Natural fluctuations in sustained attention can lead to attentional failures in everyday tasks and even dangerous incidences. These fluctuations depend on personal factors, as well as task characteristics. So far, our understanding of sustained attention is partly due to the common usage of laboratory setups and tasks, and the complex interplay between behavior and brain activity. The focus of the current study was thus to test the feasibility of applying a single-channel wireless EEG to monitor patterns of sustained attention during (...) a set of ecological tasks. An EEG marker of attention (BEI—Brain Engagement Index) was continuously recorded from 42 healthy volunteers during auditory and visual tasks from the Test of Everyday Attention (TEA) and Trail Making Test (TMT). We found a descending pattern of both performance and BEI in the auditory tasks as task complexity increases, while the increase in performance and decrease in BEI on the visual task. In addition, patterns of BEI in the complex tasks were used to detect outliers and the optimal range of attention through exploratory models. The current study supports the feasibility of combined electrophysiological and neurocognitive investigation of sustained attention in ecological tasks yielding unique insights on patterns of sustained attention as a function of task modality and task complexity. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION My underlying concern in this work is with the sociological analysis and description of members' practical activities and their practical ...

In the 1980s, philosophical, historical and social studies of science underwent a change which later evolved into a turn to practice. Analysts of science were asked to pay attention to scientific practices in meticulous detail and along multiple dimensions, including the material, social and psychological. Following this turn, the interest in scientific practices continued to increase and had an indelible influence in the various fields of science studies. No doubt, the practice turn changed our conceptions and approaches of science, but (...) what did it really teach us? What does it mean to study scientific practices? What are the general lessons, implications, and new challenges? This volume explores questions about the practice turn using both case studies and theoretical analysis. The case studies examine empirical and mathematical sciences, including the engineering sciences. The volume promotes interactions between acknowledged experts from different, often thought of as conflicting, orientations. It presents contributions in conjunction with critical commentaries that put the theses and assumptions of the former in perspective. Overall, the book offers a unique and diverse range of perspectives on the meanings, methods, lessons, and challenges associated with the practice turn. (shrink)

Emotional AI is an emerging technology used to make probabilistic predictions about the emotional states of people using data sources, such as facial (micro)-movements, body language, vocal tone or the choice of words. The performance of such systems is heavily debated and so are the underlying scientific methods that serve as the basis for many such technologies. In this article I will engage with this new technology, and with the debates and literature that surround it. Working at the intersection of (...) criminology, policing, surveillance and the study of emotional AI this paper explores and offers a framework of understanding the various issues that these technologies present particularly to liberal democracies. I argue that these technologies should not be deployed within public spaces because there is only a very weak evidence-base as to their effectiveness in a policing and security context, and even more importantly represent a major intrusion to people’s private lives and also represent a worrying extension of policing power because of the possibility that intentions and attitudes may be inferred. Further to this, the danger in the use of such invasive surveillance for the purpose of policing and crime prevention in urban spaces is that it potentially leads to a highly regulated and control-oriented society. I argue that emotion recognition has severe impacts on the right to the city by not only undertaking surveillance of existing situations but also making inferences and probabilistic predictions about future events as well as emotions and intentions. (shrink)

This article is a critical analysis of Ingrid Robeyns’ “economic limitarianism” (2017, 2019, 2022), the suggestion that there is a moral case against allowing people to be richer than they need to be in order to achieve full flourishing. Wealth above a certain “riches line” lacks value and should be capped at that level. Robeyns claims that limitarianism is justified as a partial theory of economic justice, since vast wealth is a threat to political equality and the revenue raised from (...) taxing wealth can be used to meet urgent needs. She also claims that limitarianism is problem-driven philosophy and should be judged by its capacity to address problems in the world as it is. The argument in this article is that limitarianism fails on its own premises, both as partial theory of justice and as guide to decision-making. The arguments invoked in its favour as theory does not provide reasons to support it over other redistributive schemes. As guide to practical action, it runs counter to what empirical research reveals about how attitudes to economic inequality works in that people’s acceptance of inequality adjusts: the more unequal a society is, the more inequality is accepted as fair. By disregarding inequalities below the riches-line as well as the economic system that produces them, limitarianism has no tools for countering this adjustment and risks legitimating a politics of inequality. Anyone who shares Robeyns’ concerns about economic inequality have reason to be wary of limitarianism. (shrink)

