Participants in the Third International Conference on Bioethics, Multiculturalism and Religion (2... more Participants in the Third International Conference on Bioethics, Multiculturalism and Religion (2013) were asked to discuss the relationship between “universal human rights and cultural diversity in the life sciences” based on Article 12 of the UNESCO Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights from the perspective of a particular religion. Professor Prakash Desai presented the main paper from the Hindu perspective, and in this essay I respond to his paper.
I lump neuroethicists into three loose categories distinguishable to some degree by broad divisio... more I lump neuroethicists into three loose categories distinguishable to some degree by broad divisions in academia. The first category (medicine) consists of medical doctors (eg, Joseph Fins, MD). The second category (science) consists of scientists trained in the life and ...
I question the way the law regulates adolescents by looking at the interaction between i) pre-Enl... more I question the way the law regulates adolescents by looking at the interaction between i) pre-Enlightenment norms in which scientific and political notions of human development did not exist for all practical purposes, ii) Enlightenment philosophical and scientific norms of human development, and iii) modern legal norms of human development. Are there ways in which pre-modern holistic notions of being human can contribute to a more rational approach to adolescents by the law? How can the ideology of childhood, which through Enlightenment scientific and political thought, is reified (has the illusion it is real), naturalized (has the illusion it is natural) and legitimized (encoded in the law), be overcome for adolescents?
I make four contributions to the discussion of children’s rights:
1. I make an argument that the authority of science is overrated when dealing with children. Science is used by the medical and other professions to justify their authority and competence in certain environments, including the classroom and at the bedside. It is used primarily by physicians, but is used by the other authorities that make decisions on behalf of adolescents: parents, teachers, and, in general, the state. I argue that the life sciences are now both institutionally corrupt and theoretically unsound, and therefore should no longer be a proxy for or token of authority. Decisions about children, especially adolescents, based on the life sciences, or made by life scientists (including physicians) whose authority primarily flows from their social authority as scientists, should be seen as categorically problematic and therefore categorically devalued.
2. I suggest that states and other socio-political entities should recognize committees of adolescents to represent the wishes and needs of adolescents and other children.
3. I suggest that, as a general matter, the legal presumption that adult competence happens only at 18 or 21, with carve out exceptions for some earlier competencies, should be reversed, and that the law should recognize adult competence at 14 (e.g.) with exceptions for some later competencies. And
4. Until more general reforms can be enacted, I join with those who suggest that the general rule for adolescents facing terminal or grave illnesses should be to deem them competent to make their own medical decisions.
If what is important in our affairs is that we know the truth, then are there present things abou... more If what is important in our affairs is that we know the truth, then are there present things about which we must know the past in order to know the truth?
I argue there are, and that one category of those things is legal things, the law. By law I mean political theory, justice, right, rights, positive law and ethics; and all of the various ways those things have been understood by jurists.
The way we reason about the law radically changed in the Enlightenment. By the end of the 18th century science and positivism as general methods of reason had refracted the unity of law into a scientific part and a prudential part, laws of nature and natural law. The natural law part consisted of various concepts that were then each understood to exist independently of the others: morality, positive law, political theory, justice, ethics, etc. In the aftermath positivism dominated the way law was understood. In positivism law is opposed to morality, a categorical term into which all of the prudential concepts are reduced. The prudential fragments also underwrote the development of the social sciences, and operationalized the development of ideology/critique (e.g., Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) and the relativization of political values. Any discussion of a fragment of law must include discussion of the other fragments if the Right or truth of the law is to be understood. Positivism, a fragment, is inherently incomplete as an understanding of the law, and its incompleteness mandates that if truth about the law is sought, then it must be sought in the holistic vision of law.
I generalize to argue that any argument about living things that touches, traverses or occurs after the Enlightenment must take into account the changed nature of historical space originating in the Enlightenment. Nothing in post-Enlightenment historical space, especially legal/moral things, can be taken at face value, including positivism and the US Constitution. We must strive to reassemble or revision Right for an age in which positivism is the best tool of ideology, and the dominant ideologies serve oligarchic ends.
This is a comprehensive, speculative, non-naturalist and historicist framework of a theory of law... more This is a comprehensive, speculative, non-naturalist and historicist framework of a theory of law. I address the relationship between nature and law in general; the nature of law; the nature and taxonomy of legal things; the effect of the Enlightenment on legal theory; the relationship between science and law, and between law and history; the poverty and dangers of both positivism and natural law theory; and I address several philosophical issues that are concomitant to an understanding of law in general, including the role of the universal, the centrality of the vision of life; the relationship between life and consciousness (critiquing Nagel’s new book in the process), consciousness and history, and history and law; sacrifice; evil, and the future, among other things. I explicitly place myself in the Aristotelian/Hegelian traditions.
As a subtext, I grapple with containing the systematic problem science presents to legal/political order. By laying the groundwork for a renewal of legal theory outside of the constraints of positivism and natural law the framework also lays the groundwork for a reevaluation of the role science should play in the political/legal order, and therefore of science itself. The mechanism for these reevaluations is enabled by the specific grounding of the theory in the findings of neuroscience. Neuroscience teaches one of two irreconcilable things: either man has no free will; or there is a scope of free and real capacity for the mature human to make choices, to exercise free will (within constraints). The first of these two conclusions must be wrong because it contradicts not only experimental findings about man, but it contradicts the experience of every mature human. It is a philosophical conclusion based on Enlightenment metaphysics of science. If man has no free will, there is no basis for political order, for responsibility, etc., an argument we are familiar with but fail to understand and follow to its logical and historical implications, as now I do. I begin my argument with a theory of consciousness and freedom.
