This compact and innovative book tackles one of the central issues in drug policy: the lack of a coherent conceptual structure for thinking about drugs. Drugs generally fall into one of seven categories: prescription, over the counter, alternative medicine, common-use drugs like alcohol, tobacco and caffeine; religious-use, sports enhancement; and of course illegal street drugs like cocaine and marijuana. Our thinking and policies varies wildly from one to the other, with inconsistencies that derive more from cultural and social values than (...) from medical or scientific facts. Penalties exist for steroid use, while herbal remedies or cold medication are legal. Native Americans may legally use peyote, but others may not. Penalties may vary for using different forms of the same drug, such as crack vs. powder cocaine. Herbal remedies are unregulated by the FDA; but medical marijuana is illegal in most states. Battin and her contributors lay a foundation for a wiser drug policy by promoting consistency and coherency in the discussion of drug issues and by encouraging a unique dialogue across disciplines. The contributors are an interdisciplinary group of scholars mostly based at the University of Utah, and include a pharmacologist, a psychiatrist, a toxicologist, a trial court judge, a law professor, an attorney, a diatary specialist, a physician, a health expert on substance abuse, and Battin herself who is a philosopher. They consider questions like the historical development of current policy and the rationales for it; scientific views on how drugs actually cause harm; how to define the key notions of harm and addiction; and ways in which drug policy can be made more consistent. They conclude with an examination of the implications of a consistent policy for various disciplines and society generally. The book is written accessibly with little need for expert knowledge, and will appeal to a diverse audience of philosophers, bioethicists, clinicians, policy makers, law enforcement, legal scholars and practitioners, social workers, and general readers, as well as to students in areas like pharmacy, medicine, law, nursing, sociology, social work, psychology, and bioethics. (shrink)

"Notes toward a metaphysic of wonder" is the outcome of a "Reciprocal Inquiry" in which Leoni Henning and I participated. In our correspondence, we moved very fast: I thought each of us surprised the other. As a result, I found myself writing about astonishment more elaborately than I'd intended to. Before long I was involved not only with wondering but with awe and bewilderment and amazement, and eager to connect it all with philosophy in Latin America. So these "Notes..." are (...) just a foretaste of what I hope will someday be a more extensive article, but which is only hinted at in the present version. Leoni Maria Padillha Henning’s thoughtful and informative paper, “Pragmatism in Matthew Lipman and its influence in Latin America” is singularly helpful in showing the relevance of Philosophy for Children to Latin-American education. Indeed, the intellectual momentum it generates is a powerful invitation to other educators and scholars to take up the issues where she leaves off. I’d like to take up just one of these issues, one that, on the surface at least, seems to be particularly unpromising. I’m referring to the near-unanimity that exists among scholars with regard to the tradition, descended from Aristotle, that philosophy begins in wonder. My intention is not to attempt to refute this claim, but to show its complicity in defending the traditional non-reflective paradigm of education, which has sturdily resisted the introduction of philosophy into the schools, just as it resists the conversion of the classroom into a community of inquiry. With the proper pedagogy, philosophy can readily be taught to children, and the teaching of philosophy for children can readily be taught to teachers. It is not essential that wonder precede philosophy: it can just as well follow it. (shrink)

In this article, I intend to underscore the importance of critical thinking in rendering invaluable positive contributions and impact within professional organizations in the developing world. I argue that critical thinking treated as a normative principle and balanced with a pragmatic orientation provides a rational framework for resolving conflicts that oftentimes ensue from the incoherence between Western-based organizational theories and the actual circumstances of a developing country. In order to optimize the benefits of critical thinking, I also argue that it (...) should not be expected only among leaders and managers, but also and more importantly, among organizational members and associates. It is for this reason that I introduce Matthew Lipman’s Community of Inquiry as a model for cultivating critical thinking within professional environments. (shrink)

This text aims to perform a “fly over” the Philosophy for Children program--created by the philosopher and educator Matthew Lipman-–in order to identify certain philosophical problems that might appear there, one of them being the issue of universality. In response to Lipman’s claims of universality, we try to uncover his underlying ideological position that informs his approach to the concept. To achieve that goal, we return to the program’s beginnings, in order to ask how the idea of Philosophy (...) for Children appeared and how it has developed up to the present moment. We argue that Lipman’s novel proposal to think philosophically with children emerged, in part, as a response to the student movements of 1968--a response, that is, to a specific political context that was marked by strong social and ideological disputes. Finally, we make a comparative analysis of the social and political context that informs Latin American Philosophy, and the extent to which it, also, has been shaped by a pragmatic response to a particular historical moment. The difference between the Anglo-American and the Latin American contexts is here characterized as an obstacle to a certain “universal” logos to which the Lipmanian project is linked. Our analysis is aided by the Discourse of marginalization and barbarism, produced by the Mexican philosopher Leopoldo Zea. (shrink)

Roberto Franzini Tibaldeo’s new book is both didactic and profound. On the one hand, it presents the thoughts of Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp in a clear and concise manner, with due consid...

