This commentary comprises three different responses to Counted and Zock’s article: “Place Spirituality: An Attachment Perspective.” The first response is from Esther Sternberg, MD, who gives a psychophysiological and neuroscience critique. The second is from Altaf Engineer, PhD, from the perspective of architecture and environmental psychology, and the last response is from Hester Oberman, PhD, who gives a psychology of religion rebuttal.

Introduction to healthcare ethics committees / D. Micah Hester and Toby Schonfeld -- Brief introduction to ethics and ethical theory / D. Micah Hester and Toby Schonfeld -- Ethics committees and the law / Stephen Latham -- Cultural and ...

The behavior of some nightlife-setting patrons would be unacceptable in workplaces or public settings and could cause distress to other patrons. This quantitative study determined 381 young Australian’s descriptive and personal norms regarding four types of sexual behavior. Participants’ personal norms were that these behaviors are wrong, but they reported that the behaviors are common in a nightlife setting. Behaviors such as these could theoretically be prevented by modifying patrons’ descriptive norms with evidence that their beliefs are contrary to individuals’ (...) personal norms of acceptable behavior in nightlife settings. (shrink)

The main purpose of this study was to map school leaders? perceptions concerning the cooperation of the leadership team, the distribution of leadership functions and participative decision?making, and to asses their relative weight in terms of predicting school leaders? job satisfaction. Also, the effect of demographical and structural school variables (i.e. seniority, job experience, school size, size of the leadership team, school type) on school leaders? job satisfaction was examined. A sample of 130 school leaders of 46 large secondary schools (...) completed a self?report questionnaire. The study results indicated that school leaders are highly satisfied with their job. Multiple regression analysis revealed that job satisfaction was significantly related to the cooperation of the leadership team and the school type. The amount of formal distribution of leadership functions and participative decision?making of teachers in the school policy did not have a significant influence on school leaders? job satisfaction. (shrink)

While the bioethics literature demonstrates that the field has spent substantial time and thought over the last four decades on the goals, methods, and desired outcomes for service and training in bioethics, there has been less progress defining the nature and goals of bioethics research and scholarship. This gap makes it difficult both to describe the breadth and depth of these areas of bioethics and, importantly, to gauge their success. However, the gap also presents us with an opportunity to define (...) this scope of work for ourselves and to help shape the broader conversation about the impact of academic research. Because of growing constraints on academic funding, researchers and scholars in many fields are being asked to demonstrate and also forecast the value and impact of their work. To do that, and also to satisfy ourselves that our work has meaningful effect, we must understand how our work can motivate change and how that change can be meaningfully measured. In a field as diverse as bioethics, the pathways to and metrics of change will likewise be diverse. It is therefore critical that any assessment of the impact of bioethics research and scholarship be informed by an understanding of the nature of the work, its goals, and how those goals can and ought to be furthered. In this paper, we propose a conceptual model that connects individual bioethics projects to the broader goals of scholarship, describing the translation of research and scholarly output into changes in thinking, practice, and policy. One of the key implications of the model is that impact in bioethics is generally the result of a collection of projects rather than of any single piece of research or scholarship. Our goal is to lay the groundwork for a thoroughgoing conversation about bioethics research and scholarship that will advance and shape the important conversation about their impact. (shrink)

While tens of thousands of people across the United States serve on hospital and other healthcare ethics committees, almost no carefully prepared educational material exists for HEC members. Ethics by Committee is a one volume collection of chapters developed exclusively for this educational purpose. Experts in bioethics, clinical consultation, health law, and social psychology from across the country contribute chapters on ethics consultation, education, and policy development.

