Health-worker migration, commonly called "medical brain drain", refers to the mass migration of trained and skilled health professionals from low-income to high-income countries. This is currently leaving a significant number of poor countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, with critical staff shortages in the healthcare sector. A broad consensus exists that, where medical brain drain exacerbates such shortages, it is unethical, and this review presents the main arguments underpinning this view. Notwithstanding the general agreement, which policies are justifiable on ethical grounds (...) to tackle brain drain and how best to go about implementing them remains controversial. The review offers a discussion of the specific ethical issues that have to be taken into account when deciding which policy measures to prioritise and suggests a strategy of policy implementation to address medical brain drain as a matter of urgency. (shrink)

Memory limitations and probabilistic expectations are two key factors that have been posited to play a role in the incremental processing of natural language. Relative clauses (RCs) have long served as a key proving ground for such theories of language processing. Across three self-paced reading experiments, we test the online comprehension of Hungarian subject- and object-extracted RCs (SRCs and ORCs, respectively). We capitalize on the syntactic properties of Hungarian that allow for a variety of word orders within RCs, which helps (...) us to delineate the processing costs associated with memory demand and violated expectations. Results showed a processing cost at the RC verb for structures that have longer verb-argument distances, despite those structures being more frequent in the corpus. These findings thus support theories that attribute processing difficulty to memory limitations, rather than theories that attribute difficulty to less expected structures. (shrink)

In this article, we defend a normative theory of prenatal equality of opportunity, based on a critical revision of Rawls's principle of fair equality of opportunity . We argue that if natural endowments are defined as biological properties possessed at birth and the distribution of natural endowments is seen as beyond the scope of justice, Rawls's FEO allows for inequalities that undermine the social conditions of a property-owning democracy. We show this by considering the foetal programming of disease and the (...) possibility of germ-line modifications. If children of lower socioeconomic background are more likely to develop in a poor foetal environment and germ-line enhancements are available only to the rich, initial inequalities between the rich and the poor would grow, and yet FEO would be satisfied. In order to avoid the problem, we propose a revised FEO principle omitting any reference to the comparison of natural endowments. Our revised FEO requires that institutions mitigate social class effect from reproduction and gestation to the greatest extent compatible with parental freedoms and the value of the family. (shrink)

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. David Miller’s political philosophy of immigration employs two complementary argumentative strategies to challenge open border theories. The first strategy is to defeat the principled case for open borders, such as the global equality of opportunity argument for more lax immigration control. The second strategy is to establish the democratic community’s prima facie right to determine the shape of its future, including membership and the right to exclude. First, I argue (...) that Miller’s conception of global equality of opportunity is overly narrow and that his objections to the principle, to the metric and to what counts as feasible political action misfire against other, more plausible, accounts. Second, I argue that his democratic interpretation of collective self-determination does not solve the pressing question concerning the morally justified scope and content of self-determination and the moral limits of the right to exclude. I conclude by questioning Miller’s general strategy: whether theories of immigration should be engaged in an exercise of shifting the burden of proof between open and closed borders. By contrast, I argue that a more desirable task for the political philosophy of immigration is to find ways in which the joint requirement of global equality of opportunity and collective self-determination can be coherently upheld. (shrink)

a questão russa na obra de Marx nos oferece importantes materiais para as discussões sobre as diferentes vias de entificação do capitalismo e sobre os rumos da história na obra do autor. No presente trabalho, o propósito é analisar alguns escritos do autor renano sobre a Rússia, com destaque para a correspondência com a revolucionária russa Vera Zasulitch, a fim de compreender a perspectiva do autor sobre a possibilidade de uma revolução na Rússia no século XIX.

Ethical dilemmas in critical care may cause healthcare practitioners to experience moral distress: incoherence between what one believes to be best and what occurs. Given that paediatric decision-making typically involves parents, we propose that parents can also experience moral distress when faced with making value-laden decisions in the neonatal intensive care unit. We propose a new concept—that parents may experience “moral schism”—a genuine uncertainty regarding a value-based decision that is accompanied by emotional distress. Schism, unlike moral distress, is not caused (...) by barriers to making and executing a decision that is deemed to be best by the decision-makers but rather an encounter of significant internal struggle. We explore factors that appear to contribute to both moral distress and “moral schism” for parents: the degree of available support, a sense of coherence of the situation, and a sense of responsibility. We propose that moral schism is an underappreciated concept that needs to be explicated and may be more prevalent than moral distress when exploring decision-making experiences for parents. We also suggest actions of healthcare providers that may help minimize parental “moral schism” and moral distress. (shrink)

