BackgroundExisting clinical ethics support (CES) instruments are considered useful. However, users report obstacles in using them in daily practice. Including end users and other stakeholders in developing CES instruments might help to overcome these limitations. This study describes the development process of a new ethics support instrument called CURA, a low-threshold four-step instrument focused on nurses and nurse assistants working in palliative care. MethodWe used a participatory development design. We worked together with stakeholders in a Community of Practice throughout the (...) study. Potential end users (nurses and nurse assistants in palliative care) used CURA in several pilots and provided us with feedback which we used to improve CURA.ResultsWe distinguished three phases in the development process. Phase one, Identifying Needs, focused on identifying stakeholder and end user needs and preferences, learning from existing CES instruments, their development and evaluation, and identify gaps. Phase two, Development, focused on designing, developing, refining and tailoring the instrument on the basis of iterative co-creation. Phase three, Dissemination, focused on implementation and dissemination. The instrument, CURA, is a four-step low-threshold instrument that fosters ethical reflection.ConclusionsParticipatory development is a valuable approach for developing clinical ethics support instruments. Collaborating with end users and other stakeholders in our development study has helped to meet the needs and preferences of end users, to come up with strategies to refine the instrument in order to enhance its feasibility, and to overcome reported limitations of existing clinical ethics instruments. (shrink)

Philosophers have long theorized about which things make people’s lives go well, and why, and the extent to which morality and self-interest can be reconciled. Yet little time has been spent on meta-prudential questions, questions about prudential discourse. This is surprising given that prudence is, prima facie, a normative form of discourse and, as such, cries out for further investigation. Chapter 4 takes up two major meta-prudential questions. It first examines whether there is a set of prudential reasons, generated by (...) evaluative prudential properties, and defends the view that evaluative well-being facts generate agent-relative reasons for the relevant agent. It also investigates whether prudential discourse is normative. It is proposed that prudential discourse is normative by arguing that prudential judgements are normative judgements. The case for this is presented by analogy with moral discourse by showing that the features of moral judgements that metaethicists appeal to when articulating, explaining, and justifying the claim that moral judgements are normative are also possessed by prudential judgements. Various objections to the analogy are also considered. (shrink)

In recent times, there has been a surge of interest in, and enthusiasm for, contextualist views about prudential discourse — thought and talk about what has prudential value or contributes to someone’s well-being. In this paper I examine and reject two cases for radical forms of prudential contextualism, proposed by Anna Alexandrova and Steve Campbell. Alexandrova holds that the semantic content of terms like ‘well-being’ and ‘doing well’ varies across contexts. Campbell proposes that there are plural prudential concepts at play (...) in prudential discourse (and in philosophical reflection upon such discourse) and that we find evidence of this in the conflicting commitments of prudential discourse. ​The negative aim of the paper is to show that Alexandrova and Campbell have not given us a good case for ambitious forms of contextualism about prudential discourse. The positive aim of the paper is to provide alternative, aspectualist, explanations of the features of prudential discourse that their discussions highlight. (shrink)

Philosophers have long theorized about what makes people's lives go well, and why, and the extent to which morality and self-interest can be reconciled. However, we have spent little time on meta-prudential questions, questions about prudential discourse—thought and talk about what is good and bad for us; what contributes to well-being; and what we have prudential reason, or prudentially ought, to do. This situation is surprising given that prudence is, prima facie, a normative form of discourse and cries out for (...) further investigation of what it is like and whether it has problematic commitments. It also marks a stark contrast from moral discourse, about which there has been extensive theorizing, in meta-ethics. -/- Dear Prudence: The Nature and Normativity of Prudential Discourse has three broad aims. Firstly, Guy Fletcher explores the nature of prudential discourse. Secondly, he argues that prudential discourse is normative and authoritative, like moral discourse. Thirdly, Fletcher aims to show that prudential discourse is worthy of further, explicit, attention both due to its intrinsic interest but also for the light it sheds on the meta-normative more broadly. (shrink)

