In this essay, I argue that exploring institutional racism also needs to examine interactions and communications between patients and providers. Exchange between bioethicists, social scientists, and life scientists should emphasize the biological effects—made evident through health disparities—of racism. I discuss this through examples of patient–provider communication in fertility clinics in South Africa and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to emphasize the issue of mistrust between patients and medical institutions. Health disparities and medical mistrust are interrelated problems of racism in healthcare provision.

Part of the normalization of assisted reproductive technologies is the premise that the children born from in vitro fertilization are no different from their counterparts conceived spontaneously. However, interest in peri-conception health and new epigenetic understandings of biological plasticity has led to some questioning the presumed irrelevance of conception in vitro, and when doing so, describing IVF children as “apparently healthy.” Taking “apparently” and “healthy” seriously, this article explores how modes of attention—ways of naming and framing embryo potentiality—shape understandings of (...) health and normality. I contend that understanding the politics of potentiality, and how they may emerge in a postgenomic age, requires an unpacking of various modes of attention and framing. Ethnographic findings from South Africa’s fertility clinics and emerging literature on epigenetic variation in IVF conception demonstrate how, under a genetic mode of attention, IVF clinics views “abnormality” as fated, unviable, and discardable. Exploring the possibility of answering the postgenomic questions to IVF reveals structural challenges to knowing long-term health implications. Incipient attempts within the fertility clinic at managing these questions shows various strategic techniques, such as leveraging epigenetics to marketable ends and shifts to individual responsibility. (shrink)

Warren and Dresang comment on the contributions from a psycholinguistic perspective, highlighting close relations between the respective research on events and proposing that, for example, verbs may indeed directly pre‐activate templates of the typically involved event participants.

In language, recombination of a discrete set of meaningless building blocks forms an unlimited set of possible utterances. How such combinatorial structure emerged in the evolution of human language is increasingly being studied. It has been shown that it can emerge when languages culturally evolve and adapt to human cognitive biases. How the emergence of combinatorial structure interacts with the existence of holistic iconic form-meaning mappings in a language is still unknown. The experiment presented in this paper studies the role (...) of iconicity and human cognitive learning biases in the emergence of combinatorial structure in artificial whistled languages. Participants learned and reproduced whistled words for novel objects with the use of a slide whistle. Their reproductions were used as input for the next participant, to create transmission chains and simulate cultural transmission. Two conditions were studied: one in which the persistence of iconic form-meaning mappings was possible and one in which this was experimentally made impossible. In both conditions, cultural transmission caused the whistled languages to become more learnable and more structured, but this process was slightly delayed in the first condition. Our findings help to gain insight into when and how words may lose their iconic origins when they become part of an organized linguistic system. (shrink)

In their paper “Brain Data in Context: Are New Rights the Way to Mental and Brain Privacy?” Susser and Cabrera (2024) argue against the notion that specific rights may be necessary to protect “brai...

The article presents a dialogue, made over time, about the concept of time. Thus, it recovers Franklin Leopoldo e Silva's interpretation of time in Bergson's philosophy and puts this interpretation in relation to an interpretation of time in Leibniz inspired by Deleuze and Benjamin's readings of the seventeenth-century author. I use testimony as a philosophical category to narrate my dialogue with Franklin Leopoldo e Silva, which began in 1993.

Recognizing gaps in our present understanding of leader apologies, this investigation examines how followers appraise leader apologies and how these perceptions impact work-related outcomes. Results indicate that followers who viewed their leader as trustworthy or caring before a leader wrongdoing were more likely to perceive their leader’s apology to be sincere, as compared to followers who previously doubted their leader’s trustworthiness and caring. Attributions of apology sincerity affected follower reactions, with followers perceiving sincere apologies reporting greater trust in leadership, satisfaction (...) with supervision, leader–member exchange quality, affective organizational commitment, and forgiveness than those reporting insincere or no apologies. A mediation model was supported, showing that attributions of apology sincerity fostered perceptions of humility, which enhanced perceptions of transformational leadership, and consequently garnered more positive follower reactions. (shrink)

