In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Concepts and Theories of AddictionLennart Nordenfelt (bio)Keywordsaddiction, disease, will power, autonomy, holistic view of healthThe article "A Liberal Account of Addiction" is a good piece of analytic philosophy applied to psychiatry. It is well-informed both with regard to empirical matters and philosophical conceptualization. The arguments are often—but, as I will show, not always—quite convincing. The conclusions of the paper also have crucial consequences for practice, for (...) the treatment of patients, and for social policy.The authors argue that current scientific understandings of the problem of addiction are fundamentally flawed. They distinguish between two main positions in science: The Disease View and the Willpower View. According to the Disease View, drug-seeking behavior is the direct result of some physiological change in the drug seeker's brain. According to the Willpower View, the addict is no longer rational; he or she uses drugs as a result of a fundamentally non-voluntary process.The authors dismiss the Disease View in the following way. They first note that drug addicts are in many ways rational planners. The addicts may have to think a lot to find the best ways to find the heroin, cigarettes, or alcohol, and they normally act according to this planning. They are not in any simple sense "caused" to act in a particular way. Moreover, referring to recent neurological literature, the authors note that the changes caused by drug addiction—which have to do with activating reward pathways in the brain—are identical with the outcomes of many other human activities that we do not call addiction. "In fact, any pleasurable experience causes dopamine to be released within the brain, activating these reward pathways" (Foddy and Savulescu 2010, 4). These experiences can be the result of coffee drinking, sexual activity, and physical exercise. Thus, the physical changes in the brain are not effects peculiar to the pharmacology of the drugs; they are instead the effects of the pleasure that the subject has experienced.The argument against the Willpower View is lengthy and more involved. The proponent of the Willpower View must argue that there is some flaw in the subject's autonomy. The drug addict is in some sense unable to avoid taking the drug. The authors of the present article scrutinize this idea on the basis of distinguishing between different senses of autonomy: Substantive autonomy and procedural autonomy. They state that we must here be talking about procedural autonomy, namely, autonomy regarded as dependent only on our capacity to process information and make choices in accordance with our preferences. We cannot, as in the case of substantive autonomy, require that the preferences themselves be reasonable. [End Page 27] In such a case, many of our ordinary actions would be judged non-autonomous.The most reasonable Willpower accounts rely on the idea that addicted people in some sense lack self-control. The authors cite different interpretations of the concept of lacking self- control and they conclude that "none of these … theories can say that addicts are necessarily lacking in self-control unless they also make unreasonable normative or false factual claims about the nature of drug- or pleasure-oriented choices" (Foddy and Savulescu 2010, 10). For instance, according to one interpretation the subject does not endorse his own desire for drugs, but takes the drug anyway. According to another interpretation, the addict regrets taking the drug after having done so. Against such claims the authors claim that many addicts indeed endorse their desires for drugs and many addicts do not regret their addictive behavior.So what is the positive account proposed by the authors? They put forward what they call a Liberal View. It contains three claims about addiction: First, we do not know whether an addict values anything more than the satisfaction of his addictive desires; second, we do not know whether an addict behaves autonomously when he uses drugs; and third, addictive desires are just strong regular desires.According to the Liberal View, one has to accept that the addicts may have drug taking as their highest priority and that they do not have any reduced procedural autonomy. The authors say: "Once we abandon normative bias, we must accept... (shrink)

Addiction is compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance. It is accepted as a mental illness in the diagnostic nomenclature and results in substantial health, social and economic problems. In the diagnostic nomenclature, addiction was originally included in the personality disorders along with other behaviours considered deviant. But it is now considered a clinical syndrome. Addiction is multifactorially determined, with substantial genetic influence. The development of addictions is also influenced by environmental factors, and an interplay (...) between the two. In the clinical context, addiction puts problem substance use on the agenda, and helps focus on the difficulties associated with drug use. But the concept of addiction is also used to distance the user from addicts, and in this way, may be counter-therapeutic. The addiction concept has also had a substantial influence on policy. The almost universal prohibition against drugs such as opiates, cocaine, cannabis and amphetamine has much support. But unfortunately, it has not been able to hinder the development of substance use problems. Optimism is fostered by the development of respectful ways of thinking about people with addictions, in particular, from advocates of motivational interviewing. (shrink)

