Although Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College, Alvin Plantinga has developed a theodicy that is fundamentally Arminian rather than Calvinistic. Anthony Flew, although the son of an Arminian Christian minister, regards the Arminian view of ‘free will’ to be both unacceptable on its own terms and incompatible with classical Christian theism. In this paper I hope to disentangle some of the involved controversy regarding theodicy which has developed between Plantinga and Flew, and between Flew and myself. The major portion (...) of this paper is devoted to showing that Plantinga's theodicy contains some serious flaws and undesirable implications. (shrink)

Cerebral organoid models in-of-themselves are considered as an alternative to research animal models. But their developmental and biological limitations currently inhibit the probability that organoids can fully replace animal models. Furthermore, these organoid limitations have, somewhat ironically, brought researchers back to the animal model via xenotransplantation, thus creating hybrids and chimeras. In addition to attempting to study and overcome cerebral organoid limitations, transplanting cerebral organoids into animal models brings an opportunity to observe behavioral changes in the animal itself. Traditional animal (...) ethics frameworks, such as the well-known three Rs (reduce, refine, and replace), have previously addressed chimeras and xenotransplantation of tissue. But these frameworks have yet to completely assess the neural-chimeric possibilities. And while the three Rs framework was a historical landmark in animal ethics, there are identifiable gaps in the framework that require attention. The authors propose to utilize an expanded three Rs framework initially developed by David DeGrazia and Tom L. Beauchamp, known as the Six Principles (6Ps). This framework aims to expand upon the three Rs, fill in the gaps, and be a practical means for assessing animal ethical issues like that of neural-chimeras and cerebral organoid xenotransplantation. The scope of this 6Ps application will focus on two separate but recent studies, which were published in 2019 and 2020. First, they consider a study wherein cerebral organoids were grown from donors with Down syndrome and from neurotypical donors. After these organoids were grown and studied, they were then surgically implanted into mouse models to observe the physiological effects and any behavioral change in the chimera. Second, they consider a separate study wherein neurotypical human embryonic stem cell-derived cerebral organoids were grown and transplanted into mouse and macaque models. The aim was to observe if such a transplantation method would contribute to therapies for brain injury or stroke. The authors place both studies under the lens of the 6Ps framework, assess the relevant contexts of each case, and provide relevant normative conclusions. In this way, they demonstrate how the 6Ps could be applied in future cases of neural-chimeras and cerebral organoid xenotransplantation. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo present the ethical issues, moral arguments, and reasons found in the ethical literature on organoid models.DesignIn this systematic review of reasons in ethical literature, we selected sources based on predefined criteria: The publication mentions moral reasons or arguments directly relating to the creation and/or use of organoid models in biomedical research; These moral reasons and arguments are significantly addressed, not as mere passing mentions, or comprise a large portion of the body of work; The publication is peer-reviewed and published (...) in an academic article, book, national-level report, working paper, or Ph.D. thesis; The publications collected are in English.AnalysisEach article was read in-depth for identifiable moral reasons, arguments, and concerns. These were then inductively classified and synthesized to create broader categories of reasons, and eventually an overarching conceptual scheme was created.ResultsA total of twenty-three sources were included and analyzed out of an initial 266 collected sources. Five themes of ethical issues and arguments were found: Animal Experimentation; Clinical Applications and Experiments; Commercialization and Consent; Organoid Ontology and Moral Status; and Research Ethics and Research Integrity. These themes are then further broken down into sub-themes and topics. Given the extensive nature of the topics found, we will focus on describing the topics that comprised of more in-depth reasons and arguments rather than few, passing mentions or concerns.ConclusionsThe ethics of organoids requires further deliberation in multiple areas, as much of the discussions are not presented as in-depth arguments. Such sentiments are also echoed throughout the organoid ethics literature. (shrink)

In his article, “What should ChatGPT mean for bioethics?” I. Glenn Cohen explores the bioethical implications of Open AI’s chatbot ChatGPT and the use of similar Large Language Models (LLMs) (Cohen...

Ethical deliberations are unfolding for potentially controversial organoid‐entities such as brain organoids and embryoids. Much of the ethical deliberation centers on the questionable moral status of such organoid‐entities. However, while such work is important and appropriate, ethical deliberations may become too exclusively rooted in moral status and potentially overshadow other relevant moral dilemmas. The ethical discussion on organoid models can benefit from insights brought forth by both Judith Jarvis Thomson and Don Marquis in how they attempted to advance the abortion (...) debate. To discuss other abortion ethical issues more fully, both Thomson and Marquis assumed differing moral status positions of the conceptus and followed lines of reasoning based on these moral status assumptions. We suggest a similar approach with controversial organoid‐entities like brain organoids and embryoids. To avoid overshadowing or overlooking other relevant ethical issues, ethicists ought to first assume an organoid‐entity moral status position (such as a high moral status or no moral status) and explore any possible arguments that may result from such a position. While we ought not to copy the content of Thomson and Marquis' arguments exactly for organoid‐entities, it is worthwhile to translate their arguments' overarching structures. This paper explores the relevant insights of Thomson and Marquis, how they can be translated into the organoid ethics debate, and what possible lines of inquiry may be worth exploring based on particular moral status assumptions. (shrink)

