From the state to the family: reconfiguring the responsibility for long‐term nursing care at homeThis paper discusses the implications of the shift in the location of the provision of healthcare services from healthcare institutions to the home, which has occurred or is projected to occur in coming years. It is argued that the responsibility for the provision of care and assistance needed by the elderly living at home and people with long‐term conditions living at home has shifted from public services (...) to the family. Studies of care‐givers have shown that in many situations they experience tremendous burdens, financial difficulties and health problems. Their social lives have been confined to the home, and contacts with friends and neighbors have been significantly reduced. This situation needs to be addressed by nurses, who in many cases serve as the bridge between the home and the official healthcare system. Using Foucault’s exploration of power, particularly his idea of governmentality, a genealogy of care‐giving in the home in Iceland’s health‐care has been constructed. The main findings were that, although this is occurring somewhat later than in many other countries, the state is withdrawing from its previously defined responsibility for the health and well‐being of the nation. At the same time the citizen’s responsibility for maintaining health is emphasized. Based on these findings, the argument is made that nurses in Iceland can have a profound influence on policy‐making in relation to the organization of services provided in those homes. Suggestions are made as to how this can be done, which may be of interest to nurses in other countries. (shrink)

In recent years, much attention has been paid to how older people living at home can remain independent and manage their illness themselves, while less attention has been given to those who have become frail and need assistance with challenges of everyday life. In this article, I drew on Latimer's formulation of care for frail older people as relational and world‐making and on Foucault's work related to the care of the self in developing an understanding of how frail older persons (...) manage to live well at home in the final years of their lives. I use data from an ethnographic study of home care nursing in the homes of 15 frail older people to develop an understanding of how their care at home can be developed. The participants were holding on to life, which reflected their vitality and vulnerability as well as agency in continuing to explore ways to preserve and build their world at home. With declining ability and stamina relations with material things, relatives and official care workers become of central importance in holding on to life. Home care services can be thought of as part of life, as world‐forming, where workers contribute to daily activities that support living well at home. (shrink)

In the field of health technology assessment, there are several approaches that can be used for ethical analysis. However, there is a scarcity of literature that critically evaluates and compares the strength and weaknesses of these approaches when they are applied in practice. In this paper, we analyse the applicability of some selected approaches for addressing ethical issues in HTA in the field of complex health interventions. Complex health interventions have been the focus of methodological attention in HTA. However, the (...) potential methodological challenges for ethical analysis are as yet unknown.Six of the most frequently described and applied ethical approaches in HTA were critically assessed against a set of five characteristics of complex health interventions: multiple and changing perspectives, indeterminate phenomena, uncertain causality, unpredictable outcomes, and ethical complexity. The assessments are based on literature and the authors’ experiences of developing, applying and assessing the approaches.The Interactive, participatory HTA approach is by its nature and flexibility, applicable across most complexity characteristics. Wide Reflective Equilibrium is also flexible and its openness to different perspectives makes it better suited for complex health interventions than more rigid conventional approaches, such as Principlism and Casuistry. Approaches developed for HTA purposes are fairly applicable for complex health interventions, which one could expect because they include various ethical perspectives, such as the HTA Core Model® and the Socratic approach.This study shows how the applicability for addressing ethical issues in HTA of complex health interventions differs between the selected ethical approaches. Knowledge about these differences may be helpful when choosing and applying an approach for ethical analyses in HTA. We believe that the study contributes to increasing awareness and interest of the ethical aspects of complex health interventions in general. (shrink)

In 2008, the Minister of Health for Iceland issued a new regulation intended to govern assessment practices related to placement in nursing homes. One of the aims of the regulation was to ensure that those with the most severe need would have priority. This would be achieved, in part, by requiring older people to exhaust all available community‐based service options before an assessment for placement would even take place. The new regulation was received with some hostility and criticism on the (...) part of older people and their relatives, who described the changed expectations as ‘abandonment’ by the authorities. We present our analysis of these changes by examining how older people and families are reconfigured through the new policy and argue that this ‘new’ practice of de‐institutionalization is underpinned by a shifting epistemic and normative context that is working to create a new identity and a different way of life in advanced age in Iceland. The analysis has implications for other nations as well, as much policy related to older people is broadly informed by this idea that ‘home is best’, that is, the idea that more care simply needs to happen outside of institutional settings. (shrink)

