© 2014 Taylor Francis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends routine human immunodeficiency virus testing of every client presenting for services in venues where HIV prevalence is high. Because older adults have particularly poor prognosis if they receive their diagnosis late in the course of HIV disease, any screening provided to younger adults in these venues should also be provided to older adults. We examined aging-related disparities in recent and ever HIV testing in a probability sample of at-risk (...) adults seeking services in needle exchange sites, sexually transmitted disease clinics, and Latino community clinics that provide HIV testing. Using multiple logistic regression with generalized estimating equations, we estimated associations between age category and each HIV testing outcome. Even after controlling for covariates such as recent injection drug use, older adults had 40% lower odds than younger adults did of having tested in the past 12 months or ever. Aging-related disparities in HIV testing exist among clients of these high HIV prevalence venues and may contribute to known aging-related disparities in late diagnosis of HIV infection and poor long-term prognosis. (shrink)

Harrowing stories reported in the media describe Covid‐19 ravaging through families. This essay reports professional experiences of this phenomenon, family clustering, as encountered during the pandemic's spread across Southern California. We identify three ethical challenges following from it: Family clustering impedes shared decision‐making by reducing available surrogate decision‐makers for incapacitated patients, increases the emotional burdens of surrogate decision‐makers, and exacerbates health disparities for and the suffering of people of color at increased likelihood of experiencing family clustering. We propose that, in (...) response to these challenges, efforts in advance care planning be expanded, emotional support offered to surrogates and family members be increased, more robust state guidance be issued on ethical decision‐making for unrepresented patients, ethics consultation be increased in the setting of conflict following from family clustering dynamics, and health care professionals pay more attention to systemic and personal racial biases and inequities that affect patient care and the surrogate experience. (shrink)

This paper begins with a Davidsonian puzzle in the epistemology of perception and introduces two solutions to that puzzle: the Truth-Maker View (TMV) and the Content Model. The paper goes on to elaborate (TMV), elements of which can be found in the work of Kalderon (2011) and Brewer (2011). The central tenant of (TMV) is the claim that one's reason for one's perceptual belief should, in all cases, be identified with some item one perceives which makes the proposition believed true. (...) I defend an argument against (TMV) which appeals to (a) the claim that the reason for which one believes should always to be identified with the explanans of the rationalising explanation to which one's belief is subject and (b) the claim that the explanantia of rationalising explanations must be identified with truths. I finish by replying to two objections to the argument. (shrink)

It’s one thing to do the right thing. It’s another to be creditable for doing the right thing. Being creditable for doing the right thing requires that one does the right thing out of a morally laudable motive and that there is a non-accidental fit between those two elements. This paper argues that the two main views of morally creditable action – the Right Making Features View and the Rightness Itself View – fail to capture that non-accidentality constraint: the first (...) because it morally credits agents who make heavy-duty moral mistakes; the second because it fails to generalise and is too conservative – a point which this paper gives renewed defence. The paper then goes on to defend and develop an alternative according to which moral worth is mediated by the agent’s knowing how to respond to the reasons of the type which make acting in that way right. It’s argued that this view avoids the problems for the alternatives, and it’s shown that in order for the view to avoid collapsing into a problematic form of Reliabilism we’ll have to think of states of knowing how as essentially successful in character. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

We can contrast rationalising explanations of the form S φs because p with those of the form S φs because S believes that p. According the Common Kind View, the two sorts of explanation are the same. The Disjunctive View denies this. This paper sets out to elucidate the sense in which the Common Kind Theorist asserts, but the Disjunctivist denies, that the two explanations are the same. I suggest that, in the light of the distinction between kinds of explanation (...) and particular explanations, the relevant sameness thesis is ambiguous, thus giving us two distinct versions of the Common Kind View. I then argue that the only direct arguments for Disjunctivism available in the literature fail because they only succeed in undermining one version of the Common Kind View. I finish, however, by providing a fresh argument for the Disjunctive View which aims to undermine both versions of its competitor. (shrink)

Here is a surprisingly neglected question in contemporary epistemology: what is it for an agent to believe that p in response to a normative reason for them to believe that p? On one style of answer, believing for the normative reason that q factors into believing that p in the light of the apparent reason that q, where one can be in that kind of state even if q is false, in conjunction with further independent conditions such as q’s being (...) a normative reason to believe that p. The primary objective of this paper is to demonstrate that that style of answer cannot be right, because we must conceive of believing for a normative reason as constitutively involving a kind of rationality-involving relation that can be instantiated at all only if there is a known fact on the scene, which the agent treats as a normative reason. A secondary objective, achieved along the way, is to demonstrate that in their Prime Time Errol Lord and Kurt Sylvan do not succeed in undermining the factoring picture in general, only a simple-minded version of it. (shrink)

