University of Utrecht, Department of Philosophy, Heidelberglaan 6, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 30 253 28 74, Email: Thomas.Nys{at}phil.uu.nl ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//-->Measures in public health care seem vulnerable to charges of paternalism: their aim is to protect, restore, or promote people's health, but the public character of these measures seems to leave insufficient room for respect for individual autonomy. This paper wants to explore three challenges to these charges: Measures in PHC (...) are aimed to protect, restore or promote ‘deep autonomy’, Measures in PHC are directed at the public and, as such, they do show respect for autonomy, and Some measures in PHC can be justified on grounds of justice and need not be defended as cases of ‘justified paternalism’. Although charges of unjustified paternalism in PHC might still be relevant, we should at least face these different challenges. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Der "Verfransungsprozess" der Künste, von dem Adorno gesprochen hat schlägt sich in Christian Grünys Buch in einer Verflechtung ihrer theoretischen Ausarbeitungen nieder.Eher als ein linearer Argumentationsgang ergibt sich dabei insgesamt eine Konstellation von Problemfeldern, die sich gegenseitig beleuchten und teilweise aufeinander aufbauen. Diese Konstellation versucht, das Wie der Musik auf möglichst reiche Weise zu konturieren. Die Begriffe, vermittels derer diese Konstellation aufgebaut und erläutert wird - Differenz, Resonanz, Geste und Rhythmus, Raum und Zeit, Materialität -, sind nur teilweise genuin musikalisch. (...) Sie sind Begriffe einer philosophischen Ästhetik, die dennoch nicht auf die Musik angewandt, sondern an und mit ihr entwickelt wird. Philosophische Konstellationen zur Musik sind sie insofern, als sie dem Anspruch nach weniger über die Musik sprechen als sich zu ihr stellen, sich auf ihre Bewegung einlassen und so einen Zusammenhang produzieren, der etwas an ihr aufscheinen zu lassen versucht, was sonst nicht sichtbar würde. Dabei sind an verschiedenen Stellen philosophische Diskussionen zu führen. Wenn es dabei ein Motiv gibt, das sich durch den gesamten Text zieht, so ist es das einer Differenz, die sich nie zu fixen Entgegensetzungen verfestigt. So bedeutsam die Unterscheidungen sind, die an den unterschiedlichen Stellen vorgenommen oder von der Tradition übernommen werden, so wichtig sind die Übergänge zwischen ihren Polen. Die Musik hält sich an diesen Übergängen auf, und das vorliegende Buch versucht, es ihr gleichzutun. (shrink)

Die Aufsätze dieses Sammelbandes sind dem Wort gewidmet. In jeweils unterschiedlichen Untersuchungsrahmen werden folgende Schwerpunkte behandelt: Das Wort und das Lexikon, das Verhältnis von Wort und Grammatik im Prozess des Bedeutungswandels, das Wort und der Text sowie das Wort und sein Gebrauch unter dem Aspekt der Stilistik und der Gesprächsanalyse. Die Untersuchungen ergeben neue Erkenntnisse zu Problemen der lexikalischen Bedeutung und des Bedeutungswandels, zur Textgrammatik und Grammatikalisierung bzw. zu speziellen Fragen des Wortgebrauchs in literarischen Texten und Alltagsgesprächen.

Are causal explanations (e.g., “she switched careers because of the COVID pandemic”) treated differently from the corresponding claims that one factor caused another (e.g., “the COVID pandemic caused her to switch careers”)? We examined whether explanatory and causal claims diverge in their responsiveness to two different types of information: covariation strength and mechanism information. We report five experiments with 1,730 participants total, showing that compared to judgments of causal strength, explanatory judgments tend to bemoresensitive to mechanism andlesssensitive to covariation – (...) even though explanatory judgments respond to both types of information. We also report exploratory comparisons to judgments of understanding, and discuss implications of our findings for theories of explanation, understanding, and causal attribution. These findings shed light on the potentially unique role of explanation in cognition. (shrink)

Wrongful life claims have always been controversial. Courts in England,1 the USA,2 and Australia3 have generally refused to accept them. However, are wrongful life claims becoming more commonly accepted in continental Europe? After the widely discussed Perruche case in France ,4 and a judgment of a Brussels tribunal in July 2002 that has passed almost unnoticed, the Court of Appeal of The Hague, the Netherlands, in a lengthy and motivated judgment of 26 March 2003, awarded moral damages to a child (...) born with a severe chromosomal disease.5 This judgment differs from the Perruche and Brussels judgments in that both of the latter failed to show to what extent the negligence towards the mother can at the same time be a negligence towards the unborn child. The Court of Appeal of The Hague did at least attempt to explain this.According to the Court of Appeal the midwife looking after the mother had a legal obligation not only towards the pregnant woman but also towards her fetus. This obligation can be derived from the medical treatment contract concluded between, on one hand, the employer of the midwife, the Leiden University Medical Centre, and on the other hand, the parents of the child. The Court held that the unborn child could legally be considered as a party to this contract. But even when one does not accept the existence of a contract between the …. (shrink)

La pensée de Hannah Arendt n'est pas seulement une réflexion sur le totalitarisme et une philosophie de l'action politique. Elle est une philosophie politique originale dont la force repose sur la considération de la dimension temporelle de l'existence humaine et des phénomènes politiques.--.

