Purpose Given the considerable challenges posed by disinformation to both society and journalism, how do news media outlets in Hispanic America and Spain address this pervasive global phenomenon? The purpose of this study is to evaluate the extent to which these outlets embrace recommendations from academic, professional and institutional spheres for countering false contents. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative content analysis was used using variables linked to transparency, verification and potential errors incurred. This study comprehensively analyses the ethical codes of 34 digital (...) native outlets spanning 12 Hispanic American countries (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela), as well as Spain. Findings The key findings reveal significant variations in adherence to the recommended guidelines. Particularly striking is the disparity between compliance with transparency and verification compared to notably higher adherence to measure aimed at rectifying errors. This exploratory study paves the way for further research on additional countries. Originality/value Ethical codes are a fundamental instrument of media accountability. Nevertheless, their utility in the fight against misinformation has barely been addressed. This study is pioneering in the field of disinformation and ethical codes within digital native media outlets in Hispanic America and Spain. (shrink)

Playing soccer in public parks, participating in parades, or marching in religious processions are public performances that express membership in a political community. When these practices are performed by noncitizens, they highlight how the public space—in its physical and symbolic character—is not a space exclusive to members of the political community. Rather, public space is a terrain subject to contestation. In this article, I explore the ways Mexican migrants in New York City use and appropriate public spaces and in doing (...) so expand the boundaries of the political community. I argue that by gaining access to public spaces, appropriating them, and then transforming them, noncitizens claim recognition as members of the political community and thus unsettle its boundaries. (shrink)

El desarrollo de la tecnología y de la inteligencia artificial provocan desde hace años preguntas éticas y antropológicas. La Suma Teológica de Santo Tomás permite categorizar términos tecnológicos y establecer ontologías en clave filosófica. Con esta metodología de la Suma se va a estudiar aquí el término “metaverso” y sus implicaciones éticas. El artículo aporta además una revisión sistemática de literatura científica para elaborar un mapa de conocimiento desde un punto de vista cualitativo y cuantitativo que visibilice el impacto de (...) esta terminología emergente en la investigación. (shrink)

Altruism and solidarity are concepts that are closely related to organ donation for transplantation. On the one hand, they are typically used for encouraging people to donate. On the other hand, they also underpin the regulations in force in each country to different extents. They are often used indistinctly and equivocally, despite the different ethical implications of each concept. This paper aims to clarify to what extent we can speak of altruism and solidarity in the predominant models of organ donation. (...) It also raises the ethical question of whether these categories are adequate as a basis for such models, bearing in mind that organs are a scarce resource and that a shortage of them may mean that fewer lives are saved or improved. (shrink)

Theories related to cognitive sciences, Human-in-the-loop Cyber-physical systems, data analysis for decision-making, and computational ethics make clear the need to create transdisciplinary learning, research, and application strategies to bring coherence to the paradigm of a truly human-oriented technology. Autonomous objects assume more responsibilities for individual and collective phenomena, they have gradually filtered into routines and require the incorporation of ethical practice into the professions related to the development, modeling, and design of algorithms. To make this possible, it is pertinent and (...) urgent to bring them closer to the problems and approaches of the humanities. Increasingly transdisciplinary research must be part of the construction of systems that provide developers and scientists with the necessary bases to understand the ethical debate and therefore their commitment to society. This article considers two theories as articulating axes: Blumenberg’s, coming from the field of philosophy, for whom the process of technification and especially the implementation of mathematical models in their algorithmic form leads to an emptying of meaning and therefore makes programmers who implement their functions to be alien to the concerns that gave them origin; Daston’s, belonging to the field of the history of science and according to which the division of labor in the processes of technification of the calculation implies a kind of subordination in which those who implement the inventions of a small group of privileged mathematicians ignore the procedures that put them into operation. Given these two theories, the black box models prevalent in AI development, and the urgency of establishing explanatory frameworks for the development of computational ethics, this article exposes the need to give a voice to the cultural history of consciousness for promoting the discussions around the implementation of mathematical algorithms. The paper takes as a reference the different points of view that have emerged around the study of technological ethics, its applicability, management, and design. It criticizes the current state of studies from a humanistic perspective and explains how the historical perspective allows promoting the training of software engineers, developers and creators so that they assume intuitions and moral values in the development of their work. Specifically, it aims to expose how cultural history, applied to the study of consciousness and its phenomena, makes those involved in this technological revolution aware of the effect that they, through their algorithms, have on society in general and on human beings in particular. (shrink)

