Structured interviews were held with 149 registered nurses in seven countries in America, Asia, Australia and Europe concerning the feeding of severely demented patients who do not accept food. The most common reasons for nurses being willing to change their decision to feed or not to feed were an order from the medical head, a request from the patient's husband and/or the staff meeting. There was a connection between the willingness to feed and the ranking of ethical principles. Nurses who (...) were most prone to feed the patient most often gave a high rank to the ethical principle of sanctity of life, while those who primarily chose not to feed the patient gave a high rank to the ethical principle of autonomy. All nurses stressed the ethical principle of beneficence. Des interviews structurés ont eu lieu avec 149 infirmiers/ères dans sept pays en Amérique, Asie, Australie et Europe concernant l'alimentation des malades gravement dément qui refusent de manger. La raison la plus générale pour des infirmiers/ères d'être prêt à changer leures décisions de donner à manger ou non sont: un ordre du médecin, la demande du mari de la malade ou de la réunion du personnel. Il y avait un lien entre la volonté de nourir et le rang des principes éthiques. Les infirmiers/ères les plus enclins de nourir la malade le plus souvent donnaient un rang supérieur au principe éthique de la sainteté de vie, pendant que ceux et celles qui choisissaient de ne pas nourrir la malade donnaient un rang supérieur au principe éthique de l'autonomie. Tous insistaient sur l'importance du principe éthique de la bienfaisance. Konstruktive Interviews wurden mit 149 ausgebildeten Krankenschwestern und Pfleger in sieben Ländern in Amerika, Asien, Australien und Europa gehalten über die Ernährung von schwer von Dementia praecox leidenden Patienten, die das Essen verweigern. Die gewöhnlichsten Gründe des Pflegepersonals für die Bereitwilligkeit, ihre Entscheidung, zu ernähren oder nicht, zu ändern, waren Anordnungen vom medizinischen Chef, Anfragen vom Ehemann der Patientin und/oder einer Personalsitzung. Es bestand ein Zusammenhang zwischen der Bereitwilligkeit zur Ernährung und dem Rang der ethischen Prinzipien. Die Pflegenden, die sich am meisten neigten, die Patientin zu ernähren, gaben dem ethischen Prinzip der Heiligkeit des Lebens einen hohen Rang, während die, die meistens vorzogen, die Patientin nicht zu ernähren, gaben dem ethischen Prinzip der Autonomie einen hohen Rang. Alle Pflegenden legten grossen Wert auf das ethische Prinzip der Wohltätigkeit. (shrink)

A major difficulty for currently existing theories of inductive inference involves the question of what to do when novel, unknown, or previously unsuspected phenomena occur. In this paper one particular instance of this difficulty is considered, the so-called sampling of species problem.The classical probabilistic theories of inductive inference due to Laplace, Johnson, de Finetti, and Carnap adopt a model of simple enumerative induction in which there are a prespecified number of types or species which may be observed. But, realistically, this (...) is often not the case. In 1838 the English mathematician Augustus De Morgan proposed a modification of the Laplacian model to accommodate situations where the possible types or species to be observed are not assumed to be known in advance; but he did not advance a justification for his solution. (shrink)

Among various cases that equally admit of evidentialist reasoning, the supposedly evidentialist solution has varying degrees of intuitive attractiveness. I suggest that cooperative reasoning may account for the appeal of apparently evidentialist behavior in the cases in which it is intuitively attractive, while the inapplicability of cooperative reasoning may account for the unattractiveness of evidentialist behaviour in other cases. A collective causal power with respect to agreed outcomes, not evidentialist reasoning, makes cooperation attractive in the Prisoners' Dilemma. And a natural (...) though unwarranted assumption of such a power may account for the intuitive appeal of the one-box response in Newcomb's Problem. (shrink)

S. L. Hurley; VIII*—Kant on Spontaneity and the Myth of the Giving, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, Pages 137–164, htt.

Many religious people are alarmed about features of the current age - violence in the media, a pervasive hedonism, a marginalization of religion, and widespread abortion. These concerns influence politics, but just as there should be a separation between church and state, so should there be a balance between religious commitments and secular arguments calling for social reforms. Robert Audi offers a principle of secular rationale, which does not exclude religious grounds for action but which rules out restricting freedom except (...) on grounds that any rational citizen would accept. The book describes the essential commitments of free democracy, explains how religious and secular moral considerations can be integrated to facilitate co-operation in a world of religious pluralism, and proposes ideals of civic virtue that express the mutual respect on which democracy depends. Audi offers a balanced and sophisticated treatment of the relations between religion and politics in a modern, secular society. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to make a simple observation regarding the Johnson -Carnap continuum of inductive methods. From the outset, a common criticism of this continuum was its failure to permit the confirmation of universal generalizations: that is, if an event has unfailingly occurred in the past, the failure of the continuum to give some weight to the possibility that the event will continue to occur without fail in the future. The Johnson -Carnap continuum is the mathematical consequence (...) of an axiom termed Johnson 's sufficientness postulate, the thesis of this paper is that, properly viewed, the failure of the Johnson -Carnap continuum to confirm universal generalizations is not a deep fact, but rather an immediate consequence of the sufficientness postulate; and that if this postulate is modified in the minimal manner necessary to eliminate such an entailment, then the result is a new continuum that differs from the old one in precisely one respect: it enjoys the desideratum of confirming universal generalizations. (shrink)

