Consciousness-based education and Maharishi Vedic science -- Consciousness-based education and education -- Consciousness-based education and physiology and health -- Consciousness-based education and physics -- Consciousness-based education and mathematics -- Consciousness-based education and literature -- Consciousness-based education and art -- Consciousness-based education and management -- Consciousness-based education and government -- Consciousness-based education and computer science -- Consciousness-based education and sustainability -- Consciousness-based education and world peace.

Broad consent – the act of gaining one consent for multiple potential future research projects – sits at the core of much current genomic research practice. Since the 25th May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has applied as valid law concerning genomic research in the EU and now occupies a dominant position in the legal landscape. Yet, the position of the GDPR concerning broad consent has recently been cause for concern in the genomic research community. Whilst the text (...) of the GDPR apparently supports the practice, recent jurisprudence contains language which is decidedly less positive. This article takes an in-depth look at the situation concerning broad consent under the GDPR and – despite the understandable concern flowing from recent jurisprudence – offers a positive outlook. This positive outlook is argued from three perspectives, each of which is significant in defining the current, and ongoing, legitimacy and utility of broad consent under the GDPR: the principled, the legal technical, and the practical. (shrink)

This study describes which clinical ethics approaches are available to support healthcare personnel in clinical practice in terms of their construction, functions and goals. Healthcare personnel frequently face ethically difficult situations in the course of their work and these issues cover a wide range of areas from prenatal care to end-of-life care. Although various forms of clinical ethics support have been developed, to our knowledge there is a lack of review studies describing which ethics support approaches are available, how they (...) are constructed and their goals in supporting healthcare personnel in clinical practice. This study engages in an integrative literature review. We searched for peer-reviewed academic articles written in English between 2000 and 2016 using specific Mesh terms and manual keywords in CINAHL, MEDLINE and Psych INFO databases. In total, 54 articles worldwide described clinical ethics support approaches that include clinical ethics consultation, clinical ethics committees, moral case deliberation, ethics rounds, ethics discussion groups, and ethics reflection groups. Clinical ethics consultation and clinical ethics committees have various roles and functions in different countries. They can provide healthcare personnel with advice and recommendations regarding the best course of action. Moral case deliberation, ethics rounds, ethics discussion groups and ethics reflection groups support the idea that group reflection increases insight into ethical issues. Clinical ethics support in the form of a “bottom-up” perspective might give healthcare personnel opportunities to think and reflect more than a “top-down” perspective. A “bottom-up” approach leaves the healthcare personnel with the moral responsibility for their choice of action in clinical practice, while a “top-down” approach risks removing such moral responsibility. (shrink)

Philosophers and other thinkers have pondered tough questions about the nature of reality for thousands of years. Now, science seems to be discovering increasing support for this ancient concept, and Star Trek's holodeck technology offers great insights into understanding both old and new theories about what's real. The accumulation of data over the last twenty‐five years from a variety of scientific fields reveals that the reality seems to be holographic in nature. On the holodeck, there are two types of people: (...) players, like Data pretending to be Henry V or Sherlock Holmes, and non‐player characters (NPCs), holographic people created to interact with the players. Traditional mystical approaches offer the examples of prophets, saints, and saviors as similar to these holocharacters, with some traditions even providing teachings and techniques for individuals who seek to overcome their own holoprogramming. (shrink)

One thread of abortion criticism, arguing that gender equality requires that men be allowed to terminate legal parental status and obligations, has reinforced the stereotype of men as uninterested in fatherhood. As courts facing disputes over stored pre-embryos weigh the equities of allowing implantation of the pre-embryos, this same gender stereotype has been increasingly incorporated into a legal balancing test, leading to troubling implications for ART and family law.

Recently, there has been a shift in attitude among some feminists towards the practice of cosmetic surgery away from that of outright rejection. Kathy Davis, for instance, offers a guarded `defence' of the practice as a strategy that enables women to exercise a degree of control over their lives in circumstances where there are very few other opportunities for self-realization. Others, such as Kathryn Morgan, Anne Balsamo and Orlan, though highly critical of the current practice of cosmetic surgery, go even (...) further than Davis in advocating its redeployment as a tool to subvert the dominant patriarchal ideals of feminine beauty. In this article I critically appraise this `rehabilitation' of cosmetic surgery, arguing, in the case of Davis, that she leaves unchallenged the social structures of inequality responsible for women's dissatisfaction with their bodies. The proposal to use cosmetic surgery as a tool of political critique is equally problematic insofar as it shares with the cosmetic industry its instrumentalization of the body as mere matter, which is almost infinitely transformable, and also effaces the economic inequalities within which such body transformations occur. (shrink)

