Nurses find themselves in a unique position - between patient and physicians, and in close proximity to the patient. Moral sensitivity can help nurses to cope with the daily turmoil of demands and opinions while delivering care in concordance with the value system of the patient. This article aims to reconsider the concept of moral sensitivity by discussing the function of emotions in morality. We turn to the ideas of historic and contemporary authors on the function of emotions in morality (...) to expand our understanding of moral sensitivity. Ancient philosophers and contemporary psychologists uphold different strategies on the orientation of morality being (a) personal growth or (b) community living, and the primordial function of (c) reason and (d) emotions in the creation of judgements about good and bad. The theoretical discussion on the function of emotions in morality shows that by focusing on reason alone, one leaves out an essential part of morality. The concept of moral sensitivity should (1) include an initial judgment of good and bad based on emotions, (2) hold the ability to reflect on the initial judgement and the associated emotions, (3) include the ability to understand other stakeholders' perspectives based on the ideal-types and (4) include a personal decision on the right course of action. (shrink)

Robotization is an increasingly pervasive feature of our lives. Robots with high degrees of autonomy may cause harm, yet in sufciently complex systems neither the robots nor the human developers may be candidates for moral blame. John Danaher has recently argued that this may lead to a retribution gap, where the human desire for retribution faces a lack of appropriate subjects for retributive blame. The potential social and moral implications of a retribution gap are considerable. I argue that the retributive (...) intuitions that feed into retribution gaps are best understood as deontological intuitions. I apply a debunking argument for deontological intuitions in order to show that retributive intuitions cannot be used to justify retributive punishment in cases of robot harm without clear candidates for blame. The fundamental moral question thus becomes what we ought to do with these retributive intuitions, given that they do not justify retribution. I draw a parallel from recent work on implicit biases to make a case for taking moral responsibility for retributive intuitions. In the same way that we can exert some form of control over our unwanted implicit biases, we can and should do so for unjustifed retributive intuitions in cases of robot harm. (shrink)

Governments around the world have faced the challenge of how to respond to the recent outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease. Some have reacted by greatly restricting the freedom of citizens, while others have opted for less drastic policies. In this paper, I draw a parallel with vaccination ethics to conceptualize two distinct approaches to COVID-19 that I call altruistic and lockdown. Given that the individual measures necessary to limit the spread of the virus can in principle be achieved voluntarily (...) as well as through enforcement, the question arises of how much freedom governments ought to give citizens to adopt the required measures. I argue that an altruistic approach is preferable on moral grounds: it preserves important citizen freedoms, avoids a number of potential injustices, and gives people a much-needed sense of meaning in precarious times. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 6, Page 687-698, July 2022.

Moralization is a social-psychological process through which morally neutral issues take on moral significance. Often linked to health and disease, moralization may sometimes lead to good outcomes; yet moralization is often detrimental to individuals and to society as a whole. It is therefore important to be able to identify when moralization is inappropriate. In this paper, we offer a systematic normative approach to the evaluation of moralization. We introduce and develop the concept of ‘mismoralization’, which is when moralization is metaethically (...) unjustified. In order to identify mismoralization, we argue that one must engage in metaethical analysis of moralization processes while paying close attention to the relevant facts. We briefly discuss one historical example and two contemporary cases related to COVID-19 that we contend to have been mismoralized in public health. We propose a remedy of de-moralization that begins by identifying mismoralization and that proceeds by neutralizing inapt moral content. De-moralization calls for epistemic and moral humility. It should lead us to pull away from our tendency to moralize—as individuals and as social groups—whenever and wherever moralization is unjustified. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is a relatively recent discipline that employs experimental methods to investigate the intuitions, concepts, and assumptions behind traditional philosophical arguments, problems, and theories. While experimental philosophy initially served to interrogate the role that intuitions play in philosophy, it has since branched out to bring empirical methods to bear on problems within a variety of traditional areas of philosophy—including metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. To date, no connection has been made between developments in experimental philosophy (...) and philosophy of technology. In this paper, I develop and defend a research program for an experimental philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Preventive vaccination can protect not just vaccinated individuals, but also others, which is often a central point in discussions about vaccination. To date, there has been no systematic study of self- and other-directed motives behind vaccination. This article has two major goals: first, to examine and distinguish between self- and other-directed motives behind vaccination, especially with regard to vaccinating for the sake of third parties, and second, to explore some ways in which this approach can help to clarify and guide (...) vaccination debates and policy. I propose conceiving of vaccination in terms of three basic elements: the vaccination decision-maker, the vaccine recipient and the primary beneficiary. I develop a taxonomy based on the relations between these elements to distinguish four kinds of vaccination: self-protective, paternalistic, altruistic and indirect. I finally discuss the case of human papillomavirus vaccine regulation for men and women to show how each kind of vaccination is associated with and raises specific ethical questions. (shrink)

