This article draws attention to a form of injustice in intimate relationships of care that is largely ignored in discussions about the legal rights and obligations of intimate partners. This form of injustice is connected to a feature of caregiving I call “flexibility,” in virtue of which caregiving requires “skills of flexibility.” I argue that the demands placed by these skills on caregivers create constraints that amount to “vulnerability to oppression.” To lift these constraints, caregivers are entitled to open-ended responses (...) to their work, responses that would enable them to pursue their own projects while providing care. Instead of protecting individual choice of intimate relationships, marriage law should protect these entitlements. (shrink)

This study aims to further investigate the convergent validity of the recently-proposed metapersonal model and measure of self-construal, and to emphasize the discriminant validity of the metapersonal self-construal as a distinct construct, capturing a unique aspect of self-construal separate from either interdependent or independent aspects. The study looked at two questions: Does the metapersonal self-construal predict higher emotional intelligence? Do those who have higher metapersonal self-construal scores also report greater well-being? A group of 212 undergraduate students was assessed using a (...) self-construal scale that includes the new measure of metapersonal self-construal, along with scales measuring emotional intelligence and well-being. The metapersonal self-construal predicted higher emotional intelligence scores and greater well-being than either the independent or interdependent self-construals. (shrink)

Interpretation of first four sutras of Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyaṇa on the basis of Śaṅkarācārya's commentary on Vedanta.

This article provides an introduction to what the Old Testament has to say regarding displacement and displaced people – refugees, migrants and the marginalized members of society. It surveys the instructions regarding the correct attitude and protective actions owed to ‘the stranger’ found in the Old Testament Law and it points to the divine preference to side with the suffering and the vulnerable evident in the Old Testament Prophets. Although not an exhaustive treatment of Old Testament passages tackling this topic, (...) the discussion helps make clear the fact that God is particularly concerned with justice and care for the disadvantaged members of the society, including aliens, refugees and migrants. The conclusion of the article calls the readers to consider some of the missiological-ethical implications of such concern in our contexts today. (shrink)

The global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic has considerably accelerated the adoption of teleconsultation—a form of consultation between patient and health care professional that occurs via videoconferencing platforms. For this reason, it is important to investigate the way in which this form of interaction modifies the nature of the clinical encounter and the extent to which this modification impacts the healing process. For this purpose, I will refer to insights into the clinical encounter as a face-to-face encounter drawn from the (...) phenomenology of medicine (R. Zaner, K. Toombs, E. Pellegrino). I will also take into account a criticism that has been expressed by various contemporary phenomenologists (H. Dreyfus, T. Fuchs, L. Dolezal, H. Carel), namely, that due to the lack of physical proximity to the other in all types of online encounters, such encounters lack significant features that are present in face-to-face encounters, with the most important of these being the possibility of attaining an empathetic perception of the other and a sense of embodied risk. As these elements are essential features of the clinical encounter, the aim of this paper is to determine whether teleconsultation exhibits these features. To do that, I will integrate phenomenological philosophy with qualitative research drawing materials from both the philosophical tradition, particularly with respect to the concepts of the face-to-face encounter and embodied risk (A. Schutz and H. Dreyfus), and qualitative research study regarding patient experiences of teleconsultation. I will argue that teleconsultation does involve both the possibility of perceiving the other empathetically and the possibility of experiencing a sense of embodied risk. (shrink)

