Our understanding of body ownership largely relies on the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) paradigm where synchronous stroking of the real and fake hands leads to an illusion of ownership of RH provided its physical, anatomical, and spatial plausibility. Self-attribution of a fake hand also occurs during visuomotor synchrony, when the visual feedback of self-initiated movements follows the trajectory of the instantiated motor command. In both cases, the experience of ownership is established through bottom-up integration and top-down prediction of multisensory (proximodistal) (...) cues within the peripersonal space. It seems, however, that depending on whether the signals are externally or self-generated, top-down expectation signals are qualitatively different. On the one hand, in RHI, the sensory correlations are modulated by empirically induced priors about the internal model of the body. On the other hand, in mRHI, body ownership is actively shaped by processes allowing for continuous comparison between the actual and predicted sensory consequences of the actions. Ample research demonstrates that the differential processing of the predicted and the actual reafferent information is addressed by the central nervous system via an internal Forward Model (FM). Indeed, results from mRHI suggest that in action-contexts mechanism underlying body ownership could be similar to the FM. Crucially FMs integrate across all sensory input including not only proximodistal (visuomotor) but also purely distal sensory signals (visuoauditory). Thus if body ownership results from a consistency of FM, it would be affected by the (in)congruency of purely distal signals provided that they inform about the action-consequences relevant to the task. Here we explicitly address this question. To test our hypothesis, we devise an embodied VR-based task where action outcomes were signaled by distinct auditory cues. By manipulating the cues with respect to their spatial, temporal and semantic congruency, we show that purely distal feedback violating predictions about action outcomes compromises both body ownership and performance. These results demonstrate that body ownership is influenced by cues which not only pertain to the body itself but also those arising outside of the body, and suggest that in goal-oriented tasks body ownership might result from the consistency of forward models. (shrink)

El objetivo del estudio es averiguar el grado de conocimientos previos sobre los ODS y la Agenda 2030 de los discentes en formación inicial docente para los Grados de Maestro en Educación Primaria, Maestro en Educación Infantil y Máster en Educación Secundaria de la Universitat de València. Para ello, dentro del marco de un proyecto de Innovación Docente, se administró a los participantes un inventario de conocimientos previos. Finalmente, los resultados fueron analizados y comparados con el objetivo de mejorar futuras (...) intervenciones sobre sostenibilidad e innovación curricular. (shrink)

Today, the skills-based approach is increasingly in demand by companies due, in large part, to the fact that it favors the management of human resources by focusing on individual capabilities; which, finally, improves the job profile of a company. As a result, choosing the right candidates has become increasingly selective. Universities, therefore, need to teach skills to improve the incorporation of graduates into the workplace making it as successful as possible. For this reason, it is of special relevance to know (...) if college students consider that the acquisition of skills is key for their incorporation into the workplace. The main objective of this study was to analyze and compare the importance assigned to the acquisition of basic skills in the university education of 694 students studying four different bachelor degrees: pedagogy, early childhood education, primary education, and psychology. For this purpose, a Likert-type questionnaire on basic skills was distributed with four possible options and the following five dimensions that grouped basic skills: organizational and planning capacity; access to information sources; analysis and synthesis of texts, situations, and people; teamwork; and problem solving. The results show that as a whole all students across different bachelor degrees gave a high score to the acquisition of basic skills, with early childhood education students giving it greater importance compared to the students from other disciplines and, more specifically, differences were observed in some dimensions depending on the bachelor degree that they have started. (shrink)

