Here, the authors focus on leaders who dare to lead their schools, districts, universities, and educational organizations to new possibilities. The leadership practices of the individuals featured contribute significantly to craft knowledge and to the discourse on contemporary issues of educational leadership. This book is a report of the results of a collective qualitative inquiry into the leadership of eighteen impressive women educational leaders from Illinois, representing a diversity of roles, community sizes, institutional types, and racial perspectives.

Machine learning algorithms may radically improve our ability to diagnose and treat disease. For moral, legal, and scientific reasons, it is essential that doctors and patients be able to understand and explain the predictions of these models. Scalable, customisable, and ethical solutions can be achieved by working together with relevant stakeholders, including patients, data scientists, and policy makers.

In order to address the influence of unethical leader behaviors in the form of abusive supervision on subordinates’ retaliatory responses, we meta-analytically examined the impact of abusive supervision on subordinate deviance, inclusive of the role of justice and power distance. Specifically, we investigated the mediating role of supervisory- and organizationally focused justice and the moderating role of power distance as one model explaining why and when abusive supervision is related to subordinate deviance toward supervisors and organizations. With 79 independent sample (...) studies, we found that abusive supervision was more strongly related to supervisory-focused justice, compared to organizationally focused justice perceptions, and both types of justice perceptions were related to target-similar deviance. Finally, our results showed that the negative implications of abusive supervision were stronger in lower power distance cultures compared to higher power distance cultures. (shrink)

In health care, the provision of pertinent information to patients is not just a moral imperative but also a legal obligation, often articulated through the lens of obtaining informed consent. Codes of medical ethics and many national laws mandate the disclosure of basic information about diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment alternatives. However, within publicly funded health care systems, other kinds of information might also be important to patients, such as insights into the health care priorities that underlie treatment offers made. While (...) conventional perspectives do not take this as an obligatory part of the information to be shared with patients, perhaps through viewing it as clinically “non-actionable,” we advocate for a paradigm shift. Our proposition diverges from the traditional emphasis on actionability. We contend that honoring patients as equal moral agents necessitates, among other principles, a commitment to honesty. Withholding specific categories of information pertinent to patients’ comprehension of their situation is inherently incompatible with this principle. In this article, we advocate for a recalibration of the burden of proof. Rather than requiring special justifications for adding to the standard set of information items, we suggest that physicians should be able to justify excluding relevant facts about the patient’s situation and the underlying considerations shaping health care professionals’ choices. This perspective prioritizes transparency and empowers patients with a comprehensive understanding, aligning with the ethos of respect for the patient as person. (shrink)

In William Ockham on Metaphysics, Jenny E. Pelletier gives an account of Ockham's concept of metaphysics as the science of being and God as it emerges sporadically throughout his philosophical and theological work.

I welcome Mr Kennedy's general approach, but query whether the concept of consumerism is so closely applicable to medical care as he maintains. However, in particular aspects, especially the handling of complaints, his criticisms echo those made by the Patients Association. Finally, I detect some ground for hope in the more enlightened attitude creeping in to the eduction of the medical student.

Boorse’s biostatistical theory states that diseases should be defined in ways that reflect disturbances of biological function and that are objective and value free. We use three examples from contemporary medicine that demonstrate the complex issues that arise when defining the boundaries of disease: polycystic ovary syndrome, chronic kidney disease, and myocardial infarction. We argue that the biostatistical theory fails to provide sufficient guidance on where the boundaries of disease should be drawn, contains ambiguities relating to choice of reference class, (...) and is out of step with medical processes for identifying disease boundaries. Although proponents of the biostatistical theory might regard these practical issues as irrelevant to the aim of providing a theoretical account of disease, we take them to indicate the need for a theoretical account that is adequate for current needs—including limiting new forms of medicalization that are driven by the identification of disease based on dysfunction. Our processes for determining the boundaries for disease need to recognize that there is no value-free method for making these decisions. (shrink)

