In February 2022, the Court of Protection was faced with the question of whether a kidney transplant was in the best interests of William Verden. The case highlighted the legal, ethical and clinical complexities of treating potential kidney transplant patients with impaired decision-making. Above all, it exposed the potential risk of discrimination on the basis of disability when treatment decisions in relation to potential kidney recipients with impaired capacity are being made. In this paper, we draw on the Verden case (...) to (1) examine the role of the Court of Protection in cases relating to patients with impaired decision-making capacity who require a transplant, (2) to highlight the lack of empirical data on patients who have faced inequitable access to transplant and (3) highlight the shortcomings of the existing legal and regulatory framework in England and Wales guiding clinical decision making for patients in William’s position. We consequently argue that there is a clear need for action to ensure equitable access to transplant for those in William’s position. Furthermore, we suggest that there is a responsibility incumbent on policy makers and clinicians alike to develop a meaningful, and meaningfully operational, framework centred on preventing discrimination against potential organ recipients based on their decision-making capacity. (shrink)

Previous research demonstrates that implicitly learned probability information can guide visual attention. We examined whether the probability of an object changing can be implicitly learned and then used to improve change detection performance. In a series of six experiments, participants completed 120–130 training change detection trials. In four of the experiments the object that changed color was the same shape on every trial. Participants were not explicitly aware of this change probability manipulation and change detection performance was not improved for (...) the trained shape versus untrained shapes. In two of the experiments, the object that changed color was always in the same general location . Although participants were not explicitly aware of the change probability, implicit knowledge of it did improve change detection performance in the trained location. These results indicate that improved change detection performance through implicitly learned change probability occurs for location but not shape. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In summary, the creation and maintenance of the Wistar Rats as standardized animals can be attributed to the breeding work of Helen Dean King, coupled with the management and husbandry methods of Milton Greenman and Louise Duhring, and with supporting documentation provided by Henry Donaldson. The widespread use of the Wistar Rats, however, is a function of the ingenuity of Milton Greenman who saw in them a way for a small institution to provide service to science. Greenman's rhetoric, as captured (...) in his Director's Reports, prepared annually from 1905 until his death in 1937, shows that he was unusually sensitive to his times and to the economics of science and of society. In the era when biology was being defined, he recognized in the rat the potential to be a living analog to the pure chemicals that legitimated experimental science. From management literature he extracted the ideals of uniformity of product, standards of quality, and efficiency of production, applying them to scientific practice to generate an animal model that thrives as standard equipment in laboratories throughout the world today.I will close with a quote from Frederick W. Taylor that is a cogent statement of the contribution to science and scientific progress made by standardized tools and their creators. Equating the surgeon and the workman, Taylor wrote: [He is given] the finest implements, each one of which has been the subject of special study and development ... [and] the very best knowledge of his predecessors; and, provided with standard implements and methods which represent the best knowledge of the world up to date, he is able to use his own originality and ingenuity to make real additions to the world's knowledge, instead of reinventing things which are old.Standardized tools, whether surgeons' implements or laboratory-bred rats, are one of the vehicles for carrying scientific knowledge forward from generation to generation. In this sense, Greenman's Wistar Rats have done their job, in his words, of “providing service to science.”. (shrink)

The use of cochlear implants, especially for prelingually deafened children, has aroused heated debate. Members and proponents of Deaf culture vigorously oppose implants both as a seriously invasive treatment of dubious efficacy and as a threat to Deaf culture. Some find these arguments persuasive; others do not. And in this context arise questions about the extent to which individuals with disabilities may decline treatments to ameliorate disabling conditions. When they do so, to what extent may they call upon society to (...) provide supportive services and accommodations? (shrink)

Whether or not quantum physics can account for molecular structure is a matter of considerable controversy. Three of the problems raised in this regard are the problems of molecular structure. We argue that these problems are just special cases of the measurement problem of quantum mechanics: insofar as the measurement problem is solved, the problems of molecular structure are resolved as well. In addition, we explore one consequence of our argument: that claims about the reduction or emergence of molecular structure (...) cannot be settled independently of the choice of a particular resolution to the measurement problem. Specifically, we consider how three standard putative solutions to the measurement problem inform our under- standing of a molecule in isolation, as well as of chemistry’s relation to quantum physics. (shrink)

