We suggest edits to Part Four of the Ethical and Religious Directives (ERDs) to help the US bishops address and clarify essential Church teachings on specific beginning-of-life issues facing Catholic health care today. As a teaching tool, Part Four must be updated so that Catholic health care professionals and the lay faithful can understand and apply Church teachings to new ethical challenges. Further, more direction and clarity from the ERDs is needed in applying general principles to assisted procreative technologies, pre- (...) and post-viability induction of labor, ectopic pregnancies, genetic screening and diagnosis, and contraception. Catholic health care clinicians and administrators also need to receive ongoing instruction on the ERDs’ teachings as well as the theological and philosophical rationales that undergird them. (shrink)

The diagnosis was Turn-to-Stone disease. None of us had heard of it and rushed to Google. Her body calcified itself, painfully turning tissue to bone. She planned her funeral; turning stone to ashes.Meanwhile Viagra four times a day took blood to her hands and feet. “Viagra!” she’d joke, “you’d think I was hard..

Bayesians take “definite” or “single-case” probabilities to be basic. Definite probabilities attach to closed formulas or propositions. We write them here using small caps: PROB(P) and PROB(P/Q). Most objective probability theories begin instead with “indefinite” or “general” probabilities (sometimes called “statistical probabilities”). Indefinite probabilities attach to open formulas or propositions. We write indefinite probabilities using lower case “prob” and free variables: prob(Bx/Ax). The indefinite probability of an A being a B is not about any particular A, but rather about the (...) property of being an A. In this respect, its logical form is the same as that of relative frequencies. For instance, we might talk about the probability of a human baby being female. That probability is about human babies in general — not about individuals. If we examine a baby and determine conclusively that she is female, then the definite probability of her being female is 1, but that does not alter the indefinite probability of human babies in general being female. Most objective approaches to probability tie probabilities to relative frequencies in some way, and the resulting probabilities have the same logical form as the relative frequencies. That is, they are indefinite probabilities. The simplest theories identify indefinite probabilities with relative frequencies.3 It is often objected that such “finite frequency theories” are inadequate because our probability judgments often diverge from relative frequencies. For example, we can talk about a coin being fair (and so the indefinite probability of a flip landing heads is 0.5) even when it is flipped only once and then destroyed (in which case the relative frequency is either 1 or 0). For understanding such indefinite probabilities, it has been suggested that we need a notion of probability that talks about possible instances of properties as well as actual instances.. (shrink)

DUREY A, WYNADEN D, THOMPSON SC, DAVIDSON PM, BESSARAB D and KATZENELLENBOGEN JM. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 144–152 [Epub ahead of print]Owning solutions: a collaborative model to improve quality in hospital care for Aboriginal AustraliansWell‐documented health disparities between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter referred to as Aboriginal) and non‐Aboriginal Australians are underpinned by complex historical and social factors. The effects of colonisation including racism continue to impact negatively on Aboriginal health outcomes, despite being under‐recognised and under‐reported. Many Aboriginal people (...) find hospitals unwelcoming and are reluctant to attend for diagnosis and treatment, particularly with few Aboriginal health professionals employed on these facilities. In this paper, scientific literature and reports on Aboriginal health‐care, methodology and cross‐cultural education are reviewed to inform a collaborative model of hospital‐based organisational change. The paper proposes a collaborative model of care to improve health service delivery by building capacity in Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal personnel by recruiting more Aboriginal health professionals, increasing knowledge and skills to establish good relationships between non‐Aboriginal care providers and Aboriginal patients and their families, delivering quality care that is respectful of culture and improving Aboriginal health outcomes. A key element of model design, implementation and evaluation is critical reflection on barriers and facilitators to providing respectful and culturally safe quality care at systemic, interpersonal and patient/family‐centred levels. Nurses are central to addressing the current state of inequity and are pivotal change agents within the proposed model. (shrink)

David Marr provided a useful framework for theorizing about cognition within classical, AI-style cognitive science, in terms of three levels of description: the levels of (i) cognitive function, (ii) algorithm and (iii) physical implementation. We generalize this framework: (i) cognitive state transitions, (ii) mathematical/functional design and (iii) physical implementation or realization. Specifying the middle, design level to be the theory of dynamical systems yields a nonclassical, alternative framework that suits (but is not committed to) connectionism. We consider how a brain's (...) (or a network's) being a dynamical system might be the key both to its realizing various essential features of cognition — productivity, systematicity, structure-sensitive processing, syntax — and also to a non-classical solution of (frame-type) problems plaguing classical cognitive science. (shrink)

Terry Horgan University of Memphis In this paper I address the problem of causal exclusion, specifically as it arises for mental properties (although the scope of the discussion is more general, being applicable to other kinds of putatively causal properties that are not identical to narrowly physical causal properties, i.e., causal properties posited by physics). I summarize my own current position on the matter, and I offer a defense of this position. I draw upon and synthesize relevant discussions in (...) various <blockquote> [1] </blockquote> other papers of mine (some collaborative) that bear on this topic. (shrink)

