Next SectionBackground There is an established link between depression and interest in hastened death in patients who are seriously ill. Concern exists over the extent of depression in patients who actively request euthanasia/physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and those who have their requests granted. Objectives To estimate the prevalence of depression in refused and granted requests for euthanasia/PAS and discuss these findings. Methods A systematic review was performed in MEDLINE and PsycINFO in July 2010, identifying studies reporting rates of depression in requests (...) for and cases of euthanasia/PAS. One author critically appraised the strength of the data using published criteria. Results 21 studies were included covering four countries. There was considerable heterogeneity in methods of assessing depression and selecting patients. In the highest quality studies, in the Netherlands and Oregon, 8–47% of patients requesting euthanasia/PAS had depressive symptoms and 2–17% of completed euthanasia/PAS cases had depressive symptoms. In the Netherlands, depression was significantly higher in refused than granted requests, and there was no significant difference in the rate of depression between euthanasia cases and similar patients who had not made a request for euthanasia. Conclusion It is unclear whether depression increases the probability of making a request for euthanasia/PAS, but in the Netherlands most requests in depressed patients are rejected, leaving a depression rate in cases that is similar to the surrounding population. Less evidence is available elsewhere, but some level of depression has been identified in patients undergoing euthanasia/PAS in all the countries studied. Whether the presence of depression is ever compatible with an ethical decision on euthanasia/PAS is discussed. (shrink)

Fifteen years into a successful career as a college professor, Ilana Blumberg encounters a crisis in the classroom that sends her back to the most basic questions about education and prompts a life-changing journey that ultimately takes her from East Lansing to Tel Aviv. As she explores how civic and religious commitments shape the culture of her humanities classrooms, Blumberg argues that there is no education without ethics. When we know what sort of society we seek to build, our (...) teaching practices follow. In vivid classroom scenes from kindergarten through middle school to the university level, Blumberg conveys the drama of intellectual discovery as she offers novice and experienced teachers a pedagogy of writing, speaking, reading, and thinking that she links clearly to the moral and personal development of her students. Writing as an observant Jew and as an American, Blumberg does not shy away from the difficult challenge of balancing identities in the twenty-first century: how to remain true to a community of origin while being a national and global citizen. As she negotiates questions of faith and citizenship in the wide range of classrooms she traverses, Blumberg reminds us that teaching - and learning - are nothing short of a moral art, and that the future of our society depends on it. (shrink)

Pragmatic sociology is often read as a reaction to and an alternative to Bourdieu’s ‘critical sociology’. This article, in contrast, offers an assessment of pragmatic sociology in terms of its contribution to the theory of culture in general and its affinities with repertoire theory in particular. Whereas the tendency has been to conceive of repertoires as largely unstructured entities, pragmatic sociology has demonstrated a systematic interest in their internal contents and structure, which it has even expanded through its more recent (...) turn to historical and macro comparative analysis. In the process, however, pragmatic sociology has also been leaning towards a form of cultural sociology that actually challenges some major aspects of repertoire theory–thus also bringing into relief the dilemmas facing any attempt at further elaboration of what is now a growing strand of cultural theory. (shrink)

Orphei ad Musaeum -- Orphei hymni -- Procli Lycii philosophi hymni -- Magica dicta magorum ex Zoroastre.

Preferences for options that do not secure optimal outcomes, like the ones catalogued by Sunstein, derive from two sources: cognitive heuristics and deontological rules. Although rules may stem from automatic affective reactions, they are deliberately maintained. Because strongly held convictions have important behavioral implications, it may be useful to regard cognitive heuristics and deontological rules as separate sources of nonconsequential judgment in the moral domain.

Doctors Pratt and de Vries propose a well-structured and courageous approach to analyse and repair an insufficiently recognised discussion about epistemologies and knowledge production in bioethics.1 The authors invite researchers, scholars, public health experts and bioethicists from the global North to reflect about their lack of imagination regarding different sources of narratives produced by the global South. There is a critical analysis of injustices and an urgent call for global bioethicists to reorient their field and focus on the analysis and (...) development of ethical interventions to achieve a comprehensive epistemic justice for global health ethics. Feminist bioethicists from the global South already argued about the importance of the voices and biographies of the people and groups in the communities to reframe the bioethical reasoning regarding the meaning of individual’s needs during public health and humanitarian emergencies.2 Over a decade ago, Diniz and Guilhem described the role and goal of feminist bioethics in Latin America, shaped in an oppressive context promoted and created by …. (shrink)

