Problems and choices -- Who shall live? -- The physician : the captain of the team -- The hospital : the house of hope -- Drugs : the key to modern medicine -- Paying for medical care.

Recent neuroscientific evidence brings into question the conclusion that all aspects of consciousness are gone in patients who have descended into a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Here we summarize the evidence from human brain imaging as well as neurological damage in animals and humans suggesting that some form of consciousness can survive brain damage that commonly causes PVS. We also raise the issue that neuroscientific evidence indicates that raw emotional feelings (primary-process affects) can exist without any cognitive awareness of those (...) feelings. Likewise, the basic brain mechanisms for thirst and hunger exist in brain regions typically not damaged by PVS. If affective feelings can exist without cognitive awareness of those feelings, then it is possible that the instinctual emotional actions and pain "reflexes" often exhibited by PVS patients may indicate some level of mentality remaining in PVS patients. Indeed, it is possible such raw affective feelings are intensified when PVS patients are removed from life-supports. They may still experience a variety of primary-process affective states that could constitute forms of suffering. If so, withdrawal of life-support may violate the principle of nonmaleficence and be tantamount to inflicting inadvertent "cruel and unusual punishment" on patients whose potential distress, during the process of dying, needs to be considered in ethical decision-making about how such individuals should be treated, especially when their lives are ended by termination of life-supports. Medical wisdom may dictate the use of more rapid pharmacological forms of euthanasia that minimize distress than the de facto euthanasia of life-support termination that may lead to excruciating feelings of pure thirst and other negative affective feelings in the absence of any reflective awareness. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: The Needs of Strangers. By Michael Ignatieff. The Health Economy. By Victor Fuchs. Just Health Care. By Norman Daniels.

La philosophie pratique de Kant / par Victor Delbos,...Date de l'edition originale: 1905Sujet de l'ouvrage: Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)Collection: Bibliotheque de philosophie contemporaineCe livre est la reproduction fidele d'une oeuvre publiee avant 1920 et fait partie d'une collection de livres reimprimes a la demande editee par Hachette Livre, dans le cadre d'un partenariat avec la Bibliotheque nationale de France, offrant l'opportunite d'acceder a des ouvrages anciens et souvent rares issus des fonds patrimoniaux de la BnF.Les oeuvres faisant partie de cette (...) collection ont ete numerisees par la BnF et sont presentes sur Gallica, sa bibliotheque numerique.En entreprenant de redonner vie a ces ouvrages au travers d'une collection de livres reimprimes a la demande, nous leur donnons la possibilite de rencontrer un public elargi et participons a la transmission de connaissances et de savoirs parfois difficilement accessibles.Nous avons cherche a concilier la reproduction fidele d'un livre ancien a partir de sa version numerisee avec le souci d'un confort de lecture optimal. Nous esperons que les ouvrages de cette nouvelle collection vous apporteront entiere satisfaction.Pour plus d'informations, rendez-vous sur www.hachettebnf.frhttp: //gallica.bnf.fr/ark: /12148/bpt6k255788x. (shrink)

Since the beginning of business research and teaching, the basic assumptions of the discipline have been intensely debated. One of these basic assumptions concerns the behavioral aspects of human beings, which are traditionally represented in the construct of homo economicus. These assumptions have been increasingly challenged in light of findings from social, ethnological, psychological, and ethical research. Some publications from an integrative perspective have suggested that homo economicus embodies to a high degree dark character traits, particularly related to the construct (...) of psychopathy, representing individuals who are extremely self-centered and ruthless, without feelings of remorse or compassion. While a growing body of research notes such a similarity on a more or less anecdotal basis, this article aims to explore this connection from a more rigorous perspective, bridging insights from psychological, economic, and business research to better understand the potentially dark traits of homo economicus. The analysis shows that homo economicus is not simply some kind of psychopath, but specifically a so-called subclinical or Factor 1 psychopath, who is also referred to as a “corporate psychopath” in business research. With such an analysis, the paper adds an additional perspective and a deeper psychological level of understanding as to why homo economicus is often controversially debated. Based on these insights, several implications for academic research and teaching are discussed and reflected upon in light of an ethics of virtue and care. (shrink)

