ABSTRACT In a recent (2015) Bioethics editorial, Udo Schuklenk argues against allowing Canadian doctors to conscientiously object to any new euthanasia procedures approved by Parliament. In this he follows Julian Savulescu's 2006 BMJ paper which argued for the removal of the conscientious objection clause in the 1967 UK Abortion Act. Both authors advance powerful arguments based on the need for uniformity of service and on analogies with reprehensible kinds of personal exemption. In this article I want to defend the practice (...) of conscientious objection in publicly‐funded healthcare systems (such as those of Canada and the UK), at least in the area of abortion and end‐of‐life care, without entering either of the substantive moral debates about the permissibility of either. My main claim is that Schuklenk and Savulescu have misunderstood the special nature of medicine, and have misunderstood the motivations of the conscientious objectors. However, I acknowledge Schuklenk's point about differential access to lawful services in remote rural areas, and I argue that the health service should expend more to protect conscientious objection while ensuring universal access. (shrink)

Taking a distributed view of language, this paper naturalizes symbol grounding. Learning to talk is traced to — not categorizing speech sounds — but events that shape the rise of human-style autonomy. On the extended symbol hypothesis, this happens as babies integrate micro-activity with slow and deliberate adult action. As they discover social norms, intrinsic motive formation enables them to reshape co-action. Because infants link affect to contingencies, dyads develop norm-referenced routines. Over time, infant doings become analysis amenable. The caregiver (...) of a nine-month-old may, for example, prompt the baby to fetch objects. Once she concludes that the baby uses ‘words’ to understand what she says, the infant can use this belief in orienting to more abstract contingencies. New cognitive powers will develop as the baby learns to act in ways that are consistent with a caregiver’s false belief that her baby uses ‘words.’. (shrink)

Volume 28, Issue 2, May 2020, Page 205-312.

There is a long-standing philosophical discussion about the relationship between love and choice. The most simplistic versions see love as something one “falls” into, without any choice at all. A more sophisticated account of love would accommodate some degree of indirect choice: I feel an initial interest, and choose to seek her out more. I can also choose to create and sustain the conditions that support love, for example, by avoiding infidelity and long commutes. However, such indirect choices are relatively (...) discrete or time-limited. In contrast, I want to explore a more temporally extended kind of choice, which starts when I take responsibility for the other. This is an attitude involving a prospective commitment, an achievement of the imagination, and an active concern. I argue that one essential requirement of longer-term adult romantic and friendly love is precisely that the lover takes responsibility for meeting the beloved’s unpredictable and possibly onerous needs in the future. (shrink)

By looking at the situations faced by the protagonists of two classic plays , I try to shed light on what it means to face an insoluble moral dilemma, what it might mean to deal with it, and how the dilemma can reveal certain crucial information about the decision-maker to us readers-spectators, to other characters in the play who witness, or are implicated by, the incident, as well as, and perhaps most importantly, to the protagonist himself. In so doing, I (...) distinguish the above dilemmas from moral-prudential dilemmas and from apparent dilemmas constituted by the mere lack of epistemological access. Indeed, I generally resist the various reductive approaches characteristic of much analytic moral philosophy, and challenge the notion of a uniquely right answer to which all rational moral agents can be held accountable. (shrink)

The 2016, the UK Supreme Court case of Jogee confirmed a long-standing convention in English law. In cases where D is assisting or encouraging P to commit an offence, D will only be liable as an accessory for that offence if she intentionally assists or encourages P and if she knows the essential features of the offence. In this paper, I discuss and develop some of the arguments from Sanford Kadish’s 1996 article “Reckless Complicity.” I argue that a special sub-category (...) of complicity, namely ‘enabling’, can be done recklessly, and is sufficiently blameworthy to ground criminal liability. (shrink)

Medical ethics is normally taught in a combination of three ways: through discussions of normative theories and principles; through for-and-against debating of topics; or through case studies. I want to argue that a fourth approach might be better, and should be used more: teaching medical ethics through medical law. Medical law is already deeply imbued with ethical concepts, principles and reasons, and allows the discussion of ethics through the “back door,” as it were. The two greatest advantages of the law (...) are its familiar authority, especially among the disengaged medical students who have little interest or respect for the subject of ethics; and its focus on the reality of the people and the tragedies discussed. Finally, I argue that medical law, unlike ethics, allows more efficient and more detailed MCQ assessment. (shrink)

"A collection of essays in feminist philosophy.

