I investigate patterns of usage of thanking formulae in the closing section of a corpus of 94 telephone calls made by tenants to a UK housing association. The data suggest that unilateral thanking is the norm when calls are institutionally and interactionally unmarked. In contrast, mutual thanking correlates mainly with the presence of interactional problems of various kinds, or, in a few cases, with features that are not problematic as such, but simply interactionally marked given the nature of the activity. (...) When initiated by agents rather than by callers, thanking is frequently hearable as conveying an apologetic stance. Participants thus seem to orient to different thanking patterns as devices which may be used either to mark the preceding interaction as an instance of ‘business-as-usual’ or, if such is not the case, to restore interpersonal harmony or index awareness that aspects of the preceding interaction have otherwise deviated from situational expectations. (shrink)

Ethics in caring is what we actually make explicit through our approach and how we invite the suffering patient into a caring relationship. This phenomenological study investigates suffering and health and how this presupposes a deeper reflection on ethics in caring. The aim was to try to discover, describe and understand how patients experience their life situation three years after undergoing surgery. The theoretical approach is based on central aspects of Eriksson’s caritative theory (i.e. the view of the person as (...) body, soul and spirit). The informants were four women and four men aged between 55 and 77 years. The empirical material revealed suffering that was connected with both illness and life. Suffering involves experiences of grief, loneliness and struggling. Health implies a yearning for something beyond the current life situation, a yearning to experience some meaning in life. This leads to an awareness of unplumbed possibilities. Understanding the experiences of individual patients demands of us, as both researchers and nurses, to act, seeking after the scientific truth (i.e. a deeper reflection of the ontological, epistemological and methodological questions). The idea of responsibility helps us to interpret and meet the innermost desires of suffering patients in their true presence. Caritative caring ethics means ‘being there’, confirming patients’ absolute dignity; it is a manifestation of the love that ‘just exists’. Compassion requires an inner disposition to go with others to the places where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely and broken. An ontology of caring provides both a starting point and a context for reflection about ethics and the ethical life. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to portray the ethics of suffering based on the published literature. Narrative use has become common in the fields of nursing education and curriculum development and in the determination of practice competencies. Understanding the ethics of suffering implies a hermeneutic movement between alienation and dedication. To understand the ethical significance of human suffering, the scene of suffering is described through the concepts of: to endure, to struggle, to sacrifice life and health, and to become. (...) To respond, to discover, to approach, to touch and to shape patients' different patterns of life implies responsibility: to see, to affirm their dignity by being, and to express this in ethical words. Narration plays a crucial role in transforming suffering, that is, reformulating patients' stories. It is vital that educators should create a learning environment where students can find the courage and intention to be present and listen to patients' narratives. (shrink)

The overall purpose of this cross-country Nordic study was to gain further knowledge about maintaining and promoting dignity in nursing home residents. The purpose of this article is to present results pertaining to the following question: How is nursing home residents’ dignity maintained, promoted or deprived from the perspective of family caregivers? In this article, we focus only on indignity in care. This study took place at six different nursing home residences in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Data collection methods in (...) this part of this study consisted of individual research interviews. Altogether, the sample consisted of 28 family caregivers of nursing home residents. The empirical material was interpreted using a hermeneutical approach. The overall theme that emerged was as follows: ‘A feeling of being abandoned’. The sub-themes are designated as follows: deprived of the feeling of belonging, deprived of dignity due to acts of omission, deprived of confirmation, deprived of dignity due to physical humiliation, deprived of dignity due to psychological humiliation and deprived of parts of life. (shrink)

Introduction: Expressions of dignity as a clinical phenomenon in nursing homes as expressed by caregivers were investigated. A coherence could be detected between the concepts and phenomena of existence and dignity in relationships and caring culture as a context. A caring culture is interpreted by caregivers as the meaning-making of what is accepted or not in the ward culture. Background: The rationale for the connection between existence and dignity in relationships and caring culture is that suffering is a part of (...) existence, as well as compassion in relieving suffering, and ontological interdependency. Aim: To describe different expressions of dignity in relationships and existence in context of caring cultures from the perspective of the caregivers. Research design: The methodology and method are hermeneutic. The method used was to merge the theoretical preunderstanding as one horizon of understanding with empirical data. Participants and research context: Focus group interviews with caregivers in nursing homes. Ethical considerations: The principles of the Helsinki Declaration have been followed to, for example, preserve self-determination, integrity, dignity, confidentiality and privacy of the research persons. Findings: Data interpretation resulted in four themes: Encountering existential needs that promote dignity in a caring culture; To amplify dignity in relationships by the creative art of caring in a caring culture; Violation of dignity by ignorance or neglect in a non-caring culture and The ethic of words and appropriated ground values in a caring culture. Discussion: Dignity-promoting acts of caring, or dignity-depriving acts of non-caring are adequate to see from the perspective of dignity in relationships and existence and the caring culture. Conclusions: Dignity in relationships seems to touch the innermost existential life, as the existential life is dependent on confirmation from others. (shrink)

