The words 'true value' assume an existential relationship with the thing being measured. There is assumed to exist some aspect of the thing being measured that is independent of its relationship to the person who is interested in the result of the measurement. Yet measurement is a response to the need of an observer to know something about the real world. There is therefore an epistemological aspect to measurement. Some aspect of measurement has to do with the observer as a (...) knower of the result of the measurement. The paper considers electrical measurement. It proposes that these relationships correspond to two distinct kinds of measurement: one has the characteristic that there does exist such a thing as a true value, though it cannot be known: in the other kind, no such thing as true value even exists. The notion of true value is very useful, and for the kind of measurement where such a thing does not exist, the paper defines an alternative that has the advantage that it can actually be known under some circumstances in calibration. (shrink)

REIMER‐KIRKHAM S, SHARMA S, PESUT B, SAWATZKY R, MEYERHOFF H and COCHRANE M. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 202–212 Sacred spaces in public places: religious and spiritual plurality in health careSeveral intriguing developments mark the role and expression of religion and spirituality in society in recent years. In what were deemed secular societies, flows of increased sacralization (variously referred to as ‘new’, ‘alternative’, ‘emergent’ and ‘progressive’ spiritualities) and resurgent globalizing religions (sometimes with fundamentalist expressions) are resulting in unprecedented plurality. These (...) shifts are occurring in conjunction with increasing ethnic diversity associated with global migration, as well as other axes of difference within contemporary society. Democratic secular nations such as Canada are challenged to achieve social cohesion in the face of growing religious, spiritual and ethnic diversity. These challenges are evident in the high‐paced, demanding arena of Health care. Here, religious and spiritual plurality enter in, sometimes resulting in conflict between medical services and patients’ beliefs, other times provoking uncertainties on the part of healthcare professionals about what to do with their own religiously or spiritually grounded values and beliefs. In this paper, we present selected findings from a 3‐year study that examined the negotiation of religious and spiritual pluralism in Health care. Our focus is on the themes of ‘sacred’ and ‘place’, exploring how the sacred – that which is attributed as special and set apart as it pertains to the divine, transcendence, God or higher power – takes form in social and material spaces in hospitals. (shrink)

Civilization is often equated with the story of human advancement and progress. Yet it is also the story of human oppression, exploitation, war, and empire. In our own time, modern global civilization has brought us to the brink of planetary destruction. By offering an understanding of our past, this book aims to provide a stimulus to considering a different future. Our Shadowed World considers how we have been brought to this point. It describes how the fragmented and conflicted state of (...) humanity has "progressed" from the earliest city-states to the devastation of world war and holocaust--how civilization has brought its own form of savagery. What beliefs have underlain and motivated human action? How have humans tried to understand their world? Driven by the relentless quest for power, by greed, and by extreme beliefs, the human enterprise today has placed the very idea of civilization under threat, the subject of radical questioning. Despite a new ecological awareness dedicated to saving the planet from civilization's carelessness, and a preoccupation with the nature of apocalyptic thinking, a question mark looms over the very survival of humanity in its present state--a question mark that now overshadows the world. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Complex Unity Endurance Helps Knowing When to Let Go Following Your Example Imitation is the Highest Form of… Notes.

Nursing, with its socially embedded theory and practice, inevitably operates in the realm of power and politics. One of these political sites is that of religion, which to varying degrees continues to shape beliefs about health and illness, the delivery of healthcare services and the nurse–patient encounter. In this paper, I attempt to complicate nursing's views on religion and politics in healthcare, with the intent of thinking critically and philosophically about questions that arise at the intersection of religion, politics and (...) nursing/healthcare. These questions include the following: What is the domain of religion and politics? How (non)religious are the contemporary societies in which nurses practice? What are the variations and implications of secularism? How is religion entangled with other intersecting social relations of power? How does a political reading of religion and politics matter to the concerns of nursing? (shrink)

