Addresses the ethical traditions of the profession of arms, the potential conflict of overlapping professional obligations when doctors and lawyers don military ...

When do people say that they are moved, and does this experience constitute a unique emotion? We review theory and empirical research on being moved across psychology and philosophy. We examine feeling labels, elicitors, valence, bodily sensations, and motivations. We find that the English lexeme being moved typically refers to a distinct and potent emotion that results in social bonding; often includes tears, piloerection, chills, or a warm feeling in the chest; and is often described as pleasurable, though sometimes as (...) a mixed emotion. While we conclude that it is a distinct emotion, we also recommend studying it in a more comprehensive emotion framework, instead of using the ambiguous vernacular term being moved as a scientific term. (shrink)

An influential argument against the possibility of obligations to oneself states that the very notion of such obligations is incoherent: If there were such obligations, we could release ourselves from them; yet releasing oneself from an obligation is impossible. I challenge this argument by arguing against the premise that it is impossible to release oneself from an obligation. I point out that this premise assumes that if it were possible to release oneself from an obligation, it would be impossible to (...) violate that obligation. I note that there are two interpretations of this assumption, one conceptual and one psychological. I argue that, on both interpretations, the assumption is false—at least according to independently plausible accounts of obligations to oneself and of what it means to waive an obligation. My arguments paint a picture of obligations to oneself that not only challenges the argument against their interference, but also illuminates these obligations’ relationship to other parts of the moral domain. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRecent work investigated the inter-individual functions of emotional tears in depth. In one study. What emotional tears convey: Tearful individuals are seen as warmer, but also as less competent. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56, 146–160. Https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12162) tearful individuals were rated as warmer, and participants expressed more intentions to approach and help such individuals. Simultaneously, tearful individuals were rated as less competent, and participants expressed less intention to work with the depicted targets. While tearful individuals were perceived as sadder, perceived (...) sadness mediated only the effect on competence, but not on warmth. We argue that tearful individuals might be perceived as warm because they are perceived as feeling moved and touched. We ran a pre-registered extended replication of Van de Ven et al. Results replicate the warmth and helping findings, but not the competence and work effe... (shrink)

The most prominent theories of rights, the Will Theory and the Interest Theory, notoriously fail to accommodate all and only rights-attributions that make sense to ordinary speakers. The Kind-Desire Theory, Leif Wenar’s recent contribution to the field, appears to fare better in this respect than any of its predecessors. The theory states that we attribute a right to an individual if she has a kind-based desire that a certain enforceable duty be fulfilled. A kind-based desire is a reason to want (...) something which one has simply in virtue of being a member of a certain kind. Rowan Cruft objects that this theory creates a puzzle about the relation between rights and respect. In particular, if rights are not grounded in aspects of the particular individuals whose rights they are, how can we sustain the intuitive notion that to violate a right is to disrespect the right-holder? I present a contractualist account of respect which reconciles the Kind-Desire Theory with the intuition that rights-violations are disrespectful. On this account, respect for a person is a matter of acknowledging her legitimate authority to make demands on the will and conduct of others. And I argue that kind-based desires authorize a person to make demands even if they do not correspond to that person’s well-being or other non-relational features. (shrink)

In his first paper on the special theory of relativity, Einstein indicated that the question of whether or not two spatially separated events were simultaneous did not necessarily have a definite answer, but instead depended on the adoption of a convention for its resolution. Some later writers have argued that Einstein's choice of a convention is, in fact, the only possible choice within the framework of special relativistic physics, while others have maintained that alternative choices, although perhaps less convenient, are (...) indeed possible. (shrink)

To meet all physicians' needs for ethics consultation in Finland, a novel form of service, the Physicians' Ethics Forum, was founded in 2003. The Forum is a cost-efficient service based on electronic communication. In this paper, experiences throughout its first 6 years are described.