Background: Physical impairment and dependency on others may be a threat to dignity. Research questions: The purpose of this study was to explore dignity as a core concept in caring, and how healthcare personnel focus on and foster dignity in nursing home residents. Research design: This study has a hermeneutic design. Participants and research context: In all, 40 healthcare personnel from six nursing homes in Scandinavia participated in focus group interviews in this study. Ethical considerations: This study has been evaluated (...) and approved by the Regional Ethical Committees and the Social Science Data Services in the respective Scandinavian countries. Findings: Two main themes emerged: dignity as distinction (I), and dignity as influence and participation (II). Discussion: A common understanding was that stress and business was a daily challenge. Conclusion: Therefore, and according to the health personnel, maintaining human dignity requires slow caring in nursing homes, as an essential approach. (shrink)

The acknowledgement of basic human vulnerability in relationships between mental health service users and professionals working in community-based mental health services (in Norway) was a starting point. The purpose was to explore how users of these services describe and make sense of their meetings with other people. The research is collaborative, with researcher and person with experienced-based knowledge cooperating through the research process. Data is derived from 19 interviews with 11 people who depend on mental health services for assistance at (...) least three times a week. Data is analysed according to the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Results confirm that reciprocity is fundamental for relationships, and that recognizing the individual entails personal involvement. The participants describe a struggle, and recognizing this struggle may help the professional to achieve a deeper understanding of the individual. (shrink)

Background: As part of an ongoing Scandinavian project on the dignity of care for older people, this study is based on ‘clinical caring science’ as a scientific discipline. Clinical caring science examines how ground concepts, axioms and theories are expressed in different clinical contexts. Central notions are caring culture, dignity, at-home-ness, the little extra, non-caring cultures versus caring cultures and ethical context – and climate. Aim and assumptions: This study investigates the individual variations of caring cultures in relation to dignity (...) and how it is expressed in caring acts and ethical contexts. Three assumptions are formulated: (1) the caring culture of nursing homes influences whether dignified care is provided, (2) an ethos that is reflected on and appropriated by the caregiver mirrors itself in ethical caring acts and as artful caring in an ethical context and (3) caring culture is assumed to be a more ontological or universal concept than, for example, an ethical context or ethical person-to-person acts. Research design: The methodological approach is hermeneutic. The data consist of 28 interviews with relatives of older persons from Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Ethical considerations: The principles of voluntariness, confidentiality and anonymity were respected during the whole research process. Findings: Three patterns were revealed: dignity as at-home-ness, dignity as the little extra and non-dignifying ethical context. Discussion: Caring communion, invitation, at-home-ness and ‘the little extra’ are expressions of ethical contexts and caring acts in a caring culture. A non-caring culture may not consider the dignity of its residents and may be represented by routinized care that values organizational efficiency and instrumentalism rather than an individual’s dignity and self-worth. Conclusion: An ethos must be integrated in both the organization and in the individual caregiver in order to be expressed in caring acts and in an ethical context that supports these caring acts. (shrink)

