The issues relating to the licensing of a biopharmaceutical are described. In particular attention is focused on the mind of the regulator who has the responsibility of recommending licensure. There are two key factors which operate on the mind when confronted with such a task: psychology and ethics. The different factors which influence the psychological acceptability of a product for licensure are many and varied; they include perceived need, novelty, education, context and others. Also involved is the regulator’s view of (...) the ethicality of such products and the organisms which make them, with particular reference to those which are genetically engineered. These ethical views are in turn derived by reference to basic systems of ethics which provide guidelines for behavior. It is important for the manufacturers of biopharmaceuticals to be aware of both the psychological and ethical aspects of the regulator’s mind when addressing such individuals with a view to obtaining a license to manufacture a particular biopharmaceutical. (shrink)

The issues relating to the licensing of a biopharmaceutical are described. In particular attention is focused on the mind of the regulator who has the responsibility of recommending licensure. There are two key factors which operate on the mind when confronted with such a task: psychology and ethics. The different factors which influence the psychological acceptability of a product for licensure are many and varied; they include perceived need, novelty, education, context and others. Also involved is the regulator’s view of (...) the ethicality of such products and the organisms which make them, with particular reference to those which are genetically engineered. These ethical views are in turn derived by reference to basic systems of ethics which provide guidelines for behavior. It is important for the manufacturers of biopharmaceuticals to be aware of both the psychological and ethical aspects of the regulator’s mind when addressing such individuals with a view to obtaining a license to manufacture a particular biopharmaceutical. (shrink)

We hear much of voodoo science or junk science or even scientific science, in this paper I seek to evaluate and understand how we might approach a description of the qualities of science. In this I base my reasoning on the equivalence of the words science and knowledge. I then note that the application of the scientific method determines how confident we may be in what we hold as knowledge or science (basically a tested guess or hypothesis). The different levels (...) of confidence are reflected in a variety of terms, including: good or bad, junk or valuable, voodoo or reliable. (shrink)

Much confusion exists in the definitions of the areas covered by the disciplines of Bioethics and Biotech ethics. This paper seeks to unravel this situation, following a full discussion of the definition of ethics it shows that, although Bioethics is an all-inclusive term, it is generally used for the more specific area of Biomedical ethics. This leaves space for the equivalent level term of Biotech ethics to cover those aspects of the new and old biotechnologies that are not directly concerned (...) with the delivery of health care to humans. (shrink)

This is a bold, useful and timely document. It sets out to make a series of legally and practically applicable recommendations on the process of acquiring genetic information about a person's mental condition as well as surveying the implications of the application of that information. At the heart of the document are two ethical principles: "respect for human beings and human dignity and limitation of harm to and suffering of all human beings". -/- .

In his paper entitled “Ethics and the Funding of Research and Development at Universities”1 Spier examines some of the potential problems of the relationship between 1) corporate sponsors of research and 2) the universities (and faculty) that receive that funding. Citing “He who pays the piper, calls the tune,” Spier suggests that a better way of funding research would be to “set up a dedicated publicly sponsored research establishment” with the stated goal of achieving particular technical or engineering objectives. (Spier (...) cited the successful Animal Virus Research of the UK as an example). Spier states that researchers at these establishments are “not subjected to the triple requirement to teach, research and administer as are university members, so they do not have to face the same ethical challenges of the academics.” This paper will examine the stated dangers of public/corporate research partnerships and whether the proposed alternative shares equally troubling ethical issues. (shrink)

Science and Technology Ethics re-examines the ethics by which we live and asks the question: do we have in place the ethical guidelines through which we can incorporate these developments with the minimum of disruption and disaffection? It assesses the ethical systems in place and proposes new approaches to our scientific and engineering processes and products, our social contacts, biology and informatics, the military industry and our environmental responsibilities. The volume is multidisciplinary and reflects the aim of the book to (...) promote a state of the art assessment of these issues. Science and Technology Ethics is a much-needed discussion of the scientific developments that have major effects on the way we live. It will be of interest to all students of science and technology and all professionals involved with administrating laws in these fields. (shrink)

