A striking and unexplained feature of granulomatous inflammation is its anatomical association with the lymphatic system. Accumulating evidence suggests that lymphatic tracks and granulomas may alter the function of each other. The formation of new lymphatics, or lymphangiogenesis, is an adaptive response to tumor formation, infection, and wound healing. Granulomas also may induce lymphangiogenesis which, through a variety of mechanisms, could contribute to disease outcomes in tuberculosis and sarcoidosis. On the other hand, alterations in lymph node function and lymphatic draining (...) may be primary events which attenuate the risk and severity of granulomatous inflammation. This review begins with an introduction of granulomatous inflammation and the lymphatic system. A role of the lymphatic system in tuberculosis and sarcoidosis is then hypothesized. With a focus on lymphangiogenesis in these diseases, and on the potential for this process to promote dissemination, parallels are established with the well‐established role of lymphangiogenesis in tumor biology. (shrink)

Most psychological literature on gaslighting focuses on it as a dyadic phenomenon occurring primarily in marriage and family relationships. In my analysis, I will extend recent fruitful philosophical engagement with gaslighting by arguing that gaslighting, particularly gaslighting that occurs in more public spaces like the workplace, relies upon external reinforcement for its success. I will ground this study in an analysis of the film Gaslight, for which the phenomenon is named, and in the course of the analysis will focus on (...) a paradox of this kind of gaslighting: it wreaks significant epistemic and moral damages largely through small, often invisible actions that have power through their accumulation and reinforcement. (shrink)

Most psychological literature on gaslighting focuses on it as a dyadic phenomenon occurring primarily in marriage and family relationships. In my analysis, I will extend recent fruitful philosophical engagement with gaslighting (Abramson, “Turning up the Lights on Gaslighting” [2014]; McKinnon, “Allies Behaving Badly: Gaslighting as Epistemic Injustice” [2017]; Ruiz, “Spectral Phenomenologies” [2014]) by arguing that gaslighting, particularly gaslighting that occurs in more public spaces like the workplace, relies upon external reinforcement for its success. I will ground this study in an (...) analysis of the film Gaslight, for which the phenomenon is named, and in the course of the analysis will focus on a paradox of this kind of gaslighting: it wreaks significant epistemic and moral damages largely through small, often invisible actions that have power through their accumulation and reinforcement. (shrink)

Candrakīrti is known for his commentaries on the major works of Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva. This chapter examines how Candrakīrti uses language and logic to undermine people's confidence in cherished beliefs about a self and point them towards the Buddha's path and its goal the peace of nirvana that transcends the limitations of language and logic. Candrakīrti first sets out his view on the two truths in the Madhyamakāvatāra. He associates both truths with the soteriological goal of Nāgārjuna's path: the peaceful (...) state of nirvana. Madhyamaka teaching amounts to nihilism. Candrakīrti responds that the charge of nihilism is wrong because there is no repudiation of moral actions. Emptiness is also related to the concept of intrinsic nature, and Candrakīrti uses this term in more than one sense. (shrink)

This dissertation is an attempt to loosen what I see as a chokehold by which two paramount assumptions constrict our epistemic endeavors. These Enlightenment assumptions--that we accept or refute ideas as true based on transparently clear and orderly methods and criteria, and that individuals accept or refute truth claims--are still central in epistemology, despite their many critics . Thinking about gossip as an epistemologically productive concept provides us with the means to critique those assumptions, and further attempts to broaden our (...) notion of an epistemological foundation. ;Gossip at first appears to be an unlikely candidate for such a resurrection, mainly because its treatment by academics has been dismissive; this dismissal is in part due to Enlightenment conceptions about truth and falsehood. Chapter One surveys the social science literature on gossip and rumor, revealing that social scientists begin with such restrictive definitions of what gossip is that their conclusions amount to little more than tautology. Chapter Two shows that humanists have a slightly different approach to gossip, but with roughly similar results. ;The handful of philosophers who deal directly with gossip or rumor almost as a unit accept uncritically a division between "purposive" conversation and "idle" chatter. To do so, I think, perpetuates a limiting epistemic foundation on a linguistic level. In contrast, I argue in Chapter Three that the very existence of something like gossip proves the inadequacy of the foundationalist myth , and that to attempt to understand and use gossip with foundationalist tools is simply a wrong fit. My understanding of gossip is based on this central fact: we undertake the activity of gossip or rumor-spreading because we are trying to make sense out of something--we need to collect knowledge socially. Gossip originates from dissonance; it acts as a counterweight to more official information, and can't be considered apart from official knowledge. We use gossip and rumor, along with more orthodox sources of information, to formulate our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. The extent to which gossip and rumor are spread is the extent to which the analysis is shared, and not individualized. Gossip is both a genealogical tool and an speculative tool. (shrink)

