This essay explores some concerns about the quality of informed consent in patients whose autonomy is diminished by fatal illness. It argues that patients with diminished autonomy cannot give free and voluntary consent, and that recruitment of such patients as subjects in human experimentation exploits their vulnerability in a morally objectionable way. Two options are given to overcome this objection: (i) recruit only those patients who desire to contribute to medical knowledge, rather than gain access to experimental treatment, or (ii) (...) provide prospective subjects the choice to participate in standard doubleblind study or receive the experimental treatment. Either option would guarantee that patients in desperate conditions are given a more meaningful choice and a richer freedom, and thus a higher quality of informed consent, than under standard randomized trials. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to synthesize the concepts from empirical studies and analyze, compare and interrelate them with normative ethics. The International Council of Nurses (ICN) and the Health and Medical Service Act are normative ethics. Five concepts were used in the analysis; three from the grounded theory studies and two from the theoretical framework on normative ethics. A simultaneous concept analysis resulted in five outcomes: interconnectedness, interdependence, corroboratedness, completeness and good care are all related to the empirical (...) perspective of the nurse’s interaction with the older patient, and the normative perspective, i.e. that found in ICN code and SFS law. Empirical ethics and normative ethics are intertwined according to the findings of this study. Normative ethics influence the nurse’s practical performance and could be supporting documents for nurses as professionals. (shrink)

John B. Thompson's lucid and helpful introduction to this collection of essays includes a brief history of Ricoeur's career and the thematic focuses of his major works. This introduction is followed by "Notes on editing and translating" and by "A Response by Paul Ricoeur.".

Context Physicians are regularly confronted with research that is funded or presented by industry. Objective To assess whether physicians discount for conflicts of interest when weighing evidence for prescribing a new drug. Design and setting Participants were presented with an abstract from a single clinical trial finding positive results for a fictitious new drug. Physicians were randomly assigned one version of a hypothetical scenario, which varied on conflict of interest: ‘presenter conflict’, ‘researcher conflict’ and ‘no conflict’. Participants 515 randomly selected (...) Fellows in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' Collaborative Ambulatory Research Network; 253 surveys (49%) were returned. Main object measures The self-reported likelihood that physicians would prescribe the new drug as a first-line therapy. Results Physicians do not significantly discount for conflicts of interest in their self-reported likelihood of prescribing the new drug after reading the single abstract and scenario. However, when asked explicitly to compare conflict and no conflict, 69% report that they would discount for researcher conflict and 57% report that they would discount for presenter conflict. When asked to guess how favourable the results of this study were towards the new drug, compared with the other trials published so far, their perceptions were not significantly influenced by conflict of interest information. Conclusion While physicians believe that they should discount the value of information from conflicted sources, they did not do so in the absence of a direct comparison between two studies. This brings into question the effectiveness of merely disclosing the funding sources of published studies. (shrink)

Using covariant derivatives and the operator definitions of quantum mechanics, gauge invariant Proca and Lehnert equations are derived and the Lorenz condition is eliminated in U(1) invariant electrodynamics. It is shown that the structure of the gauge invariant Lehnert equation is the same in an O(3) invariant theory of electrodynamics.

Medical technologies and assistive devices such as ventilators and power wheelchairs are designed to sustain life and/or improve functionality but they can also contribute to stigmatization and social exclusion. In this paper, drawing from a study of ten men with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, we explore the complex social processes that mediate the lives of persons who are dependent on multiple medical and assistive technologies. In doing so we consider the embodied and emplaced nature of disability and how life is lived (...) through bodies coupled with technologies and experienced as 'techno-body-subjects in situ'. Normative implications for theory and research, including bioethics research, are discussed. (shrink)

In this study, we explain differences in support for interreligious lawful and violent protests against the religious outgroup. Combining religiosity and social identity approaches, we take three dimensions of religiosity into consideration related to support for interreligious conflict, next to relevant control characteristics. The analysis is based on survey data collected among a random sample of Muslims and Christians across the Indonesian archipelago. Our findings show that members of the Muslim community are, on average, more inclined to support interreligious conflict, (...) both lawful and violent protests. Participation in rites of passage is a crucial aspect of religious practices found to be positively related to both kinds of protest. Religious beliefs show great importance but vary in their influence: particularistic views and intratextual fundamentalism are related to support for lawful protest, whereas religiocentrism is related to support both for lawful and violent protests. In contrast, salience reduces support for violent protest. As such, the findings offer a differentiated way to understand present-day interreligious conflicts among the general population in Indonesia. (shrink)