RESUMEN. Este trabajo tiene el propósito principal de estudiar cómo las nuevas formas de acceder a la paternidad y maternidad, a través de las técnicas de reproducción asistida con donación de gametos o embriones, afectan a algunos derechos de los hijos e hijas. En concreto, serán analizados los derechos de filiación paterna y materna y el derecho a conocer los orígenes biológicos. Para ello, será central tomar en consideración el deber que pesa sobre los poderes públicos de asegurar la protección (...) integral de los hijos y posibilitar la investigación de la paternidad, junto con el deber de los padres de prestar asistencia de todo orden a sus hijos. La igualdad de todos los hijos ante la ley, con independencia de su filiación, llevará a comprobar las diferencias entre las personas nacidas mediante reproducción asistida, las nacidas por reproducción natural y las adoptadas, y a valorar si tales diferencias pueden seguir siendo justificadas. ABSTRACT. This work has the main purpose of studying how new ways of access to parenthood, through assisted reproductive technologies with donation of gametes or embryos, affect some rights of the children. Specifically, there will be analyzed the children´s right to both a mother and a father and the right to know their biological origins. To do so, it will be central to take into consideration the duty of public authorities to ensure the comprehensive protection of children and enable the investigation of paternity, together with the duty of parents to provide assistance of all kinds to their children. The equality of all children before the law will lead to testing the differences between those born through assisted reproduction, those born by natural reproduction and the adopted ones, and to assess if such differences may continue being justified. (shrink)

Populations have different percents on different history realms regarding baths and fountains. A constant historical issue of such places is related with constant use and adore. Therefore we find ourselves in time where they where more used and ages where they where less used. On our paper we analyse from a sociological perspective the use of such spaces, mainly associated with social interaction and sociability. At the end of our paper, we are going to analyse both issues directly linked with (...) tourism perspective in terms of health and care on the so called “Postindustrial Society”. (shrink)

El Programa de Termalismo del IMSERSO, perteneciente al Instituto de Mayores y Servicios Sociales del Gobierno de España, se encuentra englobado dentro de de las políticas y actuaciones públicas de carácter social y económico que tienen como objetivo favorecer la salud e integración social de las personas mayores y su envejecimiento activo. Este artículo estudia, desde el año 2010 hasta el 2013, la evolución de las plazas adscritas al programa y hace una prospección para 2014-2015. Los resultados revelan una disminución (...) generalizada del número de plazas, tendencia que se mantendrá en los próximos años. (shrink)

Introduction: Resilience is a multidimensional and dynamic construct associated with positive growth and the capacity to transform stressful and negative factors into opportunities of personal development and self-improvement when faced with difficult experiences. The resilience process of each individual integrates multiple analysis levels, which range from genetic-environmental interactions to a complex process of adaptation between the individual and his/her family, friends, co-workers, society, and culture.Objective: To determine whether resilience improves in students of occupational therapy when exposed for the first time (...) to practice placement education.Methodology: Quasi-experimental, prospective, observational, multi-center study with a sample composed of students from the Degree of Occupational Therapy of the public universities of Málaga and Castilla-La Mancha. Two weeks prior to the beginning of the practice education period, the participants completed a questionnaire that included sociodemographic data and the area of their internships. They were also given the Spanish version of the Connor-Davidson's resilience scale. All these instruments were also completed 1 week after the end of the clinical practice.Results: There were statistically significant differences between the variables that make up resilience and the different internship areas. On the other hand, there was a significant improvement of global resilience after the clinical practice period, in both women and men, when the internship area was not considered.Conclusions: The results show that resilient students are more optimistic and work to improve a situation beyond doing simply what is expected of them, knowing how to control their feelings. This is beneficial for students in practice education, since, during these, they face difficult situations that require a resilient pattern, which helps reduce stress and the burnout syndrome. (shrink)

