Some environmentalists have argued that an effective ecological conscience may be rooted in a perspective that is either anthropocentric or sentiocentric. But, neither seems to have had any substantial effect on the ways in which our species treats nature. In looking to successfully awaken the ecological conscience, the focus should be on extending moral consideration to the land (wherein doing so includes all of the soils, waters, plants, animals, and the collectivity of which these things comprise) by means of coming (...) to love the land. Coming to love the land involves coming to view the land’s interests as our own—and, conferring upon the land a kind of moral patient-hood. In order to perceive the land’s “subjectivity,” and so, to come to love the land, we must relearn the way to look at the land by viewing its personality through the lens of he or she who can already do so, i.e., the nature writer. (shrink)

BackgroundThe theory and practice of ethics consultations (ECs) in health care are still characterized by many controversies, including, for example, the practice of giving recommendations. These controversies are complicated by an astonishing lack of evidence in the whole field. It is not clear how often a recommendation is issued in ethics consultations and when and why this step is taken. Especially in a facilitation model in which giving recommendations is optional, more data would be helpful to evaluate daily practice, ensure (...) that this practice is in line with the overarching goals of this approach and support the development of standards.MethodsWe analyzed all consultations requested from an EC service working under a facilitation approach at a maximum-care university hospital in Germany over a period of more than 10 years. Our aim was to better understand why—and under what circumstances—some consultation requests result in a recommendation, whereas others can be sufficiently addressed solely by facilitated meetings. We especially wanted to know when and why clients felt the need for clear advice from the EC service while in other cases they did not. We compared ethics consultations in terms of the differences between cases with and without recommendations issued by the ethics consultants using χ2 difference tests and Welch’s t-test.ResultsA total of 243 ECs were carried out between September 2008 and December 2019. In approximately half of the cases, a recommendation was given. All recommendations were issued upon the request of clients. When physicians asked for an EC, the consultation was significantly more likely to result in a recommendation than when the EC was requested by any other party. ECs in cases on wards with ethics rounds resulted in comparably fewer recommendations than those in wards without ethics rounds. When interpersonal conflicts were part of the problem or relatives were present in the meeting, clients less frequently asked for a recommendation.ConclusionFrom the client’s point of view, there does not seem to be only one “right” way to provide ethics consultations, but rather several. While facilitated meetings are obviously appreciated by clients, there also seem to be situations in which a recommendation is desired (especially by physicians). Further empirical and theoretical research is needed to validate our single-center results and re-evaluate the role of recommendations in ethics consultations. (shrink)

Purpose. Considers the possibility of establishing the Hospitality Philosophy as an independent field of philosophical knowledge. Theoretical basis. Theoretical basis for this issue is the numerous philosophical researches on the topic of hospitality (anthropological, phenomenological, ethical, social-philosophical etc.) and the analysis of its essence and paradigmatic antinomy in the historicalphilosophical way. Scientific novelty. The article attempts to revitalise the notion of philotechnics (φιλοτεχνία) as 'the art of taking care of the guest's welfare' as a possible basic concept of contemporary philosophy (...) of hospitality, which is able to reflect its nature most concisely, including its utilitarian and extra-utilitarian functions – not only a high service level, but also a “humane” attitude towards the guest. Findings. It has been summarized that modern hospitality as a specific human activity needs its own philosophy, which would comprehensively analyze the concept, study the facets and forms of its manifestations, define the worldview paradigm, form a methodology and be able to lead to an understanding of the goals of hospitality, to orient modern hospitality models to achieve certain and clear quality indicators while respecting historically verified value constants. (shrink)

We study a strengthening of the notion of a perfectly meager set. We say that a subset A of a perfect Polish space X is countably perfectly meager in X, if for every sequence of perfect subsets $\{P_n: n \in \mathbb N\}$ of X, there exists an $F_\sigma $ -set F in X such that $A \subseteq F$ and $F\cap P_n$ is meager in $P_n$ for each n. We give various characterizations and examples of countably perfectly meager sets. We prove (...) that not every universally meager set is countably perfectly meager correcting an earlier result of Bartoszyński. (shrink)