There seem to be two clearly-defined camps in the debate over the problem of moral expertise. On the one hand are the “Professionals”, who reject the possibility entirely, usually because of the intractable diversity of ethical beliefs. On the other hand are the “Ethicists”, who criticise the Professionals for merely stipulating science as the most appropriate paradigm for discussions of expertise. While the subject matter and methodology of good ethical thinking is certainly different from that of good clinical thinking, they (...) argue, this is no reason for rejecting the possibility of a distinctive kind of expertise in ethics, usually based on the idea of good justification. I want to argue that both are incorrect, partly because of the reasons given by one group against the other, but more importantly because both neglect what is most distinctive about ethics: that it is personal in a very specific way, without collapsing into relativism. (shrink)

Temporality underpins how living systems coordinate and function. Unlike measures that use mathematical conventions, lived temporalities grant functional cohesion to organisms-in-the-world. In foxtail grasses, for example, self-maintenance meshes endogenous processes with exogenous rhythms. In embrained animals, temporalities can contribute to learning. And cowbirds coordinate in a soundscape that includes conspecifics: social learning allows them to connect copulating with past events such that females exert ‘long-distance’ control over male singing. Using Howard Pattee’s work, we compare the foxtail’s self-maintenance, gender-based cowbird learning (...) and how humans manage multi-scalar activity. We argue that, while all living things coordinate, temporal ranging is typical of vertebrates. As primates, humans too use temporal ranging – they can draw on social learning, anticipate winter and manage coordinated action. However language behaviour grants new control over the scales of time. People connect the impersonal to lived experience in narratives, as they draw on autobiography and enact cultural practices. Humans become singular individuals who use temporal experience to manage affect, relationships, beliefs, fictions, and knowledge. Individual subjectivity permits collaborative and competitive activity based on linking events with quite different histories. As a result, alone of the vertebrates, we claim that humans become time-rangers. (shrink)

The reconstructive turn in memory theory challenges us to provide an account of successful remembering that is attentive to the ways in which we use memory, both individually and socially. I investigate conceptualizations of accuracy and integrity useful to memory theorists and argue that faithful recollection is often a complex epistemological/ethical achievement.

Background We report a randomised controlled clinical trial of neurofeedback therapy intervention for ADHD/ADD in adults. We focus on internal mechanics of neurofeedback learning, to elucidate the primary role of cortical self-regulation in neurofeedback. We report initial results; more extensive analysis will follow. Methods Trial has two phases: intervention and follow-up. The intervention consisted of neurofeedback treatment, including intake and outtake measurements, using a waiting-list control group. Treatment involved $\sim$40 hour-long sessions 2-5 times per week. Training involved either theta/beta or (...) sensorimotor-rhythm regimes, adapted by adding a novel 'inverse-training' condition to promote self-regulation. Follow-up (ongoing) will consist of self-report and executive function tests. Setting Intake and outtake measurements were conducted at University of Helsinki. Treatment was administered at partner clinic Mental Capital Care, Helsinki. Randomisation We randomly allocated half the sample then adaptively allocated the remainder to minimise baseline differences in prognostic variables. Blinding Waiting-list control design meant trial was not blinded. Participants 54 adult Finnish participants (mean age 36 years; 29 females) were recruited after screening by psychiatric review. 44 had ADHD diagnoses, 10 had ADD. Measurements Symptoms were assessed by computerised attention test (T.O.V.A.) and self-report scales, at intake and outtake. Performance during neurofeedback trials was recorded. Results Participants were recruited and completed intake measurements during summer 2012, before assignment to treatment and control, September 2012. Outtake measurements ran April-August 2013. After dropouts, 23 treatment and 21 waiting-list participants remained for analysis. Initial analysis showed that, compared to waiting-list control, neurofeedback promoted improvement of self-reported ADHD symptoms, but did not show transfer of learning to T.O.V.A. Comprehensive analysis will be reported elsewhere. Trial Registration "Computer Enabled Neuroplasticity Treatment (CENT)", ISRCTN13915109. Partly funded by Finnish science agency TEKES, project #440078. (shrink)

