Ethical problems regularly arise during daily care in nursing homes. These include violation of patients' right to autonomy and to be treated with respect. The aim of this study was to investigate how caregivers emphasize daily dialogue and mutual reflection to reach moral alternatives in daily care. The data were collected by participant observation and interviews with seven caregivers in a Norwegian nursing home. A number of ethical problems linked to 10 patients were disclosed. Moral problems were revealed as the (...) caregivers acted in ways that they knew were against patients' interest. We used a theoretical interpretation according to Habermas' discourse ethics on the importance of dialogue when deciding moral courses of action for patients. This theory has four basic requirements: communicative competence, equality, self-determination, and openness about motives. (shrink)

Proponents of the reasoning view analyze normative reasons as premises of good reasoning and explain the normativity of reasons by appeal to their role as premises of good reasoning. The aim of this paper is to cast doubt on the reasoning view by providing counterexamples to the proposed analysis of reasons, counterexamples in which premises of good reasoning towards φ‐ing are not reasons to φ.

This paper presents a counterexample to the principle that all epistemic reasons for doxastic attitudes towards p are provided by evidence concerning p. I begin by motivating and clarifying the principle and the associated picture of epistemic reasons, including the notion of evidence concerning a proposition, which comprises both first- and second-order evidence. I then introduce the counterexample from incoherent doxastic attitudes by presenting three example cases. In each case, the fact that the subject’s doxastic attitudes are incoherent is an (...) epistemic reason to suspend, which is not provided by evidence. I argue that this incoherence fact is a reason for the subject to take a step back and reassess her evidence for her conflicting attitudes, and thus a reason to suspend all of them. Suspending judgment enables the subject to revise attitudes where appropriate and thus (typically) to arrive at a set of coherent and well-supported attitudes. I then address a dilemma for my proposal and, in conclusion, briefly suggest a picture of epistemic reasons on which they are to be understood against the background of the subject’s virtuous intellectual conduct. (shrink)

In 2009, Tennie et al. proposed the theory of the Zone of Latent Solutions, defined as the range of behaviors an individual of a species can invent independently, i.e., which it can acquire without any form of social learning. By definition, species limited to their ZLS are unable to innovate and/or transmit behavioral traits outside their ZLS, i.e., they lack traits which go beyond the level of the individual—traits resulting from a gradual cultural evolution over successive transmission events [“cumulative culture”, (...) Boyd and Richerson ]. However, this does not exclude an influence of social learning on the population frequency of these behaviors: social learning can facilitate the acquisition of latent solutions and thus speed up and consolidate their spread within a population. Cultures—defined as behaviors at least influenced by social learning—are therefore still possible. Here, we elaborate on the ZLS account and relate it to the theories of Vygotsky who studied the role of social learning in human culture. We argue that the ZLS is a missing phylogenetic “baseline” of Vygotsky’s Zone of Actual Development. Vygotsky’s neglect of a need for a human “baseline ZAD” may have been due to his interpretation of Köhler’s work on great ape behaviors: Köhler used his observations on individual chimpanzees to draw conclusions about the chimpanzee species as a whole, stating that chimpanzees can only copy what they could have invented themselves, thus coming close to the ZLS concept. Vygotsky—studying the range of behaviors individuals could achieve independently—seemingly did not see that Köhler was suggesting a species “baseline”, upon which Vygotsky’s idea of an individual’s ZAD could develop. As a result, Vygotsky also did not see the need for a ZLS for his own study subjects: humans. Yet, there is no reason to assume that humans lack a ZLS, and in fact we present evidence for a human ZLS for tool-use behaviors. (shrink)

