We argue that there are neither scientific nor social reasons to require gathering ethno-racial data, as defined in the US legal regulations if researchers have no prior hypotheses as to how to connect this type of categorisation of human participants of clinical trials with any mechanisms that could explain alleged interracial health differences and guide treatment choice. Although we agree with the normative perspective embedded in the calls for the fair selection of participants for biomedical research, we demonstrate that current (...) attempts to provide and elucidate the criteria for the fair selection of participants, in particular, taking into account ethno-racial categories, overlook important epistemic and normative challenges to implement the results of such race-sorting requirements. We discuss existing arguments for and against gathering ethno-racial statistics for biomedical research and present a new one that refers to the assumption that prediction is epistemically superior to accommodation. We also underline the importance of closer interaction between research ethics and the methodology of biomedicine in the case of population stratifications for medical research, which requires weighing non-epistemic values with methodological constraints. (shrink)

Social theory plays an important role in the nursing discipline and nursing inquiry as it helps conceptually embed nursing in the larger picture of the social world. For example, a broad category of critical theory provides a unique lens for uncovering social conditions of inequity and oppression. Among the sociological theories, actor‐network theory (ANT) is an approach to research and analysis that has recently gained interest among nurse philosophers and researchers. Studies guided by ANT seek to understand phenomena of interest (...) as constituted within the relationships between human and nonhuman actors to understand how care practices are co‐created/enacted and how they can be made more humane. In this paper, we describe the benefits of ANT for examining healthcare access for incarcerated individuals with life‐limiting illnesses accessing palliative care and for people using illicit drugs. We argue that attention to the materiality of care practices can contribute to efforts of advancing health equity for these groups. (shrink)

Globally, there are calls to increase physical activity levels in relatively sedentary populations, including via physical activity programmes, often targeted at those body-selves deemed at risk of ‘sedentariness’. Despite the salience of sensory pleasures and displeasures in engagement with (and abandonment of) these programmes, the sensory, embodied experiences of participation remain under-researched. Here, we draw on findings from a two-year ethnographic study of a national programme in Wales, which used the aesthetic attractions of ‘natural’ outdoor environments to encourage and sustain (...) physical activity. Employing insights from phenomenological sociology, we explore the programme participants’ (n=146) lived experiences, analysed via a phenomenological lens, cohering around a panoply of sensory pleasures and displeasures, and somatic learning that is shaped and reshaped by weather encounters. (shrink)

In this text I briefly describe the main trends in the analytic philosophy of language in the 21st century. Among the most important developments that influenced the way in which the philosophy of language is done I mention experimental philosophy and conceptual engineering. Among the new topics I highlight the social and political turn of the analytic philosophy of language with its focus on gender terms, slurs, fig leaves, dog whistles and other linguistic phenomena that have significant societal impact. I (...) also mention the debate between semantic minimalism, contextualism and relativism, which has its roots in earlier philosophy but which has been very lively in the first quarter of the 21st century. (shrink)

The paper presents a scientific profile of Mieczysław Wallis in the perspective of the question of his intellectual status. The author looks for the answer within two areas that were the subject of Wallis’ interest: philosophy and history of art. She analyses the path of Wallis’ intellectual development and the formation of his creative interests: from his education (in Heidelberg and Warsaw) and inspirations, through his first intellectual concerns, to an analysis of his scientific output. In his youth, Wallis wrote (...) about the desire to create a philosophical system. Did this aspiration determine his scientific work, and to what extent? Did it set the course of his intellectual path? Was Wallis’ profile dichotomous in nature? For, as a philosopher, Wallis asked himself a fundamental question about the phenomenon of human being and its relation to the world. As a historian of art, he sought the answer by analyzing the world of man’s creative activity, his aesthetic experiences and artistic creations. Thus, on the one hand, the author emphasizes the role of philosophy in the development of Wallis’ intellectual views; on the other hand, she points to the philosophical depth of his achievements in the field of art theory. (shrink)

This translation is based on “Faust Socyn w Polsce,” in Humaniści, heretycy, inkwizytorzy (Kraków: PAU, 2006), 175–88, with the permission of the Publisher and the legal successors.

