This historical study aims to explain how the transition from student nurse service to fully qualified “graduate nurse” service in the United States in the 20th century affected assumptions about fundamental patient care in hospital wards and provide historical context for current apprenticeship programs. Through analysis of documents from 1920 when student nurse service, a nurse apprentice model, was the norm to 1960 when the nurse apprentice model was waning in favor of registered nurse service, this study found that the (...) replacement of student nurses with registered nurses led to weakened standardization of fundamental bedside care and the introduction of large numbers of unlicensed nursing assistants. While student nurses could perform all the functions of fully qualified graduate nurses, nursing assistants could not, resulting in a separation of fundamental nursing care from the professional nurse role and changes in assumptions and attitudes toward fundamental care. These changes had a negative effect on fundamental nursing care. New apprenticeship programs provide opportunities for improvement. (shrink)

Perhaps due to the numerous community and company benefits associated with corporate volunteer programs, an increasing number of national and international firms are adopting such programs. A major issue in organizing corporate volunteer programs concerns the strategies that are most effective for recruiting employee participation. The results of this study suggest that the most effective strategies for initiating participation in volunteer programs may not be the same as the strategies that are most effective in terms of maximizing the number of (...) volunteer hours contributed by employees. More importantly, the results suggest that the most effective recruitment strategies depend on the age of the employee. The results were discussed in terms of matching the recruitment strategies with the characteristics of the potential volunteers and the nature of the volunteer project. (shrink)

Patient outcome after serious brain injury is highly variable. Following a period of coma, some patients recover while others progress into a vegetative state (unresponsive wakefulness syndrome) or minimally conscious state. In both cases, assessment is difficult and misdiagnosis may be as high as 43%. Recent advances in neuroimaging suggest a solution. Both functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography have been used to detect residual cognitive function in vegetative and minimally conscious patients. Neuroimaging may improve diagnosis and prognostication. These techniques (...) are beginning to be applied to comatose patients soon after injury. Evidence of preserved cognitive function may predict recovery, and this information would help families and health providers. Complex ethical issues arise due to the vulnerability of patients and families, difficulties interpreting negative results, restriction of communication to “yes” or “no” answers, and cost. We seek to investigate ethical issues in the use of neuroimaging in behaviorally nonresponsive patients who have suffered serious brain injury. The objectives of this research are to: (1) create an approach to capacity assessment using neuroimaging; (2) develop an ethics of welfare framework to guide considerations of quality of life; (3) explore the impact of neuroimaging on families; and, (4) analyze the ethics of the use of neuroimaging in comatose patients. (shrink)

This article questions the traditional view that moral rightness and wrongness are discrete predicates with sharp boundaries. I contend that moral rightness and wrongness come in degrees: Some acts are somewhat rightandsomewhat wrong. My argument is based on the assumption that meaning tracks use. If an overwhelming majority of competent language users frequently say that some acts are a bit right and a bit wrong, this indicates that rightness and wrongnessaregradable concepts. To support the empirical part of the argument I (...) use the tools of experimental philosophy. Results from three surveys (n= 715, 578, and 182) indicate that respondents userightandwrongas gradable terms to approximately the same extent as color terms, meaning that rightness and wrongness come in degrees roughly as much as colors do. In the largest study, only 4 percent persistently usedrightandwrongas non-gradable terms. (shrink)

Religions are complex, and any attempt at defining religion necessarily falls short. Nevertheless, any scholarly inquiry into the nature of religion must use some criteria in order to evaluate and study the character of religious traditions across contexts. To this end, I propose understanding religion in terms of an orienting worldview. Religions are worldviews that are expressed not only in beliefs but also in narratives and symbols. More than this, religions orient action, and any genuine religious tradition necessarily is concerned (...) with normative behavior, whether ethical or religious in character. Such an understanding of religion has several advantages, one of which is its natural relation to current forms of the science‐religion dialogue. Not only can the findings of cognitive science and related areas inform us about the nature of religion; scientific discoveries also prove to be important for any religious synthesis that attempts to construct a worldview for the twenty‐first century. (shrink)

Classically, Christians have professed the saving efficacy of the cross. Does Karl Rahner? Recent commentary on Foundations of Christian Faith has described Rahner as conflating “atonement” generally with penal substitutionary theories of a changing God, as ruling out the redemptive significance of Christ’s death, and as denigrating the normativity of Scripture in order to do so. This article responds to these claims, unfolding Rahner’s soteriology and arguing that he advances a theology of the cross which affirms its saving efficacy, including (...) in the last decade of his work. (shrink)

