OBJECTIVES: Life-sustaining treatment at the end of life gives rise to many ethical problems in Japan. Recent surveys of Japanese physicians suggested that they tend to treat terminally ill patients aggressively. We studied why Japanese physicians were reluctant to withhold or withdraw life-support from terminally ill patients and what affected their decisions. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: A qualitative study design was employed, using a focus group interview with seven physicians, to gain an in-depth understanding of attitudes and rationales in Japan regarding (...) medical care at the end of life. RESULTS: Analysis revealed that physicians and patients' family members usually make decisions about life-sustaining treatment, while the patients' wishes are unavailable or not taken into account. Both physicians and family members tend to consider withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment as abandonment or even killing. The strongest reason to start cardiopulmonary resuscitation- and to continue it until patients' family members arrive-seems to be the family members' desire to be at the bedside at the time of death. All physicians participating in our study regarded advance directives that provide information as to patients' wishes about life-sustaining treatment desirable. All expressed concern, however, that it would be difficult to forego or discontinue life-support based on a patient's advance directive, particularly when the patient's family opposed the directive. CONCLUSION: Our group interview suggested several possible barriers to death with dignity and the appropriate use of advance directives in Japan. Further qualitative and quantitative research in this regard is needed. (shrink)

The question of whether knowledge is definable in terms of belief, which has played an important role in epistemology for the last 50 years, is studied here in the framework of epistemic and doxastic logics. Three notions of definability are considered: explicit definability, implicit definability, and reducibility, where explicit definability is equivalent to the combination of implicit definability and reducibility. It is shown that if knowledge satisfies any set of axioms contained in S5, then it cannot be explicitly defined in (...) terms of belief. S5 knowledge can be implicitly defined by belief, but not reduced to it. On the other hand, S4.4 knowledge and weaker notions of knowledge cannot be implicitly defined by belief, but can be reduced to it by defining knowledge as true belief. It is also shown that S5 knowledge cannot be reduced to belief and justification, provided that there are no axioms that involve both belief and justification. (shrink)

Medical paternalism has long been a common medical practice. However, patient autonomy in healthcare has been recently adopted by doctors and patients alike. This study explored whether doctors and patients in a tertiary care hospital in Saudi Arabia preferred autonomy or paternalism in shared decision‐making. A total of 118 participants (51 patients requiring total knee replacement, owing to stages 3–4 of osteoarthritis, and 67 doctors) from the Eastern province, Saudi Arabia. responded to a 17‐question category‐based questionnaire involving four scales of (...) autonomy. Descriptive statistics and chi‐square test results revealed that in this hospital, patients preferred a paternalistic approach toward their medical care along with a full disclosure of the risks related to surgical procedures. We recommend health education regarding the specific autonomy subscales (doctor knows best, patient should decide, right to non‐participation, and obligatory risk information), and the implementation of protocols that protect patients' rights and enhance personal autonomy. (shrink)

This essay revisits the significance of Kaufmann's Toledot ha-emunah ha-yisre'elit in Jewish intellectual history, as its reception has hitherto been somewhat reductive. His work is generally viewed as an anti-Christian polemic with a Zionist agenda that sought to glorify the formative period of his people. A closer look at his intellectual background, as well as his theoretical framework, leads us to a different understanding of his work in general and of its alleged nationalistic features in particular. The essay shows, inter (...) alia, that Kaufmann was already making a Diltheyan hermeneutic turn decades before others in his field. (shrink)

Two thought experiments are discussed which suggest, first, a geometric interpretation of the concept of a (say, vector) potential (i.e., as a kinematic quantity associated with a transformation between moving frames of reference suitably related to the problem) and, second, that, in a quantum treatment one should extend the notion of the equivalence principle to include not only the equivalence of inertial forces with suitable “real” forces, but also the equivalence of potentials of such inertial forces and the potentials of (...) suitable real forces. The two types of cancellation are physically independent of each other, because of the Aharonov-Bohm effect. Finally, we show that the latter effect itself can be understood “geometrically” as a kinematic effect arising upon the transformation between the two reference frames. (shrink)

"Deep Words contains translations of "Honso, the "Core Text" of "Gengo, by Miura Baien, 1723-1789 - a widely renowned Japanese teacher and writer of his time; ...

I present first what I take to be a more interesting item than the others. O.C 716–19. δ' ερετμος κπαγλ' λα χερ σ ✝παραπτομναπλτα θρσκει, τν κατομπδων νηρῄδων κλουθος. The above is Pearson's text, except that I have transferred the last syllable of his 716 to the beginning of my 717. Careful consideration of the metre of this stasimon has convinced me that 716 is rightly regarded by Schroeder as an ionic trimeter ; further, that 717 is what most people (...) call a glyconic, as is also 718. Naturally therefore I follow Hermann and Jebb as regards the text in 704, and have thus no use for the three conjectures mentioned by Pearson as substitutes for our admittedly corrupt παραπτομνα. (shrink)

Works by a 19th century Bengali teacher, journalist, and nationalist; most on Hinduism and philosophy.

