This chapter discusses the psychological process of selectively attending to one source of information to the exclusion of others. In a meta-analysis, it reviews different tasks used to study selective attention, under the construct of conflict resolution, as assessed with functional imaging techniques. Both the anterior cingulate cortex and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex are involved in some aspect of conflict resolution, which is likely related to different mechanisms. The theme of heterogeneity of function is reflected in these results.

This article analyzes news coverage of mass murders in Time and Newsweek for the period 1984 to 1991 for evidence of disproportionate, perhaps politically motivated coverage of certain categories of mass murder. Discusses ethical problems related to news and entertainment attention to mass murder, and suggests methods of enhancing the public's understanding of the nature of murder.

In this article, the author focuses on the allocation of decision-making authority between parents and physicians. She argues that parents should have substantial room to decide whether genetic testing is good for their child and that they may appropriately consider interests in addition to those of their child in making such choices. A physician, however, may refuse to act pursuant to parental views about testing, when in the physician's view, the parents' choices would pose a risk of significant harm to (...) the child. The balance of control between parents and physicians is illustrated by discussion of a series of case vignettes. Refusal to perform requested testing is most often warranted for testing for carrier status and for genetic predisposition to late onset disease. The author concludes her analysis by discussing why it is appropriate to give increasing deference to the views of the child as the child grows older. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 39, Issue 3, pp 205 - 234 For many people across the world, experiences of depression include features that extend beyond the biopsychiatric model, which predominates in research on the relationship between religious and spiritual coping and depressive symptoms. How does attending to these diverse experiences of depression challenge our understanding of the dynamic between religiosity and depression? This paper presents thirteen qualitative interviews among economically marginalized mothers in the metro-Boston area. Analyzing these narratives presents a complex (...) picture of the way chronic situational stress lies beneath their experiences of depression. From this expanded view of depressive experiences, we analyze the religious coping strategies of social support and meaning making to reveal the holistic, yet often ambiguous, ways these mothers engaged religious and spiritual resources to forge hope amidst chronic stress. (shrink)

The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has issued a revised “Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants” (IFAC Code). The IFAC Code is intended to be a model code of ethics for national accounting organizations throughout the world. Prior research demonstrates that approximately 50% of IFAC member organizations have adopted the IFAC Code as their organizational code of conduct. There is therefore empirical evidence that international convergence of accounting ethical standards is occurring. We employ Hofstede’s ( 2008 , http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_dimensions.php ) cultural (...) dimensions in an attempt to empirically explain accounting organizations’ decisions about whether to adopt the IFAC Code or to retain their organization-specific code. Our results indicate that accounting organizations in cultures with high levels of Individualism and Uncertainty Avoidance are less likely to adopt the model IFAC Code. Organizations in high Individualism and Uncertainty Avoidance societies are therefore less likely to surrender the setting of ethical standards to an outside, international organization. (shrink)

Psychotherapy clients read two consumer-oriented brochures: a general brochure on psychology and a brochure on the topic of client-therapist intimacy. Half of the participants read the general brochure first and the brochure on client-therapist intimacy second, and half the participants did the reverse. Participants reported favorable reactions to the brochures, indicating they thought both should be made available to psychotherapy clients; that neither were too long, too sensitive, or too difficult to read; and that the brochures should be made available (...) early during the therapeutic process. After reading the client-therapist intimacy brochure, participants also showed some changes in Likert-type scores measuring attitudes regarding intimate contact between clients and therapists. Although participants were more negative about issues of sexual misconduct after reading the client-therapist intimacy brochure, they did not indicate a decrease in trust of therapists, nor did they indicate a greater likelihood of filing a false complaint. We concluded that therapists' reservations about presenting clients with factual information regarding therapist sexual exploitation of clients are not empirically founded. (shrink)

