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13 pages, 252 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Reflective Empiricism and Empirical Animal Ethics

by Hannah Winther

Animals 2022, 12(16), 2143; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani12162143 - 21 Aug 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2853

The past few decades have seen a turn to the empirical in applied ethics. This article makes two contributions to debates on this turn: one with regard to methodology and the other with regard to scope. First, it considers empirical bioethics, which arose out of a protest against abstract theorizing in moral philosophy and a call for more sensitivity to lived experience. Though by now an established field, methodological discussions are still centred around the question of how empirical research can inform normative analysis. This article proposes an answer to this question that is based on Iris Murdoch’s criticism of the fact/value distinction and Cora Diamond’s concept of reflective empiricism. Second, the discussion takes as a point of departure a study on genome-edited farmed salmon that uses qualitative research interviews and focus groups. Although there are several animal ethics studies based in empirical data, there are few works on the methodological challenges raised by empirical ethics in this area. The article contributes to these discussions by arguing that reflective empiricism can constitute a methodological approach to animal ethics. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Empirical Animal and Veterinary Medical Ethics)

17 pages, 296 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Wittgenstein and Care Ethics as a Plea for Realism

by Sandra Laugier

Philosophies 2022, 7(4), 86; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7040086 - 4 Aug 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3029

Abstract

This paper aims to bring together the appeal to the ordinary in the ethics of care and the ‘destruction’ or philosophical subversion which Wittgenstein references in his Philosophical Investigations: Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems to destroy everything interesting, all that is great and important? What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards. The paper pursues a connection between the ethics of care and ordinary language philosophy as represented by Wittgenstein, Austin and Cavell, in particular in a feminist perspective. The central point of Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice may not be the idea of a ‘feminine morality’ but a claim for an alternative form of morality. Gilligan’s essay seeks to capture a different, hitherto neglected yet universally present alternative ethical perspective, one easy to ignore because it relates to women and women’s activities. The ethics of care recalls a plea for ‘realism’; in the sense given to it in Cora Diamond’s The Realistic Spirit to mean the necessity of seeing (or attending to) what lies close at hand. Reflection on care brings ethics back to everyday practice much as Wittgenstein sought to bring language back from the metaphysical level to its everyday use. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feminist Care Ethics Confronts Mainstream Philosophy)

20 pages, 4718 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Medial Opening Wedge High Tibial Osteotomy in Knee Osteoarthritis—A Biomechanical Approach

by Nicolae Florin Cofaru, Mihai Dan Roman, Ileana Ioana Cofaru, Valentin Stefan Oleksik and Sorin Radu Fleaca

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(24), 8972; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10248972 - 16 Dec 2020

Cited by 17 | Viewed by 13250

Abstract

This paper provides an analysis from a biomechanical perspective of the medial opening wedge high tibial osteotomy surgery, a medical procedure commonly used in treating knee osteoarthritis. The aim of this research is to improve the analysed surgical strategy by establishing optimal values for several very important parameters for the geometric planning of this type of surgical intervention. The research methods used are numerical and experimental. We used finite element, a numerical method used to study the intraoperative behavior of the CORA area for different positions of the initiation point of the cut of the osteotomy plane and for different correction angles. We also used an experimental method in order to determine the maximum force which causes the occurrence of cracks or microcracks in the CORA area. This helped us to determine the stresses, the maximum forces, and the force-displacement variations in the hinge area, elements that allowed us to identify the optimal geometric parameters for planning the surgery. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biomechanical and Biomedical Factors of Knee Osteoarthritis)

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