<p>The topic of this study is a notion of empathy that is common in philosophy and in the behavioral sciences. It is here referred to as ‘the notion of empathy as emotional sharing’, and it is characterized in terms of three ideas. If a person, S, has empathy with respect to an emotion of another person, O, then (i) S experiences an emotion that is similar to an emotion that O is currently having, (ii) S’s emotion is caused, in a particular way, by the state of O or by S’s entertaining an idea of the state or situation of O, and (iii) S experiences this emotion in a way that does not entail that S is in the corresponding emotional state. The aim of the study is to clarify this notion of empathy by clarifying these three ideas and by tracing the history of their development in philosophy.</p><p>The study consists of two parts. Part one contains a short and selective account of the history in Western philosophy of the notion of empathy as emotional sharing. In chapter 2 Spinoza’s theory of imitation of affects and Hume’s theory of sympathy are presented. It is argued that these theories only exemplify the second idea characteristic of the notion of empathy as emotional sharing. Chapter 3 contains presentations of Adam Smith’s theory of sympathy, and Schopenhauer’s theory of compassion. These theories are shown to exemplify the second and the third idea. In chapter 4 there are presentations of Edith Stein’s description of Einfühlung, and Max Scheler’s account of empathy and fellow-feeling. It is shown that these accounts contain explicit specifications of the third idea, and it is argued that they also exemplify the second idea.</p><p>In part two, the three ideas are further clarified and the notion of empathy as emotional sharing is defined. Chapter 5 contains a discussion of the main contemporary philosophical analyses of empathy. Three different views are distinguished: one that construes empathetic emotions as emotional states, one that construes them as imagined emotions, and one that construes them as off-line emotions. The first two views are criticized and rejected. The third is accepted and further developed in chapter 6, which contains a general analysis of the emotions. A distinction is made between two ways of experiencing an emotion, and it is argued that it is possible to have the affective experience characteristic of a particular kind of emotional state without being in that kind of state. In chapter 7, a definition of ‘empathy’ is proposed. This definition contains specifications of the three ideas characteristic of the notion of empathy as emotional sharing, and it shows both how the empathizer’s emotion resembles the emotion of the empathee, and how this emotion is caused and experienced.</p>

Sometimes relatives have taken me on one side and told me they cannot bear it any more:"Isn't there something you can do to end it all?"More often requests for euthanasia have come from those who are ill. I remember visiting a man with lung cancer. He asked his wife to leave the room. As she closed the door he leaned over and grabbed my arm. "I want to die", he said. "Please can you give me something." He felt a burden on his wife and wanted euthanasia for himself . Often in their duty, physicians are faced with euthanasia requests of this kind. Death is the inevitable fate of all humans but how we die is an issue of great concern for many of us. Fear of pain, loss of control and being a burden to our loved ones are common issues surrounding dying and death of patients. This has led to varying circumstances of patients’ death, and of a significant remark, the involvement of physicians in bringing about these deaths through an act of euthanasia. Euthanasia involves the intentional killing of a patient by the direct intervention of a physician (or another party) ostensibly for the good of the patient, and the most common form that this comes is through lethal injection. The ethics of euthanasia and of a physicians’ involvement have been a contentious issue from the beginnings of medicine. This for the most part is as a result that the ethical code of physicians has long been based in part on the Hippocratic Oath, which requires physicians to “do no harm”. Thus, the focus of this work will be to look into the role of the physician in ending a patient’s life through the act of euthanasia. Although necessary but not a central point of this work to merely develop arguments for and against the justification of euthanasia and a physician’s involvement in the act, but to critically view the role played by physicians in ending the life of patients through euthanasia in contrast with their medical obligation. The issue of euthanasia raises ethical questions for physicians. Is it morally right or wrong for a physician to end the life of his or her patient? And this therefore will be the focus of this work.

