When someone is trying to teach us mathematics, he will not begin by assuring us that he knows that a + b = b + a. —Wittgenstein Wittgenstein reminds us that the avenue toward belief isn’t through logic alone. We do not know those things that we have only reasoning to support. We feel sure of those things which by experience, and belief have come to exist within us, with an ‘absence of doubt.’ To consider the impact of knowing on (...) behavior, it could be said that we act, from what we know. The purpose of this paper is to consider how we come to know on a multi-model level, as exemplified by both a semiotic theory base and a situated example of how the notion of an individual Umwelt can house particular ‘knowledge’ and act upon it. PTSD, or Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, is a diagnosis, which can be given when individuals suffer negative and long lasting effects that stem from traumatic experience. (shrink)

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were married on July 29, 2000 and divorced on October 2, 2005. If I correctly understand the position defended in Thomas Sattig’s The Language and Reality of Time, this fact implies that every instantaneous region of space occupied by Brad between those dates is married to some instantaneous region occupied by Jen. Yes, the regions are married, and they are distinct from Brad and Jen. Moreover, some of them are cheating on the regions to which (...) they are married. To their discredit, they are having affairs with regions occupied by Angelina Jolie. (Shame on those regions.). (shrink)

The rapid generation of new shapes observed in the living world is the result of genetic variation, especially in “morphological” developmental genes. Many of these genes contain coding tandem repeats. Fondon and Garner have shown that expansions and contractions of these repeats are associated with the great diversity of morphologies observed in the domestic dog, Canis familiaris.1 In particular, they found that the repeat variations in two genes were significantly associated with changes in limb and skull morphology. These results open (...) the possibility that such a mechanism contributes to the diversity of life. BioEssays 27:581–587, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This book is a tribute to Kevin Kelly, who has been one of the most influential British theologians for a number of decades. On its own merits, however, it is groundbreaking collection of essays on key themes, issues and concepts in contemporary moral theology and Christian ethics. The focus is on perspectives to inform moral debate and discernment in the future. The main themes covered are shown in the list of contents below. Several of the of the contributors are from (...) the United States, three others live and work in Continental Europe and the rest are from various parts of the British Isles. Many of the authors are among the best known in their fields on both sides of the Atlantic. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine a heretofore ignored critic of Descartes on the heterogeneity problem: Anton Wilhelm Amo. Looking at Amo’s critique of Descartes reveals a very clear case of a thinker who attempts to offer a causal system that is not a solution to the mind-body problem, but rather that transcends it. The focus of my discussion is Amo’s 1734 dissertation: The Apathy [ἀπάθεια] of the Human Mind or The Absence of Sensation and the Faculty of Sense in the (...) Human Mind and their Presence in our Organic and Living Body. Amo’s discussion of the interaction, or lack thereof, of the mind and body hinges on the essential feature he identifies for the human mind—apathy, that is, impassivity. In this work, Amo engages explicitly with Descartes’s writing, which allows us to more precisely see the nature of his agreement and disagreement with the Cartesian metaphysics of mind. I proceed by treating Amo’s five stated criteria for spirit-hood which, in turn, reveal the kinds of causal connections that are possible for embodied spirits on his view. My aim is threefold: To lay out what I take to be Amo’s view of and arguments for the five criteria he takes to be required for a substance to be spirit. To locate Amo’s agreement and disagreement with Descartes. To suggest that Amo’s view on mind-body interaction involves a kind of occasional causation. (shrink)

Social media platforms have been vested with hope for their potential to enable ‘ordinary citizens’ to make their judgments public and contribute to pluralized discussions about organizations and their perceived legitimacy :60–97, 2018). This raises questions about how ordinary citizens make judgements and voice them in online spaces. This paper addresses these questions by examining how Western citizens ascribe responsibility and action in relation to corporate misconduct. Empirically, it focuses on modern slavery and analyses online debates in Denmark on child (...) slavery in the cocoa industry. Conceptually, it introduces the notion of cosmopolitanism as a general disposition of care and responsibility towards distant others, conceived as a prerequisite for the critical evaluation of corporate responsibility in the Global South. The analysis of online debates shows that citizens debate child slavery in terms of individual consumer responsibility rather than corporate responsibility. Corporations are not considered potential agents of change. As a consequence, online citizen debates did not reflect a legitimacy crisis for the cocoa industry, as debates over responsibility were overwhelmingly concerned with the agency of the Western individual, the individual agency of the speakers themselves. Participants in debates understood their agency strictly as consumer agency. (shrink)

