BackgroundAn increasing number of studies utilize intracranial electrophysiology in human subjects to advance basic neuroscience knowledge. However, the use of neurosurgical patients as human research subjects raises important ethical considerations, particularly regarding informed consent and undue influence, as well as subjects’ motivations for participation. Yet a thorough empirical examination of these issues in a participant population has been lacking. The present study therefore aimed to empirically investigate ethical concerns regarding informed consent and voluntariness in Parkinson’s disease patients undergoing deep brain (...) stimulator (DBS) placement who participated in an intraoperative neuroscience study.MethodsTwo semi-structured 30-minute interviews were conducted preoperatively and postoperatively via telephone. Interviews assessed participants’ motivations for participation in the parent intraoperative study, recall of information presented during the informed consent process, and participants’ postoperative reflections on the research study.ResultsTwenty-two participants (mean age = 60.9) completed preoperative interviews at a mean of 7.8 days following informed consent and a mean of 5.2 days prior to DBS surgery. Twenty participants completed postoperative interviews at a mean of 5 weeks following surgery. All participants cited altruism or advancing medical science as “very important” or “important” in their decision to participate in the study. Only 22.7% (n = 5) correctly recalled one of the two risks of the study. Correct recall of other aspects of the informed consent was poor (36.4% for study purpose; 50.0% for study protocol; 36.4% for study benefits). All correctly understood that the study would not confer a direct therapeutic benefit to them.ConclusionEven though research coordinators were properly trained and the informed consent was administered according to protocol, participants demonstrated poor retention of study information. While intraoperative studies that aim to advance neuroscience knowledge represent a unique opportunity to gain fundamental scientific knowledge, improved standards for the informed consent process can help facilitate their ethical implementation. (shrink)

The paper develops a philosophical account of emotions experienced and communicated on the internet, and, in particular, in the context of social media use. A growing body of research across disciplines has investigated the distinctive features of emotions in the digital age, and a key question in this regard concerns whether online emotions are the same kind of phenomena as those undergone offline. In this paper, I contribute to addressing this question by suggesting that the structure and characteristic features of (...) internet-mediated emotions can be accounted for within the perspective of Peter Goldie’s narrative theory of emotion. To do so, I first offer a reconstruction of Goldie’s conception of emotions as complex, dynamic, episodic and structured phenomena. I then move to show how the experience of emotions on social media like Facebook displays the characteristics which are at the core of Goldie’s account, proceeding to suggest that this enables us to better understand some of the features of emotions undergone on the internet. More specifically, I argue that the intensity, persistence and contagiousness of some online emotions can be better understood if we adopt Goldie’s framework. (shrink)

The primary goal of this paper is to provide substantial motivation for exploring an Acquaintance account of phenomenal consciousness, on which what fundamentally explains phenomenal consciousness is the relation of acquaintance. Its secondary goal is to take a few steps towards such an account. Roughly, my argument proceeds as follows. Motivated by prioritizing naturalization, the debate about the nature of phenomenal consciousness has been almost monopolized by representational theories. Among them, Self-Representationalism is by far the most antecedently promising. However, on (...) thorough inspection, Self-Representationalism turns out not explanatorily or theoretically better than the Acquaintance account. Indeed, the latter seems to be superior in at least some important respects. Therefore, at the very least, there are good reasons to take the Acquaintance account into serious consideration as an alternative to representational theories. The positive contribution of this paper is a sketch of an account of consciousness on which phenomenal consciousness is explained partly in representationalist terms, but where a crucial role is played by the relation of acquaintance. (shrink)

