A groundbreaking study of how concepts of virtue and vice are used to deny American women full political rights.

Virtue and vice remain at the margins of feminist conceptual analysis although both establish a dualism that denies women full citizenship. To make this argument, this analysis explores the historical case of the Lowell mill girls – the first nearly all-female labour force in the United States between 1826 and 1850. Their public debate illustrates how virtue aligns some women with the economic and political status quo while society affiliates those who challenge its dominant beliefs with vice. This moral location (...) reveals the ‘virtues of vice’ or the political benefits that women may derive from vice which places them outside traditional moral and political discourse, enabling them to question existing moral paradigms, consider alternatives, and politically organize against the status quo. As such, the Lowell mill girl debate can inform contemporary feminist theory by raising serious questions about virtue and suggesting how vice opens up a critical space for ideological innovation, referred to here as a moral middle ground, that may result in a more democratic, feminist ethics. (shrink)

Despite the prevalence of beliefs across religions regarding repentance and divine forgiveness and their recognition in theoretical and religious studies, these constructs are relatively understudied phenomena in the social sciences. Furthermore, in recent years, multiple scholars have argued for the need for research to systematically study and highlight the experience and processes of repentance and divine forgiveness. Subsequently, this study explored processes of repentance, antecedents and motivations of repentance, resources to aid in repentance, and outcomes of repentance that should be (...) further examined. This analysis was done using in-depth qualitative interviews with 15 emerging adult religious exemplars identifying with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The authors used NVivo 12 and team-based qualitative coding processes to identify themes. Repentance processes included personal change, took various lengths of time, were a part of participants’ religious identity, were recurrent processes, and were influenced by participants’ view of God. Antecedents and motivations included religious practices and rituals, emotions, interpersonal interactions, and their relationship with God. Resources that aided in repentance included religious practices and rituals, interpersonal relationships, and a relationship with God. Finally, participants reported experiencing personal changes in their behavior and character, positive emotions (including feelings of divine forgiveness), improved interpersonal relationships, and a better relationship with God. These processes align with some previously discovered and theorized findings on repentance, contribute a number of novel findings, and offer future direction regarding the motivations, resources, and transformative experiences that participants reported in their personal repentance and experience of forgiveness. (shrink)

As the first large online event of the American Society for Cybernetics, the ASC2020 Global Conversation offered an opportunity to develop new online types of cybernetic conversations on cybernetics, in cybernetic formats. This article discusses the design decisions that led to a particular organizational structure of the event, and observations on how the event unfolded from this organizational structure. Based on observations made throughout the event as well as its preparation stage, the article maps seven different types of conversations taking (...) place before and during the event and discusses opportunities and constraints encountered in relation to each identified type. As online conferences have proliferated exponentially due to the impact of COVID-19, this article aims to contribute a cybernetic perspective to the broader discourse on scholarly international exchange in online media, and offers a new perspective on how such conversations might be designed in a cybernetic manner. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis report on end‐of‐life decision‐making in Canada was produced by an international expert panel and commissioned by the Royal Society of Canada. It consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 reviews what is known about end‐of‐life care and opinions about assisted dying in Canada.Chapter 2 reviews the legal status quo in Canada with regard to various forms of assisted death.Chapter 3 reviews ethical issues pertaining to assisted death. The analysis is grounded in core values central to Canada's constitutional order.Chapter 4 reviews the (...) experiences had in a number of jurisdictions that have decriminalized or recently reviewed assisted dying in some shape or form.Chapter 5 provides recommendations with regard to the provision of palliative care in Canada, as well as recommendations for reform with respect to the various forms of assisted death covered in this document. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to measurement of violations of academic integrity may overestimate the magnitude and severity of cheating and confound panic with planned cheating. Differences in the severity and level of premeditation of academic integrity violations have largely been unexamined. Results of a study based on a combined sample of business students showed that students are more likely to commit minor cheating offenses and engage in panic-based cheating as compared to serious and planned cheating offenses. Results also indicated there is a (...) significant interaction between severity and type of cheating. We hypothesized serious and planned cheating offenses would be related to justifications and found the largest differences were between panic and planned. Finally, panic and minor cheating were associated with two self-control-related personality traits. Implications for cheating research are discussed. (shrink)

