This multi-faceted collection of women's perspectives on the renaissance in philosophical practices provides an international overview on the professional practice of philosophical counseling as rooted in the ancient philosophical discipline of life and its essential difference from modern mainstream philosophy.

Mehr Markt und Wettbewerb im Gesundheitswesen, so der Tenor aktueller gesundheitspolitischer Debatten, soll Transparenz schaffen, Kosten senken, Missbräuche verhindern und die Qualität der Leistungen steigern. Marianne Rychner zeigt anhand objektiv-hermeneutischer Materialanalysen, in welcher Weise professionalisierte ärztliche Praxis und die Logik des Marktes in einem Widerspruch zueinander stehen. Dies wird deutlich anhand einer detailgetreuen Rekonstruktion zweier ärztlicher Konsultationen. In der Interaktion zwischen Ärztin und Patient entfaltet sich eine komplexe Handlungslogik. Diese konfrontiert die Autorin mit aktuellen Versuchen, der ärztlichen Praxis den (...) Charakter eines marktkonformen Produkts zu geben. (shrink)

An understanding of the ethical implications of their work is now essential for all scientists. This accessible textbook clearly explains bioethical theories and their philosophical foundations to science students, enabling them to confidently take part in the key ethical debates of biotechnology. Over 200 activities introduce topics for personal reflection and discussion points encourage students to think for themselves and build their own arguments. Highlighting the potential pitfalls for those new to bioethics, each chapter features boxes providing factual information and (...) outlining the philosophical background. Accompanying online podcasts by the author (two of whose podcasts on iTunesU have attracted over 3 million downloads) explain points that might be difficult for beginners. Detailed case studies provide an insight into real-life examples of bioethical problems. Within-chapter essay questions and quizzes, along with end-of-chapter review questions, allow students to check their understanding and encourage broader thinking about the topics discussed. (shrink)

Packed with real-life examples of business decisions gone awry, the 8th Edition of BUSINESS ETHICS: CASE STUDIES AND SELECTED READINGS explores the complex issues of business ethics from the leaders' perspectives. This best-selling text offers a rare collection of readings which examines the business decision-making processes of many types of leaders, while revealing some of the common factors that push them over ethical lines they might not otherwise cross. A combination of short and long cases, readings, hypothetical situations, and current (...) ethical dilemmas, BUSINESS ETHICS: CASE STUDIES AND SELECTED READINGS provides a stimulating and thorough basis for evaluating business ethics, and encourages stronger values in future business leaders. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

Phenomenology has been adapted for use in qualitative health research, where it’s often used as a method for conducting interviews and analyzing interview data. But how can phenomenologists study subjects who cannot accurately reflect upon or report their own experiences, for instance, because of a psychiatric or neurological disorder? For conditions like these, qualitative researchers may gain more insight by conducting observational studies in lieu of, or in conjunction with, interviews. In this article, we introduce a phenomenological approach to conducting (...) this kind of observational research. The approach relies on conceptual grounding to focus a study on specific aspects of the participants’ experiences. Moreover, the approach maintains the openness to novel discoveries that qualitative research requires while also providing a structured framework for data collection and analysis. To illustrate its practical application, we use examples of hemispatial neglect—a neurologic disorder in which patients characteristically lack awareness of their own illness and bodily capacities. However, the approach that we describe can be applied more broadly to the study of complex illness experiences and other experiential alterations. (shrink)

Situado no norte da África durante a antiguidade tardia, o pensamento político de Santo Agostinho não está sistematizado em um conjunto teórico de obras. É fruto de sua reflexão sobre problemas concretos como a legitimidade de intervenção estatal em querelas religiosas como o conflito entre católicos e donatistas. A visão agostiniana de Estado prevê um engajamento do cristão na esfera política, não no sentido da teocracia medieval, mas tendo em vista sua purificação moral. Acredita que ele deva intervir na esfera (...) privada da fé para evitar a violência extrema, mas não crê que suas instituições possam ser justas se não orientadas pela verdadeira piedade da fé cristã. Para Agostinho uma das razões para a decadência social de Roma é sua crença em falsas narrativas que não levaram os cidadãos a um crescimento moral autêntico, no que em sua visão a Igreja pode e deve colaborar com o Estado. (shrink)

