Newborn screening programmes began in the 1960s, have traditionally been conducted without parental permission and have grown dramatically in the last decade. Whether these programmes serve patients’ best interests has recently become a point of controversy. Privacy advocates, concerned that newborn screening infringes upon individual liberties, are demanding fundamental changes to these programmes. These include parental permission and limiting the research on the blood samples obtained, an agenda at odds with the viewpoints of newborn screening advocates. This essay presents the (...) history of newborn screening in the USA, with attention to factors that have contributed to concerns about these programmes. The essay suggests that the rapid increase in the number of disorders screened for and the addition of research without either public knowledge or informed consent were critical to the development of resistance to mandatory newborn screening and research. Future newborn screening initiatives should include public education and comment to ensure continued support. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the use of neurointerventions to reduce the risk that criminal offenders will reoffend. Commentators have raised several ethical concerns regarding this practice. One prominent concern is that, when imposed without the offender’s valid consent, neurointerventions might infringe offenders’ right to bodily integrity. While it is commonly held that we possess a moral right to bodily integrity, the extent to which this right would protect against such neurointerventions is as-yet unclear. In this paper, we will assess (...) whether, why, and how severely three forms of neurointervention might infringe the right to bodily integrity. We show that the severity of the infringement of the right to bodily integrity differs across different forms of neurointervention. Moreover, we argue that mental and behavioral effects of neurointerventions could in some cases be relevant to determining the severity of infringements of the right to bodily integrity. (shrink)

Many hold that (1) consciousness poses a uniquely hard problem. Why is this so? Chalmers considers 12 main answers in 'The Meta-Problem of Consciousness'. This paper focuses on number 11, and is principally addressed to those who endorse (1) because they think that (2) consciousness can't possibly be physical. It argues that to hold (2) is to make the mistake of underestimating the physical, and that almost all who make this mistake do so because they think they know more about (...) the physical than they do. When we see things right, we see that there is nothing in physics nor in our everyday experience of the physical that gives us any good reason to hold (2). This leaves us free to embrace the overwhelmingly strong reasons for accepting that (3) consciousness is wholly physical. The correct general response is the same as the response to wave-particle duality: acceptance without expectation of understanding. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: “Pedagogy” and “Science” The Educational Reform Movement of the Eighteenth Century Kant, Hegel, and the Reform Movement Kant Hegel Conclusion.

More than twenty-five years after the first signs of potential harm, the US remains locked in the grip of an opioid epidemic, with more Americans dying from overdoses than ever before.1 Diversion of prescription opioids plays an important role in opioid-related harms. Much of the scientific and public health focus on diversion has been on end-users, given how commonly non-medical prescription opioid use occurs, as well as the proportion of individuals who report that their source of non-medical opioids was friends (...) or family. However, diversion of opioids, as well as their rampant oversupply, can be discerned higher up the supply chain, including among wholesalers, pharmacies and rogue prescribers whose behavior may trigger well-described “flags” warranting further evaluation and action. (shrink)

Before talking about national science as a specific phenomenon we find out the essence of science as a phenomenon in general. We note that science is one of the most complex phenomena of social life. Complex understanding of it complicates the fact that science is structurally extremely complex, polyfunctional, historically variable, with many of its faces included in this or that sphere of social life. It therefore appears as an extremely diverse social phenomenon. This raises some difficulties in developing a (...) general definition of it. As G. Volkov correctly pointed out, "there is nothing simpler than giving a definition to any phenomenon, when the whole thing is only in the formulation, and there is nothing more complicated than when it comes to the concentration in the concentrated form of the very essence of the object under study". (shrink)

Unlike the radical historicist and the radical logicist, the moderate historicist in the philosophy of science adopts the position that neither purely a priori (i.e., logical or philosophical) nor purely historical considerations alone determine the acceptability of a philosophical analysis of science. A dilemma arising from the nature of this position is first described and then it is argued that what is perhaps the most plausible way of avoiding this dilemma is doomed to failure. A particular example of this attempt (...) at escaping the dilemma is considered in some detail, and along the way evidence is amassed in support of the view that no non-trivial statement of moderate historicism will be coherent. (shrink)

The Baire algebra of a topological space X is the quotient of the algebra of all subsets of X modulo the meager sets. We show that this Boolean algebra can be endowed with a natural closure operator, resulting in a closure algebra which we denote $\mathbf {Baire}(X)$. We identify the modal logic of such algebras to be the well-known system $\mathsf {S5}$, and prove soundness and strong completeness for the cases where X is crowded and either completely metrizable and continuum-sized (...) or locally compact Hausdorff. We also show that every extension of $\mathsf {S5}$ is the modal logic of a subalgebra of $\mathbf {Baire}(X)$, and that soundness and strong completeness also holds in the language with the universal modality. (shrink)

A leading figure in neuroaesthetics makes the case that aesthetic experience can be meaningfully measured by the tools of neuroscience.

