Ives, Rosslyn The emergence of freethought in Western Europe and its colonies seems to be an almost inevitable outcome of the many changes that had occurred during the preceding centuries - changes that expanded knowledge and understanding about the place of humans in the scheme of things.

Ives, Rosslyn Review(s) of: Arguably, by Christopher Hitchens Atlantic Books London, 2011.

Ives, Rosslyn Review(s) of: Bigger or better: Australia's population debate, by Ian Lowe, University of Queensland Press, 2012, $34.95.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: Labor's historic mission, by Brian Ellis, Pamphleteer series No. 1, Australian Scholarly Publishing.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: Reclaiming Epicurus, by Luke Slattery, Penguin Specials, 2012. $9.99.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: The most good you can do: How effective altruism is changing ideas about living ethically, by Peter Singer, Text Publishing Melbourne 2015.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: The god argument: The case against religion and for humanism, by A. C. Grayling, Bloomsbury, London 2013. $30.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: Forgotten war, by Henry Reynolds, NewSouth, 2013. $29.99.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: Murphy's law and the pursuit of happiness: A history of the civil celebrant movement, by Dally Messenger III, Spectrum Publications, Melbourne 2012. $35 p and p.

Ives, Rosslyn On February 12, Humanists and many others around the world will celebrate Charles Darwin's birthday. We do this because his most significant contribution to human knowledge, as set out in On Origin of the Species, is the evidence and arguments for evolution by natural selection. By taking a scientific approach, Darwin along with many others changed the way humans understand their origins and place in the biosphere. We are not the product of special creation, but rather (...) naturally evolved beings, fully interdependent with the rest of the natural world. (shrink)

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: The age of genius: The seventeenth century and the birth of the modern mind, by A. C. Grayling, Bloomsbury 2016, $34.

Ives, Rosslyn When over two hundred people gathered in Amsterdam in 1952 and formed the International Humanist and Ethical Union, they had available to them a range of words to describe their non-religious worldview; among them atheist, ethicist, freethinker, humanist, rationalist and secularist. Why then, did those at the inaugural congress chose 'Humanism' over all the other available options?

Ives, Rosslyn For thousands of years religions have been the main source of answers to life's 'big questions': Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? How shall we live?

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: The swerve: How the renaissance began, by Stephen Greenblatt, Publisher The Bodley Head, London 2011.

In our seventh and final piece on the theme “Good without God”, Jonathan Ives argues that reliance on God as an external source of moral authority leads to a kind of moral cowardice.

In this article we distinguish between philosophical bioethics (PB), descriptive policy orientated bioethics (DPOB) and normative policy oriented bioethics (NPOB). We argue that finding an appropriate methodology for combining empirical data and moral theory depends on what the aims of the research endeavour are, and that, for the most part, this combination is only required for NPOB. After briefly discussing the debate around the is/ought problem, and suggesting that both sides of this debate are misunderstanding one another (i.e. one side (...) treats it as a conceptual problem, whilst the other treats it as an empirical claim), we outline and defend a methodological approach to NPOB based on work we have carried out on a project exploring the normative foundations of paternal rights and responsibilities. We suggest that given the prominent role already played by moral intuition in moral theory, one appropriate way to integrate empirical data and philosophical bioethics is to utilize empirically gathered lay intuition as the foundation for ethical reasoning in NPOB. The method we propose involves a modification of a long-established tradition on non-intervention in qualitative data gathering, combined with a form of reflective equilibrium where the demands of theory and data are given equal weight and a pragmatic compromise reached. (shrink)

This paper responds to the commentaries from Stacy Carter and Alan Cribb. We pick up on two main themes in our response. First, we reflect on how the process of setting standards for empirical bioethics research entails drawing boundaries around what research counts as empirical bioethics research, and we discuss whether the standards agreed in the consensus process draw these boundaries correctly. Second, we expand on the discussion in the original paper of the role and significance of the concept of (...) ‘integrating’ empirical methods and ethical argument as a standard for research practice within empirical bioethics. (shrink)