Rapid Ethical Assessment is an approach used to design context tailored consent process for voluntary participation of participants in research including human subjects. There is, however, limited evidence on the design of ethical assessment in studies targeting cancer patients in Ethiopia. REA was conducted to explore factors that influence the informed consent process among female cancer patients recruited for longitudinal research from Addis Ababa Population-based Cancer Registry. Qualitative study employing rapid ethnographic approach was conducted from May–July, 2017, at the Tikur (...) Anbessa Specialized Referral Hospital. In-depth and key informants’ interviews were conducted among purposively selected 16 participants. Regular de-briefings among the study team helped to identify emerging themes and ensure saturation. Interviews and debriefings were tape recorded in Amharic, and transcribed and translated to English. Coding of the transcripts was facilitated by use of NVivo software. Thematic analysis was employed to respond to the initial questions and interpret findings. Perceived barriers to voluntary study participation included lack of reporting back study results of previous studies, the decision making status of women, hopelessness or fatigue in the patients, shyness of the women, data collectors approach to the patient, and patient’s time constraints. Most of the patients preferred oral over written consent and face-to-face interview over telephone interview. Provision of detail information about the study, using short and understandable tool, competent, compassionate and respectful enumerators of the same gender were suggested to assure participation. Due to the perceived severity, the use of the term “cancer” was associated with fear and anxiety. Alternatively, uses of phrases like “breast or cervical illness/disease” were suggested during patient interviews. Voluntary participation is not straight forward but affected by different factors. Using competent, compassionate and respectful enumerators, short and precise questioning tools to limit the time of the interview could improve voluntary participation. Moreover, careful consideration of the patients and families concept of the disease such as wording and information has to be taken into account. This assessment helped in improving the consent process of the ongoing project on breast and cervical cancer patients. (shrink)

Behavioral research has revealed how normal human cognitive processes can tend to lead us astray. But do these affect economic researchers, ourselves? This article explores the consequences of stereotyping and confirmation bias using a sample of published articles from the economics literature on gender and risk aversion. The results demonstrate that the supposedly ‘robust’ claim that ‘women are more risk averse than men’ is far less empirically supported than has been claimed. The questions of how these cognitive biases arise and (...) why they have such power are discussed, and methodological practices that may help to attenuate these biases are outlined. (shrink)

Some interesting exceptions notwithstanding, the traditional logic of economic efficiency has long favored hierarchical forms of organization and disfavored democracy in business. What does the balance of arguments look like, however, when values besides efficient revenue production are brought into the picture? The question is not hypothetical: In recent years, an ever increasing number of corporations have developed and adopted socially responsible behaviors, thereby hybridizing aspects of corporate businesses and social organizations. We argue that the joint pursuit of financial and (...) social objectives warrants significant rethinking of organizational democracy’s merits compared both to hierarchy and to non-democratic alternatives to hierarchy. In making this argument, we draw on an extensive literature review to document the relative lack of substantive discussion of organizational democracy since 1960. And we draw lessons from political theory, suggesting that the success of political democracy in integrating diverse values offers some grounds for asserting parallel virtues in the business case. (shrink)

