Public attitudes concerning cognitive enhancements are significant for a number of reasons. They tell us about how socially acceptable these emerging technologies are considered to be, but they also provide a window into the ethical reasons that are likely to get traction in the ongoing debates about them. We thus see Conrad et al’s project of empirically investigating the effect of metaphors and context in shaping attitudes about cognitive enhancements as both interesting and important. We sketch what we suspect is (...) a central theme that runs through these public attitudes, but that Conrad el al’s paper elides. We were disappointed that they did not more directly explore the efficacy of frames and metaphors associated with the values of authenticity and self-expression. This seems like a missed opportunity. Based on the premise that individualistic values enjoy centrality in Western and especially North American culture (e.g. Taylor 1989), we hypothesize that metaphors and frames informed by those values will be especially effective in shaping public attitudes. That is, when various kinds of novel enhancement are described as allowing people to more fully express themselves, or as helping people overcome obstacles to being authentic and true to their inner sense of themselves, those enhancements will be considered justified, and their use more likely to be viewed as socially acceptable by the public. We support our contention by drawing on work by Elliott (2004, 2011, c.f. Kadlac 2018), and discuss how this study, and others modeled on it, might shed light on our hypothesis. (shrink)

Theistic cosmologies have inspired many religious communities to alienate transgender individuals. While the growth in tolerance among congregations and institutions is important, there remains a pressing need to address the cosmologies at the root of intolerance. A re-examination of theological conceptions of God and the human person reveal not only acceptability, but significance, in the trans experience itself. Synthesizing gender studies with theology, this interdisciplinary article argues that God’s nature as deeply personal Love implies a sacredness in gender authenticity. The (...) human person is part of an evolution toward deeply personalized consciousness. Gender, when freed from rigid constraints, is a social expression of this personalized self in a common cultural language. As infinite Love, God actualizes in the universe in deeply personal love. Therefore, by personalizing knowledge of one another and enabling deeper love between human persons, gender authenticity, in its fluidity, ambiguity, and continuous newness, deepens God’s existence. Ultimately, I argue, expressing one’s authentic gender is a sacred act. (shrink)

This paper argues for a revised concept of authenticity entailing two demands that must be balanced. The first demand moves authenticity from the position of a strictly self-regarding virtue towards the position of a fully social virtue, acknowledging the crucial feature of steadiness, i.e. self-consistency, as being precisely what we ‘naturally’ lack. Nevertheless, the value of personal authenticity in a modern, open society comes from the fact that it brings about not only steadiness, but also the public (...) development of a variety of existential options that can be understood as Millian ‘original experiments in living’. Thus the second demand of authenticity is a demand for ‘experimental’ authenticity which covers the whole spectrum of technologies of the self, from Nietzschean ‘brief habits’, to the use of enhancement technologies. (shrink)

Referring to the mainstream studies based on the personalization’s hypothesis, which positively evaluates signals of dominance shown by leaders, the analysis of Obama’s rhetoric stays a relevant exception. His risky recall, during his political talks, of his social difficulties as a child of a mixed couple was in fact one of the more surprising aspects of his success. Nevertheless, reactions to his autobiographical sharing were scarcely explored. Based on the idea that these self-disclosures signal his responsivity toward the (...) audience of low social condition and can, therefore, be defined as a sign of humility, this research aims to test if coherence between Obama’s words and his facial expressions of contempt, due to the seriousness of social injustices endured in his childhood, may influence the receivers’ perception of such unexpected communication. Before reading a brief autobiographical sharing taken from a “Back-to-school” speech, a highly ritualized monolog the US President addresses each year to students, 175 Italian participants were presented with a photo of Obama displaying either an expression of contempt or a neutral expression. Comparisons between self-assessments of perceptions and reactions of participants assigned to the two experimental conditions show that a facial expression of contempt, coherent with words describing his school difficulties, has been crucial for perceiving this humble political discourse as authentic and not as a simple socially desirable posturing. More studies seem to be needed, however, to understand how humble speech could enhance the positive face of leaders or backfire against them. (shrink)

The use of psychopharmaceuticals to enhance human mental functioning such as cognition and mood has raised a debate on questions regarding identity and authenticity. While some hold that psychopharmaceutical substances can help users to ‘become who they really are’ and thus strengthen their identity and authenticity, others believe that the substances will lead to inauthenticity, normalization, and socially-enforced adaptation of behaviour and personality. In light of this debate, we studied how persons who actually have experience with the use of psychopharmaceutical (...) medication would view their ‘self’ or their authentic personal identity in relation to the use of medication. We have interviewed a number of adults diagnosed with ADHD and discussed their experiences with medication use in relation to their conceptions of self and identity. In the first part of this paper we illustrate that the concepts of identity and authenticity play an important and sometimes problematic role in experiences of ADHD adults. This shows that the question about identity and psychopharmacology is not merely an ‘academic’ issue, but one that influences everyday lives of real people. In order to answer the question whether psychopharmaceuticals threaten personal identity and authenticity, more than empirical research is needed. We also need to analyse the concepts of personal identity, authenticity and self: what do we mean when we are using statements as ‘a way of living that is uniquely our own’, ‘our true self’, or ‘who we really are’? In the second part of this paper we discuss two important philosophical views on personal identity, authenticity and self: the self-control view as elaborated by Frankfurt, and the self-expression view as proposed by Schechtman. We compare these with the experiences of our respondents to see which view can help us to understand the diverse and often conflicting experiences that people have with medication for ADHD. This will contribute to a better understanding of whether and in which cases personal identity and authenticity are threatened by psychopharmacology. (shrink)

Moral injury is a significant issue for healthcare workers, often stemming from exposure to ethical dilemmas and distressing events. This study aims to explore the relationship between moral injury and healthcare workers’ career calling, using the job demands-resources model as a theoretical framework. The goal is to understand how moral injury affects healthcare workers’ sense of purpose and vocation and identify factors that may mitigate this impact. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with a sample of 506 Chinese healthcare workers. The (...) study used self-report questionnaires to assess moral injury, authentic self-expression, self-compassion, ethical leadership, and career calling. Path analysis was used to test the proposed mediating and moderating relationships within the job demands-resources model. Moral injury has a negative effect on healthcare workers’ career calling. This effect is mediated by authentic self-expression – the inability to openly discuss moral distress weakens the sense of purpose. Self-compassion and ethical leadership buffer against the negative impact of moral injury on career calling. This research contributes to the understanding of moral injury and career calling in healthcare workers, with practical implications for safeguarding healthcare professionals’ well-being and commitment to their vocation. (shrink)

Many people feel uneasy about enhancement technologies, yet have a hard time explaining why. This unease is often less with the technologies themselves than about the desires and aspirations that they express. I suggest here that we can diagnose the source of that unease by looking at three themes that emerge in Taylor’s writings about the making of the modern self: the importance of social recognition, the ethics of authenticity, and the rise of instrumental reason.

In this paper, I first outline a brief dialectic on free will and meaning in life. I then argue that meaning-compatibilism gives us reason to reject meaning-incompatibilism as it is currently understood. However, I critique meaning-compatibilism to the extent that it is silent with regard to freedom’s role in generating meaning in life. Because of these observations, I reconceptualize meaning-incompatibilism and urge us to adopt an alternative version of the position I call, “narrow meaning-incompatibilism.” Following my formulation of this position, (...) I construct a preliminary narrow meaning-incompatibilist framework. Here, I maintain that “self-expression” is what, in part, makes life meaningful. However, I argue that there are at least two different _kinds_ of self-expression, which I call personal self-expression and metaphysical self-expression. I argue that libertarian free will (but more specifically agent-causal libertarianism) enhances meaning in life because it secures metaphysical self-expression. On my account, if determinism is true, then agents will fail to obtain metaphysical self-expression. The result is a reality wherein agents hold a strangely alien relationship with their actions, and life is thus less meaningful because of this fact. Ultimately, then, I argue that agent-causal libertarianism enhances meaning in life because it safeguards metaphysical self-expression, which in turn alleviates this problem of alienation found at the level of action. (shrink)

Embrace your authentic self and let your soul's light shine forth with guidance from 150 lessons meant to inspire, motivate, and teach. This empowering book helps you shed what is false and come to know, accept, and express your true self. With essays to uplift and engage you through personal stories, meditations, exercises, affirmations, and question prompts, Discover Your Authentic Self shows you how to live according to your passions and purpose. Explore a range of topics for (...) self-discovery, including intuition, spirit animals, recognizing personal abilities as related to archetypes, living your purpose, spirit essence and energy (chakras and auras), and more. With this remarkable book, you'll unlock your truth and set yourself free. (shrink)

