We discuss a recent approach to investigating cognitive control, which has the potential to deal with some of the challenges inherent in this endeavour. In a model-based approach, the researcher defines a formal, computational model that performs the task at hand and whose performance matches that of a research participant. The internal variables in such a model might then be taken as proxies for latent variables computed in the brain. We discuss the potential advantages of such an approach for the (...) study of the neural underpinnings of cognitive control and its pitfalls, and we make explicit the assumptions underlying the interpretation of data obtained using this approach. (shrink)

In a questionnaire study on organ allocation 348 students of medicine (102) and economics (246) at the universities of Halle (114 students) and Hannover (234 students) responded to questions concerning their basic attitudes toward alternative criteria of organ allocation. Medical criteria were widely accepted by the respondents. Considerations concerning the patient's value to society were seen as being of minor importance. With respect to reciprocity, we could detect a high share of respondents who would favor former living donors and discriminate (...) against murderers. Among considerations of fairness, the criterion of waiting time gained the highest support. Furthermore, majorities favored the view that health-compromising behavior and differences in age should play a role. Economic considerations were strongly rejected as criteria of organ allocation. (shrink)

Foucault's analysis of an aesthetics of existence is presented as an instrument to practice ethical thought without the presupposition of an autonomous subject. The implications of Foucault's aesthetics of existence for ethical thought are traced to the work of Nietzsche. In Foucault's work, experiences of oneself are not a given, but are constituted in power relations and true-and-false games. In the interplay of truths and power relations, the individual constitutes a certain relationship to him- or herself. Foucault designated the relation (...) to oneself and one's existence as the main area of ethical concern and the most important field where aesthetic values are to be applied. In his aesthetics of existence, he invited the individual to problematize the relationship with the self and by using 'self-techniques' to transform it into a work of art. The relation to intimate others, shaped as friendship, is crucial to this ethical-aesthetic approach. Key Words: aesthetics of existence • ethics • Foucault • friendship • Nietzsche • subjectivity. (shrink)

The effective implementation of regulation in organizations is an ongoing concern for both research and practice, in order to avoid deviant behavior and its consequences. However, the way compliance with regulations is actually enacted or “performed” within organizations instead of merely executed, remains largely under-characterized. Evidence from an ethnographic study in the compliance unit of a French investment bank allows us to develop a detailed practice approach to how regulation is actually implemented in firms. We characterize the work accomplished by (...) compliance analysts who are in fact, “curving” the script of regulation within what we conceptualize as a “comfort zone”. Beyond agency, ethics appears as a key element in linking the “letter of the law”, which serves as a referential anchor to guide action, with the complex nature of specific situations. We analyze the way individuals and compliance teams cope with, interpret, struggle and in fine, perform regulation within this comfort zone. A particular interest is thus given to the work of embedded ethics in this process, as an enabler to partly recouple compliance with the regulated activity. We find that blind execution is not only impossible, but also devoid of meaning both from regulatory, risk management, and business perspectives in organizations. We highlight and characterize a hermeneutic dimension to this work, essential to effectively perform regulation in complex environments, and we suggest some directions for further research. (shrink)

Filosoof en arts Marli Huijer, de opvolger van René Gude als Denker des Vaderlands, is geen studeerkamergeleerde, al schreef ze meerdere boeken, zoals het recente Ritme en Discipline. Ze is geen tegen-, geen mee-, maar een tussendenker, ze wil de stemmen van allerlei verschillende mensen laten klinken. In de interviews in Het leven is niet leuk als je je mond houdt praat Peter Henk Steenhuis met haar over haar inspiratiebron Hannah Arendt, haar overstap van haar werk bij de methadonpost in (...) Beverwijk naar de filosofie, haar bijdrage aan het Filosofisch Elftal van Trouw, hoe wij met elkaar omgaan, hoe je jezelf kunt disciplineren, Simone de Beauvoir en Martha Nussbaum, de participatiesamenleving, omgaan met teleurstellingen, bevolkingsonderzoeken. In deze veelheid van onderwerpen benadrukt Huijer keer op keer dat het belangrijk is je vrijmoedig uit te spreken.00. (shrink)

