This article deals with the question of how ethicists respond to practical moral problems emerging in health care practices. Do they remain distanced, taking on the role of an expert, or do they become engaged with nurses and other participants in practice and jointly develop contextualized insights about good care? A basic assumption of dialogical ethics entails that the definition of good care and what it means to be a good nurse is a collaborative product of ongoing dialogues among various (...) stakeholders engaged in the practice. This article discusses the value of a dialogical approach to ethics by drawing on the work of various nursing scholars. We present a case example concerning the quality of freedom restrictions for intellectually disabled people. Issues for discussion include the role and required competences of the ethicist and dealing with asymmetrical relationships between stakeholders. (shrink)

Background As our society is ageing, nursing homes are finding it increasingly difficult to deal with an expanding population of patients with dementia and a decreasing workforce. A potential answer to this problem might lie in the use of technology. However, the use and application of surveillance technology in dementia care has led to considerable ethical debate among healthcare professionals and ethicists, with no clear consensus to date. Aim To explore how surveillance technology is viewed by care professionals and ethicists (...) working in the field, by investigating the ideal application of surveillance technology in the residential care of people with dementia. Methods Use was made of the concept mapping method, a computer-assisted procedure consisting of five steps: brainstorming, prioritising, clustering, processing by the computer and analysis. Various participants (ranging from ethicists to physicians and nurses) were invited on the basis of their professional background. Results The views generated are grouped into six categories ranging from the need for a right balance between freedom and security, to be beneficial and tailored to the resident, and clearly defined procedures to competent and caring personnel, active monitoring and clear normative guidance. The results are presented in the form of a graphic chart. Conclusions There appears to be an inherent duality in the views on using surveillance technology which is rooted in the moral conflict between safety and freedom. Elaboration of this ethical issue has proved to be very difficult. (shrink)

This paper discusses the uniqueness thesis, a core thesis in the epistemology of disagreement. After presenting uniqueness and clarifying relevant terms, a novel counterexample to the thesis will be introduced. This counterexample involves logical disagreement. Several objections to the counterexample are then considered, and it is argued that the best responses to the counterexample all undermine the initial motivation for uniqueness.

Precisamos repensar a nossa abordagem quanto à proteção da privacidade na internet. Atualmente, os formuladores de políticas vêm se aprofundando na ideia de consentimento informado como um meio para proteger a privacidade. Por exemplo, em diversos países, as empresas são obrigadas por lei a obter o consentimento de um indivíduo antes de fazer uso dos seus dados; com base nessas requisitos de consentimento informado, a lei tem por objetivo empoderar as pessoas a fazerem escolhas de privacidade tendo em vista os (...) seus melhores interesses. No entanto, estudos comportamentais colocam em cheque a eficácia desta abordagem de empoderamento como um meio para proteger a privacidade. Este artigo defende uma abordagem conjunta de proteção e empoderamento dos indivíduos para aprimorar a proteção da privacidade. Este artigo aborda problemas práticos do consentimento informado como um meio para proteger a privacidade, e ilustra problemas com os atuais regulamentos de proteção à privacidade dos dados, concernentes à segmentação comportamental. Primeiramente, discutem-se os problemas de privacidade relativos à segmentação comportamental, e o papel central do consentimento informado ao abrigo da lei de proteção à privacidade. Em seguida, enfatizam-se os problemas práticos referentes ao consentimento informado. Por fim, o artigo argumenta que os formuladores de políticas devem dar mais atenção aos regulamentos que protegem as pessoas, e menos aos que as empoderam. INFORMED CONSENT: WE CAN DO BETTER TO DEFEND PRIVACYAbstractWe need to rethink our approach to defend privacy on the internet. Currently, policymakers focus heavily on the idea of informed consent as a means to defend privacy. For instance, in many countries the law requires firms to obtain an individual’s consent before they use data about her. With such informed consent requirements, the law aims to empower people to make privacy choices in their best interests. But behavioural studies cast doubt on this approach’s effectiveness, as people tend to click OK to almost any request they see on their screens. To improve privacy protection, this article argues for a combined approach of protecting and empowering the individual. (shrink)

We study a logic for deontic necessity and sufficiency, as originally proposed in van Benthem :36–41, 1979). Building on earlier work in modal logic, we provide a sound and complete axiomatization for it, consider some standard extensions, and study other important properties. After that, we compare this logic to the logic of “obligation as weakest permission” from Anglberger et al. :807–827, 2015).