David Marr provided an influential account of levels of description in classical cognitive science. In this paper we contrast Marr'ent with some alternatives that are suggested by the recent emergence of connectionism. Marr's account is interesting and important both because of the levels of description it distinguishes, and because of the way his presentation reflects some of the most basic, foundational, assumptions of classical AI-style cognitive science . Thus, by focusing on levels of description, one can sharpen foundational differences between (...) classicism and potential non-classical conceptions of mentality that might emerge under the rubric of connectionism. (shrink)

Editors’ Note:As a matter of policy, the editors believe that publishing several reviews of selected texts is a valuable exercise which will enable a cross-section of views to be aired. The recently published second edition of the National Academy of Sciences’ report “On Being a Scientist” was considered an appropriate text for such treatment. The reviewer, Kenneth D. Pimple, Ph.D., is a Research Associate at the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions and a Visiting Lecturer in (...) the American Studies Program, both at Indiana University. He has been involved with training faculty members to teach ethics since 1989 and is the project director of “Teaching Research Ethics: A Workshop at Indiana University,” with funding from the Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. Her interests include nerve development and regeneration. Her research is in the area of analytical chemistry and emphasizes spectroscopic techniques. (shrink)

Nothing has been more central to philosophy of mathematics than the distinction between mathematical and physical objects. Yet consideration of quantum particles shows the inadequacy of the popular spacetime and causal characterizations of the distinction. It also raises problems for an assumption used recently by Field, Hellman and Horgan, namely, that the mathematical realm is metaphysically independent of the physical one.

We argue that Horgan's program for nominalizing science fails, because its translation of quantitative statements destroys the inferential structures of explanations, predictions and retrodictions of nonquantitative scientific facts.

Women face extraordinary difficulty in seeking sterilization as physicians routinely deny them the procedure. Physicians defend such denials by citing the possibility of future regret, a well‐studied phenomenon in women’s sterilization literature. Regret is, however, a problematic emotion upon which to deny reproductive freedom as regret is neither satisfactorily defined and measured, nor is it centered in analogous cases regarding men’s decision to undergo sterilization or the decision of women to undergo fertility treatment. Why then is regret such a concern (...) in the voluntary sterilization of women? I argue that regret is centered in women’s voluntary sterilization due to pronatalism or expectations that womanhood means motherhood. Women seeking voluntary sterilization are regarded as a deviant identity that rejects what is taken to be their essential role of motherhood and they are thus seen as vulnerable to regret. (shrink)

It has often been thought that our knowledge of ourselves is _different_ from, perhaps in some sense _better_ than, our knowledge of things other than ourselves. Indeed, there is a thriving research area in epistemology dedicated to seeking an account of self-knowledge that would articulate and explain its difference from, and superiority over, other knowledge. Such an account would thus illuminate the descriptive and normative difference between self-knowledge and other knowledge.¹ At the same time, self- knowledge has also encountered its (...) share of skeptics – philosophers who refuse to accord it any descriptive, let alone normative, distinction. In this paper, we argue that there is at least one _species_ of self-knowledge that is different from, and better than, other knowledge. It is a specific kind of knowledge of one’s concurrent phenomenal experiences. Call knowledge of one’s own phenomenal experiences _phenomenal knowledge_. Our claim is that some (though not all) phenomenal knowledge is different from, and better than, non-phenomenal knowledge. In other. (shrink)

This conversation between two scholars of international law focuses on the contemporary realities of feminist analysis of international law and on current and future spaces of resistance. It notes that feminism has moved from the margin towards the centre, but that this has also come at a cost. As the language of women’s rights and gender equality has travelled into the international policy worlds of crisis management and peace and security, feminist scholars need to become more careful in their analysis (...) and find new ways of resistance. While noting that we live in dangerous times, this is also a hopeful discussion. (shrink)

This book presents an overview of these studies and attempts to clarify apparently disparate results by placing them in a coherent theoretical framework.

