Using Adult Learning Theory Concepts to Address Barriers to Cancer Genetic Risk Assessment in the African American Community

Utilization of cancer genetic risk assessment can be profoundly influenced by an individuals’ knowledge of risk assessment, attitudes regarding illness and healthcare, and affective reactions derived from social norms. Race and ethnicity play a powerful role in the development of an individual's attitudes and should be considered when attempting to understand a person's openness to cancer genetic risk assessment (Lannin et al., 1998). Until recently, however, cancer screening and prevention programs have been primarily based on data from studies conducted with the Caucasian population, yielding data that are not fully applicable to the African American community. In the last several years, research findings regarding African American's knowledge, attitudes, and feelings about genetic counseling and testing have grown (Matthews et al., 2000; Singer et al., 2004; Thompson et al., 2003). However, to the authors’ knowledge, these data have yet to be presented in a manner that both summarizes the barriers that African Americans have reported regarding cancer genetic risk assessment, while at the same time suggesting methods individual genetic counselors can utilize during community presentations to help address these barriers. This article will first summarize previous empirical findings regarding African Americans’ knowledge, attitudes, and feelings about cancer genetic risk assessment. The article will then apply adult learning theory to those findings to provide genetic counselors with practical, theory based techniques to apply toward community based educational programs with African American groups.     

PHILOSOPHY,MYTH, AND THE “SIGNIFICANCE” OF SPECULATIVE THOUGHT

Abstract: A close examination of the relation between philosophy and myth reveals important functional parallels in some of their basic means of operation that helps shed some light on philosophy's overall task. A crucial aspect of the structural similarity between philosophy and myth is the generation of what Hans Blumenberg calls “significance.” I argue that the preservation and enhancement of significance (through a strong affinity to myth) is an essential and overlooked aspect of philosophy's task, one best accomplished through the world‐orienting work of speculative philosophy. By weaving the fragmented insights, criticisms, lessons, and methods of the more “specialized” analytic, pragmatic, critical, postmodern, deconstructivist, and other methods of thought together in a systematic way, speculative philosophy may be able to provide us with the kind of world orientation needed for developing a healthier, richer, more profound understanding of ourselves and our proper place within the world.     

THE TROUBLE WITH TERROR

Abstract: The argument proceeds from a sense of imminent danger; 9/11 and its sequel challenge our deepest pretensions regarding the universality and self‐evidence of moral/political conviction. The intransigence of such convictions is now an important source of international conflict and terror. It also signifies that the resolution of the disorder that now confronts the international community requires a transformation in our conception of morality itself. In this regard, philosophy has an important task to address. The discussion explores a radical change in our understanding of just war, the distinction between war and peace, the logic of conflict, and similar topics.     

Animal Rights and Animal Experiments: An Interest-Based Approach

This paper examines whether non-human animals have a moral right not to be experimented upon. It adopts a Razian conception of rights, whereby an individual possesses a right if an interest of that individual is sufficient to impose a duty on another. To ascertain whether animals have a right not to be experimented on, three interests are examined which might found such a right: the interest in not suffering, the interest in staying alive, and the interest in being free. It is argued that while the first two of these interests are sufficient to ground animal rights against being killed and made to suffer by experiments, the interest in freedom does not ground a general animal right not to be used in experimentation. Winner of the second annual Res Publica Postgraduate Essay Prize, 2006.     

Risk perception in Taiwan

In a questionnaire study, 51 Taiwanese college students were asked to judge 48 natural and human-made hazards on nine risk characteristics. Another group of 61 students were asked to rate the magnitude of 80 hazards and their attitudes toward these hazards. To evaluate the dimensionality of risk perception, participants' ratings for the nine risk characteristics were analyzed using Profile Analysis via Multidimensional Scaling approach. Two dimensions of risk perception were identified: (i) Involuntary versus Immediate Effect; and (ii) Delayed Effect versus Known to Science and Chronic. The relationships of risk perceptions and perceived public and private responsibilities in risk management were examined. Catastrophic, certain-to-be-fatal, dreaded, and uncontrollable risks were perceived as more deserving of public risk management, while controllable risks that were known to science, known to those exposed, and chronic were perceived as more deserving of private management. In particular, diseases are perceived as most deserving of private risk management and least deserving of public risk management; and technologies are perceived as most deserving of public risk management and least deserving of private risk management.     

Reasons-Responsive Compatibilism and the Consequences of Belief

John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza offer a theory of moral responsibility which makes responsibility dependent upon the way in which moral agents view themselves. According to the theory, agents are responsible for their actions only if they think of themselves as apt candidates for praise and blame; if they come to believe they are not apt candidates for praise and blame, they are ipso facto not morally responsible. In what follows, I show that Fischer and Ravizza’s account of responsibility for consequences is inconsistent with this subjective element of their theory, and that the subjective element may be retained only if they are willing to implausibly restrict their account of responsibility for consequences. I end by discussing the broad significance of the failure of the subjective element for their overall approach to moral responsibility.     

Naturalistic Explanations of Apodictic Moral Claims: Brentano’s Ethical Intuitionism and Nietzsche’s Naturalism

In this article (1) I extract from Brentano’s works (three) formal arguments against “genealogical explanations” of ethical claims. Such explanation can also be designated as “naturalism” (not his appellation); (2) I counter these arguments, by showing how genealogical explanations of even apodictic moral claims are logically possible (albeit only if certain unlikely, stringent conditions are met); (3) I show how Nietzsche’s ethics meets these stringent conditions, but evolutionary ethics does not. My more general thesis is that naturalism and intuitionism in ethics need not be mutually incompatible.

On ethical order

The existent ethical relationships are the result of the historical amalgamation of objective and subjective conditions. Ethical relationships are essential relationships in the real and rational order, which are maintained by a system of regulations on morals, laws and customs, and infused with a spirit of subjectivity. Rationality and legitimacy are the primary concerns of those relationships. A distinction between morals and ethos needs to be made when studying ethical order. Sound ethical order lies in effective regulation of morals and effective control of law. In the process of social reform, ethical order promotes social development through the dialectical movement of freedom and necessity. A harmonious society is a society which is based on legitimate and just ethical order. Translated by Cui Hui from Lunlixue yanjiu 伦理学研究 (Studies in Ethics), 2007, (5): 1–8     

大学生对个人未来的规划和态度及其与抑郁的关系

采用青少年未来取向问卷(中文版)、Beck抑郁量表-Ⅱ对723名大学牛进行调查,考察大学生对未来的规划和态度及其与抑郁的关系.结果发现:大学生对个人未来教育、职业和婚姻/家庭的探索和投入水平处于中等程度以上,并对未来持积极乐观的态度;大学一年级处于对未来发展进行探索和投入的过渡阶段;男大学生对未来婚姻/家庭的投入更多、态度更乐观;大学生对未来主要发展任务的积极规划和乐观态度能够负向预测抑郁.