-/- It is commonly believed that the etiology of autism is at least partly explained through genetics. Given the complexity of autism and the variability of the autistic phenotype, genetic research and counseling in this field are also complex and associated with specific ethical questions. Although the ethics of autism genetics, especially with regard to reproductive choices, has been widely discussed on the public fora, an in depth philosophical or bioethical reflection on all aspects of the theme seems to be (...) missing. With this literature review we wanted to map the basic questions and answers that exist in the bioethical literature on autism genetics, research, counseling and reproduction, and provide suggestions as to how the discussion can proceed. We found 19 papers that fitted the description of “bioethics literature focusing on autism genetics,” and analyzed their content to distill arguments and themes. We concluded that because of the complexity of autism, and the uncertainty with regard to its status, more ethical reflection is needed before definite conclusions and recommendations can be drawn. Moreover, there is a dearth of bioethical empirical studies querying the opinions of all parties, including people with autism themselves. Such empirical bioethical studies should be urgently done before bioethical conclusions regarding the aims and desirability of research into autism genes can be done. Also, fundamental philosophical reflection on concepts of disease should accompany research into the etiology of autism. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The article sets out to initiate a dialogue between two normative conceptions of democratic society, overwhelmingly depicted as irreconcilable by the partisans of each position: the political liberalism of John Rawls and the radical democracy of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The paper argues that both approaches share the same underlying ethos in envisioning society (called the “the ethos of contingency” in the paper) informing Laclau and Mouffe’s notion of radical democracy and hegemony, as well as Rawls's view of justice (...) as fairness conceived in terms of reciprocity with its accompanying idea of public reason and reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

This book explores the social practice of holding each other in our identities, beginning with pregnancy and on through the life span. Lindemann argues that our identities give us our sense of how to act and how to treat others, and that the ways in which we we hold each other in them is of crucial moral importance.

The essays in this volume critically analyze and revitalize agrarian philosophy by tracing its evolution in the classical American philosophy of key figures such as Franklin, Jefferson, Emerson, Thoreau, Dewey, and Royce.

Hilde Lindemann Nelson focuses on the stories of groups of people--including Gypsies, mothers, nurses, and transsexuals--whose identities have been defined by those with the power to speak for them and to constrain the scope of their actions. By placing their stories side by side with narratives about the groups in question, Nelson arrives at some important insights regarding the nature of identity. She regards personal identity as consisting not only of how people view themselves but also of how others (...) view them. These perceptions combine to shape the person's field of action. If a dominant group constructs the identities of certain people through socially shared narratives that mark them as morally subnormal, those who bear the damaged identity cannot exercise their moral agency freely.Nelson identifies two kinds of damage inflicted on identities by abusive group relations: one kind deprives individuals of important social goods, and the other deprives them of self-respect. To intervene in the production of either kind of damage, Nelson develops the counterstory, a strategy of resistance that allows the identity to be narratively repaired and so restores the person to full membership in the social and moral community. By attending to the power dynamics that constrict agency, Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair augments the narrative approaches of ethicists such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, Richard Rorty, and Charles Taylor. (shrink)

The first decisive steps of medicine towards becoming a science in its present shape happen to coincide with “the rise of the novel” in the eighteenth century. Before this well known and in our days still growing scientific specialization of medicine, the connections between literature and medicine were both many and close. By reading and analyzing a contemporary novel, The Death of a Beekeeper by the Swedish author Lars Gustafsson (1978), this article is an attempt to explore to which extent (...) a fictional narrative about a unique case of cancer may illuminate challenges associated with the experience of serious illness. Our claim is that medicine might draw wisdom from literature, its ability to create connections through narrative, to illuminate the complexity of ethical dilemmas, and to intertwine symptoms, life stories, and contexts. We argue that by being in the company of literary narratives and philosophical questions, physicians as well as other health care professionals may acquire clinically relevant skills which help them reach the ethically defined goals of their profession. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: -- Acknowledgements -- Disrupting the Impression of Stability in the Gender-Technology Relation -- Changing Images of Computers and its Users since 1980 -- Discursive Developments Within Computer Education -- Variations in Gender-ICT Relations Among Male and Female Computer Students -- Stories About Individual Change and Transformation -- Layered Meanings and Differences Within -- Is there an Elsewhere? -- References -- Endnotes -- Index.

