: Pharmacogenetics offers the prospect of an era of safer and more effective drugs, as well as more individualized use of drug therapies. Before the benefits of pharmacogenetics can be realized, the ethical issues that arise in research and clinical application of pharmacogenetic technologies must be addressed. The ethical issues raised by pharmacogenetics can be addressed under six headings: regulatory oversight, confidentiality and privacy, informed consent, availability of drugs, access, and clinicians' changing responsibilities in the era of pharmacogenetic medicine. We (...) analyze each of these categories of ethical issues and provide policy approaches for addressing them. (shrink)

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all (...) further questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

Philosophy of Communication Ethics is a unique and timely volume that creatively examines communication ethics, philosophy of communication, and "the other.".

Abstract The last two decades have witnessed a vast expansion in research and writing on the sociology of the body and on issues of embodiment. Indeed, both sociology in general and the sociology of sport specifically have well heeded the long-standing and vociferous calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to social theory. It seems particularly curious therefore that the sociology of sport has to-date addressed this primarily at a certain abstract, theoretical level, with relatively few accounts to be found (...) that are truly grounded in the corporeal realities of the lived sporting body; a ‘carnal sociology’ of sport, to borrow Crossley’s (1995) expression. To portray and understand more fully this kind of embodied perspective, it is argued, demands engaging with the phenomenology of the body, and this article seeks to contribute to a small but growing literature providing this particular form of ‘embodied’ analysis of the body in sport. Here we identify some useful intellectual resources for developing a phenomenology of sporting experience, specifically its sensory elements, and also subsequently examine the potential for its evocative portrayal and effective analysis via different kinds of textual forms. (shrink)

In this paper we look at the manual analysis of arguments and how this compares to the current state of automatic argument analysis. These considerations are used to develop a new approach combining a machine learning algorithm to extract propositions from text, with a topic model to determine argument structure. The results of this method are compared to a manual analysis.

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article took up the first two questions. Part II will take up the second two questions. Question 3 deals with the question as to whether DSM-V should assume a conservative or assertive posture in making changes from DSM-IV. That question in turn breaks down into discussion of diagnoses that depend on, and aim toward, empirical, scientific validation, and diagnoses that are more value-laden and less amenable to scientific validation. Question 4 takes up the role of pragmatic consideration in a psychiatric nosology, whether the purely empirical considerations need to be tempered by considerations of practical consequence. As in Part 1 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

Many experienced runners consider the use of wearable devices an important element of the training process. A key techno-utopic promise of wearables lies in the use of proprietary algorithms to identify training load errors in real-time and alert users to risks of running-related injuries. Such real-time ‘knowing’ is claimed to obviate the need for athletes’ subjective judgements by telling runners how they have deviated from a desired or optimal training load or intensity. This realist-contoured perspective is, however, at odds with (...) sociological research indicating that users of wearables engage in active ‘data sense-making’ that is highly contextualised. To investigate how athletes use (or not) algorithmic analysis to understand, make sense of, and improve their performance in real-time, we undertook qualitative interviews with distance runners to explore lived experiences of running with wearables. The runners described how they actively interpreted data from wearables, drawing on their own experience, ‘somatic knowledge’, and embodied ways of knowing. This allowed them to assess the relevance and usefulness of data in relation to their own goals, intentions, and feelings. Our findings challenge the techno-utopic promises of real-time and predictive analytics. (shrink)

In recent years, the role of self-tracking technologies has been investigated, debated and critiqued within qualitative research circles. The principal means by which self-tracking technologies seek to promote health-related behaviours and behaviour change is through the use of ‘nudges’. Despite the increasing prevalence of nudge-style modes of body-mind governance, there remains little in-depth qualitative research on people’s embodied responses to this form of behavioural management. The current study sought to address this lacuna by drawing on a form of empirical, sociological (...) phenomenology to investigate the lived experience of being ‘nudged’ by self-tracking technology. Our phenomenologically-inspired analysis revealed how nudges can be perceived as objectifying by rendering the user’s body the intentional object of awareness. Participants agentically engaged in a sense-making process, actively (re)interpreting the relevance of nudges and assessing critically the prescribed action in the context of their everyday life. Users expressed confidence in their own embodied sensory perceptions and assessment, and resisted having their bodily intuition displaced by ‘unbodied’ data. (shrink)

