Previous research has described some of the main characteristics of university teachers who teach in different ways, using a variety of methods and conceptions. What is generally missing from previous research is the impact of contrasting teaching approaches on students with different learning characteristics. The present investigation builds on a previous case study that identified the potential influence of a ‘meeting of minds’ between tutors and students in developing personal understanding, and also suggested contrasting perceptions of differing forms of teaching. (...) Twenty-one in-depth interviews were used to identify distinctive perceived ways of teaching and groups of students with contrasting learning intentions, looking in particular at the perceptions of tutors who were seen to encourage a ‘meeting of minds’. The main characteristics of these tutors were found be tolerating ambiguity, showing authenticity and empathy, which led to providing opportunities for discussion in breaks, and offering thinking spaces within class. The analyses identified contrasting perceptions of teaching among students who differed in their learning characteristics, and suggested how cognitive and affective elements in students’ experiences of teaching might be intertwined in influencing the development of personal understanding. (shrink)

In 2011, van Dijck and Fias described a positional SNARC effect: the SPoARC. To-be-remembered items presented centrally on a screen seemed to acquire a left-to-right spatial dimension. If confirmed, this spatialization could be crucial for immediate memory theories. However, given the intricate links between visual and spatial dimensions, this effect could be due to the visual presentation, which could have probed the left-to-right direction of reading/writing. To allow a generalization of this effect, we adapted van Dijck and Fias's task using (...) an auditory version of Sternberg's paradigm. Lists of five consonants were auditorily presented at a rate of 3 s/item. A SPoARC effect was observed. The consequences are discussed first from an immediate memory perspective, putting forward the view that order could be coded through spatialization, and then in terms of similarities between SPoARC and SNARC. (shrink)

A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a widespread tendency to rely on a rule’s letter over its spirit when deciding which acts violate the rule. This tendency’s strength varied markedly across (k = 15) field sites, owing to cultural variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared to laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether, and consequently exhibited more pronounced textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a plausible mechanism for (...) the emergence of textualism: In a two-player coordination game, incentives to coordinate in the absence of communication reinforced participants’ adherence to rules’ literal meaning. Together, these studies (Ntotal = 5495) help clarify the origins and allure of textualism, especially in the law. Within heterogeneous communities in which members diverge in their moral appraisals involving a rule’s purpose, the rule’s literal meaning provides a clear focal point—an easily identifiable point of agreement enabling coordinated interpretation among citizens, lawmakers and judges. (shrink)

The proper limit to paternalist regulation of citizens' private lives is a recurring theme in political theory and ethics. In the present study, we examine the role of beliefs about free will and determinism in attitudes toward libertarian versus paternalist policies. Throughout five studies we find that a scientific deterministic worldview reduces opposition toward paternalist policies, independent of the putative influence of political ideology. We suggest that exposure to scientific explanations for patterns in human behavior challenges the notion of personal (...) autonomy and, in turn, undermines libertarian arguments against state paternalism appealing to autonomy and personal choice. (shrink)

There has been considerable debate in legal philosophy about how to attribute purposes to rules. Separately, within cognitive science, there has been a growing body of research concerned with questions about how people ordinarily attribute purposes. Here, we argue that these two separate fields might be connected by experimental jurisprudence. Across four studies, we find evidence for the claim that people use the same criteria to attribute purposes to physical objects and to rules. In both cases, purpose attributions appear to (...) be governed not so much by original intention or by moral value as by current practice. We argue that these findings in the cognitive science of purpose attribution have implications for jurisprudential questions involving purposivist legal interpretation. (shrink)

