Ethics support staff help others to deal with moral challenges. However, they themselves can also experience moral challenges such as issues regarding (breaching) confidentiality when practicing ethics support. Currently there is no insight in these confidentiality issues and also no professional guidance for dealing with them. To gain insight into moral challenges related to Moral Case Deliberation (MCD), we studied a) beliefs and experiences of MCD facilitators regarding breaching confidentiality, b) considerations for (not) breaching confidentiality, and c) needs for an (...) ethics support tool. Data collection consisted of qualitative research methods: six semi-structured interviews; analyses of a) two recorded MCD sessions, and b) a focus group with MCD facilitators. Findings: MCD facilitators mention different conceptions and interpretations of confidentiality and various moral challenges. Questions concerning confidentiality ultimately cause reflections on roles and responsibilities of facilitators. Needs for ethics support vary from seeking advice to procedural and sometimes normative guidance for MCD facilitators. Education for MCD facilitators should focus on developing a concrete tool that stimulates awareness and reflection(skills). (shrink)

The publication of Daniel Lehrman’s 1953 paper, “A Critique of Konrad Lorenz’s Theory of Instinctive Behavior,” (_The Quarterly Review of Biology_ 28(4):337–363) exposed a gulf between comparative psychologists and ethologists regarding the concept of instincts. At the center of this debate was a rivalry between T. C. Schneirla—Lehrman’s doctoral advisor—and Konrad Lorenz. While Schneirla maintained that the concept of innate instincts mischaracterized developmental processes, Lorenz maintained that innateness was essential to understand the evolution of behavior. A year after the publication (...) of Lehrman’s paper, the Singer-Polignac Foundation organized a small conference where leaders in evolutionary biology, ethology, behavioral physiology, and comparative psychology met to discuss the concept of instinct and innateness. The result of this meeting was the publication of the book _L’instinct dans le comportement des animaux et de l’homme_ (M. Autuori et al. ( 1956 ) Masson, Paris) in which each conference participant submitted a chapter that was followed by a discussion among the participants. Here I review the historical context surrounding this conference with a republishing of the commentary on Schneirla’s chapter, “Interrelationships of the ‘Innate’ and the ‘Acquired’ in Instinctive Behavior.” Originally published in English, German, and French, the discussion is included here with a new translation into English for the first time. A companion article (this issue; G. M. Kohn (2024) “Revisiting T. C. Schneirla’s ‘Interrelationships of the “Innate” and the “Acquired” in Instinctive Behavior’ (1956)”) discusses and makes available Schneirla’s complete paper. (shrink)

During the postwar period, the concept of instinct came to encapsulate the debate around the importance of nature versus nurture. The fact that animals show highly organized behavior early in development suggested the presence of an underlying fixity where behavior was “inbuilt” into an animal’s biology despite an individual’s experiences. This placed a discrete and exhaustive line between the innate and acquired that became a foundation for the European-dominated field of ethology. Across the Atlantic, a group of comparative psychologists led (...) by the American Museum of Natural History’s T. C. Schneirla contested this approach, proposing that the study of animal behavior should avoid abstract dichotomies with a renewed focus on developmental processes. While Schneirla’s theoretical and empirical work shaped the modern study of animal behavior, his legacy requires revisiting in an era where the nature versus nurture debate is regaining prominence. In this article, I revisit Schneirla’s approach to behavior with a focus on his paper “Interrelationships of the ‘Innate’ and the ‘Acquired’ in Instinctive Behavior” (published in M. Autuori et al. (1956) _L’instinct dans le comportement des animaux et de l’homme_; Masson, Paris, pp. 387–452) for the journal’s “Classics in Biological Theory” collection; the paper is available as supplementary material in the online version of this article. A companion article (this issue; G. M. Kohn (2024) “A Discussion on Instinct, Paris, 1954”) presents the commentary that was published with it. (shrink)

