The continuous pursuit and support of medical research on both a societal and individual level is frequently presupposed as laudable, or even obligatory. However, some critics have challenged the assumption that medical research ought to be conducted. These critics reject claims that there is a moral obligation to pursue research, and that medical research may always be justifiable given adequate safeguards and regulations. We align ourselves with critics of the research imperative to the extent that we believe that medical research (...) may only be an imperfect obligation, grounded in the principle of beneficence. Our central purpose in this article, however, is not to advance an original argument concerning the .. (shrink)

Newman Robert Glass argues that there are three workings of emptiness capable of grounding thinking and behavior: presence, difference, and essence. The first two readings, exemplified by Heidegger and Mark C. Taylor respectively, present opposing views of the work of emptiness in thinking. The third, essence, presents a position on the work of emptiness in desire and affect. Glass begins by offering a close analysis of presence and difference. He then fashions his own understanding of essence, or emptiness. (...) He goes on to use this third reading to construct a comprehensive Buddhist position based in desire and affect -- a Buddhism of essence. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reassess the educational affordances of digital screens, at a time when their educational impact has become incontournable, but is also increasingly growing suspicion. To bypass the redundancies of overly critical theoretical approaches, the paper foregrounds the subjectifying potentialities of the screen’s elusive technological ‘plasticity’. After the introduction, in which some pedagogical misgivings about the digital screen are addressed, we turn to Marie-José Mondzain’s historico-philosophical genealogy of iconoclasm. Trying to make sense of the aesthetic-political ambivalence (...) that shrouded the icon’s screenic agency within a Christian ‘economy of salvation’, and which climaxed in a politics of strictly economic equivalency, we concur with Peter Szendy that this ambivalence still haunts the icon’s contemporary heirs. By pedagogically re-reading Szendy’s alternative account of ‘iconomy’ we are subsequently led to make a case for exceeding neoliberal screening politics through an affirmation of the digital screen’s radical plasticity. Along with Yves Citton, we suggest, in our conclusion, that this post-critical affirmation calls for an ‘iconomical’ practice of care-ful experiments with the screen’s dynamic technologies. Instead of combating or adapting to its aesthetically dazzling algorithms, educational practices are required that allow these algorithmic quantities to qualitatively differentiate the uses that educands make of them. (shrink)

It has been widely argued that digital technologies are transforming the nature of reading, and with it, our brains and a wide range of our cognitive capabilities. In this article, we begin by discussing the new analytical category of deep-reading and whether it is really on the decline. We analyse deep reading and its grounding in brain reorganization, based upon Michael Anderson’s Massive Redeployment hypothesis and Dehaene’s Neuronal Recycling which both help us to theorize how the capacities of brains are (...) transformed by acquisition of new skills. We examine some of the difficulties in comparing reading using technologies such as the web-browser, the tablet and E-Reader, with reading using the pre-existing print culture. While learning to read undoubtedly changes the brain, we examine what evidence there is for this being tightly tied to particular material substrates and find this lacking. Instead we attempt to situate cognitive changes around the new reading within the context of the specific new cognitive ecologies incorporating both screen and page. This involves a reconsideration of the role of material culture in the cognitive abilities. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the claim that many sentient nonhuman animals have a right to privacy. I begin by outlining the view that the human right to privacy protects our interest in shaping different kinds of relationships with one another by giving us control over how we present ourselves to others. I then draw on empirical research to show that nonhuman animals also have this interest, which grounds a right to privacy against us. I further argue that we can (...) violate this right even when other animals are unaware that we are watching them. (shrink)

The new technologies of television viewership following the digital turn have introduced new anxieties and possibilities. While new screen cultures facilitate a transnational viewership, the importance of ethically and morally grounded representations cannot be overstated. In this context, Delhi Crime, the Emmy award-winning Indian series based on the Delhi gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi, will be instrumental in informing the ethico-political concerns that ought to be prioritized while representing the subaltern subject and the novel (...) socialites fashioned through the new viewership patterns. This article attempts to understand the way in which the emerging screen economies provide new terrains for ethical representation and engendering digital publics. Thus, this article is interested in understanding the intersection of media ecologies and ethico-political concerns to introduce new dialectical possibilities. (shrink)

Experience with inverting glasses reveals key factors of spatial vision. Interpretations of the literature based on the metaphor of a “visual image” have raised the question whether visual experience with inverting glasses remains inverted or whether it may turn back to normal after adaptation to the glasses. Here, I report on my experience with left/right inverting glasses and argue that a more fine-grained sensorimotor analysis can resolve the issue. Crucially, inverting glasses introduce a conflict at the very heart of spatial (...) vision. At first, the experience of visual direction grounded in head movements differs from visual experience grounded in eye movements. During adaptation, this difference disappears, and one may learn to see without conflict where objects are located (this took me 123 h of practice). The momentary experience became once again integrated within the larger flow of visual exploration involving head movements, a change of experience that was abrupt and comparable to a Gestalt switch. The resulting experience remains different from normal vision, and I argue that this difference can be understood in sensorimotor terms. I describe how adaptation to inverting glasses is further reflected in mental imagery, supporting the idea that imagery is grounded in sensorimotor engagement with the environment as well. (shrink)

All’intersezione di Realtà Aumentata e Wearable Technologies, un nuovo paradigma estetico sta emergendo ai nostri giorni. Questo mette in atto un nuovo trattamento tecnico della nostra sensibilità, in qualche modo antagonista rispetto alla Realtà Virtuale. Nel presente studio, mi propongo di affrontare questo nuovo paradigma in riferimento al dispositivo di Google Glass, e distinguere così due diverse tendenze del suo sviluppo. La prima tendenza, che chiamerò “cartesiana”, è caratterizzata da un processo di selezione e ottimizzazione della sensibilità; la seconda (...) tendenza, che riferirò al pensiero di Merleau-Ponty, fa sì che la partecipazione estetica sia in grado di realizzare un dialogo intermediale tra parola e immagine. È interessante notare che, dal punto di vista di una tendenza “cartesiana”, il “prisma” di Google Glass è interpretato come uno schermo, mentre dal punto di vista “merleau-pontiano” è compreso piuttosto come un occhio protesico. (shrink)

