Administrators, faculty, and parents have been weighing the pros and cons of year-round schooling for a long time. They cite a variety of reasons for this scheduling change: growing school enrollments, working parents, and shrinking budgets. Hundreds of school districts in the USA and Canada have adopted year-round school schedules and many more are considering the option. This volume provides a comprehensive, research-based explanation of the concept and practice of year-round school scheduling. It reviews a variety of alternative school schedules (...) and contrasts them with the traditional schedules by showing the effects of year-round schooling on the students, staff, and facilities. (shrink)

Joanna Crosby and Dianna Taylor: The theme of this special section of Foucault Studies, “Foucauldian Spaces,” emerged out of the 2016 meeting of the Foucault Circle, where the four of you were participants. Each of the three individual papers contained in the special section critically deploys and/or reconceptualizes an aspect of Foucault’s work that engages and offers particular insight into the construction, experience, and utilization of space. We’d like to ask the four of you to reflect on what makes a (...) space Foucauldian, and whether or not you’d consider the space created by the convergence of and intellectual exchanges among an international group of Foucault scholars at the University of New South Wales in the summer of 2016 to be Foucauldian. (shrink)

Drawing the line on physician assistance in physician-assisted death continues to be a contentious issue in many legal jurisdictions across the USA, Canada and Europe. PAD is a medical practice that occurs when physicians either prescribe or administer lethal medication to their patients. As more legal jurisdictions establish PAD for at least some class of patients, the question of the proper scope of this practice has become pressing. This paper presents an argument for restricting PAD to the terminally ill that (...) can be accepted by defenders as well as critics of PAD for the terminally ill. The argument appeals to fairness-based paternalism and the social meaning of medical practice. These two considerations interact in various ways, as the paper explains. The right way to think about the social meaning of medical practice bears on fair paternalism as it relates to PAD and vice versa. The paper contends that these considerations have substantial force when directed against proposals to extend PAD to non-terminally ill patients, but considerably less force when directed against PAD for the terminally ill. The paper pays special attention to the case of non-terminally ill patients who suffer from treatment-resistant depression, as these patients present a potentially strong case for extending PAD beyond the terminally ill. (shrink)

The allocation of vaccines and therapeutics for Covid‐19 obviously raises ethical questions, and physicians and ethicists have begun to address them. Writers have identified various criteria that should guide allocation decisions, but the criteria often conflict and need to be balanced against one another. This article proposes a model for thinking about how different considerations that are relevant to the distribution of vaccines and scarce treatments for Covid‐19 could be integrated into an allocation procedure. The model employs the construct of (...) a weighted lottery, which is a construct that has been employed in other contexts that involve the distribution of scarce resources. The article highlights the advantages of applying a weighted lottery to the Covid‐19 context and offers an illustration for how it might work in practice. The primary aim of the article is to articulate the structural features of a weighted lottery for this context and to bring out its advantages over other methods for allocating Covid‐19 medications. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend the ethics of clinical research against the charge of paternalism. We do so not by denying that the ethics of clinical research is paternalistic, but rather by defending the legitimacy of paternalism in this context. Our aim is not to defend any particular set of paternalistic restrictions, but rather to make a general case for the permissibility of paternalistic restrictions in this context. Specifically, we argue that there is no basic liberty-right to participate in clinical (...) research and that considerations of distributive fairness justify some paternalistic protections of research subjects. (shrink)

The ethical standards that regulate clinical research have multiple rationales. Among them is the need to protect potential subjects from making imprudent decisions, which extends beyond the soft paternalistic concern to protect people from making uninformed decisions to participate in trials. This article argues that a plausible risk/benefit restriction on clinical trials is presumptively justified by hard paternalism, which in turn is supported by a deeper fairness-based rationale. This presumptive case for hard paternalism in research is not defeated by the (...) alleged right to participate in clinical trials, by concerns about insult or status, by the need to conduct early phase trials that promise little to no benefit to participants, or by the recognition that some potential subjects are altruistically motivated. (shrink)