RESUMO: Na reflexão que desenvolve nos textos do primeiro decênio de sua obra Agostinho mantém um princípio teleológico forte, a saber, que o grande motivo que leva o homem a filosofar e buscar a compreensão da Verdade é o desejo de ser feliz, isto é, encontrar a Beatitude que ele identifica com a condição de estar plenamente em Deus, fim último a ser buscado pelo homem. Este fim só é atingido por quem compreende a Verdade com a reta razão e (...) vive a virtude com reta vontade. Trata-se de um processo cognitivo e volitivo onde a ação humana precisa estar em conformidade com uma realidade transcendente, exterior à natureza criada, que lhe está na condição de um mandato de ação. Neste ponto percebemos a presença de um elemento deontológico forte já nesta fase de seu pensamento, o qual não esvazia sua ampla reflexão acerca da liberdade humana, mas a situa no contexto da teodiceia que justifica sua moral religiosa. (shrink)

During the last decades several tools have been developed to anticipate the future impact of new and emerging technologies. Many of these focus on ‘hard,’ quantifiable impacts, investigating how novel technologies may affect health, environment and safety. Much less attention is paid to what might be called ‘soft’ impacts: the way technology influences, for example, the distribution of social roles and responsibilities, moral norms and values, or identities. Several types of technology assessment and of scenario studies can be used to (...) anticipate such soft impacts. We argue, however, that these methods do not recognize the dynamic character of morality and its interaction with technology. As a result, they miss an important opportunity to broaden the scope of social and political deliberation on new and emerging technologies.In this paper we outline a framework for building scenarios that enhance the techno-moral imagination by anticipating how technology, morality and their interaction might evolve. To show what kind of product might result from this framework, a scenario is presented as an exemplar. This scenario focuses on developments in biomedical nanotechnology and the moral regime of experimenting with human beings. Finally, the merits and limitations of our framework and the resulting type of scenarios are discussed. (shrink)

This contribution presents an adult education workshop implemented in the field of early childhood education. One of the specificities of education and care practices lies in the competences of the professionals to give a central role to the detailed observation of situations, in order to adjust their modalities of action. How can such observational work be developed and transformed? A participatory research-training approach aims to support the co-construction of an analytical view on observable phenomena in the course of interactions. In (...) a perspective of interactional analysis, it focuses on the modalities that favor the construction of such an analytical posture. (shrink)

In this paper, we are interested in the effects of institutional context on public attitudes towards climate policies, where institutions are defined as the conventions, norms and formally sanctioned rules of any given society. Building on a 2014 survey experiment, we conducted thirty qualitative interviews with car-owners in Oslo, Norway, to investigate the ways in which institutional context and political-value orientation affect public attitudes towards emissions policies. One context (presented as a text treatment) highlighted individual rationality, emphasising the ways in (...) which local pollution impacts the individual citizen; the other highlighted social rationality, emphasising the wider significance of carbon emissions and global responsibility for climate change. We analysed the effects of these contexts on attitudes, finding that institutional context influenced individuals' perspectives as well as their attitudes towards climate policies. Groups with different value orientations differed in terms of their evaluations but not their interpretations of these contexts. (shrink)

The legalization of cannabis in Canada instantiates principles of harm-reduction and safe supply. However, in-depth understanding of values at stake and attitudes toward legalization were not part of extensive democratic deliberation. Through a qualitative exploratory study, we undertook 48 semi-structured interviews with three Canadian stakeholder groups to explore opinions and values with respect to the legalization of cannabis: (1) members of the general public, (2) people with lived experience of addiction and (3) clinicians with experience treating patients with addiction. Across (...) all groups, participants tended to be in favor of legalization, but particular opinions rested on their viewpoint as stakeholders. Clinicians considered the way legalization would affect an individual’s health and its potential for increasing rates of addiction on a larger scale. People with lived experience of addiction cited personal autonomy more than other groups and stressed the need to have access to quality information to make truly informed decisions. Alternatively, members of the public considered legalization positive or negative in light of whether one’s addiction affected others. We elaborate on and discuss how scientific evidence about drug use impact values relates and how can different arguments play in democratic debates about legalization. (shrink)

