Background: COVID-19 pandemic has led to heightened moral distress among healthcare providers. Despite evidence of gendered differences in experiences, there is limited feminist analysis of moral distress. Objectives: To identify types of moral distress among women healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic; to explore how feminist political economy might be integrated into the study of moral distress. Research Design: This research draws on interviews and focus groups, the transcripts of which were analyzed using framework analysis. Research Participants and Context: 88 (...) healthcare providers, based in British Columbia Canada, participated virtually. Ethical Considerations: The study received ethical approval from Simon Fraser University. Findings: Healthcare providers experienced moral dilemmas related to ability to provide quality and compassionate care while maintaining COVID-19 protocols. Moral constraints were exacerbated by staffing shortages and lack of access to PPE. Moral conflicts emerged when women tried to engage decision-makers to improve care, and moral uncertainty resulted from lack of clear and consistent information. At home, women experienced moral constraints related to inability to support children’s education and wellbeing. Moral conflicts related to lack of flexible work environments and moral dilemmas developed between unpaid care responsibilities and COVID-19 risks. Women healthcare providers resisted moral residue and structural constraints by organizing for better working conditions, childcare, and access to PPE, engaging mental health support and drawing on professional pride. Discussion: COVID-19 has led to new and heightened experiences of moral distress among HCP in response to both paid and unpaid care work. While many of the experiences of moral distress at work were not explicitly gendered, implicit gender norms structured moral events. Women HCP had to take it upon themselves to organize, seek out resources, and resist moral residue. Conclusion: A feminist political economy lens illuminates how women healthcare providers faced and resisted a double layering of moral distress during the pandemic. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a health threat that has dominated media coverage. However, not much is known about individual media use to acquire knowledge about COVID-19. To address this open research question, this study investigated how the perceived threat is linked to media use and how media use is associated with perceived and actual knowledge about COVID-19. In a German online survey conducted between April 16 and April 27, 2020, N = 952 participants provided information on their perceived threat and (...) media use to inform themselves about COVID-19. In this process, they indicated how well they were informed about COVID-19 and subsequently completed a COVID-19 knowledge test. Results indicated that individuals who felt more threatened by COVID-19 used media more often to inform themselves but focused on fewer different media channels. Further, frequent media use was associated with higher perceived knowledge, but not with higher actual knowledge about COVID-19, reflecting an illusion of knowledge. Additionally, using fewer media channels was linked to higher perceived and actual knowledge. Finally, explorative analyses on the use of different media channels revealed that an illusion of knowledge emerged for using social media, public television, and newspapers. Potential explanations for the findings and implications for future research are discussed. (shrink)

BackgroundThe UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the reformed guardianship law in Germany, require that persons with a disability, including people with dementia in Alzheimer’s disease (PwAD), are supported in making self-determined decisions. This support is achieved through communication. While content-related communication is a deficit of PwAD, relational aspects of communication are a resource. Research in supported decision-making (SDM) has investigated the effectiveness of different content-related support strategies for PwAD but has only succeeded in improving understanding, (...) which, although one criterion of capacity to consent, is not sufficient to ensure overall capacity to consent. The aim of the ‘spatial intervention study’ of the DECIDE project is to examine an innovative resource-oriented SDM approach that focuses on relational aspects. We hypothesise that talking to PwAD in their familiar home setting (as opposed to a clinical setting) will reduce the complexity of the decision-making process and enhance overall capacity to consent. MethodsPeople with a suspected or confirmed diagnosis of dementia in Alzheimer’s disease will be recruited from two memory clinics (N = 80). We will use a randomised crossover design to investigate the intervention effect of the decision-making place on capacity to consent. Besides reasoning capacity, which is part of overall capacity to consent and will be the primary outcome, various secondary outcomes (e.g., other aspects of capacity to consent, subjective task complexity, decisional conflict) and suspected moderating or mediating variables (e.g., meaning of home, demographic characteristics) will be assessed.DiscussionThe results of the study will be used to develop a new SDM strategy that is based on relational resources for PwAD. If a change in location achieves the anticipated improvement in capacity to consent, future research should focus on implementing this SDM strategy in a cost-effective manner in clinical practice.Trial registration: DRKS00030799. (shrink)

