Taking regular walks when living with Parkinson’s disease has beneficial effects on movement and quality of life. Yet, patients usually show reduced physical activity compared to healthy older adults. Using auditory stimulation such as music can facilitate walking but patients vary significantly in their response. An individualized approach adapting musical tempo to patients’ gait cadence, and capitalizing on these individual differences, is likely to provide a rewarding experience, increasing motivation for walk-in PD. We aim to evaluate the observance, safety, tolerance, (...) usability, and enjoyment of a new smartphone application. It was coupled with wearable sensors and delivered individualized musical stimulation for gait auto-rehabilitation at home. Forty-five patients with PD underwent a 1-month, outdoor, uncontrolled gait rehabilitation program, using the BeatWalk application. The music tempo was being aligned in real-time to patients’ gait cadence in a way that could foster an increase up to +10% of their spontaneous cadence. Open-label evaluation was based on BeatWalk use measures, questionnaires, and a six-minute walk test. Patients used the application 78.8% of the prescribed duration and enjoyed it throughout the program. The application was considered “easy to use” by 75% of the patients. Pain, fatigue, and falls did not increase. Fear of falling decreased and quality of life improved. After the program, patients improved their gait parameters in the six-minute walk test without musical stimulation. BeatWalk is an easy to use, safe, and enjoyable musical application for individualized gait rehabilitation in PD. It increases “walk for exercise” duration thanks to high observance.Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02647242. (shrink)

Moral or ethical questions are vital because they affect our daily lives: what is the best choice we can make, the best action to take in a given situation, and ultimately, the best way to live our lives? Health ethics has contributed to moving ethics toward a more experience-based and user-oriented theoretical and methodological stance but remains in our practice an incomplete lever for human development and flourishing. This context led us to envision and develop the stance of a “living (...) ethics”, described in this inaugural collective and programmatic paper as an effort to consolidate creative collaboration between a wide array of stakeholders. We engaged in a participatory discussion and collective writing process known as instrumentalist concept analysis. This process included initial local consultations, an exploratory literature review, the constitution of a working group of 21 co-authors, and 8 workshops supporting a collaborative thinking and writing process. First, a living ethics designates a stance attentive to human experience and the role played by morality in human existence. Second, a living ethics represents an ongoing effort to interrogate and scrutinize our moral experiences to facilitate adaptation of people and contexts. It promotes the active and inclusive engagement of both individuals and communities in envisioning and enacting scenarios which correspond to their flourishing as authentic ethical agents. Living ethics encourages meaningful participation of stakeholders because moral questions touch deeply upon who we are and who we want to be. We explain various aspects of a living ethics stance, including its theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as some barriers to its enactment based on the reflections resulting from the collaborative thinking and writing process. (shrink)

Medicine is often thought of as a science of the body, but it is also a science of data. In some contexts, it can even be asserted that data drive health. This article focuses on a key piece of data technology central to contemporary practices of medicine: the medical record. By situating the medical record in the perspective of its history, we inquire into how the kinds of data that are kept at sites of clinical encounter often depend on informational (...) requirements that originate well outside of the clinic, in particular in health insurance records systems. Although this dependency of today's electronic medical records on billing requirements is widely lamented by clinical providers, its history remains little studied. Following the archaeology of medicine developed by Michel Foucault in The Birth of the Clinic and expanding his methodology in light of more recent contributions to the field of media archaeology, this article excavates some of the underexplored technological conditions that help constitute today's electronic medical record. If in some contexts, it is true that data drive health, then an archaeology of medical records helps reveal how health insurance records often impact clinical care and, by extension, health and disease. (shrink)