PurposeAlthough an increasing body of literature suggests a relationship between brain irradiation and deterioration of neurocognitive function, it remains as the standard therapeutic and prophylactic modality in patients with brain tumors. This review was aimed to abstract and evaluate the prediction models for radiation-induced neurocognitive decline in patients with primary or secondary brain tumors.MethodsMEDLINE was searched on October 31, 2021 for publications containing relevant truncation and MeSH terms related to “radiotherapy,” “brain,” “prediction model,” and “neurocognitive impairments.” Risk of bias was (...) assessed using the Prediction model Risk Of Bias ASsessment Tool.ResultsOf 3,580 studies reviewed, 23 prediction models were identified. Age, tumor location, education level, baseline neurocognitive score, and radiation dose to the hippocampus were the most common predictors in the models. The Hopkins verbal learning and the trail making tests were the most frequent outcome assessment tools. All studies used regression as machine learning method. All models were judged to have a high risk of bias mainly due to issues in the analysis.ConclusionExisting models have limited quality and are at high risk of bias. Following recommendations are outlined in this review to improve future models: developing cognitive assessment instruments taking into account the peculiar traits of the different brain tumors and radiation modalities; adherence to model development and validation guidelines; careful choice of candidate predictors according to the literature and domain expert consensus; and considering radiation dose to brain substructures as they can provide important information on specific neurocognitive impairments. (shrink)

Medical technologies and assistive devices such as ventilators and power wheelchairs are designed to sustain life and/or improve functionality but they can also contribute to stigmatization and social exclusion. In this paper, drawing from a study of ten men with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, we explore the complex social processes that mediate the lives of persons who are dependent on multiple medical and assistive technologies. In doing so we consider the embodied and emplaced nature of disability and how life is lived (...) through bodies coupled with technologies and experienced as ‘techno-body-subjects in situ’. Normative implications for theory and research, including bioethics research, are discussed. (shrink)

It is difficult to imagine mathematics without its symbolic language. It is especially difficult to imagine doing mathematics without using mathematical notation. Nevertheless, that is how mathematics was done for most of human history. It was only at the end of the sixteenth century that mathematicians began to develop systems of mathematical symbols . It is startling to consider how rapidly mathematical notation evolved. Viète is usually taken to have initiated this development with his Isagoge of 1591, and a recognisably (...) modern symbol system was available by the 1630s . In little more than a generation, mathematicians went from writing mathematics in natural language to manipulating symbols much as we do today. The manipulation of symbols became both a source of new mathematics and a mode of mathematical argument. This required profound conceptual changes in both mathematics and philosophy; antique conceptions of number, proof, language, and mathematics had to be replaced or at least suspended. Thus, the development of mathematical symbolism was sufficiently rapid and profound to justify the word ‘revolution’.Moreover, what began as a technical innovation in mathematics soon took on a wider philosophical significance. The last line of Viète's introduction reads ‘To solve every problem’. Viète presumably meant that his algebra would solve every mathematical problem . However, two generations after Descartes, the teenage Leibniz articulated the characteristically modern dream of a general algebra of thought . In this ‘universal characteristic’, conceptual errors would …. (shrink)

