Background Implementing person-centred care (PCC) in nursing homes is challenging due to a gap between theory and practice. Bridging this gap requires suitable education, which focuses on learning how to attune care to the values and preferences of residents and take moral, relational, and situational aspects into account. Staff’s stories about the care they provide (i.e. caring stories) may deliver valuable insights for learning about these aspects. However, there is limited research on using staff's narratives for moral learning. Objective This (...) study aims to provide insight into the perspectives of nursing staff on using their caring stories to learn about PCC. Research design In this qualitative research, we conducted two rounds of interviews with 17 participants working in nursing homes. We wanted to obtain nursing staff’s perceptions of working with their caring stories and the impact on PCC. Ethical considerations Participation was voluntary, and participants provided written consent. The study protocol is approved by The Institutional Review Board of the Medical Ethical Committee Leiden-Den Haag-Delft. Findings Working with caring stories enables nursing staff to provide PCC and improves job satisfaction. It increases awareness of what matters to residents, fosters information rich in context and meaning, and enhances voice and vocabulary. Through in-depth team reflections, nursing staff discussed the significant moments for residents, which centralizes the discussions on the moral quality of care. Discussion Working with caring stories fosters dialogue on PCC and enhances reflection on ethical situations in daily encounters, contributing to the moral development of nursing staff. Putting nursing staff’s narratives at the centre of learning suits their daily practice and intrinsic motivation. Therefore, the outcomes of this study are an addition to the existing literature about using narratives in long-term care. Conclusion Using nursing staff's narratives contributes to PCC and positively impacts nursing staff. We recommend using staff's caring stories as a vehicle for moral learning in the transition to PCC. (shrink)

A theory of the joint measurement of quantum mechanical observables is generalized in order to make it applicable to the measurement of the local observables of field theory. Subsequently, the property of local commutativity, which is usually introduced as a postulate, is derived by means of the theory of measurement from a requirement of mutual nondisturbance, which, for local observables performed at a spacelike distance from each other, is interpreted as a requirement of macrocausality. Alternative attempts at establishing a deductive (...) relationship between relativistic causality and local commutativity are reviewed, but found wanting, either because of the assumption of an unwarranted objectivity of the object system (algebraic approach) or because of the use of a projection postulate (operational approach). Finally, the quantum mechanical nonobjectivity is related to certain features of nonlocality which are present in the formalism of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

This article starts with a case outlining ethical challenges encountered in participatory action research (PAR) on vaccine hesitancy in rural India during Covid-19. Community researchers were recruited by a not-for-profit organisation, with the aim of both discovering the reasons for vaccine hesitancy and encouraging take-up. This raised issues about the roles and responsibilities of local researchers in their own communities, where they might be blamed for adverse reactions to vaccination. They and their mentor struggled with balancing societal protection against individual (...) rights to make choices. These themes are explored in two commentaries discussing the difficulties in balancing ethics in public health (prioritising societal benefits), social research (protecting participants from harm and respecting their rights not to be involved) and participatory research practices (maximising democratic participation and decision-making). As discussed in the first commentary, often these cohere, but tensions can arise. The second commentary also raises the issue of epistemic justice, questioning the extent to which the villagers could have a say in the design, implementation and interpretation of the research, and the dangers of not hearing the voices and arguments of people who reject vaccination. The case and commentaries highlight the complexities of PAR and additional challenges in a public health context. (shrink)

How can people live together peacefully, especially in a multicultural, multi-religious society? We should find a minimum level of consensus which is needed to live peacefully together in an open society and a moral language to communicate with each other. Dutch philosopher Paul Cliteur published his book Moral Esperanto in 2007 in which he argues that it is important that people can communicate with each other in a moral and political language which is in principle understandable to everybody; in contrast (...) with religious discourse which only makes sense to believers. Cliteur makes the analogy of Esperanto, the artificial language proposed to be the lingua franca, and emphasizes the need for a universal moral language. (shrink)

