BackgroundCritical public health measures implemented to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic have disrupted health research worldwide, including HIV prevention research. While general guidance has been issued for the responsible conduct of research in these challenging circumstances, the contours of the dueling COVID-19 and HIV/aids pandemics raise some critical ethical issues for HIV prevention research. In this paper, we use the recently updated HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) Ethics Guidance Document (EGD) to situate and analyze key (...) ethical challenges related to the conduct of HIV prevention research during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as identify potential areas for refinement of the guidance document based on this unprecedented state of affairs.Main bodyNecessary actions taken for HIV prevention research studies due to the COVID-19 pandemic involve an array of ethical issues including those related to: (1) risk mitigation; (2) behavior change; (3) compounding vulnerability; (4) community engagement; (5) trial reopening; and 6) shifting research priorities.ConclusionsIn the context of the dueling HIV and COVID-19 global pandemics, research teams and sponsors must be nimble in responding to the rapidly changing environment by being sensitive to the associated ethical issues. The HTPN EGD provides a rich set of tools to help identify, analyze and address many of these issues. At the same time, future refinements of the HPTN EGD and other research ethics guidance could be strengthened by providing explicit advice regarding the ethical issues associated with disrupted research and the reopening of studies. In addition, additional consideration should be given to appropriately balancing domains of risk (e.g., physical versus social), addressing the vulnerability of research staff and community partners, and responding to un-anticipatable ancillary care needs of participants and communities. Appropriately addressing these issues will necessitate conceptual work, which would benefit from the careful documentation of the actual ethical issues encountered in research, the strategies implemented to overcome them, and their success in doing so. Throughout all of these efforts, it is critical to remember that the HIV pandemic not be forgotten in the rush to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

This article describes research to build an embodied conversational agent as an interface to a question-and-answer system about a National Science Foundation program. We call this ECA the LifeLike Avatar, and it can interact with its users in spoken natural language to answer general as well as specific questions about specific topics. In an idealized case, the LifeLike Avatar could conceivably provide a user with a level of interaction such that he or she would not be certain as to whether (...) he or she is talking to the actual person via video teleconference. This could be considered a extended version of the seminal Turing test. Although passing such a test is still far off, our work moves the science in that direction. The Uncanny Valley notwithstanding, applications of such lifelike interfaces could include those where specific instructors/caregivers could be represented as stand-ins for the actual person in situations where personal representation is important. Possible areas that come to mind that might benefit from these lifelike ECAs include health-care support for elderly/disabled patients in extended home care, education/training, and knowledge preservation. Another more personal application would be to posthumously preserve elements of the persona of a loved one by family members. We apply this approach to a Q/a system for knowledge preservation and dissemination, where the specific individual who had this knowledge was to retire from the US National Science Foundation. The system is described in detail, and evaluations were performed to determine how well the system was perceived by users. (shrink)

Somatic mutations arising in human skin cancers are heterogeneously distributed across the genome, meaning that certain genomic regions (e.g., heterochromatin or transcription factor binding sites) have much higher mutation densities than others. Regional variations in mutation rates are typically not a consequence of selection, as the vast majority of somatic mutations in skin cancers are passenger mutations that do not promote cell growth or transformation. Instead, variations in DNA repair activity, due to chromatin organization and transcription factor binding, have been (...) proposed to be a primary driver of mutational heterogeneity in melanoma. However, as discussed in this review here, recent studies indicate that chromatin organization and transcription factor binding also significantly modulate the rate at which UV lesions form in DNA. The authors propose that local variations in lesion susceptibility may be an important driver of mutational hotspots in melanoma and other skin cancers, particularly at binding sites for ETS transcription factors. (shrink)

Just Ecological Integrity presents a collection of revised and expanded essays originating from the international conference "Connecting Environmental Ethics, Ecological Integrity, and Health in the New Millennium" held in San Jose, Costa Rica in June 2000. It is a cooperative venture of the Global Ecological Integrity Project and the Earth Charter Initiative.

