Voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should not be legalised because too much that is important about living and dying will be lostIn the first of this two part series, I unpack the historical philosophical distinction between killing and allowing a patient to die in order to clear up the confusion that exists. Historically speaking the two kinds of actions are morally distinct because of older notions of causality and human agency. We no longer understand that distinction primarily because (...) we have shifted our notions of causality from a traditional formulation to a modern formulation of causality and thus of moral assessment that focuses on the effects of an action. In this essay, I prepare the ground for a companion essay by showing that the traditional formulation allows us to maintain notions of meaning and purpose to human living and dying that are precluded in the efficiency paradigm of modernity. Taken together with the companion essay, I am claiming that voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should not be legalised because too much that is important about dying and living will be lost.TWO LIESIt would be naïve to think that euthanasia, in either the VAE sense, or in the more passive sense of PAS, does not happen. It would even be naïve to think that it does not occur in a non-voluntary form. It would be equally naïve, however, to think it could be controlled through governmental regulation. The real question with regard to PAS/VAE, put so eloquently by Martha Minow, is which lie do you countenance: the lie that euthanasia does not already happen, or the lie that it can be controlled without having repercussions well beyond the limits of procedural mastery?1 With this two part paper series, I will argue that the …. (shrink)

Death cannot be mastered through a metaphysics of efficiency that interprets all actions in terms only of cause and effect, but it can be transcended if we leave the frame open to death’s ambiguityIn the second of this two part series, I describe how in shifting our frames from one of human purpose and meaning to one of efficiency, we shift the possible answers we get to our questions about voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide . Thus, by placing (...) VAE/PAS within the frame of efficiency, we narrow our focus to the final effect in the world of cause and effect—namely death. Thus, in ensconcing euthanasia within a legal framework meant to instrumentally and efficiently control euthanasia, we are in fact narrowing our focus on death. Thus, in legalising VAE/PAS we are not just adding one choice to a panoply of other choices, we are in fact changing the nature of all choices, for each choice conditions all others. We should therefore live with the lie that VAE/PAS do not happen as opposed to living with the lie that through efficient legal control we protect patients from medical dominance.AN ANECDOTESeveral years ago an acquaintance told me about a terrible situation in which he found himself during the Vietnam war. He was Green Beret—one of the elite special forces corps of the US army. He was in an area that was officially off limits to the US. His unit came under heavy fire and a buddy was shot in several places but was still alive. His comrade was in serious pain, but what scared him the most was that he might die in the jungle, be eaten by a wild animal, or be captured by the enemy. There was no way to get him out. The wounded soldier …. (shrink)

After describing Heidegger's critique of metaphysics as ontotheology, I unpack the metaphysical assumptions of several transhumanist philosophers. I claim that they deploy an ontology of power and that they also deploy a kind of theology, as Heidegger meant it. I also describe the way in which this metaphysics begets its own politics and ethics. In order to transcend the human condition, they must transgress the human.

This essay places Foucault's work into a philosophical context, recognizing that Foucault is difficult to place and demonstrates that Foucault remains in the Kantian tradition of philosophy, even if he sits at the margins of that tradition. For Kant, the forms of intuition—space and time—are the a priori conditions of the possibility of human experience and knowledge. For Foucault, the a priori conditions are political space and historical time. Foucault sees political space as central to understanding both the subject and (...) objects of medicine, psychiatry, and the social sciences. Through this analysis one can see that medicine's metaphysics is a metaphysics of efficient causation, where medicine's objects are subjected to mechanisms of efficient control. (shrink)

In the mid-1970s, the biomedical model of medicine gave way to the biopsychosocial model of medicine; it was billed as a more comprehensive and compassionate model of medicine. After more than a century of disentangling medicine from religion, the medicine and spirituality movement is attempting to bring religion and spirituality back into medicine. It is doing so under a biopsychosociospiritual model. I unpack one model for allowing religion back into medicine called the RCOPE. RCOPE is an instrument designed to categorize (...) religion and spirituality as psychological coping mechanisms. I explore how such instruments are related to the history of statistical measurement and demonstrate the political impetus that governs such enterprises. The biopsychosociospiritual medicine is billed as a more holistic and comprehensive model. This new model of medicine offers total care. However, I demonstrate how this total care becomes totalizing, indeed totalitarian, admitting religion and spirituality back into the fold of medicine under a new secularized medical control. (shrink)

Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination. (Foucault, 1984, 85)In this essay, I take a note from Michel Foucault regarding the notion of biopolitics. For Foucault, biopolitics has both repressive and constitutive properties. Foucault's claim is that with the rise of modern government, the state became exceedingly (...) concerned about the body politic, the bodies that make up the polis, including the health of those bodies. However, Giorgio Agamben claims that Foucault and all western political philosophy misses the relationship between power and Sovereignty, with disastrous results and totalizing tendencies. I explore the case of Terri Schiavo claiming that the social conservatives have attempted to politicize bare life in its legal maneuverings, but I also show how the social liberals open an uncontrollable space between life and death. Both the left and the right miss the aporia at the heart of western political philosophy, and bioethics is complicit in the totalizing effects of contemporary medicine. (shrink)

Health Savings Accounts have been marginalized in the West. In Singapore, however, they are foundational to the financing of health care. In this brief essay, I shall begin to sketch a justification for Health Savings Accounts. The family has always been thought of as a mere prolegomena to the polis and to be primarily about securing the goods of material life: food, shelter, intimacy. I shall first explore the recent scientific literature on the communal nature of human thriving and follow (...) it with a phenomenological account of human dependency. I shall claim that in securing the material means to sustain life, the family is also involved in the creation of the life-world of the child. That means that the bare necessities of life met in families are not merely about sustaining bodily life but are also part of the meaning-making aspects of life. The family then should have recourse to the material means of life-and-death decisions, because it is in these life-and-death decisions that the families’ life-world of values is to be deployed. (shrink)

Compelled by recent public and politicized cases in which withdrawal of nutrition and hydration were at issue, this essay examines recent Church statements and argues that the distinction between private and public forms of human life is being lost. Effacing the distinction between the sphere of the home (oikos), where the maintenance of life (zoē) occurs, and the city (polis), where political and public life (bios) occurs, may have unforeseen and unwanted consequences. Through their well-intentioned efforts to preserve the sanctity (...) of life, certain bishops and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have unfortunately brought political considerations into the home, taking decision-making authority away from those most intimately related to the patient. Thus, the question of removing nutrition and hydration in the case of patients such as Schiavo and Englaro becomes politicized and abstract, in contrast with the Church's previous positions on the importance of proportionate means in the maintenance of life, local decision making, and its recognition of life as a penultimate end. (shrink)

The doctrine of the mature minor began as an emergency exception to the rule of parental consent. Over time, the doctrine crept into cases that were non-emergent. In this essay, we show how the doctrine also developed in the context of the latter part of the 20th century, at the same time that the sexual revolution, the pill, and sexual liberation came to be seen as important symbols of female liberation—liberation that required that female minors be granted the status of (...) a mature minor. To do so moves sexual morality out of the domain of the family, where it had always been situated, and into the domain of the state. We also show how a phenomenological account of the care of the body in the family conforms to the latest in neuroscientific understandings of adolescent brain development. The family attenuates the dependency of adolescents and provides an important social contextualization for the care of the body, including the inculcation of sexual mores in adolescence. We conclude that the drive to push sexual decision making as a matter of state concern further undermines the foundations of the moral meanings of sex and sexuality. (shrink)

During the 1970s, prenatal screening technologies were in their infancy, but were being swiftly harnessed to uncover and prevent spina bifida. The historical rise of this screening process and prevention programme is analysed in this paper, and the role of ethical debates in key studies, editorials and letters reported in the Lancet, and other related texts and governmental documents between 1972 and 1983, is considered. The silence that surrounded rigorous ethical debate served to highlight where discussion lay—namely, within the justifications (...) offered for the prevention of spina bifida, and the efficacy and benefits of screening. In other words, the ethical justification for screening and prevention of spina bifida, when the authors are not explicitly interested in ethics, is considered. These justifications held certain notions of disability as costly to society, with an imperative to screen and prevent spina bifida for the good of the society. (shrink)

