This study focuses on how Israeli Arab citizens perceive their media representations on Israeli television and why they consume television broadcasts even though they are marked mostly by negative representations. A new concept – “Communication Boundary Situation” – a development of Jaspers’ “Boundary Situation” theory, is the theoretical framework for the article. The empirical data was collected by conducting semi-structured in-depth interviews. The findings point to different attitudes among the interviewees towards their representation in various television genres, in particular, in (...) advertising as compared to satire and drama. The suggested theoretical framework and its empirical implementation might be useful in examining how various minorities perceive their media representations in other countries. (shrink)

The proliferation of cable television in Israel through independent infrastructures has provided a unique opportunity for a quasi-experimental study on audience response, and Israeli families in particular, to a new media technology. Cable television subscription in Israel differs from non-cable households in the sense that cable television provides more individual viewing situations and encourages solitary TV viewing, and therefore should be considered a new media technology. This study examines various family characteristics and their ability to predict the extent to which (...) families use the new technology for socialization. Data concerning family characteristics, duration of cable TV subscription and the extent families use television for instrumental, integrative and educational purposes, were collected from 254 urban families in 11 neighborhoods in the main cities of Israel. The results support the structural functional theory of communication as opposed to the technological, deterministic theory of communication. Subscription to cable television did not prove to be a significant predictor of the extent to which Israeli urban families use television to fulfill major socialization purposes. Family characteristics were found to influence the socializing role of cable television. The study reveals associations between certain family characteristics and the kind of socialization role that television plays in the family. Cable television, by now a well-established feature in many households, may be considered a test case, and its current uses in the family an indication of the implications regarding the introduction of newer media technologies such as the PC and the Internet, and their potential socialization purposes within families. (shrink)

Based on longitudinal research on the media coverage of terrorist attacks, this article suggests a model of how the coverage of these attacks may be conceptualized as a media event and explores the function this serves within society. The main assumption of the model is that journalists change their ritual of news coverage when dealing with exceptional terrorist attacks; they abandon their usual normative professional frame that encompasses such activities as critical scrutiny of governmental actions, and assume a national-patriotic coverage (...) frame that seeks to reestablish normality and restore order. The model can be useful in clarifying the media's role following terror event. While media run the risk of reinforcing the terror event by giving it the public stage its perpetrators seek, by acting as patriots and not as professionals, journalists subvert the message of the terrorists, so that instead of passing on a message of terror, dread, and alarm, the media give the attacked country and society a message of solidarity, partnership, and stubborn endurance against the terrorist threat. The model may also be useful for understanding media coverage of other crisis situations apart from massive terror attacks. (shrink)

This study investigates the cross-media repertoires of news consumption of young adults in today’s fragmented multi-media environment, and examines the interactions between those repertoires and the consumers’ civic engagement and political participation. By using a Q-sort method, the respondents were asked to sort a number of elicitation cards on a relational scalar grid, which allowed for subsequent statistical factor analysis of these qualitative data and the generation of a sub-typology of media consumption repertoires as well as the discursive practices of (...) the respondents. We also used a questionnaire which included questions about news consumption, political participation, and civic engagement. The findings revealed that most young adults used repertoires of digital and new media news consumption. The interviewees were highly conscious of their choices of news sources, and some young adults explicitly stated that they preferred to consume news from sources which reflected their own political views. In this study we were able to map news media repertoires of young adults in Israel and found that young adults do participate, and are largely involved, in activism and protests. (shrink)

This study examines the theory of media systems and the models offered by Hallin and Mancini (2004) by focusing on critical junctures in which changes occur. Based on critical political economy and historical institutionalism, we analyzed the Israeli media system transition in the 1980s and early 1990s, seeking to understand the nature of this change and its theoretical implications. Our findings show a combination of government, market, and public forces in a unique situation where political, economic, and social circumstances change. (...) Accordingly, we conclude that a distinction between politics and economy, as the media system theory and, specifically, the liberal model suggests, is invalid under neoliberalism. We argue that research attention should be paid to critical junctions, and that a closer analysis of government and market interrelations can enrich theories of media systems. (shrink)

Intuition in medical and moral reasoning -- Moral intuitionism -- The place of Aristotelian phronesis in clinical reasoning -- Aristotle's practical syllogism: accounting for the individual through a theory of action and cognition -- Individual and statistical physiognomy: the art and science of making the invisible visible -- Clinical intuition versus statistical reasoning -- Contingency and correlation: the significance of modeling clinical reasoning on statistics -- Abduction: the intuitive support of clinical induction -- Conclusion: medical ethics beyond ontology.

