Dishonesty is prevalent and causes great damage to society. On an individual level, besides reaping rewards, it also carries a psychological cost for those who engage in it. This principle is used to make people more honest with behavioral interventions, one of them being the well-known ‘signature nudge’. Digital transition in society has however led to changes in the way people sign, which may affect the effectiveness of this nudge. In two experiments, the current study investigates the relationship between digital (...) signatures and honesty, building on previous research by examining novel signature types, the moderating role of personal characteristics, effect decay, and the predicting value of digital signature characteristics. Results show no effect of any signature intervention and no unilateral relation between digital signature characteristics and subsequent behavior. These findings contrast with earlier research and cast doubt on the use of signature interventions as a tool to prevent or predict dishonest behavior. (shrink)

Introduction - This paper is aimed at gaining more insight into the effects of camera-surveillance on behavior. This study investigates the effects of three different ways of ‘framing’ camera presence on cheating behavior and pro-social behavior. First, we explore the effect of presenting the camera as the medium through which an intimidating authority watches the participant. Second, we test the effect of presenting the camera as being a neutral, non-intimidating viewer. Third, we investigate whether a participant watching themselves via a (...) camera has an effect on their behavior. In contrast to most studies of camera surveillance, we will conduct our experiments in an indoor setting, enabling us to investigate behavior to a much greater detail. We will also explore possible moderating effects of personality traits. Methods - 86 students participated in this experiment, distributed over four conditions: three different ways of framing the camera presence, plus a control condition. Our main dependent variables were various kinds of cheating and pro-social behavior. We established the participant’s relevant personality traits in a separate session. Results - For cheating behavior, findings showed that the ‘authorative’ way of framing camera presence and the situation in which participants viewed themselves, differed significantly from a situation without camera-surveillance. We did not find significant effects of camera surveillance on pro-social behavior during the experiment. Looking at personality traits, we found an indication that people with an internal locus of control are more inclined to cheat when there is no camera present compared to people with an external locus of control. However, the effects of our manipulations were stronger. Conclusion - These results support the idea that the framing of a camera’s presence does indeed influence cheating behavior, adding to the preventive effects of camera-surveillance. Additionally, this study provides some valuable insights into the influence of camera presence on behavior in general. (shrink)

With disagreement, doubts, or ambiguous grounds in end–of-life decisions, doctors are advised to involve a clinical ethics committee. However, little has been published on doctors’ experiences with discussing an end-of-life decision in a CEC. As part of the quality assurance of this work, we wanted to find out if clinicians have benefited from discussing end-of-life decisions in CECs and why. We will disseminate some Norwegian doctors’ experiences when discussing end-of-life decisions in CECs, based on semi-structured interviews with fifteen Norwegian physicians (...) who had brought an end-of-life decision case to a CEC. Almost half of the cases involved conflicts with the patients’ relatives. In a majority of the cases, there was uncertainty about what would be the ethically preferable solution. Reasons for referring the case to the CEC were to get broader illumination of the case, to get perspective from people outside the team, to get advice, or to get moral backing on a decision already made. A great majority of the clinicians reported an overall positive experience with the CECs’ discussions. In cases where there was conflict, the clinicians reported less satisfaction with the CECs’ discussions. The study shows that most doctors who have used a CEC in an end-of-life decision find it useful to have ethical and/or legal aspects illuminated, and to have the dilemma scrutinized from a new perspective. A systematic discussion seems to be significant to the clinicians. (shrink)

Phenomenology has been adapted for use in qualitative health research, where it’s often used as a method for conducting interviews and analyzing interview data. But how can phenomenologists study subjects who cannot accurately reflect upon or report their own experiences, for instance, because of a psychiatric or neurological disorder? For conditions like these, qualitative researchers may gain more insight by conducting observational studies in lieu of, or in conjunction with, interviews. In this article, we introduce a phenomenological approach to conducting (...) this kind of observational research. The approach relies on conceptual grounding to focus a study on specific aspects of the participants’ experiences. Moreover, the approach maintains the openness to novel discoveries that qualitative research requires while also providing a structured framework for data collection and analysis. To illustrate its practical application, we use examples of hemispatial neglect—a neurologic disorder in which patients characteristically lack awareness of their own illness and bodily capacities. However, the approach that we describe can be applied more broadly to the study of complex illness experiences and other experiential alterations. (shrink)

