t. 1. Obshchai︠a︡ teorii︠a︡ prava. Ugolovnoe pravo -- t. 2. Kriminologii︠a︡, sot︠s︡iologii︠a︡, konfliktologii︠a︡ -- t. 3. Politologii︠a︡, ideologii︠a︡, ėtika.

In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we determine a core meaning for each value type, which is (...) sufficiently inclusive to serve as an umbrella over different understandings in the literature and specific enough to help highlight its difference from the other types of values. Finally, we discuss convergences, overlapping areas, and fuzzy boundaries between different value types to facilitate dialogue, reduce misunderstandings, and improve the methods for valuation of nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem services, to inform policy and direct future research. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: Life-sustaining treatment at the end of life gives rise to many ethical problems in Japan. Recent surveys of Japanese physicians suggested that they tend to treat terminally ill patients aggressively. We studied why Japanese physicians were reluctant to withhold or withdraw life-support from terminally ill patients and what affected their decisions. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: A qualitative study design was employed, using a focus group interview with seven physicians, to gain an in-depth understanding of attitudes and rationales in Japan regarding (...) medical care at the end of life. RESULTS: Analysis revealed that physicians and patients' family members usually make decisions about life-sustaining treatment, while the patients' wishes are unavailable or not taken into account. Both physicians and family members tend to consider withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment as abandonment or even killing. The strongest reason to start cardiopulmonary resuscitation- and to continue it until patients' family members arrive-seems to be the family members' desire to be at the bedside at the time of death. All physicians participating in our study regarded advance directives that provide information as to patients' wishes about life-sustaining treatment desirable. All expressed concern, however, that it would be difficult to forego or discontinue life-support based on a patient's advance directive, particularly when the patient's family opposed the directive. CONCLUSION: Our group interview suggested several possible barriers to death with dignity and the appropriate use of advance directives in Japan. Further qualitative and quantitative research in this regard is needed. (shrink)

Objective: To explore the experiences of people with a “terminal illness”, focusing on the patients’ perspective of euthanasia and assisted suicide.Method: A qualitative study using narrative interviews was conducted throughout the UK. The views of the 18 people who discussed euthanasia and assisted suicide were explored. These were drawn from a maximum variation sample, who said that they had a “terminal” illness, malignant or non-malignant.Results: That UK law should be changed to allow assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia was felt strongly (...) by most people. Those who had seen others die were particularly convinced that this should be a right. Some had multiple reasons, including pain and anticipated pain, fear of indignity, loss of control and cognitive impairment. Those who did not want to be a burden also had other reasons for wanting euthanasia. Suicide was contemplated by a few, who would have preferred a change in the law to allow them to end their lives with medical help and in the company of family or friends. The few who opposed a change in UK law, or who felt ambivalent, focused on involuntary euthanasia, cited religious reasons or worried that new legislation might be open to abuse.Conclusion: Qualitative research conducted on people who know they are nearing death is an important addition to the international debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide. Those who had seen others die were particularly convinced that the law should be changed to allow assisted death. (shrink)

In this paper we show how recent concepts from Dynamic Logic, and in particular from Dynamic Epistemic logic, can be used to model and interpret quantum behavior. Our main thesis is that all the non-classical properties of quantum systems are explainable in terms of the non-classical flow of quantum information. We give a logical analysis of quantum measurements (formalized using modal operators) as triggers for quantum information flow, and we compare them with other logical operators previously used to model various (...) forms of classical information flow: the “test” operator from Dynamic Logic, the “announcement” operator from Dynamic Epistemic Logic and the “revision” operator from Belief Revision theory. The main points stressed in our investigation are the following: (1) The perspective and the techniques of “logical dynamics” are useful for understanding quantum information flow. (2) Quantum mechanics does not require any modification of the classical laws of “static” propositional logic, but only a non-classical dynamics of information. (3) The main such non-classical feature is that, in a quantum world, all information-gathering actions have some ontic side-effects. (4) This ontic impact can affect in its turn the flow of information, leading to non-classical epistemic side-effects (e.g. a type of non-monotonicity) and to states of “objectively imperfect information”. (5) Moreover, the ontic impact is non-local: an information-gathering action on one part of a quantum system can have ontic side-effects on other, far-away parts of the system. (shrink)

The major periods of Rimbaud's life are seen as parts of a whole, united by the theme of a necessary and hopeless struggle for an impossible adequacy--as man, as poet, as trader. Hackett effectively presents the case that Rimbaud is the greatest French poet after Baudelaire.--A. J. S.

This book is composed of seven essays on diverse ethical themes. C. H. Hamburg's essay on the task of the contemporary psychoanalyst in giving criteria for judging psychic health, Louise Roberts' discussion of "better" as a primitive ethical term, and R. C. Whittmore's "Does the Neo-intuitionist theory of obligation rest on a mistake?" are the most valuable.--A. J. S.