I begin by evaluating four theories: mereological essentialism, the occasional identity thesis, four-dimensionalism and the constitution view. I compare the solutions these theories offer to puzzles of material constitution with particular attention being paid to their treatment of Leibniz’s Law, the ontological status of objects and the distinction between objects and their matter. If a lump of clay constitutes a statue, the lump of clay and the statue are metaphysically distinct such that they are distinct kinds, but numerically one thing—the (...) statue as constituted by the lump of clay. I defend this view against criticism that it collapses into identity or substance dualism, exploding reality with unnecessary objects. I amend constitution to better account for cases of composite objects and to better solve puzzle cases involving change in parts over time. Finally, I go on to apply constitution to an unorthodox puzzle for theories of objects—the problem of the individuation of events. Events are things that happen. If we grant that events are in the same or similar ontological category to objects, there is a strong analogy between the problem of material constitution and the problem of events. In signing the US Constitution you may also do your bit to ratify it. However, the signing and the ratifying have different properties. I suggest that the signing and the ratifying are distinct in kind, but are not two separate events. I develop a constitution relation—a contingent, irreflexive, asymmetric and transitive relation—for events. This relation has the potential to be applied to the mind-body problem. (shrink)

Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler was among those who expected Remain to win the EU referendum. Yet on 23 June 2016, a majority in the UK voted to Leave by a margin of 52–48%. A study of over 450 Leave voters, based on the MINDSPACE framework, looks at whether behavioural factors affected the outcome and at what lessons could be learned for any future votes. It finds that voters had low levels of knowledge which may have undermined any ‘status quo (...) bias’; that messengers used by the Remain campaign didn’t work for this audience; that the Remain campaign’s loss-framed figure of £4300 per household per year was judged to be less than the Leave campaign’s figure of £350 m a week (it is six times larger); and that behaviourally-based arguments on immigration might have had an impact. It notes how behavioural science was used successfully to increase turnout. The implication for communicators is that a ‘Test, Learn, Adapt’ strategy could be helpful in future campaigns. (shrink)

Não há, para Leibniz, separação entre uma esfera ética, na qual seriam consideradas as ações voluntárias dos homens e sua busca pelo bem, e uma esfera epistemológica, pela qual se explicaria a busca pela verdade. Procuramos mostrar, primeiro, em que sentido se pode dizer que o conhecimento é uma ação voluntária; e, segundo, como a ação moral só é verdadeiramente livre se fundamentada no conhecimento do verdadeiro, por isso o modelo de homem livre é o homem sábio.

Following her abdication, Queen Christina of Sweden took up residence in the Palazzo Farnese, Rome from 1655. She had already developed a keen interest in music, gained from tuition from a French dancing master, and playing the star role in the ballet The Captured Cupid in honour of her mother's birthday in 1649. Christina's arrival in Rome was marked by performances in her honour in the Palazzo Barberini and Palazzo Pamphili of specially commissioned works by contemporary composers Marco Marazzoli and (...) A.F. Tenaglia, and by her favourite Giacomo Carissimi. Inspired by the chamber music proportions of the cappella of the Collegio Germanico, many of Carissimi's secular arias were composed for his royal Swedish patron. After two years in France, Christina returned to Rome, where she took up residence in the Palazzo Riario on the Janiculum. Inventories record her musical instruments and describe the contents of the Great Hall in which concerts were held. (shrink)

This essay examines three works by three women writers whose strategies for rewriting the past include a revisionary engagement with the cultural legacies of Ancient Greece and Rome: The Emperor’s Babe: A Novel, Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, and Voyage of the Sable Venus. It argues that each embodies a mode of resistance that both protests the historic oppression of women of colour and asserts a black female agency, insisting on an empowered present and future. In achieving this, (...) all three transgress or subvert conventional generic distinctions between verse and prose, and, in Lewis’s case, between the cultural forms and academic disciplines of art, art history and literature. Each work insists on a transnational conception of black identity, implicitly tracing black diasporic experience through Africa, Europe and the Americas, and asserting the continued interconnections between these three. And, in their confrontations with the histories of colonialism, empire and slavery, each invokes not just the history of the seventeenth to twenty-first centuries ce but also the cultures of Ancient Greece and Rome, the legacies of which underpinned these modern European processes of domination. Of the three works discussed here, those by Evaristo and Lewis ultimately constitute works of greater subversive power than does that of Philip. (shrink)

