IntroductionCognition generally declines gradually over time due to progressive degeneration of the brain, leading to dementia and eventual loss of independent functions. The rate of regression varies among the six cognitive domains. Current modality of cognitive assessment using neuropsychological paper-and-pencil screening tools for cognitive impairment such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment has limitations and is influenced by age. Virtual reality is considered as a potential alternative tool to assess cognition. A novel, fully immersive automated VR system has been developed to (...) assess the six cognitive domains. As cognition is associated with age, VR performance is postulated to vary with age using this system.AimsThis is a feasibility study to evaluate the VR performance of cognitively healthy adults aged between 35 and 74 years old, based on the performance score and completion time using the CAVIRE system.MethodsConducted in a public primary care clinic in Singapore, 25 multi-ethnic Asian adults were recruited in each of the four age groups in years: 35–44; 45–54; 55–64, and 65–74. The eligibility criteria included a MoCA score of 26 or higher to reflect normal cognition and understanding English instructions. They completed common daily activities ranging from brushing teething to shopping, across 13 VR segments. Their performances scores and completion time were automatically computed by the CAVIRE system. These VR performance indices were compared across the four age groups using one-way ANOVA, F-test of the hypothesis, followed by pair-wise comparisons in the event of a significant F-test.ResultsOne participant dropped out from Group 1. The demographic characteristics of 99 participants were similar across the 4 age groups. Overall, younger participants in Groups 1 and 2 attained higher VR performance scores and shorter completion time, compared to those in Groups 3 and 4, in all six cognitive domains.ConclusionThe CAVIRE VR performance scores and completion time significantly differ between the younger and older Asian participants with normal cognition. Enhancements to the system are needed to establish the age-group specific normal performance indices. (shrink)

Nearly 20 years age, Yi-Fu Tuan wrote his influential Dominance and Affection:The Making of Pets , which argued that human affection for domestic animals is inseparable from dominance. Today, cultural critics persist in the view that companion animals are compromised, even degraded, because they are controlled by humans. The essay attempts to rethink the relationship between humans and companion animals beyond the freedom-dominance binary. It argues for a conceptual approach that defers confidant interpretation of animals while dramatically relaxing control (...) of them within human settings. It suggests that this approach be called a "performance ethic" and offered the House Rabbit Society as a model. (shrink)

BackgroundClinical ethics consultations can be complex interventions, involving multiple methods, stakeholders, and competing ethical values. Despite longstanding calls for rigorous evaluation in the field, progress has been limited. The Medical Research Council proposed guidelines for evaluating the effectiveness of complex interventions. The evaluation of CEC may benefit from application of the MRC framework to advance the transparency and methodological rigor of this field. A first step is to understand the outcomes measured in evaluations of CEC in healthcare settings. ObjectiveThe primary (...) objective of this review was to identify and map the outcomes reported in primary studies of CEC. The secondary objective was to provide a comprehensive overview of CEC structures, processes, and roles to enhance understanding and to inform standardization.MethodsWe searched electronic databases to identify primary studies of CEC involving patients, substitute decision-makers and/or family members, clinicians, healthcare staff and leaders. Outcomes were mapped across five conceptual domains as identified a priori based on our clinical ethics experience and preliminary literature searches and revised based on our emerging interpretation of the data. These domains included personal factors, process factors, clinical factors, quality, and resource factors. ResultsForty-eight studies were included in the review. Studies were highly heterogeneous and varied considerably regarding format and process of ethical intervention, credentials of interventionist, population of study, outcomes reported, and measures employed. In addition, few studies used validated measurement tools. The top three outcome domains that studies reported on were quality, process factors, and clinical factors. The majority of studies examined multiple outcome domains. All five outcome domains were multidimensional and included a variety of subthemes.ConclusionsThis scoping review represents the initial phase of mapping the outcomes reported in primary studies of CEC and identifying gaps in the evidence. The confirmed lack of standardization represents a hindrance to the provision of high quality intervention and CEC scientific progress. Insights gained can inform the development of a core outcome set to standardize outcome measures in CEC evaluation research and enable scientifically rigorous efficacy trials of CEC. (shrink)

