IntroductionInformation and communication technologies are becoming an integral part of medical practice, research and administration and their use will grow as telemedicine and electronic medical record use become part of routine practice. Security in maintaining patient data is important and there is a statuary obligation to do so, but few health professionals have been trained on how to achieve this. There is no information on the use of computers and email by doctors and nurses in South Africa in the workplace (...) and at home, and whether their current computer practices meets legal and ethical requirements. The aims of this study were to determine the use of computers by healthcare practitioners in the workplace and home; the use and approach to data storage, encryption and security of patient data and patient email; and the use of informed consent to transmit data by email.MethodsA self-administered questionnaire was administered to 400 health care providers from the state and private health care sectors. The questionnaire covered computer use in the workplace and at home, sharing of computers, data encryption and storage, email use, encryption of emails and storage, and the use of informed consent for email communication.Results193 doctors and 207 nurses in the private and public sectors completed the questionnaire. Forty (10%) of participants do not use a computer. A third of health professionals were the only users of computers at work or at home. One hundred and ninety-eight respondents (55%) did not know if the data on the computers were encrypted, 132 (36.7%) knew that the data were not encrypted and 30 (8.3%) individuals knew that the data on the computers they were using were encrypted. Few doctors, 58 (16%), received emails from patients, with doctors more likely to receive emails from patients than nurses (p = 0.0025). Thirty-one percent of individuals did not respond to the emails. Emails were saved by 40 (69%) recipients but only 5 (12.5%) doctors encrypted the messages, 19 (47.5%) individuals knowingly did not encrypt and 16 (40.0%) did not know if they encrypted the data. While 20% of health professionals have emailed patient data, but only 41.7% gained consent to do so.ConclusionsMost health professionals as sampled in South Africa are not compliant with the National Health Act or the Electronic Communications Transactions Act of South Africa or guidelines from regulatory bodies when managing patient data on computers. Many appear ignorant or lack the ability to comply with simple data security procedures. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene por objetivo establecer una relación entre la fenomenología merleau-pontiana y la expresión literaria. Dicha relación se fundamenta en la importancia que Maurice Merleau-Ponty otorga a la capacidad expresiva de la literatura. Para alcanzar este objetivo, se elucidará, en primer lugar, la expresión literaria a partir de las herramientas de la fenomenología merleau-pontiana y se buscará sostener la necesidad de utilizar expresiones propias de la literatura para lograr una descripción verdadera del fenómeno. En ese primer apartado, se (...) explicitará la importancia que tiene la literatura y su modo particular de expresión del mundo vivido para llevar a palabra al mundo mudo de la percepción mediante el análisis de algunos pasajes de la obra merleau-pontiana en que se elucida el modo de presentar de la novela de Marcel Proust. La segunda parte tendrá por objeto realizar un breve análisis de _Océano mar_, de Alessandro Baricco, con el propósito de ilustrar la primera parte. En esta, se explicitará la capacidad del lenguaje literario para expresar el mundo buscando mostrar cómo una obra literaria posibilita la expresión de las esencias, en este caso, la del mar. En nuestra conclusión, sostendremos que Merleau-Ponty considera la tarea del escritor y la del filósofo casi de modo análogo en tanto ambos están llamados a _decir_ el mundo mediante un lenguaje que nos permite un acercamiento más originario al ser salvaje, aquel propio de la literatura que surge en lo sensible y entraña las relaciones que lo han visto nacer. (shrink)

This article seeks to adumbrate something of an ascending complement to Blondel's descending Christology. For Blondel, the Word as Incarnate is not only the Redeemer but is also he in whom creation is constituted. Christ's synthesizing perception of creation mediates between the world and the creating Absolute and establishes things as real. Blondel's 'Panchristism' suggests that in his passive perception Christ is the keystone that solidifies and integrates even the most ignoble components of creation. In the current economy this passive (...) perception embraces the world as marred by sin. The way in which sin assumed by Christ in suffering and passivity is transformed in redemption is left underdeveloped, however. One aspect of a Christology that ascends from the sufferings of Christ is highlighted in reference to Blondel's own devotion to the Sacred Heart. This devotion illuminates an integration of sin and suffering into glory that is compatible with Blondel's thought. (shrink)

The years between 1833 and 1945 fundamentally transformed science’s understanding of the body’s inner senses, revolutionizing fields like philosophy, the social sciences, and cognitive science. In How We Became Sensorimotor, Mark Paterson provides a systematic account of this transformative period, while also demonstrating its substantial implications for current explorations into phenomenology, embodied consciousness, the extended mind, and theories of the sensorimotor, the body, and embodiment. -/- Each chapter of How We Became Sensorimotor takes a particular sense and historicizes its formation (...) by means of recent scientific studies, case studies, or coverage in the media. Ranging among a diverse array of sensations, including balance, fatigue, pain, the “muscle sense,” and what Maurice Merleau-Ponty termed “motricity,” Paterson’s analysis moves outward from the familiar confines of the laboratory to those of the industrial world and even to wild animals and their habitats. He uncovers important stories, such as how forgotten pain measurement schemes transformed criminology, or how Penfield’s outmoded concepts of the sensory and motor homunculi of the brain still mar psychology textbooks. -/- Complete with original archival research featuring illustrations and correspondence, How We Became Sensorimotor shows how the shifting and sometimes contested historical background to our understandings of the senses are being extended even today. (shrink)

