ObjectiveBreast cancer may profoundly affect a couple’s sex life. The present study examines whether patient-, partner- and relationship-related characteristics are associated with sexual activity of couples following breast cancer diagnosis in the treatment phase and over time.MethodsWomen with breast cancer and their male cohabiting partners participated in a longitudinal study in Denmark. Logistic regression was used to examine associations of patient-, partner- and relationship-related characteristics at baseline with couples’ sexual activity at baseline, 5 and 12 months later. The longitudinal analyses (...) were stratified for couples’ sexual activity status at baseline.ResultsA total of 722, 533 and 471 couples were included in the analyses at baseline, 5- and 12-months follow-up, respectively. Older age, depressive symptoms and lower vitality of patients were associated with lower odds of couples’ sexual activity at baseline; chemotherapy treatment and older age of patients were associated with lower odds at 5-months follow-up in couples who were not sexually active at baseline. Higher ratings of emotional closeness, affectionate behavior and satisfaction with dyadic coping were associated with higher odds for sexual activity at baseline and over time in couples who were sexually active at baseline.ConclusionSexual counseling during cancer treatment and rehabilitation should include a couple perspective. Relationship-related variables may be a protective factor for remaining sexually active after breast cancer diagnosis. Interventions could focus on strengthening these factors. Health professionals also need to consider the patients’ breast cancer treatment, vitality, and emotional distress in counselling on sexuality. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the ways through which companies gain legitimacy. However, CSR actions themselves are subject to public skepticism because of increased public awareness of greenwashing and scandalous corporate behavior. Legitimacy of CSR actions is indeed influenced by the actions of the company but also is rooted in the basic cultural values of a society and in the ideologies of evaluators. This study examines the legitimacy of CSR actions of publicly traded forest products companies as compared (...) to family-owned forest products companies. Results indicate a lower legitimacy for CSR actions of publicly traded companies than for family-owned companies. The study also examines the effect of social responsibility orientation (SRO) of evaluators on the legitimacy accorded to companies' CSR actions. We found that SRO was negatively associated with legitimacy, especially for women. Perceived profitability of companies was negatively associated with legitimacy of CSR actions for publicly traded but not for family-owned companies. (shrink)

Medieval philosophers had a predilection for using the correlative pair father and son as an illustrative example in their discussions of relations. The use of this example has sometimes led to charges of confusion on the grounds that fatherhood and sonship are not proper converses. The present article shows how a group of twelfth-century philosophers from the milieu around the logician Alberic of Paris handled the problems arising from the use of this illustrative example which they had inherited from their (...) ancient and late-ancient predecessors. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 2, Page 46-48, February 2012.

© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Scots Philosophical Association and the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Nanay provides an original and interesting discussion of the connections between aesthetics and the philosophy of perception. According to Nanay, many topics within aesthetics are about experiences of various kinds. Aesthetics is not philosophy of perception, but there are important questions within aesthetics that we can address in an interesting way (...) by using the conceptual apparatus of the philosophy of perception.The main theme of this book is the role of attention in those perceptual experiences that are relevant for aesthetics. Nanay claims that in some paradigmatic examples of aesthetic experiences our attention is exercised in the way of being distributed across properties. He argues that various versions of distributed attention can explain our experiences of aesthetic... (shrink)

In this paper I investigate the relationship between T.W. Adornos general aesthetic theory and his actual view on contemporary art. Adornos view on art is centered around concepts like praxis, matter and critique: Fine art is supposed to make it obvious that any understanding of matter always in some way is inadequate. Praxis is always grounded on an understanding of matter, but in hiding this fact it becomes ideological and repressive. The fine arts have to make this visible – they (...) have to criticize the given praxis. This leads him to reject very big areas of the actual contemporary art – e.g. the music of Igor Strawinsky. I will show that this rejection springs from Adornos view on matters that turns out to be too narrow: His view on matter is too physicalistic. He focuses on the fact that Strawinskys music on the pure audible level is not as radical as for example Schoenbergs music. In this critique I think he overlooks that the music material is not just the audible sound. Strawinskys music appears as new - but only if one realizes how history is part of its material. Adornos being unaware of this leads to a modification (through Heidegger and Strawinsky) of his (and the general marxist) concept of history: The marxist (romanticist) view on history as being one-dimensional shows to be repressive! Adornos own methodology (the negative dialectics) therefore demands a modication of his own view on history – and also of his view on contemporary arts. (shrink)

