Clinical ethics consultations exist to support patients, families and clinicians who are facing ethical or moral challenges related to patient care. They provide a forum for open communication, where all stakeholders are encouraged to express their concerns and articulate their viewpoints. Ethics consultations can be requested by patients, caregivers or members of a patient’s clinical or supportive team. Althoughpatientsand by extension their families (especially in cases of decisional incapacity) are the common denominators in most ethics consultations, these constituents are theleastlikely (...) to request them. At many healthcare organisations in the USA, ethics consultations are overwhelmingly requested by physicians and other clinicians. We believe it is vital that healthcare institutions bridge the knowledge gaps and power imbalances over access to ethics consultation services through augmented policies, procedures and infrastructure. With enhanced education and support, patients and families may use ethics consultation to elevate their voices and prioritise their unique characteristics and preferences in the delivery of their healthcare. Empowering patients and families to request ethics consultation can only strengthen the patient/family–clinician relationship, enhance the shared decision-making model of care and ultimately lead to improved patient-centred care. (shrink)

In a healthcare setting, a multitude of ethical and moral challenges are often present when patients and families direct uncivil behavior toward clinicians and staff. These negative interactions may elicit strong social and emotional reactions among staff, other patients, and visitors; and they may impede the normal functioning of an institution. Ethics Committees and Clinical Ethics Consultation Services (CECSs) can meaningfully contribute to organizational efforts to effectively manage incivility through two distinct, yet inter-related channels. First, given their responsibility to promote (...) a humane, respectful, and professional climate, many CECSs and Ethics Committees may assist institutional leadership in evaluating and monitoring incivility policies and procedures. Second, when confronted with individual incidents of patient/family incivility, Ethics Consultants can and often do work with all stakeholders to address and mitigate potentially deleterious impacts. This manuscript presents an overview of the multifaceted ethical implications of incivility in the healthcare environment, discusses the inherent qualifications of Ethics Consultants for assisting in the management of incivility, and proposes specific mitigating actions within the purview of CECSs and Ethics Committees. We also invite healthcare organizations to harness the skills and reputation of their CECSs and Ethics Committees in confronting incivility through comprehensive policies, procedures, and training. (shrink)

Educating students for emotional wellbeing is a vital task in schools. However, educating emotions is not straightforward. Emotional processes can be challenging to identify and control. How emotions are valued varies across societies, while individuals within societies face different emotional expectations. For example, girls face pressure to be happy and caring, while boys are often encouraged to be brave. This text analyses the best practices of educating emotions. The focus is not just on the psychological benefits of emotional regulation, but (...) also on how calls for educating emotions connect to the aims of society. The book explores psychology's understanding of emotions, 'the politics of emotions', and philosophy. It also discusses education for happiness, compassion, gratitude, resilience, mindfulness, courage, vulnerability, anger, sadness, and fear. (shrink)

In this article I describe the development of my collaboration with the textile artist Susie Freeman in the production of the visual arts project Pharmacopoeia. Over the last 3 years we have created a body of work that aims to provide information about common medical treatments in a way that engages the public imagination. The work is dominated by the use of active pharmaceuticals, both pills and capsules, which are incorporated into dramatic fabrics by a process known as pocket knitting. (...) These fabrics are then made into clothing and accessories, making their individual messages easier to ‘read’. The work aims to encourage people to think about their own medical and pharmacological history, and to reflect on their relationship with commonly prescribed drugs. It also reveals how dependent our society is on pharmaceuticals, how ambivalent we feel about them and yet how casually we use them. (shrink)