The term “exploitation” has gained wide currency in recent discussions of biomedical and research ethics. This is due in no small measure to the influence of Alan Wertheimer’s path-breaking work on the topic (Wertheimer 1999, 2011). Wertheimer presented a clear and compelling non-Marxist account of the concept of exploitation—one that stressed the connection between exploitation and unfair distributive outcomes. On this account, when one party exploits another, she takes advantage of the other to gain unfairly. A number of contemporary bioethicists (...) have accepted Wertheimer’s account of exploitation and have proceeded to apply it to a range of issues in research ethics (Hawkins and Emanuel 2008; Miller and Brody .. (shrink)

This paper is based on a literature review of articles discussing the teaching and learning of philosophy in primary and secondary schools. The purpose of this review was to address two research questions: What 'is 'philosophy? What does philosophy do? This paper addresses the first research question—What 'is' philosophy?—by gathering together the various understandings of the word ‘philosophy’ circulating in the literature. There are ten understandings of what philosophy 'is' that have arisen from the literature: philosophy as a foundational concept; (...) philosophy as thinking—a skill, a disposition, a practice; philosophy as method or process; philosophy as a tool or instrument; philosophy as a creative task; philosophy as inquiry; philosophy as search for truth; philosophy as non-dogmatic teaching and hence the emancipation of thought; philosophy as communal activity; philosophy as a way of life. These ten understandings have been consistent over time, from writing in the field in the 1970s through to the present day. Many commentators hold and work with multiple understandings of what philosophy 'is' in their writing. (shrink)

There is a lack of published evidence which demonstrates the impacts of public engagement in science and technology policy. This might represent the failure of PE to achieve policy impacts or indicate a lack of effective procedures for discerning the uptake by policy makers of PE-derived outputs. While efforts have been made to identify and categorize different types of policy impact, research has rarely attempted to link policy impact with PE procedures, political procedures, or the connections between them. In this (...) article, we propose a simple conceptual model to capture this information, based on semistructured interviews with both policy makers and PE practitioners. A range of criteria are identified to increase the policy impact of PE. The role of PE practitioners in realizing impacts through their interactions with policy makers in the informal “in-between” spaces of public engagement is emphasized. However, the potential contradictions between the pursuit of policy impacts and the more traditional conceptualizations of PE effectiveness are discussed. The main barrier to the identification of policy impacts from PE may lie within policy processes themselves. Political institutions have responsibility to establish formalized procedures for monitoring the uptake and use of evidence from PE in their decision-making processes. (shrink)

Drawing from literature in the social studies of science, this paper historicizes two pivotal concepts in science literacy: the definition of life and the assumption of objectivity. In this paper we suggest that an understanding of the historical, discursive production of scientific knowledge affects the meaning of scientific literacy in at least three ways. First, a discursive study of scientific knowledge has the epistemological consequence of avoiding the selective perception that occurs when facts are abstracted from the historical conditions of (...) their emergence. Second, a discursive approach to scientific knowledge can also be an example of science‐as‐exploration. Third, literacy and discourse studies contribute insights that alter assumptions about pedagogical appropriateness in science education. The paper concludes by suggesting that when science literacy includes the historical production of scientific knowledge, it can thereby extend the possibilities for what can be thought, studied and imagined in the name of science education. (shrink)

Drawing from literature in the social studies of science, this paper historicizes two pivotal concepts in science literacy: the definition of life and the assumption of objectivity. In this paper we suggest that an understanding of the historical, discursive production of scientific knowledge affects the meaning of scientific literacy in at least three ways. First, a discursive study of scientific knowledge has the epistemological consequence of avoiding the selective perception that occurs when facts are abstracted from the historical conditions of (...) their emergence. Second, a discursive approach to scientific knowledge can also be an example of science‐as‐exploration. Third, literacy and discourse studies contribute insights that alter assumptions about pedagogical appropriateness in science education. The paper concludes by suggesting that when science literacy includes the historical production of scientific knowledge, it can thereby extend the possibilities for what can be thought, studied and imagined in the name of science education. (shrink)

