This article reflects on the relevance and applicability of the Belmont Report nearly four decades after its original publication. In an exploration of criticisms that have been raised in response to the report and of significant changes that have occurred within the context of biomedical research, five primary themes arise. These themes include the increasingly vague boundary between research and practice, unique harms to communities that are not addressed by the principle of respect for persons, and how growing complexity and (...) commodification in research have shed light on the importance of transparency. The repercussions of Belmont's emphasis on the protection of vulnerable populations is also explored, as is the relationship between the report's ethical principles and their applications. It is concluded that while the Belmont Report was an impressive response to the ethical issues of its day, the field of research ethics involving human subjects may have outgrown it. (shrink)

This research engages with the problem of company-community conflict in mining. The inequitable distributions of risks, impacts, and benefits are key drivers of resource conflicts and are likely to remain at the forefront of mining-related research and advocacy. Procedural and interactional forms of justice therefore lie at the very heart of some of the real and ongoing challenges in mining, including: intractable local-level conflict; emerging global norms and performance standards; and ever-increasing expectations for the industry to translate high-level corporate social (...) responsibility policy into on-the-ground practice. This research focuses on the "process" aspects of resource conflicts through an examination of existing grievance-handling procedures at six mining operations where company-community conflict was present. In their current form, and on their own, the six mechanisms were found to be insufficient in their capacity to advance justice. The authors argue that if the overall objective of global norms is that companies construct and perform grievance handling in ways that strongly preference just practices, then "mechanisms-inpractice" must be better understood and constructively critiqued along all justice dimensions. (shrink)

This research engages with the problem of company–community conflict in mining. The inequitable distributions of risks, impacts, and benefits are key drivers of resource conflicts and are likely to remain at the forefront of mining-related research and advocacy. Procedural and interactional forms of justice therefore lie at the very heart of some of the real and ongoing challenges in mining, including: intractable local-level conflict; emerging global norms and performance standards; and ever-increasing expectations for the industry to translate high-level corporate social (...) responsibility policy into on-the-ground practice. This research focuses on the “process” aspects of resource conflicts through an examination of existing grievance-handling procedures at six mining operations where company–community conflict was present. In their current form, and on their own, the six mechanisms were found to be insufficient in their capacity to advance justice. The authors argue that if the overall objective of global norms is that companies construct and perform grievance handling in ways that strongly preference just practices, then “mechanisms-in-practice” must be better understood and constructively critiqued along all justice dimensions. (shrink)

We argue in favour of the general proposition that the nature of reasoning is best understood within a context of its origins and development. A major dimension of what develops in the years from childhood to adulthood, we propose, is increasing meta-level monitoring and management of cognition. Two domains are examined in presenting support for these claims—multivariable causal reasoning and argumentive reasoning.

This article investigates online representations and evaluations of EU migrants, focusing on the notion of ‘benefit tourism’ and discursive strategies used in the (de)legitimization of new welfare restrictions in the UK. Through the examination of online newspapers and corresponding public comment threads, this article adopts theoretical and methodological premises from Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), drawing upon the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to provide both a politically motivated as well as reflexive account. Although new participatory structures allow for resistance to emerge, the (...) openness, scalability and anonymity of the internet also allows for the spread of discrimination through the construction of EU migrants (in particular Bulgarians and Romanians) as the ‘Other’. (shrink)

As we rapidly approach the 50th year of the much‐celebrated ‘cognitive revolution’, it is worth reflecting on its widespread impact on individual disciplines and areas of multidisciplinary endeavour. Of specific concern in this paper is the example of the influence of cognitivism's equation of mind and computer in education. Within education, this paper focuses on a particular area of concern to which both mind and computer are simultaneously central: educational technology. It examines the profound and lasting effect of cognitive science (...) on our understandings of the educational potential of information and communication technologies, and further argues that recent and multiple ‘signs of discontent’, ‘crises’ and even ‘failures’ in cognitive science and psychology should result in changes in these understandings. It concludes by suggesting new directions that educational technology research might take in the light of this crisis of cognitivsm. (shrink)

We note the development of the widely employed but loosely defined construct of critical thinking from its earliest instantiations as a measure of individual ability to its current status, marked by efforts to better connect the construct to the socially-situated thinking demands of real life. Inquiry and argument are identified as key dimensions in a process-based account of critical thinking. Argument is identified as a social practice, rather than a strictly individual competency. Yet, new empirical evidence is presented documenting a (...) role for individual reasoning competencies in supporting the effectiveness of argumentive discourse. A successful curriculum is described for employing extended engagement in dialogic argumentation as a pathway to development of individual argumentive skill. (shrink)

Phillips & Silverstein argue that a range of cognitive disturbances in schizophrenia result from a deficit in cognitive coordination attributable to NMDA receptor dysfunction. We suggest that the viability of this hypothesis would be further supported by explicit implementation in a computational framework that can produce quantitative estimates of the behavior of both healthy individuals and individuals with schizophrenia.

