This paper points out that to persons unfamiliar with the context and suffering of dying patients, their loved ones, and last, but by no means least, the health care team can only discuss the very concrete question of euthanasia in an abstract way unaware of the fact that this question must, in the final analysis, be differently addressed in different specific patients and under specific circumstances. This paper poses questions which must be addressed and will rarely find a good answer (...) but at least the best among a series of unpalatable options. It again points out the important and legitimate place that emotions play in decision-making. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role that the personal history plays in a patient’s perception of his or her own illness in the light of the patient’s own personal history. It demonstrates the regrettable modern tendency to regards the patient as the “bearer of a disease” rather than as a human being with personal values and experiences into which their current illness needs to be integrated. I illustrate my point by an exchange between a student and an “attending” and the “attending” (...) and the patient. It represents only one out of unfortunately many such instances in which the pressures of “managed care” and “efficiency” have made truly knowing the patient as an individual with life experiences and personal values much more difficult. (shrink)

Throughout Supernatural, we watch the Winchesters resist, embrace, and redefine their roles in the family business, “saving people, hunting things.” These tensions echo a topic that philosophers have explored for thousands of years—free will. According to the existentialist philosopher Jean‐Paul Sartre, each person is in a constant state of shaping himself and his place in the world through free will. Dean is admirable in his ability to resist bad faith and act as captain for Team Free Will. In Supernatural, (...) the choices people make are impacted by their soul. Knowing that Sam could simply walk away from hunting to pursue a normal life shows Dean that they no longer share the same sense of moral responsibility. For good or for ill, Sam and Dean are responsible for their actions, which is better than you'd expect from an ex‐blood junkie and a high school dropout with six dollars in his pocket. (shrink)

This book assesses how Vatican II opened up the Catholic Church to encounter, dialogue, and engagement with other world religions. Opening with a contribution from the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, it next explores the impact, relevance, and promise of the Declaration Nostra Aetate before turning to consider how Vatican II in general has influenced interfaith dialogue and the intellectual and comparative study of world religions in the postconciliar decades, as well as the contribution (...) of particular past and present thinkers to the formation of current interreligious and comparative theological methods. Additionally, chapters consider interreligious dialogue vis-à-vis theological anthropology in conciliar documents; openness to the spiritual practices of other faith traditions as a way of encouraging positive interreligious encounter; the role of lay and new ecclesial movements in interreligious dialogue; and the development of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. Finally, it includes a range of perspectives on the fruits and future of Vatican’s II’s opening to particular faiths such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. (shrink)

This paper asks what led Augustine to begin his commentary on the Gospel of John, linking that decision to his ongoing efforts to heal the Donatist schism by appealing to the centrality of Jesus Christ, both in his own theological vision and in the message to those who were listening to his sermons on the Gospel of John and on the psalms of ascent. This question is particularly important in the aftermath of the Edict of Unity (405) insofar as he (...) was preaching both to faithful Catholics and to their neighbors who had accepted the legal requirements of leaving the schism behind. (shrink)

This paper asks what led Augustine to begin his commentary on the Gospel of John, linking that decision to his ongoing efforts to heal the Donatist schism by appealing to the centrality of Jesus Christ, both in his own theological vision and in the message to those who were listening to his sermons on the Gospel of John and on the psalms of ascent. This question is particularly important in the aftermath of the Edict of Unity insofar as he was (...) preaching both to faithful Catholics and to their neighbors who had accepted the legal requirements of leaving the schism behind. (shrink)

Albert of Saxony was one of the great logicians of the Middle Ages, on a par with William Ockham and John Buridan. The Twenty-Five Disputed Questions on Logic treat of central issues in logic, both then and now, such as the nature of meaning, of universals, of truth, and of tense and modality; and the quality and quantity of propositions, the role of negation, and the relations of contradiction and equivalence between them. Dr. Fitzgerald has studied Albert's work extensively, (...) and previously edited the Twenty-Five Disputed Questions from the original manuscripts. This translation makes available for the first time in English this careful and exemplary examination of logical notions by an outstanding medieval thinker.-Stephen Read, University of St. Andrews. (shrink)

We have seen important work on questions such as: whether there is a uniquely female approach to ethics, whether ethics should be par.

The journal NatureGenetics recently reported a statement made by Dr. Brigitte Boisselier declaring the rights of parents to clone themselves. Dr. Boisselier is the scientific director of ClonaidBeam me up, Scotty!”? How do we begin to respond to this offer and Dr. Boisselier's claim for its ethical justification?

This chapter contains sections titled: Scandalous Research in the Twentieth Century Basic Principles of Research Ethics Respect for Persons Beneficence Justice Conclusion.

