The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities, including among the healthcare workforce. Based on recent literature and drawing on our experiences of working in operating theatres and critical care in the UK’s National Health Service during the pandemic, we review the role of personal protective equipment and consider the ethical implications of its design, availability and provision at a time of unprecedented demand. Several important inequalities have emerged, driven by factors such as individuals purchasing their own personal protective equipment, inconsistencies between (...) guidelines issued by different agencies and organisations, and the standardised design and procurement of equipment required to protect a diverse healthcare workforce. These, we suggest, have resulted largely because of a lack of appropriate pandemic planning and coordination, as well as insufficient appreciation of the significance of equipment design for the healthcare setting. As with many aspects of the pandemic, personal protective equipment has created and revealed inequalities driven by economics, gender, ethnicity and professional influence, creating a division between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of personal protective equipment. As the healthcare workforce continues to cope with ongoing waves of COVID-19, and with the prospect of more pandemics in the future, it is vital that these inequalities are urgently addressed, both through academic analysis and practical action. All data relevant to the study are included in the article. (shrink)

There is a need for all industries, including healthcare, to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In anaesthetic practice, this not only requires a reduction in resource use and waste, but also a shift away from inhaled anaesthetic gases and towards alternatives with a lower carbon footprint. As inhalational anaesthesia produces greenhouse gas emissions at the point of use, achieving sustainable anaesthetic practice involves individual practitioner behaviour change. However, changing the practice of healthcare professionals raises potential ethical issues. The purpose of (...) this paper is twofold. First, we discuss what moral duties anaesthetic practitioners have when it comes to practices that impact the environment. We argue that behaviour change among practitioners to align with certain moral responsibilities must be supplemented with an account of institutional duties to support this. In other words, we argue that institutions and those in power have second-order responsibilities to ensure that practitioners can fulfil their first-order responsibilities to practice more sustainably. The second goal of the paper is to consider not just the nature of second-order responsibilities but the content. We assess four different ways that second-order responsibilities might be fulfilled within healthcare systems: removing certain anaesthetic agents, seeking consensus, education and methods from behavioural economics. We argue that, while each of these are a necessary part of the picture, some interventions like nudges have considerable advantages. (shrink)

People are motivated by shared social values that, when held with moral conviction, can serve as compelling mandates capable of facilitating support for ideological violence. The current study examined this dark side of morality by identifying specific cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with beliefs about the appropriateness of sociopolitical violence, and determining the extent to which the engagement of these mechanisms was predicted by moral convictions. Participants reported their moral convictions about a variety of sociopolitical issues prior to undergoing functional (...) MRI scanning. During scanning, they were asked to evaluate the appropriateness of violent protests that were ostensibly congruent or incongruent with their views about sociopolitical issues. Complementary univariate and multivariate analytical strategies comparing neural responses to congruent and incongruent violence identified neural mechanisms implicated in processing salience and in the encoding of subjective value. As predicted, neuro-hemodynamic response was modulated parametrically by individuals’ beliefs about the appropriateness of congruent relative to incongruent sociopolitical violence in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and by moral conviction in ventral striatum. Overall moral conviction was predicted by neural response to congruent relative to incongruent violence in amygdala. Together, these findings indicate that moral conviction about sociopolitical issues serves to increase their subjective value, overriding natural aversion to interpersonal harm. (shrink)

As humans, we want to live meaningfully, yet we are often driven by impulse. In Religion and the Meaning of Life, Williams investigates this paradox – one with profound implications. Delving into felt realities pertinent to meaning, such as boredom, trauma, suicide, denial of death, and indifference, Williams describes ways to acquire meaning and potential obstacles to its acquisition. This book is unique in its willingness to transcend a more secular stance and explore how one's belief in God may be (...) relevant to life's meaning. Religion and the Meaning of Life's interdisciplinary approach makes it useful to philosophers, religious studies scholars, psychologists, students, and general readers alike. The insights from this book have profound real-world applications – they can transform how readers search for meaning and, consequently, how readers see and exist in the world. (shrink)

The re-emergence of virtue ethics (henceforth VE) as both an academic theory and as an approach to applied ethics has contributed to the re-invigoration of ethical debate. It has encouraged reflective consideration of the nature of professionals' commitments to various values that constitute their personal and professional character, both collectively and individually. This paper argues that whilst there may be some value in the re-orientation of applied ethics towards questions of character, it has its limitations, including a tendency to be (...) reduced rather too easily to self-serving ends that ultimately favour dominant social groups. It should therefore be treated with caution by social professionals. (shrink)

