A child’s death is a profound loss for mothers and affects hundreds of thousands of women. Mothers report inconsolable and progressive grief that is distinct from depression and impacts daily emotions and functions. The brain mechanisms responsible for this relatively common and profound mental health problem are unclear, hampering its clinical recognition and care. In an initial exploration of this condition, we used resting state functional MRI (fMRI) scans to examine functional connectivity in key circuits, and task-based fMRI to examine (...) brain network activity in grieving mothers in response to pictures of their deceased child and as well as recognizable deceased celebrities and unfamiliar individuals. We compared nine mothers who had lost an adult child and aged-matched control mothers with a living child of a similar age. Additionally, we collected diffusion imaging scans to probe structural connectivity and complemented the imaging studies with neuropsychological assessments. Increased functional activation in Ventral Attention/Salience Networks accompanied by a reduced activation in the medial prefrontal cortex in response to the deceased child’s picture robustly distinguished the grieving mothers from controls. Heightened resting-state functional connectivity between the paraventricular thalamic nucleus (PVT) and the amygdala distinguished the grieving mothers from the controls and correlated with subjective grief severity. Structurally, maternal grief and its severity were associated with alterations in corticolimbic white matter tracts. Finally, grieving mothers performed worse than controls on neuropsychological tests of learning, memory, and executive function, linked with grief severity. Reduced activation in cortical regions inhibiting emotions and changes in the PVT circuitry—a region involved in long-term emotional memories and decision making under conflict—distinguish grieving mothers from controls. Notably, the magnitude of neurobiological changes correlates with the subjective severity of grief. Together, these new discoveries delineate a prevalent and under-recognized mental health syndrome and chart a path for its appreciation and care. (shrink)

Essays omhandlende den etiske dimension i det militære liv.

