Whistleblowers are a vital means of protecting society because they provide information about serious wrongdoing. And yet, people who speak up can suffer. Even so, debates on whistleblowing focus on compelling employees to come forward, often overlooking the risk involved. Theoretical understanding of whistleblowers’ post-disclosure experience is weak because tangible and material impacts are poorly understood due partly to a lack of empirical detail on the financial costs of speaking out. To address this, we present findings from a novel empirical (...) study surveying whistleblowers. We demonstrate how whistleblowers who leave their role as a result of speaking out can lose both the financial and temporal resources necessary to redevelop their livelihoods post-disclosure. We also show how associated costs involving significant legal and health expenditure can rise. Based on these insights, our first contribution is to present a new conceptual framing of post-disclosure experiences, drawing on feminist theory, that emphasizes the bodily vulnerability of whistleblowers and their families. Our second contribution repositions whistleblowing as a form of labour defending against precarity, which involves new expenses, takes significant time, and often must be carried out with depleted income. Bringing forth the intersubjective aspect of the whistleblowing experience, our study shows how both the post-disclosure survival of whistleblowers, and their capacity to speak, depend on institutional supports or, in their absence, on personal networks. By reconceptualizing post-disclosure experiences in this way—as material, embodied and intersubjective—practical implications for whistleblower advocacy and policy emerge, alongside contributions to theoretical debates. Reversing typical formulations in business ethics, we turn extant debates on the ethical duty of employees to speak up against wrongdoing on their heads. We argue instead for a responsibility to protect whistleblowers exposed to vulnerability, a duty owed by those upon whose behalf they speak. (shrink)

The differential activation hypothesis (DAH; Teasdale, 1988) proposes that individuals who are vulnerable to depression can be distinguished from non-vulnerable individuals by the degree to which negative thoughts and maladaptive cognitive processes are activated during sad mood. While retrieval of negative autobiographical memories is noted as one such process, the model does not articulate a role for deficits in recalling positive memories. Two studies were conducted to compare the autobiographical memory characteristics of never-depressed and formerly depressed individuals following a sad (...) mood induction. In Study 1, features of negative memories of never-depressed and formerly depressed individuals did not differ, either in neutral or sad mood. For positive memories, groups did not differ in neutral mood, but following a sad mood induction, formerly depressed individuals rated their positive memories as less vivid than their never-depressed counterparts. Study 2 examined positive autobiographical memory features more comprehensively and replicated the finding that in a sad mood formerly depressed individuals recalled less vivid positive memories than never-depressed controls. These findings suggest that the phenomenological features of positive memories could represent an important factor in depressive vulnerability, and, more broadly, that depression may be associated with a deficit in the processing of positive material. (shrink)

JANET DELGADO RODRIGUEZ | : The concept of vulnerability is central to current developments in bioethics, not only because of its analytic nature, but also due to its capacity for criticism. However, this concept has not been sufficiently developed, neither in the area of moral philosophy nor in bioethics. For this reason, it is necessary to define and analyze the conceptual framework in which the notion of vulnerability has been developed within the scope of bioethics. Thus, the purpose (...) of this paper is to indicate how the concept of vulnerability in the field of bioethics has been developed and what the main problems that derive from this approach are. Secondly, the paper analyzes some of the main philosophical approaches that I consider should be articulated in the expansion of a critical bioethics approach focused on the notion of vulnerability. To address this issue, I analyze the reflections that we find in the work of Martha Fineman, emphasizing the main relevant aspects for bioethics. Finally, I highlight the main implications of a theory of vulnerability for bioethics. | : Le concept de vulnérabilité est au coeur des développements actuels de la bioéthique, non seulement en raison de sa nature analytique, mais aussi en raison de son potentiel critique. Cependant, ce concept n’a pas été suffisamment développé, que ce soit dans le domaine de la philosophie morale ou de la bioéthique. Pour cette raison, il est nécessaire de définir et d’analyser le cadre conceptuel dans lequel la notion de vulnérabilité a été développée en bioéthique. Ainsi, le but de cet article est d’indiquer comment le concept de vulnérabilité a été développé dans le domaine de la bioéthique et quels sont les principaux problèmes découlant de cette approche. Deuxièmement, l’article analyse certaines des principales approches philosophiques qui devraient selon moi être articulées à une approche bioéthique critique centrée sur la notion de vulnérabilité. Pour traiter ce problème, j’analyse la réflexion de Martha Fineman, en soulignant les principaux aspects pertinents pour la bioéthique. Enfin, je souligne les principales implications d’une théorie de la vulnérabilité pour la bioéthique. (shrink)

