Nursing, a scientific and practical discipline, faces continuing challenges of finding new direction in order to decipher its core values and develop current ethical codes for nursing practice. In 2009–10, 28 nurses were purposely selected and interviewed using a semi-structured format in focus groups and individually. Thematic Content Analysis helped explore the perception of Iranian nurses on ethical values in patient care. Seven major themes emerged: respect for dignity, professional integrity, professional commitment, developing human relationships, justice, honesty, and promoting individuals (...) and the nursing profession. Iranian nurses revealed a unique and culture-based set of ethical values. This study found that Iranian nurses place a greater emphasis on preserving the dignity of those accompanying the patient and in showing regard for patients' religious beliefs in a gender appropriate environment. (shrink)

Rescued in 1972 from a storeroom in which rats and seeping water had severely damaged the fifty-year-old manuscript, this text is the earliest major work (1919-1921) of the great Russian philosopher M. M. Bakhtin. Toward a Philosophy of the Act contains the first occurrences of themes that occupied Bakhtin throughout his long career. The topics of authoring, responsibility, self and other, the moral significance of "outsideness," participatory thinking, the implications for the individual subject of having "no-alibi in existence," the difference (...) between the world as experienced in actions and the world as represented in discourse--all are broached here in the heat of discovery. This is the "heart of the heart" of Bakhtin, the center of the dialogue between being and language, the world and mind, "the given" and "the created" that forms the core of Bakhtin's distinctive dialogism. A special feature of this work is Bakhtin's struggle with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Put very simply, this text is an attempt to go beyond Kant's formulation of the ethical imperative. Toward a Philosophy of the Act will be important for scholars across the humanities as they grapple with the increasingly vexed relationship between aesthetics and ethics. (shrink)

The essays assembled here are all very early and differ in a number of ways from Bakhtin's previously published work.

The number of discriminable colours is often assumed to be of the order of several million but the extent of detectable chromatic diversity present in individual natural scenes is an open question. Here, the aim was to estimate the number of discriminable colours seen in natural scenes. Hyperspectral data were obtained from a set of natural scenes over the range 400 - 720 nm at 10 nm intervals (Nascimento et al, 2002 Journal of the Optical Society of America A 19 (...) 1484 - 1490) and the representation of each scene in CIELAB space computed for all pixels of the image. The number of discriminable colours was estimated by counting the number of unit volumes in the three-dimensional volume defined by the scene when represented in CIELAB space. We found that the number of discriminable colours estimated in a scene could vary by an order of magnitude from scene to scene, but rarely exceeded 105, indicating a limited chromatic diversity. (shrink)

Next SectionOne of the major concerns about surrogacy is the potential harm that may be inflicted upon the surrogate mother and the child after relinquishment. Even if one were to take the liberal view that surrogacy should be presumptively allowed on the basis of autonomy and/or compassion, evidence of harm must be taken seriously. In this paper I review the evidence from psychological studies on the effect that relinquishing a child has on the surrogate mother and while it appears that (...) many surrogates are able to cope with relinquishment, I argue that there are good reasons, grounded in empirical evidence, to support the view that the subsequent management of the relinquishment necessarily objectifies the surrogate mother. (shrink)

En este este estudio presentamos una investigación sobre la genealogía de la razón de Estado y del golpe de Estado, según Michel Foucault. La genealogía de la razón gubernamental se desarrolló paralelamente a la comprensión científica del mundo, en los siglos XVI e XVII, como una realidad gobernada por leyes propias de la naturaleza. La genealogía de la razón de Estado incorporó los elementos “científicos” de la razón gubernamental como técnicas utilitarias para gobernar convenientemente un Estado, más allá del voluntarismo (...) del arbitrio del poder soberano. Foucault muestra en sus análisis genealógicos que el golpe de Estado fue concebido, ya en el siglo XVII, como una técnica gubernamental conveniente con la razón de Estado, cuyas tres principales características son: la necesidad, la violencia y la teatralidad. Palabras clave: Razón gubernamental. Razón de Estado. Golpe de Estado. Michel Foucault. (shrink)

LET ME BEGIN this inquiry with the simple but fundamental fact that the flow of time, or passage, as it is also known, is given in experience, that it is as indubitable an aspect of our perception of the world as the sights and sounds that come in upon us, even though it is not the peculiar property of a special sense. Consider, by way of illustration, that I am now sitting at the desk in my study. This particular event (...) was not present at any earlier time, nor will it be present shortly as I become involved in other activities. The present, as I experience it, is regularly associated with later and later events. It does not hop about capriciously from here to a later time, to a previous time, and then to a much later time, or trace out some other such indiscriminate pattern; instead I find it always in association with the next moment, and as I look backward and inward, so to speak, I find that the prior moment was present and that this next-later moment is present. Quite often this condition is expressed by means of imagery. We are asked to envision either a moving present racing along a fixed track of moments or events from earlier to later, or alternatively a fixed present through which stream a series of moments or events, first the earlier and then the later ones. One is in truth hard-pressed to find references to passage which do not employ quasi-poetical tropes and metaphors, and while these do help in some sense to say what we mean, great caution is required when handling them because of their ready tendency to draw us away from the actual phenomenon requiring explanation. (shrink)

