Michel Foucault's genealogies, due to their reliance on Nietzschean accounts of the violent origins of human culture, present a problematic description of the emergence of patterns of resistance and domination. By creating a parallel fiction of emergence that replaces Nietzschean originary violence with Richard Dawkins's account of the centrality of cultural transmission in human survival we can release emergence from the unitary Foucauldian drama. It is then possible to reconstruct Foucault's genealogies, anchoring the will to knowledge in an active agent (...) dedicated to the transgression of sociocultural limits. (shrink)

This study explores experiences of ex-incels—men who have withdrawn from incel communities—through eleven qualitative interviews analysed using R.W. Connell’s hegemonic masculinity (HM) framework. Findings reveal some ex-incels adopt flexible masculinities, while others struggle with prescriptive norms perpetuated by the anti-feminist ‘manosphere’. Findings spotlight identity reconstructions, where men both reject and remain influenced by rigid archetypes, performing hybrid masculinities. This study deepens understanding of incel ideology, its impact on identity, and interplay between inceldom and masculinities via contributing to hybrid masculinities theorising. (...) Insights presents applications for gender theory and inform further research on HM’s influence within unique cultural contexts. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Mit seinem philosophischen Hauptwerk, der "Theorie der ethischen Gefühle", legte Adam Smith den Grundstein für die Ausbildung einer Moralphilosophie, die sich ausdrücklich auf die Ideen der Sympathie und der Solidargemeinschaft beruft. Die Gründung der Moral auf den Begriff des Mitgefühls oder der "Sympathie" steht im Zentrum des philosophischen Hauptwerks von Adam Smith (1723-1790), der 1759 publizierten Schrift "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". Methodisch orientiert an den Werken der englischen Empiristen Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson und Hume, untersucht (...) class='Hi'>Smith die Moralsysteme der Vergangenheit, kritisiert die Bemühungen seiner Zeitgenossen um eine Grundlegung der Moralphilosophie und nimmt so zukünftige wichtige Ansätze auf dem Gebiet der Ethik vorweg; sein Werk ist ein Sammelplatz heterogenster, scheinbar konträrer Richtungen der Moralphilosophie. Es kombiniert unterschiedliche Theorien zu einem bemerkenswerten System des "sittlich Richtigen", das sich nicht an Kriterien wie dem der Nützlichkeit ausrichtet, sondern an der Konvention des ausgebildeten Mitgefühls. Der zentrale Begriff ist dabei "Sympathie", ergänzt durch die Einführung der Idee eines unparteiischen Zuschauers, in den sich laut Smith jeder einzelne immer dann versetzt, wenn er moralische Entscheidungen zu treffen hat: "Der impartial spectator läßt die Individuen überlegen, daß sie an der Stelle desjenigen stehen könnten, dem sie ihre Sympathie zuwenden. Daraus entsteht nach Smith ein Motiv, aktuell so zu handeln, wie man an dessen Stelle behandelt werden wollte" (B. Priddat). "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" wurde mehrfach überarbeitet und ergänzt; diese Ausgabe bietet den Text in der letzten Fassung nach der 6. Auflage von 1790 in der deutschen Übersetzung von W. Eckstein. (shrink)

Both Plato and Aristotle have something to say about admiration. But in order to know where to look, and in order to appreciate the force of their remarks, we need to sketch a little of the ethical background that they presuppose. I begin, therefore, with ancient Greek ethics in the wider sense, and discuss the treatment of admiration and related attitudes by Homer, Herodotus, and other pre-Platonic sources. Then I turn to the views of Plato, Adam Smith, Aristotle (...) and Cicero. This order of discussion allows us to see why admiration is both morally significant and, in some respects, morally unreliable. (shrink)

reflection on misreadings of Adam Smith as vitalist in light of E Schliesser's Adam Smith book which shows a different interpretive route.

