The physical distancing measures necessitated by COVID-19 have resulted in a severe withdrawal from the patterns of daily life, necessitating significantly reduced contact with other people. To many, such withdrawal can be a major cause of distress. But, to some, this sort of withdrawal is an integral part of growth, a pathway to a more enriching life. The present study uses a sequential explanatory QUAN-qual design to investigate whether people who felt that their lives had changed for the better after (...) being forced to engage in physical distancing, what factors predicted such well-being, and how they spent their time to generate this sense of well-being. We invited 614 participants who reported closely following physical distancing recommendations to complete a survey exploring this topic. Our analyses, after controlling for all other variables in the regression model, found a greater positive association between presence of meaning in life, coping style, and self-transcendent wisdom and residualized current well-being accounting for retrospective assessments of well-being prior to physical distancing. An extreme-case content analysis of participants' personal projects found that participants with low self-transcendent wisdom reported more survival-oriented projects (e.g., acquiring groceries or engaging in distracting entertainments), while participants reporting high self-transcendent wisdom reported more projects involving deepening interactions with other people, especially family. Our findings suggest a more nuanced pathway from adversity to a deeper sense of well-being by showing the importance of not merely coping with adversity, but truly transcending it. (shrink)

Growing interest in embedded research approaches—where research is incorporated into clinical care—has spurred numerous studies to generate knowledge relevant to the real-world needs of patients and other stakeholders. However, it also has presented ethical challenges. An emerging challenge is how to understand the nature and extent of investigators’ obligations to patient-subjects. Prior scholarship on investigator duties has generally been grounded upon the premise that research and clinical care are distinct activities, bearing distinct duties. Yet this premise—and its corresponding implications—are challenged (...) when research and clinical care are deliberately integrated. After presenting three case studies from recent pragmatic clinical trials, we identify six differences between explanatory trials and embedded research that limit the application of existing scholarship for ascertaining investigator duties. We suggest that these limitations indicate a need to account for the implications of usual care and to move beyond a narrow focus on the investigator-subject dyad, one that better reflects the team- and institution-based nature of contemporary health systems. (shrink)

Classic statements of research ethics advise against permitting physician-investigators to obtain consent for research participation from patients with whom they have preexisting treatment relationships. Reluctance about “dual-role” consent reflects the view that distinct normative commitments govern physician–patient and investigator–participant relationships, and that blurring the research–care boundary could lead to ethical transgressions. However, several features of contemporary research demand reconsideration of the ethics of dual-role consent. Here, we examine three arguments advanced against dual-role consent: that it creates role conflict for the (...) physician-investigator; that it can compromise the voluntariness of the patient-participant’s consent; and that it promotes therapeutic misconceptions. Although these concerns have merit in some circumstances, they are not dispositive in all cases. Rather, their force—and the ethical acceptability of dual-role consent—varies with features of the particular study. As research participation more closely approximates usual care, it becomes increasingly acceptable, or even preferable, for physicians to seek consent for research from their own patients. It is time for a more nuanced approach to dual-role consent. (shrink)

Public protest continued to represent a prominent form of social activism in democratic societies during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Australia, a lack of specific legislation articulating protest rights has meant that, in the context of pandemic restrictions, such events have been treated as illegal mass gatherings. Numerous large protests in major cities have, indeed, stirred significant public debate regarding rights of assembly during COVID-19 outbreaks. The ethics of infringing on protest rights continues to be controversial, with opinion divided as to (...) whether public health goals or human rights should take precedence. This paper applies public health ethical theory to an in-depth analysis of arguments on both sides of the debate. Using the Nuffield Council on Bioethics framework as a backdrop, proportionality and necessity of restrictions are understood as key concepts that are common to both public health and human rights perspectives. The analysis presented here finds a middle-ground between the prevailing arguments on opposing sides and is further able to rationalize the use of protest itself as an important element of a mature public health ethics response to restrictive policy. Thus, this paper aims to influence public health policy and legislation regarding protest rights during public health emergencies. (shrink)

Pragmatic clinical trials offer important benefits, such as generating evidence that is suited to inform real-world health care decisions and increasing research efficiency. However, PCTs also present ethical challenges. One such challenge involves the management of information that emerges in a PCT that is unrelated to the primary research question, yet may have implications for the individual patients, clinicians, or health care systems from whom or within which research data were collected. We term these findings as?pragmatic clinical trial collateral findings,? (...) or?PCT-CFs?. In this article, we explore the ethical considerations associated with the identification, assessment, and management of PCT-CFs, and how these considerations may vary based upon the attributes of a specific PCT. Our purpose is to map the terrain of PCT-CFs to serve as a foundation for future scholarship as well as policy-making and to facilitate careful deliberation about actual cases as they occur in practice. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 3, Page 9-17, May–June 2022.