BackgroundSelf-prescribing and prescribing to personal contacts is explicitly discouraged by General Medical Council guidelines.AimsThis study examines how widespread the practice of self-prescribing and prescribing to personal contacts is.MethodsA 16-item questionnaire was distributed via an online forum comprising 4445 young medical doctors, which asked respondents about previous prescribing to themselves, their families, friends and colleagues, including the class of medication prescribed. Demographic details were collected including medical grade and specialty.ResultsA total of 729 responses were obtained, the majority of which were from (...) young non-consultant hospital doctors from a range of specialties. Two-thirds of respondents had self-prescribed, over 70% had prescribed to family, and nearly 60% had prescribed to a friend or colleague. Older doctors were more likely to self-prescribe. Interns being less likely to self-prescribe was not unexpected, while general practitioners and paediatricians were more likely to self-prescribe. GPs, paediatricians and hospital medicine specialties were more likely to prescribe to family and surgeons were more likely to prescribe to friends. Some 3% to 7% who had self-prescribed had prescribed an opiate, benzodiazepine or psychotropic medication. Male doctors, anaesthetists and surgeons were more likely to self-prescribe opioids, while those in hospital medicine were more likely to self-prescribe psychotropic medications.ConclusionPrescribing outside the traditional doctor-patient relationship is widespread despite clear professional guidance advising against it. (shrink)

Noel Malcolm, one of the world's leading experts on Thomas Hobbes, presents a set of extended essays on a wide variety of aspects of the life and work of this giant of early modern thought. Malcolm offers a succinct introduction to Hobbes's life and thought, as a foundation for his discussion of such topics as his political philosophy, his theory of international relations, the development of his mechanistic world-view, and his subversive Biblical criticism. Several of the essays pay special (...) attention to the European dimensions of Hobbes's life, his sources and his influence; the longest surveys the entire European reception of his work from the 1640s to the 1750s. All the essays are based on a deep knowledge of primary sources, and many present striking new discoveries about Hobbes's life, his manuscripts, and the printing history of his works. Aspects of Hobbes will be essential reading not only for Hobbes specialists, but also for all those interested in seventeenth-century intellectual history more generally, both British and European. (shrink)

Several facts about organ donation and transplantation are not in dispute: (1) there is a shortage of available organs; (2) many potential organ donors die after authorized withdrawal of life-susta...

Y a-t-il une psychanalyse chrétienne? Cette question a-t-elle un sens? Un croyant souffrant doit-il ou non s'assurer que son psychanalyste est lui-même croyant pour protéger sa foi? Autrement dit, comment l'analyse intègre-t-elle ou modifie-t-elle une donnée religieuse? Faire une analyse, c'est accepter de traverser le tragique de sa propre vie. En raison du dévoilement de la vérité que ce processus met en œuvre, le patient voit se dégager devant lui la perspective d'un désir dont la nouvelle mesure est infinie. Ce (...) désir avait été comblé par des objets qui, jusque-là, semblaient le satisfaire. Puis, le symptôme surgit, déstabilise, perturbe les petits arrangements que le patient s'était autorisés. Première ou dernière scène de son tragique? Dans le huis clos théâtral qu'est la séance analytique, le patient-acteur reprend et parle toute son histoire. Comme à son insu, il se voit contraint de redéfinir ce qui donne sens à sa vie : sens religieux? sens éthique? Bref, tout ce qui échappe à l'analyse et que, paradoxe imprévisible, elle évoque et convoque... Pourtant, un point restera toujours aveugle pour lui, à l'instar d'Œdipe qui, les yeux crevés, poursuit son chemin. C'est peut-être en ce même point - tragique-aveugle - que l'homme reconnaît sous une lumière nouvelle que son histoire personnelle rejoint la détresse commune et ordinaire de toute l'humanité. (shrink)

Disrespect in health care often persists despite firm commitments to respectful service provision. This conceptual paper highlights how the ways in which respect and disrespect are characterised can have practical implications for how well disrespect can be tackled. We stress the need to focus explicitly on disrespect (not only respect) and propose that disrespect can usefully be understood as a failure to relate to people as equals. This characterisation is consonant with some accounts of respect but sometimes obscured by a (...) focus on respecting people’s autonomy and dignity. Emphasising equality is consistent with connections patients draw between being (dis)respected and (in)equality. It readily accommodates microaggressions as forms of disrespect, helping to understand how and why experiences of disrespect may be unintentional and to explain why even small instances of disrespect are wrong. Our view of disrespect with an emphasis on equality strengthens the demand that health systems take disrespect seriously as a problem of social injustice and tackle it at institutional, not just individual levels. It suggests several strategies for practical action. Emphasising relational equality is not an easy or short-term fix for disrespect, but it signals a direction of travel towards an important improvement ambition. (shrink)