This research seeks to understand the relationship between philosophy and the formation of concepts in childhood from the perspective of Matthew Lipman. As our own research in the area of philosophy of education, we pose the following question as a problem to be analyzed: how can philosophy contribute to the concept formation process in childhood according to Lipman? The development of this problem was organized in five stages. A first seeks to understand and deepen Lipman's conception of (...) Philosophy for Children, especially the idea of thinking skills and philosophical dialogue in the research community; the second stage consisted of planning philosophical practice with the children at school, in a class with 32 students from the 3rd year of elementary school in a public school in the city of Londrina / PR, in the period of one semester; the third was to carry out the classroom experience with the students and the teacher from the previous stages; the fourth step was the evaluation of the practice and the planning of the following classes after each meeting; and the fifth stage was concerned with the registration, analysis and systematization of the observed. In order to investigate the contribution of philosophy to the concept formation process in childhood, according to Lipman, part of the research methodology was qualitative, analyzing the concepts of philosophy, thinking and the research community of this philosopher. For this, his main works and those of his commentators were consulted. Action research procedures were also employed through the practice of students from Elementary School I, in order to carry out an experience of the analyzed concepts. As a result of the research, it is possible to highlight the fundamental role of Lipman’s Philosophy for Children in the formation of concepts, because, through philosophical practices, the children were more reflective in approaching concepts that in their daily lives could go unnoticed. The work of questioning and dialogue in the research community made it possible to highlight the difficulty of conceptualizing at the beginning of the work, the progress along their approach and the need to seek more in-depth answers. With that, it can be highlighted that the Philosophy classes contributed to such advances and that without them the skills would remain stagnant. This study is added to the philosophical educational movement of teaching philosophy from childhood, which is considered essential for the formation of more reasonable subjects, and most importantly, with the acquisition of skills that will facilitate life in and out of school. (shrink)

There is a widespread view that philosophical thinking has no application to matters pertaining to the ‘real world’. It follows from such reasoning that if the purpose of education is to prepare students for the real world, then philosophy has no place in schools or university courses, and by implication in everyday life. One of the aims of this paper is to illustrate that the reasoning behind this view is mistaken. The ability to think critically and creatively through philosophical inquiry (...) provides an intellectual context for study and discussion of issues related to all areas of study. But the introduction of philosophy into the classroom is not without its critics. This paper, therefore, explores a major accusation aimed at philosophy, i.e., that it is necessarily adversarial. The final section of the paper argues that Matthew Lipman’s approach to philosophical inquiry offers much to remedy the more adversarial and limiting elements of the Western philosophical tradition. It is clear that we should not simply aim to reproduce traditional methods of doing philosophy in the classroom. The community of inquiry is an illustration of a positive direction in respect to participation, relatedness and relevance to those involved. (shrink)

The present work intends to focus the child in the context of what is understood of childhood today, a concept which is overlapped in the net of relations of a world geared to an exacerbated production, to the banality of knowledge and reflexive activities, to a promptness and to human relations not much solid and based on values marked by the fragility of which is acquired by idioms and by mass standards. Looking for an alternative to interrupt the strength of (...) mechanisms of an education inspired on the “paradigm standard of the pedagogic normal practice” , Lipman proposes an “educative model ruled in reflexive practice”, maintained in his revised edition of Thinking in Education , in which philosophy distinguishes itself with an unique and necessary participation of the child from the moment they enter school. It is obvious that this suggestion is based on a different conception of childhood. The philosopher is disturbed by that prescriptive perspective that indicates, for the youngest, restrictions in order to be surprised by the things and by the situations that has been shown to them, lessening in that way, the taste for questioning and the search for meaning in their experiences. (shrink)

