In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Aesthetics of Asian Art:The Study of Montien Boonma in the Undergraduate Education ClassroomMary Ann Maslak (bio)John Dewey, in his Experience and Nature, expounds on the developmental nature of human experience premised on the concept of qualitative propinquity—the integration and harmonization with the environment exemplifies the essence of experience. This principal line of reasoning shapes his fundamental argument in Art as Experience, one of Dewey's most significant educational works (...) used today.1 In it he argues that the roots of experience lie in the commonplace occurrences in the course of human life. The integration of the meaning and value drawn from previous and present circumstances results in an "experience," which, in turn, constitutes a foundation of learning for the individual. Dewey's ideas are not only appropriate but also useful in the field of education. In what ways may future teachers experience art? How does the experiential process of examining art contribute to future teachers' pedagogical tools that can be used to incorporate art into the elementary school classroom?This article demonstrates how an experiential study of a work of art in an undergraduate education course—part of the St. John's University/Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education (LCIAE) Higher Education Collaborative program in New York City—contributes to the pedagogical repertoire of process-based learning for teachers and their future students. The article begins by providing a theoretical background for the work, followed by the definitions of three concepts that are pertinent to this piece: aesthetic education, the experiential approach to learning, and process-based instruction.2 The article then focuses on the specific aims of the university's arts course, the LCIAE Partnership Program, and data and analyses from the process-based aesthetic learning for the students enrolled in the course. It ends with conclusions about aesthetic education. [End Page 67]Theoretical BackgroundAssuming the sociocultural nature of learning suggested by Dewey demands consideration of the layers of experience, it is necessary to discern the learners' emerging thoughts in light of various experiences. As a teacher, I subscribe to this belief and wanted to note how I could employ scaffolding practices to the aesthetic education learning experience for my undergraduate students. I aimed to accomplish this goal by scaffolding aesthetic experiences for students from their personal points of understanding, the university's classroom setting, and the context of museum exhibitions.Scaffolding instruction has a lengthy and persuasive history that provided the underpinning for my approach to the course.3 The intent of scaffolding is to help a learner undertake a task or goal that is beyond the learner's present level.4 Effective scaffolding encompasses a number of key features within cognitive and emotional domains.5 Cognitive elements include (1) selecting challenging activities for students; (2) monitoring their efforts; (3) using guiding questions to develop self-regulation; and (4) using indirect questioning strategies to extend and enhance the learning experience. Emotional support includes (1) structuring experiences to discourage frustration and encourage confidence; and (2) creating an atmosphere of comfort. While not all these features are applicable to scaffolding activities in an art education course of a university's teacher education program, I was mindful of their importance in structuring this course.Given that this course was my undergraduate students' initial exposure to aesthetic education, scaffolding served as an appropriate systematic pedagogical approach. In the words of Maxine Greene, aesthetic education is an intentional experience "designed to nurture appreciative, reflective, cultural, participatory engagements with the arts" by enabling the student to observe, analyze, and interpret meaning.6 In other words, it is the interactive study of the nature and expression of beauty. It seeks to enhance perception and affect, cognitive development, and personal growth by assuming that works of art provide an inexhaustible resource for exploration and reflection by the learner and an understanding based on the cultural context in which the artwork was created. Greene's philosophy, developed from the work of Dewey, posits that understanding a work of art is based on the active connection to and association with the piece. Therefore, the approach to its study is of the utmost importance.The experiential approach to learning is a... (shrink)

In this paper, I explore three autobiographical narratives that Plato’s Socrates tells: his report of his conversations with Diotima, his account of his testing of the Delphic oracle, and his description of his turn from naturalistic philosophy to his own method of inquiry.1 This Platonic Socrates shows his auditors how to philosophize for the future through a narrative recollection of his own past. In these stories, Plato presents us with an image of a Socrates who prepares others to do philosophy (...) without him. In doing so, Plato’s Socrates exhibits philosophical care for his students. In the first part of the paper, I briefly discuss Socrates’ overall narrative style as Plato depicts it in the five dialogues that Socrates narrates. I then analyze each of these autobiographical accounts with an eye toward uncovering what they reveal about Plato’s presentation of Socrates’ philosophical practice.2 Finally, I offer a brief description of what it might mean to practice philosophy as care for self and care for others in a Socratic fashion. (shrink)

Mary Anne Warren investigates a theoretical question that is at the centre of practical and professional ethics: what are the criteria for having moral status? That is: what does it take to be an entity towards which people have moral considerations? Warren argues that no single property will do as a sole criterion, and puts forward seven basic principles which establish moral status. She then applies these principles to three controversial moral issues: voluntary euthanasia, abortion, and the status of (...) non-human animals. (shrink)

Here is, we think, the point. It doesn't matter for what reason the writer or painter or lover destroys the creation: the real point is that destruction itself, like a gigantic statement. It is, in fact, something of an excitation, a stimulation to further thought: what is this ACTION about?' What do Stéphane Mallarmé, Antonin Artaud, Meret Oppenheim, Asger Jorn, Yoko Ono, Tom Phillips and Martin Arnold have in common? Whereas a wealth of critics have diagnosed contemporary art's preoccupations with (...) madness, depression and self-abuse as well as its tendency to cultivate an (anti- )aesthetics of the negative, the excremental and the abject (say, from the Vienna Action Group to Serrano, McCarthy or Delvoye), much less attention has been paid to how modern and contemporary artists and public have thrived on the destruction, disfiguration and obliteration of work by the artists and/or by that of others. From Artaud's 'terminal' notebooks to the recent upsurge in 'erasure poetics', the history of 'undoing' art deserves to be recounted in a positive mode and rescued from popular narratives of the decline and death of the avant-garde. (shrink)

