This paper proposes a refocusing of consent for clinical genetic testing, moving away from an emphasis on autonomy and information provision, towards an emphasis on the virtues of healthcare professionals seeking consent, and the relationships they construct with their patients. We draw on focus groups with UK healthcare professionals working in the field of clinical genetics, as well as in-depth interviews with patients who have sought genetic testing in the UK’s National Health Service. We explore two aspects of consent: first, (...) how healthcare professionals consider the act of ‘consenting’ patients; and second how these professional accounts, along with the accounts of patients, deepen our understanding of the consent process. Our findings suggest that while healthcare professionals working in genetic medicine put much effort into ensuring patients’ understanding about their impending genetic test, they acknowledge, and we show, that patients can still leave genetic consultations relatively uninformed. Moreover, we show how placing emphasis on the informational aspect of genetic testing is not always reflective of, or valuable to, patients’ decision-making. Rather, decision-making is socially contextualised – also based on factors outside of information provision. A more collaborative on-going consent process, grounded in virtue ethics and values of honesty, openness and trustworthiness, is proposed. (shrink)

I provide an analysis of sentences of the form ‘To beFis to beG’ in terms of exact truth-maker semantics—an approach that identifies the meanings of sentences with the states of the world directly responsible for their truth-values. Roughly, I argue that these sentences hold just in case that which makes somethingFalso makes itG. This approach is hyperintensional and possesses desirable logical and modal features. In particular, these sentences are reflexive, transitive, and symmetric, and if they are true, then they are (...) necessarily true, and it is necessary that all and onlyFs areGs. I motivate my account over Correia and Skiles’ [11] prominent alternative and close by defining an irreflexive and asymmetric notion of analysis in terms of the symmetric and reflexive notion. (shrink)

Stephen Hawking, among others, has proposed that the topological stability of a property of space-time is a necessary condition for it to be physically significant. What counts as stable, however, depends crucially on the choice of topology. Some physicists have thus suggested that one should find a canonical topology, a single ‘right’ topology for every inquiry. While certain such choices might be initially motivated, some little-discussed examples of Robert Geroch and some propositions of my own show that the main candidates—and (...) each possible choice, to some extent—faces the horns of a no-go result. I suggest that instead of trying to decide what the ‘right’ topology is for all problems, one should let the details of particular types of problems guide the choice of an appropriate topology. (shrink)

One of the more interesting philosophical debates in the seventeenth century concerned the nature and explanation of qualities. In order to understand these debates, it is important to place them in their proper historical-philosophical context. This book chapter starts with theoretical background in the work of Aristotle and the atomists, and then moves on to survey various theories of motion and rest, light, color, and sound, as well as the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, as represented in the work (...) of such figures as Berkeley, Boyle, Charleton, Cordemoy, Descartes, Desgabets, Galileo, Gassendi, Hobbes, Locke, Malebranche, Newton, Régis, Rohault, and Sennert. (shrink)

The controversy over the equivalence of continuous sedation until death (CSD) and physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia (PAS/E) provides an opportunity to focus on a significant extended use of CSD. This extension, suggested by the equivalence of PAS/E and CSD, is designed to promote additional patient autonomy at the end-of-life. Samuel LiPuma, in his article, “Continuous Sedation Until Death as Physician-Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia: A Conceptual Analysis” claims equivalence between CSD and death; his paper is seminal in the equivalency debate. Critics contend that sedation (...) follows proportionality protocols for which LiPuma’s thesis does not adequately account. Furthermore, sedation may not eliminate consciousness, and as such LiPuma’s contention that CSD is equivalent to neocortical death is suspect. We not only defend the equivalence thesis, but also expand it to include additional moral considerations. First, we explain the equivalence thesis. This is followed by a defense of the thesis against five criticisms. The third section critiques the current use of CSD. Finally, we offer two proposals that, if adopted, would broaden the use of PAS/E and CSD and thereby expand options at the end-of-life. (shrink)

The Voluntary Simplicity Movement can be understood broadly as a diverse social movement made up of people who are resisting high consumption lifestyles and who are seeking, in various ways, a lower consumption but higher quality of life alternative. The central argument of this paper is that the Voluntary Simplicity Movement or something like it will almost certainly need to expand, organise, radicalise and politicise, if anything resembling a degrowth society is to emerge in law through democratic processes. In a (...) sentence, that is the ‘grass-roots’ or ‘bottom up’ theory of legal and political transformation that will be expounded and defended in this paper. The essential reasoning here is that legal, political and economic structures will never reflect a post-growth ethics of macro-economic sufficiency until a post-consumerist ethics of micro-economic sufficiency is embraced and mainstreamed at the cultural level. (shrink)

This paper discusses one particular way we may put the idea of sharing in ubuntu philosophy into practice: moderate selflessness. Moderate selflessness is an important tool that might help us pursue other‐regarding behaviour alongside the agent's genuine well‐being interests to help disrupt the antagonistic gap between humanity and nonhumanity. I suggest that, properly understood, moderate selflessness may provide conceptual resources to avoid antagonistic environmental practices, including the concerns of poverty and biodiversity loss.