In his 1998 book Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds, Lubomír Doležel put forth a theory of narrative fiction based on the interdisciplinary framework of possible worlds. In Possible Worlds of Fiction and History: The Postmodern Stage, Doležel takes his earlier theory further and applies it to historiography as well, with the specific aim of showing how the study of history might be defended against the postmodern challenge via the use of possible worlds semantics. Doležel's book is essentially an argument against (...) the postmodern views expressed by Roland Barthes and Hayden White, who have claimed that fundamentally, there is no difference between fictional and historical narratives. According to Doležel, this difference can be saved if the focus of attention is shifted from the textual features of these narratives to the fictional or historical worlds that the narratives project.Doležel's comparison of fictional and historical worlds to each other is quite illuminating and thorough. However, the question remains whether the application of PW semantics does anything besides offering a detailed analysis of the structure of the different types of narrative worlds. After all, one should not overlook the perhaps more practical way of differentiating between historical and fictional narratives through their institutional status. Furthermore, we argue that by focusing on the properties of the end products, that is, the resulting narratives, Doležel concedes too much to postmodernists. A stronger way to give postmodernists a taste of their own medicine would be to argue that the rules that historians follow in the process of generating, constructing, and evaluating weighed causal explanations are fundamentally different from whatever rules govern the generation and construction of fiction. (shrink)

"As a doctor, I make every effort to strengthen the belief in immortality, especially with older patients when such questions come threateningly close. For, seen in correct psychological perspective, death is not an end but a goal, and life's inclination towards death begins as soon as the meridian is past."--C.G. Jung, commentary on The Secret of the Golden FlowerHere collected for the first time are Jung's views on death and immortality, his writings often coinciding with the death of the most (...) significant people in his life. The book shows many of the major themes running throughout the writings, including the relativity of space and time surrounding death, the link between transference and death, and the archetypes shared among the world's religions at the depths of the Self. The book includes selections from "On Resurrection," "The Soul and Death," "Concerning Rebirth," "Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead" from the Collected Works, "Letter to Pastor Pfafflin" from Letters, and "On Life after Death.". (shrink)

This book will give unique insight into how a new generation of Bourdieusian researchers apply Bourdieu to contemporary issues. It will provide a discussion of the working mechanisms of thinking through and/or with Bourdieu when analysing data. In each chapter, individual authors discuss and reflect upon their own research and the ways in which they put Bourdieu to work. The aim of this book is not to just to provide examples of the development of Bourdieusian research, but for each author (...) to reflect on the ways in which they came across Bourdieu's work, why it speaks to them (including a reflexive consideration of their own background), and the way in which it is thus useful in their thinking. Many of the authors were introduced to Bourdieu's works after his death. The research problems which the individual authors tackle are contextualised in a different time and space to the one Bourdieu occupied when he was developing his conceptual framework. This book will demonstrate how his concepts can be applied as "thinking tools" to understand contemporary social reality. Throughout Bourdieu's career, he argued that sociologists need to create an epistemological break, to abandon our common sense - or as much as we can - and to formulate findings from our results. In essence, we are putting Bourdieu to work to provide a structural constructivist approach to social reality anchored through empirical reflexivity. (shrink)

This article considers how Christ’s mission is furthered by international theological education in the 21st century. The sociological and missiological roles of education in forming culture are briefly introduced, followed by a discussion of the benefits of international theological education in particular. An overview of international student migration is given before considering a contemporary example of international theological education. A case study is shared on the migration outcomes of foreign international graduates from a US seminary. Six life circumstances of these (...) international students are examined for correlation with their geographic choice of location upon graduation. Missiological implications from these results are discussed. Findings are relevant for ministry organizations, churches, and institutions. (shrink)

Giorgio Agamben, a philosopher both celebrated and reviled, is among the prominent voices in contemporary Italian thought today. His work, which touches upon fields as diverse as aesthetics and biopolitics, is often understood within a framework of Aristotelian potentiality. With this incisive critique, Doussan identifies a different tendency in the philosopher's work, an engagement with the problem of time that is inextricably bound up with language and visuality. Founded in his early writings on metaphysics and continuing to his present occupation (...) with inoperativity, Time, Language and Visuality in Agamben's Philosophy forges an original path through Agamben's extensive commentary on the linguistic and the visual to illuminate the recurrent temporal theme of capture and evasion the cat-and-mouse game that bears the foundational violence of not just representation but concept-formation itself. In the process, Doussan both reveals its limit and establishes a ground for future engagements. (shrink)