BackgroundAge related differences were found in prevention behavior, showing that older individuals tend to be the most proactive. The aim of the study was the identification of psychological predictors on COVID-19 prevention behavior in women, across four generations. In addition, the predictive role of the psychological variables was explored through the lens of negative and positive information processing perspective on total and domain-specific COVID-19 prevention behavior.MethodsA cross-sectional research was conducted. The sample included 834 Hungarian speaking women. The assessed variables were: (...) COVID-19 knowledge, risk perception, COVID-19 health anxiety, negative automatic thoughts, psychological flexibility, and four domains of COVID-19 prevention behavior (social distancing, general hygiene, information seeking, health behavior). A three-level hierarchical linear regression analysis was conducted to investigate the predictors of preventive behavior in each generation.ResultsA diversity across generations was found. In case of baby boomer generation, the final model explained 32.4% of the variance for total prevention behavior [F(14,215) = 8.847,p< 0.001], and only perceived risk made a significant contribution. For Gen X the final model accounted for 21.1% of variance of total prevention behavior [F(14,341) = 7.788,p< 0.001], marital status, perceived risk, COVID-19 health anxiety, and negative automatic thoughts made significant contributions. In case of Gen Y the final model accounted for 6.2% of variance on total prevention behavior [F(14,147) = 1.761,p= 0.05], only perceived risk had a contribution to the final model. For Gen Z the final model accounted for 23.4% of variance on total preventive behavior [F(13,71) = 2.979,p= 0.002], and only psychological flexibility made a contribution to the model. The results on the distinct domains of COVID-19 prevention behavior emphasized details in the dissimilarity among generations.ConclusionThe role of generational identity on COVID-19 prevention behavior is relevant. The coexistence of negative and positive information processing may have its beneficial role in certain areas of prevention. (shrink)

The Affective grounding hypothesis suggests that affective experiences play a crucial role in abstract concepts’ processing (Kousta et al. 2011). Vigliocco and colleagues test the role of affective experiences as well as the role of language in learning words denoting abstract concepts, comparing children with typical and atypical development. They conclude that besides the affective experiences also language plays a critical role in the processing of words referring to abstract concepts.

Au Moyen Âge, la théorie médicale de la complexio n’est pas confinée dans le domaine restreint de la théorie ou de la pratique de la médecine. Elle implique une anthropologie déterminée, qui ne concerne pas seulement la santé et le bien-être de l’homme, mais, dans certaines limites, la nature même de celui-ci ou, pour mieux dire, la manière dont la nature spécifique de l’homme s’articule avec la variété et la différence des tempéraments et des dispositions individuelles : ce qu’est chaque (...) individu dépend de la complexion qui lui est propre. Cette anthropologie médicale dépasse les limites de sa discipline et pénètre aussi la théologie, par une série d’implications, pas toujours prévisibles, qui concernent la place de l’homme dans l’univers, l’eschatologie, la démonologie et aussi la christologie. Le but de cette étude est de rendre compte de certaines de ces implications en regard de la pensée de Thomas d’Aquin. Les différents lieux où Thomas étudie la complexion corporelle – il en considère les implications dans les domaines intellectuel et moral – montrent une sorte d’assimilation de l’anthropologie médicale (indirectement galénique, mais surtout avicennienne) à l’intérieur de son horizon de pensée, constitué par la philosophie naturelle aristotélicienne et par les exigences propres à sa théologie. (shrink)

The concept of voluntariness permeates the ethics and politics of migration and is commonly used to distinguish refugees from migrants. Yet, neither the precise nature and conditions of voluntariness nor its ethical significance for migrant rights and state obligations has received enough attention. The articles in this collection move the debate forward by demonstrating the complex ethical judgments involved in delineating voluntary from forced migration and in drawing out its political and institutional implications. In addition to highlighting the interplay between (...) the voluntary and nonvoluntary elements of migration over time and across different sites of the migration journey, they provide a nuanced account of the various conditions of voluntariness and they challenge common ideas about its normative political consequences. (shrink)