Of Goals and Goods and Floundering About: A Dissensus Report on Clinical Ethics Consultation Content Type Journal Article Pages 275-291 DOI 10.1007/s10730-009-9101-1 Authors Jeffrey P. Bishop, Vanderbilt University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society 2525 West End Avenue, Suite 400 Nashville Tennessee 37203 USA Joseph B. Fanning, Vanderbilt University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society 2525 West End Avenue, Suite 400 Nashville Tennessee 37203 USA Mark J. Bliton, Vanderbilt University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society 2525 West End Avenue, (...) Suite 400 Nashville Tennessee 37203 USA Journal HEC Forum Online ISSN 1572-8498 Print ISSN 0956-2737 Journal Volume Volume 21 Journal Issue Volume 21, Number 3. (shrink)

Erratum to: Echo Calling Narcissus: What Exceeds the Gaze of Clinical Ethics Consultation? Content Type Journal Article Pages 171-171 DOI 10.1007/s10730-010-9132-7 Authors Jeffrey P. Bishop, Saint Louis University Tenet Chair of Health Care Ethics, Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics Salus Center, Room 527, 3545 Lafayette Ave St. Louis MO 63104-1314 USA Joseph B. Fanning, Vanderbilt University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society 2525 West End Ave., 4th Floor, Suite 400 Nashville TN 37203 USA Mark J. Bliton, Vanderbilt (...) University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society 2525 West End Ave., 4th Floor, Suite 400 Nashville TN 37203 USA Journal HEC Forum Online ISSN 1572-8498 Print ISSN 0956-2737 Journal Volume Volume 22 Journal Issue Volume 22, Number 2. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 3, Page 333-348, May 2022.

Hitherto, the standard edition of Berkeley's works has been A. C. Fraser's of 1901, published by the Oxford University Press. The chief differences between the two editions are these. Professors Luce and Jessop give of each text the latest edition published by Berkeley himself, adding all significant variations in any earlier editions in footnotes, whereas Fraser followed no uniform procedure, and sometimes combined different editions. This difference is obviously an improvement. Further, Professor Luce's edition of Berkeley's pair of notebooks, which (...) he calls Philosophical Commentaries and which Fraser called Commonplace Book of occasional metaphysical thoughts, differs radically from Fraser's; Professor Luce has also given a different, and better, text of the Theory of Vision Vindicated. Finally, Volume II of the new edition amplifies Berkeley's brief correspondence with the American philosopher, Samuel Johnson, since it contains Johnson's letters to Berkeley, in which he questions some points in Berkeley's system, whereas Fraser published Berkeley's replies only. The editors' notes and introductions are brief, and have been written with the primary aim of presenting an accurate text. This policy is welcome, since it remains all too true that, as Professor Jessop remarks, "hitherto Berkeley has been read far too little, and his expositors far too much"; which, in the case of so excellent a writer as Berkeley, is doubly a pity. (shrink)

Guiding our response in this essay is our view that current efforts to demarcate the role of the clinical ethicist risk reducing its complex network of authorizations to sites of power and payment. In turn, the role becomes susceptible to various ideologies—individualisms, proceduralisms, secularisms—that further divide the body from the web of significances that matter to that body, where only she, the patient, is located. The security of policy, standards, and employment will pull against and eventually sever the authorization secured (...) by authentic moral inquiry. Instead of asking “What do I need to know?”, the question animating the drive to standardize will be “What is the policy or standard?” The claims of the authors in this issue of HEC Forum confirm these suspicions. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 11, Page 42-43, November 2011.

The examination of the cleroterium by Sterling Dow left few questions connected with it untouched. His publications on this ingenious device are as follows: ‘Allotment Machines', Prytaneis: A Study of the Inscriptions Honoring the Athenian Councillors, Hesperia, Suppl. i 198–215, with photographs ; ‘Aristotle, the Kleroteria, and the Courts’, HSCP 1 1–34 ; ‘Kleroterion’, in PW, Suppl. vii, col. 322–328. G. Klaffenbach summarised Dow's analysis in ‘Antike Losungsapparate’, Die Antike xiv 353–355. Prior to Dow, notice of one fragment of a (...) cleroterium was published by B. Tamaro, ‘Pianta Epigrafica dell’ Acropoli', ASAA iv/v 63 nr. 124. P has clear photographs of all remains then known. There are drawings in PW based on the drawing of I and photographs of I, II, III, X, and XI in P—Dow labelled the remains with roman numerals; I follow his labelling. Drawings in P are found opposite the photographs of I and of VI; in H, as frontispiece. Since Dow's publications appeared, there has been no reconsideration of his work nor any re-examination of his reconstruction. This is proof of the quality of his work.In 1960 when I first studied Dow's reconstruction, I relied on the excellent and revealing photographs in P. My own mechanical aptitude made me feel uneasy over certain small details in the reconstruction. (shrink)

