In this article, I argue that that the primary goal of statues honouring public figures is to create and shape a collective identity. The way that these statues further the goal of identity is not by holding up the subjects of the statues as admirable but rather by asserting that the subjects were in some way objectively important and central to some group surrounding the statue. I will look at the defences for keeping statues of and awards named after John (...) A. Macdonald and show that the primary concern is not with defending the character of Macdonald but rather that removing him is ‘erasing history’. These defences are not about defending Macdonald as a person but rather defending a conception of the Canadian identity that requires Macdonald play a central role. Against these defences of Macdonald, I show that the ‘objective history’ case for him and other such similar figures fails. In the particular case of Macdonald, it fails because he was actually not that important for Canadian history. In the general case of negative public figures, I provide a short defence of how group identities are not static and not unchangeably rooted in a single historically based articulation. (shrink)

Import-Export says that a conditional 'If p, if q, r' is always equivalent to the conditional 'If p and q, r'. I argue that Import-Export does not sit well with a classical approach to conjunction: given some plausible and widely accepted principles about conditionals, Import-Export together with classical conjunction leads to absurd consequences. My main goal is to draw out these surprising connections. In concluding I argue that the right response is to reject Import-Export and adopt instead a limited version (...) which better fits natural language data; accounts for all the intuitions that motivate Import-Export in the first place; and fits better with a classical conjunction. (shrink)

In recent years, the significance of industrial heritage has seemed to become a growing trend in international heritage studies. Concerning their attributed values and the crucial needs for urban development, this branch of cultural heritage has been considered the important grid of cities. This has caused a great acceptance of adaptive reuse practices especially among developing countries which is a smart response to an ongoing debate to reach sustainable development. The flexibility of these buildings and sites seems an important criterion, (...) which can be improved through adaptive reuse practice. Therefore, this research aims to introduce the concept of flexibility in industrial heritage sites, evaluate its criteria among adaptive reuse practices, and make a comprehensive flexibility model for it. Indeed, the final goal is to determine the condition that based on the flexibility model, the adaptive reuse practice would be a proper way of encountering these sites. A historical-interpretation research method, analytical-description techniques, and questionnaire-based interviews are applied in this research. Results indicate that flexibility has genuinely been considered in this practice. Analysing flexibility techniques, this paper suggests a valuable framework to achieve the flexibility of industrial heritage as the presupposition of successful adaptive reuse in these sites. (shrink)

The conditions of transport and slaughter at the end of their lives are a major challenge to the welfare of agricultural animals. • End-of-life experiences should be of a greater ethical concern than others of similar intensity and duration, due to their position in the animal’s life. • End-of-life welfare can have both internal importance to the animals and external ethical importance to human decision-makers. • We should pay extra care to ensure that the conditions during transport and slaughter are (...) as positive as possible. (shrink)

My dissertation is a systematic defense of the claim that what it is to be rational is to correctly respond to the reasons you possess. The dissertation is split into two parts, each consisting of three chapters. In Part I--Coherence, Possession, and Correctly Responding--I argue that my view has important advantages over popular views in metaethics that tie rationality to coherence (ch. 2), defend a novel view of what it is to possess a reason (ch. 3), and defend a novel (...) view about what it is to act and hold attitudes for normative reasons (ch. 4). In Part II--Foundationalism, Deception, and The Importance of Being Rational--I argue that foundationalists about epistemic rationality should think that the foundational beliefs are held for sufficient reasons (ch. 5), argue that my view solves the New Evil Demon problem for externalism (and solves a related and underapprieciated problem) (ch. 6), and argue that my view can vindicate the thought that we ought to be rational (ch. 7). (shrink)

