More so than in the past, the US is now embracing the logic of preventive force: using military force to counter potential threats around the globe before they have fully materialized. While popular with individuals who seek to avoid too many “boots on the ground,” preventive force is controversial because of its potential for unnecessary collateral damage. Who decides what threats are ‘imminent’? Is there an international legal basis to kill or harm individuals who have a connection to that threat? (...) Do the benefits of preventive force justify the costs? And, perhaps most importantly, is the US setting a dangerous international precedent? In Preventive Force, editors Kerstin Fisk and Jennifer Ramos bring together legal scholars, political scientists, international relations scholars, and prominent defense specialists to examine these questions, whether in the context of full-scale preventive war or preventive drone strikes. In particular, the volume highlights preventive drones strikes, as they mark a complete transformation of how the US understands international norms regarding the use of force, and could potentially lead to a ‘slippery slope’ for the US and other nations in terms of engaging in preventive warfare as a matter of course. A comprehensive resource that speaks to the contours of preventive force as a security strategy as well as to the practical, legal, and ethical considerations of its implementation, Preventive Force is a useful guide for political scientists, international relations scholars, and policymakers who seek a thorough and current overview of this essential topic. (shrink)

A strong record of human rights protections is an important factor for a state to maintain a positive international reputation. In this article, we suggest that states will use compliance with human rights treaties as a mechanism by which to improve their reputations to help achieve their foreign policy goals. We hypothesize that international human rights compliance is a means to improve a state’s reputation in three specific situations: when the state is facing regional pressures as the result of a (...) desire to join a regional organization; when the state is facing regional pressures not to run afoul of a court within a regional organization; or when a state seeks foreign assistance from an entity with human rights requirements for the receipt of such assistance. We examine our theory by analyzing human rights reports regarding state compliance with specific treaty obligations outlined in the Convention Against Torture (CAT). While the evidence for our hypotheses is mixed, we do find some support for our assertion that state compliance is linked to reputational concerns. In particular, states comply with the CAT when they are part of a regional organization that has a human rights court, and when they are receiving conditional aid from the European Union. (shrink)

Background: Mismatch between the perception of one’s moral duty and one’s real social contribution may trigger moral distress, especially when no specific resistance strategies are used to counteract morally distressing situations. Considering a philosophical-ethical conception, individuals need to first reflect upon themselves to later turn to the world and confront their current situation in order to change it. Objectives: To understand moral distress experienced by nursing professors teaching in higher education institutions and the use of parrhesia as a coping strategy. (...) Method: This qualitative exploratory-descriptive study addressed 33 nursing professors working in Brazilian federal public universities using an open-ended question form. Data were collected between June and December 2018 and analyzed using discursive textual analysis. Ethical considerations: The Institutional Review Board at the Federal University of Rio Grande approved this study. Findings: Three categories emerged: performance of nursing professors and potentially distressing situations, the experience of moral distress, and parrhesia as a strategy to deal with moral distress. Nursing professors face situations that cause moral distress in the context of higher education, however, those who adopt parrhesia as a coping strategy find it easier to express their beliefs from the perspective of moral duty, even in the face of conflicts. Conclusion: When the nursing professors in this study acknowledge elements in the power structure that hinder their actions, they express parrhesia, as an essential virtue in an attempt to modify unsymmetrical power relations that can trigger moral distress. (shrink)

Metaphors are cognitive and linguistic tools that allow reasoning. They enable the understanding of abstract domains via elements borrowed from concrete ones. The underlying mechanism in metaphorical mapping is the manipulation of concepts. This article proposes another view on what concepts are and their role in metaphor and reasoning. That is, based on current neuroscientific and behavioural evidence, it is argued that concepts are grounded in perceptual and motor experience with physical and social environments. This definition of concepts is then (...) embedded in theStructure-Mapping Theory(SMT), a model for metaphorical processing and reasoning. The blended view of structure-mapping and embodied cognition offers an insight into the processes through which the target domain of a metaphor is embodied or realised in terms of its base domain. The implications of the proposed embodied SMT model are then discussed and future topics of investigation are outlined. (shrink)

