Teaching ethics in public health programmes is not routine everywhere – at least not in most schools of public health in the European region. Yet empirical evidence shows that schools of public health are more and more interested in the integration of ethics in their curricula, since public health professionals often have to face difficult ethical decisions.

While developing his theory of world 3, Popper rejects two claims made by Plato: first, that the inhabitants of world 3, ideas, are a source of ultimate explanation, a divine revelation of truth, and second, that these ideas are unchanging. I will rehabilitate the second claim. Man does not construct world 3 by creating his theories, nor is it a source of ultimate truth. Instead, world 3 is discovered by man, and it destroys some of his theories: destructive Platonism. I (...) discuss the impact of the modified position on the Grundlagenstreit in mathematics, taking into account Gillies’s constructive Aristotelianism. I then turn to the philosophy of computers and discuss how destructive Platonism relates to computers and the Internet. In particular, I criticize Popper’s claim that computers are nothing but elaborate pens as too pessimistic and incautious, and the fashionable “singularity” theory as too optimistic and at the same time too fatalistic. In my closing remarks, as an antidote against both views, I provide a more modest and reasonable speculation about the ultimate goal and meaning of life. (shrink)

In vocational rehabilitation, empowerment is understood as the notion that people should make an active, autonomous choice to find their way back to the labour process. Following this line of reasoning, the concept of empowerment implicitly points to a specific kind of activation strategy, namely labour participation. This activation approach has received criticism for being paternalistic, disciplining and having a one-sided orientation on labour participation. Although we share this theoretical criticism, we want to go beyond it by paying (...) attention to the practical consequences of understanding empowerment as an activation strategy. Inspired by the field of Science and Technology Studies, we will explore the meaning of empowerment and activation in concrete practices of vocational rehabilitation in the Netherlands. Our analysis is based on the narratives of people with a work disability about their lives and the vocational rehabilitation programmes they participated in. We present five illustrative cases that how empowerment is ‘done’ in the practice of vocational rehabilitation and its unintended effects. Our analysis demonstrates that activation strategies seem to be caught in a paradox: instead of including people in society, they have excluding consequences. Vocational rehabilitation professionals can go beyond this paradox by learning from the ways in which empowerment is ‘done’ by clients in vocational rehabilitation programmes. (shrink)

In vocational rehabilitation, empowerment is understood as the notion that people should make an active, autonomous choice to find their way back to the labour process. Following this line of reasoning, the concept of empowerment implicitly points to a specific kind of activation strategy, namely labour participation. This activation approach has received criticism for being paternalistic, disciplining and having a one-sided orientation on labour participation. Although we share this theoretical criticism, we want to go beyond it by paying (...) attention to the practical consequences of understanding empowerment as an activation strategy. Inspired by the field of Science and Technology Studies, we will explore the meaning of empowerment and activation in concrete practices of vocational rehabilitation in the Netherlands. Our analysis is based on the narratives of people with a work disability about their lives and the vocational rehabilitation programmes they participated in. We present five illustrative cases that how empowerment is ‘done’ in the practice of vocational rehabilitation and its unintended effects. Our analysis demonstrates that activation strategies seem to be caught in a paradox: instead of including people in society, they have excluding consequences. Vocational rehabilitation professionals can go beyond this paradox by learning from the ways in which empowerment is ‘done’ by clients in vocational rehabilitation programmes. (shrink)

During recent years in North America and Europe many feminists have become increasingly critical of responses to street prostitution that concentrate solely on punishing women who sell sex while ignoring their male clients. In order to address this gender imbalance some feminists have advocated the enforcement and/or strengthening of kerb crawling legislation and other schemes that target men who pay for sex. During 1998–9 one initiative, which aimed to target men who pay for sex in the UK, the Kerb Crawler (...) Rehabilitation Programme (KCRP), was piloted in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Although the KCRP received considerable media coverage there has been relatively little critical debate among feminists about this approach to working with clients of sex workers. This article draws attention to some of the opposition to the Leeds KCRP. (shrink)

The article reconstructs Leibniz’s theory of the relation between perceptions and reality. Leibniz’s position is different both from that of Descartes, according to whom the perceptions of the senses, unlike those of the mind, are never perceptions of reality, and from that of Locke, according to whom only the perceptions of primary qualities have a resemblance to reality, whereas secondary qualities do not correspond to anything real. The author shows that, according to Leibniz, the expressive link between perception and reality (...) can be pursued in both directions: the analysis of ordinary perception allows us, on the one hand, to arrive at distinct perceptions of reality; on the other hand, Leibniz shows against Locke that even secondary qualities express a certain reality, namely that of the constitution of our body and of our sensory apparatus. (shrink)