Onychectomy involves the surgical amputation of a cat's claws. Tendonectomy entails surgically cutting tendons to prevent the extension and full use of a cat's claws. Both surgeries practically declaw cats and are not only painful but also associated with high complication rates. While feline declawing surgeries have been banned in various places around the world, they are still elective in many countries and U.S. states. This article provides an ethical analysis of declawing cats. It discusses the harms posed by feline (...) declawing surgeries, like pain and complications, which are not offset by any benefits to cats. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach, it also offers an additional and broader ethical argument against declawing, namely that removing cats' claws is unjust because it thwarts important capabilities for feline flourishing (e.g., play, bodily integrity, control over one's environment). It concludes that declawing cats for non-medical purposes is unethical and must be opposed. (shrink)

The potential for vaccines to prevent the spread of infectious diseases is crucial for vaccination policy and ethics. In this paper, I discuss recent evidence that the current COVID-19 vaccines have only a modest and short-lived effect on reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmission and argue that this has at least four important ethical implications. First, getting vaccinated against COVID-19 should be seen primarily as a self-protective choice for individuals. Second, moral condemnation of unvaccinated people for causing direct harm to others is unjustified. (...) Third, the case for a harm-based moral obligation to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is weak. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, coercive COVID-19 vaccination policies (e.g., measures that exclude unvaccinated people from society) cannot be directly justified by the harm principle. (shrink)

Vaccination can protect vaccinated individuals and often also prevent them from spreading disease to other people. This opens up the possibility of getting vaccinated for the sake of others. In fact, altruistic vaccination has recently been conceptualized as a kind of vaccination that is undertaken primary for the benefit of others. In order to better understand the potential role of altruistic motives in people’s vaccination decisions, we conducted two focus group studies with a total of 37 participants. Study 1 included (...) three focus groups on the subject of HPV vaccination for boys. Study 2 included three focus groups on the subject of pertussis and measles vaccination for childcare workers. We found substantial evidence of other-regarding motives across all focus groups, which suggests that altruistic motives could be an important factor when it comes to people’s vaccination decisions. We address the significance of these findings for vaccination policy surrounding HPV vaccination for boys and vaccination for childcare workers. We also extend the findings to normative work on vaccination for the sake of others more generally. (shrink)

For Albert Camus, plague was both a fact of life and a powerful metaphor for the human condition. Camus engaged most explicitly and extensively with the subject of plague in his 1947 novel, The Plague (La peste), which chronicles an outbreak of what is presumably cholera in the French-Algerian city of Oran. I often thought of this novel—and what it might teach us—during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, I discuss seven important insights from The Plague about epidemics, public (...) health and morality. (shrink)

Should people get vaccinated for the sake of others? What could ground—and limit—the normative claim that people ought to do so? In this paper, we propose a reasons-based consequentialist account of vaccination for the benefit of others. We outline eight harm-based and probabilistic factors that, we argue, give people moral reasons to get vaccinated. Instead of understanding other-directed vaccination in terms of binary moral duties (i.e., where people either have or do not have a moral duty to get vaccinated), we (...) develop a scalar approach according to which people can have stronger or weaker moral reasons to get vaccinated in view of the moral good of vaccination. One advantage of our approach is that it can capture why a person might have strong moral reasons to get vaccinated with Vaccine A, but only weak moral reasons to get vaccinated with Vaccine B. We discuss theoretical strengths of our approach and provide a case study of vaccination against COVID-19 to demonstrate its practical significance. (shrink)

People in vulnerable positions who need support in their daily lives often face challenges in receiving timely access to care; for instance, due to disabilities or individual and situational vulnerabilities. There has been an increasing turn to technology-mediated ways to improve access to care, which has raised ethical questions about the appropriateness and inclusiveness of digitalising care requests. Specifically, for people in vulnerable positions, digitalisation is meant to facilitate requests for access to healthcare resources and to simplify the process of (...) navigating the healthcare system. In a multidisciplinary research project, we examined the use and value of a ‘sensitive’ virtual assistant that can accommodate different needs of target groups through inclusive design, adaptive technology and artificial intelligence. This paper presents empirical findings from focus groups with care recipients and caregivers about the sensitive virtual assistant and relates the findings to five larger ethical issues associated with the use of virtual assistants in healthcare settings and care practices more generally. It highlights the risk that, even with the inclusion of target groups in the design of digitalised care assistants, some people may benefit significantly less than others. (shrink)