Resumen: La presente contribución gira en torno al significado del atentado terrorista del 11 de septiembre de 2001 para la hermenéutica filosófica, en particular la de Gianni Vattimo. El turinés gestó en sus textos de entre 2006 y 2014 una versión nueva de la hermenéutica que se basa en la experiencia de este acontecimiento. Esta nueva hermenéutica estaría atenta al conflicto y a las transformaciones sociales y tendría por núcleo la noción de “evento”, Sin embargo, Vattimo mismo no ofrece una (...) definición operativa adecuada del término. Ante esto, propongo incorporar a la tradición hermenéutica conceptos como “evento” y “milagro”, acuñados por Joseph de Maistre. Se trata de una propuesta de “maistrianización” de la hermenéutica para hacer de ella un discurso viable y fructífero en un mundo violento e inestable. (shrink)

Dieser Band behandelt umfassend und systematisch die Frage des Patientenwillens: die historischen und philosophischen Grundlagen des Willensbegriffs, die Beziehung von Autonomie und Wille und praktische Fragen der Bioethik und des Biorechts. Die Herausgeber: PD Dr. Marko Fuchs lehrt Philosophie an der Universität Bamberg. Dr. Martin Hähnel lehrt Philosophie an der Universität Bremen und ist Koordinator des BMBF-Verbundvorhabens "Verantwortungsvoller Umgang mit Künstlicher Intelligenz in der Medizin" (VUKIM) Dr. Danaë Simmermacher lehrt Philosophie an der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.

This introductory text is a critical theory toolkit on how to how to make use of Karl Marx's ideas in media, communication and cultural studies. Karl Marx's ideas remain of crucial relevance, and in this short, student-friendly book, leading expert Christian Fuchs introduces Marx to the reader by discussing fifteen of his key concepts and showing how they matter for understanding the digital and communicative capitalism that shapes human life in 21st century society. Key concepts covered include: the dialectic, (...) materialism, commodities, capital, capitalism, labour, surplus-value, the working class, alienation, means of communication, the general intellect, ideology, socialism, communism, and class struggles. Students taking courses in Media, Culture and Society; Communication Theory; Media Economics; Political Communication and Cultural Studies will find Fuchs' concise introduction an essential guide to Marx. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage de Victor Goldschmidt, pour la premiere fois en edition de poche, est le seul consacre a une notion centrale de la philosophie platonicienne, le paradigme, a la fois exemple, comparaison et modele.En prenant comme fil conducteur la definition donnee dans le Politique, l'auteur commence par etudier le role joue par ce procede privilegie dans la methode dialectique des derniers Dialogues. S'exercer sur une realite banale permet de decouvrir la structure d'un grand sujet, plus difficile a definir, comme (...) le sophiste ou l'art politique. Cependant la reussite d'une demarche en saurait en fonder la legitimite. En s'interrogeant sur son fondement, Victor Goldschmidt montre que l'usage d'un paradigme obeit a un mouvement profond de la pensee platonicienne, il nous mene du visible a l'invisible. (shrink)

Business actors create and operate in global production networks that bring them in contact with regulatory frameworks across multiple levels and domains. Importantly, they also participate in shaping those regulatory frameworks. But what are the specific interests they pursue in their involvement in regulation? Traditionally, scholars tended to assume that the focus of business actors is primarily on avoiding (stringent) public regulation. Recent developments have highlighted a broader range of business interests, however. Accordingly, this paper investigates business positions on the (...) ascription of duties and rights in regulation, specifically in the fields of due diligence, supply chain liability, and extraterritorial jurisdiction. The paper explores these issues in the context of business regulation in the field of Human Rights, looking at the United Nations Guiding Principles on human rights, their German implementation in the ‘Nationaler Aktionsplan Wirtschaft und Menschenrechte’ and the associated processes, in particular. (shrink)

En este artículo analizamos conceptos fundamentales que sirven para entender mejor Das Kontinuum. Asimismo, defendemos la interpretación de Feferman —sobre todo, en lo referente al tratamiento de los conjuntos aritméticos, y al alcance del sistema que Weyl introdujo en el libro— como la más apropiada para entender la idea original, frente a la interpretación que Arnon Avron propuso recientemente.