This paper establishes a Kantian duty against screen overexposure. After defining screen exposure, I adopt a Kantian approach to its morality on the ground that Kant’s notion of duties to oneself easily captures wrongdoing in absence of harm or wrong to others. Then, I draw specifically on Kant’s ‘duties to oneself as an animal being’ to introduce a duty of self-government. This duty is based on the negative causal impact of the activities it regulates on a human (...) being’s mental and physical powers, and, ultimately, on the moral employment of these powers. After doing so, I argue that the duty against screen overexposure is an instance of the duty of self-government. Finally, I consider some objections. (shrink)

Although prenatal screening is routinely undertaken as part of a woman's antenatal care, the ethics surrounding it are complex. In this paper, the author examines the Jewish position on the permissibility of several tests, including those for Down's syndrome and Tay-Sachs disease, the latter being especially common in the Jewish community. Clearly, the status of the tests depends on whether termination of affected pregnancies is allowed, and contemporary rabbinical authorities are themselves in dispute as to the permissibility of terminating affected (...) pregnancies. The nature of these arguments is examined and the author concludes that there are grounds on which the full range of prenatal screening is permitted in Jewish law. (shrink)

The stories we tell and show, in whatever medium, play varied roles in human cultures. One such role is to contribute to moral understanding. Moral understanding goes beyond moral knowledge; it is a complex cognitive achievement that may consist of one or more of the following: the ability to understand why, to ask the right questions, categorization, the application of models to specific incidents, or the capacity to make connections between morally charged situations that have a common underlying meaning. -/- (...) While the disciplines of communication, psychology, philosophy, and film and media studies have all made significant scholarly progress on this issue, they make different grounding assumptions and use different terminologies. Screen Stories and Moral Understanding approaches the topic from an interdisciplinary perspective and explores the conditions under which stories we view on screens-movies, streamed series, and television-can lead to moral understanding in viewers. -/- In five sections, this book explores the nature of moral understanding in relation to screen stories, the means by which moving image fictions can transfer knowledge to and cultivate perspectives in viewers, the role of affect in generating moral understanding, the viewer's engagement with characters, and what we do with screen stories after viewing them. (shrink)

A lively and approachable meditation on how we can transform our digital lives if we let a little Nietzsche in. Who has not found themselves scrolling endlessly on screens and wondered: am I living or distracting myself from living? In Emergency, Break Glass adapts Friedrich Nietzsche's passionate quest for meaning into a world overwhelmed by "content." Written long before the advent of smartphones, Nietzsche's aphoristic philosophy advocated a fierce mastery of attention, a strict information diet, and a powerful connection (...) to the natural world. Drawing on Nietzsche's work, technology journalist Nate Anderson advocates for a life of goal-oriented, creative exertion as more meaningful than the "frictionless" leisure often promised by our devices. He rejects the simplicity of contemporary prescriptions like reducing screen time in favor of looking deeply at what truly matters to us, then finding ways to make our technological tools serve this vision. With a light touch suffused by humor, Anderson uncovers the impact of this "yes-saying" philosophy on his own life-and perhaps on yours. (shrink)

This paper presents a Heideggerian phenomenological analysis of screens. In a world and an epoch where screens pervade a great many aspects of human experience, we submit that phenomenology, much in a traditional methodological form, can provide an interesting and novel basis for our understanding of screens. We ground our analysis in the ontology of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time [1927/1962], claiming that screens will only show themselves as they are if taken as screens-in-the-world. Thus, the phenomenon of (...) class='Hi'>screen is not investigated in its empirical form or conceptually. It is rather taken as a grounding intentional orientation that conditions our engagement with certain surfaces as we comport ourselves towards them “as screens.” In doing this we claim to have opened up the phenomenon of screen in a new and meaningful way. (shrink)