FRÉDÉRICK ARMSTRONG | : It is common to see vulnerability as either “ontological” or broadly “circumstantial.” Both views capture something morally important about vulnerability. However, there is a puzzle: how can the same concept refer to a necessary ontological fact and to a contingent circumstance? I address two solutions to this puzzle. First, I argue that Mackenzie et al.’s taxonomy of vulnerability is not a real solution. Second, I address Martin et al.’s dispositional account of vulnerability. (...) For them, vulnerability is both an intrinsic property and a disposition. This supposedly solves the puzzle: vulnerability can be intrinsic and yet be manifest in only some circumstances—such is the nature of dispositions. However, I argue that if vulnerability is indeed a disposition, it is better conceived as an extrinsic disposition. Thus, vulnerability cannot be both intrinsic and dispositional; Martin et al. fail to resolve the puzzle. This, however, is no reason to fret. Indeed, an amended dispositional account of vulnerability, in which it is conceived as an extrinsic disposition, is metaphysically consistent and it satisfies our moral intuitions about human vulnerability, and more. Given these advantages, I argue the solution to this dilemma is to abandon the ontological conception of vulnerability. | : La vulnérabilité est souvent présentée comme une propriété « ontologique » ou comme une propriété « circonstancielle ». Ces deux conceptions saisissent des aspects moralement significatifs de la vulnérabilité. Il y a cependant un puzzle : comment peut-elle être, en même temps, un fait ontologique nécessaire et une donnée circonstancielle contingente? J’explore deux solutions. Premièrement, je montre que la taxonomie de Mackenzie et al. n’est pas une solution. Ensuite, je présente l’approche dispositionnelle de Martin et al.. Selon elles, la vulnérabilité est une propriété intrinsèque et dispositionnelle. Cela résoudrait le puzzle : la vulnérabilité peut être intrinsèque et n’être manifeste qu’en des circonstances particulières – telle est la nature des dispositions. Or, la vulnérabilité, si on la conçoit comme une disposition, est mieux conçue comme extrinsèque. La vulnérabilité ne peut pas être dispositionnelle et intrinsèque, donc Martin et al. échouent. Il n’y a toutefois pas là lieu de s’inquiéter. Une version amendée de l’approche dispositionnelle, où la vulnérabilité est conçue comme une disposition extrinsèque, est métaphysiquement cohérente, compatible avec l’ensemble de nos intuitions morales sur la vulnérabilité humaine et plus encore. Étant données ces avantages, la solution au puzzle est d’abandonner la conception ontologique de la vulnérabilité. (shrink)

This article explores how ethical agency, as ‘other-oriented’ caring, emerged from feelings of being ‘different’ in a cultural organization by drawing on feminist ethics of care. By analyzing interview material from an ethnographic study, we centralize the relationship between feelings of being ‘different,’ vulnerability and the development of sensibilities, practices and imaginaries of care. We elaborate on how vulnerability serves as a ground for caring with rather than for others, and illustrate how it allowed individuals to challenge both (...) organizational, normative diversity discourses and essentialization of differences. We contribute to the literature on critical diversity management by furthering problematizations of instrumental diversity management from the perspective of care, and to the organizational literature on feminist care ethics by empirically exploring how ethical agency emerges from tensions related to feeling ‘different.’ While previous studies have shown how marginalized individuals use their sense of ‘otherness’ to negotiate, conform to and resist organizational norms, practices and discourses, we provide further insights on how it also can drive concern and care for others, and thus serve as possible ground for ethical change initiatives within organizations. (shrink)

Smajdor argues that “recognition” is the solution to the “reifying attitude” that results from “the urge to protect ‘vulnerable’ people through exclusion from research”. Drawing on theories of reification, we argue that it is the concepts of autonomy and vulnerability themselves that have been reified, resulting in the impoverishment of approaches to autonomy at law and in research ethics. Overcoming such reification demands a deeper consideration of the grounds on which vulnerable individuals are owed recognition and thereby the forms (...) such recognition should take. Smajdor argues for a recognition that appeals to autonomy and that manifests in providing vulnerable individuals with the opportunity to assent. The problem is that this kind of recognition is dependent on a more fundamental kind. It is this second form of recognition that would need to do the heavy lifting for assent-based frameworks to avoid the same problems we find with consent. (shrink)

A specific clinical encounter in which the author was an ethics consultant, after a brief summary, provides the basis for a phenomenological delineation and explication of the key ingredients of such encounters. A brief historical reflection on the myths of Gyges and Aesculapius suggests that several of these ingredients are essential to clinical encounters and help constitute their specific moral aspects and challenges. Understood as an interpersonal relationship framed by critical issues of illness experiences, the clinical encounter makes prominent such (...) constitutive features as dialogue, trust, violence, and especially vulnerability and power. The role of the clinical ethicist is found to be often critical in these encounters, in particular because of the need to help patients and doctors identify, understand, and cope productively with fundamental moral phenomena. (shrink)

The responsibility gap, commonly described as a core challenge for the effective governance of, and trust in, AI and autonomous systems (AI/AS), is traditionally associated with a failure of the epistemic and/or the control condition of moral responsibility: the ability to know what we are doing and exercise competent control over this doing. Yet these two conditions are a red herring when it comes to understanding the responsibility challenges presented by AI/AS, since evidence from the cognitive sciences shows that individual (...) humans face very similar responsibility challenges with regard to these two conditions. While the problems of epistemic opacity and attenuated behaviour control are not unique to AI/AS technologies (though they can be exacerbated by them), we show that we can learn important lessons for AI/AS development and governance from how philosophers have recently revised the traditional concept of moral responsibility in response to these challenges to responsible human agency from the cognitive sciences. The resulting instrumentalist views of responsibility, which emphasize the forward-looking and flexible role of agency cultivation, hold considerable promise for integrating AI/AS into a healthy moral ecology. We note that there nevertheless is a gap in AI/AS responsibility that has yet to be extensively studied and addressed, one grounded in a relational asymmetry of vulnerability between human agents and sociotechnical systems like AI/AS. In the conclusion of this paper we note that attention to this vulnerability gap must inform and enable future attempts to construct trustworthy AI/AS systems and preserve the conditions for responsible human agency. (shrink)