For over a decade, practice-based research degrees in art and design have formed part of the United Kingdom research degree education portfolio, with a relatively rapid expansion in recent years. This route to the PhD still constitutes an innovative, and on occasion a disputed, form of research study and students embarking upon the practice-based doctorate find themselves in many ways undertaking pioneering work. To date there has been a dearth of empirical studies of the actual experiences of such students. This (...) article, based upon qualitative interviews with 50 students based at 25 institutions, represents an attempt to begin to fill this lacuna. The article charts the biographical change which students undergo as they pursue their doctorates. It examines the ways in which they construct, maintain, and modify their identities whilst in the role of ‘creator/maker’, and seek to manage and combine the different modes of being required of a ‘creator’ and a researcher. (shrink)

This book is a wide-ranging exploration of regions in the new world order. The author - one of the leading international figures in the field - explores the economic logic and political meaning of regions. Exploring developments from Silicon Valley to Hong Kong, he makes the case for the growing importance of regions as against the sovereign state in the `borderless world' of the 21st century.

: Most discussions of Yamaga Soko's philosophical development as a Confucian scholar in Tokugawa Japan suggest that in his later years he moved away from Confucianism and toward a religio-philosophical celebration of Japan's supposed uniqueness. It is shown here, however, that Soko's nativism, set forth in his Chucho jijitsu, was later eclipsed by his final philosophical work, the Gengen hakki, wherein he articulated a kind of naturalistic numerology, based vaguely on the Yijing. This shift in Soko's thought can be viewed (...) as a return to Neo-Confucianism, the earliest philosophical paradigm that he had embraced. Moreover, the successive shifts in his thinking can be understood in terms of the vicissitudes of his life, first in his exile to the Kansai area, near the ancient imperial capital of Kyoto, and then later in his pardon and return to Edo, the shogun's capital. Perhaps most importantly, this final shift in Soko's thought reveals that this prominent early modern thinker did reach his philosophical climax not in defiant opposition to Neo-Confucianism, nor in a sustained celebration of Japan's political traditions and their superlative nature, but instead in a return to modes of metaphysics akin to those typically deployed by Neo- Confucians themselves in their attempts to understand the changing nature of the cosmos and their political place within its flux. (shrink)

This study traces the impact of Ch'en Pei-hsi's Hsing-li tzu-i on the rise of philosophical lexicography in Tokugawa Japan . It suggests that the appearance of copies of the 1553 Korean edition of Pei-hsi's Tzu-i, brought to Japan in the wake of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea , crucially influenced both understandings of and reactions to Neo-Confucianism in Tokugawa Japan. Pei-hsi's Tzu-i, the study relates, served as the literary template for several early Tokugawa works, including Fujiwara Seika's Kana seiri , (...) and Hayashi Razan's Shunkansho and Santokusho . The Tzu-i also went through several Japanese editions, beginning with the 1632 Sino-Japanese edition, based on Razan's kambun rendition of the Tzu-i, a vernacular explication of the text by Razan, the Seiri jigi genkai, published in 1659, an annotated edition of the 1632 Sino-Japanese edition, printed in 1670, and the 1668 publication of a later, significantly variant, Chinese edition of Pei-hsi's Tzu-i. ;Razan's Seiri jigi genkai promoted Neo-Confucian learning as expounded in the Tzu-i, but also called attention to etymologically problematic terms of that learning. The dissertation suggests that Razan's Genkai influenced both the literary form and the philosophical content of Yamaga Soko's Seikyo yoroku , Ito Jinsai's Gomo jigi , and Ogyu Sorai's Benmei , thus linking Razan's critical promotion of Pei-hsi's Tzu-i to a series of conceptually based "School of Ancient Learning" critiques of Neo-Confucianism. (shrink)