"More recently, cognitive psychologists have used the resources of psychological science to study the foundations of religion, and to discuss and possibly illuminate issues of concern for theologians. The new field, known as the cognitive science of religion, draws from work by Ernest Thomas Lawson, Robert McCauley, Pascal Boyer and Justin Barrett, among others. Many of its scholars are inspired by a spirit of collaborative work with theologians and philosophers of religion, emphasizing the need of serious cross-training between disciplines. Driven (...) by the same spirit, the present issue of Scientia et Fides documents instances of integrative work at the intersection of psychological science and philosophical or theological knowledge, specifically centered around our understanding of what a person is. We hope that, apart from their individual worth, as a whole these contributions will stimulate further interdisciplinary studies, in order to achieve genuine science-engaged philosophy and theology, and a science that is aware of philosophical and theological discussions.". (shrink)

Dreams represent threat, but appear to do so metaphorically more often than realistically. The metaphoric representation of threat allows it to be conceptualized in a manner that is constant across situations (as what is common to all threats begins to be understood and portrayed). This also means that response to threat can come to be represented in some way that works across situations. Conscious access to dream imagery, and subsequent social communication of that imagery, can facilitate this generalized adaptive process, (...) by allowing the communicative dreamer access to the problem solving resources of the community. [Revonsuo; Solms]. (shrink)

Originally a student of Marburg Neo-Kantianism, Nicolai Hartmann departed from this tradition to become one of the leading German philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century. He wrote on all the major fields of philosophy, including the philosophy of history, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, although his central interest was ontology. He held teaching posts in Marburg, Cologne, Berlin, and Göttingen, and was president of the German Philosophical Association after the Second World War. Perhaps unique among his peers, he (...) spearheaded the resurgence of ontology by developing a pluralistic, humanistic realism that attempted to do justice to both the sciences and the humanities.Over the last... (shrink)

Aristotle insists that the organic matter composing an organism depends for its being and becoming upon the living organism whose organic matter it is. An evolutionary context may at first seem to secure autonomy for an organism’s organic matter: after all, in such a context not only can organisms in divergent taxa have the same trait, but a trait can remain the same through thoroughgoing changes in its form, function, composition, and organismic context over evolutionary time. The biological homology concept (...) attempts to capture this mysterious relationship of trait sameness. However, accounts of biological homology that have dominated the contemporary scene face compelling problems—these problems, I will argue, arise from their exclusion of the organism as an explanatory locus for the being and becoming of biological traits. An evolutionary framework in fact supports an account of homology that retains these two aspects of Aristotle’s views on organic matter. (shrink)

The practice of sending and receiving sexually explicit images via mobile phones has grown exponentially in recent years with the accessibility of cellular technology. This essay examines this practice, when conducted by teenagers, in light of a Christian feminist approach to justice. Without harmfully exhorting girls' sexual "purity", we must nevertheless develop a moral framework that challenges the practice of sexting while simultaneously empowering young women to claim primary control over their own sexual experience. For Christians, justice, addressed to sexting, (...) must attend to sexual injustice even as it promotes genuine freedom, embodiment, mutuality and relational intimacy, and equality. (shrink)

Opening on Olympus and concluding with two trials involving ‘the Syrian’ (an obvious Lucianic persona), Lucian'sDouble Indictment(=Bis Acc.) presents a fantastical scenario that draws on Old Comic, Platonic and biographical models. In the first of the Syrian's two trials, a personified Rhetoric accuses the Syrian of abandoning her, his legitimate wife, for his lover, Dialogue. Dialogue, in turn, accuses the Syrian ofhubris, asserting that the Syrian rendered him a generic freak when he forced him to accept ‘jokes,iambos, cynicism, and Eupolis (...) and Aristophanes’ (ὁ σκῶμμα καὶ τὸν ἴαμβον καὶ κυνισμὸν καὶ τὸν Εὔπολιν καὶ τὸν Ἀριστοφάνη,Bis Acc.33). Amidst this literary fantasy, Lucian seemingly adds an element of realism when the Syrian specifies that he was ‘almost forty’ (τετταράκοντα ἔτη σχεδὸν γεγονότι,Bis Acc.32) at the time he left Rhetoric for Dialogue. This is notably not the only instance in which we find this age attributed to a Lucianic alter-ego: Lycinus in theHermotimus(=Hermot.) is likewise described as being ‘almost forty’ at the time of the dialogue. This is strikingly also the same age at which the dialogue's eponymous interlocutor—he is sixty at the time of the dialogue—began his own philosophical education (αὐτὸς κατὰ σὲ γεγονὼς ἠρξάμην φιλοσοφεῖν τετταρακοντούτης σχεδόν,Hermot.13). (shrink)