Inquiries into organisational scandals repeatedly attribute wrongdoing to the normalisation of deviance. From this perspective, the cause of harm lies not in the actions of any individual but rather in the institutionalised practices of organisations or sectors. Although an important corrective to dramatic tales of bad apples, the normalisation thesis underplays the role of management in the emergence of deviance. Drawing on literatures exploring ideas of amoral (Carroll in Bus Horiz 30(2):7–15, 1987) or ethically neutral leadership (Treviño et al. in (...) Calif Manag Rev 42(4):128–142, 2000) we seek to bring management back into the explanation of organisational wrongdoing. Amoral theorists point to management’s ethical silence, but they also describe the way in which that silence is sustained by a series of organisational characteristics. We build on this work in arguing that it is management’s deliberate focus on bottom line performance, the diffusion of responsibility and high levels of organisational identification that explain the emergence of wrongdoing. We apply these ideas to the case of the UK’s Stafford hospital which hit the headlines in 2009 when it was reported that poor standards of care had led to a mortality rate markedly above that expected for a hospital of its type. We conclude with a discussion of the circumstances which translate amoral management into unethical outcomes. (shrink)

Patient safety is a central aspect of healthcare quality, focusing on preventable, iatrogenic harm. Harm, in this context, is typically assumed to mean physical injury to patients, often caused by technical error. However, some contributions to the patient safety literature have argued that disrespectful behavior towards patients can cause harm, even when it does not lead to physical injury. This paper investigates the nature of such dignitary harms and explores whether they should be included within the scope of patient safety (...) as a field of practice. We argue that dignitary harms in health care are—at least sometimes—preventable, iatrogenic harms. While we caution against including dignitary harms within the scope of patient safety just because they are relevantly similar to other iatrogenic harms, we suggest that thinking about dignitary harms can help to elucidate the value of patient safety, and to illuminate the evolving relationship between safety and quality. (shrink)

This article focuses on the translation that Guy Debord made of the poem Coplas a la muerte de su padre, a work by fifteenth-century Castilian court poet Jorge Manrique. Despite the apparent distance between translator and translated, Debord’s interest is a product of his fascination with moments of historical crisis and their transformative possibilities. The Debordian way of confronting such moments and of considering Manrique’s work as a product of one of them is framed within a historical model that collapses (...) the synchronic and the diachronic through textual montage, juxtaposing fragments in an associative way. Debord develops this form of montage in his best-known works, such as The Society of the Spectacle. In dialogue with this peculiar philosophy of history, the article argues that the translation is part of a moment of interest in Spanish culture post-May ’68 in Debord’s work and should be read as a part of the Champ Libre publishing project, financed by Debord’s film impresario, patron, and friend Gerard Lebovici. The ultimate reason for his interest in Spanish culture is the idealization of the political possibilities of a society that, between the seventies and the early eighties when Debord translates Manrique, is in the midst of the transition from dictatorship to democracy. (shrink)

Patient or public involvement in health research is increasingly expected as a matter of policy. In theory, PPI can contribute both to the epistemic aims intrinsic to research, and to extrinsically valued features of research such as social inclusion and transparency. In practice, the aims of PPI have not always been clear, although there has been a tendency to encourage the involvement of so-called ordinary people who are regarded as representative of an assumed patient perspective. In this paper we focus (...) on the epistemic potential of PPI, using theoretical work in epistemology to develop a nuanced account of patients’ experiential knowledge and how this might contribute directly to conceptual development, hypothesis generation and data interpretation. We also consider how some features of health research pose barriers to this kind of epistemic contribution. Drawing on Miranda Fricker’s idea of testimonial injustice, we explore how disciplinary indicators of credibility in clinical and academic health research contexts might be wrongly applied to those involved in PPI, undermining their potential to contribute. Finally we argue for a range of strategies to maximize opportunities for patients to engage with research teams and make epistemologically significant contributions to research. (shrink)