BackgroundEverybody has the right to decide whether to receive specific medical treatment or not and to provide their free, prior and informed consent to do so. As dementia progresses, people with Alzheimer’s dementia (PwAD) can lose their capacity to provide informed consent to complex medical treatment. When the capacity to consent is lost, the autonomy of the affected person can only be guaranteed when an interpretable and valid advance directive exists. Advance directives are not yet common in Germany, and their (...) validity is often questionable. Once the dementia diagnosis has been made, it is assumed to be too late to write an advance directive. One approach used to support the completion of advance directives is ‘Respecting Choices’®—an internationally recognised, evidence-based model of Advance Care Planning (ACP), which, until now, has not been evaluated for the target group of PwAD. This study’s aims include (a) to investigate the proportion of valid advance directives in a memory clinic population of persons with suspected AD, (b) to determine the predictors of valid advance directives, and (c) to examine whether the offer of ACP can increase the proportion of valid advance directives in PwAD.MethodWe intend to recruit at leastN = 250 participants from two memory clinics in 50 consecutive weeks. Of these, the first 25 weeks constitute the baseline phase (no offer of ACP), the following 25 weeks constitute the intervention phase (offer of ACP). The existence and validity of an advance directive will be assessed twice (before and after the memory clinic appointment). Moreover, potential predictors of valid advance directives are assessed.DiscussionThe results of this study will enhance the development of consent procedures for advance directives of PwAD based on the ACP/Respecting Choices (R) approach. Therefore, this project contributes towards increasing the autonomy and inclusion of PwAD and the widespread acceptance of valid advance directives in PwAD.Trial RegistrationDRKS, DRKS00026691, registered 15th of October 2021,https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00026691. (shrink)

This reader is the first of its kind to present the work of leading French women philosophers to an English-speaking audience. Many of the articles appear for the first time in English and have been specially translated for the collection. Christina Howells draws on major areas of philosophical and theoretical debate including Ethics, Psychoanalysis, Law, Politics, History, Science and Rationality. Each section and article is clearly introduced and situated in its intellectual context. The book is necessarily feminist in inspiration (...) but draws on an unusually wide range of thinkers, chosen to represent the philosophy of women rather than feminist philosophy. It will be ideal for anyone coming to this area for the first time as well as those seeking to extend their understanding of French thought and Continental Philosophy. Articles by the following writers are included: Francoise Collin, Sylviane Agacinski, Catherine Chalier, Luce Irigaray, Francoise Proust, Francoise Dastur, Barbara Cassin, Natalie Depraz, Elisabeth de Fontenay, Elisabeth Badinter, Francoise Heritier, Helene Cixous, Monique Schneider, Julia Kristeva, Sarah Kofman, Monique David Menard, Francoise d'Eaubonne, Genevieve Fraisse, Michele Le Doeuff, Natalie Charraud, Francoise Balibar, Anne Fagot-Largeault, Colette Guillaumin, Dominique Schnapper, Myriam Revault-D'Allonnes, Nicole Loraux, Mireille Delmas-Marty, Blandine Kriegel. (shrink)

Paper presented at the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking meeting in conjunction with the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association, Chicago, April 2004.

It is sometimes argued that virtue ethics is incapable of 'telling us what to do'. I explore what this could mean, and come to the conclusion that virtue ethics does enable this, in the only sense in which it is something which we would reasonably want in an ethical theory.

