Lower limb major amputations are both life-saving procedures and life-changing events. Individual responses to limb loss are varied and complex, some individuals experience functional, psychological and social dysfunction, many others adjust and function well. Some patients refuse amputation for religious and/or cultural reasons. One of the greatest difficulties for a person undergoing amputation surgery is overcoming the psychological stigma that society associates with the loss of a limb. Persons who have undergone amputations are often viewed as incomplete individuals. The medical (...) and physical consequences of amputation serve as the centerpiece in acute care and are commonly at the forefront of prosthetic rehabilitation. Prosthetic prescription aims to compensate for functional and/or cosmetic losses where possible. The aims of rehabilitation following amputation are to restore acceptable levels of functioning that allow individuals to achieve their goals, to facilitate personal health, and to improve participation in society and quality of life either with or without prosthesis. Our article aims at underscoring some medical, social and religious aspects that can contribute to the wellbeing of patients who suffer a life changing event such as lower limb amputation. (shrink)

Neurotechnological advancement hinges on cohesive collaboration among diverse stakeholders, all unified in improving user quality of life. However, identifying the specific individuals who should q...

In emergency contexts, leaders’ ability to develop others’ trust in them is critical to leadership effectiveness. By integrating functional leadership and team process theories, we argue that democratic and autocratic leadership can create trust in the leader depending on the performance phase of the action team. We further argue that action and transition phases produce different task demands for leadership behavior to enhance trust in the leader, and different leader characteristics mediate these effects. The results of a scenario experiment and (...) field survey among firefighters revealed that autocratic rather than democratic leadership elevates trust in the leader during the action phase by increasing leader ability. In contrast, democratic rather than autocratic leadership enhances trust in the leader during the transition phase by elevating leader benevolence. These findings highlight the importance of leader characteristics in emergencies, demonstrating the value of mixing autocratic and democratic leadership behaviors across different team performance phases to build trust in the leader. (shrink)

Recent efforts in a range of scientific fields have emphasised research and methods concerning individual differences and individualisation. This article brings together various scientific disciplines—ecology, evolution, and animal behaviour; medicine and psychiatry; public health and sport/exercise science; sociology; psychology; economics and management science—and presents their research on individualisation. We then clarify the concept of individualisation as it appears in the disciplinary casework by distinguishing three kinds of individualisation studied in and across these disciplines: Individualisation ONE as creating/changing individual differences (the (...) process that generates differences between individuals: intrapopulation or intraspecific variation/heterogeneity); Individualisation TWO as individualising applications (the tailoring or customising of something—information, treatment, a product or service, etc.—for an individual or specific group of individuals); and Individualisation THREE as social changes influencing autonomy, risk, and responsibilities (the process discussed under the rubric of sociological individualisation theory). Moreover, we analyse conceptual links between individualisation and individuality, and characterise different sorts of individuality that the disciplines study. This paper aims to promote interdisciplinary research concerning individualisation by establishing a common conceptual-theoretical basis, while leaving room for disciplinary differences. (shrink)

Claudia Card did not live long enough to complete her work on surviving evils. Yet she left us an invaluable body of work on this topic. This essay surveys Card's views about the nature of evils and the ethical quandaries of surviving them. It then develops an account of survival agency that is based on Card's insights and in keeping with the agentic capacities exercised by Yezidi women and girls who have escaped from ISIS's obscene program of trafficking in (...) women and sexual violence. Card holds that true survival requires not only staying alive and as healthy as possible but also preserving your good moral character. The essay maintains that while exercising agency to elude evil and protect yourself often depends on your own skills and personality traits, exercising agency to restore or develop your moral character often depends on social support. (shrink)

This chapter explores Claudia Card's views about victims and victimizers, then to her account of surviving evils. It also explores some thoughts about autonomy and agency that extend her thinking. Atrocities are evils marked by exceptional cruelty or degradation. Evils can be deeds, practices, social structures, or environments. Misogyny is an evil that has everyday forms, such as spousal abuse and sex trafficking, and spasmodic forms, such as outbreaks of mass rape during armed conflict. The concepts of autonomy and (...) agency are a bit slippery partly because of their close relationship and partly because they are terms of art. The chapter focuses on the survival agency of the victims of the surviving trafficking and sexual violence against humanity. Survival agency is the weapon of last resort for victims of evils—people who are as disempowered as possible by an evil deed, evil practices, evil social structures, or evil environments. (shrink)

L'ouvrage regroupe plusieurs chapitres et les notices et photographies de 170 statues et objets présentés lors de trois expositions dans des musées américains, à Yale en 1996, San Antonio et Raleigh en 1997. Après un premier chapitre sur le « genre » (Gender theory in roman art, N.B. Kampen), concept moderne, fruit de plusieurs décades de travail sur la théorie féministe, qui est un chapitre de réflexions sur l'organisation sociale hiérarchisée, fondée sur les différences sexuelles, ..

