ObjectiveThe study aimed to assess the level of disease acceptance as well as the wellbeing and emotions that accompany cancer patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.Materials and MethodsThe study involved 1,000 patients of the oncology centers. The following questionnaires were used for the study: WHO-5–Well-Being Index, BDI–Beck Depression Inventory, disease acceptance scale, and proprietary multiple-choice questions regarding the impact of the epidemic situation on the respondents’ lives so far. The questionnaire study was conducted twice: in March-October 2020 and March-October 2021. The (...) differences between the given periods were statistically analyzed.ResultsAt the time of the study, the respondents felt mainly anxiety related to the possibility of contracting COVID-19, the possibility of infecting a loved one, or staying in quarantine. Anxiety was also caused by the vision of poorer access to health services. Along with the duration of the epidemic, the acceptance of neoplastic disease has decreased and the incidence of depressive symptoms has increased.ConclusionThe wellbeing of the respondents deteriorated significantly during the pandemic. The respondents, in their daily functioning, were mainly accompanied by anxiety. The risk of depression has increased and the acceptance of the disease has decreased significantly. (shrink)

IntroductionThe rapid development of technology has led to the transfer of entertainment to the virtual world. Many games and multimedia applications use the so-called augmented reality. With the development of a new technological branch, a new health problem has emerged, which is infoholic addiction, attracting people with the specific functionality that is cyberspace and the virtual world.ObjectiveThe study aimed to assess health behaviors and the risk of addiction among users of urban multimedia games. Research methodology. The study was conducted among (...) players 1,134 of urban multimedia games—Pokemon GO, in the period March–June 2021. A 990 correctly completed questionnaires were included in the final analyses. The author’s questionnaire was used in the study, which included two standardized measurement scales in the Polish abbreviated version: a questionnaire of emotions and sensations associated with electronic entertainment and a questionnaire on addiction to electronic forms of entertainment. Statistica 13.0 program was used for statistical processing of the data. The probability level was p < 0.05.ResultsThe profile of the gamer was identified as male, aged 18–30 years, with secondary education, not in a relationship, living in a city of more than 100 thousand inhabitants—60.1% of gamers met these criteria. Respondents played urban multimedia games daily. About 26.3% of respondents played this type of game 2–3 h a day. In terms of physical fitness, 64.3% of respondents felt that physical fitness had improved as a result of playing multimedia urban games. In terms of mental condition, most of the respondents said that nothing had changed. It was observed that 72.3% of respondents had some risk of addiction to urban multimedia games.ConclusionUsers of urban multimedia games were usually adult men living in big cities. It was also shown that the defined profile of the player was characterized by a higher risk of addiction to electronic forms of entertainment. It was observed that the respondents most often played urban multimedia games every day in a maximum of two-hour sessions. Based on the tools used, it can be concluded that the study group was characterized by a certain risk of addiction to urban multimedia games. (shrink)

A being has moral standing if it or its interests matter intrinsically, to at least some degree, in the moral assessment of actions and events. For instance, animals can be said to have moral standing if, other things being equal, it is morally bad to intentionally cause their suffering. This essay focuses on a special kind of moral standing, what I will call “full moral standing” (FMS), associated with persons. In contrast to the var- ious accounts of what ultimately grounds (...) FMS in use in the philosophical literature, I will propose that the emotional capacity to care is a sufficient condition of an individual’s FMS as a person. In developing this account, I will appeal to a set of intuitions not previously mined for this purpose: those generated by conflicts of interests between different life phases of a single individual. (shrink)

Here, William Bialek provides the first graduate-level introduction to biophysics aimed at physics students.

Consider Maria, a 32-year-old Spanish-speaking expectant mother who immigrated to the United States five years ago. Despite taking English classes and working in a predominantly English-speaking en...

