Metaphysics and medical ethics: a reply.

Metaphysics and medical ethics.

I take issue with Frank Leavitt's sketch of a pragmatic criterion for the relevance of metaphysics to medical ethics. I argue that appeal to the potential for confusion generated by metaphysical subtlety establishes a need for better communication rather than shows philosophical insight beside the point. I demonstrate that the proposed Criterion of Relevance has absurd consequences, and I claim...

Sellars, Wilfrid (1971). Science, sense impressions and sensa: a reply to Cornman. Review of Metaphysics 24: 391-447. SCIENCE, SENSE IMPRESSIONS, AND SENSA: A REPLY TO CORNMAN

Infanticide for handicapped infants: sometimes it's a metaphysical dispute.

Since 1973 the practice of infanticide for some severely handicapped newborns has been receiving more open discussion and defence in the literature on medical ethics. A recent and important argument for the permissibility of infanticide relies crucially on a particular concept of personhood that excludes the theological. This paper attempts to show that the dispute between the proponents of inf...

Reversibility and death: a reply to David J. Cole.

In this reply to David J. Cole it is argued that the medical concept of death as an irreversible phenomenon is correct and that it does not conflict with ordinary concepts of death.

Death in Denmark: a reply.

This reply to Martyn Evans's support for a cardiac-centered concept of death attempts to meet some objections to the brainstem definition of death. Evans's appeal to Wittgenstein's philosophy is also criticised.