Objective: To determine the usefulness of Q methodology to locate and describe shared subjective influences on clinical decision making among participant physicians using hypothetical cases containing common ethical issues. Design: Qualitative study using by-person factor analysis of subjective Q sort data matrix. Setting: University medical center. Participants: Convenience sample of internal medicine attending physicians and house staff (n = 35) at one midwestern academic health sciences center. Interventions: Presented with four hypothetical cases involving urgent decision making near the end of (...) life, participants selected one of three specific clinical actions offered for each case. Immediately afterward and while considering their decision, each respondent sorted twenty-five subjective self-referent items in terms of the influence of each statement on their decision-making process. By-person factor analysis, where participants are defined as variates, yielded information about the attitudinal background the physicians brought to their consideration of each hypothetical case. We performed a second-order factor analysis on all of the subjective viewpoints to determine if a smaller core of shared attitudes existed across some or all of the four case vignettes. Factor scores for each item and post-sort comments from interviews conducted individually with each respondent guided the interpretation of ethical perspective used by these respondents in making clinical decisions about the cases. Measurements and Main Results: Second-order factor analysis on seventeen viewpoints used by physicians in the four hypothetical urgent decision cases revealed three moderately correlated (r 2 < 40%) subjective core attitudinal guides used broadly among all the cases and among sixteen of the seventeen original factors. Across all the cases, our participants were guided in general by: (1) patient-focused beneficence, (2) a patient- and surrogate-focused perspective that includes risk avoidance, and (3) best interest of the patient guided by ethical values. Economic impact on the physician, expediency in resolution of the situation, and the expense of medical treatment were not found to be influential determinants in this study. Conclusions: Q sorting and by-person factor analysis are useful qualitative methodological tools to study the complex structure of subjective attitudes that influence physicians in making medical decisions. This study revealed the subjective viewpoints used by our physician participants as they made ethically challenging treatment decisions. The three second-order factors identified here are grounded in current bioethical values as well as the personal traits of physicians. The participants' decision methods appear to resemble casuistry more than principle-based decision making. Generalizability of results will require further studies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Neuroethics, the study of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying ethical decision-making, is a growing field of study. In this review, we identify and discuss four themes emerging from neuroethics research. First, ethical decision-making appears to be distinct from other types of decision-making processes. Second, ethical decision-making entails more than just conscious reasoning. Third, emotion plays a critical role in ethical decision-making, at least under certain circumstances. Lastly, normative approaches to morality have distinct, underlying neural mechanisms. On the basis of (...) these themes, we draw implications for research in business ethics and the practice of ethics training. (shrink)

Natural selection is commonly interpreted as the fundamental mechanism of evolution. Questions about how selection theory can claim to be the all-sufficient explanation of evolution often go unanswered by today's neo-Darwinists, perhaps for fear that any criticism of the evolutionary paradigm will encourage creationists and proponents of intelligent design.In Biological Emergences, Robert Reid argues that natural selection is not the cause of evolution. He writes that the causes of variations, which he refers to as natural experiments, are independent of (...) natural selection; indeed, he suggests, natural selection may get in the way of evolution. Reid proposes an alternative theory to explain how emergent novelties are generated and under what conditions they can overcome the resistance of natural selection. He suggests that what causes innovative variation causes evolution, and that these phenomena are environmental as well as organismal.After an extended critique of selectionism, Reid constructs an emergence theory of evolution, first examining the evidence in three causal arenas of emergent evolution: symbiosis/association, evolutionary physiology/behavior, and developmental evolution. Based on this evidence of causation, he proposes some working hypotheses, examining mechanisms and processes common to all three arenas, and arrives at a theoretical framework that accounts for generative mechanisms and emergent qualities. Without selectionism, Reid argues, evolutionary innovation can more easily be integrated into a general thesis. Finally, Reid proposes a biological synthesis of rapid emergent evolutionary phases and the prolonged, dynamically stable, non-evolutionary phases imposed by natural selection. (shrink)

Patient advocacy is an important aspect of nursing care, yet there are few instruments to measure this essential function. This study was conducted to develop, determine the psychometric properties, and support validity of the Protective Nursing Advocacy Scale (PNAS), which measures nursing advocacy beliefs and actions from a protective perspective. The study used a descriptive correlational design with a systematically selected sample of 419 medical-surgical registered nurses. Analysis of the 43-item instrument was conducted using principal components analysis with promax rotation, (...) which resulted in the items loading onto four components. The four subscales have sufficient internal consistency, as did the overall PNAS. Satisfactory evidence of construct, content, and convergent validity were determined. Implications for nursing practice include using the PNAS in conjunction with an educational program to enhance advocacy skills, which may help to improve patient outcomes. (shrink)