Religious ethics was founded on a commitment to inclusion, welcoming projects from and about different religious and philosophical traditions. This paper argues that the increasing welcome of feminist ethics in the JRE also reveals a tension in the field between inclusion and critique: where feminist ethics is included as another tradition of ethical inquiry, its critical claims can be escaped by appeal to difference from the traditions it seeks to engage. The response to feminist critique should not be to applaud (...) its inclusion without responding to its claims. Where this occurs, religious ethicists must renegotiate the terms of inclusion and the borders of difference. Feminist critique thus requires a return to founding questions of this journal, and the field, about the terms on which different traditions can be discussed and engaged in a common, critical conversation of religious ethics. (shrink)

Why does a baby who is otherwise cognitively similar to an animal such as a dog nevertheless have a higher moral status? We explain the difference in moral status as follows: the baby can, while a dog cannot, participate as a rearee in what we call “person-rearing relationships,” which can transform metaphysically and evaluatively the baby’s activities. The capacity to engage in these transformed activities has the same type of value as the very capacities (i.e., intellectual or emotional sophistication) that (...) explain unimpaired adult humans’ high moral status. We attempt to extend this account to individuals with severe cognitive impairments. (shrink)

The philosophical activities during the Safavid era mark the peak of a renewed engagement with Greek sources unmediated by Ibn Sina's interest in them and their successive incorporation into his philosophy.1 Among the topics for which the Safavid thinkers consulted ancient Greek authors were cosmology, the role of the intellect and the ways of acquiring knowledge, the nature of the soul, and the process of emanation.2 This engagement, to be sure, did not mean an antiquarian, philological return to the original (...) texts in Greek. Rather, it was a re-reading of their Arabic translations from the ninth to tenth centuries to find ideas beyond those of which Ibn Sina made use, and to legitimize—through their... Read More. (shrink)

Although the issue of innovation is widely recognized in many scientific disciplines, innovators themselves have received scant attention in research literature. The aim of this study is to explore the experience of innovators from the perspective of the social agency paradigm developed by Margaret Archer, which suggests that structural and cultural properties affect individual reflexivity through the accessibility of resources and the beliefs that agents endorse. Data was collected through individual in-depth interviews with Polish innovators, revealing that they function in (...) an entrepreneurial culture with ease in establishing networking relations. However, institutions in the national innovation system continue to reflect post-Soviet hierarchies, creating a division between those who have access to resources and those who do not. The study supports the hypothesis that post-Soviet culture is a factor in determining the low innovation level in Poland. (shrink)

Lewis’ Best System Analysis of laws of nature is often criticized on the grounds that what it means to be the “best” system is too subjective for an analysis of lawhood. Recent proponents of the BSA have embraced the view’s close connection to the particulars of scientific practice despite the objection. I distinguish two compatible versions of the objection: one opposed to mind or subject dependence and the other opposed to relativity. The BSA can answer both. Answering the anti-relative version (...) of Armstrong’s objection requires that the BSA be no more or less relative than is required by scientific practice. A spectrum of relativity is introduced with extremes of minimally and maximally relative variants of the BSA, and extant variants of the BSA are located on it. Lastly, I sketch what work remains to be done with respect to Armstrong’s objection by BSA proponents depending on where in the spectrum of relativity they hope to locate their view. (shrink)

Although it is a welcome and timely idea, the behavioural constellation of deprivation needs to explain how the development of personal control, trust, and perception of future risk is mediated through relationships with parents. Further, prioritising the present over the future may not be the essence of this constellation; perhapsnotquite being, either in the presentorin the future, is a better depiction.

People make different choices depending on which decision is the default option. In intertemporal choices, the default option is typically imposed externally. For example, people expect more for delaying the gain than are willing to pay for accelerating the future gain over the same period. We claim that apart from the external default, people’s choices are also influenced by the internal default such as the time perspective resulting in the reference point in the present. By manipulating the congruency between the (...) internal and external defaults, we show that incongruence between defaults decreases the strength of discounting of gains, but not of losses. (shrink)

Cypr zachował swoje bogate dziedzictwo kulturowe, a układ urbanistyczny i architektura w Nikozji są odzwierciedleniem zróżnicowanej historii stolicy. Nierozwiązany konflikt prowadzi do rywalizacji wokół kwestii kulturowych. To właśnie między innymi materialne dziedzictwo stało się „ofiarą” sytuacji politycznej i może być użyte do podsycania sporów i wzbogacania etnocentrycznych narracji. W takim przypadku jego ochrona może stać się selektywna. A z drugiej strony istnieje możliwość, że renowacje miejsc wspólnych lub istotnych dla innej grupy etnicznej staną się symbolem wysiłków na rzecz pojednania. Celem (...) artykułu jest przedstawienie, jak Cypryjczycy chronią osmańskie i brytyjskie dziedzictwo kulturowe w Nikozji. W artykule omówione zostały dwa projekty dwugminne: Nicosia Master Plan oraz Komitet Techniczny ds. Dziedzictwa Kulturowego. (shrink)