R. S. Peters never explicitly talks about wisdom as being an aim of education. He does, however, in numerous places, emphasize that education is of the whole person and that, whatever else it might be about, it involves the development of knowledge and understanding. Being educated, he claims, is incompatible with being narrowly specialized. Moreover, he argues, education enables a person to have a different perspective on things, ?to travel with a different view? [Peters, R. S. (1967). What is an (...) educational process? In R. S. Peters (Ed.), The concept of education (pp. 1?23). Routledge and Kegan Paul]. In asserting this about education, Peters has more in common with another great English educator, John Henry, Cardinal Newman, than one might expect, given they are separated by about a century and start from different philosophical perspectives, namely Kant to a significant degree in the former and Aristotle in the latter. Both nevertheless acknowledge the importance of reason and its development in any education worthy of the name. I will argue that in describing the ?educated person? Peters is not far from the view of Newman, who saw education as being about the ?enlargement of mind?. Although Newman hesitates to call ?enlargement of mind? wisdom, and Peters does not use either term, there are good grounds for proposing that in distinguishing between education and training, and in asserting education is moral education because it is concerned to improve persons, Peters acknowledges the higher purposes of education and hence, we can add, its connection with wisdom. Significantly, what such a reading of Peters emphasizes is his insistence on the intrinsic value of education, a view seemingly lost in modern market-driven conceptions of education. (shrink)

Feeling moved or touched can be accompanied by tears, goosebumps, and sensations of warmth in the centre of the chest. The experience has been described frequently, but psychological science knows little about it. We propose that labelling one’s feeling as being moved or touched is a component of a social-relational emotion that we term kama muta. We hypothesise that it is caused by appraising an intensification of communal sharing relations. Here, we test this by investigating people’s moment-to-moment reports of feeling (...) moved and touched while watching six short videos. We compare these to six other sets of participants’ moment-to-moment responses watching the same videos: respectively, judgements of closeness, reports of weeping, goosebumps, warmth in the centre of the chest, happiness, and sadness. Our eighth time series is expert ratings of communal sharing. Time series analyses show strong and consistent cross-correlations of feeling moved and touched and closeness with each other and with each of the three physiological variables and expert-rated communal sharing – but distinctiveness from happiness and sadness. These results support our model. (shrink)

Education needs to prepare students to have understanding of themselves, of their relationships to others, to have an ability to make good moral and other judgements and to act on these. If education has a role to play in the alleviation of the crises facing the world, then there is some urgency in reflecting on what kind of education is needed in order to prepare young people to tackle these many crises. It is our contention that the major problem with (...) modern education is that it has forgotten that its main task is helping students to learn to be wise. That is, in considering the aims of education, it is proposed that it is wisdom which is the main aim of education. This will be so whatever level of education we are discussing, though much of our discussion refers to higher education. (shrink)

Power is a matter of authority and control. It can be wielded either consciously or unconsciously, and it can be either overt or latent. Using a structured questionnaire, this study set out to describe nurses’ opinions about the exercise of power in basic care situations in both acute and long-term care. The questionnaire was organized into four categories in which items concerned: power in obligatory daily activities; power in activities necessitated by obligatory activities; power in voluntary activities; and power in (...) activities that take into account the patient’s characteristics. The samples consisted of 228 nurses from five medical and surgical wards of district hospitals, and 233 nurses from five geriatric units of a community health centre and from one nursing home in Finland. The final response rate was 65% (acute care 76%; long-term care 55%). Data analysis was based on statistical methods. The results showed that, in the nurses’ own opinion, negative power is exercised only in certain situations and in the patient’s best interest, when for instance there are concerns that something may happen to the patient. (shrink)

