In the West, the term ‘tender, loving care’ (TLC) has traditionally been used as a defining term that characterizes nursing. When this expression informs practice, it can comfort the human spirit at times of fear and vulnerability. Such notions offer meaning and resonance to the ‘lived experience’ of giving and receiving care. This suggests that, in a nursing context, TLC is rooted firmly in relationship, that is, the dynamic that exists between carer and cared for. Despite this emphasis on relationship, (...) there is a scarcity of literature that draws a connection between TLC and the moral challenge that is so much a part of human interaction. In this article we will address this deficit and present a narrative that places TLC at the centre of moral engagement between nurse and patient; in essence, we offer an alternative means of viewing relational ethics. (shrink)

Recent times have witnessed a groundswell in the number of British television programmes that deal with the ‘real life’ experiences of people in various health care settings. Such programmes tend to focus upon the two interrelated strands of the experience of those who deliver professional care and those who are at the receiving end of it. The usual rationale given for such programmes is that they offer insights about the delivery of health care that are not readily accessible to members (...) of the public. This article will look beneath the rationale and reasons offered by programme makers for the existence of such documentaries. It will explore insidious and questionable elements that go beyond revealing the ‘lived experience’ of professional carers and those for whom they care. Emerging from this is the challenging notion that such programmes deliver the opportunity to experience the vulnerability, suffering and even death of others through a voyeuristic gaze. (shrink)

_Introducción_: la Limitación del Esfuerzo Terapéutico (LET) busca reorientar las medidas del acompañamiento terapéutico durante el final de la vida; actualmente existe legislación sobre este tema. _Objetivo: _caracterizar el conocimiento y la claridad conceptual y jurídica del personal de salud del Hospital de San José (HSJ) de Bogotá sobre la LET. _Métodos: _estudio descriptivo transversal usando encuesta de libre preparación. Se estableció claridad conceptual con resultado superior al 70% de respuestas correctas. Datos levantados con cuestionario de selección múltiple vía Formularios (...) Google, tabulados en Microsoft Excel ® y analizados con Stata ® vía estadística descriptiva. _Resultados:_ 36 % de encuestados tuvo claridad conceptual y jurídica sobre LET; el 82,3 % de encuestados diferenciaron LET de eutanasia y el 95,6 %, LET de cuidados paliativos. El 61 % de los encuestados no tuvo conflicto moral/jurídico con LET; el 60 % y el 70 % de los encuestados creen, respectivamente, que suspender el oxígeno y la ventilación mecánica no hacen parte de la LET. Finalmente, el 78,9 % expresó no haber recibido suficiente información sobre el tema. _Conclusiones_: el personal encuestado carece de claridad conceptual suficiente sobre la LET,lo que señala la necesidad de mayor educación al respecto. (shrink)

Two separate research programs have revealed two different factors that feature in our judgments of whether some entity persists. One program—inspired by Knobe—has found that normative considerations affect persistence judgments. For instance, people are more inclined to view a thing as persisting when the changes it undergoes lead to improvements. The other program—inspired by Kelemen—has found that teleological considerations affect persistence judgments. For instance, people are more inclined to view a thing as persisting when it preserves its purpose. Our goal (...) in this paper is to determine what causes persistence judgments. Across four studies, we pit normative considerations against teleological considerations. And using causal modeling procedures, we find a consistent, robust pattern with teleological and not normative considerations directly causing persistence judgments. Our findings put teleology in the driver’s seat, while at the same time shedding further light on our folk notion of an object. (shrink)

Our aim in this entry is to articulate the state of the art in the moral psychology of personal identity. We begin by discussing the major philosophical theories of personal identity, including their shortcomings. We then turn to recent psychological work on personal identity and the self, investigations that often illuminate our person-related normative concerns. We conclude by discussing the implications of this psychological work for some contemporary philosophical theories and suggesting fruitful areas for future work on personal identity.

Recent years have witnessed the publication of numerous articles that draw a critical alignment between ethics and caring. In essence, this theme suggests that caring is a moral pursuit centred on the beneficent attention of one person shown to another. Yet, if such language is to have real poignancy, it must be geared towards an inclusive agenda that meets the needs of all within the community. Research evidence suggests that this is not always the case, especially in terms of the (...) care offered to members of minority ethnic groups. This article will focus on the findings of a qualitative research study that explored the expectations and perceived experiences of nursing care among members of the Pakistani community in Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK. The findings suggest that nurses should develop a more informed narrative that readily reflects the needs of the Pakistani community. (shrink)