Democracy and civil rights are distorted and polarizing ideas that pit the rich against the poor,... more Democracy and civil rights are distorted and polarizing ideas that pit the rich against the poor, and should be abandoned in favor of an emphasis on the common good. To reach that conclusion I argue the US Constitution is and has always been designed to protect the wealth of the ruling class. All political associations or states have this as a central idea.
My argument rests on a unique jurisprudential principle, the Unity Thesis. The main school of legal theory, positivism (the science of law) is based on the idea law is always separate from morals. I argue the opposite, that law cannot be understood apart from the moral. There are fundamental legal things, such as consent, iustum bellum and the state, that have persisted since classical times in our legal regimes. However, the Enlightenment acted to refract those legal things into scientific parts and moral parts. All positivist (or scientific) legal concepts, such as the Enlightenment idea of a constitution, have to be reunited with their moral part(s) in order to be properly understood. The unified legal thing out of which constitutionalism emerged is the state, and it was refracted into the Hobbesian/Lockean individual, social contract theory, inalienable rights, implicit consent, popular sovereignty, slavery, the constitution, limited suffrage, the electoral college, and oligarchic control. The moral part of the US Constitution is democracy and civil rights; the legal part oligarchy. If we merge the various meanings back into the idea of the state (as a legal thing), then we see democracy/rights continue to enable civil discord by unbalanced focus on the Hobbesian individual, and that instead we should focus on the common good.
In the course of exploring some other implications of the Unity Thesis, I explain the origin or necessity for the development of ideology/critique. Once things were reduced by science into parts we lost sight of the wholes, but since it is natural to understand things as wholes we compensate. We recognize there is something false (ideology, the mask of the whole), but since wholes have been rendered invisible we explain only what we can see as dialectic, clothing it in disapproval (critique) but prohibited by naturalism from regaining the unity.
ADVANCING GLOBAL BIOETHICS, VOL 6: RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES ON BIOETHICS and HUMAN RIGHTS, 2017
In October 2005 UNESCO adopted the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (Declarati... more In October 2005 UNESCO adopted the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (Declaration) by acclamation. It purports to "enshrine bioethics in human rights" and ensure "respect for the life of human beings", so that "human beings everywhere can benefit from the advances of science and technology within the framework of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms." In this Article, after an introduction to the critiques of the Declaration, I provide a brief theoretical taxonomy of the various normative systems that constitute international order and then use this hierarchical image to critique the Declaration's attempt to ground itself in "human rights." I include the ethical institution of science as one of the normative systems, as it has a fully developed ideology within the larger political order structured by a system of concomitant ethical values. The Declaration fails to adequately ground itself in anything resembling human rights by its references to "dignity" and "human rights and fundamental freedoms" because none of those terms has a fixed legal/moral/political/ethical meaning. The Declaration uses them as though they are basic norms in an international system of justice that protects the vulnerable, but I demonstrate that international order contains images of multiple systems of justice, all coordinated by a de facto oligarchic constitution, a constitution or system of justice that contradicts the intended meaning of "dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms" because it only protects the powerful. I then focus on the Declaration's Article 12, which purports to protect cultural diversity. I demonstrate that it is incoherent as a norm, and that its incoherence reflects the background normative incoherence of the Declaration as a whole. I conclude with concrete suggestions for subsequent iterations of international bioethical norms, including grounding them in specific positive human rights norms rather than in "human rights" in general. This paper will be of use in classes in legal theory, international law/order/theory/philosophy, human (and other) rights, and in any class in health or science related ethics (medical or clinical ethics, bioethics, research ethics, public health ethics, neuroethics, genetics ethics, environmental ethics, community ethics, etc.). It presents a succinct conceptual and diagrammatic view of the international normative order, identifying the main sources of norms, or, to put it differently, the different theories of justice that compete at the international level for bandwidth. It then illustrates how those theories function in norm creation at the international level, and it dispels the notion that the institution of science is outside of the larger political order and that it therefore has special status in norm creation.
Cancer and Health Policy: Advancements and Opportunities, 2015
This chapter will focus on the role that policy plays in creating or determining cancer and in re... more This chapter will focus on the role that policy plays in creating or determining cancer and in reducing the burden of cancer. It will describe the sources of policy; the language of policy; the history of health policy, introducing the concept of the "social determinants of health"; some ideas about how policy "determines" cancer; and various ways policy can be evaluated. The chapter will also illustrate the concepts discussed using the example of breast cancer and will provide tentative policy suggestions.
This Code of Ethics is derived directly from the Intelligence Community Directive Number 200, “Ma... more This Code of Ethics is derived directly from the Intelligence Community Directive Number 200, “Management, Integration, and Oversight of Intelligence Community Analysis” (ICD 200), issued by the Director of National Intelligence January 8, 2007. This policy framework is a capstone directive for analysis that applies to all analysts and persons who serve analytic functions in the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC).
Democracy and civil rights are distorted and polarizing ideas that pit the rich against the poor,... more Democracy and civil rights are distorted and polarizing ideas that pit the rich against the poor, and should be abandoned in favor of an emphasis on the common good. To reach that conclusion I argue the US Constitution is and has always been designed to protect the wealth of the ruling class. All political associations or states have this as a central idea.
My argument rests on a unique jurisprudential principle, the Unity Thesis. The main school of legal theory, positivism (the science of law) is based on the idea law is always separate from morals. I argue the opposite, that law cannot be understood apart from the moral. There are fundamental legal things, such as consent, iustum bellum and the state, that have persisted since classical times in our legal regimes. However, the Enlightenment acted to refract those legal things into a scientific part and a moral part. All positivist (or scientific) legal concepts, such as the Enlightenment idea of a constitution, have to be reunited with their moral part in order to be properly understood. The unified legal thing out of which constitutionalism emerged is the state, and is associated with the Hobbesian/Lockean individual, social contract theory, inalienable rights, implicit consent, popular sovereignty, slavery, the constitution, limited suffrage, the electoral college, and oligarchic control. The moral part of the US Constitution is democracy and civil rights; the legal part oligarchy. If we merge the various meanings back into the idea of the state (as a legal thing), then we see democracy/rights continue to enable civil discord by unbalanced focus on the Hobbesian individual, and that instead we should focus on the common good.
