"Deborah McCauley and Laura Porter's text combines descriptions of the pictures with the history of the churches and interviews with members. They create a representative window into the material and oral culture of central Appalachia's independent Holiness heritage. Mountain Holiness is a book that will fascinate anyone who cares about these traditions, as well as anyone concerned with the preservation of America's most vital folkways."--BOOK JACKET.

Background While community engagement is increasingly promoted in global health research to improve ethical research practice, it can sometimes coerce participation and thereby compromise ethical research. This paper seeks to discuss some of the ethical issues arising from community engagement in a low resource setting. Methods A qualitative study design focusing on the engagement activities of three biomedical research projects as ethnographic case studies was used to gain in-depth understanding of community engagement as experienced by multiple stakeholders in Malawi. Data (...) was collected through participant observation, 43 In-depth interviews and 17 focus group discussions with community leaders, research staff, community members and research participants. Thematic analysis was used to analyse and interpret the findings. Results The results showed that structural coercion arose due to an interplay of factors pertaining to social-economic context, study design and power relations among research stakeholders. The involvement of community leaders, government stakeholders, and power inequalities among research stakeholders affected some participants’ ability to make autonomous decisions about research participation. These results have been presented under the themes of perception of research as development, research participants’ motivation to access individual benefits, the power of vernacular translations to influence research participation, and coercive power of leaders. Conclusion The study identified ethical issues in community engagement practices pertaining to structural coercion. We conclude that community engagement alone did not address underlying structural inequalities to ensure adequate protection of communities. These results raise important questions on how to balance between engaging communities to improve research participation and ensure that informed consent is voluntarily given. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea in small boats has become a common sight in the media, particularly since the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015. The number of boats crossing the English Channel between the French and UK coasts has been increasing as other migration routes have been closed down. This article reports the findings of a discourse analysis of 96 UK newspaper articles published in December 2018 when the daily crossings were referred to as a ‘major crisis’. Adopting a (...) broadly critical discursive psychology perspective, we identify the use of three main interpretative repertoires used within the media reporting. Firstly, a ‘secure the borders’ repertoire which positions the UK’s borders as porous and easily breached, secondly, a ‘smuggling is immoral’ repertoire which works to position smugglers as to blame for the current ‘crisis’ and removes responsibility for the crisis from the Government, and finally, a ‘desperate people’ repertoire which worked to position the refugees themselves as vulnerable and in need of protection, but also as people who will engage in risky behaviours. We suggest that the use of these repertoires ultimately functions to obscure the need for safe and legal migration routes to the UK. (shrink)

The concept of moral distress comes from nursing ethics, and was initially defined as ‘…when one knows the right thing to do, but institutional constraints make it nearly impossible to pursue the right course of action’. There is a large body of literature associated with moral distress, yet multiple definitions now exist, significantly limiting its usefulness. We undertook a systematic review of the argument-based bioethics literature on this topic as the basis for a critical appraisal, identifying 55 papers for analysis. (...) We found that moral distress is most frequently framed around individual experiences of distress in relation to local practices and constraints, and understood in terms of power relations and workplace hierarchies. This understanding is directly derived from, and often still seen as specific to, nursing. Frequently the perspective of the morally distressed individual is privileged. Understandings of moral distress have evolved towards an ‘occupational health approach’, with the assumption that moral distress should be measured and prevented. Counter-perspectives were identified, highlighting conceptual problems. Based on our review, we propose a redefinition of moral distress: ‘Ethical unease or disquiet resulting from a situation where a clinician believes they have contributed to avoidable patient or community harm through their involvement in an action, inaction or decision that conflicts with their own values’. This definition is specific enough for research use, anchored in clinicians’ professional responsibilities and concerns about harms to patients, framed relationally rather than hierarchically, and amenable to multiple perspectives on any given morally distressing situation. (shrink)

