In an increasingly data-driven age of medicine, do companies that offer genetic testing directly to patients represent an important part of personalising care, or a dangerous threat to privacy? Should we celebrate this new mechanism of patient involvement, or fear its implications?The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge addressed these issues in the 10th annual Medical Ethics Varsity Debate, through the motion: “This House Regrets the Rise of Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing”. This article summarises and extends key arguments made in the debate, (...) exploring the impacts of such genetic testing on both the individual patient and broader society, with special consideration as to whether companies can ever truly guarantee anonymity of genetic data. (shrink)

Why should the work of the ancient and the medievals, so far as it relates to nature, still be of interest and an inspiration to us now? The contributions to this enlightening volume explore and uncover contemporary scholarship's debt to the classical and medieval past. Thinking About the Environment synthesizes religious thought and environmental theory to trace a trajectory from Mesopotamian mythology and classical and Hellenistic Greek, through classical Latin writers, to medieval Christian views of the natural world and (...) our relationship with it. The work also offers medieval Arabic and Jewish views on humanity's inseparability from nature. The volume concludes with a study of the breakdown between science and value in contemporary ecological thought. Thinking About the Environment will be a invaluable source book for those seeking to address environmental ethics from a historical perspective. (shrink)

A central question in the philosophy of science is: What is a law of nature? Different answers to this question define an important schism: Humeans, in the wake of David Hume, hold that the laws of nature are nothing over and above what actually happens and reject irreducible facts about natural modality (Lewis, 1983, 1994; cf. Miller, 2015). According to Non-Humeans, by contrast, the laws are metaphysically fundamental (Maudlin, 2007) or grounded in primitive modal structures, such as dispositional essences of (...) powerful properties (Bird, 2007), necessitation relations (Armstrong, 1983), or primitive subjunctive facts (Lange, 2009). This volume focuses on recent developments in the discussion of Humeanism, specifically on pragmatic versions of the view that put the needs of limited agents like us front and center. (shrink)

First, this collection seeks to examine exactly what Levinass writings mean for both Jews and Christians. Second, it takes a snapshot of the current state of Jewish-Christian dialogue, using Levinas as the rationale for the discussion. Three generations of Levinas scholars are represented. Contributors: Leora Batnitzky, Jeffrey Bloechl, Richard A. Cohen, Paul Franks, Robert Gibbs, Kevin Hart, Dana Hollander, Robyn Horner, Jeffrey L. Kosky, Jean-Luc Marion, Michael Purcell, Michael A. Signer, Merold Westphal, Elliott R. Wolfson, Edith Wyschogrod.

Erfüllen gewachsene Demokratien in der industrialisierten Welt das Versprechen einer Volksherrschaft oder stehen sie unter dem Einfluss einer Elite aus Politik und Wirtschaft? Von dieser Frage ausgehend entwickelt die vorliegende Monographie ein Demokratiemodell, das sich auf das Verhältnis zwischen Macht und Ohnmacht in der Gesellschaft bezieht und darauf eine moralische Verpflichtung in der Politik zurückführt. Der Text untersucht, unter welchen Bedingungen in Demokratien die individuelle Autonomie und Selbstbestimmung maximiert und die Androhung und Anwendung von Gewalt minimiert werden kann. Im Zentrum (...) steht die kritische Auseinandersetzung mit dem von Jürgen Habermas mitbegründeten Modell der deliberativen Demokratie. Der Autor entwickelt dazu ein alternatives Demokratiemodell, das aus einer pragmatischen Sichtweise die historischen und sozialen Ungleichheiten in der Gesellschaft berücksichtigt. Dies setzt allerdings eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit den von Habermas entwickelten Grundbegriffen der kommunikativen Vernunft, der kommunikativen Rationalität und des kommunikativen Handelns voraus. (shrink)

This English translation of On Anger provides a newly read and supplemented Greek text of one of the most important "Herculaneum papyri," the only collection of literary texts to survive the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. On Anger is our sole evidence for the Epicurean view of what constitutes natural and praiseworthy anger, as distinguished from unnatural pleasure in vengeance and cruelty for their own sake, a view that can be shown to have influenced Latin authors like Cicero, Horace (...) and Virgil. (shrink)

A new model for environmental and urban sustainability living architecture that connects artifice with the natural world through the use of materials that possess some of the properties of living systems, and can therefore actively exchange energy with the ecosphere, is proposed.