Prior studies have advanced our knowledge of the individual determinants of corporate philanthropy; however, little empirical research has been conducted on how these determinants combine to influence giving. In this study, the authors develop and test an integrated model of the relationship between firm resources and corporate philanthropy as mediated by managerial discretion and managerial values. In addition, the authors offer organizational slack as an alternative measure of organizational resources. As predicted, the results show that firm resources have a positive (...) effect on corporate philanthropy. This effect is fully mediated by managerial discretion and partially mediated by managerial values. (shrink)

'The church in danger' : latitudinarians, Socinians, and Hobbists -- Animal spirits and living fibres -- Mortalists and materialists -- Journalism, exile, and clandestinity -- Mid-eighteenth-century materialism -- Epilogue : some consequences.

Objectification is a foundational concept in feminist theory, used to analyze such disparate social phenomena as sex work, representation of women's bodies, and sexual harassment. However, there has been an increasing trend among scholars of rejecting and re-evaluating the philosophical assumptions which underpin it. In this work, Cahill suggests an abandonment of the notion of objectification, on the basis of its dependence on a Kantian ideal of personhood. Such an ideal fails to recognize sufficiently the role the body plays in (...) personhood, and thus results in an implicit vilification of the body and sexuality. The problem with the phenomena associated with objectification is not that they render women objects, and therefore not-persons, but rather that they construct feminine subjectivity and sexuality as wholly derivative of masculine subjectivity and sexuality. Women, in other words, are not objectified as much as they are derivatized, turned into a mere reflection or projection of the other. Cahill argues for an ethics of materiality based upon a recognition of difference, thus working toward an ethics of sexuality that is decidedly ­and simultaneously ­incarnate and intersubjective. (shrink)

This chapter argues that violence is and has always been a crucial component in the origin and maintenance of oppression. It explores how violence and the threat of violence constrain the actions of groups, harming the victims and benefiting the correlative privileged social groups. It argues that women as a group are oppressed materially through violence, and that there is a credible, psychologically effective threat of greater harm that is transmitted by the obvious material harm that they do suffer.

It is argued that dignity can be considered both subjectively, taking into account individual differences and idiosyncrasies, and objectively, as the foundation of human rights. Dignity can and should also be explored as both an other-regarding and a self-regarding value: respect for the dignity of others and respect for one’s own personal and professional dignity. These two values appear to be inextricably linked. Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean enables nurses to reflect on the appropriate degree of respect for the dignity (...) of others and of respect for themselves. To develop an understanding of the rationale for and the significance and implications of dignity in health care practice, a view of human nature is proposed that implies vulnerability and fallibility, and that urges that an ethic of aspiration is embraced. Anonymized vignettes are included to illustrate points about the everyday nature of dignity. (shrink)

This article returns to a philosophical conundrum that has troubled feminist theory since the topic of sexual violence has been taken seriously, what I call the problem of the “heteronormative sexual continuum”: how sexual assault and hegemonic heterosex are conceptually and politically related. I continue my response to the work of Nicola Gavey, who has argued for the existence of a “gray area” of sexual interactions that are ethically questionable without rising to the category of sexual assault, but whose analysis (...) did not explicitly articulate what these two categories share or what distinguishes them from each other. After summarizing Gavey's position, I summarize my previous articulation of the common ground between instances of sexual assault and examples of sexual interactions in the “gray area.” I then develop a theoretical account of how the two categories differ, arguing that the victim's agency plays different roles in the two types of interactions. Both the fact of that distinction—that we are capable of providing a philosophical account of the difference between sexual interactions that fall into the gray area and those that constitute sexual assault—and its particular content are crucial for the development of a tenable feminist sexual ethics. (shrink)

