The novelty-seeking model (NSM) does not offer a compelling unifying framework for understanding creativity and curiosity. It fails to explain important manifestations and features of curiosity. Moreover, the arguments offered to support a curiosity–creativity link – a shared association with a common core process and various superficial associations between them – are neither convincing nor do they yield useful predictions.

Background In the UK, the solidaristic character of the NHS makes it one of the most trusted public institutions. In recent years, the introduction of data-driven technologies in healthcare has opened up the space for collaborations with private digital companies seeking access to patient data. However, these collaborations appear to challenge the public’s trust in the. Main text In this paper we explore how the opening of the healthcare sector to private digital companies challenges the existing social contract and the (...) NHS’s solidaristic character, and impacts on public trust. We start by critically discussing different examples of partnerships between the NHS and private companies that collect and use data. We then analyse the relationship between trust and solidarity, and investigate how this relationship changes in the context of digital companies entering the healthcare system. Finally, we show ways for the NHS to maintain public trust by putting in place a solidarity grounded partnership model with companies seeking to access patient data. Such a model would need to serve collective interests through, for example, securing preferential access to goods and services, providing health benefits, and monitoring data access. Conclusion A solidarity grounded partnership model will help establish a social contract or licence that responds to the public’s expectations and to principles of a solidaristic healthcare system. (shrink)

On 26 February 2020, the German Constitutional Court rejected a law from 2015 that prohibited any form of ‘business-like’ assisted suicide as unconstitutional. The landmark ruling of the highest federal court emphasised the high priority given to the rights of autonomy and free personal development, both of which constitute the principle of human dignity, the first principle of the German constitution. The ruling echoes particularities of post-war Germany’s end-of-life debate focusing on patient self-determination while rejecting any discussion of active assistance (...) to die through a lethal injection administered by a doctor. This brief report discusses the ruling in the light of the broader sociopolitical and historical context of the German end-of-life debate. (shrink)

Solidarity has for a long time been referred to as the core value underpinning European health and welfare systems. But there has been debate in recent years about whether solidarity, with its alleged communitarian content, can be reconciled with the emphasis on individual freedom and personal autonomy. One may wonder whether there is still a place for solidarity, and whether the concept of justice should be embraced to analyse the moral issues regarding access to health care. In this article, I (...) will answer this question by analysing the normative foundations of the concept of justice, followed by a deeper examination of the concept of solidarity in continental philosophy. More specifically, I will compare the philosophical traditions rooted in Kant to approaches rooted in Hegel. In addition, I will present the work of Avishai Margalit on the decent society to criticize a predominantly liberal approach to access to health care. The importance of solidarity lies particularly in its emphasis on relational aspects and the role of recognition in care practices, which are usually ignored in liberal approaches to justice. However, the article will argue that solidarity is not an alternative to a rights-based concept of justice, but must be considered as a necessary complement to it. (shrink)

In 2016, a law came into force in France granting terminally ill patients the right to continuous deep sedation until death. This right was proposed as an alternative to euthanasia and presented as the ‘French response’ to problems at the end of life. The law draws a distinction between CDS and euthanasia and other forms of sympton control at the end of life. France is the first country in the world to legislate on CDS. This short report describes the particular (...) context and underlying social values that led to this piece of legislation, and explores its meaning in the wider French context. (shrink)

In 2016, a law came into force in France granting terminally ill patients the right to continuous deep sedation until death. This right was proposed as an alternative to euthanasia and presented as the ‘French response’ to problems at the end of life. The law draws a distinction between CDS and euthanasia and other forms of sympton control at the end of life. France is the first country in the world to legislate on CDS. This short report describes the particular (...) context and underlying social values that led to this piece of legislation, and explores its meaning in the wider French context. (shrink)

Drawing on political, legal, national, post-national, as well as American and European perspectives, this collection of essays offers a diverse and balanced discussion of the current arguments concerning deliberative democracy. The essays consider the thr.

The word “populism” commonly elicits images of hordes of angry townspeople with pitchforks and torches. That is the classic picture of “the mob,” bolstered by countless movie and television productions, and it is clearly based on such historical events as the English civil wars, the sans-culottes’ terror, the Bolshevik revolution, and the recent genocides in Rwanda and Burundi. Many of the leaders involved in fostering such horrors are seen as radical democrats whose successors today should also be feared. In this (...) paper, I argue that any mob takeovers of the feared sort are actually antithetical to radical democracy. This is because an authentically democratic regime, even of the most extreme type, is necessarily inconsistent with “mobocracy” or any sort of “tyranny of the majority” given its essential procedural aspects. It is argued, in fact, that leaders of legitimately democratic movements have generally been quite vapid because of the fallibilistic, plebiscitary proceduralism inherent in any authentic attempt to require government policy to reflect the “general will.” And this vapidity is argued to inhere regardless of the extent of rhetorical powers of the advocate or advocacy. (shrink)

Many parents are hesitant about, or face motivational barriers to, vaccinating their children. In this paper, we propose a type of vaccination policy that could be implemented either in addition to coercive vaccination or as an alternative to it in order to increase paediatric vaccination uptake in a non-coercive way. We propose the use of vaccination nudges that exploit the very same decision biases that often undermine vaccination uptake. In particular, we propose a policy under which children would be vaccinated (...) at school or day-care by default, without requiring parental authorization, but with parents retaining the right to opt their children out of vaccination. We show that such a policy is likely to be effective, at least in cases in which non-vaccination is due to practical obstacles, rather than to strong beliefs about vaccines, ethically acceptable and less controversial than some alternatives because it is not coercive and affects individual autonomy only in a morally unproblematic way, and likely to receive support from the UK public, on the basis of original empirical research we have conducted on the lay public. (shrink)