The current paper highlights a new, interactive Shiny App that can be used to aid in understanding and teaching the important task of conducting a prior sensitivity analysis when implementing Bayesian estimation methods. In this paper, we discuss the importance of examining prior distributions through a sensitivity analysis. We argue that conducting a prior sensitivity analysis is equally important when so-called diffuse priors are implemented as it is with subjective priors. As a proof of concept, we conducted a small simulation (...) study, which illustrates the impact of priors on final model estimates. The findings from the simulation study highlight the importance of conducting a sensitivity analysis of priors. This concept is further extended through an interactive Shiny App that we developed. The Shiny App allows users to explore the impact of various forms of priors using empirical data. We introduce this Shiny App and thoroughly detail an example using a simple multiple regression model that users at all levels can understand. In this paper, we highlight how to determine the different settings for a prior sensitivity analysis, how to visually and statistically compare results obtained in the sensitivity analysis, and how to display findings and write up disparate results obtained across the sensitivity analysis. The goal is that novice users can follow the process outlined here and work within the interactive Shiny App to gain a deeper understanding of the role of prior distributions and the importance of a sensitivity analysis when implementing Bayesian methods. The intended audience is broad and can include those with limited exposure to Bayesian methods or the specific model presented here. (shrink)

This book develops a systematic philosophical theory of social action and group phenomena, in the process presenting detailed analyses of such central social notions as 'we-attitude' (especially 'we-intention' and mutual belief, social norm, joint action, and - most important - group goal, group belief, and group action). Though this is a philosophical work, it presents a unified conceptual framework that may be useful to social scientists, especially social psychologists, as well as philosophers. The book puts forward and defends a number (...) of systematic philosophical theses, resulting in not only a theory of social action but, more broadly, a philosophical theory of society, or at least those aspects of society with which social psychology is supposed to deal (individuals in groups, groups, joint action, and the like). (shrink)

The novel notion of importing logics is introduced, subsuming as special cases several kinds of asymmetric combination mechanisms, like temporalization [8, 9], modalization [7] and exogenous enrichment [13, 5, 12, 4, 1]. The graph-theoretic approach proposed in [15] is used, but formulas are identified with irreducible paths in the signature multi-graph instead of equivalence classes of such paths, facilitating proofs involving inductions on formulas. Importing is proved to be strongly conservative. Conservative results follow as corollaries for temporalization, modalization and exogenous (...) enrichment. (shrink)

The article argues that it is important to offer children ideals. Ideals are defined as imagined excellences, which are so desirable that people will try to actualise them. These characteristics show the importance of ideals for people: ideals give direction and meaning to their lives. The motivating power of ideals can, however, also lead to fanaticism. Education should therefore involve several worthy ideals that children can commit themselves to as well as critical reflection on the ways in which people are (...) committed to and try to actualise them. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

This 1988 volume is a collection of thirteen seminal essays on ethics, free will, and the philosophy of mind. The essays deal with such central topics as freedom of the will, moral responsibility, the concept of a person, the structure of the will, the nature of action, the constitution of the self, and the theory of personal ideals. By focusing on the distinctive nature of human freedom, Professor Frankfurt is able to explore fundamental problems of what it is to be (...) a person and of what one should care about in life. (shrink)

Errol Lord offers a new account of the nature of rationality: what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. Lord defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons, and dispels doubts about whether we ought to be rational.

I critically examine the semantic view of theories to reveal the following results. First, models in science are not the same as models in mathematics, as holders of the semantic view claim. Second, when several examples of the semantic approach are examined in detail no common thread is found between them, except their close attention to the details of model building in each particular science. These results lead me to propose a deflationary semantic view, which is simply that model construction (...) is an important component of theorizing in science. This deflationary view is consistent with a naturalized approach to the philosophy of science. (shrink)

The Importance of Philosophy in Teacher Education maps the gradual decline of philosophy as a central, integrated part of educational studies. Chapters consider how this decline has impacted teacher education and practice, offering new directions for the reintegration of philosophical thinking in teacher preparation and development. Touching on key points in history, this valuable collection of chapters accurately appraises the global decline of philosophy of education in teacher education programs and seeks to understand the external and endemic causes of changed (...) attitudes towards a discipline which was once assigned such a central place in teacher education. Chapters illustrate how a grounding in the theoretical and ethical dimensions of teaching, learning, and education systems contribute in meaningful ways to being a good teacher, and trace the consequences of a decline in philosophy on individuals' professional development and on the evolution of the teaching profession more broadly. With this in mind, the text focusses on the future of teacher education and considers how we can ensure that philosophy of education feeds into the excellence of teaching today. This book will be of great interest to graduate, postgraduate students as well as research scholars in the field of educational philosophy and history of education. In addition, it will be useful for those involved in teacher education, and in particular, course, module and program development. (shrink)