Detecting contract cheating in written submissions can be difficult beyond direct plagiarism detectable via technology. Successfully identifying potential cases of contract cheating in written work such as essays and reports is largely dependent on the experience of assessors and knowledge of student. It is further dependent on their familiarity with the patterns and clues evident in sections of body text and reference materials to identify irregularities. Consequently, some knowledge of what the patterns and clues look like is required. This paper (...) documents how to identify some of the patterns and clues observed in essay and report submissions. Effective assessment design with specific contextual requirements make irregularities easier to detect and interpret. The irregularities identified were confirmed as instances of contract cheating through conversations held with postgraduate students. An essential element of the conversations was the evidence presented for discussion. Irregularities were noted on a pro-forma specifically developed for this purpose. Patterns identified include misrepresented bibliographic data, inappropriate references, irrelevant material and generalised text that did not address the assessment question or grading criteria. The validated patterns formed the basis of identifying potential instances of contract cheating in later submissions. Timely conversations with students before the end of semester are essential to determining whether the patterns and clues link to poor knowledge of academic writing conventions or classified as contract cheating necessitating the application of appropriate penalties under institutional policies and procedures. (shrink)

Virginia Held argues that feminism has a distinct contribution to make to morality, one that will transform theory and society by beginning from the experiences of women and children. Her main thesis is that the mother-child relation should be taken as the primary moral relation and the model, at least initially, for all other relations in society. She spends the first four of the ten chapters of this book arguing for the distinctness of feminist moral theory; then chapters 5-7, chapter (...) 10, and the epilogue discussing the difference that taking the mother-child relationship as the paradigm for morality would make to theory and society; chapters 8 and 9 criticizing what she takes to be her major nonfeminist competitors, especially contractualist liberal theory. Regrettably, none of these projects are, I think, particularly successful or enlightening in their failure. (shrink)

The feminist philosopher and social scientist shows how "gendering" has affected the social and natural sciences as she reconciles the long-standing dichotomy between the quantitative and qualitative methods and demonstrates the tandem use of both experimental and intuitive approaches.

The causal theory of properties is standardly combined with a realist's ontology of universals or tropes. In this paper, I consider an uncharted alternative – a nominalist causal theory of properties. I discuss advantages and disadvantages of the resulting theory of properties, and explore the Rylean understanding of causal powers that emerges.

In this article I will revisit the question of what I term the continuum of heteronormative sexual interactions, that is, the idea that purportedly ethically acceptable heterosexual interactions are conceptually, ethically, and politically associated with instances of sexual violence. Spurred by recent work by psychologist Nicola , I conclude that some of my earlier critiques of Catharine MacKinnon's theoretical linkages between sexual violence and normative heterosex are wanting. In addition, neither MacKinnon's theory nor my critique of it seem up to (...) the task of providing an ethical account of the examples of “unjust sex” that Gavey has described. I come to the conclusion that an ethical analysis of sexual interactions requires a focus on sexual desire, but that desire cannot take on the by now heavily criticized role of consent. Rather than looking for the presence or absence of sexual desire prior to sexual encounters as a kind of ethical certification of them, we ought instead to focus on the efficacy of that sexual desire, that is, its ability (or lack thereof) to shape an encounter in substantial and meaningful ways. (shrink)

“Humanism” is a term that has designated a remarkably disparate set of ideologies. Nonetheless, strains of religious, secular, existential, and Marxist humanism have tended to circumscribe the category of the human with reference to the themes of reason, autonomy, judgment, and freedom. This essay examines the emergence of a new humanistic discourse in feminist theory, one that instead finds its provocation in the unwilled passivity and vulnerability of the human body, and in the vulnerability of the human body to suffering (...) and violence. Grounded in a descriptive ontology that privileges figures such as exposure, dispossession, vulnerability, and “precariousness,” this new humanism is a corporeal humanism. This essay probes both the promise and the limitations of this emergent humanism with particular reference to recent work by feminist philosophers Judith Butler and Adriana Cavarero. (shrink)

Stress in health care is affected by moral factors. When people are prevented from doing ‘good’ they may feel that they have not done what they ought to or that they have erred, thus giving rise to a troubled conscience. Empirical studies show that health care personnel sometimes refer to conscience when talking about being in ethically difficult everyday care situations. This study aimed to construct and validate the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire (SCQ), a nine-item instrument for assessing stressful situations (...) and the degree to which they trouble the conscience. The items were based on situations previously documented as causing negative stress for health care workers. Content and face validity were established by expert panels and pilot studies that selected relevant items and modified or excluded ambiguous ones. A convenience sample of 444 health care personnel indicated that the SCQ had acceptable validity and internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha exceeded 0.83 for the overall scale). Explorative factor analysis identified and labelled two factors: ‘internal demands’ and ‘external demands and restrictions’. The findings suggest that the SCQ is a concise and practical instrument for use in various health care contexts. (shrink)

I consider a grand, yet neglected proposal put forward by Shoemaker—a functionalist theory of all properties. I argue that two possible ways of developing this proposal meet with substantial objections. However, if we are prepared to endorse an ontology of tropes, one of these functionalist analyses can be developed into an original and informative theory of properties.