Any even cursory examination of what it is to exchange words about X or to exchange views about Y requires hard thought about what it is to exchange, period. How do we invest in what we give out, and how do we get it back? In kind, or differently moneyed? And, more crucial to the topic into which I am about to make a foolhardy plunge, is there such a thing as free exchange? And if so, what is it worth?How (...) do we perceive worth anyway? What relation does such perception of the invisible system of the initially visible coinage of exchange bear to present visual perception, and then to seeing? And what does perception matter anyway, in relation to writing, reading, and exchanging words? Which is primary?All these questions—in their institutional setting, or then in their freedom from context—can themselves be related to and gathered up into the notion of translation, or the carrying over from one side to, and into, another. All we can learn about speaking and the ways it is taught, reading and the ways we learn it, seeing and the ways it teaches us is translated and transported from sight and its constraints and choices to language and its own. How we read both is itself a subject of choice and constraint, of freedom and explicit value-placing, of variety and fidelity to certain ends. Mary Ann Caws is professor of English, French, and comparative literature in the Graduate School, City University of New York. She is past president of the Modern Language Association and the author of, among other works, The Eye in the Text: Essays on Perception, Mannerist to Modern , Architextures in Surrealism and After , Reading Frames in Modern Fiction , and Interferences. (shrink)

The past 25 years have seen an upsurge of interest in the figure of Mary Magdalene, whose image has been transformed through feminist scholarship from penitent prostitute to prominent disciple of Jesus. This article documents another, non-academic, interpretation of Mary Magdalene – the image of Mary as goddess or embodiment of the female divine. The most influential proponent of this view is Margaret Starbird, who hypothesizes that Mary was both Jesus’ wife and his divine feminine counterpart. (...) The author suggests that feminist theologians/thealogians should be aware of this popular understanding of Mary; and consider what it is about Mary Magdalene as the sacred feminine/bride of Jesus/sophia that captures the public imagination in a way that other feminist christologies do not. (shrink)

This book explores the ethical implications of managing uncertainty in clinical decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. It develops an ethics of clinical uncertainty that brings together insights from the clinical and biomedical ethical literatures. The book sets out to recognize the central role uncertainty plays in clinical decision-making and to acknowledge the different levels, kinds, and dimensions of clinical uncertainty. It also aims to aid clinicians and patients in managing clinical uncertainty, and to recognize the ethical duty they have to (...) manage clinical uncertainty. The book addresses four ethical duties related to clinical uncertainty: (1) the duty to advance the welfare of those in clinical medicine, (2) to respect the rights of those in clinical medicine, (3) to promote just access to health care, and (4) to care for one another in clinical medicine. These duties took on select urgency during the COVID-19 pandemic because clinical risk assessments about COVID-19 were limited, we were asked to give informed consent in the context of limited and changing knowledge, the pandemic unearthed myriad problems about the distribution of health care, and the pandemic raised questions about how we care for each other in medicine. An Ethics of Clinical Uncertainty will appeal to scholars, advanced students, and medical professionals working in philosophy of medicine, biomedical ethics, clinical medicine, nursing, public health care, and gerontology. (shrink)

Mammalian sex chromosomes exhibit marked sexual dimorphism in behavior during gametogenesis. During oogenesis, the X chromosomes pair and participate in unrestricted recombination; both are transcriptionally active. However, during spermatogenesis the X and Y chromosomes experience spatial restriction of pairing and recombination, are transcriptionally inactive, and form a chromatin domain that is markedly different from that of the autosomes. Thus the male germ cell has to contend with the potential loss of X‐encoded gene products, and it appears that coping strategies have (...) evolved. Genetic control of sex‐chromosome inactivation during spermatogenesis does not involve pairing or the presence of the Y chromosome or an intact X chromosome, and may therefore be under exogenous control by the gonad. Sex‐chromosome reactivation during oogenesis and inactivation during spermatogenesis probably reflect specific meiotic events such as recombination. Understanding these phenomena may help explain other sex‐related differences in genetic recombination. (shrink)

Over the past decade, genetic tests have become available for a wide variety of disorders. As a result we are able to predict, with some degree of certainty, whether or not an individual will develop such diseases as breast cancer, Huntington's disease, polycystic kidney disease, and familial adenomatous polyposis. The ability to predict disease poses several unique ethical considerations for clinical decisionmaking regarding the provision of genetic testing. Patients must be able to comprehend the complexities of genetic testing and the (...) potential meaning of the results. Patients must consider the emotional, social, and economic consequences of revelations regarding their risk status. Also, obtaining information on risk status may have implications for persons other than the individual seeking genetic testing. (shrink)

This essay compares the cultural context for The Courage to Be with the present American context and then assesses the extent to which Tillich’s analysis is helpful in understanding and/or addressing current challenges to faith and life. Two aspects of culture that need to be addressed today are 1) the importance of our human bodies in how we live and in how we relate to others and 2) issues of justice and power. People still experience the anxieties of fate and (...) death, doubt and meaninglessness, and guilt and condemnation, but today there is less emphasis on guilt. For some groups, a fourth anxiety of injustice and oppression dominates. American culture today is polarized politically and religiously over basic values, with people gaining courage through belonging to particular groups much more than through the courage to be as oneself. Transcendent courage participates in the power of being-itself and grounds all forms of courage, providing a religious meaning to courage and to life. (shrink)

