This article asks how people come to interpret themselves and others as autonomous given their multiple dependencies. We draw on a cross-case comparison of ethnographic studies with two populations for whom autonomy is both central and problematic: elderly patients in post-acute care, and young adults with disabilities in an independent living program. Analyzing the institutional efforts to make their clients “as independent as possible,” we find that staff members at each organization formulate autonomy as a temporal project through an ongoing (...) calibration of open futures, ideal pasts, and situational competence. Constantly adjusting and fine-tuning where in time autonomy “really” is, workers arrange present dependence so that the contours of the future remain open for their clients. In other words, they make use of temporal markers to produce recognizable autonomous subjects whose dependencies are momentary. Theorizing this temporal project enables us to see more clearly how all of us engage in the constant business of “doing” autonomy, and to better understand the role of institutions in producing autonomous selves. (shrink)

W ostatniej dekadzie można zaobserwować postępującą w naukach społecznych kodyfikację i instytucjonalizację etyki badań. Powstaje coraz więcej kodeksów etycznych, które standaryzują zasady etycznego prowadzenia badań oraz komisji etycznych kontrolujących projekty badawcze. Za kodyfikacją oraz instytucjonalizacją etyki naukowych badań społecznych stoi między innymi przekonanie, że kodeksy i komisje etyczne znacząco przyczynią się do etycznego postępowania badaczek i ochronią podmioty zaangażowane w badania, szczególnie ich uczestników, przed krzywdą. W artykule argumentuję, że to nie wystarczy, gdyż zarówno osoby prowadzące badania, jak i komisje (...) etyczne powinny kierować się w swoich decyzjach etycznych wyobraźnią moralną. (shrink)

It is one of the ironies of our times that, as the practise of religion wanes, a theoretical interest in it on the part of many anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists and philosophers waxes. Among these, only philosophers bring to their task a long history of theological and reli gious relations. Hence their renewed interest has been hailed as a break down of isolationism, heralding, perhaps, a new era of interdisciplinary peace. To celebrate this new ecumenism, a Chicago seminary, consis tently with (...) its purpose, sponsored a colloquium to explore the future of philosophical theology. If some of its participating professional philosophers initially felt a twinge of embarrassment over their presence at an ostensibly theological meeting, they soon were at ease. No one was called upon to define the topic, or even to suggest its relationship to a philosophy of religion. Conveniently, everyone could role up his sleeves and get to work on a job he personally felt needed doing. Can we wonder that the lay observer appeared somewhat confused? Was the purpose to analyze "God talk," or to find a place for 'God' in a metaphysical scheme? Or if not these, something else? It soon became evident that the participants in the colloquium ranged from the free swinger to the severely inhibited, depending upon the role each assigned to dogma and creed. (shrink)

The program of Evolutionary Ethics (EE) is based on the assumption that our moral features constitute adaptations and as such are to be explained in terms of the evolutionary process of natural selection. However, the fundamental assumption of EE was seriously put into question: the level of analysis relevant for moral features is essentially ontogeny and culture, while the explanation using natural selection applies to the level of phylogeny and genes (Sober, 1995; Ayala, 1995; Okasha, 2009). To the discussion on (...) the validity of the program of EE we propose to bring the recent program of Extended Synthesis (ES, Pigliucci & Muller, 2010), because it attempts to account for the role of the ontogeny in evolution. We conclude, nevertheless, that ES fails to properly account for the importance of ontogeny in evolutionary processes because by extending the notion of inheritance it (con-)fuses the notions of unit of inheritance and of unit of selection (against the well-known distinction made by Hull, 1980). (shrink)

Confidentiality represents a core principle of research ethics and forms a standard practice in social research. However, what should a researcher do if they learn about illegal activities or harm during the research process? Few systematic studies consider researchers’ attitudes and reactions in such situations. This paper analyzes this issue on the basis of in-depth interviews with Polish sociologists and anthropologists who conduct qualitative research with vulnerable participants. It discusses the experiences and opinions of researchers concerning the maintenance or breaking (...) of confidentiality in the context of knowledge about illegal activities and harm. It also examines the ways in which the researchers justified their decisions. Most of my interviewees respected confidentiality in spite of knowledge of crime or harm, and referred to their epistemological perspectives regarding the role of the researcher, implicit consequentialist ethical reasoning and personal values. Where researchers did break confidentiality, this owed to their personal values and willingness to protect their informants, especially in cases of minor levels of harm as opposed to serious crime. Therefore, their experiences indicate the failure of both obligatory unconditional assurances of confidentiality and the requirement for researchers to assure confidentiality to the extent permitted by law. I argue that researchers do not need constrictive and potentially punitive rules about confidentiality, but rather sensitizing frameworks about how to contemplate and anticipate the many complexities and moral shadings of situations in the field. (shrink)

