Moral distress names a widely discussed and concerning clinician experience. Yet the precise nature of the distress and the appropriate practical response to it remain unclear. Clinicians speak of their moral distress in terms of guilt, regret, anger, or other distressing emotions, and they often invoke them interchangeably. But these emotions are distinct, and they are not all equally fitting in the same circumstances. This indicates a problematic ambiguity in the moral distress concept that obscures its distinctiveness, its relevant circumstances, (...) and how individual clinicians and the medical community should practically respond to it. We argue that, in a range of situations that are said to be morally distressing, the characteristic emotion can be well‐understood in terms of what Bernard Williams calls “agent‐regret.” We show what can thereby be gained in terms of a less ambiguous concept and a more adequate ethical response to this distinctive and complex clinician experience. (shrink)

Injuries from failed suicide attempts account for a large number of patients cared for in the emergency and trauma setting. While a fundamental underpinning of clinical ethics is that patients have a right to refuse treatment, individuals presenting with life-threating injuries resulting from suicide attempts are almost universally treated in this acute care setting. Here we discuss the limitations on physician ability to determine capacity in this setting and the challenges these pose in carrying out patient wishes.

The field of science communication is plagued by challenges. Communicators face the difficulty of responding to unjustified public skepticism over issues like climate change and COVID-19 while also acknowledging the fallibility and limitations of scientific knowledge. Our goal in this paper is to suggest a new model for science communication that can help foster more productive, respectful relationships among all those involved in science communication. Inspired by the pragmatist philosophy of John Dewey, we develop an experience model, according to which (...) science communication consists in people’s experiences with science and the meanings they develop from those experiences. Three principles are central to the model: experience is cumulative, context matters, and audiences have agency. We argue that this model has significant implications both for communication research and practice, which we illustrate by applying it to the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy. We show how science communicators can help to identify and alleviate structural factors that contribute to skepticism as well as fostering opportunities for meaning making around shared experiences. (shrink)

SUMMARYContemporary scholars seeking to advance the study of political phenomena identify their inquiry as a ‘science' that attains success through rigorous method. Thus the ‘methodological anarchism' of Paul Feyerabend's philosophy of science might seem an inauspicious place to find a fruitful disciplinary vision. Nonetheless, it echoes a longstanding conception of the ‘science' of politics articulated by Niccolò Machiavelli. Looking to Feyerabend, we propose to surmount the impasse between Machiavelli's account of politics and the demands of modern science and recover his (...) contribution to the scientific study of politics. In doing so, Machiavelli illustrates the potential of a Feyerabendian political science. (shrink)

Despite pervasive sexual violence against women, especially the extensive problem of rape on college campuses, there is virtually no Catholic response. This paper seeks to fill this lacunae by examining campus rape culture as an instance of social sin. Within this sinful social reality, rape is not deviant, but is the extreme manifestation of gender norms and expectations that construct femininity as sexual availability and masculinity as sexual aggression and dominance. Participation in the sin of rape culture may range from (...) actions of student and administrative bystanders to the everyday and mundane way that individuals live their gendered and sexual selves. In response, I offer three theological resources for moving toward transformation of rape culture into one that fosters the full human flourishing of all: interruption, conscience, and solidarity. (shrink)