This paper offers a unification and systematization of the grounding approaches to truth, denotation, classes and abstraction. Its main innovation is a method for “kleenifying” bivalent semantics so as to ensure that the trivalent semantics used for various linguistic elements are perfectly analogous to the semantics used by Kripke, rather than relying on intuition to achieve similarity. The focus is on generalizing strong Kleene semantics, but one section is devoted to supervaluation, and the unification method also extends to weak Kleene (...) semantics. (shrink)

This important book examines how the growing field of cybernetic psychology - the study of the creative complexity of the mind - can be applied to a range of different realms, tapping into the unconscious potential within us all. Cybernetic psychology integrates theories from various schools of thought, bringing them together in one unified theory. First developed and described by Danish author and psychotherapist Ole Vedfelt. It can be used in therapeutic practice, in relation to learning and pedagogics, and as (...) a tool for better leadership. The 15 chapters within this volume apply the theory to these as well as other areas, including ecology, creativity, mindfulness and scientific enquiry itself. Insightful and wide-ranging, the book will appeal to psychotherapists and those working within mental health, as well as students and researchers across Education, Psychology and beyond. (shrink)

Children with developmental disorders, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, are at high risk of school-refusal behavior compared with their peers. One of the most used scales to assess SRB is the school refusal behavior scale – revised. The SRAS-R has demonstrated good psychometric properties when used with the general population of children, but, recently, its validity has been questioned when used with children with developmental disorders. We tested the psychometric properties of the SRAS-R parental reports in 96 children with ADHD. Results (...) showed good model fit and internal consistency for the original four-factor structure. Three of the factors were strongly correlated, suggesting that SRB among children with ADHD is caused by several factors. (shrink)

Defining and implementing Corporate Responsibility can be a challenge for many businesses. The identification of patterns in the processes of adoption and implementation of Corporate Responsibility practices can help managers to administer these processes more ably. In this research note, the authors identify four factors influencing the adoption and implementation of Corporate Responsibility practices: internal drivers; organizational structures; attributes of practice; and formal processes. Results indicate that there is also a continuous improvement component, meaning that the adoption and implementation of (...) Corporate Responsibility practices are cyclical, rather than linear, processes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 57-62 [Access article in PDF] Listening to People Or Listening to Prozac?Another Consideration of Causal Classifications Jennifer Hansen Keywords causal classification, descriptivism, melancholia, neurasthenia, depression, cultural relativism. The shape and detail of depression have gone through a thousand cartwheels, and the treatment of depression has alternated between the ridiculous and the sublime, but the excessive sleeping, inadequate eating, suicidiality, withdrawal from social (...) interaction, and relentless despair are all as old as the hill tribes, if not as old as the hills. In the years since man achieved the capacity for self-reference, shame has come and gone; treatments for bodily complaints have alternated and crossed with treatments for spiritual ones; pleas to external gods have echoed pleas to internal demons. To understand the history of depression is to understand the invention of human being as we now know and are him. Our Prozac-popping, cognitively focused, semi-alienated postmodernity is only a stage in the ongoing understanding and control of mood and character. (Solomon 2001, 286) ALTHOUGH ANDREW SOLOMON clearly believes that "the shape and detail of depression have gone through a thousand cartwheels," Jennifer Radden gives us pause before assuming that depression is just another name for Dame Melancholy. Solomon's claim depends on a deeper metaphysical claim about the nature of depression and its causes. The current method of psychiatric nosology, descriptivism, does not necessarily support equating melancholia and depression. Furthermore, it appears that adopting descriptivism as the sole method of classifying mental disorders commits us to cultural relativist psychiatry. Below I reconsider whether we want to rule out causal classifications and suggest that embracing both descriptivism and causal classifications offer us greater possibilities in understanding human illness and culture.Although the occasion for Jennifer Radden's essay is to investigate whether or not melancholia and depression refer to the same thing, her essay detours into a consideration of extra-descriptivist models of psychiatric illness versus the descriptivism of current psychiatric nosology. This detour turns out to be warranted; her purely academic question yields to a timelier question concerning the proper methodology for classifying mental disorders. Whereas debates about psychiatric nosology are perennial, the recent success of the new generation of antidepressants [End Page 57] is reviving biological psychiatry and its search for the neurochemical origins of depression. Hence, embedded in Radden's question concerning whether or not melancholia is the same thing as clinical depression, is another important question concerning the causes of mental illness, particularly depression.Currently, with its descriptivist approach, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) does not classify mental illness, such as clinical depression, based on underlying causes. The cluster of symptoms and behavioral signs that lead a clinician to diagnose one as depressed that are contained in either the DSM or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) may be too fuzzy or elusive to give any clear distinction between major depression, mild depression, and the blues. For example, one group of epidemiologists points out that [t]he DSM-III, DSM-III-R, and DSM-IV acknowledge that depression, like many mental disorders, has no currently obvious natural classes... If natural classes of depression exist, then their nosology awaits the discovery of distinct and reliable genetic, biological, clinical, or other predictors of risk, severity, or clinical course. Clinicians have a tradition of separating depressions into subtypes; however, this subtyping has not yet led to clear-cut delineations of syndromes in populations. (Kaelber 1995, 4) The evidence is still insufficient to establish the biological or psychological origins of depression. Although many theories exist that explain why people become depressed, scientifically we are not yet in a position to determine which is the right theory. From a pragmatic perspective, however, whether or not we know what causes depression, we can nonetheless attempt to alleviate suffering from depression. And it is with this goal in mind that the DSM-IV and ICD-10 classify mental disorders.Now, given that our current methodology for psychiatric nosology does not establish causes, it is also insufficient for determining what... (shrink)