“Recognizing that prisons disproportionately confine sick people, with mental illness, substance abuse, HIV disease among other illnesses; and that prisoners are subject to further morbidity and mortality in these institutions, due to lack of access and/or resources for health care, overcrowding, violence, emotional deprivation, and suicide.… condemns the social practice of mass imprisonment.”After decades of steady decline, tuberculosis has emerged as a significant public health threat in the United States. The rising rates of tuberculosis cases, an increasing proportion of which (...) are resistant to standard chemotherapies, are linked to the many scourges threatening our communities: the explosion of poverty, drug use, violence, the HIV epidemic, and the concomitant rise in congregate housing including homeless shelters, residential drug treatment programs and incarceration facilities. Jails and prisons have disproportionately high rates of tuberculosis infection and have been implicated as points of tuberculosis spread and, as such, are a critical point for tuberculosis control interventions. (shrink)

Watson reported moderate correlations between the Iowa Sleep Experience Survey and self-report measures of dissociation and schizotypy. Subsequent investigations reported similar, although somewhat more modest, correlations between the ISES and measures of dissociation and schizotypy, as well as with measures of absorption and negative affect. The present study tested subjects in conditions in which the measures of sleep experiences were administered with other measures in either the same or a different test context. We determined that sleep experiences were associated with (...) measures of dissociation, absorption, and schizotypy. We closely replicated Watson and found that the ISES correlations with other measures were not affected by the test context. We suggest that Watson’s hypothesized common domain of unusual cognitive and perceptual experiences may be underpinned by common ties to imaginative experiences. (shrink)

Although we are sympathetic to his central thesis about the illusion of will, having previously advanced a similar proposal, Wegner's account of hypnosis is flawed. Hypnotic behavior derives from specific suggestions that are given, rather than from the induction, of trance, and it can be observed in 90% of the population. Thus, it is very pertinent to the illusion of will. However, Wegner exaggerates the loss of subjective will in hypnosis.

To examine the influence of hypnotic suggestibility testing as a source of individual differences in hypnotic responsiveness, we compared behavioral and subjective responses on three scales of hypnotic suggestibility: The Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A . Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility. Berlin: Consulting Psychologists Press); the Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale . The Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale: Normative data and psychometric properties. Psychological Reports, 53, 523–535); and the Group Scale of Hypnotic Ability . (...) The Group Scale of Hypnotic Ability and response booklet. Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 27, 20–31). Behavioral and subjective responses to the CURSS were significantly different than those on the HGSHS: A and GSHA. More participants were classified as “low suggestible” on the CURSS and they reported subjective experiences more similar to everyday mentation. Attitudes and expectancies of participants who received the GSHA were less predictive of responding, but rates of responding and subjective experiences were similar on the GSHA and the HGSHS: A. Discussion focuses on implications for the use of group hypnotic suggestibility scales. (shrink)

It is a foundational prediction of evolutionary theory that human beliefs accurately approximate reality only insofar as accurate beliefs enhance fitness. Otherwise, adaptive misbeliefs will prevail. Unlike McKay & Dennett (M&D), we think that adaptive belief systems rely heavily upon misbeliefs. However, the case for positive illusions as an example of adaptive misbelief is weak.

By shifting the focus of analysis from forgetting and remembering to interpreting and making-meaning, Erdelyi allows theoretical consideration of repression to move beyond the heuristic assumption that personal memory is necessarily private memory. In this commentary, repression is considered to be a collective process in which memories are shaped by the need for coherence between individual and social narratives.

