Instigados ou tocados com o belíssimo artigo escrito à quatro mãos entre Pim Haselager e González, nesta resenha crítica não só exporemos as linhas centrais de tal artigo que versa sobre uma proposta externalista da mente, levando em consideração a teoria da cognição encorporada e situada e a teoria da auto organização; também discutiremos que pensamos ser o externalismo algo muito radical. Neste sentido, prezamos por uma perspectiva mista: nem tão externalista, tampouco demasiada internalista.

O objetivo deste artigo é modesto. Trata-se apenas de caracterizar as perspectivas reducionistas e emergentistas, apontando as distinções entre ambas as posturas, bem como ressaltar que embora haja uma aproximação quanto à possibilidade de se aceitar uma emergência de tipo “fraco”, há um distanciamento dessas posturas filosóficas no que concerne à emergência de tipo “forte”.

No presente artigo, pretende-se expor e analisar as críticas que Noam Chomsky dirige contra o materialismo em filosofia da mente. Para o referido autor, a rigor, não faria sentido questionar o estatuto ontológico da mente, na medida em que os próprios físicos e filósofos materialistas desconhecem 90% da matéria que constitui o universo. Deste modo, Chomsky dirá que no tempo de Descartes, da filosofia mecânica, o que se fazia era ciência normal, ao passo que após o advento das ideias (...) de Newton, o universo passa a ser antimaterialista. O presente trabalho pode ser útil/valioso à filosofia e história das ciências naturais, à física e à filosofia da mente.The aim of this paper is to expose and analyze Noam Chomsky’s criticisms against materialism in philosophy of mind. For this author, strictly speaking, questioning the ontological status of the mind would not make sense, considering that the materialistic physicists and philosophers themselves are unaware of 90% of the matter that constitutes the universe. Accordingly, Chomsky will say that in Descartes’ time, or in times of mechanical philosophy, what was done was normal science, while after the advent of Newton's ideas the universe becomes anti-materialist. This paper can be useful/valuable to philosophy and history of natural sciences, physics and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Resenha do livro "The conscious mind" de David Chalmers.

Suspeitando de que grande parte dos problemas atuais em filosofia da mente decorre de “nós” na teia sobre a qual estrutura-se a linguagem ordinária e o jargão filosófico pretendemos, com o presente artigo, identificar e dissolver o que julgamos ser os “pontos de tensão” subjacentes à colocação de alguns problemas aparentemente intratáveis na filosofia da mente contemporânea, em especial, o problema da experiência consciente, ou problema dos qualia. E, Fazendo uso dos escritos de Wittgenstein, tencionamos estabelecer que o problema da (...) experiência consciente seria mais um pseudoproblema decorrente da aceitação irrefletida por parte dos filósofos e cientistas contemporâneos da terminologia cartesiana que estabelece as assimetrias entre o público e o privado, entre o interno e o externo. Em resumo, pretendemos, com o presente artigo, fazendo uso das reflexões wittgensteinianas nas obras acima citadas, examinar a relação entre o que convencionou-se chamar de “interno” e “externo”, em filosofia da mente, bem como argumentar que o problema da experiência consciente proposto por alguns teóricos contemporâneos pode ser “dissolvido” com o adequado uso da linguagem, tal como Wittgenstein sugere nas referidas obras. (shrink)

Neste artigo exporemos os principais obstáculos à esperança de que grande parte dos filósofos e cientistas do cérebro contemporâneos tende a entender os aspectos subjetivos da vivência mental como sendo tangíveis às abordagens filosóficas ou científicas atuais. Avaliaremos se tal otimismo pode ser levado a sério à luz do que pensamos acerca das reflexões de Shoemaker sobre a possibilidade de funcionalização dos qualia. Veremos que mesmo sendo possível a discriminação numa tabela do que poderia ser pensado como “aspecto qualitativo da (...) experiência”, que se articulam enquanto crenças qualitativas que geram determinados comportamentos, razões metafísicas se colocam como entrave à ideia de se conceber como plausível a possibilidade de funcionalização dos qualia.: In this article we will expose the main obstacles to hope that most contemporary philosophers and scientists of the brain tends to understand the subjective aspects of mental experience as tangible to current philosophical and scientific approaches. Evaluate whether such optimism can be taken seriously in light of what we think about the reflections of Shoemaker about the possibility of functionalization of qualia. We will see that even being possible discrimination in a table that could be thought of as “qualitative aspect of experience,” that articulate while qualitative beliefs that generate certain behaviors, metaphysical reasons stand as obstacle to the idea of conceiving how plausible the possibility of functionalization qualia. Keywords : Functionalism; Qualitative Similarity; Causal Track. (shrink)