Background Rapid Ethical Assessment is a form of rapid ethnographic assessment conducted at the beginning of research project to guide the consent process with the objective of reconciling universal ethical guidance with specific research contexts. The current study is conducted to assess the perceived relevance of introducing REA as a mainstream tool in Ethiopia. Methods Mixed methods research using a sequential explanatory approach was conducted from July to September 2012, including 241 cross-sectional, self-administered and 19 qualitative, in-depth interviews among health (...) researchers and regulators including ethics committee members in Ethiopian health research institutions and universities. Results In their evaluation of the consent process, only 40.2% thought that the consent process and information given were adequately understood by study participants; 84.6% claimed they were not satisfied with the current consent process and 85.5% thought the best interests of study participants were not adequately considered. Commonly mentioned consent-related problems included lack of clarity, inadequate information, language barriers, cultural differences, undue expectations and power imbalances. About 95.4% believed that consent should be contextualized to the study setting and 39.4% thought REA would be an appropriate approach to improve the perceived problems. Qualitative findings helped to further explore the gaps identified in the quantitative findings and to map-out concerns related to the current research consent process in Ethiopia. Suggestions included, conducting REA during the pre-test phase of studies when applicable. The need for clear guidance for researchers on issues such as when and how to apply the REA tools was stressed. Conclusion The study findings clearly indicated that there are perceived to be correctable gaps in the consent process of medical research in Ethiopia. REA is considered relevant by researchers and stakeholders to address these gaps. Exploring further the feasibility and applicability of REA is recommended. (shrink)

In Ethics 4, Spinoza argues that “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death” (E4p67). Spinoza’s argument for this claim depends on his view of imagination, reason, and scientia intuitiva and on his notion of conatus. I explicate Spinoza’s view of life in terms of power (potentia) and show that Spinozan death amounts to reconfiguration rather than absolute annihilation. I then show that E4p67 reflects Spinoza’s well-known account (...) of the three kinds of knowing. Thinking of death is quintessentially imaginative and passive. The free person of E4p67 is in contrast a rational person. To reason, and as becomes especially clear E5, to experience scientia intuitiva, moreover is to think of things “without any relation to time, but [rather] sub specie aeternatitis”(E2p44c2) and to experience activity To the extent, then, that we are rational, free, and active, death is a non-issue. Indeed, to the extent that we are able to meditate on life sub specie aeternitatis, we actually experience joy, love (E5p20s, p32c), eternity (Sp23s), and “the greatest satisfaction of the Mind” (E5p27). (shrink)

Universities around the world are undergoing a marketisation process in order to respond to consumer-oriented demands. Despite priority shifts, universities have remained traditionally hierarchical and elitist. Moreover, a new and growing generation of academic researchers has found it increasingly difficult to integrate in academia. Systems and patterns of behaviour breeding cultural narcissism, intended as a value and cultural system characterised by an investment in false self-projections backed by Machiavellian attainment, exist and appear to thrive in academic institutions. This organizational adaptation (...) for survival is now embedded in higher education and interlinked with mobbing, workplace bullying and academic misconduct. The problematics we are witnessing today in many academic settings (high rates of mental health issues, widespread research misconduct scandals and loss of credibility of academic research) are a by-product of an organizational narcissistic culture. Amidst economic shifts, it might seem reasonable to adopt measures aimed at increasing assets, invest in highly entrepreneurial academics who attract financial resources to universities and use any means to salvage the reputations of educational institutions. Yet these strategies might be promoting and perpetuating value systems that are undermining academic integrity, and therefore contributing to the scientific credibility crisis and failure of these institutions. (shrink)

The contributors to this issue focus on legal internationalism, including hybrid mixes with nationalist forms. They have provoked us as editors to think more about these sites and forms of engagement. Sankey shows how civic participation in the ECCC has played a key role in surfacing the gendered harms of separation and starvation. Turan highlights the problems with ICC exclusion of the experience of men and boys from sexual violence. Peroni expresses her hesitations over the Istanbul Convention given an association (...) between assumed vulnerability and migrant women, while admiring its uncoupling of violence and culture. Cruz’s interview with Wendy Brown contextualizes and expands on these themes as they consider, with other participants, the future of feminist theory in the context of neo-liberal capturing of rights and legal space. Thinking more about internationalism and commitment in this context also helps us hold a mirror up to ourselves as we reflect more critically on our own naming of FLS as an ‘international’ journal. Together these contributions, and the reviews of new work, play a role in fleshing out an editorial commitment to enacting the journal as a living thing that ‘hangs together somehow’ even as it is known differently in different places. (shrink)

