This monograph will be devoted to a cluster of related issues arising between two formidable bodies of work: between the philosophical works of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) and the very different flavored writings of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). These two thinkers are commonly regarded as polar opposites. Certainly they thought and wrote in altogether different styles, and Kierkegaard frequently gave vent to vigorous anti-Hegelian polemics. Yet ever since I was a graduate student in the late 1950s, Hegel and Kierkegaard have together (...) supplied most of my intellectual nourishment. Superficially the issues between them are obvious. With careful study they come mus less obvious, much harder to pin down, and yet, one sense, much more important than one had supposed. (shrink)

I want in these brief Notes to offer some critical observations on a text I admire very much. It appeared only after I had finally finished writing a work of my own, entitled Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking. This work focuses on Hegel’s assessments, interpretations, and transformations in Phenomenology of Spirit and writings that preceded it, of the basic religious narrative, from creation to last judgment, that Christian writers have avowed but variously interpreted since New Testament (...) times. So I will be discussing Hegel’s Ladder from a point of view formed in my long labors on that work, and with its focus in mind. I will be brief and as clear as I am able to be, painting with a broad brush without documentation, because my views have been documented in some detail in my book. Judging, in fact, from the fair-minded review of the book by Daniel Shannon that appeared in the Spring 2001 issue of the Owl, I may have been so detailed as to have lost the forest in the trees: all the more reason to keep things uncluttered here, so as to join a few issues. Not included in issues I consider worth discussing, however, are such questions as whether Hegel was a Christian, or a Christian apologist, or an atheist, or whether any sort of Christian might be eligible for Professor Harris’s Republic of the Learned. (shrink)

I. The word ‘history’ and its derivatives are used in many different senses among modern philosophers, theologians, and historians. While we need not rehearse here the various meanings of the word in current use, it will serve our purpose to call attention to a very general distinction which seems quite essential to any attempt to do so. Some meanings of ‘history’ or ‘historical’ refer to an actual course of events as they occur or are enacted. Other meanings refer to (...) the recollection, the piecing together, the reconstruction and interpretation of such a course of events after it has occurred, pre-eminently through the scholarly craft of the historian. Admittedly, even this innocent sounding distinction is fraught with difficulties. It is not as though there were an independent access to past events which could dispense with the historian’s methods. But to every event there is one relationship that requires no access at all: that of its participants, who enact it and are directly affected by it. They are in the event and it, so to speak, is in them. Indeed, though there are nonhuman factors in any event, it is the transaction of human participants which makes the event historical, which, in fact, constitutes the historical event. (shrink)

I want in these brief Notes to offer some critical observations on a text I admire very much. It appeared only after I had finally finished writing a work of my own, entitled Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking. This work focuses on Hegel’s assessments, interpretations, and transformations in Phenomenology of Spirit and writings that preceded it, of the basic religious narrative, from creation to last judgment, that Christian writers have avowed but variously interpreted since New Testament (...) times. So I will be discussing Hegel’s Ladder from a point of view formed in my long labors on that work, and with its focus in mind. I will be brief and as clear as I am able to be, painting with a broad brush without documentation, because my views have been documented in some detail in my book. Judging, in fact, from the fair-minded review of the book by Daniel Shannon that appeared in the Spring 2001 issue of the Owl, I may have been so detailed as to have lost the forest in the trees: all the more reason to keep things uncluttered here, so as to join a few issues. Not included in issues I consider worth discussing, however, are such questions as whether Hegel was a Christian, or a Christian apologist, or an atheist, or whether any sort of Christian might be eligible for Professor Harris’s Republic of the Learned. (shrink)

This is an exemplary edition of translated lectures by Hegel, both in the quality of the translation and in its editorial matter. The translated text is preceded by an Introduction devoted to historical and textual concerns, and is followed by a brief section-by-section commentary on its substance. A student who works his way through the entire volume will be well initiated into this important region of Hegel’s thought. It is good news that editions of the first and second parts (...) of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion are projected in conformity with the format and standard of this edition of Part III. (shrink)

Benchmarks against which healthcare ethics consultation (HCEC) services can assess their performance are needed. As first-generation benchmarks continue to be developed, it is the obligation of the field to continually evaluate how these measures reflect the performance of any single HCEC service. This will be possible only with widespread reporting of standardized data points. In their article in this issue of The Journal of Clinical Ethics, Glover and colleagues provide a valuable preliminary approach for assessing appropriate consult volumes for (...) a HCEC service. The limitations of their study read as a call to action for the field of clinical ethics to expand and standardize data reporting so that more robust metrics can be developed. In response to this call by Glover and colleagues, the Cleveland Clinic HCEC service provides consult data from 2015 through 2019 for one of its medical centers, and offers an additional volumebased metric, consult-to-ICU-to-bed ratio (CiBR), that may add nuance to any normative assessment of HCEC service consult volume. Given that volume-based metrics are the native language of the clinical environment, efforts to improve such metrics in the field through transparency and standardization are warranted. However, the expositive power of volume-based metrics is limited; additional domains related to quality and outcomes are needed. (shrink)