There has been considerable public debate on a range of complementary health practices throughout the western world, perhaps especially in Australia, United States and Europe. Most often, the research critique of these practices is restricted to quantitative or non-user qualitative research methodologies. Consequently, there is a significant gap in the research profile of complementary health services that needs to be addressed particularly in view of the rapid and ongoing increase in the use of complementary services, even in the face of (...) sometimes adverse media publicity. This paper demonstrates the contribution that phenomenologically based research can make to fill this lacuna by explicating, in detail, the client experience of a complementary health practice. The paper explores patient experience of a ginger compress, as applied by anthroposophically trained nurses, to demonstrate various therapeutic effects. Four key themes emerged including an increase in warmth and internal activity in the major organs of the body, changes in thought-life and sensory perception along with a greater sense of well-being and self-focus with the perception of clearer personal boundaries. These themes, emerging from a patient sample in New Zealand, compared favourably to the Filderklinik Study completed in 1992 in a large German state hospital. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 4, Edition 1 July 2004. (shrink)

A partir de los Analectas, el texto más próximo al pensamiento originario de Confucio, y empleando los otros tres libros del canon clásico del confucianismo, el presente trabajo buscar analizar cuál es la importancia que los rituales, como fórmula paradigmática de las pautas sociales, tienen en la filosofía de Confucio, en relación con su sistema ético, político y cosmológico. Después, establece una semblanza de la estructura que tenían los rituales en la China confuciana. Finalmente, se contrapone la relación de la (...) Escuela confuciana con los rituales con la secularización de la democracia actual. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) model is an innovative and important step in the study of naturalistic language. However, the simplicity of its mechanisms for dialogue coordination may be overstated and the hypothesized direct priming channel between interlocutors' situation models is questionable. A complete specification of the model will require more investigation of the role of top-down inhibition among representations.

Donald Davidson argues that ‘the stabbing of Caesar’ and ‘the killing of Caesar’ are two descriptions of the one event whereas Jaegwon Kim contends events are more fine-grained and two events occurred, related by supervenience. I argue that neither solution is satisfactory and, inspired by Lynne Rudder Baker, I develop a constitution relation governing cooccurring, co-located events such that the stabbing of Caesar comes to constitute the killing of Caesar when the stabbing occurs in the appropriate circumstances. According to my (...) view, the stabbing of Caesar is metaphysically distinct from the killing of Caesar such that the killing is dependent on the stabbing, yet is not identical to it. (shrink)

In “Ethical Responsibilities for Companies that Process Personal Data” McCoy et al. (2023) proposed three substantive principles that should underlie corporations’ treatment of data: minimizing har...

In the wake of recent corporate scandals, this paper traces the growing power of pension funds to provide managerial oversight of the firms they hold in their investment portfolios. Increasingly pension funds are exercising their legitimate rights as owners to raise the corporate governance standards of the firms they invest in. Within corporate governance generally, pension funds are shifting their attention away from managerial accountability and toward measures that increase transparency in firm-level decision-making. Pension funds use transparency to ensure that (...) shareholders are the primary interest being served by the firm. Transparency not only aligns managers and owners, it also raises issues of firm behaviour that allow other stakeholders to engage the corporation more broadly. I contend that secrecy is economically inefficient. When organizations are opaque and interests are secret, decision-making can and does distort efficiency. I examine recent pension fund corporate governance campaigns with particular reference to the California Public Employees Retirement System. (shrink)

Trata-se de refletir sobre o apagamento do nome das filósofas na narrativa canônica da Filosofia do século XVII. Essa opressão de gênero faz parte de um conjunto mais amplo de opressões derivadas da organização do capitalismo naquele momento. A chamada “querela das mulheres” (querelle des femmes), debate entre feministas e misóginos iniciado no século XV, mas reforçado no XVII, evidencia as opressões de gênero, mas deve ser posto em relação com a violência colonial que caracterizou o século XVII. A resistência (...) contra essas violências pode ser justamente uma filosofia da violência, tal como pensada pela filósofa Elsa Dorlin. (shrink)

The issue of trust has increasingly attracted attention in the business ethics literature. Our aim is to contribute further to this literature by examining how the use of the carbon copy function in email communication influences felt trust. We develop the argument that the use of cc enhances transparency—representing an important characteristic of workplace ethics—and hence promotes trust. We further argue that a downside of the cc option may be that it can also be experienced as a control mechanism, which (...) may therefore negatively affect trust. The results of our first study showed that the use of cc indeed enhances perceived transparency, but at the same time also leads to the experience of increased control. Building upon this insight, the findings of five subsequent studies consistently revealed that the use of cc negatively influences felt trust. More precisely, employees felt trusted the least when the supervisor was always included in cc. This effect on felt trust also negatively influenced how trustworthy the organizational climate was perceived. We further replicated these results in two field surveys, which showed that the negative effect of cc on felt trust lowered perceptions of psychological safety and contributed to a culture of fear. Taken together, our findings suggest that when transparency in email communications is experienced as a control mechanism, its use is perceived as unethical, rather than as ethical. Implications and recommendations for future business ethics research are discussed. (shrink)