Verbal communication leaves room for interpretative disputes. Speakers can argue about what they mean by their words and negotiate their commitments in conversation. This article examines the deniability of implicitly communicated contents and addresses the question of what makes an act of denial seem more or less plausible to the addressee. I argue that denials bring about a process of reconstruction of the context of interpretation of the speaker's utterance and I illustrate how considerations of cognitive utility are the key (...) determinant for distinguishing plausible from merely possible deniability. (shrink)

A collection of some of my previously published papers with an introduction and a new chapter.

De christelijke ethiek is een ethiek in wording. Dit tweede deel van het 'Handboek Moraaltheologie' legt aan de hand van de trefwoorden wetten, waarheid en waardigheid uit hoe de morele denkpatronen zich in de tijd hebben ontwikkeld. (Kerk)historische en dogmatische veranderingen hadden een belangrijke invloed op de moraaltheologie. Niet alleen de inhouden, maar ook methoden veranderden door de eeuwen heen: bij de eerste christenen leidde een oorspronkelijke overtuiging tot een overtuigende ethiek. In de Middeleeuwen droeg een systematisering van de theologische (...) waarheid bij aan een systematisering van morele normen en wetten. In de moderne en postmoderne tijd wordt naarmate het waarheidsbegrip in de wijsgerige ethiek verdwijnt, de morele leer aan de orde gesteld. Dit boek brengt fenomenologie, antropologie en theologie met elkaar in gesprek: eidetische fenomenologie en een existentiële antropologie dragen bij aan een mogelijke vertaalslag van geopenbaarde inhouden. (shrink)

According to Mitchell Green, speech act theory traditionally idealizes away from crucial aspects of conversational contexts, including those in which the speaker’s social position affects the possibility of her performing certain speech acts. In recent times, asymmetries in communicative situations have become a lively object of study for linguists, philosophers of language and moral philosophers: several scholars view hate speech itself in terms of speech acts, namely acts of subordination. The aim of this paper is to address one of the (...) main objections to accounts of hate speech in terms of illocutionary speech acts, that is the Authority Problem. While the social role of the speaker is the focus of several approaches, the social role of the audience has too often been neglected. The author will show that not only must the speaker have a certain kind of standing or social position in order to perform speech acts of subordination, but also the audience must typically have a certain kind of standing or social position in order to either license or object to the speaker’s authority, and her acts of subordination. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie Uterustransplantation ermöglicht Frauen mit einer absoluten uterinen Infertilität eine Schwangerschaft mit biologisch eigenem Kind. Das neuartige experimentelle Verfahren wirft eine Reihe von ethischen Fragen auf. Ziel dieses Artikels ist es, relevante ethische Problemkonstellationen im Kontext der Uterustransplantation überblickshaft darzulegen und kritisch zu diskutieren. Als systematischer Rahmen der Darstellung dienen die vier Prinzipien der Medizinethik Autonomie, Nicht-Schaden, Wohltun und Gerechtigkeit nach Beauchamp und Childress. Nach eingehender ethischer Betrachtung plädieren die Autorinnen mit Blick auf die Akkumulation schwerwiegender ethischer Probleme für die (...) Notwendigkeit einer grundlegenden und umfassenden ethischen Debatte über Uterustransplantation. Ausgangspunkt einer solchen Debatte muss eine kritische Reflexion des normativen Stellenwerts des Leidens an einem unerfüllten Kinderwunsch sein. (shrink)

Feminist Social Thought brings together key articles by prominent feminist thinkers, offering students sophisticated treatment of the theoretical topics central to feminist social thought. This reader highlights salient concerns in contemporary feminist scholarship and the advances feminist philosophers have made. The editor's introduction outlines alternative routes through the text, allowing instructors to easily adapt this reader to their particular courses and the interests of their students. Each article is prefaced with a short introduction by the editor placing it in context, (...) highlighting the principle issues and the conclusions reached. Students will find these headnotes helpful when tackling the challenging theoretical issues addressed. Representing a spectrum of feminist thinking, Feminist Social Thought is organized around seven topics constructions of gender; theorizing diversity; figurations of women; subjectivity, agency and feminist critique; social identity, solidarity and political engagement; care and its critics; and women, equality and justice. Students will be exposed to a wide variety of feminist philosophy and encouraged to think critically about challenging questions around pivotal subjects including * How are gender norms instilled, enforced, and perpetuated? * What are the relationships between gender and other socially demarcated positions such as race, class and sexual orientation? * What resources do women have at their disposal for recognizing their subordination and resisting it? * What goals should feminist politics pursue? * How can social and legal equality be reconciled with difference? (shrink)

