The present paper explores patients’ experience of lived space at the hospital and at home. To expand the understanding of the existential meaning of lived space the study revisited two empirical studies and a study of a meta-synthesis on health and caring. Phenomenological philosophy was chosen as a theoretical framework for an excursive analysis. The paper demonstrates that existential dimensions of lived space at the hospital and at home differ significantly. For the patients, the hospital space means alien territory as (...) opposed to the familiar territory of home. To some extent the experienced differences are due to the physical environment; however, as our analysis shows, other and more significant meanings are also involved. For patients, lived space at the hospital primarily concerns the influence of complex institutional power structures and specific cultural and social conventions, e.g. the role of the good patient and the ambiance of hospitals. Home, on the other hand, offers familiar lived space in which patients feel protected and safe. Further, the paper relates patients’ experience of lived space to a phenomenological view of lived space in order to illustrate the radical influence of illness on patients’ lifeworld and experience of lived space. The combination of illness and general discomfort may influence patients’ experience of home negatively; the former experience of home as a sanctuary changes into feelings of being left on one’s own and burdened by too much responsibility. Consequently, in the light of the increasing focus on patients’ self-monitoring at home, it is important for healthcare professionals to recognize the influence of spatial aspects on patients’ well-being both at the hospital and at home. (shrink)

This is the first complete, one-volume English translation of the ancient Chinese text Xunzi, one of the most extensive, sophisticated, and elegant works in the tradition of Confucian thought. Through essays, poetry, dialogues, and anecdotes, the Xunzi articulates a Confucian perspective on ethics, politics, warfare, language, psychology, human nature, ritual, and music, among other topics. Aimed at general readers and students of Chinese thought, Eric Hutton’s translation makes the full text of this important work more accessible in English than ever (...) before. Named for its purported author, the Xunzi has long been neglected compared to works such as the Analects of Confucius and the Mencius. Yet interest in the Xunzi has grown in recent decades, and the text presents a much more systematic vision of the Confucian ideal than the fragmented sayings of Confucius and Mencius. In one famous, explicit contrast to them, the Xunzi argues that human nature is bad. However, it also allows that people can become good through rituals and institutions established by earlier sages. Indeed, the main purpose of the Xunzi is to urge people to become as good as possible, both for their own sakes and for the sake of peace and order in the world. In this edition, key terms are consistently translated to aid understanding and line numbers are provided for easy reference. Other features include a concise introduction, a timeline of early Chinese history, a list of important names and terms, cross-references, brief explanatory notes, a bibliography, and an index. (shrink)

With places at nursery school promised for every child above the age of four, this book raises the stakes by looking at the quality of what is provided, and how that compares to what should be provided. Beyond Quality In Early Childhood Education and Care challenges received wisdom and the tendency to reduce philosophical issues of value to purely technical issues of measurement and management. In its place, it offers alternative ways of understanding early childhood, early childhood institutions and pedagogical (...) work. The book places issues of early childhood into a global context and relates them to writers from many fields. Drawing on work with aboriginal peoples in Canada, on the experience of Reggio-Emilia in Italy and on a project in Stockholm inspired by Reggio, the book considers the implications of these alternative ways of understanding, for practice and a reconceptualization of early childhood education and care. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe the value and philosophy of lifeworld-led care. Our purpose is to give a philosophically coherent foundation for lifeworld-led care and its core value as a humanising force that moderates technological progress. We begin by indicating the timeliness of these concerns within the current context of citizen-oriented, participative approaches to healthcare. We believe that this context is in need of a deepening philosophy if it is not to succumb to the discourses of mere consumerism. We thus (...) revisit the potential of Husserl’s notion of the lifeworld and how lifeworld-led care could provide important ideas and values that are central to the humanisation of healthcare practice. This framework provides a synthesis of the main arguments of the paper and is finally expressed in a model of lifeworld-led care that includes its core value, core perspectives, relevant indicative methodologies and main benefits. The model is offered as a potentially broad-based approach for integrating many existing practices and trends. In the spirit of Husserl’s interest in both commonality and variation, we highlight the central, less contestable foundations of lifeworld-led care, without constraining the possible varieties of confluent practices. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present re-enactment interviewing and to propose that it can be used to reveal tacit caring knowledge. This approach generates knowledge not readily attainable by other research methods, which we demonstrate by analysing the epistemological and methodological underpinnings of re-enactment interviewing. We also give examples from a study where re-enactment was used. As tacit knowledge is often characteristic of care, re-enactment interviewing has the potential to engage the informant in a holistic mode and thereby (...) reveal wisdom of the body. When the care provider recalls an event, the details are articulated, which contributes to in-depth data, which subsequently serves as a basis for trustworthy analysis. (shrink)