INTERVENTION AND REFLECTION: BASIC ISSUES IN BIOETHICS, 10th Edition offers students a compelling introduction to biomedical ethics by combining riveting human stories with clear explanations of cutting edge scientific research. A collaboration between a nationally-acclaimed bioethicist and a seasoned journalist, this textbook continues to be the most widely used bioethics textbook on the market. Each chapter includes crisp summaries of the relevant ethical theories as well as classic and contemporary articles on the most pressing topics in the field. This edition (...) features new chapters on "Medicine in a Pluralistic Society" and the "Challenge of Global Bioethics. The accessible presentation of the conceptual debate and human dimension of today's biomedical ethics captivates and engages students, whether they are philosophy, nursing or medical majors or have no philosophical or scientific training. (shrink)

This paper deals with Gärdenfors’ theory of conceptual spaces. Let \({\mathcal {S}}\) be a conceptual space consisting of 2-type fuzzy sets equipped with several kinds of metrics. Let a finite set of prototypes \(\tilde{P}_1,\ldots,\tilde{P}_n\in \mathcal {S}\) be given. Our main result is the construction of a classification algorithm. That is, given an element \({\tilde{A}}\in \mathcal {S},\) our algorithm classifies it into the conceptual field determined by one of the given prototypes \(\tilde{P}_i.\) The construction of our algorithm uses some physical analogies (...) and the Newton potential plays a significant role here. Importantly, the resulting conceptual fields are not convex in the Euclidean sense, which we believe is a reasonable departure from the assumptions of Gardenfors’ original definition of the conceptual space. A partitioning algorithm of the space \(\mathcal {S}\) is also considered in the paper. In the application section, we test our classification algorithm on real data and obtain very satisfactory results. Moreover, the example we consider is another argument against requiring convexity of conceptual fields. (shrink)

The importance of ethics in social research has increased in recent years, something reflected, among other things, in the progressive codification and institutionalization of research ethics and the growing literature on this topic. We argue that despite increasing ethical regulation and ethical reflection in social research, ethical challenges also arise, i.e., difficult situations connected with selecting ethically appropriate behavior. The aim of this special issue is to invite social researchers to reflect upon and discuss ethical challenges in contemporary social research. (...) The contributions in this issue concern vulnerability (one critically analyzing it, and another adapting the vulnerability concept to conducting research with people after a laryngectomy), the researcher and participant relationship, research ethics in multilingual world, and the ethicality of data representation where language plays a particular role in creating a form of activist research. (shrink)

Ethics committees enjoy both a long history and a strong presence in Anglophone countries, although simultaneously their functioning provokes debate in the social research community. In this paper, I analyse selected contested issues that revolve around three questions: 1) Who do ethics committees protect, and who should they? 2) Should ethics committees protect all research participants in the same way? 3) When can ethics committees intervene in the methodology of the research project under review? Analysing these disputes is important since (...) it may help to improve the functioning of ethics committees for social research in Poland. Their number has increased significantly in the last decade, but this has not been accompanied by a broader reflection on either their functioning or the concerns associated with this kind of control. (shrink)

The ability to detect deception is one of the most intriguing features of our minds. Cognitive load can surprisingly increase the accuracy of detection when there is a substantial load compared to when the detection is performed without cognitive load. This effect was tested in two experiments. In the first experiment, the participants were asked to watch truth/lie videos while completing a concurrent task (N‐back in a 3‐back version; intuitive processing), providing verbal reasoning after watching each video (deliberative processing), or (...) watching the videos alone (control group). The cognitive load caused by the concurrent task led to a higher accuracy in deception detection compared to the other conditions. In the second experiment, we examined how this effect worked under various amounts of cognitive load. Participants watching truth/lie videos were assigned to one of three experimental conditions (N‐back in three versions: 1, 3, and 5‐back) or to a control group. The participants in the 3‐back and 5‐back conditions exhibited a significantly higher accuracy in deception detection than those in the 1‐back and control groups. Thus, the effect of increased accuracy in deception detection is due to cognitive load and is related to the amount of cognitive load present. (shrink)

