Objectives: To investigate whether different methods of obtaining informed consent affected recruitment to a study of delirium in older, medically ill hospital inpatients.Design: Open randomised study.Setting: Acute medical service for older people in an inner city teaching hospital.Participants: Patients 70 years or older admitted to the unit within three days of hospital admission randomised into two groups.Intervention: Attempted recruitment of subjects to a study of the natural history of delirium. This was done by either a formal test of capacity, followed (...) by either a request for consent or an attempt at obtaining assent from a proxy, or a combined informal capacity/consent process.Main outcome measures: Prevalence and severity of delirium, and, as case mix measures, length of hospital stay and destination on discharge.Results: Recruitment of subjects through establishing formal capacity and then informed consent was less successful and, compared with those recruited through the usual combined capacity/consent approach, yielded a sample with less cognitive impairment, lower severity of delirium, lower probability of case note diagnosis of delirium and lower rate of entering a care home.Conclusions: Methods of obtaining informed consent may significantly influence the case mix of subjects recruited to a study of delirium. Stringent testing of capacity may exclude patients with delirium from studies, thus rendering findings less generalisable. A different method is necessary to achieve an ethical balance between respecting autonomy through obtaining adequate informed consent and avoiding sample bias. (shrink)

In order to explore narrativity as political action in human rights education and the relevance of uniqueness and plurality in this endeavour, this chapter first makes a shift from particularity as a collective identity of the other towards the need for plurality in any conception of rights in cosmopolitan thinking, as argued by Sharon Todd. The aim is to gain a notion of human rights learning that moves away from identity politics, from what we are, and instead engages with unique (...) relations in plural classrooms, where who one is is addressed through the notion of life narratives. The chapter then turns to Hannah Arendt and her positing of the dangers of not taking responsibility as educators to introduce students to a world which they are to transform. Finally, the chapter draws on the notion of counter‐narratives proposed by Michael Peters and Colin Lankshear. (shrink)

Consecutive measurements performed on the same quantum system can reveal fundamental insights into quantum theory’s causal structure, and probe different aspects of the quantum measurement problem. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, measurements affect the quantum system in such a way that the quantum superposition collapses after each measurement, erasing any memory of the prior state. We show here that counter to this view, un-amplified measurements have coherent ancilla density matrices that encode the memory of the entire set of quantum measurements (...) that came before, and that the chain of this entire set is therefore non-Markovian. In contrast, sequences of amplified measurements are equivalent to a quantum Markov chain. We argue that the non-Markovian nature of quantum measurement has empirical consequences that are incompatible with the assumption of wave function collapse, thus elevating the collapse assumption into a testable hypothesis. Finally, we find that all of the information necessary to reconstruct an arbitrary non-Markovian quantum chain of measurements is encoded on the boundary of that chain, reminiscent of the holographic principle. (shrink)

Arguments for or against a trend in the evolution of complexity are weakened by the lack of an unambiguous definition of complexity. Such definitions abound for both dynamical systems and biological organisms, but have drawbacks of either a conceptual or a practical nature. Physical complexity, a measure based on automata theory and information theory, is a simple and intuitive measure of the amount of information that an organism stores, in its genome, about the environment in which it evolves. It is (...) argued that physical complexity must increase in molecular evolution of asexual organisms in a single niche if the environment does not change, due to natural selection. It is possible that complexity decreases in co‐evolving systems as well as at high mutation rates, in sexual populations, and in time‐dependent landscapes. However, it is reasoned that these factors usually help, rather than hinder, the evolution of complexity, and that a theory of physical complexity for co‐evolving species will reveal an overall trend towards higher complexity in biological evolution. BioEssays 24:1085–1094, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Human Rights Education (HRE) has traditionally been articulated in terms of cultivating better citizens or world citizens. The main preoccupation in this strand of HRE has been that of bridging a gap between universal notions of a human rights subject and the actual locality and particular narratives in which students are enmeshed. This preoccupation has focused on ‘learning about the other’ in order to improve relations between plural ‘others’ and ‘us’ and reflects educational aims of national identity politics in citizenship (...) education. The article explores the learning of human rights through narratives in relations, drawing on Hannah Arendt and Sharon Todd. For this re-thinking of relations in learning human rights, the article argues that HRE needs to address both competing historical narratives on the drafting of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) as well as unique life narratives of learners. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the role of film in educational settings and argue that testimony and narrative are dependent upon each other for developing ethical judgments. We use the film 12 Angry Men to enhance our thesis that the emotional response that sometimes is intended in using film as testimonies in classrooms requires a specific listening; a listening that puts pupils at risk when they relate testimonies to their own life narratives. The article raises the importance of listening in (...) training narrative ethos in relation to violence witnessed in film. The article contributes by enhancing an understanding of a relational dimension to testimony and narrative, which, in an Arendtian sense, is also put forward as a political relation. (shrink)

