Originally published in 1923, this title is a critical examination of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. A contemporary of Freud, the author sets out to evaluate his theories in a scientific manner, searching for evidence. The result is a rather scathing review of where this is lacking.

Floods generate both risks and benefits. In Langhorne Creek, South Australia, a historically-embedded system of shared floodwater management exists among farmers, who rely on semi-regular flood inundations as part of the region’s hydrosocial terroir – a dynamic conjunction of water, landscape, social relations and agricultural practice. Unruly floods coexist with a heavily regulated and precisely measured system of modern water management for viticultural irrigation across the region. Since the mid-twentieth century, groundwater extraction and new pipeline schemes have linked Langhorne Creek (...) to the Murray Darling Basin water management system, which has displaced flooding as the primary source of irrigation water. The associated modernist shift towards the rationalization of water as a measurable resource has acted to sideline flood irrigation. Yet, floods maintain important viticultural, ecological and social roles in Langhorne Creek, adding to the flexibility and resilience of the region in response to water management challenges. The system involves technological and infrastructural components, such as flood gates and channels, but also relies upon the cooperation and coordination of community members. Local vignerons suggest that flood irrigation is environmentally as well as economically beneficial, rejuvenating riparian wetlands along watercourses. A more formal acknowledgement of the specific regional experiences of water management in a wine region like Langhorne Creek helps to fill a gap between emplaced and hydrosocial understandings of flood irrigation and broader assumptions about flooding as wasteful and inefficient. (shrink)

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic, bioethical analyses often emphasized population health and societal benefit. Hospital policies frequently focused on reducing risk of transmitting SARS‐CoV‐2 by restricting visitors; requiring protective equipment; and screening staff, patients and visitors. While restrictions can be burdensome, they are often justified as essential measures to protect the whole population against a virus with high rates of transmission, morbidity and mortality. Yet communities are not monolithic, and the impacts of these restrictions affect different groups differently. (...) An ophthalmological unit outreach program in Ethiopia serves to illustrate. Pre‐operative screening policies were designed to protect as many patients as possible but had adverse impacts on underserved communities. As this case study demonstrates, creating hospital policies that truly serve the good of the society may require a more holistic review of impacts on inequitably positioned communities. (shrink)

Chronological explanation of physics from early history through current studies geared to lay readers with limited mathematical training.

Fertility clinicians participate in non-sexual reproductive projects by providing assisted reproductive technology (ART) to those hoping to reproduce, in support of their reproductive goals. In most countries where ART is available, the state regulates ART as a form of medical treatment. The predominant position in the reproductive rights literature frames the clinician’s role as medical technician, and the state as a third party with limited rights to interfere. These roles broadly align with established functions of clinician and state in Western (...) liberal democracies, where doctors have duties to provide safe, beneficial and legal healthcare to all who seek it. Recognised state responsibilities include safeguarding equitable access to medical services and protecting and promoting reproductive liberty.I argue against this normative moral framing of clinician and state involvement in non-sexual reproduction, suggesting that clinician and state join the non-sexual reproductive project at the point of triggering conception. Begetting a child is more than just the provision and regulation of healthcare; it generates rights and confers responsibilities on all who join this morally significant project. All who collaborate have the right to join or refuse to join the project. I suggest this is intuitively understood in the sexual realm, but not in the non-sexual realm. My key substantive claim is that non-sexual reproduction is a pluralist pursuit that morally implicates more than the genetic and gestational contributors. I find that while the moral basis of a clinician or the state’s right to refuse to join the ART project is the same as for those providing gestational or genetic input, the reasons that morally underpin their refusal differs. (shrink)

The predominant position in the reproductive rights literature argues that access to assisted reproductive technologies (ART) forms part of an individual’s right to reproduce. On this reasoning, refusal of treatment by clinicians (via provision) violates a hopeful parent’s reproductive right and discriminates against the infertile. I reject these views and suggest they wrongly contort what reproductive freedom entitles individuals to do and demand of others. I suggest these views find their origin, at least in part, in the way we define (...) “reproduction” itself. This paper critically analyses two widely accepted definitions of human reproduction and demonstrates that both are fundamentally flawed. While the process of reproduction includes the biological acts of begetting and bearing a child, I argue that it does not extend to include rearing. This reworked definition has little impact in the realm of sexual reproduction. However, it has significant ethical implications for the formulation and assignment of reproductive rights and responsibilities in the non-sexual realm in two important ways. First, a claim to access ART where one has an intention to rear a child (but does not beget or bear) cannot be grounded in reproductive rights. Second, lacking an intention to rear does not extinguish the reproductive rights and responsibilities for those who collaborate in the process. I conclude that clinicians collaborate in non-sexual reproduction at the point of triggering conception (begetting) and therefore have the right to refuse to be involved in non-sexual reproduction, in some instances, as do all reproductive collaborators. (shrink)

