We derive and estimate a production function for microfinance institutions to provide empirical evidence of the ethical dilemma of balancing social and financial logics in hybrid organizations. A worldwide panel dataset of microfinance institutions is utilized and a production function augmented by average loan size is estimated using the control function approach. We show how this framework can be used to quantify the tradeoff between social outreach and financial sustainability in relation to the expansion of microfinance institutions’ credit operations. The (...) study reveals that expanding the extensive margin (increasing the number of loan clients) requires on average more than twice as many inputs as expanding the intensive margin (increasing the average loan size) to achieve the same growth in assets. Beyond the case of microfinance our production function illustrates that as hybrid organizations expand, they will inevitably face an ethical dilemma as the laws of economic efficiency exert pressure on their social missions. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

ABSTRACT Education appears to bear responsibility on the one hand to do justice to society’s need for reproduction and continuation, and on the other to do justice to the individual’s capacity for and need to express resistance, critique and political action. How we navigate this problem is tied to how we understand justice. ‘Plastic justice’ is the suggestion that questions concerning justice and education might find a materialist expression instead of the usual transcendental ideals of justice. In this perspective, ‘justice’ (...) appears not as an achievable ideal but as a philosophical void that allows us to identify and react to injustice. An example of this is the void that allows for social selection – in the form of admissions or exams – that must be kept open if we wish to avoid encouraging social conformism and reproduction. (shrink)

We have arrived at a situation in which policymakers and ethicists are considering abandoning informed consent in the governance of certain new technologies, many of which are related to large-scale information systems. A paradigm case is the problem with using individuals’ informed consent to regulate biobanks. As sometimes suggested, there is a need for “new ethical frameworks.”.

Bildung has lost its critical potential, some thinkers worry, but I put forward that this might not necessarily be the case. Jan Masschelein and Norbert Ricken argue that modernity has seen Bildung and bio-power grow complicit, effectively negating Bildung’s critical edge by turning criticism into a necessary aspect of contemporary society. However, a development of this sort seems to demand a view of both Bildung and bio-power as sovereign entities that subvert the individuals who constitute them. I challenge this view (...) by reference to Catherine Malabou's philosophy. Malabou argues that bio-power seems to suffer from a residual sovereign element which upholds a separation between a material and a symbolic mode of life, even if bio-power was originally thought as a break with sovereign thinking altogether. Malabou’s engagement with the biological concept epigenesis by way of her own concept plasticity provides an ostensibly non-sovereign approach to bio-power, one that emphasizes change, creativity, accident, and reciprocal influence. I suggest that this point of view might challenge the apparent sovereignty of bio-power and open up for a non-sovereign formulation of Bildung. (shrink)

This article is an analytic register of recent European efforts in the making of ‘autonomous’ robots to address what is imagined as Europe’s societal challenges. The paper describes how an emerging techno-epistemic network stretches across industry, science, policy and law to legitimize and enact a robotics innovation agenda. Roadmap is the main metaphor and organizing tool in working across the disciplines and sectors, and in aligning these heterogeneous actors with a machine-centric vision along a path to make way for ‘new (...) kinds’ of robots. We describe what happens as this industry-dominated project docks in a public–private partnership with pan-European institutions and a legislative initiative on robolaw. Emphasizing the co-production of robotics and European innovation politics, we observe how well-known uncertainties and scholarly debates about machine capabilities and human–machine configurations, are unexpectedly played out in legal scholarship and institutions as a controversy and a significant problem for human-centered legal frameworks. European robotics are indeed driving an increase in speculative ethics and a new-found weight of possible futures in legislative practice. (shrink)