This contribution presents an adult education workshop implemented in the field of early childhood education. One of the specificities of education and care practices lies in the competences of the professionals to give a central role to the detailed observation of situations, in order to adjust their modalities of action. How can such observational work be developed and transformed? A participatory research-training approach aims to support the co-construction of an analytical view on observable phenomena in the course of interactions. In (...) a perspective of interactional analysis, it focuses on the modalities that favor the construction of such an analytical posture. (shrink)

During the last decades several tools have been developed to anticipate the future impact of new and emerging technologies. Many of these focus on ‘hard,’ quantifiable impacts, investigating how novel technologies may affect health, environment and safety. Much less attention is paid to what might be called ‘soft’ impacts: the way technology influences, for example, the distribution of social roles and responsibilities, moral norms and values, or identities. Several types of technology assessment and of scenario studies can be used to (...) anticipate such soft impacts. We argue, however, that these methods do not recognize the dynamic character of morality and its interaction with technology. As a result, they miss an important opportunity to broaden the scope of social and political deliberation on new and emerging technologies.In this paper we outline a framework for building scenarios that enhance the techno-moral imagination by anticipating how technology, morality and their interaction might evolve. To show what kind of product might result from this framework, a scenario is presented as an exemplar. This scenario focuses on developments in biomedical nanotechnology and the moral regime of experimenting with human beings. Finally, the merits and limitations of our framework and the resulting type of scenarios are discussed. (shrink)

The legalization of cannabis in Canada instantiates principles of harm-reduction and safe supply. However, in-depth understanding of values at stake and attitudes toward legalization were not part of extensive democratic deliberation. Through a qualitative exploratory study, we undertook 48 semi-structured interviews with three Canadian stakeholder groups to explore opinions and values with respect to the legalization of cannabis: (1) members of the general public, (2) people with lived experience of addiction and (3) clinicians with experience treating patients with addiction. Across (...) all groups, participants tended to be in favor of legalization, but particular opinions rested on their viewpoint as stakeholders. Clinicians considered the way legalization would affect an individual’s health and its potential for increasing rates of addiction on a larger scale. People with lived experience of addiction cited personal autonomy more than other groups and stressed the need to have access to quality information to make truly informed decisions. Alternatively, members of the public considered legalization positive or negative in light of whether one’s addiction affected others. We elaborate on and discuss how scientific evidence about drug use impact values relates and how can different arguments play in democratic debates about legalization. (shrink)

In this paper, we are interested in the effects of institutional context on public attitudes towards climate policies, where institutions are defined as the conventions, norms and formally sanctioned rules of any given society. Building on a 2014 survey experiment, we conducted thirty qualitative interviews with car-owners in Oslo, Norway, to investigate the ways in which institutional context and political-value orientation affect public attitudes towards emissions policies. One context (presented as a text treatment) highlighted individual rationality, emphasising the ways in (...) which local pollution impacts the individual citizen; the other highlighted social rationality, emphasising the wider significance of carbon emissions and global responsibility for climate change. We analysed the effects of these contexts on attitudes, finding that institutional context influenced individuals' perspectives as well as their attitudes towards climate policies. Groups with different value orientations differed in terms of their evaluations but not their interpretations of these contexts. (shrink)

Adult-infant early dyadic interactions have been extensively explored by developmental psychologists. Around the age of 2 months, infants already demonstrate complex, delicate and very sensitive behaviors that seem to express their ability to interact and share emotions with their caregivers. This paper presents 3 pilot studies of parent-infant dyadic interaction in various set-ups. The first two present longitudinal data collected on two infants aged between 1 and 6 months and their mothers. We analyzed the development of coordination between them, at (...) the motor and at the vocal level. The 3rd pilot study aims to explore interpersonal coordination in both vocal behavior and motor activity for one infant and his mother at 2, 4 and 6 months. These pilot studies however leave a number of questions open concerning developmental changes and infants’ progressive mastery of interaction. We identify areas worth examining and try to tease out specific issues that may help develop new methodological pathways for the study of early naturalistic social interaction. We assume that a continuous, rather than discrete, approach would better capture the changes taking place in the various communicative modalities, while also displaying each dyad’s specificity and the narrative dimension of social engagement between infants and caregivers. (shrink)