Growth mindset is an important aspect of children’s socioemotional development and is subject to change due to environmental influence. Orchestral music education may function as a fertile context in which to promote growth mindset; however, this education is not widely available to children facing economic hardship. This study examined whether participation in a program of orchestral music education was associated with higher levels of overall growth mindset and greater change in levels of musical growth mindset among children placed at risk (...) by poverty. After at least 2 years of orchestral participation, students reported significantly higher levels of overall growth mindset than their peers; participating students also reported statistically significant increases in musical growth mindset regardless of the number of years that they were enrolled in orchestral music education. These findings have implications for future research into specific pedagogical practices that may promote growth mindset in the context of orchestral music education and more generally for future studies of the extra-musical benefits of high-quality music education. (shrink)

It is very much connected to the social psychology of experience. This book is written for advanced undergraduate, masters and doctoral students in social psychology.

Important features of the self-concept can be located outside of the individual and inside close or related others. The authors use this insight to reinterpret data previously said to support the empathy-altruism model of helping, which asserts that empathic concern for another results in selflessness and true altruism. That is, they argue that the conditions that lead to empathic concern also lead to a greater sense of self-other overlap, raising the possibility that helping under these conditions is not selfless but (...) is also directed toward the self. In 3 studies, the impact of empathic concern on willingness to help was eliminated when oneness--a measure of perceived self-other overlap--was considered. Path analyses revealed further that empathic concern increased helping only through its relation to perceived oneness, thereby throwing the empathy-altruism model into question. The authors suggest that empathic concern affects helping primarily as an emotional signal of oneness. (shrink)

This new book proposes a way out of the crisis by letting go of the idea that psychology needs ‘new’ foundations or a new identity, whether biological, discursive, or cognitive. The psychological is not narrowly confined to any one aspect of human experience; it is quite literally ‘everywhere’. Drawing on a range of influential thinkers including Michel Serres, Michel Foucault, AN Whitehead, and Gilles Deleuze, the book proposes a strong process-oriented approach to the psychological, which studies ‘events’ or ‘occasions.’.

BackgroundOne of the next frontiers in HIV research is focused on finding a cure. A new priority includes people with HIV (PWH) with non-AIDS terminal illnesses who are willing to donate their bodies at the end-of-life (EOL) to advance the search towards an HIV cure. We endeavored to understand perceptions of this research and to identify ethical and practical considerations relevant to implementing it.MethodsWe conducted 20 in-depth interviews and 3 virtual focus groups among four types of key stakeholders in the (...) United States (PWH, biomedical HIV cure researchers, HIV clinicians, and bioethicists) to obtain triangulated viewpoints because little was known about the ethics of this topic. Each group was queried as to ethical considerations, safeguards, and protections for conducting HIV cure-related research at the EOL to ensure this research remains acceptable.ResultsAll four key stakeholder groups generally supported HIV cure-related research conducted at the EOL because of the history of altruism within the PWH community and the potential for substantial scientific knowledge to be gained. Our informants expressed that: (1) Strong stakeholder and community involvement are integral to the ethical and effective implementation, as well as the social acceptability of this research; (2) PWH approaching the EOL should not inherently be considered a vulnerable class and their autonomy must be respected when choosing to participate in HIV cure-related research at the EOL; (3) Greater diversity among study participants, as well as multi-disciplinary research teams, is necessitated by HIV cure-related research at the EOL; (4) The sensitive nature of this research warrants robust oversight to ensure a favorable risk/benefit balance and to minimize the possibility of therapeutic misconception or undue influence; and (5) Research protocols should remain flexible to accommodate participants’ comfort and needs at the EOL.ConclusionBecause of the ethical issues presented by HIV cure-related research at the EOL, robust ethical safeguards are of utmost importance. The proposed ethical and practical considerations presented herein is a first step in determining the best way to maximize this research’s impact and social value. More much inquiry will need to be directed towards understanding context-specific and cultural considerations for implementing EOL HIV cure research in diverse settings. (shrink)

This article analyzes the demarcations made within psychology as a feature of the “memory wars”—the current controversy around “recovered” or “false” memory. As it is played out inside professional psychology, the dispute features clinical practitioners acting largely as proponents of recovered memory and experimentalists as proponents of false memory. Tracing a genealogy of this dispute back to a pair of original sites, we show how the traditions’engagement in three modes of scientific demonstration varies systematically in terms of the modes of (...) social relation inherent in their epistemic practices and the kinds of “reliable witness” these practices produce. We conclude that whereas the experimentalist tradition is able to transporttheir produced witnesses from oneto anothersite of demonstration with relative ease, the clinical tradition has much greater difficulty in doing so and thus has to engage in a variety of compensatory demonstrative strategies. (shrink)