A diagnosis of dementia often comes with difficulties in understanding a conversational context and expressing how one feels. So far, research on how to facilitate advance care planning for people with dementia focused on defining relevant themes and topics for conversations, or on how to formalize decisions made by surrogate decision makers, e.g., family members. The aim of this review is to provide a better scope of the existing research on practical communication aspects related to dementia in ACP conversations. In (...) November 2020, seven databases were searched to select papers for inclusion. This search was updated in December 2021. The search strategy consisted of three tiers, intersected by using the Boolean term “AND,” and resulted in 787 studies. Two researchers followed explicit criteria for two sequential levels of screening, based on titles and abstracts and full papers. A total of 22 studies were included for data analysis. Seven topics emerged clustered around two themes. This scoping review provides practical suggestions for healthcare professionals to improve ACP communication and uncovered gaps in research on communication aspects related to dementia in ACP conversations, such as non-verbal behavior, timing and implementation, and personal preferences. (shrink)

After showing how Deborah Mayo’s error-statistical philosophy of science might be applied to address important questions about the evidential status of computer simulation results, I argue that an error-statistical perspective offers an interesting new way of thinking about computer simulation models and has the potential to significantly improve the practice of simulation model evaluation. Though intended primarily as a contribution to the epistemology of simulation, the analysis also serves to fill in details of Mayo’s epistemology of experiment.

Clinical geneticists are increasingly confronted with ethical tensions between their responsibilities to individual patients and to other family members. This paper considers the ethical implications of a “familial” conception of the clinical genetics role. It argues that dogmatic adherence to either the familial or to the individualistic conception of clinical genetics has the potential to lead to significant harms and to fail to take important obligations seriously.Geneticists are likely to continue to be required to make moral judgments in the resolution (...) of such tensions and may find it useful to have access to ethics training and support. (shrink)

The development of human genetics raises a wide range of important ethical questions for us all. The interpersonal dimension of genetic information in particular means that genetics also poses important challenges to the idea of patient-centredness and autonomy in medicine. How ought practical ethical decisions about the new genetics be made given that we appear, moreover, no longer to be able to appeal to unquestioned traditions and widely shared communitarian values? This paper argues that any coherent ethical approach to these (...) questions must be able both to uphold the moral status of the individual and at the same time recognise the communitarian, interpersonal dimensions both of the world in which we live and of personal autonomy itself. The paper then goes on to propose an approach to the resolution of the ethical questions raised by the use of the new genetics in reproductive choice through the development of a coherent and principled process of public reason and justification oriented towards the support and development of personal autonomy. (shrink)

This paper examines how unethical behavior in the workplace occurs when management places inordinately strong emphasis on goalattainment without a corresponding emphasis on following legitimate procedures. Robert Merton's theory of sodal structure and anomie provides a foundation to discuss this argument. Key factors affecting ethical climates in work organizations are also addressed. Based on this analysis, the paper proposes strategies for developing and changing aspects of organizational culture to reduce anomie, thereby creating work climates which discourage unethical practices and provide (...) employees with mechanisms to resolve ethical conflicts in a constructive way. (shrink)

Framed within the broader theoretical context of social semiotics, we attempt to show how university students communicate using a variety of unique means, in particular social contexts. We privilege Pennycook and Otsuji’s semiotic assemblages, Jimaima and Simungala’s semiotic creativity, and the notion of semiotic economy as critical ingredients that conspire to give rise to the unique and complex coinages and innovations constituting students’ repertoires. We argue that, born out of creativity, the students’ repertoires are semiotically and economically charged discourses that (...) generate extended narratives such that more is realized with less. We show that this reality undoubtedly constitutes a multi-semiotic meaning-making endeavor that enacts and sustains students’ imagined and lived experiences in real sociocultural, historical, and political spaces in the multilingual landscapes of university campuses. (shrink)