The story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 is one of the most intriguing stories in the Hebrew Bible. While it yields many useful insights into the character of God, the nature of sin and the aspiration of our redemption, it is equally offensive when one looks at it from a human rights perspective, considering, in particular, the vulnerable and defenceless woman, Tamar. Her being returned to her father’s house is portrayed as acting in accordance with the law for (...) a childless widow. However, using the critical hermeneutical lens, it becomes apparent that the real motive that drove Judah to send her away was his fear lest his only surviving son Shelah should share the fate of Er and Onan, whose deaths he plainly attributed to Tamar’s doing. As such, Tamar was deprived of the right to marry Shelah as provided for in the levirate marriage law. Using feministic hermeneutics and the comparative approach, this article foregrounds the vulnerability experienced by women, especially when their husbands mysteriously or suddenly pass away. Because of the patriarchal hegemony of African and Israelite societies, childless widows often find themselves ostracised from the same families which they thought they were now part and parcel of by virtue of having married into that family. Much of the ostracism emanates from the fact that they are usually fingered as the prime suspects responsible for having played a part in their husbands’ deaths. Hence, the crux of this article is to present the interface between the Israelite and African worldviews, highlighting the parallels between the plight of widows in the Israelite and Shona societies. (shrink)

Breast cancer screening aims to help women by early identification and treatment of cancers that might otherwise be life-threatening. However, breast cancer screening also leads to the detection of some cancers that, if left undetected and untreated, would not have damaged the health of the women concerned. At the time of diagnosis, harmless cancers cannot be identified as non-threatening, therefore women are offered invasive breast cancer treatment. This phenomenon of identifying non-harmful cancers is called overdiagnosis. Overdiagnosis is morally problematic as (...) it leads to overall patient harm rather than benefit. Further, breast cancer screening is offered in a context that exaggerates cancer risk and screening benefit, minimises risk of harm and impedes informed choice. These factors combine to create pathogenic vulnerability. That is, breast cancer screening exacerbates rather than reduces women’s vulnerability and undermines women’s agency. This paper provides an original way of conceptualising agency-supporting responses to the harms of breast cancer overdiagnosis through application of the concept of pathogenic vulnerability. (shrink)

Psychedelics are experiencing a renaissance in mental healthcare. In recent years, more and more early phase trials on psychedelic-assisted therapy have been conducted, with promising results overall. However, ethical analyses of this rediscovered form of treatment remain rare. The present paper contributes to the ethical inquiry of psychedelic-assisted therapy by analysing the ethical implications of its therapeutic mechanisms proposed by the relaxed beliefs under psychedelics (REBUS) hypothesis. In short, the REBUS hypothesis states that psychedelics make rigid beliefs revisable by increasing (...) the influence of bottom-up input. Put differently, patients become highly suggestible and sensitive to context during a psychedelic session, amplifying therapeutic influence and effects. Due to that, patients are more vulnerable in psychedelic-assisted therapy than in other therapeutic interventions; they lose control during a psychedelic session and become dependent on the therapeutic setting (including the therapist). This enhanced vulnerability is ethically relevant and has been exploited by some therapists in the past. Therefore, patients in current research settings and starting mainstream medical settings need to be well informed about psychedelics’ mechanisms and their implications to give valid informed consent to treatment. Furthermore, other security measures are warranted to protect patients from the vulnerability coming with psychedelic-assisted therapy. (shrink)

Over the years, the urban heat vulnerability has evolved as a pressing global concern for researchers and policymakers alike. Numerous studies have aimed at mitigating the adverse effects of urban heat vulnerability on public health and safety. However, the critical task of selecting the most fitting indicator for urban heat islands in public spaces is not emphasized in the existing studies, considering the diverse indices available. Beyond identification, studies that delve into the prioritization of these indices and the (...) determination of optimal variables along with their respective weights are scanty. The present study attempts to address these gaps in urban heat vulnerability research through the lens of natural solutions. The study employs a fuzzy analytical hierarchy approach to ascertain the weights of selected criteria, providing a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted factors influencing their applicability. Real-time impact estimation using the fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solutions enhances the practicality of the findings. The results reveal a set of pivotal characteristics crucial for constructing a robust heat vulnerability index, facilitating the prioritization of selected criteria. The implementation of this hybrid methodology culminates in a streamlined, precise, and practical tool for evaluating heat vulnerability in hot urban public spaces. These findings contribute valuable insights to the academic discourse and offer a tangible resource for policymakers and practitioners. The proactive approach provides a roadmap for addressing impending challenges related to urban heat vulnerability, marking a positive step toward creating resilient and sustainable urban environments. (shrink)

