Proposed educational outcomes for the health humanities in medical education range from empathy to visual thinking skills to social accountability. This lack of widely agreed-upon high-level curricular goals limits humanities educators’ ability to design purposeful curricula toward clear, common ends and threatens justifications for scarce curricular time. We propose a novel approach to the hoped-for outcomes of health humanities training in medical schools, which has the potential to encompass traditional health humanities knowledge, skills, and behaviors while also being concrete and (...) measurable: humanistic practice. Humanistic practice, adapted from the concept of ethical sensitivity, is an intentional process of applying humanities knowledge and skills to a clinical scenario by 1) noticing that the scenario requires humanities knowledge or skills, 2) informing one’s clinical and interpersonal strategy and behavior with humanities knowledge or skills, 3) reflecting on the effectiveness of the strategy and behavior, and 4) reorienting to develop new approaches for future practice. The construct of humanistic practice may help address some of the foundational problems in health humanities outcomes research since it transcends the traditional diverse content domains in the health humanities, can link patient and provider experiences, and may bridge the divide among the additive, curative, and intrinsic epistemic positions of humanities to medical education. (shrink)

Joint attention has been extensively studied in the developmental literature because of overwhelming evidence that the ability to socially coordinate visual attention to an object is essential to healthy developmental outcomes, including language learning. The goal of this study was to understand the complex system of sensory-motor behaviors that may underlie the establishment of joint attention between parents and toddlers. In an experimental task, parents and toddlers played together with multiple toys. We objectively measured joint attention—and the sensory-motor behaviors that (...) underlie it—using a dual head-mounted eye-tracking system and frame-by-frame coding of manual actions. By tracking the momentary visual fixations and hand actions of each participant, we precisely determined just how often they fixated on the same object at the same time, the visual behaviors that preceded joint attention and manual behaviors that preceded and co-occurred with joint attention. We found that multiple sequential sensory-motor patterns lead to joint attention. In addition, there are developmental changes in this multi-pathway system evidenced as variations in strength among multiple routes. We propose that coordinated visual attention between parents and toddlers is primarily a sensory-motor behavior. Skill in achieving coordinated visual attention in social settings—like skills in other sensory-motor domains—emerges from multiple pathways to the same functional end. (shrink)

Self-criticism is a trait associated with increased psychopathology, but self-criticism is also a personality state reflecting an action that people do in moments of time. In the current study, we explored factors associated with heightened self-criticism in daily life. Participants (N = 197) received five random prompts per day for one week on their mobile phones, where they reported their current affect (negative and positive affect), willpower self-efficacy, distress intolerance, degree of support and criticism from others, current context (location, activity, (...) hunger, tiredness) and momentary self-criticism. We first demonstrated that self-criticism varies over time and across contexts, and is associated with heightened trait self-criticism. Then, using multilevel modelling, we explored the contextual factors associated with greater self-criticism. We found that self-criticism was higher when people were at home, and more tired. We also found higher self-criticism to be associated with greater negative and lower positive affect, greater distress intolerance, lower willpower and greater perceived criticism from others. In addition, self-criticism predicted subsequent distress intolerance, willpower and positive affect in lagged analyses. This study provides evidence that both environmental and psychological factors are associated with the dynamics of self-critical thoughts. (shrink)

Visual research methods like photography and digital storytelling are increasingly used in health and social sciences research as participatory approaches that benefit participants, researchers, and audiences. Visual methods involve a number of additional ethical considerations such as using identifiable content and ownership of creative outputs. As such, ethics committees should use different assessment frameworks to consider research protocols with visual methods. Here, we outline the limitations of ethics committees in assessing projects with a visual focus and highlight the sparse knowledge (...) on how researchers respond when they encounter ethical challenges in the practice of visual research. We propose a situated approach in relation to visual methodologies that encompasses a negotiated, flexible approach, given that ethical issues usually emerge in relation to the specific contexts of individual research projects. Drawing on available literature and two case studies, we identify and reflect on nuanced ethical implications in visual research, like tensions between aesthetics and research validity. The case studies highlight strategies developed in-situ to address the challenges two researchers encountered when using visual research methods, illustrating that some practice implications are not necessarily addressed using established ethical clearance procedures. A situated approach can ensure that visual research remains ethical, engaging, and rigorous. (shrink)

