have recently provided a compelling demonstration of enhanced attentional control under post-hypnotic suggestion. Using the classic color-word interference paradigm, in which the task is to ignore a word and to name the color in which it is printed (e.g., RED in green, say ''green''), they gave a post-hypnotic instruction to participants that they would be unable to read. This eliminated Stroop interference in high suggestibility participants but did not alter interference in low suggestibility participants. replicated this pattern and further demonstrated (...) that it is not due to a visual strategy (such as blurring or looking at a different location). As a historical footnote, we describe a ''case study'' from 18 years ago in which we observed the same result using a hypnotic instruction to a single highly suggestible individual that he could not read. The elimination of Stroop interference has important implications for both the study of attention and the study of hypnosis. (shrink)

_The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy_ provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer.

Currently, research ethics committees in the UK meet behind closed doors—their workings and most of the content of their decisions are unavailable to the general public. There is a significant tension between this current practice and a broader societal presumption of openness. As a form of public institution, the REC system exists to oversee research from the perspective of society generally.An important part of this tension turns on the kind of justification that might be offered for the REC system. In (...) this paper I adapt Daniels and Sabin’s accountability for reasonableness model for just resource allocation to the research ethics context to provide some structural legitimacy and to enable progress on the question of openness. After considering the consequences of adopting this model for open REC meetings, I then examine some reasons that might be offered against open meetings. These arguments do not overwhelm the core intuitions behind the presumption of openness but they do, I suggest, give us reason to retreat from fully public meetings. I conclude that there should be important adjustments to the system towards public accountability and that there are grounds for stopping short of fully public meetings. (shrink)

In their paper, “Helpful Lessons and Cautionary Tales: How Should COVID-19 Drug Development and Access Inform Approaches to Non-Pandemic Diseases?” Holly Fernandez Lynch and colleagues have present...

In biobanks, a broader model of consent is often used and justified by a range of different strategies that make reference to the potential benefits brought by the research it will facilitate combined with the low level of risk involved (provided adequate measures are in place to protect privacy and confidentiality) or a questioning of the centrality of the notion of informed consent. Against this, it has been suggested that the lack of specific information about particular uses of the samples (...) means that such consent cannot be fully autonomous and so is unethical. My answer to the title question is a definite ‘yes’. Broad consent can be informed consent and is justified by appeal to the principle of respect for autonomy. Indeed, I will suggest that the distinction between the various kinds of consent is not a distinction between kinds of consent but between the kinds of choice a person makes. When an individual makes a choice (of any kind) it is important that they do so according to the standards of informed consent and consistent with the choice that they are making. (shrink)

In 1885, during initial discussions of J. C. Maxwell's celebrated thermodynamic demon, Whiting (1) observed that the demon-like velocity selection of molecules can occur in a gravitationally bound gas. Recently, a gravitational Maxwell demon has been proposed which makes use of this observation [D. P. Sheehan, J. Glick, and J. D. Means, Found. Phys. 30, 1227 (2000)]. Here we report on numerical simulations that detail its microscopic phase space structure. Results verify the previously hypothesized mechanism of its paradoxical behavior. (...) This system appears to be the only example of a fully classical mechanical Maxwell demon that has not been resolved in favor of the second law of thermodynamics. (shrink)

In 1885, during initial discussions of J. C. Maxwell's celebrated thermodynamic demon, Whiting(1) observed that the demon-like velocity selection of molecules can occur in a gravitationally bound gas. Recently, a gravitational Maxwell demon has been proposed which makes use of this observation [D. P. Sheehan, J. Glick, and J. D. Means, Found. Phys. 30, 1227 (2000)]. Here we report on numerical simulations that detail its microscopic phase space structure. Results verify the previously hypothesized mechanism of its paradoxical behavior. This (...) system appears to be the only example of a fully classical mechanical Maxwell demon that has not been resolved in favor of the second law of thermodynamics. (shrink)

A Select Bibliography Michael McMahon Sheehan Jacqueline Murray. 16 Ritual and Iconography 134 12-14c Studies in Medieval Domestic Architecture ed M.J. Swanton (London 1975). [English aristocratic housing] 135 11-12c WEDZKI,...