A Lei de Diretrizes e Bases 9.394/96 inseriu a Filosofia nos currículos do Ensino Médio com o indicativo de interdisciplinaridade, permanecendo em aberto questões acerca de como fazer com que a Filosofia potencialize a experiência interdisciplinar. Com o objetivo de correlacionar interdisciplinaridade e Filosofia, o artigo resulta de uma análise hermenêutica que confronta reflexões de Hannah Arendt sobre a crise na educação e a proposta da comunidade de investigação de Lipman. Parte da noção de que em meados do século (...) XX, a educação tradicional foi substituída pela pedagogia progressista e a educação passou a ser pensada como ciência do ensino em geral, a fim de atender à dinâmica do avanço científico e tecnológico. A visão analítica e linear das especialidades não responde satisfatoriamente às demandas atuais de uma ciência complexa, articulada e em rápida transformação. Diante do requisito interdisciplinar da ciência, o específico da Filosofia é a problematização e a sistematização do filosofar; de mediação entre as disciplinas, em virtude da dimensão holística de seus conteúdos, e de vigilância epistemológica como recurso de revisão e atualização dos saberes. Palavras-chave: Interdisciplinaridade. Filosofia. Ciência. Crise na educação. Comunidade de investigação. (shrink)

There is a type of metaphysical picture that surfaces in a range of philosophical discussions, is of intrinsic interest, and yet remains ill-understood. According to this picture, the world contains a range of standpoints relative to which different facts obtain. Any true representation of the world cannot but adopt a particular standpoint. The aim of this paper is to propose a regimentation of a metaphysics that underwrites this picture. Key components are a factive notion of metaphysical relativity, a deflationary notion (...) of adopting standpoints, and two kinds of valid inference, one that allows one to abandon standpoints and one that does not. To better understand how theories formulated in terms of this framework are situated in dialectical space, I sketch a theory in the philosophy of time that admits both temporal and atemporal standpoints. (shrink)

O presente trabalho faz uma análise comparativa entre o pensamento dialético de Sócrates e a proposta pedagógica do filósofo Matthew Lipman, principalmente em suas obras A Filosofia vai à escola e O pensar na Educação. Para tanto, identificamos que o pensamento dialético como método aparece em Sócrates através da maiêutica, em que, por meio do diálogo, busca-se chegar a um pensamento correto. Esse exercício conceitual acompanha a história da Filosofia e ganha um lugar central nas reflexões epistemológicas sobre o (...) processo do conhecimento que pode ou não provir de um sujeito autônomo e engajado no mundo em que vive, como podemos identificar no livro VII da República e no diálogo de Críton. Lipman, com sua filosofia pragmática, é um desses autores influenciados pela dialética socrática que encontra no debate público o caminho para pensar uma prática educacional engajada no desenvolvimento intelectual e social dos envolvidos no processo de ensino de filosofia da infância. Destacamos que essa proposta de ensino endossa uma crítica ao modelo de educação conteudista e insere a educação para o pensar nos anos iniciais da Educação Básica como um processo reflexivo contextualizado e dialógico. Nesse sentido, destacamos o método socrático adaptado à filosofia para criança como resultado de uma visão pedagógica pautada no pensamento dialético que possibilita a formação de um sujeito epistemológico e moral. Pensar a Educação como ferramenta de evolução social ao formar indivíduos seguros de suas posições conceituais e abertos às diferenças, sejam elas epistemológicas, sejam ideológicas, nos parece ser uma das principais contribuições extraídas da abordagem dialética pragmática da filosofia para o pensar. Palavras-chave: Epistemologia. Filosofia. Diálogo. Pensamento. Educação. (shrink)

Contenu : Analyse des faits de société (famille, emploi, justice, liberté, amour et amitié, démocratie, violence, institutions...) - Recherche de raisons et de critères, causes et conséquences - Moyens de remédiation - Qualité du dialogue, du jugement.