Theories of Truth provides a clear, critical introduction to one of the most difficult areas of philosophy. It surveys all of the major philosophical theories of truth, presenting the crux of the issues involved at a level accessible to nonexperts yet in a manner sufficiently detailed and original to be of value to professional scholars. Kirkham's systematic treatment and meticulous explanations of terminology ensure that readers will come away from this book with a comprehensive general understanding of one of (...) philosophy's thorniest set of topics. -/- Included are discussions of the correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, semantic, performative, redundancy, appraisal, and truth-as-justification theories. There are also chapters or sections of chapters on the liar paradox, three-valued logic, Field's critique of Tarski, Davidson's program, Dummett's theory of linguistic competence, satisfaction, recursion, the extension/intension distinction, and an explanation of how theories of justification, properly understood, differ from theories of truth. -/- A persistent theme is that philosophers have too often failed to recognize that not all theories of truth are intended to answer the same question. When the various questions are made distinct, it is apparent that many of the "debates" in this field are really cases of philosophers talking past one another. There is much less disagreement within the field than has commonly been thought. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss several problems with current Big data practices which, we claim, seriously erode the role of informed consent as it pertains to the use of personal information. To illustrate these problems, we consider how the notion of informed consent has been understood and operationalised in the ethical regulation of biomedical research (and medical practices, more broadly) and compare this with current Big data practices. We do so by first discussing three types of problems that can impede (...) informed consent with respect to Big data use. First, we discuss the transparency (or explanation) problem. Second, we discuss the re-repurposed data problem. Third, we discuss the meaningful alternatives problem. In the final section of the paper, we suggest some solutions to these problems. In particular, we propose that the use of personal data for commercial and administrative objectives could be subject to a ‘soft governance’ ethical regulation, akin to the way that all projects involving human participants (e.g., social science projects, human medical data and tissue use) are regulated in Australia through the Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs). We also consider alternatives to the standard consent forms, and privacy policies, that could make use of some of the latest research focussed on the usability of pictorial legal contracts. (shrink)

Although spiritual practices such as prayer are engaged by many to support well‐being and coping, little research has addressed nurses and prayer, whether for themselves or facilitating patients' use of prayer. We conducted a qualitative study to explore how prayer (as a proxy for spirituality and religion) is manifest—whether embraced, tolerated, or resisted—in healthcare, and how institutional and social contexts shape how prayer is understood and enacted. This paper analyzes interviews with 21 nurses in Vancouver and London as a subset (...) of the larger study. Findings show that nurses' kindness can buffer the loneliness and exclusion of ill health and in this way support the “spirit” of those in their care. Spiritual support for patients rarely incorporated prayer, in part because of ambiguities about permission and professional boundaries. Nurses' engagement with prayer and spiritual support could become a politicized site of religious accommodation, where imposition, religious illiteracy, and racism could derail person‐centered care and consequently enact social exclusion. Spiritual support (including prayer) sustained nurses themselves. We propose that nursing's equity‐oriented knowledge encompass spirituality and religion as sites of exclusion and inclusion. Nurses must be supported to move past religious illiteracy to provide culturally and spiritually sensitive care with clarity about professional boundaries and collaborative models of spiritual care. (shrink)

The urgent need for solutions to critical environmental challenges is well attested, but often environmental problems are understood as fundamentally collective action problems. However, to solve to these problems, there is also a need to change individual behavior. Hence, there is a pressing need to inculcate in individuals the environmental virtues — virtues of character that relate to our environmental place in the world. We propose a way of meeting this need, by the judicious, safe, and controlled administration of “classic” (...) psychedelic drugs as a way to catalyze the development of environmental virtues – a form of moral bio-enhancement. Recent evidence shows that psychedelics can be given safely in controlled environments, and can induce vivid experiences of unity and connectedness. These experiences, in turn, can durably increase feelings of nature-relatedness and pro-environmental behaviors. Therefore, we argue that responsible psychedelic use can reliably catalyze the development of a key environmental virtue known as living in place. This is a “master environmental virtue” that subsumes the qualities of respect for nature, proper humility, and aesthetic wonder and awe. Our account advances the environmental virtues debate by introducing a relevant practical proposal, and advances the psychedelic moral enhancement debate by providing a much-needed conceptual framework. (shrink)

