Das Altern ist nicht nur eine biologische, sondern auch eine kulturelle Tatsache. Als Objekt der Verhandlungen zwischen Wissensdiskursen erscheint Alter als ein ebenso heterogenes wie problematisches Phanomen, das von Werturteilen und Weltanschauungen bestimmt wird. Des Weiteren sind Alter und Medizin in der offentlichen Meinung moderner Gesellschaften eng miteinander verbunden. Das interdisziplinare Forschungsprojekt "Kulturelle Variationen und Reprasentationen des Alters" geht von einem erweiterten, die geistes-, sozial- und medizinwissenschaftlichen Diskurse integrierenden Konzept von Alterskulturen und Potentialen des Alters aus. Dies bedeutet, Alter als (...) Gegenstand des Wissens und als Konzept zu begreifen. Alterskonzepte, das heisst Vorstellungen, Wertungen und, Bilder des Alters, sind Deutungsmuster fur elementare Bedurfnisse an der Schnittstelle von individuellem und kollektivem Leben. Mit Beitragen von David Blane und Gopalakrishnan Netuveli, Johannes Siegrist und Morten Wahrendorf, Peter Rusterholz, Anouk Janssen, Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen, Stefanie Knoll, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Gerd Gockenjan, Giovanna Pinna, Hans-Georg Pott, Monika Gomille, Miriam Seidler, Pat Thane, Simone Moses, Heiner Fangerau und Jorg Vogele, Anja Schonlau, Thomas Kupper". (shrink)

The number of children with chronic critical illness (CCI) is a growing population in the United States. A defining characteristic of this population is a prolonged hospital stay. Our study assessed the proportion of pediatric patients with chronic critical illness in U.S. hospitals at a specific point in time, and identified a subset of children whose hospital stay lasted for months to years. The potential harms of a prolonged hospitalization for children with CCI, which include over treatment, infection, disruption of (...) family life, and the intensive utilization of resources—combined with the moral distress experienced by the clinicians who care for the children, suggest the need for ethical analysis of this growing issue to identify actions that could be taken at the clinical and health systems levels to reduce the harms associated with prolonged hospital stay.In this article we present three real cases from our study that involved a very long hospital stay. We applied a framework developed by Mackenzie, Rogers, and Dodds to analyze inherent, situational, and pathogenic vulnerabilities to examine the ways that interventions intended to remedy one source of harm for the children in our cohort inadvertently created other harms. We examined the complex ways that children with protracted hospitalization are vulnerable to the choices made by their family and clinicians, as well as by healthcare systems and communities. Finally, we used this analysis to summarize actions and ethical responses to this growing patient population. Such an understanding is essential to making clinical and ethical decisions that arise for children who are at risk for a very long stay in the hospital. (shrink)

This study explores the relationship between moral intensity and the use of different sensemaking strategies in military critical incidents. First, narratives of military personnel were used to select prototypical high/low moral intensity critical incidents. In a follow-up, a scenario study was conducted with active duty military personnel to examine the relationship between moral intensity and the use of sensemaking tactics. This study offers three main conclusions. First, the use of sensemaking tactics is strongly tied to the level of moral intensity (...) in the situation. In high-intense situations, the servicemen draw on previous experiences, prediction of consequences, and help of others to recognize and interpret the situation. Less attention goes out to higher level critical thinking. Thus, it seems that in these critical incidents, the servicemen react without giving room for thorough consideration and deliberation. Second, the number of deployments a serviceman experienced influences the perceived seriousness and harmfulness of the situation negatively in low-intense situations. Finally, and in line with earlier studies, the results indicate that the concept of moral intensity is formed out of three rather than the six dimensions originally proposed by Jones. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

El presente trabajo busca las ventajas de articular la inducción y la analogía con las éticas aplicadas en proyectos socioeducativos. La revisión de artículos muestra que en los proyectos sociales predominan las éticas principialistas, a las que subyace una lógica deductiva, pero algunosestudios revelan éticas aplicadas de corte dialógico y crítico estructuradas con la inducción y la analogía. Se examinan posiciones teóricas sobre el estatuto de las éticas aplicadas, confirmando quela inducción y la analogía están presentes, tanto en la casuística (...) que culmina en la construcciónde máximas o criterios prudenciales como en procedimientos que exigen la participación de losinvolucrados en cada caso concreto, y en el círculo de la hermenéutica crítica con sus dialécticas. Mediante un procedimiento analítico-sintético se examinan 12 proyectos socioeducativos realizados en modalidad no formal. Como resultado, se distinguen cuatro combinaciones: 1) ética prescriptiva y lógica deductiva, 2) ética del reconocimiento y lógicas alternadas, 3) ética dialógica y lógica deldescubrimiento y 4) ética prudencial de la hermenéutica crítica y lógica dialéctica. Se concluye que, al incluir la inducción y la analogía en las éticas aplicadas en proyectos socioeducativos,se contribuye a la mejora de los aprendizajes y a la producción de pautas de comportamiento yconvicciones morales acordes con el contexto respectivo. (shrink)