Critics often suggest that Socrates’ portrait of the philosopher’s inspired madness in his second speech in Plato’s Phaedrus is incompatible with the other types of divine madness outlined in the same speech, namely poetic, prophetic, and purificatory madness. This incompatibility is frequently taken to show that Socrates’ characterisation of philosophers as mad is disingenuous or misleading in some way. While philosophical madness and the other types of divine madness are distinguished by the non-philosophical crowd’s different interpretations of them, I aim (...) to show that they are not, in fact, presented as incompatible. Socrates’ pair of speeches demonstrates that madness can be divided into harmful and beneficial kinds, and in Socrates’ key discussion of philosophical madness (249c4-e4), I argue that the crowd correctly recognises that the philosopher is mad on the basis of his eccentricity, but wrongly assumes that the philosopher’s madness is of the harmful type because it fails to realise that the philosopher is enthused. Socrates’ second speech provides information about human souls and gods which shows that philosophical madness belongs to the beneficial type and so falls under the heading of divine enthusiasm after all. Importantly, human souls and gods are shown in the speech to be roughly isomorphic. Both philosophical and other kinds of divine madness involve having something divine inside a human body (entheos): in the former a human soul has become godlike; in the latter a human soul has been displaced by a god. Because of this, I propose that philosophy is presented as a genuine form of divine madness alongside the other more conventional examples. (shrink)

Your perspective on life can be your power or your prison. It can serve your anxiety, your stress, and your depression, or it can support your peace, your courage, and your growth. Trent Shelton, one of the most groundbreaking and dynamic teachers of our time, wants to help you chart your path to a new perspective. Protect Your Peace offers tools to reshape your mindset and redefine the meaning you find in your life-tools that he knows can work for (...) you, because he has used them himself to transform his own life. In these pages, Trent outlines nine essential principles to help you: · Protect your energy from the things that drain it · Protect your mind from the things that distract you · Protect your soul from the things that don't fulfill you You'll learn simple strategies for setting clear boundaries, disconnecting from negativity, honing your vision and your focus, and bringing your life into alignment with your true power and purpose-with Trent as your straight-talking, profoundly inspiring guide who's with you every step of the way. Trent lets you know in no uncertain terms that there is a war on-a war for your worth. The toughest battle in it is the one you're fighting within yourself. And Protect Your Peace gives you a road map to victory. (shrink)

A fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and of the Royal Society, William Clifford (1845–79) made his reputation in applied mathematics, but his interests ranged far more widely, encompassing ethics, evolution, metaphysics and philosophy of mind. This posthumously collected two-volume work, first published in 1879, bears witness to the dexterity and eclecticism of this Victorian thinker, whose commitment to the most abstract principles of mathematics and the most concrete details of human experience resulted in vivid and often unexpected arguments. Volume (...) 2 shows Clifford's thorough engagement with scientific thought as a method for illuminating ethical and moral questions. Essays such as 'Body and Mind', 'On the Scientific Basis of Morals' and 'The Ethics of Belief' all variously demonstrate Clifford's core tenet: that beliefs - whether they guide human action or scientific enquiry - 'can never suffer from investigation'. (shrink)

Corruption has caused serious dysfunction in most of the public institutions in Zimbabwe. The effectiveness of public institutions on providing meaningful services today hinges upon the capacity of the Church and other social institutions to combat corruption. Regrettably, corruption has infected and affected both the Church and the secular institutions. This theoretical qualitative study explores the potential of the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (COCZ) in curbing corruption in Zimbabwe. It employs a combination of the Christological kenosis and Ubuntu or (...) Hunhu as its theoretical lenses. The article argues that the Church has great potential to tackle corruption. The potential of the COCZ manifests in its organisation and public engagement. The restorative nature of the COCZ Restoration Movement (RM) magnifies scripture, the gospel of Christ (Christological kenosis) as a tool of conviction and behaviour change in public spaces to combat corruption. These unique attributes of the COCZ provide the rationale for choosing it as a case study in this article. The data were collected through the engagement with literature largely from the Zimbabwean scholars on the subject and the COCZ documents. The findings were that the COCZ can only unlock its potential if it is committed to taking a self-introspection and reconfigure itself in order to take a robust anti-corruption stance.Contribution: The study poses questions about the potential of the Church’s voice, through the case of the COCZ, in the context of corruption in Zimbabwe. It pushes for the Church to reclaim its authentic status in order to root out corruption and have relevance in the Zimbabwean communities’ lived experiences. Religion has always claimed higher ground in ethical and moral issues, but there is scanty literature on the COCZ’s role in combating corruption in Zimbabwe. The study maintains that the Church has a consequential opportunity to either drive the agenda to end corruption or lose relevance due to perceived complicit attitudes towards the same. (shrink)

