ETHICS IN PROGRESS
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Giving Moral Competence High Priority in Medical Education. New MCT-based Research Findings from the Polish Context
Get PDFNowadays, healthcare and medical education is qualified by test scores and competitiveness. This article considers its quality in terms of improving the moral competence of future healthcare providers. Objectives. Examining the relevance of moral competence in medico-clinical decision-making despite the paradigm shift and discussing the up-to-date findings on healthcare students (Polish sample). Design and method. N=115 participants were surveyed with a standard Moral Competence Test to examine how their moral competence development was affected by the learning environment and further important factors. Results. The sample allowed the identification of a regress in moral competence during students’ pre-clinical curriculum, and progress during their clinical curriculum. A gender-related bias, a segmentation effect, and a pronunciation effect were noticed. Explanations. Scholarly literature usually reports a linear decrease of medical students’ C-scores resulting from, e.g., competitive trends in education. We identified such trends in terms of gender-specific competitive tactics. Religious and ethical affiliations were discussed to explain the unexpected gender bias and the related segmentation and pronunciation effects. The findings can be regarded as predictive for similar developments in educational institutions regardless of cultural contexts as the sample examined in this article represents medical education in a country facing a transition from a non-competitive to competitive tertiary education model, and between presecular and monocultural to secular and pluralist social ethics
Striving for Freedom. Some Notes about Fichte’s Idealism
Get PDFMoving from Fichte’s assumption that “the essence of the I is its activity”, this paper tries to analyze the meaning and implications of the idea of “activity” [Tathandlung] in order to explicate the peculiarities of Fichte’s critical, transcendental, and moral idealism. Fichte’s idea of activity will be examined with reference to such basic concepts as collision [Anstoss], interaction [Wechselwirkung], inter-determination [Wechselbestimmung], and striving [Streben]. However, it is freedom which frames and connects the core components of Fichte’s thinking and sets up the goal of his philosophy of action. What freedom accounts for, can be identified both at the transcendental level, in the internal dynamic of infinity and finitude constituting the subjectivity of the I, and at the moral and social levels of Fichte’s thought, as the goal of the human action in history and in the society. In assuming the unitary character of Fichte’s philosophical system, concluding remarks are developed concerning the moral meaning of the act of striving for freedom and, conversely, the immorality of attitudes and feelings such as fear, resignation, and fatigue
The Impact of the Moral Foundations Arguments on Early Adolescents
Get PDFThe empirical research reported in this article is based on the Moral Foundations Theory proposed by J. Haidt. Objectives. The author examines the impact of moral foundations arguments on early adolescents’ moral judgments regarding violating moral rules and explores gender-related differences between moral foundations preferences. Method. The effect of moral foundations arguments was measured by a newly developed meta-ethical position test (MEPT). The MEPT consists of a pretest questionnaire, treatment by moral foundations arguments, and a posttest questionnaire. The sample contained 178 early adolescents from the Czech Republic (84 females and 94 males). The influence of the moral foundations arguments was analyzed by comparing the pretest with the posttest. Results. 91% of teenagers changed their moral judgment due to confrontations with the moral foundations arguments. A Wilcoxon signed-rank test found that the moral foundations arguments were significantly relevant, since the P-value was lower than 0.001. The Mann-Whitney U test revealed the importance of the gender aspect: P-value care equals 0.01 and liberty 0.01. Girls have a preference for care foundation (21% more than boys), while boys tended to liberty (27 % more than girls). It seems that moral foundations arguments strongly change early adolescents’ moral judgments and can be practically applied as a valuable platform for early adolescents’ moral development
Typhus in Buchenwald: Can the Story Be Told?
Get PDFLudwik Fleck is known today primarily as pioneer in the social study of scientific knowledge. However, during World War II he was a prisoner in Buchenwald, where he and other prisoners produced a typhus vaccine for the Nazis, and where he witnessed murderous experiments on human beings. After WW2, Fleck was accused by one of the prisoners who had participated in the vaccine production at Buchenwald of collaborating, either deliberately or due to lack of imagination, with the Nazi experiments. This article critically examines this accusation and its well-documented rebuttal by Fleck. It argues that while sometimes, especially when dealing with emotionally fraught issues, it may be difficult to establish what precisely took place at a given time and site, it is important to restore the original complexity and messiness of past events – in order to open spaces for understanding, reflexivity and compassion.Ludwik Fleck is known today primarily as pioneer in the social study of scientific knowledge. However, during World War II he was a prisoner in Buchenwald, where he and other prisoners produced a typhus vaccine for the Nazis, and where he witnessed murderous experiments on human beings. After WW2, Fleck was accused by one of the prisoners who had participated in the vaccine production at Buchenwald of collaborating, either deliberately or due to lack of imagination, with the Nazi experiments. This article critically examines this accusation and its well-documented rebuttal by Fleck. It argues that while sometimes, especially when dealing with emotionally fraught issues, it may be difficult to establish what precisely took place at a given time and site, it is important to restore the original complexity and messiness of past events – in order to open spaces for understanding, reflexivity and compassion
Research on Moral Education Affinity from the Perspective of Psychology
