Does the philosophy of medicine exist?

There has been a great deal of discussion, in this journal and others, about obstacles hindering the evolution of the philosophy of medicine. Such discussions presuppose that there is widespread agreement about what it is that constitutes the philosophy of medicine.Despite the fact that there is, and has been for decades, a great deal of literature, teaching and professional activity carried out explicitly in the name of the philosophy of medicine, this is not enough to establish that consensus exists as to the definition of the field. And even if consensus can be obtained as to what constitutes the philosophy of medicine, this does not mean that it exists as a field.     

Making peace in gestational conflicts

Mary Anne Warren's claim that there is room for only one person with full and equal rights inside a single human skin ([1], p. 63) calls attention to the vast range of moral conflict engendered by assigning full basic moral rights to fetuses. Thereby, it serves as a goad to thinking about conflicts between pregnant women and their fetuses in a way that emphasizes relationships rather than rights. I sketch out what a care orientation might suggest about resolving gestational conflicts. I also argue that the care orientation, with its commitment to the significance of the partial and the particular, cannot be absorbed within standard, impartialist moral theory.     

农村与城镇终末期肾病患者临床状况比较分析

时比分析农村与城镇终末期肾病患者的临床状况,旨在了解新农合政策带给农村终末期肾病患者的益处及今后还需完善和努力之处.对广西壮族自治区人民医院血液净化治疗中心2007年新增的238例终末期肾病患者按农村与城镇进行分组对比分析.96例农村患者,88例选择血液透析,8例放弃治疗;142例城镇患者,23例选择腹膜透析,108例血液透析,11例放弃.无论是城镇还是农村患者慢性肾炎为主要的原发病、都存在透析过晚、并发症发生率高、急诊透析率高的现象.与城镇组相比,农村组患者平均年龄、肾痛知晓率、残余肾功能、血红蛋白、二氧化碳结合力、尿素清除指数低于城镇组(P<0.05);梗阻性肾病发病率、并发症发生率、急诊透析率、死亡率、失访率高于城镇组(P<0.05).新农合的实施使农村终末期肾病患者获得了治疗的机会,针对农村患者肾病知晓率低、临床状况差的特点,需加强农村慢性肾病的防治工作.     

谈闺阁豪杰 词坛独步之感想——李清照词的风格与独创性

豪爽淳朴的民风和浓郁的家庭文化氛围,铸就了李清照这位山东才女高雅、率直、伟岸、好胜的品性,这些品性反应在她的词作中。在众多的词人中,别具一格的她,被奉为＂婉约之宗＂,在中国文学史中占有重要地位。     

A causal model theory of the meaning of cause, enable, and prevent

The verbs cause , enable , and prevent express beliefs about the way the world works. We offer a theory of their meaning in terms of the structure of those beliefs expressed using qualitative properties of causal models, a graphical framework for representing causal structure. We propose that these verbs refer to a causal model relevant to a discourse and that "A causes B" expresses the belief that the causal model includes a link from A to B. "A enables/allows B" entails that the model includes a link from A to B, that A represents a category of events necessary for B, and that an alternative cause of B exists. "A prevents B" entails that the model includes a link from A to B and that A reduces the likelihood of B. This theory is able to account for the results of four experiments as well as a variety of existing data on human reasoning.     

Let’s Make Things Better: A Reply to My Readers

This article is a reply to the three reviews of my book What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design (Verbeek 2005) in this symposium. It discusses the remarks made by the reviewers along five lines. The first is methodological and concerns the question of how to develop a philosophical approach to technology. The second line discusses the philosophical orientation of the book, and the relations between analytic and continental approaches. Third, I will discuss the metaphysical aspects of the book, in particular the nature and value of the non-modernist approach it aims to set out. Fourth, I will discuss the social and political relevance of the book. Fifth, this will bring me to some concluding remarks about how the postphenomenological perspective developed in the book relates to liberalism, focusing on its suggestions to deliberately design our material environment in terms of mediation.

Career-specific parental behaviors in adolescents’ development

Parents are major partners in helping adolescents prepare for a career choice. Although several studies have examined links between general aspects of the parent-adolescent relationship and adolescents’ career development, little research has addressed the mechanisms involved. This study aimed to validate a three-dimensional instrument for the assessment of parental career-related behaviors and to examine their associations with career exploration and decision-making difficulties. After testing the dimensional structure of the instrument, we examined the relationship between parents’ behaviors and adolescents’ career development by using data from 359 German adolescents who reported the amount of perceived parental career-related behaviors and their career exploration and decision-making difficulties. The results of structural equation modeling confirmed the hypothesized dimensional structure (support, interference, lack of engagement). While parental support associated positively with career exploration, interference and lack of engagement associated with decision-making difficulties. Furthermore, interference and lack of engagement moderated the relationship between support and exploration. Support moderated the association between interference and decision-making difficulties.     

Phonetic recalibration only occurs in speech mode

Upon hearing an ambiguous speech sound dubbed onto lipread speech, listeners adjust their phonetic categories in accordance with the lipread information (recalibration) that tells what the phoneme should be. Here we used sine wave speech (SWS) to show that this tuning effect occurs if the SWS sounds are perceived as speech, but not if the sounds are perceived as non-speech. In contrast, selective speech adaptation occurred irrespective of whether listeners were in speech or non-speech mode. These results provide new evidence for the distinction between a speech and non-speech processing mode, and they demonstrate that different mechanisms underlie recalibration and selective speech adaptation.     

Feel the difference! The influence of ease experiences on the direction of social comparisons

The present work investigates if ease/difficulty experiences associated with social comparison information shape the direction of the comparison. In particular, we test the hypothesis that standards of comparison associated with experiences of ease lead to assimilation whereas standards processed under experiences of difficulty result in comparative contrast. In line with this hypothesis, we found in Experiment 1 that the easy processing of a standard led to assimilation whereas difficult processing of the same standard led to contrast. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, even though the ease/difficulty experiences were this time introduced independently of the standard. Finally, Experiment 3 tested the boundary conditions of the influence of experiences by showing their flexible use in judgmental processes.