Background:The process of dying in intensive care units is complex as the technological environment shapes clinical decisions. Decisions at the end of life require the involvement of patient, families and healthcare professionals. The degree of involvement can vary depending on the professional and social culture of the unit. Nurses have an important role to play in caring for dying patients and their families; however, their knowledge is not always sought.Objectives:This study explored nurses’ care practices at the end of life, with (...) the objective of describing and identifying end of life care practices that nurses contribute to, with an emphasis on culture, religious experiences and professional identity.Research Design and context:Grounded theory was used. In all, 10 nurses from intensive care unit in two large hospitals in Bahrain were participated.Ethical Considerations:Approval to carry out the research was given by the Research Ethics Committee of the host institution, and the two hospitals.Findings:A core category, Death Avoidance Talk, was emerged. This was supported by two major categories: (1) order-oriented care and (2) signalling death and care shifting.Discussion:Death talk was avoided by the nurses, doctors and family members. When a decision was made by the medical team that a patient was not to be resuscitated, the nurses took this as a sign that death was imminent. This led to a process of signalling death to family and of shifting care to family members.Conclusion:Despite the avoidance of death talk and nurses’ lack of professional autonomy, they created awareness that death was imminent to family members and ensured that end of life care was given in a culturally sensitive manner and aligned to Islamic values. (shrink)

In modern warfare, civilian populations may find themselves under immediate personal danger with very little warning. While there are ways to minimize this danger, there is a paucity of literature discussing this modern dilemma, and it is therefore important to try to address these situations in advance both logistically and ethically. Discussion of this case includes several relevant ethical principles.

Este trabalho apresenta um relato de experiência de ações realizadas no enfrentamento do bullying, desenvolvidas em uma escola privada do interior do Rio Grande do Sul. As intervenções foram desenvolvidas a partir de três Projetos: Bullying: Somos bonitos pelas nossas diferenças, bullying não é brincadeira e superando o bullying e outras formas de violência. Participaram da ação os alunos da Educação Infantil ao Ensino Médio, matriculados na Instituição nos anos de 2016, 2017 e 2018. As intervenções foram desenvolvidas pela psicóloga (...) escolar, acadêmicas de psicologia, pela assistente social e pelas orientadoras educacionais. As ações tiveram como intuito oferecer espaços de informação, diálogo e de reflexão sobre a problemática do bullying, a fim de prevenir situações de violência entre os pares. A partir das ações, os alunos puderam conceituar o fenômeno, analisar suas causas e consequências, diferenciar violência de brincadeiras entre os pares e refletir sobre formas de superar essa problemática. (shrink)

The humanitarian idea underlying this article is to attempt an epidemiological interpretation of the classic Hippocratic triad "Medicine consists of three elements: the disease, the patient and the doctor". In the XIII century, the Syrian doctor Abul-Faraj in his saying: "Look, there are three of us – you, me, and the disease. If you are on my side, it will be easier for the two of us to defeat her. But, if you go over to her side, I alone (...) will not be able to defeat you both" deciphered the magical meaning of these words. For centuries, the fundamental integrity of this formula has been an ethical and professional guarantee of the success of each patient's treatment and the prospect of building a personalized healthcare system. In this particular article, we have searched for new content of three key elements of the textbook aphorism in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. An understanding of the role of the doctor – "I" as the whole complex of efforts aimed at fighting the pandemic. Patient status "You" means the whole society during a pandemic, and even is as a long-term message for the physical, mental, social and geopolitical health of future generations. The meaning of "Disease" should be understood from the perspective of the problems of the entire health system and logistical ignorance, which has become an obstacle to achieving ethical integrity in managing epidemic challenges. The paper shows how adherence to the ethical principles of social responsibility, trust, and solidarity should become the moral accompaniment of the entire complex of sanitary, anti-epidemic, economic, legal, and social technologies that can ensure success in the fight against the pandemic and prevent the development of unjustified risks. (shrink)