BackgroundPregnant people have been overlooked or excluded from clinical research, resulting in a lack of scientific knowledge on medication safety and efficacy during pregnancy. Thus far, both the opportunities to generate evidence-based knowledge beyond clinical trials and the role of pregnant people in changing their status quo have not been discussed. Some scholars have argued that for rare disease patients, for whom, just like pregnant people, a poor evidence base exists regarding treatments, solidarity has played an important role in addressing (...) the evidence gap. This paper explores whether and how the enactment of solidarity among pregnant people can be stimulated to help address the poor evidence base on medications used during pregnancy.MethodWe use the concept of solidarity formulated by Prainsack and Buyx and enrich their concept by providing an account for stimulating the enactment of solidarity. Then we apply this account to the case of pregnant people who use medication.ResultsSolidarity means enacted commitment on the part of an individual to assisting others with whom the person recognizes a similarity in a relevant respect. Although solidarity cannot be imposed, we argue that the empowerment of people is a crucial concept in understanding how solidarity can be stimulated. Empowerment in the context of pregnant people means creating awareness about their status quo, explaining how scientific research can help close the knowledge gap, and how pregnant people can themselves contribute. In particular, how pregnant people can contribute to the collection of health data to strengthen the evidence base for medications used during pregnancy.ConclusionsWe conclude that acting in solidarity can help change the status quo for pregnant people. Furthermore, we argue that the empowerment of pregnant people and other relevant stakeholders is a way to stimulate the enactment of solidarity. The process of empowerment starts by raising awareness about the lack of evidence on medications used during prengnacy and by explaining to pregnant people how they can contribute to changing the way knowledge is being generated by, for example, sharing data on the health effects of medications. (shrink)

While freedom has traditionally been discussed in philosophy and political theory, this paper proposes an anthropological approach to the study of freedom. The focus is on the Japanese word amae, which Takeo Doi calls the ‘key’ to Japanese culture and contrasts with the ‘Western’ concept of freedom. After discussing Doi’s influential work, meanings are reconstructed from interviews and group discussions with Japanese people about amae. The interviewees define amae literally in terms of social ‘non-independence’ and, unlike Doi, understand it in (...) a complex intertwining with freedom on the one hand and autonomy on the other. Overall, the paper argues that amae can hardly serve as a ‘key’ to understanding the Japanese, but can stimulate fruitful anthropological reflections not only on Japanese culture, but also on the concept of freedom. (shrink)

Parents, peers, and teachers provide a powerful context for school students’ well-being. However, a detailed and systematic analysis of how parental, peer, and teacher support relate to students’ well-being, measured by the dimensions self-worth, psychological and physical well-being, is still missing. To address this research gap, the following study investigates 733 adolescent German students from grades 7 and 8 with respect to their perceived supportive relationships at home and within the school context. The study considers gender, socioeconomic status, and school (...) form as potential confounders. The results of the structural equation model, analyzed with the statistical software R, indicate that perceived teacher support was positively related to students’ self-worth and physical well-being, while peer support was related to psychological well-being. Students who perceived their parents as supportive reported higher well-being with respect to all three dimensions investigated. (shrink)

The differential activation hypothesis (DAH; Teasdale, 1988) proposes that individuals who are vulnerable to depression can be distinguished from non-vulnerable individuals by the degree to which negative thoughts and maladaptive cognitive processes are activated during sad mood. While retrieval of negative autobiographical memories is noted as one such process, the model does not articulate a role for deficits in recalling positive memories. Two studies were conducted to compare the autobiographical memory characteristics of never-depressed and formerly depressed individuals following a sad (...) mood induction. In Study 1, features of negative memories of never-depressed and formerly depressed individuals did not differ, either in neutral or sad mood. For positive memories, groups did not differ in neutral mood, but following a sad mood induction, formerly depressed individuals rated their positive memories as less vivid than their never-depressed counterparts. Study 2 examined positive autobiographical memory features more comprehensively and replicated the finding that in a sad mood formerly depressed individuals recalled less vivid positive memories than never-depressed controls. These findings suggest that the phenomenological features of positive memories could represent an important factor in depressive vulnerability, and, more broadly, that depression may be associated with a deficit in the processing of positive material. (shrink)

How is medical knowledge made? There have been radical changes in recent decades, through new methods such as consensus conferences, evidence-based medicine, translational medicine, and narrative medicine. Miriam Solomon explores their origins, aims, and epistemic strengths and weaknesses; and she offers a pluralistic approach for the future.

