.; It focuses on liberalism and neo- liberalism, questioning the conceptual opposition of freedom/constraint, state/market and public/private that inform liberal thought.

Introduction Tourette Syndrome is a childhood onset disorder characterized by vocal and motor tics and often remits spontaneously during adolescence. For treatment refractory patients, Deep Brain Stimulation may be considered. Methods and Results We discuss ethical problems encountered in two adolescent TS patients treated with DBS and systematically review the literature on the topic. Following surgery one patient experienced side effects without sufficient therapeutic effects and the stimulator was turned off. After a second series of behavioural treatment, he experienced a (...) tic reduction of more than 50%. The second patient went through a period of behavioural disturbances that interfered with optimal programming, but eventually experienced a 70% tic reduction. Sixteen DBS surgeries in adolescent TS patients have been reported, none of which pays attention to ethical aspects. Discussion Specific ethical issues arise in adolescent TS patients undergoing DBS relating both to clinical practice as well as to research. Attention should be paid to selecting patients fairly, thorough examination and weighing of risks and benefits, protecting the health of children and adolescents receiving DBS, special issues concerning patient’s autonomy, and the normative impact of quality of life. In research, registration of all TS cases in a central database covering a range of standardized information will facilitate further development of DBS for this indication. Conclusion Clinical practice should be accompanied by ongoing ethical reflection, preferably covering not only theoretical thought but providing also insights in the views and perspectives of those concerned, that is patients, family members and professionals. (shrink)