Cognitive theories of emotion propose that the interpretation of emotion-eliciting situations crucially shapes affective responses. Implicit or automatic biases in these interpretations may hinder emotion regulation and thereby increase risk for the onset and maintenance of psychological disorders. In this study, participants were randomly assigned to a positive or negative interpretation bias training using ambiguous social scenarios. After the completion of the training, a stress task was administered and changes in positive and negative affect and self-esteem were assessed. The results (...) demonstrate that the interpretation bias training was successful in that participants exhibited a tendency to interpret novel scenarios in accordance with their training condition. Importantly, the positive training condition also had a protective effect on self-esteem. Participants in this condition did not exhibit a decrease in self-esteem after the stress task, whereas participants in the negative condition did. These results demonstrate that implicit cognitive biases can be trained and that this training affects self-esteem. Implications of these findings for research on psychopathology and emotion regulation are discussed. (shrink)

With catastrophic events of «nature» like global warming, arguments emerge that insinuate an equivalence of vulnerability, responsibility or being affected by these catastrophes. Such an alleged equivalence when facing climate catastrophe is already visible, for example, in the notion of the «Anthropocene» itself, which obscures both causes and various vulnerabilities in a homogenized as well as universalized concept of humanity (anthropos). Taking such narratives as a starting point, the paper explores questions about the connection between catastrophe, temporality, and history, (...) following mainly Walter Benjamin, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Jean-Luc Nancy with the goal to provide (1) a critique of the concept «Anthropocene» on the basis of nonequivalence while retaining its key features to still grasp the catastrophic present, (2) an analysis of anthropocenic time and the chronical structure of catastrophe, (3) philosophical considerations on the intersection of catastrophe and history. (shrink)

In exploring the concept of vulnerability, we do not begin with a blank slate. In research involving human subjects, ethics guidelines typically provide a rough definition of the concept. For example, the commentary on Guideline 13 in the International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects, issued by the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS), says that "vulnerable persons are those who are relatively (or absolutely) incapable of protecting their own interests. More formally, they may have (...) insufficient power, intelligence, education, resources, strength, or other needed attributes to protect their own interests" (CIOMS 2002). Because the CIOMS guidelines .. (shrink)

International migration has a female face in the beginning of the twenty-first century; since at least 1990, a total of 49 percent of international migrants have been women (UN 2008).1 Many women relocate in pursuit of goals that they can’t realize in their countries of origin, and many women move on their own to developed countries as caregivers to the very old or the very young, as nurses to attend to the sick in hospitals, and as domestic workers.2 How should (...) we regard their decisions to do so? One way of thinking about such moves is to deplore the fact that women have to move in order to attain certain goals in their lives; it would be more desirable to live in a world that would not make such moves necessary... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Democracy in an Uncertain World:Expertise as a Provisional Response to VulnerabilityRobert Smid (bio)In the final chapter of American Immanence, Michael Hogue writes that "[r]ather than asking the foundationalist question of what epistemology is needed to ground or justify democracy, the pragmatist asks what epistemology democracy entails. What 'way of knowing' follows from, or is appropriate to, democracy as an associational ethos of vulnerable life?"1 While Hogue and I have (...) explored similar themes in our research on the promises and perils of democracy, this statement identifies a key difference in our respective approaches that has significant implications for the role that democracy can and should play in inquiry as well as for its potential to revolutionize civilization as we know it in the Anthropocene.In what follows, I raise three interrelated points that interrogate that difference. The first pertains to the role of foundations, provisional or otherwise, in Hogue's work, and results in a challenge to the special status seemingly given to democracy and a proposed inversion of the relation he poses between epistemology and democracy. The second pertains to the role of education in a democracy. This is a dimension of traditional pragmatist discourse on democracy that is conspicuously absent in Hogue's book, yet one that has significant implications for his argument. In this section, I will draw out the Deweyan strains of that discourse that appear to inform Hogue's work and contrast them with a Peircean take that yields notably different outcomes. The third point addresses the relation between democracy and sovereignty, a relation that Hogue explicitly eschews but that I will argue maintains some validity within democratic discourse, albeit in a more modest and provisional form. Finally, I draw these three points together in a conclusion that affirms much of Hogue's argument—including the profound vulnerability manifested by the Anthropocene and the need for more resilient forms of associated life—but assert that democracy is no less vulnerable than any other aspect of our uncertain world and therefore cannot be expected to possess within itself all that is necessary for its ongoing development. Building on the inversion of democracy and epistemology in the first section, the constitutive role of education in a [End Page 30] democracy as laid out in the second section, and the argument for a mitigated sovereignty in the third section, I argue that professional expertise provides an acceptable and necessary default when democratic structures fail.I. Provisional FoundationsAs a theopolitics rooted in religious naturalism, Hogue's understanding of democracy is one that is "embodied, relational, and vulnerable."2 That is, knowledge, meaning, and value all emerge out of and are conditioned by their social context, and shift according to the interests and needs of those who lay claim to them. Accordingly, Hogue's argument for democracy is that it is the way of life that allows for the broadest possible participation in such constructions, and which responds most effectively to the conditions of uncertainty and vulnerability surrounding them. It comes as no surprise, then, that his account of democracy is antifoundational, recognizing not only that all inquiry begins in medias res, but also that it emerges from a wide variety of media and that, while one goal of democratic discourse may be to chart a coherent path forward, both the media and the proposed paths are subject to change at any moment. Such antifoundationalism is a fairly standard commitment in pragmatist and process discourse, and thus relatively uncontroversial in its own right. It is worth noting, however, that being committed to antifoundationalism and actually being antifoundationalist in practice are often two very different things, our best efforts to the contrary notwithstanding.It is clear from Hogue's book that he resists any foundationalist epistemology, opting instead to derive his epistemology from democratic practice. As noted above, he asks "[w]hat 'way of knowing' follows from, or is appropriate to, democracy as an associational ethos of vulnerable life?"3 While it is possible that there is one epistemology that is best suited to democracy understood in this way, that epistemology would not, by his account, stand on its own foundation but be contingent on one... (shrink)

