A recent online article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, which received wide media coverage, raised the possibility that children are being ‘subjected to torture’ due to the ‘fervent or fundamentalist views’ of their parents. However, the quality of argument in that article was inadequate to sustain such a radical thesis. There was no engagement with the perspectives of different religious traditions about end-of-life care. Instead the authors invoked practices such as male infant circumcision which are wholly irrelevant to the (...) end-of-life theme. There were serious failings in relation to core principles of social and epidemiological research practice: the study based its conclusion on a sample of only six cases and failed to consider even the more obvious confounding features. Rather than demonizing the religious beliefs of parents there should be recognition of the need for mutual respect, dialogue based on an ‘expert–expert relationship’ and collaboration based on ‘shared understanding’. (shrink)

The three‐dimensional structures adopted by RNA molecules are crucial to their biological functions. The nucleotides of an RNA molecule interact to form characteristic secondary‐structure mctifs. Tertiary interactions orient these secondary‐structure elements with respect to each other to form the functional RNA. Here we describe the basic structural elements with special emphasis on a novel tertiary motif, the pseudoknot.

Learning to assume responsibility or "ownership" for patient care is an important aspect of learning what it means to be a physician. To date, most of the research on patient ownership has focused on residents' understanding of what it means to own patients. This exploratory study explored third- and fourth-year students', residents, and attending physicians' understanding of the phrase "taking ownership of a patient." Data included participant observations and interviews that expanded over a five month period. Interviews were transcribed and (...) analyzed using psychological ownership as an analytical lens and latent content analysis as a method. Third-year students primarily understood the phrase to mean communicating with patients and their immediate team. Fourth-year students indicated it was an expectation to contribute to the management of patient care. Residents and faculty thought patient ownership included an emotional investment in patients. The phrase taking ownership of patients is understood differently depending on where participants are in their development, even though it is assumed there is a shared understanding across team members. Given the variability in understanding, educators should have explicit discussions with learners about commonly used concepts to help them develop sophisticated understandings and monitor their own development. (shrink)

This study investigates how patterns of media use and exposure to media messages are related to attitudes about artificial intelligence (AI) image generators. In doing so, it builds on theoretical accounts of media framing and public opinion about science and technology topics, including AI. The analyses draw on data from a survey of the US public (N = 1,035) that included an experimental manipulation of exposure to tweets framing AI image generators in terms of real art, artists’ concerns, artists’ outrage, (...) or competing interpretations. The results show that technology news use and science fiction viewing predicted support for AI art but also predicted belief that AI image generators will take jobs and steal art styles from human artists. In addition, the experimental results demonstrate that exposure to specific media messages can influence these responses. The findings carry implications for understanding the future adoption, use, and regulation of AI image generators. (shrink)

In response to the need for a more diverse workforce, our medical school developed new policies and procedures that focus on the recruitment and selection of diverse students with a specific focus on those considered underrepresented in medicine. To understand what these students bring to the practice of medicine, researchers investigated their perception of their cultural assets and how they plan to use these assets as physicians. A cross-section of 23 ethnically, culturally, and geographically diverse medical students were interviewed and (...) data were analyzed through phenomenographical methods. The results indicate that students view themselves as having multiple assets that could be of significant value in their future practice of medicine, including: a) an interest in science and access to family members in medicine, b) personal and familial struggles with health, c) self and family as immigrants, and d) strong family and community orientations. Students perceived these as cultural assets because they could directly identify where these assets could be valuable in medicine but questioned how to maintain them throughout medical school. Now that our institution has identified these assets, next steps include administrators' investigation of ways to leverage them through curricular and educational programs. (shrink)

As gene editing technologies such as CRISPR have become increasingly prominent, so have media portrayals of them. With this in mind, the present study builds on theoretical accounts of framing effects, cultivation effects, and genre-specific viewing effects to examine how different forms of media use predict attitudes toward applications of gene editing. Specifically, the study tests how news use, overall television viewing, and science fiction viewing are related to such attitudes. The analyses draw on original data from two surveys of (...) the U.S. public, one conducted in 2020 and the other in 2021. The results from both surveys indicate that news use and overall television viewing predict support for uses of gene editing, whereas science fiction viewing is not significantly related to opinion. The findings suggest that media frames and images may carry implications for the trajectory of public opinion about gene editing technologies and, ultimately, the social context for their development and adoption. (shrink)

(Statement of Responsibility) by Timothy S. Huebner.

