In this paper I critically evaluate Ronald Dworkin's attempt in Life's Dominion to understand sacred value as a form of intrinsic value which is grounded in investment. I argue that there are two problems with Dworkin's conception of intrinsic value. First, it does not allow him to distinguish, as he must, between incremental and sacred values. Secondly, sacred value qua intrinsic value is not the kind of value which can be grounded in investment. I argue that both of these problems (...) are an implication of a realist conception of intrinsic value. Nevertheless, investment does seem to play a role in our judgements about intrinsic value and in light of this I aim to develop an alternative account of intrinsic value whichcan make sense of this. (shrink)

What is one who takes normativity seriously to do if normativity can neither be discovered lurking out there in the world independently of us nor can it be sufficiently grasped from a merely explanatory perspective? One option is to accept that the normative challenge cannot be met and to retreat to some form of moral skepticism. Another possibility has recently been proposed by Christine Korsgaard in The Sources of Normativity where she aims to develop an account of normativity which is (...) grounded in autonomy. Furthermore, she argues that on her account reasons are "essentially public" and that this captures how it is that we can obligate one another. In this paper I argue that there is a serious tension between her account of normativity and the publicity of reasons-namely, that if reasons are essentially public, then it is not possible for individuals to legislate laws for themselves. However, I then argue that if we revise her conception of normativity such that it is understood to involve collective rather than individual legislation that it may then be possible to account for interpersonal reasons. (shrink)

In popular image, Jesus as friend is sentimentalized, but not so in the Fourth Gospel. Jesus gave his life in love for others and always spoke and acted boldly—marks of friendship in the cultural world of the New Testament.

The cyclical nature of the church's timekeeping means that the sacred story begins anew at Advent, inviting the church to place the coming of the Christ child in a cosmic context in which even time is redefined by God's anticipated in-breaking into the world. Advent is the season of new beginnings and new hopes in its anticipation of the dawning of God's new age.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Martin B. Peterson argues that the social experiment analysis improperly shifts our focus onto the rhetorical dimension of debates over technology, which is ‘clearly irrelevant’ to the ‘traditional...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments:The Influence of St. Ambrose on the tertia pars of St. Thomas's Summa theologiaeDamian Day O.P.IntroductionThe recent increased interest in St. Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church has produced a number of excellent studies of the Angelic Doctor's understanding of the authority of the Fathers and his use of them.1 In this article, I hope to contribute to the ongoing (...) study of Aquinas and the Fathers by examining how Thomas employs St. Ambrose in the tertia pars of his Summa theologiae [ST]. Thomas's use of Ambrose has received little detailed [End Page 103] attention. One of Leo Elders's last contributions to the study of Aquinas and the Fathers provided an overview of Ambrose's presence in Thomas's writings.2 I hope to expand upon Elders's work of cataloging and describing Thomas's numerous citations of Ambrose—Thomas names Ambrose over eleven hundred times in his writings3—by making a particular argument about Thomas's Christological and sacramental use of Ambrose. While Elders gives an excellent summary of where Ambrose appears in Thomas's corpus, he does not connect Thomas's use of Ambrose in his treatises on Christ and the Eucharist. I argue that Thomas's citations of Ambrose in the tertia pars help him develop an understanding of the Incarnation that supports his sacramental realism, especially emphasizing contact with Christ in the Eucharist.4Much recent reflection on the Eucharist has sought to deemphasize the substantial presence of Christ and emphasize his presence in other ways. Michael C. McGuckian, for example, argues that the Western emphasis on Christ's presence in the Blessed Sacrament has damaged the understanding of participation in the heavenly liturgy and obscured other ways in which Christ is present, such as in the bishop presiding and the proclamation of the word. He claims that "those other presences surpass the presence in the elements in their personal quality, their dynamic force and their effect on our [End Page 104] spirits and are not to be undervalued."5 Looking at Thomas and Ambrose, we will see that Christ's substantial presence in the Eucharist is preeminently personal, dynamic, and efficacious for our spirits. Colman O'Neill's masterful work of sacramental realism, Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, provides an entrée into such a study. The title derives from Ambrose. In his work A Defense of the Prophet David to Theodosius Augustus, Ambrose reflects on Psalm 51. Suddenly, in the middle of confessing his sins, David foresees the cleansing sacrament of baptism. In prophetic wonder, he cries out, "face-to-face you have shown yourself to me, Christ; I have discovered you in your sacraments."6 Even prior to their institution, David prophetically glimpses what the sacraments of the Old Law prefigure. In this vision, David sees "no longer in shadow, nor in figure, nor in type," but meets Christ in his sacraments.7 For Ambrose, the sacraments are real encounters with Christ. As O'Neill puts it, "Christ, who was worshipped from afar, comes near and touches the believer; and at his touch power goes out from him."8 For [End Page 105] Thomas, too, one meets Christ in the sacraments.9 While all the sacraments apply the merits of his Passion,10 the Eucharist is the locus par excellence for meeting Christ, since the whole Christ is there contained.11 The encounter is both personal and powerful.While the language of meeting or encountering Christ in the sacraments may seem to echo modern phenomenological philosophy, Thomas grounds the encounter in a realism of the Incarnation.12 His treatment of the encounter with Christ in the sacraments flows from his treatment of the Incarnation.13 Guy-Thomas Bedouelle summed up O'Neill's approach, which reflects Thomas's, as simply stressing, again and again, "that sacramental realism implies that the Church draws its life from the dynamism of the Incarnation itself."14 I argue that Thomas, in drawing his sacramental realism from the Incarnation, employs Ambrose as a key authority. First, I examine Thomas's knowledge and use of Ambrose's works. Second, I... (shrink)