Ethics has traditionally been taught in the 'ivory towers' of academia. Recent develop ments and reforms in nurse education have given ethics a prominent position in most curricula. However, the vast majority of ethics teaching continues to take place in academic departments. This approach fuels the practitioner's views that nursing is a pragmatic activity whilst ethics is a cognitive endeavour; such perspectives entrench ethics firmly in the traditional gap between theory and practice. The focus of this paper presents an argument (...) that the teaching of ethics must be versed in clinical reality if bridges are ever to be built and the theory-practice gap crossed. Suivant la tradition, l'éthique est enseigné dans les tours d'ivoire des universités. Des développements et réformes récents dans l'éducation infirmier donnent à l'éthique une position prominante dans la plupart des programmes d'études. Mais la majorité de l'enseignement éthique continue dans les départements académiques. Cette façon d'enseigner alimente la vue des infirmiers/ères que soigner est une activité pragmatique pendant que l'éthique est un effort intellectuel. Ces attitudes retranchent l'éthique dans le vide traditionel entre la théorie et le pratique. Le thème de cet article présent l'argument que l'enseignement de l'éthique doit être posé dans la réalité clinique, si des ponts peuvent jamais être bâtis et le vide entre théorie et pratique peut être traversve. Ethik wurde traditionsmässig im Elfenbeinturm einer Universität gelehrt. Neuliche Entwicklungen und Reformen in der Ausbildung des Pflegepersonals haben der Ethik eine prominente Position gegeben in ihren Lehrplänen. Die meiste Lehre von Ethik findet jedoch weiterhin in akademischen Abteilungen statt. Dieses Vorgehen treibt die Ansicht des praktizierenden Pflegepersonals, dass Krankenpflege eine pragmatische Aktivitat ist und Ethik eine wissenschaftliche Bemühung. Solche Ansichten verwurzeln die Ethik in der traditionellen Kluft zwischen Theorie und Praxis. Das Zentrum dieses Artikels ist die These, dass die Lehre von Ethik auf klinischer Realität basiert sein muss so dass Brücken gebaut werden können und die Kluft zwischen Theorie und Praxis überschritten werden kann. (shrink)

Intensive care units are challenging and technologically advanced environments. Dealing with situations that have an ethical dimension is an intrinsic part of working in such a milieu. When a moral dilemma emerges, it can cause anxiety and unease for all staff involved with it. Theoretical and abstract papers reveal that having to confront situations of ethical difficulty is a contributory factor to levels of poor morale and burnout among critical care staff. Despite this, there is a surprising dearth of published (...) nursing research in the UK that investigates how staff deal with ethical issues in intensive care units. The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss the development of a research framework designed to explore how staff deal with moral dilemmas in a British inten sive care unit. (shrink)

Collected essays from a symposium on the prominent issue of conscience and how it is related to Catholic education.

In recent years, many philosophers of science have rejected the “value-free ideal” for science, arguing that non-epistemic values have a legitimate role to play in scientific inquiry. However, this philosophical position raises the question of how to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate influences of values in science. In this paper, we argue that those seeking to address this “new” demarcation problem can benefit by drawing lessons from the “old” demarcation problem, in which philosophers tried to find a way of distinguishing (...) between science and non-science. Many of those who worked on this problem ultimately found that efforts to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for defining science failed, and most concluded that the best solution to the problem was to characterize scientific hypotheses, theories, and research programs in terms of some common norms. We suggest that those seeking to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate value influences on science would do well to adopt a similar approach. Rather than attempting to establish necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying appropriate value influences, it will be more fruitful to evaluate scientific activities based on their adherence to a set of epistemic and ethical norms that can be implemented in scientific practice by means of rules, conventions, policies, and procedures. (shrink)

The purpose of the two studies reported here was to develop an integrated model of the scientific reasoning process. Subjects were placed in a simulated scientific discovery context by first teaching them how to use an electronic device and then asking them to discover how a hitherto unencountered function worked. To do this task, subjects had to formulate hypotheses based on their prior knowledge, conduct experiments, and evaluate the results of their experiments. In the first study, using 20 adult subjects, (...) we identified two main strategies that subjects used to generate new hypotheses. One strategy was to search memory and the other was to generalize from the results of previous experiments. We described the former group as searching an hypothesis space, and the latter as searching an experiment space. In a second study, with 10 adults, we investigated how subjects search the hypothesis space by instructing them to state all the hypotheses that they could think of prior to conducting any experiments. Following this phase, subjects were then allowed to conduct experiments. Subjects who could not think of the correct rule in the hypothesis generation phase discovered the correct rule only by generalizing from the results of experiments in the experimental phase.Both studies provide support for the view that scientific reasoning can be characterized as search in two problem spaces. By extending Simon and Lea's (1974) Generalized Rule Inducer, we present a general model of Scientific Discovery as Dual Search (SDDS) that shows how search in two problem spaces (an hypothesis space and an experiment space) shapes hypothesis generation, experimental design, and the evaluation of hypotheses. The model also shows how these processes interact with each other. Finally, we interpret earlier findings about the psychology of scientific reasoning in terms of the SDDS model. (shrink)

