Patient’s decision making competence is a widely discussed subject. Issues of competence, autonomy, well-being and protection of the patient come up every day. In this article we analyse what role PDMC plays in Dutch legislation and what dilemmas healthcare professionals may experience, notably in patients suffering from Korsakoff’s syndrome. Dilemmas emerge if professionals want to meet the requirements mentioned in Dutch law and the desires of their patients. The autonomy of the patient and the healthcare professionals’ duty to take (...) care of their patient’s best interests, create a tension and lead to uncomfortable situations. Healthcare professionals describe difficulty finding a balance between these issues and assessing the degree of mental competence still present. In long term care situations, quality of the relationship between healthcare professionals and their patients seems to be of much more importance in decision making on minor issues of competence than simply relying on legal or house rules. In being committed to their cases, professionals will be more sensitive to individuals habits, abilities, welfare and dignity, which will make it easier to decide on issues of competence, and to find creative solutions to their dilemmas. (shrink)

The belief that memory is essential to the self is common. Extreme amnesia, e.g., Korsakoff Syndrome, is held to dissolve the afflicted person’s self. This belief is a misconception that rests on a confusion of epistemic with ontological relevance. Epistemically, memory is relevant to the self: a subject’s self-knowledge partly depends on memories of past experiences. However, it is not by virtue of these memories that the subject is a self: ontologically, memory is irrelevant to that status. The fact (...) that an individuals conception of herself as existing through time is wanting does not prevent that individual from being a self at a given point in time. As the past is there whether or not it is remembered, so the self is there whether or not it remembers. If instead we define the self as awareness of being a subject of experience, the self may survive even the most extreme forms of amnesia. Being a self is an important social value, a prerequisite of numerous legal or moral rights. This in itself is questionable, like the social exclusion it may entail. Denying an amnesic person a self is therefore more than a logical mistake: it is a social exclusion that can also be questioned on ethical grounds. (shrink)

The belief that memory is essential to the self is common. Extreme amnesia, e.g., Korsakoff Syndrome, is held to dissolve the afflicted person’s self. This belief is a misconception that rests on a confusion of epistemic with ontological relevance. Epistemically, memory is relevant to the self: a subject’s self-knowledge partly depends on memories of past experiences. However, it is not by virtue of these memories that the subject is a self: ontologically, memory is irrelevant to that status. The fact (...) that an individuals conception of herself as existing through time is wanting does not prevent that individual from being a self at a given point in time. As the past is there whether or not it is remembered, so the self is there whether or not it remembers. If instead we define the self as awareness of being a subject of experience, the self may survive even the most extreme forms of amnesia. Being a self is an important social value, a prerequisite of numerous legal or moral rights. This in itself is questionable, like the social exclusion it may entail. Denying an amnesic person a self is therefore more than a logical mistake: it is a social exclusion that can also be questioned on ethical grounds. (shrink)

As portrayed in Mahābhārata including Bhagavadgītā.

A brief presentation of the major conclusions contained in the recently published monograph entitled "The Ascent to Law: Searches and Solutions," written over a period of many years. Chapter headings are: The law - an objective reality. The dogma of the law. The drama of scholarship. Searching. "The entire" substance of the law. Juridical constructs. The logic of laws. The secret of the law. Law - the highest purpose. Law in the life and fate of mankind.

Frant︠s︡uzskiĭ materializm XVIII veka -- Frant︠s︡uzskie istoriki vremen Restavrat︠s︡ii -- Sot︠s︡ialisty-utopisty -- Idealisticheskai︠a︡ nemet︠s︡kai︠a︡ filosofii︠a︡ -- Sovremennyĭ materializm.

A new class of program-oriented logical formalisms is investigated – renominative logics with extended renominations, equality predicates, and predicate complement composition. Composition algebras and languages of such logics are described; their semantic properties are investigated. For these logics, a number of logical consequence relations are proposed and investigated, in particular, the logical consequence relations with undefinedness conditions. Properties of these relations form the semantic basis for further construction of sequent-type calculi for the proposed logics.