Culp (1994) provides a defense for a form of experimental reasoning entitled 'robustness'. Her strategy is to examine a recent episode in experimental microbiology--the case of the mistaken discovery of a bacterial organelle called a 'mesosome'--with an eye to showing how experimenters effectively used robust experimental reasoning (or could have used robust reasoning) to refute the existence of the mesosome. My plan is to criticize Culp's assessment of the mesosome episode and to cast doubt on the epistemic significance of robustness. (...) In turn, I present a different account of the experimental reasoning microbiologists used in arriving at the conclusion that mesosomes are artifacts. I call this form of reasoning 'reliable process reasoning', and close the paper with a brief discussion of how experimental microbiologists justify the claim that an experimental process is reliable. (shrink)

In 1942 a coalition of twenty scientific societies formed the Conference on the Supply of Experimental Animals in an attempt to pressure the Medical Research Council to accept responsibility for the provision of standardised experimental animals in Britain. The practice of animal experimentation was subject to State regulation under the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876, but no provision existed for the provision of animals for experimental use. Consequently, day-to-day laboratory work was reliant on a commercial small animal market which (...) had emerged to sustain the hobby of animal fancying. This paper explores how difficulties encountered in experimental practice within the laboratory led to the problematisation of biomedical science’s reliance upon a commercial market for animals during the inter-war period. This is shown to have produced a crisis within animal reliant experimental science in the early 1940s which enabled the left-wing Association of Scientific Workers to cast science’s reliance on a free market as economically inefficient and a threat to the reliability of British research. It is argued that the development of standard experimental animals in Britain was, therefore, embedded within the wider cultural, societal, political and economic national context of the time. (shrink)

In 1993, an astonishing discovery was made at a tomb in Guodian in Hubei province (east central China). Written on strips of bamboo that have miraculously survived intact since 300 B.C., the "Guodian Laozi," is by far the earliest version of the _Tao Te Ching_ ever unearthed. Students of ancient Chinese civilization proclaimed the text a decisive breakthrough in the understanding of this famous text: it provides the most conclusive evidence to date that the text was the work of multiple (...) authors and editors over hundreds of years, rather than the achievement of a single individual writing during the time of Confucius. Robert Henricks now presents the first English translation of the "bamboo slip Laozi." Differing substantially from other versions we have of the text, the Guodian Laozi provides us with clues on how and when the text came into being. As Henricks's translation shows, many chapters are missing in this form of the text, and some chapters remain incomplete. All of this seems to suggest that the _Tao Te Ching_ was not yet "complete" when these slips were copied. In his translation, Henricks focuses attention on lines in each of the chapters that vary from readings in other editions. In addition, he shows how the sequence of chapters in this form of the text is totally unrelated to the sequence readers commonly see in the "standard" form of the text, i.e., in other translations. Here are just a few of the noteworthy features of this new _Tao Te Ching:_ • A lucid introduction to the Guodian Laozi, offering background on the archaeological interpretation of the discovery • Line-by-line comparisons of the Guodian Laozi against the Mawangdui and Wang Bi editions • Extensive notes on each chapter describing the unique elements of the Guodian Laozi in comparison with other versions • Transcriptions for each chapter, noting both the ancient and modern form of the characters in the chapter • An appendix featuring the official biography of Laozi written by Sima Qian, the Grand Historian of China, as well as Henricks's commentary and notes on this biography This groundbreaking work will lead to a reassessment of the history and significance of this well-known and critical work as well as a reevaluation of the role it played in the development of Taoism in early China. (shrink)

The scientific, personal, and social implications of this revolutionary work are staggering. MARGINS OF REALITY is nothing less than a fundamental reevaluation of how the world really works.

The 3Rs, or the replacement, reduction, and refinement of animal research, are widely accepted as the best approach to maximizing high-quality science while ensuring the highest standard of ethical consideration is applied in regulating the use of animals in scientific procedures. This contrasts with the muted scientific interest in the 3Rs when they were first proposed in The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique. Indeed, the relative success of the 3Rs has done little to encourage engagement with their original text, which (...) remains little read and out of print. By adopting a historical perspective, this article argues that one explanation for this disjunction may be found in another, more celebrated, event of 1959: C. P. Snow’s Rede lecture on The Two Cultures. The moral outlook of The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique derived from an earlier ethos wherein humanistic and scientific values occupied a shared culture. While the synthetic style of The Principles has hindered its readership, this article concludes that there is value to recovering the notion that the humanities and social sciences can contribute to the improvement of animal research. (shrink)