Patientenverfügungen und andere Arten gesundheitlicher Vorausverfügungen wie Advance Care Planning und in gewisser Hinsicht auch Vorsorgevollmachten und Betreuungsverfügungen schließen evaluativ gehaltvolle Annahmen und Werturteile über den weiteren Verlauf des eigenen Lebens ein, die sich als mehr oder weniger angemessen erweisen können und daher einer ethischen Klärung und Reflexion bedürfen. Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach den Grundlagen dieser Annahmen und Urteile nach und argumentiert, dass für ihre Analyse eine strebensethische Perspektive auf Vorstellungen eines guten Lebens in der Zeit besonders geeignet (...) ist. Dazu geben wir zunächst einen kurzen Überblick über die empirische Forschung zu Einflussfaktoren bei der Abfassung gesundheitlicher Vorausverfügungen, insbesondere der Bedeutung von individuellen Wertvorstellungen und Lebensorientierungen. Im nächsten Schritt wenden wir uns vor diesem Hintergrund der Bewertung von Lebensqualität im Lebensverlauf zu. Wie sich dabei zeigt, verweisen die betreffenden Werturteile in mehrfacher Hinsicht auf umfassendere Vorstellungen eines guten Lebens und seines zeitlichen Verlaufs. Daher nehmen wir im Anschluss die Frage des guten Lebens in der Zeit in den Blick und arbeiten typologisierend unterschiedliche Vorstellungen heraus, an denen sich die Implikationen der zeitlichen Erstreckung und Verlaufsstruktur guten Lebens für gesundheitliche Vorausverfügungen deutlich machen lassen. Der Aufsatz formuliert so nicht nur wichtige Perspektiven für eine eingehendere empirische Erforschung evaluativer Aspekte der Abfassung gesundheitlicher Vorausverfügungen. Die Klärung der Bedeutung der Zeitstruktur guten Lebens für solche Verfügungen eröffnet auch einen theoretischen Zugang zu den grundlegenden strebensethischen Fragen, mit denen sich die Betroffenen innerhalb des Rahmens des sollensethisch gut begründeten, gesellschaftlich weithin anerkannten und gesetzlich abgesicherten Rechtes auf ein selbstbestimmtes Sterben konfrontiert sehen. (shrink)

A large number of legal rules create an obligation to prevent, repair or otherwise mitigate damage to human health or the environment. Many of these rules require that a legally relevant causal relation between human behaviour and the damage at issue is established, and in the establishment of causal relations of this kind scientific information is often pressed into service. This thesis examines this specifically legal use of scientific information. It shows that many legally relevant causal relations cannot be established (...) in this way. It also shows that the legal strategy for dealing with epistemic difficulties by relaxing the standard of proof is of limited value in tackling this problem. Consequently, the legal rules focused upon are less efficient tools for combating damage to human health and the environment than their appearances suggest. Other legal means to achieve this aim should therefore be considered. The thesis begins by presenting a framework which can be used to solve some important problems with communication and the division of labour that arise when scientific information is used to answer legal questions. This framework recognizes both epistemological and ontological differences between law and science. The latter are differences between the kinds of entity which are relevant in distinct theoretical contexts; the former, by contrast, are differences between applicable standards of proof. In subsequent parts of the thesis this framework shapes the discussion of the question: To what extent can legally relevant causal relations, involving legally significant entities, be established through the application of scientific information about other, scientifically relevant entities and legal standards of proof. The thesis concludes with a discussion of some of the ways in which the legal regulation could, potentially, be adapted, so as to counteract damage to human health and the environment more efficiently. (shrink)