Not all of the stimuli that we encounter are unequivocal; some of them may be ambiguous. In a series of two experiments, we investigated how people perceive and assess the emotionality of the words ambiguous on three emotional spaces: valence (dimensions of positivity and negativity), origin (automaticity and reflectiveness), and activation (arousal and subjective significance). Using two types of measurement – behavioural and webcam-based eye tracking – we compared words of moderate and high ambiguity on each of those spaces with (...) control (uniequivocal) words. The behavioural measurements indicated that reaction times were significantly longer for the control words than for all the ambiguous words; the emotionality of words of ambiguous valence and origin was rated as significantly lower than the control words and words of ambiguous activation. The eye-tracking measurements indicated that words of ambiguous valence and origin caused significantly more and longer eye fixations than control words and words of ambiguous activation. The results showed the visible distinctiveness of the ambiguous words compared with the control words; they also showed differences between words of various ambiguities, verifying the proposed new model for the emotional ambiguity and presenting the behavioral and eye tracking correlates for each of the three ambiguities. (shrink)

“Normal science” is a concept introduced by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In Kuhn’s view, normal science means “puzzle solving”, solving problems within the paradigm—framework most successful in solving current major scientific problems—rather than producing major novelties. This paper examines Kuhnian and Popperian accounts of normal science and their criticisms to assess if normal science is good. The advantage of normal science according to Kuhn was “psychological”: subjective satisfaction from successful “puzzle solving”. Popper argues for an “intellectual” (...) science, one that consistently refutes conjectures and offers new ideas rather than focus on personal advantages. His account is criticized as too impersonal and idealistic. Feyerabend’s perspective seems more balanced; he argues for a community that would introduce new ideas, defend old ones, and enable scientists to develop in line with their subjective preferences. The paper concludes that normal science has no one clear-cut set of criteria encompassing its meaning and enabling clear assessment. (shrink)

Mixed emotions remain a fascinating, yet still understudied phenomenon. All of the previous research has focused solely on ambivalence, studying only the mix of positivity and negativity in emotions (the dimensions of valence). We sum up the already existing knowledge about the dimensional approach to ambivalence and its consequences. Based directly on this knowledge, we introduce a new theoretical model describing ambiguity in four additional dimensions (apart from valence), grouped into two bivariate spaces: origin (dimensions of automaticity and reflectiveness) and (...) activation (arousal and subjective significance). Both of these spaces have never been studied before in the context of ambiguity and mixed feelings. Future implications of the new model are discussed, including any potential impact on the methodology of research and the possible advantages in understanding and describing emotional experiences. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze those theories that interpret misidentification delusions in terms of mentalization. The hypothesis under examination holds that a mentalization framework is useful for describing misidentification delusions when identification is thought to be partially based on mentalization. The article provides both a characterization and possible interpretations of such delusions, and possible relations between misidentification and mentalization are scrutinized. Whether the mentalization approach may explain or describe such kinds of mental disorders is considered, with the (...) conclusion that while this approach is unsatisfactory, there is some room for future improvement. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Eros as the Educational Principle of Democracy Kerry T.Burch. Feeling Power—emotions and education Megan Boler. The Students are Watching: schools and the moral contract Theodore R.Sizer & Nancy Faust Sizer.

The text concerns the role of emotions in delusion formation. Provided are definitions from DSM-V and DSM-IV-R and the problems found in those definitions. One of them, the problem of delusion formation, is described when providing cognitive theories of delusions. The core of the paper is a presentation of the emotional and affective disorders in delusions, especially Capgras delusion and Cotard delusion. The author provides a comparison of the kinds of delusions and the conclusions taken from neuroimaging studies. As a (...) result of the fact that an explanation of delusion formation focusing on emotional problems turns out to be insufficient, the author provides examples of the reasoning impairments which coexist with them. At the end of the article, some hypotheses are proposed concerning the role of emotions and reasoning in delusion formation and the relation between belief disorders and emotional disorders. (shrink)

