A cause is proportional to its effect when, roughly speaking, it is at the right level of detail. There is a lively debate about whether proportionality is a necessary condition for causation. One of the main arguments against a proportionality constraint on causation is that many ordinary and seemingly perfectly acceptable causal claims cite causes that are not proportional to their effects. In this paper, I suggest that proponents of a proportionality constraint can respond to this objection by developing an (...) idea that is present in Yablo’s early work on proportionality, but which has strangely been ignored by both Yablo and others in the subsequent debate. My suggestion is that proportionality—and, indeed, causation itself—is relative to a domain of events. At the metaphysical level, this means that the causal relation has an extra relatum—namely, a domain of events. At the level of language, it introduces a new way in which causal claims are context-sensitive: what is expressed by a causal claim depends on the contextually relevant domain of events. As I argue, this suggestion allows us to accommodate the truth of ordinary causal claims while extending the explanatory benefits of a proportionality constraint. (shrink)

In this paper I outline an “agent-centered” approach to learning ethics. The approach is “agent-centered” in that its central aim is to prepare students toact wisely and responsibly when faced with moral problems. The methods characteristic of this approach are suitable for integrating material on professional and research ethics into technical courses, as well as for free-standing ethics courses. The analogy I draw between ethical problems and design problems clarifies the character of ethical problems as they are experienced by those (...) who must respond to them. It exposes the mistake, common in ethics teaching, of misrepresenting moral problems as multiple-choice problems, especially in the form of ‘dilemmas’, that is, a forced choice between two unacceptable alternatives. Furthermore, I clarify the importance for responsible practice of recognizing any ambiguity in the problem situation. (shrink)

We typically judge that hasteners are causes of what they hasten, while delayers are not causes of what they delay. These judgements, I suggest, are sensitive to an underlying metaphysical distinction. To see this, we need to pay attention to a relation that I call positive security-dependence, where an event E security-depends positively on an earlier event C just in case E could more easily have failed to occur if C had not occurred. I suggest that we judge that an (...) event C is a cause of a later event E only if E security-depends positively on C. This explains our causal judgements in typical cases of hastening and delaying as well as in atypical cases, where we judge that hasteners are not causes of what they hasten or that delayers are causes of what they delay. (shrink)

Where is America in the republic of letters? This question has formed in my mind over the last four years as I have collaborated on a new project based at Stanford University called Mapping the Republic of Letters. The project aims to enrich our understanding of the intellectual networks of major and minor figures in the republic of letters, the international world of learning that spanned the centuries roughly from 1400 to 1800. By creating visual images based on large digitized (...) data sets, we hope to reveal the hidden structures and conditions that nourished the growth of the republic of letters in the early modern era and the causes of its transformation in the nineteenth century. This task has only recently become feasible with the digitization of the correspondences of major intellectuals such as Benjamin Franklin, John Locke, Athanasius Kircher, and Voltaire, and of libraries, cabinets of artifacts, and Grand Tour itineraries. (shrink)

China’s remarkable gains in science over the past 25 years have been well documented but it is less well known that China and the United States have become each other’s top collaborating country. Science and technology has been a primary vehicle for growing the bilateral relationship between China and the United States since the opening of relations between the two countries in the late 1970s. During the early 2000s, the scientific relationship between China and the United States—as measured in coauthored (...) papers—showed significant growth :295–302, 2007). Chinese scientists claim first authorship much more frequently than U.S. counterparts by the end of the decade. The sustained rate of increase of collaboration with one other country is unprecedented on the U.S. side. Even growth in relations with eastern European nations does not match the growth in the relationship between China and the United States. Both countries can benefit from the relationship, but for the U.S., greater benefit would come from a more targeted strategy. (shrink)

In the first edition of The Gay Science (GS), Nietzsche proposes that we treat knowledge as unconditionally valuable and life as a tragic quest for truth. In the second edition of GS, he seems to retract this proposal, suggesting that we substitute “incipit parodia” for “incipit tragœdia.” But Nietzsche does not say what he means by “parody,” or what role he believes it should play in our evaluative lives. This article proposes that by introducing parody into GS, Nietzsche intends not (...) only to correct the original text by mocking his earlier treatment of science as tragic, but also to designate parody as a basis for new tasks, duties, and values beyond what science can offer. This article speculates that parodic value creation might consist in the imitation of behaviors and practices associated with preexisting values without the reproduction of the beliefs and feelings corresponding to those practices. (shrink)

