The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 6, Page 29-31, June 2011.

Pediatric oncology has a strong research culture. Most pediatric oncologists are investigators, involved in clinical care as well as research. As a result, a remarkable proportion of children with cancer enrolls in a trial during treatment. This paper discusses the ethical consequences of the unprecedented integration of research and care in pediatric oncology from the perspective of parents and physicians. An empirical ethical approach, combining (1) a narrative review of (primarily) qualitative studies on parents' and physicians' experiences of the pediatric (...) oncology research practice, and (2) comparison of these experiences with existing theoretical ethical concepts about (pediatric) research. The use of empirical evidence enriches these concepts by taking into account the peculiarities that ethical challenges pose in practice. Analysis of the 22 studies reviewed revealed that the integration of research and care has consequences for the informed consent process, the promotion of the child's best interests, and the role of the physician (doctor vs. scientist). True consent to research is difficult to achieve due to the complexity of research protocols, emotional stress and parents' dependency on their child's physician. Parents' role is to promote their child's best interests, also when they are asked to consider enrolling their child in a trial. Parents are almost never in equipoise on trial participation, which leaves them with the agonizing situation of wanting to do what is best for their child, while being fearful of making the wrong decision. Furthermore, a therapeutic misconception endangers correct assessment of participation, making parents inaccurately attribute therapeutic intent to research procedures. Physicians prefer the perspective of a therapist over a researcher. Consequently they may truly believe that in the research setting they promote the child's best interests, which maintains the existence of a therapeutic misconception between them and parents. Due to the integration of research and care, their different ethical perspectives become intertwined in the daily practice of pediatric oncology. Increasing awareness of what this means for the communication between parents and physicians is essential. Future research should focus on efforts that overcome the problems that the synchronicity of research and care evokes. (shrink)

THE STRUCTURALISTIC ENDEAVOUR. THE WORLD AS MUSICAL SCORE The recent decades of this century have witnessed unusually rapid and far- reaching changes in the ...

Recent decades have witnessed a growing interest injeux de motsin Greek poetry. It was especially the discovery of the ΛΕΠΤΗ acrostic in Aratus'Phaenomenaby J.-M. Jacques in 1960 that stimulated the desire for joining the elite club of those capable of detecting such encrypted messages. This period of intensiveRätselforschungrecently found its culmination in the publication of C. Luz's monograph on linguistic games in Greek poetry, in which an impressive variety of these is discussed: acrostics, palindromes, anagrams, isopsephic poems,carmina figurata, and so (...) forth. Yet even Luz's list is incomplete, and the present discussion aims to offer a brief supplement to her admirable book. I will discuss a playful device used by Greek poets which may not be as spectacular as acrostics but beats them in one hardly negligible respect – that a plausible new discovery may be easier to make in this field. (shrink)

As the Byzantinist Ihor Ševčenko once observed, "Philology is constituting and interpreting the texts that have come down to us. It is a narrow thing, but without it nothing else is possible." This definition accords with Saussure's succinct description of the mission of philology: "especially to correct, interpret, and comment upon the texts." Philology is not just a grand etymological or lexicographical enterprise. It also involves restoring to works as much of their original life and nuances as we can manage. (...) To read the written records of bygone civilizations correctly requires knowledge of cultural history in a broad sense: of folklore, legends, laws, and customs. Philology also encompasses the forms in which texts express their messages, and thus it includes stylistics, metrics, and similar studies. _On Philology _brings together the papers delivered at a 1988 conference at Harvard University's Center for Literary and Cultural Studies. The topic "What is Philology?" drew an interdisciplinary audience whose main fields of research ran the gamut from ancient Indo-European languages to African-American literature, signaling a certain sense of urgency about a seemingly narrow subject. These papers reveal that the role of philology is more important than ever. At a time when literature in printed form has taken a back seat to television, film, and music, it is crucial that scholars be able to articulate why students and colleagues should care about the books with which they work. Just as knowledge will be lost if philological standards decline, so too will fields of study die if their representatives cannot find meaning for today's readers. _On Philology _will be of interest not only to students of philology but also to anyone working in the fields of hermeneutics, literature, and communication. (shrink)