This paper reports the validation of a 6-item short form of the original 35-item Servant Leadership Behavior Scale, a widely used measure of servant leadership behavior. The holistic perspective of servant leadership and the inclusion of spirituality are two distinctive features of the SLBS relative to other servant leadership measures. Psychometric properties of the SLBS-6 were examined on the basis of seven studies. In the preliminary scale development, the factor structure of the new measure was tested using a combination of (...) all samples. The subsequent seven studies were aimed at building further its construct validity relative to observed variables within the servant leadership nomological network in direct, mediating, and moderating relationships. Analyses of all datasets using MPlus with maximum-likelihood estimation provided support for the 6-item structure and demonstrated its internal consistency reliability, criterion-related validity, and construct validity. As such, the study presents the SLBS-6 as the shortest holistic measure of servant leadership to date that can be used with confidence for research and training purposes. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Philologus Jahrgang: 159 Heft: 2 Seiten: 197-206.

This article attempts to challenge those contemporary philosophical approaches to justice (and this is the majority of them) which ascribe to the notion of justice a dominant role within ethics and political philosophy. In the first section, this overestimation of justice is traced back to J.S. Mill (and to John Rawls). After having pointed out some of the essential features of the Millian (and Rawlsian) concept, I show how far these attributes are away from what we (in our everyday language) (...) mean by the word ‚justice’. Finally, I try to spell out what might be more plausibly seen as the focus of our shared moral intuition, and to highlight to which extent there is an overlap with our common idea of justice. (shrink)

The ethics of the Flexibility In duty hour Requirements for Surgical Trainees trial have been vehemently debated. Views on the ethics of the FIRST trial range from it being completely unethical to wholly unproblematic. The FIRST trial illustrates the complex ethical challenges posed by cluster randomised trials of policy interventions involving healthcare professionals. In what follows, we have three objectives. First, we critically review the FIRST trial controversy, finding that commentators have failed to sufficiently identify and address many of the (...) relevant ethical issues. The 2012 Ottawa Statement on the Ethical Design and Conduct of Cluster Randomized Trials provides researchers and research ethics committees with specific guidance for the ethical design and conduct of CRTs. Second, we aim to demonstrate how the Ottawa Statement provides much-needed clarity to the ethical issues in the FIRST trial, including: research participant identification; consent requirements; gatekeeper roles; benefit-harm analysis and identification of vulnerable participants. We nonetheless also find that the FIRST trial raises ethical issues not adequately addressed by the Ottawa Statement. Hence, third and finally, we raise important questions requiring further ethical analysis and guidance, including: Does clinical equipoise apply to policy interventions with little or no evidence-base? Do healthcare providers have an obligation to participate in research? Does the power-differential in certain healthcare settings render healthcare providers vulnerable to duress and coercion to participant in research? If so, what safeguards might be implemented to protect providers, while allowing important research to proceed? (shrink)

Part play, part breviary, this book of conversations on "transcendence" is interspersed with brief excerpts from a wide variety of works on mysticism, philosophy, and the psychology of religion.

In the direct realist tradition of Reid and Austin, disjunctivism has joined its precursors inproudly trumpeting its allegiance with naïve realism. And the theory gains plausibility, par-ticularly as compared with adverbialism, if one considers a Wittgensteinian line of argumentregarding the use of sensation words. But ‘no common factor’ doctrines can be shown to beinconsistent with the naïve realism that has served as their main support. This does notmean that either disjunctivism or the Wittgensteinian perspective on language acquisitionthat informed it must (...) be false. It does indicate, however, that linguistic arguments againstprivate or internal meanings do not imply perceptual directness and that the espousal of direct realism—naïve or not—does not require adherence to disjunctivism. (shrink)

The volume discusses the notion of space by focusing on the most representative exponents of the Hellenistic schools and explores the role played by spatial concepts in both coeval and later authors who, without specifically thematising these concepts, made use of them in a theoretically original way. Renowned scholars investigate the philosophical significance and bring to light the problematical character of the ancient conceptions of space.

This article attempts to challenge those contemporary philosophical approaches to justice (and this is the majority of them) which ascribe to the notion of justice a dominant role within ethics and political philosophy. In the first section, this overestimation of justice is traced back to J.S. Mill (and to John Rawls). After having pointed out some of the essential features of the Millian (and Rawlsian) concept, I show how far these attributes are away from what we (in our everyday language) (...) mean by the word ‚justice’. Finally, I try to spell out what might be more plausibly seen as the focus of our shared moral intuition, and to highlight to which extent there is an overlap with our common idea of justice. (shrink)

The so-calledLatin Iliad, the main source for the knowledge of the Greek epic poem in the Latin West during the Middle Ages, is a hexametric poetic summary (epitome) of Homer'sIliadlikely dating from the Age of Nero, which reduces the 15,693 lines of the original to a mere 1,070 lines (6.8%).

Considering his status as the best fighter on the Trojan side, Hector’s flight in “Iliad” 22.131-7 is unexpected and surprising, even though Hector is never overtly reproached for his reaction. This article proposes a psychological explanation for Hector’s behaviour, drawing on recent insights concerning combat stress reaction (CSR) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): Hector does not flee from fear of death, but from the “Wind of Hate”, i. e. the terror felt when confronted with direct and personal aggression. An examination (...) of the actions of Achilles in the “Iliad” supports this conclusion, for Achilles exhibits behaviour which would qualify for a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. The intense personal hatred of Achilles is sufficient to shock Hector into flight, even if he ultimately recovers and heroically faces Achilles in battle. Thus, the scene bears testimony to the “Iliad”’s understanding of the universal human experiences of warfare and aggression. (shrink)