The work of a bioethicist carries distinctive responsibilities. Alongside those of any worker, there are responsibilities associated with giving guidance to practitioners, policy makers and the public. In addition, bioethicists are professionally exposed to and required to identify situations of moral trouble, and as a result may find themselves choosing to work as advocates or activists, with responsibilities that are distinct from those generally acknowledged within academia. The requirement for bioethics to make normative judgements entails taking a stance, which means (...) there cannot be a sharp line between ‘academic’ or ‘objective’ bioethics, and advocacy/activism, but a continuum of bioethicists’ engagement and an associated continuum of responsibilities. (shrink)

La maladie de l'ame... la belle expression platonicienne n'a de cesse d'etre d'actualite. Non seulement elle est prompte a revenir d'epoque en epoque, mais elle semble particulierement friande de la notre. Que cette maladie designe une vague tristesse, un taedium vitae, ou, plus grave, une depression, elle implique tout a la fois la souffrance morale et la souffrance physique. L'ame et le corps sont divises mais se retrouvent dans la douleur si bien que la maladie de l'ame vient de ce (...) que nous avons un corps. De ce constat paradoxal Jackie Pigeaud tire une histoire, celle du triomphe du dualisme, du fardeau de l'ame et du corps contraints a etre separes et ensemble a perpetuite. Cette histoire trouve son origine dans le monde grec, et plus exactement dans sa philosophie. La division entre maladies de l'ame et autres maladies, c'est-a-dire maladies du corps, appartient a la philosophie. La medecine aurait ete bien soulagee de cette partition. Est-ce a dire qu'elle n'entendait pas etre philosophique? Sans doute: Hippocrate en offre un bon exemple. L'accord, tacite, est le suivant: l'ame appartient au philosophe et le corps au medecin. Ciceron s'occupe des passions et Galien suspend son jugement des qu'il approche la psyche. Chacun y trouve son compte mais les consequences sont importantes: la partition du champ des maladies, la place du malade dans la societe, les traitements a apporter, notamment a la folie, dependent de ce dualisme initial. Si le legs de la medecine greco-romaine est riche, il est aussi fort lourd et trouve des developpements tout au long de l'histoire de la medecine, jusqu'a la constitution au XVIIIe siecle de la psychiatrie. D'une ecriture et d'une pensee personnelles et profondes, ce livre est un essai sur l'histoire de la pensee medicale, depuis l'Antiquite jusqu'a nos jours. La Maladie de l'ame a ete un succes des sa parution, et ce succes n'a pas ete dementi depuis. L'ouvrage n'etait malheureusement plus disponible: les livres ont leur destin commentait l'auteur. Avec cette edition revue et augmentee, accompagnee d'une preface nouvelle, le livre connait enfin le sort qu'il merite.Jackie Pigeaud est professeur emerite de litterature latine a l'Universite de Nantes et membre de l'Institut universitaire de France. On lui doit egalement, aux Belles Lettres, Folie et cures de la folie chez les medecins de l'Antiquite greco-romaine. La manie. (shrink)

Pandemics such as COVID-19 place everyone at risk, but certain kinds of risk are differentially severe for groups already made vulnerable by pre-existing forms of social injustice and discrimination. For people with disability, persisting and ubiquitous disablism is played out in a variety of ways in clinical and public health contexts. This paper examines the impact of disablism on pandemic triage guidance for allocation of critical care. It identifies three underlying disablist assumptions about disability and health status, quality of life, (...) and social utility, that unjustly and potentially catastrophically disadvantage people with disability in COVID-19 and other global health emergencies. (shrink)

This paper reports on a method for the development of grade descriptors for an international Economics A-level syllabus. The syllabus assessment provided the opportunity to explore how different examination paper structures (compulsory short answer written questions and longer essay type questions) and different mark schemes affected this relatively new method for developing grade descriptors. Quantitative analyses of candidates' marks on each question on the November 1999 examination were carried out to identify the grade (A to E) at which candidates 'mastered' (...) the question. Qualitative differences between answers to the question from candidates achieving different grades were identified by expert judges using Kelly's Repertory Grid. These qualitative data were edited to form grade descriptors which were used in the process of grading economics examinations taken in summer 2000, and their usefulness was evaluated. The effects of the question choice and type on the development process are discussed. (shrink)

This book reconceives disability as a set of social relations and practices, as experienced embodiment, and as an emancipatory movement, as well as a biomedical phenomenon. The author brings new attention to complex ethical questions surrounding disability, looking at not only the biomedical understanding of impairment, but also its cultural representations and social organization.