A patient suffering from a severe illness that is entering its terminal stage is forced to develop a coping process. Of all the coping patterns, the religious one stands out as being a psychological resource available to all patients regardless of culture, learning, and any age. Religious coping interacts with other values or practices of society, for example the model of a society that takes care of it's elder members among family or in an institutionalized environment or the way the (...) health system offers or not psychological support for a terminally ill patient. Health care providers should have at least some psychological coping patterns training because not all patterns of religious coping are equally effective, and some have been described as increasing the level of stress or producing other negative psychological effects on the patient. This article aims to review the complex models of religious coping that are unanimously accepted in psychooncology, arguments in favor of religious coping, the types of patients that use this model, ethical dilemmas that could be reinterpreted using religious arguments. Finally, we will also discuss the need of Romanian patients to embrace a religious coping in case of an incurable illness, and also the support that they can receive from both curative and palliative health care providers.  . (shrink)

Consider the claim: Our actions are free if and only if we could have done otherwise; or the claim, We are essentially mental substances because we can exist without our bodies. Both of these claims, along with countless others, employ a notion of possibility. If this notion is to have a place in philosophy, we must be able to justify our modal claims. We need an epistemology of possibility. It is often assumed that the imagination is the key here. The (...) assumption is this; if I can imagine that a proposition is the case, then p is possible. Suppose I am wondering whether Kant Critique could float above my desk; if I can imagine this book floating, then it is possible. But is the imagination a guide to the modal status of propositions? ;To answer this question we must first consider what it is to imagine a proposition. We can distinguish five main methods of imagining: to imagine is to form a mental image, to evoke experiences, to suppose, to pretend, or it is to tell a story. Can any of these methods provide us with a guide to possibility? I contend that only the last two methods are up to this task insofar as they provide us with evidence of p's modal status. Moreover, how good that evidence is depends on our ability to satisfy the requirements of completeness, coherence, and accuracy. Finally, I argue that we will have the best evidence for the possibility of p, if we combine these two methods. For by combining our evoked experiences with a story, we will generate experiences of p, the best possible explanation of a world in which p is true, and an account of p's truth that complements this explanation. Thus, given explanationist standards, we will have what we need to be justified in concluding that p is possible. (shrink)

The Cell Cycle Ontology (CCO) has the aim to provide a 'one stop shop' for scientists interested in the biology of the cell cycle that would like to ask questions from a molecular and/or systems perspective: what are the genes, proteins, and so on involved in the regulation of cell division? How do they interact to produce the effects observed in the regulation of the cell cycle? To answer these questions, the CCO must integrate a large amount of knowledge from (...) diverse sources; the irregularity and incompleteness of this information suggests an ontology can act as the means of this integration. The volatility and continued expansion of biological knowledge means the content and modelling of the CCO will have to be frequently changed and updated. The CCO is generated from the input data automatically once every two months. This makes it easy to change the representation to enable certain queries; incorporate new knowledge; and consistently apply design patterns across the CCO. The automatic process also allows the CCO to be delivered in a variety of representations that suit the needs of various CCO customers and the abilities of existing toolsets. In this paper we present the CCO and its characteristics of utility and flexibility, that, from our perspective, make it a beautiful ontology. (shrink)

El artículo presenta una reflexión sobre la manera en que en los últimos veinte años la promoción de un determinado tipo de solidaridad en Chile ha contribuido a la conformación de una gubernamentalidad liberal avanzada, necesaria para la instalación de un programa neoliberal. La reflexión se enmarca en los aportes teóricos de Michel Foucault y tiene por objeto empírico piezas de publicidad de promoción de la solidaridad emitidas en Chile entre los años 2009 y 2010, que han sido analizadas en (...) el contexto del proyecto Fondecyt 1090534. Se presentan tres tipos de resultados: (a) se describen los sectores sociales que se construyen como agentes de la solidaridad, (b) se reflexiona sobre las prácticas solidarias más promovidas y (c) se indaga en la forma en que se interpela a los sujetos a ser solidarios. (shrink)