Two Mencian political notions are examined: rebellion against tyranny and righteous martyrdom, as explored theoretically by prominent Japanese scholars of the Tokugawa period (1603-1867). It is argued here generally that Confucianism, as represented by the Mencius, was more than a feudal ideology legitimizing the hegemony of Tokugawa shoguns, since these two Mencian notions were advocated and/or opposed by both supporters and opponents of the Tokugawa regime. In the development of this argument, it is also revealed that the two notions were (...) important topics of Confucian debate among major Tokugawa scholars of all stripes throughout this period, and even in the early Meiji period. Without claiming that these two notions necessarily convey the central message of Mencius vis-à-vis political behavior, it is suggested that virtually all important Tokugawa scholars viewed them as crucial topics of debate, with most leaving a definitive statement or essay on them in their writings. (shrink)

As John Henry Newman reflected on 'The Idea of a University' more than a century and a half ago, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together some of the nation's most eminent thinkers on higher education to reflect on the nature and purposes of the American university today. Their mordant reflections paint a picture of the American university in crisis. This book is essential reading for thoughtful citizens, scholars, and educational policymakers.

Individual choices are often inconsistent with economic theories, which has motivated a variety of ways to measure how far choices are from a given theory. Recent work has investigated the correlation between “measures of rationality” and observable information such as education or income. This paper investigates the sensitivity of this analysis to the units used to measure rationality, in particular we examine measures in percentage expenditure vs dollars expenditure. We find that correlations can change sign when we change the units, (...) but this sensitivity might be mitigated with experimental methods. (shrink)

While valuable work has been done addressing clinical ethics within established healthcare systems, we anticipate that the projected growth in acquisitions of community hospitals and facilities by large tertiary hospitals will impact the field of clinical ethics and the day-to-day responsibilities of clinical ethicists in ways that have yet to be explored. Toward the goal of providing clinical ethicists guidance on a range of issues that they may encounter in the systematization process, we discuss key considerations and potential challenges in (...) implementing system-wide ethics consultation services. Specifically, we identify four models for organizing, developing, and enhancing ethics consultation activities within a system created through acquisitions: train-the-trainer, local capacity-building, circuit-riding, and consolidated accountability. We note each model’s benefits and challenges. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to consider the broader landscape of issues affected by consolidation. We anticipate that clinical ethicists, volunteer consultants, and hospital administrators will benefit from our recommendations. (shrink)

Despite thermodynamic, bioenergetic and phylogenetic failings, the 81‐year‐old concept of primordial soup remains central to mainstream thinking on the origin of life. But soup is homogeneous in pH and redox potential, and so has no capacity for energy coupling by chemiosmosis. Thermodynamic constraints make chemiosmosis strictly necessary for carbon and energy metabolism in all free‐living chemotrophs, and presumably the first free‐living cells too. Proton gradients form naturally at alkaline hydrothermal vents and are viewed as central to the origin of life. (...) Here we consider how the earliest cells might have harnessed a geochemically created proton‐motive force and then learned to make their own, a transition that was necessary for their escape from the vents. Synthesis of ATP by chemiosmosis today involves generation of an ion gradient by means of vectorial electron transfer from a donor to an acceptor. We argue that the first donor was hydrogen and the first acceptor CO2. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM – whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part 1 of this article took up the first two questions. Part 2 took up the second two questions. Part 3 now deals with Questions 5 & 6. Question 5 confronts the issue of utility, whether the manual design of DSM-III and IV favors clinicians or researchers, and what that means for DSM-5. Our final question, Question 6, takes up a concluding issue, whether the acknowledged problems with the earlier DSMs warrants a significant overhaul of DSM-5 and future manuals. As in Parts 1 & 2 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

