Anita Chari revives the concept of reification from Marx and the Frankfurt School to spotlight the resistance to neoliberal capitalism now forming at the level of political economy and at the more sensate, experiential level of subjective transformation. Reading art by Oliver Ressler, Zanny Begg, Claire Fontaine, Jason Lazarus, and Mika Rottenberg, as well as the politics of Occupy Wall Street, Chari identifies practices through which artists and activists have challenged neoliberalism's social and political logics, exposing its inherent tensions (...) and contradictions. (shrink)

How should we respond to individuals with disabilities? What does it mean to be disabled? Over fifty million Americans, from neonates to the fragile elderly, are disabled. Some people say they have the right to full social participation, while others repudiate such claims as delusive or dangerous. In this compelling book, three experts in ethics, medicine, and the law address pressing disability questions in bioethics and public policy. Anita Silvers, David Wasserman, and Mary B. Mahowald test important theories of (...) justice by bringing them to bear on subjects of concern in a wide variety of disciplines dealing with disability. They do so in the light of recent advances in feminist, minority, and cultural studies, and of the groundbreaking Americans with Disabilities Act. (shrink)

Ethics consultation has become an integral part of the fabric of U.S. health care delivery. This article summarizes the second edition of the Core Competencies for Health Care Ethics Consultation report of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. The core knowledge and skills competencies identified in the first edition of Core Competencies have been adopted by various ethics consultation services and education programs, providing evidence of their endorsement as health care ethics consultation (HCEC) standards. This revised report was prompted (...) by thinking in the field that has evolved since the original report. Patients, family members, and health care providers who encounter ethical questions or concerns that ethics consultants could help address deserve access to efficient, effective, and accountable HCEC services. All individuals providing such services should be held to the standards of competence and quality described in the revised report. (shrink)

How do I know whether there are any minds beside my own? This problem of other minds in philosophy raises questions which are at the heart of all philosophical investigations--how it is that we know, what is in the mind, and whether we can be certain about any of our beliefs. In this book, Anita Avramides begins with a historical overview of the problem from the Ancient Skeptics to Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, Reid, and Wittgenstein. The second part of (...) the book investigates the views of influential contemporary philosophers such as Strawson, Davidson, Nagel and Searle. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to evaluate the notion of collective guilt feeling both in the light of research in affectivity and in collective intentionality. The paper is divided into an introduction and three main sections. Section 1) highlights relevant features of guilt‐family emotions such as the relation between feeling guilt and objective guilt, the relation between feeling guilt and its content, and the relation between feeling guilt and the ‘self’. Moreover, the distinction between feeling guilt and feeling (...) regret is given due attention. Section 2) examines Margaret Gilbert's arguments in favor of a collectivist view of collective guilt feeling , according to which groups do genuinely feel guilt. Against the collectivist position I argue for an individualist ‘membership account’ of collective guilt feeling in terms of individual members' we‐feeling of guilt. The membership account of collective guilt feeling is vindicated on grounds of a naturalist and non‐judgmentalist understanding of emotions, as well as on the logic of personal pronouns. It combines individualism regarding the subject of the feeling with collectivism regarding the irreducibility of we‐feelings and provides, as I further argue, the required moral force attributed to collective guilt feeling. The concern of section 3) is the question of the appropriate emotional response to collective wrongdoing. I argue against the view that group members are categorically ‘committed to feel guilt as a body’ for wrongdoings committed by the group. Given that individual members often do not participate in their groups' wrongdoings, it seems unjust to impose a requirement for feeling guilt upon them. I suggest that in a general account of the appropriate assessment of collective wrongdoing, feeling regret is the better candidate than feeling guilt for the role of the minimally required emotional response.For us collectively to feel guilt over our action A is for us to be jointly committed to feeling guilt as a body over our action A. [. . .] The parties [. . .] constitute, as far as possible, a single subject of guilt feelings .[A] collective cannot respond affectively [. . .], only its constitutive members can. The lack of an affective counter‐response is troubling, because the efficacy of responses of accountability partially depends upon affect. The response of shame, guilt, and regret help to register the significance of the harm. (shrink)

One of the most intriguing of philosophical puzzles concerns other minds. How do you know there are any? Yes, you're surrounded by living organisms that look and behave much as you do. They even say they have minds. But do they? Perhaps other humans are mindless zombies: like you on the outside, but lacking any inner conscious life, including emotions, thoughts, experiences and even pain. What grounds do you possess for supposing that other humans aren't zombies? Perhaps less than you (...) think. Anita Avramides tackles this fascinating question. (shrink)

