Background: Legislative changes are resulting in assisted death as an option for people at the end of life. Although nurses’ experiences and perspectives are underrepresented within broader ethical discourses about assisted death, there is a small but significant body of literature examining nurses’ experiences of caring for people who request this option. Aim: To synthesize what has been learned about nurses’ experiences of caring for patients who request assisted death and to highlight what is morally at stake for nurses who (...) undertake this type of care. Design: Qualitative meta-synthesis. Methods: Six databases were searched: CINAHL, Medline, EMBASE, Joanna Briggs Institute, PsycINFO, and Web of Science. The search was completed on 22 October 2014 and updated in February 2016. Of 879 articles identified from the database searches, 16 articles were deemed relevant based on inclusion criteria. Following quality appraisal, 14 studies were retained for analysis and synthesis. Results: The moral experience of the nurse is defined by a profound sense of responsibility, shaped by contextual forces that nurses navigate in everyday end-of-life care practice, and sustained by intra-team moral and emotional support. Discussion: The findings of this synthesis support the view that nurses are moral agents who are deeply invested in the moral integrity of end-of-life care involving assisted death. The findings further demonstrate that to fully appreciate the ethics of assisted death from a nursing standpoint, it is necessary to understand the broader constraints on nurses’ moral agency that operate in everyday end-of-life care. Ethical considerations: Research ethics board approval was not required for this synthesis of previously published literature. Conclusion: In order to understand how to enact ethical practice in the area of assisted death, the moral experiences of nurses should be investigated and foregrounded. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one historically important approach to computationalism about thought. According to "the classical computational theory of mind" (CTM), thinking involves the algorithmic manipulation of mental symbols. The chapter reviews CTM and the related language of thought (LOT) position, urging that the orthodox position, associated with the groundbreaking work of Jerry Fodor, has failed to specify a key component: the notion of a mental symbol. It clarifies the notion of a LOT symbol and explores an approach different from (...) the orthodox, Fodorian LOT/CTM. The LOT position is a leading approach to the computational nature of thought. A key feature of LOT is that its mental representations have a combinatorial syntax. A representational system has a combinatorial syntax when it employs a finite store of atomic representations, which can be combined to form compound representations, which can then be combined to form further compound representations. (shrink)

The “Cosmological Constant Problem” is widely considered a crisis in contemporary theoretical physics. Unfortunately, the search for its resolution is hampered by open disagreement about what is, strictly, the problem. This disagreement stems from the observation that the CCP is not a problem within any of our current theories, and nearly all of the details of those future theories for which the CCP could be made a problem are up for grabs. Given this state of affairs, I discuss how one (...) ought to make sense of the role of the CCP in physics and generalize some lessons from it. (shrink)

I argue that property dualists cannot hold that minds are physical substances. The focus of my discussion is a property dualism that takes qualia to be sui generis features of reality.

The online space has become a digital public square, where individuals interact and share ideas on the most trivial to the most serious of matters, including discussions of controversial ethical issues in science, technology and medicine. In the last decade, new disciplines like computational social science and social data science have created methods to collect and analyse such data that have considerably expanded the scope of social science research. Empirical bioethics can benefit from the integration of such digital methods to (...) investigate novel digital phenomena and trace how bioethical issues take shape online.Here, using concrete examples, we demonstrate how novel methods based on digital approaches in the social sciences can be used effectively in the domain of bioethics. We show that a digital turn in bioethics research aligns with the established aims of empirical bioethics, integrating with normative analysis and expanding the scope of the discipline, thus offering ways to reinforce the capacity of bioethics to tackle the increasing complexity of present-day ethical issues in science and technology. We propose to call this domain of research in bioethicsdigital bioethics. (shrink)

