In the specialized area of pediatric endocrinology, the use of human growth hormone (hGH) both for children who have a growth hormone abnormality and for the treatment of non-hGH-deficient children who are short is a current clinical reality that raises important ethical questions. Generally speaking, the use of hGH for those children who are clearly lacking it is an efficacious intervention based upon established clinical criteria. The use of hGH for children who are short, but have no growth hormone abnormality (...) is ethically and clinically more controversial. The moral conundrum of how to gain knowledge about new medical treatments that may be beneficial to children while, at the same time, ethically enrolling them in clinical trials with placebo arms in order to gain such knowledge will continue to be a contentious issue in the conduct of research and in the delivery of health care. In addition, there are questions about what ought to be studied and whether a physical characteristic such as short stature ought to be viewed as a circumstance of less than optimal health. (shrink)

A wide range of conflicting established moral viewpoints makes development of public policy related to infertility difficult. Where there are pluralities of viewpoints and no single established moral approach, uniform solutions are questionable. The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), is a nonpartisan analytic support agency that serves the United States Congress by providing objective analyses of major public policy issues related to scientific and technological change. Because analysis of ethical issues is an important part of technology assessment, OTA included a (...) thematic analysis of ethical issues in the report, Infertility: Medical and Social Choices . A consideration of whether infertility is a disease was an important conceptual starting point, and religious perspectives were reviewed as possible sources of moral and ethical insight. Keywords: infertility, U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, infertility, right to reproduce, embryo CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The attentive pupil who wishes to be attentive, his eyes riveted on the teacher, his ears open wide, so exhausts himself in playing the attentive role that he ends up by no longer hearing anything....

Background Respect is essential to providing high quality healthcare, particularly for groups that are historically marginalized and stigmatized. While ethical principles taught to health professionals focus on patient autonomy as the object of respect for persons, limited studies explore patients’ views of respect. The purpose of this study was to explore the perspectives of a multiculturally diverse group of low-income women living with HIV (WLH) regarding their experience of respect from their medical physicians. Methods We analyzed 57 semi-structured interviews conducted (...) at HIV case management sites in South Florida as part of a larger qualitative study that explored practices facilitating retention and adherence in care. Women were eligible to participate if they identified as African American (n = 28), Hispanic/Latina (n = 22), or Haitian (n = 7). They were asked to describe instances when they were treated with respect by their medical physicians. Interviews were conducted by a fluent research interviewer in either English, Spanish, or Haitian Creole, depending on participant’s language preference. Transcripts were translated, back-translated and reviewed in entirety for any statements or comments about “respect.” After independent coding by 3 investigators, we used a consensual thematic analysis approach to determine themes. Results Results from this study grouped into two overarching classifications: respect manifested in physicians’ orientation towards the patient (i.e., interpersonal behaviors in interactions) and respect in medical professionalism (i.e., clinic procedures and practices). Four main themes emerged regarding respect in provider’s orientation towards the patient: being treated as a person, treated as an equal, treated without blame or prejudice, and treated with concern/emotional support. Two main themes emerged regarding respect as evidenced in medical professionalism: physician availability and considerations of privacy. Conclusions Findings suggest a more robust conception of what ‘respect for persons’ entails in medical ethics for a diverse group of low-income women living with HIV. Findings have implications for broadening areas of focus of future bioethics education, training, and research to include components of interpersonal relationship development, communication, and clinic procedures. We suggest these areas of training may increase respectful medical care experiences and potentially serve to influence persistent and known social and structural determinants of health through provider interactions and health care delivery. (shrink)

This paper is a tentative step toward formalizing in symbolic logic some of the central assumptions of Clark L. Hull's theory of behavior. There will be noticeable deviations from Hull's own terminology and form of statement, but this will be largely in the interest of greater logical simplicity. The notation of symbolic logic will not be used, but the behavioral axioms will be so stated as to admit of easy translation into such notation. Such easy translatability seems to be a (...) prerequisite if theorems are to be derivable with genuine deductive rigor. (shrink)

Background Caring is a core function of nurses and it confers upon them ethical obligations as ethical agents. Failure to carry out such ethical obligations raises ethical concerns. This study was not intended to explore ethical concerns, but the reported findings reveal problems which have ethical implications. This paper aims to elucidate the ethical issues inherent in the findings and propose strategies to mitigate them. Research design and methods An exploratory-descriptive qualitative design was used within a larger Action Research Study. (...) Data were collected through focus group discussions with nurse/midwives, and through exit interviews which were conducted with the women who participated in the study on their day of discharge. Six focus group discussions and thirty exit interviews were conducted, and data were analysed through thematic analysis. Participants and research context The study took place at selected maternal and child healthcare settings in Lilongwe, Malawi. The participants were nurse/midwives and women who were admitted in maternal and child healthcare settings and were purposively sampled. Ethical considerations Ethical approval was obtained from the relevant ethics committee and all ethical guidelines were followed in the conduct of the study. Findings The findings are presented under three themes which emerged from the data. The findings reveal effects of staff shortages on patient outcomes, problems experienced in low resource clinical settings and disrespectful nurse/patient communication. Conclusion The findings reveal that institutional factors constrain moral agency and patient safety is severely compromised in some of the clinical settings in Malawi which raises serious ethical concerns. (shrink)