Through a phenomenological study of horse-human relations, this article explores the ways in which, as embodied beings, we live relationally, rather than as separate human identities. Conceptually this challenges oppositional logic and humanist assumptions, but where poststructuralist treatments of these issues tend to remain abstract, this article is concerned with an embodied demonstration of the ways in which we experience a relational or in-between logic in our everyday lives.

What if depression, in the Americas at least, could be traced to histories of colonialism, genocide, slavery, exclusion, and everyday segregation and isolation that haunt all of our lives, rather than to biochemical imbalances? This article seeks alternatives to the medical model found in most depression memoirs by considering how the epistemological and methodological struggles faced by a scholar of the African diaspora confronted by the absent archive of slavery are relevant to discussions of political depression. Combining scholarly investigation and (...) personal memoir, Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother exemplifies feminism’s affective turn not only by bringing personal narrative into scholarship, but by seeking reparation for the past in the affective dynamics of cultural memory rather than in legal reform or state recognition. Stubbornly refusing to find solace in an African past before slavery, though, Hartman provides a model of emotional reparation in which feelings of loss and alienation persist. Her work suggests the relevance of political depression to both the ordinary life of racism and to what gets called clinical depression. (shrink)

The notion of virtue in general, and courage in particular, has had a hard time integrating itself into the everyday lexicon of bioethics. Following the lead of enlightenment moral philosophy, which concentrates on the theory of right action as opposed to the ancient Greeks' emphasis on the development of good character, bioethics, with some notable exceptions, has tended to relegate consideration of the virtues to the sidelines of moral argument. Recently, however, there have been calls for the necessity of “moral (...) courage” in the context of clinical ethics. As nurses, physicians, and other health care professionals confront a variety of moral contexts in which the virtue of courage is invoked to "do the right thing," stand up for patients' rights, and uphold the ethical standards of their professions, they are increasingly reminded of their moral duty to exhibit courage in the face of institutional obstacles to the proper care of their patients. For example, a nurse's hesitation to approach a physician to request increased sedation for an agitated patient out of fear of retaliation is represented in one article as a lack of courage.In this paper we offer a critical assessment of such invocations of courage. While we find courage to be an indispensable virtue in some challenging contexts, in other settings we find invocations of courage to be both an unfortunate endorsement of an oppressive status quo that can divert attention from the real problems and an undesirable and potentially destructive strategy within health care institutions whose goal is medically excellent and morally good clinical practice. As we shall argue, a call to virtuousness is not always virtuous. (shrink)

Since 1992, institutions accredited by The Joint Commission have been required to have a process in place that allows staff members, patients, and families to address ethical issues or issues prone to conflict. While the commission's expectations clearly have made ethics committees more common, simply having a committee in no way demonstrates its effectiveness in terms of the availability of the service to key constituents, the quality of the processes used, or the outcomes achieved. Beyond meeting baseline accreditation standards, effective (...) ethics resources are requisite for quality care for another reason. The provision of care to the sick is a practice with profound moral dimensions. Clinicians need what Margaret Urban Walker has called “moral spaces,” reflective spaces within institutions in which to explore and communicate values and ethical obligations as they undergird goals of care. Walker proposed that ethicists needed to be concerned with the design and maintenance of these moral spaces. Clearly, that concern needs to extend beyond ethicists to institutional leaders. This essay uses Walker's idea of moral space to describe individuals and groups who are actual and potential ethics resources in health care institutions. We focus on four requisite characteristics of effective resources and the challenges to achieving them, and we identify strategies to build them. In our view, such moral spaces are particularly important for nurses and their colleagues on interprofessional teams and need to be expanded and strengthened in most settings. (shrink)