In the third Critique Kant details an aesthetic operation of judgment that is surprising considering how judgment functioned in the first Critique. In this book, I defend an understanding of Kant’s theory of Geschmacksurteil as detailing an operation of the faculties that does not violate the cognitive structure laid out in the first Critique. My orientation is primarily epistemological, elaborating the determinations that govern the activity of pure aesthetic judging that specify it as a "bestimmte" type of judgment without transforming (...) it into "ein bestimmendes Urteil". I focus on identifying how the logical functions from the table of judgments operate in the pure aesthetic judgment of taste to reveal "the moments to which this power of judgment attends in its reflection". In the course of doing so, a picture emerges of how the world is not just cognizable in a Kantian framework but also charged with human feeling, acquiring the inexhaustible, inchoate meaningfulness that incites "much thinking". The universal communicability of aesthetic pleasure serves as the foundation that grounds robust intersubjective relations, enabling genuine connection to others through a shared a priori feeling. (shrink)

The 2010 national health reform law was written with heavy input from insurance and pharmaceutical corporations. Unfortunately, the law will leave 24 million Americans uninsured and tens of millions more woefully underinsured, such that a major illness would bankrupt them. Other developed nations have used non-profit, single-payer national health insurance to fully cover all of their residents for all needed medical care. By failing to enact such a program, the state has abdicated its responsibility to protect human health to profit-seeking (...) corporations. (shrink)

This examination of gardens--particulary English gardens of the eighteenth century--offers possible links between garden design and the arts.

The problem of necessity remains one of the central issues in modern philosophy. The authors of this volume, originally published in 1985, developed a new approach to the problem, which focusses on the logical grammar of necessary propositions. This volume gathers their seminal essays on the problem of necessity, together with new material at the original time publication.

During the COVID-19 pandemic people were increasingly obliged to wear facial masks and to reduce the number of people they met in person. In this study, we asked how these changes in social interactions are associated with young children's emotional development, specifically their emotion recognition via the labeling of emotions. Preschoolers labeled emotional facial expressions of adults and children in fully visible faces. In addition, we assessed children's COVID-19-related experiences and recorded children's gaze behavior during emotion labeling. We compared different (...) samples of preschoolers : The data for the no-COVID-19-experience sample were taken from studies conducted before the pandemic. The data for the with-COVID-19-experience sample were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland between June and November 2021. The results did not indicate differences in children's labeling behavior between the two samples except for fearful adult faces. Children with COVID-19-experience more often labeled fearful faces correctly compared to children with no COVID-19 experience. Furthermore, we found no relations between children's labeling behavior, their individual COVID-19-related experiences, and their gaze behavior. These results suggest that, even though the children had experienced differences in the amount and variability of facial input due to the pandemic, they still received enough input from visible faces to be able to recognize and label different emotions. (shrink)

My main aim in this paper is to show that influential antireductionist arguments such as Fodor's, Kitcher's, and Dupré's state stronger conclusions than they actually succeed in establishing. By putting to the fore the role of metaphysical presuppositions in these arguments, I argue that they are convincing only as 'temporally qualified argument', and not as 'generally valid ones'. I also challenge the validity of the strategy consisting in drawing metaphysical lessons from the failure of reductionist programmes. What most of these (...) antireductionist standpoints have in common is a pretension to methodological imports. I conclude by explaining why, in order to remain relevant for scientific practice, antireductionist arguments should stay clear of metaphysics, for the latter, I argue, does not mix well with a taste for methodological prescriptions. (shrink)

In recent years, various obesity-related policy strategies have fostered rigorous debate in both the academic and popular literature: should a city restrict soda size to reduce obesity rates? Should low-income individuals receiving government food assistance through the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program be prohibited from using such funds to purchase soda or other “junk foods?” Should schools undertake screening and surveillance of student body mass index? These strategies pose a central challenge for public health regulation: what is the role of government (...) in responding to rising obesity rates? Specifically, to what degree can the state restrict individual freedom to reduce the burden of.. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The unpredictability of the development and results of a research program is often invoked in favor of a free, desinterested science that would be led mainly by scientific curiosity, in contrast with a use-inspired science led by definite practical expectations. This paper will challenge a crucial but underexamined assumption in this line of defense of scientific freedom, namely that a free science is the best system of science to generate unexpected results. We will propose conditions favoring the occurrence of unexpected (...) facts in the course of a scientific investigation and then establish that use-inspired science actually scores better in this area. (shrink)