This essay considers the ancient antecedents to the “new field” of the ethics of philanthropy, arguing that key questions such as “to whom should we give our money?” have already been explored by ancient authors and that the answers they give to these questions can be quite different to the answers given by contemporary scholars. By analysing the treatment of giving in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Cicero’s De Officiis, and Seneca’s De Beneficiis, I argue that the focus of ancient thinkers upon (...) giving within one’s own community can be viewed as a possible response to a number of issues that have been raised by modern scholars, including the “problem of acting at a distance” and the “problem of accountability.” Moreover, these ancient thinkers have additional, positive reasons for thinking that philanthropy should take place within one’s own community, based upon their ideas of man’s natural duty to his political community, and the social benefits that can be derived from local philanthropy. The integration of ancient perspectives, then, into these modern debates, can serve to complement and broaden research in this emerging field. (shrink)

This paper examines how young peoples’ lived experiences with personal technologies can be used to teach engineering ethics in a way which facilitates greater engagement with the subject. Engineering ethics can be challenging to teach: as a form of practical ethics, it is framed around future workplace experience in a professional setting which students are assumed to have no prior experience of. Yet the current generations of engineering students, who have been described as ‘digital natives’, do however have immersive personal (...) experience with digital technologies; and experiential learning theory describes how students learn ethics more successfully when they can draw on personal experience which give context and meaning to abstract theories. This paper reviews current teaching practices in engineering ethics; and examines young people’s engagement with technologies including cell phones, social networking sites, digital music and computer games to identify social and ethical elements of these practices which have relevance for the engineering ethics curricula. From this analysis three case studies are developed to illustrate how facets of the use of these technologies can be drawn on to teach topics including group work and communication; risk and safety; and engineering as social experimentation. Means for bridging personal experience and professional ethics when teaching these cases are discussed. The paper contributes to research and curriculum development in engineering ethics education, and to wider education research about methods of teaching ‘the net generation’. (shrink)

Caregivers should usually accede to parents’ requests for life-sustaining treatment. For such decision-making, the best interests standard is too limited. John Arras’s “relational potential standard,” con-joined to a contemporary care ethics framework, provides a better guide.

Empathy is sometimes so hard to achieve that one may wonder if it is a virtue for caregivers at all. Perhaps a caregiver cannot always know how a patient feels, and perhaps that knowledge is sometimes too painful to possess. A nuanced understanding of what empathy entails and of the conditions for attaining it can help ground its possibility.

Suffering is a ubiquitous yet elusive concept in health care. In a field devoted to the pursuit of objective data, suffering is a phenomenon with deep ties to subjective experience, moral values, and cultural norms. Suffering’s tie to subjective experience makes it challenging to discern and respond to the suffering of others. In particular, the question of whether a child with profound neurocognitive disabilities can suffer has generated a robust discourse, rooted in philosophical conceptualizations of personhood as well as the (...) academic and experiential expertise of practiced health-care professionals. The issue remains unresolved because it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to ever truly know an infant’s lived experience. But what if this is not the best question? What if instead of asking “can this infant suffer?” the discourse is broadened to ask “is there suffering here?” This latter question demands attention to patients’ subjective experiences of suffering, but also to the web of relationships that envelop them. Without losing sight of the importance of patients’ experiences, consideration of their relationships may elucidate the presence of suffering when the patients themselves are unable to provide the same clarity. In this essay, care ethics frames an examination of how suffering manifests in the loving and caring relationships that surround an infant with profound neurocognitive disabilities, changing those relationships and affecting the individuals within them. Exploring suffering through these relationships may offer clarity on the presence and content of suffering for infants with profound cognitive disabilities, in turn offering moral guidance for responding to suffering and supporting flourishing in this context. (shrink)