Over the last decade, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been defined first as a concept whereby companies decide voluntarily to contribute to a better society and cleaner environment and, second, as a process by which companies manage their relationship␣with stakeholders (European Commission, 2001. Nowadays, CSR has become a priority issue on governments’ agendas. This has changed governments’ capacity to act and impact on social and environmental issues in their relationship with companies, but has also affected the framework in which CSR (...) public policies are designed: governments are incorporating multi-stakeholder strategies. This article analyzes the CSR public policies in European advanced democracies, and more specifically the EU-15 countries, and provides explanatory keys on how governments have understood, designed and implemented their CSR public policies. The analysis has entailed the classification of CSR public policies taking into consideration the actor to which the governments’ policies were addressed. This approach to the analysis of CSR public policies in the EU-15 countries leads us to observe coinciding lines of action among the different countries analyzed, which has enabled us to propose a ‹four ideal’ typology model for governmental action on CSR in Europe: Partnership, Business in the Community, Sustainability, and Citizenship, and Agora. The main contribution of this article is to propose an analytical framework to analyze CSR public policies, which provide a perspective on the relationships between governments, businesses, and civil society stakeholders, and enable us to incorporate the analysis of CSR public policies into a broader approach focused on social governance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17.1 (2003) 73-75 [Access article in PDF] Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics. Sonia Kruks. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001. Pp. xii + 200. $35.00 h.c. 0-8014-3387-8; $16.95 pbk. 0-8014-8417-0. Sonia Kruks' latest book, Retrieving Experience, is a valuable contribution to ongoing debates about the relevance of feminist philosophy in a period of relative political quietism. It also offers timely (...) reminders of historical continuities between phenomenological and postmodern conceptions of subjectivity and political engagement. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Fanon, and the later Sartre, Kruks proposes to "explore women's embodied experiences" and to "ask whether they might not offer some means to help build affective bonds among women who are in many ways radically different from one another" (6). The book approaches this task by means of two secondary issues. First, should feminist thought be oriented by phenomenological or postmodernist theoretical strategies? Second, can women's embodied experience be the conceptual basis for political and epistemological practices that avoid the pitfalls of "identity politics" or an "epistemology of provenance"? The answer to both questions comes through the notion of praxis developed in Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason. By thinking of embodiment as praxis or work, a strategy implicit in Beauvoir's idea that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." Kruks seeks to resolve the ethical affront of finding one's individuality reduced to the "generality" of a collective—the ethical affront to which feminists of various generations and theoretical persuasions must respond.Retrieving Experience explores the significance of recognition as a political norm. Identifying Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew as a pivotal work in the history of identitarian theorizing, she situates recent appeals for race- and gender-based political mobilization in the United States with respect to the dialectical relationship between the Look, shame, and recognition existentialists observed in situations of anti-Semitic and colonial domination during and immediately after the Second World War. Legitimating knowledge gained under oppressive conditions formed an important element of African, Southeast Asian, and ultimately African-American and feminist resistance to cultural imperialism. However, Kruks warns, discourses of "recognition" risk placing the blame for group domination on individuals' face-to-face interactions while concealing the role of state and economic institutions in enabling social disdain to systematically damage a group's quality of life. Moreover, they suggest that the experience of subjugation alone justifies knowledge claims or counts, without further elaboration, as an act of political engagement. Kruks argues that knowers and actors need to identify conceptual and practical mediations enabling individual interactions, experiences, and strategies to prompt the recognition and transformation of [End Page 73] group situations. Sartre's notion of praxis, she suggests, explains how an individual can participate in a collectivity while acting autonomously or acquiescing to subjection.The most important passages in Retrieving Experience examine the affective aspects of the decision to take up a political identity or engage in political action. Going beyond Sartre's account of mediations, Kruks suggests that the sensory and emotional qualities of embodiment are themselves mediators, the products of praxis as well as its vehicles. Since any act of social knowledge involves the emotions, affect plays an important role in the process whereby individuals from different cultural, economic, and bodily situations learn about and shape one another's' environment through the act of knowledge. Individuals, then, may have a moral responsibility to learn about others in a way that gives them "sympathetic bodies." Drawing on Maria Lugones' social epistemology, Kruks argues that "world-traveling" or existing simultaneously in several communities or sets of power relations is a bodily act, but also a fully cultural, ethical act rather than a natural way of being. One is not born, but becomes, an embodied knower. Understanding female embodiment as a kind of work or "world-traveling" praxis enables feminist solidarity—"respectful recognition" to replace a historically implausible "sisterhood" or a distinct epistemological perspective as a regulative ideal for feminist politics.But how far can the... (shrink)

