BackgroundThe impact of healthcare ethics educational interventions on participants’ ethical development is rarely reported on and assessed; even less attention is paid to educational interventions that focus on end-of-life ethical issues.AimTo evaluate the impact of the Ethical Framework for End-of-Life Care Study Sessions Programme ( EOLCSS) on the moral development of healthcare staff who are delivering end-of-life care.MethodsThe EOLCSS was delivered to 20 multi-disciplinary health care staff in Ireland in May 2013. Effect on moral reasoning was measured pre and post (...) education using the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2). Inferential statistics were used to examine the relationships between change in DIT2 scores and demographic variables.ResultsParticipants experienced moral reasoning development following receipt of EOLCSS. Age and previous ethics education contributed to the observed changes in moral reasoning.ConclusionsReceipt of the EOLCSS may contribute to moral reasoning development in practicing healthcare professionals. (shrink)

The monoidal t-norm based logic MTL is obtained from Hájek's Basic Fuzzy logic BL by dropping the divisibility condition for the strong (or monoidal) conjunction. Recently, Jenei and Montgana have shown MTL to be standard complete, i.e. complete with respect to the class of residuated lattices in the real unit interval [0,1] defined by left-continuous t-norms and their residua. Its corresponding algebraic semantics is given by pre-linear residuated lattices. In this paper we address the issue of standard and rational completeness (...) (rational completeness meaning completeness with respect to a class of algebras in the rational unit interval [0,1]) of some important axiomatic extensions of MTL corresponding to well-known parallel extensions of BL. Moreover, we investigate varieties of MTL algebras whose linearly ordered countable algebras embed into algebras whose lattice reduct is the real and/or the rational interval [0,1]. These embedding properties are used to investigate finite strong standard and/or rational completeness of the corresponding logics. (shrink)

The authors developed this textbook in response to an increasing interest in ethics, and a growing number of courses on this topic that are now being offered in educational leadership programs. It is designed to fill a gap in instructional materials for teaching the ethics component of the knowledge base that has been established for the profession. The text has several purposes: First, it demonstrates the application of different ethical paradigms (the ethics of justice, care, critique, and the profession) through (...) discussion and analysis of real-life moral dilemmas that educational leaders face in their schools and communities. Second, it addresses some of the practical, pedagogical, and curricular issues related to the teaching of ethics for educational leaders. Third, it emphasizes the importance of ethics instruction from a variety of theoretical approaches. Finally, it provides a process that instructors might follow to develop their own ethics unit or course. * Part I provides an overview of why ethics is so important, especially for today's educational leaders, and describes a multiparadigm approach essential to practitioners as they grapple with ethical dilemmas. * Part II deals with the dilemmas themselves. Ethical dilemmas written by the authors' graduate students bring readers face-to-face with the kinds of dilemmas faced by practicing administrators in urban, suburban, and rural settings in an era full of complexities and contradictions. * Part III focuses on pedagogy and provides teaching notes for the instructor. The authors discuss the importance of self-reflection on the part of both instructors and students, and model how they thought through their own personal and professional ethical codes as well as reflected upon the critical incidents in their lives that shaped their teaching and frequently determined what they privileged in class. (shrink)

The technical possibilities of biomedicine open up the opportunity to intervene in ageing itself with the aim of mitigating, reducing or eliminating it. However, before undertaking these changes or rejecting them outright, it is necessary to ask ourselves if what would be lost by doing so really has much value. This article will analyse the desirability of ageing from an individual point of view, without circumscribing this question to the desirability or undesirability of death. First, we will present the three (...) most widely used arguments to reject biomedical interventions against ageing. We will argue that only the last of these arguments provides a consistent answer to the question of the desirability of ageing. Second, we will show that the third argument falls prey to a conceptual confusion that we will call the paradox of ageing: although ageing entails negative health effects, it leads to a life stage with valuable goods. Both valuations, one positive and the other negative, refer to two different dimensions of ageing: the chronological and the biological. We will defend that, by not adequately distinguishing these two types of ageing, it does not become apparent that all the valuable goods exclusive to ageing derive only from its chronological dimension. Third, we will argue that, if we just conceive ageing biologically, it is undesirable. We will elaborate on the two kinds of undesirable effects biological ageing has: direct and indirect. Finally, we will respond to potential objections by adducing that these are insufficient to weaken our argument. (shrink)

