Ethnic minority patients face challenges concerning communication and are at higher risk of experiencing health problems and consuming fewer healthcare services. They are also exposed to disparaging societal discourses about migrants which might undermine healthcare institutions’ ambitions of equitable health care. Therefore, healthcare professionals need to critically reflect on their practices and processes related to ethnic minority patients. The aim of this article is to explore healthcare professionals’ experiences of working with ethnic minority patients by using the critical incident (CI) (...) technique. In two focus group sessions, participants discussed challenging events in their encounters with patients. The critical incidents show that healthcare professionals may experience unfamiliar situations related to their work performance, prejudice toward patients, and labeling by patients the professionals do not identify with. The professionals’ reflections are discussed in relation to social discourses on migration and their work conditions, and the possible influence on the professionals’ preconceptions and the patient–professional relationship in health care. Reflections about work experiences with ethnic minority patients and aligned societal discourses should be included in healthcare workers’ professional development. Critical incident reflections at work may contribute to better‐coping strategies for healthcare professionals and improved patient–professional relationships with ethnic minority patients. (shrink)

miembro del Future of Humanity Institute de la Universidad de Oxford y experto en mejoramiento humano y transhumanismo, sobre cuestiones centrales de su labor investigadora.PALABRAS CLAVETRANSHUMANISMO, MEJORAMIENTO HUMANO, ANDERS SANDBERG, BIOTECNOLOGÍAABSTRACTInterview with Anders Sandberg, member of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University and expert in human enhancement and transhumanism, about central topics in his works.KEYWORDSTRANSHUMANISM, HUMAN ENHANCEMENT, ANDERS SANDBERG,BIOTECHNOLOGY.

The widows of the Pastoral Epistles have been a puzzle for interpreters for generations. In the “Widows’ Tale” different categories of women are given a whole set of instructions, including how they shall be organized and with whom to live. In this article, I will highlight the interpretative potential of the very last verse of the paragraph, where “a believing woman who has widows” is mentioned. In some important manuscripts, scribes have added “believing man” in v. 16, while others have (...) left out the woman altogether. What can these disagreements and changes tell? I will argue that not enough scholarly attention has been directed to this verse. There is huge potential for a new understanding of the whole paragraph hidden here. Attention to alternative housing arrangements and manuscript variations will be employed as interpretative tools. I will use the disagreement among scribes to rethink variety and difference, and to reimagine ekklēsia within intersectional early Christian households. (shrink)

‘Language and End Time’ is a translation of Sections I, IV and V of ‘Sprache und Endzeit’, a substantial essay by Günther Anders that was published in eight instalments in the Austrian journal FORVM from 1989 to 1991 (the full essay consists of 38 sections). The original essay was planned for inclusion in the third (unrealised) volume of The Obsolescence of Human Beings. ‘Language and End Time’ builds on the diagnosis of ‘our blindness toward the apocalypse’ that was advanced (...) in the first volume of The Obsolescence in 1956. The essay asks if there is a language that is capable of making us fully comprehend the looming ‘man-made apocalypse’. In response to this, it offers a critique of philosophical jargon and of the putatively ‘objective’ language of (nuclear) science, which are both dismissed as unsuitable. Sections I, IV and V introduce this core problematic. The selection of this text for inclusion in this special journal issue responds to present-day realities that inscribe Anders’s reflections on nuclear science and the nuclear situation into new contexts. The critique that ‘Language and End Time’ advances resonates with the way in which the (undemocratic) decisions of a few companies and individuals are shaping the future of life on earth. At the same time, the wider stakes of Anders’s turn against the language employed by (weapons) scientists are newly laid bare by the realities and politics of climate change and fake news. In this new context, the language of science is all too readily dismissed as if it were a mere idiom that can be ignored without consequence. It is against the backdrop of a future that is, if anything, more uncertain than at the time of Anders’s writing, that the essay’s reflections on popularisation, the limits of language and the nature of truth gain added significance. (shrink)