"If what is important in our affairs is that we know the truth, then are there present things abo... more "If what is important in our affairs is that we know the truth, then are there present things about which we must know the past in order to know the truth?
I argue there are, and that one category of those things is legal things, the law. By law I mean political theory, justice, right, rights, positive law and ethics; and all of the various ways those things have been understood by jurists.
The way we reason about the law radically changed in the Enlightenment. By the end of the 18th century science and positivism as general methods of reason had refracted the unity of law into a scientific part and a prudential part, laws of nature and natural law. The natural law part consisted of various concepts that were then each understood to exist independently of the others: morality, positive law, political theory, justice, ethics, etc. In the aftermath positivism dominated the way law was understood. In positivism law is opposed to morality, a categorical term into which all of the prudential concepts are reduced. The prudential fragments also underwrote the development of the social sciences, and operationalized the development of ideology/critique (e.g., Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) and the relativization of political values.
Any discussion of a fragment of law must include discussion of the other fragments if the Right or truth of the law is to be understood. Positivism, a fragment, is inherently incomplete as an understanding of the law, and its incompleteness mandates that if truth about the law is sought, then it must be sought in the holistic vision of law.
I generalize to argue that any argument about living things that touches, traverses or occurs after the Enlightenment must take into account the changed nature of historical space originating in the Enlightenment. Nothing in post-Enlightenment historical space, especially legal/moral things, can be taken at face value, including positivism and the US Constitution. We must strive to reassemble or revision Right for an age in which positivism is the best tool of ideology, and the dominant ideologies serve oligarchic ends."
Why should international law be obeyed? This question assumes there is a law to be obeyed, and th... more Why should international law be obeyed? This question assumes there is a law to be obeyed, and that entities subject to the law have identifiable, concrete choices which could lead to obedience or sanctionable disobedience. It may be that neither of these assumptions is entirely justified. This paper applies Aristotle’s ideas about justice to the “Melian Dialogue”, a debate between two Athenian Generals (through their envoys) and members of the Melian “magistrates and the few,” as described by Thucydides in his history of the Peloponnesian War. Aristotle suggested that justice is natural in the sense that it arises in relations between people as a necessary element in the fulfillment of their life in, and as, society. For all groups or populations, for all relationships, justice refers to the attribute of those relationships that is perceived as fairness and adherence to moral ideals or virtues. In constituted groups, or states, one important expression of justice is found in the constitution and laws. I examine how the idea of justice as a characteristic of international group behavior is often identified as international law, and how it is determined not only by the social structure of the individual members of the group (states), but also by the characters of the personalities involved. I examine the overlap of politics, foreign relations and international law. The Melian Dialogue offers a classic locus in which to examine these ideas.
Global bioethics is an emerging concept. In 2005 the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics an... more Global bioethics is an emerging concept. In 2005 the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights was passed by the acclamation of 193 states. In spite of that, some critics argue that ethical relativism is so deeply engrained it prevents the emergence of substantive universal norms, permitting only procedural approaches to shared norms. We question that conclusion. An examination of the notions of rights, duties and dignity in the major religious traditions suggests that there may be paths, through those concepts, to substantive normative convergence. If rights and duties are seen as a unitary thing then their ideological functions will not play such a prominent role in divisiveness among the traditions, but the unified concept(s) could encourage convergence towards norms acceptable to all traditions.
Participants in the Third International Conference on Bioethics, Multiculturalism and Religion (2... more Participants in the Third International Conference on Bioethics, Multiculturalism and Religion (2013) were asked to discuss the relationship between “universal human rights and cultural diversity in the life sciences” based on Article 12 of the UNESCO Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights from the perspective of a particular religion. Professor Prakash Desai presented the main paper from the Hindu perspective, and in this essay I respond to his paper.
I lump neuroethicists into three loose categories distinguishable to some degree by broad divisio... more I lump neuroethicists into three loose categories distinguishable to some degree by broad divisions in academia. The first category (medicine) consists of medical doctors (eg, Joseph Fins, MD). The second category (science) consists of scientists trained in the life and ...
I question the way the law regulates adolescents by looking at the interaction between i) pre-Enl... more I question the way the law regulates adolescents by looking at the interaction between i) pre-Enlightenment norms in which scientific and political notions of human development did not exist for all practical purposes, ii) Enlightenment philosophical and scientific norms of human development, and iii) modern legal norms of human development. Are there ways in which pre-modern holistic notions of being human can contribute to a more rational approach to adolescents by the law? How can the ideology of childhood, which through Enlightenment scientific and political thought, is reified (has the illusion it is real), naturalized (has the illusion it is natural) and legitimized (encoded in the law), be overcome for adolescents?
I make four contributions to the discussion of children’s rights:
1. I make an argument that the authority of science is overrated when dealing with children. Science is used by the medical and other professions to justify their authority and competence in certain environments, including the classroom and at the bedside. It is used primarily by physicians, but is used by the other authorities that make decisions on behalf of adolescents: parents, teachers, and, in general, the state. I argue that the life sciences are now both institutionally corrupt and theoretically unsound, and therefore should no longer be a proxy for or token of authority. Decisions about children, especially adolescents, based on the life sciences, or made by life scientists (including physicians) whose authority primarily flows from their social authority as scientists, should be seen as categorically problematic and therefore categorically devalued.
