Rule-Consequentialism's Dilemma

This paper examines recent attempts to defend Rule-Consequentialism against a traditional objection. That objection takes the form of a dilemma, that either Rule-Consequentialism collapses into Act-Consequentialism or it is incoherent. Attempts to avoid this dilemma based on the idea that using RC has better results than using AC are rejected on the grounds that they conflate the ideas of a criterion of rightness and a decision procedure. Other strategies, Brad Hooker's prominent amongst them, involving the thought that RC need contain no overarching concern to maximize the good are acknowledged to avoid the original dilemma, but lead to further problems of motivating and justifying RC in the absence of such a concern. The paper argues that Hooker's attempt to deal with these problems by using a 'Reflective Equilibrium plus method is unsuccessful.     

男科临床工作中的人文关怀

随着现代医学模式的转化和男科学诊治技术的发展,在男科临床工作中应该注重树立人文关怀理念和强化人性化服务意识.实施人文关怀的方法包括:重视心理应激,应用心理疗法;关注患者生活,有效预防疾病;营造人文环境,提供人性化服务;遵循最优化原则,做到适度医疗;关心老年人健康,关注社会特殊群体.在男科临床工作中应提高人文关怀的自觉性.     

精神分析师的两难处境

精神分析自诞生之日起就成为了一门有争议的学科,直到100多年后的今天,它仍旧面对着各种各样的质疑.究其原因,无意识概念中所包含的矛盾难辞其咎.精神分析师正是因为将无意识作为核心的探究对象而遭遇了种种两难处境.这些两难处境既是精神分析所引发的争论的缩影,也是理解这些争论的线索之一.在探讨精神分析师的两难处境的基础上,试图从一个侧面揭示无意识以至精神现象的本质特征.     

Das homosexuelle Dilemma

This paper intends to support the idea of homosexuality as an independent development. It shifts the attention to a complex which is described as the homosexual dilemma. It emerges regularly with the regression in homosexual men. In their analysis it forms the basis of the transference and is the core complex which is regarded to be an organizer of the usual male homosexual development: The mismatching between outlines representing the parental thought about the male baby and his actual identity. It is a specific dilemma within the reflexive identity processes in the basic homosexual development. It continues in later interactions and dominates a major part of the homosexual life. The way how this dilemma is solved determines the further development. If this is done successfully, the child will have the chance for a healthy homosexual life. If it turns out to fail, the final result will be a homosexual disturbance of identity, i.e. a pathological homosexuality. Reporting clinical examples it is shown how the homosexual dilemma finds its expression in the transference. The analyst is mainly used as a narcissistic self object. Mostly, he doesn’t become an object of sexual desire but a companion who promotes the stabilization of the homosexual identity by recognition.     

The Editor's Dilemma

Dr. Burnham agreed to be interviewed regarding his views on Christian education from his perspective of 15 years of living in Africa and his current dealings with health issues in Africa. He is an expert on onchocerciasis or “river blindness” and has worked with the World Health Organization. In addition to being a physician, he has a Ph.D. in tropical disease epidemiology and a Masters in Clinical Tropical Medicine.     

A Systems Dilemma

The current shift of interest, reflected in public policy, from the production of goods to the provision of services, has caused a major re-examination of the nature of the services the individual can expect from his society. This re-examination is producing a number of insights, some of them shocking. In particular, we are learning that many of the systems we have created to deliver services are, in the name of “progress” and “civilization,” contributing to the conditions of human distress they were designed to alleviate. Much has been written lately about how service systems of one kind or another subvert their announced goals—how a welfare system perpetuates poverty, or how the medical profession creates iatrogenic illness. There has not been very much written, however, about how several systems inadvertently combine in their day to day operations in such a way as to frustrate each others' activities, and how, in so doing, they destroy in varying degrees the lives of people, or render it difficult for them to improve their lives. We have all been much too tightly locked in our own niches by training, experience, and various types of private interest to see this kind of interlock. It comes into sharp perspective only when one studies the problems of a single person in terms of his total life space, his “ecology.” This paper represents an effort to describe one such situation in a family as viewed from a community health services program designed to approach human crises as ecological phenomena, and to explore and respond to them within this framework. We have found that the best way to organize our view of the environmental field people move in is according to the diverse systems which make it up, so we have labeled our theoretical base “ecological systems theory.” ( 1 ) What is of particular interest to the behavioral scientist in the situation described is that neither individual nor family diagnosis, nor the contributions of the larger systems (in this case a housing system and a system of medical care) will, if viewed separately, explain the state of the man in question. Only when the contributions of all of these systems are made clear, and their interrelationships explored, do the origins of the phenomena described begin to emerge.     

The Obligation Dilemma

I motivate a dilemma to show that nothing can be obligatory for anyone regardless of whether determinism or indeterminism (the falsity of determinism) is true. The deterministic horn, to which prime attention is directed, exploits the thesis that obligation requires freedom to do otherwise. Since determinism precludes such freedom, it precludes obligation too. The indeterministic horn allows for freedom to do otherwise but assumes the burden of addressing whether indeterministically caused choices or actions are too much of a matter of luck to be obligatory for anyone. I critically discuss a response to the deterministic horn that invokes the distinction between alternatives compatible with determinism (weak alternatives) and those incompatible with determinism (strong alternatives).     

A Dilemma for Eternalists

Philosophia - In this discussion I argue that, given the possibility of travel to the past, eternalists face a dilemma. They must choose between fatalism and the denial of an intuitive claim about...     

A Dilemma for Rule-Consequentialism

Rule-consequentialists tend to argue for their normative theory by claiming that their view matches our moral convictions just as well as a pluralist set of Rossian duties. As an additional advantage, rule-consequentialism offers a unifying justification for these duties. I challenge the first part of the ruleconsequentialist argument and show that Rossian duties match our moral convictions better than the rule-consequentialist principles. I ask the rule-consequentialists a simple question. In the case that circumstances change, is the wrongness of acts determined by the ideal principles for the earlier circumstances or by the ideal ones for the new circumstances? I argue that whichever answer the rule-consequentialists give the view leads to normative conclusions that conflict with our moral intuitions. Because some set of Rossian duties can avoid similar problems, rule-consequentialism fails in the reflective equilibrium test advocated by the rule-consequentialists.     

A Dilemma About Necessity

The problem of the source of necessity is the problem of explaining what makes necessary truths necessarily true. Simon Blackburn has presented a dilemma intended to show that any reductive, realist account of the source of necessity is bound to fail. Although Blackburn's dilemma faces serious problems, reflection on the form of explanations of necessities reveals that a revised dilemma succeeds in defeating any reductive account of the source of necessity. The lesson is that necessity is metaphysically primitive and irreducible.

A Dilemma for Calibrationism

The aim of this paper is to describe a problem for calibrationism: a view about higher order evidence according to which one's credences should be calibrated to one's expected degree of reliability. Calibrationism is attractive, in part, because it explains our intuitive judgments, and provides a strong motivation for certain theories about higher order evidence and peer disagreement. However, I will argue that calibrationism faces a dilemma: There are two versions of the view one might adopt. The first version, I argue, has the implausible consequence that, in a wide range of cases, calibrationism is the only constraint on rational belief. The second version, in addition to having some puzzling consequences, is unmotivated. At the end of the paper I sketch a possible solution.     

A Dilemma For Skeptical Theists

Philosophia - The aim of this paper is to defend the evidential Argument from Evil from the challenge brought against it by skeptical theists. That challenge is rooted in skeptical theism's...