[ḥeleḳ 1]. Al hilkhot meḳaḥ ṭaʻut, onaʼah u-matanah, Ḥ m. 227-249 -- ḥeleḳ 2. ʻAl Hilkhot avedah u-metsiʼah, hefḳer, periḳah u-ṭeʻinah, genevah u-gezelah, Ḥ. m. 259-275, 348-377.

IntroductionThe stressful pre-operative period exerts a profound impact on psychological, physiological and immunological outcomes. Oncological surgeries, in particular, elicit significantly higher stress responses than most other surgeries. Managing these responses through psychological interventions may improve long-term outcomes. The purpose of the current research was to review studies that have explored pre-operative psychological interventions in cancer patients in order to map the types of current interventions and provide an initial assessment of whether these interventions improved psychological, physiological, and/or immunological indices as (...) well as long-term cancer outcomes.MethodsA systematic literature search for studies that included pre-operative psychological interventions in oncology patients was conducted, using the databases PubMed and Web of Science. Inclusion criteria included studies pertaining to oncological surgery in adults, study designs that included a clearly defined pre-operative psychological intervention and control group.ResultsWe found 44 studies, each using one of the following interventions: psychoeducation, cognitive interventions, relaxation techniques, integrated approaches. All the studies reported improved immediate post-operative psychological, physiological, and/or immunological outcomes. Only a few studies addressed long-term cancer outcomes, and only one reported improved survival.ConclusionsResearch on pre-operative interventions with cancer patients is missing systematic methods. Studies provide varying results, which makes it difficult to compare them and reach reliable conclusions. There is considerable heterogeneity in the literature regarding the specific intervention used, the timing of intervention, the characteristics of the patients studied and the outcome measures. In order to improve research in this field, including the measurement of long-term outcomes, we suggest some steps that should be taken in further research. (shrink)

1. Pereḳ Yetsiʼot ha-Shabat u-fereḳ Kirah.

1. Śiḥot, ʻetsot, sipurim, ṿe-hadrakhot maʻaśiyot li-veniyat ha-ḳesher ben bene ha-zug ... -- 2. Be-parashat ha-shavuʻa.

This book presents an original comprehensive approach to some of the most difficult problems concerning sense-perception and other mental states. After rejecting prevailing approaches, the author presents his own viewpoint which may be characterized as direct, critical realism. Basing his conclusions on conceptual analysis, psychological evidence and historical considerations, the author is able to offer new insights into traditionally unsolved problems concerning the nature of perceptual states, the ontological status of perceptual environment, the cognitive mechanism in perception and the explanation (...) of perceptual mistakes. The book also discusses the implications of this approach for other mental states such as memory and consciousness. (shrink)

This paper defends the view, put roughly, that to think that p is to guess that p is the answer to the question at hand, and that to think that p rationally is for one’s guess to that question to be in a certain sense non-arbitrary. Some theses that will be argued for along the way include: that thinking is question-sensitive and, correspondingly, that ‘thinks’ is context-sensitive; that it can be rational to think that p while having arbitrarily low credence (...) that p; that, nonetheless, rational thinking is closed under entailment; that thinking does not supervene on credence; and that in many cases what one thinks on certain matters is, in a very literal sense, a choice. Finally, since there are strong reasons to believe that thinking just is believing, there are strong reasons to think that all this goes for belief as well. (shrink)

Is or has economics ever been the imperial social science? Could or should it ever be so? These are the central concerns of this book. It involves a critical reflection on the process of how economics became the way it is, in terms of a narrow and intolerant orthodoxy, that has, nonetheless, increasingly directed its attention to appropriating the subject matter of other social sciences through the process termed "economics imperialism". In other words, the book addresses the shifting boundaries between (...) economics and the other social sciences as seen from the confines of the dismal science, with some reflection on the responses to the economic imperialists by other disciplines. Significantly, an old economics imperialism is identified of the "as if market" style most closely associated with Gary Becker, the public choice theory of Buchanan and Tullock and cliometrics. But this has given way to a more "revolutionary" form of economics imperialism associated with the information-theoretic economics of Akerlof and Stiglitz, and the new institutional economics of Coase, Wiliamson and North. Embracing one "new" field after another, economics imperialism reaches its most extreme version in the form of "freakonomics", the economic theory of everything on the basis of the most shallow principles. By way of contrast and as a guiding critical thread, a thorough review is offered of the appropriate principles underpinning political economy and its relationship to social science, and how these have been and continue to be deployed. The case is made for political economy with an interdisciplinary character, able to bridge the gap between economics and other social sciences, and draw upon and interrogate the nature of contemporary capitalism. (shrink)

Epicurus seems to have thought that death is not bad for the one who dies, since its badness cannot be located in time. I show that Epicurus’ argument presupposes Presentism, and I argue that death is bad for its victim at all and only those times when the person would have been living a life worth living had she not died when she did. I argue that my account is superior to competing accounts given by Thomas Nagel, Fred Feldman and (...) Neil Feit. (shrink)

This paper considers some puzzling knowledge ascriptions and argues that they present prima facie counterexamples to credence, belief, and justification conditions on knowledge, as well as to many of the standard meta-semantic assumptions about the context-sensitivity of ‘know’. It argues that these ascriptions provide new evidence in favor of contextualist theories of knowledge—in particular those that take the interpretation of ‘know’ to be sensitive to the mechanisms of constraint.