Visions of nature are defined as public views on what nature is, what values are carried by nature and what is the appropriate relationship between humans and nature. They were studied in Lubelski region, Poland. With respect to the first, respondents expressed that human influence and naturalness do not exclude each other. One result of the values survey was that respondents acknowledged nature's intrinsic value. The study into the relationship between humans and nature showed that the respondents adhered strongly to (...) a steward type of relationship, and that more ecocentric images were adhered to for a lesser, but substantial degree. (shrink)

The central theme of Byrne’s book is the fundamental moral standing of people who are mentally handicapped. Most ethical theories and ordinary moral practice deem it uncontroversial that we owe special concern and respect to ordinary adult human beings; this concern and respect is the locus of most widely recognized moral obligations. Yet many theoretical approaches to ethics explicitly or implicitly call into question whether the same ethical treatment ought to be extended to the mentally handicapped. In seeking and providing (...) explanation for the ethical status we accord human beings, ethical theories point to valuable traits of humans—their rational capacities, reflective self- awareness, capacity for autonomy, the richness of experience these capacities make possible, and so on—traits that mentally handicapped individuals typically possess only in a truncated form, or lack altogether. Byrne’s goal is to rebut this widely accepted theoretical approach and to develop an alternative justification of the special ethical status of humans, one that applies in equal measure to all members of our species, including the mentally handicapped. (shrink)

[A] man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibilities, moral being…. And it is here … that you may find ways to touch him.—A. R. Luria1.

While issues of efficacy and specificity are crucial for the future of neurofeedback training, there may be alternative designs and control analyses to circumvent the methodological and ethical problems associated with double-blind placebo studies. Surprisingly, most NF studies do not report the most immediate result of their NF training, i.e. whether or not children with ADHD gain control over their brain activity during the training sessions. For the investigation of specificity, however, it seems essential to analyze the learning and adaptation (...) processes that take place in the course of the training and to relate improvements in self-regulated brain activity across training sessions to behavioral, neuropsychological and electrophysiological outcomes. To this aim, a review of studies on neurofeedback training with ADHD patients, which include the analysis of learning across training sessions or relate training performance to outcome, is presented. Methods on how to evaluate and quantify learning of EEG regulation over time are discussed. “Non-learning” has been reported in a small number of ADHD-studies, but has not been a focus of general methodological discussion so far. For this reason, selected results from the brain-computer interface (BCI) research on the so-called “brain-computer illiteracy”, the inability to gain control over one’s brain activity, are also included. It is concluded that in the discussion on specificity, more attention should be devoted to the analysis of EEG regulation performance in the course of the training and its impact on clinical outcome. It is necessary to improve the knowledge on characteristic cross-session and within-session learning trajectories in ADHD and to provide the best conditions for learning. (shrink)

In his work on internality, identification, and caring, Harry Frankfurt attempts to delineate the organization of agency peculiar to human beings, while avoiding the traditional overintellectualized emphasis on the human capacity to reason about action. The focal point of Frankfurt’s alternative picture is our capacity to make our own motivation the object of reflection. Building upon the observation that marginal agents (such as young children and Alzheimer’s patients) are capable of caring, I show that neither caring nor internality need to (...) depend on the phenomena of reflectiveness. I develop alternative interlocking accounts of caring and internality that are independent of both reflectiveness and evaluation, but that can still do justice to the central role of carings in the organization of agency characteristic of human persons. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to review the discussion concerning various difficulties which surround the definition of depression and the methods of diagnosing and treating the disease against the background of the now dominant reductionist paradigm in psychiatry, as well as to answer the question whether a new approach to psychiatric disorders proposed by philosophers of psychiatry working within the phenomenologically inspired embodied and enactive paradigm indeed offers a solution to these difficulties. I present the issues specific to the (...) subject of depression in light of the more general problems related to biological psychiatry that have recently caused much debate. In the second part of the paper, I consider enactive, phenomenological and embodied theories of depression and the possibilities of new methods of treatment. My goal is to assess whether these theories indeed add anything important to the conceptions that are already present in psychiatry. I conclude that even if the embodied philosophy of psychiatry does not solve many of the problems faced by modern psychiatry, it can, nevertheless, provide a useful theoretical basis for future changes. (shrink)