This article addresses the conditions that are necessary for non-Indigenous people to learn from Indigenous people, more specifically from women and feminists. As non-Indigenous scholars, we first explore the challenges of epistemic dialogue through the example of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. From there, through the concept of mastery, we examine the social and ontological conditions under which settler subjectivities develop. As demonstrated by Julietta Singh and Val Plumwood, the logic of mastery—which has legitimated the oppression and exploitation of Indigenous peoples—has been (...) reproduced in academia, leaving almost no room for Indigenous knowledge and epistemes. In the same vein, Sámi scholar Rauna Kuokkanen reclaims and suggests the logic of the gift as a means to render academia more hospitable to Indigenous peoples and epistemes. In our view, reclaim as a concept-practice is a promising way to disrupt colonial, racist, and sexist power relations. Thus, we in turn propose to reclaim vulnerability as defined by Judith Butler in order to deconstruct masterful settler subjectivities and reconstruct relational ones instead. As theorized by Erinn Gilson, we propose epistemic vulnerability to imagine the conditions of our learning from Indigenous peoples and philosophies. (shrink)

Hojjat Soofi successfully developed a novel dementia-specific model of human flourishing.1 Based on a modified version of Nussbaum’s account of dignity (ie, the theoretical framework of the capabilities approach), and integrated with Kitwood and Bredin’s empirically informed list of indicators of well-being for people with dementia (ie, the field of empirically informed ethics), this model provides guidance on how to actually care for people with dementia in real-life practices, according to the moral requirements of respect for dignity. More specifically, we (...) deem the contributive value of the model to be threefold. (1) It is a successful specification and contextualisation of Nussbaum’s original list of capabilities in the context of dementia care. (2) The table clearly distinguishes between dementia-specific capabilities and their possibly dementia-related progressive deprivation (ie, the internal conditions), and the possible external setbacks or facilitators for human flourishing. (3) The model is proposed as being open to include new and additional insights from further empirical research on what forms of caregiving do (or do not) align with respect for the dignity of people with dementia. In our commentary, we want to focus on the source of dignity, that is, the locus and starting point of our moral requirements on which the author takes an explicit stance. First of all, by being founded on the list of dementia-specific capabilities, Soofi’s model places the source of our moral requirements of respect for the dignity of people with dementia within the persons themselves, ‘having some of the basis capabilities listed’ (p.6). This, in turn, brings classic discussions concerning a …. (shrink)

In the past decade UNESCO has pursued a leadership role in the articulation of general principles for bioethics, as well as an extensive campaign to promulgate these principles globally.1 Since UNESCO's General Conference adopted the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights in 2005, UNESCO's Bioethics Section has worked with member states to develop a "bioethics infrastructure." UNESCO also provides an "Ethics Teacher Training Course" to member states and disseminates a "core curriculum," primarily targeting medical students. The core curriculum orients (...) itself by the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and aims to articulate a set of "bioethical principles" that provide a "common global . (shrink)

The concept of vulnerability has been renewed in meaning and importance over recent decades. Scholars such as Judith Butler, Martha Fineman and Pamela Sue Anderson have endeavored to redeem vulnerability from its traditional signification as a negative individual condition, and to reveal the positive meaning of vulnerability as a transformative call for solidarity, equality and love. In this paper we examine the newly constructed positive understanding of vulnerability, and argue that the current way of pursuing this (...) positive understanding affirms a merely functional positivity. In the recent accounts, vulnerability is still a status to avoid, yet functions positively as a corrective force to the environment that produces vulnerability. We will try to find an essential way of designating the positivity of vulnerability by revisiting the philosophical discussion on vulnerability in Emmanuel Levinas. We will argue that Levinas’s notion of vulnerability is positive in a sense which goes beyond the purely functional; it is seen as essential for his definition of humanity. Yet compared to the contemporary discussion, Levinas’s notion of vulnerability lacks a direct social political meaning. We will tentatively explore how the essential positivity drawn from Levinas can provide a new way to construct the political significance of vulnerability. (shrink)

Peer commentary on: Goering, S., Klein, E., Dougherty, D. D., & Widge, A. S. (2017). Staying in the loop: Relational agency and identity in next-generation DBS for psychiatry. AJOB Neuroscience, 8(2), 59-70.

