Objective—To explore the opinions of unpaid healthy volunteers on the payment of research subjects.Design—Prospective cohort.Setting—Southern Alberta, Canada.Participants—Medically eligible persons responding to recruiting advertisements for a randomised vaccine trial were invited to take part in a study of informed consent at the point at which they formally consented or refused trial participation. Of 72 invited, 67 returned questionnaires at baseline and 54 at follow-up.Outcome measures—Proportions of persons who agreed or disagreed with three close-ended statements on the payment of research subjects; themes (...) and categories identified by content analysis of responses to an open-ended question.Results—A minority agreed with paying either patient or healthy volunteer participants. Opinions did not change over time. Participants' comments addressed: benefits and drawbacks to research participation; benefits and drawbacks to paying research participants; conditions under which payment of research subjects would be acceptable, and the nature of acceptable recognition. Acceptable conditions were to improve problematic recruitment, to reimburse costs, and to recognise participants, particularly for their time investment. Both non-monetary and monetary recognition of volunteers were thought to be appropriate.Conclusions—Most unpaid volunteers disagreed with paying research participants. The themes arising from their comments are similar to those that have been raised by ethicists and suggest that recognising the time and effort of participants should receive greater emphasis than presently occurs. (shrink)

A survey of 106 medical students assessing their interest in and attitudes to medical ethics in the curriculum is reported by the authors. Results indicate that 64 per cent of the students rated the importance of medical ethics to good medical care as high or critical and 66 per cent desired to learn more about the topic. However, in reports of patient encounters identifying ethical issues, less than six per cent of the students reported a frequency of more than one (...) such patient encounter per week. The students also demonstrated a greater awareness of more obvious ethical issues than of more subtle, less publicised issues. When asked how medical ethics should be taught, the students clearly affirmed a desire for an integrated exposure to the subject throughout the medical curriculum. Possible implications of these findings for medical education are discussed. (shrink)

Imitation recognition provides a viable platform from which advanced social cognitive skills may develop. Despite evidence that non-human primates are capable of imitation recognition, how this ability is related to social cognitive skills is unknown. In this study, we compared imitation recognition performance, as indicated by the production of testing behaviors, with performance on a series of tasks that assess social and physical cognition in 49 chimpanzees. In the initial analyses, we found that males were more responsive than females to (...) being imitated and engaged in significantly greater behavior repetitions and testing sequences. We also found that subjects who consistently recognized being imitated performed better on social but not physical cognitive tasks, as measured by the Primate Cognitive Test Battery. These findings suggest that the neural constructs underlying imitation recognition are likely associated with or among those underlying more general socio-communicative abilities in chimpanzees. Implications regarding how imitation recognition may facilitate other social cognitive processes, such as mirror self-recognition, are discussed. (shrink)

El pensamiento de Bertrand Russell, por M. Garrido.--La lógica y la matemática en la producción de Bertrand Russell, por J. Sanniartín Esplugues.--Bertrand Russell, filósofo, por J.L. Blasco.--La teoría y la praxis social de Bertrand Russell, por J. Carabaña.--Dos textos de Bertrand Russell.--Bio-bibliografía de Bertrand Russell, por A. García Suárez (p. [53]-79).

Venkataramanaiah, V. Introduction.--Narla, V. R. Russell and his rejection of religion.--Mehta, G. L. The sceptical crusader.--Dalvi, G. R. Russell, the man.--Venkatarao, V. The nuclear war and the future of man.--Innaiah, N. Bertrand Russell's philosophy.--Subbarayudu, P. Rationality vis-a-vis faith.--Nageswar Rao, B. Russell and nuclear warfare.--Rajagopala Rao, M. Rebel in Russell.--Shankar, G. N. J. The man who revolutionised modern thought.--Maharajasri. Russell, the social scientist in the four-dimensional universe.--The life of Bertrand Russell.--Acknowledgements.--A list of principal works (...) of Bertrand Russell.--Russell's conception of good society in a democratic socialist order.--Objects. (shrink)

