Objectives: To assess French district nurses’ opinions towards euthanasia and to study factors associated with these opinions, with emphasis on attitudes towards terminal patients.Design and setting: An anonymous telephone survey carried out in 2005 among a national random sample of French district nurses.Participants: District nurses currently delivering home care who have at least 1 year of professional experience. Of 803 district nurses contacted, 602 agreed to participate .Main outcome measures: Opinion towards the legalisation of euthanasia , attitudes towards terminal patients (...) .Results: Overall, 65% of the 602 nurses favoured legalising euthanasia. Regarding associated factors, this proportion was higher among those who discuss end-of-life issues with terminal patients , who consider competent patients should always be told their prognosis and who value the role of advance directives and surrogates in end-of-life decision-making for incompetent patients . Women and older nurses were less likely to favour legalising euthanasia, as were those who believed in a god who masters their destiny.Conclusions: French nurses are more in favour of legalising euthanasia than French physicians; these two populations contrast greatly in the factors associated with this support. Further research is needed to investigate how and to what extent such attitudes may affect nursing practice and emotional well-being in the specific context of end-of-life home care. (shrink)

Background: Hospital nurses are frequently the first care givers to receive a patient’s request for euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide (PAS). In France, there is no consensus over which medical practices should be considered euthanasia, and this lack of consensus blurred the debate about euthanasia and PAS legalisation. This study aimed to investigate French hospital nurses’ opinions towards both legalisations, including personal conceptions of euthanasia and working conditions and organisation. Methods: A phone survey conducted among a random national sample of 1502 (...) French hospital nurses. We studied factors associated with opinions towards euthanasia and PAS, including contextual factors related to hospital units with random-effects logistic models. Results: Overall, 48% of nurses supported legalisation of euthanasia and 29%, of PAS. Religiosity, training in pallative care/pain management and feeling competent in end-of-life care were negatively correlated with support for legalisation of both euthanasia and PAS, while nurses working at night were more prone to support legalisation of both. The support for legalisation of euthanasia and PAS was also weaker in pain treatment/palliative care and intensive care units, and it was stronger in units not benefiting from interventions of charity/religious workers and in units with more nurses. Conclusions: Many French hospital nurses uphold the legalisation of euthanasia and PAS, but these nurses may be the least likely to perform what proponents of legalisation call “good” euthanasia. Improving professional knowledge of palliative care could improve the management of end-of-life situations and help to clarify the debate over euthanasia. (shrink)

The study of biological invasions raises troubling scientific, political and moral issues that merit discussion and debate on a broad scale. Nativist trends in Conservation Biology have made environmentalists biased against alien species. This bias is scientifically questionable, and may have roots in xenophobic and racist attitudes. Rethinking conservationists' conceptions of biological invasion is essential to the development of a progressive environmental science, politics, and philosophy.

O artigo reflete sobre o atual contexto da Educação Superior e seus desafios na formação de novos perfis de docentes. Optamos por indagar fenomenologicamente a formação docente em uma instituição confessional a fim de perceber, na pulsão das vivências dos estudantes, o lugar que a formação humana e da consciência ocupa na trajetória acadêmica. Seguindo essa pista e dialogando com profissionais e estudantes percebemos a necessidade de um maior aprofundamento dos pressupostos antropológico-filosóficos da educação. A partir disso, fizemos um contraponto (...) entre o modelo reducionista e o complexo, fundamentando as concepções de conhecimento e educação no diálogo entre dois grandes pensadores: Edith Stein e Edgar Morin. Os resultados revelam a necessidade de um diálogo multi e transdisciplinar nos programas de formação docente, bem como a necessidade de pensar a formação humana a partir do paradigma da complexidade, interligando saberes que fomentem a reforma do pensamento. A formação humano-integral requer projetos que incluam todas as dimensões do ser humano. Desse modo, o ato educativo, ensino e aprendizagem, assume proporções que ultrapassam a experiência de sala de aula e perduram em sua formação. A reflexão realizada fez emergir com maior clareza os desafios de nosso tempo: um pensar rigoroso sobre o “humano” e sua formação em uma perspectiva onto-antropológica que tenha como base uma visão de mundo, de ser humano e de transcendência comprometidos com valores pautados na ideia de “casa comum”. (shrink)

