BackgroundAn increasing number of studies utilize intracranial electrophysiology in human subjects to advance basic neuroscience knowledge. However, the use of neurosurgical patients as human research subjects raises important ethical considerations, particularly regarding informed consent and undue influence, as well as subjects’ motivations for participation. Yet a thorough empirical examination of these issues in a participant population has been lacking. The present study therefore aimed to empirically investigate ethical concerns regarding informed consent and voluntariness in Parkinson’s disease patients undergoing deep brain (...) stimulator (DBS) placement who participated in an intraoperative neuroscience study.MethodsTwo semi-structured 30-minute interviews were conducted preoperatively and postoperatively via telephone. Interviews assessed participants’ motivations for participation in the parent intraoperative study, recall of information presented during the informed consent process, and participants’ postoperative reflections on the research study.ResultsTwenty-two participants (mean age = 60.9) completed preoperative interviews at a mean of 7.8 days following informed consent and a mean of 5.2 days prior to DBS surgery. Twenty participants completed postoperative interviews at a mean of 5 weeks following surgery. All participants cited altruism or advancing medical science as “very important” or “important” in their decision to participate in the study. Only 22.7% (n = 5) correctly recalled one of the two risks of the study. Correct recall of other aspects of the informed consent was poor (36.4% for study purpose; 50.0% for study protocol; 36.4% for study benefits). All correctly understood that the study would not confer a direct therapeutic benefit to them.ConclusionEven though research coordinators were properly trained and the informed consent was administered according to protocol, participants demonstrated poor retention of study information. While intraoperative studies that aim to advance neuroscience knowledge represent a unique opportunity to gain fundamental scientific knowledge, improved standards for the informed consent process can help facilitate their ethical implementation. (shrink)

Muslim women's rights have been a topic of discussion and debate over the past few decades, and with a good reason. Islamic Law is considered by many as patriarchal and particularly oppressive to women, and yet there are also others-Muslim women-who have rigorously defended their religion by claiming that Islam is the guarantor par excellence of women's rights. A big question begs to be answered: is Islam particularly oppressive to women?The Qur'an has addressed women's issues fourteen hundred years ago by (...) creating certain reforms to improve the status of women; however, these reforms do not seem to be practiced in Muslim societies today.1 How is this so? I contend that Islam, as revealed to Muhammad, is not oppressive to women; rather, its interpretation, in so far as it is enacted in the family laws and everyday living, is patriarchal and hence needs to be examined.2 The goal of this work is to discuss what the Qur'an says about certain problems which gravely affect Muslim women, specifically: 1. gender equality 2. polygamy 3. divorce and the concept of nushuz. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEmployees who possess cross-cultural capabilities are increasingly sought after due to unparalleled numbers of cross-cultural interactions. Previous research has primarily focused on the bright side of these capabilities, including important individual and work outcomes. In contrast, the purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the cross-cultural capability of cultural intelligence can lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Applying the general theory of confluence, we propose that expatriates high in CQ excel in customer relationship performance, while simultaneously behaving opportunistically. (...) We also suggest that ethical relativism moderates these relationships. Using mixed methods, four separate studies generally support our predictions while also deepening our understanding of various forms of opportunism and the mechanism behind two seemingly opposing effects. Conceptual and managerial implications of CQ for opportunism, customer relationship performance, and ethics are discussed. (shrink)

Various explanations are offered to explain why employees increasingly work longer hours: the combined effects of technology and globalization; people are caught up in consumerism; and the "ideal worker norm," when professionals expect themselves and others to work longer hours. In this article, we propose that the processes of employer recruitment and selection, employee self-selection, cultural socialization, and reward systems help create extended work hours cultures (EWHC) that reinforce these trends. Moreover, we argue that EWHC organizations are becoming more prevalent (...) and that organizations in which long hours have become the norm may recruit for and reinforce workaholic tendencies. Next, we offer spiritual leadership as a paradigm for organizational transformation and recovery from the negative aspects of EWHC to enhance employee wellbeing and corporate social responsibility without sacrificing profitability, revenue growth, and other indicators of financial performance. Finally, we will offer suggestions for future theory, research, and practice. (shrink)