Located in Kleinbasel close to the Rhine, the Kaskadenkondensator is a place of mediation and experimental, research-and process-based art production with a focus on performance and performative expression. The gallery, founded in 1994, and located on the third floor of the former Sudhaus Warteck Brewery (hence cascade condenser), seeks to develop interactions between artists, theorists and audiences. Eight, maybe, nine or ten 40 litre bags of potting compost lie strewn about the floor of a high-ceilinged white washed hall. Dumped, split (...) open, the soil mixed with iridescent specks of green, blue and red glitter. On the walls hang large black and white photographic images—negative and positive prints barely clean, hardly sharp, scavenged from the world and presented half processed. On a third wall, hangs a framed golden and charcoal surface. Finally, a huge stain of black dye runs down a wall that descends into a sunken quarter of the Kaskadenkondensator gallery space. The results of a collaboration between Oliver Minder and Walter Derungs reflect on themes addressed in the recent Aesthetics in the 21st Century conference held by the department of English, University of Basel. In particular, the joint show questions how an aesthetic experience may be other than a human-world interaction, hinting at the withdrawal and veiling that objects perform, while demanding that different works engage with each other and play out this game under the non-supervisory eyes of a human audience. Things here are becoming—sometimes it’s a movement towards a more complete ontic whole in a projection of finality, other times it’s a dispersal, an atrophy to rather disarrayed entities. Yet, in the moment and place in which the objects are, we take them as here and now. Let’s get to the material of the stuff that Minder and Derungs have assembled. Oliver Minder employs organic materials—potting earth, cuttlefish ink secretion, rice, and insects; yet his works hardly seem natural in the sense of a harmonic relation between material and the form they are constrained into, the objects they are compelled to occupy. For the substrates on, through, or within which these natural materials are mediated are harshly inorganic substances—Plexiglas, safety glass, acrylic resin, boat varnish, spray paint. Minder, thus, generates a conflict within the materiality of his work between two polar opposites—from the human perspective—in the contiguity of materials engaging with each other in a thrown together formation that nonetheless appears to keep the materials and the objects they make in happy accidental relation to each other. Let me expand a little: on the one hand, the things Minder makes query our belief in substance as belonging in a particular domain, an environment suited to precisely that stuff. We are focused on thinking categorically where things belong, both in terms of natural place and natural relations they might extend to each other. Hence, we are driven to think of environment and order. On the other hand, while extracting things from their conventional place and arranging them within awkward constellations that we as observers feel isn’t quite right, Minder manages to persuade the viewer that the materials are nonetheless “doing alright.” So, simultaneous to our awareness of the appropriateness of the world according to our global notions of accord and uniformity, we are forced to accept the local discrepancies of disassociation, inappropriateness and misplacement. The tension between these two vectors generates a vacillation that intensifies Minder’s work. In the Kaskadenkondensator works, then, it is vital to first consider the material of Minder’s works: potting compost—what is it doing here in the first place?—seems to enjoy being “polluted” by sparkly glitter. Glitter has a long history, used in cosmetics by the Egyptians, and in cave paintings, too, earlier made of beetle shells and mica, nowadays glitter is made of plastic cut to minute sizes down to 50 microns. So what’s the point here? Well shiny bits of dust-like material are actually generated from ultra-thin plastic sheets and are normally cut into shapes that fit contiguously on a two-dimensional surface: squares, triangles, hexagons etc. What then appears to be totally random, chaotic decoration, is actually an array of extremely regular identifiable objects. 1 Of course scale has a role to play here. The minuteness of the dimensions means the regularity is beyond our recognition—all we see are the twinkling surfaces of the multi-coloured grains of plastic. In contrast, potting compost, which appears to be unary in its dull unresponsive lumpen disposition, is in fact an amalgam of a variety of organic and inorganic materials: peat, bark, mushroom compost, and sand and perlite, and should perhaps be more proactively exciting to the viewer because of this complexity. Yes; we can (if we care to) identify different textures, different sizes in the mixture of the medium, but I claim that we tend to treat this organic/inorganic assemblage as just a simple substance. Further and crucially important to our consideration here is that the medium is partially contained, but also partially spilling from the split plastic bags in which it is sold in garden centres. That the compost spills out gives it a movement suggesting life; that the bags are cast here and there in a random fashion by Oliver Minder, lying like discarded carcasses, hacked torsos, dismembered bodies, suggests a horrific murder scene, a Tatort. 2 The glitter flourishes in the medium, lies happy and decorative; that is simply what it does, how it is—always already broken, made-for-scattering, designed to be incomplete; the taken-to-be-natural compost, in contrast, cannot rest content but is forced to speak to us metaphorically in its abject overflowing of violence and rupture. While Oliver Minder’s elements in the installation direct our attention to material, Walter Derungs’ works raise questions around seeing and making in photography. There is a simultaneous flicker between the materials and their use in the production of a sense making representation, on the one hand, and on the other the very notion of what is worthy of picturing, framing, representing on the other. Derungs' images are of non-places. Ranging from archaic decaying monster buildings, buildings that have gone far beyond the ravages of a time that we can safely associate with the genteel preservation of a Bernd and Hill Belcher post-industrial decline, to the background “noise” of an urban world that is falling apart, and to which we most of the time seem to pay little attention, and habitually just pass by. In this respect, their non-ness differs somewhat from the conventional association of the term with Marc Augé 3 , where emphasis is on the specifics (if we do care to examine them for their non-placedness) of the spatial or place containment in which movement between multimodal coordinates occurs in supermodern late capitalist post-urban spaces. In other words, we might be in an Augéian non-place and (not) experience—be impervious to—that environment, or we might in Derungs’ manner look out from such a position at the “scenery” around us. I claim scenery, as this is what Derungs seems to do with his partial photography—construct a very purposefully articulated, symmetric, flat world of image. Mostly depopulated, his images construct a space in which the direction of time is uncertain: are these partial structures falling apart, or perhaps terminated in a never-to-be-completed state, or are they a few steps from final completion? Temporal and spatial dimensions figure large in Derungs’ image-making: his world, and perhaps this is in fact the only way for it to be registered photographically, is already image before it is photographed. A key combination of images in this show is a matrix of six black and white negative prints measuring 300 x 215 cm that form the image of a semi-derelict (or is it yet incomplete) church, and adjacent on a perpendicular wall, a single black and white positive print 150 x 250 cm of two bricked-up windows of a late-Victorian industrial building. What are we led to believe that we see here? In the negative print, the conditions of perception 4 are sufficiently reproduced for us to recognise the structure of the building, to distinguish ground and form, to relate some partial elements of narrative, and to recognize symbols such as the alter cross and figure of Christ, a looming crane, a traffic cone, and banks of tiered seating. We piece the image together both from the individual forms which we recognize despite the tonal reversal, and we piece the six prints together as a whole, the matrix of lines between them emphasizing our purview onto the world. While we recognise the forms at work in the image and might possibly relate the negative reversals to other figurations such as Vera Lutter’s camera obscura exposures, we cannot but avoid seeing the partialness of the image in the sponge marks of the developer that was spread by hand across the prints. 5 Derungs’ thus intervenes with our usual conception of photography as the mimetic realist vehicle sine qua non , by exposing the viewer to tonal reversal and incomplete or over developed areas of the print. We thus confront both the idiom of such image making and its raw (chemical) materiality at once in the simultaneity of the recognition of what the image pictures and the recognition that it is in the act of picturing. The church image, taken from the series “BW Negativs 2011,” thus orients us towards how we see things in the world via photographs. The single image of the bricked-up wall presents us with a completely different visuality that relates to a faciality 6 which we cannot easily escape from. We look, or rather try to look with no success, through the face of the windows, through the classic Albertian screen 7 which has already been given to us in the church matrix beside. Yet although we should be able to make more of these concealed windows because they are a positive print, because they are complete, because they approach us on a more realistic scale, reproduced at life size, we cannot. The objects pictured here withdraw from us; furthermore, they merely mock our blindness at not seeing how we look. Blocked up with quite a hint of paned glass behind, one window is blanked out with a white blind, the other simply blankly dark. The apertures look like eyes with teeth in them, or a Dogon mask, or even Man Ray’s Noire et Blanche (1926) if we want to get really perverse. The height of elegant modernist chauvinist beauty thrown against the vacuity of post-industrial decline. Derungs thus catapults us consciously into a world enfolded with and through images, but in such a way that the images themselves become objects that stand resistant to us, impervious to our gaze, indifferent. We—and indeed they—do not attempt to reach out to a real that is beyond, rather the images play in a world that is just theirs, and we can only enter that world if we too submit to their regime: tonal reversal, segmented, partial, inadequate, still, wrenched out of time. In contemplation, in the flood of the image “falling” off the wall, we too become image-object. Perhaps enough has now been said about the works, yet enough can never really be said, we know the image will always exceed the word—let’s accelerate the critique: Derungs’ work continues in a second space partially partitioned from this first room. Opposing three more “BW Negativs” which figure yet more quotidian aspects of the world is Minder’s gold spray paint and cuttlefish secretion mix: things that just shouldn’t work together do in the dialogue between stuff that Derungs and Minder have constructed. Minder makes things; Derungs makes images; together they make objects which inhabit their own world which we can approach and sensually engage with and come to grips with only on those objects’ own terms. This is best summarised by a final work made by Oliver Minder which on a third wall faces these two semi-partitioned spaces. A deep black stain about 100 X 200 cm with streak marks running down a further 2 metres hovers positioned to observe the whole work, and also to be part of this installation, too. This liminal flat suzerain lies in/out of the whole work. The stain of cuttlefish secretion resonates with Derungs’ sponge strokes on the church image; it mirrors the iris of an all-seeing eye; it combines material in situ with the situation itself. Where Minder’s other works have material and medium or substrate upon which the material is exercised, this single black hole is image which sucks everything up into itself. It draws the viewer, who must otherwise look away attentively at the floor work, and imagine horror, or smile at the ironic play of glitter. Look away at the image constructions that suggest how it is we too look to our world. See the play of thing and image in a third area. Or, finally return to the base of the pyramid that triangulates, to realise the stuff-image that unlocks it all for us. Black on white, organic on inorganic, material to substrate, that which in the falling out of one on the other, in its running down the wall simply gives form to both content and expression in one direction, and content and expression to form in another. NOTES In fact, glitter is used as associative forensic evidence: the 20,000 or so varieties are all uniquely identifiable. Joel Sternfeld, Tatorte: Bilder gegen das Vergessen (München: Schirmer/Mosel, 1996). Marc Augé, Non­places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity trans. John Howe (London: Verso, 2006). An echo of the uneven paint strokes of light­sensitive chemicals in the paper preparations made by Henry Talbot some 170 years ago in the first sun drawings that also often pictured architectural forms. It was Talbot’s surprising discovery that where a weaker chemical solution was more thinly spread, greater light sensitivity was actualized, yet this virtual image had then to be chemically developed in a second step. Thus, Derungs unevenly finished spongings suggestively trace back to this originary technology (although his sweeps are the stains of uneven development and not those of the initial preparation of light–sensitive material). Umberto Eco, “Critique of the Image” in “Articulations of Cinematic Code” Cinematics 1, 1970. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007). Geoffrey Batchen, Burning With Desire: the Conception of Photography (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999). (shrink)