St. Stephen's Society, Hang Fook Camp, Kowloon, Hong Kong was formally registered in 1981, but its origins go back to 1966. It is a member of the Hong Kong Council of Social Services and the central Registry of Drug Abuse. The Society works in cooperation with the courts, doctors and social workers to provide a spiritual, physical, emotional, educational and social rehabilitation programme. St. Stephen's houses about 300 people on any given day. It meets in Hang Fook (...) Camp which is leased to them by the Hong Kong Government where a regular meeting is held for Christian Fellowship, the Hang Fook Christian Fellowship. (shrink)

RATIONALE: The concept of evidence-based medicine is important in providing efficient health care. The process uses research findings as the basis for clinical decision making. Evidence-based practice helps optimize current health care and enables the practitioners to be suitably accountable for the interventions they provide. Little work has been undertaken to examine how allied health professionals change their clinical practice in light of the latest evidence. The use of opinion leaders to disseminate new evidence around the management of low (...) class='Hi'>back pain into practice has been proposed. AIMS: The aim of this study was to investigate if physiotherapists' clinical management of patients with low back pain would change following an evidence-based education package, which utilized local opinion leaders and delivered the best evidence. METHOD: Thirty musculoskeletal physiotherapists from a Community Trust in North Staffordshire were cluster randomized by location of work, to two groups. The intervention group received an evidence-based programme on the management of low back pain, including advice regarding increasing activity levels and return to normal activity and challenging patients' fears and beliefs about their pain. The control group received a standard in-service training package on the management of common knee pathologies. The physiotherapists' clinical management of patients with low back pain was measured prior to training and 6 months post training. Outcome measures were based on physiotherapists completing 'discharge summary' questionnaires, which included information relating to the use and importance of therapies for treating their low back pain patients. RESULTS: There were few significant differences in treatment options between the intervention and control groups post training. Whilst there was some indication that physiotherapists were already utilizing aspects of psychosocial management for patients with low back pain, there was little change in what physiotherapists perceived to be important to patient recovery and actual clinical practice following the intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Psychosocial factors have been identified as an important factor in the recovery of patients with low back pain. This project incorporated the latest evidence on the management of low back pain and utilized the theory of opinion leaders to disseminate this evidence into clinical practice. Whilst there were some limitations in the overall size of the study, the results help to give an insight into the challenges faced by the health care system and researchers alike to ensure quality evidence is actually utilized by practitioners for the benefits of patient care. (shrink)

Rehabilitation programmes are widely offered to offenders in custodial and community settings around the world. Despite the existence of a large evidence base that identifies features of effective practice, levels of programme integrity remain low and are widely believed to undermine successful rehabilitation. In this paper it is suggested that conceptualising rehabilitation as a moral activity which involves assisting offenders to make better ethical decisions is one way to address some of the difficulties in the delivery (...) of rehabilitation programmes that potentially lead to low levels of integrity, thereby increasing effectiveness. (shrink)

Rehabilitation for disabled children requires long-term programmeswhich are expensive to the family. This study aimed to estimate the costincurred by caregivers’ children with disabilities from Pahang, Terengganu andKelantan participating in Community-Based Rehabilitation and cost of seeking alternative rehabilitation. Costanalysis using the Activity-Based Costing method was used to estimatetwelve-months’ expenditure in 2014 institutional year on 297 caregivers ofchildren with disability, aged 0 to 18 years who attended CBR. Data werecollected using a self-administered costing questionnaire and presentedin median. Results (...) showed that the median direct and indirect costs,excluding medications and alternative care were nearly four times as highin Home-Based compared to Centre-Based vs. RM608. Both groups of caregivers spent a significant amount ofresources on alternative rehabilitation. The high costs incurred for alternativerehabilitation is a major economic burden to the family. (shrink)

Scholars working in philosophy of action still struggle with the freedom/determinism dichotomy that stretches back to Hellenist philosophy and the metaphysics that gave rise to it. Although that metaphysics has been repudiated in current philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the dichotomy still haunts these fields. As such, action is understood as distinct from movement, or motion. In early China, under a very different metaphysical paradigm, no such distinction is made. Instead, a notion of self-caused movement, or spontaneity, is (...) elaborated. In this article a general conception of spontaneity from early Daoism is explained, detailing its constituent aspects. Similar notions appeared from time to time in Western philosophy, and these instances are pursued, exploring how their instantiations differed from Daoist spontaneity and why. Based on these approximate examples of spontaneity and on early Daoist spontaneity, new criteria are postulated for a plausible theory of action that dispenses with presuppositions that eventuate in a freedom/determinism dichotomy, and instead the possibility is offered of a general model of action that can be applied smoothly across current philosophical and cognitive scientific subdisciplines. (shrink)

