BackgroundFindings suggest pandemic control measures have modified maternal health practices, compromising the quality of care provided to new and expectant mothers and interfering with their birthing experiences. For this reason, this study explored the lived experiences of post-partum Victorian mothers during the pandemic as well as the potential influence of control measures over their perceptions regarding the health system.MethodsThis study used a qualitative approach. Recruitment was conducted between May and June 2021, using both the Australian Breastfeeding Association’s social media pages (...) and snowball recruitment. Interviews were semi-structured using open-ended questions relating to key themes. Seven Victorian post-partum mothers were identified and their transcripts analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.ResultsMothers described how unexpected changes to maternal care exacerbated feelings of uncertainty regarding pregnancy and birth. Mothers also differentiated between impacts by the health system and the role healthcare professionals played in moderating these effects. Whilst visitor restrictions provided some benefit, restrictions to familial and social support left many of the mothers feeling alone during their pregnancy and interfered with their immediate post-partum experience.ConclusionThis study illustrates the importance of evidence-based practice in maternal care and provides insights for both health professionals and policy analysts in developing new or modifying existing guidelines that better balance the needs of expectant and post-partum mothers with pandemic control measures. (shrink)

The objective of this study—a substudy to a phase I bioequivalence study—was to compare the effect of standard and concise consent forms on research volunteers’ comprehension of and satisfaction with consent forms, as well as to assess the effect of select volunteer characteristics, such as financial motivations to participate in research, on their comprehension. A 36-item questionnaire measured volunteers’ comprehension, satisfaction, and motivations for participation. Volunteers were randomized to the standard Pfizer consent form or a concise, easier-to-read form. We approached (...) 139 volunteers to participate, and 138 completed the questionnaire . The cohorts did not differ in sociodemographic characteristics. We found that the average comprehension scores for the standard consent form cohort and the concise consent cohort were about the same, and that satisfaction with the consent form was high in both cohorts. Surprisingly, volunteers with a financial motivation had significantly greater comprehension of the study. (shrink)

Reappraisal is a widely investigated emotion regulation strategy, often impaired in those with acquired brain injury. Little is known, however, about the tools to measure this capacity in pat...

This paper adopts the lens of environmental ethics to explore whether there is a disparity between the ethical approaches of a company in comparison to those expressed by stakeholders in relation to environmental issues, specifically those communicated through the corporate environmental report. Discourse analysis is adopted to explore the environmental section of the sustainability reports of the case study company as compared to the responses of a sample of the company’s stakeholders, using the lens of three branches of environmental ethics: (...) utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics. Results indicate that the ethical approaches expressed in the case study company’s environmental reports were grounded in utilitarianism and deontology, in contrast to a virtue ethics approach expressed by external stakeholders. The disparity widened as the relationship between the company and the stakeholder became less direct. This disparity signals a failure to meet one of the primary purposes for preparing sustainability reports: to engage with stakeholders. As such this research contributes to the literature by identifying a disparity in the how this information is communicated compared with how it is perceived by stakeholders. This has important implications for the success of current stakeholder engagement practices. (shrink)

Few subjects provoke as much controversy or debate as that of medical care, and the law that governs such an emotive area finds itself with the near-impossible task of simultaneously trying to regulate the medical profession and healthcare provision whilst upholding the rights of the millions of people who use those services every year. Medical Law combines an accessible explanation of the complex and challenging legal rules of medical care in England and Wales with a stimulating examination of the social, (...) political and ethical arguments such care provokes. It examines a broad range of issues, from the structure and organisation of the NHS, through the rules of clinical negligence, as well as focussing on the legal and ethical concerns around such deeply contentious areas as surrogacy, organ donation, abortion and euthanasia. Written very much with newcomers to the area in mind, Leanne Bell lucidly outlines not just what the law is, but how it has developed over time and also provides insights as to how advances in medical technology and techniques may call for it to evolve in the future. (shrink)