I want to argue for the importance of the notion human being in ethics. Part I of the paper presents two different sorts of argument against treating that notion as important in ethics. A. Here is an example of the first sort of argument. What makes us human beings is that we have certain properties, but these properties, making us members of a certain biological species, have no moral relevance. If, on the other hand, we define being human in terms (...) which are not tied to biological classification, if we treat as the properties which make us human the capacities for reasoning or for self-consciousness, then indeed those capacities may be morally relevant, but if they are morally significant at all, they are significant whether they are the properties of a being who is a member of our species or not. And so it would be better to use a word like ‘person’ to mean a being that has these properties , to bring out the fact that not all human beings have them and that non-human beings conceivably might have them. (shrink)

Words change meaning over time. Some meaning shift is accompanied by a corresponding change in subject matter; some meaning shift is not. In this paper I argue that an account of linguistic meaning can accommodate the first kind of case, but that a theory of concepts is required to accommodate the second. Where there is stability of subject matter through linguistic change, it is concepts that provide the stability. The stability provided by concepts allows for genuine disagreement and ameliorative change (...) in the context of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Contrary to common misconceptions, today's logic is not devoid of existential import: the universalized conditional ∀ x [S→ P] implies its corresponding existentialized conjunction ∃ x [S & P], not in all cases, but in some. We characterize the proexamples by proving the Existential-Import Equivalence: The antecedent S of the universalized conditional alone determines whether the universalized conditional has existential import, i.e. whether it implies its corresponding existentialized conjunction.A predicate is an open formula having only x free. An existential-import predicate (...) Q is one whose existentialization, ∃ x Q, is logically true; otherwise, Q is existential-import-free or simply import-free.How abundant or widespread is existential import? How abundant or widespread are existential-import predicates in themselves or in comparison to import-free predicates? We show that existential-import predicates are quite abundant, and no less so than import-free predicates. Existential.. (shrink)

This special issue of Journal of Poetry Therapy focuses on the use of poetry and other forms of expressive writing to explore the transformative experiences of military veterans, and so in this article I discuss how the use of poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy positively influenced my life while I was serving in the United States Air Force (USAF) from 2000 through 2004. This article briefly reviews my reasons for enlisting and discusses the importance that poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy had for (...) me during four different phases of my military history: (i) Basic Military Training, (ii) Aircraft Qualification, Combat Survival, and Water Survival Training, (iii) serving in the post 9/11 operations Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, and (iv) the period after fulfilling my time of service for the USAF. In discussing each phase, I explain the unique challenges that I encountered, how I used poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy to successfully overcome these challenges, point out relevant examples of poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy that were particularly influential, and include pictures of my experiences throughout. (shrink)

Business ethics attracts increasing attention from business practitioners and academic researchers. Concerns over fraudulent behavior keep attentionfocused on ethics in businesses. The accounting profession pays particularattention to matters of ethical judgment. The profession has adopted a strictcode of conduct and many states require the passage of an ethics exam to gaincertification. The more that is understood about the relationship of gender and ethics, the better chance of education and training programs will bedesigned to improve ethical awareness and sensitivity. Prior studies (...) have found that personal characteristics are an important aspect of cultural norms.This study analyzes the responses of students from eight different countries toquestions on their probable actions to an ethical dilemma. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum has argued for the superiority of her capabilities approach over the language of human rights. In this article it is argued that the capabilities approach is incapable of justifying something crucially important expressed in international human rights law: the requirement that every government treat all people as having equal status. Nussbaum has recently grappled with the role of equality within her approach, but has failed to offer a satisfactory explanation of its importance. The reason is that the value (...) and importance of equal status cannot be fully articulated in the language of capabilities alone. While most philosophical conceptions of human rights also fail to incorporate the importance of equal respect, the limitations of the capability approach are more serious. For the purposes of specifying the duties of governments, capabilities are not the only things that matter. (shrink)