The Grolier Club of New York has been mounting exhibitions of books and prints since 1884, and many of them are recognized as landmark treatments of their subjects. Most of them have also been accompanied by published catalogs or related books. A recent instance was the exhibition, in the early months of 2021, drawn from Steven Lomazow's vast collection of American magazines, consisting of over eighty-three thousand separate issues from 1731 to the present. The substantial and profusely illustrated book that (...) has resulted is a welcome new survey of the subject, for it contains not only a record of the comprehensive exhibition but also fifteen essays written by Lomazow and seven other contributors (five chronological chapters, ten topical ones).The appearance of this book is an occasion for thinking about the status of magazines as research material. Although there is a considerable literature devoted to the history of magazines, they still do not always receive the attention they deserve. For example, author bibliographies generally give detailed physical descriptions of an author's books but simply list the magazine contributions. The illogic of this approach should be obvious, for magazines are printed matter, just as books are, and are thus subject to all the same complications. Two examples will illustrate how copies of supposedly identical issues can vary. In the nineteenth century, individual issues were often reprinted when the supply ran low, so that the publisher would be able to make up complete volumes for sale in a publisher's binding at the end of the year; these second printings were not labeled as such, but they could of course contain textual differences, both intentional and accidental. In the twentieth century, some American magazines had regional “editions” in which the text was shifted around in order to accommodate different advertising, keyed to local markets (the New Yorker is an example); as a result, page citations for a given contribution might not be the same in different copies (and cutting of text could also occur).The illogic of neglecting magazines has implications for biographical, as well as bibliographical and textual, study. There are many instances in which periodical publication was crucial for an author's career. It often provided an author's first public exposure and at any point in a career might have reached a larger audience than the books. Collectors, on whom preservation of the evidence initially depends, have been as guilty as bibliographers of slighting magazines. For instance, they have traditionally paid attention to anthologies that contain first book appearances of particular works (because they are “books”), without recognizing that issues of magazines are also anthologies (and frequently of more significance for promoting an author's reputation). Preservation relies also on institutional libraries to do their part; but (although “little magazines” now seem to be safe from further destruction) mainstream and mass-circulation magazines (both present and past) are continually being discarded by libraries in favor of digital reproductions. And reproductions are no more adequate as substitutes for the originals of magazines than they are for books, since they do not provide a basis for studying the unreproducible physical details that affect the reading experience and are essential for bibliographical research. Furthermore, since copies of a magazine issue can vary (just as copies of a book can), the number of copies that are preserved is a serious concern.These are among the considerations that make one glad to see Lomazow's book, for here is a collector who has focused on magazines for their own sake. Even though his book does not go into the matters I have raised, it can still serve to publicize the cause. One hopes that it, along with the wide attention his exhibition received, will stimulate appreciation of the importance of magazines in cultural history and the consequent need to collect and preserve them. (shrink)

The theoretical and practical problems of providing incentives for people's activity in society are becoming increasingly more urgent as the role of the human factor in the development of society grows. In light of modern historical experience, we can see the onesidedness of conceptions according to which the types and directions of activity are mechanically predetermined by conditions external to it, and we can see the necessity of understanding the laws of activity itself in all their complicated dialectical essence. These (...) problems have become particularly important at the present stage of development of Soviet society, when a greater active involvement of the masses and profound changes in social psychology are becoming acutely necessary. (shrink)

The McCollough effect, an orientation-contingent color aftereffect, has been known for over 30 years and, like other aftereffects, has been taken as a means of probing the brain's operations psychophysically. In this paper, we review psychophysical, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging studies of the McCollough effect. Much of the evidence suggests that the McCollough effect depends on neural mechanisms that are located early in the cortical visual pathways, probably in V1. We also review evidence showing that the aftereffect can be induced without (...) conscious perception of the induction patterns. Based on these two lines of evidence, it is argued that our conscious visual experience of the world arises in the cortical visual system beyond V1. (shrink)