This study examines how different forms of media use predict attitudes toward the development of facial recognition technology (FRT) and applications of it by law enforcement to identify criminal suspects, identify potential terrorists, and monitor public protests. The theoretical framework builds on theories of cultivation and genre-specific viewing to develop hypotheses and research questions. The analyses draw on original data from two nationally representative surveys of the U.S. public conducted in 2020, amid a series of controversies and protests about policing (...) and racial justice. The results demonstrate that overall television viewing and crime media viewing predicted support for multiple uses of FRT, while Fox News viewing predicted support for using FRT to monitor protests. The findings advance our understanding of public opinion toward the technology and its implications for policing, protests, and social justice. (shrink)

Ethics support staff help others to deal with moral challenges. However, they themselves can also experience moral challenges such as issues regarding (breaching) confidentiality when practicing ethics support. Currently there is no insight in these confidentiality issues and also no professional guidance for dealing with them. To gain insight into moral challenges related to Moral Case Deliberation (MCD), we studied a) beliefs and experiences of MCD facilitators regarding breaching confidentiality, b) considerations for (not) breaching confidentiality, and c) needs for an (...) ethics support tool. Data collection consisted of qualitative research methods: six semi-structured interviews; analyses of a) two recorded MCD sessions, and b) a focus group with MCD facilitators. Findings: MCD facilitators mention different conceptions and interpretations of confidentiality and various moral challenges. Questions concerning confidentiality ultimately cause reflections on roles and responsibilities of facilitators. Needs for ethics support vary from seeking advice to procedural and sometimes normative guidance for MCD facilitators. Education for MCD facilitators should focus on developing a concrete tool that stimulates awareness and reflection(skills). (shrink)

Approximately 50 years have passed since Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote A Defense of Abortion (1971). Her article has significantly shaped the philosophical literature on abortion. In this paper, I will summarize some of the interesting and important work done on the topic since Thomson's article. I will highlight Thomson as a defender of the claim that abortion is morally permissible and Don Marquis as an influential opponent of that claim. I will start by articulating Thomson's case, focusing on the violinist (...) analogy. I will underscore key questions, concepts, and objections the analogy raises. I will then examine briefly how philosophers have addressed some of these issues. Next, I will outline Marquis’ work, provide a similar commentary on it, and discuss some of its main responses. I will then survey other philosophers who have addressed abortion beyond the scope of providing specific replies to Thomson or Marquis. I will close by highlighting significant points of agreement and disagreement in the literature, as well as crucial gaps in the current research. The paper is not an attempt to address every work on the topic over the last five decades, nor is it aimed at taking a position on the moral permissibility of abortion. My goal is to provide an overview of the dialectic. (shrink)

I : PETRARCH'S BRITAIN 1: Piero Boitani: Petrarch and the barbari Britanni II: PETRARCH AND THE SELF 2: Jennifer Petrie: Petrarch solitarius 3: Zygmunt G. Baranski: The Ethics of Ignorance: Petrarch's Epicurus and Averroes and the Structures of the De Sui Ipsius et Aliorum Ignorantia 4: Jonathan Usher: Petrarch's Second Death III: PETRARCH IN DIALOGUE 5: Francesca Galligan: Poets and Heroes in Petrarch's Africa: Classical and Medieval Sources 6: Enrico Santangelo: Petrarch reading Dante: the Ascent of Mont Ventoux 7: John (...) Took: Petrarch and Cino da Pistoia: A Moment in the Pre-history of the Canzoniere IV: PETRARCHISM AND ANTIPETRARCHISM IN ITALY 8: Abigail Brundin: Petrarch and the Italian Reformation 9: Hilary Gatti: Petrarch, Sidney, Bruno 10: Diego Zancani: Renaissance Misogyny and the Rejection of Petrarch 11: Letizia Panizza: Impersonations of Laura in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Italy V: PETRARCHISM: ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH CONNECTIONS 12: Michael Wyatt: Other Petrarchs in Early Modern England 13: Stephen Clucas: Thomas Watson's Hekatompathia and European Petrarchism 14: John Roe: The Comedy of Astrophil: Petrarchan Motifs in Sidney's Astrophil and Stella 15: Syrithe Pugh: Sidney, Spenser and Political Petrarchism 16: R. D. S. Jack: Petrarch and the Scottish Renaissance Sonnet VI: PETRARCH AND THE MODERNS: ITALY AND BRITAIN 17: Pamela Williams: Leopardi and Petrarch 18: Ela Tandello: Between Tradition and Transgression: Amelia Rosselli's Petrarch 19: Martin McLaughlin: Nineteenth-century British Biographies of Petrarch 20: Peter Hainsworth: Translating Petrarch. (shrink)

The first edition of The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy took the dialogue of science and philosophy from Aristotle through to Newton. This second edition adds eight chapters, taking the dialogue through the Enlightenment and up to Darwin. This anthology is an attempt to help bridge the gap between the history of science and the history of philosophy.