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

The present study examined the trait-like nature of hypnotic suggestibility by examining the stability of hypnotic responsiveness in a test–retest design in which the procedures were administered either live or by audiotape. Contrary to the idea that hypnotizability is a largely immutable, stable trait, scores on the scale of hypnotic responsiveness decreased significantly at the second session. Measures of subjective experiences and expectancies accounted for a sizable portion of the variance in hypnotic responding, both at initial test and at retest. (...) Participants became disengaged with the hypnotic procedures at retest. Participants who received the hypnotic induction by audiotape did not differ from participants who received it live. The results are consistent with sociocognitive and altered state theories of hypnosis, and underline the important role of subjective experiences in hypnotic responding. (shrink)

The American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on Circumcision published its policy statement and technical report on newborn circumcision in September 2012.1 ,2 Since that time, some individuals and groups have voiced objections to the work of the Task Force, while others have conveyed their support. The AAP task force is pleased that the policy statement and technical reports on circumcision have stimulated debate on this topic and welcomes respectful discussion and dialogue about the scientific and ethical issues that surround (...) neonatal circumcision. We believe this is a complex issue that does not lend itself to simplistic solutions. The Task Force encourages those of all viewpoints to contribute to a vibrant, thoughtful and respectful evidence-based dialogue. We appreciate that the free exchange of competing ideas is a necessary component of scientific discovery. We also recognise that all clinical decisions carry ethical dimensions and that a respectful and thoughtful dialogue about these issues is important. However, the Task Force also feels strongly that this debate and the academic literature are demeaned when those with an ideological agenda disseminate inaccurate information, misapply scientific principles, make accusations that are unsupported, communicate in a vitriolic tone, and attempt to discredit and mischaracterise alternative views and those who hold them. Healthy debate and …. (shrink)

Dissociative symptoms have been related to higher rapid eye movement sleep density, a sleep phase during which hyperassociativity may occur. This may enhance artistic creativity during the day. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a creative photo contest to explore the relation between dissociation, sleep, and creativity. During the contest, participants (N = 72) took one photo per day for five consecutive days, based on specific daily themes (consisting of single words) and the instruction to take as creative a photo (...) as possible each day. Furthermore, they completed daily measures of state dissociation and a short sleep diary. The photos and their captions were ranked by two professional photographers and two clinical psychologists based on creativity, originality, bizarreness, and quality. We expected that dissociative people would rank higher in the contest compared with low-dissociative participants, and that the most original photos would be taken on days when the participants scored highest on acute dissociation. We found that acute dissociation predicted a higher ranking on creativity. Poorer sleep quality and fewer hours of sleep predicted more bizarreness in the photos and captions. None of the trait measures could predict creativity. In sum, acute dissociation related to enhanced creativity. These findings contribute to our understanding of dissociative symptomatology. (shrink)

Deficits in the ability to read the emotions of others have been demonstrated in mental disorders, such as dissociation and schizophrenia, which involve a distorted sense of self. This study examined whether weakened self-referential source memory, being unable to remember whether a piece of information has been processed with reference to oneself, is linked to ineffective emotion recognition. In two samples from a college and community, we quantified the participants’ ability to remember the self-generated versus non-self-generated origins of sentences they (...) had previously read or partially generated. We also measured their ability to read others’ emotions accurately when viewing photos of people in affect-charged situations. Multinomial processing tree modelling was applied to obtain a measure of self-referential source memory that was not biased by non-mnemonic factors. Our first experiment with college participants revealed a positive correlation between correctly remembering the origins of sentences and accurately recognising the emotions of others. This correlation was successfully replicated in the second experiment with community participants. The current study offers evidence of a link between self-referential source memory and emotion recognition. (shrink)

Llewellyn has written a fascinating article about rapid eye movement dreams and how they promote the elaborative encoding of recent memories. The main message of her article is that hyperassociative and fluid cognitive processes during REM dreaming facilitate consolidation. We consider one potential implication of this analysis: the possibility that excessive or out-of-phase REM sleep fuels dissociative symptomatology. Further research is warranted to explore the psychopathological ramifications of Llewellyn's theory.