Geoffrey Cantor, Michael Faraday. Sandeminian and scientist. A study o f science and religion in the nineteenth century. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1991. Pp. xi + 359. ISBN 0-333-55077-3. John Meurig Thomas, Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution. The genius of man and place. Bristol, Philadelphia and London: Adam Hilger, 1991. Pp. xii + 234. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7. The correspondence of Michael Faraday. Volume 1, 1811-1831, edited by Frank A.J.L. James. London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991. Pp. xlix + 673. (...) ISBN 0-86341-248-3. ‘Very ordinary background, father ran a smithy, son had virtually no education... didn’t go to university... But extraordinary - brilliant. The Good Lord’s no respecter of backgrounds, never has been, He plants genius the world over and it’s up to us to find it’.1 Spoken neither by a scientist nor by a historian, these were the words by which Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher elevated Faraday to the status of personal hero in 1987. Behind the rhetoric stood the conviction of 1980s Thatcherism, idealizing as it did the cult of the self-made, and challenging the very survival of those weighty institutions of education and science, most notably the universities, which had apparently played no part in the life and work of such great individuals as Michael Faraday and their entrepreneurial counterparts of the Thatcher years. (shrink)

This classic edition presents the correspondence of one of the great thinkers of the 18th century, and offers a rich picture of the man and his age. This second volume contains David Hume's letters from 1766 to 1776. Hume's correspondents include such famous public figures as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, James Boswell, and Benjamin Franklin.

When a handful of people thrive while whole industries implode and millions suffer, it is clear that something is wrong with our economy. The wealth of the few is disconnected from the misery of the many. In Civilizing the Economy, Marvin Brown traces the origin of this economics of dissociation to early capitalism, showing how this is illustrated in Adam Smith's denial of the central role of slavery in wealth creation. In place of the Smithian economics of property, (...) Brown proposes that we turn to the original meaning of economics as household management. He presents a new framework for the global economy that reframes its purpose as the making of provisions instead of the accumulation of property. This bold new vision establishes the civic sphere as the platform for organizing an inclusive economy and as a way to move toward a more just and sustainable world. (shrink)