Supporting the concept of DEI, yet, perturbed by the volatility that marks today’s societal and professional climate, the authors of this article examined three Eastern spiritual traditions in search of common guidelines addressing contemporary issues related to social unrest, imbued by inequity and injustice. The areas of review included Buddhist psychology, with some of its foundational concepts such as the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, the concept of ahimsa (non-harming), and the understanding of the impermanence of everything (...) as inclusive managerial practices; Daoist philosophy, with its observations of oneness and equality, and holistic self-alignment with virtue through practicing tranquility; and Hinduism, which focuses on the absence of distinction between ourselves and others around us, thus forming the foundation for morality and ethical behavior with its emphasis on unity in diversity. This collective investigative journey has led us to gather some powerful common behavioral and ethical guidelines, to steer away managers from hyperindividualism and self-centeredness to a greater and consistent respect for the unity among all beings. (shrink)

In this paper, the author questions whether the research ethics guidelines and procedures are robust enough to protect groups when conducting genetics research with socially identifiable populations, particularly with Native American groups. The author argues for a change in the federal guidelines in substance and procedures of conducting genetic research with socially identifiable groups.

Does the “free market” foster more freedom for individuals generally and less coercion? Libertarians and other market advocates argue that the unfettered market maximizes freedom and hence has less coercion than any feasible alternative. Welfare liberals, Socialist, and Marxists, in different ways, argue against the claim that the unrestricted market maximizes freedom generally. Both supporters and critics agree that coercion undermines freedom and that that is what is ultimately prima facie wrong with it. Further, they agree that the extent to (...) which an economic system includes coercion provides a serious strike against it. The problem is that there is little consensus on the necessary conditions for coercion. In this paper I will be concerned with the nature of coercive relationships in the market. Market interactions have a particular character and occur within a specific institutional framework. Other accounts of coercion have failed to capture the unique character of coercion in the market because they have failed to take into account certain nontrivial facts about the market which are essential to the analysis of coercive market relations. (shrink)

This collection of John Mackie's papers on personal identity and topics in moral and political philosophy, some of which have not previously been published, deal with such issues as: multiple personality; the transcendental "I"; responsibility and language; aesthetic judgements; Sidgwick's pessimism; act-utiliarianism; right-based moral theories; cooperation, competition, and moral philosophy; universalization; rights, utility, and external costs; norms and dilemmas; Parfit's population paradox; and the combination of partially-ordered preferences.

ABSTRACTThis article argues that, although psychoanalysis and history have different conceptions of time and causality, there can be a productive relationship between them. Psychoanalysis can force historians to question their certainty about facts, narrative, and cause; it introduces disturbing notions about unconscious motivation and the effects of fantasy on the making of history. This was not the case with the movement for psychohistory that began in the 1970s. Then the influence of American ego‐psychology on history‐writing promoted the idea of compatibility (...) between the two disciplines in ways that undercut the critical possibilities of their interaction. The work of the French historian Michel de Certeau provides theoretical insight into the uses of incommensurability, while that of Lyndal Roper demonstrates both its limits and its value for enriching historical understanding. (shrink)

Ethicists and others who study and teach the social implications of science and technology are faced with a formidable challenge when they seek to address “emerging technologies.” The topic is incredibly important, but difficult to grasp because not only are the precise issues often unclear, what the technology will ultimately look like can be difficult to discern. This paper argues that one particularly useful way to overcome these difficulties is to engage with their natural science and engineering colleagues in laboratories. (...) Through discussions and interactions with these colleagues ethicists can simultaneously achieve three important objectives. First they can get a great deal of assistance in their research into the social implications of future technologies by talking with people that are actively creating those futures. Second their presence in the lab and the discussions that result can be a very powerful method for educating not only students, but faculty about the ramifications of their work. And third, because the education is directly linked to the students’ everyday work it is likely that it will not just be a theoretical exercise, but have direct impact on their practice. (shrink)

Artificial persons are those who speak and act for others. Nurses speak and act for patients as well as for physicians and institutions, or, more aptly, institutionalized medicine. Yet, acting for institutionalized medicine can be harmful to nurses, due to the psychological experience of moral distress and the loss of integrity of their practice. This paper illustrates the harm to nurses as expressed in narratives of their practice, and suggests some initial steps we might take in resisting the artificial personhood (...) imposed by institutionalized medicine. (shrink)