Both concepts of the holobiont and the immune system are at the heart of an ongoing scientific and philosophical examination concerning questions of the organism’s individuality and identity as well as the relations between organisms and their environment. Examining the holobiont, the question of boundaries and individuality is challenging because it is both an assemblage of organisms with physiological cohesive aspects. I discuss the concept of immunity and the immune system function from the holobiont perspective. Because of the host-microbial close (...) relations of codependence and interdependence, the holobiont is more often than not confused with the host, as the host is the domain in which this entity exists. I discuss the holobiont unique ecological characteristics of microbial assemblages connected to a host in a network of interactions in which the host is one of the organisms in the community but also its landscape. Therefore, I suggest viewing the holobiont as a host-ecosystem and discuss the implication of such a view on the concept of immunity and the meaning of protection. Furthermore, I show that viewing the holobiont as a host ecosystem opens the possibility of using the same ecological definition of boundaries and immunity dealing with an ecological system. Thus, the holobiont’s boundaries and immunity are defined by the persistence of its complex system of interactions integrating existing and new interactions. This way of thinking presents a notion of immunity that materializes as the result of the complex interdependence relations between the different organisms composing the holobiont similar to that of an ecosystem. Taking this view further, I discuss the notion of immunogenicity that is ontologically heterogeneous with various causal explanations of the processes of tolerance and targeted immune response. Finally, I discuss the possible conceptualization of already existing and new biomedical practices. (shrink)

(2001). Fruits, Apples, and Category Mistakes: On Sport, Games, and Play. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport: Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 151-159. doi: 10.1080/00948705.2001.9714610.

(1993). Why Olympic Athletes Should Avoid the Use and Seek the Elimination of Performance-Enhancing Substances and Practices From the Olympic Games. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport: Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 64-81. doi: 10.1080/00948705.1993.9714504.

In this conceptual paper, we draw on social identity theory as a means to bridge individuals’ memberships in social groups with value creation in stakeholder networks defined by a socio-economic issue. To address recent calls for microfoundations of stakeholder theory, we introduce a reconceptualization of stakeholders as social groups to examine how value is defined and interpreted in intergroup processes embedded in an issue-based stakeholder network. We establish a theoretical model of value creation that links individuals’ identification with stakeholder groups (...) to intergroup trust, co-operation, and value creation. Specifically, we argue that the salience of preexisting social identities causes harmful tensions in stakeholder relationships that negatively impact value creation. We then propose that the development of a more inclusive stakeholder identity overcomes these negative intergroup consequences in multistakeholder settings. We discuss the impact on value creation of four stakeholder identity representations based on the salience of specific and superordinate stakeholder groups. The paper concludes with implications of our theoretical model for both research and practice related to value creation in issue-based stakeholder networks. (shrink)

The core of the language of thought program is the claim that thinking is the manipulation of symbols according to rules. Yet LOT has said little about symbol natures, and existing accounts are highly controversial. This is a major flaw at the heart of the LOT program: LOT requires an account of symbol natures to naturalize intentionality, to determine whether the brain even engages in symbol manipulations, and to understand how symbols relate to lower-level neurocomputational states. This paper provides the (...) much-needed theory of symbols, and in doing so, alters the LOT program in significant respects. (shrink)

The ethical implications of the explosion of social media outlets for social work education are explored in this paper. Given that social work education has a dual focus, both of educating students and of socializing practitioners into the profession, the issue of the blurring between what is social and what is professional gains particular salience for both educators and students. Recommendations for educators to ethically address the need to maintain a consistent professional presence online and to avoid potentially harmful dual (...) relationships with students are presented. These recommendations include: abstain from using social media or use only a static professional profile; use only university protected sites to promote collaboration with students in the classroom including all students to avoid any appearance of impropriety; use social media with the utmost discretion mindful of all the risks by creating a very select circle of friends, separating one’s personal site from one’s professional site; develop policies which include not friending any individual student or any current student and inform students about the policies. (shrink)

Recently, proponents of Humean Supervenience have challenged the plausibility of the intuition that the laws of nature ‘govern’, or guide, the evolution of events in the universe. Certain influential thought experiments authored by John Carroll, Michael Tooley, and others, rely strongly on such intuitions. These thought experiments are generally regarded as playing a central role in the lawhood debate, suggesting that the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis view of the laws of nature, and the related doctrine of the Humean Supervenience of laws, are false. (...) In this paper, I take on these recent challenges, arguing that the intuition that the laws govern should be taken seriously. Still, I find the recent discussions insightful, in certain ways. Employing some ideas from one of the critics, I draw some non-standard conclusions about the significance of the thought experiments to the lawhood debate. (shrink)

