In this article, we explicate evidence-based nursing (EBN), critically appraise its framework and respond to nurses’ concern that EBN sidelines the caring elements of nursing practice. We use resources from care ethics, especially Vrinda Dalmiya’s work that considers care as crucial for both epistemology and ethics, to show how EBN is compatible with, and indeed can be enhanced by, the caring aspects of nursing practice. We demonstrate that caring can act as a bridge between ‘external’ evidence and the other pillars (...) of the EBN framework: clinical expertise; patient preferences and values. Drawing on an influential EBN handbook, section 1 presents the aims and features of EBN, including the normative principle that EBN should take place within a ‘context of caring’. We aim to understand this context and whether it can be neatly detached from the EBN framework, as the handbook seems to suggest. In section 2, we highlight the grounds for resistance to EBN from the nursing community, before mounting the argument that nursing practices can be understood fruitfully through feminist care ethics and/or virtue ethics lenses. In section 3, we deepen that analysis using Dalmiya’s concepts of care-knowing and care as a hybrid ethico-epistemic virtue, which are ideally suited to the complex practices of nursing. In section 4, we bring this rich understanding of care into conversation with EBN, showing that its framework cannot be adequately theorised without paying proper attention to care. Caring can be neither an innocuous background assumption of nor an afterthought to the EBN framework. (shrink)

Rising numbers of ageing prisoners and goals on implementing equivalent health care in prison raise issues surrounding end-of-life care for prisoners. The paucity of research on this topic in Europe means that the needs of older prisoners contemplating death in prison have not been established. To investigate elderly prisoners’ attitudes towards death and dying, 35 qualitative interviews with inmates aged 51 to 71 years were conducted in 12 Swiss prisons. About half of the prisoners reported having thought about dying in (...) prison, with some mentioning it in relation with suicidal thoughts and others to disease and old age. Themes identified during data analysis included general thoughts about death and dying, accounts of other prisoners’ deaths, availability of end-of-life services, contact with social relations, and wishes to die outside of prison. Study findings are discussed using Allmark’s concept of “death without indignities,” bringing forth two ethical issues: fostering autonomy and removing barriers. Attributing the identified themes to these two ethical actions clarifies the current needs of ageing prisoners in Switzerland and could be a first step towards the implementation of end-of-life services in correctional systems. (shrink)

Eastern Philosophy: The Basics is an essential introduction to major Indian and Chinese philosophies, both past and present. Exploring familiar metaphysical and ethical questions from the perspectives of different Eastern philosophies, including Confucianism, Daoism, and strands of Buddhism and Hinduism, this book covers key figures, issues, methods and concepts. Questions discussed include: What is the ‘self’? Is human nature inherently good or bad? How is the mind related to the world? How can you live an authentic life? What is the (...) fundamental nature of reality? Throughout the book the relationships between Eastern Philosophy, Western Philosophy and the questions reflective people ask within the contemporary world are brought to the fore. With timelines highlighting key figures and their contributions, a list of useful websites and further reading suggestions for each topic, this engaging overview of fundamental ideas in Eastern Philosophy is valuable reading for all students of philosophy and religion, especially those seeking to understand Eastern perspectives. (shrink)

Is it possible to disagree with someone without considering them cognitively flawed? The answer seems to be a resounding yes: disagreeing with someone doesn't entail thinking less of them. You can disagree with someone and not think that they are unreasonable. Deep disagreements, however, may challenge this assumption. A disagreement is deep when it involves many interrelated issues, including the proper way to resolve the disagreement, resulting in its persistence. The parties to a deep disagreement can hold neutral or even (...) positive judgements of each other's epistemic character, as parties’ judging each other's epistemic character negatively (i.e., epistemic disdain) is not a defining feature of deep disagreements. When analysing real-life cases, however, we find that epistemic disdain is typical of deep disagreements. In this article, I analyse why this is the case. Given that epistemic disdain undermines cognitive peerhood, the prospects of deep disagreements between epistemic peers seem bleak. Finally, it is discussed how the phenomenon of epistemic disdain, as it relates to deep disagreements, may increase affective polarisation. (shrink)