Cette introduction présente et contextualise les articles publiés dans la section spéciale dont le but est d’analyser l’interprétation de la pensée hellénistique chez les philosophes continentaux très influents tels que : Agamben, Arendt, Blumenberg, Foucault, Heidegger et Stiegler. Les articles prêtent une attention particulière à trois directions de recherche. Ils examinent tout d’abord l’influence de la pensée hellénistique sur ces auteurs et la façon dont ils ont interprété, utilisé et mésinterprété l’héritage des philosophies hellé-nistiques. Deuxièmement, les articles analysent les hypothèses (...) in-terprétatives et les préjugés qui ont caractérisé ces interprétations. Enfin, ils nous permettent de comprendre plus clairement pourquoi plusieurs philosophes continentaux se sont intéressés à la philosophie ancienne. Les rédacteurs invités résument les conclusions pro-visoires de cette section spéciale en soulignant que les interprétations continentales de la pensée hellénistique représentent un thème particulièrement intéressant dans le cadre de la recherche historico-philosophique actuelle. (shrink)

While it is well known that Plutarch’s De facie in orbe lunae was a major source of inspiration for Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius, its influence on his Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, and especially on his views on gravity, has not been sufficiently explored. This essay offers the first systematic comparison of Plutarch’s and Galileo’s accounts of gravity by focusing on four themes: the thought experiment of a stone falling in a tunnel passing through the center of the (...) Earth; the account of gravity as a tendency to unite with the whole; the view that the Moon is a separate center of attraction; and the impossibility of attraction by an incorporeal point. The essay analyzes the role that these themes play in De facie and in the Dialogo, trying to understand how Galileo appropriated, reworked, and expanded on Plutarch’s views. (shrink)

Current European innovation and security policies are increasingly channeled into efforts to address the assumed challenges that threaten European societies. A field in which this has become particularly salient is digitized EU border management. Here, the framework of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has recently been used to point to the alleged sensitivity of political actors towards the contingent dimensions of emerging security technologies. RRI, in general, is concerned with societal needs and the engagement and inclusion of various stakeholder groups (...) in the research and innovation processes, aiming to anticipate undesired consequences of and identifying socially acceptable alternatives for emerging technologies. However, RRI has also been criticized as an industry-driven attempt to gain societal legitimacy for new technologies. In this article, we argue that while RRI evokes a space where different actors enter co-creative dialogues, it lays bare the specific challenges of governing security innovation in socially responsible ways. Empirically, we draw on the case study of BODEGA, the first EU funded research project to apply the RRI framework to the field of border security. We show how stakeholders involved in the project represent their work in relation to RRI and the resulting benefits and challenges they face. The paper argues that applying the framework to the field of (border) security lays bare its limitations, namely that RRI itself embodies a political agenda, conceals alternative experiences by those on whom security is enacted upon and that its key propositions of openness and transparency are hardly met in practice due to confidentiality agreements. Our hope is to contribute to work on RRI and emerging debates about how the concept can (or cannot) be contextualized for the field of security—a field that might be more in need than any other to consider the ethical dimension of its activities. (shrink)

We present a logic, $$\mathbf {ELI^r}$$ ELI r, for the discovery of deterministic causal regularities starting from empirical data. Our approach is inspired by Mackie’s theory of causes as INUS-conditions, and implements a more recent adjustment to Mackie’s theory according to which the left-hand side of causal regularities is required to be a minimal disjunction of minimal conjunctions. To derive such regularities from a given set of data, we make use of the adaptive logics framework. Our knowledge of deterministic causal (...) regularities is, as Mackie noted, most often gappy or elliptical. The adaptive logics framework is well-suited to explicate both the internal and the external dynamics of the discovery of such gappy regularities. After presenting $$\mathbf {ELI^r}$$ ELI r, we first discuss these forms of dynamics in more detail. Next, we consider some criticisms of the INUS-account and show how our approach avoids them, and we compare $$\mathbf {ELI^r}$$ ELI r with the CNA algorithm that was recently proposed by Michael Baumgartner. (shrink)

