If a manager is evangelical, does it color the style he uses in his relationship with his subordinates? The paper sketches briefly the two familiar, historical ethical positions... the Protestant ethic and humanism and relates them to two styles of management. Then it points up the recent healthy growth of the evangelical movement, and the basic beliefs of evangelicals; then relates elements of these beliefs to the manager. A comparison of the three management ethics (Protestant, humanist, and evangelical) suggests some (...) differences in the characteristics of managers who follow each ethic. There is increased evidence of the effect of the evangelical ethic in political, medical, and judicial life. Is it not logical to assume it is also affecting business and management? (shrink)

In this paper, we challenge one of the criticisms against the idea of a universal basic income, namely, that people will waste the support on high-end consumption. We rely on the literature from various disciplines from which we developed high- and low-UBI scenarios for respondents to decide what they would do if the state were to provide an unconditional stipend. We analyzed the multiple-choice responses, using an ordered probit, and the written explanations of the respondents’ choices, using content analysis. The (...) results suggest that while a higher UBI would increase consumption, it would likely be done responsibly. People with low incomes showed restraint in all categories. The qualitative analysis captures some of the complexities of people’s socioeconomic circumstances that support the notion of responsible consumption. The policy implication is that a UBI could be introduced at a low level and gradually increased to a level that maximizes societal benefits. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Recreating Motherhood: Ideology and Technology in Patriarchal Society. By Barbara Katz Rothman. Surrogate Motherhood: The Legal and Human Issues. By Martha A. Field.

Despite advances in medical knowledge regarding pain management, pain continues to be significantly undertreated in the United States. There are many drug and nondrug treatments, but the use of controlled substances, particularly the opioid analgesics, is universally accepted for the treatment of pain from cancer. Although opioid analgesics are safe and effective in treating chronic pain, there is continued research and discussion about patient selection and long-term effects. A number of barriers in the health care and drug regulatory systems account (...) for the gap between what is known about pain management and what is practiced. Among the barriers are physicians’ fears of being disciplined by state regulatory boards for inappropriate prescribing.State medical boards are in a unique position not only to address physicians’ concerns about being investigated, but also to encourage pain management. Prior to 1989, a few state medical boards had policies relating to controlled substances or pain. Subsequently, state medical boards began adopting policies regarding the prescribing of opioids for the treatment of pain; many of these specifically addressed physicians’ fear of regulatory scrutiny. (shrink)

Near the homes of photographers John Willis and Tom Young is a paper mill that sits in the otherwise pristine and picturesque climes of western Massachusetts. For Willis and Young, this site is one of both aesthetic and philosophical contradictions: despite its verdant locale, the mill—with its ominous smoke stacks and countless bales of discarded paper—brings to mind the dreariness of industrialization and the impermanence of life itself. But the factory is actually one where such litter is reborn as reusable (...) paper. Willis and Young’s stunning black-and-white images, collected in this unforgettable volume, transform this mill and the innumerable mounds of recyclable waste it processes daily into an indelible and evocative landscape. Recycled Realities is not a jeremiad foretelling the consequences of excessive waste, rampant pollution, or unbridled consumption, but rather a profound meditation on the hidden meanings and connections that linger beneath the debris and detritus of everyday life. These astonishing and often surreal photos of discarded paper from the printed world trace the processes of emergence, revelation, and redemption that make the cycle of life possible. In their photographs, Willis and Young take that which we have discarded and create new forms of being in and of themselves: vibrant and ultimately life-affirming portraits of who we are as people and the realities that we constantly build—and rebuild—all around us. (shrink)

