Anthony Wrigley

Many materialist ontologies characterize the existence of everyday, middle-sized objects as reducible to collections or mereological sums of smaller, more fundamental particle constituents. Baker would have it otherwise and has set out a defence of her Constitution View of ontology that takes everyday objects to be irreducibly real and of a vast array of kinds.Motivating an interest in the metaphysics of everyday objects is not obviously straightforward when contemporary metaphysics is filled with attempts to answer seemingly more challenging questions about the existence of disputed classes of objects, such as abstracta, or very specific, unusual phenomena such as holes, rather than the mundane case of these middle-sized concreta. Yet this is Baker's point: that many kinds of ordinary objects have been overlooked by philosophers to the point where we lack an adequate account of their significance in our practices and attitudes. Moreover, in a climate of metaphysics often governed by those of a strong eliminitivist inclination with a preference for Quinean desert landscapes, the advocating of an almost indulgent ontological pluralism is enough to make this book worth reading.Those familiar with Baker's work will not be surprised that this approach to ontology is grounded from her perspective of ‘Practical Realism’. This view – partly a legacy of Aristotle, partly of G. E. …

Parfit’s (1984) Non-Identity Problem provides a strong line of argument that we cannot be harmed by pre-conception choices or actions. I argue that we can no longer appeal to the Non-Identity problem in order to justify using pre-conception genetic screening and selection techniques as a harmless tool to determine the genetic constitution of future individuals. My criticism of the Non-Identity problem is based on a rejection of the metaphysical foundations of Parfit’s argument - Kripke’s (1980) essentialist arguments for the necessity of origin. I offer an alternative account of modal harms based on counterpart theory such as that offered by David Lewis (1986). On this account, individuals can make legitimate harm claims in regard to pre-conception choices made in determining their genetic constitution by appeal to their counterparts across possible worlds.

NThere are many problems with Levi and Green’s (2010) suggestion that a computer-based decision aid will overcome the major objections to advance directives (ADs). We focus on just two here. First, we argue that the key assumption underlying Levi and Green’s paper, that autonomy always ought to take priority over other values, is false. Second, we argue that the paper misses the point of the most telling objections to the use of ADs: they lack the relevant moral authority to determine treatments. It is not that they are merely subject to a set of contingent problems related to capturing the wishes of individuals or being open to misinterpretation by others.We conclude that the plug should be pulled on Levi and Green’s computer-based proposal.