This paper will critically examine the use of evidence in creating policy in the area of reproductive technologies. The use of evidence in health care and policy is not a new phenomenon. However, codified strategies for evidence appraisal in health care technology assessments and attempts to create evidence based policy initiatives suggest that the way evidence is used in practice and policy has changed. This paper will examine this trend by considering what is counted as ‘good’ evidence, difficulties in translating (...) evidence into policy and practice and how evidence interacts with principles. To illustrate these points the removal of gamete donor anonymity in the UK in 2005 and the debates that preceded this change in the law will be examined. It will be argued that evidence will only ever take us so far and attention should also be paid to the underlying principles that guide policy. The paper will conclude with suggestions for how underlying principles can be more rigorously used in policy formation. (shrink)

Humans, like other primates, are intensely social creatures. One of the major functions of our brains must be to enable us to be as skilful in social interactions as we are in our interactions with the physical world. Furthermore, any differences between human brains and those of our nearest relatives, the great apes, are likely to be linked to our unique achievements in social interaction and communication rather than our motor or perceptual skills. Unique to humans is the ability to (...) mentalise, that is to perceive and communicate mental states, such as beliefs and desires. A key problem facing science is to uncover the biological mechanisms underlying our ability to read other minds and to show how these mechanisms evolved. To solve this problem we need to do experiments in which people interact with one another rather than behaving in isolation. Such experiments are now being conducted in increasing numbers and many of the leading exponents of such experiments have contributed to this volume. 'The Neuroscience of Social Interactions' will be an important step in uncovering the biological mechanisms underlying social interactions - undoubtedly one of the major programmes for neuroscience in the 21st century. (shrink)

This paper discusses how facet-like structures occur as a commonplace feature in a variety of computer science disciplines as a means for structuring class hierarchies. The paper then focuses on a mathematical model for facets (and class hierarchies in general), called formal concept analysis, and discusses graphical representations of faceted systems based on this model.

In der Soziologie ist seit längerer Zeit ein zunehmendes Interesse an Architektur und Artefakten beobachtbar. Dabei wird daran erinnert, dass nicht nur immaterielle Zeichen, Symbole und Repräsentationen des Sozialen existieren, sondern auch Orte, Stoffe und Dinge. Diesen wird eine wichtige Rolle im sozialen Geschehen zugesprochen: Materiales erscheint als Träger von Erinnerungskulturen, als sozialer Akteur, Heilsvermittler, Medium von Repräsentation – kurz: als Bedingung, Beschränkung und Instrument sozialer Praxis. Dies gilt auch in Bezug auf Religion. Dennoch hat die Perspektive noch kaum Eingang (...) in die deutschsprachige Religionssoziologie gefunden. Dieser Band soll daher Anstoß sein für die Öffnung der Religionssoziologie in Richtung einer Soziologie des Materialen. (shrink)

We have only limited awareness of the system by which we control our actions and this limited awareness does not seem to be concerned with the control of action. Awareness of choosing one action rather than another comes after the choice has been made, while awareness of initiating an action occurs before the movement has begun. These temporal differences bind together in consciousness the intention to act and the consequences of the action. This creates our sense of agency. Activity in (...) the anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex is associated with awareness of our own actions and also occurs when we think about the actions of others. I propose that the mechanism underlying awareness of how our own intentions lead to actions can also be used to represent the intentions that underlie the actions of others. This common system enables us to communicate mental states and thereby share our experiences. (shrink)

The goal of the study was to determine which aspects of interpersonal touch interactions lead to a positive or negative experience. Previous research has focused primarily on physical characteristics. We suggest that this may not be sufficient to fully capture the complexity of the experience. Specifically, we examined how fulfilment of psychological needs influences touch experiences and how this relates to physical touch characteristics and situational factors.In two mixed-method studies, participants described their most positive and most negative interpersonal touch experience (...) within a specific time frame. They reported fulfilment of nine needs, affect, intention, and reason for positivity/negativity, as well as the body part(s) touched, location, type of touch, interaction partner, and particular touch characteristics (e.g. humidity).Positive and negative touch experiences shared similar touch types, locations, and body parts touched, but differed in intended purpose and reasons. Overall, the valence of a touch experience could be predicted from fulfilment of relatedness, the interaction partner and initiator, and physical touch characteristics. Positive affect increased with need fulfilment, and negative affect decreased.The results highlight the importance of relatedness and reciprocity for the valence of touch, and emphasise the need to incorporate psychological needs in touch research. (shrink)

Consciousness has many elements - from sensory experiences such as vision, audition, and bodily sensation, to nonsensory aspects such as volition, emotion, memory, and thought. With all these facets - how can consciousness appear to us as a unified experience? Is this apparent unity just an illusion? Why and when does this unity break down? In recent years many have attempted to answer this, one of the most puzzling and intriguing dimensions of consciousness. With chapters from leading thinkers on consciousness, (...) from psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy this is a thought-provoking book that attempts to answer some of the big questions. (shrink)

Clark acknowledges but resists the indirect mind–world relation inherent in prediction error minimization (PEM). But directness should also be resisted. This creates a puzzle, which calls for reconceptualization of the relation. We suggest that a causal conception captures both aspects. With this conception, aspects of situated cognition, social interaction and culture can be understood as emerging through precision optimization.