We show how faceted search using a combination of traditional classification systems and mixed-membership topic models can go beyond keyword search to inform resource discovery, hypothesis formulation, and argument extraction for interdisciplinary research. Our test domain is the history and philosophy of scientific work on animal mind and cognition. The methods can be generalized to other research areas and ultimately support a system for semi-automatic identification of argument structures. We provide a case study for the application of the methods to (...) the problem of identifying and extracting arguments about anthropomorphism during a critical period in the development of comparative psychology. We show how a combination of classification systems and mixed-membership models trained over large digital libraries can inform resource discovery in this domain. Through a novel approach of “drill-down” topic modeling—simultaneously reducing both the size of the corpus and the unit of analysis—we are able to reduce a large collection of fulltext volumes to a much smaller set of pages within six focal volumes containing arguments of interest to historians and philosophers of comparative psychology. The volumes identified in this way did not appear among the first ten results of the keyword search in the HathiTrust digital library and the pages bear the kind of “close reading” needed to generate original interpretations that is the heart of scholarly work in the humanities. Zooming back out, we provide a way to place the books onto a map of science originally constructed from very different data and for different purposes. The multilevel approach advances understanding of the intellectual and societal contexts in which writings are interpreted. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist MysticismJohn A. TuckerOriginal Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism. By Harold D. Roth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Pp. v + 268. Hardcover $29.50.Searching for the origins of things remains a perennial favorite of Western scholars. For millennia, this quest has been at the core of innumerable scholarly projects. However, it has had significantly less (...) appeal to Asian thinkers, many of whom are more accustomed to assuming a continual presence or an eternal, cyclical recurrence, rather than an absolute beginning or creation ex nihilo from which all could be traced. Harold Roth's Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism continues this time-honored line of investigation, applying it to Taoist mystical writings, in a search for what Roth calls "the original tao." While such a line of research might appear perfectly reasonable to Western minds, it seems a bit incongruous with much of Taoist thought, especially when the latter is accepted and explained in terms of its own categories. For Taoists, of course, the uncarved block, the great thoroughfare, the tao itself, is the origin of all things, including mystical approaches to it and the human predicament.Given this anti-genealogical outlook, with its radical de-emphasis of texts and historical individuals, it should come as no surprise that the origins of Taoism are as murky, and hints about the same as misleading, as any could possibly be. The legendary figure Lao Tzu, now widely recognized as a fabricated philosopher meant to supply a set of presumably whimsical origins, and thus mock the appeal to them, is a case in point. Another might be the Chuang Tzu's satirically progressive deconstruction of the notion of a "beginning to being" via positing an infinite regress of beginnings that have not yet begun to be.1 Despite this, there remains the determination (and Roth is by no means alone here) to discover what has been hidden, perhaps intentionally. Without meaning to compromise this quest, we nevertheless might well ask whether the search does not somehow impair its own integrity as a [End Page 307] statement about the subject being explored. Put another way, is not the way that can be discussed the true way?Methodologically, Roth's book is "a study in 'textual archaeology' " that seeks to uncover "long-lost or long-overlooked texts and the interpretation of their significance" (p. 3). Its focus is on a collection of philosophical verses titled Nei-yeh (Inward training), which, as Roth notes, A. C. Graham earlier characterized as "possibly the oldest mystical text in China" (p. 2). While basing his analyses in part on textual, historical, and hermeneutic insights that have resulted from the relatively recent discovery of the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts, Roth's purported discovery of "the original tao" emerged not from the literal, archaeological unearthing of a text hitherto unknown, but from a new level of interpretive, historical appreciation of a writing long known to exist, Inward Training.Inward Training had been known, however, as a portion of the Kuan Tzu, a work typically characterized as "legalist" in philosophical orientation. By analyzing Inward Training via a "mystical hermeneutic," Roth suggests that the verses composing it are not just so much ancient metaphysical poetry, but instead derived from a group of devoted practitioners of breathing meditation who conceptualized their discipline through metaphysical notions regarding both the cosmos and human nature. According to Roth, these practitioners subscribed to the "guiding and pulling" methods often associated with "dietary and sexual regimens," practices later criticized in texts such as the Chuang Tzu and Huai-nan Tzu. The cosmology generated by these practitioners, and recorded in Inward Training, was, notably enough, similar to what emerged later in the Lao Tzu, a text mistakenly considered, for millennia, to be the origin of the way. Thus Roth resituates Inward Training, moving it from the more recent peripheries of antiquity to the very headwaters of the ancient tradition, as the original way.In radically rethinking the beginnings of Taoism without invoking the traditionally accepted but apparently ahistorical claims of a Lao-Chuang filiation, Roth proposes a new... (shrink)