This paper unpacks ambiguities in the field of interdisciplinarity studies, explores where they come from and how they inhibit consolidation of the field. The paper takes its point of departure in two central fault lines in the literature: the relationship between interdisciplinarity and disciplinarity and the question of whether integration is a necessary prerequisite for interdisciplinarity. Opposite positions on the fault lines are drawn out to identify sources of ambiguities, and to examine whether the positions are irreconcilable - or disagreements (...) that may continue to coexist in a consolidated field. It is argued that if we envisage a consolidated field of IDS, there is a need to develop common ground which calls for scholars of ID to be more explicit about the meanings they ascribe to ID than we see today when the sliding between the epistemological and political dimensions of the field may go unnoticed. It is suggested that whereas ambiguity may be unwanted in the epistemological dimension, it may be quite useful in the political dimension. A systematic comparison of opposite positions offers a common frame of reference for a more productive dialogue between different positions. The analysis shows that as to integration, the difference between opposite positions can be reconciled, whereas in the relation between interdisciplinarity and disciplinarity, the positions are antagonistic and logically exclude each other. The analysis suggests that it is the premise of integration that creates the conditions of possibility for “relabelling” interdisciplinarity and for using the “silo” for disciplines. (shrink)

Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood neuropsychiatric disorder characterised by the presence of motor and vocal tics. Patients with malignant TS experience severe disease sequelae; risking morbidity and mortality due to tics, self-harm, psychiatric comorbidities and suicide. By definition, those cases termed ‘malignant’ are refractory to all conventional psychiatric and pharmacological regimens. In these instances, deep brain stimulation (DBS) may be efficacious. Current 2015 guidelines recommend a 6-month period absent of suicidal ideation before DBS is offered to (...) patients with TS. We therefore wondered whether it may be ethically justifiable to offer DBS to a minor with malignant TS. We begin with a discussion of non-maleficence and beneficence. New evidence suggests that suicide risk in young patients with TS has been underestimated. In turn, DBS may represent an invaluable opportunity for children with malignant TS to secure future safety, independence and fulfilment. Postponing treatment is associated with additional risks. Ultimately, we assert this unique risk-benefit calculus justifies offering DBS to paediatric patients with malignant TS. A multidisciplinary team of clinicians must determine whether DBS is in the best interest of their individual patients. We conclude with a suggestion for future TS-DBS guidelines regarding suicidal ideation. The importance of informed consent and assent is underscored. (shrink)

Existing research on the formation of employee ethical climate perceptions focuses mainly on organization characteristics as antecedents, and although other constructs have been considered, these constructs have typically been studied in isolation. Thus, our understanding of the context in which ethical climate perceptions develop is incomplete. To address this limitation, we build upon the work of Rupp to develop and test a multi-experience model of ethical climate which links aspects of the corporate social responsibility, ethics, justice, and trust literatures and (...) helps to explain how employees’ ethical climate perceptions form. We argue that in forming ethical climate perceptions, employees consider the actions or characteristics of a complex web of actors. Specifically, we propose that employees look outward at how communities are impacted by their organization’s actions, upward to make inferences about the ethicality of leaders in their organizations, and inward at their own propensity to trust others as they form their perceptions. Using a multiple-wave field study conducted at a privately held US corporation, we find substantial evidence in support of our model. (shrink)