_ Source: _Volume 39, Issue 2, pp 139 - 164 The aim of the present study is to explore the significance of religiousness for patients suffering from first-episode psychosis. Our study is a thematic analysis. The study illustrates how the patients understood their hallucinations as mystical experiences. Even so, many of the patients describe their religiousness to be helpful in coping with their disorder, giving meaning to life as well as a relationship to a sacred figure. However, their religiousness often (...) contained religious omnipotent delusions, and built on hallucinations, displayed an unsecure relationship to the sacred figure. From a psychiatric point of view, the misinterpretation of hallucinations as mystical experiences may reinforce their delusional system and cause an obstacle to recovery. This misinterpretation may also cause problems for patients’ religious coping. Our findings underline the importance of taking patients’ religiousness into account in psychotherapy. (shrink)

This paper works within a model of ungraded belief that characterizes epistemic states as logically closed and consistent sets of sentences. The aim of this paper is to discuss three diachronic coherence conditions for such beliefs. These coherence conditions are formulated in terms of the reasoner's present beliefs about how his present beliefs will evolve in the future, for instance, in response to different pieces of future evidence.

This article identifies and critically examines three differentaspects of investor responsibility. First, investors haveresponsibilities toward their clients. Second, investors are responsible for taking steps toreduce the risk that an investment directly or indirectlycontributes to harm. Finally, investorsshould take into consideration the symbolic and signallingeffects of an investment decision. This article discusses howthese responsibilities should be interpreted and also howthey play out in practice. Norway’s Government PensionFund is used as a case in point.

ObjectivesMany older adults with visual impairment also have significant hearing loss. The aim was to investigate the effectiveness of a newly developed Dual Sensory Loss protocol on communication and wellbeing of older persons with DSL and their communication partners in the Netherlands and Belgium.MethodsParticipants and their communication partners were randomized in the “DSL-protocol” intervention group or a waiting-list control group. The intervention took 3 to 5 weeks. Occupational therapists focused on optimal use of hearing aids, home-environment modifications and effective communication (...) strategies. The primary outcome was the Communication Strategies domain of the Communication Profile for the Hearing Impaired. Secondary outcomes measured in participants were the Low Vision Quality Of Life Adjustment subscale, the Center for Epidemiological Studies - Depression Scale, De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale and the Fatigue Assessment Scale. The Hearing Handicap and Disability Inventory - Reaction of Others subscale and the Care-related Quality of Life - 7 Dimensions was measured in communication partners. Measurements were taken at baseline and 3-month follow-up. Linear mixed models were used to analyze effects between groups over time for every outcome measure.ResultsIntention-to-treat analyses showed a significant effect of the DSL-protocol on the use of verbal strategies in favor of the control group, however, this effect was non-significant after adjustment for confounding. Effect sizes of other outcomes varied between −0.23 [−0.57, 0.12] and 0.30 [−0.05, 0.64]. The LMM showed a significant effect on the HHDI-Reaction of others scale in favor of communication partners in the treatment group, however, the effect did not remain significant at a 0.01 significance level and the effect size was very small and non-significant 0.12, 95% CI [−0.27 to 0.51]. Adjusted analyses did not reveal treatment effects.ConclusionThe DSL-protocol did not clearly contribute to the enhancement of communication and wellbeing in DSL-patients. Possible reasons for the lack of effects are OTs not being comfortable giving advice on communication and psychosocial issues or the short-term treatment and follow-up period. Further study is warranted to find out how the protocol may be adapted or whether it is necessary to involve mental healthcare professionals.Clinical Trial Registrationwww.ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NTR2843. (shrink)

Background In long-term care, registered nurses and other care providers often experience tensions between ideals and realities in the delivery of services, which can result in stress of conscience. Burnout, low quality of care and a tendency to leave the profession are perceived as consequences. Objectives This study aimed to identify the socio-demographic and work-related factors associated with a high level of stress of conscience, particularly between nursing occupations. Research design A cross-sectional survey was conducted among care providers who worked (...) in Norwegian nursing homes and home care services in the spring of 2021. The sample consisted of 950 registered nurses and 1143 other care providers. Data were collected online using the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire (SCQ). Ethical considerations Participation was voluntary and based on consent. The study was approved by the Norwegian Center for Research Data. Results Registered nurses were nearly twice as likely to report high levels of stress of conscience compared to other care providers in long-term care. In addition, being a female, living alone, caring for their own children, working in an institution (versus home based), working >75% time, working shifts, not having scheduled meetings for ethical reflection and working in municipalities with a higher population density were factors associated with a high level of SCQ score. Discussion Knowledge of factors that increase the risk of high SCQ scores in registered nurses provides opportunities for prevention. Managers in long-term care should pay more attention to how work is distributed between the occupational groups and should facilitate real opportunities for ethical reflection. Conclusions The results of this study show that registered nurses have particular exposure to high levels of stress of conscience compared to other care providers in long-term care. Particular attention should be paid to registered nurses working in nursing homes. (shrink)