The Nordic countries have been major contributors to peacekeeping, often seen as particularly well suited due to their lack of ties to colonialism and supposedly peaceful nature. The article critically addresses this idea in relation to how gender equality has been conceptualized in peacekeeping taking as an example Icelandic peacekeeping. Iceland’s recent engagement in peacekeeping has strongly emphasized gender issues but has lacked an engagement with issues of power and domination and thus reflects a particular idea of ‘Nordic exceptionalism’. The (...) authors emphasize in their discussion the need to maintain critical feminist perspectives that take diverse relations of power into account. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of nursing as a knowledgeable discipline. We examined ways in which knowledge operates in the practice of home care nursing and explored how knowledge might be fruitfully understood within the ambiguous spaces and competing temporalities characterizing contemporary healthcare services. Two popular metaphors of knowledge in nursing practice were identified and critically examined; evidence-based practice and the nurse as an intuitive worker. Pointing to faults in these conceptualizations, we suggest a different way of conceptualizing the relationship (...) between knowledge and practice, namely practice as being activated by contextualized knowledge. This conceptualization is captured in an understanding of the intelligent creation of context by the nurse for nursing practice to be ethical and effective. (shrink)

In the face of environmental crises such as climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss—which all adversely impact on health—Gils-Schmidt and Salloch explore whether physicians can be justified in taking climate issues into account in clinical care.1 While their approach centres on the ‘climate-sensitive’ decisions, physicians can carry out on the micro-level of clinical decision-making, they encourage further discussions on how climate-related issues can be included across different levels of decision-making in healthcare. We propose a list of tasks and a model (...) to assist with navigating the range of factors and structural elements an environmentally sensitive ethics must address. Stephen Gardiner’s notion of a perfect moral storm is central to understanding these issues.2 Gardiner describes how a perfect moral storm occurs in the centre of three overlapping conditions for human action and policymaking in the face of climate change. This storm is driven by: (1) a lack of interest among current generations to meet global needs and accommodate the well-being of future generations, (2) a lack of ecological concerns for other parts of nature than humans and (3) weak ethical and political theories and institutions shaping policy decisions on issues with severe implications across borders and generations. Moreover, these conditions are embedded in the existing, complex world of ethically unjustified power imbalances and social injustice. The growing awareness of healthcare’s climate footprint has amplified and accelerated global, grassroots action to make healthcare more environmentally friendly. This includes incorporating environmental impacts into quality improvement methodologies, building communities of practice to explore how to make …. (shrink)

This article examines the role of medical doctors, AI designers, and other stakeholders in making applied AI and machine learning ethically acceptable on the general premises of shared decision-making in medicine. Recent policy documents such as the EU strategy on trustworthy AI and the research literature have often suggested that AI could be made ethically acceptable by increased collaboration between developers and other stakeholders. The article articulates and examines four central alternative models of how AI can be designed and applied (...) in patient care, which we call the ordinary evidence model, the ethical design model, the collaborative model, and the public deliberation model. We argue that the collaborative model is the most promising for covering most AI technology, while the public deliberation model is called for when the technology is recognized as fundamentally transforming the conditions for ethical shared decision-making. (shrink)

Trust relations in the health services have changed from asymmetrical paternalism to symmetrical autonomy-based participation, according to a common account. The promises of personalized medicine emphasizing empowerment of the individual through active participation in managing her health, disease and well-being, is characteristic of symmetrical trust. In the influential Kantian account of autonomy, active participation in management of own health is not only an opportunity, but an obligation. Personalized medicine is made possible by the digitalization of medicine with an ensuing increased (...) tailoring of diagnostics, treatment and prevention to the individual. The ideal is to increase wellness by minimizing the layer of interpretation and translation between relevant health information and the patient or user. Arguably, this opens for a new level of autonomy through increased participation in treatment and prevention, and by that, increased empowerment of the individual. However, the empirical realities reveal a more complicated landscape disturbed by information ‘noise’ and involving a number of complementary areas of expertise and technologies, hiding the source and logic of data interpretation. This has lead to calls for a return to a mild form of paternalism, allowing expertise coaching of patients and even withholding information, with patients escaping responsibility through blind or lazy trust. This is morally unacceptable, according to Kant’s ideal of enlightenment, as we have a duty to take responsibility by trusting others reflexively, even as patients. Realizing the promises of personalized medicine requires a system of institutional controls of information and diagnostics, accessible for non-specialists, supported by medical expertise that can function as the accountable gate-keeper taking moral responsibility required for an active, reflexive trust. (shrink)

Machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence can improve parts of clinical decision making regarding the gathering and analysis of data, the detection of disease, and the provis...