BackgroundMoral case deliberation is one form of clinical ethics support, and there seems to be different ways of facilitating the dialogue.PurposeThis paper aimed to explore Swedish facilitators' experiences of their role in moral case deliberations.MethodThis study had a qualitative approach with explorative design. Semi-structured interviews with eleven MCD facilitators were conducted. Their experiences were analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultBeing a facilitator was understood through the metaphor of sailing: against the wind or with it. The role was likened to a sailor's set (...) of skills: to promote security and well-being of the crew, to help crew navigate their moral reflections, to sail a course into the wind against homogeneity, to accommodate the crew's needs and just sail with the wind, and to steer towards a harbour with authority and expertise. Balancing the disparate roles of being accommodative and challenging may create a free space for emotions and ideas, including self-reflection and con... (shrink)

The article contributes to the discussion of political reasoning in general, and public reason in particular, analysed from the vantage point of comparative political theory. It aims to bring out the complexity and diversity of actual political reasoning, and it serves as a corrective to some over-simplified discussions of public reason, by defenders and critics alike. I argue that the notion of public reason can be extended to and is operative in non-liberal and religious societies, with the acknowledgment that it (...) needs to undergo a methodological metamorphosis in the process. This requires what I call multiple justificatory strategy, which allows the use of different justifications in order to respond to the plurality existing in society. However, there are certain qualifications in the use of multiple justifications. I argue that this leads to two important conclusions, that the functioning of an inclusive notion of public reason requires the strategy of multiple justifications, and it contests... (shrink)

Little Vast Rooms of Undoing explores the relationship between identity and embodiment in public toilet spaces.

As the title indicates, this article traces the history of Q research in South Africa. It focuses on South African scholars who have made worthwhile contributions to our understanding and knowledge of the Sayings Gospel Q. An attempt is ultimately made to detect some trends in this regard. One significant finding perhaps worth mentioning in the abstract is the undeniable influence of Andries G. van Aarde on Q scholarship in South Africa.

In this age of multiculturalism, global travel and terrorism, it is vital that citizens be inculcated with the fundamental values of democracy and equipped with the cognitive skills to further those values. Plato critiqued the democratic character for its potential selfishness and lack of civic engagement---this was true in ancient Athens and is still true today. Using a primarily philosophical but also an interdisciplinary approach, I discuss the historic and social contexts of moral education in democracies both ancient and modern. (...) My topic contributes to this inquiry about democratic education by discussing Virtue Ethics and Communitarianism, with attention to empirical matters as dealt with in Sociology and Psychology. This dissertation explores the Neutral Liberalism-Communitarian debate about moral education to explicate current social and educational circumstances, both theoretically and practically. I propose a model for teaching morality based on self-knowledge, without a traditional religious grounding, without competing with religious authority, resorting to dogma, or indoctrination. I draw on the works of Plato, Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William James, Charles Taylor and others, supporting my proposals with current research from Social Cognitive Psychology. Research in Psychology has shown that some ways of thinking about the self are more efficacious and functional than others. By grounding moral education in self-knowledge and virtue theory, we can ensure the preservation of our democracy by improving the ability of our citizens to reason well about personal, practical and political matters. (shrink)

The purpose of this article was to examine the historical contribution of Wilhelm Dilthey's approach to the philosophy and methodology of hermeneutics in the demarcated context of nursing science. Dilthey's work made a fundamentally significant, yet ancillary, contribution to nursing science. Organically born from a need to deduce Biblical texts, hermeneutics later developed as a means to understand the truth of another's experience, in literal German language referred to as verstehen. A German‐born empiricist and devout hermeneutic scholar, Dilthey extended the (...) philosophy of hermeneutics to a methodological approach as a way to recapture expressed meaning of human experiences. His directive work paved a procedural pathway to probe the science of human nature while bound to the appropriate sociohistorical context. Hermeneutic methodology provides a phenomenological‐like way to more keenly understand and interpret the whole person. This methodological approach steers a truth‐seeking strategy fixed in meticulous and rigorous inquiry. Dilthey transparently recognized the humble fact that there is no true way to wholly grasp another's experience, an inherent limitation of our human abilities. The current paper posits that hermeneutical understanding verstehen can be paralleled to the concept of empathy in nursing. Understanding and empathy are foundational components to the field of nursing as a caring science. The complex yet invaluable philosophy and methodology of Wilhelm Dilthey's hermeneutics is notably relevant and applicable to nursing science as we strive to care for, treat, and heal patients as whole beings. (shrink)

