Murphy, Elysia Government funds should not be used to endorse religion in state schools. The presence of chaplains and scripture teachers in public schools diminishes the secularity of the state school system. Given the plethora of faith-based schools for families seeking a religious education, it is not unreasonable for non-religious families to expect a secular education from the government sector.

The Collective Imagination explores the social foundations of the human imagination. A comprehensive audit of the creativity claims of the post-modern age - that finds them badly wanting and looks to the future - this book will appeal to sociologists and philosophers concerned with cultural theory, cultural and media studies and aesthetics.

This chapter offers a general outline of Schopenhauer’s peculiarly named concept of the 'acquired character’ and explains its basic function in his ethical thought. For Schopenhauer, a person of acquired character is someone who knows the ways of acting (Handlungsweise) that are most expressive of their individuality and who allows that self-knowledge to structure their practical and emotional life. In keeping with certain elements of his psychological determinism, acquired character is not the acquisition of a ‘new’ character; rather, it is (...) the acquisition of self-knowledge of one’s essentially fixed empirical character. It is part of the argument of this chapter that by introducing the acquired character into his reflections on human action and agency Schopenhauer weaves a certain view of individual flourishing (eudaimonia) into his ethics. There are two central ingredients of Schopenhauer’s conception of eudaimonia, and both are linked to the acquired character. The first is self-knowledge; the second is a sense of personal autonomy that follows in the wake of the first. The chapter ends with a brief attempt to connect Schopenhauer’s concept of acquired character to contemporary debates in ethics concerning autonomy, practical identity, and what some call the ‘normative significance of self’. (shrink)

This volume identifies, discusses and addresses the wide array of ethical issues that have emerged for engineers due to the rise of a global economy. To date, there has been no systematic treatment of the particular challenges globalization poses for engineering ethics standards and education. This volume concentrates on precisely this challenge. Scholars and practitioners from diverse national and professional backgrounds discuss the ethical issues emerging from the inherent symbiotic relationship between the engineering profession and globalization. Through their discussions a (...) deeper and more complete understanding of the precise ways in which globalization impacts the formulation and justification of ethical standards in engineering as well as the curriculum and pedagogy of engineering ethics education emerges. (shrink)

Experiences of substitute decision-makers with requests for consent to non-therapeutic research participation during the dying process, including to what degree such requests are perceived as burdensome, have not been well described. In this study, we explored the lived experiences of family members who consented to non-therapeutic research participation on behalf of an imminently dying patient. We interviewed 33 family members involved in surrogate research consent decisions for dying patients in intensive care. Non-therapeutic research involved continuous physiological monitoring of dying patients (...) prior to and for 30 min following cessation of circulation. At some study centres participation involved installation of bedside computers. At one centre electroencephalogram monitoring was used with a subset of participants. Aside from additional monitoring, the research protocol did not involve deviations from usual end-of-life care. Thematic analysis of interviews suggests most family members did not perceive this minimal-risk, non-therapeutic study to affect their time with patients during the dying process, nor did they perceive research consent as an additional burden. In our analysis, consenting for participation in perimortem research offered families of the dying an opportunity to affirm the intrinsic value of patients’ lives and contributions. This opportunity may be particularly important for families of patients who consented to organ donation but did not proceed to organ retrieval. Our work supports concerns that traditional models of informed consent fail to account for possible benefits and harms of perimortem research to surviving families. Further research into consent models which integrate patient and family perspectives is needed. All data relevant to the study are included in the article. (shrink)

An apparently quite specific question that was addressed by both Confucius and Socrates has attracted much attention in Sino-Hellenistic comparative philosophy. Their respective responses to the question of how a son should respond if his father commits a crime are found in Confucius' Analects 13:18 and in Plato's Euthyphro. This essay assesses three comparative analyses of these responses with particular reference to their underlying assertions of commonality, that is, the assumptions or presuppositions of commonality that serve to justify the comparative (...) exercise in the first instance. The authors suggest that two of the analyses assert commonality between their two responses from a Confucian standpoint, while the third constructs commonality from a Socratic standpoint. The authors argue that the response of Confucius focuses specifically on the issue of xiao (filial piety) in the concrete situation presented to him, whereas Socrates uses the issue to investigate the different question known as the "Euthyphro dilemma." Some brief conclusions are drawn regarding comparative philosophical analysis in general and about comparing the responses of Confucius and Socrates in these passages in particular. (shrink)