In this paper we set forth what we believe to be a relatively controversial argument, claiming that 'bioethics' needs to undergo a fundamental change in the way it is practised. This change, we argue, requires philosophical bioethicists to adopt reflexive practices when applying their analyses in public forums, acknowledging openly that bioethics is an embedded socio-cultural practice, shaped by the ever-changing intuitions of individual philosophers, which cannot be viewed as a detached intellectual endeavour. This said, we argue that in order (...) to manage the personal, social and cultural embeddedness of bioethics, philosophical bioethicists should openly acknowledge how their practices are constructed and should, in their writing, explicitly deal with issues of bias and conflict of interest, just as empirical scientists are required to do. (shrink)

A total of 1390 university students from five public Moldovan universities completed a survey reporting their experiences and beliefs with respect to 22 types of academic misconduct. An interpretable five-factor solution to the frequencies of these behaviors accounted for more than half of the total variance. The two most reliable predictors were 1) how often students witnessed other students engage in these behaviors, and 2) perceived acceptability of the behaviors. Demographic predictors of these behaviors (gender, academic specialty, year in school, (...) institution, grade average, and scholarship status) predicted minimal variance. Implications and limitations of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

This essay will criticize Peter Lamarque’s claim in The Opacity of Narrative that reading for ‘opacity’ is the way to read literature as literature. I will summarize the idea of ‘opacity’ and consider the plausibility of this claim through an examination of Lamarque’s related comments on translation. The argument for ‘opacity’, although it insists on the importance of attention to a work’s form in the apprehension of its content, involves, at the same time, a certain obliviousness to form, indicated in (...) the first instance by an unpersuasive conflation of lyric poetry and prose fiction. Through a comparison of opposing approaches to the translation of a novel written in verse, and an analysis of why the translation of poetry is generally understood to be more challenging than the translation of prose, I will argue that reading for ‘opacity’ does not adequately capture what it means to read literature as literature. (shrink)

Over the last decade, patient and public involvement (PPI) has become a requisite in applied health research. Some funding bodies demand explicit evidence of PPI, while others have made a commitment to developing PPI in the projects they fund. Despite being commonplace, there remains a dearth of engagement with the ethical and theoretical underpinnings of PPI processes and practices. More specifically, while there is a small (but growing) body of literature examining the effectiveness and impact of PPI, there has been (...) relatively little reflection on whether the concept/practice of PPI is internally coherent. Here, the authors unpick a ‘paradox’ within PPI, which highlights a tension between its moral and pragmatic motivations and its implementation. The authors argue that this ‘professionalisation paradox’ means we need to rethink the practice, and purpose, of PPI in research. (shrink)

This article builds on my previous article on Dirk H. Th. Vollenhoven (Ive 2015) and provides an overview of the development of the systematic philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd. This article seeks to provide an overview of the key developments in the thinking of Dooyeweerd, both in the convergences arising from the conversation of the two brothers-in-law and long-term colleagues and in their divergences. Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven worked within the tradition of Abraham Kuyper, the father of Reformational philosophy. The development of (...) their respective philosophical systematics has tended to be addressed separately. However, I argue that the close cooperation between the two philosophers was critical in the formulation of the philosophy of the cosmonomic Idea. The philosophical conversation between the two persisted, despite critical divergences, largely aired privately. Their respective insights remained a source of mutual stimulus and complementarity foundational for Reformational philosophy. (shrink)

Le but de cette contribution est d’identifier la place du langage dans l’architectonique du système fichtéen. Il est apparu (1) que la déduction du langage appartient de droit à la partie principielle du système ; (2) que l’intégration de cette déduction dans la partie principielle s’est faite, comme pour la doctrine de l’intersubjectivité, par la prise en compte de considérations initalement développées dans un écrit ne relevant pas directement de la Doctrine de la Science ; (3) qu’en tant que support (...) de la sollicitation, le langage joue un rôle crucial dans la genèse de la conscience, dont il constitue la condition suprême et (4) qu’il est directement lié à la solution proposée par Fichte pour remédier à l’« inachèvement du système kantien ». (shrink)

