The Cramér–Rao bound, satisfied by classical Fisher information, a key quantity in information theory, has been shown in different contexts to give rise to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. In this paper, we show that the identification of the mean quantum potential, an important notion in Bohmian mechanics, with the Fisher information, leads, through the Cramér–Rao bound, to an uncertainty principle which is stronger, in general, than both Heisenberg and Robertson–Schrödinger uncertainty relations, allowing to experimentally test the validity (...) of such an identification. (shrink)

In a recent paper (Berry in Eur J Phys 42: 015401, 2020), the boundaries of superoscillatory regions (the regions where a function oscillates faster than its fastest Fourier component) of waves described by the Helmholtz equation in a uniform medium were related to zeros of the quantum potential, arising in the Madelung formulation of quantum mechanics. We generalize this result, showing that the relativistic counterpart, which is, essentially, a Klein-Gordon equation, exhibits the same behaviour, but in spacetime, giving rise to (...) anomalous values for the local mass (instead of local momenta, in the classical case). This amounts to the generalization of the condition for superoscillations from the magnitude of a vector, to the norm of a four-vector. For a photon, boundaries of superoscillatory regions are surfaces on which the photon’s trajectory is locally light-like, separating time-like and space-like regions, which correspond to real and imaginary local mass, respectively. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to reveal the scientific inconsistency and reactionary political essence of traditional and modern concepts that distort the truth about the Great Patriotic War and the most common techniques used for this, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to propose measures to ensure an offensive strategy to protect historical truth. The scientific novelty consists in the unique author's classification of Russophobic concepts and techniques into two directions, and within their framework in the (...) analysis of their content through relevant aspects and discourses. The result of the analysis carried out are proposals to neutralize hostile propaganda, provide an offensive strategy to combat falsifiers and protect historical truth. (shrink)

August 2006 marked the 10th anniversary of landmark legislation when Israel’s parliament passed the unique Patient’s Rights Law. This law underscores the importance of medical ethics in Israeli society. During a seminar at the Shaare Zedek School of Nursing, third-year students performed a qualitative research study investigating ethical issues arising in the field of nursing, and how nursing staff dealt with these issues in relation to the law. The research was conducted using semistructured questionnaires. The results showed that the staff (...) participants knew the law, but did not differentiate between legal and ethical problems. The establishment of a framework for dealing with these issues would help to promote professional ethics, encourage broad-based agreements related to ethical decisions, reduce ethical conflict, and increase implementation of the law on patients’ rights. (shrink)

This text was conceived as an attempt to describe the organizational field of veterinary medicine of companion animals in Russia and its impact on the processes of formation of the profession of veterinarians of companion animals as a separate professional group. Having emerged in the early 1990s in Russia as a separate branch of veterinary medicine, veterinary medicine of companion aimals has gone from intuitive practices of treating dogs and cats to a complex organizational field with many actors. Despite such (...) rapid development, this area, unlike agricultural veterinary medicine, still considerably lacks strong institutional regulation. The profession of a veterinarian of companion animals does not live in the conventional continental model of professionalization for our region but it is market-oriented and develops through the veterinarians' own efforts while they do not exist outside veterinary clinics - their own organizational field. The article offers a description of this organizational field and analyzes the influence of its structure on the processes of professionalization of veterinarians of companion animals. (shrink)

Altruistic behavior and motivation has traditionally been regarded as a defense mechanism defined by the vicissitudes of instinctual gratification. In this article, we suggest that there exists a substantial body of evidence from the fields of ethology, infant research, and experimental psychology to support the existence of an independently motivated altruism that is nondefensive in nature. We attempt to show how the view of altruism as a universal motivational system stems from the recent developments in evolutionary theory and contributes to (...) our understanding of intrapsychic factors influencing human behavior in general and the process of psychotherapy in particular. It is not our goal to prove the existence of "pure altruism" that can never be derived from selfish motives. Rather, our thesis is that self-oriented and altruistic motivations are equal and essential partners in human evolution and development. It is the optimal balance of these two forces that is necessary for evolutionary advancement and for psychological health. (shrink)

