The Theory of Planned Behavior predicts that a combination of attitudes, perceived norms, and perceived behavioral control predict intentions, and that intentions ultimately predict behavior. Previous studies have found that the TPB can predict students’ engagement in plagiarism. Furthermore, the General Theory of Crime suggests that self-control is particularly important in predicting engagement in unethical behavior such as plagiarism. In Study 1, we incorporated self-control in a TPB model and tested whether norms, attitudes, and self-control predicted intention to plagiarize and (...) plagiarism behavior. The best statistical fit for the path-analytic model was achieved when a direct path from self-control to plagiarism engagement was specified. In Study 2, we added a measure of perceived behavioral control and split the measurement of norms into descriptive and injunctive components. This study found that both self-control and perceived-behavioral control additively contributed to the prediction of plagiarism and the path-analytic model achieved its best fit when direct paths from perceived norms to plagiarism behavior were specified. These studies suggest that setting strong anti-plagiarism norms, such as by the use of honor codes, and seeking to enhance students’ self-control may reduce engagement in plagiarism. (shrink)

his article develops a set of recommendations for the psychiatric and medical community in the treatment of mental disorders in response to the recently published fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, that is, DSM-5. We focus primarily on the limitations of the DSM-5 in its individuation of Complicated Grief, which can be diagnosed as Major Depression under its new criteria, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). We argue that the hyponarrativity of the descriptions of these disorders (...) in the DSM-5, defined as the abstraction of the illness categories from the particular life contingencies and personal identity of the patient (e.g., age, race, gender, socio-economic status), constrains the DSM-5's usefulness in the development of psychotherapeutic approaches in the treatment of mental disorders. While the DSM-5 is useful in some scientific and administrative contexts, the DSM's hyponarrativity is problematic, we argue, given that the DSMs are designed to be useful guides for not only scientific research, but also for the education of medical practitioners and for treatment development. our goal therefore is to offer suggestions for mental health practitioners in using the DSM-5, so that they can avoid or eliminate the problems that may stem from the limitations of hyponarrativity. When such problems are eliminated, we believe that effective psychotherapeutic strategies can be developed, which would be successful in repairing the very relationships that are strained in mental disorder: the patient's relationship to herself, her physical environment, and her social environment. (shrink)

Newborn screening has evolved to include an increasingly complex spectrum of diseases, raising concerns that screening should be optional and require parental consent. Early detection of disorders like PKU and MCAD is essential to prevent serious disability and death in affected children. These are examples of high benefit-risk ratio disorders because of the irrefutable health benefits of early detection, coupled with the low risks of treatment. The dire consequences of not diagnosing an infant with a treatable disorder because of parental (...) refusal to screen are wholly unacceptable. Thus, we believe that newborn screening for disorders with high benefit-risk ratios should continue to be mandatory. (shrink)

The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities promulgated standards for clinical ethics consultants and is currently developing a national Quality Attestation in Clinical Ethics Consultation to assist facilities in ensuring that those performing clinical ethics consultations meet minimum standards. As the field moves towards such professionalization, there is a need to provide access to qualified clinical ethicists at a broad range of medical facilities. Currently, however, there are insufficient numbers of trained clinical ethicists to staff all healthcare facilities, and many (...) facilities lack the necessary resources to hire staff clinical ethicists. In this review, we describe several models for providing expert clinical ethics support to remote facilities that lack access to qualified clinical ethicists. Based on this analysis, we recommend telemedicine as the optimal model providing expert support to local ethics committee members tasked with providing clinical ethics consultation services. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate how alternative land ethics of agricultural stakeholders may help explain recent land use changes. The paper first explores the historical development of the land ethic concept in the United States and how those ethics have impacted land use policy and use of private lands. Secondly, primary data gathered from semi-structured interviews of farmers, ranchers, and influential stakeholders are then analyzed using stakeholder analysis methods to identify major factors considered in land use decisions, (...) priorities of factors of each group, and to define relevant mental models describing each group’s view of the land ethic concept. Results show that these stakeholder groups prioritize land use factors qualitatively differently and possess strikingly different land ethics. It is concluded that shifts in stakeholder land ethics have contributed to recent land use changes. Lastly, we discuss how current agricultural policy sends mixed signals about preferred land use and the potential ramifications based on the different land ethics we’ve described. (shrink)

