Inadequate pain control, especially in older adults, remains a significant issue when caring for this population. Older adults, many of whom experience multiple acute and chronic conditions, are especially vulnerable to having their pain seriously underassessed and inadequately treated. Nurses have an ethical obligation to appropriately treat patients’ pain. To fulfill their ethical obligation to relieve pain in older patients, nurses often need to advocate on their behalf. This article provides an overview of the persistent problem of undertreated pain in (...) older adults and explores how nurses can meet this ethical duty through the application of Beauchamp and Childress’ three principles of beneficence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe paper compares Mead’s and Quine’s behaviouristic theories of meaning and language, focusing in particular on Mead’s notion of sympathy and Quine’s notion of empathy. On the one hand, Quine seems to resort to an explanation similar to Mead’s notion of sympathy, referring to ‘empathy’ in order to justify the human ability to project ourselves into the witness’s position; on the other hand, Quine’s reference to the notion of empathy paves the way to a more insightful comparison between Mead’s behaviourism (...) and an explanation of the emergence of the linguistic from pre-linguistic communication based on empathic identification processes. However, Mead is less ambiguous than Quine in his use of the notion of sympathy finds a fecund parallel in the current neuroscientific and neuro-phenomenological hypothesis on ‘empathy’. The article contends that the ambiguity in Quine’s account of empathy is due to the exigency of trying to elucidate the link between the rules of language in a cultural context and... (shrink)

According to Whitehead, nature is disclosed to mind by an ensemble of events characterized by unobservable hidden intrinsic factors (e.g., mass, gravitation) and observable extrinsic factors (e.g., motion, density). Mass is not the substratum of dynamics. It implies spatial extension and temporal duration, which are both necessary conditions of observable natural phenomena. Therefore, an instant, deprived of duration, is immeasurable. Whitehead’s claims on mass, space, and time corroborate Verlinde’s alternative conception of quantum gravitation. Within the de Sitter space-time, this conception (...) starts from the competition of the short distance degrees of freedom of the Ryn-Takanayagi tensor with long-distance thermalized excitations. This enables the creation of a baryonic mass and a decrease in de Sitter entropy. The memory effect of the original baryon creation leads to gravitation and the production of extensive thermodynamic entropy. However, the baryon production shrinks, and the dissipating space-time transforms into a space-timeless cold sink with an accompanying strong contracting memory effect. This is equivalent to the alternate motion of a giant Carnot engine, where the heat source and sink energy exchange produce the eternal periodic dynamics of the Universe. This suggests that the Universe did not start from Big Bang but oscillated eternally as a Big Bounce Universe. (shrink)

When Russell argued for his ontological convictions, for instance that there are negative facts or that there are universals, he expressed himself in English. But Wittgenstein must have noticed that from the point of view of Russell's ideal language these ontological statements appear to be pseudo-propositions. He believed therefore that what these statements pretend to say, could not really be said but only shown. Carnap discovered a way out of this mutism: what in the material mode of speech of the (...) object language looks like a pseudo-proposition can be translated into a perfectly meaningful proposition in the formal mode of speech (in the metalinguistic mode of speech of the logical syntax of language). But is this ascent into the metalanguage necessary? Taking advantage of Lésniewski's logical system there exists another way outwe can expand the number of categories of our ideal language. But Leniewski's formulas raise another profound problem, the problem of semantical muteness (cf. W. G. Lycan Semantic Competence and Funny Functors Monist 64 (1979), 209–222). (shrink)

Writing in the foreword to Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind and speaking of his upbringing in Chicago between the wars Saul Bellow attests that …as a Midwesterner, the son of immigrant parents, I recognized at an early stage that I was called upon to decide for myself to what extent my Jewish origins, my surroundings [‘the accidental circumstances of Chicago’], my schooling, were to be allowed to determine the course of my life. I did not intend to (...) be wholly dependent upon history and culture. Full dependency must mean that I was done for. The commonest teaching of the civilized world in our time can be stated simply: ‘Tell me where you come from and I'll tell you what you are’. (shrink)

