Wearable and mobile technology has advanced in leaps and bounds in the last decade with technological advances creating a role from enhancing healthy living to monitoring and treating disease. However, the discussion about the ethical use of such commercial technology in the community, especially in minors, is lacking behind. In this paper, we first summarize the major ethical concerns that arise from the usage of commercially available wearable technology in children, with a focus on smart watches, highlighting issues around the (...) consent process, mitigation of risk and potential confidentiality and privacy issues, as well as the potential for therapeutic misconceptions when used without medical advice. Then through a relevant thought experiment we move on to outline some further ethical concerns that are connected to the use of wearables by minors, to wit the issue of informed consent in the case of minors, forcing them to live in the spotlight, and compromising their right to an open future. We conclude with the view that mitigating potential pitfalls and enhancing the benefits of wearable technology especially for minors requires brave and comprehensive moral debates. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Asclepion of Epidaurus is one of the first healing environments in the world. Descendants of Asclepius, specifically medical students, have been singularly deprived of any information concerning this legacy. This article illuminates the role of Asclepion of Epidaurus and examines the view of medical students upon the subject and the possible benefits of this knowledge in their medical education.MethodsThe participants were 105 senior-year students from the Athens Medical School, who attended a multi-media assisted lecture related to the structure and (...) the role of the Asclepion of Epidaurus. Afterwards, they answered anonymously a questionnaire of 12 pairs of opposite adjectives in order to describe their view regarding the meaning of Asclepion. The method used in the evaluation of their answers was that of semantic differential.ResultsThe attitude of the students towards the meaning of Asclepion was positive, showing interest and excitement about a powerful, though unfamiliar piece of knowledge.ConclusionToday’s novice doctors have welcomed the concept of Asclepion as essential knowledge for the service they will be called to fulfill. The potential benefits of the Asclepian ideals in medical education and ethos are thoroughly discussed. (shrink)

To Americans accustomed to thinking of Greece as the cradle of Western Civilization, the realization that modern Greece is a young nation with serious cultural, political, and economic identity problems comes only with difficulty. This little book is a celebration of the life and work of Evangelos P. Papanoutsos, a very productive and influential philosopher and educational reformer. Although, like every Greek intellectual, Papanoutsos is steeped in ancient culture, he is also emphatically a twentieth-century philosopher caught up in the (...) Enlightenment tradition of Hume and Kant and occupied with moral philosophical critique of contemporary culture. (shrink)

I discuss varieties of depth psychology that both emphasize the unconscious in particular ways and simultaneously accentuate human freedom and the underdetermination of the future. They recognize the soul as vital to the work of psychotherapy. Some even speak of a “mythopoetic” imagination. The soulful depth psychologists to be considered here include Frederic Myers, Theodore Flournoy, Carl G. Jung, Vera von der Heydt, Victor White, Otto Rank, Evangelos Christou, Richard Schwartz, and James Hillman. I will contend that these approaches (...) align with a Catholic anthropology. (shrink)

In this paper I shall venture into an area with which I am not very familiar and in which I feel far from confident; namely into phenomenology. My main motive is not to get away from standard, boring, methodological questions like those of induction and demarcation; but the conviction that a phenomenological account of the empirical basis forms a necessary complement to Popper's falsificationism. According to the latter, a scientific theory is a synthetic and universal, hence unverifiable proposition. In fact, (...) in order to be technologically useful, a scientific hypothesis must refer to future states-of-affairs; it ought therefore to remain unverified. But in order to be empirical, a theory must bear some kind of relation to factual statements. According to Popper, such a relation can only be one of potential conflict. Thus a theory T will be termed scientific if and only if T is logically incompatible with a so-called basic statement b, where b is both empirically verifiable and empirically falsifiable. In other words: T is scientific if it entails ¬b; where b, hence also ¬b, is an empirically decidable proposition. (shrink)

Reprint. Originally published: 1959; 1st Princeton/Bollingen pbk. ed. published: 1970.

How should religion and ethics be studied if we want to understand what people believe and why they act the way they do? An energetic guide to the study of religion and ethics, rejecting theories from postmodernism and cognitive science in favour of a return to pragmatic enquiry.

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction.

