Introduction -- From paideia to humanism -- Pietism and the problem of human craft (Menschen-Kunst) -- The harmonious harp-playing of humanity: J. G. Herder -- Ethical formation and the invention of the religion of art -- The rise of the Bildungsroman and the commodification of literature -- Authorship and its resignation in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister -- "The Bildung of self-consciousness itself towards science": Hegel.

This essay will focus on the moral issues relating to surrogacy in the global context, and will critique the liberal arguments that have been offered in support of it. Liberal arguments hold sway concerning reproductive arrangements made between commissioning couples from wealthy nations and the surrogates from socioeconomically weak backgrounds that they hire to do their reproductive labor. My argument in this paper is motivated by a concern for controlling harms by putting the practice of globalized commercial surrogacy into the (...) context of care ethics. As I will argue, the unstable situations into which children of global surrogacy arrangements are born is symbolic of the crisis of care that the practice raises. Using the Baby Manji case as my touch point, I will suggest that liberalism cannot address the harms experienced by Manji and children like her who are created through the global practice of assisted reproductive technology. I will argue that, if commissioning couples consider their proposed surrogacy contracts from a care ethics point of view, they will begin to think relationally about their actions, considering the practice from an ethical lens, not just an economic or contractual one. (shrink)

This paper applies a relational and familial ethic to address concerns relating to nursing home deaths and advance care planning during Covid‐19 and beyond. The deaths of our elderly in nursing homes during this pandemic have been made more complicated by the restriction of visitors even at the end of life, a time when families would normally be present. While we must be vigilant about preventing unnecessary deaths caused by coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes, some deaths of our elders are (...) inevitable. Thus, it is essential that advanced care planning occurs in a way that upholds the familial and relational aspects of elders’ lives that often matter to them the most. We invoke concepts from feminist ethicists like Hilde Lindemann and Eva Kittay and introduce Avery Weisman and Thomas Hackett’s concept of “appropriate death” to suggest better ways of planning for those deaths of our elderly that cannot be avoided. Our hope is to allow for deaths that are as meaningful as possible for both the elderly and the family members who survive them. (shrink)

Augustine famously claimed that the virtues of pagan Rome were nothing more than splendid vices. This critique reinvented itself as a suspicion of acquired virtue as such, and true Christian virtue has, ever since, been set against a false, hypocritical virtue alleged merely to conceal pride. _Putting On Virtue_ reveals how a distrust of learned and habituated virtue shaped both early modern Christian moral reflection and secular forms of ethical thought. Jennifer Herdt develops her claims through an argument of (...) broad historical sweep, which brings together the Aristotelian tradition as taken up by Thomas Aquinas with the early modern thinkers who shaped modern liberalism. In chapters on Luther, Bunyan, the Jansenists, Mandeville, Hume, Rousseau, and Kant, she argues that efforts to make a radical distinction between true Christian virtue and its tainted imitations actually created an autonomous natural ethics separate from Christianity. This secular value system valorized pride and authenticity, while rendering graced human agency less meaningful. Ultimately, _Putting On Virtue_ traces a path from suspicion of virtue to its secular inversion, from confession of dependence to assertion of independence. (shrink)

Different notions of objectivity support different notions of what is required for a moral value or obligation to be experienced as objective. If the objectivity of a property requires that it can exist even when we fail to notice its existence, then experiencing a property as objective will require that we imagine it appearing in some way that is not presently available to us. Explaining what that imagining involves is the central task of this paper. Defending the epistemic value of (...) such imagining is a secondary aim. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue that the received view of autonomy is insufficient for both biomedical ethics and feminist theory. I begin with an examination of the received view of autonomy; I then indicate the way in which this view of autonomy has been applied to health care ethics. A feminist relational approach to autonomy is explored: I argue that such an approach has many strengths in that it gives us a more accurate picture of the self-in-relationships and that it (...) recognizes many social and structural conditions that may impede an individual's attempts to be autonomous. ;This feminist relational approach to autonomy, once defined, is applied to the medical/social practices of cosmetic surgery and contract motherhood. I do this to show the practical implications of this contextual approach to autonomy. (shrink)

