This article reflects on the implications of the concept of health and the questions it poses for moral philosophy, psychology, and the panoply of professions that are involved in the practices of care and in the ethics of individual rights, dignity, and autonomy. Significant among these questions is what we call “the predicament of agency.” The predicament involves the ethical tensions—arising within the broad concept of health and flourishing, but also in concrete everyday practices and relationships—between supporting individual health outcomes (...) and supporting health and flourishing through respect for autonomy and self-direction. Three ways of addressing the predicament of agency are discussed: by reinterpreting the nature and requirements of autonomy (a) by appeal to reason, (b) by designing or curating contextual conditions influencing choice (often called “choice architecture” or “nudging”) in ways that constrain autonomy but do not violate its core value, and (c) by appeal to relational judgment and reflective professional practice. The article argues that each of these lines of thought is important, but none is a panacea, and none is free from conceptual confusions and ethical pitfalls of its own. The relational approach is the most promising in pointing beyond the predicament of agency—not so much by resolving it as by showing how it can be worked through without either turning our back on caring or turning caring into management and manipulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The Politics of the Soul: Eric Voegelin on Religious Experience includes eight essays examining one of the most profound studies of religious experience to appear in the last century: that of the political philosopher Eric Voegelin. Voegelin is increasingly recognized as a political theorist of exceptional scope and erudition and the most important philosopher of his time since Toynbee, and his treatment of religious experience is a crucial part of his overall analysis of existence and history. This collection of essays (...) by prominenet Voegelin scholars is the first book to explore the relevance of that analysis to the contemporary understanding of political theory, theology, history, and philosophy of consciousness, and as such it constitutes a significant contribution not only to Voegelin scholarship but to the current quest for theoretical foundations. (shrink)

Preparing the Next Generation of Oral Historians is an invaluable resource to educators seeking to bring history alive for students at all levels. Filled with insightful reflections on teaching oral history, it offers practical suggestions for educators seeking to create curricula, engage students, gather community support, and meet educational standards. By the close of the book, readers will be able to successfully incorporate oral history projects in their own classrooms.

Scientists, humanists, and art lovers alike value art not just for its beauty, but also for its social and epistemic importance; that is, for its communicative nature, its capacity to increase one's self-knowledge and encourage personal growth, and its ability to challenge our schemas and preconceptions. However, empirical research tends to discount the importance of such social and epistemic outcomes of art engagement, instead focusing on individuals' preferences, judgments of beauty, pleasure, or other emotional appraisals as the primary outcomes of (...) art appreciation. Here, we argue that a systematic neuroscientific study of art appreciation must move beyond understanding aesthetics alone, and toward investigating the social importance of art appreciation. We make our argument for such a shift in focus first, by situating art appreciation as an active social practice. We follow by reviewing the available psychological and cognitive neuroscientific evidence that art appreciation cultivates socio-epistemic skills such as self- and other-understanding, and discuss philosophical frameworks which suggest a more comprehensive empirical investigation. Finally, we argue that focusing on the socio-epistemic values of art engagement highlights the important role art plays in our lives. Empirical research on art appreciation can thus be used to show that engagement with art has specific social and personal value, the cultivation of which is important to us as individuals, and as communities. (shrink)

While bioethics as a field has concerned itself with methodological issues since the early years, there has been no systematic examination of how ethics is incorporated into research on the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications of the Human Genome Project. Yet ELSI research may bear a particular burden of investigating and substantiating its methods given public funding, an explicitly cross-disciplinary approach, and the perceived significance of adequate responsiveness to advances in genomics. We undertook a qualitative content analysis of a sample (...) of ELSI publications appearing between 2003 and 2008 with the aim of better understanding the methods, aims, and approaches to ethics that ELSI researchers employ. We found that the aims of ethics within ELSI are largely prescriptive and address multiple groups. We also found that the bioethics methods used in the ELSI literature are both diverse between publications and multiple within publications, but are usually not themselves discussed or employed as suggested by bioethics method proponents. Ethics in ELSI is also sometimes undistinguished from related inquiries. (shrink)

