BackgroundThe wellbeing of people living with dementia and their family caregivers may be impacted by stigma, changing roles, and limited access to meaningful opportunities as a dyad. Group therapeutic songwriting and qualitative interviews have been utilized in music therapy research to promote the voices of people with dementia and family caregivers participating in separate songwriting groups but not together as dyads.ProceduresThis study aimed to explore how ten people with dementia/family caregiver dyads experienced a 6-week group TSW program. Dyads participated in (...) homogenous TSW groups involving 2–4 dyads who were either living together in the community or living separately because the person with dementia resided in a care home. The TSW program, informed by personhood, couplehood, family centered and group process frameworks, involved creating original lyrics through song parody and song collage. Qualified Music Therapists facilitated sessions and interviewed each dyad separately. Interviews were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.FindingsFive recurrent group themes were developed, indicating group TSW: was a positive shared experience, benefiting both members of the dyad and motivating further engagement with music; stimulated mental processes and reignited participants’ interests and skills; provided meaningful opportunities for reflection and connection with memories and life experiences; and prompted interaction and collaboration, leading to social connections, empathic relationships and experiences of inclusion. Participants also highlighted how: the facilitated process supported engagement, highlighting abilities and challenging doubts.ConclusionDyads identified group TSW as an opportunity to recognize strengths, voice ideas and opinions, share meaningful experiences, and do “more with music.” Participants valued TSW as a new, creative and stimulating experience that enabled connection with self and others and led to feelings of pride and achievement. Our findings further recognize how therapeutic intention and approach were reflected in participants’ engagement and responses regardless of dementia stage and type, dyad relationship, or musical background. This research may broaden perspectives and expand understanding about how people with dementia and their family caregivers access and engage in music therapy. (shrink)

Seeking to provide a richer alternative to both the contemporary cult of beauty and appearance and the concomitant decline of real beauty, this book offers a systematic treatment of the relationship between beauty and the good by drawing from ancient (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, and others) and medieval (e.g., Aquinas, Bonaventure, Hugh of St. Victor, and others) thought in such a way as to bring together scholars in these traditions.

Cet article se propose de mettre en lumière les dynamiques interactionnelles mises en œuvre par la pratique comique de l’onomasti kômôidein, à travers le recours à certaines instruments théoriques fournis par la socio-linguistique (analyse interactionnelle et conversationnelle). En soulignant l’analogie existante entre les injures que les acteurs adressent contre des citoyens réels appelés par leur nom et la calomnie, la diabolè, il propose de nuancer l’opposition, qui domine la critique aristophanienne, entre les interprétations « ritualistes » et les interprétations « (...) politiques » de ce phénomène dramatique. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Untersuchung wird von der Frage geleitet, ob und wie sich philosophische Aussagen zur Kunst mit kunsthistorischen Sichtweisen verbinden und für die Rezeption nichtgegenständlicher Kunst fruchtbar machen lassen. Sie basiert auf der Analyse von Positionen des kunsthistorischen Kanons sowie auf der Untersuchung fünf philosophisch-ästhetischer Theorien essentialistischer und antiessentialistischer Art. Aufgrund dieses hermeneutischen Prozesses wird eine Systematik der Bildbefragung entwickelt, die sich als Interpretationsansatz insbesondere für nicht gegenstandsbezogenere Werke eignet. Die interdisziplinäre Arbeit gliedert sich in vier Kapitel. Sie beginnt mit (...) der Untersuchung Elemente Zeigen und Sagen. Im zweiten Kapitel werden Elemente der ikonischen Logik untersucht, die das Sein des Bildes als sein Scheinen definieren. Dabei werden vier Typen ikonisch absenter Charakteristiken systematisiert. Das dritte Kapitel analysiert signifikante Texte zur Ästhetik von G.W.F. Hegel, M. Weitz, N. Goodman, M. Heidegger und H.-G. Gadamer. Aus ihnen werden Leitgedanken deduziert, die im vierten Kapitel die Grundlage von drei systematischen Bildbefragungen bilden. Die kunstwissenschaftliche Relevanz dieses philosophischen Ansatzes wird durch die damit generierten Werkinterpretationen belegt. (shrink)

I address Sinnott-Armstrong's argument that evidence of framing effects in moral psychology shows that moral intuitions are unreliable and therefore not noninferentially justified. I begin by discussing what it is to be epistemically unreliable and clarify how framing effects render moral intuitions unreliable. This analysis calls for a modification of Sinnott-Armstrong's argument if it is to remain valid. In particular, he must claim that framing is sufficiently likely to determine the content of moral intuitions. I then re-examine the evidence which (...) is supposed to support this claim. In doing so, I provide a novel suggestion for how to analyze the reliability of intuitions in empirical studies. Analysis of the evidence suggests that moral intuitions subject to framing effects are in fact much more reliable than perhaps was thought, and that Sinnott-Armstrong has not succeeded in showing that noninferential justification has been defeated. (shrink)

