Participants will verify that the variety of issues presented in the papers during the following four days was very wide. Among topics discussed on the opening day were notions of meaning, envy, belief, health, service, technology, the fact/value distinction, and recta-disciplinary concerns. The dichotomy of intrinsic-instrumental values within nature, the environment, human life, and technology were introduced in papers presented by Robin Attfield, Richard Francis, and Andrew Edgar.
Attfield discussed the interests and preferences of nonsentient beings and artifacts. The question was: can they be compared with each other and with human interests? According to Attfield, living creatures have preferences of their own because they are capable of being healthy and ill, and it is just the capability of being healthy that is the sufficient condition for a being to have a good of his or her own. In the following discussion, Heta Hayry pointed out the problem of the priority in a situation of conflicting human and non-human interests.
Richard Francis stressed ethical dimensions connected with the use of modern technology, while Andrew Edgar argued that discursive strategies should be introduced in the field of public health care to improve the patients' quality of life.