The author has succeeded in producing a volume which will be valuable to anyone who wishes to acquire a more catholic view of British analytic philosophy than the one offered in the works of Urmson, Warnock, and Ayer. The bibliography contains 698 items, and each of the ten chapters is amply footnoted with suggestions for further investigations. In the first chapter, Riverso meets the charge of antihistoricism by arguing convincingly that twentieth century analysis is the culmination of a movement which (...) began with Descartes' Regulae ad directionem ingenii. In the following three chapters he considers the entire Cambridge movement from its origin in B. Russell's and G. E. Moore's refutation of idealism to the disintegration of logical atomism in the second Wittgenstein. Italian readers will find especially useful Riverso's clear discussion of the impact of Wittgenstein's Tractatus on the Vienna circle, of his analysis of Ayer's radical refutation of metaphysics, as well as of the polemics of Lazerowitz and Malcolm against the principle of verifiability. In the final four chapters, Riverso takes on the arduous task of telling the story of the whole Oxonian movement. He clarifies beautifully the reasons for the transformation from normal analysis to ordinary language, and finally to the various types of grammatical elucidations of Ryle, Austin, and Strawson. Riverso dedicates a chapter each to the language of perception, the concept of person, religious language, and metaethics. In the concluding pages, he launches into passionate defense of analysis as the best therapy for our social ills and as the only alternative to Marxist ideology.--L. M. P. (shrink)

This is a nonsense book. It summarizes essential tenets of Pölätüöism, which is the definitive reconciliation of modern science and Roman Catholicism, and chronicles the long and eventful life of its founder. Although neither the cleverness nor the taste maintains a uniform excellence, there is much delightful satire on recent philosophy and religion. Pölätüö's interview with Russell, and his paper "On the Reality of the Soul and on the Reality of Onion," are two of the highlights.--W. L. M.

Three major problems continue to perplex every interpreter of Stoic logic since Lukasiewicz's [[sic]] revolutionary studies in 1932: the alleged opposition of Stoic dialectic to Aristotelian syllogistic; the baffling status of "implication" in Diodorus and Chrysippus; the questionable completeness of the Stoic system based on the five "indemonstrables." Expanding on Lukasiewicz's [[sic]] findings, Benson Mates and Mary Kneale argued for interpreting Stoic logic in terms of a logic propositions formally analogous to our propositional calculus. Furthermore Mates and, to a less (...) extent, Kneale cast doubts on the accepted opinion that Diodorus' "implication" was the ancient version of what C. I. Lewis calls "strict implication," and opted for B. Russell's "formal implication," while attributing the first type of implication to Chrysippus alone. Finally Mates, Kneale, and Reymond questioned the alleged completeness of the Stoic logic system. Among recent logicians this very question still calls for an answer. In form and content, Mignucci's knowledgeable study on the meaning of Stoic logic is a lucid restatement of his predecessors published conclusions. With the exception of the first chapter devoted to a résumé of the main contributions in the field, the remaining sections of his essay are organized around Mates' topical structure of Stoic epistemology and semantics, the doctrine of the proposition, and the theory of the five "anapodictics." Mignucci makes, however, two relevant additions which may raise suspicion among the most rigorous of logicians. In the first chapter and again in the conclusion of his essay, he analyzes carefully the alleged opposition of Aristotle's logic of classes to the Stoic logic of propositions. For Mignucci, the acceptance of the logic of propositions implies one's commitment to an ontological domain which is incompatible with the metaphysical discourse of the logic of classes. He argues that the two logics are complete and formally analogous only in the sense that from the Stoic first axiom and from the Aristotelian Barbara one can deduce all the rules which constitute their respective logics. This completeness is, however, logically dependent upon the Aristotelian and Stoic view of reality.--L. M. P. (shrink)