Il lavoro di Kari Palonen è rimasto negli anni una fonte di ispirazione per gli storici concettuali e intellettuali e per i teorici politici. La sua carriera e i suoi contributi lo rendono un interlocutore ideale per una conversazione sulla pratica congiunta della storia concettuale e dello studio del pensiero politico. Questa intervista, condotta da Rosario López e José María Rosales, si è svolta come una delle sessioni del seminario online _On the Joint Practice of Conceptual History and the (...) Study of Political Thought_, organizzato da Concepta: Research Seminars in Conceptual History and Political Thought l’8 e il 9 gennaio 2024. (shrink)

Background/Objective The act of surgery involves harming vulnerable patients with the intent that the results will improve their health and, ultimately, help the patients. Such activities will inevitably entail moral decisions, yet the ethics of surgery has only recently developed as a field of medical ethics. Within this field, it is striking how few accounts there are of actions within the operating room. The aim of this systematic review was to investigate how much of the scientific publications on surgical ethics (...) focus on what take place inside the operating room and to explore the ethical issues included in the publications that focus on medical ethics in the operating room. Methods We conducted a systematic search of the Medline and Embase databases using a PICO model and the search terms “surgery”, “ethics” and “operating room”. Papers were included if they focused on doctors, entailed activities inside the operating room and contained some ethical analysis. Thematic synthesis was used for data extraction and analysis. Findings Fewer than 2% of the scientific publications on surgical ethics included activities inside the operating room. A total of 108 studies were included in the full-text analysis and reported according to the RESERVE guidelines. Eight content areas covered 2/3 of the included papers: DNR orders in the OR, overlapping surgery, donation of organs, broadcasting live surgery, video recordings in the OR, communication/teamwork, implementing new surgical technology, and denying blood to Jehovah’s Witness. Discussion/Conclusions This systematic review indicates that only a small fraction of scientific publications on the ethics of surgery focus on issues inside the operating room, accentuating the need for further research to close this gap. The ethical issues that repeatedly arose in the included papers included the meaning of patient autonomy inside the operating room, the consequences of technological advances in surgery, the balancing of legitimate interests, the dehumanising potential of the OR, and the strong notion of surgeon responsibility. (shrink)

In late March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia introduced mandatory 14-day supervised quarantine at hotels and other designated facilities for all international arrivals. From July 2020, most states and territories introduced a fixed charge for quarantine of up to $3220 per adult. The introduction of the fee was rationalised on the basis that Australians had been allowed sufficient time to return and there was a need to recover some of the cost associated with administering the program. Drawing (...) on an empirical study of 58 returned Australian citizens and residents quarantined between March 2020 and January 2021, this paper aims to explore how people experienced paying for hotel quarantine, particularly with respect to fairness and relatedly, the principle of reciprocity. Reciprocity requires that the state has an obligation to assist individuals in discharging their duty to comply with public health measures and avoid disproportionate burdens accruing to populations or individuals. Though participants had varying opinions on whether they thought it fair to be charged for their quarantine, for many, the fee constituted a significant burden and source of stress. Given the undertaking of quarantine is primarily for the benefit of the public good, we argue the financial cost imposed on individuals does not meet the demands of reciprocity. It is imperative that future quarantine and isolation arrangements consider seriously the need to minimise burdens of individuals subject to such measures, and that fees do not become a new norm in public health and infectious disease control. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive exposition of the work of one of the most important intellectual historians and political theorists writing today.

