M. C. Dillon claims that the paramount task facing contemporary philosophers is to solve the problems stemming from ontological dualism. Merleau-Ponty's work is pivotal and indispensable in developing the requisite new phenomenological ontology. Dillon provides a lucid interpretive analysis both of Merleau-Ponty's position and of the context within which the present problematic can be understood and the radicality [[sic]] of Merleau-Ponty's response appreciated. He argues that Merleau-Ponty's ontology offers an alternative to the negative logical and historical consequences of dualism in (...) western thought. (shrink)

"`This is clearly the matur work of a seasoned scholar.'--Professor Daniel Conway. Texas A & M university, USA.

There was a time in the not too distant past when one would be obliged to begin a review like this with a comment about the relative neglect of Nietzsche’s middle works, HH, D, and GS. That time now seems to be well behind us. In recent years, there has been a spate of scholarly books devoted to these works, including Ruth Abbey’s Nietzsche’s Middle Period, Michael Ure’s Nietzsche’s Therapy: Self-Cultivation in the Middle Works, Jonathan Cohen’s Science, Culture, and Free (...) Spirits: A Study of Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human, Monika Langer’s Nietzsche’s Gay Science (New York: Palgrave... (shrink)

The objective of the present research was two-fold: to provide a new definition of ethical competence, and to clarify the influence of empathy, personal values, and the five-factor model of personality on ethical competence. The present research provides a comprehensive overview about recent approaches and empirically explores the interconnections of these constructs. 366 German undergraduate students were examined in a cross-sectional study that investigated the relationship of empathy, personal values, and the five-factor model of personality with moral judgment competence and (...) counterproductive work behavior as indicators of moral judgment and behavior. We found self-transcendence values to be related to both, high levels of empathy and ethical competence, in contrast to self-enhancement values. Multiple mediation analysis revealed unique effects of empathy on ethical competence through values as mediators. Affective empathy transmitted its effect on ethical competence through benevolence, conformity, tradition, power, and hedonism. Most importantly, perspective taking lost its predictive power when investigated alongside affective empathy dimensions. These results converge to an important role of affective empathy, in particular empathic concern, with regard to personal values and ethical competence. Furthermore, the five-factor model of personality explained variance in measures of ethical competence. Our research suggests that organizational decision makers should consider the role of empathy, personal values, and the five-factor model in their human resource management in order to select employees with high ethical competence. (shrink)

There is little information about the content of ethics consultations in pediatrics. We sought to describe the reasons for consultation and ethical principles addressed during EC in pediatrics through retrospective review and directed content analysis of EC records at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Patient-based EC were highly complex and often involved evaluation of parental decision making, particularly consideration of the risks and benefits of a proposed medical intervention, and the physician's fiduciary responsibility to the patient. Nonpatient consultations provided guidance (...) in the development of institutional policies that would broadly affect patients and families. This is one of the few existing reviews of the content of pediatric EC and indicates that the distribution of ethical issues and reasons for moral distress are different than with adults. Pediatric EC often facilitates complex decision making among multiple stakeholders, and further prospective research is need.. (shrink)

Colleagues are not only an integral part of many people’s lives; empirical research suggests that having a good relationship with one’s colleagues is the single most important factor for being happy at work. However, so far, no one has provided a comprehensive account of what it means to be a colleague. To address this lacuna, we have conducted both an empirical as well as theoretical investigation into the content and structure of the concept ‘colleague.’ Based on the empirical evidence that (...) we present in this paper, we argue that ‘colleague’ is a dual character concept that has both a descriptive and a normative basis for categorization. Its descriptive dimension is characterized by three features, according to which two people are colleagues if they work for the same institution and know each other, or if they work for the same institution and work in the same field. An independent normative dimension is revealed, which shows that, as colleagues, we are expected to fulfill substantial normative expectations. Understanding the expectations that are encoded in the very structure of this concept is crucial to lay the groundwork for an ethics of collegiality. (shrink)

Generative AI programs can produce high-quality written and visual content that may be used for good or ill. We argue that a credit–blame asymmetry arises for assigning responsibility for these outputs and discuss urgent ethical and policy implications focused on large-scale language models.