This collection contains twenty-one thought-provoking essays on the controversies surrounding the moral and legal distinctions between euthanasia and "letting die." Since public awareness of this issue has increased this second edition includes nine entirely new essays which bring the treatment of the subject up-to-date. The urgency of this issue can be gauged in recent developments such as the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands, "how-to" manuals topping the bestseller charts in the United States, and the many headlines devoted to (...) Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who has assisted dozens of patients to die. The essays address the range of questions involved in this issue pertaining especially to the fields of medical ethics, public policymaking, and social philosophy. The discussions consider the decisions facing medical and public policymakers, how those decisions will affect the elderly and terminally ill, and the medical and legal ramifications for patients in a permanently vegetative state, as well as issues of parent/infant rights. The book is divided into two sections. The first, "Euthanasia and the Termination of Life-Prolonging Treatment" includes an examination of the 1976 Karen Quinlan Supreme Court decision and selections from the 1990 Supreme Court decision in the case of Nancy Cruzan. Featured are articles by law professor George Fletcher and philosophers Michael Tooley, James Rachels, and Bonnie Steinbock, with new articles by Rachels, and Thomas Sullivan. The second section, "Philosophical Considerations," probes more deeply into the theoretical issues raised by the killing/letting die controversy, illustrating exceptionally well the dispute between two rival theories of ethics, consequentialism and deontology. It also includes a corpus of the standard thought on the debate by Jonathan Bennet, Daniel Dinello, Jeffrie Murphy, John Harris, Philipa Foot, Richard Trammell, and N. Ann Davis, and adds articles new to this edition by Bennett, Foot, Warren Quinn, Jeff McMahan, and Judith Lichtenberg. (shrink)

While it might seem prima facie plausible that divine foreknowledge is all that is needed for prophecy, this seems incorrect. To issue a prophecy, God hasto know not just how someone will act, but how someone would act were the prophecy issued. This makes some think that Middle Knowledge is required.I argue that Thomas Flint’s two Middle Knowledge based accounts of prophecy are unsatisfactory, but one of them can be repaired. However the resources needed for repair also yield a sketch (...) of a foreknowledge-only account of prophecy. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONK Negotiating Positions: The Politics of Virtue and Virtu [Virtu] rouses enmity toward order, toward the lies that are concealed in every order, ...

This research ethics article focuses on an unexpected finding from my Master’s thesis examining bereaved participants’ experiences of taking part in sensitive qualitative research: some participants wanted their real names used in my written dissertation and any subsequent empirical publications. While conducting interviews for my thesis and explaining the consent process, early responses highlighted the problematic notion of anonymity for participants engaged in qualitative research. Several participants asserted the significance of immortalizing their deceased loved ones in the pages of my (...) thesis, retaining ownership over their words and maintaining a public attachment to their personal identity. The preliminary responses also resonate with concerns regarding the ethics of assigning pseudonyms and anonymity to participants in qualitative research. Themes in the extant literature tend to centre on issues of researchers’ accountability and transparency towards participants or respect. The present article contributes to the debates surrounding anonymity and confidentiality within qualitative research, and also expands on specific issues pertaining to bereavement research ethics. (shrink)

Most of us believe that we are entitled to treat members of other species in ways which would be considered wrong if inflicted on members of our own species. We kill them for food, keep them confined, use them in painful experiments. The moral philosopher has to ask what relevant difference justifies this difference in treatment. A look at this question will lead us to re-examine the distinctions which we have assumed make a moral difference.

Discussion of the relevance of grounding to substantiveness, theory-choice, and “location problems” in metaphysics.