Most psychological literature on gaslighting focuses on it as a dyadic phenomenon occurring primarily in marriage and family relationships. In my analysis, I will extend recent fruitful philosophical engagement with gaslighting by arguing that gaslighting, particularly gaslighting that occurs in more public spaces like the workplace, relies upon external reinforcement for its success. I will ground this study in an analysis of the film Gaslight, for which the phenomenon is named, and in the course of the analysis will focus on (...) a paradox of this kind of gaslighting: it wreaks significant epistemic and moral damages largely through small, often invisible actions that have power through their accumulation and reinforcement. (shrink)

We (Patterson & Plaut, 2009) argued that cognitive neuropsychology has had a limited impact on cognitive science due to a nearly exclusive reliance on (a) single‐case studies, (b) dissociations in cognitive performance, and (c) shallow, box‐and‐arrow theorizing, and we advocated adopting a case‐series methodology, considering associations as well as dissociations, and employing explicit computational modeling in studying “how the brain does its cognitive business.” In reply, Coltheart (2010) claims that our concern is misplaced because cognitive neuropsychology is concerned only (...) with studying the mind, in terms of its “functional architecture,” without regard to how this is implemented in the brain. In this response, we do not dispute his characterization of cognitive neuropsychology as it has typically been practiced over the last 40 years, but we suggest that our understanding of brain structure and function has advanced to the point where studying the mind without regard to the brain is unwise and perpetuates the field’s isolation. (shrink)

Physicians and medical institutions in the United States are placing increasing emphasis on providing culturally sensitive care for patients, such as implementing a Confucian family-based model of medical decision making when caring for elderly Chinese patients. In this article, I articulate various reasons why deferring to the family is not a guarantee of culturally sensitive care, particularly when family members are first-generation Chinese-Americans. Nonetheless, I offer several suggestions to help physicians, medical institutions, and family members to provide more culturally sensitive (...) care for elderly Chinese patients. (shrink)

Widespread concerns about the long-term fiscal gap in Social Security have prompted various proposals for structural reform, with individual accounts as the centerpiece. Carving out individual accounts from the existing system would shift significant risks and responsibilities to individual workers. A parallel development has already occurred in the area of private pensions. Experience with 401 plans indicates that many workers will have difficulty making prudent decisions concerning investment and withdrawal of funds. Moreover, in implementing any system of voluntary individual accounts, (...) it will be important to design default settings that provide appropriate guidance for workers with heterogeneous levels of financial sophistication and risk tolerance. The central goal of Social Security reform should be to close the fiscal gap in a way that preserves rather than undermines the existing system of mandatory defined benefits for all workers. (shrink)

The ninth edition of Media Ethics: Issues and Cases has been updated to reflect the most pressing ethical issues in media. Featuring 25 new cases on hot topic issues from fake news to drones and a new chapter on social justice, this authoritative case book gives students the tools to make ethical decisions in an increasingly complex environment.