Throughout his life, contemporaries of Blanchot either sought to relegate his writing to the past, or else espoused it uncritically in a gesture akin to what Jean-Luc Nancy once called syncope. Blanchot thus divided his epoch in a way that was less a polarization than a struggle for the present in which thought takes place. Consequently, readers today in search of what makes Blanchot continue to be a contemporary find that the time of his writing is shrouded in a curiously (...) unstable quantity of oblivion. This article argues that Blanchot's refusal of biography brings about an inaugural disruption of the temporality of rational thought. From the outset, the ‘I am’ of reflection is accompanied in his writing by an ‘I am dead’ which is narrative in nature. Jacques Derrida's work is taken to exemplify the espousal of Blanchot by his contemporaries. Despite the acuity of Derrida's analyses of the fractured present of rational discourse, however, the article seeks to demonstrate that the priority of narrative in Blanchot's thought gives rise to a temporality for which philosophy can never find the measure. (shrink)

In the UK, current policies and services for people with mental disorders, including those with intellectual disabilities (ID), presume that these men and women can, do, and should, make decisions for themselves. The new Mental Capacity Act (England and Wales) 2005 (MCA) sets this presumption into statute, and codifies how decisions relating to health and welfare should be made for those adults judged unable to make one or more such decisions autonomously. The MCA uses a procedural checklist to guide this (...) process of substitute decision-making. The personal experiences of providing direct support to seven men and women with ID living in residential care, however, showed that substitute decision-making took two forms, depending on the type of decision to be made. The first process, ‘strategic substitute decision-making’, paralleled the MCA’s legal and ethical framework, whilst the second process, ‘relational substitute decision-making’, was markedly different from these statutory procedures. In this setting, ‘relational substitute decision-making’ underpinned everyday personal and social interventions connected with residents’ daily living, and was situated within a framework of interpersonal and interdependent care relationships. The implications of these findings for residential services and the implementation of the MCA are discussed. (shrink)

_Conservative Reductionism_ sets out a new theory of the relationship between physics and the special sciences within the framework of functionalism. It argues that it is wrong-headed to conceive an opposition between functional and physical properties and to build an anti-reductionist argument on multiple realization. By contrast, all properties that there are in the world, including the physical ones, are functional properties in the sense of being causal properties, and all true descriptions that the special sciences propose can in principle (...) be reduced to physical descriptions by means of functional reduction, despite multiple realization. The book develops arguments for from the metaphysics of properties and the philosophy of physics. These arguments lead to a conservative ontological reductionism. It then develops functional reduction into a fully-fledged, conservative theory reduction by means of introducing functional sub-types that are coextensive with physical types, illustrating that conservative reductionism by means of case studies from biology. (shrink)

This astonishing book features over 150 unprecedented color photographs taken by Christian Ziegler himself as he trekked through wilderness on five continents to capture the diversity and magnificence of orchids in their natural habitats.

-/- Following the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) becoming law in 2005, and prior to its coming into force in 2007, there was a sustained effort to train support staff in the many social care settings where this new law was applicable. This training drive was necessary because, prior to the MCA, mental capacity law had evolved in the courts through consideration of a small number of cases that concerned serious medical treatments. These included the withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration (...) (Airedale NHS Trust v. Bland [1993]), blood transfusion (Re T [1993]), tissue donation (Re Y [1997]) and the provision of experimental medication for terminal illness (Simms v. Simms and another (2003)). In line with the Law Commission’s recommendations, the MCA extended the application of the law to ‘all acts in connection with care or treatment’ (MCA, Section 5), meaning that, overnight, social care settings and informal family care environments immediately fell within the scope of the legislation. (shrink)

Philosophers have discussed virtue and character since Socrates, but many traditional views have been challenged by recent findings in psychology and neuroscience. This fifth volume of Moral Psychology grows out of this new wave of interdisciplinary work on virtue, vice, and character. It offers essays, commentaries, and replies by leading philosophers and scientists who explain and use empirical findings from psychology and neuroscience to illuminate virtue and character and related issues in moral philosophy. The contributors discuss such topics as eliminativist (...) and situationist challenges to character; investigate the conceptual and empirical foundations of self-control, honesty, humility, and compassion; and consider whether the virtues contribute to well-being. (shrink)

Steve Paulson, executive producer and host of To the Best of Our Knowledge, moderated a discussion with philosopher Christian Miller, neuroscientist Heather Berlin, and historian of science Michael Shermer to examine our moral ecology and its influence on our underlying assumptions about human nature.