My thesis is that, although medicine is scientific, it is not and can not become a science. After rejecting as flawed an argument attempting to show that medicine is already a science, I argue that a comparison of such basic, defining features as internal aims, criteria of success, and principles regulating the enterprises demonstrate that medicine and science are inherently different. I then argue that while it may be possible to reduce the cognitive content of medicine to biology, medicine itself (...) cannot be reduced, for as an enterprise it possesses features that make it an inappropriate subject of reduction. I conclude by indicating four results that emerge from recognizing that medicine and science are basically distinct. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Law as Art presents a radical new legal theory, the Law as Art Hypothesis, which conceives law, not as a system of rules, but as a distinctive kind of art work. Law is differentiated as art by the Law as Compound Artistic Type Hypothesis, which uses the heuristic metaphor of the Operatic Music Drama, the most elementally complex compound art form, to develop an idea of legal art as a distinctive empowered text, supported by the arts of drama, painting, sculpture, (...) dress-design, architecture, rhetoric and communication to form an elementally developed yet integrated unitary art work. Part I develops a new realist epistemology to support a contemporary action-type ontology of art, differentiated as art by virtue of its artistic value. Part II opens with a critical review of the arts in legal theory, before detailing the Law as Art and Law as Compound Artistic Type Hypothesis and locating them within contemporary scholarship. Legal philosophical implications are considered and there is an acronym key and glossary, bibliography and index. (shrink)

This article presents the ethical implications for social science research emerging from our study on interpersonal communication after a laryngectomy. By tracing the evolution of our approach through specific research experiences and participant feedback, we provide empirical support for a flexible, multidimensional, and relational understanding of key ethical concepts, such as vulnerability and the researcher-participant relationship. Our approach has shifted from institutionally imposed rigid categorizations and somewhat stereotypical treatment of both the research group and the researcher-participant relationship to an emphasis (...) on building relationships founded on mutual care and rapport. We argue that this revised perspective fosters ethical collaboration that is beneficial and secure for all parties involved, and we offer practical examples of its implementation in research practice. (shrink)

This combination textbook and anthology provides coverage of the fundamental topics in current medical ethics adn familiarizes the reader with the basic moreal and social issues confronting the medical profession today.

This book contains essays presented at a symposium on evidence and data presented by the America Philosophical Society. The essays discuss the role of evidence in interpreting anthropological fieldwork; human psychology; the mechanisms of artificial intelligence; and claims about the past. The natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities are all represented.

People regularly make decisions about how often and with whom to interact. During an epidemic of communicable disease, these decisions gain new weight, as individual choices exert more direct influence on collective health and wellbeing. While much attention has been paid to how people’s concerns about the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic affect their engagement in behaviors that could curb the spread of the disease, less is understood about how people’s concerns about the pandemic’s impact on their social lives (...) affect these outcomes. Across three studies, we find that individuals’ estimates of the pandemic’s social impact are associated with an unwillingness to curtail social interaction and follow other Centers for Disease Control guidelines as the pandemic spreads. First, these associations are present in self-report data of participants’ own behaviors and behavior across hypothetical scenarios; second, participants’ estimates of the pandemic’s impact on social life in their location of residence are associated with movement data collected unobtrusively from mobile phones in those locations. We suggest that perceptions of social impact could be a potential mechanism underlying, and therefore potential intervention target for addressing, disease-preventing behavior during a pandemic. (shrink)

W niniejszym artykule proponujemy przegląd stanowisk wobec „ucieleśnienia” jako kategorii metodologicznej w humanistyce i naukach społecznych, rozważając, jak różnie bywa to pojęcie używane i co stanowi trzon „podejścia ucieleśnionego”. Teksty zebrane w niniejszym zbiorze egzemplifikują te historycznie rozbieżne tradycje, dając obraz badań nad ucieleśnieniem jako samodzielnego pola refleksji.

My thesis is that biology is most plausibly regarded as a universal, as distinct from a provincial, science. First, I develop the general notion of a provincial science, formulate three criteria for applying the concept, and present brief examples illustrating their use. Second, I argue that a consideration of population genetics as a characteristic example of a basic biological theory strengthens the prior presumption that biology is not a provincial science. Finally, I examine two arguments to the effect that biology (...) is a provincial science. The first concerns biology's exclusively terrestrial evidence base, the second the logical character of its laws. I introduce considerations that weaken the persuasiveness of the first argument and then show that the second one rests upon a false premise and so should be rejected. (shrink)

Somatic cell gene therapy has yielded promising results. If germ cell gene therapy can be developed, the promise is even greater: hundreds of genetic diseases might be virtually eliminated. But some claim the procedure is morally unacceptable. We thoroughly and sympathetically examine several possible reasons for this claim but find them inadequate. There is no moral reason, then, not to develop and employ germ-line gene therapy. Taking the offensive, we argue next that medicine has a prima facie moral obligation to (...) do so. (shrink)