Abductive reasoning is central to reconstructing the past in the geosciences. This paper outlines the nature of the abductive method and restates it in Bayesian terms. Evidence plays a key role in this working method and, in particular, traces of the past are important in this explanatory framework. Traces, whether singularly or as groups, are interpreted within the context of the event for which they have evidential claims. Traces are not considered as independent entities but rather as inter-related pieces of (...) information concerning the likelihood of specific events. Exemplification of the use of such traces is provided by dissecting an example of their use in the environmental reconstruction of mountain climate. (shrink)

While ethics and evidence‐based medicine are often viewed as separate domains of inquiry and practice, what we know influences what we can ethically justify doing, and what we see as our moral obligations shapes the way we interpret evidence. The boundaries between the moral and epistemic spheres become particularly blurred when the health of people is at stake and even more so when no “officially” recommended medical intervention is available to help a patient in need. The treatment of major hemorrhages (...) using recombinant factor VIIa (rFVIIa), which was originally approved under orphan drug legislation to treat hemophilia, is a case in point.Following reports in the late 1990s that rFVIIa was success­fully used to stop bleeding in gunshot trauma, there was much excitement about its potential to help patients with uncontrolled bleeding in other clinical settings, leading to wide‐spread off‐label use of the drug. In recent years, new evidence has raised questions about the off‐label use of rFVIIa for severe bleeding. Nonetheless, while some clini­cians are now adamantly opposed to prescribing rFVIIa for massive bleed­ing, many remain determined to continue the practice. This raises the question: why do clinicians have such variable responses to the same body of evidence?We analyzed the debate around off‐label use of rFVIIa and character­ized its main conceptual features and tensions. We did not seek to provide a normative analysis as to whether the evidence supports the case for off‐label prescribing, nor did we try to provide a historical analysis of how attitudes and clinical practice have changed. Rather, we sought to make visible the moral and epistemic values underpinning stakeholders’ opinions and practices. On the basis of our analysis, which is described in this ar­ticle, we suggest that debates such as those surrounding rFVIIa will not be resolved simply by conducting more studies and that, therefore, there is also a need for conceptual and pro­cedural frameworks that more sys­tematically incorporate values into clinical policy‐making. (shrink)

William James’ celebrated lecture on “The Will to Believe” has kindled spirited controversy since the day it was delivered. In this lively reappraisal of that controversy, Father O’Connell contributes some fresh contentions: that James’ argument should be viewed against his indebtedness to Pascal and Renouvier; that it works primarily to validate our “over-beliefs” ; and most surprising perhaps, that James envisages our “passional nature” as intervening, not after, but before and throughout, our intellectual weighing of the evidence for belief.

