Background: Limited knowledge of the experiences of conflicts of conscience found in nursing literature. Objectives: To explore the individual experiences of a conflict of conscience for neonatal nurses in Alberta. Research design: Interpretive description was selected to help situate the findings in a meaningful clinical context. Participants and research context: Five interviews with neonatal nurses working in Neonatal Intensive Care Units throughout Alberta. Ethical consideration: Ethics approval from the Health Research Ethics Board at the University of Alberta. Findings: Three common (...) themes emerged from the interviews: the unforgettable conflict with pain and suffering, finding the nurse’s voice, and the unique proximity of nurses. Discussion and conclusion: The nurses described a conflict of conscience when the neonate in their care experienced undermanaged pain and unnecessary suffering. During these experiences, they felt guilty, sad, hopeless, and powerless when they were unable to follow their conscience. Informal ways to follow their conscience were employed before declaration of conscientious objection was considered. This study highlights the vital importance of respecting a conflict of conscience to maintain the moral integrity of neonatal nurses and exposes the complexities of conscientious objection. (shrink)

Building from an interactionist view of ethics, this study sought to integrate individual and contextual factors for understanding ethical perceptions in teams. Given the proximal nature of team members, this study specifically explored how individuals comparatively evaluate their own ethical behaviors and team members’ ethical behaviors to arrive at a perception of ethical person–group fit within a team. Grounding our theoretical arguments in relational schemas theory, we demonstrate that interpersonal ethical perceptions can have distal impacts on perceptions of team functioning. (...) The results support the hypotheses that a perceived ethical incongruence between the self and other team members negatively influenced perceptions of relationship conflict and ultimately information sharing. By exploring individual and team level aspects of ethics concurrently, we contribute to a deeper understanding of contextual forces in ethics through an interactionist approach. (shrink)

Questions about when to limit unhelpful treatments are often raised in general medicine but are less commonly considered in psychiatry. Here we describe a survey of U.S. psychiatrists intended to characterize their attitudes about the management of suicidal ideation in patients with severely treatment-refractory illness. Respondents (n = 212) received one of two cases describing a patient with suicidal ideation due to either borderline personality disorder or major depressive disorder. Both patients were described as receiving all guideline-based and plausible emerging (...) treatments. Respondents rated the expected helpfulness and likelihood of recommending each of four types of intervention: hospitalization, additional medication changes, additional neurostimulation, and additional psychotherapy. Across both cases, most respondents said they were likely to provide each intervention, except for additional neurostimulation in borderline personality disorder, while fewer thought each intervention would be helpful. Substantial minorities of respondents indicated that they would provide an intervention they did not think was likely to be helpful. Our results suggest that while most psychiatrists recognize the possibility that some patients are unlikely to be helped by available treatments, many would continue to offer such treatments. (shrink)

The hairdresser who carries Ovid's invitation to his puella in Amores 1.11 is almost immediately blamed for his rejection in 1.12, before that blame is transferred to the tablets carrying that invitation. Nape (the enslaved hairdresser of the puella) has been linked to the character Dipsas, appearing in 1.7, specifically through the descriptor sobria. By focussing on the use of the verb uerto, the reference to the mythical strix, and curses related to the old age of both Dipsas and the (...) tablets in 1.7 and 1.12, this note demonstrates that the supernatural word choice further connects Nape with Dipsas. (shrink)

French post-Marxist theory and Gauchet's model of critique -- French post-Marxist theory and the political : Gauchet and religion -- Gauchet and the genesis of modern society -- The legacy of French sociology and anthropology : Gauchet and the question of the post-secular -- The crisis of European democracy : the neo-liberal ideology and political radicalization.

This book applies Augustine's thought to current questions of teaching and learning. The essays are written in an accessible style and is not intended just for experts on Augustine or church history.

The AMA's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs' position statement on “Disaster Preparedness and Response” is a welcome discussion of an important issue: the extent to which physicians have a responsibility to treat people affected by disasters in which the nature, source, and cause of the harm is unclear and where the risk is largely unknown.

_This practical and forward-focused book presents a framework that uses social infrastructure to produce effective and inclusive professional development options in education._ Although technology has increased our capacity for social networking both in the digital space and face-to-face, Kira J. Baker-Doyle contends that most professional development opportunities for educators are still fundamentally asocial. She calls for the adoption of humanizing network practices to create meaningful continuing education experiences that leverage the collective knowledge, expertise, and social capital of educators to (...) spark educational change. Baker-Doyle shows how the critical network literacy (CNL) framework overlays critical theory, multiliteracies theory, and social network theory in a way that encourages critical reflection and collaboration among participants. She draws from sources including empirical studies of teacher educators and teacher activists, meta-analytical studies of social network research in education, and professional experience with collective organizing efforts, to detail the many benefits of cultivating CNL in educational spaces. Baker-Doyle provides evidence of how the framework’s practices and protocols can increase transparency, improve representation, and incorporate affirming and restorative discourse. Her work demonstrates how CNL helps create environments that honor teachers’ social identities, their social networks, and the broader social context in which they work. This thought-provoking book is filled with exercises that reinforce social competencies, questions that prompt dialogue and understanding, and real-world examples that underscore the framework's relevance to key educational practices. The generous guidance offered in _Critical Network Literacy_ can be used as a launching point to promote innovation and leadership in teaching. (shrink)