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I denne avhandlinga har jeg to hovedsiktemål. For det første søker jeg å gi ei tolkning av den såkalte rasjonalisten René Descartes’, transcendentalpragmatikeren Karl-Otto Apels og eleven hans, Wolfgang Kuhlmanns, samt den objektive idealisten Vittorio Hösles forsøk på å tilbakevise den universelle skeptisismen, og det vil, grovt formulert, si forsøka deres på å vise at sistebegrunna kunnskap er mulig. For det andre prøver jeg å vurdere de nemnte tenkernes skeptisismekritikk. Denne vurderinga mun-ner ut i tre hovedteser: (i) Ingen av dem har lyktes i sine forsøk på å gjendrive skepti-keren; (ii) en slik gjendrivelse er (i en bestemt forstand) heller ikke mulig; (iii) en ikke-falsifikasjonistisk universell fallibilisme, og dvs. en bestemt form for universell skeptisisme, er en posisjon som gir en korrekt beskrivelse av den menneskelige ende-lighet (på erkjennelsens område).

The topic of this study is a notion of empathy that is common in philosophy and in the behavioral sciences. It is here referred to as ‘the notion of empathy as emotional sharing’, and it is characterized in terms of three ideas. If a person, S, has empathy with respect to an emotion of another person, O, then (i) S experiences an emotion that is similar to an emotion that O is currently having, (ii) S’s emotion is caused, in a particular way, by the state of O or by S’s entertaining an idea of the state or situation of O, and (iii) S experiences this emotion in a way that does not entail that S is in the corresponding emotional state. The aim of the study is to clarify this notion of empathy by clarifying these three ideas and by tracing the history of their development in philosophy. The study consists of two parts. Part one contains a short and selective account of the history in Western philosophy of the notion of empathy as emotional sharing. In chapter 2 Spinoza’s theory of imitation of affects and Hume’s theory of sympathy are presented. It is argued that these theories only exemplify the second idea characteristic of the notion of empathy as emotional sharing. Chapter 3 contains presentations of Adam Smith’s theory of sympathy, and Schopenhauer’s theory of compassion. These theories are shown to exemplify the second and the third idea. In chapter 4 there are presentations of Edith Stein’s description of Einfühlung, and Max Scheler’s account of empathy and fellow-feeling. It is shown that these accounts contain explicit specifications of the third idea, and it is argued that they also exemplify the second idea. In part two, the three ideas are further clarified and the notion of empathy as emotional sharing is defined. Chapter 5 contains a discussion of the main contemporary philosophical analyses of empathy. Three different views are distinguished: one that construes empathetic emotions as emotional states, one that construes them as imagined emotions, and one that construes them as off-line emotions. The first two views are criticized and rejected. The third is accepted and further developed in chapter 6, which contains a general analysis of the emotions. A distinction is made between two ways of experiencing an emotion, and it is argued that it is possible to have the affective experience characteristic of a particular kind of emotional state without being in that kind of state. In chapter 7, a definition of ‘empathy’ is proposed. This definition contains specifications of the three ideas characteristic of the notion of empathy as emotional sharing, and it shows both how the empathizer’s emotion resembles the emotion of the empathee, and how this emotion is caused and experienced.

<p>This is my thesis on the D-level at the university in Karlstad at the department for environmental science. It is an analysis of the idea of self-realisation in the deepecology movement.</p><p>The Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess is one of the profiles in the foreground of deepecology in the world. His teories is important for the development of how to look at ecophilosophical matters in the nordic countries.</p><p>i will therefor investigate his theories and see how Naess constructs the relation man-nature in his ecosophy T. The principle of self-realisation and identification is there the most important foundation for the antropocentric perspective.</p><p>In my analysis I use Martin Bubers philosophy of dialogue and his thoughts about relational concept of the self as tools for my investigation.</p><p>Ecophilosophy is an academic subject that touches a variety of fields of studies but has the collaboration between the subject of culture and nature as its base. Bubers concept of the self that highlights the third. Videlicet, the relation is a third aspect of the selfs constitution apart from the me and you.</p><p>I will also, as Buber does not notice power and hierarchy in his teory, try to integrate Val Plumwoods critique towards dualism in the thinking of western society as a complementing tool.</p><p>Plumwood points out, in her ecofeministic point of view, the importance of noticing difference as an important aspect of the problems in western thinking when it comes to the relationship between humanity-environment. To develop a non-dualistic thinking, according to Plumwood, it would take a critical analysis of all types of concepts that has been developed through the classic concept of logics reduktionistic discussion wich uses separation as a method.</p><p>Plumwoods conclusion is that to come to terms with the underlying powerstructures we have to examine the thinking itself.</p><p>Buber who is rooted in the jewish chassidism tradition has from a spiritual point of view examined aspects of the relationship between I and the other/world which touches Plumwoods theories.</p><p>By combining these two thinkers I want to formulate a more complex analysis of Arne Naess principle of self-realisation.</p>

