Background:Clinical investigation is a growing field employing increasing numbers of nurses. This has created a new specialty practice defined by aspects unique to nursing in a clinical research context: the objectives, setting, and nature of the nurse–participant relationship. The clinical research nurse role may give rise to feelings of ethical conflict between aspects of protocol implementation and the duty of patient advocacy, a primary nursing responsibility. Little is known about whether research nurses experience unique ethical challenges distinct from those experienced (...) by nurses in traditional patient-care settings.Research objectives:The purpose of the study was to describe the nature of ethical challenges experienced by clinical research nurses within the context of their practice.Research design:The study utilized a qualitative descriptive design with individual interviews.Participants and research context:Participating nurses self-identified as having experienced ethical challenges during screening. The majority were Caucasian, female, and worked in outpatient settings. Approximately 50% had > 10 years of research experience.Ethical considerations:The human subjects review board approved the study. Written informed consent was obtained.Findings:Predominant themes were revealed: the inability to provide a probable good, or/do no harm, and dual obligations. The following patterns and subthemes emerged: conflicted allegiances between protocol implementation, needs of the participant, desire to advance science, and tension between the nurse–patient therapeutic relationship versus the research relationship.Discussion:Participants described ethical challenges specific to the research role. The issues are central to the nurse–participant relationship, patient advocacy, the nurse’s role in implementing protocols, and/or advancing science.Conclusion:Ethical challenges related to the specialized role of clinical research nurses were identified. More research is warranted to fully understand their nature and frequency and to identify support systems for resolution. (shrink)

This anthology of articles provides contemporary international feminist perspectives on issues of identity, agency, and difference as they pertain to both feminist politics in particular, and contemporary western politics more generally.

Digital communication between a patient and their clinician offers the potential for improved patient care, particularly for young people with long term conditions who are at risk of service disengagement. However, its use raises a number of ethical questions which have not been explored in empirical studies. The objective of this study was to examine, from the patient and clinician perspective, the ethical implications of the use of digital clinical communication in the context of young people living with long-term conditions. (...) A total of 129 semi-structured interviews, 59 with young people and 70 with healthcare professionals, from 20 United Kingdom -based specialist clinics were conducted as part of the LYNC study. Transcripts from five sites were read by a core team to identify explicit and implicit ethical issues and develop descriptive ethical codes. Our subsequent thematic analysis was developed iteratively with reference to professional and ethical norms. Clinician participants saw digital clinical communication as potentially increasing patient empowerment and autonomy; improving trust between patient and healthcare professional; and reducing harm because of rapid access to clinical advice. However, they also described ethical challenges, including: difficulty with defining and maintaining boundaries of confidentiality; uncertainty regarding the level of consent required; and blurring of the limits of a clinician’s duty of care when unlimited access is possible. Paradoxically, the use of digital clinical communication can create dependence rather than promote autonomy in some patients. Patient participants varied in their understanding of, and concern about, confidentiality in the context of digital communication. An overarching theme emerging from the data was a shifting of the boundaries of the patient-clinician relationship and the professional duty of care in the context of use of clinical digital communication. The ethical implications of clinical digital communication are complex and go beyond concerns about confidentiality and consent. Any development of this form of communication should consider its impact on the patient-clinician-relationship, and include appropriate safeguards to ensure that professional ethical obligations are adhered to. (shrink)

This study highlights an innovative educational project entitled ‘Dynamic Teaching through Communication Skills’ as well as forming part of joint initiative for Erasmus + Communities and Students Together (CaST) 2019-1-UK01-KA203-061463. The pilot study shows that there are many ways to approach teaching across the disciplines with Engaged Learning. The proposal includes discussions on the practical methodologyof integrated content and language in higher education. While bringing real worldproblem solving into the Health Engineering degree, the chapter underscores aspects of persuasion and pitch (...) development within the paradigm of English as a LinguaFranca. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, there has been an increasing acknowledgement of the importance of recognising the ethical dimension of clinical decision-making. Medical professional regulatory authorities in some countries now include ethical knowledge and practice in their required competencies for undergraduate and post graduate medical training. Educational interventions and clinical ethics support services have been developed to support and improve ethical decision making in clinical practice, but research evaluating the effectiveness of these interventions has been limited. We undertook a systematic review of (...) the published literature on measures or models of evaluation used to assess the impact of interventions to improve ethical decision making in clinical care. We identified a range of measures to evaluate educational interventions, and one tool used to evaluate a clinical ethics support intervention. Most measures did not evaluate the key impact of interest, that is the quality of ethical decision making in real-world clinical practice. We describe the results of our review and reflect on the challenges of assessing ethical decision making in clinical practice that face both developers of educational and support interventions and the regulatory organisations that set and assess competency standards. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article outlines the policy context for teachers’ learning and continuing professional development in Scotland and considers this in relation to the perspectives of key informants gained through interview. The analysis draws on a triple-lens conceptual framework and points to some interesting contradictions between the policy text and the expressed aspirations of the interviewees. Current policy and the associated structural arrangements are viewed as broadly positive, but interviewees express concerns that an unintended emphasis on contractual arrangements might inhibit the more (...) transformative elements of professional learning. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Elizabeth Barnes, (...) Mari Mikkola, and Jessica Wilson. (shrink)

