Management faces complex race related issues in which groups arguing entitlement appear to claim benefits historically enjoyed by others. Thus many affirmative action issues provoke animosity because they are framed as zero sum problems. To some extent they are zero sum. Therefore, rationales for corporate policy must address that forthrightly. Up to now the corporate justification has been weak. The article describes a social debt owed interracially resulting from the accumulation of current class benefits from past discrimination, and asserts (...) that affirmative action policies have a firm ethical basis inasmuch as they are affectively redistributing benefits to pay the social debt. (shrink)

Papers from a conference held at Colorado State Univ., Sept. 1986. Addresses such related topics as the nature of the mind, our place in society, and the nature of ethics. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Direct to consumer (DTC) advertising has attracted significant research attention, yet none has focused on empirical assessments of its overall impact on U.S. consumers nationally, and tying assessment to relevant behavioral outcomes. This paper addresses the ethical issue of DTC advertising providing a balance of product and risk information that is both understandable and believable, and contributes direction to those exploring this phenomenon.

Direct to consumer advertising has attracted significant research attention, yet none has focused on empirical assessments of its overall impact on U.S. consumers nationally, and tying assessment to relevant behavioral outcomes. This paper addresses the ethical issue of DTC advertising providing a balance of product and risk information that is both understandable and believable, and contributes direction to those exploring this phenomenon.

Direct to consumer (DTC) advertising has attracted significant research attention, yet none has focused on empirical assessments of its overall impact on U.S. consumers nationally, and tying assessment to relevant behavioral outcomes. This paper addresses the ethical issue of DTC advertising providing a balance of product and risk information that is both understandable and believable, and contributes direction to those exploring this phenomenon.

Relationships between men and women can change rapidly, yet simultaneously can resist change. This paradox is addressed by a theory of social organization in the "personality and social structure" tradition, which attempts to explain what aspects of gender relations change most readily and what aspects are most resistant to change, in terms of 1) institutional models of organization and 2) the contrasting ways in which status and role affect identity. Changes in gender relations appear first in the public sphere, but (...) are more likely to persist if they are institutionalized in both public and domestic spheres, and are embodied in identities. (shrink)

As indicated in the title, the focus of this essay is on where we should go from here and not the how, which is addressed by other authors in this issue. I am assuming that there is probably a general consensus as to where we should be heading with health care reform, but there may well be some strong differences as to how this can or should be attained.In the summer of 1966, a year after the enactment of “Medicare,” I (...) listened to Harry Becker, then the Executive Director of the New York Academy of Medicine, discuss the significance of the new health legislation and further changes that were likely in the near future. His analysis was that, after numerous attempts over many years, the United States was finally on the verge of implementing universal health insurance for all Americans. The next step would be health insurance for children, “Kiddicare.”. (shrink)

As indicated in the title, the focus of this essay is on where we should go from here and not the how, which is addressed by other authors in this issue. I am assuming that there is probably a general consensus as to where we should be heading with health care reform, but there may well be some strong differences as to how this can or should be attained.In the summer of 1966, a year after the enactment of “Medicare,” I (...) listened to Harry Becker, then the Executive Director of the New York Academy of Medicine, discuss the significance of the new health legislation and further changes that were likely in the near future. His analysis was that, after numerous attempts over many years, the United States was finally on the verge of implementing universal health insurance for all Americans. The next step would be health insurance for children, “Kiddicare.”. (shrink)

In this response, we clarify several misunderstandings of the understanding/acceptance principle and defend our specific operationalization of that principle. We reiterate the importance of addressing the problem of rational task construal and we elaborate the notion of computational limitations contained in our target article. Our concept of thinking dispositions as variable intentional-level styles of epistemic and behavioral regulation is explained, as is its relation to the rationality debate. Many of the suggestions of the commentators for elaborating two-process models are easily (...) integrated into our generic dual-process account. We further explicate how we view the relation between System 1 and System 2 and evolutionary and normative rationality. We clarify our attempt to fuse the contributions of the cognitive ecologists with the insights of the original heuristics and biases researchers. (shrink)