The purpose of my paper is to challenge the binary classification of authenticity, which is currently employed in the bioethical debate on enhancement technologies. According to the standard dichotomy, there is a stark opposition between the self-discovery model, which depicts the self as a substantial and original inwardness, and the self-creation model, which assumes that the self is an open project, that has to be constituted by one’s free actions. My claim is that the so-called (...) class='Hi'>self-creation model actually conflates two distinct versions of authenticity: one that is decisionist and one that is experimentalist. Hence, my proposal is to distinguish between three different models of authenticity: (i) self-discovery, which is an expressivist model of authenticity; (ii) existential commitment, which is a decisionist model; and (iii) reinvention of the self, which is an experimentalist model. Such a three-fold distinction will vast a more nuanced and clear light upon the enhancement debate. (shrink)

Troubling patterns of suppressed speech have emerged on the corporate internet. A large platform may marginalize potential connections between audiences and speakers. Consumer protection concerns arise, for platforms may be marketing themselves as open, comprehensive, and unbiased, when they are in fact closed, partial, and self-serving. Responding to protests, the accused platform either asserts a right to craft the information environment it desires, or abjures responsibility, claiming to merely reflect the desires and preferences of its user base. Such responses (...) betray an opportunistic commercialism at odds with the platforms’ touted social missions. Large platforms should be developing more ambitious standards for promoting expression online, rather than warring against privacy, competition, and consumer protection laws. These regulations enable a more vibrant public sphere. They also defuse the twin specters of monopolization and total surveillance, which are grave threats to freedom of expression. (shrink)

Authenticity has been recognized as a central concept in the ethics of human enhancement. In the last decade, a plethora of novel distinctions, specifications, and definitions of authenticity have been added to the debate. This chapter takes a step back and maps the different accounts of authenticity to provide a nuanced taxonomy of authenticity and reveal the emerging underlying structures of this concept. I identify three kinds of conditions for authentic creation and change of the true self (coherence, endorsement, (...) and relations) as well as ways how the true self should be expressed (in one’s self-conception, self-presentation, and one’s body, emotions, and actions). Based on this analysis, I discuss the hopes and concerns human enhancement raises for authenticity. Enhancement technologies do not threaten or foster authenticity across the board but affect different dimensions of authenticity individually. Finally, I turn to the value of authenticity and argue that the debate on authenticity in the ethics of human enhancement would profit from a more extended discussion on the comparative value of the individual dimensions of authenticity. (shrink)

In the current bioethical debates on authenticity and enhancement, the discourse is dominated by a binary distinction between self-discovery and self-constitution. The self-discovery model views authenticity as staying true to a preexisting, intrinsic nature, while self-constitution frames it as being faithful to self-imposed goals and freely chosen aspirations. However, I argue that a threefold distinction could enrich this debate and offer more nuanced perspectives on authenticity. I propose a new taxonomy consisting of three models. First, (...) the expressivist model, aligned with self-discovery, sees authenticity as expressing a natural, inner self. Second, the decisional model focuses on existential commitment, where authenticity arises from firm life choices and perseverance in the face of challenges. Lastly, the experimentalist model, inspired by Nietzsche, views life as a continuous process of self-reinvention, where authenticity is achieved through experimentation and embracing change. In the final section, I examine both sides of the enhancement debate. Supporters, using the experimentalist model, can argue that enhancement technologies allow for personal growth and creative self-exploration. However, critics, drawing on Nietzschean insights, warn that these technologies might provide superficial shortcuts, bypassing the deep struggles essential for authentic self-transformation. Moreover, they could lead to conformity, limiting individual uniqueness. My tripartite model offers a pluralistic view, suggesting that while enhancement can be ethically valuable, it also requires caution to avoid undermining the very process of self-overcoming that defines true authenticity. (shrink)

The author reflects upon her role as a public health nurse striving to attain practice authenticity. Client assessment and nursing interventions were seemingly sufficient until she became curious about ‘Who is this person sitting across from me?’ and ‘What are her experiences in the world as a lone parent living in poverty at the margins of society?’ The author begins to think that she could shift from mere client investigation to pure wonderment about the Other by imagining herself as a (...) researcher, an explorer of another's life world. Ultimately this process enables her to enhance the ‘caring’ in her practice with the knowledge gained of the perceptions and meanings impoverished clients assigned to their everyday lives. Jurgen Habermas’ theory of communicative competence serves as the reference map guiding exploration. The author uses Habermas’ theoretical principles of intersubjective mutuality – the validity claims of comprehensibility, truth, sincerity, and legitimacy. Comprehensibility embodies understanding, an attitude of unconditional acceptance, and care respect of another's individual person and self‐defined reality. Intersubjective mutuality also requires that one dwell in the moment with the Other, satisfied that communication is founded on truth. Sincerity implies fostering the Other's expression of authentic self apart from oppressive distracters. Lastly, legitimacy reconciles the author's altruistic pursuit to know the Other's ontological truth with the reality of the present world. (shrink)

By analysing three works of fiction set in Havana, Fresa y Chocolate by Tomas Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabi, Retour à Ithaque by Laurent Cantet and Viva by Paddy Breathnach, we propose to study the Cuban capital as a sick body, as an architecturally, economically, politically and socially dilapidated organism. Its citizens struggle to survive, lacking basic necessities and trapped under a claustrophobic political and social surveillance, which the film directors convey through the use of a variety of (...) aesthetic devices. There is a form of symbiosis between Havana and its inhabitants. The characters are confined in a labyrinth of alleys, stairs and narrow corridors, enveloped in a nocturnal atmosphere. The constricted arteries through which they move show that the body of Havana lacks oxygen. Its inhabitants need to find spaces to breathe and to express their authentic selves, to regenerate. This space is to be found behind Havana’s façades, behind its closed doors and even on a roof-top terrace. These private spaces reveal the dual nature of the city and its people, and constitute pockets of liberty as well as places of catharsis. The external façade presents a socially acceptable figure while covering and protecting the authentic self. The private spaces provide the physical and mental oxygen that the soul of Havana needs to survive. It is here that individual liberties flourish, allowing rights to be asserted, and art to be both preserved and created. The premise of a spiritual transformation begins to take form. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a clarification of the long debate on whether enhancement will or will not diminish authenticity. It focuses particularly on accounts provided by Carl Elliott and David DeGrazia. Three clarifications will be presented here. First, most discussants only criticise Elliott’s identity argument and neglect that his conservative position in the use of enhancement can be understood as a concern over social coercion. Second, Elliott’s and DeGrazia’s views can, not only co-exist, but even converge together as (...) an autonomy based theory of authenticity. Third, the current account of autonomy provided by DeGrazia fails to address the importance of rationality and the ability of self-correction, which, as a result impedes the theory to provide a fully developed account for authenticity. In conclusion, a satisfactory account of authenticity cannot focus only on identity or subjective preference. (shrink)

Poland’s transformation occurs in individuals’ attitudes and behaviour. Several years ago, the entrepreneur in Poland was associated with corruption and border-line legal activities. Today, many entrepreneurs are looked upon as positive role models. Social acceptance of entrepreneurial attitudes in Poland is growing. Increased susceptibility to entrepreneurial behaviour in a society will increase the rate at which new businesses are established, enhancing market dynamics, and accelerating innovative changes. But in Poland entrepreneurs are not seen as a positive example, unlike in (...) the United States. Willingness to take risks, self-expression and independence are not met with social acceptance, especially if rewarded with high incomes. The research undertaken by the author is aimed at analysing the essence of entrepreneurial attitudes and changes in the social acceptance of entrepreneurial behaviour. (shrink)

The use of psychopharmaceuticals to enhance human mental functioning such as cognition and mood has raised a debate on questions regarding identity and authenticity. While some hold that psychopharmaceutical substances can help users to ‘become who they really are’ and thus strengthen their identity and authenticity, others believe that the substances will lead to inauthenticity, normalization, and socially-enforced adaptation of behaviour and personality. In light of this debate, we studied how persons who actually have experience with the use of psychopharmaceutical (...) medication would view their ‘self’ or their authentic personal identity in relation to the use of medication. We have interviewed a number of adults diagnosed with ADHD and discussed their experiences with medication use in relation to their conceptions of self and identity. In the first part of this paper we illustrate that the concepts of identity and authenticity play an important and sometimes problematic role in experiences of ADHD adults. This shows that the question about identity and psychopharmacology is not merely an ‘academic’ issue, but one that influences everyday lives of real people. In order to answer the question whether psychopharmaceuticals threaten personal identity and authenticity, more than empirical research is needed. We also need to analyse the concepts of personal identity, authenticity and self: what do we mean when we are using statements as ‘a way of living that is uniquely our own’, ‘our true self’, or ‘who we really are’? In the second part of this paper we discuss two important philosophical views on personal identity, authenticity and self: the self-control view as elaborated by Frankfurt, and the self-expression view as proposed by Schechtman. We compare these with the experiences of our respondents to see which view can help us to understand the diverse and often conflicting experiences that people have with medication for ADHD. This will contribute to a better understanding of whether and in which cases personal identity and authenticity are threatened by psychopharmacology. (shrink)