This article explores the motives underlying corporate responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis begins with Thomas Dunfee’s Statement of Minimum Moral Obligation (SMMO), which specifies, more precisely than any other contribution to the business ethics canon, the level of corporate beneficence required during a pandemic. The analysis then turns to Milton Friedman’s neoliberal understanding of human nature, critically contrasting it with the notion of stoic virtue that informs the works of Adam Smith. Friedman contends that beneficence should (...) play no role in corporate settings. Smith, by contrast, emphasizes the need for prudence, beneficence and self-command in all human endeavours. The article then uses these competing frameworks to reflect on a published survey of 145 corporate responses to COVID-19. In many of these responses, the benefit to a non-financial stakeholder is clear, while the financial consequence to the firm remains nebulous. This supports the contention that during a pandemic, beneficence provides a more complete explanation of many corporate actions than the profit motive alone. The article contests Friedman’s Chicago School profit imperative and goes beyond Dunfee’s SMMO by endorsing the more full-throated embrace of beneficence and stoic virtue found in the works of Smith. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Impact of Fingarette’s Confucius: The Secular as Sacred on Confucian StudiesRoger T. Ames (bio)Confucius: The Secular as Sacred. By Herbert Fingarette. Hannacroix: Apocryphile Press, 2023.Writing a review of this Apocryphile Press edition of Herb Fingarette’s 1972 publication of Confucius: Secular as Sacred with its new preface by my good friend Michael Nylan is deeply personal. Like Michael and the several other distinguished scholars who have written their endorsements (...) for this new reprint, this occasion gives me a long moment to reflect on how this little book has changed my life. The project has also given me a reason to go back and reread the review of this book written by my longtime friend and collaborator, Henry Rosemont, Jr., published almost 50 years ago in Philosophy East and West.My first memory is of Herb Fingarette himself. I met this gentleman, and gentle he was, early on in my tenure at the University of Hawai‘i when Herb, always accompanied by Leslie, would make regular visits to participate in our public lectures and conferences. I always marveled at how in his presentations he would begin from some seemingly simple and offhand fact about our everyday lives. He would then quite masterfully take this ordinary detail and, through a series of incrementally insightful reflections and then again through his sensitive responses to the questions raised by his audience, elevate the discussion to become an extraordinarily memorable event. I remember well how this seasoned teacher always began the question session by calling upon the graduate students, leaving his eager professional colleagues to wait their turn. And then, with the rigor and impeccable logic of the best kind of analytical philosopher, he would gently and always smilingly, win everyone over to his conclusions.When Herb retired from Santa Barbara, he was adamant that he was retired, and in spite of the many efforts we made to draw him back into the circuit, he would have none of it. My only success in my numerous attempts to corral him was in persuading him to write a chapter for a Festschrift I edited celebrating the career of a philosopher much in his own mold as an independent thinker, my colleague Eliot Deutsch. [End Page 516]Even though Herb’s withdrawal from professional events was unequivocal, he was always available for a Reuben sandwich and a good conversation. Over the ensuing years that saw a clear-headed and always happy Herb carry on until a few years short of his centenary, I would sometimes accompany Rosemont in his regular pilgrimages to sojourn with his best Berkeley friends, which included, along with Herb, David Keightley, Huston Smith, and of course, Michael Nylan.Turning then from the large-souled man to the little book that changed the world of Confucian studies, to say that it was not well received is an understatement. When this monograph published by HarperCollins, a trade press, first appeared in the bookstores, whispers ran through the sinological community about how this pretender had the temerity to engage a canonical text well beyond his reach. Without proper philological training, he was actually challenging what we all know to be the proper translations of important Chinese terms. Again, Herb’s philosophical colleagues who were baffled by his efforts to engage Chinese philosophy as philosophy, also had his number, and it was not a high one.As Rosemont pointed out in both a critical, and to my knowledge, the first truly appreciative review of Fingarette’s commentary on the Analects (a feature review that in its pages would constitute a goodly portion of Fingarette’s 79-page book), what made this book an important inflection point for Confucian studies is that a rigorously trained philosopher was writing a philosophical and philological exegesis on what he deemed a philosophically profound text. Even for Fingarette who was himself initially nonplussed by the idea that the Analects was good philosophy, it took a careful reading and an open mind to fathom both the depth and the worth of the Analects for reflecting on our lives as they are lived today.It is a commonplace that we often do not appreciate those teachers who have influenced... (shrink)

Eighteenth-Century english scientists, Poets, And philosophers extended the meaning of 'distance' beyond a concept of space and time to include psychological and aesthetic meanings. Berkeley (1709), Priestley (1772), And thomas wedgwood (1818) showed that it was not a self-Evident idea but a complex intellectual construction. The poets denham (1655), Pope (1711), Dyer (1726), Collins (1747), Gray (1747), Campbell (1799) and wordsworth (1805-1827) used distance to represent a mental perspective, An aesthetic attitude, Nostalgia, Hope, Fancy, And imagination. Hume (1739), Hartley (1749), (...) Adam smith (1761), Burke (1757), And blair (1783) discussed early versions of aesthetic distance. The expanding meaning of 'distance' corresponds with the changing understanding of space and time in the philosophies of locke, Hume, And kant. Distance provided the eighteenth century with a means of exploring the relationship between subjective and objective realms of experience. (shrink)

In this article we reconsider strands of Adam Smith’s contribution to the project of the Enlightenment. Many of these, as we shall identify, remain poignant, and valuable observations for the twenty-first century. This sampled reconsideration touches both on how Smith is identified, as well as occasionally misread, as an Enlightenment philosopher/economist; and the extent to which t/his enlightenment survives.

