Sigmund Freud’s five long case histories have been the focus of seemingly endless fascination and criticism. This article examines how the long case-history genre developed and its impact on the professionalization of psychoanalysis. It argues that the long case histories, using a distinctive form that highlighted the peculiarities of psychoanalytic theory, served as exemplars in the discipline. In doing so, the article extends John Forrester’s work on ‘thinking in cases’ to show the practical implications of that style of reasoning. The (...) article illustrates how the form disappeared once the theoretical basis of the movement was set. The genre never became institutionalized, although the content of the five long case histories did, because of Freud’s accepted role as theoretician of psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Dignified care is a central issue in the nursing care of older adults. Nurses are expected to treat older adults with dignity, and older adults wish to be treated in a dignified manner. Researchers have recommended investigating the concept of dignity based on specific contexts and population groups. This meta-synthesis study aims to explore the understandings of dignity from the perspective of older adults in the Nordic countries. Synthesising findings from qualitative studies on older adults’ experiences of dignity has provided (...) important insight into what can be essential for dignified care in a Nordic context. The importance of visibility and recognition for the experience of dignity is an overarching theme in all the studies. The participants’ descriptions mostly implicated an existence dominated by a lack of recognition. The older adults do not feel valued as people or for their contribution to society and strive to tone down their illnesses in an attempt to become more visible and acknowledged as people. Toning down their illnesses and masking their needs can protect their independence. At the same time, becoming less visible can leave them without a voice. The metaphorical phrase protected and exposed by a cloak of invisibility is used to express the authors’ overall interpretation of the findings. Lack of recognition and being socially invisible is a genuine threat to older adults’ dignity. (shrink)

According to a classical view, suspension of judgement is, like belief and disbelief, a cognitive state. However, as some authors (Crawford 2022; Lord 2020; McGrath 2021a, 2021b; Sosa 2019, 2021) have pointed out, to suspend judgement is also to perform a certain mental action. The main goal of this article is to defend a precise account of the action that we take when we suspend our judgement: the Preventing Account. The Preventing Account has both the advantage of (i) accounting for (...) familiar situations in which subjects suspend judgements and (ii) of explaining the tendency, which is widespread in the philosophical tradition (from sceptics to pragmatists), to consider suspension of judgement as something that is (at least, to some degree) difficult to achieve. (shrink)

In the recent epistemological literature much has been written about the nature of suspending judgement or agnosticism. There has also been a surge of recent interest in the nature of ignorance. But what is the relationship between these two epistemically significant states? Prima facie, both suspension and ignorance seem to involve the lack of a correct answer to a question. And, again prima facie, there may be some intuitive attraction to the idea that when one is ignorant whether p, one (...) ought to suspend judgement whether p. In this paper we will explore a range of different possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension of judgement. We will also discuss how both ignorance and suspension are related to having inconclusive evidence. As we will see, the issues can become quite complex due to the fact that there are different, competing views about the nature of ignorance and also about the nature of suspension. Moreover, there are importantly different kinds of epistemic norms. Our overall aim then will be to systematically chart how these different choices will impact the possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension. (shrink)

Background: School nurses have great responsibilities as the connecting link between school, children/adolescents, parents, and other healthcare services. Being in this middle position, and handling complex situations and problems related to children in school, may be demanding and also lead to ethical challenges. Clinical ethics support, such as ethics reflection groups, may be of help when dealing with ethical challenges. However, there is little research on experiences with ethics reflection groups among school nurses. Aim: The aim of this research was (...) to explore how nurses in school healthcare experience their role, and how they experience participation in ethics reflection groups, using a model for systematic ethics reflection, the Centre for Medical Ethics model. Research design: The project had a qualitative design, using focus group interviews and thematic analysis. Ethical considerations: The study was evaluated by the Data Protection Official at the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (project no. 57373). The participants were given oral and written information about the study and signed a written consent. Participants and context: Twelve participants from school healthcare were recruited to the interviews. Findings: School nurses described their role as extremely challenging. How the school nurses experienced their role also influenced how they experienced participating in ethics reflection groups. The Centre for Medical Ethics model was experienced as both challenging and comprehensive. However, they also experienced that the model helped them to clarify their role and could also help them to find better solutions. Conclusion: The role as school nurse is complex and demanding, with several ethical challenges. Ethics reflection groups may be of great help when dealing with these challenges. However, it is of great importance that the methods used are adjusted to the professionals’ needs and context. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccine refusal seems like a paradigm case of irrationality. Vaccines are supposed to be the best way to get us out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet many people believe that they should not be vaccinated even though they are dissatisfied with the current situation. In this paper, we analyze COVID-19 vaccine refusal with the tools of contemporary philosophical theories of responsibility and rationality. The main outcome of this analysis is that many vaccine-refusers are responsible for the belief that (...) they should not be vaccinated and epistemically rational in holding it. This is an important result because it provides insights into the legitimacy of certain public health policies. In particular, this result shows that a public health policy that would abandon the project of convincing certain vaccine-refusers with reasons – e.g., by simply making vaccination compulsory – is prima facie illegitimate. (shrink)

