The application of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in healthcare have immense potential to improve the care of patients. While there are some emerging practices surro...

In this paper we offer a new argument for the existence of God. We contend that the laws of logic are metaphysically dependent on the existence of God, understood as a necessarily existent, personal, spiritual being; thus anyone who grants that there are laws of logic should also accept that there is a God. We argue that if our most natural intuitions about them are correct, and if they are to play the role in our intellectual activities that we take (...) them to play, then the laws of logic are best construed as necessarily existent thoughts -- more specifically, as divine thoughts about divine thoughts. We conclude by highlighting some implications for both theistic arguments and antitheistic arguments. (shrink)

Does traditional Christianity involve paradoxical doctrines, that is, doctrines that present the appearance (at least) of logical inconsistency? If so, what is the nature of these paradoxes and why do they arise? What is the relationship between "paradox" and "mystery" in theological theorizing? And what are the implications for the rationality, or otherwise, of orthodox Christian beliefs? In Paradox in Christian Theology, James Anderson argues that the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation, as derived from Scripture and formulated in (...) the ecumenical creeds, are indeed paradoxical. But this conclusion, he contends, need not imply that Christians who believe these doctrines are irrational in doing so. In support of this claim, Anderson develops and defends a model of understanding paradoxical Christian doctrines according to which the presence of such doctrines is unsurprising and adherence to paradoxical doctrines cannot be considered as a serious intellectual obstacle to belief in Christianity. The case presented in this book has significant implications for the practice of systematic theology, biblical exegesis, and Christian apologetics. (shrink)

This article focuses on mirror self-recognition, the ability to recognize one's own image in a mirror. It presents the result of the first experiment on mirror self-recognition which showed that chimpanzees are able to learn that the chimps they see in the mirror are not other chimps, but themselves, as evidenced by self-directed behaviour. It reviews evidence for neural network for self-recognition and self-other differentiation and cites evidence that frontal cortex and cortical midline structures are implicated in self-recognition tasks. It (...) also suggests that the mirror self-recognition ability correlates to large brain size relative to the animal's body size. (shrink)

The practice of paying research subjects for participating inclinical trials has yet to receive an adequate moral analysis.Dickert and Grady argue for a wage payment model in whichresearch subjects are paid an hourly wage based on that ofunskilled laborers. If we accept this approach, what follows?Norms for just working conditions emerge from workplacelegislation and political theory. All workers, includingpaid research subjects under Dickert and Grady''s analysis,have a right to at least minimum wage, a standard work week,extra pay for overtime hours, (...) a safe workplace, no faultcompensation for work-related injury, and union organization.If we accept that paid research subjects are wage earners likeany other, then the implications for changes to current practiceare substantial. (shrink)

The principle of clinical equipoise requires that, aside from certain exceptional cases, second generation treatments ought to be tested against standard therapy. In violation of this principle, placebo-controlled trials (PCTs) continue to be used extensively in the development and licensure of second-generation treatments. This practice is typically justified by appeal to methodological arguments that purport to demonstrate that active-controlled trials (ACTs) are methodologically flawed. Foremost among these arguments is the so called assay sensitivity argument. In this paper, I take a (...) closer look at this argument. Following Duhem, I argue that all trials, placebo-controlled or not, rely on external information for their meaningful interpretation. Pending non-circular empirical evidence that we can trust the findings of PCTs to a greater degree than the findings of ACTs, I conclude that the assay sensitivity argument fails to demonstrate that placebo-controlled trials are preferable, methodologically or otherwise, to active-controlled trials. Contrary to the intentions of its authors, the fundamental lesson taught by the assay sensitivity argument is Duhemian: the validity of all clinical trials depends on external information. (shrink)

In Paradox in Christian Theology I argued that the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation are paradoxical—that is, they appear to involve implicit contradictions—yet Christians can still be rational in affirming and believing those doctrines. Dale Tuggy has characterized my theory of theological paradox as a form of “positive mysterianism” and argues that the theory “faces steep epistemic problems, and is at best a temporarily reasonable but ultimately unsustainable stance.” After summarizing my proposed model for the rational affirmation (...) of theological paradox and considering whether my proposal is indeed a form of “positive mysterianism” as Tuggy defines the term, I address the two main criticisms raised in Tuggy’s paper: first, that the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility cannot bear the weight required by my defense of paradox; and second, that my proposed model is afflicted with epistemic instability. I conclude that Tuggy has failed to show that a mysterian stance with respect to paradoxical Christian doctrines is in principle unreasonable, unnatural, or unsustainable. (shrink)