The Gricean account of language is at the center of much current work in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. Anita Avramides maintains that Grice's paradigm can be used to defend very different conceptions of mind and of meaning. In this clearly argued book she describes Grice's analysis of meaning and proposes two interpretations of it, one reductive and one nonreductive. Much current work in cognitive science assumes that the content of words and thoughts can be (...) explained in naturalistic terms. A leading idea (advanced mainly by Stephen Schiffer and Brian Loar) is that the naturalistic account of content will proceed in two stages: a reduction of the semantic features of word; to the contents of propositional attitudes and then a reduction of the latter to physical or functional notions. The appeal of Grice's work on meaning to this two stage reductionist strategy is that Gricean definitions seem to provide the only way of reducing the semantic to the psychological, a reduction that is required for a naturalistic account of intentionality. While Avramides defends the method of analysis as one suited to the concept of meaning, she rejects a reductive interpretation of the analysis. She argues that any attempt to reduce the semantic to the psychological leads to a mistaken conception of mind. She exposes the assumptions behind the reductive interpretation and offers fresh and original arguments for the antireductionist position. Against the reductive Gricean she defends the idea that there is a deep epistemological symmetry between semantic and propositional attitude notions, a result of which is that semantically characterized linguistic behavior is central to our concept of belief. Anita Avramides is Lecturer in Philosophy at The Queens College, The University of Oxfor. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

'Anita L. Allen breaks new ground...A stunning indictment of women's status in contemporary society, her book provides vital original scholarly research and insight.' |s-NEW DIRECTIONS FOR WOMEN.

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

For decades a debate has played out in the literature about who bioethicists are, what they do, whether they can be considered professionals qua bioethicists, and, if so, what professional responsibilities they are called to uphold. Health care ethics consultants are bioethicists who work in health care settings. They have been seeking guidance documents that speak to their special relationships/duties toward those they serve. By approving a Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities for Health Care Ethics Consultants, the American Society (...) for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) has moved the professionalization debate forward in a significant way. This first code of ethics focuses on individuals who provide health care ethics consultation (HCEC) in clinical settings. The evolution of the code's development, implications for the field of HCEC and bioethics, and considerations for future directions are presented here. (shrink)

This article engages Axel Honneth’s recent work on Georg Lukács’ concept of reification in order to formulate a politically relevant and historically specific critique of capitalism that is applicable to theorizing contemporary democratic practice. I argue that Honneth’s attempt to reorient the critique of reification within the terms of a theory of recognition has done so at the cost of sacrificing the core of the concept, which forged a connection between the socio-political analysis of capitalist domination and an analysis of (...) the unengaged, spectatorial stance of human beings toward the world, showing how they together impede emancipatory social transformation. In order to accomplish the unfinished task of rendering the critique of reification applicable to contemporary critical theory, I seek to synthesize the advantages of Honneth’s approach, which focuses on the normative aspects of the critique of reification, with Lukács’ emphasis on the practical, political-economic dimensions of reification and the historically specific pathologies of the capitalist social form. (shrink)

The formal theory of rational choice as grounded in desire-satisfaction cannot account for the problem of such deformed desires as women's slavish desires. Traditional “informed desire” tests impose conditions of rationality, such as full information and absence of psychoses, but do not exclude deformed desires. I offer a Kantian-inspired addendum to these tests, according to which the very features of deformed desires render them irrational to adopt for an agent who appreciates her equal worth.

Christians and Christian Feminists have to respond to a whole variety of circumstances. This article asks whether the liberation theology that arose from the political struggles and violence of Latin America can be read onto the situation in Sri Lanka. The reality of war challenges male-centred doctrines of a 'just war', which ignore the many injustices of any war. Women and men are raped both in conquest and in custody Children are dispersed, orphaned, and turn to begging or prostitution, or (...) take up arms. Christians tend to retreat to liturgical solutions, while secular women's organizations face the need to rebuild society. The article challenges the churches to join in the dual task of reflecting on the real traumas of war in the light of theology, and rebuilding the bloodstained, shattered community. (shrink)

Cet article s’inscrit dans la continuité des études sur l’utilisation des corpus oraux comme ressource didactique en français langue étrangère. Il présente les défis sous-jacents à la construction d’un exercice sous format numérique à partir de l’expression polysémique genre à l’oral. L’exercice a été développé dans le cadre du projet de recherche appliquée DiCoi (Digitalisation – Corpus – Interaction), dont le but est de soutenir le développement de la compétence d’interaction orale de jeunes en formation professionnelle de métiers manuels. L’effet (...) des interventions est mesuré à l’aide de feedback, mais aussi de la collecte d’interactions orales libres enregistrées sous format audio. La réception de l’exercice est généralement positive, mais l’analyse du phénomène dans le corpus d’interaction entre allophones révèle la difficulté d’établir un lien clair entre input et output. Néanmoins, une didactisation soigneuse du matériel authentique semble rendre les phénomènes cibles saillants. (shrink)

