Death and Dying

Issues surrounding pregnancy loss are rarely addressed in Christian philosophy. Yet a modest estimate based on the empirical and medical literature places the rate of pregnancy loss between fertilization and term at somewhere between 40–60%. If miscarriage really is as common as the research gives us to believe, then it would seem a pressing topic for a Christian philosophy of the future to address. This paper attempts to begin this work by showing how thinking more closely about pregnancy loss understood (...) as a grievable event can have a profound impact on the way we think about particular theoretical debates in Christian philosophy and provide opportunities for the discipline to put its skills to use in the development of helpful conceptual and hermeneutical resources for those grieving such losses. However, this will require seeking out and taking seriously the testimony of those who have undergone pregnancy loss, as well as getting clearer on how best to conceptualize pregnancy and its loss in the first place. (shrink)

Advance directives are intended to extend patient autonomy by enabling patients to prospectively direct the care of their future incapacitated selves. There has been much discussion about issues such as whether the future incompetent self is identical to the agent who issues the advance directives or whether advance directives can legitimately secure patient autonomy. However, there is another important question to ask: to what extent and in what conditions is it ethically appropriate for one to limit the liberty or agency (...) of one’s future incompetent self by issuing an advance directive? -/- In this paper, I use a virtue-ethical approach to explore this question, focusing on the case of an advance directive for the future self with moderate dementia. First, I examine virtuous attitudes with regard to autonomy and argue that one can manifest vices or ethically undesirable character traits in trying to intervene in the future self’s life. In particular, I argue that this case can manifest vices such as disdainfulness, intellectual arrogance, and self-dictatorship, which is the vice of trying to control one’s life to an excessive degree, and that a self-dictator fails to give due moral consideration to the future self’s liberty or agency. I then introduce the Daoist idea of wu-wei, which recommends embracement of what happens in one’s life, as one of the possible remedies for the overemphasis on the value of autonomy and control. (shrink)

In a recent JME paper, Matthew John Minehan applies John Rawls’ veil of ignorance against Judith Thomson’s famous violinist argument for the permissibility of abortion. Minehan asks readers to ‘imagine that one morning you are back to back in bed with another person. One of you is conscious and the other unconscious. You do not know which one you are’. Since from this position of ignorance, you have an equal chance of being the unconscious violinist and the conscious person attached (...) to him, it would be rational to oppose a right for detachment. Likewise, behind the veil of ignorance, it is rational to oppose abortions since you could be the fetus, Minehan claims. This paper provides a plausible reply to this argument. (shrink)

Bu yazı organ nakli ile ilgili şu soruyu ele almaktadır: Doktorlar sağlıklı bir kişinin organlarını alarak organ nakline gereksinim duyan birden fazla kişinin yaşamını kurtarırlarsa ahlaksal açıdan yanlış bir şey yapmış olurlar mı? Her ne kadar sağlıklı bir insanın organlarını alarak onun ölümüne neden olmak kabul edilemez görünse de bunu yapmamanın daha çok sayıda kişinin ölümüne neden olacağı düşünülürse ortada araştırılmaya değer bir soru olduğu görülür.

Fetal reduction is the practice of reducing the number of fetuses in a multiple pregnancy, such as quadruplets, to a twin or singleton pregnancy. Use of assisted reproductive technologies increases the likelihood of multiple pregnancies, and many fetal reductions are done after in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer, either because of social or health-related reasons. In this paper, I apply Joe Horton’s all or nothing problem to the ethics of fetal reduction in the case of a twin pregnancy. I argue (...) that in the case of a twin pregnancy, there are two intuitively plausible claims: abortion is morally permissible, and it is morally wrong to abort just one of the fetuses. But since we should choose morally permissible acts rather than impermissible ones, the two claims lead to another highly implausible claim: the woman ought to abort both fetuses rather than only one. Yet, this does not seem right. A plausible moral theory cannot advocate such a pro-death view. Or can it? I suggest ways to solve this problem and draw implications for each solution. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Geleneksel tıptaki büyük ilerlemelere rağmen tamamlayıcı ve alternatif tıp (TAT) uygulamaları hala yaygın olarak kullanılmaktadır. TAT, geleneksel tıbbın bir parçası olarak görülmeyen, çeşitli tıbbi ve sağlık sistemlerini ve ürünlerini içeren uygulamalardır. Bu derlemede kalp hastalıklarında sıklıkla kullanılan TAT yöntemleri, hasta ve hastalık üzerine etkilerinden bahsedilecektir.

