The main causes of suicide and how suicide could and should be prevented are ongoing controversies in the scientific literature as well as in public media. In the bill on public health from 2008, the Swedish Parliament adopted an overarching “Vision Zero for Suicide” and nine strategies for suicide prevention. However, how the VZ should be interpreted in healthcare is unclear. The VZ has been criticized both from a philosophical perspective and against the background of clinical experience and alleged empirical (...) claims regarding the consequences of regulating suicide prevention. This study is part of a larger research project in medical ethics with the overarching aim to explore whether the VZ is ethically justifiable. The aim is to enrich the normative discussion by investigating empirically how the VZ is perceived in healthcare. Interviews based on a semi-structured interview guide were performed with 12 Swedish psychiatrists. The interviews were analysed with descriptive qualitative content analysis aiming for identifying perceptions of the Vision Zero for Suicide as well as arguments for and against it. Though most of the participants mentioned at least some potential benefit of the Vision Zero for Suicide, the overall impression was a predominant skepticism. Some participants focused on why they consider the VZ to be unachievable, while others focused more on its potential consequences and normative implications. The VZ was perceived to be impossible to realize, nonconstructive or potentially counterproductive, and undesirable because of potential conflicts with other values and interests of patients as well as the general public. There were also important notions of the VZ having negative consequences for the working conditions of psychiatrists in Sweden, in increasing their work-related anxiety and thwarting the patient-physician relationship. (shrink)

BackgroundInvoluntary treatment is a key issue in healthcare ethics. In this study, ethical issues relating to involuntary psychiatric treatment are investigated through interviews with Swedish psychiatrists.MethodsIn-depth interviews were conducted with eight Swedish psychiatrists, focusing on their experiences of and views on compulsory treatment. In relation to this, issues about patient autonomy were also discussed. The interviews were analysed using a descriptive qualitative approach.ResultsThe answers focus on two main aspects of compulsory treatment. Firstly, deliberations about when and why it was justifiable (...) to make a decision on involuntary treatment in a specific case. Here the cons and pros of ordering compulsory treatment were discussed, with particular emphasis on the consequences of providing treatment vs. refraining from ordering treatment. Secondly, a number of issues relating to background factors affecting decisions for or against involuntary treatment were also discussed. These included issues about the Swedish Mental Care Act, healthcare organisation and the care environment.ConclusionsInvoluntary treatment was generally seen as an unwanted exception to standard care. The respondents’ judgments about involuntary treatment were typically in line with Swedish law on the subject. However, it was also argued that the law leaves room for individual judgments when making decisions about involuntary treatment. Much of the reasoning focused on the consequences of ordering involuntary treatment, where risk of harm to the therapeutic alliance was weighed against the assumed good consequences of ensuring that patients received needed treatment. Cases concerning suicidal patients and psychotic patients who did not realise their need for care were typically held as paradigmatic examples of justified involuntary care. However, there was an ambivalence regarding the issue of suicide as it was also argued that risk of suicide in itself might not be sufficient for justified involuntary care. It was moreover argued that organisational factors sometimes led to decisions about compulsory treatment that could have been avoided, given a more patient-oriented healthcare organisation. (shrink)

Decision-making capacity is a key concept in contemporary healthcare ethics. Previous research has mainly focused on philosophical, conceptual issues or on evaluation of different tools for assessing patients’ capacity. The aim of the present study is to investigate how the concept and its normative role are understood in Swedish psychiatric care. Of special interest for present purposes are the relationships between decisional capacity and psychiatric disorders and between health law and practical ethics.

Aus dem Inhalt: Views from the North: Hans Petter Graver: Law, Justice and the State: Nordic Perspectives u Jacob Dahl Rendtorff: The Danish Welfare State: Philosophical Ideals and Systemic Reality u Sigri!Dur *orgeirsdottir: Feminist Ethics and Feminist Politics u Kuellike Lengi: The Situation of Human Rights in Estonia u Einar Palsson: Pythagoras and Early Icelandic Law u Law, Discourse and Rationality: Mats Flodin: Internal and External Rationality of Legal Systems u Logi Gunnarsson: A Discourse About Discourse u Hjordi!s Hakonardottir: (...) Legal Language: A Tool of Justice u Ghita Holmstrom-Hintikka: On the Use of Expert Witness in Legal Reasoning and Inquiry u Law, State and Nation: Agust H. Ing*orsson: Democracy, Bureaucracy and Marginalization of the State u Aleksander Peczenik: Law-State, Legal Certainty and Legitimacy of Law u Ove K. Pedersen/Sverre Raffnsoe: Reorganizing Society u Juha Raikka: Mill on National Sentiment u Pall Skulason: Concepts of the State and Classes of Value u Problems of Law and Rights: Britt-Mari Blegvad: How to Cope With Uncertainty: Trust and Law u Jon Wetlesen: Animal Rights or Human Duties?. (shrink)