Since 2008 I have been closely following the conceptual/performance/video work of Daniel Peltz. Gently rendered through media installation, ethnographic, and performance strategies, Peltz’s work reverently and warmly engages the inner workings of social systems, leaving elegant rips and tears in any given socio/cultural quilt. He engages readymades (of social and media constructions) and uses what are identified as interruptionist/interventionist strategies to disrupt parts of an existing social system, thus allowing for something other to emerge. Like the stereoscope (...) that requires two identical images to create an illusion of a three-dimensional image, Peltz sometimes visualizes two separate elements to create an object or moment that requires space and depth to focus on its varied layers. They say your brain has to process and make meaningful sense out of all that visual information before it can accept the illusion. I say your brain has to do a similar thing when looking and seeing the divine, magical, and faithful (social) art making of Daniel Peltz. Daniel Peltz is Associate Professor of Film/Animation/Video at RISD. He divides his time between Rhode Island and Sweden and is currently at work on an exhibition at Botkyrka Konsthall, Stockholm opening February 2013 and a new project to be included in the IASKA: Spaced Biennial (Australia) in 2014. This interview took place on Skype and is part one of a two-part interview. Feliz Lucia Molina: Are you in Providence, RI? Daniel Peltz: I’m at my house in Providence. I’ve been back for six days teaching winter session at RISD and doing this workshop series—these investors’ drum circles with a group of wealth managers. a client of the firm, 2013, photo Shirin Adhami FLM: The wealth managers were all drumming together? DP: They were all drumming in response to the performance of their retirement portfolios. FLM: Is this part of the “Unrealized Gain/Loss” piece? DP: Yes, it’s part of a show I’m working on in Sweden. I can show you because it was just today. I’ll show you some of this. Lets see—share screen [click, click, click]. This is the room. I’ve been using the camera system that’s already installed in the conference rooms to record them. So the video is being recorded directly by the wealth management office’s tech staff. These are the people I worked with in the last workshop. This conference table is less wondrous. They’ve been learning to drum in response to their retirement portfolios. I started by bringing in my little bit of wealth for them to propose a management strategy, I came to the follow-up meeting with a counter proposal, which was this workshop. So they agreed to do this series of workshops instead of managing my wealth. FLM: Does everybody in the room manage your wealth? That’s kind of a lot of people. DP: That woman in the back there and Craig —they handle new client business. So when you come there with your wealth, they sit down with you and suggest to you how they would manage it. They’re very nice, responsible people. FLM: And where is this? DP: This is in Providence and the one I was showing you is in Waltham, where I was today. Then I’m going to Newport for the last one on Friday. So I will have done four of them. This is the group in Waltham that I just played with today. I played directly with the two groups in Providence and I’m working with an ethnomusicologist at Brown, Asha Tamarisa, who is facilitating the last two. She’s helped develop the workshop in terms of figuring out how to train a group to do this and thinking about the compositional challenges of working in response to retirement portfolio data. FLM: Screensharing helps me to figure out tiny bits here and there about the project. DP: I might even be able to play you a little of the audio I’ve also been working with a group of professional percussionists on what will become a quarterly public investors’ drum circle event. Their stuff was really nice, but I want you to hear what we sounded like in the workshops. They’ve all been recorded by the a/v system in the offices. We use a simple structure where the drummer investors interpret the sensation of gain or loss as embellishments to a base heartbeat rhythm. The group holds the heartbeat and, as each person experiences gain or loss, they embellish that rhythm. "Screensharing helps me to figure out tiny bits here and there about the project" FLM: Is the process all very spontaneous? DP: Its actually quite structured. We produce a custom stock ticker that shows the performance of their collective portfolios. In advance of the workshop each participant submits assets in their retirement portfolio. Then we make a stock ticker that shows the real-time performance of their assets so that they can respond to almost live data. FLM: Are they reading the stock ticker projected up on the screen in the room? Do people drum in correspondence to the visual live data of the performance of their assets? DP: Exactly. They’re looking at the stock ticker as opposed to each other, so it’s a slightly shifted drum circle. They’re looking at the ticker but they’re listening to each other—that’s what we’re practicing. For example, NVO—the price is 172.08 but it’s down -1.16 and as that moves across the screen, the person who’s retirement is invested in that asset starts to embellish when that arrow first appears, based on their experience of loss. They stop when it exits the screen and return to the heartbeat. You could have one ticker for each retirement portfolio, but the way the workshop is constructed is that we just isolate one asset from each person’s portfolio so that everyone in the group is represented in a single ticker. So they’re drumming and looking at the ticker, but they’re hearing each other experience gain and loss. We’ve removed direct visual engagement from the social structure of a drum circle but the oral engagement is still there. FLM: So they had their own sound interpretation of gain and loss? DP: Yeah and that part is quite spontaneous as you were saying. In some of the preparatory exercises we’ve been working to give the participants more strategies for interpreting the sensations of gain and loss. We’re trying to develop their capacity to embellish a heartbeat or base rhythm but I’m not invested in having a melodious result. I’m quite curious about what this kind of structure will result in without any desire for a particular result. FLM: For context, can you talk about the project you did a couple years ago in Bali, “Unrealized Gain/Loss” in relation to this current wealth management project? DP: The workshops I’ve been doing use a similar strategy to the other components in this project. It started in Indonesia on my sabbatical and I was really trying to understand where I was physically and where I was being on sabbatical—this kind of strange jubilee structure where every seventh year you’re supposed to renew your self. And it was around the time of the global financial crisis. I was on sabbatical for the global financial crisis. I remember watching my father, in particular, respond to the financial crisis by monitoring his retirement portfolio and trying to make sense of it. I realized on a visit to their home that he checked his retirement portfolio every single day and I was really struck by that because in some way our parents are mysteries to us as children, especially their moods. We know how important their moods are but we don’t know what governs them. And somehow it was like I’d figured it out, it’s the performance of the DOW! So I think there was something in that. Then I was in Indonesia and I had been drawn there by an interest in their highly ritualized Hindu culture, where so much of life is driven by a ceremonial calendar. I was interested in Bali as this predominantly Hindu pocket within a predominantly Islamic country and life there being organized by this ritual calendar functioning as a kind of resistance to the dominant global religion of free-market capitalism. So I started to explore that correlation between the ways in which this culture that I was living in was sort of “living for the afterlife” and this idea within certain segments of American society of “living for the afterwork life”. The idea that your wellbeing in the “afterwork life” is tied to forces that are unseen and largely beyond your control has strong similarities to many religious understandings of the universe. So I started to explore that and the crafts and materials that were around me were primarily Batik and percussion. Percussion is a huge part of daily life in Bali. These gamelan troupes were everywhere. And I also happened to be there for Nyepi, the day of silence, which is preceded by a very elaborate procession and construction of demonic statues. These were the things that were around me and I started studying Batik with one of the Batik artists there and also started a conversation with two master Batik artists, one who is American and her Indonesian husband. I developed these patterns that were based on symbols from the performance of my retirement portfolio and worked with the batik artists to produce two sarongs. d. peltz - 2012 In producing the designs, I treated the performance of my retirement portfolio since my arrival at RISD [7 years] as a significant interval and then I looked at the ways in which decisions are made within retirement portfolios as having an extension outwards from the individual assets that underlie the retirement portfolio, which are kind of like the base elements of the retirement world. Then there’s the allocation of your assets, which is a global way of understanding an individual according to typologies, which are often referred to in terms of risk—this notion of a ‘risk profile’. What type of ‘person’ you are is determined by your attitude towards risk, or potentiality, and I found that to be a really fascinating way of understanding the universe. I remember looking at the tabs in my retirement portfolio and finding this one for viewing ‘Unrealized Gain/Loss’ and that’s often how I work—is just going through the Cambridge Parking Code, for example, and finding this section of the code that was called ‘Crossing Non-Signalized Locations’ and just feeling “I can’t do any better than that,” you know? That’s what I was talking about in terms of ready-mades that exist in the social sphere. So I found that tab, actually, a long time ago, and I pulled it out of a journal when I was there [in Bali] working on these pieces and I wound up making these two sarongs and later on a series of porcelain vessels for holding one’s unrealized gains and losses. At the time, I knew that I wanted a performance to come out of them, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I was inspired very much by this sort of thing: Pulls out a TIAA-CREF brochure with a man in a suit seated at a table. This guy is probably an actor, and [the brochure] says “TIAA-Cref announces “Individual counseling sessions at the Rhode Island School of Design. Individual counseling sessions at no additional cost to you. You can discuss your personal financial situation with an experienced TIAA consultant on a confidential basis. We are available to help you discuss how to achieve your financial goals by investing in financial solutions such as mutual funds, brokerage, life insurance, and annuities...etc....What retirement benefits best fits your situation?” Often I encounter this and I think O.K., this is one way to prepare for the after-work life and it seems inadequate to me. But, I also find it really inspiring. I really like the visual language of it. I kind of want to be that man. I’d like to see if I could maybe buy his clothes. FLM: What it is about the man on the brochure that interests you? DP: He’s offering personalized objective advice and a detailed evaluation of everything you need to know and do. Who wouldn’t want that? But he’s also something of a contemporary priest or priestess, mediating between the unseen all-powerful universe of global capitalism and the common worker. So I started off developing Unrealized Gain/Loss directly from the charts that represent the performance of my retirement portfolio. Then I came home and I wanted to use those. I had this word in my journal “unrealized gain/loss vessel.” I had this notion of vessels that would contain unrealized gains and losses. That felt really important to me that they would have somewhere to go. I had been thinking a lot about altars and making offerings—that somehow this really fickle, massive, difficult-to-comprehend-universe of the financial world—that somehow it might be nice if you could making an offering to it. [In Bali] they made such beautiful elaborate offerings. So I studied offering making as well with one of the women there and she taught me some of the standard forms created by folding leaves and the significance of the floral arrangements. I started working in clay and then moved to porcelain and I made these unrealized gain/loss vessels. I made a few of them, they have holes on either side that you can’t get your fingers in. But something can go in there and something can go out of there. It’s a nice size for putting on an altar. Then I got this commission from Artists in Context who was interested in my doing something for this project “Artists Perspectives for the Nation” project. I proposed initiating these investors’ drum circles as a new public performance form. I’m interested in bringing together those two symbols—the symbol of the djembe and the drum circle. unrealized gain/loss vessel - d.peltz - 2012 FLM: I can imagine the public digital stock ticker performing like a soft fleeting stream of information, a kind of (meaningless) illusory comfort blanket. DP: In some way you have to understand its relevance outside of the obvious, right? Because the obvious is illogical. Nobody is actually using that data to day trade, for example. People aren’t sitting there with their computers watching the market data in Times Square or setting up an outdoor office and being like “OK it’s up 3 points or it’s up 1.56, trade! Ok now buy, Ok now sell!” That would be a kind of a nice performance, actually. But actual day traders would want more up to date data than that. To understand what that data is doing is really important. And that’s something I’ve realized—that I’m interested in a particular kind of data visualization, which is not about what data can tell people, but what data can tell people who are visualizing it. For example, in the Cambridge Project “Crossing Non-Signalized Locations” I was interested in the 10,000 excuses archive of data recording five years worth of excuses for why people thought they shouldn’t have received their parking ticket. I was not interested in making that excuse wall so that