This article is based on a qualitative empirical project about a distinct kinship group who were among the first identified internationally as having a genetic susceptibility to cancer. 50 were invited to participate. 15, who had all accepted testing, were interviewed. They form a unique case study. This study aimed to explore interviewees’ experiences of genetic testing and how these influenced their family relationships. A key finding was that participants framed the decision to be tested as ‘common sense’; the idea (...) of choice around the decision was negated and replaced by a moral imperative to be tested. Those who did not follow ‘common sense’ were judged to be imprudent. Family members who declined testing were discussed negatively by participants. The article addresses what is ethically problematic about how test decliners were discussed and whether these ethical concerns extend to others who are offered genetic testing. Discussions showed that genetic testing was viewed as both an autonomous choice and a responsibility. Yet the apparent conflict between the right to autonomy and the moral imperative of responsibility allowed participants to defend test decliners’ decisions by expressing a preference for or defending choice over responsibility. The ‘right not to know’ seemed an important moral construct to help ethically manage unpopular decisions made by close family who declined testing. In light of this research, the erosion of the ‘right not to know’ in the genomic age could have subtle yet profound consequences for family relationships. (shrink)

How and to what degree are we responsible for our characters, our lives, our misfortunes, our relationships and our children? This question is at the heart of "Moral Responsibility". The book explores accusations and denials of moral responsibility for particular acts, responsibility for character, and the role of luck and fate in ethics. Moral responsibility as the grounds for a retributivist theory of punishment is examined, alongside discussions of forgiveness, parental responsibility, and responsibility before God. The book also discusses collective (...) responsibility, bringing in notions of complicity and membership, and drawing on the seminal contemporary discussion of collective agency and responsibility: the Nuremberg trials. (shrink)

Charles Griswold’s 2007 book Forgiveness argues that genuine forgiveness of an unexcused, unjustified and unignored offence must be normgoverned and conditional. In the same way that gift-giving is governed by norms of appropriateness, so too is forgiveness; and the appropriateness of forgiving is centrally dependent on the offender’s repentance. In response, I claim that genuine forgiveness must always be elective and unconditional, and therefore genuinely unpredictable, no matter how much – or how little – the offender repents. I consider and (...) reject one defence of unconditional forgiveness, that of Garrard and McNaughton. I then develop my own account, which builds on Bernard Williams’ notion of practical necessity. (shrink)

This book offers a feminist philosophical analysis of contemporary public skepticism about women's memories of past harm. It concentrates primarily on writings associated with the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, founded in 1992 as a lobby for parents whose adult children have accused them of some abuse after a period of having not remembered it.

Next SectionThe dominant conception of medical ethics being taught in British and American medical schools is at best pointless and at worst dangerous, or so it will be argued. Although it is laudable that medical schools have now given medical ethics a secure place in the curriculum, they go wrong in treating it like a scientific body of knowledge. Ethics is a unique subject matter precisely because of its widespread familiarity in all areas of life, and any teaching has to (...) start from this shared ethical understanding and from the familiar ethical concepts of ordinary language. Otherwise there is a real risk that spurious technocratic jargon will be deployed by teacher and student alike in the futile search for intellectual respectability, culminating in a misplaced sense of having “done” the ethics module. There are no better examples of such jargon than “consequentialism”, “deontology”, and the “Four Principles”. At best, they cannot do the work they were designed to do and, at worst, they can lead student and practitioner into ignoring their own healthy ethical intuitions and vocabulary. (shrink)

Sue Campbell reinstates the personal as an important dimension in analytic philosophy of mind. She argues that the category of feelings has a unique role in psychological explanation: the expression of feelings is the attempt to communicate personal significance. To develop a model for affective meaning, the author moves attention away from the classic emotions to feelings that are more personal, inchoate, and idiosyncratic.

In a recent article, Henri Wijsbek discusses the 1991 Chabot “psychiatric euthanasia” case in the Netherlands, and argues that Chabot was justified in helping his patient to die. Dutch legislation at the time permitted physician assisted suicide when the patient’s condition is severe, hopeless, and unbearable. The Dutch Supreme Court agreed with Chabot that the patient met these criteria because of her justified depression, even though she was somatically healthy. Wijsbek argues that in this case, the patient’s integrity had been (...) undermined by recent events, and that this is the basis for taking her request seriously; it was unreasonable to expect that she could start again. In this paper, I do not challenge the Dutch euthanasia criteria in the case of somatic illness, but I argue that both Chabot and Wijsbek are wrong because we can never be sufficiently confident in cases of severe exogenous depression to assist the patient in her irreversible act. This is partly because of the essential difference between somatic and mental illness, and because of the possibility of therapy and other help. In addition, I argue that Wijsbek’s concept of integrity cannot do the work that he expects of it. Finally, I consider a 2011 position paper from the Royal Dutch Medical Association on euthanasia, and the implications it might have for Chabot-style cases in the future. (shrink)

Moffat, Sue Review of: Celebrating with children: Volume 1 resources, volume 2 readings, by Robert Borg, Gerard Kelly, Brian Lucas,, pp.302 + 188, $29.95, $24.95.