Sense of agency refers to the sense of initiating and controlling actions in order to influence events in the outside world. Recently, a distinction between implicit and explicit aspects of sense of agency has been proposed, analogous to distinctions found in other areas of cognition, notably learning. However, there is yet no strong evidence supporting separable implicit and explicit components of sense of agency. The so-called ‘Perruchet paradigm’ offers one of the few convincing demonstrations of separable implicit and explicit learning (...) systems. We adopted this approach to evaluate the implicit–explicit distinction in the context of a simple task in which outcomes were probabilistically caused by actions. In line with our initial predictions, we found evidence of a dissociation. We discuss the implications of this result for theories of sense of agency. (shrink)

In the United States today criminal justice can vary from state to state, as various states alter the Modern Penal Code to suit their own local preferences and concerns. In Eastern Europe, the post-Communist countries are quickly adopting new criminal codes to reflect their specific national concerns as they gain autonomy from what was once a centralized Soviet policy. As commonalities among countries and states disintegrate, how are we to view the basic concepts of criminal law as a whole? Eminent (...) legal scholar George Fletcher acknowledges that criminal law is becoming increasingly localized, with every country and state adopting their own conception of punishable behavior, determining their own definitions of offenses. Yet by taking a step back from the details and linguistic variations of the criminal codes, Fletcher is able to perceive an underlying unity among diverse systems of criminal justice. Challenging common assumptions, he discovers a unity that emerges not on the surface of statutory rules and case law but in the underlying debates that inform them. Basic Concepts of Criminal Law identifies a set of twelve distinctions that shape and guide the controversies that inevitably break out in every system of criminal justice. Devoting a chapter to each of these twelve concepts, Fletcher maps out what he considers to be the deep structure of all systems of criminal law. Understanding these distinctions will not only enable students to appreciate the universal fundamental ideas of criminal law, but will enable them to understand the significance of local details and variations. This accessible illustration of the unity of diverse systems of criminal justice will provoke and inform students and scholars of law and the philosophy of law, as well as lawyers seeking a better understanding of the law they practice. (shrink)

Jewish law takes an approach to self-defense that differs dramatically from the conventional assumptions of Western secular legal systems. The central theme of Talmudic jurisprudence is that self-defense rests on a duty not to stand idly by while one's neighbor suffers. “Do not stand on the blood of one's neighbor,” as the point is cryptically put in Leviticus 19:16. This way of thinking about self-defense departs in two significant ways from common Western assumptions. First, it stresses that the roots of (...) self-defense are a duty rather than a right to act; second, it treats the case of third-party defense as logically prior to the first-party case of self -defense. (shrink)

For people to live together in pluralistic communities, they must find someway to cope with the practices of others that they abhor. For that reason, tolerance has always seemed an appealing medium of accommodation. But tolerance also has its critics. One wing charges that the tolerant are too easygoing. They are insensitive to evil in their midst. At the same time, another wing attacks the tolerant for being too weak in their sentimentsof respect. “The Christian does not wish to be (...) tolerated,” as T. S. Eliot said; and by this he meant to claim, presumably, that the Christian desires respect and acceptance, and not merely the forbearance suggested by “tolerance.” To make the case for tolerance, we must engage in a three-front campaign: first, against intolerance; second, against the moral failing of indifference; and third, against the desirability of respecting and accepting everyone. The central claim in making this case will be that unlike these three competing sentiments, tolerance is a complex attitude toward the behavior and beliefs of others. Its complexity consists in both moral disapproval and the avoidance of interference. If there is a case to be made for tolerance, it must derive from this peculiar complexity. After surveying its alternatives, I will argue that the complex sentimentof tolerance is more readily praised than its alternatives. (shrink)

The Grammar of Criminal Law is a 3-volume work that addresses the field of international and comparative criminal law, with its primary focus on the issues of international concern, ranging from genocide, to domestic efforts to combat terrorism, to torture, and to other international crimes. The first volume is devoted to foundational issues. The Grammar of Criminal Law is unique in its systematic emphasis on the relationship between language and legal theory; there is no comparable comparative study of legal language. (...) Written in the spirit of Fletcher's classic Rethinking Criminal Law, this work is essential reading in the field of international and comparative law. (shrink)

This is a reprint of a book first published by Little, Brown in 1978. George Fletcher is working on a new edition, which will be published by Oxford in three volumes, the first of which is scheduled to appear in January of 2001. Rethinking Criminal Law is still perhaps the most influential and often cited theoretical work on American criminal law. This reprint will keep this classic work available until the new edition can be published.