Beginning from the standpoint that technologically mediated education is widely prescribed for developing countries, the author first probes the nature, meaning, and impact of this agenda through its economic and political context. He argues that this context produces and shapes the rush to technology. He then examines the notion of education and the nature of the claimed technological mediation of this process, concluding that the constraints of technological mediation, and its destructive impact on teaching, show its inability to provide for (...) adequate educational development (which is necessarily grounded in a concrete human relationship in a real—not virtual—dynamic social and cultural context). He closes with recommendations for a critical rather than a wholesale adoption of technology and encourages resistance to the present press for mindless adoption. (shrink)

In the present article we discuss the relevance of the mirror mechanism for our sense of self and our sense of others. We argue that, by providing us with an understanding from the inside of actions, the mirror mechanism radically challenges the traditional view of the self and of the others. Indeed, this mechanism not only reveals the common ground on the basis of which we become aware of ourselves as selves distinct from other selves, but also sheds new (...) light on the content of our self and other experience, showing that we primarily experience ourselves and the others in terms of our own and of their motor possibilities respectively. -/- . (shrink)

In the present article we discuss the relevance of the mirror mechanism for our sense of self and our sense of others. We argue that, by providing us with an understanding from the inside of actions, the mirror mechanism radically challenges the traditional view of the self and of the others. Indeed, this mechanism not only reveals the common ground on the basis of which we become aware of ourselves as selves distinct from other selves, but also sheds new (...) light on the content of our self and other experience, showing that we primarily experience ourselves and the others in terms of our own and of their motor possibilities respectively. (shrink)