Introduction: Traditionally, empathy has been studied from two main perspectives: the theory-theory approach and the simulation theory approach. These theories claim that social emotions are fundamentally constituted by mind states in the brain. In contrast, classical phenomenology and recent research based on enactive theories consider empathy as the basic process of contacting others’ emotional experiences through direct bodily perception and sensation. Objective: This study aims to enrich knowledge of the empathic experience of pain by using an experimental phenomenological method. Method: (...) Implementing an experimental paradigm used in affective neuroscience, we exposed 28 healthy adults to a video of sportspersons suffering physical accidents while practicing extreme sports. Immediately after watching the video, each participant underwent a phenomenological interview to gather data on embodied, multi-layered dimensions (bodily sensations, emotions, and motivations) and temporal aspects of empathic experience. We also performed quantitative analyses of the phenomenological categories. Results: Experiential access to the other person’s painful experience involves four main-themes. Bodily resonance: participants felt a multiplicity of bodily, affective, and kinesthetic sensations. Attentional focus: some participants centered their attention more on their own personal discomfort and sensations of rejection, while others on the pain and suffering experienced by the sportspersons. Kinesthetic motivation: some participants experienced the feeling in their bodies to avoid or escape from watching the video, while others experienced the need to help the sportspersons avoid suffering any injury while practicing extreme sports. Temporality of experience: participants witnessed temporal fluctuations in their experiences, bringing intensity changes in their bodily resonance, attentional focus, and kinesthetic motivation. Finally, two experiential structures were found: one structure is self-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the participant’s own experience of seeing the sportsperson suffering, and self-protective kinesthetic motivation; the other structure is other-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the sportsperson, and prosocial kinesthetic motivation to help them. Discussion: We show how phenomenological data may contribute to comprehending empathy for pain in social neuroscience. In addition, we address the phenomenological aspect of the enactive approach to the three dimensions of embodiment of human consciousness, especially the intersubjective dimension. Also, based on our results, we suggest an extension of the enactive theory for non-interactive social experience. (shrink)

The development of assistive robotics and anthropomorphic AI allows machines to increasingly enter into the daily lives of human beings and gradually become part of their lives. Robots have made a strong entry in the field of assistive behaviour. In this chapter, we will ask to what extent technology can satisfy people’s personal needs and desires as compared to human agents in the field of care. The industry of assistive technology burst out of the gate at the beginning of the (...) century with very strong innovation and development and is currently attracting large sources of public and private investment and public attention. We believe that a better-defined and more fundamental philosophical-ethical analysis of the values at stake in care robots is needed. To this end, we will focus on the current status of care robots (types of care robots, their functioning and their design) and we will provide a philosophical-ethical analysis that offers a solid framework for the debate surrounding the potential risks and benefits of implementing assistive robots in people’s daily lives. (shrink)

Among the hundreds of sites that housed survivors of Nazi persecution who came to Sweden in the spring and summer of 1945, one of the largest was at the small village of Öreryd. Between June 1945 and September 1946, around a thousand Jewish and non-Jewish Polish survivors came to this site, where they were expected to stay only until they were well enough to return to their home countries or migrate elsewhere. This article contributes to filling a gap in refugee (...) history in Sweden, dealing with how survivors experienced Swedish refugee camps and shaped the refugee camp environment on their own terms. Thinking with Peter Gatrell’s framework of ‘refugeedom’, a wide range of sources have been examined for insight into how Polish survivors in the Öreryd refugee camp navigated the precarity and uncertainty of their existence as survivors and refugees in Sweden and endeavoured to shape their immediate and future lives. (shrink)

