The literature on deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive DBS (aDBS) raises concerns that these technologies may affect personality, mood, and behavior. We conducted semi-structured interviews with researchers (n = 23) involved in developing next-generation DBS systems, exploring their perspectives on ethics and policy topics including whether DBS/aDBS can cause such changes. The majority of researchers reported being aware of personality, mood, or behavioral (PMB) changes in recipients of DBS/aDBS. Researchers offered varying estimates of the frequency of PMB changes. A (...) smaller majority reported changes in personality specifically. Some expressed reservations about the scientific status of the term ‘personality,’ while others used it freely. Most researchers discussed negative PMB changes, but a majority said that DBS/aDBS can also result in positive changes. Several researchers viewed positive PMB changes as part of the therapeutic goal in psychiatric applications of DBS/aDBS. Finally, several discussed potential causes of PMB changes other than the device itself. (shrink)

The expansion of research on deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive DBS (aDBS) raises important neuroethics and policy questions related to data sharing. However, there has been little empirical research on the perspectives of experts developing these technologies. We conducted semi-structured, open-ended interviews with aDBS researchers regarding their data sharing practices and their perspectives on ethical and policy issues related to sharing. Researchers expressed support for and a commitment to sharing, with most saying that they were either sharing their data (...) or would share in the future and that doing so was important for advancing the field. However, those who are sharing reported a variety of sharing partners, suggesting heterogeneity in sharing practices and lack of the broad sharing that would reflect principles of open science. Researchers described several concerns and barriers related to sharing, including privacy and confidentiality, the usability of shared data by others, ownership and control of data (including potential commercialization), and limited resources for sharing. They also suggested potential solutions to these challenges, including additional safeguards to address privacy issues, standardization and transparency in analysis to address issues of data usability, professional norms and heightened cooperation to address issues of ownership and control, and streamlining of data transmission to address resource limitations. Researchers also offered a range of views on the sensitivity of neural activity data (NAD) and data related to mental health in the context of sharing. These findings are an important input to deliberations by researchers, policymakers, neuroethicists, and other stakeholders as they navigate ethics and policy questions related to aDBS research. (shrink)

The capacity of next-generation closed-loop or adaptive deep brain stimulation devices to read and write shows great potential to effectively manage movement, seizure, and psychiatric disorders, and also raises the possibility of using aDBS to electively modulate mood, cognition, and prosociality. What separates aDBS from most neurotechnologies currently used for enhancement is that aDBS remains an invasive, surgically-implanted technology with a risk-benefit ratio significantly different when applied to diseased versus non-diseased individuals. Despite a large discourse about the ethics of enhancement, (...) no empirical studies yet examine perspectives on enhancement from within the aDBS research community. We interviewed 23 aDBS researchers about their attitudes toward expanding aDBS use for enhancement. A thematic content analysis revealed that researchers share ethical concerns related to safety and security; enhancement as unnecessary, unnatural or aberrant; and fairness, equality, and distributive justice. Most researchers felt that enhancement applications for DBS will eventually be technically feasible and that attempts to develop such applications for DBS are already happening. However, researchers unanimously felt that DBS ideally should not be considered for enhancement until researchers better understand brain target localization and functioning. While many researchers acknowledged controversies highlighted by scholars and ethicists, such as potential impacts on personhood, authenticity, autonomy and privacy, their ethical concerns reflect considerations of both gravity and perceived near-term likelihood. (shrink)

The Resilience Scale for Adolescents is a highly rated scale for measuring protective factors of resilience. Even though the READ has been validated in several different cultural samples, no studies have validated the READ across samples in German from Switzerland and Germany. The purpose of this study was to explore the construct validity of the German READ version in two samples from two different countries and to test the measurement invariance between those two samples. A German sample and a German-speaking (...) Swiss sample of seventh graders completed the READ, Hopkins Symptom Checklist, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, General Self-Efficacy Scale, and Satisfaction with Life Scale. The expected negative correlations between READ and HSCL-25 and the positive correlations between RSE, self-efficacy, and SWL were supported. Furthermore, the results of the measurement invariance demonstrated that the originally proposed five-dimensional structure is equal in the German and Swiss samples, and it can be assumed that the same construct was assessed by excluding one item. The five-factor, 27-item solution is a valid and reliable self-report measure of protective factors between two German-speaking samples. (shrink)