The end-state comfort effect refers to the consistent tendency of healthy adults to end their movements in a comfortable end posture. In children with and without developmental coordination disorder, the results of studies focusing on ESC planning have been inconclusive, which is likely to be due to differences in task constraints. The present pilot study focused on the question whether children with and without DCD were able to change their planning strategy and were more likely to plan for ESC when (...) demanded by complex object manipulations at the end of a task. To this end, we examined ESC planning in 18 children with and without DCD using the previously used sword-task and the newly developed hammer-task. In the sword-task, children had to insert a sword in a wooden block, which could be relatively easily completed with an uncomfortable end-posture. In the hammer-task, children had to strike down a nail in a wooden pounding bench, which required additional force and speed demands, making it relatively difficult to complete the movement with an uncomfortable end-posture. In line with our hypothesis, the results demonstrated that children with and without DCD were more likely to plan for ESC on the hammer-task compared with the sword-task. Thus, while children with and without DCD show inconsistent ESC planning on many previously used tasks, the present pilot study shows that many of them are able to take into account the end-state of their movements if demanded by task constraints. (shrink)

Background: Troubled conscience among nurses and other healthcare workers represents a significant contributor to healthcare worker moral distress, burnout and attrition. While research in this area has examined critical care in hospitals, less knowledge has been obtained from long-term care contexts such as nursing homes, despite widely recognised challenges with regard to vulnerable patients, increasing workload and maintaining workforce sustainability among nurses. Objective: The aim of this study was to illuminate and interpret the meaning of the lived experience of troubled (...) conscience among registered nurses (RNs) working in nursing homes. Research design: This qualitative research employed narrative interviews with eight nurses to obtain essential meanings of their lived experiences of troubled conscience. The interview texts were analysed using a phenomenological hermeneutic approach. Ethical considerations: Participation was voluntary, informed and was conducted with written consent. The Norwegian Centre for Research Data approved the data processing of personal data. Findings: The analysis uncovered two themes: (1) troubled conscience means abandoning ideals, with the subthemes: failing dependent patients; being disloyal to colleagues; being inadequate in the performance of work tasks and (2) troubled conscience means facing realities, with the subthemes: accepting being part of the system; responding to barriers. Discussion: Troubled conscience meant experiencing continuous and simmering tension between one’s ideals and realities and feeling a drive to preserve accountability and one’s moral integrity. Endangered ideals were often under cross-pressure and included humanistic values, professional values, working life values and the values of the organisation. Conclusion: Nurses’ troubled conscience refers to a struggle, but also a force that plays out at various levels and arenas in long-term care. Openness and dialogue about how professional values and the welfare state’s intentions can be realised within the given framework are important for individual nurses’ occupational health as well as the quality of care provided to patients. (shrink)

Naturalized bioethics represents a revolutionary change in how health care ethics is practised. It calls for bioethicists to give up their dependence on utilitarianism and other ideal moral theories and instead to move toward a self-reflexive, socially inquisitive, politically critical, and inclusive ethics. Wary of idealisations that bypass social realities, the naturalism in ethics that is developed in this volume is empirically nourished and acutely aware that ethical theory is the practice of particular people in particular times, places, cultures, and (...) professional environments. These essays situate the bioethicist within the clinical or research context, take seriously the web of relationships in which all human beings are nested, and explore a number of the different kinds of power relations that inform health care encounters. Naturalized Bioethics aims to help bioethicists, doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, disability studies scholars, medical researchers, and other health professionals address the ethical issues surrounding health care. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 365-393.

Enthusiasm over technology is found among men. Or, at least, that is the impression we get from the main body of earlier research, which leaves us with an understanding of men as computer enthusiasts, while women are more reluctant and ‘rational’ in their relation to the computer. In this paper I will argue that women do in fact enjoy working with computers. The empirical material is from a study of a group of students taking a computer course. We will meet (...) women who enjoy working with computers, and explore how they express their pleasure in relation to the computer. Contrary to earlier claims that ‘computing is incompatible with being a girl’, we will find that many of the 21 women in this study are not afraid to articulate their pleasure in computing. (shrink)

