In this paper I will briefly discuss flourishing and freedom, relating them to health and disease; discuss the tensions between flourishing and freedom; and exemplify how those discussions are relevant to chronic disease suffering. The concept of freedom has significant connections with the concepts of health, disability and disease. Understanding disease and disability in terms of the loss of aspects of freedom may help our understanding of the suffering that arises from chronic disease. On the other hand, flourishing may require (...) a degree of adversity. Therefore disability and disease may be conducive to flourishing. Flourishing may be understood as subordinated to freedom, as a path to freedom, or as transcending freedom. It is suggested that freedom and flourishing are expressed as mutually enhancing cycles, actualized according to the personal circumstances that will ground their expression. In a distant horizon of innocent spontaneous self-expression, flourishing and freedom may become coincident. Regarding chronic disease as a constraint on ‘species-typical’ abilities to fulfill one’s significant life interests, as well as an unwanted intrusion into the patient’s life, presents chronic disease suffering as a loss of both positive and negative freedom. The conceptual relation between flourishing and freedom will thus organise the possibilities the sufferer sees as open to their self. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that the current discussions about regulating certain activities concerning the pharmaceutical industry do miss a crucial point. The Pharmaceutical Industry is a story of success, providing a wealth of new discoveries and applied technologies, which have greatly enhanced our lives. The current call for strict regulation of the Pharmaceutical Industry makes the unwarranted assumption that such regulation will not disturb the mechanisms of the Industry’s success. I will claim that a centralised regulation profoundly transforms (...) the direction of travel. I will also claim that the role of the executive in bypassing regulations creates a parallel industry of subsidiary regulations to counter such bypassing. The predictable consequence is the increasing role of central regulatory control and the progressive slowing down of the success of the Pharmaceutical Industry leading towards an undesirable mediocrity. The conclusion I wish to advance is that our choices are not limited to ‘a wild open market’ and ‘a regulated open market’ scenarios, and the strategy to avoid a robustly regulated but mediocre Pharmaceutical Industry may involve ‘non-open market scenarios’ which have so far been absent from the alternatives discussed. (shrink)

SIRThere are some important flaws in Michael Ardagh's reasoning.11. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is a “blanket term” for different interventions. Curative and supportive treatments have different ethical contexts and cannot be discussed at the same level. It is imperative to ascribe curative interventions within CPR the same status as any other curative intervention, such as antibiotics for infections or surgery for appendicitis. Then we will be able to discuss the ethical context of purely supportive measures such as chest compressions. To address the (...) “ethics of CPR” is a dangerous misnomer.The preferences of emergency personnel2 suggest the willingness to undergo curative interventions early during CPR, but not protracted supportive interventions. Conversely, withholding curative interventions during CPR should only be considered when any curative treatments would also be withheld.2. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is performed to offer the patient a benefit. However, CPR as a whole is only marginally effective. …. (shrink)

O tema deste artigo é sobre o modus operandi de Jesus, a maneira como ele proclama a chegada o Reino de Deus, que consiste na restauração da saúde das pessoas em suas diversas enfermidades. Qual a sua fonte de energia para a missão? Onde ele foi buscar o poder para curar e até salvar pessoas da morte, restaurando-lhes a saúde? Em suma, onde ele encontrou forças para essa missão salvífica? O objetivo desta breve pesquisa consiste em demonstrar a íntima relação (...) entre espiritualidade e saúde na prática messiânica de Jesus. A metodologia utilizada é a da exegese bíblica, a partir de Mc 1,32-39, na perspectiva de uma hermenêutica teológica atualizada, que leve a conclusões sobre a ação missionária salvífica de Jesus, pertinentes para a ação evangelizadora no tempo presente. Os resultados apontam para o fato de que a atividade messiânica de Jesus contém uma soteriologia que leva em conta a restauração da saúde física e mental. Não se trata de uma espiritualidade desencarnada das reais necessidades humanas, em suas fragilidades físicas e mentais. É, sem dúvida, uma prática comprometida com a instauração do Reino de Deus, que deve ser continuada pelos atuais discípulos e discípulas de Jesus. (shrink)

