"I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything..." (Richard Feynman)
The German Parliament yesterday has decided a law about the "living will", "testamento biologico" in Italian. An "advanced directive" (living will) is now completely binding for doctor, hospitals and relatives. Background in German at.http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/politik/130415/index.php.
Hey, Economics Geniuses! What Happened? - BusinessWeek The business week articles treats how the world economists failed to predict the finance crisis of the last year. One of the reader commented: " so what? economics is not science, but philosophy and you cannot get any relevant guidance out of that". This is widespread opinion, linguistically well expressed in English, where "science" is only applied for physics, chemistry, biology and the likes, whereas all the other stuff is labeled as "humanities".
The Berlusconi government has launched an assault against fundamental rights of individual freedom. They are going to decide a law in the senate and then in the "camera dei deputati" with the working title "testo unificato sul testamento biologico". A "testamento biologico" is a last will, anyone can write down defining what he or she wants in case of incidents or terminal illness when not beeing more able to decide.
This refers to chapter IX of Russells book "Religion and Science" Russell points out in this chapter that Ethics is based on values and that these values are purely individual psychological desires and there is nothing to do about proving what is better. There is no "Good", no "Beautiness" no "Pleasure" that is absolute or common . I do not agree completely with this position:
Hans Christian Stroebele is the directly elected representative of the Berlin constituency (Kreuzberg), where I live. He is part of the fundamentalist left wing of the Greens. Most probably I would not vote for him, as I do share very little with his lot. I am in favor of German involvement in UN peace keeping, I am in favor of free market and globalization, I am in favor of keeping German nuclear power plants online as long as this is technically wise, ... and there are many other differences in opinion.