In this introduction to part 3 of the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics,” the journal's editor argues that, apart from sortition, the best guarantees of safety in a democracy are, first, to augment judicial oversight of all political processes and, second, to exclude politicians from the process of selecting judges. “There can never be too much judicial interference,” he writes, “in what politicians regard as their domain.” The author reached this conclusion during attempts by the newly elected Israeli government, in the (...) spring of 2023, to make itself absolute by eliminating checks on its conduct that the Supreme Court had been developing and applying since the 1950s. Traditional Jewry and Judaism being notoriously hypernomian, the resistance to legality on the part of the ruling coalition has conveyed an aura of antinomian heresy. The choice in Israel appears to be between antipolitics and antinomianism, rather than between Left and Right politically—and the antipolitical model in Israel of a superintendent judiciary and an autonomous attorney general is arguably superior to the American prototype, even from the perspective (“all men are created equal..., endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”) that we have come to regard as quintessentially American. (shrink)

Medical-legal partnership (MLP) embeds attorneys and paralegals into care delivery to help clinicians address root causes of health inequities. Notwithstanding decades of favorable outcomes, MLP is not as well-known as might be expected. In this essay, the authors explore ways in which strategic alignment of legal services with healthcare services in terms of professionalism, information collection and sharing, and financing might help the MLP movement become a more widespread, sustainable model for holistic care delivery.

Medieval interpretations of hylomorphism, in which substances are conceived as metaphysical composites of prime matter and substantial form, are receiving attention in contemporary philosophy. It has even been suggested that a recovery of Aquinas's conception of prime matter as a ‘pure potentiality’, lacking any actuality apart from substantial form, may be expedient in hylomorphic interpretations of quantum mechanics. In this paper, we consider a recent hylomorphic interpretation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics, the theory of Cosmic Hylomorphism, which does not explicitly invoke (...) any notion of prime matter in its original formulation. We argue that prime matter does in fact play a role in constituting and individuating particles in this theory. However, we demonstrate that the notion of prime matter which features in the extended version of Cosmic Hylomorphism that we propose here is distinct from Aquinas's conception of prime matter, inasmuch as it has discrete metaphysical parts. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Psychedelic substances have great promise for the treatment of many conditions, and they are the subject of intensive research. As with other medical treatments, both research and clinical use of psychedelics depend on our ability to ensure informed consent by patients and research participants. However, some have argued that informed consent for psychedelic use may be impossible, because psychedelic experiences can be transformative in the sense articulated by L. A. Paul (2014). For Paul, transformative experiences involve either the acquisition of (...) knowledge that cannot be obtained in any other way or changes in the self. Either of these characteristics may appear to undermine informed consent. This article argues, however, that there is limited evidence that psychedelic experiences are transformative in Paul's sense, and that they may not differ in their transformative features from other common medical experiences for which informed consent is clearly possible. Further, even if psychedelic experiences can be transformative, informed consent is still possible. Because psychedelic experiences are importantly different in several respects from other medical experiences, this article closes with recommendations for how these differences should be reflected in informed consent processes. (shrink)