This article is meant to stage an encounter, a kind of rendezvous, between Emmanuel Levinas and Simone de Beauvoir regarding how alterity seems to enable an ethical relation for Levinas while closing one for Beauvoir. I will argue that Beauvoir's reading of Levinas on “the other” is not a charitable one, and the ethical ambivalence in Levinas's notion of alterity can motivate the praxis Beauvoir seeks for undoing social forms of oppression. I will start with Beauvoir's interpretation of alterity as (...) “feminine otherness” in Levinas's ethics that, for her, originates in the violent perspective of male privilege. Then I will move to Levinas's response to this critique in a set of interviews with Philip Nemo, and to consideration of how a more charitable reading of alterity, understood as a sort of ambivalence in the structure of subjectivity, creates a close proximity between Levinas's and Beauvoir's ethics of action. I contend that both Beauvoir and Levinas respectively developed their ethics of action, either of ambiguity or of ambivalent alterity, in order to free thought from the absolute seriousness with which normative standards are held. (shrink)

Résumé — L’analyse de la condition ouvrière dévoile les conditions sociales de la constitution psychologique et morale de soi. Le système tayloriste est aliénant en ce qu’il anéantit la capacité de s’attribuer réalité et valeur, en forçant l’ouvrier à endosser des mobiles qu’il ne peut pourtant s’approprier car ils lui sont étrangers et humiliants, contraires à ses aspirations. Il dépend de l’extériorité – où il peut certes trouver des grandeurs de conventions mensongères, mais aussi ce qui lui est le plus (...) intérieur – pour comprendre les aspirations qui le constituent et rester en accord avec lui-même. Il ne faut donc pas opposer l’intériorité indépendante et l’extériorité, mais deux types de dépendance : à la force extérieure, qui brise le rapport à soi ; ou à la nécessité, intelligible, qui en permet l’instauration : il y a des conditions à l’autonomie morale, entendue comme capacité d’agir d’après l’intellection de la nécessité, seul mobile que le sujet peut s’approprier et qui l’élève. Cela permet de juger les sociétés, acceptables si leur fonctionnement est intelligible, si elles stimulent l’activité de compréhension, et offrent un milieu où sont exprimées les aspirations, la réalité et la valeur propres à l’individu.— The analysis of the working condition reveals the social conditions of the self psychological and moral constitution. The taylorist system is alienating since it annihilates the capacity to claim any reality and value, by forcing the workman to shoulder mobiles that he cannot afford because they are foreign and humiliating to him, opposites with his aspirations. Depending on the exteriority – where he can certainly find greatnesses of untrue conventions, but also what is most inner to him – he can understand the aspirations which constitute him and though remain in agreement with himself. One thus should not oppose independent interiority and the exteriority, but two types of dependence : on the external force, which breaks the relation with the self ; or on the necessity, intelligible, that allows the setting-up of it : there are conditions to moral autonomy, understood as the capacity to act according to the intellection of the necessity, sole mobile that the subject can take over and that emancipates him. That allows to evaluate the societies, acceptable if their way of processing is intelligible, if they stimulate the understanding activity, and offer a medium where the aspirations, reality and value that are peculiar to the individual are expressed. (shrink)

There seems to be an interesting difference between judging someone to be good and judging them to be kind. Both judgements are typically positive, but the latter seems to offer more description of the person: we get a slightly more specific sense of what they are like. Very general evaluative concepts are referred to as thin concepts, whilst more specific ones are termed thick concepts. Examples of the former include good, bad, right and wrong, whilst there are countless examples of (...) the latter: brave, rude, gracious, wicked, sympathetic, mean. Marking this distinction opens up some interesting questions. How do the descriptive and evaluative elements of thick concepts combine? Are these elements separable in the first place? Is there a sharp division between thin and thick concepts? Can we mark interesting further distinctions between how thick ethical concepts work and how their aesthetic and epistemic counterparts work? How, if at all, are thick and thin concepts related to reasons and action?.These questions, and others, touch on some of the deepest philosophical issues about the evaluative and normative. They force us to think hard about the place of the evaluative in a (seemingly) nonevaluative world, and they also raise fascinating issues about how language works.This volume of twelve papers explores the phenomenon of thin and thick concepts. They are accompanied by a large introduction that offers an overview of the current and historic field.Authors: Simon Blackburn, Jonathan Dancy, Timothy Chappell, Matti Eklund, Edward Harcourt and Alan Thomas, Simon Kirchin, Debbie Roberts, Michael Smith, Valerie Tiberius, Pekka Väyrynen Eric Wiland, and Nick Zangwill. (shrink)