The Hill Burton Act, which was signed into law in 1946 and ended in 1997, was one of the most significant forces that shaped the health care system we have today. Providing grants and loans for the construction and expansion of hospitals across the country, it required beneficiary hospitals to give some amount of uncompensated care to the poor and uninsured in return.The act not only led to our health care system's current emphasis on the acute‐care hospital as the primary (...) site of health care delivery, but it also had a profound effect on nursing, fully involving the profession in an acute‐care world. The act created jobs for nurses at an unprecedented level. There are over 3.4 million nurses in the United States, and in 2013, 63 percent of all nurses worked for hospitals. Nursing education continues to emphasize acute care, despite the calls for shifting the curriculum to more community‐based content and experiences that focus on health promotion and wellness for individuals, families, and communities. It is my premise that the nursing profession and all who profess to be committed to promoting health have a moral obligation to help the nation adopt a Hill‐Burton Act of the twenty‐first century that will focus on building healthy communities, supporting families in ways that promote health, and helping individuals to live healthier lives. This would require a shift in resources from a costly health care system to investing in community development, whether job creation, building safe places to play and exercise, providing access to affordable and nutritious foods, advancing the quality of education, or other approaches to addressing and improving the social determinants of health. Making this kind of investment would speak to the principles of beneficence, least harm, and justice, particularly for socioeconomically stressed communities. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 45, Issue 11, November 2021.

ZusammenfassungDas Lindern von Leiden ist eine zentrale Aufgabe der Medizin. Seit einigen Jahren ist eine verstärkte Inanspruchnahme des Leidensbegriffs im medizinischen Kontext zu beobachten. Eine Reflexion und Klärung dessen, was mit dem Begriff „Leiden“ und Begriffen wie „unerträgliches Leiden“ gemeint ist, bleibt aber weitgehend aus. Diese Tatsache wirft eine Reihe von theoretischen und praktischen Problemen auf, die im vorliegenden Beitrag identifiziert und diskutiert werden. Dazu werden zunächst die Schwierigkeiten bei der Anwendung des Leidensbegriffs in der medizinischen Praxis am Beispiel der (...) Indikationsstellung für eine tiefe und kontinuierliche palliative Sedierung dargestellt. Anschließend wird das Problem auf theoretischer Ebene angegangen. Es wird sich zeigen, dass im medizinischen Kontext mit einem Konzept des Leidens operiert wird, das a) eine starke normative Valenz hat, b) bei dem primär der subjektive Charakter des Leidens im Vordergrund steht und das c) inhaltlich nicht ausreichend differenziert ist. Anschließend werden zwei Konzepte des Leidens vorgestellt und im Hinblick auf ihre Operationalisierbarkeit im medizinischen Kontext befragt. Auf dem Hintergrund anthropologischer Vorannahmen, werden schließlich in einem letzten Abschnitt Perspektiven zum Umgang mit dem Leidensbegriff in der Medizin entwickelt. (shrink)

Sperber suggests that competent hearers can deploy sophisticated interpretative strategies in order to cope with deliberate deception or to avoid misunderstandings due to speaker’s incompetence. This paper investigates the cognitive underpinnings of sophisticated interpretative strategies and suggests that they emerge from the interaction between a relevance-guided comprehension procedure and epistemic vigilance mechanisms. My proposal sheds a new light on the relationship between comprehension and epistemic assessment. While epistemic vigilance mechanisms are typically assumed to assess the believability of the output of (...) the comprehension system, I argue that epistemic assessment plays an additional role in determining this very output. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to evaluate which context determines the illocutionary force of written or recorded utterances—those involved in written texts, films and images, conceived as recordings that can be seen or heard in different occasions. More precisely, my paper deals with the “metaphysical” or constitutive role of context—as opposed to its epistemic or evidential role: my goal is to determine which context is semantically relevant in order to fix the illocutionary force of a speech act, as distinct (...) from the information the addressee uses to ascertain the semantically relevant context. In particular I will try to assess two different perspectives on this problem, a Conventionalist Perspective and an Intentionalist Perspective. Drawing on the literature on indexicals in written texts and recorded messages, I will argue in favor of the Intentionalist Perspective: the relevant context is the one intended by the speaker. Bringing intentions into the picture, however, requires qualification; in particular, I will distinguish my Weak Intentionalist proposal from a Strong Intentionalist one. I will show that the Weak Intentionalist Perspective is flexible enough to deal with cases of delayed communication, but not so unrestricted as to yield counter-intuitive consequences. (shrink)

Paulo Freire consistently upheld humanization and mutuality as educational ideals. This article argues that conceptualizations of knowledge and how knowledge is sought and produced play a role in fostering humanization and mutuality in educational contexts. Drawing on Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, this article focuses on the two central characters who ‘ardently’ pursue knowledge at all costs. It will be argued that the text suggests two possible outcomes from the pursuit of knowledge. One is mutuality; the other is social disconnectedness.

