I first argue that the skeptic needs an internalist conception of justification for her argument for skepticism. I then argue that the skeptic also needs to show that we do not have perceptual access to the world if her skepticism is to be a real threat to human knowledge of the world. This, I conclude, puts the skeptic in a dilemma, for internalist conceptions of justification presuppose that we have perceptual access to the world.

The aim of the paper is to examine the problem of suffering in the book of Job and the possible solution it offers. For this reason, it is structured as follows: In the first section, we will analyse Job’s evidential argument; the second section will delve into the ”friends’ and their failed attempt at a retributive theodicy; finally, we shall look into God’s argument and try to explain Job’s answer in terms of sceptical theism.

According to the so-called Hempel’s Dilemma, the thesis of physicalism is either false or empty. Our intention in this paper is not to propose a solution to the Dilemma, but rather to argue as follows: to the extent that Hempel’s Dilemma applies to physicalism it equally applies to any theory that gives a deep-structure and changeable account of our experience or of high-level theories. In particular, we will show that it also applies to mind-body dualistic theories. The (...) scope of Hempel’s Dilemma turns out to be very wide: it is a special case of a general sceptical argument against changeable deep-structure theories in and outside science. (shrink)

This paper explores the cooperation mechanisms for the prisoner’s dilemma game, a canonical example for studying cooperation mechanisms, with Bayesian games. By the approach allowing simultaneous moves with the assumption that the players might be self-interested or norm-following, we establish four possible Bayesian game models, all of which are cooperation mechanisms for the prisoner’s dilemma game except for the model in which one of the two players must be self-interested.

Although deeply committed to the model of nondirective counseling, most genetic counselors enter the profession with certain assumptions about health and disability—for example, that it is preferable to be a hearing person than a deaf person. Thus, most genetic counselors are deeply troubled when parents with certain disabilities ask for assistance in having a child who shares their disability. This ethical challenge benefits little from viewing it as a conflict between beneficence and autonomy. The challenge is better recast as a (...) conflict between parental autonomy and the child's future autonomy. (shrink)

As these opening quotes acknowledge, the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) represents a core puzzle within the formal mathematics of game theory.3 Its rise in conspicuity is evident figure 2.1 above demonstrating a relatively steady rise in incidences of the phrase’s usage between 1960 to 1995, with a stable presence persisting into the twenty first century. This famous two-person “game,” with a stock narrative cast in terms of two prisoners who each independently must choose whether to remain silent or speak, each (...) advancing self-interest at the expense of the other and thereby achieving a mutually suboptimal outcome, mires any social interaction it is applied to into perplexity. The logic of this game proves the inverse of Adam Smith’s invisible hand: individuals acting on self interest will achieve a mutually suboptimal outcome. However, as this chapter illuminates, the assumptions underlying game theory drive this conclusion. (shrink)

Teaching economics has been shown to encourage students to defect in a prisoner's dilemma game. However, can ethics training reverse that effect and promote cooperation? We conducted an experiment to answer this question. We found that students who had the ethics module had higher rates of cooperation than students without the ethics module, even after controlling for communication and other factors expected to affect cooperation. We conclude that the teaching of ethics can mitigate the possible adverse incentives of the (...) prisoner's dilemma, and, by implication, the adverse effects of economics and business training. (shrink)

The work of the French Lithuanian Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, describes a perceptive rethinking of the possibility of concrete acts of goodness in the world, a rethinking never more necessary than now, in the wake of the cruel realities of the twentieth century—ten million dead in the First World War, forty million dead in the Second World War, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Soviet gulags, the grand slaughter of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” the pointless and gory Vietnam War, the Cambodian self-genocide and (...) many an attempted extermination from the face of the earth of entire nations of indigenous peoples. The list of horrors goes on and on—daily holocausts that do not distinguish between the civilian and the soldier, the guilty and the innocent, those deserving of life and those less deserving. (shrink)