Wittgenstein explores learning through practice in the Philosophical Investigations by means of an extended analogy with games. However, does this concern with learning also necessarily extend to education, in our institutional understanding of the word? While Wittgenstein's examples of language learning and use are always shared or social, he does not discuss formal educational institutions as such. He does not wish to found a ‘school of thought’, and is suspicious of philosophy acting as a theory that can be applied to (...) other areas of life. While Wittgenstein's focus on developing independent thinking was neither individualistic nor anti-institutional, it did, however, focus on developing the thinking of his students rather than theorising about how this could be applied on a large scale. An analysis of Hermann Hesse's novel, The Glass Bead Game will help us to pick up where Wittgenstein deliberately left off—thinking about how (or if) one can institutionalise learning methods that encourage thinking for oneself. These differences in the writers’ treatment of education will become evident in the differences between their game analogies. While language-games combat our ‘craving for generality’ in Philosophical Investigations, the Glass Bead Game represents this craving, and how it manifests itself throughout history in disciplines other than logic and philosophy of language. It also represents the potential for institutions to become insular, exclusive communities. (shrink)

Nathaniel Hone’s three portraits of Sir John Fielding establish a public image for the magistrate and a visual language for representing his blindness. Fielding is represented in 1757 as a family man, in 1762 as a sociable member of the Republic of Letters, and finally in 1773 as the embodiment of Justice. The movement across the portraits from empiricism to allegory not only conveys his increasing social status and celebrity, but also the mingling of philosophical and poetic ideas about blindness (...) in Enlightenment thinking. This paper argues that Hone’s construction of Fielding’s vision impairment in the latter two portraits reflects changing attitudes to blindness resulting from Lockean sensationalism and the widespread success of cataract operations. The more academically ambitious final portrait, however, also draws on iconographic tropes of blind justice, casting Fielding in allegorical guise that confers upon him heightened powers of reason and impartiality. For Hone, Fielding’s blindness is a crucial part of his status and identity, but it also provides opportunities to push portraiture beyond its association with the imitation of the visible and into the realm of invention. (shrink)

BackgroundThe phenomenon of ‘moral distress’ has continued to be a popular topic for nursing research. However, much of the scholarship has lacked conceptual clarity, and there is debate about what it means to experience moral distress. Moral distress remains an obscure concept to many clinical nurses, especially those outside of North America, and there is a lack of empirical research regarding its impact on nurses in the United Kingdom and its relevance to clinical practice.Research aimTo explore the concept of moral (...) distress in nursing both empirically and conceptually.MethodologyFeminist interpretive phenomenology was used to explore and analyse the experiences of critical care nurses at two acute care trauma hospitals in the United Kingdom. Empirical data were analysed using Van Manen’s six steps for data analysis.Ethical considerationsThe study was approved locally by the university ethics review committee and nationally by the Health Research Authority in the United Kingdom.FindingsThe empirical findings suggest that psychological distress can occur in response to a variety of moral events. The moral events identified as causing psychological distress in the participants’ narratives were moral tension, moral uncertainty, moral constraint, moral conflict and moral dilemmas.DiscussionWe suggest a new definition of moral distress which captures this broader range of moral events as legitimate causes of distress. We also suggest that moral distress can be sub-categroised according to the source of distress, for example, ‘moral-uncertainty distress’. We argue that this could aid in the development of interventions which attempt to address and mitigate moral distress.ConclusionThe empirical findings support the notion that narrow conceptions of moral distress fail to capture the real-life experiences of this group of critical care nurses. If these experiences resonate with other nurses and healthcare professionals, then it is likely that the definition needs to be broadened to recognise these experiences as ‘moral distress’. (shrink)

There has been increasing debate in recent years about the conceptualization of moral distress. Broadly speaking, two groups of scholars have emerged: those who agree with Jameton’s ‘narrow definition’ that focuses on constraint and those who argue that Jameton’s definition is insufficient and needs to be broadened. Using feminist empirical bioethics, we interviewed critical care nurses in the United Kingdom about their experiences and conceptualizations of moral distress. We provide our broader definition of moral distress and examples of data that (...) both challenge and support our conceptualization. We pre‐empt and overcome three key challenges that could be levelled at our account and argue that there are good reasons to adopt our broader definition of moral distress when exploring prevalence of, and management strategies for, moral distress. (shrink)