The form of Western mainstream film is the crux of its ideological efficiency: by using established formal techniques, films ensure audiences un- derstand that aesthetic decisions support and clarify the narrative to ensure maximum spectatorial satisfaction. However, some films exploit their formal aesthetics in order to prevent clarification, thwarting satisfaction in favour of viewing practices that can be considered perverse in that they withhold, suspend or obstruct immediate pleasure. Contemporary Western filmmaking in the mid-1990s witnessed the emergence of a distinct (...) group of filmmakers and films that, in the popular discourse of cinematic criticism, were together coded as “difficult” or “perverse.” These films were, as a result of the characteristics we identify below, situated obliquely in relation to the larger economic and artistic struc- tures of a commercially oriented “mainstream” cinema. Included in this new form of cinematic production were films from directors such as Tim Burton: Edward Scissorhands ; David Cronenberg: eXistenZ ; David Fincher: Se7en ; Peter Greenaway: The Baby of Maçon ; David Lynch: Lost Highway ; Quentin Tarantino: Pulp Fiction and Lars von Trier: Breaking the Waves . Whilst Western cinema as a whole has a long history of exploring “difficult” or “perverse” material within the overt or covert content of narrative, plot and story, such films demonstrate a particular relationship between the content being explored and the specific formal characteristics utilised in the delivery of that content. Thus where previous examples would utilise standardised formal techniques as a way of both delivering and containing the difficult or objectionable material, the films instead offer instances where the material of the narrative content seems to bleed backwards, affecting the form and rendering the very materiality of the film itself suspect and problematic. (shrink)

This chapter argues that people have a human right to immigrate to other states. People have essential interests in being able to make important personal decisions and engage in politics without state restrictions on the options available to them. It is these interests that other human rights, such as the human rights to internal freedom of movement, expression and association, protect. The human right to immigrate is not absolute. Like other human freedom rights , it can be restricted in certain (...) extreme circumstances. Outside these circumstances, however, immigration restrictions are unjust. Having presented the argument for a human right to immigrate, the chapter responds to objections from distributive justice, culture and scarcity. (shrink)

Hester Goodenough Gelber is Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

This article considers one seemingly compelling justification for immigration restrictions: that they help restrict the brain drain of skilled workers from poor states. For some poor states, brain drain is a severe problem, sapping their ability to provide basic services. Yet this article finds that justifying immigration restrictions on brain drain grounds is far from straightforward. For restrictions to be justified, a series of demanding conditions must be fulfilled. Brain drain does provide a successful argument for some immigration restrictions, but (...) it is an argument that fails to justify restrictions beyond a small minority of cases. (shrink)

Originally published in 1773 in two volumes, and now reissued here together in one, this work by the writer Hester Chapone, a renowned proponent of female education, contains advice delivered in the form of letters to her niece. The first volume deals primarily with matters of religion and morality, while the second volume addresses questions of behaviour and schooling. Unusually for self-improvement books of this era, Chapone recommends that a young woman should have a rigorous education in a wide (...) variety of subjects, including ancient history and geography, as well as instruction in ladylike deportment and mastery of household matters. She exhorts young ladies to avoid vanity and other vices through devoted study of scripture, and writes of the importance of choosing worthy and sensible friends who can be trusted to offer good advice. Chapone's posthumously published works, in two volumes, are also reissued in this series. (shrink)

Patient organizations increasingly play an important role in health care decision-making in Western countries. The Netherlands is one of the countries where this trend has gone furthest. In the literature some problems are identified, such as instrumental use of patient organizations by care providers, health insurers and the pharmaceutical industry. To strengthen the position of patient organizations government funding is often recommended as a solution. In this paper we analyze the ties between Dutch government and Dutch patient organizations to learn (...) more about the effects of such a relationship between government and this part of civil society. Our study is based on official government documents and existing empirical research on patient organizations. We found that government influence on patient organizations has become quite substantial with government influencing the organizational structure of patient organizations, the activities these organizations perform and even their ideology. Financing patient organizations offers the government an important means to hold them accountable. Although the ties between patient organizations and the government enable the former to play a role that can be valued as positive by both parties, we argue that they raise problems as well which warrant a discussion on how much government influence on civil society is acceptable. (shrink)

Governments are increasingly inviting patient organizations to participate in healthcare policymaking. By inviting POs that claim to represent patients, representation comes into being. However, little is known about the circumstances under which governments accept POs as patient representatives. Based on the analysis of relevant legislation, this article investigates the criteria that self-help organizations, a special type of PO, must fulfil in order to be accepted as patient representatives by governments in Austria and Germany. Thereby, it aims to contribute to the (...) discussion on the role of governments in steering SHOs. There are different degrees of regulation. Governments in both countries not only formulate explicit criteria for SHOs with respect to patient representation but also guide SHOs representing patients through implicit criteria for associations. We discuss the findings against concepts of responsiveness, authorization, and accountability. Our findings indicate that governmental steering is not negative per se as indicated by previous research but—depending on legislative criteria—can promote transparency and democratic quality in patient representation. (shrink)