Meat is a multi-billion-dollar industry that relies on people performing risky physical work inside meat-processing facilities over long shifts in close proximity. These workers are socially disempowered, and many are members of groups beset by historic and ongoing structural discrimination. The combination of working conditions and worker characteristics facilitate the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Workers have been expected to put their health and lives at risk during the pandemic because of government and industry pressures to keep (...) this “essential industry” producing. Numerous interventions can significantly reduce the risks to workers and their communities; however, the industry’s implementation has been sporadic and inconsistent. With a focus on the U.S. context, this paper offers an ethical framework for infection prevention and control recommendations grounded in public health values of health and safety, interdependence and solidarity, and health equity and justice, with particular attention to considerations of reciprocity, equitable burden sharing, harm reduction, and health promotion. Meat-processing workers are owed an approach that protects their health relative to the risks of harms to them, their families, and their communities. Sacrifices from businesses benefitting financially from essential industry status are ethically warranted and should acknowledge the risks assumed by workers in the context of existing structural inequities. (shrink)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s goal is to develop a surveillance system of public health laws that would both support research and analysis among policymakers and legislators, and support the scientific basis for public health law. This session was convened, in part, to discuss the value of creating an electronic system to track public health legal information. Public health surveillance is the “ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of data regarding a health-related event for use in public (...) health action to reduce morbidity and mortality and to improve health. Data disseminated by a public health surveillance system can be used for immediate public health action, program planning and evaluation, and formulating research hypotheses.” There is currently no system available that meets the goals of this definition of “surveillance” for public health laws. (shrink)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s goal is to develop a surveillance system of public health laws that would both support research and analysis among policymakers and legislators, and support the scientific basis for public health law. This session was convened, in part, to discuss the value of creating an electronic system to track public health legal information. Public health surveillance is the “ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of data regarding a health-related event for use in public (...) health action to reduce morbidity and mortality and to improve health. Data disseminated by a public health surveillance system can be used for immediate public health action, program planning and evaluation, and formulating research hypotheses.” There is currently no system available that meets the goals of this definition of “surveillance” for public health laws. (shrink)

L'hypothèse qui guide le présent article est que les méthodes et techniques de dérivation ou de modélisation utilisées en éthique contemporaine, ont une incidence sur les contenus proprement moraux de la théorie morale ; vues comme de simples outils à l'usage du philosophe moral, elles agissent en fait comme des sources de normativité morale. Cette hypothèse n'est pas une simple reformulation de l'idée voulant qu'il existe, au sein de la théorie morale, un rapport entre explication et justification ou entre méta-éthique (...) et éthique. Pour le montrer, je m'appuierai d'abord sur une caractéristisation générale de ces composantes de la théorie morale et des rapports qu'elles entretiennent entre elles. Dans un deuxième temps j'arguerai que l'usage d'outils méthodologiques particuliers peut avoir une incidence sur les contenus moraux proprement dits. Pour caractériser cette incidence et en décrire les mécanismes, je ferai d'abord appel à une approche pragmatique de l'explication, puis je donnerai deux exemples, tirés de la philosophie morale contemporaine, et illustrant le fait que certains contenus moraux ainsi introduits échappent de fait à une justification en bonne et due forme.The central claim made in this article is that the various methodological devices used by contemporary moral philosophers in order to represent or derive moral principles affect the very moral content of their theory; seen by them as mere tools for philosophers, they in fact are sources of moral normativity. This claim is not a mere reformulation of the idea that there is within moral theory a connection between explanation and justification or between metaethics and ethics. To show that this is so, I first give a general characterization of the various components of moral theory and of their relationships. I then argue that the use of particular methodological devices affect the very moral content of the theory. To characterize such incidence and its mechanisms, I first appeal to a pragmatic conception of explanation and, finally, I discuss two examples from contemporary moral theory showing that substantive moral claims so introduced, in fact fail to be justified. (shrink)