Many physiotherapists are reluctant to treat a client with bone metastases, as treatment indications are not clearly defined. The paradigmatic case presented here, and a review of the literature, allow us to highlight some ethical and clinical issues in physiotherapy care at the end of life, particularly for patients with bone metastases. The objective of this article is not to create an ethical decision making model but rather to serve as additional guidance to existing decision models in rehabilitation. This guidance (...) is based on principlism and is specific to the oncology clients in palliative care. The proposed principles, without being exhaustive, are beneficence, non-maleficence, respect for autonomy and justice. With a review of clinical indications and precautions, the article also helps to clarify both the theoretical and the evidence-based risks. These principles provide avenues for reflection to guide the management of these patients. The physiotherapist will then be able to conduct a critical analysis, in collaboration with the interdisciplinary team, whose goal is to respect the client’s right to appropriate care at the right time and that is based on clinical need. (shrink)

The dual role of microbial communities as either beneficial/functional or harmful/pathogenic involves two issues concerning causality in physiology and medicine, etiology of disease, and the notion of function in biology. Causal explanation formulated by the germ theory of disease and the Koch postulates connects the existence of a specifically identified microbe to disease by the isolation and identification of a pathogen from an organism with the disease and the successful infection of a healthy individual. Similarly, microbiome research in medicine centers (...) on taxonomic composition in correlation with physiological conditions and germ-free mice experimentations to establish causal connections. However, because the microbiome is an ecological community, it lacks the specificity of identification assumed in the germ theory. Furthermore, the ecological aspects within and between microbiomes such as background conditions, microbial interactions, and interdependence, are treated as confounding. Looking at ecological studies, the causal explanations are less specific regarding complex systems with their processes of interactions. This article makes the following two points: One is that microbiome causality in the host should be understood similarly to the microbiome causality in an ecosystem. The second is that if considering a microbiome’s causality in the host as an ecosystem, its etiological explanation needs to be revisited to include a heterogeneous and mutual notion of interactions. Finally, according to the second point, the notion of function in ecology with its relevant notion of causality should be considered accordingly. (shrink)

Bildung, a German pedagogical term with the sense of ‘educating oneself’, refers to some of the most complex human activities. It is constitutive for human existence, because it is related to the characteristic of meaning. Because of the great relevance of Bildung for people, education is essential for furthering it. The two purposes of this contribution are: i. to examine the structure of one main process component of Bildung, namely the process of designing an image (Bild) of the changes to (...) be furthered in the educand, and ii. to explain this process component of Bildung. This process is theoretically structured as a subject‐object transformation, and the attempt is made to explain this from an idealistic perspective. Building upon this foundation, the article shows how the process of designing an image for Bildung can be furthered educationally. (shrink)

In order to enable firms to successfully deal with issues of corporate sustainability, the firms' stakeholders would need to participate in sustainability accounting and management. In practice, however, participative sustainability accounting and management are often unfeasible. The resulting consequence is the risk of misbalancing single aspects of sustainability. The purpose of this article is to show that reflexivity in sustainability accounting and management, that is, an ongoing reflection on the relationship between the goals of corporate sustainability and the overarching objective (...) of sustainable development can, at least, mitigate this problem. Reflexivity has the potential to initiate processes of collective learning and could eventually bring about the realization of business models that integrate economic, ecological, and social considerations. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation of order and welfare for Han Fei's philosophy. It will be claimed that the Legalist did indeed show concern for the overall quality of life of society, claiming that his model state would lead to a substantial increase for the individual's welfare. On the other hand, although he acknowledges (and cares) for these positive consequences, Han Fei does not attach any value for legitimizing the system he proposes to them. Even if there were any value (...) attached to benefitting the people, it would be indirect. For Han Fei, a welfare does not legitimize the system but is a consequence of the ‘right system’. He is not concerned with letting the people live better for the sake of the people, but rather with having healthy and motivated subjects, as these are at the same time consequences of, and requirements for, a strong and stable state. The novelty of this paper is to interpret Han Fei's philosophy as welfare-maximization through a specific understanding of the role of virtue. (shrink)