Current treatments for chronic pain have limited benefit. We describe a resilience intervention for individuals with chronic pain which is based on a model of viewing chronic pain as dysregulated homeostasis and which seeks to restore homeostatic self-regulation using strategies exemplified by survivors of extreme environments. The intervention is expected to have broad effects on well-being and positive emotional health, to improve cognitive functions, and to reduce pain symptoms thus helping to transform the suffering of pain into self-growth. A total (...) of 88 Veterans completed the pre-assessment and were randomly assigned to either the treatment intervention or control. Fifty-eight Veterans completed pre- and post-testing. The intervention covered resilience strengths organized into four modules: engagement, social relatedness, transformation of pain and building a good life. A broad set of standardized, well validated measures were used to assess three domains of functioning: health and well-being, symptoms, and cognitive functions. Two-way Analysis of Variance was used to detect group and time differences. Broadly, results indicated significant intervention and time effects across multiple domains: Pain decreased in present severity [F = 5.02, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.08], total pain over six domains [F = 14.52, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.21], and pain interference [F = 6.82, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.11]; Affect improved in pain-related negative affect [F = 7.44, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.12], fear [F = 7.70, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.12], and distress [F = 10.87, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.16]; Well-being increased in pain mobility [F = 5.45, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.09], vitality [F = 4.54, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.07], and emotional well-being [F = 5.53, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.09] Mental health symptoms and the cognitive functioning domain did not reveal significant effects. This resilience intervention based on homeostatic self-regulation and survival strategies of survivors of extreme external environments may provide additional sociopsychobiological tools for treating individuals with chronic pain that may extend beyond treating pain symptoms to improving emotional well-being and self-growth.Clinical Trial Registration: Registered with ClinicalTrials.gov. (shrink)

We propose that the fundamental mechanism underlying resilience is the integration of novel or negative experiences into internal schemata. This process requires a switch from reactive to predictive control modes, from the brain's salience network to the default mode network. Reappraisal, among other mechanisms, is suggested to facilitate this process.

The cosmopolitan tradition begins with Diogenes, who claimed as his identity "citizen of the world." Martha Nussbaum traces the cosmopolitan ideal from ancient times to the present, weighing its limitations as well as merits. Using the capabilities approach, Nussbaum seeks to integrate the "noble but flawed" vision of world citizenship with cosmopolitanism's concern with moral and political justice for all.--.

The chapters in this volume deal with timely issues regarding democracy in theory and in practice in today's globalized world. Authored by leading political philosophers of our time, they appear here for the first time. The essays challenge and defend assumptions about the role of democracy as a viable political and legal institution in response to globalization, keeping in focus the role of rights at the normative foundations of democracy in a pluralistic world.

We consider a class of graphs embedded in $R^2$ as noncommutative proof-nets with an explicit exchange rule. We give two characterization of such proof-nets, one representing proof-nets as CW-complexes in a two-dimensional disc, the other extending a characterization by Asperti. As a corollary, we obtain that the test of correctness in the case of planar graphs is linear in the size of the data. Braided proof-nets are proof-nets for multiplicative linear logic with Mix embedded in $R^3$ . In order to (...) prove the cut-elimination theorem, we consider proof-nets in $R^2$ as projections of braided proof-nets under regular isotopy. (shrink)

Widely hailed as one of the most significant works in modern political philosophy, John Rawls's _Political Liberalism_ defended a powerful vision of society that respects reasonable ways of life, both religious and secular. These core values have never been more critical as anxiety grows over political and religious difference and new restrictions are placed on peaceful protest and individual expression. In her introduction to the volume, Martha Nussbaum discusses the main themes of _Political Liberalism _and puts them into the (...) context of contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

We present a model for several early stages of the sensorimotor transformations involved in targeted arm movement. In psychophysical experiments, human subjects pointed to the remembered locations of randomly placed targets in three-dimensional space. They made consistent errors in distance, and from these errors stages in the sensorimotor transformation were deduced. When subjects attempted to move the right index finger to a virtual target they consistently undershot the distance of the more distal targets. Other experiments indicated that the error was (...) in the sensorimotor transformation rather than in the perception of distance. The error was most consistent when evaluated using a spherical coordinate system based at the right shoulder, indicating that the neural representation of target parameters is transformed from a retinocentric representation to a shoulder-centered representation. According to the model, the error in distance results from the neural implementation of a linear approximation in the algorithm to transform shoulder-centered target parameters into a set of arm orientations appropriate for placing the finger on the target. The transformation to final arm orientations places visually derived information into a frame of reference where it can readily be combined with kinesthetically derived information about initial arm orientations. The combination of these representations of initial and final arm orientations could give rise to the representation of movement direction recorded in the motor cortex by Georgopoulos and his colleagues. Later stages, such as the transformation from kinematic to dynamic parameters, or to levels of muscle activation, are beyond the scope of the present model. (shrink)