In the long 20th century, modern China experienced perhaps the world’s most radical and systematic secularization process and the decimation of traditional religious and ritual cultures. This article seeks to account for this experience by engaging with postcolonial theory, a body of discourse seldom found relevant to China Studies. The article attempts a two-pronged critique of both state secularization and some aspects of existing Postcolonial Studies/theory. It shows the many ways in which nationalist elites in modern China unwittingly absorbed Western (...) Orientalist discourse even as their words and actions were ostensibly anti-colonial, and much of the article examines the consequences of this native Orientalism upon Chinese religiosities. Finally, the article suggests that one cannot discuss governmentality in modern China without understanding how it is intertwined with a sovereign power that is both archaic and, at the same time, has experienced renewal and expansion in modernity. (shrink)

AN inquiry into the use of paradeigma in the Iliad must begin with Niobe. At 24. 602 Achilles introduces Niobe in order to encourage Priam to have some food. The dead body of the best of Priam's sons has now been placed on the wagon ready for its journey back to Troy. Achilles says , ‘Now let us eat. For even Niobe ate food, and she had lost twelve children. Apollo and Artemis killed them all; they lay nine days in (...) their blood and there was no one to bury them, because Zeus had turned the people into stone. On the tenth day the gods buried them. But she managed to eat some food, when she was tired of weeping. And now among the mountains, although turned into stone, she still broods over her sorrows. But come, let us also eat. You can weep for your son again later’. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is the organized expression of a growing intent among philosophers and scientists to clarify, perhaps unify, the programs, methods and results of the disciplines of philosophy and of science. The examination of fundamental concepts and presuppositions in the light of the positive results of science, systematic doubt of the positive results, and a thorough-going analysis and critique of logic and of language, are typical projects for this joint effort. It is not necessary to be committed to a (...) belief that science and philosophy are or should be one, or else that “never the twain shall meet.” If anything, there is to be expected a wholesome regard for the value of established science in furnishing a foil for philosophy and a check on its old extravagances. This does not mean that even the best-established science may not be subject to most devastating criticism by analysis of its foundations. In fact, despairing of the philosophy of the schools, science has done it largely for itself. The theories of gravitation, atomicity, electro-magnetism, evolution, relativity and quanta have all arisen through drastic revisions of complacent fundamental “truths.”. (shrink)

The literature on ethical behavior has called for studies that investigate the interaction between individual and contextual factors. This study examined whether moral identity interacts with ethical culture to predict unethical behavior at work and whether implicit and explicit moral identity affects unethical behavior distinctively. Our sample consisted of 238 participants who took part in an experiment involving an in-basket exercise that measured unethical behavior. Ethical culture was manipulated via a cover letter from a fictitious company’s CEO, and moral identity (...) was measured through a self-report scale and the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Findings indicate that implicit and explicit moral identity were negatively associated with unethical behavior and that organizational culture moderated the relationship between moral identity and unethical behavior. The results have theoretical and practical implications for understanding the interaction of predictors of unethical behavior by combining automatic and deliberate measures of moral identity with ethical culture. (shrink)

В работе исследованы современные проблемы постнеклассической науки: сборка субъектов, особенности сборки сборки религиозного субъекта, модернизации государства, отдельные субъекты негативной диалектики.

We conducted a cross-sectional survey of a random sample of 1943 spouses of home-dwellers with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) to examine the prevalence of court-appointed guardians or financial powers of attorney for persons with AD, related factors and the need for information about these issues among caregiving families. The questionnaire consisted questions on variables of demographic characteristics, disability, symptoms and care needs of the person with dementia, the strain of caregiving, the use of court-appointed legal guardians or powers of attorney, as (...) well as discussions about these issues—and the need for them—with a doctor. The response rate was 77% and the mean ages of those with AD and caregivers were 80.2 and 78.2 years, respectively. The use of legal guardians was rare (4.3%), while the use of financial powers of attorney was more common (37.8%). Only 9.9% of the couples had discussed these issues with their doctor, whereas 47.9% expressed a need for it. The factors associated with the use of these legal arrangements were related to the severity of dementia, including experiencing dementia symptoms for more than 3 years, poor functioning, incontinence and behavioural symptoms. There is a clear need for information on medico-legal issues related to dementia among caregivers of AD patients. If held soon after the diagnosis, such discussions could support the autonomy of these persons in spite of AD and enable them to plan for the future as they wish. (shrink)

