Telling stories after a loved one’s death helps surviving family members to find meaning in the experience and share perceptions about whether the death was consistent with the deceased person’s values and preferences. Opportunities for physicians to evaluate the experience of a patient’s death and to expose the ethical concerns that care for the dying often raises are rare. Narrative medicine is a theoretical perspective that provides tools to extend the benefits of storytelling and narrative sense–making to physicians. This case (...) study describes narrative writing workshops attended by physicians who care for dying patients. The narratives created revealed the physicians’ concerns about ethics and their emotional connection with patients. This case study demonstrates that even one–time reflective writing workshops might create important opportunities for physicians to evaluate their experiences with dying patients and families. (shrink)

This article discusses the ways in which the ambiguous concept of equality has been used in the British debate regarding the financing of political election campaigns. It identifies three concepts of equality commonly used in that debate: ‘equality of arms’ between political parties, ‘equality of influence’ between citizens, and ‘equality of access’ to the so‐called ‘marketplace of ideas’. The article than discusses each of these concepts of equality in greater detail, and, in doing so, identifies four broader principles underlying the (...) use of these concepts in the election financing debate. The article concludes that, although the language of equality is used often and with great effect in the election financing debate, the concepts of equality being invoked are rarely independently valuable concepts. Instead, the concepts of equality used are valued in the election financing debate because they promote one of the four underlying principles. These principles themselves, however, involve complex questions of democracy and distributional fairness, and are not uncontroversial. I thus suggest that future debates regarding election financing could be enhanced by a more direct discussion of the merits of these underlying principles. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 39.2 (2005) 36-57 [Access article in PDF] "Being With": The Resonant Legacy of Childhood's Creative Aesthetic Lori A. Custodero Teachers College, Columbia University Introduction...enrichment of the present for its own sake is the just heritage of childhood....1In this paper, the qualities of artistic pursuit exemplified in the musical play of children and the compositional processes of adults provide a context for exploring how (...) "being with" influences teaching and learning. Specifically I propose that "being with" music generates a sense of the aesthetic as we both transform musical materials — timbres, pitches, rhythms, phrases, harmonies — and are transformed by our experiences with them, and that "being with" others as we partake in musical activity often broadens and deepens that experience. In many ways, this is an exploration into why childhood matters, how it functions as a mirror for our adult lives as we experience and revel in the seemingly miraculous moments of aesthetic insight, where the familiar is welcomed with fresh perception and the addition of novelty is greeted as the solution to a previously unfathomable problem. It is also about why children matter, as our responses to their ways of being connect and transform us as adults. In this piece, recorded observations of children's musicality are juxtaposed with first-person accounts of adults' creative processes, revealing contributions to our understanding of artistry-in-action as it is manifested in both the musical and the pedagogical. The Aesthetic in Childhood and Adulthood To be "in the moment" is to encounter the aesthetic — fully engaged in an activity for which one's individual contributions are perceived as vital, aware of surprise relationships between seemingly disparate phenomena, and enveloped by sensory messages of color, sound, and movement meeting personal criteria for beauty. Such experiences exemplify features of artistry, an approach defined by openness to possibility and orientation toward discovery, where cues emanating from involvement in activity are clearly interpreted and utilized, and reflection is an ongoing process informing action. Characterized by a sense of wonder and ability to imagine and invent, the creative worlds of young children have provided a source of artistic genesis cited by composers, performers, psychologists, and educators.2Edith Cobb's thoughtful, groundbreaking account of the relationship between childhood and artistry, The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood, was introduced by Margaret Mead, who highlighted the work's thesis: "that in the imaginative experiences of childhood could be found the essential kernels of the highest forms of human thought."3 The legacy of childhood is universal to our existence; in acknowledging its contributions to ontological and cultural artistry, we can both connect personal histories across the [End Page 36] lifespan and identify characteristic trends across a spectrum of aesthetic rendering.4One trait common to both the child and the creative adult is a focused attentiveness to perceived affordances, that is, materials and human resources accessible in the environment. Acting upon and with these resources,children and artists become aesthetic agents as sensitivity to both experience and milieu combine to