Realists, D. M. Armstrong among them, claim, contrary to natural class nominalists, that natural classes are analysable. Natural classes of particulars, claim the realists, can be analysed in terms of particulars having universals in common. But for the realist, there are also natural classes of universals. And if the realist's claim that natural classes are analysable is a general claim about natural classes, then the realist must also provide an analysis of natural classes of universals. For Armstrong, the unity (or (...) naturalness) of a natural class of universals is analysed in terms of universals resembling each other. I argue that Armstrong's account fails. His account fails for the same reason all other resemblance accounts of natural classes fail: some arbitrary classes satisfy the analysis for natural classes. (shrink)

This article considers the question “Is There, Can There Be, such an Activity as World Humanities?” My response takes issue with the phrase “world humanity” that serves to legitimize a homogenizing process of globalization while simultaneously hiding from view the injustices and power imbalances that globalization creates. From my perspective as a Cree-Métis scholar, the world humanities are only valuable if they participate in the recuperation and protection of Indigenous stories—and by extension Indigenous languages and epistemes—that would require a reconsideration (...) of the definition and obligations of what it means to be human. (shrink)

Drawing on data from interviews with 65 masculine-to-feminine transgenderists, the authors examine the coming-out experiences of transgendered individuals. Drawing on the literature that shows gender to be an inherent component of the social infrastructure that at an individual level is accomplished in interaction with others, they demonstrate that interactional challenges to gender are insufficient to challenge the system of gender. Whereas many transgenderists believe that their actions and identities are radical challenges to the binary system of gender, in fact, the (...) majority of such individuals reinforce and reify the system they hope to change. (shrink)

This article draws on Foucault's concept of the exercise of power and Gramsci's concept of hegemony to examine how women used cosmetic surgery to exercise power over their bodies and lives. The analysis is rooted in two feminist perspectives on cosmetic surgery. The first argues that women who elect to have their bodies surgically altered are victims of false consciousness whose bodies are disciplined by the hegemonic male gaze. The second asserts that women who undergo elective cosmetic surgery exercise free (...) choice in controlling their bodies and lives. By examining sites wherein power is exercised by and over women, the authors argue for a synthesis of these two perspectives. They find that the women achieved greater power and control over their bodies and lives when they embodied hegemonic ideals of feminine beauty. Cosmetic surgery can be empowering for individual women while reinforcing the hegemonic ideals that oppress women as a group. (shrink)

When it comes to using patient data from the National Health Service for research, we are often told that it is a matter of trust: we need to trust, we need to build trust, we need to restore trust. Various policy papers and reports articulate and develop these ideas and make very important contributions to public dialogue on the trustworthiness of our research institutions. But these documents and policies are apparently constructed with little sustained reflection on the nature of trust (...) and trustworthiness, and therefore are missing important features that matter for how we manage concerns related to trust. We suggest that what we mean by ‘trust’ and ‘trustworthiness’ matters and should affect the policies and guidance that govern data sharing in the NHS. We offer a number of initial, general reflections on the way in which some of these features might affect our approach to principles, policies and strategies that are related to sharing patient data for research. This paper is the outcome of a ‘public ethics’ coproduction activity which involved members of the public and two academic ethicists. Our task was to consider collectively the accounts of trust developed by philosophers as they applied in the context of the NHS and to coproduce an argumentative position relevant to this context. (shrink)

