Book synopsis: The feminist movement has challenged many of the unstated assumptions on which ethics as a branch of philosophy has always rested - assumptions about human nature, moral agency, citizenship and kinship. The twenty-six readings in this book express the discontent of a succession of fiercely articulate women writers, from Mary Wollstonecraft to the present day, with the masculine bias of `morality'. The editors have contributed an overall introduction, which discusses ethics, feminism and feminist themes in ethics, and have (...) provided introductions to each of the readings, designed to situate in their historical and intellectual context. They have also compiled two lists for further reading: `Ethics: a Feminist Bibliography' and `The Male Tradition'. Ethics: A Feminist Reader is an essential resource for students and teachers of philosophy, political theory and women's studies. For anyone with a stake in progressive sexual politics it is an inspirational guide. (shrink)

One in three university students experiences mental health problems during their study. A similar percentage leaves higher education without obtaining the degree for which they enrolled. Research suggests that both mental health problems and academic underperformance could be caused by students lacking control and purpose while they are adjusting to tertiary education. Currently, universities are not designed to cater to all the personal needs and mental health problems of large numbers of students at the start of their studies. Within the (...) literature aimed at preventing mental health problems among students (e.g., anxiety or depression), digital forms of therapy recently have been suggested as potentially scalable solutions to address these problems. Integrative psychological artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of a chatbot, for example, shows great potential as an evidence-based solution. At the same time, within the literature aimed at improving academic success, the online life-crafting intervention in which students write about values and passions, goals, and goal-attainment plans has shown to improve the academic performance and retention rates of students. Because the life-crafting intervention is delivered through the curriculum and doesn’t bear the stigma that is associated with therapy, it can reach larger populations of students. But life-crafting lacks the means for follow-up or the interactiveness that online AI-guided therapy can offer. In this paper, we propose to integrate the current literature on chatbot interventions aimed at the mental health of students with research about a life-crafting intervention that uses an inclusive curriculum-wide approach. When a chatbot asks students to prioritize both academic as well as social and health-related goals and provides personalized follow-up coaching, this can prevent -often interrelated- academic and mental health problems. Right on-time delivery, and personalized follow-up questions enhance the effects of both -originally separated- intervention types. Research on this new combination of interventions should use design principles that increase user-friendliness and monitor the technology acceptance of its participants. (shrink)

(2005). Freedom in Responsibility: On the Relevance of “Sin” As a Hermeneutic Guiding Principle in Bioethical Decision Making. Christian Bioethics: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 147-165.

For the last 15 years, companies have extensively increased their environmental disclosure relative to their environmental strategy in response to institutional pressures. Based on a computerized content analysis of the annual reports of the 55 largest French industrial companies, we describe environmental disclosure with respect to the different strategies implemented by companies over a period of 6 years. The results show that environmental disclosure becomes more and more technical and precise for all the companies. Environmental innovations are presented as a (...) means of increasing energy efficiency and of obtaining a competitive advantage in green market products. The environmental management system implemented by proactive companies allows them to improve their environmental performance. However, the results show that the economic situation significantly influences the way environmental issues are addressed. (shrink)

Les personnes présentant des troubles psychiques rencontrent des difficultés à s’insérer sur le marché du travail. Dans cette étude, nous évaluons dans quelle mesure les employeurs se préoccupent de l’accès des jeunes adultes qui présentent des troubles psychiques au travail salarié. Nous mettons l’emphase notamment sur les facteurs contextuels qui influencent les jugements et les comportements des employeurs durant le processus de l’embauche. Les résultats montrent que l’adhésion à l’Accord Norvégien sur la Vie Professionnelle Inclusive et le degré de formalisation (...) des procédures d’embauche vont de pair avec l’adoption de mesures inclusives en matière de recrutement de jeunes adultes qui présentent des troubles psychiques. Cependant, malgré cet accord, peu d’entreprises norvégiennes embauchent de jeunes adultes ainsi classés. De même, seul un petit nombre d’entreprises invitent à un entretien d’embauche un candidat qualifié présentant ces troubles. Notre étude concorde ainsi avec les recherches suggérant que les réticences ou les préjugés des employeurs au recrutement des personnes avec des troubles psychiques contribuent à leurs difficultés sur le marché du travail. (shrink)