Background U.S. federal regulations require that certain ethical elements be followed to protect human research subjects. The location and clinical circumstances of a proposed research study can differ substantially and can have significant implications for these ethical considerations. Both the location and clinical circumstances are particularly relevant for research in intensive care units (ICUs), where patients are often unable to provide informed consent to participate in a proposed research intervention. Purpose Our goal is to elaborate on the updated 2013 U.S. (...) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidance document regarding an exemption from the requirement of obtaining informed consent from patients or their surrogates and to address certain elements within that document, thereby assisting clinicians in developing a framework for emergency research in accordance with the regulatory bodies at their own institutions and in the United States. Methods Review of the 2011 and updated FDA guidance document on exemption from informed consent. Results The current process of obtaining informed consent within ICUs needs to be revisited, especially for research in which timely informed consent is not likely. In particular, the process of obtaining informed consent may not be appropriate or even ethical for critically ill patients in extremis who require an intervention for which there is no current acceptable standard of care and clinical equipoise exists. We provide clinicians with a viewpoint that further elaborates on the FDA guidance document. Limitations The viewpoints provided herein are those of the authors and are therefore inherently limited by the personal views of a selected few. Other clinicians or researchers may not interpret the FDA guidelines in a similar manner. Moreover, the discussion of a guideline document is a limitation in and of itself. The guidelines set forth by the FDA are precisely that—guidelines. Therefore, they may not be followed as outlined in the guidance document within one’s own institution. Our goal is that, by elaborating on the guidelines for planned research involving human subjects in the ICU, institutional regulatory bodies may gain a better understanding in drafting their own document when faced with a clinician or a researcher who wishes to conduct planned research in an ICU. Conclusions We believe that the interpretations provided will allow clinicians to safely undertake planned research in ICUs without endangering the main tenets of ethical research involving human participants. This research is needed for the advancement of care in the critically ill. (shrink)

Public health ethics, like the field of public health it addresses, traditionally has focused more on practice and particular cases than on theory, with the result that some concepts, methods, and boundaries remain largely undefined. This paper attempts to provide a rough conceptual map of the terrain of public health ethics. We begin by briefly defining public health and identifying general features of the field that are particularly relevant for a discussion of public health ethics.Public health is primarily concerned with (...) the health of the entire population, rather than the health of individuals. Its features include an emphasis on the promotion of health and the prevention of disease and disability; the collection and use of epidemiological data, population surveillance, and other forms of empirical quantitative assessment; a recognition of the multidimensional nature of the determinants of health; and a focus on the complex interactions of many factors—biological, behavioral, social, and environmental—in developing effective interventions. (shrink)

The commentaries on our target article address three main areas: (1) the relative importance of extraversion and other related traits to DA functioning, (2) how the long-term stability of extraversion can be conceptualized within a highly plastic central nervous system, and (3) the nature of DA functioning in the MOC network and in extraversion. We have organized our Response, therefore, into three major sections.

Integrity is a critical determinant of the effectiveness of research organizations in terms of producing high quality research and educating the new generation of scientists. A number of responsible conduct of research (RCR) training programs have been developed to address this growing organizational concern. However, in spite of a significant body of research in ethics training, it is still unknown which approach has the highest potential to enhance researchers’ integrity. One of the approaches showing some promise in improving researchers’ (...) integrity has focused on the development of ethical decision-making skills. The current effort proposes a novel curriculum that focuses on broad metacognitive reasoning strategies researchers use when making sense of day-to-day social and professional practices that have ethical implications for the physical sciences and engineering. This sensemaking training has been implemented in a professional sample of scientists conducting research in electrical engineering, atmospheric and computer sciences at a large multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary, and multi-university research center. A pre-post design was used to assess training effectiveness using scenario-based ethical decision-making measures. The training resulted in enhanced ethical decision-making of researchers in relation to four ethical conduct areas, namely data management, study conduct, professional practices, and business practices. In addition, sensemaking training led to researchers’ preference for decisions involving the application of the broad metacognitive reasoning strategies. Individual trainee and training characteristics were used to explain the study findings. Broad implications of the findings for ethics training development, implementation, and evaluation in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

Nearly $2 trillion is spent annually in the U.S. treating chronic illness — yet accessibility to quality health care services in rural communities for the chronically ill and dying remains problematic. Unique barriers present special challenges to a meaningful discussion of and subsequent strategies for addressing these issues in the context of increasingly scarce resources.