Organizational ethics programs often are created to address tensions in organizational values that have been identified through repeated clinical ethics consultation requests. Clinical ethicists possess some core competencies that are suitable for the leadership of high-quality organizational ethics programs, but they may need to develop new skills to build these programs, such as familiarity with healthcare delivery science, healthcare financing, and quality improvement methodology. To this end, we suggest that clinical ethicists build organizational ethics programs incrementally and via quality improvement (...) projects undertaken in collaboration with senior clinical leaders. Organizational ethics programs often differ from clinical ethics programs in their membership and processes, and likely will require ethicists to forge new partnerships with a wide array of organizational leaders. With attention to the ways that organizational ethics programs differ from clinical ethics programs, and investment in quality improvement methodology and formal institutional needs assessments, clinical ethics leaders can position an organizational ethics program to advocate effectively for visible and compelling alignment of leadership decision making with the values of the organization. (shrink)

Ellen Fox and collaborators have produced the most detailed description of healthcare ethics practices in the United States available. Some findings are shocking for anyone committed to promoting q...

Scholars and professional organizations in bioethics describe various approaches to “quality assessment” in clinical ethics. Although much of this work represents significant contributions to the literature, it is not clear that there is a robust and shared understanding of what constitutes “quality” in clinical ethics, what activities should be measured when tracking clinical ethics work, and what metrics should be used when measuring those activities. Further, even the most robust quality assessment efforts to date are idiosyncratic, in that they represent (...) evaluation of single activities or domains of clinical ethics activities, or a range of activities at a single hospital or healthcare system. Countering this trend, in this article we propose a framework for moving beyond our current ways of understanding clinical ethics quality, toward comprehensive quality assessment. We first describe a way to conceptualize quality assessment as a process of measuring disparate, isolated work activities; then, we describe quality assessment in terms of tracking interconnected work activities holistically, across different levels of assessment. We conclude by inviting future efforts in quality improvement to adopt a comprehensive approach to quality assessment into their improvement practices, and offer recommendations for how the field might move in this direction. (shrink)

Hegel came to maturity as a philosopher during the first years of the nineteenth century, developing through prodigious intellectual struggles a highly original conception of dialectic as a method for rationally comprehending traumatic historical change. At the same time, he continued a process begun earlier, of critical engagement with the Christian gospel and its historical ethos. Hegel spent much of his youth reacting against this drama and its cultural expression. By the time he published his early masterpiece, the _Phenomenology of (...) Spirit_, he had found an ingenious way of reconstructing it in counterpoint with his new dialectical understanding of historical experience. _Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel's Thinking_ tells the story of this interplay as it develops in Hegel's thinking. It culminates in a fresh interpretation of the _Phenomenology of Spirit_ and a detailed commentary on larger portions of the text relevant to that story. Crites's reading of the masterpiece is contextualized by three substantial chapters detailing the course of Hegel's reflections on Christian themes through the first thirty-five years of his life. These chapters are both biographical and textual, treating not only the philosopher’s personal and intellectual development but also the major cultural influences that informed it. Hegel is seen to have begun as a child of the Enlightenment powerfully, affected by the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment, who finds his way to his own position as a founding genius of German Idealism and its historical dialectic. His development is thus interpreted as an epitome of a major transformation in European intellectual history. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 37-39.

One of the most pressing ethical challenges facing phase I cancer research centres is the process of informed consent. Historically, most scholarship has been devoted to redressing therapeutic misconception, that is, the conflation of the nature and goals of research with those of therapy. While therapeutic misconception continues to be a major ethical concern, recent scholarship has begun to recognise that the informed consent process is more complex than merely a transfer of information and therefore cannot be evaluated only according (...) to how well an individual understands such information. Other components of decision-making operate independently of understanding and yet still may compromise the quality of informed consent. Notable among these components is unrealistic optimism, an event-specific belief that one has a better chance of receiving benefit than others similarly situated. In this article, we consider responses to interviews with parents who had recently completed an informed consent conference for enrolling their child in a phase I cancer clinical trial to examine how this influence manifests and how investigators might address it during informed consent. (shrink)