In this dialogue, Alain Badiou shares the clearest, most detailed account to date of his profound indebtedness to Lacanian psychoanalysis. He explains in depth the tools Lacan gave him to navigate the extremes of his other two philosophical "masters," Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser. Élisabeth Roudinesco supplements Badiou's experience with her own perspective on the troubled landscape of the French analytic world since Lacan's death--critiquing, for example, the link (or lack thereof) between politics and psychoanalysis in Lacan's work. Their exchange (...) reinvigorates how the the work of a pivotal twentieth-century thinker is perceived. (shrink)

Jan WoleĔski Kazimierz Twardowski and the Development of Philosophy of Science in Poland Kazimierz Twardowski studied with Brentano and followed his style of doing philosophy, in particular, the thesis that the method of philosophy is  ...

Can there be a philosophy of taste? This paper opens by raising some metaphilosophical questions about the study of taste – what it consists of and what method we should adopt in pursuing it. It is suggested that the best starting point for philosophising about taste is against the background of 18th-century epistemology and philosophy of mind, and the conceptual tools this new philosophical paradigm entails. The notion of aesthetic taste in particular, which emerges from a growing sense of dissatisfaction (...) with an undifferentiated category of taste, comes to be set apart from gustatory taste on account of its normativity and aspirations to objectivity. The paradox of taste, as found in Hume and Kant, is examined, and shown to be highly relevant to contemporary metaphysical debate within aesthetics. Specifically, this paper argues that both Realists and Anti-Realists rely more heavily than assumed on the idea of taste. (shrink)

Escuchamos hablar con frecuencia de la importancia de las competencias blandas en la educación y en el mundo laboral. Sería primordial que la educación, en todos sus niveles, se plantee un cambio de paradigma y que las incluya en los planes de estudio, dándole el mismo valor que a las competencias duras. Sería conveniente que el alumnado las desarrolle para que los prepare en el ámbito laboral y en su transitar en este mundo cada vez más cambiante. El Coaching Educativo (...) permite desarrollar estas competencias en el alumnado, un cambio de observador, un modo distinto de ser y de hacer. (shrink)

Cette biographie de référence éclaire d'un jour nouveau tout un pan de la vie intellectuelle du XXe siècle, celui de ces universitaires juifs allemands obligés de fuir le IIIe Reich et qui, d'étape en étape, finirent par trouver refuge aux Etats-Unis. Le livre associe la présentation des grandes étapes de la pensée et de l'œuvre de Hannah Arendt aux événements historiques qui la sollicitent et au tableau des amitiés et des cercles successifs. Si la liaison qu'elle eut brièvement au début (...) des années 30 avec Heidegger est désormais bien connue, d'autres aspects de son existence, pourtant du plus haut intérêt, le sont moins : son rapprochement avec le sionisme sous l'égide de Kurt Blumenfeld avant et pendant la guerre, son mariage avec Günther Stern, puis avec Heinrich Blücher, sa longue amitié aux Etats-Unis avec la romancière Mary McCarthy ou avec le poète W.H. Auden. Polémiste redoutable et critique cinglante, constante dans ses fidélités, et en premier lieu dans sa relation avec cette grande conscience allemande que fut Karl Jaspers, Arendt a traversé tous les débats du siècle, sans jamais céder ni sur son indépendance d'esprit ni sur sa lucidité : face au totalitarisme, dont elle forge le concept, mais aussi face au racisme et aux mouvements pour les droits civils aux Etats-Unis, face à la création de l'Etat d'Israël et au devenir du sionisme, face à l'engagement américain dans la guerre du Vietnam, face à la révolte de la jeunesse des années 60. Ne s'abandonnant jamais à la tentation aristocratique du retrait, elle accomplit une œuvre de pensée sans avoir besoin de décrier le monde, mais en prônant l'amour de la réalité, donnant ainsi l'image rare d'une vie de penseur à la hauteur de ses accomplissements spéculatifs. Indisponible depuis une dizaine d'années, cet ouvrage a été mis à jour et enrichi d'une nouvelle préface de l'auteur. (shrink)