Human dignity is grounded in basic human attributes such as life and self-respect. When people cannot stand up for themselves they may lose their dignity towards themselves and others. The aim of this study was to elucidate if dignity remains intact for family members during care procedures in a children’s hospital. A qualitative approach was adopted, using open non-participation observation. The findings indicate that dignity remains intact in family-centred care where all concerned parties encourage each other in a collaborative relationship. (...) Dignity is shattered when practitioners care from their own perspective without seeing the individual in front of them. When there is a break in care, family members can restore their dignity because the interruption helps them to master their emotions. Family members’ dignity is shattered and remains damaged when they are emotionally overwhelmed; they surrender themselves to practitioners’ care, losing their self-esteem and self-respect. (shrink)

In 1979, the U.S. Surgeon General published the first “Healthy People” report, launching subsequent initiatives in ten-year intervals to improve the nation’s health by focusing on preventive care a...

There is wide agreement among scholars in research policy that the position of the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in interdisciplinary research is not as good as it should be. Academics give many reasons why SSH fields should become more active collaborators in interdisciplinarity, including the capacity within these disciplines to introduce new research questions and to make interdisciplinary research more ethically and societally grounded. This article assesses the conditions attached to 127 recent funding programmes for interdisciplinary and crossdisciplinary research. (...) The findings indicate that the exclusion of SSH from interdisciplinary fields is an ongoing problem in research funding. Furthermore, when given funding, SSH disciplines are less likely to be given the opportunity to connect their research questions and targets solely to the advancement of knowledge. These priorities increase the likelihood of SSH disciplines contributing to multidisciplinary research rather than focusing on interdisciplinarity with knowledge integration. (shrink)

Background: Nursing care is rapidly evolving due to the advanced technological and medical development, and also due to an increased focus on standardization and the logic of production, permeating today’s hospital cultures. Nursing is rooted in a holistic approach with an ethical obligation to maintain and respect the individual’s dignity and integrity. However, working within time limits and heavy workload leads to burnout and ethical insensitivity among nurses, and may challenge nurses’ options to act on the basis of ethical and (...) moral grounds in the individual care situation. Aim: The aim of this study is to describe and discuss ethical dilemmas described and experienced by nurses in clinical practice today. Method: The study was performed as a literature review following the matrix method allowing to synthesize literature across methodological approaches. A literature search was performed, including relevant studies published between 2011 and 2016. A total of 15 articles were included and analyzed focusing on their description of ethical dilemmas. Ethical consideration: We have considered and respected ethical conduct when performing a literature review, respecting authorship and referencing sources. Results: The analysis revealed three themes, relating to important aspects of nursing practice, such as the nurse–patient relationship, organizational structures, and collaboration with colleagues. The findings are summarized in the following three themes: (1) balancing harm and care, (2) work overload affecting quality, and (3) navigating in disagreement. Ethically difficult situations are evident across settings and in very diverse environments from neonatal care to caring for the older people. Organizational structures and being caught in-between professional values, standardization, and busyness was evident, revealing the complexity of nursing practice and the diversity of ethical dilemmas, concerns, and distress experienced by clinical nurses. Conclusion: Nursing practice is challenged by organizational structures and the development of the health care system, inhibiting nurses’ professional decision-making and forcing them to compromise basic nursing values. (shrink)

Accountability protects public health and safety, facilitates law enforcement, and enhances national security, but it is much more than a bureaucratic concern for corporations, public administrators, and the criminal justice system. In Why Privacy Isn't Everything, Anita L. Allen provides a highly original treatment of neglected issues affecting the intimacies of everyday life, and freshly examines how a preeminent liberal society accommodates the competing demands of vital privacy and vital accountability for personal matters. Thus, "None of your business!" is (...) at times the wrong thing to say, as much of what appears to be self-regarding conduct has implications for others that should have some bearing on how a person chooses to act. (shrink)