Current debate and policy surrounding the use of genetic editing in humans often relies on a binary distinction between therapy and human enhancement. In this paper, we argue that this dichotomy fails to take into account perhaps the most significant potential uses of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in humans. We argue that genetic treatment of sporadic Alzheimer’s disease, breast- and ovarian-cancer causing BRCA1/2 mutations and the introduction of HIV resistance in humans should be considered within a new category of genetic protection (...) treatments. We find that if this category is not introduced, life-altering research might be unnecessarily limited by current or future policy. Otherwise ad hoc decisions might be made, which introduce a risk of unforeseen moral costs, and might overlook or fail to address some important opportunities. (shrink)

En skumrand (poem) av A. Larsen.--Platons øyeblikks-filosofi eller Dialogen Parmenides' 3. hypotese, av E.A. Wyller.--Gresk og israelittisk historiesyn, av T. Boman.--Lukrets, dikter og filosof, av E. Skard.--Amor og Psyche, elskoven og sjelen, av H.P. L'Orange.--Augustins liv og lære, av P. Dietrichson.--Thomas Aquinas' syn på naturvitenskapene, av D. Føllesdal.--Mester Eckehart, av A. Brynildsen.--Renessanse-humanistene og "humanitas," av P. Svendsen.--Striden mellom de gamle og de nye, av A. Aarnes.--Harmonitanken i Schillers filosofiske avhandlinger, av O. Koppang.--Grunntrekk i Wilhelm von Humboldts sprogfilosofi, av I. Dal.--Noen (...) bemerkninger til Dostojevskijs Storinkvisitoren, av E. Krag.--Speculum og analogi i Peer Gynt, av B. Blekastad.--Om pakt-begrepet i "Kristin Lavrandsdatter," av D. Haakonsen.--Subjektivitet og sanning, av H. Skjervheim.--Refleksjoner om helhetssyn, sannhet og kunnskap, av A. Næss.--I tid og rum (poem) av A. Øverland. (shrink)

Ereignet sich anstelle von Klang oder Sprache, Musik oder Lärm lediglich Stille oder vielmehr das, was wir für Stille halten, kommt ein unerwartetes Aufmerken in Gang. Die Stille kann auffordern, genauer hinzuhören, aber auch genauer hinzusehen. Ein plötzliches Aufmerken geschieht jedoch nur, wenn die Stille den Wahrnehmenden unerwartet trifft. Einer im Alltäglichen zumeist durch die Priorität des Bewussten, Bekannten oder Vertrauten untergeordneten Stille, können Arbeiten, wie jene von Aernout Mik, eine konkrete Erfahrbarkeit geben. Was er erfahrbar werden lässt, ist aber (...) nicht die Stille, sondern das, was in der Regel überhört wird. In der Verkehrung des vermeintlich Unhörbaren in ein Hörbares zeigt sich mit der Stille ein Möglichkeitsraum, dessen Besonderheit die Autorin mit der Frage, was sich in der Erfahrung von Stille zeigt, nachgeht. Ist also von einer Stille als ästhetischem Phänomen die Rede, ist nicht eine Stille innerhalb der Rezeption genuin stiller Kunstwerke gemeint, sondern der bewusste Entzug des Auditiven. Damit widerspricht die Autorin zugleich einer Vorstellung von Stille als mess- oder bestimmbarer Grösse und stellt die Stille aus der ästhetischen Erfahrung heraus ins Zentrum ihrer Betrachtungen. (shrink)