Hildegard of Bingen’s mystical and cognitive experience uniquely combines the visual and auditory dimensions of the knowledge, in her own account, revealed to her by divine wisdom. According to Hildegard, the hidden meaning of her visions was communicated to her by a voice from the sky; thus the auditio allows her to understand the uisio, while the uisio allows her to remember the message of the auditio. Moreover, as we shall see, the Rhenish magistra apparently finds pleasure in the knowledge (...) of the natural world, an intellectual pleasure about which she does not speak directly but which is clearly shown in her works. In this paper, on the basis of Hildegard’s definition of scientia, I will try to determine what she understands by ‘knowledge’ and use her notion of praescientia Dei as a measure for the analysis of the distinct visions of the universe set out in two of her works, the Sciuias and the Liber diuinorum operum. There we can see that, despite the divine inspiration to which she attributes her wo... (shrink)

The German poet Barbara Köhler's 2007 poem-cycle Niemands Frau [Nobody's Wife] is more than a feminist response to Homer's Odyssey. In shifting the focus from the escapades of the hero Odysseus to the web of women characters that populates Homer's epic poem – Nausicaa, Circe, the Sirens, Helen, Ino Leucothea, the shades of the dead women whom Odysseus meets in Hades, and “Nobody’s wife” Penelope – Köhler also undertakes a grammatical shift: from the masculine singular pronoun “er” to the polyvalent (...) pronoun “sie” that denotes the feminine singular, the gender-unmarked plural and the formal “you.” “Sie” acts as the “quantum linguistic particle” that transports the reader from a world analogous to that conceived by Newtonian physics into a quantum universe of plural probabilities. Köhler's work explores the difference in power dynamics that results from this transformation, generating intriguing ways of reconceiving subjectivity, relationality, rationality, and authorship. Taken at their word, the poems open up a prospect of no longer insisting on the sovereign individual subject and his linear modes of narration, inheritance, calculation and grammatical proposition. (shrink)

After twelve years as the inaugural Director of the Caroline Chisholm Centre for Health Ethics, leading Melbourne bioethicist Dr Norman M Ford has resigned his position. Instead of contemplating retirement however, the tireless septuagenarian, who is also a philosopher, author, Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Philosophy and Bioethics at Monash University and Catholic Salesiah priest, has his sights set on tackling even more controversial biomedical issues as an independent research scholar and author. Georgina Hall gets an insight (...) into his life’s work. (shrink)

Responding to the nurse’s moral distress in this case depends on a deeper understanding of the source. It is possible that there is concern that resuscitation is morally wrong—perhaps because it wo...

This article considers the role of the spectator's imagination in their engagement with the sensory world of cinema. I argue that the spectator's mental images, far from being overwhelmed by those on the screen, are an important element of a complex interaction with the sensations offered and indicated by the film. I develop these ideas through a reading of Krzysztof Kieślowski's Trois Couleurs: Blanc, in which hairdresser Karol is himself unusually dependent on the mental image. This preoccupation of the film (...) directs us to question the parallel images generated by the spectator, and the ways in which they both alienate us from his subjective experience and provoke our sympathies. (shrink)

The BBC is an exemplary institution in the government of culture. In the context of the neo-liberalism of the 1990s it became also a key experimental site for the development of a new culture of government, one in which notions of markets, efficiency, accountability and audit were translated into the public sector. The focus of this paper is an analysis, based on ethnographic research, of the BBC's culture of markets, accountability and audit in the mid to late nineties. Indebted in (...) part to the Foucauldian concern with the relations between forms of political rationality and specific technologies of government, the paper charts the substance and the anti-creative effects of these techniques. But it stresses also their contestability and negotiability, how they evoke ambivalance and coexist with diverse forms of resistance. In particular, through the case of the BBC, the paper sketches the contours of a sociology of reflexivity based on a more differentiated account of reflexivity than is found in the speculative, often normatively-directed writings of Beck, Giddens and Lash. It points to the layering of reflexivities in and around the contemporary BBC, and to the competing and antagonistic reflexivities that may inhabit any social space. (shrink)

Though many argue over root causes, few dispute the existence of gender disparities across our societal landscape. Patriarchal norms consistently obstruct the flourishing of those who identify themselves as women, those who are identified by others as women, and generally those who gender-identify in ways that challenge the norms of heterosexual cis-gender male privilege. Acknowledging the limits of our analysis, here we focus on some of the disparities faced by women in particular.1 From the persistent wage gap despite women's steadily (...) increasing participation in the workforce, to the perplexing paucity of women occupying C-suite positions in business or tenured professorships in academia despite efforts to... (shrink)