Decision-making Capacity matters to whether a patient’s decision should determine her treatment. But why it matters in this way isn’t clear. The standard story is that dmc matters because autonomy matters. And this is thought to justify dmc as a gatekeeper for autonomy – whereby autonomy concerns arise if but only if a patient has dmc. But appeals to autonomy invoke two distinct concerns: concern for authenticity – concern that a choice is consistent with an individual’s commitments; and concern for (...) sovereignty – concern that an individual exercises control over that which is hers to control. Here, I argue, neither concern can alone explain why dmc matters. Instead, dmc matters because it indicates a harmony between the two concerns – the demands of each concern are more likely to agree if a patient has dmc. This vindicates the standard story, but also makes clear that dmc is an inappropriate gatekeeper for autonomy. (shrink)

Many political realists endorse some notion of political normativity. They think that there are certain normative claims about politics that do not depend on moral premises. The most prominent moralist objections to political normativity have been metaethical: specifically, that political normativity is not genuinely normative; and that it is incapable of justifying normative claims. In this article, I criticize the latter metaethical objection. I argue that the objection presupposes a notion of ‘justification’ that renders it something that is no longer (...) necessarily valuable to realists. I then extend this argument to show that all metaethical objections to political normativity are unsuccessful. Furthermore, insofar as these metaethical objections purport to constrain the types of politics that realists endorse, realists should regard them as another expression of what Raymond Geuss calls ‘dead politics’. (shrink)

Background Voluntary assisted dying became lawful in Victoria, the first Australian state to permit this practice, in 2019 via the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 (Vic). While conscientious objection by individual health professionals is protected by the Victorian legislation, objections by institutions are governed by policy. No research has been conducted in Victoria, and very little research conducted internationally, on how institutional objection is experienced by patients seeking assisted dying. Methods 28 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 family caregivers and (...) one patient about the experience of 28 patients who sought assisted dying. Participants were interviewed during August-November 2021. Data from the 17 interviews (all with family caregivers) which reported institutional objection were analysed thematically. Results Participants reported institutional objection affecting eligibility assessments, medication access, and taking the medication or having it administered. Institutional objection occurred across health settings and was sometimes communicated obliquely. These objections resulted in delays, transfers, and choices between progressing an assisted dying application and receiving palliative or other care. Participants also reported objections causing adverse emotional experiences and distrust of objecting institutions. Six mediating influences on institutional objections were identified: staff views within objecting institutions; support of external medical practitioners and pharmacists providing assisted dying services; nature of a patient’s illness; progression or state of a patient’s illness; patient’s geographical location; and the capability and assertiveness of a patient and/or caregiver. Conclusions Institutional objection to assisted dying is much-debated yet empirically understudied. This research found that in Victoria, objections were regularly reported by participants and adversely affected access to assisted dying and the wider end-of-life experience for patients and caregivers. This barrier arises in an assisted dying system that is already procedurally challenging, particularly given the limited window patients have to apply. Better regulation may be needed as Victoria’s existing policy approach appears to preference institutional positions over patient’s choice given existing power dynamics. (shrink)

This article explains and defends a novel idea about how people can be misled by a discussion topic, even if the discussion itself does not explicitly involve the making of false claims. The crucial aspect of this idea is that people are liable to infer, from the fact that a particular topic is being discussed, that this topic is important. As a result, they may then be led to accept certain beliefs about the state of the world they consider necessary (...) for the topic’s importance. What the article calls “importance misrepresentation” occurs when these beliefs about the state of the world are false or otherwise mistaken. The article explores different ways in which importance misrepresentation can occur, and it uses this idea to help clarify and strengthen some well‐known criticisms of the topic choices of academic philosophers. (shrink)

This article reassesses Samuel Pufendorf's understanding of sovereignty and of the Holy Roman Empire. I argue that the form of the polity theorized by him should be comprehended in light of his adoption of the faculty psychology of Francisco Suárez. Suárez's was a conception of the life of the mind which, Pufendorfmaintained, also operated at the level of the 'composite moral person' of the state. It is true that the sovereign's is the only will in the state that counts politically; (...) but the state has an intellect too, and this may be located in an institution separate from the sovereign. Sovereign will can only function according to the scheme of efficient causality of which faculty psychology forms a component, and thus political absolutism, in which a singular and uncontrollable will is all, is not a necessary feature of Pufendorf's political theory. Moreover, this facultative conception of sovereignty is designed to pertain just as much to composite polities such as the German Empire as to more simple polities. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Hud Hudson's compatibilistic interpretation of Kant's theory of free will, which is based on Davidson's anomalous monism. I sketch an alternative interpretation of my own, an incompatibilistic interpretation according to which agents qua noumena are responsible for the particular causal laws which determine the actions of agents qua phenomena. Hudson's interpretation should be attractive to philosophers who value Kant's epistemology and ethics, but insist on a deflationary reading of things in themselves. It is in an (...) incompatibilist interpretation of Kant's theory of free will that a "positive" conception of noumena is at its most important. If a compatibilistic interpretation is acceptable, one might suppose that we can do without a "positive" conception of noumena throughout Kant's philosophy. I demonstrate, however, that there are central elements of Kant's theory of free will that cannot be accommodated within Hudson's interpretation. (shrink)