The paper deploys the disclosive computer ethics (DCE) approach to reconstruct the ethics and politics of one of the sharing economy’s flagships—Airbnb. I investigate Airbnb’s technical design to identify the moral and political values that are embedded in the platform’s technology. I then analyze the platform’s ethics and politics towards a generalization of relevant ethical and political aspects by reconnecting them to the mechanisms, operations, rationales, and ideologies of the sharing economy in general. The paper contributes to the existing literature (...) by linking between the ethics and politics of digital platforms and their technical design, using the case study of Airbnb. Additionally, it explores Airbnb as a specific platform technology with unique ethical and political values. Thus, the paper refutes the neutrality thesis and similar claims made by sharing economy platforms. Finally, the paper makes a methodological contribution to the literature on the ethics and politics of technology. It develops a practical DCE research methodology for uncovering the values, ethics, and politics of digital technologies. (shrink)

Sculptors, architects, and painters are three professional groups that require a comprehensive understanding of how to manipulate spatial structures. While it has been speculated that they may differ in the way they conceive of space due to the different professional demands, this has not been empirically tested. To achieve this, we asked architects, painters, sculptors, and a control group questions about spatially complex pictures. Verbalizations elicited were examined using cognitive discourse analysis. We found significant differences between each group. Only painters (...) shifted consistently between 2D and 3D concepts, architects were concerned with paths and spatial physical boundedness, and sculptors produced responses that fell between architects and painters. All three differed from controls, whose verbalizations were generally less elaborate and detailed. Thus, for the case of sculptors, architects, and painters, profession appears to relate to a different spatial conceptualization manifested through a systematically contrasting way of talking about space. (shrink)

Wilson et al. focus on one class of AGL tasks: the cognitively demanding task of detecting non‐adjacent dependencies (NADs) among items. They provide a typology of the different types of NADs in natural languages and in AGL tasks. A range of cues affect NAD learning, ranging from the variability and number of intervening elements to the presence of shared prosodic cues between the dependent items. These cues, important for humans to discover non‐adjacent dependencies, are also found to facilitate NAD learning (...) in several nonhuman animal species. (shrink)

Wilson et al. focus on one class of AGL tasks: the cognitively demanding task of detecting non‐adjacent dependencies (NADs) among items. They provide a typology of the different types of NADs in natural languages and in AGL tasks. A range of cues affect NAD learning, ranging from the variability and number of intervening elements to the presence of shared prosodic cues between the dependent items. These cues, important for humans to discover non‐adjacent dependencies, are also found to facilitate NAD learning (...) in several nonhuman animal species. (shrink)

Much is said about Middle Eastern and North African publics opposing gender equality, often referring to patriarchal Islam. However, nuanced large-scale studies addressing which specific aspects of religiosity affect support for gender equality across the MENA are conspicuously absent. This study develops and tests a gendered agentic socialization framework that proposes that MENA citizens are not only passively socialized by religion but also have agency. This disaggregates the influence of religiosity, highlights its multifacetedness, and theorizes the moderating roles that gender (...) and sociocognitive empowerment play via gendered processes of agentic dissociations. Using 15 World Values Surveys and multilevel models, our analyses show that most dimensions of religiosity fuel opposition to gender equality. However, the salience of religion in daily life is found to increase women’s support for gender equality and cushion the negative impact of religious service attendance. Also, gender and education moderate the impacts of several religiosity dimensions; for instance, women’s support for gender equality more sharply declines with increased service attendance than men’s. Altogether, this study finds that religious socialization is multifaceted and gendered, and that certain men and women are inclined and equipped to deviate from dominant patriarchal religious interpretations. (shrink)

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable (...) presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

The Moral Nexus develops and defends a new interpretation of morality—namely, as a set of requirements that connect agents normatively to other persons in a nexus of moral relations. According to this relational interpretation, moral demands are directed to other individuals, who have claims that the agent comply with these demands. Interpersonal morality, so conceived, is the domain of what we owe to each other, insofar as we are each persons with equal moral standing. The book offers an interpretative argument (...) for the relational approach. Specifically, it highlights neglected advantages of this way of understanding the moral domain; explores important theoretical and practical presuppositions of relational moral duties; and considers the normative implications of understanding morality in relational terms. The book features a novel defense of the relational approach to morality, which emphasizes the special significance that moral requirements have, both for agents who are deliberating about what to do and for those who stand to be affected by their actions. The book argues that relational moral requirements can be understood to link us to all individuals whose interests render them vulnerable to our agency, regardless of whether they stand in any prior relationship to us. It also offers fresh accounts of some of the moral phenomena that have seemed to resist treatment in relational terms, showing that the relational interpretation is a viable framework for understanding our specific moral obligations to other people. (shrink)