In recent years, the phenomenon of moral distress has been critically examined—and for a good reason. There have been a number of different definitions suggested, some that claimed to be consistent with the original definition but in fact referred to different epistemological states. In this paper, we re‐examine moral distress by exploring its relationship with moral agency. We critically examine three conceptions of moral agency and argue that two of these conceptions risk placing nurses' values at the center of moral (...) action when it ought to be the patient's values that shape nurses' obligations. We propose that the conception of moral agency advanced by Aimee Milliken which re‐centers patient values, should be more broadly accepted within nursing. We utilize a case example to demonstrate a situation in which the values of a patient's parents (surrogates) justifiably constrained nurses' moral agency, creating moral distress. Through an examination of constraints on nurse agency in this case, we illustrate the problematic nature of ‘narrow' moral distress and the value of re‐considering moral distress. Finally, we provide an action‐oriented proposal identifying mediating steps that we argue have utility for nurses (and other healthcare professionals) to mediate between experiences of narrow moral distress and the exercise of moral agency. (shrink)

The epistemic and moral worth of empathy is deeply contested. Some doubt the possibility and sufficiency of empathic knowledge. Others question whether knowing how another feels is causally linked to moral actions. Though some have defended empathy as a form of knowing or an important epistemic endeavor, there is a gap in these responses that weakens their force against empathy’s skeptics. On the one hand, the epistemologists tend to focus on individuals. On the other hand, the moral theorists and moral-epistemologists (...) tend to focus on the social. Here, I contend that the first group could learn from the second and, together, form a stronger defense of empathy’s epistemic import. Namely, if, as epistemologists, we can begin from a conceptualization of empathy as a social epistemic practice within which knowledge is formed and confirmed with others, then we can better allow for possibility in understanding how another feels, reliability in empathic processes, and appropriate sensitivity to variance and degrees of empathic knowing. (shrink)

This book explores the importance of compassion and empathy within educational contexts. While compassion and empathy are widely recognised as key to living a happy and healthy life, there is little written about how these qualities can be taught to children and young people, or how teachers can model these traits in their own practice. This book shares several models of compassion and empathy that can be implemented in schooling contexts, also examining how these qualities are presented in children’s picture (...) books, films and games. The editors and contributors share personal insights and practical approaches to improve both awareness and use of compassionate and empathetic approaches to others. This book will be of interest and value to all those interested in promoting compassion and empathy within education. (shrink)

Memory conformity may occur when a person’s belief in another’s memory report outweighs their belief in their own. Witnesses might be less likely to believe and therefore take on false information from intoxicated co-witnesses, due to the common belief that alcohol impairs memory performance. This paper presents an online study in which participants watched a video of a mock crime taking place outside a pub that included a witness either visibly consuming wine or a soft drink. Participants then read a (...) statement from the witness that varied in the number of false details it contained before being asked to recall the crime. We found that the intoxicated witness was regarded as significantly less credible, but participants were not less likely to report misinformation from them. This suggests that intoxication status impacts one’s perception of how credible a source is, but not one’s ability to reject false suggestions from this source. Our findings reinforce the importance of minimizing co-witness discussion prior to interview, and not to assume that people automatically discount information provided by intoxicated co-witnesses. (shrink)

While Jameton’s (1984) definition of moral distress has been embraced by researchers and scholars for recognizing the many constraints that nurses experience on their moral agency, it has also been...

This article presents narratives from 13 Indigenous early career academics (ECAs) at one university in Auckland, New Zealand. These experiences are likely to represent those of Indigenous Māori and Pasifika ECAs nationally, given the small, centralised nature of the national academy of Aotearoa New Zealand. The narratives contain testimony, fictionalised vignettes of experience, and poetic expressions. Meeting the demands of an academic role in one’s first years of working at a university is a big deal for anyone; the extra pressures (...) and challenges for Indigenous Māori and Pacific staff are immense, yet little understood by White ‘others.’ A writing workshop was the initial catalyst of this collective writing project. Through these insider narratives, this article presents a collective description of, and response to, the experience of Māori and Pasifika early career academics. (shrink)