This dissertation explores the idea and ethics of vaccination for the sake of others. It conceptually distinguishes four different kinds of vaccination—self-protective, paternalistic, altruistic, and indirect—based on who receives the primary benefits of vaccination and who ultimately makes the vaccination decision. It describes the results of focus group studies that were conducted to investigate what people who might get vaccinated altruistically think of this idea. It also applies the different kinds of vaccination to ethical issues surrounding COVID-19, such as lockdown (...) measures, routine or mandatory vaccination of healthy children, and the ethical justification of restrictive measures for unvaccinated people. A more general philosophical account of vaccination ethics is ultimately developed, which is based not on moral duties, but on the moral reasons that people may have to get vaccinated for the sake of others. It is argued that such reasons may be stronger or weaker, depending on various factors related to the vaccines in question and the specific epidemiological circumstances. (shrink)

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a chronic illness that requires intensive lifelong management of blood glucose concentrations by means of external insulin administration. There have been substantial developments in the ways of measuring glucose levels, which is crucial to T1D self-management. Recently, continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) has allowed people with T1D to keep track of their blood glucose levels in near real-time. These devices have alarms that warn users about potentially dangerous blood glucose trends, which can often be shared with (...) ther people. CGM is consistently associated with improved glycemic control and reduced hypoglycemia and is currently recommended by doctors. However, due to the costs of CGM, only those who qualify for hospital provision or those who can personally afford it are able to use it, which excludes many people. In this paper, I argue that unequal access to CGM results in: (1) unjust health inequalities, (2) relational injustice, (3) injustice with regard to agency and autonomy, and (4) epistemic injustice. These considerations provide prima facie moral reasons why all people with T1D should have access to CGM technology. I discuss the specific case of CGM policy in the Netherlands, which currently only provides coverage for a small group of people with T1D, and argue that, especially with additional considerations of cost-effectiveness, the Dutch government ought to include CGM in basic health care insurance for all people with T1D. (shrink)

This paper explores and rehabilitates the value of decisional privacy as a conceptual tool, complementary to informational privacy, for critiquing personalized choice architectures employed by self-tracking technologies. Self-tracking technologies are promoted and used as a means to self-improvement. Based on large aggregates of personal data and the data of other users, self-tracking technologies offer personalized feedback that nudges the user into behavioral change. The real-time personalization of choice architectures requires continuous surveillance and is a very powerful technology, recently coined as (...) “hypernudging.” While users celebrate the increased personalization of their coaching devices, “hypernudging” technologies raise concerns about manipulation. This paper addresses that intuition by claiming that decisional privacy is at stake. It thus counters the trend to solely focus on informational privacy when evaluating information and communication technologies. It proposes that decisional privacy and informational privacy are often part of a mutually reinforcing dynamic. Hypernudging is used as a key example to illustrate that the two dimensions should not be treated separately. Hypernudging self-tracking technologies compromise autonomy because they violate informational and decisional privacy. In order to effectively judge whether technologies that use hypernudges empower users, we need both privacy dimensions as conceptual tools. (shrink)

E-Co-Affectivity is a philosophical investigation of affectivity in various forms of life: photosynthesis and growth in plants, touch and trauma in bird feathers, the ontogenesis of human life through the placenta, the bare interface of human skin, and the porous materiality of soil. Combining biology, phenomenology, Ancient Greek thought, new materialisms, environmental philosophy, and affect studies, Marjolein Oele thinks through concrete, living places that show the receptive, responsive power of living beings to be affected and to affect. She focuses (...) on these localized interfaces to explain how affectivity emerges in places that are always evolving, creative, porous, and fluid. Every interface is material, but is also "more" than its current materiality in co-creating place, time, and being. After extensively describing the effects of the milieu and community within which each example of affectivity takes place, in the final chapter Oele adds a prescriptive, ethical lens that formulates a new epoch beyond the Anthropocene, one that is sensitive to the larger ecological, communal concerns at stake. (shrink)

