In preparation for the development of a rapid tissue donation programme, we surveyed healthcare providers in our institution about knowledge and attitudes related to RTD with lung cancer patients. A 31-item web based survey was developed collecting data on demographics, knowledge and attitudes about RTD. The survey contained three items measuring participants’ knowledge about RTD, five items assessing attitudes towards RTD recruitment and six items assessing HCPs’ level of agreement with factors influencing decisions to discuss RTD. Response options were presented (...) on a 5-point Likert scale. Ninety-one HCPs participated in the study. 66% indicated they had never heard of RTD prior to the survey, 78% rated knowledge of RTD as none or limited and 95.6% reported not having ethical or religious concerns about discussing RTD with patients. The majority were either not comfortable or not sure if they felt comfortable discussing RTD with cancer patients . 56.1% indicated their knowledge of RTD would play an integral role in their decision to discuss RTD with patients. 71.4% reported concerns with RTD discussion and the emotional state of the patient. Physicians and nurses play an important role in initiating conversations about recruitment and donation to research that can ultimately influence uptake. Increasing HCP knowledge about RTD is a necessary step towards building an RTD programme. Our study provides important information about characteristics associated with low levels of knowledge and practice related to RTD where additional education and training may be warranted. (shrink)

Rapid tissue donation (RTD) is an advancing oncology research procedure for collecting tumors, metastases, and unaffected tissue 2–6 h after death. Researchers can better determine rates of progression, response to treatment, and polymorphic differences among patients. Cancer patients may inquire about posthumous body donation for research to offer a personal contribution to research; however, there are barriers to recruiting for an RTD program. Physicians must reassure the patient that their treatment options and quality of care will not be compromised due (...) to participating in RTD. In this commentary we discuss how theories of altruism may explain cancer patients’ desire to participate in an RTD program, the ethical concerns of health care professionals and patients and the use of altruism as a recruitment strategy. We offer recommendations for examining the cultural and ethical climate of the institution prior to initiating such a program such as examining the relationship of healthcare professionals and patients, identifying ethical concerns, and examining ways to promote acceptance and buy-in across professionals, patients, and families. (shrink)

The process of optimizing psychical distance to achieve the best possible aesthetic effect has been well-known among philosophers of art ever since Edward Bullough formulated the concept in 1912. Although it is typically analyzed as a one-way process, it nevertheless becomes a reciprocal or intersubjective process when the object of our aesthetic perception is our “other.” This is equally true for animal “others” as for our fellow human “others.” Anything animate can fix us in its gaze and thereby prompt or (...) even force us toward self-confrontation as an object of someone or something else’s perception. This reciprocity may be manifest as a sort of psychological pas de deux between the two confronting subjects, each confronting the other as object, each recognizing the other as subject, and each confronting its own self as recognizer of this relationship and recipient of this attention. The level of our awareness of our being an object for some “other” subject has a proportionately significant impact on our aesthetic perception of this “other, ” i.e., the fact that an “other” perceives us adds a dimension of “unnatural” intersubjectivity which changes our aesthetic appreciation of that “other.”. (shrink)

In a strike to permit extra billing, physicians in Ontario, Canada, sought to balance their concerns for professional autonomy with their primary call to beneficence. But the right to reasonable compensation within a nationalized health care system is not on the same moral plane as the public's right to health care. Having failed to convince either the provincial government or the public of the soundness of their position, Ontario's doctors must now repair the damage done to the relationship with their (...) patients. (shrink)

Owing to an oversight incorrect acknowledgement text was published in this chapter. The correct acknowledgement text has been updated.