An overview of the philosophical and bioethics literature on conscientious refusals by health care professionals to provide abortion and contraceptive services.

A close look at the rhetoric in America's recent welfare‐reform debate has both surprising and important implications for political philosophy. Political philosophers typically presume that opponents of redistribution are motivated by considerations other than equality. Recent arguments for welfare reform, however, have been formulated in a manner consistent with most contemporary egalitarian theories. This result should make us question either the political relevance of egalitarian ideals or the adequacy of those theories of equality.

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 3, Page 333-348, May 2022.

The history of Western Thought since the seventeenth Century leaves little doubt as to the practical validity of the method of natural investigation discovered by Galileo, interpreted by Descartes, and variously generalized by Newton and Einstein. The repercussions of its success on every level of human activity, religious, political, commercial, and educational have awakened the most diverse ánd even contradictory speculations as to the nature of this science and the objectives of the scientist. Often enough one gets the impression that (...) these speculations are founded on an arbitrary and unjustifiable conception of the nature of modern science; a conception formulated in terms of what one thinks or wishes to think science is from its effects upon the extra-scientific domain rather than in terms of a patient and critical penetration of its intrinsic structure. (shrink)

Proceedings of the Fifty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, held in Houston, Tex., Apr. 16-18, 1982. Includes bibliographical references.

Despite the widespread use of the notion of moral intuition, its psychological features remain a matter of debate and it is unclear why the capacity to experience moral intuitions evolved in humans. We first survey standard accounts of moral intuition, pointing out their interesting and problematic aspects. Drawing lessons from this analysis, we propose a novel account of moral intuitions which captures their phenomenological, mechanistic, and evolutionary features. Moral intuitions are composed of two elements: an evaluative mental state and a (...) feeling of rightness (FOR). We illustrate the phenomenology of the FOR with examples of non-moral and moral cases, and provide a biological and mechanistic account: the emergence of human reasoning capacities created a need for the co-evolution of a psychological system producing the feeling of rightness (the FORs). This system is triggered when we experience conflicting evaluations. The FORs renders evaluations resulting from rational deliberation less compelling than the evaluations produced by simple evolved systems. It thus facilitates optimal decision-making, preventing excessive interference by rational deliberation. Our account sheds light on why moral intuitions are so frequently experienced and why they are so compelling and resistant to argument. In addition, the account fuels interesting speculations about common metaethical intuitions. (shrink)

Developing novices’ proficiency in skilful activities is central to the reproduction of human societies. The interactional practices through which instruction is accomplished have provided a rich focus for ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies examining classroom settings, and, more recently, non-classroom environments of instruction in practical and manual skills. This paper examines the work of instruction in basketball training and in particular the correction of player performances, which are a ubiquitous and central feature of instruction in basketball training sessions. A central (...) part of this instructional action relies on the coach observing training activities to determine players’ competencies and to extract relevant correctables from the players’ embodied displays, which are in turn embedded within complex arrangements of rapidly moving bodies situated in material environments. In this paper we examine the visual-analytic work involved in both organizing and observing a basketball training activity, demonstrating the sequential layering of multiple membership categorization devices drawn upon in producing and recognizing actions in this setting. We argue that the coach deploys spatial orientations which function analogously to membership categorization devices, with players’ bodily positions relative to one another and the material structure of the surround generating category-like sets of rights, responsibilities, and sequential relevancies. As we demonstrate, these orientations provide crucial resources for the identification of players’ errors and thereby for the organization of instruction in interaction in this setting. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article advances a critical approach to the analysis of social policy texts drawing on the philosophical perspectives of hyperrealism, surrealism, ethics, and Critical Discourse Analysis. Drawing on official government texts and speeches on the continuing development of Singapore’s education policy, the paper examines the way metaphors of flexibility, diversity, choice, and opportunity are used within an evolving ideological context that work to continually produce truth conditions as justifications for inequality. In doing this, the analysis foregrounds a functional aspect (...) of policy metaphors as divisive mechanisms of neo-liberalism through associating individuals with the appearance of discriminatory forms of economic materiality which does not in fact exist in reality. (shrink)