Philosophical attention to animals can be found in a wide range of texts throughout the history of philosophy, including discussions of animal classification in Aristotle and Ibn Bâjja, of animal rationality in Porphyry, Chrysippus, Aquinas and Kant, of mental continuity and the nature of the mental in Dharmakīrti, Telesio, Conway, Descartes, Cavendish, and Voltaire, of animal self-consciousness in Ibn Sina, of understanding what others think and feel in Zhuangzi, of animal emotion in Śāntarakṣita and Bentham, and of human cultural uniqueness (...) in Xunzi. In recent years, there has been increased attention to animal minds in philosophical discussions across many areas of metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory. Given that nonhuman animals share some biological and psychological features with humans, and that we share community, land, and other resources, consideration of nonhuman animals has much to contribute to our philosophical activities. -/- Contemporary philosophy of animal minds often also engages with the sciences of animal cognition and behavior. The science of comparative cognition is a thriving area of research, complementing the philosophical study in two ways. For one, philosophers of animal cognition can use claims resulting from animal cognition studies as premises in philosophical discussions. For example, Jacob Beck (2012) relies on pigeons’ abilities to compare quantities to argue for nonconceptual content; Sidney Carls-Diamante (forthcoming) appeals to octopus behavior and physiology to defend embodied cognition; Richard Moore (2016a) refers to ape gestural communication to rethink the requirements for intentional communication; Andrew Barron and Colin Klein (2016) appeal to insect cognition research to defend new theories of consciousness; Sarah Vincent, Rebecca Ring, and Kristin Andrews (2019) cite dolphins’ social practices to argue for the existence of norms that do not require metacognition. -/- In addition, philosophers of animal cognition can examine the epistemology and methods used to justify the claims that arise from the science. Research into animal cognition has resulted in surprising claims about animal capacities, such as sociality in garter snakes (Skinner & Miller 2020), tool-use in ants (Maák et al. 2017), mirror self-recognition in fish (Kohda et al. 2019), empathy in rats (Bartal et al. 2011), social learning in fruit flies (Danchin et al. 2018), episodic memory in dogs (Fugazza et al. 2020), addition and subtraction in bees (Howard et al. 2019). How should we evaluate such claims? -/- Some philosophers have argued that animal cognition research is held to a higher standard than human cognition research, and that scientists working with animals are sometimes asked to solve skeptical problems (Halina 2015). Others have challenged scientific assumptions about the relationship between brain size and intelligence, as well as biases against invertebrates (Mikhalevich & Powell 2020). -/- Animal cognition research challenges philosophers to consider that many capacities and behaviors often assumed to require language, sophisticated technological capacities, or legal systems may in fact be had by other animals who lack these properties. In this way, animal cognition research often surprises us by showing that sophisticated-looking activity can be caused through rather simple mechanisms. -/- 1. What is Animal Cognition? 2. Philosophical Assumptions in the Study of Animal Cognition 2.1 Theory-ladenness 2.2 Value-ladenness 2.3 Objectivity 2.4 Simplicity 2.5 Summary 3. Animal Cognition Applied to Philosophy 3.1 The problem of other minds 3.2 The mind-body problem 3.3 Consciousness 3.4 Thought 3.5 Communication 3.6 Social understanding 3.7 The influence of animal cognition on value theory 3.7.1 Ethics 3.7.2 Political theory 3.8 Summary Bibliography Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries. (shrink)

How do feminists in the United Kingdom view spirituality and religion? What are their religious and spiritual attitudes, beliefs, and practices? What role do spirituality and religion play in feminists’ lives? This article presents findings from an interview-based study of 30 feminists in England, Scotland, and Wales. It identifies three characteristics of feminists’ approaches to religion and spirituality: They are de-churched, are relational, and emphasize practice. These features warrant a new approach to feminists’ relationships with religion and spirituality. Rather than, (...) as others have done, equating feminism with secularism, secularization, or alternative spiritualities, the article reveals the complex ways feminists forge religio-spiritual lives. The interview data demonstrate that it is unwise to see “spirituality” and “religion” as analytically distinct. Instead, drawing on the growing field of scholarship on “lived religion,” the article proposes conceptualizing feminist spirituality as lived religion. (shrink)

Our objective was to better understand the values and ethical dilemmas surrounding advance care planning through stories told by registered nurses and licensed social workers, who were employed as care managers within Area Agencies on Aging. We conducted eight focus groups in which care managers were invited to tell their stories and answer open-ended questions focusing on their interactions with consumers receiving home-based long-term care. Using narrative analysis to understand how our participants thought through particular experiences and what they valued, (...) we identified seven themes representative of their work with consumers and families: humility, respect, responsibilities, boundaries, empowerment, courage, and veracity. (shrink)

