There is already a copious literature comparing Claudius' oration on the admission of the primores Galliae into the Roman Senate with Tacitus’ account of the speech and of the opposition's case in Annals 11. 23–4. Yet the Emperor's own purpose in speaking as he did still needs some illumination. Scholarly concentration on technical points about the citizenship, on Claudius’ antiquarianism and on his debt to Livy has been fruitful, but it has often distracted attention from Claudius’ immediate aim. Meanwhile, Tacitus’ (...) interpretation has been insidious in colouring our view of what course of action the imperial orator was trying to defend before the Senate. (shrink)

There is already a copious literature comparing Claudius' oration on the admission of the primores Galliae into the Roman Senate with Tacitus’ account of the speech and of the opposition's case in Annals 11. 23–4. Yet the Emperor's own purpose in speaking as he did still needs some illumination. Scholarly concentration on technical points about the citizenship, on Claudius’ antiquarianism and on his debt to Livy has been fruitful, but it has often distracted attention from Claudius’ immediate aim. Meanwhile, Tacitus’ (...) interpretation has been insidious in colouring our view of what course of action the imperial orator was trying to defend before the Senate. (shrink)

Professional identity and competent ethical behaviors of nursing students are commonly developed through curricular inclusion of professional nursing values education. Despite the enactment of this approach, nursing students continue to express difficulty in managing ethical conflicts encountered in their practice. This descriptive correlational study explores the relationships between professional nursing values, self-esteem, and ethical decision making among senior baccalaureate nursing students. A convenience sample of 47 senior nursing students from the United States were surveyed for their level of internalized professional (...) nursing values (Revised Professional Nursing Values Scale), level of self-esteem (Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale), and perceived level of confidence in ethical decision making. A significant positive relationship (p < 0.05) was found between nursing students’ professional nursing values and levels of self-esteem. The results of this study can be useful to nursing educators whose efforts are focused on promoting professional identity development and competent ethical behaviors of future nurses. (shrink)

Sustained attention, a key cognitive skill that improves during childhood and adolescence, tends to be worse in some emotional and behavioural disorders. Sustained attention is typically studied in non-affective task contexts; here, we used a novel task to index performance in affective versus neutral contexts across adolescence (N = 465; ages 11–18). We asked whether: (i) performance would be worse in negative versus neutral task contexts; (ii) performance would improve with age; (iii) affective interference would be greater in younger adolescents; (...) (iv) adolescents at risk for depression and higher in anxiety would show overall worse performance; and (v) would show differential performance in negative contexts. Results indicated that participants performed more poorly in negative contexts and showed age-related performance improvements. Those at risk of depression performed more poorly than those at lower risk. However, there was no difference between groups as a result of affective context. For anxiety there was no difference in performance as a function of severity. However, those with higher anxiety showed less variance in their reaction times to negative stimuli than those with lower anxiety. One interpretation is that moderate levels of emotional arousal associated with anxiety make individuals less susceptible to the distracting effects of negative stimuli. (shrink)

In a recent paper M.R. Ayers attacks two widely held doctrines: Non-arbitary individuation requires principles of individuation and these are supplies only by sortal general terms. It is possible for an item a to be the same as b but not the same as b.I shall follow Ayers in calling a theory which includes both and ‘conceptualist’ or ‘sortalist’, but I shall not allow him to appropriate the honorific term ‘realist’ for his own theory, which I shall term ‘absolutist’. My (...) sole purpose here is to defend and in turn against Ayers’ attacks on them. Thus I shall ignore intermediate positions which accept but reject or vice-versa.Ayers’ paper is long and in many respects obscure; there are many points in it which require discussion but which can't receive it here for lack of space. In particular, I shall ignore his lengthy comments on the constitutive ‘is’, and also the wider metaphysical remarks in his conclusion and the postscript on Dummett. (shrink)

It is claimed by the future like ours anti-abortion argument that since killing adult humans is wrong because it deprives them of a future of value and the fetus has a future of value, killing fetuses is wrong in the same way that killing adult human beings is wrong. In The morality of abortion and the deprivation of futures (this journal, April 2000) I argued that the persuasive power of this argument rests upon an equivocation on the term “future of (...) value”. If the expression means “a potential future of value” then the moral claim is implausible because people do not in general have rights to what they need to fulfill their potential; if the expression means “self-represented future of value” then the argument fails because the fetus does not represent its future. Under no interpretation is the argument sound. In Deprivations, futures and the wrongness of killing (this journal, December 2001) Donald Marquis, author of the future like ours argument, responds at length to this objection. In the present essay the focus of the debate shifts to the proper interpretation of the right not to be killed. Donald Marquis argues that this liberty right entails the welfare right to the means necessary to sustain life; I argue that the right not to be killed does not entail unlimited welfare rights. On Marquis's view, the right not to be killed confers upon the fetus the right to whatever it takes to sustain life; on the view I defend, the right not to be killed does not confer upon the fetus or anyone else the right to another person's body. On Marquis's view, abortion is almost never permissible; on my view abortion is almost always permissible. (shrink)