A imaginação é um sentido interno que reúne as impressões dos sentidos externos, afirma Leibniz em uma carta à rainha Sophie Charlotte. Esta é uma das únicas definições da imaginação formulada explicitamente por Leibniz. Não temos as cartas escritas por SophieCharlotte, o que é uma marca do silenciamento imposto às mulheres ao longo de séculos, por isso propomos um exercício de imaginação para reconstituir a importância desse diálogo. Outras raras ocorrências do termo “imaginação” em textos de Leibniz mostram a importância (...) que o filósofo atribui ao poder de criação da imaginação. Seria possível sugerir a partir de uma relação entre memória e imaginação um sentido político para a criação imaginativa? (shrink)

O verdadeiro infinito, afirma Leibniz em seus Novos ensaios, não é um modo da quantidade, é anterior a qualquer composição e não é formado pela adição de partes. O infinito, para Leibniz, é atual e é propriedade de todas as coisas. Como criaturas finitas conhecem o infinito? Neste artigo, investigamos que tipo de relação pode ter o infinito matemático, quantitativo, para o conhecimento da infinitude divida e do infinito atual que existe no mundo. A ordem ideal da matemática instrui sobre (...) a ordem real do mundo? E quais os limites da ordem ideal na explicação do infinito atual que caracteriza Deus e o mundo? (shrink)

This paper claims rigour and sensitivity for a methodology used to explore multiple sources of data and expose the essential characteristics of a phenomenon in the human sciences. A descriptive phenomenological methodology was applied in a study of the experience of ten people with osteoarthritis receiving ginger compress therapy. The application of the phenomenological attitude, with reduction, bracketing and imaginative variation, allowed multiple sources of data – written, pictorial and oral – to be explicated. The applied methodology used is described (...) in this paper, with its six clearly defined steps illustrated by examples from the study. The findings demonstrate that phenomenological reduction enabled an indication of the potential benefits of ginger compress treatment as a therapy for people with osteoarthritis. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , May 2010, Volume 10, Edition 1. (shrink)

Žižek’s objective violence presents a radical contribution to understanding how violence occurs, and broadening our understandings of what can be theorized as violence. However, a full account of objective violence spans across multiple texts, and at times lacks full detail. This article addresses this problem by first giving an account for objective violence based on a variety of Žižek’s works, and then analyzing how other theorists outside philosophy have used this theoretical tool in their own research contexts. Through this method, (...) the conclusion is drawn that the lack of detail in Žižek’s work has created the capacity for a collaborative philosophical project whereby theorists have been able to appropriate key features of this tool in order to make it relevant to a variety of research contexts. (shrink)

This study examined 4-year-olds’ problem-solving under different social conditions. Children had to use water in order to extract a buoyant object from a narrow tube. When faced with the problem ‘cold’ without cues, nearly all children were unsuccessful. But when a solution-suggesting video was pedagogically delivered prior to the task, most children succeeded. Showing children the same video in a non-pedagogical manner did not lift their performance above baseline and was less effective than framing it pedagogically. The findings support ideas (...) central to natural pedagogy, 148–153, 2009). They also challenge the Cultural Intelligence hypothesis, according to which only humans’ social, but not their physical, cognition differs qualitatively from that of great apes. A more radical, transformative variant of the Cultural Intelligence hypothesis is suggested according to which humans’ physical cognition is shaped by their social nature and must therefore be recognized as equally distinctive as their social cognition. (shrink)

De Bie et al. (2023) found that most feminist literature praises Artificial Womb Technologies (AWT) for its potential to increase equality among the sexes. This literature frames gestation as a poi...

Environmental education aims to affect environmental knowledge and attitude to ultimately induce pro-environmental behavior. Based on 247 upper elementary school students, we tested the impact of an outdoor-based earth education program on environmental knowledge and attitude with a pre-post design. Both outcome measures were Rasch scales. Environmental knowledge is a composite of 27 system, action, and effectiveness knowledge items, and environmental attitude is a composite of 13 evaluative statements and 11 self-reported behaviors about nature preservation. Our analysis revealed gains in (...) environmental knowledge and attitude. The convergence between knowledge and attitude increased significantly from pre- to post-program, and attitude played a significant role in knowledge acquisition. (shrink)