We applaud the authors’ efforts to provide a theoretical basis for and more clearly link clinical ethics support services (CESS) to organisational-level quality improvement (QI). We agree that additional theorising and testing of the resultant theoretical frameworks is of benefit to the field of clinical ethics and that the outcome of a CESS is more valuable than the sum of the individual cases that it handles. We would suggest that the authors have emphasised the output of the CESS without fully (...) considering the process by which it happens. While moral case deliberation does provide an example pathway for QI, such improvements do not necessarily need to occur through the mechanism of moral case deliberation. Further engagement with QI literature could provide valuable insights to quality within the field of clinical ethics. For example, combining the QI concepts of organisational culture and high reliability organisations (HROs) with the clinical ethics... (shrink)

In light of recent criticisms by Woodward (2017) and Rescorla (2018), we examine the relationship between mechanistic explanation and phenomenological laws. We disambiguate several uses of the phrase “phenomenological law” and show how a mechanistic theory of explanation sorts them into those that are and are not explanatory. We also distinguish the problem of phenomenological laws from arguments about the explanatory power of purely phenomenal models, showing that Woodward and Rescorla conflate these problems. Finally, we argue that the temptation to (...) pit mechanistic and interventionist theories of explanation against one another occludes important and scientifically relevant research questions. (shrink)

This article explores the influence that the proportion of women in a department has on hiring decisions in the field of psychology. A sample of advertisers from the APA Monitor was asked to identify the gender of the candidate hired. Hiring patterns were the same for men and women hirers in nonacademic organizations, as each favored male candidates. In academic hiring, women candidates were favored in departments with moderate female representation. This finding counters claims that women are hired by departments (...) with few women in response to affirmative action. Rather, the presence of moderate numbers of women influences hiring decisions that promote women's opportunities. (shrink)

This experiment compared the effects of exposure to masked phobic stimuli at a very brief stimulus-onset asynchrony on spider-phobic and non-phobic individuals. Participants were identified through a widely used questionnaire and a Behavioral Avoidance Test with a live, caged tarantula to establish baseline levels of avoidance. One week later, they were individually administered one of two continuous series of masked images: spiders or flowers. Preliminary masking experiments showed that independent samples of participants from the same populations failed to recognize these (...) stimuli. Participants in the main experiment reported ratings of subjective distress immediately before and after the exposure manipulation. Then they engaged in the BAT once again. Very brief exposure to images of spiders reduced phobic participants’ avoidance of the tarantula. No effects were evidenced on subjective distress, or on non-phobic participants. Theoretical implications for the non-conscious basis of fear are discussed. (shrink)

This provocative book paved the way for nursing research informed by f eminist scholarship, critical theory, and post-modern thought. Controv ersial then, relevant today.

Nanomedicine is yielding new and improved treatments and diagnostics for a range of diseases and disorders. Nanomedicine applications incorporate materials and components with nanoscale dimensions where novel physiochemical properties emerge as a result of size-dependent phenomena and high surface-to-mass ratio. Nanotherapeutics and in vivo nanodiagnostics are a subset of nanomedicine products that enter the human body. These include drugs, biological products, implantable medical devices, and combination products that are designed to function in the body in ways unachievable at larger scales. (...) Nanotherapeutics andin vivonanodiagnostics incorporate materials that are engineered at the nanoscale to express novel properties that are medicinally useful. These nanomedicine applications can also contain nanomaterials that are biologically active, producing interactions that depend on biological triggers. Examples include nanoscale formulations of insoluble drugs to improve bioavailability and pharmacokinetics, drugs encapsulated in hollow nanoparticles with the ability to target and cross cellular and tissue membranes and to release their payload at a specific time or location, imaging agents that demonstrate novel optical properties to aid in locating micrometastases, and antimicrobial and drug-eluting components or coatings of implantable medical devices such as stents. (shrink)