BackgroundPrevention of mother to child transmission of HIV remains a key public health priority in most developing countries. The provider Initiated Opt – Out Prenatal HIV Screening Approach, recommended by the World Health Organization lately has been adopted and translated into policy in most Sub – Saharan African countries. To better ascertain the ethical reasons for or against the use of this approach, we carried out a literature review of the ethics literature.MethodsPapers published in English and French Languages between 1990 (...) and 2015 from the following data bases were searched: Pubmed, Cochrane literature, Embase, Cinhal, Web of Science and Google Scholar. After screening from 302 identified relevant articles, 21 articles were retained for the critical review.DiscussionMost authors considered this approach ethically justifiable due to its potential benefits to the mother, foetus and society. The breaching of respect for autonomy was considered acceptable on the grounds of libertarian paternalism. Most authors considered the Opt - Out approach to be less stigmatizing than the Opt - In. The main arguments against the Opt - Out approach were: non respect of patient autonomy, informed consent becoming a meaningless concept and the HIV test becoming compulsory, risk of losing trust in health care providers, neglect of social and psychological implications of doing an HIV test, risk of aggravation of stigma if all tested patients are not properly cared for and neglect of sociocultural peculiarities.ConclusionsThe Opt – Out approach could be counterproductive in case gender sensitive issues within the various sociocultural representations are neglected, and actions to offer holistic care to all women who shall potentially test positive for HIV were not effectively ascertained. The Provider Initiated Opt – Out Prenatal HIV Screening option remains ethically acceptable, but deserves caution, active monitoring and evaluation within the translation of this approach into to practice. (shrink)

Background: Cinematherapy and video treatments are artistic therapeutic techniques by which the individuals are exposed to their psycho-physical difficulties through the stories of the characters on the screen who are coping with the same issues that the patients are. Although these techniques are increasingly common within modern art therapies, there are neither comprehensive classifications of the different approaches nor agreement on their effectiveness. We performed a scoping review, describing different methodological approaches and outcome measures in cinematherapy and video treatments.Methodology: (...) We searched articles in PubMed, PsycINFO and Google Scholar. We included: articles in which subjects were treated for their difficulties with videos or films, articles written in English. Review articles and papers describing a research protocol without data collection were not included.Results: We analyzed 38 studies. Thirty-six reported a positive effect of the treatment. Seven studies used classical cinematherapy, adopting a qualitative approach to measure the therapy outcome. Thirty-one studies used different video treatments, 8 of which were defined as randomized controlled trials with specific objective therapy outcomes. Studies were mainly focused on behavioral and psychological difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorders and Schizophrenia.Conclusion: Studies using video treatments more often rely upon structured experimental designs; on the contrary, those who used classical cinematherapy produced descriptive results. A more standardized methodological approach in terms of experimental design, procedure, and objective outcome measure is needed to provide evidence on the effectiveness of these techniques, promoting its application in the clinical field. (shrink)

Pragmatic approaches to genetic testing are discussed and appraised. Whilst there are various schools of pragmatism, the Deweyan appraoch seems to be the most appreciated in bioethics as it allows a historical approach indebted to Hegel. This in turn allows the pragmatist to specify and balance principles in various contexts. There are problems with where to draw a line between what is referred to here as the micro- and macro-level of doing bioethics, unless one is simply to be classified as (...) a principlist. Whilst most discussions on genetics occur at a macro level, most specifying must be done also at a micro level – the clinical encounter. Whilst pragmatism encourages us to understand better social and scientific factors and puts into perspective statements like ‘playing God’, doubts are raised about the ‘consensus’ process and how one can put aside fundamental values such as the moral status of the embryo on which there is general disagreement. If those doing pragmatism do not endorse these values, there seems to be little ground for process and compromise with those who do. It seems therefore that pragmatism cannot ignore values, even those which are not endorsed by everyone. (shrink)

In “Mad Narratives: Self-Constitutions Through the Diagnostic Looking Glass,” by using narrative approaches to the self, I explore how the diagnosis of mental disorder shapes personal identities and influences flourishing. My particular focus is the diagnosis grounded on the criteria provided by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). I develop two connected accounts pertaining to the self and mental disorder. I use the memoirs and personal stories written by the subjects with a DSM diagnosis as illustrations to (...) bolster my claims. First, expanding on the narrative approaches to the self, I explain how narratives about a subject shape her self-constitution. I elucidate how this process is generated by drawing on research in developmental psychology, cognitive science, and social psychology. Next, using this account as a springboard, I argue that the DSM diagnosis of mental disorder serves as a source of narrative, entering into the patients’ autobiographical and social narratives. This plays an important role in the diagnosed subjects’ self-understanding, self-constitution and flourishing. In this vein, how mental disorders are classified is not only a theoretical question about accurately taxonomizing the various experiences related to mental distress but also an ethical question about which ways of talking about mental disorders will allow subjects to respond effectively to their psychological distress, to flourish and to live autonomous and fulfilling lives. Finally, I suggest that the DSM-based narratives wield a double-edged sword when it comes to the subject’s flourishing: On the one hand, there are problems with some DSM-based narratives that stem from the DSM diagnostic schema and the culture of DSM diagnoses. These problems render these DSM-based narratives unbeneficial for flourishing as they constrain the range of adoptive social, cognitive and emotional responses the subjects can give to their mental disorders. On the other hand, there are grounds to believe that some DSM-based narratives help subjects to flourish. For instance, they provide certainty to subjects' otherwise puzzling symptoms and help them reach out to others with similar experiences. Understanding how the DSM-based narratives can both benefit and harm will help us address problems with psychiatric diagnoses and the dissemination of knowledge about mental disorders in popular culture. The project aims to convince both philosophers and psychiatrists that no plausible theory of the self can be developed without attending to the topic of mental disorder and that no theory of mental disorder can be complete without devising the tools provided by the philosophical approaches to the self as well as developmental and social psychology. It also calls for methodological alterations in mental health ethics research, arguing that a careful scrutiny of mental disorder memoirs can advance the ethical underpinnings to the practice of psychiatry. (shrink)