Can the law benefit from an evolutionary perspective? This little book shows how the idea of survival of the fittest can help explain legal development and the rise and fall of legal institutions. The reader is invited to join in on a journey of discovery in which the world of Darwin is connected to the topics of legal change, convergence of law, legal complexity, law in hip-hop music and the adoption of the price-payment rule. Exploring these five themes from an (...) evolutionary angle indisputably upsets our traditional view of the law, but it does fit the author's view of academia as a place for cross-disciplinary research steered by curiosity. (shrink)

Wat is de plaats van het recht in de samenleving? Hoe fungeert het juridisch discours? Wie is de mens van het recht? Waartoe leiden de semantische transformaties die het recht tot een eigen discours maken? Hoe gaat de maatschappij met het juridisch discours om? Hoe verhoudt het rechtsbeleid zich tot de rechtswetenschap? Hoe verhouden de verschillende vakgebieden binnen het recht zich tot elkaar? Deze en andere vragen tussen rechtsfilosofie, rechtstheorie en rechtspraktijk worden in een collectie wetenschappelijke teksten geconfronteerd met kritische (...) interdisciplinaire benaderingen. Het boek biedt in die zin een kleine encyclopedie van de juridische discipline, gelieerd aan overwegingen van algemene cultuur. (shrink)

PREFACE Ubi bene, ibi patria. The proverb expresses an important feature of this book. 'Being somewhere' necessarily implies an orientation towards ...

The question of the philosophical basis of medical science and medical practice is considered under three closely related themes: (i) the doctor-patient relationship, (ii) the structure of the medical-ethical discourse, and (iii) the problem of philosophical founding in relation to medical conduct. The doctor-patient relationship is regarded as a transformational relation. Acceptance of the illness of the patient, the construction of a complaint as a necessary condition — and not a description of an existing reality — as well as the (...) establishment of a common interest are determinants of that relation. They are related to the dominant form of science and thought in medicine, namely application. This is typical for the Standard Medical-Ethical Discussion (SMED), its scope and its rationality. The third issue leads to the thesis that this particular rationality is not a sufficient ground for considering the medical discourse to be founded in philosophy. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 19-40.

The Roberta Kevelson Seminar on Law and Semiotics is integrated in the regular program of a US Law School and student enrollment is honored with credit points. Hitherto, the study of Legal Semiotics has mainly been located outside the Law Schools in the US and the Faculties of Law in the EU. Two important questions within the more general theme of Legal Semiotics and Legal Education arose: (1) the program requirements in an education context, and (2) the attention and interests (...) of the students. This IJSL issue offers essays presented during the Round Table which closed the Seminar, provides some experience-based suggestions for a Seminar program and discusses how to deal with the pragmatic attitude of law students. It interests how those topics relate to legal and semiotic literature and how they focus globally important viewpoints, as can be concluded in the example of the legal semiotics of family structures. (shrink)

This book examines the concept of meaning and our general understanding of reality in a legal and philosophical context. Starting from the premise that meaning is a matter of linguistic and other forms of articulation, it considers the inherent philosophical consequences. Part I presents Klages', Derrida's, Von Hofmannsthal's and Wittgenstein's explorations of silence as a source of articulation and meaning. Debates about 20th century psychologism gave the attitude concept a pivotal role; it illustrates the importance of the discovery that a (...) word is globally qualified as 'the basic unit of language'. This is mirrored in the fact that we understand reality as a matter of particles and thus interpret the real as a component of an all-embracing 'particle story'. Each chapter of the book focuses on an aspect of legal semiotics related to the chapter's theme: for instance on the meaning of a Judge's 'Saying for Law', on law students training in varying attitudes or on the ties between law and language. Part II of the book illustrates our general understanding of reality as a matter of particles and partitioning, and examines texts that prove that particle thinking is basic for our meaning concept. It shows that physics, quantum theory, holism, and modern brain research focusing on human linguistic capabilities, confirm their ties to the particle story. In contrast, the book concludes that partitions and particles are neither a fact in the history of the cosmos nor a determinant of knowledge and the sciences, and that meaning is a process: a constellation rather than a fixation. This is manifest once one understands meaning as the result of continuously changing attitudes, which create our narratives on cosmos and creation. The book proposes a new key for meaning: a linguistic occurrence anchored in dimensions of human narrativity. (shrink)

