Background Consent policies for post-mortem organ procurement (OP) vary throughout Europe, and yet no studies have empirically evaluated the ethical implications of contrasting consent models. To fill this gap, we introduce a novel indicator of governance quality based on the ideal of informed support, and examine national differences on this measure through a quantitative survey of OP policy informedness and preferences in seven European countries. -/- Methods Between 2017–2019, we conducted a convenience sample survey of students (n = 2006) in (...) Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Denmark (DK), Germany (DE), Greece (GR), Slovenia (SI) and Spain (ES), asking participants about their donation preferences, as well as their beliefs and views about the policy in place. From these measures, we computed indices of informedness, policy support, and fulfilment of unexpressed preferences, which we compared across countries and consent systems. -/- Results Our study introduces a tool for analyzing policy governance in the context of OP. Wide variation in policy awareness was observed: Most respondents in DK, DE, AT and BE correctly identified the policy in place, while those in SI, GR and ES did not. Respondents in opt-out countries (AT, BE, ES and GR) tended to support the policy in place (with one exception, i.e., SI), whereas those in opt-in countries (DE and DK) overwhelmingly opposed it. These results reveal stark differences in governance quality across countries and consent policies: We found a preponderance of informed opposition in opt-in countries and a general tendency towards support–either informed or uninformed–in opt-out countries. We also found informed divergence in opt-in countries and a tendency for convergence–either informed or uninformed–among opt-out countries. -/- Conclusion Our study offers a novel tool for analyzing governance quality and illustrates, in the context of OP, how the strengths and weaknesses of different policy implementations can be estimated and compared using quantitative survey data. (shrink)

Emotional stimuli (e.g. words, images) are often remembered better than neutral stimuli. However, little is known about how memory is affected by an environmentally induced emotional state (without any overtly emotional occurrences) – the focus of this study. Participants were randomly assigned to discovery (n = 305) and replication (n = 306) subsamples and viewed a desktop virtual environment before rating their emotions and completing objective (i.e. item, temporal-order, duration) and subjective (e.g. vividness, sensory detail, coherence) memory measures. In both (...) samples, a Partial Least Squares Correlation analysis showed that an emotional state characterised by high negative emotion (i.e. threat, fear, anxiety) and arousal was reliably associated with better memory in both objective (i.e. item) and subjective (i.e. vividness and sensory detail) domains. No reliable associations were observed for any temporal memory measures (objective or subjective). Thus, an environmentally induced state of negative emotion corresponds with enhanced memory for indices of episodic memory pertaining to “what” happened, but not necessarily “when” it happened. (shrink)

Il presente articolo ha come proprio oggetto specifico di indagine la questione dell’allattamento del bambino. L’autore si propone, più specificatamente, di sottolineare i vantaggi dell’allattamento naturale. Questi non si limitano a dei vantaggi per la salute del bambino, ma hanno anche una ricaduta psicologica sul rapporto madre-bambino.

Il gruppo riveste una grande importanza nella crescita del singolo. I valori sociali si strutturano e consolidano attraverso i processi di socializzazione, la formazione di un legame emozionale tra individuo e società, e l’interiorizzazione delle norme, processi e legami questi che si danno nel gruppo. L’articolo offre un’analisi delle fasi, le dinamiche e i percorsi che si danno nello sviluppo del gruppo di animazione, con lo scopo di offrire agli educatori uno strumento valido per l’educazione dei ragazzi. A questo riguardo, (...) in un primo momento, viene analizzata la ricerca fatta dall’individuo per essere accettato all’interno del gruppo quale motivazione primaria per la formazione del gruppo. In seguito, l’articolo si propone di studiare la nascita del gruppo come insieme teso al fare. Infine, verrà preso in considerazione il come si determina la creazione di legami interpersonali da dove sorgono i valori sociali. (shrink)

The construct of the self is important in the domain of memory research. Recent work has shown that person memory is influenced by similarity of social targets to the self. The current experiments investigate self-similarity as defined by traits and political ideology to better understand how memory for social targets is organised. Across three experiments, participants formed positive or negative impressions based on each target’s picture, a trait-implying behavior (Experiments 1 & 2), and/or political ideology (conservative/liberal label in Experiment 2; (...) political-ideological belief statements in Experiment 3) followed by a memory test. Results showed a self-similarity effect dependent on valence in Experiment 1, but not in Experiments 2 or 3 when participants processed ideological information associated with targets. These results suggest that self-similarity has an effect on memory for social targets, but that ideological information disrupts self-focused processing of others, suggesting that ideological information also has a powerful influence on what people remember about others (i.e. social targets). (shrink)

Landaeta Lardones, P., y Arias Krause, J. I. “La interpretación política de la tragedia griega en Hegel.” _Co-herencia_ 10.19 (2013): 113-133.