Symbiosis plays a fundamental role in contemporary biology, as well as in recent thinking in philosophy of biology. The discovery of the importance and universality of symbiotic associations has brought new light to old debates in the field, including issues about the concept of biological individuality. An important aspect of these debates has been the formulation of the hologenome concept of evolution, the notion that holobionts are units of natural selection in evolution. This review examines the philosophical assumptions that underlie (...) recent proposal of the hologenome concept of evolution, and traces those debates back in time to their historical origins, to the moment when the connection between the topics of symbiosis and biological individuality first caught the attention of biologists. The review is divided in two parts. The first part explores the historical origins of the connection between the notion of symbiosis and the concept of biological individuality, and emphasizes the role of A. de Bary, R. Pound, A. Schneider and C. Merezhkowsky in framing the debate. The second part examines the hologenome concept of evolution and explores four parallelisms between contemporary debates and the debates presented in the first part of the essay, arguing that the different debates raised by the hologenome concept were already present in the literature. I suggest that the novelty of the hologenome concept of evolution lies in the wider appreciation of the importance of symbiosis for maintaining life on Earth as we know it. Finally, I conclude by suggesting the importance of exploring the connections among contemporary biology, philosophy of biology and history of biology in order to gain a better understanding of contemporary biology. (shrink)

It is self-evident that medical treatments have improved in recent centuries. Through a historical analysis this article demonstrates that experimental research has underpinned the success of modern medical therapy, but it also shows that there have been examples of unethical research and that these can still be found, even today. Whilst it is crucial that research continues, it is equally important that there is appropriate review. Although the health of research itself is central to our well-being, the community needs to (...) be able to exercise its right to scrutinize such projects, not only to understand what the scientific medical community is undertaking but also to identify research it regards as unfair. In the United Kingdom this is the work of Research Ethics Committees. (shrink)

Morality bears on what we should forget. Some aspects of our identity are meant to be forgotten and there is a distinctive harm that accompanies the permanence of some content about us, content that prompts a duty to forget. To make the case that forgetting is an integral part of our moral duties to others, the paper proceeds as follows. In §1, I make the case that forgetting is morally evaluable and I survey three kinds of forgetting: no-trace forgetting, archival (...) forgetting, and siloing. In §2, I turn to how we practice these forms of forgetting in our everyday lives and the goods these practices facilitate by drawing on examples ranging from the expunging of juvenile arrest records to the right to privacy. In §3, I turn to how my account can help us both recognize and address a heretofore neglected source of harm caused by technology and big data. In §4, I end by addressing the concern that we lack control over forgetting and thus can't be required to forget. I argue this challenge can be answered, but there’s a harder challenge that can’t. Forgetting is under threat. To address this challenge and preserve forgetting, we must change the world. (shrink)

The original interest of this article lies in existential import. It provides a broader view on the problem by reference to modern, symbolic logic (ch.1). Gradually, however, our interest will change into the amalgamated expressions often used in logic; that is, why are such expressions as “x is a round triangle” applied in logic? We critically discuss this question from an extensional viewpoint, namely model theoretic semantics (ch.2). We also touch on Church’s λ-calculus in the appendix (app.2).

In The importance of argument in education Richard Andrews draws on his practice and research of over 20 years. He begins his lecture with definitions of ‘argument’ and ‘argumentation’. He justifies the overall focus on argument by first looking at its function in the social and political spheres and then moving on to a theoretical consideration of argument via the thinking of Vygotsky and Habermas. Professor Andrews applies these insights to both school- and university-level contexts. He examines three cases of (...) argumentation in education: that of a group of 6-year-old children in discussion; an essay by an undergraduate literature student; and a dissertation by an engineering student. In a further section, he turns to the question of visual and multimodal argumentation through consideration of a still image, an advertisement and a sequence of images. The lecture concludes that argument is important to education because it allows articulation of thought; engagement with personal, social and political issues; and enfranchisement within a democratic society. (shrink)

The article by Wiggins and Wilbanks in this issue (2019) provides an important overview of the some of the forms and challenges of citizen involvement in health and biomedical research. Many such r...

