Rationing in healthcare remains very much a taboo topic. Before COVID-19, it rarely received public attention, even when it occurred in everyday practices, mainly in the form of implicit rationing, as it continues to do today. There are different definitions, types and levels of healthcare rationing, according to different perspectives. With the aim of contributing to a more coherent debate on such a highly emotional healthcare issue as rationing, here are provided a number of reflections from a patient advocate perspective (...) which are specifically focused on bedside rationing, the most troublesome level, both for patients and clinicians, particularly in regard to cancer care. Oncology, with its numerous expensive therapies and increasing number of patients, is undeniably one of the main areas contributing to the increase in healthcare costs. However, the fixed budgets of today's publicly financed health systems cannot allow unlimited access to the potentially beneficial treatments to all patients. Bedside rationing constitutes the last phase of many decision-making processes occurring at different interrelated levels (macro-levels), both inside and outside healthcare systems, which implicitly and inevitably result in a bottleneck determined by the upstream decisions themselves. Shifting from implicit to explicit bedside rationing essentially means moving from a paternalistic to a citizen-before-patient approach; this implies, first of all, a cultural change. Practical bedside rationing is an ethically complex topic, but one that needs to be urgently addressed in a transparent and open debate. In this scenario, the oncological community – patients, patient advocates and clinicians – can and should play an important role. (shrink)

This paper proposes an innovative approach to achieving real-time polymorphic behavior detection, and its direct application to blockchain-focused smart-contracts. We devise a method based on a non-deterministic finite state machine to perform approximate pattern-matching, using a look-ahead mechanism implemented through a concept similar to that of a sliding window, and using threshold-based similarity checking at every state in the automaton. We introduce and formalize our approach, discuss the challenges we faced and then test it in a real-world environment. The experimental (...) results obtained showed a significant speed-up of our approach, as compared to the classic similarity measures used commonly in such scenarios. (shrink)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.

This study assessed self-reported health-related quality of life and psychological adjustment in 43 adolescents and young adults with congenital melanocytic nevi and examined associations with sociodemographic variables, characteristics of the CMN, perceived social reactions, and cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Outcome measures included the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ 4.0 and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Findings suggest impaired psychosocial health and psychological adjustment in youth with CMN compared to community norms. Impairments were associated with higher age of participants, lower socioeconomic (...) status, visibility of the skin lesion, perceived stigmatization, poorer perceived social support, and maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies, but not with sex of participants, extent of the skin lesion, and surgical removal of the nevus. Implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans Tradurre. Pratiche, teorie, strumenti, n° 10, Primavera 2016. F. Scotto, Il senso del suono. Traduzione poetica e ritmo, Roma, Donzelli, 2013, 224 p. Ce mot « rythme » ne m'est pas clair. Je ne l'emploie jamais. Paul Valéry Nel suo vastissimo trattato Critique du rythme. Anthropologie historique du langage, Henri Meschonnic si sofferma sulla scorretta etimologia che fonda il mito del ritmo, ossia quella che ricollega il ῥυθμός al movimento del mare : seguendo - (...) Recensions. (shrink)

Professional integrity is a fundamental principle of the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants Code of Ethics. This does not apply directly to members of a particular professional body, but rather member organizations from around the globe are required to adopt a code no less stringent than the principles in the IESBA Code. Hence, all professional accountants are required to possess integrity as a core ethical principle. In the USA, certified public accountants must, in addition, also adhere to the principle (...) of client advocacy in relation to their tax clients. Despite extensive prior literature on accounting ethics, firm culture, and ethical codes, no prior research has tested whether the communication of an Integrity ethical standard actually affects practitioners’ actual judgments and decisions. In this study, we use brief interventions to determine whether a prime of two ethical professional standards affects tax practitioners’ recommendations to their clients. One implication for professionalism in tax practice is our finding that a brief intervention of professional standards can directly impact on practitioners’ judgments. Most notably, a joint presentation of Advocacy and Integrity leads to contrasting results that depend on the order of the intervention. In sum, when the Integrity standard was presented before the Advocacy standard, tax practitioners were significantly less likely to choose a tax-favorable outcome. That is, the order of professional ethical standard intervention significantly affects tax practitioners’ judgments. (shrink)

A supplemental document for "Metalinguistic Gradability".

