The present collection brings together for the first time Rowe's most significant contributions to the philosophy of religion. This diverse but representative selection of Rowe's writings will provide students, professional scholars as well as general readers with stimulating and accessible discussions on such topics as the philosophical theology of Paul Tillich, the problem of evil, divine freedom, arguments for the existence of God, religious experience, life after death, and religious pluralism.

Background Informed consent is an integral component of good medical practice. Many researchers have investigated measures to improve the quality of informed consent, but it is not clear which techniques work best and why. To address this problem, we propose developing a core outcome set to evaluate interventions designed to improve the consent process for surgery in adult patients with capacity. Part of this process involves reviewing existing research that has reported what is important to patients and doctors in the (...) informed consent process. Methods This qualitative synthesis comprises four phases: identification of published papers and determining their relevance; appraisal of the quality of the papers; identification and summary of the key findings from each paper while determining the definitiveness of each finding against the primary data; comparison of key themes between papers such that findings are linked across studies. Results Searches of bibliographic databases returned 11,073 titles. Of these, 16 studies met the inclusion criteria. Studies were published between 1996 and 2016 and included a total of 367 patients and 74 health care providers. Thirteen studies collected data using in-depth interviews and constant comparison was the most common means of qualitative analysis. A total of 94 findings were extracted from the primary papers and divided into 17 categories and ultimately 6 synthesised findings related to: patient characteristics, knowledge, communication, the model patient, trust and decision making. Conclusions This qualitative meta-aggregation is the first to examine the issue of informed consent for surgery. It has revealed several outcomes deemed important to capture by patients and clinicians when evaluating the quality of a consent process. Some of these outcomes have not been examined previously in research comparing methods for informed consent. This review is an important step in the development of a COS to evaluate interventions designed to improve the consent process for surgery. Registration The study protocol was registered on the international prospective register for systematic reviews. (shrink)

Individuals vary in the way they navigate through space. Some take novel shortcuts, while others rely on known routes to find their way around. We wondered how and why there is so much variation in the population. To address this, we first compared the trajectories of 368 human subjects navigating a virtual maze with simulated trajectories. The simulated trajectories were generated by strategy-based path planning algorithms from robotics. Based on the similarities between human trajectories and different strategy-based simulated trajectories, we (...) found that there is a variation in the type of strategy individuals apply to navigate space, as well as variation within individuals on a trial-by-trial basis. Moreover, we observed variation within a trial when subjects occasionally switched the navigation strategies halfway through a trajectory. In these cases, subjects started with a route strategy, in which they followed a familiar path, and then switched to a survey strategy, in which they took shortcuts by considering the layout of the environment. Then we simulated a second set of trajectories using five different but comparable artificial maps. These trajectories produced the similar pattern of strategy variation within and between trials. Furthermore, we varied the relative cost, that is, the assumed mental effort or required timesteps to choose a learned route over alternative paths. When the learned route was relatively costly, the simulated agents tended to take shortcuts. Conversely, when the learned route was less costly, the simulated agents showed preference toward a route strategy. We suggest that cost or assumed mental effort may be the reason why in previous studies, subjects used survey knowledge when instructed to take the shortest path. We suggest that this variation we observe in humans may be beneficial for robotic swarms or collections of autonomous agents during information gathering. (shrink)

The old ritual word macte was only vaguely understood even in Republican times. As is well known, the ancient critics connected the word with magis, magnus, and explained it as magis auctus. A glance at Walde's Wörterbuch reveals that many attempts have been made in modern times to solve the mystery; but the formidable equipment of the modern philologist has yielded little better results than the popular etymology of the ancients, the most favoured view to-day seeing in mactus the PPP (...) of a verb mago with macto as the frequentative which replaces it. The supposed semantic development of this verb, originally meaning ‘to increase’, has been set forth by Warde Fowler in a well-known passage, to which recent authorities have accorded their assent and praise: ‘the vitality of the deity … was really increased by placing on the altar the organs of life of the victim’. But this is a solution which ignores half the problem: macte and mactare are used not only of the deities but also of the victim. One can perhaps understand lovem mactare as ‘to magnify J.’, but not even by the most superficial analogy can we find a transition from here to the meaning typified in mactare vinum. Yet this is one of the most frequent usages of the word. So deep a gulf lies between the two semantic spheres of the verb that some scholars have sought to find in it two different verbs. But this is a counsel of despair which the editor of the Thesaurus dismisses with a non recte. We must agree, then, with Hey that the modern explanation is ‘sicher eine unrichtige’ and with Meillet-Ernout that there exists ‘aucune étymologie claire’. It is, therefore, surprising that so ill-founded a preconception should lead investigators to ignore or even dismiss important evidence which the ancient authorities offer for the solution of this problem. (shrink)

