This book assesses how Vatican II opened up the Catholic Church to encounter, dialogue, and engagement with other world religions. Opening with a contribution from the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, it next explores the impact, relevance, and promise of the Declaration Nostra Aetate before turning to consider how Vatican II in general has influenced interfaith dialogue and the intellectual and comparative study of world religions in the postconciliar decades, as well as the contribution (...) of particular past and present thinkers to the formation of current interreligious and comparative theological methods. Additionally, chapters consider interreligious dialogue vis-à-vis theological anthropology in conciliar documents; openness to the spiritual practices of other faith traditions as a way of encouraging positive interreligious encounter; the role of lay and new ecclesial movements in interreligious dialogue; and the development of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. Finally, it includes a range of perspectives on the fruits and future of Vatican’s II’s opening to particular faiths such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to investigate and critically analyse some of the formative factors which led to the spiritual maturation of a leading Vīraśaiva saint, Basava. This inquiry focuses on a single event in the life of this great reformer of medieval times, i.e. his spiritual conflict leading to his rejection of the upanayana ceremony. The study will proceed through an investigation of the earliest and subsequent sources which veil the personality of Basava. The traditional view will be (...) challenged as one-sided. By critically comparing the sources, a more comprehensive and plausible account will be suggested. (shrink)

Transplantation is a medically successful and cost-effective way to treat people whose organs have failed--but not enough organs are available to meet demand. T. M. Wilkinson explores the major ethical problems raised by policies for acquiring organs. Key topics include the rights of the dead, the role of the family, and the sale of organs.

Doctors’ strikes are legally permissible in the UK, with the situation differing in other countries. But are they morally permissible? Doug McConnell and Darren Mann have systematically attempted to dismiss the arguments for the moral impermissibility of doctors’ strikes and creatively attempted to provide further moral justification for them. Unfortunately for striking doctors, they fail to achieve this. Meanwhile, junior doctors’ strikes have continued in the UK through 2023 and have now extended into 2024. In this response, which focuses on (...) the UK situation and specifically junior doctors’ strikes in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, I will demonstrate a central problem with their arguments—namely that they underplay the harms caused by prolonged doctors’ strikes by ignoring the harms to patients with cancer. This weakens their conclusion that strikes are morally permissible in terms of the conditions and thresholds they set. I then provide a psychological critique of their justification for strikes in terms of the interests of the public. It follows that invoking the controversial concept of supererogatory action is ungrounded but also absurd when you consider time-critical cancer care. If those representing striking doctors wish to maintain a modicum of moral respectability, they should mitigate for patients with cancer and negotiate reasonably and with urgency. (shrink)

Background: Debates over legalisation of physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia often warn of a “slippery slope”, predicting abuse of people in vulnerable groups. To assess this concern, the authors examined data from Oregon and the Netherlands, the two principal jurisdictions in which physician-assisted dying is legal and data have been collected over a substantial period.Methods: The data from Oregon comprised all annual and cumulative Department of Human Services reports 1998–2006 and three independent studies; the data from the Netherlands comprised all four (...) government-commissioned nationwide studies of end-of-life decision making and specialised studies. Evidence of any disproportionate impact on 10 groups of potentially vulnerable patients was sought.Results: Rates of assisted dying in Oregon and in the Netherlands showed no evidence of heightened risk for the elderly, women, the uninsured , people with low educational status, the poor, the physically disabled or chronically ill, minors, people with psychiatric illnesses including depression, or racial or ethnic minorities, compared with background populations. The only group with a heightened risk was people with AIDS. While extralegal cases were not the focus of this study, none have been uncovered in Oregon; among extralegal cases in the Netherlands, there was no evidence of higher rates in vulnerable groups.Conclusions: Where assisted dying is already legal, there is no current evidence for the claim that legalised PAS or euthanasia will have disproportionate impact on patients in vulnerable groups. Those who received physician-assisted dying in the jurisdictions studied appeared to enjoy comparative social, economic, educational, professional and other privileges. (shrink)