Worldwide, there is renewed public and political attention focused on public health fueled by the globally explosive H1N1 pandemic. Pandemic planning emerged as a major area for public action in the absence of an overarching ethics framework appropriate for the community and population focus of public health. Baylis, Sherwin, and Kenny propose relational personhood and relational solidarity as core values for a public health ethics. The Catholic faith tradition makes three useful contributions in support of a relational ethic: first, a (...) religious ontology that aligns with the view that human persons are inherently relational; second, a coherent account of the requisite social and communal ideals and structures that this belief demands; and third, inspiration and motivation for the attitudes and actions that are required in response to a relational ontology. (shrink)

BackgroundSocial media has globalised compassion enabling requests for donations to spread beyond geographical boundaries. The use of social media for medical crowdfunding links people with unmet healthcare needs to charitable donors. There is no doubt that fundraising campaigns using such platforms facilitates access to financial resources to the benefit of patients and their caregivers.Main textThis paper reports on a critical review of the published literature and information from other online resources discussing medical crowdfunding and the related ethical questions. The review (...) highlighted the benefits of crowdfunding as well as the under-exploration of the risk of having patients’ desires and human rights undermined during online fundraising campaigns. Majority of these campaigns get initiated on behalf of the patients, especially the very sick and dependant. The ethical questions raised relate to the voluntariness of informed consent and the possibility of patients being used as a means to an end. Vulnerability of patients may expose them to coercion, undue influence, manipulation, and violation of their human rights. The success of these campaigns is influenced by the digital skills, pre-existing social networks and, the emotional potency. Healthcare is a public good, and online market forces should not determine access to essential health services. The benefits of crowdfunding cannot be subverted, but it can perpetuate unintended injustices, especially those arising from socio-economic factors.ConclusionsPolicymakers ought to monitor the utilisation of crowdfunding sites to identify policy failures and unmet essential health care needs responsible for driving individuals to use these platforms. The upholding of human rights and the fundamental respect of the individual’s wishes is a moral imperative. The need for an ethics framework to guide different stakeholders during medical crowdfunding needs further examination. (shrink)

We propose simple nonlinear mathematical models for the legal concept of balancing of interests. Our aim is to bridge the gap between an abstract formalisation of a balancing decision while assuring consistency and ultimately legal certainty across cases. We focus on the conflict between the rights to privacy and to the protection of personal data in Art. 7 and Art. 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (EUCh) against the right of access to information derived from Art. 11 EUCh. (...) These competing rights are denoted by ( \(i_1\) ) _right to privacy _ and ( \(i_2\) ) _access to information_; mathematically, their indices are respectively assigned by \(u_1\in [0,1]\) and \(u_2\in [0,1]\) subject to the constraint \(u_1+u_2=1\). This constraint allows us to use one single index _u_ to resolve the conflict through balancing. The outcome will be concluded by comparing the index _u_ with a prior given threshold \(u_0\). For simplicity, we assume that the balancing depends on only selected legal criteria such as the social status of affected person, and the sphere from which the information originated, which are represented as inputs of the models, called legal parameters. Additionally, we take “time” into consideration as a legal criterion, building on the European Court of Justice’s ruling on the right to be forgotten: by considering time as a legal parameter, we model how the outcome of the balancing changes over the passage of time. To catch the dependence of the outcome _u_ by these criteria as legal parameters, data were created by a fully-qualified lawyer. By comparison to other approaches based on machine learning, especially neural networks, this approach requires significantly less data. This might come at the price of higher abstraction and simplification, but also provides for higher transparency and explainability. Two mathematical models for _u_, a time-independent model and a time-dependent model, are proposed, that are fitted by using the data. (shrink)

Indeed, data from impaired performance have often played a central role in our understanding of the skills and abilities of the human mind/brain This volume ...