Moral Case Deliberations are reflective dialogues with a group of participants on their own moral dilemmas. Although MCD is successful as clinical ethics support, it also has limitations. 1. Lessons learned from individual MCDs are not shared in order to be used in other contexts 2. Moral learning stays limited to the participants of the MCD; 3. MCD requires quite some organisational effort, 4. MCD deals with one individual concrete case. It does not address other, similar cases. These limitations warrant (...) research into complementary ways of providing CES to healthcare professionals. Our research objective was therefore to develop a low threshold CES tool based on a series of MCDs on autonomy in long-term care. We used a qualitative research design in which we analyzed the process and content of a series of MCDs, combined with reflections on the theoretical background of MCD. In total 28 MCDs were analyzed by means of a thematic content analysis. In various rounds of development, the results of the analysis were combined with theoretical reflections on CES. Consequently, the tool was evaluated in three focus groups and adjusted. The CES tool, called ‘moral compass’, guides the users through a series of six subsequent questions in order to methodically reflect on their concrete moral dilemma, in the form of a booklet of 23 pages. It combines a methodical element that encourages and structures a reflection process with a substantive element, including norms, values, options, strategies, and insights regarding dealing with client autonomy. By using data from a series of MCDs, combined with theoretical reflections on MCD, ethics support and moral learning, we developed a thematic, low-threshold CES tool that supports healthcare professionals in daily practice in dealing with moral questions regarding client autonomy. It integrates examples and insights from earlier MCDs on the same topic. The moral compass is not a replacement of, but can be used complementary to MCD. The feasibility and impact of the moral compass need to be investigated in an evaluative follow-up study. The methodology presented in this paper may be used to develop moral compasses on different topics in various healthcare organizations. (shrink)

"Seymon Lyudvigovich Frank, the author of the volume here made available for the first time in English translation, was one of the leading Russian philosophers of this century; some authorities consider him the most outstanding Russian philosopher of any age...._ " _Man's Soul__ is a book which perfectly exemplifies the generous conception of the mission and competence of philosophy characteristic of Frank and the other members of the Russian metaphysical movement. Frank's stated aim in the treatise is to reclaim for (...) philosophy a field of investigation which, from the time of Plato and Aristotle to that of the Russian Idealists, philosophers had viewed as properly theirs, but which, since the mid-nineteenth century, they had allowed to fall into almost complete neglect: the study of the nature of the human soul...._ "The moral message of _Man's Soul__ is well summed up by its epigraph, quoted from St. Augustine: 'Let man first of all return to his own self, so that once he has, as it were, stepped therein, he may rise from thence and be elevated to God.'" -- from the foreword by Philip J. Swoboda. (shrink)

The Unknowable, arguably the greatest Russian philosophical work of the 20th century, was the culmination of S. L. Frank's intellectual and spiritual development, the boldest and most imaginative of all his writings, containing a synthesis of epistemology, ontology, social philosophy, religious philosophy, and personal spiritual experience.

Objective: To identify factors that predict physicians’ intent to comply with the American Medical Association’s ethical guidelines on gifts from the pharmaceutical industry.Methods: A survey was designed and mailed in June 2004 to a random sample of 850 physicians in Florida, USA, excluding physicians with inactive licences, incomplete addresses, addresses in other states and pretest participants. Factor analysis extracted six factors: attitude towards following the guidelines, subjective norms , facilitating conditions , profession-specific precedents , individual-specific precedents and intent. Multivariate regression (...) modelling was conducted.Results: Surveys were received from 213 physicians representing all specialties, with a net response rate of 25.5%. 62% of respondents were aware of the guidelines; 50% had read them. 48% thought that following the guidelines would increase physicians’ credibility and professional image; 68% agreed that it was important to do so. Intent to comply was positively associated with attitude, subjective norms, facilitators and sponsorship of continuing medical education events, while individual-specific precedents had a negative relationship with intent to comply. Predictors of intent were attitude, subjective norms, the interaction term , sponsorship of CME events and individual-specific precedents.Conclusions: Physicians are more likely to follow the AMA guidelines if they have positive attitudes towards the guidelines, greater subjective norms, fewer expectations of CME sponsorship and fewer individual-specific precedents. Physicians believing that important individuals or organisations expect them to comply with the guidelines are more likely to express intent, despite having fewer beliefs that positive outcomes would result through compliance. (shrink)