The problem of dirty hands is, roughly speaking, concerned with situations in which an agent is faced with a choice between two evils so that, no matter what they do, they will have to violate something of important moral value. Theorists have been primarily concerned with dirty hands choices arising in politics because they are thought to be particularly frequent and pressing in this sphere. Much of the subsequent discussion in the literature has focused on the impact that such choices (...) have on a well-functioning democracy and how, if at all, we can ensure that a politician dirtying their hands does not undermine core democratic values and processes. A particular concern has been whether dirty-handed politicians ought to publicly reveal their actions after the fact and whether they should be held accountable through some form of punishment. The first aim of this paper is to point out that the focus on what is required in the wake of a dirty-handed decision, based on the need to protect the democratic system ought to be balanced with a genuine concern for reparative justice and what is owed to the victims of dirty hands. In the second part of this paper, I then examine the suitability of one common way in which perpetrators partly repair the damage they have done to victims, namely apologizing, in the dirty hands context. (shrink)

Managers tasked with organizational change often face irreconcilable demands on how to enact justice—situations we call _justice conundrums_. Drawing on interviews held with managers before and after a planned large-scale change, we identify specific conundrums and illustrate how managers grapple with these through three prototypical paths. Among our participants, the paths increasingly diverged over time, culminating in distinct career decisions. Based on our findings, we develop an integrative process model that illustrates how managers grapple with justice conundrums. Our contributions are (...) threefold. First, we elucidate three types of justice conundrums that managers may encounter when enacting justice in the context of planned organizational change (the justice intention-action gap, competing justice expectations, and the justice of care vs. managerial-strategic justice) and show how managers handle them differently. Second, drawing on the motivated cognition and moral disengagement literature, we illustrate how cognitive mechanisms coalesce to allow managers to soothe their moral (self-) concerns when grappling with these conundrums. Third, we show how motivated justice intentions ensuing from specific justice motives, moral emotions, and circles of moral regard predict the types of justice conundrums managers face and the paths they take to grapple with them. (shrink)

This paper responds to criticisms of sympathy-based approaches to ethics made by Jesse Prinz, focusing on the criticism that emotions are too variable to form a basis for ethics. I draw on the idea, articulated by early sentimentalists such as Hutcheson and Hume, that proper reliance on sympathy is subject to a corrective procedure in order, in part, to avoid the variability problem.

Nature in the Politics has been most extensively studied in the context of the book 1 argument that the polis is "by nature." Fred Miller's Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics is a landmark in this respect as in many others, and his discussion of the naturalness of the polis is, I think, definitive, and should put an end to the notion that according to Aristotle people find their natural end functioning as mere parts in some large organic social (...) whole. However, nature in Aristotle's ethical and political works contains complications outside book 1, and I hope that there remain some points to be made and issues to be elucidated. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that neo-Hobbesian contractarianism cannot yield direct moral standing for marginal humans and animals. However, it has been argued that marginal humans and animals can have a form of direct moral standing under neo-Hobbesian contractarianism: secondary moral standing. I will argue that, even if such standing is direct, this account is unsatisfactory because it is counterintuitive and fragile.

Ancient theories appeal to nature, in several ways, as support. This is distinguished from modern versions of naturalism. The ancient appeal to nature is not tied to a particular theory such as teleology, and involves nature as an ideal.

This paper traces back on a personal tone a provocative evocation of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The author considers existentialism as a laboratory of existence that influenced a generation's manner of living and writing and made one's existential desires into historical and political acts. Its most representative mode of expression, literature, was as an indicator of the presence of the private throughout the public world and time. In this view, de Beauvoir's presence is approached both from the perspective (...) of her understanding of the female, and from the particular kind of couple she formed with Sartre. (shrink)

Examines prudential and moral reasoning in ancient and modern ethics. Ancient ethical theories' task of articulating the agent's overall goal; Structural differences between ancient eudaemonist theories and modern theories; Virtue as a complex intellectual kind of understanding.

