BackgroundPatient-centeredness, respect for patient autonomy, and shared decision-making have now made it to center stage in discussions on quality of care. Knowing what actually counts in care and how it should be accomplished from the patients’ and nurses’ perspective seems crucial.AimTo explore how patients and their nurses perceive the importance and enactment of values in their healthcare.Research designAn observational, cross-sectional study using a self-developed questionnaire, consisting of 15 items related to seven values (e.g. uniqueness, autonomy, professionalism, compassion, responsiveness, partnership, and (...) empowerment) as described in the taxonomy of Bastemeijer et al.Participants and research contextThe survey was completed by 384 patients and 81 nurses. Participants were recruited on eight internal medicine wards of a 1000-bed university hospital in Belgium.Ethical considerationsThis study was approved by the ethical committee of the Ghent University Hospital (B670201836799).Findings(1) Patients and nurses prioritize values of care differently; (2) nurses report not being able to enact the values they prioritize in actual practice as much as one would like to; and (3) there is a gap in experienced delivery of a comprehensible explanation of all treatment options, a conversation based on equality, making shared decisions, and being non-judgmental between nurses and patients.DiscussionOur findings challenge nurses’ overemphasis on professional compassion and uniqueness while arguing for increased attention on authentic shared decision-making and empowerment. The first step to a patient-centered culture truly involving patients in their healthcare is communication and information provision, rather than focusing on tangible and normative constructs.ConclusionOur findings revealed differences in prioritization and actual enactment of values in care between patients and nurses. This was especially so for values related to communication, provision of complete unbiased information, and shared decision-making. Nurses should prioritize providing comprehensible information and using conversations based on equality to make decision together with patients. (shrink)

Study of rationalism in Urdu literature.

6 and 14 recently proposed taxonomies that distinguish between four processing states, based on bottom-up stimulus strength and top-down attentional amplification. The aim of the present study was to empirically test these processing states using the priming paradigm. Our results showed that attention and stimulus strength significantly modulated priming effects: either receiving top-down attention or possessing sufficient bottom-up strength was a prerequisite for a stimulus to elicit priming. When both top-down attention and sufficient bottom-up strength were present, the priming effect (...) was boosted. The origins of the observed priming effects also varied between different processing states. We can conclude that our empirical study using the priming paradigm confirmed the presence of four processing states, which displayed a differential pattern of response priming effects and differential origins of the response priming effects. (shrink)

Constitutional and judicial law-making is increasingly beginning to find its reflection not only in the Anglo-Saxon, but also in the Romano-Germanic legal family. However, the prerequisites for the use of this legal instrument are different, which determines the relevance of conducting a comparative analysis regarding the provision of such a mechanism in the USA and Kazakhstan. The purpose of the research is to identify common and distinctive features in the process of implementation of constitutional and judicial law-making in countries belonging (...) to different legal systems. The article uses the methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, deduction and generalization. As a result, the specificity of ensuring the mechanism of constitutional law-making in the USA was expressed, taking into account various forms of law-making activity. It has been established that the development of constitutional provisions in the United States takes place with the help of the constitutional doctrines of the Supreme Court of the United States, which provide for the introduction of amendments to constitutional provisions without a formal procedure. As a result of the study of the experience of Kazakhstan, it was established that special priority was given to the role of precedent, in particular, the decision of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan. This is explained by the integrative nature of the Romano-Germanic legal system, which allows effective development of national legislation as a whole and its provisions. The obtained results can be used during the professional training of judges in the Republic of Kazakhstan. (shrink)

K. Satchidananda Murty (1924-2011) was a vociferous writer and an iconoclast. This volume is a collection of his unpublished writings. It includes Murty's views on the Veda, its meaning, relevance, and study, and shows the significance of the Vedāntic vision to the modern world. Murty elucidates the basic tenets of Advaita Vedānta and expounds the Advaitic doctrine of the relationships between Brahman and God, Brahman and the individual self, as well as between God and the world. In his writings, Murty (...) contrasts empirical knowledge with transcendental wisdom and surveys the history of Indian science and scientific views in ancient times. The book also includes Murty's musings on the scholar Śankara's philosophy, authorship and religious life. An important contribution to Indian philosophy, the volume will be of great interest to scholars, teachers and students of Hindu philosophy, Vedāntic philosophy, Advaita Vedanta, comparative philosophy, religious studies, and South Asian studies. (shrink)

This monograph aims to mathematically codify the notion of "moral systems" and define a sensible distance between them. It consists of three parts, aimed at an audience with varying interests and mathematical backgrounds. The first part steers philosophical, formally defining moral systems and several related concepts. The second part studies black box algorithms, including questions of inference and metric construction. The third part explores the technical construction of metrics amongst conditional probability distributions.

PART The Early Wittgenstein Half of what I say is meaningless. I say it so that the other half may reach you. Kahlil Gibran My work consists of two parts ...

Principles of justice, David Estlund argues, cannot be falsified by people’s unwillingness to satisfy them. In his Utopophobia, Estlund rejects the view that justice must bend to human motivation to deliver practical implications for how institutions ought to function. In this paper, I argue that a substantive argument against such bending of justice principles must challenge the reasons for making these principles sensitive to motivational limitations. Estlund, however, provides no such challenge. His dispute with benders of justice is therefore a (...) verbal one over the true meaning of justice, which need not worry those with the intuition that justice should perform a function that requires bending. By focusing on John Rawls’s reasons for bending his justice principles, I point towards a substantive critique of bent justice. (shrink)

What is interest and how has it been conceptualized and studied? -- What explains the power of interest? : Why are students who have an interest for content more likely to continue to reengage and develop more conceptual sophistication? -- What is known about assessing existing interest? How do new interests develop? How can the phase of a person's interest be identified and measured? -- What is the relation between the development of interest and other motivational variables? -- Is it (...) a paradox that interest declines as subject matter gets more developed? What is "interest driven learning"? Does it matter if interests are taken up in rather than out of school? How different is an interest in one versus another subject matter, or domain? -- What we can now say about interest, its generation and development? What are the implications of knowing that interest can be developed? What could further research help us to understand? (shrink)

Recent research in the cognitive science of religion suggests that humans intuitively believe that others survive death. In response to this finding, three cognitive theories have been offered to explain this: the simulation constraint theory (Bering, Citation2002); the imaginative obstacle theory (Nichols, Citation2007); and terror management theory (Pyszczynski, Rothschild, & Abdollahi, 2008). First, I provide a critical analysis of each of these theories. Second, I argue that these theories, while perhaps explaining why one would believe in his own personal immortality, (...) leave an explanatory gap in that they do not explain why one would intuitively attribute survival of death to others. To fill in the gap, I offer a cognitive theory based on offline social reasoning and social embodiment which provides for the belief in an eternal social realm in which the deceased survive—the afterlife. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has sold more than one million copies since its publication in 1962, is one of the most cited academic books of all time, and continues to be read and studied today. This volume of new essays evaluates the significance of Kuhn's classic book in its changing historical context, including its initial reception and its lasting effects. The essays explore the range of ideas which Kuhn made popular with his influential philosophy of science, including (...) paradigms, normal science, paradigm changes, scientific revolutions, and incommensurability; and they also look at less-studied themes in his work, including scientific measurement, science education, and science textbooks. Drawing on the latest scholarship as well as unpublished material in the Thomas Kuhn Archives at MIT, this volume offers a comprehensive way into Kuhn's philosophy and demonstrates the continuing relevance of his ideas for our understanding of science. (shrink)