The importance of relationality in ethical leadership has been the focus of recent attention in business ethics scholarship. However, this relational component has not been sufficiently theorized from different philosophical perspectives, allowing specific Western philosophical conceptions to dominate the leadership development literature. This paper offers a theoretical analysis of the relational ontology that informs various conceptualizations of selfhood from both African and Western philosophical traditions and unpacks its implications for values-driven leadership. We aim to broaden Western conceptions of leadership development (...) by drawing on twentieth century European philosophy’s insights on relationality, but more importantly, to show how African philosophical traditions precede this literature in its insistence on a relational ontology of the self. To illustrate our theoretical argument, we reflect on an executive education course called values-driven leadership into action, which ran in South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt in 2016, 2017, and 2018. We highlight an African-inspired employment of relationality through its use of the ME-WE-WORLD framework, articulating its theoretical assumptions with embodied experiential learning. (shrink)

During the English Civil War and subsequent Restoration, beekeeping provided a ready set of moral examples for those seeking answers about the ‘natural’ structure of society. The practice itself also underwent a number of substantial changes, moving from a traditional craft practice to a more knowledge-focused, technologically complex one. The advent of glass-windowed hives in the latter half of the sixteenth century allowed intellectuals from across the political spectrum to directly observe bees as a way of gathering knowledge about how (...) to understand the divine plan and, with that understanding, improve human society. (shrink)

A wealth of experimental findings on how real actors do in fact bargain exists. However, as long as there is no systematic general account of the several experiments bargaining theory remains dominated by axiomatic approaches based on normative requirements or on assumptions of full rather than bounded rationality. Contrary to that, the new axiomatic account of aspiration level balancing in negotiations of boundedly rational actors presented in this paper incorporates experimental findings systematically into economic bargaining theory. It thereby forms a (...) descriptive theory of bargaining that has normative power as well. (shrink)

It is argued that a truly Humean approach to social interaction and to normative reflection on how we should interact needs to get even closer to the facts than the Binmore program suggests. In view of the facts Binmore’s normative conclusions on bargaining as well as on the nature of the equilibria of the game of life both seem precarious.

In the Eurotransplant region transplantable kidneys from cadaveric donors are allocated according to the Wujciak-Opelz algorithm. This paper shows that the algorithm as it stands fulfils certain normative standards of a more formal nature while violating others. In view of these insights, it is explored how the algorithm could perhaps be improved. Even if issues of substantial rather than formal adequacy need to be addressed separately, analyses as presented in this paper can prepare the ground for a discussion of substantive (...) normative issues. In any event, axiomatic accounts can tell us something about what we are in fact doing when using a procedure like the Wujciak-Opelz algorithm. (shrink)

In the Eurotransplant region transplantable kidneys from cadaveric donors are allocated according to the Wujciak-Opelz algorithm. This paper shows that the algorithm as it stands fulfils certain normative standards of a more formal nature while violating others. In view of these insights, it is explored how the algorithm could perhaps be improved. Even if issues of substantial rather than formal adequacy need to be addressed separately, analyses as presented in this paper can prepare the ground for a discussion of substantive (...) normative issues. In any event, axiomatic accounts can tell us something about what we are in fact doing when using a procedure like the Wujciak-Opelz algorithm. (shrink)

Experts in the field of organ transplantation had to rank order a set of 32 patients according to their priority in receiving a donated kidney. The patients were described by the five characteristics that are incorporated in the kidney allocation algorithm applied by Eurotransplant. The priority rankings as defined by the experts were analyzed and patterns of dedsion making identified in the rankings investigated in this study. All patterns could be explained by some type of lexicographical ranking. The larger group (...) of experts preordered tissue compatibility or, more technically speaking, the criterion of HLA match, while the complementary group applied the criterion of the length of waiting time first. Analyzing the finer decision structures of expert rankings and com paring the method of pattern exploration with a conjoint measurement analysis led to two follow-up questions: First, how can the value judgments of the experts be described adequately? Second, which type of aggregated ordering derived from the individual rankings represents them ‘best’? (shrink)

O tema da individualidade na Grécia explorado a partir da figura de Sócrates. Delineado dentro de contornos históricos da época surge o pensamento socrático como marca divisória na história do ethos e do pensamento grego, que passam para o ocidente, no que chamamos de filosofia. O texto aprofunda o assunto da noção de individualidade por meio de interpretações de comentadores de Hegel.

