Caplan, Arthur

From Philosopedia

Caplan, Arthur (20th Century) Caplan, who is Director of the Center fot Bioethics and Trustee Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, is a leading bioethicist. He wrote When Medicine Went Mad (1992) as well as several hundred articles and reviews in professionaljournals. In “The Future of Engineering Humans” (Free Inquiry, Fall 1999), he explains that the major influences on his thinking have been Ernest Nagel, John Dewey, and Sydney Hook, adding, “I think of myself as a pragmatist, although I am not quite sure my pragmatism is the same as Dewey’s. I am also influenced by biological thinking about evolution and genetics so that I am somewhat Aristotelian in outlook. And my real hero was Socrates, who I think knew what he did not know and pushed others hard to be sure what they thought they knew was really true.”