Background At the beginning of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, many non-Covid healthcare services were suspended. In April 2020, the Department of Health in England mandated that non-Covid services should resume, alongside the continuing pandemic response. This ‘resetting’ of healthcare services created a unique context in which it became critical to consider how ethical considerations did (and should) underpin decisions about integrating infection control measures into routine healthcare practices. We draw on data collected as part of the ‘NHS Reset Ethics’ project, (...) which explored the everyday ethical challenges of resetting England’s NHS maternity and paediatrics services during the pandemic. Methods Healthcare professionals and members of the public participated in interviews and focus group discussions. The qualitative methods are reported in detail elsewhere. The focus of this article is our use of Frith’s symbiotic empirical ethics methodology to work from our empirical findings towards the normative suggestion that clinical ethics should explicitly attend to the importance of relationships in clinical practice. This methodology uses a five-step approach to refine and develop ethical theory based on a naturalist account of ethics that sees practice and theory as symbiotically related. Results The Reset project data showed that changed working practices caused ethical challenges for healthcare professionals, and that infection prevention and control measures represented harmful barriers to the experience of receiving and offering care. For healthcare professionals, offering care as part of a relational interaction was an ethically important dimension of healthcare delivery. Conclusions Our findings suggest that foregrounding the importance of relationships across a hospital community will better promote the ethically important multi-directional expression of caring between healthcare professionals, patients, and their families. We offer two suggestions for making progress towards such a relational approach. First, that there is a change of emphasis in clinical ethics practice to explicitly acknowledge the importance of the relationships (including with their healthcare team) within which the patient is held. Second, that organisational decision-making should take into account the moral significance afforded to caring relationships by healthcare professionals, and the role such relationships can play in the negotiation of ethical challenges. (shrink)

Calling is a very important concept in Christianity. In the medieval era, calling was restricted to ecclesiastical work alone, a devotion to the life of contemplation. Ordinary work or physical labour was not considered qualified to be a calling. Martin Luther was the one who taught that the ordinary work of the ordinary people was also God’s calling and equally spiritual as the ecclesiastical work. However, Miroslav Volf, a Croatian theologian, criticised Luther that his view of calling was too static (...) and irrelevant to the modern context where people often choose to quit a job because of its negative effects and some people have to do multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. While recognising the validity of Volf’s critique, this article seeks to demonstrate that even in the modern context, calling is still a very important theological concept to reflect upon work. Luther’s vocational view of work could be retrieved in discussing the theology of work by putting it in dialogue with Calvin, Kuyper, and other theologians.Contribution: This article seeks to show that the concept of calling is indispensable in constructing a sound theology of work for the modern context. By understanding work as calling, Christian workers are enabled to see how they are participating in God’s redemptive work through their jobs. (shrink)

The public health measures implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in a substantially increased shared reliance on private infrastructure and digital services in areas such as healthcare, education, retail, and the workplace. This development has (i) granted a number of private actors significant (informational) power, and (ii) given rise to a range of digital surveillance practices incidental to the pandemic itself. In this paper, we reflect on these secondary consequences of the pandemic and observe that, even though (...) collateral data disclosure and additional activity monitoring appears to have been generally socially accepted as inevitable consequences of the pandemic, part and parcel of a larger conglomeration of emergency compromises, these increased surveillance practices were not directly justified by appeals to solidarity and public health in the same way that the instigating public health measures were. Based on this observation, and given the increased reliance on private actors for maintaining the digital space, we argue that governments have a duty to (i) seek and ensure that there are justifications for collateral data disclosure and activity monitoring by private actors in the context of (future) public health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, and (ii) regulate and provide accountability mechanisms for and oversight over these private surveillance practices on par with governmental essential services that engage in surveillance activities. (shrink)

In this book, Michael Arbib, a researcher in artificial intelligence and brain theory, joins forces with Mary Hesse, a philosopher of science, to present an integrated account of how humans 'construct' reality through interaction with the social and physical world around them. The book is a major expansion of the Gifford Lectures delivered by the authors at the University of Edinburgh in the autumn of 1983. The authors reconcile a theory of the individual's construction of reality as a network of (...) schemas 'in the head' with an account of the social construction of language, science, ideology and religion to provide an integrated schema-theoretic view of human knowledge. The authors still find scope for lively debate, particularly in their discussion of free will and of the reality of God. The book integrates an accessible exposition of background information with a cumulative marshalling of evidence to address fundamental questions concerning human action in the world and the nature of ultimate reality. (shrink)