Introduction: Previous findings that inattention and hyperactive/impulsive symptoms predict later peer problems have been mixed. Utilizing two culturally diverse samples with shared methodologies, we assessed the predictive power of dimensionally measured childhood IA and HI symptoms regarding adolescent peer relationships.Methods: A US-based, clinical sample of 228 girls with and without childhood diagnosed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder was assessed and followed 5 years later. A Norwegian, population-based sample of 3,467 children was assessed and followed approximately 4 years later. Both investigations used parent and (...) teacher reports of ADHD symptoms and peer relations. Multivariate regression analyses examined the independent contributions of IA and HI symptoms to later peer problems, adjusting for baseline childhood peer problems. We also examined childhood sex as a potential moderator within the Norwegian sample.Results: Higher levels of childhood HI symptoms, but not IA symptoms, independently predicted adolescent peer problems in the all-female clinical sample. Conversely, higher levels of IA symptoms, but not HI symptoms, independently predicted preadolescent peer problems in the mixed-sex population sample. Results did not differ between informants. Associations between ADHD symptom dimensions and peer problems within the Norwegian sample were not moderated by child sex.Discussion: Differential associations between childhood hyperactive/impulsive and inattention symptoms and adolescent peer problems were found across two diverse samples using a shared methodology. Potential explanations for different findings in the clinical vs. population samples include symptom severity as well as age, sex, and cultural factors. We discuss implications for future research, including the importance of dimensional measures of ADHD-related symptoms and the need for shared methodologies across clinical and normative samples. (shrink)

Toward A Sociological Imagination builds on the ideas C. Wright Mills expressed in The Sociological Imagination for an approach to the scientific method broad enough to open up to the full range of knowledge within the sociology discipline. In this book, nine sociologists and one philosopher provide detailed tests of the utility of the approach within diverse substantive sociological areas.

In an era of backlash and supposed stagnation, feminist philosophers are still providing fresh and challenging perspectives--you just have to know where to look. Continental feminist theory continues to address pressing questions of equality and difference, identity and subjectivity. Modern thinkers like Judith Butler, Kelly Oliver, and Drucilla Cornell give strikingly new perspectives on sex, gender, sexual politics, and the various social reasons for gender inequality. Yet their theories are not always well received. Continental Feminism Reader responds to the marginalization (...) of these thinkers and others like them. In this volume, Ann J. Cahill and Jennifer Hansen collect the most groundbreaking recent work in Continental Feminist Theory, introducing and explaining pieces that are often mystifying to those outside the field and outside academia. With these essays, Continental Feminism Reader begins the process of reanimating feminist politics through the critical tools of its contributors. (shrink)

In order to reach a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics in violent situations in institutional care for elderly people the aim of this study was to explore involved parties’ positions, and to illuminate forces and moves related to these positions. One involved care provider's narrative was analysed using narrative analysis and positioning theory. In the narrative the involved parties’ positions were fluid and often overlapping, and not exclusively as victim or perpetrator. Across the narrative the narrator altered the involved (...) parties’ positions by using available discourses. We understand that the altered positions were a salient way for the care provider to make sense of her experiences. By reading the care provider's narrative we further understand that she was much more than just a perpetrator, which was the origin for her narrative. This study led us to two assumptions important for implications in nursing practice. First, it is of significance how we position ourselves and others in narratives and conversations. Second, there is a difference between being categorised in advance and getting the opportunity to narrate one's own story. (shrink)

A program for the simulation of rational social normative trust, predictive `trust,' and predictive reliance between agents will be introduced. It offers a tool for social scientists or a trust component for multi-agent simulations/multi-agent systems, which need to include trust between agents to guide the decisions about the course of action. It is based on an analysis of rational social normative trust (RSNTR) (revised version of M. Tuomela 2002), which is presented and briefly argued. For collective agents, belief conditions for (...) collective agency should be added. For the various forms of trust agents must have (at least) subjectively rational reasons to believe that the conditions of the trust account are fulfilled. A list of such reasons (of varied weights), e.g., given by empirical research, can manually be built into a parameter file or be generated by a calling program in a fixed format. From this list of reasons the program randomly generates a belief base for the agents of the artificial society. Reasons can be chained together so that one set of reasons satisfies several belief conditions. The program checks if the conditions are fulfilled for the artificial agents' social normative trust/predictive `trust'/`predictive reliance' in another agent that he will perform an action X. Each outcome is logged to a result file. In conclusion we discuss various aspects of the application of a trust component of the suggested kind in empirical research, social simulation, and multi-agent systems. (shrink)

The Anschluss of Austria in 1938 was a major moment for Nazi expansion in Europe. This German annexation has often been framed to portray Austria as the “first victim” in Nazi aggression, placing blame for crimes agaisnt humanity on the Nazi ideology, rather than Austrian individuals or groups complicit with colaboration. This paper seeks to deconstruct this historiographical understanding based on ideology and analyze the impact of agency in examining Austria’s history with Nazism, the Holocaust, and coming to terms with (...) problematic history. (shrink)

Henryk Elzenberg (1887–1967)—a Polish philosopher, axiologist and existentialist claimed that creativity concealed the secret of life and death. Creativity connects many extremities and contradictions, it requires sacrifices, asceticism, perfectionism, but also yearning, liberty, sensuality and desire.