Get PDFMoral education affinity has a very important influence on the smooth development of moral education activities and the improvement of educational effectiveness. From the perspective of psychology, the needs and emotions of the educatees are its motivational mechanism, the will of the educatees is its maintenance mechanism, psychological compatibility is its guarantee mechanism, and the learning psychology of the educatees is the reinforcement mechanism. The generation of moral education affinity is the process of educators’ active interpersonal attraction, the application of positive psychological effect, the change of educatees’ attitude, and the psychological exchange and interaction between educators and educatees. The main way to cultivate moral education affinity is to fully pay attention to the needs or changes of the educatees, make efforts to stimulate and strengthen the learning motivation, maintain the main status and role of the educatees, and enhance the appeal and affinity of the educational process through the unity of knowledge and action.Moral education affinity has a very important influence on the smooth development of moral education activities and the improvement of educational effectiveness. From the perspective of psychology, the needs and emotions of the educatees are its motivational mechanism, the will of the educatees is its maintenance mechanism, psychological compatibility is its guarantee mechanism, and the learning psychology of the educatees is the reinforcement mechanism. The generation of moral education affinity is the process of educators’ active interpersonal attraction, the application of positive psychological effect, the change of educatees’ attitude, and the psychological exchange and interaction between educators and educatees. The main way to cultivate moral education affinity is to fully pay attention to the needs or changes of the educatees, make efforts to stimulate and strengthen the learning motivation, maintain the main status and role of the educatees, and enhance the appeal and affinity of the educational process through the unity of knowledge and action
Towards a Non-human Speciophilosophy
Get PDFAfter the publication of Jaques Derrida’s book, L’animal que donc je suis, anti-speciesism has been looking for a theoretical foundation for its ethical content. In my opinion, the defect of all these philosophical perspectives is that they still reduce animals to objects of human philosophy. Here, I develop a new framework in which animals are considered as subjects of their own philosophy. In analogy to the concept of ethnophilosophy, the concept of speciophilosophy is here introduced (§ 1, §3). The different ways of thinking between humans and other animals are outlined, by explaining the difference between verbal reasoning and thinking through images (§ 2). Human philosophies are shown to be anthropocentric ideologies, related to carnivorism (§4, § 8). Subsequently, animal speciophilosophies are discussed (§6) and a dialogical symphilosophein (§ 5) among all living beings is proposed to be the extension of the so-called philosophy of dialogue. Finally, it is shown how this perspective was present in the original Christian ethics (§7, §9, § 10)
„Meat Should Be Prescribed in Very Small Doses, Arsenic-like”. How Josephine Joteyko and Varia Kipiani Pioneered Medical Research to Improve Vegetarianism in 1906: « Il faut prescrire l’usage de la viande en petite quantité, comme on prescrit l’arsenic » Josephine Joteyko et Varia Kipiani: la recherche médicale pionnière en faveur du végétarisme en 1906
No full textThis compilation is based on the original report on a clinical survey conducted in Brussels (1905-1906) by Josephine Joteyko and Varia Kipiani with 43 vegetarians. Having advanced expertise in physiology and experimentalism, Joteyko (with Lithuanian and Polish origins) and Kipiani (with Georgian origins) discussed their findings at the Congress of the Belgian Society for Vegetarianism in 1906. For both children and adults, females and males, regardless of age, the findings demonstrated vegetarian dietary habits to be beneficiary for human development, the subjects’ physical and mental health, welfare, and physical and intellectual efficiency. Surprisingly, Joteyko and Kipiani confirmed C. Darwin’s observation across various nutritional cultures that vegetarian food would increase the energetic balance of the human body. Additionally, their focus on the moteur humain shows affinities with Taylorism, the modernist utopias of labor, the enhancement of human faculties, the protection of workers and their rights from automation, and applied social science represented by Joteyko and Kipiani as multidisciplinary investigators. The compilation was made on: J. Joteyko & V. Kipiani, Enquête scientifique sur les Végétariens de Bruxelles, Conférence donnée à la Société végétarienne de Belgique, le 4 décembre 1906, pp. 1–77, with no further correction
COVID-19 Forced Social Distancing and Isolation: A Multi-Perspective Experience
Get PDFThe article is combined of six chapters authored by these who voiced their experiences with social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemics in various contexts, but mostly centered on psychological, sociological, and ethical aspects. Authors, mostly psychologists and philosophers, were invited to describe their perspectives on the sense and practice of social distancing in times of pandemics. Their reflections seek to demonstrate various perspectives related to subjects’ novel self-experience, social situatedness, and their dealing with conventions and habits altered through the pandemics. As “the owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering” (Hegel), there is no conclusion in this article. It rather encourages other authors to reflect on the nearly global, still lasting phenomenon.The article is combined of six chapters authored by these who voiced their experiences with social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemics in various contexts, but mostly centered on psychological, sociological, and ethical aspects. Authors, mostly psychologists and philosophers, were invited to describe their perspectives on the sense and practice of social distancing in times of pandemics. Their reflections seek to demonstrate various perspectives related to subjects’ novel self-experience, social situatedness, and their dealing with conventions and habits altered through the pandemics. As “the owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering” (Hegel), there is no conclusion in this article. It rather encourages other authors to reflect on the nearly global, still lasting phenomenon