What is the future of Philosophy of education? Or as many of scholars and thinkers in this final ‘future-focused’ collective piece from the philosophy of education in a new key Series put it, what are the futures—plural and multiple—of the intersections of ‘philosophy’ and ‘education?’ What is ‘Philosophy’; and what is ‘Education’, and what role may ‘enquiry’ play? Is the future of education and philosophy embracing—or at least taking seriously—and thinking with Indigenous ethicoontoepistemologies? And, perhaps most importantly, what is that (...) ‘Future’? These debates have been located in the work of diverse scholars: from the West, from Global South, from indigenous thinkers. In this collective piece, we purposefully juxtapose diverse takes on the future of these intersections. We have given up the urge to organise, place together, separate with subheadings or connect the paragraphs that follow. Instead, we let these philosophers of education and thinkers who use philosophical texts and ideas to sit together in one long read as potentially ‘strange and unusual bedfellows’. This text urges us to understand how these scholars and thinkers perceive our educational philosophical futures, and how the work and thinking they have done on thinking about what the future of that new key in philosophy of education may look like is embedded in a much deeper and richer literature, and personal experience. (shrink)

This article shares reflections from members of the community of philosophers of education in the United States and Canada who were invited to express their insights in response to the theme ‘Snaps...

Liz Jackson is Professor of Education and Head of Department of International Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. Liz served as the President of the Philosophy of Education Society...

This study offers a new interpretation of Hegelian recognition – a central tenet of German Idealism – focusing on positive ethical behaviours, such as love and forgiveness. Building on the work of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Disley reassesses Hegel’s approach to the subject/object dialectic and explores the previously neglected theological dimensions of his writings. Her new interpretation offers an innovative reading of Hegel’s stance on the relationship between intersubjectivity, forgiveness and repentance in his social theory.0.

What is artificial life? Much has been said about this interesting collection of efforts to artificially simulate and synthesize lifelike behavior and processes, yet we are far from having a robust philosophical understanding of just what Alifers are doing and why it ought to interest philosophers of science, and philosophers of biology in particular. In this paper, I first provide three introductory examples from the particular subset of artificial life I focus on, known as ‘soft Alife’ (s-Alife), and follow up (...) with a more in-depth review of the Avida program, which serves as my case study of s-Alife. Next, I review three well-known accounts of thought experiments, and then offer my own synthesized account, to make the argument that s-Alife functions as thought experimentation in biology. I draw a comparison between the methodology of the thought-experimental world that yields real-world results, and the s-Alife research that informs our understanding of natural life. I conclude that the insights provided by s-Alife research have the potential to fundamentally alter our understanding of the nature of organic life and thus deserve the attention of both philosophers and natural scientists. (shrink)

Volume 52, Issue 1, January 2020, Page 17-21.

This special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory considers the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement as an educational event, which has impacted attitudes and outlooks and conceptions of young people’s role, of education, and of society. This essay serves as an introduction to the more substantive pieces that follow. It describes two alternative perspectives on youth civic engagement in Hong Kong historically; and in so doing, it addresses some of the challenges related to free academic expression that hinder scholarly research and (...) publishing on the area of Hong Kong-China relations looking into the future. It concludes with a brief glimpse of the contributions that follow. (shrink)

Schools self-identify as caring communities and teach young children to be caring for each other. But schools also teach other contradictory and competing messages, such as individualism and self-reliance, rationalist concepts of justice and meritocracy, and other neoliberal approaches to life and community. Furthermore, while endorsements of care are commonly found in educational institutions, caring is not always (or even often) practiced or regarded as a major aim in schools, in contrast with human capital approaches to youth development. This essay (...) examines how schools do and don’t care. At its core is the rearticulation of care ethics in education, and what caring means within the contemporary field. Over time, enthusiasm for care ethics has peaked and waned. It begins with a brief explanation of what caring is within the field of care ethics, before it considers how caring is ideally involved in education. In this case, discourses of care ethics and caring in education can be coopted against the writings of care ethicists to complement positive psychology, socially conservative character education and civic education, and individualistic and neoliberal approaches to education. As a result, schools can appear to care, but do so in highly distorted ways. These distortions, I argue, do not reveal fundamental limitations or flaws within care ethics approaches to care. Instead, they demand a reconsideration and rearticulation of care ethics in the contemporary education landscape: a context which has changed considerably since debates and articulations of care ethics in the 1980s. (shrink)