BackgroundPositive and negative focus in information processing associated with age has a diverse role in COVID-19 vaccine uptake. The aim of the study was the exploration of the generational diversity among psychological predictors of COVID-19 vaccine uptake.MethodsA cross-sectional research was conducted. The sample included 978 Hungarian women. Based on former literature findings, the COVID-19 vaccine uptake predictors were chosen from the health beliefs model, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, and psychological flexibility. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted to investigate the predictors of (...) COVID-19 vaccine uptake in women of Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z.ResultsIn Gen X women, the influence of significant predictors are more prone to the positivity in COVID-19 vaccine uptake behavior, perceived benefits being the most relevant, increasing the likelihood of vaccine uptake more than four times. In Gen Y women, perceived barriers, lack of confidence/skepticism and avoidance significantly reduce the probability of vaccine uptake, showing an accentuated negative focus in information processing related to COVID-19 vaccination. The vaccine uptake in Gen Z is predicted only by the perceived benefits, and the likelihood of COVID-19 vaccine uptake is heightened in chance more than 19 times.ConclusionWomen belonging to Gen X or Gen Y, the perceived benefits hold the key to vaccine uptake, while in women of Gen Z, low risks, lack of threats, and accessibility could motivate the decision of vaccine uptake. The findings are useful in generation-adapted vaccination campaigns and can also serve as inspiration for evolutionary psychology studies on health behavior and the broad area of study in cognitive biases in health information processing. (shrink)

The immigration debate in political theory has produced a series of accounts that justify the state’s right to exclude potential immigrants, where the right of self-determination figures prominently. We challenge two prominent accounts of the self-determination-based right to exclude and defend a circumscribed right to exclude and a corollary duty to admit immigrants, based on our ‘people relationship goods’ account of self-determination. Our conception reconciles the moral claims of global opportunity migrants with the well-being and non-alienation interests of the locals. (...) It therefore provides a principled answer to the philosophical question underlying pressing political conflicts today, namely what is the permissible scope of exclusion by self-determining political communities, in light of weighty global moral demands of inclusion. (shrink)

Although organizational and situational factors have been found to predict burnout, not everyone employed at the same workplace develops it, suggesting that becoming burnt out is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. The aim of this study was to elucidate perceptions of conscience, stress of conscience, moral sensitivity, social support and resilience among two groups of health care personnel from the same workplaces, one group on sick leave owing to medically assessed burnout (n = 20) and one group who showed no indications (...) of burnout (n = 20). The results showed that higher levels of stress of conscience, a perception of conscience as a burden, having to deaden one’s conscience in order to keep working in health care and perceiving a lack of support characterized the burnout group. Lower levels of stress of conscience, looking on life with forbearance, a perception of conscience as an asset and perceiving support from organizations and those around them (social support) characterized the non-burnout group. (shrink)

Hobbes's philosophical discourse is deconstructed as the interplay of the drama of individual behavior as perceived by rational agents and the detached analysis of conflict a by a political geometer . The author solves some long-standing problems in Hobbesian political philosophy (e.g., the role of glory, Hobbes' pessimism) and shows the consistency of Hobbes's attempt to derive absolutism as the only stable political association.

Michael Blake holds that liberal states are precluded from introducing compulsory medical service to improve access to health care under conditions of critical health worker shortage. "Emergency circumstances" are the only exception when the suspension of liberty may be justified. I argue that there are three problems with Blake's emergency justification of compulsory service. First, his concept of emergency is vague. Second, his account does not really rely on emergency as much as liberty. Third, his conception of permissible restrictions of (...) liberty is too narrow. I argue that liberties may be limited to some degree, temporarily, for the sake of attaining the capacities necessary for the exercise of liberties and for safeguarding the social conditions of the right to health. I conclude that in poor societies, temporarily delaying emigration through a highly qualified compulsory medical service can sometimes be justified. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to present Gödel's discussion on concepts, from 1944 to the late 1970s, in particular relation to the thought of Frege and Russell. The discussion takes its point of departure from Gödel's claim in notes on Bernay's review of ?Russell's mathematical logic?. It then retraces the historical background of the notion of intension which both Russell and Gödel use, and offers some grounds for claiming that Gödel consistently considered logic as a free-type theory of concepts, called (...) intensions, considered as the denotations of predicate names. (shrink)