This dissertation develops a reading of Arthur Schopenhauer’s theory of agency and autonomy that centers on the notion of the acquired character. I argue for a non-homuncular functionalist reading of Schopenhauerian self-government. On my reading, to be self-governing in Schopenhauer’s sense is just for a certain organizational structure to obtain between one’s individual character and one’s motivation. This structure is put in place through the hard-fought achievement of acquiring genuine self-knowledge of one’s characteristic patterns of acting, evaluative commitments, and, most (...) importantly, one’s volitional necessities. This is the achievement of what he calls the 'acquired character'. My reading also stresses the importance of the phenomena of self-expression and sublimation for Schopenhauer's view of autonomy. I also explore the overlap between Schopenhauer's views and contemporary non-homuncular models of agency, particularly Harry Frankfurt’s hierarchical model of agency, on the one hand, and Michael E. Bratman’s planning theory of autonomous self-governance, on the other. Whereas others have been skeptical of the very idea of Schopenhauerian autonomy, I argue that these reservations rest on a failure to recognize the non-homuncular option. An exploration of contemporary philosophical work on agency helps make this point stick. In the final chapter, I propose that we can see Nietzsche's famous prescription that we ‘give style' to our character as carrying forward certain elements of Schopenhauer's view of autonomy, particularly its aesthetic dimensions. This accomplishes two things. First, it shows that Schopenhauer's influence on Nietzsche goes deeper into the latter's ethical thought than many tend to think. Second, it points towards an elaboration of the view of Schopenhauerian autonomy that I establish earlier on. With the aesthetic dimensions of agency in view, acquired character can be seen as a process through which an agent develops an individual style of acting; it is a process through which one comes to fully act within themselves by embodying their character, just as the best stage and screen actors do. (shrink)

An apparently quite specific question that was addressed by both Confucius and Socrates has attracted much attention in Sino-Hellenistic comparative philosophy. Their respective responses to the question of how a son should respond if his father commits a crime are found in Confucius' Analects 13:18 and in Plato's Euthyphro. This essay assesses three comparative analyses of these responses with particular reference to their underlying assertions of commonality, that is, the assumptions or presuppositions of commonality that serve to justify the comparative (...) exercise in the first instance. The authors suggest that two of the analyses assert commonality between their two responses from a Confucian standpoint, while the third constructs commonality from a Socratic standpoint. The authors argue that the response of Confucius focuses specifically on the issue of xiao in the concrete situation presented to him, whereas Socrates uses the issue to investigate the different question known as the "Euthyphro dilemma." Some brief conclusions are drawn regarding comparative philosophical analysis in general and about comparing the responses of Confucius and Socrates in these passages in particular. (shrink)