It has been well documented that children perceive robots as social, mental, and moral others. Studies on child-robot interaction may encourage this perception of robots, first, by using a Wizard of Oz set-up and, second, by having robots engage in self-description. However, much remains unknown about the effects of transparent teleoperation and self-description on children’s perception of, and relationship formation with a robot. To address this research gap initially, we conducted an experimental study with a 2 × 2 between-subject design (...) in which 168 children aged 7–10 interacted with a Nao robot once. Transparency about the teleoperation procedure decreased children’s perceptions of the robot’s autonomy and anthropomorphism. Self-description reduced the degree to which children perceived the robot as being similar to themselves. Transparent teleoperation and self-description affected neither children’s perceptions of the robot’s animacy and social presence nor their closeness to and trust in the robot. (shrink)

The preferred tool for conceptualizing, determining, and claiming relations of kinship, ancestry, and descent among humans are diagrams. For this reason, and at the same time to avoid a reduction to biology as transported by terms such as kinship, ancestry, and descent, we introduce the expression diagrammatics of relatedness. We seek to understand the enormous influence that especially tree diagrams have had as a way to express and engage with human relatedness, but hold that this success can only be adequately (...) understood by attending to what in fact are broader diagrammatic practices. These practices bring to light that diagrams of relatedness do not simply make visible natural connections, but create or deny relations in particular ways and for particular reasons. In this special section, contributors investigate diagrams of relatedness in genealogy, heredity, as well as biological and social anthropology. Conceiving of diagrams as techniques that transcend such binaries as ‘thought and action’ and ‘image and text’, we aim at an understanding of how they were constructed and how they functioned in particular epistemic, cultural, and political contexts. (shrink)

Probing semantic relations Exploration and identification in specialized texts Alain Auger and Caroline Barrière In recent years, several scientific ...

With the COVID-19 pandemic, governments implemented successive lockdowns that forced employees to work from home to contain the spread of the coronavirus. This crisis raises the question of the effects of mandatory work from home on employees’ well-being and performance, and whether these effects are the same for all employees. In the present study, we examined whether working at home may be related to intensity, familiarity with WFH, employees’ well-being and creativity. We also examined whether the psychological profile of employees, (...) combining preference for solitude and associated personality variables from the Big Five, may influence the effects of WFH. The data were collected via an online survey from November 13th to December 15th 2020 among 946 employees from various organizations during the second lockdown in France. In addition to identifying two distinctive psychological profiles for employees having to WFH, results revealed that those with a “Solitary” profile reported higher loneliness at work, higher levels of stress, and lower levels of job satisfaction and work engagement than those with an “Affiliative” profile. It was also found that employees with a “Solitary” profile perceived themselves as less creative and produced objectively fewer ideas than individuals with an “Affiliative” profile. The present study suggests the necessity to distinguish the profiles of teleworkers and to offer a stronger support for the less affiliative employees when working from home. (shrink)

Leadership takes a central role in the public affairs agenda. This article is a review of published works on leadership focusing on the concept of grace. It discusses the role of compassion and kindness in current leadership theory and practice and whether these attributes have value in sustainable models. Findings indicate that there is conceptual confusion regarding the definition of compassion and its application in leadership practices. Kindness is not discussed within the concept of compassion and kindness itself may be (...) viewed as a weakness in contemporary self-selected leadership characteristics. The conclusions suggest there is disconnect between contemporary models of leadership and calls for sustainable ethical leadership in the spheres of public and business environments. Compassion and kindness remain in the side-lines yet the implications for future trust and commitment are neglected in times where discretionary effort of workers and volunteers is crucial to goal achievement. (shrink)

In her last novella, The Hour of the Star, Lispector makes plain that the brilliance of life – any life whatever – lies in its capacity to endlessly contemplate itself and that as such it is inseparable from its mode of contemplation. As we will suggest in this article, Lispector’s view of life as living contemplation resonates with Giorgio Agamben’s conception of being as potentiality. In the last installment of his Homo Sacer series, The Use of Bodies, Agamben tries to (...) offer an alternative paradigm of life to that of Western biopolitics, whose power operates on its separation of bare life from forms of life. Central to this new ontology is Agamben’s notion of a life as inseparable from its mode or form, as he highlights using a hyphen: form-of-life. By form-of-life, Agamben means that one’s living is never reducible to the biological or economic facts of existence because it essentially concerns itself with its potentialities, its singular modes of being. Life that contemplates itself is a life which simply is without being reducible to its function. In The Hour of the Star, Lispector’s heroine, Macabéa is not simply a figure of bare life as some critics have suggested by reducing her life to her factual circumstances. She is rather a figure whose life is affected by its own sensation of existing – its unborn possibilities. (shrink)