One way of increasing the supply of organs available for transplant would be to switch to an opt-out system of donor registration. This is typically assumed to operate on the basis of presumed consent, but this faces the objection that not all of those who fail to opt out would actually consent to the use of their cadaveric organs. This paper defuses this objection, arguing that people's actual, explicit or implicit, consent to use their organs is not needed. It borrows (...) David Estlund's notion of ‘normative consent’ from the justification of political authority and applies it to the case of organ donation. According to this idea, when it is wrong to withhold consent to something, the moral force of that lack of consent may be null and void. If it is wrong of a person to refuse to donate their cadaveric organs to others, then it may be that their actual consent is not needed. This supports an opt-out system, which provides protection for those who have genuine reasons to refuse donation, and spares the worries as to what the deceased would actually have wanted. (shrink)

The growing interest in Africa as well as concerns about negative deviant behaviors and ethnic structures necessitates examination of the effect of ethnic expectations on behavior of employees. In this study we leverage insight from ethnos oblige theory to propose that centralization of ethnic norms moderates the relationship between benevolence expectations and negative deviant behavior. Using a cross-sectional design and data from two countries as well as moderation and cross-cultural analytic techniques, we find support for three-way interactions where the relationship (...) between benevolence and negative deviant behavior is moderated by centralization and culture. We discuss the implications of the findings which support the dynamic perspective of management in Africa. (shrink)

The current resurgence of interest in cognition and in the nature of cognitive processing has brought with it also a renewed interest in the early work of Husserl, which contains one of the most sustained attempts to come to grips with the problems of logic from a cognitive point of view. Logic, for Husserl, is a theory of science; but it is a theory which takes seriously the idea that scientific theories are constituted by the mental acts of cognitive subjects. (...) The present essay begins with an exposition of Husserl's act-based conception of what a science is, and goes on to consider his account of the role of linguistic meanings, of the ontology of scientific objects, and of evidence and truth. The essay concentrates almost exclusively on the Logical Investigations of 1900/01. This is not only because this work, which is surely Husserl's single most important masterpiece, has been overshadowed first of all by his Ideas I and then later by the Crisis. It is also because the Investigations contain, in a peculiarly clear and pregnant form, a whole panoply of ideas on logic and cognitive theory which either simply disappeared in Husserl's own later writings or became obfuscated by an admixture of that great mystery which is 'transcendental phenomenology'. (shrink)

In the wake of the advent of genome editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-associated protein 9), there has been a global debate around the implications of manipulating the human genome. While CRISPR-based germline gene editing is new, the debate about the ethics of gene editing is not – for several decades now, scholars have debated the ethics of making heritable changes to the human genome. The arguments that have been raised both for and against the use of (...) genetic technologies in human reproduction reiterate much of the arguments made in the pre-CRISPR debate. As such, it is instructive for South Africa to reflect on these arguments now, in considering our position on the regulation of the use of this novel biotechnology. There are two dominant schools of thought in this area, bioliberalism and bioconservatism. Bioconservatives raise concerns about the risks of genetic manipulation, and argue that it ought to be limited or prohibited to avert these risks to human health and human nature. Bioliberal scholars are more open to the prospect of genetic manipulation, because of its potential utility. In this article, I conclude that in liberal democracies such as our own, bioliberal arguments ought to be seriously considered when formulating policy on human genome editing because of the extent to which they resonate with our Constitutional values and human rights. I further suggest that there is a need for an enquiry into the relevance of African perspectives on the ethical questions that arise concerning germline genome editing. (shrink)

Two main methods for analysing de re readings of definite descriptions in intensional contexts coexist: that of evaluating the description in the actual world, whether by means of scope, actuality operators, or non-local world binding, and that of substituting another description, usually one expressing a salient or ‘vivid’ acquaintance relation to an attitude holder, prior to evaluation. Recent work on so-called descriptive indexicals suggests that contrary to common assumptions, both methods are needed, for different ends. This paper aims to show (...) that there is indeed a division of labour between the two methods of analysis and to identify criteria for choosing among alternative ways to model the second, substitutional method. (shrink)

