This paper focuses on the topic of evaluation of clinical ethics consultation. The concept of evaluation seems to contain an internal tension: On the one hand, evaluation is seen as distorting the conceptual and normative content of the case under scrutiny and, on the other, the evaluative act is the most important use of judgment and an inescapable part of everyday life. As such, we maintain that evaluation is essential.

Fetal ultrasonography has made women's and men's relationship to the fetus more equal. Drawing on information obtained from multiple conjoint interviews with 62 childbearing couples, I suggest that although women and men are both advantaged by fetal ultrasonography, expectant fathers' experience of the fetus is always enhanced, whereas pregnant women's experience may also be attenuated. For men, fetal ultrasonography is like a prosthetic device: an enabling mechanism that permits them access to a female world from which they have been excluded (...) because of their limited biological role in reproduction. For women, fetal ultrasonography is enabling, but it may also be a disabling mechanism that disrupts their privileged access to the fetus. (shrink)

Driven by an impetus to standardize, numerous checklists have been devised to address quality in qualitative research, but these standards and the mindset driving them offer no language with which to speak about taste, or the aesthetic sensibilities that play such a key role in evaluating the goodness of any object. In this article, quality appraisal in qualitative research is considered in the context of taste, that is, in the discernment involved in judging the value of research and in the (...) recognition of the key role reviewer preferences, sensibilities and membership in one or more taste communities play in these judgements. The evaluation of a study is accomplished by evaluating one or more reports from that study, and such reports may be conceived as art forms amenable to the same criteria for appraisal as poems or paintings. Taste implies judgements about the quality of objects and a person's ability to sift through and select from a store of knowledge that knowledge appropriate to judge its value. What binds a community of practitioners (here reviewers of qualitative studies) together is taste‐making, or the constant refinements of judgements concerning what constitutes good and bad practice. (shrink)

This paper focuses on philosophical toy objects and neo-pataphysicist disciplines, everyday resistance by futility and play. Contemporary electromagnetic toys, smart objects and the Internet of Things will be compared to the seventeenth-century Wunderkammer objects. Historic naturalia, objects and actual toy gadgetry will all be unveiled as alternate W.A.S.T.E. (Pynchon 1964) communications devices, among Habsburg peers. A proof of evidence for the functions of futile toys as resistance objects is given through the presentation of electronic circuit board designs as new bachelor (...) machines, chindogus (useless objects), subcutaneous Radio Frequency Bijoux (RFID-implants) and game fashion, as introduced by the author. But what are the consequences of the use of futile toys on the streets of everyday life? Do they entail a sustainable nascent practice in arts? Who is allowed to play with the electromagnetic parallel worlds? Do electronic toys offer a parallel communications system in their futility? What is the actual role of electronic toys in an inverse trajectory backwards to their harbingers, which are philosophical toys, jeux bijoux (blingblings to play with), Wunderkammer-toys (for peers to establish links with Potlatch-like gifts to tighten social relations) and the Ludic Spielzeug (a toy which empowers the player to recognize the futile toy as tool of resistance and backtalk to given economic and discourse order)? (shrink)

Este artigo visa demonstrar como se vem instaurando a formação do cidadão através do Orçamento Participativo, na cidade de Porto Alegre, após 1990.

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 47 Heft: 1 Seiten: 53-86.

When the original Dutch version of this book was presented in 1971 to the University of Leiden as a thesis for the Doctorate in philosophy, I was prevented by the academic mores of that university from expressing my sincere thanks to three members of the Philosophical Faculty for their support of and interest in my pursuits. I take the liberty of doing so now, two and a half years later. First and foremost I want to thank Professor G. Nuchelmans warmly (...) for his expert guidance of my research. A number of my most im portant sources were brought to my attention by him. During the whole process of composing this book his criticism and encouragement were carried out in a truly academic spirit. He thereby provided working conditions that are a sine qua non for every author who is attempting to approach controversial matters in a scientific manner, conditions which, however, were not easily available at that time. In a later phase I also came into contact with Professors L. M. de Rijk and J. B. Ubbink, with both of whom I had highly stimulating discussions and exchanges of ideas. The present edition contains some entirely new sections, viz. 1-9, IV-29, V-9, V-20, VII-14 (iii), (iv), VII-17 (i), VIII-22, IX-17, IX-19, X-9 and XI-8. Section X-9 was inspired by a remark made by Professor A. (shrink)