This anthology of readings in the philosophy of religion examines the basic classical and a host of contemporary issues in thirteen thematic sections. Each section begins with an introductory essay giving background on the topic; in addition, each essay is preceded by a brief epitome, and study questions and a bibliography of suggested readings follows each section. The book is designed to parallel the thematic structure of the authors' 1990 book, Reason and Religious Belief; the two are to be marketed (...) as a set. (shrink)

Reviews the special issue of The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Challenging the therapeutic state: Critical perspectives on psychiatry and the mental health system, edited by D. Cohen . This special issue serves as an update on the critique of the medical model in psychiatry. In editing this volume, Cohen has assembled a collection of work from authors in many disciplines—including some laypersons—who are concerned with what they see as the frightening power of the "Therapeutic State." While the work of (...) Thomas Szasz is a guiding light for several of these authors, they certainly are not all associated with his work. In fact, some of them explicitly disavow what they see as Szasz's overly simple stance toward madness. Moreover, the ideas in this volume expand the critique of the medical model far beyond the range of Szasz's work. Disagreements among authors are for the most part confined to a few footnotes in this volume. The book's purpose is to expose the problem before exploring solutions to it. When the volume is at its best, the papers are united by their contention that the medical model in psychiatry is disastrous both for individuals who are victimized by its institutions and practices, and for the society that embraces its disempowering philosophy. There is little, if any, brand new material in this book. Virtually all of the articles contain research and ideas tat the authors have already published elsewhere. The virtue of the book is in bringing together a diversity of work across disciplines that would not ordinarily appear between the same two covers. The common element running through all of these articles is one that the authors almost never state in so many words, but it gives a cumulative force to their very different treatments of psychiatry's problems. Each of these papers, in its own way, reveals aspects of the irrationality implicit in psychiatric orthodoxy. Psychiatry stands at the fringe of medical science, and the fringe of any science is where the inadequacies of its paradigm are most obvious. The attempt to make the medical model fit the problem of madness has not succeeded, but orthodox psychiatry continues to pursue it. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

ABSTRACT This response to the review of Understanding Character Education: Approaches, Applications and Issues primarily addresses two main criticisms offered by Berkowitz. First, we offer comment on the conceptual definitions of ‘character’ and ‘character education’. We acknowledge the need for greater clarity regarding definitions in the field, explaining how the book’s purpose and intended audience guided the introduction of key terms in Chapter 1. Second, we consider the role of extrinsic motivators within character education approaches. We agree with Berkowitz that (...) intrinsic motivation is central to the acquisition of virtue, but caveat this by suggesting that extrinsic motivators can initially play a facilitatory role. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz werden die Veröffentlichungen des Jesuiten Erich Przywara und der sehr einflussreichen jesuitischen Zeitschrift Stimmen der Zeit aus den frühen 193oern Jahren und besonders aus dem Jahr 1933 analysiert. In diesem Zusammenhang antworte ich auch meinen Kritikern. Außerdem werden die Hintergründe und Quellen der spezifischen Form des Antisemitismus dargestellt, die in den Stimmen der Zeit vertreten wurde. Deutsche Jesuiten propagierten 1933 durchaus radikale Positionen in der Zeitschrift. In dem katholischen Blatt liest man u. a., dass die Juden dem (...) deutschen Volk mehr Schaden als Nutzen brächten. Es wurde damals auch die nordische Rasse als für Herrschaft besonders geeignet bezeichnet. Im letzten Teil dieses Aufsatzes werden Przywaras spätere Briefe an Carl Schmitt, den gläubigen antisemitischen deutschen Katholiken, analysiert. Sie zeigen, dass Przywara von dessen antidemokratischer politischer Theorie der 1930er Jahre zutiefst beeindruckt war und die Ideen des Kronjuristen des Dritten Reiches sogar noch in der Zeit nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg verbreiten wollte. (shrink)