Starting from a phenomenological understanding of the body, this article discusses the understanding of body awareness in health and illness. I question the common way to understand our relationship to our bodies in terms of subjective and objective perspectives on it, and furthermore, how this opposition has been used in the phenomenological literature to outline an understanding of health and illness as states where the body stays unnoticed versus resurfaces to our attention as dysfunctional. Using examples from an ongoing interview (...) study, I argue for an understanding of the dialectical interplay between body and world in our awareness, and how it can be understood as an approaching or distancing movement to body and world. I furthermore describe how the interplay between body and world effects and is effected by our existence in health and illness. Finally, I suggest what implications this new way of understanding the lived body has for health care practice in general, and for the development of a person‐centred care in particular. I suggest that we leave the dichotomous understanding of subjective and objective perspectives behind, and start to investigate how we move between different kinds of body awareness in health and illness. Illness, as a situation where that which has been taken for granted becomes questioned, can be said to be characterized by mistrust, and by a distancing from world and body. It is thus of importance for caregivers to provide the time, space and trusting atmosphere needed in order to make the approaching movement possible. (shrink)

The Division of Investigative Oversight within the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) is responsible for conducting oversight review of institutional inquiries and investigations of possible research misconduct. It is also responsible for determining whether Public Health Service findings of research misconduct are warranted. Although ORI findings rely primarily on the scope and quality of the institution’s analyses and determinations, ORI often has been able to strengthen the original findings by employing a variety of analytical methods, often computer based. Although (...) ORI does not conduct inquiries or investigations, it has broad authority to provide assistance to institutions at all stages of their reviews of allegations. This assistance can range from providing advice on best practices, to legal assistance, to suggestions for how best to investigate specific allegations. When asked, ORI can also conduct certain forensic analyses, such as a statistical examination of questioned digits or a simple examination of a questioned figure in Photoshop. ORI will not provide opinions or render judgment on such analyses while the institution is still conducting its investigation. Such analyses can be done without knowing much else about the case. (shrink)

The study reported in this paper focused on nursing students' learning and, in particular, their integration of caring science in theory and practice. An educational model incorporating educational drama was developed for implementation in three different teaching contexts within the nursing and midwifery study programmes at a Swedish college. A central aim was to understand the dynamics of educational drama in the healthcare context and its impact on learning and teaching. Using a phenomenological approach, seventeen students and six teachers were (...) interviewed and their experience of drama as an educational method explored.The research findings illustrate the meaning of learning and teaching that is sensitive to students' lifeworld experiences. In order to be a successful method for closing the gap between caring science theory and practice, not only the educational drama, but teaching in general, must be anchored in the lived world of the students - that is, their experiences of health and care. While embodied reflection, as a key factor in integrating theory and practice, was shown to be well supported by educational drama, it was also found that "the method" tends too readily to take over and govern teaching and learning. The findings of this study further indicate how learning in practice and embodied reflection can be supported by the inclusion of well-chosen caring science theory to cast light on caring practice dilemmas. (shrink)

