At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from (...) social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar was found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-negligible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic. (shrink)

Physical activity, and likely the motivation for it, varies throughout the day. The aim of this investigation was to create a short assessment (CRAVE: Cravings for Rest and Volitional Energy Expenditure) to measure motivation states (wants, desires, urges) for physical activity and sedentary behaviors. Five studies were conducted to develop and evaluate the construct validity and reliability of the scale, with 1,035 participants completing the scale a total of 1,697 times. In Study 1, 402 university students completed a questionnaire inquiring (...) about the want or desire to perform behaviors “at the present moment (right now).” Items related to physical activity (e.g., “move my body”) and sedentary behaviors (e.g., “do nothing active”). An exploratory structural equation model (ESEM) revealed that 10 items should be retained, loading onto two factors (5 each for Move and Rest). In Study 2, an independent sample (n= 444) confirmed these results and found that Move and Rest desires were associated with stage-of-change for exercise behavior. In Study 3, 127 community-residing participants completed the CRAVE at 6-month intervals over two years- two times each session. Across-session interclass correlations (ICC) for Move (ICC = 0.72–0.95) and Rest (ICC = 0.69–0.88) were higher than when they were measured across 24-months (Move: ICC = 0.53; Rest: ICC = 0.49), indicating wants/desires have state-like qualities. In Study 4, a maximal treadmill test was completed by 21 university students. The CRAVE was completed immediately pre and post. Move desires decreased 26% and Rest increased 74%. Changes in Move and Rest desires were moderately associated with changes in perceived physical fatigue and energy. In Study 5, 41 university students sat quietly during a 50-min lecture. They completed the CRAVE at 3 time points. Move increased 19.6% and Rest decreased 16.7%. Small correlations were detected between move and both perceived energy and tiredness, but not calmness or tension. In conclusion, the CRAVE scale has good psychometric properties. These data also support tenets of the WANT model of motivation states for movement and rest (Stults-Kolehmainen et al., 2020a). Future studies need to explore how desires to move/rest relate to dynamic changes in physical activity and sedentarism. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

While improving the theoretical account of base-rate neglect, Barbey & Sloman's (B&S's) target article suffers from affect neglect by failing to consider the fundamental role of emotional processes in decisions. We illustrate how affective influences are fundamental to decision making, and discuss how the dual process model can be a useful framework for understanding hot and cold cognition in reasoning.

As John Rist presents Augustine, he was a man who “lived on the frontier between the ancient world and mediaeval Western Europe”. Among the the many who tried to transform ancient thought, Rist tells us, Augustine was “the most radical and the most influential”.

The essays in this book, by a variety of leading Augustine scholars, examine not only Augustine's multifaceted philosophy and its relation to his epoch-making theology, but also his practice as a philosopher, as well as his relation to other philosophers both before and after him. Thus the collection shows that Augustine's philosophy remains an influence and a provocation in a wide variety of settings today.

John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument purports to demonstrate that syntax is not sufficient for semantics, and, hence, because computation cannot yield understanding, the computational theory of mind, which equates the mind to an information processing system based on formal computations, fails. In this paper, we use the CRA, and the debate that emerged from it, to develop a philosophical critique of recent advances in robotics and neuroscience. We describe results from a body of work that contributes to blurring the (...) divide between biological and artificial systems; so-called animats, autonomous robots that are controlled by biological neural tissue and what may be described as remote-controlled rodents, living animals endowed with augmented abilities provided by external controllers. We argue that, even though at first sight, these chimeric systems may seem to escape the CRA, on closer analysis, they do not. We conclude by discussing the role of the body–brain dynamics in the processes that give rise to genuine understanding of the world, in line with recent proposals from enactive cognitive science. (shrink)

The liver progenitor cell (LPC) has enormous potential for use in cell therapy to treat liver disease. Since liver regenerates readily from pre‐existing hepatocytes, a role for LPCs and, indeed, their existence have been questioned. Research during the last decade has established that LPCs are an important alternative source of cells for liver regeneration. Their utility for cell therapy lies in their ability to generate both hepatocytes and cholangiocytes. However, they are observed in liver diseases that often lead to cancer (...) and there is experimental evidence that implicates LPCs as the source of tumours. This article provides a brief history of the studies that established the functional importance of LPCs in liver disease. It focuses on mouse models that have led to the identification of factors that regulate LPC growth and differentiation and discusses LPCs derived from different sources. Recent promising results from both in vitro and vivo studies suggest that LPCs could be useful for cell therapy. In the context of liver disease, LPCs may indeed be the cell of the future and understandably “our favourite cell”. BioEssays 27:1192–1202, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This book highlights some of the most pressing safety, ethical, legal and societal issues related to the diverse contexts in which robotic technologies apply. Focusing on the essential concept of well-being, it addresses topics that are fundamental not only for research, but also for industry and end-users, discussing the challenges in a wide variety of applications, including domestic robots, autonomous manufacturing, personal care robots and drones.