“No one can serve two masters.” This Bible quotation highlights an irreducible contradiction, which echoes numerous organizational settings. This article considers the under-explored ethical implications of paradoxical injunctions created by such a contradiction at the managerial level. Contradictory organizational constraints turn into paradoxant systems , where the organization structurally settles paradoxical injunctions which challenge managerial ethics in practice. We then ask what managerial responsibility means in such contexts and find that managers have then to reshape their practice as a situated (...) construction through constant mediation between different “masters” and bricolage (i.e., tinkering with concepts). An ethnographic case study of an anti-money laundering service in an investment bank illuminates this phenomenon from a practice perspective. The possibility to enact an actual ethical practice within the contradictory organization relies on a new role of the manager. This implies drawing on an approach of responsible management as an enactment of ethics in practice which is situated within the framework of a new conception of both the organization, as a structurally “paradoxant system,” and the manager as a mediator in charge of enacting coherence. (shrink)

Yoga, together with other so-called holistic spiritual practices such as reiki or meditation, is one of the most popular spiritual disciplines in our contemporary society. The success of yoga crosses the boundaries between health, sport, religion, and popular culture. However, from a sociological point of view, this is a largely under-researched field. Aiming to fill this gap, this article analyzes the impact, meaning, and implications of the practice of yoga by taking prisons as the institutional context of the study. The (...) growth of yoga in penitentiary settings is a recent trend in many countries and raises new questions concerning its potential to foster well-being and self-transformation. The research presented here applies Schutz’s concepts of “finite province of meaning” and “stock of knowledge” to understand yoga’s role in inmates’ lives. The main argument of the article is that yoga is a body technique that affords inmates the possibility to enter into a “finite province of meaning” and transcend their everyday prison lives. However, the impact of yoga upon inmates’ lives is not limited just to its physical effects as learning yoga also involves the acquisition of a “spiritual stock of knowledge” made up of Eastern philosophy, holistic concepts, and self-help therapeutic narratives. Indeed, physical movements and spiritual accounts constitute one another in the practice of yoga, thus opening up a pathway into a different reality; movement and spiritual discourse inform one another—and it is precisely in this reflexivity that “transcendent experiences” are created and yoga is made meaningful and important in the improvement-setting of the prison. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork developed carried out in two different penitentiary institutions. (shrink)

Daydreaming appears to have a complex relationship with life satisfaction and happiness. Here we demonstrate that the facets of daydreaming that predict life satisfaction differ between men and women , that the content of daydreams tends to be social others , and that who we daydream about influences the relation between daydreaming and happiness variables like life satisfaction, loneliness, and perceived social support . Specifically, daydreaming about people not close to us predicts more loneliness and less perceived social support, whereas (...) daydreaming about close others predicts greater life satisfaction. Importantly, these patterns hold even when actual social network depth and breadth are statistically controlled, although these associations tend to be small in magnitude. Individual differences and the content of daydreams are thus important to consider when examining how happiness relates to spontaneous thoughts. (shrink)

Health is certainly a valuable asset in the life of every human being and of particular relevance for a flourishing childhood. As empirical research concerning the social determinants of health shows, its distribution can, at least to a certain extent, be influenced by the way a society is arranged. Many philosophers now acknowledge that a fair distribution of health has to be a central part of a just society and they discuss to what extent a right to health can be (...) justified. However, they do not typically distinguish between physical and mental health and neglect the special problems arising from these distinct, though related, perspectives. In this paper, we argue in favour of such a distinction and ask whether a minimally just society ought to include mental health among the goods that are to be distributed in a fair way among its children. Furthermore, we investigate the relationship between mental health and happiness and ask whether making mental health a subject of justice implies that children are entitled not only to a healthy but also to a happy childhood. Despite the positive impact of happiness on the lives of children, we conclude that happiness cannot be incorporated into a functional theory of justice, since it does not fully meet the criteria of objectivity, measurability and influenceability. (shrink)

This Open Access book offers a synthetic reflection on the authors’ fieldwork experiences in seven countries within the framework of ‘Authoritarianism in a Global Age’, a major comparative research project. It responds to the demand for increased attention to methodological rigor and transparency in qualitative research, and seeks to advance and practically support field research in authoritarian contexts. Without reducing the conundrums of authoritarian field research to a simple how-to guide, the book systematically reflects and reports on the authors’ combined (...) experiences in getting access to the field, assessing risk, navigating ‘red lines’, building relations with local collaborators and respondents, handling the psychological pressures on field researchers, and balancing transparency and prudence in publishing research. It offers unique insights into this particularly challenging area of field research, makes explicit how the authors handled methodological challenges and ethical dilemmas, and offers recommendations where appropriate. This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. (shrink)