Recently, researchers have shown an increased interest in achievement goal orientation correlates. What is not yet clear is the detailed relationships among students’ goal orientation, students’ personality traits, and parenting style. In so doing, this research responds to the need to analyze the importance of parenting styles and students’ traits in explaining the achievement goal orientations. In the exploratory correlational study, 586 Iranian students along with their parents were selected as the sample so as to evaluate the structure of the (...) relationships between these variables. The results indicate that students’ psychoticism and neuroticism predict students’ goal orientations while extraversion did not. Only the authoritative style predicts mastery approach and psychoticism trait. Permissive and authoritarian styles do not directly or indirectly predict students’ goal orientations. (shrink)

This article is the lead piece in a special report that presents the results of a bioethical investigation into chimeric research, which involves the insertion of human cells into nonhuman animals and nonhuman animal embryos, including into their brains. Rapid scientific developments in this field may advance knowledge and could lead to new therapies for humans. They also reveal the conceptual, ethical, and procedural limitations of existing ethics guidance for human‐nonhuman chimeric research. Led by bioethics researchers working closely with an (...) interdisciplinary work group, the investigation focused on generating conceptual clarity and identifying improvements to governance approaches, with the goal of helping scholars, funders, scientists, institutional leaders, and oversight bodies (embryonic stem cell research oversight [ESCRO] committees and institutional animal care and use committees [IACUCs]) deliver principled and trustworthy oversight of this area of science. The article, which focuses on human‐nonhuman animal chimeric research that is stem cell based, identifies key ethical issues in and offers ten recommendations regarding the ethics and oversight of this research. Turning from bioethics’ previous focus on human‐centered questions about the ethics of “humanization” and this research's potential impact on concepts like human dignity, this article emphasizes the importance of nonhuman animal welfare concerns in chimeric research and argues for less‐siloed governance and oversight and more‐comprehensive public communication. (shrink)

Driven by interests in workforce planning and patient safety, a growing body of literature has begun to identify the reality and the prevalence of missed nursing care, also specified as care left undone, rationed care or unfinished care. Empirical studies and conceptual considerations have focused on structural issues such as staffing, as well as on outcome issues – missed care/unfinished care. Philosophical and ethical aspects of unfinished care are largely unexplored. Thus, while internationally studies highlight instances of covert rationing/missed care/care (...) left undone – suggesting that nurses, in certain contexts, are actively engaged in rationing care – in terms of the nursing and nursing ethics literature, there appears to be a dearth of explicit decision-making frameworks within which to consider rationing of nursing care. In reality, the assumption of policy makers and health service managers is that nurses will continue to provide full care – despite reducing staffing levels and increased patient turnover, dependency and complexity of care. Often, it would appear that rationing/missed care/nursing care left undone is a direct response to overwhelming demands on the nursing resource in specific contexts. A discussion of resource allocation and rationing in nursing therefore seems timely. The aim of this discussion paper is to consider the ethical dimension of issues of resource allocation and rationing as they relate to nursing care and the distribution of the nursing resource. (shrink)

Digital piracy as a continuing problem significantly impacts various stakeholders, including consumers, enterprises, and countries. This study develops a three-level mechanism of determinants of consumer digital piracy behavior, with personal risk as an individual factor, susceptibility to interpersonal influence as an inter-personal factor, and moral intensity as a broad societal factor. Further, it explores the role of rationalization and future piracy intent as outcomes of past piracy behaviors. The authors use survey data from four countries in the European Union to (...) test the system of structural relationships. With an exception of the effect of consumers’ susceptibility to interpersonal influence on piracy behavior, the conceptual model receives remarkably consistent support across the four countries. Specifically, perception of personal risk and moral intensity negatively affected the reported piracy behavior in all four countries. The results further support the negative influence of moral intensity and the positive influence of past digital piracy behavior on consumers’ use of rationalization. Lastly, personal risk, rationalization, and past digital piracy behavior directly influenced consumers’ intention to engage in digital piracy in the future. The study also discusses implications of the findings and identifies areas of future research. (shrink)

Certainly I am in no way opposed to philosophy, or metaphysics in the sense that Wm. James defined it as a particularly intense effort to think clearly. Indeed, Klein would like to say that what I am talking about is nothing but metaphysics. But the kind of philosophy/metaphysics that is needed here is of a particular kind: a kind that does not separate philosophy/metaphysics and physics into two disjoint realms. It is of the kind that seeks to construct useful testable (...) physical theories that are adequately connected to what we can know. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 1 Seiten: 1-2.