Physical touch is central to the emotional intimacy that separates romantic relationships from other social contexts. In this study of 256 adults, we examined whether individual differences in social anxiety influenced comfort with and avoidance of physical touch. Because of prior work on sex difference in touch use, touch comfort, and social anxiety symptoms and impairment, we explored sex-specific findings. We found evidence that women with greater social anxiety were less comfortable with touch and more avoidant of touch in same-sex (...) friendships. Additionally, a woman’s social anxiety had a bigger effect on a man’s comfort with touch and avoidance of touch in the romantic relationship than a man’s social anxiety had on the woman’s endorsement of touch-related problems. These effects were uninfluenced by the length of romantic relationships. Touch is a neglected emotional experience that offers new insights into the difficulties of individuals suffering from social anxiety problems, and their romantic partners. (shrink)

Meditation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focuses on training attention and awareness to foster psycho-emotional well-being and to develop specific capacities such as calmness, clarity, and concentration. We report a prospective convenience-controlled study in which we analyzed the effect of two components of Preksha Dhyāna – buzzing bee sound meditation and color meditation on healthy college students. Mahapran and leśya dhyāna are two Preksha Dhyāna practices that are based on sound and green color, respectively. The study population (...) represents a suitable target as college students experience different stress factors during the school year. This study measures the individual and combined effects of two techniques, on short-term memory, attention, and affect, in novice meditators. We used a battery of cognitive, performance, and compared results with baseline and control values. We found improved cognition, especially attention, short-term memory, and affect in terms of positivity and reduced negativity. Overall, the two techniques produced variable benefits and subjects showed improved scores over baseline for short-term memory, cognitive function, and overall wellbeing. Further studies are required to understand underlying mechanisms for the observed differences between the two techniques and to elucidate mechanisms underlying the more pronounced and global benefits observed with the combined techniques. These results underscore a need to examine individual components of meditation practices in order to individualize treatment approaches for attention disorders in young adults.Clinical Trail Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03779269. (shrink)

We describe how a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) process was used to develop a means of discussing end-of-life care needs of Deaf seniors. This process identified a variety of communication issues to be addressed in working with this special population. We overview the unique linguistic and cultural characteristics of this community and their implications for working with Deaf individuals to provide information for making informed decisions about end-of-life care, including completion of health care directives. Our research and our work with (...) members of the Deaf community strongly show that communication and presentation of information should be in American Sign Language, the language of Deaf citizens. (shrink)

As is clear in the 2008 report of the President's Council on Bioethics, the brain death debate is plagued by ambiguity in the use of such key terms as ‘integration’ and ‘wholeness’. Addressing this problem, I offer a plausible ontological account of organismal unity drawing on the work of Hoffman and Rosenkrantz, and then apply that account to the case of brain death, concluding that a brain dead body lacks the unity proper to a human organism, and has therefore undergone (...) a substantial change. I also show how my view can explain hard cases better than one in which biological integration is taken to imply ontological wholeness or unity. (shrink)

The application of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in healthcare have immense potential to improve the care of patients. While there are some emerging practices surro...