Besonnenes Denken und Handeln erweist sich heute als dringlicher denn je. Bennent-Vahle akzentuiert und entfaltet diese These nicht zuletzt mit Blick auf aktuelle Tendenzen politischer Radikalisierung und gesellschaftlicher Verrohung. Erlautert wird, wie bedeutsam Perspektiven umsichtiger Personlichkeitsbildung fur das Gelingen demokratischer Prozesse sind. Vor allem kommt es darauf an, der menschlichen Emotionalitat gerecht zu werden und eine Kultivierung der Mitgefuhle anzuregen. Hier bietet die philosophische Tradition wertvolle Anknupfungspunkte, die es auf der Basis vertiefter wissenschaftlicher Kenntnisse zum menschlichen Gefuhlsleben zeitgemass auszutarieren und (...) praxisbezogen zu erkunden gilt. (shrink)

Besonnenes Denken und Handeln erweist sich heute als dringlicher denn je. Bennent-Vahle akzentuiert und entfaltet diese These nicht zuletzt mit Blick auf aktuelle Tendenzen politischer Radikalisierung und gesellschaftlicher Verrohung. Erläutert wird, wie bedeutsam Perspektiven umsichtiger Persönlichkeitsbildung für das Gelingen demokratischer Prozesse sind. Vor allem kommt es darauf an, der menschlichen Emotionalität gerecht zu werden und eine Kultivierung der Mitgefühle anzuregen. Hier bietet die philosophische Tradition wertvolle Anknüpfungspunkte, die es auf der Basis vertiefter wissenschaftlicher Kenntnisse zum menschlichen Gefühlsleben zeitgemäß auszutarieren und (...) praxisbezogen zu erkunden gilt. (shrink)

In the context of synthetic biology, scientists and bioengineers talk of living beings as being 'living machines'. This categorisation of the envisaged new life forms has given rise to the ethical concern that their moral status may be seen as different from that of natural or only partially artificial living beings. The paper discusses the notion of a living being and the notion of a machine in order to arrive at a conclusion to the question of whether this categorisation is (...) warranted or not. For this reason, it also looks back to the history of the comparison of living beings to machines and tries to show what motivated the analogy. In the end, though, it is argued that one should stop short of categorising living beings as machines, even if there are areas of analogy between living beings and machines. Finally, the idea that the envisaged artificial synthetic living beings could be regarded as some kind of machines is rejected. (shrink)

Adult-infant early dyadic interactions have been extensively explored by developmental psychologists. Around the age of 2 months, infants already demonstrate complex, delicate and very sensitive behaviors that seem to express their ability to interact and share emotions with their caregivers. This paper presents 3 pilot studies of parent-infant dyadic interaction in various set-ups. The first two present longitudinal data collected on two infants aged between 1 and 6 months and their mothers. We analyzed the development of coordination between them, at (...) the motor and at the vocal level. The 3rd pilot study aims to explore interpersonal coordination in both vocal behavior and motor activity for one infant and his mother at 2, 4 and 6 months. These pilot studies however leave a number of questions open concerning developmental changes and infants’ progressive mastery of interaction. We identify areas worth examining and try to tease out specific issues that may help develop new methodological pathways for the study of early naturalistic social interaction. We assume that a continuous, rather than discrete, approach would better capture the changes taking place in the various communicative modalities, while also displaying each dyad’s specificity and the narrative dimension of social engagement between infants and caregivers. (shrink)

Background Since the enactment of the euthanasia law in the Netherlands, there has been a lively public debate on assisted dying that may influence the way patients talk about euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide with their physicians and the way physicians experience the practice of EAS. Aim To show what developments physicians see in practice and how they perceive the influence of the public debate on the practice of EAS. Methods We conducted a secondary analysis of in-depth interviews with 28 Dutch (...) physicians who had experience with a complex case of EAS. Respondents were recruited both by the network of physicians working for SCEN as well as via a national questionnaire, wherein participating physicians could indicate their willingness to be interviewed. Results Three themes came up in analysing the interviews. First, the interviewed physicians experienced a change in what patients would expect from them: from a role as an involved caregiver to being the mere performer of EAS. Second, interviewees said that requests for EAS based on non-medical reasons came up more frequently and wondered if EAS was the right solution for these requests. Last, respondents had the impression that the standards of EAS are shifting and that the boundaries of the EAS regulation were stretched. Conclusions The perceived developments could make physicians less willing to consider a request for EAS. Our results also raise questions about the role of physicians and of EAS in society. (shrink)