'Two things', wrote Kant, 'fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above and the moral law within'. Many would argue that since Kant's day, the study of the starry heavens has advanced while ethics has stagnated, and in particular that Kant's ethics offers an empty formalism that tells us nothing about how we should live. In Acting on Principle Onora O'Neill shows that Kantian ethics has practical as well as philosophical importance. First published (...) in 1975, the book is regarded as a classic account and defence of the Kantian ethical position. It addresses Kant's account of reasoning about action, in particular his controversial claim that the Categorical Imperative guides action and is basic to ethics and justice. This second edition offers a substantial new introduction and updated bibliography, and will be valuable for a wide readership in Kant studies and those studying ethics. (shrink)

O fato é que não são comuns as reflexões acerca da relação entre a filosofia de Kant e a de Gadamer. Além disso, o posicionamento de Gadamer em relação ao racionalismo bem como observações de comentadores, compõem uma imagem que o qualifica como crítico contundente da filosofia kantiana. Porém, um olhar mais cuidadoso, nos mostra que Gadamer foi um intérprete de Kant que incorpora em seu projeto temas de ordem estética e ética. Basta um olhar sobre sua análise e as (...) remissões à Crítica do Juízo para nos revelar que ela é uma chave fundamental da sua hermenêutica filosófica. Dito isso, objetivamos aqui explicitar, compreender e propor uma reflexão acerca da leitura estético-moral que Gadamer realizou sobre um aspecto da filosofia de Kant. Faremos isso no intuito de avançarmos nos estudos da relação Kant-Gadamer de modo a precisar a própria natureza constitutiva daquilo que Gadamer veio a designar como hermenêutica filosófica. Para levarmos a bom termo nosso propósito, articularemos nossa reflexão a partir de uma análise e reconstrução da leitura gadameriana da terceira Crítica seguida de considerações e implicações sobre o significado desta leitura para a constituição da hermenêutica filosófica. (shrink)

Aim To ascertain the quantity and nature of gifts and items provided by the pharmaceutical industry in Australia to medical specialists and to consider whether these are appropriate in terms of justifiable ethical standards, empirical research and views expressed in the literature.

'Two things', wrote Kant, 'fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above and the moral law within'. Many would argue that since Kant's day, the study of the starry heavens has advanced while ethics has stagnated, and in particular that Kant's ethics offers an empty formalism that tells us nothing about how we should live. In Acting on Principle Onora O'Neill shows that Kantian ethics has practical as well as philosophical importance. First published (...) in 1975, the book is regarded as a classic account and defence of the Kantian ethical position. It addresses Kant's account of reasoning about action, in particular his controversial claim that the Categorical Imperative guides action and is basic to ethics and justice. This second edition offers a substantial new introduction and updated bibliography, and will be valuable for a wide readership in Kant studies and those studying ethics. (shrink)

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

Today, I will discuss aspects of my project on the Spirit of Information. I will present part of a chapter of a new book that I am working on documentation and expression, where I discuss information as an attempt to break away from documentation during modernity and today. AARON SWARTZ E O ESPÍRITO DA INFORMAÇÃOResumo Hoje vou discutir aspectos do meu projeto sobre "O espírito da informação". Irei apresentar parte do capítulo de um novo livro em que estou trabalhando sobre (...) documentação e expressão, onde discuto a informação como uma tentativa de romper com a documentação durante a modernidade e hoje. (shrink)