Ludwik Fleck is remembered for his monograph published in German in 1935. Reissued in 1979 as Genesis and development of a scientific fact Fleck’s monograph has been claimed to expound relativistic views of science. Fleck has also been portrayed as a prominent scientist. The description of his production of a vaccine against typhus during World War II, when imprisoned in Buchenwald, is legendary in the scholarly literature. The claims about Fleck’s scientific achievements have been justified by referring to his numerous (...) publications in international scientific journals. Though frequently mentioned, these publications have scarcely been studied. The present article discusses differences in interpretation and evaluation of science in relation to the background of the interpreters. For this purpose Fleck’s scientific publications have been scrutinized. In conjunction with further sources reflecting the desperate situation at the time in question, the results of the study account for a more restrained picture of Fleck’s scientific accomplishments. Furthermore, based on the review of the latter, certain demands characterizing good science could be articulated. The restricted possibilities of those not trained in science or not possessing field specific knowledge, evaluating science are discussed, as are also formal aspects of scientific papers and questions related to research ethics. (shrink)

Through a series of essays contributed by clinicians, medical historians, and prominent moral philosophers, Cognitive Disability and Its Challenge to Moral ...

I present an explanatory argument for the reasons-first view: It is superior to knowledge-first views in particular in that it can both explain the specific epistemic role of perception and account for the shape and extent of epistemic justification.

Die COVID-19 Pandemie stellt eine beträchtliche Herausforderung für die Kapazität und Funktionalität der Intensivversorgung dar. Dies betrifft nicht nur Ressourcen, sondern vor allem auch die körperlichen und psychischen Grenzen von Pflegefachpersonen. Der Frage, wie sich Fürsorge und Selbstsorge von Pflegefachpersonen auf Intensivstationen im Rahmen der COVID-19 Pandemie zueinander verhalten, wurde bislang im öffentlichen und wissenschaftlichen Diskurs keine Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Der vorliegende Beitrag reflektiert dieses Verhältnis mit Hilfe des Ethikkodex des International Council of Nurses, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Prinzipienethik und der (...) Care-Ethik nach Joan Tronto und zeigt einen Korridor ethisch vertretbarer Pflege auf.Die Arbeit leistet damit einen wichtigen Beitrag zu einer differenzierten ethischen Betrachtung der Rechte und Verantwortlichkeiten von Pflegefachpersonen als moralischen Akteuren innerhalb des Pandemiegeschehens in Deutschland. Damit schafft er eine erste Voraussetzung für einen breiten gesellschaftlichen und politischen Diskurs, der über die Pandemie hinaus dringend notwendig ist, um die Situation der Pflegefachpersonen und der Gepflegten nachhaltig zu verbessern. (shrink)

Contemporary industrialized societies have been confronted with the fact and consequences of women's increased participation in paid employment. Whether this increase has resulted from women's desire for equality or from changing economic circumstances, women and men have been faced with a crisis in the organization of work that concerns dependents, that is, those unable to care for themselves. This is labor that has been largely unpaid, often unrecognized, and yet is indispensable to human society.

The glaring lack of formal and informal caregivers in Germany has not only become apparent in hospitals and nursing homes but also in home care arrangements. One tension is particularly pertinent in such arrangements: a ‘family-oriented’ logic of the long-term care insurance and the individual wishes of those in need of care meet the actual possibilities of family carers. This care gap has been compensated for by 24-hour care workers, so-called ‘live-ins’, from Eastern Europe for some years. This contribution maps (...) the ‘live-ins’ situation comprehensively from an ethical perspective. Based on different constellations regarding the ‘live-ins’ status as a professional nurse or non-professional caregiver, which ethical principles and moral norms are affected by whom and potentially conflict with each other in such home care arrangements at a micro and meso level of care are outlined. Special attention is paid to the tension between self-care and care for others, and to questions of the shared responsibility in and social responsibility of those external services that are involved in home care in addition to the ‘live-in’. In order to uncover, understand and influence the current ethical problems, an ethical framework that considers both the divergent interests of all individuals involved in the home care arrangement and their mutual dependency and vulnerability is needed. (shrink)