Consent governs innumerable everyday social interactions, including sex, medical exams, the use of property, and economic transactions. Yet little is known about how ordinary people reason about the validity of consent. Across the domains of sex, medicine, and police entry, Study 1 showed that when agents lack autonomous decision-making capacities, participants are less likely to view their consent as valid; however, failing to exercise this capacity and deciding in a nonautonomous way did not reduce consent judgments. Study 2 found that (...) specific and concrete incapacities reduced judgments of valid consent, but failing to exercise these specific capacities did not, even when the consenter makes an irrational and inauthentic decision. Finally, Study 3 showed that the effect of autonomy on judgments of valid consent carries important downstream consequences for moral reasoning about the rights and obligations of third parties, even when the consented-to action is morally wrong. Overall, these findings suggest that laypeople embrace a normative, domain-general concept of valid consent that depends consistently on the possession of autonomous capacities, but not on the exercise of these capacities. Autonomous decisions and autonomous capacities thus play divergent roles in moral reasoning about consent interactions: while the former appears relevant for assessing the wrongfulness of consented-to acts, the latter plays a role in whether consent is regarded as authoritative and therefore as transforming moral rights. (shrink)

This chapter examines the relevance of the cognitive science of morality to moral epistemology, with special focus on the issue of the reliability of moral judgments. It argues that the kind of empirical evidence of most importance to moral epistemology is at the psychological rather than neural level. The main theories and debates that have dominated the cognitive science of morality are reviewed with an eye to their epistemic significance.

Alice B. Stockham took 'KAREZZA' from the Italian term 'carezza' meaning petting or gentle stroking. Because of birth control as well as 'spiritual exaltation' she pled for a radical change of sexual behavior. She was convinced, that there was a tremendous difference between the usual copulation ending with orgasm respectively ejaculation and the sexual merging according to the Karezza technique without a climax. In spite of the 'sexual revolutions' during the 20th century her Karezza method has been generally ignored (...) until today. But it may give men and women a chance to control the sexual drive by means of their own mental power which can be successfully trained. (shrink)

Depuis l’importante anthologie de textes féministes français parue en 1978 sous le titre Le Grief des femmes, depuis longtemps épuisée, aucun recueil similaire n’avait été composé. Nicole Pellegrin se propose de combler cette lacune, qui témoigne, selon elle, du retard français en matière d’enseignement et de vulgarisation sur l’histoire des femmes et du genre. Elle rassemble ici vingt extraits de textes, produits entre le début du XVe siècle et les années 1970. Peu d’entre eux ont été écrits...

Deux nouveaux acteurs collectifs de la vie politique émergent dans les débuts de la Troisième République : les syndicats, légalisés en 1884, et les associations féministes, dont la visibilité s’accroît en 1891 avec la fondation de la Fédération française des sociétés féministes. François Chaignaud s’intéresse à la première véritable confrontation qui se produit entre ces deux groupes, au moment de la grève déclenchée en novembre 1901 dans l’imprimerie Berger-Levrault de Nancy. Son livre, issu...

Comme son titre l’indique, cet ouvrage collectif, dirigé et présenté par Karen Hagemann et Jean H. Quataert, s’adresse en premier lieu aux historien-ne-s travaillant sur l’Allemagne des xixe et xxe siècles, et dont la majorité se trouvent aux États-Unis et en Allemagne. Son lectorat devrait pourtant s’avérer beaucoup plus vaste, car le livre offre aussi une précieuse somme de connaissances et de réflexions à tout-e historien-ne s’intéressant aux récentes évolutions de l’historiographie occide...

May assumes that if moral beliefs are counterfactually dependent on irrelevant factors, then those moral beliefs are based on defective belief-forming processes. This assumption is false. Whether influence by irrelevant factors is debunking depends on the mechanisms through which this influence occurs. This raises the empirical bar for debunkers and helps May avoid an objection to his Debunker’s Dilemma.

Typically, the imagination in thought experiments has been taken to consist in mental images; we visualize the state of affairs described. A recent alternative from Fiora Salis and Roman Frigg main...