Student-centered learning has been conceived as a Western export to the East and the developing world in the last few decades. Philosophers of education often associate student-centered learning with frameworks related to meeting the needs of individual pupils: from Deweyan experiential learning, to the ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ and other social justice orientations. Yet student-centered learning has also become, in the era of neoliberal education, a jingoistic advertisement for practices and ideologies which can be seen to lead to a global (...) devaluation of the educational profession, and the bolstering of the view of the student as a customer. In this article, I want to disentangle these views and explore some limitations of either model of student-centered learning. To add context, I consider education in the United Arab Emirates today, which provides an extreme example of the risks involved with prioritizing student’s self-identified needs and interests above all else, as in an idealized or exaggerated student-centered concept. I conclude with brief comments on amending the philosophical concept of student-centered learning to be useful in diverse contexts today. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Education Society of Australia (PESA) has been immensely proud of owning the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT), which over its 55 years of existence has become one...

There is a widespread view in philosophy of language and in philosophy of mind according to which the «quinean» rejection of analyticity can be made compatible with some sort of realism about meaning. Against such compatibilist claim, Paul Boghossian has recently held the thesis that one cannot coherently reject the analytical/synthetical distinction maintaining at the same time a meaning realism. His arguments are very pervasive, but they can be replied. The main objective of this paper is to show that in (...) fact it is possible to reject analyticity being at the same time a meaning realist, even a meaning realist of a non-holist kind. The prevailing view is basically right. Moreover, it is possible to go on maintaining the compatibilist claim in its most radical form. In short, even if we adopt a non-holist meaning realism, we must reject analyticity because language is always conceptually motivated and engaged with reality. There is no linguistic arbitrariness. That forces us to go far from classical conceptions of meaning and to have a much more pluralistic one. With respect to it, for instance, to say that some statements are true once their meanings are fixed would not entail that they are true by virtue of meanings. The problem to get such a conception of meaning remains open. However, the reasons against analyticity do not force us to any irreductible meaning holism. (shrink)

The ethic of care provides not only a basis for understanding relationships of care at the micro level but also a potent form of political ethics, relevant to the development of welfare services. Williams (2001), for example, argues that the concept of care has the capacity to be a central referent in social policy?a point at which social and cultural transformations meet with the changing relations of welfare (Williams 2001, p. 470). English social care services are currently in another period (...) of change precipitated by the ?personalisation agenda?. This agenda is seen as having the potential to revolutionise social care, to create the conditions needed to tailor services to individual needs, and to give service users greater choice and control, including, where possible, control over their own service budgets or direct possession and management of care funds. These developments are inextricably linked to broader economic and social trends, key amongst which are the ageing of the population and changing economic conditions affecting both the labour market and the market for care services. This article applies the feminist ethic of care to an analysis of the personalisation agenda in the context of care for dependent older people. It highlights fundamental political questions posed concerning the nature and extent of older people's need for care, responsibility for meeting these needs and the associated costs. It questions whether the personalisation agenda could potentially offer a more responsive form of care, by placing more power and control in older people's hands. Key points considered are the individualisation of care and the ways in which control is conceptualised. The article concludes with an assessment of the feminist ethic of care as a basis for policy evaluation. (shrink)

This new book explores the interface between political philosophy and politics, looking at the effects of philosophical traditions on the contemporary relationship between women and politics. Analysing key concepts in political philosophy, the author illustrates how common ideas - entrenched in the development of political thought and practice - have become almost intractable 'truths' that continue to differentiate between the sexes in politics. Liz Sperling looks in detail at the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Marx, Rawls and (...) Nozick, considering general themes to which they have all contributed - such as the state of nature, the state, markets, citizenship and representation. The focus then turns to the specific contributions of the philosophers that continue to influence the association of women to politics. These include an analysis of Greek classicists' establishment of andocracy, Rousseau's treatise on education for citizenship, and nineteenth-century ideas of equality. In conclusion, the themes demonstrated throughout are drawn together to show how they translate into contemporary policy on women in politics. Offering an original insight into the ways in which political thought influences political practice, this will be essential reading in a key area of politics, philosophy and women's studies. (shrink)