In this book, experienced researchers in the field address the question: Will the model survive these challenges?

This article draws on data from a qualitative research study undertaken in an old UK university with the main aim of investigating the issue of the gender dimension of academic careers. It examines the idea of an individualistic academic career that demands self-promotion, which is still used as a measure of achievement by those in senior positions. However, there is a basic contradiction. While this idea is upheld, men simultaneously gain by an in-built patriarchal support system. They do not have (...) to make a conscious effort to be helped by it, thereby perpetuating the cultural hegemony of individualism. Women are not admitted to this support system, and if they are seen as needing or wanting to set up their own system, this is viewed as a weakness. The answer appears to be for women to strategically harness feminist ways of working in a collaborative and supportive way. (shrink)

Argument schemes are abstractions substantiating the inferential connection between premise(s) and conclusion in argumentative communication. Identifying such conventional patterns of reasoning is essential to the interpretation and evaluation of argumentation. Whether studying argumentation from a theory-driven or data-driven perspective, insight into the actual use of argumentation in communicative practice is essential. Large and reliably annotated corpora of argumentative discourse to quantitatively provide such insight are few and far between. This is all the more true for argument scheme corpora, which tend (...) to suffer from a combination of limited size, poor validation, and the use of ad hoc restricted typologies. In the current paper, we describe the annotation of schemes on the basis of two distinct classifications: Walton’s taxonomy of argument schemes, and Wagemans’ Periodic Table of Arguments. We describe the annotation procedure for each, and the quantitative characteristics of the resulting annotated text corpora. In doing so, we extend the annotation of the preexisting US2016 corpus of televised election debates, resulting in, to the best of our knowledge, the two largest consistently annotated corpora of schemes in argumentative dialogue publicly available. Based on evaluation in terms of inter-annotator agreement, we propose further improvements to the guidelines for annotating schemes: the argument scheme key, and the Argument Type Identification Procedure. (shrink)

Atmospheres are affective, sensory realms, where mood is palpable. Memory landscapes intensify affectivity, amplifying emotion. The senses, especially smell and taste, trigger and heighten memory. There is therefore a potent intersection between landscape, atmospheres, memory, and the senses. These connections present the compelling prospect that atmospheres could be designed, with the intention of enhancing memory landscapes through sensory means. This paper is written from the perspective of landscape architecture, a discipline which designs and shapes landscapes. Landscape architects work within the (...) spatially and temporally fluid context of the landscape, and aligned with this is the prospect of generating and tuning atmospheres. Past traumatic events, losses of people and places, float in atmospheres of melancholy. Two projects are explored here to probe the possibilities of intentionally invoking atmospheres, exploring how the landscape could be sensorially tonalised. The memorial landscape of Pike River where 29 men died in a mine explosion, and Laura Daly’s augmented reality artwork, The Storm Cone, offer insights into the possibilities of atmospheric design. (shrink)

Susan has been profoundly deaf since childhood. She is a hearing aid wearer, and likes to use the induction loops built into some public spaces, such as theaters and cinemas, to help cut down the background noise that can make hearing speech very difficult. But this depends on the building having an induction loop fitted and properly maintained. Like many other induction loop users, Susan frequently finds that the advertised loop system is either working poorly or not working at all. (...) Almost as often, she then has the experience of making a complaint about it only to have the problem denied. If she persists, she is often then met... (shrink)

This paper argues that the existence of a canon of established and privileged texts in the primary literacy curriculum in England can be traced historically and has informed current national policy and practice. This canonisation of a particular set of literature has served to marginalise popular cultural and media texts, often the preferred texts of children in contemporary society. The paper examines the historical development of an established, hegemonic body of texts and critically analyses current national curricula frameworks for primary (...) literacy in order to determine the way in which reading material is framed. It is argued that current national policy enshrines particular textual traditions at the expense of more popular forms of material and that this has major implications for the relevance of the future primary literacy curriculum. (shrink)