The cry of the poor, the theme of this work, challenges the humanitarian consciousness of the people and is a strong questioning of the religious conscience and the Christian faith. Nevertheless, the preferential option for the poor, consecrated in the Final Document of the Episcopal Conference held in Puebla of Los Angeles, is still the cause of much controversy inside and outside the Church. Bearing in mind this context, this article aims to present the resonance of the cry of the (...) poor in the context of the Puebla Conference; demonstrate that this cry is not recent: it has been present since antiquity, and was contemplated in the earliest sacred texts, including the religious culture of Israel and the Christian religion; to reflect on this cry of impoverished crowds in contemporary times. The research is bibliographic, based on the Official Document of the conclusions of the Puebla Conference; from critical analysis by Latin American theologians, as well as from articles and books by authors from the epistemological field of the Sciences of Religion. The results achieved point to the timeliness of the issue, as there is a growing wave of impoverishment everywhere and, at the same time, a growing lack of commitment and intolerance towards the outcry of the great excluded masses. (shrink)

Medical practitioners owe much of the significant progress made in the diagnosis and treatment of disease to industrial research. Hence, co-operation between providers of medical services, most notably medical practitioners, and the pharmaceutical industry is in the best interest of patients. Yet, empirical evidence shows how well-directed influence exerted by the pharmaceutical industry impacts physicians’ decision-making. Profit-motivated inducement by the pharmaceutical industry may expose patients to considerable risks. Against what many think to be based on overwhelming evidence, Joao (...) class='Hi'>Calinas-Correia takes the view that the criticism levelled at the pharmaceutical industry as well as the call for transparency in the relationships between physicians and the industry are exaggerated. In his polemic he praises “Big Pharma” as a success and espouses the view that the undesired consequences of its activities are allegedly inherent in the underlying market environment shaped by politics. Moreover, he believes that the proposals made to control and eliminate such undesired effects will lead to mediocrity. Astonishingly, his polemic reaches out to contest the appropriateness of setting rules at all—even if being set by a democratic process. Calinas-Correia’s assertions are based on the wrong premises. They fail to recognize that today individual civil rights and liberties often enough do not have to be defended against encroachments by governmental authorities. Rather, it is incumbent on the state to create rules designed to defend the individual against infringements by overly powerful non-governmental institutions, in our case the medical-industrial complex. Given the power exercised by physicians and the special nature of their role in public health, clear-cut rules have to be enacted and implemented with respect to their relationship to Big Pharma. (shrink)

O presente trabalho busca evidenciar a concepção moral do Direito na doutrina do Direito de Kant, distinguindo as ideias que conceituam a diferença entre leis jurídicas e leis éticas, a partir das leis morais para tratar da concepção e o reconhecimento dos direitos de equidade e o de necessidade, por um lado, e a não realização desses direitos, por outro. O intuito do presente trabalho é mostrar a efetivação e validade do direito, tendo a base em Kant. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Direito. Moral. (...) Kant. Validade do Direito. (shrink)

BackgroundThe outbreak of novel coronavirus disease 2019 has caused a global panic and public concern due to its mortality ratio and lack of treatments/vaccines. Reduced levels of physical activity have been reported during the outbreak, affecting the normal daily pattern.ObjectiveTo investigate the relationship of physical activity level with sleep quality and the effects of reduction physical activity levels on sleep quality.MethodsA Google form was used to address personal information, COVID-19 personal care, physical activity, and mental health of 1,907 adult volunteers. (...) Binary logistic regression was used to verify the association of physical activity parameters and sleep quality.ResultsInsufficient physical activity levels were a risk factor to have disturbed sleep pattern [OR: 1.28, 95% CI ]; however, when the BMI was added to the analysis, there was no more statistical difference [OR: 1.23, 95% CI ]. On the other hand, we found that the reduction of physical activity levels was associated with negative changes in sleep quality [OR: 1.73, 95% CI ], regardless all the confounders [OR: 1.30, 95% CI ], unless when feeling of depression was added in Model 6 [OR: 1.28, 95% CI ].ConclusionDisruption in daily physical activity routine, rather than physical activity level, negatively influences sleep quality during the COVID-19 quarantine. (shrink)

