It was a little over ten years ago, 1967–8, that H. D. Lewis delivered the first series of Gifford lectures, The Elusive Mind, in the University of Edinburgh. It was my privilege that year to be an auditor in the Seminar at King's College that Professor Lewis was conducting with his students in the area of this topic. I had already read the works in which, in the midst of neo-orthodox and existentialist religious movements, he had devoted himself to critical (...) valuation of those doctrines - witness his Morals and the New Theology, and Morals and Revelation. This earlier work prepared for a comprehensive interpretation of religious experience in his book in 1960: Our Experience of God. (shrink)

Organismal death has long been considered the irreversible ending of an organism's integrated functioning as a whole. However, the persistence of functionality in organs, tissues, and cells postmortem, as seen in organ donation, raises questions about the mechanisms underlying this resilience. Recent research reveals that various factors, such as environmental conditions, metabolic activity, and inherent survival mechanisms, influence postmortem cellular functionality and transformation. These findings challenge our understanding of life and death, highlighting the potential for certain cells to grow and (...) form new multicellular entities. This opens new avenues in biology and medicine, expanding our comprehension of life's complexity. (shrink)

While assessment is regarded as integral to enhancing the quality of teaching and learning, it is also a practice fraught with moral and ethical issues. An analysis is made of current assessment practices of teachers in South Africa which seem to straddle the domains of accountability and professional codes of conduct. In the process the position of the teacher as mediator between policies and diverse learner needs is explored in the light of moral and ethical considerations. Based on the notions (...) of ethical caring and caring about, the article suggests the infusing of principles of ubuntu in assessment practices may provide a framework to embed and strengthen morality and ethics in South African school assessment practices. (shrink)

I argue that Fischer’s attempts to undermine the “Ought” Implies “Can” principle (OIC) fail. I argue both against his construal of the natural motivation for OIC and against his argument for the falsity of OIC. I also consider some attempts to salvage Fischer’s arguments and argue that they can work only if the true moral theory is motive determinative--i.e., it is such that, necessarily, any action performed from a motive which renders one of the blame emotions appropriate is morally impermissible, (...) no matter what other features it has. But, as motive-determinative moral theories are implausible, Fischer’s arguments are not salvageable. (shrink)

In this paper I sketch an account of moral blame and blameworthiness. I begin by clarifying what I take blame to be and explaining how blameworthiness is to be analyzed in terms of it. I then consider different accounts of the conditions of blameworthiness and, in the end, settle on one according to which a person is blameworthy for φ-ing just in case, in φ-ing, she violates one of a particular class of moral requirements governing the attitudes we bear, and (...) our mental orientation, toward people and other objects of significant moral worth. These requirements embody the moral stricture that we accord to these others a sufficient level of respect, one that their moral worth demands. This is a familiar theme which has its roots in P. F. Strawson’s pioneering views on moral responsibility. My development of it leads me to the conclusion that acting wrongly is not a condition of blameworthiness: violating a moral requirement to perform, or refrain from performing, an action is neither necessary nor sufficient for being blameworthy. All we are ever blameworthy for, I will argue, are certain aspects of our mental bearing toward others. We can be said to be blameworthy for our actions only derivatively, in the sense that those actions are the natural manifestations of the things for which we are strictly speaking blameworthy. (shrink)

The tragic crash of Air New Zealand's flight TE-901 into Mt. Erebus in Antarctica provides a fascinating case for the exploration of the notion of corporate moral responsibility. A principle of accountability that has Aristotelian roots and is significantly different from the usual strict intentional action principles is examined and defined. That principle maintains that a person can be held morally accountable for previous non-intentional behavior that has harmful effects if the person does not take corrective measures to adjust his (...) ways of behavior so as not to produce repetitions. This principle is then applied to the Mt. Erebus disaster. (shrink)

Agreeing that being is becoming, that personal identity is noninstantaneous, the temporalistic personalist argues that the identity of the person is not, as hartshorne holds, linear, or a cumulative route of unit-occasions in which the past comes into the present. there cannot be a succession of experiences without a self-identifying active person able to maintain himself through change and interaction with his ambient, natural or divine.