What can we expect from metaphysics? Defending metaphysics against its enemies and its enemies against themselves (Ideologists), according to Maine de Biran, requires a twofold struggle, capable of avoiding both the dangers of abstract metaphysics that only acknowledges a priori principles and refuses the title of science of principles to that which would be based on experience, and Condillac-inspired metaphysics, including Ideology, which acknowledges only one kind of experience, external experience. Biran builds a metaphysics of internal experience founded on the (...) discovery of an order of internal facts, which constitutes the basis of the thinking and acting being. The generating principle of our faculties, i.e. of our actions, is a dual fact, a primitive internal relationship whose terms are distinct without being separate, namely the so-called “hyper-organic” force and the resistance of our own body, identified with our very existence. Biran thus puts an end to ontological discourses when it comes to separating essences of soul and body, and promotes new empiricism.Positive metaphysics is neither logic nor general grammar, nor physiology, but the science of the primitive facts of the inner sense, a barely-born inner experimental science, namely psychology, that is analytical and synthetic, rational and experimental. (shrink)

In order to make sense of collective doxastic reasons we need an account of group belief. Once we arrive at a more nuanced understanding of group belief it turns out that for some group beliefs we need not invoke collective epistemic reasons. However, we do need them for better understanding how and why different social identity groups will hold beliefs whose evidence-base is irreducibly social and tied to them being that kind of group. This short article is a commentary on (...) Veli Mitova's 2022 article "The collective epistemic reasons of social-identity groups". (shrink)

In several papers (2013, 2014, 2015) Conor McHugh defends the influential view that doxastic responsibility, viz. our responsibility for our beliefs, is grounded in a specific form of reasons-responsiveness. The main purpose of this paper is to show that a subject’s belief can be responsive to reasons in this specific way without the subject being responsible for her belief. While this specific form of reasons-responsiveness might be necessary, it is not sufficient for doxastic responsibility.