Background: Ethics and dignity in prehospital emergency care are important due to vulnerability and suffering. Patients can lose control of their body and encounter unfamiliar faces in an emergency situation. Objective: To describe what specialist ambulance nurse students experienced as preserved and humiliated dignity in prehospital emergency care. Research design: The study had a qualitative approach. Method: Data were collected by Flanagan’s critical incident technique. The participants were 26 specialist ambulance nurse students who described two critical incidents of preserved and (...) humiliated dignity, from prehospital emergency care. Data consist of 52 critical incidents and were analyzed with interpretive content analysis. Ethical considerations: The study followed the ethical principles in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Findings: The result showed how human dignity in prehospital emergency care can be preserved by the ambulance nurse being there for the patient. The ambulance nurses meet the patient in the patient’s world and make professional decisions. The ambulance nurse respects the patient’s will and protects the patient’s body from the gaze of others. Humiliated dignity was described through the ambulance nurse abandoning the patient and by healthcare professionals failing, disrespecting, and ignoring the patient. Discussion: It is a unique situation when a nurse meets a patient face to face in a critical life or death moment. The discussion describes courage and the ethical vision to see another human. Conclusion: Dignity was preserved when the ambulance nurse showed respect and protected the patient in prehospital emergency care. The ambulance nurse students’ ethical obligation results in the courage to see when a patient’s dignity is in jeopardy of being humiliated. Humiliated dignity occurs when patients are ignored and left unprotected. This ethical dilemma affects the ambulance nurse students badly due to the fact that the morals and attitudes of ambulance nurses are reflected in their actions toward the patient. (shrink)

The paper presents different criteria of meaning formulated on the ground of contemporary empiricism, and shows their shortcomings. None of them respects all intuitions that empiricists have connected with the notion of meaning. The main thesis is that these intuitions can never be respected conjointly, for some of them exclude others. Consequently it is showed that the perfect empirical criterion of meaning does not exist.

This monograph examines the origins of modern and modernist moral confusion and the deterioration of the Judeo-Christian values and contemporary boundaries between Right and Wrong. It traces the ethical shift to the ideas of Hobbes and Bentham, the peculiar universe of Schopenhauer and Dostoevsky, the new religion of Tolstoy and the destroyed God of Nietzsche, ending with the psychoanalytical commandments of Freud and the mire of sexual identity of Foucault and Paglia.

In this paper, I explore some of the ambivalent potential of Graham Harman’s post-humanist object-oriented ontology for thinking about human beings as objects, and for how to be with human beings as objects. In particular, I consider the work of feminist phenomenologists attuned to objectification as both having a tradition of object-orientation and as already contesting the idealism that Harman opposes. Objectified human beings inhabit a site of ontological duality, often knowing themselves as objects for others, who thus experience the (...) ontological and epistemological disruptions that can emerge from the human activity of objectification. Absence of these analyses in OOO constitutes an important oversight, since the analyses draw attention not only to object relations among human beings, but thereby also point to ways of understanding human concept relations with non-human objects. (shrink)

Background Concepts of health have been widely discussed in the philosophy and ethics of medicine. Parallel to these theoretical debates, numerous empirical research projects have focused on subjective concepts of health and shown their significance for individuals and society at various levels. Only a few studies have so far investigated the concepts of health of non-professionals and professionals involved in long-term home care and discussed these empirical perspectives regarding moral responsibilities. Objectives To identify the subjective concepts of the health of (...) non-professionals (care recipients, informal caregivers) and professionals (registered nurses) involved in long-term home care and to discuss them against the background of existing normative guidelines addressing non-professionals and professionals’ responsibilities and rights concerning health. Research design A qualitative design was chosen to explore subjective concepts of health. Data were collected by semi-structured interviews; content analysis was applied according to Mayring. Participants and research context Twenty-eight interviews were conducted with non-professionals and professionals in long-term home care arrangements in Northern Germany. Ethical considerations Ethics approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board at the University Medicine Greifswald (BB123/16). Findings Non-professionals and professionals consider health as a capability that enables them to participate in social activities and live their own lives according to their preferences. The former regard health particularly as a feeling and an attitude, the latter as the absence of disease with a focus on mental and emotional well-being. Both groups highlight the unsurpassable value of health and the personal responsibility for it. Discussion Normative guidelines applicable to practice in long-term home care discuss responsibilities and rights unevenly and raise several problems regarding non-professionals and professionals’ subjective concepts of health. Conclusion Individuals’ concepts of health are relevant for the subsequent interpretation of rights and responsibilities and should, thus, be reflected upon to address health-related needs effectively. (shrink)

