Feinberg and Mallatt, in their presentation of neurobiological naturalism, have suggested that visual consciousness was acquired by early vertebrates and inherited by a wide range of descendants, and that its neural basis has shifted to nonhomologous nervous structures during evolution. However, their evolutionary scenario of visual consciousness relies on the assumption that visual consciousness is closely linked with survival, which is not commonly accepted in current consciousness research. We suggest an alternative idea that visual consciousness is linked to a specific (...) class of agency, consequently justifying their phylogenetic claim. We also examine the implication of their phylogenetic claim: visual consciousness is homologous across vertebrates, but its neural basis is not. This apparent incongruence illustrates a general phenomenon of homology, and that the resulting hierarchical view of visual consciousness and its neural basis can be straightforwardly accommodated by neurobiological naturalism. Throughout these discussions, we aim to address the potential theoretical issues in neurobiological naturalism and refine the picture illustrated by Feinberg and Mallatt regarding phylogenetic distribution and trajectories of visual consciousness. (shrink)

This study adopted an empirical method to investigate lay people’s attitudes toward the bioethical issues of human-animal chimeric brains. The results of online surveys showed that (1) people did not entirely reject chimeric brain research, but showed slightly more negative responses than ordinary animal testing; and that (2) their ethical concerns arose in connection with the perception that chimerism in the brain would humanize the animal. This means that people’s psychology was consistent with the ethical argument that crossing the human-animal (...) boundary would bring moral confusion to our society. Meanwhile, it was not in line with another argument that moral status depended on having high capacities, and that chimerism would cause a problem if it enhanced animals’ capacities. Furthermore, this study analyzed additional psychological factors related to people’s moral judgment and the relationship among those factors. Several psychological factors, such as the perception that chimeric brain research is unnatural, were identified as mediating the relationship between perception of animal humanization and ethical concerns about creating and using chimeric brains. Introducing an empirical approach to the ethics of human-animal chimeric brains brought two findings: (1) this study informed us of socially shared intuition regarding this novel technology; and (2) it unveiled the psychological processes behind people’s ethical concerns in more detail than they spontaneously mentioned. These findings will help to build normative arguments and future policies that are understandable and acceptable to society. (shrink)

Background:Protecting the dignity of elderly residents of facilities and providing dignified care can be difficult. Although attempts have been made from several aspects, dignity is considered an area in which less real impact has been made in both theory and practice.Objective:The objective of this study is to characterize the concept of dignity in care for elderly subjects in residential facilities from a practical perspective through concept synthesis.Research design:This study includes in-depth interviews with residents of elderly facilities and a literature review.Participants (...) and research context:A total of 12 residents of seven facilities in three prefectures in Japan were recruited via purposive sampling, and 27 interviews were conducted. Each digitally recorded interview was transcribed verbatim. The interview data were analyzed based on hermeneutic phenomenological research. The literature was searched using PubMed, CINAHL, and Web of Science with combinations of terms such as dignity, elderly, and residential facilities and then selected according to the predefined inclusion criteria. The descriptions about dignity in the included studies were divided into codes and compared with the results of the interviews.Ethical considerations:This study was approved by the institutional review board of Nagoya University’s Graduate School of Medicine.Findings and discussion:There were 1728 data codes for the interviews from which four themes were generated. In the literature review, 3716 titles were searched, and 28 articles were selected. Combining these results, five following themes and a conceptual matrix were obtained: individual dignity not affected by others; dignified care in a narrow sense; elements of the staff side; dignity in relation to family members, friends, society, and other residents; and dignity in relation to nursing care facilities and the nursing care system.Conclusion:According to the established matrix, we must consider the role of the care system, facility, family, and society in providing care with dignity and the individual dignity to residents and dignity in daily care. (shrink)

Neurorights, as “new human rights,” have been increasingly recognized in the literature. In the Neurorights Initiative, these rights are supposed to be directed toward mental privacy, free will, pe...