I explore the ethics of altering the body of a child with severe cognitive disabilities in such a way that keeps the child “forever small.” The parents of Ashley, a girl of six with severe cognitive and developmental disabilities, in collaboration with her physicians and the Hospital Ethics Committee, chose to administer growth hormones that would inhibit her growth. They also decided to remove her uterus and breast buds, assuring that she would not go through the discomfort of menstruation and (...) would not grow breasts. In this way she would stay “forever small” and be able to be carried and handled by family members. They claimed that doing this would ensure that she would be able to be part of the family and of family activities and to have familial care. But the procedure has raised thorny ethical questions. I wish to explore these questions philosophically by bringing to bear my own experiences as a mother of a grown daughter with severe cognitive impairments. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Any scholar undertaking to add yet another book title to the already virtually uncontrollable bibliography on Plato needs justification. ...

In 1948 Ludwik Fleck published a paper in Polish discussing the use of humans in medical experiments, thereby addressing his peers. Though the paper has so far not been translated or studied, it has been taken to indicate Fleck’s deep commitment to ethical questions, notably the question of informed consent. In being written by a former victim of the Nazi policy and a survivor of the Holocaust also acting as an expert witness in the trial of the IG Farben in (...) Nuremberg, the paper is of interest. A scrutiny of Fleck’s text and related sources discloses, however, not only the complexity of the issue at the centre of the Nuremberg trial, but also Fleck’s unexpected stance in seemingly adducing his arguments from both the German defendants and the prosecution, heavily informed by US scientists. Further, the contentious discussion of the past in Fleck’s paper reveals its links to modern bioethical discussion. Though sometimes oblivious of that past, it still faces the same questions. (shrink)

Current debates about reasons and reasoning often draw comparisons between epistemic and practical reasons and reasoning and presuppose substantial unity between the practical and epistemic domains. This stance seems to conflict with a stark Humean contrast between the two domains: With respect to practical reasons and reasoning, Hume highlights the role of impressions, especially the passions, in motivating and rationalizing action, while apparently downplaying the potential relevance of beliefs, reason, or reasons. With respect to epistemic reasons and theoretical reasoning, he (...) urges us to proportion our belief to the evidence (EHU 10.4), which suggests a significant epistemic role for evidential reasons. My contribution ar-gues that there is nonetheless a convincing and interesting unified Humean account of reasons and reasoning across both domains. To present my case, I first narrow down the unity claim that I am interested in. I then closely engage with Hume’s claims in epistemology, the philos-ophy of action, and metaethics to develop the unified Humean account. (shrink)

The third part, Cognition, concerns abstract questions about knowledge and truth as well as more concrete questions about the usefulness and tractability of various graphic representations of information. The book would be of special interest to Research Institutes in Computer Science, Researchers in Philosophical Logic, Deontic Logic, Applied Logic, Artificial Intelligence, and Cognitive Science.

Menschen erfahren und interpretieren die Welt hochst unterschiedlich - die Konzeption von Weltbildern unterliegt vielfaltigen kulturellen und religiosen Pragungen und Einflussen. Dabei kommt der Kunst seit jeher eine wichtige Funktion zu, denn sie verleiht dem jeweiligen Wirklichkeitsverstandnis Ausdruck und vermag es immer wieder neu zu konstituieren. Kunst und Religion uberschreiten mit ihrem Wirklichkeitsverstandnis das bloss Gegebene und Machbare, die Alltagsvorstellung und das Handeln in ihr. Sie fragen daruber hinaus, geben Antworten oder hinterfragen sie, stiften Bedeutung oder Sinnhaftigkeit. Solche Konstituierungen von (...) Wirklichkeit nachvollziehbar zu machen, sie nicht nur vorzustellen, sondern die Leser in lebendige Prozesse hineinzufuhren, ist die Intention dieses interdisziplinaren Dialogs. (shrink)