The article contains the results of the analysis of concepts connected with semantic functions of names. The conception of Jacek Jadacki, exposed in his "Spór o granice jezyka" ("Controversy on the limits of language"), is the point of departure of this analysis. The following theses are formulated and argued for. (1) There are two basic semantic functions of names: the referential and the descriptive one. The first function consists in indicating some objects; the second one consists in ascribing properties to (...) some objects. (2) The concepts of indicating and ascribing are primitive ones. (3) The referential function of denotation and the descriptive function of connotation are mutually independent. The term "connotation" can be defined without using the term "denotation" and vice versa . (4) Names perform not only the function of designating, i.e. referring to particular objects, but also the function of denominating, i.e. referring to universal ( resp. postulated) objects. (5) The connotation of a given name is genetically or conventionally connected with the pragmatic function of ascribing properties to respective objects. (6) In sciences, such connotations of names are sought after, which are, at the same time, essences of designates of these names. (shrink)

Kazimierz Twardowski was born in Vienna in 1866 and spent there almost thirty years - before removal to Lvov in 1895. However, the Viennese period of Twardowski's life is relatively poorly known. The article aims at throwing light on Twardowski's activities in Vienna. It is based on archival documents found in Viennese and Warsaw archives and libraries.

Alvin Plantinga’s Evolution Argument against Naturalism (Sum.)...................39 In the article the proposition is put forward that naturalism connected with evolutionism is an attitude involved in many problems, and the rationality of the naturalist attitude is not credible. The proposition is proven on the basis of the evolution argument against the form of naturalism that assumes that evolution theories are true, which was formulated by Alvin Plantinga. In the article it is shown that the naturalist explanation of human cognitive mechanisms is (...) self-refuting. The naturalist claims that man\'s cognitive system originated by way of evolutionary processes, and the aim of these processes is man\'s survival, and not the truth of his beliefs; hence - on the basis of such reasoning - one may doubt if all beliefs are true, including the naturalist one. Hence in the article it is shown that the naturalist\'s all beliefs, and among them the belief that \'God does not exist\', cannot be credible. An indirect aim of the evolution argument against naturalism is also intellectual defense of credibility of the theist image of the world. The starting point of the article is presentation of the argument that half a century earlier was formulated by Clive Staples Lewis. Next the details of Plantinga\'s argumentation and controversies connected with it are shown. In the final part of the article the relation between naturalism and theism is discussed. In conclusion it is stated that the naturalist attitude does not attain what is required, so that a naturalist could state that it is the way he thinks; and this is why he is not able to threaten Christian theism. (shrink)

The objective of the article is to identify different formulations of indeterminacy thesis and various trials of dealing with it. Indeterminacy thesis was first identified by Quine as a consequence of his theory of meaning. According to the thesis, although we can determine the kind of facts or events of the world, which a particular observation sentence type refers to, we are not able to determine the referents of words the sentence consists of. And that is because of the fact (...) that on the basis of data we normally posses in the process of interpretation we can construct indefinitely many equally good transactions manuals (due to any one of them a reference of a particular word type can be something different than due to any other). In the article four variants of indeterminacy thesis will be identified and the relations between them will be showed. The resulting thesis will be that if we do not want to accept ad hoc and improbable semantic assumptions that at the start undermine the indeterminacy thesis, we should reduce three first variants of the thesis to the fourth one. The last one, however, is such that essentially seems to resist virtually any argument against indeterminacy thesis (granting the general assumptions of semantic theories of which it is a consequence). (shrink)