Objective: To assess the adequacy of the process of informed consent for surgical patients at the University Hospital of the West Indies. Method: The study is a prospective, cross-sectional, descriptive study. 210 patients at the University Hospital of the West Indies were interviewed using a standardised investigator-administered questionnaire, developed by the authors, after obtaining witnessed, informed consent for participation in the study. Data were analysed using SPSS V.12 for Windows. Results: Of the patients, 39.4% were male. Of the surgical procedures, (...) 68.6% were scheduled, 7.6% urgent and 23.8% emergency, 35.2% were minor and 64.8% major. Information imparted/received was acceptable in 40% of cases, good in 24% and inadequate (unacceptable) in 36% of cases. Almost all (97.6%) patients stated that they understood why an operation was planned and 93.3% thought that they had given informed consent. Most (95.2%) thought that they had free choice and made up their own mind. A quarter (25.2%) of all patients were told that it was mandatory for them to sign the form. There was a discussion of possible side effects and complications in 56.7% of patients. Conclusions: This study clearly indicates that surgical patients at the University Hospital of the West Indies feel that they have given informed consent. However, it also suggests that more information should be given to patients for consent to be truly informed. (shrink)

Based on the views of Hindus in Bali, the application of ornaments in the form of Balinese traditional symbols should follow the rules of the prevailing tradition.The symbols are created to show the cosmology and philosophy based on the teachings of Hinduism as indigenous in Bali and function as a means of a sacred ritual. But in reality the designers in Bali often exploit the symbols by “mutilating” and applying them to undue places, motivated by a desire to create a (...) product or environment characterized by Balinese ethnicity. For example, Acintya relief, Karang Bhoma, Garuda Wisnu and others are applied as façade decorations for shops and banks, or they are created in the form of a statue to decorate crossroads, or used for decoration of the human body in the form of a tattoo and so forth. Seen from a semiotic approach, these actions can damage the structure of the meaning of symbols, because they bring about the interruption of the established relations of the signifier and signified and they form symbol fragments with unclear relations to meaning. Similarly, in today’s designs stamped with such decoration, they appear awkward and meaningless. From such behaviour, that practice creates styles such as pastiche, parody, kitsch, camp and so forth. (shrink)

The problem of combinatorial optimization is considered in relation to the choice of the location of the location of power supplies when solving the problem of the development of urban distribution networks of power supply. Two methods have been developed for placing power supplies and assigning consumers to them to solve this problem. The first developed method consists in placing power supplies of the same standard sizes, and the second - of different standard sizes. The fundamental difference between the created (...) methods and the existing ones is that the proposed methods take into account all the material of the problem and have specialized methods for coding possible solutions, modified operators of crossing and selection. The proposed methods effectively solve the problem of low inheritance, topological unfeasibility of the found solutions, as a result of which the execution time is significantly reduced and the accuracy of calculations is increased. In the developed methods, the lack of taking into account the restrictions on the placement of new power supplies is realized, which made it possible to solve the problem of applying the methods for a narrow range of problems. A comparative analysis of the results obtained by placing power supplies of the same standard sizes and known methods was carried out, and it was found that the developed method works faster than the known methods. It is shown that the proposed approach ensures stable convergence of the search process by an acceptable number of steps without artificial limitation of the search space and the use of additional expert information on the feasibility of possible solutions. The results obtained allow us to propose effective methods to improve the quality of decisions made on the choice of the location of power supply facilities in the design of urban electrical. (shrink)

Suyolcu-zāde Nahrī Aḥmad (d.1182/1768-1769) was an important sûfî poet being a member of Ismā‘īl Rūmī branch, the sect of Qādiriyya. He carried out the duty of spiritual and ethical guidance at Qādiriyya Lodge in Tekirdağ. Besides his sûfî character, he was a poet having an extensive knowledge about the theoretical and aesthetical bases of Dīwān literature. The only original copy of Nahrī’s Dīwānçe including his poems registered in the Vatican Library, Turkish Manuscripts, nr. 235. There are forty-five Turkish, twelve Arabic (...) and three Persian poems by Nahrī in this copy. The goal of this article is to present the formal and contextual features of Nahrī’s poems in Dīwānçe in the light of the analysis on some poems that we chose. Any study was not found about the poet’s life and poems in the literature review we made. In this study, poems are classified according to the verse form and the language, and the number of couplets, type of prosody, form, style and content of the chosen poems are evaluated accordingly. This study has importance in terms of providing insight about the Religious-Sûfîstic belief in the region and period of Nahrī Aḥmad who was a sûfî poet and a member of Qādiriyya sect. In addition, the study gives information about many important influencers of the period, particularly Niyāzī-i Miṣrī and inform the readers about these influencers’ and sûfîs’ effects on Nahrī’s poems and ideas. The study also makes contribution to determining literary-sûfistic terminology of 18th century.Summary: Suyolcu-zâde Nahrī Aḥmad (d.1182/1768-1769) was a member of Qādiriyya Dervish Convent in Tekirdag where he was born. He became the head sheikh of this convent following his father Sheikh Muḥammad Efendi and worked for the convent in several ways. Nahrī Aḥmad moved back to his hometown in 1182/1768-1769 after completing his Hajj duty and died soon after that. Nahrī had two works according to Osmanlı Müellifleri (Ottoman Authors) and it is stated that the first one of these two works is about “unity of existence”. It should be mentioned that we haven’t found a copy of this work yet. The other work of Nahrī is his Dīwānçe, which includes his poems. The only copy of this significant work is registered in Vatican Library, Turkish Manuscripts, nr. 235. In this study, we had the chance to determine a third work of Nahrī which has never been mentioned in the related literature. This third work that we determined is based on the information in an Arabic poem on the page 21a of the poet’s Dīwānçe. This book that we determined is an interpretation book completed in 1166/1752-53 but Nahrī Aḥmad didn’t mention the name of the work. Nahrī Aḥmad was a spiritual guide and sufi, and he was assigned to the duty of showing the true path in dervish lodge following his madrassa education, learning Qādiriyya lodge’s morals and methods and completing his “spiritual journey”. Besides these, he was a significant poet who could write poems in Arabic, Persian and Turkish languages and he was literary competent who knew the theoretical and aesthetic rules of Dīwān literature and used these features professionally in his works. When Nahrī’s poems are analyzed, it can be seen that he adopted the understanding of existence, knowledge and belief based on Islamic Sufism. Besides, it can be seen that he internalized the significant Religious-Sufi Turkish literature figures including especially Yūnus Emre.In the copy of his Dīwānçe, registered in Vatican Library, there are forty-five Turkish, twelve Arabic and three Persian poems. There are two other poems that weren’t written by Nahrī in the same work. These poems were written by a poet with penname of ‘Ᾱrif in the period when Nahrī’s son Muḥammad Muṣlih al-Dīn was the head sheikh in the same Dervish convent. These historical poems are significant as they describe the re-building of ruined Tekirdag Qādiriyya convent after Nahrī’s period. The goal of this article is to present the formal and contextual features of poems in Nahrī’s Dīwānçe on the basis of chosen poems. As far as we could determine, there is no other study on Nahrī’s works. Nahrī’s Dīwānçe wasn’t a kind of rearranged work of collected poems. Therefore, we classified the poems in terms of the form and language and evaluated the number of couplets, aruz prosody, shape, type and content. Poems of Nahrī in Dīwānçe in terms of verse style are: Four Turkish, three Arabic, one Persian ode, one Turkish compounded stanza, seventeen Turkish, nine Arabic and one Persian major stanza, three Turkish five-line stanzas, two Turkish pentastichs, eighteen Turkish and one Persian lyric.Nahrī Aḥmad wrote five-line stanzas for three of Niyāzī-i Miṣrī’s lyrics and one of Bāqī’s lyrics. He wrote parallel poems about one pentastich, one lyric and one other poem written in a specific style of blank verse of Niyāzī-i Miṣrī. Besides, there is also an original poem that is quite unique in the work. Nahrī wrote five couplets before each verse in Niyāzī-i Miṣrī’s ode which resulted in the creation of a common ode. Poems in Dīwānçe are contextually religious-Sufi based. ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, Ismā‘īl Rūmī who was the founder of the order of Rūmiyya branch and other sheikhs of Qādiriyya dervish order are the main names mentioned in the poems. One other significant point in Nahrī’s poems is that he had a deep love and respect for Niyāzī-i Miṣrī. There are praises, quintets and parallel poems about Miṣrī in Dīwānçe which shows Niyāzī-i Miṣrī’s effect on his work. This effect is so great that it covered not only the content but also there are the signs of the effect in terms of metaphoric language, words and verses. It can be said that ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī and Niyāzī-i Miṣrī, a member of Khalwatī order, were two significant names that surrounded the mental world of Nahrī, located in the texture of his poems and gave characteristic features to his works. There is a great number of historical poems in Nahrī’s Dīwānçe. He wrote twenty-six historical verses about various historical issues such as birth and death, construction of mosque, dervish monastery, zawiya, pavilion, repairing of mansion, renovation of dervish convent, enthronement of Sultan and appointment of Grand Vizier. Also, there are some other important parts in Nahrī’s Dīwānçe such as invocation, praise and self-adulation.Although there are not many poems in the previously mentioned copy in Vatican Library, there are various names mentioned in these poems. When these poems are analyzed, it can be seen that there are the names of some prophets, some companions of Prophet Muḥammad such as ‘Alī, Ja‘far al-Sādiq, some Persian legendary characters such as Afrāsiyāb, Rustem and Anūshirwān, some Sufi names such as Manṣūr al-Hallaj, Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Shams al-Dīn of Tabrīz, Ḥācī Bektash Velī, Ibn al-‘Arabī and Bāyazīd al-Bisṭāmī, philosopher Galen and famous love heroes Laylā and Majnūn. That is to say, the poet has a rich world of references. On the other hand, there are the names of some works mentioned in Dīwānçe. Epistle of Niyāzī-i Miṣrī named Devre-i ‘Arshiyya, and Ibn al-‘Arabī’s al-Futūhāt al-Makkiyya are the other names mentioned in the work. Name of the places included in Nahrī’s poems are: Aden, Aqmescit, Baghdad, Baghcesaray, Baṭḥā, Balkh, Dimashq, Ḥijāz, Iraq, Iran, Cairo, Ken‘ān, Karbalā, Qılburun, Crimea, Kirmān, Egypt, Nemce, Rūm, Sanaa, Shām, Yemen. This study has importance in terms of providing insight about the religious-sûfî belief in the region and period of Nahrī Aḥmad who was a sûfî poet and a member of Qādiriyya sect. In addition, the study gives information about many important influencers of the period, particularly Niyāzī-i Miṣrī. Moreover, it informs the readers about these influencers’ and sûfîs’ effects on Nahrī’s poems and ideas. The study also makes contribution to determining literary-sûfistic terminology of 18th century. (shrink)