This article was delivered as a public lecture at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, March 24, 2015. It discusses normative information and library ethics and then formal and critical information and library ethics, the latter being the preconditions to the existence of information access and user’s choices. Information professionals have strong responsibilities in creating the possibilities for information, and therefore, for truth and rights to truth, by their choices in constructing and making available or not information. Professional formal (...) and critical ethics are, thus, preconditions to information access and choices by users. ÉTICA INFORMACIONAL: AS PERSPECTIVAS NORMATIVA E CRÍTICA ResumoEste artigo foi apresentado como conferência pública na Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, em 24 de março de 2015. Discute regras referentes à informação e a ética biblioteconômica e, daí, critérios formais e críticos para a informação e a ética biblioteconômica, a última como precondição para existência do acesso à informação e escolha dos usuários. Os profissionais da informação têm grande responsabilidades na criação de possibilidades para informação e, daí, à verdade e ao direito à verdade, a partir de suas escolhas na construção e no fazer acessível ou não a informação. Critérios formais e ética crítica são, então, precondições para o acesso e escolha de informações pelos usuários. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The paper is aimed at identifying the ways of scientist’s influence on the development of modern society as compared to those of intellectuals. _Theoretical basis._ The socio-anthropological approach to the role of scientists in post-industrial society shows the leading role of people of science as a social group in present-day society. However, philosophical axiology reveals that scientists in today’s society do not have the appropriate social status: neither in state governance nor in the sphere of forming public opinion. The (...) classical doctrine concerning intellectuals has suffered a crisis in recent decades, which is due to the growing gap between the group of intellectuals recognized by society and the sphere of science. A new theoretical approach to determining the role of present-day research scientists as intellectuals is necessary. _Originality._ Successful development of modern society in conditions of growing social turbulence necessitates the access of research scientists to the sphere of public communication. This is required both by the needs of science advancement itself – to receive its adequate funding and win wide public recognition, and by society’s needs – as it is scientists who can provide reliable diagnostics of social problems and formulate well-grounded programs for overcoming them. _Conclusions._ For overcoming social barriers and getting access to public space, scientists themselves have to recognize themselves as a destitute social group – those who are unfairly deprived of making principal decisions in today’s society. For that, scientists should become modern intellectuals. Unlike media intellectuals, scientists are to interact not with social masses but, first and foremost, with public elites. The scientist has to gain his/her independent status by achieving the recognition of his/her own ideas among social elites rather than by winning wide personal popularity. Hence, scientists must aim at obtaining the status of the elite for elites – this would reveal in scientists the deepest potential of a modern man. (shrink)

At Whitsuntide, 1920, some five years before his death at the age of sixty-four, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Austrian philosopher and mystic, delivered three lectures in Dornach, Switzerland, on the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. In these lectures, now published in The Redemption of Thinking, he set himself to prove that his “Spiritual Science” was really a development of the teaching of Aquinas. The arguments on which he based this conclusion are: first, a very personal interpretation of the relation of 13th century (...) Thomism to the thought of preceding and subsequent centuries; second, the backing of a Cistercian professor of theology at Vienna University who told Dr. Steiner, after a lecture on Goethe, that “The germ of this address which you have given us to-day is to be found in Thomas Aquinas”; and third, one reference to the Summa Theologica, 1, q.2, art. 3, and one quotation from Aquinas—“Everything in the human body, even down to the vegetative activities, is occasioned and directed by soul-forces and must be understood in that light”. Even apart from this rather weak backing, it is easy to see that “Spiritual Science” as expounded by Dr. Steiner is certainly not “Thomism in its twentieth century form”. Aquinas would never accept what is implied in such statements as these: “When we penetrate beneath the surface of this material world, we discover that it is in fact a spiritual world, and that beyond the veil of nature the ultimate realities are not material atoms but spiritual beings” ; or, “I should never find the bridge to the real world if I did not bring the idea-world, which I have separated off in myself, once more into unity with that which, without the ideaworld, is no reality at all” ; or, “We must overcome dogmatism in empirical science to-day just as, on the other hand, we must overcome dogmatism in revealed religion”. (shrink)

In the article, the problem of formation of innovation potential of human capital as a fundamental condition for development of innovative-oriented economy in the present-day Russia is considered. It is shown that the conception of human capital as an economic factor of social production, which is ingrained in contemporary social science, does not take into account the dynamics and strategy of human capital development that are conditioned by its socio-anthropological basis and are the condition for the formation of its innovative (...) potential. The authors substantiates the proposition that the innovative potential of human capital should be deliberately formed by the administrative and managerial subjects of the society on the basis of developing the creative abilities and strengths of employees of business and economic spheres of social production. Implementation of a complex of social technologies is proposed to ensure the formation of innovative activity of producers in such spheres of social production as administrational, cultural, and educational. It is substantiated that the design and implementation of these technologies should be carried out on the basis of a complex methodology that integrates the tools of social philosophy, sociology and socio-philosophical anthropology. The application of the principles of an integrated methodology in the process of realizing administrational, cultural, and educational social technologies is necessary because it provides the dialectic connection of the objective and subjective conditions of the process of formation of the innovative potential of human capital on macro, micro, and meso-levels of society. It also gives an opportunity to include in the structure of human capital formation a broad set of personal qualities of workers, their ideological attitudes, and value orientations that should be accumulated in the system of innovative potential of labor motivation of employees constituting the human capital of the production organization. It is proved that the set of knowledge, skills, and social experience acquired by social actors in the process of realizing administrational, cultural, and educational social technologies in production organizations creates the actors’ need for self-actualization and development of their creative potential. (shrink)

