Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a cancer of the hematopoietic system initiated by a single genetic mutation which results in the oncogenic fusion protein Bcr-Abl. Untreated, patients pass through different phases of the disease beginning with the rather asymptomatic chronic phase and ultimately culminating into blast crisis, an acute leukemia resembling phase with a very high mortality. Although many processes underlying the chronic phase are well understood, the exact mechanisms of disease progression to blast crisis are not yet revealed. In (...) this paper we develop a mathematical model of CML based on causal Bayesian networks in order to study possible disease progression mechanisms. Our results indicate that an increase of Bcr-Abl levels alone is not sufficient to explain the phenotype of blast crisis and that secondary changes such as additional mutations are necessary to explain disease progression and the poor therapy response of patients in blast crisis. (shrink)

Background Symptom checker apps (SCAs) are mobile or online applications for lay people that usually have two main functions: symptom analysis and recommendations. SCAs ask users questions about their symptoms via a chatbot, give a list with possible causes, and provide a recommendation, such as seeing a physician. However, it is unclear whether the actual performance of a SCA corresponds to the users’ experiences. This qualitative study investigates the subjective perspectives of SCA users to close the empirical gap identified in (...) the literature and answers the following main research question: How do individuals (healthy users and patients) experience the usage of SCA, including their attitudes, expectations, motivations, and concerns regarding their SCA use? Methods A qualitative interview study was chosen to clarify the relatively unknown experience of SCA use. Semi-structured qualitative interviews with SCA users were carried out by two researchers in tandem via video call. Qualitative content analysis was selected as methodology for the data analysis. Results Fifteen interviews with SCA users were conducted and seven main categories identified: (1) Attitudes towards findings and recommendations, (2) Communication, (3) Contact with physicians, (4) Expectations (prior to use), (5) Motivations, (6) Risks, and (7) SCA-use for others. Conclusions The aspects identified in the analysis emphasise the specific perspective of SCA users and, at the same time, the immense scope of different experiences. Moreover, the study reveals ethical issues, such as relational aspects, that are often overlooked in debates on mHealth. Both empirical and ethical research is more needed, as the awareness of the subjective experience of those affected is an essential component in the responsible development and implementation of health apps such as SCA. Trial registration German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS): DRKS00022465. 07/08/2020. (shrink)

Symptom Checker Applications (SCA) are mobile applications often designed for the end-user to assist with symptom assessment and self-triage. SCA are meant to provide the user with easily accessible information about their own health conditions. However, SCA raise questions regarding ethical, legal, and social aspects (ELSA), for example, regarding fair access to this new technology. The aim of this scoping review is to identify the ELSA of SCA in the scientific literature. A scoping review was conducted to identify the ELSA (...) of SCA. Ten databases (e.g., Web of Science and PubMed) were used. Studies on SCA that address ELSA, written in English or German, were included in the review. The ELSA of SCA were extracted and synthesized using qualitative content analysis. A total of 25,061 references were identified, of which 39 were included in the analysis. The identified aspects were allotted to three main categories: (1) Technology; (2) Individual Level; and (3) Healthcare system. The results show that there are controversial debates in the literature on the ethical and social challenges of SCA usage. Furthermore, the debates are characterised by a lack of a specific legal perspective and empirical data. The review provides an overview on the spectrum of ELSA regarding SCA. It offers guidance to stakeholders in the healthcare system, for example, patients, healthcare professionals, and insurance providers and could be used in future empirical research to investigate the perspectives of those affected, such as users. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between eugenics, disability, and dehumanization, with a focus on forms of eugenics beyond Nazi eugenics.

The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has (...) been a focus in some recent discussions by both philosophers and biologists on how evolutionary individuals are created and regulated, as well as continuing work on the evolution of individuality. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of "the species problem", arguing for a view of species as homeostatic property cluster kinds, positioning the resulting form of realism about species as an alternative to the claim that species are individuals and pluralistic views of species. It draws on taxonomic practice in the neurosciences, especially of neural crest cells and retinal ganglion cells, to motivate both the rejection of the species-as-individuals thesis and species pluralism.