It is a contradictory argument to say on the one hand that social systems are always open and that there is nothing between closed and open systems, and on the other that there are pseudo-closed systems. Further, Petter Næss has shown that multivariate regression analysis can be used to help uncover mechanisms, something that should be impossible if social systems were always open. He has in addition found that the meaningful activity of urban planning requires for its existence the (...) possibility to make crude, qualitative predictions, which should also be impossible for the same reason. Critical realists therefore need to rethink the whole question of closed and open social systems. (shrink)

A fundamental assumption of theories of decision-making is that we detect mismatches between intention and outcome, adjust our behavior in the face of error, and adapt to changing circumstances. Is this always the case? We investigated the relation between intention, choice, and introspection. Participants made choices between presented face pairs on the basis of attractiveness, while we covertly manipulated the relationship between choice and outcome that they experienced. Participants failed to notice conspicuous mismatches between their intended choice and the outcome (...) they were presented with, while nevertheless offering introspectively derived reasons for why they chose the way they did. We call this effect choice blindness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Epistemic Leaks and Epistemic Meltdowns: A Response to William Morris on Scepticism with Regard to Reason Mikael M. Karlsson I. In an excellent paper which appeared in the April, 1989 issue of this journal,2 William Morris attemptsto demonstrate thatthe arguments which make up Hume's notorious chapter, "Of scepticism with regard to reason, are, in the first place, coherent—both internally and with the overall strategy of the Treatise—and, in (...) the second place, successful. Morris' paper is an exercise in the noble art of what I style constructive exegesis, an enterprise to which many readers of Hume Studies, and myself as much as any, are committed. It is a guiding principle ofthis art that we donotunderstandaphilosophical textuntil we can interpret it in such a way as to render it both coherent and correct. From this point ofview, coherence and correctness are not as independent of one another as they may seem to be to others who are differently committed. Some texts, such as Hume's chapter, "Ofscepticism with regard to reason," are notoriously resistant to constructive exegesis, despite the formidable bag of tricks which scholars and interpreters have developed; so resistant, that in gloomier moments we may be brought to wonder about our interpretative enterprise itself. Constructive exegesis is indeed a strange, and peculiarly optimistic, enterprise. Someday, I imagine, in a leisurely moment, I will think more reflectively about the principles ofour art. But not now.6 As a fellow practitioner of constructive exegesis, I am in full sympathy with what Morris tries to do in his paper; and I think that he does contribute substantially to our understanding of what Hume is up to in the chapter, "Ofscepticism with regard to reason." The third section of Morris' paper is, in my judgement, particularly successful in showing how Hume's chapter fits into the larger framework of the Treatise: Hume is, we see, attacking both what Morris labels "intellectualist rationalism" and its counterpart, which we may call 'unmitigated scepticism', although the chapter's two main arguments go primarily to the former. I also think that Morris gives very helpful, Volume XVI Number 2 121 MIKAEL M. KARLSSON and to my mind accurate, accounts of these two arguments, which I dub, respectively, the epistemic leak argument, and the epistemic meltdown argument. However, I have personally never found either of these arguments remotely convincing; and I still do not, despite Morris' clarification and defense. In what follows, I shall indicate some ofthe reasons for my dissatisfaction.?. Theepistemicleakargumentpurportsto"prove"(in Hume's sense)that reason or demonstration cannot support knowledge. Morris rightlyreminds us that whatHume meansby knowledge is perfect assurance or conviction: Knowledge is, in short, subjective certainty. This has caused confusion, for this is not what we usually mean nowadays by knowledge; nor was it what people, philosophers included, generally meant prior to Descartes. In Hume itis the product ofthe attempttoresolve all epistemic statesintomental eventsorwhat he calls "perceptions." In any case, we must—as Morris rightly explains—be clear that the epistemic leak argument is aimed at showing that demonstration cannot supportperfect conviction. Inoutline, the argumentissimple: Itworks, asMorrismakes clear, by shifting attention away from the subject-matter or "objects" of demonstration, that is, relations of ideas, to the exercise of demonstrative reason by human agents. The necessity of relations of ideas may suggest to us that we can be certain about them. Against this, one may point out that people do err in the conclusions arrived at by demonstration; this presumably shows that our (rational) understandingis fallible. And once we recognize this, our confidence in any conclusion produced by exercising this facultyislessened—thus do we move from knowledge, or subjective certainty, toprobability: belief, or imperfect conviction. Arguments ofthis general type (we can call them, using Descartes' famous figure, Totten-apple arguments ) were around long before Hume, although they were more commonly directed against the senses than against reason. We find them in antiquity—in Plato and Sextus Empiricus, for instance —and in Descartes, in parallel passages in the Discourse on Method, the First Meditation and the Principles of Philosophy, wherein one can discern a version directed precisely against reason and demonstration.12 To find out what, if anything, Hume has... (shrink)