The acknowledgement of basic human vulnerability in relationships between mental health service users and professionals working in community-based mental health services (in Norway) was a starting point. The purpose was to explore how users of these services describe and make sense of their meetings with other people. The research is collaborative, with researcher and person with experienced-based knowledge cooperating through the research process. Data is derived from 19 interviews with 11 people who depend on mental health services for assistance at (...) least three times a week. Data is analysed according to the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Results confirm that reciprocity is fundamental for relationships, and that recognizing the individual entails personal involvement. The participants describe a struggle, and recognizing this struggle may help the professional to achieve a deeper understanding of the individual. (shrink)

To answer tantalizing questions such as whether animals are moral or how morality evolved, I propose starting with a somewhat less fraught question: do animals have normative cognition? Recent psychological research suggests that normative thinking, or ought-thought, begins early in human development. Recent philosophical research suggests that folk psychology is grounded in normative thought. Recent primatology research finds evidence of sophisticated cultural and social learning capacities in great apes. Drawing on these three literatures, I argue that the human variety of (...) social cognition and moral cognition encompass the same cognitive capacities and that the nonhuman great apes may also be normative beings. To make this argument, I develop an account of animal social norms that shares key properties with Cristina Bicchieri's account of social norms but which lowers the cognitive requirements for having a social norm. I propose a set of four early developing prerequisites implicated in social cognition that make up what I call naïve normativity: the ability to identify agents, sensitivity to in-group/out-group differences, the capacity for social learning of group traditions, and responsiveness to appropriateness. I review the ape cognition literature and present preliminary empirical evidence supporting the existence of social norms and naïve normativity in great apes. While there is more empirical work to be done, I hope to have offered a framework for studying normativity in other species, and I conclude that we should be open to the possibility that normative cognition is yet another ancient cognitive endowment that is not human-unique. (shrink)

Paternalistic interventions restrict individuals’ liberty or autonomy so as to guide their decisions towards options that are more beneficial for them than the ones they would choose in the absence of such interventions. Although some philosophers have emphasised that there is a case for justifiable paternalism in certain circumstances, much of contemporary moral and political philosophy works from a strong presumption against paternalistic interventions. However, Richard Arneson has argued that there are egalitarian reasons that support the case for paternalism: paternalistic (...) interventions can protect poor decision-makers from making ‘bad’ choices, thus preventing inequalities between them and those with better decision-making skills. This paper seeks to clarify and advance our understanding of the egalitarian argument for paternalism. Arneson’s argument adds an important and often neglected dimension to the debate about paternalism but also raises a number of questions about equality, paternalism and the relationship between the two. (shrink)

This much-anticipated work is a rich and insightful collection of essays that restores women and minorities to the arena of political theory and debate.

Andrews argues for a pluralistic folk psychology that employs different kinds of practices and different kinds of cognitive tools (including personality trait attribution, stereotype activation, inductive reasoning about past behavior, and ...

In this essay, I suggest that Spinoza acknowledges a distinction between formal reality that is infinite and timelessly eternal and formal reality that is non-infinite (i. e., finite or indefinite) and non-eternal (i. e., enduring). I also argue that if, in Spinoza’s system, only intelligible causation is genuine causation, then infinite, timelessly eternal formal reality cannot cause non-infinite, non-eternal formal reality. A denial of eternal-durational causation generates a puzzle, however: if no enduring thing – not even the sempiternal, indefinite individual (...) composed of all finite, enduring things – is caused by the infinite, eternal substance, then how can Spinoza consistently hold that the one infinite, eternal substance is the cause of all things and that all things are modes of that substance? At the end of this essay, I sketch how Spinoza could deny eternal-durational causation while still holding that an infinite, eternal God is the cause of all things and that all things are modes. I develop the interpretation more in the companion essay.1 1 In “Spinoza’s Monism II,” in the next issue of this journal. (shrink)