The article discusses the problem of the possibility of knowing the future, especially the future of social phenomena compared with the future of natural ones. This problem is formulated as a dilemma: the future can be explored or can be only constructed. The idea of constructive character of knowledge of the future is viewed in two possible interpretations.The first one is a special case of the constructivist interpretation of knowledge, according to which different pictures of the future are arbitrarily (...) constructed on the basis of information about the past and current state. The second interpretaion can be presented in the form of a praxeological question: what should be an action in relation to the future, first and foremost to the future of social phenomena - cognitive or creative. It is shown that, in the first case, there is an ability to interpret knowledge of the future from the point of view of epistemological realism, in the second case, both cognitive and creative types of activity as a pragmatic position in relation to the future are necessary and cognitive activity cannot be reduced to creative one. It is also shown that forecaster’s dilemma reflects the problematic nature of forecasting under the conditions of transformation of scientific rationality and point of view of common sense, which is observed in recent decades. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest that in order to avoid some of the difficulties to which the contemporary discussion on the transcendental arguments has led we must discriminate different ways of understanding the sceptic’s challenge that Kant faces in the Critique of Pure Reason. In the first part, I expound a dilemma into which the Kantian epistemology could fall if we accept the characterization of the transcendental arguments as anti-sceptic arguments. In the second part, I present three ways of (...) understanding the sceptic’s challenge and the different strategies that could be developed to answer it correctly. (shrink)

Our study presents an overview of the issues that were brought forward by participants of a moral case deliberation (MCD) project in two elderly care organizations. The overview was inductively derived from all case descriptions (N = 202) provided by participants of seven mixed MCD groups, consisting of care providers from various professional backgrounds, from nursing assistant to physician. The MCD groups were part of a larger MCD project within two care institutions (residential homes and nursing homes). Care providers are (...) confronted with a wide variety of largely everyday ethical issues. We distinguished three main categories: ‘resident’s behavior’, ‘divergent perspectives on good care’ and ‘organizational context’. The overview can be used for agendasetting when institutions wish to stimulate reflection and deliberation. It is important that an agenda is constructed from the bottom-up and open to a variety of issues. In addition, organizing reflection and deliberation requires effort to identify moral questions in practice whilst at the same time maintaining the connection with the organizational context and existing communication structures. Once care providers are used to dealing with divergent perspectives, inviting different perspectives (e.g. family members) to take part in the deliberation, might help to identify and address ethical ‘blind spots’. (shrink)

Antibiotic allergies are commonly reported among patients, but most do not experience reactions on rechallenge with the same agents. These reported allergies complicate management of infections in patients labelled as having penicillin allergy, including serious infections where penicillin-based antibiotics are the first-line (most effective and least toxic) treatment option. Allergy labels are rarely questioned in clinical practice, with many clinicians opting for inferior second-line antibiotics to avoid a perceived risk of allergy. Reported allergies thereby can have significant impacts on patients (...) and public health, and present major ethical challenges. Antibiotic allergy testing has been described as a strategy to circumvent this dilemma, but it carries limitations that often make it less feasible in patients with acute infections or in community settings that lack access to allergy testing. This article provides an empirically informed ethical analysis of key considerations in this clinical dilemma, usingStaphylococcus aureusbacteraemia in patients with penicillin allergies as a case study. We argue that prescribing first-line penicillin-based antibiotics to patients with reported allergies may often present a more favourable ratio of benefits to risks, and may therefore be more ethically appropriate than using second-line drugs. We recommend changes to policy-making, clinical research and medical education, in order to promote more ethically acceptable responses to antibiotic allergies than the status quo. (shrink)

Questions of patient autonomy have formed an important part of ethical debate in medicine from at least the post-war period onwards. Although initially important as a counterweight to widespread medical paternalism, recent years have seen a reaction against a widely perceived ‘triumph of autonomy’. In particular, competent patients' refusal of life-saving or clearly beneficial treatment presents complex dilemmas for both healthcare professionals and ethicists. Discussion of the mechanism provided by the Israel Patient's Rights Act of 1996 for ethics committees to (...) override refusal of treatment by such patients has provided several examples in which it seems an obligation to benefit the patient can outweigh concerns regarding respect for their autonomy. However, such analyses as have been undertaken so far may be seen to omit important elements of the moral decision-making process that takes place even when the latter appears to ‘win out’. In addition to helping better prepare clinicians to meet such challenges in the future, a fuller appreciation of those elements that are present in justified cases of coercive treatment may enable them to arrive at a better understanding of what autonomy itself can mean in a medical context. (shrink)