In this essay I revisit Kant’s largely-ignored Third Analogy of Experience with an eye to what it may yet contribute to our understanding of time perception. The essay begins with an elucidation of the purpose of the Third Analogy, followed by an account of how the core argument is intended to work. It then summarizes the problem that has left the Third Analogy out of much of the scholarly literature on Kant. I respond by introducing two ways of scaling (...) class='Hi'>back on Kant’s claims. First, I offer a revisionary interpretation of the Third Analogy as a “modest” transcendental argument; second, I propose a re-imagining of the Analogy such that it yields an empirical hypothesis that might be of use in developmental psychology. (shrink)

Back to Roy Wood Sellars: Why His Evolutionary Naturalism Is Still Worthwhile POUWEL SLURINK 1. INTRODUCTION AT THE MOMENT, naturalism is fashionable as never before. Several of the most prominent living philosophers -- e.g., Quine, Churchland, Ruse -- call them- selves naturalists. However, it is not always that clear what really is meant by naturalism, apart from a philosophy in which science plays a large role. This lack of clarity stems in part from the uncertainty about what is meant (...) by "science"--physics, biology, or both of them. But partly it also stems from different interpretations of the impact of scientific models on philosophical reflections. In this article I propose a return to the writings of the "evolutionary naturalist" Roy Wood Sellars . He was the father of Wilfrid Sellars, but I think that the philosophy of Sellars pbre is a better starting-point for "a reading programme" for modern naturalists than the philosophy of Sellarsfi/s, in spite of the claim of the latter that "Critical Realism and Evolutionary Natural- ism.., and all that they imply, are part of my paternal inheritance."' Al- though it may be true that much of the philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars is rooted in the philosophy of his father, we miss the illuminating evolutionary consider- ations characteristic of his father's philosophy in most of his work, and we can see a tendency to expect too much.. (shrink)

Rehabilitation medicine, aka Physical medicine and Rehabilitation , is the medical specialty which focuses on optimizing function, ability, participation and life satisfaction in the light of noncurable disability and/or chronic disease. It is primarily geared towards the “so what” than towards “what” . PM & R is holistic and patient-centred, thus comprising a well-suited arena for dialogue and patient participation. Many patients experience a severe crisis reaction in the aftermath of major trauma or disease. This “existential rupture” calls (...) for a fundamental revaluation of many aspects of daily life. Crisis management will not merely be a matter of mourning and then back to “business as usual,” as this often is either not possible or not the optimal choice given altered life circumstances. We propose that philosophical practice may be an important addition to the rehabilitation process, by facilitating “lifeworld analyses” and thereby making it possible for the patient to find sources of meaning in life despite disability. This “therapy for the sane” comprises PP rather than psychiatric or psychotherapeutic interventions, and may come to be seen as a key aspect in the training of future physiatrists and other rehabilitation specialists. (shrink)

The literature on human ethos evinces terminological arbitrariness, which can in my opinion be overcome in only one way: through historical reflection of the meaning which the moral-philosophical concepts have expressed at the very beginning of European philosophy. The first part of the paper is therefore dedicated to the reflection on Greek notions and then its Latin translations. In this respect there appears a fundamentally historical and substantial difference between classical Greek “ethos” and modern “morality”. The second part begins with (...) the nowadays prevailing impression that “ethos” is foredoomed to disappearance for the sake of “morality”. Attempts at rehabilitating the ethos of virtues in contrast to modern morality, undertaken by communitarily inclined philosophers after the publication of Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, have for the most part been justly criticized. By means of the phenomenological method of stepping back to originary experience, I would like to approach this matter from a different and new angle. My thesis is that “ethos” represents the normality of the world of experience. “Morality” of the modern world is based upon the borderline case of such “normality”, which is elevated to the level of a normal case. In conclusion, I will try to provide a phenomenological explanation of this historical development by interpreting it as the process of “idealization”. (shrink)

The evolution of cognition literature is dominated by views that presume the evolution of underlying neural structures. However, recent models of cognition reemphasize the role of physiological structures, development, and external resources as important components of cognition. This article argues that these alternative models of cognition challenge our understanding of human cognitive evolution. As a case study, it focuses on rehabilitating bipedalism as a crucial moment in human evolution. The australopithecines are often seen as “merely” bipedal chimpanzees, with a similar (...) suite of behaviors. But an embodied, developmental approach to understanding australopithecine cognitive abilities shows that the transition between australopithecines and the emergence of the Homo genus is less of a break than is often thought. Bipedalism on this view is not just a physiological and behavioral breakthrough: it represents a major cognitive leap as well. (shrink)