When recalling autobiographical events, people not only retrieve event details but also the feelings they experienced. The current study examined whether people are able to consistently recall the intensity of past feelings associated with two consequential and negatively valenced events, i.e. the 9/11 attack (N = 769) and the COVID-19 pandemic (N = 726). By comparing experienced and recalled intensities of negative feelings, we discovered that people systematically recall a higher intensity of negative feelings than initially reported – overestimating the (...) intensity of past negative emotional experiences. The COVID-19 dataset also revealed that individuals who experienced greater improvement in emotional well-being displayed smaller biases in recalling their feelings. Across both datasets, the intensity of remembered feelings was correlated with initial feelings and current feelings, but the impact of the current feelings was stronger in the COVID-19 dataset than in the 9/11 dataset. Our results demonstrate that when recalling negative autobiographical events, people tend to overestimate the intensity of prior negative emotional experiences with their degree of bias influenced by current feelings and well-being. (shrink)

When Mommsen saw foll. 28r line i–29r line 6 of cod. Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 7530, an eighth-century grammatical miscellany from Monte Cassino, he realised immediately the importance of their contents. He wrote to Bergk about his discovery on 2 November 1844 and Bergk published the material early the next year as being an epitome of a treatise on signs applied to literary texts by Probus and earlier Latin grammarians. There had long been known Diogenes Laertius' account of the χ (...) and other signs placed in the margins of texts of Plato's dialogues, Hephaestion's account of the colometrical παράγραος, κορωνίς, διπλ and στερίσκος placed in texts of lyric and dramatic poetry, the chapter de notis sententiarum in Isidore's Origines, the names of various treatises περσημείων mentioned in the Suda, the references to σημεα in Eustathius' commentary on Homer' and in the marginal scholia to Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes in Byzantine manuscripts, Cicero's allusions to the βελός and the διπλ scattered reports of the signs with which Origen equipped Greek versions of the Old Testament and Jerome's adaptation of Origen's system, and Cassiodorus' account of his own method of noting orthodox and heterodox opinions in ecclesiastical writings. (shrink)

In the period between Constantine's reunification of the Empire in 324 and the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 M. Valerius Probus enjoyed a large reputation as master of all areas of the ars grammatica. The commentary on Terence attributed to Donatus and the commentary of Servius on Virgil cite him more often than they do any other ancient authority. His fame persisted through the Dark Ages. Eugenius of Toledo set him with Varius and Tucca against Aristarchus, the greatest of (...) the Alexandrian students of Homer. Modern writers on the history of Roman scholarship have estimated in widely different ways his quality as a textual critic, the level of his reputation during the century after his death and the influence which his activities had on the transmission of the Latin classics. That he ‘annotated’ at least some of these in the manner of an Aristarchus is not in dispute, but everything about the nature of his ‘annotation’ is. This paper will treat afresh a famous statement about Probus in Suetonius' De grammaticis, two lists of notae associated with Probus’ name in a late eighth-century manuscript from Monte Cassino, cod. Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 7530, two references to such notae which have been detected in Virgilian scholia and a number of statements in these scholia which appear to give Probus’ reasons for affixing notae. The results of my study are largely negative but may help to control general discussion of the history of a number of Latin texts. (shrink)