The pandemic has been the most vivid agent of change that many of us have known. But it has not changed everything: plenty of the institutions, norms, and practices that sustain racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and cisheteropatriarchy have either weathered the storm of the crisis or been nourished by its effects. And yet enough has changed for us to see that the pandemic has profoundly recontextualised those structures and systems of violence, bringing us into a fresh negotiation with, for example, (...) the question of how we discuss and imagine freedom. Responding in part to this unexpected provocation, activist-scholars Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson forged a collaboration from the lockdown of 2020, corresponding by letter to create their forthcoming book, Rehearsals for Living, due to be published by Haymarket Books (US) and Knopf (Canada) in 2022. In this interview, we asked them to explain the epistolary form of the book and expand on the concept of “rehearsal”, before inviting them to reflect on a series of issues that animate our current crises: the politics of recognition; the notion of apocalypse; ways to disrupt linear temporalities; practises of reciprocity against proprietary logics; the gendered violence of state apparatuses; and worldbuilding as a method of resistance. In their expansive answers, Robyn and Leanne draw on their experiences as organisers and educators, commenting on anticolonial struggles, the Movement for Black Lives, and the rise of abolition discourse. Stressing the need to build a multiplicity of shared homespaces in the face of racial/colonial capitalism and organized abandonment, they challenge us to rethink the predicaments and possibilities of the present, enabling us to imagine futures liberated of extractivist, carceral governance – “planting more liberatory futures in the present”, as Robyn puts it. The task of sowing those seeds is a collective praxis of rewriting the narratives that constitute us, refusing to hear that nothing can change and insisting that everything must. (shrink)

This paper explores the difficulties of implementing international human rights standards in post conflict states, particularly in Islamic States, using Afghanistan as a case study. The paper will submit that imposing international human rights law with a ‘top down' approach is ineffective, using the example of the western-style Afghan constitution which contains many human rights protections, such as freedom of religion, that cannot be realized in contemporary Afghan society. It will be argued that a more transparent, consultative and long-term approach (...) to human rights implementation should be taken in post conflict situations, if ‘human rights' is to be more than a catch phrase for membership of the international community. (shrink)

Feminist scholarship on the relative importance of working-class institutional strength in the economy and in the state has led to two divergent conclusions. Radical feminists argue that working-class institutions dominated by men produce male-biased outcomes; socialist feminists hold that working-class institutions promote classwide interests that benefit women as well as men. This article addresses this debate by applying generic and gendered working-class strength models of the welfare state in an examination of women's public pension quality. Quality is measured as women's (...) average pension compared with that of men, relative to women's average earnings, and compared with the average wage in the society. The authors find support for the socialist feminist view. Working-class institutions, having historically organized and represented the interests of working men, benefit women by improving the security and adequacy of their retirement incomes, but it is women's access to working-class economic and political institutions that brings greater economic equality with men in old age. (shrink)

This paper queries the absence of disabled voices in contemporary citizenship literature. It argues that the language and imagery of the citizen is imbued with hegemonic normalcy and as such excludes disability. Feminist perspectives, such as those which argue for a form of maternal citizenship, largely fail to acknowledge disability experiences. Exclusionary practices are charted and links are made between gender, race and disability in this process. A citizenship which acknowledges disability is fundamental to re-imaging local, national and international collectivities.

Virtually every aspect of the current philosophical discussion of self-deception is a matter of controversy including its definition and paradigmatic cases. We may say generally, however, that self-deception is the acquisition and maintenance of a belief (or, at least, the avowal of that belief) in the face of strong evidence to the contrary motivated by desires or emotions favoring the acquisition and retention of that belief. Beyond this, philosophers divide over whether this action is intentional or not, whether self-deceivers recognize (...) the belief being acquired is unwarranted on the available evidence, whether self-deceivers are morally responsible for their self-deception, and whether self-deception is morally problematic (and if it is in what ways and under what circumstances). The discussion of self-deception and its associated puzzles gives us insight into the ways in which motivation affects belief acquisition and retention. And yet insofar as self-deception represents an obstacle to self-knowledge, which has potentially serious moral implications, self-deception is more than an interesting philosophical puzzle. It is a problem of particular concern for moral development, since self-deception can make us strangers to ourselves and blind to our own moral failings. (shrink)

In this paper, the authors revisit the pre-service teacher practicum experience and propose that mobile technology, with its ability to provide instant communication and immediate access to resources, could minimise the “disconnect” between theory and the school classroom and improve the experience for all parties involved. However, before this project began, the wide-ranging ethical considerations surrounding the use of mobile technologies had to be addressed. This paper outlines a range of issues that should be considered whenever mobile technologies are to (...) be employed when researching in schools. (shrink)