Is there a role for aesthetic judgements in science? One aspect of scientific practice, the use of thought experiments, has a clear aesthetic dimension. Thought experiments are creatively produced artefacts that are designed to engage the imagination. Comparisons have been made between scientific (and philosophical) thought experiments and other aesthetically appreciated objects. In particular, thought experiments are said to share qualities with literary fiction as they invite us to imagine a fictional scenario and often have a narrative form (Elgin 2014). (...) But philosophical discussions of aesthetics in science have focused mainly on the epistemic role of beauty and elegance when it comes to theories and mathematical proofs, and thought experiments have been widely overlooked. My aim in this chapter is to address how the aesthetic choices scientists make in the design of a thought experiment contribute to its function: to communicate, convince, or explain a theory or phenomenon. A key issue is whether any aesthetic features in science provide anything beyond catching our attention, or are at best, a mere heuristic aid. I respond to accounts that argue this way and show how formulation is important in scientific thought experiments and, similarly to literary fictions, there is more than one way of interpreting a thought experiment scenario. I end by considering which literary examples are most appropriate when making comparisons with thought experiments. As a result, the difference between representations in art and science raised in current discussions is not as stark as it has been made out to be, and science is a more heterogeneous practice than has been allowed. Part of the value of thought experiments in scientific practice includes the qualities they share with literary works. (shrink)

Those who wish to defend the role of aesthetic values in science face a dilemma: Either aesthetic language is used metaphorically for what are ultimately epistemic features, or aesthetic language is used literally but it is difficult to see the importance of such values in science. I introduce a new account that gets around this problem by looking to an overlooked source of aesthetic value in science: the relation between form and content. I argue that a fit between the content (...) of a thought experiment, and the way in which that content is formulated, can have important epistemic pay offs through contributing to scientific understanding. (shrink)

Published in 1721 by the prominent Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather, The Christian Philosopher was the first comprehensive book on science to be written by an American. Building on natural theology, Mather demonstrated the harmony between religion and the new science associated with Sir Isaac Newton. His survey of all the known sciences from astronomy and physics to human anatomy presented evidence that both celestial and terrestrial phenomema imply an intelligent designer. Winton Solberg's introduction places Mather's treatise in its widest (...) historical context. In addition to tracing the origins and sources of Mather's work, Solberg analyzes the book's contents, its reception, and its significance in American intellectual and cultural history. This edition affirms Mather's importance to American thought as a deeply religious intellectual who introduced the Enlightenment to America. (shrink)

This edition affirms Mather's importance to American thought as a deeply religious intellectual who introduced the Enlightenment to America.".

This book surveys various sciences from astronomy and physics to human anatomy to present evidence that both celestial and terrestrial phenomena imply an intelligent designer.

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Cet article propose une analyse des huit occurrences de la formule homérique epos t’ephat’ ek t’onomazen qui sont précédées, dans le premier hémistiche de l’hexamètre, par le verbe enenipein, dans le but de mettre en lumière la signification particulière qu’y recouvre le verbe onomazein « apostropher par des mots injurieux ».

Cet article est disponible en texte intégral en format PDF.

Cet article est disponible en texte intégral en format PDF.

While the influence of emotion on individuals'' ethical decisions has been identified by numerous researchers, little is known about how emotions influence individuals'' ethical decision process. Thus, it is not clear whether different emotions promote and/or discourage ethical decision-making in the workplace. To address this gap, this paper develops a model that illustrates how emotion affects the components of individuals'' ethical decision-making process. The model is developed by integrating research findings that consider the two dimensions of emotion, arousal and feeling (...) state, into an applied cognitive-developmental perspective on the process of ethical decision-making. The model demonstrates that certain emotional states influence the individual''s propensity to identify ethical dilemmas, facilitate the formation of the individual''s prescriptive judgments at sophisticated levels of moral development, lead to ethical decision choices that are consistent with the individual''s prescriptive judgements, and promote the individual''s compliance with his or her ethical decision choices. In particular, the model suggests that individuals experiencing arousal and positive affect resolve ethical dilemmas in a manner consistent with more sophisticated cognitive moral structures. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The paper explores whether the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) in ethics and political philosophy should be individual or public in character. I defend a modestly public conception of RE, in which public opinion is used specifically as a source of considered judgments about cases. Public opinion is superior to philosophical opinion in delivering judgments that are untainted by principled commitments. A case-based approach also mitigates the methodological problems that commonly confront efforts to integrate philosophy with the investigation of popular (...) attitudes. This conception of RE is situated in relation to alternative accounts, including those of Daniels, Rawls, and Wolff and de-Shalit. (shrink)