This book opens a new dialogue for philosophical treatments of humor and comedy. It traces their history from the Dionysian Performance Tradition and brings a fresh perspective to the issue as it recasts standard interpretations of the Aristotelian theory in broader terms that offer new grounds for distinguishing humor', comedy' and mirth'.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Full Collection of Personal NarrativesZohar Lederman, Ola Ziara, Rachel Coghlan, Oksana Sulaieva, Anna Shcherbakova, Oleksandr Dudin, Vladyslava Kachkovska, Iryna Dudchenko, Anna Kovchun, Lyudmyla Prystupa, Yuliya Nogovitsyna, Ghaiath Hussein, Kathryn Fausch, P. P. Kyaw, Ayesha Ahmad, Richard W Sams II, Handreen Mohammed Saeed, Artem Riga, Ryan C. Maves, Elizabeth Dotsenko, Irina Deyneka, Eva V. Regel, and Vita Voloshchuk• An Unsettling Affair• How We Keep Caring While Walking Through Our Pain• (...) Adjusting Laboratory Practices to the Challenges of Wartime• Why We Stay• A Semi-Personal Story from a Ukrainian NGO Professional (or a Semi-Professional Story from a Ukrainian Person) Living through the War• When Ethics Survives Where People Do Not: A Story From Darfur• Burma’s Healthcare Under Fire: My Experience as an Exiled Medical Professional• When a Conflict Collapses on a Child: An (Aborted) Medical Evacuation of a Hazara Toddler During the Kabul Airport Blast and the Taliban Takeover• The Vagaries and Vicissitudes of War• Providing Care to a Potential Aggressor: An Ethical Dilemma• One Surgeon’s Experience During Armed Conflict in Ukraine• The Limits of Our Obligations• A Liberating Breath• Soldiers of the Invisible Front: How Ukrainian Therapists Are Fighting for the Mental Health of the Nation Under Fire• Stories of Families with Chronically Ill Pediatric Patients during the War in UkraineCopyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

We develop a notion of cell decomposition suitable for studying weak p-adic structures definable). As an example, we consider a structure with restricted addition.

As the mother of a daughter who has and will always require care to meet her most basic needs, I have seen firsthand how critical it is to have adequate means by which to meet those needs—for her sake, mine, and my family’s. Her flourishing life has contributed to enhancing not only our own, but those of all who care for her and who enter our lives. I have wanted to see us do better by all the families who struggle (...) and have to scratch and claw their way to access services and resources their children need. I have tried in my past writings to articulate the need and the reason why we as a society, as a community, are neither just nor caring as long as we leave their needs unmet. At the same time, I have watched as .. (shrink)

With its provocative title, Blumenthal-Barby’s (2024) Target Article is an important addition to the critical work on using ‘personhood’ in bioethics. I suggest it bears on any philosophical discus...

The paper deals with the position of a scholar in the society, as articulated in the philosophy of J. G. Fichte. It also offers a brief outline of the philosophies of education of the 18th and 19th centuries and their differences. It shows different interpretations of the concept of Bildung in German philosophy, which in that time became almost a “fashion”. The spirit of that time is reflected also in the idealist views of J. G. Fichte, especially those concerning education, (...) upbringing and personality development. (shrink)

The paper tries to explain the nature and meaning of education, as well as its role in human life. Education appears to be taken for granted. Nevertheless, we need to understand its nature and ontological background. Thus the paper aims at giving at least a partial answer to the question: What is education?