Artur Blaim’s Gazing in Useless Wonder. English Utopian Fictions 1516–1800, the thirteenth volume of the esteemed Ralahine Utopian Studies series, has already received praises as a must-read monograph from such renowned utopian scholars as Lyman Tower Sargent and Gregory Claeys—and indeed it challenges anyone who would dare state otherwise. And even though such flawless pieces of research are not that common, Blaim’s book definitely has the potential to set a precedent in that regard, being a thorough and cohesive analysis of (...) rather sporadically interpreted utopian texts and novels from even less often studied historical periods.Already the book’s composition reveals a direct association between the emergence of... (shrink)

W artykule analizowane są uwagi Henryka Elzenberga dotyczące znaczenia i funkcji muzyki dla człowieka. Muzyka ma zdolność antycypowania, wywołania, przekazywania i przekierowywania treści emocjonalnych, ale jaka jest jej rola w poznaniu i myśleniu? Problem jest omawiany w kontekście relacji muzyki z mistyką, z życiem, z niemoralnością, w odwołaniu do Beethovena i Wagnera oraz myśli Wittgensteina o muzyce.

W artykule analizowane są reguły „dezintegracji” i „dekonstrukcji” w pracach Kazimierza Dąbrowskiego i Michela Foucaulta. Teoria dezintegracji pozytywnej Dąbrowskiego bada niszczące i budujące procesy w osobowości człowieka. Teoria dyskursu Foucaulta wskazuje na różne dekonstrukcje, którym człowiek jest poddawany na skutek procesów kulturowych i psychologicznych. Obie reguły ukazane są na przykładzie opisów „zdrowia” i „choroby”.

W tekście podjęty zotał problem twórczości i osobowości artysty z perspektywy niektórych XX-wiecznych teorii, m.in. psychoanalizy, psychologii analitycznej i egzystencjalnej. Twórczość może być formą rozwiązania konfliktu i przemiany energii seksualnej, formą obrony psychologicznej i odbudowy swojego,,ja”, czynnością harmonizowania swojego,,cienia” ze sobą i wyrazem archetypu, sposobem przekroczenia swojego typu psychologicznego i rozwoju osobowości, a także mistycznym połączeniem przedmiotu i podmiotu oraz egzystencjalną psychosyntezą.

Tekst omawia myśl Henryka Bergsona na temat twórczości artystycznej jako efekt „ewolucji twórczej”. Wyłanianiu się dzieła twórczego towarzysza dwa główne procesy, które utrwalaja relacje świata duchowego i materialnego: sympatia i asymilacja. Tworzenie można opisać za pomocą różnych technik, np. skupianie, mentalizacja, wykraczanie poza plan, selekcjonowanie, odwracanie przebiegów fizycznych w stronę przeciwna, obramowanie dzieła itd. Na poziomie analizy metafizycznej Bergson opisuje twórczość nie tyle jako relacje artysta–człowiek, ale jako relacje duszy artysty i świata natury, które wymykają się regułom logicznym.