In the last few years, the U.S. health care system has seemingly been gripped by “back to the nineties” fever. But there is a notable change in professional debates about how to better control health care costs. Discussion of health care rationing, which was hotly debated in the nineties, has become much more muted.Is health care rationing passé? I contend that debates about health care rationing have waned not because the need to ration has dwindled nor because ethical debates about (...) how or whether to ration have been resolved. They have declined because the word “rationing,” and unrelated concepts such as cost‐effectiveness analysis, have been replaced by terms—“parsimony,” “value,” and “CER”—that are not burdened by emotional and historical baggage.Sometimes the best way to promote healthy moral debate is to turn to new words that don't carry the burden of past debates. (shrink)

Numbers Skeptics deny that when faced with a choice between saving some innocent people from harm and saving a larger number of different, though equally innocent, people from suffering a similar harm you ought to save the larger number. In this article, I aim to put pressure on Numbers Skepticism.

Although knowledge of torture and physical and psychological abuse was widespread at both the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and known to medical personnel, there was no official report before the January 2004 Army investigation of military health personnel reporting abuse, degradation, or signs of torture. Mounting information from many sources, including Pentagon documents, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc., indicate that medical personnel failed to maintain medical records, (...) conduct routine medical examinations, provide proper care of disabled and injured detainees, accurately report illnesses and injuries, and falsified medical records and death certificates. Medical personnel and medical information was also used to design and implement psychologically and physically coercive interrogations. The United States military medical system failed to protect detainee's human rights, violated the basic principles of medical ethics and ignored the basic tenets of medical professionalism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Key Ingredients of Logic Non‐Deductive Reasoning Forms Plausible Reasoning Induction and Abduction Confirmatory Induction Concluding Remarks.

Peter Schouls examines the role played by the concepts of freedom, mastery, and progress in Descartes' writings, arguing that these ideas express a vital and ...

A physical mechanical sequence is proposed representing measurement interactions ‘hidden' within QM's proverbial ‘black box'. Our ‘beam splitter' pairs share a polar angle, but head in opposite directions, so ‘led' by opposite hemisphere rotations. For orbital ‘ellipticity', we use the inverse value momentum ‘pairs' of Maxwell's ‘linear' and ‘curl' momenta, seen as vectors on the Poincare spherical surface. Values change inversely from 0 to 1 over 90 degrees, then ± inverts.. Detector polarising screens consist of electrons with the same vector (...) distributions, but polar angles set independently by A & B. The absorption/re-emission interaction process is modelled as surface vector additions at the angle of polar latitude of each interaction. This ‘collapse' of characteristic ‘wave values' is really then simply ‘re-polarisation', with new ellipticity. We then obtain the relation Cosθ at polarisers. We may simplify this to new ellipses with major/minor axis values. Considering as spherical orbital angular momentum rotation we invoke the unique quality of spheres to rotate concurrently on three axes! Rotating on y or z axes concurrent with x axis spin can return surface points to starting positions with non-integer x axis rotations, from half to infinity!. Second interactions at photomultiplier/ analysers are identical but at two orthogonal ‘channels'. Vector addition interactions at BOTH channel orientations normally produce a vector value of adequate amplitude to give a *click* from the MAJOR axis direction. At the ‘crossover' points at near circular polarity the orthogonal ‘certainty' is ~ 50:50, so both or neither channels may produce a ‘click'. The apparently unphysical but proved ‘Malus' law' relation; Cos2θ emerges physically from the 2nd set of interactions. The main departure from QM's assumptions are; That the original pair members each actually possessed two inverse momenta sets; ‘curl' and ‘linear'. Also that complex ‘vector additions' of those pairs occurs. Vector quantities allow A & B to reverse their OWN finding by reversing dial setting, reproducing experimental outputs without problematic ‘non-locality'. (shrink)

Over the past decades the mortality rate in the United States has decreased and life expectancy has increased. Yet a number of recent studies have drawn Americans attention to the fact that racial and ethnic disparities persist in health care. It is clear that the U.S. health care system is not only flawed for many reasons including basic injustices, but may be the cause of both injury and death for members of racial and ethnic minorities.In 2002, an Institute of Medicine (...) report requested by Congress listed more than 100 studies documenting a wide range of disparities in the United States health care system. This report found that people belonging to racial and ethnic minorities often receive lower quality of health care than do people of European descent, even when their medical insurance coverage and income levels are the same as that of the latter. (shrink)

I. On the morning of 28 November 1979 flight TE-901, a DC-10 operated by Air New Zealand Limited, took off from Auckland, New Zealand, on a sightseeing passenger flight over a portion of Antarctica. The pilot in command was Captain Collins. The following are paragraphs from the official Report of the Royal Commission that inquired into the events surrounding that flight.

