Philosophy Commons^™

Physician Assisted Dying As An Extension Of Healing, Zoe I. Marinacci

Student Publications

The role of a physician is to provide care for those who seek their assistance. Lisa Yount attributes the most ancient statement about this activity to the Hippocratic Oath. Many doctors, in fact, still take this oath, part of which reads, “I will [not] give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to that effect,” (8). This vow is still widely considered to be the ultimate statement of the physician’s moral creed (Yount 8). Debate over whether active physician assisted dying is an extension of healing ability or a violation of their …

The Moral Standing Of The Dead, Steven Luper

Philosophy Faculty Research

In choosing to do certain things, we appear to presuppose that we can act in the interests the dead, and that we have a duty to do so. For example, some of us go to great lengths to carry out their final wishes. Given that the dead no longer exist, however, it seems that nothing can be good or bad for them: they lack prudential interests. In that case, it is hard to see how we could owe them anything. They seem to lack moral standing altogether. In this essay, I will rebut this line of thought. I will claim …

Avoiding The Asymmetry Problem, Travis Timmerman

Travis Timmerman

Death And The Self, Shaun Nichols, Nina Strohminger, Arun Rai, Jay L. Garfield

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

It is an old philosophical idea that if the future self is literally different from the current self, one should be less concerned with the death of the future self (Parfit, 1984). This paper examines the relation between attitudes about death and the self among Hindus, Westerners, and three Buddhist populations (Lay Tibetan, Lay Bhutanese, and monastic Tibetans). Compared with other groups, monastic Tibetans gave particularly strong denials of the continuity of self, across several measures. We predicted that the denial of self would be associated with a lower fear of death and greater generosity toward others. To our …

Justifying A Standard Of Death, Michael Milhim

Honors Projects

There are three major positions in the legal definition of death debate: the cardio-pulmonary standard, the whole-brain standard, and the higher-brain standard. Prominent arguments for each standard appeal to a theory of human persistence. I’ll contend that these arguments fail for two reasons: the metaphysical underpinnings of the arguments are not decisive, and even if they are decisive, they may not be the right policy to enact. The later of these is more practically important than the former.

An Ethnographic, Experimental Philosophical Inquiry Into Attitudes And Perceptions Toward Suicidality, Samantha Dawn Lilly

Summer Research

With the logical and analytical approaches of experimental philosophical inquiry and the qualitative methodologies of ethnography I was able to create an account of the ways that the initial moral assumption that “suicide is wrong” appears to be harmful, not only to the deceased, but to the survivors, and those who have previously attempted suicide. A possible normative solution to these harms would be to shift our current societal intuition that: "suicide is morally wrong" to understanding suicide as a social fact.

Event, Death, And Poetry: The Death Of The Other In Derrida’S “Rams”, Harris B. Bechtol

All Faculty Scholarship

Since Heidegger, at least, the theme of the event has become a focal point of current debate in continental philosophy. While scholars recognize the important contributions that Jacques Derrida has made to this debate, the significance of his considerations of the death of the other for his conception of the event has not yet been fully appreciated. This essay focuses on Derrida’s efforts to develop the notion of the event in reference to the death of the other through his engagement with Paul Celan in “Rams—Between Two Infinities, The Poem.” I argue that Derrida’s approach results in a three-fold contribution …

Work/Death, Of Each In Their Own, Micah H. Weber

Theses and Dissertations

Writings in support of my visual thesis, including some background, and bibliographic information: Oregon/Death/Animation/Vocation and the artist as an agent of potential.