The field of consciousness studies has long benefitted from the investigation of non- ordinary states of consciousness, both spontaneous and facilitated by mind-altering agents. In the present study, I look at the implications of spontaneous near-death experiences and experiences facilitated by the dissociative anaesthetic ketamine. These experiences reputedly have similar phenomenologies, such as a feeling of dying, motion through darkness, entering another realm, visions of light, and a sense of separation from the physical body. To assess whether ketamine and near-death (...) experiences really are similar, I undertake a systematic comparison of 36 accounts of NDE-like experiences under ketamine with 36 accounts of NDE that resulted from cardiac arrest or other life-threatening circumstances in which wakefulness was maintained . The results suggest that ketamine and near- death experiences are indeed similar, which might be taken to imply that NDEs have a purely chemical or psychophysiological basis. However, this conclusion is not inevitable, and I draw upon the intriguing 'spatial' or 'situated' characteristic of ketamine and near-death experiences to suggest an alternative to both neuropsychological reductionism and a straightforward post-mortem survival theory. To develop the idea of a dynamic interrelation of consciousness and 'place', I draw on contemporary Japanese philosophies of body-mind. (shrink)

The academic databases such as Scopus or Web of Science are commonly used to measure performance of universities, departments, and even single researchers. However, to what extent such databases can represent real outcomes of aforementioned units especially in the field of art and humanities where local languages and cultural phenomena play an important role is not clear. This article focuses on understanding how research in this field, as seen through the case of aesthetics in non-English speaking countries, Finland in particular, (...) is represented through major academic databases. This question is tackled by applying a data mining approach. First, we identify major academic databases, and afterwards test what is the proportion of Finnish aesthetics presented in those databases. Our approach allows us to critically look into representation of local art or humanities related research in general academic databases, and understand to what extent we can trust those sources in representing real pictures of the field. Results strengthen the well-known fact that most common academic databases draw a rather poor picture. In more particular this article shows that there are certain factors that influence analysis of the field: spread data, multilingual content, non-standard categorization, variability of venues, different publishing patterns, and unsuitable impact metrics. However, our results propose that alternative databases can be formed from university or meta-data databases. We also provide further directions for designing of such databases. (shrink)

National <.lt> domain name disputes in Lithuania are the ones which courts must decide without having any specific legal regulation. In such cases courts shall apply analogy of law, customs and general principals of law. Last but not least, the courts must address international legal practice as regards the domain name disputes, i.e. take into account the famous ICANN Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy adopted in 1999 and mostly applied by the panels of WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre while (...) dealing with disputes on generic top level domain names <.com>, <.net>, <.org>, also analyse the practice of ADR cases of Czech Arbitration Court which has the jurisdiction over <.eu> domain name disputes. This article deals with the case-law of Lithuanian courts in <.lt> domain name disputes and analysis the trends of Lithuanian internet law as regards the protection of the owners of intellectual property in Lithuania. The special attention is given to the phenomenon of cybersquatting in Lithuania and the lack of effective means to fight such unfair practices on the net. (shrink)

The Convention on Cybercrime (the Convention) adopted in the framework of the Council of Europe is the main international legislative tool in the fight against cybercrime. It is the first international treaty on crimes committed via the Internet and other computer networks, dealing particularly with infringements of copyright, computer-related fraud, child pornography and violations of network security. Lithuania is among its signatory states, therefore, the provisions of the Convention have become binding on its legislator, obliging it to take all necessary (...) measures to harmonize national legal acts with the framework set out therein. The Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania (the CC) in force is the legal act establishing liability for criminal offences known as computer crimes and Internet crimes. Although the legislator of Lithuania had been combating cybercrimes since as early as 1994 by means of the amendments to the Soviet era Criminal Code of 1961, a significant effort was required to transpose the requirements of the Convention into the Lithuanian law, starting from the year 2007. The end result was not always as expected, leaving several serious gaps in the field of criminalization, which are thoroughly addressed in the article. In particular, this article deals with the topic of computer-related crimes and the legal approaches related to substantive criminal law of the Republic of Lithuania. The study is based on a comparative legal analysis of the Lithuanian CC and the Convention. (shrink)