In the field of ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, in which the conceptual framework of the science of interpretation is drawn and the main rules used in tafsīr are discussed, independent books have been compiled since early periods. Some of these works stand out as foundational texts because they make important determinations about the nature, function, methodology, and relationship of the science of tafsīr with other Islamic sciences. The masterpiece entitled Fahm al-Qurʾān by al-Khāris al-Muhāsibī, a scholar of sufism, tafsīr, kalām, and hadīth (...) is one of these books. Al-Muḥāsibī was a writer who lived in a period when philological and Sharīʿah sciences gained a systematic structure and schools were born and developed. Muhāsib'i's multifaceted scholarly depth, the requirements of his time, and the characteristics of his work distinguish Fahm al-Qurʾān from other works in the field in terms of its problematic, content, and style. It can be said that Fahm al-Qurʾān consists of two main chapters. In the first chapter, the issues of kalām, meaning, and reason are subjected to a quiddity inquiry. In the second chapter, the linguistic aspect of kalām is emphasized and the content and style of the Qur'ān are discussed under the headings of muhkam- mutashābih, naskh and üslūb al-Qur'ān. In this work, al-Muḥāsibī suggests that before asking How we should understand the Qur'ān?, the reader should ask What exactly is being understood and what is meaning? The first of these questions includes the question Who am I? While the sources of The Sciences of the Qurʾān mostly focus on how to understand the Qurʾān at the epistemological and methodological level, in Fahm al- Qurʾān, the meaning of understanding the Qurʾān is problematized and a theory of reason and meaning that is competent with moral training is built. Thus, the conceptual inquiries of the work extend to the existential philosophy of the author. Despite these privileges, it is surprising that Fahm al-Qurʾān did not gain a prominent place among the main sources of tafsir methodology in later periods. This may be due to the theorization of a theory of meaning in which moral maturation is placed at the center. In this research, while trying to reveal the original value that Muhāsibī added to the field with Fahm al-Qurʾān, the systematic structure of the science of interpretation, its connection with other religious sciences, the relationship between speech adjective and language were made problematic and tried to be resolved in the context of the research hypothesis. In this context, it has been determined that al-Muḥāsibī's Fahm al-Qurʾān draws the conceptual framework of tafsīr methodology in relation to the authentic structure of the sharī'ah sciences at a very early period. The fact that Fahm al-Qurʾān carries important signs regarding the position of tafsīr in the hierarchy of sciences and its relationship with other sharī'ah sciences increases the value of the work in identifying the codes of the traditional paradigm. In the research, in which induction methods were used in text analysis and deduction methods were used in discourse analysis, it was determined that Fahm al-Qurʾān had a fiction that shapes the traditional paradigm and depicts the authentic structure of religious sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Lorenzo Valla’s Oratio on the Pseudo-Donation of Constantine: Dissent and Innovation in Early Renaissance HumanismSalvatore I. CamporealeWhy did I write about the Donation of Constantine?... Bear one thing in mind. I was not moved by hatred of the Pope, but acted for the sake of the truth, of religion, and also of a certain renown—to show that I alone knew what no one else knew.Valla to Cardinal Trevisan, 1443. (...) 1Lorenzo Valla’s well known work, the Oration on the Falsely-Believed and Forged Donation of Constantine, was written by the humanist in the year 1440. It was occasioned by the strife between Pope Eugenius IV and Alfonso of Aragon over the Kingdom of Naples. Valla wrote in favor of the Ara-gonese claim, arguing against pretensions of the Papacy to determine who should rule Naples that were based on the pseudo-Constantinian Donation. 2 [End Page 9]The Donation of Constantine: History and ForgeryAs is now well known, the Constitutum Constantini was a forgery that probably originated in the papal Curia in the eighth century. Subsequently it was often contested by the anti-papal Germanic Imperial tradition. The Constitutum portrayed the popes as assuming the role of the Emperor in the western part of the Empire as a result of the “donation” made by Constantine to the “Roman Pontiff and his successors.” The Donation was said to have taken place at a time subsequent to Constantine’s seizure of the city of Rome with the victory at the Milvian Bridge in a.d. 312, and immediately after his “conversion” to the Christian faith and his “reception of baptism” by the bishop of Rome, Pope (“Saint”) Sylvester.The Constitutum presents itself as an imperial decree, drafted and signed by Constantine himself, dated in Rome with an ambiguous formulation which could indicate the year 315 or 317 or even 330. The most significant and comprehensive passage of the entire document reads as follows:In order that the supreme pontificate may not deteriorate, but may rather be adorned with glory and power even greater than the dignity of earthly rule, behold, we give over and relinquish to the aforesaid our most blessed Pontiff, Sylvester, the universal Pope, our palace, as has been said, and also the city of Rome, and all the provinces, places and cities of Italy and the western regions, and we decree by this our godlike and pragmatic sanction that they are to be controlled by him and by his successors, and we grant that they shall remain under the law of the Holy Roman Church. 3The forgery was based an on older fictional source, the Legenda Sylvestri. It was later (at least as maintained first by Nicholas of Cusa, then by Valla) introduced by the canonist Paucapalea (Gratian’s disciple and collaborator) into the collection of canon law that had been made by Gratian, the Concordantia discordantium canonum, or Decretum (c. 1140). 4 Assertions that the Constitutum derived from the Legenda and that it was a later [End Page 10] insertion into the Concordantia represent discrete stages of Valla’s philological procedure. In fact Valla’s argumentation evolves in a kind of concentric movement. After discussing the hagiographic “fiction” of the Legenda, he treats the canonical “inauthenticity” of the Constitutum as a later insertion into the Concordantia. Then Valla returns to the notion that it was “made up” or “fictional” when he declares the Constitutum a juridical “forgery.” 5Valla’s Methodology and Argumentative ProcedureThe Oratio—this was how Valla titled his work—is a confutative discourse, rhetorically structured in the epideictic mode, although particular passages also assume forensic and deliberative modes. The oration was written in accordance with rhetorical norms for investigation and argumentation that Valla had learned from and elaborated on the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian, the writer Valla considered preeminent in the rhetorical tradition. 6“This speech of mine,” Valla emphasizes, is a speech intended for and offered to the universal assembly of Christendom. Although directly addressing the Papacy and in particular the ruling pope, Eugenius IV, the “oration” is conceived as though delivered in the presence of both the ecclesiastical hierarchy and civil authorities (“quasi... (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 155–158 Michel Serres. Biogea . Trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. 2012. 200 pp. | ISBN 9781937561086 | $22.95 Conveying to potential readers the significance of a book puts me at risk of glad handing. It’s not in my interest to laud the undeserving, especially on the pages of this journal. This is not a sales pitch, but rather an affirmation of a necessary work on very troubled terms: human, earth, nature, and the problematic world we (...) class='Hi'>made. It is this world that aspirates the silence (so to speak), and therefore the subject which, along with the development of the “made world” exports the excess augmentation of the cosmically missing, this silence of the natural, et cetera. Had we learned from Locke that lesson of “labor,” to consume what we need… but perhaps we need more than what matters? Serres’ Biogea has several functions on this manner, if it is indeed a book to be consumed. First, readers searching for novelistic entertainment have a place to dwell. Biogea deserves a place in your back pocket; biographical generosity and poetic fluidity should satisfy most textual fetishes. For lay philosophers who want to refresh their acumen, Biogea deserves a place on the book shelf, one already reads a sorely needed postmodern tune-up here. Serres’ style is clearly French; he leaves few cheese crumbs on his words, rather preciseness and breathing in the work give way to a sweeping manner that breaks the narrative line of sight. A circular narrative and anachronistic fragmentation of terms allows an abyssal atmosphere to swell, if only to pump into the book the externality of its broader text. Biogea aspires to a higher standard and the book, at times, is thinking this negentropic problem too. Univocal, the publisher, has crafted a book appropriate for the hands to hold and the translations are an achievement of an otherwise difficult writer to translate. Terms are the conditions of a broader text. It is important to note that Serres’ content is as much a thinking of terminal ports. There is a regard for the transportation technology of the written word. For me, this is the mark of genius, a craftiness that tells of a book device that I may trust. Serres is an accomplished thinker and a necessary voice to check the putative trendiness of anti-postmodernist and market-driven theory of endless cultural liquidation. Offering interventions on subjectivity as an open system we are given a chance to affirm the human, not merely to discard it, but to engage its poetic image emotion, the calibratory silent sense of the analogic world; the terms on which we base our efforts. 1 The human is the center of its own negation, constantly mediating it. Something deeper at stake appears in the work then, and it is quite obvious from the onset. Certainly, a book is an intensification of possible text and those who brought this actual book into existence have captured a rarity in regards to the subject matter and artistic accomplishment. I mentioned terms as conditions, so let us understand Biogea as bio-yea, a yes to bios . An affirmation of living and accepting presence for all of its defiance of images, words, and things temporal. Therefore Serres’ existence and its existants plays parts; out of linearity and still like a porous bone pumping blood it manufactures into the fleshy life it becomes. Starting from a man named silence chaos emerges, or the man “Old Taciturn” takes up a journey anticipating a great flood. In other words, a development akin to the one in Genesis. In dealing with this ancestral occupation, fusing Genesis with contemporary philosophical terms, Serres initiates this anachronistic fragmentation under the forming subjectivity of his own autobiography. This mutation in the open system is precisely one of Serres’ terms. There an abyss is at work, stated, but also measured by heels on the ground—the abyss dispatching earthen tensions, that which plays our tunes, that which we abide by and recognize in volcanoes, rivers, oceans, earthquakes and weaponry in the battles of the world. Set in later stages of the book, such tensions are harnessed through scientific principles in an attempt to unify the terms of natural force if only to terminate the world. Thus the elevation of the earth into the world is clearly set forth. Here already, and few pages in, a resonance is set forth under appellations such as the river Garonne, a subjectivity as much as it is inhuman, the river is the inhuman that makes us human. I get the sense that Serres is taking up a challenge issued by Wallace Stevens; namely, that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written, but that only the poem of the earth has resisted composition. 2 On this level we cannot avoid the killing factor of silence, given that our cognition blocks its pure, radical obliteration. Thus a silence of attunement to the earth is in a novel dialectic of the rithmic and rhythm. A technological world, a triumph of termination is set forth. If a text imposes its will given the reader who authorizes it, it is made to convey or convect a presupposition to a reader or its inhabitant(s). Text is therefore both, in-content, contenting, contentedness, and in reading it, a way to navigate self-destruction (dis-content). Here then would one note that the “inhuman” reveals itself, “an aperiodic rhythm of lovers and beloved…the sea as our friend…but as our enemy…maternal vivifying sea.” The sea is an open book, or vaginal birth canal, where the engagement of text comes forth: “…woman sea, open vulva.” One sees like the sea, but only after it, when the uninhabitable truth of inhabiting it switches the polarity of the sailors soul: “I was seeing like the sea” (9-11). In other words, we are invited to embrace the nonsense of the visible. At this point I am taken to Jean-François Lyotard’s work The Inhuman , specifically the first entry on negentropy that would be congruent with Serres’ thematic. 3 The human being exports, deports, or transplants its relation through text, through the system— and this is its sense or relation to silence, to music. Unaware of Serres’ proximity to this work, the concept of gender interrelation as regards a solar catastrophe runs clear. It would be, on this basis, that Serres references his peers, the other texts that, as mentioned above, are discarded in philosophy today. For students of philosophy what we have here is perhaps a gift, a needed project. If silence and death are at work, there is a political valence to deal with, and here, much like the domain of the text and the dominion of the reader, we confront the world of natural, fluid violence. The anti-postmodernist critique is in part based on a weak idea that the loss of ideology, of a world vision, motivates the “correlationist” project. 