Most of the commentaries on Greek authors which circulated in the towns of Egypt during the late Ptolemaic and early Imperial periods ignored the critical and colometrical problems which had engaged the attention of the great Alexandrian grammarians. A few, however, based themselves on texts equipped with signs, included the signs in their lemmata and offered explanations. Such commentaries must be the source of the scattered references to signs in the older marginal scholia in Byzantine manuscripts of Homer, Hesiod, Pindar (...) and the Attic dramatists. The only Byzantine manuscript to transmit a pagan text still equipped with a large number and a variety of signs, namely cod. Venice, Bibl. Marc. gr. 454, is also the only one to transmit scholia with lemmata retaining prefixed signs. Just as texts and scholium-lemmata lost their signs in the course of transmission, so too did references to signs within scholia either disappear or become garbled. At best, a statement about the reasons for affixing a sign would turn into one about the content or style of the verse in question. The few mentions made of the great Alexandrians give no cause for thinking that we ever have a verbatim quotation of an πόμνημα written by one of them in order to explain his own signs. Time and again it is demonstrable that an explanation of a sign's presence against a particular verse goes back to some writer like Aristonicus. What survives of the ancient discussion of Latin literature is exiguous in comparison with the Greek material. (shrink)

Several debates of the last years within the research field of contemporary realism – known under titles such as "New Realism," "Continental Realism," or "Speculative Materialism" – have shown that science is not systematically the ultimate measure of truth and reality. This does not mean that we should abandon the notions of truth or objectivity all together, as has been posited repeatedly within certain currents of twentieth century philosophy. However, within the research field of contemporary realism, the concept of objectivity (...) itself has not been adequately refined. What is objective is supposed to be true outside a subject’s biases, interpretations and opinions, having truth conditions that are met by the way the world is. The volume combines articles of internationally outstanding authors who have published on either Idealism, Epistemic Relativism, or Realism and often locate themselves within one of these divergent schools of thought. As such, the volume focuses on these traditions with the aim of clarifying what the concept objectivity nowadays stands for within contemporary ontology and epistemology beyond the analytic-continental divide. With articles from: Jocelyn Benoist, Ray Brassier, G. Anthony Bruno, Dominik Finkelde, Markus Gabriel, Deborah Goldgaber, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, Johannes Hübner, Andrea Kern, Anton F. Koch, Martin Kusch, Paul M. Livingston, Paul Redding, Sebastian Rödl, Dieter Sturma. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage collectif réunit neuf contributions d'ethnologues et de linguistes relatives aux femmes comme objets de discours, à la langue et aux pratiques langagières censées caractériser les femmes ou le féminin, dans plusieurs aires culturelles d'Europe (Portugal, Chypre, Roumanie, mais aussi Finlande, Estonie, Laponie). Elles sont de qualité très inégale : celles qui portent sur « l'image de la femme » telle qu'on peut la saisir à partir de corpus de littérature orale (en particulie...

La question du synthétique a priori définie par Husserl, malgré la critique adressée par le Cercle de Vienne, est réouverte. Plutôt que de fonder le concept à partir de l'intuition, l'auteur propose de le fonder à partir du concept. Il s'appuie sur la pensée de Bolzano, pour en faire le principe d'une lecture de Kant, Husserl, Schlick et Wittgenstein.

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

This article describes a process of developing, implementing and evaluating a clinical ethics support service intervention with the goal of building up a context-sensitive structure of minimal clinical-ethics in an oncology department without prior clinical ethics structure. Scholars from different disciplines have called for an improvement in the evaluation of clinical ethics support services for different reasons over several decades. However, while a lot has been said about the concepts and methodological challenges of evaluating CESS up to the present time, (...) relatively few empirical studies have been carried out. The aim of this article is twofold. On the one hand, it describes a process of development, modifying and evaluating a CESS intervention as part of the ETHICO research project, using the approach of qualitative-formative evaluation. On the other hand, it provides a methodological analysis which specifies the contribution of qualitative empirical methods to the evaluation of CESS. We conclude with a consideration of the strengths and limitations of qualitative evaluation research with regards to the evaluation and development of context sensitive CESS. We further discuss our own approach in contrast to rather traditional consult or committee models. (shrink)

L'époque, selon certains, serait celle de l'espace, après l'effondrement des grandes eschatologies historiques. L'espace a, on l'oublie, une histoire. Quant à l'histoire, elle trouverait dans sa mise en relation avec les discours de la spatialité (architecture, écologie, géographie), les moyens de s'inscrire dans l'effectivité.