As the technology for ectogenesis continues to advance, the ethical implications of such developments should be thoroughly and proactively explored. The possibility of full ectogenesis remains hypothetical at present, and myriad concerns regarding the safety and efficacy of the technology must be evaluated and addressed, while pressing moral considerations should be fully deliberated. However, it is conceivable that the technology may become sufficiently well established in the future and that eventually full ectogenesis might be deemed ethically acceptable as a reproductive (...) alternative to gestation within a human womb under certain circumstances. If the safety and efficacy of full ectogenesis are established, if ethical dilemmas are sufficiently well addressed, and if the technology is offered as a reproductive option to cisgender heterosexual individuals or couples desiring to become parents, there is a moral obligation grounded in social justice to ensure that full ectogenesis be made available to individuals or couples identifying as members of sexual‐ or gender‐minority groups who likewise seek to pursue parenthood. We examine the history of access to current family‐building options, including assisted reproductive technology, surrogacy and adoption, for these populations and conclude that in the absence of robust empirical evidence suggesting an increased risk of harm to children of individuals and couples who identify as members of sexual‐ or gender‐minority groups, equitable access to ectogenesis as a pathway to parenthood for sexual and gender minorities must be assured as a matter of reproductive justice. (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual framework for studying the influence of mood on managerial ethical decision making. We draw on mood-congruency theory and the affect infusion model to propose that mood influences managerial ethical decision making through deliberate and conscious assessments of the moral intensity of an ethical issue. By accounting for proscriptive and prescriptive morality—i.e., harmful and prosocial behavior, respectively—we demonstrate that positive and negative mood may have asymmetrical and paradoxical effects on ethical decision making. Specifically, our analysis suggests (...) that individuals in a positive mood will be more likely to engage in prosocial behavior but less likely to refrain from activities that have harmful consequences for others, whereas individuals in a negative mood will be more likely to avoid activities that put others at risk or harm but at the same time less prone to engaging in activities that have positive consequences for others. Importantly, we account for the context within which managers make their decisions by examining how situational strength may moderate the influence of mood on managerial ethical decision making. Finally, we discuss how organizations can leverage the double-edged sword effect of mood on ethical decision making and prevent, control and manage the risk of unethical decision making on the part of managers. (shrink)

In recent years, discussion around memory modification interventions has gained attention. However, discussion around the use of memory interventions in the criminal justice system has been mostly absent. In this paper we start by highlighting the importance memory has for human well-being and personal identity, as well as its role within the criminal forensic setting; in particular, for claiming and accepting legal responsibility, for moral learning, and for retribution. We provide examples of memory interventions that are currently available for medical (...) purposes, but that in the future could be used in the forensic setting to modify criminal offenders’ memories. In this section we contrast the cases of dampening and enhancing memories of criminal offenders. We then present from a pragmatic approach some pressing ethical issues associated with these types of memory interventions. The paper ends up highlighting how these pragmatic considerations can help establish ethically justified criteria regarding the possibility of interventions aimed at modifying criminal offenders’ memories. (shrink)

Ronald S Laura, Michael Leahy; Religious Upbringing and Rational Autonomy, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 23, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 253–265, h.

There is currently a gap in our understanding of how figures produced by mechanical imaging techniques play evidential roles: several studies based on close examination of scientific practice show that imaging techniques do not yield data whose significance can simply be read off the image. If image-making technology is not a simple matter of nature re-presenting itself to us in a legible way, just how do the images produced provide support for scientific claims? In this article I will first show (...) that there is a distinct question about the semiotics of mechanically produced images that has not yet been answered. I show that my account of visual representations can do so, and I argue that the role of convention involved in my account is compatible with the view that visual representations produced through mechanized imaging techniques can play genuine evidential roles in scientific reasoning. (shrink)

Biologists depend on visual representations, and their use of diagrams has drawn the attention of philosophers, historians, and sociologists interested in understanding how these images are involved in biological reasoning. These studies, however, proceed from identification of diagrams on the basis of their spare visual appearance, and do not draw on a foundational theory of the nature of diagrams as representations. This approach has limited the extent to which we under- stand how these diagrams are involved in biological reasoning. In (...) this paper, I characterize three different kinds of figures among those previously identified as diagrams. The features that make these figures distinctive as representational types, furthermore, illuminate the ways in which they are involved in biological reasoning. (shrink)

