In a time marked by the development of innovative treatments in healthcare and the need for health professionals to deal with resulting ethical dilemmas in clinical practice, this study was developed to determine the influence of the bioethics teaching on the moral competence of medical and nursing students. The authors conduct a longitudinal study using the Moral Competence Test extended version before and after attending the ethics curricular unit, in three nursing schools and three medical schools of Portugal. In this (...) questionnaire the participant is confronted with three ethical dilemmas and asked to evaluate arguments for and against the attitude of the main character. For both nursing and medical students, C-score was lower after the attendance of the ethics curricular units, with a statistically significant decrease in the total score for nursing students and a decrease not statistically significant for medical students. A multivariate analysis did not find any association between this decrease and gender, course, or age. The phenomenon of moral segmentation was observed, with better performance in the worker and judge dilemma, than in the doctor dilemma. These results highlight the need to reflect on the curricular strategies that can be implemented for health professionals to better develop moral competence and decision-making, allowing for the provision of humanized health care. (shrink)

The growth of urban violence in Brazil, as in other countries, has led citizens to demand more severe and punitive measures to solve the problem of juvenile crime. One motion submitted to the Brazilian parliament, for instance, proposes to reduce the age of penal majority from 18 to 16 years. Our hypothesis is that popular opinions about this proposal are largely constrained by construal levels and psychological distance. Accordingly, we expect that the knowledge and proximity to the circumstances associated with (...) juvenile transgression will influence opinions about the proposal. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated how opinion against or for the proposal can be explained by psychological distance and moral development theory. We studied two samples, composed of people who do not have a deep experience with the subject and workers from a juvenile justice court. After collecting socio-demographic information from the subjects and their answer to moral dilemmas, the data was subjected to a multivariate analysis by multimodal logistic regression for socio-demographic characteristics, Kohlberg moral stages, and opinion on the reduction of APM as dependent variables. Our findings suggest that 1) opinion about the APM depends on psychological distance and 2) socioeconomic variables may influence the average construal level of adolescent transgressors in the public’s perspective. (shrink)

This article reports on the Boundaries in Practice (BIP) Scale developed to measure knowledge, comfort, ethical decision making, and experience. Few instruments used in studies conducted on professional/?client boundaries have been validated. The BIP demonstrated sound face, content and construct validity, and adequate internal consistency reliability. The BIP Scale provides the first reliable and valid means of investigating multiple boundary domains across health disciplines and teams. The sensitivity and complexity of boundary issues and the serious consequences of breaches highlight the (...) importance of a valid and reliable measure in building empirical knowledge in this field. (shrink)

Marcantonio Raimondis career is here considered as a record of a distinctively Renaissance hunger for imagery, on the part of the literate as well as the illiterate, a taste that did not demand autograph work and yet was very attentive to the decisions made by artists about which subjects to portray and how to present them. Marcantonios contribution is described less in terms of having made Raphaels work known widely, and more as having made engraving into an established art form: (...) collectible, discussable, debatable. His innovative technique yielded, it is argued, images of deliberately impersonal style, an accomplishment obscured by the ensuing emphasis on maniera. (shrink)

In this innovative study Patricia Kitcher argues that we can only understand the deduction of the categories in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in terms of his attempt to fathom the psychological prerequisites of thought. Thus a consideration of his conception of psychology is essential to an understanding of his philosophy. Kitcher specifically considers Kant's claims about the unity of the thinking self; the spatial forms of human perceptions; the relations among mental states necessary for them to have content; the (...) relations between perceptions and judgment; and the limits of philosophical insight into psychological processes. (shrink)

Posthuman ethics -- Great ephemeral tattooed skin -- Art: inhuman ecstasy -- Animalities: ethics and absolute abolition -- Wonder of Teras -- Mystic queer -- Vitalistic ethics: an end to necrophilosophy -- After life.

Ein zentrales Ziel von Transparency and Reflection ist es zu erklären, wie Selbstwissen möglich ist, während zugleich daran festgehalten wird, dass Wissen um Bewusstseinszustände ‚transparent‘ ist mit Blick auf unser Weltwissen. Ich möchte zeigen, dass die von Matthew Boyle bemühten Ressourcen – insbesondere „Bewusstsein als Subjekt“ und „Arten des Gegebenseins“ – nicht ausreichen, um die Einführung der Vorstellung eines Selbsts zu erklären, das vielfältige Zustände hat. Dagegen möchte ich vorschlagen, dass Boyle erfolgreicher gewesen wäre, wenn er bei seiner früheren Kantischen (...) Annahme geblieben wäre, nach der die Beherrschung der Vorstellung der Ersten-Person ein Bewusstsein der Aktivität des Denkens benötigt, das Subjekte dazu befähigt, Warum-Fragen zu beantworten. (shrink)