The issue of meaningful yet unexpressed background - to language, to our experiences of the body - is one whose exploration is still in its infancy. There are various aspects of "invisible," implicit, or background experiences which have been investigated from the viewpoints of phenomenology, cognitive psychology, and linguistics. I will claim that James, as explicated by Gurwitsch and others, has analyzed the phenomenon of fringes in such a way as to provide a structural framework from which to investigate and (...) better understand those ideas or concepts that are unexpressed, particularly those experienced in the sense of being sought-after. I will consider Johnson?s conception of the image -schematic gestalt as a way of bridging the descriptive gap between phenomenology and cognitive psychology. Starting from an analysis of the fringes, I will turn to a consideration of the of tip-of-tongue state, as a kind of feeling-of-knowing state, from a variety of approaches, focusing mainly on cognitive psychology and phenomenology. I will then integrate a phenomenological analysis of these experiences, from the James/Gurwitsch structural viewpoint, with a cognitive/ phenomenological analysis in terms of ISGs; and further integrate that with a cognitive/functional analysis of consciousness. I will employ this synthesis of three viewpoints to explore the thesis that the TOT state and similar experiences may relate to the gestalt nature of schemas as well as to particular cues, and may thus be experienced as an aspect of the continuum to the general background to all our conscious experiences. (shrink)

Ireland has struggled with its ‘feminine’ identity throughout its history. The so-called ‘chasmic dichotomy of male and female' is embedded in colonial and postcolonial constructions of Irishness and it continues to manifest itself in contemporary cultural representations of Ireland and Irishness. This study explores issues of gender and nationality via a reading of a 70-second television advertisement for Caffrey's Irish Ale, titled ‘New York’. The article suggests that, although colonial and postcolonial discourse on Ireland continues to perceive the ‘feminine’ in (...) problematic terms, this is gradually changing as Irish women increasingly, in poet Eavan Boland's words, ‘open a window on those silences, those false pastorals, those ornamental reductions’ that have confined us. (shrink)

Savage et al. do an excellent job of making the case for social bonding in general, but do a less good job of distinguishing the manners by which dance and music achieve this. It is important to see dance and music as two parallel and interactive mechanisms that employ the “group body” and “group voice,” respectively, in engendering social cohesion.

This paper is a comparative study of the accounts of the goddess Venus in the Genealogia of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) and the Mythologiae of Natale Conti (1520?-1382?). Conti's superior knowledge of Greek, access to Greek sources unknown or incomprehensible to Boccaccio, easily accessible Latin prose style, and exceptional organizational skills, enabled him to create a richer, more extensive, and more accurate account of the goddess than Boccaccio could provide. Both Boccaccio and Conti escape from the binary, antithetical understanding of Venus (...) that dominated medieval commentary. Conti focuses on the paradox of a beautiful goddess representing ugly things; Boccaccio's organizational scheme (based on a flawed genealogical chart originating with the supposed god Demogorgon) makes for a more disparate approach to symbolic interpretation, interesting in parts but thematically unfocused. (shrink)

Once upon a time, I attempted to create a web-based one-stop-shop for global poverty relief called the Maximin Project. Drawing on aspects of that experience, I show that although some existing ways of rating and recommending charities are significantly better than others, there remain certain challenges that need to be overcome. Specifically, I argue that the emerging Effective Altruism movement, with its emphasis on measurable effectiveness, runs the risk of neglecting a whole range of projects that are necessary for a (...) well-rounded approach to human development. I briefly model an alternative virtue-based approach that calls on the personal insight of individual researchers and practitioners in addition to the more directly experimental approach of organizations like GiveWell. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss a team-taught, debate-style Philosophy of Religion course we designed and taught at The Ohio State University. Rather than tackling the breadth of topics traditionally subsumed under the umbrella of Philosophy of Religion, this course focused exclusively on the nuances of the atheism-theism debate, with the instructors openly identifying as atheist or theist, respectively. After discussing the motivations for designing and teaching such a course, we go on to detail its content and structure. We then examine (...) various challenges and hurdles we faced, as well as some benefits we encountered along the way. Next, we discuss some informal data collected from the students enrolled in the course, some of which suggest some rather surprising outcomes. We conclude with some considerations of the applicability of this style of teaching to other philosophical debates. (shrink)