produce relevant and innovative outcomes.5 These two interactive dimensions have been described in interviews with composers I have interviewed as "being with the moment" and "being with yourself and at the same time with another" and are operating in the musical play of children, as noted in this description recorded by a mother/student: On Thanksgiving Day, we had a family gathering of sixteen people, five of whom are under the age of eight years. Three-year-old Louise is thrilled to be with her female cousins, who all dress up in ballet-type frilly costumes in order to put on a "show" for the family. Cousin Lily, now eight years old, assumes the role of pianist, while Louise, and five-year-old cousin Amy creatively dance to Lily's improvised accompaniment. Their movements are directly related to Lily's playing, in her fluidity and well as "jumps!" Here, family members serve as catalysts for creative activity — costumes and musical instruments in the environment... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionLori A. Custodero and Anna NeumannIn this symposium, three scholars present the genesis, meaning, and artfulness of creative work and its realization as aesthetic experience within three educational fields. Lori A. Custodero, working out of music education, provides a perspective emanating from an aesthetic of childhood wonder and playfulness; David T. Hansen, writing out of philosophy of education, discusses how being fully present in the teaching moment leads (...) to meaningful experience; and Anna Neumann, who writes out of the field of higher education studies, represents scholars as engaged in intellectual pursuits, often framed aesthetically, and as struggling to hold on to precious time for creation. Aware of the inherent tensions in learning environments from child care centers to graduate schools, we address ways in which our research has revealed people's sustained pursuit of imagined possibilities, oftentimes amidst perceived impediments.Creative work involves imagining possibilities whereby individuals, alone and together, pose personally relevant questions and pursue fluent pathways of inquiry within the shared meanings of cultural context. At its finest, such work is artful, simultaneously responding to and emanating from immediate circumstance and past experience. It is malleable and vulnerable and compelling, fusing familiar images and surprising perceptions into new "equilibria... stable, even though moving" whereby "changes interlock and sustain one another."1 As scholars and teachers committed to learning, we strive to create and discern meaning between established understandings and emerging ideas and images. As we dance between reception and action, between insight and "onsight,"2 fully attentive to the perceived potentials in our work, we move toward synchrony, experiencing the aesthetic. The realizations that arise from experiences such as these — new or newly reconfigured words, sounds, images, movement, and ideas — express new balances of sense and feeling and, sometimes, beauty. Whether in the shared, artfully expressive vocalizations between the newborn infant and mother or in the scientist's finessing patience with elegant mathematical imagery, creative work invites a drawing together of what we know and what we struggle to know. Over time, the interplay of this work and its realization, [End Page 33] what Dewey refers to as "movement and culmination,"3 creates a momentum that serves to define lives as aesthetic.We have created this symposium as a space for considering the meanings of the aesthetic in lives — from its earliest instantiations in the experiences of infants and young children, to its developed expression in the professional (in this case, intellectual) efforts of adults pursuing scholarly careers, to its representation in teaching as intergenerational fusions of knowledge, learning, and lives. We see the aesthetic as both native and learned; as individually held and formed and felt, and as collectively created and voiced, the product of lives in intersection; as marking bounded moments in time (those instants of compelling "present-ness") and as spreading through years, well beyond bounded present-ness, perhaps as memory. Yet while striving to define the aesthetic in lives, we also strive to understand lives, individually and interactively, as lodgings for the aesthetic, as locations that give shape, form, and voice to beauty and insight, to creativity and learning. As we explore the lives in which the aesthetic finds its home, and within which it forms, we wonder about the extent to which the aesthetic may, in its turn, illuminate the strivings of those lives, including human desires to create, know, learn, understand, sense. We are then collectively concerned with the meanings of the aesthetic in lives and about the lives themselves as "moving spaces" within which the aesthetic can grow.We pursue this theme, centered on the power of the aesthetic to illuminate human lives, out of a realization that current understandings of what it means to be human — and especially what it means to learn and create — have been framed within the rubrics of the social sciences, certainly in productive ways. And yet we suggest that the artful, though powerful in its abilities to voice emotion and beauty, has not been employed as intensively as it might in efforts to understand what it means to create and learn as virtues of human existence, as perhaps the ultimate of human strivings. We hope that these symposium papers will help invigorate such... (shrink)