This study aimed to capture how the coronavirus disease 2019 crisis disrupted and affected individuals’ goal pursuits and self-efficacy beliefs early during the lockdown phase of COVID-19. Participants impacted by lockdown regulations accessed an online questionnaire during a 10-day window from the end of March to early April 2020 and reported a significant personal goal toward which they had been working, and then completed quantitative and qualitative survey items tapping self-efficacy beliefs for goal achievement, subjective caring about the goal during (...) disrupted world events, and current pursuit or abandonment of the goal. The findings from both quantitative and qualitative measures demonstrated a significant drop in self-efficacy beliefs from before to during the pandemic with a large effect based on whether people thought they could still achieve their goal under current conditions. Over two-thirds of the sample was unsure or did not believe they could still carry out their goal, and over a quarter either abandoned or were uncertain they could pursue the goal. Despite this, people continued to care about their goals. Reasons for abandonment and strategies for coping with goals within the lockdown and beyond are discussed. (shrink)

In this text, Jacques Rancière critically discusses the work of Georges Didi-Huberman on images. He disagrees with various claims seemingly made by Didi-Huberman about images, such as that they can “take position” or that they are “active.” Rancière argues that Didi-Huberman adds another form of dialectics to the simpler form of dialectics adopted by Bertolt Brecht and Harun Farocki in their works, namely one that also involves a layering of different temporalities. However, both in Brecht’s War Primer and in Didi-Huberman’s (...) analysis of it, all the potencies credited to images as such are actually potencies of the words that accompany the images. Rancière comes to the conclusion that to “put images in motion,” as Didi-Huberman wants to do, or to regard them as being “active,” he has to put words, his own poetic and extensive writings, in motion. (shrink)

The Dedekind cuts in an ordered set form a set in the sense of constructive Zermelo—Fraenkel set theory. We deduce this statement from the principle of refinement, which we distill before from the axiom of fullness. Together with exponentiation, refinement is equivalent to fullness. None of the defining properties of an ordering is needed, and only refinement for two—element coverings is used. In particular, the Dedekind reals form a set; whence we have also refined an earlier result by Aczel and (...) Rathjen, who invoked the full form of fullness. To further generalise this, we look at Richman's method to complete an arbitrary metric space without sequences, which he designed to avoid countable choice. The completion of a separable metric space turns out to be a set even if the original space is a proper class; in particular, every complete separable metric space automatically is a set. (shrink)

A collection of essays on the approaches and applications of Deleuze's philosophy to the bodyUsing a variety of contemporary cultural, scientific and philosophical lines of enquiry, the contributors produce a truly multidisciplinary view of the Deleuzian body, inviting us to look afresh at art, movement and literature.The Deleuzian body is not necessarily a human body, but the lines of enquiry here all illuminate the idea of the human body and thinking about formation, origins and becoming in relation to power, creativity (...) and affect. (shrink)

How does violence shape citizens’ preferences for conflict termination? The existing literature has argued that violence either begets sympathy for more violence or drives support for making peace. Focusing on the 2016 Colombian Peace Agreement, this article finds that victimhood dissociation strongly shapes these preferences. With victimhood dissociation, a discrepancy exists between objective and subjective victimization, and the effect of violence on peace attitudes depends on citizens’ subjective interpretations of their personal experiences of violence. Citizens who do not experience violence (...) often see themselves as victims of the conflict and vice versa. Victimhood dissociation is linked to cultural stereotypes of victimhood as portrayed in elite narratives concerning the conflict. In Colombia, political leaders framed victimhood around rurality, business entrepreneurship, kidnapping, extortion, and disappearance. In 2016, this widespread narrative was instrumental for politicians opposing the peace agreement. Citizens who disassociated their personal experiences of violence from their self-understanding as victims were instrumental to the failure of the peace plebiscite. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify the distinctive and the shared features of the three phenomena: irony, understatement, and litotes. These rhetorical figures have been defined as synonymous, distinct or overlapping in various accounts. This indicates an interrelation but also a need for clearer definitions. Here, each of these rhetorical figures is defined via two jointly necessary conditions. This approach sharpens the categories, enables clear-cut distinctions and helps to explain cases of overlap. German corpus data and examples from (...) the literature as a basis, allow differentiating between cases of understatement as a means of irony, and cases of litotes as a means of understatement. Beyond that, litotes and understatement allow for non-ironic uses. Interestingly, litotic irony is built on litotic understatement. This is due to the overt contrast necessary for both understatement and irony. (shrink)