Background Since the enactment of the euthanasia law in the Netherlands, there has been a lively public debate on assisted dying that may influence the way patients talk about euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide with their physicians and the way physicians experience the practice of EAS. Aim To show what developments physicians see in practice and how they perceive the influence of the public debate on the practice of EAS. Methods We conducted a secondary analysis of in-depth interviews with 28 Dutch (...) physicians who had experience with a complex case of EAS. Respondents were recruited both by the network of physicians working for SCEN as well as via a national questionnaire, wherein participating physicians could indicate their willingness to be interviewed. Results Three themes came up in analysing the interviews. First, the interviewed physicians experienced a change in what patients would expect from them: from a role as an involved caregiver to being the mere performer of EAS. Second, interviewees said that requests for EAS based on non-medical reasons came up more frequently and wondered if EAS was the right solution for these requests. Last, respondents had the impression that the standards of EAS are shifting and that the boundaries of the EAS regulation were stretched. Conclusions The perceived developments could make physicians less willing to consider a request for EAS. Our results also raise questions about the role of physicians and of EAS in society. (shrink)

Multinational corporations (MNCs) have brought attention to the challenges of business ethics in intercultural settings. A lack of understanding regarding cultural pluralism in business ethics education has motivated some scholars to consider a broader lens, one that recognizes the influence of religion (Spalding and Franks 2012). Management awareness of the similarities and differences that stem from deeply held beliefs is essential, as unstated thoughts and feelings caninfluence starting assumptions, even before ethical decision-making processes begin. If deeply entrenched cultural traditions and (...) religious values remain implicit and/or misunderstood, collaborative efforts may be derailed due to an inadvertent lack of respect and understanding. Because many Westerners remain unfamiliar with Muslim-based beliefs, the authors advance business ethics education by offering an overview of business practices in the Middle East. A modeland exercise are presented as tools to promote awareness of cultural perspectives. This platform for understanding will help adult learners see how their personal origins can shape and influence management thought. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Die Auffassungen vom Göttlichen, welche antike Philosophen entwickelten, wurden bekanntlich nur von einer verschwindend geringen Minderheit geteilt. Das traditionelle Gottesbild, von dem sie fast ausnahmslos Abstand nahmen, prägte demgegenüber vollständig das öffentliche Leben. Marianne Wifstrand Schiebe stellt erstmals die Frage, ob sich die Philosophen Gedanken darüber machten, wie es dazu kommen konnte - ein in der Forschung bislang übersehener Zusammenhang, der Gelaüfige Ansichten zum Selbstverständnis antiker Denker und zu ihrer Auffassung von der breiten (...) Bevölkerung und deren Fähigkeiten herausfordert. Wifstrand Schiebe kann eine ganze Reihe von Theorien zur Entstehung der Vorstellung von menschengestalteten Göttern in der antiken Überlieferung nachweisen. Sie alle weisen ein hohes Mass an Folgerichtigkeit auf, so auch das am häufigsten auftretende Modell, demzufolge das falsche Gottesbild des öffentlichen Kults ein Ergebnis buchstäblicher Deutung eines ursprünglichen metaphorischen Diskurses über die Götter sei. Vor dem Hintergrund des Ansatzes von Wifstrand Scheibe erscheinen Themen wie die philosophisches Beurteilung der Götterbilder und das Phänomen des sog. "Euhemerismus", die in der Forschung seit jeher kontrovers diskutiert werden, in einem neuen Licht". (shrink)

This study investigates whether addressees visually attend to speakers’ gestures in interaction and whether attention is modulated by changes in social setting and display size. We compare a live face-to-face setting to two video conditions. In all conditions, the face dominates as a fixation target and only a minority of gestures draw fixations. The social and size parameters affect gaze mainly when combined and in the opposite direction from the predicted with fewer gestures fixated on video than live. Gestural holds (...) and speakers’ gaze at their own gestures reliably attract addressees’ fixations in all conditions. The attraction force of holds is unaffected by changes in social and size parameters, suggesting a bottom-up response, whereas speaker-fixated gestures draw significantly less attention in both video conditions, suggesting a social effect for overt gaze-following and visual joint attention. The study provides and validates a video-based paradigm enabling further experimental but ecologically valid explorations of cross-modal information processing. (shrink)

