One approach to understanding model-based reasoning in science is to examine how it develops during infancy, childhood, and adolescence. The way in which thinking changes sometimes provides clues to its nature. This paper examines cognitive developmental aspects of modeling practices and discusses how a developmental perspective can enrich the study of model-based scientific reasoning in adults. The paper begins with issues concerning developmental change, followed by a model of model-based reasoning. The rest of the paper describes how several key concepts (...) from recent developmental work could contribute to current work on model-based reasoning. Specifically, developmental research shows that (a) social processes are involved in model-based reasoning and scientific discovery, (b) the development of a theory of mind contributes to the development of scientific reasoning, (c) changes in scientific reasoning are characterized by cognitive variability, and (d) microgenetic methods could clarify conceptual change during model-based reasoning. (shrink)

Authorising euthanasia and assisted suicide with advance euthanasia directives is permitted, yet debated, in the Netherlands. We focus on a recent controversial case in which a Dutch woman with Alzheimer’s disease was euthanised based on her AED. A Dutch euthanasia review committee found that the physician performing the euthanasia failed to follow due care requirements for euthanasia and assisted suicide. This case is notable because it is the first case to trigger a criminal investigation since the 2002 Dutch euthanasia law (...) was enacted. Thus far, only brief descriptions of the case have been reported in English language journals and media. We provide a detailed description of the case, review the main challenges of preparing and applying AEDs for persons with dementia and briefly assess the adequacy of the current oversight system governing AEDs. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe rapid expansion of primary education in Ethiopia has enabled most children to attend primary education—or at least to start schooling. This expansion, however, is largely “symbolic” rat...

Although informed consent is important in clinical research, questions persist regarding when it is necessary, what it requires, and how it should be obtained. The standard view in research ethics is that the function of informed consent is to respect individual autonomy. However, consent processes are multidimensional and serve other ethical functions as well. These functions deserve particular attention when barriers to consent exist. We argue that consent serves seven ethically important and conceptually distinct functions. The first four functions pertain (...) principally to individual participants: (1) providing transparency; (2) allowing control and authorization; (3) promoting concordance with participants' values; and (4) protecting and promoting welfare interests. Three other functions are systemic or policy focused: (5) promoting trust; (6) satisfying regulatory requirements; and (7) promoting integrity in research. Reframing consent around these functions can guide approaches to consent that are context sensitive and that maximize achievable goals. (shrink)

We are grateful to Jongsma et al 1 for their interest in our article analysing the case of ‘Mrs A’, a Dutch woman with Alzheimer’s disease who received euthanasia based on her advance euthanasia directive.2 Their commentary criticises two elements of our analysis. First, the authors believe our reasons for doubting that Mrs A had the capacity to write and revise an AED rely on ‘partial’ empirical data and rest on normative errors. Second, they use two of our statements to (...) suggest we must endorse some implausible claims, for example, that ‘… in all situations and for all people, current well-being should always take precedence over all other values’. Jongsma et al assert: ‘Miller et al argue that people with dementia are impaired to make decisions.’ This casts our probabilistic claim about Mrs A’s capacity as an absolute claim about persons with dementia in general. It also implies we are using an outdated diagnosis-based view of capacity. The accusation then becomes explicit : > … several empirical studies have shown that patients with dementia are able to actively participate in qualitative studies and can respond to open questions in a meaningful way,[2-8] as well that they are able to complete an advance directive in the early phases of dementia.[9, 10] One can therefore not simply conclude on the basis of the diagnosis of dementia …. (shrink)

A physically consistent semi-classical treatment of black holes requires universality arguments to deal with the ‘trans-Planckian’ problem where quantum spacetime effects appear to be amplified such that they undermine the entire semi-classical modelling framework. We evaluate three families of such arguments in comparison with Wilsonian renormalization group universality arguments found in the context of condensed matter physics. Our analysis is framed by the crucial distinction between robustness and universality. Particular emphasis is placed on the quality whereby the various arguments are (...) underpinned by ‘integrated’ notions of robustness and universality. Whereas the principal strength of Wilsonian universality arguments can be understood in terms of the presence of such integration, the principal weakness of all three universality arguments for Hawking radiation is its absence. (shrink)

The “learning health care system” is being heralded as offering great potential for improving the quality and cost-worthiness of medical care by closely integrating the care of patients with the accumulation of aggregate data that can guide evidence-based medicine. By using electronic medical records, routine patient care and administrative data will be available for systematic observational studies. With the aid of these electronic medical records, quality-improvement studies of institutional practices and pragmatic, comparative effectiveness randomized trials of individual treatments could become (...) standard features of the medical care environment in the LHS. In this.. (shrink)