This volume is the latest in a series of books and articles stretching back more than three decades on a theme quite startling in its claims and implications: that terrestrial life did not originate on Earth but arrived in the form of cells or bacteria from outer space. The idea of “panspermia,” that the seeds of life are spread from planet to planet, dates to the 19th century with the ideas of Lord Kelvin. It was championed by the Swedish physicist, (...) chemist, and Nobelist Svante Arrhenius at the beginning of the 20th century. Once scientists recognized the difficulties of life surviving in the conditions of interplanetary and interstellar space, by the 1960s a neo-panspermia became popular: not life itself, but prebiotic chemicals were the new seeds of life, made more likely by the discovery of numerous complex organic molecules in meteorites, comets, and interstellar molecular clouds. But the difficulties of synthesizing anything more complicated than amino acids in the wake of the famous Miller-Urey experiment in 1953 kept alive the idea that life itself may be spread throughout the universe. At the center of this work is Chandra Wickramasinghe, a research student of the maverick astronomer Fred Hoyle. In 1962 Hoyle became interested in the origin and nature of interstellar dust, in particular as found in dense molecular clouds, and he and Wickramasinghe set to work on the problem. They became convinced that dust could not form inside molecular clouds, but must have originated in the atmospheres of cool stars, protoplanetary discs, or supernova ejecta, a theory now widely accepted. It was the next steps that became increasingly controversial: that the spectroscopic signature of dust was best explained by complex biomolecules such as cellulose; that biomolecules were assembled into still more complex forms inside comets; and that the living cells and bacteria generated there were responsible for the origin of life on Earth. And not only that: Hoyle and Wickramasinghe argued that the delivery of bacteria from space continues, affecting both the origin and the ongoing evolution of life, and may even be responsible for certain diseases on Earth. These theories were not only reported in reputable scientific journals such as Nature, but also in popular books including Lifecloud (1978), Diseases from Space (1979), and Evolution from Space (1981). Biologists were not impressed; Lynn Margulis, not known for the timidity of her own theories such as endosymbiosis, called the first book “wanton, amusing, promiscuous fiction.”. (shrink)

In my dissertation I approach the subject of the attributes of God in Spinoza's metaphysics by considering three pivotal and closely linked problems. I discuss the problem of the relation of God to the attributes, the problem of the essence of God, and the problem of the true conception of God. ;I examine three interpretations of God and the attributes in Spinoza: that of Jonathan Bennett, according to which God is the thing that has the attributes and modes as properties, (...) that of Edwin Curley and Alan Donagan, according to which God is the collection of attributes, and that of H. F. Hallett and Steven Parchment, according to which God is the totality of attributes. I examine each stance relative to the three problems. I reveal the weaknesses of each interpretation by making explicit the problems that each interpretation is unable to deal with successfully and by exposing new problems that some of the interpretations create. I then discuss topics in Spinoza that need to be understood in order to arrive at the correct answers to the three problems. For example, I carefully examine 2D2---a definition that commentators on Spinoza generally consider imperative in the discussion of the essence of God. ;I then suggest an interpretation of God and the attributes that is motivated by Spinoza's claim in 1P34 that God's power is God's essence. I claim that an adequate idea of the essence of God is a de re conception of God; and I invoke Michael Della Rocca's account of the opacity of attribute-contexts in order to support my view of de re conceptions of God. I show that, for Spinoza, the essence of a thing is given by the definition of the thing; and I show that 1D6 correlates with his claim in 1P34 that God's power is God's essence. I argue that God's essence is absolutely infinite and eternal power, and that power is what is constituted and expressed by each of the infinite attributes. (shrink)