Este artículo pasa revista a las principales contribuciones de Víctor Sánchez de Zavala a la lingüística y a la filosofía, a traves del análisis de las ideas centrales de su pensamiento expuestas en sus libros y artículos. Despues de una breve introdueción a su biografía académica, se analiza y explica el papel esencial que Víctor Sánchez de Zavala tuvo en la introducción de la gramatíca generativa en España. Se examina en este sentido su trabajo corno profesor, editor, traductor y escritor (...) y la Iínea central de su trabajo lingüístico. La segunda parte del artículo analiza las hipótesis fundamentales de la teoda pragmática desarrollada por este filósofo y lingüísta a lo largo de toda su vida. En esta sección, por otra parte, se presenta y discute su novedoso enfoque global de la actividad lingüística expuesta en su obra póstuma, de reciente aparieión: Hacia la pragmática (psicoIógica), Madrid, Visor.This paper reviews Víctor Sánehez de Zavala’s main contributions to linguistics and philosophy through a close look at the central ideas developed in his articles and books. In the first part, after a brief introduction to his academic biography, the leading role of Víctor Sánchez de Zavada in the introduction of formal linguistics in Spain is analysed and justified. His work as editor, professor, translator and writer is examined through his main publications. The second part of the paper is devoted to provide an analysis of the central hypotheses on which this theory of psychologicaI pragmatics is based. Furthermore, this second part examines his novel and global approach to linguistic activity, developed in his posthumous book Towards a psychological pragmatics. (shrink)

Ontological and methodological constraints on a theory of cognition that would generalize across species are identified. Within these constraints, ecological arguments for animal-environment mutuality and reciprocity and the necessary specificity of structured energy distributions to environmental facts are developed as counterpoints to the classical doctrines of animal-environment dualism and intractable nonspecificity. Implications of and for a cognitive theory consistent with Gibson's programme of ecological psychology are identified and contrasted with contemporary cognitivism.

A unifying theory of general anesthetic-induced unconsciousness must explain the common mechanism through which various anesthetic agents produce unconsciousness. Functional-brain-imaging data obtained from 11 volunteers during general anesthesia showed specific suppression of regional thalamic and midbrain reticular formation activity across two different commonly used volatile agents. These findings are discussed in relation to findings from sleep neurophysiology and the implications of this work for consciousness research. It is hypothesized that the essential common neurophysiologic mechanism underlying anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is, as with (...) sleep-induced unconsciousness, a hyperpolarization block of thalamocortical neurons. A model of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is introduced to explain how the plethora of effects anesthetics have on cellular functioning ultimately all converge on a single neuroanatomic/neurophysiologic system, thus providing for a unitary physiologic theory of narcosis related to consciousness. (shrink)

This essay explores the claim that bioethics has become a mode of biopolitics. It seeks to illuminate one of the myriad of ways that bioethics joins other institutionalized discursive practices in the task of producing, organizing, and managing the bodies—of policing and controlling populations—in order to empower larger institutional agents. The focus of this analysis is the contemporary practice of transnational biomedical research. The analysis is catalyzed by the enormous transformation in the political economy of transnational research that has occurred (...) over the past three decades and the accompanying increase in the numbers of human bodies now subjected to research. This essay uses the work of Michel Foucault, particularly his notion of docile bodies, to analyze these changes. Two loci from the bioethics literature are explored—one treating research in the United States and one treating research in developing countries. In the latter, we see a novel dynamic of the new biopolitics: the ways in which bioethics helps to create docile political bodies that will police themselves and who will, in turn, facilitate the production of docile human bodies for research. (shrink)

Within the moral/social order maintained and reproduced by biomedical ethics (i.e., the “peaceable community”), suffering is a senseless accident with no value. Insofar as suffering compromises the fundamental pillar of this order, namely, autonomy, it threatens the existence of the “peaceable community”. Consequently, biomedical ethics is only able to offer those who suffer one moral or practical response: that of elimination, embodied most vividly in the increasingly approved practice of assisted-suicide. Another moral/ social order, however, the “peaceable Kingdom” or the (...) “Body of Christ”, provides an alternative understanding of the meaning, purpose, and significance of suffering, through the Roman Catholic sacrament of anointing of the sick. Recognizing the power of sickness and suffering to “dis-inscribe” bodies of their normative self-understandings, the Church responds with a set of liturgical practices which intend to respond to the dynamics of suffering, re-inscribe these bodies, and assist persons in fulfilling the vocation of “participating in Christ's suffering for the salvation of the world”. (shrink)

There is a perplexing transition in Dr. Reza Davari's thought, when he problematizes the relation between Iranian and Western history/cultures, on which this paper is focusing. The interperative objective is to clarify this transition on the basis of the implicit relation between the two most fundamental concepts in his earlier and later thought respectively westernization and underdevelopment. Although, by this transition, the level of discussion transits from an ontologico-philosophical to an intellectualist one. So, there are two different levels of problematization (...) in his thought which differ deeply. Therefore, we are not just dealing with the substitution of fundamental concepts, but with different problematizations and different levels of discussion. Obviously, there will be new problems arising which are not just concerning with the justification of the transition but with the problematization of westernization itself. Finally, it's been concluded that in order to clarify these new problems, we should step back to the level of philosophical discussion, and first of all to the clarification of the I-not-I relation which has been neglected thoroughly in the whole project. (shrink)