In a time when worlds, communities and subjects are increasingly presented as ‘vulnerable’, much remains to be said about the distinctly feminine shapes of ‘vulnerability’; weakness, softness, permeability, a sense of being affected, imprinted upon, or entered and shattered. While this presumed vulnerability of the feminine body has often been the basis of feminist sexual politics, feminist goals of autonomy often presume an internal and external undoing of vulnerability as such. Drawing on ethnographic research with queer femmes (...) and building on Sara Ahmed’s (2004a) idea that vulnerability is a ‘particular kind of bodily relation to the world’, this experimental article challenges the popularised idea that to queer femininity requires action, intention, agency and strength. Extending the work of femme authors Dorothy Allison and Ann Cvetkovich, the article considers the cracks in such femme politics, and focuses on how femme feelings of vulnerability take shape and figure in movements, and become what sticks between femme bodies of flesh and knowledge. Attending to the sensuous canvas of skin, to high-heeled movement and desire for both sex and sisterhood, these are notes on the work of affect in what is here called femmebodiment towards a somatechnical understanding of femininity. (shrink)

Over the past years, various accounts of ethical consumption have been produced which identify certain concepts as central to mediating the ethical relationship between the consumer and the consumed. Scholars across disciplinary fields have explored how individuals construe their ethical consumption responsibilities and commitments through the notions of identity, taking care and doing good, proximity and distance, suggesting the centrality of these themes to consumer engagement in ethical practices. This paper contributes to the body of research concerned with unravelling consumers’ (...) conceptually mediated relationship to moral and ethical issues in the sphere of consumption by revealing a new set of ideas through which people interpret and relate to consumption ethics. Drawing upon findings from an empirical study on self-perceived ethical food consumers, I demonstrate that people’s perceptions and views of ethical problems around consumption are bound up with notions of vulnerability, suffering, and harm, and that these notions permeate and impact all aspects of ethical consumer behaviour. The paper concludes by arguing that we need to further explore the conceptual underpinnings of ethical consumer commitments and practices, and expand the conceptual toolkit of research on ethical consumption to account for a wider range of ideas and notions that shape individual as well as collective motivations, intentions, and actions throughout the process of becoming and being an ethical consumer. Finally, the paper suggests a specific analytical framework to facilitate such research. (shrink)

A rising number of patients require continuing or palliative services and this means that they will need to transition from one model of healthcare delivery to another. If it is generally recognised that patient vulnerability to inadequate services increases when the setting in which patient receives care changes, it is usually taken to be the result of poor coordination of services or personnel. Recognising that an integrated system is essential to adequate access, the point that I put forward in (...) this paper is that the centrality of acute care services affects the way in which chronic and palliative services are structured and, consequently, their availability. I argue that the problem originates in the manner in which some of the foundational concepts of the acute care model are imported into the other models of care delivery. In order to make this case, I review the three main models of healthcare service delivery by focusing my analysis along three axes: the goal of the care model; the predominant understanding of autonomy implicit in the model; and, the main actors in the care relationship. By examining how the various concepts translate from one model to the next, I discuss what I identify to be one of the main conceptual obstacles to less problematic transitioning, the notion of autonomy and the corresponding view of the patient as an isolated agent. (shrink)

Sex work or prostitution marks a controversial topic for Protestant sexual ethics. It is also a multifaceted phenomenon because it can occur in very different forms: the spectrum ranges from poverty, emergency and procurement prostitution to the self-determined and insured sex worker with all imaginable shades in between. In the current economic system, goods and services are exchanged, traded, sold, acquired and paid for, so sex work can also be understood as work. For the purposes of this article, we will (...) therefore start from an understanding of sex work as care work. Care work can be understood as the satisfaction of needs and interests of third parties and the self. If sex work is discussed as care work, this has a variety of consequences. These include the fact that questions of vulnerability and integrity come to the fore. Integrity can be comprehended as self-realisation or autonomy and thus as potentially vulnerable, taking up Axel Honneth’s early reflections on the issue of recognition. Integrity in Axel Honneth’s sense can - according to a first approximation - play a role for sex work on three levels: physical or corporeal level, structural level and lifestyle or way of life level. Finally, the essay discusses the concept of negotiated or consensual morality as a contribution of Protestant ethics. (shrink)

Consumer-targeted sleep tracking applications (STA) that run on mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) promise to be useful tools for the individual user. Assisted by built-in and/or external sensors, these apps can analyze sleep data and generate assessment reports for the user on their sleep duration and quality. However, STA also raise ethical questions, for example, on the autonomy of the sleeping person, or potential effects on third parties. Nevertheless, a specific ethical analysis of the use of these technologies is still missing (...) so far. The aim of the current analysis is to identify the characteristics of sleep tracking apps and to explore the specific ethical aspects associated with this form of self-tracking. Firstly, the field of mobile health applications was screened for STA to explore their typical functions and target user groups. Secondly, an ethical analysis was conducted focusing on the three ethical dimensions: (1) medicalization, (2) vulnerability, and (3) relationality. The analysis indicates that these three normative dimensions are decisive for assessing STA and that the ethical profile of this technology varies greatly depending on the respective user group. As the three dimensions medicalization, vulnerability, and relationality play a distinguishing role in the use of STA, they should be especially addressed in responsible development and implementation of STA. In addition, the analysis helps to evaluate the use of STA, in terms of different risks for specific user groups, the sensitive contexts of usage, and potential interference with the intimacy of third parties. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the ethical responsibility of agents who find themselves in situations characterized by what I call the Individual Ethical Gap (IEG). Individual Ethical Gap situations are structured so as to rule out holding individuals responsible for their actions and omissions by virtue of the intentions behind or the consequences of their actions. I argue that, in IEG situations, individuals can nevertheless, depending on the circumstances, be held ethically responsible for their actions and omissions by virtue of (...) the conditions in which they find themselves operating. Individual Ethical Gap situations therefore give rise to what I call conditioned responsibility: responsibility stemming from the conditions in which one finds oneself enmeshed. This notion of an ethics stemming from conditions (rather than from consequences or intentions) gives rise to a particular form of vulnerability to error in our self- and other-ascriptions of ethical responsibility: a vulnerability in our ethical understanding. In the final section of the paper I use Pamela Sue Anderson’s discussion of vulnerability and of Kantian autonomy to show that this vulnerability arising from the conditioned aspect of our ethical responsibility need not be regarded as a threat to ethics but, on the contrary, as an element of belonging and of understanding that renders possible a more honest encounter with others and with the world. (shrink)