How does literature illuminate the way we live? Maurice Natanson, a prominent champion of phenomenology, draws upon this method's unique power to show how fiction can highlight aspects of experience that are normally left unexamined. By exploring the structure of the everyday world, Natanson reveals the "uncanny" that lies at the core of the ordinary. Phenomenology--which involves the questioning of that which we usually take for granted--is for Natanson the essence of philosophy. Drawing upon his philosophical predecessors Edmund Husserl, (...) Alfred Schutz, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Natanson paves his own way with stories and examples that themselves bear witness to how phenomenology occurs in literature. In considering such works as Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Natanson shows how literature opens us to the domain of possibility and how metaphor offers philosophical power when we think about freedom and change. This book, written by one of the twentieth century's leading phenomenologists, will interest students in philosophy and in literature. They will value the work particularly for its clarification of concepts and terms that frequently emerge in the contemporary intellectual climate. (shrink)

"This book tries to assess Galileo's work in its historical singularity. It is constructed around a precise question: How did Galileo create the modern science of motion? Starting from this question, I shall go on to determine as accurately as I can what concepts and methods helped classical mechanics to take shape." [Preface].

No one who has read the classics with any attention can fail to have been struck by certain oddities in both the Greek and Latin usage of epithets denoting colour. How really strange their application often is may have escaped general notice for three reasons: partly, it may be, because custom has staled their surprising character—phrases such as ‘the wine-dark sea’ having become, so to say, ‘household words’; partly because a natural and on the whole commendable diffidence prevents our attributing, (...) at least to the Greeks, anything that seems in the least derogatory from an artistic point of view; and partly because these instances of curious usage are scattered and so have no cumulative effect on our judgement. (shrink)

Since William Jones announced the kinship of Sanskrit and the European languages, a massive body of scholarship has illuminated the development of the so-called "Indo-European" language group. This new historical philology has enormous technical achievements to its credit. But almost from the start, it became entangled with prejudices and myths--with efforts to recreate not only the lost language, but also the lost--and superior--civilization of the Indo-European ancestors. This drive to determine the identity and nature of the first language of humanity (...) was deeply rooted in both near eastern and western traditions. The Bible described the perfect, transparent language of Adam and followed its degeneration, caused by human sin, into the multiple, opaque languages of later nations. The three sons of Noah became, for Jewish and early Christian writers, the founders of three distinct human groups. By the sixth and seventh centuries, historians began to magnify the deeds of certain later peoples, such as the Scythians and Goths, and to connect them with the biblical genealogy of languages and races. And in the Renaissance, speculative historical etymology took root and flourished, as national pride led European intellectuals to assert that their own modern languages--for example, Flemish--either could be identified with the original one or offered the closest surviving approximation to it. Japheth, Noah's favorite son and the forefather of the Europeans, emerged as the hero who had preserved the original language in its purity. A new history of the European languages developed, one which traced them back to the language of the barbarian Scythians and emphasized the connections between Persian and European languages. It came to seem implausible that the European languages derived from Hebrew. By the eighteenth century, in short, all the preconditions were present for a discovery that the ancestors of the Europeans, like the common ancestor of their languages, had been independent of Semitic influence. A modern scholarly thesis whose political and intellectual consequences are still working themselves out reveals the continuing impact of a millennial tradition of speculation about language and history. (shrink)

A sustained analysis of how Addams gave American pragmatism a radical, revolutionary edge.

This dissertation integrates the work of feminist care theorists such as Carol Gilligan with the phenomenological work on embodiment of Maurice Merleau-Ponty as well as the social philosophy of Jane Addams to create an approach to morality that I call, "Embodied Care." I define embodied care as an approach to morality that shifts ethical considerations to context, relationships, and affective knowledge in a manner that can only be fully understood if its embodied dimension is recognized. Care is exhibited through (...) habits that are an expression of embodied knowledge and contribute to a caring imagination. Care is committed to the flourishing and growth of individuals yet acknowledges our interconnectedness and interdependence. This dissertation aims to contribute two ideas to existing care discourse: Care cannot be fully understood without attending to its embodied dimension and that care can be a viable component of a social ethic but only if its corporeal aspect is addressed. ;The introduction contains my definition of care that will be explicated throughout the dissertation. The opening chapter reviews the current literature on care ethics and organizes various positions held to help clarify the assertion I will make throughout the dissertation: care is more foundational than an ethical theory because it is rooted in the body. Largely drawing upon the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, chapter two establishes how the body is "built for caring" by exploring caring knowledge and caring habits. Chapter three bridges individual and social considerations through the notion of a caring imagination which employs corporeal resources to transcend distance and time to understand and empathize with others. In chapter four the work of Jane Addams is used to understand how attending to embodiment can contribute to social habits of care that build a caring society. The final chapter explores how embodied care transforms the moral landscape on a personal and a social level. ;Rather than providing the definitive answers desired by traditional ethical systems, embodied care points to the kinds of questions and issues that should be attended to. Embodied care is not about "getting it right," but about "making it better" for those involved. (shrink)