Signal transduction pathways are largely conserved throughout the animal kingdom. The repertoire of pathways is limited and each pathway is used in different intercellular signaling events during the development of a given animal. For example, Wnt signaling is recruited, sometimes redundantly with other molecular pathways, in four cell specification events during Caenorhabditis elegans vulva development, including the activation of vulval differentiation. Strikingly,a recent study finds that Wnts act to repress vulval differentiation in the nematode Pristionchus pacificus,1 demonstrating evolutionary flexibility in (...) the use of intercellular signaling pathways. BioEssays 27:765–769, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Paul Menzel and Donald Light ("A Conservative Case for Universal Access to Health Care," Jul-Aug 2006) tell a story that is plausible. However, based on my twenty-five years of experience as a policy analyst interested in access to health care, I find it inaccurate for a number of reasons.

"Ethical Choices in Contemporary Medicine" jettisons the standard medical ethics models of "rights" language and shows how the bioethical problems that receive attention from the media and the public are related to and are explicable in terms of the epistemological foundations of science and medicine. These epistemological concerns include how medical knowledge is established , how medical protocols are administered , how medical certainty is evaluated and medical responsibility is framed , and how medical knowledge is transmitted and how medical (...) care is allocated . The book examines the present predicaments of medicine within a broad cultural context and suggests that rational discourse and parochial ethical dialogue may be futile in the face of competing and incommensurable frameworks and agendas, attitudes and wishes. The authors show that, in the postmodern age, two interrelated issues surface when it comes to medicine. On the one hand, there is a strong critique of science and the privileges associated with the scientific discourse and, on the other, there is still a deep-seated quest for certainty in all medical matters. (shrink)

The Catholics order is from the way they worship to the way they behave ( lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi ). Protestants, on the other hand, commence with the question, ‘What are we to believe?’ The Protestant order would therefore be lex credendi, lex orandi, lex vivendi. Lex credendi is the law of belief (what we believe). Lex orandi, lex credendi, literally means the law of prayer (the way we worship) is the law of belief (what we believe) or (...) the law of praying ( lex orandi ) constitutes or establishes the law of believing ( lex credendi ). As we believe, so we live ( lex credendi ) forms the basis and foundation of both the Catholic doctrine and the Catholic moral life. Lex orandi, the law of prayer (the way we worship) has to do with the enactment of the liturgy itself. In this article, I argue that the liturgy of life ( lex vivendi ) makes apparent what we believe. Lex vivendi [the rule of life] therefore pertains to how one should conduct oneself in a specified way, especially in relation to others regarding the teachings of the church as well as to ethical and social questions. Lex vivendi has to do with the faithful living of the Gospel. This article will therefore attend to the following: the meaning of lex credendi, lex orandi, lex vivendi ; expansion of adage to lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi ; justice and lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi ; interplay between lex credendi, lex orandi, lex vivendi in Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA). Contribution: From the perspective of Protestant dogmatics, this article aims to contribute to the reflection on the notion fides quaerens intellectum [faith seeks understanding]. (shrink)

An innovative gateway MBA course, Personal Development and Social Responsibility, is the focus of this paper. We describe the course and show how it is related intimately to the missions and traditions of our university and college; various themes are integrated; and our interactions as developers of and instructors for the course mirror some of the issues addressed in it. We include an evaluation of the efficacy of the course, based on student course and self evaluations. We do not write (...) with the expectation that others will necessarily replicate what we have done but with the hope that they will (1) consider carefully the relationship between what and how they teach with the missions and traditions of their universities and colleges; (2) examine the integration of content and process; and (3) reflect on their collegial associations with one another. (shrink)

This article examines the way in which some biomedical ethicists have constructed sexually transmitted AIDS as a significant threat to women's health. We demonstrate that the familiar claim that‘women are the fastest growing group'— whether of HIV-infected or of AIDS patients — is misleading because it obscures the distinction between proportional rate of growth and absolute increase. Feminist ethicists have suggested that misogyny of a male dominated health care system has led to underreporting of women AIDS cases in order to (...) support these feminists’claim of AIDS being a real threat to women's health. Given the apparent rarity of tertiary transmissions of AIDS, the assertion that most or even many women are at significant risk for AIDS seem wrong. Particularly disturbing in this campaign is the fact that the theme of‘risky sex’has been extended all the way to lesbians, even though their risk to acquire AIDS sexually is non-existent to minuscule. We argue that actual harm is done to women by this exaggeration of their risk of contracting AIDS sexually. The scare has led to misappropriations of scarce health care funds. AIDS disproportionately affects women who inject drugs, and who suffer other diseases, poverty and malnutrition. It would have been better to concentrate health care efforts in this area instead of‘educating’women not at risk for AIDS how to prevent the acquisition of this disease. Unjustifiable AIDS anxiety has been created in women and has resulted in millions of unnecessary HIV-tests, and many broken relationships. This anxiety has inevitably reduced the pleasure of having sex for many women. We reject the kind of‘victim ideology’that lies at the heart of this strategy which has, unfortunately, been supported by a number of influential feminist ethicists. (shrink)