This article examines the role of culture in the metaphorical/metonymic conceptualizations of fear, a primary emotion, in two languages—Akan (a West African, Kwa language) and English. The article adopts the general framework of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) to compare and contrast the differences and/or similarities in the conceptualizations as well as the language-specific construals or elaborations of shared conceptual metaphors of fear in the two languages. The analysis of the language-specific realizations of the shared metaphorical/metonymic conceptualizations of the emotion concept (...) reveals both similarities and differences in the two languages, showing support for the cultural embodied cognition thesis, namely, the similarities in the conceptualization of emotions across cultures may be explained in terms of universal embodied cognition from which general metaphorical principles derive. However, the differences in language-specific elaborations may be explained in terms of cultural filtering of the general universal conceptualizations to reflect human experiences that are more salient to a particular sociocultural group. This analysis also shows a metaphor–metonymy interaction in the conceptualization of emotions across cultures. (shrink)

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these dualities, as (...) proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)

This article reports findings of a hermeneutic phenomenological study that explored the clinical learning experience for Malawian undergraduate student nurses. The study revealed issues that touch on both nursing education and practice, but the article mainly reports the practice issues. The findings reveal the emotions that healthcare workers in Malawi encounter as a consequence of practising in resource-poor settings. Furthermore, there is severe nursing shortage in most clinical settings in Malawi, and this adversely affects the performance of nurses because of (...) the excess workload it imposes on them. The results of the study also illustrate loss of professional pride among some of the nurses, and the article argues that such a demeanour is a consequence of burnout. However, despite these problems, the study also reveals that there are some nurses who have maintained their passion to care. (shrink)

The issues of tithes and seed sowing have taken a central focus in contemporary Christianity in Nigeria among the preachers. Many a time, it is assumed that tithes and seed sowing are requirements for salvation, prosperity and total well-being of the members. Making many to believe that Christianity is a money-venture business one can succeed if he knows how to hoodwink the gullible. Many have been deceived that by parting with a substantial amount of money in the name of sowing (...) seed, their problems would be solved. Unfortunately, the person’s problem may remain the same or even be compounded. This paper evaluates the activities, attitude and their inordinate ambitions. It examines the impact of tithe and seed sowing on Christianity in Nigeria. The research method adopted for this work is the qualitative phenomenological method. The paper observed that the value of tithe and seed sowing has changed from what is prescribed in the bible to what is preached on the pulpits. The study recommends among other things, that these preachers should preach the gospel with decorum and as it were in the bible so that its influence on Nigerians will bring about a reduction in crime, corruption and other immoral activities in Nigeria. Contribution: The article is focused on the issues of tithes and seed sowing. It underscores the fact that the message of tithe and seed sowing has become a means of siphoning members and enriching the preachers. It further reveals its negative and positive impacts such as, the promotion of corruption and fraud in the church and society, contribution to the decline of morality in the church and the society, increasing crime rate and increasing poverty rate in Nigeria among others. (shrink)

The evolutionary theory of the knowledge reunites its facts of several independent sources: first of the Biological investigation of the conduct, Second, they constitute the systematic conditions of the evolution. Third it is continuum of the evolution, that comes in support of the thesis that as I ..

The central merit of the Theory of the Complexity as a Method is the "relational thought". This is one of the distinctive characteristics in the work of Morin. The method consists of the learning of that relational thought. But the same method is not simply thought, but a general attitude tow..

How the insane asylum became a laboratory of democracy is revealed in this provocative look at the treatment of the mentally ill in nineteenth-century France. Political thinkers reasoned that if government was to rest in the hands of individuals, then measures should be taken to understand the deepest reaches of the self, including the state of madness. Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain maintain that the asylum originally embodied the revolutionary hope of curing all the insane by saving the glimmer (...) of sanity left in them. Their analysis of why this utopian vision failed ultimately constitutes both a powerful argument for liberalism and a direct challenge to Michel Foucault's indictment of liberal institutions. The creation of an artificial environment was meant to encourage the mentally ill to live as social beings, in conditions that resembled as much as possible those prevailing in real life. The asylum was therefore the first instance of a modern utopian community in which a scientifically designed environment was supposed to achieve complete control over the minds of a whole category of human beings. Gauchet and Swain argue that the social domination of the inner self, far from being the hidden truth of emancipation, represented the failure of its overly optimistic beginnings. Madness and Democracy combines rich details of nineteenth-century asylum life with reflections on the crucial role of subjectivity and difference within modernism. Its final achievement is to show that the lessons learned from the failure of the asylum led to the rise of psychoanalysis, an endeavor focused on individual care and on the cooperation between psychiatrist and patient. By linking the rise of liberalism to a chapter in the history of psychiatry, Gauchet and Swain offer a fascinating reassessment of political modernity. (shrink)

