The present research seeks to better understand research conditions in laboratory research, with special attention paid to the informed consent process and experimenter characteristics. The first study tested the impact of language perspective and experimenter demeanor upon participant retention of the informed consent information, attitudes toward the research project, and performance on experimental tasks. The second study examined the impact of experimenter attire. Across the two studies, our results suggest that there was no impact of language perspective, whereas the number (...) of other participants in the laboratory, experimenter attire, and experimenter demeanor influence participant behaviors in the laboratory. (shrink)

BackgroundSelf-prescribing and prescribing to personal contacts is explicitly discouraged by General Medical Council guidelines.AimsThis study examines how widespread the practice of self-prescribing and prescribing to personal contacts is.MethodsA 16-item questionnaire was distributed via an online forum comprising 4445 young medical doctors, which asked respondents about previous prescribing to themselves, their families, friends and colleagues, including the class of medication prescribed. Demographic details were collected including medical grade and specialty.ResultsA total of 729 responses were obtained, the majority of which were from (...) young non-consultant hospital doctors from a range of specialties. Two-thirds of respondents had self-prescribed, over 70% had prescribed to family, and nearly 60% had prescribed to a friend or colleague. Older doctors were more likely to self-prescribe. Interns being less likely to self-prescribe was not unexpected, while general practitioners and paediatricians were more likely to self-prescribe. GPs, paediatricians and hospital medicine specialties were more likely to prescribe to family and surgeons were more likely to prescribe to friends. Some 3% to 7% who had self-prescribed had prescribed an opiate, benzodiazepine or psychotropic medication. Male doctors, anaesthetists and surgeons were more likely to self-prescribe opioids, while those in hospital medicine were more likely to self-prescribe psychotropic medications.ConclusionPrescribing outside the traditional doctor-patient relationship is widespread despite clear professional guidance advising against it. (shrink)

La importancia de la esperanza en la vida de las personas es reconocida portodos; sin embargo, el tema ha sido trabajado casi exclusivamente porteólogos. El artículo intenta encontrar, mediante el análisis de los aportes deKant, Maree! y Bloch, un vocabulario que nos permita comprender laesperanza en términos filosóficos; es un ejercicio reflexivo de spes quaerensintellectum y, a la vez, de intellectus quaerens spem.

This chapter first surveys general issues in the epistemic internalism / externalism debate: what is the distinction, what motivates it, and what arguments can be given on both sides. -/- The second part of the chapter will examine the internalism / externalism debate as regards to the specific case of the epistemology of memory belief.

The acquisition of a new skill usually proceeds through five stages, from novice to expert, with a sixth stage of mastery available for highly motivated performers. In this chapter, we re-state the six stages of the Dreyfus Skill Model, paying new attention to the transitions and interrelations between them. While discussing the fifth stage, expertise, we unpack the claim that, “when things are proceeding normally, experts don’t solve problems and don’t make decisions; they do what normally works” (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, (...) 1988, pp. 30 – 31). This leads us to offer an account of the “perspectival deliberation” that arises for experts and masters and that is distinct from the calculative deliberation characteristic of the lower stages of skillfulness. (shrink)

'The problem of the twentieth-century is the problem of the color-line.' Originally published in 1903, The Souls of Black Folk is a classic study of race, culture, and education at the turn of the twentieth century. With its singular combination of essays, memoir, and fiction, this book vaulted W. E. B. Du Bois to the forefront of American political commentary and civil rights activism. The Souls of Black Folk is an impassioned, at times searing account of the situation of African (...) Americans in the United States. Du Bois makes a forceful case for the access of African Americans to higher education, memorably extols the achievements of black culture (above all the spirituals or 'sorrow songs'), and advances the provocative and influential argument that due to the inequalities and pressures of the 'race problem', African American identity is characterized by 'double consciousness'. This edition includes a valuable appendix of other writing by Du Bois, which sheds light on his attitudes and intentions. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

We presuppose a position of scientific realism to the effect (i) that the world exists and (ii) that through the working out of ever more sophisticated theories our scientific picture of reality will approximate ever more closely to the world as it really is. Against this background consider, now, the following question: 1. Do the empirical theories with the help of which we seek to approximate a good or true picture of reality rest on any non-empirical presuppositions? One can answer (...) this question with either a 'yes' or a 'no'. 'No' is the preferred answer of most contemporary methodologists -- Murray Rothbard is one distinguished counterexample to this trend -- who maintain that empirical theories are completely free of non-empirical ('a priori') admixtures and who see science as a matter of the gathering of pure 'data' obtained through simple observation. From such data scientific propositions are then supposed to be somehow capable of being established. (shrink)

What are the most fundamental features of the world? Do minds stand outside the natural order? Is a unified picture of mental and physical reality possible? The Mind in Nature provides a staunchly realist account of the world as a unified system incorporating both the mental and the physical. C. B. Martin, an original and influential exponent of 'ontologically serious' metaphysics, echoes Locke's dictum that 'all things that exist are only particulars', and argues that properties are powerful qualities. He also (...) spells out the implications of this view for philosophical conceptions of causation, intentionality, consciousness, and the mind-body problem. Martin emphasizes the importance of non-conscious 'vegetative' systems, which provide clear examples of intentionality in the form of representational use. The slide from representational use to consciousness involves a change in the material of use, but not the form of representation. A concluding chapter provides an argument for the view that an ontology of particular substances and properties leads ineluctably to monism: the bus we board with Locke takes us directly to the world of Spinoza and Einstein. Along the way, we are led to understand the nature of minds and conscious states of mind in a way that avoids both reductionism and dualism. (shrink)

In this concise yet powerful book, one of the twentieth century's most respected political philosophers presents a controversial reassessment of the political ideas and intellectual legacy of Edmund Burke. A practicing politician and powerful writer, full of ideas, Burke was intent on getting those ideas translated into government policies. But he was too much the impatient practitioner to set out his principles in a single book in the manner of Locke or Hume, leaving both admirers and opponents ample scope to (...) reinterpret his work in different ways. Macpherson, however, finds Burke's views on political economy to be the one consistent factor in his thinking. Today Burke is often viewed as one of modern conservatism's founding lights, and in an era of global capitalism unfettered by national borders, Macpherson's reassessment of Burke's ideas is perhaps more timely than ever. (shrink)

First published in 1986, Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft remains the only analysis of indigenous discourse about an African belief system undertaken from within the framework of Anglo-American analytical philosophy. Taking as its point of departure W. V. O. Quine's thesis about the indeterminacy of translation, the book investigates questions of Yoruba epistemology and of how knowledge is conceived in an oral culture.