Numerous philosophical theories of joint agency and its intentional structure have been developed in the past few decades. These theories have offered accounts of joint agency that appeal to higher-level states that are?shared? in some way. These accounts have enhanced our understanding of joint agency, yet there are a number of lower-level cognitive phenomena involved in joint action that philosophers rarely acknowledge. In particular, empirical research in cognitive science has revealed that when individuals engage in a joint activity such as (...) conversation or joint problem solving, they become aligned at multiple levels. We argue that this phenomenon of alignment is crucial to understanding joint actions and should be integrated with philosophical approaches. In this paper, we sketch a possible integration, and draw out its implications for understanding of joint agency and collective intentionality. The result is a process-based, dynamic account of joint action that integrates both low-level and high-level states, and seeks to capture the separate processes of how a joint action is initiated and sustained. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has repeatedly been described as an “essentially contested concept,” which means that its signification is subject to continuous struggle. We argue that the “CSR institution” (CSRI; i.e., the set of standards and rules regulating corporate conduct under the banner of CSR) is legitimized by narratives which “decontest” the underlying concept of CSR in a manner that safeguards the CSRI from calls for alternative institutional arrangements. Examining several such narratives from a structuralist perspective, we find them to (...) be permeated with six recurrent ambiguities that we show to be reflective of three deep-set taboos: the taboo of the noncongruency between corporate profit objectives and societal needs, the taboo of multinational firms’ continued contribution to the emergence of global socioenvironmental issues, and the taboo of the CSRI’s moderate results in solving these problems. We contend that the perpetuation of these taboos contributes to inhibiting substantial change in the way of doing business, and we sketch out possibilities for initiating a “recontestation” of CSR’s meaning. (shrink)

Orr and Siegler have recently defended a restrictive view concerning posthumous sperm retrieval and conception, which would limit insemination to those cases where the deceased man has provided explicit consent for such a procedure. The restrictive view dominates current law and practice. A permissible view, in contrast, would allow insemination and conception in all but those cases where the posthumous procedure has been explicitly refused, or where there is no reasonable evidence that the deceased person desired children. I describe a (...) phenomenology of procreative desires which supports the permissible view, and which is compatible with requirements concerning the interests of the decedent, concepts of medical infertility, and the welfare of the future child. The account illustrates how our current obsession with individual rights and autonomy can be self-defeating and repressive. (shrink)

One of the chief innovations in medieval adaptations of Aristotelian psychology was the expansion of Aristotle's notion of imagination orphantasiato include a variety of distinct perceptual powers known collectively as the internal senses. Amongst medieval philosophers in the Arabic world, Avicenna offers one of the most complex and sophisticated accounts of the internal senses. Within his list of internal senses, Avicenna includes a faculty known as “estimation”, to which various functions are assigned in a wide variety of contexts. Although many (...) philosophers in the Arabic world as well as in the Latin West accepted Avicenna's positing of an estimative faculty, Avicenna's best-known critics, al-Ghazâlî and Averroes, found Avicenna's arguments in support of a distinct estimative faculty problematic. For different reasons, both Averroes and Ghazâlî raised the basic question of whether one needed to posit a distinct faculty of estimation to supplement the perceptual abilities of the other internal senses, and whether the notion of an estimative power as defined by Avicenna was internally coherent. Such criticisms suggest that the Avicennian conception of estimation is not entirely unambiguous, and that a correct understanding of Avicenna's motivations for delineating an estimative power requires a careful study of the diverse activities assigned to it throughout Avicenna's philosophical writings. (shrink)

Verbal derogation is not only a linguistic but also, and perhaps more importantly, a political phenomenon. In this paper, I argue that to do justice to the political relevance of derogatory terms, we must not neglect the social practices and structures in which the use of these terms is embedded. I aim to show that inferentialist semantics is especially helpful to account for this social embeddedness and, consequently, the political relevance of derogatory terms. I am concerned with specifying the linguistic (...) and political aspects of terms that are at the core of derogatory language use. I explain them with the help of Brandomian inferentialism which tends to be quickly dismissed or ignored in discussions about the meaning of derogatory terms. My inferentialist account is in line with Lynne Tirrell’s broader inferentialist framework for understanding derogatory communicative practices. I provide the semantic details of her broader inferentialist view and thereby aim to show that inferentialist semantics is a promising theory which cannot be neglected in further discussion of meaning and politics in derogatory language use. (shrink)

Chapter Introduction Hobbes's political doctrine presents the unusual feature that it has given rise to an "official" interpretation, in terms of which, ...