Suspeitando de que grande parte dos problemas atuais em filosofia da mente decorre de “nós” na teia sobre a qual estrutura-se a linguagem ordinária e o jargão filosófico pretendemos, com o presente artigo, apresentar a argumentação de Wittgenstein no que tange a identificar e dissolver o que julgamos ser os “pontos de tensão” subjacentes à colocação de alguns problemas aparentemente intratáveis na filosofia da mente contemporânea, em especial, o problema da experiência consciente, ou problema dos qualia. E, fazendo uso dos (...) escritos de Wittgenstein, tencionamos apresentar as reflexões de Wittgenstein no sentido de que o problema da experiência consciente “poderia” ser mais um pseudoproblema decorrente da aceitação irrefletida por parte dos filósofos e cientistas contemporâneos da terminologia cartesiana que estabelece as assimetrias entre o público e o privado, entre o interno e o externo. Em resumo, pretendemos, com o presente artigo, fazendo uso das reflexões wittgensteinianas nas obras acima citadas, examinar a relação entre o que convencionou-se chamar de “interno” e “externo”, em filosofia da mente, bem como argumentar que o problema da experiência consciente proposto por alguns teóricos contemporâneos pode ser “dissolvido” ou melhor entendido com o adequado uso da linguagem, tal como Wittgenstein sugere nas referidas obras. (shrink)

Instigados ou tocados com o belíssimo artigo escrito à quatro mãos entre Pim Haselager e González, nesta resenha crítica não só exporemos as linhas centrais de tal artigo que versa sobre uma proposta externalista da mente, levando em consideração a teoria da cognição encorporada e situada e a teoria da auto organização; também discutiremos que pensamos ser o externalismo algo muito radical. Neste sentido, prezamos por uma perspectiva mista: nem tão externalista, tampouco demasiada internalista.

Subject of constant reflections in other works and published studies, the theme of memory and its relations between past and present always provokes renewed perspectives regarding the readings of the ancient texts in our academic discussions. Analyzing the present time of a community behind an ancient document is likewise always challenging. However, in the present document (Mark’s Gospel), when analyzed in the light of heuristic concepts - such as memory, for example - there are very effective indications in proposing new (...) perceptions about the constant interaction between past memories and memory constructions in present times (of the ancient document that has been analysed). New horizons open up in the field of study of the texts that make up the New Testament when dialogues with psychology and research on memory. In this sense, this work applies the postulate of D.L. Schacter on the adaptations that are made in the memories of the past so that they meet the needs of the present to the gospel of Mark. It follows that the author of the said gospel rewrote the traditions received so that they answered questions that were made to them in the present. (shrink)

BARROZO, Victor Breno Farias. Memória, Transmissão e emoção: estudo sobre a modernidade religiosa no pensamento de Danièle Hervieu-Léger. 2014. Dissertação (Mestrado), Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte. Palavras-Chave: Danièle Hervieu-Léger. Modernidade religiosa. Senso religioso contemporâneo. Memória. Transmissão. Emoção. Keywords : Danièle Hervieu-Léger. Religious modernity. Contemporary religious sense. Memory. Transmission. Emotion.

O mais divulgado modelo iconográfico mariano da época contemporânea, presente em quase todos os templos católicos do mundo, nasceu em Portugal na sequência das Aparições de Fátima de 1917. Não teria o conhecido desenvolvimento sem que no processo cultual interviesse a disciplina escultórica que logo em 1920 faria cristalizar, através do escopro de um santeiro, a imagem de Nossa Senhora do Rosário de Fátima. O estudo do tipo, do arquétipo e dos subtipos da Virgem de Fátima, primeiramente produzidos em (...) oficinais trabalhos de santeiros e, em fase posterior, interpretados por artistas, permite entender os contornos do nascimento de uma realidade imagética, isto é, de uma iconografia ex nihilo e o seu, necessariamente, tardio desenvolvimento estético. (shrink)

