Background: Professional ethical codes are an important part of healthcare. They are part of the professionalisation of an occupation, are used for regulation of the professions and are intended to guide ethical behaviour in healthcare. However, so far, little is known about the practical use of professional codes in healthcare, particularly in paramedicine. Objective: The aim of this scoping review was to determine what is known in the existing literature about health professionals’ knowledge, awareness and use of their professional codes. (...) Method: A scoping review was performed based on a six-stage framework as described by Levac et al. Six databases were searched: OVID Medline, EMBASE, EMCARE, CINAHL, ProQuest and Scopus, in September 2020. Google Scholar, Trove and Google using.gov and.org websites were also searched for grey literature. Two reviewers independently assessed study eligibility. Results: The search yielded 1162 results after duplicate removal. Thirty-nine studies remained after title and abstract review. Twenty-five articles were included after full-text review. Sixteen examined nursing, eight examined medicine and one examined both nursing and medicine. No studies were identified that examined paramedicine. Twenty-one studies were of a cross-sectional design and four studies were of a qualitative design. Conclusion: Most health professionals know the codes exist, but do not think they know the content. Despite valuing professional codes highly, healthcare professionals do not use them regularly in clinical practice. Further research is needed, and professional codes should be made useful for practice and consideration given to how codes can be written, communicated and implemented to increase their actualisation in healthcare. Research should also begin in paramedicine to identify clinician’s knowledge and use of codes in this profession. Review registration: Open Science Framework – doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/NKBY4 Ethics Statement: This article does not contain any studies involving human participants performed by any of the authors. The review followed good scientific conduct. (shrink)

Background Paramedicine is a newly regulated profession in Australia and with the introduction of regulation in 2018 for this profession came increased responsibilities – including the introduction of a professional code of conduct. Several countries now have regulation of paramedicine and associated professional codes to guide ethical and professional behaviour. Despite this, there has been no published research into paramedic understanding and use of their professional codes. Objectives To explore Australian paramedics’ use and understanding of their professional code of conduct. (...) Research design: This study used a qualitative descriptive design, underpinned by hermeneutic theory. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview data and identify Australian paramedic perceptions surrounding the use of their code of conduct. Results 11 Registered Paramedics from several states and territories were interviewed. Participants were invited to interview by advertisement on social media and the Australasian College of Paramedicine Web site. Participants had varied professional backgrounds including clinical work, education providers and policymakers/managers. Four themes were identified as follows: Theme 1 – ‘You don’t know, what you can’t know’; Theme 2 – ‘I don’t need the code – the code is for others’; Theme 3 – ‘It’s about time’; Theme 4 – ‘Navigating the new profession’. Ethical considerations: Ethics approval was granted by the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (MUHREC) Project ID: 28921. All participants provided informed consent. Conclusions The results of this study suggest that paramedics’ knowledge and use of their code is limited, and participants appeared to mostly rely instead on ‘common sense’ morals. Participants did appear to want to understand the broad concepts of the code more and have this better integrated into the profession. The code was also interpreted as important to the paramedic profession and its new professional status, helping to legitimise it as a health profession in Australia. (shrink)

John Buridan was a fourteenth-century philosopher who enjoyed an enormous reputation for about two hundred years, was then totally neglected, and is now being 'rediscovered' through his relevance to contemporary work in philosophical logic. The final chapter of Buridan's Sophismata deals with problems about self-reference, and in particular with the semantic paradoxes. He offers his own distinctive solution to the well-known 'Liar Paradox' and introduces a number of other paradoxes that will be unfamiliar to most logicians. Buridan also moves on (...) from these problems to more general questions about the nature of propositions, the criteria of their truth and falsity and the concepts of validity and knowledge. This edition of that chapter is intended to make Buridan's ideas and arguments accessible to a wider range of readers. The volume should interest many philosophers, linguists and logicians, who are increasingly finding in medieval work striking anticipations of their own concerns. (shrink)

What explains variation in hunting success? This paper examines foraging success among Inuit hunters, paying particular attention to factors that account for differential returns in hunting. Although there are several possibilities for explaining hunting success, this study finds that birth order and age are important predictors of foraging returns. Furthermore, data on food sharing suggests that birth order has important effects on the distribution of food. That is, early-born hunters not only produce more food, they give much of that food (...) to their parents, who then distribute it to the hunter’s younger siblings. These findings are discussed within the context of local resource enhancement and the value of early-born sons to Inuit parents. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Cybernetics, Reflexivity and Second-Order Science” by Louis H. Kauffman. Upshot: This commentary reflects broadly on the concept of eigenform and reflexive domains, focusing on the idea that second-order science is neither the same as nor completely distinct from ordinary living.