This article examines clinical wisdom, which has emerged from a broader study about nurse managers' influence on proficient registered nurse turnover and retention. The purpose of the study was to increase understanding of proficient nurses' experience and clinical practice by giving voice to the nurses themselves, and to look for differences in their practice. This was a qualitative study based on semistructured interviews followed by analysis founded on Gadamerian hermeneutics. The article describes how proficient nurses experience their practice. Proficient practice (...) constitutes clinical wisdom based on responsibility, thinking and ethical discernment, and a drive for action. The study showed that poor working conditions cause proficient nurses to regress to non-proficient performance. Further studies are recommended to allow deeper searching into the area of working conditions and their relationship to lack of nurse proficiency. (shrink)

Visual illusions provide important evidence for the co-existence of unconscious and conscious representations. Objects surrounded by other figures are consciously perceived as different in size, while the visuo-motor system supposedly uses an unconscious representation of the discs’ true size for grip size scaling. Recent evidence suggests other factors than represented size, e.g., surrounding rings conceived as obstacles, affect grip size. Use of the diagonal illusion avoids visual obstacles in the path of the reaching hand. Results support the dual representation theory. (...) Grip size scaling follows actual size independent of illusory effects, which clearly bias conscious perception in direct comparisons of lengths and in finger-thumb span indications of perceived length. (shrink)

The cost-effectiveness of 24-hour care makes it a major source of support for elderly people in need of home-based care in Austria. Language barriers, feelings of isolation when living with chronically ill people and a lack of adequate training and quality control create stressful working conditions for 24-hour caregivers in Austria, who mainly come from Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. The challenges not only affect the 24-hour caregivers themselves but also their clients, relatives and registered care agency nurses in care settings. (...) The aim of the qualitative study was to assess user needs in order to develop an app to improve working conditions and quality assurance in 24-hour home-care. The study consisted of guided interviews, focus group and cultural probes and 45 interviewees. The collected data were analyzed using Kuckartz’s method of content structuring qualitative content analysis. The main results show that 24-hour caregivers predominantly require information about common geriatric diseases and the law on 24-hour care. Additionally, medical emergencies can cause insecurities, which creates high interest in professional emergency management skills. Clients and relatives are especially interested in 24-hour caregivers having better German language skills. Care agencies and registered nurses would particularly welcome electronic care documentation to ensure traceability of the activities and measures taken. The study points to the need for a digital tool that would meet demand for an appropriate assistance system for 24-hour home-care that complies with the AAL requirements of the aligned project. Therefore, the intended software solution meets challenges in 24-hour home-care for 24-hour caregivers, persons in need of care, their relatives and professionals involved in the 24-hour care setting. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the efficiency of information aggregation in a committee whose members have heterogeneous preferences over a binary decision variable. We study a voting game with a pre-vote communication stage and identify conditions under which full information aggregation is possible. In particular, if preferences are common knowledge and each committee member is endowed with information, full information aggregation is possible despite preference heterogeneity.

ZusammenfassungKnochen waren im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert ein unverzichtbarer, größtenteils importabhängiger Rohstoff der chemischen Industrie, die daraus Düngemittel, Tierfutter, Leim, Gelatine, Seife und andere Produkte herstellte. Das Thema Knochenverwertung wurde im Schulunterricht der NS-Zeit genutzt, um Jugendlichen die Relevanz des Vierjahresplans und der deutschen Autarkiepolitik zu verdeutlichen und sie zu motivieren, sich im Rahmen der Altstoffsammlungen an der heimischen Erfassung dieses Rohmaterials zu beteiligen. Diverse NS-Instanzen hatten ein differenziertes Spektrum von Lehrmitteln erarbeitet, um die Behandlung dieses Themas in der (...) Schule zu unterstützen. Der Artikel untersucht, welche Botschaften diese damals hochmodernen Unterrichtsmedien vermittelten und zeigt, wie auch weniger ideologieanfällig scheinende Fächer, etwa der Chemieunterricht, politisch instrumentalisiert wurden. (shrink)

