Abstract:Patients with repeated minor head injury are a challenge to our clinical skills of neurodiagnosis because the relevant evidence objectively demonstrating their impairment was collected in New Zealand (although published in theBMJandLancet) and, at the time, was mired in controversy. The effects of repeated closed diffuse head injury are increasingly recognized worldwide, but now suffer from the relentless advance of imaging technology as the dominant form of neurodiagnosis and the considerable financial interests that underpin the refusal to recognize that acute (...) accelerational injury is the most subtle and insidiously damaging (especially when seen in the light of biopsychosocial medicine), and potentially one of the most financially momentous (given the large incomes impacted and needing compensation) phenomena in modern sports medicine. The vested interests in downplaying this phenomenon are considerable and concentrated in North America where diffuse head injury is a widespread feature of the dominant winter sports code: Gridiron or American Rules football. The relationship of this to shattered lives among the brightest and best of young men and the relatively dated objective evidence are a toxic mix in terms of ethical analysis and, therefore, there is a malignant confluence of social forces that tends toward minimizing the injury. (shrink)

Abstract The phenomenology of Multiple Personality (MP) syndrome is used to derive an Aristotelian explanation of the failure to achieve rational integration of mental content. An MP subject is best understood as having failed to master the techniques of integrating conative and cognitive aspects of her mental life. This suggests that in irrationality the subject may lack similar skills basic to the proper articulation and use of mental content in belief formation and control of action. The view that emerges centres (...) mind on the activity of a subject rather than a structured causal nexus. (shrink)

It is striking that some arguments in the bioethical literature seem implausible, counterintuitive, and even ridiculous when reported to competent moral agents. When examined, these arguments bear uncanny resemblances to the discourse of patients with debilitating mental disorders. I examine the kinds of irrationality involved, and discuss the fact that such irrationality is worrying in a discipline that purports to serve as a guide for real‐life practical reasoning. I offer some thoughts about correctives that we might use to temper some (...) of the odd opinions that bedevil our subject in the name of ethical analysis. It seems that one ought to be suspicious of neatly rational arguments that produce counterintuitive conclusions, but the alternative seems to be that we explore new constructions of old problems in Bioethics such that our discussion of them does justice to what we regard as of fundamental significance to our lives together as human beings. (shrink)

Joseph Fins's book Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics, and the Struggle for Consciousness is a considerable addition to the literature on disorders of consciousness and the murky area of minimally conscious states. Fins brings to this fraught area of clinical practice and neuroethical analysis a series of stories and reflections resulting in a pressing and sustained ethical challenge both to clinicians and to health care systems. The challenge is multifaceted, with diagnostic and therapeutic demands to be met by (...) clinicians and a mix of moral, scientific-economic, and political resonances for health care analysts. Everything in the book resonates with my own clinical experience and the often messy and emotionally wrenching business of providing ongoing care for patients with severe brain injuries and disorders, people who frequently resist the categorizations that well-organized health care systems prefer and that can dictate terms of patient management. (shrink)

Patients with covert awareness who present as being vegetative raise the question of moral status and clinical decisions about those who have suffered major brain injuries. When the idea of moral s...

This study examines whether corporate social responsibility performance is associated with corporate tax avoidance. Employing a matched sample of 434 firm-year observations from the Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini database over the period 2003–2009, our logit regression results show that the higher the level of CSR performance of a firm, the lower the likelihood of tax avoidance. Our results indicate that more socially responsible firms are likely to display less tax avoidance. Finally, the results from our additional analysis show that the (...) CSR categories community relations and diversity represent particularly important elements of CSR performance that reduce tax avoidance. (shrink)

This symposium represents the first major foray of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry into what may well become one of its significant strands of scholarship. The JBI has always encouraged critical and marginal areas of bioethics scholarship and particularly those which make use of contemporary continental philosophy and cultural theory in addition to traditional analytic methods. For that reason this symposium is an expression of a “natural fit” or a “match made in heaven” (or at least the Platonic version of (...) that idea). The authors span times and sites in history and culture, from ancient Greece to present day Brisbane. They draw on a variety of literary genres and figures, ranging from Greek tragedy to an epic Chinese novel; from Jane Austen to William Styron, a major American novelist and essayist; from the modern English science fiction of Kazuo Ishiguro, a Japanese expatriate in London, to the 20th-century English poetry of Philip Larkin. The symposium also engages with some recur. (shrink)