Background: Autonomy is a central concept in both bioethics and rehabilitation. Bioethics has emphasized autonomy as self-governance and its application in treatment decision-making. In addition to discussing decisional autonomy, rehabilitation also focuses on autonomy as functional independence. In practice, responding to patients with diminished autonomy is an important component of rehabilitation care, but also gives rise to tensions and challenges. Our objective was to better understand the complex and distinctive ways that autonomy is understood and upheld in the context of (...) rehabilitation care by reviewing how autonomy is discussed in the rehabilitation literature. Methods: We conducted a scoping review addressing issues of autonomy in the context of mental and physical rehabilitation. Our process followed three sequential steps. We extracted and analyzed bibliometric information. We then examined how autonomy was defined and conceptualized. Finally, we examined how the articles discussed the roles of rehabilitation health professionals in responding to patient autonomy. Findings: The articles include 16 empirical reports, 17 case studies and 30 theoretical papers. The most common conceptual accounts of autonomy drew upon principlism, rights-based and legal analyses, and relational/social approaches. We identified four broad approaches for responding to patient autonomy: supporting, promoting, respecting and advocating. Conclusion: This review helps clarify some of the ambiguities and conceptual distinctions underlying discussions and practices related to autonomy in rehabilitation. It also draws attention to a wide range of activities that health professionals can undertake with the goal of supporting, promoting, respecting and advocating for patient autonomy in rehabilitation care. (shrink)

Background: Autonomy is a central concept in both bioethics and rehabilitation. Bioethics has emphasized autonomy as self-governance and its application in treatment decision-making. In addition to discussing decisional autonomy, rehabilitation also focuses on autonomy as functional independence. In practice, responding to patients with diminished autonomy is an important component of rehabilitation care, but also gives rise to tensions and challenges. Our objective was to better understand the complex and distinctive ways that autonomy is understood and upheld in the context of (...) rehabilitation care by reviewing how autonomy is discussed in the rehabilitation literature. Methods: We conducted a scoping review addressing issues of autonomy in the context of mental and physical rehabilitation. Our process followed three sequential steps. We extracted and analyzed bibliometric information. We then examined how autonomy was defined and conceptualized. Finally, we examined how the articles discussed the roles of rehabilitation health professionals in responding to patient autonomy. Findings: The articles include 16 empirical reports, 17 case studies and 30 theoretical papers. The most common conceptual accounts of autonomy drew upon principlism, rights-based and legal analyses, and relational/social approaches. We identified four broad approaches for responding to patient autonomy: supporting, promoting, respecting and advocating. Conclusion: This review helps clarify some of the ambiguities and conceptual distinctions underlying discussions and practices related to autonomy in rehabilitation. It also draws attention to a wide range of activities that health professionals can undertake with the goal of supporting, promoting, respecting and advocating for patient autonomy in rehabilitation care. (shrink)

The Ontological Square is a categorial scheme that combines two metaphysical distinctions: that between types (or universals ) and tokens (or particulars ) on the one hand, and that between characters (or features ) and their substrates (or bearers ) on the other hand. The resulting four-fold classification of things comprises particular substrates, called substances , universal substrates, called kinds , particular characters, called modes or moments , and universal characters, called attributes . Things are joined together in facts by (...) primitive ontological ties or nexus . This article describes a logic that is meant to capture the basic intuitions behind the Ontological Square. Given a minimal correspondence between atomic logical form and ontological structure, the commitment to nexus as a distinct ontological category entails a rehabilitation of copulae as ties of predication. Thus, the Logic of the Ontological Square is a copula calculus rather than a predicate calculus; its soundness and completeness can be established with respect to a model akin to a so-called first-order semantics for standard second-order logic. (shrink)

This paper investigates the conceptual possibility for, and the institutions relating to a positive right of private property to data. To do so, it distinguishes between structured data, as a designator, and datapoints, which are data embedded in the timeline. The reasoning being explored here is: the agents generating datapoints – he source of the data – have a right to private property to the datapoints they generate. The agents, then, can choose to retain the datapoints or to sell them (...) to data-users, aggregators, etc. Once these data-users render property of data themselves, they can further market it. There are, however, challenges to this view. One is the relative high cost of managing private property to data versus the relative low cost of misappropriating data and datapoints. The other is network effects: more precisely, data created or enriched in networks. (shrink)

It is argued first, that Spinoza's Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is best seen as an auxiliary premise and not as an axiom of the Ethics; second, that Spinoza held the PSR to be a self-evident truth that indicates a necessary condition for clearly and distinctly representing the existence or non-existence of a thing; and third, that this interpretation of Spinoza's PSR explains the near absence of the PSR within the demonstrations of the Ethics as well as the importance of (...) the principle in Spinoza's thought. (shrink)