This article explores the theme of the 2021 ALTER conference “norms questioned by disability,” by proposing a parallel with the process of questioning norms carried out by gender studies. After a contextualization of the role of norms in sociology and the link between the interrogation of norms and collective mobilizations, two examples of this approach are identified and illustrated by comparing gender studies and disability studies: naming the unthought (e.g. evidence of hierarchy, evidence of bicategorization), and specifying a presumed neutral (...) (by demonstrating the situated character of norms, concepts or characteristics associated with a dominant group and previously perceived as neutral or universal). Using examples from the fields of work, organizations and politics, similarities are pointed out between the modes of reasoning of the two fields of study. If disability studies have been able to benefit from a certain number of analytical achievements of gender studies, they can reciprocally offer new approaches for the latter, notably around the issue of constructivism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Justice of the GreeksRobert W. WallaceSealey, Raphael. The Justice of the Greeks. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. Pp. xiii 1 164.Over the last fifteen years research in Greek law has expanded rapidly, especially in Anglo-American countries. In consequence, significant differences of approach to this material have become apparent. The older, juristic approach is largely continental, where the living tradition of Roman law as the basis (...) for current legal codes has meant that most Greek legal historians first studied Roman law, were trained as lawyers, and now teach in law schools. By contrast, most Anglo-Americans now working in this field were trained as ancient historians or philologists. They know little of Roman or modern law and mostly care less about it, arguing that most Greek legislation was unsystematic, arising piecemeal in response to interpersonal or community problems. For these scholars, a juristic approach to Greek law is sometimes even misleading: sociology and anthropology offer more appropriate methodologies. Sealey places his new book squarely in the continental tradition. He expressly rejects sociology (22), and modestly announces his intention to publicize the work of Wolff, Ruschenbusch, and Thür (ix–x). However, S. also was trained as a historian and philologist. How far does his book add to the juristic tradition of Greek legal scholarship? And how far does it make its own, historical contribution? [End Page 130]“This book is an inquiry into the rule of law,” its first sentence declares. It is not always that, but rather, a wide-ranging exposition of various questions about Greek law, which ruled and in some areas (S. indicates) failed to rule. S.’s book offers a number of lucid, courteous discussions, presented sometimes in a paratactic way, but conveying overall a sense of chronological development. Its general intention is “to discover the historical contribution of Greek thought to the field of law, justice, and right... [and] to discover principles, concepts, and aims that underlay the development of law in Greek cities” (133). With a scope so large, the book is often too brief. With rapid strokes S. adopts positions typically without evaluating much of the scholarship regarding them. Some arguments S. has made before. He repeats them despite previous criticisms. S. includes several lengthy discussions of Roman and Near Eastern law, typically to illustrate differences with Greece. This may contrast with legal anthropologists, who illuminate Greek practices through comparative materials. Although S. adopts various hypotheses of his continental colleagues, it is not his purpose to add much to their arguments. More significantly, despite S.’s intention to find “the historical contribution of Greek thought to the field of law, justice, and right,” it remains unclear that the Greeks made such a contribution. As S. himself says, the Greeks “did not recognize an underlying body of thought expressed” in particular laws (59). By contrast, in smaller instances and in his general conclusions regarding the “principles, concepts, and aims” underlying Greek law, the positive results of S.’s work are historical, and even sociological.Chapter 1, “Scope of the Inquiry,” is perhaps most problematic. S. begins with the role of law in society, the meaning of the term “law,” and philosophical discussions of the nature of law especially in Savigny (7–9). Having set out objections to Savigny’s thesis that every nation’s civil law springs from, and remains true to, its distinctive character or historical circumstances (9–12), S. concludes, somewhat abruptly, that Savigny’s great merit was his recognition that “law can develop without statutory enactment and that the development stays within limits or follows lines that can be discerned” (12). It is so far unclear how Savigny’s thesis pertains to ancient Greece. It remains so during S.’s three illustrations of the development of Greek law beyond statutory enactment, in atimia, testimentary practice, and the marriage of heiresses (12–19). Indeed, it turns out, S. largely rejects Savigny’s primary insight (21–22). For S., laws are shaped not by national character but by “an underlying body of thought” characteristic of the society. Accordingly, S. concludes, the legal historian must fit specific legal provisions into their wider legal and intellectual context... (shrink)

We conducted a four-part study to map out the conceptual space of a diverse set of immoral items, including those that are extreme and/or intergroup (e.g. child sex abuse, genocide, slavery), with the goal of identifying attributes spontaneously used in moral judgment. In Part 1, we identified 56 immoral items. In Part 2, participants completed a similarity-based card sort task of the 56 immoral items. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) indicated that three-dimensional space was needed to capture the perceived differences among the (...) items. In Part 3, regression analysis indicated that perceived similarity among the immoral items related to their commonness, objectivity, forgivability, and legality. In Part 4, regression analysis indicated that the configuration of immoral items corresponded to the amount of anger and disgust the items elicited and items’ perceived harmfulness. We attempt to synthesize these results and answer questions about the roles of anger, disgust, and harm in moral judgment. (shrink)

In recent years, an increasing number of theoretical biologists and philosophers of biology have been opposing reductionist research agendas by appealing to the concept of biological autonomy which draws on the older concept of autopoiesis. In my paper, I investigate some of the ontological implications of this approach. The emphasis on autonomy and autopoiesis, together with the associated idea of organisational closure, might evoke the impression that organisms are to be categorised ontologically as substances: ontologically independent, well-individuated, discrete particulars. However, (...) I argue that this is mistaken. Autopoiesis and biological autonomy, properly understood, require a rigorous commitment to a process ontological view of life. (shrink)

Perceived behavioral integrity involves the employee’s perception of the alignment of the manager’s words and deeds. This meta-analysis examined the relationship between perceived behavioral integrity of managers and the employee attitudes of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, satisfaction with the leader and affect toward the organization. Results indicate a strong positive relationship overall (average r = 0.48, p<0.01). With only 12 studies included, exploration of moderators was limited, but preliminary analysis suggested that the gender of the employees and the number of (...) levels between the employee and the manager are potential moderators of the relationship. In the current sample of studies, country where the research was conducted did not seem to have any moderating effects. In addition to suggesting further investigation of potential moderators, we call for research that examines the relationship between behavioral integrity and outcomes that include individual behavior and organizational performance. (shrink)

