We explored the comprehension of the informed consent in 77 cancer patients previously enrolled in randomised phase II or phase III clinical trials, between March and July 2011, at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milano. We asked participants to complete an ad hoc questionnaire and analysed their answers. Sixty-two per cent of the patients understood the purpose and nature of the trial they were participating in; 44% understood the study procedures and 40% correctly listed at least one of the (...) major risks or complications related to their participation in the trial. We identified three factors associated with comprehension of the informed consent: age, education and type of tumour/investigator team. We suggest several possible improvements of how to obtain informed consent that will increase patient awareness, as well as the validity and effectiveness of the clinical trials. (shrink)

In 2003, the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Regina McKnight, an African American woman who was convicted at the age of twenty‐two for committing “homicide by child abuse.” She became the first woman in the United States to be arrested, prosecuted, and convicted for experiencing a stillbirth. Rather than an outlier case in the annals of American jurisprudence that stretched law beyond reason while restraining compassion and justice, McKnight's conviction inspired similar prosecutions of other poor black women (...) and then of other women. More than one‐third of states consider pregnant women's illicit drug use a form of child abuse, resulting in unprecedented forms of criminal and civil punishment. Laws previously understood to protect pregnant women from domestic violence during pregnancy, such as fetal protection laws, now serve as the vehicles for prosecuting pregnant women. What these prosecutions and laws expose are the multitudinous ways in which the criminalization of poor pregnant women—and normalization of that criminalization, such that even doctors and nurses are expected to participate in it—serve to humiliate women, interfere with their reproductive health, and ultimately rob women of reproductive autonomy. (shrink)

Le concezione stoica dei predicati come effetti incorporei di cause -- La nozione stoica di lekton -- Lo sviluppo della nozione di lekton -- La nozione stoica di ptōsis.

La interpretación monista de la ontología de Parménides aquí propuesta parece confirmada por la lógica ineludible que impregna enteramente su pensamiento. A pesar del carácter fragmentario de su poema, es posible reconstruir la férrea racionalidad de la ontología parmenídea. Esta lógica intrínsecamente coherente pone de manifiesto la absoluta necesidad de la naturaleza monística del ser. En esta perspectiva parece evidente la absoluta incompatibilidad de la perfecta racionalidad y coherencia de la verdad con la dimensión engañosa e inconsistente de la doxa.

Two literal quotations from Chrysippus’ On Possibles, preserved in Plutarch’s On the Contradictions of the Stoics, seem to contradict the Stoic thesis of the isotropy of the void. According to this thesis the void is an infinite undifferentiated expanse whose center is marked by, and coincides with, the position of the world. Since there is nothing else outside the world, the cohesive force that pervades it is sufficient on its own to guarantee the quasi–indestructibility of the trans–cyclical διακόσμησις and the (...) eternity of the οὐσία. Conversely, in these two quotations Chrysippus maintains that there is a central διαφορά equipped with causal force. This seems to imply the anisotropy of the void. Chrysippus’s view here is also at odds with another official Stoic thesis, i.e. that the incorporeal is causally inert. In this paper it will be argued that there is in fact no contradiction, because, in those two quotations, Chrysippus consciously develops a cosmological hypothesis in order to resolve a difficulty concerning the role of fire during the universal conflagration. Chrysippus’ solution to this difficulty belongs to modal logic and consists in distinguishing between the actual universe and the possible ones. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of external factors in the constitution of the Stoic mind. It will show how the external influences the Stoic mind in several crucial ways: 1) Constitutive Role: The external world acts as a constitutive factor for the soul (the third level of the scala naturae), shaping its development. At the fourth level, the logos (rational principle) interacts with qualified external objects. These objects form the basis of abstract reasoning and teachings derived from external sources; 2) (...) Truth-Making Function: The external world serves as a truth-maker for phantasiai and the axiomata associated with them, providing validation and substance to internal representations and core beliefs; 3) Opposition to External Goods: For the Stoic soul dedicated to virtue, external goods are elements to be opposed or transcended. The Stoic perspective emphasizes the pursuit of virtue as independent of external goods, which are considered indifferent or secondary to moral development; 4) Condition of Possibility: the external void or incorporeal space is a necessary condition for the growth of the cosmos, including its periodic conflagration (destruction) and subsequent reconstitution. (shrink)

La de orden público es una noción tan central como compleja. Este ensayo busca ofrecer elementos esenciales para desarrollar una crítica de dicha noción ampliamente utilizada en el pensamiento jurídico y político. Para ello, se proponen cinco partes de una posible teoría general del orden público, evidenciando presupuestosy mecanismos de funcionamiento: la ontología, la física, la política, la ética, y la estética. Los mecanismos a través de los cuales operan y las presuposiciones de cada uno de ellos son cuidadosamente analizados.