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

Both living donor transplantation and human subjects research expose one set of individuals to clinical risks for the clinical benefits of others. In the Belmont Report, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavior Research articulated three principles to serve as the basis for a research ethics framework: respect for persons, beneficence and justice. In contrast, living donor transplantation lacks a framework. In this manuscript, we adapt the three principles articulated in the Belmont Report to (...) serve as the foundation for an ethics framework for living donor transplantation which we supplement with the principles of vulnerability and responsibility. The National Commission supported additional protections for vulnerable groups of potential research participants. In 2001, Kenneth Kipnis effectively argued that the concept of vulnerable groups failed to explore in what ways particular groups of people were vulnerable, thereby risking unnecessary protections for some and inadequate protections for others. He proposed a taxonomy that explored different types of vulnerabilities that all research participants may experience to provide a more robust framework for human subjects protections, which we adapt to living donors. Robert Goodin claims that health professionals, who stand in special relationship with patients, are responsible for promoting and protecting their well-being. In living donor transplantation, the donor transplant team is responsible for empowering prospective donors to address their vulnerabilities and/or for protecting those who cannot by disqualifying them from donation. (shrink)

The article argues for a stand-alone ethics course in accounting and details the shortfalls and questionable approach of “teaching ethics across the curriculum”, especially for those preparing for professional careers in accounting. The need for a prerequisite course in the philosophy of ethics and moral reasoning is also addressed. A proposed semester listing of course topics for an accounting ethics course is presented, with supporting reasoning for their inclusion, and a detailed semester course syllabus is provided for consideration.

The article argues for a stand-alone ethics course in accounting and details the shortfalls and questionable approach of “teaching ethics across the curriculum”, especially for those preparing for professional careers in accounting. The need for a prerequisite course in the philosophy of ethics and moral reasoning is also addressed. A proposed semester listing of course topics for an accounting ethics course is presented, with supporting reasoning for their inclusion, and a detailed semester course syllabus is provided for consideration.

The Institute of Medicine reporting on the quality of health care in America recommends six aims for achieving the health care system we could have. Together with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Triple Aim initiative, a framework has emerged to challenge providers, educators, and policymakers to remake the health care system according to specific objectives: to provide care that is safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable to more people at a price we can afford. Complicating this mission of better (...) prevention and better care at a lower cost is a daunting demographic: January of 2011 marked the month and year that the first of the baby boomers turned 65. The U.S. Census Bureau in May 2010 projected the number of Americans of this age and over to reach 88 million by 2050, more than double the current figure of 40.2 million. Parekh and Barton forecast in stark detail what it will be like to address these burgeoning numbers of older Americans with comorbidities, including the fact that over 20% of the population currently experiences at least two chronic medical conditions. (shrink)

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

This volume shows how Gandhi's thought and action-oriented approach are significant, relevant, and urgently needed for addressing major contemporary problems and concerns, including issues of violence and nonviolence, war and peace, religious conflict and dialogue, terrorism, ethics, civil disobedience, injustice, modernism and postmodernism, oppression and exploitation, and environmental destruction. Appropriate for general readers and Gandhi specialists, this volume will be of interest for those in philosophy, religion, political science, history, cultural studies, peace studies, and many other fields.

Presents a plethora of approaches to developing human potential in areas not conventionally addressed. Organized in two parts, this international collection of essays provides viable educational alternatives to those currently holding sway in an era of high-stakes accountability.