This article presents an examination of the ethical code of nursing in Israel, focusing on the nurse-patient, nurse-colleague, and nurse-professional leadership relationships. This article offers for the first English translation of the Israel Nursing Association’s Code of Ethics to facilitate international scholarly discussion, and to critique this Code through the lens of Asa Kasher’s philosophical test, thereby examining its completeness and practical utility. As it stands today, the code lacks clarification of the professional ethical uniqueness of nursing. To address this (...) gap, the article adopts a philosophical approach using Kasher’s test named the Three Components of the Practical Ideal to distill the distinctive ethical obligations imposed on nursing professionals. The article highlights the importance of professionalism in nursing, encompassing expertise, autonomy, and recognition, as emphasized in the Code of Ethics. However, the current code does not explicitly delineate the unique requirements specific to nursing. Thus, the article proposes the integration of these explicit requirements into the Code of Ethics through collaborative efforts. Furthermore, it emphasizes the crucial role of nursing education and training programs in fostering professional identity formation based on the strengthening of the commitment to relevant ethical principles. The article contributes to the advancement of nursing ethics by providing a comprehensive framework for understanding and implementing proper ethical conduct within the nursing profession. (shrink)

Afhandlinger om den tyske filosof Ernst Bloch's værker og idéer.

Reinicke, H. Einleitung, abenteuerliches Philosophieren für die Revolution.--Bloch, E. Vom Anbruch gemeinsamer Meinungen.--Bloch, E. Briefe an Joachim Schumacher.--Adorno, T. W. Für Ernst Bloch.--Bloch, E. Friedrich Engels als Polyhistor.--Bloch, E., Reinicke, H. Gespräch, Sokratisches zu Berufsverbot und Studentenbewegung.--Bloch, E. Offener Brief.--Schumacher, J. Erlebtes, Gespräche, das Unvergessliche (1932-77).--Schmidt, B. Über die Grundfrage Blochschen Philosophierens.

This commentary criticises Bering on two counts. First, because we do not know what he attributes to natural selection and what he sees as derived representations. Second, Bering's ethnography of religion is inadequate. People who practise ancestor worship are not concerned with their own survival but with that of others. Many supernatural beings are not thought of as morally motivated.

Most decisions in life involve ambiguity, where probabilities can not be meaningfully specified, as much as they involve probabilistic uncertainty. In such conditions, the aspiration to utility maximization may be self-deceptive. We propose “robust satisficing” as an alternative to utility maximizing as the normative standard for rational decision making in such circumstances. Instead of seeking to maximize the expected value, or utility, of a decision outcome, robust satisficing aims to maximize the robustness to uncertainty of a satisfactory outcome. That is, (...) robust satisficing asks, “what is a ‘good enough’ outcome,” and then seeks the option that will produce such an outcome under the widest set of circumstances. We explore the conditions under which robust satisficing is a more appropriate norm for decision making than utility maximizing. (shrink)

Bloch's The Spirit of Utopia, here presented for the first time in English translation, is one of the great historic books from the beginning of the twentieth-century. A peculiar amalgam of biblical, Marxist, and Expressionist turns, drawing on both Hegel and Schopenhauer for the groundwork of its metaphysics of music, but consistently interpreting the cultural legacy in the light of a certain Marxism, The Spirit of Utopia is a unique attempt to rethink the history of Western civilizations as a (...) process of revolutionary disruptions and to reread the artworks, religions, and philosophies of this tradition as incentives to continue disrupting. The first part concerns a mode of 'self-encounter' which presents itself in the history of music from Mozart through Mahler as an encounter with the problem of a community to come. The second part is entitled 'Karl Marx, Death and the Apocalypse'. (shrink)

Die mit 126 Briefen und Gegenbriefen fast luckenlos erhaltene Geschaftskorrespondenz des Philosophen Ernst Bloch (1885 -1977) mit dem Aufbau-Verlag Berlin ist ein buch- und verlagsgeschichtliches Zeitdokument erster Ordnung: Es belegt alle ...

Olivier Bloch travaille sur l'histoire de la philosophie, et plus particulièrement sur l'histoire des doctrines, courants et traditions matérialistes, dans le domaine de la philosophie antique et dans celui de la philosophie de l'âge classique (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles), en particulier en France (Descartes, Gassendi et ses disciples, les philosophes matérialistes du XVIIIe siècle), et en Grande-Bretagne (Hobbes). Depuis le début des années 80, ses recherches portent principalement sur les traditions libertines et clandestines de l'âge classique et leur prolongement (...) dans le matérialisme des Lumières, et, dans cette perspective, sur les rapports entre matérialisme et littérature, avec un intérêt tout particulier pour Cyrano de Bergerac, puis Molière. Ses collègues ont voulu lui rendre hommage par ce recueil d'études sur ses domaines de prédilection. (shrink)

Ernst Bloch gives a striking account of materialism that traces emancipatory elements of modern thought to medieval Islamic philosophers' encounter with Aristotle. He argues that the great medieval Islamic philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina) planted the seeds of a radical materialism still relevant for critical theory today.