A single mother is a person who is accountable for raising their children alone because they do not have a husband or live-in partner. Single mothers claim to have no co-parenting relationships at all, comparing single parents to those who are married, cohabiting, or without children, single parents experience the worst work-life balance. A single parent may feel overwhelmed by the demands of juggling child care, a career, paying bills, and maintaining household responsibilities. Single-parent households frequently deal with several extra (...) obligations and possible complications that other families would not. The study also emphasizes the difficulties and coping mechanisms faced by contractual single parents as well as their lived experiences. The study's findings, which were based on an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, were as follows: (1) Work-life balance can be difficult for single parents. They struggle to keep their jobs while taking care of their family because they are the only ones in charge of the children. (2) Single contractual mothers face particular difficulties due to a lack of resources for basic expenses. (3) Contractual single women lean on their kids, the good people in their lives, and their faith in God to get through problems. (shrink)

In the wake of injustices in healthcare, the field of clinical ethics consultation would benefit from new methods that support ethicists in addressing the role of intersecting systems of oppression in healthcare decision-making.1 We argue for an expanded view of Delany and colleagues’ critical dialogue method to accomplish this by integrating a constructivist lens.2 By doing so, critical dialogue holds the potential to not only encourage a deeper examination of operating moral assumptions but also offers an important framework for examining (...) how underlying social structures shape ethical reasoning in clinical cases.3 As a first step in consultation methods, ethicists are often encouraged to solicit the viewpoints of treatment teams. Taking a constructivist viewpoint, these encounters can reveal to ethicists the narratives that teams share, which are iteratively developed through patient and treatment team interactions, and play a central role in how teams interpret cases. Further, consider that concepts in clinical ethics cases can directly contribute to the characterisation of patients by treatment teams, such as decisional capacity or agreeableness to care. In this regard, how treatment teams frame ethical concerns is not necessarily a direct reflection of the core issues; rather, their interpretations are partially rooted in narratives about patients and the interpersonal dynamics through …. (shrink)

In this one-of-a-kind text, George P. Fletcher, a renowned legal theorist, offers a provocative yet accessible overview of the basics of legal thought. The first section of the book is designed to introduce the reader to fundamental concepts such as the rule of law and deciding cases under the law. It continues with an analysis of the values of justice, desert, consent, and equality, as they figure into our judgment of legal cultures in terms of soundness and legitimacy. The (...) final chapters address the problems of morality and consistency in the law. In each case the author not only introduces the basic ideas but considers important arguments in the contemporary literature and raises original claims of his own. Ideally suited for courses in the philosophy of law, legal issues, and jurisprudence, Basic Concepts of Legal Thought fills a void in the literature, as there is no other volume that both eases law students into the mysteries of legal philosophy and provides an introduction to the legal mind for non-lawyers. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Loyalty and Partiality Loyalty: Unilateral and Reciprocal Contract and History Individualism and Communitarianism Loyalty in the Legal Culture Loyalty and Its Critics References.

This chapter contains sections titled: What I s Punishment? Purposes of Punishment An Alternative Theory of Punishment Responsibility References.

These days, American politicians are loath to cite biblical passages for fear of being charged with breaching the wall between church and state. There was a time when a presidential candidate could claim that a certain monetary policy would “crucify us on a cross of gold.” This kind of rhetoric is now taboo. America's national leaders even avoid quoting the religious phrases from the Declaration of Independence, particularly its references to the “Creator” or “Nature's God.” Although in the past some (...) of the greatest American political oratory—Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg or Martin Luther King, Jr., at the Lincoln Memorial —relied unashamedly on biblical sources and imagery, it is no longer considered acceptable to argue publicly in the language of either the Hebrew or Christian Bibles. However religious American society might still be today, political rhetoric is noticeably nonreligious. (shrink)

Attitudes toward collective guilt in the Middle East require us to take a closer look at guilt in the Bible. It turns out the text of Genesis is conflicted. Some passages support a theory of guilt linked with the inevitability of cleansing and punishment; other passages appear to treat guilt as a psychological state that might be cured by a confession of sins. The tension is important today in trying to understand whether the collective guilt of nations should also entail (...) collective punishment. (shrink)