Simply stated, Pragmatic Invariantism is the view that the practical interests of a person can influence whether that person’s true belief constitutes knowledge. My primary objective in this article is to show that Pragmatic Invariantism entails external world skepticism. Toward this end, I’ll first introduce a basic version of Pragmatic Invariantism (PI). Then I’ll introduce a sample skeptical hypothesis (SK) to the framework. From this I will show that it is extremely important that the phenomenally equivalent skeptical scenarios generated by (...) SK are actually false. We’ll then see that by combining PI and SK, the effect will be to place extremelyhigh demands upon evidence for ~SK. It will finally be observed that, while we may have good evidence for ~SK, we do not have extremely strong evidence sufficient for establishing ~SK. This supports my conclusion that any standard version of Pragmatic Invariantism ultimately entails external world skepticism. If successful, my conclusion will critically undermine the current view that Pragmatic Invariantism is actually a skeptically resistant position. (shrink)

Book V of Eriugena’s Periphyseon presents new critical problems because of the lack of the Rheims manuscript, which contains the author’s own revisions. The text which has been called Versio Prima in the first four books of Jeauneau’s new edition is lacking for the fnal volume. Working from a transcription of the second portion of the Clauis Physicae, the epitome of the Periphyseon by Honorius Augustodunensis, the author reports that the unpublished Clauis II contains a text of Periphyseon V that (...) is analogous to Versio Prima. This article first compares the transcription from Clauis II to Lucentini’s notes on Honorius’ work, then it analyses the difference between Clauis II and Versio Secunda in Periphyseon V. The relationship is found to be the same as that between the primitive text of Periphyseon in books I-IV and Eriugena’s revised version . Consequently, Clauis II should be recognized as an essential witness to the early text of Periphyseon V. (shrink)

We give two slight generalizations of results of Poizat about elementary theories of groups obtained by free constructions. The first-one concerns generic types and the non-superstability of such groups in many cases. The second-one concerns the connectedness of most free products of groups without amalgamation.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky expressed a strange and surprising sentiment through one of the characters of The Brothers Karamazov. A dying young man named Markel declares: Every one of us has sinned against all men, and I more than others." He later says: "...every one of us is answerable for everyone else and for everything." Markel's absurd claims have engendered many reflections on the nature of suffering and what it means to be responsible for someone else's suffering. The world has no shortage (...) of pain and evil; what exactly is the relationship between suffering and responsibility? Markel's declarations press forward a question that drives this essay collection: how responsible should we consider ourselves for the suffering of the world? This volume is a collection of essays that struggle in various ways to understand and respond to several philosophical, theological and practical problems. In each case the authors grapple with issues surrounding suffering, immorality, evil, exploitation and oppression. The contributors share a clear concern for the ways that philosophers and theologians should respond to the problems of suffering and evil. They also share a conviction that these remain intense and central problems for philosophy and theology. Evil is an obstacle for belief, for morality, for hospitality, and for hope. This book struggles to address the particular and strong sense of responsibility that falls on Christians when it comes to understanding and, more importantly, responding to the problems of suffering and evil in the world. (shrink)

This commentary explores a number of issues raised by Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel in 'Describing Inner Experience'. The commentary argues for expanding the definition of mental imag-ery, by which it is a virtually universal human attribute; reintroduces a theory of response organization, the meaning complex, to conceptu-alize unsymbolized thinking; draws on work with Guided Affective Imagery to comment on the fragility versus robustness of mental imagery; comments on the virtues and probable flaws of Descriptive Experience Sampling , including an evolutionary explanation (...) of the flaws; and describes a pair of alternatives to DES: idiothetic experience sampling in which rating scales immediately follow the narrative reports, in place of delayed interviews, and the growing promise of coupling experience sampling with brain imaging. (shrink)

Cet article datant de l’an 2000 proposait un survol visionnaire de la façon dont des media alors émergeants aux débuts de l’internet questionnaient la prémisse identifiant le succès d’un média avec la maximisation chiffrée de son audience. L’auteur passe en revue des « media intimes », des « media socialisés », des « media souverains » et des « media phatiques » pour dépasser les idées héritées du XX e siècle sur l’utilité et la qualité des mass-médias.

By means of minimal assumptions on the individual preferences, I show that the Willingness To Pay (WTP) for both a FSD and SSD reduction of risk is the sum of a mean effect, a pure risk effect and a wealth effect. As a result, the WTP of a risk-averse decision maker may be lower than the WTP of a risk-neutral one, for a large class of individual preferences’ representation and a large class of risks.