Stephen Napier – författare

Beginning with the D-day landings, this is a brutally frank appraisal of the planned use and actual results of the deployment of armour by both German and Allied commanders in the major tank battles of the Normandy campaign including operations Epsom, Goodwood, Cobra and Totalize. The Armoured Campaign in Normandy is a critique of Montgomery’s plans to seize territory and break out and describes how they failed in the face of German resistance. It details the poor planning and mistakes of British senior commanders and how the German Army’s convoluted chain of command contributed to their own defeat; these were decisions taken which cost the lives of the tank crews of both sides ordered to carry them out.Official reports, war diaries, after action reports, letters, regimental histories, memoirs of generals and recollections of tank men are used to tell the inside story of the campaign from an armour point of view to give a different but detailed perspective of the Normandy campaign from the men who fought in it.

Churchill has gone down in history as one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known. From the day the Second World War was declared he stood out as the only man wanting to take offensive action. But is this accolade deserved? The first few years of the war were nothing short of disastrous, and author Stephen Napier shows how Churchill’s strategies - and his desire not to be the first British prime minister to surrender the nation - brought the war effort to the brink of ruin and back again. Did his series of retaliatory raids in response to a German accidental bombing help cause the Blitz? Were plans already at large for the US to join the war, with Churchill as the primary puppet master? Napier explores all this and more in a controversial examination of Churchill’s leadership using first-person accounts from his peers and electorate.

Bioethics is a field of inquiry and as such is fundamentally an epistemic discipline. Knowing how we make moral judgments can bring into relief why certain arguments on various bioethical issues appear plausible to one side and obviously false to the other. Uncertain Bioethics makes a significant and distinctive contribution to the bioethics literature by culling the insights from contemporary moral psychology to highlight the epistemic pitfalls and distorting influences on our apprehension of value. Stephen Napier also incorporates research from epistemology addressing pragmatic encroachment and the significance of peer disagreement to justify what he refers to as epistemic diffidence when one is considering harming or killing human beings. Napier extends these developments to the traditional bioethical notion of dignity and argues that beliefs subject to epistemic diffidence should not be acted upon. He proceeds to apply this framework to traditional and developing issues in bioethics including abortion, stem cell research, euthanasia, decision-making for patients in a minimally conscious state, and risky research on competent human subjects.

Combining conceptual analysis with well established empirical evidence, this is an important new book in analytical epistemology.Contemporary epistemology debates have largely been occupied with formulating a definition of knowledge that is immune to any counterexample. To date, no definition has been able to escape unscathed.Moving away from debates about definitions, "Virtue Epistemology" shows what conditions are essential for knowledge and applies this account to different domains. It proposes that agents must be motivated correctly to acquire knowledge, even in the case of perception.Stephen Napier examines closely the empirical research in cognitive science and moral psychology to build an account of knowledge wherein an agent must perform acts of virtue in order to get knowledge. In so doing, Napier provides answers to two key questions: 'what is knowledge?' and 'how do we get it?'

Bioethics is a field of inquiry and as such is fundamentally an epistemic discipline. Knowing how we make moral judgments can bring into relief why certain arguments on various bioethical issues appear plausible to one side and obviously false to the other. Uncertain Bioethics makes a significant and distinctive contribution to the bioethics literature by culling the insights from contemporary moral psychology to highlight the epistemic pitfalls and distorting influences on our apprehension of value. Stephen Napier also incorporates research from epistemology addressing pragmatic encroachment and the significance of peer disagreement to justify what he refers to as epistemic diffidence when one is considering harming or killing human beings. Napier extends these developments to the traditional bioethical notion of dignity and argues that beliefs subject to epistemic diffidence should not be acted upon. He proceeds to apply this framework to traditional and developing issues in bioethics including abortion, stem cell research, euthanasia, decision-making for patients in a minimally conscious state, and risky research on competent human subjects.

Contemporary epistemology debates have largely been occupied with formulating a definition of knowledge that is immune to any counterexample. To date, no definition has been able to escape unscathed. Moving away from debates about definitions, Virtue Epistemology shows what conditions are essential for knowledge and applies this account to different domains. It proposes that agents must be motivated correctly to acquire knowledge, even in the case of perception. Stephen Napier examines closely the empirical research in cognitive science and moral psychology to build an account of knowledge wherein an agent must perform acts of virtue in order to get knowledge. In so doing, Napier provides answers to two key questions: 'what is knowledge?' and 'how do we get it?'

This project argues that arguments for the permissibility of killing—specifically, arguments in favor of abortion and euthanasia—fail to justify their conclusions. At best, these arguments form a merely coherent network, but ultimately evince a circular pattern of justification. This book traces the two principal arguments made in support of permissible abortion: arguments based on a time-relative interest account of wrongdoing; and arguments based on the non-personhood of what is killed. It also addresses the principal arguments made in support of permissible euthanasia, namely arguments based on the value of autonomy and compassion. For each argument, this book argues that it suffers from various defects. The book thus concludes that arguments for abortion and euthanasia are unjustified.

“Bioethicists have achieved consensus on two ideas pertaining to beginning of life issues: (1) persons are those beings capable of higher-order cognition, or self-consciousness, and (2) it is impermissible to kill only persons.