This article discusses the role of moment-to-moment affect dynamics in mental disorder and aims to integrate recent literature on this topic in the context of complex dynamical system theory. First, we will review the relevance of temporal and contextual aspects of affect dynamics in relation to psychopathology. Related to this, we will discuss recent insights resulting from a network view on affect dynamics in psychopathology. Next, we explore how we can reconcile literature findings from a perspective of complex dynamical system (...) theory. Finally, future directions with regard to personalized assessment of risk and diagnostic use are discussed. (shrink)

As web instruction becomes more and more prevalent at universities across the country, instructors of ethics are being encouraged to develop online courses to meet the needs of a diverse array of students. Web instruction is often viewed as a cost-saving technique, where large numbers of students can be reached by distance education in an effort to conserve classroom and instructor resources. In practice, however, the reverse is often true: online courses require more of faculty time and effort than do (...) many traditional classes. Based on personal experience teaching an online course in health care ethics for students in the Allied Health Professions, it is evident that there are both benefits and challenges in teaching online courses, particularly in ethics. Examples of benefits are (1) the asynchronous nature of web instruction allows students to progress through the course at their own pace and at times that are convenient given their clinical responsibilities; (2) web courses allow for a standardization of content and quality of instruction over a diversity of programs; and (3) examples can be tailored to the differing experiences of students in the course. Some challenges to teaching online ethics courses include (1) the fact that online instruction benefits visual learners and disadvantages those lacking good reading comprehension or strong writing skills; (2) developing meaningful student-student and student-instructor interaction; and (3) teaching ethics involves teaching a process rather than a product. Allowing students to apply their knowledge to real-world cases in their disciplines and encouraging them to share experiences from clinical practice is an effective way to meet several of these challenges. Building an online community is another good way to increase the interaction of students and their engagement with the material. (shrink)

The United States Food and Drug Administration , in collaboration with pharmaceutical manufacturers, have recently implemented a heavily revised risk-management program for patients on isotretinoin , a drug with known and pronounced teratogenic effects. This revised risk management plan places significant burdens on both providers and patients in the hopes of achieving its goal of reducing fetal exposure to isotretinoin. The main focus of this paper is to discuss the burdens of various aspects of the program in relationship to potential (...) corresponding benefits. In particular, we evaluate the pregnancy rates of women on isotretinoin therapy compared with that of the general population and the rate changes based on the risk management programs. Additionally, we investigate whether the benefits of the program for women have increased as the benefits have risen. We devote special attention to the ethical implications of the intent of the program and to an analysis of the ethical justification of the restrictions placed on women of childbearing potential as it compares to the risk-benefit relationship of using isotretinoin. (shrink)

“What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.” These opening lines from Kierkegaard's Either/Or signify a tragic state of affairs because the poet brings joy to others and yet experiences no joy himself. In a similar vein, consider the child prodigy—Bobby Fischer, Shirley Temple, Mozart. Although there is no question that these children were gifted, there (...) is some debate about how happy their childhoods were. There are benefits to just “being a kid,” and it is not clear that these individuals had that opportunity. (shrink)

Two of the tales mentioned in the title are in many ways typical of the great collections of stories to which they belong. What makes them conspicuous is no doubt the intensity of the erotic desire presented as the ultimate law which justifies even the most outrageous actions. The cult of eroticism is combined there with a cult of youth, which means disaster for the protagonists, who try to combine eroticism with advanced age. And yet the stories in question have (...) roots in a very different tradition in which overt eroticism is punished and can only reassert itself in a chastened form, its transformation being due to sacrifices made by the lover to become reunited with the object of his love. A medieval example of the latter tradition is here the Middle English romance, Sir Orfeo. All of the three narratives are conspicuously connected by the motif of the enchanted tree. The Middle Ages are associated with a tendency to moralize ancient literature, the most obvious example of which is the French anonymous work Ovide moralisé, and its Latin version Ovidius Moralizatus by Pierre Bersuire. In the case of The Merchant’s Tale and The Tale of the Enchanted Pear-Tree, we seem to meet with the opposite process, that is with a medieval demoralization of an essentially didactic tradition. The present article deals with the problem of how this transformation could happen and the extent of the resulting un-morality. Some use has also been made of the possible biblical parallels with the tales in question. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to investigate some of the possible sources of inspiration for Orwell’s concept of the artificial language called Newspeak, which, in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is shown as an effective tool of enslavement and thought control in the hands of a totalitarian state. The author discusses, in this context, the putative links between Newspeak and really existing artificial languages, first of all Esperanto, and also between Orwell’s notion of “doublethink”, which is an important feature of (...) the totalitarian mentality, and Czesław Miłosz’s notion of “ketman”, developed in his book The Captive Mind. But the main emphasis is on the connection between Orwell’s book and the slightly earlier novel by C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength. It is well known that Orwell knew Lewis’s book and expressed his mixed feelings about it. There are many specific, though far from obvious, similarities between the two books, but what seems to have been particularly inspiring for Orwell was Lewis’s vision of a thoroughly degenerate language that is used for political manipulation rather than for communication. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show the role, the possibilities and the limits of Wyspiański’s national thinking through Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Of particular importance, in this context, is the role the Ghost takes in Wyspiański’s celebrated interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. By the Ghost we mean the spirit of history, the ghost of a father, the spirit of the fatherland, the voice of the ancestors, and particularly that of the Polish king Casimir the Great, as well as the Holy Ghost (...) and the Evil Spirit because all these aspects of the Ghost belong to Wyspiański’s vision. The play in question bears witness to what the Polish poet calls “the truth of other worlds,” as well as the truth of the theatre, which Wyspiański calls the labyrinth. The poet manages to reduce, to some extent, this difficult truth to the truth of the world he cared most about, that is the present and historical reality of Poland, more specifically the city of Cracow, known as Poland’s spiritual, that is “ghostly,” and only virtual, capital. It is also remarkable that Wyspiański saw the Ghost in Hamlet in the context of other Shakespearean ghosts, apparitions and magicians, such as those that appear in Macbeth, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Richard III. At the same time, Wyspiański realizes that the Ghost, with its irrationalism, offends the spirit of post-medieval times, and as such, is understandably neglected by Hamlet, who for Wyspiański, in anticipation of Harold Bloom, stands for modernity. (shrink)