BackgroundChronic kidney disease is a significant cause of global deaths. Those who progress to end-stage kidney disease often commence dialysis as a life-extending treatment. For cognitively impaired patients, the decision as to whether they commence dialysis will fall to someone else. This scoping review was conducted to map existing literature pertaining to how decisions about dialysis are and should be made with, for, and on behalf of adult patients who lack decision-making capacity. In doing so, it forms the basis of (...) a larger body of work that is exploring how these decisions ought to be made.MethodsTo identify relevant papers, searches were conducted on Ovid MEDLINE(R), Embase, PsychINFO, The Cochrane Library, and Web of Science. Inclusion criteria were then applied, requiring that papers: report on empirical studies about how decisions about dialysis are made and/or discuss how decisions about dialysis should be made with, for, and on behalf of adult patients who lack decision-making capacity; be published from 1961 onwards; and be published in English. This resulted in 27 papers eligible for inclusion.ResultsOf note, the majority of papers originated in the United States. There was wide variation across the included papers. Extracted data were grouped under the following themes: involving various parties (patient involvement, family dominance, and wider communication); objectivity about care options (including difficulties with family detachment); cultural sensitivity; medical versus non-medical factors; managing nonadherent patients; and the role and prevalence of substituted judgement. The literature shows that there is inconsistency in the principles and processes surrounding decisions made about dialysis with, for, and on behalf of adult patients who lack decision-making capacity.ConclusionsThis scoping review demonstrates that there is significant variation in both the practice and theory of dialysis decision making with, for, and on behalf of cognitively impaired adult patients. Complexity arises in considering who should get a say, how influential their say should be in a decision, and what factors are most relevant to the decision. A lack of up-to-date literature exploring this issue is highlighted, with this scoping review providing a useful groundwork from which further research can be undertaken. (shrink)

Cette contribution vise à répertorier les traces d’une influence de la mystique dans le corpus fichtéen et à définir un cadre interprétatif pour expliquer le recours par Fichte à un langage mystique dans L’Initiation à la vie bienheureuse. Un examen attentif des diverses sources laisse apparaître que la tradition mystique et Jacob Böhme en particulier, portés par un puissant souffle poétique, peuvent remplir à l’égard de la philosophie un rôle propédeutique par leur capacité à élever le public au suprasensible, mais (...) doivent également y borner leurs prétentions. Fichte dénonce en effet sur un plan philosophique leur caractère dogmatique et ne leur accorde de valeur qu’éclairés par la critique. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 80-82.

In this paper, we present the first stage of an empirical bioethics project exploring the moral sources of paternal responsibilities and rights. In doing so, we present both (1) data on men's normative constructions of fatherhood and (2) the first of a two-stage methodological approach to empirical bioethics. Using data gathered from 12 focus groups run with UK men who have had a variety of different fathering experiences (n = 50), we examine men's perspectives on how paternal responsibilities and rights (...) are generated and the significance of the genetic connection within the father–child relationship. We do not attempt to explore men's experiences of fatherhood or their fathering practices; and neither is the analysis driven from a particular sociological perspective. Rather, we explore men's normative constructions of fatherhood in order to present accessible data that might be of significance to the philosophical/moral debate on the sources of paternal rights and responsibilities. (shrink)