Rapid individual cognitive phenotyping holds the potential to revolutionize domains as wide‐ranging as personalized learning, employment practices, and precision psychiatry. Going beyond limitations imposed by traditional lab‐based experiments, new efforts have been underway toward greater ecological validity and participant diversity to capture the full range of individual differences in cognitive abilities and behaviors across the general population. Building on this, we developed Skill Lab, a novel game‐based tool that simultaneously assesses a broad suite of cognitive abilities while providing an engaging (...) narrative. Skill Lab consists of six mini‐games as well as 14 established cognitive ability tasks. Using a popular citizen science platform (N = 10,725), we conducted a comprehensive validation in the wild of a game‐based cognitive assessment suite. Based on the game and validation task data, we constructed reliable models to simultaneously predict eight cognitive abilities based on the users’ in‐game behavior. Follow‐up validation tests revealed that the models can discriminate nuances contained within each separate cognitive ability as well as capture a shared main factor of generalized cognitive ability. Our game‐based measures are five times faster to complete than the equivalent task‐based measures and replicate previous findings on the decline of certain cognitive abilities with age in our large cross‐sectional population sample (N = 6369). Taken together, our results demonstrate the feasibility of rapid in‐the‐wild systematic assessment of cognitive abilities as a promising first step toward population‐scale benchmarking and individualized mental health diagnostics. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe and criticize M.G.F. Martin's version of disjunctivism, and his argument for it from premises about self-knowledge.

Interest in the notion of the possible financial sacrifice suffered by socially responsible investment (SRI) fund investors for considering ethical, social and environmental issues in their investment decisions has spawned considerable academic interest in the performance of SRI funds. Both the Australian and international research literature have yielded largely mixed results. However, several of these studies are hampered by methodological problems which can obscure the significance of reported results, such as the use of small sample sizes, inconsistencies in the time (...) frames selected to analyse performance and different modelling frameworks used to estimate investment returns. This study attempts to redress some of these issues by investigating the returns performance of 89 ethical funds in Australia over the period 1986-2005. Using a multi-factor CAPM model [Fama, E. F., and K. R. French (1996) J. Finance 51(1), 55] (which controls for factors such as size, book-to-market value and momentum) we find that ethical funds significantly under-perform the market in Australia, particularly in the most recent 5 years of our sample period (2000-2005). Risk adjusted returns (using Jensen's alpha) indicate that average annual underperformance is around 1.52% in the 2000-2005 period for our sample and .88% over the whole sample period. Our results contrast with many previous studies (both Australian and international), which have not found statistically significant differences in the performance of ethical funds relative to market benchmarks and/or a matched sample of conventional funds. (shrink)

Several philosophers have questioned the possibility of a genetic epistemology, an epistemology concerned with the developmental transitions between successive states of knowledge in the individual person. Since most arguments against the possibility of a genetic epistemology crucially depend upon a sharp distinction between the genesis of an idea and its justification, I argue that current philosophy of science raises serious questions about the universal validity of this distinction. Then I discuss several senses of the genetic fallacy, indicating which sense of (...) ‘genesis’ is relevant to epistemology. Next I consider the objection that psychology is irrelevant to epistemology, and that since "genetic epistemology" is really psychology, "genetic epistemology" is irrelevant to a real epistemology. Finally, I take up the objection that nothing discovered in genetic psychology could be relevant to a genetic epistemology. These last two arguments are based upon what I claim to be a mistaken notion of the nature of psychology. Suitably interpreted, psychology can assist genetic epistemology precisely in the way that the history of science assists current philosonhv of science. *I owe considerable thanks to Jann Benson, Ken Freeman, Bernie Rollin and Ron Williams for their helpful discussions concerning many of the issues discussed in this paper. I also wish to thank David Hamlyn, John Heil, William Lycan, Harvey Siegel and an anonymous reviewer for their comments and suggestions. It goes without saying that none of these individuals (especially Hamlyn and Siegel) necessarily agree with me. An earlier version of this paper was read at Colorado State University where the audience's comments were beneficial. (shrink)

What do we see? We are visually conscious of colors and shapes, but are we also visually conscious of complex properties such as being John Malkovich? In this book, Susanna Siegel develops a framework for understanding the contents of visual experience, and argues that these contents involve all sorts of complex properties. Siegel starts by analyzing the notion of the contents of experience, and by arguing that theorists of all stripes should accept that experiences have contents. She then (...) introduces a method for discovering the contents of experience: the method of phenomenal contrast. This method relies only minimally on introspection, and allows rigorous support for claims about experience. She then applies the method to make the case that we are conscious of many kinds of properties, of all sorts of causal properties, and of many other complex properties. She goes on to use the method to help analyze difficult questions about our consciousness of objects and their role in the contents of experience, and to reconceptualize the distinction between perception and sensation. Siegel's results are important for many areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. They are also important for the psychology and cognitive neuroscience of vision. (shrink)

Siegel and Byrne debate whether perceptual experiences present rich properties or exclusively thin properties.