First published in 1984, this is a study of categorization practices: how people categorize each other and their actions; how they describe, infer, and judge. The book presents a sociological analysis and description of practical activities and makes a cogent contribution to the study of how the moral order actually works in practical communicative contexts. Among the issues dealt with are: collectivity categorizations, the organization of lists and descriptions, moral attribution and inferences, and the relationship between standards of morality and (...) standards of rationality. (shrink)

The present study examined the effects of mindfulness training on attention regulation in university students and whether the potential benefits of implementation are influenced by the yoga component of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) and/or by MBI homework practice. In a non-randomized trial with pre- and post-assessments, n = 180 university students were allocated to either mindfulness training (experimental groups), awareness activities (active control group), or no training (passive control group). Mindfulness was taught through two MBIs, one including yoga and the other (...) excluding yoga. Attention regulation was operationalized via behavioral indicators, namely sustained attention, cognitive flexibility, cognitive inhibition, and data-driven information processing. With the exception of speed in a cognitive flexibility task, the results indicated no systematic or differential advantage arising from mindfulness training, with or without yoga, regarding the aspects of attention regulation. There was no consistent influence of homework quantity or quality. The implications for mindfulness training in academic contexts are discussed. (shrink)

The biofuel boom is placing enormous demands on existing cropping systems, with the most crucial consequences in the agri-food sector. The biofuel industry is responding by initiating private governance and certification. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the Cramer Commission, among others, have formulated criteria on “sustainable” biofuel production and processing. This article explores the legitimacy of private governance and certification by the biofuel industry, highlighting opportunities and challenges. It argues that the concept of output based legitimacy is (...) problematic in the case of biofuel as long as no consensus or commonly agreed “best” solution has been established on what sustainable biofuel production is. Furthermore, it shows that the private governance initiatives analyzed fail to adequately include actors from developing countries. Finally, the article argues that we need mechanisms for control and accountability in order to guarantee that the political output of biofuel certification serves the common welfare. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy of science, the consensus view seems to be that scientific explanations describe mechanisms responsible for the phenomena to be explained. Two kinds of explanatory relevance figure in mechanistic accounts of explanation: causal and constitutive. Following prominent accounts, it seems natural to analyze both these relations in terms of systematic interventions into some factor X with respect to another factor Y. However, such interventions are tailored to uncover causal relations only. Construing the constitutive relationship between parts and wholes (...) in terms of interventions thus raises metaphysical, conceptual, and epistemological questions. We here review the barriers that intervention-based inquiry into mechanisms encounters and consider some solutions. (shrink)

Featuring contributions from the world’s leading experts on the subject and based partly on several detailed case studies, this volume is the first comprehensive analysis of the scientific notion of robustness as well as of the general ...

A growing body of work approaches the current environmental devastation from the perspective of a “crisis of sensitivity”: our inability to care for the living around us is said to be a failure of perception and feeling. The article explores several versions of the narrative of modern insensitivity through a study of Günther Anders and Jane Bennett, highlighting the limitations of such approaches. I suggest the notion of a desensitization apparatus to specify and politicize the diagnosis of a “crisis of (...) sensitivity”. (shrink)