Bullying remains a pervasive problem in healthcare, and evidence suggests systems in place are not utilised due to perceptions of ineffectiveness and inequity. This study examines bystander responses to bullying and factors that influence decisions to intervene. We explore relationships between bystanders’ perceptions of psychological safety across three levels (organisation, supervisor and colleague) and reactions to witnessing bullying. We suggest psychological safety would be positively associated with the decision to intervene. Findings indicate the most pervasive reaction to witnessing incidents of (...) bullying is to discuss with colleagues, a low‐involvement reaction. We find perceptions of supervisory and organisational safety/support are positively related to high‐involvement decisions such as formal reporting of the incidents, highlighting the importance of support from those in power. However, perceptions of collegial support may lead to low‐involvement responses, which risk reinforcing and underpinning dysfunctional organisational dynamics by providing informal social and emotional responses that may substitute more formal organisational responses to this persistent problem. This study highlights the importance of support from individuals in power if bystanders are to feel comfortable making high‐involvement interventions. (shrink)

Resenha da tradução da Ética, de Baruch de Espinosa, da Editora Relógio d'Água.

: Para que se possa abordar a sociabilidade em Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), é importante mencionar a importância que a autora confere, em suas obras, à necessidade de organização dos grupos humanos por meio de regras, assim como de que essas regras sejam seguidas para a preservação da vida em conjunto. Segundo a autora, a política é a maneira humana de convívio entre os homens e mulheres por meio do gerenciamento de questões emergentes, sem o uso de qualquer coação. Ainda, para (...) ela, a igualdade não se origina da linhagem, do status social, mas da igualdade no sentido de poder agir em conjunto. Assim o indivíduo tem um importante papel a ser exercido na esfera política, enquanto cidadão. Nesse contexto, é preciso que haja um “espaço público”, bem como, que os cidadãos tenham a liberdade para expressar-se, podendo contestar, discutir as ideias e ideais, sem utilizar-se de qualquer tipo de violência, buscando, por meio dessa elaboração conjunta, adquirir outros direitos, por exemplo, à saúde, à educação, à moradia, ao emprego. A existência da possibilidade de ver e ser visto, discordar e poder expor isso, para Arendt, apenas ocorre em uma convivência política, na pluralidade, buscando a elaboração de regras para a organização do grupo em que vivem e pelo qual se sentirão partícipes e responsáveis. Ou seja, é uma atitude que ocorre em um espaço público de encontro de iguais, enquanto cidadãos, diferentes, enquanto seres únicos por nascimento, a fim de conseguir, mesmo que momentaneamente, a garantia de paz no convívio das singularidades. O presente texto visa a destacar a importância da necessidade dos laços de sociabilidade em um Estado Democrático de Direito, a partir da obra Origens do Totalitarismo, no qual Arendt descreve o Regime Totalitário vivenciado por ela, bem como, a ruptura dos laços de sociabilidade, fatos passíveis de discussão para pensar a situação política, não somente do Brasil como também de outros estados considerados democráticos. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Arendt; Política; Sociabilidade; Ordenamento Jurídico; Totalitarismo. (shrink)

IntroductionDeep brain stimulation (DBS) is increasingly used to treat the symptoms of various neurologic and psychiatric conditions. People can undergo the procedure during reproductive years but the safety of DBS in pregnancy remains relatively unknown given the paucity of published cases. We thus conducted a review of the literature to determine the state of current knowledge about DBS in pregnancy and to determine how eligibility criteria are approached in clinical trials with respect to pregnancy and the potential for pregnancy.MethodsA literature (...) review was conducted in EMBASE to identify articles involving DBS and pregnancy. Two reviewers independently analyzed the articles to confirm inclusion. Data extracted for analysis included conditions treated, complications at all stages of pregnancy, neonatal/pediatric outcomes, and DBS target. A second search was then conducted using www.clinicaltrials.gov. The same two reviewers then assessed whether each trial excluded pregnant individuals, lactating individuals, or persons of childbearing age planning to conceive. Also assessed was whether contraception had to be deemed adequate prior to enrollment.ResultsThe literature search returned 681 articles. Following independent analysis and agreement of two reviewers, 8 pregnancy related DBS articles were included for analysis. These articles described 27 subjects, 29 pregnancies (2 with subsequent pregnancies), and 31 infants (2 twin pregnancies). There was 1 preterm birth at 35 weeks, and 3 patients who experienced discomfort from the DBS battery (i.e., impulse generator) placement site. All 27 patients had a DBS device implanted before they became pregnant, which remained in use throughout their pregnancy. There was exclusion of pregnant individuals from 68% of 135 interventional trials involving DBS. Approximately 44% of these trials excluded persons of childbearing age not on “adequate contraception” or wishing to conceive in the coming years. Finally, 22% excluded breastfeeding persons.ConclusionThe data from 29 pregnancies receiving DBS treatment during pregnancy was not associated with unexpected pregnancy or post-partum complication patterns. Many clinical trials have excluded pregnant individuals. Documentation of outcomes in larger numbers of pregnancies will help clarify the safety profile and will help guide study designs that will safely include pregnant patients. (shrink)