R. S. Peters never explicitly talks about wisdom as being an aim of education. He does, however, in numerous places, emphasize that education is of the whole person and that, whatever else it might be about, it involves the development of knowledge and understanding. Being educated, he claims, is incompatible with being narrowly specialized. Moreover, he argues, education enables a person to have a different perspective on things, ‘to travel with a different view’ [Peters, R. S.. What is an educational (...) process? In R. S. Peters, The concept of education. Routledge and Kegan Paul]. In asserting this about education, Peters has more in common with another great English educator, John Henry, Cardinal Newman, than one might expect, given they are separated by about a century and start from different philosophical perspectives, namely Kant to a significant degree in the former and Aristotle in the latter. Both nevertheless acknowledge the importance of reason and its development in any education worthy of the name. I will argue that in describing the ‘educated person’ Peters is not far from the view of Newman, who saw education as being about the ‘enlargement of mind’. Although Newman hesitates to call ‘enlargement of mind’ wisdom, and Peters does not use either term, there are good grounds for proposing that in distinguishing between education and training, and in asserting education is moral education because it is concerned to improve persons, Peters acknowledges the higher purposes of education and hence, we can add, its connection with wisdom. Significantly, what such a reading of Peters emphasizes is his insistence on the intrinsic value of education, a view seemingly lost in modern market-driven conceptions of education. (shrink)

A questionnaire was used to assess people's attitudes toward 33 species of animals on six dimensions . A cluster analysis resulted in five groups of animals with similar ratings on these dimensions. Respondents were also asked about their attitudes toward hunting, fishing, and medical, scientific and product-testing research using animals.

The place of physical education has been contested in recent times and it has been argued that its justification as part of school curricula seems to be marginal at best. Such justifications as have been offered, propose that physical education is justified because of its contribution to moral development or because it is capable of being studied as a theoretical subject. Other justifications have centred on the embodied nature of the human being. In this article we draw on some classical (...) thinkers, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine and Benedict, to argue for a strong, integrated view of the human person. From this it is concluded that physical education is a necessary component of education and that a complete education therefore involves physical education. Physical education is understood in a broad sense as a family resemblance concept which incorporates a wide variety of physical activities. Disciplined physical activity which enables individuals to gain those physical skills required for learning, it is proposed, is essential for intellectual development. Benedictine education, which involves hard physical work, reading, prayer and reflection, illustrates how the physical and mental aspects of a person are to be integrated in order to attain the ends of the committed Benedictine monk. (shrink)

If we accept Popper's idea that the human habitat is described in terms of three worlds, and that there are overlaps between these three worlds, our moral actions and values will also be subject to the same kinds of consideration as a repertoire of behaviours exhibited in a physical environment. We will develop moral habits in a moral habitat and our moral behaviours will also be dependent on the kind of moral habitat in which we find ourselves.There are three main (...) problems to which this analysis leads and on which we will focus in this paper. Firstly, there is the problem of the kind of moral environment—habitat—that we need to provide for human beings if they are to develop the kinds of moral values that we hold to be important. Secondly, there is the question of how we are to develop the kinds of moral habits themselves and thirdly, there is the question of how these moral habits and habitat are to be maintained. If we take Popper seriously then human beings have a crucial responsibility in the creation of a moral third world—that is, a habitat in which human beings can flourish. Schools have an important role as a moral habitat for the inculcation of good moral habits. (shrink)

While celebrated for bringing peace and prosperity to the region, European integration has been recently challenged by various internal and external crises that call the progressivist narrative of ever closer—and larger—union into question. Torn between regional community and global society, particularism and cosmopolitanism, and politics and technocracy, the European Union appears beset by fundamental tensions. In search of a different theoretical perspective on “the crisis,” some commentators have drawn on Carl Schmitt’s political theory to emphasize key issues concerning political decisions, (...) identities, and boundaries in Europe. Yet, Schmitt comes with his own blind spots. For the purpose of a critical engagement with Schmitt’s potential insights and their limits, this article contrasts his approach with that of his contemporary Alexandre Kojève, who envisioned the integration of world society through economy, law, technology, and administration, a perspective not unfamiliar to the original story of European integration. In reconsidering the dialectic between Schmitt’s and Kojève’s positions, this article goes beyond their apparent contradictions and discusses attempts by both authors to reconcile the opposition, from Kojève’s move to Empires to Schmitt’s theory of the union, thereby illuminating deep-seated dilemmas of contemporary European politics which fundamentally condition its trajectory between contestation and re-constitution. (shrink)