Moral and self-conscious emotions like guilt and shame can function as internal negative experiences that punish or deter bad behaviour. Individual differences exist in people’s tendency to experience guilt and shame. Being disposed to experience guilt and/or shame may predict students’ expectations of their emotional reactions to engaging in immoral behaviour in the form of academic misconduct, and thus dissuade students from intending to engage in this behaviour. In this study, students’ (n = 459) guilt and shame proneness, their expectations (...) of feeling guilt and shame if they engaged in academic misconduct, and their intentions to engage in academic misconduct were measured. Three of the four facets of the guilt and shame proneness scale [GASP: Guilt–Negative-Behavior-Evaluation (NBE), Guilt-Repair, Shame–Negative-Self-Evaluation (NSE)] had significant negative correlations with academic misconduct intentions, and these relationships were mediated by anticipating shame and guilt related to engaging in academic misconduct. These results suggest that for some students expecting to experience negative moral emotions when engaging in academic misconduct may protect them from breaching ethical assessment rules. (shrink)

Philosophers and social scientists will welcome this highly original discussion of Max Weber's analysis of the objectivity of social science. Guy Oakes traces the vital connection between Weber's methodology and the work of philosopher Heinrich Rickert, reconstructing Rickert's notoriously difficult concepts in order to isolate the important, and until now poorly understood, roots of problems in Weber's own work.Guy Oakes teaches social philosophy at Monmouth College and sociology at the New School for Social Research.

The Bayesian model has been used in psychology as the standard reference for the study of probability revision. In the first part of this paper we show that this traditional choice restricts the scope of the experimental investigation of revision to a stable universe. This is the case of a situation that, technically, is known as focusing. We argue that it is essential for a better understanding of human probability revision to consider another situation called updating (Katsuno & Mendelzon, 1992), (...) in which the universe is evolving. In that case the structure of the universe has definitely been transformed and the revision message conveys information on the resulting universe. The second part of the paper presents four experiments based on the Monty Hall puzzle that aim to show that updating is a natural frame for individuals to revise their beliefs. (shrink)

John Cook Wilson is an important predecessor of contemporary knowledge first epistemologists: among other parallels, he claimed that knowledge is indefinable. We reconstruct four arguments for this claim discernible in his work, three of which find no clear analogues in contemporary discussions of knowledge first epistemology. We pay special attention to Cook Wilson’s view of the relation between knowledge and forms of thinking (like belief). Claims of Cook Wilson’s that support the indefinability of knowledge include: that knowledge, unlike belief, straddles (...) an active/passive divide; that, rather than entailing belief, knowledge excludes belief; and that understanding forms of thinking other than knowledge (such as belief) depends on understanding knowledge. Reflecting on Cook Wilson’s framework highlights underappreciated concerns relevant to any attempt to define knowledge. (shrink)

Recently, cognitivist accounts about art have come under pressure to provide stronger arguments for the view that artworks can yield genuine insight and understanding. In Gregory Currie’s Imagining and Knowing: Learning from Fiction, for example, a convincing case is laid out to the effect that any knowledge gained from engaging with art must “be judged by the very standards that are used in assessing the claim of science to do the same” (Currie 2020: 8) if indeed it is to count (...) as knowledge. Cognitivists must thus rally to provide sturdier grounds for their view. The revived interest in this philosophical discussion targets not only the concept of knowledge at the heart of cognitivist and anti-cognitivist debate, but also highlights a more specific question about how, exactly, some artworks can (arguably) afford cognitive import and change how we think about the world, ourselves and the many events, persons and situations we encounter. This paper seeks to explore some of the ways in which art is capable of altering our epistemic perspectives in ways that might count as knowledge despite circumventing some standards of evidential requirement. In so doing we will contrast two alternative conceptions of how we stand to learn from art. Whereas the former is modelled on the idea that knowledge is something that can be “extracted” from our experience of particular works of art, the latter relies on a notion of such understanding as primarily borne out of a different kind of engagement with art. We shall call this the subtractive conception and cumulative conception respectively. The cumulative conception, we shall argue, better explains why at least some insights and instances of knowledge gained from art seem to elude the evidential standards called for by sceptics of cognitivism. (shrink)

Motivated by the ongoing controversy surrounding corporate tax, this article presents a study that explores stakeholder expectations of corporate tax in the context of UK business. We conduct a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with representatives of community groups, as well as interviews with those representing business groups. We then identify eight themes that together describe “what” companies need to do, “how” they need to do it, and “why” they need to do it, if they wish to appeal to a (...) wide group of interested parties. We discuss our findings based on the corporate social responsibility literature and propose novel ways for community groups and business groups to connect on the topic of corporate tax, suggesting opportunities and themes for dialogue and potential steps to co-create solutions in a stakeholder society. (shrink)