Review BARROZO, Victor Breno Farias. Modernidade religiosa : memória, transmissão e emoção no pensamento de Danièle Hervieu-Léger. São Paulo: Fonte Editorial, 2014.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bookmarks When most of us think of the losses for literature, music, and art caused by the First World War, the names that typically spring to mind are Rupert Brooke, WUfred Owen, and perhaps George Butterworth. This is conventional Anglocentrism. The millions of young victims of that conflict included many of the most promising artistic and literary talents from across Europe and beyond. The magnitude of this loss is (...) brought home by a new book edited by Tim Cross, TL· Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets, and Playwrights (University of Iowa Press, $17.95, paperbound). The idea is simple, the result moving. Cross has brought together fifty-nine biographical sketches of poets or writers who died in the war, with relevant illustrations and samples of their work. The two-column, 406-page book ranges from the American Alan Seeger and more famous British names, through the Breton poet Jean-Pierre Calloc'h, Germans such as Georg Trakl and Franz Janowitz, the Alsatian Ernst Stadler, the Hungarian Géza Gyóni, and the Armenians Grigor Zohrab, Daniel Varouzan, and Siamant'o. There are Czechs, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Slovenes. It would be difficult tooverestimate the richness of TL· Lost Voices of World War I. As a random taste, here's a tart little piece by the German Gustav Sack, killed in 1916 during the advance on Bucharest. As with the other poetry in the book, this translation (by Anthea Bell) of Piffle (Quark) appears side by side with the original. Year after year, you gnaw your way through life, the years elude your clutch, and in the end, your hair is gray and still you don't amount to much. You eat and drink and court a girl, get chUdren too, the Lord knows why, whUe Time, pursuing its mad whirl, faster and faster rushes by. You lay you down to end your days a penitent; you thus obtain fine tributes to your worthy ways, and so chalk up one last net gain. Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 446-454 Bookmarks447 An appendix lists, with their major works, eight hundred creative artists known to have died as a result of the war. If this book is a record of the genius and aesdietic sensibUity of the human race, it is also a monument to its brutal stupidity. It is a war memorial like none other in my experience. The Heidegger-Hitler cauldron continues to boil, and the appearance in English of Victor Farias's Heidegger and Nazism (Temple University Press, $29.95) wUl further stoke the fire. Editors Tom Rockmore andJoseph Margolis provide a perceptive foreword to this American edition of the book in which they identify four strategies for dealing with Heidegger's involvement with Nazism. We have (1) the plain position that there is "an intrinsic link between Heidegger's thought and Nazism"; (2) the beUef that the link is purely contingent ; (3) the "learned" form of (2), according to which "Heidegger's detractors are insufficiently aware of the entire body of his thought to criticize it"; and (4) the view which concedes (1) but—watch out!—holds that "the uninitiated, those whose philosophical being is not bound up with Heidegger in an essential way, cannot really measure the importance or full significance of Heidegger's work." Tedious to have to say it, but people whose being is so "bound up" with Heidegger are quite possibly the least qualified to comment on his fascism. The old official stance—Heidegger was naive, guilty only of a temporary "political error," worked from within to protect the university, actuaUy wanted to defend Jews, and, my favorite, must have felt real bad, etc.—is demolished by the documentation in Farias's book. Different readers will be impressed by different items in the mass of material Heidegger and Nazism collects, but the overall case is conclusive. OccasionaUy I have the sense that this book contains too many diversions about characters connected with Heidegger. WhUe people Heidegger was friendly with—for example, the Freiburg mayor, Franz Kerber —may have had unimpeachable Nazi credentials, it is not always clear what this teUs us about Heidegger himself. In general, there is a... (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that a general norm of truth governs the attitude of believing. In a recent and influential discussion, Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi raise a number of serious objections to this view. In this paper, I concede that Bykvist and Hattiangadi's criticisms might be effective against the formulation of the norm of truth that they consider, but suggest that an alternative is available. After outlining that alternative, I argue that it is not vulnerable to objections parallel to those (...) Bykvist and Hattiangadi advance, although it might initially appear to be. In closing, I consider what bearing the preceding discussion has on important questions concerning the natures of believing and of truth. (shrink)

Based on a creative use of the phenomenological method, we argue that a close examination of the temporality of objects reveals the future as genuinely open. Without aiming to decide the matter of phenomenological realism, we suggest that this method can be used to investigate the mode of being of objects in their own temporality. By bracketing the anticipatory structure of experience, one can get a sense of objects’ temporality as independent of consciousness. This contributes to the current Realism versus (...) Idealism debates, but it does so without taking sides. The starting point is neither an analysis of pure consciousness, nor attempts to describe objects in-themselves, but the idea that things can be phenomenologically grasped through the difference between their temporality and our own. By being methodically “open to the future,” one can become aware of the sui generis temporality of objects as different from the temporality shaped by our anticipation. (shrink)

