Limited scientific literature is available for developing ‘best practice’ guidelines for the management of dairy goats (Capra hircus), particularly goat kids. Disbudding practices for kids and calves appear to be similar; however, it is important to recognise that kids are not small calves. Disbudding causes pain and is performed on calves and kids — welfare concerns surrounding disbudding affect both industries. In this review, we evaluate literature on disbudding of kids and calves and compare methodologies across the two species. In addition, we catalogue behavioural and physiological responses to disbudding and, finally, review alternatives to disbudding (or refinements). Although there may be certain similarities between the response of goat kids and calves to cautery disbudding, it is important to highlight the differences that do exist between the species to reduce the risk of potential detrimental effects (eg brain injury). Cautery disbudding is the most common and efficacious method of disbudding kids and calves; however, kids have thinner skulls and are disbudded at a younger age, which can increase the risk of thermal injury to the brain. Kids and calves show behavioural and physiological responses indicative of pain; however, variability in these responses between studies are likely due to differences in disbudding methodologies, study design and within-species variation. Effective pain mitigation strategies may differ across species; therefore, future research is needed to optimise pain mitigation strategies for kids. Currently, alternatives to cautery disbudding including: (i) selection for polled animals; (ii) managing horned animals; or (iii) the development of novel disbudding methods (eg cryosurgery, clove oil injection) have been deemed unsuitable by the industries as the methods are either impracticable or ineffective. Therefore, if disbudding is to continue, species-appropriate pain mitigation strategies need to be refined. Establishing best practice guidelines for disbudding kids requires managers to recognise that they are not small calves.

The title of this paper proclaims its central interest—the relationship which holds between the concept of integrity and the concept of the identity of the self, or, for short, self-identity. Unreflective speech often suggests a close relationship between the two, but in the latter half of this century, notwithstanding one or two notable exceptions, they have been discussed with minimum cross-reference as if they belonged to two rather different philosophical menus which tended not to be available at the same restaurant on the same night. My intention is to argue that our account of the one carried implications for the other and that this relationship is reflexive. My argument will proceed by stating and criticizing a common account of the relationship between each of these concepts which tends to offer mutual support for the implied account of each. Thereafter an alternative account will be outlined.

It was, I believe, Thomas Arnold who wrote: ‘Educate men without religion and all you make of them is clever devils’. Thus the Headmaster of one famous school summarized pithily the view of the relationship between religion and ethics which informed educational theory and practice in this country for at least a further century. There is a confusion of two different assumptions usually to be found in this context. The first is that religious belief can provide an intellectual foundation (logical, or epistemological, or sometimes both) for moral belief; the second is that the effect of religious teaching is to improve behaviour according to the norms of some particular set of moral beliefs.

Most of us have probably heard Samuel Johnson's witticism about the reported proposal of an acquaintance to enter into a second marriage—‘the triumph of hope over experience’. Whatever that tells us about his friend's previous marriage, it tells us quite a bit about the popular understanding of hope. A similiar point was implied by J. B. Priestley when he referred to whisky distillers marketing faith and hope at twelve shillings and sixpence per bottle, and not for the first time G. K. Chesterton got it superficially wrong in defining hope as ‘the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate’.

It is of course true that the articulation of religious and theological views depends upon and often masks philosophical presuppositions. For example, those who quote with approval Anselm's ‘credo ut intelligam’, ‘I believe so that I may understand’, seldom follow the good example set by Anselm, and make explicit, as Anselm does in the following sentence, the fact that this principle rests upon a further principle: ‘For I believe this also, that “unless I believe, I shall not understand”’ (Proslogion, I). This paper is an attempt to track down and expose one very pervasive set of views about the nature of experience which is implicit in a wide range of religious and theological claims.

Philosophers have devoted much attention to a series of issues grouped under the heading ‘the problem of personal identity’. In most of these discussions the focus has been the question of identity over time and the issues confronted have been basically logical or metaphysical. Students enrolled in philosophy classes dealing with such topics often express a sense of disappointment or frustration, for, of course, they belong to a culture in which the jargon of ‘self’ or ‘personal’ identity belongs to a rather different intellectual context heavy with the overtones of existentialism or with the suggestion of psychoanalysis. Anglo-Saxon philosophers have tended to bypass these ways of construing questions of personal identity; sometimes for good reason, sometimes not.

My argument will be that our understanding of human beings, which is what I take the Christian doctrine of man to be concerned with, will benefit considerably from an examination of two different but related clusters of human attitudes which can be found respectively under the headings ‘optimism’ and ‘pessimism’. There are many pitfalls in the way of such an enterprise, and occasionally some prejudices to be overcome. For example L. E. Loemker in the relevant articles in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy concludes a fairly lengthy discussion with the rather terminal judgement:

The questions set in the draft programme for this session of the conference are:

Is it possible to understand the religion of somebody else, or must one be committed to a religious position in order to understand it? Is belief a condition for understanding?

These questions give the contemporary form of the debate about the perennial problem of the relationship between belief and understanding, and I sympathise with Professor Kuitert's sense that these questions themselves require further definition. Fortunately for the sake of philosophical dialogue I do not fully accept his conclusions. This however, is not because he wants to deny that belief is a condition for understanding, whereas I wish to affirm this. The main part of my paper will be devoted to showing what I find to be unsatisfactory in such an antithesis.

This paper will use some of Bonhoeffer's writings as the basis for an examination of the concept of transcendence within the context of religious belief. The intention of the paper is to present an account of the nature of transcendence in ethical terms. The conclusions will include an assessment of the significance of this for the discussion of the relation between religion and morality.