The author is one of Canada's most respected thinkers on the moral and philosophical foundations of responsible government and Confederation. This book offers a study of political science over the years through the intellectual lens of her career.

The literature of modernity, describing the fleeting, anonymous, ephemeral encounters of life in the metropolis, mainly accounts for the experiences of men. It ignores the concomitant separation of public and private spheres from the mid-nineteenth century, and the increasing segregation of the sexes around that separation. The influential writings of Baudelaire, Simmel, Benjamin and, more recently, Richard Sennett and Marshall Berman, by equating the modern with the public, thus fail to describe women's experience of modernity. The central figure of the (...) flâneur in the literature of modernity can only be male. What is required, therefore, is a feminist sociology of modernity to supplement these texts. (shrink)

Contrary to Vaesen's argument that humans are unique with respect to nine cognitive capacities essential for tool use, we suggest that although such cognitive processes contribute to variation in tool use, it does not follow that these capacities arenecessaryfor tool use, nor that tool use shaped cognition per se, given the available data in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral biology.

Using an interpretative research approach to ethical and legal literature, it is argued that nursing in the battlefield is distinctly different to civilian nursing, even in an emergency, and that the environment is so different that a duty of care owed by military nurses to wounded soldiers should not apply. Such distinct differences in wartime can override normal peacetime professional ethics to the extent that the duty of care owed by military nurses to their patients on the battlefield should not (...) exist. It is also argued that as military nurses have legal and professional obligations to care for wounded soldiers on the battlefield, this obligation conflicts with following military orders, causing a dual loyalty conflict. This is because soldiers are part of the ‘fighting force’ and must be fit to fight and win the battle. This makes them more of a commodity rather than individual persons with distinct health care needs. (shrink)

A working party of academics from both professional safeguarding backgrounds and research backgrounds developed and wrote ethical guidelines on safeguarding children in research on behalf of their faculty research ethics committee. The working party encountered a lack of useful precedents while developing the guidelines leading to a lengthy process of debate and consideration of the issues. This paper explores the various issues and dilemmas arising during this process, particularly the tension between safeguarding children from abuse and maintaining research confidentiality. One (...) of the main areas of discussion was how to establish the limits of confidentiality without compromising the research in hand. The role and responsibilities of researchers in supporting children's welfare, and the development of procedures for ensuring that safeguarding is effective are discussed as key elements. In addition, the issues researchers may face when determining thresholds for intervention are considered alongside the uncertainties created by considerations of the extent to which children can give informed consent in research contexts. The paper reflects the process of considering these issues and the conclusions the working party drew as to how best to support children's welfare during research. It also outlines the key elements of the guidelines and the structures developed to ensure researchers could get advice if suspected child abuse became an issue in their research. The paper includes a short version of the guidelines which were eventually approved across the Higher Education Institute. (shrink)