The principle of need—the idea that resources should be allocated according to need—is often invoked in priority setting in the health care sector. In this article, I argue that a reasonable principle of need must be indeterminate, and examine three different ways that this can be dealt with: appendicizing the principle with further principles, imposing determinacy, or empowering decision makers. I argue that need must be conceptualized as a composite property composed of at least two factors: health shortfall and capacity (...) to benefit. When one examines how the different factors relate to each other, one discovers that this is sometimes indeterminate. I illustrate this indeterminacy in this article by applying the small improvement argument. If the relation between the factors are always determinate, the comparative relation changes by a small adjustment. Yet, if two needs are dissimilar but of seemingly equal magnitude, the comparative relation does not change by a small adjustment of one of the factors. I then outline arguments in favor of each of the three strategies for dealing with indeterminacy, but also point out that all strategies have significant shortcomings. More research is needed concerning how to deal with this indeterminacy, and the most promising path seems to be to scrutinize the position of the principle of need among a plurality of relevant principles for priority setting in the health care sector. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that sufficientarian principles are indispensable in the set of principles that have bearing on issues in distributive ethics. I provide two arguments in favor of this claim. First, I argue that sufficientarianism is the only framework that allows us to appropriately analyze what sort of obligations we have toward individuals who are badly off due to their own faults and choices. Second, I argue that sufficientarianism is the only theory that provides an adequate framework for (...) thinking about the desperately badly off. (shrink)

How should scarce health-related resources be allocated? This paper argues that values that apply to these decisions fail to always fully determine what we should do. Health maximization and allocation-according-to-need are suggested as two values that should be part of a general theory of how to allocate health-related resources. The “small improvement argument” is used to argue that it is implausible that one alternative is always better, worse, or equal to another alternative with respect to these values. Approaches that rely (...) on these values are thus incomplete. To deal with this, it is suggested that we ought to use incomplete theories in a two-step process. Such a process first discards ineligible alternatives, and, second, uses reasons grounded in collective commitments to identify a unique, best alternative in the remaining set. (shrink)

Inference has long been a concern in epistemology, as an essential means by which we extend our knowledge and test our beliefs. Inference is also a key notion in influential psychological or philosophical accounts of mental capacities, from perception via utterance comprehension to problem-solving. Consciousness, on the other hand, has arguably been the defining interest of philosophy of mind over recent decades. Comparatively little attention, however, has been devoted to the significance of consciousness for the proper understanding of the nature (...) and role of inference. It is commonly suggested that inference may be either conscious or unconscious. Yet how unified are these various supposed instances of inference? Does either enjoy explanatory priority in relation to the other? In what ways or senses, can an inference be conscious, or fail to be conscious, and how does this matter? This book brings together original essays from established scholars and emerging theorists that illustrate how several current debates in epistemology, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of mind can benefit from reflections on these and related questions about the significance of consciousness for inference. Contributors include: Kirk Ludwig and Wade Munroe; Michael Rescorla; Federico Bongiorno and Lisa Bortolotti; Berit Brogaard; Nicholas Allott; Jake Quilty-Dunn and Eric Mandelbaum; Corine Besson; Anders Nes; David Henderson, Terry Horgan, and Matjaž Potrč; Elijah Chudnoff; and Ram Neta. (shrink)

