Back to bundles: Deflating property rights, again

Copyright © 2014 Cambridge University PressFollowing Wesley Hohfeld's pioneering analyses, which demonstrated that the folk concept of ownership conflated a variety of distinct legal relations, a deflationary bundle theory regarding those relations as essentially unconnected held sway for much of the subsequent century. In recent decades, this theory has been thought too diffuse; it seems counterintuitive to insist, for instance, that rights of possession and alienation over a property are associated only contingently. Accordingly, scholars such as James Penner and James Harris have advanced theories that revive the concept of ownership, identifying some instances of property as paradigmatic, and regarding others as conceptually subsidiary. I propose a new interpretation of the bundle theory, based on David Lewis's idea of Humean supervenience among physical particles. I critically examine the major antibundle positions, arguing that their criticisms result from confusion about the claims of the bundle theory, which remains the best account of property rights available. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014

So language. Very Prescribe. Wow.

The philosophical dispute about linguistic normativity is one battlefield in a larger war over the nature of language as an object of scientific study. For those influenced by Wittgenstein, language involves following – or failing to follow – public, prescriptive rules; for Chomsky and his followers, language is a property of individual minds and brains, and the grammatical judgements of any mature individual speaker – her competence – cannot be, in any linguistic sense, ‘wrong’. As I argue here, the recent ‘doge meme’ internet fad provides surprising evidence for the prescriptivist view. Normative attitudes towards linguistic practices are a ubiquitous feature of those practices, and there is no principled basis on which to regard them as non-linguistic

Termination of Pregnancy, Article 40.3.3, and the Law of Intended Consequences

ArticleMuch of the public debate concerning the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013 (2013 Bill) has either presumed or explicitly claimed that “abortion” is never necessary to save the life of the mother, since procedures intended to save the life of the mother are not “direct” or “intentional” terminations and therefore, by definition, not abortions. The 2013 Bill itself seems to imply sympathy with this view; others have claimed that it renders the 2013 Bill unnecessary. We trace this claim to the Thomist “Doctrine of Double Effect”, which is a mainstay of Catholic moral theology, and examine its plausibility in real-life medical cases. We focus in particular on the example of ectopic pregnancy. It is implausible, we argue, that the distinction typically drawn by Catholic theologians between the various procedures available for treating such unviable and life-threatening pregnancies can be explained by either directness or intention. Indeed, no single principle seems capable of distinguishing such cases in a medically or morally significant manner. “Abortion”, then, even narrowly defined as the “direct” and “intentional” termination of a pregnancy, is sometimes necessary and appropriate to save the life of the mother; and “abortion” in this sense is accordingly permitted under the terms of the 2013 Bill

Three Aristotelian Accounts of Disease and Disability

Copyright © 2015 Wiley. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Glackin, S. N. (2015), Three Aristotelian Accounts of Disease and Disability. Journal of Applied Philosophy, which has been published in final form at 10.1111/japp.12114. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving: http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-820227.html#termsThe question of whether medical and psychiatric judgements involve a normative or evaluative component has been a source of wide and vehement disagreement. But among those who think such a component is involved, there is considerable further disagreement as to its nature. In this paper, I consider several versions of Aristotelian normativism, as propounded by Christopher Megone, Michael Thompson and Philippa Foot, and Martha Nussbaum. The first two, I claim, can be persuasively rebutted by different modes of liberal pluralist challenge – respectively, pluralism about structures of social organisation and pluralism about biological forms. Nussbaum’s version, by contrast, is alert to the need for pluralism; I argue, however, that the Aristotelian aspects of her theory hamper her pursuit of those pluralistic aims

So language. Very Prescribe. Wow.

The philosophical dispute about linguistic normativity is one battlefield in a larger war over the nature of language as an object of scientific study. For those influenced by Wittgenstein, language involves following – or failing to follow – public, prescriptive rules; for Chomsky and his followers, language is a property of individual minds and brains, and the grammatical judgements of any mature individual speaker – her competence – cannot be, in any linguistic sense, ‘wrong’. As I argue here, the recent ‘doge meme’ internet fad provides surprising evidence for the prescriptivist view. Normative attitudes towards linguistic practices are a ubiquitous feature of those practices, and there is no principled basis on which to regard them as non-linguistic

Placebo treatments, informed consent and 'the grip of a false picture'

Copyright © 2015 by the BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & Institute of Medical EthicsIt is widely supposed that the prescription of placebo treatments to patients for therapeutic purposes is ethically problematic on the grounds that the patient cannot give informed consent to the treatment, and is therefore deceived by the physician. This claim, I argue, rests on two confusions: one concerning the meaning of 'informed consent' and its relation to the information available to the patient, and another concerning the relation of body and mind. Taken together, these errors lead naturally to the conclusion that the prescription of placebos to unwitting patients is unethical. Once they are dispelled, I argue, we can see that providing 'full' information against a background of metaphysical confusion may make a patient less informed and that the 'therapeutic' goal of relieving the patient of such confusions is properly the duty of the philosopher rather than the physician. Therapeutic placebos therefore do not violate the patient's informed consent or the ethical duties of the doctor