The idea that there is an inherent incentive in moral judgment or, in Classical terms, that there is an essential relationship between virtue and well?being is sharply criticized in contemporary moral theory. The associated theses that there is a way of living which is objectively good for human beings and that living that way is part of understanding moral truth are equally problematic. The Aristotelian argument proceeded via the premise that a human being was a rational social being. The present (...) reworking of that thesis builds on the internal connection between rationality and concept use. Moral judgment is linked to the grasp of moral concepts and thereby to an appreciation of how it is with other persons. The judgment that another person instances a morally relevant ascription is grounded on an empathic grasp of how it is with that person and thus tied to the thought that one ought to act in such and such a way or. in other words, to a disposition to act. Because the empathically grasped content of moral concepts is related to a number of mental ascriptions and reactive attitudes, the grasp of that content is interwoven deeply in the structure of human mental life and any attempt systematically to devalue or undermine it is threatening to one's mental integrity as a rational social being. Thus there is a deep link between moral sense or the disposition to act morally and an adequately grounded conception of human well?being. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of thought crucially involve an array of abilities to identify general properties or features of the world (corresponding to concepts) and objects that instantiate those general properties. Abilities of both types can be grounded in a naturalistic account of the usefulness of cognitive structures in adaptive behaviour. Language enhances these abilities by multiplying the experience bases giving rise to them and helping to overcome subjective biases.

The two commentators have examined and illuminated different aspects of the analysis of delusions that we have offered. Their discussions both raise points that clarify that analysis in helpful ways. Richard Bentall (2014) makes the telling point that distinguishing the mental phenomena that count as delusions is not always straightforward and that, at the margins, there is a perennial problem with patterns of thought that seem to fall outside the realm of shared meanings that most of us derive from our (...) experiences. The problem is evident in certain marginal conditions that come to psychiatric attention, like conversion reactions, body dysmorphic disorder, anorexia, and the many obsessions or strained .. (shrink)

The legalisation of euthanasia creates a certain tension when it is compared with those traditional medical principles that seem to embody respect for the sanctity of life. It also creates a real need for us to explore what we mean by harm in relation to dying patients. When we consider that we must train physicians so that they not only understand ethical issues but also show the virtues in their clinical practice, it becomes important for us to strive to train (...) them in virtue rather than mere knowledge. We can only do this by conveying a real sense of the needs of the patient and an ability to relate to patients as people not problems. Such attitudes take shape in a training programme in which practical situations are explored and discussed and the limits of scientific medical responses to those challenges are exposed. Keywords: bioethics education, euthanasia, moral judgment, training, virtue CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Perception is often analysed as a process in which causal events from the environment act on a subject to produce states in the mind or brain. The role of the subject is an increasing feature of neuroscientific and cognitive literature. This feature is linked to the need for an account of the normative aspects of perceptual competence. A holographic model is offered in which objects are presented to the subject classified according to rules governing concepts and encoded in brain function (...) in that form. This implies that the analysis of perception must consider not only the fact that there is an interaction between the perceiving subject and the perceived object but also that the interaction is shaped by a system of concepts which the subject uses in thought and action. (shrink)