2. I suggest that states and other socio-political entities should recognize committees of adolescents to represent the wishes and needs of adolescents and other children.
3. I suggest that, as a general matter, the legal presumption that adult competence happens only at 18 or 21, with carve out exceptions for some earlier competencies, should be reversed, and that the law should recognize adult competence at 14 (e.g.) with exceptions for some later competencies. And
4. Until more general reforms can be enacted, I join with those who suggest that the general rule for adolescents facing terminal or grave illnesses should be to deem them competent to make their own medical decisions.
If what is important in our affairs is that we know the truth, then are there present things abou... more If what is important in our affairs is that we know the truth, then are there present things about which we must know the past in order to know the truth?
I argue there are, and that one category of those things is legal things, the law. By law I mean political theory, justice, right, rights, positive law and ethics; and all of the various ways those things have been understood by jurists.
The way we reason about the law radically changed in the Enlightenment. By the end of the 18th century science and positivism as general methods of reason had refracted the unity of law into a scientific part and a prudential part, laws of nature and natural law. The natural law part consisted of various concepts that were then each understood to exist independently of the others: morality, positive law, political theory, justice, ethics, etc. In the aftermath positivism dominated the way law was understood. In positivism law is opposed to morality, a categorical term into which all of the prudential concepts are reduced. The prudential fragments also underwrote the development of the social sciences, and operationalized the development of ideology/critique (e.g., Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) and the relativization of political values. Any discussion of a fragment of law must include discussion of the other fragments if the Right or truth of the law is to be understood. Positivism, a fragment, is inherently incomplete as an understanding of the law, and its incompleteness mandates that if truth about the law is sought, then it must be sought in the holistic vision of law.
I generalize to argue that any argument about living things that touches, traverses or occurs after the Enlightenment must take into account the changed nature of historical space originating in the Enlightenment. Nothing in post-Enlightenment historical space, especially legal/moral things, can be taken at face value, including positivism and the US Constitution. We must strive to reassemble or revision Right for an age in which positivism is the best tool of ideology, and the dominant ideologies serve oligarchic ends.
This is a comprehensive, speculative, non-naturalist and historicist framework of a theory of law... more This is a comprehensive, speculative, non-naturalist and historicist framework of a theory of law. I address the relationship between nature and law in general; the nature of law; the nature and taxonomy of legal things; the effect of the Enlightenment on legal theory; the relationship between science and law, and between law and history; the poverty and dangers of both positivism and natural law theory; and I address several philosophical issues that are concomitant to an understanding of law in general, including the role of the universal, the centrality of the vision of life; the relationship between life and consciousness (critiquing Nagel’s new book in the process), consciousness and history, and history and law; sacrifice; evil, and the future, among other things. I explicitly place myself in the Aristotelian/Hegelian traditions.
As a subtext, I grapple with containing the systematic problem science presents to legal/political order. By laying the groundwork for a renewal of legal theory outside of the constraints of positivism and natural law the framework also lays the groundwork for a reevaluation of the role science should play in the political/legal order, and therefore of science itself. The mechanism for these reevaluations is enabled by the specific grounding of the theory in the findings of neuroscience. Neuroscience teaches one of two irreconcilable things: either man has no free will; or there is a scope of free and real capacity for the mature human to make choices, to exercise free will (within constraints). The first of these two conclusions must be wrong because it contradicts not only experimental findings about man, but it contradicts the experience of every mature human. It is a philosophical conclusion based on Enlightenment metaphysics of science. If man has no free will, there is no basis for political order, for responsibility, etc., an argument we are familiar with but fail to understand and follow to its logical and historical implications, as now I do. I begin my argument with a theory of consciousness and freedom.
Democracy and civil rights are distorted and polarizing ideas that pit the rich against the poor,... more Democracy and civil rights are distorted and polarizing ideas that pit the rich against the poor, and should be abandoned in favor of an emphasis on the common good. To reach that conclusion I argue the US Constitution is and has always been designed to protect the wealth of the ruling class. All political associations or states have this as a central idea.
My argument rests on a unique jurisprudential principle, the Unity Thesis. The main school of legal theory, positivism (the science of law) is based on the idea law is always separate from morals. I argue the opposite, that law cannot be understood apart from the moral. There are fundamental legal things, such as consent, iustum bellum and the state, that have persisted since classical times in our legal regimes. However, the Enlightenment acted to refract those legal things into scientific parts and moral parts. All positivist (or scientific) legal concepts, such as the Enlightenment idea of a constitution, have to be reunited with their moral part(s) in order to be properly understood. The unified legal thing out of which constitutionalism emerged is the state, and it was refracted into the Hobbesian/Lockean individual, social contract theory, inalienable rights, implicit consent, popular sovereignty, slavery, the constitution, limited suffrage, the electoral college, and oligarchic control. The moral part of the US Constitution is democracy and civil rights; the legal part oligarchy. If we merge the various meanings back into the idea of the state (as a legal thing), then we see democracy/rights continue to enable civil discord by unbalanced focus on the Hobbesian individual, and that instead we should focus on the common good.
In the course of exploring some other implications of the Unity Thesis, I explain the origin or necessity for the development of ideology/critique. Once things were reduced by science into parts we lost sight of the wholes, but since it is natural to understand things as wholes we compensate. We recognize there is something false (ideology, the mask of the whole), but since wholes have been rendered invisible we explain only what we can see as dialectic, clothing it in disapproval (critique) but prohibited by naturalism from regaining the unity.
