This paper proposes communities of practice (CoP) as a process to build moral resilience in healthcare settings. We introduce the starting point of moral distress that arises from ethical challenges when actions of the healthcare professional are constrained. We examine how situations such as the current COVID-19 pandemic can exponentially increase moral distress in healthcare professionals. Then, we explore how moral resilience can help cope with moral distress. We propose the term collective moral resilience to capture the shared capacity arising (...) from mutual engagement and dialogue in group settings, towards responding to individual moral distress and towards building an ethical practice environment. Finally, we look at CoPs in healthcare and explore how these group experiences can be used to build collective moral resilience. (shrink)

Drawing from extensive, eye-opening first-person accounts, No Refuge puts a spotlight on the millions of refugees worldwide who have to leave home but find nowhere to resettle. As political philosopher Serena Parekh argues, this is not just a problem for politicians. Citizens also have a moral duty to help resolve the global refugee crisis and to end the suffering and denial of human rights that refugee are forced to endure, often for years. While the media usually focus on the (...) challenges that Western states have with the arrival of large numbers of asylum seekers and refugees, the real problem is that millions are stuck in inhumane conditions in refugee camps and urban centers, with little chance of finding a more permanent solution. Grounded in powerful testimony from refugees and meticulous research on the conditions in which so many suffer worldwide, No Refuge shows why, as states but also as citizens, we cannot afford to wait any longer to end this crisis. (shrink)

Research into television's ethical value has mostly focused on scandal genres, such as Big Brother, Jersey Shore, and Jerry Springer. Only recently have researchers started to explore television's moral content with a broader focus. In this study we explore and describe the types of morality and moral content of a night of Dutch prime time television with an open and inductive approach through a qualitative content analysis. Our results revealed 13 types of morality and a basic differentiation between morals that (...) react on violations and transgressions, focusing on restricting behavior, and morals that are focused on ideals and values and stimulate social behavior. Lastly, we differentiated three moral meta-themes that permeate all genres, as well as six moral themes that arose only in specific genre-clusters. (shrink)

The first issue of Artificial Intelligence and Law journal was published in 1992. This paper offers some commentaries on papers drawn from the Journal’s third decade. They indicate a major shift within Artificial Intelligence, both generally and in AI and Law: away from symbolic techniques to those based on Machine Learning approaches, especially those based on Natural Language texts rather than feature sets. Eight papers are discussed: two concern the management and use of documents available on the World Wide Web, (...) and six apply machine learning techniques to a variety of legal applications. (shrink)

Contemporary egalitarian theories of justice constrain the demands of equality by responsibility, and do not view as unjust inequalities that are traceable to individuals' choices. This paper argues that, in order to make non-arbitrary determinate judgements of responsibility, any theory of justice needs a principle of stakes , that is, an account of what consequences choices should have. The paper also argues that the principles of stakes seemingly presupposed by egalitarians are implausible, and that adopting alternative principles of stakes amounts (...) to fleshing out the demands of responsibility rather than imposing limits on them. (shrink)

Summary The famous essay by Christian von Ehrenfels, Über Gestaltqualitäten (1890), opens up, as is well-known, an important seam not only in the psychology of perception but also of aesthetics, of the psychology and philosophy of music, art and language. Here, in fact, the form understood as ‘Gestalt’ is something concretely audible and visible and not simply a formal abstraction. It is about a pioneering programme rich in ideas and original connections. The author does not mean simply to define the (...) meaning of the concept of Gestalt, but he also sets out a fertile variety of extraordinary applications. In the first place – following a suggestion of Ernst Mach’s – he indicates an application in the field of music, in particular in the exemplary case of melody. In this sense the melody, as a temporal Gestalt, is a more fitting illustration of Gestalt than a spatial Gestalt (e.g. of a geometric figure). But in other cases, as for instance in the case of perception of movement, both temporal and spatial Gestalts are admitted. And a characteristic example is provided by dance. In this article, we shall investigate the comparison between sound movement and visual–gestural movement, and we shall also be discussing the matter by having recourse to the experience of professional dancers. (shrink)