4 Serres seems to offer another way to view this when he notes that whereas persons “sometimes kill,” it is clearly “the collective” that “always kills” (17). What is the collective today, if not an organizing function we never see yet acts in its favor in the name of truth? One feels a sense of enigma here, if only to link to what Stevens remarked of communism as a “grubby faith,” providing this applies for capitalism as well, namely any ideology of progress overly interested in absolutes. Here we get the sense that the inhuman, silence, this type of killing, always killing, could not be matched by human-made, political dynamos. Or that if it comes to an equilibrium, a catastrophe is never too far from us to read with our heels. We are left to note that the forces of nature presuppose and permeate political systems, the more these systems obtain force, the more the system takes upon itself the proper name of nature that motivates its dissemination, albeit falsely. This note, that in an age of ecocide and technological captivity (sustainability and transparency) political regimes won’t grow our soul-learning ears any larger than our tongues, stands clear to us. The promise of technological desubjectification is here pushed aside. Regarding politics, Serres illustrates this fact: Where did this corpse come from? Who was it? Who killed it? I don’t know. I won’t try to find out. I refuse to get vengeance for it. And I only see Garonne. For our victims, today, are the rivers, too. Their waters have irrigated my life, enchanted my thought, invigorated my body; I’ve known them to be threatening, untamable, as dangerous as the sea when it rages. Yes, murderous. They decided to control their courses; dams, sometimes senseless, destroying sites and valleys, reduced entire populations to servile displacements; programs for the irrigation of thirsty farmland, often beneficial of course, completed their drying up.(22) Serres enters into his idea concerning the captivity of language from the natural into a world system: For thousands of years, we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation. Thus every inert object, every living thing as well, sleeps under the covers of signs, a little in the way that, today, a thousand posters shouting messages and ugly riots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception because the meaning, almost nil, of this false language and these base images forms an irresistible source of attraction to our neurons and eyes. This appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. (38-39) Technological concealment coming to bear, we begin to get a sense of another commentary on the condition of sensing, driving home the necessity of a text dealing with such subject matter to be what its terms insist. Thus toward new openings: The new opening. As low beneath our feet as you like, the Biogea opens us to another space, high enough for us to be able to acquire a wisdom there, that of redeveloping this same place differently from our fathers, this place that’s still politically cut up by old hatreds, beneath the flood of tears and blood that we call history. Without this soft place, spiritually very old, but newly conceived in this way, without the juridical construction of a common good, opposed to our filthy ownership, I don’t see how our planet, hard, will survive. Hardness that depends on a softness, material belonging that depends on this temporary rented location (51). Serres enters into a summit on the content and the structure of his work. Archimedes is brought in with the concept of three volcanoes. Meaning fire, but as well earth, water, air. For it was Archimedes’ war machines that sought to lift the earth, thus bringing in the question of principles of science: “can a principle be invented while controlling its consequences?” (66-7). May the earth be put in a sentence, terminated by terminology, appellations, gone wild? By means of these element-dominating laws, this old physicist began to tear nature away from the ancient myths; by a strange return, today we’re plunging our successes back into the anxieties and terrors from which that ancient physics was born. Yes, our new history of science and technology is plunging, today, as though in a loop, into the fundamental human myths from which Empedocles’ first laws came. A major progression and a regression on the nether side of the origins. Consequently, the contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of hate and love are at the same time human, living, inert and global. We will never attain a deontology of our knowledge and actions without thinking the subjective, the objective, the collective, and the cognitive all together simultaneously. Here, hate and love are the result of these four components.(71) Working then on the concept of fire-starting mirrors to the atomic annihilation of the Second War, Serres works into the subjectivity in question on the matter of rhythm—say rithmic— precisely at that point: Knowledge is changing today. The all-political is dying; the monarchy of the sciences said to be hard is coming to a close. The science of the things of the world will have to communicate just as much as the things of the world do, which do it much better than humans do, who don’t always want to do it. Let’s celebrate two changes this morning. The first one strikes a new blow to our narcissism. No, knowledge and the world don’t resemble our analytical enjoyments of refined cutting up, of endless debates and of exclusions full of hate. They, on the contrary, form a bloc and a sum, alliance and alloys. Uniting the fields of knowledge among themselves the way the things are connected among themselves, the second newness puts into place sets united by interlacing, webs and simplexes that combine with the things of the world, themselves combined, the combined knowledge that understands them.(130-1) Biogea closes on its opening flood thematic, approaching the initial telos of Genesis. Here the trees are brought into a position with atmosphere, the opaque abyssal reservoir, the tomb of the sun, sea in the polarity of the earthen heaven and hell. The poem of the earth then is silent but deadly, indeed, as funny as that phrase is, mainly a tomb gas. The meaning of the living and the non-meaning of things converge in the muteness of the world; this meaning and non-meaning plunge there and come out, the ultimate eddy. Mundus patet: through a fissure, through an opening, a fault, a cleft come noises, calls as small as these apertures. I’m listening, attentive, I’m translating, I’m advancing in the scaled-down meaning and science. Mundus patet: should the world open greatly, it will launch me into its silence. The totality remains silent. Knowledge expanded in elation. White origin of meaning, fountain of joy. (198) Final Remarks One test of a review is the long term trajectory the referee thinks the book will have. I see Serres’ text lending greatly into the vision of Biogea . In fact, in the vision of the novel inquiries of Stephen Jay Gould’s work there is something to be thought on the level of the individual and the species; namely, that humanity and its uniqueness is in its deferral, its thinking and naming, a thinking surrounded by silence that filters into everything, that pulls us through the world, the kinetic pulse we recognize, and all of that we cleave away in the base philosophical maxim of difference itself. Unique individuals are spatial creatures: we dwell, and we ought to get good at it. Yet this is an imaginative space that, if you are crazy enough to believe it, de-term-ine the conditions of its own terms. That is why we are not merely creating spaces on the acceleration of time, or so this ignoramus thinks, to accidentally transcend. Imagination already has this insatiable silence that we drink up and fail to manifest. Space is timeless. The imagination itself, shared by humans for themselves, their objects, and the species as a whole, is a non-defined space of relation; a whole human trajectory as part of nature, and part of worlds that are the other side of thinking nature, the consequence of it, at least our attempt to do so. Our survival is based on our deliberation, our caution, our natural deconstructive sense toward this silence that is already part of the song, sung, singing of this century without end. Good books will let us inhabit this space and recognize a form of life. Serres’ text moves toward dwelling, as noted, in masterful and accessible ways. The pitched battles are the falling replays of anemic and dead politics. As soon as we realize there is humanity, we may be able to enjoy the end of it, our inhuman capability of listening to silence. NOTES 1. See Michel Serres. The Parasite . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2007. 2. Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value” [ca. 1945], in Collected Poetry and Prose . New York: The Library of America. 1997. 724-39. 3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time . Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1992. 4. See the introduction: Quentin Melliassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency . Trans. Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum. 2008. EDITOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on August 8, 2012. Substantial edits include block quotes from the book under review as well as the inclusion of comments from the author. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:These Things I BelieveA. M. ShuhamI am a health care professional who has worked in the field for two decades. I have been part of small miracles and heartbreaking events, which kept me up at night. Although I do not [End Page 120] provide direct patient care, my advanced education and expertise allows me to advise members of the health care team when difficult questions arise about the goals (...) of treatment, questions about competency and interpreting patient preferences. I believe my interest in the field was shaped by my family’s experience dealing with the challenges that come with terminal illness and advancing age. I am humbled to have been part of their journey as they faced death with dignity and grace.Living in a small community presents significant challenges that may never occur in a large urban setting. The team you work with knows your family or the names of your children because in their spare time they are the piano teacher or soccer coach for your children, friends that knew you growing up. This close knit atmosphere can be a blessing when things go well and unbearable when mistakes are made or professionals disagree, because you still interact with one another outside the context of your professional role and this is when moral distress begins.I began working with A. J. ten years ago to facilitate the completion of a health care directive. At the time A. J was beginning to show the signs of a neuro–muscular disease experienced by other members of the family. In early 2000 most directives were fairly straightforward with the option to choose artificial nutrition and hydration or not. A. J. very specifically checked “none.” Years went by living independently for A. J. but as most illnesses progress so did A. J’s, and admission to a health care institution became necessary. In many situations medically assisted nutrition and hydration would be indicated, but in this case the wishes of the patient were known in the form of a health care directive. The decision makers inability to honor the directive was the purpose for my involvement almost a decade after my initial work with A. J.No matter where you stand in the debate regarding medically assisted nutrition and hydration being burdensome or ordinary care, most people believe in the importance of a health care directive given the histories of Nancy Cruzan, Karen Quinlan and Terri Schiavo. My objective was to compile the legal information that would elucidate the patient preferences and help staff and the decision maker understand it was time to honor the directive given the advanced stage of disease. Numerous attempts were made with the surrogate and health care professionals to help them understand state statutes on health care directives supporting a patient’s right to chose. It became clear that some of the team seemed disinterested in my concerns or my responsibility as a professional, and I began to believe the difficulty was a failure on my part to communicate clearly.During that first year conversations and meetings were scheduled with the patients decision makers and they felt unable to make a decision and requested the entire family provide input. Although they understood A. J’s wishes, they felt everyone should be in agreement. In my experience when leaving decisions of this magnitude to a large extended family, communications deteriorate and little can be accomplished. Some members in the family held fundamental religious beliefs and thought a miracle could change the prognosis. While I believe as health care professionals we must respect individual religious beliefs and values, we are also morally obligated to advocate on behalf of our patients a fundamental principle I hold dear.The health care team was no more eager to address the issue than the family. I had produced specific state statutes regarding the health care directive of a previously competent person and even in light of this information, some individuals continued to believe the surrogates decision took precedence over the directive. This growing tension left me feeling angry and ineffective, questioning my role in the organization, while watching A. J. linger in a state not chosen. I believed I had failed... (shrink)