This paper is the first of two in a series. In this paper, we identify mental health needs and challenges in the age of COVID-19 among Nepali-speaking, Bhutanese resettled refugees in the USA. We argue for a public health justice framework that looks critically at social determinants impacting mental health (SDIMH) barriers, which negatively impact our Bhutanese population, and serves as a theoretical foundation toward public policy and law that will inform healthcare decisions and fair treatment of resettled refugees at (...) the clinical bedside and in the community. We first describe our Bhutanese refugee population and the critical mental health issues that, for many, originated during political persecution and violent ethnic cleansing initiatives, or while living in refugee camps prior to resettlement to the USA. We present a social justice framework emerging from an extensive literature review and incorporating core social determinants specific to mental health in the age of COVID-19, which are guided by the social determinants of economic stability; neighborhoods and physical environment; education; nutrition and exercise; community and social context; healthcare system; and legal system. We illustrate specific SDIMH of our resettled Bhutanese refugees during the pandemic, followed by a second paper that details recommendations for applying the SDIMH in a collective effort to address specific barriers to mental healthcare and support. (shrink)

Canadian children’s literature rarely depicts characters labelled with intellectual disabilities, yet when it does it often remains mired in stereotypes that recycle prevalent myths and misconceptions. Even as more recent literature attempts to push back against such stereotypes, it nevertheless predominantly remains caught in these dangerous representational repertoires. This article offers a brief history of Canadian literary depictions of intellectual disability and a critique of the Canadian publishing spheres. Through a critical analysis of Lorna Schultz Nicholson’s book Fragile Bones, we (...) discuss the limits of representation of intellectual disability in children’s fiction. We also offer a critique of the ableist publishing climate in Canada and suggest that structural barriers prevent disabled writers from entering the literary marketplace on an equal playing field. These barriers to publishing lead to the vast underrepresentation of disabled authors and the misrepresentation of disability in general and intellectual disability in particular in Canadian children’s literature. (shrink)

The possibilities for collecting, storing, and processing of data have increased significantly over the last decades. It has been argued that an increasing demand for health data will de...

Although I am not supposed to have a favorite patient, she is one. Arissa is a three‐year‐old girl. Her parents, natives of Comoros, had illegally immigrated to the French department of Mayotte. When I first began treating her, I saw her as a time bomb. But we built a relationship, and when she deteriorated on my watch, I wanted to say, “Fight to the end!—she is my favorite patient!” But I thought that I did not have the necessary distance to (...) answer the question. (shrink)

We expand on the article “Ethical Challenges Arising in the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Overview from the Association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD) Task Force” to consider the ways in which rural...

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 6, Page 53-55, June 2012.

When the Argonauts reach the island of Lemnos, Apollonius of Rhodes tells us, they send their herald Aethalides to the ruler of the island. Such a means of establishing contact and requesting safe passage was the norm in the Homeric world; there heralds acted as intermediaries between commanders and subordinates or between groups of people. In preliterate societies, heralds facilitated communication: messages were transmitted through memorization and repetition rather than by means of writing. While verbatim repetition was no doubt a (...) necessary feature of this form of communication, its wholesale transference into Homeric poetry was not necessarily the logical corollary. Nonetheless, we know of such repetitions precisely because of their appearance in the Homeric poems. It is now widely accepted that such passages are a result of the oral style of composition in which the oral poet repeats passages just as he uses shorter formulaic phrases. The debate embedded in the A-scholia of the Iliad suggests that repeated passages were a source of contention already in antiquity. While it is more common to see the scholiasts trying to decide which passage is ‘correct’ and which should be athetized, this provides evidence that athetization was not a unanimous impulse. The scholiast defends 2.60–71, part of which is repeated for the third time, against Zenodotus. (shrink)