Psychiatric research is advancing rapidly, with studies revealing new investigative tools and technologies that are aimed at improving the treatment and care of patients with psychiatric disorders. However, the ethical framework in which such research is conducted is not as well developed as we might expect. In this paper we argue that more thought needs to be given to the principles that underpin research in psychiatry and to the problems associated with putting those principles into practice. In particular, we comment (...) on some of the difficulties posed by the twin imperatives of ensuring that we respect the autonomy and interests of the research subject and, at the same time, enable potentially beneficial psychiatric research to flourish. We do not purport to offer a blueprint for the future; we do, however, seek to advance the debate by identifying some of the key questions to which better answers are required. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present the activities and research methodologies of CTL, a laboratory of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, founded and directed by Lina Bolzoni. CTL’s objective is to investigate the complex structure of relationships between the linguistic and the figurative code in literary tradition, paying particular attention to the XVth, XVIth and XVIIth centuries and using information technologies both as an auxiliary research tool and as a medium for scientific dissemination. Here I shall be (...) discussing the Centre’s digitalization projects, and in particular the project concerned with the Orlando Furioso and its remediation into images. This project, active since 2007, is, I believe, particularly representative of the progressive implementation within CTL of both traditional and computer-related methodologies in the planning of digital collections dedicated to words and images. (shrink)

Some studies highlighted that patients with narcolepsy type-1 experience high lucid dream frequency, and this phenomenon has been associated with a creative personality. Starting from the well-known “pandemic effect” on sleep and dreaming, we presented a picture of dream activity in pharmacologically treated NT1 patients during the Italian lockdown. Forty-three NT1 patients completed a web-survey during Spring 2021 and were compared with 86 matched-controls. Statistical comparisons revealed that: NT1 patients showed greater sleepiness than controls; controls showed higher sleep disturbances than (...) NT1 patients, and this result disappeared when the medication effect in NT1 was controlled; NT1 patients reported higher lucid dream frequency than controls. Focusing on dreaming in NT1 patients, we found that nightmare frequency was correlated with female gender, longer sleep duration, higher intrasleep wakefulness; dream recall, nightmare and lucid dream frequency were positively correlated with sleepiness. Comparisons between low and high NT1 lucid dreamers showed that patients more frequently experiencing lucid dreams reported a greater influence of dreaming during wakefulness, especially concerning problem-solving and creativity. Overall, our results are consistent with previous studies on pandemic dreaming carried out on healthy subjects. Moreover, we confirmed a link between lucidity and creativity in NT1 patients. Considering the small sample size and the cross-sectional design, our findings cannot provide a causal relationship between lucid dreams and the COVID-19 lockdown. Nevertheless, they represent a first contribution to address future studies on this issue, suggesting that some stable characteristics could interact with changes provoked by the pandemic. (shrink)

Are inequalities of income created by the free market just? In this book Serena Olsaretti examines two main arguments that justify those inequalities: the first claims that they are just because they are deserved, and the second claims that they are just because they are what free individuals are entitled to. Both these arguments purport to show, in different ways, that giving responsible individuals their due requires that free market inequalities in incomes be allowed. Olsaretti argues, however, that neither (...) argument is successful, and shows that when we examine closely the principle of desert and the notions of liberty and choice invoked by defenders of the free market, it appears that a conception of justice that would accommodate these notions, far from supporting free market inequalities, calls for their elimination. Her book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in political philosophy, political theory and normative economics. (shrink)

Argumentation is a mechanism to support different forms of reasoning such as decision making and persuasion and always cast under the light of critical thinking. In the latest years, several comput...

Does justice require that individuals get what they deserve? Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers examining the relation between desert and justice; they also illuminate the nature of distributive justice, and the relationship between desert and other values, such as equality and responsibility.