the public could see and understand this data. Inevitably the data will be seen by others but I was really interested in what the action of visualizing the data told those who were visualizing it. The parking attendants themselves were writing those excuses on the wall—I was interested in what that kind action of writing the excuses on the wall told them about the data. Similarly, I’m interested in designing a way to allow people to pass this data from the unseen universe of the market, through their own bodies, which happens through the merging of the drum and the stock ticker. I’m interested in those two also as symbols; the drum as this symbol of the earth, the body and a pagan counterculture, and the stock ticker referring to the ethereal world of global markets—bringing those two together and making them dependent. I’m often drawn to conceptual propositions that I become invested in testing in a sincere way—at first they often they sound humorous to others, but I have to remember that there is humor in them. I don’t sit around and laugh about these things. I stop finding them funny at all. I’m interested in the proposition that we could know something about the after-work life by drumming in response to our retirement portfolio. So then I become really interested in how to craft that into a viable performance form for myself and others. FLM: The aspect of using sound in “Unrealized Gain/Loss” as a way of embodying the information to the asset holder is really intriguing—using sound as a means of embodying the asset data. Was sound a medium that made sense to use immediately or were you considering other means of attempting to embody it? DP: Well I do use other mediums within the project like textile, ceramic, and batik patterns. I was first drawn to the history of Batik patterns as a socio-economic stratification system and the vessels as a way of embodying or manifesting this data of unrealized gain and loss. My first approach was to work with meditation actually—a meditation workshop with my colleagues. I was going to offer this “Unrealized Gain/Loss” workshop where you would explore the sensations of gain and loss by adapting the way yogi-nidra brings you into contact with your physical surroundings and stretches your perception. FLM: At Naropa University there are/were business & compassion workshops—a sort of mash-up of business and compassion and how compassion could be incorporated into a business model. This process and engagement of “embodying data” also has to do with “Participatory Democracy and the Future of Karaoke” you created at the DNC in Denver in 2008. DP: That kind of appropriation and instrumentalization of spiritual practice could be disturbing and thus compelling as a strategy. For various reasons, I’ve come to be drawn to both the form of a quarterly public performance and the established performance form of a drum circle. Its something I’ve seen myself do before, that is to mess up a really good functional social system like a drum circle or karaoke. I remember I was developing language for the karaoke project and started calling it “Participatory Democracy and the Future of Karaoke” and one of my assistants on the project, who’s an incredible artist, said, “but don’t you think the future of karaoke is guitar hero?” and I realized that maybe he thought I was trying to improve the form. I’m just trying to get people to have this shifted embodied experience, I need to craft the performance context so that they can do that. In the case of the karaoke project, for example, what did I need in order to be able to do this [a person to stand up in front of a bar and deliver a karaoke speech]? I realized that the body is very vulnerable so I built a podium so that the speaker can feel secure enough to do this, otherwise you couldn’t get to this state achieved by passing these speeches through the body. Then I was, like, well you need to be able to practice the lyrics because you don’t know all the “songs” by heart, which became an insert to the massive track books carried by most karaoke VJs. And then sometimes the crowd in the bar isn’t there with me, so I needed to extract the voice of the crowd cheering from the original venue and I needed the local audience to cheer if they wanted to. I’m interested in both where the form succeeds and fails. In particular, one of the most interesting things is this auditory gap between the space where you are, the reduced scale of applause in your own little bar, and this grand scale of applause at the convention center where the speech was originally delivered. FLM: How did the concept of “Participatory Democracy Karaoke” come about and why did you use karaoke as a means of engaging what was happening at the DNC in 2008? DP: I was looking at a lot of different readymade media infrastructures within the city at the time. I was interested in the emergency broadcast systems and I developed a proposal to repurpose that system and karaoke became an important symbol because it was this populist form that was already engaged in exploring the sensation of celebrity but also visualizing the gap between ourselves and those with more power and influence. So it had this readymade capacity to play with power and celebrity and I felt like the Obama presidential campaign, the first one in particular, had some very curious overlaps with this culture of celebrity. Obama of course rose to power partly based on his oratory abilities and I was interested in how karaoke as a vehicle was so adept at offering people all that was left of authentic expression in a political speech. Managing a politician and constructing their identity is such a developed practice that it becomes, kind of automatically, a metaphor for the way that our own identities are constructed. Of course the Obama campaign was very hip and savvy and deploying this notion of grassroots. It was really pioneering in its use of social media and this deployment of notions of populism. I was interested at that time in the capacity of karaoke to track speech patterns, precise tempos of anyone’s delivery, and that to me was a way of thinking about what might be left of the authentic self. I was interested in karaoke’s capacity to extract that authentic component and offer it to others. So not just to stand up and be them, but to [literally] pass their speech patterns through your own body. A long time ago, it started to strike me as odd that one would make media at all. It struck me as a kind of un-contemporary way of going about making art in an age of media overflow. That logic extended into my thinking on delivery devices and installation as well. Why would one buy a screen or even set one up when there are so many out there? And the way in which these media displays function in karaoke bars and bars in general is very interesting to me. I’m drawn to this passive consumption of media where your primary social interaction is with the bartender or a few other individuals but these screens are around you and your attention is shifting back and forth between these spaces. So much political rhetoric is spoken to a half-listening audience. I was interested in what was happening in the slippage and that karaoke was a kind of slippage amplifier. So if you put people in a bar and they are delivering a Kucinich speech and Kucinich comes up on a screen then your getting a sound bite of Kucinich and an image of Kucinich and your friend is talking to you— FLM: A kind of magic takes place in that incongruency between sound and image and the karaoke participant who’s relaying the speech-text at the same time. DP: Exactly and there’s some kind of truth in that experience of reality. FLM: Yeah, there’s something uncanny about seeing the body close-up like that as though it can’t lie to you in that moment or context. It’s a weird moment of luminous clarity. The work you’ve done and all of what you’re saying about karaoke is so very interesting to me. Growing up, my dad and uncles sang karaoke a lot (and still do) and being first-generation Filipino American is a different cultural subtext entirely. I’m also seeing it from the position of witnessing family members who are carriers of these stories and songs. And seeing them cherish these Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley songs so much, I also see how their bodies are literal vessels of popular music that signifies something greater—it signifies their cultural and socioeconomic place in the world. The way that they cherish these American 1950s and 1960s pop songs is similar to having a certain kind of reverence for their spiritual faith or Catholicism. It’s a similar kind of care, focus, and attention exerted in karaoke and Catholicism—that these two structures and systems give something to focus on. Setsuko, Seiji and Hitoshi in Obama, Japan as Obama in Indiana — d. peltz — 2008 DP: Sure there something about the relationship we have to our candidate or the way we go about choosing a candidate, which is very similar to a deity or idol. I learned a lot about karaoke culture through this project. I’d never done karaoke. I’d never been interested in it as a form and then I travelled to Japan as part of the project when I made “Setsuko, Seiji and Hitoshi in Obama, Japan as Barack Obama in Indiana” and it was quite fascinating because my image of karaoke had always been this very public forum in a karaoke bar and then I discovered there’s this whole other world of karaoke where people even go on their own, they go and rent a room or cubicle and sing, or they go on a date—just the two of them go and sit in a room and do karaoke together. FLM: I’m interested in issues that take place within or as a result of specific karaoke culture(s). In the Philippines within the last several years there’s been occurring the “My Way Killings” phenomenon. Apparently baklas or gay men are employed by karaoke establishments to help “smooth over conflicts over karaoke singing”—these social forms of conduct, or lack thereof that arise out of the infrastructures of this social sport. In this one rural part of the Philippines there’s a village karaoke machine that the whole village shares—the Aeta indigenous people have an appointed “keeper” of the karaoke machine. I also see karaoke as a proxy to the confessional box in Catholicism where one goes to pour out their sins (minus the penance and redemption). The karaoke machine enables one to literally sing out whatever’s going on internally, but through highly saturated popular song lyrics. While karaoke is a public and social sport, it can also be a private one. Karaoke is a means of communion with each other. DP: Right, this preference for this kind of mediated communication. In Japan I was trying to organize people to work on this project and I was talking about throwing a party and they were like, well, we have to rent a karaoke machine because what else are we going to do? And I think its kind of serving that function of surrogacy—emotional surrogacy. FLM: And karaoke tools can be read as ritual tools—the magic mic that holds everything. There’s got to be some overlap at some point—between religious ceremony and devotion to the karaoke machine. DP: The way I designed the piece was so that it could slip right on top of the ready-made karaoke infrastructure. There was a flat-packed podium and it was made of a single sheet of plywood with no fasteners that slotted into itself. Those were sent out to a network of karaoke bars that I invited to become “karaoke convention centers.” The local VJs downloaded our custom-made, speech-extracted tracks that were designed to play on their existing equipment. In this sense the piece is a permanent installation. If you go to Denver today, some of the VJs still have the tracks in their library of offerings, the Ramones and Romney. It was this notion of re-purposing readymade infrastructure to create a distributable populist form. Obama was coming and the convention was in the Pepsi Center and 30,000 people were coming including 10,000 journalists. The impetus behind the larger art project that commissioned international artists to make works in Denver, was that local people weren’t going to have much access to this convention. It was like an invasion, the city was being descended upon, but if you lived a block away from the site, you had the same access as people in Zimbabwe&mash;30 second media bits excerpted from the speeches. So it seemed to me that the fundamental gesture was how do I take that signal, which was travelling out of the convention center, and create a local interruption? FLM: Is that what you mean by ‘intervention’? The term is frequently used to help describe your work. DP: It depends on the day. Around that karaoke project I had a conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko and he was proposing that maybe rather than intervention, we should consider the word interruption. Because intervention is kind of an overused term in the field of art and it has militaristic and therapeutic associations outside of the art context. Fundamentally, the idea of intervening speaks to the readymade social world as your primary material. So it’s basically suggesting a kind of subtractive process, which gets back to this question: what is the role of the contemporary media artist in a world that’s so saturated with media? You can’t work additively in a saturated field. If you want to make a visible mark you have to work subtractively. That’s what intervention is about to me, just another way of saying “to work subtractively.” FLM: So the interventions or interruptions aren’t necessarily adding or subtracting, but are they putting orange cones there? What are they doing exactly? DP: I think you’re right about that, they’re not really subtracting. They’re adding to the scope of possibility. I’ve been thinking (with this exhibition I’m mounting next month) about the work as explorations and expansions of social possibility. Maybe it’s more insertion. I started calling the pieces ‘insertions’ that I was making in Rejmyre—a small town in Sweden where I’ve been working for six years now. My favorite site to install there is the tourist bureau. I started calling the video pieces that I made for the tourist bureau, video insertions. This idea that you’re inserting something into the readymade media infrastructure of the world resonates with me. Insertion leverages a context, creating a possibility that the inserted object might be naturalized in the process — that someone can encounter my video in Rejmyre as tourist information. And then all of a sudden tourist information can include some American guy prostrating through town and it can include really bad relationship advice. Maybe insertion is a better word. tourist information – d. peltz 2009-present  . (shrink)