We know that reading involves coordination between textual characteristics and visual attention, but research linking eye movements during reading and comprehension assessed after reading is surprisingly limited, especially for reading long connected texts. We tested two competing possibilities: (a) the weak association hypothesis: Links between eye movements and comprehension are weak and short‐lived, versus (b) the strong association hypothesis: The two are robustly linked, even after a delay. Using a predictive modeling approach, we trained regression models to predict comprehension scores (...) from global eye movement features, using participant‐level cross‐validation to ensure that the models generalize across participants. We used data from three studies in which readers (Ns = 104, 130, 147) answered multiple‐choice comprehension questions ~30 min after reading a 6,500‐word text, or after reading up to eight 1,000‐word texts. The models generated accurate predictions of participants' text comprehension scores (correlations between observed and predicted comprehension: 0.384, 0.362, 0.372, ps <.001), in line with the strong association hypothesis. We found that making more, but shorter fixations, consistently predicted comprehension across all studies. Furthermore, models trained on one study's data could successfully predict comprehension on the others, suggesting generalizability across studies. Collectively, these findings suggest that there is a robust link between eye movements and subsequent comprehension of a long connected text, thereby connecting theories of low‐level eye movements with those of higher order text processing during reading. (shrink)

Qu’est-ce qu’une écriture clinique? Quelle est son intention, son objet, son propos? Et peut-on réellement appliquer cette notion aux écrits hippocratiques? Pour explorer cette question, nous nous pencherons brièvement sur la notion générale d’écriture médicale telle qu’elle est abordée en plusieurs endroits de la littérature hippocratique et galénique. Nous analyserons ensuite plus spécifiquement et longuement, au sein du corpus hippocratique, le cas des livres I et III des Épidémies qui offrent un exemple à la fois remarquable et problématique de ce (...) qu’on peut attendre, dans l’Antiquité, d’une écriture clinique. (shrink)

Case Study research is characterized by the employment of multiple data gathering methods. In this paper, I examine the concurrent use of participant observation and qualitative interviews. The question I examine is: what is the rationale behind their combination in case study research? In the literature on case study research, the two most common reasons for using multiple methods appeal to comprehensiveness and convergent confirmation respectively. I argue that there is a third significant, yet overlooked, way to motivate the joint (...) use of participant observation and qualitative interviews: the methods may generate complementary evidence and this puts the researcher in a better position to confirm that her data manifest central epistemic values and so are suitable as basis for providing an adequate answer to her research question. I refer to this as the rationale of blended epistemic value validation. (shrink)

The rediscovery of Aristotle’s works on syllogisms in the Latin world, especially the Sophistici Elenchi and then the Prior Analytics, gave rise to sophisticated views on the nature of syllogistic form and syllogistic matter in the thirteenth century. It led to debates on the ontology of the syllogism as studied in the Prior Analytics, i.e. the syllogism made of letters and the four logical constants a/e/i/o, with deep consequences on the definition of logic as a universal method for all sciences (...) and as a science itself. (shrink)

Jusqu’à une date récente, la voiture reposait sur des principes bien établis de mécanique et de thermodynamique, elle doit maintenant intégrer les technologies numériques. Tiraillé entre l’appel du progrès et les peurs qui y sont associées, le législateur a un rôle clé à jouer dans les nombreux domaines qui seront touchés par la montée en puissance de l’intelligence artificielle. Sous le chapitre des véhicules autonomes tout particulièrement, accepter de confier sa sécurité à une intelligence artificielle est un pas essentiel, mais (...) délicat, dans le processus du développement. C’est pourquoi on peut se demander si le principe de précaution pourrait protéger efficacement contre les appréhensions légitimes liées à ces innovations. (shrink)

Historically the terms “final,” “unconditional,” and “intrinsic” have played a foundational role in ethical theory. I argue that final/instrumental distinction is best understood in terms of the for-sake-of relation and involves a tri-part division of goods. I show that this first way of categorizing goods is more closely aligned with a second way of categorizing goods in terms of intrinsic/extrinsic goods than has thus far been acknowledged. Lastly, I distinguish yet a third way of categorizing goods: unconditional/conditional goods. While the (...) final/instrumental and intrinsic/extrinsic distinctions have received the lion’s share of philosophical attention, the unconditional/conditional distinction is no less important. (shrink)

Gauz revient dans cet entretien sur son dernier roman, Camarade Papa, lequel a reçu le Grand Prix Littéraire d’Afrique Noire en 2018. Il nous ouvre des chemins pour mieux le lire. Celui de raconter une histoire de l’Histoire, à hauteur d’hommes, adultes ou enfants, pleine de beauté, d’idéaux et de liberté. Celui de sortir de la couleur pour retrouver la capacité de ravissement et défendre les façons de parler comme cultures et armes politiques. Celui de nommer la beauté de l’espoir (...) des migrants, qui sont des « super espérants ». (shrink)