The fact that Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin seem to disagree about the ordinary use of words such as ‘voluntary’, ‘involuntary’, ‘voluntarily’, and ‘involuntarily’ has been taken to cast doubt on the methods of ordinary language philosophy. As Benson Mates puts the worry, ‘if agreement about usage cannot be reached within so restricted a sample as the class of Oxford Professors of Philosophy, what are the prospects when the sample is enlarged?’ (Mates, Inquiry 1:161–171, 1958, p. 165). In this chapter, (...) we evaluate Mates’s criticism alongside Ryle’s and Austin’s specific claims about the ordinary use of these words, assessing these claims against actual examples of ordinary use drawn from the British National Corpus (BNC). Our evaluation consists in applying a combination of methods: first aggregating judgments about a large set of samples drawn from the corpus, and then using a clustering algorithm to uncover connections between different types of use. In applying these methods, we show where and to what extent Ryle’s and Austin’s accounts of the use of the target terms are accurate as well as where they miss important aspects of ordinary use, and we demonstrate the usefulness of this new combination of methods. At the heart of our approach is a commitment to the idea that systematically looking at actual uses of expressions is an essential component of any approach to ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 12.3 (2002) 305-323 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 41 Bioethics and Cloning, Part I Susan Cartier Poland and Laura Jane Bishop This is Part One of a two part Scope Note on Bioethics and Cloning. Part Two will be published in the December 2002 issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal and as a separate reprint. Contents For Parts 1 And (...) 2 Part 1Part 2I.History of the ScienceI.Ethical PerspectivesII.Historical CommentaryII.Religious PerspectivesIII.Animal WelfareIII.Fiction and FilmIV.Laws and Legal Literature"Clone" is a collective noun (I, Stewart 1997, p. 771). A collective noun names a group and is composed of individual members, such as "herd" or "flock." Derived from the Greek kl¯on for twig or slip, "clone" was first used in biology to describe the aggregate of asexually produced progeny of an individual, either naturally occurring or man-made; the definition later expanded to mean a group of genetically identical members who originate from a single ancestor. Thus, a clone is a group that results from the process of asexual reproduction.In nature, cloning occurs either by parthenogenesis (reproduction without fertilization) or by fission (embryo splitting). In a pioneering experiment in 1952, Robert Briggs and Thomas J. King (I, 1952), cancer researchers at the Institute for Cancer Research (today part of the Fox Chase Cancer Center) in Philadelphia, demonstrated on frogs another method of cloning by transplanting nuclei into enucleated cells, a technique called "nuclear transplantation," which John B. Gurdon and colleagues (I, 1958, 1975) used to create clones of frogs.Then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, two back-to-back frauds in cloning occurred. First, the cloning of a human described by American science journalist David Rorvik in the 1978 book In His Image was called a hoax by a court in [End Page 305] 1982. Second, the cloning of three mice, announced by German wunderkind Karl Illmensee to scientific circles in 1979 (and to the public in 1981), could not be proven to be true, according to convincing evidence by McGrath and Solter (I) published in 1984.With their pronouncement that mammalian cloning was impossible, McGrath and Solter essentially stopped cloning research and funding for such biological research. So by the mid-1980s, instead of further investigating cloning, developmental biologists studied embryology related to in vitro fertilization, while molecular biologists studied recombinant DNA under the newly relaxed NIH guidelines. These two strands of scientific investigation came together in the work of Ian Wilmut, who created in vitro embryos using nuclear transplantation to reproduce genetically engineered cattle. Wilmut was seeking a way to increase the successful birth rate when, in the 1990s, he produced identical twin sheep, Megan and Morag, cloned from an embryonic cell, followed by another sheep, Dolly, cloned from an adult cell. The birth of a mammal from an embryo whose genetic material came from an adult cell firmly re-established the possibility of cloning from adults. Prior to Dolly's birth, scientists believed that adult cells lost the ability to dedifferentiate—i.e., to become unspecialized—and so could not direct the development of an embryo through to birth.The 1997 announcement of Dolly's birth initiated the present widespread discussion of cloning. Because of its potentially vast applications across human health, medicine, agriculture, and business/economics, cloning raises a host of issues including those concerning: genetics and genetic engineering, patenting, animal rights and/or animal welfare (especially for transgenic, research, or cloned animals), organ transplantation, reproduction, eugenics, pharmacology (drug production using transgenic animals), research practices, informed consent, stem cell research, women's rights, children's rights, parental rights and responsibilities, and theology and philosophy. It fosters questions about the meaning and purpose of life, the limits of human powers to intervene in research and therapy, and what it means to be human or animal. In addition, environmentalists and organic farmers raise concerns about the effect of novel animals and plants on the environment, while nutritionists and the lay public wonder... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religious Perspectives on Bioethics, Part ILaura Jane Bishop (bio) and Mary Carrington Coutts (bio)This is Part One of a two part Scope Note on Religious Perspectives on Bioethics. Part Two will be published in the December 1994 issue of this Journal. This Scope Note has been organized in alphabetical order by the name of the religious tradition.Contents for Parts 1 and 2Part 1Part 2I.GeneralI.Native AmericanII.African Religious TraditionsReligious TraditionsIII.Bahá'í (...) FaithII.Protestantism—willIV.Buddhism and Confucianisminclude a general sectionV.Eastern Orthodoxyand sections focused onVI.Hinduismspecific denominations.VII.IslamIII.Roman CatholicismVIII.JainismIX.JudaismIntroductionThe many religions of the world bring diverse, and occasionally divergent, attitudes to bioethical issues. These beliefs may guide patients and health care professionals as they seek or provide health care. In an attempt to facilitate understanding of and access to information about these beliefs in our pluralistic and global society, this Scope Note identifies literature by the world's major religious groups on topics relating to bioethics.Topics covered by this Scope Note include general attitudes to health and [End Page 155] health care, the physician-patient relationship, treatment refusal, abortion, contraception, sterilization, reproductive technologies, genetics, mental health, human experimentation, organ transplantation and donation, death, euthanasia, suicide, and prolongation of life. Material was not available on all of these topics for each religion.The literature gathered here represents only a small portion of the available writing on religion and medicine, and is limited to that which comments explicitly on bioethical issues. Some faiths have a rich tradition of writing in bioethics; for others the literature is more limited. Variation in coverage is not intended to indicate the relative importance of a faith, but reflects accessibility and space constraints. Individuals interested in obtaining additional information are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature.Specific citations about a region or country were chosen because of the predominance of a religious tradition within the population. In all cases, variation in spelling represents author usage. This Scope Note treats only the literature published in English, and every attempt has been made to identify English language sources for these faiths.It is important to remember that doctrinal and theological differences exist even within the same denomination and that views of individual patients, family members, and health care providers should be sought.Dictionaries and EncyclopediasMelton, J. Gordon, ed. Encyclopedia of American Religions. Fourth edition. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993. 1217 p. Basic information about the history, sacred texts, membership, educational facilities, publications, and North American addresses are provided for 1,730 churches, denominations, sects, and cults. Bibliographies for many faiths supplement this extensive resource.Reich, Warren T., ed. Encyclopedia of Bioethics. New York: Free Press, Macmillan, 1978. 4 volumes. Articles on all the major religions as they relate to bioethics are included in this highly-regarded encyclopedia. In addition, many of the topical essays feature a section on the views of various faiths on the topic under discussion. For the best use of the Encyclopedia, see the subject index in volume 4. (Note: a revised, second edition is due to be published by Macmillan in late 1994.)GeneralAmerican Psychiatric Association. Committee on Religion and Psychiatry. Guidelines Regarding Possible Conflict Between Psychiatrists' Religious Commitment and Psychiatric Practice. American Journal of Psychiatry 147 (4): 542, April 1990. The American Psychiatric Association recommends that psychiatrists respect their patients' religious beliefs and that they not impose their own [End Page 156] beliefs on their patients.Bankowski, Z., and Bryant, J. H. Health Policy, Ethics and Human Values: Proceedings of the XVIIth CIOMS Round Table Conference, Athens Greece. Geneva: Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences, 1985. 336 p. Many sections of this volume address issues where religion impacts health policymaking. Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and Asia are highlighted for the varied ways in which their religions and cultures are integrated into the provision of health care.Batchelor, Edward, ed. Abortion: The Moral Issues. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1982. 246 p. Batchelor compiles a collection of essays by experts on religious ethics as they relate to abortion. Includes... (shrink)

