Doctor and patient meet in a circle of feelings determined by suffering. Sensitivity to the suffering is an axis determining the nature of the doctor and patient relationship. The patient's experience of an illness is individual, private, and very often difficult to describe. But the possibility to understand the suffering of another person comes from the fact that suffering is a universal feeling. We propose to enter the world of patient's experience by writing a letter to a doctor, which would (...) reflect their experiences and expectations towards him. This was the task required for 120 students of the second year of medicine and dentistry education. (shrink)

OF SENSES AND PERCEPTION—WHAT SMITH TELLS US ABOUT BERKELEY AND VICE VERSA Adam Smith’s epistemology, described primarily in the essay Of the External Senses, was strongly inspired by George Berkeley’s thought expressed in his New Theory of Vision (1709). Both philosophers distinguished between the Objects of Sight and the Objects of Touch and analyzed the perception of distance between objects and size of objects (Berkeley’s thorough analysis was limited to the sense of sight, whereas Smith described also the features of (...) other senses.). They also noticed the observer’s role in the process. Both philosophers made a parallel between their epistemology and moral/ social theories. However, their conclusions turned out to be quite different, despite some similarities in their views on the problem of external senses. Smith focused on the issue of sympathy and the Impartial Spectator, and underlined the fact that our moral judgements are strongly altered by our relation to those who are judged and that we learn how to give opinions on the basis of how others judge our behaviour. Berkeley, on the other hand, focused on the role of laws and reason in both epistemological and moral judgements. Keywords: ADAM SMITH, GEORGE BERKELEY, EPISTEMOLOGY, MORAL/SOCIAL THEORIES. (shrink)