The search for the best wellness practice has promoted the development of devices integrating different technologies and guided meditation. However, the final effects on the electrical activity of the brain remain relatively sparse. Here, we have analyzed of the alpha and theta electroencephalographic oscillations during the realization of the arrest reaction when a chromotherapy session performed in a dedicated room [Rebalance device], with an ergonomic bed integrating pulsed-wave light stimulation, guided breathing, and body scan exercises. We demonstrated that the PWL (...) induced an evoked-related potential characterized by the N2-P3 components maximally recorded on the fronto-central areas and accompanied by an event-related synchronization of the delta–theta–alpha oscillations. The power of the alpha and theta oscillations was analyzed during repeated ARs testing realized along with the whole RB session. We showed that the power of the alpha and theta oscillations was significantly increased during the session in comparison to their values recorded before. Of the 14 participants, 11 and 6 showed a significant power increase of the alpha and theta oscillations, respectively. These increased powers were not observed in two different control groups who stayed passively outside or inside the RB room but without any type of stimulation. These preliminary results suggest that PWL chromotherapy and guided relaxation induce measurable electrical brain changes that could be beneficial under neuropsychiatric perspectives. (shrink)

This is the only general selection available of the writings of the renowned English idealist philosopher F. H. Bradley; it is the ideal introduction to his thought. Bradley's original texts are given an editorial framework in the introductions to each section, allowing students to investigate his philosophy first-hand and yet to be guided through the difficulties presented by his work.

All the passages are from the writings and translations of Thomas Taylor.

Le probleme de la connaissance est essentiel a une juste comprehension de la pensee de Sartre. Conscience et liberte se donnant pour leur propre fondement, l'alternative a l'ethique est d'aborder la question de l'homme en tentant de concilier la subjectivite avec la certitude et la verite de la connaissance. Ni la science ni le Cogito cartesien ne permettent d'acceder a une connaissance veritable: la conscience est existence concrete et pre-reflexive. Il ressort de l'ontologie une dualite de la connaissance que resout (...) une dialectique de la conscience; il y a, dans la connaissance, une necessite incontournable de recourir a la rationalite, alors que la realite qu'elle vise est irreductible a la rationalite. La theorie de la conscience fonde epistemologiquement cette dialectique et assure la verite et l'intelligibilite de l'homme et de l'histoire: la connaissance est situee. Existence et savoir ne font qu'un; la verite est l'acte de la liberte. (shrink)

One of the most familiar traits of the part-horse, part-man creatures known as silens is their keen interest in women. In Athenian vase-painting, the female companions of the silens are characterized by a variety of attributes and items of dress, and exhibit mixed feelings toward the attentions of silens. The complexities of the imagery have resulted in disagreement in modern scholarship on several points, including the identity of these females, the significance of their attributes, and the explanation of a change (...) in their receptivity to the advances of the silens. One of the reasons for the lack of consensus in the scholarship is the fact that the imagery raises not one question but many: questions concerning iconographical method, mythology, ritual, and poetry. In what follows I have attempted to separate some of these entangled issues. I hope to show that the companions of the silens are nymphs and not maenads, and that a major change in the iconography of silens and nymphs, occurring in late sixth-century red-figure Attic vase-painting, reflects in some way developments in the Athenian dramatic genre of satyr-play. (shrink)

Dans cet ouvrage collectif, l'article de Guy Bouchard intitulé "Comment émasculiniser l' écriture philosophique" met d'abord en lumière le sexisme qui a caractérisé tant la philosophie que le langage en général; il s'interroge ensuite sur les façons "d'émasculiniser" l' écriture philosophique et au niveau de la pensée, et à celui du langage.