Recent studies suggest that terminally ill African Americans’ care is generally more expensive and of lower quality than that of comparable non-Hispanic white patients. Scholars argue that increasing hospice enrollment among African Americans will help improve end-of-life care for this population, yet few studies have examined the experiences of African American patients and their loved ones after accessing hospice care. In this article, we explore how African American patients and lay caregivers evaluated their hospice experiences. Drawing from 39 in-depth interviews (...) with 26 participants, we use a modified version of Bute and Jensen’s (2011) narrative typology to organize patients’ and caregivers’ stories into three general categories: narratives of satisfaction, narratives of regret, and narratives of ambivalence. Building from these categories, we discuss the implications of this research for understanding hospice experiences, promoting hospice access, and improving end-of-life care for marginalized populations. (shrink)

Spirituality and storytelling can be resources in aging successfully and in dying well given the constraints of modern day Western culture. This paper explores the relationship of aging to time and the dynamic process of the life course and discusses issues related to confronting mortality, including suffering, finitude, spirituality, and spiritual closure in regard to death. And, finally, the role of narrative in this process is taken up.

Fear generalisation, a process by which conditioned fear spreads to similar but innocuous stimuli, is key in understanding why some individuals feel unsafe in objectively non-threatening situations. Both trait neuroticism and lack of predictability about the likelihood of feared consequences are associated with negative affect in the face of ambiguity and may increase the degree to which fear generalises. Undergraduates with varying degrees of neuroticism were randomised to either high- or low-instructional predictability conditions prior to fear acquisition. A fear generalisation (...) test measured risk ratings and attentional bias on a modified dot-probe paradigm. Among individuals with higher neuroticism, providing instructional predictability did not reduce fear; these individuals reported higher risk and increased attentional bias toward ambiguous stimuli. Overall, for individuals with higher neuroticism, predictability information hurt rather than helped interpretation of ambiguous stimuli, challenging a common conceptualisation of predictability as a factor that reduces fear. (shrink)

There is growing interest in tissue procurement for cancer research through autopsy. Establishing an autopsy/tissue donation programme for breast cancer research within an academic medical centre i...

Adolescence is an important developmental period marked by a transition from primarily parental-controlled eating to self-directed and peer-influenced eating. During this period, adolescents gain autonomy over their individual food choices and eating behavior in general. While parent-feeding practices have been shown to influence eating behaviors in children, little is known about how these relationships track across adolescent development as autonomy expands. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify factors that impact food decisions and eating autonomy among adolescents. Using (...) the food choice process model as a guide, four focus groups were conducted with 34 adolescents. Focus group discussion was semi-structured, asking teens about influences on their food choices across different food environments, their involvement with food purchasing and preparation, and perceived control over food their choices. Focus group transcripts were analyzed using deductive and inductive code creation and thematic analysis. This study found six leading influences on adolescents' food choices and identified additional factors with prominence within specific environmental contexts. This study distinguished a broader spectrum of factors influencing adolescent food choice that extend beyond “convenience” and “taste” which have previously been identified as significant contributors. The degree of control that teens reported differed by eating location, occasion, and social context. Finally, adolescents demonstrated various levels of engagement in behaviors related to their eating autonomy. Identifying the emergent themes related to adolescent autonomy was the first step toward the goal of developing a scale to evaluate adolescent eating autonomy. (shrink)

Pleiotropically acting eukaryotic corepressors such as retinoblastoma and SIN3 have been found to physically interact with many widely expressed “housekeeping” genes. Evidence suggests that their roles at these loci are not to provide binary on/off switches, as is observed at many highly cell‐type specific genes, but rather to serve as governors, directly modulating expression within certain bounds, while not shutting down gene expression. This sort of regulation is challenging to study, as the differential expression levels can be small. We hypothesize (...) that depending on context, corepressors mediate “soft repression,” attenuating expression in a less dramatic but physiologically appropriate manner. Emerging data indicate that such regulation is a pervasive characteristic of most eukaryotic systems, and may reflect the mechanistic differences between repressor action at promoter and enhancer locations. Soft repression may represent an essential component of the cybernetic systems underlying metabolic adaptations, enabling modest but critical adjustments on a continual basis. (shrink)