Keisha Ray and Jane Falls Cooper’s article “Bioethics of Environmental Injustice: Ethical, Legal, and Clinical Implications of Unhealthy Environments” seeks to give environmental concerns greater p...

Bio-heteronormative conceptions of the family have long reinforced a nuclear ideal of the family as a heterosexual marriage, with children who are the genetic progeny of that union. This ideal, however, has also long been resisted in light of recent social developments, exhibited through the increased incidence and acceptance of step-families, donor-conceived families, and so forth. Although to this end some might claim that the bio-heteronormative ideal is not necessary for a social unit to count as a family, a more (...) systematic conceptualization of the family—the kind of family that matters morally—is relatively underexplored in the philosophical literature. This paper makes a start at developing and defending an account of the family that is normatively attractive and in line with the growing prevalence of non-conventional families and methods of family-formation. Our account, which we call a constitutive-affirmative model of the family, takes the family to be constituted by an ongoing process of relevant affective and affirmative relations between the putative family members. (shrink)

Paracelsus is an extraordinarily difficult author to interpret, in part because of the seemingly elusive boundary between literal and metaphorical levels of meaning in his work. The present paper argues for a literal reading of Paracelsus, based on comments that he makes in his late Philosophia de divinis operibus & factis & de secretis naturae. The article also includes a translated chapter from one of the treatises in that work, De lunaticis.

This article confronts the challenges and opportunities presented by medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) representing families impacted by the family regulation system. Based on the authors’ experience developing a collaboration between a medical-legal partnership, interdisciplinary law school clinic and nurse home visiting program focused on clients impacted by the family regulation system, the article challenges traditional conceptions of the MLP model and proposes an expanded vision for MLPs to address systemic injustice and improve outcomes for families.

_This paper discusses the concept of compassion fatigue in light of the importance that political decisions, especially the application of the concept of public spirit, have had on care and nursing in a Danish hospital context during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper is based on recent research literature in the field as well as the author’s own participatory observation study. The paper suggests that nurses already show a sense of public spirit due to their authorization and professional ethics, but at (...) the same time they must balance the ambiguity of nursing care. A linguistic-philosophical study of public spirit shows that the concept can have a discursive, double-binding and interpellative effect on nurses, who may therefore have an experience of inadequacy and compassion fatigue. In this context, compassion fatigue must be understood as the fact that nurses cannot provide the care they want or that is expected of them. Public spirit can be said to have had a renaissance and linguistic and moral supremacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper views the concept of __waywardness 1 as a possible response for how to prevent or completely avoid compassion fatigue, so that nurses instead have an experience of compassion / self-compassion. This could in the end be important for encouraging more nursing students and nurses who have the desire and opportunity to stay in the profession._ _Keywords_: Nursing care, compassion fatigue, public spirit, compassion, COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

This article substantiates the common intuition that it is wrong to contribute to dangerous climate change for no significant reason. To advance this claim, I first propose a basic principle that one has the moral obligation to act in accordance with the weight of moral reasons. I further claim that there are significant moral reasons for individuals not to emit greenhouse gases, as many other climate ethicists have already argued. Then, I assert that there are often no significant moral (or (...) excusing) reasons to emit greenhouse gases. In any such trivial-cost – but not necessarily trivial-impact – cases, the individual then has an obligation to refrain. Finally, I apply the moral weighing principle to everyday situations of emitting and establish two surprisingly substantial implications: the relevance of virtues to the interpersonal assessment of environmentally harmful actions and the extensive individual ethical obligations that exist short of moral purity. (shrink)

An adult university hospital ethics committee evaluated a proposed TA-NRP protocol in the fall of 2018. The protocol raised ethical concerns about violation of the Uniform Determination of Death Act and the prohibition known as the Dead Donor Rule, with potential resultant legal consequences. An additional concern was the potential for increased mistrust by the community of organ donation and transplantation. The ethics committee evaluated the responses to these concerns as unable to surmount the ethical and legal boundaries and the (...) ethics committee declined to endorse the procedure. These concerns endure. (shrink)

Socioeconomic inequality is perpetuated and exacerbated by an overlooked yet serious epidemic of time theft: the act of causing others to lose their time without adequate cause, compensation, or consent. We explain why time theft goes unnoticed, how it drives socioeconomic inequality, and what businesses and policymakers can do to address it.