Notwithstanding requirements for scientific/social value and risk/benefit proportionality in major research ethics policies, there are no widely accepted standards for these judgments in Phase 1 trials. This paper examines whether the principle of clinical equipoise can be used as a standard for assessing the ratio of risk to direct-benefit presented by drugs administered in one category of Phase 1 study—first-in-human trials involving patients. On the basis of the supporting evidence for, and architecture of, Phase 1 studies, the articles offers two (...) provisional conclusions: (1) the risks of drug administration in such trials cannot generally be justified on therapeutic grounds but by appeal to the social value of the research; and (2) a framework for adjudicating the ratio of risk/social-value must be developed. (shrink)

A relatively new and exciting area of collaboration has begun between philosophy of mind and ethics. This paper attempts to explore aspects of this collaboration and how they bear upon traditional ethics. It is the author's contention that much of Western moral philosophy has been guided by largely unrecognized assumptions regarding reason, knowledge and conceptualization, and that when examined against empirical research in cognitive science, these assumptions turn out to be false -- or at the very least, unrealistic for creatures (...) with our cognitive structures. The fundamental tension between the Western idea of morality (as basically rule-following) and the way in which people actually confront and experience moral dilemmas is a result of our failure to take the insights of cognitive psychology seriously. This failure has had a dramatic impact on not only how we teach ethics, but how we attempt to live out lives. (shrink)

The effort to revise the Declaration of Helsinki and the CIOMS Guidelines has sparked a sometimes vitriolic debate centering on the use of placebo controls.

The paper discusses various concepts of 'species equality' and 'species superiority' and the assumptions concerning intrinsic value on which they depend. I investigate what philosophers from the traditional deontological (Taylor and Lombardi) and utilitarian (Singer and Attfield) perspectives have meant by their claims for species equality. I attempt to provide a framework of intrinsic values that justifies one sense in which members of a species can be said to be superior to members of another species.

Gifts have served as a fundamental aspect of the human experience across time, even as their precise roles and functions have shifted. In the past, bioethicists and others have drawn upon anthropol...

Since its introduction in 1987, Benjamin Freedman’s principle of clinical equipoise has enjoyed widespread uptake in bioethics discourse. Recent years, however, have witnessed a growing consensus that the principle is fundamentally flawed. One of the most vocal critics has undoubtedly been Franklin Miller. In a 2008 paper, Steven Joffe and Miller build on this critical work, offering a new conception of clinical research ethics based on science, taking what they call a “scientific orientation” toward the ethics of clinical research. Though (...) there is much to recommend Joffe and Miller’s scientifically oriented conception of clinical research ethics, I believe that both the critical and constructive projects suffer from the same basic mistake: inattention to context. The internal norms of science cannot be fully specified, let alone satisfied, independently of contextual (external) factors that only come into view when we are attentive to the particular context of that form of inquiry. (shrink)

Char and colleagues provide a useful conceptual framework for the proactive identification of ethical issues arising throughout the lifecycle of machine learning applications in healthcare. Th...

As scientists target communities for research into the etiology, especially the genetic determinants of common diseases, there have been calls for the protection of communities. This paper identifies the distinct characteristics of aboriginal communities and their implications for research in these communities. It also contends that the framework in the Belmont Report is inadequate in this context and suggests a fourth principle of respect for communities. To explore how such a principle might be specified and operationalized, it reviews existing guidelines (...) for protecting aboriginal communities and points out problems with these guidelines and areas for further work. (shrink)

Despite their crucial role in the translation of pre-clinical research into new clinical applications, phase 1 trials involving patients continue to prompt ethical debate. At the heart of the controversy is the question of whether risks of administering experimental drugs are therapeutically justified. We suggest that prior attempts to address this question have been muddled, in part because it cannot be answered adequately without first attending to the way labor is divided in managing risk in clinical trials. In what follows, (...) we approach the question of therapeutic justification for phase 1 trials from the viewpoint of five different stakeholders: the drug regulatory authority, the IRB, the clinical investigator, the referring physician, and the patient. Our analysis shows that the question of therapeutic justification actually raises multiple questions corresponding to the roles and responsibilities of the different stakeholders involved. By attending to these contextual differences, we provide more coherent guidance for the ethical negotiation of risk in phase 1 trials involving patients. We close by discussing the implications of our argument for various perennial controversies in phase 1 trial practice. (shrink)