Jennifer Johnston’s fiction presents the conditions of Irish culture and society by exploring the separations between interior and exterior realms and past and present temporalities persisting within the insulating privacy of the familial home space. In _The Christmas Tree_ (1981), the home is both haven and prison for Johnston’s heroine. In this paper, I argue that the home—which assumes the form of the individual body and the familial home—is paradoxical. The protagonist leaves 1950s Ireland because of the country’s rigid (...) gender roles in order to pursue an autonomous life as a writer in England, but she is unable to publish her writing within the confines of the patriarchal publishing world. The home of her body becomes paradoxical when she becomes a single mother as an avenue for creativity but is then diagnosed with terminal cancer. She returns to her father’s home to die, which she re-orders and reclaims through the disorder of the uncanny—represented by her non-conformity and illness brought into the patriarchal home. By writing her life story and creating a brief, alternative maternal relationship with her young caretaker, the protagonist confronts her own ambivalence toward her parents, who also represent aspects of oppressive heteronormative gender expectations. (shrink)

As scholars integrate empirical approaches to ethical questions in healthcare, relational autonomy theory must inform research design and change practice. Qualitative approaches are well suited to issues where patient values play a central role, and they can be combined with relational autonomy theory to investigate the factors influencing autonomy-rich experiences. This paper draws upon my experience conducting bioethics research related to clinical trial decision-making to develop a systematic method for applying relational autonomy as a theoretical lens to qualitative health research. (...) The resultant practical guide utilizes Susan Sherwin’s theory of relational autonomy and presents an empirical method responsive to autonomy-relevant questions. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that there is a deep connection between home-based care, technology, and the self. Providing the means for persons to receive care at home is not merely a kindness that respects their preference to be at home: it is an important means of extending their selfhood and respecting the unique selves that they are. Home-based technologies like telemedicine and robotic care may certainly be useful tools in providing care for persons at home, but they also (...) have important implications for sustaining selfhood in ways that are of value to individuals and those who care for them. I will argue, by appealing to Hilde Lindemann’s notion of “holding” persons’ identities in place, that technological interventions are not only useful tools for improving and sustaining health and good care at home, but that they may also help to extend our personal identities and relational capacities in ways that are practically and ethically good. Because of these important goods, I will claim that there is a prima facie moral duty to do this “holding” work and that it is best done by family members and loved ones who are well suited to the job because of their history and relationship with the individual that needs to be “held” in place. (shrink)

Are women's requests for aid in dying honored more often than men's, or less? Feminist arguments can support conclusions either that gendered perceptions of women as self‐sacrificing predispose physicians to accede to women's requests to die — or that cultural understandings of women as not fully rational agents lead physicians to reject their requests as irrational.

Eudaimonism is often regarded as egoistic. If it recommends that agents pursue their own good because it is their own good, it is guilty as charged. But excellence‐prior eudaimonism offers a non‐egoistic alternative to this welfare‐prior eudaimonism. Excellence‐prior eudaimonism recommends that an agent live in a way that is in fact good for the agent, but it does not regard the agent’s own good as necessarily that for the sake of which the agent acts, nor does it regard living well (...) as justified by the fact that it is good for the agent, but simply because it is good. The Christian eudaimonisms of Augustine and Aquinas are best understood as deepened forms of excellence‐prior eudaimonism. (shrink)

Findings suggest a positive impact of bilingualism on cognition, including the later onset of dementia. However, it is not clear to what extent these effects are influenced by variations in attentional control demands in response to specific task requirements. In this study, 20 bilingual and 20 monolingual older adults performed a task-switching task under explicit task-cuing vs. memory-based switching conditions. In the cued condition, task switches occurred in random order and a visual cue signaled the next task to be performed. (...) In the memory-based condition, the task alternated after every second trial in a predictable sequence without presenting a cue. The performance of bilinguals did not vary across experimental conditions, whereas monolinguals experienced a pronounced increase in response latencies and error rates in the cued condition. Both groups produced similar switch costs and mixing costs, but bilinguals produced them with lower response latencies. The cognitive benefits of bilingualism seem not to apply to executive functions per se but to affect specific cognitive processes that involve task-relevant context processing. The present results suggest that lifelong bilingualism could promote in older adults a flexible adjustment to environmental cues, but only with increased task demands. However, due to the small sample size, the results should be interpreted with caution. (shrink)

Drawing upon the concept of thirdspace (Soja 1996), this article extends sociocultural theorizations of space in relation to alternative educational programs: programs designed to re-engage youth who have been pushed out of mainstream schools. Snapshots of educational programs, provided by ethnographic research gathered in the United States, Australia, and Canada, foreground the contradictions inherent in these alternative spaces: on one hand, the possibilities obtained for youth through participation, and on the other, the production of these programs through displacement. Alternative educational (...) programs expose the tensions between a democratic ideal of engaging all young people in excellent and equitable public schools and a neo-liberal economic rationality that currently fuels the ?sorting machine? function of compulsory schooling. (shrink)