Comparisons, and by that I mean the hunt for essential similarities or at least serious family resemblances, between the ethical views of Western and non-Western thinkers have been a staple of comparative philosophy for quite some time now. Some of these comparisons, such as between the views of Aristotle and Confucius, seem especially apt and revealing. However, I’ve often wondered whether Western “ethical theory”—virtue ethics, deontology, or consequentialism—is always the best lens through which to approach non-Western ethical thought. Particularly when (...) the discussion has turned to Buddhism and Buddhist ethics, theories of this sort at best seem to have an uncertain application. This is not to say that .. (shrink)

Effects of linguistic labels on learning outcomes are well-established; however, developmental research examining possible mechanisms underlying these effects have provided mixed results. We used a novel paradigm where 8-year-olds and adults were simultaneously trained on three sparse categories (categories with many irrelevant or unique features and a single rule defining feature). Category members were either associated with the same label, different labels, or no labels (silent baseline). Similar to infant paradigms, participants passively viewed individual exemplars and we examined fixations to (...) category relevant features across training. While it is well established that adults can optimize their attention in forced-choice categorization tasks without linguistic input, the present findings provide support for label induced attention optimization: simply hearing the same label associated with different exemplars was associated with increased attention to category relevant features over time, and participants continued to focus on these features on a subsequent recognition task. Participants also viewed images longer and made more fixations when images were paired with unique labels. These findings provide support for the claim that labels may facilitate categorization by directing attention to category relevant features. (shrink)

The discourse surrounding mental health conditions (MHCs) can fluctuate between versions of the medical model, which views such conditions as pathologies requiring clinical intervention, and the ne...

In recent debates on digital twins, much attention has been paid to understanding the interaction between individuals and their digital representations (Braun, 2021). Iglesias et al. (2025) shed ne...

A. To Be Is to Be Related. In opposition to a nineteenth century version of atomistic individualism and eighteenth century romanticism, such idealists as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, and Josiah Royce have contended that individual freedom rises only within an organic whole of some sort. For them the question of human freedom has to do not so much with the issue of the individual vs. society as with the kind of individuals that arise out of the (...) community. Individuals enjoy freedom, not despite the social organism, but in and through it. The idealistic doctrine of “internal relations” is carried into philosophical psychology as well as into social and political philosophy. To be is to be related—that is the idealistic answer to atomistic individualism and ethical egoism. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to develop a Christian doctrine of the Incarnation in the light of a process philosophy of the type expounded by A. N. Whitehead and E. S. Brightman. Rather than offer at this time a detailed defence either of the idea of incarnation or of process philosophy, I wish to show that the two can be coherently related in such a way that each receives a greater degree of completion and clarity. Of course risks are (...) unavoidable in any attempt to make Athens and Jerusalem respond to one another. But the risks and losses would be even greater if the way of isolation and of mutually ignoring one another were accepted. (shrink)

By naturalized epistemology, I mean those views expressed by Nozick and Margolis among others who favor an evolutionary account of human rationality as an adaptive mechanism which is unlikely to provide the means for its own legitimation and therefore unlikely to produce a single set of rules or norms which are certifiably rational. Analyzing the likely relativism that stems from such a view, namely that there could be divergent standards of rationality under different historical or environmental conditions, I conclude that (...) evolutionary epistemologies are unable to account for rationality as an experienced capacity on the part of human beings. After giving a few examples of what seem to me to be cases where we do experience a form of reason that appears antinomian, I challenge a naturalized view of mind to embrace and provide some sort of explanatory account of this kind of mental elasticity that it both seems to make room for and is certainly not unfamiliar to other philosophical perspectives such as that of Zen Buddhism. (shrink)

In his article "Can the East Help the West to Value Nature?" Holmes Rolston, III, wrote that Eastern religious insights would need considerable reformulation in order for us to answer affirmatively the question posed in his title. The present article, while arguing that such an assessment is unduly harsh, goes on to evaluate critically the various Asian ideas of nature, arguing that their ethical consequences are no worse than those of the postmodern concept of nature endorsed by Rolston, Callicott, and (...) others. (shrink)

An essay exploring various manifestations of anthropomorphism in history and possible explanations of why it endures.