Aneuploidy, an aberrant number of chromosomes in a cell, is a feature of several syndromes associated with cognitive and developmental defects. In addition, aneuploidy is considered a hallmark of cancer cells and has been suggested to play a role in neurodegenerative disease. To better understand the relationship between aneuploidy and disease, various methods to measure the chromosome numbers in cells have been developed, each with their own advantages and limitations. While some methods rely on dividing cells and thus bias aneuploidy (...) rates to that population, other, more unbiased methods can only detect the average aneuploidy rates in a cell population, cloaking cell‐to‐cell heterogeneity. Furthermore, some techniques are more prone to technical artefacts, which can result in over‐ or underestimation of aneuploidy rates. In this review, we provide an overview of several “traditional” karyotyping methods as well as the latest high throughput next generation sequencing karyotyping protocols with their respective advantages and disadvantages. (shrink)

A shift towards more environmentally friendly and socially responsible food systems is a key step in the achievement of global sustainable development goals. To obtain significant results, however, it is essential to find participative ways to frame food sustainability objectives, so they can speak to a wide array of actors of change. This article addresses the promising potential of empowering actors across the food system to make a shift in their food choices, by facilitating the association of food sustainability values (...) with contemporary moral issues. In this context, a conceptual framework for a transition towards food sustainability is proposed, based upon the concept of the moral circle. This approach transcends the human-centred methods enacted in traditional sustainable development agendas, offering an alternative with a more holistic perspective. It is expected that emphasising moral reflection around sustainability might encourage societal participation in the creation of sustainable, fair and healthier food systems. (shrink)

There is an increasing body of literature proposing to include animal welfare in the United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda. The main argument is the potential positive effect that improving the welfare of animals could have over the health and welfare of humans. However, recent literature suggests that the welfare interests of animals should also be considered. Based on these premises, an analysis of the practical implications of including animal welfare in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is granted. The aim (...) of this study is to address this by applying the case of animals in the agriculture and aquaculture systems. Animal farming inherently affects the welfare of a substantial number of sentient animals while, the welfare of farmed animals has been connected to human wellbeing and several environmental issues. The study highlights the feasibility of incorporating the welfare of farmed animals into a future version of the SDGs. It does so by developing a model based on a set of human-focused (anthropocentric) and animal-focused (sentientistic) targets for each of the 17 goals. It has been argued that expanding the scope of the SDGs from anthropocentrism to sentientism creates a synergy between human and animal welfare and, on top of that, is progress towards sustainability. (shrink)

ExtractPhilosophers and others with inquisitive minds have busied their brains for millennia with questions such as: ‘Does god exist? What is the meaning of life? Are we free or determined? What is truth? Is there any knowledge which is so certain that no reasonable person could doubt it? What is reality? What is good? What is beautiful? Why exist? What is “to be”? What is justice? What did Kant mean by the categorical imperative?’ Are all these topics equally important or (...) is there a ranking of philosophical problems? If there is such a ranking, is there a need to set priorities? What philosophical problem is most urgent?Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.IS THERE A BIGGEST PROBLEM IN PHILOSOPHY? SOME REFLECTIONS ON SETTING PRIORITIESVolume 12, Issue 34Floris van den BergDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175613000055Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. IS THERE A BIGGEST PROBLEM IN PHILOSOPHY? SOME REFLECTIONS ON SETTING PRIORITIESVolume 12, Issue 34Floris van den BergDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175613000055Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. IS THERE A BIGGEST PROBLEM IN PHILOSOPHY? SOME REFLECTIONS ON SETTING PRIORITIESVolume 12, Issue 34Floris van den BergDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175613000055Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