Heideggerian philosophy is frequently chosen as a philosophical framing, and/or a hermeneutic analytical structure in qualitative nursing research. As Heideggerian philosophy is dense, there is merit in the development of scholarly resources that help to explain discrete Heideggerian concepts and to uncover their relevance to contemporary human experience. This paper uses a meta-synthesis methodology to pool and synthesise findings from 29 phenomenological research reports on Being-with in the nurse–patient relationship. We firstly considered and secured the most relevant Heideggerian elements to (...) nurse–patient Being-with. Under these deductive codes, we then inductively developed sub-themes that seemed to explain the multifaceted nature of Being-with, through a secondary analysis and synthesis of published data from 417 patient, carer and nurse participants. Dasein-with was enhanced when nurses had first-hand experience with a phenomenon. Nurses moved between the inauthentic they-mode, and the authentic self-mode. Through circumspection, technology and people were encountered environmentally feeding into nursing attention, assessment and communication. Nursing as a social arrangement was expressed through either leaping-in care or leaping-ahead care. There was a place for both inauthentic and authentic discourse that nurses wove through the ontic everydayness of nursing tasks. (shrink)

Although the concept of the consumer–brand relationship has undergone rapid change over the past two decades, the issue of brand addiction is still generally neglected in the literature. Based on social identity theory, the research develops a conceptual model of the influence of self-expressive brands and susceptibility to interpersonal influence on brand addiction. The results of this research demonstrate both separate and joint effects of SEBs and SUSCEP on brand addiction. In addition, harmonious brand passion and obsessive brand (...) passion positively mediate the relationships among SEB, SUSCEP, and brand addiction. The research explores the formation mechanism of brand addiction from a new perspective and has important practical implications for brand marketers concerned with finding the most effective means to enhance the consumer–brand relationship. (shrink)

Holiness in the Christian tradition has often been understood in a way that devalues embodiment and practical engagement with the world of one's time. The latter understanding, for example, led to Marx's critique and repudiation of Christianity. Both interpretations of holiness can be understood as mistaken efforts to express the dynamism for authenticity in contextualised human subjectivity. Vatican 2 opposed both views by addressing itself to all people of good will, declaring that everyone was called to holiness, and that authentic (...) Christian identity involved solidarity with the world of one's time, especially those who are poor. Vatican 2, therefore, provided an authoritative faith foundation for holiness expressed through social commitment and for viewing social commitment on the part of people of good will in whatever state of life as a form of holiness. This vision was also the conviction of leading spirituality writers of the period, like Thomas Merton, and inspired liberation theologians and the Latin American Catholic bishops at their conference in Medellín a few years after the Council. The argument of this article is that the emergence and development of a non-dualist Christian spirituality is grounded methodologically in the correct appropriation of the common innate dynamism for authenticity in concrete human persons and lived spiritual experiences consistent with and capable of enhancing this dynamism. (shrink)

The treatment of children diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder with stimulant drugs has been a subject of controversy for many years, both within and outside bioethics, and the controversy is still very much alive. In her feature article , Ilina Singh, a major contributor to that debate in recent years, brings fresh empirical evidence to bear on it. She uses new data to deal with two key ethical concerns that have been raised about the practice. First, does medicating children (...) with ADHD compromise their capacity for autonomous moral agency? And second, does it pose a threat to their ‘authentic self’? A related question is whether medication for ADHD is being used as an instrument of social control, forcing children to adapt to environments that they find oppressive.Whereas previous research by Singh examined the attitudes of parents of boys diagnosed with ADHD,1 this article draws from a series of interviews with children from the UK and USA, including those who were taking drugs for ADHD. The conclusions that Singh reaches can be characterised as cautiously optimistic. The data, she thinks, indicate that ‘a majority of children are not victims of stimulant drugs’. Rather than experiencing their use of such drugs as undermining their capacity for moral agency, children tend to report that the medication renders them better able to control their responses in potentially challenging situations. In addition, most of the children did not perceive the medication as a threat to their authenticity. Singh nevertheless accepts that such a threat might be real in certain cases, and suggests ways in which the threat might be mitigated. In particular, she suggests—plausibly, I think—that medical professionals could play a key role by spending more time listening to children in order to get …. (shrink)

BackgroundOrgan donation has become one of the most effective ways to save lives and improve the quality of life for patients with end-stage organ failure. No previous studies have investigated the preferences for the different consenting options for organ donation in Egypt. This study aims to assess Egyptians’ preferences regarding consenting options for posthumous organ donation, and measure their awareness and acceptance of the Egyptian law articles regulating organ donation.MethodsA cross sectional study was conducted among 2743 participants over two years. (...) Each participant was required to rank eleven consenting options from 1 to 11, and to report his awareness and acceptance of the seven articles of the Egyptian law of organ donation.Results47% of the participants expressed willingness to donate their organs after death. This percentage increased to 78% when consenting options were explained to participants. “Informed consent by donor only” was the most preferred type of consent for one third of respondents. Awareness of the law articles regulating organ donation was relatively low ranging from 56% to 23%.ConclusionCurrently, around half of the Egyptian population agree to posthumous organ donation. This percentage could be increased significantly by raising the awareness about how the process of donation could be regulated and how the patient’s right of decision could be protected. (shrink)