Neoliberal cultural frames of individual choice inform mothers’ accounts of why they refuse state-mandated vaccines for their children. Using interviews with 25 mothers who reject recommended vaccines, this article examines the gendered discourse of vaccine refusal. First, I show how mothers, seeing themselves as experts on their children, weigh perceived risks of infection against those of vaccines and dismiss claims that vaccines are necessary. Second, I explicate how mothers see their own intensive mothering practices—particularly around feeding, nutrition, and natural living—as (...) an alternate and superior means of supporting their children’s immunity. Third, I show how they attempt to control risk through management of social exposure, as they envision disease risk to lie in “foreign” bodies outside their networks, and, therefore, individually manageable. Finally, I examine how these mothers focus solely on their own children by evaluating—and often rejecting—assertions that their choices undermine community health, while ignoring how their children benefit from the immunity of others. By analyzing the gendered discourse of vaccines, this article identifies how women’s insistence on individual maternal choice as evidence of commitment to their children draws on and replicates structural inequality in ways that remain invisible, but affect others. (shrink)

Some authors have advanced a contractual model to protect patient autonomy within the therapeutic relationship. Such a conception of the physician–patient relationship is intended to serve both parties by respecting patients' choices and preserving physician integrity. I critique this contractual view and offer an alternative, feminist contextualized approach to autonomy within the therapeutic relationship. This approach places the physician-patient relationship within a larger social context, and indicates the many social inequalities that render insupportable the notion of physicians and patients as (...) contracting equals. (shrink)

Epistemological issues are usually taken to be David Hume's central preoccupation. Attending to the role of sympathy in Hume's thought reveals, however, that his primary aim is to secure the conditions for social peace and prosperity in 18th-century Scotland and beyond, a peace particularly threatened by religious conflict. This perspective not only discloses the unity of Hume's ethical, political, aesthetic, and historical writings, it also suggests that the driving forces in the development of modern ethical and religious thought are ethical (...) and social rather than epistemological. ;The first two chapters discuss the background to Hume's use of sympathy and explore its application in the Treatise. In Hume's secularized account of moral approbation, sympathy fills the place Hutcheson reserved for Providence; it assures an intelligible connection between moral judgments and human flourishing in society. Hume at first makes use of a passive notion of sympathy developed by Latitudinarian divines to counter Hobbesian accounts of self-interested human nature. But this passive form of sympathy is limited and variable, threatening to reinforce, rather than alleviate, religious zeal and sectarian conflict. Hume introduces a new form of corrected, 'extensive' sympathy which involves an active effort to overcome prior affinities and cross factional boundaries. ;Appreciating the role of sympathy in morals also illuminates malfunctions of judgment among religious believers. Chapter 3 interprets Hume's essay on the pleasures of tragedy as an unmasking of Scottish Evangelical condemnation of theater. Evangelical opposition reflects pathologies of belief which grow out of a rejection of worldly existence and eventually distort sympathetic capacities. In "Of the Standard of Taste," discussed in Chapter 4, Hume grapples with disagreement in taste and judgment and argues that sympathy cannot be extended to those who live "artificial" religious lives, deducing practical consequences from speculative theories. ;Where poetry fails, however, history may succeed, since history is for Hume the paradigm of sympathetic understanding. As the final chapter argues, it is in the History of England that sympathy reaches its mature expression and Hume's delineation of the links among religious irrationality, zeal, and faction, attains its most concrete and persuasive form. (shrink)

“You are interested in ethics,” the clinician said, “there are problems with medical ethics in Taiwan.” It was 2005, shortly after I had moved to Taiwan. A little later, a professor told me of a university hospital that served as a site for a transnational clinical trial run by a pharmaceutical company. He said that since no informed consent procedure was in place at that time, the hospital had simply obtained employer consent. “That’s why companies want to come to Taiwan (...) to do clinical testing, because you can do anything here—things that can’t be done in the US. That’s why everyone wants to come to Taiwan.” These statements may seem, at first, to indicate a lack of concern in Taiwan for medical and scientific... (shrink)

Returning to John P. Reeder's 1978 essay on “Religious Ethics as a Field and Discipline,” this essay explores debates surrounding the original intentions for the Journal of Religious Ethics (JRE) and for the field of religious ethics, as these have played out over the decades among an influential group of scholars involved with the JRE since its inception: Arthur Dyck, Ronald Green, Stanley Hauerwas, and Jeffrey Stout. While the JRE and its founding mission are in need of ongoing critique and (...) transformation, we might well still affirm the journal's ongoing importance as a site for the negotiation of a commons, the identification of possibilities for shared life, imagined beyond exclusion and domination. (shrink)