The article asks whether political anger has a legitimate place in a democracy, as this is a political system designed to resolve conflicts by peaceful negotiation. It distinguishes personal from social anger and political anger, to focus explicitly on the latter. It argues that both the feeling and expression of political anger are subject to normative constraints, often specific to social status and gender. The article examines arguments, including those of Seneca, in favour of an anger-free society. It concludes, however, (...) that a democracy cannot dispense with political anger, which has a vital role to play in protecting things of value. This role demands a civic education such that when democratic values are under threat citizens will not feel apathetic or simply fearful, but angry and possessed of a repertoire of ways of expressing democratic anger. (shrink)

In this article, we attempt to shed light on how, placed by the law in a situation of identity suspension that is "impossible to bear," unaccompanied minors (UAMs) can construct themselves, caught as they are between a unique personal identity that they know they must mourn in order to be able to stay in the territory, and a projected identity, also constructed by and within the fantasy of the Other. In this context, we consider the possible scope for a relationship (...) between UAMs and social workers or volunteers, and how the understanding of the topology of the Borromean knot can be used in the training of social workers and volunteers. (shrink)

For his hypothèse des accords Leibniz chose the catchy title harmonie pré-établie, which unfortunately to this day is often mistaken as a dualistic approach to the problem of preserving the coherence of the physical world without having to compromise humankind’s mentality. I shall show that the dualistic comprehension of Leibniz’s hypothesis is misleading and that this is largely due to the neglect of both the reception at his time and his characteristic didactic-dialectic way of reasoning.

GESTÃO DE RESÍDUOS SÓLIDOS EM MEGAVENTOS: ASPECTOS CONCEITUAIS.

How do we perdure when we and everything around us are caught up in incessant change? But the course of this change does not seem to be haphazard and we may seek the modalities of its Logos in the transformations in which it occurs. The classic term "Metamorphosis" focuses upon the proportions between the transformed and the retained, the principles of sameness and otherness. Applied to life and its becoming, metamorphosis pinpoints the proportions between the vital and the aesthetic significance (...) of life. Where could this metaphysical in-between territory come better to light than in the Fine Arts? In this collection are investigated the various proportions between the vital significance of the constructivism of life and a specifically human contribution made by the creative imagination to the transformatory search for beauty and aesthetic values. Papers by: Lawrence Kimmel, Mark L. Brack, Sheryl Tucker de Vazquez, William Roberts, Jadwiga Smith, Victor Gerald Rivas, Max Statkiewicz, Matti Itkonen, George R. Tibbetts, Linda Stratford, Jorella Andrews, Ingeborg M. Rocker, Stephen J. Goldberg, Leah Durner, Donnalee Dox, Catherine Schear, Samantha Henriette Krukowski, Gary Maciag, Kelly Dennis, Wanda Strukus, Magda Romanska, Patricia Trutty-Coohill, Ellen Burns, Tessa Morrison, Sabine Coelsch-Foisner, Gary Backhaus, Daniel M. Unger, Howard Pearce. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that having inconsistent desires is irrational or otherwise bad for an agent. If so, if agents seem to want a and not-a, then either their attitudes are being misdescribed – what they really want is some aspect x of a and some aspect y of not-a – or those desires are somehow 'inconsistent' and thus inappropriate. I argue first that the proper characterization of inconsistency here does not involve logical form, that is, whether the desires involved (...) have the form 'a and not-a', but rather the possibility of fulfilling all one's desires; and secondly, that the 'essential' conflicts involved in such inconsistencies are quite common and no worse for an agent than contingent conflicts. I draw implications concerning moral epistemology, moral realism and the logic of attitudes. (shrink)

Peter Geach famously holds that there is no such thing as absolute identity. There are rather, as Geach sees it, a variety of relative identity relations, each essentially connected with a particular monadic predicate. Though we can strictly and meaningfully say that an individual a is the same man as the individual b, or that a is the same statue as b, we cannot, on this view, strictly and meaningfully say that the individual a simply is b. It is difficult (...) to find anything like a persuasive argument for this doctrine in Geach's work. But one claim made by Geach is that his account of identity is the account most naturally aligned with Frege's widely admired treatment of cardinality. And though this claim of an affinity between Frege's and Geach's doctrines has been challenged, the challenge has been resisted. William Alston and Jonathan Bennett, indeed, go further than Geach to argue that Frege's doctrine implies Geach's. If Alston and Bennett are right, then those who favor a broadly Fregean treatment of cardinality have no choice but to adopt Geach's doctrine of relative identity. And because contemporary set-theoretic accounts of cardinality are essentially Fregean in all respects relevant to this issue (see §11 below), it follows from Alston and Bennett's claim that virtually every standard modern treatment of cardinality requires a 'relativized' treatment of identity. The purpose of this paper is to argue against the implication claimed by Alston and Bennett. Despite some superficial similarities between Frege's treatment of cardinality and Geach's treatment of identity, the two doctrines are fundamentally opposed. Frege's account of cardinality, and its set-theoretic descendants, are all inconsistent with the claim that identity is 'relative' in Geach's sense. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics 7.7 (= Eudemian Ethics 6.7), Aristotle distinguishes softness (malakia) from lack of self-control (akrasia) and endurance (karteria) from self-control (enkrateia). This paper argues that unqualified softness consists of a disposition to give up acting to avoid the painful toil (ponos) required to execute practical resolutions, and (coincidentally) to enjoy the pleasures of rest and relaxation. The enduring person, in contrast, persists in her commitments despite the painful effort required to enact them. Along the way, I argue that (...) this interpretation qualifies our understanding of the pleasures and pains with which temperance and intemperance are concerned. (shrink)

