Empathy is a fundamental concept in health care and nursing. In academic literature, it has been primarily defined as a personal ability, act or experience. The relational dimensions of empathy have received far less attention. In our view, individualistic conceptualizations are restricted and do not adequately reflect the practice of empathy in daily care. We argue that a relational conceptualization of empathy contributes to a more realistic, nuanced and deeper understanding of the functions and limitations of empathy in professional care (...) practices. In this article, we explore the relational aspects of empathy, drawing on sources that offer a relational approach, such as the field of care ethics, the phenomenology of Edith Stein and qualitative research into interpersonal and interactive empathy. We analyse the relational aspects of three prevalent components of empathy definitions: the underlying ability or act (i.e. the cognitive, affective and perception abilities that enable empathy); the resulting experience (i.e. empathic understanding and affective responsivity) and the expression of this experience (i.e. empathic expression). Ultimately, we propose four inter‐related understandings of empathy: (a) A co‐creative practice based on the abilities and activities of both the empathizer and the empathee; (b) A fundamentally other‐oriented experience; (c) A dynamic, interactive process in which empathizer and empathee influence each other's experiences; (d) A quality of relationships. (shrink)

Metaphysics, morals and science -- The classics : value -- The neo-classics : utility -- The Keynesian revolution -- Development and under-development -- What are the rules of the game?

I address a question in moral metaphysics: How are conflicts between moral obligations possible? I begin by explaining why we cannot give a satisfactory answer to this question simply by positing that such conflicts are conflicts between rules, principles, or reasons. I then develop and defend the “Dispositional Account,” which posits that conflicts between moral obligations are conflicts between the manifestations of obligating dispositions (obligating powers, capacities, etc.), just as conflicts between physical forces are conflicts between the manifestations of (certain) (...) causal dispositions (causal powers, capacities, etc.). This account combines the so-called “moral forces” interpretation of prima facie obligations with a dispositional moral metaphysic according to which the metaphysical grounds of moral obligations are not rules or laws, but rather real, irreducibly dispositional properties (or powers) of moral agents and patients. My principal aims are to offer a theoretically attractive and suitably metaphysical account of conflicts of obligation, and to show that the dispositional moral metaphysic that grounds the Dispositional Account can explain and accommodate plausible normative views that rule- and law-based alternatives cannot, as well as to answer objections that have been pressed against other accounts of moral conflict (especially Ross’s) that appeal to moral dispositions or forces. (shrink)

Cesario's analysis has three key flaws. First, the focus on whether an effect is “real” overlooks the importance of theory testing. Second, obsession with effects sidelines theoretically informed questions about when and why an effect may arise. Third, failure to take stock of cultural and historical context strips findings of meaning.

Este artículo trata de la posmodernidad como estilo cultural que influye, desde todos los espacios sociales, en el individuo. Analizada como límite extremado de la modernidad, la posmodernidad se ha descrito como la base teórica de la revolución de las tecnologías que han modificado el mundo radicalmente en los últimos veinte años. La economía sigue ocupando un lugar fundamental en esta nueva sociedad, como en todas las anteriores. Pero, ahora el consumo se ha convertido en la variable más importante, y (...) condiciona la vida de los individuos afectando a su propia identidad.This article treats of the postmodern era as cultural style that influences, from all the social spaces, the individual. Analyzed as extreme limit of the modernity, the postmodern era has been described as the theoretical base of the revolution of the technologies that have modified the world radically in the last twenty years. The economy continues occupying a fundamental place in this new society, ,like in all the previous ones. But, now the consumption has turned into the most important variable, and determines the life of the individuals concerning his own identity. (shrink)

Introduction -- The ethics of care and global politics -- Rethinking human security -- 'Women's work' : the global care and sex economies -- Humanitarian intervention and global security governance -- Peacebuilding and paternalism : reading care through postcolonialism -- Health and human security : gender, care and HIV/AIDS -- Gender, care, and the ethics of environmental security -- Conclusion. Security through care.