Ethics has assumed a dominant position in the current economic debate, and this study focuses on ethics as a legitimate underpinning to good business decision making. Using a self-response survey of marketing managers in Spain, the current theory on ethical decision making is extended. Results support the mediating influence of the PRESOR construct (an individual’s perception of the importance of ethics and social responsibility for the effectiveness of the organization) on relativistic and idealistic moral thinking when one is considering the (...) moral intensity of a situation. In addition, the study found support for the relationship between relativism (negative), idealism (positive), corporate ethical values, and job satisfaction, thereby providing additional support for the prior theory. Finally, a thorough review of the extant literature and suggestions for future ethics research in the marketing field are included. (shrink)

Very little research into women farmers in developed countries has been produced by economists, but much of what has been studied by scholars in other disciplines has economic implications. This article reviews such research produced by scholars in all disciplines to explore to what extent women farmers are becoming more equal to men farmers and to suggest further contributions to the literature. As examples, topics that has been widely researched in developing countries but have received almost no attention in developed (...) countries include comparisons of men and women farmers’ productivity and their access to and use of resources. Discoveries in these and other areas will be important not only for their insights into the agricultural industry in developed countries, but also because they will inform, and be informed by, research on women farmers in developing countries. (shrink)

Este estudio examina la influencia de la tradición neoplatónica en el pensamientode Santo Tomás con respecto a la causalidad de la bondad divina. El axioma “bonum est diffusivum sui,” atribuido en general al Pseudo-Dionisio, será puesto de relieve e interpretado en el sentido de la causalidad final.

This article examines the assessment of mental capacity in the context of euthanasia, particularly when requested by patients with mental illnesses. It proposes a holistic alternative approach to the traditional functional model, arguing that the latter is insufficient to capture the complexity of these patients’ decisions. Using approaches based on narrative, hermeneutic, and dialogical ethics, it offers an evaluation that considers the patient’s life story, values, and context. Shared decision-making and empathy are identified as fundamental components to ensure informed and (...) consensual decisions, promoting an environment of respect and mutual understanding. The article reviews Spanish legislation on euthanasia, highlighting the need to include medical ethics experts in the Guarantee and Evaluation Commissions. These experts provide a comprehensive ethical perspective essential for addressing the ethical complexities in euthanasia requests and ensuring fair decisions that reflect the patient’s true will. It recommends reviewing and expanding current protocols, as well as including continuous ethics training to improve medical practice in this context. The conclusions suggest that an assessment of mental capacity based on ethical principles and an integrated narrative can significantly improve medical practice and decision-making in euthanasia, especially for these patients. Furthermore, the inclusion of ethics experts in the commissions can provide a more humane and just perspective, ensuring that decisions respect the patient’s dignity and autonomy. (shrink)

Resumen: La concepción del ser humano como animal tecnológico, junto con la idea del progreso como sustento de la civilización, plantea varias cuestiones que precisan ser consideradas con detenimiento, entre ellas qué se entiende por progreso y qué sentido y valor tiene la tecnología. El caso de la realidad virtual patentiza de hecho la habitual asunción de la tecnología como algo ajeno a la producción cultural, humana. Sin embargo, la tecnología comparte nuestros límites y está sometida a nuestro designio, por (...) más que se le quiera asumir independiente de nosotros y por más que se intente reemplazar nuestra interacción con el espacio natural por una relación enteramente controlada en un medio virtual.: The idea of the human being as a technological animal, coupled with the idea of progress as the very foundation of civilization, raises several issues that need to be carefully considered, including the meaning of progress and the meaning and value of technology. The case of virtual reality indeed makes explicit the common assumption of technology as something alien to cultural, human production. However, technology shares our limits and it is subject to our plans, regardless of whether someone insists on assuming it independent of ourselves or insists on replacing our interaction with natural space by an interaction in an entirely controlled virtual environment. (shrink)