Working memory is the system responsible for maintaining and manipulating information, in the face of ongoing distraction. In turn, WM span is perceived to be an individual-differences construct reflecting the limited capacity of this system. Recently, however, there has been some evidence to suggest that WM capacity can increase through training, raising the possibility that training can functionally alter the neural structures supporting WM. To address the hypothesis that the neural substrates underlying WM are targeted by training, we conducted (...) a meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of WM training using Activation Likelihood Estimation. Our results demonstrate that WM training is associated exclusively with decreases in blood oxygenation level-dependent responses in clusters within the fronto-parietal system that underlie WM, including the bilateral inferior parietal lobule, middle and superior frontal gyri, and medial frontal gyrus bordering on the cingulate gyrus. We discuss the various psychological and physiological mechanisms that could be responsible for the observed reductions in the BOLD signal in relation to WM training, and consider their implications for the construct of WM span as a limited resource. (shrink)

This study assessed the validity of instrument including various negative psychological and physical behaviors of commuters due to the public transport delay. Instruments have been mostly evaluated by parametric method of item response theory. However, the IRT has been characterized by some restrictive assumptions about the data, focusing on detailed model fit evaluation. The Mokken scale analysis, as a scaling procedure is a non-parametric method, which does not require adherence to any distribution. The results of the study show that in (...) most regards, our instrument meets the minimum requirements highlighted by the MSA. However, the instrument did not adhere to the minimum requirements of the “scalability” for two variables including “stomach pain” and “increased heart rate”. So, modifications were proposed to address the violations. Although MSA technique has been used frequently in other fields, this is one of the earliest studies to implement the technique in the context of transport psychology. (shrink)

The war on terrorism, say America's leaders, is a war of Good versus Evil. But in the minds of the perpetrators, the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington were presumably justified as ethically good acts against American evil. Is such polarization leading to a violent "clash of civilizations" or can differences between ethical systems be reconciled through rational dialogue? This book provides an extraordinary resource for thinking clearly about the diverse ways in which humans see good and evil. (...) In nine essays and responses, leading thinkers ask how ethical pluralism can be understood by classical liberalism, liberal-egalitarianism, critical theory, feminism, natural law, Confucianism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Each essay addresses five questions: Is the ideal society ethically uniform or diverse? Should the state protect, ban, or otherwise intervene in ethically based differences? How should disagreements on the rights and duties of citizens be dealt with? Should the state regulate life-and-death decisions such as euthanasia? To what extent should conflicting views on sexual relationships be accommodated? This book shows that contentious questions can be discussed with both incisiveness and civility. The editors provide the introduction and Donald Moon, the conclusion. The contributors are Brian Barry, Joseph Boyle, Simone Chambers, Joseph Chan, Christine Di Stefano, Dale F. Eickelman, Menachem Fisch, William Galston, John Haldane, Chandran Kukathas, David Little, Muhammad Khalid Masud, Carole Pateman, William F. Scheuerman, Adam B. Seligman, James W. Skillen, James Tully, and Lee H. Yearley. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:William James, A Pluralistic Universe. A New Philosophical ReadingRichard A. S. Hall William James, A Pluralistic Universe. A New Philosophical Reading. Ed. H. G. Callaway. Newcastle, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.In 1907 William James was invited to give the Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College, Oxford. Initially he was reluctant to do so since he feared undertaking them would divert him from developing rigorously and systematically some metaphysical ideas (...) of his own that had preoccupied him for some time. [End Page 130]In the end, however, he relented and in the spring of 1908 gave the lectures which were subsequently published as A Pluralistic Universe.As it happened, though, in the course of these lectures James presented some of those metaphysical ideas, though in a popular and informal style appropriate to lecturing. Later on he did get down to working out a systematic metaphysics in proper academic style, but the project was cut short by his untimely death in 1910. The incomplete Some Problems of Philosophy,posthumously published in 1911, recapitulates some major themes of A Pluralistic Universe.When James addressed his Oxford audience, the time was ripe for the advancement of his own brand of metaphysical pluralism and radical empiricism in opposition to the still-regnant forms of monistic idealism as represented by Bradley, Green, and Royce. The hegemony in the philosophical world long enjoyed by idealism was beginning to break up—something noted by James in his first lecture—due in no small part to the very ideas aired in his lectures and the then newly emerging schools of pragmatism and realism. The period between 1914 and 1918 not only rings the death knell of European imperialism but also, significantly, marks the watershed between nineteenth-and twentieth-century philosophy.The argument of A Pluralistic Universerevolves around the Parmenidean conundrum of the one-and-the-many. It is the solution to this problem that was the main bone of contention between James and absolute idealists like F. H. Bradley, T. H. Green, and Josiah Royce. For them, the world in reality is but one thing, though appearing illusorily as many, with a pervasive unity throughout—it is a "block-universe," to use James's expression for it; for James, by contrast, the world is irreducibly many things whose unities are partial and shifting. The gravamen of James's objections to absolute idealism was its monism, though he objected no less strenuously to other ideas associated with it: its doctrine of internal relations; its determinism; and, in particular, its deprecation of experience in favor of concepts (what James condemns as "vicious intellectualism"). James proposed, against this monolithic idealism, the alternative hypothesis of metaphysical pluralism. Here he affirmed the reality of external relations (particularly conjunctions) among things and the continuities within experience, thereby making his empiricism "radical." He approached experience phenomenologically, finding it, not concepts, to be constitutive of reality, the value of concepts being more practical than theoretical. He conceived of the universe as being open-ended, where human agency can make a difference for the better.A subtext of A Pluralistic Universeis James's advocacy of something like [End Page 131]traditional theism in contradistinction to the pantheism of absolute idealism. He rightly notes that the Absolute is not the God of Christianity. He believes that his pluralistic ontology allows for, and the religious experiences of people abundantly attest to, the existence of a personal God, albeit a finite one, with whom communion and commerce is possible. At a deeper, psychological level, though, A Pluralistic Universeis an expression of James's own desire to feel "at home" in the universe, a desire, I should add, that he shares with many protagonists of classic American fiction, and which is perhaps intensified by the experience of inhabiting and accommodating one's self to the relatively unfamiliar New World. He complains about the "foreignness" of the Absolute in objective idealism and of that sovereign God, in traditional theisms, subsisting beyond all human influence or effects.Howard Callaway's recent edition of James's Hibbert Lectures joins the Harvard edition of them, with a foreword by Richard J. Bernstein, as an indispensable volume of James's... (shrink)