Most philosophical accounts of causation take causal relations to obtain between individuals and events in virtue of nomological relations between properties of these individuals and events. Such views fail to take into account the consequences of the fact that in general the properties of individuals and events will depend upon mechanisms that realize those properties. In this paper I attempt to rectify this failure, and in so doing to provide an account of the causal relevance of higher-level properties. I (...) do this by critiquing one prominent model of higher-level properties—Kim’s functional model of reduction—and contrasting it with a mechanistic approach to higher-level properties and causation. (shrink)

How should addictive behavior be explained? In terms of neurobiological illness and compulsion, or as a choice made freely, even rationally, in the face of harmful social or psychological circumstances? Some of the disagreement between proponents of the prevailing medical models and choice models in the science of addiction centres on the notion of “loss of control” as a normative characterization of addiction. In this article I examine two of the standard interpretations of loss of control in (...) class='Hi'>addiction, one according to which addicts have lost free will, the other according to which their will is weak. I argue that both interpretations are mistaken and propose therefore an alternative based on a dual-process approach. This alternative neither rules out a capacity in addicts to rationally choose to engage in drug-oriented behavior, nor the possibility that addictive behavior can be compulsive and depend upon harmful changes in their brains caused by the regular use of drugs. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Clinicians, researchers and the informed public have come to view addiction as a brain disease. However, in nature even extreme events often reflect normal processes, for instance the principles of plate tectonics explain earthquakes as well as the gradual changes in the face of the earth. In the same way, excessive drug use is predicted by general principles of choice. One of the implications of this result is that drugs do not turn addicts into compulsive drug users; they (...) retain the capacity to say ?no?. In support of the logical implications of the choice theory approach to addiction, research reveals that most addicts quit using drugs by about age 30, that most quit without professional help, that the correlates of quitting are the correlates of decision making, and, according to the most recent epidemiological evidence, the probability of quitting remains constant over time and independent of the onset of dependence. This last result implies that, after an initial period of heavy drug use, remission is independent of any further exposure to drugs. In short, there is much empirical support for the claim that addiction emerges as a function of the rules of everyday choice. (shrink)

This paper reviews and extends ideas of eukaryotization by endosymbiosis. These ideas are put within an historical context of processes that may have led up to eukaryotization and those that seem to have resulted from this process. Our starting point for considering the emergence and development of life as an organized system of chemical reactions should in the first place be in accordance with thermodynamic principles and hence should, as far as possible, be derived from these principles. One trend to (...) be observed is the ever-increasing complexity resulting in several layers of compartmentalization of the reaction system, either spatial (of which the eukaryotic cell is an example), or functional (as in the gradually deepening distinction between metabolic, enzymatic and information-storing functions within the cell). One of the causes of this complexification of living systems will have been the changes in environmental conditions, particularly the geochemical impoverishment of the biosphere during geological history, partly brought about by living systems themselves, and partly by the trend towards increasing efficiency and specificity of the reactions that occur. (shrink)

Research findings on addiction are contradictory. According to biographical records and widely used diagnostic manuals, addicts use drugs compulsively, meaning that drug use is out of control and independent of its aversive consequences. This account is supported by studies that show significant heritabilities for alcoholism and other addictions and by laboratory experiments in which repeated administration of addictive drugs caused changes in neural substrates associated with reward. Epidemiological and experimental data, however, show that the consequences of drug (...) consumption can significantly modify drug intake in addicts. The disease model can account for the compulsive features of addiction, but not occasions in which price and punishment reduced drug consumption in addicts. Conversely, learning models of addiction can account for the influence of price and punishment, but not compulsive drug taking. The occasion for this target article is that recent developments in behavioral choice theory resolve the apparent contradictions in the addiction literature. The basic argument includes the following four statements: First, repeated consumption of an addictive drug decreases its future value and the future value of competing activities. Second, the frequency of an activity is a function of its relative (not absolute) value. This implies that an activity that reduces the values of competing behaviors can increase in frequency even if its own value also declines. Third, a recent experiment (Heyman & Tanz 1995) shows that the effective reinforcement contingencies are relative to a frame of reference, and this frame of reference can change so as to favor optimal or suboptimal choice. Fourth, if the frame of reference is local, reinforcement contingencies will favor excessive drug use, but if the frame of reference is global, the reinforcement contingencies will favor controlled drug use. The transition from a global to a local frame of reference explains relapse and other compulsive features of addiction. (shrink)