Over the past several decades, research in the cognitive sciences has foregrounded the importance of active bodies and their continuous dependence on the changing environment, strengthening the relevance of dynamical models. These models have been steadily developed within the ecological psychology approach to cognition, which arguably contributes to the “ecological turn” we are witnessing today. The embodied and situated nature of cognition, regarded by some as a passing trend, is presently becoming a largely accepted assumption. In this paper, I claim (...) that in light of these developments, ecological psychology, in alliance with related approaches, such as enactivism and interactivism, has the potential to deeply transform our perspectives on cognition and action, restoring their pertinence to humans as persons. However, an important challenge to the realization of this potential has to be noted: neither the mainstream information-processing approach nor the dynamics-oriented perspective on cognition provides an account of how the capacity of humans to use language and think “symbolically” can be derived from the continuous flow of agent−environment interaction. I will attempt to show that posing the “dynamical” and “computational” hypotheses about the nature of cognition as mutually exclusive approaches to cognition results in undesirable reductionism, which makes it difficult to meet this challenge. There are good reasons, advanced over half a century ago by, for example, Michael Polanyi or Howard Pattee, to think that we need complementary descriptions to understand cognizing systems, in order to grasp the fact that they are governed both by physical laws and by emergent historical constraints. Details of such a complementarity-based approach still await elucidation, but some proposed solutions have the potential to ease the tension between the information-processing and dynamical approaches to cognition and to lead to a better understanding of their interrelation. (shrink)

Artykuł przedstawia etyczny problem dehumanizacji w perspektywie prac i doświadczeń Mieczysława Wallisa, polskiego uczonego, przedstawiciela filozoficznej szkoły lwowsko-warszawskiej. W czasie II wojny światowej myśliciel ten spędził około 5 lat w niemieckich obozach jenieckich. Nie poddał się jednak wówczas atmosferze niepokoju i rezygnacji, nie pogrążył w strachu przed długotrwałą niewolą, lecz nieprzerwanie kontynuował swoją pracę naukową i dydaktyczną. W rezultacie, nie tylko zilustrował mechanizmy dehumanizacji zachodzące w rzeczywistości obozowej, ale także sformułował autorski intelektualny „program profilaktyczny”, który pozwalał obronić ludzką psychikę, osobowość, (...) doznania i emocje przed ich szkodliwym, destrukcyjnym wpływem. Jego fundamentem był świat ludzkiego wnętrza, postawa skupienia się na sferze wartości i przeżyć estetycznych oraz implikowanych przez nie specyficznie ludzkich działaniach. (shrink)

Taking Culture Seriously in Community Mental Health is a community-based participatory action research project in Ontario devoted to developing, pilot testing, and evaluating mental health service models grounded in the concept of "cultural empowerment." To ensure that the knowledge generated in the project is shared and used, the research collaborative places a heavy emphasis on communicating with stakeholder groups. This paper provides an overview of a communications policy designed to facilitate such sharing and use. It describes the development and key (...) features of the policy, focusing on the broad issues of principles, authorship and acknowledgment, and planning and procedures. (shrink)

One of the most widely applied techniques used to examine associative memory errors is the Deese-Roediger- McDermott paradigm. The aim of the present studies was to demonstrate a Polish version of the DRM paradigm and to test the characteristics of memory illusions evoked by this procedure for both recall and recognition. A normative study was conducted to prepare Polish stimuli material sharing similar characteristics as the lists in the English language version. Subsequently, the lists were applied to examine the effect (...) of prior recall on recognition, as well as the influence of retention interval on recall. The results revealed that the Polish version of the DRM paradigm induced a robust effect of false recall and recognition. Moreover, it was revealed that immediate recall of a single list led to a higher rate of both correct and false recall and that prior recall positively influenced recognition, leading to a higher rate of hits. (shrink)

