NATURALLY. DEVELOPED. THOUGHT. Figure i these two construcrs to define a sprctrum of modes of thought, ranging ftom analytical (inrensive checking and nattow focus) to intuitive (minimal checking and btoad focus). He develops the ...

In this article, I will be focusing specifically on cryopreservation and two of the American biotechnomedical tenets introduced by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Gloria St. John in their technocratic model of medicine: the “body as machine” and “death as defeat.” These axioms are embraced by both the biotechnomedical establishment as well as the cryopreservation communities when they discuss the future of humankind. In particular, I will be focusing on the political economy of cryopreservation as an embodiment of American neoliberalism—as (...) well as a Durkheimian death ritual—in the twenty-first century. Finally, I will theorize on a future populated by human beings from “the past” and the implications and consequences that may be caused by contemporary humans experiencing a temporal shift from traveling in deep time vis-à-vis cryopreservation. (shrink)

Why would a successful physician who has undergone seven years of rigorous medical training take the trouble to seek out and learn to practice alternative methods of healing such as homeopathy and Chinese medicine? From Doctor to Healer answers this question as it traces the transformational journeys of physicians who move across the philosophical spectrum of American medicine from doctor to healer. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Gloria St. John conducted extensive interviews to discover how and why physicians make the (...) move to alternative medicine, what sparks this shift, and what beliefs they abandon or embrace in the process. After outlining the basic models of American health care-the technocratic, humanistic, and holistic-the authors follow the thoughts and experiences of forty physicians as they expand their horizons in order to offer effective patient care. The book focuses on the radical shift from one end of the spectrum to the other-from the technocratic approach to holism-made by most of the interviewees. Because many American physicians find such a drastic change too threatening, the authors also address the less radical transition to humanism-a movement toward compassionate care arising from within the medical system. (shrink)

We present an exactly soluble electron trajectory that permits an analysis of the soft (deep infrared) radiation emitted, the existence of which has been experimentally observed during beta decay via lowest order inner bremsstrahlung. Our treatment also predicts the time evolution and temperature of the emission, and possibly the spectrum, by analogy with the closely related phenomenon of the dynamic Casimir effect.

Human development is meant to be transformational in that it aims to improve people's lives by enhancing their capabilities. But who does it target: people as they are or the people they will become? This paper argues that the human development approach relies on an understanding of personal identity as dynamic rather than as static collections of preferences, and that this distinguishes human development from conventional approaches to development. Nevertheless, this dynamic understanding of personal identity is presently poorly conceptualized and (...) this has implications for development practice. We identify a danger of paternalism and propose institutionalizing two procedural principles as side constraints on development policies and projects: the principle of free prior informed consent and the principle of democratic development. -/- . (shrink)

In this interview, professor Davis discusses the evolution of his career and research interests as a philosopher-economist and gives his perspective on a number of important issues in the field. He argues that historians and methodologists of economics should be engaged in the practice of economics, and that historians should be more open to philosophical analysis of the content of economic ideas. He suggests that the history of recent economics is a particularly fruitful and important area for research exactly (...) because it is an open-ended story that is very relevant to understanding the underlying concerns and concepts of contemporary economics. He discusses his engagement with heterodox economics schools, and their engagement with a rapidly changing mainstream economics. He argues that the theory of the individual is “the central philosophical issue in economics” and discusses his extensive contributions to the issue. (shrink)

Background: A growing literature has raised—skeptically—the question of whether cutting-edge scientific research can identify and address broader ethical and policy considerations in real time. In genomics, the question is: Can ELSI contribute to genomics in real time, or will it be relegated to its historical role of after-the-fact outsider critique? We address this question against the background of a genomic screening project where we participated as embedded, real-time ELSI researchers and observers, from its initial design through its conclusion.Methods: As part (...) of the ELSI study design, the project included an ongoing reflexive ethnography in which the authors studied the process of its design and implementation. The authors were true participant observers, serving as members of various task-oriented groups while recording meetings and other events for ongoing qualitative analysis. We also conducted and analyzed interviews of multiple participants at the conclusion of the project.Results: Our real-time ELSI initiative had a mixed record of successes and challenges. If we define success as ELSI researchers having had an opportunity to participate fully in the project and to make the ELSI perspective heard, then our assessment is largely positive. If, however, we define successes as instances where real-time ELSI contributions changed the direction of the genomic or public health aspects of the GeneScreen project or, after careful deliberation, confirmed the appropriateness of the status quo, then we can identify only a few examples. While we had a seat at the table, we were, for the most part, tolerated guests.Conclusions: We conclude that there are significant barriers to real-time ELSI influence. The difficulty does not reside in any intended exclusion of an ELSI perspective, but in factors endemic to genomic research, including knowledge disparities, epistemological biases, and the pressures of time and money. (shrink)

This essay, which is the editor's introduction to part 1 of a multipart symposium on quietism, also constitutes his call for symposium papers. The symposium is meant be comprehensive. It is described as political and broadly cultural as well as religious, and in religious terms is said to cover not only the Catholic and Protestant quietisms (most properly so called) of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but also the proto-quietisms of the medieval Western church and reputedly quietist aspects of (...) the Gnostic, Eastern Orthodox, early Hasidic, Shi'ite, Jain and other Indic, Taoist, and Zen religious traditions. This introduction emphasizes the secular approaches, mostly antipolitical or postphilosophical, that wear the adjective “quietist” metaphorically, including the postmodern currents that Martha Nussbaum has named “hip quietism” and the “minimalist” philosophical version developed by Wittgenstein and some of his successors, notably Richard Rorty. This introduction concludes with attention to Rorty's late essay “Naturalism and Quietism,” then with a dedication of the entire symposium to Rorty's memory. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of essays by various contributors in honor of the late Laurence Berns, Richard Hammond Elliot Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. The essays address the literary, political, theological, and philosophical themes of his life's work as a scholar, teacher, and constant companion of the "great books.".