In a recent thought-provoking piece, Peter Roberts argues against the central role of happiness as a guiding concept in education, and argues for more attention to be paid to despair. This does not mean cultivating despair in young people, but allowing them to make sense of their own natural occasional despair, as well as the despair of others. I agree with Roberts about happiness, and about the need for more attention to despair, but I argue that focusing too much on (...) despair is dangerous without paying simultaneous attention to goodness. Roberts argues that students must be helped to face the despair born of the realisation that we can never be sure of the moral grounds on which our actions are based, we can never fully know ourselves, and that education should make us more appreciative of what we don't know. I argue against all three claims: there are some moral truths that we can know; we can know enough of ourselves in certain contexts; education should not only teach intellectual humility, it should also give us confidence in appreciating the sources of meaning that are ordinarily available, e.g. personal relationships. The paper concludes with a response to the objection that my position is little more than old-fashioned moralism and conservatism. (shrink)

Falk's argument takes for granted that “protolanguage” used a genetic propensity for producing word-forms. Using developmental evidence, I dispute this assumption and, instead, reframe the argument in terms of behavioral ecology. Viewed as niche-construction, putting the baby down can help clarify not only the origins of talk but also the capacity to modify what we are saying as we speak.

This paper asks three inter-related questions, proceeding chronologically through a divorcee’s experience: is it responsible and rational to make an unconditional marital vow in the first place? does divorce break that unconditional marital vow? And the main question: can the divorcee make a second unconditional marital vow in all moral seriousness? To the last question I answer yes. I argue that the divorce process is so disorienting – to use Amy Harbin’s term – as to transform the divorcee and therefore (...) partly release her from the original vow. Arguing this will require a specific understanding of personal identity and change. (shrink)

Benedict XVI's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, treated the different characteristics of human love and their expression. The first section discusses eros and the second shows how agape provides the essential framework for Catholic charitable organisations. I will be arguing that by omitting any reflection on the role of philia, he missed a significant opportunity to retrieve an important part of the Tradition and expand our usual understanding of the elements of social ethics. Part I briefly gives the background of (...) Benedict's non-use of philia in his encyclical and indicates the basis for the view that philia has no place in Christian social ethics. The favoured approach is that of agape. Part II presents Thomas Aquinas' view of friendship and how it might counter the shortcomings identified by the authors in Part I. Part III applies his view of friendship to the key principles in Catholic social teaching of solidarity and preferential option for the poor. Part IV concludes with some general summary remarks. (shrink)

Five proposals for admitting better applicants into medical school are discussed in this article: An A level in a humanity or social science would be required, to supplement—not replace—the stringent science requirement. This would ensure that successful candidates would be better “primed” for the medical curriculum. Extra points in the applicant’s initial screening would be awarded for an A level in English literature. There would be a minimum age of 23 for applicants, although a prior degree would not be required. (...) This is to ensure that the applicants are mature enough to know themselves and the world better, to make a more informed and motivated choice of career, and to get more out of the humanities components of the curriculum. A year’s full-time experience in a healthcare or charity environment would be desirable. Applicants would be given two lists of interview discussion topics to prepare: works of literature and topics in healthcare politics. (shrink)

In 1965 Peter Winch published ‘The Universalisability of Moral Judgements’. I feel that the argument in this paper has never been successfully refuted, and that it remains relevant to many contemporary debates in moral philosophy. Winch argued against the widespread assumption that a moral judgement, if true, ought to be universalisable for all people in relevantly similar situations. He considers the example of Captain Vere in Melville’s ‘Billy Budd’: Vere managed to condemn a man he considered innocent, while Winch concludes (...) that in the same situation he could not have done it. Many contemporary moral realists would demand that at least one of them was incorrect, probably because of misperceiving the situation . Instead, says Winch, there is a sense in which one action legitimately ‘struck’ Vere, but not Winch, as correct, and that this is the end of the ‘dispute’ between them. However, this requires a robust defence against counter-charges of relativism. Part of the problem with Winch’s article, I argue, is his ambiguous use of the concept of ‘moral rightness’, but I remedy this, and defend Winch against two further sympathetic criticisms. (shrink)

