Transformative unlearning: safety, discernment and communities of learning This paper aims to stimulate awareness about the intellectual and emotional work of ‘unlearning’ in knowledge workers in the emerging learning age. The importance of providing a safe space for dialogue to promote transformative learning, through building ‘communities of learning’, is highlighted. Unlearning is conceptualized within a transformative education paradigm, one whose primary orientation is discernment, a personal growth process involving the activities of receptivity, recognition and grieving. The author utilizes the metaphor (...) of an unfolding spiral path to explore her experience of needing to ‘unlearn’ a trusted nursing practice prior to ‘learning’ new best caring practices related to infant sleep positions. Macro and micro approaches to facilitating unlearning in organizations, in learners and in nurses are suggested. (shrink)

Neuropalliative care developed to address the needs of patients living with life‐limiting neurologic disease. One critical consideration is that disease‐related changes to cognition, communication, and function challenge illness experiences and care practices. We conducted an ethnography to understand neuropalliative care as a phenomenon; how it was experienced, provided, conceptualized. Personhood served as our conceptual framework; with its long philosophical history and important place in nursing theory, we examined the extent to which it captured neuropalliative experiences and concerns. Personhood contextualized complex (...) losses, aligning the impact of functional and relational changes. Cognition, communication, and functional alterations stretched conceptions of personhood, insinuating it can be relational, fluid, adaptive. Although normative conceptions of personhood guided research and decision‐making, ethical considerations suggested personhood could be transformed, remade. We consider the implications of our findings through three themes. First, we examine how literature on illness experience fails to integrate the realities of people living with and dying from neurologic disease; we counter this by interrogating the concept of experience. Second, we turn to Ricoeur's work on recognition to illuminate relational conceptions of personhood to inform care practices. Finally, we reflect on how personhood can bridge the gap left by functional changes, enhance relational engagement, and promote dignity at the end of life. (shrink)

Originally published in 1980, this book examines the major issues in the philosophy of social science, paying specific attention to cross-cultural understanding, humanism versus scientism, individualism versus collectivism, and the shaping of theory by evaluative commitment. Arguing for a cross-cultural conception of human beings, the authors defend humanism and individualism, and reject the notion that social inquiry is necessarily vitiated by an adherence to values.

Is it ethical to market complementary and alternative medicines? Complementary and alternative medicines are medical products and services outside the mainstream of medical practice. But they are not just medicines offered and provided for the prevention and treatment of illness. They are also products and services – things offered for sale in the marketplace. Most discussion of the ethics of CAM has focused on bioethical issues – issues having to do with therapeutic value, and the relationship between patients and those (...) purveyors of CAM. This article aims instead to consider CAM from the perspective of commercial ethics. That is, we consider the ethics not of prescribing or administering CAM but the ethics of selling CAM. (shrink)

Global democratization cannot be achieved by simply replicating familiar democratic institutions on a global scale. We must explore alternative institutional means for establishing democratic institutions at the global level within the present pluralist structure of global power.

The paper explores a case of partnership between a large pharmaceutical company and a national charity in the United Kingdom, a partnership from which the drug company sought improved public relations, and the charity money. Neither side was able to accept this reality. Managers of the partnership insisted that its only purpose was to improve the lifestyle of teenagers. They were supported by a literature on partnership that also tends to ignore the distinction between the task the partnership is set (...) and its fundamental purpose. While much is made of the benefits of partnership, there are likely to be costs, both private and social, associated with failure to admit the purpose of partnership. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the conflictual history and future implications of two important traditions of twentieth-century European thought: the ...

This article considers two prominent, competing approaches to defining the scope of business responsibility for human rights. The first approach advocates extension of business responsibility beyond the boundaries of the enterprise to encompass broader ‘spheres of influence’. The second approach advocates a business ‘responsibility to respect’ human rights. Building on a critical evaluation of these competing accounts of business responsibility, this article outlines a modified account, referred to as a framework of ‘spheres of responsibility’. On such an account, business responsibility (...) for human rights outcomes is conceptualised not only in relation to direct ‘harms’ imposed by business, but also in relation to corporate influence over broader relationships and institutions that shape and constrain the substantive realisation of human rights. (shrink)

In this article, I show how it is possible, working from a Thomistic perspective, to affirm the existence of animal rights. To start, I show how it is possible to ascribe indirect rights to animals—in particular, the indirect right to not be treated cruelly by us. Then, I show how it is possible to ascribe some direct rights to animals using the same reasoning that Aquinas offers in defending the claim that animals have indirect rights. Next, I draw on elements (...) of Aquinas’s metaphysical worldview in order to buttress the claim that animals have direct rights. I then respond to an attempt to ground the ethical treatment of animals, but not direct rights for animals, in natural law. In conclusion, I affirm that it is permissible to use animals to further the human good so long as in doing so we respect the direct rights that they possess. (shrink)

An introduction to a special issue of Symposium on normativity and freedom.