This book explores Rousseau's contribution to the Republican tradition in political thought. Through comparisons with various Republican lineages, it addresses problems that have defined and redefined Republicanism: attaining virtue, preserving liberty, sustaining the social order, orienting persons toward the common good, and having the law rule over men.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:I Know You Have to Stay … I Wish I Could, I Wish I CouldMegan K. SkaffIn the world of healthcare, I advocate for the scores of youth who have had Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). I work to understand where the child has been so we can learn the extent of the trauma that the child has been through. While working for a facility as the Street Outreach Case (...) Manager, my priority was based mainly on one girl, let us call her Tawny. I knew Tawny was going to be a very difficult client to work with the moment I realized she did not trust anyone in her own life, let alone the facility I worked in. She would not talk to a single staff member. However, being her case manager, it was my job to get her to trust me so I could crack her case and really get down to the problems she was facing. I promised myself the day I met Tawny that I would never cast one judgment upon this girl, and I made good on that promise until this very day.I find it true that we are all raised in different situations. Tawny endured such horrific childhood experiences that she voluntarily entered herself into our organization. My specialty was the homeless and runaway case manager. Hence, the reason she ended up on my caseload. After running many different tests, I learned that her ACEs score was a ten out of ten. To her, everything she had endured that warranted this score was baseline normal; she did not see her experiences as traumatic, she just saw them as a piece of her life. For me as her case manager, looking at this ten was devastating. I wanted to know everything I could that went into this high score. I needed Tawny to learn to trust me so I could understand what was going on in her home life and better understand her and her trust issues.Just a side note, the staff around me strongly hated Tawny. The worst part about this was that she knew it because they vocalized it. The staff [End Page 5] was so horrible that they would not even pretend to her face that they liked her. The one job they had as staff—to make her feel welcomed and loved in an environment full of broken kids—they could not do. There was no question as to why I struggled to build a relationship with my most vulnerable yet strongest client. Tawny would not let anyone see her as vulnerable. She did not want to be vulnerable because to her vulnerability meant weakness.I was determined to build a solid foundation of trust with Tawny. It was difficult, but I did it. At best, this process took weeks, maybe close to over a month. After many days of her asking other staff, "why is this b**** still in here," and her finally, slowly inching closer to me to say, "Sup," and me answering, "Just waiting for you to talk to me." This answer would make her smile, even though she tried hard not to. As much as she did not want it to be true, I was the only person she wanted to hang out with on the floor. She did not want anything to do with the kids or the staff. She knew the kids on the floor were toxic for her, and she wanted a better life for herself. She knew the staff were toxic for her as well.She started to ask daily where I was, so I started making sure I was on the floor every day. I gave her my work cell and wrote it in the call book along with a message that she had permission to call at any time, no matter day or night. Staff hated that. I did not care. Let me tell you, she tested it to its limits. If she called me at 3:00 AM, I would answer. She would say she was calling to say goodnight; when really, she just needed to know someone would be there. She needed to know she could trust me... (shrink)

These three reflections look at the theological and ethical implications of sexual violence in light of the attention brought by #MeToo. The first explores ethnographic interviews which indicate that Church leaders, teachers, and parents contribute to rape culture by leaving sexual violence unaddressed in Christian sexual education, arguing that it must be reconstructed to eliminate the Church’s participation in a culture that promotes gender-based violence. The second notes that feminist scholarship has made the case that rape and “unjust sex” are (...) associated with what is considered acceptable heterosexuality, require the category of “cultural sin” to account for the social responsibility of persons. Finally, the third explores how a feminist political theological ethics of “dangerous memory” is required to critique of the structures and systems that violate women’s selves and bodies. (shrink)

Kolbe and de Melo-Martin (2023) describe fatal problems in current definitions and measurement of moral distress and injury (MD/I) in medical professionals, which impede development of genuine atte...

Pro Doernberg and Truog (2023), we recognize and acknowledge five spheres of morality in medicine. We posit that these spheres represent domains of practical engagement, which, as the authors note,...

This article explores Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as an “object of care” for use in examining the relationship between creativity and responsibility in the sciences and beyond. Through three short sketches from different disciplinary lenses—literature, science and technology studies, and feminist studies—readers get a sense of the different ways scholars might consider Shelley’s text as an object of care. Through an analysis and synthesis of these three sketches, the authors illustrate the value of such an object in thinking about broad cultural (...) issues. The article acts as a kind of boundary object by creating distinct, yet overlapping narratives from an object that is owned by many social worlds. The three sketches reveal Frankenstein as a thoughtful consideration about what it means to care for, or fail to care for, one’s creation, rather than as a cautionary tale about the evils of scientific hubris. Although infrastructures at universities often prevent interdisciplinary dialogue, the article concludes that purposeful boundary objects created around objects of care like Frankenstein can help build bridges and create shared meanings for new interdisciplinary spaces. (shrink)

Fiester and Yuan (2023) highlight ethical concerns important for considering behavioral contracts to manage charged/challenging interactions with patients and/or families. We support the viability...

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 77-80.

We are grateful to Friesen and colleagues for drawing attention to the tension between the protection of populations that may experience vulnerability with their inclusion in research (Friesen et a...

Which systems/organisms are conscious? New tests for consciousness (‘C-tests’) are urgently needed. There is persisting uncertainty about when consciousness arises in human development, when it is lost due to neurological disorders and brain injury, and how it is distributed in nonhuman species. This need is amplified by recent and rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI), neural organoids, and xenobot technology. Although a number of C-tests have been proposed in recent years, most are of limited use, and currently we have no (...) C-tests for many of the populations for which they are most critical. Here, we identify challenges facing any attempt to develop C-tests, propose a multidimensional classification of such tests, and identify strategies that might be used to validate them. (shrink)

Having a confirmation bias sometimes leads us to hold inaccurate beliefs. So, the puzzle goes: why do we have it? According to the influential argumentative theory of reasoning, confirmation bias emerges because the primary function of reason is not to form accurate beliefs, but to convince others that we’re right. A crucial prediction of the theory, then, is that confirmation bias should be found only in the reasoning domain. In this article, we argue that there is evidence that confirmation bias (...) does exist outside the reasoning domain. This undermines the main evidential basis for the argumentative theory of reasoning. In presenting the relevant evidence, we explore why having such confirmation bias may not be maladaptive. (shrink)

Bioethicists in healthcare institutions have the skills and insights and can and must facilitate and promote measures that address deeply ingrained structural issues that exacerbate health inequity...