Background: Due to the important role of depression in major illnesses, screening measures for depression are commonly used in medical research. The protocol for managing participants with positive screens is unclear and raises ethical concerns. The aim of this article is to identify and critically discuss the ethical issues that arise when a positive screen for depression is detected, and offer some guidance on managing these issues.DiscussionDeciding on whether to report positive screens to healthcare practitioners is both an ethical and (...) a pragmatic dilemma. Evidence suggests that reporting positive depression screens should only be considered in the context of collaborative care. Possible adverse effects, such as the impact of false-positive results, potentially inappropriate labelling, and potentially inappropriate treatment also need to be considered. If possible, the psychometric properties of the selected screening measure should be determined in the target population, and a threshold for depression that minimises the rate of false-positive results should be chosen. It should be clearly communicated to practitioners that screening scores are not diagnostic for depression, and they should be informed about the diagnostic accuracy of the measure. Research participants need to be made aware of the consequences of the detection of high scores on screening measures, and to be fully informed about the implications of the research protocol.SummaryFurther research is needed and the experiences of researchers, participants, and practitioners need to be collated before the value of reporting positive screens for depression can be ascertained. In developing research protocols, the ethical challenges highlighted should be considered. Participants must be agreeable to the agreed protocol and efforts should be made to minimise potentially adverse effects. (shrink)

There is a continued need to consider ways to prevent early adolescent engagement in a variety of harmful risk-taking behaviours for example, violence, road-related risks and alcohol use. The current prospective study examined adolescents? reports of intervening to try and stop friends? engagement in such behaviours among 207 early adolescents (mean age?=?13.51?years, 50.1% females). Findings showed that intervening behaviour after three months was predicted by the confidence to intervene which in turn was predicted by student and teacher support although not (...) parental support. The findings suggest that the benefits of positive relationship experiences might extend to the safety of early adolescent friendship groups particularly through the development of confidence to try and stop friends? risky and dangerous behaviours. Findings from the study support the important role of the school in creating a culture of positive adolescent behaviour whereby young people take social responsibility. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

The syllabus presented here is designed for use in the training of researchers and research ethics committee members throughout the European Union and beyond. It is intended to be accessible to scientific and lay readers, including those with no previous experience of ethical theory and analysis. The syllabus will cover key issues in the ethics of research involving human participants, including the ethical issues associated with new technologies.

In August 2011, a group of medical doctors, ethicists, academic and medical physicists were asked to debate and reach consensus on the potential need for randomised control trials to test charged particle radiation therapy for treating tumours. The outcome of the meeting was a paper recently published in the Journal of Medical Ethics entitled “Position statement on ethics, equipoise and research on charged particle therapy” by Sheehan et al. However 6 of the 30 meeting participants withdrew from authorship of (...) the ‘position statement’ because their views were not adequately represented. The ‘position statement’ did not state our reasons for withdrawing from the statement, which is a considerable omission. We had two principal objections: the case for the benefits to patients and society of randomized trials to test CPRT was not adequately represented, and the complexities and potential harms of CPRT were not clearly stated. In this response we explain and justify our objections. Patients, doctors and policymakers seeking to make independent judgments about whether equipoise exists for the relative benefits of CPRT should therefore read this document alongside the ‘position’ statement. (shrink)

This chapter examines Chomsky's influence on the modeling of linguistic variation, focusing specifically on the notion of parameter. It begins by examining the different conceptualizations of “parameter” in Chomsky's work, from the Government and Binding era, through early Minimalism to more recent approaches which locate variation in phonological form. The idea that grammatical variation should be modeled by abstract parameters is arguably one of Chomsky's most important contributions to linguistic theory, and one which has had significant influence. Two domains of (...) variation (word order and argument expression) are used as case studies to illustrate how Chomsky's ideas have given rise to different kinds of parametric models. Finally, the chapter discusses some of the potential objections to the concept of parameters before concluding. (shrink)

To the age-old debate over what it means to be human, the relatively new fields of sociobiology and artificial intelligence bring new, if not necessarily compatible, insights. What have these two fields in common? Have they affected the way we define humanity? These and other timely questions are addressed with colorful individuality by the authors of _The Boundaries of Humanity_. Leading researchers in both sociobiology and artificial intelligence combine their reflections with those of philosophers, historians, and social scientists, while the (...) editors explore the historical and contemporary contexts of the debate in their introductions. The implications of their individual arguments, and the often heated controversies generated by biological determinism or by mechanical models of mind, go to the heart of contemporary scientific, philosophical, and humanistic studies. (shrink)