Pritchard sostiene que la condición de habilidad y la condición de seguridad le imponen demandas independientes al conocimiento, i.e., que la satisfacción de una no implica la satisfacción de la otra y que, por lo tanto, ninguna de ellas es suficiente por sí misma para ofrecer una caracterización adecuada de esta noción. Argumento, por el contrario, que no hay buenas razones para pensar que la condición de seguridad es insuficiente. Empleando algunos conceptos de Greco y Pritchard y Kallestrup para caracterizar (...) a las habilidades cognitivas y el caso del mentiroso consistente de Lackey, argumento que TEMP, el caso clave de Pritchard para mostrar que puede haber seguridad sin habilidad, no funciona porque el proceso cognitivo relevante constituye una realización legítima, aunque anómala, de una habilidad. Pritchard maintains that the ability and the safety conditions impose independent demands on knowledge, i.e., that satisfying only one of them is not sufficient to acquire knowledge. I argue that there are no good reasons to suppose that the safety condition is not sufficient. I claim that TEMP, the key case proposed by Pritchard to show that there can be safety without ability, fails because therelevant cognitive process constitutes a legitimate, although anomalous, realization of a cognitive ability. (shrink)

El artículo presenta un análisis comparativo de los últimos parágrafos de la Vida de Pirrón de Diógenes Laercio y de un capítulo del Adversus ethicos de Sexto Empírico. Los resultados de este análisis harán plausible la hipótesis de una fuente común, reproducida parcialmente en DL, pero elaborada y refinada en Sexto. En ambos textos son centrales las nociones de fin y de elección. Se presentan las diferencias entre ambos textos entorno a la primera, y las tensiones internas comunes que implica (...) el tratamiento de la segunda. The article provides a comparative analysis of the final paragraphs of Diogenes Laertius' Life of Pyrrho and a chapter from the Adversus ethicos by Sextus Empiricus. The results of the analysis make plausible the hypothesis regarding a common source, partially reproduced in DL, but elaborated on and refined in Sextus. The notions of end and choice are central in both texts. The paper presents the differences between the texts regarding the former and the common internal tensions entailed by treatment of the latter. (shrink)