Background:Choice to live and die at home is supported by palliative care policy; however, health resources and access disparity impact on this choice in rural Australia. Rural end-of-life home care is provided by district nurses, but little is known about their role in advocacy for choice in care.Objectives:The study was conducted to review the scope of the empirical literature available to answer the research question: What circumstances influence district nurse advocacy for rural client choice to live and die at home?, (...) and identify gaps in the knowledge.Method:Interpretive scoping methodology was used to search online databases, identify suitable studies and select, chart, analyse and describe the findings.Results:34 international studies revealed themes of ‘the nursing relationship’, ‘environment’, ‘communication’, ‘support’ and ‘the holistic client centred district nursing role.Discussion:Under-resourcing, medicalisation and emotional relational burden could affect advocacy in rural areas.Conclusion:It is not known how district nurses overcome these circumstances to advocate for choice in end-of-life care. Research designed to increase understanding of how rural district nurses advocate successfully for client goals will enable improvements to be made in the quality of end-of-life care offered. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric and AngerKenneth S. Zagacki and Patrick A. Boleyn-FitzgeraldSince most believe anger can be either good or bad, rhetors face a moral problem of determining when anger is appropriate and when it is not. They face a corresponding rhetorical problem in deciding when and how to express anger and determining the role that it might play in public discourse, with specific audiences and in particular rhetorical situations. Rhetorical scholars (...) have catalogued whole genres of angry rhetoric—apocalyptic genres, jeremiads, the demonizing rhetoric of religious and political leaders—wherein the rhetorical display of anger is explained in terms of situational conventions and cultural norms.1 Yet these scholars have not easily resolved the moral problems associated with angry rhetoric. Aristotle suggested the earliest and most obvious solutions to these problems. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he outlines a typology for discerning the moral limits of anger and, by implication, angry rhetoric. And in Book II of the Rhetoric he asserts that the orator needs to know the structure of emotions like anger and how to intensify and dissipate them. Or, in other words, the orator must know how to make it reasonable to be angry. Some contemporary philosophers have gone further, suggesting that a failure to feel and express anger in public betrays an insufficient concern for justice and self respect.In this essay, we follow Aristotle in arguing that anger is sometimes the emotion we expect people to feel or the rhetorical response we expect them to display and evoke in others. But we also challenge part of Aristotle's argument by asking: "Even when angry rhetoric would appear to be a reasonable, morally appropriate response, is there a way in which rhetors might manage anger in their public discourse in order to achieve ends which are both morally and pragmatically productive?" The answer, we propose, lies in what we call "non-angry" rhetoric, which involves transforming and reflecting upon anger in public discourse. Because such rhetoric often promotes noble ends such as reconciliation and forgiveness, it is at least morally permissible and more likely morally virtuous.2 In order to establish these claims, our analysis focuses on the case of Nelson Mandela and his "Address to the Interfaith Commissioning Service for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission."3 In this speech, Mandela, as our [End Page 290] analysis demonstrates, managed anger and turned it into an object of reflection, thereby illustrating what opportunities for reconciliation and democratic deliberation would look like during the difficult period attending the political transition in South Africa in general and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings in particular. His "Address" exemplified a unique moment when the rhetoric and the ethics of anger came together in a public performance. While acknowledging the understandable anger of blacks, Mandela (who may in fact have harbored considerable anger himself) simultaneously suggested that by engendering a less hostile social-political context, in which participants maintained their self-respect without necessarily sacrificing justice, a new democratic community could emerge. This would be a community where, as he described it, individuals began to reconcile with and no longer persecute one another. As Aristotle might explain, the purpose of Mandela's speech was to manage the anger of blacks, so that they would then be able to deliberate properly about the issues before the TRC and about the larger democratic transition. As the philosopher Eugene Garver says, the particular passions Aristotle chooses to explore in the Rhetoric serve a role necessary for the kind of public, political decision making he assigns to rhetoric. These emotions serve to integrate—or segregate, as the case may be—"distinct individuals into a deliberative or judging body, or demos" (1994, 131).What we are recommending, then, is that rhetoric encompasses both considerations of moral desert as well as broader moral concerns. While there are times when individuals seem to deserve our angry rhetoric, it may not be justified from a broader moral perspective, especially when the goal is the good of the state or the community—viz., if angry rhetoric leads to the violent dissolution of democratic community. Ultimately, we argue that the moral constitution of political, deliberative communities must be viewed in terms... (shrink)

Faculty continue to address academic dishonesty in their classes. In this follow-up to an earlier study on general perceived faculty student cheating, using a sample of business school faculty, we compared three levels of faculty classification: full-time non-tenure track, full-time tenured/tenure-track, and part-time adjuncts. Results showed that NTTs perceived higher levels for three different types of student cheating, i.e., paper-based, forbidden teamwork, and hiring someone to take an exam. In addition, NTTs were more likely to report a student for cheating. (...) NTTs reported a higher course load and average class size, and average class size was positively related to all five types of cheating measured. Given the predicted increase in NTTs across all disciplines, making sure that all faculty,, have the resources needed to deter student cheating is important. All faculty have an obligation to hold students accountable for their behavior. Individual integrity is paramount; and it is what employers expect. Regardless of the chosen field or discipline, an employer’s expectations, in terms of character, is to hire individuals who possess a level of honesty that is above reproach. Addressing cheating is an obligation that all faculty need to address purposefully. Providing resources to help faculty address cheating is critical. Resources might include conflict resolution training to provide instructors with the necessary guidance so that they can better handle these difficult situations. This is important not only for the student while in school, but also for a university/college’s reputation. (shrink)