Although many modern philosophers of law describe custom as merely a minor source of law, formal law is actually only one source of the legal customs that govern us. Many laws grow out of custom, and one measure of a law's success is by its creation of an enduring legal custom. Yet custom and customary law have long been neglected topics in unsettled jurisprudential debate. Smaller concerns, such as whether customs can be legitimized by practice or by stipulation, stipulated by (...) an authority or by general consent, or dictated by law or vice versa, lead to broader questions of law and custom as alternative or mutually exclusive modes of social regulation, and whether rational reflection in general ought to replace sub-rational prejudice. Can legal rules function without customary usage, and does custom even matter in society? The Philosophy of Customary Law brings greater theoretical clarity to the often murky topic of custom by showing that custom must be analyzed into two more logically basic concepts: convention and habit. James Bernard Murphy explores the nature and significance of custom and customary law, and how conventions relate to habits in the four classic theories of Aristotle, Francisco Suarez, Jeremy Bentham, and James C. Carter. He establishes that customs are conventional habits and habitual conventions, and allows us to better grasp the many roles that custom plays in a legal system by offering a new foundation of understanding for these concepts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Autonomy, Experience, and TherapyDominic Murphy (bio)The contemporary philosophical idea of autonomy has a psychological implication, to wit, that there exists a comprehensive set of ideal competences, realized in our mind/brain, that enable a person to be self-governing. Autonomy is normally accorded individuals who enjoy a certain kind of psychological functioning and, perhaps, a certain sort of psychological history (Christman 1991). We think that autonomous individuals critically evaluate their (...) life and actions, endorse them as self-determined rather than imposed from without, and guide their own lives in accordance with the plans and values they have worked out for themselves. Such self-government has to depend on some psychological structures, but philosophers have tended to theorize about what these structures might be at a considerable distance from what the behavioral sciences can tell us. Anderson and Lux's paper is a welcome contribution to the growing literature that tries to connect issues in ethics with empirical considerations. This sort of methodological, as opposed to merely metaphysical, naturalism, is only just coming into vogue in ethics, even in moral psychology.1 Anderson and Lux are, as far as I am aware, the first people to reflect seriously on what we can learn about autonomy from clinical experience. Theirs is a very suggestive and fruitful paper that looks at real-life cases of loss of autonomy and tries to reach conclusions about what the deficits in performance tell us about the psychological preconditions of autonomy. Their paper also opens the way for an investigation into the precise neurologic and computational underpinnings of these capacities, which is essential if we are to get a serious moral psychology underway.I find little to quarrel with in the story that Anderson and Lux tell, but I will try to modify it slightly to bring out what I think is the important psychological point they make and explore some ramifications. I begin by claiming that they have scored a decisive point in favor of an external conception of autonomy. Second, I suggest that what Anderson and Lux have really put their finger on is less a requirement of accurate self-assessment than a requirement of sensitivity to feedback from the environment. I conclude by raising some of these issues about the relations between autonomy and assessments of psychological function when the deficit responsible is less amenable to clear cut neurologic identification.The External Perspective on AutonomyOne way of taking the paper (although this goes beyond anything that Anderson and Lux suggest) is that there is a smooth naturalistic picture of the cognitive basis of autonomy. When people have a normally functioning neurocomputational setup in their heads, we should assume that they are autonomous, and vice versa. However, autonomy cannot simply be identifiable with a mind that is working as some scientific theory says it should, because a mind that is [End Page 303] in that sense working correctly could, nonetheless, be directed by forces other than the agent. Servile or deluded individuals might endorse their lives even if those lives are the product of indoctrination, self-deception, or internalized oppression (Mackinnon 1997; Mele 1995). Normal mechanisms of belief fixation, for example, may not foster one's autonomy if the only context in which they are exercised is one in which many possible ways of life are simply unavailable for consideration, having been excluded from consideration by the dominant forces around one. We might, then, think of full autonomy as depending on relational rather than intrinsic properties. Perhaps autonomy requires a subject to have both normal psychological capacities and the right sort of environment in which to exercise them. I do not follow-up on this suggestion, but I mention it because it introduces two dimensions, within the subject and around the subject, where the externalist perspective on autonomy can get a grip. I discuss the former, but I do not mean to suggest that the latter is not important. A full account must deal with both. But even the psychological structures that foster autonomy cannot be identified with a mind working according to some scientific theory, as we shall see.Many writers on autonomy argue that we must recognize appropriate, objective constraints... (shrink)

This paper works with Pascal's Wager with "life has meaning" replacing "God exists" as the proposition that we "bet on". This change shows that we should choose to believe that life is meaningful. This argument does not fall prey to the "many gods" objection. People looking for what makes makes life meaningful do not get many clues from this argument which only justifies the search for meaning.

Accession Number: ATLA0001788504; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 265-277.; Physical Description: diag ; Language(s): English; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

An exploration of the self in dramaturgical societies: This is the double, duplicitous, witty self, the one who communicates indirectly through characters and masks, the self who is a personality, who knowingly plays a role on the public stage, and who inhabits a wry, not to say awry, paradoxical world created by a mischievous comic God. A motley bunch of characters wander across the stage of this article. These include recusant Catholics, American sociologists, theologians of paradox, philosophers of comedy, Oscar (...) Schindler, Mick Jagger, William Shakespeare, G.K. Chesterton, as well as various assorted epicurean puritans, inventive liars, elusive playwrights, pompous intellectuals, sleuthing heroes from detective fiction, ambitious pretenders, satirists of newspaper folly, media nitwits, boys playing girls playing boys, and, if you are really good, girls playing boys playing girls. All of them bearing testament to Viola's immortal line: I am not what I am. (shrink)

This article explores the mystical impulse in the American mind, reflected in the work of William James, Kenneth Burke, and most especially the case of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The parallels and differences between Emerson's mystical idea of Nature and the ancient Greek pre-Socratic idea of the universe as a union of opposites are explored. The divergence between the Americans and the Greeks concerning the idea of limits is reflected on. The optimism of the Americans is explained as a function of (...) their mystical theodicy, and the greatness of their power as a function of their mystic ability, so well assayed by Emerson, to bear crushing paradoxes with a cheerful lightness of being. (shrink)