The theoretical inquiry into the foundations of criminal law in the twentieth century, in both civil and common law traditions, is assayed by the consideration of seven main currents or trends. First, the structure of offenses is examined in light of the bipartite, tripartite, and quadripartite modes of analysis. Second, competing theories of culpability - normative and descriptive - are weighed in connection with their important ramifications for the presumption of proof and the allocation of the burden of persuasion on (...) defenses. Third, the struggle with alternatives to punishment for the control and commitment of dangerous but non-criminal persons is compared in civil and common law approaches. Fourth, the ascendancy of feminism, as the most successful interdisciplinary school of thought applied to criminal law since the early 1970s, and its contributions in the areas of rape, self-defense, provocation, and capital punishment are charted and weighed. Fifth, one of the most distinctive facets of criminal theory in the last century has been the emergence of the victims' rights movement; its success is compared in civil and common law jurisdictions. Sixth, while it is commonplace in the civil law tradition to embed issues of criminal law within the principles of constitutional law, common law jurisdictions vary; the increasing constitutionalization of criminal law in Canada is contrasted with its decrease in the U.S. Seventh, against the backdrop of a particularly intense period of codification of the criminal law in the last half of the twentieth century, the celebrated American Model Penal Code is criticized. Finally, four predictions for the direction of criminal theory in the next century are ventured. (shrink)

Professor Fletcher challenges the traditional account of the development of tort doctrine as a shift from an unmoral standard of strict liability for directly causing harm to a moral standard based on fault. He then sets out two paradigms of liability to serve as constructs for understanding competing ideological viewpoints about the proper role of tort sanctions. He asserts that the paradigm of reciprocity, which looks only to the degree of risk imposed by the parties to a lawsuit on (...) each other, and to the existence of possible excusing conditions, provides greater protection of individual interests than the paradigm of reasonableness, which assigns liability instrumentally on the basis of a utilitarian calculus. Finally, Professor Fletcher examines stylistic differences between the two paradigms which may explain the modern preference for the paradigm of reasonableness. (shrink)

In the theory of rights we repeatedly encounter the problem of reconciling someone’s having a right, with his properly suffering damage to the interest protected by the right. In the case of right to life, we have to assess numerous cases in which individuals are killed or allowed to die, and yet we wish nonetheless to affirm their right to life. These cases include killing an aggressor in self-defense, accidental homicide, terminating life-sustaining therapy, and capital punishment.

George Fletcher, a foremost scholar in the fields of comparative and international criminal law, was a friend and colleague of Herbert Morris, a renowned scholar and teacher of law and philosophy at the UCLA School of Law. To commemorate and honor the late Herbert Morris, who died in 2022, Fletcher has assembled and edited the selection of essays in this book. Many of the contributors knew Morris on a personal and an academic level. Others only knew of Morris (...) by reputation. The essays fall into four categories: Criminal Law and Theory, Personal Reflections, Art and Literary Criticism, and Law and Religion. This commemorative volume reflects Fletcher's respect and admiration for his friend's accomplishments and lifetime achievements. "In two essays, the late Professor Herbert Morris addresses the fundamental issue in criminal law, whether thoughts alone could constitute a basis of criminal liability. The first essay was "Punishment for Thoughts" and the second, "Persons and Punishment". I consider these two of the most important articles ever published on the theory of criminal law." George Fletche. (shrink)

America is at war with terrorism. Terrorists must be brought to justice.We hear these phrases together so often that we rarely pause to reflect on the dramatic differences between the demands of war and the demands of justice, differences so deep that the pursuit of one often comes at the expense of the other. In this book, one of the country's most important legal thinkers brings much-needed clarity to the still unfolding debates about how to pursue war and justice in (...) the age of terrorism. George Fletcher also draws on his rare ability to combine insights from history, philosophy, literature, and law to place these debates in a rich cultural context. He seeks to explain why Americans--for so many years cynical about war--have recently found war so appealing. He finds the answer in a revival of Romanticism, a growing desire in the post-Vietnam era to identify with grand causes and to put nations at the center of ideas about glory and guilt.Fletcher opens with unsettling questions about the nature of terrorism, war, and justice, showing how dangerously slippery the concepts can be. He argues that those sympathetic to war are heirs to the ideals of Byron, Fichte, and other Romantics in their belief that nations--not just individuals--must uphold honor and be held accountable for crimes. Fletcher writes that ideas about collective glory and guilt are far more plausible and widespread than liberal individualists typically recognize. But as he traces the implications of the Romantic mindset for debates about war crimes, treason, military tribunals, and genocide, he also shows that losing oneself in a grand cause can all too easily lead to moral catastrophe.A work of extraordinary intellectual power and relevance, the book will change how we think not only about world events, but about the conflicting individualist and collective impulses that tear at all of us. (shrink)