Surprise and change are the way of the world. Philosophers have known this at least since Thales, and practical men knew it long before. Variety and the continual flux of one thing into another is, for Peirce, a central notion. A very similar conception underlies the information-gap theory of uncertainty and its application to decisions with severely deficient understanding which I have argued for earlier. For Haack, whose treatment of warrant is strongly non-probabilistic, info-gap theory is a natural context. The (...) connection between Peirce, Haack and info-gap theory is explored in this paper. (shrink)

Background: In Israel, caring for people with end-stage dementia confined to home is mainly done by home care units, and in some cases by home hospice units, an alternative palliative-care service. Because life expectancy is relatively unknown, and the patient’s decision-making ability is poor, caring for this unique population raises ethical dilemmas regarding when to define the disease as having reached a terminal stage, as well as choosing between palliative and life-prolonging-oriented care. Objectives: Exploring and describing differences and similarities of (...) professional staff members’ (PSMs’) and family caregivers’ perceptions of caring for people with end-stage dementia in two different settings. Design: Qualitative research, using semi-structured interviews analyzed through a thematic content–analysis approach. Participants: Sixty-four interviews were conducted (24 PSMs and 40 family caregivers) in two care-settings—home hospice unit and home care unit. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee (BBL00118-17). Findings: We found dilemmas regarding palliative care to be the main theme, including definition of the disease as terminal, choosing “comfort” over “life-prolonging,” clarifying patients’ wishes and deciding whether or not to use artificial feeding. Discussion: Both PSMs and family caregivers deal with ethical dilemmas and have reached different conclusions, both legitimate. Comprehending dementia as a terminal disease influenced participants’ perceptions of the relevancy of palliative care for people with end-stage dementia. Discrepancies between PSMs and family caregivers in caring for people with end-stage dementia were found in both home hospice unit and home care unit environments, raising potential conflicts regarding decisions for end-of-life care. Conclusions: Communication between PSMs and family caregivers is crucial for the discussion about the discrepancies regarding the unique dilemmas of caring for people with end-stage dementia and bridging the gap between them. Lack of communication and resources can hamper the provision of an acceptable solution for quality and equality of care in the best interest of people with end-stage dementia. (shrink)

Taking notice of race is both risky and inevitable, in medicine no less than in other endeavors. On the one hand, race can be a useful stand-in for unstudied genetic and environmental factors that yield differences in disease expression and therapeutic response. Attention to race can make a therapeutic difference, to the point of saving lives. On the other hand, racial distinctions have social meanings that are often pejorative or worse, especially when these distinctions are cast as culturally or biologically (...) fixed. I argue in this essay that we should start with a presumption against racial categories in medicine, but permit their use when it might prolong lives or meaningfully improve health. Use of racial categories should be understood as an interim step; follow-up inquiry into the factors that underlie race-correlated clinical differences is important both to improve the efficacy of clinical care and to prevent race in itself from being misunderstood as a biological determinant. If we pursue such inquiry with vigor, the pernicious effects of racial categories on public understanding can be managed. But perverse market and regulatory incentives create the danger that use of race will be “locked-in,” once drugs or other therapies are approved. These incentives should be revisited. (shrink)

" Se moquer de la philosophie, c'est vraiment philosopher. " Ce propos de Pascal, Olivier Bloch l'illustre et le confirme par le présent ouvrage, en s'attachant à démontrer la part de philosophie inhérente au texte de Molière et le jeu théâtral auquel elle renvoie. La philosophie, dont le terme et le concept courent tout au long de l'œuvre de Molière, c'est celle de son temps, au premier chef celle de Descartes, mais aussi les philosophies antagonistes comme celle de Gassendi. (...) L'étude d'Olivier Bloch nous montre que les pièces les plus célèbres de Molière - Dom Juan, Les Femmes Savantes, Tartuffe... comme d'autres moins connues - Amphitryon, Les Amants magnifiques... - mettent littéralement en scène des propos, des débats et des concepts caractéristiques de ces philosophies. Ce constat n'a rien d'anecdotique : nous découvrons ainsi que Molière avait une connaissance et une compréhension des problèmes philosophiques de son époque qui dépassent ce que l'on avait soupçonné jusqu'alors. Sur le registre de l'humour, il détourne à travers ses pièces les thèmes philosophiques majeurs de l'époque classique (Dieu et les preuves de son existence, l'âme et le corps, le Moi, etc.) et fait écho à leur mise en cause dans la Culture du XVIIe siècle. Lecture originale et subtile de Molière, cet essai éclaire son œuvre, les débats de son époque et les rapports qu'entretiennent la littérature, le théâtre, la comédie, le rire et la philosophie. (shrink)