Incessantly cited by critics, Bakhtin's work none the less remains relatively unavailable: partly through lack of suitable editions, partly because no individual text conveys all the key concepts or arguments. This anthology provides in a convenient format a good selection of the writing by Bakhtin and of that attributed to Voloshinov and Medvedev. It introduces readers to the aspects most relevant to literary and cultural studies and gives a focused sense of Bakhtin's central ideas and the underlying cohesiveness of his (...) thinking. (shrink)

The author argues that there is a sharp contrast between Plato's earlier teleological explanation of nature and his later conception. In the Phaedo Anaxagoras' νοṽς as a teleological principle is rejected, the forms taking its place, in the Philebus the existence of a νοṽς explaining order and finality in nature, is strictly demonstrated. After that nature and consequences of this new doctrine are briefly discussed : the ineffable character of the transcendent cause of the world ; the reduction of the (...) number of the Forms to those of substances in nature ; the causality of νοṽς as an immanent and intermediate one ; the foundation of a mathematical science of nature. Thirdly the author makes an effort to reconstruct the philosophical grounds of this development, starting from the three theses, on which the argumentation of the Philebus is based. 1) νοṽς can only exist in a soul. It is argued that the dynamic conception of soul in the Phaedrus logically leads to the conclusion, that νοṽς also is movement . 2) To explain cosmic order and finality a νοṽς has to be accepted. This new idea occurs for the first time in the Sophistes and in the myth of the Politicus. 3) Cosmic order has a mathematical and astronomical character. This aspect is absent before the Philebus and seems to have been a consequence of Plato's discovery of the regularity in the planitary motions . Finally the author thinks he can indicate in the Sophistes the turning-point in the theory of Forms, as a result of the extension of the notion of being. (shrink)

The ability to improve diagnosis and refine prognosis in children with acute leukaemia is improving steadily. A growing number of tests can and are being performed on leukaemic cells. These include surface-marker analysis, DNA content, cytogenetics and studies of gene rearrangements. Increasingly large bone-marrow samples, now usually obtained under general anaesthesia, are required to make secure diagnoses. Ethical issues arise from three major areas. 1) Current research on leukaemia cells requested by the Medical Research Council is considered by local research (...) ethics committees, but parents are not regularly given detailed information about or asked specifically to consent to such research; 2) substantial quantities of excess cells are stored indefinitely. This archive of stored material is a valuable resource for research but there has been little consideration of the ethical issues which arise from this practice, and 3) there is a potential for pressure to obtain increasingly large samples. 'Creeping growth' in sample size is likely to continue unless ethics committees consider future research proposals in more detail. These issues deserve attention in order that worthwhile research and its publication are not impeded for want of ethical consideration. The implications extend beyond the field of childhood leukaemia. (shrink)

AN inquiry into the use of paradeigma in theIliadmust begin with Niobe. At 24. 602 Achilles introduces Niobe in order to encourage Priam to have some food. The dead body of the best of Priam's sons has now been placed on the wagon ready for its journey back to Troy. Achilles says, ‘Now let us eat. For even Niobe ate food, and she had losttwelvechildren. Apollo and Artemis killed them all; they lay nine days in their blood and there was (...) no one to bury them, because Zeus had turned the people into stone. On the tenth day the gods buried them. But she managed to eat some food, when she was tired of weeping. And now among the mountains, although turned into stone, she still broods over her sorrows. But come, let us also eat. You can weep for your son again later’. (shrink)

In Australia and other countries, certain groups of women have traditionally been denied access to assisted reproductive technologies . These typically are single heterosexual women, lesbians, poor women, and those whose ability to rear children is questioned, particularly women with certain disabilities or who are older. The arguments used to justify selection of women for ARTs are most often based on issues such as scarcity of resources, and absence of infertility , or on social concerns: that it “goes against nature”; (...) particular women might not make good mothers; unconventional families are not socially acceptable; or that children of older mothers might be orphaned at an early age. The social, medical, legal, and ethical reasoning that has traditionally promoted this lack of equity in access to ARTs, and whether the criteria used for client deselection are ethically appropriate in any particular case, are explored by this review. In addition, the issues of distribution and just “gatekeeping” practices associated with these sensitive medical services are examined. (shrink)

It is well known that the medieval philosophical thought of the Islamic world was characterized by a significant level of understanding of the phenomenon of religion. This was due not only to the religious coloration of the tradition itself or the purely religious outlook, but also to the importance of the role that religion played and continues to play in Muslim societies. One of the manifestations of this phenomenon is the long-term development of historical, doxographically-apologetic and philosophical views on the (...) phenomenon of religion, its content, functions and role. Religion acted as the starting point of a whole system of social, cultural, economic and political ties, and therefore one of the pressing problems of medieval Islamic religious thought was the problem of categories and definitions related to variable ideas. about religion in general. (shrink)