Resumen¿Podemos afirmar que una muerte indolora supone un daño para el individuo que muere? En este artículo se analiza el criterio más utilizado para responder afirmativamente a la pregunta. Un criterio que insiste en la necesidad de tener un interés por seguir viviendo. En el artículo pregunto si la autoconciencia requerida para la presencia del citado interés puede ser realmente condición necesaria en un análisis adecuado del daño de la muerte.Palabras claveMuerte, animales no humanos, autoconciencia,análisis privacionistaAbstractCan we say that a (...) painless death harms the individual who dies? This paper examines the criterion more frequently used to respond affirmatively to this question. It’s an approach that emphasizesthe need to have an interest in staying alive. Here I ask if the self-awarenessrequired for the presence of such interest may actually be a necessary condition in a proper analysis of the harm of death.KeywordsDeath, non human animals, self-awareness, deprivationist analys. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPsychiatric research is advancing rapidly, with studies revealing new investigative tools and technologies that are aimed at improving the treatment and care of patients with psychiatric disorders. However, the ethical framework in which such research is conducted is not as well developed as we might expect. In this paper we argue that more thought needs to be given to the principles that underpin research in psychiatry and to the problems associated with putting those principles into practice. In particular, we comment (...) on some of the difficulties posed by the twin imperatives of ensuring that we respect the autonomy and interests of the research subject and, at the same time, enable potentially beneficial psychiatric research to flourish. We do not purport to offer a blueprint for the future; we do, however, seek to advance the debate by identifying some of the key questions to which better answers are required. (shrink)

Agostino d’Ippona è stato un punto di riferimento costante nella produzione filosofica arendtiana, a partire dalla dissertazione di dottorato del 1928, intitolata Il concetto d’amore in Agostino, fino alle ultime pagine scritte prima di morire, e dedicate alla trattazione della volontà. Il segno più evidente di questo rapporto è costituito da una frase del De civitate Dei, « initium ut esset creatus est homo, ante quem nullus fuit» sulla quale Hannah Arendt fonda il proprio concetto di libertà, intesa come la (...) capacità dell’uomo di “essere” un nuovo inizio. Attraverso questo concetto H. Arendt tenta di restituire all’uomo il senso della propria irriducibile unicità, contro i tentativi del potere di rendere ogni individuo “superfluo”. A monte dell’interesse per Agostino vi sono, però, anche ragioni di carattere biografico, se è vero che la donna conobbe Agostino attraverso la mediazione, umana e intellettuale, del suo maestro Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that we should not frame the debate over whether or not we have duties to help refugees in terms of duties of rescue. This way of framing the issue, where Western states are depicted as rescuing refugees from harms unconnected to them, does not adequately represent the reality experienced by refugees in the 21 st century. I suggest that we need a framework that includes the secondary harms experienced by refugees as they try to seek (...) refuge in camps, urban spaces and via asylum. These secondary harms constitute serious violations of human rights and prevent refugees from accessing the minimum conditions of human dignity. As a result, the rescue metaphor is inappropriate and, perhaps more importantly, prevents us from having a proper debate about the obligations of states in general, and Western states in particular, to refugees. (shrink)

_Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity_ explores the theme of human rights in the work of Hannah Arendt. Parekh argues that Arendt's contribution to this debate has been largely ignored because she does not speak in the same terms as contemporary theoreticians of human rights. Beginning by examining Arendt’s critique of human rights, and the concept of "a right to have rights" with which she contrasts the traditional understanding of human rights, Parekh goes on to analyze some of the (...) tensions and paradoxes within the modern conception of human rights that Arendt brings to light, arguing that Arendt’s perspective must be understood as phenomenological and grounded in a notion of intersubjectivity that she develops in her readings of Kant and Socrates. (shrink)

The possible contribution that the figure of the veterinarian provides to a progressive clarification of the knowledge inherent in the animal subject can be highlighted by an epistemological reflection which throws into relief the distinctive modes of approach and the most suitable curative procedures. At the same time a comparison between such procedures and the methods developed by different contemporary philosophical-scientific sectors, including those of the human sciences, could prove instructive in reporting the junctions and obligatory crossings of common problems.

This article explores strategies of cultural representation in the production of Gurinder Chadha, a British director of Sikh origin. Chadha’s work is located in what Marie Louise Pratt defines as ‘contact zones’, negotiating between US, European and Indian audiences. The result is a directing style that puts together ‘East’ and ‘West’, Bollywood and Hollywood, in an in-between space that has been radically reconfigured through hybridization. This happens in particular through her use of music and soundtrack, from the documentary I’m British (...) but..., up to the recent Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice. Here, many and diverse musical languages are put together through the representational strategies of parody and kitsch, deconstructing the idea of cultural identity in the very gesture that creates it. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of applying the theory of Documentality to the photograph, examining it in the context of the photo archive. To this end, I maintain that a photograph’s document value is not determined by its nature, but by its relationship to inscription practices. And I regard the space of the archive as a paradigmatic device that produces cognitive strategies on the word pairing “photograph/photographs” inextricably linked to the inscriptions connected with it, in the form of “archiwritings” and (...) registrations, in essence: with the words of the archive itself. (shrink)

