This paper aims to critique the phenomenon of advanced patient autonomy and choice in healthcare within the specific context of self-testing devices. A growing number of self-testing medical devices are currently available for home use. The premise underpinning many of these devices is that they assist individuals to be more autonomous in the assessment and management of their health. Increased patient autonomy is assumed to be a good thing. We take issue with this assumption and argue that self-testing provides a (...) specific example how increased patient autonomy and choice within healthcare might not best serve the patient population. We propose that current interpretations of autonomy in healthcare are based on negative accounts of liberty to the detriment of a more relational understanding. We also propose that Kantian philosophy is often applied to the healthcare arena in an inappropriate manner. We draw on the philosophical literature and examples from the self-testing process to support these claims. We conclude by offering an alternative account of autonomy based on the interrelated concepts of relationality, care and responsibility. (shrink)

Stanisław Brzozowski formulated the ideal of modern man in the polemic with the contemporary man, who has ceased to believe in truth and moral values and is devoid of the will to act. For Brzozowski modernity involves the discovery of truth about the human condition: about man as an autonomous subject, a creator of values, who struggles with non-human reality. This truth was formulated in Kant’s idea of autonomy and in Marx’ idea of a collective conquest of the world of (...) nature. For Brzozowski, ideal modern man is “the conscious labourer,” who labours because he wants to proudly impose a human law on the non-human world. At the same time Brzozowski used the term “modernity” to describe life of constant change in the modern world, understood as a set of results of man’s reign over nature. For the sake of human maturity, Brzozowski expected the truly modern man to perceive modern life as an unquestionable value. Undoubtedly, there is an evident tension in Brzozowski’s ideal of modern man between the affirmation of creativity in the world of change and the necessity of disciplined production, including unchangeable moral foundations of labour. There is also a major shift in this ideal, stemming from Brzozowski’s change of attitude towards religion. (shrink)

Mental-content verbs such as think, believe, imagine and hope seem to pose special problems for the young language learner. One possible explanation for these diYculties is that the concepts that these verbs express are hard to grasp and therefore their acquisition must await relevant conceptual development. According to a diVerent, perhaps complementary, proposal, a major contributor to the diYculty of these items lies with the informational requirements for identifying them from the contexts in which they appear. The experiments reported here (...) explore the implications of these proposals by investigating the contribution of observational and linguistic cues to the acquisition of mental predicate vocabulary. We Wrst demonstrate that particular observed situations can be helpful in prompting reference to mental contents, speciWcally, contexts that include a salient and/or unusual mental state such as a false belief. We then compare the potency of such observational support to the reliability of alternate or concomitant syntactic information (e.g., sentential complementation) in tasks where both children and adults are asked to hypothesize the meaning of novel verbs. The Wndings support the eYcacy of false belief situations for increasing the saliency of mental state descriptions, but also show that.. (shrink)

Background: Ethics and dignity in prehospital emergency care are important due to vulnerability and suffering. Patients can lose control of their body and encounter unfamiliar faces in an emergency situation. Objective: To describe what specialist ambulance nurse students experienced as preserved and humiliated dignity in prehospital emergency care. Research design: The study had a qualitative approach. Method: Data were collected by Flanagan’s critical incident technique. The participants were 26 specialist ambulance nurse students who described two critical incidents of preserved and (...) humiliated dignity, from prehospital emergency care. Data consist of 52 critical incidents and were analyzed with interpretive content analysis. Ethical considerations: The study followed the ethical principles in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Findings: The result showed how human dignity in prehospital emergency care can be preserved by the ambulance nurse being there for the patient. The ambulance nurses meet the patient in the patient’s world and make professional decisions. The ambulance nurse respects the patient’s will and protects the patient’s body from the gaze of others. Humiliated dignity was described through the ambulance nurse abandoning the patient and by healthcare professionals failing, disrespecting, and ignoring the patient. Discussion: It is a unique situation when a nurse meets a patient face to face in a critical life or death moment. The discussion describes courage and the ethical vision to see another human. Conclusion: Dignity was preserved when the ambulance nurse showed respect and protected the patient in prehospital emergency care. The ambulance nurse students’ ethical obligation results in the courage to see when a patient’s dignity is in jeopardy of being humiliated. Humiliated dignity occurs when patients are ignored and left unprotected. This ethical dilemma affects the ambulance nurse students badly due to the fact that the morals and attitudes of ambulance nurses are reflected in their actions toward the patient. (shrink)