This article seeks to explore and analyze the relationship between autonomy and trust, and to show how these findings could be relevant to medical ethics. First, I will argue that the way in which so-called “relational autonomy theories” tie the notions of autonomy and trust together is not entirely satisfying Then, I will introduce the so-called Encapsulated Interest Account as developed by Russell Hardin. This will bring out the importance of the reasons for trust. What good reasons do we have (...) for trusting someone? I will criticize Hardin’s business model as insufficiently robust, especially in the context of health care, and then turn to another source of trust, namely, love. It may seem that trust-through-love is much better suited for the vulnerability that is often involved in health care, but I will also show that it has its own deficiencies. Good health care should therefore pay attention to both models of trust, and I will offer some tentative remarks on how to do this. (shrink)

As a response to Gooskens’ article , this paper offers some further comments on the ethics of violent or immoral video games. After arguing that the appeal of such games actually presupposes an awareness of moral transgression, it considers the desensitization thesis, the argument from catharsis, and the relevance of human flourishing.Although this brief analysis does not provide any clear-cut answer to the question of whether or not such games ought to be frowned upon, it does reveal some possible sources (...) of discomfort. (shrink)

Excerpt from La Notion d'Espace Le probleme de l'espace que nous nous proposons de traiter forme une partie integrante de la cosmologie. Il a sa place tout indiquee dans cette etude cosmologique, intitulee: les causes constitutives du monde mineral. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format (...) whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

In response to Ruud ter Meulen’s contribution, it is argued that, although the relationship between these concepts is both tight and complex, solidarity should be carefully distinguished from justice. Although ter Meulen wants to defend a normative conception of solidarity, the relation to its descriptive component is not always very clear. As a normative concept it should not collapse into that of justice; and as a descriptive notion it is obviously defective. In order to successfully navigate between these unhappy alternatives, (...) ter Meulen rightfully turns to critical theory. But then it is still not entirely clear how the normative considerations that ter Meulen wants to defend follow from this promising framework. (shrink)

What does it mean to have a distinctively religious orientation toward reality? Martin J. De Nys offers a philosophy of religion grounded within the phenomenological tradition as a way to understand religious life. Focusing on the key concepts of sacred transcendence, religious discourse, and radical self-transcendence, De Nys contends that a phenomenological view of religion allows considerable diversity in regard to the possibility of religious truth. Phenomenology also helps to account for the dizzying variety of religious expressions and religious lifeways. (...) Ultimately, De Nys reaches a universal and complete method of describing a philosophical approach to religious life. This compelling book plays a valuable role in describing human engagement with religion. (shrink)

One of the most pervasive criticisms of nudges has been the claim that they violate, undermine or decrease people’s autonomy. This claim, however, is seldom backed up by an explicit and detailed conception of autonomy. In this paper, we aim to do three things. First, we want to clear up some conceptual confusion by distinguishing the different conceptions used by Cass Sunstein and his critics in order to get clear on how they conceive of autonomy. Second, we want to add (...) to the existing discussion by distinguishing between ‘autonomy’ as the ability to set your own ends and ‘autocracy’ as the ability to actually realize those ends. This will allow for a more careful ethical evaluation of specific nudge interventions. Third, we will introduce the idea of ‘perimeters of autonomy’ in an attempt to provide a realistic account of personal autonomy and we will argue that it can alleviate most of the worries about nudging being autonomy-undermining. (shrink)