AT Historia Animalium 561b27, during the course of his account of chick embryology, Aristotle notes : . D'Arcy Thompson translated this passage as follows: About the twentieth day, if you open the egg and touch the chick, it moves inside and chirps, and it is already coming to be covered in down when, after the twentieth day is past, the chick begins to break the shell.

The Second Vatican Council of the Universal Church of Christ, under the slogan “Ajornamento”, called on Christians to take a fresh look at non-Christian religions, as well as those who were preparing the coming of Christ on their earth. “From ancient times and to this day, there is a certain sense of this mysterious power among different nations, which works in the phenomena of nature and in the events of human life, moreover, and sometimes the recognition of the Supreme Godhead, (...) and even of the Father. This knowledge and feeling pervades the deep religious sentiment of their lives.... The Catholic Church does not reject anything that is true and holy in these religions. With sincere reverence she looks at these ways of life and actions, at these commandments and doctrines, although in many things they are different from what she acknowledges and preaches, not infrequently, however, they reveal the ray of that Truth that enlightens all people. ”. (shrink)

Much is being written these days about integration, its desirability and even its necessity when complex research problems are to be addressed. Seldom, however, do we hear much about the failure of such efforts. Because integration is an ongoing activity rather than a final achievement, and because today’s literature about integration consists mostly of manifesto statements rather than precise descriptions, an examination of unsuccessful integration could be illuminating to understand better how it works. This paper will examine the case of (...) prokaryote phylogeny and its apparent failure to achieve integration within broader tree-of-life accounts of evolutionary history. Despite the fact that integrated databases exist of molecules pertinent to the phylogenetic reconstruction of all lineages of life, and even though the same methods can be used to construct phylogenies wherever the organisms fall on the tree of life, prokaryote phylogeny remains at best only partly integrated within tree-of-life efforts. I will examine why integration does not occur, compare it with integrative practices in animal and other eukaryote phylogeny, and reflect on whether there might be different expectations of what integration should achieve. Finally, I will draw some general conclusions about integration and its function as a ‘meta-heuristic’ in the normative commitments guiding scientific practice. (shrink)

