The article examines the state and trends in the development of distance learning in the world in conditions of covid-19, identifies the main specific difference between distance education and other forms of education, and analyzes the state of the world market of educational services via the Internet. The important features and characteristics of distance learning, examples of its organization in higher educational institutions, as well as statistics on the development of distance learning in the world are presented. The main problematic (...) points on the way of introducing the distance education system in the context of a pandemic and the factors hindering the development of this promising form of education are identified. In addition, the article examines the psychological and pedagogical features of distance learning with the current conditions of the development of education at the university. The psychological characteristics of students and their learning difficulties have been determined. It also clarified the problems faced by teachers in the organization and implementation of distance learning. Practical recommendations for the support of distance learning for students have been developed. (shrink)

The doctor patient relationship starts with a story. Doctors' notes, a patient's chart, the recommendations of ethics committees and insurance justifications all hinge on written and verbal narrative interaction. The "practice" of narrative profoundly affects decision making, patient health and treatment and the everyday practice of medicine. In this edited collection, the contributors provide conceptual foundations, practical guidelines and theoretical considerations central to the practice of narrative ethics.

The purpose of this study was to illuminate the ethically difficult situations experienced by care providers working in a nursing home. Individual interviews using a narrative approach were conducted. A phenomenological-hermeneutic method developed for researching life experience was applied in the analysis. The findings showed that care providers experience ethical challenges in their everyday work. The informants in this study found the balance between the ideal, autonomy and dignity to be a daily problem. They defined the culture they work in (...) as not supportive. They also thought they were not being seen and heard in situations where they disagree with the basic values of the organization. The results are discussed in terms of Habermas’s understanding of modern society. Care settings for elderly people obviously present ethical challenges, particularly in the case of those suffering from dementia. The care provider participants in this study expressed frustration and feelings of powerlessness. It is possible to understand their experiences in terms of Habermas’s theory of modern society and the concept of the system’s colonization of the life world. (shrink)

In this timely and highly original merging of theory and practice, conflict photographer and critical theorist Rita Leistner applies Marshall McLuhan's semiotic theories of language, media, and technology to iPhone photographs taken during a military embed in Afghanistan. In a series of what Leistner calls iProbes—a portmanteau of iPhone and probe—Leistner reveals the face of war through the extensions of man. As digital photography becomes more ubiquitous, and as the phones we carry with us become more advanced, the process (...) of capturing images becomes more democratic and more spontaneous. Leistner's photos result from both access and impulse. Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan will appeal anyone with an interest in the conflicts in the Middle East, the seminal communications theorist, or iPhone apps and photography. (shrink)

'Manning successfully argues that theory and ethics should once again be reunited...thorough and provocative...'—THE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW.

This paper proposes a discussion about the construction of aesthetic values by children. The discussion focuses on the relationship between preschool children and popular music. It considers their preferences, their opinion about the music that they hear and dance to, and their conceptions of childhood that is built on the interface with mass media’s implicit concepts. At a first sight—or first “hearing”—one may have the impression that some of these songs do not belong to the universe of childhood. If one (...) looked for them in music shops or on websites that offer lyrics, chord notations or MP3 downloads, they certainly will not be found on shelves or links dedicated to “children’s music.” Even in the productions labeled “childish,” we find recordings of children’s groups miniaturizing famous adult groups, singing the same songs or remixes with childish patterns, assuming the same costumes and the same choreography. Many of those child groups were created for game shows and competitions inspired by the headhunters logic. Although these songs are not categorized as childish, children are in fact the target audience, and account for the largest number of viewers, a fact which suggests that we reflect seriously on the roles that children are taking on in the world of consumption. The central inquiry of this text is into the meanings that children attribute to this kind of musical production. This issue leads us to reflect on two other aspects of equal importance: the meaning that this type of production has in the field of art and, consequently, the meaning that art takes in the life of children. In the context of the culture industry and of an age of mechanical reproduction , exposure becomes not only a fundamental criterion of appraisal of art, but in fact comes to define its condition. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the claim that a corporation cannot be held to be morally responsible unless it is a person. First, I argue that this claim is ambigious. Person flags three different but related notions: metaphysical person, moral agent, moral person. I argue that, though one can make the claim that corporates are metaphysical persons, this claim is only marginally relevant to the question of corporate moral responsibility. The central question which must be answered in discussions of corporate (...) moral responsibility is whether corporations are moral agents or moral persons. I argue that, though we can make a case for saying corporations are moral agents, they are not moral persons, and hence, we can hold them responsible. In addition, we need not treat them the way we would be obligated to treat a moral person; we needn't have the same scruples about holding a corporation morally responsible as we would a moral person. (shrink)