The argument rests on earlier work questioning the Russellian separation of levels and arguing that Russellian levels should be taken to include the levels of particle and aggregate, and generality and detail. That earlier work argues from the non-separation of particle and aggregate that predictability is limited and that physics cannot come to an end. This leads to a view of the world as flux. Identifiable objects demanding explanation can only be temporary entities emerging from flux and explanation can only (...) be local and historical. This precludes explanation of totality and leads us to reject Leibniz’s question. Baldwin’s argument from possible worlds theory that a null world is possible is examined and questioned. Koon’s combination of the kalam argument with the grim reaper paradox is not queried but a way is found of circumventing it. It is noted in passing that the argument does not have the anti-theistic implications which may appear. (shrink)

Georgians' acquaintance with Islam was with the first Arab raids. From the first Muslim Arab domination, Georgians started to become Muslims with cultural interaction. Islam spread especially in Eastern Georgia during the time of Muslim Arabs, Seljuks and Mongols. The spread of Islam in Western Georgia started with the Ottomans. The Ottoman Empire's contact with Georgia begins with the conquest of Trabzon by Fatih Sultan Mehmed. When the Ottomans contacted the region, the geography of Georgia was divided into small kingdoms. (...) With the conquest of Trabzon, the Georgian border was reached and in 1479, Acaristan, Borcka and Maçahel surroundings joined the Ottoman lands. On the one hand, Sukhumi was captured from the north. Then, continuing to advance in the region, Yavuz Sultan Selim paid tribute to the Kingdom of Güryel and Imeret (Açıkbaş) in 1508 during his governorship of Trabzon. Thus, the Ottoman borders had reached beyond the Black Sea coast into Western Georgia. As a result of the increasing relations around Adjaria, which came under Ottoman rule, Islamization began to spread rapidly among the people. Contrary to what is claimed, the spread of Islam in the region did not spread from the ruling strata to the lower, but from the popular strata to the ruling strata. This process was surprisingly fast. In the process of Islamization, many mosques, masjids and schools were built in Adjara, especially with the help of the people. The foundations operating in the region and the mosques and masjids serving under them show that, contrary to the claims of Russian and Georgian historians, Islamization took place rapidly at the beginning of the 17th century in Adjara. In this process, many mosques, masjids and schools were built in the region. In this research, based on the numerous Hurufat records belonging to Adjara, Batumi, Gönye, Çürüksu and Maçahel, the Islamization process will be evaluated by making a social reading with the data obtained from the religious structures established in the rural settlements of the Adjara geography and their officials. Evaluations were made on the Islamization process in Adjara by making a social reading. (shrink)

Suicidal Thoughts is a compilation of some of the most moving and insightful writing accomplished on the topic of suicide. It presents the thoughts and experiences of fifteen writers who have contemplated suicide-some on a professional level, others on a personal level, and a few, both personally and professionally. Through this collection, the reader is able to bear witness to the struggle between life and death and to the devastating aftermath of suicide. Suicidal Thoughts provides readers with a better understanding (...) of the reasons why some individuals give serious consideration to killing themselves. (shrink)

Muzykalʹnai︠a︡ ėstetika i kulʹturologii︠a︡ -- Istorii︠a︡ muzyki -- Istorii︠a︡, teorii︠a︡ muzykalʹnogo ispolnitelʹstva -- Tradit︠s︡ionnai︠a︡ kulʹtura.

Incivility among physicians, between physicians and learners, and between physicians and nurses or other healthcare professionals has become commonplace. If allowed to continue unchecked by academic leaders and medical educators, incivility can cause personal psychological injury and seriously damage organisational culture. As such, incivility is a potent threat to professionalism. This paper uniquely draws on the history of professional ethics in medicine to provide a historically based, philosophical account of the professional virtue of civility. We use a two-step method of (...) ethical reasoning, namely ethical analysis informed by pertinent prior work, followed by identifying the implications of clearly articulated ethical concepts, to meet these goals. The professional virtue of civility and the related concept of professional etiquette was first described by the English physician-ethicist Thomas Percival (1740–1804). Based on a historically informed philosophical account, we propose that the professional virtue of civility has cognitive, affective, behavioural and social components based on a commitment to excellence in scientific and clinical reasoning. Its practice prevents a dysfunctional organisational culture of incivility and sustains a civility-based organisational culture of professionalism. Medical educators and academic leaders are in a pivotal and powerful position to role model, promote and inculcate the professional virtue of civility as essential to an organisational culture of professionalism. Academic leaders should hold medical educators accountable for discharge of this indispensable professional responsibility. (shrink)