We introduce a new model of reduction inspired by Kemeny and Oppenheim’s model [Kemeny & Oppenheim 1956] and argue that this model is operative in a “ruthlessly reductive” part of current neuroscience. Kemeny and Oppenheim’s model was quickly rejected in mid-20th-century philosophy of science and replaced by models developed by Ernest Nagel and Kenneth Schaffner [Nagel 1961], [Schaffner 1967]. We think that Kemeny and Oppenheim’s model was correctly rejected, given what a “theory of reduction” was supposed to account for at (...) that time. But their guiding insights about what constitutes scientific reduction—increases in explanatory scope and systematization—reflect actual practices of current reductionistic neuroscience. The key rehabilitative step to make their insights fit current scientific details is to restate them using resources from recent work on causal-mechanistic explanation. We begin with a scientific case study, drawn from the relatively new field of “molecular and cellular cognition”. It provides an explanation of the well-known Ebbinghaus spacing effect on learning and memory in terms of interactions between a transcriptional enhancer protein and its inhibiting phosphatase in neurons recruited into the memory trace. Next we briefly describe some popular models of reduction from mid-20th-century philosophy of science. We point out how these models fail to illuminate key features of our scientific case study. Finally we present our causal-mechanistically updated Kemeny and Oppenheim-inspired model and argue that it nicely accounts for the details of our scientific case study. We close with a remark that will hopefully undercut the surprise many may feel to learn that a long-rejected philosophical account of reduction actually is at work in one of the most prominent reductionistic endeavors in current science. (shrink)

It is often maintained that Samuel Pufendorf founded natural equality on human dignity. This article partly questions this interpretation, maintaining that the dignity Pufendorf attributed to human nature did not indicate the Kantian idea of absolute and incomparable worth but only superiority in relation to other animals. This comparative dignity of humanity implied that all humans are equally obliged to obey natural law, but it did not offer a foundation for the similarity of their innate duties. The latter followed from (...) the fundamental principle of natural law, the duty to maintain sociality, and from observations concerning human self-esteem. (shrink)

The history of concepts has partly replaced the older style of the `history of ideas' and can be extended to a critique of normative political theory and, thereby, understood as an indirect style of political theorizing. A common feature in Quentin Skinner's and Reinhart Koselleck's writings lies in their critique of the unhistorical and depoliticizing use of concepts. This concerns especially the classical contractarian theories, and both authors remark that this still holds for work by their contemporary heirs, such as (...) Rawls, Habermas and other contemporary normative theorists. Conceptual history offers us a chance to turn the contestability, contingency and historicity of the use of concepts into instruments for conceptualizing politics. The alternative, indirect mode of political theorizing Skinner and Koselleck practise consists of a `Verfremdungseffekt', which helps us to distance ourselves from thinking in terms of contemporary paradigms, unquestioned conventions, given constellations of alternatives or implicit value judgements. In the Skinnerian variant the conceptual changes are made intelligible through analysis of the rhetorical redescriptions among the political agents, whereas Koselleck thematizes the differences in the temporal index of concepts. The subversive aspect in the history of concepts consists of the explication and historical variation of the tacit normative content in the use of concepts. (shrink)

The current antireductionist consensus rests in part on the indefensibility of the deductive-nomological model of explanation, on which classical reductionism depends. I argue that the DN model is inessential to the reductionist program and that mechanism provides a better framework for thinking about reductionism. This runs counter to the contemporary mechanists’ claim that mechanism is an alternative to reductionism. I demonstrate that mechanists are committed to reductionism, as evidenced by the historical roots of the contemporary mechanist program. This view shares (...) certain core commitments with reductionism. It is these shared commitments that constitute the essential elements of the reductionist program. (shrink)

This paper considers a solution to a scenario found in Tom Regan’s Case for Animal Rights, offered by Daniel Kary. Regan considers a case where either one human or any number of dog’s must be sacrificed. He chooses the human because they would be harmed more than any dog would be. This is initially puzzling since Regan claims that humans and dogs have equal inherent value (the objective value as an end that entities have). Kary’s solution argues the human should (...) be saved since their possible experiences have greater intrinsic value (the objective value as an end that experiences have) than those of any number of dogs’. The rationale is that dog experiences are too similar to be additive. The paper acknowledges that Kary’s alternative solution is more plausible than Regan’s, but it ultimately fails to be convincing. (shrink)

