In order to assure optimal care of patients with chronic illnesses, it is necessary to take into account the cultural factors that may influence health-related behaviors, health practices, and health-seeking behavior. Despite the increasing number of Romanian Roma, research regarding their beliefs and practices related to healthcare is rather poor. The aim of this paper is to present empirical evidence of specificities in the practice of healthcare among Romanian Roma patients and their caregivers. Using a qualitative exploratory descriptive design, this (...) study is based on data gathered through three focus groups with 30 health mediators in the counties of Iasi and Cluj (Romania). We identified various barriers to access to healthcare for Roma patients: lack of financial resources and health insurance coverage, lack of cognitive resources or lack of personal hygiene, but also important cultural issues, such as the shame of being ill, family function, disclosure of disease-related information, patient’s autonomy, attitudes towards illness and health practices, that should be considered in order to create a culturally sensitive environment in Romanian medical facilities:… The role of the health mediators within the context of cultural diversity is also discussed, as cultural brokers contributing to health care quality among Romanian Roma patients Bridging cultural differences may improve patient–healthcare provider relationships, but may have limited impact in reducing ethnic disparities, unless coupled with efforts of Roma communities to get involved in creating and implementing health policies. (shrink)

Medical communication in Western-oriented countries is dominated by concepts of shared decision-making and patient autonomy. In interactions with Roma patients, these behavioral patterns rarely seem to be achieved because the culture and ethnicity have often been shown as barriers in establishing an effective and satisfying doctor–patient relationship. The study aims to explore the Roma’s beliefs and experiences related to autonomy and decision-making process in the case of a disease with poor prognosis. Forty-eight Roma people from two Romanian counties participated in (...) semi-structured interviews, conducted by a research team from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Iasi. Participants were recruited among the chronically ill patients and caregivers. The Roma community opposes informing the terminal patients about their condition, the “silence conspiracy” being widely practiced. The family fully undertakes the right of decision making, thus minimizing the patient’s autonomy. We identified ethical dilemmas concerning autonomy, lack of patients’ real decision-making power, and paternalistic attitudes exerted firstly by the family and, on demand, by the physician. Instead, the Roma patient benefits from a very active support network, being accompanied at the hospital by numerous relatives. The patient’s right to make autonomous decisions promoted in the Western countries and stipulated by the Romanian law has diminished value in the Roma community. For the Roma, the understanding of dignity is not simply individual and personal, but it is closely related to their cultural particularities. Ignoring their cultural values could create conflicts between healthcare providers and community. (shrink)

Este trabajo se propone la lectura y recepción estéticas de L'identüé de MilanKundera. La reconstrucción y concretización de la dinámica intema de la obra se hará a partir de la filosofía existencialista acuñada y defendida por Jean Paul Sartre en su primer texto filosófico, L'etre et le néant, y en su novela Lanausée. Se intentará, pues. configurar L'idenüté sobre la base de aquella modalidad de l'etre-pour-autrui descrita por Sartre, modalidad que fluye del texto mismodel novelista checo y que se encuentra (...) asentada sobre aquella dialéctica delos personqjes enclavada en el interior de la Eirifühlung de una relación amorosa signada por la mirada. En este contexto. se estudiará si los personajes"kunderianos" han pagado el costo que les impone el (más grande) existencialista francés para resguardar su "identidad", es decir, si han elegido convertirse provisionalmente en esa objetividad inerte y exteriorizada en la que la libertad que los define como para-síes ha devenido pasada y ajena. (shrink)

De los escasos estudios filosóficos dedicados a Die vertauschten Köpfe de Thomas Mann se puede concluir que estamos ante una novela sobre la identidad personal, aunque resulta difícil de decidir en qué sentido lo es. Parecemos condenados a recaer en el dualismo cartesiano del que emerge la identidad autorreferencial del cogito, o bien en el reduccionismo neurocientífico o filosófico en el que la identidad personal deviene algo indiscernible. Nuestra hipótesis es que Die vertauschten Köpfe es una novela sobre la identidad (...) personal en el sentido de la "identidad narrativa" defendida por Ricoeur principalmente en Temps et récit III, "L'identité narrative" y Soi-même comme un autre. From what scarce philosophical readings there are of Thomas Mann's Die vertauschten Köpfe, one can conclude that it is a novel about personal identity, even if it is hard to determine in what manner. It would appear that we are condemned to fall back on the Cartesian dualism that yields the cogito's self-referential identity or on the neuroscientific or philosophical reductionism in which personal identity becomes indiscernible. Our hypothesis is that Die vertauschten Köpfe is a novel about personal identity in the sense of "narrative identity" explored by Ricoeur mainly in Temps et récit III, "L'identité narrative" and Soi-même comme un autre. (shrink)