Background Healthcare leader support and facilitation for ethics work are of great importance for healthcare professionals’ handling of ethical issues, moral distress, and quality care provision. A digital tool for ethical reflection in long-term care was developed in response to the demand for appropriate tools. Research aim This study aimed to explore healthcare leaders’ expectations of using a digital tool for ethical reflection among their home nursing care staff. Research design A qualitative research design with vignettes and focus group interviews (...) was used. The data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Participants and Research Context The sample comprised ten healthcare leaders from municipal long-term care in Norway. Ethical Considerations Participation was voluntary and based on informed consent. The Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research approved this study. Findings The analysis resulted in the development of three themes representing leaders’ expectations of the tool: (i) giving staff a voice, (ii) revealing ethics in practice, and (iii) keeping the pot boiling. Discussion Leaders must be informed about the ethical issues experienced to engage in supportive measures for their staff. Digital channels can increase the democratization, safety, and efficiency of communication between employees and leaders and increase awareness of ethical aspects in daily care work. The leaders had positive expectations of employees’ activities and benefits from using the tool for ethical reflection. However, they admitted that realizing the tool’s potential to ensure continuity in ethics work requires considerable organizational and leader involvement. Conclusions This study shows that healthcare leaders are open to digital solutions for managing ethics work in home nursing care. Both opportunities and important prerequisites for successfully implementing the digital tool were identified. (shrink)

Our article examines how journalistic reports and online comments have made sense of computational politics. It treats the discourse around data-driven campaigns as its object of analysis and codifies four main perspectives that have structured the debates about the use of large data sets and data analytics in elections. We study American, British, and German sources on the 2016 United States presidential election, the 2017 United Kingdom general election, and the 2017 German federal election. There, groups of speakers maneuvered between (...) enthusiastic, skeptical, agnostic, or admonitory stances and so cannot be clearly mapped onto these four discursive positions. Coming along with the inconsistent accounts, public sensemaking was marked by an atmosphere of speculation about the substance and effects of computational politics. We conclude that this equivocality helped journalists and commentators to sideline prior reporting on the issue in order to repeatedly rediscover the practices they had already covered. (shrink)

This book provides an analysis of the construction, diagnosis (as chaotic) and evaluation of models in chaos theory. It contains a detailed look at the interaction of the different models used in chaos theory and analyses how these models influence the way chaos is defined. Furthermore, the book discusses the conditions for the occurrence of chaos and the detection of chaos in nature.

Results from studies on gender differences in emotion recognition vary, depending on the types of emotion and the sensory modalities used for stimulus presentation. This makes comparability between different studies problematic. This study investigated emotion recognition of healthy participants (N = 84; 40 males; ages 20 to 70 years), using dynamic stimuli, displayed by two genders in three different sensory modalities (auditory, visual, audio-visual) and five emotional categories. The participants were asked to categorise the stimuli on the basis of their (...) nonverbal emotional content (happy, alluring, neutral, angry, and disgusted). Hit rates and category selection biases were analysed. Women were found to be more accurate in recognition of emotional prosody. This effect was partially mediated by hearing loss for the frequency of 8,000 Hz. Moreover, there was a gender-specific selection bias for alluring stimuli: Men, as compared to women, chose “alluring” more often when a stimulus was presented by a woman as compared to a man. (shrink)

This study aims to disentangle complexity from randomness and chaos, and to present a definition of complexity that emphasizes its epistemically distinct qualities. I will review existing attempts at defining complexity and argue that these suffer from two major faults: a tendency to neglect the underlying dynamics and to focus exclusively on the phenomenology of complex systems; and linguistic imprecisions in describing these phenomenologies. I will argue that the tendency to discuss phenomenology removed from the underlying dynamics is the main (...) root of the difficulties in distinguishing complex from chaotic or random systems. In my own definition, I will explicitly try to avoid these pitfalls. The theoretical contemplations in this paper will be tested on a sample of five models: the random Kac ring, the chaotic CA30, the regular CA90, the complex CA110 and the complex Bak-Sneppen model. Although these modelling studies are restricted in scope and can only be seen as preliminary, they still constitute on of the first attempts to investigate complex systems comparatively. (shrink)

