ABSTRACT In this paper I examine some of the issues surrounding the moral status of the therapy known as ‘deprogramming’. I argue against the extreme view that all deprogrammings are morally impermissible. In certain instances deprogramming is morally justified because it is quite capable of restoring the conditions needed for the exercise of autonomy. The view of autonomy I am following is that constructed by Gerald Dworkin, wherein two conditions must be met in describing a person as autonomous—authenticity and procedural (...) independence. Autonomy of another type, described by Dworkin as authenticity plus substantive independence, may be lost by persons involved in cults but in those instances deprogramming as reconstructed in this paper is not a morally justified measure. (shrink)

Today, societal decisions in areas of complexity are often dominated by one of three alternative ways: (a) by scientists, nowadays often in combination with commercial interest; (b) by politicians alone; and (c) by simply “laissez-faire,” or “the tyranny of small steps.” None of these three ways of decision making is fully democratic because they do not create enough awareness among the politicians and the general public. One reason is that the decision making basis becomes too narrowly framed and fragmented. Biotechnology (...) will continue to feed society with new democratic challenges for many years, perhaps decades, to come. The initially promising ideas of participative and deliberative democracy do not seem to solve the awareness problem. Instead, the authors propose an approach with more structured efforts for awareness building with transparency and participation taking place within the framework of representative democracy. (shrink)

Animal and human studies suggest that parenting style is transmitted from one generation to the next. The hypotheses of this study were that a mother’s rearing experiences would predict her own parenting resources and current maternal mood, motivation to care for her offspring, and relationship with her parents would underlie this association. In a subsample of 201 first-time mothers participating in the longitudinal Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment project, we assessed a mother’s own childhood maltreatment and rearing experiences using the (...) Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and the Parental Bonding Instrument. At 6 months postpartum, mothers completed questionnaires on parenting stress, symptoms of depression, maternal motivation, and current relationship with their own parents. The sample consisted of mostly high socioeconomic status mothers recruited from Montréal or Hamilton, Canada, with an age range from 18 to 43 years. More severe maltreatment and less supportive rearing by the mother’s parents predicted increased parenting stress at 6 months. These associations were mediated through distinct psychosocial pathways: maltreatment on parenting stress through symptoms of depression ; maternal rearing on parenting stress through maternal motivation and symptoms of depression ; and paternal rearing on parenting stress through current relationship with the father. Maternal rearing experiences predict a mother’s own parenting resources though distinct psychosocial pathways, including depressed mood, maternal motivation, and social support. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminism and Classics:Framing the Research AgendaBarbara K. GoldA landmark conference on "Feminism and Classics: Framing the Research Agenda" was held at Princeton University on November 7-10, 1996; the coorganizers were Janet M. Martin (Princeton University) and Judith P. Hallett (University of Maryland). This conference is the second in a series of more-or-less triennial meetings devoted to feminist research in various areas of classical studies. The first of these conferences (...) ("Feminism and Classics I") was held at the University of Cincinnati in 1992 and was codirected by Kathryn J. Gutzwiller and Ann N. Michelini (both of the University of Cincinnati; for a review of this conference see Clara Hardy and Kirk Ormand, BMCR 4.2 [1993] 135-41).The goals of the Princeton conference were several:mdash To address the evidential deficiencies of the traditional classical literary canon-by examining new kinds of sources and evidence, particularly nonliterary texts and material culture; and by giving increased attention to the ancient Near East and Africa (especially Egypt) as well as to post-classical Greek and Latin texts;mdash To address the methodological inadequacies of traditional historical and philological approaches-by applying the new literary and textual criticism and theory to the traditional classical literary canon as well as to nonliterary and postclassical texts; by adopting comparative approaches to the study of ancient sexuality and gender; and by considering women (in addition to men) as agents in the transmission of the classical tradition;mdash To clarify, illuminate, and evaluate the relations between classical scholarship and the politics of social change-by defining the actual and potential relations among feminist studies, gender studies, and women's studies, and the relation of classical studies to each; by examining the variety of relations that feminist and other scholarship can have to the politics of social change; and by addressing the role of theory in feminist scholarship in classics.The conference was divided into four plenary sessions, each one devoted to a core area of feminist scholarly research in classics: The Historical Recovery of Ancient Women (Speakers: Shelby Brown, UCLA [End Page 328] and Alan Shapiro, University of Canterbury, New Zealand; Discussants: Barry S. Strauss, Cornell University and Sandra R. Joshel, New England Conservatory of Music); Women and the Classical Tradition (Speakers: Joan M. Ferrante, Columbia University and Shelley P. Haley, Hamilton College; Discussants: Diana Robin, University of New Mexico and Judith P. Hallett, University of Maryland); Feminist Literary Studies and the Construction of Sexuality and Gender in the Ancient World (Speakers: David Konstan, Brown University and Barbara K. Gold, Hamilton College; Discussants: Ellen Oliensis, Yale University and Ruth Webb, Princeton University); Feminism and Classics in the Next Century: Feminist Studies, Gender Studies, Women's Studies (Speakers: Peter W. Rose, Miami University of Ohio and Nancy F. Partner, McGill University; Discussants: Sarah B. Pomeroy, Hunter College and CUNY and Amy Richlin, University of Southern California).In addition to the four plenary sessions, there was a rich variety of discussion and presentation in other formats: opening and closing roundtables (including, in addition to some of the speakers and organizers, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, Hamilton College, Barbara M. McManus, College of New Rochelle, Bella Zweig, University of Arizona, Kathryn J. Gutzwiller, and Ann N. Michelini, both of the University of Cincinnati); the keynote address by Ernestine Friedl, Duke University; and sixteen interactive workshops, which followed up on the topics of the plenary sessions. These covered topics as broad as "Reading Gender in Epigraphical Text and Context" (Susan Guettel Cole), "The Classical World in Twentieth-Century Historical Fiction by Women" (Sheila Murnaghan and Deborah H. Roberts), "Feminist Theory/Queer Theory" (Kirk Ormand and Rabinowitz), "Politics, Pedagogy, and the Future of Gender Studies" (Mary Whitlock Blundell, Jeffrey S. Carnes, and John T. Kirby), and "Feminist Anthropology and Feminist Work in Classics" (Deborah Lyons).The conference was one of several events celebrating the 250th anniversary of Princeton University. In certain respects it carried on the work of the 1917 Princeton conference organized by Dean Andrew Fleming West. Entitled "Value of the Classics," the 1917 conference was also in its own way interdisciplinary, documenting the impact of classics on such fields as medicine, law, economics, sociology, and public... (shrink)