Next SectionThe principle of respect for autonomy has shaped much of the bioethics' discourse over the last 50 years, and is now most commonly used in the meaning of respecting autonomous choice. This is probably related to the influential concept of informed consent, which originated in research ethics and was soon also applied to the field of clinical medicine. But while available choices in medical research are well defined, this is rarely the case in healthcare. Consideration of ordinary medical practice (...) reveals that the focus on patient choice does not properly grasp the moral aspects involved in healthcare. Medical decisions are often portrayed as if doctors and patients in confidence confront specific decisions about examinations or treatment, yet the reality often involves many different participants, with decisions being made over time and space. Indeed, most of the decisions are never even presented to patients, as it would be unethical to suggest something that is not medically justifiable. The options patients do confront are somewhat arbitrarily constructed within the narrow framework of both what is deemed to be medically appropriate and how the healthcare system is organised practically. While the autonomy discourse has proven valuable, a failure to distinguish between the fields of medical research and clinical medicine has generated a focus on patient choice that does not reflect what is really at stake in healthcare settings. This is alarming, because the current discourse misrepresents medical practice in a way that actually contributes to bioethical self-delusion. (shrink)

Objective To study how doctors care for their patients, both medically and as fellow humans, through observing their conduct in patient–doctor encounters. Design Qualitative study in which 101 videotaped consultations were observed and analysed using a Grounded Theory approach, generating explanatory categories through a hermeneutical analysis of the taped consultations. Setting A 500-bed general teaching hospital in Norway. Participants 71 doctors working in clinical non-psychiatric departments and their patients. Results The doctors were concerned about their patients' health and how their (...) medical knowledge could be of service. This medical focus often over-rode other important aspects of the consultations, especially existential elements. The doctors actively directed the focus away from their patients' existential concerns onto medical facts and rarely addressed the personal aspects of a patient's condition, treating them in a biomechanical manner. At the same time, however, the doctors attended to their patients with courteousness, displaying a polite and friendly attitude and emphasising the relationship between them. Conclusions The study suggests that the main failing of patient–doctor encounters is not a lack of courteous manners, but the moral offence patients experience when existential concerns are ignored. Improving doctors' social and communication skills cannot resolve this moral problem, which appears to be intrinsically bound to modern medical practice. Acknowledging this moral offence would, however, be the first step towards minimising the effects thereof. (shrink)

Background: Situations where patients resist necessary help can be professionally and ethically challenging for health professionals, and the risk of paternalism, abuse and coercion are present. Research question: The purpose of this study was to examine ethical challenges in situations where the patient resists healthcare. Research design: The method used was clinical application research. Academic staff and clinical co-researchers collaborated in a hermeneutical process to shed light on situations and create a basis for new action. Participants and research context: Four (...) research groups were established. Each group consisted of six to eight clinical co-researchers, all employees with different health profession backgrounds and from different parts of the municipal healthcare services, and two scientific researchers. Ethical considerations: The study was conducted in compliance with ethical guidelines and principles. Participants were informed that participation was voluntary and that confidentiality would be maintained. They signed a consent form. Findings: The findings showed that the situations where patients opposed help related to personal hygiene, detention in an institution and medication associated with dental treatment. The situations were perceived as demanding and emotionally stressful for the clinicians. Discussion: The situations can be described as everyday ethics and are more characterised by moral uncertainty and moral distress than by being classic ethical dilemmas. Conclusion: Norwegian legislation governing the use of force seems to provide decision guidance with the potential to reduce uncertainty and moral stress if the clinicians’ legal competence had been greater. (shrink)

This article examines legal debates over the use of natural resources in the public international areas beyond national jurisdiction: Antarctica, the high seas, the deep seabed, and outer space. It does this in light of the writings of Hugo Grotius, examining ways in which the early modern metacolonial encounters may have been functionally similar to those in the present. The article illustrates how the legal principles in De iure belli ac pacis (1625) still resonate with the structure of metacolonial arguments (...) today. At the same time, it observes how closely early modern colonial encounters were connected with the recurrence of war. This should come as a reminder not to underestimate the value of the current multilateral conventions and institutions that govern the global commons. (shrink)