The introduction of Western healthcare, via colonialism, into Africa facilitated a confrontation of indigenous and exogenous “medical” knowledge as well as the attendant praxis. Although colonialism has been expunged from the shores of Africa, the epistemic and ideological frictions it introduced into the sphere of healthcare linger and raise different dilemmas. Against this background, this paper explores pragmatic and ethical approaches that may help engage these tensions in the context of drug development based on validated traditional phytomedicines.

Among various cases that equally admit of evidentialist reasoning, the supposedly evidentialist solution has varying degrees of intuitive attractiveness. I suggest that cooperative reasoning may account for the appeal of apparently evidentialist behavior in the cases in which it is intuitively attractive, while the inapplicability of cooperative reasoning may account for the unattractiveness of evidentialist behaviour in other cases. A collective causal power with respect to agreed outcomes, not evidentialist reasoning, makes cooperation attractive in the Prisoners' Dilemma. And a (...) natural though unwarranted assumption of such a power may account for the intuitive appeal of the one-box response in Newcomb's Problem. (shrink)

The Skeptic’s Oakeshott poses the thesis that Michael Oakeshott’s political philosophy is best understood from the vantage point of his skepticism and his intellectual affinity to Hobbes. Margaret Thatcher based much of her political philosophy on Oakeshott’s theories, but Gerencser shows how she widely misinterpreted his work. He argues persuasively against those who understand Oakeshott in terms of the influence of British idealism. Instead, Gerencser argues that Oakeshott adopts and softens Hobbes' idea of consent as the basis of political authority. (...) By insisting that political authority has its source in acknowledgement and recognition, Oakeshott’s philosophy opens the doors to democratic politics. The book ends with persuasive criticisms of Oakeshott. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that hedonism about well-being faces a powerful dilemma. However, as I shall try to show here, this choice creates a dilemma for hedonism. On a subjective interpretation, hedonism is open to the familiar objection that pleasure is not the only thing desired or the only thing for which we possess a pro-attitude. On an objective interpretation, hedonism lacks an independent rationale. In this paper, I do not claim that hedonism fails once and for (...) all. However, this dilemma illustrates a serious problem for hedonism, the solution to which is not immediately obvious, and which must be addressed if hedonism is to be considered a serious competitor for the true theory of well-being. (shrink)

Background: There are intriguing and challenging ethical dilemmas in the practice of palliative care in a traditional developing society.Objective: To review the different ethical issues involved in cancer and palliative care in developing countries, with special reference to India.Methods: Published literature on pain relief and palliative care in the developing countries was reviewed to identify ethical issues and dilemmas related to these, and ways in which ethical principles could be observed in delivery of palliative care in such countries are discussed.Results: (...) The literature review revealed a number of ethical dilemmas and challenges that professionals, cancer patients and their families encountered during palliative care. It was noted that patients’ preferences and decisions are influenced by family members. Dilemmas leave the professionals and families confused about how ethical their actions have been. Specific ethical issues were noted in relation to the availability and use of oral morphine for pain relief, spiritual care, lack of adequate palliative care services, and palliative care education.Conclusions: The four principles of ethics posed difficulties in understanding the complex ethical issues in a developing country with a traditional background. Ethical issues need to be handled delicately and sensitively in palliative care settings, within the framework of the traditions and culture of the society and financial constraints. The possible role of ethics committees in palliative care settings to help decision-making needs to be studied and discussed. (shrink)

The ability to design technological solutions that address sustainability is considered pivotal to the future of the planet and its people. As technology professionals engineers are expected to play an important role in sustaining society. The present article aims at exploring sustainability concepts of newly enrolled engineering students in Denmark. Their understandings of sustainability and the role they ascribe to sustainability in their future professional practice is investigated by means of a critical discourse analysis including metaphor analysis and semiotic analysis. (...) The sustainability construal is considered to delimit possible ways of dealing with the concept in practice along the engineering education pathway and in professional problem solving. Five different metaphors used by the engineering students to illustrate sustainability are identified, and their different connotative and interpretive implications are discussed. It is found that sustainability represents a dilemma to the engineering students that situates them in a tension between their technology fascination and the blame they find that technological progress bears. Their sustainability descriptions are collected as part of a survey containing among other questions one open-ended, qualitative question on sustainability. The survey covers an entire year group of Danish engineering students in the first month of their degree study. (shrink)