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to consider some of the philosophical and bioethical issues raised by the creation of the draft social values framework developed to facilitate data collection and country-specific presentations at the inaugural workshop on "Social values and health priority setting" held in February 2011. -/- DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Conceptual analysis is used to analyse the term "social values", as employed in the framework, and its relationship to related ideas such as moral values. The structure of the framework (...) (process and content values) is considered in light of current debate in philosophy and bioethics about the political and moral aims served by these kinds of values, and the extent to which they are either suited to, or sufficient for, the policy context. -/- FINDINGS: There is much to be gained by engaging with the arguments presented in the philosophical literature in order to further refine the framework. The framework should remain neutral in respect of the importance of procedural values in different contexts and should be as inclusive as possible in respect of the principles it includes. Further development would be best served by taking a multidisciplinary approach. The framework could provide a valuable space in which future debates about procedural/substantive values can be considered. -/- ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The paper brings philosophical and bioethics perspectives to bear on a new framework proposed for the analysis of social values in health priority setting. It identifies how such a practical, policy-focused framework might be informed by engagement with deeper, and often unresolved, questions or principle around resource allocation in health. (shrink)

Conventional truth describes things as delivered by ordinary experience; ultimate truth captures the way that things are independent of our interests, practices, and cognitive faculties. It is notoriously difficult to provide an adequate analysis of either conventional or ultimate truth, however. This chapter develops a previous scholarly suggestion to understand conventional truth in Madhyamaka as deflationary truth. It points out that this suggestion is a good one only if a supplementary theory of meaning, which the deflationary theory of truth presupposes, (...) can be given in a way that is consistent with both the limitations of the deflationary theory of truth and with Madhyamaka antirealist metaphysics. It then offers a presentation of Dharmakīrti’s theory of apoha in order to argue that the resources necessary to give the required account of meaning can be found in Dharmakīrti’s account of intentional mental content. (shrink)

The issue of a generational exchange in Italian feminism has been crucial over the last decade. Current struggles over precariousness have revived issues previously raised by feminists of the 1970s, recalling how old forms of instability and precarious employment are still present in Italy. This essay starts from the assumption that precariousness is a constitutive aspect of many young Italian women's lives, young Italian feminist scholars have been discussing the effects of such precarity on their generation. This article analyses the (...) literature produced by political groups of young scholars interested in gender and feminism connected to debates on labour and power in contemporary Italy. One of the most successful strategies that younger feminists have used to gain visibility has involved entering current debates on precariousness, thus forcing a connection with the larger Italian labour movement. In doing so, this new wave of feminism has destabilized the universalism assumed by the 1970s generation. By pointing to a necessary generational change, younger feminists have been able to mark their own specificity and point to exploitative power dynamics within feminist groups, as well as in the family and in the workplace without being dismissed. In such a layered context, many young feminists argue that precariousness is a life condition, not just the effect of job market flexibility and not solely negative. The literature produced by young feminists addresses the current strategies engineered to make ‘their’ precarious life more sustainable. This essay analyses such strategies in the light of contemporary Italian politics. The main conclusion is that younger Italian women's experience requires new strategies and tools for struggle, considering that the visibility of women as political subjects is still quite minimal. Female precariousness can be seen as a fruitful starting point for a dialogue across differences, addressing gender and reproduction, immigration, work and social welfare at the same time. (shrink)

Welches Verhältnis besteht zwischen „Bild" und menschlichem Denken? Welche Rolle spielt das Konzept der „Form" im menschlichen Wissen? Forscher aus Philosophie, Kulturwissenschaften, Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Ästhetik, Literatur, Anthropologie, Mathematik und Biologie untersuchen aus historischer und theoretischer Perspektive den Zusammenhang zwischen der Aktivität des Denkens und den Konzepten von Bild und Form.