Information communication technology is spreading fast and wide. Driven by convenience, it enables people to undertake personal tasks and make decisions more easily and efficiently. Convenience enjoys an air of liberation as well as self-expression affecting all areas of life. The industry for children's toys is a major economic market becoming ever more tech-related and drawn into the battle for convenience. Like any other tech-related industry, this battle is about industry dominance and, currently, that involves networked toys. Networked toys (...) aim to enhance convenience for children and parents alike. Increasingly difficult to resist, these convenient networked devices are also a societal game changer. Neatly nestled in a lacuna juris and surrounded by a lack of clinical evidence, networked toys raise complex ethical issues concerning human development. This article lays bare the regulatory nexus for networked toys and invites ethical thinking to fill the gap to ensure sufficient protection for all human developmental stages. Networked toys not only affect but also might interfere with child development. Therefore, the article initially summarises the four key psychological stages through which the neurological development of the human brain processes. Each of these stages involves vital windows for human development in cognitive, emotional and social dimensions. Missing any of these developmental windows changes an individual human for life. The article then takes a look at the two main legal frameworks protecting the stages of human development which are applicable to networked toys: First, the examination of the human rights framework with its major segments emanating from the fundamental rights to privacy for family and home, to a child's education as well as to personal data reveals the use of current networked toys as a shielded part of parenting which tends to be at odds with privacy and data protection requirements. Second, the product liability framework for toy manufacturers requires evidence-based causality for putting a child's safety at risk. Unfortunately, these legal frameworks fail to offer sufficient protection of the human developmental stages. There is a lacuna juris. Although networked toys involve the risk of negatively impacting human development in every dimension, clinical psychological studies are impossible to acquire as court evidence for product liability because they take too long to provide reliable data while exposing several generations of children to the examined risk in the process. Meanwhile the temptation of convenience continues to drive the industry and consumers of networked toys and devices, which are already impacting children of all age groups. Accepting this phenomenon as an element of cognitive dissonance in society and in science falls far short of an appropriate ethical balance. The need for creating such an ethical balance concerning networked toys is all the more imperative because even if the networked toy industry managed to eliminate all psychological risks for human development and every legal conflict with privacy and security, significant ethical and societal risks of networked toys remain due to inevitable technological bias. Against these mounting changes, it is suggested that only an ethical approach of interdisciplinary research and learning seems most promising to develop an appropriate equilibrium between the complex challenges posed by networked toys and the societal values at stake. (shrink)

Authenticity has become one of the key ethics in contemporary society and culture. This research analyses the present ideals of authenticity in work-life, building on theories on post-secularization and new spiritualities, neoliberalism, and the concept of ideal worker deriving from organizational studies. Corporate mindfulness is looked at as a topical example of authenticity practices in current work-life. The research utilizes interview data was produced in a knowledge work organization that had launched its own mindfulness program and become part of the (...) wider workplace spirituality movement. The research question focused on what kind of discourses on authenticity are born when the organization simultaneously discourages full expressions of one’s personality as not being professional or adequate in work-life context, and roots for mindfulness, which hails for recognizing reality as it is, accepting oneself and finding authentic self. Using discourse analysis, four themes were found in data, each revealing a different discourse on authenticity. (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on the concept of authenticity and its implications for our projects of self-creation, particularly those involving the use of "enhancement technologies". After an introduction to the concept of authenticity and the enhancement debate in the first part of the thesis, part 2 considers the main analyses of authenticity in the contemporary philosophical literature. It begins with those emphasizing _self-creation_, and shows that, despite their merits, such views cannot adequately deal with certain types of cases, which require (...) a third option, “true self” accounts, emphasizing _self-discovery_. However, it is argued that in their existing versions, accounts of this third sort are also unsatisfactory. Part 3 of the thesis proposes a new account of the "true self" sort, intended to improve upon existing ones. Common problematic assumptions about the concept of the true self are critiqued, after which a new analysis of that concept is presented, based on seven different conditions. Two specific definitions of authenticity, respectively emphasizing self-expression and the preservation of one's true self, are provided, and its relation to various associated notions, such as integrity or sincerity, are examined. Finally, part 4 looks at the implications of the previous parts for the enhancement debate. In particular, it discusses the prospect of technologically enhancing our personality and mood dispositions. Do such interventions always threaten our authenticity, as some worry? A negative answer is provided to that question. Various potential pitfalls hinted at by the inauthenticity worry are discussed and acknowledged. It is, however, argued that such enhancements could still in principle be used in a fully authentic manner, and that they have the potential to bring about genuine improvements in our mood but also to our moral capacities and our affective rationality more generally. (shrink)

BackgroundThe success of biobanking is directly linked to the willingness of people to donate their biological materials for research and storage. Ethical issues related to patient consent are an essential component of the current biobanking agenda. The majority of data available are focused on population-based biobanks in USA, Canada and Western Europe. The donation decision process and its ethical applications in clinical populations and populations in countries with other cultural contexts are very limited. This study aimed to evaluate the decision-making (...) experience of the clinical biobank donors, as well as psychological and social motivators and deterrents of this decision and associated ethical risks.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted in two medical institutions, in St Petersburg (Russia), in 2016–2017, among 13 donors of a clinical biobank (pregnant women, cardiac patients, and patients with multiple sclerosis) and three donation organisers—medical specialists involved in recruiting donors for a clinical biobank. Analysis of interview data was based on qualitative content analysis.ResultsDonors of a clinical biobank express beliefs in the absence of risks associated with the donation. The primary motivators for donating to the biobank were: prosocial, indirect reciprocity (response to or anticipation of an act in kind by a third party), intrinsic motivation (to enhance their self-esteem and satisfying their curiosity about the donation process), and comparability with personal values. A high level of trust in biomedical research and the particular physician can contribute to a favourable decision. The overall decision-making process regarding the biobank donation could be described as quick and not based on a careful reading of informed consent documents. The integration of biobank donation decision-making in the process of medical care might prompt patient to donate to biobank without proper consideration. The specific type of therapeutic misconception—the presence of unrealistic hope that donation could provide a direct benefit for a third person in need was discovered.ConclusionsPatients recruited to a clinical biobank in Russia have virtually no concerns as to the storage of their biomaterials. The donation decision is mainly motivated by prosocial attitudes and other factors that are similar to the motivating factors of blood donation. The fact of going through inpatient treatment and poor differentiation between donation for other people's benefit and for research purposes can make the process of obtaining consent more ethically problematic. (shrink)

Authenticity has become a widespread ethical ideal that represents a way of dealing with normative gaps in contemporary life. This ideal suggests that one should be true to oneself and lead a life expressive of what one takes oneself to be. However, many contemporary thinkers have pointed out that the ideal of authenticity has increasingly turned into a kind of aestheticism and egoistic self-indulgence. In his book, Varga systematically constructs a critical concept of authenticity that takes into account the (...) reciprocal shaping of capitalism and the ideal of authenticity. Drawing on different traditions in critical social theory, moral philosophy and phenomenology, Varga builds a concept of authenticity that can make intelligible various problematic and potentially exhausting practices of the self. (shrink)

One objection to enhancement technologies is that they might lead us to live inauthentic lives. Memory modification technologies (MMTs) raise this worry in a particularly acute manner. In this paper I describe four scenarios where the use of MMTs might be said to lead to an inauthentic life. I then undertake to justify that judgment. I review the main existing accounts of authenticity, and present my own version of what I call a “true self” account (intended as a complement, (...) rather than a substitute, to existing accounts). I briefly describe current and prospective MMTs, distinguishing between memory enhancement and memory editing . Moving then to an assessment of the initial scenarios in the light of the accounts previously described, I argue that memory enhancement does not, by its very nature, raise serious concerns about authenticity. The main threat to authenticity posed by MMTs comes, I suggest, from memory editing. Rejecting as inadequate the worries about identity raised by the President’s Council on Bioethics in Beyond Therapy , I argue instead that memory editing can cause us to live an inauthentic life in two main ways: first, by threatening its truthfulness, and secondly, by interfering with our disposition to respond in certain ways to some past events, when we have reasons to respond in such ways. This consideration allows us to justify the charge of inauthenticity in cases where existing accounts fail. It also gives us a significant moral reason not to use MMTs in ways that would lead to such an outcome. (shrink)