The Greek word eoikos can be translated in various ways. It can be used to describe similarity, plausibility or even suitability. This book explores the philosophical exploitation of its multiple meanings by three philosophers, Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato. It offers new interpretations of the way that each employs the term to describe the status of their philosophy, tracing the development of this philosophical use of eoikos from the fallibilism of Xenophanes through the deceptive cosmology of Parmenides to Plato's Timaeus. The (...) central premise of the book is that, in reflecting on the eoikos status of their accounts, Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato are manipulating the contexts and connotations of the term as it has been used by their predecessors. By focusing on this continuity in the development of the philosophical use of eoikos, the book serves to enhance our understanding of the epistemology and methodology of Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato's Timaeus. (shrink)

The core idea of social constructivism in mathematics is that mathematical entities are social constructs that exist in virtue of social practices, similar to more familiar social entities like institutions and money. Julian C. Cole has presented an institutional version of social constructivism about mathematics based on John Searle’s theory of the construction of the social reality. In this paper, I consider what merits social constructivism has and examine how well Cole’s institutional account meets the challenge of accounting for the (...) characteristic features of mathematics, especially objectivity and applicability. I propose that in general social constructivism shows promise as an ontology of mathematics, because the view can agree with mathematical practice and it offers a way of understanding how mathematical entities can be real without conflicting with a scientific picture of reality. However, I argue that Cole’s specific theory does not provide an adequate social constructivist account of mathematics. His institutional account fails to sufficiently explain the objectivity and applicability of mathematics, because the explanations are weakened and limited by the three-level theoretical model underlying Cole’s account of the construction of mathematical reality and by the use of the Searlean institutional framework. The shortcomings of Cole’s theory give reason to suspect that the Searlean framework is not an optimal way to defend the view that mathematical reality is socially constructed. (shrink)

I develop a theory of counterfactuals about relative computability, i.e. counterfactuals such as 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then the halting problem would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is true, and 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then arithmetical truth would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is false. These counterfactuals are counterpossibles, i.e. they have metaphysically impossible antecedents. They thus pose a challenge to the orthodoxy about counterfactuals, which would treat them as uniformly true. What’s more, I (...) argue that these counterpossibles don’t just appear in the periphery of relative computability theory but instead they play an ineliminable role in the development of the theory. Finally, I present and discuss a model theory for these counterfactuals that is a straightforward extension of the familiar comparative similarity models. (shrink)

This open access book presents an ethical approach to utilizing personal medical data. It features essays that combine academic argument with practical application of ethical principles. The contributors are experts in ethics and law. They address the challenges in the re-use of medical data of the deceased on a voluntary basis. This pioneering study looks at the many factors involved when individuals and organizations wish to share information for research, policy-making, and humanitarian purposes. -/- Today, it is easy to donate (...) blood or even organs, but it is virtually impossible to donate one’s own medical data. This is seen as ethically unacceptable. Yet, data donation can greatly benefit the welfare of our societies. This collection provides timely interdisciplinary research on biomedical big data. Topics include the ethics of data donation, the legal and regulatory challenges, and the current and future collaborations. -/- Readers will learn about the ethical and regulatory challenges associated with medical data donations. They will also better understand the special nature of using deceased data for research purposes with regard to ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, and justice. In addition, the contributors identify the key governance issues of such a scheme. The essays also look at what we can learn in terms of best practice from existing medical data schemes. (shrink)

The frequency and severity of natural disasters and extreme weather events are increasing, taking a dramatic economic and relational toll on the communities they strike. Given the critical role that entrepreneurship plays in a community’s viability, it is necessary to understand how small business owners respond to these events and move forward over time. This study explores the long-term dynamics and trajectory of individuals within the broader business community following a natural disaster, paying particular attention to the influence of social (...) identity. Results suggest that the community identity changes over the course of recovery and rebuilding, underscoring the need for a holistic approach so that intervening agencies can achieve the sustainable economic recovery desired. (shrink)