"After reading this book, the world won't look the same. Imagine yourself confined to a wheelchair; or living within the severely constricted lifestyle options of a woman in Saudi Arabia; or being a homosexual in a homophobic society; or a coffee farmer in Ethiopia; or a cow on a factory farm; or growing up impoverished in a developing country; or living 500 years from now when future generations may be negatively impacted by what we do today. This compelling thought experiment (...) invites readers to take a moral journey, which in turn leads to an inconvenient evaluation of the way most of us live. The author proposes a new perspective, called universal subjectivism, which can be adopted by anyone regardless of religious or philosophical orientation. It takes into consideration the universal capacity for suffering and, through raising awareness, seeks to diminish that suffering and increase happiness. With consistent and crystal clear moral reasoning, van den Berg shows that the world can be organized to ensure more pleasure, beauty, justice, happiness, health, freedom, animal welfare, and sustainability. He emphasizes that today the near-term future is our greatest challenge- our affl. (shrink)

Het woord 'woke' duikt steeds vaker op in de media. Woke is niet alleen een nieuwe ideologie, maar creë̈ert tevens een heel eigen vocabulaire. Woke-woorden komen vaak uit het Engels, zoals cultural appropriation, safe space, bipoc of gas lighting, terwijl ook allerlei Nederlandse woorden en begrippen, zoals diversiteit, inclusiviteit, transfobie of 'mensen met een vagina' in het woke-jargon een specifieke betekenis hebben gekregen. De verhitte debatten over woke vinden met name plaats in de culturele sector, het onderwijs, de politiek, het (...) publieke debat en op de sociale media. 'Wokabulary - kritisch wokewoordenboek' is daarom bestemd voor journalisten, leraren, HR-medewerkers, beleidsmedewerkers, communicatieadviseurs, museumconservatoren, politici, docenten en niet te vergeten studenten. En daarnaast natuurlijk voor iedere woke-belangstellende. 'Wokabulary' is een lexicon in de stijl van Voltaires beroemde, eloquente 'Filosofisch woordenboek', waarin hij geloof en bijgeloof bekritiseert. 'Wokabulary' verheldert niet alleen de woordenschat van woke, maar bekritiseert deze ook. Tegelijkertijd wordt kritiek geleverd op doorgeslagen antiwokisme."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

People often say that humans are omnivores in order to justify eating meat as normal and veganism as abnormal. The is one of the arguments that vegetarians and vegans encounter when meat-eaters try to defend the moral acceptability of body parts on their plate. When responding to this argument, the position of the vegan is similar to the atheist who time and again is confronted with the same fallacious arguments in support of the existence of god(s). Veganism and atheism are (...) both ethical default positions. Similarly, not killing other people is also a default position. (shrink)

The key focus in ethics should be on victims. Victims are those that suffer from unnecessary and preventable pain and misery. Non-human animals can also suffer and should therefore be included in the moral circle. Ethical living is striving to avoid harm to others and striving to help alleviate or prevent suffering. Being good isn't easy.Export citation.

Research skills are important for university graduates, but little is known about undergraduates’ motivation for research. In this study, self-efficacy beliefs and intrinsic motivation for several research activities were measured three times during an undergraduate research project. In order to promote self-efficacy for writing and collaboration, a collaboration script was developed and tested on half of the students. Twelve students were interviewed three times to gather in-depth information about motivational and self-efficacy beliefs. All measures except intrinsic motivation for research increased (...) significantly during the project. Interview results suggest that enactive mastery and positive social interdependence promoted self-efficacy. Feelings of relatedness seemed to promote intrinsic motivation for writing. Lack of autonomy and low perceived relevance may explain why motivation for research remained stable. The script had no impact on self-efficacy beliefs. Relatedness,... (shrink)

