Background:In Ontario, Canada, patients who lack decision-making capacity and have no family or friends to act as substitute decision-makers currently rely on the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee to consent to long-term care (nursing home) placement, but they have no legal representative for other placement decisions.Objectives:We highlight the current gap in legislation for difficult transition cases involving unrepresented patients and provide a novel framework for who ought to assist with making these decisions and how these decisions ought to (...) be made.Research design:This paper considers models advanced by Volpe and Steinman with regard to who ought to make placement decisions for unrepresented patients, as well as current ethical models for analyzing how these decisions should be made.Participants and research context:We describe an anonymized healthcare transition case to illustrate the fact that there is no legally recognized decision-maker for placement destinations other than long-term care facilities and to show how this impacts all stakeholders.Ethical considerations:The case provided is an anonymized vignette representing a typical transition case involving an unrepresented patient.Findings:As a result of a gap in provincial legislation, healthcare providers usually determine the appropriate placement destination without a clear framework to guide the process and this can cause significant moral distress.Discussion:We argue for a team decision-making approach in the short term, and a legislative change in the long-term, to respect the patient voice, evaluate benefit and risk, enhance collaboration between healthcare providers and patients, and promote social justice. We believe that our approach, which draws upon the strengths of interprofessional teams, will be of interest to all who are concerned with the welfare and ethical treatment of the patients for whom they care.Conclusions:One of the main strengths of our recommendation is that it provides all members of the healthcare team (including nurses, social workers, therapists, and others) an increased opportunity to advocate on behalf of unrepresented patients. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Background Regionalised models of health care delivery have important implications for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses yet the ethical issues surrounding disability and regionalisation have not yet been explored. Although there is ethics-related research into disability and chronic illness, studies of regionalisation experiences, and research directed at improving health systems for these patient populations, to our knowledge these streams of research have not been brought together. Using the Canadian province of Ontario as a case study, we address this gap (...) by examining the ethics of regionalisation and the implications for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. The critical success factors we provide have broad applicability for guiding and/or evaluating new and existing regionalised health care strategies. Discussion Ontario is in the process of implementing fourteen Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs). The implementation of the LHINs provides a rare opportunity to address systematically the unmet diverse care needs of people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. The core of this paper provides a series of composite case vignettes illustrating integration opportunities relevant to these populations, namely: (i) rehabilitation and services for people with disabilities; (ii) chronic illness and cancer care; (iii) senior's health; (iv) community support services; (v) children's health; (vi) health promotion; and (vii) mental health and addiction services. For each vignette, we interpret the governing principles developed by the LHINs – equitable access based on patient need, preserving patient choice, responsiveness to local population health needs, shared accountability and patient-centred care – and describe how they apply. We then offer critical success factors to guide the LHINs in upholding these principles in response to the needs of people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Summary This paper aims to bridge an important gap in the literature by examining the ethics of a new regionalisation strategy with a focus on the implications for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses across multiple sites of care. While Ontario is used as a case study to contextualize our discussion, the issues we identify, the ethical principles we apply, and the critical success factors we provide have broader applicability for guiding and evaluating the development of – or revisions to – a regionalised health care strategy. (shrink)

We give a historical overview of the development of almost 50 years of empirical research on the affordances in the past and in the present. Defined by James Jerome Gibson in the early development of the Ecological Approach to Perception and Action as the prime of perception and action, affordances have become a rich topic of investigation in the fields of human movement science and experimental psychology. The methodological origins of the empirical research performed on affordances can be traced (...) back to the mid 1980’s and the works of Warren (1984, 1988) and Michaels (1988). Most of the research in Ecological Psychology performed since has focused on the actualization of discretely defined actions, the perception of action boundaries, the calculation of pi-numbers, and the measurement of response times. The research efforts have resulted in advancements in the understanding of the dynamic nature of affordances, affordances in a social context and the importance of calibration for perception of affordances. Although affordances are seen as an instrumental part of the control of action most studies investigating affordances do not pay attention to the control of the action. We conclude that affordances are still primarily treated as a utility to select behaviour, which creates a conceptual barrier that hinders deeper understanding of affordances. A focus on action-boundaries has largely prevented advancement in other aspects of affordances, most notably an integrative understanding of the role of affordances in the control of action. (shrink)