Cet article aborde la question du genre en relisant les choses à la lumière du développement psychique de la sexualité de l’être humain. La métapsychologie ne répond pas à la question de savoir comment le sexe vient aux uns et aux autres ni à celle de savoir s’il devrait exister une sortie de la binarité masculin-féminin. Car, pour la métapsychologie, la pulsion sexuelle, présente dès le début, se constitue pour chacun non seulement à l’aune des deux genres connus : bisexualité (...) psychique, mais également de manière multiple selon le sujet, son histoire. Tant au niveau de l’identité sexuée (masculine, féminine ou « autre ») que du choix d’objet (homosexuel, hétérosexuel ou asexuel) et que des moyens mis en œuvre pour la jouissance (autoérotisme, coït, satisfactions hallucinatoires), il n’y a pour la métapsychologie de fermeture d’aucune sorte, mais l’exact inverse : le champ de tous les possibles. (shrink)

Applied to video games, Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow evidences that a positive gaming experience is intrinsically self-rewarding and primarily determined by the skill/challenge balance. A multi-layered measure of enjoyment is built to take these components into account. Gamers were asked to report the concentration-enjoyment they experienced during a first-person shooter game, and to better assess the gap between skill and challenge, the challenge enjoyment was also rated. Along with concentration level, concentration enjoyment is used to build a gaming experience typology (...) that accounts for the self-rewarding component. An enjoyment-based challenge mapping is also drawn up, crossing challenge enjoyment and challenge level. The results show that this integrative enjoyment measure strengthens the causal link between challenge and gaming experience. Most importantly, the findings suggest that challenge or concentration-based enjoyment measures outweigh the standard concentration and difficulty measures as they are more likely to ensure a pleasant and positive experience (flow or relaxation) for the gamers. Indeed, regardless of the reported level of challenge, a gamer is more likely to have a positive experience when challenged at a level she perceives as pleasant. This article emphasizes the importance for game publishers of gathering enjoyment-based concentration and challenge assessments to ensure a positive gaming experience and gamers’ commitment. (shrink)

Background: The professional values presented in ethical guidelines of the Norwegian Nurses Organisation and International Council of Nurses describe nurses’ professional ethics and the obligations that pertain to good nursing practice. The foundation of all nursing shall be respect for life and the inherent dignity of the individual. Research proposes that nurses lack insight in ethical competence and that ethical issues are rarely discussed on the wards. Furthermore, research has for some time confirmed that nurses experience moral distress in their (...) daily work and that this has become a major problem for the nursing profession. Objectives: The purpose of this article is to obtain a deeper understanding of the ethical challenges that nurses face in daily practice. The chosen research questions are “What ethical challenges do nurses experience in their daily practice?” Research design: We conducted a qualitative interview study using a hermeneutical approach to analyzing data describing nurses’ experiences. Ethical considerations: The Norwegian Social Science Data services approved the study. Furthermore, the head of the hospital gave permission to conduct the investigation. The requirement of anonymity and proper data storage in accordance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki was met. Method and results: The context for the study comprised three different clinical wards at a university hospital in Norway. Nine qualified nurses were interviewed. The results were obtained through a systematic development beginning with the discovery of busyness as a painful phenomenon that can lead to conflicts in terms of ethical values. Furthermore, the consequences compromising professional principles in nursing care emerged and ended in moral blindness and emotional immunization of the healthcare providers. Emotional immunization occurred as a new dimension involving moral blindness and immunity in relation to being emotionally touched. (shrink)

Les textes qui rendent ici hommage à Michel Serres (1930-2019) privilégient une singularité et un itinéraire vivants de pensée et d’écriture plus qu’une analyse conceptuelle ou théorique d’aspects de son œuvre.

Background: The professional values presented in ethical guidelines of the Norwegian Nurses Organisation and International Council of Nurses describe nurses’ professional ethics and the obligations that pertain to good nursing practice. The foundation of all nursing shall be respect for life and the inherent dignity of the individual. Research proposes that nurses lack insight in ethical competence and that ethical issues are rarely discussed on the wards. Furthermore, research has for some time confirmed that nurses experience moral distress in their (...) daily work and that this has become a major problem for the nursing profession. Objectives: The purpose of this article is to obtain a deeper understanding of the ethical challenges that nurses face in daily practice. The chosen research questions are “What ethical challenges do nurses experience in their daily practice?” Research design: We conducted a qualitative interview study using a hermeneutical approach to analyzing data describing nurses’ experiences. Ethical considerations: The Norwegian Social Science Data services approved the study. Furthermore, the head of the hospital gave permission to conduct the investigation. The requirement of anonymity and proper data storage in accordance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki was met. Method and results: The context for the study comprised three different clinical wards at a university hospital in Norway. Nine qualified nurses were interviewed. The results were obtained through a systematic development beginning with the discovery of busyness as a painful phenomenon that can lead to conflicts in terms of ethical values. Furthermore, the consequences compromising professional principles in nursing care emerged and ended in moral blindness and emotional immunization of the healthcare providers. Emotional immunization occurred as a new dimension involving moral blindness and immunity in relation to being emotionally touched. (shrink)