In light of the recent emergence of predictive techniques in law enforcement to forecast crimes before they occur, this paper examines the temporal operation of power exercised by predictive policing algorithms. I argue that predictive policing exercises power through a paranoid style that constitutes a form of temporal governmentality. Temporality is especially pertinent to understanding what is ethically at stake in predictive policing as it is continuous with a historical racialized practice of organizing, managing, controlling, and stealing time. After first (...) clarifying the concept of temporal governmentality, I apply this lens to Chicago Police Department’s Strategic Subject List. This predictive algorithm operates, I argue, through a paranoid logic that aims to preempt future possibilities of crime on the basis of a criminal past codified in historical crime data. (shrink)

This article argues that the meaning of the word ‘autism’ experienced a radical shift in the early 1960s in Britain which was contemporaneous with a growth in epidemiological and statistical studies in child psychiatry. The first part of the article explores how ‘autism’ was used as a category to describe hallucinations and unconscious fantasy life in infants through the work of significant child psychologists and psychoanalysts such as Jean Piaget, Lauretta Bender, Leo Kanner and Elwyn James Anthony. Theories of autism (...) were then associated both with schizophrenia in adults and with psychoanalytic styles of reasoning. The closure of institutions for ‘mental defectives’ and the growth in speech therapy services in the 1960s and 1970s encouraged new models for understanding autism in infants and children. The second half of the article explores how researchers such as Victor Lotter and Michael Rutter used the category of autism to reconceptualize psychological development in infants and children via epidemiological studies. These historical changes have influenced the form and function of later research into autism and related conditions. (shrink)

Sophocles' Antigone is a touchstone in democratic, feminist and legal theory, and possibly the most commented upon play in the history of philosophy and political theory. Bonnie Honig's rereading of it therefore involves intervening in a host of literatures and unsettling many of their governing assumptions. Exploring the power of Antigone in a variety of political, cultural, and theoretical settings, Honig identifies the 'Antigone-effect' - which moves those who enlist Antigone for their politics from activism into lamentation. She argues (...) that Antigone's own lamentations can be seen not just as signs of dissidence but rather as markers of a rival world view with its own sovereignty and vitality. Honig argues that the play does not offer simply a model for resistance politics or 'equal dignity in death', but a more positive politics of counter-sovereignty and solidarity which emphasizes equality in life. (shrink)

An interpretative history of human rights in Africa, exploring indigenous rights traditions, anti-slavery, anti-colonialism, post-colonial violations and pro-democracy movements.

Many explanations in molecular biology, neuroscience, and other fields of experimental biology describe mechanisms underlying phenomena of interest. These mechanistic explanations account for higher-level phenomena in terms of causally active parts and their spatiotemporal organization. What makes such a mechanistic description explanatory? The best-developed answer, Craver's causal-mechanical account, has several weaknesses. It does not fully explicate the target of explanation, interlevel relation, or interactive nonmodular character of many biological mechanisms as we understand them. An alternative account of MEx, emphasizing interdependence (...) among a mechanism's components, remedies these difficulties. (shrink)

En esta era digital contemporánea, la constante creación y consumo de arte e imágenes visuales se ha vuelto predominante. Sin embargo, sigue existiendo la necesidad imperante de alfabetización visual. Esta investigación explora el impacto positivo de la educación artística en la vida de los estudiantes y aborda las desigualdades en la oferta de clases de arte en España y Estados Unidos. También enfatiza el rol fundamental de la integración de las artes de manera interdisciplinaria y transversal, instando a los encargados (...) de formular políticas educativas a priorizar la educación artística mejorando la legislación educativa y la asignación de recursos. El artículo examina las dificultades para garantizar el acceso equitativo a la educación artística y señala las oportunidades que se pierden cuando las habilidades de alfabetización visual no se desarrollan. Los resultados indican la necesidad de incorporar el arte en el plan de estudios de todas las asignaturas y así promover las habilidades de alfabetización visual. El artículo concluye ofreciendo sugerencias para integrar el arte en las clases obligatorias y promoviendo una educación artística equitativa en las escuelas. Esta investigación contribuye al discurso vigente sobre el potencial transformador de la educación artística en el panorama digital actual. (shrink)

This book intervenes in contemporary debates about the threat posed to democratic life by political emergencies. Must emergency necessarily enhance and centralize top-down forms of sovereignty? Those who oppose executive branch enhancement often turn instead to law, insisting on the sovereignty of the rule of law or demanding that law rather than force be used to resolve conflicts with enemies. But are these the only options? Or are there more democratic ways to respond to invocations of emergency politics? Looking at (...) how emergencies in the past and present have shaped the development of democracy, Bonnie Honig argues that democracies must resist emergency's pull to focus on life's necessities because these tend to privatize and isolate citizens rather than bring us together on behalf of hopeful futures. Emphasizing the connections between mere life and more life, emergence and emergency, Honig argues that emergencies call us to attend anew to a neglected paradox of democratic politics: that we need good citizens with aspirational ideals to make good politics while we need good politics to infuse citizens with idealism.Honig takes a broad approach to emergency, considering immigration politics, new rights claims, contemporary food politics and the infrastructure of consumption, and the limits of law during the Red Scare of the early twentieth century. Taking its bearings from Moses Mendelssohn, Franz Rosenzweig, and other Jewish thinkers, this is a major contribution to modern thought about the challenges and risks of democratic orientation and action in response to emergency. (shrink)