The paper examines the legal, ethical, and public policy issues involved in the Union Carbide gas leak in India which caused the deaths of over 3000 people and injury to thousands of people. The paper begins with a historical perspective on the operating environment in Bhopal, the events surrounding the accident, then discusses an international situation audit examining internal strengths and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats faced by Union Carbide at the time of the accident. There is a discussion (...) of management of the various interests involved in international public relations and ethical issues. A review of the financial ratio analysis of the company prior and subsequent to the accident follows, then an examination of the second tragedy of Bhopal — the tragic failure of the international legal system to adequately and timely compensate victims of the accident.The paper concludes with recommendations towards public policy, as well as a call for congressional action regarding international safety of U.S. based multinational operations. (shrink)

The important question is how people process probabilistic information, not whether they process it in accordance with a normative model that we never should have expected them to be capable of following. Experience is not the cure, as widely thought, to problems with utilizing base rate information.

The empirical literature exploring lawyers and their moral decision making is limited despite the “crisis” of unethical and unprofessional behavior in the bar that has been well documented for over a decade. In particular we are unaware of any empirical studies that investigate the moral landscape of the health lawyer’s practice. In an effort to address this gap in the literature, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Vanderbilt University designed an empirical study to gather preliminary evidence regarding the moral reasoning (...) of health care attorneys. The primary research question was how health lawyers respond when they encounter ethical or moral dilemmas in their practice for which the law fails to offer a bright-line solution. In exploring this question, we sought to understand better what motivations or influences guide action when health lawyers confront ethical quandaries, and whether there are specific differences, e.g., gender, experience, or religiosity, that are associated with specific responses to situations testing ethical or moral boundaries. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to analyze, clarify, and reconstruct the concept of class consciousness by developing a dialectical account of political agency at work in the concept. I defend a dialectical account of agency, that includes both the way in which individuals come together to form groups, but also the capacity of a collective to transform social conditions. I argue that this account of political agency is necessary in order to understand the possibility of social transformation or change. I trace the (...) development of the relationship between consciousness and agency in the early tradition of Western Marxism, focusing primarily on the account of class consciousness given by Georg Lukács in History and Class Consciousness. Against his account of the world historical agency of a unified proletariat, however, I defend Theodor Adorno’s insistence on nonidentity, and the importance of unreconciled groups in capitalist society. In order to understand these groups, such as the vanguard, party, or proletariat, we must understand the way in which individuals form groups, as well as their inherent collectivity. -/- My account of the political agency at work in the concept of class consciousness is broadly speaking pluralist. I argue that a multiplicity of methodologies is needed in order to arrive at a complete picture of the concept. I defend an account of class consciousness that is neither reductive nor deflationary with respect to other dimensions of social domination. This class forward approach seeks to build intersectional political coalitions in order to undertake revolutionary action. Successful revolutionary social transformation is never guaranteed in advance; however, the concept of class consciousness, reconstructed through the lens of political agency, offers conceptual resources to address the problems of today, for the sake of a better tomorrow. (shrink)

A questão relacionada ao método, na obra de Michel Foucault, é uma problemática na qual alguns pesquisadores têm se debruçado, tendo em vista a diversidade dos caminhos de pesquisa trilhados ao longo de sua produção intelectual. Nesse sentido, o presente estudo, através de uma discussão teórica, pretende colocar em pauta o conceito de anarqueologia, desenvolvido pelo filósofo francês no curso Do governo dos vivos, de 1980. A hipótese que se pretende desdobrar é a de que o conceito em voga se (...) inscreve em um percurso teórico-metodológico particular, abarcando um encadeamento dos três domínios ou eixos (ser-saber, ser-poder, ser-consigo) da obra de Foucault, viabilizando assim certa reformulação da interpretação foucaultiana acerca do sujeito. (shrink)

