There has been little previous scholarship regarding the aims, options and impact of ethics education on residential care‐givers. This manuscript details findings from a pragmatic cluster trial evaluating the impact of three different approaches to ethics education. The focus of the article is on one of the interventions, an immersive simulation experience. The simulation experience required residential care‐givers to assume the profile of elderly care‐recipients for a 24‐hr period. The care‐givers were student nurses. The project was reviewed favourably by a (...) university ethics committee, and participants provided informed consent. Data from six postsimulation experience focus groups were analysed thematically and three themes were identified: the experience of vulnerability, dignity in care and the organisation of care. Findings suggest that the immersive simulation experience had a powerful immediate impact as participants described epiphanous insights relating to their care experiences. It is suggested that reflecting on and recording epiphanous events has the potential to sustain ethical care practices. Further research is required to evaluate the impact of different ethics education interventions in different cultural contexts. Exploration is also required regarding the meaning and significance of care epiphanies, those “most delicate and evanescent of moments,” for the sustainability of ethical care. (shrink)

There has been little previous research regarding the effectiveness of ethics education interventions for residential care‐givers. The Researching Interventions to Promote Ethics in social care project responded to the question: Which is the most effective ethics education intervention for care‐givers in residential social care? A pragmatic cluster trial explored the impact of three ethics education interventions for: (a) interactive face‐to‐face ethics teaching; (b) reflective ethics discussion groups; and (c) an immersive simulation experience. There was also a control arm (d). 144 (...) trial participants were recruited from 39 residential care homes for older people in southern England. Change scores compared across intervention arms showed a significant reduction in work‐related moral stress in the teaching arm compared with control group (p =.03); there were no significant differences between control and intervention arms in change scores for moral sensitivity, interpersonal reactivity (empathy) or ethical leadership. Qualitative data themes were as follows: ethical care; care challenges; and ethical care inhibitors. Overall findings stimulate reflection on the value of three different ethics education interventions and the most appropriate means to evaluate their impact. Findings suggest the complexity and diverse nature of ethical competence in care. We suggest a way forward for research evaluating ethics education. (shrink)

In the nineteenth century, Nietzsche famously announced that God was dead. In the twentieth century, an increasing reliance on science and technology led to a widespread rejection of belief on the grounds of its irrationality. Yet for all the skepticism directed towards it, religion has not died. In fact, the opposite has occurred: it has persisted and proliferated. In this wide-ranging dialogue, two leading commentators on religion address - from their different but complementary traditions of Christianity and Buddhism - the (...) continuing appeal of spirituality to people eager to explore fundamental questions of meaning and identity. The authors indicate that science, for all the benefits it has conferred, has limits of explanation. It may be able to show how, but not necessarily why. --BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

The Market as God captures how our world has fallen in thrall to the business theology of supply and demand. According to its acolytes, the Market is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. It knows the value of everything, and determines the outcome of every transaction; it can raise nations and ruin households, and nothing escapes its reductionist commodification. The Market comes complete with its own doctrines, prophets, and evangelical zeal to convert the world to its way of life. Cox brings that (...) theology out of the shadows, demonstrating that the way the world economy operates is neither natural nor inevitable but shaped by a global system of values and symbols that can be best understood as a religion. -/- Drawing on biblical sources, economists and financial experts, prehistoric religions, Greek mythology, historical patterns, and the work of natural and social scientists, Cox points to many parallels between the development of Christianity and the Market economy. At various times in history, both have garnered enormous wealth and displayed pompous behavior. Both have experienced the corruption of power. However, what the religious have learned over the millennia, sometimes at great cost, still eludes the Market faithful: humility. (shrink)

Sacred Tropes: Tanakh, New Testament, and Qurʾan as Literature and Culture. Edited by Roberta Sterman Sabbath. Biblical Interpretation Series, vol. 98. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Pp. xxii + 534. $241.

A sociological conceptualisation of space moves beyond the material to the relational, to consider space as a social process. This paper draws on research that explored the reproduction of legitimated knowledge and power structures in intensive care units during encounters, between patients, who were experiencing mental illness, and their nurses. Semi‐structured telephone interviews with 17 intensive care nurses from eight Australian intensive care units were conducted in 2017. Data were analysed through iterative cycling between participants' responses, the literature and the (...) theoretical framework. The material and relational aspects of space in this context constitute a dynamic process that is concerned with the reproduction of everyday life, the preservation of the biomedical authority of intensive care, and the social othering of people experiencing mental illness. The work of theorists such as Löw, Harvey and Foucault underpins the exploration of space as a multi‐dimensional, malleable social process that both produces and is the product of social interaction and the social world. In this paper, we argue that the performative work of knowledge and power production and reproduction, considered here in relation to intensive care spaces, enables ongoing othering and disenfranchisement of people experiencing mental illness. (shrink)

Continues the ongoing dialogue between religion and science. In this volume, the author has focused on scientific or science-based technology rather than just the significance of 'pure science'. This complex focus covers a number of issues including scientific theory, public policy, ethical consideration, cosmology, theological conundrums and the age-old issues of the meaning of human life and its fulfillment.