This study was designed to determine the quality of service through the evaluation of hospitalized patients. An analysis of hospitalized patients’ subjective feelings towards service quality was carried out, in the context of the application of the SERVQUAL method. The pilot study was conducted in a Silesian hospital in a group of 29 young patients diagnosed with kidney disease. The study used a standard sheet of 22 SERVQUAL statements and an analysis of the significance of the 5 areas of quality (...) material important for the patient. According to the respondents, the most important of the 5 features that influence the quality of life is the ability of the ward staff to provide adequate medical services The least important were the aesthetics and ergonomics of rooms. Service quality gaps were seen in all the five dimensions as well as in the overall service quality. Hence, the following conclusions could be made: 1. The SERVQUAL method helps to identify discrepancies between perceptions of patients’ expectations in all the dimensions of quality of medical services. 2. For patients, the least important is the material dimension, whereas the one most affecting them is the dimension associated with the reliability of medical services. 3. An improvement of the level of satisfaction with the quality of medical services requires proper planning and effectiveness of implementation of health care services. 4. Research should be conducted on a larger population of patients. (shrink)

Neff's gripping images and poignant narratives are the stories that New Orleans citizens told one another - a view of the disaster not captured by the news cameras - and pho.

Nursing theories are typically anthropocentric and emphasize caring for a person as a unitary whole. They maintain the dualisms of human–nonhuman, natural–social and material–ideal. Recent developments in nonhuman ontology question the utility of that approach. One important philosopher in this new materialism is political theorist Jane Bennett. In this paper, I explore Bennett's vital materialism and enchantment as two concepts arising from the nonhuman turn that should inform nursing philosophy. Vital materialism considers the lively power of matter to affect the (...) world and be affected in relations. Enchantment refers to a sense of wonder and captivation with matter. While summarizing her important contributions, I also describe common criticisms and responses. I consider the human as an assemblage of matter as well as the agency or “thing power” of matter external to humans. This has implications for nursing thought and practice, and it can inform a more capacious research methodology. I also discuss how compassion fatigue or burnout and other professional issues may be seen as a form of disenchantment with the material world. I argue that embracing these and other elements of Bennett's new materialist philosophy can help nurses and other health professionals enrich their theories and practice to advance their disciplines and improve care for persons and populations. (shrink)

In the absence of shared beliefs and even common interests, it should not be surprising that so much of the well-intentioned art acquired for public spaces has failed—failed as art and as art for a civic site. The conventional wisdom of simply choosing “the best artist” and then turning him or her loose to create a work within time and budget guidelines lost much credibility with the drama of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc commission: the process of selection, erection, litigation, rejection, (...) and removal of the sculpture from the Federal Building plaza in New York City. The new conventional wisdom? The jury, not the artist, was ultimately responsible. For Serra did precisely the kind of work for which he is respected worldwide but in a context and for a specific public whose requirements, in their view, were not met but even abrogated by what Serra had done so well: made a Serra.The issues raised by this particular controversy as well as by the very different response now accorded the once-controversial Vietnam Veterans Memorial by Maya Lin, together with firsthand frustration with the selection process for public commissions, were some of the specific reasons for organizing the day-long symposium held 16 September 1989 in First Chicago Center under the auspices of Sculpture Chicago, a biennial exhibition and educational series. John Hallmark Neff, director of the First National Bank of Chicago’s art program, is a former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. He is the author of Anselm Kiefer: Brüch und Einung , and he is currently working on a book on Max Neuhaus and a catalogue essay for the forthcoming Agnes Denes retrospective exhibition. (shrink)