Multiple states are at risk of becoming uninhabitable due to climate change, forcing their populations to flee. While the 1951 Refugee Convention provides the gold standard of international protection, it is only applied to a limited subset of people fleeing their countries, those who suffer persecution, which most people fleeing climate change cannot establish. While many journalists and non-lawyers freely use the term “climate refugees,” governments, and courts, as well as UNHCR and many refugee experts, have excluded most climate refugees (...) from the Convention as a matter of legal interpretation. In our 2015 paper, “Unable to Return in the 1951 Refugee Convention: Stateless Refugees and Climate Change”, we sought to reopen the debate on “climate refugees” by arguing that some climate refugees qualify under the 1951 Convention as it is currently written (even if they are not persecuted): those who are stateless and are unable to return to their country of origin because climate change has rendered it uninhabitable. Our interpretation, however, has been rejected by Goodwin-Gill and McAdam (2021) and by Foster and Lambert (2019), which explicitly responds to our paper. Here, we address and respond to their arguments, and develop a new supplementary one, drawing on the principle of systemic integration, as enshrined in Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. (shrink)

When is a belief or judgment justified? One might be forgiven for thinking the search for single answer to this question to be hopeless. The concept of justification is required to fulfil several tasks: to evaluate beliefs epistemically, to fill in the gap between truth and knowledge, to describe the virtuous organization of one’s beliefs, to describe the relationship between evidence and theory (and thus relate to confirmation and probabilification). While some of these may be held to overlap, the prospects (...) for fulfilling all may well seem poor. Furthermore the internalist requires that justification be an introspectible property of beliefs and a fundamental epistemic concept, while the externalist is often happy to ignore the concept altogether or at best regard it as an embarrassing add-on to their epistemology. In the light of this one might reasonably give up on justification altogether or adopt pluralist approach, denying that justification is any single property of beliefs of judgments. (shrink)

Diese erste, umfassende Darstellung von Kants Philosophie der Mathematik unternimmt es, die Aussagen Kants über Mathematik im Kontext seiner jeweiligen philosophischen Problemkonstellation zu verorten. Darüber hinaus werden die Ergebnisse dieser Zuweisungen einer systematischen Evaluation unterworfen. Der Befund: Kants Mathematikbegriff ist durch Prämissen geprägt, die sich aus seinen generellen philosophischen Einstellungen ergeben. Es sind also nicht so sehr die immanenten Probleme der Mathematik, die Kants Bild vom Wesen des Mathematischen bestimmten, sondern vielmehr die systematischen Probleme der Philosophie, die ihn zu einer (...) Auseinandersetzung mit den epistemischen und methodologischen Aspekten der Mathematik nötigten. (shrink)

J. Kaerst, following a suggestion made by Ranke, conjectured that Diodorus' source for Alexander, whom he identified with Clitarchus, derived information from the mercenaries who served Darius. This conjecture has been developed into an elaborate theory by Sir William Tarn, a theory that has found some favour. He holds that the ‘mercenaries' source’, which I shall henceforth call M, was Diodorus' ‘principal guide [my italics] down to Issus’, and also ‘largely used’ by Curtius ; from certain texts in (...) Curtius Tarn infers that M went down to Darius' death, and he thinks that till that point both Diodorus and Curtius continued to draw upon him, as well as upon other authorities. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss how Causal Decision Theory should be modified to handle a class of problematic cases involving deterministic laws. Causal Decision Theory, as it stands, is problematically biased against your endorsing deterministic propositions (for example it tells you to deny Newtonian physics, regardless of how confident you are of its truth). Our response is that this is not a problem for Causal Decision Theory per se, but arises because of the standard method for assessing the truth of (...) certain counterfactuals. The truth of deterministic laws is `modally fragile' on the standard semantics for counterfactuals: if determinism is true and you were to do otherwise, the laws would be different. We provide two ways of avoiding this problem: 1) supplement the standard semantics for counterfactuals with impossible worlds, or 2) introduce rigid designators into the description of problematic decision situations. We argue that both of these approaches are well-motivated and can be readily incorporated into Lewisian Causal Decision Theory. (shrink)