The essay examines contemporary Arab films that express the body's forces. One strategy, common with other world cinemas, is that films carry out different operations at the molar and molecular levels, which correspond to different levels of embodiment and body politics. Another, more unique to Arab cinema, is to cultivate strategies of protecting and enfolding bodies, similar to what Foucault termed ars erotica. Third, they enlist the audience in a struggle to attain what Spinoza called ‘adequate ideas’, ideas that arise (...) immanently from the body's capacities. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown a robust bias to express the goal path over the source path when describing events. Motivated by linguistic theory, this study manipulated the causal structure of events and measured the extent to which adults and 3.5- to 4-year-old English-speaking children included the goal and source in their descriptions. We found that both children's and adults’ encoding of the source increased for events in which the source caused the motion of the figure compared to nearly identical events (...) in which the source played no such causal role. However, a goal bias persisted overall for both causal and noncausal motion events. These findings suggest that although the goal bias in language is highly robust, properties of the source influence its likelihood of being encoded in language, thus shedding light on how properties of an event can influence the mapping of event components into language. (shrink)

Feminist peace theories that find hope for peace in the ideal of the caretaking woman are grounded in patriarchal gender distinctions, fail to challenge adequately the patriarchal dualism that constitutes the self by devaluing the other, and the practice of caretaking about which they speak may be easily co-opted into the service of war. Feminist peace theory should address the devaluation of "others," in order to undermine this justification and motivation for war.

This collection of essays explores the shifting definitions of the terms lesbian and postmodern, the lesbian in contemporary fiction and Hollywood film, and the pitfalls and rewards of the recent lesbian theory.

it is common in reid scholarship to use the notion of intentionality both to explicate his notion of conception and to explain his talk of acts such as perception having objects distinct from themselves. With regard to conception, Reid states that every act of conception “must have an object; for he that conceives, must conceive something.”1 Using the notion of intentionality, commentators interpret this to mean that, through conception, the mind is directed on an object, and that acts of conception (...) are always of an object or about something.2 Commentators further explicate the purported intentionality of conception in terms of it being an act of representing something or having representational content, where... (shrink)

Kant sobre las definiciones matemáticas, de Mirella Capozzi.

Kant thinks poetry is the greatest of all the arts, and that Milton is one of the greatest poets. Sanford Budick, a professor of English from Hebrew University, investigates the Miltonic echoes in Kant’s work in this very thorough, dense, and deliberate study. Budick argues that Milton’s poetic form, especially his use of successive images, informs some of the most crucial and complex passages in Kant’s ethical and aesthetic theory. Budick concedes that it may seem strange to blur the line (...) between poetry and philosophy, but he also underlines the fact that “in Kant’s world poetry and philosophy had not yet experienced the virtual divorce that characterizes our own age” (119). Budick contends that the .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Searching for Peace in DeathLaura WachsmuthDisclaimers. No funding was utilized for this manuscript. The author, Laura Wachsmuth, has worked at several hospitals. The opinions contained herein are her own. All names have been changed to protect the privacy of the patient and the patient's family.I first met Ellen when she was admitted to the Women and Infant unit on a late spring day in May. She was 27 (...) weeks pregnant and was experiencing intense abdominal pain.As a hospital chaplain, I support patients and their families emotionally and spiritually. Sometimes, this looks like praying with patients; other times, it looks like sitting in quiet because there are no adequate words. Over time, I have developed ways to help me cope with the intensity I witness daily. Still, cases come up that I must grieve. The case of Ellen is one such example.The first time I met Ellen, she was waiting to hear back about her scans and tests. A quick look at her chart and a conversation with the medical team revealed that she was in her mid-thirties. While she spoke English fluently, she had immigrated to the US, and English was her second language. She, along with her husband, Mark, and their young son, had come to the United States on a work visa.After knocking on the door and entering her dim hospital room, I noticed right away what a beautiful person Ellen was, inside and out. Lying in bed, her long dark hair piled up on her head, her slim figure was visibly pregnant underneath her hospital gown. She smiled and gently greeted me. Mark was at her side. Clearly, Ellen was in physical pain, and while she and Mark still hoped the doctors were wrong in thinking she may have cancer, the emotional strain of waiting lay heavy upon them.Ellen and Mark kindly welcomed me and were attentive as best they could as I introduced myself and explained my role as a chaplain. They told me [End Page 75] that they were spiritual, not religious, but welcomed chaplain visits. Both exuded a certain peace and kindness, which was striking considering all they were enduring.As Ellen and her family waited for the results to come back, I waited as well and frequently checked her medical chart, looking for updates. About a week after she was first admitted, the medical team broke the dreaded news: Ellen had stage IV gastric cancer; it was estimated she only had 11 months to live. At this point, the Palliative Care team became involved in Ellen's care, and the chaplain on this team supported Ellen through the shock of her diagnosis and the difficult treatment choices she faced.Originally, the plan was for Ellen to deliver her daughter at 29–30 weeks and then to receive 2–3 rounds of chemotherapy. After further deliberation, however, it was decided that it was riskier to deliver a baby at 29–30 weeks than it was to undergo chemotherapy while pregnant, so Ellen began chemotherapy while still carrying her baby. Her chemotherapy was not a curative treatment, but there was hope it might give her more time.While my role became more peripheral at this point, I continued visiting Ellen. She was often tired or in pain, so I was mindful to keep my visits short. Mark, who stayed with his wife day in and day out, was usually in the room when I came by, and I often inquired after his well-being. Since Ellen and Mark's families still lived abroad, Mark was Ellen's primary support, and needed care and support himself.After two rounds of chemotherapy, Ellen made the decision to stop treatments. She made this decision because she was concerned about the risks of chemotherapy on her baby. It was an agonizing decision, and even after she made it, Ellen turned it over in her mind. During one of our visits, she asked me if I thought she had made the right decision. I told her that I fully supported her, but as I left her room, I wondered if I had done the right thing in affirming her choice. Looking... (shrink)