In Brazil, the epicenter of the Zika crisis, brown, black, and indigenous poor women living in municipalities with scarce resources were disproportionally affected. The gendered consequences of the epidemic exposed how intersectional lenses are central to understand the impact of public health emergencies in the lives of women and girls. The demand for Zika-affected children and women to be research participants is relevant for an ethical analysis of participant protection procedures during a crisis. We investigated how women experienced research participation (...) by analyzing their narratives. Two-year-long longitudinal qualitative study in Brazilian sites located in the epidemic's epicenter was performed using mixed methods: ethnography with women from two distinct states and individual semi-structured interviews with five women in different Zika-affected states, four of which were community leaders. All women in the study were mothers or grandmothers of Zika-affected children. Thematic analysis was used for data evaluation. Women perceived being pressured to participate in research and a lack of benefit sharing. Structural determinants of gender inequality, such as its effect on power distribution, were found to impact research participant protection. Formal procedures for research protocols approvals were insufficient in protecting participants because these instruments were unable to account for structural aspects. Communitarian mobilization, through WhatsApp groups, was found to be an important mechanism to create conditions to challenge oppressive structures. Strengthening public health, effective community-based participation in research planning and implantation of ethical strategies that promotes gender equality can have transformative effect on unequal power structures and promote participant protection. (shrink)

This paper introduces The Certainty Trap, a pervasive cognitive distortion that leads individuals to treat their knowledge and beliefs as definitive and final rather than provisional, particularly regarding contentious social and political issues. It explores three key fallacies underlying this trap, discusses its consequences, and proposes strategies for moving from certainty to confidence in thinking and discourse. By revealing the mechanisms of The Certainty Trap and its overall impact on various domains of society, this essay aims to contribute to the (...) clearer thinking that can lead to more nuanced and productive approaches to addressing complex societal challenges. (shrink)

As mídias facilitam as aprendizagens e oportunizam a expressão das Habilidades Sociais dos estudantes. Este estudo objetiva caracterizar o uso das Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação e as Habilidades Sociais de 456 estudantes de escolas privadas do Sul do Brasil. Trata-se de um estudo quantitativo, descritivo e transversal. Utilizou-se um questionário de dados sociodemográficos, Questionário de Utilização das Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação e Inventário de Habilidades Sociais para Adolescentes Del-Prette. O celular/ smartphone e as redes sociais foram as principais (...) tecnologias utilizadas. Destaca-se maior frequência nas Habilidades Sociais de Civilidade e Desenvoltura social e menores frequências em Empatia, Autocontrole, Assertividade e Abordagem Afetiva. Além de alta dificuldade na emissão de Empatia, Autocontrole e Assertividade. Sugere-se estudos clínicos para desenvolvimento de maior repertório de habilidades sociais nesta população para fins de prevenção de comportamentos problemáticos relacionados a baixos níveis de habilidades sociais e alto uso de mídias. (shrink)

S.N. Eisenstadt’s theory of culture has remained little examined as such. This article starts by assessing the place given to theorizing culture in the vast corpus of his writings, and the part played by successive theoretical influences, as well as shifting research priorities in that regard. The following section delineates the core arguments or ‘key ideas’ that arise from his most explicit theoretical writings with respect to culture. The article ends by positioning Eisenstadt’s approach relative to some major trends and (...) issues in contemporary cultural sociology at large and drawing some implications for the further elaboration of a ‘strong’, modular and multi-level approach to culture. (shrink)

Due to an oversight, Ilana Raburn's article “Intrinsic Kinds in Internal Medicine,” Philosophy of Medicine 5, no. 1 (2024), https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2024.189, failed to acknowledge the influence of Harriet Fagerberg’s characterisation of diseases as Millikanian natural kinds in “Reactive Natural Kinds and Varieties of Dependence,” European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12, article 72 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-022-00500-x.