This article examines the way in which some biomedical ethicists have constructed sexually transmitted AIDS as a significant threat to women's health. We demonstrate that the familiar claim that‘women are the fastest growing group'— whether of HIV‐infected or of AIDS patients — is misleading because it obscures the distinction between proportional rate of growth and absolute increase. Feminist ethicists have suggested that misogyny of a male dominated health care system has led to underreporting of women AIDS cases in order to (...) support these feminists’claim of AIDS being a real threat to women's health. Given the apparent rarity of tertiary transmissions of AIDS, the assertion that most or even many women are at significant risk for AIDS seem wrong. Particularly disturbing in this campaign is the fact that the theme of‘risky sex’has been extended all the way to lesbians, even though their risk to acquire AIDS sexually is non‐existent to minuscule. We argue that actual harm is done to women by this exaggeration of their risk of contracting AIDS sexually. The scare has led to misappropriations of scarce health care funds. AIDS disproportionately affects women who inject drugs, and who suffer other diseases, poverty and malnutrition. It would have been better to concentrate health care efforts in this area instead of‘educating’women not at risk for AIDS how to prevent the acquisition of this disease. Unjustifiable AIDS anxiety has been created in women and has resulted in millions of unnecessary HIV‐tests, and many broken relationships. This anxiety has inevitably reduced the pleasure of having sex for many women. We reject the kind of‘victim ideology’that lies at the heart of this strategy which has, unfortunately, been supported by a number of influential feminist ethicists. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article examines the way in which some biomedical ethicists have constructed sexually transmitted AIDS as a significant threat to women's health. We demonstrate that the familiar claim that‘women are the fastest growing group'— whether of HIV‐infected or of AIDS patients — is misleading because it obscures the distinction between proportional rate of growth and absolute increase. Feminist ethicists have suggested that misogyny of a male dominated health care system has led to underreporting of women AIDS cases in order to (...) support these feminists’claim of AIDS being a real threat to women's health. Given the apparent rarity of tertiary transmissions of AIDS, the assertion that most or even many women are at significant risk for AIDS seem wrong. Particularly disturbing in this campaign is the fact that the theme of‘risky sex’has been extended all the way to lesbians, even though their risk to acquire AIDS sexually is non‐existent to minuscule. We argue that actual harm is done to women by this exaggeration of their risk of contracting AIDS sexually. The scare has led to misappropriations of scarce health care funds. AIDS disproportionately affects women who inject drugs, and who suffer other diseases, poverty and malnutrition. It would have been better to concentrate health care efforts in this area instead of‘educating’women not at risk for AIDS how to prevent the acquisition of this disease. Unjustifiable AIDS anxiety has been created in women and has resulted in millions of unnecessary HIV‐tests, and many broken relationships. This anxiety has inevitably reduced the pleasure of having sex for many women. We reject the kind of‘victim ideology’that lies at the heart of this strategy which has, unfortunately, been supported by a number of influential feminist ethicists. (shrink)

Comparisons between related species often allow the detailed genetic analysis of evolutionary processes. Here we advocate the use of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (and several other rhabditid species) as model systems for microevolutionary studies. Compared to Drosophila species, which have been a mainstay of such studies, C. elegans has a self‐fertilizing mode of reproduction, a shorter life cycle and a convenient cell‐level analysis of phenotypic variation. Data concerning its population genetics and ecology are still scarce, however. We review molecular, behavioral (...) and developmental intraspecific polymorphisms for populations of C. elegans, Oscheius sp. 1 and Pristionchus pacificus. Focusing on vulval development, which has been well characterized in several species, we discuss relationships between patterns of variations: (1) for a given genotype (developmental variants), (2) after mutagenesis (mutability), (3) in different populations of the same species (polymorphisms) and (4) between closely related species. These studies have revealed that evolutionary variations between sister species affect those characters that show phenotypic developmental variants, that are mutable and that are polymorphic within species. BioEssays 23:807–819, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