According to the cognitive model of psychopathology, maladaptive beliefs about oneself, others, and the world are the main factors contributing to the development and persistence of various forms of mental suffering. Therefore, the key therapeutic process of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)—a therapeutic approach rooted in the cognitive model—is cognitive restructuring, i.e., a process of revision of such maladaptive beliefs. In this paper, I examine the philosophical assumptions underlying CBT and offer theoretical reasons to think that the effectiveness of belief revision (...) in psychotherapy is very limited. This is the case, I argue, because the cognitive model wrongly assumes that our body of beliefs is unified, while it is in fact fragmented. (shrink)

Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI) systems (also known as AI “chatbots”) are among the most promising examples of the use of technology in mental health care. With already millions of users worldwide, CAI is likely to change the landscape of psychological help. Most researchers agree that existing CAIs are not “digital therapists” and using them is not a substitute for psychotherapy delivered by a human. But if they are not therapists, what are they, and what role can they play in mental (...) health care? To answer these questions, we appeal to two well-established and widely discussed concepts: cognitive and affective artifacts. Cognitive artifacts are artificial devices contributing functionally to the performance of a cognitive task. Affective artifacts are objects which have the capacity to alter subjects’ affective state. We argue that therapeutic CAIs are a kind of cognitive-affective artifacts which contribute to positive therapeutic change by (i) simulating a (quasi-)therapeutic interaction, (ii) supporting the performance of cognitive tasks, and (iii) altering the affective condition of their users. This sheds new light on why virtually all existing mental health CAIs implement principles and techniques of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy — a therapeutic orientation according to which affective change and, ultimately, positive therapeutic change is mediated by cognitive change. Simultaneously, it allows us to conceptualize better the potential and limitations of applying these technologies in therapy. (shrink)

Concerns about censorship have once again reached a fever pitch across the liberal West. In other historical periods, such concerns may have marked reactions to book bans and burnings. Often, they followed prosecutions and subsequent jailtime for things spoken or written. During the Red Scare, they were the hushed response to chilling state-sponsored watch-lists and employer-supported blacklists designed to ensure victory against communism. Against this history, complaints about the new censorship appear differently. With respect to the new censorship, there are (...) no books burnings, no prosecutions, no laws or committees. Indeed, there is no coercive state involvement at all. With a few notable exceptions, complaints about censorship in the 21st-century West are complaints about the behavior of private parties: social groups, employers, media conglomerates, social media platforms, and search engines. -/- To better understand the concerns surrounding nonstate interference with speech, Private Censorship offers an account of censorship, as well as an assessment of the ethical and political issues it raises across contexts. J.P. Messina asks and variously answers questions like: what should we think when employees get fired for things they say and how might patterns of such firings create a climate of fear inimical to free inquiry? When is it appropriate for social media firms to deplatform users, and what does it mean for our democracy that those in charge of such decisions are often wealthy Silicon Valley executives? Do search engines act as massive gatekeepers to information in troubling ways, and how might they be constrained, if they do? Along the way, Messina casts a critical eye on many popular proposals for responding to these complaints. Unlike these popular approaches, Private Censorship foregrounds the importance of rights to property, association, and free expression for thinking well about 21st-century censorship concerns. (shrink)