In response to Paul Valéry's claim that “philosophy is poetry,” Simone Weil set out to examine the nature of philosophical thinking. She argues that it is above all concerned with value. In the course of her argument, she lays out the grammatical differences between thinking about value, and other epistemological endeavours. These differences mean that inconsistencies are not to be avoided in philosophy, and that philosophy is not a matter of system building. In the end, she also believes that thinking (...) philosophically requires one to possess the value of detachment, and hence a readiness to be transformed. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage à la mémoire de Simon Lantieri, qui fut Maître-Assistant puis Maître de Conférence au département de philosophie de l'Université de Provence de 1964 à 1986, est l'occasion de marcher sur les traces d'un philosophe du " voyage " qui aimait écrire que " le parcours est toujours vécu comme plus important que l'espace parcouru " et chez qui le voyage n'était jamais recherche d'exotisme mais dialogue, échange sans fin avec les êtres, les choses, en vue d'une connaissance (...) qui soit aussi jouissance et quête d'un mieux vivre. Vingt-quatre contributions, dues à des universitaires et chercheurs tant français qu'étrangers, venus d'horizons très divers, sont ici réunies. Du questionnement incessant de l'œuvre valéryenne aux interrogations épistémologiques, esthétiques, historiques et philosophiques sur quelques lieux marquants du parcours intellectuel de Simon Lantieri, toutes témoignent du rayonnement profond exercé par l'homme sur tous ceux qui l'ont connu et aimé. (shrink)

This book develops a comprehensive framework for ethics in the helping professions based on bioethicist Bernard Gert's theory of common morality. The prevailing model of ethics education is built upon adherence to codes of ethics applied largely through the use of decision-making trees. While a firm understanding of a professions code of ethics and all relevant laws is essential to responsible practice, this approach to teaching ethics excludes the opportunity for students to acquire a holistic, and grounded understanding of moral (...) action. The framework proposed in this text moves beyond codes of ethics, and allows students to develop a cohesive sense of ethical reasoning that both validates their moral intuition and challenges moral assumptions. The theory of a common morality uses a systematic, step-by-step approach that readers and practitioners can apply to all questions of moral action and behaviour. While there is no such thing as a single right answer to any ethical question, by following this approach practitioners can confidently eliminate the bad decisions, allowing them to feel more secure in their decision and practice. (shrink)

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next twenty (...) or thirty years.' Timothy Williamson, Grazer Philosophische Studien. (shrink)

The first study, along with edition and translation, of Chrysostomus Javelli’s epitome of the _Liber de bona fortuna_ (1531), a work permitting insight into the early modern understanding of fortune, fate, and free will.

I show that frequentism, as an explanation of probability in classical statistical mechanics, can be extended in a natural way to a decoherent quantum history space, the analogue of a classical phase space. The result is a form of finite frequentism, in which Gibbs’ concept of an infinite ensemble of gases is replaced by the quantum state expressed as a superposition of a finite number of decohering microstates. It is a form of finite and actual frequentism (as opposed to hypothetical (...) frequentism) insofar as all the microstates exist, in keeping with the decoherence-based Everett interpretation, and some versions of pilot-wave theory. (shrink)

or Browse over 3500 reviews in " by Valerie Hardcastle, Ph.D. " _Metapsychology_.