Hermeneutic research in nursing: developing a Gadamerian‐based research method This paper takes the stance that although there are many different approaches to phenomenological and hermeneutic research, some of these have become blurred due to multiple interpretations of translated materials. Working from original texts by the German philosophers, this paper reconsiders the relevance of phenomenology and hermeneutics to nursing research. We trace the development of Gadamer's philosophy in order to propose a research method based in this tradition. Five steps have been (...) identified as a guide for nurse researchers. These are deciding upon a question, identification of preunderstandings, gaining understanding through dialogue with participants, gaining understanding through dialogue with text and establishing trustworthiness. (shrink)

The current status of localization and related concepts, especially localized statevectors and position operators, within Lorentz-invariant Quantum Theory (LIQT) is ambiguous and controversial.1 Ever since the early work of Newton & Wigner (1949), and the subsequent extensions of their work, particularly by Hegerfeldt (1974, 1985), it has seemed impossible to identify localized statevectors or position operators in LIQT that were not counterintuitive—strange—in one way or another; the most striking strange property being the superluminal propagation of the localized states. The ambiguous (...) and controversial status of these concepts arises from the varied reactions that workers have to the strange properties. Some regard them, particularly the superluminal propagation, as utterly unacceptable, and conclude that no precise concepts of localized statevectors and position operators exist in LIQT (Wigner 1973, p. 325-327; 1983, pp. 310-313; Malament 1996). Others downplay the whole issue, on the grounds that current theoretical and experimental practice has no need of sharply formulated concepts of localization, localized states etc. (Birrell & Davies 1984, pp. 48-59; Haag 1992, p. 34). Still others, including ourselves, believe that the superluminal propagation does not lead to causal contradictions, and is not in conflict with available empirical data: so that it should not be ruled out. We also believe that the other strange properties are merely unfamiliar novelties of LIQT which we must simply learn to accept. (Like the superluminal propagation, they do not lead to causal contradictions, nor conflict with available data.) So in this paper, we aim to help remove the ambiguous and controversial status of localization concepts in LIQT. Overall, our strategy will be to assess a number of localization concepts, and thereby clarify the often complex relationships among them. (shrink)

C’est par une description de la fête des Grandes Dionysies, célébrée chaque année à Athènes à la fin du mois de mars, que Mary‑Anne Zagdoun entame son ouvrage sur « l’esthétique d’Aristote ». Et pour cause : c’est principalement, on le sait, lors de cette panégyrie qu’avaient lieu les représentations théâtrales des œuvres qui constituent l’objet d’étude privilégié à partir duquel Aristote a élaboré une théorie artistique novatrice : les tragédies et, dans une moindre mesure pour ce que nous (...) e... (shrink)