The rise and spectacular fall of the friendship between the two great philosophers of the eighteenth century, barely six months after they first met, reverberated on both sides of the Channel. As the relationship between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume unraveled, a volley of rancorous letters was fired off, then quickly published and devoured by aristocrats, intellectuals, and common readers alike. Everyone took sides in this momentous dispute between the greatest of Enlightenment thinkers. In this lively and revealing book, Robert (...) Zaretsky and John T. Scott explore the unfolding rift between Rousseau and Hume. The authors are particularly fascinated by the connection between the thinkers’ lives and thought, especially the way that the failure of each to understand the other—and himself—illuminates the limits of human understanding. In addition, they situate the philosophers’ quarrel in the social, political, and intellectual milieu that informed their actions, as well as the actions of the other participants in the dispute, such as James Boswell, Adam Smith, and Voltaire. By examining the conflict through the prism of each philosopher’s contribution to Western thought, Zaretsky and Scott reveal the implications for the two men as individuals and philosophers as well as for the contemporary world. (shrink)

This classic edition presents the correspondence of one of the great thinkers of the 18th century, and offers a rich picture of the man and his age. This first volume contains David Hume's letters from 1727 to 1765. Hume's correspondents include such famous public figures as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, James Boswell, and Benjamin Franklin.

In the section ‘Further reading’, I listed a book that arrived on my desk just as I was sending IGT off to the press, namely Church’s Thesis after 70 Years edited by Adam Olszewski et al. On the basis of a quick glance, I warned that the twenty two essays in the book did seem to be of ‘variable quality’. But actually, things turn out to be a bit worse than that: the collection really isn’t very good at all! (...) After I sent my book to press, I gave a paper-by-paper review on my blog, at http://logicmatters.blogspot.com. It is probably more fun to chase up the reviews ‘in the wild’, so to speak, starting from the entry for May 14, 2007. But here they are wrapped up into a single document, only marginally tidied. Some of the points made here should help further explain and support the general line on the Thesis taken in.. (shrink)

Businesses always exist in some context. This essay proposes three criteria of contextual integrity—the principles of inclusion, relational identity, and completeness— with examples of their violation and proposals for their repair. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations violates the principle of inclusion by dissociating his advocacy of free trade from the slave trade on which it depended. We can repair this violation by developing a civic perspective that allows us to recognize the close connection between early capitalism and (...) slavery. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith also violated the second principle of contextual integrity by identifying property relations as a process of natural evolution. In fact, property relations are grounded in civil law. We can repair this violation by recognizing that civic relations should be the basis for property relations. The violation of the contextual integrity of completeness can be observed in the division of the economy into different sectors that separate Wall Street from Main Street. We can repair this violation by designing the economy as different systems of provision, such as the housing or food system. This would allow us to have a complete picture of the contexts in which businesses exist, and help us to understand how business ethics might promote contextual integrity. (shrink)

Can a set of musical metaphors in a treatise on ethics reveal something about the nature and source of moral autonomy? This article argues that it can. It shows how metaphorical usage of words like tone, pitch, and concord in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments can be understood as elements of an analogical model for morality. What this model tells us about morality depends on how we conceptualise music. In contrast to earlier interpretations of Smith's metaphors (...) that have seen music as an aesthetic object, this article sees music as a practice. Understood in this way, the analogy allows us to see morality too as a practice––as moral tuning. This in turn reveals a novel answer to the intractable problem of conventionalism: moral autonomy consists in the freedom inherent in the constant need to interpret and reinterpret the strictly formal ideal of perfect propriety. (shrink)

L'ouvrage tente d'éclairer les notions de valeurs et d'intérêts à partir d'une lecture de la Théorie des sentiments moraux d'A. Smith. Lecture qui nous conduit à réhabiliter la notion de travail commandé à l'encontre de celle de travail incorporé de D. Ricardo et K. Marx, à rapprocher l'analyse marxienne de la valeur et de l'exploitation de l'analyse smithienne centrée sur la sympathie et l'échange, à montrer que notre intérêt (self-love) est lié à l'intérêt que les autres nous portent, ce (...) qui nous éloigne de l'intérêt strictement égoïste de l'homo economicus. La découverte des neurones miroirs, socle neurobiologique de l'empathie, vient conforter notre analyse qui s'ouvre sur une nécessaire refondation de l'économie politique"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

A critical appraisal of Chiara Bottici’s influential work on imaginal politics, this collection uses this rich theoretical framework for incisive analysis, within critical theory and political philosophy, psychoanalysis and sociology.