Epigenetic markers could potentially be used for risk assessment in risk-stratified population-based cancer screening programmes. Whereas current screening programmes generally aim to detect existing cancer, epigenetic markers could be used to provide risk estimates for not-yet-existing cancers. Epigenetic risk-predictive tests may thus allow for new opportunities for risk assessment for developing cancer in the future. Since epigenetic changes are presumed to be modifiable, preventive measures, such as lifestyle modification, could be used to reduce the risk of cancer. Moreover, epigenetic markers (...) might be used to monitor the response to risk-reducing interventions. In this article, we address ethical concerns related to personal responsibility raised by epigenetic risk-predictive tests in cancer population screening. Will individuals increasingly be held responsible for their health, that is, will they be held accountable for bad health outcomes? Will they be blamed or subject to moral sanctions? We will illustrate these ethical concerns by means of a Europe-wide research programme that develops an epigenetic risk-predictive test for female cancers. Subsequently, we investigate when we can hold someone responsible for her actions. We argue that the standard conception of personal responsibility does not provide an appropriate framework to address these concerns. A different, prospective account of responsibility meets part of our concerns, that is, concerns about inequality of opportunities, but does not meet all our concerns about personal responsibility. We argue that even if someone is responsible on grounds of a negative and/or prospective account of responsibility, there may be moral and practical reasons to abstain from moral sanctions. (shrink)

In the debate surrounding the introduction of non-invasive prenatal testing in prenatal screening programmes, the concept of routinisation is often used to refer to concerns and potential negative consequences of the test. A literature analysis shows that routinisation has many different meanings, which can be distinguished in three major versions of the concept. Each of these versions comprises several inter-related fears and concerns regarding prenatal screening and particularly regarding NIPT in three areas: informed choice, freedom to choose and consequences for (...) people with a disability. Three of the strongest arguments raised under the flag of routinisation are assessed for their validity: the threat that NIPT poses to informed choice, the potential increase in uptake of first-trimester prenatal screening and its consequences for social pressure to participate in screening or terminate affected pregnancies, and the negative consequences for disabled people. These routinisation arguments lack empirical or normative ground. However, the results of this analysis do not imply that no attention should be paid to possible problems surrounding the introduction of NIPT. At least two problems remain and should be addressed: there should be an ongoing debate about the requirements of informed choice, particularly related to an expanded scope of prenatal screening. Also, reproductive autonomy can only be achieved when expecting parents’ options are variegated, real and valuable, so that they can continue to choose whether or not to screen or to terminate a pregnancy. (shrink)

Background: Expanded newborn screening generates incidental results, notably carrier results. Yet newborn screening programmes typically restrict parental choice regarding receipt of this non-health serving genetic information. Healthcare providers play a key role in educating families or caring for screened infants and have strong beliefs about the management of incidental results. Methods: To inform policy on disclosure of infant sickle cell disorder (SCD) carrier results, a mixed-methods study of healthcare providers was conducted in Ontario, Canada, to understand attitudes regarding result management (...) using a cross-sectional survey (N = 1615) and semistructured interviews (N = 42). Results: Agreement to reasons favouring disclosure of SCD carrier results was high (65.1%–92.7%) and to reasons opposing disclosure was low (4.1%–18.1%). Genetics professionals expressed less support for arguments favouring disclosure (35.3%–78.8%), and more agreement with arguments opposing disclosure (15.7%–51.9%). A slim majority of genetics professionals (51.9%) agreed that a reason to avoid disclosure was the importance of allowing the child to decide to receive results. Qualitatively, there was a perceived “duty” to disclose, that if the clinician possessed the information, the clinician could not withhold it. Discussion: While a majority of respondents perceived a duty to disclose the incidental results of newborn screening, the policy implications of these attitudes are not obvious. In particular, policy must balance descriptive ethics (ie, what providers believe) and normative ethics (ie, what duty-based principles oblige), address dissenting opinion and consider the relevance of moral principles grounded in clinical obligations for public health initiatives. (shrink)

As rapid advances in human genetic research are transferred into new areas of genetic technology, questions relatingto the use of these techniques will escalate. This paper examines some of the policy concerns surrounding recent developments in genetic screening. It discusses the impetus and implications of genetic screening in general, examines various applications, and analyzes the costs and benefits of screening programs currently in existence. Special emphasis is placed on whether or not screening should be considered a matter of public health (...) and mandated on those grounds. This paper argues against any compulsory screening programs except where the disease is easily identified, applicable across social groups, and treatable. While screening services for carriers of genetic disease and prenatal diagnosis should be made available and education programs should be expanded substantially, the burden of proof for involuntary programs is placed on the proponents. There is little public health justification at thb time for mandatory screening though this does not preclude future public health demands. It is argued that the goals and justification of various human genetic technologies must be examined at this time due to the rapid advancement of the research as well as the ultimate benefits promised for humankind. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This paper adopts the lens of environmental ethics to explore whether there is a disparity between the ethical approaches of a company in comparison to those expressed by stakeholders in relation to environmental issues, specifically those communicated through the corporate environmental report. Discourse analysis is adopted to explore the environmental section of the sustainability reports of the case study company as compared to the responses of a sample of the company’s stakeholders, using the lens of three branches of environmental ethics: (...) utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics. Results indicate that the ethical approaches expressed in the case study company’s environmental reports were grounded in utilitarianism and deontology, in contrast to a virtue ethics approach expressed by external stakeholders. The disparity widened as the relationship between the company and the stakeholder became less direct. This disparity signals a failure to meet one of the primary purposes for preparing sustainability reports: to engage with stakeholders. As such this research contributes to the literature by identifying a disparity in the how this information is communicated compared with how it is perceived by stakeholders. This has important implications for the success of current stakeholder engagement practices. (shrink)

