Continuous sedation until death (CSD), the act of reducing or removing the consciousness of an incurably ill patient until death, often provokes medical-ethical discussions in the opinion sections of medical and nursing journals. A content analysis of opinion pieces in medical and nursing literature was conducted to examine how clinicians define and describe CSD, and how they justify this practice morally. Most publications were written by physicians and published in palliative or general medicine journals. Terminal Sedation and Palliative Sedation are (...) the most frequently used terms to describe CSD. Seventeen definitions with varying content were identified. CSD was found to be morally justified in 73 % of the publications using justifications such as Last Resort, Doctrine of Double Effect, Sanctity of Life, Autonomy, and Proportionality. The debate over CSD in the opinion sections of medical and nursing journals lacks uniform terms and definitions, and is profoundly marked by ‘charged language’, aiming at realizing agreement in attitude towards CSD. Not all of the moral justifications found are equally straightforward. To enable a more effective debate, the terms, definitions and justifications for CSD need to be further clarified. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper attempts to shed light on Hegel’s recurring comment that Spinoza’s philosophy lacks the ‘principle of individuality’. It shows that this criticism can have three distinct meanings: that Spinozism cannot account for the multiplicity of finite individuals; that Spinozism leads to a moral devaluation of the finite individual; the form of substance is indifferent and lacks a differentiating principle. It is shown that Hegel argued, somewhat incoherently, for all three.

The relatively new practice of continuous sedation at the end of life (CS) is increasingly being debated in the clinical and ethical literature. This practice received much attention when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling noted that the availability of CS made legalization of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) unnecessary, as CS could alleviate even the most severe suffering. This view has been widely adopted. In this article, we perform an in-depth analysis of four versions of this ?argument of preferable alternative.? Our goal (...) is to determine the extent to which CS can be considered to be an alternative to PAS and to identify the grounds, if any, on which CS may be ethically preferable to PAS. (shrink)

El autor nos introduce en la experiencia del silencio, que postula fue en el comienzo de los tiempos el estado natural de los seres, y afirma que en el contexto de la vida occidental actual el hombre y la mujer han perdido contacto con su ser interior. Que el ruido de la sociedad moderna y artificial nos ha arrebatado el silencio indispensable para el desarrollo integral de los seres humanos.

Castigated as theoretically naive by Perry Anderson, or praised as culturally sensitive by later writers, the political thought of the “first New Left” has often been understood in relation to F. R. Leavis's cultural criticism. This article seeks to reframe the writings of E. P. Thompson, Stuart Hall, Charles Taylor and Alasdair Macintyre from this period as interventions in a fundamentally sociological debate about the nature of capitalism in the managed economy of postwar Britain.

Abstract The structure of value education in Flanders is deeply shaped by segregation, i.e. a pattern of separate social organisation based on world view. Several religious authorities are officially recognized which control their own course in the community and official schools. A course of non?denominational ethics is offered to students who do not identify with a recognized religion. Representatives of the catholic and of the humanist groups base the legitimacy of separate value education on the claim that students of respectively (...) the Roman Catholic and the ethics course reflect the sociomoral diversity in the wider population. A newly devised Dutch adaptation of the DIT and a questionnaire were administered to 631 secondary school students from the highest two grades. It was found that either (1) values education in the Flemish schools has no or very little effect on the students as far as moral reasoning is concerned, or (2) that values education in the Flemish schools does have an effect on the moral reasoning skills of the students, but that the respective populations of the courses are not influenced in an appreciably different way. (shrink)

This ar ti cle ad dresses the dis cus sion of the relationship between political philosophy and po - litical science. Concepts are articulated throiugh poltical thought that of fer vi sion and a re la tion ship of pol i tics from a sci en tific per spec tive. When ap - proaching political scien..

Henley argued that for Kuhn psychology is a nonparadigmatic science and that Skinner rejects the formulation of theories in psychology The present article shows that in a Kuhnian use of the concept of “paradigm” psychology is a paradigmatic science. This paper also demonstrates that Skinner himself formulated a theory of behavior as an alternative to traditional theoretical approaches in psychology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Bertrand Russell dedicó parte de su obra a la discusión sobre el problema de la referencia y la descripción . Russell, junto Whitehead, elaboró un tratado de lógica matemática, titulado Principia Mathematica en el que retomó el proyecto de Frege tratando de demostrar que la matemática es una rama de la lógica. Russell no sólo tiene este propósito logicista, sino que también quiere concebir un lenguaje lógicamente perfecto , esto es, un lenguaje preciso, en el que se elimina toda ambigüedad (...) y vaguedad. En una palabra, el lenguaje de la ciencia en el que a todo nombre, por ejemplo, le “corresponde” un objeto. El Wittgenstein de las Investigaciones filosóficas se enfrentará a tal proyecto y a la concepción de un lenguaje cartográfico de la realidad. El autor, propone por el contrario, la reivindicación de un lenguaje sencillo, austero, cotidiano y plural, lejos de toda “estructura oculta”, finalmente, un lenguaje que no trasgreda las prácticas comunes y de paso a un lenguaje filosófico menos “enredado” y “dogmatico”. Pretendemos resaltar cómo la crítica a la búsqueda de un lenguaje perfecto permite que al lenguaje y a la filosofía misma, se les conciba de un modo más abierto, cotidiano y plural, en palabras del mismo Wittgenstein, una filosofía descansada “que ya no se fustigue más con preguntas que la ponen a ella misma en cuestión”. (shrink)