Health services internationally struggle to ensure health care is “person-centered” (or similar). In part, this is because there are many interpretations of “person-centered care” (and near synonyms), some of which seem unrealistic for some patients or situations and obscure the intrinsic value of patients’ experiences of health care delivery. The general concern behind calls for person-centered care is an ethical one: Patients should be “treated as persons.” We made novel use of insights from the capabilities approach to characterize person-centered care (...) as care that recognizes and cultivates the capabilities associated with the concept of persons. This characterization unifies key features from previous characterisations and can render person-centered care applicable to diverse patients and situations. By tying person-centered care to intrinsically valuable capability outcomes, it incorporates a requirement for responsiveness to individuals and explains why person-centered care is required independently of any contribution it may make to health gain. (shrink)

Childcare robots are being manufactured and developed with the long term aim of creating surrogate carers. While total childcare is not yet being promoted, there are indications that it is 'on the cards'. We examine recent research and developments in childcare robots and speculate on progress over the coming years by extrapolating from other ongoing robotics work. Our main aim is to raise ethical questions about the part or full-time replacement of primary carers. The questions are about human rights, privacy, (...) robot use of restraint, deception of children and accountability. But the most pressing ethical issues throughout the paper concern the consequences for the psychological and emotional wellbeing of children. We set these in the context of the child development literature on the pathology and causes of attachment disorders. We then consider the adequacy of current legislation and international ethical guidelines on the protection of children from the overuse of robot care. (shrink)

Noel Carroll, film scholar and philosopher, offers the first serious look at the aesthetics of horror. In this book he discusses the nature and narrative structures of the genre, dealing with horror as a "transmedia" phenomenon. A fan and serious student of the horror genre, Carroll brings to bear his comprehensive knowledge of obscure and forgotten works, as well as of the horror masterpieces. Working from a philosophical perspective, he tries to account for how people can find pleasure in (...) having their wits scared out of them. What, after all, are those "paradoxes of the heart" that make us want to be horrified? (shrink)

According to spacetime state realism, the fundamental ontology of a quantum mechanical world consists of a state-valued field evolving in four-dimensional spacetime. One chief advantage it claims over rival wave-function realist views is its natural compatibility with relativistic quantum field theory. I argue that the original density operator formulation of SSR cannot be extended to QFTs where the local observables form type III von Neumann algebras. Instead, I propose a new formulation of SSR in terms of a presheaf of local (...) state spaces dual to the net of local observables studied by algebraic QFT. 1Introduction2Spacetime State Realism in Quantum Field Theory 2.1Equivalence thesis3Entanglement and the Type III Property 3.1No-Go Lemma 13.2No-Go Lemma 24State Space Axioms for Quantum Field Theory 4.1Revised equivalence thesis5Discussion. (shrink)

Assesses the European reception of Hobbes's thought from c.1640 to c.1750. It begins by discussing the publishing history of his works on the Continent, and the various attempts to edit or translate them. Then it considers the reception of his writings, dividing the European writers into three categories: the defenders of orthodoxy, who reacted against Hobbes's ideas because they regarded them as extreme; the radicals, who celebrated and developed his ideas—also because they regarded them as extreme; and a broader third (...) category, consisting of those who engaged in more or less positive ways with Hobbesian theories, not to shake the foundations of orthodoxy, but to develop arguments and positions within the intellectual mainstream. It suggests that this third category was larger and more significant than has hitherto been recognized. Finally, the essay considers Hobbes's own relationship to the ‘Republic of Letters’ of his time. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there are important ethical questions about healthcare improvement which are underexplored. We start by drawing on two existing literatures: first, the prevailing, primarily governance-oriented, application of ethics to healthcare ‘quality improvement’ (QI), and second, the application of QI to healthcare ethics. We show that these are insufficient for ethical analysis of healthcare improvement. In pursuit of a broader agenda for an ethics of healthcare improvement, we note that QI and ethics can, in some respects, (...) be treated as closely related concerns and not simply as externally related agendas. To support our argument, we explore the gap between ‘quality’ and ‘ethics’ discourses and ask about the possible differences between ‘good quality healthcare’ and ‘good healthcare’. We suggest that the word ‘quality’ both adds to and subtracts from the idea of ‘good healthcare’, and in particular that the technicist inflection of quality discourses needs to be set in the context of broader conceptualisations of healthcare improvement. We introduce the distinction between quality as a measurable property and quality as an evaluative judgement, suggesting that a core, but neglected, question for an ethics of healthcare improvement is striking the balance between these two conceptions of quality. (shrink)