Background: Adolescence is a period with physical, psychological, biological, intellectual, and social changes in which there is usually little perception of risk. COVID-19 has generated constant situations of change and uncertainty worldwide. During the pandemic, the acquisition of preventive behaviors has been relevant. Various studies carried out with adults associate risk perception and the implementation of preventive behaviors with knowledge about the COVID-19 and with age, but there are not many studies with adolescents. Therefore, the objective is to validate, in (...) Spanish, the questionnaire of the knowledge, attitudes, risk perceptions, and practices of adolescents toward the pandemic, and analyze it according to sociodemographic characteristics.Method: This study was a descriptive cross-sectional study, which included adolescents between the ages of 12–18. First, a translation and a back-translation of the questionnaire were performed. The questionnaire was presented in several high schools chosen by convenience sampling and following a non-probabilistic snowball sampling. Reliability and validity analyses were then carried out and the relationships between the different sociodemographic variables were analyzed.Results: The reliability of the questionnaire is acceptable. Knowledge was higher in women, and in those with a higher level of education; and were lower in those who lived in smaller towns, as well as in those who had a member of their family receiving financial aid. In terms of attitudes and risk perceptions, younger adolescents had higher scores, and those who had a member of their family receiving financial aid, lower.Conclusion: The questionnaire is a reliable tool in the Spanish adolescent population. Knowledge was influenced by gender, place of residence, level of education, and financial aid. Attitudes and risk perceptions were influenced by age and financial aid. For practices, no predictors were found. In general, adolescents scored lower on knowledge about COVID-19, but they scored higher on COVID-19 safety practices. (shrink)

For years, the sexual and reproductive health of women with intellectual and developmental disability or disabilities has been insufficiently addressed by institutions and family members due to a lack of information, training, and, sometimes, religious issues. In this context, contraceptive digital pills can enhance the sexual and reproductive control of this population group. Digital pills could help to improve adherence to treatments aimed to prevent unwanted pregnancies, as well as allowing women and their caregivers to exert better drug intake control. (...) However, there are some ethical risks to consider that may outweigh these benefits. This study sets out to explore the ethical considerations that should be taken into account in the case of a potential roll‐out of contraceptive digital pills as a way of improving the sexual and reproductive health of these women. (shrink)

Although many of the factors that may influence donation have been identified, the timing of the interview in which families are asked for their authorisations seems to be decisive. However, there are few studies that analyse this process when the interview takes place. Qualitative techniques such as Participant Observation could help to better understand this process. One of the most recurring arguments against carrying out this type of study is the difficulty in complying with all the ethical requirements for any (...) research as defined in biomedical research guidelines and committees. This article aims to contribute to a discussion on the ethical viability of conducting an in situ study on family interviewing and proposes a strategy for minimising possible risks in designing a study of these characteristics. (shrink)

The organ donation and transplantation (ODT) system heavily relies on the willingness of individuals to donate their organs. While it is widely believed that public trust plays a crucial role in shaping donation rates, the empirical support for this assumption remains limited. In order to bridge this knowledge gap, this article takes a foundational approach by elucidating the concept of trust within the context of ODT. By examining the stakeholders involved, identifying influential factors, and mapping the intricate trust relationships among (...) trustors, trustees, and objects of trust, we aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of trust dynamics in ODT. We employ maps and graphs to illustrate the functioning of these trust relationships, enabling a visual representation of the complex interactions within the ODT system. Through this conceptual groundwork, we pave the way for future empirical research to investigate the link between trust and organ donation rates, informed by a clarified understanding of trust in ODT. This study can also provide valuable insights to inform interventions and policies aimed at enhancing organ donation rates. (shrink)

Background: This research explores how public awareness and attitudes toward donation and transplantation policies may contribute to Spain's success in cadaveric organ donation. Materials and Methods: A representative sample of 813 people residing in Andalusia (Southern Spain) were surveyed by telephone or via Internet between October and December 2018. Results: Most participants trust Spain's donation and transplantation system (93%) and wish to donate their organs after death (76%). Among donors, a majority have expressed their consent (59%), and few nondonors have (...) expressed their refusal (14%). Only a minority are aware of the presumed consent system in force (28%) and feel sufficiently informed regarding the requirements needed to be an organ donor (16%). Participants mainly consider that relatives should represent the deceased's preferences and be consulted when the deceased's wishes are unknown, as is the case in Spain. Conclusion: Public trust in the transplant system may contribute to Spain's high performance in organ donation. High levels of societal support toward organ donation and transplantation do not correspond with similar levels of public awareness of donation and transplantation policies in Spain. (shrink)