Developments in the field of neuroscience, according to its proponents, offer the prospect of an enhanced understanding and treatment of addicted persons. Consequently, its advocates consider that improving public understanding of addiction neuroscience is a desirable aim. Those critical of neuroscientific approaches, however, charge that it is a totalising, reductive perspective–one that ignores other known causes in favour of neurobiological explanations. Sociologist Nikolas Rose has argued that neuroscience, and its associated technologies, are coming to dominate cultural models to (...) the extent that 'we' increasingly understand ourselves as 'neurochemical selves'. Drawing on 55 qualitative interviews conducted with members of the Australian public residing in the Greater Brisbane area, we challenge both the 'expectational discourses' of neuroscientists and the criticisms of its detractors. Members of the public accepted multiple perspectives on the causes of addiction, including some elements of neurobiological explanations. Their discussions of addiction drew upon a broad range of philosophical, sociological, anthropological, psychological and neurobiological vocabularies, suggesting that they synthesised newer technical understandings, such as that offered by neuroscience, with older ones. Holding conceptual models that acknowledge the complexity of addiction aetiology into which new information is incorporated suggests that the impact of neuroscientific discourse in directing the public's beliefs about addiction is likely to be more limited than proponents or opponents of neuroscience expect. (shrink)

The Consensus Statement of the Third International Congress on Concussion in Sport in November 2008 defined concussion as a “complex pathophysiologic process affecting the brain, induced by traumatic biochemical forces.” Definitions of concussion vary slightly between various professional organizations of neurosurgeons, neurologists, and orthopedic surgeons, but all share the common characteristics of trauma affecting the head or body resulting in transient neurologic deficits or symptoms. Underlying the symptoms of concussion is a complex pathophysiologic process at the cellular level. While concussion (...) is typically thought of as resulting from a direct impact to the head, a concussion can also be sustained as a result of an impact to the body causing the force of the impact to be transmitted to and absorbed by the brain. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSince its emergence during the 1970s, scientific research on exercise addiction has been interested primarily in the mental and physical causes and consequences of the behaviour of exercise addicts. This focus can be ascribed to the dominance of psychology and medicine among this field of research. This paper wishes to contribute to these thematic priorities and basic approaches by taking a phenomenological perspective as a basis, thus making the embodied and the personal dimension of exercise addiction (...) the centre of attention. This approach aims towards two goals: First, it shall be pointed out that philosophy, especially phenomenology, can make a profound contribution to research concerning exercise addiction. Second, a phenomenological approach, which has so far remained mostly unknown to international sport philosophy, will be introduced, namely the New Phenomenology founded by German philosopher Hermann Schmitz. For this purpose, the objective of New Phenomenology will be explained as well as... (shrink)

Frank and Nagel are very interested in the causes and consequences of moralizing about addiction. If addiction is a disease, moralistic concerns are sidelined. If it's a choice, we'd better identify clear reasons to absolve addicts from blame. While these are interesting considerations, they don't have much to do with the model of addiction I put forward in the target article.

Critics of commodification object to sales but not gifts of some goods, such as human blood or human organs, on grounds that such trade wrongly coerces, morally corrupts, and crowds out altruism. This essay takes issues with each of these claims. It disputes Micheal Sandel’s claim that voluntary exchange coerces, arguing that he confuses what is unfair with what is unfree. It argues, where trade does create moral costs, that these costs should be weighed against the moral costs of trade (...) bans, such as the loss of human life, and the harms endemic to illegal markets. The essay also quarrels with Richard Titmuss’s The Gift Relationship, arguing that compensation for blood need not crowd out blood donation, that compensation does not preclude a charitable impulse, and that some important gift relationship posses elements of altruism and exchange.Ceux qui critiquent la marchandisation sont contre la vente mais pas contre le don de certains biens comme le sang ou les organes humains parce qu’un tel commerce exercerait une contrainte, corromprait morallement, et ne laisserait pas de place à l’altruisme. Ce papier traite de chacune de ces affirmations. Il consteste l’affirmation de Micheal Sandel selon laquelle l’échange volontaire exerce une contrainte, en suggérant qu’il confond ce qui injuste avec ce qui n’est pas libre. Si le commerce entraîne des coûts moraux, cet essai suggère que ces coûts devraient être comparés avec les coûts moraux associés aux interdictions de commerce tels que la perte de la vie humaine et ceux associés aux maux endémiques des marchés illégaux. Il critique aussi l’ouvrage de Richard Titmuss, “The Gift Relationship” en suggérant que les compensations monétaires en échange d’un don de sang n’évincent pas nécessairement le don de sang, qu’elles n’empêchent pas les impulsions charitables, et que d’importants actes de don comportent des éléments d’altruisme et d’échange. (shrink)