Hanlester Network v. Shalala ) marks the first test of the application of the Medicare-Medicaid anti-kickback statute to physician self-referral joint ventures. The most recent development in this ongoing litigation was the April 6, 1995 decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, holding the Hanlester Network vicariously liable for its marketing vice president's knowing and willful violation of the antikickback statute. The vice president had offered to pay physician-investors in order to induce their referrals of program-related business.The Hanlester Network (...) was a California general partnership comprised of corporations, clinical laboratories, and individual investors. In April 1987, it entered into a management agreement on behalf of the clinical laboratories with SmithKline BioScience Laboratories. (shrink)

The level of medical care to patients and the success of the implementation of the national project "Health" depend on the health status and doctor's professionalism. Modern healthcare reform is being implemented by optimizing costs, merging medical organizations, closing ineffective hospitals, expanding the use of high-tech care and informatization of the doctor's activities. All this makes it necessary to assess the health of doctors. Scientists have studied the quality of life and identified the professional burnout of doctors in children's clinics (...) in different age groups. Primary care pediatricians have a higher quality of life score when compared to the standard [1]. However, all groups have a high level of professional burnout. The pre-retirement group of doctors has more unfavorable profile. They are highly professional specialists but may experience emotional discomfort because the pension system has been reformed. This situation requires the introduction of preventive work with doctors of this age as a group with great potential and capable of professional longevity. (shrink)

This article uses two concepts—trying on gender and local gender regime—to examine adolescent gendering processes for 26 girls from two northeastern communities. Based on a four-year study, the author found that the process of becoming a woman is much more provisional than previously thought. Adolescent girls resist, experiment, and practice gender in a trying-on process; gender, race, and class structures in the communities mutually reinforce particular kinds of femininities. This article describes the gender regime of each community and examines how (...) the gender regimes differentially shape the process of trying on gender as these girls make the transition to womanhood. (shrink)

A lecture concerned with women as philosophers and as philosophical thinkers. Some bibliographical information in the footnotes.

D. Blumbergi identifies three kinds of moral criticism: (i) of an individual for violating a moral practice in his society, (2) of a moral practice but not the individual who participates in it, and (3) of both an individual and the practice in accordance with which he acts ('practice-personal' criticism) (p. 348). According to Mr. Blumberg, successful derivation of a conclusive 'ought'-statement from statements about socially-created obligations would show how moral criticisms of type 1 are justified. Moral criticisms of type (...) 2 would still be allowed, but not those of type 3. -/- I discuss the following points made by Blumberg: (A) Criticism of type 1 is 'the most common kind of moral judgment' (p. 356); (B) Searle dispensed 'with the conclusive aspect of the conclusion, and with it the finality of the derivation, when it began to seem unrealizable' (p. 356); (C) 'It is impossible to derive conclusive "ought"-statements embodying our traditional moral outlook from statements about socially-created obligations, . . .' (p. 355); (D) 'Either we surrender the attempt to derive a conclusive "ought" -statement from statements about socially-created obligations, or else we must surrender our right to make practice-personal criticisms' (p. 357). -/- I argue that conclusiveness in judgments, both moral and non-moral, is always relative to the range of reasons weighed, the implications of action considered. Therefore 'ought' must always be taken to be context-bound just as moral principles are taken to be defeasible, elliptical. This interpretation of 'ought' and 'conclusive' as bound to a context, point of view or framework, is quite consistent with Searle's distinction between what is internal and external to an institution. (shrink)

v. 1. De l'ineffable et de l'Un -- v. 2. De la triade et de l'unifié -- v. 3. De la procession.

The shape of hooks is of a taxonomic significance for cestoda. In order to characterize shape through numbers, a mathermatical model of drawings in two-dimensional space is proposed. This model is a synthetic one: first, it uses a large number of points on the edge of a hook-drawing as data; secondly, it enables to draw a specific hook by means of a computer after the parameters have been extracted from the data. The method does not use landmarks and therefore avoids (...) the difficulty of locating them. The ensuing discussion concerns description in common parlanceversus mathermatical language, the genesis of hooks and description in three-dimensional space. (shrink)

while william james's research in mental healing, psychical research, and religious experience are all well-documented, his foray into phrenology remains unexplored and undeveloped. This paper begins with Ralph Barton Perry's narrative, which portrays James as a believer in the truth of phrenology and as someone who thinks it should be valued as an art. While this depiction of James has not made its way into the recent biographies, there are a few individuals who, in fact, perpetuate this idea within the (...) secondary literature. In response, this paper offers a critical assessment of Perry's account by demonstrating that there is sufficient reason to be suspicious of his assertions. The... (shrink)