This paper aims to evince the need to interpret Adam Smith’s work from rhetorical theory. More specifically, to interpret The Wealth of Nations from deliberative rhetoric. To do this, it studies the origin of his theory of language, identifying and analyzing its sources from the catalog of his personal library, evincing that Smith didn’t deem language as an epistemic resource but as a collective means to build social reality through deliberation. This leads to the definition of The (...) Wealth of nations as a text more rhetorically deliberative than scientifically Newtonian. The main conclusion revises the interpretation of Smith as only an apologist for the free market, proposing instead that his great work was constructed as a harmonious dialogue of multiples voices and views. From this derives, as second conclusion, the need to redefine the epistemological status of economic theory, that must be integrated as one more voice in the ever-recurring debate around the social construction of reality. (shrink)

Political Imaginaries in Question Content Type Journal Article Pages 5-11 Authors Suzi Adams, School of Social and Policy Studies, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia Jeremy C. A. Smith, School of Education and Arts, University of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia Ingerid S. Straume, University of Oslo Library, University of Oslo, Norway Journal Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy & Social Theory Online ISSN 1568-5160 Print ISSN 1440-9917 Journal Volume Volume 13 Journal Issue Volume 13, Number 1 / 2012.

Tennenbaum's Theorem yields an elegant characterisation of the standard model of arithmetic. Several authors have recently claimed that this result has important philosophical consequences: in particular, it offers us a way of responding to model-theoretic worries about how we manage to grasp the standard model. We disagree. If there ever was such a problem about how we come to grasp the standard model, then Tennenbaum's Theorem does not help. We show this by examining a parallel argument, from a simpler model-theoretic (...) result. (shrink)

Background: Moral distress is the inability to do the right thing due to institutional constraints. The Measure of Moral Distress – Healthcare Professionals (MMD-HP) measures this phenomenon and has extensively explored moral distress among nurses. There are limited large-scale research studies using the MMD-HP to identify levels of moral distress across multiple healthcare professionals (HPs) and settings. Research question: What are the overall levels of moral distress among HPs? Research design: A quantitative, exploratory, cross-sectional study of HPs in a healthcare (...) system using the MMD-HP. Participants and research context: Eligible participants included HPs ( N = 8,206) working in all inpatient and outpatient units and centers in a multi-site healthcare system located in the Southeastern United States. Ethical considerations: The Institutional Review Board provided approval for this research. A survey preamble supplied information within the learning management system and consent was presumed with survey completion. Findings: A total of 3,561 HPs completed the MMD-HP. The top three morally distressing items included compromised patient care due to inadequate resources, caring for more patients than is safe, and low quality of patient care due to poor team communication. Intensive care unit (ICU) areas had significantly greater moral distress than all other areas ( p < 0.001). Formal leaders had the greatest moral distress ( p < 0.001). Mixed-acuity and medical-surgical HPs accounted for 22.8% of those who reported considering leaving their current position due to moral distress. Nurses represented 42.2% of those considering leaving their current position due to moral distress. Conclusions: This study uniquely identified that formal leaders and HP participants in the ICU setting had the greatest moral distress. Exploring moral distress is imperative for healthcare systems to decrease turnover, improve engagement, and the quality of patient care. (shrink)

Offering a field-defining survey of the topic, this is the first book to engage all the key figures in the social imaginaries field. It offers new perspectives on the productive tension between social imaginaries and the creative imagination, providing the first programmatic approach to the field as a whole.