This is a review of Marie-Eve Morin's translation of Jean-Luc Nancy's "Ego Sum.".

This chapter describes a perspective on emotion, according to which emotions are: 1. Designed to function in a social context: an emotion is often an act of relationship reconfiguration brought about by delivering a social signal; 2. Forms of skillful engagement with the world which need not be mediated by conceptual thought; 3. Scaffolded by the environment, both synchronically in the unfolding of a particular emotional performance and diachronically, in the acquisition of an emotional repertoire; 4. Dynamically coupled to an (...) environment which both influences and is influenced by the unfolding of the emotion We draw heavily on ‘transactional’ accounts of emotion proposed by some contemporary psychologists. Although these authors do not, to our knowledge, conceive their work as a contribution to the ‘situationist’ literature that is the focus of this volume, we contend that their proposals constitute a fairly exact, affective parallel to situationist ideas about cognition. The primary aim of this chapter is to demonstrate that a situated approach to emotion already exists and is backed by a substantial experimental literature. (shrink)

This valuable book will give educators solution-based methods and research-based resources to improve classroom culture, as well as enabling schools to elevate students' engagement and academic achievement.

Some commentators have condemned Kant’s moral project from a feminist perspective based on Kant’s apparently dim view of women as being innately morally deficient. Here I will argue that although his remarks concerning women are unsettling at first glance, a more detailed and closer examination shows that Kant’s view of women is actually far more complex and less unsettling than that attributed to him by various feminist critics. My argument, then, undercuts the justification for the severe feminist critique of Kant’s (...) moral project. (shrink)

Can a businessman be moral? What are the values implicit in a business deal? How can we think responsibly about economic decisions? An academic philosopher and a practical businessman together examine the fundamental principles of economic activity to discover how we can think responsibly about economic decisions. Ethics must play a part as business relations are only sustainable when the parties have some values in common, but significant divergences of interest can limit the importance of ethical considerations. The responsibilities of (...) business towards employees, employers, customers, competitors, the state, the environment and the third world are all discussed. (shrink)

The development of evolutionary approaches to psychology from Classical Ethology through Sociobiology to Evolutionary Psychology is outlined and the main tenets of today's Evolutionary Psychology briefly examined: the heuristic value of evolutionary thinking for psychology, the massive modularity thesis and the monomorphic mind thesis.

It is unreasonable to assume that our pre-scientific emotion vocabulary embodies all and only those distinctions required for a scientific psychology of emotion. The psychoevolutionary approach to emotion yields an alternative classification of certain emotion phenomena. The new categories are based on a set of evolved adaptive responses, or affect-programs, which are found in all cultures. The triggering of these responses involves a modular system of stimulus appraisal, whose evoluations may conflict with those of higher-level cognitive processes. Whilst the structure (...) of the adaptive responses is innate, the contents of the system which triggers them are largely learnt. The circuits subserving the adaptive responses are probably located in the limbic system. This theory of emotion is directly applicable only to a small sub-domain of the traditional realm of emotion. It can be used, however, to explain the grouping of various other phenomena under the heading of emotion, and to explain various characteristic failings of the pre-scientific conception of emotion. (shrink)

In behavioral ecology some authors regard the innateness concept as irretrievably confused whilst others take it to refer to adaptations. In cognitive psychology, however, whether traits are 'innate' is regarded as a significant question and is often the subject of heated debate. Several philosophers have tried to define innateness with the intention of making sense of its use in cognitive psychology. In contrast, I argue that the concept is irretrievably confused. The vernacular innateness concept represents a key aspect of 'folkbiology', (...) namely, the explanatory strategy that psychologists and cognitive anthropologists have labeled 'folk essentialism'. Folk essentialism is inimical to Darwinism, and both Darwin and the founders of the modern synthesis struggled to overcome this way of thinking about living systems. Because the vernacular concept of innateness is part of folkbiology, attempts to define it more adequately are unlikely to succeed, making it preferable to introduce new, neutral terms for the various, related notions that are needed to understand cognitive development. (shrink)