BackgroundResearchers worry that patients in early-phase research experience unrealistic optimism about benefits and risks of participation. The standard measure of unrealistic optimism is the Comparative Risk/Benefit Assessment questionnaire, which asks people to estimate their chances of an outcome relative to others in similar situations. Such a comparative framework may not be a natural way for research participants to think about their chances.ObjectiveTo examine how people interpret questions measuring unrealistic optimism and how their interpretations are associated with their responses.MethodsUsing an early-phase (...) cancer trial vignette, we administered the CRBA to 297 adults from the general public. They estimated their comparative chances of risk and benefit, then provided rationales for their estimates.ResultsFor both CRBA benefit and risk questions, about 50% of respondents chose 0, and 50% chose a non-0 response. Respondents’ rationales for their estimates showed that overall only about 40%–44% gave comparative rationales, indicating that they interpreted the CRBA as intended. 68.7% of respondents who gave the ‘correct’ 0 rating gave comparative rationales, whereas only 11.6% of respondents who gave non-0 ratings did so. A similar trend was seen for chances of risk.ConclusionResearch participants may not understand comparative benefit and risk questions as intended; attributions of unrealistic optimism may require additional evidence that the respondents’ estimates are intended to be comparative. (shrink)

Essays in Memory of Richard Helgerson: Laureations brings together new essays by leading literary scholars of the British and European middle ages and early modern period who have been influenced by the groundbreaking scholarship of Richard Helgerson. The contributors evince the ongoing impact of Helgerson's work in critical debates including those of nationalism, formal analysis, and literary careerism.

Background: Expanded newborn screening generates incidental results, notably carrier results. Yet newborn screening programmes typically restrict parental choice regarding receipt of this non-health serving genetic information. Healthcare providers play a key role in educating families or caring for screened infants and have strong beliefs about the management of incidental results. Methods: To inform policy on disclosure of infant sickle cell disorder (SCD) carrier results, a mixed-methods study of healthcare providers was conducted in Ontario, Canada, to understand attitudes regarding result management (...) using a cross-sectional survey (N = 1615) and semistructured interviews (N = 42). Results: Agreement to reasons favouring disclosure of SCD carrier results was high (65.1%–92.7%) and to reasons opposing disclosure was low (4.1%–18.1%). Genetics professionals expressed less support for arguments favouring disclosure (35.3%–78.8%), and more agreement with arguments opposing disclosure (15.7%–51.9%). A slim majority of genetics professionals (51.9%) agreed that a reason to avoid disclosure was the importance of allowing the child to decide to receive results. Qualitatively, there was a perceived “duty” to disclose, that if the clinician possessed the information, the clinician could not withhold it. Discussion: While a majority of respondents perceived a duty to disclose the incidental results of newborn screening, the policy implications of these attitudes are not obvious. In particular, policy must balance descriptive ethics (ie, what providers believe) and normative ethics (ie, what duty-based principles oblige), address dissenting opinion and consider the relevance of moral principles grounded in clinical obligations for public health initiatives. (shrink)

This book starts from the premise that methodology has always dominated archaeology to the detriment of broader social theory.

The idea that democracy is under threat, after being largely dormant for at least 40 years, is looming increasingly large in public discourse. Complex systems theory offers a range of powerful new tools to analyse the stability of social institutions in general, and democracy in particular. What makes a democracy stable? And which processes potentially lead to instability of a democratic system? This paper offers a complex systems perspective on this question, informed by areas of the mathematical, natural, and social (...) sciences. We explain the meaning of the term 'stability' in different disciplines and discuss how laws, rules, and regulations, but also norms, conventions, and expectations are decisive for the stability of a social institution such as democracy. (shrink)

Political scientists have conventionally assumed that achieving democracy is a one-way ratchet. Only very recently has the question of ‘democratic backsliding’ attracted any research attention. We argue that democratic instability is best understood with tools from complexity science. The explanatory power of complexity science arises from several features of complex systems. Their relevance in the context of democracy is discussed. Several policy recommen- dations are offered to help stabilize current systems of representative democracy.