Is the Miranda warning, which lets an accused know of the right to remain silent, more about procedural fairness or about the conventions of speech acts and silences? Do U.S. laws about Native Americans violate the preferred or traditional "silence" of the peoples whose religions and languages they aim to "protect" and "preserve"? In Just Silences, Marianne Constable draws on such examples to explore what is at stake in modern law: a potentially new silence as to justice.Grounding her claims (...) about modern law in rhetorical analyses of U.S. law and legal texts and locating those claims within the tradition of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault, Constable asks what we are to make of silences in modern law and justice. She shows how what she calls "sociolegal positivism" is more important than the natural law/positive law distinction for understanding modern law. Modern law is a social and sociological phenomenon, whose instrumental, power-oriented, sometimes violent nature raises serious doubts about the continued possibility of justice. She shows how particular views of language and speech are implicated in such law.But law--like language--has not always been positivist, empirical, or sociological, nor need it be. Constable examines possibilities of silence and proposes an alternative understanding of law--one that emerges in the calling, however silently, of words to justice. Profoundly insightful and fluently written, Just Silences suggests that justice today lies precariously in the silences of modern positive law. (shrink)

Since listeners usually look at the speaker's face, gestural information has to be absorbed through peripheral visual perception. In the literature, it has been suggested that listeners look at gestures under certain circumstances: 1) when the articulation of the gesture is peripheral; 2) when the speech channel is insufficient for comprehension; and 3) when the speaker him- or herself indicates that the gesture is worthy of attention. The research here reported employs eye tracking techniques to study the perception of gestures (...) in face-to-face interaction. The improved control over the listener's visual channel allows us to test the validity of the above claims. We present preliminary findings substantiating claims 1 and 3, and relate them to theoretical proposals in the literature and to the issue of how visual and cognitive attention are related. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 65 Heft: 2 Seiten: 349-355.

In the advertising discourse of human genetic database projects, of genetic ancestry tracing companies, and in popular books on anthropological genetics, what I refer to as the anthropological gene and genome appear as documents of human history, by far surpassing the written record and oral history in scope and accuracy as archives of our past. How did macromolecules become "documents of human evolutionary history"? Historically, molecular anthropology, a term introduced by Emile Zuckerkandl in 1962 to characterize the study of primate (...) phylogeny and human evolution on the molecular level, asserted its claim to the privilege of interpretation regarding hominoid, hominid, and human phylogeny and evolution vis-à-vis other historical sciences such as evolutionary biology, physical anthropology, and paleoanthropology. This process will be discussed on the basis of three key conferences on primate classification and evolution that brought together exponents of the respective fields and that were held in approximately ten-years intervals between the early 1960s and the 1980s. I show how the anthropological gene and genome gained their status as the most fundamental, clean, and direct records of historical information, and how the prioritizing of these epistemic objects was part of a complex involving the objectivity of numbers, logic, and mathematics, the objectivity of machines and instruments, and the objectivity seen to reside in the epistemic objects themselves. (shrink)

References to publications written by women constitute a significantly larger proportion of citations in articles written by women than in articles written by men in the same subfields. Further, the difference between citation patterns of men and women authors increases as the proportion of women in the discipline decreases, showing that these women are doubly disadvantaged in accumulating citations. These results suggest that the problems of members of an out-group tend to be most serious when their numbers are small and (...) that they will find it increasingly easier to gain acceptance and recognition as their numbers increase. (shrink)

Exploratory studies employing volunteer subjects are especially vulnerable to race and class bias. This article illustrates how inattention to race and class as critical dimensions in women's lives can produce biased research samples and lead to false conclusions. It analyzes the race and class background of 200 women who volunteered to participate in an in-depth study of Black and White professional, managerial, and administrative women. Despite a multiplicity of methods used to solicit subjects, White women raised in middle-class families who (...) worked in male-dominated occupations were the most likely to volunteer, and White women were more than twice as likely to respond to media solicitations or letters. To recruit most Black subjects and address their concerns about participation required more labor-intensive strategies involving personal contact. The article discusses reasons for differential volunteering and ways to integrate race and class into qualitative research on women. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the distinction between epistemic privilege and epistemic authority is an important one for feminist epistemologists who are sympathetic to feminist standpoint theory, I argue that, while the first concept is elusive, the second is really the important one for a successful feminist standpoint project.