This book is the most comprehensive, integrated explanatory account yet published of the properties of question formations and their variation across languages. It makes an important contribution to the current debate over whether syntax should be understood derivationally, arguing that thebest model of language is one in which sentences are constructed in a series of operations that precede or follow each other in time. The central problem it addresses is the nature of the difference between (a) languages in which all (...) wh-words move overtly to a clause-initial position (exemplified byBulgarian); (b) languages in which one wh-phrase moves per clause but all others remain in situ (exemplified by English); and (c) languages in which there is no overt movement at all (exemplified by Japanese). Professor Richards focuses on the nature of syntactic movement in order to see what this reveals about the syntactic derivation. He considers the nature of interactions between movement operations and investigates the behaviour of multiple overt wh-movement, scrambling, cliticization, and objectshift. His general conclusions about the relationship between movement and multiple specifiers follow straightforwardly from basic principles of Shortest Move and Shortest Attract. He develops a PF-imposed well-formedness condition on movement chains (essentially, a requirement that a single memberof the chain be unambiguously identified as the copy to be pronounced), which allows for the development of theories of anti-agreement, the that-trace effect, and the conditions on participial agreement in Romance, among other phenomena. He defends the claim that well-formed dependencies can improvethe status of ill-formed dependencies created later in the derivation, illustrating the explanatory power, under certain structural conditions, of his Principle of Minimal Compliance. He uses data on the locality of wh-movement to argue that the Principle of Minimal Compliance is responsible for anumber of the apparent distinctions between overt and covert movement. This book will interest syntacticians at graduate level and above as well as linguistic theorists concerned with the syntax-semantics interface. (shrink)

Although some attention has been devoted to assessing the attitudes and concerns of businesspeople toward ethics, relatively little attention has focused on the attitudes and concerns of tomorrow's business leaders, today's college students. In this investigation a national sample was utilized to study college students' attitudes toward business ethics, with the results being analyzed by academic classification, academic major, and sex. Results of the investigation indicate that college students are currently somewhat concerned about business ethics in general, and that female (...) students in particular are more concerned about ethical issues than are their male counterparts. (shrink)

He describes this most private work of Heidegger's philosophy as "a dissonant symphony that imperfectly weaves together its moments into a vast fugue, under the ...