In seeking for an understanding of ethical practices in health care situations, our challenge is always both to recognize and respond to the call of individuals in need. In attuning ourselves to the call of the vulnerable other an ethical moment arises. Asking ‘how are you?’ in health care practice is our very first possibility to learn how a particular person finds herself or himself in this particular situation. Here, ‘how are you?’ shows itself as an ethical question that opens (...) up a relational space that calls forth a response. It is a way to understand the situated moments in which we are already that enables us to act respectfully. Our ethical frameworks assist us in trying to decide what is the right thing to do given a set of circumstances. Yet there is a prior step that already calls us to ethical attention; this is when we ask ‘how are you?’, which transforms a seemingly small interaction into an ethical moment. ‘How are you?’ is a question that turns us back to who we are as health care professionals and calls us to be more deeply attentive to the moment. When we sincerely ask ‘how are you?’ we enact our ethical commitments to one another. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that Selim Berker’s widely discussed prime number case is merely an instance of the well-known generality problem for process reliabilism and thus arguably not as interesting a case as one might have thought. Initially, Berker’s case is introduced and interpreted. Then the most recent response to the case from the literature is presented. Eventually, it is argued that Berker’s case is nothing but a straightforward consequence of the generality problem, i.e., the problematic aspect of the (...) case for process reliabilism (if any) is already captured by the generality problem. (shrink)

Despite a growing body of research by management scholars to understand and explain failures in ethical decision making (EDM), misconduct prevails. Scholars have identified character, founded in virtue ethics, as an important perspective that can help to address the gap in organizational misconduct. While character has been offered as a valid perspective in EDM, current theorizing on how it applies to EDM has not been well developed. We thus integrate character, founded in virtue ethics, into Rest’s (1986) EDM model to (...) reveal how shifting attention to the nature of the moral agent provides critical insights into decision making more broadly and EDM specifically. Virtue ethics provides a perspective on EDM that acknowledges and anticipates uncertainties, considers its contextual constraints, and contemplates the development of the moral agent. We thus answer the call by many scholars to integrate character in EDM in order to advance the understanding of the field and suggest propositions for how to move forward. We conclude with implications of a character-infused approach to EDM for future research. (shrink)

On the basis of the Suppes–Sneed structuralview of scientific theories, we take a freshlook at the concept of refutability,which was famously proposed by K.R. Popper in 1934 as a criterion for the demarcation of scientific theories from non-scientific ones, e.g., pseudo-scientificand metaphysical theories. By way of an introduction we argue that a clash between Popper and his critics on whether scientific theories are, in fact, refutablecan be partly explained by the fact Popper and his criticsascribed different meanings to the term (...) theoryThen we narrow our attention to one particular theory,namely quantum mechanics, in order to elucidate general matters discussed. We prove that quantum mechanics is irrefutable in a rather straightforward sense, but argue that it is refutable in a more sophisticated sense, which incorporates someobservations obtained by looking closely at the practiceof physics. We shall locate exactly where non-rigourous elements enter the evaluation of a scientific theory – thismakes us see clearly how fruitful mathematics isfor the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Employee performance plays a crucial role in the productivity of organizations, especially in the hospitality industry in Malaysia. This work performance is influenced by leadership style, and finding the type of leadership style that is suitable to apply to employees is crucial, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Transformational leadership theory is selected for this study in determining leadership styles. There are four dimensions under transformational leadership theory, namely idealized influence, individualized consideration, inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation. Data (...) were collected online from 400 employees working in the hospitality industry in Malaysia and analyzed using partial least square structure equation modeling. The findings show that only two dimensions of transformational leadership, namely idealized influence and inspirational motivation, have a significant positive influence on employee performance. Implications in the context of human resource management and recommendations to increase employee performance are also discussed. (shrink)