A theoretical structure for multiattribute decision making is presented, based on a dynamical system for interactions in a neural network incorporating affective and rational variables. This enables modeling of problems that elude two prevailing economic decision theories: subjective expected utility theory and prospect theory. The network is unlike some that fit economic data by choosing optimal weights or coefficients within a predetermined mathematical framework. Rather, the framework itself is based on principles used elsewhere to model many other cognitive and behavioral (...) data, in a manner approximating how humans perform behavioral functions. Different, interconnected modules within the network encode (a) attributes of objects among which choices are made, (b) object categories, (c) and goals of the decision maker. An example is utilized to simulate the actual consumer choice between old and new versions of Coca-Cola. Potential applications are also discussed to market decisions involving negotiations between participants, such as international petroleum traders. (shrink)

Before Abraham Robinson and Kurt Gödel became familiar with Paul Cohen’s Results, both logicians held a naïve Platonic approach to philosophy. In this paper I demonstrate how Cohen’s results influenced both of them. Robinson declared himself a Formalist, while Gödel basically continued to hold onto the old Platonic approach. Why were the reactions of Gödel and Robinson to Cohen’s results so drastically different in spite of the fact that their initial philosophical positions were remarkably similar? I claim that the key (...) to these different responses stems from the meanings that Gödel and Robinson gave to the concept of intuition, as well as to the relationship between epistemology and ontology. I also illustrate that although it might initially appear that Gödel’s and Robinson’s positions after Cohen’s results were quite different, this was not necessarily the case. (shrink)

Le cancer est perçu aujourd’hui comme une maladie qui affecte à peu près autant d’hommes que de femmes. C’est cependant une conception relativement récente. Jusqu’au milieu du xxe siècle, le cancer était considéré comme une pathologie principalement féminine, les tumeurs malignes produisant des symptômes typiques faciles à détecter. Au xxe siècle, les cancers féminins – du sein et de l’utérus – sont les principales cibles des campagnes publiques pour la détection précoce des tumeurs malignes. Depuis les années 1950, le développement (...) de méthodes efficaces de diagnostic et l’augmentation des cancers du poumon, plus fréquents chez les hommes, met fin à l’image du cancer comme une pathologie féminine. Dans les discours publics et les medias, les cancers des organes reproducteurs féminins continuent cependant d’être plus visibles que ceux des organes reproducteurs masculins, et les femmes à risques sont plus souvent sujettes à une chirurgie de prévention mutilante. (shrink)

Following Levinas’ articulation that “truth is accessible only to the mind capable of experiencing an exile away from its preconceptions and prejudices,” Exile and Otherness posits that Shinran, the founder True Pure Land Buddhism, and Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher and Torah scholar, exhibit sensitivity to the neglected and suffering others.

Linguistic forms with dedicated evidential meanings have been described for a number of Australian languages (eg. Donaldson 1980, Laughren 1982, Wilkins 1989) but there has been little written on how these are used in social interaction. This paper examines evidential strategies in ordinary Garrwa conversations, by taking into account what we know more generally about the status of knowledge and epistemic authority in Aboriginal societies, and applying this understanding to account for the ways knowledge is managed in `ordinary' interactions.

Nancy Levene reinterprets a major early modern philosopher, Benedict de Spinoza - a Jew who was rejected by the Jewish community of his day but whose thought contains, and critiques, both Jewish and Christian ideas. It foregrounds the connection of religion, democracy, and reason, showing that Spinoza's theories of the Bible, the theologico-political, and the philosophical all involve the concepts of equality and sovereignty. Professor Levene argues that Spinoza's concept of revelation is the key to this connection, and (...) above all to Spinoza's view of human power. This is to shift the emphasis in Spinoza's thought from the language of amor Dei to the language of libertas humana without losing either the dialectic of his most striking claim - that man is God to man - or the Jewish and Christian elements in his thought. Original and thoughtfully argued, this book offers fresh insights into Spinoza's thought. (shrink)

This article examines the ways in which 1970s French feminists who participated in the Women’s Liberation Movement (Mouvement de libération des femmes – MLF) wielded the spectre of lesbianism as an American idiosyncrasy to counteract the politicisation of lesbianism in France. It argues that the erasure of lesbian difference from the domain of French feminism was a necessary condition for making ‘woman’ an amenable subject for incorporation into the abstract unity of the French nation, wherein heterosexuality is conceived as a (...) democratic crucible where men and women harmoniously come together and differences are deemed divisive. Looking at the history of feminism from the standpoint of a lesbian perspective reveals unforeseen continuities between French ‘feminist’ and ‘anti-feminist’ genealogies insofar as they rest on common heterosexual and racial foundations. Finally, the article demonstrates that the alleged un-Frenchness ascribed to the word ‘lesbian’ in the 1970s feminist movement spectrally returned in the 1990s when the word ‘gender’ was, in its turn, deemed radically foreign to the French culture by feminist researchers. Fiercely reactionary constituencies against the legalisation of same-sex marriage have more recently taken up this rhetorical weapon against sexual and racial minorities. (shrink)