This paper critically engages with new self-tracking technologies. In particular, it focuses on a conceptual tension between the idea that disclosing personal information increases one’s autonomy and the idea that informational privacy is a condition for autonomous personhood. I argue that while self-tracking may sometimes prove to be an adequate method to shed light on particular aspects of oneself and can be used to strengthen one’s autonomy, self-tracking technologies often cancel out these benefits by exposing too much about oneself to (...) an unspecified audience, thus undermining the informational privacy boundaries necessary for living an autonomous life. (shrink)

Recently, Joshua Greene has argued that we need a metamorality to solve moral problems for which evolution has not prepared us. The metamorality that he proposes is a utilitarian account that he calls deep pragmatism. Deep pragmatism is supposed to arbitrate when the values espoused by different groups clash. To date, no systematic appraisal of this argument for a metamorality exists. We reconstruct Greene’s case for deep pragmatism as a metamorality and consider three lines of objection to it. We argue (...) that, in the end, only one of these objections seriously threatens Greene’s position. Greene has to commit to the nonexistence of moral truth in order for his argument for the need of a metamorality to get off the ground. This, however, leads to a tension in his overall argument for deep pragmatism: ultimately, it casts his rejection of antiutilitarian moral intuitions into doubt. (shrink)

The rapid expansion of Big Tech companies into various societal domains (e.g., health, education, and agriculture) over the past decade has led to increasing concerns among governments, regulators, scholars, and civil society. While existing theoretical frameworks—often revolving around privacy and data protection, or market and platform power—have shed light on important aspects of Big Tech expansionism, there are other risks that these frameworks cannot fully capture. In response, this editorial proposes an alternative theoretical framework based on the notion of sphere (...) transgressions, which draws on political philosopher Michael Walzer's theory of justice. The editorial not only introduces the sphere transgressions framework, but it also highlights its potential to generate novel research questions. Furthermore, this editorial introduces eight articles and one commentary from a group of interdisciplinary scholars that critically examine Big Tech expansionism by reflecting on this expansionism from the perspective of different societal spheres or by engaging with the sphere transgressions framework itself. (shrink)

This paper takes as its point of departure the recent publication of Heidegger’s lecture course Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy and focuses upon Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle’s concept of pathos. Through a comparative analysis of Aristotle’s concept of pathos and Heidegger’s inventive reading of this concept, I aim to show the strengths and weaknesses of Heidegger’s reading. It is my thesis that Heidegger’s account is extremely rich and innovative as he frees up pathos from the narrow confines of psychology and (...) incidental change and places it squarely into the center of the fundamental changes affecting a living being’s existence; simultaneously, however, Heidegger sometimes overstates the ties that pathos has with other concepts such as ousia and logos and highlights exceptional rather than common meanings of pathos, thereby risking the charge of being unfaithful to Aristotle’s text. (shrink)

Background The European Union aims to optimize patient protection and efficiency of health-care research by harmonizing procedures across Member States. Nonetheless, further improvements are required to increase multicenter research efficiency. We investigated IRB procedures in a large prospective European multicenter study on traumatic brain injury, aiming to inform and stimulate initiatives to improve efficiency. Methods We reviewed relevant documents regarding IRB submission and IRB approval from European neurotrauma centers participating in the Collaborative European NeuroTrauma Effectiveness Research in Traumatic Brain Injury. (...) Documents included detailed information on IRB procedures and the duration from IRB submission until approval. They were translated and analyzed to determine the level of harmonization of IRB procedures within Europe. Results From 18 countries, 66 centers provided the requested documents. The primary IRB review was conducted centrally or locally and primary IRB approval was obtained after one, two or three review rounds with a median duration of respectively 50 and 98 days until primary IRB approval. Additional IRB approval was required in 55% of countries and could increase duration to 535 days. Total duration from submission until required IRB approval was obtained was 114 days and appeared to be shorter after submission to local IRBs compared to central IRBs. Conclusion We found variation in IRB procedures between and within European countries. There were differences in submission and approval requirements, number of review rounds and total duration. Research collaborations could benefit from the implementation of more uniform legislation and regulation while acknowledging local cultural habits and moral values between countries. (shrink)

This research statement presents a roadmap for the ethical evaluation of contact tracing apps. Assuming the possible development of an effective and secure contact tracing app, this roadmap explores three ethical concerns—privacy, data monopolists and coercion- based on three scenarios. The first scenario envisions and critically evaluates an app that is built on the conceptualization of privacy as anonymity and a mere individual right rather than a social value. The second scenario sketches and critically discusses an app that adequately addresses (...) privacy concerns but is facilitated by data monopolists such as Google and Apple. The final scenario discusses the coerced installation and use of a privacy-friendly, independently developed contact tracing app. The main worry is coercion through societal exclusion and limited societal participation. The statement concludes with three suggestions for designing an ethical contact tracing app and a research agenda. (shrink)