One hundred years separates the birth of T. Campanella from that of G. B. Vico. This collection of essays, published in 1969 by the Archives of Philosophy, is the end result of a congress held in Rome commemorating the birth of both philosophers. Campanella and Vico are celebrated in the same volume on the assumption of ideal affinities besides the accidental circumstances of having been born a century apart. Unfortunately, only one essay is expressly devoted to the analysis of Campanella's (...) and Vico's metaphysics. While the first two papers consider Campanella's medical biography and his epistemology, the last four are dedicated solely to various aspects of Vico's thought. On Iacobelli Isoldi falls the responsibility of justifying the title of the volume. But her attempt to demonstrate a family resemblance between Vico's and Campanella's metaphysics remains farfetched. For Campanella's way of solving the theoretical problem arising from Descartes' dualism issues in inevitable skepticism. Campanella never abandoned the position that the cogito is a vehicle of certainty, but not a criterion of truth. Vico on the other hand, overcomes his initial skepticism by transforming the criterion of truth into a criterion of certainty. In the New Science he demonstrates how man can possess true knowledge of the social and historical sciences. To demonstrate that this symposium had been assembled for reasons other than physical convenience, more papers on possible relations between the Dominican friar of Cosenza and the professor of eloquence of Naples would have been a desideratum.--L. M. P. (shrink)

Three major problems continue to perplex every interpreter of Stoic logic since Lukasiewicz's [[sic]] revolutionary studies in 1932: the alleged opposition of Stoic dialectic to Aristotelian syllogistic; the baffling status of "implication" in Diodorus and Chrysippus; the questionable completeness of the Stoic system based on the five "indemonstrables." Expanding on Lukasiewicz's [[sic]] findings, Benson Mates and Mary Kneale argued for interpreting Stoic logic in terms of a logic propositions formally analogous to our propositional calculus. Furthermore Mates and, to a less (...) extent, Kneale cast doubts on the accepted opinion that Diodorus' "implication" was the ancient version of what C. I. Lewis calls "strict implication," and opted for B. Russell's "formal implication," while attributing the first type of implication to Chrysippus alone. Finally Mates, Kneale, and Reymond questioned the alleged completeness of the Stoic logic system. Among recent logicians this very question still calls for an answer. In form and content, Mignucci's knowledgeable study on the meaning of Stoic logic is a lucid restatement of his predecessors published conclusions. With the exception of the first chapter devoted to a résumé of the main contributions in the field, the remaining sections of his essay are organized around Mates' topical structure of Stoic epistemology and semantics, the doctrine of the proposition, and the theory of the five "anapodictics." Mignucci makes, however, two relevant additions which may raise suspicion among the most rigorous of logicians. In the first chapter and again in the conclusion of his essay, he analyzes carefully the alleged opposition of Aristotle's logic of classes to the Stoic logic of propositions. For Mignucci, the acceptance of the logic of propositions implies one's commitment to an ontological domain which is incompatible with the metaphysical discourse of the logic of classes. He argues that the two logics are complete and formally analogous only in the sense that from the Stoic first axiom and from the Aristotelian Barbara one can deduce all the rules which constitute their respective logics. This completeness is, however, logically dependent upon the Aristotelian and Stoic view of reality.--L. M. P. (shrink)

The author has succeeded in producing a volume which will be valuable to anyone who wishes to acquire a more catholic view of British analytic philosophy than the one offered in the works of Urmson, Warnock, and Ayer. The bibliography contains 698 items, and each of the ten chapters is amply footnoted with suggestions for further investigations. In the first chapter, Riverso meets the charge of antihistoricism by arguing convincingly that twentieth century analysis is the culmination of a movement which (...) began with Descartes' Regulae ad directionem ingenii. In the following three chapters he considers the entire Cambridge movement from its origin in B. Russell's and G. E. Moore's refutation of idealism to the disintegration of logical atomism in the second Wittgenstein. Italian readers will find especially useful Riverso's clear discussion of the impact of Wittgenstein's Tractatus on the Vienna circle, of his analysis of Ayer's radical refutation of metaphysics, as well as of the polemics of Lazerowitz and Malcolm against the principle of verifiability. In the final four chapters, Riverso takes on the arduous task of telling the story of the whole Oxonian movement. He clarifies beautifully the reasons for the transformation from normal analysis to ordinary language, and finally to the various types of grammatical elucidations of Ryle, Austin, and Strawson. Riverso dedicates a chapter each to the language of perception, the concept of person, religious language, and metaethics. In the concluding pages, he launches into passionate defense of analysis as the best therapy for our social ills and as the only alternative to Marxist ideology.--L. M. P. (shrink)