This book celebrates the work of Patricia Werhane, an iconic figure in business ethics. This festschrift is a collection of articles that build on Werhane’s contributions to business ethics in such areas as Employee Rights, the Legacy of Adam Smith, Moral Imagination, Women in Business, the development of the field of business ethics, and her contributions to such fields as Health Care, Education, Teaching, and Philosophy. All papers are new contributions to the management literature written by well-known business (...) ethicists, such as Norman Bowie, Richard De George, Ronald Duska, Edwin Hartman, Michael Hoffman, Mollie Painter-Morland, Mark Schwartz, Andrew Wicks, and others. The volume is comprised of articles that reflect on Werhane’s work as well as build on it as a way to advance further research. At the end of the festschrift, Pat Werhane provides responses to each chapter. The first chapter of the book also includes the overview of Patricia Werhane’s work and her academic career. The book is written to appeal to management scholars and graduate students interested in the areas of Business Ethics, Modern Capitalism, and Human Rights. Patricia Werhane is one of the most distinguished figures in the field of business ethics. She was a founder of the field, she is one of its leading scholars, and she has had a profound impact on the world of business practice. Among her many accomplishments, Pat is known for her original work on moral imagination, she is an acclaimed authority on employee rights in the workplace, and she is one of the leading scholars on Adam Smith. Having been active in Academia for over 50 years, Werhane is a prolific author of over a hundred articles and book chapters, and the author or editor of twenty-seven books, including Adam Smith and his Legacy for Modern Capitalism, Moral Imagination and Management Decision-Making, and co-authored books Organization Ethics in Health Care, Alleviating Poverty Through Profitable Partnerships, Obstacles to Ethical Decision-Making, Corporate Responsibility: The American Experience, and Research Approaches to Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anderson claims that the prevailing culture of business is one of domination. “Most workplace governments in the United States are dictatorships, in which bosses.. don’t merely govern workers; they dominate them” (2017, p. xxii; italics in the original). If this diagnosis is correct, then the culture of business poses a significant threat to human liberty, as each year millions of people in the employ of businesses spend hundreds or thousands of hours on the job. This essay provides a further (...) argument supporting Anderson’s analysis, by extending her treatment of Adam Smith and drawing on his claim about the potentially mind-numbing effects on workers of extreme division of labor. Smith’s analysis, though consistent with Anderson’s, implies that the problem is more worrisome than she allows, and accordingly that Anderson’s own remedy might be insufficient. Our Anderson/Smith argument suggests that worker unfreedom might warrant more aggressive institutional remedy. (shrink)

A collaborative article by the Editorial Collective of Social Imaginaries. Investigations into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries field has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. The recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable field and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the most important theoretical frameworks (...) for understanding social imaginaries, although the field as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative. We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a significant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the field and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination, the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifically political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their inter-civilisational encounters. The social imaginaries field imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold significant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena. The essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making offers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices. (shrink)

Background: The Measure of Moral Distress – Healthcare Professionals (MMD-HP) is a 27-item survey that quantifies moral distress. The MMD-HP was distributed to healthcare professionals (HPs), and analysis of a free-text response item revealed information-rich descriptions of morally distressing situations. Research question: What are HPs’ perceptions of their experiences of morally distressing situations? Research design: A descriptive, qualitative approach explored respondents’ free-text responses to the following open-ended response item: “If there are other situations in which you have felt moral distress, (...) please write and score them here.” Participants and research context: Eligible participants were HPs ( N = 8206) working in a large, multi-site healthcare system located in a major, urban city in the Southeastern United States. Ethical considerations: The Institutional Review Board provided approval for this research. A survey preamble supplied information, and consent was presumed with survey completion. Findings: Three themes were identified from 282 free-text responses: Theme 1: Compromised Quality of Care, Theme 2: Hostile Work Environment, and Theme 3: Ineffective Leadership. Conclusions: This study is unique because it provided in-depth qualitative analysis of morally distressing situations in a free-text response item across a wide array of HPs within multiple settings. Responses revealed that moral distress impacted the quality of patient care and provided descriptions of powerlessness to act. (shrink)

Klein’s account of epistemic justification, infinitism, supplies a novel solution to the regress problem. We argue that concentrating on the normative aspect of justification exposes a number of unpalatable consequences for infinitism, all of which warrant rejecting the position. As an intermediary step, we develop a stronger version of the ‘finite minds’ objection.