This article reports on the development of the managerial ethical profile (MEP) scale. The MEP scale is a multilevel, self-reporting scale measuring the perceived influence that different dimensions of common ethical frameworks have on managerial decision making. The MEP scale measures on eight subscales: economic egoism, reputational egoism, act utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism, self-virtue of self, virtue of others, act deontology, and rule deontology. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to provide evidence of scale validity. Future research needs and the value (...) of this measure for business ethics are discussed. (shrink)

In their contribution, Kok et al raise a relevant, though often underestimated, issue: clinical ethics support services are often assumed to lead to an improvement of quality of care at the organisational level, but evidence in support of this claim is weak, if not completely lacking.1 Therefore, the authors propose a complex theoretical model connecting a specific kind of CESS, moral case deliberation, with mechanisms for quality of care improvement at the individual and the organisational level. The proposal is original, (...) and the topic discussed of great interest not only to practitioners and researchers dealing with CESS, but also to health policy-makers and managers of healthcare system, for all of whom it is indeed crucial to understand whether and how ethics support can positively impact quality of care. However, despite its undoubtful merits, we feel that some claims and model’s underlying assumptions might require in-depth scrutiny and more solid justification. i. First, the authors discuss two different approaches to understanding quality of care: the first approach, which they define as reductionist, interprets quality as an outcome-oriented, quantitative, and therefore, measurable function. The second approach defines quality …. (shrink)

BackgroundClinical Ethics Support Services have been established to support healthcare professionals in addressing ethically sensitive issues in clinical practice and, in many countries, they are under development. In the context of growing CESS, exploring how healthcare professionals experience and address clinical ethics issues in their daily practice represents a fundamental step to understand their potential needs. This is even more relevant in the context of extremely sensitive diseases, such as cancer. On this basis, we carried out a qualitative study conducting (...) in-depth semi-structured interviews with stakeholders of a major comprehensive cancer centre in Italy, with the twofold aim of investigating what ethical issues arise in the context of clinical oncology and how they are addressed, as well as stakeholders’ expectations about a potential CESS to be implemented within the Institution.MethodsThe study was conducted within the theoretical framework of Grounded Theory. Participants were healthcare professionals and other key stakeholders working within the cancer centre. The semi-structured interview aimed at exploring common ethical aspects of oncology, investigating stakeholders’ professional experience in dealing with clinical ethics issues, their expectations and requests regarding ethics support services. Transcripts of the interviews were coded and analysed according to the principles of Grounded Theory.ResultsTwenty-one stakeholders were interviewed. Our analysis showed a wide consensus on the identification of ethically relevant issues, above all those concerning communication, end-of-life, and resource allocation. The absence of institutional tools or strategies to address and manage ethical issues at the patient bedside emerged, and this is reflected in the widespread request for their development in the future. The ideal support service should be fast and flexible in order to adapt to different needs and clinical cases.ConclusionsThe interviewees showed a limited degree of ‘ethical awareness’: despite having reported many issues in clinical practice, they could hardly identify and describe the ethical aspects, while complaining about a lack of ethical resources in their management. To build a truly effective support service, it therefore seems appropriate to take such context into consideration and address the emerged needs. Ethical sensitivity seems to be key and it becomes even more relevant in critical clinical areas, such as the therapeutic pathways of terminally ill patients. (shrink)