This paper analyses the activities of five organizations shaping the debate over the global governance of genome editing in order to assess current approaches to public engagement (PE). We compare the recommendations of each group with its own practices. All recommend broad engagement with the general public, but their practices vary from expert-driven models dominated by scientists, experts, and civil society groups to citizen deliberation-driven models that feature bidirectional consultation with local citizens, as well as hybrid models that combine elements (...) of both approaches. Only one group practices PE that seeks community perspectives to advance equity. In most cases, PE does little more than record already well-known views held by the most vocal groups, and thus is unlikely to produce more just or equitable processes or policy outcomes. Our exploration of the strengths, weaknesses, and possibilities of current forms of PE suggests a need to rethink both “public” and “engagement.”. (shrink)

Real causal systems are complicated. Despite this, causal learning research has traditionally emphasized how causal relations can be induced on the basis of idealized events, i.e. those that have been mapped to binary variables and abstracted from time. For example, participants may be asked to assess the efficacy of a headache-relief pill on the basis of multiple patients who take the pill (or not) and find their headache relieved (or not). In contrast, the current study examines learning via interactions with (...) continuous dynamic systems, systems that include continuous variables that interact over time (and that can be continuously observed in real time by the learner). To explore such systems, we develop a new framework that represents a causal system as a network of stationary Gauss--Markov (``\OU'') processes and show how such \textit{OU networks} can express complex dynamic phenomena such as feedback loops and oscillations. To assess adult's abilities to learn such systems, we conducted an experiment in which participants were asked to identify the causal relationships of a number of OU networks, potentially carrying out multiple, temporally-extended interventions. We compared their judgments to a normative model for learning OU networks as well as a range of alternative and heuristic learning models from the literature. We found that, although participants exhibited substantial learning of such systems, they committed certain systematic errors. These successes and failures were best accounted for by a model that describes people as focusing on pairs of variables, rather than evaluating the evidence with respect to the full space of possible structural models. We argue that our approach provides both a principled framework for exploring the space of dynamic learning environments as well as new algorithmic insights into how people interact successfully with a continuous causal world. (shrink)

Genomic biobanks present ethical challenges that are qualitatively unique and quantitatively unprecedented. Many critics have questioned whether the current system of informed consent can be meaningfully applied to genomic biobanking. Proposals for reform have come from many directions, but have tended to involve incremental change in current informed consent practice. This paper reports on our efforts to seek new ideas and approaches from those whom informed consent is designed to protect: research subjects. Our model emerged from semi-structured interviews with healthy (...) volunteers who had been recruited to join either of two biobanks , and whom we encouraged to explain their concerns and how they understood the relationship between specimen contributors and biobanks. These subjects spoke about their DNA and the information it contains in ways that were strikingly evocative of the legal concept of the trade secret. They then described the terms and conditions under which they might let others study their DNA, and there was a compelling analogy to the commonplace practice of trade secret licensing. We propose a novel biobanking model based on this trade secret concept, and argue that it would be a practical, legal, and ethical improvement on the status quo. (shrink)

Today’s medical training environment exposes medical trainees to many aspects of what has been called “the hidden curriculum.” In this article, we examine the relationship between two aspects of the hidden curriculum, the performance of emotional labor and the characterization of patients and proxies as “bad,” by analyzing clinical ethics discussions with resident trainees at an academic medical center. We argue that clinicians’ characterization of certain patients and proxies as “bad,” when they are not, can take an unnecessary toll on (...) trainees’ emotions. We conclude with a discussion of how training in ethics may help uncover and examine these aspects of the hidden curriculum. (shrink)

Civic engagement requires individuals to have both knowledge of democratic principles and the skills for enacting change. Acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary for a productive civic life can be difficult for students if they are not provided conceptual scaffolds and opportunities to practice citizenship. We implemented and studied an activity using Westheimer and Kahne's (2004) citizenship typology during a summer civics institute to help students grapple with their understandings of “good” citizenship. We found (1) students appropriated the language of (...) Westheimer and Kahne's citizenship typology by using it to describe their expanding understandings of citizenship; and (2) students used the citizenship typology to name and make sense of their civic identity. We discuss these findings and reflect on our use of Westheimer and Kahne's citizenship typology as a cognitive scaffold. (shrink)

The double slit problem is idealized by simplifying each slit by a point source. A composite reduced action for the two correlated point sources is developed. Contours of the reduced action, trajectories and loci of transit times are developed in the region near the two point sources. The trajectory through any point in Euclidean 3-space also passes simultaneously through both point sources.

Instead of investigating the interference between two stationary, rectilinear wave functions in a trajectory representation by examining the trajectories of the two rectilinear wave functions individually, we examine a dichromatic wave function that is synthesized from the two interfering wave functions. The physics of interference is contained in the reduced action for the dichromatic wave function. As this reduced action is a generator of the motion for the dichromatic wave function, it determines the dichromatic wave function’s trajectory. The quantum effective (...) mass renders insight into the behavior of the trajectory. The trajectory in turn renders insight into quantum nonlocality. (shrink)