In the good old days, when general philosophy of science ruled the Earth, a simple division was often invoked to talk about philosophical issues specific to particular kinds of science: that between the natural sciences and the social sciences. Over the last 20 years, philosophical studies shaped around this dichotomy have given way to those organized by more fine-grained categories, corresponding to specific disciplines, as the literatures on the philosophy of physics, biology, economics and psychology--to take the most prominent four (...) examples--have blossomed. In general terms, work in each of these areas has become increasingly enmeshed with that in the corresponding science itself, increasingly naturalistic (in at least one sense of that term), and in my view, increasingly interesting. (shrink)

Bioethicists have typically disdained where they did not simply ignore the Hippocratic tradition in medicine. Its exclusivity—an oath of and for physicians—seemed contrary to the perspective that bioethicists have attempted to invoke. Robert M. Veatch recently articulated this rejection of the Hippocratic tradition, and of a professional ethic of medicine in general, in a volume based on his Gifford lectures. Here that argument is critiqued. The strengths of the Hippocratic tradition as a flexible and ethical social doctrine are offered (...) in its stead. (shrink)

One might imagine that this remark of James was too obvious to be denied, but in fact current philosophical orthodoxy runs against it. Since the renewal of interest in the emotions produced by Anthony Kenny's Action Emotion and Will in 1963, philosophers have focussed primarily on the cognitive aspects of emotions—the judgments, evaluations, beliefs, presuppositions which they contain. Bodily feelings have been, on the whole, slighted. Sometimes they are dismissed outright, as by Robert Solomon: “feelings no more constitute or (...) define the emotion than an army of fleas constitutes a homeless dog. … Feeling is the ornamentation of emotion, not its essence.”; more often, as in Jerome Neu, given only rather slight attention because “thoughts are of greater importance than feelings in the classification and discrimination of emotional states”. (shrink)

The explanatory gap . Consciousness is a mystery. No one has ever given an account, even a highly speculative, hypothetical, and incomplete account of how a physical thing could have phenomenal states. Suppose that consciousness is identical to a property of the brain, say activity in the pyramidal cells of layer 5 of the cortex involving reverberatory circuits from cortical layer 6 to the thalamus and back to layers 4 and 6,as Crick and Koch have suggested for visual consciousness. (...) .) Still, that identity itself calls out for explanation! Proponents of an explanatory gap disagree about whether the gap is permanent. Some say that we are like the scientifically naive person who is told that matter = energy, but does not have the concepts required to make sense of the idea. If we can acquire these concepts, the gap is closable. Others say the gap is uncloseable because of our cognitive limitations. Still others say that the gap is a consequence of the fundamental nature of consciousness. (shrink)