Deianira complains that Hercules, as a slave of Omphale, did not refrain from telling to the Lydian queen his famous labours; among them, the Hydra: quaeque redundabat fecundo vulnere serpens fertilis et damnis dives ab ipsa suis ‘It will be admitted that redundabat, which usually means to “overflow”’ can only be applied to the Hydra by a very strong metaphor; but it is not only a strong one, it is quite unexampled: so A. Palmer in The Academy 49 , 160. (...) But his own emendation rebellabat has not convinced anybody – rightly, as I think. Still, his remark was not otiose: redundabat refers to the ‘growing again’ of Hydra's heads, that seem to ‘spring’ from the wounds like water's spurts; it is not impossible, but nevertheless it is strange. Why does Ovid use this metaphor ‘a fluctibus desumpta’ here? I suggest that there is a precise reason: Ovid does not mention the name of the serpens, but of course his reader knows it and also knows why the Hydra is so called: πò τν δτων. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reading After Actium: Vergil's Georgics, Octavian, and RomeSergio CasaliChristopher Nappa. Reading After Actium: Vergil's Georgics, Octavian, and Rome. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. xii + 293 pp. Cloth, $75.Nappa's reading of the Georgics is a linear one: in his own words, his book is "a literary commentary that moves sequentially through the text from beginning to end" (3). After the introduction, the book is divided into (...) four chapters, each one devoted to a single book of the poem. This is how Nappa presents his work: "It is my contention that the Georgics can be profitably understood as a post-Actium 'reading,' or rather a set of them, of the situation in which Octavian found himself in the early 20s b.c.e., after the battle of Actium and before the assumption of the title Augustus. Perhaps more importantly, the Georgics represents an attempt to engage in a constructive dialogue with Octavian on the potential courses available to him and on the potential interpretations of his character, achievements, and motives, which would have been a central concern to the Roman and Italian elite"; Nappa wants to read the Georgics "as a didactic work addressed to Octavian, one that invites him (and any other reader) to react to specific problems, puzzles, and challenges" (1–3).From these proemial declarations I was expecting a linear reading of the poem constantly focused on Octavian as the model reader of the text, a consistent attempt to imagine his reactions as the "disciple" of Vergil. In fact, Nappa does not do that, at least not in a fully consistent way. Octavian as the ideal disciple and the poem as a series of "lessons" to the princeps are only a part of Nappa's actual reading of Vergil's text. I must confess that this discovery has been a bit disappointing, especially since the first chapter does in fact rather brilliantly begin with a lesson to Augustus; but this is due to the fact that the poem, of course, opens with an invocation to the princeps. Unfortunately, after that Octavian will not always be the center of attention, as I was hoping. But this does not mean that Nappa does not have interesting things to say about Vergil's poem.The introduction (1–22) clarifies Nappa's avowedly reader-oriented approach to Vergil's text: he proposes to confront the poem's difficulties and contradictions as, in a sense, the real meaning of the text: "the lessons of the [End Page 611] Georgics do not consist of the transmission of information but of the experience of confronting the often chimerical world presented by the poet.... the Georgics emphasizes the fact that in our quest for a meaning various audiences will construct (or discover) different, and even mutually exclusive meanings" (3). After a defense of intentionality as a heuristic tool for reading the Georgics, Nappa discusses the complex status of Octavian in the poem. First of all, he is the poem's addressee, "the most important audience Vergil has ever had," to whom to poet address even harsh lessons ("Octavian must understand the nature of the world he is trying to govern and the way the world sees him," 6); but he is also one of the topics of discussion, and at the same time one of the gods who are asked to favor the poet's undertaking. For Nappa, "the poem does not express a view of the princeps or his achievements so much as it invites the audience, Octavian as well as us, to consider the theme from multiple points of view" (8). Vergil's famous "mistakes" also "serve a didactic purpose: by inviting his readers to consider agricultural advice that is either obviously erroneous or presented in a highly selective and nonsequential way, the teaching poet compels them to search for deeper meaning, a term I use with some reluctance. The meaning each reader finds will, of course, depend on that reader" (11). In the last section of the introduction, Nappa locates the position of his reading within recent scholarship on the Georgics: his aporetic stance recalls above all Christine Perkell, The Poet's Truth (Berkeley... (shrink)

In the fourth line of her first speech in Book 1, to Ilioneus and the Trojan castaways, Dido quotes the first word of the first line of Lucretius’ De rerum natura, and in the fourth line of her second speech, to Aeneas, she quotes the first words of the second line of the De rerum natura. This is not a coincidence but a signal of the importance of Lucretius and Epicureanism for the characterization of Dido in the Aeneid.

Dawn. Aeneas has just left. As soon as Dido notices that the Trojan fleet is sailing far away from Carthage she is overcome by despair and launches into an enraged monologue , which climaxes in her curse against Aeneas and all of his descendants . In the first part of the monologue Dido reproaches herself for how she has dealt with Aeneas.