With the increasing professionalization of clinical ethics, some hospitals and health systems utilize both ethics committees and professional clinical ethicists to address their ethics needs. Drawing upon historical critiques of ethics committees and their own experiences, the authors argue that, in ethics programs with one or more professional clinical ethicists, ethics committees should be dissolved when they fail to meet minimum standards of effectiveness. The authors outline several criteria for assessing effectiveness, describe the benefits of a model that places primary (...) responsibility for ethics work with professional clinical ethicists—the PCE-primary model, and offer suggestions for alternative ethics program structures that empower healthcare professionals to contribute to ethics work in ways more tailored to their strengths and skills while minimizing the shortcomings of ethics committees. (shrink)

This review praises Hodgson’s study for exhibiting the experimental openness of Hegel’s thinking: far from being part of a closed system, Hegel’s philosophy of religion is a work in progress. But the review criticizes the final chapter of the study for hedging this openness, for narrowing Hegel’s contemporary legacy to a few currently fashionable gestures.

This review praises Hodgson’s study for exhibiting the experimental openness of Hegel’s thinking: far from being part of a closed system, Hegel’s philosophy of religion is a work in progress. But the review criticizes the final chapter of the study for hedging this openness, for narrowing Hegel’s contemporary legacy to a few currently fashionable gestures.

Mr. C is a twenty‐two‐year‐old who was flown to a level‐1 trauma center after diving headfirst into shallow water. Prior to this accident, he was in excellent health. At the scene, he had been conscious but was paralyzed and had no sensation below his neck. The emergency medical services team immobilized Mr. C's neck with a cervical collar and intubated him for airway protection before transport. As Mr. C's medical care proceeds, he expresses a desire for extubation, although it was (...) not clear that he had the capacity to make this (or any other) decision. It also was unclear whether this desire reflected his authentic wishes to be allowed to die or stemmed from feelings of discomfort and agitation. Over a period of several days, Mr. C's sedation was lightened, and the psychiatry service conducted a formal decision‐making capacity assessment. Mr. C continues to express a desire to withdraw life‐sustaining medical treatment. However, the psychiatry service is concerned that Mr. C seems to lack adequate insight into what it would mean to die.What does it mean to respect Mr. C's autonomy? (shrink)

This new edition of Will Kymlicka's best selling critical introduction to contemporary political theory has been fully revised to include many of the most significant developments in Anglo-American political philosophy in the last eleven years, particularly the new debates over issues of democratic citizenship and cultural pluralism. The book now includes two new chapters on citizenship theory and multiculturalism, in addition to updated chapters on utilitarianism, liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, socialism, communitarianism, and feminism. The many thinkers discussed include G. A. (...) Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, William Galston, Carol Gilligan, R. M. Hare, Chandran Kukathas, Catherine Mackinnon, David Miller, Philippe Van Parijs, Susan Okin, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, John Roemer, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, and Iris Young. Extended guides to further reading have been added at the end of each chapter, listing the most important books and articles on each school of thought, as well as relevant journals and websites. Covering some of the most advanced contemporary thinking, Will Kymlicka writes in an engaging, accessible, and non-technical way to ensure that the book is suitable for students approaching these difficult concepts for the first time. This second edition promises to build on the original edition's success as a key text in the teaching of modern political theory. (shrink)

Intellectual courage requires acting to promote epistemic goods despite significant risk of harm. Courage is distinguished from recklessness and cowardice because the expected epistemic benefit of a courageous action outweighs (in some sense) the threatened harm. Sometimes, however, inquirers pursue theories that are not best supported by their current evidence. For these inquirers, the expected epistemic benefit of their actions cannot be explained by appeal to their evidence alone. The probability of pursuing the true theory cannot contribute enough to the (...) expected epistemic benefit for the action to count as courageous rather than reckless. Thus, there must be some other epistemic consideration which favors their action, besides evidence for their theory. I argue that the proper account of intellectual courage requires recognition of inquisitive reasons: a distinct category of epistemic reasons which concern successful inquiry. This category includes reasons to think a theory itself is promising, e.g., that the theory suggests potentially fruitful new research. It also includes social epistemic reasons, e.g., that pursuing a theory will improve the distribution of cognitive labor. Inquisitive reasons help explain why researchers who pursue improbable theories count as intellectually courageous, rather than reckless. The expected epistemic benefit of an action is partially determined by the inquisitive reasons in its favor. On my account, intellectually courageous inquiry requires acting in a way that is sensitive to inquisitive reasons. (shrink)

The orthodox monadic determination thesis holds that we represent colour relations by virtue of representing colours. Against this orthodoxy, I argue that it is possible to represent colour relations without representing any colours. I present a model of iconic perceptual content that allows for such primitive relational colour representation, and provide four empirical arguments in its support. I close by surveying alternative views of the relationship between monadic and relational colour representation.