At the forefront of international concerns about global legislation and regulation, a host of noted environmentalists and business ethicists examine ethical issues in consumption from the points of view of environmental sustainability, economic development, and free enterprise.

Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. Part one shows the roots of contributors in the realist school; part two focuses on different levels of the significance of economics for social justice; and part three deals with both existential experience and government policy in war and peace issues.

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

The “New Natural Law” Theory (NNL) of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, and their collaborators offers a distinctive account of intentional action, which underlies a moral theory that aims to justify many aspects of traditional morality and Catholic doctrine. -/- In fact, we show that the NNL is committed to premises that entail the permissibility of many actions that are irreconcilable with traditional morality and Catholic doctrine, such as elective abortions. These consequences follow principally from two aspects of (...) the NNL. The first aspect is its distinctive version of the planning theory of intention, in which adopting the 'first-person perspective' of an agent is a sufficient, and not merely necessary, condition for determining the nature of his intentional action; this planning theory rests upon an implicitly Cartesian conception of human behavior, in which behavior chosen by an agent has no intrinsic “intentionalness” apart from what he confers upon it as part of his plan. The second aspect is the NNL's distinctive account of basic human goods' incommensurability, according to which there is no common factor shared by basic human goods that allows them to be comparatively ranked in any way that directs practical deliberation. -/- The entailments of these two aspects of the NNL, we argue, amount to a reductio ad absurdum. Pace the proponents of the NNL account, we sketch an alternative hylomorphic conception of intentional action that avoids untoward moral implications by grounding human agency in the exercise of basic powers that are either (a) essential constituents of human nature or (b) acquired through participation in social practices. This conception of intentional action provides a stronger foundation for natural law theory. (shrink)

In Intention and her subsequent essays that addressed human action, Elizabeth Anscombe made signal contributions to the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, and to western philosophy more broadly. The new natural law theory of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, and their collaborators mistakenly claims to be consonant with Anscombe’s work. A central reason for this misappropriation lies in the failure to understand the ways in which Anscombe does and does not deploy a “first-person perspective” in analyzing intentional action. Far from supporting (...) the new natural law, Anscombe’s work, rightly understood, provides arguments for rejecting it. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13.1 : 47–56. (shrink)

John Rawls’s political liberalism and its ideal of public reason are tremendously influential in contemporary political philosophy and in constitutional law as well. Many, perhaps even most, liberals are Rawlsians of one stripe or another. This is problematic, because most liberals also support the redefinition of civil marriage to include same-sex unions, and as I show, Rawls’s political liberalism actually prohibits same- sex marriage. Recently in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, however, California’s northern federal district court reinterpreted the traditional rational basis (...) review in terms of liberal neutrality akin to Rawls’s “public reason,” and overturned Proposition 8 and established same-sex marriage. (This reinterpretation was amplified in the 9th Circuit Court’s decision upholding the district court on appeal in Perry v. Brown.) But on its own grounds Perry should have drawn the opposite conclusion. This is because all the available arguments for recognizing same-sex unions as civil marriages stem from controversial comprehensive doctrines about the good, and this violates the ideal of public reason; yet there remains a publicly reasonable argument for traditional marriage, which I sketch here. In the course of my argument I develop Rawls’s politically liberal account of the family by drawing upon work by J. David Velleman and H. L. A. Hart, and discuss the implications of this account for political theory and constitutional law. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

Bayesians take “definite” or “single-case” probabilities to be basic. Definite probabilities attach to closed formulas or propositions. We write them here using small caps: PROB(P) and PROB(P/Q). Most objective probability theories begin instead with “indefinite” or “general” probabilities (sometimes called “statistical probabilities”). Indefinite probabilities attach to open formulas or propositions. We write indefinite probabilities using lower case “prob” and free variables: prob(Bx/Ax). The indefinite probability of an A being a B is not about any particular A, but rather about the (...) property of being an A. In this respect, its logical form is the same as that of relative frequencies. For instance, we might talk about the probability of a human baby being female. That probability is about human babies in general — not about individuals. If we examine a baby and determine conclusively that she is female, then the definite probability of her being female is 1, but that does not alter the indefinite probability of human babies in general being female. Most objective approaches to probability tie probabilities to relative frequencies in some way, and the resulting probabilities have the same logical form as the relative frequencies. That is, they are indefinite probabilities. The simplest theories identify indefinite probabilities with relative frequencies.3 It is often objected that such “finite frequency theories” are inadequate because our probability judgments often diverge from relative frequencies. For example, we can talk about a coin being fair (and so the indefinite probability of a flip landing heads is 0.5) even when it is flipped only once and then destroyed (in which case the relative frequency is either 1 or 0). For understanding such indefinite probabilities, it has been suggested that we need a notion of probability that talks about possible instances of properties as well as actual instances.. (shrink)