Recently, Nathan criticized Bar-Hillel and Falk's analysis of some classical probability puzzles on the grounds that they wrongheadedly applied mathematics to the solving of problems suffering from “ambiguous informalities”. Nathan's prescription for solving such problems boils down to assuring in advance that they are uniquely and formally soluble—though he says little about how this is to be done. Unfortunately, in real life problems seldom show concern as to whether their naturally occurring formulation is or is not ambiguous, does or (...) does not allow for unique formalization, etc. One step towards dealing with such problems intelligently is to recognize certain common cognitive pitfalls to which solvers seem vulnerable. This is discussed in the context of some examples, along with some empirical results. (shrink)

Despite its phenomenal success since its inception in the early nineteen-nineties, the evidence-based medicine movement has not succeeded in shaking off an epistemological critique derived from the experiential or tacit dimensions of clinical reasoning about particular individuals. This critique claims that the evidence-based medicine model does not take account of tacit knowing as developed by the philosopher Michael Polanyi. However, the epistemology of evidence-based medicine is premised on the elimination of the tacit dimension from clinical judgment. This is demonstrated through (...) analyzing the dichotomy between clinical and statistical intuition in evidence-based medicine’s epistemology of clinical reasoning. I argue that clinical epidemiology presents a more nuanced epistemological model for the application of statistical epidemiology to the clinical context. Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowing is compatible with the model of clinical reasoning associated with clinical epidemiology, but not evidence-based medicine. (shrink)

This book addresses the perennial question: What is justice?

I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment. I will keep them from harm and injustice. The Hippocratic Oath formulates the ethical principle of medical beneficence and its negative formulation non-maleficence. It relates medical ethics to the traditional end of medicine, that is, to heal, or to make whole. First and foremost, the duty of the physician is to heal, and if this is not possible at least not to harm. This (...) ethical principle helped to establish the necessary trust between physician and patient in the pre-modern era when most of medicine was nothing more than a set of placebos (Shapiro 1960). Beginning in the seventeenth-century, Western .. (shrink)

Over the past several decades the ‘affective revolution’ in cognitive psychology has emphasized the critical role affect and emotion play in human decision-making. Drawing on this affective literature, various commentators have recently proposed strategies for managing therapeutic expectation that use contextual, symbolic, or emotive interventions in the consent process to convey information or enhance comprehension. In this paper, we examine whether affective consent interventions that target affect and emotion can be reconciled with widely accepted standards for autonomous action. More specifically, (...) the ethics of affective consent interventions is assessed in terms of key elements of autonomy, comprehension and voluntariness. While there may appear to be a moral obligation to manage the affective environment to ensure valid informed consent, in circumstances where volunteers may be prone to problematic therapeutic expectancy, this moral obligation needs to be weighed against the potential risks of human instrumentalization. At this point in time we do not have enough information to be able to justify clearly the programmatic manipulation of human subjects' affective states. The lack of knowledge about affective interventions requires corresponding caution in its ethical justification. (shrink)

The title of my paper, “Affecting the Body and Transforming Desire,” (Braude 2012a) is inspired from Plato’s Symposium, where the physician Eryximachus presents a purely neurophysiological discourse on love. James Giordano’s and Gerrit Glas’s commentaries on my paper have the timbre of a contemporary symposium, in this instance to discern the nature of suffering. Thus, I take Giordano’s and Glas’s commentaries to be generally sympathetic to my offering, although providing further critical insights that deepen the multidimensional understanding of suffering and (...) the correct ethical and medical response. From different perspectives both commentators zone in on one central aspect of my analysis, that is .. (shrink)

“Business,” wrote a professor of marketing in 1929, “is the work of the world, humanity's chiefest task.” On the doorstep of the Depression, Prof. George R. Collins was selling business, by which he meant the business economy, an economic order based on the systematic management of money. I do not intend to enter the volatile controversy between Collins and those like Aldous Huxley who accused business people of being venal and crass. Rather, I intend to trace one likely path by (...) which many in 1929 had come to regard business as a redemptive activity and the business person as a redeemer. (shrink)