François-Xavier de Peretti | : Notre propos consistera à analyser des textes cartésiens pouvant confirmer une tendance de l’ego à mimer Dieu, à endosser une certaine ressemblance avec Dieu. Nous examinerons pour cela l’énoncé du cogito tel qu’il est formulé dans les Médiations métaphysiques, pour suggérer que la parole de l’ego mime, dans les limites de sa puissance, la puissance performative de la parole de Dieu. Nous considérerons ensuite la manière dont les Méditations métaphysiques sont construites comme un hexaméron, (...) qui donne à nouveau naissance au monde au terme d’un exercice méditatif où le sujet retrouve une place centrale. | : We shall analyze some Cartesian texts able to enlighten a trend of the ego to mimic or to endorse a sort of resemblance to God. For this purpose, we shall consider the cogito, as it is formulated in the Meditations on First Philosophy, and we shall suggest that the ego mimics, in the limits of its own power, the performative power of the word of God. Then, we shall examine how the Meditations on First Philosophy are built as an hexameron which creates again the world at the end of a meditation exercise where the subject gets back to a central position. (shrink)

Les sociétés contemporaines entretiennent un rapport ambivalent au risque : elles sont promptes à s’alarmer pour des risques collectifs, tout en valorisant les prises de risque individuelles. Cet article s’attache à resituer les interprétations sociologiques de ces prises de risque délibérées, en particulier celles de Lyng et Le Breton, dans le cadre de la société du risque décrite par Beck et Giddens. Les prises de risque apparaissent alors comme la réaction à un environnement devenu très incertain et anxiogène. Ce cadre (...) interprétatif invite aussi à nuancer l’opposition entre prises de risque adultes et adolescentes. Si les premières se concrétisent plus souvent dans la pratique d’un sport extrême, tandis que les secondes s’avèrent plus transgressives, il est possible que ce contraste traduise surtout des moyens matériels différenciés. Les données quantitatives du Baromètre Santé 2000 permettent enfin de tester empiriquement quelques hypothèses relatives à ces interprétations.Risk has an ambivalent status in contemporary societies : great fears of collective risks coexist with an increasing taste for individual risk-taking. This article aims at reframing Lyng and Le Breton’s sociological interpretations of voluntary risk-taking in a broader scope, derived from the « risk society » described by Beck and Giddens. From this viewpoint, such behaviours are individual responses to an environment in which uncertainty is causing anxiety, and adolescent risky behaviours are not so different from those of adults. If adolescents are more prone to take risks in illegal ways, it can result from a restricted access to expensive extreme sports. Using quantitative data from the French survey Baromètre Santé 2000, the article ends with an empirical test of some hypotheses deriving from these interpretations. (shrink)

Neste artigo, objetivamos refletir sobre a experiência cristã de Deus diante da tentação do vazio cultural que assola as «teologias» da secularização e o vazio de Deus nas «contra-teologias». No percurso investigativo, revisitamos a literatura teológica da tradição católica, mapeando as contribuições das teologias da experiência cristã de Deus como a experiência de uma plenitude. Por este caminho, delineamos uma pesquisa bibliográfica de abordagem qualitativa. No seio da sociedade contemporânea, desafiada por «crises permanentes», corrupção, barbáreis e pandemia aflora a carência (...) de um Mistério Sagrado, capaz de revelar o sentido último da existência humana. Na eclesiologia do século XXI, a experiência cristã de Deus — latino-americana e caribenha — reclama para a sua práxis histórica a epifania do rosto de um Deus sofredor. Este Deus, sensivelmente, assume o fardo da existência humana, solidarizando-se com o sofrimento de pessoas concretas, de corpo-vivente, psique e espírito - um Deus responsável, inclusivo, totalmente envolvido com o destino da humanidade e da «Casa Comum», que não renuncia a nenhuma das suas criaturas. (shrink)

According to a broadly accepted interpretation, the doubt of the First Meditation gets stronger due to an increasing effectiveness of the reasons for said doubt. I defend a deflationary reading of the doubt of the Meditations insofar as the sceptical arguments used by René Descartes gradually lose power. This reading is obviously not without consequences, which will be mentioned in the conclusion, for the interpretation of the exercise of doubt and, more fundamentally, of the Cartesian doctrine of knowledge.