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory provides an entry point into this burgeoning field by both synthesizing and challenging the terms that motivate it. The handbook demonstrates how mainstream political theory can and must be enriched through attention to genuinely global, rather than parochially Euro-American, contributions to political thinking. Entries emphasize exploration of substantive questions about political life-ranging from domination to political economy to the politics of knowledge-in a range of global contexts, with attention to whether and how those (...) questions may be shared, contested, or reformulated across differences of time, space, and experience. They connect comparative political theory to cognate disciplines including postcolonial theory, area studies, and comparative politics. Creative organizational tools such as tags and keywords aid in navigation of the handbook to help readers trace disruptions, thematic connections, contrasts, and geographic affinities across entries. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.

The scientific study of consciousness emerged as an organized field of research only a few decades ago. As empirical results have begun to enhance our understanding of consciousness, it is important to find out whether other factors, such as funding for consciousness research and status of consciousness scientists, provide a suitable environment for the field to grow and develop sustainably. We conducted an online survey on people’s views regarding various aspects of the scientific study of consciousness as a field of (...) research. 249 participants completed the survey, among which 80% were in academia, and around 40% were experts in consciousness research. Topics covered include the progress made by the field, funding for consciousness research, job opportunities for consciousness researchers, and the scientific rigor of the work done by researchers in the field. The majority of respondents (78%) indicated that scientific research on consciousness has been making progress. However, most participants perceived obtaining funding and getting a job in the field of consciousness research as more difficult than in other subfields of neuroscience. Overall, work done in consciousness research was perceived to be less rigorous than other neuroscience subfields, but this perceived lack of rigor was not related to the perceived difficulty in finding jobs and obtaining funding. Lastly, we found that, overall, the global workspace theory was perceived to be the most promising (around 28%), while most non-expert researchers (around 22% of non-experts) found the integrated information theory (IIT) most promising. We believe the survey results provide an interesting picture of current opinions from scientists and researchers about the progresses made and the challenges faced by consciousness research as an independent field. They will inspire collective reflection on the future directions regarding funding and job opportunities for the field. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 4, April 2022.

In recent years, the law in the area of recovered memories in child sexual abuse cases has developed rapidly. See J.K. Murray, “Repression, Memory & Suggestibility: A Call for Limitations on the Admissibility of Repressed Memory Testimony in Abuse Trials,” University of Colorado Law Review, 66 : 477-522, at 479. Three cases have defined the scope of liability to third parties. The cases, decided within six months of each other, all involved lawsuits by third parties against therapists, based on treatment (...) in which the patients recovered memories of sexual abuse. The New Hampshire Supreme Court, in Hungerford v. Jones, 722 A.2d 478, allowed such a claim to survive, while the supreme courts in Iowa, in J.A.H. v. Wadle & Associates, 589 N.W.2d 256, and California, in Eear v. Sills, 82 Cal. Rptr. 281, rejected lawsuits brought by nonpatients for professional liability. (shrink)

Contemporary educational theorists focus on the significance of Dewey’s conception of experience, learning-by-doing and collateral learning. In this essay, I reexamine the chapters of Dewey’s Democracy and Education, that pertain to thinking and highlight their relationship to Dewey’s How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking in the Educative Process—another book written explicitly for teachers. In How We Think Dewey explains that nothing is more important in education than the formation of concepts. Concepts introduce permanency into an (...) otherwise impermanent world. He defines concepts as established meanings, or intellectual deposits used to found a better understanding of new experiences; they are what makes any experience educationally worthwhile. Dewey accuses traditional and progressive education of failing to appropriately form concepts in students. His position is that concepts are formed and transformed by experience, reflection and activity. He argues that the individual makes a personalized use of concepts for which he or she requires: continuity of experience, exposure to new or surprising possibilities, and sustained communication with others—all of which are discussed at length in Democracy & Education. I conclude with the practical recommendation that K-12 schools introduce philosophy into the curriculum. Philosophy not only invites students to engage their concepts in a reflective manner, but it also provides a valuable resource for that engagement. Most if not all of philosophy’s canonical texts are dedicated to analyzing such concepts as beauty, friendship, love and justice. The introduction of philosophy in K-12 education would, I suggest, offer a correction to both traditional and progressive education. (shrink)