The study reported in this paper focused on nursing students’ learning and, in particular, their integration of caring science in theory and practice. An educational model incorporating educational drama was developed for implementation in three different teaching contexts within the nursing and midwifery study programmes at a Swedish college. A central aim was to understand the dynamics of educational drama in the healthcare context and its impact on learning and teaching. Using a phenomenological approach, seventeen students and six teachers were (...) interviewed and their experience of drama as an educational method explored.The research findings illustrate the meaning of learning and teaching that is sensitive to students’ lifeworld experiences. In order to be a successful method for closing the gap between caring science theory and practice, not only the educational drama, but teaching in general, must be anchored in the lived world of the students – that is, their experiences of health and care. While embodied reflection, as a key factor in integrating theory and practice, was shown to be well supported by educational drama, it was also found that “the method” tends too readily to take over and govern teaching and learning. The findings of this study further indicate how learning in practice and embodied reflection can be supported by the inclusion of well-chosen caring science theory to cast light on caring practice dilemmas. (shrink)

This lavishly illustrated book establishes the towering influence of the scientist Victor Regnault in the earliest decades of photography, a period of experimentation ripe with artistic, commercial, and scientific possibility. Regnault has a double significance to the early history of photography, as the first leader of the Société Française de Photographie and as the maker of more than two hundred calotype portraits and landscapes. His photographic and scientific careers intersected a third field with his appointment in 1852 as director of (...) the Sèvres porcelain works. Readers are treated to Regnault's own beguiling pastoral, garden, and forest scenes; striking portraits of the scientists and artists in his circle of friends; quirky images of acoustic experiments; and an insider's view of the Sèvres porcelain works. Regnault's richly varied photographs also encompass perhaps the most extensive group of family portraits in early photography, and his romanticized landscapes reflect a moment when the rural outskirts of Paris were being aggressively suburbanized and industrialized. Occupying a unique and powerful position in the overlapping spheres of photography, science, industry, and art, Regnault was elected president of the newly formed S.F.P. in 1855. By examining his intertwined activities against the backdrop of French photography's nascent pursuit of institutional legitimacy, this book illuminates an important and overlooked body of images and the irregular cultural terrain of early photography. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

This issue brings together a selection of articles based on presentations at two Conferences in 1997. The aim has been 1) to offer clearer and more understandable descriptions of the major trends and relationships that are involved in the structural transformations that are occurring in food systems at all levels; 2) to help develop better theoretical and conceptual tools to aid us in analyzing such restructurings and their dynamics; and 3) to clarify a number of practical issues facing those seeking (...) to promote more sustainable and just food systems, especially at the local level. With only one exception, all the articles here focus on Western economies where food systems are highly commodified, globally integrated, corporate, and state structures have been restructured by a series of neo-liberal reforms in recent years. In pointing out the problems with these food systems, the articles also discuss various possibilities for structural reforms for more healthy, sustainable, just, and equitable food systems and societies. (shrink)

Traditionally, empathy is conceived of as a cognitive function that governs how people think during social interactions, and is considered as largely impervious to change. However, developments in psychology and neuroscience show that empathy is grounded in neural substrates of emotionally communicative behaviour and so is learned through imitation and other forms of cultural learning. This also means that abnormal patterns of empathic function can develop through adverse life experiences, or that empathy may fail to develop in young people with (...) neurodevelopmental disorders. Nevertheless, by focussing on empathy as a quality of social interaction and affective expression in the here and now, and by appreciating that it is as a special form of sensorimotor skill, pathways to training and fostering better development of empathy can be identified. (shrink)

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

Eric T. Poehlman, Ph.D., was an internationally recognized, tenured professor at the University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington when, in October 2000, a junior member of Poehlman’s laboratory became convinced that he had altered data from a study on aging volunteers from the Burlington area. This suspicion developed into one of the most significant cases of scientific misconduct in the history of the US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Research Integrity (ORI), launching a US Department of (...) Justice (DOJ) civil and criminal fraud investigation and, eventually, to a much publicized guilty plea and felony conviction. In the end, Dr. Poehlman admitted to 54 findings of scientific misconduct made by the UVM and ORI, agreed to retract or correct ten of his publications and to exclude himself from federal procurement and nonprocurement transactions for life. The United States Government’s handling of this case was distinguished by a highly cooperative approach that integrated the resources of the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont (USAO) and both ORI and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in HHS in the common goal of prosecuting research fraud. (shrink)

