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)

The ethical theory discoverable in Hegel’s writings assigns, on Dean Moyar’s reading, an important role to the idea of conscience. Hegel’s discussion of conscience presents a theory of practical reasoning which requires that one be able to nest the particular purposes that motivate one’s actions in the objective purposes that have normative status insofar as they prevail in the institutions of modern ethical life. Those norms are legitimized by the fact that the institutions in question, most especially the state, predicate (...) themselves on their recognition of the rights of the particular individual. Individuals are not simply passive in relation to ethical, institutional norms. Individual moral deliberation plays a key role in the ethical development of society. Nonetheless, the norms that the state requires the individual to recognize do seem to be, in the last analysis, beyond appeal. Hegel makes, and Moyar presents, a powerful case for this position. Nonetheless, pacifist arguments present this position with a serious challenge. (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)

Can the conception of God in Hegel’s philosophy of religion provide a resource for current philosophical theology? The argument in William Desmond’sHegel’s God: A Counterfeit Double? entails a strongly negative response. Desmond argues that the basic commitments of Hegel’s speculative philosophyentail a systematic inability adequately to conceive of divine transcendence. In this article, I address this claim by examining Hegel’s conception of God inrelation to the issues of (i) the religious representation and the philosophical concept, (ii) the nature of speculative (...) thinking and the conception of God, (iii) the idea of creation, and (iv) affirming the truth about divine transcendence. In each case I argue that Desmond’s critique is unwarranted. A more appropriate attitude towards Hegel on the question of God combines critique with an effort at discovering and appropriating philosophical principles that are productive for current philosophical theology. (shrink)

World Health Organization [WHO] -- Australia -- Belgium -- Bulgaria -- Canada -- [People's Republic of] China -- Czech Republic -- France -- Hellas [Greece] -- Hungary -- Ireland -- Israel -- Malaysia -- The Netherlands -- Nigeria -- Peru -- Poland -- Singapore -- South Africa -- Spain -- Sweden -- United Kingdom -- United States of America -- Uruguay.

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)

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)

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)

In this paper I argue that Isaiah Berlin’s theory of freedom should not be interpreted in a reductive sense. The distinction between negative and positive freedom, as different concepts and possibly conflicting values, truly holds (thereby excluding reductive interpretations that claim there is only one concept of freedom). Moreover, Berlin’s theory as a whole leaves room for both a comprehensive liberalism which advocates autonomy, critical reflection and personal judgement, as well as a liberalism of fear which defends a minimal level (...) of decency and modesty aims at a modus vivendi. I think Berlin’s liberalism is one of hope and fear. (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)

In the early 1970s Harry Frankfurt argued that so-called 'coercive threats' cause a violation of their victim's autonomy, thereby excluding him from moral responsibility. A person is therefore not responsible for doing what he is forced to do. Although this seems correct on an intuitive level, I will use Frankfurt's later vocabulary of 'care' and 'love' in order to show that threats essentially involve an abuse of a person's autonomy instead of an infringement or violation thereof. Still, if we want (...) to understand the sense of reluctance that is involved in acting under threat, as well as the sense of responsibility that befalls both the victim as well as the perpetrator, then we have to move beyond the Frankfurtian framework. (shrink)

Hegel and Lonergan both make important contributions to the contemporary task of developing philosophical considerations of God within the context of a philosophy of religion. Hegel maintains that philosophy must both present knowledge of God as God is in godself, and present an account of God’s involvement with the human community. One accomplishes this two-sided task, Hegel believes, through the philosophical appropriation of the religious representation. If this appropriation is rightly understood, there is little in it to which Longern should (...) object, and a great deal that he might endorse, given his own views about the relation between philosophy of religion and philosophy of God. At the same time, Lonergan would rightly object to what at times seems at least to be Hegel’s annulment of religious mystery, and the claim Hegel sometimes seems to make that the cognitive achievements of philosophy result in a sublation of the existential concerns of religion. Lonergan argues for positions that make possible important corrections of these problems. (shrink)

Why ought we concern ourselves with understanding a concept of evil? It is an elusive and politically charged concept which critics argue has no explanatory power and is a relic of a superstitious and primitive religious past. Yet its widespread use persists today: we find it invoked by politicians, judges, journalists, and many others to express the view that certain actions, persons, institutions, or ideologies are not just morally problematic but require a special signifier to mark them out from the (...) ordinary and commonplace. Therefore, the question of what a concept of evil could mean and how it fits into our moral vocabulary remains an important and pressing concern. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evil provides an outstanding overview and exploration of these issues and more, bringing together an international team of scholars working on the concept of evil. Its 27 chapters cover the crucial discussions and arguments, both historical and contemporary, that are needed to properly understand the historical development and complexity of the concept of evil. The Handbook is divided into three parts: Historical explorations of evil Recent secular explorations of evil Evil and other issues. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evil is essential reading for students and researchers in the fields of ethics and philosophy of psychology. It also provides important insights and background for anyone exploring the concept of evil in related subjects such as literature, politics, and religion. (shrink)

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)

The main task of Cognitive Science is to construct concepts and models that would be superordinate to knowledge in the various particular cognitive sciences. In particular, one major objective is to formulate a hypergeneral description of representations that could encompass all descriptions given in subordinate domains.A first basic distinction is between natural and rational representations, i.e. given mental entities and representations that are governed by prescriptive rules coming from logical or scientific thought. In addition, representations must be described in respect (...) to several sources of variability, which are tentatively listed here.Description of natural representations is based on a distinction between taken representations, which are mental events, and type representations, which are lasting structures registered in memory. The connection between them can be modelled through the concept of activation.One advantage of activation models is their large compatibilty, not only with experimental evidence in cognitive psychology, but also with facts and hypotheses in neurosciences, and programming modes or requirements in artificial intelligence. Comprehension of natural language is a highly representative domain in this respect, which exemplifies the power of these concepts. (shrink)

This volume collects the papers given at the meeting of the Hegel Society of America held in November, 1972, at the University of Notre Dame. As the editors point out in their Foreword, these papers fall under two general headings, “ Hegel’s conception of the history of philosophy in general, and his relation to individual thinkers both before and after him.” The value of these essays lies not only in their being carefully informative regarding these two themes, although they are (...) this. But there also emerge from reflection upon these essays philosophical problems important to anyone doing philosophy in the Hegelian manner. The following brief review of the essays will depart from the order of the text by considering the second essay first. (shrink)