Recent UK reports have revealed extensive evidence of unethical care practices. Older and vulnerable patients in some British health services have experienced appalling and avoidable suffering. Explanations for, and solutions to, these care failures have been proposed with wide-ranging recommendations. Many of these have direct implications for clinical ethics with additional frameworks for ethical values proposed, a heightened awareness of the moral culture of organisations acknowledged and a renewed interest in the ethics component of professional education debated. In this paper, (...) I suggest that we integrate insights from the slow movement into clinical ethics practice. Distinctions are made between fast and slow healthcare practice and between fast and slow ethics. I argue that, whilst there is a place for both, slow ethics enables us to assume a more positive stance in relation to ‘crisis’, and requires that we learn from past accounts and scholarship and consider the role of clinical ethics in sustaining caring cultures. (shrink)

This book gives a socialist-feminist theory of the origins, persistence and reproduction of male dominance in systems of parenting/motherhood and sexuality. I create the concept of "modes of sex/affective production" which I see as analogous to and intertwined with modes of economic production to reproduce historically different systems of male dominance. I compare my Multi-system socialist-feminist theory to those of Liberal Feminism, Radical feminism, Marxist-feminism, Freudian feminism, and various types of lesbian-feminism. The concluding chapter presents a socialist-feminist vision of a (...) liberated society where class, gender and racial dominance have been eliminated. Historical, political and personal examples are discussed. (shrink)

The possible future use of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) and the challenges associated with assigning moral responsibility leads to several debates. Some authors argue that the highly autonomous capability of such systems may lead to a so-called responsibility gap in situations where LAWS cause serious violations of international humanitarian law. One proposed solution is the doctrine of command responsibility. Despite the doctrine’s original development to govern human interactions on the battlefield, it is worth considering whether the doctrine of command (...) responsibility could provide a solution by applying the notion analogously to LAWS. A fundamental condition underpinning the doctrine’s application is the control requirement, stipulating that a superior must exert some degree of control over subordinates. The aim of this article is to provide an in-depth analysis of this control condition and assess whether it leads to the impossibility of applying the doctrine of command responsibility to LAWS. To this end, the first section briefly introduces the topic of LAWS and responsibility gaps. The subsequent section provides a concise overview of the doctrine itself and the conditions typically necessitated for its application. In the third section, a comprehensive scrutiny of the control requirement is undertaken through examination of key case law, examining how the concept has been interpreted. Finally, the fourth section delves into the evaluation of commanders’ potential to exert effective control over their (non-human) subordinates. Based on this, the feasibility of considering command responsibility as a viable solution is assessed, aiming to determine whether its application should be prima facie excluded or warrants further exploration. (shrink)

Two significant, apparently unrelated, trends have emerged in American society and medicine. First, American medicine is reexamining its approach to dying. The Institute of Medicine, the American Medical Association and private funding organizations have recognized that too many dying people suffer from pain and other distress that clinicians can prevent or relieve. Second, this past decade has marked a sharp increase in the number of physicians prosecuted for criminal negligence based on arguably negligent patient care. The case often cited as (...) a watershed is People u. Einaugfer, which involved a New York nursing home patient whose physician was convicted in 1993 of two criminal misdemeanors after he ordered an elderly dialysis patient to be tube fed through a peritoneal dialysis Catheter.How is the growing awareness of dying patients’ pain and the increasing willingness of prosecutors to charge physicians with crimes connected? Pain at the end of life is frequently treated with narcotics, prescription drugs that are closely regulated by state and federal law. That complex web of laws—and a growing fear of legal sanctions—has deterred physicians from prescribing controlled substances. As those legal sanctions move from disciplinary actions to criminal charges, physicians’ fears may expand. (shrink)