It has long been a truism of the history of philosophy that intentionality is an invention of the medieval period, and within this standard narrative, the central place of Arabic philosophy has always been acknowledged. Yet there are many misconceptions surrounding the theories of intentionality advanced by the two main Arabic thinkers whose works were available to the West, Avicenna and Averroes. In the first part of this paper I offer an overview of the general accounts of intentionality and intentional (...) being found in the linguistic, psychological, and metaphysical writings of Avicenna and Averroes, and I trace the terminology of “intentions” to a neglected passage from Avicenna’s logic. In the second part of the paper I examine the way that Avicenna and Averroes apply their general theories of intentionality to the realm of sense perception. I offer an explanation of why Avicenna might have chosen to denominate the objects of the internal sense faculty of estimation as “intentions”, and I explore the implications of Averroes’s decision to attribute intentionality to the external senses and the media of perception. (shrink)

In 1241/4 the theology masters at the university at Paris with their chancellor, Odo of Chateauroux, mandated by their bishop, William of Auvergne, met to condemn ten propositions against theological truth. This book represents the first comprehensive examination of what hitherto has been a largely ignored instrument in a crucial period of the university's early maturation. However, the book's ambition goes wider than this. The condemnation provides a window through which to view the wider doctrinal, intellectual, institutional and historical developments (...) within the emerging university. These include the advent of the Dominicans and Franciscans at the university; and the developing focus of Paris theologians on using their learning for preaching at a time of a rapid and sometimes divergent development of doctrine and concerns over the newly-translated Aristotelian and associated Arab and Jewish works, heresy, the Greek Church and the Jews. The book compares the condemnation's ten articles with the major statement of Catholic principles in the first canon of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, and assesses what conclusions can be drawn from their apparent correlation. (shrink)

Idiosyncrasies of Hobbes's composition process, together with a paucity of reliable autobiographical materials and the norms of seventeenth-century manuscript production, render interpretation of his political theory particularly difficult and contentious. These difficulties are surveyed here under three headings: the process of "serial" composition, which was common in the period; the relationship between Hobbes's three political-theory texts-- the "Elements of Law, De Cive ", and "Leviathan", which is basic to defining the textual embodiment of his theory, and controversial; and his method (...) of writing. I argue that Hobbes's composition process undercut his intention to produce a deductive, logical theory of politics and opened the door to inconsistency and muddle in his arguments. (shrink)

This article discusses some``historical milestones'' in computer ethics, aswell as two alternative visions of the futureof computer ethics. Topics include theimpressive foundation for computer ethics laiddown by Norbert Wiener in the 1940s and early1950s; the pioneering efforts of Donn Parker,Joseph Weizenbaum and Walter Maner in the1970s; Krystyna Gorniak's hypothesis thatcomputer ethics will evolve into ``globalethics''; and Deborah Johnson's speculation thatcomputer ethics may someday ``disappear''.

The concept of ‘‘certitude” is central in Arabic discussions of the theory of demonstration advanced by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics. In the Arabic tradition it is ‘‘certitude,” rather than ‘‘knowledge”, that is usually identified as the end sought by demonstrations. Al-Fārābī himself devotes a short treatise, known as the Conditions of Certitude, to determining the criteria according to which a subject can claim to have absolute certitude of any proposition. In this article the author traces the roots of the (...) concept of certitude to the Arabic translation of the Posterior Analytics. She then offers a close reading of the text of al-Fārābī's Conditions and its parallels in his Epitome of the Posterior Analytics. She argues that the identification of certitude as a cognitive state distinct from knowledge enabled al-Fārābī to introduce a number of interesting and sometimes problematic innovations into Arabic epistemology. Foremost amongst his positive innovations is the recognition that contingent as well as necessary propositions allow for an attenuated form of certitude, and the introduction of reliabilism into the justification of claims to certitude. But al-Fārābī is also one of the first philosophers to articulate explicitly the idea that certitude must include an element of ‘‘knowing that one knows,” a controversial principle that tends to undermine both al-Fārābī’s reliabilism and his efforts to loosen some of the strictures in traditional Aristotelian epistemology. (shrink)