Should financial incentives be offered to mothers for breastfeeding? Given the significant socioeconomic and sociodemographic differences in breastfeeding in the USA, researchers and policymakers are exploring the role of financial incentives for breastfeeding promotion with the objective of increasing uptake and reducing disparities. Despite positive outcomes in other health domains, the acceptability of financial incentives is mixed. Financial incentives in the context of infant feeding are particularly controversial given the complex obligations that characterize decisions to breastfeed. After situating the specific (...) ethical tensions related to personal responsibility, fairness, and intrusiveness, we argue that exploring carefully designed financial incentives can be ethically justified to support breastfeeding uptake particularly given established medical guidelines that support breastfeeding benefits, wide socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities and notable influences in the broader choice architecture of infant feeding in the USA. Additional empirical research is warranted to better understand effectiveness, cost and specific ethical concerns related to free and informed choice. (shrink)

Romano Guardini was one of the most important intellectuals of German Catholicism in the twentieth century. He influenced nearly an entire generation of German Catholic theologians and was the leading figure of the German Catholic youth movement as it grew exponentially in the 1920s. Yet there are many open questions about his early intellectual development and his academic contribution to religious, cultural, social and political questions in the Weimar Republic and in National Socialist Germany. This article draws upon Guardini’s publications, (...) the secondary literature on Guardini and on some archival material, seeking to outline his early development and his engagement with the ideological context following World War I and in National Socialist Germany. Here Guardini’s criticisms of the modern age are presented. Besides this many other issues are addressed, such as his criticism of the women’s movement, his understanding of the youth movement, reception of Carl Schmitt, views of race, interpretation of the controversial Volk-concept, contribution to a Jewish journal in 1933, and his basic positions on the issues of obedience, order and authority. While Guardini was viewed critically by some National Socialists in the Third Reich, the administrative correspondences on him in the 1940s actually show that there was an internal debate about him among the National Socialist officials. This involved different figures, including a diplomat who came to Guardini’s defense. The internal disagreements were made more complicated because Guardini’s brothers were apparently members of the Fascist Party in Italy at this time. (shrink)

Two interpretations of the precautionary principle are considered. According to the normative interpretation, the precautionary principle should be characterised in terms of what it urges doctors and other decision makers to do. According to the epistemic interpretation, the precautionary principle should be characterised in terms of what it urges us to believe. This paper recommends against the use of the precautionary principle as a decision rule in medical decision making, based on an impossibility theorem presented in Peterson . However, (...) the main point of the paper is an argument to the effect that decision theoretical problems associated with the precautionary principle can be overcome by paying greater attention to its epistemic dimension. Three epistemic principles inherent in a precautionary approach to medical risk analysis are characterised and defended. (shrink)

The Drake Relays are one of the iconic events of track and field in the United States. World and Olympic champions test their speed and stamina on the famed Blue Oval in Des Moines, Iowa, every April, and by spring 2013 they had set fourteen world records and fifty-one American records. But unlike most other top meets, this one also features college athletes from all over the country and high school athletes from across Iowa, giving them the experience of a (...) lifetime—competing on the same track with the elite in their sport. This mix brings many enthusiastic spectators to the stadium and makes for an unusually close bond between fans and athletes—it’s as if everyone’s family is there cheering. Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer David Peterson has been covering the Drake Relays for nearly forty years, but his love affair with the meet started earlier, when he ran on three winning relay teams there for Kansas State University. Now, drawing upon an unmatched personal archive, he offers the pictures of a lifetime spent on the Blue Oval. He captures on camera athletes of all levels in triumph and defeat, in mid-stride or leap, embracing their fans, their moms and dads, and their kids. In addition to the stars of the past, such as Carl Lewis, Suzy Favor Hamilton, and Herschel Walker, and those of the ’00s, like Lolo Jones and Jeremy Wariner, we see teenagers who may be the stars of the future, as well as the many athletes who will never be famous but nonetheless show themselves—and their sport—at their best. A beautiful celebration of the Drake Relays and the diverse sports that make up “track and field,” this book will evoke memories and inspire runners, throwers, and jumpers everywhere. (shrink)

In Australia and other countries, certain groups of women have traditionally been denied access to assisted reproductive technologies . These typically are single heterosexual women, lesbians, poor women, and those whose ability to rear children is questioned, particularly women with certain disabilities or who are older. The arguments used to justify selection of women for ARTs are most often based on issues such as scarcity of resources, and absence of infertility , or on social concerns: that it “goes against nature”; (...) particular women might not make good mothers; unconventional families are not socially acceptable; or that children of older mothers might be orphaned at an early age. The social, medical, legal, and ethical reasoning that has traditionally promoted this lack of equity in access to ARTs, and whether the criteria used for client deselection are ethically appropriate in any particular case, are explored by this review. In addition, the issues of distribution and just “gatekeeping” practices associated with these sensitive medical services are examined. (shrink)