"Deleuze plonge la critique kantienne transcendantale dans le bain dissolvant d'un empirisme renouvelé. Ce livre se propose de restituer cette entreprise, et d'analyser l'étonnante création de ce concept, que Deleuze mène depuis ses premières monographies jusqu'à Différence et Répétition dans un dialogue fécond avec l'histoire de la philosophie. Par quelles opérations de distorsion et de collage, Deleuze compose-t-il l'empirisme de Hume, la théorie du signe comme force de Nietzsche, le virtuel et les multiplicités de Bergson, les modes de Spinoza, les (...) individualisations impersonnelles de Simondon pour renouveler la théorie kantienne du transcendantal? C'est tout l'objet de cette enquête, qui permet d'entrer dans le laboratoire du penseur, pour saisir la philosophie se faisant, mais qui permet également d'expliquer l'insistance du transcendantal dans toute son oeuvre"--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

This article presents a descriptive, interpretive theory of ethical responsibility in public health nursing. The theory is based on qualitative empirical studies, a purposeful literature review and meta-ethnography of public health nurses’ experiences of ethical responsibility, interpreted within a philosophical framework. Levianasian philosophy provides the main direction for the authors’ interpretations. The path for theory development consists of three phases: an inspirational phase, an explorative phase and the third phase ‘ joining the dots’. The theory illustrates that ethical responsibility in (...) public health nursing is related to the life existentials of temporality and human relationships. Due to blurred boundaries in these essential life structures, public health nurses can experience a sense of satisfaction but also worries, uncertainties and loneliness. The study reveals paradoxical connections between fear and courage, and between freedom, autonomy and a sense of entrapment in responsible relationships. The authors purport that the results of this study are relevant for education and practice and can provide direction for further studies on developing theories of ethical responsibility in other nursing specialities. (shrink)

The concept of suffering is discussed among those who are cognitively aware and verbally capable to express their suffering. Due to immaturity, preterm infants’ abilities to express suffering are limited. Relieving suffering is an ethical and juridical demand of good nursing care. The purpose of this study is to describe nurses’ perceptions of the suffering of preterm infants. A descriptive qualitative approach was selected. Data were collected from essays written by nurses (n = 19) working in the neonatal intensive care (...) unit. Inductive content analysis guided by the research question was performed. The nurses described individually determined suffering of the preterm infants according to four categories: suffering ruled by maturation, existence of suffering, individual threshold of suffering and interpreting the cues of suffering. Suffering of preterm infants is manifested by population-specific features, emphasising the need to develop sensitive interventions for relieving their suffering. (shrink)

Background: Due to the major changes occurring in the demographic composition of the world’s population, the number of older individuals is increasing, which puts pressure on the healthcare systems in many different countries. The involvement of volunteers and family members may become necessary to fulfil a patient’s needs for follow-up treatments and long-term care in their homes. Aim: This study aimed to explore how nurses and physicians experienced and addressed ethical challenges when they dealt with relatives in what have traditionally (...) been one-on-one consultations at two Norwegian hospital outpatient clinics. Research Design and Methods: A total of eight nurses and two physicians from two different hospitals participated in individual in-depth interviews. The transcribed interviews were analysed using an eclectic approach called ‘bricolage’ inspired by Kvale and Brinkmann. We combined cross-case thematic and theoretical normative analyses. Ethical considerations: The principles of voluntariness, confidentiality, withdrawal and anonymity were respected throughout the research process. In addition, the Norwegian Social Science Data Services approved this study. Findings: The findings showed that respect for a patient’s autonomy was used as an argument for delimiting the relatives’ access to the patient’s consultations. We found that there were insufficient routines in place for inviting and involving relatives in the patient consultations in the outpatient clinics. Discussion: The traditional Western attitudes towards the principles of patient autonomy will likely be challenged due to the growing need for family involvement in the care of a patient in the future. Conclusion: This study’s description of the nurses and physicians’ interpretations of ‘patient autonomy’ as a phenomenon uncover the need for systematic ethical deliberation in the clinical setting. On an organisational level, there is a strong indication of the need to discuss the routines that are in place to invite the next of kin to participate in such patient’s healthcare consultations. (shrink)