We argue that the analysis of cognitive attitudes should play a central role in developing more sophisticated accounts of the proper roles for values in science. First, we show that the major recent efforts to delineate appropriate roles for values in science would be strengthened by making clearer distinctions among cognitive attitudes. Next, we turn to a specific example and argue that a more careful account of the distinction between the attitudes of belief and acceptance can contribute to a better (...) understanding of the proper roles for values in a case study from paleoanthropology. (shrink)

This report highlights and explores five questions which arose from The Unity of Consciousness and Sensory Integration conference at Brown University in November of 2011: 1. What is the relationship between the unity of consciousness and sensory integration? 2. Are some of the basic units of consciousness multimodal? 3. How should we model the unity of consciousness? 4. Is the mechanism of sensory integration spatio-temporal? 5. How Should We Study Experience, Given Unity Relations?

This is an excerpt of a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from The Unity of Consciousness and Sensory Integration conference at Brown University in November of 2011. This portion of the report explores the question: Is the mechanism of sensory integration spatio-temporal?

This is an excerpt of a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from The Unity of Consciousness and Sensory Integration conference at Brown University in November of 2011. This portion of the report explores the question: Are some of the basic units of consciousness multimodal?

This report highlights and explores five questions that arose from the workshop on sensory substitution and augmentation at the British Academy, March 26th through 28th, 2013.

This is an excerpt of a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from The Unity of Consciousness and Sensory Integration conference at Brown University in November of 2011. This portion of the report explores the question: How should we model the unity of consciousness?

The purpose of the two studies reported here was to develop an integrated model of the scientific reasoning process. Subjects were placed in a simulated scientific discovery context by first teaching them how to use an electronic device and then asking them to discover how a hitherto unencountered function worked. To do this task, subjects had to formulate hypotheses based on their prior knowledge, conduct experiments, and evaluate the results of their experiments. In the first study, using 20 adult subjects, (...) we identified two main strategies that subjects used to generate new hypotheses. One strategy was to search memory and the other was to generalize from the results of previous experiments. We described the former group as searching an hypothesis space, and the latter as searching an experiment space. In a second study, with 10 adults, we investigated how subjects search the hypothesis space by instructing them to state all the hypotheses that they could think of prior to conducting any experiments. Following this phase, subjects were then allowed to conduct experiments. Subjects who could not think of the correct rule in the hypothesis generation phase discovered the correct rule only by generalizing from the results of experiments in the experimental phase.Both studies provide support for the view that scientific reasoning can be characterized as search in two problem spaces. By extending Simon and Lea's (1974) Generalized Rule Inducer, we present a general model of Scientific Discovery as Dual Search (SDDS) that shows how search in two problem spaces (an hypothesis space and an experiment space) shapes hypothesis generation, experimental design, and the evaluation of hypotheses. The model also shows how these processes interact with each other. Finally, we interpret earlier findings about the psychology of scientific reasoning in terms of the SDDS model. (shrink)

This is an excerpt of a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from The Unity of Consciousness and Sensory Integration conference at Brown University in November of 2011. This portion of the report explores the question: How should we study experience, given unity relations?

Understood one way, the branch of contemporary philosophical ethics that goes by the label “metaethics” concerns certain second-order questions about ethics—questions not in ethics, but rather ones about our thought and talk about ethics, and how the ethical facts (insofar as there are any) fit into reality. Analogously, the branch of contemporary philosophy of law that is often called “general jurisprudence” deals with certain second-order questions about law—questions not in the law, but rather ones about our thought and talk about (...) the law, and how legal facts (insofar as there are any) fit into reality. Put more roughly (and using an alternative spatial metaphor), metaethics concerns a range of foundational questions about ethics, whereas general jurisprudence concerns analogous questions about law. As these characterizations suggest, the two sub-disciplines have much in common, and could be thought to run parallel to each other. Yet, the connections between the two are currently mostly ignored by philosophers, or at least under-scrutinized. The new essays collected in this volume are aimed at changing this state of affairs. The volume collects together works by metaethicists and legal philosophers that address a number of issues that are of common interest, with the goal of accomplishing a new rapprochement between the two sub-disciplines. (shrink)

It is widely recognized that endocrine disrupting compounds, such as Bisphenol A, pose challenges for traditional paradigms in toxicology, insofar as these substances appear to have a wider range of low-dose effects than previously recognized. These compounds also pose challenges for ethics and policymaking. When a chemical does not have significant low-dose effects, regulators can allow it to be introduced into commerce or the environment, provided that procedures and rules are in place to keep exposures below an acceptable level. This (...) option allows society to maximize the benefits from the use of the chemical while minimizing risks to human health or the environment, and it represents a compromise between competing values. When it is not possible to establish acceptable exposure levels for chemicals that pose significant health or environmental risks, the most reasonable options for risk management may be to enact either partial or complete bans on their use. These options create greater moral conflict than other risk management strategies, leaving policymakers difficult choices between competing values. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How do we recognize distinct types of emotion in music?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What counts as cognitive penetration?