Authority qua empowerment is the weak reading of authority in Hans Kelsen's writings. On the one hand, this reading appears to be unresponsive to the problem of authority as we know it from the tradition. On the other hand, it squares with legal positivism. Is Kelsen a legal positivist?Not without qualification. For he defends a normativity thesis along with the separation thesis, and it is at any rate arguable that the normativity thesis mandates a stronger reading of authority than that (...) modelled on empowerment. I offer, in the paper, a prima facie case on behalf of a stronger reading of authority in Kelsen. I go on to argue, however, that the textual evidence weighs heavily in favour of the weak reading. Both nomostatics and nomodynamics are pervasive points of view in the Pure Theory of Law, and both reflect species of empowerment as the endpoint of Kelsen's reconstructions. (shrink)

We consider language models for the Lambek calculus that allow empty antecedents and enrich them with constants for the empty language and for the language containing only the empty word. No complete calculi are known with respect to these semantics, and in this paper we consider several trivalent systems that arise as fragments of these models? logics.

Joachim Schulte’s introduction provides a distinctive and masterful account of the full range of Wittgenstein’s thought. It is concise but not compressed, substantive but not overloaded with developmental or technical detail, informed by the latest scholarship but not pedantic. Beginners will find it accessible and seasoned students of Wittgenstein will appreciate it for the illuminating overview it provides.

Background: In Switzerland, non-medical right-to-die organisations such as Exit Deutsche Schweiz and Dignitas offer suicide assistance to members suffering from incurable diseases.Objectives: First, to determine whether differences exist between the members who received assistance in suicide from Exit Deutsche Schweiz and Dignitas. Second, to investigate whether the practices of Exit Deutsche Schweiz have changed since the 1990s.Methods: This study analysed all cases of assisted suicide facilitated by Exit Deutsche Schweiz and Dignitas between 2001 and 2004 and investigated by the University (...) of Zurich’s Institute of Legal Medicine. Furthermore, data from the Exit Deutsche Schweiz study which investigated all cases of assisted suicide during the period 1990–2000 were compared with the data of the present study.Results: More women than men were assisted in both organisations. Dignitas provided more assistance to non-residents, younger persons : D: 64.5 ; E: 76.6 ; p = 0.001), and people suffering from fatal diseases such as multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Lethal medications were more often taken orally in cases assisted by Dignitas. The number of women and the proportion of older people suffering from non-fatal diseases among suicides assisted by Exit Deutsche Schweiz has increased since the 1990s : 69.3 to 76.9, p = 0.000), non-fatal diseases: 22% to 34%, p = 0.026).Conclusions: Weariness of life rather than a fatal or hopeless medical condition may be a more common reason for older members of Exit Deutsche Schweiz to commit suicide. The strong over-representation of women in both Exit Deutsche Schweiz and Dignitas suicides is an important phenomenon so far largely overlooked and in need of further study. (shrink)

S. L. Hurley; II*—Conflict, Akrasia and Cognitivism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 86, Issue 1, 1 June 1986, Pages 23–50, https://doi.org/10.1.

Sven Erik Nordenbo; Bildung and the Thinking of Bildung, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages 341–352, https://doi.or.

Inducing the rubber hand illusion (RHI) requires that participants look at an imitation hand while it is stroked in synchrony with their occluded biological hand. Previous explanations of the RHI have emphasized multisensory integration, and excluded higher cognitive functions. We investigated the relationship between the RHI and higher cognitive functions by experimentally testing task switch (as measured by switch cost) and mind wandering (as measured by SART score); we also included a questionnaire for attentional control that comprises two subscales, attention-shift (...) and attention-focus. To assess experience of RHI, the Botvinick and Cohen (1998) questionnaire was used and illusion onset time was recorded. Our results indicate that rapidity of onset reliably indicates illusion strength. Regression analysis revealed that participants evincing less switch cost and higher attention-shift scores had faster RHI onset times, and that those with higher attention-shift scores experienced the RHI more vividly. These results suggest that the multi-sensory hypothesis is not sufficient to explain the illusion: higher cognitive functions should be taken into account when explaining variation in the experience of ownership for the rubber hand. (shrink)

Business ethics scholars have proposed strategies for mitigating the ill effects brought on by a wealth maximization business strategy by urging managers to either embrace corporate social responsibility (CSR) or to manage according to stakeholder theory. In this article I argue that these strategies are often ineffective in bringing about the behavior they promote because it is antithetical to the nature and logic of capitalism. I examine the organizing principles of capitalism and the role it assigns to capitalists, and juxtapose (...) these with the behavior prescribed by three normative frameworks: strategic management theory (SMT), the CSR initiative, and stakeholder theory. Unlike the behaviors prescribed by the CSR initiative and stakeholder management theory, the behavior prescribed by SMT is consistent with the role of capitalists as defined by the organizing principles of capitalism, and SMT's “rules” have instilled habits that have, in turn, been able to mold managers’ aspirations and purposes. CSR and stakeholder theory must not only combat the habits instilled by the entrenched SMT, they must also find some way of instilling habits that run contrary to those defined by the nature and logic of capitalism itself. (shrink)