In an effort to clear away confusions regarding the role of cultural analysis in historical explanation, this paper proposes a new approach to the issue of cultural autonomy. The premise is that there are two forms of cultural autonomy, analytic and concrete. Analytic autonomy posits the independent structure of culture-its elements, processes, and reproduction. It is achieved through the theoretical and artificial separation of culture from other social structures, conditions, and action. Concrete autonomy establishes the interconnection of culture with the (...) rest of social life, and is achieved by fleshing out the historically specific formulation of particular cultural structures. In addition to theoretically specifying the two forms of cultural autonomy, I demonstrate analytic and concrete autonomy in practice by examining two works that incorporate culture into the analysis of the same historical event. The rewards of recognizing both analytic and concrete cultural autonomy are twofold. First, cultural reductionism can be countered by establishing that culture is structural. Second and more important, once the independent nature of a cultural form is established, its causal contribution to concrete historical situations can be assessed accurately and integrated into historical explanation. (shrink)

The article tries to make the point that William Pietz’s contributions were the first to make a history of the term based on his longue durée and of the matricial embedding of the conceptual and the material into the notion of the fetish. The second argument points that art history can take advantage of William Pietz’s book in redifing the discipline.

Michel Serres a su détecter en l’homme un incoercible besoin de récit pour exister : ces contes, ces mythes, ces histoires qui peuplent et nourrissent l’imaginaire, stimulent la raison, et apaisent les tensions. Conteur, écrivain, il a su combiner en lui la double dimension du « styliste et du grammairien ». Tous ses ouvrages l’attestent. Platon reste la toile de fond d’un type d’écriture où se mêlent, dans l’harmonie, le récit et la démonstration. Philosophe des reliures, non des coupures, Michel (...) Serres a mis au jour la vertu du récit, petit ou grand, d’unir ce qui, sans lui, demeurerait sans consistance, épars, ou, sans doute, muet. (shrink)

This book explores five Platonic dialogues: Lysis, Charmides, Protagoras, Euthydemus, and the Republic. This book uses Socrates’ narrative commentary as its primary interpretive framework. No one has engaged in a sustained attempt to explore the Platonic dialogues from this angle. As a result, it offers a unique contribution to Plato scholarship. The portrait of Socrates that emerges challenges the traditional view of Socrates as an intellectualist and offers a holistic vision of philosophical practice.

Precarious Others: Valuing Singularity -- Alienation and Exclusion: Appreciating Proximity -- Shamed and Shaming: Honouring Students -- Destitute and Dying: Preserving Dignity -- Fears and Frustrations: Acknowledging Desire -- Revitalizing Teaching as Vocation.

This article criticizes recent suggestions that the current ELSI research field should accommodate a new direction towards a ‘post-ELSI’ agenda. Post-ELSI research seeks to avoid the modernist division of responsibility for technical and social issues said to characterize ELSI research. Collaboration and integration are consequently the key terms of post-ELSI strategies that are to distinguish it from ELSI strategies. We argue that this call for a new direction relies on an inadequate generalized analysis of ELSI research as modern that will (...) affect the construal of post-ELSI strategies. We are concerned that the call for post-ELSI shift will exclude imaginative proposals and intellectual freedom by narrowing down the scope and methodologies of ELSI and thereby missing opportunities to play a critical and constructive normative role. Instead of framing current trends in ELSI research as a radical and progressive shift from ELSI to post-ELSI, we suggest an alternative story of expansion and diversification described in terms of a drift from ELSA 1 to ELSA 2, pertaining to acronyms in use in Europe. ELSI research has never been modern. It has been experimenting from the very start on ways to mesh the works of humanist, social and natural scientist in order to bridge and build alignments of emerging scientific and societal goals and matters of concern. The development from ELSA 1 to ELSA 2 expands in our account the range of intellectual and methodological capacities of analysis and engagement of complex and dynamic science-society relationships. We present three areas of ELSA expertise to illustrate that the expertise within the field builds on scholarly achievements within the humanities, social sciences as well as the natural sciences. The plurality of disciplinary background of ELSA researchers represents a valuable diversity that enables mutual criticism and formulations of complementary approaches that together constitute a viable ELSA field. (shrink)

Freadman uses the term genre to access Peirce’s work, and expands this original theoretical approach by proposing that “genre” interacts with “sign” and that this interaction is central to the study of the semiotic in general.