The internalism-externalism debate is one of the oldest debates in epistemology. Internalists assert that the justification of our beliefs can only depend on facts internal to us, while externalists insist that justification can depend on additional, for example environmental, factors. Clayton Littlejohn proposes and defends a new strategy for resolving this debate. Focussing on the connections between practical and theoretical reason, he explores the question of whether the priority of the good to the right might be used to defend (...) an epistemological version of consequentialism, and proceeds to formulate a new 'deontological externalist' view. On this view, the justificatory status of a belief depends upon whether it is fit for the purposes of practical reasoning. Only beliefs that meet externalist standards are fit for such a purpose. If we want to understand how a wide range of norms (e.g., moral norms) apply to rational agents regardless of what their evidence or outlook is like, we have to embrace an externalist account of the justification. (shrink)

Functional diversity holds the promise of understanding ecosystems in ways unattainable by taxonomic diversity studies. Underlying this promise is the intuition that investigating the diversity of what organisms actually do—i.e. their functional traits—within ecosystems will generate more reliable insights into the ways these ecosystems behave, compared to considering only species diversity. But this promise also rests on several conceptual and methodological—i.e. epistemic—assumptions that cut across various theories and domains of ecology. These assumptions should be clearly addressed, notably for the sake (...) of an effective comparison and integration across domains, and for assessing whether or not to use functional diversity approaches for developing ecological management strategies. The objective of this contribution is to identify and critically analyze the most salient of these assumptions. To this aim, we provide an “epistemic roadmap” that pinpoints these assumptions along a set of historical, conceptual, empirical, theoretical, and normative dimensions. (shrink)

In a recent article Dylan Dodd has argued that anyone who holds that all knowledge is evidence must concede that we know next to nothing about die external world. The argument is intended to show that any infallibilist account of knowledge is committed to scepticism, and that anyone who identifies our evidence with the propositions we know is committed to infallibilism. I shall offer some reasons for thinking Dodd's argument is unsound, and explain where his argument goes wrong.

A decolonial practice and understanding of education (whether theological or otherwise) requires engaging, subverting, deposing and reimagining a whole ecology of imaginaries, practices, structures, institutionalities, traditions, power asymmetries etc.: a task that is far beyond the capacities of any individual, community or even generation. Cognisant of this reality, the article foregrounds the question of pedagogy in theological education (but only as an integral part of the colonial/decolonial ecology of education) and argues that in so far as our pedagogies in theological (...) education treat students primarily as ‘thinking creatures’, we are engaging in a dis-membering pedagogy that reproduces the coloniality of being. I identify a Cartesian anthropology (‘ego cogito sum’) – engendering a host of dualisms giving artificial supremacy to certain dimensions of reality over others – as a key animating source of dis-membering pedagogies. Drawing on the ‘pedagogical excess’ (i.e. underexplored pedagogical themes) in the theological anthropology of Simon Maimela in conversation with pedagogical visions that cohere and extend his anthropological commitments, I argue that a re-membering pedagogy is, at minimum: a pedagogy of performative action, embodiment and (community based) liminality. I argue throughout the article that in the work of re-sourcing our animating anthropologies and re-imagining our pedagogies, we are engaged in the healing work of re-membering that which coloniality has torn apart: theory and practice, mind and body, the individual and relationality, the student and the teacher, the theological school and society. Contribution: This article outlines my attempts to theoretically and theologically ground (and extend) my espoused pedagogical commitments forged at the intersection of my community work and teaching as a theological educator in an undergraduate BTh programme. This article invites other theological educators to become conscious of the theological anthropology that their espoused pedagogical commitments assume and reflect on the pedagogical commitments that their theological anthropology entails, especially as it relates to the ongoing calls for the Africanisation/decolonisation of theological education in South Africa. (shrink)

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

Sartre’s phenomenological view of consciousness gives primacy to the thesis that all consciousness is nonthetically aware of itself, i.e., pre-reflectively aware of itself but not as an object. Few commentators, however, have explained Sartre’s grounds for holding this thesis, despite his view that the thesis’s truth underwrites the certainty of the Cartesian cogito and thereby the method of Sartre’s own phenomenological ontology. I document three lines of support for the thesis, the most promising of which consists in a proof by (...) cases. Namely, Sartre’s texts contain the argument that the existence of nonthetic consciousness is the only satisfactory explanation of the Cartesian cogito’s certainty. The paper concludes with an examination of whether and how nonthetic consciousness can serve as a foundation for Sartre’s method of phenomenological ontology. (shrink)

