Woodward's long awaited book is an attempt to construct a comprehensive account of causation explanation that applies to a wide variety of causal and explanatory claims in different areas of science and everyday life. The book engages some of the relevant literature from other disciplines, as Woodward weaves together examples, counterexamples, criticisms, defenses, objections, and replies into a convincing defense of the core of his theory, which is that we can analyze causation by appeal to the notion of manipulation.

Focusing mainly on respect for autonomy, particularly autonomous choices and actions in bioethical decisions, I examine several complexities of enacting this respect through the case of a fourteen-year-old boy who died after being allowed to refuse a necessary blood transfusion on religious grounds. I argue that thicker concepts of autonomy, closely connected with relational autonomy, direct our attention to aspects of respect for autonomy that are often neglected or underappreciated in much bioethical theory and practice. In particular, they illuminate the (...) interpretive complexity of respecting autonomous choices by focusing attention on the relational context of individuals’ decisions, on respect for individuals’ social-cultural beliefs and values, and on the temporality of selves, as expressed in their past consent or future consent as well as in—and sometimes in contradiction to—their present consent or dissent. However, it is important not to convert the illuminating and valuable insights from theories of relational autonomy into necessary conditions of autonomous choices and actions and hence of respect for autonomy. (shrink)

"A very good book indeed: there is scarcely an issue anyone has thought to raise about the topic which Childress fails to treat with sensitivity and good judgement....Future discussions of paternalism in health care will have to come to terms with the contentions of this book, which must be reckoned the best existing treatment of its subject."--Ethics. "A clear, scholarly and balanced analysis....This is a book I can recommend to physicians, ethicists, students of both fields, and to those most affected--the (...) patients themselves."--Edmund D. Pellegrino, John Carroll Professor of Medicine and Medical Humanities, Georgetown University Medical Center. (shrink)

: Moral frameworks for evaluating non-donation strategies to increase the supply of cadaveric human organs for transplantation and ways to overcome barriers to organ donation are explored. Organ transplantation is a very complex area, because the human body evokes various beliefs, symbols, sentiments, and emotions as well as various rituals and social practices. From a rationalistic standpoint, some policies to increase the supply of transplantable organs may appear to be quite defensible but then turn out to be ineffective and perhaps (...) even counterproductive because of inadequate attention to these rich and complex features of human body parts. Excessively rationalistic policies neglect deep beliefs, symbols, sentiments, and emotions and the like, and that deficiency marks many actual and proposed policies. In addition, policies are often too individualistic and too legalistic. (shrink)

The topics covered in this volume, originally published in 1973, include the need for a more adequate concept or definition of education, the issue of whether indoctrination is compatible with education, particularly with moral education, and the processes of judging the merits of different approaches to aesthetic education. Two contributors present complementary analyses of the relations between freedom as a characteristic of institutions and the process of learning to be a free man. There is discussion of the neglected subject of (...) rights and duties in education, with special emphasis on the question of a universal right to education. The volume concludes with papers on the relevance of philosophy to the practical judgments of educators and to education as a field of study. (shrink)

History and Systems of Psychology provides an engaging introduction to the rich story of psychology's past. Retaining the clarity and accessibility praised by readers of earlier editions, this classic textbook provides a chronological history of psychology from the pre-Socratic Greeks to contemporary systems, research, and applications. The new edition also features expanded coverage of Eastern as well as Western traditions, influential women in psychology, professional psychology in clinical, educational, and social settings, and new directions in twenty-first century psychology as a (...) cognitive and a positive science. Assuming little prerequisite knowledge, the authors discuss the people, places, and concepts that have shaped psychology's story, and show that we remain fascinated by the same enduring questions that confronted our ancestors - namely, our wonder at our subjectivity and consciousness of self. The seventh edition is fully supported by robust pedagogical features, instructor resources, and a companion website to aid student learning. (shrink)

Public health ethics, like the field of public health it addresses, traditionally has focused more on practice and particular cases than on theory, with the result that some concepts, methods, and boundaries remain largely undefined. This paper attempts to provide a rough conceptual map of the terrain of public health ethics. We begin by briefly defining public health and identifying general features of the field that are particularly relevant for a discussion of public health ethics.Public health is primarily concerned with (...) the health of the entire population, rather than the health of individuals. Its features include an emphasis on the promotion of health and the prevention of disease and disability; the collection and use of epidemiological data, population surveillance, and other forms of empirical quantitative assessment; a recognition of the multidimensional nature of the determinants of health; and a focus on the complex interactions of many factors—biological, behavioral, social, and environmental—in developing effective interventions. (shrink)