What sort of claims do scientific models make and how do these claims then underwrite empirical successes such as explanations and reliable policy interventions? In this paper I propose answers to these questions for the class of models used throughout the social and biological sciences, namely idealized deductive ones with a causal interpretation. I argue that the two main existing accounts misrepresent how these models are actually used, and propose a new account. *Received July 2006; revised August 2008. †To contact (...) the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Missouri, St. Louis, 599 Lucas Hall (MC 73), One University Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63121-4400; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

How do people respond to others' accidental behaviors? Reward and punishment for accidents might be depend on the actor's intentions, or instead on the unintended outcomes she brings about. Yet, existing paradigms in experimental economics do not include the possibility of accidental monetary allocations. We explore the balance of outcomes and intentions in a two-player economic game where monetary allocations are made with a "trembling hand": that is, intentions and outcomes are sometimes mismatched. Player 1 allocates $10 between herself and (...) Player 2 by rolling one of three dice. One die has a high probability of a selfish outcome, another has a high probability of a fair outcome, and the third has a high probability of a generous outcome. Based on Player 1's choice of die, Player 2 can infer her intentions. However, any of the three die can yield any of the three possible outcomes. Player 2 is given the opportunity to respond to Player 1's allocation by adding to or subtracting from Player 1's payoff. We find that Player 2's responses are influenced substantially by the accidental outcome of Player 1's roll of the die. Comparison to control conditions suggests that in contexts where the allocation is at least partially under the control of Player 1, Player 2 will punish Player 1 accountable for unintentional negative outcomes. In addition, Player 2's responses are influenced by Player 1's intention. However, Player 2 tends to modulate his responses substantially more for selfish intentions than for generous intentions. This novel economic game provides new insight into the psychological mechanisms underlying social preferences for fairness and retribution. (shrink)

This paper investigates Neoplatonist literary criticism by framing the special interest in the target of each dialogue within the context of cosmo-literary theory. The starting hypothesis is that the themes of Plato's dialogues do not fully meet the expectations of a new didactics based on isagogical schemes as an image of Neoplatonic metaphysics. Among these schemes is the target of each dialogue, whose relation to the theme can be explained, in a fruitful and innovative way, through a cosmic analogy. Thus (...) after examining the more or less explicit criticism of literary criteria of analysis by Plato's ancient exegetes, this article will focus on how Neoplatonists load the Greek termskopos(target) with metaphysical content and, accordingly, on how we should translate it in accordance with the commentators’ intentions. It will show that the target is the literary counterpart to the One, but that it should not be confused with the theme because the latter must be seen as the literary counterpart to the Intellect. (shrink)

Our ability to attend selectively to our surroundings - noticing things that matter, ignoring those that don't - is crucial if we are to negotiate the world around us. This is the first book in years to explore just how our attention can be influenced by time, and how our own perception of time can be influenced by what we attend to.

We agree with van der Pijl et al that the question of how to ensure consent is obtained for procedures which occur during labour and childbirth is vitally important, and worthy of greater attention.1 However, we argue that the modified opt-out approach to consent outlined in their paper may not do enough to protect the choice and agency of birthing people. Moreover, while their approach reflects a pragmatic attempt to facilitate legal clarity and certainty in this context, this is not (...) necessarily responsive to the messy realities of decision-making during labour (and beyond). We outline some of our concerns with their proposals and demonstrate how these illuminate some broader, longstanding tensions around consent and medical law. The authors place significant focus on the particularities of labour, outlining six ways in which maternity care is ‘unlike the usual healthcare setting’ (van der Pijl M et al,1p4). We support the need for attentiveness to these particularities and the problematic nature of consent in this context. Recent scholarly attention on the possible ‘political, ethical and theoretical implications and meanings of birthing embodiment’ (Chadwick R,2p2) has invited more nuanced conversation about consent, agency and decision-making during labour. However, while recognising the embodied particularities of labour, we must also avoid essentialising the differences of labouring bodies and thereby reinforcing exclusionary norms of consent. This points to a long-standing tension in feminist theory between the universal and the particular; between recognising and responding to the powerlessness of individuals without …. (shrink)

Executive Summary There is a general perception that biomedical research has not given the same attention to the health problems of women that it has given ...