The Greek word mētis (μῆτις) traditionally refers to a particular form of wily intelligence associated with the arts of deception (dolos) and the knowledge of tricks (kerdē), subterfuges, and traps. Mētis evokes innovative and ground-breaking solutions, based on the capability to understand, anticipate, and possibly violate the others’ expectations. Most importantly, mētis presupposes practical wisdom, or prudence (phrόnesis), a dispositional quality that underpins all the virtues that deserve to be cultivated by sportspersons and that is pivotal to perfect sportspersons’ moral (...) character. Not only is prudence required to apply mētis profitably for winning a game, but it is also indispensable to perform consistently with the game’s norms—cognizant of sport values. This analysis of mētis is key to illuminate the embodied dimension of tactical and moral reasoning in contemporary sport practice. In this paper, we first argue that the strategic effectiveness of mētis proves that not only sensorimotor control but also higher forms of intelligence, like strategic reasoning, are embodied and inform skilful performance; second, we argue that relying on mētis is necessary not only to interpret the rules of the game in one’s own favor but also to respect the shared values that these rules uphold in the sport practice. (shrink)

Recent democratic theorists have drawn on the work of the late Pierre Bourdieu to make the case that patterned inequalities in the social capacity to engage in deliberation can undermine deliberative theory’s democratic promise. They have proposed a range of deliberative democratic responses to the problem of cultural inequality, from enabling the marginalised to adopt the communicative dispositions of the dominant, to broadening the standards that define legitimate deliberation, to strengthening deliberative counter‐publics. The author interprets Bourdieu’s theory of the linguistic (...) habitus to prompt an even more radical critique of deliberative democracy than these theorists acknowledge, one to which the proposed solutions fail adequately to respond. Her argument suggests that empirical work on deliberative democracy should expand to address specifically the problems of cultural inequality that Bourdieu’s work highlights. (shrink)

Large-scale whole genome sequencing (WGS) studies promise to revolutionize cancer research by identifying targets for therapy and by discovering molecular biomarkers to aid early diagnosis, to better determine prognosis and to improve treatment response prediction. Such projects raise a number of ethical, legal, and social (ELS) issues that should be considered. In this study, we set out to discover how these issues are being handled across different jurisdictions.

In seiner Auseinandersetzung mit Eberhard behauptet Kant, Kritizismus sei die eigentliche Apologie von Leibniz. Diese Äußerung darf nicht einfach als sarkastisch abgetan werden. Kant kann dies insofern ernsthaft denken und behaupten, da für ihn die Transzendentalphilosophie die wesentliche philosophische Bedeutung des leibnizschen Gedankens aufhebt, liegt doch schon in Leibniz ein kritizistischer Kern, welcher wiedergewonnen werden kann. Man sieht hier nur einen Aspekt dieser historischen Transformation von Leibniz im kantischen Gedanken, und zwar: die explizite Behauptung Kants, das Konzept der prästabilierten Harmonie (...) werde in der Theorie der reflektierenden Urteilskraft und im Begriff der Zweckmäßigkeit kritisch aufgehoben. Dazu muss man jedoch vorher den Grundzug des kritischen Unterschieds zwischen Kant und der leibniz-wolffschen Philosophie durch eine Diskussion über die Bedeutung des Begriffs des Transzendentalen erläutern. (shrink)

O PAPEL DA CRÍTICA HERMENÊUTICA DO DIREITO: SOBRE AS RELAÇÕES ENTRE FILOSOFIA, TEORIA DO DIREITO E A ATUAÇÃO DO JUDICIÁRIO.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the applications of the interbehavioral model to the system of educational psychology. Some of its foundations are exposed, its application as a logic of theoretical construction, culminating with some characteristics of its technological application, in continuity with the theory of behavior, in the science of psychology. The technological model of didactic discourse is rescued, and its current and potential contributions in the educational field are valued. It is concluded that there (...) is significant potential for the development of interbehavioral thinking in the field of psychology, but researchers need more interest in it. (shrink)