En “Sur un autoportrait de Rembrandt”, Paul Ricoeur trabaja la identidad del pintor holandés analizando un autorretrato de 1660. En vista de que Ricoeur aborda “la escritura como un capítulo en una teoría general de la iconicidad”, da lugar a entenderlo de modo semejante a como W. J. T. Mitchell propone leer a Jaques Derrida: como “un filósofo de la versión gráfica del giro pictorial”. De sostenerse esta lectura, por una parte, la iconicidad devendría una dimensión irreductible de la comprensión (...) de sí. Por la otra, en el autorretrato de Rembrandt de 1660, el autor “real”, tras disolverse en el personaje “irreal” que retrató, creó la distancia para que en carácter de espectador pueda examinarse autobiográficamente merced a objetivarse en su imagen especular. Y en ese análisis de sí por sí devendría un sí mismo capaz de vivir una vida digna de ser vivida. De ser consiste la argumentación, nuestra hipótesis es que la “identidad narrativa”, largamente trabajada por Ricoeur, quedaría subordinada a, al tiempo que complementaría, lo que damos en llamar aquí la “identidad icónica”. (shrink)

Dada la polaridad entre las teorías "legitimistas" (Weber) e "ilegitimistas" (Arendt) respecto de la violencia en la arena política, en este artículo se explora el aporte de Paul Ricoeur en torno al tema. Puesto que para este autor lo político es la realización de la intención ética, primero se abordará la dimensión ética y moral de la violencia. Después se ingresará en el dominio propiamente político donde Ricoeur defiende una dialéctica "asimétrica" entre los argumentos "ilegitimistas" y "legitimistas" en la cual (...) los primeros adquieren razonabilidad dentro de un concepto "amplio" de violencia próximo al de Arendt. Por último, se abordará la dimensión temporal de la violencia presente en la memoria colectiva y en la historia. Se concluirá con un balance de los méritos y de las cuestiones parcialmente irresueltas en la obra de Ricoeur. Given the polarity between the "legitimist" (Weber) and the "illegitimist" (Arendt) theories of violence in the political field, I will explore the philosophical contributions of Paul Ricoeur to this issue. Since the political field is for the author the accomplishment of the ethical intention, I will first explore the ethical and moral dimension of violence. Secondly, I will enter in the proper political field where we will see Ricoeur defends an "asymmetrical" dialectic between the "legitimist" and "illegitimist" arguments in which the former acquire reasonability within a "broad" concept of violence akin to Arendt's. Thirdly, I will approach the temporal dimension of violence as it appears in collective memory and in history. I will conclude with an account of the merits and partially unresolved questions within Ricoeur's work. (shrink)

A patient suffering from a severe illness that is entering its terminal stage is forced to develop a coping process. Of all the coping patterns, the religious one stands out as being a psychological resource available to all patients regardless of culture, learning, and any age. Religious coping interacts with other values or practices of society, for example the model of a society that takes care of it's elder members among family or in an institutionalized environment or the way the (...) health system offers or not psychological support for a terminally ill patient. Health care providers should have at least some psychological coping patterns training because not all patterns of religious coping are equally effective, and some have been described as increasing the level of stress or producing other negative psychological effects on the patient. This article aims to review the complex models of religious coping that are unanimously accepted in psychooncology, arguments in favor of religious coping, the types of patients that use this model, ethical dilemmas that could be reinterpreted using religious arguments. Finally, we will also discuss the need of Romanian patients to embrace a religious coping in case of an incurable illness, and also the support that they can receive from both curative and palliative health care providers.  . (shrink)

The effective collection and management of personal data of rapidly migrating populations is important for ensuring adequate healthcare and monitoring of a displaced peoples’ health status. With developments in ICT data sharing capabilities, electronic personal health records (ePHRs) are increasingly replacing less transportable paper records. ePHRs offer further advantages of improving accuracy and completeness of information and seem tailored for rapidly displaced and mobile populations. Various emerging initiatives in Europe are seeking to develop migrant‐centric ePHR responses. This paper highlights their (...) importance and benefits, but also identifies a number of significant ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) and challenges to their design and implementation, regarding (1) the kind of information that should be stored, (2) who should have access to information, and (3) potential misuse of information. These challenges need to be urgently addressed to make possible the beneficial use of ePHRs for vulnerable migrants in Europe. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays, dealing with one of the most interesting topics in the history of ideas, particularly in the history of theories of visual perception: the question posed by Wil...