ADVANCING GLOBAL BIOETHICS, VOL 6: RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES ON BIOETHICS and HUMAN RIGHTS, 2017
In October 2005 UNESCO adopted the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (Declarati... more In October 2005 UNESCO adopted the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (Declaration) by acclamation. It purports to "enshrine bioethics in human rights" and ensure "respect for the life of human beings", so that "human beings everywhere can benefit from the advances of science and technology within the framework of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms." In this Article, after an introduction to the critiques of the Declaration, I provide a brief theoretical taxonomy of the various normative systems that constitute international order and then use this hierarchical image to critique the Declaration's attempt to ground itself in "human rights." I include the ethical institution of science as one of the normative systems, as it has a fully developed ideology within the larger political order structured by a system of concomitant ethical values. The Declaration fails to adequately ground itself in anything resembling human rights by its references to "dignity" and "human rights and fundamental freedoms" because none of those terms has a fixed legal/moral/political/ethical meaning. The Declaration uses them as though they are basic norms in an international system of justice that protects the vulnerable, but I demonstrate that international order contains images of multiple systems of justice, all coordinated by a de facto oligarchic constitution, a constitution or system of justice that contradicts the intended meaning of "dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms" because it only protects the powerful. I then focus on the Declaration's Article 12, which purports to protect cultural diversity. I demonstrate that it is incoherent as a norm, and that its incoherence reflects the background normative incoherence of the Declaration as a whole. I conclude with concrete suggestions for subsequent iterations of international bioethical norms, including grounding them in specific positive human rights norms rather than in "human rights" in general. This paper will be of use in classes in legal theory, international law/order/theory/philosophy, human (and other) rights, and in any class in health or science related ethics (medical or clinical ethics, bioethics, research ethics, public health ethics, neuroethics, genetics ethics, environmental ethics, community ethics, etc.). It presents a succinct conceptual and diagrammatic view of the international normative order, identifying the main sources of norms, or, to put it differently, the different theories of justice that compete at the international level for bandwidth. It then illustrates how those theories function in norm creation at the international level, and it dispels the notion that the institution of science is outside of the larger political order and that it therefore has special status in norm creation.
Cancer and Health Policy: Advancements and Opportunities, 2015
This chapter will focus on the role that policy plays in creating or determining cancer and in re... more This chapter will focus on the role that policy plays in creating or determining cancer and in reducing the burden of cancer. It will describe the sources of policy; the language of policy; the history of health policy, introducing the concept of the "social determinants of health"; some ideas about how policy "determines" cancer; and various ways policy can be evaluated. The chapter will also illustrate the concepts discussed using the example of breast cancer and will provide tentative policy suggestions.
This Code of Ethics is derived directly from the Intelligence Community Directive Number 200, “Ma... more This Code of Ethics is derived directly from the Intelligence Community Directive Number 200, “Management, Integration, and Oversight of Intelligence Community Analysis” (ICD 200), issued by the Director of National Intelligence January 8, 2007. This policy framework is a capstone directive for analysis that applies to all analysts and persons who serve analytic functions in the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC).
Democracy and civil rights are distorted and polarizing ideas that pit the rich against the poor,... more Democracy and civil rights are distorted and polarizing ideas that pit the rich against the poor, and should be abandoned in favor of an emphasis on the common good. To reach that conclusion I argue the US Constitution is and has always been designed to protect the wealth of the ruling class. All political associations or states have this as a central idea.
My argument rests on a unique jurisprudential principle, the Unity Thesis. The main school of legal theory, positivism (the science of law) is based on the idea law is always separate from morals. I argue the opposite, that law cannot be understood apart from the moral. There are fundamental legal things, such as consent, iustum bellum and the state, that have persisted since classical times in our legal regimes. However, the Enlightenment acted to refract those legal things into a scientific part and a moral part. All positivist (or scientific) legal concepts, such as the Enlightenment idea of a constitution, have to be reunited with their moral part in order to be properly understood. The unified legal thing out of which constitutionalism emerged is the state, and is associated with the Hobbesian/Lockean individual, social contract theory, inalienable rights, implicit consent, popular sovereignty, slavery, the constitution, limited suffrage, the electoral college, and oligarchic control. The moral part of the US Constitution is democracy and civil rights; the legal part oligarchy. If we merge the various meanings back into the idea of the state (as a legal thing), then we see democracy/rights continue to enable civil discord by unbalanced focus on the Hobbesian individual, and that instead we should focus on the common good.
"If what is important in our affairs is that we know the truth, then are there present things abo... more "If what is important in our affairs is that we know the truth, then are there present things about which we must know the past in order to know the truth?
I argue there are, and that one category of those things is legal things, the law. By law I mean political theory, justice, right, rights, positive law and ethics; and all of the various ways those things have been understood by jurists.
The way we reason about the law radically changed in the Enlightenment. By the end of the 18th century science and positivism as general methods of reason had refracted the unity of law into a scientific part and a prudential part, laws of nature and natural law. The natural law part consisted of various concepts that were then each understood to exist independently of the others: morality, positive law, political theory, justice, ethics, etc. In the aftermath positivism dominated the way law was understood. In positivism law is opposed to morality, a categorical term into which all of the prudential concepts are reduced. The prudential fragments also underwrote the development of the social sciences, and operationalized the development of ideology/critique (e.g., Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) and the relativization of political values.
Any discussion of a fragment of law must include discussion of the other fragments if the Right or truth of the law is to be understood. Positivism, a fragment, is inherently incomplete as an understanding of the law, and its incompleteness mandates that if truth about the law is sought, then it must be sought in the holistic vision of law.
I generalize to argue that any argument about living things that touches, traverses or occurs after the Enlightenment must take into account the changed nature of historical space originating in the Enlightenment. Nothing in post-Enlightenment historical space, especially legal/moral things, can be taken at face value, including positivism and the US Constitution. We must strive to reassemble or revision Right for an age in which positivism is the best tool of ideology, and the dominant ideologies serve oligarchic ends."