This paper addresses the coconstruction of identities and emotions through the human/animal relationship, arguing that nonhuman animals can and do act as coagents in interspecies encounters. The paper narrates the extraordinary boundary-transgressing experiences of a particular kind of cogency labeled “huminality” . An autoethnographic account of pet-visitation involving a woman, a West Highland white terrier named Fergus, and geriatric residents demonstrates the power of huminality to authorize the emergence and realization of different identities and selves. Examples include the intimate friend, (...) the dignified self, the institutional resister, the gift-giver, and the available self. Huminality, in the emotional spacetime of the hospital, is rooted in empathy, concern, and affection. As ontological choreography, huminality takes us past the animal-Nature/human-culture frontier into uncharted territories of spacetime to engage in forms of life with nonhuman others. Encounters with animals, even on a geriatric ward, can transform our universe and our selves. (shrink)

En el presente artículo retomo algunos tramos de mi tesis doctoral “El pensamiento histórico en las buenas prácticas de enseñanza de la historia en el nivel secundario. Un estudio interpretativo en escuelas municipales de Mar del Plata”, con la intención de reconocer experiencias vitales de otras mujeres que como profesionales docentes otorgan significado y sentido al presente proyectando futuros para sus estudiantes en territorio. En este trabajo rescato trazos de las historias de vida y biografías profesionales a partir del enfoque (...) narrativo que me permitió conocer sus vivencias, tomas de decisiones, formas de hacer y de sentir la enseñanza. (shrink)

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these dualities, as (...) proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)

November 4th-5th, 2012 at Kyoto University. Organizers: Hisashi Nakao & Pierre-Alain Braillard.

This pa per at tempts to look at read ing and all that this im plies, to some how find a view - point, such as a look at one self and through the eyes of one self, re gard ing one sit u a tion or an - other, one mat ter or an other. This view arises from ten sion be tween the text of fic tion a..

En este artículo me ocupo de la cuestión de cómo en las teorías de proceso dual se puede dar cuenta del autoengaño y su conexión con la racionalidad. Presento las versiones intencionalista y no intencionalista del autoengaño y muestro cómo el debate entre ellas puede dirimirse de manera más completa y satisfactoria en el marco de una teoría dual. En éste suelen aceptarse dos sistemas de razonamiento, uno heurístico y otro analítico, que compiten por el control de nuestras inferencias y (...) acciones, pero a veces interactúan y colaboran entre sí. Se defiende que si predomina la respuesta de S1, se puede ver el patrón del autoengaño como una forma de razonamiento heurístico y no únicamente como un vínculo causal. Se sugiere que las evaluaciones en cuanto a la racionalidad del proceso del autoengaño, dependerá del modo en que intervenga en el patrón de razonamiento y del sistema desde el cual se lleve a cabo. In this paper I discuss the phenomenon of self-deception and its connection with the notion of rationality linked to the dual process theories. I present the intentionalist and nonintentionalist accounts of self-deception and aim to show how the debate between them can be resolved in a more comprehensive and satisfactory manner, if it is placed in the frame of the dual process theories. The dual model usually accepts two kinds of reasoning processes, heuristic and analytic, referred to two different systems, S1 and S2. These processes compete for control of our inferences and actions, but sometimes they interact and collaborate. It is suggested that in a dual model, the evaluations in terms of the rationality of the process will depend on the way in which self-deception participates in the reasoning process and on the system from which the evaluation takes place. (shrink)

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2009v13n3p357 Neste trabalho concorda-se com a tese de I. Hacking segundo a qual o significado das constantes lógicas é dado pelas Regras de Introdução e Eliminação do cálculo de sequentes de Gentzen que caracterizam a concepção da noção de consequência lógica abstrata. Perguntamos quais são as regras mínimas que um conectivo deve satisfazer para que seja considerado uma negação genuína. Tomaremos como referência para tratar dessa questão os C-sistemas de Newton da Costa e o sistema LP de Graham Priest. Finalmente, (...) analisaremos esses sistemas na lógica de sequentes a fim de mostrar que a negação paraconsistente ou bem carece das regras puras de eliminação e negação da negação ou ela envolve outros conectivos, o que torna difícil atribuir um significado unívoco à negação paraconsistente. (shrink)

This work agrees and supports the I. Hacking’s thesis regarding the meaningof the logical constants accordingly with Gentzen’s Introduction and Elimination Rules of Sequent Calculus, corresponding with the abstract conception of the notion of logical consequence. We would like to ask for the minimum rules that must satisfy a connective in order to be considered as a genuine negation. Mainly, we will refer to both da Costa’s C-Systems and Priest’s LP system. Finally, we will analyze the presentations of these systems (...) within the Sequent Logic to show that paraconsistent negation lacks of pure rules of negation-elimination and negation-introduction rules or that they involve other connectives, thus making difficult to assign an univocal meaning to paraconsistent negation. (shrink)