Philosophers are uniquely qualified to negotiate a balance between the reflective potential of globalization and the great routine powers of nations, states, tribes, and families. Here's how we can do it: we can teach the difference between playing a game and choosing a game. From time immemorial people of all tribes and cultures have marked a sharp distinction between those individuals deemed qualified by age, expertise, or status to choose or write the rules, and those other, lesser individuals who are (...) obliged merely to obey those rules. This is the traditional difference between a person, on the one hand, and a utensil, on the other: persona est sui iuris; servus non est persona ("A person chooses its own laws; a slave is not a person"). Persons, but not utensils such as shoes, have, and deserve, good will. To a person, a culture is a means of creating a sustainable humane environment. To a culture, a person is a means for the culture to replicate itself. Placing culture first is a tradition we can no longer afford to maintain, because it makes enduring peace impossible. The purposes utensils can be made to serve have become too terrible (and, with the advent of global communication, too obvious) for the human race to endure, and the capacity of the voiceless to express themselves violently is increasing without limit. Hence we must create new traditions in which we teach all our children reflective thought, with which rules are pragmatically justified rather than unquestionable. To that end I propose to distinguish random, routine, and reflective thought and action. Each of these three levels of thought and action has its costs and its benefits; together they contain the entire range of human possibility. Three familiar philosophical concepts support my claim that reflective thought and action can and must be taught to and learned by all. (shrink)

In response to theJournal of Religious Ethics(JRE) editors' request for reflections on “how religious ethicists have interacted with, and ought to interact with, public policy decision makers,” this essay focuses on doing religious ethics in the context of doing public bioethics, especially through participating in public bioethics bodies (PBBs) established to provide advice to public policymakers in what might be called “mediated advocacy.” Drawing heavily on the author's experience as a member of and a consultant to several PBBs, it features (...) case studies of PBBs deliberating about and recommending public policies to address the scarcity of postmortem organs for transplantation, the equitable allocation of COVID‐19 vaccine, cloning humans, and human embryonic stem cell research. (shrink)

Argues that Wittgenstein's early ethical notion of agreement with the world pivoted to become his later therapeutic notion of agreement with living forms, which satisfies the conditions necessary for a full therapeutic philosophy.

This is the first book to explore the relationship between Martin Heidegger's work and modern anthropology. Heidegger attracts much scholarly interest among social scientists, but few have explored his ideas in relation to current anthropological debates. The discipline's modernist foundations, the nature of cultural constructionism and of art ñ even what an anthropology of art must include ñ are all informed and illuminated by Heidegger's work. The author argues that many contemporary anthropologists, in their concern to return subjectivity and 'voice' (...) to their interlocutors, neglect to recognize that language and other representational practices conceal the world and human subjectivity as much as reveal it. The author also suggests that Heidegger's critique of western technology provides the basis for a return to anthropology's sociological foundations. Emerging from over ten years of original research, and drawing on a rich knowledge of Australian and Melanesian ethnography, this book reassesses the underlying framework of modern and, particularly, visual anthropology. Innovative and provocative, it will be of interest to all anthropologists, philosophers and students of art and culture. (shrink)

Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 50, Issue 1, Page 7-19, March 2022.

I, for one, am grateful to Peter Ubel, Karen Scherr, and Angela Fagerlin (2017) for their important and illuminating reflections on medical decision making, particularly in the context of preferenc...

After briefly sketching common-morality principlism, as presented in Principles of Biomedical Ethics, this paper responds to two recent sets of challenges to this framework. The first challenge claims that medical ethics is autonomous and unique and thus not a form of, or justified or guided by, a common morality or by any external morality or moral theory. The second challenge denies that there is a common morality and insists that futile efforts to develop common-morality approaches to bioethics limit diversity and (...) prevent needed moral change. This paper argues that these two critiques fundamentally fail because they significantly misunderstand their target and because their proposed alternatives have major deficiencies and encounter insurmountable problems. (shrink)