This article illuminates the relationship between John Rawls' and Michael Walzer's accounts of non-domestic justice by tracing its connection to their domestic relationship. More precisely, it places the celebrated positional shifts that characterize the latter within the context of the fundamental justificatory tension between their projects which endures: reason vs trust; and then juxtaposes this justificatory tension and their non-domestic political prescriptions. Such contextualization is important to the clarification of the pair's non-domestic relationship since it enables the observation that despite (...) this enduring justificatory tension these political prescriptions are remarkably similar. (shrink)

This article focuses on a slightly earlier period in its investigation of the meanings of and associations with the term normal than Cryle and Stephens have done in their recent book. It looks at the establishment and rapid demise of the Ecole normale (normal school) in Paris in 1794–5, founded on the same model as a school for the manufacture of arms that had operated in spring 1794, and suggests that this model was not only responsible for some of the (...) problems the Ecole normale experienced, setting up unachievable expectations of rapid efficacy, but also had an impact on what its name was assumed to mean. Moving between, on the one hand, an analysis of explicit (and opposing) definitions of what the term normal meant, and, on the other, an account of how the Ecole normale was set up and what it was set up to do, this paper agrees with Cryle and Stephens that the term was ‘formed in controversy’, and fills in the intellectual and philosophical context from which the notion of the statistical norm would emerge. (shrink)

Inspired by Voltaire's advice that a text needs to be concise to have real influence, this anthology contains fiery extracts by forty eighteenth-century authors, from the most famous philosophers of the age to those whose brilliant writings are less well-known. These passages are immensely diverse in style and topic, but all have in common a passionate commitment to equality, freedom, and tolerance. Each text resonates powerfully with the issues our world faces today. Tolerance was first published by the Société française (...) d'étude du dix-huitième siècle (the French Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo assassinations in January 2015 as an act of solidarity and as a response to the surge of interest in Enlightenment values. With the support of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, it has now been translated by over 100 students and tutors of French at Oxford University."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

[From SEP]: Contemporary virtue epistemology (hereafter ‘VE’) is a diverse collection of approaches to epistemology. At least two central tendencies are discernible among the approaches. First, they view epistemology as a normative discipline. Second, they view intellectual agents and communities as the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, with a focus on the intellectual virtues and vices embodied in and expressed by these agents and communities. This entry introduces many of the most important results of the contemporary VE research program. These (...) include novel attempts to resolve longstanding disputes, solve perennial problems, grapple with novel challenges, and expand epistemology’s horizons. In the process, it reveals the diversity within VE. Beyond sharing the two unifying commitments mentioned above, its practitioners diverge over the nature of intellectual virtues, which questions to ask, and which methods to use. It will be helpful to note some terminology before proceeding. First, we use ‘cognitive’, ‘epistemic’ and ‘intellectual’ synonymously. Second, we often use ‘normative’ broadly to include not only norms and rules, but also duties and values. Finally, ‘practitioners’ names contemporary virtue epistemologists. (shrink)

In this paper, Charles Mills discusses what he calls “white ignorance”, developing one of the main themes of his 1997 book, The Racial Contract. His discussion is concerned with the idea of a cognitive disadvantage based on membership in a social group, which is not strange to the radical philosophical tradition, and that has been explored with more vigor in the recent Social Epistemology, in debates about epistemic injustices, silencing, willful ignorance, cognitive biases, epistemological standpoints, etc. Mills argues for an (...) “Epistemology of the white ignorance”, a racially and socially situated epistemology, which contraposes itself, in a great extent, to the individualistic tendencies of the traditional epistemological work, while conserving the interests in objectivity and truth of this work. (shrink)