Bridging feminist new materialism and feminist phenomenology, Astrida Neimanis’s volume, Bodies of Water, discusses water in terms of nurturing maternality based on a figural reservoir of what she terms “amniotics” and “planetary breastmilk” in order to posit this maternality as the material condition of the embodiment of life. In this article I show that this imagery is a construction consistently haunted by figures of anxiety and loss. I do this by first revisiting earlier interventions in deconstruction concerning materiality and feminist (...) theory as follows. First, pointing out a resonance between this figuration of wateriness and Kant’s notion of the dynamic sublime, I turn to Paul de Man’s reading of materiality in the Kantian sublime in order to suggest that Neimanis’s figuration of maternal water is an effect of an aesthetic ideology. Subsequently, I will revisit Diana Fuss’s reading of Irigaray – Neimanis’s main feminist resource – to show that the ontological status of water as maternal is constructed via an Irigarayan distinction between metaphor and metonymy. Finally, in order to show ways in which the maternal materiality of water is haunted by figures of anxiety and loss, I will consult Elissa Marder’s more recent work on the maternal function. (shrink)

The aggregation of individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective decision on the same propositions is called judgment aggregation. Literature in social choice and political theory has claimed that judgment aggregation raises serious concerns. For example, consider a set of premises and a conclusion where the latter is logically equivalent to the former. When majority voting is applied to some propositions (the premises) it may give a different outcome than majority voting applied to another set of propositions (the (...) conclusion). This problem is known as the discursive dilemma (or paradox). The discursive dilemma is a serious problem since it is not clear whether a collective outcome exists in these cases, and if it does, what it is like. Moreover, the two suggested escape-routes from the paradox—the so-called premise-based procedure and the conclusion-based procedure—are not, as I will show, satisfactory methods for group decision-making. In this paper I introduce a new aggregation procedure inspired by an operator defined in artificial intelligence in order to merge belief bases. The result is that we do not need to worry about paradoxical outcomes, since these arise only when inconsistent collective judgments are not ruled out from the set of possible solutions. (shrink)

After a brief discussion of Kreisel’s notion of informal rigour and Myhill’s notion of absolute proof, Gödel’s analysis of the subject is presented. It is shown how Gödel avoids the notion of informal proof because such a use would contradict one of the senses of “formal” that Gödel wants to preserve. This Gödelian notion of “formal” is directly tied to his notion of absolute proof and to the question of the general applicability of concepts, in a way that overcomes both (...) Kreisel and Myhill’s conceptions. This paper aims to contribute to the present-day debate on informal and epistemic mathematics, focusing on what appears necessary for a better understanding of the issues at stake. (shrink)

The article is devoted to postmodernism musical performance. There was realized a comprehensive retrospective analysis of the phenomenon development from ancient period to nowadays. It was proved that in ancient times interpretation was explained as a form of mythological worldview embodiment; in the Middle Ages as a way of uniting man and God; in Rrenaissance as a means of harmonizing material and spiritual components of personality; in Baroque as a method of theatricality of person's existence; in Classicism as an opportunity (...) to assert the power of human mind; Romanticism emphasized emotionality and subjectivity of concerting, the unique role of master; Modernism declared freedom of interpretation. Understanding the essence of musical performance with each historical stage became deeper, was enriched with new terminological, depth of scientific and theoretical understanding. The musical performance of postmodernism as a unique phenomenon has its own chronology of formation and development, based on achievements of previous epochs, transformed in accordance to philosophical aesthetics of the late XX century. Its outstanding constitutive qualities are: anthropology, religiosity, spirituality, meditation, improvisation, humanism, dialogicity, theatricality, rationalism, intellectualism, emotionality, playing, intertextuality, polystylistics etc. The performing art of postmodernism embodies the conceptual principles of its time: pluralism, irony, collage, synthesis, the death of the author, so on. It unites, eclectically mixes different artistic traditions and views, it forms a unique interpretive vision of musical text, demonstrates openness to dialogue with different historical epochs and civilizations, aimed at both the elite and the mass audience. (shrink)

Pain perception is influenced by several factors, and among them, affect, sex, and perception of bodily signals are assumed to play a prominent role. The aim of the present study is to explore how sex, cardiac interoceptive accuracy, and the interaction of the latter two influence the perception of experimentally induced pain. We investigated a large sample of young adults, assessing current positive and negative affective state with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, cardiac interoceptive accuracy with the mental heartbeat (...) tracking task, and pain sensitivity with electrical stimulation on the back of the dominant hand, applying a repeated-measures staircase protocol. Males showed a significantly higher pain threshold and tolerance level than females, whereas cardiac interoceptive accuracy was not associated with pain sensitivity. The impact of sex × cardiac interoceptive accuracy interaction was significant for pain threshold only, while pain tolerance was predicted only by sex. According to these findings, the associations between pain sensitivity, cardiac IAc, and sex might be more complicated than it was supposed in previous studies. Interactions between factors impacting pain perception appear worthy of further investigation. (shrink)

Il y a trente ans, évoquant la gynécologie dans l’Antiquité, Giulia Sissa écrivait que l’utérus, « dépositaire insensé et irritable de la reproduction sociale, est le seul organe qui a forcé la connaissance médicale hippocratique à définir en son sein une véritable spécialité ». L’ouvrage de Monica H. Green reprend, en les contextualisant dans un paradigme méthodologique beaucoup plus complexe, ses études précédentes sur la figure historique et littéraire de Trotula et sur la médecine féminin...