‘External memories’ raise a question about context: ‘external to what?’ External memory is a technical term applied to everything that can be memorized in an individual's environment. As a general rule I have decided to retain the technical terms that characterize the area of the topic under discussion. It was Ted Nelson who coined the word hypertext in 1967 to signify non-sequential writing as well as a computer technology that allowed the user to move about freely by means of software (...) links. I shall use the term software to mean computer programs. Electronic publishing started with the Xanadu system developed by Nelson. At the lowest level a hypertext is a system for managing databases that allows the user to connect together information screens using links. It is a collection of texts interconnected by means of interactive switches. This dynamic presentation of non-linear texts could not be printed on a conventional page. Hypertext allows the origin of a piece of information to be traced. In this article traceability is synonymous with explanation: ‘Why was this equipment designed in one way rather than another?’ It is about discovering the route of the design process that led to the eventual idea for the equipment. The necessary explanations are often required long after decisions were made, and this is why traceability is a matter of memory. The term agent is often used to mean those members of a community that act on its behalf. There are agents for a company or public department. There are biological agents. In a non-technological world traceability is ideally carried out by human agents who explain to other human agents. The term agent has been extended into the computer world to mean software to which the user delegates, sometimes unwittingly, tasks of varying complexity. These are then called software agents. In this article I refer to agent in its wider meaning, to be understood as an actor or an entity able to act in a limited context and having a quite specific role and appropriate resources. (shrink)

: Though it is being widely argued that expanding young people's capacity to learn is a viable and desirable goal of education, it it not always clear what this means, how it is to be achieved, and how the effectiveness of interventions is to be assessed. It is argued that the capacity to learn should be interpreted as a portmanteau term that comprises a varied set of positive learning dispositions. These are illustrated, and the idea of ?expansion? is glossed in (...) terms of broadening, strengthening and deepening these dispositions. (shrink)

[1] Époques et auteurs.--[2] Textes choisis.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE PLACE OF RENE GIRARD IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY Guy Vanheeswijck University ofAntwerp and ofLeuven Iwould like to start by quoting a text which is likely to be recognized by everyone, who is even on a superficial level familiar with the work of René Girard: Desire that bears on a natural object is only human to the extent that it is mediated by the desire of another bearing on the (...) same object: it is human to desire what others desire, because they desire it. Thus an object that is perfectly useless from a biological point of view (such as a medal, or the enemy's flag) can be desired because it is the object of other desires. Such a human desire, and human reality as it differs from animal reality, is only created by the action that satisfies such desires. Human history is the history of desires that are desired [Désirs désirés]. Undoubtedly, these could be words written by Girard. However, they are not. These words are quoted from the famous lectures given by Alexandre Kojève on Hegel's Phänomenologie des Geistes at the Ecole pratique des hautes études between 1933 and 1939. They were followed by what would become the crème ofpost-war French philosophy: Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, Alexandre Koyré, Pierre Klossowski, Jacques Lacan, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre.' Kojève's interpretation ofHegel has, as generally known, become the point ofreference to the post-war twentieth ' Although Sartre himselfcould not attend the lectures (at that time he taught philosophy in Le Havre en Laon), he must have heard from it by way of Aron or Merleau-Ponty. 96Guy Vanheeswijck century philosophy in France. Before 1930 the word "dialectic" was burdened with an odium of sin, after 1930 it became a word—thanks to Kojève —radiant with prestige. Before 1930 there had been no talk of an Hegelian school whatsoever in France, after 1930 the situation changed so drastically that Merleau-Ponty was able to write these often quoted lines in 1946: Hegel is at the origin of everything that has been great in philosophy for over a century; for example Marxism, Nietzsche, phenomenology and German existentialism, psychoanalysis. He inaugurates the attempt to explore the irrational and to integrate it within a wider rationality that remains the philosophical task of our century. (Sens et non-sens 109-110) Half a century later, these words have lost their self-evident character. While the generation of French thinkers between 1930 and 1960 stresses its dependence on Hegel, the generation after 1960 heavily reacts against him. In 1970 Michel Foucault gave his inaugural speech at the Collège de France. On behalf of his generation he testified to a generalized antiHegelianism at that moment: "Our entire epoch, whether through logic or epistemology, whether through Marx or Nietzsche, seeks to evade Hegel's Imperium [échapper à Hegel] (L'Ordre du discours 74). Obviously, René Girard belongs to the second generation, which, on the one hand, embroiders on the theme ofdesire, borrowed from Kojève's interpretation ofHegel, but, on the other, in its search for answers precisely wishes to get rid of Hegel. But, is it correct to call René Girard a philosopher? His schooling was that of an historian. In 1947 he graduated in Paris as an archivistepal éographe at the Ecole de Chartres: his thesis was "La vie privée à Avignon dans la seconde moitié du XVe siècle." Three years later—in the meantime he had emigrated to the United States—he received his Ph.D. at the faculty of history of the University of Indiana. The topic of his dissertation was "American opinion ofFrance, 1940-1943." However, he has never worked as a professional historian. He owes his reputation first and foremost to his literary analyses, subsequently to his research in anthropology, finally to his exegesis ofthe Bible. Time and again, Girard has expressed his preference for literature to both humanities and philosophy. Human behavior is, in his view, much less elucidated by the conceptual structures of discursive philosophy than by the evocative force of a Greek tragedy, the Biblical passion story or a modern novel. One might retort that René Girard... (shrink)