In this paper, I propose the concept of the “animated persona,” a soundless voice that says, “I am here” and appears on the surface of someone or something. This concept can bring clarity to the experience of perceiving a kind of personhood on a corpse, a wooden mask, or even a tree. In the first half of this paper, I will examine some Japanese literature and a work of Viktor Frankl’s that discuss these phenomena. In the second half, I will (...) analyze the concept of animated persona from five perspectives: (1) a compelling power, (2) surface-ness, (3) religious experience, (4) universality, and (5) the meaning of “I.” Lastly, I will discuss the relationship among the three layers of biological object, animated persona, and self-conscious being. My aim is to shed new light on the meaning of the encounter between the living and the dead. (shrink)

Some people willingly risk or give up their lives for something they deeply believe in, for instance standing up to a dictator. A good example of this are members of the White Rose student resistance group, who rebelled against the Nazi regime and paid for it with their lives. I argue that when the cause is good, such risky activities (and even deaths themselves) can contribute to meaning in life in its different forms – meaning-as-mattering, meaning-as-purpose, and meaning-as-intelligibility. Such cases (...) highlight the importance of integrity, or living up to one’s commitments, in meaningful living, or dying, as it may be, as well as the risk involved in commitment, since if you die for a bad cause, you have only harmed yourself. However, if leading a more rather than less meaningful life benefits rather than harms you, there are possible scenarios in which you yourself are better off dying for a good cause than living a longer moderately happy life. This presents a version of a well-known puzzle: what, then, makes dying for a cause a self-sacrifice, as it usually seems to be? I sketch some possible answers, and try to make sense of relevant work in empirical psychology. (shrink)

In paleontology, the discovery of funeral rites is an important factor in determining the degree of social awakening of a hominid. This awareness of death is an engine of social cohesion (uniting to resist disasters and enemies) and action (to do something to leave a trace). It is an important element of metaphysical reflection. This is also what gives the symbolic power to acts such as homicide and suicide. According to Plato, death is the separation of soul and body. Finally (...) freed from his fleshly prison, the immortal soul can freely reach the sky of Ideas, Eternity, the domain of philosophers. (cf. Phaedo). (shrink)

The Buddhist Nikāya Suttas frequently mention the concept of fear (bhaya) and related synonyms. This concept does not receive much scholarly attention by subsequent Buddhist philosophers. Recent scholars identify a ‘paradox of fear’ in several traditions of classical Indian Buddhism (Brekke 1999, Finnigan 2019, Giustarini 2012). Each scholar points out, in their respective textual contexts, that fear is evaluated in two ways; one positive and the other negative. Brekke calls this the “double role” of fear (1999: 443). Each also identify (...) fear as purposely elicited to motivate acts aimed at achieving fearlessness, where freedom from fear is characteristic of nibbāna. They all find this puzzling. Finnigan asks: “Why would one purposefully incite fear if one’s goal is its elimination?” (2019: 221). Giustarini says that fear has a “contradictory nature” (2012: 513); Brekke calls it “the paradox of fear” (1999: 442). This article introduces the ‘paradox of fear’ as it appears in the Bodhicaryāvatāra of Śāntideva and the Nikāya suttas. It then critically examines Brekke and Giustarini’s proposed solutions. It argues that they get some things right in ways that are both supported by the Nikāyas and relevant to Śāntideva but that they leave some important questions unanswered. The article contends that these questions are best answered if fear is analysed as appropriate when its objects are related to karma and rebirth. (shrink)

The deaths of those on whom our practical identities rely generate a sense of disorientation or alienation from the world seemingly at odds with life being meaningful. In the terms put forth in Cheshire Calhoun’s recent account of meaningfulness in life, because their existence serves as a metaphysical presupposition of our practical identities, their deaths threaten to upend a background frame of agency against which much of our choice and deliberation takes place. Here I argue for a dual role for (...) grief in addressing this threat to life’s meaningfulness. Inasmuch as grief’s object is the loss of our relationship with the deceased as it was prior to their death, grief serves to alert us to the threat to our practical identities that their deaths pose to us and motivates us to defuse this threat by revising our practical identities to reflect the modification in our relationship necessitated by their deaths. Simultaneously, the emotional complexity and richness of grief episodes provides an abundance of normative evidence regarding our relationship with the deceased and our practical identities, evidence that can enable us to re-establish our practical identities and thereby recover a sense of our lives as meaningful. (shrink)