Erscheint anlasslich des 15. Weltkongresses der Internationalen Vereinigung fur Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie (IVR) vom 18. bis 24. August 1991 in Gottingen und enthalt eine Selbstdarstellung der deutschen Sektion der IVR. Die Autoren berichten uber ihre eigene theoretische Position oder uber neuere Diskussionszusammenhange, die ihnen wichtig erscheinen. Aus dem Inhalt: K. Adomeit: Menschenrechte und Rechtsphilosophie u H. Albert: Erkenntnis, Recht und soziale Ordnung u R. Alexy: Idee und Struktur eines vernunftigen Rechtssystems u O. Ballweg: Analytische Rhetorik als juristische Grundlagenforschung u R. (...) Dreier: Zur gegenwartigen Diskussion des Verhaltnisses von Recht und Moral u W. Eichhorn: Wege und Irrwege einer Transformation u M. Frommel: Mannliche Gerechtigkeitsmathematik versus weiblicher Kontextualismus? u H. Garrn: Zur rechtspraktischen Bedeutung einer Theorie der juristischen Rhetorik u G. Haney: Das Widerspruchsvolle des Rechtsbegriffs u W. Hassemer: Rechtsphilosophie, Rechtswissenschaft, Rechtspolitik - am Beispiel des Strafrechts u A. Kaufmann: 45 Jahre erlebte Jahre Rechtsphilosophie u H. Klenner: Die ontologische und gnoseologische Dimension der Sein/Sollen-Problematik u U. Klug: Multidimensionale Rechtsphilosophie u H.-J. Koch/H. Russmann: Juristische Methodenlehre und analytische Philosophie u M. Kriele: Die demokratische Weltrevolution u K. Kuhl: Rehabilitierung und Aktualisierung des kantischen Vernunftrechts u E.-J. Lampe: Moderne Rechtsanthropologie u K.A. Mollnau: Vom Beginn der Niedergangsjurisprudenz in der DDR u U. Neumann: Sprachphilosophische Ansatze in der neueren Rechtsphilosophie u u.a. (Franz Steiner 1991). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Solitude: A Philosophical EncounterRobert D. CottrellSolitude: A Philosophical Encounter, by Philip Koch; xiv & 375 pp. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1994, $39.95 cloth, $17.95 paper.A professor of philosophy at the University of Prince Edward Island (an attractively solitary spot, I should imagine), Philip Koch divides his book into two parts, asking in Part I: what is solitude? and in Part II: what role does solitude (...) play in our lives? At the beginning of his inquiry, Koch identifies two primary modes of human experience: solitude, the core definition of which is social disengagement, and encounter, that is to say, interaction with others. Both are essential for human completion; indeed, the inescapable link between solitude and encounter is illustrated in the book’s full title, which contains both words. Still, in today’s society solitude is probably less understood and appreciated than encounter, for we tend to stress the supposed primacy of relationships and bonds. Calling himself a partisan of solitude, Koch sets out to correct the imbalance he discerns between solitude and encounter by focusing on how solitude (different, he insists, from loneliness, isolation, privacy, or alienation) contributes to our physical, moral, and emotional well-being.Koch is a philosopher; he defines his terms and then, as he moves along, makes subtle distinctions in his original definitions, rendering each term ever more precise and accurate. Conscious of the slippage of meaning that often occurs in language and of the mischief that can be caused by using terms improperly, Koch points out how Tillich (p. 164) and Mijuskovic (p. 173) go astray by gliding confusedly from one term to another, the result being that their arguments drift into muddle. Koch’s own thinking is pellucidly clear. The major part of his book is a discussion of the value of solitude. He identifies five primary virtues linked to solitude: freedom, attunement to self, attunement to nature, reflective perspective, and creativity. After discussing each of the virtues, Koch answers the objections that have been raised throughout the centuries to the claims he has made for the positive tole of solitude in our lives.Ranging over the whole history of human thought, Koch draws on a vast array of writers, including Tao Tze, Plotinus, Seneca, Augustine, Petrarch, Saint Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, Montaigne, Descartes (always a key figure in any discussion of the evolution of Western thought), Goethe, Wordsworth, Hugo, Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Whitman, Proust, Lawrence, Rilke, Sartre, Eiseley, Woolf, and Sarton. A meticulously learned book, Solitude is also a deeply meditative and an intensely personal one. In this, it resembles the work of Montaigne and of Loren Eiseley, where philosophical or (in the case of Eiseley) scientific knowledge is inseparable from imaginative vision; inseparable, too, from the distinctive voice of the author, for Koch, like Montaigne and Eiseley, moves easily from meditation to recollection, recounting moments of joy or sorrow in his own life. Even Koch’s prose bears some resemblance to that of Montaigne or Eiseley for, like theirs, it vibrates with the peculiarly poetic [End Page 155] intensity that a great writer can find in plain, unadorned speech. Indeed, what remains with the reader of this book, beyond the philosophical arguments and the erudite explanations, relegated wisely to the footnotes at the back of the volume where they are available to serious students without intimidating casual readers, is the seductive charm of the author’s voice, the sense of being addressed directly and intimately. To encounter this marvelous book, written in solitude, read in solitude, is to move beyond solitude and to experience, in the strange way that only a good book can provide, intimacy with another mind, another spirit that is engaged—it, too—in the process of encountering other minds, other spirits.Robert D. CottrellOhio State UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Where does the mind begin and end? Most philosophers and cognitive scientists take the view that the mind is bounded by the skull or skin of the individual. Robert Wilson, in this provocative and challenging 2004 book, provides the foundations for the view that the mind extends beyond the boundary of the individual. The approach adopted offers a unique blend of traditional philosophical analysis, cognitive science, and the history of psychology and the human sciences. The companion volume, Genes and (...) the Agents of Life, explores the theme in the biological sciences. Written with verve and clarity, this ambitious book will appeal to a broad swathe of professionals and students in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and the history of the behavioural and human sciences. You can download the table of contents here. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory has become a central issue in the literature on business ethics / business and society. There are, however, a number of problems with stakeholder theory as currently understood. Among these are: 1) the lack of a coherent justificatory framework, 2) the problem of adjudicating between stakeholders, and 3) the problem of stakeholder identification. In this essay, I propose that a possible source of obligations to stakeholders is the principle of fairness (or fair play) as discussed in the political (...) philosophic literature of Rawls, Simmons, and Cullity among others. The principle of fairness states that, “Whenever persons or groups of persons voluntarily accept the benefits of a mutually beneficial scheme of co-operation requiring sacrifice or contribution on the parts of the participants and there exists the possibility of free-riding, there exist obligations of fairness on the part of these persons or groups to co-operate in proportion to the benefits accepted.” In this essay I discuss the gaps in the current stakeholder literature, elucidate and defend a principle of fairness that fills the gap, compare the fairness model to other similar models of business ethics, and draw some conclusions for the future of stakeholder theory. (shrink)