Résumé Descartes a adopté envers le scepticisme une attitude que d’aucuns parmi ses adversaires ont jugée ambiguë voire coupable. Il a recouru à des arguments sceptiques pour mettre en œuvre son célèbre doute qu’il concevait néanmoins comme l’acte inaugural d’une philosophie en quête de certitude scientifique. Descartes rejetait ainsi la fin poursuivie par les sceptiques et entendait user du doute contre le doute. Cette stratégie fondée sur un scepticisme des moyens pour combattre la fin et l’esprit même du scepticisme s’est-elle (...) révélée pertinente? Richard Popkin a pensé que non, dans son histoire du scepticisme, et conclu à l’échec d’un Descartes « sceptique malgré lui ». Je me propose de nuancer cette thèse de manière significative, suggérant que Descartes, sceptique à un second degré, était bien conscient de la finitude de l’esprit humain et des limites assignables à la recherche de la vérité des choses telles qu’elles sont en soi. (shrink)

This study addresses philosophy’s traditional rejection of the sense of smell, taking into account the most unpleasant but also the most beneficial aspects of odour, from antiquity to the present day. The topic is investigated following a thread through several texts by Derrida, Nietzsche, and Freud. It explains the reasons– sometimes apparent, sometimes hidden– behind the most palpable effects of the philosophical marginalization of the sense of smell.

Aquí se presenta una visión panorámica de la herencia filosófica legada por Derrida, pasando revista a los rasgos más característicos del pensamiento derridiano, que se definió a sí mismo como «cierta experiencia aporética de lo imposible». Tras examinar conceptos como los de «fidelidad», «espectro», «acontecimiento» y, por supuesto, «deconstrucción», se hace ver que -según Derrida- la tarea filosófica consistiría en analizar los estratos y sedimentos que configuran el discurso dentro del cual pensamos, con el fin de abrir nuevas perspectivas de (...) futuro y descubrir otros posibles sentidos distintos a los refrendados por la tradición. (shrink)

La tradition française du commentaire cartésien a peu traité du thème des Méditations métaphysiques en tant que méditations. Elle ne l’a toutefois pas totalement ignoré, d’où l’intérêt de faire un point sur les antécédents et les esquisses de ce thème dans la critique philosophique française contemporaine, d’en mesurer la portée en situant les Méditations à l’égard du genre méditatif et de proposer une double interprétation du texte de Descartes, non seulement comme traité de métaphysique, mais aussi comme suite d’exercices volontaires. (...) Cette qualité d’exercices volontaires qui contribue, en grande partie, à son originalité, assigne au texte réputé théorique des Méditations métaphysiques, une finalité éminemment pratique : l’assimilation des vérités métaphysiques et non leur seule démonstration. (shrink)

Did Descartes manage to overcome the skeptics? If we understand “overcome” in the sense of “refute,” the answer is no, since his hyperbolic doubt harbors several blind spots and is, therefore, not as radical as is commonly argued. In this way, the victory of the cogito is perhaps less decisive and fruitful than it is claimed. If we understand “overcome” in the sense of “remove” or “move beyond,” the answer is yes. Descartes has overcome skepticism, but at the cost of (...) a decision, a sort of bet made in favor of reason based on a confidence in the human mind that is never really subverted. This faith in reason, truth, and specific epistemological principles in Descartes’ philosophy constitute what Wittgenstein calls “hinges,” which are indispensable for doubting and searching for truth. In this sense, Descartes’ anti-skepticism is more a confidence in reason in order to save the possibility of science than the result of a logical refutation. (shrink)

