In 2004 a survey was conducted in the member states of the European Union designed to gain greater insight into the views on control strategies for foot and mouth disease, classical swine fever, and avian influenza with respect to the epidemiological, economic and social-ethical consequences of each of these animal diseases. This article presents the results of the social-ethical survey. A selection of stakeholders from each member state was asked to prioritize issues for the prevention and control of these diseases. (...) A majority of stakeholders chose preventive measures as the preferred issue. An analysis was done to determine whether there were differences in views expressed by stakeholders from member states with a history of recent epidemics and ones without such a history, and whether there were regional differences. There were no differences between member states with or without a history of recent epidemics. There were indeed regional differences between the priority orders from Northern and Southern Europe on the one hand, and from Eastern Europe on the other. (shrink)

This article seeks to shed light on civil commitment in the context of the opioid crisis, to sketch the existing legal landscape surrounding civil commitment, and to illustrate the relevant medical, ethical, and legal concerns that policymakers must take into account as they struggle to find appropriate responses to the crisis.

Background: Demand for organisational ethics capacity is growing in health organisations, particularly among managers. The role of clinical ethicists in, and perspective on, organisational ethics has not been well described or documented in the literature. Objective: To describe clinical ethicists’ perspectives on organisational ethics issues in their hospitals, their institutional role in relation to organisational ethics, and their perceived effectiveness in helping to address organisational ethics issues. Design and Setting: Qualitative case study involving semi-structured interviews with 18 clinical ethicists across (...) 13 health organisations in Toronto, Canada. Results: From the clinical ethicists’ perspective, the most pressing organisational ethics issues in their organisations are: resource allocation, staff moral distress linked to the organisation’s moral climate, conflicts of interest, and clinical issues with a significant organisational dimension. Clinical ethicists were consulted in particular on issues related to staff moral distress and clinical issues with an organisational dimension. Some ethicists described being increasingly consulted on resource allocation, conflicts of interest, and other corporate decisions. Many clinical ethicists felt they lacked sufficient knowledge and understanding of organisational decision-making processes, training in organisational ethics, and access to organisational ethics tools to deal effectively with the increasing demand for organisational ethics support. Conclusion: Growing demand for organisational ethics expertise in healthcare institutions is reshaping the role of clinical ethicists. Effectiveness in organisational ethics entails a re-evaluation of clinical ethics training to include capacity building in organisational ethics and organisational decision-making processes as a complement to traditional clinical ethics education. (shrink)

Objectives: The N2b is an event-related potential component thought to index higher-order executive function. While the impact of concussion on executive functioning is frequently discussed in the literature, limited research has been done on the role of N2b in evaluating executive functioning in patients with concussion. The aims of this review are to consolidate an understanding of the cognitive functions reflected by the N2b and to account for discrepancies in literature findings regarding the N2b and concussion.Methods: A scoping review was (...) conducted on studies that used the N2b to measure cognitive functioning in healthy control populations, as well as in people with concussions.Results: Sixty-six articles that met inclusion criteria demonstrated that the N2b effectively represents stimulus-response conflict management, response selection, and response inhibition. However, the 19 included articles investigating head injury found widely varied results: some studies found the amplitude of the N2b to be increased in the concussion group, while others found it to be decreased or unchanged.Conclusion: Based on the available evidence, differences in the amplitude of the N2b have been linked to response selection, conflict, and inhibition deficits in concussion. However, due to large variations in methodology across studies, findings about the directionality of this effect remain inconclusive. The results of this review suggest that future research should be conducted with greater standardization and consistency. (shrink)

In addition to probabilities of monetary gains and losses, personality traits, socio-economic factors, and specific contexts such as emotions and framing influence financial risk taking. Here, we investigated the effects of joyful, neutral, and sad mood states on participants’ risk-taking behaviour in a simple task with safe and risky options. We also analysed the effect of framing on risk taking. In different trials, a safe option was framed in terms of either financial gains or losses. Moreover, we investigated the effects (...) of emotional contagion and sensation-seeking personality traits on risk taking in this task. We did not observe a significant effect of induced moods on risk taking. Sad mood resulted in a slight non-significant trend of risk aversion compared to a neutral mood. Our results partially replicate previous findings regarding the presence of the framing effect. As a novel finding, we observed that participants with a low emotional contagion score demonstrated increased risk aversion during a sad mood and a similar trend at the edge of significance was present in high sensation seekers. Overall, our results highlight the importance of taking into account personality traits of experimental participants in financial risk-taking studies. (shrink)

