Can deception ever be justified on therapeutic grounds?

Can compulsory removal ever be justified for adults who are mentally competent?

Section 47 of the National Assistance Act is controversial in that it makes provision for the compulsory removal and care of mentally competent adults in certain limited circumstances. A case is described in which it is argued that compulsory management could be justified. This is because the diversity and potentially conflicting nature of the relevant considerations involved in this and a rest...

Can viruses ever be useful?

M ost of the terms used for computer viruses arc metaphors: they have a largely medical origin, and are seductive if not literally sexy. The very real worries WC have about AIDS, for example, no doubt colour the way we talk about computer viruses. At the extreme, abstractly viruses arc clearly just algorithms, and like any other algorithm they arc good for some things and not good for others. T...

Can claims for 'wrongful life' be justified?

The authors reject Joseph Fletcher's arguments that the choice to procreate is a privilege and that parents may be responsible in certain circumstances for producing genetically defective children. They argue instead that procreation is a conditional right, but nonetheless conclude that parents may be held responsible for the "wrongful life" of genetically damaged offspring based on the legal ...

Can Knowledge Be Justified True Belief?

Knowledge was traditionally held to be justified true belief. This paper examines the implications of maintaining this view if justication is interpreted algorithmically. It is argued that if we move sufficiently far from the small worlds to which Bayesian decision theory properly applies, we can steer between the rock of fallibilism and the whirlpool of skepticism only by explicitly building i...

Active euthanasia: can it be justified?