Depuis la nuit des temps, les relations homme-animal ont reposé sur un principe d'inégalité et de domination. Pourtant, la place et le statut des animaux ont récemment connu de grandes évolutions. L'animalisme, à l'instar de l'antispécisme ou de l'abolitionnisme est progressivement entré dans le débat public, poussé par une actualité brûlante (scandales des abattoirs, vidéos L214, émergence d'un véganisme de masse, etc.). A l'origine, ce courant d'éthique proposant de défendre les droits des animaux était considéré comme une mouvance violente et (...) radicale. Comment cette doctrine a-t-elle séduit un public de plus en plus large? Que nous raconte cet engouement quant à nos valeurs, aux croyances de notre société? Cet ouvrage constitue la première analyse sociologique de ce phénomène émergent. En embrassant les points de vues politiques, écologiques, religieux ou encore celui des contre-cultures, Marianne Celka jette un regard neuf et, pour la première fois, neutre et objectif sur cette question aussi profonde que troublante du rapport entre l'homme et l'animal. (shrink)

Supramolecular chemistry, at the interface between chemistry, physics and biology, is a research domain which has grown considerably in the last 40 years. Jean-Marie Lehn was the first to lay its foundations and formalise its concepts, in a seminal article published in 1978. This work earned him the 1987 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, which he shared with Charles J. Pedersen and Donald J. Cram. The development of SMC has led to the creation of a dedicated institute and a new building (...) on the university campus. In this chapter, the emergence of supramolecular chemistry as a paradigm and research speciality at the University of Strasbourg is reconstructed with a focus on Lehn’s central role in this process, proposing a three-period chronology based on Mullins’ sequential model. It is furthermore argued that the creation of a physical space, with particular architecture and functions, has also played a key role in consolidating what is now called the “Strasbourg’s chemistry”. The disciplinary character of SMC is discussed in reference to the concept of “new disciplinarity” put forward by Marcovich and Shinn :582–6062011, Toward a new dimension: exploring the nanoscale. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014). (shrink)

The movement advocating the formal certification of clinical ethics consultants may result in major changes to the field of clinical ethics consultation by creating a new standard of care. The actual certification process is still in the development phase, but unanswered questions include: What will certification cost, and, Who will pay? Currently there is little salary support for ethics consultants and no regulation requiring healthcare institutions to offer clinical ethics consultation. Without the support of healthcare administrators and accreditation bodies, this (...) may remain unchanged.Healthcare administrators may be unwilling to pay for certification or professional services if accreditation bodies do not require healthcare institutions to provide certified ethics consultants’ services. If consultants will not be reimbursed or paid, they may not seek certification. If certified consultants are required, healthcare administrators may look for ways to cover the costs for providing this service, including insurance or third-party reimbursement and direct billing of patients for consultations, which may affect who performs and who participates in ethics consultation. However, this is less than ideal, as bioethicists believe ethics consultation should be available to all as part of providing safe, quality ethical care and support and guidance for patients, families, and healthcare staff.Going forward, bioethicists should study quality improvement, patient safety, and cost-savings resulting from certification-eligible clinical ethics consultants’ activities. Administrators and financial personnel can be surveyed regarding their support for the certification process. Bioethicists should enlist the help of patient rights and safety advocacy groups, professional medical associations, and healthcare administrators. Bioethicists should invite accreditation bodies, healthcare administrators, and financial personnel to collaborate in the development of the certification process. Without their support, certification may be of value only to the bioethics community, and may have little standing in actual clinical healthcare institution settings. (shrink)

Do you want to make sure you · Don’t invest your money in the next Enron? · Don’t go to work for the next WorldCom right before the crash? · Identify and solve problems in your organization before they send it crashing to the ground? Marianne Jennings has spent a lifetime studying business ethics---and ethical failures. In demand nationwide as a speaker and analyst on business ethics, she takes her decades of findings and shows us in The Seven Signs (...) of Ethical Collapse the reasons that companies and nonprofits undergo ethical collapse, including: · Pressure to maintain numbers · Fear and silence · Young ’uns and a larger-than-life CEO · A weak board · Conflicts · Innovation like no other · Belief that goodness in some areas atones for wrongdoing in others Don’t watch the next accounting disaster take your hard-earned savings, or accept the perfect job only to find out your boss is cooking the books. If you’re just interested in understanding the (not-so) ethical underpinnings of business today, The Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse is both a must-have tool and a fascinating window into today’s business world. (shrink)

This literature review of professionalism was prepared by San Jose State University graduate student Marianne Allison as a research committee project of the Mass Communication and Society Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The project was prepared under the guidance of Professor Diana Stover Tillinghast. It reviews the literature on two approaches to professionalism in general and of the professionalism of journalists in particular: the ?structural?functionalist approach?; and the ?power approach.?; Traditional and recent discussions of the (...) nature of professionalism in occupational sociology are presented. Studies of the professionalism of journalists both in the United States and cross?culturally are critiqued. The paper suggests several areas of fruitful research, and contains an extensive bibliography. (shrink)

"A discussion of issues raised by Richard Rorty's engagement with feminist philosophy.