Contents Introduction: Why Idealism Matters Part 1: Ancient Idealism 1. Parmenides and the Birth of Ancient Idealism 2. Plato and Neoplatonism Part 2: Early Modern Idealism 3. Phenomenalism and Idealism I: Descartes and Malebranche 4. Phenomenalism and Idealism II: Leibniz and Berkeley Part 3: German Idealism 5. Immanuel Kant: Cognition, Freedom and Teleology 6. Fichte and the System of Freedom 7. Philosophy of Nature and the Birth of Absolute Idealism: Schelling 8. Hegel and Hegelianism: Mind, Nature and Logic Part 4: (...) British Idealism 9. British Absolute Idealism: From Green to Bradley 10. Personal Idealism: From Ward to McTaggart 11. Naturalist Idealism: Bernard Bosanquet 12. Criticisms and Persistent Misconceptions of Idealism 13. Actual Occasions and Eternal Objects: The Process Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead. Part 5: Contemporary Idealisms 14. Autopoiesis: Idealist Biology I 15. Autonomous Agents: Idealist Biology II 16. Contemporary Philosophical Idealisms. (shrink)

This chapter advances a contextual view of evidence, through a reconsideration of Hempel's paradox of confirmation. The initial view regarding Hempel's paradox is that a non-black non-raven does confirm ‘All ravens are black’, but only in certain contexts. The chapter begins by reformulating the paradox as a puzzle about how the same entity can have variable evidential values for a given proposition. It then offers a three-stage solution to the reformulated paradox. The situation makes better sense when we reach a (...) deeper propositional understanding of evidence, recognising that each entity can be represented in multiple observational propositions. Some anti-contextualist intuitions can be defused by distinguishing two different senses of the word ‘evidence’, one applying to objects or events and the other applying to propositions; only the latter is relevant to inference. A fuller understanding comes from analysing the constitution and use of evidence in terms of epistemic action. These reflections on the ravens paradox suggest a general philosophical framework more suitable for understanding the function of evidence in scientific and everyday practices. (shrink)

Population-level theories of evolution—the stock and trade of population genetics—are statistical theories par excellence. But what accounts for the statistical character of population-level phenomena? One view is that the population-level statistics are a product of, are generated by, probabilities that attach to the individuals in the population. On this conception, population-level phenomena are explained by individual-level probabilities and their population-level combinations. Another view, which arguably goes back to Fisher but has been defended recently, is that the population-level statistics are sui (...) generis, that they somehow emerge from the underlying deterministic behavior of the individuals composing the population. Walsh et al. label this the statistical interpretation. We are not willing to give them that term, since everyone will admit that the population-level theories of evolution are statistical, so we will call this the emergentist statistical interpretation. Our goals are to show that: This interpretation is based on gross factual errors concerning the practice of evolutionary biology, concerning both what is done and what can be done; its adoption would entail giving up on most of the explanatory and predictive projects of evolutionary biology; and finally a rival interpretation, which we will label the propensity statistical interpretation succeeds exactly where the emergentist interpretation fails. (shrink)

As in other fields, scholarly publication in sociology is not only the key to career success but also the route by which feminist analyses and perspectives become known to others in the discipline. A growing literature has analyzed women's and men's rates of publication, but the gender politics of the prepublication production of research and gender differences in reputation building after publication remain underexplored. This report reviews the current state of knowledge about sociological publishing at three phases: prepublication, the publication-seeking (...) phase, and postpublication. It concludes with critical questions to be addressed in developing a comprehensive model of gender effects on sociological publishing. (shrink)

Bioethical debates such as those surrounding the manipulation of human embryos are often based on metaphysical assumptions that lack a foundation in the natural sciences. In this paper we support a gradualist position whereby the embryo progressively takes on the form and associated ethical significance of a human being. We support this position by introducing a concept of biological structure or form to show how the gradualist position has its metaphysical foundations in modern biology. The conceptual basis for form and (...) structure are outlined and their compatibility with and basis in current empirical biology is demonstrated by some recent advances in our understanding of the processes of development from single cell to organism. We then briefly explore the ethical significance of accepting a form or structure based conception of biology for the status of the early embryo. (shrink)

In this paper, we distinguish two different approaches to cultural evolution. One approach is meme-centered, the other organism-centered. We argue that in situations in which the meme- and organism-centered approaches are competing alternatives, the organism-centered approach is in many ways superior. Furthermore, the organism-centered approach can go a long way toward understanding the evolution of institutions. Although the organism-centered approach is preferable for a broad class of situations, we do leave room for super-organismic or sub-organismic explanations of some cultural phenomena.