He focuses on Hegel and Nietzche, perhaps to give Mallarme and Kafka a breathing spell. Paper edition (unseen), $10.95. No index or bibliography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The original extended mind theory propagated by Clark and Chalmers (Analysis 58:7–19, 1998) refers to the idea that our minds do not simply live within our brains or bodies but extend into the material world. In other words, the extended mind refers to the externalization of cognitive processes into technology. Through the case study of the artistic performance of the android Alter inspired by the Japanese Shintoist ritual of Kagura this paper reconceptualizes the extended mind from a technological act of (...) transfer towards the relational, spatial, and performative ontologies of the intersubjective encounters between humans and non-humans. In an effort to decolonize performance and curatorial practice the paper draws upon indigenous scholarship, feminist STS, and performance studies to overcome preconceived conceptualizations of affect, perception, and relationality. The fundamental question the paper explores is how does intersubjective relationality unfold through performance in space? Based upon a critique of the android Alter’s past performance the paper concludes with a re-envisioned event score that employs a reconceptualized theory of the extended mind and aimed at a different kind of intersubjective relationality to emerge. (shrink)

A commentary on the Case Study “Bad Words,” in the March‐April 2014 issue.

Pour un pédopsychiatre, le concept de médiation est indissociable de celui d’intérêt de l’enfant, ce terme étant défini comme la protection de la sécurité et du développement affectif et intellectuel de l’enfant. Dans les situations de divorce concernant des enfants petits, il est donc indispensable que les professionnels impliqués aient des connaissances précises concernant les besoins d’un nourrisson, et en particulier qu’ils soient familiers avec la théorie et la clinique de l’attachement. Quant aux visites médiatisées qui sont nécessaires dans certaines (...) situations complexes en protection de l’enfance, elles sont clairement hors du champ de la médiation familiale. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a new approach to address the ramification problem in common-sense reasoning about action and change. We contrast the methods of McCain and Turner, Thielscher and Sandewall and, based on some of the limitations they encounter, we introduce a trajectory-based approach which keeps a history of the states through which a system evolves to characterise its dynamical state. We furnish an underlying state-transition semantics and a logic that admits an expressive, dynamical account of some typical scenarios (...) which encounter modelling difficulties in the other approaches mentioned. (shrink)

This book looks at two ‘revolutions’ in philosophy – phenomenology and conceptual analysis which have been influential in sociology and psychology. It discusses humanistic psychiatry and sociological approaches to the specific area of mental illness, which counter the ultimately reductionist implications of Freudian psycho-analytic theory. The book, originally published in 1973, concludes by stating the broad underlying themes of the two forms of humanistic philosophy and indicating how they relate to the problems of theory and method in sociology.

Contributors to this volume demonstrate how the ethics of care factors into a variety of social policies and institutions, and can indeed be useful in thinking about a number of different social problems. Divided into two sections, the first looks at care as a model for an evaluative framework that rethinks social institutions, liberal society, and citizenship at a basic conceptual level. The second explores care values in the context of specific social practices or settings, as a framework that should (...) guide thinking. (shrink)

This paper presents an overview on the concept of cardinal utility in its relations with the literature since the beginning of the XVIIIth century (Part I); an estimate of the cardinal utility function for its negative values, thus completing the estimate of this function for its positive values given in my 1984 Venice paper (Part II); and finally different applications to the theory of choices in the presence of risk and to the wealth transfer and tax questions (Part III).

Prodelision or Inverse Elision takes place when a word ending in a long vowel or diphthong is immediately followed by another word beginning with a short vowel. Though it is very occasionally found in inscriptions and in the manuscripts of certain prose authors, particularly those of Plato—almost uniquely and its cases—it is to be considered as essentially a verse phenomenon, affecting as it does the metre of the line in which it occurs. Prodelision was unknown to Homer and Hesiod, is (...) rare in lyric, and seems only to come into real use with the dramatists of the fifth century. An examination of the practice of the three tragedians and of Aristophanes is not without interest in itself and may occasionally throw some light on points of textual criticism. (shrink)