Ostensibly a discussion about love, the debate in the Phaedrus also encompasses the art of rhetoric and how it should be practised. This new edition contains an introductory essay outlining the argument of the dialogue as a whole and Plato's arguments about rhetoric and eros in particular. The Introduction also considers Plato's style and offers an account of the reception of the dialogue from its composition to the twentieth century. A new Greek text of the dialogue is accompanied by a (...) select textual apparatus. The greater part of the book consists of a Commentary, which elucidates the text and makes clear how Plato achieves his philosophical and literary objectives. Primarily intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of ancient Greek literature and philosophy, it will also benefit scholars who want an up-to-date account of how to understand the text, argument, style and background of the work. (shrink)

This paper, in opposition to the standard theories of social cognition found in psychology and cognitive science, defends the idea that direct perception plays an important role in social cognition. The two dominant theories, theory theory and simulation theory , both posit something more than a perceptual element as necessary for our ability to understand others, i.e., to “mindread” or “mentalize.” In contrast, certain phenomenological approaches depend heavily on the concept of perception and the idea that we have a direct (...) perceptual grasp of the other person’s intentions, feelings, etc. This paper explains precisely what the notion of direct perception means, offers evidence from developmental studies, and proposes a non-simulationist interpretation of the neuroscience of mirror systems. (shrink)

Opens up new dimensions in the philosophical thought of Merleau-Ponty and addresses contemporary issues concerning interpretation theory and postmodernity.

This article addresses questions about the sense of agency and its distinction from the sense of ownership in the context of understanding schizophrenic thought insertion. In contrast to “standard” approaches that identify problems with the sense of agency as central to thought insertion, two recent proposals argue that it is more correct to think that the problem concerns the subject’s sense of ownership. This view involves a “more demanding” concept of the sense of ownership that, I will argue, ultimately depends (...) on the sense of agency. In this regard, the sense of agency still appears to be the originating problem. (shrink)

It is difficult to give a nice succinct précis of The Phenomenological Mind since it is composed of a set of chapters each of which addresses a different topic. The topics are linked in numerous ways. There is one way, however, in which all of the chapters are bound together to constitute a unified whole, and this might be considered something like a framework proposition. Phenomenology, understood as the philosophical approach taken up by Husserl and a number of people who (...) loosely follow his lead, has something important to contribute to philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences. The proof of this claim is to be found in the details of the various chapters. In some cases it consists of showing that a phenomenological approach provides a genuine alternative to the standard or current approaches to be found in these areas. In other cases, phenomenological methods may provide insights about certain key concepts; or insights that are suggestive for experimental work. To do any of this requires that we take an interdisciplinary approach and recognize that these various investigations do not move on a one-way track. (shrink)

Some people commonly know a proposition just in case they all know it, they all know that they all know it, they all know that they all know that they all know it, and so on. They commonly believe a proposition just in case they all believe it, they all believe that they all believe it, they all believe that they all believe that they all believe it, and so on. A long tradition in economic theory, theoretical computer science, linguistics (...) and philosophy has held that people have some approximation of common knowledge or common belief in a range of circumstances, for example, when they are looking at an object together, or when they have just discussed something explicitly in conversation. In this paper, I argue that people do not have any approximation of common knowledge or common belief in these circumstances. The argument suggests that people never have any approximation of common knowledge or common belief. (shrink)

I examine several aspects of the experience of time in depression and in the experience of different emotions. Both phenomenological and experimental studies show that depressed subjects have a slowed experience of time flow and tend to overestimate time spans. In comparison to patients in control conditions, depressed patients tend to be preoccupied with past events, and less focused on present and future events. Recent empirical findings in studies of emotion perception show different degrees of over- or underestimation of time (...) in perception of faces showing different emotions compared with neutral faces. Clinical phenomenology predicts that the effects on time estimation would not be additive if these tests were conducted with depressed subjects. (shrink)

We examine the writings of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman regarding their interpretation and use of the concept of self-interest.We argue that neither Smith nor Friedman considers self-interest to be synonymous with selfishness and thus devoid of ethicalconsiderations. Rather, for both writers self-interest embodies an other-regarding aspect that requires individuals to moderate theiractions when others are adversely affected. The overriding virtue for Smith in governing individual actions is justice; for Friedman it isnon-coercion.