SIRAkabayashi et al1 presented us with an account of the difficulties when attempting to respect the patient's autonomy while we do not know the patient's own understanding regarding the autonomy we are attempting to respect. Most times we, as doctors, face difficult decisions, we do not have previous, reliable knowledge of the patients' views on the issue which we are finding difficult to resolve. Even previous discussions which happened far from the turmoil of cancer disclosure or similar events, can only (...) be relied upon to a limited extent. We have all seen patients changing their minds in the face of catastrophe, in ways not only unpredictable to their doctor, but also to themselves. Transcultural study of the meanings and practice of individual autonomy provides a very useful way of extending our understanding of these issues, enlarging our horizons, as it does, beyond the anglo-saxon view.The main point, however, is to construe a definition of autonomy which will encompass the cultural and individual variations of whatever autonomy stands for. Here I can only offer my view that autonomy …. (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak has ravaged all societal domains, including education. Home confinement, school closures, and distance learning impacted students, teachers, and parents’ lives worldwide. In this study, we aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on Italian and Portuguese students’ academic motivation as well as investigate the possible buffering role of extracurricular activities. Following a retrospective pretest–posttest design, 567 parents reported on their children’s academic motivation and participation in extracurricular activities. We used a multi-group latent change score model to (...) compare Italian and Portuguese students’: pre-COVID mean motivation scores; rate of change in motivation; individual variation in the rate of change in motivation; and dependence of the rate of change on initial motivation scores. Estimates of latent change score models showed a decrease in students’ motivation both in Italy and in Portugal, although more pronounced in Italian students. Results also indicated that the decrease in students’ participation in extracurricular activities was associated with changes in academic motivation. Furthermore, students’ age was significantly associated with changes in motivation. No significant associations were found for students’ gender nor for parents’ education. This study provides an important contribution to the study of students’ academic motivation during home confinement, school closures, and distance learning as restrictive measures adopted to contain a worldwide health emergency. We contend that teachers need to adopt motivation-enhancing practices as means to prevent the decline in academic motivation during exceptional situations. (shrink)

A lista de dez categorias apresentada por Aristóteles no capítulo 4 das Categorias gerou, desde cedo, sérios problemas aos intérpretes. Em primeiro lugar, não é claro qual o objetivo e o âmbito desta lista. Trata-se de uma tentativa de estabelecer os gêneros mais gerais de palavras, de coisas, de conceitos, de todos eles? Em segundo lugar, Aristóteles enumera as categorias, mas não apresenta qualquer justificação para o seu número e completude. Esta lacuna conduziu os intérpretes a forjar diversas tentativas de (...) resolver estes dois problemas. Na escolástica medieval de língua latina, quer por razões didáticas, quer por razões teóricas, a receção destes problemas tomou a forma de uma discussão acerca de uma via divisiva ou sufficientia que demonstrasse a completude da lista aristotélica. Evidentemente, para que essa via divisiva seja consequente, é necessário antes estabelecer qual o âmbito da lista. É intenção do presente artigo apresentar um dos primeiros textos do século XIII no qual estes problemas são discutidos: Rationes super Praedicamenta Aristotelis de Nicolau de Paris (m. 1263), importante magister artium da Universidade de Paris no segundo quartel do século XIII, autor de uma das primeiras sufficientiae neste contexto escolástico, fonte imprescindível para compreender a origem e a evolução deste tipo de resposta ao problema da completude da lista de categorias. (shrink)

This paper has the purpose of showing the way the concept of narrative identity, suggested by Ricoeur, enables us to re-evaluate the paradoxes resulting from the two classic criteria used to solve the problem of personal identity.

This essay aims to analyze the conception of a work of art in the thought of Susanne K. Langer. The author offers us a definition of art, grounded on the idea that art is the “creation of symbolic forms of human feeling”. This thesis is, in turn, constructed from a robust theory of the symbolic function of the human mind.

The goal of this paper is to distinguish between two main concepts in Philosophy of Religion: the religious human experience and the notion of God. It argues that religion must be understood as a symbolic and cultural construction while the concept of the divine means the experience of the limits of human thought. Sometimes, throughout human history, these two experience meet but they are not conceptually the same.

This paper analyses which are the great cultural cosmogonic models of creation in mythology; so it will be an essay of comparative mythology about the origin of the world, a study marked by the concern to detect philosophical principles that guide this area of thought.