Purpose: We sought to examine the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) literature research and scholarship types, topics, and contributing community fields of training as a first step to charting the broader ELSI community’s future priorities and goals. Methods: We categorized 642 articles and book chapters meeting inclusion criteria for content in both human genetics or genomics and ethics or ELSI during a 5-year period (2003–2008) according to research and scholarship types, topics, and the area of advanced training of the (...) first-listed author. Research and scholarship type categories were developed and characterized through in-depth review of 95 randomly sampled publications from the larger group. Results: There is a single dominant approach to ELSI, which focuses on ethical and other social issues “downstream” of advances in genomics, the contributors to which predominately have advanced training in medicine or science fields other than social science. A comparatively low percentage of publications primarily offer policy recommendations, and these are much more likely to be written by those with advanced training in law than is the case for the literature as a whole. Social science studies predominately employ qualitative methods and vary significantly with respect to the extent and types of recommendations offered. Two further types of ELSI research and scholarship offer alternative models for so-called “normative” work in this field. Conclusion: Considering topics, training, and types of ELSI research and scholarship from the most recent past allows for a baseline perspective that is sorely needed in charting this field’s future course. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

Donation after cardiac death (DCD) is associated with many problems, including ischemic injury, high rates of delayed allograft function, and frequent organ discard. Furthermore, many potential DCD donors fail to progress to asystole in a manner that would enable safe organ transplantation and no organs are recovered. DCD protocols are based upon the principle that the donor must be declared dead prior to organ recovery. A new protocol is proposed whereby after a donor family agrees to withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments, (...) premortem nephrectomy is performed in advance of end-of-life management. Since nephrectomy should not cause the donor's death, this approach satisfies the dead donor rule. The donor family's wishes are best met by organ donation, successful outcomes for the recipients, and a dignified death for the deceased. This proposal improves the likelihood of achieving these objectives. (shrink)

Advances in DNA sequencing technology open new possibilities for public health genomics, especially in the form of general population preventive genomic sequencing. Such screening programs would sit at the intersection of public health and preventive health care, and thereby at once invite and resist the use of clinical ethics and public health ethics frameworks. Despite their differences, these ethics frameworks traditionally share a central concern for individual rights. We examine two putative individual rights—the right not to know, and the child’s (...) right to an open future—frequently invoked in discussions of predictive genetic testing, in order to explore their potential contribution to evaluating this new practice. Ultimately, we conclude that traditional clinical and public health ethics frameworks, and these two rights in particular, should be complemented by a social justice perspective in order adequately to characterize the ethical dimensions of general population PGS programs. (shrink)

Recent studies indicate that mammalian chromosomes contain discretecis‐acting loci that control replication timing, mitotic condensation, and stability of entire chromosomes. Disruption of the large non‐coding RNA gene ASAR6 results in late replication, an under‐condensed appearance during mitosis, and structural instability of human chromosome 6. Similarly, disruption of the mouse Xist gene in adult somatic cells results in a late replication and instability phenotype on the X chromosome. ASAR6 shares many characteristics with Xist, including random mono‐allelic expression and asynchronous replication timing. (...) Additional “chromosome engineering” studies indicate that certain chromosome rearrangements affecting many different chromosomes display this abnormal replication and instability phenotype. These observations suggest that all mammalian chromosomes contain “inactivation/stability centers” that control proper replication, condensation, and stability of individual chromosomes. Therefore, mammalian chromosomes contain four types ofcis‐acting elements, origins, telomeres, centromeres, and “inactivation/stability centers”, all functioning to ensure proper replication, condensation, segregation, and stability of individual chromosomes. (shrink)

A 55-year-old man, admitted to the hospital after an episode of aphasia due to transient ischemic attack, underwent ultrasound imaging that showed near occlusion of the left carotid artery. A carot...