The Ethics of Dust: Doge's Palace, Venice, is an installation resulting from the experimental preservation of the pollution accumulated on the Doge's Palace of Venice. Traditionally, only the intentional products of human labor, such as art or architecture, have been considered part of our cultural heritage. Pollution is a formless byproduct that was never intentionally shaped; yet it is perhaps our civilization's most significant cultural product. Jorge Otero-Pailos' preservation of pollution expands the notion of world heritage to include our unintentional (...) outputs. Published on the occasion of the presentation of The Ethics of Dust: Doge's Palace, Venice​ at the 53rd International Art Exhibition / Biennale di Venezia, 2009. The Ethics of Dust: Doge's Palace, Venice​ was commissioned and produced by TBA21. The book includes text contributions Daniel Birnbaum, Francesca von Habsburg, Thordis Arrhenius, Daniel A. Barber, Valeria Burgio, Dorota Chudzicka, Lorenzo Fusi, David Gissen, Caroline A. Jones, Jorge Otero-Pailos , Adam Phillips, Raqs Media Collective, Mark Wigley. (shrink)

The word 'bisexuality', unknown to the ancients, is used here in two senses to indicate an individual with male and female sex organs or who copulates with people of both sexes. The phenomenon of bisexuality is then analysed with reference to the Greek myth of Hermaphrodite, a 'bisexual' being, born of a nymph's love for a young man of divine descent: in the guise of a fable, the myth recounts the birth of a 'monster', who raises a question-mark over the (...) fundamental rule of the division between the sexes. As regards behaviour, the paper then shows that in both Greece and Rome bisexual behaviour was the rule for men. The concept of 'homosexuality', in contrast to heterosexuality, was not introduced till the Christian era, and then not without difficulty. Condemnation of the practice as 'against nature' began with the emperor Justinian in the 6th century. (shrink)

In parallel to their monumental installations, which were built in the Western and South- western deserts of the U.S. in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of representatives of American Land Art have also produced works on film. Researchers have held divergent views about the importance of these films for the understanding of the installations and about their character as either independent works or mere documentations. This article takes a different approach and analyses an element common to both (...) installations and films: the critique of conventional constructions of illusionistic space. The repudiation of conventional spatial structures and of the representation of perspective is discussed on the basis of works by Walter De Maria and Robert Smithson. A formal analysis demonstrates that the films go beyond merely showing the conception of space in Land Art installations. Instead, they perform a similar critique of conventional ideas of space with decidedly cinematic techniques. (shrink)

This title is playful, of course. It is designed merely to attract curiosity and attention … It dates back to a childhood game of which I have forgotten both rules and stakes. An imaginary sovereign was roused from his indifference and responded with an approximate repetition of Marie-Antoinette's suggestion that if the people were hungry, food should be thrown to them. I took such caricatures of kings as anti-models, replacing bread with symbols. Now we are all too disturbed, individually and (...) collectively, by the economic discomfort which is a generalized hunger and, in too many parts of the world and - not only in the third world - by actual famines, not to be aware, on a daily basis, of the responsibility it is to cultivate and transmit to others substance which is purely symbolic. Certain statistics, which now form part of our daily life, are capable of discrediting definitively the ivory tower which our universities are accused of representing, or of having represented in the past. In my own country, Canada, one child in five lives in poverty. The economic worth of the poorest forty-eight countries in the world is equal to the combined wealth of the ten richest individuals. There were twenty million refugees in 1997. One billion two hundred million human beings are short of fresh water this year, etc. This type of figure is, sadly, all too familiar. And it is a case of preaching to the converted to assert the extent to which culture, education and all their constituent disciplines are nourishment of a different order to physical food, because intellectual work is genuine work, providing a living for those who work at it professionally, and above all also those who benefit from its immediate and continuing fruits - i.e. ideally, the whole of society, and in all countries. In this respect - and this is implicit, but through depending habitually on what is implicit nothing is ever sufficiently explicit - it is generally acknowledged (thanks to UNESCO in particular) to what extent the development of economic resources is linked with the advancement and communication of knowledge, on a scale which is regional as well as national, within cities, rural communities, families. (shrink)