Each of the chapters in this volume devotes considerable attention to defining and elaborating the notion of the frame problem-one of the hard problems of artificial intelligence. Not only do the chapters clarify the problems at hand, they shed light on the different approaches taken by those in artificial intelligence and by certain philosophers who have been concerned with related problems in their field. The book should therefore not be read merely as a discussion of the frame problem narrowly conceived, (...) but also as a general analysis of what could be a major challenge to the design of computer systems exhibiting general intelligence. (shrink)

P.S. Greenspan uses the treatment of moral dilemmas as the basis for an alternative view of the structure of ethics and its relation to human psychology. In its treatment of the role of emotion in ethics the argument of the book outlines a new way of packing motivational force into moral meaning that allows for a socially based version of moral realism.

If we seek to analyse causation in terms of counterfactual conditionals then we must assume that there is a class of counterfactuals whose members (i) are all and only those we need to support our judgements of causation, (ii) have truth-conditions specifiable without any irreducible appeal to causation. I argue that (i) and (ii) are unlikely to be met by any counterfactual analysis of causation. I demonstrate this by isolating a class of counterfactuals called non-projective counterfactuals, or NP-counterfactuals, and indicate (...) how counterfactual analyses of causation must appeal to them to account for the correct causal judgements we make. I show that the truth-conditions of NP-counterfactuals are specifiable only by irreducible appeal to causation. A dilemma then holds: if counterfactual analyses of causation eschew appeal to NP-counterfactuals they are empirically inadequate, but if they appeal to NP-counterfactuals they are circular and thus conceptually inadequate. (shrink)

In this paper, I support a hybrid form of expressivism called constructive ecumenical expressivism (CEE) which I have previously used (to attempt) to resolve the gamer’s dilemma. (Young, 2016. Resolving the gamer’s dilemma. London: Palgrave Macmillan.) In support of CEE, I argue that the various other attempts at either resolving, dissolving or resisting the dilemma are consistent with CEE’s moral framework. That is, with its way of explaining what a claim to morality is, with how moral norms (...) are established, with the role intuition is able to play in establishing these norms, and therefore with how the gamer’s dilemma can be resolved. I also demonstrate, more broadly, how CEE advocates robust relativism as a means of justifying the constructed moral norm’s normative credentials, and therefore how one society’s norm can be judged morally superior to another’s. (shrink)

Our study presents an overview of the issues that were brought forward by participants of a moral case deliberation (MCD) project in two elderly care organizations. The overview was inductively derived from all case descriptions (N = 202) provided by participants of seven mixed MCD groups, consisting of care providers from various professional backgrounds, from nursing assistant to physician. The MCD groups were part of a larger MCD project within two care institutions (residential homes and nursing homes). Care providers are (...) confronted with a wide variety of largely everyday ethical issues. We distinguished three main categories: ‘resident’s behavior’, ‘divergent perspectives on good care’ and ‘organizational context’. The overview can be used for agendasetting when institutions wish to stimulate reflection and deliberation. It is important that an agenda is constructed from the bottom-up and open to a variety of issues. In addition, organizing reflection and deliberation requires effort to identify moral questions in practice whilst at the same time maintaining the connection with the organizational context and existing communication structures. Once care providers are used to dealing with divergent perspectives, inviting different perspectives (e.g. family members) to take part in the deliberation, might help to identify and address ethical ‘blind spots’. (shrink)