Given his known predilection for ontological parsimony, Ockham’s ontology of artifacts is unsurprisingly reductionist: artifacts are nothing over and above their existing and appropriately ordered parts. However, the case of artifacts is notable in that they are real objects that human artisans produce by bringing about a real change: they spatially rearrange existing natural thing(s) or their parts for the sake of some end. This article argues that the human contribution to the nature and production of artifacts is two-fold: (1) (...) the artisan’s cognitive grasp of her expertise and her decision to deploy that expertise are the two efficient causes necessary to explain the existence of an artifact, and (2) the purpose that the artisan had in mind when she decided to make an artifact fixes the function(s) of the artifact such that an artisan’s purpose is the final cause necessary to explain what an artifact is. Artifacts indeed exist, owing what they are and that they are to intelligent and volitional human activity, which Ockham never denies. The article submits that a myopic focus on Ockham’s indisputable reductionism does not exhaust what is metaphysically interesting and relevant about artifacts. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the various meanings of embodiment from a patient’s perspective. Resorting to phenomenology of health and medicine, I take the idea of ‘lived experience’ as starting point. On the basis of an analysis of phenomenology’s call for bracketing the natural attitude and its reduction to the transcendental, I will explain, however, that in medical phenomenological literature ‘lived experience’ is commonly one-sidedly interpreted. In my paper, I clarify in what way the idea of ‘lived experience’ should be (...) revisited and, subsequently, what this reconsideration means for phenomenological research on embodiment in health and medicine. The insight that the body is a condition of possibility for world-disclosing yet, at the same time, itself conditioned by this world forces us to not only zoom in on the body’s subject-side, but also on its object-side. I argue that in order to render account for this double body ontology, phenomenology should include empirical sociological analyses as well. I thus argue in favor of the idea of a socio-phenomenology. Drawing on material from my own research project on embodied self-experiences after breast surgery, I show how this approach can be fruitful in interpreting the impact of disfigurements on a person’s embodied agency, or a person’s ‘I can’. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of strategic conversations in corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy formation. The authors suggest that explicitly engaging stakeholders in the CSR strategy-making process, through the mechanism of strategic conversations, will minimize future stakeholder concerns and enhance CSR strategy making. In addition, suggestions for future research are offered to enable a better understanding of effective strategic conversation processes in CSR strategy making and the resulting performance outcomes.

I said at the beginning that some quantum leaps in our thinking would be required as we face up to the challenges and changes that health care delivery will and must undergo.It is not a matter of politics, it is a matter of pragmatism.It is a matter of reality and it's a matter of simply having to face up to what, may I say, has been glaringly obious for some time.I know that doctors come with a strong ethos in terms (...) of their commitment to their patient and that is as it should be, but governments are always going to be constrained by the amount of money that is available to spend in any one particular field of health service.Within the priorities that governments have, health versus education, versus welfare, versus debt, debates will continue to be had.One of the strengths of New Zealand's health services, with its contracting arrangements, is that it is able to respond flexibly to the priorities that the government sets for the health services it seeks to deliver to every person in New Zealand.I am very optimistic that over time this new model of funding of our New Zealand health services will see a fairer distribution of the health dollars available to meet the wide range of medical needs of New Zealanders.Health care delivery is changing rapidly around the world.If we are to keep up in the future we must be realistic now. The challenge is mine as Minister of Health. The challenge is yours as health professionals. The challenge is ours as a community. (shrink)

This edition includes a new chapter on scepticism.

In 1820, a Handbook of the Flora of Scandinavia by Carl Hartman was published in Stockholm by Zacharias Haeggström. The Handbook was a successful project for both author and publisher: similar enough to textbooks and academic publications to appeal in educational settings, yet ostensibly written for the general public. The Handbook went through eleven editions, becoming the standard reference flora for Swedish botanists – academic as well as others – before being succeeded after 1879 by a range of specialized floras (...) aimed at schoolboys, students, or academic botanists. The trajectory of Hartman’s Handbook through the nineteenth century highlights the changing conditions of Swedish botanical publication. It draws attention to authorship as a scientific career tool, and, conversely, the significance of scientific texts in the emergence of commercial publishing in the first half of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Ryan, Jennie A current search of reliable internet sources gives the present number of recognised major world religions as somewhere between twenty two and twenty five. These religions have approximately 6.9 billion adherents. Recent meta-analysis of a range of surveys into non-belief in 'God' has reported that between 7% and 10% of the world's population identifies as non-theistic . Out of the top fifty countries with the largest percentage of self-professed atheists, , close to 80% are developed, democratic, mostly European (...) countries, with high standards of public healthcare and accessible food, water and housing. (shrink)