We can think about the use of controlled substances in the treatment of anxiety disorders in two simple but diametrically opposed ways. First, we can say that anxiety disorders are trivial and require only acts of willpower, or, if anxiety disorders do require treatment, they are better treated without the use of benzodiazepines. When BZs are used to treat anxiety, they pose grave risks of addiction to the patients to whom these medicines are prescribed; they relieve patients’ symptoms, but are (...) the equivalent of a pharmacological “roach motel,” a haven into which many unsuspecting patients enter, but from which few emerge without becoming addicted. Patients must then face terrible struggles to free themselves of dependence on BZs, and this compounds the problem for which they sought treatment. Furthermore, the large number of prescriptions for BZs are a threat to the public health because these drugs are widely abused by alcoholics and drug addicts. (shrink)

Op-ed written with historian Caroline Light about some of the ways that ideas of democratic citizenship can become perverted by the idea that personal safety required armed defense against attacks by strangers.

BackgroundImplementation of recommendations from clinical practice guidelines is essential for evidence based clinical practice. However, the most effective methods of implementation are unclear. We conducted a national, cluster-randomised, blinded implementation trial to determine if midwife or doctor local implementation leaders are more effective in implementing a guideline for use of oral dextrose gel to treat hypoglycaemic babies on postnatal wards. To prevent any conscious or unconscious performance bias both the doctor and midwife local implementation leaders were kept unaware of the (...) trial. This paper reports the ethical dilemmas and practical challenges of ensuring clinicians remained unaware of their involvement in an implementation trial.MethodsWe sought approval from the National Health and Disability Ethics committee to keep clinicians unaware of the trial by waiving the standard requirement for locality approval usually required for each district health board. The ethics committee did not approve a waiver of consent but advised that we approach the chief executive of each district health board to ask for provisional locality approval. Ultimately it was necessary to seek ethics approval for three separate study designs to keep clinicians unaware of the trial.ResultsThe median time for chief executive approval was 16 days and for locality approval was 57 days. We completed 21 different locality approval forms for 27 hospitals.ConclusionsKeeping clinicians unaware of their involvement in a national implementation cluster-randomised trial is feasible. However, despite a national ethics committee, significant logistical challenges were time consuming and delayed trial completion. Co-ordination of the locality approval process would help facilitate multi-centre trials. (shrink)

This article aims to deepen and extend theoretical understanding of mobility by exploring some of the mechanisms by which it operates. It introduces the concept and practices of ‘tacking’ as a frame for examining the creative processes of navigation and improvisation through which people approach and reflect on the irregularities and uncertainties of their everyday rounds, enacted or otherwise narrated as spatial biography – lives conceived in mobile-spatial terms. ‘Tacking’ also travels beyond this frame of reference, i.e. it is ‘good (...) to think with’ across different substantive contexts of social interaction. Tacking suggests ongoing adjustment and modification that respond to shifting circumstances and may create new facts on the ground, which elicit further adjustments. (shrink)

We consider here how cultural and socioeconomic dimensions of justice beyond the state are related. First we examine cosmopolitan theories that have drawn on John Rawls's egalitarian liberal framework to argue that a just global order requires substantive, transnational redistribution of material resources. We then assess the view, ironically put forward by Rawls himself, that this perspective is ethnocentric and insufficiently tolerant of non-liberal cultures. We argue that Rawls is right to be concerned about the danger of ethnocentrism, but wrong (...) to assume that this requires us to reject the case for substantive redistribution across state boundaries. A more compelling account of justice beyond the state will integrate effectively socioeconomic and cultural aspects of justice. We suggest that this approach is best grounded in a critical theory of recognition that responds to the damage caused to human relations by legacies of historical injustice. (shrink)

At first sight, classical architecture, with its continuous revivals and reworking of the forms of Greek and Roman building, would appear to offer a privileged field in which to apply Warburg's central notion of the survival of classical forms and his view of art history's unfolding as a process of remembrance. Yet Warburg himself did not write on architecture. The topic has also largely vanished from the pages of the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, though in the past (...) the journal has been the venue for influential publications on classical architecture. By comparing two Warburg circle publications from 1949 — Fritz Saxl and Rudolf Wittkower's British Art and the Mediterranean World and Wittkower's Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism — this article shows that architectural history of this kind, developed in the context of the Warburg Institute, is connected not only to Aby Warburg's ideas on Nachleben der Antike and Mnemosyne, but also to the organization and holdings of the Warburg Institute Library. Working in the Warburg Library gives architectural historians the intellectual space to think about architecture in terms of design issues, but moreover as an actor shaping society and culture. This article concludes that Warburg's thought offers important, and thus far hardly explored, starting points for new investigations of the built classical heritage. (shrink)