Vol. 1. A-I. -- Vol. 2. J-Z -- Vol. 3. Apparati.

An apparently simple answer to this question is 'diversity': there is a diversity of women readers, diversity of interests, diversity of methods and diversity of results of women reading the Bible. In this article I will discuss the complex reality of the diversity of contemporary women's reading of the Bible. I will discuss women readers under two headings, namely the everyday, non-academic reader on the one hand, and the professional, academically trained biblical exegete on the other. I will first suggest (...) a general comparison of these two groups before I treat each one in greater detail. Finally, I will offer a reading of a story about a woman from the Gospel of Mark that draws on feminist hermeneutics to read for a meaning that liberates women from a burdensome, conventional reading. (shrink)

Em minha tese de doutorado defendi que, para compreender como Hegel articula a passagem da contradição dialética à lógica, o conceito hegeliano de contradição deve ser analisado sob a perspectiva de uma antinomia. Para sustentar este argumento, propus uma atualização deste conceito a partir de uma estrutura antinômica. Essa atualização, porém, trouxe um outro problema: nessa reconstrução, a contradição, em Hegel, continua a se desenvolver de maneira gradativa, ao passo que a lógica tradicional trabalha apenas com valores de p e (...) -p, e não com níveis de gradação. Assim, para continuar sustentando o argumento de que o conceito hegeliano de contradição, sob a perspectiva de uma antinomia, pode ser compreendido como uma contradição lógica, seria necessário encontrar uma lógica que não operasse apenas com valores binários, mas também com níveis de gradação. Foi a partir dessa necessidade que surgiu a ideia de aplicar o conceito de contradição em Hegel à Lógica Difusa, e esta é, portanto, a proposta do presente artigo. (shrink)

This paper applies Plato's cave allegory to Enron's success and downfall. Plato's famous tale of cave dwellers illustrates the different levels of truth and understanding. These levels include images, the sources of images, and the ultimate reality behind both. The paper first describes these levels of perception as they apply to Plato's cave dwellers and then provides a brief history of the rise of Enron. Then we apply Plato's levels of understanding to Enron, showing how the company created its image (...) and presented information to support that image, and how the public eventually emerged from the cave to realize the truth about Enron's actual accounting practices and financial state, which led to the corporation's downfall. We find Plato's allegory both useful in analyzing the relationship between Enron and the public and instructive about the power and moral responsibility of Enron's executives. (shrink)

The concept of the digital phenotype has been used to refer to digital data prognostic or diagnostic of disease conditions. Medical conditions may be inferred from the time pattern in an insomniac’s tweets, the Facebook posts of a depressed individual, or the web searches of a hypochondriac. This paper conceptualizes digital data as an extended phenotype of humans, that is as digital information produced by humans and affecting human behavior and culture. It argues that there are ethical obligations to persons (...) affected by generalizable knowledge of a digital phenotype, not only those who are personally identifiable or involved in data generation. This claim is illustrated by considering the health-related digital phenotypes of precision medicine and digital epidemiology. (shrink)

In the past decade the central principles of western feminist theory have been dramatically challenged. many feminists have endorsed post-structuralism's rejection of essentialist theoretical categories, and have added a powerful gender dimension to contemporary critiques of modernity. Earlier 'women' have been radically undermined, and newer concerns with 'difference', 'identity', and 'power' have emerged. Destabilizing Theory explores these developments in a set of specially commissioned essays by feminist theorists. Does this change amount to a real shift within feminist theory, or will (...) feminism's links with an emancipatory modernism reinstate an older political agenda? Can we transcend the common counterposition of equality and difference, or is feminism condemned to argue within the terms of this binary opposition? (shrink)

The essay focuses on Jeff Wall’s theoretical writings and artistic productions. The inquiry on the photograph’s medium has been re-enacted in the late 1970s and 1980s by the use of the large scale and the “tableau-form”; in Wall’s work the large scale of the images, coupled with the light box, stimulates at the same time a new relationship with the beholder’s gaze and the possibility of a historical dialogue with other media, like painting and cinema. By the analysis of photographs (...) like Mimic and A view from an Apartment the interplay between document and fiction, capture of everyday and mise en scène appears at the core of Wall’s research and a main subject in contemporary photography. (shrink)

The pluralist sheds the more traditional ideas of truth and ontology. This is dangerous, because it threatens instability of the theory. To lend stability to his philosophy, the pluralist trades truth and ontology for rigour and other ‘fixtures’. Fixtures are the steady goal posts. They are the parts of a theory that stay fixed across a pair of theories, and allow us to make translations and comparisons. They can ultimately be moved, but we tend to keep them fixed temporarily. Apart (...) from considering rigour of proof as a fixture, I discuss fixed models, invariant notions and fixed information about objects across theories. There are other fixtures, but it is enough to start with these. (shrink)