This essay argues for the relevance of the history of family life to the history of science, taking the example of the Exners of Vienna. The Exners were an influential case of the nineteenth‐century European phenomenon of the “scientific dynasty.” The focus here is on their collaborative research on color theory at the turn of the twentieth century. At first glance, this project looks like a reactionary strike against aesthetic innovation, a symptom of what historians assume was an unbridgeable gulf (...) between scientific reason and artistic modernism. We can better understand the Exners’ motivations by situating this research at the intersection of the family's public and private lives. The domestic context sheds light on their use of such scientific terms as “subjective,” “normal,” and “universal,” providing a more nuanced sense of what rationality really meant in fin‐de‐siècle Vienna. (shrink)

Clinical research employing the randomized clinical trial has, traditionally, been understood to pose an ethical dilemma. On the one hand, each patient ought to get the treatment that best meets her needs, as judged by the patient in consultation with her doctor. On the other hand, the method most helpful to advancing our understanding about what treatments are indeed best able to meet patient needs is the randomized trial, which necessitates that each patient's care is decided not by physician judgment (...) or patient choice but instead by random assignment. The tension can be described as a conflict between the interests of individual patients who are sick today, and the interests of the group of people who will become sick in the future and would benefit from advances in medical understanding. How one ought to balance these important and often competing interests is an important ethical question that resists easy resolution. (shrink)

Background: Genomic analysis may reveal both primary and secondary findings with direct relevance to the health of probands’ biological relatives. Researchers question their obligations to return findings not only to participants but also to family members. Given the social value of privacy protection, should researchers offer a proband’s results to family members, including after the proband’s death? Methods: Preferences were elicited using interviews and a survey. Respondents included probands from two pancreatic cancer research resources, plus biological and nonbiological family members. (...) Hypothetical scenarios based on actual research findings from the two cancer research resources were presented; participants were asked return of results preferences and justifications. Interview transcripts were coded and analyzed; survey data were analyzed descriptively. Results: Fifty-one individuals (17 probands, 21 biological relatives, 13 spouses/partners) were interviewed. Subsequently, a mailed survey was returned by 464 probands, 1,040 biological family members, and 399 spouses/partners. This analysis highlights the interviews, augmented by survey findings. Probands and family members attribute great predictive power and lifesaving potential to genomic information. A majority hold that a proband’s genomic results relevant to family members’ health ought to be offered. While informants endorse each individual’s choice whether to learn results, most express a strong moral responsibility to know and to share, particularly with the younger generation. Most have few concerns about sharing genetic information within the family; rather, their concerns focus on the health consequences of not sharing. Conclusions: Although additional studies in diverse populations are needed, policies governing return of genomic results should consider how families understand genomic data, how they value confidentiality within the family, and whether they endorse an ethics of sharing. A focus on respect for individual privacy—without attention to how the broad social and cultural context shapes preferences within families—cannot be the sole foundation of policy. (shrink)

L'A. presenta un'analisi della Lettera sull'anima, in cui Avicenna affronta il tema delle idee di esseri fittizi, come la fenice, ed in particolare la permanenza di tali idee nell'anima dopo la sua separazione dal corpo. Nella parte centrale dello studio l'A. esamina il rapporto fra la risposta avicenniana al problema ed alcuni elementi dottrinali caratterizzanti il pensiero del filosofo: il tema degli universali, della quidditas, o natura comune, e la distinzione fra essenza ed esistenza.