Here at last is a coherent, unintimidating introduction to the challenging and fascinating landscape of Western philosophy. Written expressly for "anyone who believes there are big questions out there, but does not know how to approach them," Think provides a sound framework for exploring the most basic themes of philosophy, and for understanding how major philosophers have tackled the questions that have pressed themselves most forcefully on human consciousness. Simon Blackburn, author of the best-selling Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, begins (...) by making a convincing case for the relevance of philosophy and goes on to give the reader a sense of how the great historical figures such as Plato, Hume, Kant, Descartes, and others have approached its central themes. In a lively and accessible style, Blackburn approaches the nature of human reflection and how we think, or can think, about knowledge, fate, ethics, identity, God, reason, and truth. Each chapter explains a major issue, and gives the reader a self-contained guide through the problems that the philosophers have studied. Because the text approaches these issues from the gound up, the untrained reader will emerge from its pages able to explore other philosophies with greater pleasure and understanding and be able to think--philosophically--for him or herself. Philosophy is often dismissed as a purely academic discipline with no relation to the "real" world non-philosophers are compelled to inhabit. Think dispels this myth and offers a springboard for all those who want to learn how the basic techniques of thinking shape virtually every aspect of our existence. (shrink)

Social problems such as racism, sexism, and inequality are often cited as structural rather than individual in nature. What does it mean to invoke a social structural explanation, and how do such explanations relate to individualistic ones? This article explores recent philosophical debates concerning the nature and usages of social structural explanation. I distinguish between two central kinds of social structural explanation: those that are autonomous from psychology, and those that are not. This distinction will help clarify the explanatory power (...) that each type of SSE has, points of convergence with methodological traditions such as critical theory and rational choice theory, and the difficulties that each type of SSE faces. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the view defended by Manuel Rebuschi, Maxime Amblard, and Michel Musiol that schizophrenia is not entirely irrational but that the rationality of disordered discourse can be accounted for from the first-person point of view—which, by their account, is not wholly introspective but is rather defined by a certain use of the charity principle, by contrast with what they call third-person approaches. I argue in favor of the idea of continuity between the two points of view: (...) ordinary and schizophrenic. On the basis of this claim, I propose a hypothesis for understanding what Rebuschi et al. call the interactional deficiency of schizophrenic conversations, and I make further exploratory suggestions of ways of understanding the so-called rationality of schizophrenic discourse, notably in relation to the complex notions of “context” and “meaning”. (shrink)

La philosophie de l’action wittgensteinienne, par sa clarification conceptuelle, permet une critique radicale de la métaphysique dualiste impliquée par la psychologie empirique. Si le psychologique est constitué concrètement par nos pratiques, une philosophie wittgensteinienne de l’action peut aider la psychologie à sortir des impasses dues à ses confusions sur la nature de son objet, en substituant à la notion réductrice de comportement le concept d’action.

In this paper, I explore the difference between expression of intention and expression of emotion through a discussion of a passage from G.E.M. Anscombe’s Intention, where she claims that expression of intention, unlike expression of emotion, is “purely conventional”. I argue that this claim is grounded on the fact that, although emotions can be described, expressions of emotion are not descriptions at all. Similarly, expressions of intention are not descriptions of a present state of mind but are rather the expression (...) of a special sort of foreknowledge of a purported action. They are, in this respect, distinct from expression of emotion, since they are a description of some future happening. Now, the centrally descriptive character of expressions of intention is what makes them “purely conventional”. But of course, Anscombe argues, one can have an intention without expressing it. And having an intention does not amount to having some description in mind. (shrink)

Most studies investigating the relationship between cultural constructs and ethical perception have focused on individual- and societal-level values without much attention to other type of cultural constructs such as social beliefs. In addition, we need to better understand how social beliefs are linked to ethical perception and the level of analysis at which social beliefs may best predict ethical perceptions. This research contributes to the cross-cultural ethical perception literature by examining the relationship of individual-level social cynicism belief, one of five (...) universally endorsed social beliefs, together with individual social dominance orientation and the perception of unethical behavior. By means of two studies, we examine these relationships across societies that significantly differ on societal-level social cynicism belief. Using 371 business students from Russia and the U.S. in Study 1 and 268 professionals from Portugal and the U.S. in Study 2, we found that individual-level social cynicism belief was positively associated with social dominance orientation. Social dominance orientation, in turn, mediated the relationship between individual social cynicism belief and the perception of unethical behavior. Although we found significant societal-level differences in social cynicism belief in both studies, the relationships between individual-level social cynicism belief, social dominance orientation, and the perception of unethical behavior were structurally equivalent across societies in both studies, suggesting that societal-level differences did not significantly affect these relationships. Implications for cross-cultural business ethics research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Feminist Political Theory provides both a wide-ranging history of western feminist thought and a lucid analysis of contemporary debates. It offers an accessible and thought-provoking account of complex theories, which it relates to 'real-life' issues such as sexual violence, political representation and the family. This timely new edition has been thoroughly updated to incorporate the most recent developments in feminism and feminist scholarship throughout, in particular taking into account the impact of black and postmodern feminist thought on feminist political theory.