David Hunter’s On Believing is an ambitious, extremely carefully argued, discussion of what it means to believe. He urges readers to re-think the way to categorize beliefs (or more precisely believ...

Michael Seidler - Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 405-406 Book Review Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany Ian Hunter. Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xix + 398. Cloth, $69.95. Mendelssohn once referred to Kant, supposedly with affection, as "the all-destroyer" . Hunter's erudite book (...) takes a similar, albeit colder view of Kant's impact on the history of moral and political thought. Kant and Kantians, he holds, not only distort that account by advancing themselves as the "critical" solution to its dialectical inadequacies,.. (shrink)

This essay examines Kant's relationship to the Stoics with respect to the affective dimension of the moral life. Besides offering a general description and comparison of the two philosophies in this particular regard, it utilizes numerous specific Kantian references to and parallels with Stoicism to argue that his own position was, throughout its development, shaped by a growing contact with and appreciation of the Stoic view. The paper proceeds from some negative remarks of Kant about suppressing or even eliminating the (...) emotions and inclinations found mainly in the Grundlegung and the second Critique, and then goes on to show how Kant was able to draw upon a number of Stoic distinctions and concepts, such as that between the affects and the passions, in order to mitigate these negative and exclusivistic attitudes and to reincorporate the affective components of the personality into his conception of a fully human moral life. Moreover, because of the numerous subtopics explored in making the main case for the Kant-Stoa link, the essay also accomplishes its subsidiary purpose of showing the importance of the sometimes overlooked emotional factor or dimension of Kant's ethics as such. (shrink)

Die meisten Erörterungen der Freiheitsproblematik bei Leibniz beschränken sich auf die Frage, ob das logische Prinzip vom unzureichenden Grunde eine praktisch-kausale Determination menschlicher Handlungen einschließt. Meine Abhandlung gibt darauf eine bejahende Antwort und zeigt, daß Leibniz sich sehr darum bemüht hat, logische Handlungsgründe als unmittelbare Verhaltensursachen, d.h. als kausale Erklärung menschlicher Freiheit zu begreifen, der wichtigste Beitrag der Abhandlung besteht jedoch darin, im Detail gezeigt zu haben, daß Leibniz neben der obigen eine andere und neue Freiheitskonzeption vom Standpunkt der Unvollkommenheit (...) des moralisch handelnden Subjektes entwickelt hat. -Diese Freiheit realisiert sich gemäß einer informellen, aber komplexen Methode moralischer Entwicklung und Selbstbestimmung, wodurch der moralisch Handelnde eine zunehmende Herrschaft über die Triebe und Leidenschaften gewinnt, diese Methode moralischer Selbstverwirklichung besitzt Ähnlichkeiten mit der „moralischen Therapieײ der späteren Stoa und mit der Kantischen Methode der sich selbst bestimmenden „praktischen Vernunftײ. (shrink)

The question of whether it is ever permissible to believe on insufficient evidence has once again become a live question. Greater attention is now being paid to practical dimensions of belief, namely issues related to epistemic virtue, doxastic responsibility, and voluntarism. In this book, McCormick argues that the standards used to evaluate beliefs are not isolated from other evaluative domains. The ultimate criteria for assessing beliefs are the same as those for assessing action because beliefs and actions are both products (...) of agency. Two important implications of this thesis, both of which deviate from the dominant view in contemporary philosophy, are 1) it can be permissible to believe for non-evidential reasons, and 2) we have a robust control over many of our beliefs, a control sufficient to ground attributions of responsibility for belief. (shrink)

The paper discusses two recent approaches to schizophrenia, a phenomenological and a neuroscientific approach, illustrating how new directions in philosophy and cognitive science can elaborate accounts of psychopathologies of the self. It is argued that the notion of the minimal and bodily self underlying these approaches is still limited since it downplays the relevance of social interactions and relations for the formation of a coherent sense of self. These approaches also illustrate that we still lack an account of how 1st (...) and 3rd person observations can fruitfully go together in an embodied account of disorders of the self. Two concepts from enactive cognitive science are introduced, the notions of autonomy and sense-making. Based on these, a new proposal for an enactive approach to psychopathologies of the self is outlined that integrates 1st and 3rd person perspectives, while strongly emphasising the role of social interactions in the formation of self. It is shown how the enactive framework might serve as a basis for an alternative understanding of disorders of the self such as schizophrenia, as a particular form of socially constituted self-organisation. (shrink)