The close ties between law and psychiatric illness challenge our effort to understand the complex semantics of Western culture and the foundations of law in the heart of that culture. It is, however, difficult to be immediately confronted with the limitations of these semantics. Can one ever achieve a refined precision of psychiatric issues? Lawyers and psychiatrists tend to disregard the fact that people live within different realms of expressiveness, even where the same phenomena seem apparent. They neutralize all relativity (...) and design a quasi-universal body of legal doctrines or construct an all-embracing medical nosology. The question remains what practices of judgment are justifiable when the history books demonstrate the ever-changing character of the idea of a common good and a well-ordered life. Notions of relativity accompany decisions to punish or to cure, to exclude or to include, to disregard or to consider. In these decisions, there are never supracultural notions at hand and only rarely ideas that reach beyond the boundaries of either profession's own discourse. (shrink)

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort. - Einleitung. - 1. Teil: Das Zeugnis anderer - Eine Quelle gerechtfertigter wahrer Meinung? - 2. Teil: Karl Poppers Theorie objektiven Verstehens (Situationslogik). - 3. Teil: Uber die, Notwendigkeit' von Rationalitats- und Wahrheitsprasumtionen beim Verstehen. - Zusammenfassende Schlussbemerkung. - Literaturverzeichnis. - Personenregister. - Sachregister.".

This article examines the political perspective of corporate social responsibility from the standpoint of normative Islam. We argue that large firms within Muslim majority countries have the moral obligation to assist governments in addressing challenges related to sustainable socioeconomic development and in advancing human rights. In substantiating our argument, we draw upon the Islamic business ethics, stakeholder theory, and corporate governance literatures, as well as the concepts of Maqasid al Shariah (the objectives of Islamic law) and fard al ‘ayn (obligation (...) upon all individuals within society) versus fard al kifayah (obligation upon some individuals within society) to introduce a normative model elucidating critical Islamic precepts. Finally, we propose an Islamic “political” corporate governance framework, which democratizes firm decision making by embedding “core” stakeholders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and Shariah scholars in the corporate board, thereby enhancing the ability of businesses to respond to stakeholder concerns and priorities, while mitigating interstakeholder and intraboard power asymmetries. (shrink)

Is the European Union a new Walden? Although a contrast in form and format, the Union is surprisingly close to the latter's underlying philosophy. One can read this proximity in the Treaties or the many facets of the European idea which mirrors in the Union's emerging legal system. Today there is no longer a Union of a limited number of Nation States desiring to end divisions among themselves, to acquire mutual respect and prosperity or a higher standard of living and (...) working conditions for its members. European citizenship shows a global orientation and is in continuous competition with the discourse of a globalizing economy and its Internet democracy. Analyses of concepts such as political geography, global, (supra)national and regional citizenship, democracy, learning society, native tongue and market lead to the insight that the Union's legal system wishes to ensure its citizens a legally engendered, formatted and protected global position for action. Walden's philosophy has a new face. (shrink)

Peirce shows how he presupposes that a ‘most general science of semeiotic’ is entirely a matter of culture. Semiotics unfolds even beyond the debate on specific differences between nature and culture. The expression ‘semiotics of culture’ entails all components of a true pleonasm. Pierce finds his parallel in the philosophy of Hegel and both philosophers consider the close ties between expressiveness and consciousness as a specifically human, cultural and spiritual activity. That viewpoint leads not only to linguistic but also to (...) other expressive phenomena, among which the body. Faces are perhaps the most outstanding bodily carriers of expression, so that Peirce’s analyses of Thirdness relate to the human face, not as a natural but as a cultural datum, in particular an artifice. A face-to-face relationship is embedded in a regulative discourse rather than an ethical appeal or other metaphysical dimensions. Three cases show various degrees of artificiality with different semiotic implications: Tilda Swinton’s appearance at the recent 2008 Oscar ceremony, the body art of Orlan and the first 2005 facial transplant of Isabelle Dinoire. The three do not only show how the human face is an artifice, but also how realities can appear to be fictitious within patterns of semiotic nature. Any sign can be a correlative to a fictitious world! (shrink)