MARKOVIČ, P. : Slovenský literárny klasicizmus a preromantizmus. Prešov : Vydavateľstvo Prešovskej univerzity v Prešove, 144 s. ISBN 978-80-555-2496-2.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nina Pelikan Straus RETHINKING FEMINIST HUMANISM Important challenges to feminist philosophy have been launched by Martha Nussbaum and Carol Gilligan. Taken together, Nussbaum 's TL· Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Phüosophy (1986)1 and Gilligan's In a Different Voice (1982)2 direct us to die consequences of feminism's critique of humanism, supplemented recendy by attempts at a union with Foucaultian genealogy.3 Each of these texts (...) provokes questions about the reliance on deconstructive theories, like those of Michel Foucault, in contemporary feminist discourse. In this essay I will indicate some of the limitations ofthat union and contrast it to the expanding possibilities generated for feminist thought by a revised discourse of modern humanism. The desirability of this revision will appear more clearly once we take up the quarrel ofsome feminists with the humanist tradition and realize that there is no satisfactory single account of what humanism means. Nussbaum's revision of humanism, for example, is based on a reexamination of human cognition, one which includes emotional responsiveness, traditionally associated with women, as a source of ethical knowledge. Gilligan's humanist revision suggests another variety of humanism, grounded in the claim that Freudian psychology's descriptions of the cognitive developments of men and women fail to account for the different approaches to ethical dilemmas expressed by women's voices. Nussbaum's humanism has classical roots in Plato, Aristode, and die Greek tragedies, while Gilligan's humanism is derived from modern psychoanalysis. Such differences in themselves illustrate humanism's long and pluralistic history. Although Nussbaum does not describe herself as a modern feminist and Gilligan does, each of their texts Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 284-303 Nina Pelikan Straus285 suggests how, respectively, a woman scholar's response to classical Greek tragedy and philosophy and a woman psychologist's approach to psychoanalysis offer reinterpretations of both feminism and humanism. Parallels between Nussbaum's and Gilligan's contributions to philosophy and psychology suggestan innovative study ofvoices, stories, and images which employ woman as a vehicle for a new approach to etiiics.4 Read togedier, they indicate ways that feminists can redescribe the humanist tradition without either succumbing to the essentialist doctrine which Foucault exposes as oppressive in its consequences for women, or by being seduced by Foucault's antihumanism itself. Nussbaum and Gilligan both expose what Annette Baier calls "a striking feature ofmodern moralphilosophizing"—namely, its "avoidance of the concept of love"5—and each suggests how that feature can be transformed. As linked meditations on unsolved problems of our own way of life, Nussbaum's project is to correct the "notoriously crude and hasty" Aristotelian "investigation of the potential of women for excellence " (FG, p. 471), while Gilligan's work is a response to the dire consequences of Freud's influential notion that "women's experience of sexuality and relationships" is a "dark continent."6 One outcome of feminism's use of Foucault's critique of humanism is the possibilityofits settling into a new orthodoxy or politically "correct" position used to measure degrees of feminist commitment. A better outcome is that feminist discourses which have assimilated Foucault's analysis of power may help to combat this threat.7 The threat is taken to be orthodoxy, and Foucault's discourse is characterized as a guarantee against orthodoxy's temptations. A more problematic consequence of die Foucaultian influence, however, is a devaluation of liberal feminist discourses about "human nature" in favor ofthose which follow Foucault by (in Foucault's words) changing the subject and asking instead, "How has the concept of human nature functioned in our society?"8 This change in emphasis depends upon a description of knowledge as inseparable from power—with Foucault's own texts as the most powerful examples of the emphasis. Michel Foucault thus becomes the Strong Poet whom some feminists incorporate or resist in their writings.9 This incorporation can circumscribe their approaches to feminist problems in ways that suggest traditional female bondages to founding-father texts from which Foucaultian discourse is supposed to liberate them. 286Philosophy and Literature The problem is then one oftemptation. Exercising power is pleasurable, and if we stop with the pleasure that assimilating Foucault yields, we... (shrink)