Competition among scientists for funding, positions and prestige, among other things, is often seen as a salutary driving force in U.S. science. Its effects on scientists, their work and their relationships are seldom considered. Focus-group discussions with 51 mid- and early-career scientists, on which this study is based, reveal a dark side of competition in science. According to these scientists, competition contributes to strategic game-playing in science, a decline in free and open sharing of information and methods, sabotage of others’ (...) ability to use one’s work, interference with peer-review processes, deformation of relationships, and careless or questionable research conduct. When competition is pervasive, such effects may jeopardize the progress, efficiency and integrity of science. (shrink)

Even babies have an implicit appreciation of the relationship between realistic pictures and the objects that they depict, but a mature understanding of pictures involves an explicit appreciation of how pictures work. Adults appreciate that pictures are public representations that can communicate information to other people, and that some pictures are better at doing this than others. We explore the foundations of this understanding in young children. In three experiments, using yes/no and forced-choice questions, we find that 3- and 4-year (...) olds understand that other people benefit from pictures that contain greater perceptual detail and that the more realistic the picture, the better it is as a symbolic vehicle. (shrink)

This article explains the problems with Alan Shewmon’s critique of brain death as a valid sign of human death, beginning with a critical examination of his analogy between brain death and severe spinal cord injury. The article then goes on to assess his broader argument against the necessity of the brain for adult human organismal integration, arguing that he fails to translate correctly from biological to metaphysical claims. Finally, on the basis of a deeper metaphysical analysis, I offer a revised (...) rationale for the validity of the neurological criterion of human death. (shrink)

Cet article examine la place du concept d’impartialité dans les théories délibératives de la démocratie. C’est à partir de certaines critiques féministes que sont discutés deux défis lancés à la théorie délibérative et qui sont étroitement liés : le premier porte essentiellement sur le critère du raisonnable et l’idée d’offre de raisons ; le second concerne les circonstances sociales et politiques contingentes dans lesquelles les perspectives des groupes marginalisés peuvent influencer le jugement des autres citoyens. Certains des changements qui devraient (...) être apportés à la théorie délibérative afin qu’elle puisse tenir compte de ces préoccupations sont ensuite proposés. Finalement, les implications de tels changements pour nos notions plus générales de vertu et de responsabilité de la citoyenneté sont examinées.This article examines the place of the concept of impartiality in theories of deliberative democracy. Drawing on and extending recent feminist critiques of deliberative democracy, it explores two interrelated challenges to deliberative theory, one focused on the standard of reasonableness and the idea of reason-giving and the other on the contingent social and political circumstances under which marginalized-groups perspectives may sway the judgment of other citizens. Finally, some of the changes required of deliberative theory to address these concerns are discussed, and the implications of these changes for our more general notions of the virtues and responsibilities of citizenship are explored. (shrink)

On the old story about early modern philosophy, Descartes is a “rationalist” who devalues the senses, and Berkeley an “empiricist” who rejects this. Berkeley plays into this story in his Notebooks, where he writes: “in vindication of the senses effectually to confute wt Descartes saith in ye last par. of the last Med: viz. that the senses oftener inform him falsly than truely”. But when we turn to this “last par.,” we find Descartes maintaining that “my senses report the truth (...) much more frequently than not”. In this paper, I draw on recent commentary to outline Descartes' positive account of sensation. I then look carefully at Berkeley's account of the same, in particular, by considering his distinction between human and divine perception and his account of the laws of nature. In so doing, I suggest that there are noteworthy parallels between Descartes' and Berkeley's accounts with respect to the function of sensation and the ways in which sensations can fulfill this function. I conclude by sketching some ways in which this understanding of Berkeley can illuminate some aspects of Berkeley scholarship. (shrink)

Political scientist Melissa Orlie asks what it means to live freely and responsibly when advantages are distributed disproportionately according to race, gender ...