An examination of the evidence for and the theoretical implications of a universal word order constraint, with data from a wide range of languages. This book presents evidence for a universal word order constraint, the Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC), and discusses the theoretical implications of this phenomenon. FOFC is a syntactic condition that disallows structures where a head-initial phrase is contained in a head-final phrase in the same extended projection/domain. The authors argue that FOFC is a linguistic universal, not just a (...) strong tendency, and not a constraint on processing. They discuss the effects of the universal in various domains, including the noun phrase, the adjective phrase, the verb phrase, and the clause. The book draws on data from a wide range of languages, including Hindi, Turkish, Basque, Finnish, Afrikaans, German, Hungarian, French, English, Italian, Romanian, Arabic, Hebrew, Mandarin, Pontic Greek, Bagirmi, Dholuo, and Thai. FOFC, the authors argue, is important because it is the only known example of a word order asymmetry pertaining to the order of heads. As such, it has significant repercussions for theories connecting the narrow syntax to linear order. (shrink)

"Dissecting Bioethics," edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Häyry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics. The section is dedicated to the idea that words defined by bioethicists and others should not be allowed to imprison people's actual concerns, emotions, and thoughts. Papers that expose the many meanings of a concept, describe the different readings of a moral doctrine, or provide an alternative angle to seemingly self-evident issues are therefore particularly appreciated. The themes covered in the section (...) so far include dignity, naturalness, public interest, community, disability, autonomy, parity of reasoning, symbolic appeals, and toleration. (shrink)

For the past 3 years, since acquiring formal training in healthcare ethics and philosophy, I have been one of those physicians who “does” ethics. I teach medical students and residents, write articles, speak at conferences, chair an ethics committee, and informally consult with colleagues on cases where they request advice related to ethical issues in the care of patients. These activities have been a rewarding and challenging part of my practice. There has also been a fair amount of frustration. Unfortunately, (...) both in teaching and patient care, it has been a frequent experience to finish a discussion with physicians only to be told that what I said was nice but had no bearing in the real world. In the words of a medical resident: 'You know, this ethics stuff is really a lot of crap, isn't it?'. (shrink)

In the Early Modern era of encyclopedias, the Bible functioned as a tool for managing and organizing the superabundance of information. From Johann Alsted to Johann Scheuchzer, this paper traces the use of the Biblical encyclopedia and the ways that the Bible was deployed to control the data that flooded the world of Early Modern scholarship. In a variety of contexts, the Bible served as a structure for generating meaningful statements from informational noise. In turn, the use of the Bible (...) as a principle of organization would have profound implications for the status of the Bible in Early Modern scholarly culture. (shrink)

Can films philosophize rather than simply represent philosophical ideas developed outside of the cinematic medium? Taking up this question crucial to the emergent field of film philosophy, this book argues that the films of the American avant-garde do "do" philosophy and illuminates the ethical and political stakes of their aesthetic interventions. The book traces the avant-garde's philosophy by developing a history and theory of its investment in dimensional, conceptual, and material in-betweens, clarifying how this cinema's reflections on the creation and (...) reception of images construct an ethics of perception itself, a responsibility to perpetuate thought in an enduring re-encounter with the world and with meaning's unfinished production. This entails the avant-garde's locating of cinema's-and thought's-ends or meanings in their means, and their advancement of an image of truth that is made rather than found that unites their films with the philosophies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ralph Waldo Emerson who believed the "journey's end is found in every step of the road" (Cavell). Rectifying film-philosophy's neglect of the American avant-garde, the book demonstrates how rather than showing their interest in the revelation of authoritative truths, the avant-garde's interest in the re-encounter and review of the seen and known emerges from an American Transcendentalist tradition that opposes such notions. Sheehan reads the avant-garde's interest in the contingencies of spectatorial experience as also an extension of Pragmatism's commitment to replacing the authority of a priori knowledge with that of individual experience. She also shows how Emerson's influence on Friedrich Nietzsche connects the American avant-garde's philosophies to Deleuze's time-image, premised largely upon Nietzsche's "powers of the false.". (shrink)