I examine the feminist epistemic values in science, presented by Helen Longino, and their role in framing microbiome causality in the study of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In particular, I show how values presented as feminist give an alternative view in scientific theories—focusing on ontological heterogeneity and mutuality of interactions rather than simplicity and one causal direction—when looking at relations between organisms and microorganisms, and between organisms (particularly humans) and their environment. I identify two approaches in microbiome study, an immunological (...) approach that looks at the microbiome pathogenicity and an ecological approach that studies the microbial activity and functions. I show the puzzles stemming from the traditional background beliefs of the immune self and germ theory in the study of IBD causality. Furthermore, I argue for the benefits of a shift to the ecological view of body-microbe interrelations. I conclude with the benefits and advantages of feminist values over traditional ones, both in creating new ways of understanding organisms’ physiology and immune systems and for future biomedical studies involving microbiome causality. (shrink)

Arousal is one of the dimensions of core affect and frequently used to describe experienced or observed emotional states. While arousal ratings of facial expressions are collected in many studies it is not well understood how arousal is displayed in or interpreted from facial expressions. In the context of socioemotional disorders such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, this poses the question of a differential use of facial information for arousal perception. In this study, we demonstrate how automated face-tracking tools can be (...) used to extract predictors of arousal judgments. We find moderate to strong correlations among all measures of static information on one hand and all measures of dynamic information on the other. Based on these results, we tested two measures, average distance to the neutral face and average facial movement speed, within and between neurotypical individuals and individuals with autism. Distance to the neutral face was predictive of arousal in both groups. Lower mean arousal ratings were found for the autistic group, but no difference in correlation of the measures and arousal ratings could be found between groups. Results were replicated in an high autistic traits group. The findings suggest a qualitatively similar perception of arousal for individuals with and without autism. No correlations between valence ratings and any of the measures could be found, emphasizing the specificity of our tested measures. Distance and speed predictors share variability and thus speed should not be discarded as a predictor of arousal ratings. (shrink)

The past decades have seen a rise in religious and secular responses to inequality that seek to offer those who are relatively wealthy an opportunity to personally engage with impoverished people and places. This article examines three cases of elite white South Africans who intentionally immersed themselves in poor urban environments. In dialogue with the anthropology of ethics, I argue that immersion was seen as an experimental tool for transforming the self and cultivating virtues of empathy and responsibility towards others. (...) In this way, immersion acted as a technology of the self, linking care of the self to care of others. Yet such experimentation was not without risk. Though imagined as a tool that could promote care of the self and care of others, immersion carries with it the potential to reinforce power divides and/or solicit negative moral judgment. (shrink)

In the work of Karl Polanyi, the negative effects of a self-regulating market economy are described as being limited by societal forces such as the policies of the welfare state. With the decline of the modern welfare state since the late 1970s, social activities of business firms are increasingly regarded as an important complement to or even as a substitute for welfare state policies by a part of the literature. However, and controversially, another stream of argumentation regards these activities as (...) being aimed at advancing the reach of market forces. To fully grasp the ambiguous nature of the social activities of business, in this paper I provide an account of affirmative as well as of critical interpretations of these activities throughout the history of modern capitalism. On this basis, the power of critique to disentangle the diverse motivations that underlie the social engagement of business is highlighted as a condition for facilitating a role of business in society that balances economic and social considerations. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,’ Harry Frankfurt argues that a successful analysis of the concept ‘human’ must reveal something that distinguishes humans from non-human...

What is the link between the discovery of the relativistic expanding Universe and British imperialism? A public panel debate in the early days of relativistic cosmology shows how fundamental scientific research, whether there are obvious political stakeholders (like biosecurity and climate) or not, runs real-time risks of being repurposed for political ends.

The article discusses how current mediated conditions change nature perception from a media study perspective. The article is based on different case studies such as the current sensation of atmospheric change through sensible media attached to trees which get published via Twitter, the meteorologist Amazonian Tall Tower Observatory and the use of gutta percha derived from tropical trees for the production of cables in the history of telegraphy. For analysing the examples, the perspective of »media as environments« is flipped to (...) »environments as media«, because this focus doesn’t approach media from a networked and technological perspective primarily but makes productive the elemental character of basic »media« like air, earth and water. (shrink)