Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 3, Page 290-297, March 2022.

BackgroundNon-violent resistance which has involved healthcare workers has been instrumental in securing a number of health-related gains and a force in opposing threats to health. Despite this, we...

Introduction: Non-violent resistance, carried out by healthcare workers, has been a common phenomenon. Despite this and despite the issues this type of action raises, we know little about the healthcare workers who engage in this action and their perspectives about its justification. This exploratory study sought to address this gap, examining these fundamental questions amongst a sample of healthcare workers who have engaged in acts of resistance, exploring their understanding of non-violent resistance, its justification and the barriers they faced in (...) engaging in such action. Methods: Participants were recruited through Medact's ( https://www.medact.org/ ) member database and directed to an online survey hosted on Qualtrics. While participants were unlikely to be representative of the broader UK healthcare community, participants were in an advantageous position to comment on non-violent resistance. Descriptive quantitative analysis and a content analysis were conducted. Results: The majority of participants felt that non-violent resistance could be justified dependent on its cause and/or the action in question. Within this, most felt that if action were non-violent, that if it didn't harm patients and that if the issue in question had to do with health being compromised, action was often justified. A number of others framed their justification as being a right or duty to engage in non-violent resistance. In relation to barriers to engaging in non-violent resistance, these fell into three categories: personal, professional and broader concerns related to society or the general culture found in healthcare. Within these, time and concerns about registration or the consequences of engaging in action were cited as the greatest barriers. Conclusions: These results suggest that healthcare workers who regularly engage in non-violent action carefully thought through their actions, acknowledging the diversity of actions and issues that could be challenged, for many patient care remained a primary concern. There is a need for clarity from regulatory bodies and in particular the need for dialogue between healthcare bodies and healthcare workers who continue to engage in acts of non-violent resistance. (shrink)

Resistance is a concept understudied in the context of health and healthcare. This is in part because visible forms of social protest are sometimes understood as incongruent with professional identity, leading healthcare workers to separate their visible actions from their working life. Resistance takes many forms, however, and focusing exclusively on the visible means more subtle forms of everyday resistance are likely to be missed. The overarching aim of this study was to explore how resistance was enacted within the workplace (...) amongst a sample of twelve healthcare workers, based in the United Kingdom; exploring the forms that such action took and how this intersected with health and healthcare. In depth-interviews were conducted and results were analysed utilizing Lilja’s framework ( 2022 ). Our findings suggest that resistance took a number of forms, from more direct confrontational acts, to those which sought to avoid power or which sought to create alternative or prefigurative practices or norms. These findings speak to the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions of resistance, as carried out by healthcare workers in the workplace. While many acts had clear political motives, with issues like climate change in mind for example, participants also described how the act of providing care itself could be an act of resistance. While saying something about our participants, this also said something about the healthcare systems in which they worked. These findings also raise a range of normative issues. Perhaps needless to say, there appears to be substantial scope to expand and interrogate our findings and apply the idea of resistance to health and healthcare. (shrink)

There are strong reasons for assuming that Thomas Aquinas conceived of God’s existence in terms of logical necessity in a broad sense. Yet this seems to stand in some tension with the fact that he excludes the possibility of a priori arguments for the existence of God. One apparently attractive way of handling this tension is to use a two-dimensional framework inspired by Saul Kripke. Against this, this article demonstrates that a Kripke-inspired framework is inapt in this context because it (...) allows for the conceivability of God’s non-existence, thereby rendering his non-existence possible in some important, and for Aquinas inacceptable, sense. Drawing on David Chalmers, the article submits that the existence of God can only be necessary if God’s non-existence is ideally inconceivable. On the basis of Aquinas’ own understanding of God, however, the article argues further that God’s non-existence in fact is inconceivable. The alleged conceivability of God’s non-existence is ultimately due to our (human) inability to grasp the nature of being, whereas creatures who grasp the nature of being are unable to conceive of God’s non-existence. This removes God’s non-existence from the realm of relevant conceivability and, therefore, from the range of possible worlds. (shrink)

Walker Percy's use of the terms Umwelt and Welt as well as his separation of events into dyadic and triadic ones, where the latter involve human beings, is brought to bear on the relationship between science and religion with the upshot being that science is not equipped to really understand or explain triadic entities.

We study countable universes similar to a free action of a group G. It turns out that this is equivalent to the study of free semi-actions of G, with two universes being transformable iff one corresponding free semi-action can be obtained from the other by a finite alteration. In the case of a free group G (in finitely many or countably many generators), a classification is given.