ArgumentBetween 1878 and 1880, Switzerland, Italy, and Japan initiated the world's first national earthquake commissions, but only the Swiss made ordinary citizens a vital part of this undertaking. This paper examines the texture of communication between Swiss scientists and lay observers and traces the development of a language for seismology that was simultaneously scientific and vernacular. This is the story of an aborted dialogue between scientists and citizens about living with environmental risk, an alternative abandoned on the way to the (...) increasingly technical science of the twentieth century. (shrink)

The concept of ‘‘certitude” is central in Arabic discussions of the theory of demonstration advanced by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics. In the Arabic tradition it is ‘‘certitude,” rather than ‘‘knowledge”, that is usually identified as the end sought by demonstrations. Al-Fārābī himself devotes a short treatise, known as the Conditions of Certitude, to determining the criteria according to which a subject can claim to have absolute certitude of any proposition. In this article the author traces the roots of the (...) concept of certitude to the Arabic translation of the Posterior Analytics. She then offers a close reading of the text of al-Fārābī's Conditions and its parallels in his Epitome of the Posterior Analytics. She argues that the identification of certitude as a cognitive state distinct from knowledge enabled al-Fārābī to introduce a number of interesting and sometimes problematic innovations into Arabic epistemology. Foremost amongst his positive innovations is the recognition that contingent as well as necessary propositions allow for an attenuated form of certitude, and the introduction of reliabilism into the justification of claims to certitude. But al-Fārābī is also one of the first philosophers to articulate explicitly the idea that certitude must include an element of ‘‘knowing that one knows,” a controversial principle that tends to undermine both al-Fārābī’s reliabilism and his efforts to loosen some of the strictures in traditional Aristotelian epistemology. (shrink)

Rehabilitating some of Bakhtin's neglected ideas and reframing him as a philosopher of aesthetics, Bakhtin Reframed will be essential reading for the huge community of Bakhtin scholars as well as students and practitioners of visual culture ...

ArgumentWhat, if anything, uniquely defines the mountain as a “laboratory of nature”? Here, this question is considered from the perspective of meteorology. Mountains played a central role in the early history of modern meteorology. The first permanent year-round high-altitude weather stations were built in the 1880s but largely fell out of use by the turn of the twentieth century, not to be revived until the 1930s. This paper considers the unlikely survival of the Sonnblick observatory in the Austrian Alps. By (...) examining the arguments of the Sonnblick's critics and defenders, it reveals a seemingly paradoxical definition of the mountain as a space that simultaneously maximized isolation and communication. Drawing on the social and environmental history of the Alps, it shows how the Sonnblick came to appear as the perfect embodiment of this paradox. (shrink)

How and why, historian of science Lily Kay asks, did the ‘biological problem of DNA-based protein synthesis’ come to be represented ‘as an information code and a writing technology?’ What sort of metaphor was ‘code’ for these bio-geneticists? One whose run-away expansion, Derrida noted in Of Grammatology (1967), urgently required philosophical justification. Yet, 60 years later, there is still fundamental disagreement about its meaning and epistemic status. If the metaphor lacks ontological purchase, what accounts for its effectiveness? If, on the (...) other hand, scriptural metaphors get at the common root of culture and biology, what do we now mean by ‘code’? In this article, I trace several influential accounts of the metaphor’s effectiveness—making explicit the opposing notions of ‘code’ that animate them—and argue that each is too limited. Greater attention to the metaphoricity of ‘code’ yields a more philosophically productive and critical account of the metaphor of code. (shrink)

Dans cet article, l’auteure, psychologue clinicienne, interroge les enjeux intersubjectifs sous-jacents aux expériences de nourrissage. Elle envisage la croissance psychique comme étant fonction de l’instauration d’une relation humaine intime et nourrissante qu’elle nomme une « relation de nourrissage ». À partir d’une séquence détaillée d’observation de bébé à domicile selon la méthode E. Bick, l’auteure considère la relation de nourrissage comme le paradigme de la rencontre intersubjective. Elle souligne l’importance du travail d’accordage dans la mise en forme et l’intégration de (...) l’expérience. Elle montre ensuite que la relation de nourrissage permet, à travers le rétablissement de l’unité symbiotique postnatale ordinaire, l’accès à une reconnaissance intersubjective individuante. Enfin, elle met en lumière le fantasme organisateur de la relation de nourrissage et le rôle central tenu par la fonction paternelle. (shrink)

We should not think of babies as having a right to be born healthy. We cannot say what such a right involves, and if we could, enforcing it would infringe on the mother's most basic rights. Most importantly, positing such a right casts the fetus and mother as adversaries, and so destroys the maternal‐fetal relationship.