This edited collection sets forth a new understanding of aesthetic-moral judgment organised around three key concepts: pleasure, reflection, and accountability. The overarching theme is that art is not merely a representation or expression like any other, but that it promotes shared moral understanding and helps us engage in meaning-making. This volume offers an alternative to brain-centric and realist approaches to aesthetics. It features original essays from a number of leading philosophers of art, aesthetics, ethics, and perception, including Elizabeth Burns Coleman, (...) Garrett Cullity, Cynthia A. Freeland, Ivan Gaskell, Paul Guyer, Jane Kneller, Keith Lehrer, Mohan Matthen, Jennifer A. McMahon, Bence Nanay, Nancy Sherman, and Robert Sinnerbrink. Part I of the book analyses the elements of aesthetic experience— pleasure, preference, and imagination—with the individual conceived as part of a particular cultural context and network of other minds. The chapters in Part II explain how it is possible for cultural learning to impact these elements through consensus building, an impulse to objectivity, emotional expression, and reflection. Finally, the chapters in Part III converge on the role of dissonance, difference, and diversity in promoting cultural understanding and advancement. Social Aesthetics and Moral Judgment will appeal to philosophers of art and aesthetics, as well as to scholars in other disciplines interested in issues related to art and cultural exchange. (shrink)

The doctrine of the image of God is often regarded as grounding human dignity in something permanent and unchanging that transcends our attitudes and behaviors. Yet we persistently encounter the argument that particular human individuals or groups have acted so as to forfeit their moral standing as fellow humans. They are bestialized, categorized as non-human animals, lifting ordinary restraints on punishment. I examine the logic of this argument in John Locke, Thomas Aquinas, and contemporary felony disenfranchisement, showing how it involves (...) slippage between the unobjectionable notion that specific rights may in particular circumstances be forfeited, and the deeply troubling claim that one’s moral standing as human can as such be forfeited. I argue that an apparently similar rhetoric of dehumanization employed by Frederick Douglass, in contrast, refrains from stripping the opponent of moral considerability. (shrink)

This essay revisits Elizabeth Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy' with two goals in mind. The first is to recover and reclaim its radical vision, by setting forth a unified account of its three guiding theses. On the interpretation advanced here, Anscombe's three theses are not independently intelligible; their underlying unity is the perceived necessity of absolute prohibitions for any sound account of practical reason. The second goal is to show that Anscombe allows for a thoroughly unmodern sense of ‘moral' that applies (...) to human actions; the paper concludes with some reasons to think that this unmodern sense of ‘moral' is worthy of further philosophical attention and defense. (shrink)

The ethical naturalist asks us to take seriously the idea that practical norms are a species of natural norms, such that moral goodness is a kind of natural goodness. The ethical naturalist has not demonstrated, however, how it is possible for a power of reason to be governed by natural norms, because her own attempts to do this have led her into a dilemma. If she takes the first horn and stresses that ethical naturalism provides objective, natural norms of the (...) species, then she fails to show how such norms are practical, or operative from a deliberative point of view. If she takes the second horn and stresses that ethical naturalism yields a picture of knowledge of human life that is practical because it comes through virtuous dispositions of intellect and will, then she fails to have an account of how it is knowledge of facts about a life form, potentially accessible to a non-human knower. In this paper, I argue that one potential resolution to this dilemma can be found in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. On a broadly Thomist account of practical reason, the first principles of practical reason are our common human ends or goods, which are constitutive of a good human life. The work of practical reason on this naturalistic account is twofold: to conceive and order these ends into some general conception of how to live, and to apply this general conception to the particular situations of one’s life in order to realize one’s vision of the good life, here and now. (shrink)

The peptide hormone oxytocin plays a critical role in regulating affiliative behaviors including mating, pair‐bond formation, maternal/parenting behavior, social recognition, separation distress and other aspects of attachment. Jin and colleagues1 recently reported intriguing findings that CD38, a transmembrane receptor with ADP‐ribosyl cyclase activity, plays a critical role in maternal nurturing behavior and social recognition by regulating oxytocin secretion. This research may have implications for understanding disorders marked by deficits in social cognition and social functioning, including autism, social anxiety disorder, borderline (...) personality disorder and schizophrenia. BioEssays 29:837–841, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