Following decades of neglect, the work of the German Jewish philosopher, literary author, cultural critic, and poet Günther Anders (1902–1992) is gaining increasing recognition in the English-speaking world. This translation of “Résistance heute” (Resistance Today) makes one of Anders’s most programmatic and polemical short texts available. Published at the height of his anti-nuclear activism, “Resistance Today” is the written version of a speech Anders delivered in November 1962 upon acceptance of the northwest Italian city of Omegna’s Resistance (...) Prize (other notable recipients included Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon). It first appeared in print in the West German left-wing journal Das Argument in November 1963. Clearly written for the occasion, the text condenses (and often further radicalizes) key premises about the end of history, the amoral character of work, and the continuity between Nazi totalitarianism, the nuclear age and the world of consumerism that are developed in great nuance across a range of books that Anders had recently published. Key co-ordinates include: Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen 1 (The Obsolescence of Human Beings 1, 1956), his groundbreaking critique of technology; Der Mann auf der Brücke (The Man on the Bridge, 1959), a philosophical travel diary occasioned by Anders’s 1958 visit to Japan and his participation at the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Tokyo; Burning Conscience (1961), a correspondence with the American reconnaissance pilot Claude Eatherly, who scouted the target area before the Enola Gay went on to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima. It seems likely that Burning Conscience, which turned into an international bestseller, occasioned the award of the prize. (shrink)

In _Plato on Democracy and Political technē_ Anders Dahl Sørensen offers an in-depth investigation of Plato’s discussions of democracy’s ‘epistemic potential’, arguing that this question is far more central to his political thought than is usually assumed.

In recent years, a new argument in favor of Donnellan’s (Philos Rev 77: 281–304, 1966) semantic distinction between attributive and referential descriptions has been proposed by Michael Devitt and Marga Reimer. This argument is based on two empirical premises concerning regularity of use and processing ease. This paper is an attempt to demonstrate (a) that these empirical observations are dubious and fail to license the conclusion of the argument and (b) that if the argument were sound, it would severely overgenerate. (...) The general lesson of the paper is that empirical observations about (a) how frequent an expression E is used to mean M and (b) how easy and fast M is processed cannot be taken to provide reliable evidence about the lexically encoded semantic properties of E. (shrink)

Much research aimed at developing measures for normative criteria to guide the assessment of healthcare resource allocation decisions has focused on health maximization, equity concerns and more recently approaches based on health capabilities. However, a widely embraced idea is that health resources should be allocated to meet health needs. Little attention has been given to the principle of need which is often mentioned as an alternative independent criteria that could be used to guide healthcare evaluations. This paper develops a model (...) and indicator of need satisfaction that aggregates the health needs of a population in a particular time period into a single measure that weights individual health needs by the severity of their ill health. The paper provides a first step towards formalizing the principle of need as a measurable objective for healthcare policy and we discuss some challenges for future research, including incorporating the duration of time into need-based health evaluations. (shrink)

Anders, Rudi To solve a problem such as wars between nations and civil wars it is necessary to discover what causes the problem.

Human cognitive performance has crucial significance for legal process, often creating the difference between fair and unfair imprisonment. Lawyers, judges, and jurors need to follow long and complex arguments. They need to understand technical language. Jurors need to remember what happens during a long trial. The demands imposed on jurors in particular are sizeable and the cognitive challenges are discussed in this chapter. Jurors are often subjected to both tremendous decision complexity and tremendous evidence complexity. Some of these problems could (...) be ameliorated if we can somehow enhance the cognitive capacities, including attention and memory, of various players in trials. There are multiple ways in which cognition can be improved either by external tools or by an increasing number of biomedical interventions that act directly on the brain. The article surveys a range of beneficial and detrimental effects that substances can have on cognition. (shrink)

Berg, J. Buñuels dagdröm.--Bergström, L. Pessimismens konsekvenser.--Furberg, M. Möjliga teser hos Johannes Climacus.--Halldén, S. Teckenrelationen och språkreglernas juridik.--Hedenius, I. Ett argument mot den rättsfilosofiska domstolsrealismen.--Mates, B. Om Platons argument "den tredje människan."--Marc-Wogau, K. Kant om lögnen.--Næss, A. Om filosofiske projekter som forener empirisk semantikk og metafysisk spekulasjon.--Ofstad, H. Får nazister lettere magesår enn humanister?--Prawitz, D. Om moraliska och logiska satsers sanning.--Stenius, E. Om Descartes' psykofysiska modell.--Tranøy, K. E. Filosofenes etiske ansvar.--Wright, G. H. von. En filosof ser på filosofien.

Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach is today one of the most influential theories of justice. In her earlier works on the capabilities approach, Nussbaum only applies it to humans, but in later works she extends the capabilities approach to include sentient animals. Contrary to Nussbaum’s own view, some scholars, for example, David Schlosberg, Teea Kortetmäki and Daniel L. Crescenzo, want to extend the capabilities approach even further to include collective entities, such as species and ecosystems. Though I think we have strong (...) reasons for preserving ecosystems and species within the capabilities approach, there are several problems with ascribing capabilities to them, especially if we connect it with the view that species and ecosystems are subjects of justice. These problems are partly a consequence of the fact that an ascription of capabilities to species and ecosystems needs to be based on an overlapping consensus between different comprehensive doctrines, in accordance with the framework of political liberalism on which the capabilities approach builds. First, the ascription of capabilities to species and ecosystems presupposes the controversial standpoint that they are objectively existing entities. Second, the ascription of capabilities to ecosystems and species and the view that they are subjects of justice is justified by claiming that they have integrity and agency, but these characteristics have different meanings when applied to collective entities and humans, respectively. Third, the view that species and ecosystems are subjects of justice seems to require the controversial assumption that they have interests of their own, which differ from the interests of the sentient beings that are part of them. However, even if we do not ascribe capabilities to species and ecosystems and regard them as subjects of justice, there are still strong reasons to protect them within the capabilities approach, as the preservation of ecosystems and species is an important precondition for many human and animal capabilities. (shrink)

How should one understand comparisons in which neither of two alternatives is at least as good as the other? Much recent literature on comparability problems focuses on what the appropriate explanation of the phenomenon is. Is it due to vagueness or the possibility of non-conventional comparative relations such as parity? This paper argues that the discussions on how to best explain comparability problems has reached an impasse at which it is hard to make any progress. To advance the discussion we (...) suggest a new classification of comparability problems that focuses on the problems they cause for practical reasoning. (shrink)

Understanding how individual agency and group agency relate is of great importance for a range of philosophical and practical concerns, including responsibility ascription and institutional design. This article discusses the relation between corporate and individual responsibility in agency—in particular, the relation between corporate and individual control of actions. First, I criticize Christian List and Philip Pettit’s causal account of combined corporate and individual control. Second, I develop an alternative account in terms of structural control, and I show how this gives (...) a better grasp of the issue. Third, I argue for an act-dualism that complements my account of control and sheds further light on the relation between corporate and individual agency and responsibility. (shrink)

This paper argues that cost-effectiveness analysis in the healthcare sector introduces a discrimination risk that has thus far been underappreciated and outlines some approaches one can take toward this. It is argued that appropriate standards used in cost-effectiveness analysis in the healthcare sector fail to always fully determine an optimal option, which entails that cost-effectiveness analysis often leaves decision makers with large sets of permissible options. Larger sets of permissible options increase the role of decision makers’ biases, whims, and prejudices, (...) which means that the discrimination risk increases. Two ways of mitigating this are identified: tinkering with standards used in the cost-effectiveness analysis and outlining anti-discrimination guidelines for decision makers. (shrink)

A notorious problem that has recently received increased attention in axiology, normative theory and population ethics is the apparent ubiquity of what can be generally called nondeterminacy. This paper illustrates how nondeterminacy can spawn cyclical rankings. So, accepting that practical reasons can admit of nondeterminacy challenges the widely held idea that ‘better than’ is transitive. As a result, standard approaches to rational choice under nondeterminacy fail to be action-guiding, since in some situations all options are dominated, that is, impermissible according (...) to standard rational choice criteria. (shrink)

Hebbian cell-assembly theory and attractor networks are good starting points for modeling cortical processing. Detailed cell models can be useful in understanding the dynamics of attractor networks. Cell assemblies are likely to be distributed, with the cortical column as the local processing unit. Synaptic memory may be dominant in all but the first couple of seconds.