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a serious condition with a large disease burden. It is often claimed that MDD is a “brain disease.” What would it mean for MDD to be a brain disease? I argue that the best interpretation of this claim is as offering a substantive empirical hypothesis about the causes of the syndrome of depression. This syndrome-causal conception of disease, combined with the idea that MDD is a disease of the brain, commits the brain disease conception of (...) MDD to the claim that brain dysfunction causes the symptoms of MDD. I argue that this consequence of the brain disease conception of MDD is false. It incorrectly rules out genuine instances of content-sensitive causation between adverse conditions in the world and the characteristic symptoms of MDD. Empirical evidence shows that the major causes of depression are genuinely psychological causes of the symptoms of MDD. This rules out, in many cases, the “brute” causation required by the brain disease conception. The existence of cases of MDD with non-brute causes supports the reinstatement of the old nosological distinction between endogenous and exogenous depression. (shrink)

It is a mistake to think that any philosophical contribution to the study of psychopathology is otiose. I identify three non-exhaustive roles that philosophy can and does occupy in the study of mental disorder, which I call the agenda-setting role, the synthetic role, and the regulative role. The three roles are illustrated via consideration of the importance of Jaspers' notion of understanding and its application to specific examples of mental disorder, including delusions of reference, Capgras delusion and other monothematic delusions, (...) and clinical depression. Together the three roles assign to philosophy of psychopathology the task of determining how to situate the varieties of mental disorder within the system of interpretive and evaluative concepts that partially make up the dynamic but indispensable manifest image. (shrink)

Rudolf Eucken on the meaning and value of life: the anthropotheistic standpoint of religious idealism.--The alleged revolutionism of Eucken's philosophy.--Activism and adolescence.--The religion of the spirit.--The principle of fruition.--Religion and morality.--Fruition and action.--The passion of love.--Pragmatism and religious idealism.--Universalism and the problem of evil.

This book is the first major study of the theme of misanthropy, its history, arguments both for and against it, and its significance for us today. Misanthropy is not strictly a philosophy. It is an inconsistent thought, and so has often been mocked. But from Timon of Athens to Motörhead it has had a very long life, vast historical purchase and is seemingly indomitable and unignorable. Human beings have always nursed a profound distrust of who and what they are. This (...) book does not seek to rationalize that distrust, but asks how far misanthropy might have a reason on its side, if a confused reason. There are obvious arguments against misanthropy. It is often born of a hatred of physical being. It can be historically explained. It particularly appears in undemocratic cultures. But what of the misanthropy of terminally defeated and disempowered peoples? Or born of progressivisms? Or the misanthropy that quarrels with specious or easy positivities (from Pelagius to Leibniz to the corporate cheer of contemporary `total capital`)? From the Greek Cynics to Roman satire, St Augustine to Jacobean drama, the misanthropy of the French Ancien Regime to Swift, Smollett and Johnson, Hobbes, Schopenhauer and Rousseau, from the Irish and American misanthropic traditions to modern women`s misanthropy, the book explores such questions. It ends with a debate about contemporary culture that ranges from the `dark radicalisms`, queer misanthropy, posthumanism and eco-misanthropy to Houellebecq, punk rock and gangsta rap. (shrink)

It is a mistake to think that any philosophical contribution to the study of psychopathology is otiose. I identify three non-exhaustive roles that philosophy can and does occupy in the study of mental disorder, which I call the agenda-setting role, the synthetic role, and the regulative role. The three roles are illustrated via consideration of the importance of Jaspers’ notion of understanding and its application to specific examples of mental disorder, including delusions of reference, Capgras delusion and other monothematic delusions, (...) and clinical depression. Together the three roles assign to philosophy of psychopathology the task of determining how to situate the varieties of mental disorder within the system of interpretive and evaluative concepts that partially make up the dynamic but indispensable manifest image. (shrink)

Despite how he begins, suggesting that it is somehow a problem for me that I think "there is such a thing as philosophy, which could then be useful for psychopathology," ultimately it is clear that the possibility of philosophy is not the issue for Ghaemi. Rather, his issue is with academic philosophy of psychiatry, as he sees it, and with my failure to ask what underlying assumptions typically operate in it.I do not dispute that someone like Jaspers would want to (...) ask such a question, nor do I dispute that it is, in general, a perfectly good question. But Ghaemi thinks that my paper is missing out on something by not posing it. The reason he thinks this is because he thinks my paper is an instance of a pattern in the discipline against which he evidently has an axe to grind. In particular, he thinks philosophy in general should be more attendant to the ways in which Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) categories are (problematically) socially constructed. The fact that philosophers have failed to critically point this out allegedly shows philosophy of psychiatry's— and my—unexamined sympathy with the postmodern tendencies—understood as tendencies toward "relativism about truth" and "skepticism about science"—of psychiatry itself. This is odd for a number of reasons, especially in the present context. Firstly, I am not presently in a position to exhaustively defend all of philosophy of psychiatry on the charge of 'postmodernism,' or on the charge of failure to critically engage with the DSM, but it is worth simply stating that I find these to be rather patently unsubstantiated charges. Prominent works that falsify the latter and easily come to mind are by Tsou (2011), Cooper (2004, 2007), Horwitz and Wakefield (2007), Murphy (2006), Poland and von Eckhardt (2013), and Lalumera (2016). Of these, only Lalumera is interested in defending a DSM-style descriptivism (which perhaps Ghaemi would call a kind of "social constructionism"), but even she limits her defense of DSM categories to their role as reference-fixing representations. It is also true that Tsou's paper is an argument that the practical considerations which go into shaping the DSM categories sometimes represent values that permissibly operate in psychiatry. Perhaps this could be construed as a kind of social constructionism as well, and presumably Ghaemi would disagree with it, but no one here is guilty of a failure to engage critically with the DSM and its history. Further, whichever position is taken by these theorists on whether the DSM does, or even one day could, cut nature at its joints, or whether some of the values that shape its construction do so permissibly or impermissibly, one's acceptance or rejection of relativism about truth is an entirely logically independent matter. (shrink)