Intersectional feminist scholars emphasize how overlapping systems of oppression structure gender inequality, but in focusing on the gendered, classed, and racialized bases of stratification, many often overlook disability as an important social category in determining economic outcomes. This is a significant omission given that disability severely limits opportunities and contributes to cumulative disadvantage. We draw from feminist disability and intersectional theories to account for how disability intersects with gender, race, and education to produce economic insecurity. The findings from our analyses (...) of 2015 American Community Survey data provide strong empirical support for hierarchies of disadvantage, where women and racial minority groups with disabilities and less education experience the highest poverty levels, report the lowest total income, and have a greater reliance on sources outside the labor market for economic security. By taking disability into account, our study demonstrates how these multiple characteristics lead to overlapping oppressions that become embedded and reproduced within the larger social structure. (shrink)

Generalisation in evaluative conditioning occurs when the valence acquired by a conditional stimulus (CS), after repeated pairing with an unconditional stimulus (US), spreads to stimuli that are similar to the CS (generalisation stimuli, GS). CS evaluations can be updated via CS instructions that conflict with prior conditioning (negative conditioning + positive instruction). We examined whether CS instructions can update GS evaluations after conditioning. We used alien stimuli where one alien (CSp) from a fictional group was paired with pleasant US images (...) and another alien (CSu) from a different group was paired with unpleasant US images. The other members from the two groups were used as GSs. After conditioning, participants received negative CSp instructions and positive CSu instructions. In Experiment 1, explicit and implicit GS evaluations were measured before and after the instructions. In Experiment 2, we used a between-participants design where one group received positive/negative CS instructions while a control group received neutral instructions. In both experiments, the positive/negative CS instructions caused a reversal of explicit GS evaluations and an elimination of implicit GS evaluations. The findings suggest that generalised evaluations can change after CS instructions which may have implications for interventions aimed at reducing negative group attitudes. (shrink)

This article synthesizes research presented in several models of unethical behavior to develop propositions about the factors that facilitate and mitigate deception in online business communications. The work expands the social network perspective to incorporate the medium of communication as a significant influence on deception. We go beyond existing models by developing seven propositions that identify how social network and issue moral intensity characteristics influence the probability of deception in online business communication in comparison to traditional communication channels. Remedies to (...) detect and discourage deception in online business networks are also offered, as well as limitations and future research directions. (shrink)

This article presents a sobering view of the discipline of cognitive neuropsychology as practiced over the last three or four decades. Our judgment is that, although the study of abnormal cognition resulting from brain injury or disease in previously normal adults has produced a catalogue of fascinating and highly selective deficits, it has yielded relatively little advance in understanding how the brain accomplishes its cognitive business. We question the wisdom of the following three “choices” in mainstream cognitive neuropsychology: (a) single‐case (...) methodology, (b) dissociation between functions as the most important source of evidence, and (c) a central goal of diagramming the functional architecture of cognition rather than specifying how its components work. These choices may all stem from an excessive commitment to strict and fine‐grained modularity. Although different brain regions are undoubtedly specialized for different functions, we argue that parallel and interactive processing is a better assumption about cognitive processing. The essential goal of specifying representations and processes can, we claim, be significantly assisted by computational modeling which, by its very nature, requires such specification. (shrink)