Recent studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging of patients in a vegetative state have raised the possibility that such patients retain some degree of consciousness. In this paper, the ethical implications of such findings are outlined, in particular in relation to decisions about withdrawing life-sustaining treatment. It is sometimes assumed that if there is evidence of consciousness, treatment should not be withdrawn. But, paradoxically, the discovery of consciousness in very severely brain-damaged patients may provide more reason to let them die. (...) Although functional neuroimaging is likely to play an increasing role in the assessment of patients in a vegetative state, caution is needed in the interpretation of neuroimaging findings. (shrink)

The purpose of this note is to examine the notion of obligations to future generations, a notion that finds increasing use in discussions of social policies and programs, particularly as concerns population distribution and control and environment control. Thus, it may be claimed, the solution of problems in these areas is not merely a matter of enhancing our own good, improving our own conditions of life, but is also a matter of discharging an obligation to future generations.

The current position on the deceased’s consent and the family’s consent to organ and tissue donation from the dead is a double veto—each has the power to withhold and override the other’s desire to donate. This paper raises, and to some extent answers, questions about the coherence of the double veto. It can be coherently defended in two ways: if it has the best effects and if the deceased has only negative rights of veto. Whether the double veto has better (...) effects than other policies requires empirical investigation, which is not undertaken here. As for rights, the paper shows that it is entirely possible that individuals have a negative right of veto but no positive right to compel acceptance of their offers. Thus if intensivists and transplant teams turn down the deceased’s offer, they do not thereby violate the deceased’s right. This leaves it open whether non-rights based reasons—such as avoiding bad publicity or distress —require intensivists and transplant teams to turn down or accept the deceased’s offer. This, however, is beyond the scope of this paper. The current position may or may not be wrong, but it is at least coherent. (shrink)

It is generally wrong to manipulate. One leading reason is because manipulation interferes with autonomy, in particular the component of autonomy called ‘independence’, that is, freedom from intentional control by others. Manipulative health promotion would therefore seem wrong. However, manipulative techniques could be used to counter-manipulation, for example, playing on male fears of impotence to counter ‘smoking is sexy’ advertisements. What difference does it make to the ethics of manipulation when it is counter-manipulation? This article distinguishes two powerful defences of (...) counter-manipulative health promotion: that the counter-manipulation would prevent manipulation occurring, leaving people unmanipulated; and that the counter-manipulation would make people healthier without being any more manipulated than they would otherwise be. The article explains how counter-manipulation might work and the limits to its scope. The upshot is that counter-manipulative health promotion could respect the independence people are owed in virtue of their autonomy. However, autonomy is not the only consideration, and the article discusses further potential problems. Counter-manipulative health promotion might be misapplied, it might undermine trust, it might infringe on some norms for role behaviour and it might encourage a regrettable social practice. These objections are likely to be decisive against the counter-manipulation in some but not all cases. (shrink)

abstract This paper examines, from a philosophical point of view, the ethics of the role of the family and the deceased in decisions about organ retrieval. The paper asks: Who, out of the individual and the family, should have the ultimate power to donate or withhold organs? On the side of respecting the wishes of the deceased individual, the paper considers and rejects arguments by analogy with bequest and from posthumous bodily integrity. It develops an argument for posthumous autonomy based (...) on the liberal idea of self‐development and argues that this establishes a right of veto over donation. It claims, however, that whether the family's power to veto would conflict with posthumous autonomy rights depends on how it comes about. On the side of respecting the family's wishes, the paper first considers an argument from family distress. This supports a contingent, non‐rights‐based reason for the family's power that is trumped by the deceased's rights. It then outlines and criticises an argument based on family autonomy. The conclusion is that the individual has the right to veto the family's wish to donate and that, while the family has no right to veto the individual's wishes to donate, it can legitimately acquire this power and has done so in practice. (shrink)