In 1910, Charles Richet suggested that studying individual variations in anaphylactic responses might both open a way to experimental investigation of the biological basis of individuality and help unify the immunological and physiological approaches to biological phenomena. The very opposite would happen however. In the next two decades, physiologists and immunologists interested in anaphylaxis and allergy experienced more and more difficulties in communicating. This divergence between the physiopathological and immunological approaches derived from discrepancies between the experimental systems used by each (...) of these scientific communities. Trying to develop a point of view that took into account all bodily reactions to stimuli, physiologists thought that individual variations between the laboratory animals they used (mainly dogs and cats) constituted important experimental data. Seeking to develop reproducible studies of infection, immunity and 'sensitisation', bacteriologists and immunologists considered that individual variations between the laboratory animals they used (mainly small rodents) constituted 'noise' and not a 'signal'. Each group's loyalty to the experimental models used in their discipline widened the gap between immunological and physiological explanations of allergies and led to the abandonment of studies on the biological basis of individuality. (shrink)

"In a complex world where competing groups claim to be speaking on behalf of incommensurate versions of 'humanity, ' the authors represented in "In the Name of ...

Smajdor addresses the problem of inferior clinical outcomes among adults with impairments of capacity to give informed consent (AWIC). She notes that AWIC are generally excluded from clinical trials to protect them against harms and avoid exploitation and claims there is a causal link between involvement in clinical trials and favourable outcomes. She argues, given this link, that we should increase AWIC representation in clinical trials and can justifiably do so by recognising the capacity of AWIC to assent. AWIC form (...) a diverse group, with multiple aetiologies, including, for example, Down syndrome, traumatic brain injury and dementia. In some cases, the inability to consent may fluctuate so that the same person could be AWIC only at certain times. Yet despite these differences, the group has a shared unmet need. We agree with Smajdor that AWIC outcomes should be improved, but question whether simply increasing representation in clinical trials is sufficient to achieve this. We identify the following points: 1. AWIC are under-represented in clinical trials. There is evidence of widespread exclusion of AWIC in clinical trials within the UK and abroad and it is often a specific exclusion criterion.1 2. AWIC have worse clinical outcomes and a lower life expectancy. The life expectancy …. (shrink)

Linguistic studies of evidentiality, the coding of source of knowledge, have often appeared divided into two camps: those whose focus is the semantic, morphological and typological characteristics of grammaticalized morphological evidential systems, and those whose focus is on the social functions of non-grammaticalized evidential constructions as markers of epistemic authority and responsibility. While interest in the discourse functions of all evidential systems has been growing as seen in the recent special issue of the journal Pragmatics and Society on ‘Evidentiality in (...) Interaction’, there has been little direct attention on whether the deployment of evidential strategies in discourse varies according to the grammatical status of the grammatical resources available to the speaker. This article examines the nature of both grammaticalized and non-grammaticalized evidential systems in a number of languages to show that while the underlying pragmatics of evidentiality is the same regardless of grammatical system, nonetheless grammaticalized evidential systems provide important evidence of the particular features of knowledge sources that are used in routine ways in discourse sufficiently to motivate their development into grammatical systems. (shrink)

The paper studies Livy's account in Book 45 of the aftermath of Aemilius Paullus' conquest of Macedon employing two interpretative methods, both common in recent studies of historians. The first is “metahistory,” in other words interpreting events within a historical narrative as commenting covertly on the genre of history and on the work as an example of that genre. The second is seeing how internal audiences provide a guide for the reader's interpretation. These, though theoretically independent, are in practice often (...) related, with internal audiences being used as a trigger for wider reflections on the text and the genre. Four linked passages from Livy 45 are discussed in detail. One invites a systematic metahistorical reading without the use of an internal audience, partly to endorse Livy's own manner of “secondary” history, partly to promote a moral reading of the text. The other three employ internal audiences to similar effect: first, Aemilius' meeting with the defeated Perseus, and the lesson which he draws about the mutability of fortune; second, the spectacular games he organizes at Amphipolis; and third, his eventual triumph in Rome, along with the speech that Servilius gives in its support. The understanding of the genre of history that Livy promotes through these passages is, however, astonishingly narrow and didactic, ignoring even central aspects of his own work which do not conform to that understanding. The paper concludes by considering why Livy would wish to present himself and his genre as single-mindedly moralistic when neither he nor it actually was. (shrink)