In late 2003, the Canadian media reported that the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice would start offering arbitration in family disputes in accordance with both Islamic legal principles and Ontario's Arbitration Act of 1991. A vociferous two-year debate ensued on the introduction of “Sharia law” in Ontario. This article analyzes representations of Muslim women's agency that came to the fore in this debate by examining reports in three Canadian newspapers. The debate demonstrated two notions of agency. The predominant perspective conceptualized (...) Muslim women's agency as their ability to resist domination, tying secularization to agency. A second strain of the debate portrayed agency as embedded in intersecting social forces of domination and subordination. The first perspective homogenized diverse Muslim communities, fostering the gendered racialization of these communities. Understanding agency as embedded, by contrast, enabled conceptualizations of Muslim women as agentic religious subjects. (shrink)

The philosophical debate around moods has mainly focused on whether and how their seeming recalcitrance to representationalist treatment can be overcome by accommodating moods’ apparent undirectedness through a peculiar representational structure. Through these theoretical efforts, though, most theorists have taken a double wrong turn (or so I argue), by maintaining that (i) (if directed,) moods are outwardly directed (i.e., directed toward something external to and independent of the subject’s mind) and (ii) moods are discrete mental states (on a par with (...) emotions, perceptual experiences, thoughts, etc.). By pointing at three as yet overlooked phenomenological features of moods—subjective salience, undetachability, and globality—I suggest that moods are (i) inwardly oriented (i.e., they pertain to the subjective aspect of experience and, if directed at all, they are directed toward one’s experiences) and (ii) structural features of consciousness (rather than discrete mental states). I thus explore a new approach to the nature of mood experience, one that aims to do justice to those phenomenological features: I call this the “ways of inner awareness” view. On this view, moods are ways of being aware of one’s own experiences. Different versions of the view may be developed, depending on various metaphysical commitments. I do not defend or recommend, here, any specific version. The aim of the paper is to motivate the general ways-of-inner-awareness approach to mood and hint at some possible ways it may be elaborated. (shrink)

The past 20 years have seen dramatic rises in suicide rates in the United States and other countries around the world. These trends have been identified as a public health crisis in urgent need of new solutions and have spurred significant research efforts to improve our understanding of suicide and strategies to prevent it. Unfortunately, despite making significant contributions to the founding of suicidology – through Emile Durkheim’s classic Suicide (1897/1951) – sociology’s role has been less prominent in contemporary efforts (...) to address these tragic trends, though as we will show, sociological theories offer great promise for advancing our understanding of suicide and improving the efficacy of suicide prevention. Here, we review sociological theory and empirical research on suicide. We begin where all sociologists must: with Durkheim. However, we offer a more comprehensive understanding of Durkheim’s insights into suicide than the prior reviews provided by those in other disciplines. In so doing, we reveal the nuance and richness of Durkheim’s insights that have been largely lost in modern suicidology, despite being foundational to all sociological theories of suicide – even those that have moved beyond his model. We proceed to discuss broadly acknowledged limitations to Durkheim’s theory of suicide and review how more recent theoretical efforts have not only addressed those concerns, but have done so by bringing a larger swatch of sociology’s theoretical and empirical toolkit to bare on suicide. Specifically, we review how recent sociological theories of suicide have incorporated insights from social network theories, cultural sociology, sociology of emotions, and sociological social psychology to better theorize how the external social world matters to individual psychological pain and suffering. We conclude by making explicit bridges between sociological and psychological theories of suicide; by noting important limitations in knowledge about suicide – particularly regarding the roles of organizations, inequality, and intersectionality in suicide – that sociology is well situated to help address. (shrink)