How is it that we think and refer in the first-person way? For most philosophers in the analytic tradition, the problem is essentially this: how two apparently conflicting kinds of properties can be reconciled and united as properties of the same entity. What is special about the first person has to be reconciled with what is ordinary about it. The range of responses reduces to four basic options. The orthodox view is optimistic: there really is a way of reconciling these (...) apparently contradictory properties as contained within the same thing. The heretical views are pessimistic and content to be so: there is no such way, and that is because there is simply nothing to reconcile – because there is really nothing special about what is in question; or there is really nothing ordinary about it; or there is really nothing …. (shrink)

Philosophical theories of emotions, and to an extent some theories of scientific psychology, represent attempts to capture the essence of emotions basically as they are conceived in common sense psychology. Although there are problems, the success of explanations of our behavior in terms of believes, desires and emotions creates a presumption that, at some level of abstraction, they reflect important elements in our psychological nature. It is incumbent on a theory of emotions to provide an account of two salient facts (...) about emotions as conceived in common sense psychology. As intentional states, emotions have representational and rational properties: emotions represent states of affairs; and they are rationally related to other mental representations, figure in rational explanations of behavior, and are open to rational assessment. Emotions also have a close relationship to a range of non-intentional phenomena: in typical cases, emotions involve physiological changes, usually associated with the activation of the autonomic nervous system, which are proprioceptively experienced; and they often involve behavioral tendencies, as well. (shrink)

A review of deVries' and O'Shea's books, both titled "Wilfrid Sellars". By Jaroslav Peregrin.

Thomas Kuhn had little to say about scientific change in biological science, and biologists are ambivalent about how applicable his framework is for their disciplines. We apply Kuhn’s account of paradigm change to evolutionary microbiology, where key Darwinian tenets are being challenged by two decades of findings from molecular phylogenetics. The chief culprit is lateral gene transfer, which undermines the role of vertical descent and the representation of evolutionary history as a tree of life. To assess Kuhn’s relevance to this (...) controversy, we add a social analysis of the scientists involved to the historical and philosophical debates. We conclude that while Kuhn’s account may capture aspects of the pattern of an episode of scientific change, he has little to say about how the process of generating new understandings is occurring in evolutionary microbiology. Once Kuhn’s application is limited to that of an initial investigative probe into how scientific problem-solving occurs, his disciplinary scope becomes broader. (shrink)

It is common to regard love, friendship, and other associational ties to others as an important part of a happy or flourishing life. This would be easy enough to understand if we focused on friendships based on pleasure, or associations, such as business partnerships, predicated on mutual advantage. For then we could understand in a straightforward way how these interpersonal relationships would be valuable for someone involved in such relationships just insofar as they caused her pleasure or causally promoted her (...) own independent interests. But many who regard love, friendship, and other associational ties as an important part of a happy or flourishing life suppose that in many sorts of associations—especially intimate associations—the proper attitude among associates is concern for the other for the other's own sake, not just for the pleasure or benefits one can extract from one's associates. It is fairly clear how having friends of this sort is beneficial. What is less clear is how being a friend of this sort might contribute to one's own happiness or well-being. Even if we can explain this, it looks as if the contribution that friendship makes to one's happiness could not be the reason one has to care for friends, for that would seem to make one's concern for others instrumental, not a concern for the other for her own sake. (shrink)

Consequentialism is often criticized for failing to accommodate impersonal constraints and personal options. A common consequentialist response is to acknowledge the anticonsequentialist intuitions but to argue either that the consequentialist can, after all, accommodate the allegedly recalcitrant intuitions or that, where accommodation is impossible, the recalcitrant intuition can be dismissed for want of an adequate philosophical rationale. Whereas these consequentialist responses have some plausibility, associational duties represent a somewhat different challenge to consequentialism, inasmuch as they embody neither impersonal constraints nor (...) personal options, but rather personal constraints. Our intuitions about associational duties resist capture within the intellectual net of consequentialism, and such duties do admit of a philosophical rationale at least as plausible as anything the consequentialist has to offer. (shrink)

This study explores consumer expectations and attitudes related to gender-based price discrimination. Although much research has focused on pay inequalities and gender diversity, considerably less attention has been focused on situations in which men and women are charged different prices based on gender. In two studies, expectations and attitudes toward gender-based price discrimination are examined. In Study 1, two scenarios related to prices at hair salon and dry cleaning services were manipulated to measure expectations and attitudes toward gender-based price discrimination. (...) We found that the nature of the service results in expectations of price differences between men and women. We also found men expect gender-based pricing more than women. In Study 2, qualitative research was conducted to reveal the cognitions that men and women experience when exposed to gender-based price discrimination. (shrink)

Here we prove the existence of sheaf cohomology theory in arbitrary o-minimal structures.