This paper considers political agency and space as found in Cavarero's For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression in order to take a critical philosophical approach to human rights education and the political implications of its increasingly legal discourse. Like Arendt, Cavarero is concerned with a radical rethinking of political space, as not limited to place or legal borders, but bound by our human condition of plurality and relationality. Both Arendt and Cavarero want politics to be (...) coupled with justice, nevertheless, Cavarero provides a notion of politics that lets us think beyond territorial terms of a polis, which opens for exploring an expanded conceptualization of human rights politics, as not bound by national legislative measures, but as concerning political action in-between human beings. In contrast to the dominant discourse on ‘human rights experts’ who frame the content for HRE, the notion of ‘absolute local space’ questions the dichotomy of universal/particular in raising the importance of a plurality of unique voices who create a spectrum for the universality of rights. (shrink)

There is a globalization trend in teacher education, emphasizing the role of teachers to make judgments based on human rights in their teaching profession. Rather than emphasizing the epistemological dimension of acquiring knowledge about human rights through teacher education, an ontological dimension is emphasized in this paper of what it means to become a professional teacher. An ontological dimension of ‘learning to become’ can be captured in critical examination of a cosmopolitan awareness of teachers in relation to judgment and justice. (...) I read the critique through studies on human rights in teacher education, which transforms notions of openness and respect in relations marked by difference. (shrink)

Resumo Aproximar vivência e criação de si explorando suas relações será um dos objetivos deste artigo, bem como elucidar a capacidade humana de dotar de sentido suas vivências, o que também não deixa de ser uma atitude artística perante a própria existência.To approach living and self creation exploring their relations will be one of the objectives of this paper, as well as to elucidate the human capacity to give meaning to their experiences, which is also an artistic attitude towards existence (...) it self. (shrink)

É largamente reconhecido no interior dos estudos das Humanidades, em especial no campo da Filosofia, a lacuna deixada acerca da compreensão do papel das mulheres e da sua produção intelectual no pensamento filosófico. Tal preocupação deve-se, em grande parte, à produção divulgada por outras áreas de estudos, como as de gênero e da teoria feminista. No caso do campo filosófico, trata-se de reconhecer que a história da filosofia nunca foi feita só por homens, ainda mais quando se tratou da defesa (...) da liberdade das mulheres e da sua luta por inserção e reconhecimento intelectuais. Neste sentido, este trabalho visa analisar comparativamente três discursos em defesa da liberdade das mulheres, escritos por duas jovens autoras e um autor, em momentos distintos. Em primeiro lugar, temos o discurso de um jovem professor de retórica, Lorenzo Valla, contido no seu diálogo Do Prazer, de 1431; em segundo, temos o diálogo Il Merito delle Donne, da escritora veneziana Moderata Fonte, publicado postumamente em 1600; e, por fim, o texto da Tirannia Paterna, de outra escritora veneziana, a filósofa Arcangela Tarabotti, publicado postumamente em 1654. Em todos os três casos, tratam-se de discursos endereçados aos homens, em repúdio por seus crimes cometidos contra a liberdade das mulheres e o livre-arbítrio em geral. Desse modo, tomando como eixo de análise a semelhança temática entre tais textos, será de nosso interesse observar a relação entre o ethos dos falantes com o self dos autores nessas três orações distintas, levando em consideração ainda o gênero de discurso, a audiência, os efeitos retóricos e o contexto em que as obras se inscreveram. (shrink)

Here we describe how more important findings were obtained in a delirium study by using an informal assessment of mental capacity, and, in those who lacked capacity, obtaining consent later when or if capacity returned or a proxy was found. From a total of 233 patients 23 patients lacked capacity as judged by our informal capacity judgment and 210 did not. Of those who lacked capacity, 13 agreed to enter in the study. Six of them regained capacity later. When these (...) 13 participants were excluded from analysis, significant findings were no longer evident. These results show that by the inclusion of subjects who lacked capacity the results of analyses of the condition from whish they suffer are altered. We suggest that this approach to the study of delirium is more ethical than the usual system of strict exclusion of people who lack capacity to give consent and for whom assent is not available. (shrink)

What one decides fit for appearance through writing and speech bears a political signifi cance that risk being distorted through both language, reception in the public, and through calls for gendered representations. How can work of female philosophers be interpreted as a concern for the world from that of having to respond to a male-dominated discourse through which speech becomes trapped into what one might represent as ‘other’? In this paper, I explore the public reception of two female thinkers who (...) question, in diff erent ways, the dominant notion of the author or philosopher as a male subject; what kind of limitations does the relative notion of ‘female’ pose political action, and how can privilege constitute a hindrance to feminist solidarity? (shrink)