The article analyses legal preconditions for personal identification in physical and electronic space (hereinafter – cyberspace). Analysis of legal governing of identification in physical space is followed by the analysis of the same in cyberspace. Compulsory elements of identification in physical space and compulsory and non-compulsory elements of identification in cyberspace are provided which leads to conclusions about problem aspects concerning personal identification in cyberspace and related legal governing. This scientific article consists of four main chapters. The first chapter „Identity (...) and Personal Identification“ looks into identity, its content and elements alongside with personal identification. The second chapter „Personal Identification in Physical Space“ scrutinizes legal preconditions of identification in physical space in Lithuania. The third chapter „Personal Identification in Cyberspace“ looks into elements of legally regulated and non-regulated personal identification in cyberspace and discusses identity of a person in cyberspace. The fourth chapter „Electronic Identity of a Person and Legal Regulation“ analyzes and systematizes elements of electronic identity of the person and presumes their reliability and mandatory legal governing. (shrink)

Two sources of possible disagreement in bioethics may be associated with pessimism about what bioethics can achieve. First, pluralism implies that bioethics engages with interlocutors who hold divergent moral beliefs. Pessimists might believe that these disagreements significantly limit the extent to which bioethics can provide normatively robust guidance in relevant areas. Second, the interdisciplinary nature of bioethics suggests that interlocutors may hold divergent views on the nature of bioethics itself—particularly its practicality. Pessimists may suppose that interdisciplinary disagreements could frustrate the (...) goals of bioethics. In this article, I explore how wonder may alleviate the concerns of the first group of pessimists regarding problems associated with pluralism, provided that we are willing to accept some interdisciplinary frustrations. Then, I invite readers of this issue of The Journal of Medicine & Philosophy to test these intuitions by considering the role of wonder in these articles. (shrink)

I develop an expressivist account of verbal disagreements as practical disagreements over how to use words rather than factual disagreements over what words actually mean. This account enjoys several advantages over others in the literature: it can be implemented in a neo-Stalnakerian possible worlds framework; it accounts for cases where speakers are undecided on how exactly to interpret an expression; it avoids appeals to fraught notions like subject matter, charitable interpretation, and joint-carving; and it naturally extends to an analysis of (...) metalinguistic negotiations. (shrink)

A common objection to the very idea of conceptual engineering is the topic continuity problem: whenever one tries to “reengineer” a concept, one only shifts attention away from one concept to another. Put differently, there is no such thing as conceptual revision: there’s only conceptual replacement. Here, I show that topic continuity is compatible with conceptual replacement. Whether the topic is preserved in an act of conceptual replacement simply depends on what is being replaced (a conceptual tool or a conceptual (...) role) and what the topic under discussion is. Thus, the topic continuity problem only arises from a failure to specify these two things. (shrink)

