The Oxford Handbook of Psychiatric Ethics is the most comprehensive treatment of the field in history. The volume is organized into ten sections which survey the scope of the text: Introduction, People Come First, Specific Populations, Philosophy and Psychiatric Ethics, Religious Contexts of Psychiatric Ethics, Social Contexts of Psychiatric Ethics, Ethics in Psychiatric Citizenship and the Law, Ethics of Psychiatric Research, Ethics and Values in Psychiatric Assessment and Diagnosis, Ethics and Values in Psychiatric Treatment. Written and edited by an international (...) team of experts, this landmark book provides a powerful and compelling review of psychiatric ethics in the 21st Century. (shrink)

Universities introduce intermediate assessment because it is understood to have positive effects on student behaviour and achievement. Yet, how intermediate assessment is perceived might be conditional for its success. The current study investigates both teachers’ and students’ perceptions of intermediate assessment. Teachers and students were interviewed and Student Evaluations of Teaching were examined. Results indicate that both teachers and students had generally positive perceptions of intermediate assessment. However, the two groups provided different reasons for their positive perceptions. Teachers and students (...) agreed that intermediate assessment helps students to keep up with their study work. Moreover, teachers mentioned that they could assess various knowledge and skills with intermediate assessment, whereas students preferred intermediate assessments to test the same knowledge and skills as the final exam. This finding suggests that teachers and students in our study had different goals... (shrink)

I argue here that r. Van straaten's four modifications of f. Sommers' 'rule for enforcing ambiguity' are based upon a misunderstanding of the basis of the rule and a failure to see the spanning/predicability distinction. The effect is that none of van straaten's several counterexamples are telling against the rule. In place of van straaten's modifications I offer the following simple but important changes in the rule: the restriction of things to individuals and the reading of 'makes (...) sense to predicate' and similar phrases in terms of the spanning relation. (shrink)

This article addresses the research question: “How do Dutch highly educated Muslim women of Moroccan descent use prayer in dealing with problems?” The theoretical framework was mainly based on the work of Pargament et al. regarding religious coping. The empirical part of the study consisted of a quantitative and a qualitative part. This article presents results of the quantitative part. For the quantitative part of our research, 177 questionnaires were collected using snowball sampling. We asked respondents about their praying practices (...) and their ways of religious coping, using the Brief RCOPE. The connection and communication in their prayer with a loving, caring, benevolent God is the main religious way in which these Muslim women of Moroccan descent cope with all kinds of problems. This use of prayer as a way of coping can be clarified through the psychological functions of religiosity and prayer that are suggested by Pargament, Koenig, and Perez. Prayer could help them in: finding meaning, being master over their circumstances and controlling their emotions, finding comfort and closeness to God, experiencing intimacy with others and closeness to God, and transforming their way of life. We did find few negative religious coping strategies, such as negative feelings towards God or alienation. This is in line with research results of Abu Raiya and Pargament. As Islam implies surrender to God, it may be difficult for Muslims to admit their religious distress, doubts, and struggles. (shrink)

A brain-computer interface technology that can decode the neural signals associated with attempted but unarticulated speech could offer a future efficient means of communication for people with severe motor impairments. Recent demonstrations have validated this approach. Here we assume that it will be possible in future to decode imagined (i.e., attempted but unarticulated) speech in people with severe motor impairments, and we consider the characteristics that could maximize the social utility of a BCI for communication. As a social interaction, communication (...) involves the needs and goals of both speaker and listener, particularly in contexts that have significant potential consequences. We explore three high-consequence legal situations in which neurally-decoded speech could have implications:Testimony, where decoded speech is used as evidence;Consent and Capacity, where it may be used as a means of agency and participation such as consent to medical treatment; andHarm, where such communications may be networked or may cause harm to others. We then illustrate how design choices might impact the social and legal acceptability of these technologies. (shrink)