The Market for Bodily Parts: Kant and duties to oneself

ABSTRACT The demand for bodily parts such as organs is increasing, and individuals in certain circumstances are responding by offering parts of their bodies for sale. Is there anything wrong in this? Kant had arguments to suggest that there is, namely that we have duties towards our own bodies, among which is the duty not to sell parts of them. Kant's reasons for holding this view are examined, and found to depend on a notion of what is intrinsically degrading. Rom Harré's recent revision of Kant's argument, in terms of an obligation to preserve the body's organic integrity, is considered. Harré's view does not rule out all acts of selling, but he too ultimately depends on a test of what is intrinsically degrading. Both his view and Kant's are rejected in favour of a view which argues that it does make sense to speak of duties towards our own bodies, grounded in the duty to promote the flourishing of human beings, including ourselves. This provides a reason for opposing the sale of bodily parts, and the current trend towards the market ethic in health care provision.     

THE ROLE OF GENERALISED EXPECTANCIES IN DETERMINING CAUSAL ATTRIBUTIONS FOR SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN TWO SOCIAL CLASSES

Summary . The sources of discrepancies in causal attributions for success and failure and for self and other attributions of outcome may become clearer when specific research attention is paid to the role of generalised expectancies in the attributional process. The present study hypothesised that when information about task and outcome is standardised, the attributions of both actors and observers will tend to reflect generalised expectancies, evoked in this study by two levels of SES in both actor and observer conditions, more than they will self-serving biases. 230 sixth grade Jewish Israeli pupils of two SES levels were assigned to one of three experimental conditions. All pupils received eight anagrams, four soluble by all and four insoluble. Those in the self-attribution condition attributed their own outcomes to various causes, while those in the similar and different other conditions attributed the same outcomes for pupils of apparently similar or different social class, after having first completed the anagrams themselves. The results indicated that while pupils of high SES tended to attribute both their own and others' outcomes in ways consistent with high generalised expectancy for success, pupils of low SES attributed their own outcomes more to external, unstable factors, and differentiated consistently in their attributions for the self, for similar and for different others. It was argued that these differences reflect undifferentiated, global perceptions of causality among high SES pupils, whose patterns of attribution are consistent both with teacher values and their own experience. Low SES pupils have more differentiated perceptions of causality since uncertainty as to the real causes of their learning outcomes motivates them to greater, but not always adaptive, attributional activity.     

Verbal and visuo-spatial memory Two clinical tests administered to a group of normal subjects

Abstract.— A group of 165 normal subjects were examined on two memory tests in clinical use, the Word Pairs Test and the Visual Gestalts Test. The purpose of the study was to establish norms with the variables of age, sex, and length of schooling being taken into consideration. During the learning phase a complex interaction between all three factors was found for the Word Pairs, whereas in the Visual Gestalts scores were only affected by age. In the delayed memory task used in both tests, age was again found to be the only significant factor. Using quartile scores, it was found that females performed better than males on the verbal test and vice versa on the visuo-spatial test. Normative data are presented for three age groups. A significant decline in performance appeared in the age group 40–49 years. The data became more heterogenous with an increase in the age of the subjects.     

Career and Educational Counseling Implications of Women's Life Experience Learning

This article summarizes the responses of 131 adult women to a questionnaire survey of their experiences and activities in homemaking, parenting, volunteer work, recreation, formal and nonformal education, and paid work. The results show that reentry women have had a wide variety of life experiences through which they have developed job-related skills. The findings also show the importance of counselor assistance in identifying nontraditional skills and in exploring how the interpersonal and managerial skills learned in unpaid work can aid women's career advancement.     

Student Attitudes Toward Children and Adolescents With Severe Burns

Using color photographs donated by burned and nonburned children as stimulus materials, the authors compared attitudes of 218 practice teachers, senior nursing students, and counselors-in-training toward children and adolescents described as typical, having emotional and psychological problems, or having been severely burned and scarred. With the Adjective Generation Technique and a researcher-designed Attitude Scale, the authors found that children with severe burns and facial scarring were regarded less favorably and were given fewer predictions of future success than the other 2 groups. Significantly fewer of the students expressed a willingness to work with them, and many had little confidence that they would be able to help burned clients. Questions generated by participants concerning things they wanted to know about the 3 groups before working with them revealed that burned children were most often asked about their injuries and scarring but were rarely asked about school, leisure activities, or friends.     

The Effects of the Fresh Start Program on Native American Parolees' Job Placement

Fresh Start, a career development project in Rapid City, South Dakota focusing on Native American parolees with multiple barriers to employment, was effective in placing 75% of its 1994 group in Jobs. Clients reported that feeling valued and important was the most important aspect of the experience.     

EXPLICATING THE IMPLICIT: THE LOCAL LEVEL AND THE MICROPROCESS OF CHANGE IN THE ANALYTIC SITUATION

This paper proposes a method of examining the micro-events of the analytic process that borrows heavily from developmental research. The increasing importance of illuminating the microprocess of interaction to understanding the process of change in analytic treatment is emphasised. A set of constructs and terminology is proposed for the study of the moment-to-moment interactive process in psychoanalytic therapy referred to as the local level. A theory of therapeutic action based on 'local-level' process is then explicated. Its central element involves a step-by-step process of 'fitting together', which leads to changes in implicit knowing through alteration of emotional procedures.