How educators and students process and respond to emotions can either enhance or impede the development of the whole child. Social and emotional learning (SEL) refers to the processes of developing social and emotional competencies, which depend on individuals’ capacity to recognize, understand, and manage emotions (i.e., emotional intelligence or EI). Consensus across disciplines about the importance of EI highlights the need to advance the science of how to teach SEL. RULER, an evidence-based approach to teaching EI, provides an educational (...) framework that encompasses a set of practices for comprehensive SEL integration across a school or district. In this article, we describe RULER, explain how it teaches EI, and summarize evidence of its effectiveness. (shrink)

Recent debates between modernists and postmodernists have shaken the foundations of modern social science. The epistemological assumptions of long-established procedures for constructing and validating knowledge claims have been called into question. This article discusses how two major contributors to the “new feminist epistemologies”—Dorothy Smith and Patricia Hill Collins—selectively integrate premises of modernist and postmodernist thought into their standpoint approaches. However, the particular premises they select result in significant ontological and epistemological differences between their works. These differences reflect major controversies over (...) materialism versus idealism, as well as essentialism versus diversity. As such, these different standpoints have important implications for feminist scholarship and political practice. (shrink)

AbstractBackgroundEthical challenges constitute an inseparable part of daily decision-making processes in all areas of healthcare. In prehospital emergency medicine, decision-making commonly takes place in everyday life, under time pressure, with limited information about a patient and with few possibilities of consultation with colleagues. This paper explores the ethical challenges experienced by prehospital emergency personnel. MethodsThe study was grounded in the tradition of action research related to interventions in health care. Ethical challenges were explored in three focus groups, each attended by (...) emergency medical technicians, paramedics, and prehospital anaesthesiologists. The participants, 15 in total, were recruited through an internal information network of the emergency services. Focus groups were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim.ResultsThe participants described ethical challenges arising when clinical guidelines, legal requirements, and clinicians’ professional and personal value systems conflicted and complicated decision-making processes. The challenges centred around treatment at the end of life, intoxicated and non-compliant patients, children as patients—and their guardians, and the collaboration with relatives in various capacities. Other challenges concerned guarding the safety of oneself, colleagues and bystanders, prioritising scarce resources, and staying loyal to colleagues with different value systems. Finally, challenges arose when summoned to situations where other professionals had failed to make a decision or take action when attending to patients whose legitimate needs were not met by the appropriate medical or social services, and when working alongside representatives of authorities with different roles, responsibilities and tasks.ConclusionFrom the perspective of the prehospital emergency personnel, ethical challenges arise in three interrelated contexts: when caring for patients, in the prehospital emergency unit, and during external collaboration. Value conflicts may be identified within these contexts as well as across them. A proposed model of analysis integrating the above contexts can assist in shedding light on ethical challenges and value conflicts in other health care settings. The model emphasises that ethical challenges are experienced from a particular professional perspective, in the context of the task at hand, and in a particular, the organisational setting that includes work schedules, medical guidelines, legal requirements, as well as professional and personal value systems. (shrink)

Unconsented intimate exams on men and women are known to occur for training purposes and diagnostic reasons, mostly during gynecological surgeries but also during prostate examinations and abdominal surgeries. UIEs most often occur on anesthetized patients but have also been reported on conscious patients. Over the last 30 years, several parties—both within and external to medicine—have increasingly voiced opposition to these exams. Arguments from medical associations, legal scholars, ethicists, nurses, and some physicians have not compelled meaningful institutional change. Opposition is (...) escalating in the form of legislative bans and whistleblower reports. Aspiring to professional and scientific detachment, institutional consent policies make no distinction between intimate exams and exams on any other body part, but patients do not think of their intimate regions in a detached or neutral way and believe intimate exams call for special protections. UIEs are found to contribute to moral erosion and moral distress of medical students and compromise the sacred trust between the medical community and the general public. This paper refutes the main arguments in favor of the status quo, identifies a series of harms related to continuing the current practice, and proposes an explicit consent policy for intimate exams along with specific changes to medical school curriculum and institutional culture. Because patients are the rights-holders of their bodies, consent practices should reflect and uphold patient values which call for explicit consent for intimate exams. (shrink)

: Because an influenza pandemic would create the most serious hardships for those who already face most serious hardships, countries should take special measures to mitigate the effect of a pandemic on existing social inequalities. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that anybody is thinking about that.