In this paper, an account of rational social normative trust (RSNTR) and a context for rational trust (Y) will be offered and briefly argued. The account concerns a person’s trust in another person that he will perform a specific action. Rational social normative trust is conceived as the trustor’s accepting attitude vis-à-vis his dependence on the trustee. This is an attitude that the trustor acquires non-intentionally, because of his belief, due to their relationship of mutual respect, that he is entitled (...) to expect of the trustee, on social or (quasi-) moral normative grounds, that the trustee will intentionally gratify him by his action, and because of his belief that he will indeed do so at least in part in deference to his rights. The “trust context Y” involves the conditions for a situation where the trustor can rationally consider whether intentional gratification may be expected. Rational trust is distinguished from the more general technical concept of rational reliance by the presence of context Y and the trustor’s expectation of the trustee’s intentional gratification of the trustor. The trustor’s social normative expectation of the trustee’s intentional “acting with goodwill” towards him is the central belief of the trustor involved in rational social normative trust. This belief does not require the trustor’s belief of the trustee’s genuine attitude of goodwill towards the trustor. The account distinguishes social normative trust from predictive “trust” by the trustor’s socially grounded normative, as opposed to only predictive, expectation of the trustee’s intentional gratification of the trustor. Normative trust, and also predictive “trust,” are more than an evaluation of a person’s trustworthiness. In addition to expecting of the trustee and/or expecting that the trustee will intentionally gratify him, the trustor feels comfortable about being dependent on the trustee, and has an accepting attitude regarding his dependent position. Both in normative and predictive trust, the trustor may decide to depend, or to refrain from depending, on the trustee for an action. In the case of normative trust, the trustor genuinely trusts the person he decides to depend on, but in the case of predictive “trust,” his “trusting” is comparable to relying on some features of the trustee or the situation. “Deciding to trust” is to make a bet on someone – to act as if one trusted. The account of rational trust (RSNTR) will be applied to a case where the trustee is a collective agent. Criteria for collective agency is then added. Collective agency is discussed, mainly, in the light of Raimo Tuomela’s work. When the trustor is a collective, the criteria for collective agency should be satisfied for the trustor as well. (shrink)

The myside bias in written argumentation entails excluding other side information from essays. To determine the locus of the bias, 86 Experiment 1 participants were assigned to argue either for or against their preferred side of a proposal. Participants were given either balanced or unrestricted research instructions. Balanced research instructions significantly increased the use of other side information. Participants' notes, rather than search patterns, predicted the myside bias. Participants who defined good arguments as those that can be “proved by facts” (...) were more prone towards the myside bias. In Experiment 2, 84 participants of high and low argumentation ability read a text called “More Than Just the Facts” designed to contradict this fact-based argumentation schema. For high argumentation ability participants, the intervention reduced the myside bias, but for low ability participants it increased. The roots of the myside bias are underdeveloped argumentation schemata leading to misconceptions about research and argumentation. (shrink)

This book reveals the sense in which our postmodern societies are characterized by the obscene absence of the intellectual. The modern intellectual--who had once been associated with humanism and enlightenment—has in our day been replaced by media stars, talking heads, and technical experts. At issue is the ongoing crisis of democracy, under the aegis of the société du spectacle and its vast networks of politically-induced idiocy, industrially-produced biocide, and militarily-provoked genocide. Spectacle fills the resulting moral and intellectual vacuum with electronic (...) technologies of control, punishment, and destruction. This postmodern tyranny reduces intelligence to mechanistic, positivist, and grammatological models of inquiry, while increasing the segmentation, fragmentation, and dissolution of human existence. The apotheosis of the spectacle explains the intellectual void that lies at the heart of our postmodern decadence; it also accounts for the need to recuperate the humanist values of enlightenment promoted by the modern intellectual tradition. (shrink)

A Cinematic Humanist approach to film is committed inter alia to the following tenet: Some fiction films illuminate the human condition thereby enriching our understanding of ourselves, each other and our world. As such, Cinematic Humanism might reasonably be regarded as an example of what one might call ‘Cinematic Cognitivism’. This assumption would, however, be mistaken. For Cinematic Humanism is an alternative, indeed a corrective, to Cinematic Cognitivism. Motivating the need for such a corrective is a genuine scepticism about the (...) very notion of the cognitive. Using historical reconstruction, I reveal how ‘cognitive’ has become a multiply ambiguous, theory-laden term in the wake of, indeed as a consequence of, Noam Chomsky’s original stipulative definition. This generates a constitutive problem for cognitivism as both a research programme and a set of claims, and as such poses a trilemma for philosophers of film, art and beyond. I propose a Cinematic Humanist solution to the problematic commitments of cognitive film theorising and, in so doing, gesture towards a methodology I am calling ‘philosophy of film without theory’. (shrink)

Through a close reading of Plato’s Euthyphro, I reopen an old question: what would it look like to think piously? Although the dialogue itself is aporetic with regard to the definition of piety as such, I show that a specifically philosophical piety emerges: namely, the capacity to deal well with sameness and difference. A look at central features of the dialogues that provide the Euthyphro’s dramatic context confirms this claim.