J.-M. Pigeaud, « Du rythme dans le corps. Quelques notes sur l'interprétation du pouls par le médecin Hérophile. » In : Bulletin del'Association Guillaume Budé, n° 3, octobre 1978, pp. 258-267. La littérature sur le pouls a été très abondante ; elle est maintenant réservée à l'archéologie de la médecine ; les philologues et les historiens de la philosophie auraient intérêt à la consulter. Nous voudrions réfléchir quelque peu à la définition du pouls par Hérophile. Ce médecin fut sans doute (...) le premier à mesurer - Médecine – Nouvel article. (shrink)

This paper identifies and discusses ethical issues associated with the increasingly common use of multiple reminders in postal survey research. When undertaking postal surveys, it is common to improve response rates by contacting survey recipients multiple times encouraging them to complete the questionnaire. The ethical implications of the use of multiple reminders are rarely discussed in the literature advocating their use. The paper briefly reviews the arguments encouraging use of multiple reminders, and identifies and discusses the potential ethical issues raised (...) by their use in postal surveys. A set of principles is then proposed for using multiple reminders in an ethically responsible way. It is argued that by following these principles, the use of multiple reminders should present no increased potential for harassment or coercion of survey recipients compared to alternative survey techniques. The use of these principles in a recent postal survey is then presented and discussed; a 60% response rate was achieved utilising multiple survey reminders in a way consistent with this set of principles. (shrink)

Literature relating to gender and discourse has shown that the features and structure of women's talk are highly cooperative. The implicature taken from this research has led to a binary opposition of gender stereotyping that allows for the inference that if women's talk is stylistically cooperative then it follows that cooperativity is a characteristic feature of women's social lives. Further, in opposition to this, men are seen as competitive and, as Cameron has rightly noted, analysis that focuses on the `style (...) rather than the substance of what is said' obscures the complex nature of talk and results in unhelpful `competitive/cooperative oppositions'. This article explores the genre of gossip and suggests two main sub-genres `bitching' and `peer group news-giving'. Analysis of instances of women's `bitching' reveals that while women's conversations may rely on interlocutor cooperativity and a collaborative floor, the conversations are underpinned by a need to discursively claim symbolic capital through competition for socially acceptable images of femininity which reproduce a hegemonic ideology of gender. (shrink)

In this paper a dialogue game for critical discussion is developed. The dialogue game is a formalisation of the ideal discussion model that is central to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. The formalisation is intended as a preparatory step to facilitate the development of computational tools to support the pragma-dialectical study of argumentation. An important dimension of the pragma-dialectical discussion model is the role played by speech acts. The central issue addressed in this paper is how the speech act perspective (...) can be accommodated in the formalisation as a dialogue game. The starting point is an existing ‘basic’ dialogue game for critical discussion, in which speech acts are not addressed. The speech act perspective is introduced into the dialogue game by changing the rules that govern the moves that can be made and the commitments that these result in, while the rules for the beginning, for the end, and for the structure of the dialogue game remain unchanged. The revision of the move rules is based on the distribution of speech acts in the pragma-dialectical discussion model. The revision of the commitment rules is based on the felicity conditions that are associated with those speech acts. (shrink)

This paper explores the changes in cognitive function which occur as someone "loses consciousness" under anesthesia. Seven volunteers attempted a categorization task and a within-list recognition test while inhaling air, 0.2% isoflurane, and 0.4% isoflurane. In general, performance on these tests declined as the dose of anesthetic was increased and returned to baseline after 10 min of breathing air. A measure of auditory evoked responding termed "coherent frequency" showed parallel changes. At 0.2% isoflurane, subjects could still identify and respond to (...) category exemplars but showed impaired short-term memory function. Electrical stimulation at 0.4% isoflurane, intended to mimic the arousing effects of surgery, had a small, beneficial effect on performance. A mean of 63% of category exemplars was identified at this stage, but recognition memory for those exemplars was at chance on recovery. There was no evidence for learning of words presented at 0.8% isoflurane. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ways in which anesthetic agents can be used to investigate the role of awareness in learning and memory. It reviews research into learning during light, subclinical anesthesia, termedhypesthesia.This research suggests that the effects of anesthetics on implicit and explicit memory are roughly comparable, although implicit memory for simple stimuli may resist the effects of very low doses of anesthetic. In addition, this paper reports experimental data demonstrating that long-term retention of information is prevented by doses of (...) anesthetic that are low enough to permit awareness and even short-term memory of auditory stimuli. Overall, these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that frontal lobe function is particularly sensitive to anesthetics. They raise theoretical and practical questions about the necessity of consciousness for learning and about interpretation of the evidence for learning during surgery under general anesthesia. (shrink)