What kinds of norms constrain mechanistic discovery and explanation? In the mechanistic literature, the norms for good explanations are directly derived from answers to the metaphysical question of what explanations are. Prominent mechanistic accounts thus emphasize either ontic or epistemic norms. Still, mechanistic philosophers on both sides agree that there is no sharp distinction between the processes of discovery and explanation. Thus, it seems reasonable to expect that ontic and epistemic accounts of explanation will be accompanied by ontic and epistemic (...) accounts of discovery, respectively. As we will show here, however, recent discovery accounts implicitly rely on both ontic and epistemic norms to characterize the discovery process. In this paper, we develop an account that makes explicit that, and how, ontic and epistemic norms work together throughout the discovery process. By describing mechanism discovery as a process of pattern recognition we demonstrate that scientists have to develop epistemic activities to distinguish a pattern from its background. Furthermore, they have to determine which epistemic activities successfully describe how the pattern is implemented by identifying the pattern’s components. Our approach reveals that ontic and epistemic norms are equally important in mechanism discovery. (shrink)

Definition of the problemAdvance directives involve evaluative assumptions about the further course of one’s life that can be more or less appropriate and thus call for ethical reflection. This contribution focuses on the basis and criteria of such assumptions. We argue that considerations regarding the temporal structure of a good life constitute a particularly relevant perspective in this context.ArgumentsEmpirical studies on the individual composition of advance directives point to the important role of personal values and life plans that can change (...) over time. Therefore, we first contextualize advance directives from the perspective of an ethics of the good life and then discuss their implications with regard to different levels of temporality, comprising fundamental parameters of human existence in time, cultural models of the life course, as well as narratives of the individual trajectory of life.ConclusionConceptions of a good life and its temporal structure represent an important perspective for drafting and interpreting advance directives. Their consideration provides a more nuanced understanding of the evaluative implications of advance care planning. This can benefit individual patients, service providers, as well as policy makers. (shrink)

During the last ten years complexity research has received a large amount of attention by both the scientific community and the general public. One of the greatest draws of complexity as a field of research is the possibility of recognizing it in virtually every branch of science and he social sciences. However, despite the labelling of an increasingly large number of models and natural systems as ‘complex', the definition of the term has remained vague. In particular, attempts at such a (...) definition have failed to fully emancipate the notion of a complex system from those of a stochastically random and deterministically chaotic one. In this paper we will try to disentangle the definition of complexity from randomness and chaos. We will also examine the power of some existing entropy and complexity measures to distinguish a complex system from the other two. Our analysis indicates that the affinity of complexity to chaos has been overstated in the existing literature and that a careful distinction between phenomenological and dynamical complexity will be needed to achieve a successful definition. (shrink)

Il s’agit de montrer que Gorgias avait conçu une opposition structurelle entre une persuasion bonne et une persuasion mauvaise et trompeuse. Il a souvent paru difficile de concilier sa prétention à dire la vérité au sujet d’Hélène et sa description, au sein du même texte, du discours comme indissociable d’une persuasion explicitement dite trompeuse. L’ Éloge d’Hélène serait-il lui-même trompeur, sa vérité ne serait-elle en réalité qu’une δόξα parmi d’autres, puisque le discours faillirait à dire ce qui est? Au contraire, (...) Gorgias évoque « quelque mauvaise persuasion », suggérant que la persuasion, ambivalente, peut aussi être bonne ou neutre : il parlerait principalement d’une persuasion mauvaise associée à la tromperie pour démontrer l’innocence d’Hélène qui l’a subie. Cette persuasion trompeuse fonctionnerait parce que ses victimes méconnaîtraient les faits passés, présents et futurs. Toutefois, le texte suggère que certains individus puissent les connaître. Gorgias en ferait partie : il se présente en opposition avec les poètes, qui estiment détenir leur savoir des Muses mais diffusent des discours mensongers, et, loin de transmettre comme eux un discours acquis d’avance, il a recours au raisonnement, λογισμός, seul moyen d’accéder à une connaissance des événements. Il reste cependant comme les poètes tributaire de la tradition. (shrink)

edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Häyry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics.

Czech translation of Marguerite Léna’s Choisir l’ Europe: Constantin Sigov et la dignité humaine.