This essay in social and intellectual history advances the thesis that Western social philosophy arose during the disintegration of the ancient Greek and Roman communities and has been preoccupied ever since with the problem of community lost and community to be gained. As the author shows, Western ideas of moral authority, freedom, consensus, and personality take on their distinctive character as aspects of Western man's search tor community. Six major types of community in Western life and thought are distinguished by (...) Professor Nisbet: military, political, religious, revolutionary, ecological, and plural. Each of these is presented as a continuing current in Western history and as a vital context to the central ideas of social philosophy. From Plato and Aristotle down to such moderns as Marx, Tocqueville, Weber, Kropotkin, and Fanon we see the dominant ideas and perspectives of Western thought as responses to conflicts and crises--above all, to those affecting man's perennial quest for community.--From publisher description. (shrink)

This is an introductory article on sociobiology, particularly its relationship to eugenics. Sociobiology developed in the 1960s as a field within evolutionary biology to explain human social traits and behaviours. Although sociobiology has few direct connections to eugenics, it shares eugenics’ optimistic enthusiasm for extending biological science into the human domain, often with reckless sensationalism. Sociobiology's critics have argued that sociobiology also propagates a kind of genetic determinism and represents the zealous misapplication of science beyond its proper reach that characterized (...) the eugenics movement. More recently, evolutionary psychology represents a sophistication of sociobiology that attends to the mind as the "missing link" between evolution and behaviour (Cosmides and Tooby 1992, Pinker 1997). (shrink)

1. The Situation in Cognition 2. Situated Cognition: A Potted Recent History 3. Extensions in Biology, Computation, and Cognition 4. Articulating the Idea of Cognitive Extension 5. Are Some Resources Intrinsically Non-Cognitive? 6. Is Cognition Extended or Only Embedded? 7. Letting Nature Take Its Course.

Although ethics consultation is offered as a clinical service in most hospitals in the United States, few valid and practical tools are available to evaluate, ensure, and improve ethics consultation quality. The quality of ethics consultation is important because poor quality ethics consultation can result in ethically inappropriate outcomes for patients, other stakeholders, or the health care system. To promote accountability for the quality of ethics consultation, we developed the Ethics Consultation Quality Assessment Tool. ECQAT enables raters to assess the (...) quality of ethics consultations based on the written record. Through rigorous development and preliminary testing, we identified key elements of a quality ethics consultation, established scoring criteria, developed training guidelines, and designed a holistic assessment process. This article describes the development of the ECQAT,.. (shrink)

Genes and the Agents of Life undertakes to rethink the place of the individual in the biological sciences, drawing parallels with the cognitive and social sciences. Genes, organisms, and species are all agents of life but how are each of these conceptualized within genetics, developmental biology, evolutionary biology, and systematics? The 2005 book includes highly accessible discussions of genetic encoding, species and natural kinds, and pluralism above the levels of selection, drawing on work from across the biological sciences. The book (...) is a companion to the author's Boundaries of the Mind (2004), also available from Cambridge, where the focus is the cognitive sciences. The book will appeal to a broad range of professionals and students in philosophy, biology, and the history of science. You can download the table of contents and the first chapter here. (shrink)

Nursing is possible owing to a series of intricate systemic relations. Building on an established tradition of sociological research, we critically analysed the nursing profession in Chile, with an emphasis on its education system, in the light of social systems theory. The paper's aim was to explore basic characteristics of nursing education as a system, so as to outline its current evolution. Drawing on recent developments in nursing, we applied an empirical framework to identify and discuss functionally differentiated systems that (...) are relevant to nursing and observe communications between them. We found that the dynamics of nursing as a whole develop from communications with closely related systems, including the nursing profession and the education system more broadly. While the discipline (as a system of representations) strives to control the profession (as an applied occupational field), the necessities of practicing nurses imply other forces mediating the making of the profession, a process framed by market dynamics in education and health. (shrink)

Written by the preeminent democratic theorist of our time, this book explains the nature, value, and mechanics of democracy. In a new introduction to this Veritas edition, Ian Shapiro considers how Dahl would respond to the ongoing challenges democracy faces in the modern world. “Within the liberal democratic camp there is considerable controversy about exactly how to define democracy. Probably the most influential voice among contemporary political scientists in this debate has been that of Robert Dahl.”—Marc Plattner, _New York (...) Times_ “An excellent introduction for novices, as well as a trusty handbook for experts and political science mavens.”—_Publishers Weekly_. (shrink)

In Water into Wine? Robert Larmer re-examines significant issues in this cross-disciplinary debate and attacks two basic assumptions governing it.