"Science is rooted in conversations," wrote Werner Heisenberg, one of the twentieth century's great physicists. In Quantum Dialogue, Mara Beller shows that science is rooted not just in conversation but in disagreement, doubt, and uncertainty. She argues that it is precisely this culture of dialogue and controversy within the scientific community that fuels creativity. Beller draws her argument from her radical new reading of the history of the quantum revolution, especially the development of the Copenhagen interpretation. One of several (...) competing approaches, this version succeeded largely due to the rhetorical skills of Niels Bohr and his colleagues. Using extensive archival research, Beller shows how Bohr and others marketed their views, misrepresenting and dismissing their opponents as "unreasonable" and championing their own not always coherent or well-supported position as "inevitable." Quantum Dialogue, winner of the 1999 Morris D. Forkosch Prize of the Journal of the History of Ideas, will fascinate everyone interested in how stories of "scientific revolutions" are constructed and "scientific consensus" achieved. "[A]n intellectually stimulating piece of work, energised by a distinct point of view."—Dipankar Home, Times Higher Education Supplement "[R]emarkable and original. . . . [Beller's] arguments are thoroughly supported and her conclusions are meticulously argued. . . . This is an important book that all who are interested in the emergence of quantum mechanics will want to read."—William Evenson, History of Physics Newsletter. (shrink)

Argument-mapping software abounds, and one of the reasons is that using the software has been shown to teach/promote/improve critical thinking skills. These positive results are very encouraging, but they also raise the question of whether the computer tutorial environment is producing these results, or whether learning argument mapping, even with just paper and pencil, is sufficient. Based on the results of two empirical studies, I argue that the basic skill of being able to represent an argument diagrammatically plays an important (...) role in the improvement of critical-thinking skills. While these studies do not offer a direct comparison between the two methods, it is important for anyone wishing to employ argument mapping in the classroom to know that significant results can be obtained even with the most rudimentary of tools. (shrink)

Knowing Nature brings together political ecologists and science studies scholars to showcase the key points of encounter between the two fields and how this ...

This study casts light on how the issue of childlessness is portrayed in the Bible. The discussion begins with a commentary on Michal’s story, which provides the foundation for further reflection on how childlessness was dealt with in the biblical world, especially in the situations where no miraculous divine solutions were provided. Several humanly devised solutions, acceptable and practiced in the ancient world are presented. The last part of the paper focuses on the more eschatological view of human existence provided (...) in the New Testament, showing that childlessness is a form of suffering included in the promise of redemption brought about by the inauguration of God’s kingdom. As such the response of the redeemed community is to be characterized by love and compassion. (shrink)

Nowadays, managing change in complex services requires that middle management re-designs its objects and professional practices, in order to cope with new needs. It seems therefore crucial to activate training settings that allow managers to: develop research and analytical skills on their own work practices and professional objects; face and manage conflict, related to every change, that represents an opportunity to reflect and review one's own practices; and build new and shared repertories of managerial practices, able to support a better (...) form of living and working together within the management community. Moving from these hypotheses, inside the setting of a training intervention conducted in an educational service, the article discusses a specific tool used to generate opportunity of exchange, and reflection, within a challenging framework of change. (shrink)

Background Bioethical debates about privacy, big data, and public health surveillance have not sufficiently engaged the perspectives of those being surveilled. The data justice framework suggests that big data applications have the potential to create disproportionate harm for socially marginalized groups. Using examples from our research on HIV surveillance for individuals incarcerated in jails, we analyze ethical issues in deploying big data in public health surveillance. -/- Methods We conducted qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 24 people living with HIV who had (...) been previously incarcerated in county jails about their perspectives on and experiences with HIV surveillance, as part of a larger study to characterize ethical considerations in leveraging big data techniques to enhance continuity of care for incarcerated people living with HIV. -/- Results Most participants expressed support for the state health department tracking HIV testing results and viral load data. Several viewed HIV surveillance as a violation of privacy, and several had actively avoided contact from state public health outreach workers. Participants were most likely to express reservations about surveillance when they viewed the state’s motives as self-interested. Perspectives highlight the mistrust that structurally vulnerable people may have in the state’s capacity to act as an agent of welfare. Findings suggest that adopting a nuanced, context-sensitive view on surveillance is essential. -/- Conclusions Establishing trustworthiness through interpersonal interactions with public health personnel is important to reversing historical legacies of harm to racial minorities and structurally vulnerable groups. Empowering stakeholders to participate in the design and implementation of data infrastructure and governance is critical for advancing a data justice agenda, and can offset privacy concerns. The next steps in advancing the data justice framework in public health surveillance will be to innovate ways to represent the voices of structurally vulnerable groups in the design and governance of big data initiatives. (shrink)