What form might truth take in a theoretical frame which precludes notions of origin and telos? Catherine Malabou’s theory of ‘plasticity’ is such a frame, as it takes the accumulation of life and not the search for eternal truths to be a central premise of philosophy. I conduct a close reading of central texts of Malabou’s to conceptualise truth as a plastic phenomenon over three stages: conception, gestation, and nativity. The conception of truth involves its coming-into-shape; gestation its consolidation of (...) shape; nativity the precariousness of being alive. ‘Plastic truth’ represents a meeting of negotiations, accidents, history, and morality, in constant motion; an epistemic modality with moral and political consequences for education. (shrink)

This article investigates the communication of professional ethos, the ethical standards of a profession in training, from passing on ideas of patients’ welfare in medical schools to communicating values in military academies. The article examines this through a consideration of the consequences of Wittgenstein’s discussions on the nature of language: how words and sentences acquire meaning. Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox, the paradox that any act can be brought into correspondence with a rule and thereby that any “meaning” might be applicable to (...) what is being taught, must make us re-evaluate assumptions about a professional ethos as a guide for professionals in their future practice. If, as Wittgenstein asserts, the meaning of a word is its use, we must abandon ideas of an essence of professional ethos encapsulated in words. Ethical standards of the professions are not reducible to a set of rules. Instead teachers must seek to expand the learner’s repertoire of responses and invite different answers rather than a pre-established correct answer. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the interdisciplinary character of development studies and ethics by discussing the relationship between Christian theology and development studies in general and development ethics in particular. I begin by presenting development theology, a kind of theology that critically reflects on the meaning and implications of the Christian faith with regard to improving the lives of people living in material poverty. This kind of theology is related to the better-known liberation theology, and I discuss the role of (...) this kind of theology in the works of Denis Goulet, the founder of development ethics as an academic discipline. I argue there is a fruitful, critical and constructive relationship between liberation theology and development ethics in the writings of Goulet. I then turn to how development issues are addressed in contemporary theology, with an emphasis on documents produced by two faith-based development organizations, Christian Aid UK and Norwegian Church Aid. I argue that development issues have been readdressed in Christian theology, relying less on the notion of liberation, but more on the concepts of reconstruction, ?diakonia?, human dignity and human relationships. I argue that there is a need to revisit the critical and constructive connections between Christian theology and development ethics and, more broadly, the related challenges of interdisciplinary inquiries, and I conclude by showing some of the ways of undertaking this task. (shrink)

ZUSAMMENFASSUNGDer Artikel präsentiert den Versuch, Luthers berühmte Behauptung, dass der rechtfertigende Glaube den Menschen definiere, in der Perspektive der Gegenwart zu lesen. Die jüngste Entwicklung in den Gesellschaftswissenschaften und der Gender-Forschung bietet eine Reihe neuer Anhaltspunkte zum Verständnis von Identitätsbildung und Identitätserfahrung. Der Gedanke dessen, dass die Rechtfertigung die Identität definiere, muss folglich an dem anknüpfen, was wir sonst noch über die durch die menschliche Wechselwirkung konstruierte Identität wissen. Der Artikel erörtert dieses Thema und diskutiert die Frage, ob dies nicht (...) – theologisch verstanden – homosexuelle und lesbische Paare heterosexuellen Paaren gleichstellt.SUMMARYIn the thesis De homine from 1536, Luther famously stated that justification by faith alone gives a short definition of the human being. This article tries to defend such a definition under contemporary conditions, taking into account what we now know of the construction and inhabitation of human identity. Summing up seminal insights into the development of identity from the social sciences and from gender studies, the article discusses possible consequences for the theological understanding of homosexual cohabitation. A range of insights are brought into play, including the phenomenology of Knud Ejler Løgstrup, to understand the emergence of identity through human interaction, and its implications for the centre of evangelical belief and ethics. (shrink)