This paper attempts to philosophically articulate empirical evidence on the positive effects of illness within the wider context of a discussion of the positive aspects of vulnerability. The conventional understanding holds that to be vulnerable is to be open to harms and wrongs; it is to be fragile, defenseless, and of compromised autonomy. In this paper, we challenge the assumption that vulnerability consists of nothing but powerlessness and dependence on others. This paper attempts to: (1) outline the theoretical (...) conceptualisation of the positive aspects of coping with illness, while simultaneously showing how these findings provide empirical support for some classical philosophical ideas; (2) influence a change in the manners in which the ill are usually perceived (as weak, dependent, robbed of a good life) and (3) point to the importance of modernising the prevalent biomedical conception of illness with the subjective dimension of health. Biomedical understanding of illness focuses on the vulnerable experience of the sufferer, suggesting the importance of philosophical additions. (shrink)

The article concludes the special section on vulnerability. By reflecting on the arguments in and the convergences between the contributions to the preceding trialogue, it outlines three key challenges in vulnerability research. Across disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological boundaries, the contributions agree in their criticism of negative, individualistic, and/or essentialist conceptualizations of vulnerability; instead, they call for a non-dualist, pluralist, and participative approach to vulnerability that takes the lived-through experience of individuals as its starting point. Based on (...) this decision, the challenges arise of (1) how to conceptualize and identify the structures of lived-through experiences of vulnerability and of (2) how the experiences of individuals and groups in different social positions can be collected, understood, and interpreted. The trialogue texts, we argue, provide important impulses for the development of a multi-perspective methodology, which permits to analyze vulnerability in a way that is theoretically, ethically, and methodologically appropriate. Finally, by taking lived-through experience as a starting point, the articles in this special section (3) contribute to a better understanding of the contentious polysemy of the term vulnerability. By analyzing the constitutive ambivalence and ambiguity of experiences of vulnerability as well as the difficulties of intersubjective communicability, the contributions help to understand why articulations of vulnerability are often vague and why vulnerability can be politically instrumentalized. In this way, the comprehensive understanding of vulnerability (e.g., as positive and negative, enabling and inhibiting), promoted in the trialogue, also becomes a means of moral and political criticism. (shrink)

The paper examines how the current evolution and growth of ICTs enables a greater number of individuals to communicate and interact with each other on a larger scale: this phenomenon enables people to cross the conventional boundaries set up across modernity. The presence of diverse barriers does not however disappear, and we therefore still experience cultural, political, legal and moral boundaries in the globalised Information Society. The paper suggests that the issue of boundaries is to be understood, primarily, in philosophical (...) terms, in order to explain in what sense the fundamental historicity and situatedness of human beings does not necessarily prevent them from being able to cross the boundaries of their own experiences and to communicate with other human beings. Our line of reasoning is based on the idea that the epistemic and moral subject is neither a pure universal subject always transcending the limits of its experience nor the mere product of the context in which it find itself embedded. By virtue of its continued existence and experience of any given context, the epistemic and moral subject is asked to respond to the constraining affordances of data and to account for the moral calls of the other. This intertwinement of responsiveness and accountability towards what is "over there" confers us an original understanding of what is "here". (shrink)

ABSTRACT Through an exploration of a home invasion scene in Ingmar Bergman's Shame, this article explores the ways in which it is not only our own bodies that are vulnerable to assault but also the meaningful objects through which we expressively engage with the world, as well as the worldly context of these embodied engagements. First, I draw primarily on the work of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in order to explore the ways in which things come to be incorporated (...) into our bodily experience and how our vulnerability as embodied individuals is thus extended into the life of these things. Second, I engage with phenomenological accounts of home and psychoanalytic accounts of childhood development in order to argue that our extended bodily vulnerability is coextensive with our creative openness to the world. Finally, I offer some reflections on the role played by breakdown in phenomenological experience, at the level of the things through which we are “at home” to expressively extend ourselves out into the world and at the level of the sense of “homelessness” alive in the experience of anxiety. (shrink)