Why should international law be obeyed? This question assumes there is a law to be obeyed, and th... more Why should international law be obeyed? This question assumes there is a law to be obeyed, and that entities subject to the law have identifiable, concrete choices which could lead to obedience or sanctionable disobedience. It may be that neither of these assumptions is entirely justified. This paper applies Aristotle’s ideas about justice to the “Melian Dialogue”, a debate between two Athenian Generals (through their envoys) and members of the Melian “magistrates and the few,” as described by Thucydides in his history of the Peloponnesian War. Aristotle suggested that justice is natural in the sense that it arises in relations between people as a necessary element in the fulfillment of their life in, and as, society. For all groups or populations, for all relationships, justice refers to the attribute of those relationships that is perceived as fairness and adherence to moral ideals or virtues. In constituted groups, or states, one important expression of justice is found in the constitution and laws. I examine how the idea of justice as a characteristic of international group behavior is often identified as international law, and how it is determined not only by the social structure of the individual members of the group (states), but also by the characters of the personalities involved. I examine the overlap of politics, foreign relations and international law. The Melian Dialogue offers a classic locus in which to examine these ideas.
Global bioethics is an emerging concept. In 2005 the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics an... more Global bioethics is an emerging concept. In 2005 the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights was passed by the acclamation of 193 states. In spite of that, some critics argue that ethical relativism is so deeply engrained it prevents the emergence of substantive universal norms, permitting only procedural approaches to shared norms. We question that conclusion. An examination of the notions of rights, duties and dignity in the major religious traditions suggests that there may be paths, through those concepts, to substantive normative convergence. If rights and duties are seen as a unitary thing then their ideological functions will not play such a prominent role in divisiveness among the traditions, but the unified concept(s) could encourage convergence towards norms acceptable to all traditions.
This book includes a number of distinct religious and secular views on the anthropological, ethic... more This book includes a number of distinct religious and secular views on the anthropological, ethical and social challenges of reproductive technologies in the light of human rights and in the context of global bioethics. It includes contributions of bioethics experts from six major religions—Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Judaism—as well as secular authors. The chapters include commentaries discussing the content cross-religious/secular tradition to give a comparative perspective. Not only the volume editors but also the contributing authors took part in reviewing each others’ chapter making this a unique collected volume, not common in interreligious dialogue today. This text appeals to researchers and students working in the fields of bioethics and religious/secular studies.
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Papers by John Lunstroth
I make four contributions to the discussion of children’s rights:
1. I make an argument that the authority of science is overrated when dealing with children. Science is used by the medical and other professions to justify their authority and competence in certain environments, including the classroom and at the bedside. It is used primarily by physicians, but is used by the other authorities that make decisions on behalf of adolescents: parents, teachers, and, in general, the state. I argue that the life sciences are now both institutionally corrupt and theoretically unsound, and therefore should no longer be a proxy for or token of authority. Decisions about children, especially adolescents, based on the life sciences, or made by life scientists (including physicians) whose authority primarily flows from their social authority as scientists, should be seen as categorically problematic and therefore categorically devalued.
2. I suggest that states and other socio-political entities should recognize committees of adolescents to represent the wishes and needs of adolescents and other children.
3. I suggest that, as a general matter, the legal presumption that adult competence happens only at 18 or 21, with carve out exceptions for some earlier competencies, should be reversed, and that the law should recognize adult competence at 14 (e.g.) with exceptions for some later competencies. And
4. Until more general reforms can be enacted, I join with those who suggest that the general rule for adolescents facing terminal or grave illnesses should be to deem them competent to make their own medical decisions.
I argue there are, and that one category of those things is legal things, the law. By law I mean political theory, justice, right, rights, positive law and ethics; and all of the various ways those things have been understood by jurists.
The way we reason about the law radically changed in the Enlightenment. By the end of the 18th century science and positivism as general methods of reason had refracted the unity of law into a scientific part and a prudential part, laws of nature and natural law. The natural law part consisted of various concepts that were then each understood to exist independently of the others: morality, positive law, political theory, justice, ethics, etc. In the aftermath positivism dominated the way law was understood. In positivism law is opposed to morality, a categorical term into which all of the prudential concepts are reduced. The prudential fragments also underwrote the development of the social sciences, and operationalized the development of ideology/critique (e.g., Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) and the relativization of political values. Any discussion of a fragment of law must include discussion of the other fragments if the Right or truth of the law is to be understood. Positivism, a fragment, is inherently incomplete as an understanding of the law, and its incompleteness mandates that if truth about the law is sought, then it must be sought in the holistic vision of law.
I generalize to argue that any argument about living things that touches, traverses or occurs after the Enlightenment must take into account the changed nature of historical space originating in the Enlightenment. Nothing in post-Enlightenment historical space, especially legal/moral things, can be taken at face value, including positivism and the US Constitution. We must strive to reassemble or revision Right for an age in which positivism is the best tool of ideology, and the dominant ideologies serve oligarchic ends.
As a subtext, I grapple with containing the systematic problem science presents to legal/political order. By laying the groundwork for a renewal of legal theory outside of the constraints of positivism and natural law the framework also lays the groundwork for a reevaluation of the role science should play in the political/legal order, and therefore of science itself. The mechanism for these reevaluations is enabled by the specific grounding of the theory in the findings of neuroscience. Neuroscience teaches one of two irreconcilable things: either man has no free will; or there is a scope of free and real capacity for the mature human to make choices, to exercise free will (within constraints). The first of these two conclusions must be wrong because it contradicts not only experimental findings about man, but it contradicts the experience of every mature human. It is a philosophical conclusion based on Enlightenment metaphysics of science. If man has no free will, there is no basis for political order, for responsibility, etc., an argument we are familiar with but fail to understand and follow to its logical and historical implications, as now I do. I begin my argument with a theory of consciousness and freedom.