Pragmatism emphasizes practical consequences and empirical explanations rather than introspective contemplations. However, the arguments of pragmatists are not uniform, as shown by the four prominent pragmatists presented in this article. The major difference between them is that Peirce and Haack acknowledge an objective truth, whereas James and Rorty do not. Thus, for a fuller understanding of the pragmatist view of our knowledge, both camps must be consulted. In the nursing field, pragmatism is occasionally referred to as a guiding philosophy. However, (...) the influence of James and Rorty has been greater than that of Peirce and Haack on pragmatists, which may risk leading to a skewed understanding of pragmatism by nursing scholars. Still, the four pragmatists share naturalism, which rejects a metaphysics that defines the nature of knowledge before our enquiry and emphasizes experience and practice. Pragmatic naturalism can help ensure that nursing theory does not deviate from clinical practice. This article also explores the broad adaptability of the ideas of all four pragmatists to philosophical issues in nursing, such as mixed‐methods research, epistemic relativism and realism. By showing that pragmatism can be relevant and stimulating to each of these topics, the article demonstrates that the different approaches to pragmatism can provide more inspiration for nurses and nursing researchers in the future. (shrink)

Background:Information sharing is one of the most important means of public health nurses collaborating with other healthcare professionals and community members. There are complicated ethical issues in the process.Research objectives:To describe the ethical dilemmas associated with client information sharing that Japanese public health nurses experience in daily practice and to clarify their decision-making process to resolve these dilemmas.Research design:Data were collected using a three-phase consensus method consisting of semi-structured interviews, self-administered questionnaires and a group interview.Participants and research context:We surveyed administrative (...) public health nurses in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. The semi-structured interviews were carried out with 12 administrative public health nurses, and the self-administered questionnaires were sent to all 899 administrative public health nurses. The group interview was carried out with eight administrative public health nurses.Ethical considerations:Ethical approval was granted by the ethics committee of the School of Health Sciences, Nagoya University, Japan (8-158, 9-130).Findings:Information-sharing ethical dilemmas occurred most often when clients’ decisions did not coincide with the nurses’ own professional assessments, particularly when they faced clinical issues that were inherently ambiguous. In their decision-making processes, nurses prioritised ‘protection of health and life’.Discussion:These findings suggest that, above all, they sought to address urgent risks to clients’ lives while upholding the principle of client autonomy as much as possible. In such cases, the nurses made decisions regarding whether to share information about the client depending on the individual situation.Conclusion:Public health nurses should protect the client’s health while taking into consideration their relationship with the client. (shrink)

Frankfurt-Style Cases (FSCs) seem to elicit the intuitive judgment that an agent is morally responsible despite being unable to act otherwise, which is supposed to falsify the Principle of Alternative Possibility (PAP). Recent empirical studies have shown that the inclination toward this intuitive judgment is shared among people, which seems to reinforce the argument against the PAP. However, some scholars have argued for Descriptive Anti-Intuitionism (DAI) — intuitive judgments have never played an evidential role in philosophy — and thus denied (...) the philosophical significance of such empirical findings. I point out that although DAI fails in its literal claim for FSCs, an associated insight remains potent: an intuitive judgment is so fragile that it can be easily defeated by further arguments. Nevertheless, I argue, empirical studies are significant in uncovering the general principles to which we are committed in our practice concerning moral responsibility. I clarify how such findings can play a robust evidential role in philosophical debates concerning moral responsibility by tracing the literature written by Frankfurt and philosophers. (shrink)

The phylogenetic position of the hagfish remains enigmatic. In contrast to molecular data that suggest monophyly of the cyclostomes, several morphological features imply a more ancestral state of this animal compared with the lampreys. To resolve this question requires an understanding of the embryology of the hagfish, especially of the neural crest. The early development of the hagfish has long remained a mystery. We collected a shallow‐water‐dwelling hagfish, Eptatretus burgeri, set up an aquarium tank designed to resemble its habitat, and (...) successfully obtained several embryos. By observing the histology and expression of genes known to play fundamental roles in the neural crest, we found that the hagfish crest develops as delaminating migratory cells, as in other vertebrates. We conclude that the delaminating neural crest is a vertebrate synapomorphy that seems to have appeared from the beginning of their evolutionary history, before the splitting away of the hagfish lineage. BioEssays 30:167–172, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

There is an emerging experimental trend in bioethics and neuroethics. We briefly review several topics in this trend and discuss how the existing and future studies can have normative implications related to bioethical/neuroethical issues. Particularly, we consider three major ways to draw such implications; (1) contributing to conceptual analysis and philosophical (counter-)evidence, (2) figuring out the unreliability of moral thinking and thereby providing a debunking argument, and (3) estimating the feasibility of ethical norms and policies.