This article draws on an empirical investigation of how Australia’s cervical screening program came to be the way it is. The study was carried out using grounded theory methodology and primarily uses interviews with experts involved in establishing, updating or administering the program. We found strong differences in experts’ normative evaluations of the program and beliefs about optimal ways of achieving the same basic outcome: a reduction in morbidity and mortality caused by invasive cervical cancer. Our analysis demonstrates how variations (...) in values and preferences associated with key concepts underpinning public health such as benefit, harm and burden led to different perspectives on the purpose of an organized cervical screening program. These variations were largely driven by different bases of professional experience. Differently conceived purposes in turn led to conflict over how the program should be operationalized. Following Frith’s model of empirical bioethics, the results of the study both draw on and inform the existing public health and screening ethics literature. (shrink)

In the USA, there are missed opportunities to diagnose hepatitis C virus in pregnancy because screening is currently risk-stratified and thus primarily limited to individuals who disclose history of injection drug use or sexually transmitted infection risks. Over the past decade, the opioid epidemic has dramatically increased incidence of HCV and a feasible, well-tolerated cure was introduced. Considering these developments, recent evidence suggests universal HCV screening in pregnancy would be cost-effective and several professional organisations have called for updated national policy. (...) Historically, universal screening has been financially disincentivised on the healthcare system level, particularly since new diagnoses may generate an obligation to provide expensive treatments to a population largely reliant on public health resources. Here, we provide ethical arguments supporting universal HCV screening in pregnancy grounded in obligations to respect for persons, beneficence and justice. First, universal prenatal HCV screening respects pregnant women as persons by promoting their long-term health outside of pregnancy. Additionally, universal screening would optimise health outcomes within current treatment guidelines and may support research on treatment during pregnancy. Finally, universal screening would avoid potential harms of risk-stratifying pregnant women by highly stigmatised substance use and sexual behaviours. (shrink)

BackgroundCervical cancer disproportionately burdens disadvantaged women. Organised cervical screening aims to make cancer prevention available to all women in a population, yet screening uptake and cancer incidence and mortality are strongly correlated with socioeconomic status. Reaching underscreened populations is a stated priority in many screening programs, usually with an emphasis on something like ‘equity’. Equity is a poorly defined and understood concept. We aimed to explain experts’ perspectives on how cervical screening programs might justifiably respond to ‘the underscreened’.MethodsThis paper reports (...) on a grounded theory study of cervical screening experts involved in program organisation. Participants were 23 experts from several countries and a range of backgrounds: gynecology; epidemiology; public health; pathology; general practice; policy making. Data were gathered via semi-structured interview and concepts developed through transcript coding and memo writing.ResultsMost experts expressed an intuitive commitment to reducing systematic differences in screening participation or cancer outcomes. They took three different implicit positions, however, on what made organised programs justifiable with respect to underscreened populations. These were: 1) accepting that population screening is likely to miss certain disenfranchised groups for practical and cultural reasons, and focusing on maximising mainstream reach; 2) identifying and removing barriers to screening; and 3) providing parallel tailored screening services that attended to different cultural needs. Positions tended to fall along country of practice lines.ConclusionsExperts emphasised the provision of opportunity for underscreened populations to take up screening. A focus on opportunity appeared to rely on tacit premises not supported by evidence: that provision of meaningful opportunity leads to increased uptake, and that increased uptake of an initial screening test by disadvantaged populations would decrease cervical cancer incidence and mortality. There was little attention to anything other than the point of testing, or the difficulties disadvantaged women can have in accessing follow up care. The different approaches to ‘improving equity’ taken by participants are differently justified, and differently justifiable, but none attend directly to the broader conditions of disadvantage. (shrink)

This paper examines one particular justification for the screening and termination of embryos/fetuses which possess genetic features known to cause disability. The particular case is that put forward in several places by John Harris. He argues that the obligation to prevent needless suffering justifies the prevention of the births of disabled neonates. The paper begins by rehearsing Harris's case. Then, drawing upon claims advanced in a recent paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics, it is subjected to critical scrutiny, focusing (...) on Harris's “suffering claim” .1 It is argued that the suffering claim must be false if understood as an empirical claim. And, even if understood as a conceptual truth, it mistakenly assimilates the concepts of harm and suffering. Finally, again focusing on Harris's recent work in this area, his characterisation of disability as a “harmed condition” is shown not to apply in the case of at least some moderate forms of intellectual disability. (shrink)

On June 22, 2008, in a television interview with Alexander Kluge, the Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke was asked to explain his ethical approach to filmmaking. His response was that the prerequisite for making films ethically lies in a filmmaking practice that takes the spectator seriously and stimulates the viewer’s imagination. Haneke’s raison d’être is grounded in the idea that unlike literature, film runs the risk of restricting people’s imagination by showing and clarifying everything. As he says, “one ought to work (...) against this wherever possible…Film, like any other art, should produce a dialogue, not a monologue. Omitting explanation is one of the many ways of inspiring the viewer’s imagination.”Haneke’s... (shrink)

Richard Dawkins has a dilemma when it comes to design arguments. On the one hand, he maintains that it was Darwin who killed off design and so implies that his rejection of design depends upon the findings of modern science. On the other hand, he follows Hume when he claims that appealing to a designer does not explain anything and so implies that rejection of design need not be based on the findings of modern science. These contrasting approaches lead to (...) the following dilemma: if he claims that Darwinism is necessary for rejecting design, he has no satisfactory response to design arguments based on the order in the laws of physics or the fine-tuning of the physical constants; alternatively, if Humean arguments are doing most of the work, this would undermine one of his main contentions, that atheism is justified by science and especially by evolution. In any case, his Humean arguments do not provide a more secure basis for his atheism because they are seriously flawed. A particular problem is that his argument for the improbability of theism rests on a highly questionable application of probability theory since, even if it were sound, it would only establish that the prior probability of God’s existence is low, a conclusion which is compatible with the posterior probability of God’s existence being high. (shrink)