Ethnic nepotism theory predicts that even in times of communal peace altruism is more pronounced within than between ethnic groups. The present study tested the hypothesis that altruism in the form of alms giving would be greater within than between ethnic groups, and greater between more closely related groups than between more distant groups. The three groups chosen for study were ethnic Russians, Moldavians, and Gypsies. Russians are genetically closer to Moldavians than to Gypsies. Observations were made of 128 (...) ethnic Russian, 25 Moldavian, and 25 Gypsy beggars receiving gifts from ethnic Russians in Moscow trains. The Gypsies were mainly girls, contrary to the Russian sample. Multivariate analysis identified three main strategies: active, personified, and appeasing-undirected. Russian strategies were most variable. Gypsies presented strong charity releasers: 84% were children who played music and sang and showed appeasing-undirected behavior. The few adults were highly submissive or friendly. Nevertheless, their success was limited compared with that of ethnic Russians despite the latter’s demanding behavior and their being mostly mature or elderly persons. Moldavians received an intermediate amount of charity. The hypothesis was supported. (shrink)

In recent decades, philosophers of science have devoted considerable efforts to understand what models represent. One popular position is that models represent fictional situations. Another position states that, though models often involve fictional elements, they represent real objects or scenarios. Though these two positions may seem to be incompatible, I believe it is possible to reconcile them. Using a threefold distinction between different signs proposed by Peirce, I develop an argument based on a proposal recently made by Kralemann and (...) Lattman (in Synthese 190:3397–3420, 2013) that shows that the two aforementioned positions can be reconciled by distinguishing different ways in which a model representation can be used. In particular, on the basis of Peirce’s distinction between icons, indices and symbols, I argue that models can sometimes function as icons, sometimes as indexes and sometimes as symbols, depending on the context in which they are considered and the use that they are developed for because they all have iconic, indexical and symbolic features. In addition, I show that conceiving models as signs enables us to develop an account of scientific representation that meets the main desiderata that Shech (in Synthese 192:3463–3485, 2015) presents. (shrink)

Neptunus et Apollo dicuntur Troiam muro cinxisse; his rex Laomedon uouit quod regno suo pecoris eo anno natum esset immolaturum. id uotum auaritia fefellit. alii dicunt †parum eum promisisse. The story that Neptune and Apollo together built the walls of Troy for Laomedon is well known from Homer. At the end of their year's service the perfidious king refused to pay the agreed wages. Ovid tells the familiar story in one of his transitional sections in the Metamorphoses. Hyginus' account poses (...) the textual problem indicated above. H. I. Rose comments on ‘parum’ as follows: ‘procul dubio corruptum hoc neque arridet Schmidtii coniectura promsisse. fuitne partum equarum? hoc enim plerumque narratur, equos quos a Ioue accepisset promisisse Laomedontem mercedis nomine…sed Herculi; quod facile ad deos mercennarios transferri potuit; atque non equos sed equas fuisse tradit Apollod. II, 104’. Rose rightly rejects Schmidt's emendation ‘promsisse’. ‘Promisisse’ has every sign of soundness and the difficulty lies, as Rose sees, with ‘parum’. Rose's own conjecture ‘partum equarum’, however, will not do. Apart from the oddity of the expression, one would need a good deal more persuasion than Rose offers to accept that the well-known promise of Zeus' horses which Laomedon made to Hercules was transferred from Hercules to Neptune and Apollo. There is no suggestion anywhere in the sources that Laomedon promised to give Neptune and Apollo the famous horses as payment for building the walls. (shrink)