By the end of the seventeenth century, high culture had banished astrology as a mixture of superstition and imposture. The great astrological treatises of the past - in particular the Ptolemaic Tetrabiblos (whose very authenticity was cast into doubt) - stopped being published; a hodgepodge of minor writings, mostly preserved in manuscript form, lay mouldering in oblivion in the far recesses of libraries. It was only in the latter decades of the eighteenth century that the learned world began once again (...) to pay attention to the ancient art, when historians of ancient religions and science began to realize the impossibility of exploring their subjects without taking into account a presence that could be neither denied nor underestimated. The history of astrology then began to take shape as a specific field of study, and historicophilological research was able to employ it as a tool for penetrating the tie between mythos and logos, at the origin of western civilization. Along with the image of the Greek miracle, an overly simplistic and schematic definition of reason and science began to decline. It was necessary to isolate, as Hermann Usener sought to do, the “wild germ of science” and to acknowledge the fact that logic and magic bloom on the same stem, as Aby Warburg has often reminded us, with reference to Jean Paul. (shrink)

This paper commences by making a case for a naturalized approach to knowledge‐first epistemology. On this basis it then goes on to describe and defend a naturalized, functionalist account of group knowledge. It then contrasts this with Jennifer Lackey's (2021) account of the epistemological status of groups.

In a letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco dei Medici, dating from 1477 to 1478, the Platonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino develops the classical theme of the correspondence between man and cosmos on the basis of the astrological techniques. The inner heaven, a term of the relationship between macrocosm and microcosm, takes the form of what astrologers call the birth theme: the series of astral positions at the moment of birth and related to its place. Taking up Origen’s theme of the inner (...) heavens, he systematically applies the theory of planet-signs to deciphering underlying themes of individual personality. (shrink)

O artigo apresenta o livro O fogo e o relato. Ensaios sobre criação, escrita, arte e livros, do filósofo italiano Giorgio Agamben, discutindo alguns dos limiares poéticos do seu pensamento político. Parte-se de alguns dos debates subentendidos de Agamben com Jacques Derrida sobre linguagem e literatura, passa-se pelo ato poético como ato de resistência, define-se a potência inoperante presente em gestos de interrupção discursiva e chega-se à discussão sobre vida e obra em contexto biopolítico. Seguindo a ordem dos capítulos, mas (...) sem pretender esgotá-los, o pressuposto do artigo é de que o italiano, que tem a poesia e a literatura geralmente vinculada a uma espécie de “primeira fase” de sua obra, também na série biopolítica nomeada Homo Sacer lançou mão da poesia e da literatura como forte estratégia de resistência e abertura de limiares ante a lógica que se desenha do poder soberano. Se, por um lado, o livro pode ser lido como formando um círculo hermenêutico, os capítulos, por outro lado, permitem ao leitor perceber as principais linhas em que filosofia, literatura, poesia e política se entrecruzam para o pensador italiano. Por isso, também, recorreu-se à relação direta de alguns argumentos expostos em O fogo e o relato tanto com noções e argumentos presentes em outros livros de Agamben, quanto pontualmente com outros interlocutores. (shrink)

In the paper, a detailed analysis of some new logical aspects of Cantor’s diagonal proof of the uncountability of continuum is presented. For the first time, strict formal, axiomatic, and algorithmic definitions of the notions of potential and actual infinities are presented. It is shown that the actualization of infinite sets and sequences used in Cantor’s proof is a necessary, but hidden, condition of the proof. The explication of the necessary condition and its factual usage within the framework of Cantor’s (...) proof makes, Cantor’s proof invalid. It’s shown that traditional Cantor’s proof has a second necessary, but hidden as well, condition which is teleological by its nature, i.e., is not mathematical. The explication of the second necessary condition makes Cantor’s statement on the uncountability of continuum unprovable from the point of view of classical logic.One of the most dramatic facts in history of science is connected just with the notion of actual infinity and consists in the following. On the one hand, Aristotle, Berkeley, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, Gauss, Kant, Cauchy, Kronecker, Hermite, Poincaré, Bair, Borel, Brouwer, Quine, Wittgenstein, Weyl, Luzin, and a lot of other outstanding creators of classical logic and classical mathematics, during millenniums, stated categorically and insistently warned about that the actual infinity is a self-contradictory notion and its usage in mathematics is inadmissible (e.g., according to Poincare, “There is no actual infinity. - Cantorians forgot that and fell into contradictions. Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered”). On the other hand, a lot of outstanding scientists of the XX c.c., such as Hilbert, Church, Turing, Gödel, etc., and modern axiomatic set theory as a whole ignored this (intuitive though) opinion of genii and accepted Cantor’s “transfinite paradise”, based on the actual infinity. In the paper some logical, philosophical, and psychological aspects of this historical “favorable opposition” are analyzed, and the fact that the scientific intuition of genii has won the historical battle against the mytho-’logic’ of Cantor’s transfinite ‘paradise’ is explained and logically justified. (shrink)