Hubert Dreyfus has defended a novel view of agency, most notably in his debate with John McDowell. Dreyfus argues that expert actions are primarily unreflective and do not involve conceptual activity. In unreflective action, embodied know-how plays the role reflection and conceptuality play in the actions of novices. Dreyfus employs two arguments to support his conclusion: the argument from speed and the phenomenological argument. I argue that Dreyfus's argumentative strategies are not successful, since he relies on a dubious assumption about (...) concepts and reflection. I suggest that Dreyfus is committed to a minimal view of conceptuality in action. (shrink)

Two semantic theories of proper names are explained and assessed. The theories are Burge’s treatment of proper names as complex demonstratives and Larson and Segal’s quasi-descriptivist account of names. The two theories are evaluated for empirical plausibility. Data from deficits, processing models, developmental studies and syntax are all discussed. It is concluded that neither theory is fully confirmed or refuted by the data, but that Larson and Segal’s theory has more empirical plausibility.

A Steiner triple system (STS) is a set S together with a collection B of subsets of S of size 3 such that any two elements of S belong to exactly one element of B. It is well known that the class of finite STS has a Fraïssé limit M_F. Here, we show that the theory T of M_F is the model completion of the theory of STSs. We also prove that T is not small and it has quantifier elimination, (...) TP2, NSOP1, elimination of hyperimaginaries and weak elimination of imaginaries. (shrink)

We analyze the geometric foundations of classical Yang-Mills theory by studying the relationships between internal relativity, locality, global/local invariance, and background independence. We argue that internal relativity and background independence are the two independent defining principles of Yang-Mills theory. We show that local gauge invariance -heuristically implemented by means of the gauge argument- is a direct consequence of internal relativity. Finally, we analyze the conceptual meaning of BRST symmetry in terms of the invariance of the gauge fixed theory under general (...) local gauge transformations. (shrink)

Engages Levinas and Heidegger on the provocative issue of an ethics of things.

Part I of Frege’s Grundgesetze is devoted to the “exposition [Darlegung]” of his formal system.

We argue that not all cases of before-effect involve causation and ask how to demarcate cases of before-effect in which the events that follow exert causal influence over the before-effect from cases in which they do not.

Although stakeholder theory is widely accepted in environmental disclosure research, empirical evidence about the role of stakeholders in firms’ disclosure is still scarce. The authors address this issue for a setting of carbon disclosure. Our international sample comprises the Carbon Disclosure Project Global 500, S&P 500, and FTSE 350 reports from 2008 to 2011, resulting in a total of 1,120 firms with 3,631 firm-year observations. The authors apply Tobit regressions to analyze the relationship between carbon disclosure and the relevance of (...) the following stakeholder groups: government, general public, media, employees, and customers. Our results confirm that in addition to carbon performance, all stakeholders are associated with carbon disclosure. Only one stakeholder group acts as a moderator for the relationship between carbon performance and carbon disclosure. Furthermore, the authors find that carbon performance but not the affiliation to a carbon-intensive industry acts as a moderator between stakeholder relevance and carbon disclosure. (shrink)

This paper discusses citizenship in Finnish religious education in relation to human security. It traces the characteristics of human security that connect citizenship, religion, and education in Finnish policy documents. The article focuses on basic education. Its data were analyzed employing qualitative content analysis. The findings indicate that citizenship in Finnish RE entails personal security concerns dealing with psychological and human rights issues. These are found to be essentially human security as conceptualized by the United Nations. However, Finnish policy documents (...) sparingly utilize human security in explicit terms. Finland rather emphasizes the practical applications of human security. Incorporation of explicit global citizen and human rights issues into RE in the new Finnish curriculum seems to project critical global citizenship. This is found to promote human security. Following Finland’s bid for practical application of human security, we recommend that human security be explicitly integrated into the Finnish RE curriculum. (shrink)

The music theory of Leibniz was thought to be by most of the scholars a part of the Pythagorean philosophical tradition. This opinion was maintained without a founded knowledge of the Pythagorean sources nor a proper consideration of the contemporary scientific background, upon which Leibniz wrote. The purpose of this article consists of analysing to what extent the Pythagorean tradition in music theory had still an influence in a philosophical age, whose music had already thoroughly abandoned the main statements of (...) the Pythagoreans. Questions belonging to the Pythagorean conception of music, such as the Tetraktys theory, the number proportions regarding musical intervals and the music of the spheres, are discussed here upon the background of the 17th century music theory. After that, Leibniz' considerations of these subjects turn out to be quite different from those of the Pythagorean tradition. Leibniz criticises it or translates it in an utterly modern language. He proposes a contemporary conception of harmony as an anticipation of beauty through the conjunction of the opposites, which emerges in the music theory of his time and will lead to the aesthetics substituting for the mystic. Dissonance, contrast and mistune are the new concepts to be taken into account. (shrink)