Delusions are typically regarded as beliefs of a certain kind, both by psychiatrists and by lay people. In “Double Bookkeeping and Doxasticism about Delusion,” Porcher formulates and assesses two kinds of arguments against doxasticism about delusions, the theoretical stance according to which delusions are a kind of belief. Those arguments, which Porcher calls “the argument from action guidance and the argument from phenomenology” are motivated by a phenomenon sometimes associated with delusions: double bookkeeping, a kind of ambivalence of patients, who (...) “often appear to be living in two parallel but separate worlds: consensual reality and the realm of their hallucinations and delusions” (Sass, 1994, p.... (shrink)

In this article, we explore the concept of a “right not to know” on a population rather than individual level. We argue that a population level “right not to know” is a useful concept for helping to define the appropriate boundaries of public engagement initiatives in the emerging public health genomics context.

While the realm of bioethics has traditionally focused on the rights of the individual and held autonomy as a defining principle, public health ethics has at its core a commitment to the promotion of the common good. While these two domains may at times conflict, concepts arising in one may also be informative for concepts arising in the other. One example of this is the concept of a “right not to know.” Recent debate suggests that just as there is a (...) “right to know” information about one's genetic status, there is a parallel “right not to know” when it comes to genetic information that if communicated, could be detrimental to an individual's social or psychological well-being. As new genetic technologies continue to change the nature of genetic testing and screening, it is crucial that normative frameworks to guide and assess genetic public health initiatives be developed. In this context, the question of whether a “right not to know” may also be said to exist for populations on a public health level merits attention. (shrink)

L’article analyse la grève des camionneurs au Brésil, à partir de la centralité de la logistique en tant que terrain de lutte et d’accumulation dans le capitalisme contemporain. Dans le cas du Brésil, l’interruption complète de la provision d’intrants de base et l’occupation de routes dans tout le pays signifiaient la fin d’un cycle politico-économique basé sur la fausse alternative entre le néolibéralisme et le développementisme progressiste. La lutte des camionneurs, bien que ambiguë et contradictoire, révèle l’urgence pour nouvelles formes (...) de protection sociale et concrète, de valorisation des revenus et de la vie dans le cadre des luttes de la logistique. (shrink)

This book introduces readers to central concepts and ideas in Mexican philosophy. Couched in stories and anecdotes from the author's life, the book offers these concepts and ideas as orientations, recommendations, or exhortation for navigating today's world. The structure and the style of the book aims at making these accessible to both specialists and non-specialist or anyone who may have had some experience with contemporary forms of marginalization, alienation, objectification, or any of the various forms of dread and accidentality familiar (...) to modern life. This, the author thinks, is most of us. Narrowing down the scope of the tradition, the author draws from the history of Mexican philosophy in the 20th century, as it is at this time that Mexican philosophy comes into its own. The book begins with two short introductions, one is an introduction philosophy in Mexico, the other to Mexican philosophy. Here, readers are introduced to Alfonso de la Veracruz, who offered the first philosophy course in the Americas in 1540 in the monastery of a small town in Michoacán, Mexico. From there, it presents four main themes from Mexican philosophy that recur in the philosophical literature. The remainder of the book serves as a "guide" for living a better, more fulfilling life. The main characters in what the author considers an uncontroversial retelling of Mexican philosophy are Antonio Caso, Samuel Ramos, Emilio Uranga, Leopoldo Zea, Jorge Portilla, Rosario Castellanos, Elsa Cecilia Frost, and, of course, persons in the author's own life. (shrink)

En el vórtice del tiempo -- La digestión del conocimiento -- De la noble virtud -- Retrodicción del futuro -- Taki Onqoy -- Guernica -- Máximas e interludios -- De retorno al crepúsculo -- Bitácora.