Background: Discussion of the influence of money on bioethics research seems particularly salient in the context of research on the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of human genomics, as this research may be financially supported by the ELSI Research Program. Empirical evidence regarding the funding of ELSI research and where such research is disseminated, in relation to the specific topics of the research and methods used, can help to further discussions regarding the appropriate influence of specific institutions and institutional (...) contexts on ELSI and other bioethics research agendas. Methods: We reviewed 642 ELSI publications (appearing between 2003 and 2008) for reported sources of funding, forum for dissemination, empirical and nonempirical methods, and topics of investigation. Results: Most ELSI research is independent of direct grant-based funding sources; 66% reported no such sources of funding. The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is the most dominant source of funding; 16% of publications acknowledged at least one source of NHGRI grant funding. Funding is acknowledged more frequently in empirical than nonempirical publications and more frequently in publications in public health journals than in any other ELSI research dissemination forums. Dominant research topics vary by publication forum and by reported funding. Conclusions: ELSI research is surprisingly independent of direct grant-based funding, yet correlations are apparent between this type of funding and publication placement, topics addressed, and methods used, implying a not insignificant influence on ELSI research agenda setting. However, given the relatively low percentage of publications acknowledging external grant-based funding, as well as other significant correlations between publication placement and topics addressed, additional institutional contexts, perhaps related to professional advancement or valuation, may shape research agendas in ways that potentially exceed the direct influences of grant-based funding in this area. In some cases, grant-based funding may actually counter other potentially problematic institutional influences. (shrink)

Vaesen infers unique properties of mind from the appearance of specific cultural innovation – a correlation without causal direction. Shifts in habitat, population density, and group dynamics are the only independently verifiable incentives for changes in cultural practices. The transition from Acheulean to Late Stone Age technologies requires that we consider how population and social dynamics affect cultural innovation and mental function.

The first English translation of Fichte’s second set of 1804 lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre.

v. 1. Nicomachean ethics. Politics. The Athenian Constitution. Rhetoric. On Poetics.--v. 2. Logic.--v. 3. Physics. Metaphysics. On the soul. Short physical treaties.--v. 4. On the heavens. On generation and corruption. Meteorology. Biological treatises.

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is the most likely site where egocentric spatial relationships are represented in the brain. PPC cells receive visual, auditory, somaesthetic, and vestibular sensory inputs; oculomotor, head, limb, and body motor signals; and strong motivational projections from the limbic system. Their discharge increases not only when an animal moves towards a sensory target, but also when it directs its attention to it. PPC lesions have the opposite effect: sensory inattention and neglect. The PPC does not seem (...) to contain a “map” of the location of objects in space but a distributed neural network for transforming one set of sensory vectors into other sensory reference frames or into various motor coordinate systems. Which set of transformation rules is used probably depends on attention, which selectively enhances the synapses needed for making a particular sensory comparison or aiming a particular movement. (shrink)

Orthologic is defined by weakening the axioms and rules of inference of the classical propositional calculus. The resulting Lindenbaum-Tarski quotient algebra is an orthoimplication algebra which generalizes the author's implication algebra. The associated order structure is a semi-orthomodular lattice. The theory of orthomodular lattices is obtained by adjoining a falsity symbol to the underlying orthologic or a least element to the orthoimplication algebra.

Providing an original and systematic treatment of foundational issues in philosophy of religion, J. L. Schellenberg's new book addresses the structure of..

The breaking of bad news in a hospital setting, particularly to patients in a terminal condition, highlights some complex and often emotive ethical issues for nurses. One theory that examines the way in which individuals react to bad news such as a terminal illness, is the theory of awareness contexts. However, this theory may be limited by failing to recognize the complexity of the situation and the ethical issues involved for nurses caring for terminally ill patients. Furthermore, contexts of awareness (...) are influenced to a much greater extent by relationships with nurses than simply by the delivery of medical information. Even when information is given to the client and the family, the nurse is involved in helping them to know the meaning of this information. In a hospital, the nurse is faced with emotional demands by clients, families and colleagues, complex issues of advocacy, and professional boundaries and responsibilities. It is the author’s wish to examine the reality of clinical practice for nurses, thus further extending the theory of awareness contexts. (shrink)