An anthropocentric scope for clinical medical ethics (CME) has largely separated this area of bioethics from environmental concerns. In this article, we first identify and reconcile the ethical issues imposed on CME by climate change including the dispersion of related causes and effects, the transdisciplinary and transhuman nature of climate change, and the historic divorce of CME from the environment. We then establish how several moral theories undergirding modern CME, such as virtue ethics, feminist ethics, and several theories of justice, (...) promote both a flourishing of human medical practice and the environment. We conclude by defining an expanded the scope of CME as inclusive of not only patients, families, physicians, and other health professionals but other humans, non-humans, and their shared environment. We then apply this scope and theory to a widely used framework for applying CME, the Four Topics model, to construct a climate conscious approach to CME. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Maurice Blondel on the Practice of Supernatural ReligionAnne M. CarpenterIntroductionMaurice Blondel attended daily Mass to the very end of his life.1 This essay is, in a way, a meditation on this fact. But it is more nearly a confrontation with Blondel's philosophical argument in defense of human action's capacity for affirming the infinite, for "containing" the infinite in its affirmation of the infinite, an affirmation achieved in action's finitude. (...) That is, this is an essay on Blondel's argument for a supernatural religion that can be literally practiced. Much like Blondel's larger philosophical works, this essay spends its time exploring the coordinating ground of supernatural religion, which is the natural world split open in two directions: in its very existence, which is a supposition of what absolutely outstrips its power; in its very action, which in ecstasy takes the shape of a desire for a reversal that it cannot offer itself. So the natural world presupposes the supernatural and desires the supernatural while remaining, of its own power, natural. Blondel makes a theoretical distinction in the universe that, concretely, is a natural–supernatural one committed to a single destiny. This theory and this concreteness cohere in order to make the literal practice of religion both possible and necessary, terms that this essay explains. [End Page 1305]Action: The Problem of Theory and PracticeBlondel's later writing in the 1930s expands on an important paradox that appears in the very early L'Action (1893). That paradox has to do with a distinction between theory—that is, the world of ideas and reflection—and practice, by which Blondel means the concrete world of human action, a world that for Blondel is an expansive range or "body" of action. It is true, after all, that an idea is not a deed. And yet no deed is without its idea, without the mediatory power of the act of consciousness, nor without the mediation of this consciousness's rationality—a further synthesizing act within consciousness—even when the deed contradicts reason. "Hence," says Blondel, "it is because we find in our acts a kind of creative sovereignty that we have a consciousness of ourselves and reason; it is because we are reasonable and conscious of ourselves that we judge ourselves capable of voluntary initiative."2 The paradox, at one angle, is this leap or gap, this difference nevertheless sustained by a mediation, where ideas and deeds are non-identical yet inseparable. At another angle, it is a paradox that a "science of practice" has to straddle, since it studies (as science) what it is not: concrete action (practice). Blondel, whether young or of his latter days, is after the possibility of such a science. He is also after the bond between reasoning and acting. In this section, I also seek that bond, and I make use of Blondel's early and later works together to give a sense not of Blondel's development, but of the Gestalt of his life's work with respect to the bond between thought and action.3The bond first requires the rejection of monism. Though Blondel's stance toward theologies of his day tends to be more well-known among theologians, and therefore filtered through questions of nature and grace and carried through to a rejection of a two-tiered conception of the universe, still, his nearer interlocutors are often monists: modern philosophers and the modern sciences, and their strange compatriots in history, the spiritual movements of the fin de siècle, involving spiritualisms of various kinds, recollected in our popular imagination today in visions of crystal balls and séance tables. The positivism of the modern sciences and of modern (French) philosophy poses a totally self-contained "nature" that can be explained [End Page 1306] without religion, in a form of what English speakers might call "secularism," but which is more accurately filtered through French Republican desires for laïcité.4 While Blondel was writing, there were not only these political and scientific and philosophical trends, but also the semi-pantheistic, variously agnostic religious movements that dominated privileged circles in Europe at the time. These are a kind of... (shrink)

The evaluation of the European Moral Case Deliberation Outcomes project (Euro-MCD) has resulted in a revised evaluation instrument, knowledge about the content of MCD (moral case deliberation), and the perspectives of those involved. In this paper, we report on a perspective that has been overlooked, the facilitators’. We aim to describe facilitators’ perceptions of high-quality moral case deliberation and their Euro-MCD sessions. The research took place in Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands using a survey combined with interviews with 41 facilitators. (...) Facilitators’ perceived that attaining a high-quality MCD implies fostering a safe and respectful atmosphere, creating a wondering mode, being an attentive authority, developing moral reflective skills, reaching a common understanding, and ensuring organisational prerequisites for the MCD sessions. Our central conclusion is that efforts at three levels are required to attain a high-quality MCD: trained and virtuous facilitator; committed, respectful participants; and organizational space. Furthermore, managers have a responsibility to prepare MCD participants for what it means to take part in MCD. (shrink)

Our new issue brings unlikely philosophers into dialogue (for example, Adorno and Krishnamurti) for the first time as well as reconsiders some of the most important figures (for example, Nietzsche...