Literacy is an essential skill. Learning to read is a requirement for becoming a self-providing human being. However, while spoken language is acquired naturally with exposure to language without explicit instruction, reading and writing need to be taught explicitly. Decades of research have shown that well-structured teaching of phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and letter-to-sound mapping is crucial in building solid foundations for the acquisition of reading. During the COVID-19 pandemic, children worldwide did not have access to consistent and structured teaching (...) and are, as a consequence, predicted to be behind in the development of their reading skills. Subsequent evidence confirms this prediction. With the best evidence-based practice in mind, we developed an online version of a well-structured early literacy training program for 5-year-old children. This 2-week online Reading Camp program is designed for pre-K children. It incorporates critical components of the fundamental skills essential to learning to read and is taught online in an interactive, multi-sensory, and peer-learning environment. We measure the participants’ literacy skills and other related skills before and after participating in the online Reading Camp and compare the results to no-treatment controls. Results show that children who participated in the online Reading Camp improved significantly on all parameters in relation to controls. Our results demonstrate that a well-structured evidence-based reading instruction program, even if online and short-term, benefits 5-year-old children in learning to read. With the potential to scale up this online program, the evidence presented here, alongside previous evidence for the efficacy of the in-person program, indicates that the online Reading Camp program is effective and can be used to tackle a variety of questions regarding structural and functional plasticity in the early stages of reading acquisition. (shrink)

This article explores the situation faced by the so-called royalists during the Independence in New Granada and their language of love and subordination to the king, through which they ratified their membership in the Spanish political community, even having been born in America. The king was not a distant symbol, he was a presence felt and lived by his American vassals. The wars of Independence did not confront, as traditional historiography has argued, Creoles and peninsular people, but members of the (...) same political body, who, because they remained loyal to the crown or were born in the peninsula, were turned into enemies to be exterminated, such as as provided in the War to Death Decree of 1813, issued by Simón Bolívar. (shrink)

La intención de este ensayo es dar cuenta de algunas tendencias del Pensamiento Filosófico-Ético Ambiental colombiano, y su importancia en la Escuela de Pensamiento Ambiental que se está construyendo en la Universidad Nacional Sede Manizales gracias a los aportes de pensadores que han asumido la tarea de pensar lo pensado. En la primera parte presentaremos el pensamiento de of Augusto Angel-Maya, quien inauguró la escuela colombiana de pensamientoambiental y luego concisamente introduciremos las voces de José María Borrero, Julio Carrizosa, Arturo (...) Escobar, Guillermo Hoyos, Rubiel Ramírez y Patricia Noguera. En estas diversas aproximaciones de pensamiento ambiental encontramos potencias creadoras de una visión ambiental alternativa que está consolidándose no sólo en Colombia, sino en América Latina. Estas voces han abierto caminos hacia la reflexión sobre valores emergentes de las relaciones entre los humanos y las tramas de la vida, los valores que todos debemos construir si queremos una "sociedad Ambiental", y los valores que es necesario superar desde nuevas prácticas educativas, políticas, económicas y culturales, tanto en nuestra región como en otras latitudes. (shrink)

La intención de este ensayo es dar cuenta de algunas tendencias del Pensamiento Filosófico-Ético Ambiental colombiano, y su importancia en la Escuela de Pensamiento Ambiental que se está construyendo en la Universidad Nacional Sede Manizales gracias a los aportes de pensadores que han asumido la tarea de pensar lo pensado. En la primera parte presentaremos el pensamiento de of Augusto Angel-Maya, quien inauguró la escuela colombiana de pensamientoambiental y luego concisamente introduciremos las voces de José María Borrero, Julio Carrizosa, Arturo (...) Escobar, Guillermo Hoyos, Rubiel Ramírez y Patricia Noguera. En estas diversas aproximaciones de pensamiento ambiental encontramos potencias creadoras de una visión ambiental alternativa que está consolidándose no sólo en Colombia, sino en América Latina. Estas voces han abierto caminos hacia la reflexión sobre valores emergentes de las relaciones entre los humanos y las tramas de la vida, los valores que todos debemos construir si queremos una "sociedad Ambiental", y los valores que es necesario superar desde nuevas prácticas educativas, políticas, económicas y culturales, tanto en nuestra región como en otras latitudes. (shrink)

Este articulo explora los temas de las correspondencias y la alegoría en las reflexiones de Walter Benjamin sobre la poesía de Charles Baudelaire. Compara dichas reflexiones con otros enfoques críticos de la época y pone de relieve la relación, que Benjamin consideraba esencial, entre la forma de la obra baudeleriana y las transformaciones históricas de mediados del siglo XIX. This paper explores the presence of correspondances and allegory in Walter Benjamin's thoughts on the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. It compares these (...) thoughts with other contemporary critical approaches and points up the relationship, which Benjamin considered essential, between the form of Baudelaire's work and the historical changes of the mid-nineteenth century. (shrink)

La actividad económica ha existido siempre, la pregunta es ¡qué leyes económicas deben regirla? Curiosamente debemos rescatar valores que hoy las escuelas de negocios dirían "antieconómicos".

We present a reflection about the importance of playing as an activity inherent to the human being and its benefits in the different areas of child development: affectivity, motor skills, intelligence, creativity and sociability. Currently the game has gone into the background in early childhood education compared to other more academic tasks, however numerous studies point out its many benefits.