La vie, la mort, le sexe : ces trois thèmes n'ont cessé de hanter l'homme, cet étrange animal pensant. Peu de civilisations anciennes cependant ont développé, comme l'ont fait les Grecs 500 ans avant notre ère, des réflexions et des pratiques sociales aussi voisines des nôtres encore aujourd'hui. Ils ont été plus loin que quiconque dans l'élaboration d'une pensée qui s'interroge sur la place et le rôle de l'homme au sein de l'univers. Certes, les dieux sont omniprésents. Mais ce sont (...) des humains divinisés qui ne différent guère des mortels que par leur privilège de l'immortalité. Les Grecs ont anticipé comme personne nos questionnements, nos angoisses, nos passions, nos interrogations, nos rapports avec la vie, la nature, le temps, l'amour, la mort. Nous divergeons parfois, nous convergeons souvent, mais le plus fascinant est le dialogue qui ne cesse de s'établir avec eux depuis 2500 ans.--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Bioethics has been in existence now for more than twenty years. Much has changed, however, since Van Rensselaer Potter2 first used the term bioethics in 1971. For Potter, bioethics was an applied science with its roots in the biological sciences and its orientation towards the betterment of human life. Today the concept is used in a different context. It has become the name given to the ethical research that has become necessary in light of the new possibilities created by revolutionary (...) developments in medical science. Generally speaking, bioethics is concerned with the beginning and the end of life. In a certain sense, however, this is merely a de facto definition which does not possess a great deal of internal logical consistency.If we attempt to reconstruct the incredibly rapid evolution of bioethics we quickly realize how the times were truly ripe for this new discipline to begin to mature. In a very short space of time bioethics was taken seriously in just about every University and medical centre the world over. There is no part of the world which has not organised a colloquium or developed a study programme or created a Centre for Biomedical Ethics. Yet this advance is hardly surprising if we consider the fact that there have been revolutionary developments in themedical world in the 1960’s which have made it necessary to engage in serious ethical reflection on the borderline questions of human life.From the start, bioethicists have concerned themselves primarily with ethical problems related to reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization, medically assisted fertilization with donor gametes, pregnancy termination, and the status of the embryo. More recently, however, questions concerning the end of life have entered the bioethicist’s field of interest, e.g. ethical questions related to euthanasia and the problems surrounding the artificial nutrition and hydration of persistently vegetative patients. In the meantime, of course, bioethics has broadened its field of interest beyond questions related to the beginning and end of life. Serious ethical and juridical reflection has resulted from the problems surrounding organ transplantation, transplantation of brain tissue, and the problem of AIDS.With the many recent developments in genetics, the first applications of gene therapy, and the world-wide human genome research project bioethics is assured an exciting future. It is clear that the issues which grab the bioethicist’s attention are rather disparate. Moreover, we are now beginning to realize that a whole gamut of specific questions cannot be addressed unless the broader context of the ethics of health care in general is taken into account. Such a realization has led to something of a new movement within the bioethical sphere which is interested in widening the notion of ‘medical ethics’ or ‘ethics of health’.The purpose of this article is to help familiarize the reader with the world of bioethics. Such a task is both simple and complex; bioethics has become a house with many rooms, a house, furthermore, which is being constantly renovated and rebuilt. By way of introduction, we shall take an investigative and evaluative stroll through the broad landscape bioethics has traced in the first twenty years of its existence. (shrink)

In Belgium the legal conditions to practise euthanasia are governed by the act on euthanasia of 28 May, 2002 that entered into force on 23 September, 2002. There is no relevant jurisprudence and no guidance is offered by self-regulation made up by the medical profession itself before or after the enactment of the act. Thoughtful comments on the act are, understandably, lacking up to now while the discussions in parliament have been often unclear, contradictory and sometimes even misleading. In other (...) words, the law on euthanasia in Belgium almost coincides with the act on euthanasia.In this respect the situation in the Netherlands is totally different. The law on euthanasia is first of all governed by the "Termination of life on request and assisted suicide act" of 10 April, 2001 that entered into force on 1 April, 2002. This act is generally considered as the codification of the norms and procedures that have governed the practice of euthanasia in the Netherlands for almost three decades. These norms and procedures have largely emerged from within the medical profession itself and were later adopted by the courts in the context of criminal prosecutions. There also exists a very important legal doctrine that offers guidance in understanding this act. In other words, studying the law on euthanasia in the Netherlands is more than merely studying the act on euthanasia. The act is only the ‘tip of the iceberg’.While the Dutch act aims to codify existing practices, the Belgian act mainly aims to modify the behaviour of physicians when ending the life of their patients. It is hoped that a law that pretends to offer legal security to physicians and patients will stimulate patients to express a voluntary and explicit request and that physicians will abandon their practice of ending the lives of patients without their request. Research indeed had pointed out that Belgian physicians frequently 'forget' to obtain the patient’s request before ending his life.Is should be made clear from the outset that a comparison of the Belgian and the Dutch law regulating the practice of euthanasia is a hazardous undertaking. Just comparing both acts — at first sight the Belgian act, although much more detailed, could be considered a 'clone' of the Dutch act — will lead to misleading and even incorrect results. Not only the acts, but also medical practice and legal practice have to be considered when we try to compare the law on euthanasia in both countries. In this article I will make an attempt to do this. Lack of space requires omitting many details from the comparison. (shrink)