The psychological factors influencing a return to sport has gained increased research attention. In the current investigation, we explored professional basketball players’ perceptions of the psychological factors facilitating a return to performance equal to or exceeding previous performance standards. We also sought to describe athletes’ experiences – both positive and negative – of returning to sport following injury recovery. Ten Italian professional male basketball players (age range 22-36 years), were retrospectively interviewed in relation to three time-periods: (1) from the commencement (...) of rehabilitation to their first official competition, (2) the first official competition, and (3) the six-months following the initial competition. Hierarchical content analysis of the data revealed numerous themes across the three time periods. In regards to Period 1, participants indicated that social support, investment in rehabilitation and training programs, coping skills and motivation were fundamental in reaching pre-injury performance levels. During their first official game (i.e. Period 2), athletes reported that realistic performance expectations, focusing on the performance, positive emotions, motivation, arousal and social support facilitated their return to sport. Athletes however, also described a predominance of factors that hindered their return to pre- injury levels (i.e., low confidence in personal abilities, decrements in skill execution and dysfunctional physical sensations). Moreover, participants typically described a substandard level of performance during their first competition back following injury. In recounting experiences during the six months following their first official game, basketballers reported improvements in skill execution and highlighted the importance of coping skills, motivation and social support. The process of restoring self-confidence in one’s ability to successfully perform was perceived as crucial in enabling participants to move beyond a mere return to sport to a return to high performance ─ that is, to reach a level of proficiency equal to or exceeding previous performance standards. Findings support the relevance of cognitive, emotional and behavioral responses highlighted in the Integrated Model and suggest the importance of addressing psychological factors throughout the return-to-sport process. Finally, results from the present study hold a number of practical implications for athletes’ aiming to achieve a return to pre-injury levels. (shrink)

Exercise-based rehabilitation forms a key part of the UK National Health Service patient-care pathway for cardiac rehabilitation (CR). Only around half of all eligible patients attend core CR, however, with social inequalities affecting participation. Few qualitative studies have explored in-depth the key factors influencing engagement with CR, specifically from a sociological theoretical, and ethnographic perspective. Utilising an ethnographic approach allowed us to get a sense of the embodied experiences of 10 participants attending or declining core CR, together with (...) a further seven family members/significant others. This provided in-depth appreciation of participants’ lifeworld contexts as key influences on CR participation. The article draws on these qualitative data and focuses on 1) participants’ initial thoughts about CR; and 2) navigating the field of CR, analysed via thematic analysis. We utilise a Bourdieusian theoretical perspective to theorise the findings, including salient socio-cultural factors influencing attendance/non-attendance and (non)adherence. The article findings highlight how perceptions of CR and the ability to navigate the field are strongly influenced by habitus and capital, and how personal biographies and socio-material conditions affect adherence to CR programmes. The study provides original insights into embodied experiences of exercise-based CR, and novel understandings of the reasons for drop-out/poor adherence, theorised from a Bourdieusian perspective. (shrink)

Abstrak: Sains sebagai keselamatan adalah ungkapan yang kerap digunakan secara peyoratif untuk menggambarkan dampak sains dan teknologi yang mencelakakan manusia. Artikel ini akan menunjukkan bahwa ide ‘sains sebagai keselamatan’ dapat dilacak ke Francis Bacon (1561-1626) dan ditafsirkan secara ketat menurut doktrin keselamatan Kristiani. Bacon merancang suatu program raksasa untuk meningkatkan proses pembelajaran dan pembaharuan pengetahuan. Namun, pada abad ke-16, setiap upaya untuk mencanangkan perluasan pengetahuan perlu terlebih dulu merehabilitasi status moral pengetahuan yang diasosiasikan dengan petaka di Firdaus, yang membawa dosa (...) masuk ke dunia. Secara cermat Bacon menangani keprihatinan moral dan teologis zamannya dengan cara menjalin unsur eskatologis ke dalam programnya. Dia lalu menyuguhkan restorasi pengetahuan sebagai kasus partikular dalam sejarah keselamatan yang akan memulihkan penguasaan dan kuasa manusia atas alam, dan pada waktunya membebaskan manusia dari kesengsaraan material. Kata Kunci: Sains, alam, kejatuhan, pemulihan, instauratio, apokalips, sejarah keselamatan, kemaslahatan. Abstract: Science as salvation' is a term used pejoratively to refer to the harmful impact of science and technology. This article will show that the idea of ‘science as salvation’ can be traced back to Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and was strictly construed according to the Christian doctrine of salvation. Bacon devised a comprehensive programme for the advancement of learning and the restoration of knowledge. But any sixteenth-century proposals for the expansion of knowledge first required a rehabilitation of the moral status of knowledge long tainted by an image of catastrophe leading to the fall from the Garden of Eden, in which knowledge brought sins into the world. Bacon meticulously worked on the moral and theological concern of knowledge by weaving an eschatological element into his programme. He then espoused the restoration of knowledge as a particular case in the history of salvation envisaged to eventually restore human Arcadian mastery and dominion over nature, which in turn was expected to relieve humans from material sufferings. Keywords: Knowledge, sin, fall, salvation, instauratio, apocalyps, sacred history. (shrink)

Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit, and Jaegwon Kim put forward two models of higher-level causal explanation. Advocates of both versions are inclined to draw the conclusion that the models don't differ substantially. I argue, on the contrary, that there are relevant metaphysical differences between Jackson and Pettit's notion of programme explanation on the one hand, and Kim's idea of supervenient causation on the other. These can be traced back to underlying differences between the contents of their physicalisms.

Pulmonary rehabilitation has demonstrated patients’ physiological and psychosocial improvements, symptoms reduction and health-economic benefits whilst enhances the ability of the whole family to adjust to illness. However, PR remains highly inaccessible due to lack of awareness of its benefits, poor referral and availability mostly in hospitals. Novel models of PR delivery are needed to enhance its implementation while maintaining cost-efficiency. We aim to implement an innovative community-based PR programme and assess its cost-benefit. A 12-week community-based PR will be (...) implemented in primary healthcare centres where programmes are not available. Healthcare professionals will be trained. 73 patients with CRD and their caregivers will compose the experimental group. The control group will include dyads age- and disease-matched willing to collaborate in data collection but not in PR. Patients/family-centred outcomes will be dyspnoea, fatigue, cough and sputum, impact of the disease, emotional state, number of exacerbations, healthcare utilisation, health-related quality of life and family adaptability/cohesion. Other clinical outcomes will be peripheral and respiratory muscle strength, muscle thickness and cross sectional area, exercise capacity, balance and physical activity. Data will be collected at baseline, at 12 weeks, at 3- and 6-months post-PR. Changes in the outcome measures will be compared between groups, after multivariate adjustment for possible confounders, and effect sizes will be calculated. A cost-benefit analysis will be conducted. This study will enhance patients access to PR, by training healthcare professionals in the local primary healthcare centres to conduct such programmes and actively involving caregivers. The cost-benefit analysis of this intervention will provide an evidence-based insight into the economic benefit of community-based PR in chronic respiratory diseases. The trial was registered in the ClinicalTrials. gov U.S. National Library of Medicine, on 10th January, 2019. (shrink)

This study investigates rehabilitation team members’ interactive accomplishments of their domains of work and responsibility in rehabilitation team conferences in Japan. A combination of membership categorization analysis and sequential analysis is adopted to systematically illustrate the situated productions of professional sense-making practices. Analysis focuses on the segment in which a physician asks a series of questions regarding a patient’s functional status and disability coded in the functional assessment record (FAR). A close examination of data shows that a physician (...) does not always choose a respondent with his or her gaze when asking a question because s/he is continuously reading the FAR displayed on a computer screen. Despite this, a physician’s mention of a topic generates a professional’s domain of work and responsibility in a local division of labor which is used by members to assume who the relevant categorial respondent is. Further, members demonstrate these assumptions by shifting their gazes toward the computer screen, back to the document on the desk, and turning toward co-participants, thus embodying professional roles and responsibilities in situ. This study utilizes the analyst’s ethnographic understanding of the routines and division of labor at the rehabilitation ward as a resource to explicate professional sense-making practices, thus utilizing Garfinkel’s ethnomethodological studies of work. Together with sequential and categorial resources offered by Sacks, this study elucidates inferences and normative expectations which rehabilitation team members bring together to reproduce the endogenous logic of rehabilitation culture in actual occasions of the institutional life. (shrink)

This article is written by a descendant of enslaved Africans and explores the theological significance of Black bodies. Black bodies have been commodified, controlled and coerced by White hegemony, often lacking agency and self-determination. Using personal experience and contextual analysis, this article, drawing on Black theology inspired reflections, argues that we need to rethink how we conceive of Black bodies ethically, if Black lives are to really matter. The rehabilitation of Black bodies is achieved through a theological reappraisal of (...) holiness and sacraments, underpinned by an embodied pneumatology, in which Black bodies are shown to be sacramental and worthy of mattering in a world underpinned by White supremacy. (shrink)