My argument rests on a unique jurisprudential principle, the Unity Thesis. The main school of legal theory, positivism (the science of law) is based on the idea law is always separate from morals. I argue the opposite, that law cannot be understood apart from the moral. There are fundamental legal things, such as consent, iustum bellum and the state, that have persisted since classical times in our legal regimes. However, the Enlightenment acted to refract those legal things into scientific parts and moral parts. All positivist (or scientific) legal concepts, such as the Enlightenment idea of a constitution, have to be reunited with their moral part(s) in order to be properly understood. The unified legal thing out of which constitutionalism emerged is the state, and it was refracted into the Hobbesian/Lockean individual, social contract theory, inalienable rights, implicit consent, popular sovereignty, slavery, the constitution, limited suffrage, the electoral college, and oligarchic control. The moral part of the US Constitution is democracy and civil rights; the legal part oligarchy. If we merge the various meanings back into the idea of the state (as a legal thing), then we see democracy/rights continue to enable civil discord by unbalanced focus on the Hobbesian individual, and that instead we should focus on the common good.
In the course of exploring some other implications of the Unity Thesis, I explain the origin or necessity for the development of ideology/critique. Once things were reduced by science into parts we lost sight of the wholes, but since it is natural to understand things as wholes we compensate. We recognize there is something false (ideology, the mask of the whole), but since wholes have been rendered invisible we explain only what we can see as dialectic, clothing it in disapproval (critique) but prohibited by naturalism from regaining the unity.
My argument rests on a unique jurisprudential principle, the Unity Thesis. The main school of legal theory, positivism (the science of law) is based on the idea law is always separate from morals. I argue the opposite, that law cannot be understood apart from the moral. There are fundamental legal things, such as consent, iustum bellum and the state, that have persisted since classical times in our legal regimes. However, the Enlightenment acted to refract those legal things into a scientific part and a moral part. All positivist (or scientific) legal concepts, such as the Enlightenment idea of a constitution, have to be reunited with their moral part in order to be properly understood. The unified legal thing out of which constitutionalism emerged is the state, and is associated with the Hobbesian/Lockean individual, social contract theory, inalienable rights, implicit consent, popular sovereignty, slavery, the constitution, limited suffrage, the electoral college, and oligarchic control. The moral part of the US Constitution is democracy and civil rights; the legal part oligarchy. If we merge the various meanings back into the idea of the state (as a legal thing), then we see democracy/rights continue to enable civil discord by unbalanced focus on the Hobbesian individual, and that instead we should focus on the common good.
I argue there are, and that one category of those things is legal things, the law. By law I mean political theory, justice, right, rights, positive law and ethics; and all of the various ways those things have been understood by jurists.
The way we reason about the law radically changed in the Enlightenment. By the end of the 18th century science and positivism as general methods of reason had refracted the unity of law into a scientific part and a prudential part, laws of nature and natural law. The natural law part consisted of various concepts that were then each understood to exist independently of the others: morality, positive law, political theory, justice, ethics, etc. In the aftermath positivism dominated the way law was understood. In positivism law is opposed to morality, a categorical term into which all of the prudential concepts are reduced. The prudential fragments also underwrote the development of the social sciences, and operationalized the development of ideology/critique (e.g., Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) and the relativization of political values.
Any discussion of a fragment of law must include discussion of the other fragments if the Right or truth of the law is to be understood. Positivism, a fragment, is inherently incomplete as an understanding of the law, and its incompleteness mandates that if truth about the law is sought, then it must be sought in the holistic vision of law.
I generalize to argue that any argument about living things that touches, traverses or occurs after the Enlightenment must take into account the changed nature of historical space originating in the Enlightenment. Nothing in post-Enlightenment historical space, especially legal/moral things, can be taken at face value, including positivism and the US Constitution. We must strive to reassemble or revision Right for an age in which positivism is the best tool of ideology, and the dominant ideologies serve oligarchic ends."
I make four contributions to the discussion of children’s rights:
1. I make an argument that the authority of science is overrated when dealing with children. Science is used by the medical and other professions to justify their authority and competence in certain environments, including the classroom and at the bedside. It is used primarily by physicians, but is used by the other authorities that make decisions on behalf of adolescents: parents, teachers, and, in general, the state. I argue that the life sciences are now both institutionally corrupt and theoretically unsound, and therefore should no longer be a proxy for or token of authority. Decisions about children, especially adolescents, based on the life sciences, or made by life scientists (including physicians) whose authority primarily flows from their social authority as scientists, should be seen as categorically problematic and therefore categorically devalued.
2. I suggest that states and other socio-political entities should recognize committees of adolescents to represent the wishes and needs of adolescents and other children.
3. I suggest that, as a general matter, the legal presumption that adult competence happens only at 18 or 21, with carve out exceptions for some earlier competencies, should be reversed, and that the law should recognize adult competence at 14 (e.g.) with exceptions for some later competencies. And
4. Until more general reforms can be enacted, I join with those who suggest that the general rule for adolescents facing terminal or grave illnesses should be to deem them competent to make their own medical decisions.
I argue there are, and that one category of those things is legal things, the law. By law I mean political theory, justice, right, rights, positive law and ethics; and all of the various ways those things have been understood by jurists.