Neste texto pretende-se mostrar certos ângulos da reflexão de Platão sobre a educação e sua temporalidade, privilegiando o tempo "interno" imbricado nas questões da areté, do conhecimento e da teleologia da vida humana. A dignidade do viver como meta dependente da razão normativa estrutura a ação daqueles que têm a Filosofia como reflexão específica para a educação da alma, conforme a pensou o filósofo.This paper aims to present some views about Plato’s reflection on education and its temporality, emphasizing the “inner” (...) time involved in questions of areté, knowledge and teleology of human life. The dignity of living as an aim dependant on normative reason , is a base to the action of those who have Philosophy as an specific reflection for the education of the soul, as the Philosopher regarded it. (shrink)

This review of the long-awaited English translation and edition of Pierre Klossowski’s Living Currency starts with a comparison of its historical context and our own in order to consider why this book remains important today. I support this comparison by examining its account of the “moral power” of industrial society to elicit the participation of the very people it exploits in their own exploitation. In short, Klossowski understands that this regime is based upon an affective arrangement that makes us, even (...) those of us who protest against it, into its ever-renewed source. Despite the apparent inescapability of this regime that is us, I suggest that Klossowski’s parodic utopia, in which the body becomes living currency, follows Georges Bataille to offer an ethics of the general economy that might, perhaps, enable us to subvert it and develop new ways of relating to ourselves and others. Careful consideration of the difficulties this translation encounters in a letter Michel Foucault sent to Klossowski, allows me to conclude by questioning how we are to interpret his book and this new edition. (shrink)

This volume is the first part of a larger work on the philosophy of Solomon Maimon and its systematic place in the history of thought. Here we deal with so me of the fundamental themes of Maimon's philosophy, including his examination of Kant's philosophy, his re lation to such immediate post-Kantians as Reinhold and Schulze, and the relation between him and Fichte. The second volume will concern itself with such aspects of Maimon's theoretical philosophy as the prob lem of the (...) categories, the relation between idea and fiction, the concept of a universal soul, and practical philosophy, that is, ethics and the philosophy of law. Chapters V, VII, and X of this volume contain, with substantial revisions in form and content, material that appeared originally in scholarly periodicals. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Hebrcw Union College A nnual for permission to use the substance of my articles: "Solomon Maimon's Treatment of the Problems of Antinomies and Its Relation to Maimonides," H.U.C.A., Vol. XXI; "Maimon and Mai monides," H.U.C.A., Vol. XXII, part one; and to the Journal 0/ the History 0/ I deas, for permission to use the substance of my essay "Solomon Maimon's Doctrine of Infinite Reason and Its Historical Relations," J.H.I., Vol. XIII, No. 2. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman has constructed two theories of simplicity: one of predicates; one of hypotheses. I offer a simpler theory by generalization and abstraction from his. Generalization comes by dropping special conditions Goodman imposes on which unexcluded extensions count as complicating and which excluded extensions count as simplifying. Abstraction is achieved by counting only nonisomorphic models and subinterpretations. The new theory takes into account all the hypotheses of a theory in assessing its complexity, whether they were projected prior to, or result (...) from, projection of a given hypothesis. It assigns simplicity post-projection priority over simplicity pre-projection. It better orders compound conditionals than does the theory of simplicity of hypotheses, and it does not inherit an anomaly of the theory of simplicity of predicates — its failure to order the ordering relations. Drop Goodman's special conditions, and the problems fall away with them. (shrink)

Cet article s’appuie sur les résultats d’une étude menée en partenariat entre une équipe pluridisciplinaire de cliniciens en santé mentale de Montréal, spécialisés en intervention auprès de personnes attirées par ou engagées dans l’extrémisme violent, et une équipe de recherche qui documente et étudie les interventions de l’équipe. L’étude documente l’émergence de systèmes de croyances de plus en plus dystopiques, hétérogènes et violents, particulièrement chez les jeunes. La perte de confiance dans les institutions et un malaise autour des représentations et (...) rôles de genre sont des thématiques récurrentes. Une analyse des dynamiques familiales et sociales dans les trajectoires de patients attirés par l’extrémisme violent suggère l’existence de processus traumatiques de quête de sens et d’appartenance qui font écho à des mécanismes de perte, de régression et de deuil. Les auteurs proposent de concevoir ce mécanisme comme un « deuil épistémique » qui pourrait aider à expliquer l’émergence d’idéologies hybrides dans le paysage de l’extrémisme violent. (shrink)

This is a phenomenological description of existential obedience, which draws out a contrast between it and ressentiment and existential envy, and compares it with pedagogical obedience. The discussion is developed with reference especially to the work of Erich Fromm, Emerson, and Nietzsche. Eds: This paper forms part of a special issue titled ‘Beyond Virtue and Vice: Education for a Darker Age’, in which the editors invited authors to engage in exercises of ‘transvaluation’. Certain apparently settled educational concepts (from agency and (...) fulfilment to alienation and ignorance) can be reinterpreted and transvaluated (in a Nietzschean vein) such that virtues become vices, and vices, virtues. The editors encouraged authors to employ polemics and some occasional exaggeration to reimagine educational values that are all too readily accepted within contemporary educational discourses. (shrink)