The aim of the study was to compare the strategies of coping with stress during the COVID-19 epidemic in athletes involved in Olympic preparations and students of physical education, and to determine their depending on the variable gender. The research was conducted in the form of an on-line survey in the period of April 7–28 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Four standard psychological questionnaires were used. Elite athletes and physical education students practicing sports most often dealt with the stress of the (...) COVID-19 pandemic using cognitive and behavioral coping strategies. The sports level depended on the strategies of coping with the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic more strongly than gender. The relationship between the sense of coherence and the hope for success treated as a generalized immune resource with coping strategies in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic postulated by Antonovsky was confirmed. (shrink)

After Knowledge: Science, Deregulation, and Restoration. In the light of recent phenomena and developments – from ‘alternative facts’ to the rise of the ‘New Right’ –, the notion that we live in a ‘knowledge society’ (which has served our discipline well over the last couple of decades) seems more than a little antiquated. Our present, or so it would seem, is determined by forces other than ‘knowledge’ or, for that matter ‘science’. By the same token, ‘knowledge’ has lost traction for (...) the purposes of a historiography trying to keep abreast with the times. At this impasse, we propose that historians of science embrace our predicament head‐on. They should take a more serious interest in the trajectories that brought us here: that is, in recent history and the political and ideological projects which shaped it. We suggest two complementary concepts along which such analyses might proceed: deregulation and restoration. (shrink)

Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (shrink)

In these essays, appearing for the first time in English, Gadamer addresses practical questions about recent politics in Europe, about education and university reform, and about the role of poetry in the modern world. This book also includes a series of interviews that the editors conducted in 1986. Gadamer elaborates on his experiences in education and politics, touching on the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the early Frankfurt School, Heidegger and the Nazis, university life in East Germany, and the prospects (...) for Europe in the coming years. Hans-Georg Gadamer was probably Heidegger’s leading interpreter in Germany, and in the 1950s and 1960s he became the world’s leading exponent of hermeneutics. His hermeneutical theory explains how it is that ancient art and philosophy still speak to us today. His influential idea of the “fusion of horizons” also shows how it is that we understand what is remote form our own culture. (shrink)

Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (shrink)

Barcz and Zaręba (2021) argue that depending on the shape and the size of the asymmetry in attributions of intentional actions one can distinguish various interpretations of the Knobe effect. Their classification of these interpretations can be used to compare judgments of intentional action across different languages and cultures. Our study in three languages (Polish, English and Italian) indicates that there is some cross-cultural variation both in the ascription of intentionality to an action and in the ascription of actions to (...) the agent. (shrink)

