Pastoral Support for Late-Life Sexuality

SUMMARY

As more persons live longer and enjoy relatively good physical health, new ethical questions arise. One set of questions regards the continuation of sexual life among older persons, especially among older unmarried persons. Women live many years longer than their spouses and often were of a younger age than the spouses. The Judeo-Christian tradition affirms the vitality of sex as a basic part of God's gift of physical creation. A large majority of older people view sexual expression as important and many see it as crucial to a good relationship with a partner. These issues are raised for the awareness of pastoral counselors to understand and be responsive to the varied sexual alternatives m the later years m order to offer practical help to older persons.     

How Can Ethics Support Innovative Health Care for an Aging Population?

The rapidly expanding aging population presents an urgent global challenge cutting through just about every dimension of worldly life, including the social, political, cultural, and economic. Developing innovations in health and assistive technology (AT) are poised to support effective and sustainable health care in the face of this challenge, yet there is scant (but growing) discussion of the ethical issues surrounding AT for older persons with dementia. Demands for ethical frameworks that can respond to frontline dilemmas regarding AT development and provision, and how the needs of aging persons themselves are defined throughout this development process, are increasing. This article suggests that fulfilling the promises of AT to provide effective and ethically informed solutions may demand shifting away from standard bioethical analyses that centralize the principle of respect for autonomy. An autonomy-centric paradigm is dubiously equipped to theorize the foundational ethical issues in dementia care and to effectively guide AT development and implementation. An agency-centered approach to dementia care, which could engage more adaptively with the perspectives and choices of older persons themselves while offering strong support to AT research and stakeholders, may offer an attractive alternative.     

建设同他者交互关系的未来

本文的核心主题是如何建立同他者的交互关系。作者认为,伦理行为应该从呼吸开始,这是人类最为原初的举动,但在西方文化中一直未得到尊重。忘却呼吸的结果造成了精神和身体的分离,也形成了二元对立的文化传统。要建立二者的伦理关系,首先就要拥有自我爱慕的能力,这是一种栖居在自我状态、能够主宰自己行动和思维的能力,是维持自己家园的前提。在此基础上,作者认为应该开放自我的世界迎接他者的到来,把自己封闭在自我世界的结果将导致对他者异质性的排斥。同时,有必要保持沉默,要耐心倾听,更要换一个方式讲话,充分开发知觉感受,以尊重他者完成自我的超越。二者关系也因此得以建立,这一尊重差异基础之上的二者关系不仅适用于处理性别关系,也可以应用于处理其他文化差异中的二者关系,而无数的二者关系最终组成了多元的世界。     

中国企业伦理研究的本土意识

中国的企业伦理研究必须具备相应的本土意识,即,既要带着中国文化的意识去观察和分析现实的企业伦理问题,又要通过对文化传统的研究,探询自身的理论支点,为企业行为提供规范导向。要使这种具有本土特色的企业伦理研究得以可能,就必须有相应的方法论自觉,将本土意识贯穿于我们对经济实践的分析、基础问题的研究以及企业伦理理论的建设之中。     

Two Models of the Trinity?

Contrary to a common assumption, I argue that there is full agreement between East and West on the issue of the relation between the divine essence and the divine persons. I defend this claim by using the understanding of universals found in D. M. Armstrong to cast light on the theories. Taking Gregory of Nyssa and John of Damascus as representatives of the Eastern tradition, I show that this tradition sees the divine essence as a numerically singular object that is wholly present in each divine person. The Eastern tradition explicitly sees this object as a universal. The Western tradition – exemplified in Augustine and Aquinas – likewise sees the divine essence as a numerically singular object that is wholly present in each divine person. But this tradition customarily denies that such an object could be a universal, on the merely philosophical grounds that universals are divided amongst the particulars that share them, and thus cannot be numerically one. Having shown the fundamental consonance of the two traditions, I argue by way of conclusion that differences between social and non–social theories of the Trinity depend entirely on the nature and extent of the features that are supposed to distinguish the persons from each other.     

Spirituality Among Older African Americans

Recent changes in gerontology have drawn attention to the role of spirituality among older adults. Demographic trends suggest that the number of African Americans over the age of 65 is increasing, with the largest shift to occur in persons 85 years of age and older. Given the paucity of information available regarding the relationship between spirituality and aging along with the increase in the number of older African Americans, a literature review of these concepts is sorely needed. This paper provides a thorough profile of older African Americans, with a review of historical and cultural factors that have informed the spiritual development of this population. Additionally, attention is given to methodological issues such as definitions, measures, sampling, and research designs at the interface of development and spirituality in this population. The paper also reviews findings to date about the effects of spirituality on physical and mental health among older African Americans.     

