This book brings together the relevant interdisciplinary and method elements needed to form a conceptual framework that is both pragmatic and rigorous. By using the best and often the latest, work in thanatology, psychology, neuroscience, sociology, physics, philosophy and ethics, it develops a framework for understanding both what death is – which requires a great deal of time spent developing definitions of the various types of identity-in-the-moment and identity-over-time – and the values involved in death. This pragmatic framework answers questions about why death is a form of loss; why we experience the emotional reactions, feelings and desires that we do; which of these reactions, feelings and desires are justified and which are not; if we can survive death and how; whether our deaths can harm us; and why and how we should prepare for death. Thanks to the pragmatic framework employed, the answers to the various questions are more likely to be accurate and acceptable than those with less rigorous scholarly underpinnings or which deal with utopian worlds.

This book brings together the relevant interdisciplinary and method elements needed to form a conceptual framework that is both pragmatic and rigorous. By using the best, and often the latest, work in thanatology, psychology, neuroscience, sociology, physics, philosophy and ethics, it develops a framework for understanding both what death is - which requires a great deal of time spent developing definitions of the various types of identity-in-the-moment and identity-over-time - and the values involved in death. This pragmatic framework answers questions about why death is a form of loss; why we experience the emotional reactions, feelings and desires that we do; which of these reactions, feelings and desires are justified and which are not; if we can survive death and how; whether our deaths can harm us; and why and how we should prepare for death. Thanks to the pragmatic framework employed, the answers to the various questions are more likely to be accurate and acceptable than those with less rigorous scholarly underpinnings or which deal with utopian worlds. .

This book aims to address in a novel way some of the fundamental philosophical questions concerning suicide. Focusing on four major authors of Western philosophy - Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein - their arguments in favour or against suicide are explained, contextualized, examined and critically assessed. Taken together, these four perspectives provide an illuminating overview of the philosophical arguments that can be used for or against one’s right to commit suicide. Intended both for specialists and those interested in understanding the many complexities underlying the philosophical debate on suicide, this book combines philosophical depth with exemplary clarity.

Death inhabits our collective imaginary, even though sometimes, like a squatter, it hides discretely in order to avoid conflicts. It is undoubtedly a multi-faceted subject of study, which requires consideration from an interdisciplinary perspective. This book deals with this phenomenon, and more specifically with the discourses that surround – and construct our perspectives and understanding of – death and dying. Of course, the present volume does not attempt to be exhaustive, and considers the subject from several standpoints, including linguistics, anthropology, history of medicine, and importantly, literary studies. It combines various points of view and different methodologies of knowledge, in the hope that they come together to constitute a written dialogue –or more precisely, a polylogue. The ordering of the texts in this volume provides readers with an itinerary that begins with more general approaches, such as a historical presentation of the medicalisation of death and an in-depth reflection on the best way to die, and ends with studies of specific literary works from different periods. The itinerary that this book provides is framed by a discourse analysis-based overview that explores how different approaches to death and dying intersect and complement each other in an interdisciplinary endeavour. This analysis focuses on literary and non-literary genres in order to shed some new light on a topic that is inexhaustible because of its sociocultural relevance.

This collection of papers presents case studies and reflections on research bioethics from the standpoint of two Latin American academics involved in the teaching and dissemination of good practices and essential information on bioethics and various related topics. While limited in scope to a few key issues, the text may be read as an inspiration to comparative analyses of research practices involving human subjects and as an example of the reception of fundamental ideas on science and technology adopted in the Latin American region after their development in other areas of the globe.

Can the law keep up with AI? This book examines liability and regulation for artificial intelligence causing serious physical harm, both now and in the future. While AI moves quickly, regulation follows more slowly – an increasing problem for an evolutionary, fast-paced emerging technology. AI has the potential to save lives, but in doing so will have the potential to take them as well. How do we future-proof law and regulation to incentivise life-saving innovation as safely as possible? This book details how to regulate AI in high-risk civil applications (for example, automated vehicles and medicine), addressing both liability and regulatory structure. It highlights crucial liability themes for technology governance; provides tools to bridge the gap between regulators and technologists; examines jurisdictional approaches to AI regulation in the EU, UK, USA, and Singapore; and ultimately suggests a jurisdiction-agnostic blueprint for regulation.

This annual edited volume explores a wide range of topics in digital ethics and governance. Included are chapters that: analyze the opportunities and ethical challenges posed by digital innovation; delineate new approaches to solve them; and offer concrete guidance on how to govern emerging technologies. The contributors are all members of the Digital Ethics Lab (the DELab) at the Oxford Internet Institute, a research environment that draws on a wide range of academic traditions. Collectively, the chapters of this book illustrate how the field of digital ethics - whether understood as an academic discipline or an area of practice - is undergoing a process of maturation. Most importantly, the focus of the discourse concerning how to design and use digital technologies is increasingly shifting from ‘soft ethics’ to ‘hard governance’. Then, there is the trend in the ongoing shift from ‘what’ to ‘how’, whereby abstract or ad-hoc approaches to AI governance are giving way to more concrete and systematic solutions. The maturation of the field of digital ethics has, as this book attempts to show, been both accelerated and illustrated by a series of recent events. This text thereby takes an important step towards defining and implementing feasible and effective approaches to digital governance. It appeals to students, researchers and professionals in the field.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Congress enacted a vast body of legislation to protect the environment and individual health and safety. Collectively, this legislation is known as “risk regulation” because it addresses the risk of harm that technology creates for individuals and the environment. In the last two decades, this legislation has come under increasing attack by critics who employ utilitarian philosophy and cost-benefit analysis. The defenders of this body of risk regulation, by contrast, have lacked a similar unifying theory. In this book, the authors propose that the American tradition of philosophical pragmatism fills this vacuum. They argue that pragmatism offers a better method for conceiving of and implementing risk regulation than the economic paradigm favored by its critics. While pragmatism offers a methodology in support of risk regulation as it was originally conceived, it also offers a perspective from which this legislation can be held up to critical appraisal. The authors employ pragmatism to support risk regulation, but pragmatism also leads them to agree with some of the criticisms against it, and even to level new criticisms of their own. In the end, the authors reject the picture—painted by risk regulation’s critics—of widely excessive and irrational regulation, but the pragmatic perspective also leads them to propose a number of recommendations for useful reforms to risk regulation.

Educational Theory and Jewish Studies in Conversation: From Volozhin to Buczacz, by Harvey Shapiro, PhD, brings together two different fields of study--modern Jewish studies and contemporary educational theory--to provide new theoretical frameworks for their interaction. Although Jewish studies and education programs at secular universities have joined denominational and transdenominational institutions of higher learning in adopting a dual or parallel course structure, there has been little scholarly attention given to the basis for doing so. Shapiro provides alternative theoretical frameworks for the relationship between Jewish studies and educational theory and discusses different ways of developing and articulating these relationships between disciplines. Shapiro shows what is at stake when students and faculty think and communicate together across discourses--in particular, between the fields of education and Jewish studies. Presenting an alternative to conventional notions of interdisciplinarity, this book's import extends to virtually all relationships between the humanities and professional education when these different discourses illuminate and challenge one another.