Contrary to the classical denial of bodily attributes or human emotions to God, both Samson Raphael Hirsch and Franz Rosenzweig embrace biblical anthropomorphisms. Their views on anthropomorphisms are part of their critiques of philosophy, especially of the basic preconceptions of the philosophical approach to the concept of God. This article analyses their positions by examining Hirsch’s commentaries on scripture (especially Gen 6:6), and Rosenzweig’s “A Note on Anthropomorphisms in Response to the Encyclopedia Judaica’s Article.” Through a close reading and interpretation (...) of Rabad of Posquiére’s famous animadversion against Maimonides’s rule concerning heretics, this paper retraces the rabbinical roots of Hirsch’s and Rosenzweig’s approach to anthropomorphisms. (shrink)

The following paper analyzes the effect of the Shakespearean text—and Hamlet in particular—on Levinas’s thought. I argue that Levinas’s reading of Shakespeare’s Hamlet played a decisive role in one of the most crucial phenomenological debates to be found in the Levinasian text, namely, the debate with Heidegger on the meaning of death and on the object of Angst (anguish). Analyzing Levinas’s remarks on Hamlet in his philosophical text, this article demonstrates how Shakespeare inspires Levinas’s anti-Heideggerian thesis about anguish being anguish (...) before eternity (and not anguish before death). Moreover, this article analyzes the Hecuba scene from the perspective of Levinas’s philosophy of substitution (where again Shakespeare occupies a central role), and tries to understand the situation of Shakespeare’s tragedy as being “beyond tragedy.”. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 2 Seiten: 338-369.

Assessing mastery of bioethics in a graduate program requires careful attention not simply to the content knowledge and skill development of students but also to the principles of sound assessment processes. In this article, we describe the rationale, development process, and features of the comprehensive exam we created as a culminating experience of a master’s program in bioethics. The exam became the students’ opportunity to demonstrate the way they were able to integrate course, textual, and practical knowledge gained throughout the (...) experience of the program. Additionally, the exam assessed students’ proficiency in the field of bioethics and their ability to critically and constructively analyze bioethical issues. In this article, we offer tips to other exam creators regarding our experiences with question and answer development, scoring of the exam, and relationships between coursework and exam preparation and completion. We also include a sample rubric for others to see how we determined which student answers were satisfactory. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 145-147.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 1, Page W1-W2, January 2012.

The Third Revolution is an examination of the historic transformations in contemporary China. Elizabeth C. Economy is director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. According to its mission statement, the CFR is a think tank “dedicated to being a resource for … government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students … to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States.” The Third Revolution is about the societal, economic, and political changes (...) under the administration of General Secretary Xi Jinping. Published by Oxford as a CFR Book, the study is written from a foreign policy perspective with regard to strategic U.S.... (shrink)

The environmental crisis is the collision of civilization with biospherical limits. Its sign is climate change, which is brought about by a cultural maladaptation, and which threatens to lead to scarcity, displacement, and violence. The solution will have to be a global transformation—a civil evolution—to a postcarbon and sustainable world order. China and Germany, I argue, are well positioned to achieve this new adaptation to living within limits, whereas the United States may have difficulties to respond adequately to the new (...) realities. Here I explore cultural and historical reasons for this Sino-German convergence. (shrink)