This paper explores how undergraduate students understood the social relevance of their engineering course content knowledge and drew broader social and ethical implications from that knowledge. Based on a three-year qualitative study in a junior-level engineering class, we found that students had difficulty in acknowledging the social and ethical aspects of engineering as relevant topics in their coursework. Many students considered the immediate technical usability or improved efficiency of technical innovations as the noteworthy social and ethical implications of engineering. Findings (...) suggest that highly-structured engineering programs leave little room for undergraduate students to explore the ethical dimension of engineering content knowledge and interact with other students/programs on campus to expand their “technically-minded” perspective. We discussed the issues of the “culture of disengagement” :42–72, 2014) fueled by disciplinary elitism, spatial distance, and insulated curriculum prevalent in the current structure of engineering programs. We called for more conscious effort by engineering educators to offer meaningful interdisciplinary engagement opportunities and in-class conversations on ethics that support engineering students' holistic intellectual growth and well-rounded professional ethics. (shrink)

The AGI alignment problem has a bimodal distribution of outcomes with most outcomes clustering around the poles of total success and existential, catastrophic failure. Consequently, attempts to solve AGI alignment should, all else equal, prefer false negatives (ignoring research programs that would have been successful) to false positives (pursuing research programs that will unexpectedly fail). Thus, we propose adopting a policy of responding to points of philosophical and practical uncertainty associated with the alignment problem by limiting and choosing necessary assumptions (...) to reduce the risk of false positives. Herein we explore in detail two relevant points of uncertainty that AGI alignment research hinges on---meta-ethical uncertainty and uncertainty about mental phenomena---and show how to reduce false positives in response to them. (shrink)

In a recent article Duncan Purves, Ryan Jenkins, and B. J. Strawser argue that in order for a decision in war to be just, or indeed the decision to resort to war to be just, it must be the case that the decision is made for the right reasons. Furthermore, they argue that this requirement holds regardless of how much good is produced by said action. In this essay I argue that their argument is flawed, in that it mistakes what (...) makes an agent morally good for what makes an act morally good. I argue that the main thrust of Purves et al.’s argument in fact undermines the conclusion they wish to draw, and that the reasons for one’s action do not make an in principle difference to the morality of actions in war. I further argue that this position undermines the traditional ad bellum just war constraint of right intention, and that the morality of actions in war is, at core, only concerned with outcomes. I conclude by clarifying that one’s reasons for action do in fact matter when deciding to enter war or kill in war, but only because one’s reasons significantly impact the way in which one acts. The purpose of this paper is to clear the theoretical space by showing why intentions/reasons do not in principle matter when assessing the morality of war (or killing), but this should not be taken as an argument that we should ignore intentions/reasons altogether. (shrink)

Introduction into the structure, contents and specifications of the Information Coding Classification, developed in the seventies and used in many ways by the author and a few others following its publication in 1982. Its theoretical basis is explained consisting in the Integrative Level Theory, following an evolutionary approach of ontical areas, and integrating also on each level the aspects contained in the sequence of the levels, the distinction between categories of form and categories of being, the application of a feature (...) of Systems Theory and the inclusion of a concept theory, distinguishing four kinds of relationships, originated by the kinds of characteristics. Its special Subject Groups on each of its nine levels are outlined and the combinatory facilities at certain positions of the Systematifier are shown. Further elaboration and use have been suggested, be it only as a switching language between the six existing universal classification systems at present in use internationally. (shrink)

A directory of archives and manuscript repositories, with links to web pages for the repositories and to online finding aids. Searchable by: collection name; city; state; National Inventory of Documentary Sources (NIDS) number; and National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) number.