Resumen Platón proyecta en la República un programa cultural que supone la redefinición del papel de la poesía tradicional en razón de su asociación con los regímenes democrático y tiránico. Esto, según pretendo mostrar, puede vincularse de manera legítima con la polémica anticirenaica de Platón contra Aristipo. Para ello, por un lado, exploraré los rasgos del biotipo tiránico y su régimen concomitante en la República VIII-IX y, por otro, analizaré sus vínculos con los planteamientos anticirenaicos en el Gorgias. Este examen (...) permitirá ofrecer claves de análisis para dos pasajes muy discutidos de la República IX: el símil del ascensor y el número del tirano, que cobran una nueva luz a partir de la consideración de esta polémica intrasocrática.Plato put forward in Republic a cultural program which implies the redefinition of the role of traditional poetry due to its association with the democratic and tyrannical regimes. I intend to show that this point is connected with the anti-cyrenaic arguments that Plato raises against Aristippus. On the one hand, I will study the features of the tyrannical biotype and its correspondent regime in Republic VIII-IX, and, on the other, I will analyze its links with the anti-cyrenaic arguments in Gorgias. This exam will allow us to offer some clues to better understand two widely debated passages in Republic IX: the analogy of the lift and the tyrant’s number. Both acquire a new perspective when this intra-socratic polemic is taken into account. (shrink)

Ethical behavior — the conscious attempt to act in accordance with an individually-owned morality — is the product of an advanced stage of the maturing process. Three models of ethical growth derived from research in human development are applied to issues of business ethics.

Legal apparatus looks like a set of norms which rely on a rational project of life, yet it is possible, following Deleuze but also Hume and Kafka, to recognise the irrational aspect of this system. Is the law a dream? In what relation is the law with the subject? If the legal subject acts in a dream, what are the results? This paper develops around such questions with the aim of critically reflecting on the foundations of subjectivity and its connections (...) with the legal normativity that requires obedience as the main form of respect and adherence. In this apparently free and creative present, which is unfolded on a digital codex of information, it seems relevant to be highly suspicious of the barriers that are going to be tightened more and more around thought and its potential creative evolutions. Can we think of – beyond the legal/illegal, obedient/disobedient dichotomy – a system of social relations that, instead of giving space to the permanent and repetitive features of subjects, discovers a wider margin of affective, innovative and creative connections in response to the behavioral exemplifications of diktats? (shrink)

The digital represents an oppressive apparatus of control or a new horizon for liberation? This article frames a post-deleuzian and post-guattarian line of though about the digital and the politics. Control and discontinuity of affections are the two poles for a reasoning about our involvment in the digital and our awareness of risks and opportunities. If we assume that the contemporary is characterized by the pulverization of the real, and that from the thanatology of the twentieth century could hardly be (...) born a 'providential' technology at the same time thanatology can’t stop the entropic being, which transcends all ambition of autonomy of matter. The machines were built in the frame of segmentation, but the ontological instability is able to give form to a different and new releases. However, a reflection on new technologies leads us to understand that the affectivity of matter, its discontinuities, while constituting a virtual source of potentiality with 'machinic heterogenesis', does not 'escape' the power, but urges the control to raise new challenges not in opposition but in affinity. In this mimetic interaction, then, should continue to reflect, remembering always the lure of Deleuze to irony and humour, on possible differential practices for limiting the disciplines in order to move the entropy in the logic of the database, under the sign of an aesthetics of affection, renewing the an-aestheticized subjectivity of contemporary. (shrink)