There is a question over whether or not Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), contended that the rich devise structures of authority (especially civil government) to protect their wealth. At issue is whether significant, private wealth can exist prior to forms of authority. Smith seems to me not to have thought so. It is true that he asserts that, "antecedent to any civil institutions", superiority of fortune can "give some men superiority over the greater part of their brethren" (...) (p.670). However, I argue that there is strong reason not to take the word "antecedent" here in a temporal sense. In numerous and important examples Smith depicts the relationship between wealth and authority as non-empirical (or at least not simply empirical). This connection flows naturally from Smith's epoch-making redefinition of wealth as the productive capacity which a society can command within its given social and political framework. Appreciating this point leads one to see Smith as developing an early form of historical materialism. (shrink)

This is part 1 of 6 of the dossier What Do We Talk about when We Talk about Queer Death?, edited by M. Petricola. The contributions collected in this article sit at the crossroads between thanatology and queer theory and tackle questions such as: how can we define queer death studies as a research field? How can queer death studies problematize and rethink the life-death binary? Which notions and hermeneutic tools could be borrowed from other disciplines in order to better (...) define queer death studies? The present article includes the following contributions: – MacCormack P., What does queer death studies mean?; – Radomska M., On queering death studies; – Lykke N., Death as vibrancy; – Hillerup Hansen I., What concreteness will do to resolve the uncertain; – Olson P., Queer objectivity as a response to denials of death; – Manganas N., The queer lack of a chthonic instinct. (shrink)

The Mirror Game (MG) is a common exercise in dance/movement therapy and drama therapy. It is used to promote participants’ ability to enter and remain in a state of togetherness. In spite of the wide use of the MG by practitioners, it is only recently that scientists begun to use the MG in research, examining its correlates, validity and reliability. This study joins this effort by reporting on the identification of scale items to describe the nonverbal behaviour expressed during the (...) MG and its correlation to measures of attachment. Thus, we explored the application of the MG as a tool for assessing the embodiment of attachment in adulthood. Forty-eight participants (22 females, mean age = 33.2) played the MG with the same gender-matched expert players. All MG were videotaped. In addition, participants were evaluated on two central measurements of attachment in adulthood: The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and the Experience in Close Relationship questionnaire (ECR). To analyse the data, we developed the “mirror game scale” that coded the nonverbal behavior during the movement interaction, using 19 parameters. The sub-scales were reduced using factor analysis into two dimensions referred to as “together” and “free”. The free factor was significantly correlated to both measurements of attachment: Participants classified as having secure attachment on the AAI, received higher scores on the MG free factor than participants classified as insecure (t (46) = 7.858, p =.000). Participants who were high on the avoidance dimension on the ECR, were low on the MG free factor (r (48) =-.-285, p =.007). This is the first study to examine the MG as it is used by practitioners and its correlation to highly standardized measures. This exploratory study may be considered as part of the first steps of exploring the MG as a standardized assessment tool. The advantages of the MG as a simple, non-verbal movement interaction demonstrate some of the strengths of dance/movement and drama therapy practice. (shrink)

This is part 1 of 6 of the dossier What Do We Talk about when We Talk about Queer Death?, edited by M. Petricola. The contributions collected in this article sit at the crossroads between thanatology and queer theory and tackle questions such as: how can we define queer death studies as a research field? How can queer death studies problematize and rethink the life-death binary? Which notions and hermeneutic tools could be borrowed from other disciplines in order to better (...) define queer death studies? The present article includes the following contributions: – MacCormack P., What does queer death studies mean?; – Radomska M., On queering death studies; – Lykke N., Death as vibrancy; – Hillerup Hansen I., What concreteness will do to resolve the uncertain; – Olson P., Queer objectivity as a response to denials of death; – Manganas N., The queer lack of a chthonic instinct. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper conceptualizes the interaction of three discursive paths: the history of science, scientific education, and the debate about the Filipinization of scientific education. The paper analyzes the form of scientific revolution in the field of medicine which is different from its counterparts in the fields of astronomy and physics; as such, the paper contributes a particular narrative of that provides proof that it is possible to tackle scientific issues using the Filipino language as medium. It assumes that the (...) Filipino language should be used in the teaching of science and in scientific research. The scientific revolution in medicine is seen as the eventual downfall of Hippocrates and Galen and the rise of the theories of Paracelsus, Vesalius, Fracastoro , and Harvey. (shrink)

William Connolly presents a lucid and concise defense of the thesis of "essentially contested concepts" that can well be read as a general introduction to political theory, as well as for its challenge to the prevailing understanding of political discourse. In Connolly's view, the language of politics is not a neutral medium that conveys ideas independently formed but an institutionalized structure of meanings that channels political thought and action in certain directions. In the new preface he pursues the (...) implications of this perspective for a distinctive conception of ethics and democracy. (shrink)