Drawing from the Boulding''s (1956) framework for general systems theory, the need to employ richer paradigm in the study of organizations (Pondy and Mitroff, 1979) is reiterated. It is argued that a better understanding of organizational ethical behavior is contingent upon viewing organizations as symbol processing systems of shared language and meanings. Further, it is proposed that organizations, like individuals, develop into collectivities of shared cognitions and rationale, over a period of time. The study adapts Kohlberg''s (1983) model of moral (...) development to examine if organizations can be viewed as passing through different stages of moral development depending on the type of moral reasoning employed to explain their behaviors in the face of ethical crises. Several cases raising questions about the ethics of corporate behavior were researched. An instrument entitled Organization Response Analysis was constructed using statements made by various spokespersons representing five of these organizations. The instrument was administered to 246 graduate and undergraduate students of business (N = 246). Results indicated a great degree of concurrence among respondents of differing genders, levels of education and work experience in determining the stages of moral development of organizations. Limitations of the current study and implications for future research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

We presuppose a position of scientific realism to the effect (i) that the world exists and (ii) that through the working out of ever more sophisticated theories our scientific picture of reality will approximate ever more closely to the world as it really is. Against this background consider, now, the following question: 1. Do the empirical theories with the help of which we seek to approximate a good or true picture of reality rest on any non-empirical presuppositions? One can answer (...) this question with either a 'yes' or a 'no'. 'No' is the preferred answer of most contemporary methodologists -- Murray Rothbard is one distinguished counterexample to this trend -- who maintain that empirical theories are completely free of non-empirical ('a priori') admixtures and who see science as a matter of the gathering of pure 'data' obtained through simple observation. From such data scientific propositions are then supposed to be somehow capable of being established. (shrink)

Este artículo problematiza la forma en la que el feminismo ha interpretado al escepticismo como una amenaza para su proyecto epistemológico, ético y político, y plantea que, a pesar de dicha interpretación, el escepticismo es inherente a la filosofía feminista y un aliado útil para su proyecto. El problema ha estado en cómo el feminismo ha reducido su comprensión del escepticismo a una versión cartesiana extrema y ha pasado por alto otras corrientes de la tradición —como la de David Hume— (...) que podrían ser fructíferas para promover una actitud crítica y emancipatoria. Muestra así como una alianza entre una comprensión moderada del escepticismo y el feminismo puede brindar las herramientas necesarias para cuestionar formas de dominación patriarcal y poner en marcha investigaciones que combatan la opresión de género. (shrink)

The study of actions is of major importance in social science regardless of whether the investigator is or isn’t a behaviorist. Actions constitute much if not all of an observational substratum which both prompts explanation and confirms prediction. Actions are of interest both as samples of what an animal can do and as symptoms of underlying structures, either psychic or physical. Doubtless, actions as symptoms of underlying structures are, in the long run, of greater importance in social science than actions (...) as samples of capacities, for to be able to predict an organism’s further performance on the basis of knowledge of capacities is not necessarily to understand the organism. Understanding actions, if it is indeed the desideratum of social science—as I take it to be—involves more, however, than the viewing of actions as symptomatic of underlying structures. Actions are obviously bearers of meaning in and for a given social context, and this meaning is for both the agent and actual or imagined spectators. Spectators can be said to do their viewing both at the time the action takes place and also, in a sense, at later times when recalling or reading reports of a now past action. (shrink)

(Added April 2023: This draft is superseded by Briggs, R.A., & George, B.R. (2023). 'What Even Is Gender?'. Routledge. DOI 10.4324/9781003053330, and in particular by the first three chapters thereof. While this much earlier draft remains available for archival purposes, you are encouraged to read and cite the 2023 book and to use its terminology.) -/- This paper presents a new taxonomy of sex/gender concepts based on the idea of starting with a few basic components of the sex/gender system, and (...) exhausting the possible types of simple associations and identities based on these. The resulting system is significantly more fine-grained than most competitors, and helps to clarify a number of points of confusion and conceptual tension in academic and activist conversations about feminism, transgender politics, and the social analysis of gender. (shrink)

Brian Wormald provides a fundamental reappraisal of one of the most complex and innovative figures of the late-Elizabethan and Jacobean age. In the centuries since his death, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has been perceived and studied as a promoter and prophet of the philosophy of science--natural science--but he saw himself also as a clarifier and promoter of what he called "policy" or the study and improvement of the structure and function of civil states. Mr. Wormald shows that Bacon was concerned equally (...) with the knowledge of the world of nature and with that of policy. The junction between the two enterprises was effected by his work in history; and in the end it was Bacon's conception and practice of history that provided the answer to his efforts to advance policy and natural philosophy. (shrink)