Place, practice and status have played significant and interacting roles in the complex history of primatology during the early to mid-twentieth century. This paper demonstrates that, within the emerging discipline of primatology, the field was understood as an essential supplement to laboratory work. Founders argued that only in the field could primates be studied in interaction with their natural social group and environment. Such field studies of primate behavior required the development of existing and new field techniques. The practices and (...) sites developed by American primatologist Clarence Ray Carpenter were used to demonstrate that scientific standards could be successfully applied to the study of primates in the field. In an environment in which many field biologists fought for higher scientific status, Carpenter gradually adopted increasingly interventionist techniques. These techniques raised epistemological problems for studies whose value rested on the naturalness of the behaviors observed. Thus, issues of status shaped field practices and subsequently altered Carpenter's criteria for what constituted natural primate behavior. (shrink)

_Desk Set_, a 1957 20th Century Fox studio comedy, made with the sponsorship of IBM, charts the relationship between a reference librarian, Bunny Watson, and Richard Sumner, the inventor of a computer which appears to threaten her job. The film displays a thriving philodendron within Bunny’s skyscraper office, illustrating her organic style of thinking, and implicitly inviting us to see the plant in opposition to the computer. The suggestion that the plant is in some sense excessive, claiming attention beyond the (...) norms of the ornamental background houseplant, opens questions about how we look at plants on film. We find here a reframing of figure and ground, which relates the philodendron to moments where plants become conspicuous in early film and in horror. _Desk Set_ reflects a vegetal landscape characterised by all the commonplace instrumentalising of plants in modernity, amongst which the philodendron emerges as an exception. The plant does not point outwards to a putative wilderness. Instead, our looking at it allows us to contemplate it as an individuated specimen, and to move from that act of looking to recognise its deep entanglement with the urban environment, and with human care. (shrink)

Background: Nurses face ethical issues and experience moral distress in their everyday work. A nursing ethics champion program was developed at a hospital in the United States. Methods: As part of a quality improvement project, pre- and post-training surveys were developed to assess whether the program was feasible and sustainable, enhanced nurse confidence in recognizing and addressing ethical issues and moral distress, and increased nurse knowledge of institutional resources for addressing the same. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed. Results: Thirteen (...) nurses from both the critical care and medical/surgical settings participated in the program. The program proved feasible. Attrition after the educational sessions raised concerns about sustainability. Survey results suggest an association between participating in the program’s educational sessions and increased nurse confidence in recognizing and addressing ethical issues and moral distress, as well as identifying institutional resources that can assist nurses with the same. Discussion: Opportunities for future nursing ethics champion programs include increasing the interactivity and duration of educational sessions, making programs multidisciplinary, and creating materials for nurses to more easily share with colleagues. It would be valuable for future research to measure the impact of nursing ethics champion programs on nursing turnover. Implications: A nursing ethics champion program has the potential to help nurses feel better equipped to navigate ethical issues and moral distress in their everyday work. (shrink)

Catalysed by conversations amongst a group of colleagues, this article is an initial exploration of what happens to women academics aged 60+ who work in a university in Aotearoa New Zealand. This work is an example of when academic theories, in this case feminism, are called forth by real-world experiences – in this case, increasing academic job insecurity, catalysed by post-pandemic economic shortfalls. We blend together personal anecdotes and feminist analysis to show how women’s academic careers, which are commonly constrained (...) by motherhood in their younger years, are also curtailed at the senior end by processes of voluntary/involuntary retirement, as and when demanded by adverse fiscal conditions. (shrink)

This year’s Waitangi Day, 6 February 2021, saw the revival of a favourite zombie in New Zealand politics when Judith Collins, the leader of the Opposition, complained about not getting a chance to...

Although justice is a central principle in clinical ethics, work that centers social justice is often marginalized in clinical ethics. In addition to institutional barriers that may be preventing clinical ethicists from becoming the activists that Meyers argues we should be, we must also recognize the barriers embedded in the field of clinical ethics itself. As clinical ethicists, we have an opportunity to support anti‐racism work in particular by altering our own organizational structures to be more inclusive and reflective of (...) the Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color we serve, enhancing clinical ethics education and training by making critical theories foundational, and decolonizing our clinical ethics consultation tools and practices. (shrink)