A direct and wide-ranging introduction to the main themes and problems of philosophy as it is taught in the anglo-american tradition. An ideal primer for beginning undergraduates.

What Is Race? Evidence from Scientists is a picture book for schoolchildren published by UNESCO as part of its high-profile campaign on race. The 87-page, oblong, soft-cover booklet contains bold, semi-abstract, pared-down images accompanied by text, devised to make scientific concepts ‘more easily intelligible to the layman’. Produced by UNESCO’s Department of Mass Communication, the picture book represents the organization’s early-postwar confidence in the power of scientific knowledge as a social remedy and diplomatic tool. In keeping with a significant component (...) of the race campaign, What Is Race? presented genetics as the route to an enlightened, scientific, non-prejudiced understanding of race. This article seeks to explain the book’s management, aesthetics and framing in the context of postwar disciplinary and international politics. Viewing UNESCO’s race campaign as a high point for an internationalist ideology of mass education, this article also analyses the visual and literary arguments of What Is Race? and proposes that the enduring image of genetics as technical and neutral knowledge was in part shaped by UNESCO’s efforts to communicate scientific authority to an apparently ‘popular’ audience. (shrink)

One famous debate in contemporary epistemology considers whether there is always one unique, epistemically rational way to respond to a given body of evidence. Generally speaking, answering “yes” to this question makes one a proponent of the Uniqueness thesis, while those who answer “no” are called “permissivists”. Another influential recent debate concerns whether non-truth-related factors can be the basis of epistemic justification, knowledge, or rational belief. Traditional theories answer “no”, and are therefore considered “purists”. However, more recently many theorists have (...) argued to the contrary, claiming that impurist factors, such as practical stakes, can sometimes encroach or even override truth-related considerations. This paper bridges the two debates by presenting and defending what I call “Impurist Permissivism”. I support Impurist Permissivism by showing how it can resist Roger White’s famous Argument from Arbitrariness (2005). (shrink)

Is God dead? -- The western split : transcendent, deity, desacralised nature -- The western split : God's otherness, humanity's degradation -- The western split : gender discrimination, its origins, and its consequences -- Energy and divinity -- Divinity within -- The Christian doctrine of incarnation : restricted immanence -- Incarnation and atonement mythology -- Creativity, divine, and human -- Divinity and ethics -- Religion and science -- The problem of evil : providence -- Death and beyond.

ABSTRACT This paper reconstructs William of Ockham's (c. 1287–1347) account of the ontology of social groups. Across his writings, Ockham mentions kingdoms, religious orders, crowds, people, armies, and corporations. Using the political community as a case-study against the background of Ockham’s metaphysics of parts and wholes, it is argued that at least some social groups are identical to a plurality of many human beings who have decided to order themselves with respect to another in some particular way. In this regard, (...) a social group is a structured aggregate that is nothing over and above its existing and ordered parts, and, at least in the case of the political community, is like an artefact inasmuch as it is partly dependent on the volitional acts of its members to exist at all. (shrink)