If you have become as discouraged as I have in the past in the struggle to decipher what philosophers are really up to, then this book will provide very helpful explanations. It is not a book that can be read through quickly, and it does require a fairly broad familiarity with the language of philosophy, however the effort to understand it is very well worth it. It is also not a book that reassures the kind of person who seeks to (...) avoid personal responsibility and self-direction. It dissolves ordinary refuges of transcendently comforting words rather than promotes them. That is, this book is for fiercely independently-minded individuals. If you want to not be misled into the same mistakes philosophers have been making over the past two millennia, then this book is essential towards your quest. (shrink)

Notoriously, most philosophers write for other philosophers. Most philosophy books are designed for students of philosophy, students who can be assumed to have signed up and remained in the subject voluntarily, and therefore to have a certain interest in the subject and a certain understanding of the point of it all. In this paper I want to consider the philosopher’s engagement with those who, living in the ‘real world’, have had neither interest in nor exposure to philosophy beyond the stereotypes (...) of popular culture.1 By ‘engagement’ I have in mind formal pedagogical encounters such as compulsory teaching sessions in professional schools, public discussions and television talk-shows where the speaker is introduced as a ‘philosopher’, but above all the informal conversations that a philosopher inevitably has with his family, neighbours, doctor, accountant, his child’s teachers, his priest etc., where he is not so much teaching philosophy as explaining what the subject is. I’m hoping this is not of merely anthropological concern, but that this exploration can reveal something important about teaching the subject to philosophy students as well, even if for reasons of space it will have to be a bit polemical. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Criminal Law: An Introduction explores the central concepts of criminal law, such as intention, complicity, duress, and how they work, both within criminal law practice and in our everyday lives, from legal and philosophical perspectives. At the heart of the book is the central philosophical concept of responsibility: what does it mean to be responsible for an act, to hold someone responsible for an act, or to give an excuse in order to avoid responsibility for an act? (...) Offering talking points to enrich an ongoing conversation, this unique textbook addresses all of these questions in an accessible way for law and non-law students alike. Real cases are examined in detail and a critical approach to the criminal law is adopted throughout. The focus will be mainly on the criminal law of England and Wales, with occasional cases from other jurisdictions, and occasional examples from other areas of law This text will be ideal reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of law, philosophy and criminology, as well as political science and sociology. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin introduced the example of Margo, who was so severely demented that she could not recognise any family or friends, and could not remember anything of her life. At the same time, however, she seemed full of childish delight. Dworkin also imagines that, before her dementia, Margo signed an advance refusal of life-saving treatment. Now severely demented, she develops pneumonia, easy to treat, but lethal if untreated. Dworkin argues that the advance refusal ought to be heeded and Margo be (...) allowed to die of that pneumonia, on the basis that the prior refusal expresses her true wishes. In this paper I want to challenge Dworkin’s understanding of identity and his conclusion about advance refusals, and I develop my argument in two directions. First, I argue that the demented Margo is not some ‘lesser’ version of the ‘true’ Margo, but instead that the present Margo’s wishes should take precedence over those of the past Margo, on the grounds that all of us are entitled to change our minds. Second, I argue for a stronger role for friends and family members in sustaining the demented Margo’s identity through her years of decline. Based on this, I argue for a presumption against the advance refusal, but I allow that in extreme cases, a friend might have the authority to demand that it be heeded. (shrink)

Like Kravchenko, we build on Maturana’s bio-logic and the view that language is the “outcome of the evolution of observers.” Yet, Kravchenko offers a narrow “linguistic” reading of Maturana. On our wider view, Kravchenko’s work is criticized for limiting use of “languaging” to aspects of observing that leave out how sensibility and activity inform human practices. Stephen Cowley & Rasmus Gahrn-Andersen.

In a recent issue of Bioethics, Bernard Gesang asks whether a moral philosopher possesses greater moral expertise than a non-philosopher, and his answer is a qualified yes, based not so much on his infallible access to the truth, but on the quality of his theoretically-informed moral justifications. I reject Gesang's claim that there is such a thing as moral expertise, although the moral philosopher may well make a valid contribution to the ethics committee as a concerned and educated citizen. I (...) suggest that wisdom is a lot more interesting to examine than moral expertise. Again, however, moral philosophers have no monopoly on wisdom, and the study of philosophy may even impede its cultivation. (shrink)