In this photo essay, we take readers through ecologies of de/colonization that we engage with in our creative methodology of walking and talking. As academics called upon to do equity, diversity and decolonization work in colonial institutions, we reflect on our location in lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ lands (“Victoria, BC, Canada”) and the circuits that extend to the Caribbean archipelago of our origins and families (Borikén/Puerto Rico and Jamaica). We take up the tasks of collectively reflecting on how to care for (...) our communities and for each other in an interconnected world amidst socio-ecological crisis. Our method that emerged during the pandemic is specific to our embodiments “here” as settlers of Caribbean roots whose family histories “there” include both complicity with and domination by colonization, trans-Atlantic enslavement, and forced migration. We are attempting to learn, as we hold the messiness of institutions who want straightforward paths to remediate racism, colonization, and the like. Our walking and talking follow a meandering and re-visiting process prompted by our institutional contexts and circumstances, and also by serendipity, surprise and beauty offered through non-human elements on our walks. The photos evidence these moments and the connections to “here-there” in ecologies of de/colonization. We invite readers on our circuitous paths that involve deconstructing, and building or affirming, noticing, following literal paths and those in scholarly-activist circles. In the creative process of drawing relations of the here-there, and attending to serendipity, ancestral spirit, and more-than-human agency, we witness and imagine worlds otherwise (King et al., 2020). These circuitous roots and routes offer possibilities of reckoning, repairing and re-worlding. (shrink)

The analysis of the operation of tourism companies will provide valid information for the design of policies to reactivate the tourism industry, which has been strongly affected during the pandemic generated by COVID-19. The objective of this paper is to use soft computing techniques to analyse tourism companies in Ecuador. First of all, dimensionality reduction methods are applied: principal component analysis, isometric feature mapping and locally linear embedding, on data of tourism enterprises in Ecuador for the year 2015. In addition, (...) to verify the trend of operational variables, the data of tourism companies in Ecuador in 2019 and 2020 are analysed with dimensionality reduction methods that improve the interpretation by minimizing the loss of information. The data sets are analysed with k-means, k-medoids and Hierarchical Clustering, generating groups according to similar characteristics. The optimal number of clusters is determined with the following: Elbow Method, Silhouette Coefficient, Davies-Bouldin Index and Dunn Index. In addition, an analysis of the operation of tourism companies in the year 2020 concerning previous years is included. The study allows exploring Soft Computing techniques to identify important information for the definition of strategies that contribute to an effective reactivation of the tourist industry of Ecuador. (shrink)

According to a popular view, the past is present here and now. This is presentism combined with endurantism: the past continuously persists through time to the present. By contrast, I argue that memories, memorials, and histories are of entities discontinuous with present experiences, and that the continuity between past and present in them is a construct. Memories, memorials, and histories are semantic means for dealing with the past. My presupposition that past and present are different is supported by grammar: as (...) verbal tenses show, the past is not present here and now, for otherwise it would not be past. A failure to note this difference is a lack of chronesthesia, a sense of time specific to human beings. I argue that presentism fails to account for the temporal structures of memory and the changes in perspective as we switch from the present to a past situation. My account is perdurantist in the sense that it allows for temporal parts of things such as memorials or tombstones, as well as events such as wars or commemorations. But my main goal is to outline a semantic approach to the past: the tie between past and present actions and events is the semantic ground–consequence relation: a past event is the antecedent grounding a present situation, explaining why it is the case. In addition, I show how we refer to the past by means of two rhetorical figures of speech: synecdoche, using the part–whole relation for relating the past to the present by transposing its sense; and anaphor, which has a deictic function—it points back toward the past. In references to the past, the deictic field is a scene visualized by the speaker and addressees: the deictic field is transposed from a perceptual to an imaginary space. (shrink)

The paper evaluates Christopher Hookway's claim that individual epistemic vice can enhance the value of collective epistemic virtue. I suggest that this claim can be defended on the grounds of a dynamic account of collective intentional properties that is supplemented by an account of a spontaneous ordering mechanism such as the "intangible hand". Both these accounts try to explain how individual traits integrate into collective traits by way of aggregation. In this respect, they are different from normative and summative accounts (...) of plural subjects. I argue that it is the repeatable and self-amplifying nature of character traits that calls for a dynamic account of collective virtues. With regard to epistemic virtues and their role in the acquisition of knowledge I hold that their dynamic and self-amplifying character warrants their reliability, since it is this character that bottoms out in repeated acts of epistemally correct behavior that constitute a 'responsible practice'. The successful appliance of the latter amplifies the attitude it origins from. If epistemic virtues construed along these lines are attributed to collectives, a dynamic aggregate account supplemented by an account of an "intan-gible hand" device might explain how an aggregate of virtuous efforts of individuals can not only absorb a certain amount of vice but be even enhanced by the 'spice' of some non-intentional epistemically vicious side effects of epistemically virtuous en- deavor. (shrink)

Akabayashi and Slingsby's (2006) article reminds us that the North American emphasis on individualistic autonomy is not universal. As the authors explain, personal identity in Japan is not construc...