The paper develops a framework for discussing concepts of health and disease along two dimensions. The first is the role of values in our disease concepts, and the second is the relationship between science and folk psychology. This framework is then applied to the concept of mental disorder. I argue that existing treatments of the concept yield too much authority to common sense, which produces a tension within the program of finding a scientific basis for our ascriptions of mental disorder. (...) The science should be given more authority, even if this leads to counterintuitive results. I conclude by identifying several smaller scale conceptual problems within the application of science to mental illness, and argue that the debate needs to shift towards dealing with such problems in an empirically informed way, rather than remaining at the level of conceptual analysis. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This article examines the Roman tradition that Numa once negotiated with Jupiter about human sacrifice. Complete versions of the myth survive in Ovid, Plutarch and Arnobius. Previous studies of this tradition have proposed four main interpretations of it, which have done important service in modern reconstructions of the character of Roman religion. These scholarly treatments raise several questions. First, are they actually supported by, or the most convincing way of reading, the surviving ancient sources? If so, have they been correctly (...) attributed? Why might a specific ancient author present the myth of Numa and Jupiter in a manner which suggests one interpretation rather than another? What ideological and theological work does the story do for Ovid, for Plutarch and for Arnobius? Finally, can this myth, in whatever version, support the weight of the implications put on it for the character of Roman religion? This article seeks to enhance our understanding of this myth in its surviving versions, not just by analysing the evidence for each of the modern interpretations, but also by considering why ancient authors tell the myth of Numa and Jupiter the way they do. It is argued that their choices illustrate best not one meaning of the myth nor one Roman way of piety but the richness and diversity of religious reflection in antiquity. (shrink)

A challenging critique of narrative theologies, including the works of George Lindbeck, Robert Jenson, and Herbert McCabe. Francesca Aran Murphy argues that the use of the concept of story or narrative in theology is circular and self-referential, and that the widespread notion that the role of the theologian is to 'tell God's story' has not helped theology to advance the reality of its doctrines. Murphy contends that the scriptural revelation on which Christian theology depends is not a story (...) or a plot but a dramatic encounter between mysterious, free, and unpredictable persons. She offers her own alternative approach, making use of cinema and film theory, and engaging in particular in a dialogue with the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this essay the argument set forth by Michael Levin regarding the abnormality of homosexual behaviour is reviewed and criticized. Against his argument which holds that homosexual behaviour is abnormal because it constitutes an evolutionary aberration, I argue that Levin's and all similarly constructed arguments fail to show that evolutionary origins of sexual behaviour have any significant normative force. I contend that his notion of homosexuality is confused and that he fails to consider alternative methods of how homosexuality might (...) have indeed served evolutionary adaptive purposes or been the result of surplus adaptations. I argue, too, that Levin's linking of unhappiness with homosexual behaviour is spurious and ill‐supported. Consequently, I reject Levin's claims that public policy ought to do what it can to minimize the incidence of such behaviour. I argue by contrast that if happiness is the end of public policy decisions, then society ought to take what measures it can to protect persons in respect of their homosexual behaviour and identities. (shrink)

Reports about possible genetic bases of homoerotic sexual orientation in adults have received a kind of schizophrenic social reception. On the one hand, these reports have been welcomed by some gay men and lesbians as biological confirmation of the commonly held view that sexual orientation is an involuntary trait, that sexual orientation is not in any meaningful sense chosen. Simon LeVay has received mail from thankful correspondents who welcomed his 1991 report about the possible neuroanatomical basis for male homoerotic sexual (...) orientation, and some legal analysts see important implications of biological studies for the ways in which civil rights are recognized, especially those that depend on an immutable characteristic like race or gender. (shrink)

Medical residency—specialty training after the completion of medical school—is an essential component of medical education and is required in order to be a licensed, independent medical practitioner in most jurisdictions. As things currently stand in the United States, the match between medical school graduates and residency programs is governed by a match between rank-order lists prepared by candidates and residencies alike. An applicant picks a number of residency programs and ranks them according to order of interest. The residency program prepares (...) a similar list, ranking the candidates it most wants in its program. A computer program compares the rankings and makes assignments according to a certain algorithm. Using these lists, the match system assigns approximately 24,000 applicants to approximately 21,000 training positions in pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine, and the rest. These assignments are then announced to all parties on specific days. The system has been in place since 1952 and is overseen by the National Residency Match Program, a nonprofit organization. This system has several advantages. First of all, it standardizes the timetable for decisions, and applicants are in no position to tie up offers while waiting to hear from other institutions. Institutions are not held captive, either, in making assignments while waiting to hear from particular parties. (shrink)