Summary Ian Hunter has made a name for himself as a critic of German university metaphysics, finding its progeny at work in places where many of us would not even think of looking, for example in the late twentieth-century celebration of theory in the humanities. Some of his recent work has focused on a rather different issue: the methodological task of making intellectual history empirical. Here he builds on Quentin Skinner's rationale for the Cambridge School's efforts to make the history (...) of political thought more properly historical. Skinner's argument draws on the work of R. G. Collingwood, at least in its earlier versions, and on neo-Kantian tendencies in mid-twentieth century Oxford philosophy. Thus, in aligning his methodological programme with Skinner's argument, Hunter may risk bringing elements of university metaphysics back in another form. (shrink)

In Matter and Memory, Bergson examines the relationship between perception and memory, the status of consciousness in its relation to the brain, and more generally, a possible conjunction of matter and mind. Our reading focuses in particular on his understanding of the evanescent presence of the present and of its debt vis-à-vis the "unconscious" consciousness of a "virtual" past. We wish to show that the Bergsonian version of a critique of "the metaphysics of presence" is, for all that, an offshoot (...) of a Platonic type of metaphysics. It is true that Bergson departs from traditional standpoints on the side of a self-sufficient and original present and a form of presence to which the transparency of consciousness would confer the character of immediate evidence. All the same, it can hardly be claimed that his rehabilitation of the past and the unconscious opens up new perspectives on how forgetting and death are bound up with the work of memory. (shrink)

In this article, the author analyzes dominating contemporary approaches to the study of esotericism including those of W. Hanegraaff that is popular today among European scholars and its alternatives developing in the USA and the United Kingdom. The author argues that these methodologies should be understood as competitive „research programmes‟ inside the complex field of the academic study of esotericism and can‟t be described in terms of „old‟ and „new‟ paradigms like Hanegraaff tends to do it.

The terms “contemplation” and “standpoint,” as used by Lukács, have almost disappeared from the vocabulary of scholars studying the contemporary world of work. This paper aims to rehabilitate these terms by arguing that, despite its shortcomings, a Lukácsian approach offers a valuable perspective for examining labor experiences. I first outline the foundations of Lukács's reification theory by focusing on objective reification. Then, I reconstruct the concepts of contemplation and having a standpoint of experience by surveying Lukác's analysis of how different (...) actors in capitalism experience reality. I conclude by exploring the implications of reification theory for analyzing market-centered regimes of control. The article can be read as an invitation for researchers investigating the world of labor to reengage with reification theory. (shrink)

Background:Women's health has received renewed attention in the last few years including health rehabilitation options for women affected by breast cancer. Dancing has often been regarded as one attractive option for supporting women's well-being and health, but research with women recovering from breast cancer is still in its infancy. Dancing with Health is multi-site pilot study that aimed to evaluate a dance programme for women in recovery from breast cancer across five European countries.Methods:A standardized 32 h dance protocol (...) introduced a range of Latin American dances presented within a sports and exercise framework with influences from dance movement therapy. Fifty-four women (M age 53.51; SD 7.99) participated in the study who had a breast cancer diagnosis 6 weeks, no indication of metastasis, or scheduled surgery/chemotherapy/radiation treatment for the duration of the intervention. Primary outcome data was collected for anthropometric and fitness measures next to cancer-related quality of life.T-tests and Wilcoxon signed ranked tests were used to establish differences pre and post intervention. Cohen's d was also calculated to determine the effect size of the intervention.Results:Statistically significant changes were found for: (i) weight, right and left forearm circumference and hip; (ii) 6 min walking, right and left handgrip, sit-to-stand and sit-and-reach; (iii) the EORTC-QLQ C30 summary score as well as the subscales of emotional and social functioning and symptoms. In all cases the direction of change was positive, while Cohen's d calculated showed that the effect of the intervention for these parameters ranged from intermediate to large.Conclusion:Changes on the above anthropometric, fitness and quality of life measures suggest that the intervention was of value to the participating women recovering from breast cancer. Results also advocate collaborative efforts across countries to further research. (shrink)