This chapter explores perspectivism in the American Pragmatist tradition. On the one hand, the thematization of perspectivism in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science can benefit from resources in the American Pragmatist philosophical tradition. On the other hand, the Pragmatists have interesting and innovative, pluralistic views that can be illuminated through the lens of perspectivism. I pursue this inquiry primarily through examining relevant sources from the Pragmatist tradition. I will illustrate productive engagements between pragmatism and perspectivism in three areas: in (...) the pragmatists’ fallibilistic theories of inquiry and truth, in their pluralistic metaphysics, and in their views on cultural pluralism. While there are some potential sticking points between pragmatism and perspectivism, particularly around the visual metaphor of perspective, these philosophical approaches nonetheless have much to learn from each other. Perspectivism is in danger of falling between the horns of pernicious relativism and a platitudinous view of the limits of human perception and cognition. The pragmatists accounts of truth and reality open the possibility of a more thoroughgoing perspectivism. I will follow this thread through Charles S. Peirce’s, William James’, and John Dewey’s theories of inquiry and truth, Peirce’s evolutionary metaphysics, James’ radical pluralism, Dewey’s cultural naturalism, Richard Rorty’s anti-essentialism, Jane Addams’ standpoint epistemology, W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of race consciousness, Horace Kallen’s and Alain LeRoy Locke’s cultural pluralism, and Mary Parker Follett’s account of pluralistic integration. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology by John BehrMatthew Z. ValeJohn the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology by John Behr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), xv + 388 pp.Father Behr's book defies summary. Its ambitions span several fields—patristics, contemporary biblical scholarship, speculative systematics, phenomenology—and Behr has controversial proposals in each. The book is not (expressly) a (...) work of systematic theology, but its speculative élan and its ambition to give a normative account of Christian theology's beating heart is unmistakable. If a vice of the book is vagueness on questions of burning Christological, protological, and eschatological interest, among its virtues is the verve and vividness with which it provokes such questions to begin with. Behr has written, not a book on John, but a Johannine manifesto on theology. [End Page 989]The book is a "symposium" in three parts, each inviting a different kind of reader of John's gospel. The first is predominantly "historical" (the early Fathers of the Johannine school, reconstructed by modern scholarship), the second predominantly "exegetical" (contemporary biblical studies), and the third "philosophical," with a single guest in Michel Henry. The book's heart is an argument about what "incarnation" means. When it comes to the Incarnation, we labor, Behr says, under what Quentin Skinner calls a "mythology of doctrine," the hermeneutical fallacy of projecting onto a tradition's classical writers positions and whole doctrinal categories developed only later (6–8). The mythology of doctrine Behr opposes is, in fact, a mythological notion of the Incarnation as "an episode in the biography of the Word" (a phrase from Rowan Williams), the episode when a "pre-incarnate Word" is born as Jesus (3, and throughout). To break the ice on this mythology, part 1 reconstructs an original milieu for John's Gospel—a school of John the Evangelist, centered upon an original Pascha celebration—in which "becoming flesh," "Word," and "human being" mean something other than the dogmatic meanings we project back onto them. This Johannine school is not the Johannine "community" posited by historical-critical studies, but the school of John's "hearers" that J. B. Lightfoot traced from Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch, Papias of Hierapolis, and Melito of Sardis down to Irenaeus (30–31). Behr's reconstruction makes the following proposals. Our evangelist is John the Elder, the beloved disciple, not the Synoptics' son of Zebedee. This John was plausibly an eyewitness to the crucifixion—alone among the evangelists. He authored both the Gospel and the Apocalypse bearing his name, according to near unanimous second-century tradition (76). The Apocalypse was possibly written before the Gospel, perhaps before the Temple's destruction. John the Elder originated the yearly Pascha celebration, and it remained peculiar to his school until the second half of the second century. This feast originally celebrated the crucifixion, burial, resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost as the single event of the Passion, just as in John's Gospel Jesus's ascension (12:32), glorification (13:31–2), and "handing down the Spirit" (19:30) are identified with the crucifixion. Only later was the Passion's simple white light refracted into the liturgical cycle's rainbow of distinct feasts (91–92, 243).This reconstruction is explicitly speculative. Its purpose is to enliven our imaginations about what the evangelist's vision may possibly be. If the mythological picture of the Incarnation is easily recognized as false, our theological traditions still have not entirely exorcised it from their standard narration. Behr proposes a Johannine narration untroubled by this [End Page 990] mythology. The Incarnation is not a novelty occurring for God at some moment. No previously fleshless divine agent undergoes change to become flesh at some time. The Incarnation must instead be understood "apocalyptically," as the eternal mystery of Jesus Christ being revealed for us in time (256-57). The Incarnation is Jesus's eternal identity as the Word being revealed and wrought in time and pro nobis by the Passion (24, 29, 257, 130). John's Gospel should be read, in John Ashton's words, as "an apocalypse—in reverse, upside down, inside out" (4, 99... (shrink)