Individuals suffering from anorexia-nervosa experience dysmorphic perceptions of their body and desire to act on these perceptions by refusing food. In some cases, anorexics want to refuse food to the point of death. In this paper, I answer this question: if an anorexic, A, wants to refuse food when the food would either be life-saving or prevent serious bodily harm, can A’s refusal be valid? I argue that there is compelling reason to think that anorexics can validly refuse food, even (...) in these extreme circumstances. (shrink)

The development of artificial womb technology is proceeding rapidly and will present important ethical and theological challenges for Christians. While there has been extensive secular discourse on artificial wombs in recent years, there has been little Christian engagement with this topic. There are broadly two primary uses of artificial womb technology—ectogestation as a form of enhanced neonatal care, where some of the gestation period takes place in an artificial womb, and ectogenesis, where the entire gestation period is within an artificial (...) womb. Ectogestation for the latter weeks or months of pregnancy could be possible within a decade or so, while ectogenesis for humans is far more speculative. Ectogestation is likely to significantly decrease maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality, and so there is a strong case for supporting its development. Ectogenesis, however, may bring a number of challenges, including the commodification of children, and the pathologizing of pregnancy and childbirth. Its long-term effects on those who are created through this process are also unknown. In the event that it becomes ubiquitous, we may also find the central theological significance of pregnancy and birth diminished. The dilemma for Christians is that the development of ectogestation seems likely to normalise the use of artificial gestation, and, in time, pave the way for ectogenesis. (shrink)

Pro-life advocates commonly argue that fetuses have the moral status of persons, and an accompanying right to life, a view most pro-choice advocates deny. A difficulty for this pro-life position has been Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist analogy, in which she argues that even if the fetus is a person, abortion is often permissible because a pregnant woman is not obliged to continue to offer her body as life support. Here, we outline the moral theories underlying public health ethics, and examine (...) the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of public health considerations overriding individual rights. We argue that if fetuses are regarded as persons, then abortion is of such prevalence in society that it also constitutes a significant public health crisis. We show that on public health considerations, we are justified in overriding individual rights to bodily autonomy by prohibiting abortion. We conclude that in a society that values public health, abortion can only be tolerated if fetuses are not regarded as persons. (shrink)

I briefly discuss the philosophical reasons for preferring the future over the present.

O scurtă retrospectivă a virusul COVID-19 care a cauzat actuala pandemie, a cilului său de viață și a istoriei sale. Reacții, măsuri și efecte ale pandemiei COVID-19. O prezentare a diverselor abordări filosofice, cu accent pe filosofia morții, ecopsihanaliză, și apel la filosofiile lui Sigmund Freud și Albert Camus. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17900.59528.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 180-182.

Social space is superimposed on the civilization map of the world whereas the social time is correlated with the duration of civilization existence. Within own civilization the concept space is non-homogeneous, there are “singled out points” — “concept factories”. As social structures, cities may exist rather long, sometimes during several millennia, but as concept centres they are limited by the duration of civilization existence. If civilization is a “concept universe”, nobody and nothing may cross the boundaries, which include cities as (...) well. Death of civilization leads to reboot cultural and historical space-time. On the other hand, reformatted olds concepts are not preserved, but there may be reception of old concepts and their new interpretation. However, even in case of genetic links presence, they are the other concepts and not modified old ones. Under certain circumstances may take place “rebranding” when attractive name is connected to the concept of absolutely different order to attach to it authority of the past. (shrink)

This paper will address René Girard’s critique of the “humanization of nothingness” in modern Western philosophy. I will first explain how the “desire for death” is related to a phenomenon that Girard refers to as “obstacle addiction.” Second, I will point out how mankind’s desire for death and illusory will to self-divinization gradually tend to converge within the history of modern Western humanism. In particular, I will show how this convergence between self-destruction and self-divinization gradually takes shape through the evolution (...) of the concept of “the negative” from Hegel to Kojève, Sartre and Camus. Finally, we shall come to see that in Girard’s view “the negative” has tended to become an ever-preoccupying and unacknowledged symptom of mankind’s addiction to “model/obstacles” of desire. (shrink)