The distinction between acting and suffering underlies any theory of agency. Among contemporary writers, Fred Dretske is one of the few who has attempted to explicate this distinction without restricting the notion of action to intentional action alone. Aristotle also developed a global account of agency, one which is deeper and more detailed than Dretske's, and it is to Aristotle's account (with some modifications) that the bulk of this paper is devoted. Dretske's sketchier theory faces at least two ground-level problems. (...) It is shown in the course of the paper how these can be handled by the Aristotelian account, in a way which is friendly to Dretske's approach. (shrink)

The legacy of Nisbett and Wilson’s classic article, Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes , is mixed. It is perhaps the most cited article in the recent history of consciousness studies, yet no empirical research program currently exists that continues the work presented in the article. To remedy this, we have introduced an experimental paradigm we call choice blindness [Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikström, S., & Olsson, A. . Failure to detect mismatches between intention and (...) outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310, 116–119.]. In the choice blindness paradigm participants fail to notice mismatches between their intended choice and the outcome they are presented with, while nevertheless offering introspectively derived reasons for why they chose the way they did. In this article, we use word-frequency and latent semantic analysis to investigate a corpus of introspective reports collected within the choice blindness paradigm. We contrast the introspective reasons given in non-manipulated vs. manipulated trials, but find very few differences between these two groups of reports. (shrink)

This paper reviews the contemporary discussion on the epistemological and ontological effects of Big Data within social science, observing an increased focus on relationality and complexity, and a tendency to naturalize social phenomena. The epistemic limits of this emerging computational paradigm are outlined through a comparison with the discussions in the early days of digitalization, when digital technology was primarily seen through the lens of dematerialization, and as part of the larger processes of “postmodernity”. Since then, the online landscape has (...) become increasingly centralized, and the “liquidity” of dematerialized technology has come to empower online platforms in shaping the conditions for human behavior. This contrast between the contemporary epistemological currents and the previous philosophical discussions brings to the fore contradictions within the study of digital social life: While qualitative change has become increasingly dominant, the focus has gone towards quantitative methods; while the platforms have become empowered to shape social behavior, the focus has gone from social context to naturalizing social patterns; while meaning is increasingly contested and fragmented, the role of hermeneutics has diminished; while platforms have become power hubs pursuing their interests through sophisticated data manipulation, the data they provide is increasingly trusted to hold the keys to understanding social life. These contradictions, we argue, are partially the result of a lack of philosophical discussion on the nature of social reality in the digital era; only from a firm metatheoretical perspective can we avoid forgetting the reality of the system under study as we are affected by the powerful social life of Big Data. (shrink)