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Le Morvan and Stock claim that the kantian ideal of treating people always as ends in themselves and never merely as a means is in direct and insurmountable conflict with the current medical practice of allowing practitioners at the bottom of their “learning curve” to “practise their skills” on patients. In this response, I take up the challenge they issue is and try to reconcile this conflict. The kantian ideal (...) offered in the paper is an incomplete characterisation of Kant’s moral philosophy, and the formula of humanity is considered in isolation without taking into account other salient kantian principles. I also suggest that their argument based on “necessary for the patient” assumes too narrow a reading of “necessary”. This reply is intended as an extension to, rather than a criticism of, their work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DHARMA AND DESTRUCTION: BUDDHIST INSTITUTIONS AND VIOLENCE Christopher Ives Stonehill College Photographs ofgentle monks in saffron, the cottageindustry ofbooks on mindfulness, and the Dalai Lama's response to the Chinese invasion of Tibet have all helped portray Buddhism as the "religion of nonviolence." This representation ofBuddhism finds support in Buddhist texts, doctrines, and ritual practices, which often advocate ahimsa, nonharming or non-violence. The historical record, however, belies the portrayal (...) of Buddhism as a "religion of nonviolence." By reinterpreting early doctrines of ahimsa, Buddhist thinkers have legitimated violence in particular situations, practitioners have committed acts of violence, and Buddhist institutions have lent support to other institutions—social, political, and governmental —engaged in violence. In this paper I will examine Buddhist perpetration andjustifications ofviolence,1 with particularfocus on Japan, arguing that, historically, Buddhists' desire for institutional security has taken precedence over total rejection of violence. 1 I have restricted my discussion to the killing of other human beings. I do not consider suicide andthe killing ofnon-human animals. For a discussion ofBuddhism, (self-)sacrifice, and suicide in relation to Girard's theory, see Charles D. Orzech, '"Provoked Suicide' and the Victim's Behavior." 152Christopher Ives Non-violence The doctrine of ahimsa figures prominently in early and Theravadan Buddhism. The first ofthe five moral precepts (panca silani) in Buddhism is ahimsa, and in the Dhammapada the historical Buddha purportedly states, All are afraid of the rod. Of death all are afraid. Having made oneself the example, One should neither slay nor cause to slay. (Ross 202) The Buddhaalso sketches the consequences ofhurting orharming (himsa): Who with a rod does hurt Beings who desire ease [of nibbana], While himself looking for ease— He, having departed, ease does not get. Theravadan monastic codes and practices, such as the uposatha biweekly confession of moral transgressions and recitation of the 227 rules in the Patimokkha (Skt. Pratimoksa), are closely tiedto ahimsa. One ofthe Patimokkha's four "offenses of defeat" (parajika dharmas), for which the punishment is immediate expulsion of the monk or nun from the order, is killing another human being (Prebish 11). Mahayana texts continue this exhortation against violence. For example, in the Dasabhimika-sutra we read that a Buddhist "must not hate any being and cannot kill a living creature even in thought."2 Early Buddhist texts include depictions ofthe ideal Buddhist king, the cakravartin-raja or "monarch who turns the wheel [of the Dharma],"3 as an exemplar of nonviolence. Contemporary Buddhist activist Sulak Sivaraksa expresses it, this king is a "an ideal ruler, a world-conquering monarch, who subdued the earth through righteousness rather than war" (Sulak 129), and whose ten main duties include striving for peace and ruling with nonviolent benevolence (129). For well over 2000 years 2 Cited in Har Dayal, The Bodhisattva Doctrine, p. 199; quoted by Kraft, 5. In much ofthe first section of this paper I am indebted to Ken Kraft's introduction to his volume. 3 The metaphor ofturning the wheel refers to the historical Buddha's teaching ofthe Dharma and the later propagation of it by others. Dharma and Deconstruction153 Buddhists have lifted up Indian king Ashoka (c. 272-236) as an instantiation of this ideal. The early Buddhist doctrine of ahimsa should not, however, be construed as compassionate altruism. Luis Gómez and other scholars have delineated how ahimsa at first did not express some sort of underlying altruistic concern for the well-being of others. Vegetarianism and other ways of avoiding himsa, harming or violence, derived from ancient Indian ritual taboos againstblood and otherbodily liquids (Gómez 36). Buddhists ethicized and psychologized earlier notions of physical pollution, and advocated abstention fromviolenceprimarily as ameans ofself-cultivation, as a way to keep the mind pure, like an unstained cloth (36). (Scholars have even argued that the positive expression oíahimsa, the practice ofdirecting metta (loving-kindness) to others, originally had as much or more to do with the spiritual benefits accrued by the person directing the metta as it did with the well-being of the person receiving it. Only later was ahimsa furtherreinterpreted as positive regard forothers, as seen in the bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism. Violence in Buddhist History At numerous times over... (shrink)