In Invisible Hands, the historians Jonathan Sheehan and Dror Wahrman identify a defining feature of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: the decline of God as a source of order in favor of a new model of self-organization.” Sheehan and Warhman provide a novel account of how people on the threshold of modernity understood the continuing presence in the world of apparent disorder, randomness, and chance. If God no longer actively guaranteed that order will always prevail, what or whom did? The (...) answer, the authors argue, was a new appreciation for complexity, new understandings of causality, and new functions for the divine hand. At the foundation of this novel way of thinking was the ability to imagine complex systems--be they natural or human--asself-organizing. Invisible Hands maps and explains the intensifying presence of the languages of self-organization throughout the eighteenth century, proliferating as they did with ever greater sophistication across numerous intellectual domains and cultural arenas. For self-organization was less a theory than a field of new insights: insights into the dynamics of chance and randomness, into the relationship between agency and determinism, into the role of God in a world without hands-on providence. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to think through some of the problems of idolatry and sacrifice for the early modern period and more generally, for the constitution of religious and political community. In particular, it argues that the altars of the idols condensed two problems: first, the problem of communion, and specifically the Protestant ability to communicate with God; and second, the problem of distinction. At a time when the nature of the religious polity was in question, the analysis of (...) idolatry and sacrifice produced a conceptual structure for understanding, in anthropological fashion, the very constitution of religious and political community. In fact, this essay will suggest, this structure lives on, alive and well, among modern theorists seeking to diagnose the ailments of modernity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 67.4 (2006) 561-569 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Introduction: Thinking about Idols in Early Modern EuropeJonathan Sheehan University of MichiganAbstractThis essay is an introduction to a collection of six articles on early modern debates about idolatry. If the debates started in religion, however, they quickly generated political, philosophical, anthropological, and even scientific corollaries. These may appear to be abstract and theoretical questions, but (...) they produced a complex set of answers with important consequences for many people. To see what was at stake, we need look no further than the New World and its missions. If the most frequently cited texts in the collection of articles are Bartolomé de las Casas and José de Acosta, it is because the New World forced the reality of idolatry onto the wider European stage.When does an image become a god? The early Christian apologist Minucius Felix had an answer. A log "is cut, is hewn, is planed," and is still no god. A stone "is sculptured, and is polished by some abandoned man" and still is no god. A sculpture "is set up, and even yet it is not a god." But, "lo, it is adorned, it is consecrated, it is prayed to—then at length it is a god, when man has chosen it to be so, and for the purpose has dedicated it." 1If only it were that easy. Felix offered just half of the story as David Freedberg has argued. Veneration does not produce that unhealthy power that idols exert over the attentive viewer. Rather, the opposite is true: idols are venerated because they exert this power. All images seem to contain at least traces of it. They draw our eye with ineluctable command, and force themselves on our attention. The image is just a representation, of course. It has been made by humans and can only ever gesture to an absent presence. And yet, images are also effective. Their ability to move us depends on "the possibility of fusion" between image and prototype. The crucifix is always only wood or stone, but its power comes from what might be called, with Freedberg, a "sacred contagion" that penetrates from behind the veil of representation. Indeed, its value as a religious object depends on this [End Page 561] contagion. Worshipers know that those tears shed by the Virgin in anguish at Christ's broken body are, in reality, just paint over mute stone and wood. Nevertheless, they are moved by those specks of material. If not, why have a statue in the first place? "The miraculous object has an effectiveness that proceeds as if the original body were present," Freedberg notes, "but the difficulty lies in cognitively grasping that 'as if.'" 2 Men do not choose to invest images with power over their imaginations and intellects. Even before images are prayed to, before they are consecrated, they already have that power.Whatever one thinks of the phenomenology of images, there is no doubt that this super-human power of idols obsessed many people in the early modern period. An object that had no power to inspire attention and devotion was hardly a threat, after all. The enormous waves of iconoclasm that swept across Europe—Germany in the 1520s, Scotland in the late 1550s, the Netherlands in the 1560s, England in the 1640s—were not directed at decorative tiles, pews, or doorstops. They were directed exactly at those things that made the devout feel the presence of the divine. And no one was quicker to identify these powerful images than the breakers themselves, who, in their extreme acts of rage, confirmed the effects that these supposedly dead bits of wood and stone exerted over them. The man in Ulm in 1534 who defecated into "the mouth of an effigy of Christ" demonstrated his extreme revulsion at what was, in reality, merely a lump of brute material. 3 Perhaps, if asked, he would have insisted that his scatological exuberance was designed to show definitively the impotence of the... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Gorgias presents us with a mystery and an enigma: Who was Callicles? And, what was Plato trying to accomplish in this dialogue? While searching for the identity of Callicles, we gain a better understanding of Plato's purpose for this dialogue, which is to use justice as a means for staking out the boundaries of four types of rhetoric. This article argues that Plato uses the Gorgias to reveal the deficiencies of sophistic nomos-centered rhetorics and an unjust sophistic phusis-centered (...) rhetoric, opening the door for a “true” rhetoric that he articulates in the Phaedrus and a universal justice based on virtue that he describes in the Republic. (shrink)