Family involvement in healthcare decision-making for competent patients occurs to varying degrees in many communities around the world. There are different attitudes about who should make treatment decisions, how and why. Legal and professional ethics codes in most jurisdictions reflect and support the idea that competent patients should be enabled to make their own treatment decisions, even if others, including their healthcare professionals, disagree with them. This way of thinking contrasts with some cultural norms that put more emphasis on the (...) family as a decision-making entity, in some circumstances to the exclusion of a competent patient. Possible tensions may arise between various combinations of patient, family members and healthcare professionals, and healthcare professionals must tread a careful path in navigating family involvement in the decision-making process. These tensions may be about differences of opinion about which treatment option is best and/or on who should have a say or influence in the decision-making process. While some relevant cultural, legal and policy considerations vary from community to community, there are ethical issues that healthcare professionals need to grapple with in balancing the laws and professional codes on decision-making and the ethical principle of respecting patients and their autonomy. This paper will highlight and propose that a partial resolution to these issues may lie in relational understandings of autonomy, which in principle justify interventions by healthcare professionals and family that support patients in decision-making. (shrink)

This study provides a comparison of the ethical perceptions of managers and non-managers, including professionals, teachers, sales persons and clerks, as well as technical and plant workers. Data of working individuals were collected in Hong Kong in the form of questionnaires which contain vignettes of questionable ethical issues. Factor analysis was used to identify the major ethical dimensions which were then used as the basis of comparison. Regression analyses were used to study the effect of various variables on ethical perceptions (...) in terms of the identified dimensions. Our study reviews that managers tend to possess deontological views that are more ethical than that found in other occupations. The gap between managers and professionals in perceiving unethical behavior is narrower compared to that between the former and individuals in other occupations. The acceptability of unethical behavior tends to decline with income. Besides, there are indications that people working in non-profit organizations tend to have higher ethical standards. Based on our results, recommendations are made to improve the ethical culture of organizations. (shrink)

Standard approaches to ontological simplicity focus either on the number of things or types a theory posits or on the number of fundamental things or types a theory posits. In this paper, I suggest a ground-theoretic approach that focuses on the number of something else. After getting clear on what this approach amounts to, I motivate it, defend it, and complete it.

There are various reasons why efforts to promote “support for self-management” have rarely delivered the kinds of sustainable improvements in healthcare experiences, health and wellbeing that policy leaders internationally have hoped for. This paper explains how the basis of failure is in some respects built into the ideas that underpin many of these efforts. When support for self-management is narrowly oriented towards educating and motivating patients to adopt the behaviours recommended for disease control, it implicitly reflects and perpetuates limited and (...) somewhat instrumental views of patients. It tends to: restrict the pursuit of respectful and enabling ‘partnership working’; run the risk of undermining patients’ self-evaluative attitudes ; limit recognition of the supportive value of clinician-patient relationships; and obscure the practical and ethical tensions that clinicians face in the delivery of support for self-management. We suggest that a focus on enabling people to live well with their long-term conditions is a promising starting point for a more adequate conception of support for self-management. We then outline the theoretical advantages that a capabilities approach to thinking about living well can bring to the development of an account of support for self-management, explaining, for example, how it can accommodate the range of what matters to people for living well, help keep the importance of disease control in perspective, recognize social influences on people’s values, behaviours and wellbeing, and illuminate more of the rich potential and practical and ethical challenges of supporting self-management in practice. (shrink)