Some combinations of attitudes--of beliefs, credences, intentions, preferences, hopes, fears, and so on--do not fit together right: they are incoherent. A natural idea is that there are requirements of "structural rationality" that forbid us from being in these incoherent states. Yet a number of surprisingly difficult challenges arise for this idea. These challenges have recently led many philosophers to attempt to minimize or eliminate structural rationality, arguing that it is just a "shadow" of "substantive rationality"--that is, correctly responding to one's (...) reasons. -/- In *Fitting Things Together*, Alex Worsnip pushes back against this trend--defending the view that structural rationality is a genuine kind of rationality, distinct from and irreducible to substantive rationality, and tackling the most important challenges for this view. In so doing, he gives an original positive theory of the nature of coherence and structural rationality that explains how the diverse range of instances of incoherence can be unified under a general account, and how facts about coherence are normatively significant. He also shows how a failure to focus on coherence requirements as a distinctive phenomenon and distinguish them adequately from requirements of substantive rationality has led to confusion and mistakes in several substantive debates in epistemology and ethics. -/- Taken as a whole, Fitting Things Together provides the first sustained defense of the view that structural rationality is a genuine, autonomous, unified, and normatively significant phenomenon. (shrink)

Hospital ethics committees are common, but not universal, in small hospitals. A needs assessment was completed at a 155-bed community hospital in order to adapt an academic tertiary center model for a clinical ethics committee to fit the needs of the small hospital community. Of 678 questionnaires distributed, 209 were completed. Data suggested that clinical staff frequently experienced ethical dilemmas. Significantly more nonphysicians indicated that they would utilize a consultation service, if available, compared to physicians (p = 0.0067). The data (...) also indicated that the majority of staff (>80 percent) desired more education in clinical ethics. Physicians preferred annual or bi-annual hospital-wide grand rounds, compared to nonphysicians, who preferred more frequent department-based teaching (p < 0.001). The data presented in this article were used to subsequently develop a clinical ethics support committee, the process of which is also described. (shrink)

Professional philosophers and advanced students working in metaphysics and the philosophy of science will find this book both provocative and stimulating.

CRISPR/Cas9 is quickly becoming one of the most influential biotechnologies of the last five years. Clinical trials will soon be underway to test whether CRISPR/Cas9 can edit away the genetic mutations that cause sickle cell disease (SCD). This article will present the background of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing and SCD, highlighting research that supports the application of CRISPR/Cas9 to SCD. While much has been written on why SCD is a good biological candidate for CRISPR/Cas9, less has been written on the ethical (...) implications of including SCD in CRISPR/Cas9 research. This article will argue that there is a strong case in favor of including SCD. Three benefits are achieving distributive justice in research, continuing to repair the negative relationship between patients with SCD and the health‐care system, and benefit‐sharing for those who do not directly participate in CRISPR/Cas9 research. Opponents will argue that SCD is a risky candidate, that researchers will not find willing participants, and that the burden of SCD is low. Of this set of arguments, the first gives pause. However, on balance, the case in favor of including SCD in CRISPR/Cas9 research is stronger than the case against. Ultimately, this article will show that the historic and sociopolitical injustices that impede progress in treating and curing SCD can be alleviated through biotechnology. (shrink)