This discussion is about the moods characteristic of depressive and manic states. Moods are distinguished from the emotions they often accompany, and the relationship between these less and more cognitive, and seemingly less and more intentional, states is provided preliminary clarification. Epistemic deficiencies identified here, when combined with differences of quality and quantity in the moods and motivations that beset the depression and mania sufferer, seem likely to hinder self-knowledge and self-integration. These deficiencies, it is argued, may help explain why (...) the extreme moods found in states of depression and mania contribute to our inclination to regard these conditions as disorder. (shrink)

Psychiatric ethics spans several overlapping domains, including the guidelines for ethical research in psychiatry, the professional ethics required in the practice of psychiatry, and a broader set of moral and ethical problems and dilemmas distinctive to, or at least magnified by, the mental health care setting. Reviewed here are selected issues arising in the last two domains, some seemingly inevitable components of mental disorder and its cultural history and others resultant from recent changes and discoveries. Even as science explains and (...) demystifies mental disorder, it is concluded, new ethical problems will continue to arise in psychiatry and certain recalcitrant problems will likely persist. (shrink)

Most words in English are ambiguous between different interpretations; words can mean different things in different contexts. We investigate the implications of different types of semantic ambiguity for connectionist models of word recognition. We present a model in which there is competition to activate distributed semantic representations. The model performs well on the task of retrieving the different meanings of ambiguous words, and is able to simulate data reported by Rodd, Gaskell, and Marslen‐Wilson [J. Mem. Lang. 46 (2002) 245] on (...) how semantic ambiguity affects lexical decision performance. In particular, the network shows a disadvantage forwords with multiple unrelated meanings (e.g., bark) that coexists with a benefit for words with multiple related word senses (e.g., twist). The ambiguity disadvantage arises because of interference between the different meanings, while the sense benefit arises because of differences in the structure of the attractor basins formed during learning. Words with few senses develop deep, narrow attractor basins, while words with many senses develop shallow, broad basins. We conclude that the mental representations of word meanings can be modelled as stable states within a high‐dimensional semantic space, and that variations in the meanings of words shape the landscape of this space. (shrink)

o amor e 0 6dio, dois sentimentos fundamentais do ser humano, estao ligados as fases evolutivas do desenvolvimento sexual infantil, as quais, por sua vez, sao sobredeterminadas pelas relacees intersubjetivas que a crianc;:a experimenta. Tentando precisar 0 significado do amor como 0 sentimento de unidade entre dois seres diferentes, no qual 0 amado assume uma importancia vital para 0 amante, somos levados a definir 0 6dio como 0 sentimento de oposicao entre diferentes seres que estao afetivamente ligados, onde 0 ser (...) odiado representa aquilo que deve ser eliminado, expulso, destruido. Se 0 amor liga-se a fase oral, ao 6dio compulsivo parace ligar-se em determinadas pessoas a uma certa consfituicao da fase anal, onde 0 comportamento transgressor surge como uma forma<;ao de compromisso entre a repeticao de uma viol!ncia sofrida e a tentativa de libertar-se dela. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: amor, 6dio, libido. (shrink)

Resumen: Las normas de propiedad intelectual y copyright prevén un periodo de protección otorgando unos derechos económicos exclusivos y temporales. Pasado un plazo determinado, las obras protegidas entran en lo que se denomina dominio público. Éste suele ser considerado como el momento en el que los bienes culturales pasan a estar bajo el dominio y control de la sociedad en conjunto. El presente trabajo pretende argumentar que, dado nuestro actual sistema económico, en realidad el dominio público funciona más como una (...) posibilidad de negocio para determinadas empresas que como una verdadera opción para que el público pueda acceder a las obras. Abstract: The legislation of continental intellectual property and copyright provide for a period of protection granting exclusive and temporary economic rights. After a certain period, protected works enter into what is called the public domain. This is often considered as the moment in which the cultural goods come under the control and domain of society as a whole. The present paper pretends to argue that, given our current economic system, the public domain actually functions more as a business opportunity for certain companies than as a real option for the public to access artistic and intellectual works. (shrink)