The article examines the change of theoretical framework in analytic philosophy of mind. It is well known fact that nowadays philosophical problems of mind are frequently seen as incredibly difficult. It is noteworthy that the first programs of analytical philosophy of mind were skeptical about difficulty of that realm of problems. One of the most notable features of both those programs was the strong antimetaphysical stance, those programs considered philosophy of mind unproblematic in its nature. However, the consequent evolution of (...) philosophy of mind shows evaporating of that stance and gradual recovery of the more sympathetic view toward the mind problematic. Thus, there were two main frameworks in analytical philosophy of mind: 1) the framework of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy dominated in the 1930s and the 1940s; 2) the framework that dominated since the 1950s and was featured by the critique of the first framework. Thus, the history of analytical philosophy of mind moves between two highly opposite understandings of the mind problematic. The article aims to found the causes of that move in the ideas of C. Hempel and G. Ryle, who were the most notable philosophers of mind in the 1930s and the 1940s. (shrink)

This essay first draws upon the work of William James and others to propose a nonphysicalistic understanding of the relationship between the brain and consciousness in order to articulate a philosophical perspective that can understand entheogenic visionary/mystical experiences as something other than hallucinations. It then focuses on the Santo Daime tradition, a religious movement that began in Brazil in the early part of the twentieth century, to provide an example of the personal and social ramifications of taking an entheogen (ayahuasca) (...) within a disciplined religious context. The essay claims that the Santo Daime is one example of a contemporary mystery school; gives a brief history of the development of this religion; discusses the key theological assumptions of this movement; investigates the important role played by visionary/mystical experiences within this religion; underscores the centrality of healing and spiritual transformation for members of this tradition; and ends with an examination of the crucial significance of spiritual discipline within this entheogenically based religion. (shrink)

Changes in healthcare financing increasingly rely upon patient cost-sharing to control escalating healthcare expenditures. These changes raise new challenges for physicians that are different from those that arose either under managed care or traditional indemnity insurance. Historically, there have been two distinct bases for arguing that physicians should not consider costs in their clinical decisions—an “aspirational ethic” that exhorts physicians to treat all patients the same regardless of their ability to pay, and an “agency ethic” that calls on physicians to (...) be trustworthy advisors to their patients. In the setting of greater patient cost-sharing, physicians' aspiration and agency roles increasingly conflict. Satisfactorily navigating the new terrain of consumer-driven healthcare requires physicians to consider these two roles and how they can best be reconciled so as to maximize quality of care while respecting the heterogeneity of patients' financial resources and willingness to pay. (shrink)

In 1926, Mally presented the first formal system of deontic logic. His system had several consequences which Mally regarded as surprising but defensible. It also, however, has the consequence that A is obligatory if and only if A is the case, which is unacceptable from the point of view of any reasonable deontic logic. We describe Mally's system and discuss how it might reasonably be repaired.

In this unique work, Professor G.A. Powell Jr. writes: "Thinkers are different from writers—writers are prostitutes. Thinkers desire to be prostitutes." Daily Conversations with My Interloper is first and foremost a celebration of the narrative paradigm, its evolution, latitude of expression, and radical subjectivity in the forms of aphorisms and feuilletons. Following in the literary tradition of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Camus, John Cage, Emile Cioran, and Susan Sontag, et al., the text chronicles Professor Powell's reflections about the ongoing metamorphoses (...) of cultures, influential literary figures, travel, film, history, ennui, quotidian, and the mundane day-to-day existence in which all people participate. Daily Conversations with my Interloper, is a provocative read for the public and private intellectual interested in a panoply of ideas. (shrink)

This book offers the first comprehensive introduction to wave scattering in nonstationary materials. G. F. Roach's aim is to provide an accessible, self-contained resource for newcomers to this important field of research that has applications across a broad range of areas, including radar, sonar, diagnostics in engineering and manufacturing, geophysical prospecting, and ultrasonic medicine such as sonograms. New methods in recent years have been developed to assess the structure and properties of materials and surfaces. When light, sound, or some other (...) wave energy is directed at the material in question, "imperfections" in the resulting echo can reveal a tremendous amount of valuable diagnostic information. The mathematics behind such analysis is sophisticated and complex. However, while problems involving stationary materials are quite well understood, there is still much to learn about those in which the material is moving or changes over time. These so-called non-autonomous problems are the subject of this fascinating book. Roach develops practical strategies, techniques, and solutions for mathematicians and applied scientists working in or seeking entry into the field of modern scattering theory and its applications. Wave Scattering by Time-Dependent Perturbations is destined to become a classic in this rapidly evolving area of inquiry. (shrink)

Ch. 1. Metodologicheskie problemy sot︠s︡ialʹno-gumanitarnogo poznanii︠a︡ -- ch. 2. Metodologicheskie problemy istorii filosofii i ėstetiki.

This systematic development of the internal realist approach, first developed by Hilary Putnam, tries to steer a middle course between metaphysical realism and relativism. It argues against metaphysical realism that it is open to global skepticism and cannot cope with conceptual pluralism. Against relativism it is claimed that there are mind-independent constraints on the validity of our claims to knowledge. The book provides a moderately verificationist account of semantics and novel explanation of the idea of conceptual schemes. It is also (...) argued that internalism realism can accommodate our common sense realist intuitions adn is also compatible with physicalism and naturalism. (shrink)