The approach of responsible research and innovation has been proposed to support the introduction of technologies that touch upon socially sensitive issues. RRI is intended to help designers and manufacturers of new technologies identify and accommodate public concerns when developing a new technology by engaging with a wide range of relevant actors in an interactive, transparent process. However what this approach amounts to exactly remains elusive as of yet, i.e. it is unclear what its contribution to the societal embedding of (...) new technologies should consists of exactly. The transition to a sustainable bio-economy that uses biomass as its main resource is a complicated trajectory involving many actors and touching upon societally sensitive issues such as the use of genetic modification. In this paper we pose the question in what way RRI can stimulate the development and diffusion of a sustainable bio-economy in The Netherlands and Europe. We claim that for the further development and diffusion of the bio-economy, trust among actors in the relevant value-chain is a prerequisite. RRI can play a pivotal part in the bio-economy by providing conditions for trustworthiness of actors and by enhancing trusting relationships. This can be achieved through instruments such as personal relationships, third person guarantors, institutions and the communication of values. From the application of RRI to the context of the bio-economy, lessons can be drawn for other socially intricate technological trajectories. (shrink)

Recent findings emphasize the complexity, both genetic and functional, of the manifold genes and mutations causing inherited retinal degeneration in humans. Knowledge of the genetic bases of these diseases can contribute to design of rational therapy, as well as elucidating the function of each gene product in normal visual processes.

Diseases causing inherited retinal degeneration in humans, such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular dystrophy, are genetically heterogeneous and clinically diverse. More than 40 genes causing retinal degeneration have been mapped to specific chromosomal sites; of these, at least 10 have been cloned and characterized. Mutations in two proteins, rhodopsin and peripherin/RDS, account for approximately 35% of all cases of autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa and a lesser fraction of other retinal conditions. This target article reviews the genes and mutations causing retinal (...) degeneration and proposes mechanisms whereby specific mutations lead to particular clinical consequences, that is, the relationship between genotype and phenotype. Retinitis pigmentosa and macular dystrophy are genetically heterogeneous diseases that cause retinal degeneration in humans and often result in severe visual impairment or blindness. Although many of the genes causing these diseases have not been identified, three photoreceptor-specific proteins have been implicated: rhodopsin, peripherin/RDS, and the P-subunit of rod phosphodiesterase. Mutations in the genes for these three proteins can cause either dominant retinitis pigmentosa, recessive retinitis pigmentosa, dominant congenital stationary night blindness, or dominant macular degeneration. Why this multiplicity of clinical phenotypes? Our target article summarizes the genetic and biochemical background to this question and proposes a number of possible explanations. Discussion focuses mainly on 73 distinct disease-causing mutations of rhodopsin. We feel that rhodopsin and other photoreceptor proteins can serve as model systems for unraveling the connection between genotype and phenotype, not only for inherited retinal diseases but for other degenerative disorders as well. (shrink)