In Political Theology on Edge, the discourse of political theology is seen as situated on an edge—that is, on the edge of a world that is grappling with global warming, a brutal form of neoliberal capitalism, protests against racism and police brutality, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This edge is also a form of eschatology that forces us to imagine new ways of being religious and political in our cohabitation of a fragile and shared planet. Each of the essays in this (...) volume attends to how climate change and our ecological crises intersect and interact with more traditional themes of political theology. While the tradition of political theology is often associated with philosophical responses to the work of Carl Schmitt—and the critical attempts to disengage religion from his rightwing politics—the contributors to this volume are informed by Schmitt but not limited to his perspectives. They engage and transform political theology from the standpoint of climate change, the politics of race, and non-Christian political theologies including Islam and Sikhism. Important themes include the Anthropocene, ecology, capitalism, sovereignty, Black Lives Matter, affect theory, continental philosophy, destruction, and suicide. This book features world renowned scholars and emerging voices that together open up the tradition of political theology to new ideas and new ways of thinking. Contributors: Gil Anidjar, Balbinder Singh Bhogal, J. Kameron Carter, William E. Connolly, Kelly Brown Douglas, Seth Gaiters, Lisa Gasson-Gardner, Winfred Goodwin, Lawrence Hillis, Mehmet Karabela, Michael Northcott, Austin Roberts, Noëlle Vahanian, Larry L. Welborn. (shrink)

BackgroundThe biopharmaceutical industry operates at the intersection of life sciences, clinical research, clinical care, public health, and business, which presents distinct operational and ethical challenges. This setting merits focused bioethics consideration to complement legal compliance and business ethics efforts. However, bioethics as applied to a biopharmaceutical industry setting often is construed either too broadly or too narrowly with little examination of its proper scope.Main textAny institution with a scientific or healthcare mission should engage bioethics norms to navigate ethical issues that (...) arise from the conduct of biomedical research, delivery of clinical care, or implementation of public health programs. It is reasonable to assume that while bioethics norms must remain constant, their application will vary depending on the characteristics of a given setting. Context “specification” substantively refines ethics norms for a particular discipline or setting and is an expected, needed and progressive ethical activity. In order for this activity to be meaningful, the scope for bioethics application and the relevant contextual factors of the setting need to be delineated and appreciated. This paper defines biopharmaceutical bioethics as: the application of bioethics norms (concepts, principles, and rules) to the research, development, supply, commercialization, and clinical use of biopharmaceutical healthcare products. It provides commentary on this definition, and presents five contextual factors that need to be considered when applying bioethics norms to a biopharmaceutical industry setting: (1) dual missions; (2) timely and pragmatic guidance; (3) resource stewardship; (4) multiple stakeholders; and (5) operational complexity.ConclusionUnderstanding the scope of the biopharmaceutical enterprise and contextual factors of a biopharmaceutical industry setting is foundational for the application of bioethics norms. Establishing a common language and approach for biopharmaceutical bioethics will facilitate breadth and depth of discussion and subsequent implementation to benefit patients, the healthcare system and society. (shrink)

Drawing upon Herbert Marcuse’s lectures and writings on education, I argue that foundational to his critical theory of education is a biopolitical project calling for the pedagogical production of new human beings under counterrevolutionary types of education. In the second section, I put Marcuse’s biopolitically rethought critical theory of education into conversation with W. E. B. Du Bois’s critique of caste education, as both share the demand for an abolition ethic to be the ontological grounding of the educational subject. Ultimately, (...) I argue an abolition politics needs to be the basis for reimagining education in counterrevolutionary times. (shrink)