Dans notre État laïque et démocratique, les débats relatifs aux sujets d’éthique ne semblent pas pouvoir être menés dans une ambiance apaisée. Loin d’entendre des échanges ouverts et rationnels, nous assistons à des joutes oratoires emplies de condamnations incohérentes et de prédictions aussi catastrophistes qu’infondées. Pourtant, au moment même où l’espace public et médiatique semble refuser le débat lucide et raisonnable, un nouveau territoire offre l’occasion de le mener à bien : celui des séries télévisées. Véritable phénomène culturel d’une ampleur (...) inédite, l’essor des séries télés, outre sa fonction de divertissement, permet aux questions d’éthique d’être véritablement posées et discutées. Depuis la question de la vie jusqu’à celle de la mort, depuis la question des services corporels à celle des comportements sexuels, les séries couvrent tout le champ de l’éthique contemporaine. Populaires sans céder au populisme, elles s’offrent indéniablement des outils au service de la réflexion éthique. (shrink)

Au-delà des fake news relayées par des YouTubeurs dopés aux clics, n’est-ce pas du côté des gouvernements et des grands groupes multinationaux qu’il faut chercher les conspirations les plus puissantes et les plus quotidiennes qui ont façonné nos vies et notre histoire au cours des dernières décennies? Autour d’un complotisme aisément dénoncé pour son folklore aussi ridicule que dangereux, cet article nous immerge dans un tourbillon de suspicions para-complotistes dont il est bien difficile d’éviter le tournoiement.

From the 1960s, mathematical and computational tools have been developed to arrive at human population trees from various kinds of serological and molecular data. Focusing on the work of the Italian-born population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, I follow the practices of tree-building and mapping from the early blood-group studies to the current genetic admixture research. I argue that the visual language of the tree is paralleled in the narrative of the human diasporas, and I show how the tree was actually (...) mapped onto the surface of the earth. This visual and textual structure is mirrored in the liberal discourse of unity in diversity that has been criticized as running counter to the socio-political effects of human population genetics. From this perspective, one may ask how far the phylogenetic diagram in its various forms is a manifestation of the physics of power that according to Michel Foucault consists in mechanisms that analyse distributions, movements, series, combinations, and that uses instruments to render visible, to register, to differentiate and to compare. It is one among other disciplinary technologies that ensure the ordering of human diversity. In the case of intra-human phylogenetic trees, population samples and labels are one issue. Another is that the separated branches seem to show groups of people, who have in reality been interacting and converging, as isolated. Often based on so-called isolated peoples, molecular tree diagrams freeze a hierarchical kinship system that is meant to represent a state before the great historical population movements. (shrink)

Addiction is a common condition affecting millions of people worldwide of which only a small proportion receives treatment. The development and use of healthcare services is influenced by how addiction is understood (e.g., a condition to treat, a shameful condition to stigmatize), notably with respect to how volition is impacted (e.g., addiction as a choice or a disease beyond one’s control). Through semi-structured qualitative interviews, we explore the implicit views and understandings of addiction and volition across three stakeholder groups: people (...) with lived experience of addiction, clinicians with experience treating addiction, and members of the public without lived experience of addiction. We notably examine whether three paradigms, i.e., three philosophical sets of understandings about the nature of reality and knowledge (realism, relativism, pragmatism) reflect how stakeholders envision addiction and volition in the context of addiction. The use of these paradigms allows for the characterization of different stances on addiction and volition and an assessment of the coherence of beliefs about these matters. Our findings demonstrate that few participants relied on a single epistemic paradigm when describing their views. Furthermore, there were notable differences in understandings of volition between the clinician group, who were more oriented toward pragmatism, and people with lived experience of addiction, who were less oriented toward realism. Despite its limitations, our study suggests that a greater appreciation for the complexity of views held by different stakeholders about addiction and volition could help critically assess the search for coherence expressed in academic and policy debates. (shrink)