_The Scope of Morality _ was first published in 1980. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The scope of morality, Peter A. French contends, is much narrower than many traditional and contemporary works in ethical theory suggest. We trivialize morality if we think it has something to say about everything we do; it touches us all, but not at all times. (...) This essay in philosophical ethics focuses upon the origin, purpose, and function of the various concepts to be found in a more or less mature morality. The author draws a distinction between moral concepts that arise from an individual's wish to live a worthwhile life and those directed towards the development of virtue in the moral community. Moral concepts, in his view, are subjective creations of human beings rather than laws with an objective basis in nature. The ethics of sociobiology, of the lifeboat and spaceship models, and of game theory all come under his critical eye in this useful and progressive work. _The Scope of Morality_, says Hector-Neri Castaneda, "represents a serious effort at discussing the nature of morality, taking into account the most important contributions of recent writers.". (shrink)

Although generally philosophers have put a high valuation on reason, increasingly the role of emotions in motivating action is being recognized. The essays in this volume explore the emotions from a variety of perspectives, ranging from Aristotelian views of the passions to the new findings of cognitive science, and from such diverse starting points as medieval literature and psychological studies.

There is a moral phenomenon of “Secondary Permissibility” in which an otherwise morally impermissible option is made morally permissible by the presence of another option. In this paper I explain how this phenomenon works and argue that understanding how it works suggests a new model for the structure of the ethics of harming.

Since my childhood I have given up several conceptions of God. Each time there was quite a wrench, for, in my own limited way, I had been walking with my ‘living’ God. In my philosophical and theological studies, I have been impressed by the fact that one deep-souled thinker found the living God of another ‘dead’. And then I realised that a God is ‘living’ or ‘dead’ insofar as ‘He’ answers questions that are vital to the given believer.

This collection of essays, inspired by the author's experience teaching ethics to Marine and Navy chaplains during the Iraq War, examines the moral and psychological dilemmas posed by war. The first section deals directly with Dr Peter A. French's teaching experience and the specific challenges posed by teaching applied and theoretical ethics to men and women wrestling with the immediate and personal moral conflicts occasioned by the dissonance of their duties as military officers with their religious convictions. The following (...) chapters grew out of philosophical discussions with these chaplains regarding specific ethical issues surrounding the Iraq War, including the nature of moral evil, forgiveness, mercy, retributive punishment, honour, torture, responsibility and just war theory. This book represents a unique viewpoint on the philosophical problems of war, illuminating the devastating toll combat experiences take on both an individual's sense of identity and a society's professed moral code. (shrink)

The main strength of this book is the international exchange of ideas that will not only highlight many of these crucial bioethical issues but will strengthen the discipline of bioethics both nationally and globally. A critical exchange of ideas allows everyone to learn and benefit from the insights gained through others experiences. Analyzing and understanding real medical-ethical issues and cases and how they are resolved is the basis of education in bioethics for those who will have to make these decisions (...) in the future. The more we examine, analyze, and debate these bioethical issues and cases, the more knowledge will be gained and hopefully, we will all gain more practical wisdom. (shrink)

Modern philosophy assumes that tolerance is part of modernity's essence. It views tolerance as humanity's voice of conscience, nature's moral law, through which the human spirit progresses. As such, tolerance is one of modernity's sacred cows, a conflated metaphysical and moral principle. Weissberg is an arch-defender of thoughtful tolerance, who finds intolerable the growing misunderstanding of tolerance. His general thesis is that, properly understood, tolerance is a political, not an attitudinal concept. He contends that, increasingly during this century, Americans have (...) replaced political tolerance with a Utopian ideal of tolerance as the psychological acceptance of endless differences. He maintains that…. (shrink)