Riassunto: Questo lavoro cerca di mostrare come i disordini psichiatrici non possano essere inquadrati in chiave essenzialista, cioè non possano essere individuati attraverso proprietà necessarie e sufficienti. Preliminarmente introdurremo un modello chiamato Homestatic Property Cluster, che risulterà strumentale per comprendere, in prima istanza, la natura continua o discreta delle entità “disordini psichiatrici”. Sosterremo che i disordini mentali sono entità discrete. In seguito, per quanto riguarda la nostra critica all’essenzialismo, analizzeremo il disease model, ponendo l’attenzione soprattutto sui suoi limiti, cercando di (...) mettere in rilievo varie obiezioni rispetto alla sua applicabilità. Infine, cercheremo di illustrare come il modello HPC possa essere un buon punto di partenza per identificare e classificare i generi psichiatrici e come esso possa mediare tra una visione rigidamente discreta e una visione rigidamente continua dei generi psichiatrici, poiché il modello HPC, a nostro avviso, combina in maniera virtuosa proprietà di entrambe le concezioni. Parole chiave: Modello HPC; Generi naturali; Continuo; Discreto; Filosofia della psichiatria Psychiatric Kinds as HPC: A new Approach to the Discrete/Continuum Controversy in Psychiatry: This paper aims to show that psychiatric disorders cannot be defined within an essentialist perspective – i.e. by means of necessary and sufficient properties. We introduce the Homeostatic Property Cluster model which proves useful for addressing the question as to whether psychiatric disorders are continuous or discrete entities. From this discussion we find that psychiatric kinds are discrete. We then analyze the disease model – recognized in the medical field as an essentialist model – bringing attention to its limitations and raising objections to its applicability. Finally, we argue that the HPC model offers a good starting point for identifying and classifying psychiatric kinds, and show how it can provide a bridge between the rigidly discrete and rigidly continuous perspectives on kinds, bringing together aspects of both. Keywords: HPC Model; Natural Kinds; Continuous; Discrete; Philosophy of Psychiatry. (shrink)

The fifth scene represented on the Shield of Aeneas describes Porsenna's siege of Rome and the resistance of the Romans, with the two classic exempla of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia :nec non Tarquinium eiectum Porsenna iubebataccipere ingentique urbem obsidione premebat;Aeneadae in ferrum pro libertate ruebant.illum indignanti similem similemque minantiaspiceres, pontem auderet quia uellere Cocles 650et fluuium uinclis innaret Cloelia ruptis.According to Roman mainstream tradition, at the beginning of the Republic, Porsenna, an Etruscan king of Clusium, tried to reinstate the exiled (...) Tarquinius Superbus by besieging Rome, but the heroism of Romans such as Horatius Cocles, C. Mucius Scaevola and Cloelia impressed him so much that he decided to give up the siege and make peace with his enemies. He then sent his army against the Latins and was finally defeated at the battle of Aricia by the joint forces of the Latin League and their allies from Cumae. However, there circulated also less flattering versions of the story: Tacitus hints at the fact that the Romans had in fact surrendered to Porsenna, and Pliny refers to a humiliating treaty imposed on them by the Etruscan king. (shrink)

Clinical Ethics Committees (CECs), as distinct from Research Ethics Committees, were originally established with the aim of supporting healthcare professionals in managing controversial clinical ethical issues. However, it is still unclear whether they manage to accomplish this task and what is their impact on clinical practice. This systematic review aims to collect available assessments of CECs’ performance as reported in literature, in order to evaluate CECs’ effectiveness. We retrieved all literature published up to November 2019 in six databases (PubMed, Ovid (...) MEDLINE, Scopus, Philosopher’s Index, Embase and Web of Science), following PRISMA guidelines. We included only articles specifically addressing CECs and providing any form of CECs performance assessment. Twenty-nine articles were included. Ethics consultation was the most evaluated of CECs’ functions. We did not find standardized tools for measuring CECs’ efficacy, but 33% of studies considered “user satisfaction” as an indicator, with 94% of them reporting an average positive perception of CECs’ impact. Changes in patient treatment and a decrease of moral distress in health personnel were reported as additional outcomes of ethics consultation. The highly diverse ways by which CECs carry out their activities make CECs’ evaluation difficult. The adoption of shared criteria would be desirable to provide a reliable answer to the question about their effectiveness. Nonetheless, in general both users and providers consider CECs as helpful, relevant to their work, able to improve the quality of care. Their main function is ethics consultation, while less attention seems to be devoted to bioethics education and policy formation. (shrink)