On the analogy of the colloquial register in some modern languages, where narrative and argument may be punctuated by oaths and exclamations (sometimes obscene or blasphemous) in order to maintain a high affective level and compel the hearer's attention, it is reasonable to postulate that Attic conversation also was punctuated by oaths, that this ingredient in comic language was drawn from life, and that the comparative frequency of ║ (|)M M(M) Δ in comedy is sufficiently explained thereby. There are obvious (...) affinities between some passages of comedy, relaxed conversation in Plato and Xenophon, and the forceful, man-to-man tone which Demosthenes sometimes adopts to such good effect (e.g. xxi 209). Compare, for instance, Ar.V.133 f.ἔστιν δ' ⋯νομα ⋮ τῷ μ⋯ν γέροντι ⋮ Φιλοκλέων / να⋯ μ⋯ Δία, τῷ δ' υἱεῖ κτλ., where the oath is a response to imagined incredulity, and X.Smp.4.27αὐτ⋯ν δ⋯ σέ, ἔɸη, ⋯γὼ εἶδον να⋯ μ⋯ τ⋯ν Ἀπόλλω, ὅτε κτλ. (‘Oh, yes, I did!’).It is also important that the commonest oaths fit, in most of their forms, the end of an iambic trimeter:(να⋯) μ⋯ τ⋯ν Δία, ν⋯ (τ⋯ν) Δία,ν⋯ τούς θεούς, μ⋯ τοὺς θεούς. Add that in Aristophanic dialogue (by contrast with Menander) over half the iambic trimeters end with major pause, and half the remainder with minor pause, and we can see why Δ / established itself early as a distinctive comic pattern. Out of 105 examples ofM M(M) Δ cited from comedy in Section II above, 59 have the oath at verse-end.In the case ofπάνυ, which was almost exclusively Attic and — to judge from its great rarity in tragedy — felt by Athenian poets to be prosaic, we lack evidence on its functions in the colloquial register; it may or may not have served as affective punctuation. In prose, we have to reckon with the fact thatπ MπandMππconstituted a genuine stylistic choice (cf. n. 32) as far back as the evidence will take us, since the two earliest instances in prose are [X.]Ath.2.3πάνυ δι⋯ χρείανand ibid. 3.5πολλ⋯ ἔτι πάνυ. The oath, as treated by the comic poets on the basis of colloquial usage, is bound to have served as a model forπάνυ, exerting an influence which pulledπάνυto the end of the verse, but there was also a powerful metrical constraint. As a dibrach ending in a vowel which could not be elided or enter into crasis,πάνυwas especially appropriate for verse-end. That in itself was enough both to establishMππas the dominant pattern in comedy and to promoteMπ…π. Out of the total of 104 examples ofMπ(…)πin comedy, 93 haveπάνυat verse-end, which makesMπ(…)π/ one of the hallmarks of comic style.Mπ…πdoes not occur in prose in association with any other feature identified as colloquial, but it should be noted that Aiskhines and Demosthenes are much fonder ofMππthan other prose authors. In some cases one can see that the orderMππavoids a succession of short syllables (e.g. D. xviii 130, liv 1) or hiatus (e.g. D. xxx 36) or both (e.g. D. xliii 10), but there are other cases in which it has the opposite effect (e.g. D. xxiv 140, xliii 53). The possibility of comic influence on oratorical language cannot be dismissed out of hand. It is also possible that someone will find positive determinants which will explain all the cases ofMππin prose.σɸόδρα, which, likeπάνυ, is peculiarly Attic, is metrically more tractable thanπάνυ, since it can be elided; even so, out of the 80 comic examples ofMσ(…) σ no less than 58 haveσɸόδραat verse-end, and of those 58 there are 22 at major pause, 8 at presumed major pause and 9 at minor pause. The comic treatment ofσɸόδραis thus comparable with the treatment ofπάνυ, and Timokles (CGFP) 222(b).4τηρεῖν…σɸόδραis in fact the closest analogy we have to Ar.Pl.234 f.ἄχθομαι…πάνυ.δέandγάρare a different matter, and in some significant respects different from each other. Postponement ofδέis especially prominent in Aeschylus (45 examples, including a few in which the text is suspect) and then abundant in fourth-century comedy. It is much less common in Euripides (18 examples), rare in Sophocles (6) and Aristophanes (6), and virtually limited in prose to the categories which I labelled (l)–(3). There is as yet no evidence to associate postponement ofδέwith colloquial language; on the contrary, it seems to have begun as a feature of poetic language and to have been taken up and exploited by fourth-century comedy. If, in addition to being Aeschylean, it was colloquial in the fourth century, what happened to it afterwards? Except for such an isolated and inexplicable case as Diod. xx85.1 (v.l.!) — in a military narrative — it is not a feature of the Koine at literary, documentary or subliterate level.Postponement ofγάρwas no doubt encouraged by postponement ofδέ, but it is not itself notably poetic (20 examples in tragedy, of which only three come in my class (5)). One can see how it could possibly have developed in the spoken language of the fourth century, extending the function ofγάρas an explanatory particle (rather on the lines ofγε) in a way which makes it comparable with the English ‘you see’ in (e.g.) ‘He didn't dare pick it up. He hurt his back last year, you see’. For an extension of this kind we may compare the current extension of the English genitive affix in (I heard both examples a year or two ago) ‘Then the girl whose place she was taking's mother turned up’ and ‘The man that Christopher liked's Introduction is much better’. Moreover, postponedγάρappears in a segment of conversation constructed in indirect speech by Theophrastus inChar.8.9τ⋯ πρ⋯γμα βο⋯σθαι γάρ(p C N γάρ). Again we must ask: what happened to it afterwards? A couple of cases in Theophrastus' botanical works (CPiii 11.3 andHPiv 6.1) could be a reflex of the influence of comedy on literary language at Athens. The influence was plainly short-lived, since it did not affect the Koine.It is not hard to see why serious poetry in the fifth century and earlier should have experimented occasionally with the postponement ofδέandγάρ: treatment ofM M qas a valid alternative toM q Mis metrically very convenient. No poet, however, could afford to use common words in a bizarre, un-Greek way merely to save himself time and trouble in constructing a verse. Linguistic innovation is normally analogical, proceeding by extension from a starting-point already there, and the most obvious starting-point for postponement ofδέandγάρis constituted by my class (3). This consideration provides comic postponement with a pedigree, but does not deny it individuality. The remarkable scale and frequency with which comedy exploited a phenomenon which tragedy used with restraint and prose hardly at all gives comic postponement the right to be regarded as a quite distinctive artificial feature of comedy. (shrink)