In recent years, an increasing number of medical books and papers attempting to analyse the concepts of health and disease from the perspective of evolutionary biology have been published.This paper introduces the evolutionary approach to health and disease in an attempt to illuminate the premisses and the framework of Darwinian medicine. My primary aim is to analyse to what extent evolutionary theory provides for a biological definition of the concept of disease. This analysis reveals some important differences between functional explanations (...) in the field of evolutionary biology and functional explanations in the field of medicine. Moreover, I shall argue that the biological functions relevant to the health of an organism cannot be determined on the basis of evolutionary theory. Accordingly, it seems that Darwinian medicine does not provide for the definition of a biological concept of disease. Still,Darwinian medicine may suggest why we are susceptible to certain diseases; it might also prove a suggestive heuristic on the basis of which new hypotheses concerning relevant treatments of various diseases might be advanced. (shrink)

Because of the transfer of responsibility from hospitals to community-based settings, providers in home-based care have more responsibilities and a wider range of tasks and responsibilities than before, often with limited resources. The increased responsibilities and the complexity of tasks and patient groups may lead to several ethical challenges. A systematic search in the databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, and SveMed+ was carried out in February 2019 and August 2020. The research question was translated into a modified PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, and (...) Outcome) worksheet. A total of 40 articles were included. The review is conducted according to the Vancouver Protocol. The main findings from the systematic literature review show that ethical challenges experienced by healthcare and social care providers in home-based care are related to autonomy and balancing ethical principles, decisions regarding intensity of care, challenges related to priority settings, truth-telling, and balancing the professional role. Findings regarding ethical challenges within home-based care are in line with findings from institutional healthcare and social care settings. However, some significant differences from the institutional context are also highlighted. (shrink)

The views on plagiarism of 574 students at four Australian universities operating in Singapore were investigated through a survey and interviews. Analysis of students’ responses to different plagiarism scenarios revealed misconceptions and uncertainties about many aspects of plagiarism. Self-plagiarism and reuse of a friend’s work were acceptable to more than one quarter of the students, and nearly half considered collusion to be a legitimate form of collaboration. One quarter of the students also indicated that they would knowingly plagiarize. This should (...) serve as a wake-up call regarding plagiarism in transnational higher education. Seven measures are recommended to curb plagiarism and foster academic integrity. (shrink)

This paper interprets the British legislative process that initiated the first comprehensive national regulation of embryo research and fertility services and examines subsequent efforts to restrain the assisted reproduction industry. After describing and evaluating British regulatory measures, I consider successive failures to control the assisted reproduction industry in the US. I discuss disparities between UK and US regulatory initiatives and their bearing on regulation in other countries. Then I turn to the political and social structures in which the assisted reproduction (...) industry is embedded. I argue that regulatory bodies are seldom neutral arbiters. They tend to respond most readily to special interests and neglect strategies that could more effectively meet the health needs of the people they represent. Neither national nor international bodies have aggressively pursued policies to harness the industry, reduce infertility rates, or meet the needs of people whose fertility is threatened by substandard healthcare and environmental neglect. In conclusion, I consider recent initiatives by activist groups to mount an alternative response to the industry's current practices and build a transnational reproductive justice movement. (shrink)

Here is the question: what constitutes a good explanation of phenomena?

The American Medical Association's Code of Ethics prohibits physicians from giving substances they believe are placebos to their patients unless the patient is informed of and agrees to use of the substance. Various questions surround the AMA policy, however. One of these has to do with what should be disclosed. The AMA holds that any treatment that the physician believes is a placebo should be identified as such to the patient. But consider a more restrictive policy that requires physicians to (...) defer to the medical community's consensus view about which treatments have a specific effect on the condition being treated. In light of the ethical goals that the AMA identifies—namely, concerns about patient trust, autonomy, and benefit—there are potential advantages to the more restrictive policy. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 1, Page 55-74, February 2022. Many find that the objectionable nature of paternalism has something to do with belief. However, since it is commonly held that beliefs are directly governed by epistemic as opposed to moral norms, how could it be objectionable to hold paternalistic beliefs about others if they are supported by the evidence? Drawing on central elements of relational egalitarianism, this paper attempts to bridge this gap. In a first step, it (...) argues that holding paternalistic beliefs about others implies a failure to regard them as equals in terms of their moral agency. In a second step, it shows that the fact that we should regard others as equals in this sense raises the threshold for sufficiency of evidence for paternalistic beliefs to be epistemically justified. That is, moral reasons of relational equality encroach on the epistemic. However, these reasons are not decisive. In cases where others are about to jeopardize critical goods such as their lives, mobility or future autonomy, relational equality sometimes calls for paternalistic action and, by extension, the formation of beliefs that render such action rational. The upshot is that in order to meet demands of relational equality we have a pro tanto reason to not hold paternalistic beliefs about others. (shrink)