Contemporary bioethical issues are inherently cross-cultural and global in their scope. This is not surprising, as bioethical matters touch everyone in one way or another. Moral quandaries in health-care, life sciences, and biotechnology do not respect natural and human boundaries, the boundaries between and within nation-states, ethnicities, cultures, communities, and social groups. In addition, the simultaneously large-scale and intimate interactions between and within different cultures and civilizations and the rapid pace at which they change are phenomena that distinguish our times (...) from previous eras. Bioethics—as a particular domain of public discourse and an academic discipline—has thus been rapidly... (shrink)

This article explores the temporal organization and manipulation of time in the production and presentation of news reports. Time is often cited as one of the most central organizing concepts of news production; indeed one of the major features of news reporting is the breaking of stories and the reporting of events `as they happen'. However, whilst much emphasis is placed upon time within media production, much of this pertains to the reporting of past and present events rather than the (...) reporting of the future. This article explores the future within news reporting through an examination of sequential events leading up to a main scheduled newsworthy event: the execution of Timothy McVeigh. It analyses how the production of `news' utilizes the future by relying upon prediction and speculation about what will happen and examines: how news can be seen to depend to a large degree on uncertainty for its value; the use of time frames within media reporting; and the way time is manipulated in the service of the recency and immediacy of news reporting. (shrink)

Background: Mild traumatic brain injury results from an external force to the head or body causing neurophysiological changes within the brain. The number and severity of symptoms can vary, with some individuals experiencing rapid recovery, and others having persistent symptoms for months to years, impacting their quality of life. Current rehabilitation is limited in its ability to treat persistent symptoms and novel approaches are being sought to improve outcomes following mTBI. Neuromodulation is one technique used to encourage adaptive neuroplasticity within (...) the brain.Objective: To systematically review the literature on the efficacy of neuromodulation in the mTBI population.Method: A systematic review was conducted using Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES and EBM Review. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and the Synthesis Without Meta-analysis reporting guidelines were used and a narrative review of the selected studies was completed. Fourteen articles fulfilled the inclusion criteria which were published in English, investigating an adult sample and using a pre- and post-intervention design. Studies were excluded if they included non-mild TBI severities, pediatric or older adult populations.Results: Thirteen of fourteen studies reported positive reductions in mTBI symptomatology following neuromodulation. Specifically, improvements were reported in post-concussion symptom ratings, headaches, dizziness, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, general disability, cognition, return to work and quality of life. Normalization of working memory activation patterns, vestibular field potentials, hemodynamics of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and excessive delta wave activity were also seen. The studies reviewed had several methodological limitations including small, heterogenous samples and varied intervention protocols, limiting generalisability. Further research is required to understand the context in which neuromodulation may be beneficial.Conclusions: While these positive effects are observed, limitations included unequal representation of neuromodulation modalities in the literature, and lack of literature describing the efficacy of neuromodulation on the development or duration of persistent mTBI symptoms. Better clarity regarding neuromodulation efficacy could have a significant impact on mTBI patients, researchers, clinicians, and policy makers, facilitating a more productive post-mTBI population. Despite the limitations, the literature indicates that neuromodulation warrants further investigation. PROSPERO registration number: CRD42020161279. (shrink)

How did meat emerge to become such an important feature in Western society? In both popular and academic literatures, biophysical and political-economic factors are often cited as the reason for meat’s preeminent status. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive investigation of these claims by reviewing the available evidence on the political-economic and biophysical features of meat over the long arc of Western history. We specifically focus on nine critical epochs: the Paleolithic, early to late Neolithic, antiquity, ancient Israel and (...) early Christian societies, medieval Europe, early modern Europe, colonial America, the American frontier, and the modern industrial era. We find that except under conditions of environmental scarcity, the meaning and value of meat cannot be attributed to intrinsic biophysical value or to the political-economic actors who materially benefit from it. Rather, meat’s status reflects the myriad cultural contexts in which it is socially constructed in people’s everyday lives, particularly with respect to religious, gender, communal, racial, national, and class identity. By deconstructing the normalized/naturalized materialist assumptions circling around meat consumption, this paper clears a space for a more nuanced appreciation of the role that culture has played in the legitimation of meat, and by extension, the possibility of change. (shrink)