Good work in nursing is work that is scientifically effective as well as morally and socially responsible. The purpose of this study was to examine variables that sustain good work among entering nurses (with one to five years of experience) and experienced professional nurses despite the obstacles they encounter. In addition to role models and mentors, entering and experienced nurses identified team work, cohesiveness and shared values as levers for good work. These nurses used prioritization, team building and contemplative practices (...) to overcome obstacles. Entering professional nurses tended to avoid conflict in the work setting. Experienced nurses reported forming teams of decision makers who share similar values to resolve conflict. These findings have implications for nurse education and nursing practice. Reflection on the importance of values and virtue in sustaining good work is important. Entering professional nurses should be encouraged to seek positive role models and reflect on the lessons that can be learned from experienced exemplary nurses. (shrink)

With each novel infectious disease outbreak, there is scholarly attention to healthcare providers’ obligation to assume personal risk while they care for infected patients. While most agree that healthcare providers have a duty to assume some degree of risk, the extent of this obligation remains uncertain. Furthermore, these analyses rarely examine healthcare institutions’ obligations during these outbreaks. As a result, there is little practical guidance for healthcare institutions that are forced to weigh whether or when to exclude healthcare providers from (...) providing care or allow them to opt out from providing care to protect themselves. This article uses the COVID-19 pandemic to examine the concept of risk and the professional duties of both healthcare providers and healthcare institutions, and proposes a framework that can be used to make concrete institutional policy choices. This framework should be a useful tool for any hospital, clinic, or health agency that must make these choices during the current pandemic and beyond. (shrink)

Natalie Davis is a quintessential storyteller in the way theorized by Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Michel de Certeau. Her work decenters history not simply because it grants agency and so historical visibility to those who have been hidden from history or left on its margins, but also because her stories reveal the complexities of human experience and so challenge the received categories with which we are accustomed to thinking about the world.

Among the many applications of artificial intelligence (AI), virtual assistants are one of the tools most likely to grow in the future. The development of these systems may play an increasingly important role in many facets of our lives. Therefore, given their potential importance and present and future weight, it is worthwhile to analyze what kind of challenges they entail. In this chapter, we will provide an overview of the ethical aspects of artificial virtual assistants. First, we provide a conceptual (...) clarification of the term ‘virtual assistant’, including different types of interfaces and recommender systems. Second, we address three ethical issues related to the deployment of these systems: their effects on human agency and autonomy and the subsequent cognitive dependence they would generate; the human obsolescence that may cause a generalized extension of the dependence problem; and the invasions of privacy that virtual assistants may cause. Finally, we outline the debates about the use of virtual assistants to improve human moral decisions and some areas in which these systems can be applied. (shrink)

The first-century ascetic Jewish philosophers known as the 'Therapeutae', described in Philo's treatise De Vita Contemplativa, have often been considered in comparison with early Christians, the Essenes, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. This study, which includes a new translation of De Vita Contemplativa, focuses particularly on issues of historical method, rhetoric, women, and gender, and comes to new conclusions about the nature of the group and its relationship with the allegorical school of exegesis in Alexandria. Joan E. Taylor argues (...) that the group represents the tip of an iceberg in terms of ascetic practices and allegorical exegesis, and that the women described point to the presence of other Jewish women philosophers in Alexandria in the first century CE. Members of the group were 'extreme allegorizers' in following a distinctive calendar, not maintaining usual Jewish praxis, and concentrating their focus on attaining a trance-like state in which a vision of God's light was experienced. Their special 'feast' was configured in terms of service at a Temple, in which both men and women were priestly attendants of God. (shrink)

In contemporary historical studies, Peano is usually included in the logical tradition pioneered by Frege. In this paper, I shall first demonstrate that Frege and Peano independently developed a similar way of using logic for the rigorous expression and proof of mathematical laws. However, I shall then suggest that Peano also used his mathematical logic in such a way that anticipated a formalisation of mathematical theories which was incompatible with Frege’s conception of logic.

"The spiritual needs and interests of both men and women have changed enough to merit a new edition of this superbly crafted, scholarly study of Sophia." -- Janet Forsythe Fishburn.

Various international authorities have insisted on the importance of ethical learning in higher education for would-be professionals, including students of Business Administration. As the process of creating the European Higher Education Area gathers pace, first steps have been taken to explicitly incorporate ethics in the common European Qualifications Framework. However, the authors of this study show how in the course of the EQF development process, the consideration given to ethical qualifications has been curtailed and subjected to serious limitations. In this (...) article, the authors review the historical development and the main elements of the EQF. Then, they analyze the gradual elimination of ethics within the EQF. Finally, they highlight the implications of this gradual elimination and propose avenues for further research. (shrink)

In contemporary historical studies, Peano is usually included in the logical tradition pioneered by Frege. In this paper, I shall first demonstrate that Frege and Peano independently developed a similar way of using logic for the rigorous expression and proof of mathematical laws. However, I shall then suggest that Peano also used his mathematical logic in such a way that anticipated a formalisation of mathematical theories which was incompatible with Frege’s conception of logic.