This paper traces the unspoken, implicit white racial logic of the brain disease model of addiction, which is based on seemingly universal, disembodied brains devoid of social or environmental influences. In the United States, this implicit white logic led to “context-free” neuroscience that made the social hierarchies of addiction and its consequences invisible to, and thus exacerbated by, national policies on opioids. The brain disease model of addiction was selectively deployed among the white middle-class population that had long accessed narcotics (...) and pharmaceutical treatments for narcotics disorders from biomedical clinics, as opposed to from illegal sources subject to law enforcement. In turn, new treatments for opioid addiction were racially marketed to the same white clientele to which newly patented opioid analgesics were marketed, tapping into a circumscribed but highly lucrative consumer base that has long benefited from a legally protected, racially segregated safe space for white narcotics consumption. The connecting thread for the contemporary white opioid “crisis,” therefore, is white race as a ghost variable in addiction neuroscience and in its pharmaceutical and biotechnological translation. (shrink)

There seems to be a proliferation of prizes and rankings for ethical business over the past decade. Our principal aims in this article are twofold: to initiate an academic discussion of the epistemic and normative stakes in business-ethics competitions; and to help organizers of such competitions to think through some of these issues and the design options for dealing with them. We have been able to find no substantive literature — academic or otherwise — that addresses either of these two (...) broad topics and audiences. Our modest aim, therefore, is to suggest an agenda of issues, and to begin to explore and analyse some of the possible arguments for and against various philosophical or practical solutions. Part I explores the challenges facing a prize-organizing committee, including problems derived from what Rawls calls the "fact of pluralism" in democratic societies (reasonable people will always disagree over some basic values, including those relevant to evaluating business practices), and epistemic issues about how we can justify qualitative judgments on the basis of incomplete quantitative data. We also try to identify risks and opportunity costs for ethics-prize granters. In Part II we spell out (a) a range of design options and (b) some advice about how any particular prize-awarding committee might select among these options to best achieve its goals (which typically involve highlighting and publicizing best practices for ethical business). (shrink)

Recent neuroscientific research has caused a paradigm shift in our understanding of the meaning and scope of compassion. Derived from the Latin root compassiō, compassion used to be a religious emotion that implied suffering with the perceived sufferer, whereas now it is examined as a psychological, neuroscientific, neurobiological, and thus natural, phenomenon. The newly arisen research interest in compassion led to the development of secular compassion training programs that follow closely in the footsteps of the “mindfulness revolution.” Whereas the latter (...) has been criticized for its reductionist appropriation of Buddhist thought by the capitalist west, in this paper, I demonstrate that the secularization of compassion is the result of innovative activities by representatives of the Buddhist traditions. I argue that some of the causes for the recent secularization and sciencization can be traced back into the fourteenth century Tibet, namely to the innovative exegetical activities of the scholars of the Tibetan Lojong tradition. I argue that from the perspective of the tradition, the sciencization of compassion resembles a deliberate purposeful “translation” effort that fits into the “two-track approach” of Buddhist propagation. (shrink)

BackgroundAs the range of therapeutic options in the field of oncology increases, so too does the strain on health care budgets. The imbalance between what is medically possible and financially feasible is frequently rendered as an issue of tragic choices, giving rise to public controversies around health care rationing.Main bodyWe analyse the Norwegian media discourse on expensive cancer drugs and identify four underlying premises: (1) Cancer drugs are de facto expensive, and one does not and should not question why. (2) (...) Cancer drugs have an indubitable efficacy. (3) Any lifetime gained for a cancer patient is an absolute good, and (4) cancer patients and doctors own the truth about cancer. Applying a principle-based approach, we argue that these premises should be challenged on moral grounds. Within the Norwegian public discourse, however, the premises largely remain unchallenged due to what we find to be unjustified claims of moral superiority. We therefore explore alternative framings of the issue of expensive cancer drugs and discuss their potential to escape the predicament of tragic choices.ConclusionsIn a media discourse that has seemingly stagnated, awareness of the framings within it is necessary in order to challenge the current tragic choices predicament the discourse finds itself in. In order to allow for a discourse not solely concerned with the issue of tragic choices, the premises that underlie it must be subjected to critical examination. As the field of oncology advances rapidly, we depend on a discussion of its opportunities and challenges that is meaningful, and that soberly addresses the future of cancer care—both its potential and its limits. (shrink)