An old question in Spinoza scholarship is how finite, non-eternal things transitively caused by other finite, non-eternal things (i. e., the entities described in propositions like E1p28) are caused by the infinite, eternal substance, given that what follows either directly or indirectly from the divine nature is infinite and eternal (E1p21–23). In “Spinoza’s Monism I,” “Spinoza’s Monism I,” in the previous issue of this journal. I pointed out that most commentators answer this question by invoking entities that are indefinite and (...) sempiternal, but argued that perhaps we should not be so quick to assume that in Spinoza’s system, an infinite and eternal substance could cause such indefinite, sempiternal entities. But if such eternal-durational causation is denied, then it seems harder to see how Spinoza’s system could be coherent: if Spinoza holds that the infinite, eternal substance cannot cause anything that is not infinite and not eternal, then how can he also hold that all things are modes immanently caused by substance (E1p15, E1p18, E1p25)? In this essay, I explain how Spinoza’s system could be understood in light of a denial of eternal-durational causation. On the interpretation I offer, God is the cause of all things and all things are modes because the essences of all things follow from the divine nature and all essences enjoy infinite, eternal reality as modes immanently caused by the infinite, eternal substance. The same non-substantial essences can also be conceived as enjoying non-infinite, non-eternal reality, but so conceived, they are enduring, finite (or sempiternal, indefinite) entities that cannot be conceived as modes caused by and inhering in the one infinite, eternal substance. I conclude by pointing out that if we take this interpretive route, we do have to understand Spinoza as committed to acosmism, or a denial of the reality of the world – at least the world of enduring, finite things. (shrink)

Once upon a time, not too long ago, the question about apes and ethics had to do with moral standing—do apes have interests or rights that humans ought to respect? Given the fifty years of research on great ape cognition, life history, social organization, and behavior, the answer to that question seems obvious. Apes have emotions and projects, they can be harmed, and they have important social relationships.

This introduction to the topical collection, Folk Psychology: Pluralistic Approaches reviews the origins and basic theoretical tenets of the framework of pluralistic folk psychology. It places special emphasis on pluralism about the variety folk psychological strategies that underlie behavioral prediction and explanation beyond belief-desire attribution, and on the diverse range of social goals that folk psychological reasoning supports beyond prediction and explanation. Pluralism is not presented as a single theory or model of social cognition, but rather as a big-tent research (...) program encompassing both revisionary and more traditionally inspired approaches to folk psychology. After reviewing the origins of pluralistic folk psychology, the papers in the current issue are introduced. These papers fall into three thematic clusters: Folk-psychological strategies beyond propositional attitude attribution ; Enculturation and regulative folk psychology ; and Defenses of pluralism. (shrink)

My two principal aims in this essay are interconnected. One aim is to provide a new interpretation of the ‘infinite modes’ in Spinoza’s Ethics. I argue that for Spinoza, God, conceived as the one infinite and eternal substance, is not to be understood as causing two kinds of modes, some infinite and eternal and the rest finite and non-eternal. That there cannot be such a bifurcation of divine effects is what I take the ‘infinite mode’ propositions, E1p21–23, to establish; E1p21–23 (...) show that each and every one of the immanent effects of an infinite and eternal God is an infinite and eternal mode. The other aim is to show that these propositions can be understood as part of an extended critical response to Descartes’s infamous doctrine that God creates eternal truths and true and immutable natures. If we have the correct (Spinozan) conceptions of what God is and how God works, we see that an eternal and infinite God can only be understood to cause ‘eternal truths,’ and that these eternal truths are infinite and eternal modes of God. (shrink)

The study of animal cognition raises profound questions about the minds of animals and philosophy of mind itself. Aristotle argued that humans are the only animal to laugh, but in recent experiments rats have also been shown to laugh. In other experiments, dogs have been shown to respond appropriately to over two hundred words in human language. In this introduction to the philosophy of animal minds Kristin Andrews introduces and assesses the essential topics, problems and debates as they cut (...) across animal cognition and philosophy of mind. She addresses the following key topics: what is cognition, and what is it to have a mind? What questions should we ask to determine whether behaviour has a cognitive basis? the science of animal minds explained: ethology, behaviourist psychology, and cognitive ethology rationality in animals animal consciousness: what does research into pain and the emotions reveal? What can empirical evidence about animal behaviour tell us about philosophical theories of consciousness? does animal cognition involve belief and concepts; do animals have a ‘Language of Thought’? animal communication other minds: do animals attribute ‘mindedness’ to other creatures? moral reasoning and ethical behaviour in animals animal cognition and memory. Extensive use of empirical examples and case studies is made throughout the book. These include Cheney and Seyfarth’s ververt monkey research, Thorndike’s cat puzzle boxes, Jensen’s research into humans and chimpanzees and the ultimatum game, Pankseep and Burgdorf’s research on rat laughter, and Clayton and Emery’s research on memory in scrub-jays. Additional features such as chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of mind, animal cognition. It will also be an excellent resource for those in fields such as ethology, biology and psychology. (shrink)

Birch sketches out an ingenious account of how the psychology of social norms emerged from individual-level norms of skill. We suggest that these individual-level norms of skill are likely to be much more widespread than Birch suggests, extending deeper into the hominid lineage, across modern great ape species, all the way to distantly related creatures like honeybees. This suggests that there would have been multiple opportunities for social norms to emerge from skill norms in human prehistory.