Discussions of whistleblowing and employee loyalty usually assume either that the concept of loyalty is irrelevant to the issue or, more commonly, that whistleblowing involves a moral choice in which the loyalty that an employee owes an employer comes to be pitted against the employee''s responsibility to serve public interest. I argue that both these views are mistaken and propose a third view which sees whistleblowing as entirely compatible with employee loyalty.

The computational argument for individualism, which moves from computationalism to individualism about the mind, is problematic, not because computationalism is false, but because computational psychology is, at least sometimes, wide. The paper provides an early, or perhaps predecessor, version of the thesis of extended cognition.

Essentialism is widely regarded as a mistaken view of biological kinds, such as species. After recounting why (sections 2-3), we provide a brief survey of the chief responses to the “death of essentialism” in the philosophy of biology (section 4). We then develop one of these responses, the claim that biological kinds are homeostatic property clusters (sections 5-6) illustrating this view with several novel examples (section 7). Although this view was first expressed 20 years ago, and has received recent discussion (...) and critique, it remains underdeveloped and is often misrepresented by its critics (section 8). (shrink)

The Eugenic Mind Project is a wide-ranging, philosophical book that explores and critiques both past and present eugenic thinking, drawing on the author’s intimate knowledge of eugenics in North America and his previous work on the cognitive, biological, and social sciences, the fragile sciences. Informed by the perspectives of Canadian eugenics survivors in the province of Alberta, The Eugenic Mind Project recounts the history of eugenics and the thinking that drove it, and critically engages contemporary manifestations of eugenic thought, newgenics. (...) An accessible, original work of scholarship adopting what the author calls a standpoint eugenics, this book focuses on the roots of eugenic thinking past and present. It will provoke and enrich discussions about human nature and human diversity, the social uses of biotechnology, and social policy governing future generations. You can download the preface and acknowledgements here. (shrink)

Previous research on unethical business behavior usually has focused on its impact from a financial or philosophical perspective. While such foci are important to our understanding of unethical behavior, we argue that another set of outcomes linked to individual well-being are critical as well. Using data from psychological, criminological, and epidemiological sources, we propose a model of unethical behavior and well-being. This model postulates that decrements in well-being result from stress or trauma stemming from being victimized by, engaging in, or (...) witnessing unethical behavior, or even from being associated with individuals involved in such behavior. (shrink)

This is a critical response to "Defending Eugenics", published in MBR in 2018.

Social Values and Research in Human Embryology ROBERT G. EDWARDS and DAVID J. SHARP E 125 Babies by Means of In Vitro Fertilization: Unethical Experiments ...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

We describe herein an introductory STS course, designed for large numbers of students, which uses a large number of faculty instructors. Its content and style has evolved continuously for 20 years in a major research university and been adapted for use in small two-year and four-year campuses.

While memory is conceptualized predominantly as an individual capacity in the cognitive and biological sciences, the social sciences have most commonly construed memory as a collective phenomenon. Collective memory has been put to diverse uses, ranging from accounts of nationalism in history and political science to views of ritualization and commemoration in anthropology and sociology. These appeals to collective memory share the idea that memory ‘‘goes beyond the individual’’ but often run together quite different claims in spelling out that idea. (...) This paper reviews a sampling of recent work on collective memory in the light of emerging externalist views within the cognitive sciences, and through some reflection on broader traditions of thought in the biological and social sciences that have appealed to the idea that groups have minds. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the relationship between these kinds of cognitive metaphors in the social sciences and our notion of agency. (shrink)