Aberrations and variations within kinds of creatures required explanation to Western medievals, who took the Genesis creation narratives together with Aristotelian species to imply that change was limited to within species; consequently, species were presumed static. Medieval philosophers often explained variation—including “new” kinds like mules—as due to problems in procreation/gestation (following Aristotle) or by sin. I argue that Aquinas's explanation of variation in women, people with disabilities, and mules suggests that Aquinas cannot be taken to entirely reject the possibility of (...) new kinds, and parallels in his explanation of the existence of women and the possible existence of new kinds provides warrant for a re‐evaluation of his understanding of the notion of the natures or essences shared by kinds. Sin—individual or original—is an inadequate explanation for variation, and the argumentative parallels between Aquinas's treatment of women and mules challenge presumptions about what medievals mean by “static kinds” at all, revealing space for evolutionary thought. (shrink)

This article discusses the discourses of disability through a parallel `disabling' of its own text. It draws on literary as well as sociological sources in order to interrogate the nature and relations of the `tragic', the `heroic' and the `comic'. The authors offer the conclusion that the comic is never quite absent from the discourse of tragedy (after Kundera), and turn that insight back on their own text, in an attempt to refuse the solemnities and closures of their own narrative.

An important milestone was crossed recently in the discipline of philosophy, but hardly anyone seems to have noticed. In 2004, for the first time since statistics have been gathered on such things, women earned more than 30 percent of the doctorates in philosophy in this country, 33.3 percent, up from 27.1 percent the year before. The highest percentage women had achieved previously in philosophy was 29.4 percent, in..

Difference and Habit: Deleuze anti-Hegelian critique of consciousness Since Antiquity, habit has been understood as a second nature, as something that we develop in a conscious or unconscious way, and which directs and structures both our cognitive and practical lives – our consciousness and our actions. For Hegel, habit effectuates the transition from nature to spirit or consciousness, thus forming the basis of morality. Habit thus constitutes an essential stage in the development of the mind and a crucial aspect of (...) Hegel’s philosophical anthropology. Habit also plays a crucial role in the thinking of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who characterizes his philosophical project as anti-Hegelian or anti-dialectical. Even though many works examine the relationship between Deleuze and Hegel, almost none of these discuss the concept of habit of these authors, and the role that it plays in Deleuze’s so-called anti-Hegelianism. In this article, I address the concept of habit in Difference and Repetition, and the role it plays in Deleuze’s critique of Hegel. I also compare this concept with Hegel’s own conception of habit in his Anthropology. I show that Deleuze certainly does not understand repetition as second nature as Hegel does, because then it is impossible to account for the productive power of the unconscious or the sub-representative, and of real creativity. I distinguish my interpretation of habit in Deleuze from that of a number of other authors, who, in my view, do not draw all the conclusions from Deleuze’s interpretation of Hume. I then expound Deleuze’s original notion of habit and compare it with Hegel’s. (shrink)

BackgroundThe present study examined the efficacy of the Michigan Model of Infant Mental Health-Home Visiting infant mental health treatment to promote the socioemotional wellbeing of infants and young children. Science illuminates the role of parental “co-regulation” of infant emotion as a pathway to young children’s capacity for self-regulation. The synchrony of parent–infant interaction begins to shape the infant’s own nascent regulatory capacities. Parents with a history of childhood adversity, such as maltreatment or witnessing family violence, and who struggle with symptoms (...) of post-traumatic stress may have greater challenges in co-regulating their infant, thus increasing the risk of their children exhibiting social and emotional problems such as anxiety, aggression, and depression. Early intervention that targets the infant–parent relationship may help buffer the effect of parental risk on child outcomes.MethodsParticipants were 58 mother–infant/toddler dyads enrolled in a longitudinal randomized control trial testing the efficacy of the relationship-based IMH-HV treatment model. Families were eligible based on child age and endorsement of at least two of four socio-demographic factors commonly endorsed in community mental health settings: elevated depression symptoms, three or more Adverse Childhood Experiences parenting stress, and/or child behavior or development concerns. This study included dyads whose children were born at the time of study enrollment and completed 12-month post-baseline follow-up visits. Parents reported on their own history of ACEs and current posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, as well as their toddler’s socioemotional development.ResultsMaternal ACEs predicted more toddler emotional problems through their effect on maternal PTSD symptoms. Parents who received IMH-HV treatment reported more positive toddler socioemotional wellbeing at follow-up relative to the control condition. The most positive socioemotional outcomes were for toddlers of mothers with low to moderate PTSD symptoms who received IMH-HV treatment.ConclusionResults indicate the efficacy of IMH-HV services in promoting more optimal child socioemotional wellbeing even when mothers reported mild to moderate PTSD symptoms. Results also highlight the need to assess parental trauma when infants and young children present with socioemotional difficulties. (shrink)