The general typology for the dialogue between religion and science is built on the assumption that there is an objective world, one reality that can be described. In this paper, I present an alternative epistemological framework for the dialogue that understands all descriptions of reality as symbolic. Therefore, this understanding creates a new possibility for mutual enrichment between the two dialogue partners. I demonstrate the usefulness of this framework by applying it to the dialogue between artificial intelligence (AI) and theology. (...) I discuss an advanced AI project: Cog, a humanoid robot. After briefly describing this project, its assumptions, and the emotions it creates (mainly hope and fear), I show how the project can be enriched by theological insight. The concept ofimago Dei—the understanding of humans created in the image of God—can be applied to the Cog project especially when it is presented in a way that takes the metaphorical character of both theological and scientific theories seriously. (shrink)

I distinguish between the classical Gricean approach to conversational implicatures , which I call the action-theoretic approach, and the approach to CIs taken in contemporary cognitive science. Once we free ourselves from the AT account, and see implicating as a form of what I call “conversational tailoring”, we can more easily see the many different ways that CIs arise in conversation. I will show that they arise not only on the basis of a speaker’s utterance of complete sentences but also (...) on the basis of sub-sentential clauses—cases of so-called embedded implicatures—as well as from discourse segments containing several sentences—cases that Geurts calls ‘multiplicatures’. I will argue that they arise also from contents that are themselves implicit, such as presupposed contents or other implicatures. All but the first sort of case are difficult for the traditional Gricean AT account to handle, whereas they fall naturally out of an account that sees conversational participants as engaged in conversational tailoring—i.e., as engaged in a process of shaping informational and discourse structural properties of utterances in their successive conversational turns, and hence shaping their interlocutors’ cognitive environments. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to investigate how life in Norwegian nursing homes may affect experiences of dignity among persons with dementia. The study had a qualitative design and used a phenomenological and hermeneutic approach. Participant observation in two nursing home units was combined with qualitative interviews with five residents living in these units. The study took place between March and December 2010. The residents feel that their freedom is restricted, and they describe feelings of homesickness. They also experience (...) that they are not being seen and heard as individual autonomous persons. This lack of freedom, experiences of homesickness and feelings of not being confirmed and respected as individual autonomous persons may be a threat to their personal dignity. In order to protect and enforce the dignity of persons with dementia living in nursing home, we should confirm them as whole and as individual persons, and we should try to make the nursing homes less institutional and more home like. (shrink)

Background: Research suggests that nurses generally do not participate in ethical decision-making in accordance with ethical guidelines for nurses. In addition to completing their training, nurses need to reflect on and use ethically grounded arguments and defined ethical values such as patient’s dignity in their clinical work. Objectives: The purpose of this article is to gain a deeper understanding of how nurses deal with ethical decision-making in daily practice. The chosen research question is “How do nurses participate in ethical decision-making (...) for the patient?” Design and method: We use Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics as well as Kvale and Brinkmann’s three levels of understanding in interpreting the data material. Nine registered nurses were interviewed. Ethical considerations: The Ombudsman of Norwegian Social Science Data and the head of the hospital approved the investigation. The participants received both oral and written information about the study and they gave their consent. We informed the participants that the participation was voluntary and that they were free to withdraw at any point in the course of the study. The requirement of anonymity and proper data storage was in accordance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki (1964). The participants were assured that privacy, and confidentiality would be duly protected. Results: Four key themes emerged: (1) confusion in relation to professional and operational expectations of role, (2) ideal somnolence, (3) inadequate argumentation skills, and (4) compound pressure. Conclusion: Ethical ideals appear to be latent in the mindset of the participants; however, the main finding of this investigation is that nurses need to activate the ideals and apply them into practice. Furthermore, management needs to initiate professional reasoning and interdisciplinary discussions leading to common goals for patients. (shrink)

Bishop is a professor of nursing; Scudder is a professor of philosophy.

The aim of this paper is to question the significance of Derrida's deconstruction of the concepts of subject and history. While ‘postmodernity’ tends to be characterized by philosophical critique as the ‘liquidation of the subject’ or the ‘end of history’, I attempt to show that Derrida's deconstruction of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘historicity’ is not an elimination or destruction of these concepts, but an attempt to transform them in order to free them from their metaphysical-teleological presuppositions. This paper argues that this transformation, (...) which begins in Derrida's and continues in Stiegler's texts, leads to the notions of ‘psycho-social individuation’ and ‘doubly epokhal redoubling’. I maintain that such notions ‘supplement’ the metaphysical concepts of subject and history by forcing a reconsideration of the technical conditions of psychic individuation and the technological conditions of ‘epochality’. (shrink)