This book examines how the semantics and metaphysics of disagreement affect the epistemology of disagreement. It thus broadens the philosophical discourse by relating the epistemological discussion of (peer) disagreement to inquiries into the nature of disagreement and disagreeing. By doing this, it paints a new picture of the epistemological situation evoked by disagreement: To the same extent that an interpersonal dispute undermines the justification of the disputing persons’ beliefs, it also presents an obstacle to interpersonal understanding. This follows from the (...) nature of meaning, belief and communication, rightly understood. In demonstrating the relevance of this to philosophical reflections on peer disagreement and resolution of disagreement, the book addresses arguably the most contentious kind of disagreement, namely, religious disagreement. It shows that apparent disagreement in religion suggests that the dialog partners might not have reached sufficient mutual understanding. This has important ramifications for the rationally right conduct in the face of religious disagreement, and for the possibility of rational resolution of religious disputes. (shrink)

A core activity promoted by the value sensitive design approach is the iterative and integrative performance of conceptual, empirical and technical investigations. In this essay, I will contribute and reflect on a method for conceptual mapping through which such tripartite investigations can be supported in ways that are open to stakeholder participation.

Swedish welfare has for decades served as a role model foruniversalistic welfare. When the economic recession hit Swedish economyin the beginning of the 1990s, a period of more than 50 years ofcontinuous expansion and reforms in the welfare sector came to an end.Summing up the past decade, we can see that the economic downturnenforced rationing measures in most parts of the welfare state, althoughmost of this took place in the beginning of the decade. Today, most ofthe retrenchment has stopped and (...) in some areas we can see tendencies ofrestoration – but more so in financial benefits than in the caringsectors. In the article this process is discussed as a process ofreallocation where general principles of solidarity become manifest.Various levels of decision making are discussed within the context ofsocio-political action. Current transitions in Swedish health care aredescribed with respect to coverage rates, content, marketisation anddistribution. Basic principles of distribution are highlighted in orderto analyse the meaning of social solidarity in a concrete allocativesetting. The significance of popular opinion – it's shifts anddeterminants – is also considered. The article concludes with adiscussion of how the (once salient) features of universalism inwelfare and health care provision have been affected by the developmentsin the past decade in Sweden. (shrink)

C. S. Peirce posits that the self is known only through negation—by the knower finding out that he or she is wrong. Even more importantly he considers a man to be nothing more than a sign. This is existentially inadequate. In this chapter, Stacey Ake shows the shortcomings of Peirce’s Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness in creating human identity by utilizing and developing Walker Percy’s notion of Fourthness in order to show that there is a positive way to create identity and, (...) more importantly, community. (shrink)

Roland Allen emerged as an independent missionary and theologian within the Anglican Mission to North China from 1895 to 1903. For the rest of his life, he continued as a freelance missiological writer, debater and priest for some time connected to the interdenominational World Dominion Press. As a theologian and churchman, with a genuine incarnational ecclesiology as his foundation, he combined a Catholic view of Anglicanism with a deliberate concern for local Christian initiatives and the spontaneous expansion of local Christian (...) communities within their own environment. Basic in his ecclesiology was his view of the Church as a sacramental body, a network of local fellowships celebrating the Sacraments. Therefore, these nurtured local Christian ‘Churches’ are to be regarded and treated as the proper agents of Evangelization. In order to implement this understanding of mission he encouraged experiments with ordination of local voluntary clergy to open up the access to a sacramental life, and, thereby, promoting growth and expansion in mission. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to present mathematical logic to students who are interested in what this field is but have no intention of specializing in it. The point of view is to treat logic on an equal footing to any other topic in the mathematical curriculum. The book starts with a presentation of naive set theory, the theory of sets that mathematicians use on a daily basis. Each subsequent chapter presents one of the main areas of mathematical logic: (...) first order logic and formal proofs, model theory, recursion theory, Gödel's incompleteness theorem, and, finally, the axiomatic set theory. Each chapter includes several interesting highlights—outside of logic when possible—either in the main text, or as exercises or appendices. Exercises are an essential component of the book, and a good number of them are designed to provide an opening to additional topics of interest. (shrink)

We exhibit a theory where definable types lack the amalgamation property.

The following is an examination of two possible interpretations of the meaning of the “existence” of God. By using two different Danishterms—the word existence (Existents) and the concept “coming to be” (Tilværelse)—found in Kierkegaard’s writing, I hope to show that two very different theological outcomes arise depending upon which idea or term is used. Moreover, I posit which of these twooutcomes is closer in nature to the more famously used German term Dasein.

This paper reviews the history and current status of electronic identities (eID) and eID management in Sweden, including an outlook for the future. The paper is based on official policy documents, technical documentation, presentations by key experts, and comments from government agencies and independent experts. The future perspective is based on the October 2009 public investigation (SOU 2009:86) by the E-delegation. It is concluded that the E-delegation proposal, while still pending political decision, is a major step forward in terms of (...) making eID more established as an infrastructural element in the government electronic service program. (shrink)