Recent discoveries of geographical patterns in microbial distribution are undermining microbiology’s exclusively ecological explanations of biogeography and their fundamental assumption that ‘everything is everywhere: but the environment selects’. This statement was generally promulgated by Dutch microbiologist Martinus Wilhelm Beijerinck early in the twentieth century and specifically articulated in 1934 by his compatriot, Lourens G. M. Baas Becking. The persistence of this precept throughout twentieth-century microbiology raises a number of issues in relation to its formulation and widespread acceptance. This paper will (...) trace the conceptual history of Beijerinck’s claim that ‘everything is everywhere’ in relation to a more general account of its theoretical, experimental and institutional context. His principle also needs to be situated in relationship to plant and animal biogeography, which, this paper will argue, forms a continuum of thought with microbial biogeography. Finally, a brief overview of the contemporary microbiological research challenging ‘everything is everywhere’ reveals that philosophical issues from Beijerinck’s era of microbiology still provoke intense discussion in twenty-first century investigations of microbial biogeography. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to clarify the role of ‘wonder’ in education. Most of us who work in education want to provide valuable experiences for our students, and we want them to be driven by intrinsic values such as truth and recognition of the dignity of human existence. However, whilst I echo many of the sentiments espoused by advocates of the utility and ethical significance of wonder, I contend that some recent developments—and in particular, Schinkel’s argument that ‘deep’ (‘contemplative’ (...) or ‘cosmic’) wonder has a ‘fundamental’ role in education—are misconceived. This is, I argue, because any concept deployable within educational spaces (whether formal or informal) must pay due regard to the conceptual constraints of the concept of ‘education’; that is, attention must be paid to the role of ‘learning’. Schinkel’s proposals are, I suggest, vulnerable to a critique of sentimentalism and excessive romanticism. As such, they offer little in terms of practical import for educators. As I will propose, if we are to take ‘wonder’ seriously in educational contexts, we must pay attention to the purpose of wonder as an epistemic emotion; namely, aiming for knowledge and understanding, and getting there requires sensitivity to practical know-how and conceptual competence. (shrink)

The need to address our question arises from two sources, one in Kant and the other in a certain type of response to so-called Reformed epistemology. The first source consists in a tendency to distinguish theoretical beliefs from practical beliefs , and to treat theistic belief as mere practical belief. We trace this tendency in Kant's corpus, and compare and contrast it with Aquinas's view and a more conservative Kantian view. We reject the theistic-belief-as-mere-practical-belief view: it is bad descriptive anthropology, (...) it embraces a misguided ideal of a fragmented self unattainable by human beings, and it will deter people from the most desirable sort of faith. The second source consists in the idea that since theistic beliefs function as answers to why-questions, their epistemic status hangs on whether they meet certain distinctively explanatory standards, whatever support they might receive from other sources. We argue that this is a non-sequitur and suggest questions for further research. (shrink)

According to familiar accounts, Rousseau held that humans are actuated by two distinct kinds of self love: amour de soi, a benign concern for one's self-preservation and well-being; and amour-propre, a malign concern to stand above other people, delighting in their despite. I argue that although amour-propre can (and often does) assume this malign form, this is not intrinsic to its character. The first and best rank among men that amour-propre directs us to claim for ourselves is that of occupying (...) 'man's estate'. This does not require, indeed it precludes, subjection of others. Amour-propre does not need suppression or circumscription if we are to live good lives; it rather requires direction to its proper end, not a delusive one. (shrink)