We describe how a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) process was used to develop a means of discussing end-of-life care needs of Deaf seniors. This process identified a variety of communication issues to be addressed in working with this special population. We overview the unique linguistic and cultural characteristics of this community and their implications for working with Deaf individuals to provide information for making informed decisions about end-of-life care, including completion of health care directives. Our research and our work with (...) members of the Deaf community strongly show that communication and presentation of information should be in American Sign Language, the language of Deaf citizens. (shrink)

Despite thermodynamic, bioenergetic and phylogenetic failings, the 81‐year‐old concept of primordial soup remains central to mainstream thinking on the origin of life. But soup is homogeneous in pH and redox potential, and so has no capacity for energy coupling by chemiosmosis. Thermodynamic constraints make chemiosmosis strictly necessary for carbon and energy metabolism in all free‐living chemotrophs, and presumably the first free‐living cells too. Proton gradients form naturally at alkaline hydrothermal vents and are viewed as central to the origin of life. (...) Here we consider how the earliest cells might have harnessed a geochemically created proton‐motive force and then learned to make their own, a transition that was necessary for their escape from the vents. Synthesis of ATP by chemiosmosis today involves generation of an ion gradient by means of vectorial electron transfer from a donor to an acceptor. We argue that the first donor was hydrogen and the first acceptor CO2. (shrink)

Before the establishment in the early 1800s of France's Sûreté Nationale and England's Scotland Yard, the detection of crimes was generally regarded as supernatural work, but the rise of modern science allowed mere mortals to systematize and categorize events—and thus to solve crimes. Reducing the amount of crime, however, did not reduce the fear of crime, which actually grew in the late-nineteenth century as the result of globalization and media sensationalism. Literary detectives offered an imaginary cure for an imaginary disease. (...) Sherlock Holmes, the most famous literary detective, retained many of the characteristics that earlier ages had attributed to superhuman “detectives”; a wondrous and a social being, he nonetheless was able to reassure an anxious public that even the most heinous crimes could be solved. His ability to calm the fears of the globalizing Victorian era was an early version of what later became a proliferation of imaginary characters serving similar public functions. (shrink)

Ethical beliefs may vary across cultures but there are things that must be valued as preconditions to any cultural practice. Physical and mental abilities vital to believing, valuing and practising a culture are such preconditions and it is always important to protect them. If one is to practise a distinct culture, she must at least have these basic abilities. Access to basic healthcare is one way to ensure that vital abilities are protected. John Rawls argued that access to all-purpose (...) primary goods must be ensured. Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum claim that universal capabilities are what resources are meant to enable. Len Doyal and Ian Gough identify physical health and autonomy as basic needs of every person in every culture. When we disagree on what to prioritize, when resources to satisfy competing demands are scarce, our common needs can provide a point of normative convergence. Need-based rationing, however, has been criticized for being too indeterminate to give guidance for deciding which healthcare services to prioritize and for tending to create a bottomless-pit problem. But there is a difference between needing something (first-order need) and needing to have the ability to need (second-order need). Even if we disagree about which first-order need to prioritize, we must accept the importance of satisfying our second-order need to have the ability to value things. We all have a second-order need for basic healthcare as a means to protect our vital abilities even if we differ in what our cultures consider to be particular first-order needs. (shrink)