This book intervenes in contemporary debates about the threat posed to democratic life by political emergencies. Must emergency necessarily enhance and centralize top-down forms of sovereignty? Those who oppose executive branch enhancement often turn instead to law, insisting on the sovereignty of the rule of law or demanding that law rather than force be used to resolve conflicts with enemies. But are these the only options? Or are there more democratic ways to respond to invocations of emergency politics? Looking at (...) how emergencies in the past and present have shaped the development of democracy, Bonnie Honig argues that democracies must resist emergency's pull to focus on life's necessities because these tend to privatize and isolate citizens rather than bring us together on behalf of hopeful futures. Emphasizing the connections between mere life and more life, emergence and emergency, Honig argues that emergencies call us to attend anew to a neglected paradox of democratic politics: that we need good citizens with aspirational ideals to make good politics while we need good politics to infuse citizens with idealism.Honig takes a broad approach to emergency, considering immigration politics, new rights claims, contemporary food politics and the infrastructure of consumption, and the limits of law during the Red Scare of the early twentieth century. Taking its bearings from Moses Mendelssohn, Franz Rosenzweig, and other Jewish thinkers, this is a major contribution to modern thought about the challenges and risks of democratic orientation and action in response to emergency. (shrink)

This special issue considers the significance of film to the establishment and development of scientific approaches to the mind. Bonnie Evans explores how the origins of film technologies in 1895 in France encouraged a series of innovative collaborations, influencing both psychological theorisation, and new filming techniques. Jeremy Blatter explains how Harvard psychologist Hugo Münsterberg created early films specifically designed to engage audiences using psychological tactics. Scott Curtis’ article examines how Yale psychologist Arnold Gesell was able to extract scientific data (...) from a film. Felix Rietmann’s article explores a collection of infant observation films from the 1930s and 1960s and how they developed unique narratives of mothers’ engagement with their children that did not necessarily match up with dominant scientific theories. Janet Harbord's article considers how a trilogy of films made at the Maudsley Hospital in the 1950s engaged with innovative film-making techniques that captured behaviour as discrete units. Seth Watter further examines how William S. Condon's use of the unique technology of the Bell and Howell 173BD projector in the 1960s created new understandings of human behaviour that could not have been predicted in advance, and which were highly influenced by the technology itself. Finally, Des O’Rawe explores how radical approaches in both anti-psychiatry, and documentary film-making in the 1960s created new opportunities for audiences to engage with different psychological states. All of these developments in film and psychology continue to influence understandings in both these fields to the present day. (shrink)

The present study investigated whether individual differences between psychologists in thinking styles are associated with accuracy in diagnostic classification. We asked novice and experienced clinicians to classify two clinical cases of clients with two co-occurring psychological disorders. No significant difference in diagnostic accuracy was found between the two groups, but when combining the data from novices and experienced psychologists accuracy was found to be negatively associated with certain decision making strategies and with a higher self-assessed ability and preference for a (...) rational thinking style. Our results underscore the idea that it might be fruitful to look for explanations of differences in the accuracy of diagnostic judgments in individual differences between psychologists (such as in thinking styles or decision making strategies used), rather than in experience level. (shrink)

As staggering inequality continues to be an urgent political topic, this book, illustrated with nearly seventy of Riis ’s photographs, will serve as a stunning reminder of what has changed, and what has not.

What does it mean to know another person, and how is such knowledge different from other kinds of knowledge? These questions constitute an important part of what I call ‘second-person epistemology’ – the study of how we know other people. I claim that knowledge of other people is not only central to our everyday lives, but it is a kind of knowledge that is unlike other kinds of knowledge. In general, I will argue that second-person knowledge arises from repeated interactions (...) with another person, and that it also requires employment of certain cognitive abilities and a unique kind of second-order knowledge. This paper provides the framework for a second-person epistemology by examining some of our ordinary claims about what it means to know another person. I describe four conditions that typically characterize knowing another person. Then I describe the psychological grounds of knowing a person. Finally, I conclude with some thoughts about the unique symmetries of second person knowledge and the role of such knowledge in our broader epistemological endeavours. (shrink)

We argue in this article that many common adverbial phrases generally taken to signal a discourse relation between syntactically connected units within discourse structure instead work anaphor- ically to contribute relational meaning, with only indirect dependence on discourse structure. This allows a simpler discourse structure to provide scaffolding for compositional semantics and reveals multiple ways in which the relational meaning conveyed by adverbial connectives can interact with that associated with discourse structure. We conclude by sketching out a lexicalized grammar for (...) discourse that facilitates discourse interpretation as a product of compositional rules, anaphor resolution, and inference. (shrink)