We confront the following popular views: that mind or life are algorithms; that thinking, or more generally any process other than computation, is computation; that anything other than a working brain can have thoughts; that anything other than a biological organism can be alive; that form and function are independent of matter; that sufficiently accurate simulations are just as genuine as the real things they imitate; and that the Turing test is either a necessary or sufficient or scientific procedure for (...) evaluating whether or not an entity is intelligent. Drawing on the distinction between activities and tasks, and the fundamental scientific principles of ontological lawfulness, epistemological realism, and methodological skepticism, we argue for traditional scientific materialism of the emergentist kind in opposition to the functionalism, behaviourism, tacit idealism, and merely decorative materialism of the artificial intelligence and artificial life communities. (shrink)

Recently, some mechanists have embraced reductionism and some reductionists have endorsed mechanism. However, the two camps disagree sharply about the extent to which mechanistic explanation is a reductionistic enterprise. Reductionists maintain that cellular and molecular mechanisms can explain mental phenomena without necessary appeal to higher-level mechanisms. Mechanists deny this claim. I argue that this dispute turns on whether reduction is a transitive relation. I show that it is. Therefore, mechanistic explanations at the cellular and molecular level explain mental phenomena. I (...) make my case in part by noting that mechanisms at higher levels are composed of mechanisms at lower levels. Compositional relations are transitive. In addition, they are explanatory. I conclude that there are explanatory linkages from cellular and molecular mechanisms to mental phenomena within a hierarchy of nested mechanisms. (shrink)

Background:Dignity is an important ideal in the nursing of older women who need municipal care. Dignity can be challenged when health is impaired by feeling grief and suffering associated with bodily changes and impaired functions. Aim and research questions:The study aimed to deepen the understanding of the meaning of dignity in the life of fragile older women who daily needed help from municipal care service. The research questions are: What is older women’s experience of dignity, and what is it not (...) to be met with dignity when needing service from municipality care? Research design: The study has a qualitative design, and the methodology is based on Gadamer’s ontological hermeneutics. Ten women receiving municipal care, aged from 66 to 91 were interviewed in their home environments. Kvale and Brinkmanns’ three levels of interpretation were applied in the analysis of the interviews: self-understanding, a critical understanding based on common sense, and theoretical understanding. Ethical considerations: The study follows the guidelines for good scientific practice according to the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data. Results: The interviews revealed fragments of the women’s unique life history. Two themes emerged from the interpretation: Confirming encounters provide human dignity; and Not being confirmed as a human being violates human dignity. Conclusions:For the women, dignity is about feeling seen and understood by the individual nurse and this takes place both in conversation and in bodily care. Not being seen or confirmed gives rise to suffering. The reason for this seems to be lack of competence on the part of the staff or little continuity. (shrink)

In science as in mathematics, it is popular to know little and resent much about category theory. Less well known is how common it is to know little and like much about set theory. The set theory of almost all scientists, and even the average mathematician, is fundamentally different from the formal set theory that is contrasted against category theory. The latter two are often opposed by saying one emphasizes Substance, the other Form. However, in all known systems of mathematics (...) throughout history, mathematicians have moved fluidly between ideas conceived of as thing-like, property-like, and process-like. On the other hand one way to advance science is to better distinguish between thing, property, and process. All this constitutes a distracting background for those interested in, or distressed by, the possible application of category theory to science, and to mathematics as well. (shrink)

Depression is a severe mental disorder most often treated with serotonergic antidepressants (ADs). Unfortunately, pharmacotherapeutic responses differ greatly between patients, and our mechanistic understanding of AD modulators is limited. According to the undirected susceptibility of change hypothesis, the effects of ADs on depressive behaviour can be influenced by the patient’s environment. Using population density as an index of social environment, we investigated in depressed patients whether their living environment modulated the AD treatment effect on a behavioural marker for depression: eye (...) tracking-based attentional bias for socially relevant information (i.e. facial expressions). Our data indicate a significant role for the environment moderating attention bias in depressed patients. Specifically, the interaction between population density and the attention for different emotional facial expressions indicated that a low population density could have a protective effect on automatic depressotypic behaviour; an effect most prominent in patients on serotonergic ADs. Possibly, less frequent unavoidable social contact and reduced overall sensory stimulation, particularly in combination with serotonergic AD treatment, benefits mental health. These findings challenge our thinking about (and stimulate research on) taking a patient’s environment into account when prescribing pharmacotherapy for depression. (shrink)