A common argument against lockdowns is that they restrict freedom. On this view, lockdowns might be effective in protecting public health, but their impact on freedom is purely negative. This article challenges that view. It argues that while lockdowns restrict freedom, so too do viruses. Since viruses restrict freedom and lockdowns protect us from viruses, lockdowns can protect us from the harmful effects that viruses have on freedom. The problem we face is not necessarily freedom versus public health. Sometimes it (...) is freedom itself—or its value or distribution—that provides reason for lockdowns. (shrink)

Because the poorest people tend to die from easily preventable diseases, addressing poverty is a relatively cheap way to save lives. War, by contrast, is extremely expensive. This article argues that, since states that wage war could alleviate poverty instead, poverty can render war unjust. Two just war theory conditions prove relevant: proportionality and last resort. Proportionality requires that war does not yield excessive costs in relation to the benefits. Standardly, just war theorists count only the direct costs: the death (...) and destruction wrought by war. This article argues that it can sometimes be appropriate to add the opportunity costs of a failure to alleviate poverty. Last resort is the condition that there must be no better alternative means of achieving the same just end for which the war is waged. This article argues that there are some cases in which alleviating poverty may constitute a better alternative. These are cases in which the most fitting description of the just end for war is sufficiently general that poverty alleviation offers a means to pursue it. The idea that poverty can sometimes render war unjust has, to date, been largely overlooked. It is, nevertheless, an idea with profound implications since, once taken seriously, war becomes much harder to justify. Wars that, in every other respect, seem just may prove disproportionate or unnecessary given the alternative of alleviating poverty. (shrink)

This CQ department is dedicated to bringing noted bioethicsts together in order to debate some of the most perplexing contemporary bioethics issues. You are encouraged to contact department editor, D. Micah Hester, UAMS/Humanities, 4301 W. Markham St. #646, Little Rock, AR 72205, with any suggestions for debate topics and interlocutors you would like to see published herein.

This CQ department is dedicated to bringing noted bioethicists together in order to debate some of the most perplexing contemporary bioethics issues. You are encouraged to contact “The Great Debates” department editor, D. Micah Hester, UAMS/Humanities, 4301 W. Markham St., #646, Little Rock, AR 72205, with any suggestions for debate topics and interlocutors you would like to see published herein.

This article addresses a previously overlooked problem in the ethics of defensive killing. Everyone agrees that defensive killing can only be justified when it is necessary. But necessary for what? That seemingly simple question turns out to be surprisingly difficult to answer. Imagine Attacker is trying to kill Victim, and the only way one could save Victim is by killing Attacker. It would seem that, in such a case, killing is necessary. But now suppose there is some other innocent person, (...) suffering some entirely distinct threat, whose life one could save instead. Is killing still necessary? The seemingly obvious answer is “yes.” Killing is necessary since it is the only means to achieve the goal that stands to justify killing. The problem with this answer is that it presupposes a certain description of that goal as something like “saving Victim’s life” or “saving Victim’s life from Attacker.” Other descriptions are plausible, such as “saving a life.” On that latter description, killing is unnecessary in this case. The problem we are encountering is the problem of finding the right description of the goal of killing. Call this the “description problem.” This article sets out to solve the description problem and arrives at a radical conclusion. In a variety of cases, we should describe the goal of killing in broad terms, without reference to a specific victim or a specific threat. These broad descriptions—such as “saving a life”—make it easier to find relevant alternatives. Killing, it turns out, is much harder to justify than we might otherwise have thought. (shrink)

Several months ago, I was walking down the hallway outside our medical school faculty offices and a colleague stopped me to ask a question. He phrased his query in the context of a case that raised ethical issues for him, and he asked me to respond. I obligingly offered my opinion given the details he presented, ending my comments with the phrase, To this he kindly shot back, To be honest, this question caught me off guard. Though his particular dilemma (...) was relatively well-trod territory for many bioethicists, I had done little research on the issue and could not immediately render a response to his latter query. (shrink)