According to realist structuralism, mathematical objects are places in abstract structures. We argue that in spite of its many attractions, realist structuralism must be rejected. For, first, mathematical structures typically contain intra-structurally indiscernible places. Second, any account of place-identity available to the realist structuralist entails that intra-structurally indiscernible places are identical. Since for her mathematical singular terms denote places in structures, she would have to say, for example, that 1 = − 1 in the group (Z, +). We call this (...) the identity problem and conclude that nominalism is presently the safest route for the structuralist. (shrink)

Ned Block argues that the higher-order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (xxx).1 In this response, I wish to plead guilty as charged. Indeed, I will continue herein to abuse Block’s notion of what-it’s-like-ness. After doing so, I will argue that the HO approach accounts (...) for the sense of what-it’s-like-ness that matters in a theory of consciousness. I will also argue that the only incoherence present in the HO theory is that generated by embracing Block’s controversial notion of what-it’s-like-ness, something no theorist of any stripe ought to do. Block is famous for (among other things) having introduced the notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ into contemporary philosophy of mind (Block 1995). This term is widely employed in the philosophical literature and it even appears in the empirical literature. But wide-speared usage has brought about divergent interpretations of the term. We can distinguish a ‘moderate’ and a ‘zealous’ reading of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. On the moderate reading, ‘phenomenal consciousness’ just means ‘experience’. Many people have embraced this sense of the term and use it to roughly pick out conscious experience involving sensory quality (states like conscious visual experiences or conscious pains, for example).2 On the zealous reading, however, phenomenal consciousness is held to be ‘distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional property’ (Block 1995: 234). That is, any explanation of phenomenal consciousness in exclusively cognitive, intentional, or functional terms will fail to capture, without remainder, what is really distinctive about phenomenal consciousness. Block, of course, is fully clear about embracing the zealous reading; indeed, his initial introduction of the notion is in those terms. The same ambiguity occurs with the much-used (and abused) idea of ‘what-it’s-like-ness’.. (shrink)

Prologue: Toward a new Enlightenment -- From bounded to relational being -- Bounded being -- In the beginning is the relationship -- The relational self -- The body as relationship : emotion, pleasure and pain -- Relational being in everyday life -- Multi-being and the adventure of everyday life -- Bonds, barricades, and beyond -- Relational being in practice -- Knowledge as co-creation -- Education in a relational key -- Therapy as relational recovery -- Organizing : the precarious balance -- (...) From the moral to the sacred -- Beyond moral pluralism -- All our relations, approaching the sacred -- Epilogue: The coming of relational consciousness. (shrink)

Scientists and laypeople alike use the sense of understanding that an explanation conveys as a cue to good or correct explanation. Although the occurrence of this sense or feeling of understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good explanation, it does drive judgments of the plausibility and, ultimately, the acceptability, of an explanation. This paper presents evidence that the sense of understanding is in part the routine consequence of two well-documented biases in cognitive psychology: overconfidence and hindsight. In light of (...) the prevalence of counterfeit understanding in the history of science, I argue that many forms of cognitive achievement do not involve a sense of understanding, and that only the truth or accuracy of an explanation make the sense of understanding a valid cue to genuine understanding. (shrink)

This analysis explores the phenomenology of suffering and temporal, genetic and social developmental aspects of suffering for seriously ill older adults. A phenomenological account of suffering is advanced using oral history data from in-depth interviews with a seriously ill, frail elderly woman. The analysis evaluates how a phenomenological account of suffering may inform ethics in end-of-life decision making, and may provide a further basis for an integrated ethical and gerontological response to suffering in palliative social work practice with seriously ill (...) older adults at the end of life. Levinas’s ethical philosophy and conceptualizations of the non-totalizing relation of self to other, disinterest, and radical passivity are employed to help reframe an approach to the ethical relation and the nature of obligation in end-of-life care, expanding consciousness of suffering and its meanings in an intersubjectively experienced world. Differences in Husserl’s account of the other and the concept of alterity in Levinas’s ethics are explored in the context of phenomenology as a descriptive science that respond directly to the pragmatic concerns of the analysis. (shrink)