In Rethinking Language Arts: Passion and Practice, Second Edition , author Nina Zaragoza uses the form of letters to her students to engage pre-service teachers in reevaluating teaching practices. Zaragoza discusses and explains the need for teachers to be decision-makers, reflective thinkers, political beings, and agents of social change in order to create a positive and inclusive classroom setting. This book is both a critical text that deconstructs the way language arts are traditionally taught in our schools as well (...) as a visionary text with clear, no-nonsense directions on how to provide much needed change in our schools. (shrink)

Indigenous people (IP) have faced multiple difficulties in education. Indigenous students often do worse academically than non-indigenous student peers. These stated the low enrollment rates showed a dropout rate, absenteeism, repetition rates, literacy rate, and thus the educational outcomes, with retention and completion being two significant issues. Further, this study explores the lived experiences and challenges faced by indigenous high school students amidst the new normal education. Employing the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the findings of this study were: (1) The reason (...) why IP learners were not satisfied with their performance is that they cannot understand some of the lessons due to the language barrier. (2) IP learners are committed to finishing their studies, however, some of the students lack resources for studying, like gadgets for researching, and they do not have cell phones. And the other students may have gadgets or cellphones, but their internet connection is low or not accessible in some places at their location. (shrink)

Vibrant Death links philosophy and poetry-based, corpo-affectively grounded knowledge seeking. It offers a radically new materialist theory of death, critically moving the philosophical argument beyond Christian and secular-mechanistic understandings. The book's ethico-political figuration of vibrant death is shaped through a pluriversal conversation between Deleuzean philosophy, neo-vitalist materialism and the spiritual materialism of decolonial, queerfeminist poet and scholar Gloria Anzaldua. The book's posthuman deexceptionalizing of human death unfurls together with a collection of poetry, and autobiographical stories. They are analysed through the (...) lens of a posthuman, queerfeminist revision of the method of autophenomenography (phenomenological analysis of autobiographical material). Nina Lykke explores the speaking position of a mourning, queerfeminine "I", who contemplates the relationship with her dead beloved lesbian life partner. She reflects on her enactment of processes of co-becoming with the phenomenal and material traces of the deceased body, and the new assemblages with which it has merged through death's material metamorphoses: becoming-ashes through cremation, and becoming-mixed-with-algae-sand when the ashes were scattered across a seabed made of fiftyfive million-year-old, fossilized algae. It is argued that the mourning "I"'s intimate bodily empathizing (theorized as symphysizing) with her deceased, queermasculine beloved life partner facilitates the processes of vitalist-material and spiritual-material co-becoming, and the rethinking of death from a new and different perspective than that of the sovereign, philosophical subject. (shrink)

A long tradition of psychological research has explored the distinction between characteristics that are part of the self and those that lie outside of it. Recently, a surge of research has begun examining a further distinction. Even among characteristics that are internal to the self, people pick out a subset as belonging to the true self. These factors are judged as making people who they really are, deep down. In this paper, we introduce the concept of the true self and (...) identify features that distinguish people’s understanding of the true self from their understanding of the self more generally. In particular, we consider recent findings that the true self is perceived as positive and moral, and that this tendency is actor-observer invariant and cross-culturally stable. We then explore possible explanations for these findings and discuss their implications for a variety of issues in psychology. (shrink)

I present an argument for the view that laws ground their instances. I then outline two important consequences that follow if we accept the conclusion of this argument. First, the claim that laws ground their instances threatens to undermine a prominent recent attempt to make sense of the explanatory power of Humean laws by distinguishing between metaphysical and scientific explanation. And second, the claim that laws ground their instances gives rise to a novel argument against the view that grounding relations (...) are metaphysically necessary. (shrink)