This article focuses on the issue of social support received by students of music schools in the context of their musical achievements. The theoretical part of this article contains the characteristics of factors related to the musical achievements of students; the support they receive from their environment is essential for their success in the process of musical education and their subsequent artistic career, in addition to their musical abilities and traits of personality. The research part is devoted to detailed analysis (...) of the support level received by music school students and its correlation to their level of musical achievement. Social support is analysed with a view to its structure, distinguishing the following kinds of support: emotional, evaluative, informative and instrumental received from people who are significant to the music school student and indicates the essential presence of support in the process of musical achievement. Moreover, as part of the presentation of the study, the authors introduce their original tool for measuring social support tailored to the realities of music schools - the Scale of Social Support of the Students of Music Schools. This tool may be applied in the work of educational psychologists and teachers in music schools. (shrink)

Der Autor untersucht als Berufspadagoge, Technologe und Technikphilosoph die gegenwartig zu losenden Erziehungs- und Bildungsproble- me unter dem Aspekt des Wesens der Technik. Die mit der Technikent- wicklung entstandenen Grundfragen des individuellen und gesellschaft- lichen Lebens und die notwendig gewordene Regelung desselben werden unter soziotechnischen und bildungsintentionalen Gesichtspunkten analysiert und in systemtheoretische Blickwinkel geruckt. Die Untersuchung richtet sich an alle, die aktiv an der Menschenbildung, an kulturpolitischen Entscheidungen und an der technikphilosophischen Diskussion beteiligt sind.".

In the tradition of classical pragmatism, one could contend there are two kinds of thinkers. The first kind, represented most notably by William James and John Dewey, could be labeled as enthusiastic and prolific writers to whom it posed no difficulty to articulate their ideas at remarkable length and with enviable wit. The pragmatists of the second kind like Charles S. Peirce and George H. Mead, for various reasons, never managed to put their ideas on paper in the form of (...) a longer, systematic treatise. Whereas for Peirce such an endeavor might have arguably been a drag given his rushing mind, exploding with new ideas, Mead seems to never have been quite aware of the pioneering.. (shrink)

The research interest of this article is focused on determining the level of influence of Adventist ideas on the formation of the religious identity of the founder of the Bible Students (later Jehovah's Witnesses) and the Watch Tower Society, Charles Taze Russell. As a result of the analysis of the works of Russell and his associates, an attempt was made to explore the attitude of Russell and his supporters to Adventism as a whole. Also, in the opposite direction, the influence (...) of Adventism on the formation of Russell's doctrinal system is determined. Selected aspects of the religious identity of Russell and the Bible Students are identified in the context of searching for answers to the question “Why did Russell deny any influence of Adventism on the formation of his personality?” In the context of scientific research, it has been established that in Russell's time, society treated with contempt the scattered descendants of the Millerites, who suffered a public failure on October 22, 1844. Accordingly, when Russell was asked why certain aspects of his beliefs were similar to Adventist ideas? He replied that his teaching had nothing in common with Adventism. However, in his autobiography, Russell acknowledged the fact that the influence of Adventists on his personal development occurred during his spiritual quest in his youth. Consequently, there are a number of Adventist positions with which Russell strongly disagrees. Namely, the events at the Second Coming of Christ, the method of the Savior’s return to earth, and the method of saving the faithful and the unfaithful. There are also a number of provisions with which he agreed. For example, a look at the unconscious state of the dead, the expectation of the imminent return of Christ to earth, and an emphasis on the study of biblical prophecies of the books of Daniel according to two criteria. First is the emphasis on the second coming of Christ. Secondly, the fulfillment of biblical prophecies in the context of prophetic periods. At the same time, in his approving comments about these two aspects of Adventist teaching, he repeatedly emphasized that Adventists had stopped in their research. That is why we summarize that the religious identity of Russell and his supporters contains Adventist ideas (not to be identified with the modern Seventh-day Adventist Church), which Charles Taze Russell and the Bible Students have constantly denied. (shrink)