This book is an eye-opening account of transnational advocacy, not by environmental and rights groups, but by conservative activists. Mobilizing around diverse issues, these networks challenge progressive foes across borders and within institutions. In these globalized battles, opponents struggle as much to advance their own causes as to destroy their rivals. Deploying exclusionary strategies, negative tactics and dissuasive ideas, they aim both to make and unmake policy. In this work, Clifford Bob chronicles combat over homosexuality and gun control in (...) the UN, the Americas, Europe and elsewhere. He investigates the 'Baptist-burqa' network of conservative believers attacking gay rights, and the global gun coalition blasting efforts to control firearms. Bob draws critical conclusions about norms, activists and institutions, and his broad findings extend beyond the culture wars. They will change how campaigners fight, scholars study policy wars, and all of us think about global politics. (shrink)

In 2004, the agricultural economies of many rural communities in the United States were impacted by the cessation of a price-support and supply-control program for tobacco production. Tobacco was not only an important livelihood, but also was central to social and cultural life. Using a social–ecological systems lens and the adaptive cycle metaphor, we examine the reorganization of agriculture in communities that previously produced tobacco under the program. Specifically, we seek to understand how transitional policy that provided financial support to (...) tobacco farmers interacted with other social, cultural, physical and human capitals to condition system reorganization. We conducted semi-structured interviews with farmers, extension agents, and policy makers in Kentucky as well as examined trends in income and number of farmers before and after the transition as indicators of reorganization. We determined that the financial support was perceived as helpful in supporting the transition and that tobacco farmers reorganized their livelihoods primarily around existing, remnant assets and endogenous capacities. In addition, we determined that though the agricultural system may be reorganizing economically, it is not necessarily supportive of the same social bonds and values that co-existed with tobacco economy. Understanding agricultural economies as part of complex social–ecological systems that consist of interconnected values, identities, ecology and social ties is important for developing policies to support systems and communities through economic transitions. (shrink)

This marvelous volume takes the reader on a journey across the centuries as it explores eponymous physical laws—from Archimedes' Law of Buoyancy and Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion—whose ramifications have profoundly altered our everyday lives and our understanding of the universe.

Today's digital revolution is a worldwide phenomenon, with profound and often differential implications for communities around the world and their relationships to one another. This book presents a new, explicitly international theory of media ethics, incorporating non-Western perspectives and drawing deeply on both moral philosophy and the philosophy of technology. Clifford Christians develops an ethics grounded in three principles - truth, human dignity, and non-violence - and shows how these principles can be applied across a wide range of cases (...) and domains. The book is a guide for media professionals, scholars, and educators who are concerned with the global ramifications of new technologies and with creating a more just world. (shrink)

Since Oregon implemented its Death with Dignity Act, many additional states have followed suit demonstrating a growing understanding and acceptance of aid in dying processes. Traditionally, the patient has been the one to request and seek this option out. However, as Death with Dignity acts continue to expand, it will impact the role of physicians and bring up questions over whether physicians have the ethical obligation to facilitate a conversation about AID with patients during end of life discussions. Patients have (...) the right to make informed decisions about their health, which implies that physicians have an obligation to discuss with and inform patients of the options that will accomplish the patients’ goals of care. We will argue that physicians have an ethical obligation to inform certain patients about AID during end of life care discussions. We will also address what this obligation encompasses and explore guidelines of when and how these conversations should occur and proceed. Earlier guidelines, presented by various palliative care and ethics experts, for proceeding with such conversations have mostly agreed that the discussion of hospice and end of life care with patients should be initiated early and that the individual goals of a patient during the remaining duration of life should be thoroughly examined before discussion of appropriate options. In discussing AID, physicians should never recommend but inform patients about the basics so that they can make an informed decision. If patients express further interest in AID, the physician should open up the dialogue to address the reasoning behind this decision versus other possible treatments to ensure that patients clearly comprehend the process and implications of their decision. Ultimately, any end of life choice should be made by patients with the full capacity to express what they envision for the remaining duration of life and to comprehend the advantages and disadvantages of all the possible options. (shrink)

This book presents a clear and critical view of the orthodox logical empiricist tradition, pointing the way to significant developments for the understanding of science both as research and as culture.

In a lively, intelligent synthesis of math, mysticism, and science fiction, Clifford Pickover explains the eternal magic of numbers.

In this collection of essays, Clifford Geertz explores the nature of his anthropological work in relation to a broader public, serving as the foremost spokesperson of his generation of scholars, those who came of age after World War II. ...