In "Upheavals of Thought", Martha Nussbaum offers a theory of the emotions. She argues that emotions are best conceived as thoughts, and she argues that emotion-thoughts can make valuable contributions to the moral life. She develops extensive accounts of compassion and erotic love as thoughts that are of great moral import. This paper seeks to elucidate what it means, for Nussbaum, to say that emotions are forms of thought. It raises critical questions about her conception of the structure of (...) emotion, and about her conception of compassion, in particular. Finally, the paper seeks to show how analyzing the structure, as well as the moral value, of the emotions ultimately requires entering the realm of religious ethics. (shrink)

The biology of early life adversity explores how social experiences early in life affect physical and psychological health and well-being throughout the life course. In our previous work, we argued that narratives emerging from and about this research field tend to focus on harm and lasting damage with little discussion of reversibility and resilience. However, as the Science and Technology Studies literature has demonstrated, scientific research can be actively taken up and transformed as it moves through social worlds. Drawing on (...) fieldwork with actors in education and juvenile corrections in the US Pacific Northwest, we found that they employed the biology of early life adversity not only to promote prevention but also to argue for changes within their own institutions that would allow them to better serve children and youth who have experienced adversity and trauma. Our study shows that biosocial narratives are neither inherently liberatory nor inherently oppressive but that the situated narrative choreographies in which they are enrolled are essential for their political effects. In our case, we show how these biosocial narratives have been articulated with knowledge and practices from restorative justice and trauma-informed care to reimagine the social meaning of the biology of early life adversity. (shrink)

During the 1970s and 1980s, legal precedent, governmental recommendations, and professional society guidelines drove the formation of hospital ethics committees (HECs). The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organization’s requirements in the early 1990s solidified the role of HECs as the primary mechanism to address ethical issues in patient care. Because external factors drove the rapid growth of HECs on an institution-byinstitution basis, however, no initial consensus formed around the structure and function of these committees. There are now almost (...) 40 years of empirical studies on the composition, administration, and activities of HECs in the United States. We conducted a systematic review of the available empirical literature on HECs to describe their evolution. As HECs changed over time, they increased their total number of members and percentage of members from nursing and the community. Although physicians increasingly chaired these committees, their presence as a percentage of overall members declined. The percentage of administrative members remained steady, although committees became increasingly likely to have at least one administrative member. HECs were also increasingly likely to report to an administrative body or to the board of trustees or directors rather than to the medical staff. Finally, consultation volume increased steadily over time. There has not, however, been a national survey of the composition of ethics committees, their administration, or volume of consultation in more than 10 years, despite increasing calls for professional standards and quality improvement assessments among HECs. (shrink)

Why do people shift their strategies for solving problems? Past work has focused on the roles of contextual and individual factors in explaining whether people adopt new strategies when they are exposed to them. In this study, we examined a factor not considered in prior work: people's evaluations of the strategies themselves. We presented undergraduate participants from a moderately selective university (N = 252; 64.8% women, 65.6% White, 67.6% who had taken calculus) with two strategies for solving algebraic word problems (...) and asked them to rate these strategies and their own strategy on a variety of dimensions. Participants’ ratings loaded onto two factors, which we label quality and difficulty. Participants’ initial evaluations of the quality of the strategies were associated with whether they used the strategies at posttest, and this effect held even when controlling for individual and contextual factors. However, people's evaluations of the difficulty of the strategies were not consistently associated with their later adoption of those strategies. We also examined individual and contextual predictors of strategy ratings and strategy adoption. Participants’ need for cognition and their spatial visualization ability were associated with their strategy evaluations, and the framing of the story problems was associated with their strategy adoption. The findings highlight that strategy adoption depends on multiple interacting factors, and that to understand strategy change, it is critical to examine how people evaluate strategies. (shrink)

Maria mediatrix represents a paradigm of mediality in the Middle Ages. Mary′s power consists in bridging the gap between the celestial sphere and the world, the Christ and mankind. She is full of grace and conveying grace, participating in humanity and divinity by these characteristics. Her influence is based on having given birth to the Christ, accompanied his life until his death on the cross, having suffered and died in her soul with him in love. She incites the individual to (...) follow her on her paths, to love and suffer as she did, to follow the Christ. Her path – if followed – offers the perspective to reach redemption and salvation. But she is also interceding for the sinners. Ascended to heaven and crowned as queen, she is able to change the severity of judgements of her son into mercy. The present article outlines a “mediologic” approach, presenting some developments from the bible to the Middle Ages and giving examples of different ways of Mary′s mediation. The latter are mainly focussed on homilies written by Bernhard de Clairvaux (1090–1153) on the occasion of the feasts of the birth and ascension of Mary and five chapters of the ‘Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit’ by Heinrich Seuse (1295–1366). (shrink)