The way we reason about the law radically changed in the Enlightenment. By the end of the 18th century science and positivism as general methods of reason had refracted the unity of law into a scientific part and a prudential part, laws of nature and natural law. The natural law part consisted of various concepts that were then each understood to exist independently of the others: morality, positive law, political theory, justice, ethics, etc. In the aftermath positivism dominated the way law was understood. In positivism law is opposed to morality, a categorical term into which all of the prudential concepts are reduced. The prudential fragments also underwrote the development of the social sciences, and operationalized the development of ideology/critique (e.g., Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) and the relativization of political values. Any discussion of a fragment of law must include discussion of the other fragments if the Right or truth of the law is to be understood. Positivism, a fragment, is inherently incomplete as an understanding of the law, and its incompleteness mandates that if truth about the law is sought, then it must be sought in the holistic vision of law.
I generalize to argue that any argument about living things that touches, traverses or occurs after the Enlightenment must take into account the changed nature of historical space originating in the Enlightenment. Nothing in post-Enlightenment historical space, especially legal/moral things, can be taken at face value, including positivism and the US Constitution. We must strive to reassemble or revision Right for an age in which positivism is the best tool of ideology, and the dominant ideologies serve oligarchic ends.
As a subtext, I grapple with containing the systematic problem science presents to legal/political order. By laying the groundwork for a renewal of legal theory outside of the constraints of positivism and natural law the framework also lays the groundwork for a reevaluation of the role science should play in the political/legal order, and therefore of science itself. The mechanism for these reevaluations is enabled by the specific grounding of the theory in the findings of neuroscience. Neuroscience teaches one of two irreconcilable things: either man has no free will; or there is a scope of free and real capacity for the mature human to make choices, to exercise free will (within constraints). The first of these two conclusions must be wrong because it contradicts not only experimental findings about man, but it contradicts the experience of every mature human. It is a philosophical conclusion based on Enlightenment metaphysics of science. If man has no free will, there is no basis for political order, for responsibility, etc., an argument we are familiar with but fail to understand and follow to its logical and historical implications, as now I do. I begin my argument with a theory of consciousness and freedom.
My argument rests on a unique jurisprudential principle, the Unity Thesis. The main school of legal theory, positivism (the science of law) is based on the idea law is always separate from morals. I argue the opposite, that law cannot be understood apart from the moral. There are fundamental legal things, such as consent, iustum bellum and the state, that have persisted since classical times in our legal regimes. However, the Enlightenment acted to refract those legal things into scientific parts and moral parts. All positivist (or scientific) legal concepts, such as the Enlightenment idea of a constitution, have to be reunited with their moral part(s) in order to be properly understood. The unified legal thing out of which constitutionalism emerged is the state, and it was refracted into the Hobbesian/Lockean individual, social contract theory, inalienable rights, implicit consent, popular sovereignty, slavery, the constitution, limited suffrage, the electoral college, and oligarchic control. The moral part of the US Constitution is democracy and civil rights; the legal part oligarchy. If we merge the various meanings back into the idea of the state (as a legal thing), then we see democracy/rights continue to enable civil discord by unbalanced focus on the Hobbesian individual, and that instead we should focus on the common good.
In the course of exploring some other implications of the Unity Thesis, I explain the origin or necessity for the development of ideology/critique. Once things were reduced by science into parts we lost sight of the wholes, but since it is natural to understand things as wholes we compensate. We recognize there is something false (ideology, the mask of the whole), but since wholes have been rendered invisible we explain only what we can see as dialectic, clothing it in disapproval (critique) but prohibited by naturalism from regaining the unity.
My argument rests on a unique jurisprudential principle, the Unity Thesis. The main school of legal theory, positivism (the science of law) is based on the idea law is always separate from morals. I argue the opposite, that law cannot be understood apart from the moral. There are fundamental legal things, such as consent, iustum bellum and the state, that have persisted since classical times in our legal regimes. However, the Enlightenment acted to refract those legal things into a scientific part and a moral part. All positivist (or scientific) legal concepts, such as the Enlightenment idea of a constitution, have to be reunited with their moral part in order to be properly understood. The unified legal thing out of which constitutionalism emerged is the state, and is associated with the Hobbesian/Lockean individual, social contract theory, inalienable rights, implicit consent, popular sovereignty, slavery, the constitution, limited suffrage, the electoral college, and oligarchic control. The moral part of the US Constitution is democracy and civil rights; the legal part oligarchy. If we merge the various meanings back into the idea of the state (as a legal thing), then we see democracy/rights continue to enable civil discord by unbalanced focus on the Hobbesian individual, and that instead we should focus on the common good.
I argue there are, and that one category of those things is legal things, the law. By law I mean political theory, justice, right, rights, positive law and ethics; and all of the various ways those things have been understood by jurists.
The way we reason about the law radically changed in the Enlightenment. By the end of the 18th century science and positivism as general methods of reason had refracted the unity of law into a scientific part and a prudential part, laws of nature and natural law. The natural law part consisted of various concepts that were then each understood to exist independently of the others: morality, positive law, political theory, justice, ethics, etc. In the aftermath positivism dominated the way law was understood. In positivism law is opposed to morality, a categorical term into which all of the prudential concepts are reduced. The prudential fragments also underwrote the development of the social sciences, and operationalized the development of ideology/critique (e.g., Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) and the relativization of political values.
Any discussion of a fragment of law must include discussion of the other fragments if the Right or truth of the law is to be understood. Positivism, a fragment, is inherently incomplete as an understanding of the law, and its incompleteness mandates that if truth about the law is sought, then it must be sought in the holistic vision of law.
I generalize to argue that any argument about living things that touches, traverses or occurs after the Enlightenment must take into account the changed nature of historical space originating in the Enlightenment. Nothing in post-Enlightenment historical space, especially legal/moral things, can be taken at face value, including positivism and the US Constitution. We must strive to reassemble or revision Right for an age in which positivism is the best tool of ideology, and the dominant ideologies serve oligarchic ends."