We have only limited awareness of the system by which we control our actions and this limited awareness does not seem to be concerned with the control of action. Awareness of choosing one action rather than another comes after the choice has been made, while awareness of initiating an action occurs before the movement has begun. These temporal differences bind together in consciousness the intention to act and the consequences of the action. This creates our sense of agency. Activity in (...) the anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex is associated with awareness of our own actions and also occurs when we think about the actions of others. I propose that the mechanism underlying awareness of how our own intentions lead to actions can also be used to represent the intentions that underlie the actions of others. This common system enables us to communicate mental states and thereby share our experiences. (shrink)

Exploring the conceptual baseline of Parsons's sociology and maintaining focus on its links with 20th century history, this book sheds light on the requirements of analytical rigor in the social sciences through examination of the debates in which Parsons was engaged throughout his life. In addition to revisiting Parsons's extensive oeuvre, Uta Gerhardt takes up various themes in current research and theory - including social inequality, civic culture, and globalization - thus demonstrating what the conceptual approaches of Parsons can accomplish (...) today. (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscience aspires to explain how the brain produces conscious states. Many people think this aspiration is threatened by the subjective nature of introspective reports, as well as by certain philosophical arguments. We propose that good neuroscientific explanations of conscious states can consolidate an interpretation of introspective reports, in spite of their subjective nature. This is because the relative quality of explanations can be evaluated on independent, methodological grounds. To illustrate, we review studies that suggest that aspects of the feeling (...) of being in control of one's bodily movement can be explained in terms of the complex and surprising way the brain predicts movement. This is a modest type of functional, contrastive explanation. Though we do not refute the threatening philosophical arguments, we show that they do not apply to this type of explanation. (shrink)

People should be allowed to decide how and where they wish to be tested for HIV without there being a formal requirement for pretest counsellingIn his paper, Ethics of HIV testing in general practice without informed consent, Fraser argues that pretest counselling and informed consent are pillars of the ethical conduct of HIV testing. In my response I want to look critically at these contentions. While I will agree with Fraser that it is always necessary to get informed consent from (...) a patient for an HIV test I will argue that an emphasis on pretest counselling as a prerequisite for testing can actually undermine a patient’s autonomy, the very principle that informed consent seeks to promote.This response will start with an analysis of Case Two as this highlights the fundamental importance of informed consent. It will then go on to look at Case One and show how the special application of informed consent in the field of HIV testing can, in certain circumstances, lead to a reduction in patient autonomy.CASE TWOIn Fraser’s second case a 43 year old married clergyman presented with a recurrent infection of his little toe and the preliminary lab reports queried Kaposi’s sarcoma. The general practitioner thought that because of the patient’s lifestyle there was little risk of HIV infection, “suggesting the possibility of HIV, when it is unexpected and the risk low, can in itself cause anxiety and distress”. On these grounds the GP did not call the patient in for an HIV test.Some might argue that the GP should have tested the clergyman. This could have been done in one of two ways: by seeking his explicit consent for an HIV test, or by getting blanket consent for a range of tests, including HIV, without HIV being explicitly mentioned. …. (shrink)

Einleitung-- Kapitel I: Politische Freiheit: Vom Begriff zur Erfahrbarkeit -- Kapitel II: Die politische Welt -- Kapitel III: Politisches Handeln -- Kapitel IV: Politisches Urteilen -- Schlussbetrachtung -- Literaturverzeichnis und ...

Governments and local administrations increasingly use the internet to improve citizens’ participation in deliberation processes. However, research studies have pointed out that deliberation outcomes vary due to the participants’ sociodemographic differences. In this paper, we address this debate by quantitatively measuring different sociodemographic participant groups’ deliberation quality. By building an index of the quality of understanding, we analyze the quality of 1,991 postings on local political issues that participants contributed during the 2011 Zurich City debate. We defined five indicators for (...) deliberation quality: statement of reasons, proposals for solutions, respect, doubts, and reciprocity. The analysis confirms that the sociodemographic composition of the participants is of great importance for self-selected participation and deliberation quantity, but not for the deliberation quality. (shrink)

Christopher Frith is a research professor at the Functional Imaging Laboratory of the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience at University College, London. He explores, experimentally, using the techniques of functional brain imaging, the relationship between human consciousness and the brain. His research focuses on questions pertaining to perception, attention, control of action, free will, and awareness of our own mental states and those of others. As the following discussion makes clear, Frith investigates brain systems involved in the choice of one (...) action over another and in the understanding of other people. Such investigations are aimed at understanding brain basis of autism and schizophrenia. In his widely cited study of schizophrenia, The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia , Frith argues that many of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as delusions of control, auditory hallucinations, and thought insertion, involve problems of self-monitoring. Patients, in effect, lose track of their own intentions and mistakenly attribute agency for their own actions to someone else. Frith employs models of motor control, involving comparator mechanisms and efference copy, not only to explain delusions that involve movement, but also to develop a neurocognitive explanation of delusional cognition. (shrink)