Leadership and the Unmasking of Authenticity presents a philosophic treatment of the core concept of authentic leadership theory, with a view toward illuminating how authors in the history of philosophy have understood authenticity as an ideal for humanity. Such an approach requires a broader view of the historical origins of authenticity and the examination of related ideas such as self-knowledge and deception. The chapters of this volume illuminate the conflict between the contemporary understanding of authenticity and traditional philosophy by (...) revisiting the ideas of thinkers who express self-knowledge as a cornerstone of their philosophy. Tracing the origins of our contemporary concern for authenticity to the writings of 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this book explores the key thinkers writing in the wake of Rousseau's emphasis on sincerity, namely Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, to show that their acceptance of authenticity as an ideal for humanity was ambiguous at best. This volume also covers representative authors in the earlier history of philosophy, such as Plato, Niccolò Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, and John Locke. The result is a keen, in-depth analysis of works of philosophy and political philosophy that broach questions of authenticity, self-knowledge, and deception. This critical contribution to authentic leadership theory and the theory of authenticity will be a key resource for both undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of leadership studies, political science and philosophy. Contributors include: J.C. Byham, B.E. Cusher, E.A. Dolgoy, J. Fortier, N.W. Harter, M.A. Menaldo, H. Pedersen, J.M. Warner. (shrink)

Recent developments in the study of our brain and neurochemical maps have sparked much enthusiasm in some scholars, making room for speculations over the possibility to shape our morality from within ourselves rather than through [failed] socio-political projects. This paper aims at criticising the prospected scenario put forward by some scholars supporting a specific version of Moral Enhancement as an overly optimistically described manipulative tools. To do so, I will focus on a specific version of Moral Enhancers, namely Emotional Enhancers. (...) By looking from close at this group of enhancers and the potential results of their implementation, I will underline the risks that those could pose to sexual minorities, and I will use this analysis to support a much more cautious assessment of these drugs and a broader assessment of what their social acceptance would mean. (shrink)

Background Bioethical debates about privacy, big data, and public health surveillance have not sufficiently engaged the perspectives of those being surveilled. The data justice framework suggests that big data applications have the potential to create disproportionate harm for socially marginalized groups. Using examples from our research on HIV surveillance for individuals incarcerated in jails, we analyze ethical issues in deploying big data in public health surveillance. -/- Methods We conducted qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 24 people living with HIV who had (...) been previously incarcerated in county jails about their perspectives on and experiences with HIV surveillance, as part of a larger study to characterize ethical considerations in leveraging big data techniques to enhance continuity of care for incarcerated people living with HIV. -/- Results Most participants expressed support for the state health department tracking HIV testing results and viral load data. Several viewed HIV surveillance as a violation of privacy, and several had actively avoided contact from state public health outreach workers. Participants were most likely to express reservations about surveillance when they viewed the state’s motives as self-interested. Perspectives highlight the mistrust that structurally vulnerable people may have in the state’s capacity to act as an agent of welfare. Findings suggest that adopting a nuanced, context-sensitive view on surveillance is essential. -/- Conclusions Establishing trustworthiness through interpersonal interactions with public health personnel is important to reversing historical legacies of harm to racial minorities and structurally vulnerable groups. Empowering stakeholders to participate in the design and implementation of data infrastructure and governance is critical for advancing a data justice agenda, and can offset privacy concerns. The next steps in advancing the data justice framework in public health surveillance will be to innovate ways to represent the voices of structurally vulnerable groups in the design and governance of big data initiatives. (shrink)

Pride expressions draw attention to one’s achievement, and therefore can enhance one’s status. However, such attention has been linked to negative interpersonal consequences (i.e. envy). Fortunately, people have been found to regulate their pride expressions accordingly. Specifically, pride expressions are lower when the domain of the achievement is of high relevance to observers. We set out to replicate this effect in a non-Western sample. Additionally, we extended the current finding by investigating the moderating role of self-monitoring, an individual’s ability (...) and willingness to adjust their behaviours under different social contexts to cultivate status. This allows us to explore the previously assumed underlying status motive in regulating pride expressions. Data from two preregistered studies (N1 = 913; N2 = 1081) replicated the effect that pride expressions are inhibited when the achievement domain is relevant. A significant main effect of self-monitoring was found, such that high self-monitors express more pride than low self-monitors, consistent with the conceptualisation of self-monitoring as rooted within a status-enhancement motive. The assumed interaction effect between domain relevance and self-monitoring was not significant. Our findings suggest that the effect of domain relevance on pride expression is robust and status driven. (shrink)

The current meta-analysis reviews 24 studies on self-reported emotional reactions to facial expressions (social rejection, social acceptance, and neutral) in socially anxious versus nonanxious individuals. We hypothesized that socially anxious individuals would perceive all face types as less approachable, more negative, and more arousing. After correcting for biases, results showed that socially anxious individuals, compared to controls, reported lower approachability to all types of expressions and higher arousal in response to neutral expressions. Variances among effects usually could (...) not be explained by the proposed moderators. This suggests that current conceptualizations of social anxiety should take into account the willingness to approach social stimuli rather than global measures of emotion or arousal. (shrink)

Bioethics has a founding story in which medical paternalism, the interference with the autonomy of patients for their own clinical benefit, was an accepted ethical norm in the history of Western medical ethics and was widespread in clinical practice until bioethics changed the ethical norms and practice of medicine. In this paper I show that the founding story of bioethics misreads major texts in the history of Western medical ethics. I also show that a major source for (...) empirical claims about the widespread practice of medical paternalism has been misread. I then show that that bioethics based on its founding story deprofessionalizes medical ethics. The result leaves the sick exposed to the predatory power of medical practitioners and healthcare organizations with only their autonomy-based rights to non-interference, expressed in contracts, to protect them. The sick are stripped of the protection afforded by a professional, fiduciary relationship of physicians to their patients. Bioethics based on its founding story reverts to the older model of a contractual relationship between the sick and medical practitioners not worthy of intellectual or moral trust (because such trust cannot be generated by what I call ‘deprofessionalizing bioethics’). On closer examination, bioethics based on its founding story, ironically, eliminates paternalism as a moral category in bioethics, thus causing bioethics to collapse on itself because it denies one of the necessary conditions for medical paternalism. Bioethics based on its founding story should be abandoned. (shrink)

Self-interest is widely accepted as a powerful motivator by both academics and laypeople alike. However, research surrounding the self-interest motive paints a complicated picture of this most important psychological construct. Additionally, research on the social desirability of self-interest has revealed that despite its widespread acceptance, people do not readily accept that self-interest drives their own behaviors. This paper reviews the literature on self-interest and reveals several curious features surrounding its actual effect on helping behaviors, (...) political attitudes and voting, and people's apparent ambivalence toward self-interest as a motive. It is possible that norms against the expression of self-interestedness evolved, creating ambivalence towards this widely accepted construct, subsequently affecting its expression on many human behaviors. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a physical activity intervention program designed to enhance levels of engagement in PA. Despite robust evidence supporting the beneficial effects of PA on overall health, only about 22% of individuals engage in the recommended minimum amount of PA. Recent surveys suggested that most individuals express intentions to be physically active, though the psychological state of amotivation dismissed these struggles. In the current study, we pilot-tested a new intervention program, (...) aimed at enhancing engagement in PA among sedentary individuals. The intervention was based on two behavioral change and motivational psychological frameworks: Self-Determination Theory and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. During a 14-week intervention program, 94 sedentary Israeli college students were randomly assigned into one of three groups: SDT and ACT-based intervention, traditional intervention, and a non-treatment group. Prior to and following the intervention, participants completed the Behavioral Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire-3 to examine motivation to exercise and the International Physical Activity Measurement IPAQ to evaluate their training frequency. Results showed that the SDT and ACT-based intervention group exhibited a significant increase in motivation to exercise between time 1 and time 2, while the other two groups showed insignificant differences in motivation to exercise. Furthermore, neither of the groups showed significant differences in their training frequency per week. However, those in the SDT and ACT-based groups reported an increase in activity intensity from time 1 to time 2 compared to the two other groups. Further, exercise psychology consultants and scholars can use the intervention protocol and utilize these findings to improve PA behaviors and promote health in the general population. Limitations, future directions, and implications are discussed in detail. (shrink)

The debate about how neurotechnologies impact authenticity has focused on two inter-related dimensions: self-discovery and self-creation. In this paper, we develop a broader framework that includes the experimental and relational dimensions of authenticity, both understood as decisive for shaping one’s narrative identity. In our view, neurointerventions that alter someone’s personality traits will also impact her very own self-understanding across time. We argue that experimental authenticity only needs a minimum conception of narrative coherence of the self and (...) that reversibility should remain a key feature in the ethical assessment of neurotechnologies. The relational dimension of authenticity derives from the fact that a process of self-constitution is never a solitary business. The significant others act not just as subsequent judges of one’s life decisions, but as real co-authors of one’s self. We discuss relevant cases in which others are actively contributing to the meaning-making process, as to the direction one’s life is taking. We also claim that the experimental and the relational dimensions of authenticity should aim to correct each other. The relational dimension introduces socially approved standards as well as limitations to the array of available possibilities of self-fashioning or human enhancement. The experimental side enables us to avoid confusing one’s personal identity with a social and narrative construct that only bears the mark of social pressure and conformism. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that within the Japanese social context, the act of suicide is a positive moral act because the values underpinning it are directly related to a socially pervasive moral belief that any act of self-sacrifice is a worthy pursuit. The philosophical basis for this view of the self and its relation to society goes back to the writings of Confucius who advocated a life of propriety in which being dutiful, obedient, and loyal to (...) one's group takes precedence over the desires of the individual selves that make up the group. I argue that this philosophical perspective poses formidable challenges to Japanese psychiatry (which accepts a contrary western perspective) because, as western psychiatry is based on the concept of autonomous individuality, the Japanese conceive of the self as socially embedded. Because suicide in Japan is viewed as a potentially honorable, virtuous, and even beautiful act of self-sacrifice expressing one's duty to one's group, the western perspective is quite foreign to the Japanese self-conceptual framework. Therefore, since Japanese psychiatry and law have embraced the western medical tradition of viewing suicide as a non-rational response to mental illness, which runs counter to the cultural view that suicide is a moral (and rational) act, I argue that western explanations of suicide present significant cross-cultural problems for Japanese psychiatry. (shrink)