Michael Holland presents an early and little-known article by Maurice Blanchot, whose subject is the memorial concert in honour of Claude Debussy which took place in Paris in June 1932, following the unveiling of a monument to the composer earlier in the day. Blanchot provides a detailed account of the concert, emphasising the international co-operation that lay behind the expression of national pride, and arguing, against the grain of contemporary opinion, that the pure art of music transcends any (...) notion of national genius. (shrink)

This co-edited volume compares Chinese and Western experiences of engineering, technology, and development. In doing so, it builds a bridge between the East and West and advances a dialogue in the philosophy of engineering. Divided into three parts, the book starts with studies on epistemological and ontological issues, with a special focus on engineering design, creativity, management, feasibility, and sustainability. Part II considers relationships between the history and philosophy of engineering, and includes a general argument for the necessity of dialogue (...) between history and philosophy. It continues with a general introduction to traditional Chinese attitudes toward engineering and technology, and philosophical case studies of the Chinese steel industry, railroads, and cybernetics in the Soviet Union. Part III focuses on engineering, ethics, and society, with chapters on engineering education and practice in China and the West. The book’s analyses of the interactions of science, engineering, ethics, politics, and policy in different societal contexts are of special interest. The volume as a whole marks a new stage in the emergence of the philosophy of engineering as a new regionalization of philosophy. This carefully edited interdisciplinary volume grew out of an international conference on the philosophy of engineering hosted by the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. It includes 30 contributions by leading philosophers, social scientists, and engineers from Australia, China, Europe, and the United States. (shrink)

The fifteen new essays collected in this volume address questions concerning the ethics of self-defense, most centrally when and to what extent the use of defensive force, especially lethal force, can be justified. Scholarly interest in this topic reflects public concern stemming from controversial cases of the use of force by police, and military force exercised in the name of defending against transnational terrorism. The contributors pay special attention to determining when a threat is liable to defensive harm, though doubts (...) about this emphasis are also raised. The legitimacy of so-called "stand your ground" policies and laws is also addressed. This volume will be of great interest to readers in moral, political, and legal philosophy. (shrink)

This paper sheds light on the possibilities and perspectives of linking digital editions of Medieval German texts to each other and to other digital resources. Furthermore, it discusses some of the internal and technical conditions necessary to render this linkage meaningful, like lemmatisation, part-of-speech-tagging, and using standardised mark-up languages. Finally, the sustainability and reusability of digital editions are considered. While in the past, editions of medieval texts were conceived as rather isolated scholarly works of individual editors, nowadays the collaboration and (...) cooperation of greater working groups is essential in editing projects. Due to the complexity of editions consisting of multiple textual layers, e. g. apparatus entries, annotations, or facsimiles, the requirements for future digital editions have risen. The first approach to respond to these demands is to link the various textual layers to each other, enabling the users to navigate between these layers in a sensible way. The second step is to link the edited text to other resources, such as online dictionaries or other editions, allowing complex research networks to be created. These goals are achieved by lemmatising and other tagging methods, ensuring the information being mapped to a normalised and idealised frame of reference. Common standards like Unicode or the TEI guidelines are of great importance for such purposes, as they assure the interchange and re-use of scientific data, as well as their sustainability. (shrink)

Maurice Blanchot remains a writer whose work, though often cited, is little-known to the English-speaking reader. In The Blanchot Reader Michael Holland answers that urgent need and does so in a way that provides a coherent perspective on what by any standard is an extraordinary personal and intellectual career.