Asylbarns status og rettigheter i Norge er i kritisk søkelys. En særlig utsatt gruppe er barn av papirløse foreldre som fødes på norske sykehus. Med bakgrunn i Kirkens Bymisjons arbeid med denne gruppen, argumenterer jeg i denne artikkelen for at slike eksempler viser at norsk offentlig politikk overfor disse barna tenderer mot å gradere og dermed underminere deres grunnleggende menneskeverd, slik dette blant annet kommer til uttrykk i barnekonvensjonens krav om hensynet til barnets beste. Ved hjelp av Judith Butlers tenkning (...) om sårbarhet og «framing» samt Giorgio Agambens tenkning om «nakent liv» og unntakstilstanden, analyserer jeg hvordan denne graderingen av asylbarnas menneskeverd skjer. Til slutt viser jeg kort hvordan Helsesenteret uttrykker motstand mot disse mekanismene som bidrar til å underminere asylbarnas og de papirløses menneskeverd.Nøkkelord: menneskeverd, asylbarn, papirløse i Norge, Kirkens Bymisjon, helsesenter, etikk, flyktninger, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, diakonalt arbeidEnglish summary: Children of asylum seekers and human dignity: Ethical reflections based on the experiences of the Health Care Centre for Undocumented MigrantsThe human rights and dignity of children of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants is much debated in Norway. A group that is particularly at risk is children born in Norwegian hospitals whose parents do not possess a legal residence permit. On the basis of the diaconal work of the Church City Mission in Oslo that aims at providing care and defending the rights of these groups through the Health Care Centre for Undocumented Migrants, the purpose of this article is to argue that the inherent human dignity of these children is being undermined in contemporary Norwegian politics. By relating to Judith Butler's thoughts on vulnerability and «framing» and Giorgio Agamben's theory of the «bare life» and the state of exception, the article aims at showing mechanisms that contribute to the undermining of the human dignity and rights of this group. The last part shows how the work of the health care center with its ethical and theological basis can be seen as offering resistance to these mechanisms and tendencies. (shrink)

Review of Thomas Harder & Lene Ewald Hesels''s _En sten for Eva_ (København: Gads Forlag, 2022). 380 pp. & Hanne Foighels _Sten på sten. Mine 400 år gamle danskjødiske rødder_ (København: Dansk Jødisk Museum, 2022). 496 pp.

Historically, the care of hospitalized children has evolved from being performed in isolation from parents to a situation where the parents and the child are regarded as a unit, and parents and nurses as equal partners in the child’s care. Parents are totally dependent on professionals’ knowledge and expertise, while nurses are dependent on the children’s emotional connection with their parents in order to provide optimal care. Even when interdependency exists, nurses as professionals hold the power to decide whether and (...) to what extent parents should be involved in their child’s care. This article focuses on nurses’ responsibility to act ethically and reflectively in a collaborative partnership with parents. To illuminate the issue of nurses as moral practitioners, we present an observation of contemporary child care, and discuss it from the perspective of the Danish moral philosopher KE Løgstrup and his book The ethical demand. (shrink)

Recension av _Jødisk: Identitet, praksis og minnekultur _redigerad av Cora Alexa Døving (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2022). 344 s.

Notions of research quality are contextual in many respects: they vary between fields of research, between review contexts and between policy contexts. Yet, the role of these co-existing notions in research, and in research policy, is poorly understood. In this paper we offer a novel framework to study and understand research quality across three key dimensions. First, we distinguish between quality notions that originate in research fields and in research policy spaces. Second, drawing on existing studies, we identify three attributes (...) considered important for ‘good research’: its originality/novelty, plausibility/reliability, and value or usefulness. Third, we identify five different sites where notions of research quality emerge, are contested and institutionalised: researchers themselves, knowledge communities, research organisations, funding agencies and national policy arenas. We argue that the framework helps us understand processes and mechanisms through which ‘good research’ is recognised as well as tensions arising from the co-existence of conflicting quality notions. (shrink)

In recent years, discourses on photography have undergone a transformative shift from a focus on the individual photograph’s connection to memory, pastness, loss, and death towards exploring photographic imagery as shared, networked, and continuously circulating in a ubiquitous present. The general claim for the temporal dimension in this shift is that photography is no longer seen as a mere witness or reservoir of the past but instead points to or participates in an active present. Against this claim, the article argues (...) for broadening the perspective, drawing on resources across C.P. Snow’s “two cultures”—the arts and humanities vs. the natural sciences—to develop a better conception of time and a more varied and useful selection of photographic practices. In this connection, the article provides a reading of Paul Ricoeur’s compound concept of “the third time”, cutting across the two cultures. Drawing on insights from Patrick Maynard and Kelley Wilder, basic premises for photographic practices in the natural sciences are brought into the discussions of the discursive shift from a preoccupation with photography and the past to an interest in photography and the present. The purpose of this paper is to develop a better ground for navigating intricate questions about the relationship between photography and time. (shrink)

International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 25, Issue 1, Page 92-95, March 2011.