In The Leviathan in the state theory of Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt puts forward the claim that there is a ?barely visible crack? in Hobbes's theory of the state that opened the door to liberal constitutionalism. This essay claims that Schmitt's ?thesis of the crack? is composed of two elements: first, Schmitt argues that Hobbes makes a concession to individual conscience in his discussion of miracles; second, Schmitt points out that Hobbes's individualism undermines his notion of the absolute state. As (...) Schmitt relies on an unconvincing critique of Hobbes's discourse on miracles in order to justify his more general claim against Hobbes's authoritarianism, this essay suggests that Schmitt's ?thesis of the crack? is untenable in the form that Schmitt presented it in 1938. An attempt, however, is made to salvage ?the thesis of the crack? by turning to concepts found in Schmitt's Concept of the political and in Political theology. Although Schmitt openly approved of the so?called protection/obedience principle, this essay claims that there are a number of crucial differences between Schmitt's formulation of that principle and Hobbes's own version; an examination of these differences enables us (i) to appreciate the consequences of Hobbes's individualism on his theory of the state and (ii) to shed new light on Howard Warrender's famous claim that Hobbes's sovereign is inherently weak. The essay concludes that in spite of Schmitt's fallacious formulation of the ?thesis of the crack? of 1938, his political theory affords us a rare vantage point from which we can clearly see a case against the association of Hobbes with authoritarianism. (shrink)

Inequality causes a variety of social ills, which give egalitarians reasons for concerns of justice. In particular, inequality is deemed to undermine people’s fundamental moral capacity of self-respect. In this paper, we explore the complex relationship between inequality and self-respect from a philosophical and an empirical angle, arguing that a theory of justice should take both into account. To this purpose, we first clarify the normative objection to inequality from the alleged erosion of self-respect. Then, we elaborate on empirical findings (...) showing the crucial role that ‘relative deprivation’ plays in the causal mechanism that connects inequalities to the erosion of self-respect. We conclude that this role is best understood in philosophical terms as a form of deprivation that affects thesignificance that people attach to the value of the choices they make. (shrink)

The paper discusses ten philosophical problems in deontic logic: how to formally represent norms, when a set of norms may be termed ‘coherent’, how to deal with normative conflicts, how contraryto-duty obligations can be appropriately modeled, how dyadic deontic operators may be redefined to relate to sets of norms instead of preference relations between possible worlds, how various concepts of permission can be accommodated, how meaning postulates and counts-as conditionals can be taken into account, and how sets of norms may (...) be revised and merged. The problems are discussed from the viewpoint of input/output logic as developed by van der Torre & Makinson. We argue that norms, not ideality, should take the central position in deontic semantics, and that a semantics that represents norms, as input/output logic does, provides helpful tools for analyzing, clarifying and solving the problems of deontic logic. (shrink)

The paper aims at providing an exhaustive analysis of the key concept of glory in Hobbes's works. It is argued that the meaning and role of glory are essentially the same in all Hobbes's writings. The paper claims that in Elements of Law, De Cive, Leviathan, De Homine, Behemoth and in the Correspondence the desire of glory and ambition are given by Hobbes a crucial role in the explanation of human conflict. The paper argues that the status of glory vis-a-vis (...) other passions changes radically in Leviathan and De Homine: whereas in the earlier works glory was the ultimate motivation of most (if not all) individuals, i.e. the genus of all passions; in later works it becomes a species or instance of human passions. In Leviathan no concept is raised to the central position previously occupied by glory. (shrink)

The editors present the essays that are collected in the volume and which are the outcome of talks given at the international conference “Kurt Gödel Philosopher: From Logic to Cosmology” that was held in Aix en Provence (France) in summer 2013. Many of the authors belong to a group of scientists who have contributed to an ANR project with the same title under the direction of Gabriella Crocco.