While there is an extensive subfield in sociology studying the sources, content, and consequences of collective memory, the study of future projections has been much more fragmentary. In part, this has to do with the challenge of measurement; how do you measure something that has not happened yet? In this article, I argue that future projections can be studied via their externalizations in attitudes, narratives, performance, and material forms. They are particularly evident in what I call “sites of hyperprojectivity,” that (...) is, sites of heightened, future-oriented public debate about possible futures. As a pilot project, I examine contending narratives about possible futures in the online documents of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development and the accompanying “People’s Summit,” held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012. I propose a framework for studying how public interventions into debates about “sustainable futures” and the “green economy” differ on various dimensions of projectivity, including their temporal reach, attention to contingency and causality, and network mapping of future actors. I present a preliminary analysis at the level of narrative and grammar, by analyzing the use of predictive, imperative, and subjunctive verb forms in both programmatic and oppositional texts. I close with a discussion of how different genres of future projection might be put to analytical use in studying processes of interest to social scientists, such as coalition formation, institution building, political mobilization, and policy change. (shrink)

In the tense religious climate of the late Renaissance (ca. 1550-1650), traditional charges of impiety directed against Aristotle carried new weight. Many turned to alternative philosophical authorities in the search for a truly pious philosophy. Another, "most pious" solution was to ground natural philosophy on a literal reading of the Bible, especially Genesis. I examine this kind of physics, often called Mosaic, or sacred, or Christian, through the example of Johann Amos Comenius and those whom he praises as predecessors in (...) his attempt to reform physics according to the "divine light" of Scripture. In analyzing the works of these authors, I conclude that what they shared most effectively was an agenda rather than a practice. They defended the single, universal truth of a "Christian philosophy" grounded in biblical literalism against the impious excesses of philosophical naturalism, on the one hand, and against the antiphilosophical attacks of extreme theologians, on the other hand. This peculiar strand of natural philosophy, neither traditional nor "modern," needs to be included in attempts to map the complex dynamics of contemporary debates and self-presentations. -/- . (shrink)

This paper tells the story of G-protein coupled receptors, one of the most important scientific objects in contemporary biochemistry and molecular biology. By looking at how cell membrane receptors turned from a speculative concept into a central element in modern biochemistry over the past 40 years, we revisit the role of manipulability as a criterion for entity realism in wet-lab research. The central argument is that manipulability as a condition for reality becomes meaningful only once scientists have decided how to (...) conceptually coordinate measurable effects distinctly to a specific object. We show that a scientific entity, such as GPCRs, is assigned varying degrees of reality throughout different stages of its discovery. The criteria of its reality, we further claim, cannot be made independently of the question about how this object becomes a standard by which the reality of neighbouring elements of enquiry is evaluated. (shrink)

Respect is much referred to in professional codes, in health policy documents and in everyday conversation. What respect means and what it requires in everyday contemporary nursing practice is less than clear. Prescriptions in professional codes are insufficient, given the complexity and ambiguity of everyday nursing practice. This article explores the meaning and requirements of respect in relation to nursing practice. Fundamentally, respect is concerned with value: where ethical value or worth is present, respect is indicated. Raz has argued that (...) the two ways of encountering value are to respect and to engage with it. The former requires acknowledgement and preservation. Respect in nursing practice necessarily requires also engagement. Respect is an active value and can be conceptualized within the context of virtue ethics as a hybrid virtue having both intellectual and ethical components. Examples from the literature are provided to illustrate situations where the respectful nurse requires these components or capabilities. (shrink)

Most current techniques to deal with invasive species are ineffective or have highly damaging side effects. To this end suppression-drives based on clustered regularly inter-spaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR/Cas9) have been touted as a potential silver bullet for the problem, allowing for a highly focused, humane and cost-effective means of removing a target species from an environment. Suppression-drives come with serious risks, however, such that the precautionary principle seems to warrant us not deploying this technology. The focus of this paper (...) is on one such risk – the danger of a suppression-drive escaping containment and wiping out the target species globally. Here, I argue that in most cases this risk is significant enough to warrant not using a gene-drive. In some cases, however, we can bypass the precautionary principle by using an approach that hinges on what I term the ‘Worst-Case Clause’. This clause, in turn, provides us with a litmus test that can be fruitfully used to determine what species are viable targets for suppression-drives in the wild. Using this metric in concert with other considerations, I suggest that only three species are currently possible viable targets – the European rabbit, ship rat and Caribbean Tree Frog. (shrink)

