Background Doctors and the Sri Lanka Medical Association recognise the importance of do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation decisions and disclosure; however, few previous studies exist examining these practices in Sri Lanka. Resuscitation decisions have seen significant changes in the UK in recent years, with a legal imperative for clear communication and a move to understand patients’ preferred outcomes before recommending clinical guidance. Methods Participants from two Sri Lankan hospitals were selected purposively to represent a range of specialties and seniorities for (...) semi-structured interview. Results Fifteen participants of varying seniorities were recruited. Practice of do not resuscitate and informing patients is highly variable; there is no definitive guidance published on best practice of these issues in Sri Lanka. Participants felt that inpatients were generally not aware of their medical conditions or treatments. With the poor social and palliative care service provision in Sri Lanka comes a pressure to involve families in the patient care, particularly at the end of life. This feeds into a culture where patient autonomy plays a subordinate role to family involvement. Participants understand the ethical need for do not resuscitate, however, it is viewed to be a consideration for when the patient is close to death. Conclusion Do not resuscitate does not appear to be a prominent feature of end-of-life care in Sri Lanka and thus consideration of the appropriateness of resuscitation is commonly left late in a patient’s deterioration. Education, inclination and respect for doctors are suggested barriers to effective inclusion of patients in their healthcare and end-of-life decisions. (shrink)

In presenting his theory of the three levels of the divine, namely the One, the Intellect and the Soul, as a legitimate interpretation of Plato’s thought, Plotinus (Enn. 5.1.8) quotes from the Second Letter attributed to Plato, connecting its enigmatic statement about the king at the top of a threefold order of all things (Ep. 2.312e) with the first, second and third deductions in Plato’s Parmenides (Parm. 137c‑157b). These are taken to refer to the One, the Intellect and the Soul (...) respectively, in terms of the One simpliciter, the One‑Many and the One‑and‑Many. This paper first shows why the passage from the Second Letter, rather than any other passage from Plato’s writings, is Plotinus’ chief witness for the legitimacy of his theory of three levels of the divine as an interpretation of Plato. It then re‑examines the reception of the Second Letter (considered apocryphal by most contemporary scholars) prior to Plotinus. While Diogenes Laertius (5.56‑62) testifies to the presence of the collection of Plato’s Letters as early as the third century BC, and very likely of the Second Letter within the edition of Plato’s works by Thrasyllus around the beginning of the CE, the first unmistakable references to the passage in question do not appear before the mid‑second century AD. Its use by either Moderatus of Gades, as argued by E. R. Dodds, or a predecessor of Moderatus, possibly Thrasyllus or Posidonius, as argued by H. Tarrant, is thoroughly hypothetical and not corroborated by irrefutable evidence. The first authors known to us with certainty who quote the Second Letter are Justin Martyr (Apol. 1.60) and Apuleius (Apol. 64). The former does so because of the triadic formula, which he puts into relation with the Christian Trinity, while the latter appeals to it because it names the god of the Platonists ‘the king’. The use of the Second Letter by Valentinus and Numenius around the same time, in the context of a threefold theology, though admittedly likely, is not attested beyond any doubt. Origen testifies that Celsus quoted the Second Letter in his polemics against the Christians, Clement of Alexandria refers to the various passages of the Second Letter on several occasions and there is a single reference to it in Athenagoras. Among the Greek pagan authors before Plotinus, only Alexander of Aphrodisias quotes the passage about the king of all things in commenting upon Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s theory of causes. Since there is no conclusive evidence of the interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides in terms of a hierarchy of metaphysical principles before Plotinus (Simplicius’ testimony about Moderatus may reflect Porphyry’s or Simplicius’ own views), the first interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides to draw on the Second Letter known to us remains that of Plotinus. (shrink)