This paper aims to analyse how literary fiction deals with two real cases of philistine violence on cultural objects, one artistic and the other scientific. In this way, we will analyse Mishima's novel, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, which narrates the destruction of one of the “jewels of Kyoto,” as well as Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, which novelised the attack against the meridian of Greenwich. In both cases, we are confronted with the same attitude, namely, the insane resentment (...) against the reality principle. (shrink)

O presente artigo tem como objectivo fundamental propor uma interpretação do poema de T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, no qual a experiência do mal constitui ponto de referência central. Esta experiência, traduzida metaforicamente por "terra desolada", pode ser perspectivada tanto em termos pessoais como civilizacionais. O poema, depois de realizar o diagnóstico de uma situação de crise profunda, realiza o que poderíamos designar como um ritual catártico que permite a purificação das dimensões negativas, sedimentadas em nós, constrangedoras da nossa liberdade. (...) /// This paper proposes an interpretation of T. S. Elliot 's poem The Waste Land whose core is the experience of evil. Such experience, expressed by the metaphor of the "waste land", can be viewed either in personal or in civilizational terms. After diagnosing a profound crisis, the poem goes on to what could be called a cathartic ritual, which enables the purification of negative elements of life that constrain our freedom. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to dispute Marc Hauser’s thesis, sustained in Wild Minds. What animals Really Think, that we must abandon the question of whether animals have a feeling of themselves, replacing it for an objective and scientific analysis capable of disclosing the extraordinary similitude between different mental procedures animals undergo when they face common challenges.

This essay aims to examine how Thomas Mann reinterprets, in the novel “The Magic Mountain”, Nietzsche’s view of the world expressed in “The Birth of Tragedy”. The Olympic world becomes in the novel of Mann, a sanatorium where the death drive controls everything. Several interpretations for this ironic reading of the magic mountain symbol are offered, in particular the idea that death must not hypnotise us, a major theme of “Snow scene” of the novel.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, one of the most controversial intellectual disputes was the question of method in natural philosophy, or physics. The tensions between observational experience and geometrization, demonstration from the effects and from the causes, and between Aristotle’s authority and new philosophical tendencies made some philosophers search for new solutions. Others criticized these new solutions and tried to show the validity of several medieval scholastic readings of Aristotle. With this article, I intend to present the role of (...) experience in the dispute between Nicoletto Vernia’s approach to the subject-matter of physics and Gomes of Lisbon’s response to it. While Vernia holds that the subject-matter of physics is mobile body, Gomes argues it is natural substance. What is at stake is how to combine experience, definition, and demonstration to obtain a consistent scientific method. Only through the study of this kind of text and discussion can we gather a solid background to elucidate what has changed and what has been inherited from the past in the scientific shift of the seventeenth century. (shrink)

Gómez de Lisboa fue uno de los más importantes representantes del escotismo del renacimiento italiano. En su Scriptum super Questiones Metaphisice Antonii Andree, a veces está en desacuerdo con las soluciones de Antoni Andreu y con sus interpretaciones de Escoto. Con este artículo, trato de presentar esos puntos de desacuerdo. Al hacerlo, espero contribuir a la comprensión del escotismo del renacimiento y proporcionar un buen ejemplo de la duradera influencia de Antoni Andreu.

This essay examines the conflict of interpretations arisen by Kafka’s work, specially by his narrative «The Metamorphosis». It analyses the range and limits of the psychological, sociological, theological and existentialist interpretation of Kafka.

This paper examines the philosophical conflict arisen by theodicy in western culture. After the exposition of Simon Blackburn and Richard Swinbume’s contentions views, we sustain that the only credible solution to the problem entails a new philosophical concept of God based on a non-anthropocentric vision of reality.

In this paper, we sustain the thesis that there is a violent aspect in the religious attitude. However, it is also true – as paradoxical as it might sound – that religion has been the privileged field to limit all kinds of violence in human societies. Keywords: Religion. Violence. Sacrifice. Frazer. Girard. Eliade.

Una de las características de la transmisión manuscrita de los _Tractatus _ _de Pedro Hispano es el hecho de que el tratado sobre las _Categorías _no siempre ocupa el mismo lugar al interior de la obra. En algunos manuscritos se encuentra en tercer lugar, después del tratado acerca de la _Isagoge _de Porfirio, siguiendo el orden tradicional de la _logica vetus. _Pero en algunos otros, se encuentra en quinto lugar, después del tratado sobre los _Tópicos _y antes del tratado sobre (...) la suposición. En los dos casos, el lugar de las _Categorías _de Aristóteles en la lógica es definido por la noción de “término”. El propósito de este artículo es entender por qué ocurre esta variación, ya que no es teóricamente neutral. Por tanto, para atender al problema del orden de aparición del tratado sobre las _Categorías _dentro de la lógica, se presentarán tres de los más destacados comentaristas de los _Tractatus_: Juan Buridan, Juan Versor y Pedro Tartaret. Este ejercicio proporcionará algunas conclusiones sobre la relación entre las categorías y la teoría de la suposición, y también sobre la _vexata quaestio _acerca del sujeto de las categorías. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to dispute Marc Hauser’s thesis, sustained in Wild Minds. What Animals Really Think, that we must abandon the question of whether animals have a feeling of themselves, replacing it for an objective and scientific analysis capable of disclosing the extraordinary similitude between different mental procedures animals undergo when they face common challenges.