The discipline of applied ethics already has a certain familiarity in the Anglo-Saxon world, above all through the work of Peter Singer. Applied ethics uses the tools of moral philosophy to resolve practical problems of the sort which arise, for example, in the running of hospitals. In the University at Buffalo (New York) there was organized on April 24-25 1998 the world's first conference on a new, sister discipline, the discipline of applied ontology. Applied ontologists seek to apply ontological tools (...) to solving practical problems of the sort which arise in various extra-philosophical domains, including law and government administration. (shrink)

This research explores the concept of religious universalism and its potential impact on expressions of Islamic devotion within Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The study aims to investigate how Islamic practices and beliefs can serve as a deterrent against the proliferation of religious extremism. By examining various dimensions of Islamic religiosity in these countries, this research seeks to uncover the ways in which a broad and inclusive interpretation of religion can contribute to countering the influence of radical ideologies. Through an analysis (...) of religious rituals, educational frameworks, and cross-faith engagements, this study offers insights into the capacity of religious universalism to mitigate the advancement of religious extremism across diverse cultural and social contexts. Contribution: This research enhances our understanding of how universality of religion can serve as a deterrent against religious extremism by examining its manifestations within the contexts of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The findings offer practical insights and recommendations that can inform policies and initiatives aimed at fostering tolerance, inclusivity, and harmony within diverse religious societies. (shrink)

People often make less risky decisions for themselves than others. We examined how people allocated risks (i.e., determining the ratio of uncertain outcomes to certain outcomes) between themselves and others. We also investigated gain (vs. loss) domain and social value orientation as predictors of risk allocations. The results of three experiments demonstrated that participants were more likely to share their risks equally between themselves and others than distribute risk unequally. In the gain (vs. loss) domain, participants allocated fewer risks to (...) themselves and more risks to the other person for unequal risk allocations. Compared to proselfs, prosocials were more likely to allocate risks equally. We also found stronger domain effects on unequal risk allocations for proselfs than for prosocials. Therefore, our findings clarify the effects of risk distribution, domain, and social value orientation on interpersonal allocation decisions and highlight equal risk distribution between oneself and others. (shrink)

Relatives of persons with severe mental illness face a straining life situation and need support. Exclusion of relatives in mental health care has long been reported. The aim of this study was to describe conceptions of nurses in mental health care about supporting relatives of persons with severe mental illness. Focus group interviews with nurses from all levels of mental health care in Norway were performed. A phenomenographic approach was used. The nurses found that their responsibility first and foremost was (...) the patient, especially to develop an alliance with him or her. Additional premises for supporting relatives were the context framing the nursing care, aspects of the actors, and relational concerns between them. Competing or contradictory demands were found within these premises. Two paths were identified concerning the nurses’ support of relatives: seeing the relative in the shadow of the patient or as an individual person. (shrink)

In our opinion, the flaws in the teaching of philosophy were to a large degree related to the fact that it was regarded as a science . The resolute rejection of this position and the recognition of philosophy's status as a world view is for us the necessary condition for escaping from the existing situation. To put it more concretely, the view of philosophy that became entrenched among us has produced the following fundamental flaws in the teaching process:—An underestimation of (...) or even a dismissive attitude toward pre- Marxist and in particular non-Marxist theories . Although non-Marxist philosophy was looked at in the course of study, this was done mainly to show its shortcomings—to the greater glory of Marxist philosophy. Idealism was regarded only as a barren flower. Students were instilled with the idea that idealism was on the verge of being overcome and supplanted by materialism, and this created in them a completely untrue picture of the real course of development of philosophical knowledge. (shrink)

The field of developmental psychology has typically traced its history to Darwin or to changes in views about the nature of childhood. What has been generally neglected is how the core assumptions of contemporary theories were forged in the early history of modern science. In particular, the rise of Newtonian mechanics precipitated similar perspectives in geology and then biology. They all converged on a shared set of assumptions about the nature of change in the physical world. Theology also played a (...) key role in this process, serving not only as a foil, but also as a source of important insights for the emerging scientific, and developmental, world view. The field of developmental psychology is a child of this complex and often stormy relationship between science and theology that has shaped Western thought. (shrink)