Starting from the Friday woman lead prayer held in 2005 in New York, I focus in this paper on the role Muslim contemporary women play in shaping Muslim societies and communities to assert their authoritative role “in the mosque”. I begin by setting the scene of the event and, after a brief discussion of its symbolic meaning, I address two main questions: first, how the debate which followed the event contributed and contributes to promote a change inside the Muslim world (...) and outside it, letting emerge some leading figures in the struggle for justice and equity in contemporary Islam; and second which are the theological and legal basis for the role of woman as imāma. Although the issue of women leadership in prayer is far from finding a unanimous consent, the debate demonstrates that some issues can and must be discussed, and that a change is possible only when Muslim women question the male elite power. (shrink)

This book gives a descriptive analysis of specific Madhyamika texts. It compares the ideology of Kumarajiva (a translator of the four Madhyamika treatises 400 A.D.) with the ideologies of the three Chinese contemporaries - HuiYuan, Seng-Jui and Seng-Chao. It envisages an intercultural transmission of religious and philosophical ideas from India to China.

Published in 1982 by CUP (pb. 2009) it discusses the forms of materialism then current, including Davidson, early Rorty, but concentrating on Smart and Armstrong, and arguing that central state materialism fails to give a better 'occurrent' account of conscious states than does behaviourism/functionalism, as Armstrong claims. The book starts with a version of the 'knowledge argument' and ends with a chapter claiming that our conception of matter/the physical is more problematic than our conception of mind.

Introduction -- On human nature -- The strange history of altruism -- The Freudian self -- Thinking again.

In recent decades, issues that reside at the center of philosophical and psychological inquiry have been absorbed into a scientific framework variously identified as "brain science," "cognitive science," and "cognitive neuroscience." Scholars have heralded this development as revolutionary, but a revolution implies an existing method has been overturned in favor of something new. What long-held theories have been abandoned or significantly modified in light of cognitive neuroscience? _Consciousness and Mental Life_ questions our present approach to the study of consciousness and (...) the way modern discoveries either mirror or contradict understandings reached in the centuries leading up to our own. Daniel N. Robinson does not wage an attack on the emerging discipline of cognitive science. Rather, he provides the necessary historical context to properly evaluate the relationship between issues of consciousness and neuroscience and their evolution over time. Robinson begins with Aristotle and the ancient Greeks and continues through to René Descartes, David Hume, William James, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Derek Parfit. Approaching the issue from both a philosophical and a psychological perspective, Robinson identifies what makes the study of consciousness so problematic and asks whether cognitive neuroscience can truly reveal the origins of mental events, emotions, and preference, or if these occurrences are better understood by studying the whole person, not just the brain. Well-reasoned and thoroughly argued, _Consciousness and Mental Life_ corrects many claims made about the success of brain science and provides a valuable historical context for the study of human consciousness. (shrink)

Philosophical dialogue has the power to improve interdisciplinary scientific research. The Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI) conducts workshops that foster philosophical dialogue among interdisciplinary researchers. This chapter focuses on 20 of these workshops, all of which used the Toolbox STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) instrument and were conducted with interdisciplinary research teams of scientists. We analyze data from some of these workshops and demonstrate that philosophical dialogues conducted using the Toolbox method have two salutary effects. First, they lead to a (...) significant increase in belief formation about philosophical topics relevant to interdisciplinary science. Scientists sometimes do not have preconceived commitments on issues in philosophy of science, and Toolbox workshops tend to prompt them to adopt views on these topics. Second, these philosophical …. (shrink)