Can human rights in education enhance students and teachers capacity to reimagine their local community and to rethink the rules and laws that support such a social community? This paper is a political philosophical inquiry into human rights in education, drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, Cornelius Castoriadis and Adriana Cavarero. By placing learning at the center of political philosophy through the notion of paideia, we need to ask how such an education can look like. According to Castoriadis, society (...) exists only insofar as it is embodied in its social individuals. Society and its individuals are in a constant process of becoming toward relational autonomy that implies a moral self-limitation. At the core of my philosophical inquiry into moral subjectification is the need to re-think human rights and the pedagogical subject in relational terms that imply self-limitation and political engagement in a wider cosmopolitan community. (shrink)

Human beings as imperfect rational beings face continuous challenges, one of them has to do with the lack of recognizing and respecting our inner dignity in present times. In this collective paper, we address the overall theme—Philosophy of Education in a New Key from various perspectives related to dignity. We address in particular some of the constraints and possibilities with regard to this issue in various settings such as education and society at large. Klas Roth discusses, for example, that it (...) is not uncommon that the value of human beings has to do with their price in, inter alia, their social, cultural, political and economic settings throughout the world. He argues that such a focus does not necessarily draw attention to the inner dignity of human beings, but that human beings ought to do so in education and society at large. Lia Mollvik discusses views of inner and outer dignity, and argues that there needs to be a balance in between them, and that the balance ought to be acknowledged in education. Rama Alshoufani discusses the classification of human beings in terms of various diagnoses related to the asserted dysfunction of the brain, and she argues that such classification does paradoxically not necessarily respect people with such diagnoses as ends in themselves. On the contrary, she argues that their inner dignity is not respected, but that it should be. Other such failures are due to the lack of inner dignity when it comes to Children’s rights as discussed by Rebecca Adami, and to the lack of recognition of human beings’ vulnerability as discussed by Katy Dineen. Fariba Majlesi criticizes a too strong emphasis on substantive notions of humanist education, which seem to hinder new ways of thinking; she argues that it is necessary to acknowledge the latter in and through education in order to preserve the dignity of human beings. Dignity, it is argued throughout the paper, has an inner moral worth, and is beyond price. (shrink)

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

Emotion dysregulation (ED) is a vulnerability factor for affective disorders that may originate from deficits in cognitive control (CC). Although measures of ED are often designed to assess trait-like tendencies, the extent to which such measures capture a time-varying (TV) or state-like construct versus a time-invariant (TI) or trait-like personality characteristic is unclear. The link between the TV and TI components of ED and CC is also unclear. In a 6-wave, 5-month longitudinal study, community participants (n = 1281) completed the (...) Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS-16), a commonly used measure of ED and measures of CC. A latent variable (trait-state-occasion) model showed that the proportion of TI factor variance (.80) was greater than the TV factor variance (.19). Although TV factor stability was significant, the coefficients were small in magnitude. Furthermore, regression weights for the ED TI factor (average β = −.62) were significant and larger than those for the TV factor (average β = −.10) in predicting latent CC at each of the six-time points. These findings suggest that ED, as assessed by the DERS-16, is largely TI and this TI component is more strongly linked to CC than the TV component. (shrink)

For medical schools, the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated examination and curricular restructuring as well as significant changes to clinical attachments. With the available evidence suggesting that medical students’ mental health status is already poorer than that of the general population, with academic stress being a chief predictor, such changes are likely to have a significant effect on these students. This online, cross-sectional study aimed to determine the impact of COVID-19 on perceived stress levels of medical students, investigate possible contributing and alleviating (...) factors, and produce recommendations for medical schools to implement during future healthcare emergencies. The majority of respondents reported levels of stress ranging from moderate to extreme. Higher levels of stress were significantly associated with female gender and international status. A significant association was also noted between reported stress and the transition to online learning and online assessment formatting, concerns for personal health and for the health of family members. Students who reported higher stress levels were less confident in their government’s management of the crisis. Additionally, students who reported lower stress agreed highly that their medical school had an appropriate response to the crisis, had provided sufficient information regarding the crisis, that they trust their school in handling the continuing of their education and that their school had appropriate plans in place to support the continuing of education. (shrink)

This paper attends to the curious affair of Jacques Derrida in Prague when he was arrested by the Czechoslovakian police on charges of drug smuggling. It reads two images by Valerio Adami and Nicolas Poussin, entitled, ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’, Tom Stoppard's play, Professional Foul about dissident philosophers in Prague, and a section from Ken McMullen's film Ghost Dance on Kafka. It turns around the question of what ‘innocence’ might mean in politics and reading.