This thought-provoking book, first published in 1991, examines sexual politics in a world which is being radically changed by the challenges of feminism. Seidler explores how men have responded to feminism, and the contradictory feelings men have towards dominant forms of masculinity. Seidler’s stimulating and original analysis of social and political theory connects personally to everyday issues in people’s lives. It reflects the growing importance of sexual and personal politics within contemporary politics and culture, and demonstrates clearly the (...) challenge that feminism brings to our inherited forms of morality, politics and sexuality. (shrink)

Eduard Seidler sets his discussion of the teaching of medical ethics in the Federal Republic of Germany against an historical background. Immediately after the Second World War the freshness of the memory of the 'Nuremberg Medical Trials' influenced the way in which moral dilemmas were treated in Germany. At the present time no systematic instruction in medical ethics is provided in either undergraduate or postgraduate or continuing medical education. As a result of this, an inquiry was set up in (...) 1977/78. Questionnaires were sent out with a view to collecting information on how subjects referring to medical ethics are treated during medical training. The inquiry showed that no special discipline can claim to be the only competent one for medical ethics, but that everyone has something to contribute. Dr Seidler concludes by stating that basic curricula related to the problems of medical ethics would have to be developed and should be carried on continuously within the training programme. (shrink)

For the last forty years, two claims have been at the core of disputes about scientific change: that scientists reason rationally and that science is progressive. For most of this time discussions were polarized between philosophers, who defended traditional Enlightenment ideas about rationality and progress, and sociologists, who espoused relativism and constructivism. Recently, creative new ideas going beyond the polarized positions have come from the history of science, feminist criticism of science, psychology of science, and anthropology of science. Addressing the (...) traditional arguments as well as building on these new ideas, Miriam Solomon constructs a new epistemology of science. After discussions of the nature of empirical success and its relation to truth, Solomon offers a new, social account of scientific rationality. She shows that the pursuit of empirical success and truth can be consistent with both dissent and consensus, and that the distinction between dissent and consensus is of little epistemic significance. In building this social epistemology of science, she shows that scientific communities are not merely the locus of distributed expert knowledge and a resource for criticism but also the site of distributed decision making. Throughout, she illustrates her ideas with case studies from late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century physical and life sciences. Replacing the traditional focus on methods and heuristics to be applied by individual scientists, Solomon emphasizes science funding, administration, and policy. One of her goals is to have a positive influence on scientific decision making through practical social recommendations. (shrink)

The article deals with larger stretches of talk-in-interaction and argues in favor of a descriptive approach, which integrates the structural requirements of global organization, the special type of sequential orderliness within larger units as well as the genre-orientation of these units. Drawing on previous work in conversation analysis, discourse analysis and the sociological genre analysis, the article introduces GLOBE as an analytical tool which functionally links discourse units to conventionalized communicative purposes. GLOBE reconstructs the interactive achievement of genre-oriented discourse units (...) in a three-branch analysis of jobs, devices and forms. The analytical potential of GLOBE is demonstrated in the exemplary genre-contrastive analysis of a narrative, an explanative and an argumentative excerpt. On the basis of the analyses of the three genres, the overarching constitution of genre-oriented global units is then explicated. (shrink)

In this work, originally published in 1986, Victor Seidler explores the different notions of respect, equality and dependency in Kant’s moral writings. He illuminates central tensions and contradictions not only within Kant’s moral philosophy, but within the thinking and feeling about human dignity and social inequality which we take very much for granted within a liberal moral culture. In challenging our assumption of the autonomy of morality, Seidler also questions our understanding of what it means for someone to (...) live as a person in his or her own right. The autonomy of individuals cannot be assumed but has to be reasserted against relationships of subordination. This involves a break with a rationalist morality, so that respect for others involves respect for emotions, feelings, desires and needs, and establishes a fuller autonomy as a basis for freedom and justice. (shrink)

A new, social epistemology of science that addresses practical as well as theoretical concerns.