Theodore Roszak's compelling parable, The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, provides an (eco)-feminist view of the “Night of the Living Dead Model” and suggests that only the equal union of “masculine” and “feminine” energies will help us resolve the current eco-crisis. This article further explores the consequences of the highly masculinized post-Enlightenment rationalism as demonstrated in Roszak's novel. Although this article agrees that there is a dangerous imbalance between natural/spiritual and scientific/rational viewpoints, it also stresses that the extreme genderification of these (...) energies is potentially problematic. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Mark Schroeder has argued that all reasonable forms of inconsistency of attitude consist of having the same attitude type towards a pair of inconsistent contents (A-type inconsistency). We suggest that he is mistaken in this, offering a number of intuitive examples of pairs of distinct attitudes types with consistent contents which are intuitively inconsistent (B-type inconsistency). We further argue that, despite the virtues of Schroeder's elegant A-type expressivist semantics, B-type inconsistency is in many ways the more natural choice in developing (...) an expressivist account of moral discourse. We close by showing how to adapt ordinary formality-based accounts of logicality to define a B-type account of logical inconsistency and distinguish it from both semantic and pragmatic inconsistency. In sum, we provide a roadmap of how to develop a successful B-type expressivism. (shrink)

This article is based on a chapter of my forthcoming book, A World Cut in Two: The Global Traffic in Organs . My debts to those who have assisted the Organs Watch project are too numerous to be acknowledged here. The late "Micky" Friedlaender of Hadassah Hospital was an invaluable friend and feisty interlocutor on the ethics and practice of transplantation. Meira Weiss, esteemed anthropological colleague and friend, and Dr. Chen Kugel, military IDF commissioned officer and senior pathologist, each paid (...) dearly for their love of truth, of their professions, and their patriotism. Their work on this subject paved the way for the writing of this article. (shrink)

It has long been widely agreed that some concepts can be possessed only by those who have undergone a certain type of phenomenal experience. Orthodoxy among contemporary philosophers of mind has it that these phenomenal concepts provide the key to understanding many disputes between physicalists and their opponents, and in particular offer an explanation of Mary’s predicament in the situation exploited by Frank Jackson's knowledge argument. I reject the orthodox view; I deny that there are phenomenal concepts. My arguments exploit (...) the sort of considerations that are typically used to motivate externalism about mental content. Although physicalists often appeal to phenomenal concepts to defend their view against the knowledge argument, I argue that this is a mistake. The knowledge argument depends on phenomenal concepts; if there are no phenomenal concepts, then the knowledge argument fails. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Contemporary relativists often see their view as contributing to a semantic/post-semantic account of linguistic data about disagreement and retraction. I offer an independently motivated metasemantic account of the same data, that also handles a number of cases and empirical results that are problematic for the relativist. The key idea is that the content of assertions and beliefs is determined in part by facts about other times, including times after the assertion is made or the belief is formed. On this (...) temporal externalist view, speaker behaviours such as retraction of previous assertions play a role in making it the case that a past utterance has a given meaning. (shrink)

This paper addresses five questions: First, what is trajectory of Western liberal ethics and politics in defining life, rights and citizenship? Second, how will neuro-remediation and other technologies change the definition of death for the brain injured and the cryonically suspended? Third, will people always have to be dead to be cryonically suspended? Fourth, how will changing technologies and definitions of identity affect the status of people revived from brain injury and cryonic suspension? I propose that Western liberal thought is (...) working towards a natural end, a “telos.” In response to a variety of biotechnologies, law and public opinion in liberal democracies will be forced to make explicit that the rights of a living thing are determined by its level of consciousness. I discuss the way that technology will force three clarifications about the value of consciousness, at the beginning, the end and boundaries of human life. Sentience and personhood will become the basis of moral concern, regardless of its media. Just as human rights have become independent of race, gender and property, rights will become independent of being a breathing human being. But even as we make this transition, the cryonically preserved are still likely to be considered dead for pragmatic reasons, albeit with gradually increasing rights as technology makes their reanimation increasingly probable. I suggest that it could be acceptable to cryonicists that the frozen continue to be defined as dead if assisted suicide can be legalized. Under a liberal assisted suicide policy cryonicists might be allowed to carry out suspension before a declaration of death, preserving the maximum amount of neural information. The gradual redefinition of life and personal identity in terms of psychological continuity will also have consequences for the legal status of the reanimated. If, due to information loss, the reanimated do not meet a threshold of psychological continuity, they may be considered new persons. Cryonicists may therefore wish to specify ahead of time whether they are still interested in being reanimated if pre-animation assessment suggests that the result will not meet the necessary threshold of continuity. Finally, I touch on the way that neural technology will fundamentally problematize the separate, autonomous self on which liberal democratic values are based, leading to a legal and political Singularity. It is this looming neural Singularity that makes the proposed liberal democratic telos a final stage in humanistic thought, before it is superceded by something radically different. (shrink)