<b>Objectives:</b> To gather empirical data on how gender and educational level influence bioethical reasoning among medical students by analyzing their use of care versus justice arguments for reconciling a bioethical dilemma. <b>Setting:</b> University Departments of Medical Ethics, Social and Communication Psychology in Germany. Participants: First and fifth year medical students. Design and method: Multidisciplinary, empirical, 2-segment study of ethics in action: In intrapersonal Segment 1, the students were presented with a bioethical dilemma and then administered a 13-item questionnaire to survey (...) their individual preferences for care versus justice arguments in resolving the conflict. The survey questioned 6 justice, 6 care-related items and 1 socially critical item. Data were analysed by gender and year of medical school. In interpersonal Segment 2, the bioethical dilemma from Segment 1 was discussed in gender-mixed and gender-homogeneous groups. Coded transcripts were evaluated to identify prevalences in care versus justice reasoning. <b>Results:</b> Data on 462 medical students were evaluable (n=338 in Segment 1, n=168 in Segment 2, n=44 overlap). Gender and level of education had no effect on moral reasoning in intrapersonal Segment 1, but significantly affected reasoning in interpersonal Segment 2, where women significantly tended to use more care-orientated arguments. Justice arguments predominated the group discussions. <b>Conclusion:</b> Interpersonal contexts affect moral reasoning in medical students, probably by amplifying the socialisation relating to gender and educational level. Care orientation is associated with the female gender. Professional socialisation tends to reduce the diversity and richness of moral reasoning towards a more justice-weighted orientation. Medical ethics should teach both justice and care reasoning modes in order to broaden physicians' ability to reconcile bioethical dilemmas. (shrink)

The contributions in the first part Re-modelling logic of this volume take account of formal logic in the theory of rational argumentation.

It is becoming more common that the decision-makers in private and public institutions are predictive algorithmic systems, not humans. This article argues that relying on algorithmic systems is procedurally unjust in contexts involving background conditions of structural injustice. Under such nonideal conditions, algorithmic systems, if left to their own devices, cannot meet a necessary condition of procedural justice, because they fail to provide a sufficiently nuanced model of which cases count as relevantly similar. Resolving this problem requires deliberative capacities uniquely (...) available to human agents. After exploring the limitations of existing formal algorithmic fairness strategies, the article argues that procedural justice requires that human agents relying wholly or in part on algorithmic systems proceed with caution: by avoiding doxastic negligence about algorithmic outputs, by exercising deliberative capacities when making similarity judgments, and by suspending belief and gathering additional information in light of higher-order uncertainty. (shrink)

Wie muss ein ethischer Beratungsdienst strukturiert sein, damit er in moralischen Konfliktsituationen im klinischen Alltag angefragt wird und die Ratsuchenden ergebnisorientiert unterstützen kann? Nach welchen Kriterien lassen sich die Beratungsgespräche auswerten und bewerten? Zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen werden theoretisch fundierte Konzepte ethischer Fallbesprechung aus Nimwegen, Leuven und Basel herangezogen; dies geschieht vor dem Hintergrund der Erfahrungen mit der über zehnjährigen Entwicklung der ethischen Arbeit im Ev. Krankenhaus Bielefeld (EvKB). Als Resultat stellen wir einen strukturierten, multidisziplinären Ansatz vor, mit dem in (...) den Beratungsgesprächen die ethischen Dimensionen unterschiedlicher Vorstellungen herausgearbeitet und möglichst einvernehmlichen Lösungen zugeführt werden. Am Beispiel des EvKB lässt sich zeigen, dass der ethische Beratungsdienst auch in Zeiten knapper Ressourcen implementiert und praktiziert werden kann und eine Gesprächskultur schafft, die zu neuen Zielvariablen führt; hier spielen der Perspektivenwechsel und die Prozessgerechtigkeit eine zentrale Rolle und liefern zugleich Ansatzpunkte für unsere eigene Evaluationsstrategie. Zum aktuellen Stand der Evaluation klinischer Ethikberatung wird die internationale Literatur kritisch gewürdigt. Erste konzeptionelle Ansätze und Ergebnisse einer eigenen Evaluationsstrategie werden vorgestellt. Durch die Offenlegung hoffen wir, die Auseinandersetzung mit diesen Themen zu intensivieren. (shrink)