This is an excerpt from a report on the Sensory Substitution and Augmentation Conference at the British Academy in March of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: Does sensory substitution generate perceptual or cognitive states?

This report highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012: 1. How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development? 2. What are the origins of multimodal associations? 3. Does our representation of time provide an amodal framework for multi-sensory integration? 4. What counts as cognitive penetration? 5. How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development?

This report highlights and explores four questions that arose from the workshop on temporal experience at the University of Toronto, May 20th and 21st, 2013.

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?

This is an excerpt from a report on the Temporal Experience Workshop at the University of Toronto in May of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: Do we have one central clock for time, or different clocks for each sense modality?

This is an excerpt from a report on the Temporal Experience Workshop at the University of Toronto in May of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: What sorts of mechanisms underlie the perceived duration of external events?

This is an excerpt from a report on the Temporal Experience Workshop at the University of Toronto in May of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: What can we learn about the nature of time from the nature of ordinary experience?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: Does our representation of time provide and amodal framework for multi-sensory integration?

This is an excerpt from a report on the Sensory Substitution and Augmentation Conference at the British Academy in March of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: Can normal non-sensory feelings be generated through sensory substitution?

This is an excerpt from a report on the Sensory Substitution and Augmentation Conference at the British Academy in March of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: What can sensory substitution tell us about perceptual learning?

This is an excerpt from a report on the Sensory Substitution and Augmentation Conference at the British Academy in March of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: How does sensory substitution interact with the brain’s architecture?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What are the origins of multimodal associations?

This is an excerpt from a report on the Temporal Experience Workshop at the University of Toronto in May of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: What is the relationship between time as represented in experience, the timing of the experiential act, and the timing of the neural realizer of the experience?

This is an excerpt from a report on the Sensory Substitution and Augmentation Conference at the British Academy in March of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: What are the limitations of sensory substitution.

Algorithms for approximate Bayesian inference, such as those based on sampling (i.e., Monte Carlo methods), provide a natural source of models of how people may deal with uncertainty with limited cognitive resources. Here, we consider the idea that individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) may be usefully modeled in terms of the number of samples, or “particles,” available to perform inference. To test this idea, we focus on two recent experiments that report positive associations between WMC and two distinct (...) aspects of categorization performance: the ability to learn novel categories, and the ability to switch between different categorization strategies (“knowledge restructuring”). In favor of the idea of modeling WMC as a number of particles, we show that a single model can reproduce both experimental results by varying the number of particles—increasing the number of particles leads to both faster category learning and improved strategy‐switching. Furthermore, when we fit the model to individual participants, we found a positive association between WMC and best‐fit number of particles for strategy switching. However, no association between WMC and best‐fit number of particles was found for category learning. These results are discussed in the context of the general challenge of disentangling the contributions of different potential sources of behavioral variability. (shrink)

One of the central limitations of sensory substitution devices (SSDs) is their inability to reproduce the non-sensory feelings that are normally associated with visual experiences, especially hedonic and aesthetic responses. This limitation is sometimes reported to cause SSD users frustration. To make matters worse, it is unclear that improvements in acuity, bandwidth, or training will resolve the issue. Yet, if SSDs are to actually reproduce visual experience in its fullness, it seems that the reproduction of non-sensory feelings will be of (...) some importance. We offer a novel solution. Researchers can produce hedonic and aesthetic responses by eliciting these feelings artificially, pairing distal objects that should be pleasurable to pleasurable stimulus outputs from the SSD. We outline two strategies for accomplishing this: first, by means of a prefixed, hardwired, association of pleasant distal objects to pleasant stimulus outputs from the SSD; second, by means of a flexible, feedback-based association which creates associations based on a subject-directed matching of distal objects to patterns of stimuli from the SSD which the subject takes to have the corresponding hedonic properties. We evaluate some problems with both strategies, and we argue that the feedback-based strategy is more promising. Researchers can use this strategy to help the blind, allowing them to take pleasure in the objects they perceive using SSDs. (shrink)

The two target articles in this issue draw an important connection between disability bioethics and geriatric bioethics. Dominic JC Wilkinson makes a pragmatic case for using frailty as a fa...