In the paper, a detailed analysis of some new logical aspects of Cantor’s diagonal proof of the uncountability of continuum is presented. For the first time, strict formal, axiomatic, and algorithmic definitions of the notions of potential and actual infinities are presented. It is shown that the actualization of infinite sets and sequences used in Cantor’s proof is a necessary, but hidden, condition of the proof. The explication of the necessary condition and its factual usage within the framework of Cantor’s (...) proof makes, Cantor’s proof invalid. It’s shown that traditional Cantor’s proof has a second necessary, but hidden as well, condition which is teleological by its nature, i.e., is not mathematical. The explication of the second necessary condition makes Cantor’s statement on the uncountability of continuum unprovable from the point of view of classical logic.One of the most dramatic facts in history of science is connected just with the notion of actual infinity and consists in the following. On the one hand, Aristotle, Berkeley, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, Gauss, Kant, Cauchy, Kronecker, Hermite, Poincaré, Bair, Borel, Brouwer, Quine, Wittgenstein, Weyl, Luzin, and a lot of other outstanding creators of classical logic and classical mathematics, during millenniums, stated categorically and insistently warned about that the actual infinity is a self-contradictory notion and its usage in mathematics is inadmissible (e.g., according to Poincare, “There is no actual infinity. - Cantorians forgot that and fell into contradictions. Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered”). On the other hand, a lot of outstanding scientists of the XX c.c., such as Hilbert, Church, Turing, Gödel, etc., and modern axiomatic set theory as a whole ignored this (intuitive though) opinion of genii and accepted Cantor’s “transfinite paradise”, based on the actual infinity. In the paper some logical, philosophical, and psychological aspects of this historical “favorable opposition” are analyzed, and the fact that the scientific intuition of genii has won the historical battle against the mytho-’logic’ of Cantor’s transfinite ‘paradise’ is explained and logically justified. (shrink)

A new speculative ontology of aesthetics. In Aesthesis and Perceptronium, Alexander Wilson presents a theory of materialist and posthumanist aesthetics founded on an original speculative ontology that addresses the interconnections of experience, cognition, organism, and matter. Entering the active fields of contemporary thought known as the new materialisms and realisms, Wilson argues for a rigorous redefining of the criteria that allow us to discriminate between those materials and objects where aesthesis (perception, cognition) takes place and those where it doesn't. (...) Aesthesis and Perceptronium negotiates between indiscriminately pluralist views that attribute mentation to all things and eliminative views that deny the existence of mentation even in humans. By recasting aesthetic questions within the framework of "epistemaesthetics," which considers cognition and aesthetics as belonging to a single category that can neither be fully disentangled nor fully reduced to either of its terms, Wilson forges a theory of nonhuman experience that avoids this untenable dilemma. Through a novel consideration of the evolutionary origins of cognition and its extension in technological developments, the investigation culminates in a rigorous reevaluation of the status of matter, information, computation, causality, and time in terms of their logical and causal engagement with the activities of human and nonhuman agents. (shrink)

This is the second part of a two-part series on the logic of hyperlogic, a formal system for regimenting metalogical claims in the object language (even within embedded environments). Part A provided a minimal logic for hyperlogic that is sound and complete over the class of all models. In this part, we extend these completeness results to stronger logics that are sound and complete over restricted classes of models. We also investigate the logic of hyperlogic when the language is enriched (...) with hyperintensional operators such as counterfactual conditionals and belief operators. (shrink)