In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, mothers impacted by the genetic condition of albinism, whether as mothers of children with albinism or themselves with albinism, are disproportionately impacted by a constellation of health-related stigma, social determinants of health, and human rights violations. In a critical ethnographic study in Tanzania, we engaged with the voices of mothers impacted by albinism and key stakeholders to elucidate experiences of stigma. Their narratives revealed internalized subjective stigma, social stigma such as being ostracized by family (...) and community, and structural stigma on account of lack of access to SDH. An analysis of health systems as SDH revealed stigmatizing attitudes and behaviours of healthcare providers, especially at the time of birth; a lack of access to timely quality health services, in particular skin and eye care; and a lack of health-related education about the cause and care of albinism. Gender inequality as another SDH featured prominently as an amplifier of stigma. The findings pose implications for research, policy, and practice. A concrete avenue to de-stigmatization of mothers impacted by albinism exists by the application of principles of human rights, particularly equality and non-discrimination; contextual analysis of cultural dynamics including relevant ontology; meaningful participation of rights-claimants, such as peer groups of mothers; and accountability of governments and their obligation to ensure access to health information as a key social determinant of the right to health. (shrink)

The bioethical principle of respect for a person’s bodily autonomy is central to biomedical and healthcare ethics. In this article, we argue that this concept of autonomy is often annulled in the maternity field, due to the maternal two-in-one body (and the obstetric focus on the foetus over the woman) and the history of medical paternalism in Western medicine and obstetrics. The principle of respect for autonomy has therefore become largely rhetorical, yet can hide all manner of unethical practice. We (...) propose that large institutions that prioritize a midwife–institution relationship over a midwife–woman relationship are in themselves unethical and inimical to the midwifery philosophy of care. We suggest that a focus on care ethics has the potential to remedy these problems, by making power relationships visible and by prioritizing the relationship above abstract ethical principles. (shrink)

The evaluation of new theories and pedagogical approaches to business ethics is an essential task for ethicists. This is true not only for empirical and applied evaluation but also for metatheoretical evaluation. However, while there is increasing interest in the practical utility and empirical testing of ethical theories, there has been little systematic evaluation of how new theories relate to existing ones or what novel conceptual characteristics they might contribute. This paper aims to address this lack by discussing the role (...) of metatheorising in assessing new approaches to ethics. The approach is illustrated through evaluating a new pedagogy and curriculum for ethics education called Giving Voice to Values (GVV). Our method involves identifying a number of metatheoretical lenses from existing reviews of ethical theories and applying these to examine GVV’s conceptual elements. Although GVV has been explicitly presented as a pedagogy and teaching curriculum, we argue that it has the potential to contribute significantly to the development of ethical theory. We discuss the general implications of this metatheoretical method of evaluation for new approaches to business ethics and for GVV and its future development. (shrink)

This article explores how ethics and religion interface in everyday life by drawing on a study examining the negotiation of religious and spiritual plurality in health care. Employing methods of critical ethnography, namely, interviews and participant observation, data were collected from patients, health care providers, administrators and spiritual care providers. The findings revealed the degree to which `lived religion' was intertwined with `lived ethics' for many participants; particularly for people from the Sikh faith. For these participants, religion was woven into (...) everyday life, making distinctions between public and private, secular and sacred spaces improbable. Individual interactions, institutional resource allocation, and social discourses are all embedded in social relationships of power that prevent religion from being a solely personal or private matter. Strategies for the reintegration of religion into nursing ethics are: adjusting professional codes and theories of ethics to reflect the influence of religion; and the contribution of critical perspectives, such as postcolonial feminism, to the understanding of lived ethics. (shrink)