This chapter explores the relations of different kinds of power, philosophically understood – sovereign power, disciplinary power, and biopower – and argues that the politics of the Star Wars galaxy is animated by an ontology, or metaphysical picture, centered on power. It further argues that The Mandalorian criticizes this power ontology with the introduction of the Child, Grogu, who generates a different kind of Force: a relational ontology of love. Grogu and the love he generates point to a different way (...) of being in the world than power. Ultimately, The Mandalorian offers a different ontology of power – an ontology of love – as a radical alternative to the bindings of political power. Palpatine is correct that power dynamics shape the confrontational relationship between the Jedi and Sith, which is fed by the Jedi's disavowal of strong attachments. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Exploration of the Functional Properties of Interaction: Computer Models and Pointers for Theory” by Etienne B. Roesch, Matthew Spencer, Slawomir J. Nasuto, Thomas Tanay & J. Mark Bishop. Upshot: Artificial life computer simulations hold the potential for demonstrating the kinds of bottom-up, cooperative, self-organizing processes that underlie the self-construction of observer-actors. This is a worthwhile, if limited, attempt to use such simulations to address this set of core constructivist concerns. Although we concur with (...) much of the philosophical perspective in the target article, we take issue with some of the implied positions related to dynamical systems, sensorimotor contingency theory, and neural information processing. Ideally, we would like to see computational approaches more directly address adaptive, constructive processes and mechanisms operant in minds and brains. This would entail using tasks that are more relevant to the psychology of human and animal learning than performing digit sums or sorts. It also could involve relating the dynamics of agents more explicitly to ensembles of communicating neural assemblies. (shrink)

The act of criminalising conduct has been understood by many theorists as a form of communication. This paper proposes a model, based on speech-act theory, for understanding how that act of communication works. In particular, it focuses on analysing how and where wrongfulness can appear in this speech-act, if one were to argue, as many theorists do, that part of what is being communicated through criminalisation is the wrongfulness of the target conduct. I argue that the act of criminalisation is (...) best understood as an indirect speech-act, which both asserts and declares normative facts, the utterance of which makes it the case that a conduct is now criminalised. Within this speech-act, wrongfulness can appear as an implicit assertion of the wrongness of the conduct, which has to be inferred by hearers from the context of utterance. The paper then briefly discusses the upshots of this model, mainly that it allows a clearer picture of how criminalisation conveys meanings, as well as leaving open the question as to whether it makes sense to think that the wrongfulness being conveyed is specifically of a moral kind. (shrink)

Introduces the applications of repeated measures design processes with the popular IBM® SPSS® software Repeated Measures Design for Empirical Researchers presents comprehensive coverage of the formation of research questions and the analysis of repeated measures using IBM SPSS and also includes the solutions necessary for understanding situations where the designs can be used. In addition to explaining the computation involved in each design, the book presents a unique discussion on how to conceptualize research problems as well as identify appropriate repeated (...) measures designs for research purposes. Featuring practical examples from a multitude of domains including psychology, the social sciences, management, and sports science, the book helps readers better understand the associated theories and methodologies of repeated measures design processes. The book covers various fundamental concepts involved in the design of experiments, basic statistical designs, computational details, differentiating independent and repeated measures designs, and testing assumptions. Along with an introduction to IBM SPSS software, Repeated Measures Design for Empirical Researchers includes: A discussion of the popular repeated measures designs frequently used by researchers, such as one-way repeated measures ANOVA, two-way repeated measures design, two-way mixed design, and mixed design with two-way MANOVA Coverage of sample size determination for the successful implementation of designing and analyzing a repeated measures study A step-by-step guide to analyzing the data obtained with real-world examples throughout to illustrate the underlying advantages and assumptions A companion website with supplementary IBM SPSS data sets and programming solutions as well as additional case studies Repeated Measures Design for Empirical Researchers is a useful textbook for graduate- and PhD-level students majoring in biostatistics, the social sciences, psychology, medicine, management, sports, physical education, and health. The book is also an excellent reference for professionals interested in experimental designs and statistical sciences as well as statistical consultants and practitioners from other fields including biological, medical, agricultural, and horticultural sciences. J. P. Verma, PhD, is Professor of Statistics and Director of the Center for Advanced Studies at Lakshmibai National Institute of Physical Education, India. Professor Verma is an active researcher in sports modeling and data analysis and has conducted many workshops on research methodology, research designs, multivariate analysis, statistical modeling, and data analysis for students of management, physical education, social science, and economics. He is the author of Statistics for Exercise Science and Health with Microsoft® Office Excel®, also published by Wiley. (shrink)