This is an excellent article, probably the best there is in defence of prohibiting the sale of organs, and it deserves a much fuller discussion of detail than there is space for here.1 My concerns, however, are with generalities rather than detail. Although some such argument might justify prohibition of organ selling in particular places and at particular times, it is difficult to see how it could support the kind of general, universal policy currently accepted by most advocates of prohibition.Whenever (...) the subject of organ selling is discussed, it is useful to keep in mind the natural history of the debate. Prohibition was instituted by most governments and professional bodies just about as quickly as possible after it was discovered that payment for kidneys was going on, and was a direct response to feelings of moral outrage. It all happened without time for debate. It was only later, as challenges appeared, that justifications began to be produced; and when they did they followed a pattern long familiar to philosophers, and more recently recognised by moral psychologists, of determined efforts to find a justification for the initial intuition that organ selling must be wrong. New arguments kept appearing in the cause as earlier attempts were shown to fail, and many were so weak that they could not have seemed plausible unless their advocates had already been committed to their conclusion. This does not mean, of course, that a good justification could never be produced. It does, however, suggest a widespread feeling that organ selling must be intrinsically …. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Levinas versus Levinas:Hebrew, Greek, and Linguistic JusticeOona EisenstadtI argue in this paper that Levinas's philosophical writings and his Jewish writings are not easily read as compatible. But I do not make the argument on what might seem to be the obvious grounds, namely, that the philosophical writings represent what Levinas calls the "Greek" while the Jewish writings represent what he calls the "Hebrew." On the contrary, my claim is (...) almost precisely the opposite. As Levinas uses the terms "Greek" and "Hebrew," each refers to a "sub-textual... way of thinking and speaking" (Richard Kearney, quoted in Cohen 1986, 18–19). The "Greek" is the ontological mode that seeks to describe the whole—this is essentially the mode I believe Levinas works the reader toward in the Jewish writings. The "Hebrew" is the dialogical mode that is never complete and preserves dissent—this is the mode he works the reader toward in the philosophical works. The first half of this paper contains a general discussion of the meaning of the two terms, the way in which Jacques Derrida brings out what is at stake in their use with the introduction of the more critically clarified terms "Jewgreek" and "Greekjew," and, finally, the beginning of my argument that Levinas is at odds with himself. The second half illustrates the argument with brief examinations of text: we look first at the "Hebrew" or "Jewgreekish" Levinas of the final chapter of Otherwise than Being, a Levinas in many ways comparable to Plato's dialogical Socrates; and second, at the "Greek" or "Greekjewish" Levinas of the Talmudic reading "The Pact," a Levinas who praises universality, universal translatability, mutuality, and reciprocality.As is well known, the juxtaposition Greek/Hebrew, as Levinas uses it, does the same work as several other juxtapositions he employs, including same/other, politics/ethics, said/saying, and totality/infinity. In each of these formulations, the first term refers to a way of thinking that pulls things [End Page 145] together into a larger order, and the second term to a rupture that operates as thought's origin and at the same time thought's challenge. On a first reading of Levinas, the reader has the impression that the juxtaposed elements stand in opposition to one another, but as one reads more one sees that this is only part of how he intends the juxtapositions to be understood; in particular, one sees that justice of any kind requires both elements. The reasons for this can be variously described. There are, for instance, the concrete organizational requirements of justice: a just society must, on the one hand, treat people as parts of ordered wholes (as citizens, as members of family groups or income groups, and so forth) and, on the other hand, allow those designations to be called into question by the rupturing ipseity of individuals. And there are, to introduce an example more pertinent to this paper, the concrete linguistic requirements of justice. A just discourse, or a good book, places its elements into a coherent order; this can be described by saying that it assumes or imposes a certain sameness by addressing its readers as a group, or that it stands as a said, but is most simply described by saying that the book speaks in Greek. However, it must also remain open to rupture by readers and writers who came before its having been written and readers and writers yet to come; this can be described as an other-in-the-same or a saying-in-the-said, but is most simply described, in Levinas's shorthand, as the incorporation or preservation of the Hebrew in the Greek.At the end of his first essay addressed to Levinas, "Violence and Metaphysics," Derrida plays, in a serious way, with the Greek/Hebrew distinction, and especially with the fact that the two sides depend on one another. This mutual dependence rests not only on the requirements of justice, but also, and first, on what seems to be a contradiction in Levinas's thinking. Levinas says (repeatedly, in almost all of his works) that it is the experience of rupture that calls us, in the first place, to totalize, which... (shrink)

This paper proposes communities of practice (CoP) as a process to build moral resilience in healthcare settings. We introduce the starting point of moral distress that arises from ethical challenges when actions of the healthcare professional are constrained. We examine how situations such as the current COVID-19 pandemic can exponentially increase moral distress in healthcare professionals. Then, we explore how moral resilience can help cope with moral distress. We propose the term collective moral resilience to capture the shared capacity arising (...) from mutual engagement and dialogue in group settings, towards responding to individual moral distress and towards building an ethical practice environment. Finally, we look at CoPs in healthcare and explore how these group experiences can be used to build collective moral resilience. (shrink)