The perpetual music track is a new concept that describes a condition of constant or near-constant musical imagery. This condition appears to be very rare even among composers and musicians. I present here a detailed self-analysis of musical imagery for the purpose of defining the psychological features of a perpetual music track. I have music running through my head almost constantly during waking hours, consisting of a combination of recently- heard pieces and distant pieces that spontaneously pop into the head. (...) Imagery consists mainly of short musical fragments that get looped repeatedly upon themselves. Corporeal manifestations of imagery occur in the form of unconscious finger movements whose patterns correspond to the melodic contour of the imagined piece. Musical dreams occur every week or two, and contain a combination of familiar and originally- composed music. These results are discussed in light of theories of imagery, consciousness, hallucination, obsessive cognition, and most especially the notion that acoustic consciousness can be split into multiple parallel streams. (shrink)

This commentary on Isabelle Stengers's article, “Comparison as a Matter of Concern” is an assessment of her stance toward experimental psychology. At the various points in her work where she considers that discipline, she tends to accuse it of failing to embrace the “risk” that she sees as defining the “collective games” of science. Brown invokes the behavioral approach to experimental psychology of the early to mid-twentieth century to contextualize Stengers's treatment of continuous comparison conducted by scientists around “matters (...) of concern.” Her use of the metaphor of predator/prey relationships between practices is seen as reversing the usual direction of critique within psychology, such that experimental psychology appears to have, in the Wistar rat, an object grounding a community that is capable of performing continuous comparison, which its critics contrastingly lack. Stengers's ecological view of practices may then ultimately lead to a reappraisal of branches of the human sciences, such as experimental psychology, which she tends, on occasion, to dismiss. (shrink)

The ‘mathematical imaginary’ at work in psychology is central to the contingent history of the discipline, but is also responsible for considerable confusion and ambiguity around the ontological assumptions of psychological theories and models. Rather than reject the mathematical altogether, this article argues for an alternative form of mathematical description in psychology through the use of topology. Drawing on DeLanda’s topological account of the virtual, the relationship between psychology and ontology is progressively questioned in relation to memory. Henri Bergson’s conception (...) of duration and the pure past is juxtaposed with the topological psychology of Kurt Lewin and its notion of life space as a manifold with n-dimensions. Using a diagrammatic strategy developed by Mullarkey, an actualist account of the virtual is used to hold these distinct bodies of work together. Psychological events may be given a ‘thick description’ through the identification of topological relations and invariants. The interplay between the actual entities that are afforded in experience can be seen to be virtualized as planes of irreality. A topological approach to psychology offers the opportunity of replacing the taxonomy of essences common to the discipline with a dynamic account of invariance through homeomorphism. (shrink)

In Kant's Critique of Judgment (CJ), the actual mechanism of the construction of aesthetic ideas is only briefly sketched. I suggest that there may be a connection between certain aspects of Sections 49 and 59, such that the creation of aesthetic ideas can be related to the process of "symbolic hypotyposis" (¤59.2). I will argue that the process of symbolic hypotyposis relates to the formation of aesthetic attributes, as symbols, through an analogical process; that a symbol acts, in effect, as (...) one part of the four parts of an analogy, and that the aesthetic idea may result from the application of the process of analogy. I will suggest that aesthetic attributes may, in some cases, function as symbols, and induce what I will term "conceptual overflow," in which the normal contents of the symbol are supplemented through the analogical process. (shrink)

All our conscious experiences, linguistic and nonlinguistic, are bound up with and dependent on a background that is vague, unexpressed, and sometimes unconscious. The combination of William JamesÕs concept of "fringes" coupled with Aaron GurwitschÕs analysis of the field of consciousness provides a general structure in which to embed phenomenal descriptions, enabling fringe phenomena to be understood, in part, relative to other experiences. I will argue, drawing on examples from Drew LederÕs book, The Absent Body, that specific and detailed phenomena (...) can and should be interrelated through JamesÕs and GurwitschÕs analyses. I am proposing first that phenomenological descriptions in general could benefit from explicit consideration of the context of the phenomena within the totality of the field of consciousness, and second, that establishing that context requires a general structural model of that field, similar to that provided by Gurwitsch. (shrink)

Husserlian phenomenology depends upon a particular and limited set of related methodologies, which assume not merely abilities and results on the part of phenomenologists which have been severely criticized, but more profoundly, that mental contents are atomistic and independently manipulable. I will show not only that this assumption is mistaken and that questioning it undermines traditional phenomenological method, but that it leads to a paradox when turned upon itself which forces the rejection of a purely Husserlian phenomenology. More generally, any (...) theory whose data is confined to the results of particular and limited methodologies is by that fact unable to investigate those methodologies, and is thus at best only able to function in a severely restricted realm. (shrink)