A key topic within the field of the phenomenology of medicine has been the relationship between body and self in illness, including discussions about the otherness and mineness of the body. The aim of this article is to distinguish between different meanings of bodily otherness and mineness in illness with reference to the interpretation of the body as “saturated phenomenon,” inspired by the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion. With the help of Marion’s ideas it is possible to distinguish between two meanings (...) of bodily otherness and of mineness (objective and non-objective forms). These distinctions support and elaborate on ideas already found in the phenomenology of medicine and offer further insights into the nature of the experience of illness. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a novel skeptical view about moral disgust. I argue that much recent discussion of moral disgust neglects an important ontological question: is there a distinctive psychological state of moral disgust that is differentiable from generic disgust, and from other psychological states? I investigate the ontological question and propose two conditions that any aspiring account of moral disgust must satisfy: it must be a genuine form of disgust, and it must be genuinely moral. Next, I examine (...) two prominent accounts of moral disgust by John Kekes and Victor Kumar and argue that neither successfully establishes the existence of genuinely moral disgust: Kekes’ account does not satisfy the second condition, and Kumar’s view does not meet the first. I claim that an important general lesson can be drawn from my critiques of Kekes’ and Kumar’s accounts: to establish the existence of moral disgust, one must provide unequivocal evidence that genuinely moral disgust, not generic disgust or anger, is being elicited in response to relevant moral violations. I conclude by considering why we ought to be skeptical about the general prospect of giving a positive answer to the ontological question, given the available evidence. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers have looked to empirical findings about psychopaths to help determine whether moral agency is underwritten by reason, or by some affective capacity, such as empathy. Since one of psychopaths’ most glaring deficits is a lack of empathy, and they are widely considered to be amoral, psychopaths are often taken as a test case for the hypothesis that empathy is necessary for moral agency. However, people with autism also lack empathy, so it is reasonable to think that (...) any empirically-informed attempt to answer the question of whether empathy is necessary for moral agency should give due attention to autism as well as psychopathy. Jeanette Kennett’s thought-provoking paper ‘Autism, Empathy and Moral Agency’ (2002) is an early and arguably the most notable example of such an attempt. Kennett argues that although autistic people and psychopaths both lack empathy, autistic people possess a ‘reverence for reason’ that enables them to become capable moral agents. By contrast, psychopaths lack this rational capacity, and it is this defect of reason rather than an empathic impairment that explains why they are amoral. Kennett thus concludes that empathy is not necessary for moral agency. In this chapter, I challenge Kennett’s argument. First, I review the empirical evidence in order to demonstrate that there is a component of empathy called affective empathy that is impaired in psychopaths but largely preserved in autistics. As such, the claim that psychopaths and autistics share a common lack of empathy is unjustified. Second, I challenge Kennett’s claim that empathy plays no role in explaining the moral difference between psychopaths and autistics. Instead, I contend that the intact affective empathy of autistic people is a crucial component of their capacity to act from reverence for reason. (shrink)

While feelings of disgust and repulsion are experienced and accepted as part of care practices of nurses who work in palliative care, they are often silenced. Working alongside two palliative care nurses in a hospice setting, we engaged in a narrative inquiry to inquire into their experiences of disgust. The study took place in a palliative care setting in a large urban city in Germany. We understand care practices as actions that follow a logic of care. According to a logic (...) of care, actions are situated within a social context, given by specific relationships including power, and individual needs. Various aspects of disgust are visible in the experiences of the participants and highlighted in the narrative threads of disgust and silence, disgust and protection, and disgust and boundaries. Embedded in the experience of disgust of nurses working in palliative care, we see that there are borderlands of care that challenge who we are and are becoming. Opening discussion about disgust in nursing makes visible the complexity of care. (shrink)