Against the dominant trend in contemporary republicanism, which views Roman political theory as providing significant resources to contemporary emancipatory projects, this article reads the Roman legal and political theoretical tradition as revealing above all the capacity of Republican resources to be coopted in support of monarchic domination. It does so by tracing changes in doctrines of liberty, popular sovereignty, magistracy and majoritarianism from the period of the free Republic into the Principate and thence into the Justinianic codifications, as well as (...) their reception in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Italy. Along the way it urges a more nuanced view of the sources of the Republican tradition: an awareness both of when specific sources on Rome became available to late medieval and early modern thinkers and of the imperial origins of the major sources available before the sixteenth century. (shrink)

“Clinical ethics consultants” have been practicing in the United States for about 50 years. Most of the earliest consultants—the “pioneers”—were “outsiders” when they first appeared at patients' bedsides and in the clinic. However, if they were outsiders initially, they acclimated to the clinical setting and became “insiders” very quickly. Moreover, there was some tension between traditional academics and those doing applied ethics about whether there was sufficient “critical distance” for appropriate reflection about the complex medical ethics dilemmas of the day (...) if one were involved in the decision making. Again, the pioneers deflected concerns by identifying and instituting safeguards to assure professional objectivity in clinical ethics consultation services. One might suggest that in moving inside and establishing normative practices, the pioneer clinical ethics consultants anticipated adoption of their routines and professionalization of the field. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Abstract Most modern knowledge is not science. The physical sciences have successfully validated theories to infer they can be used universally to predict in previously unexperienced circumstances. According to the conventional conception of science such inferences are falsified by a single irregular outcome. And verification is by the scientific method which requires strict regularity of outcome and establishes cause and effect. -/- Medicine, medical research and many “soft” sciences are concerned with individual people in complex heterogeneous populations. These populations (...) cannot be tested to demonstrate strict regularity of outcome in every individual. Neither randomised controlled trials nor observational studies in medicine are science in the conventional conception. Establishing and using medical and other “soft science” theories cannot be scientific. It requires conceptually different means: requiring expert judgement applying all available evidence in the relevant available factual matrix. -/- The practice of medicine is observational. Prediction of outcomes for the individual requires professional expertise applying available medical knowledge and evidence. Expertise in any profession can only be acquired through experience. Prior cases are the fundament of knowledge and expertise in medicine. Case histories, studies and series can provide knowledge of extremely high reliability applicable to establishing reliable general theories and falsifying others. Their collation, study and analysis should be a priority in medicine. Their devaluation as evidence, the failure to apply their lessons, the devaluation of expert professional judgement and the attempt to emulate the scientific method are all historic errors in the theory and practice of modern medicine. (shrink)

Inspired by the person and writings of C.S. Lewis, this book examines pertinent and pressing issues in living the Christian faith today. Experts in their fields share their insights and conclusions.

Re-Vision addresses four issues that lie at the crux of the relationship between science and religion—the origin of the cosmos and creation in Genesis; evolutionary theory and God’s action in the world; genes and human freedom; and whether intelligent design is good science and/or good theology.

This essay examines the contemporary approaches to systems theory, the strengths and limitations of these approaches, and how communication researchers can apply them creatively. It points out that using system approaches requires communication scholars to study the mutual interaction of both information inputs and matter/energy inputs. Overloads of these inputs coupled with storage problems could engender positive feedback loops and move the system away from the linear region of stability toward the edge of chaos. It could then self-organize as a (...) more complex system in a new phase space of its trajectory. This complexity approach could be used to trace the trajectory of the global mass communication system or to conduct empirical research on all or any of the information-processing subsystems within the eight hierarchical levels of nested systems ranging from cell to supranational systems. Although systems thinking is writ large in the onto-cosmology of Eastern philosophies, its epistemological and methodological refinements did not occur until quantum physics challenged the ‘atomism’ of the dominant Newtonian-Cartesian model. (shrink)

This book develops a new naturalist theory of reason and scientific knowledge from a synthesis of philosophy and the new sciences of complex adaptive systems.

Information is the fourth core element of public health legal preparedness and of legal preparedness for public health emergencies specifically. Clearly, the creation, transmittal, and application of information are vital to all public health endeavors. The critical significance of information grows exponentially as the complexity and scale of public threats increase.Only a small body of organized information on public health law existed before the 21st century: a series of landmark books published beginning in 1926 by Tobey, Grad, and Wing ; (...) model public health laws published as early as 1907; systematic reviews of original research studies published in the 1990s; and a small but growing number of articles published in public health journals and law reviews.With the new century came new public health law programs and activities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in public health professional associations, and in numerous non-profit and academic organizations. (shrink)

Information is the fourth core element of public health legal preparedness and of legal preparedness for public health emergencies specifically. Clearly, the creation, transmittal, and application of information are vital to all public health endeavors. The critical significance of information grows exponentially as the complexity and scale of public threats increase.Only a small body of organized information on public health law existed before the 21st century: a series of landmark books published beginning in 1926 by Tobey, Grad, and Wing ; (...) model public health laws published as early as 1907; systematic reviews of original research studies published in the 1990s; and a small but growing number of articles published in public health journals and law reviews.With the new century came new public health law programs and activities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in public health professional associations, and in numerous non-profit and academic organizations. (shrink)