The indexical thesis says that the indexical terms, “I”, “here” and “now” necessarily refer to the person, place and time of utterance, respectively, with the result that the sentence, “I am here now” cannot express a false proposition. Gerald Vision offers supposed counter-examples: he says, “I am here now”, while pointing to the wrong place on a map; or he says it in a note he puts in the kitchen for his wife so she’ll know he’s home even though he’s (...) gone upstairs for a nap, but then he leaves the house, forgetting to remove the note. The first sentence is false by virtue of “here” not necessarily referring to the place of utterance, the second sentence, by virtue of “now” not necessarily referring to the time of utterance. We argue that these sentences express falsehoods only because the terms are being used demonstratively, not indexically – the distinction pertains not to words simpliciter, but to uses of words. When used indexically, the terms refer in accord with the indexical thesis; but when used demonstratively, their referents depend on how devices of ostension are used with their utterance – pointings, and the like. Thus Vision’s first sentence really says, “I am there now”, referring to the place on the map the finger is pointing to. As for his second sentence, we distinguish the time of utterance or production of a sentence from the time of its uptake. Due to the pragmatics of interpretation, the sentence really says “I” – the person ‘uttering’ the note – “am here” – here where the note is, with the note serving as a kind of proxy ‘finger’ – “now” – where “now” refers to the time of uptake of the note, i.e., when it is read. “I” refers indexically, “here”, demonstratively, and “now”, indexically, but indexically to the time of uptake. Since the sentence is not purely indexical, its falsehood doesn’t threaten the indexical thesis. A similar treatment is given of teletyped messages about the typer’s location. (shrink)

This paper is about the experience of secondary headship selection. Using data from career history interviews with 20 headteachers, 10 men and 10 women, from two Midlands educational authorities, the paper demonstrates some of the different procedures and processes used to select headteachers. Then by comparing the experiences of the long‐in‐post and recently appointed heads, aspects of continuity and change in the headteacher role are explored. The paper argues that although the processes and the selectors’ perceptions of the appropriate candidates (...) have changed, nevertheless other features such as gender, networking and reputing continue to be important aspects of the headship selection process. (shrink)

The effectiveness of multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) in tackling grand social and environmental challenges depends on productive dialogue among diverse parties. Facilitating such dialogue in turn entails building common ground in form of joint knowledge, beliefs, and suppositions. To explore how such common ground can be built, we study the role of different facilitators and their strategies for bridging the perspectives of competing stakeholder groups in two contrasting MSIs. The German Partnership for Sustainable Textiles was launched in an initially hostile communicative (...) environment, whereas the Fossil Free Sweden Initiative proceeded in a fertile communicative environment. We trace how the facilitators in these initiatives achieved common ground through three bridging strategies—communicative integration, temporal calibration, and process alignment—adapted to the communicative environments of these MSIs. In hostile communicative environments, facilitators achieve common ground by steering diverging stakeholder groups towards ‘reconciling’ their different language registers, knowledge bases, and meaning systems to ‘meet in the middle’ on points of agreement and shared interests. In fertile communicative environments characterised by greater mutual trust, facilitators can steer interactants to ‘strategically appropriate’ to the language, knowledge, and meaning system of a particular stakeholder group to win this group’s support. Our analysis contributes to a better understanding of how productive multi-stakeholder dialogue can be facilitated. (shrink)

Definition: considering human beings to be of central importance; the source of value.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Franklin Miller1 make a convincing case for their claim that what is wrong about killing someone is that one is putting the person in a state of universal and irreversible disability. Thus, killing in and of itself is not an additional harm for a person who has been universally and irreversibly disabled. The implications for such a view are, as they note, quite wide-ranging. Given advances in medical technology, there are individuals being kept alive now who are (...) universally and irreversibly disabled. Not only would death not be viewed as an additional harm, but it may also be the case that the organs of such individuals should be made available to save the lives of those who are not universally and irreversibly disabled. Given how Sinnott-Armstrong and Miller spell out what universal and irreversible mean, I am in broad …. (shrink)

An annual publication which publishes original articles, some of substantial length, on a wide range of topics in ancient philosophy, and review articles of major books.