On 19 July 2016, three medical organisations filed a federal lawsuit against representatives from several Vermont agencies over the Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act. The law is similar to aid-in-dying laws in four other US states, but the lawsuit hinges on a distinctive aspect of Vermont's law pertaining to patients' rights to information. The lawsuit raises questions about whether, and under what circumstances, there is an ethical obligation to inform terminally ill patients about AID as an (...) end-of-life option. Much of the literature on clinical communication about AID addresses how physicians should respond to patient requests for assisted dying, but neglects the question of how physicians should approach patients who may not know enough about AID to request it. In this article, I examine the possibility of an affirmative duty to inform terminally ill patients about AID in light of ethical concerns about professional responsibilities to patients and the maintenance of the patient–provider relationship. I suggest that we should not take for granted that communication about AID ought to be patient-initiated, and that there may be circumstances in which physicians have good reasons to introduce the topic themselves. By identifying ethical considerations that ought to inform such discussions, I aim to set an agenda for future bioethical research that adopts a broader perspective on clinical communication about AID. (shrink)

Problem-Based Learning has become an increasingly popular instructional method for a variety of disciplines at all levels. Many studies and meta-analyses of these studies have shown the efficacy of this method for developing knowledge and skills. I adopted this method for teaching Engineering Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University, which has as its main course objectives the development of moral reasoning skills, as well as collaboration and communication skills, with special attention given to ethical dilemmas that may arise in the normal (...) course of an engineer’s professional career. In the most recent iteration of the course, I used the Engineering and Science Issues Test as a pretest and posttest to test the development of my students’ moral reasoning skills over the course of the semester. Based on the results of these tests, I argue that the students in my Engineering Ethics course did in fact significantly develop their moral reasoning skills. (shrink)

Rather than focus on effects, the isolatable and measureable outcomes of events and interventions, the papers assembled here offer different perspectives on the affective dimension of the meaning and politics of human/non-human relations. The authors begin by drawing attention to the constructed discontinuity between humans and non-humans, and to the kinds of knowledge and socialities that this discontinuity sustains, including those underpinned by nature-culture, subject-object, body-mind, individual-society polarities. The articles presented track human/non-human relations through different domains, including: humans/non-humans in history (...) and animal welfare science (Fudge and Buller); the relationship between the way we live, the effects on our natural environment and contested knowledges about ‘nature’ (Whatmore); choreographies of everyday life and everyday science practices with non-human animals such as horses, meerkats, mice, and wolves (Latimer, Candea, Davies, Despret). Each paper also goes on to offer different perspectives on the human/non-human not just as division, or even as an asymmetrical relation, but as relations that are mutually affective, however invisible and inexpressible in the domain of science. Thus the collection contributes to new epistemologies/ontologies that undercut the usual ordering of relations and their dichotomies, particularly in that dominant domain of contemporary culture that we call science. Indeed, in their impetus to capture ‘affect’, the collection goes beyond the usual turn towards a more inclusive ontology, and contributes to the radical shift in the epistemology and philosophy of science’s terms of engagement. (shrink)

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is a psychiatric illness that presents a complex variety of perceptual alterations and somatic sensations. These alterations occur at the level of (1) bodily representations and (2) bodily experiences. The alterations are widespread, and they involve multiple cognitive functions. We reviewed the current literature linking the psychiatric literature on AN with the philosophical debate on the Cognitive Penetrability of Perception (CPP). We describe the alterations in perception, starting from the most widespread and studied, i.e., those concerning distortions (...) in the estimation of the dimensions of one's body (“dysmorphophobia” or “body image disturbance”) to then describe those of more recent analysis involving alterations in bodily experiences. Body image disturbances in AN have been linked to alexithymia, emotional dysregulation, and altered interoceptive awareness, highlighting the complex interaction between emotion, cognition, and perception in AN. We show how the recent debate on CPP can benefit from the empirical investigations in AN, and can, in turn, serve to outline new lines of research. (shrink)