The article aims to show that the theory of open and autopoietic systems may be applied in such a way as to transcend the sterile opposition between autonomy aesthetics and culturalism. A theory of contemporary and modern art as an observational system is outlined. Art is seen as specializing to an increasing degree in cannibalizing the discourses and modalities of media & communication industries. Art is thus a parasitical observer (Serres 1980). Why should one affect a shift in framework? What (...) are post-Luhmannian optics on contemporary arts and media able to do beyond what post-structuralist and postmodern optics already achieve? Post-structuralist aesthetics deal with contingency, insecurity, paradox and autoreflexivity, surplus meanings, and the complexity and decentering of the subject. Switching to systems theory allows us to treat such issues without building a wall of irrationality around the arts and the humanities. It handles these important issues in a systematic manner which links up with scientific discourse and with the advanced problem solving and criticality of other social domains, like politics, business and the media industries. Notably the rigueur and self-reflectivity of the conceptual framework allows us also to define limits of our approach. What is it about art which aesthetics cannot and should not explain? (shrink)

This book engages with post-truth as a problem of societal order and for scholarly analysis. It claims that post-truth discourse is more deeply entangled with main Western imaginations of knowledge societies than commonly recognised. Scholarly responses to post-truth have not fully addressed these entanglements, treating them either as something to be morally condemned or as accusations against which scholars have to defend themselves (for having somehow contributed to it). Aiming for wider problematisations, the authors of this book use post-truth to (...) open scholarly and societal assumptions to critical scrutiny. Contributions are both conceptual and empirical, dealing with topics such as: the role of truth in public; deep penetrations of ICTs into main societal institutions; the politics of time in neoliberalism; shifting boundaries between fact - value, politics - science, nature - culture; and the importance of critique for public truth-telling. Case studies range from the politics of nuclear power and election meddling in the UK, over smart technologies and techno-regulation in Europe, to renewables in Australia. The book ends where the Corona story begins: as intensifications of Modernity's complex dynamics, requiring new starting points for critique. (shrink)

Philosophical anthropologies that emphasise the role of the emotions can be used to expand existing notions of moral agency and learning in situations of great moral complexity. In this article we tell the story of one patient facing the tough decision of whether to be tested for Huntington’s disease or not. We then interpret her story from two different but compatible philosophical entry points: Aristotle’s conception of Greek tragedy and Karl Jaspers’ notion of Grenzsituationen (boundary situations). We continue by indicating (...) some ways in which these two positions may be used for reflecting upon different perspectives involved in clinical decision-making, those of patients, clinicians and bioethicists. We conclude that the ideas we introduce can be used as hermeneutic tools for situating learning and dialogue within a broader cultural field in which literature and art may also play important roles. (shrink)

In this article I consider some central aspects of the naturalist philosophy of science and science and technology studies in dealing with the contested status of technoscience in medicine. Focusing on the concepts of realism and representation, I argue that theories of science-as-practice in naturalist philosophy of science should expand their scope so as to reflect more thoroughly on the social and political context of technoscience. I develop a hermeneutic of technomedical objects in order to highlight the internal connectedness between (...) social action, material agency, and the actions of scientific communities. The framework thus developed is used to re-consider the genomic turn in medicine. Pointing to the discrepancies between socially dominant representations of genomic technology and the actual interventions brought about through those technologies, I raise the question of how and where to address problems of theory and policy. (shrink)

This is a review of contemporary philosophical discussions of population policies. The focus is on normative justification, and the main question is whether population policies can be ethically justified. Although few analytical philosophers have directly addressed this question – it has been discussed more in other academic fields – many arguments and considerations can be placed in the analytical philosophical discourse. This article offers a comprehensive review and analysis of ethically relevant aspects of population policies evaluated on the basis of (...) the main ethical theories. This analysis is preceded by a brief historical contextualisation of when and how population policies became ethically contentious and how this relates to philosophical debates in environmental ethics, population ethics and political philosophy. The article also includes a conceptual analysis of population policies in which the empirical intricacies around individual fertility decisions are sorted out and the different ways in which they can be affected are categorised in a taxonomy which highlight the most relevant ethical aspects of population policies. The ethical analysis shows that while population policies can be justified on the basis of most ethical theories, it all depends on what prior assumptions are made about what is at stake. (shrink)