There are a number of problems associated with the classic notion of beauty understood as an experience of perceptual form. These problems are that there is an apparent incompatibility between beauty’s objectivity and subjectivity; and an incompatibility between the two self-evident theses that (i) there are no principles of beauty and (ii) there are genuine judgements of beauty. There is also the problem of explaining the possibility of a disinterested pleasure. To solve these problems I draw upon the work of (...) Glyn Humphreys & Dietmar Heinke (1998) according to whom the processing of ‘between-object’ relations draws upon view-dependent primitives and the processing of ‘within-object’ relations draws upon view-invariant primitives. I argue that if what we experience as aesthetic form or beauty is some kind of play on the processes involved in processing within-object-relations during the course of perceiving certain objects, then the apparent problems of beauty would be resolved. I speculate that perhaps the perception of certain objects employs perceptual principles in an unprecedented way or in a way which epitomizes their normal operation. The idea is that when perception is employed in such a way that our attention is drawn from the object recognized to the experience of perception as something like a solution to a problem (that is, to the experience of the construction of within-object relations), then we experience what we know of as aesthetic form and beauty. (shrink)

In 2000, researchers from the Human Genome Project proclaimed that the initial sequencing of the human genome definitively proved, among other things, that there was no genetic basis for race. The genetic fact that most humans were 99.9% the same at the level of their DNA was widely heralded and circulated in the English-speaking press, especially in the United States. This pronouncement seemed proof that long-term antiracist efforts to de-biologize race were legitimized by scientific findings. Yet, despite the seemingly widespread (...) acceptance of the social construction of race, post-HGP genetic science has seen a substantial shift toward the use of race variables in genetic research and, according to a number of prominent scholars, is re-invoking the specter of earlier forms of racial science in some rather discomfiting ways. During the past seven years, the main thrust of human genetic research, especially in the realm of biomedicine, has shifted from a concern with the 99.9% of the shared genome — what is thought to make humans alike — towards an explicit focus on the 0.1% that constitutes human genetic variation. Here I briefly explore some of the potential implications of the conceptualization and practice of early 21st century genetic variation research, especially as it relates to questions of race. (shrink)

William Placher and others have charged seventeenth-century theologians with "domesticating" divine transcendence, with fostering an understanding of God that was clear and comprehensible, but unattractive, unpersuasive, and easily undermined by secular thought. This essay tests that claim by analyzing the discourse of divine compassion which became prominent among post-Restoration Anglican divines. While the second generation of latitudinarians do exemplify the trends Placher traces, the first generation of latitudinarians, notably Cambridge Platonist Benjamin Whichcote, succeeds in finding a way to affirm divine (...) compassion without undermining divine transcendence. Moreover, Whichcote argues that an insistence on divine incomprehensibility fosters a voluntaristic conception of divine power and—contrary to Placher—undermines efforts to promote transformative justice in human society. The present case study suggests that we must reconsider our modes of articulating divine transcendence. (shrink)

Behavioural evidence suggests that cephalopod molluscs may have a form of primary consciousness. First, the linkage of brain to behaviour seen in lateralization, sleep and through a developmental context is similar to that of mammals and birds. Second, cephalopods, especially octopuses, are heavily dependent on learning in response to both visual and tactile cues, and may have domain generality and form simple concepts. Third, these animals are aware of their position, both within themselves and in larger space, including having a (...) working memory of foraging areas in the recent past. Thus if using a ‘global workspace’ which evaluates memory input and focuses attention is the criterion, cephalopods appear to have primary consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that thestatus of those who take care of persons withdisabilities, and persons with disabilities,are inextricably linked. That is, devaluingthe status of one necessarily devalues that ofthe other. Persons with disabilities and thosewho help care for them must form an alliance toadvance their common interests. This alliancecan gain insight and inspiration from feministthought insofar as caretaking is literallylinked to problems of the representation ofcaretaking as ``women's work,'' and morephilosophically, by borrowing from the toolboxof feminist social, political, (...) and economicanalyses. (shrink)

This article examines the case of institutional inertia in Japanese financial regulation, focusing on the reasons why institutions centered on informal modes of organization and interaction proved particularly The Japanese case serves as a particularly tough test for theories of institutional adaptation and change because even crisis failed to produce timely institutional change. The paper argues that informal, exclusionary and opaque relational ties served as a functional substitute for formal regulation and promoted cooperative government-bank relationships in an earlier period. Yet, (...) when the informal attributes of the system began to impede the sound functioning of the financial system, the very opacity of these ties and the informational dynamics underlying them meant that the Diet and the general public were less than fully aware of the extent of dysfunction present as time went on. (shrink)