The figure of Donna Haraway’s cyborg continues to loom large over contemporary feminist engagements with questions of technology. Across a range of analytical projects ranging from cosmetic surgery to employment practices it has come to be one of the defining figurations through which the social and discursive construction of bodies in a technological age are theorized. Indeed, it has become a widely accepted and largely unquestioned orthodoxy of postmodern feminist thinking. Not only has the cyborg offered a theoretical framework for (...) exploring the feminist possibilities of technologies, it has provided a focus for situating questions of technology and bodies into broader feminist theoretical considerations of the structures of knowledge, particularly those of binary oppositions and the logic of identity. While a productive and influential intervention into feminist theorizing, the cyborg is not without limitations. One of these is pointed out by Kirby (1997) as a failure to break convincingly with the logic ofidentity in the way Haraway theorizes the intersection of bodies and technologies in the fabrication of the cyborg. This article examines that criticism and then explores the possibilities which Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblageoffers as a mean of thinking the meetings of bodies and technologies beyond binary oppositions. (shrink)

Soon it may be possible to promote the rehabilitation of criminal offenders through _neurointerventions_ (interventions which exert direct physical, chemical or biological effects on the brain). Some jurisdictions already utilise neurointerventions to diminish the risk of sexual or drug-related reoffending. And investigation is underway into several other neurointerventions that might also have rehabilitative applications within criminal justice—for example, pharmacotherapy to reduce aggression or impulsivity. Ethical debate on the use of neurointerventions to facilitate rehabilitation—henceforth ‘neurorehabilitation’—has proceeded on two assumptions: that we (...) have instrumental reasons for employing neurorehabilitation (e.g. because it helps protect the public from crime); and that its permissibility depends upon whether its use unjustifiably infringes offenders’ rights. This paper defends a different, hitherto neglected thought. I argue we have rights-based reasons to offer neurorehabilitation to offenders—in other words, that offenders have a _moral right_ to neurorehabilitation. I identify three considerations which support a moral right to conventional rehabilitative interventions—(1) as a countermeasure to the debilitating side-effects of punishment; (2) as a derivative right of the right to hope for renewed liberty; and (3) as compensation for structural injustice. I argue these considerations extend to support a moral right to neurorehabilitation in the following instance: when neurorehabilitation would be part of the _most effective_ package for facilitating rehabilitation, and can be carried out at reasonable cost. I then defend my argument against potential objections, including the objection that neurorehabilitation is a bad option for offenders to have and the charge of over-medicalisation. (shrink)

We argue that the letter of the Extended Mind hypothesis can be accommodated by a strongly internalist, broadly Cartesian conception of mind. The argument turns centrally on an unusual but highly plausible view on the mark of the mental.

This essay uses the phenomenal advent of women's climbing as a paradigm case for integrating feminism and phenomenology, and for analyzing how women experience and evolve free movement and existence. In contrast to the paradigm set by Iris Marion Young's “Throwing like a Girl,” it stresses the category of the lived body over the category of gender, and it reveals how women, by employing and cultivating the body's motility and spatiality, engage and transcend the limits of crux situations.

: This essay uses the phenomenal advent of women's climbing as a paradigm case for integrating feminism and phenomenology, and for analyzing how women experience and evolve free movement and existence. In contrast to the paradigm set by Iris Marion Young's "Throwing like a Girl," it stresses the category of the lived body over the category of gender, and it reveals how women, by employing and cultivating the body's motility and spatiality, engage and transcend the (gender) limits of crux situations.

The micro-regional focus of bioregionalism is a small unit of physical space, typically a watershed region. In bioregional discourse, natural systems become metaphors for cultural coherence. However, when we look for laws embedded in the natural world, those that are found do not then reveal themselves as principles which apply to systems of culture. Further, within most individuals, the sense of regional identity spans several scales because our past narratives and present affiliations span several localities. Humans are not immersed in (...) singular niches, nor is the bioregionalist an existential, primordial localist, for his or her choice has been crafted. (shrink)

Many opponents of BIG programs believe that receiving guaranteed subsistence income would act as a strong disincentive to work. In contrast, various areas of empirical research in psychology suggest that a BIG would not lead to meaningful reductions in work. To test these competing predictions, a comprehensive review of BIG outcome studies reporting data on adult labor responses was conducted. The results indicate that 93 % of reported outcomes support the prediction of no meaningful work reductions when the criterion for (...) support is set at less than a 5 % decrease in either average hours worked per week or the rate of labor participation. Overall, these results indicate that adult labor responses would show no substantial impact following a BIG intervention. (shrink)

(1992). TROUBLES FOR NEW WAVE MORAL SEMANTICS: THE ‘OPEN QUESTION ARGUMENT’ REVIVED. Philosophical Papers: Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 153-175. doi: 10.1080/05568649209506380.