Judaism is one of the oldest religions that has survived to this day. It is a religion of mostly ethnic Jews, a nation that, for many historical reasons, was scattered all over the world and for a long time did not have a permanent place of residence, its state. During the century of its existence Judaism has undergone a number of changes, but its main features - monotheism and the veneration of ancient religious books - have not lost yet.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 142-154 [Access article in PDF] Critical Discussions The Fortunes of Avant-Garde Poetry Mary Anne O'Neil Invisible Fences. Prose Poetry as a Genre in French and American Literature, by Steven Monte; xii & 298 pp. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000, $50.00. Modern Visual Poetry, by Willard Bohn; 321 pp. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000, $47.00. The situation of French poetry at the turn (...) of the twenty-first century is far different from what it was during the last fin de siècle. In 1900, poetry was a booming art, and France was home to numerous poets of varied inspiration and expression. The religious verse of Claudel and Péguy shared the attention of the reading public with the philosophical poetry of Valéry and the futuristic celebrations of Paris and modern life found in Apollinaire's Alcools and Calligrammes. Long poems, short poems, poems written in standard verse, free verse, prose, and even published as drawings, suggested that the golden age of poetry begun in the early nineteenth century by the Romantics and continued after 1850 by Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé, would not soon come to an end. This indeed proved to be the case, for the heirs of the Symbolist tradition of the first decade of the twentieth century were soon followed by the Surrealist revolutionaries of the 1920s and 1930s, many of whom directed their talents to the composition of political verse at the time of the Second World War. Political poetry by and large disappeared from France after 1950, only to be [End Page 142] succeeded over the next two decades by two very different types of verse. On the one hand, writers like St. John Perse and Pierre Jean Jouve produced difficult works whose appeal was limited to a sophisticated audience, while lyricists, such as Jacques Prévert and even the songwriter Georges Brassens, made poetry more accessible to the general public, often through popular songs. The fact that, during the days of May 1968, students scrawled verses of the Surrealist-Communist poet Paul Eluard on the walls of the Sorbonne to encourage efforts to bring down the social order attests to the power exerted by poetry on the intellectual life of France well into the second half of the twentieth century. Such, however, is no longer the case today. There are only two well-known living French poets, Francis Ponge and Yves Bonnefoy. While reviews dedicated to original poetry do still exist, especially in the south of France where the poetic arm of the French Resistance was most active in the 1940s, poetry attracts many fewer readers--and fewer writers--than it did even fifty years ago.Such a radical change merits some reflection. What has happened to French poetry since the mid-twentieth century? In a sense, all good things must come to an end sometime, and a century and a half of inventiveness and poetic energy may simply have run its natural course. French publishing houses, well aware that prose sells better than verse, have done little to encourage young poets. However, certain trends in the subject matter and form of contemporary French poetry have probably contributed to the current lack of interest. Since the end of the Second World War, French poets have concerned themselves almost uniquely with everyday life--common objects, geographical locales, and ordinary people. This obsession with the ordinary has produced some excellent poetry, especially René Char's evocations of Provençal landscapes and Yves Bonnefoy's treatments of childhood. Yet, this concentration on everyday life has severed poetry from the traditional subjects that have sustained it ever since classical antiquity, such as the celebration of heroic figures and heroic deeds, philosophical and religious inquiry, love, loss, prophetic vision. This very narrow range of subject risks consigning poetry to the status of a minor art. At the turn of the twenty-first century, French poetry also finds itself at the end of a very long period of formal experimentation that began in the second half of the nineteenth century and which includes... (shrink)

Background:Nursing practice is complex, as nurses are challenged by increasingly intricate moral and ethical judgments. Inadequately studied in underrepresented groups in nursing, moral distress is a serious problem internationally for healthcare professionals with deleterious effects to patients, nurses, and organizations. Moral distress among nurses has been shown to contribute to decreased job satisfaction and increased turnover, withdrawal from patients, physical and psychological symptoms, and intent to leave current position or to leave the profession altogether.Research question:Do significant gender differences exist in (...) the moral distress scores of critical care nurses?Research design:This study utilized a quantitative, descriptive methodology to explore moral distress levels in a sample of critical care nurses to determine whether gender differences exist in their mean moral distress scores.Participants and research context:Participants ( n = 31) were critical care nurses from an American Internet nursing community who completed the Moral Distress Scale–Revised online over a 5-day period in July 2013.Ethical considerations:Institutional review board review approved the study, and accessing and completing the survey implied informed consent.Findings:The results revealed a statistically significant gender difference in the mean moral distress scores of participants. Females reported statistically significantly higher moral distress scores than did males. Overall, the moral distress scores for both groups were relatively low.Discussion:The findings of a gender difference have not previously been reported in the literature. However, other findings are consistent with previous studies on moral distress.Conclusion:Although the results of this study are not generalizable, they do suggest the need for continuing research on moral distress in underrepresented groups in nursing, including cultural and ethnic groups. (shrink)

Walter Conn's theory of Christian Conversion (1986) provides an illuminating lens for understanding Dorothy Day's conversion experience. Day's story, conversely, offers an opportunity to test selected features of Conn's theory, specifically the affective, cognitive, moral, and religious categories of analysis. The dialectic is a fruitful one, yielding insight into both Day's story and Conn's theory, while at the same time raising provocative questions about and contributing to the current debate regarding an "ethic of care" as distinct from an "ethic of (...) justice.". (shrink)