French political philosophy has experienced a renewal over the last twenty years. One of its leading projects is Marcel Gauchet’s reflection on democracy and religion. This project situates itself within the context of the French debate on modernity and autonomy launched by the work of Cornelius Castoriadis. Gauchet’s work makes a significant contribution to this debate by building on the pioneering work of Lefort on the political self-instituting capacity of modern societies and the associated shift from religion to ideology. It (...) thus explores the centrality of the notion of sovereignty in the advent of liberal democracy and conducts this reflection within an overall discussion of the role played by Christianity in the genesis of European modernity. It elaborates an anthropology of modernity which explores the relationship between individualism and democracy and redefines modernity as a project of sovereignty which aims at creating a radically new society, the society of individuals. (shrink)

This paper explores the specific contribution of a strand of contemporary French social theory founded by Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort to the understanding of human power. It formulates a conception of power that transcends its definitions in terms of physical coercion or institutionalised violence to reveal the way power is creative and institutes the social. Its reflection on the cultural nature of political power and it role in society is shown to extend the pioneering reflection of Durkheim's sociology, especially (...) as regards the homology that exists between religion and politics. The social role performed by the state explored by Durkheim prefigures Gauchet's theory of the state, which builds on Lefort's work. Gauchet's theory can be said to elaborate a critical synthesis of the two stands of Durkheim's work: the sociology of religion and the sociology of the modern state. This synthesis raises questions on the role played by the European state in the development of individualism, in both its political and economic manifestations. (shrink)

Searches for the sources and means for a disciplined practical approach to exploring human experience.

A collaborative article by the Editorial Collective of Social Imaginaries. Investigations into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries field has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. The recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable field and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the most important theoretical frameworks (...) for understanding social imaginaries, although the field as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative. We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a significant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the field and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination, the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifically political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their inter-civilisational encounters. The social imaginaries field imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold significant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena. The essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making offers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices. (shrink)

Starting with a discussion of the crisis of French national identity that became fully apparent in the 1980s, this article examines the historical paradigm that conditioned the birth of French universalism and ultimately spelt its demise. Identifying as the determining experience the reification/deification of power performed by monarchical absolutism, it examines the evolution of what can be termed after Marcel Gauchet the French `political-intellectual system', with its exclusive emphasis on the ideological legitimacy of power, and highlights the crucial role played (...) by intellectuals in its formation, be it on an oppositional mode. Looking back to the 17th century, it thus identifies in Montaigne's essays and their complex dialectic of order and revolt the fundamental paradox within which French intellectual culture evolved right up to post-structuralism, which, whilst it attempted a most radical critique of the French intellectual mystique, ultimately remained prisoner to its underlying statism. Post-structuralism is thus to be seen as the first manifestation of a profound crisis of French intellectual culture, triggered in the 1970s by the crisis of French republicanism, in the wake of the worldwide decline of national sovereignty. What characterized French political and intellectual culture from its inception was indeed the reductive absorption of the notion of society into that of state, and the concomitant belief in a rational vanguard. However, whilst post-structuralism belongs to a tradition of resistance to the republican legacy of the French Enlightenment, it remains deeply conditioned by the pessimism of its distant Augustinian and Jansenist origins: unable to conceive of any effective social action outside of the state, it condemns itself to the marginality of counter-culture. Rather than a total deconstruction of French universalism, post-structuralism must thus be identified as its last, contradictory manifestation. (shrink)

Radical behaviorism is fundamentally different from traditional psychology, so it is not surprising that is has been widely misunderstood. It offers an alternative to the traditional treatments of mind that avoids some of the insoluble problems raised by those views. B. F. Skinner attempted many times to describe this alternative with limited success, partially attributable to the opacity of his prose and the excessiveness of his proposed applications. We offer annotated excerpts from one of his books dedicated to this end (...) in an effort to show how his approach deals with topics usually viewed as "cognitive psychology." While modern radical behaviorism has progressed beyond Skinner's conception in important ways, his writings remain instructive. (shrink)

Accurately assessing youth mental health involves obtaining reports from multiple informants who typically display low levels of correspondence. This low correspondence may reflect situational specificity. That is, youth vary as to where they display mental health concerns and informants vary as to where and from what perspective they observe youth. Despite the frequent need to understand and interpret these informant discrepancies, no consensus guidelines exist for integrating informants’ reports. The path to building these guidelines starts with identifying factors that reliably (...) predict the level and form of these informant discrepancies, and do so for theoretically and empirically relevant reasons. Yet, despite the knowledge of situational specificity, few approaches to integrating multi-informant data are well-equipped to account for these factors in measurement, and those that claim to be well-positioned to do so have undergone little empirical scrutiny. One promising approach was developed roughly 20 years ago by Kraemer and colleagues. Their Satellite Model leverages principal components analysis and strategic selection of informants to instantiate situational specificity in measurement, namely components reflecting variance attributable to the context in which informants observe behavior, the perspective from which they observe behavior, and behavior that manifests across contexts and perspectives. The current study represents the first construct validation test of the Satellite Model. A mixed-clinical/community sample of 134 adolescents and their parents completed six parallel surveys of adolescent mental health. Adolescents also participated in a series of simulated social interactions with research personnel trained to act as same-age, unfamiliar peers. A third informant viewed these interactions and completed the same surveys as parents and adolescents. We applied the Satellite Model to each set of surveys and observed high internal consistency estimates for each of the six-item trait, context, and perspective components. Scores reflecting the trait, context, and perspective components displayed distinct patterns of relations to a battery of criterion variables that varied in the context, perspective, and source of measurement. The Satellite Model instantiates situational specificity in measurement and facilitates unifying conceptual and measurement models of youth mental health. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn our everyday life, we frequently switch between different tasks, a faculty that changes with age. However, it is still not understood how emotion impacts on age-related changes in task s...