Nick Bostrom and others have suggested treating decision-making under moral uncertainty as analogous to parliamentary decision-making. The core suggestion of this “parliamentary approach” is that the competing moral theories function like delegates to the parliament, and that these delegates then make decisions by some combination of bargaining and voting. There seems some reason to hope that such an approach might avoid standard objections to existing approaches (for example, the “maximise expected choiceworthiness” (MEC) and “my favourite theory” approaches). However, the parliamentary (...) approach is so far extremely underspecified, making it largely indeterminate how such a model will in fact behave in the respects that those concerned with moral uncertainty care about. This paper explores one way of making it precise. We treat predicaments of moral uncertainty as analogous to bargaining situations alone (setting aside voting), and apply a version of the Nash solution that is standard in bargaining theory. The resulting model does indeed perform in many of the hoped-for ways. However, so also does a version of MEC that employs a structural approach to intertheoretic comparisons. It seems to us an open question which, regarding this version of MEC and the bargaining-theoretic approach, is superior to the other. We identify the key points on which the two differ. (shrink)

The demands of morality can seem straightforward. Be kind to others. Do not lie. Do not murder. But moral life is not so simple. We are often confronted with difficult situations in which someone is going to get hurt no matter what we do, in which we cannot meet all of our obligations, in which loyalties come into conflict, in which we cannot help everyone who needs it, or in which we must compromise on important values. It is natural to (...) describe such situations as moral dilemmas. This chapter is about the psychology of how we represent, process, and make decisions about what to do when moral life is difficult in this way. Our first aim is to provide some conceptual clarity on what exactly turns a choice situation into a moral dilemma. Here, we propose a normative account of moral dilemmas in terms of moral appropriate feelings of conflict in response to strongly conflicting reasons. Our second aim is to critically survey existing psychological work, providing an overview of some important findings, while raising questions for future research. (shrink)

This entry summarizes an emerging subdiscipline of both empirical bioethics and experimental philosophy (“x-phi”) which has variously been referred to as experimental philosophical bioethics, experimental bioethics, or simply “bioxphi”. Like empirical bioethics, bioxphi uses data-driven research methods to capture what various stakeholders think (feel, judge, etc.) about moral issues of relevance to bioethics. However, like its other parent discipline of x-phi, bioxphi tends to favor experiment-based designs drawn from the cognitive sciences – including psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics – to (...) tease out why and how stakeholders think as they do. (shrink)

Historically left to the margins, the topics of imagination and creativity have gained prominence in philosophy of science, challenging the once dominant distinction between ‘context of discovery’ and ‘context of justification’. The aim of this chapter is to explore imagination and creativity starting from issues within contemporary philosophy of science, making connections to these topics in other domains along the way. It discusses the recent literature on the role of imagination in models and thought experiments, and their comparison with fictions. (...) It then turns to the importance of constraints on imaginings in the scientific domain, as well as whether constraints can hinder creativity. The second part of the paper focuses on the social dimensions of science. It considers imagination and creativity of scientific communities, asks whether the institution of science promotes creativity (and whether we want it to) or if it encourages conservativeness, and ends with a reflection on the politics of imagination and creativity in science. (shrink)

The progression of research and scholarly inquiry does not occur in isolation and is wholly dependent on accurate reporting of methods and results, and successful replication of prior work. Without mechanisms to correct the literature, much time and money is wasted on research based on a crumbling foundation. These guidelines serve to outline the respective responsibilities of researchers, institutions, agencies, and publishers or editors in maintaining the integrity of the research record. Delineating these complementary roles and proposing solutions for common (...) barriers provide a foundation for best practices. (shrink)

A major problem for interpersonal aggregation is how to compare utility across individuals; a major problem for decision-making under normative uncertainty is the formally analogous problem of how to compare choice-worthiness across theories. We introduce and study a class of methods, which we call statistical normalization methods, for making interpersonal comparisons of utility and intertheoretic comparisons of choice-worthiness. We argue against the statistical normalization methods that have been proposed in the literature. We argue, instead, in favor of normalization of variance: (...) we claim that this is the account that most plausibly gives all individuals or theories ‘equal say’. To this end, we provide two proofs that variance normalization has desirable properties that all other normalization methods lack, though we also show how different assumptions could lead one to axiomatize alternative statistical normalization methods. (shrink)

Although machine intelligence is increasingly employed in healthcare, the realm of decision-making in medical ethics remains largely unexplored from a technical perspective. We propose an approach based on fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs), which builds on Beauchamp and Childress’ prima-facie principles. The FCM’s weights are optimized using a genetic algorithm to provide recommendations regarding the initiation, continuation, or withdrawal of medical treatment. The resulting model approximates the answers provided by our team of medical ethicists fairly well and offers a high degree (...) of interpretability. Possible applications of such a system include informal guidance on medical ethics dilemmas as well as educational purposes. (shrink)