As biological organisms, we age and, eventually, die. However, age’s deteriorating effects may not be universal. Some theoretical entities, due to their synthetic composition, could exist independently from aging—artificial general intelligence (AGI). With adequate resource access, an AGI could theoretically be ageless and would be, in some sense, immortal. Yet, this need not be inevitable. Designers could imbue AGIs with artificial mortality via an internal shut-off point. The question, though, is, should they? Should researchers curtail an AGI’s potentially endless lifespan (...) by deliberately making it mortal? It is this question that this article explores. First, it considers what type of AGI is under discussion before outlining how such beings could be ageless. Then, after clarifying the type of immortality under discussion and arguing that imbuing an AGI with synthetic aging would be person-affecting, the article explores four core conundrums: (i) deliberately causing a morally significant being’s death; (ii) immortality’s associated harms; (iii) concerns about immortality’s unequal assignment; and (iv) the danger of immortal AGI overlords. The article concludes that while prudence requires we create an aging AGI, in the face of the material harm such an action would constitute, this is an insufficient reason to justify doing so. (shrink)

Frank E. Zachos offers a comprehensive review of one of today's most important and contentious issues in biology: the species problem. After setting the stage with key background information on the topic, the book provides a brief history of species concepts from antiquity to the Modern Synthesis, followed by a discussion of the ontological status of species with a focus on the individuality thesis and potential means of reconciling it with other philosophical approaches. More than 30 different species concepts (...) found in the literature are presented in an annotated list, and the most important ones, including the Biological, Genetic, Evolutionary and different versions of the Phylogenetic Species Concept, are discussed in more detail. Specific questions addressed include the problem of asexual and prokaryotic species, intraspecific categories like subspecies and Evolutionarily Significant Units, and a potential solution to the species problem based on a hierarchical approach that distinguishes between ontological and operational species concepts. A full chapter is dedicated to the challenge of delimiting species by means of a discrete taxonomy in a continuous world of inherently fuzzy boundaries. Further, the book outlines the practical ramifications for ecology and evolutionary biology of how we define the species category, highlighting the danger of an apples and oranges problem if what we subsume under the same name ("species") is in actuality a variety of different entities. A succinct summary chapter, glossary and annotated list of references round out the coverage, making the book essential reading for all biologists looking for an accessible introduction to the historical, philosophical and practical dimensions of the species problem. (shrink)

The wasteland and the wilding: the aesthetic of abandoned and reclaimed green spaces -- Green man: human-plant hybrids -- Robotany and aesthetics -- Bio rights: earth of agonies and eco-punks -- Eco-feminism: plants as becoming-woman -- Ungrounding plant life: the after-effects -- On rhizomes and dead trees.

Changescapes - an introduction -- Aqueous aesthetics -- The rise of multimedia systems -- Complex dynamics disciplines -- The known world -- Attunement and agility -- Camouflage and changefulness -- Narrative hunger - geographical information systems, google street view and the colonial prospectus -- Wayfaring strangers: artistic investigations of the mood of dark tourism in online mapping -- Ghosts of a better tomorrow: the volatile formalism of 1980s film workshop productions in Hong Kong -- Cast against type -- What the (...) eye can hear -- A forest. A clearing. -- Motility -- Deep water time. (shrink)