Conceptual generalisation occurs when conditional responses generalise to novel stimuli from the same category. Past research demonstrates that physiological fear responses generalise across categories, however, conceptual generalisation of stimulus valence evaluations during fear conditioning has not been examined. We investigated whether conceptual generalisation, as indexed by electrodermal responses and stimulus evaluations, would occur, and differ after training with single or multiple conditional stimuli (CSs). Stimuli from two of four categories (vegetables, farm animals, clothing, and office supplies) were used as the (...) CS+ (followed by an electric stimulus) or CS- (presented alone). Generalisation was assessed by presenting novel stimuli from the CS categories after acquisition, extinction, and reinstatement. One category exemplar was used as the CS+ and CS- in the single group, whereas three exemplars were used as the CS+ and CS- in the multiple group. Electrodermal responses generalised in acquisition and extinction but did not differ between groups. In the multiple group, CS evaluations generalised in acquisition and extinction, whereas generalisation was not evident in the single group. Training with multiple CSs also resulted in the extinction of stimulus valence. The current findings have implications for future research examining the generalisation of valence and for exposure-based treatments of anxiety. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been increasing managerial and academic attention given to a variety of mechanisms for companies to respond to stakeholder concerns about global business ethics. One area that merits further analysis is the role of industry‐level cooperation regarding issues in global business ethics such as labor practices. There are two main issues that we will address in this article: institutional pressures that predict when an industry will create a code of conduct and institutional complements for an industry‐level (...) code of conduct to be “successful” with regard to responding to stakeholder concerns about international business operations. We offer a number of propositions—bringing together work from both the corporate social responsibility and (neo)institutional theory literatures—with regard to both predictors and complements of industry self‐regulation in reference to labor practices. (shrink)

Although prior work on ethical decision-making has examined the direct impact of magnitude of consequences as well as the direct impact of emotions on ethical judgments, the current research examines the interaction of these two constructs. Building on previous research finding disgust to have a varying impact on ethical judgments depending on the specific behavior being evaluated, we investigate how disgust, as well as happiness and sadness, moderates the effect of magnitude of consequences on an individual’s judgments of another person’s (...) unethical behavior. Specifically, we propose and find that because disgust and happiness are both associated with more heuristic-based processing, they both lead to a stronger reliance on the magnitude of consequences when forming ethical judgments. In contrast, because sad and neutral emotional states are associated with more systematic processing, they both result in a weaker reliance on the magnitude of consequences. As such, the effect of magnitude of consequences on judgments of unethical behaviors is stronger when individuals making the judgments are experiencing disgust or happiness versus sadness or a neutral state. This research shows that ethical judgment severity is contingent on individual-level factors, particularly the current emotional state being experienced by the individual, interacting with magnitude of consequences to impact the ethical decision-making process. (shrink)

Titles and abstracts for the Pitt-London Workshop in the Philosophy of Biology and Neuroscience: September 2001.

Within the realm of nano-, bio-, info- and cogno- (or NBIC) technosciences, the ‘power to change the world’ is often invoked. One could dismiss such formulations as ‘purely rhetorical’, interpret them as rhetorical and self-fulfilling or view them as an adequate depiction of one of the fundamental characteristics of technoscience. In the latter case, a very specific nexus between science and technology, or, the epistemic and the constructionist realm is envisioned. The following paper focuses on this nexus drawing on theoretical (...) conceptions as well as empirical material. It presents an overview of different technoscientific ways to ‘change the world’—via contemplation and representation, intervention and control, engineering, construction and creation. It further argues that the hybrid character of technoscience makes it difficult (if not impossible) to separate knowledge production from real world interventions and challenges current science and technology policy approaches in fundamental ways. (shrink)

The counseling process involves attention, emotional perception, cognitive appraisal, and decision-making. This study aimed to investigate cognitive appraisal and the associated emotional processes when reading short therapists' statements of motivational interviewing (MI). Thirty participants with work injuries were classified into the pre-contemplation (PC,n= 15) or readiness stage of the change group (RD,n= 15). The participants viewed MI congruent (MI-C), MI incongruent (MI-INC), or control phrases during which their electroencephalograms were captured. The results indicated significant Group × Condition effects in the (...) frontally oriented late positive complex (P600/LPC). The P600/LPC's amplitudes were more positive-going in the PC than in the RD group for the MI congruent statements. Within the PC group, the amplitudes of the N400 were significantly correlated (r= 0.607–0.649) with the participants' level of negative affect. Our findings suggest that the brief contents of MI statements alone can elicit late cognitive and emotional appraisal processes beyond semantic processing. (shrink)