Developmental systems theory (DST) is a general theoretical perspective on development, heredity and evolution. It is intended to facilitate the study of interactions between the many factors that influence development without reviving `dichotomous' debates over nature or nurture, gene or environment, biology or culture. Several recent papers have addressed the relationship between DST and the thriving new discipline of evolutionary developmental biology (EDB). The contributions to this literature by evolutionary developmental biologists contain three important misunderstandings of DST.

This book was first published in 1985. The journal is concerned with the study of philosophy in all its branches: logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, social and political philosophy and the philosophies of religion, science, history, language, mind and education. The journal is not committed to any particular school or method and contributors are expected to avoid needless technicality. There is a section on new books which includes reviews, book notes and a list of books received.

As far as consideration of man as phenomenon, as appearance, as an empirical self, is concerned, Kant appears to be a thoroughgoing psychological hedonist.

This volume offers a lively and accessible guide to some of the major issues current in French philosophy today and to some of the figures who are or have been influential in shaping its development. The collection is unusual and interesting in bringing together a range of contributors from both Britain and France, and is intended not only for professional philosophers but also for those with a more general interest in the French intellectual scene.

The original contributions to this Royal Institute of Philosophy collection are centrally concerned with ethics, but from a wide variety of perspectives. The essays, written by authors of great distinction, range from the analytic and theoretical to the applied, touching such topical and hotly-debated issues as what constitutes morality in political life, the relation between education and ethical standards, and whether morality can indeed be defined. The volume will provide stimulating reading for scholars and students alike.

Ethical questions are often associated with practical dilemmas: questions in morality, in other words. This volume, by contrast, asks questions about morality: what it is, and to what it owes its precarious authority over us. The focus on metaethics is sustained throughout, via a wide range of philosophical perspectives. Distinguished luminaries who include R. M. Hare and Bernard Williams address keenly debated issues such as what constitutes morality in politics; the relationship between education and ethical standards; and whether or not (...) morality can indeed be defined at all. As Nikhil Krishnan writes in his elegant Foreword, 'The plain-speaking, essayistic grace of these essays, speaks nevertheless of the possibility of moral philosophy, written with an eye to a listener, very possibly not a professional philosopher, who has the right to say, ''This is all very well, your neat little theory, but it doesn't ring true. Things are more complicated than that.'''. (shrink)

Classical logic has proved inadequate in various areas of computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, philosopy and linguistics. This is an introduction to extensions of first-order logic, based on the principle that many-sorted logic (MSL) provides a unifying framework in which to place, for example, second-order logic, type theory, modal and dynamic logics and MSL itself. The aim is two fold: only one theorem-prover is needed; proofs of the metaproperties of the different existing calculi can be avoided by borrowing them from (...) MSL. To make the book accessible to readers from different disciplines, whilst maintaining precision, the author has supplied detailed step-by-step proofs, avoiding difficult arguments, and continually motivating the material with examples. Consequently this can be used as a reference, for self-teaching or for first-year graduate courses. (shrink)

This article discusses Heidegger’s interpretation of Parmenides given in his last public lecture ‘The Principle of Identity’ in 1957. The aim of the piece is to illustrate just how original and significant Heidegger’s reading of Parmenides and the principle of identity is, within the history of Philosophy. Thus the article will examine the traditional metaphysical interpretation of Parmenides and consider G.W.F. Hegel and William James’ account of the principle of identity in light of this. It will then consider Heidegger’s contribution, (...) his return to and re-interpretation of Parmenides in his last lecture. Heidegger will, through the Parmenidean claim that ‘Thinking and Being are one’ deconstruct the traditional metaphysical understanding of the principle of identity, and in its place offer a radically different conception of how our relationship, our ‘belonging together’ with Being can be understood. (shrink)