Gravity and Grace was the first ever publication by the remarkable thinker and activist, Simone Weil. In it Gustave Thibon, the priest to whom she had entrusted her notebooks before her untimely death, compiled in one remarkable volume a compendium of her writings that have become a source of spiritual guidance and wisdom for countless individuals.

To what extent should we focus on implicit bias in order to eradicate persistent social injustice? Structural prioritizers argue that we should focus less on individual minds than on unjust social structures, while equal prioritizers think that both are equally important. This article introduces the framework of transactive memory into the debate to defend the equal priority view. The transactive memory framework helps us see how structure can emerge from individual interactions as an irreducibly social product. If this is right, (...) then debiasing interventions are structural interventions. One upshot is that the utility of the individual versus structural distinction is not apparent for the purposes of intervention. (shrink)

The number of distributors selling Fair Trade products is constantly increasing. What are their motivations to distribute Fair Trade products? How do they organise this distribution? Do they apply and communicate the Fair Trade values? This research, based on five case studies in Switzerland, aims at understanding and structuring the strategies and the managerial practices related to Fair Trade product distribution, as well as analysing if they denote an engagement with Fair Trade principles. The results show a high heterogeneity of (...) strategies and engagement. In general, strategies implemented by mainstream actors contribute to increase Fair Trade global sales but do not convey the transformative message of Fair Trade through their engagement. The latter is rather communicated through alternative channels. Problems and potential solutions to this issue are discussed. (shrink)

Sugar, pork, beer, corn, cider, scrapple, and hoppin' John all became staples in the diet of colonial America. The ways Americans cultivated and prepared food and the values they attributed to it played an important role in shaping the identity of the newborn nation. In A Revolution in Eating, James E. McWilliams presents a colorful and spirited tour of culinary attitudes, tastes, and techniques throughout colonial America. Confronted by strange new animals, plants, and landscapes, settlers in the colonies and West (...) Indies found new ways to produce food. Integrating their British and European tastes with the demands and bounty of the rugged American environment, early Americans developed a range of regional cuisines. From the kitchen tables of typical Puritan families to Iroquois longhouses in the backcountry and slave kitchens on southern plantations, McWilliams portrays the grand variety and inventiveness that characterized colonial cuisine. As colonial America grew, so did its palate, as interactions among European settlers, Native Americans, and African slaves created new dishes and attitudes about food. McWilliams considers how Indian corn, once thought by the colonists as "fit for swine," became a fixture in the colonial diet. He also examines the ways in which African slaves influenced West Indian and American southern cuisine. While a mania for all things British was a unifying feature of eighteenth-century cuisine, the colonies discovered a national beverage in domestically brewed beer, which came to symbolize solidarity and loyalty to the patriotic cause in the Revolutionary era. The beer and alcohol industry also instigated unprecedented trade among the colonies and further integrated colonial habits and tastes. Victory in the American Revolution initiated a "culinary declaration of independence," prompting the antimonarchical habits of simplicity, frugality, and frontier ruggedness to define American cuisine. McWilliams demonstrates that this was a shift not so much in new ingredients or cooking methods, as in the way Americans imbued food and cuisine with values that continue to shape American attitudes to this day. (shrink)