The goal of the present study was to investigate the interaction between different senses of polysemous nouns (metonymies and metaphors) and different meanings of homonyms using the method of event-related potentials (ERPs) and a priming paradigm. Participants read two-word phrases containing ambiguous words and made a sensicality judgment. Phrases with polysemes highlighted their literal sense and were preceded by primes with either the same or different – metonymic or metaphorical – sense. Similarly, phrases with homonyms were primed by phrases with (...) a consistent or inconsistent meaning of the noun. The results demonstrated that polysemous phrases with literal senses preceded by metonymic primes did not differ in ERP responses from the control condition with the same literal primes. In contrast, processing phrases with the literal sense preceded by metaphorical primes resulted in N400 and P600 effects that might reflect a very limited priming effect. The priming effect observed between metonymic and literal senses supports the idea that these senses share a single representation in the mental lexicon. In contrast, the effects observed for polysemes with metaphorical primes characterize lexical access to the word’s target sense and competition between the two word senses. The processing of homonyms preceded by the prime with an inconsistent meaning, although it did not elicit an N400 effect, was accompanied by a P600 effect as compared to the control condition with a consistent meaning of the prime. We suppose that the absence of the N400 effect may result from inhibition of the target meaning by the inconsistent prime, whereas the P600 response might reflect processes of reanalysis, activation, and integration of the target meaning. Our results provide additional evidence for the difference in processing mechanisms between metonymies and metaphors that might have separate representations in the mental lexicon, although they are more related as compared to homonyms. (shrink)

A PROTEÇÃO DOS DIREITOS HUMANOS NO CONTINENTE EUROPEU: BREVES APONTAMENTOS.

The concepts of disease, illness and sickness capture fundamentally different aspects of phenomena related to human ailments and healthcare. The philosophy and theory of medicine are making manifold efforts to capture the essence and normative implications of these concepts. In parallel, socio-empirical studies on patients’ understanding of their situation have yielded a comprehensive body of knowledge regarding subjective perspectives on health-related statuses. Although both scientific fields provide varied valuable insights, they have not been strongly linked to each other. Therefore, the (...) article aims to scrutinise the normative-ethical implications of patient perspectives in building a bridge to the empirical ethics debates. Three potential fields of tension between the illness and the disease perspective are presented. Consequently, findings from empirical research examining patient perspectives on illness are displayed and the practical implications and associated ethical issues which arise are discussed. This leads to the conclusion that an explicit and elaborate empirical-ethical methodology is needed to deal appropriately with the complex interaction between patients’ views and the medico-professional view of disease. Kon’s four-stage model of normative-empirical collaboration is then applied against the background of empirical data on patient perceptions. Starting from this exemplary approach, the article suggests employing empirical-ethical frameworks for further research on the conceptual and normative issues, as they help to integrate perspectives from the philosophy of medicine with socio-empirical research. The combination of theoretical and empirical perspectives suggested contributes to a more nuanced discussion of the normative impact of patients’ actual understanding of illness. Further empirical research in this area would profit from explicitly considering potential ethical issues to avoid naturalistic fallacies or crypto-normative conclusions that may compromise healthcare practice. Vice versa, medico-theoretical debates could be enriched by integrating subjective views of those people who are immediately affected. (shrink)

The current dispute between causalists and simulationists in philosophy of memory has led to opposing attempts to characterize the relationship between memory and imagination. In a recent overview of this debate, Perrin and Michaelian have suggested that the dispute over the continuity between memory and imagination boils down to the question of whether a causal connection to a past event is necessary for remembering. By developing an argument based on an analogy to perception, I argue that this dispute should instead (...) be viewed as a dispute about the nature of the attitudes involved in remembering and imagining. The focus on attitudes, rather than on causal connections, suggests a new way of conceiving of the relationship between memory and imagination that has been overlooked in recent philosophy of memory. (shrink)

This chapter considers the philosophical contributions of German writer Karoline von Günderrode (1780–1806). Günderrode's work participates in debates regarding the question of free will, the nature of the self, the nature of consciousness, what happens to us after we die, the vocation of humankind, the relationship between the self and nature and between these and the Absolute or the divine, the role of gender in social life, ideals for political arrangements, and the pursuit of virtue and beauty. Günderrode’s writings provide (...) a rich and relatively unexplored perspective on these topics. After a biography and overview of Günderrode’s writings, the chapter summarizes key areas of Günderrode’s thought. These include Günderrode’s metaphysical claims, unique accounts of love and death, models of consciousness and identity, political theory (especially regarding revolution), contributions to early nineteenth century understandings of gender, and nascent ethics and aesthetics. The last section of the chapter considers ways that Günderrode might have influenced several well-known nineteenth century thinkers, notably Clemens Brentano, Georg Friedrich Creuzer, and Bettina Brentano-von Arnim – and, through the latter, the Young Hegelians and American Transcendentalism. (shrink)

An English translation of German writer Karoline von Günderrode's poem "A Persian Tale." The entire journal issue is open access and full of other wonderful stuff!