Gabrielle Suchon’s Treatise on Ethics and Politics offers surprising descriptions of sexual difference for an ostensibly feminist work. Stereotypically feminine traits—such as excessive emotions, chattiness, and deception—are compared to earthquakes, storms, wildfire, and apparitions. Although these descriptions may seem off-putting to modern readers, I argue that in offering these unflattering descriptions of women, Suchon is making a novel intervention in debates about the nature of sexual difference. In the Renaissance and Early Modern period, the salient question about feminine difference was (...) whether it was a preternatural deformity, and specifically a monstrosity. While most pro-woman authors argued that women were not preternatural, Suchon argues the affirmative, claiming that “persons of the sex are true wonders.” In doing so, Suchon presses on a tension at the heart of scholastic conceptions of women while also provoking an emotional response that might encourage men to reconsider whether patriarchal practices are truly to their advantage. (shrink)

From very early on, Western philosophers have been obsessed with the understanding of a relatively few works of philosophy which have played a disproportionately large and fundamental role in developing the Western philosophical canon, dominating the curriculum in the past and in the present; there is no indication that they will not do so in the future.Uses and Abuses of the Classics examines the various ways in which the different periods of the history of philosophy have approached these texts. The (...) editors have chosen for analysis some of the major philosophers from periods of the history of philosophy in which the interpretation of the classics has been particularly significant.Contributions to this book include entries on: Aristotle's reading of Plato; Averroes on Aristotle; Nietzsche on the Beginnings of Western Philosophy; and Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Wisdom, happiness, and virtue Sin, evil, and theodicy Will and personal agency Reason, understanding, and belief Method in philosophical theology God Soul, mind, and memory.

A large part of the ambitious project that Grisez sketches in his paper can reasonably be thought of as developing and extending in interesting ways ideas of Thomas Aquinas. But in Part IV of the paper Grisez dramatically parts company with Aquinas on what might seem a fundamental issue. Aquinas famously holds that human beings find their ultimate fulfillment in beatific vision of God. Grisez tells us that, as he understands that claim, it is false.

The focus of this dissertation is to identify, analyze, and critique what I take to be a fundamental contradiction between the ideal mission of the university to serve as the site for the pursuit of truth and the function of Traditionalist humanities curriculums. I argue that because nationalist education makes it nearly impossible for students to engage in the critique of ideology, nationalist education is antithetical to the university's mission. With anything less than the ability to engage in this critique (...) of ideology, there is no way that students can participate meaningfully in the ideal of the university. ;In the opening chapter I argue first, that the development and preservation of national culture stands in a dialectical relation to the preservation and contestation of national identity; second, that post-secondary education in the arts and humanities is largely education in the national culture; and third, that nationalism mediates the dialectical relation between national culture and national identity. In the second chapter I critique nationalism on the grounds that underlying every nationalist movement is a universalist project which denies the reality of complex personal identity formation. ;In the third chapter I show that the Traditionalist position seeks to support through curricular control nationalist versions of culture and identity. ;In the fourth chapter I critique Marx's and Mannheim's theories of ideology since they seek to devise methods for evaluating ideology through epistemic standpoints removed from the site of the production of ideology. And thus I conclude this chapter by asserting that in order to be a critic of ideology one must struggle with and acknowledge multiple and complex social identities. ;In the final chapter I defend the claim that nationalist education undermines the process of teaching students to be critics of ideology since such an education prevents students from engaging the complexity of the encounter between the knowing subject and the object of knowledge. Moreover, I argue that a decidedly non-nationalist multicultural education offers the possibility of developing heterogeneous group identity without the deleterious consequences invariably brought forth by nationalism. (shrink)

This commentary challenges Rogers & McClelland (R&M) to use their model to account for delusional belief formation and maintenance. The gradual development of delusions and the nature of disconnectivity in Capgras delusions are used to illustrate the role of emotional salience in delusions. It is not clear how this kind of emotional saliency can be represented within the current architecture.

The “Fourth International Conference on the Comparative, Historical and Critical Analysis of Bureaucracy” was held in Vancouver, B.C., September 2-6,1985. Focusing on the relations between “Bureaucracy and Culture,” the conference program promised to have sections on intellectuals, the labor movement, prisons, mass culture, the new class, state terrorism, etc. As is usually the case in even the best organized conferences, however, most speakers paid only lip service to their assigned theme and chose to discuss instead whatever they happened to be (...) working on. The predictable result, of course, was that when these various Leibnizian monads were forced by the collective discussion to focus on the issues at hand, they simply fell back on recycling well-worn political stances to confront specific questions with automatic easy answers. (shrink)

This article outlines a new approach to answering the foundational question in democratic theory of how the boundaries of democratic political units should be delineated. Whereas democratic theorists have mostly focused on identifying the appropriate population-group – or demos – for democratic decisionmaking, it is argued here that we should also take account of considerations relating to the appropriate scope of a democratic unit’s institutionalized governance capabilities – or public power. These matter because democratically legitimate governance is produced not only (...) through the decision-making agency of a demos, but also through the institutionally distinct sources of political agency that shape the governance capabilities of public power. To develop this argument, the article traces a new theoretical account of the normative and institutional sources of collective agency, political legitimacy, and democratic boundaries, and illustrates it through a democratic reconstruction of the classical body politic metaphor. It further shows how this theoretical account lends strong prescriptive support to pluralist institutional boundaries within democratic global governance. (shrink)