Reductive intellectualists hold that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. For this thesis to hold water, it is obviously important that knowledge-how and knowledge-that have the same epistemic properties. In particular, knowledge-how ought to be compatible with epistemic luck to the same extent as knowledge-that. It is argued, contra reductive intellectualism, that knowledge-how is compatible with a species of epistemic luck which is not compatible with knowledge-that, and thus it is claimed that knowledge-how and knowledge-that come apart.

Fake news is a scourge within modern society, brought about by foreign powers amplifying messages throughout the recently constructed echo chambers of social media and exacerbated by the lack of co...

We are living in a world which is severely crisis-ridden and faces some major challenges. The fact that we are currently facing a genuine global pandemic brings about even more uncertainty. The social and political institutions, which emerged and consolidated during the 20th century, and which created stability, have become fragile. The young generation born in the 1990s and onwards have experienced 9/11 and the ‘war against terrorism’, the financial crisis of 2008, changes to climate, environmental degradation, and most recently (...) the COVID-19 pandemic. The generation born between 1960 and 1990 have had the same experiences along with severe economic crises in the 1970s and 1980s and the Cold War. Some of these challenges are in different ways intertwined with capitalism and its crises, while others are linked to the rapid development of new technologies, in particular innovations within communication and information technologies. This introduction lists the most important grand challenges facing the world as they have emerged more recently. The five articles following this introduction address some of these challenges, with particular attention to the problems of capitalism and democracy and the relation between these two areas. Most authors agree that climate change and the destruction of the environment are the biggest and most pertinent problems to address, but it is their stance that we can only meet these challenges if democracy is functioning well. (shrink)

Research using explicit measures has linked decreased positive future thinking, but not increased negative future thinking, with clinical depression. However, individuals may be unable or unwilling to express thoughts about the future, and can be unaware of implicit beliefs that can influence their behavior. Implicit measures of cognition may shed light on the role of future thinking in depression. To our knowledge, the current study presents the first implicit measure of positive and negative future thinking. A sample of 71 volunteers (...) completed both implicit and explicit measures of positive and negative future thinking. The findings indicate differences in the evaluation of both positive and negative future events between the two groups. However, group differences were more pronounced on the implicit measure. These findings point to the potential utility of an implicit measure of future thinking in mental health research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Susser and Cabrera (2024) assess the role of bespoke neuro-privacy regulations including the creation of a novel right to mental privacy. They argue that focusing on what distinguishes mental priva...

Ritual circumcision of infant boys is controversial in Norway, as in many other countries. The procedure became a part of Norwegian public health services in 2015. A new law opened for conscientious objection to the procedure. We have studied physicians’ refusals to perform ritual circumcision as an issue of professional ethics. Qualitative interview study with 10 urologists who refused to perform ritual circumcision from six Norwegian public hospitals. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, then analysed with systematic text condensation, a qualitative (...) analysis framework. The physicians are unanimous in grounding their opposition to the procedure in professional standards and norms, based on fundamental tenets of professional ethics. While there is homogeneity in the group when it comes to this reasoning, there are significant variations as to how deeply the matter touches the urologists on a personal level. About half of them connect their stance to their personal integrity, and state that performing the procedure would go against their conscience and lead to pangs of conscience. It is argued that professional moral norms sometimes might become more or less ‘integrated’ in the professional’s core moral values and moral identity. If this is the case, then the distinction between conscience-based and professional refusals to certain healthcare services cannot be drawn as sharply as it has been. (shrink)