This paper resolves a paradox concerning colour constancy. On the one hand, our intuitive, pre-theoretical concept holds that colour constancy involves invariance in the perceived colours of surfaces under changes in illumination. On the other, there is a robust scientific consensus that colour constancy can persist in cerebral achromatopsia, a profound impairment in the ability to perceive colours. The first stage of the solution advocates pluralism about our colour constancy capacities. The second details the close relationship between colour constancy and (...) contrast. The third argues that achromatopsics retain a basic type of colour constancy associated with invariants in contrast processing. The fourth suggests that one person-level, conscious upshot of such processing is the visual awareness of chromatic contrasts ‘at’ the edges of surfaces, implicating the ‘colour for form’ perceptual function. This primitive type of constancy sheds new light on our most basic perceptual capacities, which mark the lower borders of representational mind. (shrink)

Prolific journalist, historian, political columnist, and practicing Catholic Wills (now 76) writes an intensely opinionated re-evaluation of leaders and celebrities he has encountered, among them Studs Terkel, Beverly Sills, William Buckley, Richard Nixon, and more.

Levinas, Storytelling and Anti-Storytelling explores the troubling nature of storytelling through a reading of the work of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas is a thinker who has a complex relationship with literature and with storytelling.

The author attempts to encompass the self, or a self, that, while at some times appears to be his own, at other times not, thus encompassing and continually morphing. It is a mixture of poetry and prose.

For them, citizenship is by definition a matter of treating people as individuals with equal rights under the law. This is what distinguishes democratic citizenship from feudal and other pre-modern views that determined people's political status by ...

Psychiatry widely assumes an internalist biomedical model of mental illness. I argue that many of psychiatry’s diagnostic categories involve an implicit commitment to constitutive externalism about mental illness. Some of these categories are socially externalist in nature.

Colour constancy is a foundational and yet puzzling phenomenon. Standard appearance invariantism is threatened by the psychophysical matching argument, which is taken to favour variantism. This argument, however, is inconclusive. The data at best support a pluralist view: colour constancy is sometimes variantist, sometimes invariantist. I add another potential explanation of these data, complex invariantism, which adopts an atypical six-dimensional model of colour appearance. Finally I prospect for a unifying conception of constancy among two neglected notions: discriminatory colour constancy and (...) relational colour constancy. The former arguably marks a common core capacity that is present across widely differing viewing contexts. (shrink)

If, as expressivists maintain, the function of normative thought and talk is not to represent or describe the world, then how can normative judgements be correct or incorrect? In particular, how can I make sense of my own normative fallibility, the possibility that my own normative judgements might be mistaken? In this paper, I construct and defend a substantive but non-representational theory of normative (in)correctness for expressivists. Inspired by Blackburn’s (1998: 318) proposal that I make sense of my fallibility in (...) terms of the possibility that my judgements might be unstable through improvement, my account is designed in the first instance to vindicate the expressivist’s conception of the nature of normative inquiry. I then defend the proposal from the charge that it leaves insufficient room for my own fallibility, and in particular from Egan’s (2007) argument that it implies a “smug” asymmetry between myself and others. Critical to the response is the appeal to indeterminacy in cases of fundamental normative disagreement between reasonable normative outlooks. (shrink)

in a very different sense, to refer to the cultural community, or cultural structure, itself On this view, the cultural community continues to exist even when its members arc free to modify the character of the culture, should they find its traditional ...

This paper presents a new response to the colour similarity argument, an argument that many people take to pose the greatest threat to colour physicalism. The colour similarity argument assumes that if colour physicalism is true, then colour similarities should be scrutable under standard physical descriptions of surface reflectance properties such as their spectral reflectance curves. Given this assumption, our evident failure to find such similarities at the reducing level seemingly proves fatal to colour physicalism. I argue that we should (...) dispense with this assumption, and thus endorse the inscrutability of colour similarity. This strategy is inspired by parallels between the colour similarity argument and the explanatory gap between mind and body made vivid by Jackson’s (1986) knowledge argument, and in particular by type-B physicalist responses to that argument. This inscrutability response is further motivated by cases in chemistry and biochemistry in which analogous scrutability theses fail to hold. Along the way, I present a challenge to standard formulations of the colour similarity argument based on the extreme context sensitivity of the similarity relation. Most presentations of the argument fail to control for such contextual variation, which raises the distinct possibility that the argument equivocates on the similarity relation across its premises. Although ultimately inconclusive, this context challenge forces a significant reformulation of the colour similarity argument, and highlights the need for much greater care in handling claims about colour similarity. (shrink)