Today, DIY -- do-it-yourself -- describes more than self-taught carpentry. Social media enables DIY citizens to organize and protest in new ways and to repurpose corporate content in order to offer political counternarratives. This book examines the usefulness and limits of DIY citizenship, exploring the diverse forms of political participation and "critical making" that have emerged in recent years. The authors and artists in this collection describe DIY citizens whose activities range from activist fan blogging and video production to knitting (...) and the creation of community gardens. Contributors examine DIY activism, describing new modes of civic engagement that include Harry Potter fan activism and the activities of the Yes Men. They consider DIY making in learning, culture, hacking, and the arts, including do-it-yourself media production and collaborative documentary making. They discuss DIY and design and how citizens can unlock the black box of technological infrastructures to engage and innovate open and participatory critical making. And they explore DIY and media, describing activists' efforts to remake and reimagine media and the public sphere. As these chapters make clear, DIY is characterized by its emphasis on "doing" and making rather than passive consumption. DIY citizens assume active roles as interventionists, makers, hackers, modders, and tinkerers, in pursuit of new forms of engaged and participatory democracy. _Contributors_Mike Ananny, Chris Atton, Alexandra Bal, Megan Boler, Catherine Burwell, Red Chidgey, Andrew Clement, Negin Dahya, Suzanne de Castell, Carl DiSalvo, Kevin Driscoll, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Joseph Ferenbok, Stephanie Fisher, Miki Foster, Stephen Gilbert, Henry Jenkins, Jennifer Jenson, Yasmin B. Kafai, Ann Light, Steve Mann, Joel McKim, Brenda McPhail, Owen McSwiney, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Graham Meikle, Emily Rose Michaud, Kate Milberry, Michael Murphy, Jason Nolan, Kate Orton-Johnson, Kylie A. Peppler, David J. Phillips, Karen Pollock, Matt Ratto, Ian Reilly, Rosa Reitsamer, Mandy Rose, Daniela K. Rosner, Yukari Seko, Karen Louise Smith, Lana Swartz, Alex Tichine, Jennette Weber, Elke Zobl. (shrink)

We conducted a rapid review and quantitative summary of meta-analyses that have examined interventions which can be used by individuals during quarantine and social distancing to manage anxiety, depression, stress and subjective well-being. A literature search yielded 34 meta-analyses (total number of studies k = 1,390, n = 145,744) that were summarized. Overall, self-guided interventions showed small to medium effects in comparison to control groups. In particular, self-guided therapeutic approaches (including cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness, and acceptance-based interventions), selected positive psychology interventions, and (...) multi-component and activity-based interventions (music, physical exercise) showed promising evidence for effectiveness. Overall, self-guided interventions on average did not show the same degree of effectiveness as traditional guided individual or group therapies. There was no consistent evidence of dose effects, baseline differences and differential effectiveness of eHealth interventions. More research on the effectiveness of interventions in diverse cultural settings is needed. (shrink)

This study highlights a range of perspectives offered by 11 international teachers, participating in a cultural immersion experience, as they reflect on how they saw democracy manifested at their school internships. Teachers from six different countries studied and taught in a rural community in the Southern United States, where a medium-sized research university hosted the teachers as part of a federally-funded program during an academic semester. As a part of a larger qualitative research study analyzing the international teachers’ perception of (...) American schooling, data from intercultural sessions, individual interviews, and assigned reaction papers highlighted multiple contradictions between the teachers’ interpretation of democratic ideals and democratic education as they saw manifested in American schools. These narratives highlight the complex forces that shape individuals’ perceptions of democracy as played out in the everyday life of a cultural immersion experience. The researchers suggest that these transnational perspectives can serve as a mechanism allowing Western educators to listen to the “Other” as they interrogate taken-for-granted assumptions about American schooling. Narratives primarily highlight inconsistencies between the goals of citizenship education and the way in which citizenship is promoted or neglected in K-12 classrooms. (shrink)