Les troubles des conduites alimentaires surviennent le plus souvent à l’adolescence sur un fond d’organisation peu stable d’un moi en devenir, les symptômes focalisant sur l’alimentaire un déplacement de besoins affectifs, difficiles à assumer. Ils se constituent à partir d’une interaction complexe à la fois sur le plan individuel et sur le plan relationnel-familial. L’article présente une étude descriptive du fonctionnement intrapsychique individuel et des vécus familiaux du point de vue du père, de la mère et de la fille (diagnostiquée (...) anorexique), à partir d’entretiens et de l’application du Rorschach. Les données recueillies montrent des liens familiaux marqués par des sentiments d’intrusion et de profonde solitude. Le couple parental a montré peu de soutien mutuel et des difficultés chroniques. Père, mère et fille ont montré une fragilité psychique importante avec un moi peu protégé par une enveloppe solide et/ou souple. Les moments de crise de la vie familiale (les maladies, l’adolescence, le vieillissement) étaient perçus comme des tragédies. (shrink)

Background:Ambulance professionals often address conflicts between ethical values. As individuals’ values represent basic convictions of what is right or good and motivate behaviour, research is needed to understand their value profiles.Objectives:To translate and adapt the Managerial Values Profile to Spanish and Swedish, and measure the presence of utilitarianism, moral rights and/or social justice in ambulance professionals’ value profiles in Spain and Sweden.Methods:The instrument was translated and culturally adapted. A content validity index was calculated. Pilot tests were carried out with 46 (...) participants.Ethical considerations:This study conforms to the ethical principles for research involving human subjects and adheres to national laws and regulations concerning informed consent and confidentiality.Findings:Spanish professionals favoured justice and Swedish professionals’ rights in their ambulance organizations. Both countries favoured utilitarianism least. Gender differences across countries showed that males favoured rights. Spanish female professionals favoured justice most strongly of all.Discussion:Swedes favour rights while Spaniards favour justice. Both contexts scored low on utilitarianism focusing on total population effect, preferring the opposite, individualized approach of the rights and justice perspectives. Organizational investment in a utilitarian perspective might jeopardize ambulance professionals’ moral right to make individual assessments based on the needs of the patient at hand. Utilitarianism and a caring ethos appear as stark opposites. However, a caring ethos in its turn might well involve unreasonable demands on the individual carer’s professional role. Since both the justice and rights perspectives portrayed in the survey mainly concern relationship to the organization and peers within the organization, this relationship might at worst be given priority over the equal treatment and moral rights of the patient.Conclusion:A balanced view on ethical perspectives is needed to make professionals observant and ready to act optimally – especially if these perspectives are used in patient care. Research is needed to clarify how justice and rights are prioritized by ambulance services and whether or not these organization-related values are also implemented in patient care. (shrink)

Desigualdade, pobreza e diferença: precariedade na vida escolar Resumo: O presente artigo tem como objetivo analisar a desigualdade, a pobreza e as diferenciações inferiorizadoras – discriminações e segregações – e seus efeitos de precarização sobre a vida escolar: reprovação e abandono escolar. O centro crítico da análise encontra-se na circularidade viciosa pela qual, num sentido, a desigualdade e a pobreza determinam diferenciações inferiorizadoras que resultam em fracasso escolar e, no sentido inverso, o fracasso escolar resulta em mais pobreza e mais (...) desigualdade. Tal processo selaria a impossibilidade de cumprimento do direito universal à educação, inscrito como promessa nos ideais da democracia liberal. O estudo pode ser caracterizado como bibliográfico, embasado em autores do campo da economia, sociologia, direito e filosofia, com especial apoio em documentos da ONU, UNESCO, OCDE e Constituição Federal brasileira. Os resultados do estudo apontam para as graves responsabilidades das políticas públicas, dos sistemas de ensino e dos projetos pedagógicos das unidades escolares em interromper a circularidade dessa precarização. Palavras-chave: Desigualdade. Pobreza. Diferença. Precariedade. Fracasso escolar. Desigualdad, Pobreza y Diferencia: Precariedad en la Vida Escolar Resumen: El artículo analiza la desigualdad, la pobreza y las diferenciaciones inferiorizadoras - discriminaciones y segregaciones - y sus efectos de precarización sobre la vida escolar: reprobación y abandono escolar. El centro crítico del análisis se ubica en la circularidad viciosa por la cual, en un sentido, la desigualdad y la pobreza determinan diferenciaciones inferiorizadoras que resultan en fracaso escolar y, al inverso, el fracaso escolar resulta en más pobreza y más desigualdad. Esa circularidad sellaria la imposibilidad de cumplimiento del derecho universal a la educación - promesa de la democracia liberal. El estudio es bibliográfico, desde autores en la economía, sociología, derecho y filosofía, con especial apoyo en documentos de la ONU, UNESCO, OCDE y la Constitución Federal brasileña. Se apunta a las graves responsabilidades de las políticas públicas, de los sistemas de enseñanza y de los proyectos pedagógicos de las unidades escolares en interrumpir la circularidad de esa precarización. Palabras-clave: Desigualdad. Pobreza. Diferencia. Precariedad. Fracaso escolar. Inequality, Poverty and Difference: Precariousness in School Life: This article aims to analyze inequality, poverty and specific social differences - discrimination and segregation - and their impacts on precariousness of school life: failure and school dropout. The center of analysis lies in the vicious circularity by which, in a direction, inequality and poverty determine the differentiation of people that result in school failure, and on the way round, school failure results in more poverty and more inequality. Such circularity is an impossibility of compliance with the universal right of education - a promise of liberal democracy. It’s about a bibliographic study of a wide range of authors on economics, sociology, law and philosophy, with references to UN, UNESCO, OECD documents and the brazilian Federal Constitution. The results of the study point out to the responsibilities of public policies, educational systems and the pedagogical projects of the school units, to interrupt the circularity of this precariousness. Keywords: Inequality. Poverty. Precariousness. Difference. School Failure. Data de registro:08/07/2019 Data de aceite: 27/05/2020. (shrink)