OBJECTIVE: To apply component analysis, a structured approach to the ethical analysis of risks and potential benefits in research, to published emergency research using a waiver of/exception from informed consent. The hypothesis was that component analysis could be used with a high degree of interrater reliability, and that the vast majority of emergency research would comply with a minimal-risk threshold. METHODS: A Medline search and manual search were done to identify studies using a waiver of/exception from informed consent published between (...) July 1996 and December 2000. A review panel of physicians and bioethicists independently classified nontherapeutic procedures in each study as minimal risk, probably minimal risk, or probably more than minimal risk. RESULTS: Seventy studies using a waiver of/exception from informed consent were identified. A majority of reviewers classified nontherapeutic procedures in 62 studies (88.6%) as minimal risk. Reviewers classified nontherapeutic procedures in six studies (8.6%) as minimal risk or probably minimal risk. In two studies (2.9%), nontherapeutic procedures were classified as probably more than minimal risk. The intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.89 (95% CI = 0.85 to 0.93), indicating very high interrater reliability. CONCLUSIONS: Component analysis can be used with high reliability to review emergency research and may improve the consistency of institutional review board review of emergency research. The vast majority of published emergency research performed using a waiver of/exception from consent complies with a properly-applied minimal-risk threshold. A minimal-risk threshold for nontherapeutic procedures protects subjects better than current U.S. regulations while permitting important emergency research to continue. (shrink)

This article contributes to a more nuanced and contextual approach to women’s decision-making concerning their stored IVF (in vitro fertilisation) embryos through attempting to craft a space for the expression of the complex, and contradictory, emotions attached to these decisions, unhooked from any notion of abstract moral status inhering in the embryo itself. Women struggle to express the confounding nature of the relationship to the stored IVF embryo as something of-the-body but not within the body, neither self nor other, person (...) nor thing. In order to try to address this sense of the ineffable, I draw in this article upon a series of images by German-born American artist, Kiki Smith. The article explores three major themes, each alongside one of Smith’s artworks connecting to an experience of discomfort or confounding unease. (shrink)

Probably the main purpose of reproductive technologies is to enable people who choose to do so to avoid the birth of a baby with a disabling condition. However the conditions women want information about and the ‘price’ they are willing to pay for obtaining that information vary enormously. Individual women have to arrive at their own prenatal testing choices by ‘trading off’ means and ends in order to resolve the dilemmas facing them. We know very little about how individuals make (...) these trade-offs, so it is difficult to predict how new technologies will affect their choices and preferences. Uptake decisions can be expected to change, especially in the group of women who now are put off by some aspect of the current screening approach, where the avoidance of miscarriage risk may have provided a kind of ‘psychological shelter’, protecting a lot of people from having to make other decisions. Technologies such as Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis may remove a second ‘psychological shelter’ because they offer the means of avoiding the birth of an affected child without terminating a pregnancy. Even if new technologies will make some decisions easier in terms of their cognitive demands, they will also create new dilemmas and decision making will not necessarily become less stressful in emotional terms. Key challenges concern information and decision-making. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs William of Ockham's account of the ontology of social groups. Across his writings, Ockham mentions kingdoms, religious orders, crowds, people, armies, and cor...

Introduction -- Time and matter: temporality, embodied subjectivity and film phenomenology -- Knowing and nothing: Chris Marker, subjective temporalities and vocalic bodies in the future tense -- Agnès Varda's Trinket box: subjective relationality, affect and temporalised space -- Burlesque gestures and bodily attention: phenomenologies of the ephemeral in Chantal Akerman -- Threatened corporealities: thinking with the films of Philippe Grandrieux -- Conclusion: rethinking cinematic subjectivity and beyond.

Although scars never disappear completely, in time most people will basically get used to them. In this paper I explore what it means to habituate to scars against the background of the phenomenological concept of incorporation. In phenomenology the body as Leib or corps vécu functions as a transcendental condition for world disclosure. Because of this transcendental reasoning, phenomenology prioritizes a form of embodied subjectivity that is virtually dis-embodied. Endowing meaning to one’s world through getting engaged in actions and projects (...) is most successful indeed when one’s body is “absent,” “transparent,” or, at least, if it is not in the center of one’s attention. This taken-for-granted nature can be disturbed by discomfort, disability, and disfigurement. Incorporation, so I explain, aims at maintaining or restoring the body’s taken-for-grantedness. My analysis of the case of a woman who successfully habituated to her mastectomy scar demonstrates, however, that habituation to a perceptible scar can only be understood partly in terms of incorporation. Next to a decrease of explicit attention for the scar and the discomfort it produces, the scar should also stop being a sign that refers to something else than itself. This is only possible, I argue, by taking the body’s materiality seriously, rather than it being wiped out as a result of transcendental reasoning. (shrink)