Over the last decade, there has been a considerable expansion of mindfulness programmes into a number of different domains of contemporary life, such as corporations, schools, hospitals and even the military. Understanding the reasons for this phenomenon involves, I argue, reflecting upon the nature of contemporary capitalism and mapping the complexity of navigating new digital technologies that make multiple and accelerated solicitations upon attention and our affective lives. Whilst acknowledging the benefits of mindfulness practice, this article argues that it is (...) equally important to attend to the ethical framework that gives orientation to these practices and the outer conditions that shape lived daily experience, such as school or work environments. I suggest that the well-meaning efforts to secularise mindfulness, provide scientific evidence for its effectiveness, and introduce it to wider publics may have served to impoverish the rich contribution that practices of mindfulness, situated within a broader ethical framework, can make to human lives, and arguably contribute to the educational endeavour. For example, the emphasis on transforming inner conditions of students’ lives can lead to the neglect of outer conditions, such as structural inequality, or unhealthy and exploitative work practices. This can result in practices that privilege individual wellbeing over compassion and concern for the happiness of others, providing a buffer against loving attention to the world and others. Instead, I ask how mindfulness in educational settings could come to be viewed in a different light if we reflect upon the ways in which school environments and curricula can promote mindfulness, awareness, sensitive inquiry, and contemplative practices through the day, rather than offering it as a discrete intervention focused on the self and wellbeing. (shrink)

Freedom and moral responsibility have one foot in the practical realm of human affairs and the other in the esoteric realm of fundamental metaphysics—or so we believe. This has been denied, especially in the metaphysics-bashing era occupying the first two-thirds or so of the twentieth century, traces of which linger in the present day. But the reasons for this denial seem to us quite implausible. Certainly, the argument for the general bankruptcy of metaphysics has been soundly discredited. Arguments from Strawson (...) and others that our moral practices are too deeply embedded in human life to rest on anything as tenuous as a metaphysical doctrine far from the thoughts of ordinary people would seem to prove too much: we can easily imagine fantastic scenarios far from the thoughts of ordinary people—involving, say, alien manipulation or massive deception—that, if true, would clearly undermine claims to freedom and responsibility. For still other philosophers, the separation of the moral life from (some) metaphysical issues is prescriptive, not descriptive: it is a recommendation that we revise ordinary moral thought by severing its allegedly problematic links to metaphysics. (Some philosophers appear to hover undecided between such a prescriptive project and a Strawsonian descriptive claim.) We suspect that the prospects of retaining the binding force of ordinary moral thought, were such a reconceived moral practice widely embraced, are bleak. A transition to something closer to moral nihilism seems at least as likely. In any case, our interest here is in descriptive metaphysics, not revisionary. -/- To say as we do that freedom and moral responsibility have a partly metaphysical character is not to suggest that they can be had only if some highly specific version of a particular metaphysical framework is correct. Instead, we suggest in what follows, it is a broadly neo-Humean metaphysics that is not hospitable to freedom (for reasons distinctive to the metaphysics), while a broadly neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is. But we also think (and it is the main aim of our paper to show) that different versions of the neo- Aristotelian metaphysics lead to rather different metaphysical accounts of free and responsible action. Specifically, we will argue that (1) the most satisfactory account of human freedom within the broadly neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is agent-causal, but that (2) two different versions of the general metaphysics will lead to important differences in the agent-causal account of freedom. Adjust the details of your general metaphysics, and the details of your account of freedom are transformed in significant ways. Action theory cannot properly be pursued in isolation from general metaphysics. (shrink)

Negative emotion differentiation has been suggested to be important for adaptive emotion regulation. However, knowledge concerning how ED may impact specific ER strategy choice remains surprisingly sparse. We therefore investigated if person-level negative ED was associated with habitual use of individual ER strategies, how person-level negative ED was associated with daily use of individual ER strategies, and finally how within-person daily fluctuations in negative ED were associated with daily use of individual ER strategies. During a 10-day experience sampling study, 90 (...) healthy participants rated their momentary emotions and their ER efforts in response to those emotions. ER strategies included four putatively adaptive strategies and four putatively maladaptive strategies. Results revealed that negative ED at the person level was neither associated with habitual nor daily ER strategy endorsement when controlling for negative emotions. Likewise, associations between within-individual daily variation in negative ED and daily ER did not remain statistically significant after controlling for negative emotions. The results thus point to no or weak associations between negative ED and ER choice above and beyond negative emotions. Future experimental studies addressing ED at the momentary level and teasing out the ED–ER causal timeline are needed to further evaluate ED–ER associations. Findings from such research may represent an important step toward refining psychotherapeutic interventions aimed at improving emotional problems. (shrink)