Certain realist critics of U.S. foreign policy put forth an alternative model of “offshore balancing” as a definitively rational alternative to what they regard as the current, and utterly disastrous, policy of “liberal hegemony.” They predict that the public will eventually recognize the hollowness of liberalism and demand a foreign policy rooted in hardnosed realism. They also promise that this rational outline will also be a positive good, maximizing national interests and moral values with no tradeoffs between them. I argue (...) that offshore balancing packages realist arguments in an idealist framework, whereby the good is both self-evident and bound to triumph. This inhibits the actual realist task of revealing the harsh facts of politics, which inevitably interfere with preferences. Offshore balancing traps itself between its claim of inevitability, which undercuts the need for advocacy, and desirability, which pushes against its inevitability. The only way they can resolve this contradiction is with an increasingly caustic account of liberalism as so utterly wrong and immoral that its opponents earn the mark of reason and goodness by sheer virtue of their opposition. Offshore balancing subordinates its account of the world as it is to a demand of how the world must not be. (shrink)

Le cosmopolitisme, concept antique, n'appartient pas à l'origine à la philosophie de l'histoire. Il subit différentes métamorphoses ; présent chez les Cyniques et chez les Stoïciens, mis en réserve par l'humanisme de la Renaissance, il réapparaîtra en force à l'époque des Lumières. Critiqué par Rousseau, soutenu par Kant, il ne cesse d'être actuel dans la globalisation ou la mondialisation à travers diverses instances, dont l'ONU. Sur la scène européenne, il inspire les débats actuels contradictoires des eurosceptiques et des eurofédéralistes. La (...) liaison du cosmopolitisme et de la philosophie de l'histoire s'impose cependant indéniablement dans notre horizon au-delà des idéologies et des faillites du siècle dernier : totalitarismes et fascisme. (shrink)

Old age often brings with it chronic conditions that make it difficult to handle the activities of daily life. In the United States, unpaid family caregivers, predominantly women, provide most of this care. I explore why this situation has come about and persists and further ground my image of a dystopian future in neoliberalism, the policymaking process, and contemporary politics. I then offer an ethical and policy foundation for an alternative approach to providing needed long-term care services and make provisional (...) suggestions for actions that ought to be taken now and in the near future to avoid this dystopian future. (shrink)

From one of the world's most celebrated moral philosophers comes a thorough examination of the current American political crisis and recommendations for how to mend a divided country.

Tamil: A Biography. By David Shulman. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. xii + 402.

To characterize human emotions, researchers have increasingly utilized Automatic Facial Expression Analysis (AFEA), which automates the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) and translates the facial muscular positioning into the basic universal emotions. There is broad interest in the application of FACS for assessing consumer expressions as an indication of emotions to consumer product-stimuli. However, the translation of FACS to characterization of emotions is elusive in the literature. The aim of this systematic review is to give an overview of how FACS (...) has been used to investigate human emotional behavior to consumer product-based stimuli. The search was limited to studies published in English after 1978, conducted on humans, using FACS or its action units to investigate affect, where emotional response is elicited by consumer product-based stimuli evoking at least one of the five senses. The search resulted in an initial total of 1,935 records, of which 55 studies were extracted and categorized based on the outcomes of interest including (i) method of FACS implementation; (ii) purpose of study; (iii) consumer product-based stimuli used; and (iv) measures of affect validation. Most studies implemented FACS manually (73%) to develop products and/or software (20%) and used consumer product-based stimuli that had known and/or defined capacity to evoke a particular affective response, such as films and/or movie clips (20%); minimal attention was paid to consumer products with low levels of emotional competence or with unknown affective impact. The vast majority of studies (53%) did not validate FACS-determined affect and, of the validation measures that were used, most tended to be discontinuous in nature and only captured affect as it holistically related to an experience. This review illuminated some inconsistencies in how FACS is carried out as well as how emotional response is inferred from facial muscle activation. This may prompt researchers to consider measuring the total consumer experience by employing a variety of methodologies in addition to FACS and its emotion-based interpretation guide. Such strategies may better conceptualize consumers' experience with products of low, unknown, and/or undefined capacity to evoke an affective response such as product prototypes, line extensions, etc. (shrink)