In the majority of research, resettled immigrant and refugee parents are often considered to be less involved with their children’s schooling than majority parents. This study challenges such research positions, based on narrative interviews about parenting in exile conducted with refugee parents resettled in Norway. Cultural psychology and positioning theory have inspired the analyses. The choice of methodology and conceptualisations have brought forth a rich vein of material, which illuminated agency and active positions in the parents’ narratives about involvement with (...) their children’s education. Involvement narratives of success achieved by parents taking action are presented as well as narratives of thwarted agency. Parents’ narrated action includes also involvement outside officialdom, such as informal contact with teachers. It is assumed that the latter involvement forms have become invisible in the majority of earlier research on refugee parents’ school involvement due to methodological choices, and may have contributed to deficit positioning of refugee parents as passive in school involvement. This article’s agency narratives form a sharp contrast to such deficit positioning. (shrink)

Although Daniel Engster's “caring” human rights are, on the surface, a compelling way to bring the concept of care into the international political realm, I argue they actually serve to perpetuate some of the same problems of mainstream human-rights discourses. The problem is twofold. First, Engster's particular care theory relies on an uncritical acceptance of our dependence relations. It can, therefore, not only overlook how local and global institutions, norms, and the marketplace shape our relations of dependence, but also serve (...) to further naturalize our current dependence relations. Second, Engster's caring human rights are only minimally feminist, which means that they do not pay attention to the way in which women's full and equal political participation is a necessary component to challenging and overcoming the oppression, marginalization, and exploitation of women and their caring labor worldwide. Although I am sympathetic to Engster's goals and some of his proposed policy solutions, I argue that we should not abandon the critical, feminist lens of care ethics in favor of “caring” human rights that cannot overcome the care critique of mainstream human-rights discourses. (shrink)

Moral philosophers aside, people sustain a vital interest in the results of ethical theorizing only on the hope that these results will eventually provide satisfying, clear, and univocal answers to essential moral questions like: What is Right Action? What is Good? But whatever else might be said of this century’s labors in moral philosophy, they have failed utterly to nurture this hope. Instead, the overwhelming perception has been that this sort of answer to these questions is beyond our ken, or (...) else that the questions themselves are somehow unintelligible. It would not be unrealistic to forecast a dismal and lonely future for the discipline of ethics should this perception continue to be the dominant one. (shrink)

Quentin Skinner’s thesis ‘that political life itself sets the main problems for the political theorist’ marks a turning point in the study of the history of political thought. The Protestant princes who revised Luther’s doctrine of disobedience in order to save Lutheranism as a political force are the best example of this ‘Skinnerian revolution’ in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. This is in accordance with his claim that principles play a legitimating and innovating role in politics. A tacit implication (...) of the thesis is that we should not only read theorists as politicians but also read politicians as theorists. The politician possesses a special competence in discerning between various types of situation, has a distinct contestational imagination, is a person who is prepared to acknowledge the inherent paradoxes of the situation and who has the capacity to deal politically with limited time. (shrink)

In recent years, many philosophers of science have attempted to articulate a theory of non-epistemic emergence that is compatible with mechanistic explanation and incompatible with reductionism. The 2005 account of Fred C. Boogerd et al. has been particularly influential. They argued that a systemic property was emergent if it could not be predicted from the behaviour of less complex systems. Here, I argue that Boogerd et al.'s attempt to ground emergence in complexity guarantees that we will see emergence, but at (...) the cost of rendering it either trivial or epistemic. There are three basic problems. First, neither the measures of complexity explicitly mentioned by Boogerd et al. nor the most popular measures in the literature can do the practical and theoretical work that they assign to complexity. Second, I argue that while the success of their view depends on restricting the base of information available to the reductionist, this cannot be done in a way that is metaphysically neutral with respect to emer.. (shrink)