In this article we refine the design ofcontext shifting experiments, which play a central role in contextualist debates, and we subject a large number of scenarios involving different types of expressions of interest to contextualists, including ‘know’ and color adjectives like ‘green’, to experimental investigation. Our experiment (i) reveals an effect of changing contexts on the evaluation of uses of the sentences that we examine, thereby overturning the absence of results reported in previous experimental studies (so‐callednull results), (ii) uncovers evidence (...) for a ‘truth bias' in favor of positive over negative sentences, and (iii) reveals previously unnoticed distinctions between the strength of the contextual effects displayed by scenarios involving knowledge ascriptions and scenarios concerning color and other miscellaneous scenarios. (shrink)

I call an experiment “crucial” when it makes possible a decisive choice between conflicting hypotheses. Joharmsen's selection for size and weight within pure lines of beans played a central role in the controversy over continuity or discontinuity in hereditary change, often known as the Biometrician-Mendelian controversy. The “crucial” effect of this experiment was not an instantaneous event, but an extended process of repeating similar experiments and discussing possible objections. It took years before Johannsen's claim about the genetic stability of pure (...) lines was accepted as conclusively demonstrated by the community of geneticists. The paper also argues that crucial experiments thus interpreted contradict certain ideas about the underdetermination of theories by facts and the theory-ladenness of facts which have been influential in recent history and sociology of science. The acceptance of stability in the pure lines did not rest on prior preference for continuity or discontinuity. And this fact permitted a final choice between the two theories. When such choice is characterized as “decisive” or “final”, this is not meant in an absolute philosophical sense. What we achive in these cases is highly reliable empirical knowledge. The philosophical possibility of drawing (almost) any conclusion in doubt should be distinguished from reasonable doubt in empirical science. (shrink)

In this article, we examine patterns of negotiation in multi-party decision making in social work. We draw on Strauss’ theory of negotiated order and a discourse analytical approach, seeking to gain insight into the complex accomplishment of making a decision in an inter-professional and multi-party setting. Working with data from 97 team meetings in a social work setting, we identify two patterns of negotiation in talk: expanding and postponing. ‘Expanding’ covers a group of interactional actions involving turn-taking and closure, while (...) ‘postponing’ includes a group of actions whereby assessments or topics are avoided or made irrelevant. Both are examples of the complex ways in which team members negotiate both the institutional order and the decision to be made in the specific case in situ. (shrink)

We analyse the connection between the computability and continuity of functions in the case of homomorphisms between topological algebraic structures. Inspired by the Pour-El and Richards equivalence theorem between computability and boundedness for closed linear operators on Banach spaces, we study the rather general situation of partial homomorphisms between metric partial universal algebras. First, we develop a set of basic notions and results that reveal some of the delicate algebraic, topological and effective properties of partial algebras. Our main computability concepts (...) are based on numerations and include those of effective metric partial algebras and effective partial homomorphisms. We prove a general equivalence theorem that includes a version of the Pour-El and Richards Theorem, and has other applications. Finally, the Pour-El and Richards axioms for computable sequence structures on Banach spaces are generalised to computable partial sequence structures on metric algebras, and we prove their equivalence with our computability model based on numerations. (shrink)

Restrictions on research on therapeutic cloning are questionable as they inhibit the development of a technique which holds promise for succesful application of pluripotent stem cells in clinical treatment of severe diseases. It is argued in this article that the ethical concerns are less problematic using therapeutic cloning compared with using fertilised eggs as the source for stem cells. The moral status of an enucleated egg cell transplanted with a somatic cell nucleus is found to be more clearly not equivalent (...) to that of a human being. Based on ethical considerations alone, research into therapeutic cloning should be encouraged in order to develop therapeutic applications of stem cells. (shrink)

Are plants sentient? Several researchers argue that plants might be sentient. They do so on the grounds that plants exhibit cognitive behaviour similar to that of sentient organisms and that they possess a vascular system which is functionally equivalent to the animal nervous system. This paper will not attempt to settle the issue of plant sentience. Instead, the paper has two goals. First, it provides a diagnosis of the current state of the debate on plant sentience. It is argued that (...) the current state of the debate on plant sentience cannot yield any progress because the behavioural and physiological similarities pointed to as a way of inferring consciousness are not, in themselves, indicative of consciousness. Second, the paper proposes we adopt the theory-light approach proposed by Birch (Noûs 56(1):133–153, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12351 ) whereby we start to test for clusters of cognitive abilities facilitated by consciousness in plants. Currently, there are no such tests and therefore no evidence for plant sentience. The paper proposes that the task for future research on plants be in line with the tests outlined in the theory-light approach. (shrink)

