This book brings together contributors from the different member states of the European Union in order to understand the different degrees of subscription to the concept of Europe and the role education plays in such a process. This second edition includes the new countries which have become part of the union and also considers recent developments in policy and practice. Countries covered are: Austria; Belgium; Denmark; Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Ireland; Italy; Luxembourg; Netherlands; Portugal; Spain; Sweden and the UK. All (...) sectors of education are dealt with in each case and the central theme of the European dimension is examined throughout. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Amongst inanimate objects, it is generally accepted that at least some art forms, such as music and painting, are capable of being genuinely expressive of emotion, even though it is difficult to understand exactly how. In contrast, although expressive properties can be attributed to non-artworks, such as natural objects or wine, it has often been claimed that such objects cannot be genuinely expressive. Focussing on wine, I argue that once we understand properly the nature of expressiveness, if we allow (...) that music can be expressive there is no good reason to withold the ability to be genuinely expressive from wine. (shrink)

I propose to show that the use that has often been made of wittgenstein's work in the philosophy of religion is innocuous. the notion that the meaning of a word or a sentence is the use to which it is put has been exploited in such a way that it neither does justice to religious belief nor to wittgenstein's thought. i endeavour to show that the burden of the positivist programme was not to withold from religious language the accolade (...) of 'meaning'. it was to show that no piece of language could be both meaningful and true (or false) which did not satisfy the conditions of either the analytic or the synthetic category. i conclude that wittgenstein's work can provide an effective liberation from positivism if it can be shown that wittgenstein gives us sufficient reason to reject the analytic-synthetic distinction not only as an inadequate criterion of 'meaning', but as an inadequate criterion of 'truth' as well. (shrink)

The first edition of The Mismeasure of Man appeared in 1981 and was quickly praised in the popular press as a definitive refutation of 100 years of scientific work on race, brain-size and intelligence. It sold 125,000 copies, was translated into 10 languages, and became required reading for undergraduate and even graduate classes in anthropology, psychology, and sociology. The second edition is not truly revised, but rather only expanded, as the author claims the book needed no updating as any new (...) research would only be plagued with the same philosophical errors revealed in the first edition. Thus it continues a political polemic, whose author engages in character assassination of long deceased scientists whose work he misrepresents despite published refutations, while studiously witholding from his readers fifteen years of new research that contradicts every major scientific argument he puts forth. Specific attention in this review are given to the following topics: the relationship between brain size and IQ, the importance of the scientific contributions of Sir Francis Galton, S. G. Morton, H. H. Goddard, and Sir Cyril Burt, the role of early IQ testers in determining U.S. immigration policy, The Bell Curve controversy and the reality of g, race /sex/social class differences in brain size and IQ, Cesare Lombroso and the genetic basis of criminal behavior, between-group heritabilities, inter-racial adoption studies, and IQ why evolutionary theory predicts group differences, and the extent to which Gould's political ideology has affected his scientific work. (shrink)

This paper will survey and assess the ways in which moral thinkers in the early modern tradition of casuistry considered a range of cases of conscience (casus conscientiae) relating to lying, deception, and witholding the truth. Arguing that the position of the casuists has been unjustly maligned — not least by Pascal's brillant yet partizan Les Proviniciales — casuistical theories of lying and simulation will be placed in a broad intellectual context which will examine attihules to mendacity among early modern (...) medical writers, political theorists, anbl philosophers. Contrasting casuistical theoriessuch as equivocation and mental reservation with the approach to lying of other early modern writers, the lecture will advancfcahe view that the casuists promulgated a conceptual outlook on the differences betweefc lying and deception which is of inherent interest, and which helps to clarify some of the salient issues that attend a philosophical account of lying. (shrink)

The information age we are living in and the technology that supports it, raises new ethical concerns. Among these concerns are privacy — the rights of individuals to withold information they consider sensitive, and accessibility — the rights of individuals to obtain information that is relevant to the decisions they must make. Arguments about potential impacts of information technology on privacy and accessibility mask and underlying conflict — that one person's beliefs about their right to relevant information is likely (...) to conflict with another person's belief's about their right to withold information they consider sensitive. This paper proposes that the conflict is likely to be a function of the role the individuals plays in the decision making situation — situationally conditioned belief (SCB) — rather than a function of the person's underlying ethical values.This paper presents an empirical study involving information privacy and accessibility in routine business and market decisions, designed to reveal the presence of SCBs. The results indicate that SCBs cause a gap in beliefs about information accessibility and privacy. Impacts of the SCB gap are discussed. A negotiation technique called information exchange is suggested as a means of closing the SCB gap in routine business and market transactions. (shrink)