These days many gyms and fitness centers are closed to reduce transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in society. The gym is an environment rich in microorganisms, and careful hygiene is a necessity to keep infections at bay. Exercise centers strive for better hygiene compliance among their members. This effort has become essential in light of the current pandemic. Several experimental studies show that others’ physical presence, or the “illusion” of being watched, may alter behavior. This article reports on a natural (...) field experiment testing one specific social nudge intended to increase gym members’ hygienic behavior. The study was conducted before the SARS-COV-2 pandemic. A picture of “observing eyes” was attached to paper dispensers and cleanser spray bottles at two different gyms in Norway. A reversal design, also called an ABA design, with and without the nudge’s presence, was used to investigate the impact on gym members’ hygienic behavior. A follow-up study was conducted in one of the centers to investigate whether the nudge stimuli would function over time. The study included 254 individual choice situations during nine observation sessions conducted over 9 weeks. The results from both centers provide evidence of a strong effect of the nudge. However, the effect decreased during the follow-up study. These findings support previous research indicating that human behavior is influenced by the presence of implicit observation cues – in this case – observing eyes. However, insights into the long-term effect of implicit observation cues are still needed since the salience of the stimuli faded over time. (shrink)

An Invitation to Feminist Ethics is a hospitable approach to the study of feminist moral theory and practice. Designed to be small enough to be used as a supplement to other books, it also provides the theoretical depth necessary for stand-alone use in courses in feminist ethics, feminist philosophy, and women's studies. The "overviews" section introduces important concepts in feminist ethical theory and contrasts that theory with the standard moral theories. The "close-ups" section looks at three topics--bioethics, violence, and the (...) globalized economy--to help students put the theories presented in the Overviews section to practical use. (shrink)

This biography of Jacques Derrida tells the story of a Jewish boy from Algiers, excluded from school at the age of twelve, who went on to become the most widely translated French philosopher in the world – a vulnerable, tormented man who, throughout his life, continued to see himself as unwelcome in the French university system. We are plunged into the different worlds in which Derrida lived and worked: pre-independence Algeria, the microcosm of the École Normale Supérieure, the cluster of (...) structuralist thinkers, and the turbulent events of 1968 and after. We meet the remarkable series of leading writers and philosophers with whom Derrida struck up a friendship: Louis Althusser, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Genet, and Hélène Cixous, among others. We also witness an equally long series of often brutal polemics fought over crucial issues with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, John R. Searle, and Jürgen Habermas, as well as several controversies that went far beyond academia, the best known of which concerned Heidegger and Paul de Man. We follow a series of courageous political commitments in support of Nelson Mandela, illegal immigrants, and gay marriage. And we watch as a concept – deconstruction – takes wing and exerts an extraordinary influence way beyond the philosophical world, on literary studies, architecture, law, theology, feminism, queer theory, and postcolonial studies. In writing this compelling and authoritative biography, Benoît Peeters talked to over a hundred individuals who knew and worked with Derrida. He is also the first person to make use of the huge personal archive built up by Derrida throughout his life and of his extensive correspondence. Peeters’ book gives us a new and deeper understanding of the man who will perhaps be seen as the major philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

If personhood involves the construction of a narrative identity, then what are we to say of someone who is seriously ill or disabled? How can her life have any narrative when she is unable to write one?

A long lasting debate in the field of implicit learning is whether participants can learn without acquiring conscious knowledge. One crucial problem is that no clear criterion exists allowing to identify participants who possess explicit knowledge. Here, we propose a method to diagnose during a serial reaction time task those participants who acquire conscious knowledge. We first validated this method by using Stroop-like material during training. Then we assessed participants’ knowledge with the Inclusion/Exclusion task and the wagering task . Both (...) experiments confirmed that for participants diagnosed as having acquired conscious knowledge about the underlying sequence the Stroop congruency effect disappeared, whereas for participants not diagnosed as possessing conscious knowledge it only slightly decreased. In addition, both experiments revealed that only participants diagnosed as conscious were able to strategically use their acquired knowledge. Thus, our method allows to reliably distinguish between participants with and without conscious knowledge. (shrink)

American bioethicists lack the theoretical resources to work in cross‐cultural settings. All we have are two approaches to ethics—principles vs. narratives—that are mostly at odds, and neither of which is up to the job. If moral principles are too abstract to be useful, and if stories cannot provide moral authority, then where do we find our moral norms?

The Vlaams Blok is one of the most successful of the extreme right-wing parties in Europe. The growth of the party was partly due to its populist rhetoric on race and security, and its anti-establishment rhetoric.Indeed, over the years, the party has prioritized the immigration issue, which has yielded electoral rewards, and sidelined the Flemish question.Further, the Vlaams Blok has filtered, softened and rewritten strongly-worded ideological texts in order to broaden its electoral appeal, and consolidate its gains.The recent transformation of (...) the Vlaams Blok into Vlaams Belang may be seen as a further step in the party’s attempt to become a right-conservative people’s party.It is another indication of an attempt to get away from the party’s image as being on the extreme of the right wing and the historical legacy of collaboration, and radical Flemish nationalism. (shrink)