My essay explores the connections between Spinoza’s theory of biblical interpretation and his conception of prophecy, linking the two through what he calls “moral certainty.” The question of what prophecy conveys is connected to the question of how to read Scripture because readers are in a similar position to both the prophets, who attain sure knowledge of some matter revealed by God, and the audience of prophecy, who have access to this knowledge only through faith. Like prophets, readers are interpreters (...) of something that can not be known by way of reason alone; hence the effort to secure certainty involves factors other than purely rational ones (the history of the text, for readers; a vivid imagination, signs, and virtue for the prophet). But like the prophet’s audience, the knowledge of texts that we can attain is not always “sure,” since texts “transcend” us in a certain sense. That is, they introduce novelties---laws, customs, histories---that we wouldn’t know without reading them, and we therefore have to take their authors, prophets in this case, at their word-as it were, on faith. While most of the focus on Spinoza’s concept of biblical interpretation has centered on his maxim that “the method of interpreting Scripture is no different from the method of interpreting Nature,” I hold that it is just as crucial to investigate his claims concerning the nature of prophecy, and in particular to allow prophetic knowledge to shed light on Spinoza’s concepts of words, history, and the corruption and incorruptibility of texts. (shrink)

That Sallust owed a considerable debt to the writings of Cato the Censor was observed in antiquity, and the observation has often been discussed and expanded on by modern scholars. The ancient references to Sallust's employment of Cato are mainly in the context of his adoption of an archaic style, and specifically Catonian vocabulary. But the choice of Cato as a model had an obvious significance that went beyond the purely stylistic. Sallust's works articulate extreme pessimism at the moral state (...) of late-Republican Rome, and do so partly by contrasting the modern age with a prelapsarian time of near-untrammelled virtue, brought to an end only by the fall of Carthage and the consequent dominance of Roman power, which in turn led to moral corruption. Similarly, Cato famously stood in his own day for moral rectitude—and specifically appealed to past virtue as the standard to which he wished to hold his contemporaries. Sallust, by writing in a Catonian style, aligns himself with that tradition. (shrink)

The objective of this survey was to assess the extent to which nurses encounter and identify dilemma-generating situations in the light of the publication and circulation of the Israeli code of ethics for nurses in 1994. The results are being used as a basis for a programme aimed at promoting nurses' decision-making skills in coping with ethical dilemmas. In this era of major advances in medicine, the nurse's role as the protector of patient rights may bring about conflicts with physicians' (...) orders, with institutional policies, or with patients' families. Nurses will then become confronted with ethical and moral dilemmas. A nationwide survey was carried out to identify and describe the ethical conflicts with which nurses in Israel are confronted in the course of their work. A third of the enumerated dilemmas were encountered by more than 50% of the nurses. The major determinant influencing encounters with dilemmas, as perceived by the participating nurses, was their work setting, namely, the hospital versus the community. It was shown that nurses seek support mainly among their peers, they are barely familiar with the Israeli Code, and they consider their own families as the predominant factor in shaping their ethical attitudes. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the implications of a specific type of anger — termed here ‘civic’ anger — with regard to the place of emotions and their relation to regimes of justification in the framework of Boltanski and Thévenot’s sociology of critical capacity. Drawing upon interviews with a sample of Israeli philanthropic mega-donors, it will highlight the distinctive features and context-bound operation of civic anger as a type of moral and political emotion that has not yet (...) received its due conceptualization. In the case at hand here, civic philanthropic anger will be shown to correspond to a cultural configuration that included regimes of justification equivalent to those already identified by Boltanski and Thévenot (mainly ‘civic’ and ‘industrial’), but also allowed a distinctive cluster of emotions to develop into an additional, ‘quasi’ regime of justification (‘benevolence’). As such, it points to ways in which a renewed sociology of morality needs enlist the fecund idea of regimes of justification, but also draw more systematic theoretical and empirical attention to the variable and multifaceted relation between emotions and justifications in practices of moral interpretation. (shrink)