SummaryComparison of some longitudinal data on infant weight in two samples of Australian Aborigines indicates changes in infant growth between 1966 and 1976 which suggest that at the time when the child comes off the breast, weight gain slows. This faltering of weight gain is often followed by a partial catch-up, but the resultant weight for age at 1 year corresponds with a lower British centile than the child was at just before weaning.

What's wrong with high executive pay? Beyond envy, is some issue of justice or fairness at stake? And what can anyone do about it? (A lot, as it turns out.).

The coordinated attack scenario and the electronic mail game are two paradoxes of common knowledge. In simple mathematical models of these scenarios, the agents represented by the models can coordinate only if they have common knowledge that they will. As a result, the models predict that the agents will not coordinate in situations where it would be rational to coordinate. I argue that we should resolve this conflict between the models and facts about what it would be rational to do (...) by rejecting common knowledge assumptions implicit in the models. I focus on the assumption that the agents have common knowledge that they are rational, and provide models to show that denying this assumption suffices for a resolution of the paradoxes. I describe how my resolution of the paradoxes fits into a general story about the relationship between rationality in situations involving a single agent and rationality in situations involving many agents. (shrink)

Robert Aumann presents his Agreement Theorem as the key conditional: “if two people have the same priors and their posteriors for an event A are common knowledge, then these posteriors are equal” (Aumann, 1976, p. 1236). This paper focuses on four assumptions which are used in Aumann’s proof but are not explicit in the key conditional: (1) that agents commonly know, of some prior μ, that it is the common prior; (2) that agents commonly know that each of them updates (...) on the prior by conditionalization; (3) that agents commonly know that if an agent knows a proposition, she knows that she knows that proposition (the “K K” principle); (4) that agents commonly know that they each update only on true propositions. It is shown that natural weakenings of any one of these strong assumptions can lead to countermodels to Aumann’s key conditional. Examples are given in which agents who have a common prior and commonly know what probability they each assign to a proposition nevertheless assign that proposition unequal probabilities. To alter Aumann’s famous slogan: people can “agree to disagree”, even if they share a common prior. The epistemological significance of these examples is presented in terms of their role in a defense of the Uniqueness Thesis: If an agent whose total evidence is E is fully rational in taking doxastic attitude D to P, then necessarily, any subject with total evidence E who takes a different attitude to P is less than fully rational. (shrink)

This article presents a new interpretation of the great Ming dynasty philosopher Wang Yangming’s celebrated doctrine of the “unity of knowledge and action”. Wang held that action was not unified with all knowledge, but only with an elevated form of knowledge, which he sometimes called “genuine knowledge”. I argue for a new interpretation of this notion, according to which genuine knowledge requires freedom from a form of doxastic conflict. I propose that, in Wang’s view, a person is free from this (...) form of doxastic conflict if and only if they are acting virtuously. (shrink)

Are LLMs cultural technologies like photocopiers or printing presses, which transmit information but cannot create new content? A challenge for this idea, which we call "bibliotechnism", is that LLMs often do generate entirely novel text. We begin by defending bibliotechnism against this challenge, showing how novel text may be meaningful only in a derivative sense, so that the content of this generated text depends in an important sense on the content of original human text. We go on to present a (...) different, novel challenge for bibliotechnism, stemming from examples in which LLMs generate “novel reference”, using novel names to refer to novel entities. Such examples could be smoothly explained if LLMs were not cultural technologies but possessed a limited form of agency (beliefs, desires, and intentions). According to interpretationism in the philosophy of mind, a system has beliefs, desires and intentions if and only if its behavior is well-explained by the hypothesis that it has such states. In line with this view, we argue that cases of novel reference provide evidence that LLMs do in fact have beliefs, desires, and intentions, and thus have a limited form of agency. (shrink)

How we narrate our lives can affect us, for good or ill. Our narrative practices make an undeniable difference to our psychosocial well-being. All so-called "talking cures" – including traditional psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approaches to therapy and newer techniques – are motivated by this insight about the power of personal narratives. All therapies of the discursive ilk make use of narratives, in one way or another, as a means of enabling individuals to frame, or reframe, and to manage their life (...) circumstances in richer or new ways.Narrative Therapy, an important sub-class of talking therapies, breaks faith with more traditional psychodynamic approaches in adopting a... (shrink)

This paper studies one aspect of the great Ming dynasty philosopher Wang Yangming’s (王陽明 1472-1529) celebrated doctrine of the unity of knowledge and action (zhi xing he yi 知行合一). Wang states that his doctrine does not apply to all knowledge, but only to an elevated form of knowledge, which he sometimes calls “genuine knowledge” (zhen zhi 真知). But what is “genuine knowledge”? I develop and compare four different interpretations of this notion: the perceptual, practical, normative and introspective models. The main (...) aim of the paper is to develop these models in more detail than has been done before. But at the end of the paper I argue that the introspective model is to be preferred over the alternatives. (shrink)