The conduct of research in settings affected by disasters such as hurricanes, floods and earthquakes is challenging, particularly when infrastructures and resources were already limited pre-disaster. However, since post-disaster research is essential to the improvement of the humanitarian response, it is important that adequate research ethics oversight be available. We aim to answer the following questions: 1) what do research ethics committee members who have reviewed research protocols to be conducted following disasters in low- and middle-income countries perceive as the (...) key ethical concerns associated with disaster research?, and 2) in what ways do REC members understand these concerns to be distinct from those arising in research conducted in non-crisis situations? This qualitative study was developed using interpretative description methodology; 15 interviews were conducted with REC members. Four key ethical issues were identified as presenting distinctive considerations for disaster research to be implemented in LMICs, and were described by participants as familiar research ethics issues that were amplified in these contexts. First, REC members viewed disaster research as having strong social value due to its potential for improving disaster response, but also as requiring a higher level of justification compared to other research settings. Second, they identified vulnerability as an overarching concern for disaster research ethics, and a feature that required careful and critical appraisal when assessing protocols. They noted that research participants’ vulnerabilities frequently change in the aftermath of a disaster and often in unpredictable ways. Third, they identified concerns related to promoting and maintaining safety, confidentiality and data security in insecure or austere environments. Lastly, though REC members endorsed the need and usefulness of community engagement, they noted that there are significant challenges in a disaster setting over and above those typically encountered in global health research to achieve meaningful community engagement. Disaster research presents distinctive ethical considerations that require attention to ensure that participants are protected. As RECs review disaster research protocols, they should address these concerns and consider how justification, vulnerability, security and confidentially, and community engagement are shaped by the realities of conducting research in a disaster. (shrink)

Heyes's literature review of deception, imitation, and self-recognition is inadequate, misleading, and erroneous. The anaesthetic artifact hypothesis of self-recognition is unsupported by the data she herself examines. Her proposed experiment is tantalizing, indicating that theory of mind is simply a Turing test.

One of the most persuasive objections to the identity thesis.

Moral intuitions, while ubiquitous in moral reasoning, have been the cause of considerable controversy in philosophy. My purpose here is to describe the most reasonable role for intuitions in moral theory, in order to look at some problems that arise, particularly for theories of justice, when intuitions are presumed to have this role.

Written from a post-modern perspective, this article makes use of the concepts of obligation, subject position, line of action, discursive form, sentient agent, exchange, mediating technology, intentionality, improvisational performance, and communicative routines to produce an overarching theory of communication and its processes. The work of the article is to develop the linkages among these concepts and founds this analysis in ethnographic research. It concludes that the process of communication occurs inside a nexus of obligation from relational subject positions within some (...) line of action regularly involving a discursive form. It is enacted by two or more sentient agents performing an exchange often utilizing a mediating technology under the intentionality of an improvisationalperformance of a pre-existing communicative routine. (shrink)

Marcuse suggested the alienation of art from society intrinsic to the aesthetic form represents and recollects an unreal world capable of indicting existing social arrangements while simultaneously providing a sensuous experience of another possible, liberated reality denied by established institutions. Drawing on and recasting part of Marcuse’s theory of art and the aesthetic dimension, the author puts forward several theses regarding art, alienation and abolition of the prison-industrial complex. First, art implies alienation; yet, because of that condition, art offers an (...) antidote to estrangement conducive to PIC abolition. Second, Marx explained why key components of capitalism engender alienation, but expounding upon his analysis reveals how incarceration and the concomitant punitive paradigm also reinforce and reproduce estrangement; art, understood as recollection, can aid in abolition of those institutions. Third, authentic justice implies unimpeded use of creative capacities denied and distorted by the PIC, but art can act as recuperation of those capacities in ways that transform our understanding and practice of justice. Fourth, art can offer a foretaste of liberation while anticipating, expressing and heightening our understanding of the possibilities for fuller freedom and PIC abolition, going against and beyond reformist reforms that have historically functioned to strengthen and expand the PIC. Finally, art augments the spirit of abolition and intimates a mode of being antithetical to imprisonment, the PIC and the alienated way of life associated with criminalization and State coercion. (shrink)

This article discusses the properties of a controllable, flexible, hybrid parallel computing architecture that potentially merges pattern recognition and arithmetic. Humans perform integer arithmetic in a fundamentally different way than logic-based computers. Even though the human approach to arithmetic is both slow and inaccurate it can have substantial advantages when useful approximations are more valuable than high precision. Such a computational strategy may be particularly useful when computers based on nanocomponents become feasible because it offers a way to make use (...) of the potential power of these massively parallel systems. Because the system architecture is inspired by neuroscience and is applied to cognitive problems, occasional mention is made of experimental data from both fields when appropriate. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)