Available for the first time in English, this is the definitive account of the practice of sexual slavery the Japanese military perpetrated during World War II by the researcher principally responsible for exposing the Japanese government's responsibility for these atrocities. The large scale imprisonment and rape of thousands of women, who were euphemistically called "comfort women" by the Japanese military, first seized public attention in 1991 when three Korean women filed suit in a Toyko District Court stating that they had (...) been forced into sexual servitude and demanding compensation. Since then the comfort stations and their significance have been the subject of ongoing debate and intense activism in Japan, much if it inspired by Yoshimi's investigations. How large a role did the military, and by extension the government, play in setting up and administering these camps? What type of compensation, if any, are the victimized women due? These issues figure prominently in the current Japanese focus on public memory and arguments about the teaching and writing of history and are central to efforts to transform Japanese ways of remembering the war. Yoshimi Yoshiaki provides a wealth of documentation and testimony to prove the existence of some 2,000 centers where as many as 200,000 Korean, Filipina, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Burmese, Dutch, Australian, and some Japanese women were restrained for months and forced to engage in sexual activity with Japanese military personnel. Many of the women were teenagers, some as young as fourteen. To date, the Japanese government has neither admitted responsibility for creating the comfort station system nor given compensation directly to former comfort women. This English edition updates the Japanese edition originally published in 1995 and includes introductions by both the author and the translator placing the story in context for American readers. (shrink)

We provide an overview of a proposal for a new metaphysical framework within which theology and science might both find a home. Our proposal draws on the triadic semiotics and threefold system of metaphysical categories of C. S. Peirce. We summarize the key features of a semiotic model of the Trinity, based on observed parallels between Peirce's categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness and Christian thinking about, respectively, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We test and extend the semiotic model (...) by exploring how Peirce's taxonomy of signs offers a new approach to theological reflection on the Incarnation. This leads to a novel way of framing scientific questions about human evolution in semiotic terms and to a new approach to theological anthropology. Finally, we use the semiotic model of the Trinity as the basis of a trinitarian approach to the theology of creation according to which the semiotic processes that are fundamental to life and to human behavior and cognition may be understood as “vestiges of the Trinity in creation.”. (shrink)

If one of the most important aims of education on military ethics is to strengthen moral competence, we argue that it is important to base ethics education on virtue ethics, the Socratic attitude and the process of ?living learning?. This article illustrates this position by means of the example of a ?train the trainer? course on military ethics for Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs), which is developed at the Netherlands Defence Academy, and uses a number of examples both from its structure and (...) from experiences from its actual use. (shrink)

Virtues are acquirable, so if intellectual humility is a virtue, it’s acquirable. But there is something deeply problematic—perhaps even paradoxical—about aiming to be intellectually humble. Drawing on Edward Slingerland’s analysis of the paradoxical virtue of wu-wei in Trying Not To Try (New York: Crown, 2014), we argue for an anti-individualistic conception of the trait, concluding that one’s intellectual humility depends upon the intellectual humility of others. Slingerland defines wu-wei as the “dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a person (...) who is optimally active and effective” (Trying Not to Try, 7). Someone who embodies wu-wei inspires implicit trust, so it is beneficial to appear wu-wei. This has led to an arms race between faking wu-wei on the one hand and detecting fakery on the other. Likewise, there are many benefits to being (or seeming to be) intellectually humble. But someone who makes conscious, strategic efforts to appear intellectually humble is ipso facto not intellectually humble. Following Slingerland’s lead, we argue that there are several strategies one might pursue to acquire genuine intellectual humility, and all of these involve commitment to shared social or epistemic values, combined with receptivity to feedback from others, who must in turn have and manifest relevant intellectual virtues. In other words, other people and shared values are partial bearers of a given individual’s intellectual humility. If this is on the right track, then acquiring intellectual humility demands epistemic anti-individualism. (shrink)

According to the most popular versions of the flicker defense, Frankfurt-style cases fail to undermine the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) because agents in these cases are (directly) morally responsible not for making the decisions they make but for making these decisions on their own, which is something they could have avoided doing. Frankfurt defenders have primarily focused on trying to show that the alternative possibility of refraining from making the relevant decisions on their own is not a robust alternative, (...) while generally granting that this alternative cannot easily be eliminated from successful cases of this sort. In a recent issue of this journal, Stockdale (2022) attempts to sidestep the debate concerning robustness and develops a novel kind of Frankfurt-style case in which agents are unable to avoid making the relevant decisions on their own. The fundamental problem with Stockdale’s argument is that it hinges on an implausible conception of acting on one’s own. I help clarify the pertinent sense of what it means to do a thing on one’s own in this context and show that these new cases are unable to overcome the targeted versions of the flicker defense of PAP. (shrink)