Disjointism is the view that co-located objects do not share any parts. A human-shaped statue is composed from a torso, head and limbs; the co-located lumpof clay is only composed from chunks of clay. This essay discusses the tenability of this relatively neglected view, focusing on two objections. The first objection is that disjointism implies co-located copies of microphysical particles. I argue that it doesn’t imply this and that there are more plausible disjointist views of tiny parts available. The second (...) objection is that disjointism is at a loss to explain how material objects can be co-located and why the weights of co-located objects don’t add up. The standard pluralist account appeals to the fact that co-located objects stand in mereological relations and this account is not available to the disjointist. I sketch an alternative account that appeals to a notion of ‘material identity’: the statue is taken to be the same matter as the lump of clay. The resort to a new theoretical primitive may seem to invite a quick rejection on grounds of unnecessary theoretical complexity but I argue that an abductive comparison with rival forms of pluralism shows that such a rejection is misguided. (shrink)

A prática filosófica com crianças permite que elas construam e cumulativamente reconstruam significados enquanto formam a consciência de si, mobilizando simultaneamente elementos dos domínios afetivo, cognitivo e recreativo, presentes na esfera da sua experiência. Nesta dinâmica, habilidades de diálogo e de pensamento consolidam-se sobre competências crítico-reflexivas, sensíveis a critérios razoáveis de afirmação das competências intencionais de interpretação desta sensibilidade em ambientes educativos profícuos privados e públicos, tais como a família e a escola. Sendo a vida infantil um processo de mútuo (...) crescimento entre a consciência individual e o meio social um caminho regulado pelo seu valor e autenticidade de ser que já-é, seja como «projeção extensiva» ou «corporalizando o desejo», Lipman busca um pensar mais atento, mais criterioso, mais significante, mais criativo e mais cativante: um pensar investigando. Estas múltiplas dimensões do pensamento proporcionam à criança três exercícios fundamentais na conclusão da sua singularidade, carácter e personalidade: num primeiro momento, a descoberta da sua potencialidade ontológica manifestada segundo um desejo de diálogo interior na intenção de conhecimento de si mesmo, enquanto ser-sujeito-criança que pretende conhecer o Outro que há em si; num segundo momento, a tomada de consciência da importância da “relação de encontro e de reconhecimento” com Outro que já não é uma mesmidade, mas que funciona como uma necessidade de «caminhar junto com…brincando» na condição de tomar a reciprocidade como imperativo da construção de um sujeito que se quer também ser-pessoa; e num terceiro momento, um retorno a si, como forma de re-nascimento face à aprendizagem que o contexto lhe proporcionou. É no dinamismo deste contexto que a criança aprende a pensar. Assim, pensar melhor é exercitar, mais que um pensamento complexo, um pensamento de ordem superior. Inevitavelmente surgem-nos questões que nos inquietam face a estas ideias: como potenciar o exercício reflexivo e crítico rumo a esta práxis sapiente? Que modelo de discussão devemos adoptar para que se tomem como objetos sentimentos ou pulsões éticas, emoções ou pulsões estéticas para que a descoberta do íntimo de seu ser e da sua socialização e civilidade seja efetiva? Que relação se pode firmar entre o desejo, a arte de ser e a forma de viver? (shrink)

Author note: Matthew Lipman, Professor of Philosophy at Montclair State College and Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, is ...

This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

This is a textbook for teachers that demonstrates how philosophical thinking can be used in teaching children.

This paper proposes a view of time that takes passage to be the most basic temporal notion, instead of the usual A-theoretic and B-theoretic notions, and explores how we should think of a world that exhibits such a genuine temporal passage. It will be argued that an objective passage of time can only be made sense of from an atemporal point of view and only when it is able to constitute a genuine change of objects across time. This requires that (...) passage can flip one fact into a contrary fact, even though neither side of the temporal passage is privileged over the other. We can make sense of this if the world is inherently perspectival. Such an inherently perspectival world is characterized by fragmentalism, a view that has been introduced by Fine in his ‘Tense and Reality’ (2005). Unlike Fine's tense-theoretic fragmentalism though, the proposed view will be a fragmentalist view based in a primitive notion of passage. (shrink)

The author presents and defends three theses: (1) "the first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology." (2) "the second is that the concepts of obligation, And duty... And of what is morally right and wrong, And of the moral sense of 'ought', Ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible...." (3) "the third thesis is that (...) the differences between the well-Known english writers on moral philosophy from sidgwick to the present day are of little importance." (staff). (shrink)

Fragmentalism is the view that reality is not a metaphysically unified place, but fragmented in a certain sense, and constituted by incompatible facts across such fragments. It was introduced by Kit Fine in a discussion of tense realist theories of time. Here I discuss the conceptual foundations of fragmentalism, identify several open questions in Fine’s characterization of the view, and propose an understanding of fragmentalism that addresses these open questions.