The questions of violence, justice and judgment define one of the most resonant and constant concerns of contemporary thought. In part, this is only a reflection of what are often called the ‘realities on the ground’ . In the few years of this century the logic of violence, and even its aestheticisation – whether as terror or as ‘shock and awe,’ or in the citizen’s daily vocation to be ‘alert but not alarmed’ – have become the familiar data of current (...) experience. They are a kind of weather, felt through the colour-coded threat scale of the Homeland Security Advisory System, or in the casual references to the ‘current climate.’ In view of these realities, and of an acclimatisation to them that informs general popular support for extensions of executive power and legislative activity, the urgency of the turn or return to questions of force and law is to be expected. In the fabric of recent debate, they are seams at which confrontations are staged and positions defined; but also, where the thought that remains closest to the ‘realities on the ground’ is forced into juxtaposition with the mythological and theological schemes that violence, justice and judgment inevitably conjure. Thus, contributors to this issue of Colloquy were invited to consider whether it was possible to account for a difference between violence, terror and revolution, without simplification or banalisation of the relationship between law and force. On the one hand, the editors envisaged that this question would be a provocation to reexamine contemporary representations of sovereignty, jurisdiction and the ‘state of exception,’ in a global context dominated by issues of security and the justification of extra-legal and extra-judicial force – occupation, detention, torture. On the other hand, the reference to the mythological and the theological was inevitable, inasmuch as contributors were invited to organise their reflections around two of the most significant interventions in twentieth-century jurisprudence and political theory, Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” and Jacques Derrida’s “Force of Law.” For as is well-known, Benjamin and Derrida pursue their distinctive lines of questioning in the direction of a ‘divine violence’ or of a ‘mystical foundation of authority.’ The reception of the two texts suggests that these concepts remain, for many, difficult to the point of being indigestible; at least in the ‘current climate.’. (shrink)

This paper explores how philosophical inquiry and Critical Discourse Analysis can mutually benefit from each other to produce new methodological and reflexive directions in neo-liberal policy research to examine the phenomenon of 'What is '. Through this we argue that augmenting linguistic analysis with philosophical perspectives develops and supports CDA scholarship more broadly by accommodating the shifting complexity of social problems of ideologically driven inequality that are inbuilt through, in our case, social policy texts. In discussing philosophical-methodological issues, the paper (...) argues for the need to continually adapt CDA to the particular data so as to remain sensitive to and avoid hegemonic tendencies in analysis. Through adopting the principles of a working methodology, we discuss a micro-meso-macro CDA framework that draws on the analytical concepts of movement, metaphorical superfluidity, thematic condensation, and surrealism to conceive of a research approach capable of examining and comprehending evolving discourses of political economies. The most immediate benefit of this framework is its capacity to illustrate how forms of valuations perpetuated by and through policy discourse are the motivational locus of meaning making insofar as they strongly inform the moral underpinning the ideology of economic growth. (shrink)

In this article, we reflect on our personal experience of acting as ‘independent academic experts’ in an European Union policy forum, to reflect on how the EU utilises gender to legitimise certain policy discourses in combating sex trafficking. Starting from our personal experience, we draw on wider feminist research on gender expertise and on Fraser’s new reflexive theory of political injustice, to consider how the EU structures debates in this area to determine ‘who’ is entitled to speak and be heard (...) on this issue. In a context in which sex trafficking policy intersects with a variety of competing agendas on – among other things – law and order, organised crime, immigration, asylum and border security policy, our argument will suggest that the exclusion of critical feminist voices and lack of alternative perspectives permits much scope for continuing inequality and injustice. (shrink)

This book is devoted to the reintroduction of the remarkable approach to sociological inquiry developed by Harvey Sacks. Sacks's original analyses - concerned with the lived detail of action and language-in-interaction, discoverable in members' actual activities - demonstrated a means of doing sociology that had previously seemed impossible. In so doing, Sacks provided for highly technical, detailed, yet stunningly simple solutions to some of the most trenchant troubles for the social sciences relating to language, culture, meaning, knowledge, action, and social (...) organisation. In this original collection, scholars working in a range of different fields, including sociology, human geography, communication and media studies, social psychology, and linguistics, outline the ways in which their work has been inspired, influenced, and shaped by Sacks's approach, as well as how their current research is taking Sacks's legacy forward in new directions. As such, the collection is intended to provide both an introduction to, and critical exploration of, the work of Harvey Sacks and its continued relevance for the analysis of contemporary society. (shrink)