Neptunus et Apollo dicuntur Troiam muro cinxisse; his rex Laomedon uouit quod regno suo pecoris eo anno natum esset immolaturum. id uotum auaritia fefellit. alii dicunt †parum eum promisisse. The story that Neptune and Apollo together built the walls of Troy for Laomedon is well known from Homer. At the end of their year's service the perfidious king refused to pay the agreed wages. Ovid tells the familiar story in one of his transitional sections in the Metamorphoses. Hyginus' account poses (...) the textual problem indicated above. H. I. Rose comments on ‘parum’ as follows: ‘procul dubio corruptum hoc neque arridet Schmidtii coniectura promsisse. fuitne partum equarum? hoc enim plerumque narratur, equos quos a Ioue accepisset promisisse Laomedontem mercedis nomine…sed Herculi; quod facile ad deos mercennarios transferri potuit; atque non equos sed equas fuisse tradit Apollod. II, 104’. Rose rightly rejects Schmidt's emendation ‘promsisse’. ‘Promisisse’ has every sign of soundness and the difficulty lies, as Rose sees, with ‘parum’. Rose's own conjecture ‘partum equarum’, however, will not do. Apart from the oddity of the expression, one would need a good deal more persuasion than Rose offers to accept that the well-known promise of Zeus' horses which Laomedon made to Hercules was transferred from Hercules to Neptune and Apollo. There is no suggestion anywhere in the sources that Laomedon promised to give Neptune and Apollo the famous horses as payment for building the walls. (shrink)

1. Introduction. Nowadays metaphysics is so far out of fashion, with scientists at any rate, that a few words of justification may be required for putting it in relation with science, as in this paper.Metaphysics is nothing occult, nor is it necessarily dogmatic or allied to theology. Strictly, it is a science itself, the science of being. But since a large section of being—even the whole of it, according to some metaphysics—consists of phenomena, and since the ostensible business of natural (...) science is with phenomena, a distinction has to be made. The use of ‘metaphysics’ in this paper is restricted to the non-phenomenal mode of being. More explicitly, it is restricted to formal and general things, such as category, class, variable, relation, order. General words, which I take to be all the words except certain proper names, are, accordingly, metaphysical signs; and the metaphysical matrix is by no means limited to science but extends to all discourse in which there are general terms. (shrink)

If you are an anthropologist wanting to use digital methods or programming as part of your research, where do you start? In this commentary, we discuss three ways in which anthropologists can use computational tools to enhance, support, and complement ethnographic methods. By presenting our reflections, we hope to contribute to the stirring conversations about the potential future role of data science vis-a-vis anthropology and ethnography, and to inspire other anthropologists to take up the use of digital methods, programming, and (...) computational tools in their own research. (shrink)

This is the first of six volumes, the last of which is scheduled for publication in late 1970. Altogether they will comprise "a comprehensive survey of central theological topics conducted by a group of writers in basic sympathy with each other, whose theological views have emerged from a serious and disciplined study of the relevant sources and from an awareness of the problems posed by life and thought in the modern world." The Encyclopedia is being published simultaneously in English, French, (...) German, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish editions and it has been billed as an international project. In actual fact, a German, and particularly, Rahnerian point of view overwhelmingly predominates in this first volume. This may be all to the good but the statistics are nonetheless revealing. Each of the 120 articles and parts of articles is signed, by one or more of a total of ninety different authors. But out of these ninety, fourteen contributors,, account for approximately 42 per cent of the writing. Rahner himself has authored eight articles or parts of articles and ninety-eight columns; i.e., approximately 12 per cent of the total space. In short, this first volume certainly reflects what Karl Rahner is thinking. Whether that is what Catholic theology as a whole is or ought to be thinking is, of course, another question altogether. The more significant articles include those on "Angel" ; "Apocrypha" ; "Apologetics" ; "Baptism" ; "Bible" and "Biblical Exegesis" ; "Bishop" ; "Charity" ; "Christianity" ; "Church" ; "Church and State" ; "Church and World" ; "Church History" ; "Confirmation". Also deserving of mention are philosophical articles by Jörg Splett: "Agnosticism," "Analogy of Being," "Anthropomorphism," "Body," "Categories," "Concept," and "Consciousness." These articles are almost Leibnizian in their clarity and conciseness. They are written from a definite point of view, viz., transcendental Thomism strongly influenced by Heidegger; but they quite ably speak for themselves and their subject matter. The focus of most of the articles is on the current state of discussion in Catholic theology. The attempt to be up to date is reflected on almost every page, with numerous citations from the documents of Vatican II. No attempt has been made to render the articles definitive in terms of detail or scope. Thus the title Encyclopedia is somewhat misleading if it is meant to indicate that the present work is in the same genre as, say, the Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics or the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique. Sacramentum Mundi is more like a contemporary Summa than a multi-dimensional and exhaustive encyclopedia.--E. A. R. (shrink)

There are a number of grounds for criticizing what the state requires of one, and for thinking that one no longer has an obligation to obey it. I will begin by attempting to locate liberalism amongst such grounds. It is useful for this purpose to contrast two headings under which these grounds may fall. Firstly, there are criticisms concerning the content of the requirements of the state. In this case exception is taken to what it is that the law requires (...) quite apart from the process by which it was arrived at. If Jews are legally prevented from practising certain professions, and objection is taken because no state should make laws debarring persons from certain professions on religious grounds, the objection is one of content. Secondly, there are grounds concerning the procedure by which a decision was reached. If it is thought that the British Government ought not to have signed the Treaty of Rome because no referendum was taken on whether the electorate wanted Britain to join, exception is taken to the procedure by which this decision was made. The objection could be made by one who thought that British entry was the best policy. liberalism lays down principles concerning the permissible content of what is required by the state. (shrink)

The constantly accelerating progress of contemporary natural science is indissolubly associated with the development and use of mathematics and with the processes of mathematical modeling of the phenomena of nature. The essence of this diverse and highly fertile interaction of mathematics and natural science and the dialectics of this interaction can only be disclosed through analysis of the nature of theoretical notions in general. Today, above all in the ranks of materialistically minded researchers, it is generally accepted that theory possesses (...) a value of its own. Contrary to positivist concepts of the nature of our knowledge, the meaning and significance of theory do not consist merely of the recording of experimental data, their classification and notation in abbreviated form. The meaning of theory is considerably more significant and is revealed, above all, in its explanatory and predictive functions. Contemporary theoretical knowledge is quite advanced and comprises a highly complex system, relatively self-contained and capable of internal development. Mathematics is the most interesting and distinctive phenomenon in the system of theoretical knowledge, in the system of science in general. It is in its dialectical development that the internal force and dynamics of the development of theory, in the very broadest sense of that word, find expression. Paul Lafargue tells us that Karl Marx held that "science only attains perfection when it succeeds in making use of mathematics" . In many fields of research the formulation of new ideas and concepts rests upon mathematics, its concepts and notions, and "is suggested" by the latter. "Mathematics," writes F. Dyson, "is the main source of the notions and principles out of which new theories are created" . The basic significance of mathematics to theory has been noted by outstanding thinkers over the course of the entire history of development of science. Today the expressive phrase, "the mathematization of knowledge," has come into general currency as a description of the principal direction of growth of theoretical notions in natural science. However, with respect to the growth of modern theoretical physics in general, the statement that it develops primarily by the method of the mathematical hypothesis has general validity. For example, the principal findings and discoveries of quantum theory and particle physics, starting from the corpuscularwave dualism and terminating with the omega minus hyperon and hypothetical quarks, were obtained or made "at the tip of a mathematician's pen.". (shrink)

We know that there has been no time in the history of humanity in which animate matter existed and produced only conditions favorable to its existence, without any damage to the environment. Therefore, I agree that changing the relationship of man to the environment must be considered a task of prime importance, because it makes no sense to live and not believe in the possibility that the conditions of life can be improved. It is absolutely essential that all efforts be (...) made - which depends on us - to see that social conditions and, consequently, the biological conditions of life on earth favor life and promote peace on earth - not war, not mutual extermination. The entire history of the past was based on the extermination and suppression of the weak. On the other hand, the theory of Marxism-Leninism holds that it is possible and necessary to create conditions under which life would be continued, but not at the expense of weaker or more poorly organized neighbors. Conditions must be created that favor joint and friendly existence. (shrink)

