In medical practice and research it is necessary to consider the rights of the researcher or physician and of the subject or patient, to conform to scientific standards and to examine the appropriateness with respect to laws and moral values. Research ethics committees have an important role to play in ensuring the ethical standards and scientific merit of research on human subjects. Research of no scientific value is also against ethical principles. To obtain valid and reliable results from biomedical research, (...) it is a scientific and ethical obligation to make use of the science of statistics. Therefore, for research to be evaluated using biostatistics intensively from ethical and scientific points of view, a biostatistics expert is necessary on research ethics committees. Developments in Turkey are used as examples. (shrink)

Objectives: The aim of this study is to evaluate the views of cancer patients on patient rights in the context of the right to information and autonomy according to articles related to the issue in the “Patient Rights Regulation”. Methods: The research was conducted among cancer patients in the medical oncology department of a research and practice hospital using a random sampling method between June and September 2005. Data were collected during face-to-face interviews using a questionnaire. Results: There was a (...) high rate of positive response to the items that the patients have the right to be informed (86.5%), that the physician should inform the patient on the diagnosis and the treatment (92.3%) and that the physician is obliged to inform the patient (76.9%). Only 43.3% of the patients stated that the patient has the right to refuse the treatment recommended by the physician. The participants mostly agreed that the patient should participate in decisions about the treatment and that patient consent should be given (78.8%). Conclusions: There are extensive efforts in Turkey towards making patient rights a significant supportive component of health services. For patient rights to become a natural part of medical practice it is necessary to give priority to education of both patients and physicians about patient rights and to lay emphasis on an ethical approach in the patient–physician relationship. (shrink)

A case study is presented of the development of computer-based support tools for power engineers in the electricity supply industry. The objective was to develop an expert system to support witching schedule production. A user-centred approach was followed which led the user community to conclude that a switching schedule production assistant (SSPA) was required which would leave control with the power engineer. Prototype systems were developed and evaluated in user trials which revealed that a significant and more general purpose tool (...) would be a computer generated electricity network display that the engineers could manipulate. The paper concludes that the process of enabling users to evaluate alternative forms of technology can facilitate the development systems that are useful, acceptable and usable. (shrink)

Abstract An attempt is made to analyse the key notions in the Buddha's Dhamma? ?truth?, ?knowledge?, ?emancipation??by way of the philosophical techniques of the later Wittgenstein. The analysis hence is both comparative and noncomparative. It is comparative because two thought processes from two different traditions are brought together. And it is noncomparative since it brings into focus a philosophical exegesis as against a comparative exposition. In the process not only are philosophical errors in comparative exposition made explicit in our thesis (...) but it also offers a genuine basis for modern Buddhist philosophy. (shrink)

Volume 46, Issue 6, November 2020, Page 727-743.

A. D. Smith; VI*—The Self and the Good, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 85, Issue 1, 1 June 1985, Pages 101–118, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristot.

An assessment is made of Rudolf Otto's criticisms of Friedrich Schleiermacher's claim that religious feeling is to be interpreted as essentially involving a feeling of absolute dependence. Otto's criticisms are divided into two kinds. The first suggest that a feeling a dependence, even an absolute one, is the wrong sort of feeling to locate at the heart of religious consciousness. It is argued that this criticism is based on misinterpretations of Schleiermacher's view, which is in fact much closer to Otto's (...) than the latter appreciated. The second kind of criticism suggests that the feeling of absolute dependence cannot play the foundational role assigned to it by Schleiermacher, since it is itself a secondary response. It is argued not only that Otto provides no justification for this criticism, but that Otto's own position is incoherent unless Schleiermacher's view is accepted. (shrink)

The monograph shows that in the last 50 years theoretical linguistics remains a compendium of mutually contradicting doctrines on multiple levels: the level of general theories of language, the level of its main constituents (the lexicon, syntax, and the lexical-syntactic interface that connects them), and the lower levels of specific linguistic problems (such as lexical polysemy, grammatical meanings, etc.). The contradictions of contemporary linguistic theories are indicative of a deep crisis. Evolutionary-synthetic theory of language is aimed at overcoming this crisis. (...) It implements a multidisciplinary approach that describes the language a) in evolutionary and ontogenetic development and b) in close interaction with other human subsystems: the mental representation of the world, human activity and social interaction. Language is defined as a dual system developing in ontogeny: 'universal sensory sublanguage + ethnically specific functional sublanguage' where the sensory sublanguage is used to describe the 'visible' world (accessible to the senses), and the functional sublanguage is employed to describe the conceivable world ('comprehended by human mind'). Within the framework of the approach presented, many problems are solved: 1) the cognitive (non-verbal) language for representing language meanings; 2) diversity and unity of languages (using the structure alternative to Chomsky's Universal Grammar); 3) the main (original) function of the language; 4) the cognitive language of thought (its basis is the lexical and grammatical meanings of the sensory sublanguage); 5) dual (functionally prototypical) structure of human categories; 6) mechanisms in the early acquisition of lexical and grammatical meanings; 7) the meaning (assignment) of the syntactic structure of a sentence, etc. The book deals with a wide range of issues related to human cognition, glottogenesis and anthropogenesis, universal cognitive structures for the representation of objects, actions and situations, so it will be of interest not only to linguists, but also to psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers. (shrink)