Sparrows fly because they are birds. This mushroom is poisonous because it is an Amanita muscaria. Pointing out the kind to which things belong explains many of their properties. Jonathan Lowe’s four-category ontology and his account of laws of nature provide a framework to account for the explanatory appeal of referring to kind membership. For Lowe, “Electron has Unit-negative charge” is a typical example for a law of nature: a kind universal characterized by a property universal. We present both Lowe’s (...) original account of laws of nature and later developments, and show how Lowe’s account can help to solve notorious problems of other accounts, namely, the regularity view and the Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley view. We argue that there are two challenges that Lowe’s view cannot master. First, Lowe conflates generics and dispositions, which is a considerable problem for Lowe, because his account of dispositional predication and his account of laws of nature are intimately connected. Second, there is the identification problem of fully specifying and identifying the formal ontological relation of characterization between kind universals and property universals. In order to solve these problems, we develop an account of formal causation inspired by Aristotle’s theory of explanation in his Posterior Analytics. Though very close to Lowe’s own account, our neo-Aristotelian account avoids Lowe’s confusion regarding dispositions, avoids overdetermination through several similar laws of nature, and provides an answer to the identification problem: The characterization of a kind universal by a property universal constitutes the relation of formal causation. By virtue of this relation, the kind Amanita muscaria is the formal cause of this mushroom having the attribute of being poisonous. (shrink)

Clinical ethics support, in particular Moral Case Deliberation, aims to support health care providers to manage ethically difficult situations. However, there is a lack of evaluation instruments regarding outcomes of clinical ethics support in general and regarding Moral Case Deliberation (MCD) in particular. There also is a lack of clarity and consensuses regarding which MCD outcomes are beneficial. In addition, MCD outcomes might be context-sensitive. Against this background, there is a need for a standardised but flexible outcome evaluation instrument. The (...) aim of this study was to develop a multi-contextual evaluation instrument measuring health care providers’ experiences and perceived importance of outcomes of Moral Case Deliberation. (shrink)

Anthropomorphism has long been considered a cardinal error when describing animals. Ethicists have feared the consequences of misrepresenting animals in their reasoning. Recent research within human- animal studies, however, has sophisticated the notion of anthropomorphism. It is suggested that avoiding anthropomorphism merely creates other morphisms, such as mechanomorphism. Instead of avoiding anthropomorphism, it is argued that it is a communicative strategy that should be used critically. Instances of anthropomorphism in animal ethics are analyzed in this paper. Some analogies made between (...) people and non-human animals in present theories of animal ethics are clear instances of psychological anthropomorphism. Other analogies are implicit cases of cultural anthropomorphism. It is argued that animal ethics needs to take the wider discourse of critical anthropomorphism into account in order to sophisticate the understanding and use of anthropomorphic projections. Anthropomorphism is an efficient tool of communication, and it may be made an adequate one as well. (shrink)

This article examines how one of the most striking differences between the central doctrines of the Catholic Church and the secular context of Swedish society, attitudes to abortion, is managed by the Swedish church hierarchy and commentators in the official newsletter of the Catholic Church of Sweden. Using Foucauldian concepts of power, the article concludes that in its marginal position, the Catholic Church in Sweden mixes the traditional pastoral and sovereign power of the church with the way pastoral power is (...) exerted in modern society, in its efforts to continue asserting its influence over the possible courses of action for pregnant women. While traditionally abortion has been a woman’s crime, in the Swedish Catholic context it becomes rather the crime of the secular society. This means also that the image of woman as being responsible for her decisions and in need of forgiveness gives way to an image of woman as a victim in need of understanding. (shrink)

The classical view of the gene prevailing during the 1910s and 1930s comprehended the gene as the indivisible unit of genetic transmission, genetic recombination, gene mutation and gene function. The discovery of intragenic recombination in the early 1940s led to the neoclassical concept of the gene, which prevailed until the 1970s. In this view the gene or cistron, as it was now called, was divided into its constituent parts, the mutons and recons, materially identified as nucleotides. Each cistron was believed (...) to be responsible for the synthesis of one single mRNA and concurrently for one single polypeptide. The discoveries of DNA technology, beginning in the early 1970s, have led to the second revolution in the concept of the gene in which none of the classical or neoclassical criteria for the definition of the gene hold strictly true. These are the discoveries concerning gene repetition and overlapping, movable genes, complex promoters, multiple polyadenylation sites, polyprotein genes, editing of the primary transcript, pseudogenes and gene nesting. Thus, despite the fact that our comprehension of the structure and organization of the genetic material has greatly increased, we are left with a rather , open and general concept of the gene. This article discusses past and present contemplations of genes, genomes, genotypes and phenotypes as well as the most recent advances of the study of the organization of genomes. (shrink)