Chez Paul Tillich, le concept de Dieu s’oppose au modèle « interventionniste » du théisme traditionnel en Occident. Cet article se propose de déterminer si, et en quel sens, d’après Tillich, on peut dire que Dieu agit pour influencer le cours des événements historiques. On soutient que son concept de « pouvoir Spirituel » fournit une réponse à cette question. Pour clarifier cette thèse, on explore les concepts d’esprit, de pouvoir, de sens, de vocation, de kairos et de renoncement au (...) pouvoir. Selon Tillich, la vocation de groupes sociaux déterminés est animée d’un pouvoir divin conférant tout ensemble un don et une tâche. Pour les chrétiens, la vocation de Jésus le Christ, qui consiste à proclamer la venue du Royaume de Dieu comme le sens ultime de l’histoire, constitue le critère permettant de juger les vocations concrètes. Dieu agit en offrant un sens, qui doit être choisi et réalisé. (shrink)

Abelard closely follows the Augustinian view with regard to the notion of intention. However, he distances himself from him concerning the contribution of acts in the evaluation of moral responsibility. Independent thinker, the philosopher of the twelfth century, then, uses an ancient Stoic thesis according to which all actions are indifferent, except those related to virtue and vice. He also takes back another idea of the Stoa concerning, this time, the concept of will as habitus. In this paper, we first (...) expound Abelard’s position on these issues before presenting the main sources to which he has access directly. (shrink)

We review an argument that bipartite "PR-box" correlations, though designed to respect relativistic causality, in fact violate relativistic causality in the classical limit. As a test of this argument, we consider Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) correlations as a tripartite version of PR-box correlations, and ask whether the argument extends to GHZ correlations. If it does-i.e., if it shows that GHZ correlations violate relativistic causality in the classical limit-then the argument must be incorrect (since GHZ correlations do respect relativistic causality in the classical (...) limit.) However, we find that the argument does not extend to GHZ correlations. We also show that both PR-box correlations and GHZ correlations can be retrocausal, but the retrocausality of PR-box correlations leads to self-contradictory causal loops, while the retrocausality of GHZ correlations does not. (shrink)

Dans son effort pour ébranler la dichotomie entre la raison calculatrice et le domaine de l'irrationnel, Ch. Perelman s'inspire de la rhétorique ancienne et, entre autres, de Platon. Il utilise celui-ci pour illustrer le mépris des philosophes à l'égard de la rhétorique, pour indiquer la voie d'une rhétorique différente, et pour caractériser la forme du dialogue. On montre que cette condamnation de la rhétorique est beaucoup plus systématique, chez Platon, que ne le laisse entendre Perelman; que la "rhétorique digne des (...) dieux" de Platon n'a rien à voir avec la nouvelle rhétorique; et que le dialogue platonicien n'est pas un dialogue au sens de cette dernière. Bref, Platon est un anti-modèle, et c'est en prenant conscience de leur hétérogénéité radicale que l'on pourra le mieux apprécier l'originalité de ces deux conceptions de la philosophie. (shrink)

In the area of teaching sciences, the authors study the space given to the collaboration concept in order to enlighten the co-production and practices management processes in the area of change conduct and support, especially when these practices are hold by research-intervention. Base on the analysis of a common work dedicated to the change conduct and support, the authors situate the idea of collaboration in the theoretical object formulation of the “change conduct and support” and clarify its place and role (...) among the terms and conditions of research-intervention implemented. (shrink)

The target article focuses on the predictive coding of and something happened and the and response to make. We extend that scope by addressing the aspect of perception and action. Successful interaction with the environment requires predictions of everything from millisecond-accurate motor timing to far future events. The hierarchical framework seems appropriate for timing.