Investigation of “out-of-body experiences” has implications for understanding both normal bodily-self integration and its vulnerabilities. Beyond reported associations between OBEs and specific brain regions, however, there have been few investigations of neurochemical systems relevant to OBEs. Ketamine, a drug used recreationally to achieve dissociative experiences, provides a real-world paradigm for investigating neurochemical effects. We investigate the strength of the association of OBEs and ketamine use relative to other common drugs of abuse. Self-report data from an online survey indicate that both (...) lifetime frequency of ketamine use and OBEs during ketamine intoxication were more strongly related to the frequency of OBEs and related phenomena than other drugs. Moreover, the apparent effects of other drugs could largely be explained by associated ketamine use. The present results, consistent with the role of NMDA receptors in OBEs, should encourage future studies of the role of neurochemical systems in OBEs. (shrink)

Medical ethics, principles, persons, and perspectives is discussed under three headings: History, Theory, and Practice. Under Theory, the author will say something about some different approaches to the study and discussion of ethical issues in medicine—especially those based on principles, persons, or perspectives. Under Practice, the author will discuss how one perspectives based approach, hermeneutics, might help in relation first to everyday ethical issues and then to public controversies. In that context some possible advantages of moving from controversy to conversation (...) will be explored; and that will then be illustrated with reference to a current controversy about the use of human embryos in stem cell therapy research. The paper begins with history, and it begins in the author’s home city of Edinburgh. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that individual moral obligations and responsibility entail shared (or joint) moral obligations and responsibility. However, whether individual epistemic obligations and responsibility entail shared epistemic obligations and responsibility is rarely discussed. Instead, most discussions of doxastic responsibility focus on individuals considered in isolation. In contrast to this standard approach, I maintain that focusing exclusively on individuals in isolation leads to a profoundly incomplete picture of what we're epistemically obligated to do and when we deserve epistemic blame. First, (...) I argue that we have epistemic obligations to perform actions of the sort that can be performed in conjunction with other people, and that consequently, we are often jointly blameworthy when we violate shared epistemic obligations. Second, I argue that shared responsibility is especially important to doxastic responsibility thanks to the fact that we don't have the same kind of direct control over our beliefs that we have over our actions. In particular, I argue that there are many cases in which a particular individual who holds some problematic belief only deserves epistemic blame in virtue of belonging to a group all the members of which are jointly blameworthy for violating some shared epistemic obligation. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur remains one of philosophy of religion's most distinctive voices. Ricoeur was a philosopher first, and while his religious reflections are very relevant to theology, Boyd Blundell argues that his philosophy is even more relevant. Using Ricoeur's own philosophical hermeneutics, Blundell shows that there is a way for explicitly Christian theology to maintain both its integrity and overall relevance. He demonstrates how the dominant pattern of detour and return found throughout Ricoeur’s work provides a path to understanding the (...) relationship between philosophy and theology. By putting Ricoeur in dialogue with current, fundamental, and longstanding debates about the role of philosophy in theology, Blundell offers a hermeneutically sensitive engagement with Ricoeur's thought from a theological perspective. (shrink)

By placing the theories of Jung and Patañjali in dialogue with one another, Consciousness in Jung and Patañjali illuminates significant differences between dual and nondual psychological theory and teases apart the essential discernments that theoreticians must make between epistemic states and ontic beliefs.

Jung’s individuation process, the central process of human development, relies heavily on several core philosophical and psychological ideas including the unconscious, complexes, the archetype of the Self, and the religious function of the psyche. While working to find empirical evidence of the psyche’s religious function, Jung studied a variety of subjects including the Eastern liberatory traditions of Buddhism and Patañjali’s Classical Yoga. In these traditions, Jung found substantiation of his ideas on psychospiritual development. Although Jung’s career in soul work was (...) lengthy, throughout, he aimed to steer clear of metaphysics. Patañjali’s metaphysics, on the other hand, are straightforward, and his ontological commitments are evident. Because Jung’s ontological commitments were not explicit, his theories, when seen through Patañjali’s lens, confuse ontological questions with epistemic issues. As a result, when comparing the Jungian and Patañjalian notions of the Self, Jung’s insightful ideas seem to be constructed upon a considerably shaky foundation. Yet, utilizing the exceptionally consistent ontological and epistemological commitments of Patañjali Yoga, as well as the objective measures of affective neuroscience, brings credence to the innate aspects and instinctual nature of Jung’s archetype of the Self, and assists in answering the question of whether the archetype is innate or emergent. (shrink)