While nursing practice embodies certain observable and sometimes habitual actions, much inheres in these actions that is not immediately discernible. Taking on Lyotard's exegesis of the unpresentable, I undertake an analysis of the unpresentable as it occurs in nursing practices. The unpresentable is a place of alterity often excluded from dominant discourses. Yet this very alterity is what practising nurses face day after day. Drawing from two nursing situations, one from a hermeneutic phenomenological study and the other from the literature, (...) I elucidate the unpresentable from a nursing point of view. Evoking Lyotard as well as selected philosophers from the continental philosophical tradition, I also question whether nursing in its present discourse is capable of responding to the unpresentable in nursing situations. Through the philosophical stance of presentation and representation, I delineate the urgent need to bring the otherness of the unpresentable into our nursing discourse. Nurses in practice confront a wide array of human differences and diversities and come to the realization that no framework alone can ever really have primacy over the multiform presentations of human suffering that so strikingly evoke alterity. (shrink)

The dominant discourse in chronic disease management centres on the ideal of person-centred healthcare, with an empowered patient taking an active role in decision-making with their healthcare provider. Despite these encouraging developments toward healthcare democracy, many person-centred conceptions of healthcare and programming continue to focus on the healthcare institution’s perspective and priorities. In these debates, the patient’s voice has largely been absent. This article takes the example of patient empowerment to show how the concept has been influenced by a variety (...) of competing and shifting influences that have led to conceptualisations and programming designed for the patient, but developed without the patient. The framework of epistemic injustice is proposed to unravel the complexity of these omissions. The concept can be defined as a wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower. It occurs when a person is ignored or not believed due to a prejudice of some kind. It has been applied to healthcare in order to better understand barriers for patient participation and will be used to better understand the problems with current empowerment definitions and implementation strategies. The article will end by proposing some methodologies to facilitate patient-developed concepts of empowerment. (shrink)

Complex and urgent challenges including climate change and the significant decline in biodiversity provide a broad agenda for interdisciplinary scholars interested in the implications facing businesses, humanity, and other species. Within this context of sustainability, persistent conflicts between key paradigms create substantial barriers against—but also opportunities for—developing new conceptual approaches and theoretical models to understand and respond to these critical issues. Here, I revisit paradigmatic tensions to assess their impact on research and debate on sustainability, ethics, and business. Drawing on (...) relational ontology and values of nature that recognise humanity’s tight embeddedness within the planetary ecosystem, I examine how conceptualising sustainability as the _pursuit of life_ might generate new insights for research and practice into the wider transformation needed to sustain and restore socioecological systems. The aim here, however, is not to reconcile these paradigmatic tensions but instead use them as a fruitful lens for examining the implications for sustainability, while acknowledging the inherent ethical dilemmas for individuals, organisations, and society. (shrink)

A citizen’s jury brings together a mix of citizens from different socio-economic groups who deliberate on a particular policy issue over a number of days. Since their development in the 1970s in th...

SUMMARYThe history of the law of nations is generally seen as a synonym for the history of the laws of war. Yet, a strictly bilateral perspective can distort our interpretation of early modern diplomacy. The Peace of Utrecht inaugurated an era of relative stability in the European state system, based on balance-of-power politics and anti-hegemonic legal argumentation. Incidental conflicts ought to be interpreted against this background. Declarations of war issued in 1718, 1719 and 1733 during the War of the Quadruple (...) Alliance and the Polish Succession should not be read as doctrinal surrogates for trials between two parties, but as manifestos in a European arena. (shrink)

This article sets out to research and resolve the conceptual lag between the family as defined and recognised in law and the multiplicity of queer constellations of ‘intimate citizenship’ in which families are actually done. The focus is on adult unions outside of conjugal coupledom. The family law practices, and awareness and expectations of adults in such unions were analysed through 21 interviews and the content analysis of 40 documents and were projected against the applicable legal mould. The article then (...) proposes to resolve the existing conceptual lag by advancing a conception of the family as a malleable, open-ended assemblage, in lieu of the current rigid status approach in family law, which is both under- and overinclusive. The proposed conception does justice to the increasing fluidity of family formations, which are not always already domestic, dyadic and sexual. (shrink)