In this paper I offer a theory of what makes certain influences on visual experiences by prior mental states (including desires, beliefs, moods, and fears) reduce the justificatory force of those experiences. The main idea is that experiences, like beliefs, can have rationally assessable etiologies, and when those etiologies are irrational, the experiences are epistemically downgraded.

There is an important division in the human mind between perception and reasoning. We reason from information that we have already, but perception is a means of taking in new information. Susanna Siegel argues that these two aspects of the mind become deeply intertwined when beliefs, fears, desires, or prejudice influence what we perceive.

I argue that there are phenomenological constraints on what it is to see an object, and that these are overlooked by some theories that offer allegedly sufficient causal and counterfactual conditions on object-seeing.

Can perceptual experiences be states of uncertainty? We might expect them to be, if the perceptual processes from which they're generated, as well as the behaviors they help produce, take account of probabilistic information. Yet it has long been presumed that perceptual experiences purport to tell us about our environment, without hedging or qualifying. Against this long-standing view, I argue that perceptual experiences may well occasionally be states of uncertainty, but that they are never probabilistically structured. I criticize a powerful (...) line of reasoning that we should expect perceptual experience to be probabilistic, given their interfaces with unconscious probabilistic information, with behavior responsive to it, and with credences. (shrink)

chapter on perception and bias including implicit bias.

This article reflects on childhood times based on the words chrónos, kairós and aión, which the Greeks use to conceptualize time, in dialogue with different authors, such as Kohan, Pohlmann, Skliar, Kohan and Fernandes. In the pedagogical field, we explore how Pedagogy of Childhood has focused on the importance of childhood temporality and children’s agency, with contributions from Hoyuelos, Parrini, Aguilera et al., Barbosa, Oliveira-Formosinho e Araújo, Oliveira-Formosinho, Pinazza and Gobbi. We reflect on what forms of organizing time are possible (...) when we think about children and their childhoods. Would it be a continuous and chronological time, a time of opportunity for the instant or the timeless intensity of the aiónic? Would it be possible to open spaces in school for other temporalities, given its immersion in chronological time, and its extreme emphasis on routine? We seek a relationship between forms of temporality, philosophy, and early education in order to explore alternative possibilities in the relationship between child and the school context, and conclude that, since the child’s is the aiónic time of intense experience, it is in the heightened dynamic immediacy and the multiple symbolic languages of play that it may be possible to create pedagogical structures that provide a dwelling for childhood temporality. (shrink)

This important text introduces students to both feminism and other social and political theories via an examination of the inter-relationship between different feminist positions and key contemporary debates. The book takes each debate in turn, outlines the main themes, discusses different feminist responses and evaluates the implications for real-life political and social issues. This user-friendly structure effectively redraws the map of contemporary feminist thought, offering a fresh and succinct summary of an extensive range of material and graphically demonstrating the ongoing (...) relevance and value of a feminist perspective. (shrink)

In discussions of perception and its relation to knowledge, it is common to distinguish what one comes to believe on the basis of perception from the distinctively perceptual basis of one's belief. The distinction can be drawn in terms of propositional contents: there are the contents that a perceiver comes to believe on the basis of her perception, on the one hand; and there are the contents properly attributed to perception itself, on the other. Consider the content.

Since disjunctivists when talking about perception deny that hallucinations and veridical perceptions have a common fundamental nature, they need some other way to account for the fact that these kinds of experiences can ‘seem the same’ from the inside. A natural response is to give a purely epistemic account of hallucination, according to which there is nothing more to hallucinations than their indiscriminability from veridical perceptions. This chapter argues that the epistemic conception of hallucination falters in its treatment of cognitively (...) unsophisticated creatures, and that it cannot respect all the facts about what we can know on the basis of introspection. (shrink)

We offer a framework for assessing what the structure of episodic memory might be, if one accepts the Buddhist denial of persisting selves. This paper is a response to Jonardon Ganeri's paper "Mental time travel and attention", which explores Buddhaghosa's ideas about memory. (It will eventually be published with a reply by Ganeri).