This treatise presents thoughts on the divide that exists in chemistry between those who seek their understanding within a universe wherein the laws of physics apply and those who prefer alternative universes wherein the laws are suspended or ‘bent’ to suit preconceived ideas. The former approach is embodied in the quantum theory of atoms in molecules (QTAIM), a theory based upon the properties of a system’s observable distribution of charge. Science is experimental observation followed by appeal to theory that, upon (...) occasion, leads to new experiments. This is the path that led to the development of the molecular structure hypothesis—that a molecule is a collection atoms with characteristic properties linked by a network of bonds that impart a structure—a concept forged in the crucible of nineteenth century experimental chemistry. One hundred and fifty years of experimental chemistry underlie the realization that the properties of some total system are the sum of its atomic contributions. The concept of a functional group, consisting of a single atom or a linked set of atoms, with characteristic additive properties forms the cornerstone of chemical thinking of both molecules and crystals and Dalton’s atomic hypothesis has emerged as the operational theory of chemistry. We recognize the presence of a functional group in a given system and predict its effect upon the static, reactive and spectroscopic properties of the system in terms of the characteristic properties assigned to that group. QTAM gives physical substance to the concept of a functional group. (shrink)

American taxpayers spend $30 billion annually funding biomedical research. By some estimates, half of the results from these studies can't be replicated elsewhere-the science is simply wrong. Often, research institutes and academia emphasize publishing results over getting the right answers, incentivizing poor experimental design, improper methods, and sloppy statistics. Bad science doesn't just hold back medical progress, it can sign the equivalent of a death sentence. How are those with breast cancer helped when the cell on which 900 papers are (...) based turns out not to be a breast cancer cell at all? How effective could a new treatment for ALS be when it failed to cure even the mice it was initially tested on? In Rigor Mortis, award-winning science journalist Richard F. Harris reveals these urgent issues with vivid anecdotes, personal stories, and interviews with the nation's top biomedical researchers. We need to fix our dysfunctional biomedical system-now. (shrink)

The quantum theory of atoms in molecules (QTAIM) uses physics to define an atom and its contribution to observable properties in a given system. It does so using the electron density and its flow in a magnetic field, the current density. These are the two fields that Schrödinger said should be used to explain and understand the properties of matter. It is the purpose of this paper to show how QTAIM bridges the conceptual gulf that separates the observations of chemistry (...) from the realm of physics and do so in a manner that is both rigorous and conceptually simple. Since QTAIM employs real measurable fields, it enables one to present the findings of complex quantum mechanical calculations in a pictorial manner that isolates the essential physics. The time has arrived for a sea change in our attempts to predict and classify the observations of chemistry, time to replace the use of simplified and arbitrary models with the full predictive power of physics, as applied to an atom in a molecule. (shrink)

Nance reads these texts against the social and cultural conditions of their making, establishing a solid historical basis for the interpretation of key beliefs and doctrines.

Background: Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) system activation is adaptive in response to stress, and HPA dysregulation occurs in stress-related psychopathology. It is important to understand the mechanisms that modulate HPA output, yet few studies have addressed the neural circuitry associated with HPA regulation in primates and humans. Using high-resolution F-18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) in rhesus monkeys, we assessed the relation between individual differences in brain activity and HPA function across multiple contexts that varied in stressfulness.

Genetic epistemology analyzes the growth of knowledge both in the individual person (genetic psychology) and in the socio-historical realm (the history of science). But what the relationship is between the history of science and genetic psychology remains unclear. The biogenetic law that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny is inadequate as a characterization of the relation. A critical examination of Piaget's Introduction à l'Épistémologie Généntique indicates these are several examples of what I call stage laws common to both areas. Furthermore, there is at (...) least one example of a paradoxical inverse relation between the two — geometry. Both similarities and differences between the two domains require an explanation, a developmental explanation. Although such an explanation seems to be psychological in nature, it is not merely empirical but also normative (since psychology is both factual and normative according to Piaget). Hence genetic epistemology need not be reduced to psychology (narrowly conceived), but rather should be seen as being both empirical and normative and thus similar to certain types of contemporary philosophy of science. (shrink)