Across two studies, a wide age range of participants was interviewed about the nature of death. All participants were living in rural Madagascar in a community where ancestral beliefs and practices are widespread. In Study 1, children (8–17 years) and adults (19–71 years) were asked whether bodily and mental processes continue after death. The death in question was presented in the context of a narrative that focused either on the corpse or on the ancestral practices associated with the afterlife. Participants (...) aged 8 years and older claimed that death brings an end to most bodily and mental processes. Nevertheless, particularly in the context of the religious narrative, they claimed that certain mental processes continue even after death. This assertion of an afterlife was more evident among adults than children, especially with respect to cognitive processes, such as knowing and remembering. In Study 2, 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds were asked similar questions in connection with the death of a bird and a person. Seven‐year‐olds consistently claimed that bodily and mental processes cease at death, whereas 5‐year‐olds were unsystematic in their replies. Together, the two studies replicate and extend findings obtained with Western children showing that, in the course of development, different conceptions of death are elaborated—a biological conception in which death terminates living processes and a religious conception in which death marks the beginning of a new form of spiritual existence. (shrink)

This essay collects four decades of my own reflections, as an anthropologist and feminist, on gender and coloniality across various contexts in Latin America. It also highlights the decolonial methodology and vocabulary that I have had to develop in my various roles as scholar, public intellectual, and expert witness over the years. Briefly, what I present here is a decolonial feminist perspective that argues for the existence of a patriarchal political order in communal societies before colonization. Yet, in my view, (...) precolonial gender has a dual structure that is plural in essence and differs markedly from the binary gender structure of colonial-modern societies, which works in terms of a One and its marginalized others. As I argue, the capturing and transformation of precolonial dual gender structures by the modern gender system exacerbates inequality, increases violence against women, and disempowers them politically. For that reason, I speak of “low-intensity” and “high-intensity” patriarchal systems. (shrink)

We consider the problem of moral disjunction in professional and business activities from a virtue-ethical perspective. Moral disjunction arises when the behavioral demands of a role conflict with personal morality; it is an important problem because most people in modern societies occupy several complex roles that can cause this clash to occur. We argue that moral disjunction, and the psychological mechanisms that people use to cope with it, are problematic because they make it hard to pursue virtue and to live (...) with integrity. We present role coadunation as a process with epistemic and behavioral aspects that people can use to resolve moral disjunction with integrity. When role coadunation is successful, it enables people to live virtuous lives of appropriate narrative disunity and to honor their identity-conferring commitments. We show how role coadunation can be facilitated by interpretive communities and discuss the emergence and ideal features of those communities. (shrink)

I have become curious about reciprocity within clinical practice. A vast topic that mobilizes considerations of money, knowledge, kinship, power, culture, and uses of the body, reciprocity is a strong means by which to achieve the egality required of just health care. Within health care, reciprocity might enable not only so‐called shared decision‐making and patient autonomy. It might open the door to mutual acknowledgement of the value of each participant's beliefs and habits. It might appear as a humble realization that (...) no one understands what health is and a concurrent welcoming curiosity about one another's conception of how the body and speech and mind work. From the intimate to the international levels of care, such forms of reciprocity may culminate in the radical and powerful state of reciprocal recognition.In this short essay, I will focus on one aspect of reciprocity in health care: the narrative and potentially reciprocal nature of attention in health care. A critical element in the development of therapeutic alliance, clinical accuracy, and effective practice, attention requires a donation of the self as a vessel into which can enter that which is perceived or, from the other side, a penetrating of that which is perceived so that one sees it from within its own vessel. (shrink)

If our sense of the past is inevitably shaped by the explanatory logic of narrative, then the stories that we create in turn reveal the inescapable presence and ...

Proposing that the interaction between reader and literature involves four “modes of textual engagement” — recognition, enchantment, knowledge, and shock — The Uses of Literature bridges the gap between literary theory and common-sense beliefs about why we read literature.

This paper presents an account of the moral boundaries of organizations. We define an organization’s moral boundary to encompass all of the actions for which it could be held morally responsible. Our theory requires us to view organizations as subjects that act in the world, rather than as objects that are used as tools; that is, it requires us to focus on corporate moral agency. We present a process model for determining whether a given action lies within an organization’s moral (...) boundary, and we discuss how an organization’s moral boundary can be created, destroyed, or modified as a result of deliberate choices by human and organizational actors. Our article contributes to the literature by conceptualizing the distinction between organizations as subjects and organizations as objects, and so clarifying the distinction between legal and moral boundaries; by recentering the discussion of boundaries on organizational actions rather than on contingent institutional features; and by adding nuance to the assignment of moral responsibility in complex organizational networks and in situations where one corporate moral agent depends upon another for its existence. (shrink)

The problem of the relation and difference between things and objects is one of the most decisive issues for the conception of the real. These words are usually used interchangeably – and not only in their everyday usage. There are some contemporary philosophical positions that consider almost “everything” as an object; on the other hand, there are proponents of a strict separation of objects and things. How did it happen that the concept of thing (res) and object (obiectum) not only (...) began to theoretically “compete” with each other but also sometimes came to represent differently conceived realities, and even occasionally came to represent an identical conception of reality? This article, on the one hand, discusses the philosophical strategies that reveal the difference between objects and things and enable such a conception of reality which takes into account the Kantian distinction between Realität and Wirklichkeit. On the other, it reconstructs Giorgio Agamben’s project of modal ontology. Agamben’s take on the question What is real? is oriented toward the modus of being and could be traced back to the recognition of the difference between objects and things as well as the “restoration of the life of things themselves.”. (shrink)