**For my more recent views of the third kind of cognition, see my "Finding Oneself in God"** -/- Abstract: Cognition of the third kind, or scientia intuitiva, is supposed to secure beatitudo, or virtue itself (E5p42). But what is scientia intuitiva, and how is it different from (and superior to) reason? I suggest a new answer to this old and vexing question at the core of Spinoza’s project in the Ethics. On my view, Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva resembles Descartes’s scientia more (...) than has been appreciated. Although Spinoza’s God is not Descartes’s benevolent, transcendent God, Spinoza agrees with Descartes that the highest certainty requires that a cognizer correctly conceive of God and her causal relation to God; it is only with cognition of the third kind that a cognizer can be certain that her adequate (that is, clear and distinct) representations of extramental things agree with formally real, extramental ideata, and so are true. If this is right, a reading of Spinoza that has dominated scholarship since the Ethics’ publication is misguided: for Spinoza, it is not always the case that having (and recognizing that one has) a clear and distinct idea is sufficient for knowing that that idea is true. I end the chapter by suggesting why scientia is intuitive for Spinoza: Spinoza attempts to avoid Cartesian-Circle-style circularity by insisting that a cognizer must intuit the correct representation of God and God’s relation to things. (shrink)

This article asserts the significance of the portrayal of the political art of statesmanship as weaving, and aims to show how this image emphasizes two main aspects of the political art of statesmanship. Firstly, the image implies a three-dimensionality, both through the process of weaving and through the thickness of the protective fabric this produces, that in turn indicates the vital aspect of corporeality in politics. Secondly, weaving as a paradigmatic example of the art of statesmanship presents a way of (...) incorporating different entities and joining diverse threads into a cohesive unity, without reducing them to a form of sameness as mere mathematical counting would. These two aspects are in turn connected to an emphasis on the importance in good statesmanship of recognizing the specificity of the occasion and the variety and difference of the innumerable qualities to be interlaced in weaving the fabric of a good society. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 6, June 2022.

This book undertakes an extensive study of the constellation of two eminent thinkers of post-idealism for the first time. The contributions in this volume analyze the relationship between Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard systematically and historically from a number of thematic perspectives: metaphysics and ethics, freedom and original sin, existential philosophy and the theory of suffering, art and aesthetics, religion and science. The book also goes into Kierkegaard s explicit disagreement with Schopenhauer and last but not least discusses the conflicting poles of (...) idealism and modernity. The volume is rounded off by a first complete and annotated German translation of the notes on Schopenhauer, which Kierkegaard wrote in his late journals.". (shrink)

This paper explores the unique phenomenology of habit and temporality put forth in Beauvoir’s La Vieillesse. I situate her understanding of temporality in relation to her early work Pyrrhus and Cinéas. I extract her notion of a boundary marked future that decreases anticipation for the future and thus rigidifies habits. In the final section I appropriate the notion of a boundary mark for a cultural phenomenology where we understand boundary marks as constituted by our understandings of ourselves in time and (...) not through aging alone. This cultural boundary mark can be used to understand how societal prejudice operates at the level of lived temporality. (shrink)

Agonizing care: care ethics, agonistic feminism and a political theory of care ‘Care’ is central to nursing theory and practice, and has been described in a variety of ways. Intense conversations about care have been developing in other fields of study as well, from the social sciences to the humanities. Care ethics has grown out of intellectual exchange between feminist thought, moral theory and the critique of traditional western political philosophy. However, care ethics is not without its critics, as these (...) accounts of care have also sparked vigorous challenges. This paper traces the construct of care through nursing theory, care ethics, feminist critiques of moral and political theory and agonistic feminism to outline a set of problematics that a political theory of care should engage. It discusses how care is conventionally posited in more or less essentialist, universalizing and naturalizing terms. It introduces the ideas of feminist theorists who resist dichotomizing care and the political, and situate care in the context of power and politics. The tensions between care feminism and agonistic feminism are highlighted in order to explore the potential of theorizing both care and nursing in political terms. (shrink)