Participants watched themselves in a mirror while another person behind them, hidden from view, extended hands forward on each side where participants’ hands would normally appear. The hands performed a series of movements. When participants could hear instructions previewing each movement, they reported an enhanced feeling of controlling the hands. Hearing instructions for the movements also enhanced skin conductance responses when a rubber band was snapped on the other’s wrist after the movements. Such vicarious agency was not felt when the (...) instructions followed the movements, and participants’ own covert movement mimicry was not essential to the influence of previews on reported control. (shrink)

We present numerous natural algebraic examples without the so-called Canonical Base Property (CBP). We prove that every commutative unitary ring of finite Morley rank without finite-index proper ideals satisfies the CBP if and only if it is a field, a ring of positive characteristic or a finite direct product of these. In addition, we construct a CM-trivial commutative local ring with a finite residue field without the CBP. Furthermore, we also show that finite-dimensional non-associative algebras over an algebraically closed field (...) of characteristic [Formula: see text] give rise to triangular rings without the CBP. This also applies to Baudisch’s [Formula: see text]-step nilpotent Lie algebras, which yields the existence of a [Formula: see text]-step nilpotent group of finite Morley rank whose theory, in the pure language of groups, is CM-trivial and does not satisfy the CBP. (shrink)

In Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute, Daniel Andrés López reassembles Lukács’s philosophy of praxis on a Hegelian basis, as a conceptual-historical totality, both defending him and proposing an unprecedented, immanent critique that raises problems for Marxian philosophy as a whole.

There is much effort nowadays to protect communication networks against different cybersecurity attacks (which are more and more sophisticated) that look for systems’ vulnerabilities they could exploit for malicious purposes. Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) are popular tools to detect and classify such attacks, most of them based on ML models. However, ML-based NIDSs cannot be trained by feeding them with network traffic data as it is. Thus, a Feature Engineering (FE) process plays a crucial role transforming network traffic raw (...) data onto derived one suitable for ML models. In this work, we study the effects of applying one such FE technique in different ways on the performance of two ML models (linear and non-linear) and their selected features. This the Feature as a Counter approach. The derived observations are computed from either with the same number of raw samples, (batch-based approaches) or by aggregating them by time intervals (timestamp-based approach). Results show that there is no significant differences between the proposed approaches neither in the performance of the models nor in the selected features that validate our proposal making it feasible to be widely used as a standard FE method. (shrink)

Simon May has argued that the notion of a principled compromise is incoherent. Reasons to compromise are always in his view strategic: though we think that the position we defend is still the right one, we compromise on this view in order to avoid the undesirable consequences that might flow from not compromising. I argue against May that there are indeed often principled reasons to compromise, and that these reasons are in fact multiple. First, compromises evince respect for persons that (...) we have reason to think of as our epistemic peers, and acknowledgement of our own finitudes as moral reasoners. Second, compromises are often made morally necessary by the shortfalls that unavoidably separate democratic institutions from democratic ideals. Third, compromises express a desirable form of democratic community. And fourth, compromises are often justified from a consequentialist point of view, in that they allow for the realization of values that would not be realized as well by the failure to compromise. (shrink)

Through a convenience sample of 260 employees, the study shows how employees’ perceptions about corporate citizenship (CC) predict their affective commitment. The study was carried out in Portugal, a high in-group and low societal collectivistic culture. Maignan et al.’s (1999, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science27(4), 455–469) construct, including economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary responsibilities was used. The main findings are: (a) contrary to what has been presumed in the literature, the discretionary dimension includes two factors: CC toward employees (...) and toward community; (b) perceptions of CC explain 35% of unique variance of affective commitment; (c) the best predictors are perceptions of economic and legal CC and, mainly, perceptions of discretionary CC toward employees; (d) the perceptions of discretionary CC toward employees are significantly better predictors of affective commitment than are perceptions of economic, ethical, and discretionary CC toward the community; (e) perceived inconsistency of the several CC dimensions is detrimental to employees’ affective commitment. The study questions the four-dimensional model of the CC construct as operationalized by Maignan et al., suggests that culture should be included as a moderating variable in future research, and stresses that affective commitment may decrease when employees perceive that their organizations act upon the several areas of CC inconsistently. (shrink)

Memory perfttrmattce of 118 individuals who had been iu close dating relationships for at least 3 months was studied. For a memory task ostensibly to be performed by pairs, some Ss were paired..