People typically remember emotionally negative words better than neutral words. Two experiments are reported that investigate whether emotionally enhanced memory for negatively arousing words is based on a storage or retrieval advantage. Participants studied non-word–word pairs that either involved negatively arousing or neutral target words. Memory for these target words was tested by means of a recognition test and a cued-recall test. Data were analysed with a multinomial model that allows the disentanglement of storage and retrieval processes in the present (...) recognition-then-cued-recall paradigm. In both experiments the multinomial analyses revealed no storage differences between negatively arousing and neutral words but a clear retrieval advantage for negatively arousing words in the cued-recall test. These findings suggest that EEM for negatively arousing words is driven by associative processes. (shrink)

The volume is a collection of essays devoted to the analysis of scientific change and stability. It explores the balance and tension that exist between commensurability and continuity on the one hand, and incommensurability and discontinuity on the other. Moreover, it discusses some central epistemological consequences regarding the nature of scientific progress, rationality and realism. In relation to these topics, it investigates a number of new avenues, and revisits some familiar issues, with a focus on the history and philosophy of (...) physics, and an emphasis on developments in cognitive sciences as well as on the claims of “new experimentalists”. The book constitutes fully revised versions of papers which were originally presented at the international colloquium held at the University of Nancy, France, in June 2004. (shrink)

I will present a refutation of 6 and 7 inconsistency claim. Using the proof by Kiessling, I will show that Classical Electrodynamics can be applied consistently and can preserve energy conservation to the problem of charged, accelerated particles. This refutes the core of Frisch's inconsistency claim. Additionally, I will argue that Frisch's proof and the resulting debate is based on a comparison of different, approximate, explicit solutions to the Maxwell–Lorentz equations. However, in order to be informative on the foundations of (...) CED, an analysis would have to be focussed on the Maxwell–Lorentz equations as coupled system of equations. (shrink)

First published in 1984, this is a study of categorization practices: how people categorize each other and their actions; how they describe, infer, and judge. The book presents a sociological analysis and description of practical activities and makes a cogent contribution to the study of how the moral order actually works in practical communicative contexts. Among the issues dealt with are: collectivity categorizations, the organization of lists and descriptions, moral attribution and inferences, and the relationship between standards of morality and (...) standards of rationality. (shrink)

This study investigated whether school closures and health-related uncertainties in the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic posed risk factors for adolescents’ mental health and whether perceived social support by parents, teachers, and friends functioned as protective factors. In particular, we argued that perceived social support would buffer negative associations between educational and health concerns and mental health. Based on a person-centered approach, we first examined resilience profiles. These profiles reflect configurations regarding the levels of these risk and protective factors (...) and levels of mental health. Second, we analyzed whether these risk and protective factors predicted adolescents’ mental health differently by using a variable-centered approach. The sample consisted of 1’562 adolescents in lower and higher secondary education from three regions: German-speaking part of Switzerland, N = 486; Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, N = 760; and Northern Italy N = 316. Results from the person-centered approach revealed three latent profiles characterized by low, average, or high resilience. Lower resilience was associated with higher educational concerns, lower perceived social support, and lower mental health, while high resilience was characterized by lower concerns, higher support, and higher mental health. Importantly, educational concerns varied more between profiles than health concerns, and perceived teacher and family support varied more than perceived friend support. Corroborating these findings, the variable-centered approach revealed that educational concerns were a stronger predictor than health concerns and pointed to a higher relative importance of perceived family support for adolescents’ mental health relative to perceived teacher and friend support. Taken together, the findings suggest that adolescents’ educational concerns and perceived family support, respectively, were stronger risk and protective factors for their mental health during school closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, adolescents from regions being more exposed to the COVID-19 pandemic, namely, Italian-speaking part of Switzerland and Northern Italy, were more likely classified in the low or the average rather than in the high resilience profile compared to students from the region with lower exposure, that is, the German-speaking part of Switzerland. (shrink)