Berger (forthcoming) states that moral intimacy is important in applying the best interests standard. But what he calls moral intimacy requires that someone has overcome epistemic burdens needed to represent the patient. We argue elsewhere that good surrogate decision-making is first and foremost a matter of overcoming epistemic burdens, or those obstacles that stand in the way of a surrogate decision-maker knowing what a patient wants and how to satisfy those preferences. Berger’s notion of moral intimacy depends on epistemic intimacy: (...) the fact that a surrogate's epistemic burdens with respect to the best interests of the incapacitated patient have been adequately surmounted, plus some other feature. Thus, where a particular patient-surrogate relationship fails to be morally intimate, what is lacking is either epistemic intimacy or this second feature. Furthermore, Berger uses the notion of moral intimacy as an explanans for the application of the best interests standard. We argue that the notions of epistemic intimacy and epistemic burdens not only help to explain the notion of moral intimacy, but also better explain the application of the best interests standard. Given the role of epistemic burdens and the epistemic intimacy that overcoming them enables, bioethicists and physicians should consider a surrogate’s epistemic standing relative to the patient’s best interests before pronouncing on the former’s ethical probity. (shrink)

Conscientious objection in healthcare has come under heavy criticism on two grounds recently, particularly regarding abortion provision. First, critics claim conscientious objection involves a refusal to provide a legal and beneficial procedure requested by a patient, denying them access to healthcare. Second, they argue the exercise of conscientious objection is based on unverifiable personal beliefs. These characteristics, it is claimed, disqualify conscientious objection in healthcare. Here, we defend conscientious objection in the context of abortion provision. We show that abortion has (...) a dubitable claim to be medically beneficial, is rarely clinically indicated, and that conscientious objections should be accepted in these circumstances. We also show that reliance on personal beliefs is difficult to avoid if any form of objection is to be permitted, even if it is based on criteria such as the principles and values of the profession or the scope of professional practice. (shrink)

In ’Abortion and deprivation: a reply to Marquis’, Anna Christensen contends that Don Marquis’ influential ’future like ours’ argument for the immorality of abortion faces a significant challenge from the Epicurean claim that human beings cannot be harmed by their death. If deprivation requires a subject, then abortion cannot deprive a fetus of a future of value, as no individual exists to be deprived once death has occurred. However, the Epicurean account also implies that the wrongness of murder is also (...) not grounded in the badness of death, which is strongly counterintuitive. There is an alternative: we can save our intuitions by adopting a more moderate Epicurean account such as that proposed by David Hershenov, who grounds the wrongness of killing in the prevention of the benefit of further good life rather than in the badness of death. Hershenov’s account, however, is equally applicable to Marquis’ argument: abortion similarly prevents a fetus from enjoying the benefit of a future like ours. Consequently, we conclude that Christensen’s criticism of Marquis’ argument fails to undermine his reasoning. (shrink)

This is the first chapter of a projected book to be entitled, The Ego and the Spirit. This book will endeavor to examine what lies at the heart of human spiritual aspiration from a psychological, philosophical, and religious perspective. In this first chapter, I discuss the predicament of the human ego, charged with a task that it cannot fulfill: To establish itself securely within being. The ego's efforts to fulfill this task through its dealings with the things and people of (...) the material world lead to distortions in its self-experience, its relations with others, and its involvement in life in general. The world's spiritual traditions have long recognized the predicament of the ego and present themselves as a means to its resolution. In this first chapter, though, the focus is on the ego and its predicament. (shrink)

A substantial proportion of human embryos spontaneously abort soon after conception, and ethicists have argued this is problematic for the pro-life view that a human embryo has the same moral status as an adult from conception. Firstly, if human embryos are our moral equals, this entails spontaneous abortion is one of humanity’s most important problems, and it is claimed this is absurd, and a reductio of the moral status claim. Secondly, it is claimed that pro-life advocates do not act as (...) if spontaneous abortion is important, implying they are failing to fulfill their moral obligations. We report that the primary cause of spontaneous abortion is chromosomal defects, which are currently unpreventable, and show that as the other major cause of prenatal death is induced abortion, pro-life advocates can legitimately continue efforts to oppose it. We also defend the relevance of the killing and letting die distinction, which provides further justification for pro-life priorities. (shrink)

In December of 2013, my Dad died of advanced Alzheimer's and a condition called Myasthenia Gravis. This is a selection of journal entries I made over the course of the two years leading up to my Dad's death. It is not a philosophical essay, but a personal reflection, in "real time" so to speak, on the nature of the dying process in relation to questions of faith, hope, despair, and the meaning of a man's life. I offer it here for (...) any who might find it worthwhile. (shrink)