In recent years, facial difference is increasingly on the public and academic agenda. This is evidenced by the growing public presence of individuals with an atypical face, and the simultaneous emergence of research investigating the issues associated with facial variance. The scholarship on facial difference approaches this topic either through a medical and rehabilitation perspective, or a psycho-social one. However, having a different face also encompasses an embodied dimension. In this paper, we explore this embodied dimension by interpreting the stories (...) of individuals with facial limb absence against the background of phenomenological theories of the body, illness and disability. Our findings suggest that the atypical face disrupts these individuals’ engagement with everyday projects when it gives rise to disruptive perceptions, sensations, and observations. The face then ceases to be the absent background to perception, and becomes foregrounded in awareness. The disruptions evoked by facial difference call for adjustments: as they come to terms with their altered face, the participants in our study gradually develop various new bodily habits that re-establish their face’s absence, or relate to its disruptive presence. It is through these emergent habits that facial difference comes to be embodied. By analyzing the everyday experiences of individuals with facial limb absence, this article provides a much-needed exploration of the embodied aspects of facial difference. It also exemplifies how a phenomenological account of illness and disability can do justice both to the impairments and appearance issues associated with atypical embodiment. (shrink)

BackgroundHealthcare professionals and surrogate decision-makers often face the difficult decision of whether to initiate or withhold antibiotics from people with dementia who have developed a life-threatening infection after losing decisional capacity.MethodsWe conducted a vignette-based survey among 1050 Quebec stakeholders (senior citizens, family caregivers, nurses and physicians; response rate 49.4%) to (1) assess their attitudes toward withholding antibiotics from people with dementia lacking decisional capacity; (2) compare attitudes between dementia stages and stakeholder groups; and (3) investigate other correlates of attitudes, including (...) support for continuous deep sedation (CDS) and medical assistance in dying (MAID). The vignettes feature a woman moving along the dementia trajectory, who has refused in writing all life-prolonging interventions and explicitly requested that a doctor end her life when she no longer recognizes her loved ones. Two stages were considered after she had lost capacity: the advanced stage, where she likely has several more years to live, and the terminal stage, where she is close to death.ResultsSupport for withholding antibiotics ranged from 75% among seniors and caregivers at the advanced stage, to 98% among physicians at the terminal stage. Using the generalized estimating equation approach, we found stakeholder group, religiosity, and support for CDS and MAID, to be associated with attitudes toward antibiotics.ConclusionsFindings underscore the importance for healthcare professionals of discussing underlying values and treatment goals with people at an early stage of dementia and their relatives, to help them anticipate future care decisions and better prepare surrogates for their role. Findings also have implications for the scope of MAID laws, in particular in Canada where the extension of MAID to persons lacking decisional capacity is currently being considered. (shrink)

This book addresses the methodological issues involved in responsible innovation and provides an overview of recent applications of multidisciplinary research. Responsible innovation involves research into the ethical and societal aspects of new technologies (e.g. ICT, nanotechnology, biotechnology and brain sciences) and of changes in technological systems (e.g. energy, transport, agriculture and water). This research is highly multidisciplinary. It involves close collaboration between researchers in such diverse fields as ethics, social science, law, economics, applied science, engineering - as well as innovative, (...) design-oriented and policy-relevant. Although there is a trend to engage ethicists and social scientists early in technology development, most literature in the field of Technology Assessment or Ethics of Technology is still aimed at one discipline whereas this book incorporates different approaches and to discuss experiences, lessons and more general theoretical issues. (shrink)

Chervenak and McCullough, authors of the most acknowledged ethical framework for maternal–fetal surgery, rely on the ‘ethical–obstetrical’ concept of the fetus as a patient in order to determine what is morally owed to fetuses by both physicians and the women who gestate them in the context of prenatal surgery. In this article, we reconstruct the argumentative structure of their framework and present an internal criticism. First, we analyse the justificatory arguments put forward by the authors regarding the moral status of (...) the fetus qua patient. Second, we discuss the internal coherence and consistency of the moral obligations those authors derive from that concept. We claim that some of the dilemmas their approach is purported to avoid, such as the debate about the independent moral status of the fetus, and the foundation of the moral obligations of pregnant women (towards the fetuses they gestate) are not, all things considered, avoided. Chervenak and McCullough construct the obligations of physicians as obligations towards entities with equal moral status. But, at the same time, they assume that the woman has an independent moral status while the moral status of the fetus is dependent on the decision of the woman to present it to a physician for care. According to the logic of their own argumentation, Chervenak and McCullough implicitly admit a different moral status of the woman and the fetus, which will lead to different ascription of duties of the physician than those they ascribed. (shrink)