Decision-makers frequently struggle to base their choices on an exhaustive evaluation of all options at stake. This is particularly so when the choice problem at hand is complex, because the available alternatives are hard to compare. Rather than striving to choose the most valuable alternative, in such situations decision-makers often settle for the choice of an alternative which is not inferior to any other available alternative instead. In this paper, we extend two established models of boundedly rational choice, the categorize (...) then choose heuristic and the rational shortlist method, to incorporate this kind of “indecisive” choice behavior. We study some properties of these extensions and provide full behavioral characterizations. (shrink)

This paper describes the historical background and early formation of Wilhelm Johannsen's distinction between genotype and phenotype. It is argued that contrary to a widely accepted interpretation his concepts referred primarily to properties of individual organisms and not to statistical averages. Johannsen's concept of genotype was derived from the idea of species in the tradition of biological systematics from Linnaeus to de Vries: An individual belonged to a group - species, subspecies, elementary species - by representing a certain underlying type. (...) Johannsen sharpened this idea theoretically in the light of recent biological discoveries, not least those of cytology. He tested and confirmed it experimentally combining the methods of biometry, as developed by Francis Galton, with the individual selection method and pedigree analysis, as developed for instance by Louis Vilmorin. The term "genotype" was introduced in W. Johannsen's 1909 treatise, but the idea of a stable underlying biological "type" distinct from observable properties was the core idea of his classical bean selection experiment published 6 years earlier. The individual ontological foundation of population analysis was a self-evident presupposition in Johannsen's studies of heredity in populations from their start in the early 1890s till his death in 1927. The claim that there was a "substantial but cautious modification of Johannsen's phenotype-genotype distinction" from a statistical to an individual ontological perspective derives from a misreading of the 1903 and 1909 texts. The immediate purpose of this paper is to correct this reading of the 1903 monograph by showing how its problems and results grow out of Johannsen's earlier work in heredity and plant breeding. Johannsen presented his famous selection experiment as the culmination of a line of criticism of orthodox Darwinism by William Bateson, Hugo de Vries, and others. They had argued that evolution is based on stepwise rather than continuous change in heredity. Johannsen's paradigmatic experiment showed how stepwise variation in heredity could be operationally distinguished from the observable, continuous morphological variation. To test Galton's law of partial regression, Johannsen deliberately chose pure lines of self-fertilizing plants, a pure line being the descendants in successive generations of one single individual. Such a population could be assumed to be highly homogeneous with respect to hereditary type, and Johannsen found that selection produced no change in this type. Galton, he explained, had experimented with populations composed of a number of stable hereditary types. The partial regression which Galton found was simply an effect of selection between types, increasing the proportion of some types at the expense of others. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to reflect on the place and importance of the question of address and to show how it comes to the fore in Søren Kierkegaard’s writings. What shall be attempted, with regard to Kierkegaard’s already widely recognized renown as an existential thinker, is to catch a glimpse of issues that make up the larger background in which the question of address is embedded. In doing so, the essay explores several features of Kierkegaard’s inquiry into the (...) question of existence in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and connect them with the notion of the reader. This latter notion provides a way of understanding the singularity of voice, while offering an account of the testimony to existence. After a brief recapitulation, the essay identifies in conclusion unresolved issues relating to speech, silence, confidentiality, and listening. (shrink)

As moral injury is a still-emerging concept within the area of military mental health, prevalence estimates for moral injury and its precursor, potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs), remain unknown for many of the world’s militaries. The present study sought to estimate the prevalence of PMIEs in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), using data collected from CAF personnel deployed to Afghanistan, via logistic regressions controlling for relevant sociodemographic, military, and deployment characteristics. Analyses revealed that over 65% of CAF members reported exposure (...) to at least one event that would be considered a PMIE. The most commonly PMIEs individuals reported included seeing ill or injured women and children they were unable to help (48.4%), being unable to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants (43.6%), and finding themselves in a threatening situation where they were unable to respond due to the rules of engagement under which they were required to operate (35.4%). These findings provide support for both the presence of exposure to PMIEs in CAF members and the need for formal longitudinal data collection regarding PMIE exposure and moral injury development. (shrink)