Das ethische Prinzip des Respekts vor der Autonomie des Patienten/Probanden hat in der modernen Medizin mittlerweile weltweit Bedeutung erlangt. Die Betonung der Autonomie des Patienten und Probanden in allen in der letzten Zeit verabschiedeten internationalen Deklarationen gibt dieser Tendenz unmissverständlich Ausdruck. Doch wenngleich diese Entwicklung unstrittig positiv ist, wirft sie dennoch eine Reihe von Fragen auf, die mit der Kodifizierung, Interpretation, Reichweite und Anwendung dieses universalen Prinzips verbunden sind. Die Antworten auf diese Fragen entscheiden darüber, ob Autonomie als hilfreiches, emanzipatorisches (...) oder als überforderndes, gar hegemoniales Prinzip begriffen wird. Diese normativen Probleme werden anhand von Beispielen aus der globalen Medizinethik verdeutlicht. Was in modernen Gesellschaften als Autonomie bezeichnet und für die Praxis fruchtbar gemacht wird, ist als ein soziales Konstrukt zu verstehen, nicht im Sinne einer Schimäre, sondern im Sinne einer soziokulturellen Leistung, die auf komplexen, historisch gewachsenen und kulturell geprägten Interaktionen von Gesellschaften, Institutionen und Individuen beruht. (shrink)

We investigated the effect of culture, moral discourse, and motivation to engage in prosocial behavior on benefactors’ positive affect. Participants from three cultures responded to scenarios in which they could perform small acts of kindness for different targets. A stronger relationship between agentic and obligated motivation to perform acts of kindness, as well as between obligated motivation and positive affect, was observed for participants from Japan, and for individuals with higher endorsement of the Community Ethic. Agentic motivation to engage in (...) prosocial behavior was related to benefactors’ positive affect, regardless of relationship type. (shrink)

A typical problem of modern medicine results from the gap between scientific knowledge and its application in individual cases. Whereas scientific knowledge is generalized and impersonal information, medical practice takes place under conditions which are singular, individual and irreversible. The paper examines whether prognosis is able to bridge this gap or hiatus theoreticus. It is shown that diagnosis of a single case always relies on prognostic considerations. The individual prognosis (as distinguished from the nosologic prognosis of a certain disease) enables (...) doctors to apply scientific knowledge and practice according to the actual situation, the history and personal preferences of the patient. Prognosis – not diagnosis – therefore legitimizes medical interference. A methodology of individual prognosis as the basis for a theory of practice is discussed. (shrink)

Defeasibility, most generally speaking, means that given some set of conditions A, something else B will hold, unless or until defeating conditions C apply. While the term was introduced into philosophy by legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart in 1949, today, the concept of defeasibility is employed in many different areas of philosophy. This volume for the first time brings together contributions on defeasibility from epistemology , legal philosophy and ethics and the philosophy of action . The volume ends with an extensive (...) bibliography. (shrink)

During a smallpox epidemic in April 1721, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu asked Dr. Charles Maitland to "engraft" her daughter, thus instigating the first documented inoculation for smallpox (_Variola_ virus) in England. Engrafting, or variolation, was a means of conferring immunity to smallpox by placing pus taken from a smallpox pustule under the skin of an uninfected person to create a local infection. The introduction of infectious viral matter, however, could trigger fullblown smallpox, and the practice was controversial for both this (...) reason and the pervasive conviction that it was immoral to intentionally infect a human body. Eventually, engrafting was phased out altogether in favor of vaccination, a much safer procedure established by Edward Jenner in the late eighteenth century. Montagu's decision was influenced by her experiences in Constantinople, where she had spent a year, and where engrafting was commonplace. As a smallpox survivor herself, Montagu had taken an interest in Turkish inoculation practices, and had had her son Edward engrafted while in Turkey. She was not the first person to import the idea of smallpox inoculation to England, nor the first English person to have their child inoculated (other English children had been inoculated while visiting Turkey), yet she quickly became known for importing and popularizing smallpox inoculation. At the request of her acquaintances, she took her inoculated daughter with her on a round of visits into elite households to demonstrate the safety of the procedure. The reputation she gained was both positive and negative: monuments were erected in her honor, encomiastic poems were published, and Voltaire declared her "a woman of as fine a genius, and endued with as great a strength of mind as any of her sex in the British Kingdoms"; however, anti-inoculationists ridiculed her, some society figures regarded her warily, and Alexander Pope satirized her in his poetry.

Montagu’s pioneering role in the smallpox debate is undoubtedly significant: she instigated the first smallpox inoculation on English soil, and she was largely responsible for making the practice acceptable in elite circles. My interest in this essay is in the nature and significance of Montagu’s reputation as an inoculation pioneer. I will argue that her reputation was based on the particular combination of her social position as a Whig and an aristocratic woman; her interest in progressive and enlightened forms of social, political, and scientific thought; her standing in influential literary circles; and, not least, the force of her own personality. In broad terms, I offer Montagu’s involvement in the smallpox debate as a case study in a new kind of public role becoming available to elite women in the early eighteenth century — a role that caused considerable discomfort among her peers and in the medical community, and one that stimulated a widespread controversy in print publications of the day. (shrink)