This thesis explores whether the three standard value relations, “better than”, “worse than” and “equally as good”, exhaust the possibilities in which things can relate with respect to their value. Or more precisely, whether there are examples in which one of these relations is not instantiated. There are cases in which it is not obvious that one of these relations does obtain; these are referred to as “hard cases of comparison”. These hard cases of comparison become interesting, since if it (...) not the case that the standard three value relations obtains in these cases then the three standard relations do not exhaust the possibility of instantiated value relations. It is argued that for some of the hard cases of comparison, the standard relations determinately obtain. For some it is indeterminate, due to vagueness, which of the three relations obtains, but it is determinate that one of them obtains. Thereafter it is argued that the influential Collapsing Argument fails in ruling out other accounts of the hard cases of comparison. Since one cannot depend on the Collapsing Argument in order to conclude that all items are related by the standard three relations, the investigation continues. It is argued that none of the hard cases of comparison are cases of incomparability. Furthermore, none of them are cases of a fourth basic positive value relation such as “parity”. Consequently, for all the hard cases of comparison one of the standard value relations holds, although sometimes we do not know which one and sometimes it is indeterminate which one holds. This means that there is no reason to assume that one of the standard three value relations does not hold between items we are comparing. This is followed by a brief discussion about the normative consequences of this result. The thesis ends with four different appendices in which related topics are discussed. (shrink)

In 1997 John Broome presented the Collapsing Argument that was meant to establish that non-conventional comparative relations cannot exist. Broome's argument has faced a lot of scrutiny and a certain type of counterexample has been used to undermine it. Most of the counterexamples focus on the Collapsing Principle which plays a central role in Broome's argument. In this article we will take a closer look at the most common type of counterexample and propose how to adjust the Collapsing Principle in (...) order to avoid objections based on these counterexamples. We argue that a weaker version of the Collapsing Principle is not susceptible to the classical counterexamples. Furthermore, after an explorative discussion about the intuitions behind the original principle, we show that this weaker formulation is at least as intuitive as the principle suggested by Broome. (shrink)

Incommensurability is the impossibility to determine how two options relate to each other in terms of conventional comparative relations. This book features new research on incommensurability from philosophers who have shaped the field into what it is today, including John Broome, Ruth Chang and Wlodek Rabinowicz. The book covers four aspects relating to incommensurability. In the first part, the contributors synthesize research on the competing views of how to best explain incommensurability. Part II illustrates how incommensurability can help us deal (...) with seemingly insurmountable problems in ethical theory and population ethics. The contributors address the Repugnant Conclusion, the Mere Addition Paradox and so-called Spectrum Arguments. The chapters in Part III outline and summarize problems caused by incommensurability for decision theory. Finally, Part IV tackles topics related to risk, uncertainty and incommensurability. Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk, and Decision-Making will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in ethical theory, decision theory, action theory, and philosophy of economics. (shrink)

Recently a lot has been written on the topic of value incomparability. While there is disagreement on how we are to understand incomparability, most seem to accept Ruth Chang's claim that all comparisons must proceed in some specific respect. Call this the Requirement for Specification. Interestingly, even though most seem to accept this requirement, next to nothing has been written on it. In this paper I focus on the requirement and discuss two different but related topics. First, an important observation (...) is made: as it turns out, the requirement plays an important explanatory role for the thesis that incomparability is to be understood in terms of vagueness. Second, I consider what is entailed by the Requirement for Specification. There is a general worry that the requirement entails that there is no such thing as goodness simpliciter. The line of thought is that if we always must specify in which way something is e.g., better than something else, then perhaps things cannot be better simpliciter. And if there is no such thing as betterness-simpliciter, then can there be such a thing as goodness simpliciter? Finally, I consider how an answer to this question affects the view that incomparability is vagueness. (shrink)