The Cultural Embeddedness of Arguments Raised as a Part of the Bulgarian Debate About the Ratification of the Istanbul Convention

The paper presents an analysis of the cultural embeddedness of arguments, raised as a part of the Bulgarian debate about the ratification of the Istanbul convention. The method I employed was the localization procedure of Generalized Argumentation theory. Through a qualitative analysis of empirical argumentation data, I identified arguments in favour of or against the ratification of the Istanbul convention. Information about the cultural background against which these arguments were raised, i.e. about Bulgarian culture, was gathered from the part of the ninth wave of the European Social Survey that used the Portrait Value Questionnaire—an instrument for measuring human values, based on Schwartz’s theory of human values. By establishing a certain relationship between the arguments and the cultural background information, I came to the conclusion that the debate between the proponents and the opponents of the ratification represented a conflict between the basic values of universalism and tradition, and more particularly, between the lower-order values of equality and respect for tradition.

     

Expressing the tradition in an educational context

Being born into a religious tradition, remaining within it and making one’s life an expression of it as a chaplain in a faith‐based college is not necessarily an unimaginative choice. A culture has some enduring characteristics but to survive meaningfully it has to be relevant to contemporary life. Thus, there is a necessity to question what is to be kept and what is to be discarded or less empathised. Most importantly, it must be asked by what means in such a college – through the design of buildings, chapel worship, respect of all college members, self‐conscious continuity and social projects – it can be effectively acted out in otherwise secular academic culture and multi‐cultural collegial community.     

施特劳斯政治哲学的精神与中国传统之重建

该文认为政治就是以公共权力分配为核心内容的游戏;政治学与政治哲学的根本区别在于政治学研究权力游戏规则的运行规律,而政治哲学则研究权力游戏规则的合法性;古典西方政治哲学所形成的是一种正义传统,而它正与中国古典政治哲学的天道传统相呼应。中国近代所形成的革命文化破坏了我们自己的政治哲学传统,重建我们自己的政治哲学和政治文化传统,是当代中国文化建设的核心任务之一。     

The Underlying Architecture of the Creative Worlds of Children: Young Persons from the UK and China Unwittingly Generate More Concepts that Violate Ontological Category Structure Than Do Older Adults During an Exemplar‐Generation Task

Is our cognition the underlying architecture of the recurrent and pan‐cultural imaginative ideas of children and adolescents? Recent cross‐cultural studies show that children and adolescents recall proportionally more creative, counterintuitive concepts than older adults. One outstanding concern is that cultural transmission is also constrained by how concepts emerge into culture. Hence, a broad sample of age demographics in UK and China (10–58 years; N = 90) participated in an exemplar‐generation task where participants assembled statements exemplifying conceptual categories of positive and negative emotion, imagery, humor, and inferential potential. Multiple regression analysis considering counterintuitiveness and age revealed young persons generated significantly more imaginative, counterintuitive ideas than older adults, in both UK and China groups. This cross‐cultural support for an underlying cognitive architecture of human creativity builds on Ward's (1994) research on structured imagination.     

Bartlett revisited: reconfiguration of long-term memory in young and older adults

This study was performed after the tradition of F. C. Bartlett (1932), who demonstrated that memory reconfigures over time. The authors investigated the memory of young and older adults to examine the degree to which the aging process influences reconfigurative tendencies. From an initial sample of 53 participants, 20 young and 19 older adults completed 6 tests of recall for Bartlett's original text materials over an 84-day period. Consistent with the broad conclusions of Bartlett's study, reconfiguration was observed: Both young and older adults introduced errors into memory. Older adult recall was lower overall than that of young adults, and recall performance diminished over time. However, there was no difference between the performances of young and older adults with respect to incorrectly recalled intrusive elements.     

现代医学伦理学原则的冲突及其原因分析

现代医学伦理学追求的是在基本原则指导下建构一个程序规则,让各种理论和价值观获得平等对话和合作的机会。但由于方法本身的缺陷及现代性伦理的内在矛盾,它并没有实现这一目的。我们必须充分尊重中国文化传统和社会现实,谨慎而合理的利用西方医学伦理资源。     

Bartlett Revisited: Reconfiguration of Long-Term Memory in Young and Older Adults

This study was performed after the tradition of F. C. Bartlett (1932), who demonstrated that memory reconfigures over time. The authors investigated the memory of young and older adults to examine the degree to which the aging process influences reconfigurative tendencies. From an initial sample of 53 participants, 20 young and 19 older adults completed 6 tests of recall for Bartlett's original text materials over an 84-day period. Consistent with the broad conclusions of Bartlett's study, reconfiguration was observed: Both young and older adults introduced errors into memory. Older adult recall was lower overall than that of young adults, and recall performance diminished over time. However, there was no difference between the performances of young and older adults with respect to incorrectly recalled intrusive elements.     