For years theists have claimed that the constants of physics had to be finely tuned by God to the values that have for life in the universe to be possible. In my column of June, 2009 I showed that many of these claims are based on an improper analysis of the data. Even some of the competent scientists who write on this subject commit the fallacy of holding all the parameters constant and varying just one. When you allow all to (...) vary, you find that changes to one parameter can be easily compensated for by changes to another, leaving the ingredients for life in place. This point is also made nicely in a recent Scientific American cover story by Alejandro Jenkins and Gilad Perez. In this column I will discuss perhaps the most cited example of claimed fine-tuning, the Hoyle resonance. In 1953 the famous astronomer Fred Hoyle calculated that the production of carbon would not occur with sufficient probability unless that probability was boosted by the presence of an excited nuclear state of C12 at a very specific energy. In what appeared to be a remarkable victory for anthropic reasoning, Hoyle proposed that this previously unknown state must exist at about 7.7 MeV. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Creativity Belongs to the Person, not to DiseaseJuan J. López-Ibor Jr. (bio) and María-Inés López-Ibor (bio)Keywordscreativity, patho-biography, Saint Teresa, visionsIn the paper, “From the Visions of Saint Teresa of Jesus to the Voices of Schizophrenia,” Cangas, Sass, and Pérez-Álvarez (2008) take an original approach to patho-biography that is very welcome.The temptation to designate historical individuals or characters of fiction as suffering from mental disease has always produced disagreeable feelings (...) in me. This sort of abuse of psychiatry and of the people in question is parallel to the abuse by the media or lay citizens when they describe, say, an especially violent murderer as a schizophrenic—forgetting that the vast majority of people with schizophrenia are not in the least violent. Having read Santa Teresa’s writings during my adolescence, well before I even considered entering medicine, I reacted to comments about her alleged psychiatric illnesses with uneasiness, to put it mildly. The Santa Teresa of La Vida de la Santa Madre Teresa de Jesús (her autobiography), of the Camino de Perfección, and of the El Castillo Interior was surely not a mental patient, it seemed to me. The same would apply to San Juan de La Cruz, Jean D’Arc, Don Quijote, Sancho Panza, Edipus, and Clitemnestra, to mention a few. Even van Gogh’s paintings did not seem to me the productions of a patient with schizophrenia or epilepsy. Of course all of them may have suffered, at certain periods of life, symptoms attributable to a mental disorder, but their creativity rested elsewhere, and was often manifest during healthy periods of their lives. After years spent fighting the stigma of mental diseases, and after organizing several exhibitions of works of art of people with mental diseases, we came to the conclusion that creativity and singularity belong to the person, not to the illness. Some of the diseases of these individuals may have being accidents (van Gogh’s hallucinations and psychotic symptoms, for example, were most probably due to intoxications with absinthe, then rich in hallucinogenic alkaloids such as tujone), or, together with other life circumstances, may have had unspecific influences on the person’s condition. In contrast with many other psychiatric disorders that are represented in ancient Greek and Roman literature, there are no descriptions of individuals with schizophrenia in the Greek and Roman literature dating from the fifth century bc to the beginning of the second century Ad (Evans et al. 2003), and several authors have speculated that schizophrenia did not exist before the eighteenth century (Ellard 1987).Caution is important when dealing with mental health and religious issues in contrast with creativity. The creativity of people suffering from bipolar disorders is well recognized (Jamison 1993) and [End Page 277] the same applies to alcohol and drug intoxication. Tellenbach (1986) has also written on the creativity of depressed persons, although he refers more to the disposition of mood (Schwermut) than to clinical depression as such. The link between melancholia and genius put forward by Aristotle has often been misinterpreted. The philosopher was considering the melancholic temperament and not the melancholic illness as we would understand it today. Of the four temperaments, it is in his view only the melancholic that is gifted with creativity. The sanguine person seeks the immediate pleasures of life, the choleric one considers himself powerful and dedicates himself to manifesting this power, and the phlegmatic individual is disconnected from life and seeks to live without effort or pleasure. The melancholic temperament leads to creativity because of the predominance of doubt, reflection, and dissatisfaction with the miseries of life.Freud’s notion of religiosity as a collective obsessive neurosis is totally mistaken, in my view. The three main themes of obsessions are cleanliness, order, and guilt. In none of these cases is the theme the goal of the action; rather, it is a strategy to contain anxiety. As a consequence, patients with obsessions and compulsions about dirt and cleanliness tend to be dirty themselves, because the real purpose of their compulsions is not in fact to be clean but rather to satisfy a ritual. When order... (shrink)

For over 40 years, J. I. Packer's classic has been an important tool to help Christians around the world discover the wonder, the glory and the joy of knowing God. Explaining both who God is and how we can relate to him, this thought-provoking work seeks to transform and enrich the Christian understanding of God.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 6, Page 15-17, June 2012.

The first comprehensive treatment of the relationship between biblical interpretation and Christian ethics.

Definition and Meaning of the Islamic Philosophy of Religion Difference between Islamic Philosophy and Muslim Philosophy There is a difference between ...

The removal of water from mines was one of the key issues that former miners had to deal with. Roman colonists brought new technology to the Iberian Peninsula that addressed this problem. However, they did not invent this technology because it had already been applied to the growth of other endeavours in the Hellenistic society throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. In the mine, the Archimedes screw, waterwheels, bucket pulleys, and Ctesibius pumps were the primary drainage systems. In this essay, the primary (...) characteristics, and modes of operation of machines are examined. Without leaving out the most significant finds made in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, one of the regions with the longest history of mining exploitation. To serve as a foundation for future research in this field, this work compares the primary mining mechanisms in ancient Huelva on a qualitative and quantitative level by the implementation of a TOPSIS methodology, a multi-criteria decision analysis method. (shrink)