Love cannot be everlasting, much as we might desire it to be so. So, what is love in a life that begins and ends? How does it feel to love as a finite being, imperfectly as we may? In Western philosophy and religious thought, love has often been characterized as a source of constancy and commitment. Love in Time reveals the opposite to be true. From the ways our beloveds (and their qualities that endear them to us) change over time, (...) to the possibility of our feelings toward our beloveds-or their feelings toward us-changing, love, Bialek shows, is an endeavor fraught with uncertainty. Yet it is that very uncertainty that entices us to our beloveds. Love is not a refuge from the vagaries of worldly life, impervious to its changing conditions. Rather, it is an orientation to a future that we do not yet know. In this book, Fannie Bialek explores the temporal experience of lovers spending time with their beloveds. Love in time, like any temporal experience, is composed of moments of not knowing what will happen next. It is an experience of vulnerability in this way, the lover exposed to an unknown future and waiting to see how it plays out. Attending to these vulnerabilities, Love in Time develops a fresh ethics of love that centers uncertainty and humility. It is an ethics of love that speaks to the uncertainty of the present and beyond. (shrink)

For over a century, philosophers have argued that philosophy is impossible or useless, or both. Although the basic notion dates back to the days of Socrates, there is still heated disagreement about the nature of truth, reality, knowledge, the good, and God. This may make little practical difference to our lives, but it leaves us with a feeling of radical uncertainty, a feeling described by Kolakowski as "metaphysical horror." "The horror is this," he says, "if nothing truly exists except the (...) Absolute, the Absolute is nothing; if nothing truly exists except myself, I am nothing." The aim of this book, for Kolakowski, is finding a way out of this seeming dead end. In a trenchant analysis that serves as an introduction to nearly all of Western philosophy, Kolakowski confronts these dilemmas head on through examinations of several prominent philosophers including Descartes, Spinoza, Husserl, and many of the Neo-Platonists. He finds that philosophy may not provide definitive answers to the fundamental questions, yet the quest itself transforms our lives. It may undermine most of our certainties, yet it still leaves room for our spiritual yearnings and religious beliefs. The final sentence of the book captures the hopefulness that has survived the horror of nothingness when Kolakowski asks: "Is it not reasonable to suspect that if existence were pointless and the universe devoid of meaning, we would never have achieved not only the ability to imagine otherwise, but even the ability to entertain this very thought—to wit, that existence is pointless and the universe devoid of meaning?" The answer, of course, is clear. Now it is up to readers to take up the challenge of his arguments. (shrink)

In our article (Zawadzki and Adamczyk 2021), we analyzed threats that novel memory modifying interventions may pose in the future. More specifically, we discussed how optogenetics’ potential for reversible erasure/deactivation of memory “may impact authenticity by producing changes at different levels of personality.” Our article has received many thoughtful open peer commentaries for which we would like to express our great appreciation. We have identified two main threads of objections. They are related to the potential applicability of optogenetics as a (...) therapeutic memory modification technology (MMT) in humans—applicability thread, and the normative value of authenticity, that is, the assumption that preserving authenticity is valuable (either in general or in the particular approach we adopted)—normative thread. Both of these threads concern fundamental issues: The former deals with the scientific credibility of the case vignette on which our discussion is based, and the latter deals with the normative weight of our considerations. We think that addressing both of them can be instructive in a broader context as they reflect a more general disagreement among neuroethicists about the very purpose and method of our discipline. (shrink)