Part I Philosophic Traditions Introduction to Part I 3 1 Philosophy and the Afro-American Experience 7 CORNEL WEST 2 African-American Existential Philosophy 33 LEWIS R. GORDON 3 African-American Philosophy: A Caribbean Perspective 48 PAGET HENRY 4 Modernisms in Black 67 FRANK M. KIRKLAND 5 The Crisis of the Black Intellectual 87 HORTENSE J. SPILLERS Part II The Moral and Political Legacy of Slavery Introduction to Part II 107 6 Kant and Knowledge of Disappearing Expression 110 RONALD A. T. JUDY 7 (...) Social Contract Theory, Slavery, and the Antebellum Courts 125 ANITA L. ALLEN AND THADDEUS POPE 8 The Morality of Reparations II 134 BERNARD R. BOXILL Part III Africa and Diaspora Thought Introduction to Part III 151 9 “Afrocentricity‘: Critical Considerations 155 LUCIUS T. OUTLAW, JR. 10 African Retentions 168 TOMMY L. LOTT 11 African Philosophy at the Turn of the Century 190 ALBERT G. MOSLEY Part IV Gender, Race, and Racism Introduction to Part IV 199 12 Some Group Matters: Intersectionality, Situated Standpoints, and Black Feminist Thought 205 PATRICIA HILL COLLINS 13 Radicalizing Feminisms from “The Movement Era‘ 230 JOY A. JAMES 14 Philosophy and Racial Paradigms 239 NAOMI ZACK 15 Racial Classification and Public Policy 255 DAVID THEO GOLDBERG 16 White Supremacy 269 CHARLES W. MILLS Part V Legal and Social Philosophy Introduction to Part V 285 17 Self-Respect, Fairness, and Living Morally 293 LAURENCE M. THOMAS 18 The Legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson 306 MICHELE MOODY-ADAMS 19 Some Reflections on the Brown Decision and Its Aftermath 313 HOWARD McGARY 20 Contesting the Ambivalence and Hostility to Affirmative Action within the Black Community 324 LUKE C. HARRIS 21 Subsistence Welfare Benefits as Property Interests: Legal Theories and Moral Considerations 333 RUDOLPH V. VANTERPOOL 22 Racism and Health Care: A Medical Ethics Issue 349 ANNETTE DULA 23 Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition 360 ANGELA Y. DAVIS Part VI Aesthetic and Cultural Values Introduction to Part VI 373 24 The Harlem Renaissance and Philosophy 381 LEONARD HARRIS 25 Critical Theory, Aesthetics, and Black Modernity 386 LORENZO C. SIMPSON 26 Black Cinema and Aesthetics 399 CLYDE R. TAYLOR 27 Thanatic Pornography, Interracial Rape, and the Ku Klux Klan 407 T. DENEAN SHARPLEY-WHITING 28 Lynching and Burning Rituals in African-American Literature 413 TRUDIER HARRIS-LOPEZ 29 Rap as Art and Philosophy 419 RICHARD SHUSTERMAN 30 Microphone Commandos: Rap Music and Political Ideology 429 BILL E. LAWSON 31 Sports, Political Philosophy, and the African American 436 GERALD EARLY. (shrink)

An increasingly unbridgeable gap exists between the supply and demand of transplantable organs. Human embryonic stem cell technology could solve the organ shortage problem by restoring diseased or damaged tissue across a range of common conditions. However, such technology faces several largely ignored immunological challenges in delivering cell lines to large populations. We address some of these challenges and argue in favor of encouraging contribution or intentional creation of embryos from which widely immunocompatible stem cell lines could be derived. Further, (...) we argue that current immunological constraints in tissue transplantation demand the creation of a global stem cell bank, which may hold particular promise for minority populations and other sub-groups currently marginalized from organ procurement and allocation systems. Finally, we conclude by offering a number of practical and ethically oriented recommendations for constructing a human embryonic stem cell bank that we hope will help solve the ongoing organ shortage problem. (shrink)

Industry groups engage in venue shifting when they seek to overturn or alter restrictive regulations imposed by one political venue through another. A critical step in this process is resolving uncertainties surrounding the preference of the targeted venue and the nature of the relevant policy proposal. While existing studies emphasize a long-term trial-and-error process of policy learning, we focus on nascent industries and argue that ventures seek other information sources to resolve these uncertainties quickly. In particular, nascent industry groups are (...) likely to perceive that the targeted venue will support their policy proposal if the targeted venue is ideologically distant from the venue that has enacted the restrictive regulations, if the targeted venue has recently supported other nascent industry groups’ similar policy proposals, or if the industry groups themselves are more exposed to industry peers’ success in promoting the same policy proposal in other jurisdictions. Under these conditions, the industry groups invest more to influence the targeted venue in response to restrictive regulations enacted by other venues. We find support for our theory by examining how from 2013 to 2019 the small unmanned aircraft systems industry trade associations in the United States lobbied state governments to nullify local regulations. (shrink)

Two recent cases raise the question: Should the body be considered a form of property? Patients generally do not share in the profits derived from the applications of research on their body parts and products. Nor is their consent for research required so long as the body part is unidentified and is removed in the course of treatment. A market in body parts and products would require consent to all categories of research and ensure that patients are protected from coercion (...) and given the chance to be paid fairly for their contributions. Such a market might force us to rethink our policies prohibiting organ sales. Donors, recipients, and society will benefit from a market in body parts so long as owners—and no one else—retain control over their bodies. (shrink)

