BackgroundThe Asclepion of Epidaurus is one of the first healing environments in the world. Descendants of Asclepius, specifically medical students, have been singularly deprived of any information concerning this legacy. This article illuminates the role of Asclepion of Epidaurus and examines the view of medical students upon the subject and the possible benefits of this knowledge in their medical education.MethodsThe participants were 105 senior-year students from the Athens Medical School, who attended a multi-media assisted lecture related to the structure and (...) the role of the Asclepion of Epidaurus. Afterwards, they answered anonymously a questionnaire of 12 pairs of opposite adjectives in order to describe their view regarding the meaning of Asclepion. The method used in the evaluation of their answers was that of semantic differential.ResultsThe attitude of the students towards the meaning of Asclepion was positive, showing interest and excitement about a powerful, though unfamiliar piece of knowledge.ConclusionToday’s novice doctors have welcomed the concept of Asclepion as essential knowledge for the service they will be called to fulfill. The potential benefits of the Asclepian ideals in medical education and ethos are thoroughly discussed. (shrink)

Previous studies on body ownership illusions have shown that under certain multimodal conditions, healthy people can experience artificial body-parts as if they were part of their own body, with direct physiological consequences for the real limb that gets ‘substituted’. In this study we wanted to assess (a) whether healthy people can experience ‘missing’ a body-part through illusory ownership of an amputated virtual body, and (b) whether this would cause corticospinal excitability changes in muscles associated with the ‘missing’ body-part. Forty right-handed (...) participants saw a virtual body from a first person perspective but for half of them the virtual body was missing a part of its right arm. Single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied before and after the experiment to left and right motor cortices. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and the extensor digitorum communis (EDC) of each hand. We found that the stronger the illusion of amputation and arm ownership, the more the reduction of MEP amplitudes of the EDC muscle for the contralateral sensorimotor cortex. In contrast, no association was found for the EDC amplitudes in the ipsilateral cortex and for the FDI amplitudes in both contralateral and ipsilateral cortices. Our study provides evidence that a short-term illusory perception of missing a body-part can trigger inhibitory effects on corticospinal pathways and importantly in the absence of any limb deafferentation or disuse. (shrink)

This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

The author presents and defends three theses: (1) "the first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology." (2) "the second is that the concepts of obligation, And duty... And of what is morally right and wrong, And of the moral sense of 'ought', Ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible...." (3) "the third thesis is that (...) the differences between the well-Known english writers on moral philosophy from sidgwick to the present day are of little importance." (staff). (shrink)

A pandemic of misinformation is said to spread alongside the COVID-19 pandemic. The need to properly inform the public is stronger than ever in the fight against misinformation, but what ‘properly’ means in this context is a quite controversial issue. In what follows, I discuss the challenges we face in communicating COVID-19 health information to the public, with the aim to shed light on some ethical and policy issues emerging in science (communication) in times of crises.

Beyond the observation that both speakers and listeners rapidly inspect the visual targets of referring expressions, it has been argued that such gaze may constitute part of the communicative signal. In this study, we investigate whether a speaker may, in principle, exploit listener gaze to improve communicative success. In the context of a virtual environment where listeners follow computer-generated instructions, we provide two kinds of support for this claim. First, we show that listener gaze provides a reliable real-time index of (...) understanding even in dynamic and complex environments, and on a per-utterance basis. Second, we show that a language generation system that uses listener gaze to provide rapid feedback improves overall task performance in comparison with two systems that do not use gaze. Aside from demonstrating the utility of listener gaze in situated communication, our findings open the door to new methods for developing and evaluating multi-modal models of situated interaction. (shrink)

Current debates over inductive risk and the role of values in science have largely revolved around the question of the moral responsibilities of scientists: Do scientists have the duty to consider the potential non-epistemic consequences of theories they advocate and, if yes, what values should be taken into account in decision-making? The paper discusses two different – though potentially complementary – responses to this question: a) H. Douglas’s view that scientists should avoid causing reckless or negligent harm to others as (...) a result of the decisions they make and b) K. Elliott’s Multiple Goals Criterion. Drawing from the case of potential coronavirus transmission by sharing the Holy Communion that recently divided Greek society and medical experts, it shows the tensions emerging between autonomy and the moral responsibilities of scientists, when the boundaries of science are blurred and the epistemic goal of truth is inconsistent with alternative goals. It argues that the balance attempted between scientific principles and religious beliefs was unattainable and concludes that the need to distinguish between epistemic and non-epistemic values, which is traditionally related to the ideal of value free science, should be reconsidered and even prioritized among the responsibilities of scientists. (shrink)