Materialist and fundamentalist reductive ideologies obscure our capacity to directly experience the numinous. Thus, importantly, given the weight of the observable and measurable in orthodox science, and oftentimes a dismissal of both the soul and the subjective, a viable means of reconciling science and religious experience has continued to elude us. As a counter-measure to this obscuration, Jungian-oriented depth psychology has developed as an empirical science of the unconscious, researching both subject and object and offering theories and practices that foster (...) the psychospiritual development of the personality. Despite cultural and epochal differences, comparable evidence to Jung's process of psychospiritual development can be found in the Eastern liberatory tradition of Patañjali's Classical Yoga. However, given the elevated presence of neuroscience, no psychology, and especially no psychology that supports the soul, seems likely to survive much longer without finding an alliance with the objective measures of brain science. When considering the radically empirical measures of Jung and Patañjali, affective neuroscience may offer us a contemporary and objective means of languaging the bridge between the transcendent and immanent and fostering a contemporary science of the sacred. (shrink)

All representationalists maintain that there is a necessary connection between an experience’s phenomenal character and intentional content; but there is a disagreement amongst representationalists regarding the nature of those intentional contents that are necessarily connected to phenomenal character. Russellian representationalists maintain that the relevant contents are composed of objects and/or properties, while Fregean representationalists maintain that the relevant contents are composed of modes of presentation of objects and properties. According to Fregean representationalists such as David Chalmers and Brad Thompson, the (...) Fregean variety of the view is preferable to the Russellian variety because the former can accommodate purported counterexamples involving spectrum inversion without illusion and colour constancy while the latter cannot. I maintain that colour constancy poses a special problem for the Fregean theory in that the features of the theory that enable it handle spectrum inversion without illusion cannot be extended to handle colour constancy. I consider the two most plausible proposals regarding how the Fregean view might be developed in order to handle colour constancy—one of which has recently been defended by Thompson —and argue that neither is adequate. I conclude that Fregean representationalism is no more able to accommodate colour constancy than is Russellian representationalism and, as such, ought to be rejected. (shrink)

For both Jung and Patañjali our human desire to understand “God” is as real as any other instinct. Jung’s and Patañjali’s models further align in their emphasis on the teleological directedness of the psyche, and their aim at reconciling science and religious experience. As an atheist, Freud was in disagreement, but all three scholars align in their emphasis on the study of affect as an empirical means of entering into the psyche. For Patañjali, the nadir of affect lays in transcending (...) sorrow and stabilizing the mind. Mental stability in turn produces the capacity to fully differentiate between the binding states of mind, which lead to human suffering, and the experience of pure consciousness resting in authentic nature. Contemporary brain research indicates that conscious states are inherently affective—further, the upper brainstem is intrinsically conscious whereas the cortex is not; it derives its consciousness from the brainstem. Understanding consciousness, then, may have less to do with reflective cognition than with instinct. This research spotlights the phenomena of affect, as it appears to not only draw us back to the highly significant rupture of the Freud Jung dialogue, but also forward into formulating a contemporary clinical picture of the drive towards (or away from) religious experience. (shrink)

Our current scientific exploration of reality oftentimes appears focused on epistemic states and empiric results at the expense of ontological concerns. Any scientific approach without explicit ontological arguments cannot be deemed rational however, as our very Being can never be excluded from the equation. Furthermore, if, as many nondual philosophies contend, subject/object learning is to no avail in the attainment of knowledge of ontic reality, empiric science will forever bear out that limitation. Putting Jung's depth psychology in dialogue with Patañjali's (...) yoga philosophy is one way to attempt an alliance between dualistic and nondualistic models. Jung's assertion of an unconscious is what notably sets him apart from Patañjali. Furthermore, whereas Patañjali distinguishes between pure consciousness and the contents of consciousness, Jung does not. Although both Jung and Patañjali attempt to ground their work in the direct experience of life, and guide us towards wholeness, looking at Jung through the lens of nonduality, wholeness appears beyond reach. It is through Jung's synchronicity hypothesis where we may be able to forge a bridge between the models. This bridge allows a contemporary argument for an understanding of the ontic reality of pure consciousness, and subsequently the discrimination between things as they are and things as they appear. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 _ _. (shrink)