Razzismo e schiavitů sono fenomeni appartenenti ai processi socioculturali occidentali ed esprimono una logica identitaria esclusiva. Nella societÀ contemporanea sono in fase di graduale riaffermazione ed č da tale constatazione che prende le mosse questo saggio, il cui obiettivo consiste nello sviluppare alcune considerazioni sull'evoluzione storico-filosofica del concetto di razzismo - a partire dalle riflessioni di Joseph Arthur de Gobineau e Julius Evola - al fine di mostrare come esso sia alla base di un nuovo tentativo di divisione della societÀ (...) e degli individui, tramite la quale la progressiva emersione di nuove forme di schiavismo tende a essere facilitata. (shrink)

L'evoluzione del concetto di educazione ha risentito e risente dei cambiamenti che si sono succeduti all'interno della societÀ civile. Nell'etÀ contemporanea il mutamento piů significativo riguarda la presenza di una pluralitÀ di culture all'interno dei moderni Stati-nazione. In particolare in ambito educativo, il multiculturalismo pone sfide importanti alla stessa concezione di paideia nella sua connotazione classica di "educazione del cittadino": occorre quindi riconsiderarne le fondamenta. L'articolo riflette su tale problematica con riferimento alle principali posizioni della pedagogia interculturale, fino a prendere (...) in considerazione l'effettiva esistenza di una nuova "paideia" interculturale e la sua potenzialitÀ nel contesto scolastico italiano. (shrink)

Political ecology and science studies have found fertile meeting ground in environmental studies. While the two distinct areas of inquiry approach the environment from different perspectives—one focusing on the politics of resource access and the other on the construction and perception of knowledge—their work is actually more closely aligned now than ever before. Knowing Nature brings together political ecologists and science studies scholars to showcase the key points of encounter between the two fields and how this intellectual mingling creates a (...) lively and more robust ecological framework for the study of environmental politics. The contributors all actively work at the interface between these two fields, and here they use empirical material to explore questions of theoretical and practical import for understanding the politics that surround nature-society relations, from wildlife management in the Yukon to soil fertility in Kenya. In addition, they examine how various environmental knowledge claims are generated, packaged, promoted, and accepted (or rejected) by the different actors involved in specific cases of environmental management, conservation, and development. Finally, they ask what is at stake in the struggles surrounding environmental knowledge, how such struggles shape conceptions of the environment, and whose interests are served in the process. (shrink)

The word “philosophy” comes from the Greek “philos” (meaning love) and “sophia” (meaning wisdom); thus philosophy literally is the “love of wisdom.” Whatever else philosophy may be, most people agree that it still retains this spirit of its etymological roots, and that when we are engaged in philosophy we are pursuing wisdom for the sake of itself. Wisdom, however, is not the same thing as knowledge or information. We aren’t merely trying to amass list of interesting ideas, or believe anything (...) that sounds good. Wisdom is, at least in part, the reflection on and critical evaluation of what we ourselves and others around us believe about some very heady topics. (shrink)

Supercommentary on Siddhāntabindu of Madhusūdana Sarasvatī, exegesis of Daśaślokī, treatise of the Advaita school in Indic philosophy, by Śaṅkarācārya.

Social context shapes negotiators’ actions, including their willingness to act unethically. We use a simulated negotiation to test how three dimensions of social context—dyadic gender composition, negotiation strategy, and trust—interact to influence one micro-ethical decision, the use of deception. Deception in all-male dyads was relatively unaffected by trust or the other negotiator’s strategy. In mixed-sex dyads, negotiators consistently increased their use of deception when three forms of trust were low and opponents used an accommodating strategy. However, in all-female dyads, negotiators (...) appeared to use multiple and shifting reference points in deciding when to deceive the other party. In these dyads, the use of deception increased when a competitive strategy combined with low benevolence-based trust or an accommodating strategy combined with high identity-based trust. Deception in all-female dyads decreased when a competitive strategy was used in the context of low deterrence-based trust. (shrink)