This article involves a critical examination of the recent paradigm shift in the appraisal of women's dress. Whereas in the past, female fashion was criticized primarily in terms of its impractical and restrictive nature and more `functional' and `natural' modes of dress were advocated, in recent times the legitimacy of the notion of `functional' or `natural' dress has been challenged. As theorists such as Wilson, Sawchuck and Hollander have pointed out, to assume that there is a `natural' mode of dress (...) which reflects the body `as it really is' wrongly presupposes that the body pre-exists culture when in fact it is always inescapably encoded by cultural norms. However, as is argued in the article, while recent theorists have revealed the naivete of the functionalist paradigm upon which previous critiques of fashion have been premised, their alternative conception of liberatory dress as that which highlights the constructed nature of the body is equally as problematic insofar as it leaves unchallenged the reduction of self-identity to image which the advertising and fashion industries now endorse and promote. In championing the idea of dress as a parodic play in which the body of the wearer is denaturalized, postmodern theories of fashion display an unwitting complicity with our contemporary culture of the spectacle which privileges the cult of appearance over all other sources of identity formation. (shrink)

This article brings together Roland Barthes and Samuel Beckett into a dialogue devoid of hierarchy, with Jacques Lacan as mediator. Both writers were intent on escaping the sway of the image considered as formatted by meanings. For Barthes, the themes of love and photography point to the existence of unicity within the dispersal of meanings and the reality of loss. Rather than undoing the image like Barthes, Beckett starts from an inaugural absence of instituted reality: from an original absence of (...) any ‘that-has-been’, as expressed in the motif of the mask. Both authors locate vision within speech, and the alterity contained within the latter. (shrink)

This article aims to argue that the Sayings Gospel Q has a unique message for the peasantry and poor of ancient society. The intention of this article is to uncover the intended message of three particular Q texts for the peasantry and poor, namely Q 7:24–28, Q 10:5–9 and Q 11:9–13.

This article responds to Ruben Zimmermann's latest book, Puzzling the Parables of Jesus. In particular, one aspect of his proposed method is challenged, namely, his conscious attempt to do away with considerations of the pre-Easter context when interpreting the parables. The article finishes by proposing a variant methodology of parable interpretation, featuring the parable of the Good Samaritan as a working example.

While ornament during the period of modernism was much maligned as inessential, superficial, deceptive and irrational, it has been rehabilitated by a number of feminist theorists in recent times such as Norma Broude and Naomi Schor. In their defence of ornament, these theorists have exposed the derogation of the feminine implicit in the devaluation of ornament, which has traditionally been conceived as a feminine domain. Yet this feminist espousal of ornament largely fails to challenge the modernist conception of ornament as (...) decorative embellishment devoid of meaning, differing from it only by giving ornament a positive rather than a negative valuation. Consequently, its defence of ornament as a re-assertion of the legitimacy of the feminine ultimately perpetuates rather than undermines stereotypical associations of the feminine with the sensuous, the superficial and the irrational. A more thoroughgoing challenge would question the way in which ornament was defined during the period of modernism, recognizing its role as a carrier of meaning. (shrink)

A prominent feature of contemporary fashion has been the mainstreaming of ‘pauperist’ style in which motifs of poverty such as worn materials and frayed hems are deliberately sought after as a new form of glamour. What began as an act of rebellion amongst youth subcultures of the 1960s and ’70s has now become a widespread phenomenon. As will be argued in this paper, poverty chic has become a new form of status distinction that disavows its extravagance. Whereas in the past, (...) superior social status was often indicated through ostentatious dress, now a ‘humbler’ sartorial style is preferred in an era marked by financial, political and environmental crises. The popularity of pauperist style today lies in the fact that it assuages the anxieties provoked by these crises through its conversion of poverty into an aesthetic style. (shrink)

Classical work on Vedanta philosophy by Bādarāyaṇa; includes three commentaries.

In his influential 1987 monograph, Kloppenborg identified three layers in the Sayings Gospel Q: the ‘formative stratum’ (or Q¹), the ‘main redaction’ (or Q²), and the ‘final recension’ (or Q³). He ascribed the cluster of sayings in Q 12:39–59 to the main redaction. Within this cluster appears the parable of the loyal and wise slave (Q 12:42–46). In my view, some portions of this parable actually originate with the formative stratum. The aim of the current article is to reconsider the (...) redactional make-up of this parable by appealing to Kloppenborg’s own criteria for distinguishing between Q1 and Q2, including those of ‘characteristic forms’, ‘characteristic motifs’ and ‘implied audience’. (shrink)