The sense of agency is the perception of willfully causing something to happen. Wegner and Wheatley proposed three prerequisites for SA: temporal contiguity between an action and its effect, congruence between predicted and observed effects, and exclusivity . We investigated how temporal contiguity, congruence, and the order of two human agents’ actions influenced SA on a task where participants rated feelings of self-agency for producing a tone. SA decreased when tone onsets were delayed, supporting contiguity as important, but the order (...) of the agents’ actions also mattered. Relative contiguity was the main determinant of SA, as delayed tones were usually attributed to the most recent action. This was unaffected by contingencies between the two actors’ actions , showing that contiguity has a powerful influence on SA, even during joint action in the presence of other cues. (shrink)

In the context of the long-lasting coronavirus crisis, this study examines the occurrence, causes, and consequences of issue fatigue – a phenomenon that refers to a feeling of annoyance with an issue that is repeated continually in the news. Using data obtained from a representative two-wave panel survey conducted online in April and May 2020 (n = 1,232) in Germany, the study employed a cross-lagged panel model to examine longitudinal relations. First, the results indicate that a considerable share (...) of the German population already felt fatigued with the coronavirus issue in April, and that this proportion increased by May. Second, in terms of causes, the results show that perceptions of low news credibility and perceived “victimization” of other topics caused high levels of issue fatigue. However, effects of the reverse direction were also present, pointing to a mutual reinforcement of issue fatigue and media perceptions. Third, regarding consequences, the results reveal that recipients experiencing issue fatigue increasingly avoided coronavirus news, and also tended to disregard coronavirus hygiene rules. (shrink)

Neuroscience has substantially advanced the understanding of how changes in brain biochemistry contribute to mechanisms of tolerance and physical dependence via exposure to addictive drugs. Many scientists and mental health advocates scaffold this emerging knowledge by adding the imprimatur of disease, arguing that conceptualizing addiction as a brain disease will reduce stigma amongst the folk. Promoting a brain disease concept is grounded in beneficent and utilitarian thinking: the language makes room for individuals living with addiction to receive the (...) same level of compassion and access to healthcare services as individuals living with other medical diseases, and promotes enlightened social and legal policies. However such claims may yield unintended consequences by fostering discrimination commonly associated with pathology. Specifically, the language of neuroscience used to describe addiction may reduce attitudes such as blame and responsibility while inadvertently identifying addicted persons as neurobiological others. In this paper, we examine the merits and limitations of adopting the language of neuroscience to describe addiction. We argue that the reframing of addiction in the language of neuroscience provides benefits such as the creation of empowered biosocial communities, but also creates a new set of risks, as descriptive neuroscience concepts are inseparable from historical attitudes and intuitions towards addiction and addicted persons. In particular, placing emphasis on the diseased brain may foster unintended harm by paradoxically increasing social distance towards the vulnerable group the term is intended to benefit. (shrink)

This volume of the Sociology of the Sciences Yearbooks stems from our experience that collaborations between non-scientists and scientists, often initiated by scientists seeking greater social relevance for science, can be of major importance for cognitive development. It seemed to us that it would be useful to explore the conditions under which such collaborations affect scientific change and the nature of the processes involved. This book therefore focuses on a number of instances in which scientists and non-scientists were jointly involved (...) in the genera tion of scientific results at the "interface" of science and society. Despite the considerable variety of cases reported here, a number of questions are central. Under what conditions do such cooperative processes occur? What perceptions of social relevance and what sorts of col laborations with non-scientific groups are involved? How is this collaboration achieved, and through what forums? How can insights into its conditions and mechanisms stabilize such cooperations over a longer period of time? If they are stabilized, do they really affect science, or do they mainly function to shield the rest of the science system against external influences? These questions are pertinent both to intellectual problems in the sociology of science and to the practical concerns of modern science policies. The significance of relations between knowledge producers and knowledge consumers and interest in how these relations affect science and society have changed considerably in recent decades. (shrink)