Navigation ability varies widely across humans. Prior studies have reported that being younger and a male has an advantage for navigation ability. However, these studies have generally involved small numbers of participants from a handful of western countries. Here, we review findings from our project Sea Hero Quest, which used a video game for mobile and tablet devices to test 3.9 million people on their navigation ability, sampling across every nation-state and from 18 to 99 years of age. Results revealed (...) that the task has good ecological validity and across all countries sufficiently sampled (N = 63), age is linked to a near-linear decline in navigation ability from the early 20s. All countries showed a male advantage, but this varied considerably and could be partly predicted by gender inequality. We found that those who reported growing up in a city were on average worse at navigating than those who grew up outside cities and that navigation performance helped identify those at greater genetic risk of Alzheimer's disease. We discuss the advantages and challenges of using a mobile app to study cognition and the future avenues for understanding individual differences in navigation ability arising from this research. (shrink)

Navigation ability varies widely across humans. Prior studies have reported that being younger and a male has an advantage for navigation ability. However, these studies have generally involved small numbers of participants from a handful of western countries. Here, we review findings from our project Sea Hero Quest, which used a video game for mobile and tablet devices to test 3.9 million people on their navigation ability, sampling across every nation-state and from 18 to 99 years of age. Results revealed (...) that the task has good ecological validity and across all countries sufficiently sampled (N = 63), age is linked to a near-linear decline in navigation ability from the early 20s. All countries showed a male advantage, but this varied considerably and could be partly predicted by gender inequality. We found that those who reported growing up in a city were on average worse at navigating than those who grew up outside cities and that navigation performance helped identify those at greater genetic risk of Alzheimer's disease. We discuss the advantages and challenges of using a mobile app to study cognition and the future avenues for understanding individual differences in navigation ability arising from this research. (shrink)

While there is a substantive literature on the link between welfare states and individuals’ trust, little is known about the micro-linkage of the conditionality of welfare as a driver of trust. This study presents a unique randomized social experiment investigating this link. Recipients of the regular Dutch social assistance policy are compared to recipients of two alternative schemes inspired by the basic income and based on a more trusting and unconditional approach, testing the main reciprocity argument in the literature: a (...) trusting government will harvest trust from welfare recipients in return. Particularly trust in local government – the level at which the experiment was implemented – increases among recipients of the alternative treatments. Subsequently, we innovatively theorize and test rigorously which mediating mechanisms might explain this increase. Policy evaluation, social integration, and psychological well-being are studied in this respect. Of these, the only underlying mechanism proven to mediate the treatment effect in local political trust, is citizens’ satisfaction with policy. (shrink)

Two important aspects of the relationship between peer review and innovation includes the acceptance of articles for publication in journals and the assessment of applications for grants for the funding of research work. While there are well-known examples of the rejection by journals of first choice of many papers that have radically changed the way we think about the world outside ourselves, such papers do get published eventually, however tortuous the process required. With grant applications the situation differs in that (...) the refusal of a grant necessarily curtails the possible research that may be attempted. Here there are many reasons for conservatism and reservation as to the ability of a grant allocation process based on peer review to deliver truly innovative investigations. Other methods are needed; although such methods need not be applied across the board, they should constitute the methods whereby some 10–20% of the grant monies are assigned. The nomination of prizes for specific accomplishments is one way of achieving innovation although this presumes that investigators or institution already have available the money necessary to effect the innovations; otherwise it is a question of the selection and funding of particular individuals or institutions and requiring them to solve particular problems that are set in the broadest of terms. (shrink)

Josef Pieper wrote about “the silence of St. Thomas”—faced with some of philosophy’s toughest questions, Thomas does not give “a textbook reply.” In this paper, I note an instance of such silence: Thomas gives no dogmatic, unequivocal answer to the question “What is freedom?” and this omission seems to have been deliberate. While his predecessors and contemporaries discussed the definition of freedom formally, Thomas does not do so, nor does he offer a precise account of libertas. Why would Thomas avoid (...) this debate? An answer is necessarily tentative, but I argue that Thomas wanted to simplify his treatment of the power of choice. In addition, he may be convinced that freedom is best understood as instantiated within a nature or its powers, making any abstract consideration fundamentally unfruitful. (shrink)

This book provides a collection of sources, many of them fragmentary and previously scattered and hard to access, for the development of Peripatetic philosophy in the later Hellenistic period and the early Roman Empire. It also supplies the background against which the first commentator on Aristotle from whom extensive material survives, Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. AD 200), developed his interpretations which continue to be influential even today. Many of the passages are here translated into English for the first time, (...) including the whole of the summary of Peripatetic ethics attributed to 'Arius Didymus'. (shrink)