: How do people make decisions? Previous psychological research consistently shed light on the fact that decisions are not the result of a pure rational reasoning, and that emotions can assume a crucial role. This is particularly true in the case of moral decision-making, which requires a complex integration of affective and cognitive processes. One question that is still open to debate concern the individual factors that can affect moral decisions. Gender has been consistently identified as a possible variable of (...) interest for the adoption of different strategic behaviors, with men using more rational processes and women more deontological principles. In the present study we aimed at exploring the presence of gender differences in different decision-making scenarios. Results showed that the moral scenario led to a similar acceptance rate in both genders, while economic and shopping offers were more likely to be accepted by men. Also, women were more inclined to refuse unfair offers, which included a higher personal benefit at the expense of the opponent, even if this meant a total loss for both parties. Finally, correlational analyses revealed a different relation between risk propensity and decision-making in men and women in different scenarios. Keywords: Decision-making; Utilitarianism; Altruism; Moral Decision-making; Economic Decision-making Decisioni morali, economiche e d’acquisto a confronto. Effetti di genere e utilitarismo Riassunto: Come prendiamo le decisioni? La letteratura psicologica disponibile ha chiarito in ampia misura come le decisioni non siano il risultato di un ragionamento puramente razionale e che le emozioni possono assumere un ruolo cruciale. Questo è particolarmente vero nel caso delle decisioni morali, che richiedono una complessa integrazione tra processi affettivi e cognitivi. Una questione ancora aperta riguarda i fattori individuali che possono incidere sulle decisioni morali. Il genere è stato identificato come una possibile variabile da considerare rispetto all’adozione di comportamenti strategici differenti, in cui gli uomini sembrano più inclini a far uso di processi razionali e le donne a considerare principi deontologici. In questo lavoro abbiamo provato a esplorare la presenza di differenze di genere in diversi contesti decisionali. I risultati hanno mostrano come in ambito morale entrambi i generi siano portati ad accettare opzioni simili, mentre offerte economiche e commerciali sono accettate in misura maggiore dagli uomini. Le donne sarebbero più inclini a rifiutare offerte inique che comprendono benefici personali maggiori a discapito di una controparte, anche se questo implica una perdita totale da ambo le parti. Infine, le analisi correlazionali hanno mostrato una diversa relazione tra propensione al rischio e processi decisionali tra uomini e donne in contesti diversi. Parole chiave: Processi decisionali; Utilitarismo; Altruismo; Processi decisionali morali; Processi decisionali economici. (shrink)

Siempre se ha reconocido en Pirrón de Élide el inicio puntual del escepticismo griego. Sabemos ya hoy que esta información, sesgada, proviene más de la necesidad de Enesidemo de refundar el movimiento, que de la realidad filosófica. En este artículo demostramos que Pirrón, ni tuvo consciencia de ser un escéptico, ni, en rigor, inició ninguna nueva corriente. Su deslizamiento, y posterior reconocimiento, hacia el escepticismo, debe más bien encuadrarse en el natural desarrollo de la filosofía abderita, a través de Metrodoro (...) de Quíos, discípulo de Demócrito, Anaxarco maestro de Pirrón y Nausífanes su discípulo. Y todo debido al afán aventurero del personaje de Élide al enrolarse en el séquito de Alejandro Magno. (shrink)