This qualitative study, using content analysis, examines to what extent addiction, its causes, consequences, and prevention methods are covered and which types of addiction are discussed in Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge courses. The study focuses on how these topics are presented in RCMK textbooks, which primarily address substance addictions such as drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, while briefly mentioning behavioural addictions like overeating, gambling, and technology use. Addiction is portrayed as a moral issue affecting mental, (...) physical, and spiritual health, as well as an individual's self-control and sense of responsibility. Substance addictions receive greater emphasis, reflecting their association with religious texts and state anti-addiction policies, whereas behavioural addictions are given less consideration. The study concludes that addiction should be approached in a comprehensive and progressively deepening manner as students advance through grade levels in RCMK textbooks. In its current form, the information does not appear to effectively develop skills or serve a preventive function that encourages healthier choices. (shrink)

Consumer skepticism of corporate environmental activities is on the rise. Yet research on this timely, intriguing, and important topic is scarce for both academics and practitioners. Building on attribution theory, we develop and test a theoretically anchored model that explains the sources and consequences of green skepticism. The study findings reveal that consumers’ perceptions of industry norms, corporate social responsibility, and corporate history are important factors that explain why consumers assign different motives to corporate environmental actions. In addition, the (...) results show that while intrinsic motives exert a strong negative effect on green skepticism, extrinsic motives have no discernible effect. Furthermore, the findings indicate that green skepticism prompts consumers to seek more information about the products, sparks negative word of mouth to friends and acquaintances, and forestalls purchase intentions. The study offers several implications for corporate and public policy makers and presents fruitful research directions. (shrink)

It was widely believed among post-classical thinkers that the classical Mutakallimūn held that the cause of dependence of an effect on a cause was its origination, or a combination of origination and contingency, or its contingency on condition of its origination. Some post-classical thinkers, led by al-Sayyid al-Sharif al-Jurjānī, went further by interpreting Abu’l-Hasan al-Ashʿarī’s denial of the persistence of accidents was a consequence of his view that origination was the cause of dependence. This is because the origination view entailed (...) that the world was no longer in need of the Creator after its origination, and thus, him and his followers sought to deflect this consequence by holding that accidents do not persist, and since the persistence of substances was dependent on those accidents, and accidents do not persist more than one moment, those substances remained in need of the Creator for those accidents after their origination. This article seeks to investigate this analysis of the Shaykh al-Ashʿarī’s view, alongside the leading scholars of his school. After examining the original sources of classical Ashʿarī thinkers, along with the Baṣran Mu’tazila, and the texts of Ibn Sina, it becomes clear that the Ashꜥarīs did not hold that accidents did not persist in order to deflect that purported consequence. Indeed, it becomes clear that they did not hold that origination was the cause of dependence, but rather, that it was contingency. As for the Mu’tazila, they are explicit that the cause of dependence is origination, and that is based on their view on the reality of the nonexistent. Since essences are real in their state of nonexistence, they are not in need of a cause; and everything that obtains for those essences after they come into exist are entailments of that essence; thus, they only stand in need of a cause in their origination, that is, going from nonexistence into existence. Indeed, they are also explicit that effects do not need the Creator after their origination, and they clarified this through a comparison with a builder and a building. Indeed, the classical Ashꜥarīs criticized them for this, just as Ibn Sina did in the Ishārāt wa’l-tanbīhāt, al-Najāt, and al-Shifā. Thus, those post-classical scholars generalized the statement that origination is the cause of dependence to all classical mutakallimūn, and then they interpreted Ashʿarī’s motivation behind the denial of the persistence of accidents in accordance with that. The truth, however, is that his view on accidents is based on contingency, and that is because a substance is possible of persistence and possible of non-persistence, and therefore, it stands in need of cause to determine its state in the subsequent moment. That determination must entail something additional to the substance itself, otherwise, the effect is redundant. That additional property must be an accident, and since it is impossible for an accident to subsist in an accident, it is not possible for an accident to persist, because it is not receptive to the property which entails persistence; meanwhile, it is possible for substances, because they can sustain accidents. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article reports the result of a survey about causal beliefs, normative conceptions and moral evaluations of addicts and addiction in the general population. Specifically, we focused on four issues: To what extent are the normative conceptions of addiction current in the philosophical and scientific literature reflected in laypersons' conception of addiction? How do laypersons rate addicts on perceived responsibility? Which factors influence laypersons' responsibility attributions in the context of addiction? What feelings and attitudes (anger/sympathy/help-giving (...) intentions) do laypersons have toward addicts? We found that, although laypersons seem to assume a weakness view of addiction, their patterns of responsibility attributions vary depending on type of drugs combined with perceived severity of outcome, where the latter even overrides the attributional effects of the actor's perceived control over events. Some explanations of the data are suggested, and various consequences with respect to help-giving behavior, are discussed. (shrink)