We report an experiment investigating the “special-process” theory of insight problem solving, which claims that insight arises from non-conscious, non-reportable processes that enable problem re-structuring. We predicted that reducing opportunities for speech-based processing during insight problem solving should permit special processes to function more effectively and gain conscious awareness, thereby facilitating insight. We distracted speech-based processing by using either articulatory suppression or irrelevant speech, with findings for these conditions supporting the predicted insight facilitation effect relative to silent working or thinking (...) aloud. The latter condition was included to investigate the currently contested effect of “verbal overshadowing” on insight, whereby thinking aloud is claimed to hinder the operation of special, non-reportable processes. Whilst verbal overshadowing was not evident in final solution rates, there was nevertheless support for verbal overshadowing up to and beyond.. (shrink)

Although many studies have found a positive relationship between corporate social performance and employer attractiveness, few have examined how different forms of responsibility might mediate that attraction, particularly when those social practices afford different degrees of employee participation. The current study undertook this line of inquiry by examining prospective employees’ attraction to three common approaches to corporate social performance (CSP) that offer increasing levels of participation: donation, volunteerism, and operational integration. Unexpectedly, findings from an empirical investigation challenged the study's main (...) hypothesis; that is, prospective employees were least attracted to firms that integrated their social and financial goals. Consequently, important implications and questions remain for both employers and business educators. (shrink)

This book searches for the sources and means for a disciplined practical approach to exploring human experience. The spirit of this book is "pragmatic" and relies on a Husserlian phenomenology primarily understood as a "method" of exploring our experience. The authors do not aim at a neo-Kantian "a priori" new theory of experience but instead they describe a concrete activity: how we examine what we live through, how we "become aware" of our own mental life. The range of experiences of (...) which we can become aware is vast: all the normal dimensions of human life (perception, motion, memory, imagination, speech, everyday social interactions), cognitive events that can be precisely defined as tasks in laboratory experiments (e.g., a protocol for visual attention), but also manifestations of mental life more fraught with meaning (dreaming, intense emotions, social tensions, altered states of consciousness). The central assertion in this work is that this immanent ability is habitually ignored or at best practiced unsystematically, that is to say, blindly. Exploring human experience amounts to developing and cultivating this basic ability through specific training. Only a hands-on, non-dogmatic approach can lead to progress, and that is what animates this book. (Series B). (shrink)

Philosophers sometimes hope that our discipline will be transformative for students, perhaps especially when we teach so-called philosophy of the body. To that end, this article describes an experimental upper-level undergraduate course cross-listed between Philosophy and Physical Education, entitled “Thinking Through the Body: Philosophy and Yoga.” Drawing on the perspectives of professor and students, we show how a somatic practice (here, hatha yoga) and reading texts (here, primarily contemporary phenomenology) can be integrated in teaching and learning. We suggest that the (...) course raised questions about the ethics of evaluation as well as about the split between theory and practice, which have larger pedagogical implications. (shrink)

IntroductionCognitive impairment is a highly prevalent non-motor feature of Parkinson’s disease. A better understanding of the underlying pathophysiology may help in identifying therapeutic targets to prevent or treat dementia. This study sought to identify metabolic alterations in the prefrontal cortex, a key region for cognitive functioning that has been implicated in cognitive dysfunction in PD.MethodsProton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy was used to investigate metabolic changes in the PFC of a cohort of cognitively normal individuals without PD, as well as PD participants (...) with either normal cognition, mild cognitive impairment, or dementia. Ratios to Creatine resonance were obtained for glutamate, glutamine and glutamate combined, N-acetylaspartate, myoinositol, and total choline, and correlated with cognitive scores across multiple domains administered to the PD participants only.ResultsWhen individuals retain cognitive capabilities, the presence of Parkinson’s disease does not create metabolic disturbances in the PFC. However, when cognitive symptoms are present, PFC Glu/Cre ratios decrease with significant differences between the PD-NC and PPD groups. In addition, Glu/Cre ratios and memory scores were marginally associated, but not after Bonferroni correction.ConclusionThese preliminary findings indicate that fluctuations in prefrontal glutamate may constitute a biomarker for the progression of cognitive impairments in PD. We caution for larger MRS investigations of carefully defined PD groups. (shrink)