Objectification involves treating someone as a thing. The role of images in perpetuating objectification has been discussed by feminist philosophers. However, the precise effect that images have on an individual's visual system is seldom explored. Kathleen Stock’s work is an exception—she describes certain images of women as causing viewers to develop an objectifying ‘gestalt’ which is then projected onto real-life women. However, she doesn’t specify the level of visual processing at which objectification occurs. In this paper, I propose that images (...) can affect a viewer's early visual system. I will argue that if a viewer is exposed to a lot of images that depict women as sexual objects, this will bias their early visual selection mechanisms in a way that can result in an objectifying way of seeing. This is an important contribution to work on objectification as it incorporates empirical studies on vision and findings from philosophy of mind. It also examines some of the epistemic and moral consequences of objectification occurring at this early visual stage. (shrink)

This article explores how corporate governance processes and structures are being used in large Australian companies to develop, lead and implement corporate responsibility strategies. It presents an empirical analysis of the governance of sustainability in fifty large listed companies based on each company’s disclosures in annual and sustainability reports. We find that significant progress is being made by large listed Australian companies towards integrating sustainability into core business operations. There is evidence of leadership structures being put in place to ensure (...) that board and senior management are involved in sustainability strategy development and are then incentivised to monitor and ensure implementation of that strategy through financial rewards. There is evidence of a willingness to engage and communicate clearly the results of these strategies to interested stakeholders. Overall, there appears to be a developing acceptance amongst large corporations that efforts towards improved corporate sustainability are not only expected but are of value to the business. We suggest that this is evidence of a managerial shift away from an orthodox shareholder primacy understanding of the corporation towards a more enlightened shareholder value approach, often encompassing a stakeholder-orientated view of business strategy. However, strong underlying tensions remain due to the insistent market emphasis on shareholder value. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo present (1) the ethical concepts related to the debate on resuscitation of extremely premature infants (EPIs) as they are described in the ethical literature; and (2) the ethical arguments based on these concepts.DesignWe conducted a systematic review of the ethical literature. We selected articles based on the following predefined inclusion/exclusion criteria: (1) English language articles (2) presenting fully elaborated ethical arguments (3) on resuscitation (4) of EPIs, that is, infants born before 28 weeks of gestation.AnalysisAfter repeated reading of articles, (...) we developed individual summaries, conceptual schemes and an overall conceptual scheme. Ethical arguments and concepts were identified and analysed.ResultsForty articles were included out of 4709 screened. Personhood, best interest, autonomy and justice were concepts grounding the various arguments. Regarding these concepts, included authors agreed that the best interest principle should guide resuscitation decisions, whereas justice seemed the least important concept. The arguments addressed two questions: Should we resuscitate EPIs? Who should decide? Included authors agreed that not all EPIs should be resuscitated but disagreed on what criteria should ground this decision. Overall, included authors agreed that both parents and physicians should contribute to the decision.ConclusionsThe included publications suggest that while the best interest is the main concept guiding resuscitation decisions, justice is the least important. The included authors also agree that both parents and physicians should be actively involved in resuscitation decisions for EPIs. However, our results suggest that parents’ decision should be over-ridden when in contrast with the EPI’s best interest. (shrink)

Why do we find agents less blameworthy when they face mitigating circumstances, and what does this show about philosophical theories of moral responsibility? We present novel evidence that the tendency to mitigate the blameworthiness of agents is driven both by the perception that they are less normatively competent—in particular, less able to know that what they are doing is wrong—and by the perception that their behavior is less attributable to their deep selves. Consequently, we argue that philosophers cannot rely on (...) the case strategy to support the Normative Competence theory of moral responsibility over the Deep Self theory. However, we also outline ways in which further empirical and philosophical work would shift the debate, by showing that there is a significant departure between ordinary concepts and corresponding philosophical concepts, or by focusing on a different type of coherence with ordinary judgments. (shrink)

Walker's essays and articles written between 1966 and 1982 discuss the concept and influence of art and the artist's life, criticisms of authors such as Jean Toomer and Zora Neale Hurston, studies in the civil rights movement and feminist movement, and her own ideas while writing her book "The Color Purple.".

While discussions of the imagination have been limited in philosophy of science, this is beginning to change. In recent years, a vast literature on imagination in science has emerged. This paper surveys the current field, including the changing attitudes towards the scientific imagination, the fiction view of models, how the imagination can lead to knowledge and understanding, and the value of different types of imagination. It ends with a discussion of the gaps in the current literature, indicating avenues for future (...) research. (shrink)