Among the studies on the history of philosophy recently published in Italy, one that may be of some interest to the English reader is by D R . Abbagnano , a young pupil of Aliotta , and is devoted to the new English idealism. 1 Truthfully speaking, the term ‘ new ’ is inappropriate, or partly so, because Abbagnano dedicates the greater part of his study to what we might call the ‘ old ’ idealism in England, represented by Stirling, (...) the two Cairds, Wallace, Green, and Bradley. However, he does also pass in review the more recent doctrines, particularly those of J. H. Muirhead, G. H. Howison, D. G. Richtie, J. E. Creighton, J. B. Baillie, J. S. Mackenzie, H. Jones, W. E. Hocking, A. S. Pringle Pattison, and G. P. Adams. Abbagnano regards as a distinctive trait of English idealism inspired by Hegel as opposed to Hegel himself, this, that “for Hegel the absolute is essentially process, change and becoming; it is thought which differentiates itself and becomes articulate in a life of its own, in the threefold rhythm of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, in which each moment passes into the next. For Green, Bradley, and Royce, the absolute is on the other hand immutability, completeness, static perfection, in which each process and becoming is overcome and resolved.” At any rate, Abbagnano is equally unsympathetic towards Hegel and towards his followers, against whom he opposes, not without scholastic ingenuity, his own irrationalistic views, set out in another book whose contents are sufficiently expressed in the title. 1. (shrink)

Mill's feminism has been attacked as being logically incoherent. The general verdict has been that Mill can easily be defended from the charge. However, both sides in the debate have ignored the fact that his feminism is part of a broader theory of liberal empiricism. Placing The Subjection of Women in this context re–opens the question of its logical credentials and reveals a basic weakness in Millian feminism.

Among the studies on the history of philosophy recently published in Italy, one that may be of some interest to the English reader is by D R . Abbagnano , a young pupil of Aliotta , and is devoted to the new English idealism. 1 Truthfully speaking, the term ‘ new ’ is inappropriate, or partly so, because Abbagnano dedicates the greater part of his study to what we might call the ‘ old ’ idealism in England, represented by Stirling, (...) the two Cairds, Wallace, Green, and Bradley. However, he does also pass in review the more recent doctrines, particularly those of J. H. Muirhead, G. H. Howison, D. G. Richtie, J. E. Creighton, J. B. Baillie, J. S. Mackenzie, H. Jones, W. E. Hocking, A. S. Pringle Pattison, and G. P. Adams. Abbagnano regards as a distinctive trait of English idealism inspired by Hegel as opposed to Hegel himself, this, that “for Hegel the absolute is essentially process, change and becoming; it is thought which differentiates itself and becomes articulate in a life of its own, in the threefold rhythm of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, in which each moment passes into the next. For Green, Bradley, and Royce, the absolute is on the other hand immutability, completeness, static perfection, in which each process and becoming is overcome and resolved.” At any rate, Abbagnano is equally unsympathetic towards Hegel and towards his followers, against whom he opposes, not without scholastic ingenuity, his own irrationalistic views, set out in another book whose contents are sufficiently expressed in the title. 1. (shrink)

This early work by Robin G. Collingwood was originally published in 1939 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'An Autobiography' is the story of Collingwood's personal and academic life. Robin George Collingwood was born on 22nd February 1889, in Cartmel, England. He was the son of author, artist, and academic, W. G. Collingwood. He was greatly influenced by the Italian Idealists Croce, Gentile, and Guido de Ruggiero. Another important influence was his father, a (...) professor of fine art and a student of Ruskin. He published many works of philosophy, such as Speculum Mentis (1924), An Essay on Philosophic Method (1933), and An Essay on Metaphysics (1940). (shrink)

In this book G. W. Leibniz presents not only his reflections on predestination and election but also a more detailed account of the problem of evil than is found in any of his other works apart from the _Theodicy_. Surprisingly, his _Dissertation on Predestination and Grace_ has never before been published in any form. Michael J. Murray's project of translating, editing, and providing commentary for the volume will therefore attract great interest among scholars and students of Leibniz's philosophy and theology. (...) Leibniz addresses such topics as free will, moral responsibility, divine causation, justice, punishment, divine foreknowledge, and human freedom, revealing crucial aspects of the genesis of his mature metaphysics and the theological motivations behind it. (shrink)

Dallmayr argues that G W F Hegel is perhaps the leading philosopher of modernity and explores his philosophy as it pertains to the meaning of modernity and postmodernity: its celebration of individual freedom and the importance of a network of social relationships, public justice and civic virtue. This important text explains Hegel's work in the context of current theoretical and philosophical debates about modernity, illustrating his response to contemporary issues and recognizing him as a major figure in the history of (...) political thought. (shrink)