Objectives To evaluate whether the requirement of “minimal risk and burden” for paediatric research without direct benefit to the subjects compromises the ability to obtain data necessary for improving paediatric care. To provide evidence-based reflections on the EU recommendation that allows for a higher level of risk. Design and setting Systematic analysis of the approval/rejection decisions made by the Dutch Central Committee on Research involving Human Subjects (CCMO). Review methods The analysis included 165 proposals for paediatric research without direct (...) benefit that were reviewed by the CCMO between January, 2000, and July, 2007. A separate, in-depth analysis of all drug studies included 18 early phase drug studies and nine other drug studies without direct benefit. Results 11 out of 165 studies were definitively rejected because the CCMO did not regard the risk and/or burden to be minimal. In three of these 11 cases (including two early phase drug studies) the requirement of minimal risk and burden was cited as the only reason for rejection. Four other early phase drug studies also involved risks and/or burdens that were not regarded to be minimal but were nevertheless approved. Conclusions The requirement of minimal risk and burden, aiming to protect research subjects, occasionally leads to rejection of protocols. Early phase drug studies relatively often do not comply with the requirement. Committees may find ways to approve important studies that formally should be rejected, but that is not a desirable solution. The regulatory framework should be revised to make such occasional exceptions to the requirement legitimate and transparent. (shrink)

This paper discusses the D-N model of scientific explanation. It is suggested that explanation is a part of assertive discourse where certain principles must be observed. Then use is made of the relation between the informative content and logical content of a sentence (as shown, for instance, by Popper) to draw some of the conditions necessary for a sound model. It is claimed that the conditions of the model proposed in the present paper exhaust the insights of the papers (...) in the literature, solve the difficulties encountered by other authors, but have some damaging consequences on the D-N model of scientific explanation. (shrink)

J. P. Z. Bonilla's methodological approach to truthlikeness is evaluated critically. On a more general level, various senses in which the theory of truthlikeness could be seen as a theory concerned with methodology are distinguished, and it is argued that providing speical sciences with methodological tools is unrealistic as an aim of the theory of verisimilitude. Rather, when developing this theory, one should rest contnet with the more modest aim of conceptual analysis, or of providing explications for the relational concept (...) of being closer to the truth. In addition, some remarks will be made on the difficulties which the similarity approach to truthlikeness has in realizing this aim and which are caused by the important role that Hintikka's constituents have in it. (shrink)

The article discusses the modern philosophical concepts of transhumanism and posthumanism. The central issue of these concepts is “What is the posthuman?” The 21st century is marked by a contradictory understanding of the role and status of the human. On the one hand, there comes the realization of human hegemony over the whole world around: in the 20th century mankind not only began to conquer outer space, invented nuclear weapons, made many amazing discoveries but also shifted its attention to (...) itself or rather to the modification of itself. Transhumanist projects aim to strengthen human influence by transforming human beings into other, more powerful and viable forms of being. Such projects continues the project of human “deification.” On the other hand, acknowledging the onset of the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene, there comes the rejection of classical interpretations of the human. The categories of historicity, sociality and subjectivity are no longer so anthropocentric. In the opinion of the posthumanists, the project of the Vitruvian man has proven to be untenable in the present-day environment and is increasingly criticized. The reflection on the phenomenon of the human and his future refers to the concepts that explore not only human but also non-human. Very often we can find a synonymous understanding of transhumanism and posthumanism. Although these movements work with the same modern constructs and concepts but interpret them in a fundamentally different way. The discourse of transhumanism refers to the Cartesian opposition of the body and the mind. Despite the sacralization of technology and the desire to purify the posthuman from such seemingly permanent attributes of the living as aging and death, transhumanism in many ways continues the ideas of the Enlightenment. For posthumanists, the subject is nomadic and a kind of assembly of human, animal, digital, chimerical. Thus, in posthumanism the main maxim of humanism about the human as the highest value is rejected – the human ceases to be “the measure of all things.”. (shrink)

The author of this work has attempted a detailed analysis of those aspects of visual perception which he takes to be of vital importance to the epistemologist. The epistemological problems which form the background of his work are primarily those raised by Realist theories of perception. By tackling the problems raised by Realist theories, and at the same time rejecting Phenomenalism, Professor Dretske has made a useful contribution to philosophical analyses of perception. He has, I believe, been partly successful (...) in showing that the dichotomy ‘either Realist or Phenomenalist’ need not be a real one; that rigid Realist theories such as those of Ryle, Chisholm, and Armstrong need not be the only viable alternatives to Phenomenalism. (shrink)

The article examines the contribution of the Italian journalist and historian Giampaolo Pansa to the Italian collective memory. The definition of the concept of "collective trauma", as well as "structural violence" is given. The work also deals with the consequences of the fascist regime on Italian identity, expressed in cultural trauma. A historiographical review of two books by J. Pansa, who made a great impression on the Italians, as he was the first to decide to tell about the mutual (...) two-sided arbitrariness of winners and losers that took place in Italy during the civil War of 1943–1945. For a long time it was forbidden to talk about this conflict in Italy about what the traumatized consciousness did not allow to remember. The silence that Italy was struck by eventually played a bad role for the Italians. Having abruptly left the fascist worldview, having abruptly changed their identity from totalitarian to democratic, the Italians were afraid to work through this trauma, not wanting to remember the lynching and arbitrariness committed by many of those who were considered and rightfully considered heroes. Moreover, many families who were associated with fascism or simply adhered to these views were afraid to talk about them because of the risk of retaliation. (shrink)

SummaryThis study evaluated the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the male Sardinian population, and verifies that it has increased over the last 30 years. Data were collected during 2003–2004 from military registers in the Archive of the Military District of Cagliari for the years 1969 and 1998. A total of 22,345 forms were analysed from all Sardinia. The conscripts were classified on the basis of their place of residence and socioeconomic status. The overall prevalence of overweight and obesity in (...) Sardinia were 4.33% and 0.55%, respectively, for the conscripts of 1969 and 9.8% and 3% for 1998. Olbia-Tempio was the province with the highest incidence of overweight and obesity in 1969, and Nuoro had the highest incidence in 1998. Distribution of body mass index, overweight and obesity across the island showed a statistically significant heterogeneity that strongly decreased from 1969 to 1998. Among the conscripts of 1969, the incidence of overweight and obesity were higher in rural than in urban regions. An opposite trend was observed for the 1998 prevalence, it being more frequent in urban than rural regions. Comparison with other Italian regions was made. The percentages of overweight and obese individuals in Sardinia have markedly increased during the last 30 years, but their low incidence with respect to other Italian populations could be explained by the genetic peculiarity of the island. The change in the internal distribution of obesity clearly reflects socioeconomic changes. (shrink)

I discuss the behavior of the Akaike Information Criterion in the limit when the sample size grows. I show the falsity of the claim made recently by Stanley Mulaik in Philosophy of Science that AIC would not distinguish between saturated and other correct factor analytic models in this limit. I explain the meaning and demonstrate the validity of the familiar, more moderate criticism that AIC is not a consistent estimator of the number of parameters of the smallest correct model. (...) I also give a short explanation why this feature of AIC is compatible with the motives for using it. (shrink)

I discuss the behavior of the Akaike Information Criterion in the limit when the sample size grows. I show the falsity of the claim made recently by Stanley Mulaik in Philosophy of Science that AIC would not distinguish between saturated and other correct factor analytic models in this limit. I explain the meaning and demonstrate the validity of the familiar, more moderate criticism that AIC is not a consistent estimator of the number of parameters of the smallest correct model. (...) I also give a short explanation why this feature of AIC is compatible with the motives of using it. (shrink)

The problem of the subject area of ethics is, so to speak, one with a "double bottom," for beneath the discussion of its subject matter in the narrow sense is actually concealed a diversity of positions and notions on the part of the participants regarding various prospects for the development of that discipline, the relationship among its various aspects, ways of perfecting its methodology, and so forth. This is a response to the new demands made by practical life in (...) socialist society today. It is also a result of the internal logic of the development of ethical thought and, in a certain sense, of the forecasting of science. It is precisely in this framework that V. T. Efimov's article should mainly be considered. It attracts attention, at the right time and in a polemically acute fashion, to the most urgent "growth points" of ethical knowledge, those urgently requiring joint discussion and decision. Also well chosen, in its way, is the term morality studies, even in the capacity of a preliminary denotation of the entire basic sphere of practical, concrete "validation" of ethics as a philosophical discipline. This term reflects, in our opinion, important trends in the development over the past decade of those aspects of ethics and its methodology that were previously described either as "descriptive ethics," "the sociology of morals," or "the sociology of socialization," or as "ethology," "ethnology," and so forth. As we know, all those terms suffered from imprecision or ambiguity of meaning and did not take root in Soviet philosophical literature. (shrink)