This article outlines the emergence of ABA (Applied Behaviour Analysis) in the mid-20th century, and the current popularity of ABA in the anglophone world. I draw on the work of earlier historians to highlight the role of Ole Ivar Lovaas, the most influential practitioner of ABA. I argue that reception of his initial work was mainly positive, despite concerns regarding its efficacy and use of physical aversives. Lovaas’ work, however, was only cautiously accepted by medical practitioners until he published results (...) in 1987. Many accepted the results as validation of Lovaas’ research, though both his methods and broader understanding of autism had shifted considerably since his early work in the 1960s. The article analyses the controversies surrounding ABA since the early 1990s, considering in particular criticisms made by autistic people in the ‘neurodiversity movement’. As with earlier critics, some condemn the use of painful aversives, exemplified in the campaign against the use of shock therapy at the Judge Rotenberg Center. Unlike earlier, non-autistic critics, however, many in this movement reject the ideological goals of ABA, considering autism a harmless neurological difference rather than a pathology. They argue that eliminating benign autistic behaviour through ABA is impermissible, owing to the individual psychological harm and the wider societal impact. Finally, I compare the claims made by the neurodiversity movement with those made by similar 20th- and 21st-century social movements. (shrink)

UNICEF estimates that 1.6 billion children across the world have had their education impacted by COVID-19 and have attempted to continue their learning at home. With ample evidence showing a negative impact of noise on academic achievement within schools, the current pre-registered study set out to determine what aspects of the home environment might be affecting these students. Adolescents aged 11–18 took part online, with 129 adolescents included after passing a headphone screening task. They filled out a sociodemographic questionnaire, followed (...) by a home environment and noise questionnaire. Participants then completed three executive function tasks while listening to a soundtrack of either white noise or home-like environmental noise. For purposes of analysis, based on the noise questionnaire, participants were separated into quieter and noisier homes. Results revealed that measures of the home environment significantly correlated with individual perceptions of noise and task performance. In particular, adolescents coming from noisier homes were more likely to report that they studied in a noisy room and that they were annoyed by noise when studying. In terms of noise and task performance, the Flanker task revealed that while older adolescents were more efficient overall than their younger peers, those older adolescents from noisier homes seemed to lose this advantage. Additionally, reaction times for younger adolescents from noisier homes were less impacted by accuracy compared to their peers from quieter homes, though there was no difference for the older adolescents. This evidence suggests that higher in-home noise levels lead to higher rates of annoyance and may be hindering home-learning, with both younger and older adolescents being impacted. Furthermore, the long-term effect of in-home noise on adolescent executive function task performance indicates that these findings transcend the pandemic and would influence in-school learning. Limitations and advantages of online adolescent research without researcher supervision are discussed, including sociodemographics and adapting tasks. (shrink)

Terence Irwin's edition of the Nicomachean Ethics offers more aids to the reader than are found in any modern English translation. It includes an Introduction, headings to help the reader follow the argument, explanatory notes on difficult or important passages, and a full glossary explaining Aristotle's technical terms. The Third Edition offers additional revisions of the translation as well as revised and expanded versions of the notes, glossary, and Introduction. Also new is an appendix featuring translated selections from related texts (...) of Aristotle. (shrink)

The multi-disciplinary unit Social Responsibility in Action was developed for students with an interest in ethics who were completing undergraduate degrees in Arts, Commerce, Design or Science at an Australian research-intensive university. The academic objectives of this unit were to increase student awareness, knowledge, understanding and critical thinking skills related to various ethical issues. Lecturers from five disciplines collaborated in the design and delivery of SRA, which comprised lectures, tutorials and a research-based project. Anonymous surveys were administered at the start (...) and end of the semester to obtain feedback on student expectations and learning experience, respectively. Data across three student cohorts showed that at the start of semester, 80% of student comments indicated a desire to expand their interest of ethical matters, 59% a desire to gain understanding and knowledge and 59% to gain critical thinking or communication skills. SRA was extremely well received by students, with 98% of respondents indicating that this multi-disciplinary ethics unit had met their expectations. Students also found that the variety of teaching styles, unit content and multi-disciplinary approach stimulated learning. (shrink)