This essay explores the implications of historicising John Rawls’s theory of justice. While historical research on Rawls and his social context has provided valuable insights, some scholars argue that historicising carries significant philosophical consequences. This paper critically examines one such argument that contends that historicising Rawls’s theory demonstrates its contextual nature, undermines its diagnostic powers, and leads to its complete dissolution. We offer a reconstruction of this argument and show that it fails. Further, while we argue that this argument fails, (...) we go on to suggest that historical evidence may contribute to a defensive argument against appeals to expert opinion. By examining the appropriate relationship between historical research and philosophy, this essay contributes to the evaluation of the historicist critique and offers insights into the broader role of historical research in philosophical discourse. (shrink)

According to John Rawls’s famous Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justifiable to all citizens. The currently dominant interpretation of what is justifiable to persons in this sense is an internalist one. On this view, what is justifiable to persons depends on their beliefs and commitments. In this paper I challenge this reading of Rawls’s principle, and instead suggest that it is most plausibly interpreted in externalist terms. On this alternative view, (...) what is justifiable to persons is not in any way dependent on, or relativized to, their beliefs and commitments. Instead, what is justifiable to all in the relevant sense is what all could accept as free and equal. I defend this reinterpretation of the view by showing how it is supported by Rawls’s account of the freedom and equality of persons. In addition, a considerable advantage of this suggestion is that it allows for an inclusive account of to whom the exercise of political power must be made justifiable. (shrink)

Violent video games (VVGs) are a source of serious and continuing controversy. They are not unique in this respect, though. Other entertainment products have been criticized on moral grounds, from pornography to heavy metal, horror films, and Harry Potter books. Some of these controversies have fizzled out over time and have come to be viewed as cases of moral panic. Others, including moral objections to VVGs, have persisted. The aim of this paper is to determine which, if any, of the (...) concerns raised about VVGs are legitimate. We argue that common moral objections to VVGs are unsuccessful, but that a plausible critique can be developed that captures the insights of these objections while avoiding their pitfalls. Our view suggests that the moral badness of a game depends on how well its internal logic expresses or encourages the players’ objectionable attitudes. This allows us to recognize that some games are morally worse than others—and that it can be morally wrong to design and play some VVGs—but that the moral badness of these games is not necessarily dependent on how violent they are. (shrink)

Despite remarkable empirical and methodological advances, our theoretical understanding of the evolutionary processes that made us human remains fragmented and contentious. Here, we make the radical proposition that the cultural communities within which Homo emerged may be understood as a novel exotic form of organism. The argument begins from a deep congruence between robust features of Pan community life cycles and protocell models of the origins of life. We argue that if a cultural tradition, meeting certain requirements, arises in the (...) context of such a “social protocell,” the outcome will be an evolutionary transition in individuality whereby traditions and hominins coalesce into a macroscopic bio-socio-technical system, with an organismal organization that is culturally inherited through irreversible fission events on the community level. We refer to the resulting hypothetical evolutionary individual as a “sociont.” The social protocell provides a preadapted source of alignment of fitness interests that addresses a number of open questions about the origins of shared adaptive cultural organization, and the derived genetic adaptations that support them. Also, social cooperation between hominins is no longer in exclusive focus since cooperation among traditions becomes salient in this model. This provides novel avenues for explanation. We go on to hypothesize that the fate of the hominin in such a setting would be mutualistic coadaptation into a part-whole relation with the sociont, and we propose that the unusual suite of derived features in Homo is consistent with this hypothesis. (shrink)

According to a standard account of incomparability, two value bearers are incomparable if it is false that there holds a positive value relation between them. Due to the vagueness of the comparative predicates it may also be indeterminate as to which relation that holds - for each relation it is neither true nor false that it holds. John Broome has argued that indeterminacy cannot coexist with incomparability and since there seems to exist indeterminacy there cannot exist incomparability. At the core (...) of his argument lies the collapsing principle. There are several arguments against this principle; Erik Carlson has advanced most of these. In this paper two strategies in dealing with these arguments are discussed. One strategy is to deny the existence of a certain kind of properties; another strategy that has been advanced by Christian Constantinescu is to restrict the collapsing principle. In the paper it is argued that the first of these strategies is the most promising strategy. A novel argument in favour of this strategy is presented and several objections to the strategy are rebutted. Finally it is concluded that, even though this strategy deals with most objections, without a better argument in favour of the principle the debate seems to run into a stalemate. (shrink)