BackgroundJunior medical doctors have a key role in discussions and decisions about treatment and end-of-life care for people with dementia in hospital. Little is known about junior doctors’ decision-making processes when treating people with dementia who have advance care directives, or the factors that influence their decisions. To describe among junior doctors in relation to two hypothetical vignettes involving patients with dementia: their legal compliance and decision-making process related to treatment decisions; the factors influencing their clinical decision-making; and the factors (...) associated with accurate responses to one hypothetical vignette. MethodA cross-sectional survey of junior doctors, including trainees, interns, registrars and residents, on clinical rotation in five public hospitals located in one Australian state. The anonymous, investigator-developed survey was conducted between August 2018 and June 2019. Two hypothetical vignettes describing patients with dementia presenting to hospital with an ACD and either: bacterial pneumonia; or suspected stroke were presented in the survey. Participants were asked to indicate whether they would commence treatment, given the ACD instructions described in each vignette.ResultsOverall, 116 junior doctors responded. In Vignette 1, 58% of respondents selected the legally compliant option. Participants who chose the legally compliant option perceived ‘following patient wishes’ and ‘legal requirements to follow ACDs’ as equally important reasons for complying with the ACD. The most common reason for not selecting the legally compliant option in Vignette 1 was the ‘ACD is relevant in my decision-making process, but other factors are more relevant’. In Vignette 2, 72% of respondents indicated they would commence treatment and 18% selected they would not commence treatment.. Similar reasons influenced participant decision-making in Vignette 2, a less legally certain scenario.ConclusionsThere are critical gaps in junior doctors’ compliance with the law as it relates to the implementation of ACDs. Despite there being differences in relation to the legal answer and its certainty, clinical and ethical factors guided decision-making over and above the law in both vignettes. More education and training to guide junior doctors’ clinical decision-making and ensure compliance with the law is required. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How Augustinian Is Aquinas's Basic Account of Free Decision?Jamie Anne SpieringIntroductionQuestions about Augustine's influence on Thomas Aquinas are always interesting. In the previous century, leading Thomists such as Marie Dominic Chenu, Jean-Pierre Torrell, and Étienne Gilson wrote about the influence of one great master on the other. However, no one thinks the investigation is complete: the contributions of the new century have begun and are expected to continue.1 In (...) this article, I would like to consider how Augustine influenced Aquinas's account of something known to both authors as liberum arbitrium: free choice, or free decision.2 When we speak of grace and [End Page 435] human freedom, Aquinas's debt to Augustine and the extent of his fidelity to the master have been frequently explored.3 The same is true with regard to the fairly advanced question of the relation between human freedom and divine foreknowledge.4 But in this article I would like to consider Thomas's treatment of what we might call the basic questions surrounding man's ability to choose freely—questions about its essence and its existence. What is this liberum arbitrium, which Augustine repeatedly calls "a gift of nature"? How should we understand its activity? How should we understand its origin? Thomas Aquinas deals with liberum arbitrium as a power of the soul in question 83 of Summa theologiae [ST] I, in question 24 of De veritate, and in chapter 48 of Summa contra gentiles [SCG] II. These texts are not about the role of grace or the causality of God—though they prepare for the discussion—but simply about the powers of an intellectual nature. How Augustinian is Aquinas's account in these texts?5 [End Page 436] I will try to explore the question with reasonable thoroughness in this paper.6It will surprise no one to hear that my answer to "was Aquinas an Augustinian in his basic treatment of free decision?" is "in a way, no, and in a way, yes." It is both surprising and notable how significantly Aquinas departs from the Augustinian path. The first part of this paper will discuss three major ways in which Aquinas's account of liberum arbitrium breaks openly (by medieval standards) from the type of careful loyalty we see in earlier authors. In the second part of the paper, I will argue that Aquinas's account follows Augustine in distinctive ways: instead of prioritizing Augustine's context and preferred evidence for free decision, Aquinas does more to locate free decision within the quest for happiness which provided the ultimate pattern for Augustine's thought. He is an Augustinian, but of a very different kind.Aquinas's Treatment of Liberum Arbitrium Represents a Significant Break with the Augustinian TraditionIt simply was not Thomas's practice to write statements such as: "I am going to treat this topic in a way different from that of Augustine, and I plan to make significant improvements." How, then, can we understand whether, and to what extent, he made a break with Augustine's ideas? Direct comparison of the authors' works is the obvious strategy, but such comparison is complicated by our ignorance of whether Aquinas had actually seen the work in question or was only familiar with quotations from it. So I will employ an additional strategy to reveal Aquinas's breaks with Augustine: I will compare Thomas's work to that of Peter Lombard and Anselm of Canterbury. We know Aquinas had read Peter's work thoroughly, because [End Page 437] he wrote a commentary on it, and citations in De veritate reveal that Thomas knew at least the highlights of Anselm's work on free decision. Both Peter and Anselm are faithful to many aspects of Augustine's treatment: they follow him in the way they contextualize the topic, and they are careful to use Augustinian language in defining it. Aquinas does not. He radically shifts the context for the liberum arbitrium discussion and rejects definitions that use Augustine's formulations. He uses a boldly Aristotelian framework to replace a number of elements in Augustine's treatment. Finally, unlike Augustine, Peter, or Anselm, he asks about the... (shrink)

In this anthology of new and classic articles, fifteen noted feminist philosophers explore contemporary ethical issues that uniquely affect the lives of women. These issues in applied ethics include autonomy, responsibility, sexual harassment, women in the military, new technologies for reproduction, surrogate motherhood, pornography, abortion, nonfeminist women and others. Whether generated by old social standards or intensified by recent technology, these dilemmas all pose persistent, 'nagging,' questions that cry out for answers.

BackgroundTranscranial direct current stimulation is a non-invasive, non-convulsive technique for modulating brain function. In contrast to other non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, where costs, clinical applicability, and availability limit their large-scale use in clinical practices, the low-cost, portable, and easy-to-use tDCS devices may overcome these restrictions.ObjectiveDespite numerous clinical applications in large numbers of patients suffering from psychiatric disorders, it is not quite clear how tDCS influences the mentally affected human brain. In order to decipher potential neural mechanisms of action of tDCS (...) in patients with psychiatric conditions, we focused on the combination of tDCS with neuroimaging techniques.DesignWe propose a contemporary overview on the currently available neurophysiological and neuroimaging data where tDCS has been used as a research or treatment tool in patients with psychiatric disorders.ResultsOver a reasonably short period of time, tDCS has been b... (shrink)

In this article, I investigate the similarities and differences between the ways we relate to the other in ethics and in love through an engagement with the thinking of K.E. Løgstrup and Emmanuel Levinas. My point of departure will be a reading of a novel by Maja Lucas, Mother, which brings out the important and complicated nature of the relation between ethics and love. My main concern, however, is to investigate how Løgstrup’s and Levinas’s different conceptions of natural love point (...) to differences in their understanding of the ethical relationship to the other. (shrink)