BackgroundWith the enactment of Bill C-7 in Canada in March 2021, people who are eligible for medical assistance in dying (MAiD), whose death is reasonably foreseeable and are at risk of losing decision-making capacity, may enter into a written agreement with their healthcare provider to waive the final consent requirement at the time of provision. This study explored healthcare providers’ perspectives on honouring eligible patients’ request for MAiD in the absence of a contemporaneous consent following their loss of decision-making capacity. (...) MethodA critical qualitative methodology, using a feminist ethics theoretical lens with its focus on power and relationality, was used to examine how socio-political and environmental contexts influenced healthcare providers' moral agency and perspectives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 healthcare providers (13 physicians, six nurse practitioners, nine nurses and two social workers) from across Canada who provide MAiD-related care.ResultsThemes identified include; (1) balancing personal values and professional responsibilities, (2) anticipating strengths and limitations of the proposed waiver of final consent amendment, (3) experiencing ethical influences on decisions to enter into written agreements with eligible patients, (4) recognizing barriers to the enactment of MAiD in the absence of a contemporaneous consent and (5) navigating the potential for increased risks and burden.DiscussionTo our knowledge, this is the first study in Canada to explore healthcare providers’ perspectives on waiving the final consent for MAiD using a written agreement. Most participants supported expanding eligible people’s access to MAiD following loss of capacity, as they believed it would improve the patients’ comfort and minimize suffering. However, the lack of patients’ input at the time of provision and related ethical and legal challenges may impact healthcare providers’ moral agency and reduce some patients’ access to MAiD. Providers indicated they would enter into written agreements to waive final consent for MAiD on a case-by-case basis. This study highlights the importance of organizational, legal and professional support, adequate resources, clear policies and guidelines for the safety and wellbeing of healthcare providers and to ensure equitable access to MAiD. (shrink)

Implicit learning is said to occur when a person learns about a complex stimulus without necessarily intending to do so, and in such a way that the resulting knowledge is difficult to express. Over the last 30 years, a number of studies have claimed to show evidence of implicit learning. In more recent years, however, considerable debate has arisen over the extent to which cognitive tasks can in fact be learned implicitly. Much of the debate has centred on the questions (...) of how unconscious, and how abstract, is implicitly acquired knowledge? The aim of this book is to provide students and researchers with a self-contained and balanced summary of the various theoretical and empirical positions that are currently shaping this exciting area of research. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 7, Page 774-782, September 2022.

The horror described in the Book of Lamentations engenders terror-fraught cries from those entrapped by them. The laments that comprise the book plumb the depths of human tragedy and desperation without rushing prematurely into consolation and relief.

This study aims to address how and when retailers’ sustainability efforts translate into positive consumer responses. Hypotheses are developed and tested through a scenario-based experiment among 672 consumers. Retailers’ assortment sustainability and distribution sustainability are manipulated. Retailers’ sustainability efforts lead to positive consumer responses via two underlying mechanisms: consumers’ identification with the store and store legitimacy. The effects of sustainability efforts are strengthened if consumers have personal norms favoring shopping at environmentally friendly stores. Remarkably, when controlling for moderation by personal (...) norms, social norms weaken the effects. The findings show that traditional marketing mix elements provide opportunities for retailers to improve their organizations’ bottom line and positively affect consumer well-being. This study helps retailers decide whether or not to invest in and communicate about sustainability. Past research has shown the clear potential for positive consumer responses to firms’ sustainability efforts, but little is known about the underlying mechanisms and the conditions under which such responses take place. This study advances theory by examining personal and social factors as mediators and moderators of the retailers’ sustainability efforts–consumer responses relationship. (shrink)

Abstract We propose a metaethical view that combines the cognitivist idea that moral judgments are genuine beliefs and moral utterances express genuine assertions with the idea that such beliefs and utterances are nondescriptive in their overall content. This sort of view has not been recognized among the standard metaethical options because it is generally assumed that all genuine beliefs and assertions must have descriptive content. We challenge this assumption and thereby open up conceptual space for a new kind of metaethical (...) view. In developing our brand of nondescriptivist cognitivism we do the following: (1) articulate a conception of belief (and assertion) that does not require the overall declarative content of beliefs (and assertions) to be descriptive content; (2) make a case for the independent plausibility of this conception of belief and assertion; and (3) argue that our view, formulated in a way that draws upon the proposed conception of belief, has significant comparative advantages over descriptivist forms of cognitivism. (shrink)

The 'business judgement rule ' requires corporate directors only to act with honesty and reasonable care in the interest of shareholders. A stronger ' fiduciary ' duty is required where one party requires protection from another. This paper argues that where corporations take risks with the environment, directors are fiduciaries. Stakeholders are in that case the general public, future generations and other species, which have not voluntarily accepted risk and cannot limit liability. Recognition of fiduciary duty in such cases is (...) consistent with recent trends in the law of equity. It would require all economic activities to move from open to closed systems. (shrink)

Research ethics principles and regulations typically have been applied to the protection of individual human subjects. Yet, new paradigms of research that include the place-based community and cultural groups as partners or participants of environmental research interventions, in particular, require attention to place-based identities and geographical contexts. This paper argues the importance of respecting “place” within human subjects protections applied to communities and cultural groups as part of a critical need for research ethics and cultural competence training for graduate research (...) students. These protections and benefits are extensions of the Belmont Principles and have been included in recent recommendations from research regulatory committees. (shrink)