BackgroundFreezing of gait is a disabling burden for Parkinson’s disease patients with poor response to conventional therapies. Combined deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus and substantia nigra moved into focus as a potential therapeutic option to treat the parkinsonian gait disorder and refractory FoG. The mechanisms of action of DBS within the cortical-subcortical-basal ganglia network on gait, particularly at the cortical level, remain unclear.MethodsTwelve patients with idiopathic PD and chronically-implanted DBS electrodes were assessed on their regular dopaminergic medication in (...) a standardized stepping in place paradigm. Patients executed the task with DBS switched off, conventional STN DBS and combined STN+SN DBS and were compared to healthy matched controls. Simultaneous high-density EEG and kinematic measurements were recorded during resting-state, effective stepping, and freezing episodes.ResultsClinically, STN+SN DBS was superior to conventional STN DBS in improving temporal stepping variability of the more affected leg. During resting-state and effective stepping, the cortical activity of PD patients in STIM OFF was characterized by excessive over-synchronization in the theta, alpha, and high-beta band compared to healthy controls. Both active DBS settings similarly decreased resting-state alpha power and reduced pathologically enhanced high-beta activity during resting-state and effective stepping compared to STIM OFF. Freezing episodes during STN DBS and STN+SN DBS showed spectrally and spatially distinct cortical activity patterns when compared to effective stepping. During STN DBS, FoG was associated with an increase in cortical alpha and low-beta activity over central cortical areas, while with STN+SN DBS, an increase in high-beta was prominent over more frontal areas.ConclusionsSTN+SN DBS improved temporal aspects of parkinsonian gait impairment compared to conventional STN DBS and differentially affected cortical oscillatory patterns during regular locomotion and freezing suggesting a potential modulatory effect on dysfunctional cortical-subcortical communication in PD. (shrink)

The motif of ancient beliefs about afterlife and contemporary idea of them appears increasingly in contemporary works directed to young audience. The combination of mythology and history known from ancient sources and popular culture works is essential for reception studies. The paper presents three cases of transformation of characters connected with ancient beliefs about afterlife as protagonists or villains in works directed to youth; Hades as a villain known from Disney’s works, especially Hercules; Persephone and Hades’s love story in three (...) web comics: Underworld Love Story and Hades & Persephone Shorts by Gau Meo and Hades’ Holiday by Elvishness; and the way the Cleopatra VII Philopator’s image in Scooby Doo! in Where’s My Mummy? is different than others representations of the queen. (shrink)

ObjectivesWorking memory is essential for daily life skills like reading comprehension, reasoning, and problem-solving. Healthy aging of the brain goes along with working memory decline that can affect older people’s independence in everyday life. Interventions in the form of cognitive training are a promising tool for delaying age-related working memory decline, yet the underlying structural plasticity of white matter is hardly studied.MethodsWe conducted a longitudinal diffusion tensor imaging study to investigate the effects of an intensive four-week adaptive working memory training (...) on white matter integrity quantified by global and tract-wise mean diffusivity. We compared diffusivity measures of fiber tracts that are associated with working memory of 32 young and 20 older participants that were randomly assigned to a working memory training group or an active control group.ResultsThe behavioral analysis showed an increase in working memory performance after the four-week adaptive working memory training. The neuroanatomical analysis revealed a decrease in mean diffusivity in the working memory training group after the training intervention in the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus for the older adults. There was also a decrease in mean diffusivity in the working memory training group in the right superior longitudinal fasciculus for the older and young participants after the intervention.ConclusionThis study shows that older people can benefit from working memory training by improving their working memory performance that is also reflected in terms of improved white matter integrity in the superior longitudinal fasciculus and the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, where the first is an essential component of the frontoparietal network known to be essential in working memory. (shrink)

Background: The Parkinsonian [i.e., Parkinson's disease ] gait disorder represents a therapeutical challenge with residual symptoms despite the use of deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus and medical and rehabilitative strategies. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of different DBS modes as combined stimulation of the STN and substantia nigra and environmental rehabilitative factors as footwear on gait kinematics.Methods: This single-center, randomized, double-blind, crossover clinical trial assessed shod and unshod gait in patients with PD with (...) medication in different DBS conditions during different gait tasks and compared gait characteristics to healthy controls. Notably, 15 patients participated in the study, and 11 patients were analyzed after a dropout of four patients due to DBS-induced side effects.Results: Gait was modulated by both factors, namely, footwear and DBS mode, in patients with PD. Footwear impacted gait characteristics in patients with PD similarly to controls with longer step length, lower cadence, and shorter single-support time. Interestingly, DBS exerted specific effects depending on gait tasks with increased cognitive load. STN+SN DBS was the most efficient DBS mode compared to STIM OFF and STN DBS with intense effects as step length increment during dual task.Conclusion: The PD gait disorder is a multifactorial symptom, impacted by environmental factors as footwear and modulated by DBS. DBS effects on gait were specific depending on the gait task, with the most obvious effects with STN+SN DBS during gait with increased cognitive load. (shrink)