This is a breakthrough work expanding the debate of the dilemmas of life and death in contemporary American society by carrying it beyond the insights of Western religious and philosophic thought to include ethical perspectives of the Hindu tradition. The topics covered are the timely ethical issues that concern both Americans and all people of the world — abortion, suicide, euthanasia, and the environment. A lively East-West dialogue probes the roots of each issue in its native setting, and the fruit (...) of this historical approach is a clear-cut analysis of up-to-date cases, giving their current status in terms of ethics, religion, philosophy, medicine, and law. Unlike traditional textbooks that concentrate on a theoretical analysis to the exclusion of practical issues, this book does justice to both theoretical and practical ethics. (shrink)

Next SectionBackground: Physicians face ethical difficulties daily, yet they seek ethics consultation infrequently. To date, no systematic data have been collected on the strategies they use to resolve such difficulties when they do so without the help of ethics consultation. Thus, our understanding of ethical decision making in day to day medical practice is poor. We report findings from the qualitative analysis of 310 ethically difficult situations described to us by physicians who encountered them in their practice. When facing such (...) situations, the physicians sought to avoid conflict, obtain assistance, and protect the integrity of their conscience and reputation, as well as the integrity of the group of people who participated in the decisions. These goals could conflict with each other, or with ethical goals, in problematic ways. Being aware of these potentially conflicting goals may help physicians to resolve ethical difficulties more effectively. This awareness should also contribute to informing the practice of ethics consultation. Objective: To identify strategies used by physicians in dealing with ethical difficulties in their practice. Design, setting, and participants: National survey of internists, oncologists, and intensive care specialists by computer assisted telephone interviews (n = 344, response rate = 64%). As part of this survey, we asked physicians to tell us about a recent ethical dilemma they had encountered in their medical practice. Transcripts of their open-ended responses were analysed using coding and analytical elements of the grounded theory approach. Main measurements: Strategies and approaches reported by respondents as part of their account of a recent ethical difficulty they had encountered in their practice. Results: When faced with ethical difficulties, the physicians avoided conflict and looked for assistance, which contributed to protecting, or attempting to protect, the integrity of their conscience and reputation, as well as the integrity of the group of people who participated in the decisions. These efforts sometimes reinforced ethical goals, such as following patients’ wishes or their best interests, but they sometimes competed with them. The goals of avoiding conflict, obtaining assistance, and protecting the respondent’s integrity and that of the group of decision makers could also compete with each other. Conclusion: In resolving ethical difficulties in medical practice, internists entertained competing goals that they did not always successfully achieve. Additionally, the means employed were not always the most likely to achieve those aims. Understanding these aspects of ethical decision making in medical practice is important both for physicians themselves as they struggle with ethical difficulties and for the ethics consultants who wish to help them in this process. (shrink)

Most people agree that murder is wrong. Yet, within computer games virtual murder scarcely raises an eyebrow. In one respect this is hardly surprising, as no one is actually murdered within a computer game. A virtual murder, some might argue, is no more unethical than taking a pawn in a game of chess. However, if no actual children are abused in acts of virtual paedophilia (life-like simulations of the actual practice), does that mean we should disregard these acts with the (...) same abandon we do virtual murder? In this paper I shall outline several arguments which attempt to permit virtual murder, whilst prohibiting virtual paedophilia. (shrink)

Online education lacks the moral and ethical engagement as well as the empathic interactions that are essential and integral to true liberal education, including business. While the online venue can provide useful information and put libraries at the hands of the student or employee, there is an implicit lack of focus on the sacredness and centrality of the person, his or her values, attitudes, needs, and expectations. The focus of online education is on the delivery of data, not the student’s (...) engagement with the material or the process. Critically absent from online education is the ability to explore the transformation of data as it changes, first to information, then to knowledge, and finally to wisdom, within each person. Finally, absent is the ability to raise the level of abstraction. Since all needs to be measurable in concrete terms in online education, we are left with the language of metrics, such as deliverables, outcomes, inputs, and outputs. Where is the person in all of this? Where is the focus on the moral compass that is so necessary in any type of education? (shrink)

(1992). The prisoner's dilemma and educational provision: A reply to Ruth Jonathan. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 118-133.