In this article I argue that understanding the role that the virtues of love play in Kant’s ethical theory requires understanding not only the nature of the virtues themselves, but also the unique nature of wide Kantian duties. I begin by making the case that while the Doctrine of Virtue supports attributing an affective component to the virtues of love, we are right to resist attributing anaffective success conditionto these virtues. I then distinguish wide duties from negative and narrow (positive) (...) duties in order to make the case that prudential considerations often unavoidably and unproblematically play a role in deliberation about how we fulfil our wide duties. In the final section I combine these findings, arguing that the virtues of love play an important moral role by shaping these prudential considerations. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the problem of giving a correct analysis of function statements as they are used in biology. Examples of such statements are (1) The function of the myelin sheath is to insulate the nerve fiber and (2) The function of chlorophyll is to enable photosynthesis to take place. After criticizing analyses of such statements developed by Braithwaite, Nagel and Hempel an analysis is presented by the author. Finally the question of whether function statements are explanations is (...) discussed briefly. (shrink)

On a version of consent theory that tempts many, predatory sexual relations involving significant power imbalances (e.g. between professors and students, adults and teenagers, or employers and employees) are wrong because they violate consent-centric norms. In particular, the wronged party is said to have been incapable of consenting to the predation, and the sexual wrong is located in the encounter’s nonconsensuality. Although we agree that these are sexual wrongs, we resist the idea that they are always nonconsensual. We argue instead (...) that it is possible for students, teenagers, employees, etc. to fully consent to sexually predatory encounters; denying as much renders survivors of predation vulnerable to compounding harms. Survivors face a dilemma: give up either their understanding of their experience as wrong, or their self-conception as an agent capable of consenting. We call the latter phenomenon agential demotion. (shrink)

In ‘The logic of partial supposition’ (Analysis vol. 81), Benjamin Eva and Stephan Hartmann investigate partial imaging, a credence-revision method which combines the partiality familiar from Jeffrey Conditioning(The Logic of Decision, 1983) with the formal notion of imaging familiar from Lewis’s ‘Causal decision theory’ (1981). They argue that because partial imaging is non-monotonic, it ‘fail[s] to provide a plausible account of the norms of partial subjunctive suppositions’.In this note, I present a notion of partial imaging that does satisfy monotonicity, and (...) discuss some of the applications and ramifications. The account frames conditioning as a form of imaging, and rejects Gärdenfors’s principle of linearity in ‘Imaging and conditionalization’ (1982). (shrink)

Today dominative power operates apart from, and exterior to, those state governmentalities that the "body politics" of Stanley Hauerwas disavows as "constantinian" entanglements such as military service, governmental office, and conspicuous expressions of civil religion. This is especially true with respect to those biopolitical modalities David Theo Goldberg names as "racelessness," by which material inequalities are racially correlated, thereby allowing whiteness to mediate life and ration death. If, as Hauerwas contends, radical ecclesiology is indeed a theopolitical alternative to the nation–state's (...) politics of violence, then it must prove itself resistant to such racialized violence. However, inasmuch as the (largely) uncontested fact of ecclesial segregation recapitulates these broader stratifications and exclusions, the church functions as a passive civil religion and itself participates in the politics of "nonviolent violence." Thus, Hauerwas must do something that he has been reluctant to do. He must talk about race and racism more directly, specifying how his ecclesiological theopolitics resists such forms of violence; more importantly, he must demonstrate how actual ecclesial congregations instantiate such resistance. In short, to be truly nonviolent, Hauerwas's body politics must become a politics of bodies. (shrink)

“Everyone has a price at which he sells himself”: Immanuel Kant quotes this remark in the 1793 _Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone_, attributing it to “a member of English Parliament”. I argue, however, that the context of the quotation in the _Religion_ alludes to the arresting pedagogical practices of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who famously said that “different people sell themselves at different prices” (Discourses 1.2). I argue that there are two sides of Epictetus’s pedagogical strategies: a jolting (...) side meant to expose self-deception and practical inconsistency; and an uplifting side meant to arouse the resources by which it is possible to progress towards virtue — specifically, our sense of kinship with the divine insofar as we are rational. I argue that Kant develops a conception of self-respect in later practical works that plausibly draws on Epictetus, and his distinctive version of the traditional Stoic account of rational agency. (shrink)