This study investigates the financial effects of additions to and deletions from the most well-known social stock index: the MSCI KLD 400. Our study makes use of the unique setting that index reconstitution provides and allows us to bypass possible issues of endogeneity that commonly plague empirical studies of the link between corporate social and financial performance. By examining not only short-term returns but also trading activity, earnings per share, and long-term performance of stocks that are involved in these events, (...) we bring forward evidence of a ‘social index effect’ where unethical transgressions are penalized more heavily than responsibility is rewarded. We find that the addition of a stock to the index does not lead to material changes in its market price, whereas deletions are accompanied by negative cumulative abnormal returns. Trading volumes for deleted stocks are significantly increased on the event date, while the operational performances of the respective firms deteriorate after their deletion from the social index. (shrink)

This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed (...) by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man. (shrink)

Viruses are essentially composed of a nucleic acid (segmented or not, DNA, or RNA) and a protein coat. Despite their simplicity, these small pathogens are responsible for significant economic and humanitarian losses that have had dramatic consequences in the course of human history. Since their discovery, scientists have developed different strategies to efficiently detect viruses, using all possible viral features. Viruses shape, proteins, and nucleic acid are used in viral detection. In this review, the development of these techniques, especially for (...) plant and mammalian viruses, their strengths and weaknesses as well as the latest cutting-edge technologies that may be playing important roles in the years to come are described. (shrink)

The multitude of facial expressions that humans are capable of is particularly potent in capturing attention. Facial expressions provide crucial information regarding a person's internal state and intentions and therefore the rapid recognition of these expressions can facilitate efficient social interaction. This article reviews evidence from a number of domains and argues that common personality traits—that are distributed normally in the general population—can have a profound influence on the processing of facial expressions. It synthesizes data from behavioral and neuroimaging research (...) to illustrate that these personality traits are an important determinant of emotion processing. The article focuses on the processing of facial emotional expressions paying particular attention to the influence of common personality traits in influencing emotion processing. A complete understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in the processing of facial expressions, should take individual differences in personality traits into account. (shrink)

Normal propositional modal systems This first chapter has two main aims. One is to give a general account of the propositional modal systems that we shall ...

An examination of verbal hallucinations and thought insertion as examples of "alienated self-consciousness.".

This book traces the intellectual revolution initiated by Thales in the sixth century BC to its culmination in the metaphysics of Parmenides.

The present study explores Greek parents? views on parental educational involvement and its impact on adolescent scholastic and social development. Specifically, aspects of parental involvement such as the achieved objectives of current parent?school communication, the psychological climate dominating teacher?parent interactions and parents? suggestions for improvement of current policies and practices are examined. Four hundred and seventy?five parents participated in the study. Findings showed that family?school communication is believed to be insufficient in Greece, despite the fact that parents tend to: (1) (...) regard their cooperation with teachers as determinative of adolescent academic and psychosocial development; (2) consider teachers to be friendly and caring; and (3) believe that secondary school provides some opportunities for constructive parental involvement. These paradoxes are discussed and explained as a result of radical changes in current social and educational values, principles and objectives. (shrink)

The distinction between being a dog (metaphorically) and being mad in ancient Greek philosophy- focusing on Diogenes the Cynic- and tragedy. It is with regards to ancient philosophy and tragedy because the former dogginess is aware of itself in that there is a theory behind it and aims at the good life, whereas the latter, I argue, is destructive and closer to madness. Keywords: Tragedies, Early Cynicism, dogs, madness, metaphor.

En octobre 2006, à 150 m du stade antique d’Olympie, a été mis au jour un mur en calcaire daté de l’époque romaine. La fouille d’urgence menée par la VIIe éphorie des Antiquités préhistoriques et classiques en 2007 et 2008 a dégagé un édifice antique rectangulaire à deux pièces, en poros coquillier, probablement du ve s. av. J.‑C. et, à l’Est, des bains romains. Au cours de la fouille, furent découverts des cerbères bicéphales avec des galettes (popana) dans la gueule. (...) L’un d’eux porte l’inscription dédicatoire ΜΑΤΡΙ ΚΟΡ[ΑΙ ΒΑ]ΣΙΛΕΙ (« à Déméter, à Coré et au roi [c.‑à‑d. Pluton] »), ce qui nous autorise à identifier le sanctuaire comme celui de Déméter Chamyné dont parle Pausanias (VI 21, 1‑3). Cette fouille a aussi livré 33 monnaies de bronze et une monnaie fourrée, dont les mieux conservées datent principalement du iiie s. et du ive s. apr. J.‑C. Dans le lot, on reconnaît parmi les monnaies locales six exemplaires d’Élis, dont les plus anciennes remontent au ive s. av. J.‑C. et les plus récentes datent de l’époque d’Hadrien. La présence de quatre monnaies de Sicyone et de deux monnaies de la région d’Héraia atteste des liens de l’Élide avec le reste du Péloponnèse. (shrink)

This entirely new work guides the reader through the most basic systems of modal propositional logic up to systems of modal predicate with identity, dealing with both technical developments and discussing philosophical applications.