Coinciding with the rising development of emerging markets, sustainable consumption practices in these markets are increasingly under scrutiny. In this context, we compare empirical results from consumers in four countries (three emerging markets and one developed market) in an experimental study to uncover patterns of preferences for sustainable luxury products (i.e., products that combine sustainability and luxury characteristics). Our findings illustrate that consumers’ quality, emotional, price, and social value perceptions, as well as purchase and electronic word-of-mouth intentions, are consistently higher (...) in all three emerging markets compared to the developed market. We find that sustainability (vs. conventional) product features increase consumers’ product value perceptions and behavioral intentions, although this effect is partially stronger for the developed compared to the emerging market(s). We further show a positive sustainability effect for luxury products, this effect is stronger for mass-market products. Combining sustainability and luxury signals leads to similar effects in emerging and developed markets. Thus, emerging markets have promise in terms of scope for incorporating sustainability characteristics into luxury products. Sustainable luxury consumption can therefore be understood as a manifestation of global consumer culture. (shrink)

What is citizenship? -- What are choices? -- Choosing to think for yourself -- Choosing to say no -- Choosing to be friendly -- Choosing to be fair -- Choosing what to eat -- Choosing to spend or save money -- Choosing entertainment -- Choosing to be active -- Choosing to follow the rules -- Choosing to tell the truth -- Making choices and happiness.

This paper argues for the value of the ‘strange’ as a hermeneutical tool to open fresh perspectives on an issue of widespread human concern, specifically how to deal with and relate to the dead. Traditional Chinese folk religion and the animistic ghost culture found within it is introduced and the role of gods, ancestors, and ghosts explained. The view that death is not the end of life but the transition to a new relationship with the living raises questions about our (...) potential obligations to the dead. It also has implications for our thinking about intergenerational justice and the role of our memory of the past in shaping our present and future experience. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore how the prospect of artificial placenta technology (nearing clinical trials in human subjects) should encourage further consideration of the loss experienced by individuals when their pregnancy ends unexpectedly. Discussions of pregnancy loss are intertwined with procreative loss, whereby the gestated entity has died when the pregnancy ends. However, we demonstrate how pregnancy loss can and does exist separate to procreative loss in circumstances where the gestated entity survives the premature ending of the pregnancy. In outlining (...) the value that can be attached to pregnancy beyond fetal-centric narratives, we illustrate how pregnancy loss, separate to procreative loss, can be experienced. This loss has already been recognised among parents who have experienced an unexpected early ending of their pregnancy, resulting in their child being cared for in neonatal intensive care unit. Artificial placentas, however, may exacerbate these feelings and make pregnancy loss (without procreative loss) more visible. We argue that pregnancy is an embodied state in which gestation is facilitated by the body but gestation itself should be recognised as a process—and one that could be separable from pregnancy. In demarcating the two, we explore the different ways in which pregnancy loss can be understood. Our objective in this paper goes beyond contributing to our philosophical understanding of pregnancy towards practical-orientated conclusions regarding the care pathways surrounding the artificial placenta. We make recommendations including the need for counselling and careful consideration of the language used when an artificial placenta is used. (shrink)

This research presents findings from a study of gender-based differences in an ethical decision situation. The study focuses on gender as it relates to situational factors and accounting experience. The primary element of interest is how the gender of the actor (the person described in each vignette) influences the evaluation/assessment of the ethical/unethical decisions. While previous research has provided evidence of ethical differences relating to the gender of the responding subjects, limited evidence has been presented relating to situational issues that (...) may influence assessments of ethical decisions.This research uses four accounting environment vignettes to survey the responses of accountants and accounting students to the ethical/unethical nature of the actions that are taken. In addition, how likely the accountants believe they are to take the same actions is also surveyed. The subjects are a representative sample of practicing accountants in the U.S. and senior/graduate accounting majors at a state university in the southwestern United States. (shrink)

Direct-to-consumer television advertisements for Lyrica in the United States create narratives of gendered domestic normalcy to which women with fibromyalgia are encouraged to aspire through pharmaceutical intervention. This paper unpacks images and narratives within these advertisements to demonstrate that they rely on metaphors that represent gendered expectations in order to evoke guilt and provoke a desire for what Joseph Dumit calls “health as risk reduction,” and what I argue is an attempt to show disability being erased. Following Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding (...) model of communication, viewers play a role in constructing societal expectations for women with chronic pain and for themselves. (shrink)