Multi-Task Learning tries to improve the learning process of different tasks by solving them simultaneously. A popular Multi-Task Learning formulation for SVM is to combine common and task-specific parts. Other approaches rely on using a Graph Laplacian regularizer. Here we propose a combination of these two approaches that can be applied to L1, L2 and LS-SVMs. We also propose an algorithm to iteratively learn the graph adjacency matrix used in the Laplacian regularization. We test our proposal with synthetic and real (...) problems, both in regression and classification settings. When the task structure is present, we show that our model is able to detect it, which leads to better results, and we also show it to be competitive even when this structure is not present. (shrink)

A vital step to successfully orienting Deleuze with biosemiotics (and theories of biological complexity overall) is to discover a coherent scientific throughline in his work that also accounts for the aesthetic/creative dimension of his philosophy. This requires the heterodox move (from a Deleuzean point of view) of giving priority to the organism. I argue that Deleuze’s treatment of the organism does more than signal a superficial relation to biological complexity theory that, as a result of his nuanced take on the (...) matter, undermines the value of the organic body to his system. Instead, we can recognize a working theory of autopoiesis in the early Deleuze that scaffolds as well as substantiates his later ethological and biosemiotic observations and reveals a definite, albeit minimal, notion of subjectivity in his work. Most importantly, reorienting his logic of sense as a logic of sense-making, or the context-dependent signification between system and environment (Thompson, 2007), allows us to begin the work of mining a scientific throughline in Deleuze’s work akin to biological complexity theory that is of value to both Deleuze studies and biosemiotics. (shrink)

Supporting children to successfully transition from primary to secondary school is of utmost importance for several reasons, including to prevent future emotional and behavioural problems. Level Up is a novel, UK-based intervention consisting of five online group sessions, straddling the summer holidays, and providing at-risk children and their parents/carers with skills to manage their behaviour, emotions, and relationships to support their transition to secondary school. A prior evaluation of Level Up reported a need to better describe the mechanisms of change. (...) This study therefore evaluated the experiences of children and their parents/carers regarding the facilitators and barriers to engagement and change, and the perceived impact. Fourteen children and 17 parents/carers were interviewed. Identified barriers and facilitators were: (1) Having a safe, supportive, and fun space, (2) Learning through connection, (3) A family approach, (4) Problematic group dynamics, and (5) Connecting through video calls. Perceived impact was described as: (1) Empowering children, (2) Supporting children socially, (3) Supporting parents and carers in their parenting role, and (4) Supporting a successful transition to secondary school. Another theme (5) describes some families’ experiences of limited impact. These findings can be used to better understand how to support children in their school transition. (shrink)

Much has been made of the so-called “speculative turn” in contemporary philosophy. For some, this turn marks the “end of phenomenology” and the dawn of a new empiricism in European philosophy. For others, it amounts to nothing more than a renewal of the straw-person accusation of psychologism against phenomenology. In truth, it is neither. Instead, this article argues that while at times mutually critical of one another, speculative materialism and phenomenology are best understood as parallel projects with shared trajectories and (...) aims, common concerns, and even comparable methods. The bene????it of reading these two apparently divergent camps as parallel projects is that it allows phenomenology to understand the diversity of its own history anew and, in light of this, to draw from speculative realism as a resource for rethinking its objectives and methods in its pursuit of a robust post-Kantian realism. (shrink)