Current advances in connectivity, sensor technology, computing power and the development of complex algorithms for processing health-related data are paving the way for the delivery of innovative long-term health care services in the future. Such technological developments will, in particular, assist the elderly and infirm to live independently, at home, for much longer periods. The home is, in fact, becoming a locus for health care innovation that may in the future compete with the hospital. However, along with these advances come (...) valid privacy and security questions arising from the fact that the data collected and transmitted through these technologies could also allow for individual monitoring as well as unauthorized access to critical diagnostic and other health data. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore an alternative to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities for Moral Responsibility—the Ceteris Paribus Principle of Alternative Possibilities for Moral Responsibility. I consider motivations for this principle and answer some objections to it.

This article analyzes the experiences of ecologists who used data they did not collect themselves. Specifically, the author examines the processes by which ecologists understand and assess the quality of the data they reuse, and investigates the role that standard methods of data collection play in these processes. Standardization is one means by which scientific knowledge is transported from local to public spheres. While standards can be helpful, the results show that knowledge of the local context is critical to ecologists' (...) reuse of data. Yet, this information is often left behind as data move from the private to the public world. The knowledge that ecologists acquire through fieldwork enables them to recover the local details that are so critical to their comprehension of data collected by others. Social processes also play a role in ecologists' efforts to judge the quality of data they reuse. (shrink)

In 2012, chief nursing officers (CNO) in England published a policy on compassion in response to serious criticisms of patients’ care. Because their objective is fundamentally to shape nursing, this study argues, following Popper, that the policy should be analysed. An appraisal tool, developed from Popper, Gadamer, Jauss and Thiselton, is the framework for this analysis. The CNO policy document identified six values and behaviours, termed ‘6Cs’, required by all nurses, midwives and care staff. The document contains no data, references (...) or acknowledgements, but is similar to the 6Cs defined by the Canadian nursing nun, Sister M. Simone Roach, in her theory of caring published 30 years earlier. Roach considered caring and the components of it, including compassion, to be moral virtues, an inner motivation to care. This study suggests that without explicit reference to Roach's ideas, and her underlying theoretical base, the CNO requirement has the effect of turning virtues into commodities and a form of external control, described by Ritzer as a McDonaldized dehumanization. This study, which has international relevance beyond England and the UK, suggests that the CNO revise their policy by acknowledging Roach's 6Cs and openly discuss the implications of her work for their policy. (shrink)

Genome editing is revolutionising the field of genetics, which includes novel applications to food animals. Responsible research and innovation has been advocated as a way of ensuring that a wider-range of stakeholders and publics are able to engage with new and emerging technologies to inform decision making from their perspectives and values. We posit that genome editing is now proceeding at such a fast rate, and in so many different directions, such as to overwhelm attempts to achieving a more reflective (...) pace. An alternative location for reflection is during the much slower process of taking products from the lab to market. We suggest emphasising Responsible Innovation, putting the ‘I’ back into RRI, and encouraging companies to embrace an RRI approach. We review some previous attempts at developing industry-relevant frameworks for RRI. We then describe two examples of genome editing in livestock; hornless cattle and disease resistant pigs, and reflect on the sorts of questions that could be considered in these two genome editing examples. This paper seeks to take forward the discussion on RRI by extending it to bringing products to market in the context of genome edited livestock. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to add to the research surrounding nurses' work in hospitals. Throughout history, nurses have faced adverse working conditions, an aspect of their work that remains remarkably unchanged today. Prevailing historical ideologies and sociopolitical conditions influences the context of nurses' work in contemporary hospitals. This research revealed how ruling patriarchal power and nurses' altruistic ways normalize the conditions in hospitals as nurses' work. Moving discourses further add to the work of nurses in hospitals. For example, (...) cost containment strategies, overcapacity and short staffing have resulted in practices to accommodate these problems. While contemporary hospitals may look different, clearly, inside, little has changed since the early days; hospital issues have clearly become an ordinary part of nurses' work. This article discusses how the conditions in hospitals have become an ordinary part of nurses' work. The research in this article emphasizes how prevailing ideologies and institutional discourses make invisible and taken‐for‐granted, how this normalizing of nurses' work contributes to sustaining the hospital's power. (shrink)