Anders, Rudi When I see a colourful sunset, my mind goes to a spectacular purple sunset I saw near the Mexican border many years ago. That memory stops me from being fully aware of the scene in front of me. No two sunsets are the same and my memory is stopping me from fully appreciating the spectacle before my eyes. Famous and spectacular places don't work for me because expectations and memories get in the way, but when I walk (...) alone in nature I find my mind stops chattering and I begin to effortlessly notice the shades of green in the foliage, the patterns in the bark on the trees and the sounds and fragrances. It sometimes feels as if am absorbed by the surroundings. When this happens I don't bother with the names of birds or flowers because even that distracts from direct experience. (shrink)

Anders, Rudi A Melbourne suburb A short speech Congratulations..

Anders, Rudi Sometimes it is nice to do something totally unconnected to the usual bustle of life, such as a walk in the park. This time I visit a German Lutheran church in Melbourne; I have never entered it before. The exterior and interior consistently retain the traditional design. The bluestone gives it a sense of permanence - timelessness. I rarely like modern churches; mixing modern and traditional never works for me. This church is not large and has an (...) intimate feel to it. The people are all smiles. I like people, regardless of their beliefs. Family groups look like they feel at home, and visitors like me are made welcome. I sit and admire the skill of the craftsmen who attended to every detail in the church. They didn't have the modern machines we take for granted. (shrink)

This guest column asks how Bruno Latour has contributed to any present and future refiguring of relations between the sciences and the humanities. To answer the question, it traces three select and shifting figures of knowledge by means of which Latour himself has been charting his progress—from the anthropologist, charged with unraveling techno-scientific networks, to the moralist, participating in the parliament of nature, to the diplomat, negotiating the moderns’ many modes of existence. Rather than a neat blueprint for carving up (...) the knowledge space, this essay argues, Latour leaves us with “an ethos of knowledges that verges on a chaos of in-disciplines.” The essay concludes, however, that Latour’s “in-disciplinary” thinking is and will likely continue to be an important resource for explorations into the uncertain, “nonmodern” erritories that Latour has so valuably observed. (shrink)

This article analyzes the conditions for mobilizing the science base for development of public policy. It does so by focusing upon the science-policy interface, specifically the processes of direct interaction between scientists and scientifically trained experts, on the one hand, and agents of policymaking organizations, on the other. The article defines two dimensions – cognitive distance and expert autonomy – which are argued to influence knowledge exchange, in such a way as to shape the outcome. A case study on the (...) implementation of congestion charges in Stockholm, Sweden, illustrates how the proposed framework pinpoints three central issues for understanding these processes: Differentiating the roles of, e.g., a science-based consultancy firm and an academic environment in policy formation; Examining the fit between the organizational form of the science-policy interface and the intended goals; and Increasing our understanding of when policymaker agents themselves need to develop scientific competence in order to interact effectively with scientific experts. (shrink)

Review of Eva Ekselius: _'Vakna mitt folk!' Det judiska Europa mellan den franska revolutionen och den ryska_. Volante 2023.

Like Marcel Proust, the late Strindberg stands on the threshold between realism and modernism, where memory and the hidden truths of the mind demand radically new literary representation. The great realist tradition of the nineteenth century still remains vital for him in a novel like The Scapegoat [Syndabocken], where the heritage from Balzac is obvious. But in the last decades before his death in 1912 he also produces some of his most spectacular works, experimenting with genre conventions, with dream logic (...) and stream of consciousness. One can even—and this is my interest here—discern signs of astonishing insight concerning triangular desire, one of his most stubborn motifs since The Defence of a Madman... (shrink)

This article shows that introducing the positive comparative relation parity only helps one block so‐called “Spectrum Arguments” in order to avoid their unsavoury implications if one specifies parity in a specific way with respect to its persistence. The article illustrates how parity must both admit of persistency and be weakly non‐persistent for parity to block Spectrum Arguments, and identifies some consequences of that discovery for the general debate on Spectrum Arguments, value theory and comparability problems.