English summary: In this volume, the Munich and Vienna-based theologian Falk Wagner's work in the fields of philosophical theology, sociology and lived religion is taken up for the first time against the backdrop of current theological and philosophical controversies. The essays integrate Wagner's thinking into the history of theology and philosophy in the twentieth century, reconstruct fundamental elements of his philosophical theology between the poles of speculative theology and lived religion, while also highlighting the constellations and context wherein his theology (...) is situated. The authors explore from a work- and problem-historical perspective the contribution of the systematic theologian to the relevant twenty first century debates. German description: Der vorliegende Band thematisiert erstmals vor dem Hintergrund der gegenwartigen theologischen und philosophischen Kontroversen das Gesamtwerk des Munchener und Wiener Theologen Falk Wagner im Spannungsfeld von philosophischer Theologie, Sozialwissenschaften und gelebter Religion. Die einzelnen Beitrage ordnen dessen Denken in die theologie- und philosophiegeschichtliche Entwicklung des 20. Jahrhunderts ein, rekonstruieren grundlegende Aufbauelemente seiner philosophischen Theologie und beleuchten die Konstellationen, in denen seine Theologie steht. Dabei loten die Autoren sowohl in werkgeschichtlicher als auch in problemgeschichtlicher Perspektive den Beitrag des systematischen Theologen fur die theologischen Debatten im 21. Jahrhundert aus. Mit Beitragen von: Christine Axt-Piscalar, Ulrich Barth, Christian Danz, Wilhelm Grab, Kathrin Mette, Michael Murrmann-Kahl, Jan Rohls, Ewald Stubinger, Folkart Wittekind, Kurt Walter Zeidler, Manuel Zelger. (shrink)

Religiöse Vielfalt mitsamt ihren destruktiven und bereichernden Elementen gehört weltweit mehr denn je zur Signatur der Lebenswelt gegenwärtiger Gesellschaften. Interreligiöse Kommunikation ist daher ein dialogischer Imperativ, von dem die friedliche Koexistenz religiöser Gemeinschaften in der jeweiligen Gesellschaft oder ganzer benachbarter Kulturen abhängt. Im Zentrum des Bandes steht die - im Zusammenspiel theologischer, religionswissenschaftlicher und -philosophischer, soziologischer sowie erziehungs- und medienwissenschaftlicher Perspektiven zu führende - Auseinandersetzung mit der höchst aktuellen Frage nach den Bedingungen und Grenzen des konstruktiven Umgangs mit religiöser Pluralität (...) und Differenz. Die Beiträge bieten unterschiedliche theoretische Zugänge sowie historische, religionswissenschaftliche und pädagogische Fallbeispiele. Sie sollen helfen, die Bedingungen und Potentiale einer kommunikativen Praxis zu diskutieren, die von der berechtigten Vielstimmigkeit einander widerstreitender Wahrheits- und Geltungsansprüche ausgeht und dazu befähigt, religiöse Differenz anzuerkennen und ihr mit Achtung zu begegnen, ohne den eigenen Standpunkt im Interesse eines rein konsensorientierten Dialogs zu verschweigen. (shrink)

The eight pieces constituting this Meeting Report are summaries of presentations made during a panel session at the 2011 Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) annual meeting held between March 3rd and 6th in Cincinnati. Lisa Newton organized the session and served as chair. The panel of eight consisted both of pioneers in the field and more recent arrivals. It covered a range of topics from how the field has developed to where it should be going, from identification of (...) issues needing further study to problems of training the next generation of engineers and engineering-ethics scholars. (shrink)

Der Klimawandel ist die globale Krise unserer Gegenwart. Mit Blick auf die sich hieraus ergebenen Handlungsoptionen und -zwänge stellt der verantwortliche Umgang mit Energie sicher einen der zentralen Bereiche dar. Unsere ethische Verantwortung betrifft dabei beides: Erzeugung und Verbrauch von Energie gleichermaßen. Der vorliegende Band verfolgt zwei Ziele: Erstens soll ein interdisziplinärer Dialog ermöglicht und die dafür notwendigen fachlichen Reflexionen angestoßen werden. Keine Einzeldisziplin kann auf die komplexen Probleme des Klimawandels oder die mit dem Terminus Energieverantwortung angezeigten Herausforderungen alleine eine (...) plausible Antwort geben. Vielmehr müssen die Wissenschaften ein gemeinsames Verständnis der Probleme entwickeln, um auch interdisziplinär geteilte Antworten bereitstellen zu können. Zweitens soll dies in transdisziplinärer Perspektive erfolgen. Das bedeutet, die von der Gesellschaft an die Wissenschaft herangetragenen Fragen und Problemstellungen ernst zu nehmen, aufzugreifen und Antworten zu formulieren, die auch außerhalb der wissenschaftlichen Diskurse als Antworten auf diese Fragen und Problemstellungen verstanden werden können. (shrink)