There is compelling evidence that pain experience is influenced by cognitive states. We explore one specific form of such influence, namely placebo analgesia, and examine its relevance for the cognitive penetration debate in philosophy of mind. We single out as important a form of influence on experience that we term radical cognitive penetration, and argue that some cases of placebo analgesia constitute compelling instances of this phenomenon. Still, we urge caution in extrapolating from this to broader conclusions about cognitive penetration (...) in perceptual experience. Instead, we suggest that the cognitive penetration of pain raises distinctive psychological, epistemological, and ethical issues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Democratizing Psychiatric ResearchRecognizing the Potential and the Limits of Experiential ExpertiseThe author reports no conflict of interests.First, I want to express my gratitude for such thoughtful and generative responses to the manuscript "Why Democratize Psychiatric Research?," which has been in development for several years and is the product of much reflection that has taken place in academic, advocacy, and interpersonal contexts. I am delighted to see such insightful engagement (...) with the piece and to have a chance to respond to both Drs. David Crepaz-Keay and Sam Fellowes here. Given that the authors raise such different questions within their commentaries, I consider each in turn.In his illuminating commentary, Crepaz-Keay makes three important points in response to the epistemic and ethical reasons I lay out as justifications for democratizing efforts in mental health research. First of all, Crepaz-Keay warns that there is "more subjectivity across much of medicine" than in the picture I've painted, and that we might do better to focus on this shared territory, taking up the goal of democratization across all of medicine, rather than risk "othering" psychiatry as uniquely subjective. In this way, Crepaz-Keay emphasizes, mental health service user researchers might "become leaders in progressive medical thinking."I appreciate this call to emphasize the ways in which the importance of subjective experiences cuts across all of medicine and to learn broad lessons from the pioneering participatory work that has been accomplished in the domain of mental health. I agree that much of medicine suffers from a focus on the objective to the neglect of the subjective, and wonder if this focus can sometimes create a distinct kind of worry in territories in which objective measures are widely available. Consider the focus on reducing the size of a tumor at all costs that can sometimes obscure important considerations related to what a good end of life might look like (Gawande, 2014). Particularly [End Page 143] within the process of determining what is worth measuring within research (and what is worth treating within clinical contexts), patient voices are essential to making an informed and beneficial decision. I agree with Crepaz-Keay here—this point applies to all realms of medicine.In contrast, I think other kinds of risks arise in domains in which objective measures are not widely available and therefore subjective reports of patients make up an essential part of any diagnosis or assessment. Another area I often think about is placebo studies, and in this space, stereotypes related to 'real' suffering and 'real' healing circulate widely (Friesen, 2019b). Largely, these stereotypes tend to support the importance and reality of that which occurs at the level of the physical or biological and take much less seriously suffering or healing which is thought to be located 'all in the head' (Friesen & Dionne, 2022). These biases also cut across medicine, influencing which patients are seen as trustworthy, dramatic, or worthy of one's compassion. I would argue that they show up especially in the setting of mental health care and research, in part because of the lack of objective measures and physiological explanations. A psychiatrized patient often has nothing physical or objective to point to with regard to their suffering, and so may be at the whim of a provider in relation to whether they are likely to be believed or discredited. As such, we must be especially alert to the unique risks that arise when evidence for suffering comes in a subjective form, and how efforts toward democratization might help reduce such risks.Second, Crepaz-Keay offers an essential intervention in relation to the importance of anti-racism within participatory practices in psychiatry. Although I do make mention of the lack of representation of racialized communities in participatory psychiatric research in discussing the important role that values play in the development of psychiatric knowledge, Crepaz-Keay accurately points out that this point related to representation is cross-cutting, and highly relevant to several of the other reasons I offer for why psychiatry research ought to be democratized. I am grateful for this invitation to look more broadly at how the exclusion of some voices from participatory efforts might apply across... (shrink)

Die Unterscheidung von <I>theoretischer Ethik und <I>angewandter Ethik ist als Antwort auf vollig neue Handlungsoptionen und Entscheidungsdilemmata zu betrachten, die im Zuge des wissenschaftlich-technischen Fortschritts seit der zweiten Halfte des 20. Jahrhunderts entstanden. Die im Zusammenhang mit dieser Entwicklung auftretenden ethischen Fragen bzw. Probleme erfordern neuartige Losungsstrategien. Diese konnen nicht mehr ohne weiteres aus den uberlieferten moralischen Prinzipien der traditionellen Moralphilosophie abgeleitet werden. Aus diesem Grunde entstehen neue Herausforderungen fur die Philosophie, denen sich die Autoren dieses Sammelbandes gestellt haben. In (...) den Aufsatzen wird zum einen gezeigt, dass sich dem berechtigten <I>Praktischwerden der Ethik als praktischer Philosophie auch andere Formen <I>Praktizierender Philosophie zuordnen, wie etwa der Bereich der <I>Lebenskunst oder der einer <I>Philosophischen Praxis, zum anderen zeigen die verschiedenen Arbeiten aber auch, dass bei all dem nicht ubersehen werden darf, dass angewandte Ethik keine <I>Sonderethik ist, die unabhangig von der allgemeinen philosophischen Ethik betrieben werden kann.". (shrink)

What does it take to argue well? The goal of this series of studies was to better understand the cognitive skills entailed in argument, and their course of development, isolated from the verbal and social demands that argumentive discourse also entails. Findings indicated that young adolescents are less able than adults to coordinate attention to both positions in an argument, an age-related pattern that parallels one found in discourse. Contributing to this weakness was inattention to the opposing position (in both (...) constrained and unconstrained formats), but not ability to address the opposing position when explicitly asked to do so. In addition to implementing the necessary dual focus, results point to the importance of developing epistemological understanding of the relevance of the opposing position to argument, as well as of the goals of argument more generally. The results also reflect the close parallels between dialogic and non-dialogic argument. (shrink)