Appeals to the moral value of nature and naturalness are commonly used in debates about technology and the environment and to inform our approach to the ethics of technology and the environment more generally. In this paper, I will argue, firstly, that arguments from nature, as they are used in debates about new technologies and about the environment, are misinterpreted when they are understood as attempting to put forward categorical objections to certain human activities and, consequently, their real significance is (...) often overlooked. Secondly, arguments from nature, particularly as they are used in the context of debates over the use of new technologies, can be understood as appealing to human nature as a way to determine human limitations. Thirdly, arguments from nature can inform our discussion of what it is to be a human being or a person, and this kind of discussion can, in turn, inform our ethical deliberations in such areas of bioethics as euthanasia, abortion, etc. Finally, I conclude that a proper understanding of these arguments can help in establishing which virtues and which vices relate to our relationship with the non-human world—that is, which character dispositions are relevant to an environmental virtue ethics, with human nature as its foundation. A proper understanding of the argument from nature provides the basis for a ‘virtuously anthropocentric’ environmental ethics. (shrink)

What might a modern environmental or technological virtue or vice look like? That is, what virtues or vices might relate to our environmental place in the world, rather than our social place in the world? This question is particularly pressing in light of the unique chal­lenges presented by the current environmental and technological milieu. A recurring theme that arises in response to advances in certain technologies, particularly technologies that are seen in some way as “interfering in nature,” is that humans (...) are indulging in the vice of hubris, often referred to by the phrase “playing God.” Taking the notion of hubris as a starting point, the notion of “living in place” can be developed as a primary environmental and technological virtue, with reference to Heidegger’s analysis of the role of technology in human life. A pre-eminent environmental and technological virtue—living in place—can be understood in the light of Heidegger’s notion of “poetic dwelling,” where the role of human art and technology, rather than being primarily to dominate or manipulate nature, is to bring the natural world “into being.”. (shrink)

Continuing the dialogue: postcolonial feminist scholarship and Bourdieu — discourses of culture and points of connection Postcolonial feminist theories provide the analytic tools to address issues of structural inequities in groups that historically have been socially and economically disadvantaged. In this paper we question what value might be added to postcolonial feminist theories on culture by drawing on Bourdieu. Are there points of connection? Like postcolonial feminists, he puts forward a position that aims to unmask oppressive structures. We argue that, (...) while there are points of connection, there are also epistemologic and methodologic differences between postcolonial feminist perspectives and Bourdieu's work. Nonetheless, engagement with different theoretical perspectives carries the promise of new insights — new ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘understanding’ that might enhance a praxis‐oriented theoretical perspective in healthcare delivery. (shrink)

While for decades nursing has advocated for theory‐informed practice, more recent attention has tended to focus on mid‐range theory rather than the earlier focus on developing grand theory to encompass all of nursing practice. However, there has been continued interest in the holistic nursing community on grand theory and, in particular, on Integral Theory. Although Integral Theory's four‐quadrant (AQAL) perspective is familiar in nursing, little is known about how it is being used by nurses in direct practice. The purpose of (...) this interpretive descriptive study was to provide a practice‐based perspective on Ken Wilber's Integral Theory in professional nursing practice. The following research question was investigated: How does Integral Theory assist nurses in describing and understanding their professional work? Nurses participating in this study used Integral Theory as a map or heuristic that gave structure to an inquiry process in professional nursing practice and in nursing education in a manner that was holonic, multiperspectival, and self‐reflective. Challenges constraining nurses’ use of Integral Theory included its intricacy, as well as contextual factors in practice environments. Implications for nursing practice and education for the use of Integral Theory's meta‐framework are described. (shrink)

Hartry Field has argued that Alfred Tarski desired to reduce all semantic concepts to concepts acceptable to physicalism and that Tarski failed to do this. In the two succeeding decades, Field has been charged with being too lenient with Tarski; but it has been almost universally accepted that an objection at least as strong as Field's is telling against Tarski's theory. Close examination of the relevant literature, most of it printed in this journal in the 1930s, reveals that Field's conception (...) of physicalism is anachronistic. Tarski did succeed in furthering the sort of physicalist program he had in mind. (shrink)

