Increasing ethical attention and debate is focusing on whether individuals who take part in clinical trials should be given access to post-trial care. However, the main focus of this debate has been upon drug trials undertaken in low-income settings. To broaden this debate, we report findings from interviews with individuals (n = 24) who participated in a clinical trial of a closed-loop system, which is a medical device under development for people with type 1 diabetes that automatically adjusts blood glucose (...) to help keep it within clinically recommended ranges. Individuals were recruited from UK sites and interviewed following trial close-out, at which point the closed-loop had been withdrawn. While individuals were stoical and accepting of the requirement to return the closed-loop, they also conveyed varying degrees of distress. Many described having relaxed diabetes management practices while using the closed-loop and having become deskilled as a consequence, which made reverting back to pre-trial regimens challenging. Participants also described unanticipated consequences arising from using a closed-loop. As well as deskilling, these included experiencing psychological and emotional benefits that could not be sustained after the closed-loop had been withdrawn and participants reevaluating their pre- and post-trial life in light of having used a closed-loop and now perceiving this life much more negatively. Participants also voiced frustrations about experiencing better blood glucose control using a closed-loop and then having to revert to using what they now saw as antiquated and imprecise self-management tools. We use these findings to argue that ethical debates about post-trial provisioning need to be broadened to consider potential psychological and emotional harms, and not just clinical harms, that may result from withdrawal of investigated treatments. We also suggest that individuals may benefit from information about potential nonclinical harms to help make informed decisions about trial participation. (shrink)

This book provides a collection of sources, many of them fragmentary and previously scattered and hard to access, for the development of Peripatetic philosophy in the later Hellenistic period and the early Roman Empire. It also supplies the background against which the first commentator on Aristotle from whom extensive material survives, Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. AD 200), developed his interpretations which continue to be influential even today. Many of the passages are here translated into English for the first time, (...) including the whole of the summary of Peripatetic ethics attributed to 'Arius Didymus'. (shrink)

I Foundations i Every account of Nietzsche is an interpretation. Perhaps students of him are inclined to forget the extent to which this is also true of ...

The sublime has long been a key concept in the study of aesthetics. However, it has failed to gain traction in empirical aesthetics. With reference to Longinus, Burke, and Kant, this cross-disciplinary article defines the sublime as a mixture of fascination, exaltation, boundlessness, and fear. These descriptors are then compared with those of peak, ecstatic, and mystical psychological experiences; it is argued that they represent different approaches to the same phenomenon. In order to render sublime aesthetic states experimentally accessible, the (...) interplay of three factors is discussed. Firstly, focused attention and absorption are highlighted as active ingredients catalysing altered states. Secondly, external-to-internal entrainment is posited as a means by which a sense of continuity is established between perceiver and percept. Thirdly, it is recognized that autobiographical context and physical empathy will determine the extent to which any stimulus is capable of eliciting sublime feelings in an individual. (shrink)

According to the author Rorty´s romanticism is limited by postanalytical presuppositions. Consequently, Rorty should be considered a "modern enlightened man". Due to his disbelief in the concept od "experience", in searching for something beyond "vocabularies", Rorty ignores an important fact: Humans are interconnected with their world also by other relationships, not only by those, which can be formulated in banal, everyday "rational" language. In order to show more clearly the blind spot of the postanalyticians he tries to compare Rorty´s approach (...) with that of Michel Foucault, who attempted at reintroducing the forgotten conception of truth as a personal "proof" or "battle". Thus he wanted to confirm the superiority of ac_ting over thinking, of experiment over clearly defined and intelligible "vocabulary". According to the author this approach is much closer to romanticism than that of Rorty. (shrink)

The case for God -- Possibilities -- The illusion of Descartes -- Self-creation, part 1 -- Self-creation, part 2 -- Self-existence -- Necessary being -- The God of the Bible vs. the God of philosophy -- Kant's moral argument -- Vanity of vanities -- The psychology of atheism.

Some statements are called reflexive. For example, the statement : „ This sentence consists of six words”. The reflexivity lies in the fact that the statement refers to itself. Reflexivity in the sense of self-reference can be used systematically as a philosophical method. Usually the use of this method (as I explain in section I) leads to some form or other of scepticism. But in addition, and this is the point of the article, this method can be used as a (...) means of finding certain grounds (foundations). This is argued in sections II-IV by means of an analysis of the „ transcendental pragmatics“ of Karl-Otto Apel. (shrink)