This paper will consider the role of schools, as a particular moral habitat in the formation of moral virtues and how the inculcation of a comprehensive private moral system of beliefs, values and practices leads to public values in a multicultural, pluralist society. It is argued that the formation of good persons ensures the formation of good citizens and that governments should therefore support good moral education rather than seek to impose national public values or to concentrate on developing good (...) citizens only. The recognition that moral values are learnt within particular private moral systems of values, that it is these on which common public values rely for support and that there are a variety of such comprehensive private moral systems also means that a variety of schools need to be supported. One condition which such schools need to fulfil is that the comprehensive private moral system of beliefs which they inculcate in their students is based on a recognition of the universal applicability of the moral principles that they endorse. (shrink)

This paper will consider the role of schools, as a particular moral habitat in the formation of moral virtues and how the inculcation of a comprehensive private moral system of beliefs, values and practices leads to public values in a multicultural, pluralist society. It is argued that the formation of good persons ensures the formation of good citizens and that governments should therefore support good moral education rather than seek to impose national public values or to concentrate on developing good (...) citizens only. The recognition that moral values are learnt within particular private moral systems of values, that it is these on which common public values rely for support and that there are a variety of such comprehensive private moral systems also means that a variety of schools need to be supported. One condition which such schools need to fulfil is that the comprehensive private moral system of beliefs which they inculcate in their students is based on a recognition of the universal applicability of the moral principles that they endorse. (shrink)

Evidentials in Pastaza Quichua, an Amazonian dialect of Ecuadorian Quechua, are examined and their uses in narratives compared. The novel contribution of this paper is to show, by comparing data from personal experience narratives, that evidentials are used to convey speaker subjectivity, rather than source of information, and that switches between different speaker subjectivities, which may be encoded as ‘selves’ or ‘others’, are particularly evident in passages where momentous, life-changing statuses or interpersonal upheavals are being articulated.

If we accept Popper's idea that the human habitat is described in terms of three worlds, and that there are overlaps between these three worlds, our moral actions and values will also be subject to the same kinds of consideration as a repertoire of behaviours exhibited in a physical environment. We will develop moral habits in a moral habitat and our moral behaviours will also be dependent on the kind of moral habitat in which we find ourselves. There are three (...) main problems to which this analysis leads and on which we will focus in this paper. Firstly, there is the problem of the kind of moral environment—habitat—that we need to provide for human beings if they are to develop the kinds of moral values that we hold to be important. Secondly, there is the question of how we are to develop the kinds of moral habits themselves and thirdly, there is the question of how these moral habits and habitat are to be maintained. If we take Popper seriously then human beings have a crucial responsibility in the creation of a moral third world—that is, a habitat in which human beings can flourish. Schools have an important role as a moral habitat for the inculcation of good moral habits. (shrink)

The demonstration that slow transport of clocks can be used to define simultaneity in inertial frames of reference leads to the question of whether clock transport can similarly be used in noninertial frames. It is shown that there are certain types of reference frames in which the clock-transport method cannot be used in a self-consistent manner. It is also shown that there are other types of noninertial frames in which the clock-transport method will succeed. The discussion includes noninertial frames in (...) flat space-time as well as the case of curved space-times. (shrink)

Sober (1992) has recently evaluated Brandon's (1982, 1990; see also 1985, 1988) use of Salmon's (1971) concept of screening-off in the philosophy of biology. He critiques three particular issues, each of which will be considered in this discussion.

Non-suicidal self-injury is a complex behaviour, routinely engaged for emotion regulatory purposes. As such, a number of theoretical accounts regarding the aetiology and maintenance of NSSI are grounded in models of emotion regulation; the role that cognition plays in the behaviour is less well known. In this paper, we summarise four models of emotion regulation that have repeatedly been related to NSSI and identify the core components across them. We then draw on social cognitive theory to unite models of cognition (...) and models of emotion in developing a new cognitive-emotional model of NSSI. Our model articulates how emotion regulation and cognition can work in concert to govern NSSI, and offers several new research questions that can be addressed within this framework. (shrink)