The performance appraisal process is increasingly seen as a key link between employee behaviour and an organization’s strategic objectives. Unfortunately, performance reviews often fail to change how people work, and dissatisfaction with the appraisal process has been associated with general job dissatisfaction, lower organizational commitment, and increased intentions to quit. Recent research has identified a number of factors related to reactions to performance appraisals in general and appraisal satisfaction in particular. Beyond the appraisal outcome itself, researchers have found that appraisal (...) reactions are affected by perceptions of fairness and the relationship between the supervisor and the employee. To explain the relationships among these factors, the present article proposes a moral cognition perspective. We suggest that employees judge a performance appraisal from the perspective of its moral justifiability, and that appraisal reactions will be determined, at least in part, by the perceived moral justifiability of the process. The proposal was supported by results from a survey of government employees using measures of performance ratings, leader–member exchange, perceived utility, and organizational justice. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore Peirce's work for insights into a theory of learning and cognition for education. Our focus for this exploration is Peirce's paper The Fixation of Belief (FOB), originally published in 1877 in Popular Science Monthly. We begin by examining Peirce's assertion that the study of logic is essential for understanding thought and reasoning. We explicate Peirce's view of the nature of reasoning itself—the characteristic guiding principles or ‘habits of mind’ that underlie acts of inference, the dimensions (...) of and interaction between doubt and belief, and his four methods of resolving or ‘fixing’ belief (i.e., tenacity, authority, a priori, and experimentation). The four methods are then juxtaposed against current models of teaching and learning such as constructivism, schema theory, situated cognition, and inquiry learning. Finally, we discuss Peirce's modes of inference as they relate educationally to the resolution of doubt and beliefs and offer an example of belief resolution from an experienced teacher in a professional development environment. (shrink)

This paper is a response to William Hasker’s “bring about” argument (1999, reiterated in 2011) against the Molinist theory of divine providence. Hasker’s argument rests on his claim that God’s middle knowledge must be regarded as part of the world’s past history; the primary Molinist response has been to resist this claim. This paper argues that even if this claim about middle knowledge is granted, the intended reductio does not go through. In particular, Hasker’s claim about middle knowledge is shown (...) to undermine his proof of the “power entailment principle.” The paper closes with a critical examination of ideas about free will and the past history of the world that might be supposed to support Hasker’s conviction that Molinism is incompatible with a libertarian view of free will. (shrink)

Successful therapies to combat microbial diseases and cancers require incorporating ecological and evolutionary principles. Drawing upon the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology, we present a systems‐based approach in which host and disease‐causing factors are considered as part of a complex network of interactions, analogous to studies of “classical” ecosystems. Centering this approach around empirical examples of disease treatment, we present evidence that successful therapies invariably engage multiple interactions with other components of the host ecosystem. Many of these factors interact (...) nonlinearly to yield synergistic benefits and curative outcomes. We argue that these synergies and nonlinear feedbacks must be leveraged to improve the study of pathogenesis in situ and to develop more effective therapies. An eco‐evolutionary systems perspective has surprising and important consequences, and we use it to articulate areas of high research priority for improving treatment strategies. (shrink)

It is now standard in the literature on reasons and rationality to distinguish normative reasons from motivating reasons. Two issues have dominated philosophical theorising concerning the latter: (i) whether we should think of them as certain (non-factive) psychological states of the agent – the dispute over Psychologism; and (ii) whether we should say that the agent can Φ for the reason that p only if p – the dispute over Factivism. This paper first introduces a puzzle: these disputes look very (...) much like merely verbal disputes about the meaning of phrases like `S’s reason’ in motivating reasons ascriptions, and yet charity requires us to think that something substantive is afoot. But what? The second aim of the paper is to extract substantive theses from certain natural arguments for Psychologism and Anti-Factivism – theses which are versions of a controversial view of the nature and normative structure of rationality. The paper ends by arguing against these substantive theses on phenomenological and ethical grounds. The upshot is that proponents of Psychologism and Anti-Factivism are either engaged in the project of defending merely verbal theses or they’re engaged in the project of defending false substantive ones. (shrink)

Processing information in the context of personal survival scenarios elicits a memory advantage, relative to other rich encoding conditions such as self-referencing. However, previous research is unable to distinguish between the influence of survival and self-reference because personal survival is a self-referent encoding context. To resolve this issue, participants in the current study processed items in the context of their own survival and a familiar other person’s survival, as well as in a semantic context. Recognition memory for the items revealed (...) that personal survival elicited a memory advantage relative to semantic encoding, whereas other-survival did not. These findings reinforce suggestions that the survival effect is closely tied with self-referential encoding, ensuring that fitness information of potential importance to self is successfully retained in memory. (shrink)