Peer review is widely recognized as a mechanism for quality control of academic content. This research article aims at comparing the review reports and decisions of reviewers who are members of the editorial board of the European Scientific Journal with those reviewers suggested by the authors and who are not affiliated with the journal. 457 review reports on 378 papers submitted to the ESJ in the period of October–December 2017 were analysed. Statistical methods including OLS and Wilcoxon rank-sum test were (...) applied based on the score approach toward the reviewers’ assessments of the papers and their characteristics related to the country, gender, and time of revisions. Results show the difference between the decisions these two groups of reviewers made. Even though editor-suggested and author-suggested reviewers need equal time to review a paper, the former are less favourable towards the authors of the papers. It is also concluded that factors such as time and country of the reviewers influence their decisions. In this regard, the editors should avoid relying their decisions solely on review reports received from reviewers suggested by the authors. However, further research with larger sample sizes should be conducted. (shrink)

With the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), global researchers were confronted with major challenges. The German National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON) was launched in fall 2020 to effectively leverage resources and bundle research activities in the fight against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We analyzed the setup phase of NAPKON as an example for multicenter studies in Germany, highlighting challenges and optimization potential in connecting 59 university and nonuniversity study sites. We examined the ethics application (...) process of 121 ethics submissions considering durations, annotations, and outcomes. Study site activation and recruitment processes were investigated and related to the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections. For all initial ethics applications, the median time to a positive ethics vote was less than two weeks and 30 of these study sites (65%) joined NAPKON within less than three weeks each. Electronic instead of postal ethics submission (9.5 days (Q1: 5.75, Q3: 17) vs. 14 days (Q1: 11, Q3: 26), p value = 0.01) and adoption of the primary ethics vote significantly accelerated the ethics application process. Each study center enrolled a median of 37 patients during the 14-month observation period, with large differences depending on the health sector. We found a positive correlation between recruitment performance and COVID-19 incidence as well as hospitalization incidence. Our analysis highlighted the challenges and opportunities of the federated system in Germany. Digital ethics application tools, adoption of a primary ethics vote and standardized formal requirements lead to harmonized and thus faster study initiation processes during a pandemic. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is changing healthcare and the practice of medicine as data-driven science and machine-learning technologies, in particular, are contributing to a variety of medical and clinical tasks. Such advancements have also raised many questions, especially about public trust. As a response to these concerns there has been a concentrated effort from public bodies, policy-makers and technology companies leading the way in AI to address what is identified as a "public trust deficit". This paper argues that a focus on trust (...) as the basis upon which a relationship between this new technology and the public is built is, at best, ineffective, at worst, inappropriate or even dangerous, as it diverts attention from what is actually needed to actively warrant trust. Instead of agonising about how to facilitate trust, a type of relationship which can leave those trusting vulnerable and exposed, we argue that efforts should be focused on the difficult and dynamic process of ensuring reliance underwritten by strong legal and regulatory frameworks. From there, trust could emerge but not merely as a means to an end. Instead, as something to work in practice towards; that is, the deserved result of an ongoing ethical relationship where there is the appropriate, enforceable and reliable regulatory infrastructure in place for problems, challenges and power asymmetries to be continuously accounted for and appropriately redressed. Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study. (shrink)

This study examined the effect of history of harsh parenting on readiness for aggression in young adults testing the mediating effect of emotional reaction to frustration and provocation that is assumed to arise in the context of a history of physical punishment and psychological aggression. Data were collected from 402 participants including 187 Poles and 215 Americans. Participants reported retrospectively on corporal punishment and psychological aggression experienced during childhood. Based on self-report instruments, sensitivity to provocation and frustration and three patterns (...) of readiness for aggression in adulthood were assessed. Contrary to the US sample, sensitivity to provocation and frustration were mediators in the Polish sample alone. The important role of contextual factors that define harsh parenting circumstances, such as cultural context and sex of the parent, are discussed. (shrink)