The first is that a miracle, understood as an event produced by a transcendent agent overriding the usual course of nature, involves a violation of the laws of nature. Larmer argues that events are explained by reference to both relevant laws and units of mass/energy in the sequences to be explained. He contends that a miracle need not be conceived as involving a violation of natural law, but rather as the creation or annihilation of mass/energy by a transcendent agent. In (...) reply to the objection that this account would violate the first law of thermo-dynamics, he distinguishes two forms of the principle -- one metaphysical, one scientific -- and aruges that a miracle would not violate the principle considered as a scientific law. The second assumption is that miracle testimony cannot serve as evidence for theism. Larmer demonstrates that the logical ties connecting the concept of miracle to theism need not imply that one must be a theist to evaluate miracle testimony properly. All that is required is that one is prepared to entertain theism as a hypothesis. Attacking these assumptions allows Larmer to show that Humean balance-of-probabilities arguments, based on a presumed conflict between evidence which establishes belief in the laws of nature and evidence in favour of miracles, miss the point if miracles need not be defined as violations of the laws of nature. He argues that, in the absence of a general argument demonstrating that the testimonial evidence in favour of miracles conflicts with the evidence for the laws of nature, it is up to the atheist to demonstrate, on a case-by-case basis, why the testimonial evidence is to be rejected. His conclusion is that, contrary to what is usually thought, the burden of proof lies not upon the shoulders of the theist, but upon the shoulders of the atheist. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory is often unable to distinguish those individuals and groups that are stakeholders from those that are not. This problem of stakeholder identity has recently been addressed by linking stakeholder theory to a Rawlsian principle of fairness. To illustrate, the question of stakeholder status for the non-human environment is discussed. This essay criticizes a past attempt to ascribe stakeholder status to the non-human environment, which utilized a broad definition of the term "stakeholder." This paper then demonstrates how, despite the (...) denial of stakeholder status, the environment is nonetheless accounted for on a fairness-based approach through legitimate organizational stakeholders. In addition, since stakeholder theory has never claimed to be a comprehensive ethical scheme, it is argued that sound reasons might exist for managers to consider their organization's impact on the environment that are not stakeholder-related. (shrink)

This paper examines the standard view of realization operative incontemporary philosophy of mind, and proposes an alternative, generalperspective on realization. The standard view can be expressed, insummary form, as the conjunction of two theses, the sufficiency thesis andthe constitutivity thesis. Physicalists of both reductionist and anti-reductionist persuasions share a conception of realization wherebyrealizations are determinative of the properties they realize and physically constitutive of the individuals with those properties. Centralto the alternative view that I explore here is the idea that (...) the requisite,metaphysically robust notion of realization is ineliminably context-sensitive. I shall argue that the sufficiency and constitutivity theses aretypically not jointly satisfied by any one candidate realizer, and that goingcontext-sensitive in one's metaphysics is preferable to the standard view.The context-sensitive views developed here are implicit in a range ofcommon views in both the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of biology,even if they have not been explicitly articulated, and even though theyundermine other views that are commonly endorsed. (shrink)

Dominant views of personal identity in philosophy take some kind of psychological continuity or connectedness over time to be criterial for the identity of a person over time. Such views assign psychological states, particularly those necessary for narrative memory of some kind, special importance in thinking about the nature of persons. The extended mind thesis, which has generated much recent discussion in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, holds that a person’s psychological states can physically extend beyond that person’s (...) body. Since “person” is a term of both metaphysical and moral significance, and discussions of both extended minds and personal identity have often focused on memory, this article explores the relevance of extended cognition for the identity of persons with special attention to neuroethics and memory. (shrink)

Reprinted, with modification, from Wilson and Keil 1998.

Who is recognised as a philosopher and what counts as philosophy influence both the content of a philosophical education and academic philosophy’s continuing demographic skew. The “philosophical who” and the “philosophical what” themselves are a partial function of matters that have been passed over in collective silence, even if that now feels to some like a silence belonging to the distant past. This paper discusses some philosophical silences regarding race, gender, and disability in the context of reflection on philosophical education (...) and on philosophical practice in the public sphere. It focuses on Charles Mills’ writings on race, Susan Babbitt’s on race and gender, and on more collaboratively-generated work on eugenics and disability. (shrink)

Research on positive psychology demonstrates that specific individual dispositions are associated with more desirable outcomes. The relationship of positive psychological constructs, however, has not been applied to the areas of business ethics and social responsibility. Using four constructs in two independent studies (hope and gratitude in Study 1, spirituality and generativity in Study 2), the relationship of these constructs to sensitivity to corporate social performance (CSCSP) were assessed. Results indicate that all four constructs significantly predicted CSCSP, though only hope and (...) gratitude interacted to impact CSCSP. Discussion focuses upon these findings, limitations of the study, and future avenues for research. (shrink)