The principles of the 3Rs—replacement, refinement, and reduction—strongly shape discussion of methods for performing more humane animal research and the regulation of this contested area of technoscience. This special issue looks back to the origins of the 3Rs principles through five papers that explore how it is enacted and challenged in practice and that develop critical considerations about its future. Three themes connect the papers in this special issue. These are the multiplicity of roles enacted by those who use and (...) care for animals in research, the distribution of “feelings that matter” across species and spaces of laboratory animal practice, and the growing importance of “cultures of care” in animal research. (shrink)

This book demonstrates that the state-contingent approach provides the best way to think about all problems in the economics of uncertainty, including problems...

Nursing advocacy for patients is considered to be an essential component of nursing practice. This phenomenological qualitative pilot study explored registered nurses' lived experience of nursing advocacy with patients using a sample of three medical-surgical registered nurses. The guiding research questions were: (1) how do registered nurses practicing in the medical-surgical specialty area describe their experiences with nursing advocacy for their patients; and (2) what reflections on educational preparation for their professional roles do registered nurses identify as related to their (...) practices of nursing advocacy with their patients? Data analysis procedures were based on Moustakas' data analysis method, and Lincoln and Guba's criteria were applied for rigor. The emergent themes were: speaking out and speaking for patients; being compelled to act on unmet needs of patients; fulfillment and frustration; the patient is changed; primarily learned on the job; and confidence gained through practice. The findings increase the body of knowledge surrounding nursing advocacy as practiced by nurses. (shrink)

Theoretical explication of a growing body of empirical data on consciousness-related anomalous phenomena is unlikely to be achieved in terms of known physical processes. Rather, it will first be necessary to formulate the basic role of consciousness in the definition of reality before such anomalous experience can adequately be represented. This paper takes the position that reality is constituted only in the interaction of consciousness with its environment, and therefore that any scheme of conceptual organization developed to represent that reality (...) must reflect the processes of consciousness as well as those of its environment. In this spirit, the concepts and formalisms of elementary quantum mechanics, as originally proposed to explain anomalous atomic-scale physical phenomena, are appropriated via metaphor to represent the general characteristics of consciousness interacting with any environment. More specifically, if consciousness is represented by a quantum mechanical wave function, and its environment by an appropriate potential profile, Schrödinger wave mechanics defines eigenfunctions and eigenvalues that can be associated with the cognitive and emotional experiences of that consciousness in that environment. To articulate this metaphor it is necessary to associate certain aspects of the formalism, such as the coordinate system, the quantum numbers, and even the metric itself, with various impressionistic descriptors of consciousness, such as its intensity, perspective, approach/avoidance attitude, balance between cognitive and emotional activity, and receptive/assertive disposition. With these established, a number of the generic features of quantum mechanics, such as the wave/particle duality, and the uncertainty, indistinguishability, and exclusion principles, display metaphoric relevance to familiar individual and collective experiences. Similarly, such traditional quantum theoretic exercises as the central force field and atomic structure, covalent molecular bonds, barrier penetration, and quantum statistical collective behavior become useful analogies for representation of a variety of consciousness experiences, both normal and anomalous, and for the design of experiments to study these systematically. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish two kinds of predictivism, ‘timeless’ and ‘historicized’. The former is the conventional understanding of predictivism. However, I argue that its defense in the works of John Worrall (Scerri and Worrall 2001, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 32, 407–452; Worrall 2002, In the Scope of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, 1, 191–209) and Patrick Maher (Maher 1988, PSA 1988, 1, pp. 273) is wanting. Alternatively, I promote an historicized predictivism, and briefly defend such (...) a predictivism at the end of the paper. (shrink)

This original new work takes a sharply focused look at Berkeley's ontology and provides a fuller understanding of the relationship between, on the one hand, Berkeley's nominalism and antiabstractionism and, on the other, his principal arguments for idealism and his attempts to square his idealism with common sense. Drawing heavily on detailed textual analysis, historical context, and careful examination of the work of other scholars, Muehlmann challenges, modifies, rejects, and exploits some well-established interpretations of Berkeley's philosophy.