At the UN, important projects laying down transnational corporations' (TNCs) human rights responsibilities have been launched without ever clarifying the relevant theoretical foundations. One of the consequences is that the human rights principles in projects like the 2000 UN Global Compact and the 2003 Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights can be understood in different ways, which should not cause surprise given that their authors come from diverse backgrounds, including economics (...) and public policy. An examination of these projects and the views of their authors reveals that, although they are superficially linked to international human rights law, they go well beyond it and attempt to deal with corporate social responsibility issues in ways that elude neat classification as fitting neatly in either legal or non-legal categories. Too little attention has been paid to how in the course of developing these projects the legal and ethical dimensions have become entwined and how lines have gotten blurred. Meanwhile, there has been recognition that these UN projects have emerged simply as ad hoc responses to practical concerns about the sustainability of globalization. The lack of any foundational theory or normative framework should be addressed; it is time to bring together specialists from different fields concerned with the human rights responsibilities of corporations to see if it is possible to define a coherent overarching theory for these UN projects. (shrink)

Background The field of formal nursing ethics is not new, with literature primarily from North America, dating back to the 1880s. The establishment of the international journal Nursing Ethics in 1994 served to stimulate, curate and disseminate research and scholarship in this evolving field. Three decades on, it is timely to review progress and to make recommendations for the future focus of the field. Purpose This article reviews 182 issues of Nursing Ethics over 30 years, focusing on: regions of origin (...) of published articles; methodologies; and topic themes. Research design The process involved documentary analysis, by hand, summarising: (1) regions of origin; (2) most common methodologies - qualitative; quantitative; mixed methods; argument-based; and reviews; and (3) themes relating to topic areas. Ethical considerations The manuscript was reviewed by members of the Nursing Ethics Editorial Board and revised in accord with reviewers’ feedback. The research did not involve human participants nor require consent from individuals. Findings There has been an escalation of scholarship in nursing ethics with significant shifts over 3 decades, as evidenced in the journal Nursing Ethics. This paper focuses on trends relating to: (1) Regions of origin of published papers – initially manuscripts were primarily from Europe and North America and there is now more geographical diversity; (2) Methodologies – there is strong evidence of the ‘empirical turn’ from an initial focus on philosophical perspectives to empirical research, particularly quantitative research; and (3) Topic areas – whilst there is rich diversity, there has been increasing focus on areas such as moral distress, ethical climate and ethics education. Conclusion This review is intended to stimulate reflection on progress made and approaches to future directions. This includes more critical focus on: the meaning and purpose of nursing ethics; impact on practice, education and research; and potential to respond to care challenges. (shrink)

Literature on caring for those with advanced Parkinsonian dementia often urges caregivers to refrain from arguing with, or contesting, their hallucinatory landscape. The clinical advice tends to be to go with the flow and “play along.” It is the above prescription that I aim to trouble here, on phenomenological grounds. With reference to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s idea of the perceptual faith, I explore that idea that caregiving often requires the relaxation or expansion of the perceptual faith, not for the purposes of (...) “playing along” so much as being-with. At the intersection of the ethics of care and phenomenology, and in reference to my experience caregiving for my mother, this paper explores the ethics of caregiving for those with dementia. (shrink)

A virtue centred approach to ethics has been criticized for being vague owing to the nature of its central concept, the paradigm person. From the perspective of the practitioner the most damaging charge is that virtue ethics fails to be action guiding and, in addition to this, it does not offer any means of act appraisal. These criticisms leave virtue ethics in a weak position vis-à-vis traditional approaches to ethics. The criticism is, however, challenged by Hursthouse in her analysis of (...) the accounts of right action offered by deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics. It is possible to defend the action guiding nature of virtue ethics: there are virtue rules and exemplars to guide action. Insights from Aristotle’s practical approach to ethics are considered alongside Hursthouse’s analysis and it is suggested that virtue ethics is also capable of facilitating action appraisal. It is at the same time acknowledged that approaches to virtue ethics vary widely and that the challenges offered here would be rejected by those who embrace a radical replacement virtue approach. (shrink)