This article is the first of three on the relationship between the Sayings Gospel Q and the ancient concept of 'psychostasia,' which is the ancient notion that a divine or supernatural figure weighed people's souls when judging them. The ultimate goal of all three articles is to enhance our understanding of Q 6:37-38, as well as of the Q document as a whole. In the current article, attention is focused on intertexts from the Old Testament, and the occurrences therein of (...) the word 'measure' and the concept of 'psychostasia'. The implications of these results for our interpretation of Q 6:37-38 are briefly noted. A second (future) article will focus on intertexts in apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings from Second Temple Judaism dealing with 'psychostasia'. A third study will ultimately spell out in more comprehensive detail the implications of the foregoing intertextual investigations on both our understanding of Q 6:37-38 and our understanding of the Sayings Gospel Q as a whole. (shrink)

Within the Community Rule, 1QS 8:1-4 has at times been used as an intertext to support claims pertaining to the future expectations of both early Jesus movements and the historical Jesus himself. In particular, the passage has functioned as an intertext to support the notion that Jesus and some of his earliest movements foresaw the future restoration and liberation of greater Israel in toto, including outsiders. Without getting involved in this larger New Testament debate, the current article wishes to address (...) the appropriateness of using 1QS 8:1-4 as an intertext without taking its literary and sectarian contexts into consideration. Focusing throughout on the interrelationship between judgement and boundary demarcation, this article will unfold in a centripetal manner. Firstly, it will treat the commonalities among all the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls. Secondly, the discussion will direct its focus specifically to the Community Rule. Finally, we will look at 1QS 8:1-4 in particular. (shrink)

This study considers the verisimilitude of the harvest saying in Matthew 9.37–38 and Luke (Q) 10.2, specifically the opening statement that the harvest is plentiful but the workers few. By ‘verisimilitude’ is meant the tradition’s tendency to be viewed as realistic in its original socio-historical context. In other words, would the first listeners have nodded their heads in agreement at the claim that the harvest is plentiful but the workers few? The focus here is not on the logion’s possible metaphorical (...) application, but on the literal saying, which involves ancient agriculture. To address the verisimilitude question, the study will consider some individual features of the logion itself, as well as the socio-historical context of farming and harvesting in 1st-century Palestine and the Roman Empire. Contribution: This study attempts to determine the verisimilitude of the literal claim that the harvest is plentiful but the workers few. The author is not aware of any other study that attempts to answer this verisimilitude question about Matthew 9.37–38 and Luke (Q) 10.2. Answering this question is sure to contribute to the understanding and interpretation of the chosen logion in the future. (shrink)

This article argues that rapid eye movement (REM) dreaming is elaborative encoding for episodic memories. Elaborative encoding in REM can, at least partially, be understood through ancient art of memory (AAOM) principles: visualization, bizarre association, organization, narration, embodiment, and location. These principles render recent memories more distinctive through novel and meaningful association with emotionally salient, remote memories. The AAOM optimizes memory performance, suggesting that its principles may predict aspects of how episodic memory is configured in the brain. Integration and segregation (...) are fundamental organizing principles in the cerebral cortex. Episodic memory networks interconnect profusely within the cortex, creating omnidirectional “landmark” junctions. Memories may be integrated at junctions but segregated along connecting network paths that meet at junctions. Episodic junctions may be instantiated during non–rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep after hippocampal associational function during REM dreams. Hippocampal association involves relating, binding, and integrating episodic memories into a mnemonic compositional whole. This often bizarre, composite image has not been present to the senses; it is not “real” because it hyperassociates several memories. During REM sleep, on the phenomenological level, this composite image is experienced as a dream scene. A dream scene may be instantiated as omnidirectional neocortical junction and retained by the hippocampus as an index. On episodic memory retrieval, an external stimulus (or an internal representation) is matched by the hippocampus against its indices. One or more indices then reference the relevant neocortical junctions from which episodic memories can be retrieved. Episodic junctions reach a processing (rather than conscious) level during normal wake to enable retrieval. If this hypothesis is correct, the stuff of dreams is the stuff of memory. (shrink)

If both waking and dreaming consciousness are functional, their de-differentiation would be doubly detrimental. Differentiation between waking and dreaming is achieved through neuromodulation. During dreaming, without external sensory data and with mesolimbic dopaminergic input, hyper-cholinergic input almost totally suppresses the aminergic system. During waking, with sensory gates open, aminergic modulation inhibits cholinergic and mesocortical dopaminergic suppresses mesolimbic. These neuromodulatory systems are reciprocally interactive and self-organizing. As a consequence of neuromodulatory reciprocity, phenomenologically, the self and the world that appear during dreaming (...) differ from those that emerge during waking. As a result of self-organizing, the self and the world in both states are integrated.Some loss of self-organization would precipitate a degree of de-differentiation between waking and dreaming, resulting in a hybrid state which would be expressed heterogeneously, both neurobiologically and phenomenologically. As a consequence of progressive de-differentiation, certain identifiable psychiatric disorders may emerge. Ultimately, schizophrenia, a disorganized-fragmented self, may result. (shrink)