Acoustic speech output results from coordinated articulation of dozens of muscles, bones and cartilages of the vocal mechanism. While we commonly take the fluency and speed of our speech productions for granted, the neural mechanisms facilitating the requisite muscular control are not completely understood. Previous neuroimaging and electrophysiology studies of speech sensorimotor control has typically concentrated on speech sounds (i.e., phonemes, syllables and words) in isolation; sentence-length investigations have largely been used to inform coincident linguistic processing. In this study, we (...) examined the neural representations of segmental features (place and manner of articulation, and voicing status) in the context of fluent, continuous speech production. We used recordings from the cortical surface (electrocorticography (ECoG)) to simultaneously evaluate the spatial topography and temporal dynamics of the neural correlates of speech articulation that may mediate the generation of hypothesized gestural or articulatory scores. We found that the representation of place of articulation involved broad networks of brain regions during all phases of speech production: preparation, execution and monitoring. In contrast, manner of articulation and voicing status were dominated by auditory cortical responses after speech had been initiated. These results provide a new insight into the articulatory and auditory processes underlying speech production in terms of their motor requirements and acoustic correlates. (shrink)

A recent contribution to the moral decision-making literature argues that individuals' moral behavior is partially shaped by the amount of moral approbation they expect to receive from their moral referent groups (Jones and Ryan, 1997). This paper examines the nature and content of these previously underexamined sources of moral guidance. In an open-ended empirical test of undergraduate business students (n = 369), we found that 1) significant differences exist between individuals' moral referent groups and work-related referent groups, 2) females were (...) more likely than males to include themselves in their moral referent groups, 3) females were more likely than males to be designated as moral referents, and 4) females were more likely to be included in moral referent groups than in work-related referent groups. The paper also includes a general description of the membership of these business subjects' moral referent groups and presents a variety of suggestions for future research. (shrink)

This article focuses on the effectiveness of antihomophobia discourses and explores the process of teaching and learning about heteronormativity. The author offers an interrogation of the regulatory fictions within heteronormativity and frameworks of resistance and examines attempts to move beyond established views of sexual minority students and explore the ways in which queer research has, and continues to, bring a counternarrative to staid liberal notions of reform and the well-intentioned rhetoric of diversity and difference. This analysis raises critical questions about (...) the possibility of moving beyond standard antihomophobia curricula and questions approaches such as the one-off lecture format and other condensed discussions of heteronormativity and homophobia. (shrink)

In a series of influential essays, Sharon Street has argued, on the basis of Darwinian considerations, that normative realism leads to skepticism about moral knowledge. I argue that if we begin with the account of moral knowledge provided by Aristotelian naturalism, then we can offer a satisfactory realist response to Street’s argument, and that Aristotelian naturalism can avoid challenges facing other realist responses. I first explain Street’s evolutionary argument and three of the most prominent realist responses, and I identify challenges (...) to each of those responses. I then develop an Aristotelian response to Street. My core claim is this: Given Aristotelian naturalism’s account of moral truth and our knowledge of it, we can accept the influence of evolutionary processes on our moral beliefs, while also providing a principled, non-question-begging reason for thinking that those basic evaluative tendencies that evolution has left us with will push us toward, rather than away from, realist moral truths, so that our reliably getting things right does not require an unexplained and implausible coincidence. (shrink)

Personal Versus Political Affairs in Churchill's This is a Chair There are plenty of issues in the world to petition and fight for, yet each individual also has "battles" at home to contend with. Which is of more importance? We often separate the two indefinitely. In studying Caryl Churchill's work This Is a Chair, however, I would suggest the personal and political to be intimately related and possibly each even a causation of the other. To take care of one may (...) be eliminating the problem of the other as well. Might political problems stem from petty, personal qualms? Even more specifically might jeopardizing moral norms affect the greater social order? If so, this would be a revelation and fresh pursuit in solving many of the monumental political issues which are faced today. (shrink)

The point of departure in this article is the Danish debate about democracyin schools. This article presents a first step in a study of how the relationshipbetween democracy and education can be understood. A juxtaposition of thetwo concepts requires, first of all, an analysis of how the concept of democracyis used in the educational debate. In this article three models of democracy areapplied as an analytical framework: a liberal model (Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Rawls,Dworkin), a communitarian model (MacIntyre, Sandel, Nussbaum) and (...) a communicative/deliberativemodel (Walzer, Benhabib, Taylor, Habermas). Numerous contradictions and tensionsbetween concepts of democracy and education can be found in such a juxtaposition,depending on which conception of democracy one chooses to apply. In this articleI discuss which conception affords us the most meaningful concept of democraticteaching. As an introduction, a brief historical overview of the interplay betweendemocracy and education in Danish school is provided. (shrink)