This is a book about the religious life of the Greeks from the eighth century BC to the fifth century AD, looked at in the context of a variety of different cities and periods. Simon Price does not describe some abstract and self-contained system of religion or myths but examines local practices and ideas in the light of general Greek ideas, relating them for example, to gender roles and to cultural and political life (including Attic tragedy and the trial (...) of Socrates). He also lays emphasis on the reactions to Greek religions of ancient thinkers - Greek, Roman, Jewish and Christian. The evidence drawn on is of all kinds: literary texts, which are translated throughout; inscriptions, including an appendix of newly translated Greek inscriptions; and archaeology, which is highlighted in the numerous illustrations. (shrink)

As of this writing, twenty‐one states have passed laws barring transgender youth‐athletes from competing on public‐school sports teams in accordance with their gender identity. Proponents of these regulations claim that transgender females in particular have inherent physiological advantages that threaten a “level playing field” for their cisgender competitors. Existing evidence is limited but does not support these restrictions. Gathering more robust data will require allowing transgender youth to compete (rather than preemptively barring them), but even if trans females are shown (...) to retain some advantage, this would not have greater moral significance than the many other “fair” physical and economic advantages found across sports. These regulations deprive transgender youth, an exceptionally vulnerable population, from the vast physical, mental, and social benefits of sports. While we advocate for transgender inclusion under our current, gender‐segregated model of sport, we propose changes to the overarching structure that would promote a more inclusive and fairer athletic environment. (shrink)

In this clear introduction to ethics Simon Blackburn tackles the major moral questions surrounding birth, death, happiness, desire and freedom, showing us how ...

Platonism, Ficino to Foucault explores some key chapters in the history Platonic philosophy from the revival of Plato in the fifteenth century to the new reading of Platonic dialogues promoted by the so-called ‘Critique of Modernity’.

Trust and Governance asks several important questions: Is trust really essential to good governance, or are strong laws more important? What leads people either to trust or to distrust government, and what makes officials decide to be trustworthy? Can too much trust render the public vulnerable to government corruption, and if so what safeguards are necessary? In approaching these questions, the contributors draw upon an abundance of resources to offer different perspectives on the role of trust in government. Enriched by (...) perspectives from political science, sociology, psychology, economics, history, and philosophy, Trust and Governance opens a new dialogue on the role of trust in the vital relationship between citizenry and government. (shrink)

Revelatory insights into the early life and thought of the preeminent French feminist philosopher Dating from her years as a philosophy student at the Sorbonne, this is the 1926-27 diary of the teenager who would become the famous French philosopher, author, and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir. Written years before her first meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre, these diaries reveal previously unknown details about her life and offer critical insights into her early philosophy and literary works. Presented here for the first time (...) in translation and fully annotated, the diary is completed by essays from Barbara Klaw and Margaret A. Simons that address its philosophical, historical and literary significance. The volume represents an invaluable resource for tracing the development of Beauvoir's independent thinking and influence on the world. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted that what we ought to do collectively does not imply anything about what each of us ought to do individually. According to this line of reasoning, if cooperating will make no difference to an outcome, then you are not morally required to do it. And if cooperating will be personally costly to you as well, this is an even stronger reason to not do it. However, this reasoning results in a self-defeating, yet entirely predictable outcome. If (...) everyone is rational, no one will cooperate, resulting in an aggregate outcome that is devastating for everyone. This dismal analysis explains why climate change and other collective action problems are so difficult to ameliorate. The goal of this paper is to provide a different, exploratory framework for thinking about individual reasons for action in collective action problems. I argue that the concept of commitment gives us a new perspective on collective action problems. Once we take the structure of commitment into account, this activates requirements of diachronic rationality that give individuals instrumental reasons to cooperate in collective action problems. (shrink)

Nietzsche famously attacked traditional morality, and propounded a controversial ethics of 'life-enhancement'. Simon May presents a radically new view of Nietzsche's thought, which is shown to be both revolutionary and conservative, and to have much to offer us today after the demise of old values and the 'death of God'.

(2014). Tin Men: Ethics, Cybernetics and the Importance of Soul. Journal of Military Ethics: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 3-19. doi: 10.1080/15027570.2014.908011.