The author starts from the observation that citizenship and voluntarism are contested terms with diverse meanings. They have also been appropriated by politicians of various persuasions and imbued with meanings associated with ‘feel good’ factors that emphasize serving in a community. Therefore, voluntarism has the potential to continue the exclusion of minority groups, marginalized individuals and collective groupings at the expense of their citizenship rights, particularly those identified by Hannah Arendt as the ‘right to have rights’ that have been endorsed (...) through public policy but today are being undermined by the ‘age of austerity’ in publicly funded welfare states. Against the background of the political context of UK, and the public rhetoric on the ‘Big Society’, the author examines whether citizenship discourses allied with voluntarism support a meaningful endorsement of altruistic solidarity or whether they endorse exploitative relationships under the guise of meeting the public needs. (shrink)

This article argues that theorists of black/african diasporas should interrogate the specific ways in which ‘race’ is used to engage people in diasporic projects, and that such projects are intimately intertwined with specifically gendered, sexualized, and generational class relations and positionalities in specific national contexts and spaces. Attention to these intersections can help us better understand hierarchies of power between and among diasporic individuals and communities. This article focuses on historically specific Swedish meanings of racialized femininities and the different forms (...) of agency women use to negotiate the gendered processes of racialization they encounter in a variety of settings and sources. It draws on interviews and fieldnotes conducted between 1994 and 2007, together with analysis of popular culture (music and radio programmes) and ethnographic material collected by Swedish ethnologist Viveca Motsieloa, and maps out some of the complexities utilized by different generations of Swedish women of African heritage in a changing Swedish landscape of racial formations. Their negotiations show how tensions and differences between ‘second-generation’ migrants and those of the ‘first generation’ are expressed through gender, sexuality, and differing understandings of ‘race’ (and the place of ‘racial mixture’). (shrink)

Background Nurse leaders increasingly need effective tools that facilitate the prioritisation of ethics and help staff navigate ethical challenges and prevent moral distress. This study examined experiences with a new digital tool for ethical reflection, tailored to improve the capabilities of both leaders and employees in the context of municipal long-term care. Aim The aim was to explore the experiences of nurse leaders and nurses in using Digital Ethical Reflection as a tool for ethics work in home nursing care. Research (...) design The study employed a qualitative design, incorporating individual and focus group interviews for data collection. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the data. Participants and research context The participants comprised six nurse leaders and 13 nurses, representing six home care zones across two Norwegian municipalities. Ethical considerations The study involved informed, voluntary participation and was approved by the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research. Findings Four themes were developed: a constant walk on the edge between engagement and discouragement and lost in translation describe the process, while tuning in to the ethical dimension and navigating ethical uncertainties illuminate the experienced significance of Digital Ethical Reflection. Conclusion Success with Digital Ethical Reflection in home nursing care depends on clear leadership planning, nurses’ understanding of the tool’s purpose, and active use of digital registrations. Support from ethically interested nurses enhances overall engagement. Further research is needed to explore the potential of Digital Ethical Reflection as an additional tool in long-term care ethics work. (shrink)

I argue along the following lines: For Wollstonecraft, liberty is independence in two different spheres, one presupposing the other. On the one hand, liberty is independence in relation to others, in the sense of not being vulnerable to their whim or arbitrary will. Call this social, or political, liberty. For liberty understood in this way, infringements do not require individual instances of interfering. Liberty is lost in unequal relationships, through dependence on the goodwill of a master. In addition, liberty is (...) independence of mind, a state I am in when I trust my own reasoned judgement above any other authority. Call this moral liberty. Moral liberty needs social liberty. In other words, to the extent I am subject to the whim of others, I am not in a position to be guided by my own judgement. Moral liberty is one of two aspects of virtue: a disposition to independent deliberation according to reason. As such, virtue is a habit of mind. The second aspect of virtue is universal benevolence as its action guiding principle. This is how liberty, equality, and virtue fit together. Social liberty, understood as independence in relation to others, necessarily coexist with equality, and is necessary for moral liberty, the habit of mind that makes up one aspect of virtue, as well as for universal benevolence as virtue’s action guiding principle. This triad explains her views on property, on sex equality, and also on legitimate government. My second line of argument is that according to Wollstonecraft, we have a duty to be virtuous. Virtue is the main object of human life. But since virtue, in both its aspects, needs social liberty and since liberty is the birthright of man, the duty is conditioned on the right. The foundation for the triad of liberty, equality, and virtue is a theory of rights. The basis for the discussion of virtue is the right to the conditions necessary for its realization. The duty is conditioned on the right to liberty. (shrink)