Carson Strong has argued that if human cloning were safe it should be available to some infertile couples as a matter of ethics and law. He holds that cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer should be available as a reproductive option for infertile couples who could not otherwise have a child genetically related to one member of the couple. In this analysis, Strong overlooks an important category of people to whom his argument might apply, couples he has not failed to (...) consider elsewhere. In this discussion, however, Strong refers exclusively to opposite sex couples facing obstacles such as surgically removed ovaries and the inability to produce sperm. In fact, however, there are many adult couples who, while fertile in and of themselves, are not fertile as couples. This group includes not only opposite sex couples but coupled same sex partners as well. I believe the defenses Strong offers regarding the use of SCNT by opposite sex infertile couples would extend to same sex couples for two reasons. First, some same sex couples might face the inability to have a genetically related child, and second, Strong's arguments ultimately ground a general defense of SCNT independent of the question of a couple's fertility. (shrink)

For many commentators in bioethics and the law, safety is the fulcrum for evaluating the ethics of human reproductive cloning. Carson Strong has argued that if cloning were effective and safe it should be available to married couples who have tried to have children through various assisted reproductive technologies but been unable to do so. On his view, cloning should be available only as reproductive last resort. I challenged that limited use by trying to show that the arguments Strong adduces (...) in favor of reproductive somatic nuclear transfer for married couples extend to same-sex couples as well, who face a different kind of infertility. I also went on to argue that his justifications would in fact extend the legitimate use of SNT to any couples regardless of whether they had fertility difficulties or not. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Desire and Ethics in Hobbes's Leviathan:A Response to Professor DeighAccording to the "orthodox" interpretation of Hobbes's ethics, the laws of nature are the products of means-end thinking. According to the "definitivist" interpretation recently offered by John Deigh, the laws of nature are generated by reason operating on a definition of "law of nature," where the content of this definition is given by linguistic usage.2 I aim to accomplish two (...) things in this note. First, I want to locate as clearly as possible the point at which the orthodox and definitivist interpretations must disagree. Second, I want to show that once the claim on which these interpretations disagree is made clear, it is the orthodox interpretation that turns out to be the superior.31.Deigh takes as the initial test case for the various interpretations of Hobbes's moral theory the passage in chapter fifteen of Leviathan commonly known as "the reply to the fool." The fool, it will be recalled, argues that the precept that covenants be kept is not a rule of reason; Hobbes argues that the fool's "specious reasoning is neverthelesse [End Page 259] false," for to break a valid covenant is to violate a dictate of reason.4 Deigh summarizes his criticism of the orthodox interpretation of this passage as follows.On [the orthodox] interpretation, the dispute between Hobbes and the Fool concerns the deliverances of reason when reason is exercised in the service of self-interest, that is, when its exercise consists in determining the fittest means to achieving the ends set by egoistic desires. Such an exercise falls outside of the definition of reason that Hobbes gives in chapter five. It exemplifies strategic or means-to-end thinking and not deduction. Indeed, it corresponds to what Hobbes, in chapter three, defines as seeking... Hence, the orthodox interpretation of the laws of nature implies that Hobbes, in expounding the laws of nature, went back on the notion of reason he defined in chapter five. It implicitly attributes a fundamental inconsistency to Hobbes's philosophy.5The laws of nature—among which is the rule requiring the keeping of covenants6 —are held by Hobbes to be precepts of reason.7 Hobbes deems them, collectively, a science,8 by which he means that they are the deliverances of reason that pertain to a specific subject-matter.9 But, argues Deigh, Hobbes understands reason in a very specific way, a way that is distinct from the sort of means-end thinking that Hobbes describes in detail in chapter three and labels "seeking." Thus the orthodox interpretation of Hobbes's moral theory is at odds with Hobbes's own conception of the laws of nature individually as dictates of reason and collectively as the science of the true moral philosophy.It is of course true that the sort of thinking that Hobbes calls "seeking" and the sort of thinking that Hobbes calls "reasoning" are fundamentally different. Seeking takes its origin from experience: we have seen certain events following other events, and we retain a trace of that experience in imagination. Thus when we have some desire, there arises "the Thought of some means we have seen produce the like of that which we ayme at; and from the thought of that, the thought of means to that mean; and so continually, till we come to some beginning within our power."10 Those that are able to engage in this sort of thinking well are prudent,11 and on Hobbes's view, humans with comparable experience will exhibit a comparable degree of prudence.12 And because seeking requires only desire to regulate thought and some experience of events succeeding other events, there is nothing distinctively human about this form of thinking, and indeed Hobbes acknowledges that prudence is common to humans and other animals.13 By contrast, the process that Hobbes calls "reasoning" [End Page 260] is characterized independently of desire. All that is essential to reasoning is that it involves the drawing of consequences that follow from sentences formed from aptly-defined general terms.14 Thus all deliverances of reason are, either explicitly or implicitly, conditional in form: necessarily, if p... (shrink)