According to QBism, quantum states, unitary evolutions, and measurement operators are all understood as personal judgments of the agent using the formalism. Meanwhile, quantum measurement outcomes are understood as the personal experiences of the same agent. Wigner’s conundrum of the friend, in which two agents ostensibly have different accounts of whether or not there is a measurement outcome, thus poses no paradox for QBism. Indeed the resolution of Wigner’s original thought experiment was central to the development of QBist thinking. The (...) focus of this paper concerns two very instructive modifications to Wigner’s puzzle: One, a recent no-go theorem by Frauchiger and Renner, and the other a thought experiment by Baumann and Brukner. We show that the paradoxical features emphasized in these works disappear once both friend and Wigner are understood as agents on an equal footing with regard to their individual uses of quantum theory. Wigner’s action on his friend then becomes, from the friend’s perspective, an action the friend takes on Wigner. Our analysis rests on a kind of quantum Copernican principle: When two agents take actions on each other, each agent has a dual role as a physical system for the other agent. No user of quantum theory is more privileged than any other. In contrast to the sentiment of Wigner’s original paper, neither agent should be considered as in “suspended animation.” In this light, QBism brings an entirely new perspective to understanding Wigner’s friend thought experiments. (shrink)

_The purpose_ of the article is to clarify the most relevant philosophical dimensions of modern patriotism against the background of defending the processes of national identity. _The theoretical basis_ of the study consisted of institutional analysis, synergetic and philosophical-anthropological approaches, as well as existential philosophy and philosophy of applied ethics. Patriotism is seen as a path to self-expression, the world of life, mental self-limitation and self-aggrandizement of modern man. The peculiarities of modern considerations about the philosophical content of patriotism within (...) the framework of its comparison with other value structures, such as cosmopolitanism, liberalism, nationalism, etc., are established. _Originality._ The scientific novelty is that the article for the first time reveals the correlations of patriotism with other ideological and ideological doctrines and systems of political and social worldview, which fix the identity of individuals and groups in the context of ethnic, social or political community. _Conclusions._ The existential dimension of patriotism is based on worldviews of involvement in the local community. Trends in globalization are forcing modern people to "seek refuge" in small communities, or even in a family or other small group. "Local" or "neighborhood" patriotism acquires the character of an expression of involvement in a friend and relative. It almost completely "crosses out" the constitutional and ideological patriotism inherent in the states of the twentieth century. The reorientation of significant philosophical justifications of patriotism in modern conditions provokes a discussion about the spirituality and societal nature of patriotic meanings. In the struggle for the independence of modern Ukraine, we are all witnessing the process of overcoming "state" patriotism "local". This process is very important in the face of opposition to the totalitarian ideology of the Russian aggressor. (shrink)

The present author developed a calculus for the logic of ‘because’. In a recent paper in this journal, it has been claimed that the central inference rules for the logic are invalid and that the intuition upon which the rules are based is not accounted for. This note criticises these arguments and presents an independent argument in favour of the rules used in the logic.

We apply an online optimization process based on machine learning to the production of Bose-Einstein condensates. BEC is typically created with an exponential evaporation ramp that is optimal for ergodic dynamics with two-body s-wave interactions and no other loss rates, but likely sub-optimal for real experiments. Through repeated machine-controlled scientific experimentation and observations our ’learner’ discovers an optimal evaporation ramp for BEC production. In contrast to previous work, our learner uses a Gaussian process to develop a statistical model of the (...) relationship between the parameters it controls and the quality of the BEC produced. We demonstrate that the Gaussian process machine learner is able to discover a ramp that produces high quality BECs in 10 times fewer iterations than a previously used online optimization technique. Furthermore, we show the internal model developed can be used to determine which parameters are essential in BEC creation and which are unimportant, providing insight into the optimization process of the system. (shrink)