What kind of a science is psychoanalysis? What constitutes its domain? What truth claims does it maintain? In this unique and scholarly work concerning the nature of psychoanalysis, Gunnar Karlsson guides his arguments through phenomenological thinking which, he claims, can be seen as an alternative to the recent attempts to cite neuropsychoanalysis as the answer to the crisis of psychoanalysis. Karlsson criticizes this effort to ground psychoanalysis in biology and neurology and emphasizes instead the importance of defining the (...) psychoanalytic domain from the vantage point of the character of consciousness. His understanding of the unconscious, the libido and the death drive offer new insights into the nature of psychoanalysis, and he also illuminates and develops neglected dimensions such as consciousness and self-consciousness. Karlsson's approach to psychoanalysis is rigorous yet original, and this book fills an intellectual gap with implications for both the theoretical understanding and clinical issues of psychoanalysis. (shrink)

The proliferation of digital data has been the impetus for the emergence of a new discipline for the study of social life: ‘computational social science’. Much research in this field is founded on the premise that society is a complex system with emergent structures that can be modeled or reconstructed through digital data. This paper suggests that computational social science serves practical and legitimizing functions for digital capitalism in much the same way that neoclassical economics does for neoliberalism. In recognition (...) of this homology, this paper develops a critique of the complexity perspective of computational social science and argues for a heterodox computational social science founded on the meta-theory of critical realism that is critical, methodological pluralist, interpretative and explanative. This implies diverting computational social science’ computational methods and digital data so as to not be aimed at identifying invariant laws of social life, or optimizing state and corporate practices, but to instead be used as part of broader research strategies to identify contingent patterns, develop conjunctural explanations, and propose qualitatively different ways of organizing social life. (shrink)

Socrates’ expert-analogies is frequent both in Plato’s dialogues and in the Socratic writings of Xenophon, and is also ascribed to Socrates by Aristotle and Aeschines. Socrates makes an analogy from a non-controversial expert (or an expertise) like the cobbler or ship-captain, to another (often controversial) expert (or expertise) like the statesman. This paper defends an interpretation of the expert-analogy as valid deductions. It infers from one type of expert (such as the ship-captain) to another type of expert (such as the (...) statesman), and the attribute inferred (for instance ‘should not be selected by lot’) belongs to these types of experts because they are experts. The general logical form, which makes no mention of the expert and which is valid in virtue of its form, infers from one or more species to another species of the same genus, and the attribute inferred is presupposed to belong as such to the genus and only accidentally to the species. (shrink)

Weakness of will denotes a phenomenon that many would regard as forming part of everyday human experience. I hate to admit to it, but I do sometimes reprimand my children more harshly than I think I should, and similar situations occur daily. This could be an example of weakness of will or incontinence: I will to be constructive and provide a model of calm interaction, but fail to do so because my will is weak and I end up acting against (...) better knowledge. But what is it that happens in such situations? Philosophers, theologians, poets, and other writers have discussed this question as akrasia, as well as under other headings. Weakness of Will from Plato to the Present not only contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the history of akrasia, but is also the first book that attempts to cover the trajectory of this issue through all major periods of Western philosophy. The book invites a broad range of readers, focusing on canonical figures from Plato and Aristotle through Augustine and Aquinas to Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche. (shrink)

Contrary to religious fundamentalism, James insists on judging religion by human standards. Fundamentalists would object on two counts: i) a truly religious person must be willing to sacrifice everything, even reason itself, on the altar of faith; and ii) James reduces religion to a mere conventionalism by presuming to apply to it the very human standards religion itself must judge.The first response shows piety itself requires the autonomy of reason. The second shows James fully appreciates the critical role religion has (...) played in our social evolution. However, this leads into a paradox, given our first argument, which is resolved if we accept at least the possibility, as James did, of a friendly relation between the divine and the human. (shrink)