Rylands Latin MS 164 is one of over forty manuscript books of hours in the John Rylands Library. It was made in France in the middle of the fifteenth century and its extensive, high quality illumination associates its production with the worshop of the so-called Bedford Master. However, it has not been the subject of any sustained published research and consequently the significance of variations in the mise-en-page of the books pages has not been scrutinised. This article focuses on the (...) variations in two replacement pages, one within the calendar and one beginning the Penitential Psalms, and in the case of the page beginning the Penitential Psalms considers whether the replacement could have been made by Sir Gregory Osborne Page-Turner, the owner of Rylands Latin MS 164 in the early nineteenth century. (shrink)

“Arguments from nature” are used, and have historically been used, in popular responses to advances in technology and to environmental issues—there is a widely shared body of ethical intuitions that nature, or perhaps human nature, sets some limits on the kinds of ends that we should seek, the kinds of things that we should do, or the kinds of lives that we should lead. Virtue ethics can provide the context for a defensible form of the argument from nature, and one (...) that makes proper sense of its enduring role in debates concerning our relationship to technology and the environment. However, the notion of an ethics founded upon an account of the essential features of human nature is controversial. On the one hand, contemporary biological science no longer defines species by their essential characteristics, so from a biological point of view there just are no essential characteristics of human beings. On the other hand, it might be argued that humans have, in some sense, “transcended our biology,” so an understanding of humans as a biological species is extraneous to ethical questions. In this article, I examine and defend the argument from nature, as a way to ground an ethic of virtue, from some of the more common criticisms that are made against it. I argue that, properly interpreted as an appeal to an evaluative account of human nature, the argument from nature is defensible with the context of virtue ethics and, in this light, I show how arguments from nature made in popular responses to technological and environmental issues are best understood. (shrink)

After explaining the philosophical significance of the paradox and explaining what an adequate dissolution must do, i show that the story of the unexpected exam hides within it two distinctly different paradoxes. the first turns on a problem of self-reference, but all previous attempts to dissolve the paradox fail to dissolve the second. i then dissolve it.

This volume offers a collection of in-depth explorations of pragmatism as a framework for discussions in philosophy of science and metaphysics. Each chapter involves explicit reflection on what it means to be pragmatist, and how to use pragmatism as a guiding framework in addressing topics such as realism, unification, fundamentality, truth, laws, reduction, and more. -/- .

Our intention is to contribute to the development of Canadian Nursing and Medical Education (NursMed) and efforts to redress deepening, intersecting health and social inequities. This paper addresses the following two research questions: (1) What are the ways in which Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies can inform Canadian NursMed Education with a focus on critically examining settler‐colonialism, health equity, and social justice? (2) What are the potential struggles and adaptations required to integrate Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies within Canadian NursMed Education in service of (...) redressing intersecting health and social inequities? Briefly, Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies are philosophies of learning that encourage teachers and students to reflect on health through the lenses of settler‐colonialism, health equity, and social justice. Drawing on critical ethnographic research methods, we conducted in‐depth interviews with 25 faculty members and engaged in participant observation of classrooms in university‐based Canadian NursMed Education. The research findings are organized into three major themes, beginning with common institutional features influencing pedagogical approaches. The next set of findings addresses the complex strategies participants apply to integrate Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies. Lastly, the findings illustrate the emotional and spiritual toll some faculty members face when attempting to deliver Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies. We conclude that through the application of Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies teachers and students can support movements towards health equity, social justice, and unlearning/undoing settler‐colonialism. This study contributes new knowledge to stimulate dialog and action regarding the role of health professions education, specifically Nursing and Medicine as an upstream determinant of health in settler‐colonial nations such as Canada, United States, Australia, and New Zealand. (shrink)

كتاب بحصي يتناول الصراع بين الصوفية والسلفية ويتناول قصة حياة الحلاج وابن الفارض والسهروردي ودواوينهم ويتناول الحب الإلهي عند الصوفية.