This book explores, in rich and rigorous ways, the possibilities and limitations of “thick” autonomy in light of contemporary debates in philosophy, ethics, and bioethics. Many standard ethical theories and practices, particularly in domains such as biomedical ethics, incorporate minimal, formal, procedural concepts of personal autonomy and autonomous decisions and actions. Over the last three decades, concerns about the problems and limitations of these “thin” concepts have led to the formulation of “thick” concepts that highlight the mental, corporeal, biographical and (...) social conditions of what it means to be a human person and that enrich concepts of autonomy, with direct implications for the ethical requirement to respect autonomy. The chapters in this book offer a wide range of perspectives on both the elements of and the relations between “thin” and “thick” concepts of autonomy as well as their relative roles and importance in ethics and bioethics. This book offers valuable and illuminating examinations of autonomy and respect for autonomy, relevant for audiences in philosophy, ethics, and bioethics. (shrink)

Do pacifists and proponents of justified violence share a starting point? Whether or not just war theory contains an embedded presumption against violence is an important and disputed question. Substantively it is important not only because it has implications for the possibility of dialogue among Christians of different persuasions but also because the belief that the tradition advances no moral reservations about the use of force may have the effect of lowering the moral barriers against the resort to war. Conceptually (...) it is important because it reflects a fundamental methodological disagreement concerning the meaning and resolution of conflicts among moral duties. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the conceptual and moral issues raised by illegal actions in health care. The author first identifies several types of illegal action, concentrating on civil disobedience, conscientious objection or refusal, and evasive noncompliance. Then he sketches a framework for the moral justification of these types of illegal action. Finally, he applies the conceptual and normative frameworks to several major cases of illegal action in health care, such as "mercy killing" and some decisions not to treat incompetent (...) patients. Keywords: illegal actions, mercy killing, non-treatment of incompetent patients, civil disobedience, conscientious objection, evasive non-compliance, moral justification and disobedience, dissent in health care CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

_Considers the notable similarities between the thought of Confucius and Wittgenstein._.

This unique collection of readings provides a resource of primary source material, affording a survey of the history and systems of psychology from pre-Socratic thought to the present. Selected for accessibility, the 24 selections are organized to offer a representation of the historical sweep of psychological interpretations. After presenting approaches to the scholarly study of psychology's history, through an excerpt from Thomas Kuhn, the readings introduce the major themes of psychological inquiry in chronological fashion. The selections include the works of: (...) Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm Wundt, Franz Brentano, William James, John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, Ivan Pavlov, John Broadus Watson, B.F. Skinner, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Carl Rogers. Features: Introductory essays for each group of readings provide important historical, social, and cultural background and context. Sample questions encourage critical reflection on the issues raised by the authors. Compatibility with most textbooks in the history and systems of psychology. (shrink)