This article discusses the phenomenon of normative resilience, with a focus on evaluative resilience. An object can become more or less valuable. In addition to this change in an object's value, the object's value can become more or less resilient. If it is less resilient, it cannot withstand as much evaluative change without its degree of value changing, as compared to an object with more resilient value. The article consists of three parts. First, examples of resilience are presented to give (...) the reader an intuitive understanding of the phenomenon, Second, the Fitting Attitudes Analysis of value is invoked to provide a formal account of evaluative resilience. Third, the theoretical and practical advantages of acknowledging the existence of evaluative resilience are brought to light. (shrink)

Drawing on John Dewey and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein, this book employs philosophy as a conceptual resource to develop new methodological and analytical tools for conducting in situ empirical investigations. Chapter one explores the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Dewey. Chapter two exposits Deweyan ideas of embodiment, the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, and aesthetically expressive meaning underdeveloped in Wittgenstein. Chapter three introduces the method of practical epistemological analysis and a model of situated epistemic relations to investigate the learning of body (...) techniques in dinghy sailing. The concluding chapter introduces a model of situated artistic relations to investigate the learning of artistic techniques of self-expression in the Swedish sloyd classroom. (shrink)

This volume outlines a Deleuzian approach to analyzing science, culture and politics.

According to Ruth Chang the three standard positive value relations: “better than”, “worse than” and “equally good” do not fully exhaust the conceptual space for positive value relations. According to her, there is room for a fourth positive value relation, which she calls “parity”. Her argument for parity comes in three parts. First, she argues that there are items that are not related by the standard three value relations. Second, that these items are not incomparable, and third, that the phenomena (...) she has focused on are not due to the vagueness of the comparative predicates. This paper focuses on the second part of the argument and an objection is presented. By assuming the Small Unidimensional Difference Principle, which is a key premise for the second part of the argument, Chang’s argument could be accused of begging the question. More so, by assuming this principle, the space for incomparability gets severely limited. If these worries are justified, then Chang’s argument for parity as a fourth form of comparability is unsuccessful. (shrink)

. Undoubtedly, multinational corporations must play a significant role in the advancement of global ecological ethics. Our research offers a glimpse into the process of how goals of ecological sustainability in one multinational corporation can trickle down through the organization via the sustainability support behaviors of supervisors. We asked the question “How do supervisors in a multinational corporation internalize their corporation’s commitment to ecological sustainability and, in turn, behave in ways that convey this commitment to their subordinates?” In response, we (...) created a theoretical framework for supervisor sustainability support behavior based on Stern et al., Human Ecology Review 6(2), 81-97 (1999) value-belief-norm (VBN) theory. We then tested our framework by performing a survey-based field study of supervisors in a multinational pharmaceutical company that has publicly professed a goal of ecological sustainability. (shrink)

A longitudinal study of 308 white -collar U.S. employees revealed that feelings of hope and gratitude increase concern for corporate social responsibility. In particular, employees with stronger hope and gratitude were found to have a greater sense of responsibility toward employee and societal issues; interestingly, employee hope and gratitude did not affect sense of responsibility toward economic and safety/quality issues. These findings offer an extension of research by Giacalone, Paul, and Jurkiewicz.