It is commonplace to claim that it is good to believe the truth. In this paper, I reject that claim and argue that the considerations which might seem to support it in fact support a quite distinct though superficially similar claim, namely, that it is bad to believe the false. This claim is typically either ignored completely or lumped together with the previous claim, perhaps on the assumption that the two are equivalent, or at least that they stand or fall (...) together. Such assumptions, I argue, are mistaken. While it is not always good to be right, it is always bad to be wrong. This is an interesting and overlooked asymmetry, which calls for further investigation. (shrink)

Plagiarism is increasingly evident in business and academia. Though links between demographic, personality, and situational factors have been found, previous research has not used actual plagiarism behavior as a criterion variable. Previous research on academic dishonesty has consistently used self-report measures to establish prevalence of dishonest behavior. In this study we use actual plagiarism behavior to establish its prevalence, as well as relationships between integrity-related personal selection and workplace deviance measures. This research covers new ground in two respects: (a) That (...) the academic dishonesty literature is subject to revision using criterion variables to avoid self bias and social desirability issues and (b) we establish the relationship between actual academic dishonesty and potential workplace deviance/white-collar crime. (shrink)

Concept empiricists are committed to the claim that the vehicles of thought are re-activated perceptual representations. Evidence for empiricism comes from a range of neuroscientific studies showing that perceptual regions of the brain are employed during cognitive tasks such as categorization and inference. I examine the extant neuroscientific evidence and argue that it falls short of establishing this core empiricist claim. During conceptual tasks, the causal structure of the brain produces widespread activity in both perceptual and non-perceptual systems. I lay (...) out several conditions on what is required for a neural state to be a realizer of the functional role played by concepts, and argue that no subset of this activity can be singled out as the unique neural vehicle of conceptual thought. Finally, I suggest that, while the strongest form of empiricism is probably false, the evidence is consistent with several weaker forms of empiricism. (shrink)

When someone steps on your toe on purpose, it seems to hurt more than when the person does the same thing unintentionally. The physical parameters of the harm may not differ—your toe is flattened in both cases—but the psychological experience of pain is changed nonetheless. Intentional harms are premeditated by another person and have the specific purpose of causing pain. In a sense, intended harms are events initiated by one mind to communicate meaning (malice) to another, and this could shape (...) the recipient’s experience. This study examined whether self-reported pain is indeed higher when the events producing the pain are understood as intentionally (as opposed to unintentionally) caused by another person. Although pain was traditionally conceived to be solely physical in nature (Aydede, 2005), its experience varies substantially with psychological context. The placebo analgesia effect, for example, is the reduction of pain without a change in physical stimulation when context, expectations, or sugar pills challenge the interpretation of a sensation as painful (e.g., Fields, 2008). The nocebo effect, in turn, is the experience of pain without any physical stimulation—as when participants report headaches when told that a (nonexistent) electric current is passing through their heads (Schweiger & Parducci, 1981). These variations in pain experience seem to depend on the meaning of the stimulus: A sugar pill is meant to decrease pain, whereas electric current is meant to increase pain. In an interpersonal context, the meaning of an action is derived from the would complete. perceiver’s perceptions of the actor’s intention (Clark, 1996). (shrink)

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 2-9.

Korcz argues that deontological considerations support this view. According to him, our practice of praising and blaming people for the epistemic appropriateness of their beliefs provides us with good reason to think that meta-beliefs can establish basing relations independently of any causal relation. Korcz writes.