This article examines narratives, images, and stories that give insight to everyday experimentation and ethical self‐formation. I use the case of World Vision and its early leaders to unpack genealogies of American evangelical humanitarianism. Rather than seeking to identify American evangelicalism’s normative ethical stance, I aim to expand the discussion in anthropology of ethics on ethical self‐formation through examining the tensions, reflections, and processes of becoming among evangelical humanitarians. In doing so, I examine two focal areas of ethical self‐formation among (...) early World Vision leaders. The first is oscillation between and mixing of passion and compassion frameworks in the American evangelical imagination. Second, I identify a range of temporal frames that evangelicals draw on to make sense of and formulate ethical responses to human needs encountered abroad. (shrink)

This chapter aims to draw attention to metaphorical and discursive understandings of Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and the anorexic body. Instead of offering new explanations or discussing the causations of the disorder, my interest lies in exploring some of the ways myths and beliefs inform readings of anorexic bodies, anorexics, and their self-understanding. Moreover, I aim to highlight how a strict focus on the visuality of the anorexic body, rather than the lived body, contributes to the discourse. Drawing on my PhD (...) research “Lyrics, Voices and the Stories They Tell” (2024), my personal experience, diary notes, lyrics, and poems, I aim to shed light on how anorexic narratives come to be, how they can offer valuable insights, and how they can contradict some existing beliefs and myths. Thus, I hope to contribute something new to the conversation about AN and the anorexic silence. (shrink)

This paper looks to Bernard Suits’s analysis of games and game playing for at least a partial answer to the question in its title. It applies Suits’s analysis to Sudoku, a popular logic puzzle, and to Ana-lytical Reasoning, a question type in standardized assessments. The purpose is both to test Suits’s analysis in a novel domain and to give educators and test developers useful insight into the relationship between logic exercises and games.

Managing the perceived or actual risks of vaccine policy remains a challenge for public health. Vaccines are among the most significant public health achievements; however, current public and political discourse focuses on the risk of harm they purportedly produce. While the vaccine-related bioethics literature often centres on risk, it has largely overlooked the growing normative scholarship on ethical risk imposition and just distribution. We undertook an analytic scoping review to understand how risk is applied in the bioethics literature, primarily to (...) take stock of where we stand as a bioethics community to advance discussions on ethical vaccination policy. Sixty-two papers were included. Most of the literature adopts an agent-relative rather than agent-neutral account of risk, prioritising duties and rights related to avoiding harm, respecting autonomy and ensuring fairness over simplistic consequentialist reasoning. While individual papers often convey risk as flowing in a single direction – falling into either agent-centred or patient-centred perspectives – the literature as a whole reveals risk to be multidirectional. We are simultaneously both vector and victim, and with regard to risk imposition and distribution, also, morally, both agent and patient. Recognising this is critical for clearer ethical reasoning and more effective discourse and policymaking. (shrink)

Many have argued that sexualized banter is indicative of “masculine” culture, serving as a mechanism by which men construct masculine identity and dominance and create a climate of sexual harassment. While this claim has much empirical support, sexualized banter among women remains undertheorized. Furthermore, many contemporary scholars agree that the meaning of a sexual exchange may vary widely between cultural and material contexts, but this insight has only recently been applied to studies of workplace sexuality. This article considers the issues (...) of gender, sexuality, power, and context in light of ethnographic data collected in two service work establishments. Within these organizations, many workplace sexualized interactions emerge as facilitating camaraderie and empowerment between workers. The article concludes that the sexual particularities of a workplace should be interpreted as one of its many cultural features, reflective more of its organizational conditions than of a static sexual symbolism. (shrink)

This article considers how the metaphor of the vaccine line and the subjectivity of the line jumper came to frame COVID vaccination experiences. Drawing on analysis of interviews (n = 24) with self-identified vaccine line jumpers, this article reports on three narratives that arose across interviews: (1) vaccine line jumping is a necessary strategy of health-advocacy, (2) vaccines are personal healthcare tools earned through individual merit, and (3) vaccine refusal is a problem of belief rather than access. Findings advance research (...) about the personalization of vaccination and public health while contributing insights about the constrained subjectivities that people adopt in individualistic health landscapes. (shrink)