The 2017 story of Charlie Gard is revisited. Upon the British High Court’s ruling in favor of the physicians that the infant should be allowed to die without the experimental treatment, the view of the public as well as the opinions of bioethicists and Catholic bishops are divided, interestingly along with a cultural line. American bioethicists and Catholic bishops tend to believe that the parents should have the final say while British/European bioethicists and Catholic bishops in general side with the (...) court’s decision. The paper explores the place of culture in bioethical reasoning between the UK/Europe and the US while claiming that cultural differences are more important than geopolitical or religious differences to understand the bioethical positions of a group. In addition, the authors introduce a decision-making program for handicapped neonates which is developed by the American Jesuit Bioethicist, Richard McCormick, and modified further by the contemporary American Jesuit Bioethicist, Peter A. Clark, in an attempt to see if the program’s normatizing categories can contribute to the culture-laden ethical discussions on Charlie’s case. However, it is admitted that the McCormick-Clark device is borne out of the American and Catholic theological context. (shrink)

Explanations of former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s public and private views on the aetiology of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country remain partial at best without the recognition that the latter presuppose and imply a postmodernist/postcolonialist philosophy of science that erases the line separating the political from the scientific. Evidence from Mbeki’s public speeches, interviews, and private and anonymous writings suggests that it was postmodernist/postcolonialist theory that inspired him to doubt the “Western” scientific consensus on HIV/AIDS and to implement (...) a public health policy that dragged its feet on full roll-out of antiretroviral therapy, causing thousands of avoidable deaths. A weak reductio ad absurdum allows us to conclude from this premise that postmodernist/postcolonial critique of “Western” science ought to be shunned. A comparative argument from consequences further suggests that in a situation where a misguided health policy has lead to a humanitarian catastrophe, and where postmodernist/postcolonialist critique of science can and has been used to justify this policy, an alternative theory ought to be preferred on which such justification would not be possible. The paper closes with a call for a non-relativist alternative to postmodernist/postcolonialist philosophy of science, and evaluates the potential of recent developments in ‘Studies of Expertise” to yield such. (shrink)

Samuel Scheffler defends “The Afterlife Conjecture”: the view that the continued existence of humanity after our deaths—“the afterlife”—lies in the background of our valuing; were we to lose confidence in it, many of the projects we engage in would lose their meaning. The Afterlife Conjecture, in his view, also brings out the limits of our egoism, showing that we care more about yet unborn strangers than about personal survival. But why does the afterlife itself matter to us? Examination of Scheffler’s (...) second argument helps answer this question, thereby undermining his argument. Our concern for the afterlife involves bootstrapping: we care more about the afterlife than about personal survival precisely because the latter has such salient limits that our lives are structured by adaptation to mortality, and it is only because the afterlife does provide a measure of personal survival that it can give meaning to our projects. (shrink)

In this article I criticize the recommendations of some prominent statisticians about how to estimate and compare probabilities of the repeated sudden infant death and repeated murder. The issue has drawn considerable public attention in connection with several recent court cases in the UK. I try to show that when the three components of the Bayesian inference are carefully analyzed in this context, the advice of the statisticians turns out to be problematic in each of the steps.

In this paper I revisit a dispute between Mikel Burley and Robin Le Poidevin about whether or not the B-theory of time can give its adherents any reason to be less afraid of death. In ‘Should a B-theoretic atheist fear death?’, Burley argues that even on Le Poidevin’s understanding of the B-theory, atheists shouldn’t be comforted. His reason is that the prevalent B-theoretic account of our attitudes towards the past and future precludes treating our fear of death as unwarranted. I (...) examine his argument and provide a tentative defense of Le Poidevin. I claim that while Burley rightly spots a tension with a non-revisionary approach to our ordinary emotional life, he doesn’t isolate the source of that tension. The real question is how to understand Le Poidevin’s idea that on the B-theory, we and our lives are ‘eternally real’. I then suggest that there is a view of time that does justice to Le Poidevin’s remarks, albeit a strange one. The view takes temporal relations to be quasi-spatial and temporal entities to exist in a totum simul. (shrink)