Studying trust in the context of human-robot interaction is of great importance given the increasing relevance and presence of robotic agents in the social sphere, including educational and clinical. We investigated the acquisition, loss and restoration of trust when preschool and school-age children played with either a human or a humanoid robot in-vivo. The relationship between trust and the representation of the quality of attachment relationships, Theory of Mind, and executive function skills was also investigated. Additionally, to outline children’s beliefs (...) about the mental competencies of the robot, we further evaluated the attribution of mental states to the interactive agent. In general, no substantial differences were found in children’s trust in the play-partner as a function of agency (human or robot). Nevertheless, 3-years-olds showed a trend toward trusting the human more than the robot, as opposed to 7-years-olds, who displayed the reverse pattern. These findings align with results showing that, for 3 and 7-year-olds, the cognitive ability to switch was significantly associated with trust restoration in the human and the robot, respectively. Additionally, supporting previous findings, we found a dichotomy between attributions of mental states to the human and robot and children’s behavior: while attributing to the robot significantly lower mental states than the human, in the trusting game children behaved in a similar way when they related to the human and the robot. Altogether, the results of this study highlight that similar psychological mechanisms are at play when children are to establish a novel trustful relationship with a human and robot partner. Furthermore, the findings shed light on the interplay – during development – between children’s quality of attachment relationships and the development of a Theory of Mind, which act differently on trust dynamics as a function of the children’s age as well as the interactive partner’s nature (human vs. robot). (shrink)

Publicou-se pela editora Appris no ano de 2019 o livro Nas trilhas de Edith Stein:gênero em perspectiva fenomenológica e teológica, da pesquisadora Clélia Peretti,professora do curso de Bacharelado em Teologia e do Programa de Pós-Graduação(Mestrado e Doutorado) em Teologia da PUCPR. Resultado do seu doutorado, o livropossui como tema as contribuições nos campos da filosofia e da teologia na perspectivafeminina a partir da filósofa e mística Edith Stein, uma das grandes mulheres do séculoXX. Escrito por uma mulher sobre uma (...) das grandes mulheres do século XX, um dosseus méritos consiste no fato de assumir a defesa da feminilidade à luz da fé.Prefaciado pelo professor, pesquisador e tradutor Renato Kirchner e apresentado peloprofessor Ezequiel Westphal, o livro está dividido em cinco capítulos. (shrink)

The Cognitive Estimation Test is widely used by clinicians and researchers to assess the ability to produce reasonable cognitive estimates. Although several studies have published normative data for versions of the CET, many of the items are now outdated and parallel forms of the test do not exist to allow cognitive estimation abilities to be assessed on more than one occasion. In the present study, we devised two new 9-item parallel forms of the CET. These versions were administered to 184 (...) healthy male and female participants aged 18–79 years with 9–22 years of education. Increasing age and years of education were found to be associated with successful CET performance as well as gender, intellect, naming, arithmetic and semantic memory abilities. To validate that the parallel forms of the CET were sensitive to frontal lobe damage, both versions were administered to 24 patients with frontal lobe lesions and 48 age-, gender- and education-matched controls. The frontal patients’ error scores were significantly higher than the healthy controls on both versions of the task. This study provides normative data for parallel forms of the CET for adults which are also suitable for assessing frontal lobe dysfunction on more than one occasion without practice effects. (shrink)

Constituye la primera monografía que, en castellano, se publica sobre Jacques Derrida. Las cuestiones que se abordan aquí nos demuestran, cosa que no es poco, como mediante su pensamiento nos es más lúcida la comprensión de la tradición occidental.

Constituye la primera monografía que, en castellano, se publica sobre Jacques Derrida. Las cuestiones que se abordan aquí nos demuestran, cosa que no es poco, como mediante su pensamiento nos es más lúcida la comprensión de la tradición occidental.

Whether or not conscious recollection in autobiographical memory is affected in schizophrenia is unknown. The aim of this study was to address this issue using an experiential approach. An autobiographical memory enquiry was used in combination with the Remember/Know procedure. Twenty-two patients with schizophrenia and 22 normal subjects were asked to recall specific autobiographical memories from four lifetime periods and to indicate the subjective states of awareness associated with the recall of what happened, when and where. They gave Remember, Know (...) or Guess responses according to whether they recalled these aspects of the event on the basis of conscious recollection, simply knowing, or guessing. Results showed that the frequency and consistency of Remember responses was significantly lower in patients than in comparison subjects. In contrast, the frequency of Know responses was not significantly different, whereas the frequency of patients’ Guess responses was significantly enhanced. It is concluded that the frequency and consistency of conscious recollection in autobiographical memory is reduced in patients with schizophrenia. (shrink)

The Problem of Perception offers two arguments against direct realism--one concerning illusion, and one concerning hallucination--that no current theory of ...

