Philosophy of medicine — From a medical perspective

In this commentary on the article by Arthur L. Caplan [1] the philosophy of medicine is viewed from a medical perspective. Philosophical studies have a long tradition in medicine, especially during periods of paradigmatic unrest, and they serve the same goal as other medical activities: the prevention and treatment of disease. The medical profession needs the help of professional philosophers in much the same way as it needs the cooperation of basic scientists. Philosophy of medicine may not deserve the status of a philosophical subspecialty or field, but it so closely linked to the main trends of contemporary medical thinking that it must be regarded as an emerging (or reemerging) medical subdiscipline.     

Scripture as the Voice of God: The Continuing Importance of Autopistia

This article argues that the concept of autopistia offers a helpful perspective for theological reflection on the authority of Scripture in the present context. It explains the concept by eliminating some misunderstandings and offering a definition of the autopistia of Scripture from its theological sources. It faces the objections that the idea is inutile because it is too specifically Protestant and outdated because it rests on pre‐modern presuppositions. Finally it draws some implications of this perspective for the role of the church, for the communication of the authority of Scripture in the postmodern context, and for the proper place of the doctrine of Scripture in systematic theology.     

Sufficiency and Satiable Values

This article identifies value‐satiability sufficientarianism as a distinctive version of the sufficiency view, which has been ignored in the literature on distributive justice. This is unfortunate because value‐satiability sufficientarianism is much better equipped than alternative sufficiency views to cope with the standard objections against sufficiency. Most often, sufficientarianism refers to satiability as a feature of moral principles and reasons. But value‐satiability sufficientarianism also invokes satiability in the space of value‐theory, as it determines the sufficiency threshold at the point where justice‐relevant values have been completely fulfilled. The article gives examples of how this view is widely apparent in the literature, and it provides some reasons in its favour. It then presents the two standard objections against sufficientarianism – the threshold objection and the indifference objection – and argues that these critiques do not apply to value‐satiability sufficientarianism. The general argument of the article therefore proves sufficientarianism more difficult to refute than is commonly credited.     

The experience machine and the expertise defense

Recent evidence suggests that participants without extensive training in philosophy (so-called lay people) have difficulties responding consistently when confronted with Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine thought experiment. For example, some of the participants who reject the experience machine for themselves would still advise a stranger to enter the machine permanently. This and similar findings have been interpreted as evidence for implicit biases that prevent lay people from making rational decisions about whether the experience machine is preferable to real life, which might have consequences for one of the strongest objections to philosophical hedonism (the view that pleasure is the only intrinsic value). Against this consequence, it has been argued that expert philosophers are immune to such biases (the so-called expertise defense). In this paper, I report empirical evidence against this expertise defense.     

Abandoning the Buck Passing Analysis of Final Value

In this paper it is argued that the buck-passing analysis (BPA) of final value is not a plausible analysis of value and should be abandoned. While considering the influential wrong kind of reason problem and other more recent technical objections, this paper contends that there are broader reasons for giving up on buck-passing. It is argued that the BPA, even if it can respond to the various technical objections, is not an attractive analysis of final value. It is not attractive for two reasons: the first being that the BPA lacks the features typical of successful conceptual analyses and the second being that it is unable to deliver on the advantages that its proponents claim for it. While not offering a knock-down technical refutation of the BPA, this paper aims to show that there is little reason to think that the BPA is correct, and that it should therefore be given up as an analysis of final value.

A Minimalist Theory of Truth

This article, after briefly discussing Alfred Tarski's influential theory of truth, turns to a more recent theory of truth, a deflationary, or minimalist, theory. One of the chief elements of a deflationary, or minimalist, theory of truth is that it replaces the question of what truth is with the question of what “true” does. After setting out the central features of the minimalist theory of truth, the article explains the motivation for opting for such a position. In addition, it provides some reasons for thinking that such a theory of truth is “minimal” or “deflationary” in the way that contemporary truth theorists have claimed it to be.     