The development of self-regulation in early childhood is related to development of emotional regulation and attention, in particular executive attention. As the ability to self-regulate is crucial in life, it is important to reveal early predictors of self-regulation. The aim of the paper is to present the results of longitudinal studies on the relationships between the functioning of attention, regulation of emotion and later self-regulatory abilities. 310 children were assessed at three time points. At 12 months of age emotional regulation (...) in situation of frustration and attention regulation were assessed. At 18 and 24 months behavioral-emotional regulation in the Snack Delay Task was measured. Additionally parents assessed executive attention using The Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire when children were 26 months old. Structural equation modelling revealed two different paths to development of self-regulatory abilities at 18 months: emotional and emotionalattentional and only one emotional-attentional path at 24 months. The early ability to focus attention and later executive attention functioning revealed to be important predictors of self-regulatory abilities both at 18 and 24 months of age. (shrink)

Optogenetics is an invasive neuromodulation technology involving the use of light to control the activity of individual neurons. Even though optogenetics is a relatively new neuromodulation tool whose various implications have not yet been scrutinized, it has already been approved for its first clinical trials in humans. As optogenetics is being intensively investigated in animal models with the aim of developing novel brain stimulation treatments for various neurological and psychiatric disorders, it appears crucial to consider both the opportunities and dangers (...) such therapies may offer. In this review, we focus on the memory-modifying potential of optogenetics, investigating what it is capable of and how it differs from other memory modification technologies. We then outline the safety challenges that need to be addressed before optogenetics can be used in humans. Finally, we re-examine crucial neuroethical concerns expressed in regard to other MMTs in the light of optogenetics and address those that appear to be unique to the memory-modifying potential of optogenetic technology. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I want to re-examine the epistemic status of elaborated delusions. Bortolotti (2016, 2020) claims that they can be epistemically innocent. However, I will show that this type of delusions is more unique than suggested by the existing analyses of their epistemic status. They typically cause more profound harms than other kinds of delusions, and in most cases, it would be counterproductive to classify them as epistemically beneficial or innocent. I will employ predictive (...) and phenomenological models of delusions and the enactivist notion of sensus communis to explain the harms and possible benefits of elaborated delusions and why I think the existing definition does not fully grasp them. Based on this analysis, I will propose changes to the conditions for epistemic innocence. (shrink)

Intertemporal choice requires one to decide between smaller sooner and larger later payoffs and is captured by discount rates. Across two preregistered experiments testing three language pairs (Polish vs. English, Spanish, and German; Experiment 1) and with incentivized participants (Experiment 2), we found no evidence that using a foreign language decreased the strength or increased the consistency of intertemporal choices. On the contrary, there was some evidence of stronger discounting when a foreign language was used. We confirmed prior findings that (...) more reflective individuals discount less strongly but observed that they were just as (un)affected by using foreign language as less reflective individuals. Thus, we provide preliminary evidence that the foreign language effect is robust to individual differences in cognitive reflection. (shrink)

Due to the development of global economy and increased geographical and occupational mobility, communication with people from multicultural backgrounds has become commonplace in many healthcare institutions. As the demographic profiles of both patients and medical personnel are increasingly varied, intercultural competence has become an integral component of English for Medical Purposes training. However, are medical students generally familiar with the notion of intercultural competence? What intercultural aspects should they be aware of in order to practise effectively when they graduate? The (...) aim of this article is to present medical students′ understanding of IC based on a survey conducted among undergraduate learners at the Medical University of Bialystok, Poland. The article begins with a discussion on intercultural competence in the context of health care. Following this, a discussion on why intercultural competence needs to be incorporated and used in Medical English programmes is presented. (shrink)

This article proposes a theoretical reflection on the articulation between teachers’ conceptions of particular knowledge objects on the one hand, and their professional action about these objects on the other. We will illustrate our point through two studies carried out in France and in Quebec in the field of the teaching of socially acute questions (SAQs). The first study focuses on the link between the social representations (Abric, 1994) of sustainable development (SD) among future teachers of humanities and natural sciences (...) and their practices with regard to education for sustainable development (ESD).The second study focuses on the relationship between a science teacher’s knowledge about the natural sciences (NS) as an object of knowledge and as an object of instruction. In order to enrich our reflection, we present an original operationalization of the concept of teaching practices, whose different dimensions (finalized, technical, interactive, affective) are put in relation with the concepts of social representations and relationships to knowledges. This perspective and theoretical reflection allows us to identify crossings and tensions between beliefs and teaching practices with regard to the SAQs in reference to the transformative-sociocritical and transmissive-positivist approaches of ESD. (shrink)