Prescriptive rules guide human behavior across various domains of community life, including law, morality, and etiquette. What, specifically, are rules in the eyes of their subjects, i.e., those who are expected to abide by them? Over the last sixty years, theorists in the philosophy of law have offered a useful framework with which to consider this question. Some, following H. L. A. Hart, argue that a rule’s text at least sometimes suffices to determine whether the rule itself covers a case. (...) Others, in the spirit of Lon Fuller, believe that there is no way to understand a rule without invoking its purpose — the benevolent ends which it is meant to advance. In this paper we ask whether people associate rules with their textual formulation or their underlying purpose. We find that both text and purpose guide people’s reasoning about the scope of a rule. Overall, a rule’s text more strongly contributed to rule infraction decisions than did its purpose. The balance of these considerations, however, varied across experimental conditions: In conditions favoring a spontaneous judgment, rule interpretation was affected by moral purposes, whereas analytic conditions resulted in a greater adherence to textual interpretations. In sum, our findings suggest that the philosophical debate between textualism and purposivism partly reflects two broader approaches to normative reasoning that vary within and across individuals. Keywords: , the concept of law, rules, legal psychology, Hart, Fuller. (shrink)

Health services internationally struggle to ensure health care is “person-centered” (or similar). In part, this is because there are many interpretations of “person-centered care” (and near synonyms), some of which seem unrealistic for some patients or situations and obscure the intrinsic value of patients’ experiences of health care delivery. The general concern behind calls for person-centered care is an ethical one: Patients should be “treated as persons.” We made novel use of insights from the capabilities approach to characterize person-centered care (...) as care that recognizes and cultivates the capabilities associated with the concept of persons. This characterization unifies key features from previous characterisations and can render person-centered care applicable to diverse patients and situations. By tying person-centered care to intrinsically valuable capability outcomes, it incorporates a requirement for responsiveness to individuals and explains why person-centered care is required independently of any contribution it may make to health gain. (shrink)

Examines the nature and origins of Hobbes's Biblical criticism, concentrating on what has always seemed his most radical claim—the argument that the Pentateuch was written not by Moses but by a much later figure, Ezra the Scribe. It traces the origins of this theory, showing how some key elements of Hobbes's biblical criticism were already present in the mainstream tradition; but it argues that Hobbes's insistence on the grounding of the authority of the text in political authority did give a (...) radical new edge to his theory. Finally, it considers whether it is correct to describe Hobbes as having founded modern biblical criticism. (shrink)

This essay juxtaposes concepts created by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari with worlds imagined by Ursula Le Guin in a performance of ‘rhizosemiotic play’ that explores some possible ways of generating and sustaining what William Pinar calls ‘complicated conversation’ within the regime of signs that constitutes an increasingly internationalized curriculum field. Deleuze and Guattari analyze thinking as flows or movements across space. They argue, for example, that every mode of intellectual inquiry needs to account for the plane of immanence upon (...) which it operates—the preconceptual field presupposed by the concepts that inquiry creates. Curriculum inquiry currently operates on numerous nationally distinctive planes of immanence. I argue that the internationalization of curriculum studies should not presume a singular transnational plane of immanence but, rather, envisage a process performed by curriculum scholars with the capacities and competencies to change planes—to move between one plane of immanence and another and/or to transform their own planes. My essay is a ‘narrative experiment’ that takes seriously Deleuze’s argument that a work of philosophy should be, in part, a kind of science fiction, and also takes inspiration from Le Guin’s science fictional stories of ‘changing planes’ to generate productive and disruptive transnational agendas in curriculum inquiry. (shrink)

As disciplines, psychology and theology share an overlapping interest in the nature and functioning of human beings. This book provides an introduction to many of the worldview issues and philosophical foundations that frame the relationship of psychology and theology, includes scholarly reflection on the integration literature, and surveys five paradigms of possible relationships between psychology and Christianity. Questions at the end of each chapter are included to help readers evaluate both the material and their own burgeoning approach to integration. This (...) book is ideal as a textbook for students of psychology and other behavioral and social sciences (social work, sociology, theology, counseling, pastoral counseling) at both the graduate and undergraduate level. It is also written for the broader readership of psychologists, counselors, pastors, and others who are interested in integration" -- Publisher description. (shrink)

Traces the life of Confucius and discusses the history and culture of ancient China.

These essays are the fruit of many years' research by one of the world's leading Hobbes scholars. Noel Malcolm offers not only succinct introductions to Hobbes 's life and thought, but also path-breaking studies of many different aspects of his political philosophy, his scientific and religious theories, his relations with his contemporaries, the sources of his ideas, the printing history of his works, and his influence on European thought.