In “Mindsets, Informed Consent and Research,” Lynn Jansen opens a promising new window onto consent for early‐phase cancer trials. She hypothesizes that patients who have agreed to take part in these trials, most of whom have incurable cancers, adopt different cognitive orientations or mindsets during the predecisional “deliberative” phase than they do during the postdecisional “implementation” phase. The different objectives that individuals hold during these phases—choosing among courses of action during the former, implementing the chosen action during the latter—lead (...) to the adaptive and preconscious application of different cognitive and attentional filters. If this is the case, then the prevalent practice of using surveys and interviews with postdecisional research participants, who on average markedly overestimate the potential for benefit that these trials offer, to extrapolate to the ethically central but much less studied deliberative phase, is methodologically suspect. As Jansen correctly notes, her thesis has numerous implications for the theory and study of informed consent. Three, in particular, deserve further discussion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mild Cognitive Impairment:Where Does It Go From Here?John Bond (bio) and Lynne Corner (bio)Keywordsbiomedicalization, dementia, mild cognitive impairment, subjectivityThe joy of formal interdisciplinary discussion of this kind is the way that ideas presented through the gaze of social scientists stimulate such exciting thoughts and responses from other disciplines such as philosophy and psychology. We would like to thank Sabat and Thornton for their supportive and provocative reactions to our (...) paper. In the spirit of their responses, it is not our intention to respond to their thoughts directly; rather, we take the opportunity to theorize sociologically about this new category of psychiatry that has come to be known simply as mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In reviewing the responses of Sabat and Thornton, three thoughts emerged. First, together we have covered ontologic, epistemologic, methodologic, and theoretical questions about MCI, but none of us has posed basic political questions, such as: Why has MCI emerged as a new psychiatric label at this particular time? Second, this discussion brings together social scientists with a psychologist and a philosopher, but important constituents are missing. Consequently we are missing "insider" views on the importance of MCI to clinical practice. Third, this discussion highlights for us even more acutely the central question: Is MCI a real entity? In the following, we reflect on the first of these because our response also addresses the third. We first revisit the "evidence" about the importance of MCI for clinical practice.The notion of MCI as the transitional state between normal aging and Alzheimer's disease and other dementias has existed in a number of guises for many years, with benign senescent forgetfulness (Kral 1962) being the forerunner of a number of other terms, including questionable dementia, incipient dementia, isolated memory impairment, mild neurocognitive decline, age-associated memory impairment, age-associated cognitive decline, and cognitive-impairment-not-demented (Geda et al. 2004). Given that psychiatric labels implying the existence of MCI have been part of the practice landscape for over forty years, it is perhaps not surprising that its reinvention in the form of MCI has not, it appears, raised much attention outside specialist centers in North America and Europe. The reaction from grassroots clinical practice has been similar in intensity to their subdued reaction to the antipsychiatry movement in the 1960s. But for specialist clinics like the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, it has been an expanding [End Page 29] industry with numerous published papers, international conference presentations, and research funding opportunities.MCI can be distinguished from similar diagnostic categories that preceded its appearance in 1991. A key diagnostic criteria is the requirement for a subjective memory complaint by the person subsequently diagnosed as having MCI. Other diagnostic criteria include normal general cognitive function, normal activities of daily living, and memory being impaired for age, but not being demented (Petersen et al. 1999; Petersen and Morris 2003). To our knowledge, the idea of subjectivity being an important diagnostic criterion, as opposed to a means of identifying signs and symptoms, is a first in medical science. We know of no other medical category or diagnosis where subjectivity plays such a significant role, other than perhaps severe health phobias. Broadly speaking, two kinds of clinical evidence for MCI exist: first, that originating from studies (some quite small) applying the diagnostic criteria in specialist clinic populations; and, second, that found in large population studies. The main distinction between these two sets of evidence is that one is based on selected clinic populations and the other on unselected community populations. Most studies conclude that people whose memory is impaired for their age, as measured by similar cognitive tests such as the Mini-Mental State Examination, show decline in cognition that often leads to Alzheimer's disease and other kinds of dementia in the future. This finding is not remarkable given that it has long been known that age is a predictor of cognitive impairment. However, the population studies suggest a lower conversion rate than those for specialist clinics (Ritchie, Artero, and Touchon 2001).Petersen (2005) provides a robust defense as to why MCI might be a useful category in research and also indicates the potential benefits of treating MCI... (shrink)