Bioethics has been in existence now for more than twenty years. Much has changed, however, since Van Rensselaer Potter2 first used the term bioethics in 1971. For Potter, bioethics was an applied science with its roots in the biological sciences and its orientation towards the betterment of human life. Today the concept is used in a different context. It has become the name given to the ethical research that has become necessary in light of the new possibilities created by revolutionary (...) developments in medical science. Generally speaking, bioethics is concerned with the beginning and the end of life. In a certain sense, however, this is merely a de facto definition which does not possess a great deal of internal logical consistency.If we attempt to reconstruct the incredibly rapid evolution of bioethics we quickly realize how the times were truly ripe for this new discipline to begin to mature. In a very short space of time bioethics was taken seriously in just about every University and medical centre the world over. There is no part of the world which has not organised a colloquium or developed a study programme or created a Centre for Biomedical Ethics. Yet this advance is hardly surprising if we consider the fact that there have been revolutionary developments in themedical world in the 1960’s which have made it necessary to engage in serious ethical reflection on the borderline questions of human life.From the start, bioethicists have concerned themselves primarily with ethical problems related to reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization, medically assisted fertilization with donor gametes, pregnancy termination, and the status of the embryo. More recently, however, questions concerning the end of life have entered the bioethicist’s field of interest, e.g. ethical questions related to euthanasia and the problems surrounding the artificial nutrition and hydration of persistently vegetative patients. In the meantime, of course, bioethics has broadened its field of interest beyond questions related to the beginning and end of life. Serious ethical and juridical reflection has resulted from the problems surrounding organ transplantation, transplantation of brain tissue, and the problem of AIDS.With the many recent developments in genetics, the first applications of gene therapy, and the world-wide human genome research project bioethics is assured an exciting future. It is clear that the issues which grab the bioethicist’s attention are rather disparate. Moreover, we are now beginning to realize that a whole gamut of specific questions cannot be addressed unless the broader context of the ethics of health care in general is taken into account. Such a realization has led to something of a new movement within the bioethical sphere which is interested in widening the notion of ‘medical ethics’ or ‘ethics of health’.The purpose of this article is to help familiarize the reader with the world of bioethics. Such a task is both simple and complex; bioethics has become a house with many rooms, a house, furthermore, which is being constantly renovated and rebuilt. By way of introduction, we shall take an investigative and evaluative stroll through the broad landscape bioethics has traced in the first twenty years of its existence. (shrink)

According to Stephen Holland, the challenges I mention in my original paper can be met, so that, in a way, the problem of paternalism in public health care—which I intended to put into perspective by drawing out some possible justifications for it—returns in all its might and glory. But of course, as Holland observes, I never suggested that my challenges could never be met. I only wanted to point out that for each and every particular public health policy that should (...) come to our attention we should reflect upon these challenges and see whether they could provide reasons for justification. I believe that the discussion is often stalled because these measures—in the absence of individual consent and in their aim to benefit the public's ‘best interests’—seem to be paternalist by default. In my paper, I wanted to call this assumption into question, but never intended to prove that there is no such thing as unjustified paternalism in public health care. Nevertheless, Holland's criticism is very insightful and he has done a lot to clarify my position. However, he also puts me on the spot by urging me to argue to what extent I can meet his rebuttal, and I am very grateful for that opportunity. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz schildert den platonisierenden Antipsychologismus welchen Bolzano, der junge Brentano, Twardowski, Meinong, der Husserl der Logischen Untersuchungen, Frege, der Russell der Jahrhundertwende und der junge Wittgenstein philosophisch vertraten, und versucht eine soziologische und ideologiekritische Interpretation sowohl dieser Einstellung als auch derjenigen des traditionellen Psychologismus des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. Der Platonismus des neunzehnten und zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts wird als ein Ausdruck fiir - oder vielmehr als eine Reaktion gegen - den Verfall der klassischen burgerlichen Werte aufgefaBt. In Wittgensteins Tractatus spielen Elemente sowohl (...) eines platonisierenden Antipsychologismus wie auch eines relativistischen, verhaltensphanomenologisch orientierten Antipsychologismus eine Rolle: dieses Werk wird also als eine grelle Manifestation des Uberganges von der klassischen zur spatbiirgerlichen Weltanschauung, als ein Obergang vom Glauben an ewige Wahrheiten zur Hinnahme einer Gebrauchs-Theorie der Bedeutung und deren Konsequenzen interpretiert. (shrink)