If the contemporary rebirth of the ontological argument had its conception in Norman Malcolm's discovery of a second Anselmian argument it had its full-term delivery as a healthy philosophical progeny with Alvin Plantinga's sophisticated modal version presented in the tenth chapter of The Nature of Necessity. This latter argument has been the centre of a huge body of literature over the last fifteen years, and deservedly so. One is impressed that this version of Anselm's jewel is valid and sound if (...) any is. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:After Irony: Aristophanes’ Wealth and its Modern InterpretersJames McGlewThe contest between Chremylus and Penia in Wealth (488–626) lies at the center of interpretations of Aristophanes’ final surviving play and of Old Comedy’s dramatic and receptive development in Aristophanes’ last years. In much of the work of scholars since Helmut Flashar’s 1967 article, 1 and including A. E. Bowie’s recent study (1993) on Aristophanes, that contest and the episodic portion (...) of the play following it are seen as dominated by a tension between the play’s logical consequences and its dramatic outcomes; Penia, these scholars believe, gives the better argument, and when Chremylus nonetheless proceeds with his plan of restoring Plutus’ sight, his program is haunted by her warnings: for the insightful members of the audience, Chremylus’ plan proves to be a social and ethical catastrophe. This “ironic interpretation” of Wealth has troubled some recent commentators. But most of those who refuse to see a fundamental disengagement between the logic and drama imbedded in the play, find a similar tension between the play’s dramatic promise and its reception; for Konstan and Dillon (1981) and for Olson (1993), the play imagines universal wealth but serves a conservative, anti-revolutionary ideology: comic fantasy provides an escape for an increasingly impoverished and powerless dēmos. Thus, even if Wealth did not persuade poor Athenians that Penia was better than Plutus, it still helped keep them loyal to her.Recent interest in Wealth has had some effect in rescuing the play from literary death. Viewed as enervated and unimaginative by most scholars of recent generations, 2 Wealth has regained the moral weight [End Page 35] that once inspired the Italian Renaissance to honor it before any other work of Greek antiquity with a Latin translation, 3 and that invited the attention of Fielding (Aristophanes 1742) and other modern translators. Underlying this new interpretation of Wealth lies a reassessment of its dramatic qualities: the dramatic and narrative infelicities that troubled the last generation of Aristophanes scholars are now seen as keys to the subtlety of this last extant example of Old Comedy. But the revived interest and dramatic reassessment of Wealth have made it into a very different play. 4 What earlier scholars had read as a somewhat anemic flight into escapist fantasy is now taken as a demonstration that wealth and justice, good behavior and material happiness are inherently irreconcilable. Chremylus may dream of universal wealth, but the play itself hopes to offer its audience a superior moral wisdom.The new readings of Wealth constitute a relatively united front against which the few dissident voices—Sommerstein’s (1984) is the most important 5 —have had little effect. This paper examines the dramatic and political character of Aristophanes’ last comedy to argue that Wealth itself thematizes the relationship between comic fantasy and its audience’s private desires, a relationship at the heart of recent conservative interpretations of the play. I will suggest that Aristophanes has constructed Chremylus’ victory over Penia to restate—albeit his audience and comedy itself were changing—the political significance and integrity of comic fantasy. Accused by Penia at 557—and by her modern admirers—of doing nothing more than “trying to kō mō idein” her, Chremylus [End Page 36] invites his audience “to laugh at poverty” and dream of escaping it in a way that reaffirms Athenian democratic identity and celebrates the decision-making powers of the collective dē mos. 6The ironic interpretation of Wealth, and even some critics of this interpretation, 7 assume that Aristophanes’ audience would have perceived, and held on to the perception, that Penia’s argument was stronger than Chremylus’; and that, moreover, the superiority of Penia’s argument shaped the audience’s view of the second half of Wealth, which presents a utopic vision of life without her (Olson 1993, 235–36). But the comic arguments of Aristophanes’ earlier agons—our best source for reconstructing the expectations of Wealth’s audience—do not offer much support for these assumptions. Arguments win in Aristophanes’ earlier plays by uniting the Chorus, the synecdochic audience, behind the protagonist; for this, verifiable fact is not necessarily the best tool. In Acharnians, Dicaeopolis’ argument... (shrink)

Discussions of genetic enhancements often imply deep suspicions about human desires to manipulate or enhance the course of our future. These unspoken assumptions about the arrogance of the quest for perfection are at odds with the normally hopeful resonancy we find in contemporary theology. The author argues that these fears, suspicions and accusations are misplaced. The problem lies not with the question of whether we should pursue perfection, but rather what perfection we are pursuing. The author argues that perfection, properly (...) understood, has an enormously positive function in the Roman Catholic tradition. The author examines three sources: the Scriptures, the scholastic tradition, and ascetical theology. He examines contemporary criticisms of perfectionism and suggests that an adequate virtue theory keeps us from engaging perfectionism as such. The author then shows how a positive, responsible view of perfection is an asset to our discussion on enhancement technology. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to expand upon the conclusions reached by Orr and Genesen in their 1997 article , Requests for ‘inappropriate’ treatment based on religious beliefs.1 Assuming, with Orr and Genesen, that claims made in the name of religion are not absolute, I will propose some principles for determining when claims based on religious beliefs or cultural sensibilities “trump” other considerations and when they do not.

TWENTIETH-CENTURY CATHOLIC MORAL THEOLOGIANS HAVE ABANDONED their long-standing primary task of being teachers of priests who need specific interpretations of the law to hear confessions properly. By 1965 they had become guardians of the personal consciences of lay people seeking to become disciples of Christ. This shift was occasioned by a sustained debate between manualists and revisionists in which they argued about the primary locus of moral theology, about the locus of moral truth, and about the objectivity of moral truth.

Branding has long been seen as an effective means of marketing products. The use of brand-based marketing campaigns, however, has come under intense scrutiny over the past 10 years for its power to facilitate deception and emotional manipulation. As a way of proceeding through the many differing moral assessments, this paper turns for insight to the tradition of writing on social ethical issues within the Roman Catholic Church. The author suggests that Catholic Social Teaching offers a distinctive approach to advertising (...) ethics that charts a middle course between the two poles of the debate on branding. This article introduces readers to the approach to advertising developed within Vatican documents on media, highlighting the basic values at stake and the particular moral norms for advertising that are articulated. The article then applies these values and norms to the case of brandbased advertising, ultimately suggesting that advertisers approach their work through the virtue of solidarity. (shrink)