Cosmological ideas influenced every aspect of traditional Chinese culture, from science and medicine to art, philosophy, and religion. Although other premodern societies developed similar conceptions, in no other major civilization were such ideas so pervasive or powerful. In The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology, John Henderson traces the evolution of Chinese thought on cosmic order from the classical era to the nineteenth century. Unlike many standard studies of premodern cosmologies, this book analyzes the origins, development, and rejection of (...) these models, not just their structure. Moreover, while historians often limit their studies of cosmic order to specialized fields like the history of science, Henderson examines how the cosmological ideas formulated in late classical times permeated various facets of Chinese life, from high philosophy to popular culture. (shrink)

While working on various medieval philosophers, I have noticed an affinity between their remarks on the reasonableness of accepting propositions that are not matters of proof and strict deduction and St. John Henry Newman’s remarks that we accept unconditionally and rightly everyday ordinary propositions without calibrating them to demonstrable arguments. In particular, Cardinal Matthew of Aquasparta and Blessed John Duns Scotus both claim there is a sense in which assent to everyday propositions is tantamount to knowledge, even though (...) there is no adequate argumentation or demonstrative reasoning compelling us to assent to such propositions. Newman’s distinction between notional and real apprehension of propositions, notional and real assents, and his insistence on the existence of real assents to propositions that are not necessarily proved, or in some cases provable, seem, at first glance, a case parallel to that of the medieval philosophers we have mentioned. (shrink)

A range of positions persist in the proper interpretation of generative linguistics. The paper responds to recent work in this area that either weakly or strongly diverges from the non-contentful, internalist model presented in Collins (2008a). Against the sympathetic criticisms of Matthews (2008) and Smith (2008), it is argued that a crucial role for content in our understanding of linguistic theories remains obscure, although the discussion here will hopefully clarify the divergence between the parties as merely perspectival. Rey (2008) (...) more strongly argues that the non-contentful model is prey to some classic complaints. The charges are rebutted. Finally, the position of Devitt (2008a, b) is considered. It is argued that his most recent presentation of his brand of realism fails to speak to the fundamental complaints levelled against it, especially as regards the putative role of conventions in the explanation of unvoiced syntax. (shrink)

According to QBism, quantum states, unitary evolutions, and measurement operators are all understood as personal judgments of the agent using the formalism. Meanwhile, quantum measurement outcomes are understood as the personal experiences of the same agent. Wigner’s conundrum of the friend, in which two agents ostensibly have different accounts of whether or not there is a measurement outcome, thus poses no paradox for QBism. Indeed the resolution of Wigner’s original thought experiment was central to the development of QBist thinking. The (...) focus of this paper concerns two very instructive modifications to Wigner’s puzzle: One, a recent no-go theorem by Frauchiger and Renner, and the other a thought experiment by Baumann and Brukner. We show that the paradoxical features emphasized in these works disappear once both friend and Wigner are understood as agents on an equal footing with regard to their individual uses of quantum theory. Wigner’s action on his friend then becomes, from the friend’s perspective, an action the friend takes on Wigner. Our analysis rests on a kind of quantum Copernican principle: When two agents take actions on each other, each agent has a dual role as a physical system for the other agent. No user of quantum theory is more privileged than any other. In contrast to the sentiment of Wigner’s original paper, neither agent should be considered as in “suspended animation.” In this light, QBism brings an entirely new perspective to understanding Wigner’s friend thought experiments. (shrink)