Exceptions are often cited as a counterargument against formal causation. Against this I argue that Aristotle explicitly allows for exceptions to essences in his biological writings, and that he has a means of explaining them through formal causation – though this means that he has to slightly elaborate on his general case theory from the Posterior Analytics, by supplementing it with a special case application in the biological writings. Specifically for Aristotle an essential predication need not be a universal predication. (...) Rather an essential predication is where a property belongs essentially to a species or genus. This essential predication serves a causal and explanatory role, and is not dependent on a corresponding universal predication. (shrink)

SummaryOverweight and obesity constitute a major and increasing health and welfare problem throughout the world. Assessing the multifaceted mechanisms – biological, environmental and behavioural – behind this development is a crucial task in medical, social and economic sciences. We are, therefore, grateful to have been given the opportunity to, once again, discuss whether the risk of divorce may be one of the factors influencing the incentives of becoming overweight or obese and, hence, ultimately the physical appearance among the married. In (...) this Debate, colleagues Schneider and Grimps present the results of a multilevel analysis, in which they could not identify any statistically significant association between body mass index and divorce risk among married people. Thus, they question the findings, previously published in this Journal. The Schneider and Grimps arguments are not convincing, however. So, we still claim that the statistical material at hand does, indeed, imply that divorce risk at the national level may well influence the weight of the married. (shrink)

Despite remarkable empirical and methodological advances, our theoretical understanding of the evolutionary processes that made us human remains fragmented and contentious. Here, we make the radical proposition that the cultural communities within which Homo emerged may be understood as a novel exotic form of organism. The argument begins from a deep congruence between robust features of Pan community life cycles and protocell models of the origins of life. We argue that if a cultural tradition, meeting certain requirements, arises in the (...) context of such a “social protocell,” the outcome will be an evolutionary transition in individuality whereby traditions and hominins coalesce into a macroscopic bio-socio-technical system, with an organismal organization that is culturally inherited through irreversible fission events on the community level. We refer to the resulting hypothetical evolutionary individual as a “sociont.” The social protocell provides a preadapted source of alignment of fitness interests that addresses a number of open questions about the origins of shared adaptive cultural organization, and the derived genetic adaptations that support them. Also, social cooperation between hominins is no longer in exclusive focus since cooperation among traditions becomes salient in this model. This provides novel avenues for explanation. We go on to hypothesize that the fate of the hominin in such a setting would be mutualistic coadaptation into a part-whole relation with the sociont, and we propose that the unusual suite of derived features in Homo is consistent with this hypothesis. (shrink)

Two experiments with undergraduates as subjects were carried out with the aim of replicating and extending previous results showing that the implication of the behavioral life-cycle hypothesis (H. M. Shefrin & R. H. Thaler, 1988) that people classify assets in different mental accounts (current income, current assets, and future income) may explain how consumption choices are influenced by temporary income changes. In both experiments subjects made fictitious choices between paying for a good in cash or according to a more expensive (...) installment plan after they had received an income which was either less, the same, or larger than usual. In Experiment 1 subjects were supposed to have savings so that the total assets were equal, whereas in Experiment 2 the total assets varied. The results of both experiments supported the role of mental accounts in demonstrating that subjects were unwilling to pay in cash after an income decrease even though they had access to saved money. Thus, in effect they chose to pay more for the good than they had to. Indicating a need for further refinement of the concept of mental account, choices to pay in cash after an income decrease tended to be more frequent when the consumption and savings motives were compatible than when they were incompatible. Furthermore, increasing the total assets made subjects more willing to pay in cash after an income decrease. (shrink)

This study aims at discovering the essential constituents involved in the experiences of guilt and shame. Guilt concerns a subject’s action or omission of action and has a clear temporal unfolding entailing a moment in which the subject lives in a care-free way. Afterwards, this moment undergoes a reconstruction, in the moment of guilt, which constitutes the moment of negligence. The reconstruction is a comprehensive transformation of one’s attitude with respect to one’s ego; one’s action; the object of guilt and (...) the temporal-existential experience. The main constituents concerning shame are its anchorage in the situation to which it refers; its public side involving the experience of being perceptually objectified; the exclusion of social community; the bodily experience; the revelation of an undesired self; and the genesis of shame in terms of a history of frozen now-ness. The article ends with a comparison between guilt and shame. (shrink)