In the literature, there have been several methods and definitions for working out whether two theories are “equivalent” or not. In this article, we do something subtler. We provide a means to measure distances between formal theories. We introduce two natural notions for such distances. The first one is that of axiomatic distance, but we argue that it might be of limited interest. The more interesting and widely applicable notion is that of conceptual distance which measures the minimum number of (...) concepts that distinguish two theories. For instance, we use conceptual distance to show that relativistic and classical kinematics are distinguished by one concept only. (shrink)

In the last years of his life, between 1292 and 1298, the Franciscan Peter of John Olivi wrote a series of short devotional texts, known as Opuscula, aimed at the religious edification of the laity. Olivi's perspective was strongly eschatological: in his opinion, the imminence of the end of time made lay religious experience more authentic than that of the clergy, which would eventually oppose the final evangelical renewal.Among the twelve surviving Opuscula, the most eschatologically oriented is titled Remedia contra (...) temptationes spirituales. The Remedia are characterized by a cautious and rigorous judgment on spiritual gifts, such as visions and raptures. According to Olivi, these phenomena are particularly... (shrink)

Synchronic and diachronic philology is a necessary but insufficient condition for studying rhetoricians and philosophers of the Ancient world. Knowledge of formal logic in order to understand their works is also required. As a rhetorician-turned-philosopher Augustine not only utilized Stoic and Aristotelian logic but also exceeded the boundary of such formal languages using both original inference patterns unknown to such formal systems and disclosing new horizons to Western philosophy.

This work manages to present a complete and informative overview of Nicholas Rescher s philosphy. A prominent representative of contemporary pragmatism and of 20th century s thought at large, Rescher wrote an impressive amount of volumes and essays on a wide variety of philosophical topics. The present book purports to make his theses and theories accessible in one single volume. Moreover, it provides an apparatus of references to the relevant literature produced by Rescher s critics, and positions his work in (...) the wider setting of its links with various contemporary American and European philosophers. The mixture of pragmatism and idealism, typical of Rescher s stance, is carefully taken into account, along with his contributions to logic, philosophy of science, metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics, social and political philosophy.". (shrink)

This paper investigates the compatibility between the theoretical framework of the global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT) of conscious processing and the perturbational complexity index (PCI). Even if it has been introduced within the framework of a concurrent theory (i.e. Integrated Information Theory), PCI appears, in principle, compatible with the main tenet of GNWT, which is a conscious process that depends on a long-range connection between different cortical regions, more specifically on the amplification, global propagation, and integration of brain signals. Notwithstanding (...) this basic compatibility, a number of limited compatibilities and apparent differences emerge. This paper starts from the description of brain complexity, a notion that is crucial for PCI, to then summary of the main features of PCI and the main tenets of GNWT. Against this background, the text explores the compatibility between PCI and GNWT. It concludes that GNWT and PCI are fundamentally compatible, even though there are some partial disagreements and some points to further examine. (shrink)

Law and racism are intertwined, with legal tools bearing the potential to serve as instruments of oppression or equity. This Special Issue explores this dual nature of health law, with attention to policing in the context of mental health, schools, and substance use disorders; industry and the environment in the context of food advertising, tobacco regulation, worker safety, and environmental racism; health care and research in the context of infant mortality, bias in medical applications of AI, and diverse inclusion in (...) research; and anti-racist teaching and practice in the context of building an interprofessional curriculum and medical-legal partnerships. (shrink)

Allocating attention determines what we remember later. Attentional demands vary in a task-switching paradigm, with greater demands for switch than for repeat trials. This also results in lower subsequent memory performance for switch compared to repeat trials. The main goal of the present study was to investigate the consequences of task switching after a long study-test interval and to examine the contributions of the two memory components, recollection and familiarity. In the study phase, the participants performed a task-switching procedure in (...) which they had to switch between two classifications tasks with pictures. After a short vs. a long study-test interval of a week, the participants performed a surprise memory test for the pictures and gave remember/know judgements. The results showed that recognition memory declined after 1 week and this was mainly due to a decrease in “remember” responses. The results also showed that the task-switching effect on memory was enduring. Whereas the results of the immediate test were mixed, the results of the delayed tests showed that the task-switching effect was based on recollection, expressed in more “remember” responses for repeat than for switch trials. As recollection is more sensitive to attention manipulations than familiarity, the results align with the notion that attentional requirements at study determine what we remember, in particular after a long study-test interval. (shrink)