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diseases are a group of neuromuscular diseases that often cause suffering and premature death. New mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRTs) may offer women with mtDNA diseases the opportunity to have healthy offspring to whom they are genetically related. MRTs will likely be ready to license for clinical use in the near future and a discussion of the ethics of the clinical introduction ofMRTs is needed. This paper begins by evaluating three concerns about the safety of MRTs for clinical (...) use on humans: (1) Is it ethical to use MRTs if safe alternatives exist? (2) Would persons with three genetic contributors be at risk of suffering? and (3) Can society trust that MRTs will be made available for humans only once adequate safety testing has taken place, and that MRTs will only be licensed for clinical use in a way that minimises risks? It is then argued that the ethics debate about MRTs should be reoriented towards recommendingways to reduce the possible risks of MRT use on humans. Two recommendations are made: (1) licensed clinical access to MRTs should only be granted to prospective parents if they intend to tell their children about their MRT conception by adulthood; and (2) sex selection should be used in conjunction with the clinical use ofMRTs, in order to reduce transgenerational health risks. (shrink)

Currently in the United Kingdom, anyone donating gametes has the status of an open-identity donor. This means that, at the age of 18, persons conceived with gametes donated since April 1, 2005 have a right to access certain pieces of identifying information about their donor. However, in early 2015, the UK Parliament approved new regulations that make mitochondrial donors anonymous. Both mitochondrial donation and gamete donation are similar in the basic sense that they involve the contribution of gamete materials to (...) create future persons. Given this similarity, this paper presumes that both types of donor should be treated the same and made open-identity under the law, unless there is a convincing argument for treating them differently. I argue that none of the existing arguments that have been made so far in favor of mitochondrial donor anonymity are convincing and mitochondrial donors should therefore be treated as open-identity donors under UK law. (shrink)

Although organizational commitment continues to interest researchers because of its positive effects on organizations, we know relatively little about the effects of the ethical context on organizational commitment. As such, we contribute to the organizational commitment field by assessing the effects of ethical climates (Victor and Cullen, 1987, 1988) on organizational commitment. We hypothesized that an ethical climate of benevolence has a positive relationship with organizational commitment while egoistic climate is negatively related to commitment. Results supported our propositions for both (...) a benevolent climate and an egoistic climate. We also hypothesized that a principled climate is positively related to organizational commitment for professional workers but has no relationships for nonprofessional workers. Results supported this hypothesis. (shrink)

But Williams had created a field of historical study, where his white counterparts had not. Single-handedly and without the blessing or approval of the academic community, Williams had called attention to the importance of including Afro-Americans in any acceptable and comprehensive history of the nation long before the historians of various groups of European-Americans or Asian-Americans had begun to advocate a similar treatment for their groups. And if Williams did not impress the white professional historians, he gave heart and encouragement (...) to future Afro-American historians. When the History of the Negro Troops appeared in 1887, nineteen-year-old W. E. B. Du Bois was a college senior at Fisk University and editor-in-chief of the student magazine, The Fisk Herald. In the columns of the Herald Du Bois wrote, "At last we have a historian; not merely a Negro historian, but a man who judged by his merits alone has written a splendid narrative. The Herald congratulates George W. Williams, and the race, which may justly be . . . [proud] of him."1 Many years later, Carter G. Woodson, the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and of the Journal of Negro History, described Williams' History of the Negro Troops as "one of the most valuable accounts of the Civil War."2 With words like these from Du Bois and Woodson, on whose shoulders much of the second stage of Afro-American historiography would rest, it is not too much to say that George Washington Williams was responsible for the beginnings of Afro-American historiography. · 1. The Fisk Herald, January 1888, p. 8.· 2. Woodson's appraisal of Williams was found among his papers and made available to me by Dr. Charles H. Wesley when he was executive director of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which had been founded by Woodson in 1915. John Hope Franklin, president-elect of the American Historical Society, has written a biography of George Washington Williams. He is the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago and the author of, among other works, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North. (shrink)

This book examines the different conceptions of the individual that have emerged in recent new approaches in economics, including behavioral economics, experimental economics, social preferences approaches, game theory, neuroeconomics, evolutionary and complexity economics, and the capability approach. These conceptions are classified according to whether they seek to revise the traditional atomist individual conception, put new emphasis on interaction and relations between individuals, account for individuals as evolving and self-organizing, and explain individuals in terms of capabilities. The method of analysis uses (...) two identity criteria for distinguishing and re-identifying individuals to determine whether these different individual conceptions successfully identify individuals. Successful individual conceptions account for sub-personal and supra-personal bounds on single individual explanations. The former concerns the fragmentation of individuals into multiple selves; the latter concerns the dissolution of individuals into the social. The book develops an understanding of bounded individuality, seen as central to the defense of human rights. (shrink)