Die Forschung zu Eduard Hanslicks Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854) ist in der deutschsprachigen Diskussion auf die historischen Hintergründe von Hanslicks Argument fokussiert. Während die frühesten Deutungen von Hanslicks Standpunkt seine systematischen Berührungspunkte mit dem ahistorischen Formalismus von Johann Friedrich Herbart konstatierten, akzentuierte die deutsche Forschung der 1970er und 1980er seinen starken Konnex mit Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Dahlhaus betonte speziell, dass Hanslicks Argument eine Bekanntschaft mit dem Hegelianismus als der »herrschenden Philosophie der 1830er und 1840er« nötig mache. Dahlhaus’ Hypothese wird bei (...) der gewissenhaften Rekonstruktion der österreichischen Hegelrezeption jedoch schwierig. Habsburgische Bildungsplaner befanden dagegen den Deutschen Idealismus für politisch untragbar, was die Entlassung von mehreren Professoren nach sich zog, die den ›gefährlichen‹ Hegelianismus propagierten. Diese Lage wird von uns als geeigneter Ansatzpunkt für die detailgetreue Untersuchung der hegelianischen Theorieelemente von Hanslicks Abhandlung benutzt, welche vor dem Hintergrund der ablehnenden Grundhaltung ›Österreichs‹ zum Deutschen Idealismus sorgsam erfolgen muss. Hanslicks VMSTraktat umfasst dennoch mehrere wichtige Elemente der hegelianischen Ästhetik-diskussion, die nicht einzig Hegels System, sondern ebenso hegelianische Kunsttheoretiker (Kahlert, Krüger, Vischer etc.) umfänglich einbeziehen muss. Hanslicks Standpunkt, der die ahistorische Ausrichtung des Herbart’schen Formalismus niemals aufgriff, ist vor allem durch Vischers Annahme zur historischen Entwicklung des musikalischen Grundmaterials geprägt worden. Wir sehen somit Hanslicks VMS-Traktat als die ›eklektische‹ Verschmelzung von heterogenen theoretischen Diskursfeldern, womit dieser Herbartianismus und Hegelianismus als ästhetische Gegenpole des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts miteinander ausgleichen konnte. German-speaking scholarship on Eduard Hanslick’s aesthetic treatise »On the Musically- Beautiful« (1854) is primarily concerned with the historical background of Hanslick’s argument. Whereas contemporary investigations into Hanslick’s aesthetics emphasised theoretical overlaps with Johann Friedrich Herbart’s ahistorical formalism, German scholars of the 1970s and 1980s highlighted similarities to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In this respect, Dahlhaus specifically accentuated that Hanslick’s doctrine implies an exposure to Hegelianism as the »reigning philosophy of the 1830s and 1840s«. By reconstructing the historical reception of Hegel’s system in Austria, however, Dahlhaus’s premise becomes thoroughly problematic. Habsburg authorities considered German Idealism to be politically intolerable, thereby prompting numerous sackings of Austrian university lecturers on account of ›dangerous‹ Hegelianism. We take this historical framework as a suitable starting point for a comprehensive investigation of Hanslick’s Hegelian leanings that have to be carefully explored in the light of ›Austria’s‹ critical attitude towards speculative philosophy. »On the Musically-Beautiful«, however, comprises important elements of Hegelian aesthetics that are not limited to Hegel’s system but rather extend to Hegelian aesthetics in general (Kahlert, Krüger, Vischer etc.). Vischer’s hypothesis regarding the historical development of musical material particularly influenced Hanslick’s aesthetic outlook, who did not share the ahistorical conception of Herbartian formalism. Thus, we interpret Hanslick’s aesthetic treatise as an ›eclectic‹ fusion of diverse theoretical frameworks, ultimately reconciling Herbart and Vischer as the opposing extremes of mid-19th century aesthetics. (shrink)

It is argued that Weyl’s theory of gravitation and electricity came out of ‘mathematical justice’: out of the equal rights direction and length. Such mathematical justice was manifestly at work in the context of discovery, and is enough to derive all of source-free electromagnetism. Weyl’s repeated references to coordinates and gauge are taken to express equal treatment of direction and length.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Necessity and Essence Naming and Reference Rules and Meaning Conclusion References.