BackgroundContradictory evidence exists about the emotional burden of participating in qualitative research for palliative care patients and carers and this raises questions about whether this type of research is ethically justified in a vulnerable population. This study aimed to investigate palliative care patients' and carers' perceptions of the benefits and problems associated with open interviews and to understand what causes distress and what is helpful about participation in a research interview.MethodsA descriptive qualitative study. The data were collected in the context (...) of two studies exploring the experiences of care of palliative care patients and carers. The interviews ended with questions about patients' and carers' thoughts on participating in the studies and whether this had been a distressing or helpful event. We used a qualitative descriptive analysis strategy generated from the interviews and the observational and interactional data obtained in the course of the study.ResultsThe interviews were considered helpful: sharing problems was therapeutic and being able to contribute to research was empowering. However, thinking about the future was reported to be the most challenging. Consent forms were sometimes read with apprehension and being physically unable to sign was experienced as upsetting. Interviewing patients and carers separately was sometimes difficult and not always possible.ConclusionThe open interview enables the perspectives of patients and carers to be heard, unfettered from the structure of closed questions. It also enables those patients or carers to take part who would be unable to participate in other study designs. The context is at least as important as the format of the research interview taking into account the relational circumstances with carers and appropriate ways of obtaining informed consent. Retrospective consent could be a solution to enhancing participants control over the interview. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 61-67.

The world as we currently know it is troubled by climate change, leaving a marked trace in our affective landscape, for example, in the form of shame, anger, and depression. This affective landscape needs further philosophical exploration, and in this paper I use analyses by Aristotle, Heidegger, and Butler to discuss anxiety and grief. I focus on these two affects because they a) often collaborate in times of ecological destruction, and b) can be distinguished in terms of short-term intentional “emotions” (...) and as long-term, atmospheric “moods.” Due to their temporal and atmospheric flexibility, these affects gain particular traction in relating to the deep-time timescale of the Anthropocene. At the end of the paper, I discuss trust, since the affective constellation of long-term atmospheric anxiety and grief can become especially productive when combined with the safety of trust, in that such constellation may enable constructive transformations building environmentally sustainable futures. (shrink)

Algorithmic Justice Algorithmic bias can lead to harmful forms of algorithmic discrimination. In this article, I argue that technology does not exist in a vacuum and is always part of power relations. I therefore criticize technological fixes that reduce social problems to a technical solution. Dominant solutions like ‘debiasing’, while important, avoid questions about deep-rooted injustices. They ‘accept’ and work with and within the frames of existing social (power) structures. Justice requires considering the structural dimensions of inequality. I draw attention (...) to Langdon Winner’s call to ask whether a technology is ‘just’ rather than approaching the issue of algorithmic discrimination from a solutionist angle of optimization and functionality. I propose that we draw inspiration from the work of philosophers who approach justice from a structural or systemic perspective. This results in a philosophical approach that stretches the concept of ‘discrimination’ and exposes the relationships between inequalities. Moreover, it questions the structures and boundaries in which the technology is embedded. Finally, I criticize the current hype around AI that distracts us from the fact that we have had existential problems with AI for a long time and that these problems are deeply intertwined with (the history of) our social power relations. (shrink)

In this Précis I provide a brief overview of my monograph E-Co-Affectivity, which combines biology, phenomenology, Ancient Greek thought, new materialisms, environmental philosophy, and affect studies. I briefly outline central concepts such as affectivity, interface, community, and the middle voice.

This paper examines the figure of silence in the works of Michel Serres and Simone Weil. It argues that, in the spirit of Serres and Weil, our time of crisis calls not for a short-term response, but for long-term engagement in a dialectics of silence: the dialogical movement between the silencing of institutions and the attentive silence of visionary insights. Such dialectics can revalidate the value of institutional silencing if based on solid rational proof while simultaneously showing the value of (...) visionary ideas that rightfully combat problematic institutional silencing. Especially in this current moment, in which science and scientific propositions are relentlessly questioned, there is a need to lean into silence so as to promote a productive dialogue that regains trust in proven scientific ideas and institutions while allowing visionary insights their place as well, provided that we are willing to test them. (shrink)