Some influence of Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale, also known as the story of the patient Griselda, on Shakespeare, and particularly on The Winter’s Tale, has long been recognized. It seems, however, that the matter deserves further attention because the echoes of The Clerk’s Tale seem scattered among a number of Shakespeare’s plays, especially the later ones. The experimental nature of this phenomenon consists in the fact that Griselda-like characters do not strike the reader, especially perhaps the Renaissance reader, as good (...) protagonists of a tragedy, or even a problem comedy. The Aristotelian conception of the tragic hero does not seem to fit Griselda because there is no “tragic fault” in her: she is completely innocent. It was thus a bold decision on the part of Shakespeare to use this archetype as a corner stone of at least some of his plays. (shrink)

We are appreciative of the broad range of commentaries our target article generated. The inquiry into the contingency phase of public health emergencies is nascent and the cl...

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Kant's Universal Natural History: Fuzzy Wavefronts and the Dance of Comets Kant's Nebular Hypothesis: Sun Clouds and Environmental Fate Kant's Dare to Christianity: Joining Leibniz and Newton over Spacetime Kant's Cosmogony: Cyclic Universes and the Phoenix of Nature Conclusion.

For couples for whom assisted reproduction is the only way to have genetically related offspring, the donation of gametes by others makes available enhanced reproductive options. There has been an increasing demand for such services, as evidenced by the Web site launched by fashion photographer Ron Harris in the fall of 1999. Although the sale of such gametes is not new, this Web site does speak to a different set of priorities and values than has been witnessed in the context (...) of assisted reproduction: the selection of particular traits, in effect, the creation of designer babies. With the expanding demand for such services come expanded liabilities, which are the focus of this article. The author argues that this kind of commodification of gametes reinforces dubious social attitudes, leads to potential harms for the children created by this technology, and suggests a departure from traditional paradigms in medicine: a departure in an ill-advised direction. (shrink)

In their article in the September-October 2010 issue of IRB: Ethics & Human Research, Chris Kaposy and Françoise Baylis argue that the contraception policy of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s institutional review board fails to meet an ethically ideal standard in establishing the criteria investigators should follow when including women of childbearing potential in clinical research. In this response, we argue that the UNMC IRB’s policy is evidence-based and pragmatically oriented and that it therefore better safeguards women’s autonomy than (...) an ideal policy could. We also offer some of our experiences with the policy since it was implemented six years ago. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: The Problem of Dynamics in the Enlightenment Kant's Starting Point: The Ontology of Force Relativistic Dynamics: The Force–Space Bond The True Estimation of Force: The Marriage of Momentum and Energy Conclusion – Kant's Unlikely Dialectical Inspiration.

The unsustainability of the Western paradigm points to the need for alternatives. Confucian philosophy suggests itself as a cultural resource for human evolution in the Anthropocene, because of its emphasis on good governance, information-based policy, and factbased practices. However, patriarchy is a liability of Confucian philosophy, and the Analects in particular is sexist. Ecological wisdom, progressive thought, and feminism go hand in hand. How can the Analects be utilized for a future-oriented reading? I suggest an interpretive pathway for a non-patriarchic, (...) ecological, and feminist appropriation of Confucius. (shrink)

Introduction to healthcare ethics committees / D. Micah Hester and Toby Schonfeld -- Brief introduction to ethics and ethical theory / D. Micah Hester and Toby Schonfeld -- Ethics committees and the law / Stephen Latham -- Cultural and ...

This chapter contains section titled: Thomasius Wolff Crusius, Baumgarten, and Lessing Writings.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 12, Page 62-63, December 2011.

More instability (MSSD) and variability (SD) of negative affect (NA) have been related to current and future depressive symptoms. We investigated whether NA instability and variability were predictive of the rate of symptom improvement during treatment and of reaching remission status. Forty-six individuals with major depressive disorder completed six days of ecological momentary assessments (10 beeps/day) before starting a combination of pharmacotherapy and supportive therapy. During and after treatment, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) diagnostic interview was performed monthly for (...) 18 months. The rate of change in HDRS scores over five months (during treatment) and remission status (HDRS ≤ 7) over eighteen months were predicted by the SD, MSSD and Mean of NA, and relevant baseline predictors. Higher Mean NA and baseline symptom severity, but not NA variability or instability, predicted stronger depressive symptom reduction during treatment. Higher odds of remitting were only associated with lower Mean NA. Higher mean NA may indicate more room for improvement and thus for a steeper rate of symptom change, while lower mean NA levels may imply that remission status is more readily reached. To resolve the inconclusive findings for instability and variability as predictors of symptom improvement replication in larger samples is required. (shrink)

The reference to the vagina as “it” or “down there” is symptomatic of two larger cultural problems: not naming the vagina when speaking about the vagina, and conflating the vagina with the external female genitalia. The euphemisms and obfuscating language have implications both for lay understandings of female bodies and for the practice of health care. Granting and using a name gives both the named and the namer power and legitimacy.