Central to the argument of the book are Charles Taylor's perspectives on authenticity and expressivism, which the author reads as a radical reworking of our understanding of being in the world and a starting point for rethinking the way individuals and communities ought to be dealing politically with ecological crises. Glen Lehman uses Taylor's work on liberalism, interpretivism and socialism to construct a bridge between democratic, ethical and ecological perspectives. The bridge developed involves a fusion between liberal and interpretivist (...) ideas, establishing a common ground through which different values are addressed. Such a fusion of perspectives acts in a spirit that moderates the dominant anthropocentric attitude toward the natural environment"--From publisher's website. (shrink)

Read in isolation, H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture is seen to render a settled verdict against the sectarian anticultural type and in favour of the transformative type. But this ignores the interrelated dialectics of movement and institution, withdrawal and identification, accommodation and transformation characteristic of his critical project. It further occludes Niebuhr's variegated treatment and deployment of `the monastic' within his larger corpus, and especially in the lesser-known texts such as The Church Against the World. This essay reconsiders Christ (...) and Culture within this broader critical and textual context. It revisits the question posed in `Back to Benedict?': `It is worthwhile raising the question, therefore, whether Protestantism can and ought to continue to reject the monastic ideal out of hand'. It retrieves the full valence of hermetic, cenobitic, and mendicant forms of asceticism conflated by Niebuhr's equivocal designation of `monasticism'. In so doing, it argues for a mendicant cultural ethic which can account for the full dialectical range of Niebuhr's sectarian and transformative types within the sectarian type itself. (shrink)

This article uses the interpretive work of Dreyfus, Gadamer, Nussbaum and Taylor to explore the natural environment as a shared ecological and social commonality. I focus on the supposition that the natural world possesses intrinsic value and new political structures are needed. I explore how we might better engage with multiple cultures concerning matters at the heart of ecological politics. Political interpretivists offer processes of equal facilitation and maximization that work to include environmental values in democratic thought. Interpretivists differ from (...) earth-based and neo-conservative environmentalists, who dominate modern debates. The differences involve understanding the role of practical reasoning and how humanity interacts with the natural world. Intriguingly, then, interpretivists concur with Deep Ecologists that nature possesses intrinsic value, but do so guided by an ideal of authenticity. (shrink)

This article explores Charles Taylor's Hegelian and Aristotelian ethic of reconciliation. It comments on the critical work provided by Joel Anderson, Jürgen Habermas, Chandras Kukathas, Morag Patrick, Philip Pettit and Mark Redhead. It is argued that these critical perspectives on Taylor's work have not fully developed the spirit of liberalism which runs like a red thread through his ethic of reconciliation. For Taylor, reconciliation embraces others who are different from us and aims to create a virtuous culture. Taylor's critics overlook (...) the liberal implications of his ethic and also do not recognize his commitment to the plural diversity in modern societies. Taylor's communitarianism (post-liberalism in his mind) aims to create trust, openness and democratic accountability. The article concludes that democratic practice must also engage with others who are different from us, fostering a fusion of horizons that creates reconciliation and understanding. Key Words: communitarianism • ecology • interpretation • liberalism • post-liberalism • public sphere • reconciliation. (shrink)

It is an appealing idea that deontic modality is a modality of the open future, and that the indeterminacy of the open future is the key, within natural language, to understanding the deontic modal puzzles that form the traditional subject-matter of deontic logic. In this paper, I pull together three well-studied strands of indeterminism—Thomason (1980)’s settledness operator, the modal base of Kratzer (1981, 1991)’s analysis of modals, and Stalnaker (1978)’s notion of diagonal acceptance—to argue for two theses governing a deontic (...) logic for natural language. -/- The first thesis makes a claim about postsemantic truth, and is couched in terms of Stalnaker’s dagger operator. The second concerns what it is for an act to be permissible, when agents exercise partial control over their obligations as well as their bodily movements. (shrink)