Mitochondrial replacement techniques are intended to avoid the transmission of mitochondrial diseases from mother to child. MRT represent a potentially powerful new biomedical technology with ethical, policy, economic and social implications. Among other ethical questions raised are concerns about the possible effects on the identity of children born from MRT, their families, and the providers or donors of mitochondria. It has been suggested that MRT can influence identity directly, through altering the genetic makeup and physical characteristics of the child, or (...) indirectly through changing the child's experience of disease, and by generating novel intrafamilial relationships that shape the sense of self. In this article I consider the plausibility and ethical implications of these proposed identity effects, but I focus instead on a third way in which identity may be affected, through the mediating influence of the wider social world on MRT effects on identity. By taking a narrative approach, and examining the nature and availability of identity narratives, I conclude that while neither direct genetic nor indirect experiential effects can be excluded, social responses to MRT are more likely to have a significant and potentially damaging influence on the generation of MRT children's narratives of identity. This conclusion carries some implications for the collective moral responsibility we hold to ensure that MRT, if implemented, are practised in ethically justifiable ways. (shrink)

Research has shown that gossip plays an important role in establishing and supporting group values and behaviors. However, gossip also plays a role in the development and social construction of identity. In particular, gossip is a discursive resource that enables participants to create what Kyratzis refers to as practice communities: discursive contexts where speakers can explore the acceptability of social behaviors and values with their peers. This study analyzed excerpts of gossip taken from conversations involving 16-year-old high school girls to (...) examine the role gossip plays in negotiating adulthood. (shrink)

Efforts to combat the COVID-19 crisis brought mountains of legislation and guidance to coerce or encourage people to stay at home and reduce the spread of the virus. During peak lockdown in the United Kingdom regulations defined when people could or could not leave their homes. Meanwhile guidance on social distancing advised people to stay within ‘households’. This paper explores the legislation under lockdowns in the UK from March to October 2020 and the implications for women’s gendered caring roles. The (...) regulations and guidance assumed that households were separate units and ignored the interdependencies which exist between households and between individuals and wider society. The continuing focus in the lockdown regulations has been on households as autonomous, safe, adequate and secure. This overlooks the interdependency of human life, gendered aspects of caring and the inequalities of housing and living conditions, highlighted by feminist scholarship. (shrink)

This note is in part a response to Alastair Hannay's review discussion, ?A Kind of Philosopher: Comments in Connection with Some Recent Books on Kierkegaard? (Inquiry, Vol. 18 [1975], No. 3). In his review, Hannay states that Kierkegaard and philosophy appear to be on the road to a reconciliation, and asks What is behind this get?together if it is one??. I suggest that in some remarks touching on Kierkegaard's theory of Truth, Hannay has touched on the ground for that ?get?together?, (...) a Pyrrhonian scepticism. (shrink)

In the past few years, anthropological research concerned with the ethnographic aspects of ritual practices has renewed its interest in the meaning of ritual symbolism. This research has been possible because of a methodological inversion, namely, starting with a descriptive study of the rites rather than analyzing religious beliefs, contrarily to what was the moraine frontale of traditional history of religion.

Long considered to be institutions outside of time, the temples of India are today the subject of ethno-historical studies that attempt to establish their continuous and recent transformations. Recent monographs, based especially on relationships between the central government and local authorities, reconstruct by periods their medieval, modern and present history, that is the long destiny of constant restructuring over time (Appadurai 1981; Fuller 1984; Reiniche 1989), showing that temples, whether large or small, never ceased being the center of important conflicts (...) between social groups seeking dominance. (shrink)

St. Stephen's Society, Hang Fook Camp, Kowloon, Hong Kong was formally registered in 1981, but its origins go back to 1966. It is a member of the Hong Kong Council of Social Services and the central Registry of Drug Abuse. The Society works in cooperation with the courts, doctors and social workers to provide a spiritual, physical, emotional, educational and social rehabilitation programme. St. Stephen's houses about 300 people on any given day. It meets in Hang Fook Camp which is (...) leased to them by the Hong Kong Government where a regular meeting is held for Christian Fellowship, the Hang Fook Christian Fellowship. (shrink)