In this paper I will present conceptions of state reduction and particle and/or system localization which render these subjects fully compatible with the general requirements of a relativistic, i.e. Lorentz invariant, quantum theory. The approach consists of a systematic generalization of the concepts of initial data assignment at definite times, initiation and completion of measurements at definite times, and dynamical evolution as time dependence, to the concepts of initial data assignment on arbitrary space-like hyperplanes, initiation and completion of measurements on (...) arbitrary space-like hyperplanes, and dynamical evolution as space-like hyperplane dependence, respectively. I also briefly discuss the superluminal propagation which emerges from the localization study and the manner in which causal anomalies are nevertheless avoided. (shrink)

This essay seeks to link management action with business ethics. It utilizes two conceptual models of decision making to examine the important processes of information gathering and information processing. This analysis is then related to the ethical aspects of a business decision to help explain differences in the selection of ethical criteria.

Through the explicit introduction of hyperplane dependence as a form of relativistic dynamical evolution, we construct a manifestly covariant description of a single positive energy particle interacting with any one of a large class of “moving” external potentials. In1+1 dimensions, the simplified mathematics allows us to display a number of general properties of solutions to the equations of motion for evolution on hyperplanes.

L’ouvrage d’Anne Cova, tiré principalement de la partie inédite de sa thèse doctorale soutenue en 1994, porte sur l’histoire des débats autour d’une question : « la liberté de la maternité », dont les contours s’étendent bien au-delà des discussions entre les féministes et leur opposants, et qui d’une certaine manière reste aussi « brûlante » de nos jours qu’il y a cent ans, soit la période étudiée. Le dépouillement des plus importants périodiques spécialisés publiés entre 1890 et 1939 (...) (Régén... (shrink)

Neo‐Aristotelian virtue ethics makes essential reference to the notion of a stable, robust character‐trait. It also claims to be constrained by at least a minimal degree of psychological realism. Recent developments in empirical psychology have drawn into question the evidence for the existence of such robust traits, arguing that it rests on what has been called a ‘fundamental attribution error’. Virtue ethics has thus seemingly been made vulnerable to criticisms that it is essentially dependent on an erroneous, folk‐psychological, notion of (...) character and, so, must either abandon their characteristic notion of virtue or forego any pretensions to psychological realism. I develop a two‐pronged response to this objection. First, I argue that there is reason to question much of the empirical evidence and that such evidence as does exist can easily be accommodated by virtue ethics. Next, I argue that even if we allow that neo‐Aristotelian virtue ethical theories does sometimes presuppose a stronger conception of character‐traits than is warranted by the evidence, this does not significantly undermine the virtue ethicist's project. (shrink)

It is the purpose of this study to identify the most-referenced authors, works, periodicals and publishers in business ethics. A computer analysis was made of over eight hundred references taken from fifty-seven recent articles. The result is a special type of bibliography designed to conserve time for readers in this field. The two most-cited authors were Milton Friedman and Christopher Stone; while the most-referenced works were Where the Law Ends by Stone, Is the Ethics of Business Changing? by Brenner and (...) Molander, and Ethical Theory and Business edited by Beauchamp and Bowie. (shrink)

In his new book, Constitutional Essentials, Frank Michelman provides a splendid elaboration and defense of ‘the constitutional theory of political liberalism’ implicit in John Rawls’s classic work, Political Liberalism. In this essay, we make some observations about what a difference 30 years makes, comparing the political and constitutional climate in which Rawls wrote and published Political Liberalism in 1993 with the climate in which Michelman wrote and published this exegesis of it. We focus on (1) changes in our circumstances of (...) pluralism, including the accentuation of polarization and unreasonable views, and (2) the simultaneous breakdown of trust in the Supreme Court authoritatively to resolve disputes concerning constitutional essentials. Throughout, we acknowledge and seek to reckon with the possibility that Michelman may have given Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy its fullest, most coherent account just at the moment when the possibility of realizing it seems to be passing. (shrink)

As a stress test of experimenter demand effects, we run an experiment where subjects can physically destroy coupons awarded to them. About one subject out of three does. Giving money back to the experimenter is possible in a separate task but is more consistent with an experimenter demand effect than an explanation based on altruism towards the experimenter. A measure of sensitivity to social pressure helps predict destruction when social information is provided.