There is no need to prove the significance to philosophy of the famous liar paradox. Attempts to solve it have not ceased over the course of many centuries, from hoary antiquity to our own day. The failure of attempts undertaken within the bounds of everyday, natural languages has led many philosophers, particularly of the positivist trend, to pessimistic conclusions with respect to the potentials of such languages. This is very clearly evident, for example, in the statement of A. Tarski, who (...) writes: "The liar paradox made its first appearance in our discussions as a kind of evil force possessed of great destructive energy. It compels us to reject all attempts to explicate the notion of truth for natural languages and to confine ourselves to the formalized languages of scientific reasoning." Tarski's viewpoint has been repeatedly criticized. We should prefer not to cast doubt on the significance of that highly valuable criticism. However, we cannot fail to observe that Tarski's notion retains its force so long as its basic argument - the insolubility of the liar paradox within the confines of natural languages - remains standing. (shrink)

How do people attribute responsibility in situations where the contributions of multiple agents combine to produce a joint outcome? The prevalence of over-determination in such cases makes this a difficult problem for counterfactual theories of causal responsibility. In this article, we explore a general framework for assigning responsibility in multiple agent contexts. We draw on the structural model account of actual causation (e.g., Halpern & Pearl, 2005) and its extension to responsibility judgments (Chockler & Halpern, 2004). We review the main (...) theoretical and empirical issues that arise from this literature and propose a novel model of intuitive judgments of responsibility. This model is a function of both pivotality (whether an agent made a difference to the outcome) and criticality (how important the agent is perceived to be for the outcome, before any actions are taken). The model explains empirical results from previous studies and is supported by a new experiment that manipulates both pivotality and criticality. We also discuss possible extensions of this model to deal with a broader range of causal situations. Overall, our approach emphasizes the close interrelations between causality, counterfactuals, and responsibility attributions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Annual Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesSandra Costen Kunz, Jonathan A. Seitz, and Jonathan A. SeitzThe SBCS is one of more than two dozen scholarly societies that have been formally recognized by the American Academy of Religion as a “Related Scholarly Organization.” The pattern for many years has been for the SBCS to hold its annual meeting in conjunction with the annual meeting of the AAR. On (...) the Friday before the AAR’s annual meeting begins, the board meets in the morning and early afternoon, followed by an AAR-advertised session late that afternoon. On Saturday, another paper session or panel is followed by the annual members meeting.The Friday business meeting included reports from each of the SBCS officers and award committees. Guy McCloskey gave the treasurer’s report, which was unanimously accepted. He concluded his service on the board with this meeting, and in January was replaced as treasurer by Denise Yarbrough. The journal report by Wakoh Shannon Hickey and Denise Yarbrough, along with an extended discussion of the overall state of the journal, dealt with issues related to SBCS’s long-term relationship with the University of Hawai‘i Press and the current issue; the Society is working to sign a new memorandum of understanding with the Press. Another topic for discussion included outreach (website, Facebook page) and the need to reach potential new members. SBCS communicates with its whole membership through biannual newsletters. The newsletter is now distributed electronically, with hard copies available at the annual meeting. The decision was made to update the website. The nominating committee reported that three members (Brown, Seitz, Tanaka) will conclude their [End Page 185] terms as board members, but all three will remain on because they serve in other capacities. The Graduate Student Award Committee reported that despite several interesting submissions it did not choose a paper this year. The board spent some time discussing ways to encourage graduate student involvement. Possibilities for increasing graduate student involvement include prioritizing student participation in panels, working with AAR’s efforts to include graduate students, and promoting essays on H-net or other mailing lists. The SBCS board typically has a graduate student representative (currently Glenn Willis).The Saturday members meeting on November 23 was called to order at 11:40 a.m. The nominating committee proposed a slate, which was unanimously approved. John Makransky was elected to the vice-presidency, and Sallie King, Judith Simmer-Brown, and Abraham Velez were chosen as board members. Elizabeth Harris, president of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies, reported that the papers from their 2011 conference at Liverpool Hope University, titled “Hope a Form of Delusion? Christian and Buddhist Perspectives” will be published. She announced their upcoming conference “Buddhist-Christian Relations in Asia—Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Japan, China, Korea” on June 21–29, 2015, at the Arch Abbey St. Ottilien near Munich, Germany, which has been very involved in monastic interreligious dialogue. She called our attention to the plans being made in Sri Lanka for a centennial celebration of the birth of Lynn de Silva, a pioneer in Buddhist-Christian dialogue and Christian theology of religions. Vice-president Alice Keefe and vice-president-elect John Makransky led us in a discussion of potential session topics. At 11:55 a.m. Terry Muck handed over the presidency to Alice Keefe, who adjourned the session.The two panels this year (reflected in articles published in this issue of the journal) were “Deep Listening and Spiritual Care” and “New Perspectives on Buddhism and Multiple-Religious Belonging.” Chaired by Alice A. Keefe, the deep listening panel included a contemplative exercise by Judith Simmer-Brown and papers by Duane Bidwell and Sandra Costen Kunz. John Makransky responded. The multiple-belongings panel was cosponsored with the Buddhism in the West Group and included papers by Harold Kasimow, Richard Payne, Emily Sigalow, and Kristin Johnston Largen. Wendy Cadge presided and Donald Swearer responded. In 2014, SBCS is to meet concurrent with the AAR in San Diego. [End Page 186]Sandra Costen KunzTrinity Theological Seminary Legon, GhanaJonathan A. SeitzTaiwan Theological Seminary Taipei, TaiwanBaltimore, Maryland, USA, November 22–23, 2013Copyright © 2014 University... (shrink)

The latest news from our planet is threatening: climate change, pollution, forest loss, species extinctions. All these words are frightening and there is no sign of improvement. Simple logic leads to the conclusion that humanity has to react, for its own survival. But at the scale of a human being, it is less obvious. Organizing one’s daily life in order to preserve the environment implies self-questioning, changing habits, sacrificing some comfort. In one word, it is an effort. Then, what (...) justifies such an effort? The personal choice to act in order to preserve our environment is often made by simple altruism. This choice is based on our love for other human beings: our love for the others grounds our effort. Our moral values, our ethical reflections and our religious beliefs are the deep core of these choices. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15.12 NRSV). This Charter shows the moral and religious values that can help us react regarding the current environmental crisis and it should empower us to transcend the ideas of effort and sacrifice in order to consider the respect of the shared house, in a prophetic fulfillment of the being. (shrink)

The multi-modal tasks have started to play a significant role in the research on artificial intelligence. A particular example of that domain is visual–linguistic tasks, such as visual question answering. The progress of modern machine learning systems is determined, among other things, by the data on which these systems are trained. Most modern visual question answering data sets contain limited type questions that can be answered either by directly accessing the image itself or by using external data. At the same (...) time, insufficient attention is paid to the issues of social interactions between people, which limits the scope of visual question answering systems. In this paper, we propose criteria by which images suitable for social interaction visual question answering can be selected for composing such questions, based on psychological research. We believe this should serve the progress of visual question answering systems. (shrink)

Pearce's "African Philosophy and the Sociological Thesis" makes very interesting reading. Why it is interesting is not because it advances the frontiers of philosophical discourse in Africa or globally but because it shows that certain unwarranted dispositions die hard and that deliberate ignorance, if that is what is displayed, is hard to cure. In this article the author comments on the following contentions made by Pearce: (1) philosophy has no social relevance and/or responsibility; (2) philosophy is purely a linguistic (...) activity concerned with analysis of concepts and examination; (3) philosophy derives from religion; (4) because African philosophy cannot supplant world philosophy, it lacks locus and legitimacy; (5) African philosophy pursues intellectual apartheid through an ethnophilosophical agenda; and (6) African philosophy is vulnerable to the Sociological Thesis and is voided by it. The author's rebuttal consists of a critical and analytic examination of Pearce's views, counterfactual illustrations, and elicitation of enthymemic presuppositions. (shrink)

We tested the hypothesis that choices determined by Type 1 processes are compelling because they are fluent, and for this reason they are less subject to analytic thinking than other answers. A total of 104 participants completed a modified version of Wason's selection task wherein they made decisions about one card at a time using a two-response paradigm. In this paradigm participants gave a fast, intuitive response, rated their feeling of rightness for that response, and were then allowed free (...) time to reconsider their answers. As we predicted, answers consistent with a matching heuristic were made more quickly than other answers, were given higher FOR ratings, and received less subsequent analysis as measured by rethinking time and the probability of changing answers. These data suggest that reasoning biases may be compelling because they are fluently generated; this is turn creates a strong FOR, which acts as a signal that further analysis is not necessary. (shrink)

The work is an attempt to assess individual capabilities of children to predict a sensor flow structure and to identify the parameters that contribute to an effective formation of a child’s mental picture of the external environment. For this experiment, a method has been developed, in which fractal stream of signals has a structure, where the same signals flow is repeated twice. The subjects were children 5-7-year-old. They made up three groups: children attending a kindergarten, a group of early (...) development center, and a group of children with speech problems. It is shown that for preschoolers it is difficult to perform tasks involving inhibitory processes due to immaturity of the frontal lobes of their brains. Despite the fact that the children with speech problem have physiological characteristics that impair overall learning, they are more efficient and more resilient performing learned cognitive tasks. The ability to predict the fractal structure of the sensory stream by 5-7-year-old children depends both of their physiological capabilities and the special work of the adult, aimed at the development of individual-psychological characteristics of the child. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that parkour can be understood as a way to recapture moments of non-alienated human experience in urban space. I draw on Hartmut Rosa’s theory of temporally caused alienati...