Ever since John Perry's developments in the late 70s, it is customary among philosophers to take de se contents as essentially tied to the explanation of action. The target explanation appeals to a subject-specific notion of de se content capable of capturing behavioural differences in central cases. But a subject-specific de se content leads us, I argue, to a subject-specific notion of intentional action that prevents basic forms of generalisation. Although this might be seen as a welcome revision of our (...) pre-theoretical conceptions, I propose, instead, a strategy to circumvent this rather unexpected result: to reject subject-specific de se contents in favour of subject-specific ways of thinking that do not enter into the content of one's attitudes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 195-198 [Access article in PDF] Implicit and Explicit Temporality Thomas Fuchs Keywords implicit/explicit temporality, embodiment, intersubjectivity, desynchronization, melancholia, schizophrenia Since Minkowski (1970), Strauss (1966), v. Gebsattel (1954), and Tellenbach (1980), temporality has been a main subject of phenomenological psychiatry. Drawing on philosophical concepts of Bergson, Husserl, and Heidegger, these authors have analyzed psychopathologic deviations of time experience, mainly from an individual point (...) of view, for example, as a slowing down or inhibition of lived time in depression or obsessive–compulsive disorder. Their analyses are still most valuable today, but may be carried further by introducing concepts such as embodied and intersubjective temporality into psychopathology. Martin Wyllie (2005), by opening up a wide scope of temporal phenomena and related concepts, makes a laudable effort to contribute to such a progress.In my commentary, I would like to propose a distinction that is suggested by much of Wyllie's analysis and may shed further light on psychopathology, namely between implicit and explicit temporality. If we look at a child while obliviously playing with his toys, lost to the world, we may assume that there is no sense of the time passing. Lived time runs with the movement of life, implicit in the child's experience of being engaged in his play and directed toward his goals. It "unfolds through the processes of bodily activity" (Wyllie 2005). Future and past do not stand out against the pure presence of "becoming." This implicit mode of temporality is retrieved every time that we are absorbed in what we are doing, and may even reach the climax of "flow experiences" (Csikszentmihalyi 1988) where the sense of time is lost in unimpeded, fluent performance.However, this changes when a gap arises between need and satisfaction, desire and fulfillment, or plan and execution. Now the future appears as a "not yet" or "yet to come," experienced as the temporality of awaiting, striving, or longing for. Time is felt as passing by and refusing the desired fulfillment; it becomes conscious or explicit. A similar gap arises between the present and something irretrievably lost, bringing the past to consciousness as a "no more." Again time is experienced explicitly, but now as moving on relentlessly and separating us from the lost object. The gap to the past may not be bridged any more: this is the temporality of missing or mourning. In both cases, explicit time arises as a negation of implicit or lived time (here my use of the term is a bit divergent from Wyllie's); it is experienced as a "not yet" or "no more," often with a component of displeasure or suffering (Fuchs 2001a, 2003)."Implicit" versus "explicit time" thus come near to another distinction well known in phenomenology, namely between the "lived" and [End Page 195] the "corporal body" (Leib versus Koerper). The first term refers to the body functioning in the tacit mode, as the medium of everyday performance. The second term points to the body as turning into the object of attention, for example, when it puts up resistance to our purposes, or is used as an instrument deliberately (Fuchs 2001b). In fact, implicit temporality and tacit performance of the body are nearly synonymous: Lived time may be regarded as a function of the lived body, opened up by its potentiality and capability. The more we are engaged in our tasks, the more we forget time as well as the body; we are, as it were, "inside time." On the other hand, in explicit temporality the body often appears in the corporal or explicit mode as well. For example, when falling ill, we experience our body no more as a tacit medium but rather as an object or obstacle, while we notice the slowing down of time and may even feel excluded from the movement of life. Thus, embodiment and temporality have a parallel background–foreground structure.I now try to carry these considerations further by including the intersubjective dimension of time. In an earlier paper, I describe the attunement of the living being to its environment as a continuous synchronization on the biological as... (shrink)

This book demonstrates for the first time how the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein can transform 4E Cognitive Science. In particular, it shows how insights from Wittgenstein can empower those within 4E to reject the long held view that our minds must involve representations inside our heads. The book begins by showing how proponents of 4E are divided amongst themselves. Proponents of Extended Mind insist that internal representations are always needed to explain the human mind. However, proponents of Enacted Mind reject (...) this claim. Using insights from Ludwig Wittgenstein, the book introduces and defends a new theoretical framework called Structural Enacted or Extended Mins (STEEM). (shrink)