How does Kant understand the representation of an empirical self? For Kant, the sources of the representation must be both a priori and a posteriori. Several scholars claim that the a priori part of the ‘self’ representation is supplied by the category of ‘substance,’ either a regular substance (Andrew Chignell), a minimal substance (Karl Ameriks) or a substance analog (Katharina Kraus). However, Kant opens the Paralogisms chapter by announcing that there is a thirteenth ‘transcendental’ concept or category: “We now come (...) to a concept that was not entered in the above general list of transcendental concepts, and that must yet be classed with them … This is the concept – or, if one prefers, the judgment – I think.” (A341/B399). I argue that it is the ‘I think’ that provides the a priori framework for the representation of the empirical self. (shrink)

Much modern science and ethics debate is on high-profile problems such as animal organ transplantation, genetic engineering and fetal tissue research, in discourse that assumes technical tones. Other work, such as narrative ethics, expresses the failed promise of technology in the vivid detail of human experience. However, the essential nature of contemporary technology remains largely opaque to our present ethical lens on health care and on society. The limited controversies of modern science and ethics perpetuate ‘technics’, a technical, problem-solving mindset (...) that fails to grapple successfully with the complexity of technology. A critical dialectic between practice and scholarship widens the ethical conversation in nursing to consider technology as an ongoing set of daily and fundamental moral choices on how we live. Critical text on technology recovers ethics from the limits of technics, and assists nurses to develop an inherent knowedge of technology that is needed to provide ethical care in a technological world. (shrink)

We show that, assuming the Axiom of Determinacy, every non-selfdual Wadge class can be constructed by starting with those of level $\omega _1$ and iteratively applying the operations of expansion and separated differences. The proof is essentially due to Louveau, and it yields at the same time a new proof of a theorem of Van Wesep. The exposition is self-contained, except for facts from classical descriptive set theory.

Despite much popular interest in food issues, there remains a lack of social justice in the American agrifood system, as evidenced by prevalent hunger and obesity in low-income populations and exploitation of farmworkers. While many consumers and alternative agrifood organizations express interest in and support social justice goals, the incorporation of these goals into on-the-ground alternatives is often tenuous. Academics have an important role in calling out social justice issues and developing the critical thinking skills that can redress inequality in (...) the agrifood system. Academics can challenge ideological categories of inquiry and problem definition, include justice factors in defining research problems, and develop participatory, problem-solving research within social justice movements. In addition, scholars can educate students about the power of epistemologies, discourse, and ideology, thereby expanding the limits and boundaries of what is possible in transforming the agrifood system. In these ways, the academy can be a key player in the creation of a diverse agrifood movement that embraces the discourse of social justice. (shrink)

• But this rests on the debatable view that understanding a moral reason implies being motivated to conform to it. Psychopaths do seem to have at least a “rote” or emotionally shallow understanding that their acts are wrong.

In order to reduce internal dissonance and emotional pain, the personality plays a causal role in confabulating consistency among our beliefs, values and actions. To the extent that we are unaware of our own moral ''blind spots," a prima facie duty to engage in self-knowledge exists. Only then can we reduce injustices incurring from moral arrogance.

Although it is now fifteen years since G. Williams' thorough-going criticism of B. Axelson's Unpoetische Wörter, his discussion has failed to elicit the adverse response which might have been expected in view of the widespread influence exerted by the earlier work. The reason for this may be that Axelson's theory is so widely accepted that any refutation thereof may be disregarded. Yet surely Williams was right to point to the dangers of total reliance on statistics and to the necessity of (...) considering the contexts in which words occur in Latin poetry. In this respect, he was not so much rejecting Axelson's work as pointing to its inadequacies: whereas Axelson would be content to label a word that occurs only rarely in poetry as ‘unpoetisch’, it is necessary, as Williams demonstrates, to take the further step of determining the effect that such a word has in a given context. This approach will be particularly helpful, for example, in the case of parvulus at Virg. Aen. 4.328, where the heightened pathos achieved by Virgil's use of a diminutive is better appreciated by the reader who is aware of the scarcity of diminutive adjectives in poetry and in epic above all. To recognise parvulus as an ‘unpoetic word’, with Axelson, is the essential first step, but we should proceed a stage further to inquire what effect was intended by the employment of a form not normally found in elevated poetry. Of greater importance is Williams' rejection of the ‘hierarchy of genres’ theory, taken for granted by Axelson, that is, that Latin poetry may be divided into a number of higher- or lower-ranking genres and that the more elevated a genre the less unpoetic vocabulary it is liable to employ. (shrink)