In this paper we seek to provide elements of an axiomatic theory for a sentient consciousness as a quantified form of introspective awareness. A crucial step for its formulation is use of an interval temporal logic to give expression to on-going conditions such as those represented by the progressive aspect in natural language. In this way we are able to enrich more stative mental models so that an agent's internal activities and its perception of external processes can be represented more (...) faithfully. The need for agent consciousness research is briefly discussed. (shrink)

Depue & Collins's (D&C's) work relies on extrapolation from data obtained through studies in experimental animals, and needs support from studies of the role of dopamine (DA) neurotransmission in human behaviour. Here we review evidence from two sources: (1) studies of patients with Parkinson's disease and (2) positron emission tomography (PET) studies of DA neurotransmission, which we believe lend support to Depue & Collins's theory, and which can potentially form the basis for a true neurochemistry of personality.

Both as cardinal and as Pope Benedict XVI, one of Josef Ratzinger's consistent concerns has been the foundational moral imperatives of the natural law. In 2004, then Cardinal Ratzinger requested that the University of Notre Dame study the complex issues embedded in discussions about "natural rights" and "natural law" in the context of Catholic thinking. To that end, Alasdair MacIntyre provided a substantive essay on the foundational problem of moral disagreements concerning natural law, and eight scholars were invited to respond (...) to MacIntyre's essay, either by addressing his work directly or by amplifying his argument along other yet similar paths. The contributors to this volume are theologians, philosophers, civil and canon lawyers, and political scientists, who reflect on these issues from different disciplinary perspectives. Once the contributors' essays were completed, MacIntyre responded with a closing essay. Throughout the book, the contributors ask: Can a persuasive case for a foundational morality be made etsi Deus daretur? And, of course, persuasive to whom? The exchanges that take place between MacIntyre and his interlocutors result, not in answers, but in rigorous attempts at clarification. __Intractable Disputes about the Natural Law__ will interest ethicists, moral theologians, and students and scholars of moral philosophy. "Lawrence Cunningham has assembled an esteemed group of scholars to provide incisive analyses of the contemporary state of natural law theory, particularly in light of Alasdair MacIntyre's groundbreaking work. The essays are lucid, engaging, and intellectually sophisticated. __Intractable Disputes about the Natural Law_ _is a must-read not only for moral theologians, but for anyone concerned about the conceptual foundations of human rights, human dignity, and moral dialogue in pluralistic societies." --_Stephen J. Pope, Boston College_ "MacIntyre's first essay, on its own, would make this book an important scholarly contribution. But the ensuing contributions enable the book to flourish further, with contributions on subjects both readily associated with natural law and moral disagreement as well as those more creatively connected to the genesis of the text. Cunningham's volume both broadens and deepens contemporary thinking on a perennial topic, and will richly reward its readers." --_William C. Mattison III, The Catholic University of America_. (shrink)

By virtue of its epistemic deficits, propaganda is very much an unethical phenomenon. Coping effectively with propaganda requires a communicative response that confronts its inherent unethicality with ethically grounded resistance. In this article, I propose two congruent plans of communicative action, each of which rests on an apparent ethical connection: J. Michael Sproule's (1994) reclaiming of classical eloquence, and Jonathan Rauch's (1993) provocative program of "liberal science.".

What if gravity satisfied the Klein-Gordon equation? Both particle physics from the 1920s-30s and the 1890s Neumann-Seeliger modification of Newtonian gravity with exponential decay suggest considering a "graviton mass term" for gravity, which is _algebraic_ in the potential. Unlike Nordström's "massless" theory, massive scalar gravity is strictly special relativistic in the sense of being invariant under the Poincaré group but not the 15-parameter Bateman-Cunningham conformal group. It therefore exhibits the whole of Minkowski space-time structure, albeit only indirectly concerning volumes. (...) Massive scalar gravity is plausible in terms of relativistic field theory, while violating most interesting versions of Einstein's principles of general covariance, general relativity, equivalence, and Mach. Geometry is a poor guide to understanding massive scalar gravity: matter sees a conformally flat metric due to universal coupling, but gravity also sees the rest of the flat metric in the mass term. What is the 'true' geometry, one might wonder, in line with Poincaré's modal conventionality argument? Infinitely many theories exhibit this bimetric 'geometry,' all with the total stress-energy's trace as source; thus geometry does not explain the field equations. The irrelevance of the Ehlers-Pirani-Schild construction to a critique of conventionalism becomes evident when multi-geometry theories are contemplated. Much as Seeliger envisaged, the smooth massless limit indicates underdetermination of theories by data between massless and massive scalar gravities---indeed an unconceived alternative. At least one version easily could have been developed before General Relativity; it then would have motivated thinking of Einstein's equations along the lines of Einstein's newly re-appreciated "physical strategy" and particle physics and would have suggested a rivalry from massive spin 2 variants of General Relativity. The Putnam-Grünbaum debate on conventionality is revisited with an emphasis on the broad modal scope of conventionalist views. Massive scalar gravity thus contributes to a historically plausible rational reconstruction of much of 20th-21st century space-time philosophy in the light of particle physics. An appendix reconsiders the Malament-Weatherall-Manchak conformal restriction of conventionality and constructs the 'universal force' influencing the causal structure. Subsequent works will discuss how massive gravity could have provided a template for a more Kant-friendly space-time theory that would have blocked Moritz Schlick's supposed refutation of synthetic _a priori_ knowledge, and how Einstein's false analogy between the Neumann-Seeliger-Einstein modification of Newtonian gravity and the cosmological constant \Lambda generated lasting confusion that obscured massive gravity as a conceptual possibility. (shrink)