Memory errors and, specifically, false memories in the Deese/Roediger–McDermott paradigm have been extensively studied in the past decades. Most studies have investigated false memory in monolinguals’ native or first language (L1), but interest has also grown in examining false memories in participants’ second language (L2) with different proficiency levels. The main purpose of this manuscript is to review the current state of knowledge on the role of language proficiency on false memories when participants encode and retrieve information in the same (...) language. To do so, a systematic literature search was conducted, and the available studies were reviewed. These studies differed in, for example, age, language proficiency, or material characteristics, including both high and low associative strength lists, and they reported different results. In this review, we attempted to make sense of the apparently contradictory results by carefully identifying participants’ language dominance and L2 proficiency. Specifically, the results indicated that, first, people are more prone to produce false memories in their dominant than in their non-dominant language. This result generalizes to lists with high and low associative strength, as well as to participants of different ages. Second, false memories do not differ between two languages when speakers are equally proficient in both languages. Finally, highly proficient L2 speakers produce more false memories in their L2 than speakers with lower L2 proficiency. The results of this review will be considered in the light of the theoretical frameworks of false memories and bilingual language processing. (shrink)

Foucault’s vocabulary of arts of existence might be helpful to problematize the entwinement of humans and technology and to search for new types of hybrid selves. However, to be a serious new ethical vocabulary for technology, this art of existence should be supplemented with an ongoing critical discourse of technologies, including a critical analysis of the subjectivities imposed by technologies, and should be supplemented with new medical and philosophical regimens for an appropriate use of technologies.

In this paper we claim educational leadership as an autonomous discipline whose goals and strategies should not mirror those typical of business and political leadership. In order to define the aims proper to educational leadership we question three common assumptions of what it is supposed to carry out. First, we turn to Hannah Arendt and her contemporary critics to maintain that education aims at opening up exceptions within the normal course of events rather than simply preserving it. This way, education (...) is not reduced to an instrument at the service of the reinforcement of a given social and economic system. This leads us to ask what should exactly educational leadership oppose by means of these exceptions. According to Tyson E. Lewis’s wise application to education of Giorgio Agamben’s ontology of impotentiality, the apparently reasonable idea that education must help the subject to develop his potentials is precisely an instrumentalization of education which brings about a desubjectification of the learner. Education should actually make the pupil aware of his right not to carry his potentiality to its actualization and dwell instead in a state of impotentiality. Third and last, we complicate this picture by alluding to Zygmunt Bauman’s critique of the rejection of Western individuals to realize certain possibilities, which they deem too costly. By analysing in conjunction Agamben’s encouragement to suspend one’s potential and Bauman’s insistence on the need of not suspending it, we conclude by defining what, in our opinion, defines the raison d’être of educational leadership. (shrink)

BackgroundThe evaluation of pain remains one of the most difficult challenges that healthcare practitioners face. Chronic pain appears to affect more than 35% of the population in the West, and indeed, pain is the most common reason patients seek medical care. Despite its ubiquity, studies in the last decades reveal that many patients feel their pain is dismissed by healthcare practitioners and that, as a result, they are denied proper medical care. Buchman, Ho, and Goldberg (J Bioethic Inq 14:31-42, 2017) (...) point to this phenomenon as a form of “epistemic injustice”: an unfair and harmful downgrading of credibility affecting some individuals and groups, which prevents them from receiving appropriate and beneficial medical care.MethodsBy exploring the existing literature on this downgrading of patients’ credibility written by healthcare professionals and scholars in medical humanities, I identify and examine the reasons patients are often not believed about their pain and why healthcare is too-often unhelpful or hurtful to people presenting with chronic pain. I also explore to what extent it is possible to forge an alternative epistemological model.ResultsI suggest that most of the causes of this downgrading of patient’s credibility result from either the difficulty in communicating pain or the widespread belief that pathology is always the result of objective tissue damage. I examine whether pain has to be effectively communicated and have an objective cause in order for it to be deemed credible. In the end, I argue that in the case of pain, both communication and objectivity are highly problematic.ConclusionsI conclude by suggesting that, although alternative epistemological models might be impossible to build, believing patients has both moral and clinical benefits, and this warrants further research. (shrink)