This paper presents scientists’ understanding of their roles in society and corresponding responsibilities. It discusses the researchers’ perspective against the background of the contemporary literature on scientific responsibility in the social sciences and philosophy and proposes a heuristic that improves the understanding of the complexity of scientific responsibility. The study is based on qualitative interviews with senior scientists. The presented results show what researchers themselves see as their responsibilities, how they assume them, and what challenges they perceive with respect to (...) their responsibilities. Regarding the latter, the interviewed researchers highlight those aspects of responsibility that go beyond the expertise of their professional role, and thus cannot be carried by scientists alone. For example, scientists alone cannot determine the general direction science takes, or the useful application of their research. The interviewed researchers describe those challenges as responsibilities that must be shared across different societal groups. In the theoretical literature, responsibility has been described as a relation between an actor (who), the action for which someone is responsible (what), and the normative framework against which someone is responsible (why). We will draw on this concept of “relational responsibility” to identify the various actors, normative frameworks, and actions relevant to scientific responsibility. This will serve as a heuristic tool to help identify the entanglement of responsibilities spread across several societal groups. (shrink)

Die öffentliche Diskussion um die „personalisierte Medizin“ legt nahe, dass mit diesem medizinischen Ansatz hohe Erwartungen an einen Beitrag zur klinischen Versorgung verbunden werden. Über die Wahrnehmungen und Bewertungen klinisch tätiger Ärzte ist jedoch wenig bekannt. Die vorliegende qualitative Interviewstudie gibt einen Einblick bezüglich des Einflusses „personalisierter Medizin“ auf die klinische Praxis aus ärztlicher Perspektive. Die Ärzte im vorliegenden Sample nehmen „personalisierte Medizin“ zwar als einen medizinischen Fortschritt wahr, sehen allerdings keine grundsätzliche Veränderung der bisherigen medizinischen Praxis. Als zentrales Problem (...) wird die Handhabung und Verwertung von molekulargenetischen Informationen für Diagnose und Therapie in der klinischen Praxis thematisiert. In Anbetracht der Ergebnisse muss infrage gestellt werden, ob „personalisierte Medizin“ nicht das Gegenteil von dem, was ihr Name nahe legt – eine personenorientiertere Medizin – bewirkt. Die Strategien im Umgang mit den Informationsmassen produzieren selbst neue Herausforderungen, die ein Hindernis für eine personenorientierte Medizin darstellen könnten. (shrink)

In absence of effective pharmaceutical treatments, the individual's compliance with a series of behavioral recommendations provided by the public health authorities play a critical role in the control and prevention of SARS-CoV2 infection. However, we still do not know much about the rate and determinants of adoption of the recommended health behaviors. This paper examines the compliance with the main behavioral recommendations, and compares sociocultural, psychosocial, and social cognitive explanations for its variation in the French population. Based on the current (...) literature, these 3 categories of factors were identified as potential determinants of individual differences in the health preventive behaviors. The data used for these analyses are drawn from 2 cross-sectional studies conducted after the lockdown and before the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic in France. The participants were drawn from a larger internet consumer panel where recruitment was stratified to generate a socio-demographically representative sample of the French adult population. Overall, the results show a very high rate of compliance with the behavioral recommendations among the participants. A hierarchical regression analysis was then performed to assess the potential explanatory power of these approaches in complying with these recommendations by successively entering sociocultural factors, psychosocial factors, social cognitive factors in the model. Only the inclusion of the cognitive variables substantially increased the explained variance of the self-reported adoption of preventive behaviors, providing better support for the social cognitive than the sociocultural and psychosocial explanations. (shrink)