人类基因组计划带给不同文化传统的伦理挑战

分析了人类基因组计划带给四种不同文化传统中的人们的伦理挑战,即南美、印度、西方传统和儒家传统。西方传统又分为天主教道德传统、英美传统和欧洲大陆传统三方面阐述,并指出不同的文化背景对HGP研究的不同导向。最后强调此领域中的跨文化研究有待进一步深入。     

关于医学人文教学几个问题的认识

文化素质教育与人文教育有联系,但也有区别;对人文精神的理解,存在东方与西方、传统与现在的差异;人文精神的核心是人是一切的根本,人的生命、思想、理想应当受到关爱和尊重;人文精神或人文主义包括理念层次和实践层次;人文精神是一种普世价值而主要不是意识形态;人文知识不等于人文素养,医学人文教育的目标是提升学生对生命的尊重与关爱;医学人文教育应当渗透到医学专业教育之中。     

Network Size, Social Support and Happiness in Later Life: A Comparative Study of Beijing and Hong Kong

This study investigates how happiness of elderly Chinese is related to their social support networks, based on survey data collected in 2000 from Beijing and Hong Kong. These two Chinese cities share a common cultural heritage but differ in social-economic structure. It was found that in both cities, income is more significant than gender and education in determining happiness, but it is less important than personal network size and particularly perceived social support. More importantly, findings from the two cites consistently lend support to the thesis that older persons with a larger network are happier and that social support plays a mediating role. Controlling for social-demographic factors does not change this pattern of relationships. There are, however, differences between the two cities. Beijing’s elderly were found to be happier and have larger social networks than Hong Kong’s elderly. Also, our explanatory models consistently account for less variance in the happiness of older persons in Beijing. These findings are probably due to the differences between socialist Beijing and capitalist Hong Kong in degrees of modernization and urbanization and in social organization of work and community life.     

Respect as Esteem: The Case of Counselling

To claim that respect is one of the cornerstones of professional ethics is uncontroversial. However, it has become commonplace in the philosophical literature to distinguish between different kinds of respect. This paper considers the distinction between ‘recognition respect,’ said to be owed to persons as such, and ‘appraisal respect,’ said to be owed to those persons whom merit it, in the context of the professional–client relationship. Using the practice of counselling as an example, it is argued that both kinds of respect have a place in the professional–client relationship, which is in turn articulated as a relationship between equally fallible moral agents.     

A Review of “Divorce: Causes and Consequences”

Substance abuse affects millions of adults each year, of whom one in five are older adults. Given pervasive stereotypes about later life and the ways in which older persons internalize such messages, dealing with and using previous work on substance abuse, the social breakdown syndrome, and narrative therapy, we describe the importance of and ways for marriage and family therapists to work with older persons facing the compounding experiences of ageism and substance abuse. The purpose of this study was to: 1) identify the prevalence of substance abuse among those 65 and older; 2) document and emphasize the unique challenges of addressing this issue among those 65 and older; and 3) provide an application of the narrative approach to working with older persons presenting with substance abuse.     

Nature and grace: the paradox of Catholic ethics.

Roman Catholic bioethics seems to be caught in a paradox. On the one hand it is committed to the natural law tradition and the power of reason to understand the structures of creation and the moral law. On the other hand there is a greater and greater appeal to Scripture and revelation. The tradition maintains that reason is capable of understanding the rational structures of reality and that ethics is properly built on metaphysics. In this way ethics, bioethics, is non-sectarian. However, the tradition also recognizes the effects of Original Sin on the will and intellect and the broad cultural changes that have affected our understanding of metaphysics. The appeal to Revelation is a corrective to many contemporary trends in ethics and bioethics. This article will examine the interplay of reason and revelation in the Church's teaching on sexuality (particularly contraception and in vitro fertilization), suffering, and death. Catholic bioethics is in the end prophetic and ecumenical and not gnostic and non-ecumenical.     

Freedom and Respect in a Multicultural Society

ABSTRACT Martin Hollis, in Market Equality and Social Freedom [1], used the Dewsbury case to illustrate the tension between individual freedom and the public good. Like others engaged in the public debate on multicultural education in general, and Dewsbury in particular, Hollis avoided the main issue: “What should be the curriculum in a school attended by pupils from different cultural backgrounds?’’Rational debate in this highly controversial area requires an analysis of two fundamental concepts—multicultural education and respect. The former can take three forms, each corresponding with a distinctive curriculum model. One—the Equality option—is inimical to parental rights as guaranteed under the European Convention, but it attracts support because of a widespread failure to recognise that one can respect someone's right to hold and propagate a particular faith (or opinion) without necessarily respecting that faith (or opinion). It is shown that this failure has come about through very lax usage of ‘respect’. It is argued that by respecting persons whatever their values the potential conflict between liberty and equality can be resolved in a free society.