Airedale NHS Trust v Bland establishes three principles among which is the controversial idea that people in a PVS, though not dying, have no best interests and no meaningful life. Accordingly, it is argued, they may have their food and fluids, whether delivered by tube or manually, removed, with the result that they die. Laing challenges this view arguing that not only is this bad medical science, it is unjustly discriminatory and at odds with our duties to the severely disabled. (...) Laing highlights research by Keith Andrews et al and points out that Andrew Devine, in the same Hillsborough disaster, woke up some years after Tony Bland was decided.(Post script) Laing argues elsewhere that after the Mental Capacity Act 2005 the case has become a dangerous springboard for new third parties' to require the removal of food and fluids from the vulnerable incapacitated. (shrink)

The recent revelation that the rolling out of the Liverpool Care Pathway as the NHS National End of Life Care strategy in 2008 had been financially incentivised and implemented with astonishing compliance emerged as a thought-provoking development. Many of us have been warning for years of the financial, political and research interests that there are in institutionalising sedation-and-dehydration regimes, and then, inevitably, medical homicide. Freedom of Information Act requests exposed the millions of pounds that have been paid for the implementation (...) of this national end-of-life care strategy. Much more interestingly, it showed that some hospital trusts had been paid these funds for ensuring that up to two thirds of all deaths were Pathway deaths. Given that the very livelihood of health professionals was being judged against the new Commissioning for Quality Innovation (CQUIN) ’Gold Standards Framework’, professional observance of the pathway was predictable. The revelation of management targets, despite the best efforts of the regime’s proponents to play them down, radically alters the debate. Unlike education or housing targets, these ones are potentially homicidal. (shrink)

The Liverpool Care Pathway is intended as a palliative care regime at the end of life. Even its critics agree that certain of its recommendations may be useful and appropriate. Additionally, critics are aware that there are occasions when death may be a foreseen side effect of perfectly licit palliation whose primary ends are not homicidal at all. It is evident that treatment may be over-expensive, over-burdensome or simply futile. There is no suggestion that critics of the Pathway adhere irrationally (...) to what is known in medical ethics as the error of vitalism, the commitment to excessive, extraordinary or futile treatment, or over-burdensome care at the end of life. However, to ask whether treatment is futile, over-burdensome or over-expensive is very different to the discriminatory question about the futility, burden or expense of a frail and vulnerable patient. The sedation-dehydration aspect of the Pathway attracts much proper opposition. Doctors and families have found that those on the Pathway recovered when they intervened to take the patient off it. Senior medics have stepped forward, in the face of managerial opposition to argue that it is often impossible to know with certainty whether a person is imminently dying. One problem with the Pathway is that where a patient is misdiagnosed as terminal, the combination of morphine and dehydration has a self-fulfilling character and is likely to undermine a patient’s capacity. Persistent dehydration of even fit and healthy sedated patients will kill them. This was the difficulty highlighted by concerned medical professionals many years ago. The independent inquiry ordered in response to Freedom of Information Act requests performed in 2012 demonstrating a staggering increase in the number of people dying on the Pathway once it was financially incentivised needs to ensure certain investigations take place. What is needed, however, is not a whitewash but an independent inquiry with all interests declared and data sets interrogated and collated. These will cover a time-series medical history of each anonymised patient on the Pathway, duration until death, information about interventions provided during the period, monthly raw data from each trust, hospice or care home, medical histories, removals from the Pathway, information about journals that were corrected once a patient recovered, demographic data, location information and an audit trail of all data management. (shrink)

The chief executive of the Law Society proposes that the Mental Capacity Bill is a progressive initiative enhancing personal autonomy. Laing replies to this by showing that the Bill, for from enhancinging personal autonomy explodes it by inviting homicide by unaccountable third parties, allowing non-therapeutic research and organ-removal without consent and creating a secret and unaccountable court with a lethal power over the vulnerable incapacitated.