Obesity is often considered a public health crisis in rich countries that might be alleviated by preventive regulations such as a sugar tax or limiting the density of fast food outlets. This paper evaluates these regulations from the point of view of equity. Obesity is in many countries correlated with socioeconomic status and some believe that preventive regulations would reduce inequity. The puzzle is this: how could policies that reduce the options of the badly off be more equitable? Suppose we (...) distinguish: (1) the badly off have poor options from (2) the badly off are poor at choosing between their options (ie, have a choosing problem). If obesity is due to a poverty of options, it would be perverse to reduce them further. Some people in public health say that preventive regulations do not reduce options but, I shall argue, they are largely wrong. So the equity case for regulations depends on the worst off having a choosing problem. It also depends on their having a choosing problem that makes their choices against their interests. Perhaps they do. I ask, briefly, what the evidence has to say about whether the badly off choose against their interests. The evidence is thin but implies that introducing preventive regulations for the sake of equity would be at least premature. (shrink)

Gametes, tissue, and organs can be taken from the dying or dead for reproduction, transplantation, and research. Whole bodies as well as parts can be used for teaching anatomy. While these uses are diverse, they have an ethical consideration in common: the claims of the people whose bodies are used. Is some use permissible only when people have consented to the use, actually wanted the use, would have wanted the use, not opposed the use, or what? The aim of this (...) article is to make progress in answering these questions. Initially I assume knowledge of people’s desires in order to test whether consent is directly required by their rights without worrying about mistaken uses against their wishes. I claim consent is not directly required by people’s rights. If we know people wanted or would want a use, their rights permit the use, but if we know they wanted or would want not to be used, their rights do not permit the use. The knowledge assumption is then dropped and the question becomes how to decide what to do when the wishes of rightholders are not known. I suggest working out what to do when wishes are known and then adjusting, on the basis of whatever evidence there is, for probability and strength of desire. There are other considerations too, for instance about default rules. The key general comment here is that, in setting rules, the costs to rightholders in not getting what they want needs to be taken into account. The final section tries to show that, in setting these rules, mistaken uses are not to be taken as worse than mistaken failure to use. (shrink)

This white paper aims to identify an open problem in 'Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality' -namely whether quantum theory and special relativity are formally compatible-, to indicate what the underlying issues are, and put forward ideas about how the problem might be addressed.

In this paper I hope to show that a conception of human rights requires a view of the social ideal and the good life, and requires a view of the nature of human community. But what I say in favor of these points hardly amounts to a demonstration. Instead I try to exhibit how we think and talk about rights in general, and what the presuppositions of such thought and talk are. Throughout, I emphasize the pragmatic side of rights-discourse and (...) I try to establish some of the contexts in which such discourse can be significantly employed. Much of what I say is motivated by the consideration that an historically important factor in the generation of various rights, their acknowledgement and implementation, and their extension to increasingly larger segments of the population, has been the claims put forward and the demands made by individuals and groups against individuals and groups. This factor constitutes a suggestive clue for the development of a theory of rights. The treatment here, however, is largely programmatic and fragmentary. The space allotted does not permit more. Moreover, I lead up to—but do not go into—the social ideal and the human community. The title of this essay indicates its limited scope. The above points are, of course, hardly novel; many older writers laid great stress upon them. But of late they have not received the attention that they in my view deserve. What does it mean for someone to maintain a conception of human rights? How is this conception given any concrete content? The answers to these questions, I believe, ultimately lead to a consideration of social ideals and the human community. What follows is meant to stimulate new thinking on these old-fashioned topics. (shrink)

In C.Q. xliii , p. 39, Mr. J. H. Quincey quotes the opening lines of Catalepton 5 as, Ite hinc,-inanes, ite, rhetorum ampullae, inflata rhoso* non Achaico verba, and adds, ‘the second line is corrupt and no satisfactory emendation has been proposed’. The MS. readings are: rhorso B, roso Mu, om. in lacuna Ar. In face of these voces nihili many have fallen back on the rore of the Aldine edition of 1517. But this does not really help, for one (...) does not inflate with dew: orators are not dew-bags, but wind-bags. It occurred to me some years ago that what is needed is some word meaning breath or wind to go with inflata, and that in view of the rh in rhorso it was probably a Greek word which a scribe had failed to recognize. I conjectured οζ, and found subsequently that this had been proposed by K. Münscher in Hermes, xlvii , pp. 153–4. οȋζος used of any rushing sound, is applied to speech by Philostratus , and by Pollux . It is easy to see how rhoezo could degenerate into rhoeso-rhoso-roso. (shrink)