The anti-patriarchy movement is going to undo ten thousand years of recorded history…. You watch. The time has come. Women are gonna take charge of society.I think [#MeToo] will have staying power because people, and not only women, men as well as women, realize how wrong the behavior was and how it subordinated women. So we shall see, but my prediction is that it is here to stay.As the story is told, #MeToo arrived in a kairotic moment. Jodi Kantor and (...) Megan Twohey's 5 October 2017 New York Times exposé of the methods Harvey Weinstein used to systematically harass and subsequently silence women in the entertainment industry opened the proverbial floodgates. Ten days later, actor Alyssa... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 87-92 [Access article in PDF] Christian Prayer Seen from the Eye of a Buddhist Kenneth K. Tanaka Musashino Women's University, Tokyo When I think about Christian prayer, the image I get is that of a young girl of about eight years old with long brown hair. Wearing a nightgown, she is kneeling next to her bed with her hands clasped and her head bowed. I (...) have often queried myself about the source of this image. This is an interesting question in itself. I personally don't know of anyone who fits that description or who has actually witnessed someone like her in prayer. Nevertheless, it is interesting how a Buddhist raised in a predominately Christian society comes to form his image of Christian prayer.Working further with this image, I see this little girl—let's call her Megan—doing two things in her evening prayer. One is that she is giving thanks to God for the benefits she has received. She thanks him for her food, clothing, friends, and family. Then, she also makes a request. In this petitionary element of her prayer, she is asking God to make her sick father get well soon. As she does so, her expression turns more serious, and she clasps her hands more firmly and brings them closer to her chest. She then looks up toward the ceiling, expressing her heartfelt wish for her father's early recovery. What is noteworthy is that Megan's prayers are spoken aloud as in a human conversation.I realize that this image does not do justice to a topic as enormous as "Christian prayer," but I believe that it provides a glimpse into how one Buddhist imagines the topic. I have a number of questions about Megan's prayer, particularly as I try to understand what may be going on inside of her. I wonder first and foremost, what God looks like to her. Is God a male or a female, or neither? I would think that even for her (in this gender-sensitive age), God is still a male. If so, does she see him as an elderly man with a long white beard, holding a cane and sitting in a throne? Next, where does God reside? If he is in heaven, what is heaven like to her? I wonder if heaven is located somewhere amidst the lofty, puffy clouds. In regards to her father's illness, how does she think God can make her father get well? What is the mechanism by which a personified God can heal? Perhaps I am being too analytical and overly rigorous with my questions about a spiritual act, and that of an eight-year-old at that.Perhaps I should, instead, turn the questions toward me, asking how I would [End Page 87] answer the same questions about a Buddhist girl "praying" before the Buddha or a bodhisattva for the same kind of wish? The image that immediately crops up in my mind is of a girl of about twelve and her mother whom I saw at a pagoda in Rangoon, Burma, a number of years ago. The girl is wearing a large, red fresh flower in her hair and has on traditional apparel. She sits with her mother on a marble floor of a spacious area in front of Buddha images that are several meters in height. She holds a bouquet of flowers held upright between the palms of hands in a gesture of reverence. She sits with her legs folded but thrown out to her side, a style common in her country as well as in Thailand. Her eyes appear closed, and her head is slightly bowed down toward the Buddha images. She stays in that posture for what seems like several minutes; her mother does the same. I don't know, of course, what is going on inside, but she is certainly not meditating.I believe this is an important point to make here, for Buddhists are stereotypically seen to only meditate. However, the vast majority of lay Buddhists... (shrink)

This book may be described as a Festschrift—or more accurately a Gedenkschrift, given that it is a posthumous celebration of Gareth Matthews’ work and career. It consists of a selected anthology of his papers, interspersed with papers by scholars that offer interpretive perspectives on his work. The Matthews papers, which are brilliantly chosen, represent only one dimension of his oeuvre; he was in fact a recognized scholar of ancient and medieval philosophy, particularly Plato, Aristotle and Augustine. The present selection draws (...) from his persistent, oddly related inquiry, pursued over the course of almost 40 years, into the theory and practice of conducting philosophical conversations with children, whether inside or outside the classroom. (shrink)

For much of their history, the relationship between anthropology and psychology has been well captured by Robert Frost's poem, “Mending Wall,” which ends with the ironic line, “good fences make good neighbors.” The congenial fence was that anthropology studied what people think and psychology studied how people think. Recent research, however, shows that content and process cannot be neatly segregated, because cultural differences in what people think affect how people think. To achieve a deeper understanding of the relation between process (...) and content, research must integrate the methodological insights from both anthropology and psychology. We review previous research and describe new studies in the domain of folk biology which examine the cognitive consequences of different conceptualizations of nature and the place of humans within it. The focus is on cultural differences in framework theories among Native Americans and European American children and adults living in close proximity in rural Wisconsin. Our results show that epistemological orientations affect memory organization, ecological reasoning, and the perceived role of humans in nature. This research also demonstrates that cultural differences in framework theories have implications for understanding intergroup conflict over natural resources and are relevant to efforts to improve science learning, especially among Native American children. (shrink)