This paper is a reflection on the puzzle of life after death. It explores the meaning, types and causes of death so as to contemplate the purpose of life. Thus, the paper takes into consideration metaphysical, moral and epistemic issues in the belief in life after death (or life after life). This exploration is done considering the Yoruba philosophy of death (iku), life (iye) and life after death (aye atun wa). We note that, for the Yoruba, life as seen in (...) the body is ephemeral, whereas death (that is, the separation of the soul from the body—iku ara) is a transitory process of life to a renewed life. The paper shows that the Yoruba’s idea of death is not an end to life but a change in its form. It is argued, then, that the Yoruba ontology has the implications that: (a) life is a continuum and, (b) man is not his body, (c) hence, a theory of immortality of the soul is implied. The paper observes that, though certain contradictions exist in the Yoruba worldview, the ethos of the belief seems significant. The paper examines the notions of imo (knowledge) and igbabo (belief) in Yoruba epistemology and thus advances the thesis that their belief in life after death cannot be corroborated, though not unreasonable. (shrink)

Article on the personal experience concerning the topic of death and dying.

This article has two main sections. In Section I, I argue against the skeptic's position. I examine an attempt to see both prima facie objections as arising from features that killing and letting die have in common, and then argue that all such attempts are doomed to failure. In Section II, I explain how even defenders of the distinction's significance have misconstrued the difference between the two objections. In so doing I attempt to develop a better account of why killing (...) and letting die are prima facie objectionable. I also briefly explore some related matters. (shrink)

An e-book devoted to 13 critical discussions of Thaddeus Metz's book "Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study", with a lengthy reply from the author. -/- Preface Masahiro Morioka i -/- Précis of Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study Thaddeus Metz ii-vi -/- Source and Bearer: Metz on the Pure Part-Life View of Meaning Hasko von Kriegstein 1-18 -/- Fundamentality and Extradimensional Final Value David Matheson 19-32 -/- Meaningful and More Meaningful: A Modest Measure Peter Baumann 33-49 -/- Is Meaning in (...) Life Comparable?: From the Viewpoint of ‘The Heart of Meaning in Life’ Masahiro Morioka 50-65 -/- Agreement and Sympathy: On Metz’s Meaning in Life Sho Yamaguchi 66-89 -/- Metz’s Quest for the Holy Grail James Tartaglia 90-111 -/- Meaning without Ego Christopher Ketcham 112-133 -/- Death and the Meaning of Life: A Critical Study of Metz’s Meaning in Life Fumitake Yoshizawa 134-149 -/- Metz’ Incoherence Objection: Some Epistemological Considerations Nicholas Waghorn 150-168 -/- Meaning in Consequences Mark Wells 169-179 -/- Defending the Purpose Theory of Meaning in Life Jason Poettcker 180-207 -/- Review of Thaddeus Metz’s Meaning in Life Minao Kukita 208-214 -/- A Psychological Model to Determine Meaning in Life and Meaning of Life Yu Urata 215-227 -/- Assessing Lives, Giving Supernaturalism Its Due, and Capturing Naturalism: Reply to 13 Critics of Meaning in Life Thaddeus Metz 228-278 . (shrink)

After rejecting substance dualism, some naturalists embrace patternism. It states that persons are bodies and that bodies are material machines running abstract person programs. Following Aristotle, these person programs are souls. Patternists adopt four-dimensionalist theories of persistence: Bodies are 3D stages of 4D lives. Patternism permits at least six types of life after death. It permits quantum immortality, teleportation, salvation through advanced technology, promotion out of a simulated reality, computational monadology, and the revision theory of resurrection.

Book synopsis: Dying and death are topics of deep humane concern for many people in a variety of circumstances and contexts. However, they are not discussed to any great extent or with sufficient focus in order to gain knowledge and understanding of their major features and aspects. The present volume is an attempt to bridge the undesirable gap between what should be known and understood about dying and death and what is easily accessible. Included in the present volume are chapters (...) arranged in three sections. First, there are chapters on aspects of dying, written by people who have professional experience and personal insights into the nature of the processes at work and the ways it should be treated. Secondly, there are chapters on assisted death (Euthanasia) that illuminate the practices involved in the professional assistance given to persons who suffer from an incurable illness and who do not want their painful life to be medically extended. Thirdly, there are chapters on mourning, examined in a variety of cultural contexts. These provide insights for different ways of maintaining the presence of the dead in the life of the living: “life in the hearts”. (shrink)

The 2013 Rostock Symposium on Systems Biology and Bioinformatics in Aging Research was again dedicated to dissecting the aging process using in silico means. A particular focus was on ontologies, as these are a key technology to systematically integrate heterogeneous information about the aging process. Related topics were databases and data integration. Other talks tackled modeling issues and applications, the latter including talks focussed on marker development and cellular stress as well as on diseases, in particular on diseases of kidney (...) and skin. (shrink)