Background At the beginning of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, many non-Covid healthcare services were suspended. In April 2020, the Department of Health in England mandated that non-Covid services should resume, alongside the continuing pandemic response. This ‘resetting’ of healthcare services created a unique context in which it became critical to consider how ethical considerations did (and should) underpin decisions about integrating infection control measures into routine healthcare practices. We draw on data collected as part of the ‘NHS Reset Ethics’ project, (...) which explored the everyday ethical challenges of resetting England’s NHS maternity and paediatrics services during the pandemic. Methods Healthcare professionals and members of the public participated in interviews and focus group discussions. The qualitative methods are reported in detail elsewhere. The focus of this article is our use of Frith’s symbiotic empirical ethics methodology to work from our empirical findings towards the normative suggestion that clinical ethics should explicitly attend to the importance of relationships in clinical practice. This methodology uses a five-step approach to refine and develop ethical theory based on a naturalist account of ethics that sees practice and theory as symbiotically related. Results The Reset project data showed that changed working practices caused ethical challenges for healthcare professionals, and that infection prevention and control measures represented harmful barriers to the experience of receiving and offering care. For healthcare professionals, offering care as part of a relational interaction was an ethically important dimension of healthcare delivery. Conclusions Our findings suggest that foregrounding the importance of relationships across a hospital community will better promote the ethically important multi-directional expression of caring between healthcare professionals, patients, and their families. We offer two suggestions for making progress towards such a relational approach. First, that there is a change of emphasis in clinical ethics practice to explicitly acknowledge the importance of the relationships (including with their healthcare team) within which the patient is held. Second, that organisational decision-making should take into account the moral significance afforded to caring relationships by healthcare professionals, and the role such relationships can play in the negotiation of ethical challenges. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 22 Heft: 1 Seiten: 197-204.

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 22 Heft: 1 Seiten: 1-8.

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 22 Heft: 1 Seiten: 13-38.

(1996). Socialist legacy as liability: East German intellectuals after German unification. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 556-561.

Over the last 20 years the comparator model for delusions of control has received considerable support in terms of empirical studies. However, the original version clearly needs to be replaced by a model with a much greater degree of sophistication and specificity. Future developments are likely to involve the specification of the role of dopamine in the model and a generalisation of its explanatory power to the whole range of positive symptoms. However, we will still need to explain why symptoms (...) can be so variable and we still do not understand the origin of the most mysterious symptom of all: thought insertion. (shrink)

In 2008 UK legislation was amended to enable the use of deferred consent for paediatric emergency care (EC) trials in recognition of the practical and ethical difficulties of obtaining prospective consent in an emergency situation. However, ambiguity about how to make deferred consent acceptable to parents, children and practitioners remains. In particular, little is known about practitioners’ views and experiences of seeking deferred consent in this setting.

Who presupposes Kelsen's basic norm? Is it possible to defend the presupposition in a way that is convincing? And what difference does the presupposition make? Endeavouring to highlight the role of basic assumptions in the law, the author argues that the verb "to presuppose', with Kelsen, has not only a conceptual but also a normative dimension; and that the expression 'presupposing the basic norm'is adequate in so far as it marks the descriptive-normative nature of utterances made in specifically legal speech-situations.Addressed (...) to legal theorists in general, the treatise purports to show that Kelsen's doctrine lends itself to an interpretation according to which the very act of "presupposing" the Grundnorm can be understood as a Grund, i.e. normative source of all positive law; and, what is more, that this interpretation admits of addressing the issue of the (formal) legitimacy of supra-national and directly applicable rules and other norms. (shrink)

The ecological crisis is arriving, coinciding with crises of many human systems, e.g. the financial and economic systems. Centuries of mismanagement and abuse of natural and human "resources" bring drought and floods, snow storms and suffocating heat, political and psychic collapses. Calls for rethinking and restoring our relationship to the non-human world, to one another, and to ourselves are now ubiquitous.These calls have emerged from various disciplines—psychology, philosophy, sociology, biology, education, law...

Patients with delusions of control are abnormally aware of the sensory consequences of their actions and have difficulty with on-line corrections of movement. As a result they do not feel in control of their movements. At the same time they are strongly aware of the action being intentional. This leads them to believe that their actions are being controlled by an external agent. In contrast, the normal mark of the self in action is that we have very little experience of (...) it. Most of the time we are not aware of the sensory consequences of our actions or of the various subtle corrections that we make during the course of goal-directed actions. We know that we are agents and that we are successfully causing the world to change. But as actors we move through the world like shadows glimpsed only occasional from the corner of an eye. (shrink)