The existence of a meaningful distinction between economic rights and “other rights” has been a cornerstone of constitutional law for the past sixty years. During this period, the federal courts consistently have taken the position that Congress is free to abuse citizens’ economic liberties, but is not permitted to interfere with such other, noneconomic “rights” as freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.

Socioeconomic differences in behaviour are pervasive and well documented, but their causes are not yet well understood. Here, we make the case that a cluster of behaviours is associated with lower socioeconomic status, which we call “the behavioural constellation of deprivation.” We propose that the relatively limited control associated with lower SES curtails the extent to which people can expect to realise deferred rewards, leading to more present-oriented behaviour in a range of domains. We illustrate this idea using the (...) specific factor of extrinsic mortality risk, an important factor in evolutionary theoretical models. We emphasise the idea that the present-oriented behaviours of the constellation are a contextually appropriate response to structural and ecological factors rather than a pathology or a failure of willpower. We highlight some principles from evolutionary theoretical models that can deepen our understanding of how socioeconomic inequalities can become amplified and embedded. These principles are that small initial disparities can lead to larger eventual inequalities, feedback loops can embed early-life circumstances, constraints can breed further constraints, and feedback loops can operate over generations. We discuss some of the mechanisms by which SES may influence behaviour. We then review how the contextually appropriate response perspective that we have outlined fits with other findings about control and temporal discounting. Finally, we discuss the implications of this interpretation for research and policy. (shrink)

Individual and/or co-offenders fraudulent activities can have a devastating effect on a company’s reputation and credibility. Enron, Xerox, WorldCom, HIH Insurance and One.Tel are examples where stakeholders incurred substantial financial losses as a result of fraud and led to a loss of confidence in corporate dealings by the public in general. There are numerous theoretical approaches that attempt to explain how and why fraudulent acts occur, drawing on the fields of sociology, organisational, management and economic literature, but there is limited (...) empirical evidence published in accounting literature. This qualitative inductive study analyses perceptions and experiences of forensic accountants to gain insights into individual fraud and co-offending in order to determine whether the conceptual framework developed from literature accurately depicts the causes of fraud committed by individuals and groups in the twenty-first century. Findings from the study both support and extend the conceptual framework, demonstrating that strain and anomie can result in fraud, that deviant sub-groups recruit and coerce members by providing relief from strain, and that inadequate corporate governance mechanisms both contribute to fraud occurring, and provide the opportunity for fraudulent activities to be executed and often remain undetected. Additional factors emerging from this study (the ‘technoconomy’, addiction and IT measures) were also identified as contributors to fraud, particularly relevant to the twenty-first century, and consequently, a refined conceptual framework is presented in the discussion and conclusion to the paper. (shrink)

1. This is a book not only about school exclusions. It examines the scale of the problem which has wider implications for educational inequality both in England and internationally (Demie, 2019, 20...

Pain and pleasure affect us all. Knowing this with empathy, and acting upon it, civilises us. Without such empathy, pain can become a means of domination and injustice. Moreover, pain is expressed and responded to in all social contexts, and the word “pain” has diverse meanings, depending on the associated activities. To observe various ways in which we say that it hurts, and the many meanings of pain, I follow ordinary-language philosophy, particularly Ludwig Wittgenstein and John L Austin, and I (...) consider a range of social and historical contexts, from the closest intimacy, everyday chatter, the clinic, and beyond, to the domain of public policy and human rights. This addresses our verbal expressions of pain, their lived contexts and effects, within relationships and among social groups, altering mutual obligations, eliciting actions and reactions, and thence creating moral, legal and political norms. My aim, then, is to consider the social and political implications of ordinary performative pain-talk, in particular regarding the relationship between pain and justice, public policy, human rights and law.Clinical Implications: Clinicians’ roles in disability assessment and pain management are often affected by extrinsic concerns such as financial incentives and the risks of substance abuse. This chapter addresses those complex issues, illustrating how they have arisen in particular historical circumstances, and with political and economic causes and consequences. While unable to provide ready-to-hand clinical solutions, a pragmatic ordinary-language approach to conversations and disagreements about pain helps to chart the grounds on which these matters are debated. (shrink)