With a textual record spanning dozens of languages—to say nothing of its oral histories—Advaita Vedānta’s multilingual archive presents obvious and daunting challenges for scholars of South Asian intellectual and religious histories. The papers in this issue build on recent multilingual and contextual approaches to South Asian intellectual history by reading a rich corpus of Advaita Vedānta material in Persian, Marathi, Tamil, Sanskrit and Braj Bhasha. In bringing these sources and their authors into conversation with one another, this issue acknowledges Advaita (...) Vedānta’s broad appeal in early-modern and colonial South Asia; but it also attests to Advaita Vedānta’s heterogeneous, textured, and even contested historical development. The following papers chart Advaita Vedānta across five unique social, linguistic, intellectual, and geographical spaces from the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century. While no single issue could contextualize something as historically recalcitrant as Advaita Vedānta, we see this special issue as a step on the long and necessary road to historicizing Vedānta, broadly, and Advaita Vedānta, specifically. (shrink)

Puritans had big stories to tell, and they cast themselves big parts to play in those stories. The fervent English Protestants who believed that the Elizabethan Church urgently needed further reformation, and the self-selecting band among them who went on to colonize New England, were sure that they could re-create the churches of the apostolic age, and eliminate centuries’ worth of Romish accretions. By instituting scriptural forms of worship, these purified churches might have a beneficial influence on the state as (...) well, and bring about the rule of the godly. If a purified English church and state could inaugurate reformation across all of Christendom, spread the gospel to infidels around the globe, and usher in the millennium, then all the better. In 1641, an anonymous tract called A Glimpse of Sions Glory announced that the new puritan-controlled Parliament would bring on “Babylon's destruction... The work of the day [is] to give God no rest till he sets up Jerusalem in the praise of the whole world.” The leading minister of colonial Boston at the time, John Cotton, predicted that as soon as 1655, as Michael Winship summarizes Cotton: the states and Christian princes of Europe, under irresistible supernatural influence, would have instituted congregationalism [Massachusetts’ form of church polity] and overthrown Antichrist and Muslim Turkey. The example of their churches’ pure Christianity would have brought about the conversion of Jews and pagans across the globe. Thereafter, the churches of Christ would enjoy the millennium's thousand years of peace before the climactic battle with Gog and Magog at the end of time. Those are big stories. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to critique the primary arguments given by Paul Bloom and Jesse Prinz against empathy, and to argue instead that empathy is best understood as a virtue that plays an important but complicated role in the moral life. That it is a virtue does not mean that it always functions well, and empathy sometimes contributes to behavior that is partial and unfair. In some of their writings, both Bloom and Prinz endorse the view that empathy (...) is a fixed trait, but there is little reason to think this, and the studies that they cite do not support this view. Further, a number of recent studies suggest the opposite: our empathic reactions are malleable and subject to environmental effects and learning. Although our capacities for cognitive and emotional empathy are clearly not sufficient for being moral, I argue that they are functionally necessary traits that, like other virtues, must be cultivated correctly. (shrink)

In these skeptical and disillusioned times, there are still groups of people scattered throughout the world who are trying to live out utopian dreams. These communities challenge the inevitability and morality of dominant political and economic models. By putting utopian religious ethics into practice, they attest to the real possibility of social alternatives. In Seeds of the Kingdom, Anna L. Peterson reflects on the experiences of two very different communities, one inhabited by impoverished former refugees in the mountains of (...) El Salvador and the other by Amish farmers in the Midwestern U.S. What makes these groups stand out among advocates of environmental protection, political justice, and sustainable development is their religious orientation. They aim, without apology, to embody the reign of God on earth. The Salvadoran community is grounded in Roman Catholic social thought, while the Amish adhere to Anabaptist tradition. Peterson offers a detailed portrait of these communities' history, social organization, religious life, environmental values, and agricultural practices. She discovers both practical and ideological commonalities in these two comparatively successful and sustainable communities, including a strong collective identity, deep attachment to local landscapes, a desire to preserve non-human as well as human lives, and, perhaps unexpectedly, a utopian horizon that provides both goals and the hope of reaching them. By examining the process by which people struggle to live according to a transcendent value system, she sheds light on both the actual and the potential place of religion in public life. Peterson argues that the Amish and Salvadoran communities, geographically and culturally removed from the industrialized West, have relevance for the political and environmental problems of the developed world. These communities have succeeded in the face of significant internal and external challenges, offering important practical and theoretical lessons on how to achieve ecological sustainability and social justice in the wider world. (shrink)