The following article intends an overview on Enrique Dussel’s early work and the examination of the development process of political and philosophical categories such as the ones of “Latin-American identity / otherness”; “Latin-American thought” and political and historical subjects. The corpus covered in this study includes the author’s anthropological-philosophical research on the origins and fundamentals of the western culture as they appear in the trilogy: El humanismo semita, El humanismo helénico and El dualismo en la antropología de la Cristiandad; the (...) first development of otherness and analectic and the proposition of a new political subject in Método para una filosofía de la liberación and Para una ética de la liberación latinoamericana. A review of the first author’s historiographical experiences is included as well by the study of his book: Hipótesis para una historia de la Iglesia en América Latina. (shrink)

This fourteenth volume of Collected Papers is an eclectic tome of 87 papers in Neutrosophics and other fields, such as mathematics, fuzzy sets, intuitionistic fuzzy sets, picture fuzzy sets, information fusion, robotics, statistics, or extenics, comprising 936 pages, published between 2008-2022 in different scientific journals or currently in press, by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 99 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 26 countries: Ahmed B. Al-Nafee, Adesina Abdul Akeem Agboola, Akbar Rezaei, Shariful Alam, Marina Alonso, Fran Andujar, (...) Toshinori Asai, Assia Bakali, Azmat Hussain, Daniela Baran, Bijan Davvaz, Bilal Hadjadji, Carlos Díaz Bohorquez, Robert N. Boyd, M. Caldas, Cenap Özel, Pankaj Chauhan, Victor Christianto, Salvador Coll, Shyamal Dalapati, Irfan Deli, Balasubramanian Elavarasan, Fahad Alsharari, Yonfei Feng, Daniela Gîfu, Rafael Rojas Gualdrón, Haipeng Wang, Hemant Kumar Gianey, Noel Batista Hernández, Abdel-Nasser Hussein, Ibrahim M. Hezam, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Muthusamy Karthika, Nour Eldeen M. Khalifa, Madad Khan, Kifayat Ullah, Valeri Kroumov, Tapan Kumar Roy, Deepesh Kunwar, Le Thi Nhung, Pedro López, Mai Mohamed, Manh Van Vu, Miguel A. Quiroz-Martínez, Marcel Migdalovici, Kritika Mishra, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Mohamed Talea, Mohammad Hamidi, Mohammed Alshumrani, Mohamed Loey, Muhammad Akram, Muhammad Shabir, Mumtaz Ali, Nassim Abbas, Munazza Naz, Ngan Thi Roan, Nguyen Xuan Thao, Rishwanth Mani Parimala, Ion Pătrașcu, Surapati Pramanik, Quek Shio Gai, Qiang Guo, Rajab Ali Borzooei, Nimitha Rajesh, Jesús Estupiñan Ricardo, Juan Miguel Martínez Rubio, Saeed Mirvakili, Arsham Borumand Saeid, Saeid Jafari, Said Broumi, Ahmed A. Salama, Nirmala Sawan, Gheorghe Săvoiu, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Seok-Zun Song, Shahzaib Ashraf, Jayant Singh, Rajesh Singh, Son Hoang Le, Tahir Mahmood, Kenta Takaya, Mirela Teodorescu, Ramalingam Udhayakumar, Maikel Y. Leyva Vázquez, V. Venkateswara Rao, Luige Vlădăreanu, Victor Vlădăreanu, Gabriela Vlădeanu, Michael Voskoglou, Yaser Saber, Yong Deng, You He, Youcef Chibani, Young Bae Jun, Wadei F. Al-Omeri, Hongbo Wang, Zayen Azzouz Omar. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two parts. In Section 1, I explore and defend a “regulative view” of folk-psychology as against the “standard view”. On the regulative view, folk-psychology is conceptualized in fundamentally interpersonal terms as a “mind-making” practice through which we come to form and regulate our minds in accordance with a rich array of socially shared and socially maintained sense-making norms. It is not, as the standard view maintains, simply an epistemic capacity for coming to know about the (...) mental states and dispositions already there. Importantly, the regulative view can meet and beat the standard at its own epistemic game. But it also does more. In Section 2, I show how the regulative view makes progress on two other problems that remain puzzling on the standard view: the problem of “first-person authority” – accounting for the special features of self-knowledge; and the problem of “reactive.. (shrink)

