Vital forces, selves, and consent

"Vital Forces and Vital Laws in Eighteenth-Century French Physiology"

Dynamic informed consent processes vital for treatment with antidepressants.

Advances in technology and transparency have greatly accelerated the ability of clinicians to remain current with regards to being informed and informing patients about the risk/benefit ratio when considering antidepressant medication. In spite of this, the current climate of pharmaceutical industry influence on medical practice does much to hinder informed consent processes. Recent findings of...

True Selves, False Selves, and the Ambiguity of Authenticity

Automata, Receptacles, and Selves

After rejecting Carruthers' conflation of levels of consciousness as implausible and conceptually muddled, and Carruthers' claim that nonhumans are automata as undermined by evolutionary and ethological considerations, we develop a general criticism of contemporary philosophical approaches which, though recognizing nonhuman consciousness, still see animals as mere receptacles of experiences. Th...

Reasons and Real Selves

Most accounts of responsibility begin from either of two prominent points of departure: the idea that an agent must have some characterological or expressive connection to the action, or alternately, the idea that an agent must be in some sense responsive to reasons. Indeed, we might even understand much of the past couple of decades of philosophical work on moral responsibility as concerned wi...