Background: Ethics support services are growing in Europe to help doctors in dealing with ethical difficulties. Currently, insufficient attention has been focused on the experiences of doctors who have faced ethical difficulties in these countries to provide an evidence base for the development of these services.Methods: A survey instrument was adapted to explore the types of ethical dilemma faced by European doctors, how they ranked the difficulty of these dilemmas, their satisfaction with the resolution of a recent ethically difficult (...) case and the types of help they would consider useful. The questionnaire was translated and given to general internists in Norway, Switzerland, Italy and the UK.Results: Survey respondents ranged in age from 28 to 82 years, and averaged 25 years in practice. Only a minority reported having access to ethics consultation in individual cases. The ethical difficulties most often reported as being encountered were uncertain or impaired decision-making capacity , disagreement among caregivers and limitation of treatment at the end of life . The frequency of most ethical difficulties varied among countries, as did the type of issue considered most difficult. The types of help most often identified as potentially useful were professional reassurance about the decision being correct , someone capable of providing specific advice , help in weighing outcomes and clarification of the issues . Few of the types of help expected to be useful varied among countries.Conclusion: Cultural differences may indeed influence how doctors perceive ethical difficulties. The type of help needed, however, did not vary markedly. The general structure of ethics support services would not have to be radically altered to suit cultural variations among the surveyed countries. (shrink)

This paper defends three theses: that presentism is either trivial or untenable; that the debate between tensed and tenseless theories of time is not about the status of presentism; and that there is no temporal analogue of the modal thesis of actualism.

Context: In the past two decades, the so-called 4E approaches to the mind and cognition have been rapidly gaining in recognition and have become an integral part of various disciplines. Problem: Recently, however, questions have been raised as to whether, and to what degree, these different approaches actually cohere with one another. Specifically, it seems that many of them endorse mutually incompatible, perhaps even contradictory, epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions. Method: By retracing the roots of an alternative conception of mind and (...) cognition, as propounded by Varela, Thompson & Rosch, we provide an outline of the original philosophical framework of enactivism and neurophenomenology. We focus on its three central tenets - reflexivity, subject-world co-determination, and the construal of cognition as situated, skillful and embodied action - and show how they collectively add up to a radical change in attitude towards the age-old philosophical dilemmas. Results: We show how contemporary enactivist and embodied approaches relate to the original Varelian conception, and argue that many of them, despite frequent claims to the contrary, adopt significantly less radical philosophical positions. Further, we provide some tentative suggestions as to why this dilution of the original impetus might have occurred, paying special attention to the deep-rooted disparities that span the field. Implications: It is argued that more attention should be paid to epistemological and metaphysical tenets of different proposals within the 4E movement in general and enactivism in particular. Additionally, in emphasizing the inescapable multilayeredness and contextuality of scientific knowledge, enactivism and neurophenomenology accord with pluralist accounts of science and might provide important contributions to contemporary debates in the field. Constructivist content: The epistemological odyssey, construed as a journey to find a middle way between realism and idealism, is a central tenet of anti-representationalist, non-dualist constructivist approaches aimed at avoiding age-old philosophical traps. (shrink)

The traditional desire view of painfulness maintains that pain sensations are painful because the subject desires that they not be occurring. A significant criticism of this view is that it apparently succumbs to a version of the Euthyphro Dilemma: the desire view, it is argued, is committed to an implausible answer to the question of why pain sensations are painful. In this paper, I explain and defend a new desire view, and one which can avoid the Euthyphro Dilemma. (...) This new view maintains that painfulness is a property, not of pain sensations, but of a pain experience, understood as a relational state constituted by a pain sensation and a desire that the sensation not be occurring. (shrink)

We examine the relationship between scientific knowledge and the legal system with a focus on the exclusion of expert testimony from trial as ruled by the Daubert standard in the US.We introduce a simple framework to understand and assess the role of judges as “gatekeepers”, monitoring the admission of science in the courtroom. We show how judges face a crucial choice, namely, whether to limit Daubert assessment to the abstract reliability of the methods used by the expert witness or also (...) to check whether the application of those methods was correct. Undesirable outcomes result from both choices, thereby giving rise to the “gatekeeper’s dilemma.” We illustrate the dilemma by analyzing in some detail two well-known cases of Daubert challenges to economic experts. Finally, we present reasons for the absence of straightforward solutions to the dilemma and for its likely endurance. (shrink)