According to the distinguished philosopher Richard Wollheim, an emotion is an extended mental episode that originates when events in the world frustrate or satisfy a pre-existing desire (Wollheim, 1999). This leads the subject to form an attitude to the world which colours their future experience, leading them to attend to one aspect of things rather than another, and to view the things they attend to in one light rather than another. The idea that emotions arise from the satisfaction or frustration (...) of desires—the ‘match-mismatch’ view of emotion aetiology—has had several earlier incarnations in the psychology of emotion. Early versions of this proposal were associated with the attempt to replace the typology of emotion found in ordinary language with a simpler theory of drives and to define new emotion types in terms of general properties such as the frustration of a drive. The match-mismatch view survived the demise of that revisionist project and is found today in theories that accept a folk-psychological-style taxonomy of emotion types based on the meaning ascribed by the subject to the stimulus situation. For example, the match-mismatch view forms part of the subtle and complex model of emotion episodes developed over many years by Nico Frijda (Frijda, 1986). According to Frijda, information about the ‘situational antecedents’ of an emotion—the stimulus in its context, including the ongoing goals of the organism—is evaluated for its relevance to the multiple concerns of the organism. Evaluation of match-mismatch—the degree of compatibility between the situation and the subject's goals—forms part of this process. (shrink)

InWisdom, Information and Wonder, Mary Midgley tackles the question at the root of our civilization: What is knowledge for?

In the Philippines, all transplant centers are mandated by the Department of Health (DOH) to have a Hospital Transplant Ethics Committee (HTEC) to ensure that donations are altruistic, voluntary and free of coercion/commercial transactions. This study was undertaken primarily to describe the organizational and functional profile of existing HTECs and identify areas for improvement. This is a descriptive cross‐sectional study. There was variation in their logistical arrangements (support from hospital, filing systems, office spaces), operations (length and frequency of meetings, number (...) of referrals) and membership (composition, qualifications, occupation, training). The approval rate for donor‐recipient pairs is high with the majority of cases made by living non‐related donors. Appropriate reasons were cited for rejection. The perception of HTECs is that they are competent and confident in their decision‐making. However, there is a need to standardize HTEC composition, provide operating procedures and additional training which can be done by the DOH. (shrink)

En quoi consiste, ou devrait consister, l'éthique professionnelle en enseignement? Comment se manifeste-t- elle dans les gestes pédagogiques? Selon quels critères peut-on la juger? Comment développer l'éthique professionnelle dans le cadre des formations initiale et continue en enseignement? En tenant compte du contexte social et culturel du Québec, des principes éthiques déjà énoncés par le ministère de l'Education ainsi que des lois, codes et conventions ayant des incidences sur la pratique enseignante, les auteures présentent des éléments à considérer pour la (...) réflexion éthique sur l'agir professionnel. Elles proposent des clarifications conceptuelles et un certain nombre de repères et de balises afin de guider les enseignants et de stimuler la discussion sur l'éthique professionnelle, non seulement dans la classe, mais aussi dans l'école et dans la société. (shrink)

What social conditions and intellectual practices are necessary in order for religious cultures to flourish? Paul Griffiths finds the answer in "religious reading" --- the kind of reading in which a religious believer allows his mind to be furnished and his heart instructed by a sacred text, understood in the light of an authoritative tradition. He favorably contrasts the practices and pedagogies of traditional religious cultures with those of our own fragmented and secularized culture and insists that religious reading should (...) be preserved. (shrink)

We know we have thoughts, but are we aware that we have styles of thought? This book, written by one of the most gifted and celebrated social thinkers of our time, is a contribution to understanding the rules of the different styles of thinking. Author Mary Douglas takes us through a range of thought styles from the vulgar to the refined. Throughout this fascinating journey, Thought Styles shows us how the different styles work and how outsiders can learn the (...) styles of insiders. The discussion ranges from the style of folklore to the styles of therapy, shopping, religion, and animal rights. The result is a book full of insight. Readers will find themselves thinking in new ways about the mechanics of communication in everyday life. Professionals and researchers in sociology, communication, and anthropology will especially appreciate this auspicious new book. (shrink)

How is hope to be found amid the ethical and political dilemmas of modern life? Writer and philosopher Mary Zournazi brought her questions to some of the most thoughtful intellectuals at work today. She discusses "joyful revolt" with Julia Kristeva, the idea of "the rest of the world" with Gayatri Spivak, the "art of living" with Michel Serres, the "carnival of the senses" with Michael Taussig, the relation of hope to passion and to politics with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto (...) Laclau. A dozen stimulating minds weigh in with their visions of a better social and political order. The result is a collaboration - of writing, of thinking, and of politics - that demonstrates more clearly than any single-authored project could how ideas encountering one another can produce the vision needed for social change. (shrink)