Frente aos enormes e complexos desafios em que a tecnologia crescentemente se apodera de processos produtivos e decisórios sem a interferência humana - apesar de refletir sínteses e padrões resultantes de toda a sorte de elementos associados a nossa visão de mundo -, o design se constitui um dos campos do conhecimento que participa da configuração das relações entre o ser, o meio e a cultura material. Nesse sentido, o estudo objetiva compreender o pensamento de Jonas (2006) e investigar indícios (...) contribuintes à elaboração de critérios éticos autorregulatórios para o campo do design, traduzindo significados associados que possam orientar a profissão, situando a vida na Terra no centro do processo. A metodologia é de cunho bibliográfico com leitura de aproximação de Princípio Responsabilidade, seguida de perspectiva mais analítica dos capítulos I (A Natureza Modificada do Agir Humano) e II (Questões de Princípio e Método) e de outros tópicos quando oportunos. Os resultados apresentam pistas para articular o Princípio responsabilidade em termos de design, bem como contradições formuladas sob a forma de perguntas cuja intenção é fomentar novas reflexões. (shrink)

Reflete sobre o potencial da mediação da informação como via de fortalecimento para o mundo social da vida ante ao processo colonizador do mundo dos sistemas, considerando as atuais demandas sociais em âmbito informacional. A Ciência da Informação é cada vez mais convidada a encontrar caminhos para refletir sobre seu objeto como motor do desenvolvimento cultural e fortalecimento do mundo social da vida, de maneira a reafirmar seu lugar enquanto ciência social. Desse modo, a mediação da informação, estando presente em (...) todas as ações do ciclo informacional, constitui-se base sustentadora de ações que contribuem para que a Ciência da Informação cumpra com sua missão e responsabilidade sociais ante as ambivalências da sociedade. Assim, a teoria da ação comunicativa de Jürgen Habermas pode nos proporcionar um diálogo possível com as abordagens teóricas da mediação da informação, no sentido de encontrar pontos que convergem para eixos integradores do mundo social da vida. Nesse sentido, entende-se que o trabalho com a informação demanda pesquisadores e mediadores conscientes que, no âmbito da Ciência da Informação, desenvolvam e tomem como referência estudos da mediação da informação que envolvam esferas apontadas por Habermas como espaços em estado de vulnerabilidade. (shrink)

A teaching method may not work for all students. Therefore, attention should be paid to the type of students entering the learning environment in order to explain how they perceive the learning environment and achieve. This study investigates students? perceptions and achievement in four learning environments that differed in the degree to which case-based and lecture-based learning were implemented (either separately or combined), hereby making use of students? motivational and learning profiles. Participants were 1098 first-year student teachers who took a (...) course on child development. Results showed that autonomously motivated deep-strategic learners were significantly more positive about each type of learning environment than little motivated and less pronounced deep-strategic learners. However, with regard to achievement, student profiles did not differ. Instead, the learning environment proved to be of significant influence: students in a gradually implemented case-based setting and a completely lecture-based setting scored significantly higher than students in a completely case-based setting. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the desires that play a role at the palliative stage and relate them to various approaches to patient autonomy. What attitude can physicians and other caregivers take to the desires of patients at the palliative stage? We examine this question by introducing five physicians who are consulted by Jackie, an imaginary patient with metastatic lung carcinoma. By combining the models of the physician-patient relationship developed by Emanuel and Emanuel (1992) and the Hellenistic approaches to desires (...) analyzed by Nussbaum (1994), five different ways of dealing with desires in the context of palliative care are sketched. The story of Jackie shows that desires are to a certain extent responsive to reasoning. In the palliative process, that can be a reason to devote attention to the desires of patients and caregivers and to determine which desires need to be fulfilled, which are less important, and how they are linked to emotions the patient has. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn the last decades, narrative theory has collaborated with sociology and anthropology of health to account for the importance that illness narratives hold for those who are or have been si...

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a Lógica do Discurso na obra de Éric Weil, bem como relacionar os diversos discursos já feitos na história da filosofia na tentativa de apresentar um a nova maneira de ser, de compreender, de falar e de agir. Estes discursos se manifestam como aceitação do absoluto - optando pela racionalidade, ou como recusa ao diálogo - optando pela violência. Esta lógica pretende superar as demais lógicas articuladas na história.