What happens when humans and birds engage each other through a collaboration-as-fantasy mediated by computers? Could such an exercise be modelled in a way that helps us to transcend the techno-ocularcentric fetishes for precision and certainty which demarcate our time? From Edgar Wind’s notion of 'incarnation' – as the place where empirical experience and metaphysical foundation meet in the single cognitive and experiential act – this article bridges the analogue with the digital, navigating nature’s strategies to embody inherited and learned (...) complex behaviours in the design of nests, in what I call data-nests. (shrink)

Despite the significant contribution of cognitive-behavioral therapy to effective treatment options for specific syndromes, treatment progress has been stagnating, with response rates plateauing over the past several years. This stagnation has led clinical researchers to call for an approach that instead focuses on processes of change and the individual in their particular context. Process-based therapy is a general approach representing a model of models, grounded in evolution science, with an emphasis on idiographic methods, network models of case conceptualization, and enhancing (...) wellbeing. In this paper, we describe the theory underlying PBT and present a case study for how to apply PBT tools and principles to deliver process-informed and person-centered evidence-based treatment. In addition, we discuss lessons learned from our case and provide suggestions for future considerations when implementing PBT in clinical settings. (shrink)

Recently, the construct ‘lucid dreamless sleep’ has been proposed to explain the state of ‘clear light’ described by Tibetan Buddhist traditions, a special state of consciousness during deep sleep in which we’re told to be able to recognise the nature or essence of our mind (Padmasambhava & Gyatrul 2008; Ponlop 2006; Wangyal 1998). To explain the sort of awareness experienced during this state, some authors have appealed to the sort of lucidity acquired during lucid dreaming and suggested a link between (...) both phenomena (Thompson 2014, 2015; Windt 2015a; Windt et al. 2016). Whilst these authors appeal to a non-conceptually mediated form of lucidity, which doesn’t consist of reflective awareness and propositional thought, the question as to whether the state of clear light should be considered a lucid state similar to lucid dreaming still arises. I argue that the concept ‘lucidity’ used to describe this sort of state is imprecise and that two theoretical notions of lucidity should be distinguished. The first one, which I call the technical notion, requires the recognition of the hallucinatory character of my current experience. The second, the broader notion, involves the seeming recognition of being directly acquainted with the phenomenal character of my experience. I spell out these two notions of lucidity and argue that only the latter could apply to the state of clear light sleep. (shrink)

Four instances of how science fiction contributes to the elucidation of novelty in the context of discovery are considered by extending existing discussions on temporal and use-novelty. In the first instance, science fiction takes an already well-known theory and produces its own re-interpretation; in the second instance, the scientific account is usually straightforward and whatever novelty that may occur would be more along the lines of how the science is deployed to extra-scientific matters; in the third instance, science fiction takes (...) an idea that appears impossible within the delimitations of reality and produces a universe where such a possibility becomes feasible; and in the fourth instance, science fiction extends from an idea already known at the time of the work’s production to simulate a possibility that could emerge should the extension be experimentally viable. However, the article will not end with a mere evaluation of these instances, but also proposes instances on how science fiction could contribute to new ways of experiencing, discerning, and working with scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Una pandemia ha golpeado a millones de familias en el mundo. Este problema global parecía que cuestionaba todas nuestras formas de vida. No obstante, los malos hábitos y las viejas estructuras corruptas comenzaron a aprovecharse de esta situación. Y la corrupción volvió a la escena, en la sobrevaloración de medicamentos o equipos médicos, en la mala repartición de víveres o de dinero, en el cobro de dinero por ingreso a una unidad de cuidado intensivo, aprovecharse de su posición política para (...) vacunarse antes, etc. ¿Se ha normalizado la corrupción en la vida nacional? (shrink)

Este artículo está motivado por el problema de la responsabilidad colectiva frente a las acciones cometidas por nuestros antepasados y por la pregunta acerca de la legitimidad de las demandas de perdón. Acudiendo al universo conceptual heredado de Hannah Arendt, en este texto se aboga por el ejercicio de la capacidad de juicio como detonante tanto de la demanda de perdón como de la responsabilidad colectiva. El perdón se presenta así no solo como una categoría moral sino fundamentalmente política, imprescindible (...) para reconciliarse con lo acontecido y mirar al futuro con esperanza. (shrink)