En el libro II de la Ética Nicomaquea (EN), Aristóteles menciona 6 casos para los cuales la fórmula según la cual la virtud es el término medio no aplica, esto es, 3 acciones y 3 pasiones donde no es posible pensar ocasión o modo correctos de realizarlas, acciones y pasiones que siempre estarán mal independientemente del contexto y del agente, lo que hoy día llamaríamos «absolutos morales». Dentro de la bibliografía secundaria tal afirmación no ha suscitado gran polémica, pero poco (...) o nada se ha reparado en el hecho de que (1) la cualidad por la cual esas 6 son siempre reprobables la comparten muchas otras acciones y pasiones y que, por tanto, (2) habría que aceptar que en Aristóteles hay un listado relativamente extenso de «absolutos morales». (shrink)

Neuroscience investigations of emotional influences on social cognition have been dominated by the somatic marker hypothesis and dual-process theories. Taken together, these lines of inquiry have not provided strong evidence that emotional influences on social cognition rely on neural systems which code for bodily signals of arousal nor distinguish emotional reasoning from other modes of reasoning. Recent findings raise the possibility that emotionally influenced social cognition relies on two stages of neural changes: once when emotion is elicited and a different (...) set of changes at the time of social cognitive judgment. These findings suggest that affect infusion models may be a fruitful framework for bridging neuroscience and psychological understanding of the role of emotion in social cognition. (shrink)

Around the world, many schools were closed as one of the measures to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. School closure brought about important challenges to the students' learning process. This context requires strong self-regulatory competences and agency for autonomous learning. Moreover, online remote learning was the main alternative response to classroom learning, which increased the inequalities between students with and without access to technological resources or for those with low digital literacy. All considered, to level the playing field (...) for students without digital resources, there is an urgent need to promote self-regulatory competences through offline intervention solutions. The current paper describes a project with this purpose, using radio broadcasting and letters to reach elementary students without digital resources. Moreover, potential reach and participants' perspectives of the project implementation are presented and discussed. The project draws on a prior evidence-based story-tool intervention grounded on a self-regulated learning framework. The original intervention was set previous to the COVID-19 pandemic and was implemented in the classroom context (N= 1,103 students). Once the schools had been closed down, the mode of intervention was adapted with the collaboration of the community. Alternative solutions were developed as follows: (i) story chapters were read on the radio and students received to their homes a printed script, prompting reflection, and suggesting related activities; (ii) students were provided with the story-tool to read autonomously and received letters from the main characters of the story which included, for example, suggestions for activities and reflection. These two alternative modes of intervention delivery potentially reached 394 elementary students, including students with digital resources. Interviews conducted with a group of students were provided information about the positive aspects of these two modes of intervention delivery, perceived learning (e.g., planning), constraints, and suggestions to improve the project. The current work is likely to merit attention from researchers and educational practitioners, given the need to use offline alternatives to provide support for students without digital resources to engage in autonomous learning during the pandemic period. This project may also be used as an alternative or a complementary solution to online modality. (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)

One of the persistent features of historical writing about the sciences in the last twenty years has been the concern of a number of historians who insist on the need for a new awareness of the role of visual images and image making. The author believes that, rather than reducing the analysis of visual culture to a single set of principles, the point of the academic study of scientific images is the recognition of their heterogeneity, the different circumstances of their (...) production, and the variety of cultural and social functions they serve. This essay challenges historians to discover new ways of framing the historical meanings of scientific images within the larger contexts of signifying symbols, images, and mediations that make up culture. The study of nineteenth‐century practices of building collections of scientific photographs provides the background for a discussion of the significance of picture archives in the history of science, of the historical mechanisms that frame some pictures as “scientific” and others as “unscientific,” and of the need for further research on how scientific images generate meaning. (shrink)

Jennifer Homsby; The Facts in Question: A Response to Dodd and to Candlish, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 99, Issue 1, 1 June 1999, Pages 241–.