Experimentation is at the heart of scientific inquiry. In the behavioral and neural sciences, where only a limited number of observations can often be made, it is ideal to design an experiment that leads to the rapid accumulation of information about the phenomenon under study. Adaptive experimentation has the potential to accelerate scientific progress by maximizing inferential gain in such research settings. To date, most adaptive experiments have relied on myopic, one-step-ahead strategies in which the stimulus on each trial (...) is selected to maximize inference on the next trial only. A lingering question in the field has been how much additional benefit would be gained by optimizing beyond the next trial. A range of technical challenges has prevented this important question from being addressed adequately. This study applies dynamic programming, a technique applicable for such full-horizon, “global” optimization, to model-based perceptual threshold estimation, a domain that has been a major beneficiary of adaptive methods. The results provide insight into conditions that will benefit from optimizing beyond the next trial. Implications for the use of adaptive methods in cognitive science are discussed. (shrink)

The urgency of the study of "stem-education" as a factor in the development of "smart-society" is that this kind of society is a continuation of information and "knowledge society", which is developing on the basis of smart technologies. The concept of smart society is at the heart of modern state -owned development programs of South Korea and Japan. In South Korea, the National Social Agency has developed a "Smart Society Strategy" that introduces the technological foundations of smart societies. The central (...) issue of Smart-society is business, which makes managing more intelligent and activities aimed at using knowledge and innovation. The objectives of the study are to identify the "stem-education" endpoint through the use of electronic and collective technologies, which become more massive and effective, and through the use of natural, engineering and maternal education. It is no coincidence that this concept is documented in the Europe 2020 Strategy: Smart Growth Strategy, which includes the development of an economy based on knowledge and innovation, fosters sustainable growth, more efficient use of resources, and inclusive growth and strengthening of high employment. Countries such as the United States, China, Australia, the United Kingdom, Israel, and Singapore carry out state-of-the-art stem-education programs. The methodological basis of the study is systematic, structural, axiological, synergetic methods and approaches that have allowed disclosing stem -education as the leading trend in the world of educational space. Conclusion - It is proved that stem-education is an innovation that combines the traditions of natural and mathematical education, is based on the principles of fundamentalism and knowledge -based, combining technological, organizational, material and technical resources and human capital. As a result of the development of stem-education at the expense of ICT, business processes, governance, and management reform are undergoing change, leading to economic, social and managerial processes at a higher level in some of those societies. Smart society is a new quality of society in which the combination of the use of new technologies will allow people to improve the quality of their lives. This article presents philosophical and educational reflection of smart -society as a new model of the information society and presents its impact on human capital. It reveals timeliness of this topic, which is innovative and hardly developed. It analyses international experience in establishment and growth of smart -society and dimensions of axiological field of smart-society, which is based on axiological matrix of information and knowledge, which are considered and being civilized dimensions of modern society. The main idea is to prove the evolution of the information society to smart -society and the possibility of establishment of smart-society in Ukraine. The analysis of smart-society formation was made and its characteristics were defined, which claims priority role in the world information space formation and contribute to the competitiveness of Ukraine in the international information space. (shrink)

A groundbreaking study of deafness, by a philosopher who combines the scientific erudition of Oliver Sacks with the historical flair of Simon Schama. There is nothing more personal than the human voice, traditionally considered the expression of the innermost self. But what of those who have no voice of their own and cannot hear the voices of others? In this tour de force of historical narrative, Jonathan Ree tells the astonishing story of the deaf, from the sixteenth century to the (...) present. Ree explores the great debates about deafness between those who believed the deaf should be made to speak and those who advocated non-oral communication. He traces the botched attempts to make language visible, through such exotic methods as picture writing, manual spellings, and vocal photography. And he charts the tortuous progress and final recognition of sign systems as natural languages in their own right. I See a Voice escorts us on a vast and eventful intellectual journey,taking in voice machines and musical scales, shorthand and phonetics, Egyptian hieroglyphs, talking parrots, and silent films. A fascinating tale of goodwill subverted by bad science, I See a Voice is as learned and informative as it is delightful to read. (shrink)

This study presents findings from an ontological and contextual determination of the concept of dignity. The study had a caritative and caring science perspective and a hermeneutical design. The aim of this study was to increase caring science knowledge of dignity and to gain a determination of dignity as a concept. Eriksson’s model for conceptual determination is made up of five part-studies. The ontological and contextual determination indicates that dignity can be understood as absolute dignity, the spiritual dimension characterized (...) by responsibility, freedom, duty, and service, and relative dignity, characterized by the bodily, external aesthetic dimension and the psychical, inner ethical dimension. Dignity exists in human beings both as absolute and relative dignity. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

The Lord Jesus before ascending to Heaven did say there would be signs accompanying believers, one of which was that they laid their hands on the sick, and the person was healed. Some groups really claim that every believer can cure a disease, is that right? To answer this question, it is very necessary to discuss Mark 16: 17-18. In this discussion using the Historical Redemptive method (redemptive history). So that through discussion with the History of the Atonement method you (...) can understand the meaning of the text in the context of the History of the Atonement. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present and discuss nurses’ and physicians’ comments in a questionnaire relating to patients’ transition from curative treatment to palliative care. The four-page questionnaire relating to experiences of and attitudes towards communication, decision-making, documentation and responsibility of nurses and physicians and towards the competence of patients was developed and sent to a random sample of 1672 nurses and physicians of 10 specialties. The response rate was 52% , and over one-third made comments. The (...) respondents differed in their comments about three areas: the concept of palliative care, experiences of unclear decision-making and difficulties in acceptance of the patient’s situation. The responses are analysed in terms of four ethical theories: virtue ethics, deontology, consequentialism and casuistry. Many virtues considered to be appropriate for healthcare personnel to possess were invoked. Compassion, honesty, justice and prudence are especially important. However, principles of medical ethics, such as the deontological principle of respect for self-determination and the consequence of avoidance of harm, are also implied. Casuistry may be particularly helpful in analysing certain areas of difficulty—namely, what is meant by “palliative care”, decision-making and accepting the patient’s situation. Keeping a patient in a state of uncertainty often causes more suffering than necessary. Communication among the staff and with patients must be explicit. Many of the staff have not had adequate training in communicating with patients who are at the end of their life. Time for joint reflection has to be regained, and training in decision-making is essential. In our opinion, palliative care in Sweden is in need of improvement. (shrink)

Aging is associated with decreased functional connectivity in the main brain networks, which can underlie changes in cognitive and emotional processing. Neurofeedback is a promising non-pharmacological approach for the enhancement of brain connectivity. Previously, we showed that a single session of infra-low frequency neurofeedback results in increased connectivity between sensory processing networks in healthy young adults. In the current pilot study, we aimed to evaluate the possibility of enhancing brain connectivity during aging with the use of infra-low frequency neurofeedback. Nine (...) females aged 52 ± 7 years with subclinical signs of emotional dysregulation, including anxiety, mild depression, and somatoform symptoms, underwent 15 sessions of training. A resting-state functional MRI scan was acquired before and after the training. A hypothesis-free intrinsic connectivity analysis showed increased connectivity in regions in the bilateral temporal fusiform cortex, right supplementary motor area, left amygdala, left temporal pole, and cerebellum. Next, a seed-to-voxel analysis for the revealed regions was performed using the post- vs. pre-neurofeedback contrast. Finally, to explore the whole network of neurofeedback-related connectivity changes, the regions revealed by the intrinsic connectivity and seed-to-voxel analyses were entered into a network-based statistical analysis. An extended network was revealed, including the temporal and occipital fusiform cortex, multiple areas from the visual cortex, the right posterior superior temporal sulcus, the amygdala, the temporal poles, the superior parietal lobule, and the supplementary motor cortex. Clinically, decreases in alexithymia, depression, and anxiety levels were observed. Thus, infra-low frequency neurofeedback appears to be a promising method for enhancing brain connectivity during aging, and subsequent sham-controlled studies utilizing larger samples are feasible. (shrink)