In debates over abortion, the foetus and the woman have been continually positioned as antagonists. Given the stakes involved in such debates about personal integrity, individual responsibility, life and death, it is no wonder that many radical feminist authors have concentrated on refocusing the attention on women and away from the disembodied foetus. Such writers have worked hard to decode and deconstruct the public foetus in our midst and have mobilized interpretative tools such as cultural criticism to contextualize the production (...) and consumption of foetal images. Barbara Duden's book, The Public Foetus, is an important and interesting contribution to this effort, which is still taken up by authors writing in this field. Duden's strategy is to seek to remind us (and in particular those who are involved in reproductive medicine) that pregnancy is concentrated in the embedded pregnant woman rather than the disembodied ‘public foetus’ and she attempts to retrieve the embodied woman as the site of pregnancy through what Michaels has termed a ‘fetal disappearing act’. While this may create as many problems for women as it resolves, I would argue that, while the ‘public foetus’ continues to loom large in the politics of abortion and women's positions in relation to the new reproductive technologies remain contested, Duden's work remains important in the continuing debate about how women's reproductive freedom can be continually re-negotiated and re-established. (shrink)

Moral distress is a pervasive phenomenon in healthcare for which there is no straightforward “solution.” Rhetoric surrounding moral distress has shifted over time, with some scholars arguing that moral distress needs to be remedied, resolved, and eradicated, while others recognize that moral distress can have some positive value. The authors of this paper recognize that moral distress has value in its function as a warning sign, signaling the presence of an ethical issue related to patient care that requires deeper exploration, (...) rather than evidencing identification of the “right” course of action. Once the experience of moral distress is identified, steps ought to be taken to clarify the moral issue, and, if possible and reasonable, the patient’s values ought to be prioritized. This paper offers concrete actions steps, drawn from theory, which can be used in clinical practice to provide peer support or to facilitate self-reflection for morally distressed individuals. This approach empowers morally distressed individuals to explore ethical issues, identify concrete steps that can be taken, and mitigate feelings of powerlessness that are often associated with moral-constraint distress. The questions guide individuals and peers to reflect first on the micro-space and then more broadly on the institutional culture, facilitating meso- and macro-reflection and action. (shrink)

Title first published in 2003. John Macquarrie has been a major contributor in the theological world for more than forty years, but as yet very little secondary material on his work has appeared. This book offers an insightful introduction to Macquarrie's theology, arguing that at its heart is a systematic theology of gift. Tracing the development of his thought from its early existentialism to the social and world-affirming perspectives of later writings, this book shows how these developments emerge in dialogue (...) with contemporary thinkers. Morley demonstrates how Macquarrie's theology mediates between two traditionally opposing theologies of gift and being, centring on the doctrines of God and of human being, and reaching its fullest expression in Christology, with Christ as the focal point of two personal movements of self-giving - divine and human. Macquarrie himself contributes a Foreword. (shrink)

Washday at the Pā is the title of an old schoolbook, a picture reading book for younger schoolchildren, which was produced in 1964 by the state education system in Aotearoa-New Zealand in 1964, written and photographed by Ans Westra, who later became one of the most famous photographers in the country. Washday at the Pā provoked a national debate when the Minister of Education acceded to protests by the Māori Womens Welfare League against its use in classrooms by withdrawing it (...) completely, and the story of this controversy has remained alive in national consciousness ever since. This research brings Māori feminist philosophy to the Washday debate: I take up Mana Wahine theory as a useful lens on the controversy, understood as an event about, with and for women, in the history of Māori education. The purpose of this article is to reread, using Mana Wahine theory, existing arguments about the book’s withdrawal, and to propose an original resolution of the question at the centre of debate: should the book have been withdrawn from schools, or not? (shrink)

Macphail’s ‘null hypothesis’, that there are no differences in intelligence, qualitative or quantitative, between non-human vertebrates has been controversial. This controversy can be useful if it encourages interest in acquiring a detailed understanding of how non-human animals express flexible problem-solving capacity (‘intelligence’), but limiting the discussion to vertebrates is too arbitrary. As an example, we focus here on Portia, a spider with an especially intricate predatory strategy and a preference for other spiders as prey. We review research on pre-planned detours, (...) expectancy violation and a capacity to solve confinement problems where, in each of these three contexts, there is experimental evidence of innate cognitive capacities and reliance on internal representation. These cognitive capacities are related to, but not identical to, intelligence. When discussing intelligence, as when discussing cognition, it is more useful to envisage a continuum instead of something that is simply present or not; in other words, a continuum pertaining to flexible problem-solving capacity for ‘intelligence’ and a continuum pertaining to reliance on internal representation for ‘cognition’. When envisaging a continuum pertaining to intelligence, Daniel Dennett’s notion of four Creatures (Darwinian, Skinnerian, Popperian, Gregorian) is of interest, with the distinction between Skinnerian and Popperian Creatures being especially relevant when considering Portia. When we consider these distinctions, a case can be made for Portia being a Popperian Creature. Like Skinnerian Creatures, Popperian Creatures express flexible problem solving capacity, but the manner in which this capacity is expressed by Popperian Creatures is more distinctively cognitive. (shrink)