Marx is generally taken to be important in the history of thought as a social philosopher, that is, a philosopher whose main categories are human individuals, their interactions, and the development and modification of institutions, values, and the like. Not so, according to Carol C. Gould, who contends, rather, that Marx is important in the history of thought as a metaphysician, that is, a philosopher whose main categories are particulars, classes, the relation of individuals to class concepts, change, causation, and (...) the like, and, having developed principles in that universal ontic domain, Marx proceeded to apply them to a special subdomain of reality, namely, society. In other words, Marx was important as an ontologist in general, and specifically as a social ontologist. Thus, the author states: "I present Marx for the first time as a great systematic philosopher in the tradition of Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel. Yet I show that Marx’s philosophical system is distinctive in that he develops it as a framework for his concrete social theory and his critique of political economy". (shrink)

Two of the articles deal with the Apology and the Crito and another two tie in with the themes of these dialogues by focusing on the questions of rhetoric. R. E. Allen in "Irony and Rhetoric in Plato’s Apology" points out the interrelationship between the Apology and the Gorgias in terms of two forms of rhetoric: "base rhetoric, aiming at gratification... and philosophical rhetoric, aiming at the truth." It is the latter form of rhetoric that Allen suggests Socrates uses before (...) the Athenian judges. Betty Sichel argues along similar grounds in "Is Socrates a Sophist?" where she differentiates Socrates’ use of Sophistic logic and rhetoric from the Sophistic use by focusing on the contrasting content and purposes of the two. W. K. C. Guthrie, in contrast, in "Rhetoric and Philosophy: The Unity of the Phaedrus" disagrees with the above two, instead denying to Socrates any interest in rhetoric and arguing that the Phaedrus must be read "not as has been done in the past as a manual of instruction in rhetoric... but a plea to abandon it for philosophy." A. D. Woozley’s treatment of the Apology and the Crito turns from a discussion of rhetoric to "Socrates and the Law," and offers yet another attempt to wrestle with and find compatible the striking contradictions in these two works concerning obedience to the law. Though Woozley wisely concludes that a definitive answer is impossible, he does proceed with considerable care and insight through the various Socratic arguments. (shrink)

Biographies of Thomas Hobbes are hardly lacking. Reik’s book, however, with its attention to aspects of Hobbes’s life not usually considered in a general biography and specifically with its use of manuscripts not previously consulted by Hobbes scholars is a definite addition to the literature on Hobbes. Though Reik begins by noting that a "modern biography of Hobbes…must be in large part a history of his thought for the simple reason that he never did much in the active sense", the (...) value of this work lies not in its somewhat shallow analysis of Hobbes’s ideas, but in its description of the social, intellectual, literary, scientific, and religious worlds in which Hobbes moved and the particular individuals in all of these circles with whom Hobbes had associations-whether favorable or otherwise. One of Reik’s theses is that the basic orientation of Hobbes’s thought and writings was set in the English Renaissance and that this orientation was not cast aside as the intellectual climate of England moved towards the Enlightenment—a factor which seems to account, in part, for Hobbes’s position as something of a misfit towards the end of his life. (shrink)

Presented in this study is an analysis of the electronic properties of doped diamond calculated using the Vienna ab initio simulation package, employing density functional theory within the generalized-gradient approximation. The dopants studied here have been inserted substitutionally into a 64-atom diamond supercell and include the single-electron acceptors boron and aluminium, the single-electron donors nitrogen and phosphorus and the double-electron donors oxygen and sulphur. Co-doping of diamond with sulphur and boron has also been briefly examined. The doped supercells have been (...) relaxed, followed by calculation of electronic properties from the electronic density of states such as the indirect bandgap E g , the valence bandwidth and an examination of the acceptor and donor states in the bandgap. It is anticipated that this study will provide a useful comparison of the third- and fourth-row donors and acceptors in diamond. (shrink)

The “therapeutic misconception” describes a process whereby research volunteers misinterpret the intentions of researchers and the nature of clinical research. This misinterpretation leads research volunteers to falsely attribute a therapeutic potential to clinical research, and compromises informed decision making, therefore compromising the ethical integrity of a clinical experiment. We review recent evidence from the neurobiology of social cognition to provide a novel framework for thinking about the therapeutic misconception. We argue that the neurobiology of social cognition should be considered in (...) any ethical analysis of how people make decisions about participating in clinical trials. The neurobiology of social cognition also suggests how the complicated dynamics of the doctor-patient relationship may unavoidably interfere with the process of obtaining informed consent. Following this argument we suggest new ways to prevent or at least mitigate the therapeutic misconception. (shrink)