The science confidently consolidated the idea of ​​the functions of religion, which traditionally understand the nature and direction of the influence of religion on society. But when investigating individual religions in different epochs, scientists knew about functions, but did not see the influence of religion. As in Soviet times, for example: even when it was forbidden, religion functioned in cut-down forms, underground, but did not affect the vital functions of the vast majority of people. One or another element of religion (...) played a role in the entire religious complex, but it did not nearly work for the society and individual citizens. The function should characterize the activity. Here we must speak more about functionality as ability to perform certain functions and their visible and effective manifestations. (shrink)

Organismal form arises by the coordinated movement, arrangement, and activity of cells. In metazoans, most morphogenetic programs that establish the recognizable body plan of any given species are initiated during the developmental period, although in many species growth continues throughout life. By comparing the cellular and molecular development of the bilaterians (bilaterally symmetrical animals) to the development of their closest outgroup, the cnidarians, it appears that morphogenesis and the cell fate specification associated with germ layer formation during the process of (...) gastrulation are separately controlled by two distinct downstream pathways (canonical and planar cell polarity) of Wnt signaling. Furthermore, a fundamental change in the early developmental program, the positioning of the site of gastrulation, allowed the spatial separation of gene regulatory networks that facilitated the rapid diversification of bilaterian body plans. (shrink)

This introduction sets the stage for the Special Issue and the manuscripts that follow. Interest in work hours, work intensification and work addiction has grown over the past decade. Several factors have come together to increase hours spent at work, the nature of work itself, and motivations for working hard, particularly among managers and professionals. The introduction first reviews some of the known causes and consequences of long work hours and the intensification of work. A case is (...) then made as to why individuals, families, organizations and society should care about hours spent at work and work addiction. Individuals and organizations have some choice here. Most employees would in fact prefer to work fewer hours though few actually realize their preferences. This collection lays out these choices and hopefully encourages thought and discussion of their merits. Long work hours and work addiction harms individuals and their families and does not make organizations more effective. The introduction concludes with a brief summary of the diverse contributions of an international group of leading researchers in this area. (shrink)

Background Nurses frequently face situations in their daily practice that are ethically difficult to handle and can lead to moral distress. Objective This study aimed to explore the phenomenon of moral distress and describe its work-related predictors and individual consequences for home-care nurses in Germany. Research design A cross-sectional design was employed. The moral distress scale and the COPSOQ III-questionnaire were used within the framework of an online survey conducted among home-care nurses in Germany. Frequency analyses, multiple linear and (...) logistic regressions, and Rasch analyses were performed. Participants and research context The invitation to participate was sent to every German home-care service ( n = 16,608). Ethical considerations The study was approved by the Data Protection Office and Ethics Committee of the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Results A total of 976 home-care nurses participated in this study. Job characteristics, such as high emotional demands, frequent work-life-conflicts, low influence at work, and low social support, were associated with higher disturbance caused by moral distress in home-care nurses. Organizational characteristics of home-care services, such as time margin with patients, predicted moral distress. High disturbance levels due to moral distress predicted higher burnout, worse state of health, and the intention to leave the job and the profession, but did not predict sickness absence. Conclusions To prevent home-care nurses from experiencing severe consequences of moral distress, adequate interventions should be developed. Home-care services ought to consider family friendly shifts, provide social support, such as opportunities for exchange within the team, and facilitate coping with emotional demands. Sufficient time for patient care must be scheduled and short-term takeover of unknown tours should be prevented. There is a need to develop and evaluate additional interventions aimed at reducing moral distress, specifically in the home-care nursing sector. (shrink)