Drawing on the Agency-Stewardship approach, which suggests that manager profile may range from the agent model to the steward model, this article aims to examine how important CEOs are to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Specifically, this exploratory study proposes the existence of a relationship between manager profile and CSR practices and that this relation is mediated by the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility. After applying a mediated regression analysis using survey information collected from 149 CEOs in Spain, results (...) show that those closer to the steward model are more inclined to attach great importance to ethics and social responsibility, and to implement CSR practices in their companies. Results also provide support for the suggested mediating effect. Thus, this article extends research in understanding top managers as drivers for CSR and suggests new ways to deal with this issue empirically. (shrink)

Successful formulation and implementation of end-of-life care requires ongoing communication with the patient. When patients, for reasons of general medical or psychiatric illness, fail to verbally communicate, providers must be receptive to messages conveyed through alternate avenues of communication. We present the narrative of a man with schizophrenia who wished to forgo hemodialysis as a study in the ethical importance of attention to nonverbal communication. A multilayered understanding of the patient, as may be provided by both behavioral and motivational models, (...) can inform the provider’s ability to receive, process, and represent communicated content to the patient or his or her surrogate decision-maker. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explain why cultural preservation is important, and in particular, why it is important enough to justify immigration restrictions. I also attempt to explain why one rarely encounters this type of argument in philosophy.

Many believe that because we are so small, we must be utterly insignificant on the cosmic scale. But whether this is so depends on what it takes to be important. On one view, what matters for importance is the difference to value that something makes. On this view, what determines our cosmic importance is not our size, but what else of value is out there. But a rival view also seems plausible: that importance requires sufficient causal impact on the relevant (...) scale; since we have no such impact on the grand scale, that would entail our cosmic insignificance. I argue that despite appearances, causal impact is neither necessary nor sufficient for importance. All that matters is impact on value. Since parts can have non-causal impact on the value of the wholes that contain them, this means that we might have great impact on the grandest scale without ever leaving our little planet. (shrink)

In his reference letter for Murdoch’s 1947 fellowship application at Newnham College, Cambridge, her erstwhile Oxford undergraduate tutor, Donald MacKinnon, remarks that Murdoch is ‘on the threshold of creative work of a high order’. This chapter outlines the nature of that ‘creative work’ and its early development. We show how Murdoch’s close study of the Christian existentialist philosopher and playwright Gabriel Marcel (1883–1973) came to inflect both her early critique of Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialism and her first attempts to show (...) the limits of logical positivism. We explain how once at Cambridge, Murdoch’s exposure to Wittgenstein’s method, through her philosophical friendship with Elizabeth Anscombe, gave her the conceptual means to recast those aspects of Marcel’s thought (as well as those of Martin Buber) that she believed were important but, as she wrote in her application, ‘vague’. We show, finally, how both strands of Murdoch’s thinking are later brought into synchrony in the much-discussed example of M&D. This, in turn, allows us to isolate Murdoch’s understanding of the individual’s relation to their own ‘ghostly past’ and to reveal the importance of Murdoch’s early encounters with Anscombe and Marcel. (shrink)

The study aims to analyze the importance of analogy in the writings of the Czech theologian, philosopher and educational reformer John Amos Comenius. Analogy is clearly invaluable for Comenius as it plays a key role in the introduction of a third, particularly reliable method – syncrisis that allows us to see an image of something invisible (uncreated) on visible (created) things. For Comenius, this method became an integral supplement to analysis and synthesis, with all three forming the basis of all (...) his studies. Syncrisis is principally applied to theological matters, for instance to the study of man, the living image of God that reflects the creator. The analogy of the micro- and macrocosm that Comenius uses is integral to both his epistemology and metaphysics. If a man (the microcosm) attains self-knowledge, he is able to know other humans, the entire material world (the macrocosm), and also his very archetype – God. For Comenius though, man is not only a microcosm but also a little God (mikrotheos), a faithful imprint of God's perfection. Man, created as the culmination of the material world, becomes God's partner in maintaining and completing the entire universe. Human creativity, analogous to God's creative power, plays a decisive role in the creation of other worlds – the World of Human Artifice, the Moral World and the Spiritual World. Ultimately, the collaboration of man and God is an inherent prerequisite to the culmination of creation – the last world, the Eternal World. (shrink)