Shelley Tremain's book, Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, considers how disability has been incorrectly contained by medical ethics or ignored entirely by mainstream philosophy. She argues for an antifoundational approach to disability that accounts for the historical and material conditions of people while also attending to the conditions of disabled philosophers themselves. This important contribution to the fields of philosophy, gender studies, and disability studies explicitly addresses how ableism has impacted academic discourses in philosophy, harming disabled philosophers, disabled people, (...) and the production of knowledge in these areas. This interrogation of ableism in academia comes as a... (shrink)

In contemporary discourse, inclusion has evolved into a core value, with inclusive societies being lauded as progressive and inherently positive. Conversely, exclusion and excluding practices are typically deemed undesirable. However, this paper questions the prevailing assumption that inclusion is always synonymous with societal progress. Could it be that exclusion, in certain contexts, serves as a more effective tool for advancing societal development? Is there a more intricate interconnection between these phenomena than conventionally acknowledged? This paper advocates moving beyond a simplistic (...) inclusion/exclusion dichotomy and puts forth two theses. First, it posits that exclusion can, at times, be a superior metric for gauging progress. Second, it contends that inclusion and exclusion are thoroughly entwined, challenging the notion of a clear demarcation between them. The underlying premise is that, much like inclusion, there can be meaningful value associated with exclusion. Furthermore, applying a rigid inclusion/exclusion dichotomy oversimplifies the discourse on societal progress, providing an artificial representation of what constitutes advancement. Such oversimplification hampers both contemporary research in the humanities and broader political discourse. The primary objective of this paper is to introduce a fresh perspective to the discourse surrounding societal progress. By challenging the fundamental conceptual framework, it seeks to add nuance to the ongoing debate, fostering a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities inherent in measuring progress within society. (shrink)

The medicalisation of pregnancy and childbirth has been encouraged by the continuing growth of technology that can be applied to the reproductive journey. Technology now has the potential to fully separate reproduction from the human body with the prospect of ectogenesis—the gestation of a fetus outside of the human body. This paper considers the issues that have been caused by the general medicalisation of pregnancy and childbirth and the impact that ectogenesis may have on these existing issues. The medicalisation of (...) pregnancy and childbirth is criticised for its impact on the relationship between doctors and pregnant women and the way in which doctors treat fetuses. It is argued that ectogenesis may cause more imbalance in the doctor and intended parent relationship and may result in an increased lack of clarity regarding a doctor’s duty to the fetus. This paper finds that extensive guidance and revised legislation will be necessary to minimise the impact of ectogenesis on the existing issues caused by the medicalisation of reproduction. (shrink)

This paper presents a new theory of modal reasoning, i.e. reasoning about what may or may not be the case, and what must or must not be the case. It postulates that individuals construct models of the premises in which they make explicit only what is true. A conclusion is possible if it holds in at least one model, whereas it is necessary if it holds in all the models. The theory makes three predictions, which are corroborated experimentally. First, conclusions (...) correspond to the true, but not the false, components of possibilities. Second, there is a key interaction: it is easier to infer that a situation is possible as opposed to impossible, whereas it is easier to infer that a situation is not necessary as opposed to necessary. Third, individuals make systematic errors of omission and of commission. We contrast the theory with theories based on formal rules. (shrink)

We call systematic disputes that are particularly hard to resolve deep disagreements. We can divide most theories of deep disagreements in analytic epistemology into two camps: the Wittgensteinian view and the fundamental epistemic principles view. This essay analyzes how both views deal with two of the most pressing issues a theory of deep disagreement must address: their source and their resolution. After concluding that the paradigmatic theory of each camp struggles on both fronts, the essay proceeds to show that, despite (...) their differences, these theories share some core assumptions and think of deep disagreements similarly: as grounded in fundamental epistemic differences between the parties. This underlying conception of deep disagreements the author calls “the fundamental model.” The essay provides reasons to be wary of this conception, and hence, mainstream epistemologists’ treatment of the issue. (shrink)