Over recent decades, developments in network governance have seen governments around the world cede considerable authority and responsibility to commercial migration intermediaries for recruiting and managing temporary migrant labour. Correspondingly, a by-product of network governance has been the emergence of soft employment regulation in which voluntary codes of conduct supplement hard legal employment standards. This paper explores these developments in the context of temporary migrant workers employed in Australian horticulture. First the paper analyses the growing use of temporary migrant labour (...) in this industry. It then describes how different types of intermediaries interact with this workforce. The paper then outlines both hard and soft employment regulations, and contrasts them with actual employment conditions, questioning how a network governance approach has affected this vulnerable workforce. The paper concludes that changes in network governance of migration and employment relations have emasculated formal legal regulation, leaving market forces to operate without effective or ethical constraints at the expense of the public good. (shrink)

The Shapley value is the unique value defined on the class of cooperative games in characteristic function form which satisfies certain intuitively reasonable axioms. Alternatively, the Banzhaf value is the unique value satisfying a different set of axioms. The main drawback of the latter value is that it does not satisfy the efficiency axiom, so that the sum of the values assigned to the players does not need to be equal to the worth of the grand coalition. By definition, the (...) normalized Banzhaf value satisfies the efficiency axiom, but not the usual axiom of additivity. (shrink)

The natural input memory (NIM) model is a new model for recognition memory that operates on natural visual input. A biologically informed perceptual preprocessing method takes local samples (eye fixations) from a natural image and translates these into a feature‐vector representation. During recognition, the model compares incoming preprocessed natural input to stored representations. By complementing the recognition memory process with a perceptual front end, the NIM model is able to make predictions about memorability based directly on individual natural stimuli. We (...) demonstrate that the NIM model is able to simulate experimentally obtained similarity ratings and recognition memory for individual stimuli (i.e., face images). (shrink)

A cooperative game with transferable utility–or simply a TU-game– describes a situation in which players can obtain certain payoffs by cooperation. A value function for these games assigns to every TU-game a distribution of payoffs over the players. Well-known solutions for TU-games are the Shapley and the Banzhaf value. An alternative type of solution is the concept of share function, which assigns to every player in a TU-game its share in the worth of the grand coalition. In this paper we (...) consider TU-games in which the players are organized into a coalition structure being a finite partition of the set of players. The Shapley value has been generalized by Owen to TU-games in coalition structure. We redefine this value function as a share function and show that this solution satisfies the multiplication property that the share of a player in some coalition is equal to the product of the Shapley share of the coalition in a game between the coalitions and the Shapley share of the player in a game between the players within the coalition. Analogously we introduce a Banzhaf coalition structure share function. Application of these share functions to simple majority games show some appealing properties. (shrink)

One of the challenges Public Service Media institutions face today is how to translate normative values such as universality and diversity into measurable and tangible content in an attempt to realize their “public value”. This contribution shows how the communicative functions of humor can help create public value by introducing audiences to minorities. As a case in point, we analyzed Taboe, a humorous human-interest program about minorities including, amongst others, the visually impaired and the obese, broadcast by Flemish public broadcaster (...) VRT in 2018. Based on in-depth interviews with program makers and participants and a qualitative content analysis of the program, the study found that humor provided the program with a positive, funny yet emotional tone of voice that attracted and kept the audience’s attention. By giving various minorities an active voice, Taboe introduced mainstream audiences to the their perspective, encouraging increased knowledge and understanding and, in turn, tolerance of, and acceptance towards, the minority groups represented. (shrink)