MATERIALISTS claim that in principle mentality could be accounted for entirely by properties of matter. They must, of course, clarify, as far as possible, the precise scope of the concept "properties of matter." According to materialists there exists only one type of "substance" in the universe, namely matter. Sophisticated experimental and theoretical analyses have led contemporary physicists to interpret known material entities as being composed of two classes of elementary particles, namely quarks and leptons and constituents of interaction fields that (...) mediate interactions between some or all of the elementary particles and which comprise photons, gluons, intermediate bosons and gravitons. For instance, protons and neutrons are composed--by hypothesis--of quarks, while electrons are probably the most familiar leptons. Whether any analyzed and postulated elementary particles and constituents of interaction fields are "ultimate" components of matter can never be known. It remains always possible that more basic subcomponents of known components will be discovered. This has happened repeatedly throughout the history of physics. Hence, what physicists understand by the "physical properties" of the basic components of matter must always remain expressed in terms of usually intricate hypothetico-deductive theories which are tentative and fallible. Contemporary relativistic quantum mechanics of elementary particles and of interaction fields provide typical examples of such hypothetico-deductive theories relating to present known basic components of matter. (shrink)

SummaryExtremism in the environment‐versus innateness controversy in the behavioural sciences and in human sociobiology is being examined. Genetic effects can be severely modified or overruled by environmental factors, but may, nevertheless, be important. Dawkins' view that we are survival machines programmed to subserve selfish genes seems untenable and is a root of racialism. It is also argued that morality is compatible with mixed genetic and environmental control of brains via existing biological machinery.

_Zettel, _ an en face bilingual edition, collects fragments from Wittgenstein's work between 1929 and 1948 on issues of the mind, mathematics, and language.

This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed (...) by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man. (shrink)

In 2005 St Andrews Studies published a volume of essays by Anscombe entitled Human Life, Action and Ethics, followed in 2008 by a second with the title Faith in a Hard Ground. Both books were highly praised. This third volume brings essays on the thought of historical philosophers in which Anscombe engages directly with their ideas and arguments. Many are published here for the first time and the collection provides further testimony to Anscombe's insight and intellectual imagination.

Does action always arise out of desire? G. F. Schueler examines this hotly debated topic in philosophy of action and moral philosophy, arguing that once two senses of "desire" are distinguished - roughly, genuine desires and pro attitudes - apparently plausible explanations of action in terms of the agent's desires can be seen to be mistaken. Desire probes a fundamental issue in philosophy of mind, the nature of desires and how, if at all, they motivate and justify our actions. At (...) least since Hume argued that reason "is and of right ought to be the slave of the passions," many philosophers have held that desires play an essential role both in practical reason and in the explanation of intentional action. G. F. Schueler looks at contemporary accounts of both roles in various belief-desire models of reasons and explanation and argues that the usual belief-desire accounts need to be replaced. Schueler contends that the plausibility of the standard belief-desire accounts rests largely on a failure to distinguish "desires proper," like a craving for sushi, from so-called "pro attitudes," which may take the form of beliefs and other cognitive states as well as desires proper. Schueler's "deliberative model" of practical reasoning suggests a different view of the place of desire in practical reason and the explanation of action. He holds that we can arrive at an intention to act by weighing the relevant considerations and that these may not include desires proper at all. (shrink)

Ecological theory is built upon assumptions about the fundamental nature of organism-environment interactions. We argue that two mutually exclusive sets of such assumptions are available and that they have given rise to alternative approaches to studying ecology. The fundamentally different premises of these approaches render them irreconcilable with one another. In this paper, we present the first logical formalisation of these two paradigms.The more widely-accepted approach - which we label the demographic paradigm - includes both population ecology and community ecology (...) (synecology). Demographic ecology assumes that the environment is relatively stable and that biotic processes, governed predominantly by resource availability, are the most important of ecological and evolutionary influences. Moreover, ecological processes are assumed to translate into directional selection pressures that drive significant evolutionary change on a local scale through the process of optimisation. (shrink)