In this paper, I begin by defending permissivism: the claim that, sometimes, there is more than one way to rationally respond to a given body of evidence. Then I argue that, if we accept permissivism, certain worries that arise as a result of learning that our beliefs were caused by the communities we grew up in, the schools we went to, or other irrelevant influences dissipate. The basic strategy is as follows: First, I try to pinpoint what makes irrelevant influences (...) worrying and I come up with two candidate principles. I then argue that one principle should be rejected because it is inconsistent with permissivism. The principle we should accept implies that it is sometimes rational to maintain our beliefs, even upon learning that they were caused by irrelevant influences. (shrink)

The continuing ramifications of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 have forced social scientists to raise fundamental questions about the relationship between capitalism, democracy and inequality. In particular, Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Wolfgang Streeck’s Buying Time focus on, respectively, the economic and the political contradictions of capitalistic societies. Piketty argues that capitalism naturally tends towards the exacerbation of rent-based wealth inequality, whereas Streeck suggests that capitalism and democracy are ultimately incompatible. A striking feature of these two contributions is that their authors (...) are social democrats, not Marxists or radical anti-capitalist thinkers. In this review article, I illustrate how the combination of social democratic convictions and the acknowledgment that capitalism cannot be tamed generates interesting tensions between the diagnosis offered by the two monographs and the solutions that are proposed. I end the piece by raising two remarks on the implications that this tension might have for normative political theory. On the one hand, it is time for theory to do more work on political action and agency. On the other, liberal egalitarian theorists might have to acknowledge that they are in the same predicament as Piketty and Streeck: social democracy is their ideal, yet it is perhaps unattainable. If this is the case, liberal egalitarians might be committed to adopt a more confrontational attitude towards capitalism: they might have to become reluctant radicals. (shrink)

El presente artículo aborda tres aportes de la deconstrucción de Jacques Derrida a la crítica al nacionalismo en distintos momentos de su obra: a) la deconstrucción del mito de los orígenes como ideal de pureza que expone con la lógica del suplemento; b) la crítica a la noción de un idioma nacional pensado como el idioma de un “nosotros” a partir de una comunidad de espíritu y c) la deconstrucción de un nacionalismo a la vez cosmopolita y humanista, inclusive en (...) filosofías críticas del humanismo y contrarias a cualquier determinación racial o natural. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper describes the way in which a simple device, the pregnancy wheel, has been used by the medical profession to impose a new way of measuring and experiencing pregnancy.The change involves counting in weeks instead of counting in months and it is gradually replacing a commonsensical method that had deep physiological and cultural roots. In contrast, the medical methodology of counting forty weeks is more complicated and lacks direct connections to the events of pregnancyIn the encounter between the (...) doctor and the pregnant woman the pregnancy wheel has a variety of uses, among them determinations of the age and estimated size of the fetus.It plays an additional role, however, in the medicalization of pregnancy by providing the doctor with privileged information. It also influences modes of thinking through the way in which it deals with the question of the beginning of pregnancy, a question that has clear moral implications. (shrink)

The article looks at Novi ecclesiastico-scholastici Annales (…), a periodical which is a significant resource in book culture research. The authors focus mainly on book distribution and propagation in Protestant communities during the last decade of the 18th century.

Had we grown up elsewhere or been educated differently, our view of the world would likely be radically different. What to make of this? This paper takes an accuracy-centered first-personal approach to the question of how to respond to the arbitrary nature in which many of our beliefs are formed. I show how considerations of accuracy motivate different responses to this sort of information depending on the type of attitude we take towards the belief in question upon subjecting the belief (...) to doubt. (shrink)

My main aim in this paper is to specify conditions that distinguish rational, or justified, hope from irrational, or unjustified hope. I begin by giving a brief characterization of hope and then turn to offering some criteria of rational hope. On my view both theoretical and practical norms are significant when assessing hope’s rationality. While others have recognized that there are theoretical and practical components to the state itself, when it comes to assessing its rationality, depending on the account, only (...) one of these dimensions matters. Either hope’s rationality is taken to be entirely derivative on the rationality of some belief that the hope entails, or the focus is entirely on the practical dimensions. If we take seriously the idea that both kinds of norms are at play, an account which treats these both as salient and as intertwining in important ways is preferable. I argue that as the practical importance of hope increases, the demand for the level of evidential support lessens and as the stakes get lower, the evidence for the likeliness of the hoped-for outcome coming to be must go up for the hope to be rational. This is so because a hope is rational insofar as it contributes to agential flourishing, but the different dimensions of hope each pick out different aspects of agency; to hope well requires agential competence in both the epistemic and practical realms. (shrink)