Every ethic, if it is not to be a feather in the wind, needs an epistemology. As we look at epistemologies from Plato's Theaetetus to Kant's First Critique to contemporary virtue epistemology, the question of knowledge is always tethered to an ethics, sometimes tightly, sometimes loosely. To live a good life and act rightly toward others, we need to know what we need to know to do this well; we need to know how to know that what we are doing (...) is what is good or right; and we need to know how we can know what is good and right. That is, if we wish to know that what we are doing is right, what principles or precepts to follow, we need to reflect on the nature and the possibility of knowledge itself.What Vrinda Dalmiya... (shrink)

In der Öffentlichkeit häufig als Auswanderungsland wahrgenommen, unternahm China in den letzten Jahren verstärkt Bemühungen, qualifizierte Fachkräfte aus dem Ausland für den chinesischen Arbeitsmarkt zu gewinnen. Die Einführung eines Fachkräfteeinwanderungssystem mit abgestuften Rechten für Arbeitsmigrant:innen sollte diese Entwicklung fördern. Die vorliegende Analyse zeigt, dass diese Reform des Einwanderungssystems die Gerichtspraxis nicht verändert hat. Abseits der politischen Diskurse um die Anwerbung von internationalen Talenten und der Propagierung Chinas als Wissenssupermacht, bleibt China aufgrund der existierenden Probleme im bestehenden Rechtssystems für Arbeitsmigrant:innen unattraktiv.

Dependency is a keyword in disability studies. The article reviews the negative force of the term and why disability researchers and activists have made the case for the independence of disabled people. But dependency, I claim, is a feature of any human life and I argue that disability studies needs to neutralize the term and appropriate dependency as that which binds people, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. I argue that we can acknowledge dependency and work toward an ideal of (...) "managed dependency.". (shrink)

Proč by se měl filozof vědy zajímat o počítačové simulace? Autorka ve své práci argumentuje tezi, podle níž je počítačová simulace nejen samozřejmou součástí vědeckých metod, ale navíc má potenciál rozvíjet na poli filozofie vědy zcela nové metodologické koncepty a kategorie. Na příkladu tzv. numerického experimentu, který představuje jednu z nejčastějších podob počítačových simulací ve vědě, je ukázán jejich nejasný metodologický status. Na jedné straně lze u simulací (konkrétně numerického experimentování) sledovat vlastnosti, které jsou typické pro teoretický přístup ve vědě, (...) na druhé straně však rovněž vystupují v roli velmi blízké empirické evidenci, čímž se naopak blíží experimentu. V textu autorka představuje zejména Humphreysovu interpretaci počítačové simulace jako hybridní kategorie, která vzbuzuje diskuzi nad založením zcela nové, simulace lépe postihující teorie vědy. (shrink)

The article discusses two historical events taken from texts from the Holy Scripture – the Old and the New Testaments, and a spiritual view on human soul, as found in the Holy tradition of the Orthodox church: they support the thesis that, according to the method of allegorical interpretation, the three evidences point to three inner stages through which human soul passes in its transition to a holistic spiritual development: from the act of the Holy Baptism to the entry into (...) the Kingdom of God. (shrink)

Proč by se měl filozof vědy zajímat o počítačové simulace? Autorka ve své práci argumentuje tezi, podle níž je počítačová simulace nejen samozřejmou součástí vědeckých metod, ale navíc má potenciál rozvíjet na poli filozofie vědy zcela nové metodologické koncepty a kategorie. Na příkladu tzv. numerického experimentu, který představuje jednu z nejčastějších podob počítačových simulací ve vědě, je ukázán jejich nejasný metodologický status. Na jedné straně lze u simulací (konkrétně numerického experimentování) sledovat vlastnosti, které jsou typické pro teoretický přístup ve vědě, (...) na druhé straně však rovněž vystupují v roli velmi blízké empirické evidenci, čímž se naopak blíží experimentu. V textu autorka představuje zejména Humphreysovu interpretaci počítačové simulace jako hybridní kategorie, která vzbuzuje diskuzi nad založením zcela nové, simulace lépe postihující teorie vědy. (shrink)