In South Africa, the majority of the population suffers from the inadequacy of learning opportunities and poor access to the higher education system. This causes the widening of the knowledge gap and increased socio-economic marginalisation, which threatens community agency. Critical knowledge created by academics at South African higher education institutions often culminates in access-controlled, costly scientific publications, thus limiting public access. On the other hand, because of the distance between universities and communities, community knowledge and intelligences are never fed (...) class='Hi'>back into the university to enrich scholarship and enhance relevance. This paper explores the need for higher education to be freed from its elitist captivity in order to widen access to knowledge that would enhance community agency and revitalise academic agency for social change. The paper starts with a discussion on the need for change in the elitist nature of higher education. I will recount how essential shifts in thinking and action created the Chance 2 Advance programme hosted by the largest provider of higher education on the continent, the University of South Africa. This programme was designed in an attempt to re-vision academic scholarship for the benefit of the poor. Chance 2 Advance is an engaged scholarship and community-learning programme designed to bring communities and academics closer, in a mutual and reciprocal process of knowledge creation and knowledge mobilisation for social change. The programme has been replicated in urban and rural areas with success. At the end of 2018, the programme is poised to reach 100 000 participants, since its inception in 2010. (shrink)

Pneumatic muscle actuators own excellent compliance and a high power-to-weight ratio and have been widely used in bionic robots and rehabilitated robots. However, the high nonlinear characteristics of PMAs due to inherent construction and pneumatic driving principle bring great challenges in applications acquired accurately modeling and controlling. To tackle the tricky problem, a single PMA mass setup is constructed, and a back propagation neural network is employed to identify the dynamics of the setup. An offline model is built up (...) using sampled data, and online modifications are performed to further improve the quality of the model. An adaptive controller based on BPNN is designed using gradient descent information of the built-up model. Experiments of identifying the PMA setup using BPNN and position tracking by adaptive BPNN controller are performed, and results demonstrate the good capacity in accurate controlling of the PMA setup. (shrink)

The question I wish to address on this occasion is whether the Platonic course of study retains any validity in the modern world. I shall argue that some version of it indeed might, though by no means for everybody. A course of education, after all, which begins with the rules for rational thought and argumentation, then turns to the question of the true nature of the self, followed by a consideration of the nature of ethics, politics, physics and metaphysics, should (...) serve very well for developing well-rounded and rational persons. I believe that the true legacy of the Platonist model of education, on which modern civilisation is progressively turning its back, is that the properly structured study of quite abstract subjects is the best training for the mind, even when the mind is turned to the solution of entirely practical problems. (shrink)

Education is a fundamental process of human life with ethics having an important place in all areas of our life. It is thus important to incorporate ethics into education as a subject. Reports have indicated in how “teaching philosophy can enhance people’s capacity for critical thinking, encourage critical engagements with ideas of self, and improve interpersonal skills, with these being important transferable skills that could help prisoners to prosper once released”. This is in line with the South African prison system’s (...) mandate, which is to maintain and promote a just, peaceful and safe society by correcting offending behaviour in a safe, secure and human environment, thus facilitating optimal rehabilitation and reduced repeat offending. Therefore, for the system to fulfil some of its mandate; ethics education in prison for the purpose of rehabilitating offender’s moral thinking and reasoning in order to correct their behaviour before being released is vital. Ethics training was done at the Johannesburg Correctional Service, with a maximum of 40 voluntary participants. Training was dived into three categories: 1. Tutorials. 2. Practical application of moral values of Ubuntu. 3. Discussion and debating another set of moral values as well as writing of assignments. Participants reported to have gained and learned to respect themselves as well as others, identify their faults and gained self-confidence. Application of this method in ethics education proved to be well received by the participants, as well as how ethics training in prison might be used as an effective tool for moral development and reasoning, thereby rehabilitation. (shrink)

There is a chapter in the history of ideas which, at least since the 1960s, appeared to have been definitively resolved. French Marxism of the 1930s has thus been reduced, whether by its supporters and opponents or by historians, to the status of a mere avatar of Stalinist diamat, albeit with certain variations which can be traced back to the national heritage of materialism and rationalism. The paper presents the main results of a research project whose purpose is to (...) reconstruct the developments which have led to the formation of such an image. The aim is to recover the possibility of apprehending afresh the various competing trends which, at the time, were engaged in a discursive struggle, the object of which was the definition of dialectical materialism. Hegel’s name, invoked in the context of epistemological discourses and to oppose the dominant academic tradition, thus emerges as a major philosophical reference for those currents which, at the termination of this ideological conflict, ended up on the defeated side. (shrink)

This article discusses the methodological problems in justifying gestalt ontology at the expense of environmental ethics, as displayed by the father of deep ecology, Arne Næss. As one of the main reasons for underrating the role of ethics in building environmental philosophy, I point out Næss’ theory of narrowing morality to moralization, which can be traced to the way he examines the impact of moral intuition, duty, and beautiful actions in Kant’s sense. On a macro methodological level, the main objective (...) of this paper is to show why rehabilitating the role of ethics in Næss’ conception necessitates rethinking his move “from ethics to ontology and back” within the framework of ontological ethics. (shrink)