This paper presents a modified random network model to illustrate how groups can form in the absence of evolutionary forces, assuming groups are collections of entities at any level of organization. This model is inspired by the Zero Force Evolutionary Law, which states that there is always a tendency for diversity and complexity to increase in any evolutionary system containing variation and heredity. That is, in the absence of evolutionary forces, the expectation is a continual increase in diversity and complexity (...) at any level of biological hierarchy. I show that, when modeled, this expectation of increasing variation results not only in the formation of groups, but also in a higher probability of group formation than is found in a model that is purely random. (shrink)

Advice is interesting because it is a relationship that is built upon two asymmetries. Advice concerns what the advisee ought to do. For that reason, considerations of autonomy suggest that the advisee has a greater claim on what matters in deliberation. However, the advisor is wiser than the advisee. That suggests that the advisor has a greater insight into what matters in deliberation. These are the asymmetry of autonomy and the asymmetry of wisdom. To account for both, I argue for (...) informed subjectivism. Informed subjectivism is the view that the quality of advice is determined by the likelihood that the advisee would consistently prefer acting on the advice to not acting the advice. The theory captures the asymmetry of autonomy by making the quality of advice based on the advisee’s judgment. It captures the asymmetry of wisdom by making the relevant judgments of the advisee be ones that are informed by experience. (shrink)

The legacy of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research has been a powerful force for critically understanding social reality. Erich Fromm was one of the early and best known members of the Institute. Fromm emphasised the centrality of culture and interpersonal relations in the contruction of the psyche. The unconscious was not only the location for buried repressed matter but also for the imaginative potential of the human person. He is a forgotten and neglected contributor to the story of the (...) Institute having been written out of this history. This retrospective of his ideas explores his work in the light of the recent work of Jürgen Habermas who is also an active but less controversial engager with the psychoanalytic tradition. The implications for adult education will be addressed. The paper outlines Fromm’s radical reinterpretation of psychoanalysis emphasising the importance of social existence as distinct from the impact of instincts; key concepts of the market, commodity fetishism and automaton conformity; The implications for adult education in the tradition of radical (Freire) and transformative learning theory (Mezirow) and addressed and make connections between Habermas and Fromm that further the project of critical theory. Both attempted in different times to identify and realise the potential of (though neither used the term) of lifelong learning as part of the process of bringing about a more just and caring society and a shared attention to the importance of having free conversations about how the emancipated life might be created and sustained. (shrink)

Hans Blumenberg’s work is characterized by a seemingly insatiable predilection for anecdotes — about Thales and Pyrrhus, Goethe and Fontane, Husserl and Wittgenstein, Polgar and Jünger. This essay explores the theoretical status of anecdotes by juxtaposing Carl Linnaeus’s Nemesis Divina with Blumenberg’s Care Crosses the River, both read alongside Aristotle’s notion of exemplarity and Joel Fineman’s delineation of the anecdote as the literary-historical form for expressing contingency. As a mode of thought at the nexus of literature and experience, anecdotes immediately (...) pose the question of evidence. Even if true, an anecdote opens the issue of whether it is the exception or the norm, whether it only speaks for itself or assumes exemplary force, and what such exemplarity might mean. By juxtaposing two theorists qua anecdotists — Carl Linnaeus and Hans Blumenberg — this essay aims to show the inextricable relation between anecdote and example, and thus between anecdote and rhetoric, a counterpart and supplement to the poetics of metaphor within what one can call with Blumenberg a theory of nonconceptuality. (shrink)

Background: This study was developed as a result of a court case involving conflicts between midwives’ professional practice and their faith when caring for women undergoing abortions in Scotland. Research questions: What are practising Roman Catholics’ perspectives of potential conflicts between midwives’ professional practice in Scotland with regard to involvement in abortions and their faith? How relevant is the ‘conscience clause’ to midwifery practice today? and What are participants’ understandings of Canon 1398 in relation to midwifery practice? Research design: The (...) theoretical underpinning of this study was Gadamer’s hermeneutic out of which the method developed by Fleming et al. involving a five-stage approach was utilised. Participants and research context: The research was conducted in the south of Scotland. A purposive sampling method was used. Eight participants who were practising Roman Catholics familiar with the subject of conscientious objection who were either midwives, lawyers (civil, canon or both) or priests contributed. Ethical considerations: The major ethical issues related to respect for autonomy, maintaining confidentiality and obtaining voluntary informed consent. Parish priests agreed to act as gatekeepers to prospective participants. All legal requirements were addressed regarding data collection and storage. Approval was given by the ethics committee of the university with which one of the researchers were associated. Findings: Three key themes provide an understanding of the situation in which midwives find themselves when considering the care for a woman admitted for an abortion: competing legal systems, competing views of conscience and limits of participation. Conclusion: Clear guidelines for practice should be developed by a multi-professional and consumer group based on an update of the abortion law to reflect the change from a surgical to medical procedure. Clarification of Canon 1398 in relation to what is and is not participation in the procurement of abortion would be of benefit to midwives with a conscientious objection. (shrink)