The importance of preserving trust in physicians and in medical institutions has received widespread attention in recent years. Primarily, this is due to the threats to trust posed by managed care, but there is a general and growing recognition that trust deserves more attention than it traditionally has received in all aspects of medical ethics, law, and public policy. Trust has both intrinsic and instrumental value. Trust is intrinsically important because it is a core characteristic that affects the emotional and (...) interpersonal aspects of the physician/patient relationship. As an instrumental value, trust is widely believed to be essential for effective therapeutic encounters. It has been hypothesized or shown to affect a host of important behaviors and attitudes relating to care, including seeking care, disclosing private information, complying with treatment, and being satisfied with care. Moreover, trust may be a mediator of measurable clinical outcomes and a key factor in the mind–body interactions that underlie placebo/nocebo effects and the effectiveness of alternative medicine. It is no surprise, then, that preserving, justifying, and enhancing trust is the fundamental goal of much of medical ethics, and is a prominent objective in healthcare law and public policy. Discussions of trust and related concepts were commonplace in professionally based medical ethics prior to the 1970s. a 1 2. (shrink)

Relocating Kripke's puzzle about belief, this paper investigates i) in what the puzzle consists, exactly; ii) the method used in its construction; and iii) relations between meaning and rationality. Essential to Kripke's puzzle is a normative notion of contradictory belief. Different positions about the meaning of names yield different views of what constitutes the attribution of contradictory belief; and Kripke's puzzle unwittingly _imports a Millian assumption. Accordingly, the puzzle about belief is not independent of positions about the meaning of names.

In this article I maintain the importance of the Aristotelian concept of prudence or phronesis applied to business ethics, distinguishing its meaning from Solomon and Hartman’s approaches to Aristotelian business ethics. Whereas Solomon stresses the value of perception of particulars and Hartman criticizes the incapacity of Aristotelian phronesis to dwell with the interests of others, I advocate that Aristotelian virtue ethics is important because the concept of phronesis does three things: (a) stresses the rational calculation and general principles or rules (...) in virtue ethics, in general, and business ethics, in particular; (b) provides a communal-based ethics principle; and c) offers us a clear comprehension about what calculation or reasoning is in ethics. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept of management is critically important for understanding managed care. A proper interpretation of management is needed before a positive account of the ethics of managed care can be constructed. The paper discusses three aspects of management: administrative, clinical, and resource management, and compares the central commitments of traditional medical practice with those of managed care for each of these aspects. In so doing, the distinctive conceptual features of the managed care paradigm are discussed. The (...) paper concludes by arguing that the concept of management implicit in the managed care paradigm affords a basis for building a more adequate ethic of managed care. (shrink)

Money is an essential element of everyday life. It is required to keep life going. However, the importance of money is not only in having it to meet one’s needs but also in the proper management of it. Like any other human endeavour, Christian missionary activities involve cash; one cannot talk about it without mentioning money. Nevertheless, money also poses a potential danger to the missionary enterprise. It is therefore important to pay attention to money-related issues in Christian missions because (...) the approach taken in handling money in Christian missions can either promote the gospel or delay its advancement and distort its shape. This article will consider biblical perspective of money, importance of money in Christian missions, challenges related to money in Christian missions and how to handle money in Christian missions before conclusion is drawn. (shrink)

Abstract Recently, some philosophers of psychiatry (viz., Rachel Cooper and Dominic Murphy) have analyzed the issue of psychiatric classification. This paper expands upon these analyses and seeks to demonstrate that a consideration of the history of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) can provide a rich and informative philosophical perspective for critically examining the issue of psychiatric classification. This case is intended to demonstrate the importance of history for philosophy of psychiatry, and more generally, the potential benefits (...) of historically-informed approaches to philosophy of science. (shrink)