Se trata de mostrar que los intentos por acceder a la experiencia psiquiátrica y determinarla a partir de posiciones naturalistas y psicologistas, que son las dominantes, conllevan inestabilidad y que esta caracteriza precisamente el campo de la psiquiatría históricamente. Asumiendo las implicaciones filosóficas que supone el abordaje de ese campo empírico abierto, se postula que sólo la psicopatología, en su ejercicio como procedimiento a la vez lógico e intelectivo, permite relacionar los distintos planos de realidad en que se desenvuelve y (...) tratar de cerrar su campo para dotar a la psiquiatría de la necesaria estabilidad requerida de cara a su praxis clínica. (shrink)

Fichte réserve à l’esthétique un lieu privilégié au sein de son système, non pas qu’il lui consacre un large développement, mais parce qu’il se sert d’elle pour éclairer la nature de l’activité philosophique, après l’instauration kantienne de l’idéalisme transcendantal. En accordant à l’art une place dans la genèse de la spéculation philosophique, Fichte nous offre en même temps l’ébauche d’une esthétique originale, se démarquant de celles de Kant et de Schiller.

Religion is often understood to play a positive role in shaping moral attitudes among believers. We assessed the relationship between church members’ levels of felt connectedness to their respective congregations and perceived similarity in personal and congregational moral values, and whether there was a relationship between these and the amount of time spent in synchronous movement or singing during worship. The similarity between personal and perceived congregational moral importance was correlated with feelings of closeness to one’s congregation but not by (...) the amount of time spent in synchronous movement or singing. Differences in moral foundations scores and in moral importance of specific issues were found between different theological traditions. These findings demonstrate that, for churchgoers, there is a relationship between the use of music or synchronous movement in a church service and feelings of social bonding and there is also a relationship between the degree to which churchgoers identify with their church community and the degree to which they believe their priorities match those of their church. Furthermore, differences in theological tradition appear to be reflected in differences in moral values. (shrink)

Henry et al. (2007) claim they are concerned with the overmedicalization of bad memories and its subsequent exploitation by the pharmaceutical industry. However, they downplay the contributing role...

Jennifer Homsby; The Facts in Question: A Response to Dodd and to Candlish, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 99, Issue 1, 1 June 1999, Pages 241–.

We outline some ways in which motor neglect (the underutilization of a limb despite adequate strength) and hysterical paralysis (failure to move a limb despite no relevant structural damage or disease) may throw light on the pathophysiology of catatonia. We also comment on the manifold inadequacies of distinguishing too firmly between symptoms of “neurologic origin” and of “psychiatric origin.”.

Este libro recoge una veintena de estudios que, desde el punto de vista de la teoría social abordan aspectos variados de la Globalización, el Riesgo y la Reflexividad, considerados como los retos fundamentales con los que ha de enfrentarse la sociología actual.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 8, Page 33-35, August 2011.

Photographs deployed in scientific investigation also are circulated and consumed in popular culture. Examination of the work of an early-twentieth-century consulting U.S. scientist in commercial print advertising illuminates a still mostly unwritten history concerning scientific realism, photography, and American advertising’s middle-class audiences. The work of American scientific photographer Philip O. Gravelle with American national advertising campaigns during the early decades of the twentieth century draws attention to the myriad creative uses of scientific photography during the first decades of the twentieth (...) century. It also sheds new light on a pivotal era in the evolution of illustration-based American print advertising. (shrink)