Anders, Rudi The articles in AH I like best are the ones with which I disagree to a greater or lesser degree, because they force me to re-think and clarify my position. One such article was by John Perkins, titled 'Let's admit that Islam is a problem'. Although the article is very well-written, and I admire John's fact-finding regarding Islam, I think he misses the elephant in the room. Namely, Christian Europe and North America killed far more people than (...) Islam ever did. Buddhist and Shinto Japan did shocking things in the last world war. Jews in Israel ignore the rights of Palestinians. The atheist communist Soviet Union was as bad as Christian Czarist Russia. There is gross injustice in Hindu India. I don't think Islam should be singled out as a problem. I agree that religion can be a problem but the many atheist dictators, for example: Napoleon Bonaparte, Mussolini and Stalin, are also a problem, so atheism as such is not a guarantee of justice. (shrink)

Anders, Rudi I enjoy mixing with people who hold different beliefs from mine. Belief is a very complex and rather odd thing. I am particularly interested in the psychology of belief. Sometimes belief is the cause of terrible conflict and suffering.

In many biological experiments, due to gene-redundancy or distributed backup mechanisms, there are no visible effects on the functionality of the organism when a gene is knocked out or down. In such cases there is apparently no counterfactual dependence between the gene and the phenotype in question, although intuitively the gene is causally relevant. Due to relativity of causal relations to causal models, we suggest that such cases can be handled by changing the resolution of the causal model that represents (...) the system. By decreasing the resolution of our causal model, counterfactual dependencies can be established at a higher level of abstraction. By increasing the resolution, stepwise causal dependencies of the right kind can serve as a sufficient condition for causal relevance. Finally, we discuss how introducing a temporal dimension in causal models can account for causation in cases of non-modular systems dynamics. (shrink)

Abstract Normative criteria for evaluations of economic and social outcomes are often formulated in terms of social welfare functions which are essentially and importantly non-satiable. However, there are good reasons to consider certain normative criteria and many policy objectives to be capped, i.e. bounded, and thus satiable provided sufficient resources are made available for their satisfaction. Inspired by the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke class of indicators, this paper uses an interdisciplinary approach to develop a model for assessing outcomes in terms of capped objectives (...) based on an understanding of individual shortfalls from the objective, denoted needs. We present an indicator to measure need satisfaction in a population of individuals with heterogeneous needs and highlight an aggregation problem under scarcity. For such situations, we develop three ways in which the indicator can be weighted that reflect respectively concerns over the frequency, depth and severity of the need shortfalls and show that normative evaluations based on these weighting schemes can conflict, yielding mutually inconsistent outcome rankings. The indicator can be adapted to measure a wide variety of phenomena, e.g. health needs, education shortfalls, deprivation, etc., and it is suited for targeting exercises and other policy implementations. In particular, it allows for exogenous weighting schemes, i.e. weights that can incorporate non-shortfall characteristics relevant for the evaluation, e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, etc. The indicator thus enables new ways for researchers to promote and study satiable objectives in a wide variety of contexts relevant to economic and social policy, e.g. human development programs, poverty reduction, healthcare policies, etc. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the effect of unitarity bounds sb⩾s≡(E1+E2) cms 2 for the recently proposed types of nonderivative 4-fermion contact interactions. To this purpose we decompose the helicity amplitudes at c.m.s. into partial waves. The bounds are defined to hold for all reaction channels due to the same type of contact interaction. We find sb=τ4π/κ. Here κ is the coupling constant. The factor τ depends on the type of coupling and on the different cases to identify the fermions. (...) It ranges from 1/3 to 4. (shrink)