Gegenstand der Erörterung ist die Offenlegung des faktischen und potentiellen Ethikbezugs von Technik. Grundlegend für jede Ethik ist ein je bestimmtes Verständnis des Menschen und seiner Wirklichkeit. Diese prinzipielle Positionalität ist gegenüber diskurs- und verfahrensethischen Ansätzen ebenso festzuhalten wie gegenüber utilitaristischen Nivellierungen grundlagentheoretischer Fragen. Die vorliegende Untersuchung aus evangelischer Perspektive zeigt anhand der Analyse zweier technikphilosophischer Konzeptionen der Gegenwart (G. Ropohl, W. Ch. Zimmerli) die Relevanz von Technikethik nicht nur für Techniker, sondern bezüglich menschlichen Handelns im allgemeinen.

The term ‘sustainability’ is vague and open to interpretation. In this paper we analyze how firms use the term in an effort to make the concept their own, and how it becomes a premise for further decisions, by applying a bottom-up approach focusing on the interpretation of ‘sustainability’ in the Norwegian salmon-farming industry. The study is based on a strategic selection of informants from the industry and the study design rests on: 1) identification of the main drivers of sustainability, and (...) 2) the application of five different discursive strategies to analyze how the firms maneuver to legitimize ‘sustainability’ in their conduct. We employ the Critical Discourse Analysis framework, which emphasizes how discourses provide different concepts of meaning. The sustainability concept is assessed based on how sustainability is brought into action by social actors in a legitimate way, and how this action results in sustainable practices. The empirical case of the study is the verbal justification of sustainability practices among representatives of the Norwegian salmon-farming industry. We aim to find out how these representatives translate the rather vague directives of the sustainability concept into legitimate choices that resonate with the firms’ contextual environment, hence, how the salmon farmers perceive, explore, interpret, explain, enact, and defend the diverse landscape of sustainability when implementing professional decisions. We found a trend of passive adaptation to external requirements, such as public regulations and regulative requirements from certification bodies. At the same time, there are progressive forces that attempt to improve the sustainability of the farming practices by involvement in research and innovation projects or cooperation with other firms, e.g. the contribution from offshore engineers in developing high seas farms. The strategies outlined and discussed cannot be seen as a typology to categorize the firms. More than one discursive strategy may be involved in one firm’s choice, and the strategies may work on different levels. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate possible associations between obstructive sleep apnea and fatigue. This naturally led to considering the association between OSA and excessive sleepiness, depression, and anxiety.BackgroundOSA is a highly prevalent sleep disorder, associated with a risk of hypertension, cardiovascular events, daytime sleepiness, poor cognitive function, and sudden death during sleep. Both excessive sleepiness, fatigue, and symptoms of depression are frequently reported.Method5,464 patients referred to a university hospital for obstructive sleep apnea underwent standard respiratory polygraphy. The (...) severity of OSA was defined as either mild, moderate, or severe, using the apnea–hypopnea index. Validated questionnaires were used to assess excessive sleepiness, pathological fatigue, depression, and anxiety.ResultsNearly 70% of the patients were men, and median age was 50 years. One in three had moderate-to-severe OSA. Excessive sleepiness and pathological fatigue were present in 43 and 39%, respectively. The prevalence of possible depression and anxiety was 19 and 28%, respectively. The proportion of patients with male sex, obesity, and excessive sleepiness increased with the severity of OSA. In contrast, the proportion of patients with pathological fatigue did not increase with OSA severity, and there was a decrease in depression and anxiety with increasing OSA severity.ConclusionOur study reports that pathological fatigue, as well as anxiety and depression, did not increase with OSA severity, whereas excessive sleepiness did. Knowledge concerning conditions related to OSA severity may be indicative of pretest probability of OSA and thus change the priority for polygraphy. Furthermore, the high prevalence rates of fatigue, anxiety, and depression among these patients warrant further investigations. (shrink)