This article examines the implications of the escalation in institutional inves power and heterogeneity for two dominant theories of corporate governanceagency theory and stakeholder theory. From this analysis, a new view of the agency relationship between institutional investors and their portfolio firms emerges, which recognizes the institutions’ market power, complex role as financial intermediaries, and possible involvement in simultaneous and opposing agency contracts. We also conclude that stakeholder theorists should reconsider these newly empowered shareholders’moral standing in relation to their portfolio (...) firms, and they should reexamine the identities and goals of these modern investors. To that end, we demonstrate that a novel, intragroup application of Mitchell, Agle, and Wood’s stakeholder framework to heterogeneous institutional investors illuminates their varying levels of stakeholder salience. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre's account of tradition-based rationality has been the subject of much discussion, as well as the object of some recent charges of inconsistency. The author considers arguments by Jennifer Herdt, Peter Mehl, and John Haldane which attempt to show that MacIntyre's account of rationality is, in some way, inconsistent. It is argued that the various charges of inconsistency brought against MacIntyre by these critics can be understood as variations on two general types of criticism: (1) that MacIntyre's account of (...) tradition-based rationality presents a picture of rationality with inconsistent internal elements, and (2) that MacIntyre, in the act of presenting his picture of rationality, makes the sort of claims to which his own account of rationality denies legitimacy, and thus MacIntyre's account is self-referentially incoherent. In response to criticisms of the first sort, it is argued that MacIntyre can further clarify or develop his position to take the current criticisms into account without altering the fundamental aspects of his picture of rationality. In response to the charge of self-referential incoherence, it is argued that the charge rests on a mistaken understanding of MacIntyre's position and of the nature of justification. In dealing with these arguments, the author hopes to not only vindicate MacIntyre's account of rationality against the charges of some of its recent critics, but also to shed some light on the nature of arguments both for and against relativism and historicism. (shrink)

What we call natural and what we call human are inseparable. We live one life. Why is Earth supposedly a mother? Cuomo suggested a historic association with the connection of woman and Earth as “providers of life, sustenance, and creativity.” Norgaard wrote that there is a “connection between women’s fertility and the fertility of the land.” Women are oriented toward relationships and interdependence whereas men approach problems with principles, reasoning, and judgments. Are these generalizations? Undoubtedly, yes. Yet it is sometimes (...) helpful to start with the general and then fuse new meanings and perspectives from such traditional beliefs. I believe the way forward.. (shrink)

In the unfolding debate on the prospects, challenges and viability of the imminent transition towards a ‘Bio-Based Society’ or ‘Bio-based Economy’—i.e. the replacement of fossil fuels by biomass as a basic resource for the production of energy, materials and food, ‘big’ concepts tend to play an important role, such as, for instance, ‘sustainability’, ‘global justice’ and ‘naturalness’. The latter concept is, perhaps, the most challenging and intriguing one. In public debates concerning biotechnological interactions with the natural environment, the use of (...) terms such as ‘nature’ and ‘naturalness’ is both inevitable and hazardous . Indeed, various conflicting interpretations of naturalness play a role on both sides of the current debate. This paper aims to analyse and critically assess the role of ‘nature-speak’ in the BBS transition. We will begin with a concise overview of the vicissitudes of the nature-concept so far, focussing on how modern science and technology have challenged and affected our understanding of what nature is. Subsequently, we describe how ‘naturalness’ functions in the unfolding BBS debate. Finally, we will focus on a particular case study, namely the production of rubber with the help of natural latex coming from dandelion plants rather than from rubber trees. On the one hand, this is presented as a more natural and nature-friendly way of producing rubber. On the other hand, it is a sophisticated process, involving high technology and primarily focussed on competitiveness on the global market. To what extent or in what sense can dandelion latex be regarded as more natural? And what can we learn from this case study when it comes to addressing naturalness in the broader conceptual and bio-political arena? (shrink)