Multiple disciplines have contributed to acculturation research with aims to measure, conceptualize, and theorize this complex phenomenon. Few studies, however, have attempted to find meaning in how acculturation is lived and, this lack may have contributed to acculturation being understood as a construct removed from human experience. The purpose of this article is to show how a research methodology based on phenomenological epistemology can humanize the understanding of the acculturation experience. This contribution is demonstrated in a study that used a (...) phenomenological approach to describe and elucidate acculturation as a lived experience in the context of Latina adolescents who emigrated from Mexico to the US. Thus, this article illustrates how the phenomenological approach used in this study allows new meanings of acculturation to be experientially revealed. (shrink)

This symposium is inspired by the round tables organised by James Elkins in Cork, Ireland and Chicago which aimed to create a dialogue between art historians and philosophers on concepts which are central to the way both disciplines conduct their respective endeavours. For our symposium, art historians and philosophers will discuss topics and concepts which are likely to be given different interpretations by the respective disciplines. We will attempt to bridge the gap between the respective interpretations by inviting a closer (...) consideration of the alternative perspective. The first topic will be the relation of aesthetic and moral considerations in evaluating the photography of Bill Henson. The second will be "Beauty" and the third, will be the nature of "Aesthetic Autonomy". (shrink)

Substituted judgement is often used in the absence of advanced directives to guide decision-making when patients lack decisional capacity. We present a remarkable case of family members exercising substituted misjudgement for a 42-year-old man hospitalized with multiorgan failure on life support. Feeling that their loved one would rather die than face severe disability, they elected to withdraw life support. Although this was done, the patient remained alive and recovered enough to clearly indicate his preference for life, even with severe disability. (...) This case suggests that in instances of unusual quality-of-life judgements where the patient's wishes cannot be known with reasonable certainty, families and physicians should be very wary using substituted judgement to refuse life support. Unless there are strong considerations based on the patient's prior statements, actions and values to decline life support, it would seem ethically appropriate to continue treatment, even with substantial disability the likely outcome. (shrink)

The probing readings of Putting On Virtue offered by Sheryl Overmyer, Darlene Weaver, and James Foster provide a welcome opportunity for further reflection on key questions: Was Aquinas really concerned with the status of pagan virtues? Can we properly understand a thinker whose driving questions are not the same as our own without taking up a stance of pure deference? Can an inquiry into hyper-Augustinian anxiety over acquired virtue assist us in arriving at an account of positive self-regard? Can an (...) account that stresses the graced character of all virtue formation be coherent? And can it do justice to the ways in which Christians reached for accounts of infused virtue precisely in order to affirm how grace overcomes the ways in which fortune hounds acquired virtue? I respond affirmatively to all of the above. (shrink)

This is a conversation held at the book launch for Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), hosted jointly, in November 2020, by the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, and the Australian Catholic University. The conversation covers the claim made by Insole that Kant believes in God, but is not a Christian, the way in which reason itself is divine for Kant, and the suggestion that reading Kant can open (...) up new possibilities for dialogue between Christian thinkers and contemporary forms of secular religiosity. (shrink)

Research has shown that both physical exercise and cognitive training help to maintain cognition in older adults. The question is whether combined training might produce additive effects when the group comparisons are equated in terms of exercise intensity and modality. We conducted a systematic electronic search in MEDLINE, PsycInfo, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials databases to identify relevant studies published up to February 2021. Seven hundred and eighty-three effect sizes were obtained from 50 published intervention studies, involving 6,164 (...) healthy older adults, and submitted to a three-level meta-analysis. Results showed that combined training produced a small advantage in comparison to single cognitive training on executive functions, whereas both types of training achieved similar effects on attention, memory, language, processing speed, and global cognition. Combined training achieved higher training gains in balance than single physical training, indicating a transfer from cognitive training to balance. Performing cognitive and physical exercise simultaneously, and interactive training produced the largest gains in executive functions, speed, and global cognition, as well as the largest improvements in physical functions. Aerobic training was associated with higher effects in attention and fitness, whereas non-aerobic training produced larger effects in global cognition and balance. For all cognitive and physical outcomes, training resulted more advantageous when performed in a social context, even though individual training obtained similar results in balance as group training.Systematic Review Registration:www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/, identifier: CRD42020175632. (shrink)