In this article, we analyse the symbolic meaning of the Thomas Mann's novel, The Magic Mountain. We try to see the scope of the interpretations that consider the metaphors of death, time and culture as the main subject of the novel. Finally, we sustain the idea that Thomas Mann wants to tell us that beauty and perfection are the reverse of death and suffering.

In this study we examined whether parents’ perceptions of students’ anxiety as well as perceived support from both teachers and classmates were predictive of changes in students’ academic motivation during the first wave of COVID-19. To this end, we used a retrospective pretest-posttest design together with a latent change score model to analyze our data. From April to May of 2020, 394 Portuguese parents of students in grades 1–9 participated in this study. Our results showed that students’ anxiety and teachers’ (...) social support, as perceived by parents, were highly significant predictors of academic motivation changes. Specifically, we found a negative effect of anxiety and a positive effect of teachers’ social support on students’ academic motivation. Our results did not show, however, a significant predictive role of classmates’ social support. This study provides an important contribution to further understand the intrapersonal and interpersonal factors that are associated with the decline of students’ academic motivation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pivotal role of teachers in sustaining students’ academic motivation and other relevant educational implications for the ongoing pandemic are discussed. (shrink)

About one third of patients with epilepsy have seizures refractory to the medical treatment. Electrical stimulation mapping is the gold standard for the identification of “eloquent” areas prior to resection of epileptogenic tissue. However, it is time-consuming and may cause undesired side effects. Broadband gamma activity recorded with extraoperative electrocorticography during cognitive tasks may be an alternative to ESM but until now has not proven of definitive clinical value. Considering their role in cognition, the alpha and beta bands could further (...) improve the identification of eloquent cortex. We compared gamma, alpha and beta activity, and their combinations for the identification of eloquent cortical areas defined by ESM. Ten patients with intractable focal epilepsy participated in a delayed-match-to-sample task, where syllable sounds were compared to visually presented letters. We used a generalized linear model approach to find the optimal weighting of each band for predicting ESM-defined categories and estimated the diagnostic ability by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Gamma activity increased more in eloquent than in non-eloquent areas, whereas alpha and beta power decreased more in eloquent areas. Diagnostic ability of each band was close to 0.7 for all bands but depended on multiple factors including the time period of the cognitive task, the location of the electrodes and the patient’s degree of attention to the stimulus. We show that diagnostic ability can be increased by 3–5% by combining gamma and alpha and by 7.5–11% when gamma and beta were combined. We then show how ECoG power modulation from cognitive testing can be used to map the probability of eloquence in individual patients and how this probability map can be used in clinical settings to optimize ESM planning. We conclude that the combination of gamma and beta power modulation during cognitive testing can contribute to the identification of eloquent areas prior to ESM in patients with refractory focal epilepsy. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to analyze the association between physical activity and eating habits during the COVID-19 pandemic among Brazilian adults. A sample of 1,929 participants answered an online survey, however 1,874 were included in the analysis. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on eating habits was assessed inquiring about participants' intake of fruits, vegetables, fried foods, and sweets during the pandemic. Physical activity was assessed by asking participants about their weekly frequency, intensity and number of minutes/hours engaging (...) in structured physical activities per week. Participants were then stratified into categories based on moderate-to-vigorous intensity and into active or inactive. Increased sweets consumption was the most commonly reported change to eating habits, followed by an increase in the consumption of vegetables, fruits, and fried foods. Physical activity practice was related to lower consumption of fried foods and sweets. A cluster analysis revealed subjects with higher the level of physical activity was more likely to follow a healthy diet. Thus, physical activity was positively associated with healthier eating habits. Health authorities must recommend regular physical as a strategy to improve overall health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Future studies should address the physical activity interventions to improve health status during a pandemic. (shrink)