The language of ethics expertise has become particularly important in bioethics in light of efforts to establish the value of the clinical ethics consultation, to specify who is qualified to function as a clinical ethics consultant, and to characterize how one should evaluate whether or not a person is so qualified. Supporters and skeptics about the possibility of ethics expertise use the language of ethics expertise in ways that reflect competing views about what ethics expertise entails. We argue for clarity (...) in understanding the nature of expertise and ethics expertise. To be an ethics expert, we argue, is to be an expert in knowing what ought to be done. Any attempt to articulate expertise with respect to knowing what ought to be done must include an account of ethics that specifies the nature of moral truth and the means by which we access this truth or a theoretical account of ethics such that expertise in another domain is linked to knowing or being better at judging what ought to be done and the standards by which this “knowing” or “being better at judging” is determined. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our analysis for the literature on ethics expertise in CEC. We do think that there are clear domains in which a clinical ethics consultant might be expert but we are skeptical about the possibility that this includes ethics expertise. Clinical ethics consultants should not be referred to as ethics experts. (shrink)

Thus far, little work in bioethics has specifically focused on global health research priority-setting. Yet features of global health research priority-setting raise ethical considerations and concerns related to health justice. For example, such processes are often exclusively disease-driven, meaning they rely heavily on burden of disease considerations. They, therefore, tend to undervalue non-biomedical research topics, which have been identified as essential to helping reduce health disparities. In recognition of these ethical concerns and the limited scholarship and dialogue addressing them, we (...) convened an international workshop in September 2015. The workshop aimed to initiate discussion on the appropriate relationship between global and national levels of health research priority-setting and to begin exploring what might be ethically required for priority-setting at each of those levels. This paper comprises our reflections following the workshop. Its main objective is to launch a research agenda for the ethics of global health research priority-setting. We identify three domains of global health research priority-setting—scope, underlying values and substantive requirements, and procedural considerations. For each domain, specific research questions are highlighted and why they need to be explored is explained. Some preliminary thoughts and normative arguments as to how the research questions might be answered are also offered. For example, we provide initial ideas about the appropriate relationship between different priority-setting levels and what values and substantive considerations should guide or underpin global health research priority-setting as a matter of justice. We anticipate that framing a new research agenda for the ethics of global health research priority-setting will spur ethicists, researchers, and policymakers to refocus their efforts on developing more rigorous and ethically sound approaches to priority-setting. (shrink)

As the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on health service delivery, health providers are modifying care pathways and staffing models in ways that require health professionals to be reallocated to work in critical care settings. Many of the roles that staff are being allocated to in the intensive care unit and emergency department pose additional risks to themselves, and new policies for staff reallocation are causing distress and uncertainty to the professionals concerned. In this paper, we analyse a range of ethical issues (...) associated with changes to staff allocation processes in the face of COVID-19. In line with a dominant view in the medical ethics literature, we claim, first, that no individual health professional has a specific, positive obligation to treat a patient when doing so places that professional at risk of harm, and so there is a clear ethical tension in any reallocation process in this context. Next, we argue that the changing asymmetries of health needs in hospitals means that careful consideration needs to be given to a stepwise process for deallocating staff from their usual duties. We conclude by considering how a justifiable process of reallocating professionals to high-risk clinical roles should be configured once those who are ‘fit for reallocation’ have been identified. We claim that this process needs to attend to three questions that we consider in detail: (1) how the choice to make reallocation decisions is made, (2) what justifiable models for reallocation might look like and (3) what is owed to those who are reallocated. (shrink)

We read with great interest Garland, Morain and Sugarman’s manuscript on the obligations of clinicians to participate in pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs) (Garland, Morain and Sugarman 2023). We bel...

This interdisciplinary book considers the relationship between language and thought from a philosophical perspective, drawing both on the philosophical study of language and the purely formal study of grammar, and arguing that the two should align. The claim is that grammar provides homo sapiens with the ability to think in certain grammatical ways and that this in turn explains the vast cognitive powers of human beings. Evidence is considered from biology, the evolution of language, language disorders, and linguistic phenomena.