Thanks to the advent of social media, large numbers of Americans believe outlandish falsehoods that have been widely debunked. Many of us have a tendency to fault the individuals who hold such beliefs. We naturally assume that the individuals who form and maintain such beliefs do so in virtue of having violated some epistemic obligation: perhaps they failed to scrutinize their sources, or failed to seek out the available competing evidence. I maintain that very many ordinary individuals who acquire outlandish (...) false beliefs thanks to their use of popular social media platforms (and other similar internet technologies) deserve little or no blame for believing these falsehoods. Such individuals would be fully blameworthy only if they had formed or maintained the relevant beliefs partly in virtue of violating some epistemic obligation and had no excuse for violating that obligation. However, the nature of these internet technologies provides excuses for violating the relevant epistemic obligations, and so individuals are excused for holding the resulting false beliefs. (shrink)

Very often when the vast majority of experts agree on some scientific issue, laypeople nonetheless regularly consume articles, videos, lectures, etc., the principal claims of which are inconsistent with the expert consensus. Moreover, it is standardly assumed that it is entirely appropriate, and perhaps even obligatory, for laypeople to consume such anti-consensus material. I maintain that this standard assumption gets things backwards. Each of us is particularly vulnerable to false claims when we are not experts on some topic – such (...) falsehoods have systematic negative impacts on our doxastic attitudes that we can neither prevent nor correct. So, when there is clear expert consensus on a given scientific issue, while it is permissible for experts to consume anti-consensus material, laypeople have an epistemic obligation to avoid such material. This argument has important consequences for philosophical discussions of our epistemic obligations to perform or omit belief-influencing actions. Such discussions typically abstract away from the important differences between experts and laypeople. Accordingly, we should reject this typical practice as problematic, and insist instead that laypeople and experts have fundamentally different epistemic obligations. (shrink)

This introductory textbook presents Christian philosophical and theological approaches to ethics. Combining their expertise in philosophy and theology, the authors explain the beliefs, values, and practices of various Christian ethical viewpoints, addressing biblical teachings as well as traditional ethical theories that contribute to informed moral decision-making. Each chapter begins with Words to Watch and includes a relevant case study on a vexing ethical issue, such as caring for the environment, human sexuality, abortion, capital punishment, war, and euthanasia. End-of-chapter reflection questions, (...) illustrations, and additional information tables are also included. (shrink)

Crime, Justice and Human Rights is an introduction to the philosophy, law and politics of human rights, uniquely tailored to criminologists and criminal justice practitioners. Integrating human rights and criminological frameworks across a range of subject areas - from criminalization and state crime, to crime prevention and critical analyses of the operation of the police, courts and penal system - the authors highlight both the potential and the limitations of human rights in informing new directions in criminology. Featuring case material (...) from Europe, North America, Australia and beyond, this critical, multidisciplinary text supports the teaching of human rights across a wide range of criminological topics, and assists students, researchers and independent readers to incorporate human rights paradigms into their criminological analysis. (shrink)

Phillips & Silverstein's focus on schizophrenia as a failure of “cognitive coordination” is welcome. They note that a simple hypothesis of reduced Gamma synchronisation subserving impaired coordination does not fully account for recent observations. We suggest that schizophrenia reflects a dynamic compensation to a core deficit of coordination, expressed either as hyper- or hyposynchronisation, with neurotransmitter systems and arousal as modulatory mechanisms.

It is well-known that naïve realism has difficulty accommodating perceptual error. Recent discussion of the issue has focused on whether the naïve realist can accommodate hallucination by adopting disjunctivism. However, illusions are more difficult for the naïve realist to explain precisely because the disjunctivist solution is not available. I discuss what I take to be the two most plausible accounts of illusion available to the naïve realist. The first claims that illusions are cases in which you are prevented from perceiving (...) properties you would ordinarily perceive and subsequently form a mistaken judgment about the perceived object. The second appeals to an unusual look or appearance that the perceived object instantiates. I argue that neither account is satisfactory and that, consequently, naïve realism ought to be rejected. (shrink)