La theorie de la signification a joue un role central dans le developpement de la phenomenologie. Jocelyn Benoist essaye d'en donner un expose systematique, y decelant le paradoxe que represente l'influence decisive d'un auteur qui n'utilise pas le concept d'intentionalite (Bolzano), relu et reinterprete par Husserl au moyen de ce meme concept. L'oeuvre de Husserl se situe au croisement de Bolzano et de Brentano, d'une pensee du sens et d'une pensee de l'acte, de l'objectivisme logique et de la description (...) psychologique et pragmatique: c'est le principe de lecture adopte ici. Cette enquete sur la theorie de la signification de Husserl conduit a revisiter tous les lieux classiques de la philosophie du langage et de la logique contemporaine, mis en vedette depuis par la philosophie analytique: theorie du sens, de la grammaire, de la verite, de la proposition, du nom propre, de l'indexicalite, des performatifs, etc. On mesure ainsi le point auquel la pensee de Husserl etait deja installe de plain-pied dans ces problematiques, et ce qu'elles-memes ont, aujourd'hui, a gagner a un retour sur elle. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie öffentliche Diskussion um die „personalisierte Medizin“ legt nahe, dass mit diesem medizinischen Ansatz hohe Erwartungen an einen Beitrag zur klinischen Versorgung verbunden werden. Über die Wahrnehmungen und Bewertungen klinisch tätiger Ärzte ist jedoch wenig bekannt. Die vorliegende qualitative Interviewstudie gibt einen Einblick bezüglich des Einflusses „personalisierter Medizin“ auf die klinische Praxis aus ärztlicher Perspektive. Die Ärzte im vorliegenden Sample nehmen „personalisierte Medizin“ zwar als einen medizinischen Fortschritt wahr, sehen allerdings keine grundsätzliche Veränderung der bisherigen medizinischen Praxis. Als zentrales Problem (...) wird die Handhabung und Verwertung von molekulargenetischen Informationen für Diagnose und Therapie in der klinischen Praxis thematisiert. In Anbetracht der Ergebnisse muss infrage gestellt werden, ob „personalisierte Medizin“ nicht das Gegenteil von dem, was ihr Name nahe legt – eine personenorientiertere Medizin – bewirkt. Die Strategien im Umgang mit den Informationsmassen produzieren selbst neue Herausforderungen, die ein Hindernis für eine personenorientierte Medizin darstellen könnten. (shrink)

L'idée d'une origine commune de la phénoménologie et de la philosophie analytique commence à être bien admise. On essaie ici de lui donner quelque consistance en la mettant à l'épreuve d'une question, qui fut décisive pour les auteurs à la source de ces deux traditions, à la fin du XIXème siècle et au début du XXème : celle de la référence manquante ou des " objets inexistants ". On montre comment ce problème a pu orienter d'un côté les débats internes (...) à l'école brentanienne (Brentano lui-même, Twardowski, Meinong, le jeune Husserl), et de l'autre les réflexions des auteurs sources de la tradition dite analytique (Bolzano, Frege, Russell). Par opposition à d'autres études plus " syncrétiques ", il s'agit avant tout, dans la démarche adoptée, de mettre en avant des différences. D'abord au sein de l'école intentionaliste, beaucoup plus diversifiée et traversée de tensions qu'on ne le croit souvent. Puis, aussi et surtout, entre cette école et les auteurs qui ont choisi délibérément une autre voie : Frege et Russell, bien sûr, mais aussi déjà Bolzano. Il s'agit par là même de mesurer un écart qui devait s'avérer déterminant pour toute la philosophie du XXème siècle et de mieux définir le champ propre de cette philosophie. (shrink)

Animal production, especially pork production, is facing growing international criticism. The greatest concerns relate to the environment, the animals’ living conditions, and the occupational diseases. But human and animal conditions are rarely considered together. Yet the living conditions at work and the emotional bond that inevitably forms bring the farm workers and the animals to live very close, which leads to shared suffering. Suffering does spread from animals to human beings and can cause workers physical, mental, and also moral suffering, (...) which is all the more harmful due to the fact that it is concealed. The conceptual tools used to conceal suffering ( animal welfare, stress, pain) suggest that the industrial system can be improved, whereas for farmers it is by definition incompatible with animal husbandry. (shrink)