The alienation of labour is both classical and contemporary. In its classical form, it speaks to the potential dehumanisation of workers in capitalist societies. In its contemporary form, it manifests itself in the disenfranchisement of the individual because of changes in organised global workplaces. Over the years, Africa’s labour transition from traditional spirituality to contemporary organised global workplaces has fuelled new forms of public labour alienation. Civil servants, in some African countries, experience labour alienation reminiscent of work under capitalism. This (...) is in contradiction to the pre-colonial and traditional view of work as a vocation. Zimbabwe is undergoing negative economic, social, and political growth that has resulted in the alienation of civil servants. The government reneges on its public role of providing space for individual growth and well-being in preference for ‘public capitalism’ and cultural alienation. The potential for an effective public service lies in changing the work culture. Contribution: This article interrogates the impacts of the work culture within the public service in Zimbabwe in an attempt to proffer a return to the African traditional spirituality of work that was founded on the principles of ubuntu. It recognises the traditional symbiotic relationship between being and doing among the indigenous African communities as the panacea for the continent’s human capital development. (shrink)

In their article “The Bioethics of Environmental Injustice: Ethical, Legal, and Clinical Implications of Unhealthy Environments,” Ray and Cooper (2024) invite us to prioritize environmental health...

While postmodernists have claimed that the failure of the Enlightenment was a failure of philosophical courage, this plenary address explores how its greatest shortcoming actually was its hubris. Paying attention to how Western scholars have centered pride in their elitist purview was their ultimate worldview, this article examines ‘pride’ as the doctrinal dimension of the good life in contemporary Western society and culture. Furthermore, it implores postmodern Christian social ethicists to reform their stewardship to the telos of the field's highest (...) ideals and role, in order to confront the shortcomings of the Enlightenment and help realize its greater capacity for social transformation. Borrowing the Gandhian critique of ‘knowledge without character’, the author surveys how the existential crisis of higher education, the political manipulation of journalism, and the policy practices of politicians, public intellectuals, and pundits operate in addressing post-imperial/postmodern legacies have legitimated implicit biases and dehumanizing projects that pass off stereotypes as scholarship and hate as hermeneutics. (shrink)

This essay argues for two conclusions. First, clinical decision-making is not best thought of as analogous to the purchase of other services, such as car repair. Health-care decision-making is far more difficult, collaborative, emotionally fraught, and subject to cognitive distortions. Second, the provision of health care should not be delegated to unregulated markets. Unlike other markets, there is no reason to expect health-care market outcomes to be efficient or fair or to promote individual freedom, properly conceived. Markets may play an (...) important role in implementing an allocation of healthcare, but they are not an ethically acceptable alternative to determining what that allocation should be. (shrink)

Given a rich environment, how do we decide on what information to use? A view of a single entity (e.g., a group of birds) affords many distinct interpretations, including their number, average size, and spatial extent. An enduring challenge for cognition, therefore, is to focus resources on the most relevant evidence for any particular decision. In the present study, subjects completed three tasks—number discrimination, surface area discrimination, and convex hull discrimination—with the same stimulus set, where these three features were orthogonalized. (...) Therefore, only the relevant feature provided consistent evidence for decisions in each task. This allowed us to determine how well humans discriminate each feature dimension and what evidence they relied on to do so. We introduce a novel computational approach that fits both feature precision and feature use. We found that the most relevant feature for each decision is extracted and relied on, with minor contributions from competing features. These results suggest that multiple feature dimensions are separately represented for each attended ensemble of many items and that cognition is efficient at selecting the appropriate evidence for a decision. (shrink)

Prospective memory (PM) is the accurate execution of an intention in the future. PM may be negatively impacted by negative affect, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Rumination may increase the frequency of task-irrelevant thoughts, which deplete attentional capacity and reduce performance. To date, no studies have examined state and trait rumination on an online measure of PM. The present study examined the effects of state and trait rumination on an event-based, focal PM task embedded within a one-back task over (...) multiple sessions. 95 non-depressed adults (18–53 years) completed measures of state/trait rumination, mood, and PM on at least two occasions. Using multi-level modelling, we found that a derived measure of trait rumination, but not an established trait rumination survey, nor negative mood, predicted poorer PM accuracy. These novel findings demonstrate that trait rumination may partially underlie the association between negative affect & PM in a non-clinical sample, and highlight the potential of online methods to study PM. (shrink)