Amidst the recent threat of COVID-19, home gardens have surged in popularity as seed companies and nurseries find it challenging to keep their supplies fully stocked. The victory garden movement that emerged during WWII has today re-emerged as COVID victory gardens. Yet, the global changes and cognitive shifts associated with COVID-19 have differential impacts. The narrative of COVID victory gardens depoliticizes urban agriculture. It is blind to its long history in marginalized, oppressed, and displaced communities where home gardens have always (...) been part of a struggle for identity, autonomy, and self- and communal-determination. I argue the blindness embedded in the narrative of COVID victory gardens violates our “food-related obligations,” which are our responsibilities to ourselves, our food, and each other. Silencing how communities of color have historically grown food in pursuit of dignity disregards how home gardens in communities of color are not merely a reactionary response to crisis but part of a historical legacy whereby people of color have grown food for generations to create and recreate sustainable ways of living that validate their cultures, knowledges, and ways of being. (shrink)

We show that a coherent theory of partially ordered connectives can be developed along the same line as partially ordered quantification. We estimate the expressive power of various partially ordered connectives and use methods like Ehrenfeucht games and infinitary logic to get various undefinability results.

A reiteration of the main details of the case may be helpful. Euphiletus killed Eratosthenes and was prosecuted for premeditated homicide by Eratosthenes' relatives. The present speech, our sole source of information concerning the case, was written for the defendant, partially or totally, by a professional speechwriter, presumably Lysias. In this speech Euphiletus admits killing Eratosthenes. He pleads, however, that, since he killed Eratosthenes after catching him in the act of adultery with his own wife, this was a case of (...) justified homicide. At the same time, he denies a charge of the prosecution that he had killed Eratosthenes for reasons unrelated to the adultery. The speech was delivered before a court of fifty-one judges especially set up to judge such cases, as is attested elsewhere:T1Arist. Ath. Pol. 57.3: ‘If…a person admits that he has killed someone but claims that he had a right to do so, as, for instance, when he has surprised an adulterer in the act,… then the trial takes place in the Delphinion’. (shrink)

Based on an analysis of a landmark case Lim Mey Lee Susan v Singapore Medical Council in Singapore where a doctor was professionally disciplined for over-charging a wealthy patient, a judgement upheld by the Singapore High Court, this paper will discuss the notion of an ‘ethical price’ (EP) and its determination with respect to the provision of healthcare services. It will first examine the limitations of a legal approach for setting an ethical limit to pricing. From there, it will argue (...) that Confucian philosophy provides a useful ethical framework to explore EP, with focus on the context of Singapore. The following question is addressed: What is an ethical pricing standard for medical practice from a Confucian perspective? The strengths and limitations of a Confucian value base as regards the determination of an objective EP will be analysed through an examination of the shortcomings of the doctor’s behaviour in the Susan Lim case as well as other case scenarios. The paper will conclude with some practical suggestions on how Confucian-based ideas can be applied to decision-making on pricing and the importance of this for medical professionalism and ethics teaching. (shrink)

The concept of experience, in Kant as well as in Hegel, as well as the process of tansformation it undergoes in passing from one philosopher to the other, offers a great complexity. Here, we will take up in only one aspect, though not in the least marginal I believe; that is, experience as constituent, as an element or process constituent of the subject , so that experience itself conforms the set of possibilility conditions for the opening up to the world (...) and the realization of new experiences, and even more, the set which determines this opening and the experience. With it, in that transformation, not only the transformation of the modern concept of experience is produced, but also the field in which the concept of experience in contemporary philosophy is to be discussed is as well indicated, even though, in this case, it might be translated into other terms, such as self, subjectivity, existence, personal identity, narrative identity, etc.El concepto de experiencia, tanto en Kant como en Hegel así como en el proceso de transformación que sufre con el paso de uno al otro, ofrece una gran complejidad. Aquí vamos a centrarnos en un solo aspecto, creo que nada marginal, a saber, la experiencia como constitutivo, como elemento o proceso constituyente del sujeto , de forma que ella misma conforma el conjunto de condiciones de posibilidad para la apertura al mundo y la realización de nuevas experiencias, es más, es el conjunto que determina dicha apertura y la experiencia. Con ello, en dicha transformación no sólo se produce la transformación del concepto moderno de experiencia, sino que se señala el campo en el que se va a debatir el concepto de experiencia en la filosofía contemporánea, aunque en este caso se traduzca en otros términos, tales como sí-mismo, subjetividad, existencia, identidad personal, identidad narrativa, etc. (shrink)