People often have strong views about being the subjects of research after their deaths. Should these views be given any weight and, if so, how much? How could we find out what the views are and what should we do if we cannot? This paper defends the idea of posthumous interests and discusses the significance of those interests for research ethics. It argues that we can be guided by a symmetry between the interests of living and dead people and uses (...) posthumous privacy as an example. It also claims that the weight of those interests might not decline even over long periods of time. The arguments have important implications for the ethics of (amongst others) biomedical, archaeological, anthropological, historical, and sociological research. (shrink)

Paternalist policies in public health often aim to improve people’s well-being by reducing their options, regulating smoking offering a prime example. The well-being challenge is to show that people really are better off for having their options reduced. The distribution challenge is to show how the policies are justified since they produce losers as well as winners. If we start from these challenges, we can understand the importance of the empirical evidence that a very high proportion of smokers regret smoking. (...) In short, it is important that they regret it and important that the proportion is so high. This paper explains how, philosophically, regret can relate to well-being and it considers some of the strengths and weakness in the empirical research that the explanation brings out. The regret case for regulating smoking is indeed strong, although not as strong as the empirical researchers think. It is much weaker for paternalistic intervention in other public health problems, such as obesity and binge drinking. (shrink)

According to much modern social psychology, behavioural economics and common sense, people's actions and beliefs are frequently the result of rapid intuitive thought rather than careful deliberation. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, in their influential book, Nudge, synthesised the literature and used it as the basis for numerous policy ideas.1 Not least, they gave the word ‘nudge’ as a handy term to apply to all sorts of ways of taking advantage of people's psychological quirks without coercing or bribing them. But (...) while Nudge was long on ideas and enthusiasm, it was short on conceptual clarity. The idea of a nudge was inconsistent with some of the policies Thaler and Sunstein endorsed and their account of nudging's relation to freedom and paternalism was flawed.In Salvaging the concept of nudge, Yashar Saghai acts as a friendly critic who thinks nudging has plenty to offer the policy world but sees that it needs both conceptual clarity and ethical defence.2 He wants to show how some of ways of taking advantage of people's psychology could leave them as free as before and he is especially concerned with what I would describe as a question of manipulation: …. (shrink)

It has been pointed out to me that in my article on ‘The Augustan Rules for Dactylic Verse’ I misrepresented an observation of Maas as reported by Wilamowitz in his Griechische Verskunst, p. 53. Wilamowitz' words are: ‘Wenn Tibull und Ovid den Pentameter so bauen, dass die vorletzte Silbe betont wird, tun sie das nach dem Vorgange gleichzeitiger griechischer Epigrammatiker.’ This means, of course, that the Greek writers mentioned ended with a paroxytone word, not necessarily with a disyllable, as I (...) assumed it to mean, and I apologize for the oversight. (shrink)