BackgroundObtaining informed consent for intravenous thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke can be challenging, and little is known about if and how the informed consent procedure is performed by neurologists in clinical practice. This study examines the procedure of informed consent for intravenous thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke in high-volume stroke centers in the Netherlands.MethodsIn four high volume stroke centers, neurology residents and attending neurologists received an online questionnaire concerning informed consent for thrombolysis with tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA). The respondents were (...) asked to report their usual informed consent practice for tPA treatment and their considerations on whether informed consent should be obtained.ResultsFrom the 203 invited clinicians, 50% (n = 101) completed the questionnaire. One-third of the neurology residents (n = 21) and 21% of the neurologists (n = 8) reported that they always obtain informed consent for tPA treatment. If a patient is not capable of providing informed consent, 30% of the residents (n = 19) reported that they start tPA treatment without informed consent. In these circumstances, 53% of the neurologists (n = 20) reported that the resident under their supervision would start tPA treatment without informed consent. Most neurologists (n = 21; 55%) and neurology residents (n = 45; 72%) obtained informed consent within one minute. None of the respondents used more than five minutes for informed consent. Important themes regarding obtaining informed consent for treatment were patients’ capacity, and medical, ethical and legal considerations.ConclusionThe current practice of informed consent for thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke varies among neurologists and neurology residents. If informed consent is obtained, most clinicians stated to obtain informed consent within one minute. In the future, a shortened information provision process may be applied, making a shift from informed consent to informed refusal, while still considering the patient’s capacity, stroke severity, and possible treatment delays. (shrink)

This essay takes Arthur Danto’s end-of-art thesis as a case in point of a substantive philosophy of history. Such philosophy explains the direction that art has taken and why that direction could not have been different. Danto never scrutinized the philosophy of history that his end-of-art thesis presumes. I aim to do that by drawing a distinction between what I refer to as the common view of history and the philosophical view of history, and by arguing that we need the (...) latter if we want to properly assess the plausibility of the end-of-art thesis. (shrink)

Let T be a complete o-minimal extension of the theory of real closed fields. We characterize the convex hulls of elementary substructures of models of T and show that the residue field of such a convex hull has a natural expansion to a model of T. We give a quantifier elimination relative to T for the theory of pairs (R, V) where $\mathscr{R} \models T$ and V ≠ R is the convex hull of an elementary substructure of R. We deduce (...) that the theory of such pairs is complete and weakly o-minimal. We also give a quantifier elimination relative to T for the theory of pairs (R, N) with R a model of T and N a proper elementary substructure that is Dedekind complete in R. We deduce that the theory of such "tame" pairs is complete. (shrink)

The literature on the epistemology of ignorance already discusses how certain forms of discrimination, such as racism and sexism, are perpetuated by the ignorance of individuals and groups. However, little attention has been given to how speciesism—a form of discrimination on the basis of species membership—is sustained through ignorance_._ Of the few animal ethicists who explicitly discuss ignorance, none have related this concept to speciesism as a form of discrimination. However, it is crucial to explore this connection, I argue, as (...) ignorance is both an integral part of the injustice done to animals as well as an obstacle to improving their treatment. In order to adequately criticize sustained structural speciesism and injustices towards animals, I develop an epistemological account of ‘speciesist ignorance’. I begin by defining and distinguishing between individual and group-based accounts of speciesist ignorance. I argue that humans, taken as a group, enjoy a position of privilege, which allows them to comfortably remain ignorant of their participation in collective wrongdoings towards animals. Additionally, I point out that speciesist ignorance is structurally encouraged and thereby maintains the dominant view that the human-animal-relationship, as it stands, is just. In sum, this article lays the groundwork for a social epistemology of speciesist ignorance. In particular, it informs further debate about individual and institutional epistemic duties to inquire into speciesism and to inform the public, about the moral culpability of ignorant actions, and about effective animal advocacy and policy which actively rejects speciesist ignorance. (shrink)