Editor James Fetzer presents an analytical and historical introduction and a comprehensive bibliography together with selections of many of Carl G. Hempel's most important studies to give students and scholars an ideal opportunity to appreciate the enduring contributions of one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century.

Biological evolution is a complex blend of ever changing structural stability, variability and emergence of new phe- notypes, niches, ecosystems. We wish to argue that the evo- lution of life marks the end of a physics world view of law entailed dynamics. Our considerations depend upon dis- cussing the variability of the very ”contexts of life”: the in- teractions between organisms, biological niches and ecosys- tems. These are ever changing, intrinsically indeterminate and even unprestatable: we do not know ahead of (...) time the ”niches” which constitute the boundary conditions on selec- tion. More generally, by the mathematical unprestatability of the ”phase space”, no laws of mo- tion can be formulated for evolution. We call this radical emergence, from life to life. The purpose of this paper is the integration of variation and diversity in a sound concep- tual frame and situate unpredictability at a novel theoretical level, that of the very phase space. Our argument will be carried on in close comparisons with physics and the mathematical constructions of phase spaces in that discipline. The role of symmetries as invariant preserving transformations will allow us to under- stand the nature of physical phase spaces and to stress the differences required for a sound biological theoretizing. In this frame, we discuss the novel notion of ”enablement”. Life lives in a web of enablement and radical emergence. This will restrict causal analyses to differential cases. Mutations or other causal differ- ences will allow us to stress that ”non conservation princi- ples” are at the core of evolution, in contrast to physical dynamics, largely based on conservation principles as sym- metries. Critical transitions, the main locus of symmetry changes in physics, will be discussed, and lead to ”extended criticality” as a conceptual frame for a better understanding of the living state of matter. (shrink)

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

Today's digital revolution is a worldwide phenomenon, with profound and often differential implications for communities around the world and their relationships to one another. This book presents a new, explicitly international theory of media ethics, incorporating non-Western perspectives and drawing deeply on both moral philosophy and the philosophy of technology. Clifford Christians develops an ethics grounded in three principles - truth, human dignity, and non-violence - and shows how these principles can be applied across a wide range of cases and (...) domains. The book is a guide for media professionals, scholars, and educators who are concerned with the global ramifications of new technologies and with creating a more just world. (shrink)

Lycan not only uses the numerous arguments against materialism, and functionalist theories of mind in particular, to gain a more detailed positive view of the ..

Clinical ethics consultations exist to support patients, families and clinicians who are facing ethical or moral challenges related to patient care. They provide a forum for open communication, where all stakeholders are encouraged to express their concerns and articulate their viewpoints. Ethics consultations can be requested by patients, caregivers or members of a patient’s clinical or supportive team. Althoughpatientsand by extension their families (especially in cases of decisional incapacity) are the common denominators in most ethics consultations, these constituents are theleastlikely (...) to request them. At many healthcare organisations in the USA, ethics consultations are overwhelmingly requested by physicians and other clinicians. We believe it is vital that healthcare institutions bridge the knowledge gaps and power imbalances over access to ethics consultation services through augmented policies, procedures and infrastructure. With enhanced education and support, patients and families may use ethics consultation to elevate their voices and prioritise their unique characteristics and preferences in the delivery of their healthcare. Empowering patients and families to request ethics consultation can only strengthen the patient/family–clinician relationship, enhance the shared decision-making model of care and ultimately lead to improved patient-centred care. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Schelling assigns knowledge of the absolute first principle of philosophy to intellectual intuition. Schelling's doctrine of intellectual intuition raises two important questions for interpreters. First, given that his doctrine undergoes several changes before and after his identity philosophy, to what extent can he be said to “hold onto” the same “sense” of it by the 1830s, as he claims? Second, given that his doctrine of intellectual intuition restricts absolute idealism to what he calls a “science of reason”, (...) which he says cannot prove the absolute’s existence, what other doctrine does he require in order to prove this? I will answer these questions by tracing the shifts in Schelling’s doctrine of intellectual intuition from the 1790s to the 1830s and drawing out its evolving methodological role within his science of intelligibility. (shrink)