The elements which every schoolboy learns on beginning Latin Verse Composition include a number of rules which seem arbitrarily designed to make the game harder. In hexameters, he is told, he must have a masculine caesura either in the third foot or in the second and fourth, and end normally with a disyllabic or a trisyllable; in pentameters he must end with a disyllabic; and in neither line may a single monosyllable stand at the end. Rarely, in my experience, is (...) any reason given him by way of redress, and he will search for one in vain in most of the school text-books, in introductions like Postgate's to Tibullus and Propertius, and in histories of Latin literature like Wight Duff's and Mackail's. This reticence may be due to the dissensions of experts on this subject and on the subject of Latin accentuation in general, but the theory that predominates in England, among those who hold a theory at all, explains so many of the phenomena that it deserves to be more widely and precisely known. The most detailed exposition of it is by E. H. Sturtevant, who summed up his analyses in a pair of articles in the Transactions of the American Philological Association in 1923–4. While his careful work is invaluable as marshalling the statistics and evidence, it errs on the side of excessive minuteness, and leaves room not merely for some additions, but for a different kind of treatment concerned less with bare statistics and more with poetic principles and historical development. Since Latin Verse Composition plays such an important part in English higher classical education, it seems desirable that a less technical and more accessible account should be available for English readers. Such an account I attempt to give here, keeping separate as far as possible the exposition and the consideration of the criticisms and rival theories that have been advanced. (shrink)

As in literature poetry precedes prose, so in poetry a special and ‘heightened’ diction seems to precede everyday language. Mr.T.S.Eliot has put it thus: ‘Every revolution in poetry is apt to be, and sometimes to announce itself as, a return to common speech.’ How does this apply to Greek and Latin ? There are objections to considering words in isolation from this point of view, since neutral ones are apt to go now grey, now purple, according to their company; but (...) if we do not do so, we deny ourselves the only considerable method of investigation that is still open to us. Again, we must recognize that most poems are composed largely of ordinary words, though these are often used in a way that is not ordinary. (shrink)

** The primary topic of this dissertation is the study of the relationships between parts and wholes as described by particular physical theories, namely generalized probability theories in a quasi-classical physics framework and non-relativistic quantum theory. ** A large part of this dissertation is devoted to understanding different aspects of four different kinds of correlations: local, partially-local, no-signaling and quantum mechanical correlations. Novel characteristics of these correlations have been used to study how they are related and how they can be (...) discerned via Bell-type inequalities that give non-trivial bounds on the strength of the correlations. ** The study of quantum correlations has also prompted us to study a) the multi-partite qubit state space with respect to its entanglement and separability characteristics, and b) the differing strength of the correlations in separable and entangled qubit states. Results include a novel classification of multipartite (partial) separability and entanglement, strong constraints on the monogamy of entanglement and of non-local correlations, and many new entanglement detection criteria that are directly experimentally accessible. ** Because of the generality of the investigation these results also have strong foundational as well as philosophical repercussions for the different sorts of physical theories as a whole; notably for the viability of hidden variable theories for quantum mechanics, for the possibility of doing experimental metaphysics, for the question of holism in physical theories, and for the classical vs. quantum dichotomy. (shrink)

'Thought insertion' in schizophrenia involves somehow experiencing one's own thoughts as someone else's. Some philosophers try to make sense of this by distinguishing between ownership and agency: one still experiences oneself as the owner of an inserted thought but attributes it to another agency. In this paper, we propose that thought insertion involves experiencing thought contents as alien, rather than episodes of thinking. To make our case, we compare thought insertion to certain experiences of 'verbal hallucination' and show that they (...) amount to different descriptions of the same phenomenon: a quasi-perceptual experience of thought content. We add that the agency/ownership distinction is unhelpful here. What requires explanation is not why a person experiences a type of intentional state without the usual sense of agency, but why she experiences herself as the agent of one type of intentional state rather than another. We conclude by sketching an account of how this might happen. (shrink)

The fragmentary columns of the Fourth Book of Philodemus' περ μονσικς were the first-fruits of Herculaneum, published in 1793, with venturesome reconstructions and learned notes, by the Academici of Naples. Fragments of the other books occur in four volumes of the Collectio Altera of 1862–5. A. Teubner Text by J. Kemke, a pupil of Bücheler, appeared in 1884, upon which Gomperz made a number of improvements in a pamphlet published in the following year. Otherwise, save for a few pages in (...) H. Abert's Die Lehre vom Ethos in der griechischen Musik published in 1899, the work has attracted very little attention; which is scarcely surprising in view of the state of the text and the peculiar awkwardness of Philodemus' Greek. (shrink)