The target article misrepresents the foundations of integrated information theory and ignores many essential publications. It, thus, falls to this lead commentary to outline the axioms and postulates of IIT and correct major misconceptions. The commentary also explains why IIT starts from phenomenology and why it predicts that only select physical substrates can support consciousness. Finally, it highlights that IIT's account of experience – a cause–effect structure quantified by integrated information – has nothing to do with “information transfer.”.

Background Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) designed to screen for fetal genetic conditions, is increasingly being implemented as a part of routine prenatal care screening in the United States (US). However, these advances in reproductive genetic technology necessitate empirical research on the ethical and social implications of NIPT among populations underrepresented in genetic research, particularly Black women with sickle cell disease (SCD).Methods Forty (N = 40) semi-structured interviews were conducted virtually with Black women in the US (19 participants with SCD; 21 (...) participants without SCD) from June 2021 to January 2022. We employed a qualitative approach to examine the study participants’ perceptions of the potential advancement of NIPT for screening SCD in the fetus. Data were analyzed using NVivo 12 qualitative software.Results The themes revealed the complexities involving the intersectional lived experiences of SCD, prenatal care, lack of synergy among health providers, and NIPT decision-making. The results further revealed that even when Black women have shared commonalities in their lived experiences while navigating SCD and motherhood, their perceptions of NIPT screening technologies are divergent.Conclusion Expanding the ethical discourse on the social implications of NIPT is critical to fully elucidate how Black women perceive NIPT’s utility, particularly as NIPT advances to screen for SCD in the fetus. Neglecting to include Black women with genetic conditions in empirical studies on NIPT may contribute to ongoing health inequities and limit and constrain reproductive choices among Black women with and without SCD. (shrink)

Sense of agency is a compelling but fragile experience that is augmented or attenuated by internal signals and by external cues. A disruption in SoA may characterise individual symptoms of mental illness such as delusions of control. Indeed, it has been argued that generic SoA disturbances may lie at the heart of delusions and hallucinations that characterise schizophrenia. A clearer understanding of how sensorimotor, perceptual and environmental cues complement, or compete with, each other in engendering SoA may prove valuable in (...) deepening our understanding the agency disruptions that characterise certain focal neurological disorders and mental illnesses. Here we examine the integration of SoA cues in health and illness, describing a simple framework of this integration based on Bayesian principles. We extend this to consider how alterations in cue integration may lead to aberrant experiences of agency. (shrink)

Hospital ethics committees have become widespread over the last 25 years, stimulated by the Quinlan decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court, the report of a President's Commission, and most recently by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations , which now man dates that each hospital seeking accreditation have a functioning process for the consideration of ethical issues in patient care. Laws and regulations in several states require that hospitals establish ethics committees, and some states stipulate that (...) certain types of cases and disputes be taken to such committees. At least one state grants legal immunity to those who implement recommendations of an ethics committee. (shrink)

How patients and nurses experience the acute care psychiatric environment The concept of the therapeutic milieu was developed when patients’ hospitalizations were long, medications were few, and one‐to‐one nurse–patient interactions were the norm. However, it is not clear how the notion of ‘therapeutic milieu’ is experienced in American acute psychiatric environments today. This phenomenological study explored the experience of patients and nurses in an acute care psychiatric unit in the USA, by asking them, ‘What stands out to you about this (...) psychiatric hospital environment?’ Three figural themes emerged, contextualized by time, which was a source of stress to both groups: for patients there was boredom, and for nurses, pressure and chaos. Although they shared some themes, nurses and patients experienced them differently. For instance, nurses felt caged‐in by the Plexiglas‐enclosed nursing station, and patients felt caged‐in by the locked doors of the unit. The findings from this US study do not support the existence of the therapeutic milieu as described in the literature. Furthermore, although the nurse–patient relationship was yearned for by nurses, it was nearly absent from patients’ descriptions. The caring experienced by patients was mainly derived from interactions with other patients. (shrink)