This article explores the category of biopolitics through the use Roberto Esposito and Giorgio Agamben make of two Greek words, bios and ōē. In particular, I argue that the separation of bios and ōē as introduced in Homo Sacer has no "natural" nor "lingual" relevance. The exposition of such a fabulous antinomy simply ruins the historical matter of Agamben's discourse on biopolitics. Here, Esposito's research could be read as an attempt to found the category of biopolitics anew without repeating the (...) fiction of a bifurcation between ōē and bios. However, Esposito, in his own celebration of biopower, undermines the very power of language and, thus, ignores the variation of the invariant that is history. Esposito's and Agamben's difficulties lead us back to the possible ambition of all politics to absorb all life, as it was already expressed by Aristotle. In this sense, "modern biopolitics" becomes a case study for the totalitarian temptation of political order. (shrink)

Previous studies on body ownership illusions have shown that under certain multimodal conditions, healthy people can experience artificial body-parts as if they were part of their own body, with direct physiological consequences for the real limb that gets ‘substituted’. In this study we wanted to assess (a) whether healthy people can experience ‘missing’ a body-part through illusory ownership of an amputated virtual body, and (b) whether this would cause corticospinal excitability changes in muscles associated with the ‘missing’ body-part. Forty right-handed (...) participants saw a virtual body from a first person perspective but for half of them the virtual body was missing a part of its right arm. Single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied before and after the experiment to left and right motor cortices. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and the extensor digitorum communis (EDC) of each hand. We found that the stronger the illusion of amputation and arm ownership, the more the reduction of MEP amplitudes of the EDC muscle for the contralateral sensorimotor cortex. In contrast, no association was found for the EDC amplitudes in the ipsilateral cortex and for the FDI amplitudes in both contralateral and ipsilateral cortices. Our study provides evidence that a short-term illusory perception of missing a body-part can trigger inhibitory effects on corticospinal pathways and importantly in the absence of any limb deafferentation or disuse. (shrink)

Inter- and transdisciplinary research arise as necessary conditions to address societal problems. These collaborations, by definition, encompass experts from distinct domains, demanding an epistemic dependence between researchers. In such cases where, additionally, an epistemic asymmetry exists, this might then lead to tensions and enhance epistemic disagreements. How should scholars behave when in peer disagreement? On the one hand, in philosophical literature on the epistemology of disagreement, normative accounts about how one should respond when facing an epistemic disagreement are usually built (...) upon hypothetical scenarios that do not portray real-life disagreements in scientific settings. On the other hand, Science and Technology Studies (STS) research that deals with academic and scientific disagreement typically uses a descriptive, empirical approach. We argue that before a normative account of responses to disagreement is developed, we need to understand how academic disagreement actually takes place in real interdisciplinary scientific practice. In this chapter, we address a case of academic disagreement within an interdisciplinary research team in Brazil during their development of a framework for transdisciplinary collaboration. Data was collected with ethnographic tools, while the analytic perspective of the investigation is grounded on recent debates about research groups in social epistemology and in the epistemology of disagreement. We will show that an interplay between trust and disagreement is required for dealing with inter- and transdisciplinary research practices. We hold that shedding light on disagreements and communications between collaborators may improve the epistemic performance of collaborative research teams by refining the dynamics of inter- and transdisciplinary investigations. (shrink)

Neoliberal Techniques of Social Suffering: Political Resistance and Critical Theory from Latin America and Spain is the result of the critical and political commitment of various Latin American and Spanish philosophers who share a critical approach to the global “stealth revolution” in recent decades, where neoliberalism has forced the well-being and reproduction of life to adapt to a system devastating for both humans and non-humans. The authors voice the shared concern of contemporary Spanish and Latin American societies to build new (...) conceptions of the public and the common through mobilizing affects usually disavowed in political theory. If, in Ancient Greece, the idea of strengthening the most vulnerable and weakest was deplored as the art of sophists, this collection edited by Laura Quintana and Nuria Sánchez Madrid explores the other side of our social world to revive grassroots strategies of resistance and emancipation, which are able to bring about new distributions of power, welfare, and discursive legitimation and to extend our goal of creating a radically democratic world. (shrink)