It is necessary that, if the world is divided into nations, conflicts should arise in which there is no strong argument against terrorism or repression. By a strong argument I mean one that would sway all minds not blindly partisan, without moral commitments that are unusual or outlandish in the modern world and with as much aversion to violence as most people have. So I do not here consider, because it is unusual, heroic and absolute pacifism, much as I respect (...) it; on the other hand I do mention Christian moral objections applying specially to terrorism because it seems somewhat outlandish even now to ignore the Christian element in our tradition. (shrink)

The idea that experts (especially scientific experts) play a privileged role in determining the meanings of our words and the contents of our concepts has become commonplace since the work of Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, and others in the 1970s. But if experts have the power to determine what our words mean, they can do so responsibly or irresponsibly, from good motivations or bad, justly or unjustly, with good or bad effects. This paper distinguishes three families of metasemantic views based (...) on their attitudes towards bad behaviour by meaning-fixing experts, and draws a series of distinctions relevant for the normative evaluation of meaning-determining actions. (shrink)

"'There is only one thing that is certain, namely that we can have nothing certain; and therefore it is not certain that we can have nothing certain,' Samuel Butler once said, expressing in that mindbloggler all the elements required to form a classical paradox. Throughout the ages wise men and jesters alike have been intrigued by such mental twists and riddles which defy common sense and yet appear to be true." -- Dust jacket.

This volume presents twenty of the most important interviews the journal, Cogito conducted between 1987 and 1996. Covering a wide spectrum of intellectual inquiry, from logic to metaphysics to philosophy of mind, the interviews provide an excellent introduction to philosophy in the English speaking world at the end of the century. Interviews with: Michael Dummett Peter Strawson Alasdair MacIntyre David Gauthier Nancy Cartwright Mary Warnock Hilary Putnam Daniel Dennett Bernard Williams John Cottingham Willard Quine Stephen Korner Hugh Mellor Adam Morton (...) Jean Hampton Roger Scruton Richard Dawkins Richard Sorabji Derek Parfit Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

As a contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on the resolution and prevention of enmity, this article concerns how enmity deforms social as well as individual personality. Societies need time and must exert significant effort, much of it intellectual, in order to recuperate: they need to recover both from harms that others have intentionally done them and from having done harm to others. Social recuperation is difficult because the tactics and standards of wartime seep into civilian and personal domestic life. (...) In contemporary American life, the proliferation of armed and gated communities, the institution of the house gun, the general acquiescence in stop-and-frisk encounters, and the incarceration in huge numbers of gang members and small-time drug dealers are examples. An inverse relationship of wartime and peacetime abuses is also apparent: behaviors associated with civilian private life are deployed during wartime as techniques with which to humiliate and torture enemy combatants. This type of mimetic effect reaches the limit of complexity when wartime abuses that mirror domestic abuses are then mirrored in their further application to domestic settings that themselves have become militarized. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:EMBODIED HUMAN AGENTS INHABITING A MATERIAL WORLD? CHARLES T. HUGHES Chapman University Orange, California I. /n;troduction HE CONCEPT of a "logically possible world" has roven useful in the investigation of issues within many ranches of philosophy, including the philosophy of religion.1 Since this paper includes an analysis of one "possible worlds" objection to Christian theism, based upon the problem of evil, it will prove useful to preface my (...) discussion with a paragraph which summarizes some of the ideas important to the logic of possible worlds. Each logically possible world contains a complete set of compossible facts, which includes the past, present, and future of its objects, properties, and relations. Those complete sets of compossible facts, each of which describes the way the actual world could have been, have in common the truth of all logically necessary propositions (for example, 2 +2 = 4, "Circles cannot be squared "), and the falsity of all logically impossible propositions (for example, 2 +6 = 7, " Circles can be squared"), but differ in their truth values with respect to at least some logically contingent propositions (for example, "Elephants exist" is true in one or more possible worlds but false in all others, and "Unicorns exist " is true in one or more possible worlds but false in all others). An impossible world includes an affirmation of the falsity of at least one necessary proposition (for example,,.._,(2 +2 = 4)), and/or affirms the truth of at least one logical1 See Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), chapters IX and X. 389 390 CHARLES T. HUGHES ly impossible proposition (for example, " Logically necessary propositions are false in all possible worlds ").2 The actual world, which is our world, is that complete set of compossible propositions which describe the way things actually are. The actual world, therefore, differs from other possible worlds in that all of its contingent propositions correspond to the past, present, and future of all of the objects, properties, and relations which actually obtain. There is an on-going debate about the nature and ontological status of possible worlds and their objects.3 The purpose of this paper is to analyze and reject a particular "possible worlds" objection to Christian theism, based upon the problem of evil, which is not frequently discussed in philosophical literature. The problem is this : If God must actualize a possible world in order to provide human agents with the initial stage of existence they require to develop freely as rational, moral, and religious beings, who choose their own destinies, why did God not create them as incorporeal agents within an immaterial world which would, by its very nature, eliminate the physical dimension of evil and suffering which plagues the actual world? For it seems, prima facie, that God could have realized his purposes by actualizing an immaterial world, populated with human-like incorporeal agents, thereby avoiding all of the terrible evil and suffering made possible by physicality. Therefore, the existence of the actual physical world, with all its evil and suffering, is evidence against the existence of God.4 In order to show that the previously stated objection from evil could pose a genuine threat to theism, I will first identify some of my important assumptions in this paper, and then outline particular Christian ideas to determine how the " possible worlds " 2 For an argument that some impossible propositions are not self-contradictory, see Linda Zagzebski, " What If the Impossible Had Been Actual," in Michael D. Beatty, ed., Christian Theism aml the Problems of Philosophy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp. 165-183. a Compare, for example, the positions of D. M. Armstrong, A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) and D. Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). 4 Some interesting discussion of this type of problem can be found in Austin Farrer, Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited (London: Collins, 1962), pp. 69-76. EMBODIED HUMAN AGENTS 391 objection to Christian theism could arise in the first place. After that, I will discuss the nature of the " possible worlds " objection and how, in principle, it might be rebutted by theists who possess a great amount of... (shrink)