Why should one person obey another? Why (to ask the question from the first-person perspective) ought I to submit to another and follow her judgment rather than my own? In modern political thought, which denies that some are born rulers and others are born to be ruled, the most prominent answer has been: “Because I have consented to her authority.” By making authority conditional on the subjects’ consent, political philosophers have sought to reconcile authority’s hierarchical structure with the equal moral (...) standing of governor and governed. Yet such consent accounts of authority have long been deemed problematic on a number of grounds, not the least of which is that few citizens have given their consent to the state under whose laws they live. So unless we are willing to deny the state’s authority over those who have not consented, or revert to the pre-modern assumption of a natural political hierarchy, we must find another way of reconciling authority with our standing as free and equal moral agents. In recent political and legal philosophy, the most influential solution to this problem has been Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority, according to which legitimate authority, while it does not require the consent of the governed, must exist for their sake, or serve them. The normal way to justify someone’s authority, on the service conception, is to show that, by treating her directives as binding, the subjects are likely better to conform to reasons that apply to them anyway. The service conception has, however, recently been criticized (by, among others, Thomas Christiano, Scott Hershovitz, and Jeremy Waldron) for being insufficiently attuned to the significance that procedural, and in particular democratic, features of political and legal institutions have for the justification of their authority. If these ‘democratic critics’ are right, then two commitments that many in the liberal-democratic tradition may find independently attractive turn out to be in tension: the liberal idea that authority is normally legitimate only insofar as it serves its subjects, and the democratic idea that legitimate authority can (and regularly does) rest on fair procedures. In this article I argue that the critics’ arguments rest on a misunderstanding of the service conception; yet their worries point the way to an under-appreciated and interesting view of democracy as an authoritative arbitration procedure. After introducing the service conception’s view of justified authority, I briefly distinguish a broad and a narrow interpretation of it, and suggest that we should embrace the latter to make sense of the idea that political authority serves its subjects (Section I). Next I turn to the objection raised by the democratic critics: the service conception, they say, cannot make room for the intrinsic fairness of democratic procedures because it is preoccupied with the quality of outcomes (Section II). But, I argue, the objection rests on an illicit identification of two different kinds of outcomes: the outcome of the decision-making procedure on the one hand, the outcome or result of treating that first outcome as authoritative on the other. Distinguishing between these is crucial for an adequate understanding of democracy’s authority. While the service conception is indeed organized around the latter, this does not commit it to an exclusive concern with the former; yet it is a singular commitment to the former that is problematic from a democratic point of view (Section III). To bring home this point, I sketch a model of authority as arbitration that is frequently overlooked in recent discussions of authority even though it is centrally concerned with procedural (and ultimately democratic) values and fits squarely into the service conception of authority (Section IV). (shrink)

Believing in God requires not only a leap of faith but also an extension of people’s normal capacity to perceive the minds of others. Usually, people perceive minds of all kinds by trying to understand their conscious experience (what it is like to be them) and their agency (what they can do). Although humans are perceived to have both agency and experience, humans appear to see God as possessing agency, but not experience. God’s unique mind is due, the authors suggest, (...) to the uniquely moral role He occupies. In this article, the authors propose that God is seen as the ultimate moral agent, the entity people blame and praise when they receive anomalous harm and help. Support for this proposition comes from research on mind perception, morality, and moral typecasting. Interestingly, although people perceive God as the author of salvation, suffering seems to evoke even more attributions to the divine. (shrink)

We often think about the alternatives to a decision that has been made. Thinking in this way is known as counterfactual thinking, that is, thinking about what could have been had an alternative dec...

In slapstick comedy, the worst thing that could happen usually does: The person with a sore toe manages to stub it, sometimes twice. Such errors also arise in daily life, and research traces the tendency to do precisely the worst thing to ironic processes of mental control. These monitoring processes keep us watchful for errors of thought, speech, and action and enable us to avoid the worst thing in most situations, but they also increase the likelihood of such errors when (...) we attempt to exert control under mental load (stress, time pressure, or distraction). Ironic errors in attention and memory occur with identifiable brain activity and prompt recurrent unwanted thoughts; attraction to forbidden desires; expression of objectionable social prejudices; production of movement errors; and rebounds of negative experiences such as anxiety, pain, and depression. Such ironies can be overcome when effective control strategies are deployed and mental load is minimized. (shrink)

Biobanks correspond to different situations: research and technological development, medical diagnosis or therapeutic activities. Their status is not clearly defined. We aimed to investigate human biobanking in Europe, particularly in relation to organisational, economic and ethical issues in various national contexts. Data from a survey in six EU countries were collected as part of a European Research Project examining human and non-human biobanking. A total of 147 institutions concerned with biobanking of human samples and data were investigated by questionnaires and (...) interviews. Most institutions surveyed belong to the public or private non-profit-making sectors, which have a key role in biobanking. This activity is increasing in all countries because few samples are discarded and genetic research is proliferating. Collections vary in size, many being small and only a few very large. Their purpose is often research, or research and healthcare, mostly in the context of disease studies. A specific budget is very rarely allocated to biobanking and costs are not often evaluated. Samples are usually provided free of charge and gifts and exchanges are the common rule. Good practice guidelines are generally followed and quality controls are performed but quality procedures are not always clearly explained. Associated data are usually computerised. Biobankers generally favour centralisation of data rather than of samples. Legal and ethical harmonisation within Europe is considered likely to facilitate international collaboration. We propose a series of recommendations and suggestions arising from the EUROGENBANK project. (shrink)