For more than 100 years, anthropologists have collected ethnographic research among communities who assert that the spirits, animal allies, and other entities of the unseen world are “really real,” yet we have historically contextualized this information under the umbrella of cultural relativism rather than taking the veracity of these claims seriously. In the last decade, some anthropologists claim that our discipline has finally undergone an ontological turn, which opens a door for anthropologists to finally take claims of nonhuman sentience seriously (...) under the umbrella of ontological, rather than cultural, relativism. This paper takes issue with ontological relativism as just one more frame for explaining away the stories of other-than-human consciousness that ethnographers report and suggests that there is an urgent need to consider the relevance, rather than the relativism, of other-than-human consciousness. It looks to Michael Harner's work as a welcome alternative to ontological relativism and encourages opening our minds to a reconsideration of what is “really real.”. (shrink)

The voluntary and informed consent of subjects has been the central focus of concern in research reviews, overshadowing the importance of all other considerations. The Nuremberg Code, with its rights-based protection of the subject's autonomy above all else, made it difficult to justify research with no intended benefit when subjects are incompetent to make a valid informed choice to participate. Subsequent codes providing for research with incompetent subjects followed the lead of Nuremberg, substituting the informed authorization of a proxy for (...) the informed consent of the subject. (shrink)

Liberalism, or at least twentieth century liberalism, is today out of fashion amongst the electorate of the United States and Britain. Even within the academy—often, contrary to liberalism itself, one of the last institutions to reflect major shifts in ideology—it appears to be losing its grip. The rise of neo-contractarianism in social and political philosophy and neo-conservatism in economics are only two pieces of evidence of its demise. Nevertheless, reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated in some quarters of (...) social philosophy; in particular, it still thrives as the received opinion whenever the issue of paternalism is raised. And, of course, the single most important liberal standard-bearer here is John Stuart Mill. (shrink)

Recent studies show that returning global health trainees often report having felt inadequately prepared to deal with ethical dilemmas they encountered during outreach clinical work. While global health training guidelines emphasize the importance of developing ethical and cultural competencies before embarking on fieldwork, their practical implementation is often lacking and consists mainly of recommendations regarding professional behavior and discussions of case studies. Evidence suggests that one of the most effective ways to teach certain skills in global health, including ethical and (...) cultural competencies, is through service learning. This approach combines community service with experiential learning. Unfortunately, this approach to global health ethics training is often unattainable due to a lack of supervision and resources available at host locations. This often means that trainees enter global health initiatives unprepared to deal with ethical dilemmas, which has the potential for adverse consequences for patients and host institutions, thus contributing to growing concerns about exploitation and “medical tourism.” From an educational perspective, exposure alone to such ethical dilemmas does not contribute to learning, due to lack of proper guidance. We propose that the tension between the benefits of service learning on the one hand and the respect for patients’ rights and well-being on the other could be resolved by the application of a simulation-based approach to global health ethics education. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe last two plates of Aby Warburg's unpublished picture-atlasMnemosyne, which is thought today to be among Warburg's most innovative contributions to the study of art history, are here analyzed in detail. These plates were assembled in the summer before his death in 1929; they reflect experiences of the time he spent in Rome during 1928 and 1929 and are here understood as Warburg's attempt to visualize his theory of the symbol.TheBilderatlaswas to have a two-fold function: Warburg planned it to (...) be a summary of his life's work; he also wanted its plates to reflect his theory of pictures and images. I argue here that particularly plate 79 is indeed an attempt tovisualizethe theoretical foundation of Warburg's view of the representational function of pictures. It refers to the origin of the power of images in sacrificial rituals and to the limits of this power. Warburg singles out the Eucharist and the doctrine of transsubstantiation to illustrate the role of the symbol in rituals.With this emphasis on ritual as a necessary complement for the functioning of the symbol, Warburg reaffirms his theory of the image to include the social act. This inclusion can be shown to be motivated by contemporary political concerns. (shrink)

Previous research has linked the concept of number and other ordinal series to space via a spatially oriented mental number line. In addition, it has been shown that in visual scene recognition and production, speakers of a language with a left-to-right orthography respond faster to and tend to draw images in which the agent of an action is located to the left of the patient. In this study, we aim to bridge these two lines of research by employing a novel (...) method that measures the spatial bias produced by transitive sentences that use a wide variety of abstract and concrete verbs. Across four experiments, participants read sentences and then responded to probe words appearing on either the left or right sides of the screen. Probe words consisted of agents, patients, other words in the sentence, or newly encountered words. We found consistent lateral biases to responding to agents and patients, which appears to be independent of order of mention in the sentence but which does reflect a correspondence between position in the sentence and role in the causal sequence of the action. Our results also show that this spatial bias is driven by the use of the hands in two different ways: The left hand shows a greater sensitivity to the spatial effect than the right hand, and vocal responses produce no spatial effect. (shrink)

In the form of inference known as inference to the best explanation there are various ways to characterise what is meant by the best explanation. This paper considers a number of such characterisations including several based on confirmation measures and several based on coherence measures. The goal is to find a measure which adequately captures what is meant by 'best' and which also yields the truth with a high degree of probability. Computer simulations are used to show that the overlap (...) coherence measure achieves this goal, enabling the true explanation to be identified almost as often as an approach which simply selects the most probable explanation. Further advantages to this approach are also considered in the case where there is uncertainty in the prior probability distribution. (shrink)

This paper considers an application of work on probabilistic measures of coherence to inference to the best explanation. Rather than considering information reported from different sources, as is usually the case when discussing coherence measures, the approach adopted here is to use a coherence measure to rank competing explanations in terms of their coherence with a piece of evidence. By adopting such an approach IBE can be made more precise and so a major objection to this mode of reasoning can (...) be addressed. Advantages of the coherence - based approach are pointed out by comparing it with several other ways to characterize ‘ best explanation ’ and showing that it takes into account their insights while overcoming some of their problems. The consequences of adopting this approach for IBE are discussed in the context of recent discussions about the relationship between IBE and Bayesianism. (shrink)