Starting from first person experience, I argue that early miscarriage may invoke a sense of loss that is enigmatic and ambiguous, often times complicated by the fact that the topic of miscarriage is culturally silenced. Understanding the frequency of such occurrences of early pregnancy loss (in terms of the “miscarriage iceberg”) adds to the existential need to conceptualize such losses as they bleed into life at its very emergence. The prevalent cultural discourse on loss, even when it deals with ambiguity, (...) is focused upon individuation and personhood, which may complicate the grieving process in the case of early pregnancy loss.In searching for alternative epistemologies to address early pregnancy loss and its consequent grief, I propose the following conceptual pathways to elucidate the nature of this loss. First, early pregnancy loss may be understood in terms of the dissipation of a pregnant constellation, thereby putting less emphasis on losing a “being” but rather a sense of participation. This clarifies the kind of loss involved but does not yet completely explain what kind of relationality is lost. Secondly, the grief involved in early pregnancy loss benefits from the Freudian-inspired theories of Pauline Boss and Judith Butler, who emphasize that grief entails absence and presence (Boss, The myth of closure: ambiguous loss in a time of pandemic and change. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2021) as well as a deep loss of identity given the loss of relational ties that inform identity (Butler, Stud Gender Sexuality 4(1):9–37, 2003). This deepens the account of grief but does not precisely address the loss of mere emergent relationality. Thirdly, following Gilbert Simondon’s theory on ontogenesis (Simondon, The genesis of the individual. In Crary J, Kwinter S (eds) Incorporations. Zone Books, New York, 297–319, 1992), pregnancy loss involves losing a bridge to a pre-individual relationality, due to which the formerly pregnant body cannot easily leap “back” into former forms of individuation nor leap forward into a socially recognized altered collectivity. This account is able to clarify the kind of relational loss involved in early pregnancy loss. (shrink)

The Casuistry of International Criminal Law: Exploring A New Field of Research International criminal courts have made an important contribution to the development of international criminal law. Through case law, the courts have fine-tuned and modernized outdated concepts of international crimes and liability theories. In studying this practice, scholars have so far focused on the judicial interpretation of statutory and customary rules, thereby paying little attention to the rules’ application in individual cases. In this article, I reveal the limitations of (...) this approach and illustrate how insights from casuistry can advance international criminal law discourse. In particular, I use the example of genocide to show that casuistic case law analyses can help scholars clarify the meaning of the law and appraise the application of substantive legal concepts in individual cases. Based on these observations, I argue that scholars should complement their current research with studies into the casuistry of international criminal law. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

After many policy attempts to tackle the persistent rise in the costs of health care, physicians are increasingly seen as potentially effective resource stewards. Frameworks including the quadruple aim, value-based health care and choosing wisely underline the importance of positive engagement of the health care workforce in reinventing the system–paving the way to real affordability by defining the right care. Current programmes focus on educating future doctors to provide ‘high-value, cost-conscious care’ (HVCCC), which proponents believe is the future of sustainable (...) medical practice. Such programmes, which aim to extend population-level allocation concerns to interactions between an individual doctor and patient, have generated lively debates about the ethics of expanding doctors’ professional accountability. To empirically ground this discussion, we conducted a qualitative interview study to examine what happens when resource stewardship responsibilities are extended to the consulting room. Attempts to deliver HVCCC were found to involve inevitable trade-offs between benefits to the individual patient and (social) costs, medical uncertainty and efficiency, and between resource stewardship and trust. Physicians reconcile this by justifying good-value care in terms of what is in the best interest of individual patients–redefining the currency of value from monetary costs to a patient’s quality of life, and cost-conscious care as reflective medical practice. Micro-level resource stewardship thus becomes a matter of working reflexively and reducing wasteful forms of care, rather than of making difficult choices about resource allocation. (shrink)

My book seeks to carve out a new way to examine affectivity, by using interdisciplinary methods for scholarship of affectivity, and by focusing on specific, concrete, material interfaces: in plants, birds, placentas, human skin, and, finally, soil. In my response to Florian Grosser, Jea Sophia Oh, and Miguel José Paley, I emphasize this focus on local material e-co-affectivity because it explains in large part why I, strategically, (1) have or have not used certain sources or ideas in Aristotle and Heidegger, (...) and (2) how I see my new research developing and addressing some of the concerns of the respondents regarding the need to tend to the inequities of vulnerability. Moreover, I will try to address (3) questions regarding post-human agency, as well as (4) cross-cultural comparisons with the Chinese concept of wuwei and the Korean concept of jeong (emotions or feeling). I conclude (5) by addressing concerns regarding the meaning of temporality as it is lived on the skin. (shrink)