Richard Polt takes a fresh approach to Heidegger’s thought during his most politicized period, and works toward a philosophical appropriation of his most valuable ideas. Polt shows how central themes of the 1930s—such as inception, emergency, and the question “Who are we?”—grow from seeds planted in Being and Time and are woven into Heidegger’s political thought. Working with recently published texts, including Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, Polt traces the thinker’s engagement and disengagement from the Nazi movement. He critiques Heidegger for (...) his failure to understand the political realm, but also draws on his ideas to propose a “traumatic ontology” that understands individual and collective existence as identities that are always in question, and always remain exposed to disruptive events. Time and Trauma is a bold attempt to gain philosophical insight from the most problematic and controversial phase of Heidegger’s thought. (shrink)

Two critical thinking skills—the tendency to avoid myside bias and to avoid one-sided thinking—were examined in three different experiments involving over 1200 participants and across two different paradigms. Robust indications of myside bias were observed in all three experiments. Participants gave higher evaluations to arguments that supported their opinions than those that refuted their prior positions. Likewise, substantial one-side bias was observed—participants were more likely to prefer a one-sided to a balanced argument. There was substantial variation in both types of (...) bias, but we failed to find that participants of higher cognitive ability displayed less myside bias or less one-side bias. Although cognitive ability failed to associate with the magnitude of the myside bias, the strength and content of the prior opinion did predict the degree of myside bias shown. Our results indicate that cognitive ability—as defined by traditional psychometric indicators—turns out to be surprisingly independent of two of the most important critical thinking tendencies discussed in the literature. (shrink)

This book describes Descartes's The Passions of the Soul as a foundational work of the Enlightenment, a precursor of later notions of the historicity of the human, and the first psychology of modern type: to understand and heal ourselves, we look not outward at the world in immediate relation to it, but inward, at the self, its brain, and its past history. Special attention is given to Descartes’s account of imagination and its problematic impact on passion and volition.

Piaget's social psychology is not widely discussed among psychologists, partly because much of it is still contained in untranslated French works. In this article I summarize the main lines of Piaget's social psychology and briefly indicate its relation to current theories in social psychology. Rejecting both Durkheim's sociological holism and Tarde's individualism, Piaget advances a sociological relativism in which all social facts are reducible to social relations and these, in turn, are reducible to rules, values and signs. Piaget's theory of (...) social values takes the form of a social exchange theory characterized in an abstract logical way. Piaget claims social exchange requires normative principles of reciprocity and that individual social development results in such an equilibrium because rationality itself is social and based upon social cooperation. These views, in turn, derive from Piaget's orthogenetic views concerning the course of evolution: development can be characterized as an increase in equilibrium manifested both in individual action and in social interaction. (shrink)

Several philosophers have questioned the possibility of a genetic epistemology, an epistemology concerned with the developmental transitions between successive states of knowledge in the individual person. Since most arguments against the possibility of a genetic epistemology crucially depend upon a sharp distinction between the genesis of an idea and its justification, I argue that current philosophy of science raises serious questions about the universal validity of this distinction. Then I discuss several senses of the genetic fallacy, indicating which sense of (...) ‘genesis’ is relevant to epistemology. Next I consider the objection that psychology is irrelevant to epistemology, and that since "genetic epistemology" is really psychology, "genetic epistemology" is irrelevant to a real epistemology. Finally, I take up the objection that nothing discovered in genetic psychology could be relevant to a genetic epistemology. These last two arguments are based upon what I claim to be a mistaken notion of the nature of psychology. Suitably interpreted, psychology can assist genetic epistemology precisely in the way that the history of science assists current philosonhv of science. *I owe considerable thanks to Jann Benson, Ken Freeman, Bernie Rollin and Ron Williams for their helpful discussions concerning many of the issues discussed in this paper. I also wish to thank David Hamlyn, John Heil, William Lycan, Harvey Siegel and an anonymous reviewer for their comments and suggestions. It goes without saying that none of these individuals (especially Hamlyn and Siegel) necessarily agree with me. An earlier version of this paper was read at Colorado State University where the audience's comments were beneficial. (shrink)