Cat Wars is a dangerous book that declares war on all free-roaming cats. Filled with hyperbole and exaggerated statistics, the book argues that cats are a danger to humans, birds, and other free-living animals and should be eradicated from the landscape—a devastating, expensive, inhumane, and useless result. This review exposes the flaws in the authors’ analysis and ethical approach and redirects the dialogue toward an ethic that protects all animals. Compassionate conservationism promotes the use of nonlethal management strategies to protect (...) individual birds and other animals while compassionately reducing the number of free-roaming cats. (shrink)

Going beyond the creolisation theories of Brathwaite and Glissant, I attempt to develop ideas concerning the gendering of creolisation, and a historicising of affects within it. Addressing affects as ‘physiological things’ contextualised in the history of the Caribbean slave plantation, I seek, importantly, to delineate a trajectory and development of a specific Creole history in relation to affects. Brathwaite's proposition that ‘the most significant (and lasting) inter-cultural creolisation took place’ within the ‘intimate’ space of ‘sexual relations’ is key to my (...) argument. In the light of this, I consider how Creole cultural knowledge about affect—as the primary motivational system inclusive of fear, anger, outrage and so on — might be identified, and what constitutes such Creole knowledge within which affect might be embedded. How might Glissant's relationality and Creole literary texts add to this knowledge? I focus primarily on three texts: Clarke's The Polished Hoe, Collins’ The Colour of Forgetting and Morejón's ‘Amo a mi amo’/‘l Love My Master’. Each text on which I draw is selected for its intersectional representation of gender relations, ‘knowledge about sexual difference’ and its representation of Creole subjectivities within the context problematised here as the ‘demonic ground’. Moreover, as auto-theorising texts, they represent both narrative and meta-narrative of a creolising of affects in and against the economy of the slave plantation. Each represents also a stage or aspect of the development of subjectivities and an affective community that inform this intervention concerned with theorising against consolidated, universalising and Eurocentric conceptualisations of affect. In the process, I attempt to offer a differentiated cartography and literary archaeology of affect. (shrink)

We have recently stated the reasons why we claim that biological ageing is undesirable. Räsänen has responded to our article by arguing that this process has certain desirable aspects and, therefore, our position is inconsistent. Räsänen develops two arguments to defend his position. We will call the first the argument from the totality of the ageing process and the second the argument from the reduced goods of the ageing process. In this reply, we will give reasons to show that both (...) arguments fail. The first, on the one hand, starts from a dubious conception of ageing and, on the other hand, even accepting this conception, its reformulation is morally empty. The second incurs in an absurd conclusion. (shrink)

Historically, academic freedom is a concept aimed at resolving conflicts about the relationship between power and knowledge, politics and truth, action and thought by positing a sharp distinction between them, a distinction that has been difficult to maintain. This paper analyzes those tensions by looking at early statements of the founders of the American Association of University Professors , by exploring the paradoxes of disciplinary authority which at once guarantees and limits professorial autonomy, and by examining several cases in which (...) the question of the meaning of academic responsibility was in dispute. It argues that because the tensions are not susceptible to final resolution, the principle of academic freedom must be preserved in order to mediate them. (shrink)

The review argues that, while Fish's book is undoubtedly a corrective to the most extreme examples of polemical teaching, it oversimplifies the difficulties academics face in trying to create sharp distinctions between politics and scholarship. The radical disconnection he advocates does not address the most difficult situations in which lines cannot be clearly drawn between the substance of academic research and teaching and the politics of the process of knowledge production itself.

Le genre est-il encore une « catégorie utile » d’analyse? Cet article suggère qu’il a perdu son tranchant critique. Non seulement le genre est devenu un moyen banal et routinier de caractériser les différences entre les sexes mais il a également parfois empêché les féministes de s’intéresser aux importantes questions posées par les nouvelles recherches menées dans les domaines de la biologie et de la psychologie. L’auteur ne prétend pas qu’il faille éliminer le genre et les notions qui lui sont (...) associées de notre vocabulaire, tâche non seulement impossible mais également absurde car elle nierait la flexibilité et la mobilité du langage et son rôle crucial comme acteur du changement. L’article propose donc que les féministes empruntent de nouvelles directions cherchant à redéfinir les mots et concepts, ou bien à redéployer et reformuler les idées existantes. (shrink)