The modern conception of race is often thought by philosophers to have developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in response to a unique confluence of scientific, philosophical, and imperial forces; and in recent decades some impressive work has been done to excavate the details of its construction during this period. . . . I will argue, however, that an analysis of the visual images created by Europeans during the first half-century after 1492 reveals that the essential elements of the (...) late modern conception of race are put into place during that period. In brief, the tremendous social, economic, and political pressures that culminate in this comparatively brief moment yield the modern notion of "the savage." I will suggest that from its inception this notion is an inherently radicalized one, and that it is the nodal point for the more familiar eighteenth- and nineteenth-century understandings of non-European races. Moreover, I will argue that the modern notion of the savage is synthesized, not directly from the Noachic legends, but from images drawn, sometimes literally, on the margins of medieval understandings of humanity: powerful and deeply entrenched images of the Wild Man and the monstrous races. (shrink)

Self-deception may be a natural consequence of active goal operation instead of an adaptation for negotiating the social world. We argue that because autonomous goal programs likely drove human judgment and behavior prior to evolution of a central executive or “self,” these goal programs can operate independently to attain their desired end states and thereby produce outcomes that “deceive” the individual.

Challenges to Legal Theory offers the reader a fascinating journey though a variety of multi-disciplinary topics, ranging from law and literature, and law and religion, to legal philosophy and constitutional law. The collection reflects some of the challenges that the field of legal theory currently faces. It is compiled by a selection of international and Spanish scholars, whose essays are made available in English translation for the first time. The volume is based on a collection of essays, published in Spanish, (...) in honour of Professor José Iturmendi Morales, of Complutense University, Madrid, and brings the rich scholarship of pre-eminent Spanish scholars of law and legal theory to an international audience. (shrink)

THE OCCASION FOR THE ESSAYS RESPONDING TO MANAGING DIVERSITY IN academe follows in response to a challenge issued by Miguel De La Torre in a 2006 plenary panel regarding the invisibility of minority scholars' work in SCE publications. That 2006 panel, which included presentations by De La Torre, Melanie Harris, Gabriel Salgado, and Darryl Trimiew, stimulated discussions in both the Women's Caucus and the meeting of the Board of Directors; this set of essays from a 2008 plenary session and a (...) concurrent session held later in the meeting is the result of those earlier discussions. The two sessions both address diversity: these essays feature minority voices presenting specific proposals for how minority scholarship should and should not be used by majority and other minority scholars; the concurrent session featured a discussion by majority scholars on what whites must do to diversify the society. Our hope is that these essays and the discussions they generate will shed more light on this extremely complex and important issue for the SCE and the institutions in which members work. (shrink)

We interpret the (formal) postulates of measurement in quantum theory in terms of measurement procedures that can be done in the laboratory (at least in principle).

How do we ready ourselves to intervene responsively in the contingent situations that arise in co-designing to make change? How do we attune to group dynamics and respond ethically to unpredictable developments when working with 'community'? Participatory Design can contribute to social transitions, yet its focus is often tightly tuned to technique for designing ICT at the cost of participatory practice. We challenge PD conventions by addressing what happens as we step into a situation to alter it with others, an (...) aspect of practice that cannot be replicated or interchanged. We do so to argue that practices of readiness are constituted by personal histories, experiences, philosophies and culture. We demonstrate this political argument by giving reflexive accounts of our dimensions of preparation. The narratives here are distinct, yet reveal complementary theories and worldviews that shape PD ontologies. We have organized these around the qualities of punctuation and poise as a way to draw out some less easily articulated aspects of PD practice. (shrink)

Elencos y discursos -- Discurso en los exámenes generales del Colegio El Salvador, pronunciado el 16 de diciembre de 1858 -- Aforismos -- Cuestión de método -- Impugnación a Cousin.

John Deely uses the way of signs not only to establish the contact and dependencies between human thought and action and the surrounding physical universe, but also to account for a social construction of reality as part of human experience beyond mere “thinking thing”. Experiencing evolutionary love is a reciprocal exchange of desire, which is the primary strength of Eros, where eroticism and semiotics intertwine. When Deely states that all animals signify, but only human animals are capable of developing semiotics, (...) he opens a whole way of understanding for us to move beyond the definition of human being as a rational animal into a “semiotic animal” that is also capable of love. (shrink)