_From a renowned foreign-policy expert, a new paradigm for strategy in the twenty-first century_ In 1961, Thomas Schelling’s _The Strategy of Conflict_ used game theory to radically reenvision the U.S.-Soviet relationship and establish the basis of international relations for the rest of the Cold War. Now, Anne-Marie Slaughter—one of _Foreign Policy’_s Top 100 Global Thinkers from 2009 to 2012, and the first woman to serve as director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning—applies network theory to develop a new (...) set of strategies for the post-Cold War world. While chessboard-style competitive relationships still exist—U.S.-Iranian relations, for example—many other situations demand that we look not at individual entities but at their links to one another. We must learn to understand, shape, and build on those connections. Concise and accessible, based on real-world situations, on a lucid understanding of network science, and on a clear taxonomy of strategies, this will be a go-to resource for anyone looking for a new way to think about strategy in politics or business. (shrink)

Most commentators working on Wittgenstein’s remarks on ethics note that he rejects the very possibility of traditional normative ethics, that is, a philosophically justified normative guide for right conduct. In this article, Wittgenstein’s view of ethical reflection as presented in his notebooks from 1936 to 1938 is investigated, and the question of whether it involves ethical guidance is addressed. In Wittgenstein’s remarks, we can identify three requirements inherent in ethical reflection. The first two is revealed in the realisation that ethical (...) reflection presupposes both a clear understanding of oneself and a normative ideal of how one ought to live and reason. The third source of normativity springs from the fact that ethical reflection involves a relationship with the other, not as judge, but as example and addressee. In this way, ethical reflection is essentially relational. In the article, we unfold how these three normative sources figure in Wittgenstein’s remarks, especially how the third requirement, the relationship with the other, shows both a point of conversion and a difference between his view of ethics and religious faith. It will also be argued that even if Wittgenstein thus presents ethical reflection as a normatively guided activity, the content of the guidance is personal, springing solely from the reflecting individual. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on two underlying presumptions that impinge on the effort of UNESCO to engender universal agreement on a set of bioethical norms: the conception of universality that pervades much of the document, and its disregard of structural inequalities that significantly impact health. Drawing on other UN system documents and recent feminist bioethics scholarship, we argue that the formulation of universal principles should not rely solely on shared ethical values, as the draft document affirms, but also on differences (...) in ethical values that obtain across cultures. UNESCO's earlier work on gender mainstreaming illustrates the necessity of thinking from multiple perspectives in generating universal norms. The declaration asserts the ‘fundamental equality of all human beings in dignity and rights’1 and insists that ‘the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition’2 yet it does not explicitly recognize disparities of power and wealth that deny equal dignity and rights to many. Without attention to structural (as opposed to merely accidental) inequities, UNESCO's invocation of rights is so abstract as to be incompatible with its avowed intention. (shrink)

In Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings, ethics takes a central place in his thinking. This element investigates his engagement with ethics in both early and later thinking. Starting from the remarks on ethics in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the framing of these remarks, it presents two influential approaches to Tractarian ethics, before it develops a coherent reading of ethics in the early thinking, focusing on ethical silence and the relationship notions of world and the philosophical 'I'. The reading of 'A Lecture on (...) Ethics' focuses on the critique of ethical theory and the personal dimension of ethics, two themes also running through Wittgenstein's later thinking. It considers Wittgenstein's later ethical investigations, of ethical examples, ethically relevant language uses of language and the connections between reflections on ethics and living. It also considers the role of the other in Wittgenstein's later thinking. (shrink)

Background In 2001 a report on the provision of clinical ethics support in UK healthcare institutions identified 20 clinical ethics committees. Since then there has been no systematic evaluation or documentation of their work at a national level. Recent national surveys of clinical ethics services in other countries have identified wide variation in practice and scope of activities. Objective To describe the current provision of ethics support in the UK and its development since 2001. Method A postal/electronic questionnaire survey administered (...) to the chairs of all 82 clinical ethics services registered with the UK Clinical Ethics Network in July 2010. Results Response rate was 62% with the majority of responding services situated in acute trusts. All services included a clinical ethics committee with one service also having a clinical ethicist. Lay members were present in 72% of responding committees. Individual case consultation has increased since 2001 with 29% of chairs spending more than 50% of their time on this. Access to and involvement in the process of case consultation is less for patients and families than for clinical staff. There is wide variation in committee processes and levels of institutional support. Over half of the responding committees undertook some form of evaluation. Conclusion Clinical ethics services in the UK are increasing as is their involvement in case consultation. However, the significant variation in committee processes suggests that further qualitative research is needed to understand how these committees function and the role they play in their institution. (shrink)

In an historic first, two ethics committees - one from Laos, the other from France - met in Vientiane in October 2015. Researchers examined a multitude of ethical issues related to health, the environment, and societies in countries in the Mekong region. Urgent, universal questions were discussed in local contexts ; productive debates illustrated a complex array of possible solutions. This book, born out of that meeting, serves as a guide for those working across the spectrum of scientific fields on (...) paths to promote justice and reduce suffering. Like the Mekong River, the field of research ethics does not run in a straight line ; and like that river, everyone it touches discovers that what may initially appear to separate us ultimately serves to bring us together. (shrink)

Publications of the series include the official proceedings of the ALWS-conferences and of their special workshops. The series is open also for other high-quality publications, especially on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and its influence on contemporary analytic philosophy.