Although ethics instruction has become an accepted part of the business school curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, some scholars have questioned its effectiveness, and research results have been mixed. However, studies yield interesting results regarding certain factors that influence the ethicality of business students and may impact the effectiveness of business ethics instruction. One of these factors is gender. Using personal and business ethics scenarios, we examine the main and interactive effects of gender and business ethics education (...) on moral judgment. We then analyze the relationships between gender and business ethics education on personal ethical perspectives. Our results indicate that women are generally more inclined to act ethically than men, but paradoxically women who have had business ethics instruction are less likely to respond ethically to business situations. In addition, men may be more responsive to business ethics education than women. Finally, women’s personal ethical orientations may become more relativistic after taking a business ethics class. (shrink)

The strong continuity thesis postulates that the properties of mind are an enriched version of the properties of life, and thus that life and mind differ in degree and not kind. A philosophical problem for this view is the ostensive discontinuity between humans and other animals in virtue of our use of symbols—particularly the presumption that the symbolic nature of human cognition bears no relation to the basic properties of life. In this paper, we make the case that a genuine (...) account of strong continuity requires the identification of some sort of correlate of symbol-use in basic life properties. Our strategy is three-fold: 1) we argue that examples of proto-symbolism in simple living systems would be consistent with an evolutionary trajectory that ultimately produced symbolic cognition in humans; 2) we introduce Gordon Tomkins’ biological notion of ‘symbol’ as something that represents to the organism a feature of its environment that is significant to its survival; and 3) we employ this biological understanding of symbol-use to suggest that the symbolic nature of human cognition can be understood as an enriched version of the basic symbolic properties of life, thus preserving life-mind continuity in this context. (shrink)

This book is the first extensive study of the role of the family in the work of Seneca. It offers a new way of reading philosophy that combines philosophical analysis with social, cultural and historical factors to bring out the ways in which Stoicism presents itself as in tune with the universe. The family serves a central role in an individual's moral development - both the family as conventionally understood, and the wider conceptual family which Stoicism constructs. Innovative readings of (...) Seneca's work bring out the importance of the family to his thought and how it interacts with other Stoic doctrines. We learn how to be virtuous from observing and imitating our family, who can be biological relatives or people we choose as our intellectual ancestors. The Ethics of the Family in Seneca will be of particular interest to researchers in Roman Stoicism, imperial culture and the history of the family. (shrink)

Some may say the rise of parochial, sectarian populism has indicated a failure of civic education. On the other hand, it might be said to demonstrate the increasing power of some alternative forms of education. This paper hopes to shed light on how ordinary people learn in ways and through means that are at odds with the experiences of scholars and elites. To do so it explores the intersections of education, technology, and social mobility, to highlight how people learn social (...) class, and learn in classed ways outside schools. In contrast to the dream of information liberty, this article considers how online media is marked by private control of information, often retracing and broadening gaps between social classes. The article provides a theoretical understanding of the relationship between technology and education and the linkages of class and media consumption. It then integrates these topics by exploring how online learning through segmented social media operates to reproduce class and facilitate and mobilize sectarianism. This paper concludes with a recommendation for more focus on the study of class by philosophers interested in education for democracy and social justice. (shrink)

This paper is about perception and its objects. My aim is to suggest a new way to articulate some of the central ideas of direct realism. Sections 1 and 2 offer from different perspectives a panoramic view of the main problems and options in the philosophy of perception. Section 3 introduces the notion of “camouflage” as an interesting and promising alternative in order to explain the nature of the intentional objects of perception. Finally, section 4 makes use of this new (...) notion in the analysis of the relationships between the intentionality of perception, the intentionality of thought, and the intentionality of language. (shrink)