This paper discusses the definition of argumentation as a means for persuading an audience on the acceptability of a thesis. It is argued that persuasion is a goal that relates more to the communicative situation, the type of interaction or the type of discourse, rather than to the argumentative nature of it. Departing from the analysis of a short conversational sequence between people who agree on an issue and nevertheless argue, I suggest that a definition of argumentation in terms of (...) persuasion fails to account for what people are actually doing in these situations. I propose instead that several functions may be assigned to argumentation when considering the context in which it is produced: a cognitive function (which helps participants to elaborate a position on the discussed issue), and an identifying function (which enables them to portray themselves through the expression and the justification of their opinion). In the case analyzed here, a third function to which the argumentative activity contributes can also be identified, namely the enhancing of the emotional tonality of the relationship between the participants. While it becomes clear from the discussion of this argumentative sequence that the participants do not seek to persuade each other or some third party, it is not suggested that argumentation never aims at persuading an audience, but rather that persuasion cannot be considered as a defining feature of argumentation. (shrink)

This literature review of professionalism was prepared by San Jose State University graduate student Marianne Allison as a research committee project of the Mass Communication and Society Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The project was prepared under the guidance of Professor Diana Stover Tillinghast. It reviews the literature on two approaches to professionalism in general and of the professionalism of journalists in particular: the ?structural?functionalist approach?; and the ?power approach.?; Traditional and recent discussions of the (...) nature of professionalism in occupational sociology are presented. Studies of the professionalism of journalists both in the United States and cross?culturally are critiqued. The paper suggests several areas of fruitful research, and contains an extensive bibliography. (shrink)

Multinational corporations (MNCs) have brought attention to the challenges of business ethics in intercultural settings. A lack of understanding regarding cultural pluralism in business ethics education has motivated some scholars to consider a broader lens, one that recognizes the influence of religion (Spalding and Franks 2012). Management awareness of the similarities and differences that stem from deeply held beliefs is essential, as unstated thoughts and feelings caninfluence starting assumptions, even before ethical decision-making processes begin. If deeply entrenched cultural traditions and (...) religious values remain implicit and/or misunderstood, collaborative efforts may be derailed due to an inadvertent lack of respect and understanding. Because many Westerners remain unfamiliar with Muslim-based beliefs, the authors advance business ethics education by offering an overview of business practices in the Middle East. A modeland exercise are presented as tools to promote awareness of cultural perspectives. This platform for understanding will help adult learners see how their personal origins can shape and influence management thought. (shrink)

Is the Miranda warning, which lets an accused know of the right to remain silent, more about procedural fairness or about the conventions of speech acts and silences? Do U.S. laws about Native Americans violate the preferred or traditional "silence" of the peoples whose religions and languages they aim to "protect" and "preserve"? In Just Silences, Marianne Constable draws on such examples to explore what is at stake in modern law: a potentially new silence as to justice.Grounding her claims (...) about modern law in rhetorical analyses of U.S. law and legal texts and locating those claims within the tradition of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault, Constable asks what we are to make of silences in modern law and justice. She shows how what she calls "sociolegal positivism" is more important than the natural law/positive law distinction for understanding modern law. Modern law is a social and sociological phenomenon, whose instrumental, power-oriented, sometimes violent nature raises serious doubts about the continued possibility of justice. She shows how particular views of language and speech are implicated in such law.But law--like language--has not always been positivist, empirical, or sociological, nor need it be. Constable examines possibilities of silence and proposes an alternative understanding of law--one that emerges in the calling, however silently, of words to justice. Profoundly insightful and fluently written, Just Silences suggests that justice today lies precariously in the silences of modern positive law. (shrink)