BackgroundNational guidelines require programmes use subjective assessments of social support when determining transplant suitability, despite limited evidence linking it to outcomes. We examined how transplant providers weigh the importance of social support for kidney transplantation compared with other factors, and variation by clinical role and personal beliefs.MethodsThe National survey of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and the Society of Transplant Social Work in 2016. Using a discrete choice approach, respondents compared two hypothetical patient profiles and selected one for transplantation. (...) Conditional logistic regression estimated the relative importance of each factor; results were stratified by clinical role and beliefs.ResultsFive hundred and eighy-four transplant providers completed the survey. Social support was the second most influential factor among transplant providers. Providers were most likely to choose a candidate who had social support, always adhered to a medical regimen, and had a 15 years life expectancy with transplant. Psychosocial providers were more influenced by adherence and quality of life compared with medical/surgical providers, who were more influenced by candidates' life expectancy with transplant. For providers concerned with avoiding organ waste, social support was the most influential factor, while it was the least influential for clinicians concerned with fairness.ConclusionsSocial support is highly influential in listing decisions and may exacerbate transplant disparities. Providers’ beliefs and reliance on social support in determining suitability vary considerably, raising concerns about transparency and justice. (shrink)

Today, nurses are required to have knowledge and awareness concerning professional values as standards to provide safe and high-quality ethical care. Nurses’ perspective on professional values affects decision-making and patient care. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the importance of professional values from clinical nurses’ perspective. The present cross-sectional study was conducted in 2016 in four educational hospitals of Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Data were collected via the Persian version of Nursing Professional Values Scale-Revised by Weis and (...) Schank. Sampling was conducted through the use of stratified random sampling method and 250 clinical nurses participated in the study. Results indicated that the total score of the nurses’ professional values was high.. From nurses’ perspective items such as “Maintaining confidentiality of patients” and “Safeguarding patients’ right to privacy” had more importance; however, “Recognizing role of professional nursing associations in shaping healthcare policy” and “Participating in nursing research and/or implementing research findings appropriate to practice had less importance. A statistically significant relationship was observed between NPVS-R mean scores and nurses’ age, work experience as well as participation in professional ethical training. Although the total score related to the clinical nurses’ perspective on professional values was high, the importance of certain values was at a lower level. Owing to the emerging ethical challenges, it is indispensable to design educational programs in order to improve nurses’ awareness and understanding of the comprehensive importance of professional values. Furthermore, it is recommended that mixed methods studies should be conducted in order to design an instrument to evaluate the use of values in nursing practice. (shrink)

Some machine learning models, in particular deep neural networks, are not very well understood; nevertheless, they are frequently used in science. Does this lack of understanding pose a problem for using DNNs to understand empirical phenomena? Emily Sullivan has recently argued that understanding with DNNs is not limited by our lack of understanding of DNNs themselves. In the present paper, we will argue, contra Sullivan, that our current lack of understanding of DNNs does limit our ability to understand with DNNs. (...) Sullivan’s claim hinges on which notion of understanding is at play. If we employ a weak notion of understanding, then her claim is tenable, but rather weak. If, however, we employ a strong notion of understanding, particularly explanatory understanding, then her claim is not tenable. (shrink)

To foster research integrity (RI), it is necessary to address the institutional and system-of-science factors that influence researchers’ behavior. Consequently, research performing and research funding organizations (RPOs and RFOs) could develop comprehensive RI policies outlining the concrete steps they will take to foster RI. So far, there is no consensus on which topics are important to address in RI policies. Therefore, we conducted a three round Delphi survey study to explore which RI topics to address in institutional RI policies by (...) seeking consensus from research policy experts and institutional leaders. A total of 68 RPO and 52 RFO experts, representing different disciplines, countries and genders, completed one, two or all rounds of the study. There was consensus among the experts on the importance of 12 RI topics for RPOs and 11 for RFOs. The topics that ranked highest for RPOs concerned education and training, supervision and mentoring, dealing with RI breaches, and supporting a responsible research process (e.g. through quality assurance). The highest ranked RFO topics concerned dealing with breaches of RI, conflicts of interest, and setting expectations on RPOs (e.g. about educating researchers about RI). Together with the research policy experts and institutional leaders, we developed a comprehensive overview of topics important for inclusion in the RI policies of RPOs and RFOs. The topics reflect preference for a preventative approach to RI, coupled with procedures for dealing with RI breaches. RPOs and RFOs should address each of these topics in order to support researchers in conducting responsible research. (shrink)