For Māori, a real opportunity exists to flesh out some terms and concepts that Western thinkers have adopted and that precede disciplines but necessarily inform them. In this article, we are intent on describing one of these precursory phenomena—Foucault’s Gaze—within a framework that accords with a Māori philosophical framework. Our discussion is focused on the potential and limits of colonised thinking, which has huge implications for such disciplines as education, among others. We have placed Foucault’s Gaze alongside a Māori metaphysics (...) and have speculated on the Gaze’s surveillant/expectant strategies with some key Māori primordial phenomena in mind, such as ‘te kore’ and ‘āhua’. We posit the Gaze as an entity and thus aim to render it more relevant to Māori, so that it can be addressed appropriately. We also preface that discussion by theorising on some of the challenges that confront us as Māori authors in even referring counter-colonially to the Gaze. Whilst we do not seek to destabilise the Gaze by positing it as a metaphysically based entity, we do hint at the possibility that critical indigenous philosophy may even for a short time bring the Gaze into focus for Māori. By introducing an awareness of an alternative metaphysics, we may have unsettled the self-certainty of the Gaze. (shrink)

Washday at the Pā is the title of an old schoolbook, a picture reading book for younger schoolchildren, which was produced in 1964 by the state education system in Aotearoa-New Zealand in 1964, written and photographed by Ans Westra, who later became one of the most famous photographers in the country. Washday at the Pā provoked a national debate when the Minister of Education acceded to protests by the Māori Womens Welfare League against its use in classrooms by withdrawing it (...) completely, and the story of this controversy has remained alive in national consciousness ever since. This research brings Māori feminist philosophy to the Washday debate: I take up Mana Wahine theory as a useful lens on the controversy, understood as an event about, with and for women, in the history of Māori education. The purpose of this article is to reread, using Mana Wahine theory, existing arguments about the book’s withdrawal, and to propose an or... (shrink)

‘The Gift’ is the English title of a small book first published in French in 1925 by sociologist Marcel Mauss, which catalyzed an ongoing debate linked to a wide range of scholarship. Mauss’s gift theory included the Māori example of the ‘hau of the gift’ which Mauss explained as a spiritual force, seeking to return to its original owner or place of origin. This article brings a critical Māori perspective to Mauss’ notion of the hau of the gift, in an (...) indigenous philosophical response to Eurocentric social science that combines critical discourse analysis with Kaupapa Māori theory and principles of research. The paper introduces Mauss’ arguments about gifting, and the role of hau in those arguments, before turning to a close examination of the concept of ‘hau’ as presented in the original Māori letters, the primary data used by Elsdon Best to write his anthropological articles, from which Mauss developed his ideas about hau. These letters, which sparked the whole debate, are material artefacts of the cross-cultural educational relationship between Tamati Ranapiri as teacher, and Elsdon Best as student. Common-sense Māori readings of Ranapiri find no mystery in what he wrote about hau, but reinforce the significance of his correspondence, from the perspective of Kaupapa Māori versions of the history of Māori education. (shrink)

In many cases of family trauma, victims are left with the burden of rebuilding relationships that have been damaged. This paper illustrates that inappropriate pressure to forgive can harm victims of abuse. This pressure can come from a combination of assumptions. Firstly, often forgiveness is conflated with reconciliation, and those who put pressure on victims to forgive do so to avoid uncomfortable blame or estrangement. Secondly, anger is often inappropriately understood as a morally blameworthy emotion to hold. I draw on (...) Amia Srinivasan’s (2018) work on affective injustice to address this assumption and argue that pressure to forgo anger, forgive, and reconcile stems from a mistaken interpretation of these concepts and is ultimately harmful. I demonstrate this by using examples where victims have found their voices stifled by the mistaken coding of anger as morally blameworthy and forgiveness as morally required. (shrink)