We defend a fitting-attitude theory of the funny against a set of potential objections. Ultimately, we endorse a version of FA theory that treats reasons for amusement as non-compelling, metaphysically non-conditional, and alterable by social features of the joke telling context. We find that this version of FA theory is well-suited to accommodate our ordinary practices of telling and being amused by jokes, and helpfully bears on the related faultless disagreement dispute.

e live on a wonderful planet that not only teems with life but shows a marvellous exuberance of form and variety. In comparison with the size of the Earth its living skin (the so-called biosphere) may be thin, but it is by no means negligible. From high in the atmosphere, where ballooning spiders wafted aloft on their silk-strings have been trapped at heights of more than 4500 m and birds such as condors cross tropical storms at altitudes well above 6000 (...) in, via the oceans and the green continents, to deep within the Earth's crust where bacteria are known to live at depths of at least several kilometres, life is pervasive. (shrink)

Engaging patients in research has come to be viewed as a vital component of high‐quality research, and funders now regard engaging patients and other stakeholders as a core criterion for funding decisions. In response, numerous empirical and conceptual papers have emerged to guide the process of engagement. However, as Emily Largent and colleagues rightly note, the inquiry of whom to engage has received less attention. While several teams have suggested that the selection of patients for engagement is an important consideration, (...) researchers generally have little guidance on how to undertake this process. To that end, Largent and colleagues offer an important contribution to the literature. I agree with their argument regarding the centrality of critically examining which patients to engage in research and with their recommendations to maximize the positive goals of patient engagement. However, three issues warrant further consideration. (shrink)

Tradução do texto "Schopenhauer as an evolutionist" de Arthur. O. Lovejoy, publicado em 1911 no The Monist.

An important short study of Nietzsche by the famed European critic. Included are selections from the Brandes-Nietzsche correspondence.

Herodotus holds an honoured place among the pioneers of Greek epigraphy. We seek in vain for earlier signs of any appreciation of the historical value of inscriptions, and though we may conjecture that the antiquarian interests of some of his contemporaries or near-contemporaries might well have led them in this direction, our view of the beginnings of Greek epigraphical study must be based on Herodotus, whether or not he truly deserves to be regarded as its ρχηγέτηϲ. Apart from its significance (...) in the history of scholarship Herodotus' use of inscriptions may be expected to throw some light on his methods and on his conception of his task. He cites epigraphic evidence throughout his work and in relation to a wide range of topics; if his use of this material suggests any general conclusions, we do not need to allow for the bias of a single source or the effect of peculiar local conditions, as we must when we consider his accounts of individual episodes or areas. We are relatively well placed to assess his procedure. We have a reasonably clear idea of the general appearance of the various scripts concerned , and in this respect enjoy a considerable advantage over the majority of Herodotus' original audience. Three of the inscriptions which he cites have been wholly or partly preserved, and thus provide a simple gauge of his accuracy in reporting such evidence. (shrink)

IBERTARIANS hold that we have such duties as: not to directly and significantly harm others or their property, to keep agreements, to refrain from lying and certain other sorts of deception, and to compensate those whom we wrong. They also hold that we have a duty not to interfere with the liberty of others as long as they are fulfilling these duties. This duty of non-interference, they have thought, has protected the privacy of the home, and hence parental autonomy, for (...) it insures that others have no authority over or responsibility for (except in extreme circumstances) how parents raise or treat their children. (Why parental autonomy has been held to be protected by this duty of non—in_terference should be clear enough: for if (as is surely plausible) the main effect of that duty is to secure for adults the liberty (within limits) to live their private lives as they choose, then, on the natural assumption that the matter of how to raise one`s children falls within the domain of the private lives of adults, intervention by others, and in particular by the state, for the purpose of ensuring that children get raised in one way rather than another, would be impermissible.) More specifically to our purposes now, libertarians have supposed that the duty of non-interference leaves intact parents` perogative to decide if, and in what way, their children are to be educated. That this is crucial both to the degree and to the point of parental autonomy is clear enough. For it goes both to the matter of keeping out of the private home those who would provide education for children (if such is the wish of the parents), and to the matter of parents` entitlement to instill in their children the values that they (the parents) wish their children to have. Libertarians, however, have not had very much specific to say about the moral status of children. Are children owned by their parents? Do they have all the rights and duties that normal adults have'? Or is their status somewhere in between these extremes? Given that libertarians haven't said, there are different possible ways of extending traditional libertarian theory so as to cover children.. (shrink)