In this chapter it is argued that Mary Wollstonecraft’s political is best characterized as ‘feminist republicanism’. Wollstonecraft’s feminism challenges republicanism from within. The republican movement used the language of rights and liberty in arguments for popular sovereignty and against despotic and aristocratic privilege. Wollstonecraft articulated her feminism within and against this movement, which argued for the rights of all while taking for granted that ‘all’ is properly represented by white men with property. Her feminism requires the dismantling of all hierarchies, (...) for the sake of freedom and virtue. Many have read Wollstonecraft as a liberal. If by liberal one simply means a philosophy based on natural rights and a principle of individual liberty, then Wollstonecraft was a liberal, but we do not gain any understanding of the particulars of her thinking in that way. The republican conception of personal freedom – independence or freedom from arbitrary rule – is an organising principle in Wollstonecraft’s thought. This conception of freedom feeds her feminist critique of republicanism: the sexism of republicanism is found in the definitional association of liberty and virtue with maleness. Of equal importance is her critical take on the civic humanist discourse of virtue as a way of living freely in society. Virtue is not a set of rules; it is the learnt habit of a resolute and independent personal character. This in turn requires that a person receives rational education and is treated with equal respect. Women are deliberately kept out of this sphere of moral progress. When Wollstonecraft ironically notes that ‘truth, fortitude and humanity’ are seen to be ‘manly morals’ she attacks, from within, the republican language that makes virtue into a male domain. (shrink)

This paper deals with calibration in scientific practices which investigate relatively well-understood natural phenomena by means of already standardized instrumental devices. Calibration is a crucial topic, since it conditions the reliability of instrumental procedures in science. Yet although important, calibration is a relatively neglected topic. We think more attention should be devoted to calibration. The paper attempts to take a step in this direction. The aims are two-fold: (1) to characterize calibration in a relatively simple kind of scientific practices; (2) (...) to provide conceptual and taxonomic tools of broader scope that help to get a better understanding of calibration in more complex cases and other kinds of scientific practices. For this purpose, we first provide indications for why a conceptual framework is needed. Second, a bibliographic survey of works dealing with calibration is attempted. Third, we introduce different tools to enable a better understanding of calibration. Fourth, we turn to the elaboration of what we call a “simple exemplar” of calibration, illustrated through the case of the calibration of an equal-arm balance. Fifth, the tools previously introduced, and the framework of the simple exemplar, are applied to a more complex case of calibration: calibration procedures in X-ray experiments. This serves to show the work accomplished by the simple exemplar and to emphasize features of more complex cases of calibration. Eventually, we revisit and specify the nature, status, scope and value of the proposed framework. (shrink)

Ce texte propose un décentrement théorique dans la formulation et l’analyse de ce que la clinique a coutume de désigner par « troubles psychiques/psychiatriques ». En contestant le monopole qu’à le pouvoir psychiatrique sur la thématisation de la souffrance et les voies possibles de rétablissement, il devient alors possible d’ouvrir un espace pour penser une politique de l’affect.

The Groningen Protocol aims at providing guidance in end-of-life decision-making for severely impaired newborns. Since its publication in 2005 many bioethicists and health care professionals have written articles in response. However, only very little is known about the opinion among the general population on this subject. The aim of this study was to present the general attitude towards neonatal euthanasia (NE) among the Austrian population and the factors associated with the respondents’ opinion.