An ongoing debate between ‘procedural’ and ‘substantive’ theorists of personal autonomy addresses the following question: should agents have the final say on their own autonomy or should the objective circumstances in which agents live take prevalence when assessing their autonomy? Proceduralists favour the first strategy and substantive theorists restrict more explicitly the conditions under which autonomy is possible. I focus on forms of heteronomy which derive from oppressive circumstances and accept that substantive theorists are correct in contending that (i) forms (...) of oppression common in contemporary liberal societies (e.g. gender or racial oppression) tend to increase heteronomy; and (ii) the heteronomy which derives from social oppression tends to fly below the radar of procedural accounts. Still, I argue that a revised procedural strategy could limit these forms of heteronomy as long as it avoids the injunctions to ‘authenticity’ common in procedural models. I proceed by reconstructing John Christman’s model which, I argue, constitutes the most promising procedural account to assess autonomy under oppression. Christman’s theory, however, needs to be reinforced to ensure self-problematisation in light of a social perspective. I show that the latter is necessary to experience the forms of alienation which are markers of heteronomy according to Christman. (shrink)

Both articles in the November‐December 2021 issue of the Hastings Center Report reflect bioethics’ growing interest in questions of justice, or more generally, questions of how collective interests constrain individual interests. Hugh Desmond argues that human enhancement should be reconsidered in light of developments in the field of human evolution. Contemporary understandings in this area lead, he argues, to a new way of thinking about the ethics of enhancement—an approach that replaces personal autonomy with group benefit as the primary (...) criterion for deciding what enhancements are acceptable. In the second article, Johannes Kniess considers the many attempts within bioethics to draw on John Rawls's work to discuss health care access and social determinants of health, and he comes across as moderately optimistic that Rawls's theory of justice has ongoing relevance. (shrink)

The debate on “cognitive enhancement” has moved from discussions about enhancement in adults to enhancement in children and adolescents. Similar to positions expressed in the adult context, some have argued that pediatric cognitive enhancement is acceptable and even laudable. However, the implications differ between the adult and the pediatric contexts. For example, in the debate over cognitive enhancement in adults, i.e., those who have legal majority, respect for autonomy demands that personal preferences not be overridden in absence of strong arguments (...) because competent adults are in the best position to recognize and protect their own interests. However, the concepts of best interest and autonomy provide a different picture in the case of pediatric enhancement. In the context of decision-making involving minors, it is assumed that the parents are in the best position to promote and protect the interests of their children and this is chiefly why they are granted the authority to make decisions on their behalf. However, we argue in favor of guarding the physical integrity of children from intrusive medical interventions without medical need and with clear and detrimental effects. We also support leaving open other legitimate life trajectory and career choices, as this is in the best interest of the child, even if they are less in line with the expectations of parents or success in educational settings. In addition, parental decision-making in favor of cognitive enhancement suffers from a lack of information about cognitive enhancers and potential biases. Thus, bearing in mind these issues and the development of volitional capacities of children, we argue that pediatric enhancement is not a morally acceptable practice and “inevitability” can be curbed with clear and fair rules that establish duties of state representatives, physicians, and public institutions. We conclude by canvassing evidence-based policy options that could protect the open future of minors and define the parameters of parental decision-making analogous to the cases of nicotine and alcohol. (shrink)

Some philosophers have criticized the use of psychopharmaceuticals on the grounds that even if these drugs enhance the person using them, they threaten their authenticity. Others have replied by pointing out that the conception of authenticity upon which this argument rests is contestable; on a rival conception, psychopharmaceuticals might be used to enhance our authenticity. Since, however, it is difficult to decide between these competing conceptions of authenticity, the debate seems to end in a stalemate. I suggest that we need (...) not resolve this debate to end the stalemate. New technologies which alter the self can be understood within the framework of the first conception of authenticity, I suggest, not as threatening the authentic self, but rather as bringing the outward appearance of the self into line with its deepest essence. Since psychopharmaceutical use can plausibly be understood on this model, it can be seen as enhancing our authenticity on either conception. (shrink)

“Bioethics is not just Bioethics.” This is the aphoristic way in which I have recurrently expressed my historical and social perspective on the significance of bioethics, whose import I regard as extending beyond the emergence, development, and establishment of an intellectual field that is primarily concerned with advances in biology and medicine, their relationship to illness and health, and their ethical concomitants. In my view, although they are expressed through the medium of medicine, some of the (...) value and belief questions with which bioethics has been preoccupied since its inception are connected with broad and deep moral issues that are integral to what the illustrious French sociologist Émile Durkheim... (shrink)

A prominent critique of cognitive or athletic enhancement claims that certain performance‐improving drugs or technologies may ‘cheapen’ resulting achievements. Considerably less attention has been paid to the impact of enhancement on the value of moral achievements. Would the use of moral enhancement (bio)technologies, rather than (solely) ‘traditional’ means of moral development like schooling and socialization, cheapen the ‘achievement’ of morally improving oneself? We argue that, to the extent that the ‘cheapened achievement’ objection succeeds in the domains of cognitive or athletic (...) enhancement, it could plausibly also succeed in the domain of moral enhancement—but only regarding certain forms. Specifically, although the value of moral self‐improvement may be diminished by some of the more speculative and impractical forms of moral enhancement proposed in the literature, this worry has less force when applied to more plausibly viable forms of moral enhancement: forms in which drugs or technologies play an adjunctive or facilitative, rather than a determinative, role in moral improvement. We illustrate this idea with three examples from recent literature: the possible use of psychedelic drugs in certain moral‐learning contexts, ‘Socratic Al’ (a proposed Al‐driven moral enhancer) and empathy enhancement through virtual reality (VR). We argue that if one assumes that these technologies work roughly as advertised (which is an open empirical question), the ‘cheapened achievement’ objection loses much of its bite. The takeaway lesson is that moral enhancement in its most promising and practical forms ultimately evades a leading critique of cognitive and athletic enhancement. We end by reflecting on the potential upshot of our analysis for enhancement debates more widely. (shrink)

Patients with mental illness, and depression in particular, present clinicians and surrogate decision-makers with complex ethical dilemmas when they refuse life-sustaining non-psychiatric treatment. When treatment rejection is at variance with the beliefs and preferences that could be expected based on their premorbid or “authentic” self, their capacity to make these decisions may be called into question. If capacity cannot be demonstrated, medical decisions fall to surrogates who are usually advised to decide based on a substituted judgment standard or, when (...) that is not possible, best interest. We propose that in cases where the patient meets the widely accepted cognitive criteria for capacity but is making decisions that appear inauthentic, the surrogate may best uphold patient autonomy by following a “restorative representation” model. We see restorative representation as a subset of substituted judgement in which the decision-maker retains responsibility for deciding as the patient would have, but discerns the decision their “truest self” would make, rather than inferring their current wishes, which are directly influenced by illness. Here we present a case in which the patient’s treatment refusal and previously undiagnosed depression led to difficulty determining the patient’s authentic wishes and placed a distressing burden on the surrogate decision-maker. We use this case to examine how clinicians and ethicists might better advise surrogates who find themselves making these clinically and emotionally challenging decisions. (shrink)

In our article (Zawadzki and Adamczyk 2021), we analyzed threats that novel memory modifying interventions may pose in the future. More specifically, we discussed how optogenetics’ potential for reversible erasure/deactivation of memory “may impact authenticity by producing changes at different levels of personality.” Our article has received many thoughtful open peer commentaries for which we would like to express our great appreciation. We have identified two main threads of objections. They are related to the potential applicability of optogenetics as a (...) therapeutic memory modification technology (MMT) in humans—applicability thread, and the normative value of authenticity, that is, the assumption that preserving authenticity is valuable (either in general or in the particular approach we adopted)—normative thread. Both of these threads concern fundamental issues: The former deals with the scientific credibility of the case vignette on which our discussion is based, and the latter deals with the normative weight of our considerations. We think that addressing both of them can be instructive in a broader context as they reflect a more general disagreement among neuroethicists about the very purpose and method of our discipline. (shrink)