Seven essays explore issues of scientific methodology in various episodes of science from Newtonian physics of the 17th and 18th century to quantum mechanics in the 20th. Addressed to scholars of the history and philosophy of science, but also accessible to general readers. Annotation copyright Book.

This chapter contains sections titled: Lafayette's American Plants English Agrarian Influences Transforming La Grange Planting Politics at La Grange Notes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:From the Dutch Novel Messire (2008) by Els LaunspachEls LaunspachTranslated by Laura Vroomen (bio)The rooftops have just appeared out of the November night. First the white frames become visible, then the roof tiles, the walls and the gaping holes of the windows. A cluster of ravens alights on the far side of the tower. Three birds think better of it and fly from the eaves to the oak (...) tree. They are all awaiting the new day, as I am. The last remaining leaves on the trees—at night their vague contours can fool you into thinking it is summer—are shrivelled and yellow, the colour of the torches that are now being lit behind some castle windows. The mist presses against the walls of the watch house. Slowly, the dark-grey light turns a cooler shade.’How could he convey his experiences with a lump of charcoal? He threw it down on the table. His fingers had turned black and the characters, conceived with such conviction, were crude, with smudges everywhere. Yet he picked up his makeshift writing tool once more, this time to record two facts.‘I have lost my books. Cromwell sent Rich to take them away.’His books in Rich’s hands, his solace disappearing from view behind that pleated cloak. Naturally, their contents were all in his head. But his books were his friends; fellow travellers, silent witnesses, comrades. All gone, even God’s [End Page 249] word. Only a single sheet of paper remained, but what he wanted to tell his daughter Margaret, how the day began, refused to take shape.‘It’s funny,’ he had wanted to write. ‘I used to say that I’d wanted to be a monk, remember? Now I’ve got what I wanted. Peace and quiet. Few sounds penetrate my tower, save for the croaking of the ravens and the occasional cooing dove. I can meditate and pray and ponder to my heart’s content. The cries of the rowers and the seamen seem very distant, somewhere down below. No interruptions. At times the wind rattles the window and howls through the slit in the wall. I can hear John-a-Wood moving his stool or dropping a cup on the floor—wood and tin on stone. I have found my place in the world, Margaret. I have become pure spirit, just as I had wished. Still, I’m plagued by doubt and bad dreams.’ No, there was no need for them to know that. His family was worried enough as it was. The more steadfast he became, the more they worried. Humour no longer helped either. His eldest child’s letters pierced right through it.So now everything was laid bare. No more digression or embellishment; charcoal did not allow it. He had been reduced to straight talking, to facts. His days had become pure routine. Rise at six and pray. At times it felt as if he were in his own chapel at home, until he heard the rattling of John’s keys. The door would open: barley gruel and a jug of fresh water. The first and only smile of the day, unless he had a visitor. Then he was alone again to study and think.Now that his books were gone, there was every opportunity for thinking. Having had visitors just the week before, he could not expect any for a while. At the time he had not been able to summon the energy to listen and respond; his neck was stiff, turning his head painful. Howard had been there, asking question after question in an attempt to offer him a way out, when all he wanted was to enjoy the fire. Firewood and visitors went hand in hand, unbeknownst to Norfolk. The prisoner wanted to be alone and enjoy the fire. He wanted to close his eyes and not have to turn his head, to lose himself completely in the heat.So now he did not study after breakfast, but wrote a letter instead. Writing, debate and analysis were his reason for living, so he felt compelled to keep working, even here, even with a useless lump of charcoal. But prayer... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionStuart J. Youngner (bio), Laura A. Siminoff (bio), and Renie Schapiro (bio)This issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (KIEJ) centers on a piece of empirical research. The motivation behind the study of Laura Siminoff, Christopher Burant, and Stuart Youngner (2004) was to find out more about what the general public understands and believes about when a person is dead. More specifically, the study tried to (...) determine how members of the public define death, especially their acceptance and interpretation of the medical concept of "brain death," and their attitudes toward the so-called "dead donor rule," an informal but powerful social and legal norm insisting that the taking of organs for transplantation not cause the death of the source of those organs.As the demand for organs increases and the waiting list grows, the United States has explored multiple ways to expand the pool of potential donors. One approach has been to gerrymander (coherently or not) the line between life and death to shift patients who are extremely compromised but traditionally considered to be in the living category into the dead category. In this way, the dead donor rule remains technically intact. This reasoning is explicit in the report of the Harvard Medical School Ad Hoc Committee (1968) that "introduced" "brain death" to the American culture. Since then, other efforts to redraw the line have been proposed and rejected.One alternative to gerrymandering is to consider under what conditions, if any, it is morally acceptable to violate the dead donor rule. Some would argue that this alternative is the more "honest" approach. Rather than sidestepping moral problems by calling people dead, it brings the moral problems to the surface where the necessity of sticking to the rule can be considered on its own merits. However, when the Journal of the American Medical Association printed a position paper that proposed making anencepahlic newborns an exception to the dead donor rule, along with arguments about why this was acceptable, the outcry was so great that the proposal was retracted (AMA 1995).Clearly, our society has identified organ transplantation as a priority, although two papers in this volume (those by Courtney Campbell and by Megan Crowley-Matoka and Robert Arnold) take issue with that prioritization. The fact that the donor pool has remained relatively stable (and inadequate) despite massive efforts [End Page 211] to increase it speaks, at least in part, to the cultural and legal resistance to "new" ways to procure more organs. Voluntarism seems to have peaked. Financial incentives clash with the heavily endorsed notion of the "gift of life" and seem to many to violate the dignity of the human body. Presumed consent or eminent domain, in which the community has a greater claim to a person's organs than that person or his/her family, go against the grain of American individual freedom and the ethos of patient autonomy.Abandoning the dead donor rule generally is regarded as an even tougher sell to the American public and its legislators. The study by Siminoff and colleagues attempts, among other things, to gauge just how tough this sell would be. What the data actually demonstrate is a matter of interpretation, and this issue of the KIEJ is devoted to some of those interpretations. The authors, with the exception of Daniel Hausman, came together for a meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, during which the study's methods and data were presented with time for questions, clarifications, and general discussion. The authors then worked with the editors to generate the papers printed in this volume.The issue begins with a presentation of the study conducted by Siminoff and colleagues. The same paper also appears in the journal Social Science and Medicine, where it includes the conclusions of the authors (Siminoff, Burant, and Youngner 2004). In the current volume, we present only the methodology of and data from the study, allowing a number of distinguished commentators to offer their own conclusions and reflections.The first response comes from Tracy Schmidt, Executive Director of Intermountain Donor Services, one of our nation's organ procurement organizations (OPOs). For years, organ procurement professionals have reported anecdotal stories about families who wished to donate organs of... (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.