As we rapidly approach the 50th year of the much‐celebrated ‘cognitive revolution’, it is worth reflecting on its widespread impact on individual disciplines and areas of multidisciplinary endeavour. Of specific concern in this paper is the example of the influence of cognitivism's equation of mind and computer in education. Within education, this paper focuses on a particular area of concern to which both mind and computer are simultaneously central: educational technology. It examines the profound and lasting effect of cognitive science (...) on our understandings of the educational potential of information and communication technologies, and further argues that recent and multiple ‘signs of discontent’, ‘crises’ and even ‘failures’ in cognitive science and psychology should result in changes in these understandings. It concludes by suggesting new directions that educational technology research might take in the light of this crisis of cognitivsm. (shrink)

Why does discourse so often seem shallow, with people arguing past one another more than with one another? Might contributing causes be individual and logical rather than only dialogical? We consider here whether there exist errors in reasoning that could be particularly damaging in their effects on argumentive discourse. In particular, we examine implications for discourse of two such errors – explanation as a replacement for evidence and neglecting the likelihood of multiple causes contributing to an outcome. In Studies 1 (...) and 2, we show these errors to be prevalent in a cross section of adults, as well as samples of community college students and young adolescents, with minimal age-related improvement. They also occur, although less frequently, among a sample of highly educated adults, and in Study 3, we examine their role in the discourse of college-educated adults. We point finally to evidence that these individual reasoning errors are potentially addressable through education. (shrink)

Simple explanations are very often inadequate and can encourage faulty inferences. We examined college students’ explanations regarding illegal immigration to determine the prevalence of single-factor explanations. The form of students’ explanations was predicted by their responses on a simple three-item forced-choice multivariable causal reasoning task in which they selected the strongest evidence against a causal claim. In a further qualitative investigation of explanations by a sample of community adults, we identified positive features among those who scored high on this multivariable (...) causal reasoning task. We consider limitations of single-factor reasoning and means of encouraging more comprehensive explanations to support claims. (shrink)

A recent systematic review of Machine Learning (ML) approaches to health data, containing over 100 studies, found that the most investigated problem was mental health (Yin et al., 2019). Relatedly, recent estimates suggest that between 165,000 and 325,000 health and wellness apps are now commercially available, with over 10,000 of those designed specifically for mental health (Carlo et al., 2019). In light of these trends, the present chapter has three aims: (1) provide an informative overview of some of the recent (...) work taking place at the intersection of text mining and mental health so that we can (2) highlight and analyze several pressing ethical issues that are arising in this rapidly growing field and (3) suggest productive directions for how these issues might be better addressed within future interdisciplinary work to ensure the responsible development of text mining approaches in psychology generally, and in mental health fields, specifically. In Section 1, we review some of the recent literature on text-mining and mental health in the contexts of traditional experimental settings, social media, and research involving electronic health records. Then, in Section 2, we introduce and discuss ethical concerns that arise before, during, and after research is conducted. Finally, in Section 3, we offer several suggestions about how ethical oversight of text-mining research might be improved to be more responsive to the concerns mapped out in Section 2. (shrink)

Building on decades of rich discussions of why 'nothing about us without us' matters in the field of psychiatry, this paper aims to illuminate the justifications underlying participatory research in psychiatry, and how these justifications might shape participatory methodologies. This is accomplished through the examination of several epistemic and ethical features of psychiatry that underlie the importance of engaging in participatory research in the field, unpacking their connection to participatory research, and offering suggestions related to their implications for research methodologies. (...) The epistemic features include: the irreducible value of patient experience, the extent of disagreement and uncertainty in the field, and the value-laden nature of knowledge in psychiatry. The ethical features include: the preponderance of harm, denials of agency and epistemic injustice, and the constant struggle for power. These features offer useful touchpoints for thinking through why participation matters in mental health research. (shrink)

Historians of Reformational philosophy often claim that Abraham Kuyper obtained the idea of sovereignty in its own sphere from Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer. But very little historical research has been done on Groen’s sources for and development of this idea. The first use of the Dutch phrase souvereiniteit in eigen sfeer is much earlier than previously thought; it was used in 1853 by J.I. Doedes, an associate of the “ethical theologian” Daniël Chantepie de la Saussaye. Groen became aware of the (...) ideas of Franz von Baader through journals founded by them, and by reading and corresponding with them and others, such as J.H. Gunning Jr. and Friedrich Fabri. Groen himself owned some of Baader’s books. He also relied strongly on the work of the jurist Friedrich Julius Stahl, who was 37 years younger than Baader but taught for a while at the same Munich university and shared Baader’s anti-revolutionary ideas. (shrink)

In a recent paper, a “distance” function, $\cal D$ , was defined which measures the distance between pure classical and quantum systems. In this work, we present a new definition of a “distance”, D, which measures the distance between either pure or impure classical and quantum states. We also compare the new distance formula with the previous formula, when the latter is applicable. To illustrate these distances, we have used 2 × 2 matrix examples and two-dimensional vectors for simplicity and (...) clarity. Several specific examples are calculated. (shrink)