This article describes three utopian attempts to ameliorate the negative effects of income inequality that are less revolutionary than those of More and Bellamy. Rather than dispensing with money or gold, these three utopias modify existing institutions with the aim of lopping off the extremes of both wealth and poverty without upending the entire social and economic structure. Discussion includes Theodor Hertzka’s _Freeland_ (1891), Theodor Herzl’s _Altneuland: The Old New Land_ (1902), and H. G. Wells’s _A Modern Utopia_ (1905). The (...) three utopias provide potential solutions by undercutting causes of poverty and intergenerational wealth accumulation rather than by economic leveling, and by stressing a fresh start for each generation. The primary tools in this effort are education, universal healthcare, a safety net of basic income, fiscal transparency, confiscatory estate taxes, and common ownership of land. (shrink)

It is proposed that early in phylogeny a large proportion of amino acid substitutions were selectively neutral, but that bursts of adaptive substitutions during major radiations of life so increased selective constraints that most mutations in modern proteins are detrimental. Recent findings on DNA nucleotide sequences indicate that decreasing mutation rates further slowed the rate of molecular evolution in the lineage to humans.

Moralists hold that art criticism can and should take stock of moral considerations. Though moralists disagree over the proper scope of ethical art criticism, they are unified in their acceptance of the consistency of valence thesis: when an artwork fares poorly from the moral point of view, and this fact is art critically relevant, then it is thereby worse qua artwork. In this paper, I argue that a commitment to moralism, however strong, is unattractive because it requires that we radically (...) revise our art critical practices in contexts where revision seems ill advised. I will consider two such cases, Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and Balthus’ Alice. When we further reflect on our actual art critical practices in cases like these, we find that we do not have an unfailing commitment to the consistency of valence thesis. That is, some artworks are (artistically) good because they are (morally) bad. (shrink)

How can we explain change and the occurrence of novelty? Are changes governed by natural laws or do they happen by chance? In this book, the author analyses explanatory models of the so-called new mechanists in terms of the occurrence of new entities and their epistemological and metaphysical background assumptions. At the same time, her investigation is a methodological attempt to readdress questions at the boundary between scientific explanation and metaphysics, such as in the debate about free will.

This article argues that the ‘Third Way’ philosophy that has been adopted by centre-left parties throughout Europe and the United States provides the conceptual framework to analyse contemporary postfeminism and its contentious micro-politics that emerges out of personal and daily gender-based struggles. The notion of a postfeminist micro-politics complicates the critical perception of postfeminism as a depoliticized and anti-feminist backlash and offers a dynamic model of political action that takes into account the multiple agency positions of individuals today. Postfeminism and (...) the politics it endorses differ from emergent political movements such as third wave feminism in that they are not founded on second wave feminist theory and activism. Instead, postfeminist politics adopts a Third Way perspective to reconcile a number of conflicting concerns, from feminist calls for female equality and theoretical debates on anti-essentialism to the consumerist demands of capitalist society. These controversial new junctures are examined by paying particular attention to postfeminism’s female sexual agent who becomes the ‘entrepreneur’ of her own image, buying into standardized femininities while also seeking to resignify their meanings. In particular, the article discusses the paradoxical possibilities of ‘active consumption’ and ‘fashion feminism’ whereby women endeavour to achieve empowerment by exerting their consumer agency and using their bodies as political tools within the parameters of a capitalist economy. (shrink)

Our primal ability to see one thing in terms of another shapes our landscape perception. Although modes of appreciation are tied to personal interests and situations, there are many lines of conflict and incompatibility between these modes. A religious point of view is unacceptable to those without religious beliefs. Background knowledge is similarly required for taking an arts or science-based view of landscape, although this knowledge can be acquired. How to cultivate responses grounded in imagination, emotion, and instinct is less (...) clear, but advocates are eager to spell out notions of virtuous exercise and effective schooling. Carlson’s science-based theory often gets the most attention because he has refined and defended it over many years, but there is a place in aesthetic nature appreciation for the formal or design elements he dismisses as well as for religious, imaginative, emotional, and ambient responses. To date, the normative aspects of these theories have been presented sketchily at best. Working out these details will chart a way for landscape appreciation to become politically correct. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.