How important is luck in economic success? No question more reliably divides conservatives from liberals. As conservatives correctly observe, people who amass great fortunes are almost always talented and hardworking. But liberals are also correct to note that countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much. In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine. In Success and Luck, bestselling author and New York Times economics (...) columnist Robert Frank explores the surprising implications of those findings to show why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in success--and why that hurts everyone, even the wealthy. Frank describes how, in a world increasingly dominated by winner-take-all markets, chance opportunities and trivial initial advantages often translate into much larger ones--and enormous income differences--over time; how false beliefs about luck persist, despite compelling evidence against them; and how myths about personal success and luck shape individual and political choices in harmful ways. But, Frank argues, we could decrease the inequality driven by sheer luck by adopting simple, unintrusive policies that would free up trillions of dollars each year--more than enough to fix our crumbling infrastructure, expand healthcare coverage, fight global warming, and reduce poverty, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. If this sounds implausible, you'll be surprised to discover that the solution requires only a few, uncontroversial steps. Compellingly readable, Success and Luck shows how a more accurate understanding of the role of chance in life could lead to better, richer, and fairer economies and societies. (shrink)

In this study, the author shows new entry points to the dialogue between Kant and Heidegger. Schalow takes up the question: "Why should a philosopher like Kant, for whom language seemed to be almost inconsequential, become the crucial counter point for a thinker like Heidegger to develop a novel way to understand and express the most perennial of all philosophical concepts, namely, 'being' as such?" This approach allows for addressing issues which are normally relegated to the periphery of the exchange (...) between Heidegger and Kant, including spatiality and embodiment, nature and art, religion and politics. (shrink)

This note is a postscript to Ramsey's 'Truth and Probability'. It replaces that article's psychological reading of subjective probability with a reading of it as a consistency condition on the theory that we act to maximise expected utility.

How could ectogestative technology disrupt gender roles, parenting practices, and concepts such as ‘birth’, ‘body’, or ‘parent’? In this chapter, we situate this emerging technology in the context of the history of reproductive technologies and analyse the potential social and conceptual disruptions to which it could contribute. An ectogestative device, better known as ‘artificial womb’, enables the extra-uterine gestation of a human being, or mammal more generally. It is currently developed with the main goal of improving the survival chances of (...) extremely premature neonates. We argue that the intended use of the technology in neonatal intensive care units, as an alternative to current incubators (’partial-ectogestation’), challenges concepts such as ‘birth’, ‘fetus’, and ‘neonate’, and has several ethico-legal implications. We moreover address a more futuristic scenario where the entire embryological and fetal development could happen within an artificial womb (’full-ectogestation’). Such a scenario reveals the disruption of gender roles, parenting practices, and concepts such as ‘mother’, ‘father’, and ‘parent’. Both full- and partial-ectogestation would have implications for engineering and design, law-making, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of the original artefact. Generally these books are created from careful scans of the original. This allows us to preserve the book accurately and present it in the way the author intended. Since the original versions are generally quite old, there may occasionally be certain imperfections within these reproductions. We're happy to make these classics available again for future generations to enjoy!

ABSTRACT There is a growing acceptance of user rights models with regard to dependent populations such as nursing home residents, but classic theories of rights presuppose levels of human rationality and human agency often lacking in the case of highly dependent populations. While user rights models have strong advantages at a rhetorical level, the reduced capacity for dependent groups to assert their rights constitutes a significant structural limitation. Policies, practices and regulatory strategies developed on the assumption that very dependent groups (...) can indeed assert such rights thus proceed on a premise which is fatally flawed. (shrink)

How should we react to the contention that there is empirical evidence showing that many judge Gettier cases to be cases of knowledge, contrary to the verdict of most analytical philosophers about these cases? I argue that there is no single answer to this question. The discussion is set inside a view about how to view the role and significance of intuitive responses to some of philosophy's famous thought experiments. One take-home message is that experimental philosophy and conceptual analysis are (...) not as far apart as is often thought. (shrink)

We enter here upon a history of conversational traffic between the respective departments of philosophy and law in the old academy of liberalism, where lawyers hear much from philosophers, yes-and philosophers hear from lawyers, too, in what has fruitfully been a both-ways exchange. Our philosophical protagonist is John Rawls. This book comprises a study of the rise and workings, within the Rawlsian political-liberal philosophy, of the idea of a country's higher-legal constitution as a public platform for the justification of political (...) coercion. A study of Rawls on constitutionalism can help us, I believe, in scoping out and managing a cluster of constitutional lawyers' debates-interminable ones, it seems, in the constitutional-democratic precincts of our times-that I will catalogue soon below. But conversely, I believe, those seeking the best and truest readings of Rawls might have something to learn from the controversies of the lawyers. My approach to Rawls has accordingly been that of a critically leavened (while no doubt broadly sympathetic) exegesis, while with the legal-discursive materials I take more of a diagnostic turn. My hope is that a treatment of these two discourses in relation to each other will prove an aid to both political-philosophical and legal-practical reflection. (shrink)

The article argues that universals of law, i.e. the laws of nature, are the general axioms of a deductive system of all knowledge, and their deductive consequences. Universals of fact are generalisations deducible from these together with particular facts.