In the current era, building more innovative teams is key to organizational success, yet there is little consensus on how best to achieve this. Common wisdom suggests that positive reinforcement through shared positive rewards builds social support within teams, and in turn facilitates innovation. Research on basic group processes, cultural rituals, and the evolution of pro-group behavior has, however, revealed that sharing adverse experiences is an alternative path to promoting group bonding. Here, we examined whether sharing an adverse experience not (...) only builds social support within teams, but also in turn enhances creativity within novel teams. Drawing on behavioral observation of an experimental group interaction we find evidence that sharing an adverse (vs. non-adverse) experience leads to increased supportive interactions between team members and this in turn boosts creativity within a novel team. These effects were robust across different indicators of creativity: objective measures of creativity, third party ratings of the creativity of group products, and participants’ own perceptions of group creativity. Our findings offer a new perspective from which to understand how best to boost innovation and creative output within teams. (shrink)

One approach to validating simulation models is to formally compare model outputs with independent data. We consider such model validation from the point of view of Frequentist statistics. A range of estimates and tests of goodness of fit have been advanced. We review these approaches, and demonstrate that some of the tests suffer from difficulties in interpretation because they rely on the null hypothesisHypothesis that the model is similar to the observationsObservations. This reliance creates two unpleasant possibilities, namely, a model (...) could be spuriously validated when dataData are too few, or inappropriately rejected when data are too many. Finally, these tests do not allow a principled declaration of what a reasonable level of difference would be considering the purposes to which the model will be put. We consider equivalence tests, and demonstrate that they do not suffer from the previously identified shortcomings. We provide two case studies to illustrate the claims of the chapter. (shrink)

Ethics, religion, and spirituality -- Spirituality in care -- Spirituality and ethics -- Love -- The community of care : fit for purpose -- Values, virtues, and the patient -- Challenging faith -- Spirituality and the domain of justice.

The simple model maintains that morally relevant factors combine in a simple, additive way, like weights on a scale. Although intuitive and familiar, this model entails that certain plausible views about particular cases and how morally relevant factors combine and interact therein are false. Shelly Kagan suggests that we could accommodate the relevant views and interactions by rejecting either of two assumptions the simple model makes: that the moral status of an act is determined by the sum of the contributions (...) made by each of the factors relevant thereto (additivity); and that neither the “weight” nor the “valence” of a factor’s contribution can be affected by other factors (atomism). But is there an atomistic option, a way of accommodating the relevant views and interactions by rejecting additivity rather than atomism? I argue that developing an atomistic option requires offering a conception of contribution that renders coherent the particular claims that must be true if there is, indeed, such an option. And I consider whether Rossian pluralism—the locus classicus for the idea of a contributory right-making factor—offers the resources necessary to offer such a conception, and whether it could accommodate the relevant views and interactions other than by rejecting atomism. (shrink)

In the preceding article in this section, F. LeRon Shults responds to our article preceding his, “Semiotics as a Metaphysical Framework for Christian Theology.” We respond here to his criticisms of our proposal. We discuss his concerns about the concept of “vestiges of the Trinity in creation” and argue that this does not undermine the absolute ontological difference between God and creation. We offer a clarification of our idea that the Incarnation may be understood, in terms of Peirce's taxonomy of (...) signs, as a qualisign of God's being. Finally, we discuss the idea that all symbols “break on the infinite.”. (shrink)

Chapter 1 The Author: Life and Works 1 . Historical and Cultural Background In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Jews of southern France (the Midi, ...