With aging, incidence of severe stress‐related diseases increases. However, mechanisms, underlying individual vulnerability to stress and age‐related diseases are not clear. The goal of this review is to analyze finding from the recent literature on age‐related characteristics of the hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal (HPA) axis associated with stress reactivity in animals that show behavioral signs of anxiety and depression under mild stress, and in human patients with anxiety disorders and depression with emphasis on the impact of the circadian rhythm and the negative (...) feedback mechanisms involved in the stress response. One can conclude that HPA axis reaction to psycho‐emotional stress, at least acute stress, increases in the aged individuals with anxiety and depression behavior. Elevated stress reactivity is associated with disruption of the circadian rhythm and the mineralocorticoid receptor‐mediated glucocorticoid negative feedback. The disordered function of the HPA axis in individuals with anxiety and depression behavior can contribute to aging‐related pathology. (shrink)

Freedom of expression is a fundamental part of living in a free and open society and, above all, a basic need of every human being and a requirement to attain happiness. Its absence has relevant consequences, not only for individuals but also for the whole social community. This might explain why freedom of expression was, along with other freedoms (conscience and religion; thought, belief, opinion, including that of the press and other media of communication; peaceful assembly; and association), at the (...) core of liberal constitutionalism, and constitutes, since the Second World War, an essential element of constitutional democracies. In a democracy, people should be allowed to express themselves to others freely. The paper, which is divided into five sections, points out that states are obliged to protect the exercise of that freedom not only because its very purpose is the common good and welfare of society but also because it is a requirement of any constitutional democracy. Otherwise, when people cannot express themselves, perhaps out of fear (not from ‘war’ but from different kinds of social pressure or ‘violence’ exerted by some lobbies, mass media, or governmental policies that are at odds with respect for the plurality of opinions), vulnerability arises. This weakens not only those individuals that are not allowed to express their thoughts but also those who do not dare to do it – or even not to think for themselves – under certain environmental pressures (exerted by states, international organizations, social media, or financial groups, lobbies, etc.). In the end, the decline of freedom of expression makes most people more vulnerable and jeopardizes the whole democratic system. (shrink)

Microcredit, a non-profit lending approach that is often championed as a source of women’s inclusion and empowerment, has in the past decade been followed by microfinance, a forprofit sibling of a different temperament. Microfinance in India is now in turmoil, precipitated by legislation in the state of Andhra Pradesh, which has encouraged withholding of payment, which in turn has frozen the market. This paper considers one precipitating condition of the crisis: the remarkable, new, and developing burden of formal economic debt (...) that poor women in the state have only recently come to hold – debt that now surpasses one year’s family income, on average. The development of this lending sector follows upon innovation in lending to the poor of the global north over the past two decades, and the practices show noteworthy parallels. Both lending schemes have produced similar disproportionate burdens upon some low-status individuals within their respective economic orders, and both may exploit a vulnerability that is born of aspiration and produces great dysfunction for borrowers. This paper introduces the two lending schemes, sketches the parallels, and introduces the claim that ethical finance arrangements for the poor require attention to vulnerability, an under-utilized category in both liberal ethical theory and in finance. (shrink)

The economic crash of 2008 demonstrated the fragility of financial systems throughout the world; COVID-19, as the first pandemic in over a century to wreak global havoc, has demonstrated the fragility of healthcare systems. At the time of writing, the virus has been with us for a little over a year, and concerted vaccination efforts have begun. At the same time, several variants (some significantly more infectious than others) of SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, have emerged in different countries, (...) sparking a new wave of border closures and local lockdowns, and a new wave of debates over the right way for governments and individuals alike to respond to the pandemic. The response of governments around the world has been far from synchronised over the last year, but almost without exception, they have made significant efforts to reduce the public health impact of the pandemic – overall, the preservation of life and health has been prioritised at the cost of material and financial goods and other widely used metrics of socio-political success. In this chapter, I suggest that a taking a care ethics perspective allows us to elucidate the important place of caring duties and caring relationships in ethical evaluation of pandemic management strategies. Government action and public attitudes alike demonstrate that care – concern for the wellbeing of others – has had significant normative force in motivating decision-making and shaping ethical responses to COVID-19. (shrink)

Liberals are concerned with the equal moral status of all human beings. This article discusses what flows from this premise for moral cosmopolitans when analysing temporary foreign worker programs for low-skilled workers. Some have hailed these programs as a tool to achieve redistributive global goals. However, I argue that in the example of Live-In-Caregivers in Canada, the morally most problematic aspect is that it provokes vulnerability of individual workers. Once in a situation of vulnerability, important conditions of individual (...) autonomy are jeopardized. Even if these programs provide for redistribution of opportunities on a global scale, the challenge such programs pose to the conditions of autonomy can not outweigh these gains. Instead, they need to be re-assessed and changed to fundamentally express equal moral status of all human beings. (shrink)

Is there anything outside the Christian Text or is the Christian Text all there is? The article will argue that the Christian Text has formed and shaped Western thinking to such an extent that it is impossible to think in the global world, co-created by various Western texts, without Christianity. The fact that the West colonised the world, and that today the Western media dominates the language of the global village, makes it nearly impossible to think outside the Christian Text (...) and thus the universal domination by the Text. This article will first argue that for the Western-influenced world, there is nothing beyond the Christian Texts, and then it will argue that although this Text has universal dominance, there is an interpretation of its central message as a message of weakness and vulnerability, which challenges its imperialism. This leads towards the question: what is a possible praxis of such a universal and 'imperial' Text with its message of vulnerable weakness, specifically from a post-colonial context like South Africa? (shrink)