In this paper I examine Grace A. de Laguna’s theory of universals in its historical context and in relation to contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics. I explain the central features of her theory, arguing that her theory should be classified as a form of immanent realism and as a powers ontology. I then show in what ways her theory affords a theory of modality in terms of potentialities and discuss some of its consequences along the way.

A. H. Louie's More Than Life Itself is an exploratory journey in relational biology, a study of life in terms of the organization of entailment relations in living systems. This book represents a synergy of the mathematical theories of categories, lattices, and modelling, and the result is a synthetic biology that provides a characterization of life. Biology extends physics. Life is not a specialization of mechanism, but an expansive generalization of it. Organisms and machines share some common features, but organisms (...) are not machines. Life is defined by a relational closure that places it beyond the reach of physicochemical and mechanistic dogma, outside the reductionistic universe, and into the realm of impredicativity. Function dictates structure. Complexity brings forth living beings. (shrink)

Nel 1589 Hercole Filogenio scrisse un discorso che intitolò _Dell’eccellenza della donna_, con l’intento di allinearsi “all’opinione di coloro che si sforzano scoprire l’errore di molti, quali tanto si affannano in avilire il feminil sesso” e dedicò il suo scritto a Flavia Peretti Orsina, donna distinta e dallo spirito inquieto, che con i suoi interessi contribuì allo sviluppo della società dell’epoca. Nel suo tentativo di preservare le donne dal biasimo manifestato dal maschilismo egemone e, allo stesso tempo, elogiare le (...) loro virtù, Filogenio propone due conclusioni, l’analisi e l’approfondimento delle quali, per mezzo di un’argomentazione valida, costituiscono il nucleo testuale della sua opera. L’articolo presenta e analizza i ragionamenti che Filogenio sviluppa nella seconda parte del suo discorso sui quali intende imperniare la dimostrazione della seconda conclusione: che la Donna non è superiore né inferiore all’Uomo, ma simile e uguale per nobiltà, eccellenza e perfezione. (shrink)

This book argues for the use of nonideal theory in social ontology. The central claim is that a paradigm shift is underway in contemporary social ontology, from ideal to nonideal, and that this shift should be fully followed through. To develop and defend this central claim, the first step is to show that the key questions and central dividing lines within contemporary social ontology can be fruitfully reconstructed as a clash between two worlds, referred to as ideal and nonideal social (...) ontology. Ideal social ontology is characterized by consensus and cooperation, while nonideal social ontology is characterized by conflict and contestation. The second step is to show that, when taken together, objections to the standard model of ideal social ontology (the dominant version of ideal social ontology) imply that this model needs to be given up in favor of nonideal social ontology. In other words, we should look to nonideal rather than ideal social ontology for core concepts. The third step is to offer a positive account, called the power view, of nonideal social ontology. This account places the concept of social power at the core of a general theory of the social world and replaces the flat and narrow conception of power in ideal social ontology with a richer and more extensive conception. In addition, it rectifies a shortcoming in nonideal social ontology by attending to class, which has been notably and oddly overlooked in the literature. (shrink)

This companion is a cutting-edge primer to critical forms of the posthumanities and the feminist posthumanities, aimed at students and researchers who want to catch up with the recent theoretical developments in various fields in the humanities, such as new media studies, gender studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, human animal studies, postcolonial critique, philosophy and environmental humanities. It contains a collection of nineteen new and original short chapters introducing influential concepts, ideas and approaches that have shaped and developed (...) new materialism, inhuman theory, critical posthumanism, feminist materialism, and posthuman philosophy. A resource for students and teachers, this comprehensive volume brings together established international scholars and emerging theorists, for timely and astute definitions of a moving target – posthuman humanities and feminist posthumanities. (shrink)

Filosofii︠a︡ svobodnogo dukha : problematika i apologii︠a︡ khristianstva (p. 13-[228]) -- I︠A︡ i mir obʹektov : opyt filosofii odinochestva i obshchenii︠a︡ -- Sudʹba cheloveka v sovremennom mire : k ponimanii︠u︡ nasheĭ ėpokhi -- Dukh i realʹnostʹ : osnovy bogochelovecheskoĭ dukhovnosti.