Intelligence on mass media audiences was founded on representative statistical samples, analysed by statisticians at the market departments of media corporations. The techniques for aggregating user data in the age of pervasive and ubiquitous personal media build on large aggregates of information analysed by algorithms that transform data into commodities. While the former technologies were built on socio-economic variables such as age, gender, ethnicity, education, media preferences, Big Data technologies register consumer choice, geographical position, web movement, and behavioural information in (...) technologically complex ways that for most lay people are too abstract to appreciate the full consequences of. The data mined for pattern recognition privileges relational rather than demographic qualities. We argue that the agency of interpretation at the bottom of market decisions within media companies nevertheless introduces a ‘heuristics of the algorithm’, where the data inevitably becomes translated into social categories. In the paper we argue that although the promise of algorithmically generated data is often implemented in automated systems where human agency gets increasingly distanced from the data collected, one can observe a felt need among media users and among industry actors to ‘translate back’ the algorithmically produced relational statistics into ‘traditional’ social parameters. The tenacious social structures within the advertising industries work against the techno-economically driven tendencies within the Big Data economy. (shrink)

In this article, Ingrid Andersson discusses the decolonial philosophy of Sylvia Wynter, with a special focus on addressing her concepts of the hybrid human and origin stories. Andersson shows how Wynter's philosophizing about the being of being human is premised on an entanglement of nature and culture that is on par with the posthuman understanding of the ontological inseparability of matter and discourse. She goes on to interrogate some productive tensions between Wynter's decolonial philosophy and posthumanism by pointing (...) out how Wynter's hybrid human formulates an understanding of human nature that is different in itself and not solely in relation to other nonhuman entities. In the final part of the article, she proposes how we, with Wynter, can devise a pedagogical approach that seeks to counteract harmful taxonomizing practices. (shrink)

There are two main ways of understanding the function of surrogate decision making in a legal context: the Best Interests Standard and the Substituted Judgment Standard. First, we will argue that the Best Interests Standard is difficult to apply to unconscious patients. Application is difficult regardless of whether they have ever been conscious. Second, we will argue that if we accept the least problematic explanation of how unconscious patients can have interests, we are also obliged to accept that the Substituted (...) Judgment Standard can be coherently applied to patients who have never been conscious at the same extent as the Best Interests Standard. We then argue that acknowledging this result is important in order to show patients respect. (shrink)

Background: Informal coercion, that is, situations where caregivers use subtle coercive measures to impose their will on patients, is common in adult psychiatric inpatient care. It has been described as ‘a necessary evil’, confronting nurses with an ethical dilemma where they need to balance between a wish to do good, and the risk of violating patients’ dignity and autonomy. Aim: To describe nurses’ experiences of being involved in informal coercion in adult psychiatric inpatient care. Research design: The study has a (...) qualitative, inductive design. Participants and research context: Semi-structured interviews with 10 Swedish psychiatric nurses were analysed with qualitative content analysis. Ethical considerations: The study was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. In line with the Swedish Ethical Review Act, it was also subject to ethical procedures at the university. Findings: Four domains comprise informal coercion as a process over time. These domains contain 11 categories focusing on different experiences involved in the process: Striving to connect, involving others, adjusting to the caring culture, dealing with laws, justifying coercion, waiting for the patient, persuading the patient, negotiating with the patient, using professional power, scrutinizing one’s actions and learning together. Discussion: Informal coercion is associated with moral stress as nurses might find themselves torn between a wish to do good for the patient, general practices and ‘house rules’ in the caring culture. In addition, nurses need to be aware of the asymmetry of the caring relationship, in order to avoid compliance becoming a consequence of patients subordinating to nurse power, rather than a result of mutual understanding. Reflections are thus necessary through the process to promote mutual learning and to avoid violations of patients’ dignity and autonomy. Conclusion: If there is a need for coercion, that is, if the coercion is found to be an ‘unpleasant good’, rather than ‘necessary evil’ considering the consequences for the patient, it should be subject to reflecting and learning together with the patient. (shrink)

In "Criticism and the History of Science" Karl Popper's falsificationist conception of science is developed and defended against criticisms raised by Thomas ...