One of the important aspects of recent aesthetics is its focus on cross-disciplinary approaches. This implies that, although claims to generality and objectivity continue to be made, no single practice, science, or approach is able to provide absolute evidential support for arguments and claims. Aesthetics as a critical enterprise, therefore, is open to a plurality of explanations. As a result, art becomes more than another object of scientific or philosophical inquiry. It becomes a model for philosophical practice that can complement (...) or compete with dominant scientific paradigms. However, such aesthetic practice must respond to at least two grounds for skepticism: that a turn to aesthetics involves withdrawal from either critical and rigorous thinking or from social action and life. By discussing three core themes relevant for recent debates across the fields of philosophy, art history/theory and art pratice we would like to show how these concerns, while serious, can be taken up by aesthetics. These themes are: 1. the issue of validity (motivated by inquiries into the peculiar validity of aesthetic judgments); 2. the issue of subjectivity (motivated by the stipulated ‘special link’ between aesthetics and the human subject); and the political dimension of aesthetics (highlighted by the political implications of pluralist approaches to aesthetics, such as the need for negotiation and appeal). (shrink)

According to Regulatory Focus Theory, two systems determine our strategies to pursue goals – the promotion and the prevention system. Individuals with a dominant promotion system focus on achieving gains, i.e., promoters, and individuals with a dominant prevention system focus on avoiding losses, i.e., preventers. Regulatory Fit Theory suggests that a fit between this focus and the situation causes superior performance and makes individuals feel right. We transfer the fit idea to the interaction of dominant regulatory focus with motivational direction. (...) We investigated these interaction effects on individuals’ performance and their experience within creativity workshops. In Study 1, using multi-level analyses, we found that a promotion focus was associated with fluency and a prevention focus with elaborated ideas. This effect was stronger, when preventers also scored high on avoidance motivation. Further, preventers experienced more autonomy support and were more satisfied when they scored high on avoidance. Promoters high on approach motivation reported more autonomy support and more satisfaction than preventers high on approach motivation. For Study 2, we used an experimental design: After measuring regulatory focus, we manipulated approach vs. avoidance motivation in creativity workshops. Using multi-level analyses, we did not find main or interaction effects on fluency or elaboration but we found interaction effects on participants’ experience of the creativity workshop. Preventers were more satisfied when they received the avoidance condition. Promoters reported less autonomy support, lower satisfaction, and more perceived conflicts within their teams in the avoidance condition. (shrink)

BackgroundThe global COVID-19 pandemic confronts people with their fragility, vulnerability, and mortality. To date, scales to measure death awareness mainly focus on the anxiety-provoking aspect of mortality cues. This study aims to cross-culturally adapt and validate the Death Reflection Scale, a scale for measuring positive, growth-oriented cognitions of life reflection and prosocial behavior following confrontation with the finiteness of life.Materials and MethodsThe Death Reflection Scale was translated and adapted in a multi-step process to the German language. In this anonymous, cross-sectional, (...) online survey at a large university in Germany, students, healthcare professionals and other staff completed the DRS alongside comparison measures. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess configural, metric, and scalar measurement equivalence across four age and occupational groups. Convergent/divergent validity testing was done via Spearman correlations.Results1,703 participants provided data for a response rate of ∼5%. 24% of respondents were HCP, 22% students. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a higher-order structure of the DRS with a strong general factor and the originally proposed five subscales. Multi-group CFA showed partial metric equivalence across age groups and partial scalar invariance across occupational groups. Non-invariant scales were the Motivation to live, Putting life into perspective, and Legacy subscales. In the convergent validity testing, two hypotheses were fully confirmed, two partially and four were not confirmed. Experiencing a propensity for increased contemplation and life reflection during the pandemic together with spirituality showed correlations of moderate to large size to the DRS and its subscales.ConclusionFurther conceptual work for death awareness to explore the construct’s stability in different population groups needs to be undertaken. However, the DRS can be mostly used to assess positive and growth-oriented aspects of death awareness and death reflection which may be an important avenue when developing counseling and support interventions for groups experiencing a high burden during the pandemic. (shrink)

Language processing changes with the knowledge and use of two languages. The advantage of being bilingual comes at the expense of increased processing demands and processing costs. I suggest considering bilingual complexity including these demands and costs. The proposed model claims effortless monolingual processing. By integrating individual and situational variability, the model would lose its idealistic touch, even for monolinguals.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.