Current accounts suggest that self-referential thought serves a pivotal function in the human ability to simulate the future during mind-wandering. Using experience sampling, this hypothesis was tested in two studies that explored the extent to which self-reflection impacts both retrospection and prospection during mind-wandering. Study 1 demonstrated that a brief period of self-reflection yielded a prospective bias during mind-wandering such that participants’ engaged more frequently in spontaneous future than past thought. In Study 2, individual differences in the strength of self-referential (...) thought — as indexed by the memorial advantage for self rather than other-encoded items — was shown to vary with future thinking during mind-wandering. Together these results confirm that self-reflection is a core component of future thinking during mind-wandering and provide novel evidence that a key function of the autobiographical memory system may be to mentally simulate events in the future. (shrink)

Introduction -- Tending the dark fire: the Boehmian notion of drive -- The night-side of nature: the early Schellingian unconscious -- The speculative psychology of dissociation: the later Schellingian unconscious -- Schellingian libido theory.

Background Empirical studies of surrogate decision-making tend to assume that surrogates should make only a 'substituted judgement'—that is, judge what the patient would want if they were mentally competent. Objectives To explore what people want in a surrogate decision-maker whom they themselves select and to test the assumption that people want their chosen surrogate to make only a substituted judgement. Methods 30 undergraduate students were recruited. They were presented with a hypothetical scenario about their expected loss of mental capacity in (...) the future and asked to answer some questions about their choice of surrogate. These data were analysed qualitatively using thematic content analysis. Results Most respondents talked about choosing someone who was caring and competent in certain ways, giving interesting evidence for their judgements. Surprisingly few highlighted how well they thought their chosen surrogate knew their preferences and would be able to make a substituted judgement. Moreover, few specified that their chosen surrogate had similar attitudes and values to their own and so would make a similar decision to theirs in the circumstances presented. Some respondents also referred to the social role of their chosen surrogate or the social dynamics of their situation which influenced their choices, as well as to ideas of reciprocity and characteristics of honesty and loyalty. Conclusion In the event that they lose mental capacity, many people will not select a surrogate to decide about medical treatments on their behalf solely on the basis that they expect their surrogate to make a substituted judgement. (shrink)

An extensive literature has demonstrated that encoding information in a self-referential manner enhances subsequent memory performance. This ‘self-reference effect’ is generally elicited in paradigms that require participants to evaluate the self-descriptiveness of personality characteristics. Extending work of this kind, the current research explored the possibility that explicit evaluative processing is not a necessary precondition for the emergence of this effect. Rather, responses to self cues may enhance item encoding even in the absence of explicit evaluative instructions. We explored this hypothesis (...) by testing memory for items encoded in either an evaluative or relational context. The relational context was achieved by requesting participants to report the spatial relationship between target stimuli, and visual or verbal referent cues. The results revealed a self-referent memory advantage, regardless of the encoding context or triggering cue. The theoretical implications of these findings are considered. (shrink)

The early Schelling and the romantics constructed the unconscious in order to overcome the modern split between subjectivity and nature, mind and body, a split legislated by Cartesian representationalism. Influenced by Boehme and Kabbalah, the later Schelling modified his notion of the unconscious to include the decision to be oneself, which must sink beneath consciousness so that it might serve as the ground of one's creative and personal acts. Slavoj Zizek has read the later Schelling's unconscious as a prototype of (...) Lacan's reactive unconscious, an unconscious that only exists as the excluded other of consciousness. This reading, though close to the text of Schelling, misses something essential: the unconscious for Schelling is not a repression but a condition of the possibility of life and love. (shrink)