This paper is about the semantic analysis of referentially opaque verbs like seek and owe that give rise to nonspecific readings. It is argued that Montague's categorization (based on earlier work by Quine) of opaque verbs as properties of quantifiers runs into two serious difficulties: the first problem is that it does not work with opaque verbs like resemble that resist any lexical decomposition of the seek ap try to find kind; the second one is that it wrongly predicts de (...) dicto (i.e. narrow scope) readings due to quantified noun phrases in the object positions of such verbs. It is shown that both difficulties can be overcome by an analysis of opaque verbs as operating on properties. This is a strongly modified version of a paper entitled lsquoDo We Bear Attitudes towards Quantifiers?rsquo that I have presented at conferences in Gosen (Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft), Ithaca (SALT I), and Konstanz (Lexikon). I owe a special debt to Hans Kamp and Arnim von Stechow for shaping my views on the subject of this paper during the past ten years or so. Comments from and discussions with the following friends and colleagues have also led to considerable improvements: Heinrich Beck, Steve Berman, David Dowty, Veerle van Geenhoven, Fritz Hamm, Irene Heim, Wolfgang Klein, Angelika Kratzer, Michael Morreau, Barbara Partee, Mats Rooth, Roger Schwarzschild, Wolfgang Sternefeld, Emil Weydert, Henk Zeevat, and three referees. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 1 Seiten: 350-353.

When two people move in synchrony, they become more social. Yet it is not clear how this effect scales up to larger numbers of people. Does a group need to move in unison to affiliate, in what we term unitary synchrony; or does affiliation arise from distributed coordination, patterns of coupled movements between individual members of a group? We developed choreographic tasks that manipulated movement synchrony without explicitly instructing groups to move in unison. Wrist accelerometers measured group movement dynamics and (...) we applied cross-recurrence analysis to distinguish the temporal features of emergent unitary synchrony and distributed coordination. Participants’ unitary synchrony did not predict pro-social behavior, but their distributed coordination predicted how much they liked each other, how they felt toward their group, and how much they conformed to each other's opinions. The choreography of affiliation arises from distributed coordination of group movement dynamics. (shrink)

This paper offers an explanation of the fact that sentences of the form (1) ‘X may A or B’ may be construed as implying (2) ‘X may A and X may B’, especially if they are used to grant permission. It is suggested that the effect arises because disjunctions are conjunctive lists of epistemic possibilities. Consequently, if the modal may is itself epistemic, (1) comes out as equivalent to (2), due to general laws of epistemic logic. On the other hand, (...) on a deontic reading of may, (2) is only implied under exceptional circumstances – which usually obtain when (1) is used performatively. (shrink)

The paper is about the interpretation of opaque verbs like “seek”, “owe”, and “resemble” which allow for unspecific readings of their (indefinite) objects. It is shown that the following two observations create a problem for semantic analysis: (a) The opaque position is upward monotone: “John seeks a unicorn” implies “John seeks an animal”, given that “unicorn” is more specific than “animal”. (b) Indefinite objects of opaque verbs allow for higher-order, or “underspecific”, readings: “Jones is looking for something Smith is looking (...) for” can express that there is something unspecific that both Jones and Smith are looking for. Given (a) and (b), it would seem that the following inference is hard to escape, if the premisses are construed unspecifically and the conclusion is taken on its under- specific reading: Jones is looking for a sweater. Smith is looking for a pen. Smith is looking for something Jones is looking for. (shrink)

This article asks about the conditions of a sociological operationalization of the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Raising the question of freedom and social opportunities, the capability approach has so far mainly been discussed by economists and philosophers. In order to adopt this approach for a sociological and pragmatist perspective, it engages with methodological and theoretical issues. Whereas capabilities have until now mainly been studied within quantitative frameworks, the author opts for a qualitative method of inquiry (...) that draws on a pragmatist and configurational approach. Such a shift towards qualitative inquiry is a key condition for a better sociological understanding of notions like freedom and opportunities that stand at the core of the capability approach. (shrink)