This article deals with science content “in the making” and in particular the role of the body in producing scientific phenomena. While accounts of scientists’ work have repeatedly demonstrated, how producing phenomena requires immense amounts of time and effort, involving tinkering and manual labor, this is a little empirically studied content in science education. Seeking to shed light on how the body is involved with materiality to produce physics phenomena, and in what terms this is learning physics content, the article (...) first examines how bodily tinkering is a necessary part of knowing physics through reviewing major accounts of science studies and research in science education. Secondly, drawing on phenomenology and pragmatist ideas, the article examines how students’ bodies need to be educated in the transactional process with material and artifacts to produce phenomena in the context of science learning in lower secondary physics education. Demonstrating that embodied phenomena production is an inescapable part of learning scientific inquiry, and that bodies are just as much a part of the subject physics as conceptual knowledge, we suggest that the education of students’ bodies needs to be made an explicit content. This is important not only for making tacit content accessible to all, but also for addressing epistemological understandings of what science and technology is about. (shrink)

Most studies on the reception of Darwinism in France focus on the scientific community. This essay investigates the popular press. Widely discussed in French newspapers in 1878, Darwinism was connected with a sensational murder case in which two well-educated young men, Aimé Barré and Paul Lebiez, killed an elderly woman. Before his arrest, Lebiez had given a public lecture on the Darwinian “struggle for life.” Competing factions of the press explicitly linked the case with Darwinism to advance either conservative or (...) republican political agendas, which brought Darwinism into the public eye. This essay argues that Charles Darwin’s instrumentalization was decisive in spreading his theory in French society. That same year, the Academy of Sciences elected Darwin to membership after six failed attempts. (shrink)

Aristotle is widely regarded as the greatest of all philosophers; indeed, he is traditionally referred to simply as `the philosopher'. Today, after more than two millennia, his arguments and ideas continue to stimulate philosophers and provoke them to controversy. In this book J.L. Ackrill conveys the force and excitement of Aristotle's philosophical investigations, thereby showing why contemporary philosophers still draw from him and return to him. He quotes extensively from Aristotle's works in his own notably clear English translation, and a (...) picture emerges of a lucid, lively, subtle and tough-minded thinker of astonishing range and penetration. Professor Ackrill identifies many striking connections between Aristotle's ideas and ideas in recent philosophy; he also raises philosophical questions of his own, and exemplifies the way in which Aristotle can still be argued with and learned from. (shrink)

O trabalho analisa o marketing da candidatura Rio 2016, Live your passion e os discursos em torno da reforma urbana entendida como “legado” para o Rio de Janeiro dos Jogos Olímpicos de 2016. Argumenta que o discurso legitimador das remoções nas favelas começa a ser construído na candidatura com o discurso do legado e, adiante, com o do bom governo da cidade integrada via políticas públicas. Lançando mão da noção foucaultiana de biopoder, conclui que as atuais intervenções urbanísticas legitimam ações (...) de segregação social na cidade. (shrink)

Adjustments of everyday life in order to prevent disease or treat illness afflict partly unconscious preferences and cultural expectations that are often difficult to change. How should one, in medical contexts, talk with patients about everyday life in ways that might penetrate this blurred complexity, and help people find goals and make decisions that are both compatible with a good life and possible to accomplish? In this article we pursue the question by discussing how Habermas’ theory of communicative action can (...) be implemented in decision-making processes in general practice. The theory of deliberative decision-making offers practical guidelines for what to talk about and how to do it. For a decision to be rooted in patients’ everyday life it has to take into consideration the patient’s practical circumstances, emotions and preferences, and what he or she perceives as ethically right behaviour towards other people. The aim is a balanced conversation, demonstrating respect, consistency and sincerity, as well as offering information and clarifying reasons. Verbalising reasons for one’s preferences may increase awareness of values and norms, which can then be reflected upon, producing decisions rooted in what the patient perceives as good and right behaviour. The asymmetry of medical encounters is both a resource and a challenge, demanding patient-centred medical leadership, characterised by empathy and ability to take the patient’s perspective. The implementation and adjustments of Habermas’ theory in general practice is illustrated by a case story. Finally, applications of the theory are discussed. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

This comprehensive and important volume includes contributions by activists, journalists, lawyers and scholars from twenty-one countries. The essays map the directions the movement for women's rights is taking--and will take in the coming decades--and the concomittant transformation of prevailing notions of rights and issues. They address topics such as the rapes in former Yugoslavia and efforts to see that a War Crimes Tribunal responds; domestic violence; trafficking of women into the sex trade; the persecution of lesbians; female genital mutilation; and (...) reproductive rights. (shrink)