We welcome Ms Smajdor’s critique into our investigations of expected future tax gains to the state from children conceived by in vitro fertilisation .1 To better inform the JME readership, we wish to correct some misinterpretations of our research by Smajdor, and to highlight some weaknesses of current IVF funding policies.Our investigation sought to establish the long-term net tax contribution from an IVF-conceived child, assuming that the child was average in every respect .2 We conducted this analysis on the basis (...) that IVF, and other assisted reproductive treatments, are unique among all medical interventions—unique in the sense that their success leads to the creation of human life; a life that would not have existed had the technology not been available and accessible to couples willing to undergo treatment. Hence, this method provides us with an opportunity to explore lost tax revenue to the state resulting from children that have not been born due to limited public access to IVF treatments currently observed in the UK and many other countries.In our investigations, the costs of IVF were treated as an investment in human capital with future long-term cost and revenue implications for the state. Our evaluation ignored the many humanistic reasons for offering IVF treatment to infertile couples and concentrated solely on the possible economic benefits.3 The perspective of the analysis was that of the state; hence …. (shrink)

Reflection Principles are commonly thought to produce only strong axioms of infinity consistent with V = L. It would be desirable to have some notion of strong reflection to remedy this, and we have proposed Global Reflection Principles based on a somewhat Cantorian view of the universe. Such principles justify the kind of cardinals needed for, inter alia , Woodin’s Ω-Logic.

In her paper, “The Non-Governing Conception of Laws,” Helen Beebee argues that it is not a conceptual truth that laws of nature govern, and thus that one need not insist on a metaphysical account of laws that makes sense of their governing role. I agree with the first point but not the second. Although it is not a conceptual truth, the fact that laws govern follows straightforwardly from an important (though under-appreciated) principle of scientific theory choice combined with a highly (...) plausible claim about the connection between scientific theory choice and theory choice in metaphysics. I present and defend this argument and then show how the resulting understanding of governance gives rise to an especially strong version of recent explanatory circularity arguments against Humeanism about laws of nature. Finally, I present three options for a further understanding of the governance relation that are compatible with my argument. (shrink)

Cartwright (Synthese 121(1/2):3–27, 1999a; The dappled world, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999b) attacked the view that causal relations conform to the Markov condition by providing a counterexample in which a common cause does not screen off its effects: the prominent chemical factory. In this paper we suggest a new way to handle counterexamples to Markov causation such as the chemical factory. We argue that Cartwright’s as well as similar scenarios feature a certain kind of non-causal dependence that kicks in once (...) the common cause occurs. We then develop a representation of this specific kind of non-causal dependence that allows for modeling the problematic scenarios in such a way that the Markov condition is not violated anymore. (shrink)

Philosophers and scientists both ask questions about what the world is like. How do these fields interact with one another? How should they? Naturalism Beyond the Limits of Science investigates an approach to these questions called methodological naturalism. According to methodological naturalism, when coming up with theories about what the world is like, philosophers should, whenever possible, make use of the same methodology that is deployed by scientists. Although many contemporary philosophers have implicit commitments that lead straightforwardly to methodological naturalism, (...) few have a clear understanding of how widespread and disruptive methodological naturalism promises to be for the field. By way of a series of case studies involving laws of nature, composition, time and modality, and drawing on historical and contemporary scientific developments including the discovery of the neutrino, the introduction of dark energy, and the advent of relativity theory, this book demonstrates the ways in which scientists rely on extra-empirical reasoning and how that very same extra-empirical reasoning can yield surprising results when applied to philosophical debates. Along the way, Nina Emery's investigation illuminates the complex relationship between philosophy and the sciences, and makes the case that philosophers and scientists alike would benefit from a greater understanding of the connections between the two fields. (shrink)

In recent years, several countries have enacted guidelines and/or mandatory laws to increase the presence of women on the boards of companies. Through these regulatory interventions, the aim is to eradicate the social and labor grievances that women have traditionally experienced and which has relegated them to smaller-scale jobs. Nevertheless, and despite the advances achieved, the female representation in the boardroom remains far from the desired levels. In this context, it is now necessary to enhance the advantages of board gender (...) diversity from both ethical and economic points of view. This article examines the relation between board gender diversity and economic results in Spain: the second country in the world to legally require gender quotas in boardrooms and historically characterized by a minimal female participation in the workforce. Based on a sample of 125 non-financial firms listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2009, our findings show that in the period analyzed the increase of the number of women on boards was over 98 %. This suggests that compulsory legislation offers an efficient framework to execute the recommendation of Spanish codes of good governance by means of the increase in the number of women in the boards of firms. Furthermore, we find that the increase in the number of women on the boards is positively related to higher economic results. Therefore, both results suggest that gender diversity in boardrooms should be incremented, mandatory laws being a key factor to do so. (shrink)

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy_the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to the (...) literature on environmental philosophy. (shrink)