An article publicising the philosophical contributions of German writer Karoline von Günderrode (1780–1806).

The paper analyzes the two types of self-deception, usually labeled straight and twisted self-deception. In straight cases the self-deceptive belief coincides with the subject’s desire. In twisted cases, by contrast, the self-deceptive belief opposes the subject’s desire as in the example of Othello’s conviction of Desdemona’s infidelity. Are both these contrasting types of deceptive beliefs cases of SD? The argument of this paper shall answer this question in the positive, yet in different way from the unitary explanation of straight and (...) twisted SD proposed by Alfred Mele. The causal account of SD claims to provide a unitary and simple explanation for both straight and twisted SD, and considers such a unitary explanation as a specific virtue of the causal view. Within the same causal model, the difference between straight and twisted self-deception is explained by a difference in the motivational state that in twisted cases is dominated by emotions. The paper will critically examine this claim, and advance an alternative explanation based on a different view of self-deception where emotions play a role alongside wishes both in straight and in twisted case. (shrink)

An article publicising the philosophical importance of Early German Romantic writer Dorothea Veit-Schlegel (1764–1839).

Partiendo de los análisis de M. Foucault, se muestran las relaciones entre biopolítica y Salud Pública. La medicina, durante siglos, fue considerada como un ámbito de interés principalmente individual, y los regímenes de salud, lejos de afectar al conjunto de la población, fueron reservados casi exclusivamente para la élite. Durante el siglo XVIII, en cambio, en el mismo momento en que la administración de la vida devino un objetivo político, los problemas de salud se convirtieron en una cuestión pública. Desde (...) entonces, los discursos y las prácticas médicas han sido determinantes en el diseño de la identidad del hombre contemporáneo. (shrink)

Here’s a plausible thought: we should make a promise only if we rationally believe that we will follow through. But if that’s right, and if it’s rational to believe only what our evidence supports, then it seems that we shouldn’t make promises to do things our evidence suggests that there’s a significant chance we don’t do – things that many others, or we ourselves, have set out and failed to do. Think: promises to stay faithful or to be on time (...) or to quit smoking. But surely that can’t be right! After all, these are some of our most important promises. This leaves us with a puzzle: either accept that sometimes it’s ok to promise against the evidence or accept that we shouldn’t be making many of our most important promises. This paper develops a response to this puzzle. Promising against the evidence turns out to be morally problematic across the board. But, upon closer inspection, it seems our evidence often does support the belief that we will do something that many others, or we ourselves, have set out and failed to do. When it does, promising is permissible. When it doesn’t, promising is not the right thing to do. (shrink)

This book explores the metaphysics of political communities. It discusses how and why a plurality of individuals becomes a political unity, what principles or forces keep that unity together, and what threats that unity can be faced with. In Part I, the author justifies the need for the notion of substance in metaphysics in general and in the metaphysics of politics in particular. He spells out a moderately realist theory of substances and of their principles of unity, which supports substantial (...) gradualism. Part II concerns action theory and the nature of practical reason. The author claims that the acknowledgement of reasons by agents is constitutive of action and that normativity depends on the role of the good in the formation of reasons. Finally, in Part III the author addresses the notion of political community. He claims that the principle of unity of a political community is its authority to give members of the community moral reasons for action. This suggests a middle way between liberal individualism and organicism, and the author demonstrates the significance of this view by discussing current political issues such as the role of religion in the public sphere and the political significance of cultural identity. Authority and the Metaphysics of Political Communities will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in social metaphysics, political philosophy, philosophy of action, and philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

All migration politics are reproductive politics. The nation-state project of controlling migration secures the racialised demographics of the nation, understood as a reproducible fact of the social and human body, determining who is differentially included, who is excluded, and who is exalted. In this commentary, we put forward a provocation about methodological heteronormativity and its omnipresence in the discourse surrounding the so-called “refugee crisis.” By methodological heteronormativity, we refer to the ways states, supranational organisations, hegemonic ideologies, but also solidarity movements (...) and critical scholars construct the figure of the (un)deserving “refugee.”. (shrink)