This study aimed to determine the extent to which the principles of privacy and equality were observed during diagnostic genetic testing according to views held by patients or child patients' parents (n = 106) and by staff (n = 162) from three Finnish university hospitals. The data were collected through a structured questionnaire and analysed using the SAS 8.1 statistical software. In general, the two principles were observed relatively satisfactorily in clinical practice. According to patients/parents, equality in the post-analytic phase (...) and, according to staff, privacy in the pre-analytic phase, involved the greatest ethical problems. The two groups differed in their views concerning pre-analytic privacy. Although there were no major problems regarding the two principles, the differences between the testing phases require further clarification. To enhance privacy protection and equality, professionals need to be given more genetics/ethics training, and patients individual counselling by genetics units staff, giving more consideration to patients' world-view, the purpose of the test and the test result. (shrink)

Ahmad S. Dallal’s book is an informative and easily readable study of the thought of six leading twelfth/eighteenth century Muslim scholars. The author treats these scholars as the representatives of distinct intellectual trends of Islamic thought in the premodern period, while asserting that they belonged to the same thought-world and focused on the value of the present and the study of the ḥadīth. The monograph is a valuable contribution to the subject that is likely to cater to the needs of (...) graduate students. (shrink)

The CoVid-19 pandemic has profoundly disrupted schooling and education more generally through the shift from face to face teaching in classrooms and lecture theatres to an online mode of teaching a...

On Chang's voluntarist account of commitments, when we commit to φ, we employ the 'normative powers' of our will to give ourselves a reason to φ that we would otherwise not have had. I argue that Chang's account, by itself, does not have sufficient conceptual resources to reconcile the normative significance of commitments with their alleged fundamentally volitional character. I suggest an alternative, second-personal account of commitment, which avoids this problem. On this account, the volitional act involved in committing is (...) one of holding ourselves accountable, thus putting us under to a pro tanto obligation to ourselves. The second-personal account implies that there is an interesting link between commitment and morality. (shrink)

According to Darwall’s Second-Personal Account, moral obligations constitutively involve relations of authority and accountability between persons. Darwall takes this account to lend support to Kant’s moral theory. Critics object that the Second-Personal Account abandons central tenets of Kant’s system. I respond to these critics’ three main challenges by showing that they rest on misunderstandings of the Second-Personal Account. Properly understood, this account is not only congenial to Kant’s moral theory, but also illuminates aspects of that theory which have hitherto received (...) scant attention. In particular, it motivates a fresh perspective on the relationship between respect, persons, and the law. (shrink)

This thesis provides a restatement of Kantian constructivism, with the aim of avoiding some of the objections and clearing up some of the ambiguities that have haunted previous versions of the view. I restate Kantian constructivism as the view that morality’s normativity has its source in the form of second-personal reasoning, a mode of practical reasoning in which we engage when we address demands person-to-person. By advancing a position about the source of moral normativity, Kantian constructivism addresses a metaethical question, (...) albeit one that is distinct from the questions that many traditional metaethical positions, such as moral realism, focus on. Kantian constructivism has an advantage over competing views of the source of moral normativity when it comes to answering the so-called Normative Question, which I interpret as the question of why we are rationally required to do what we take to be our moral obligation. Kantian constructivism can answer this question because, unlike its competitors, it does not conceive of practical reason as a receptive faculty that is determined by external inputs. Instead, it regards the very form of second-personal reasoning as grounding the fact that morality is normative, thus explaining morality’s rational authority. Although second-personal reasoning is fundamentally distinct from the merely first-personal mode of reasoning that we must engage in insofar as we are agents, all those agents whom we would ordinarily consider bound by moral obligations seem to engage in it. Indeed, although it involves irreducibly second-personal notions, such as accountability and the authority to address legitimate demands, second-personal reasoning is not to be mistaken for a social practice. Instead, it can be applied to purely self-regarding contexts, such as that of committing oneself to a personal project and thereby holding oneself accountable for pursuing it, as well as to interactions with others. (shrink)