This study investigates whether addressees visually attend to speakers’ gestures in interaction and whether attention is modulated by changes in social setting and display size. We compare a live face-to-face setting to two video conditions. In all conditions, the face dominates as a fixation target and only a minority of gestures draw fixations. The social and size parameters affect gaze mainly when combined and in the opposite direction from the predicted with fewer gestures fixated on video than live. Gestural holds (...) and speakers’ gaze at their own gestures reliably attract addressees’ fixations in all conditions. The attraction force of holds is unaffected by changes in social and size parameters, suggesting a bottom-up response, whereas speaker-fixated gestures draw significantly less attention in both video conditions, suggesting a social effect for overt gaze-following and visual joint attention. The study provides and validates a video-based paradigm enabling further experimental but ecologically valid explorations of cross-modal information processing. (shrink)

In the advertising discourse of human genetic database projects, of genetic ancestry tracing companies, and in popular books on anthropological genetics, what I refer to as the anthropological gene and genome appear as documents of human history, by far surpassing the written record and oral history in scope and accuracy as archives of our past. How did macromolecules become "documents of human evolutionary history"? Historically, molecular anthropology, a term introduced by Emile Zuckerkandl in 1962 to characterize the study of primate (...) phylogeny and human evolution on the molecular level, asserted its claim to the privilege of interpretation regarding hominoid, hominid, and human phylogeny and evolution vis-à-vis other historical sciences such as evolutionary biology, physical anthropology, and paleoanthropology. This process will be discussed on the basis of three key conferences on primate classification and evolution that brought together exponents of the respective fields and that were held in approximately ten-years intervals between the early 1960s and the 1980s. I show how the anthropological gene and genome gained their status as the most fundamental, clean, and direct records of historical information, and how the prioritizing of these epistemic objects was part of a complex involving the objectivity of numbers, logic, and mathematics, the objectivity of machines and instruments, and the objectivity seen to reside in the epistemic objects themselves. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the distinction between epistemic privilege and epistemic authority is an important one for feminist epistemologists who are sympathetic to feminist standpoint theory, I argue that, while the first concept is elusive, the second is really the important one for a successful feminist standpoint project.

Exploratory studies employing volunteer subjects are especially vulnerable to race and class bias. This article illustrates how inattention to race and class as critical dimensions in women's lives can produce biased research samples and lead to false conclusions. It analyzes the race and class background of 200 women who volunteered to participate in an in-depth study of Black and White professional, managerial, and administrative women. Despite a multiplicity of methods used to solicit subjects, White women raised in middle-class families who (...) worked in male-dominated occupations were the most likely to volunteer, and White women were more than twice as likely to respond to media solicitations or letters. To recruit most Black subjects and address their concerns about participation required more labor-intensive strategies involving personal contact. The article discusses reasons for differential volunteering and ways to integrate race and class into qualitative research on women. (shrink)

References to publications written by women constitute a significantly larger proportion of citations in articles written by women than in articles written by men in the same subfields. Further, the difference between citation patterns of men and women authors increases as the proportion of women in the discipline decreases, showing that these women are doubly disadvantaged in accumulating citations. These results suggest that the problems of members of an out-group tend to be most serious when their numbers are small and (...) that they will find it increasingly easier to gain acceptance and recognition as their numbers increase. (shrink)

With disagreement, doubts, or ambiguous grounds in end–of-life decisions, doctors are advised to involve a clinical ethics committee. However, little has been published on doctors’ experiences with discussing an end-of-life decision in a CEC. As part of the quality assurance of this work, we wanted to find out if clinicians have benefited from discussing end-of-life decisions in CECs and why. We will disseminate some Norwegian doctors’ experiences when discussing end-of-life decisions in CECs, based on semi-structured interviews with fifteen Norwegian physicians (...) who had brought an end-of-life decision case to a CEC. Almost half of the cases involved conflicts with the patients’ relatives. In a majority of the cases, there was uncertainty about what would be the ethically preferable solution. Reasons for referring the case to the CEC were to get broader illumination of the case, to get perspective from people outside the team, to get advice, or to get moral backing on a decision already made. A great majority of the clinicians reported an overall positive experience with the CECs’ discussions. In cases where there was conflict, the clinicians reported less satisfaction with the CECs’ discussions. The study shows that most doctors who have used a CEC in an end-of-life decision find it useful to have ethical and/or legal aspects illuminated, and to have the dilemma scrutinized from a new perspective. A systematic discussion seems to be significant to the clinicians. (shrink)