In this paper I use William James's understanding of significance in life to show that for certain patients euthanasia and assisted suicide can be importantly meaningful acts that family, friends, and health care professionals must acknowledge and even, at times, aid in bringing to fruition. Dying with meaning is transformative. It reshapes the lives of others that are left behind, giving to their lives new groundings by engaging them in the meaning of dying for us. For the patient, dying with (...) meaning takes the seemingly formless void in the abyss of death and gives it a significant purpose in the last stages of life itself; it turns potential nothingness into actual significance. To the extent that we outsiders do not help the dying, we condemn terminally ill patients to a meaningless existence until they die. (shrink)

Since the decade of the 1970s, and particularly since the first successful test-tube baby in 1978, the development and use of assisted reproductive technologies have grown exponentially. Would-be parents—including those in so-called traditional male-female marriages, unmarried adults, postmenopausal women, and same-sex partnerships—who just over 20 years ago had no recourse for their fertility issues can now pursue their desires to have children with at least a partial, if not, total, genetic and/or biological relationship. Ovulation-stimulating medications, artificial insemination using the sperm (...) of a husband or unrelated donor, in vitro fertilization with embryo transfer, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, and gamete and zygote intrafallopian transfers are but a few of a host of treatment options ranging in complexity, invasiveness, and expense. And on the horizon are genetic techniques such as cloning—which was once considered “pure” science fiction but in 1997 became what some call an inevitability, with the development of mammalian cloning in the form of the now-famous Dolly the sheep. (shrink)

In April of 2001 I published a brief commentary in the journal Academic Medicine questioning the current character and functioning of the National Residency Matching Program. The purpose of the article was to stimulate a rethinking of process. At 50 years old, the environment through which the match operates has changed, and as such I thought it time to ask ourselves whether or not the match, its algorithm, and, more important, the values it manifests might well need an overhaul.

What are the ethical implications of global poverty for immigration policy? This article finds substantial evidence that migration is effective at reducing poverty. There is every indication that the adoption of a fairly open immigration policy by rich countries, coupled with selective use of immigration restrictions in cases of deleterious brain drain, could be of significant assistance to people living in poor countries. Empirically there is nothing wrong with using immigration policy to address poverty. The reason we have to reject (...) such an approach is not empirical but normative. People have human rights to stay in their home country and to migrate elsewhere. Counter poverty measures that require people to move or to stay are likely to violate these rights. Everyone should be free to migrate but no one should be forced to migrate. Using immigration policy to address global poverty, in place of alternatives, fails on both these counts. (shrink)

This article questions the use of immigration as a tool to counter global poverty. It argues that poor people have a human right to stay in their home state, which entitles them to receive development assistance without the necessity of migrating abroad. The article thus rejects a popular view in the philosophical literature on immigration which holds that rich states are free to choose between assisting poor people in their home states and admitting them as immigrants when fulfilling duties to (...) assist the global poor. Since the human right to stay is entailed by values that feature prominently in the philosophical debate on immigration, the article further contends that participants in that debate have particular reason to reject the popular ‘choice view’ and endorse the alternative position presented in the article. (shrink)

Scholars have explored the influence of the field of cybernetics on scientific thought and disciplines. However, from the inception of the field, ‘‘cyberneticians’’ had explicitly envisioned applications reaching beyond the purview of scientific disciplines; cybernetics was remarkable for its portability and potential application in a wide variety of contexts. This article explores connections between cybernetics and experimental music from 1950-1980, which was a period of experimentation with electronic techniques in recording, composition, and sound production and manipulation. Examples include musicians, engineers, (...) instrument builders, composers, and scientists in collaboration with musicians who invoked cybernetic themes in their work. These uses of cybernetics were more diverse than accounts of cybernetics within the sciences suggest, presenting a major difficulty in addressing cybernetics as a homogeneous or monolithic discourse. In particular, cybernetic discourse in music often exhibited themes of openness and indeterminacy, rather than the ‘‘command and control’’ of the ‘‘closed world.’’. (shrink)