In this paper I distinguish two kinds of predictivism, 'timeless' and 'historicized'. The former is the conventional understanding of predictivism. However, I argue that its defense in the works of John Worrall and Patrick Maher is wanting. Alternatively, I promote an historicized predictivism, and briefly defend such a predictivism at the end of the paper.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) and Alan Musgrave argue that it is impossible to precisely date discovery events and precisely identify discoverers. They defend this claim mainly on the grounds that so-called discoverers have in many cases misconceived the objects of discovery. In this paper, I argue that Kuhn and Musgrave arrive at their view because they lack a substantive account of how well discoverers must be able to conceptualize discovered objects. I remedy this deficiency by providing just such an (...) account, and with this account I delineate how one can secure precision regarding the identity of discoverers and the times of discoveries. Near the end of my paper I bring my target of criticism up-to-date; it turns out that Steve Woolgar adopts an approach to discovery kindred to those of Kuhn and Musgrave and I close the paper by discussing what is at stake in rebutting him. (shrink)

How do thought and language manage to be 'about' aspects of the world? J. Robert G. Williams investigates how representation arises out of a fundamentally non-representational world, showing the explanatory relations between the representational properties of language, of thought, and of perception and intention.

In 1912, Henri Poincaré published an argument which apparently shows that the hypothesis of quanta is both necessary and sufficient for the truth of Planck''s experimentally corroborated law describing the spectral distribution of radiant energy in a black body. In a recent paper, John Norton has reaffirmed the authority of Poincarés argument, setting it up as a paradigm case in which empirical data can be used to definitively rule out theoretical competitors to a given theoretical hypothesis. My goal is to (...) dispute Norton ''s claim that there is no theoretical underdetermination problem arising between classical physics and early quantum theory. The strategy I use in defending my view is to adopt a suggestion made by Jarrett Leplin and Larry Laudan on how to assess the relative merits of competing theoretical alternatives, where each alternative has an equal capacity to save the phenomena. In the course of the paper, I distinguish between two branches of classical physics: classical mechanics and classical electromagnetism. The former is claimed by Norton and Poincaré to be determinately ruled out by the black body evidence; and it is the former that I argue is compatible with this evidence. (shrink)

Much more than an obligation to protect our clients' rights, ethics is better understood as the very fabric that underpins and supports our most basic efforts in working with clients and interacting with others in our everyday lives. Robert Lee brings together a diverse group of voices in the Gestalt field to demonstrate the interrelations between the ethics of the therapeutic endeavor and the Gestalt tradition, from theory to practice to extensions beyond the analytic setting.

The ‘musca depicta’ trope is well known to art historians, with a history going back to Pliny. It flourished in the Renaissance, but in eighteenth-century England the meaning of the trope was altered greatly when employed in popular culture, both in live theatrical presentations (by George Alexander Stevens) and in published poetry (by James Robertson, comedian of York). Originally, the trope signalled the virtuosity of the painter, who was able to fool the eye by depicting flies so real that the (...) viewer attempted to shoo them off the picture. However, in the hands of Stevens and Robertson, that bit of theatre was turned on its head, as the supposed connoisseur engaged in a harsh criticism of a painting is startled when a fly that he thinks poorly depicted suddenly flies off the canvas, thereby rendering the connoisseur a satiric target. (shrink)

The ontological status of sport: Weiss, P. Records and the man. Schacht, R. L. On Weiss on records, athletic activity, and the athlete. Fraleigh, W. P. On Weiss on records and on the significance of athletic records. Stone, R. E. Assumptions about the nature of movement. Suits, B. The elements of sport. Kretchmar, S. Ontological possibilities: sport as play. Morgan, W. An existential phenomenological analysis of sport as a religious experience. Fraleigh, W. P. The moving "I." Fraleigh, W. P. Some (...) meanings of the human experience of freedom and necessity in sport. Keenan, F. W. The concept of doing.--The ethical status of sport: Keating, J. W. The ethics of competition and its relation to some moral problems in ahtletics. Sadler, W. A., Jr. A contextual approach to an understanding of competition: a response to Keating's philosophy of athletics. Osterhoudt, R. G. On Keating on the competitive motif in athletics and playful activity. Suits, B. The grasshopper: a thesis concerning the moral idea of man. Broekhoff, J. Sport and ethics in the context of culture. Zeigler, E. F. The pragmatic (experimentalistic) ethic as it relates to sport and physical education. Roberts, T. J. and Galasso, P. J. The fiction of morally indifferent acts in sport. Osterhoudt, R. G. The Kantian ethic as a principle of moral conduct in sport and athletics. Thomas, C. E. Do you "wanna" bet: an examination of player betting and the integrity of the sporting event.--The aesthetic status of sport: Kuntz, P. G. The aesthetics of sport. Keenan, F. W. The athletic contest as a "tragic" form of art. Osterhoudt, R. G. An Hegelian interpretation of art, sport, and athletics. (shrink)