By integrating conservation of resources and social comparison perspectives, we seek to investigate how employees’ own i-deals, independently from and jointly with their coworker’s i-deals, determine their emotional exhaustion and subsequent deviant behaviors. We conducted a field study focusing on task i-deals, and used Actor–Partner Interdependence Model and polynomial regression to test the hypotheses. We found that emotional exhaustion not only mediated the negative relationship between employees’ own task i-deals and deviant behaviors, but also mediated the positive relationship between upward (...) social comparison of task i-deals and deviant behaviors. These results demonstrated the intra- and interpersonal implications of task i-deals for emotional exhaustion and subsequent deviant behaviors. The current research not only shifts the attention from a predominantly positive view on i-deals to a more balanced and nuanced view on i-deals’ implications, but also sheds light on the interpersonal nature of i-deals and the emotional exhaustion implication of upward social comparison. (shrink)

In Building Better Beings, Vargas develops and defends a naturalistic account of responsibility, whereby responsible agents must possess a feasibly situated capacity to detect and respond to moral considerations. As a preliminary step, he also offers a substantive account of how we might justify our practices of holding responsible—viz., by appeal to their efficacy in fostering a ‘valuable form of agency’ across the community at large, a form of agency that precisely encompasses sensitivity to moral considerations. But how do these (...) accounts relate to one another? Though I find much that is appealing in Vargas’s general approach, I challenge his insistence that these accounts should be treated as ‘conceptually independent’, arguing that this generates an objectionable “justification gap”: on his analysis, someone could remain an appropriate target of our responsibility practices and yet fail to be a morally responsible agent. In closing, I offer a potential solution to this problem, though it means re-visioning how the account of moral responsibility is conceptually tied to the justification of our responsibility practices. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two parts. In Section 1, I explore and defend a “regulative view” of folk-psychology as against the “standard view”. On the regulative view, folk-psychology is conceptualized in fundamentally interpersonal terms as a “mind-making” practice through which we come to form and regulate our minds in accordance with a rich array of socially shared and socially maintained sense-making norms. It is not, as the standard view maintains, simply an epistemic capacity for coming to know about the (...) mental states and dispositions already there. Importantly, the regulative view can meet and beat the standard at its own epistemic game. But it also does more. In Section 2, I show how the regulative view makes progress on two other problems that remain puzzling on the standard view: the problem of “first-person authority” – accounting for the special features of self-knowledge; and the problem of “reactive.. (shrink)

This paper examines the methodological claim made famous by P.F. Strawson: that we understand what features are required for responsible agency by exploring our attitudes and practices of holding responsible. What is the presumed metaphysical connection between holding responsible and being fit to be held responsible that makes this claim credible? I propose a non-standard answer to this question, arguing for a view of responsible agency that is neither anti-realist (i.e. purely 'conventionalist') nor straightforwardly realist. It is instead ‘constructivist’. On (...) the ‘Scaffolding View’ I defend, reactive attitudes play an essential role in developing, supporting, and thereby maintaining the capacities that make for responsible agency. While this view has relatively novel implications for a metaphysical understanding of capacities, its chief virtue, in contrast with more standard views, is providing a plausibly defensible account of how so-called responsible agents genuinely deserve to be treated as such. (shrink)

Philosophers and social scientists have focussed a great deal of attention on our human capacity to trust, but relatively little on the capacity to hope. This is a significant oversight, as hope and trust are importantly interconnected. This paper argues that, even though trust can and does feed our hopes, it is our empowering capacity to hope that significantly underwrites—and makes rational—our capacity to trust.

In his 2014 article “Motivations for Relativism as a Solution to Disagreements”, Steven Hales argues that relativism is a plausible disagreement resolution strategy for epistemically irresolvable disagreements. I argue that his relativistic strategy is not adequate for disagreements of this kind, because it demands an impossible doxastic state for disputants to resolve the disagreement. Contrarily, Fogelin’s :1–8, 1985) theory of deep disagreement does not run into the same problems. Deep disagreements, according to Fogelin, cannot be resolved through argumentation because the (...) conditions for argumentation are lacking in such contexts. I advance the view that deep disagreements arise due to differences in disputants’ mutually supporting interrelated beliefs. This view avoids the hurdles caused by the tiered structure of support found at the heart of Hales’s view on disagreement: the assumption that belief and perspective can be separated, and that disagreement is located. (shrink)