New perspectives on the role of collective responsibility in modern politics States are commonly blamed for wars, called on to apologize, held liable for debts and reparations, bound by treaties, and punished with sanctions. But what does it mean to hold a state responsible as opposed to a government, a nation, or an individual leader? Under what circumstances should we assign responsibility to states rather than individuals? Leviathan on a Leash demystifies the phenomenon of state responsibility and explains why it (...) is a challenging yet indispensable part of modern politics. Taking Thomas Hobbes' theory of the state as his starting point, Sean Fleming presents a theory of state responsibility that sheds new light on sovereign debt, historical reparations, treaty obligations, and economic sanctions. Along the way, he overturns longstanding interpretations of Hobbes' political thought, explores how new technologies will alter the practice of state responsibility as we know it, and develops new accounts of political authority, representation, and legitimacy. He argues that Hobbes' idea of the state offers a far richer and more realistic conception of state responsibility than the theories prevalent today, and demonstrates that Hobbes' Leviathan is much more than an anthropomorphic "artificial man." Leviathan on a Leash is essential reading for political theorists, scholars of international relations, international lawyers, and philosophers. This groundbreaking book recovers a forgotten understanding of state personality in Hobbes' thought and shows how to apply it to the world of imperfect states in which we live. (shrink)

This intriguing volume provides a thorough examination of the historical roots of global climate change as a field of inquiry, from the Enlightenment to the late twentieth century. Based on primary and archival sources, the book is filled with interesting perspectives on what people have understood, experienced, and feared about the climate and its changes in the past. Chapters explore climate and culture in Enlightenment thought; climate debates in early America; the development of international networks of observation; the scientific transformation (...) of climate discourse; and early contributions to understanding terrestrial temperature changes, infrared radiation, and the carbon dioxide theory of climate. But perhaps most important, this book shows what a study of the past has to offer the interdisciplinary investigation of current environmental problems. (shrink)

Science fiction is often held up as a particularly philosophical genre. For, beyond actualising mind-experiment-like fantasies, science fiction films also commonly toy with speculative ideas, or else engineer encounters with the strange and unknown. Denis Villeneuve's Arrival is a contemporary science fiction film that does exactly this, by introducing Lovecraft-esque tentacular aliens whose arrival on Earth heralds in a novel, but ultimately paralysing, inhuman perspective on the nature of time and reality. This article shows how this cerebral film invites viewers (...) to confront a counterintuitive model of time that at once recalls and reposes what Gilles Deleuze called a “third synthesis” of time, and that which J. M. E. McTaggart named the a-temporal “C series” of “unreal” time. We finally suggest that Arrival's a-temporal conception of the future as having already happened can function as a key to understanding the fate of humanity as a whole as we pass from the anthropocene, in which humans have... (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the interpretation of velocity eigenstates for unstable quantons, their relationship to space-like momentum eigenstates for such quantons and the explanation of Shirokov’s contracting lifetimes for such velocity eigenstates. It is an elaboration of a portion of the authors earlier study.

Marie-Anne Boivin a été en son temps une des sages-femmes françaises les plus célèbres. Son parcours professionnel et scientifique est présenté ici, illustrant l’espace laissé aux femmes dans les professions médicales. Reconnue d’abord pour ses ouvrages techniques concernant l’obstétrique, elle sort de son champ traditionnel de compétence pour aborder de façon novatrice la gynécologie naissante, à l’instar des médecins, avec son Traité pratique des maladies de l’utérus (1833), devenu un classique. Cette œuvre scientifique lui vaut un succès d’estime, mais (...) ne lui permet pas d’atteindre une véritable reconnaissance institutionnelle dans son pays. (shrink)

The quality space hypothesis about conscious experience proposes that conscious sensory states are experienced in relation to other possible sensory states. For instance, the colour red is experienced as being more like orange, and less like green or blue. Recent empirical findings suggest that subjective similarity space can be explained in terms of similarities in neural activation patterns. Here, we consider how localist, workspace, and higher-order theories of consciousness can accommodate claims about the qualitative character of experience and functionally support (...) a quality space. We review existing empirical evidence for each of these positions, and highlight novel experimental tools, such as altering local activation spaces via brain stimulation or behavioural training, that can distinguish these accounts. (shrink)