The article is a commentary to Susan Haack’s The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth. It consists of two parts. In the first one some doubts about Haack’s conception of partiality of truth are formulated. However, Haack’s concept of truth is treated as one of the assumptions and not brought up for discussion. In the second part of the article a simple typology of possible sources of truth’s partiality in science is presented. The list includes deliberate and unintentional omissions, (...) misleading, lack of scientific interest, unattainability, and epistemological problems with truth and realism. (shrink)

Heidegger and ethics is a contentious conjunction of terms. Martin Heidegger himself rejected the notion of ethics, while his endorsement of Nazism is widely seen as unethical. This major new study examines the complex and controversial issues involved in bringing them together. By working backwards through his work, from his 1964 claim that philosophy has been completed to _Being and Time_, his first major work, Joanna Hodge questions Heidegger's denial that his enquires were concerned with ethics. She discovers a (...) form of ethics in Heidegger's thinking which elucidates his important distinction between metaphysics and philosophy. Against many contemporary views, she proposes therefore that ethics can be retrieved and questions the relation between ethics and metaphysics that Heidegger had made so pervasive. (shrink)

Ballard et al. show how control structures using minimal state can be made flexible enough for complex cognitive tasks by using deictic pointers, but they do so within a specific computational framework. We discuss broader implications in cognition and memory and provide biological evidence for their theory. We also suggest an alternative account of pointer binding, which may better explain their limited number.

Language isn't the only way to cross modules, nor is it the only module with access to both input and output. Minds don't generally work across modules because this leads to combinatorial explosion in search and planning. Language is special in being a good vector for mimetics, so it becomes associated with useful cross-module concepts we acquire culturally. Further, language is indexical, so it facilitates computationally expensive operations.

The questions and methods of molecular biology and evolutionary biology are clearly distinct, yet a unified approach can lead to deep insights. Unfortunately, attempts to unify these approaches are fraught with pitfalls. In this informal series of questions and answers, we offer the mechanistically oriented biologist a set of steps to come up with evolutionarily reasonable and meaningful hypotheses. We emphasize the critical power and importance of carefully constructed null hypotheses, and we illustrate our ideas with examples representing a range (...) of topics, from the biology of aging, to protein structure, to speciation, and more. We also stress the importance of mathematics as the lingua franca for biologists of all stripes, and encourage mechanistic biologists to seek out quantitative collaborators to build explicit mathematical models, making their assumptions explicit, and their logic clear and testable. Biologists in all realms of inquiry stand to gain from strong bridges between our disciplines. (shrink)

Getting to peace is not a straightforward process. In Uganda, internal conflict has raged for more than 20 years between the Government and the Lord’s Resistance Army. The construction of a comprehensive negotiated settlement is at the mercy of conflicting ideologies and influences at the international, national and grassroots levels. This paper examines the Juba peace talks, the major actors in the negotiation process, and tension between prosecution and amnesty.

Według standardowej koncepcji krzywdy, inkorporującej test kontrfaktyczny, osoba B została skrzywdzona, jeśli na skutek działania x osoby A znalazła się w gorszej sytuacji niż ta, w której znajdowałaby się, gdyby osoba A nie zrealizowała tego działania. Zastosowanie tej koncepcji do wyborów prokreacyjnych napotyka jednak dwa poważne problemy teoretyczne: tzw. problem nie-istnienia, będący także istotą spraw sądowych z tytułu „wrongful life”, oraz problem nie-tożsamości, opisany przez Derka Parfita. Problemy te ujawniają, że standardowa koncepcja krzywdy prowadzi do wniosków, które są całkowicie sprzeczne (...) z powszechnie podzielanymi intuicjami dotyczącymi obowiązków moralnych rodziców wobec przyszłych dzieci. Celem niniejszego artykułu jest analiza alternatywnej koncepcji krzywdy – tzw. krzywdy progowej. Wykazane zostanie, że koncepcja ta jest oporna na problem nie-istnienie, ale nie jest w stanie w sposób satysfakcjonujący rozwiązać problemu nie-tożsamości. (shrink)