IN THE FIRST SEVERAL PARAGRAPHS of Nicomachean Ethics 9.8, Aristotle asks "whether a man should love himself most", and asserts that "men say that one ought to love best one's best friend". Yet earlier Aristotle describes loving as more essential to friendship than being loved; furthermore, he emphasizes that a man wishes well to his friend for his friend's sake, not as a means to his own happiness. Note also Aristotle's continued emphasis upon man as a political animal. In the (...) Politics as well as the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes the biological, even instinctive tendency of humans to seek each other's company. He considers it absurd for a man even to imagine living alone, since "without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods". It is only the human animal, however, who is even capable of that genuine friendship which, although rare, Aristotle considers "not only necessary but also noble; for... we think it is the same people that are good men and are friends" ; these friends are "alike in their excellence", one loving another "as being the man he is". (shrink)

In dialogue with the most famous myth for the origin of different languages - The Tower of Babel - A Psychoanalytic Exploration on Sameness and Otherness: Beyond Babel provides a series of timely reflections on the themes of sameness and otherness from a contemporary psychoanalytic perspective. How are we dealing with communication and its difficulties, the confusion of tongues and loss of common ground within a European context today? Can we move beyond Babel? Confusion and feared loss of shared values (...) and identity are a major part of the daily work of psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Bringing together an international range psychoanalytic practitioners and researchers, the book is divided into six parts and covers an array of resonant topics, including: language and translation; cultural identity; families and children; the cyber world; the psychotherapeutic process; and migration. Whereas the quest for unity, which underpins the myth of Babel, leads to mystification, simplification and the exclusion of people or things, multilingual communities necessitate mutual understanding through dialogue. This book examines those factors which further or threaten communication, aiming not to reduce but to gain complexity. It suggests that diversification enriches communication and that, by relating to others, we can create something new. As opposed to cultural and linguistic homogeneity, Babel is not only a metaphor for mangled communication, alienation, and distraction, it is also about the acceptance or rejection of differences between self and other. This book will be of great interest to psychoanalytic psychotherapists and researchers from a wide variety of backgrounds. (shrink)

We argue that one can explain why the influence of illusions decreases during a movement without assuming that different visual representations are used for planning and control. The basis for this is that movements are guided by a combination of correctly perceived information about certain attributes (such as a target's position) and illusory information about other attributes (such as the direction of motion). We explain how this can automatically lead to a decreasing effect of illusions when hitting discs that move (...) in an illusory direction, and when grasping objects of which the apparent size or orientation has been changed by an illusion. (shrink)

The Words, as its name suggests, interweaves with the fictionalized account of Sartre's childhood the story of his discovery of reading and writing. To be able to say something about those Words other than what Sartre has said himself, we must have in mind a precise goal, a clear question which we must not lose sight of. Ours is: how does Sartre explain to himself his entry into the world of written signs, into what we will call, with Lacan, the (...) symbolic? And following from that, what might Sartre's theory of the symbolic be? How, without full knowledge of it, does this account of a childhood (and a masterful one it is) connect together reading, writing and psychic structure? By his psychological explanations Sartre in fact helps us to imagine this complex adventure which "the entry into reading" represents for the human subject. We have here chosen the particular moment of the child's discovery of his grandfather's Library. We shall see how this scene sheds light on the fantasm which structures the subject's choice of writing as his symptom. We should add that in our own research we are interested not so much in a psychoanalysis of Sartre, as in an attentive reading of what the author of The Words and Nausea tells us indirectly about the function of the symbolic in the life of a human subject. Sartre helps us to understand Lacan. (shrink)

This article analyses the short performances of Drag Sethlas at the yearly Gran Canaria Drag Queen Contest in Spain (2017–20) from the perspective of religious studies and gender studies, following on from an earlier article in which this case was explored in light of the severe blasphemy accusations (by local and national bishops and lay organisations) against the 2017 show. These short performances consist of remarkable representations of Roman Catholic texts, saints, symbols and rituals acted out as prize-winning drag-queen shows (...) that were aired on national television. At the same time, these acts are situated, by reference to famous earlier controversial acts by the pop artists Madonna, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande, in a genealogy of provocations and blasphemy accusations that are currently made in North American and Western European countries. In exploring the forms of ritualisation (cf. Bell 1989) in the provocation that this type of popular artistic performance with strong religious connotations evokes, I show the presence of a double theatricality in Sethlas’s first and most controversial performance: on the one hand a ‘holy drama’ centred around a religious pattern of penance, repentance and redemption, and on the other hand a specific drag theatricality, with its parodies, mockery and daring erotic scenes. It is precisely the connection between both forms of theatricality, especially the representation of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, who play a large and special role in both forms of theatricality, that contributes most to the provocativeness of this scene. (shrink)

Focusing on discourses and practices of identity in an Italian organization in London, this article examines the relationship between the construction of the identity of places and the construction of terrains of belonging. Various forms of cultural practices that mark out spatial and identity boundaries for the London Italian population are discussed in relation to the deployment of gender and ethnicity. Advancing a corporeal approach to identity formation, it is argued that displays of the Italian presence in London operate through (...) the repetition of regulatory norms that produces the effect of materialization of cultural belonging through the ethnicizing and gendering of individual bodies. Gender and ethnicity are deeply embedded in one another and their entwinement is to be understood as the outcome of their construction along similar bodily lines. Also, the author shows that gender and ethnicity are mutually dependent on each other for their construction; imperatives of gender serve to stabilize a fluctuating and indeterminate ethnic culture, while ethnic conventions naturalize the different positions men and women occupy in social life. (shrink)