This work aims to consider philosophically the issue of the method in philosophical practices with children. It analyzes some influences received by the creators of Philosophy for Children, Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp, like the pragmatism of J. Dewey. It describes the meanings of three similar expressions in Lipman's work: methodical, methodological and method. It offers some criticisms of method: Hans-Georg Gadamer, but especially Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. Finally, he questions the need of a method for (...) doing philosophy with children or, more broadly, for thinking childishly in education. -/- Este trabajo tiene como objetivo pensar filosóficamente el tema del método en las prácticas filosóficas con niñas y niños. Analiza algunas influencias recibidas por los creadores de Filosofía para Niños, Matthew Lipman y Ann Margaret Sharp, como el pragmatismo de J. Dewey. Describe los significados de tres expresiones similares en el trabajo de Lipman: metódico, metodológico y metodológico. Ofrece algunas críticas del método: Hans-Georg Gadamer, pero especialmente Henri Bergson y Gilles Deleuze. Finalmente, cuestiona la necesidad de un método para hacer filosofía con niñas y niños o, más ampliamente, para pensar infantilmente en educación. -/- Este trabalho busca pensar filosoficamente a questão do método nas práticas filosóficas com crianças. Analisa algumas influencias recebidas pelos criadores da Filosofia para Crianças, Matthew Lipman e Ann Margaret Sharp, como o pragmatismo de J. Dewey. Descreve os sentidos de três expressões afins na obra de Lipman: metódico, metodologia e método. Oferece algumas críticas a leituras do método: Hans-Georg Gadamer, mas sobretudo Henri Bergson e Gilles Deleuze. Finalmente, problematiza a necessidade de um método para fazer filosofia com crianças ou, de um modo mais geral, para pensar infantilmente na educação. (shrink)

Fragmentalism was first introduced by Kit Fine in his ‘Tense and Reality’. According to fragmentalism, reality is an inherently perspectival place that exhibits a fragmented structure. The current paper defends the fragmentalist interpretation of the special theory of relativity, which Fine briefly considers in his paper. The fragmentalist interpretation makes room for genuine facts regarding absolute simultaneity, duration and length. One might worry that positing such variant properties is a turn for the worse in terms of theoretical virtues because such (...) properties are not involved in physical explanations and hence theoretically redundant. It will be argued that this is not right: if variant properties are indeed instantiated, they will also be involved in straightforward physical explanations and hence not explanatorily redundant. Hofweber and Lange, in their ‘Fine’s Fragmentalist Interpretation of Special Relativity’, object that the fragmentalist interpretation is in tension with the right explanation of the Lorentz transformations. It will be argued that their objection targets an inessential aspect of the fragmentalist framework and fails to raise any serious problem for the fragmentalist interpretation of special relativity. (shrink)

This essay is dedicated to the memory of Katherine Hawley.1Bitcoin was invented to serve as a digital currency that demands no trust in financial institutions, such as commercial and central banks. This paper discusses metaphysical aspects of bitcoin, in particular the view that bitcoin is socially constructed, non-concrete, and genuinely exists. If bitcoin is socially constructed, then one may worry that this reintroduces trust in the communities responsible for the social construction. Although we may have to rely on certain communities, (...) I argue that social construction doesn’t imply a demand for trust because the relevant communities don’t take on any relevant commitments. Bitcoin is indeed trust-free. (shrink)

Objects often manifest themselves in incompatible ways across perspectives that are epistemically on a par. The standard response to such cases is to deny that the properties that things appear to have from different perspectives are properties that things really have out there. This type of response seems worrying: too many properties admit of perspectival variance and there are good theoretical reasons to think that such properties are genuinely instantiated. So, we have reason to explore views on which things can (...) have the incompatible properties they appear to have across perspectives. This paper explores the view that things can have incompatible properties if the world is not a metaphysically unified place but is instead fragmented. There is a sensible notion of co-obtainment, on which two facts can each obtain without co-obtaining. Using this notion, we can step back from our embedded perspectives on the world without deeming the contents of those perspectives to be mere appearances. This renders th.. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is the thought that the phenomenal appearances that accompany mental states are somehow only there, or only real, from the standpoint of the subject of those mental states. The world differs across subjects in terms of which appearances obtain. Not only are subjects standpoints across which the world varies, subjects are standpoints that we can ‘adopt’ in our own theorizing about the world (or stand back from). The picture that is suggested by these claims (...) has an appeal but is at the same time obscure and stands in need of regimentation. This paper explores and motivates a metaphysical account of what it is for subjects to be standpoints, what it is to adopt standpoints in our representations and, most importantly, how these notions might help us better understand the subjective character of conscious mental states. Some well-known observations by Thomas Nagel serve as starting points and the paper concludes by revisiting Nagel’s argument for the inevitable incompleteness of objective accounts of mental states, which will be reframed in terms of the central commitments of the proposed framework. (shrink)