This chapter argues that J. P. Sartre has overlooked two motivations in developing his theory of temporality: first, to found the method of phenomenological ontology; and, second, to show that human freedom, pace I. Kant, must be situated within the empirical world. Sartre argues that consciousness is nothingness’s origin by having the ontological characteristic of being “its own nothingness”. Sartre begins his account by noting that temporality is “an organized structure” such that the three temporal dimensions—past, present, and future—are not (...) externally related but rather internally or synthetically related to one another. Sartre then uses phenomenological description to elucidate the past’s true ontological status. Sartre seeks an account according to which time’s successive moments are not only separable but also unified in some way, i.e. have “a form of synthesis”. Sartre clarifies that it is one and the same phenomenon both for a present to change into the past and for a new present to arise. (shrink)

Could it be right to convict and punish defendants using only statistical evidence? In this paper, I argue that it is not and explain why it would be wrong. This is difficult to do because there is a powerful argument for thinking that we should convict and punish defendants using statistical evidence. It looks as if the relevant cases are cases of decision under risk and it seems we know what we should do in such cases (i.e., maximize expected value). (...) Given some standard assumptions about the values at stake, the case for convicting and punishing using statistical evidence seems solid. In trying to show where this argument goes wrong, I shall argue (against Lockeans, reliabilists, and others) that beliefs supported only by statistical evidence are epistemically defective and (against Enoch, Fisher, and Spectre) that these epistemic considerations should matter to the law. To solve the puzzle about the role of statistical evidence in the law, we need to revise some commonly held assumptions about epistemic value and defend the relevance of epistemology to this practical question. (shrink)

Scientific claims implicitly invite criticism. While we might expect that challenging an epistemic authority in religious circles would be seen as an illegitimate activity (e.g. heresy) and met with suppression, challenging an epistemic authority in scientific circles is supposed to be a legitimate form of engagement, and should (ideally) be met with reasoned argument based in empirical evidence. Given this implicit invitation to challenge scientific claims, and the sweeping knowledge claims often made by today’s scientists, it is hardly surprising that (...) people outside narrowly defined scientific communities (i.e. science’s “public”) often challenge the truth of scientific consensuses. The scrutiny of scientific claims by non-scientist members of the public is quite understandable and in many ways unobjectionable, given the role that science advice increasingly plays in our society’s governance structures and public policy making. As scientists increasingly play policy-maker, they become doubly subject to public criticism: first as a scientist making substantive claims about reality and second as public-interest decision-maker making important decisions about public policy. Thus, for the scientist’s social role as epistemic authority to remain justified, public criticism of science should ideally be entertained and answered by practicing scientists. (shrink)

Background and objective: Code status discussions may fail to address patients’ treatment-related goals and their knowledge of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). This study aimed to investigate patients’ resuscitation preferences, knowledge of CPR and goals of care. Design, setting, patients and measurements: 135 adults were interviewed within 48 h of admission to a general medical service in an academic medical centre, querying code status preferences, knowledge about CPR and its outcome probabilities and goals of care. Medical records were reviewed for clinical information (...) and code status documentation. Results: 41 (30.4%) patients had discussed CPR with their doctor, 116 (85.9%) patients preferred full code status and 11 (8.1%) patients expressed code status preferences different from the code status documented in their medical record. When queried about seven possible goals of care, patients affirmed an average of 4.9 goals; their single most important goals were broadly distributed, ranging from being cured (n = 36; 26.7%) to being comfortable (n = 8; 5.9%). Patients’ mean estimate of survival to discharge after CPR was 60.4%. Most patients believed it was helpful to discuss goals of care (n = 95; 70.4%) and the chances of surviving inhospital CPR (n = 112; 83.0%). Some patients expressed a desire to change their code status after receiving information about survival following inhospital CPR (n = 11; 8.1%) or after discussing goals of care (n = 2; 1.5%). Conclusions: Doctors need to address patients’ knowledge about CPR and take steps to avoid discrepancies between treatment orders and patients’ preferences. Addressing CPR outcome probabilities and goals of care during code status discussions may improve patients’ knowledge and influence their preferences. (shrink)