This paper identifies the phenomenon of conceptual competence injustice, a form of epistemic injustice that occurs when a marginalized epistemic agent makes a conceptual claim and is illegitimately regarded as having failed to grasp one or more of the concepts expressed in her testimony. The notion of a conceptual claim is given a deflationary account that is coextensive with the class of a priori knowable claims. This study reveals a form of oppression that severely hinders marginalized epistemic agents who seek (...) to create or communicate conceptual knowledge. Conceptual competence injustice is compared and contrasted with three other forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, and contributory injustice. The final section investigates a number of damaging effects that conceptual competence injustice has on marginalized persons pursuing a career in academic philosophy. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have offered quasi-perceptual theories of desire, according to which to desire something is roughly to “see” it as having value or providing reasons. These are offered as alternatives to the more traditional Humean Theory of Motivation, which denies that desires have a representational aspect. This paper examines the various considerations offered by advocates to motivate quasi-perceptualism. It argues that Humeanism is in fact able to explain the same data that the quasi-perceptualist can explain, and in one (...) case the Humean explanation is superior. Quasi-perceptual accounts of desire, the paper concludes, are for the most part unmotivated. (shrink)

This book investigates the impact of misinformation and the role of truth in political struggle. It develops a theory of objective truth for political controversy over topics such as racism and gender, based on the insights of intersectionality, the Black feminist theory of interlocking systems of oppression. Truth is defined using the tools of model theory and formal semantics, but the theory also captures how social power dynamics strongly influence the operation of the concept of truth within the social fabric. (...) Systemic ignorance, propagated through false speech and misinformation, sustains oppressive power structures and perpetuates systemic inequity. Truth tends to empower marginalized groups precisely because oppressive systems are maintained through systemic ignorance. If the truth sets people free, then power will work to obscure it. Hence, the rise of misinformation as a political weapon is a strategy of dominant power to undermine the political advancement of marginalized groups. (shrink)

Dementia is an illness that raises important questions about our own attitudes to illness and aging. It also raises very important issues beyond the bounds of dementia to do with how we think of ourselves as people - fundamental questions about personal identity. Is the person with dementia the same person he or she was before? Is the individual with dementia a person at all? In a striking way, dementia seems to threaten the very existence of the self. This book (...) brings together philosophers and practitioners to explore the conceptual issues that arise in connection with this increasingly common illness. Drawing on a variety of philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, Hume, Wittgenstein, the authors explore the nature of personal identity in dementia. They also show how the lives and selfhood of people with dementia can be enhanced by attention to their psychosocial and spiritual environment. Throughout, the book conveys a strong ethical message, arguing in favour of treating people with dementia with all the dignity they deserve as human beings. The book covers a range of topics, stretching from talk of basic biology to talk of a spiritual understanding of people with dementia. Accessibly written by leading figures in psychiatry and philosophy, the book presents a unique and long overdue examination of an illness that features in so many of our lives. (shrink)

The debate over safe spaces has traditionally been cast as a conflict between competing goals. On the one hand we have epistemic goals such as the pursuit of truth and the free exchange of ideas. O...

The revival of interest in realism in political theory is comprehensively explored in Politics Recovered, a major new volume of 14 original essays edited by Matt Sleat. Wide-ranging and engaging throughout, the book takes in both supporters and critics of the realist turn and addresses neglected questions of the political application of realism and of the connection between contemporary political realism and the classical IR tradition of realist thought. But I argue that the book also prompts some troubling questions about (...) the ultimate coherence of the realist orientation and about the way in which realists interpret the limits of political theory and of political theorists. (shrink)