One of the more radical transhumanist proposals for future human being envisions the uploading of our minds to a digital substrate, trading our dependence on frail, degenerating “meat” bodies for the immortality of software existence. Yet metaphor studies indicate that our use of metaphor operates in our bodily inhabiting of the world, and a phenomenological approach emphasizes a “hybridity” to human being that resists traditional mind/body dichotomies. Future scenarios envisioning mind uploading and disembodied artificial intelligence (AI) share an apocalyptic category (...) with more traditional religious eschatologies, though they differ markedly in content; therefore, the insights of embodied cognition and their uptake in technological innovation are considered as they apply to theological concerns. Theology often functions in debates over the technological future to critique or to caution. However, theologians may learn from their technological dialogue partners when it comes to the future of embodiment and its implications for the construction and practice of theology. (shrink)

In “The Logic of Deep Disagreements,” Robert Fogelin claims that parties to a deep disagreement lack the common ground needed for arguments to work, making the disagreement impervious to rational resolution. Although Fogelin’s article received numerous responses, there has been no attempt to elucidate the epistemological theory behind Fogelin’s theses. In this article, I examine Fogelin’s theory of deep disagreements in light of his broader philosophy. The picture that emerges is that of relativism of distance, à la Bernard Williams. By (...) interpreting Fogelin’s theory as relativism of distance, it avoids some of the critiques that have been raised against it. (shrink)

Scientific articles have been traditionally written from single points of view. In contrast, new knowledge is derived strictly from a dialectical process, through interbreeding of partially disparate perspectives. Dialogues, therefore, present a more veritable form for representing the process behind knowledge creation. They are also less prone to dogmatically disseminate ideas than monologues, alongside raising awareness of the necessity for discussion and challenging of differing points of view, through which knowledge evolves. Here we celebrate 250 years since the discovery of (...) the chemical identity of the inorganic component of bone in 1769 by Johan Gottlieb Gahn through one such imaginary dialogue between two seasoned researchers and aficionados of this material. We provide the statistics on ups and downs in the popularity of this material throughout the history and also discuss important achievements and challenges associated with it. The shadow of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is cast over the dialogue, acting as its frequent reference point and the guide. With this dialogue presented in the format of a play, we provide hope that conversational or dramaturgical compositions of scientific articles—albeit virtually prohibited from the scientific literature of the day—may become more pervasive in the future. (shrink)

Let Q be an equivalence relation whose equivalence classes, denoted Q[x], may be proper classes. A function L defined on Field(Q) is a labelling for Q if and only if for all x,L(x) is a set and L is a labelling by subsets for Q if and only if BG denotes Bernays-Gödel class-set theory with neither the axiom of foundation, AF, nor the class axiom of choice, E. The following are relatively consistent with BG. (1) E is true but there (...) is an equivalence relation with no labelling.(2) E is true and every equivalence relation has a labelling, but there is an equivalence relation with no labelling by subsets. (shrink)

The class forcing theorem, which asserts that every class forcing notion ${\mathbb {P}}$ admits a forcing relation $\Vdash _{\mathbb {P}}$, that is, a relation satisfying the forcing relation recursion—it follows that statements true in the corresponding forcing extensions are forced and forced statements are true—is equivalent over Gödel–Bernays set theory $\text {GBC}$ to the principle of elementary transfinite recursion $\text {ETR}_{\text {Ord}}$ for class recursions of length $\text {Ord}$. It is also equivalent to the existence of truth predicates for the (...) infinitary languages $\mathcal {L}_{\text {Ord},\omega }$, allowing any class parameter A; to the existence of truth predicates for the language $\mathcal {L}_{\text {Ord},\text {Ord}}$ ; to the existence of $\text {Ord}$ -iterated truth predicates for first-order set theory $\mathcal {L}_{\omega,\omega }$ ; to the assertion that every separative class partial order ${\mathbb {P}}$ has a set-complete class Boolean completion; to a class-join separation principle; and to the principle of determinacy for clopen class games of rank at most $\text {Ord}+1$. Unlike set forcing, if every class forcing notion ${\mathbb {P}}$ has a forcing relation merely for atomic formulas, then every such ${\mathbb {P}}$ has a uniform forcing relation applicable simultaneously to all formulas. Our results situate the class forcing theorem in the rich hierarchy of theories between $\text {GBC}$ and Kelley–Morse set theory $\text {KM}$. (shrink)