In “The Logic of Deep Disagreements,” Robert Fogelin claims that parties to a deep disagreement lack the common ground needed for arguments to work, making the disagreement impervious to rational resolution. Although Fogelin’s article received numerous responses, there has been no attempt to elucidate the epistemological theory behind Fogelin’s theses. In this article, I examine Fogelin’s theory of deep disagreements in light of his broader philosophy. The picture that emerges is that of relativism of distance, à la Bernard Williams. By (...) interpreting Fogelin’s theory as relativism of distance, it avoids some of the critiques that have been raised against it. (shrink)

This paper presents a new theory of modal reasoning, i.e. reasoning about what may or may not be the case, and what must or must not be the case. It postulates that individuals construct models of the premises in which they make explicit only what is true. A conclusion is possible if it holds in at least one model, whereas it is necessary if it holds in all the models. The theory makes three predictions, which are corroborated experimentally. First, conclusions (...) correspond to the true, but not the false, components of possibilities. Second, there is a key interaction: it is easier to infer that a situation is possible as opposed to impossible, whereas it is easier to infer that a situation is not necessary as opposed to necessary. Third, individuals make systematic errors of omission and of commission. We contrast the theory with theories based on formal rules. (shrink)

If ZFC is consistent, then the collection of countable computably saturated models of ZFC satisfies all of the Multiverse Axioms of Hamkins.

The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is responsible for conducting health technology assessment on behalf of the National Health Service. In seeking to justify its recommendations to the NHS about which technologies to fund, NICE claims to adopt two complementary ethical frameworks, one procedural—accountability for reasonableness —and one substantive—an ‘ethics of opportunity costs’ that rests primarily on the notion of allocative efficiency. This study is the first to empirically examine normative changes to NICE’s approach and to analyse (...) whether these enhance or diminish the fairness of its decision-making, as judged against these frameworks. It finds that increasing formalisation of NICE’s approach and a weakening of the burden of proof laid on technologies undergoing HTA have together undermined its commitment to EOC. This implies a loss of allocative efficiency and a shift in the balance of how the interests of different NHS users are served, in favour of those who benefit directly from NICE’s recommendations. These changes also weaken NICE’s commitment to AfR by diminishing the publicity of its decision-making and by encouraging the adoption of rationales that cannot easily be shown to meet the relevance condition. This signals a need for either substantial reform of NICE’s approach, or more accurate communication of the ethical reasoning on which it is based. The study also highlights the need for further empirical work to explore the impact of these policy changes on NICE’s practice of HTA and to better understand how and why they have come about. (shrink)

The 1996 European Summer Meeting of the Association of Symbolic Logic was held held the University of the Basque Country, at Donostia (San Se bastian) Spain, on July 9-15, 1996. It was organised by the Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language and Information (ILCLI) and the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Sciences of the University of the Basque Coun try. It was supported by: the University of Pais Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unib ertsitatea, the Ministerio de Education y Ciencia (DGCYT), Hezkuntza Saila (...) (Eusko Jaurlaritza), Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia, and Kuxta Fun dazioa. The main topics of the meeting were Model Theory, Proof Theory, Re cursion and Complexity Theory, Models of Arithmetic, Logic for Artifi cial Intelligence, Formal Semantics of Natural Language and Philosophy of Contemporary Logic. The Program Committee consisted of K. Ambos Spies (Heidelberg), J.L. Balcazar (Barcelona), J.E. Fenstad (Oslo), D. Israel (Stanford), H. Kamp (Stuttgart), R. Kaye (Birmingham), J.M. Larrazabal (San Sebastian), D. Lascar (Paris, chairman), A. Marcja (Firenze), G. Mints (Stanford), M. Otero (Madrid), S. Ronchi della Rocca (Torino), K. Segerberg (Uppsala) and L. Vega (Madrid). The organizing Committee consisted of X. Arrazola (San Sebastian), A. Arrieta (San Sebastian), R. Beneyeto (Valencia), B. Carrascal (San Se bastian), K. Korta (San Sebastian), J.M. Larrazabal (San Sebastian, chair man), J.C. Martinez (Barcelona), J.M. Mendez (Salamanca), F. Migura (Victoria) and J. Perez (Victoria). (shrink)