A. Koriat distinguishes between feeling-based and inferentially based feeling-of-knowing judgments. The former are attributable to partial information that is activated in implicit memory but not fully articulated. They are not, however, attributable to direct access to the target-an hypothesis that Koriat specifically repudiates. While there is considerable merit in the distinction that Koriat draws, and his emphasis on the possibility that people base at least some of their metacognitive judgments on implicit information seems well founded, it is argued that his (...) rejection of the direct access view is premature. There may be a state-a true noetic state-in which people actually know the answer before they are able to express it. A case is made for further consideration of the scientific merits of the direct-access view of the noetic feelings people experience in imminent tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states. (shrink)

Background: Improved techniques and life sustaining technology in the neonatal intensive care unit have resulted in an increased probability of survival for extremely premature babies. The by-product of the aggressive treatment is iatrogenic pain, and this infliction of pain can be a cause of suffering and distress for both baby and nurse. Research question: The research sought to explore the caregiving dilemmas of neonatal nurses when caring for extremely premature babies. This article aims to explore the issues arising for neonatal (...) nurses when they inflict iatrogenic pain on the most vulnerable of human beings – babies ≤24 weeks gestation. Participants: Data were collected via a questionnaire to Australian neonatal nurses and semi-structured interviews with 24 neonatal nurses in New South Wales, Australia. Ethical consideration: Ethical processes and procedures set out by the ethics committee have been adhered to by the researchers. Findings: A qualitative approach was used to analyse the data. The theme ‘inflicting pain’ comprised three sub-themes: ‘when caring and torture are the same thing’, ‘why are we doing this!’ and ‘comfort for baby and nurse’. The results show that the neonatal nurses were passionate about the need for appropriate pain relief for extremely premature babies. Conclusion: The neonatal nurses experienced a profound sense of distress manifested as existential suffering when they inflicted pain on extremely premature babies. Inflicting pain rather than relieving it can leave the nurses questioning their role as compassionate healthcare professionals. (shrink)

Abstract:We analyzed data from a survey of employees of a large military base in order to assess possible differences in the whistle-blowing process due to type of wrongdoing observed. Employees who observed perceived wrongdoing involving mismanagement, sexual harassment, or unspecified legal violations were significantly more likely to report it than were employees who observed stealing, waste, safety problems, or discrimination. Further, type of wrongdoing was significantly related to reasons given by employees who observed wrongdoing but did not report it, across (...) all forms of wrongdoing. However, the primary reason that observers did not report it was that they thought nothing could be done to rectify the situation. Finally, type of wrongdoing was significantly related to the cost of the wrongdoing, the quality of the evidence about the wrongdoing, and the comprehensiveness of retaliation against the whistle-blower. These findings suggest that type of wrongdoing makes a difference in the whistle-blowing process, and it should be examined in future research. (shrink)

Sixty-five undergraduates participating in a wide range of psychological research experiments were interviewed in depth about their research experiences and their views on the process of informed consent. Overall, 32% of research experiences were characterized positively and 41 % were characterized negatively. One major theme of the negative experiences was that experiments were perceived as too invasive, suggesting incomplete explication of negative aspects of research during the informed consent process. Informed consent experiences were viewed positively 80% of the time. However, (...) most of the participants had a limited view of the purpose of informed consent: Less than 20% viewed the process as a decision point. Results suggest a number of common pitfalls to standard informed consent practices that have not generally been recognized. Results are discussed in terms of both ethical and methodological implications. Suggestions for improving the informed consent process are also provided. (shrink)

This study investigated effects of codes of ethics on perceptions of ethical behavior. Respondents from companies with codes of ethics (n = 465) rated role set members (top management, supervisors, peers, subordinates, self) as more ethical and felt more encouraged and supported for ethical behavior than respondents from companies without codes (n = 301). Key aspects of the organizational climate, such as supportiveness for ethical behavior, freedom to act ethically, and satisfaction with the outcome of ethical problems were impacted by (...) the presence of an ethics code. The mere presence of a code of ethics appears to have a positive impact on perceptions of ethical behavior in organizations, even when respondents cannot recall specific content of the code. (shrink)

Crisis demands -- Crisis narratives -- Crisis: refrain!