New computer systems of discovery create a research program for logic and philosophy of science. These systems consist of inference rules and control knowledge that guide the discovery process. Their paths of discovery are influenced by the available data and the discovery steps coincide with the justification of results. The discovery process can be described in terms of fundamental concepts of artificial intelligence such as heuristic search, and can also be interpreted in terms of logic. The traditional distinction that places (...) studies of scientific discovery outside the philosophy of science, in psychology, sociology, or history, is no longer valid in view of the existence of computer systems of discovery. It becomes both reasonable and attractive to study the schemes of discovery in the same way as the criteria of justification were studied: empirically as facts, and logically as norms. (shrink)

This paper studies intentional action in stit logic. The formal logic study of intentional action appears to be new, since most logical studies of intention concern intention as a static mental state. In the formalization we distinguish three modes of acting: the objective level concerning the choices an agent objectively exercises, the subjective level concerning the choices an agent knows or believes to be exercising, and finally, the intentional level concerning the choices an agent intentionally exercises. Several axioms constraining the (...) relations between these different modes of acting will be considered and discussed. The side effect problem will be analyzed as an interaction between knowingly doing and intentionally doing. Non-successful action will be analyzed as a weakening of the epistemic attitude towards action. Finally, the notion of ‘attempt’ will be briefly considered as a further weakening in this direction. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of some research methods evident in contemporary nursing literature. The arguments derive from critical‐feminist, humanist and ethical perspectives. As a consequence of investigating specific aspects of scientific method, an approach to research that is congruent with values intrinsic to an holistic approach to nursing practice is articulated. Such methodologies also render problematic withstatus quopower relations between nurses and other health professionals, as well as between nurses and patients. The central themes in this paper are: the (...) absence of overt conceptual frameworks; an avoidance of complex social contexts within which research subjects live; an apparent lack of empathy; and an apolitical articulation of research problems and data analyses. All four of these difficulties may be traced to scientific methodology by many researchers. Most nurse researchers may not actually adhere to this technique, but I propose that they have been informed by belief systems associated with scientific methodology and diat these have dire consequences for the discipline of nursing. A key argument is diat the apparent lack of conceptual frameworks in the majority of nursing research is due to the epistemology, which therefore provides a pre‐existing, non‐declared conceptual framework, that is incorporated into the research by drawing upon scientific mediodology. A further argument is diat scientific, or scientistic, ways of approaching situations are antithetical to nursing values and to constructive social change for the benefit of patients, nursing and nurses. (shrink)

This study investigates potential differences in attitudes towards corporate social responsibility between Saudis and Muslims from other predominately Islamic countries. We propose that Saudi Arabia’s unique rentier-state welfare and higher education systems account for these distinctions. In evaluating our propositions, we replicate Brammer et al. :229–243, 2007) survey on attitudes towards CSR using a sample of Saudi undergraduate and graduate business students and compare the results against data from subjects in other majority Muslim countries. In addition, this work examines possible (...) differences within the Saudi sample with respect to sex and academic level. Our results indicate that our Saudi subjects maintain higher expectations for corporations’ social responsibility within their supply chain than the Brammer et al.’s sample. In contrast, Muslims in the Brammer et al.’s sample hold higher expectations for corporations in supporting societal development and poverty alleviation in comparison to the Saudi sample. We also find within the Saudi sample that females and subjects at higher academic levels are more inclined to hold corporations responsible for social issues related to CSR than males and subjects in lower academic levels. We examine these findings, explore their implications, and propose areas for future research. (shrink)