Rethinking Neuroethics in the Light of the Extended Mind Thesis

The extended mind thesis is the claim that mental states extend beyond the skulls of the agents whose states they are. This seemingly obscure and bizarre claim has far-reaching implications for neuroethics, I argue. In the first half of this article, I sketch the extended mind thesis and defend it against criticisms. In the second half, I turn to its neuroethical implications. I argue that the extended mind thesis entails the falsity of the claim that interventions into the brain are especially problematic just because they are internal interventions, but that many objections to such interventions rely, at least in part, on this claim. Further, I argue that the thesis alters the focus of neuroethics, away from the question of whether we ought to allow interventions into the mind, and toward the question of which interventions we ought to allow and under what conditions. The extended mind thesis dramatically expands the scope of neuroethics: because interventions into the environment of agents can count as interventions into their minds, decisions concerning such interventions become questions for neuroethics.     

Unconscious choice: the dissociation of creative animus among writers and psychotherapists

The paper argues that writers and psychotherapists are drawn to their work through the desire to remedy an unconscious sense of lack brought about by early relational trauma. Often, because of its origins in psychic pain, the connection between these individuals' beginnings and their profession remains largely dissociated. The theme is developed with reference to the idea of the wounded healer taken up by Jung. It is proposed that the original wound is also the crack that lets the light in: a dissociated tough spirit that can be channelled into discriminating countertransference and strong writing. This paper is implicitly arguing against an objective or neutral analytic stance, and for the therapeutic and creative value of acquaintance with negative affect.     

Contemplating the One who Remains the Same: Augustine,Swinburne, and Psalm 102 on the Relation between Divine Immutability and Theological Reason

This article defends a classical doctrine of divine immutability by contending that the most influential objections lodged against it by theologians and philosophers such as Richard Swinburne–i.e. that divine immutability is speculative rather than practical, is philosophical rather than biblical, and fails to cohere with a ‘personal’ God who relates to creatures–are rooted in a particular construal of theological reason. I diagnose Swinburne’s account of theological reason with the help of Karl Barth’s interpretation of Anselm, and put forth a contrasting account of divine immutability, rooted in a distinct approach to theological reason, through a theological interpretation of Psalm 102, an analysis of the Creator/creature distinction, and an examination of Augustine’s De trinitate.     

The Anatomy of a Philosophical Hoax

This article reflects upon the state of the philosophical profession vis‐à‐vis a close reading of the hoax perpetrated against the International Journal of Badiou Studies in 2016. This hoax is not a subversive act of disciplinary criticism (as the hoaxers contend). Rather, it is a poorly disguised attempt to enforce a partisan and myopic conception of philosophy and to delegitimize an entire subfield of philosophical production—namely, continental philosophy. The hoax is symptomatic of a deeper problem that plagues the profession today: the willingness exhibited by many philosophers to police the boundaries of the discipline by engaging in what we call “acts of force.” The prevalence of acts of force demonstrates that professional philosophy is shaped not only by the giving and taking of reasons but also by shopworn disciplinary tribalisms (for example, continental versus analytic) and asymmetrical power relations involving agents with unequal amounts of social, professional, and philosophical capital.     

Art as Orientation

What is it that we lack in everyday life that causes us to value art so highly? This article argues that (almost) all values are to be understood in terms of a needs‐satisfaction system, and hence that the value of art can be understood only with reference to the state of the appreciator prior to engagement with the artwork. Aesthetic appreciation can be analysed as a process, which can be described in empirically based psychological terms, leading to a functional view of aesthetic experience as potentially enhancing the individual's orientation at sensory, cognitive, and interpersonal levels; our motivation is a special form of pleasure. Various objections are then considered, with particular attention to the role of pleasure in connection with tragedy; the relation of art to related cultural pursuits is also briefly indicated.     

On a Pedestal—Sport as an Arena for Admiration

ABSTRACT

In philosophical analyses of the value of sport, a relatively unheralded feature is the opportunity that sport offers for admiration. While we readily salute many of the things that people admire (the amazing catch, the sensational comeback), we do not sufficiently appreciate that admiration itself is a positive good that is beneficial to the admirer. At a time when much in the world around us seems distinctly unadmirable and when admiration itself is often dismissed as naïve, athletic achievements and the qualities that propel them present palpable counter-evidence to our darker conclusions. Shining a spotlight on sports’ displays of human beings doing difficult things can pay healthy dividends, as admiration fuels aspiration.