In matters of governance, is believing subject to ethical standards? If so, what are the criteria how relevant are they in our personal and political culture today? The really important matters in politics and governance necessitate a confidence that our beliefs will lead dependably to predictable and verifiable outcomes. Accordingly, it is unethical to hold a belief that is founded on insufficient evidence or based on hearsay or blind acceptance. In this paper, we demonstrate that the pragmatist concept of truth (...) best meets this standard for ethically held belief in matters of politics and governance. Currently, these standards are abused by the gaslighting and distortion characteristics of the often social media driven ‘misinformation society’. The legitimacy and trust in our institutions and leadership that is requisite for good governance is challenged thereby, threatening the viability of our republic. (shrink)

There are growing concerns that increased screen device usage may have a detrimental impact on classroom behaviour and attentional focus. The consequences of screen use on child cognitive functioning have been relatively under-studied, and results remain largely inconsistent. Screen usage may displace the time usually spent asleep. The aim of this study was to examine associations between screen use, behavioural inattention and sustained attention control, and the potential modifying role of sleep. The relations between screen use, behavioural inattention, sustained attention (...) and sleep were investigated in 162 6- to 8-year-old children, using parent-reported daily screen use, the SWAN ADHD behaviour rating scale, The sustained attention to response task and the children’s sleep habits questionnaire. Tablet use was associated with better sustained attention performance but was not associated with classroom behavioural inattention. Shorter sleep duration was associated with poorer behavioural inattention and sustained attention. Sleep quality and duration did not act as mediators between screen usage and behavioural inattention nor sustained attention control. These findings suggest that careful management of the amount of time spent on electronic screen devices could have a beneficial cognitive impact on young children. The results also highlight the critical role of sleep in enhancing both behavioural attention and sustained attention, which are essential for supporting cognitive development and learning. (shrink)

The article focuses on stories and storytelling practices as explanatory resources in standardization processes. It draws upon an ethnographic study of the development of a technical standard for data sharing in an ecological research community, where participants struggle to articulate the difficulties encountered in implementing the standard. Building from C. Wright Mills’ classic distinction between private troubles and public issues, the authors follow the development of a story as it comes to assist in transforming individual troubles in standard implementation into (...) an institutional issue for the ecological scientific community. The authors present the “hands-on” social science collaboration in this study as an example of a mechanism for supporting institutionalization of issues. Finally, the authors argue that narratives can serve as effective organizing principles within institutional settings, thereby providing an approach to understand the practical, substantive difficulties that occur in work with data in the sciences. (shrink)

Drawing from Goffman’s original observations on stigma and the consequences of interactions between the stigmatized and supportive or stigmatizing audiences, we conduct a 20-year review of the diverse literature on stigma to revisit the collective nature of stigmatization processes. We find that studies on stigma’s origins, responses, processes, and outcomes have diverged from Goffman’s relational view of stigma as they have overlooked important relational mechanisms explaining the processes of (de)stigmatization. We draw from those conclusions to justify the need to study (...) stigma as a collective phenomenon. We develop a relational perspective on stigma based on understanding how attributes are stigmatized (or not) by audiences in their interactions. We argue that to advance stigma research, it is necessary to build on Goffman’s theory to include the stigmatizers (i.e., the normal) and supporters (i.e., the wise); how they create, sustain, or remove stigma; and how they relate to the stigmatized (i.e., the targets). Accordingly, we provide a research agenda on stigma as a collective phenomenon that theorizes a relational perspective, proposes a typology of how audiences relate to stigmatization, and identifies patterns of relations between audiences. We thus offer a missing piece to existing accounts of stigma by focusing on the key role of audiences (i.e., stigmatizers or supporters of the stigmatized) rather than on the targets of stigma (i.e., the own). (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Coping with Genetic Disorders. By John C. Fletcher. Genetics, Ethics and Parenthood. Edited by Karen Lebacqz. Screening and Counseling for Genetic Conditions: The Ethical, Social, and Legal Implications of Genetic Screening, Counseling, and Education Programs. A report of the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research.