Can we have a posteriori knowledge of modal facts? And if so, is that knowledge fundamentally a posteriori, or does a priori intuition provide the modal component of what is known? Though the latter view seems more straightforward, there are also reasons for taking the first option seriously.

Metaphors involve immense explanatory power and positive impact predominantly in the scientific education and popularization. Still the use of metaphors in science might be a double-edged sword. Introduction of the computer metaphor to many scientific fields in the last century resulted in reductionist approaches, oversimplifications and mechanistic explanations in science as well as in humanities. In this short commentary we developed further the computer metaphor by prof. Noble and the illusions this metaphor led to in genetics, linguistics and consequently DNA (...) linguistics. (shrink)

For Protosociology the "Diskurs "-theory has a special significance. Validity-dimensions of speech and their evaluation in the procedure of argumentation indicate generalized presuppositions of interactive processes. These validity-dimensions can be reconstructed in lingusitic characterisations of "normative language" (P.W. Taylor). Thus it is possible to make first steps to a theory of validity. Protosociology provides a special reconstruction of argumentative speech on the level "interpersonality, structure of communicative acting and collective identity". The aim of Protosociology within a context of problems of (...) "Diskurs"-theory would have to establish normative values for an evaluation of such validity-dimensions. A logic of "Diskurs" would have to be developed as a kind of logic of "relevance". (shrink)

At first place the article should serve as clarification of the term "lifeworld" ("Lebenswelt) by means of selected lifeworld-conceptions of 20th. century philosophy.I would like to explikate the attempts of reflexive reference to lifeworld which exist in the concept of Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Searle. According to the explanations of Husserl and Heidegger my main interest lies in the problematic of validity. The relation between lifeworld and reflection shall be dealt with in the light of the philosophy of language (Wittgenstein, (...) Searle).At least I would like to discuss the relation between tifeword and science. (shrink)

This article investigates the original meaning of a passage of Plotinus’ Enneads, the treatise On Fate (Enneads, III, 1, 5). The thesis of the article envisagesthe understanding of the passage in the light of a Plotinian critic of astrology and argues that the understanding and the modern translations of the passage did not exactly detect neither the Plotinian doctrine nor how Plotinus represents his polemical opponents. We argued in this article that, for criticizing the contemporary astrology of his time, Plotinus (...) elusively calls Anaxagoras’ astronomy, claiming exclusive minerality of the heaven in perfect circular movement. In addition, I correlated this observation with a broader conclusion on the grounding of the heaven as a significant space in the horizon of a hermeneutic conversion of the Plotinian philosophy. (shrink)

This article describes a qualitative inquiry into the historical reception of Flemish television fiction broadcast by the monopolistic Flemish broadcaster BRT between 1953 and 1989. This is a relatively homogeneous period, both in terms of broadcasting policies and fiction output. What do viewers remember of this period? Can patterns be discerned in these memories, and if so, why? To answer these questions, this research uses semi-structured interviews with older viewers. First, the article discusses the particular problems of this method, mostly (...) ‘faulty’ memory and nostalgic reinterpretation. Then, the findings are presented, reflecting on processes of memory formation. One clear finding concerns the selective and homogeneous nature of memories; the same few serials are remembered in similar ways by most, leading to clichéd memories of the past. (shrink)

The article provides a reply to critical remarks made during the discussion about creativity and scientific knowledge. The authors propose to consider their concept of creativity not as antagonistic or incommensurable with the alternative, but rather co-existing through the complementarity principle. Responding to a comment about the socio-cultural conditionality of a particular cognitive situation, the authors question whether globalization seriously influence this matter in science. They support the statement about the importance of the interaction between science and art, science and (...) philosophy as an opportunity to consider scientific problems from the outside, in an unusual way. Regarding the comment about serendipity, the authors note that in certain cases we need exactly epistemological randomization, since we cannot consciously induce serendipity. In conclusion, thanks are expressed to all participants in the discussion. (shrink)