Prenatal screening, consisting of maternal serum screening and nuchal translucency screening, is on the verge of expansion, both by being offered to more pregnant women and by screening for more conditions. The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have each recently recommended that screening be extended to all pregnant women regardless of age, disease history, or risk status. This screening is commonly justified by appeal to the value of autonomy, or women's (...) choice. In this paper, I critically examine the value of autonomy in the context of prenatal screening to determine whether it justifies the routine offer of screening and the expansion of screening services. I argue that in the vast majority of cases the option of prenatal screening does not promote or protect women's autonomy. Both a narrow conception of choice as informed consent and a broad conception of choice as relational reveal difficulties in achieving adequate standards of free informed choice. While there are reasons to worry that women's autonomy is not being protected or promoted within the limited scope of current practice, we should hesitate before normalizing it as part of standard prenatal care for all. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated the factors that people consider when evaluating informal arguments in newspaper and magazine editorials. Experiment 1 showed that subjects were more likely to object to the truth of the premises and the conclusions of an argument than to the strength of the link between them. Experiment 1 also revealed two manipulations that helped subjects object to the link between premises and conclusions: rating how well the premises support the conclusions and rating the believability of the premises and (...) conclusions. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that subjects who identified the premises and conclusions of an argument were better at formulating objections to the link between premises and conclusions. Moreover, subjects in Experiment 2 were better and faster at formulating objections to the truth of the premises and conclusions than to the link between premises and conclusions. The results are discussed in terms of the constraints they pose for developing a cognitive theory of informal reasoning. (shrink)

Lors de l’atelier organisé dans le cadre de l’atelier et du forum communautaire 2023 de la SCB-SCB, nous avons exploré et problématisé le concept d’ « amélioration » des éthiciens cliniques, dans le contexte plus large des discussions sur la professionnalisation de l’éthique clinique. Ce résumé présente les principaux points de vue d’éthiciens cliniques à travers le Canada sur ce sujet et comprend des suggestions sur les mesures que nous pourrions prendre sur le terrain pour permettre et soutenir l’amélioration des (...) éthiciens cliniques à l’avenir. (shrink)

Background: Research involving adults lacking mental capacity relies on the involvement of a proxy or surrogate, although this raises a number of ethical concerns. Empirical studies have examined attitudes towards proxy decision-making, proxies’ authority as decision-makers, decision accuracy, and other relevant factors. However, a comprehensive evidence-based account of proxy decision-making is lacking. This systematic review provides a synthesis of the empirical data reporting the ethical issues surrounding decisions made by research proxies, and the development of a conceptual framework of proxy (...) decision-making for research. Methods: A systematic review was conducted according to PRISMA guidelines. Databases including MEDLINE, EMBASE, and CINAHL were searched using a combination of search terms, and empirical data from eligible studies were retrieved. The review followed the framework synthesis approach to refine and develop a conceptual framework. Results: Thirty-four studies were included in the review. Two dimensions of proxy decision-making emerged. The ethical framing criteria of decision-making used by proxies: use of a substituted judgement, use of a best interests approach, combination of substituted judgement and best interests, and ‘something else’, and the active elements of proxy decision-making: ‘knowing the person’, patient-proxy relationship, accuracy of the decision, and balancing risks, benefits and burdens, and attitudes towards proxy decision-making. Interactions between the framing criteria and the elements of decision-making are complex and contextually-situated. Conclusions: The findings from this systematic review challenge the accepted reductionist account of proxy decision-making. Decision-making by research proxies is highly contextualized and multifactorial in nature. The choice of proxy and the relational features of decision-making play a fundamental role: both in providing the proxy’s authority as decision-maker, and guiding the decision-making process. The conceptual framework describes the relationship between the framing criteria used by the proxy, and the active elements of decision-making. Further work to develop, and empirically test the proposed framework is needed. (shrink)