The paper proceeds in four stages. It first explains what admiration is and then identifies the kinds of things that sport distinctly offers, to admire. The heart of it demonstrates the value of athletic admiration, tracing how this contributes to a flourishing life in three principal ways: through the role-modeling that it offers, the action that it encourages and the feelings that it fosters. Finally, the paper considers four possible objections, which serves both to clarify and to fortify its central contention.     

On What We are and How We Persist

This article defends novel approaches to what we are and how we persist. First it is claimed that we have disjunctive persistence conditions: we can persist by way of either biological continuity or psychological continuity. Then it is claimed that we are neither human beings nor persons essentially. Rather, we are essentially bio‐psycho‐continuers, a concept to be explained along the way. A variety of objections are considered and found wanting.     

Theology's munus triplex? Reconsidering Theology's Relationship to the Sciences

Despite the complicated history of exchange between theology and science, the relation between the two can perhaps be summarized succinctly by Ian Barbour's influential taxonomy: conflict, independence, dialogue or integration. This article explores an alternative route by demonstrating how three recent theologians (Barth, Van Huyssteen and Webster) offer recognizably distinct visions for Christian theology's interdisciplinary encounters which can be characterized respectively as prophetic, priestly and royal. A second section of this article discusses the fruitfulness of adopting a munus triplex approach to the interdisciplinary question, as well as anticipating potential objections to transferring the ‘offices’ of Christ to the task of theology.     

A PUZZLE ABOUT NATURALISM

Abstract: This article presents and solves a puzzle about methodological naturalism. Trumping naturalism is the thesis that we must accept p if science sanctions p, and biconditional naturalism the apparently stronger thesis that we must accept p if and only if science sanctions p. The puzzle is generated by an apparently cogent argument to the effect that trumping naturalism is equivalent to biconditional naturalism. It turns out that the argument for this equivalence is subtly question‐begging. The article explains this and shows more generally that there are no scientific arguments for biconditional naturalism.     

Distinguishing Agent-Relativity from Agent-Neutrality

The agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction is one of the most important in contemporary moral theory. Yet providing an adequate formal account of it has proven to be difficult. In this article I defend a new formal account of the distinction, one that avoids various problems faced by other accounts. My account is based on an influential account of the distinction developed by McNaughton and Rawling. I argue that their approach is on the right track but that it succumbs to two serious objections. I then show how to formulate a new account that follows the key insights of McNaughton and Rawling's approach yet avoids the two objections.     

The Problem of Obligation,the Finite Rational Will,and Kantian Value Realism

Abstract

Robert Stern's Understanding Moral Obligation is a remarkable achievement, representing an original reading of Kant's contribution to modern moral philosophy and the legacy he bequeathed to his later-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century successors in the German tradition. On Stern's interpretation, it was not the threat to autonomy posed by value realism, but the threat to autonomy posed by the obligatory nature of morality that led Kant to develop his critical moral theory grounded in the concept of the self-legislating moral agent. Accordingly, Stern contends that Kant was a moral realist of sorts, holding certain substantive views that are best characterized as realist commitments about value. In this paper, I raise two central objections to Stern's reading of Kant. The first objection concerns what Stern identifies as Kant's solution to the problem of moral obligation. Whereas Stern sees the distinction between the infinite will and the finite will as resolving the problem of moral obligation, I argue that this distinction merely explains why moral obligations necessarily take the form of imperatives for us imperfect human beings, but does not solve the deeper problem concerning the obligatory nature of morality—why we should take moral norms to be supremely authoritative laws that override all other norms based on our non-moral interests. The second objection addresses Stern's claim that Kantian autonomy is compatible with value realism. Although this is an idea with which many contemporary readers will be sympathetic, I suggest that the textual evidence actually weighs in favor of constructivism.