The pharmaceutical industry plays an increasingly dominant role in healthcare, raising concerns about “conflicts of interest” on the part of the medical professionals who interact with the industry. However, there is considerable disagreement over the extent to which COI is a problem and how it should be managed. Participants in debates about COI have become entrenched in their views, which is both unproductive and deeply confusing for the majority of medical professionals trying to work in an increasingly commercialized environment. We (...) used a modified meta-narrative review method to analyse debates about COI in the academic and grey literature. We found two Discourse Models: The Critical Discourse Model sees COI in health and biomedicine as a major problem that both can and should be addressed, while the Defensive Discourse Model argues that current efforts to control COIs are at best unnecessary and at worst harmful. Each model is underpinned by profoundly differing views about how society should be organized—in particular whether market forces should be encouraged or curtailed—and how the dangers associated with market forces should be managed. In order to make any headway, academics and policymakers must recognize that these debates are underpinned by profoundly differing worldviews. (shrink)

Distributive justice has come to the fore in political philosophy: how should we arrange our social and economic institutions so as to distribute benefits and burdens fairly? Thirty-two leading figures from philosophy and political theory present specially written critical assessments of the key issues in this flourishing area of research.

This book is a philosophical analysis of the ethical treatment of refugees and stateless people, a group of people who, though extremely important politically, have been greatly under theorized philosophically. The limited philosophical discussion of refugees by philosophers focuses narrowly on the question of whether or not we, as members of Western states, have moral obligations to admit refugees into our countries. This book reframes this debate and shows why it is important to think ethically about people who will never (...) be resettled and who live for prolonged periods outside of all political communities. Parekh shows why philosophers ought to be concerned with ethical norms that will help stateless people mitigate the harms of statelessness even while they remain formally excluded from states. (shrink)

This paper is part of a book symposium on Fred Feldman's, *Pleasure and the Good Life*. I argue that Feldman’s defence of hedonism, although successful on its own terms, is of less significance than it may seem at first, for two main reasons. First, Feldman’s defence of the claim that attitudinal pleasures are the chief good is either implausible or crucially incomplete. Second, Feldman’s claim that hedonists can overcome the objections levelled against them while remaining pure hedonists is only partially (...) true. (shrink)

Parental consent poses challenges to needed research with adolescents who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and/or questioning (LGBTQ+) and are at heightened risk for negative health outcomes. Obtaining parental consent in studies focused on LGBTQ+ issues can prove arduous if adolescents have not yet disclosed their identity or have unsupportive guardians. Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) may be hesitant to grant waivers of parental consent, yet research suggests that studies requiring parental consent deter the participation of adolescents who identify (...) as LGBTQ+. In this article, ethical considerations regarding waivers of parental consent in the context of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) general ethical principles are reviewed and recommendations for psychological researchers seeking waivers of parental consent are offered. A vignette is used to demonstrate a question-and-answer guide to help determine if a waiver of parental consent is ethically justified. (shrink)

Noisefest! is an interactive, multisensory experience centered around a small Maine town and rooted in the sounds and noise of its streets. Comprising a Virtual Reality tour, soundwalks and remixes, a 2D laser cut geographical map with Arduino controllers, and a Futuristic noise intoner, one of the objectives of this collaborative, transdisciplinary, and theory-based project is to create concrete opportunities for students to participate in the “real” world and engage with the materiality of noise and its manifestations by interacting with (...) the soundscape through novel, interactive, and multisensory practices. Noisefest! is also an example of how one can creatively and artistically extend the reach of the digital humanities beyond the borders of academia and into the public realm. (shrink)

Xavier Le Roy’s performance Self-Unfinished is emblematic of how contemporary dance’s resistance to the submission of the body to a codified ideal body model manifests itself through the staging of bodies “beyond codes”, i.e., bodies that take surprising, sometimes even apparently “monstrous” shapes. The purpose of this article is to investigate the “monstrosity” of Self-Unfinished and to sketch out an analysis of it following Hermann Schmitz's theory of the Leib and Tonino Griffero’s account on atmospheres.