Research involving adults who lack capacity to consent relies on proxy (or surrogate) decision making. Proxy decisions about participation are ethically complex, with a disparity between normative accounts and empirical evidence. Concerns about the accuracy of proxies’ decisions arise, in part, from the lack of an ethical framework which takes account of the complex and morally pluralistic world in which proxy decisions are situated. This qualitative study explored the experiences of family members who have acted as a research proxy in (...) order to develop an understanding of the ethical concepts involved, and the interactions between those concepts. Proxies described a complex process of respecting the wishes and preferences of the person they represented, whist integrating preferences with what they viewed as being in the interests of the person. They aimed to make a decision that was ‘best’ for the person and protected them from harm; they also aimed to make the ‘right’ decision, viewed as being authentic to the person’s values and life. Decisions were underpinned by the relationship between the person and their proxy, in which both trust and trustworthiness were key. Proxies’ decisions, based both on respect for the person and the need to protect their interests, arose out of their dual role as both proxy and carer. The findings raise questions about accounts which rely on existing normative assumptions with a focus on accuracy and discrepancy, and which fail to take account of the requirement for proxies to make authentic decisions that arise out of their caring obligations. (shrink)

Managers have a unique fiduciary responsibility to shareholders of a firm that implies a set of ethical obligations. At a minimum, managers are required to protect shareholder’s interests when other stakeholders are unaffected by their decision. This ethical imperative has been established in the literature. In cases of conflicts of interest between managers and shareholders, the board of directors of the firm has an ethical obligation to shareholders. The structure of the board can affect its ability to fulfill this obligation. (...) Two specific cases where managerial actions have been argued to be unethical are the adoption of classified boards and poison pills. In this study, we empirically analyze the role of board structure in protecting shareholder rights in the specific case of antitakeover provisions. We test this question on a sample of firms whose shareholders have voted to remove antitakeover provisions and find that independent, focused boards are more likely to accede to shareholder resolutions than are less independent boards. Board size is also important and related to other board structures. We draw implications of this finding for future research on the ethics of board governance.What’s really needed is a change in mindset—one that fosters not only a culture of compliance but also a company-wide environment that fosters ethical behavior and decision-making.—William H. Donaldson, SEC Chairman (2004). (shrink)

This article contends that feminism is haunted by its past, and that to be haunted means that feminists need to bear witness to the possibilities, often unrealized, of that past and to actively resist the policing and defensiveness that have marked feminism's relationship to its diverse history in recent years. It engages with the work of Terry Castle and Avery Gordon in order to make this argument, and to map out a methodology for looking for the ghosts of the recent (...) feminist past. In looking for one such ghost - the figure of the feminist-as-lesbian - the article asks, how does the trope of the apparitional in lesbian cultural visibility structure cultural memories of the second wave movement? To that end the article discusses the presence of the ghost in a recent feminist/queer study of feminist historicity and in the popular press respectively. The final section looks back to the 1980s in order to trace the connections between then and now, and, therefore, something of what the ghost wants us to remember. (shrink)

I argue there is no pacifist commitment implied by the practice of mothering, contrary to what Ruddick suggests. Using violence in certain situations is consistent with the goals of this practice. Furthermore, I use Ruddick's valuable analysis of the care for particular individuals involved in this practice to show why pacifism may be incompatible with caring passionately for individuals. If giving up passionate attachments to individuals is necessary for pacifist commitment as Ghandi claims, then the price is too high.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the UK’s primary healthcare priority-setting body, responsible for advising the National Health Service in England on which technologies to fund and which to reject. Until recently, the normative approach underlying this advice was described in a 2008 document entitled ‘Social value judgements: Principles for the development of NICE guidance’ (SVJ). In January 2020, however, NICE replaced SVJ with a new articulation of its guiding principles. Given the significant evolution of NICE’s (...) methods between 2008 and 2020, this study examines whether this new document (‘Principles’) offers a transparent account of NICE’s current normative approach. It finds that it does not, deriving much of its content directly from SVJ and failing to fully acknowledge or explain how and why NICE’s approach has since changed. In particular, Principles is found to offer a largely procedural account of NICE decision-making, despite evidence of the increasing reliance of NICE’s methods on substantive decision-rules and ‘modifiers’ that cannot be justified in purely procedural terms. Thus, while Principles tells NICE’s stakeholders much about how the organisation goes about the process of decision-making, it tells them little about the substantive grounds on which its decisions are now based. It is therefore argued that Principles does not offer a transparent account of NICE’s normative approach (either alone, or alongside other documents) and that, given NICE’s reliance on transparency as a requirement of procedural justice, NICE does not in this respect satisfy its own specification of a just decision-maker. (shrink)