Questions such as ‘What if such small companies as Hewletts and the Varians had not been established in Santa Clara County in California?’ or ‘What if Q-type keyboards had not been invented?’ are well known among economists. The questions point at a phenomenon called path dependence: ‘small events’, the argument goes, may cause the evolution of institutions to lock in to specific paths that may produce undesirable consequences. How about applying such skeptical views in economics to human ideas and (...) thought in general? That is to say, what if we ask such questions as: what if Greek philosophy had not been interested in ‘essences’ and ‘foundations’? What if Kant had not invented the ‘thing-in-itself?’ Nature and society, according to such Platonic philosophers, can be known only if it can be shown that events are governed, regulated and characterised by ‘forms’, which are immutable, complete, and perfect in their nature. But is there an ‘essence’ that makes a man 100 per cent male? Was there really a ‘foundation’ in history that caused a proletarian revolution in Russia? What if we had pushed aside the rhetoric of utopian ideality? What if we had a worldview different than the one depicted by Thomas More in his Utopia? The essay points at the possibility of such skepticism in human ideas and thought. (shrink)

Excessive alcohol use has adverse effects on the central nervous system (CNS) and can lead to alcohol use disorders (AUDs). Recent studies have suggested that myelin reductions may directly contribute to CNS dysfunctions associated with AUDs. Myelin consists of compact lipid membranes wrapped around axons to provide electrical insulation and trophic support. Regulation of myelin is considered as a new form of neural plasticity due to its profound impacts on the computation of neural networks. In this review, the authors first (...) discuss experimental evidence showing how alcohol exposure causes demyelination in different brain regions, often accompanied by deficits in cognition and emotion. Next, they discuss postulated molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying alcohol's impact on myelin. It is clear that more extensive investigations are needed in this important but underexplored research field in order to gain a better understanding of the myelin‐behavior relationship and to develop new treatment strategies for AUDs. (shrink)

We argue that the meaning of smiles is interpreted from physical/contextual cues, and simulation may simply reinforce the information derived from these cues. We suggest that, contrary to the claim of the SIMS model, positive and negative smiles may invoke similar simulation processes. Finally, we provide alternative explanations for the role of eye contact in the processing of smiles.

Race and nationality.--Ancients and moderns.--Liberty.--Ultimate facts in economics.--Auto-suggestion.--Nervous tri-unity.--The laws of the mind.--The brain as a laboratory.--Time and space.--Vocabulary and grammar.--Logic.--Motives and feelings.--Free will, trial, and choice.--The foundations of morality.--The development of art.--Amusement.

The process of transformation of the theoretical model of desire as a phenomenon of subjective socio-cultural reality and the essential expression of the whole human being is comprehended. The methodological basis of the article consists of general scientific and philosophical methods of cognition; the authors rely on the dialectical method in studying the phenomenon of desire as the unity of the material and symbolic worlds. The causes and consequences of changes that occur in modern consumer society from the (...) standpoint of “wishing human”, when the desire that actualizes the person of the subject is defined as a process carried out by man in everyday life. Socio-economic mechanisms are analysed, which, on the one hand, force a person to work constantly, and on the other hand – to rethink their needs and desires, transforming the latter, as a result of which it moves to the consumption of objects, many of which are incorporeal. The ontological aspect of the interpretation of desire as a way of social existence expands the knowledge of human nature and seeks to answer the question of why certain events occur in human existence and how they relate to human. It can be stated that the attempt to form a new hedonistic value system in the new generation was successful, and its key differences from the traditional hedonistic value system are immateriality, accessibility and a large number of adherents, which naturally follows from this accessibility. Multi-vector communication involves the possibility of varying the choice of freedom of the subject, which in actions and inferences is relative one, although there is a dependence on communication with sociality, a form of communication with which there is a desire. Subject and object are constituted by desire, which is the impetus for creation, change, movement, and acquisition. (shrink)

Supervised injectable opioid assisted treament prescribes injectable opioids to individuals for whom other forms of addiction treatment have been ineffective. In this article, we examine arguments that opioid-dependent people should be assumed incompetent to voluntarily consent to clinical research on siOAT unless proven otherwise. We agree that concerns about competence and voluntary consent deserve careful attention in this context. But we oppose framing the issue solely as a matter of the competence of opioid-dependent people and emphasize that it should (...) be considered in the context of inequities in access to siOAT as a medical treatment. Consequently, we suggest that bioethics literature on nonexploitation, which focuses on clinical research in low-income countries, is helpful due to locating ethical issues within systemic social conditions. Finally, we consider the implications of our argument for the ethics of clinical research on siOAT. (shrink)