Whether human thinking can be formalized and whether machines can think in a human sense are questions that have been addressed by both Peirce and Searle. Peirce came to roughly the same conclusion as Searle, that the digital computer would not be able to perform human thinking or possess human understanding. However, his rationale and Searle's differ on several important points. Searle approaches the problem from the standpoint of traditional analytic philosophy, where the strict separation of syntax and semantics renders (...) understanding impossible for a purely syntactical device. Peirce disagreed with that analysis, but argued that the computer would only be able to achieve algorithmic thinking, which he considered the simplest type. Although their approaches were radically dissimilar, their conclusions were not. I will compare and analyze the arguments of both Peirce and Searle on this issue, and outline some implications of their conclusions for the field of Artificial Intelligence. (shrink)

Emergent properties (EPs) are not causally reducible to the properties of a complex system’s elements. If a system’s properties cannot be reduced to those of any of its components, then that system is effectively a singular entity (SE). EPs are thus not properties of known complexes, but of SEs. A precise description of the parameters necessary to observe a physical system as an SE is thus necessary to establish under what conditions properties are understood as emergent. That description is provided (...) in terms of the temporal dynamics of systems and their internal/external interactions. (shrink)

Despite its long history, there is no agreed-upon conception of emergence. One might claim that a common idea of emergence seems to be that something termed a "system" gives rise to, or possesses, characteristics termed "properties," which latter are absent or unmanifested in whatever individual components the system consists and are thus "emergent" from the system itself. However, types of systems discussed run a gamut from purely mental entities to simple tools . "Properties" is similarly unconstrained . The so-called special (...) sciences, such as biology, psychology, sociology, and even chemistry have all claimed some properties as emergent. However, the enormous literature dealing with various types of systems characterized as emergent can be divided, roughly speaking, into two classes of descriptions of emergence. One might be termed "structural" and the other "functional." The first characterizes emergent systems in terms of their components and their interrelationships , while the second characterizes them in terms of their effects on other systems or elements . There is generally no mention of possible internal structures of the system in the latter, and if there is, it is in vague and/or abstract terms, while the former emphasizes internal structures over clear characterizations of the effects of emergence. Thus, a conception of emergence like Kim's is functional, while explicit descriptions of small-world networks, chaotic systems, or other types of complex internal organizations in mathematics, physics, and computer science are structural. The structuralfunctional distinction will play a part in the analysis of emergence later in this paper. (shrink)

In this dissertation I develop a structural model of phenomenal consciousness that integrates contemporary experimental and theoretical work in philosophy and cognitive science. I argue that phenomenology must be “naturalized” and that it should be acknowledged as a major component of empirical research. I use this model to describe important phenomenal structures, and I then employ it to provide a detailed explication of tip-of-tongue phenomena. The primary aim of “structural phenomenology” is the creation of a general framework within which descriptions (...) of experiences may be organized. The work of Husserl, Gurwitsch, the Gestalt psychologists, and many contemporary philosophers and cognitive scientists reveals several basic parameters underlying subjectivity. Chapter I argues that Husserlian methodology possesses problems both of praxis and of internal logic, and that its phenomenological descriptions cannot have the certainty he claimed. Consequently, an adequate phenomenology must incorporate empirical studies. This conclusion enables explicit transitions between empirical investigations and phenomenological insights. Chapter II introduces the theoretical framework underlying my model. I identify four parameters applicable to all experiences: 1) the degree of volitional emphasis with which something is experienced, i.e., the intensity of our focus on it, 2) the degree of non-volitional emphasis, i.e., the degree to which it is salient, 3) a variant of intentionality I term “directionality”, and 4) the property of recursion. Experiences are embedded within a complex set of relationships that unify and direct a layered phenomenal structure. I support these claims with evidence discovered over the past two centuries of research. Chapter III applies my model to the tip-of-tongue (TOT) state, in which difficulty remembering is accompanied by a sense of active searching. I show that a phenomenological description of the TOT experience is dependent on cognitive data, and that a phenomenological analysis is necessary to properly interpret these data. By showing how structural phenomenology offers a perspective from which to elucidate the results of experimental studies, I hope to clarify and establish the explicit role of introspection in empiricism, and of empiricism in phenomenology. (shrink)