<p>Avhandlingen ”En jämförelse mellan Wittgenstein och Rorty”, syftar till att ge ett svar på frågan om Richard Rorty har rätt att hänvisa till Ludwig Wittgensteins filosofi som överensstämmande med sin egen filosofi, nypragmatismen. En analys av texter från de båda filosoferna visar att de skiljer sig ifråga om vad filosofi är genom att Rortys åsikt grundas på ett historicistiskt och allmänvetenskapligt synsätt medan Wittgensteins är av filosofisk art; deras åsikter om vad filosofin borde vara genom att Rorty vill ha en friare filosofi med betoning på diskussion medan Wittgenstein menar att filosofin även i framtiden kommer att syssla med samma problem som de gamla grekerna; deras åsikter om filosofins värde genom att Rorty anser att filosofin har ett värde som vägledare och diskussionsform medan Wittgenstein endast tillskriver filosofin ett värde som en terapi för att klarlägga olika frågor. En ytterligare analys visar att frågeställningarna är två; är Wittgenstein pragmatist och är han politiskt liberal? Det svar som ges är att Wittgenstein inte är pragmatist i Rortys mening och att det inte finns några belägg för hans liberalism och att dessa tolkningar från Rorty endast beror på att han missförstått Wittgenstein på dessa punkter. Slutsatsen som ges är att Wittgensteins filosofi inte kan sägas överensstämma med Rortys nypragmatism. Dels på grund av olikheten i deras åsikter om filosofi; dels för att Rorty missförstått Wittgenstein på viktiga punkter och dels för att Rorty är influerad av många andra filosofer och att därför hans filosofi som slutprodukt inte är överensstämmande med Wittgensteins.</p> / <p>Avhandlingen ”En jämförelse mellan Wittgenstein och Rorty”, syftar till att ge ett svar på frågan om Richard Rorty har rätt att hänvisa till Ludwig Wittgensteins filosofi som överensstämmande med sin egen filosofi, nypragmatismen. En analys av texter från de båda filosoferna visar att de skiljer sig ifråga om vad filosofi är genom att Rortys åsikt grundas på ett historicistiskt och allmänvetenskapligt synsätt medan Wittgensteins är av filosofisk art; deras åsikter om vad filosofin borde vara genom att Rorty vill ha en friare filosofi med betoning på diskussion medan Wittgenstein menar att filosofin även i framtiden kommer att syssla med samma problem som de gamla grekerna; deras åsikter om filosofins värde genom att Rorty anser att filosofin har ett värde som vägledare och diskussionsform medan Wittgenstein endast tillskriver filosofin ett värde som en terapi för att klarlägga olika frågor. En ytterligare analys visar att frågeställningarna är två; är Wittgenstein pragmatist och är han politiskt liberal? Det svar som ges är att Wittgenstein inte är pragmatist i Rortys mening och att det inte finns några belägg för hans liberalism och att dessa tolkningar från Rorty endast beror på att han missförstått Wittgenstein på dessa punkter. Slutsatsen som ges är att Wittgensteins filosofi inte kan sägas överensstämma med Rortys nypragmatism. Dels på grund av olikheten i deras åsikter om filosofi; dels för att Rorty missförstått Wittgenstein på viktiga punkter och dels för att Rorty är influerad av många andra filosofer och att därför hans filosofi som slutprodukt inte är överensstämmande med Wittgensteins.</p>

<p>The concept of dignity has beeen one of the ambiguous concepts in biomedical ethics. Thus the ambiguous nature of this concept has been extended to what it means to die with dignity. This research work is an investigation into the complexity in the understanding of "dying with dignity" in Applied Ethics.</p>

<p>Uppsatsen behandlar till synes omoraliska handlingar vars bidrag till det totala utfallet tycks vara försumligt, eller rent av obefintligt.</p>