During the Renaissance, the su was regarded primarily as a source of light which gave form to all things*; during the Enlightenment, paradoxically, the sun was regarded primarily as a source of heat. Paracelsian chemistry of the 1500s introduced salt as a third principle which embodied the other two, mercury and sulphur; salt was that universal mediating presence which represented earth. By the late 1700s salt was no longer a metaphysical principle but an acid-base compound, and volatile salts aroused most (...) interest. These changes in scientific perceptions of sun and salt ran parallel to one another: beginning as transcendent sources of form, sun and salt came to be considered manipulable sources of energy. Our r-;odern approach to energy derives from a period during which Europeans gradually lost their belief in the creative agency of two essentials to human life. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIn der neueren deutschen Rechtsprechung wurden die Anforderungen an die rechtliche Zulässigkeit von Zwangsbehandlungen verschärft und der Berücksichtigung des natürlichen Willens nicht selbstbestimmungsfähiger Patienten ein höherer Stellenwert eingeräumt. So ist der behandelnde Arzt etwa verpflichtet, einen letzten Versuch zu unternehmen, eine auf Vertrauen gegründete Zustimmung zu erhalten. In Anbetracht dessen, dass ein solches Gespräch im Kontext informellen Zwangs stattfindet, ergibt sich ein medizinethisches Dilemma: Entweder wird eine Zwangsbehandlung durchgeführt und somit direkter körperlicher Zwang angewendet, oder eine Zustimmung wird erzielt, jedoch (...) gegebenenfalls um den Preis, dass informeller Zwang – z. B. in Form einer Drohung, Täuschung oder Manipulation – ausgeübt wird. Es wird dafür argumentiert, dass die Antwort auf dieses Problem im philosophischen Begriff der Anerkennung zu finden ist, der im vorliegenden Kontext als eine spezifische Haltung aufgefasst wird und sich in einem respektvollen Umgang des Klinikpersonals mit den betroffenen Patienten zeigt. Die Ausübung von Zwang ist in solchen Fällen kaum zu vermeiden. Dennoch kann man in dieser Situation besser oder schlechter mit dem Patienten umgehen – und besser heißt hier, dem Patienten Anerkennung entgegenbringen. (shrink)

The name is from the 20th chapter of the Book of Revelations. Christ has just defeated the Beast, and cast him and his false prophet into a "lake of fire burning with brimstone". Christ has also slaughtered the army of the beast, including the kings of the earth, slaying them with a sword which "proceeded out of his mouth". And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his (...) hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and that that he must be loosed a little season. And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshiped the beast, neither his image, neither had they received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. Hence the millennium: the thousand-year reign of Christ and his saints upon the earth, after they defeat the forces of evil. Millenarianism, originally, was the belief, among Christians, that this epoch was coming very soon, and that they, the righteous witnesses of Christ, would be part of it. (shrink)

Coercion in the treatment of persons suffering from mental disorders is one of the major ethical controversies in psychiatry. Despite great efforts to reduce the use of coercive interventions, they are still widespread and differ between European countries regarding the specific type of intervention and the number of patients affected. It is common to justify measures against the present will of patients under the assumption that they promote their well-being, that is, by reference to the ethical principal of beneficence. However, (...) it is indisputable that such measures can also cause severe harm to the patients concerned and that these measures are often experienced as degrading. In which situations can coercive interventions be labeled justifiably as “beneficial”? How can they be reduced to a minimum? This volume addresses these issues from an interdisciplinary and international perspective, combining contributions from, among others, medical ethicists, philosophers, legal scholars, psychologists and psychiatrists from different European countries. Theoretical and conceptual essays are complemented by contributions with a strong relationship to clinical practice. (shrink)

This essay advances and defends two claims: (a) that rights cannot be inalienable and (b) that even if they could be, this would not be morally justifiable.

Hillel Steiner; III*—Individual Liberty, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 33–50, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristote.

ḥeleḳ 1-3. Toldot Bet Hilel -- ḥeleḳ 4. [without special title].