BackgroundThere is a lack of empirical research regarding the outcomes of such clinical ethics support methods as moral case deliberation. Empirical research in how healthcare professionals perceive potential outcomes is needed in order to evaluate the value and effectiveness of ethics support; and help to design future outcomes research. The aim was to use the European Moral Case Deliberation Outcome Instrument instrument to examine the importance of various MCD outcomes, according to healthcare professionals, prior to participation.MethodsA North European field survey (...) among healthcare professionals drawn from 73 workplaces in a variety of healthcare settings in the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The Euro-MCD instrument was used.ResultsAll outcomes regarding the domains of moral reflexivity, moral attitude, emotional support, collaboration, impact at organisational level and concrete results, were perceived as very or quite important by 76%–97% of the 703 respondents. Outcomes regarding collaboration and concrete results were perceived as most important. Outcomes assessed as least important were mostly about moral attitude. ‘Better interactions with patient/family’ emerged as a new domain from the qualitative analysis. Dutch respondents perceived most of the outcomes as significantly less important than the Scandinavians, especially regarding emotional support. Furthermore, men, those who were younger, and physician-respondents scored most of the outcomes as statistically significantly less important compared with the other respondents.ConclusionsThe findings indicate a need for a broad instrument such as the Euro-MCD. Outcomes related to better interactions between professionals and patients must also be included in the future. The empirical findings raise the normative question of whether outcomes that were perceived as less important, such as moral reflexivity and moral attitude outcomes, should still be included. In the future, a combination of empirical findings and normative reflection will contribute to the revision of the instrument. (shrink)

The relative importance of the Jones’ [Jones, T. M.: 1991, Academy of Management Review 16(2), 366–395] six components of moral intensity was measured using a conjoint experimental design. The most important components influencing ethical perceptions were: probability of effect, magnitude of consequences, and temporal immediacy. Contrary to previous research, overall social consensus was not an important factor. However, consumers exhibit distinctly different patterns in ethical evaluation, and for approximately 15% of respondents social consensus was the most important dimension.

How important is the ability to freely control eye movements for reading comprehension? And how does the parser make use of this freedom? We investigated these questions using coregistration of eye movements and event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) while participants read either freely or in a computer‐controlled word‐by‐word format (also known as RSVP). Word‐by‐word presentation and natural reading both elicited qualitatively similar ERP effects in response to syntactic and semantic violations (N400 and P600 effects). Comprehension was better in free reading but (...) only in trials in which the eyes regressed to previous material upon encountering the anomaly. A more fine‐grained ERP analysis revealed that these regressions were strongly associated with the well‐known P600 effect. In trials without regressions, we instead found sustained centro‐parietal negativities starting at around 320 ms post‐onset; however, these negativities were only found when the violation occurred in sentence‐final position. Taken together, these results suggest that the sentence processing system engages in strategic choices: In response to words that don't match built‐up expectations, it can either explore alternative interpretations (reflected by regressions, P600 effects, and good comprehension) or pursue a “good‐enough” processing strategy that tolerates a deficient interpretation (reflected by progressive saccades, sustained negativities, and relatively poor comprehension). (shrink)

Baptism has been a focus of significant discussion in the ecumenical movement, as the different churches seek a common understanding of Baptism, with the goal of mutual recognition. The Orthodox Church has been involved in these conversations from the beginning. The present article is an attempt to trace the participation of the Orthodox representatives in these dialogues on Baptism, both at the level of the World Council of Churches and in bilateral dialogues. It explains the Orthodox understanding of Baptism as (...) a Sacrament, how this understanding is reflected (or not) in ecumenical agreements on Baptism. It will also review official Orthodox responses to some of these agreements. The author attempts to demonstrate that the Orthodox Church’s contributions to these sometimes-difficult dialogues have shown a commitment to seeking a common understanding of Baptism. Finally, this paper will examine the present state of ecumenical dialogue on Baptism, and evaluate its prospects for the future. (shrink)