Almost all countries and fertility clinics impose age limits on women who want to become pregnant through Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART). Age limits for aspiring fathers, however, are much less common and remain a topic of debate. This article departs from the principle of reproductive autonomy and a conditional positive right to receive ART, and asks whether there are convincing arguments to also impose age limits on aspiring fathers. After considering three consequentialist approaches to justifying age limits for aspiring fathers, (...) we take in a concrete normative stance by concluding that those are not strong enough to justify such cut-offs. We reinforce our position by drawing a comparison between the case of a 39-year-old woman who wants to become a single mother via a sperm donor on the one hand, and on the other hand the same woman who wants to have a child with a 64-year-old man who she loves and who is willing to care for the child as long as he is able to. We conclude that, as long as appropriate precautions are taken to protect the welfare of the future child, couples who want to receive fertility treatment should never be limited on the basis of the age of the (male) partner. An absence of age limits for men would respect the reproductive autonomy of both the man and the woman. (shrink)

In this article it will be concluded that systematic menstrual tracking in women’s sport has the potential to cause harm to athletes. Since the ruling of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) in the United States, concerns regarding menstrual health tracking have arisen. Research suggests that the menstrual tracking of female athletes presents potential risks to “women’s autonomy, privacy, and safety in sport” (Casto 2022, 1725). At present, the repercussions of systematic menstrual tracking are particularly under-scrutinized, and this paper (...) seeks to combine novel research in the sport sciences with present ethical debates in the philosophy of sports. Utilizing Beauvoir’s feminist philosophy (2011), this paper argues that systematic menstrual tracking may contribute to the wider system of women’s oppression by exploiting female athletes, as well as enabling the internalization of submissive behaviour in cultures where athletes are expected to comply unquestioningly. Five policy recommendations are made concerning autonomy, informed consent, education, safeguarding and data access. The overall findings of this paper propose that a more in-depth understanding of the links between data, privacy, and the menstrual cycle are required by sports organizations and governing bodies if athletes are to be protected in a future where systematic menstrual tracking is inevitable. (shrink)

There are people where two or more personalities seem to have independent-and sometimes mutually forgetful-control of the same bodily individual. This chapter gives a brief account of the history of the diagnosis of "Multiple Personality Disorder" or "Dissociative Identity Disorder", and the conflicting judgment of therapists, lawyers, and philosophers as to whether this is a real syndrome. It is suggested that the diagnosis may be therapeutically helpful for some other disturbances, including anorexia, even if it does not carry the strong (...) metaphysical moral that some have supposed. The cases are of interest to philosophers as they purport to represent "real -life" difficulties for standard theories of "personal identity." The chapter argues that the diagnosis depend on prior assumptions about such identity, and so don't easily confirm or rebut any available theory, including more ancient theories about demonic possession. (shrink)

This paper outlines three broad ways one might think about logical correctness: the Realist approach, the One-Language approach and my own Neo-Carnapian view. Although the realist and one-language views have dominated the philosophy of logic in recent years, I argue against them, favouring of the Neo-Carnapian approach.

This essay examines the many problems with public and private development aid and argues that global liberalization of trade and immigration would have a greater direct effect in reducing global poverty. It also examines and rejects the view that people in rich countries have a strong moral obligation to give to the global poor. Such an obligation is in tension with an ethic that prizes personal projects. A political morality of equal respect and concern is congenial not with foreign aid, (...) but with recognizing the agency of the global poor by lifting the many obstacles they currently face to participating in the market as producers and consumers. (shrink)

Offers a thorough, multidisciplinary picture of the informational challenges of our media ecosystem, as well as collaborative strategies for addressing them.

Nammalvar, a Tamil poet who lived in IX-X centuries, is revered as one of the great mystics of India. His four poetic works are equated with the sacred hymns and are part of the ritual worship in the temples of South India. Artistic images of Nammalvar formed the basis of the philosophy of Vishishta-Advaita several centuries later. The poem “Thiruviruttam” is considered as his early work, where he combines the canons of ancient Tamil poetry and his devoted love for Vishnu-Tirumal. (...) The study presents a religious and philosophical interpretation of the poem. The secret of the poem is its dualism: external beauty and sacred meaning. There is a spiritual meaning in symbols of Tamil poetry. Nammalvar takes canons of his predecessors, poets of the Sangam era. However, he fills one with new content. The author compares ancient Tamil poetry and the work of Nammalvar. The plot describes the love between God and the soul. The poet reveals several types of bhakti or devoted love. The description of bhakti subsequently formed the basis for the classification of souls in the philosophy of vishishta-advaita. Bhakti leads to the transition to Vaikuntha or the heaven city. Sri Vaishnavism teachers turned the description of relationship soul-Vishnu into a spiritual practice. The artistic images of Nammalvar are compared with Hindu concepts such as transcendence, darshan, divine grace and moksha. In South India “Thiruviruttam” is considered the Tamil Rig Veda. Poem is performed at home, in the temple, during festive processes. It helps to find the roots of Vaishnavism and understand its poetic origin. (shrink)