This paper forms part of a wider study examining the history and sociology of nursing education in England between 1860 and 1948. It argues that the question of whether nursing was an art, science and/or social science has been at die ‘heart’ of a wider debate on die occupational status and disciplinary identity of nursing. The view that nursing was essentially an art and a ‘calling’, was championed by Florence Nightingale. Ethel Bedford Fenwick and her allies insisted that nursing, like (...) other professions, was a ‘scientific’ and technical enterprise. Social scientists later came to challenge nursing's claim to professionalism by analysing nursing work first within die context of industrial psychology. But they also advocated a rapprochement between nursing, health services and social science research, a challenge which we are in nursing, still striving to meet This paper argues for a strong coalition of nursing with its former nineteenth century ally, social science, in die continuing struggle for change within nursing and health care policy. Rather than searching for some rarified and purified essence of nursing knowledge, it argues that nurses need to join forces with sociologists and economists in striving to shape die agenda for health services research and provide die evidential basis for health policy transformation more generally. (shrink)

Since the publication of Annette Baier’s agenda-setting article entitled ‘Trust and Antitrust’, trust has become an increasingly popular topic, not only in moral philosophy and epistemology but als...

This article comprises a lyrical exposition of the ‘in-betweenness’ that underlies pedagogical relations and musical practice. The latter comprises making, performing, teaching, and indeed listening to music, phenomena encapsulated in the term ‘musicking’, first coined by the musicologist Christopher Small in 1999. Improvisatory practice is inscribed into the very process of writing as a means of mainstreaming the power of connection; and troubling the notion of seeking as the hallmark of ‘poor pedagogy’ (Masschelein, Citation2010) or weak education (Ingold, Citation2018). Drawing (...) inter alia on a scintillating improvisational performance by the musician Bobby McFerrin, we argue that pedagogical relations, construed as the art of encounter, are about finding rather than seeking. Finding implies experiencing a sense of connection, ‘that feeling of landing in the present tense’, of being immersed in whatever occupies you, paying close attention to the details of experience’ (Tempest, Citation2020, p. 5). This is a far cry from education in a major key, the secure territory of understanding that is premised on codified knowledge that pre-empts attention or marginalises it altogether. We draw on examples from music education to explore the deleterious effects of power dynamics. We end with a rallying cry for education as a common chorus. (shrink)

In a certain sense, trust really cannot be created at all, because trust lies outside that which we can decide. But trust itself contains some creative element in the sense that trust allows our feeling for the new to gain a place in our experience of the world, including our experience of our own future and the future of others as promising. In that sense, there is an intrinsic element of generation or creation in trust. This circularity between trust and (...) creation points to a virtuous circle of dependency or interdependency between people that communicate. In order to describe this connection between maintaining an open mind towards the new and trust, trust is seen as threefold. It is an attitude of trust in oneself or self-confidence; it is trust in the people one knows and shares experiences with; and it is a more generalized trust understood as an affinity for new things – that is, confidence in meeting whatever the unknown brings on. Looking at both Hannah Arendt's and K.E. Løgstrup’s phenomenological analyses of trust, we see trust as the experience that one is not a sovereign being, but a being that is given over – or as Løgstrup puts it: surrendered - a self-surrender that entails a risk of becoming self-exposure if one’s trust is not accepted. The core of trust is that a person leaves something up to the other, and if that something falls on barren soil, then it withers and dies. But when we are seen and heard, not only as individuals, but as persons with opinions and actions, we achieve visibility, not only to others, we also become visible to ourselves, and experience the world as real in a manner we cannot access by any other means. Løgstrup even speaks of “a trust in life itself, in the ongoing renewal of life” when we are met by others in dialogue. The strength in Løgstrup’s and Arendt’s phenomenological analyses of trust lies in their ability to point out the mutual interdependency between self-surrender and trust, and between appearance and community. Appearance is the ability to be counted on as a person who can stand behind one's actions, and a person who can give promises to others. Community, in this context, both connects and divides us as people with different opinions and perspectives of the same thing. This makes the promise the ultimate deed a person can perform with words, namely, creating relationships with other people in mutuality and respect. One’s ability and, especially, one’s will to be bound to something and to allow oneself to be bound by the promise – these constitute the creativity of trust. Making a promise both creates and confirms the common space within which people count on each other and trust each other. (shrink)

Fair competition law and public health law talk past each other when discussing pharmaceutical pricing and distribution. The former cannot agree on the relevant definition of consumer welfare. The latter does not fully comprehend the highly complex but inherently collective nature of pharmaceutical drug acquisition in the United States. This essay proposes to inject public health discourse into this debate to enrich it, focus it, and render it more accessible to those who must live by its outcome.

Since the 1970s, anthropologists have moved into diverse workplaces, including private and public settings, that raise new issues for anthropology as a discipline as well as for the discourse on science more generally. In the context of increasing globalization, the articulation of new ethical dilemmas around such issues as technology, indigenous knowledge and rights, government regulation and bioethics among others, can and do inform and shape scientific public policy. The authors in this volume work in traditional research centres and universities, (...) as well as in private and public sectors, and across specialties from medical anthropology and social medicine to archaeology and cyberspace. They explore the dimensions of an ethical anthropology in today's world, and the unique contribution of anthropology to the sciences. (shrink)