I argue that Aristotle’s account of scientific demonstrations in the Posterior Analytics is centred upon formal causation, understood as a demonstration in terms of essence (and as innocent of the distinction between form and matter). While Aristotle says that all four causes can be signified by the middle term in a demonstrative syllogism, and he discusses at some length efficient causation, much of Aristotle’s discussion is foremost concerned with the formal cause. Further, I show that Aristotle had very detailed procedures (...) for identifying the formal cause, and that he is aware of several problems which might lead one to erroneously identify the wrong form as the cause of a property. Finally, I show that Aristotle’s account can easily be adapted to material causation, and through some modifications (introduction of process universals related through parthood), hinted at in II 11-12 and 16-17, to efficient and final causation. (shrink)

Background Person-centred care is based on ethical principles, and it is regarded as high-quality care. Care of older persons should embrace person-centredness. During the pandemic, older persons were highlighted as a vulnerable group at risk of developing serious illness and/or suffering death from COVID-19. Several pandemic-related measures were introduced in residential care facilities (RCFs) to reduce this risk, which influenced the possibilities to lead and provide a person-centred care. Aim This study’s aim was to explore ethical challenges in relation to (...) person-centredness during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the perspective of leaders in RCFs. Research design The study had a qualitative descriptive design. Participants and research context Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 26 leaders working in RCFs in Sweden. Data were analysed using conventional content analysis. Ethical considerations The study was approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority. The participants received oral and written information about the study and gave written consent. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Findings The overarching ethical challenge was Having to disregard the individual needs of the person in order to protect the group and society. This included (a) Protecting the group versus promoting the older person’s autonomy; (b) Being forced to lead care based on uncertainty instead of evidence; (c) Striving to provide dignified care but lacking opportunities; and (d) Going far beyond ordinary duty and endangering one’s own and the staff’s health. Discussion The ethical challenges meant being torn between the person’s individual needs and protecting the group and society, with clashing ethical principles as a consequence. Conclusions The leaders faced ethical situations resulting in undignified and compromised person-centred care, which has implications for stakeholders and management who need to address the work conditions in RCFs. (shrink)

Former Prime Minister Koizumi's surprising victory within the Liberal Democratic Party in 2001 and his subsequent popularity as prime minister led to increased interest in the study of populism in Japan. In addition to Ōtake Hideo's prominent contributions, several others have also employed populism as a prism to study Japanese politics. Compared to the major debates on populism and particularly on the populist radical right in Western Europe over the last two decades, however, the study of Japanese populism seems to (...) be at a less mature stage. Lessons may be learned from the European literature for the community studying Japanese populism. This paper first summarizes the studies on Japanese populism. Then, the main discussions and arguments presented in the academic literature on the PRR in Europe are discussed. Next, this study evaluates how arguments found in studies of European populism can be exploited in further research on populist politicians and parties in Japan. The author recommends further studies on conceptual definitions, on the classifications of politicians and parties, and on explaining the emergence and persistence of these parties and politicians. The findings in this paper encourage and support further research on populism in the Japanese political system. (shrink)

Two experiments with undergraduates as subjects tested explanations of how a prior temporary income change influences choices between buying and deferred buying. In Experiment 1 predictions from the behavioral life-cycle theory (Shefrin & Thaler, 1988), the renewable resources model (Linville & Fischer, 1991) and the loss-sensitivity principle (Garling & Romanus, 1997) were contrasted. The results are inconsistent with the latter two explanations since the framing of buying as positive (buying a new model of a product) or negative (replacing a broken (...) product) did not interact with the income change. Congruent with the behavioral life-cycle theory, willingness to buy was greater when subjects received a temporary income increase than when they received a temporary income decrease although total assets were equal. Further support for the behavioral life-cycle theory is obtained in Experiment 2 where four income-change conditions and durable and nondurable goods are compared. (shrink)

In nursing practice, awareness of ethical inner values and a common understanding of nursing and caring are needed. It is therefore important to highlight ideas of caring in nursing practice. The aim of this paper was to illuminate nursing, caring and ethical inner values in caring and caring in nursing practice. By being attentive, open, respectful and treating the patient as a person, nurses can enhance both their own and the patient's sense of personal meaning in the caring relationship. Nurses (...) can use self‐reflection to create an awareness of nursing, caring and ethical inner values in caring. (shrink)