ABSTRACTObjective: This study was designed to improve our understanding of prospective memory changes in ageing, and to identify the cognitive correlates of PM decline, using a virtual environment, to provide a more realistic assessment than traditional laboratory tasks.Design: Thirty-five young and 29 older individuals exposed to a virtual town were asked to recall three event-based intentions with a strong link between prospective and retrospective components, three event-based intentions with a weak link, and three time-based intentions. They also underwent retrospective episodic (...) memory, executive functions, binding in working memory, processing speed, and time estimation assessments.Results: Older individuals recalled fewer intentions than young adults. While age-related PM decline affected the recall of both prospective and retrospective components, the recall of the latter seemed more challenging for older individuals when the link was weak. This PM decline was linked to an age-related decline... (shrink)

Shared decision making has become the standard of care, yet there remains no consensus about how it should be conducted. Most accounts are concerned with threats to patient autonomy, and they address the dangers of a power imbalance by foregrounding the patient as a person whose complex preferences it is the practitioner's task to support. Other corrective models fear that this level of mutuality risks abdicating the practitioner's responsibilities as an expert, and they address that concern by recovering a nuanced (...) but genuinely directive clinical role. Cribb and Entwistle helpfully categorize models of shared decision making as ‘narrower’ and ‘broader’ and praise the latter's ‘open‐ended and fully dialogical ways of relating’. However, they stop short of providing a philosophical account of how that dialogue works. In this paper, a nurse–midwife and a philosopher collaborate to argue that the Socratic model of dialogue offers a solution to the practitioner–patient dilemma. In the Theaetetus, Socrates compares dialogical reasoning to ‘midwifery with all its standard features’. By means of a three‐way analogy, elements of midwifery practice are used to illuminate features of Socrates' claim that his dialogue is like midwifery; those features are then translated into an approach to shared decision making as the ‘midwifery of good thinking’ which both midwives and physicians would do well to adopt. A key concept that emerges is the need for practitioners to make a risk‐confidence assessment of the particular content of any decision to appropriately modulate their role in the practice of shared decision making. (shrink)

Niedenthal et al. postulate that eye contact with the expresser of an emotion automatically initiates embodied simulation. Our commentary explores the generality of such an eye contact effect for emotions other than happiness. Based on the appraisal theory of emotion, we propose that embodied simulation may be reinforced by mutual or averted gaze as a function of emotional context.

Surprise – these much-publicized rules are not the least bit reassuring to people who specialize in the study of ethics. While attention to ethics is certainly welcome, these ethical codes provide a too-easy cop-out, a way to neatly dispose of attention to nagging and pervasive problems. The typical professional code is little more than a checklist of rules that enables professionals of any stripe to give lip service to ethical behavior without engaging in continuing dialogue on ethical dilemmas. Neatly packaged (...) commandments short-circuit development of the reasoning tools to work through ethical challenges meaningfully and with long-lasting impact on the actual behavior in any field. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer an introduction to case study research in the social sciences. We begin with a discussion of the definition of case study research. Next, we point to various purposes that case study research may serve in the social sciences and then turn to outline the main philosophical issues raised by case study research. Finally, we briefly present the papers in this special issue.