When people suffer they always suffer as a whole human being. The emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering of human beings cannot be completely separated from all other kinds of suffering, such as from harmful natural, ecological, political, economic and social conditions. In reality they interact with each other and influence each other. Human beings do not only suffer from somatic illnesses, physical pain, and the lack of decent opportunities to satisfy their basic vital, social and emotional needs. They also suffer (...) when they are not able to experience and grasp any meaning of life even if such suffering is not quite as obvious as most forms of physical, social and emotional suffering. Suffering from the lack for the sense of the meaning of life is a special form of emotional, cognitive, and spiritual suffering. Although all human beings share the same basic human need for some meaning of life, the fulfilment of this need is highly individual and personal. Although all forms of human suffering can be a challenge to the meaning of life, the personal conditions of suffering usually are a stronger challenge for the meaning of life. Among the personal conditions of human suffering, the Grenzsituationen cannot be cancelled or raised at all, but only accepted and coped with as existential aspects of the conditio humana. According to Karl Jaspers these are: death, suffering, struggling, guilt, and failing. The challenge for human beings to cope with these Grenzsituationen is a way to move from the mere Being-there to true human Existence. (shrink)

Kertomus René Descartesin kuolemasta / An account of the Death of René Descartes.

Käsittelen tässä artikkelissa Leibnizin käsitystä kuolemasta, jota ei tarkkaan ottaen ole olemassa. Kuoleminen on Leibnizin mukaan vain tila, jossa havaintomme eivät nouse tarkoiksi ja vaivumme ikäänkuin elottoman luonnon tasolle.

When I was fifteen, I was having serious doubts about the existence of a supernatural entity benevolently looking over me, and—perhaps even more disturbingly—about the possibility of an afterlife in which I would again see my friends and relatives and exist happily ever after. It was at that point that I started reading the writings of Bertrand Russell,1,2 one of the most controversial philosophers and political activists of the Twentieth century.

This paper—written for nonspecialist readers—asks whether life after death is in any sense possible given the apparent fact that after we die our remains decay to the point where only randomly scattered atoms remain. The paper argues that this is possible only if our remains are not in fact dispersed in this way, and discusses how that might be the case. -/- 1. Life After Death -- 2. Total Destruction -- 3. The Soul -- 4. Body-Snatching -- 5. Radical Resurrection (...) -- 6. Irreversibility -- 7. Atomic Reassembly -- 8. The Transporter -- 9. Replicas and Originals -- 10. Survival and Causal Connections. (shrink)

This is a review of Johnston's book Surviving Death.

In the future, human destiny may depend on our ethics. In particular, biotechnology and expansion in space can transform life, raising profound questions. Guidance may be found in Life-centered ethics, as biotic ethics that value the basic patterns of organic gene/protein life, and as panbiotic ethics that always seek to expand life. These life-centered principles can be based on scientific insights into the unique place of life in nature, and the biological unity of all life. Belonging to life then implies (...) a human purpose: to safeguard and propagate life. Expansion in space will advance this purpose but will also raise basic questions. Should we expand all life or only intelligent life? Should we aim to create populations of trillions? Should we seed other solar systems? How far can we change but still preserve the human species, and life itself? The future of all life may be in our hands, and it can depend on our guiding ethics whether life will fulfil its full potentials. Given such profound powers, life-centered ethics can best secure future generations. Our descendants may then understand nature more deeply, and seek to extend life indefinitely. In that future, our human existence can find a cosmic purpose. (shrink)

Arguments concerning central issues of contemporary Medical Ethics often not only bear similarities, but also derive their sheer essence from notions which belong to the celebrated history of Ethics. Thus, argumentation pro euthanasia and assisted suicide which focus on the detainment of dignity and the ensuring of posthumous reputation on behalf of the moral agent is shown to echo stoic views on arête and the subordination of life to the primary human goal, namely the achievement of virtue. The progress made (...) in palliative care when seen alongside the — steadily increasing — requests for suicide, is indicative of the fact that, though pain now days can be effectively controlled, moral agents often consider the preservation of their life detrimental to the detainment of virtue or posthumous reputation. The stoic view is considered to justify elective death as a personal choice, but is deemed inadequate as well as inconsistent in the broader context of a coherent value theory. (shrink)