This paper endeavors to carry out a philosophical analysis of the current state of civic education in Western democracies, in order to deal with the problematic dualism between extreme individualism and endogamic communitarianism, which alters the relational modalities and specific lifestyles that characterize human plurality. As such, the intention of this article is to understand how the formation of citizens supported by the practice of philosophy can cultivate a dialogical, open, and pluralistic community capable of facing this duality. For this (...) purpose, we carried out a systematic and critical analysis of books and articles that, in dealing with the relationship between the individual and the community, aim to overcome the above-mentioned problematic dualism. Among the results of this study, we found that Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp’s Philosophy for Children (P4C) program contributes significantly to the empowerment of citizens, and supports the development of their ability to engage in dialogue in search of creative and ethical solutions in the diverse circumstances of daily life. Moreover, P4C contributes to the achievement of communities characterised by solidarity, plurality, openness, and self-correction, and which are oriented toward the rigorous search for the common good. Therefore, we conclude that community-based philosophical practices such as P4C can contribute to civic education and the formation of responsible citizens, offering a possible paradigm to develop the humanistic axis of the individual and promote openness to diversity. (shrink)

Metaphysical views typically draw some distinction between reality and appearance, endorsing realism about some subject matters and antirealism about others. There are different conceptions of how best to construe antirealist theories. A simple view has it that we are antirealists about a subject matter when we believe that this subject matter fails to obtain. This paper discusses an alternative view, which I will call the fundamentality-based conception of antirealism. We are antirealists in this sense when we think that the relevant (...) matter fails to be constitutive of fundamental reality. The following discussion will not rely on any particular understanding of fundamental reality, covering conceptions based on grounding, naturalness and truthmaking, to name three salient ones. This paper argues that there are serious issues with fundamentality-based metaphysics. It will be argued that: the fundamentality-based approach shapes and restricts our realist and antirealist views in unsatisfying ways, that it is unable to handle the conflicting facts that lie across the envisaged ‘layers’ of the metaphysically structured world, and that the methodological reasons for adopting the fundamentality-based approach fail. The paper will conclude with a diagnosis of the discussed issues, identifying a common source. (shrink)

The relations between reason, motivation and value present problems which, though ancient, remain intractable. If values are objective and rational how can they move us and if they are dependent on our contingent desires how can they be rational? E. J. Bond makes a bold attack on this dilemma. The widespread view among philosophers today is that judgements contain an irreducible element of personal commitment. To this Professor Bond proposes an account of values as objective and value judgements as true (...) or false, employing a distinction between grounding and motivating reasons to establish their connection with action. He defines and tests his position against a number of recent theories, providing in the process forceful criticism of Williams, Wiggins, Foot, Narveson and Nagel, among others. A distinctive contribution to the subject, it will stimulate interest and worthwhile debate among philosophers, while also serving as an introduction to this vital topic. (shrink)

Critical thinking is in vogue - in colleges and universities as well as in elementary and secondary schools. This fact alone is enough to give us pause: seldom do shifts in academic fashion happen concurrently at all educational levels.

Derek Parfit’s view of personal identity raises questions about whether advance decisions refusing life-saving treatment should be honored in cases where a patient loses psychological continuity; it implies that these advance decisions would not be self-determining at all. However, rather than accepting that an unknown metaphysical ‘further fact’ underpins agential unity, one can accept Parfit’s view but offer a different account of what it implies morally. Part II of this article argues that contractual obligations provide a moral basis for honoring (...) advance decisions refusing life-saving and/or life-sustaining medical treatment; advance decisions have similarities to contracts, such as life insurance policies and will-contracts, that come into effect when the psychological discontinuity is through death. (shrink)

Word of the inauguration of a newsletter on the program in Analytical Thinking that is based in the School of Education at Texas Wesleyan College is indeed welcome. Knowing the energy and expertise of the two administrators of the program, Dean Joe Mitchell and Professor Ronald Reed, I have no doubt that the newsletter will be a success, and I shall look forward to receiving every issue.