This paper examines the Confucian concept of tian, conventionally translated into English as “Heaven.‘ The secondary literature on tian has primarily focused on the question of what tian is: e.g., whether tian is an anthropomorphic deity or a naturalistic force, or whether tian is transcendent or immanent. Instead, this paper locates tian with respect to the ethical life of human beings, and argues that the two conflicting concepts of “moral economy‘ and “contingency‘ are main characteristics of tian. This paper further (...) investigates these characteristics in Kongzi’s and Mengzi’s ethical thought: how they conceptualized moral economy and contingency, and how their different conceptualizations shaped their respective ethical programs: Kongzi’s ethics of faith and Mengzi’s ethics of confidence. (shrink)

Regulation of stem cell research in Europe should not take place without public and scholarly inputThe European Union has, at present, no jurisdiction over research carried out in the member states, or concerning the “ethics” of member states. This does not, however, mean that decisions made by the European institutions cannot influence such matters greatly.There has recently been a lot of focus on the decision not to fund embryonic stem cell research during the first year of the 6th framework (...) class='Hi'>programme , but behind the scenes a much more important and wide ranging set of regulations are being prepared.The European Commission has prepared a draft directive on setting standards of quality and safety for the donation, procurement, testing, processing, storage, and distribution of human tissues and cells.1 The purpose of this directive was originally to “ensure the quality and safety of human tissues and cells for clinical use” in the EU. This is clearly a laudable objective, fully in line with the EU’s jurisdiction in consumer protection and public health.During the intricate processes of political …. (shrink)

The notion of “bounded rationality” was introduced by Simon as an appropriate framework for explaining how agents reason and make decisions in accordance with their computational limitations and the characteristics of the environments in which they exist (seen metaphorically as two complementary scissor blades).We elaborate on how bounded rationality is usually conceived in psychology and on its relationship with logic. We focus on the relationship between heuristics and some non-monotonic logical systems. These two categories of cognitive tools share fundamental features. (...) As a step further, we show that in some cases heuristics themselves can be formalized from this logic perspective. We have therefore two main aims: on the one hand, to demonstrate the relationship between the bounded rationality programme and logic, understood in a broad sense; on the other hand, to provide logical tools of analysis of already known heuristics. This may lead to results such as the characterization of fast and frugal binary trees in terms of their associated logic program here provided. (shrink)

In recent work, Bengson, Cuneo, and Shafer‐Landau (2020) develop a new social version of moral intuitionism that promises to explain why our moral intuitions are trustworthy. In this paper, we raise several worries for their account and present some general challenges for the broader class of views we call Social Moral Intuitionism. We close by reflecting on Bengson, Cuneo, and Shafer‐Landau's comparison between what they call the “perceptual practice” and the “moral intuition practice”, which we take to raise some difficult (...) normative and meta‐normative questions for theorists of all stripes. (shrink)

The primary aim of this paper is to defend the Lockean View—the view that a belief is epistemically justified iff it is highly probable—against a new family of objections. According to these objections, broadly speaking, the Lockean View ought to be abandoned because it is incompatible with, or difficult to square with, our judgments surrounding certain legal cases. I distinguish and explore three different versions of these objections—The Conviction Argument, the Argument from Assertion and Practical Reasoning, and the Comparative Probabilities (...) Argument—but argue that none of them are successful. I also present some very general reasons for being pessimistic about the overall strategy of using legal considerations to evaluate epistemic theories; as we will see, there are good reasons to think that many of the considerations relevant to legal theorizing are ultimately irrelevant to epistemic theorizing. (shrink)

The primary objective of this paper is to introduce a new epistemic paradox that puts pressure on the claim that justification is closed under multi premise deduction. The first part of the paper will consider two well-known paradoxes—the lottery and the preface paradox—and outline two popular strategies for solving the paradoxes without denying closure. The second part will introduce a new, structurally related, paradox that is immune to these closure-preserving solutions. I will call this paradox, The Paradox of the Pill. (...) Seeing that the prominent closure-preserving solutions do not apply to the new paradox, I will argue that it presents a much stronger case against the claim that justification is closed under deduction than its two predecessors. Besides presenting a more robust counterexample to closure, the new paradox also reveals that the strategies that were previously thought to get closure out of trouble are not sufficiently general to achieve this task as they fail to apply to similar closure-threatening paradoxes in the same vicinity. (shrink)