A global health archive consisting of podoconiosis tissue slides and blocks, was donated to Brighton & Sussex Medical School in 2014. There is little guidance on the socioethical and legal issues surrounding the retrospective use of archived or ‘abandoned’ tissue samples, which poses a number of questions relating to the ethical standing of the archive. There is a great deal of interpretation in the guidelines that are currently in existence; however, modern ethical principles cannot be applied as it is not (...) feasible to either reconsent or retrospectively seek approval. Our research team believed that it was unethical to leave the archive in storage, as this option favours neither researcher nor subjects. Permission was obtained from the Human Tissue Authority and a local ethics board for the tissues to be utilized in on-going research on podoconiosis aetiology. There is a delicate balance between the benefits gained by society relating to the development and progress of scientific research and the risks to the donor regarding the reuse of their tissues. Clearer guidelines should be made available to ensure that researchers are able to reuse tissue archives in contemporary research. (shrink)

The rapid pace of technological development often outstrips the ability of legislators and regulators to establish proper guardrails on emerging technologies. A solution is for those who develop, deploy, and use these technologies to develop themselves as moral agents—i.e., as agents capable of steering the course of emerging technologies in a direction that will benefit humanity. However, there is a dearth of literature discussing how to foster moral agency in computer science courses, and little if any research on the effectiveness (...) of such courses in computer science. This paper addresses this gap by providing an overview of an undergraduate course on technology ethics. It then shares and discusses a subset of data collected from a mixed-methods study using a pre-post design that sought to examine the course’s effectiveness in developing students’ moral, intellectual, and civic virtues, as well as related dispositions. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with everyday data practices, considering how people record data produced through self-monitoring. The analysis unpacks the relationships between taking a measure, and making and reviewing records. The paper is based on an interview study with people who monitor their blood pressure and/or body mass index/weight. Animated by discussions of ‘data power’ which are, in part, predicated on the flow and aggregation of data, we aim to extend important work concerning the everyday constitution of digital data. In (...) the paper, we adopt and develop the idea of curation as a theory of attention. We introduce the idea of discerning work to characterise the skilful judgements people make about which readings they record, how readings are presented, and about the records they retain and those they discard. We suggest self-monitoring produces partial data, both in the sense that it embodies these judgements, and also because monitoring might be conducted intermittently. We also extend previous analyses by exploring the broad set of materials, digital and analogue, networked and not networked, involved in record keeping to consider the different ways these contributed to regulating attention to self-monitoring. By paying attention to which data is recorded and the occasions when data is not recorded, as well as the ways data is recorded, the research provides specificity to the different ways in which self-monitoring data may or may not flow or contribute to big data sets. We argue that ultimately our analysis contributes to nuancing our understanding of ‘data power’. (shrink)

This practical guide is full of advice on how to make the most of the PhD experience. It covers the practicalities of embarking on a PhD and guides students through the process, from selecting a topic and securing finance to writing and publishing their thesis. It also includes a wealth of workshop activities to help students sharpen their focus and clarify their thoughts, and top tips for further development. This is an essential guide for all current and soon-to-be PhD students. (...) It also offers useful guidance for anyone considering pursuing research-based career. (shrink)

Supported decision-making has been promoted at a policy level and within international human rights treaties as a way of ensuring that people with disabilities enjoy the right to legal capacity on an equal basis with others. However, little is known about the practical issues associated with implementing supported decision-making, particularly in the context of dementia. This study aimed to understand the experiences of people with dementia and their family members with respect to decision-making and their views on supported decision-making. Thirty-six (...) interviews were undertaken with fifty-seven participants across three states in Australia. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used as the methodological approach, with relational autonomy as a theoretical perspective. We identified two overarching themes relating to participants’ experiences with decision-making: “the person in relationship over time” and “maintaining involvement.” Participant views on the practical issues associated with supported decision-making are addressed under the themes of “facilitating decision-making,” “supported decision-making arrangements,” “constraints on decision-making,” and “safeguarding decision-making.” While participants endorsed the principles of supported decision-making as part of their overarching strategy of “maintaining involvement” in decision-making, they recognized that progressive cognitive impairment meant that there was an inevitable transition toward greater involvement of, and reliance upon, others in decision-making. Social and contextual “constraints on decision-making” also impacted on the ability of people with dementia to maintain involvement. These themes inform our proposal for a “spectrum approach” to decision-making involvement among people living with dementia, along with recommendations for policy and practice to assist in the implementation of supported decision-making within this population. (shrink)

Supported decision-making has been promoted at a policy level and within international human rights treaties as a way of ensuring that people with disabilities enjoy the right to legal capacity on an equal basis with others. However, little is known about the practical issues associated with implementing supported decision-making, particularly in the context of dementia. This study aimed to understand the experiences of people with dementia and their family members with respect to decision-making and their views on supported decision-making. Thirty-six (...) interviews were undertaken with fifty-seven participants across three states in Australia. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used as the methodological approach, with relational autonomy as a theoretical perspective. We identified two overarching themes relating to participants’ experiences with decision-making: “the person in relationship over time” and “maintaining involvement.” Participant views on the practical issues associated with supported decision-making are addressed under the themes of “facilitating decision-making,” “supported decision-making arrangements,” “constraints on decision-making,” and “safeguarding decision-making.” While participants endorsed the principles of supported decision-making as part of their overarching strategy of “maintaining involvement” in decision-making, they recognized that progressive cognitive impairment meant that there was an inevitable transition toward greater involvement of, and reliance upon, others in decision-making. Social and contextual “constraints on decision-making” also impacted on the ability of people with dementia to maintain involvement. These themes inform our proposal for a “spectrum approach” to decision-making involvement among people living with dementia, along with recommendations for policy and practice to assist in the implementation of supported decision-making within this population. (shrink)

Internalists about reasons following Bernard Williams claim that an agent’s normative reasons for action are constrained in some interesting way by her desires or motivations. In this paper, I offer a new argument for such a position—although one that resonates, I believe, with certain key elements of Williams’ original view. I initially draw on P.F. Strawson’s famous distinction between the interpersonal and the objective stances that we can take to other people, from the second-person point of view. I (...) suggest that we should accept Strawson’s contention that the activity of reasoning with someone about what she ought to do naturally belongs to the interpersonal mode of interaction. I also suggest that reasons for an agent to perform some action are considerations which would be apt to be cited in favor of that action, within an idealized version of this advisory social practice. I then go on to argue that one would take leave of the interpersonal stance towards someone—thus crossing the line, so to speak—in suggesting that she do something one knows she wouldn’t want to do, even following an exhaustive attempt to hash it out with her. An internalist necessity constraint on reasons is defended on this basis. (shrink)

People with anorexia nervosa commonly exhibit social difficulties, which may be related to problems with understanding the perspectives of others, commonly known as Theory of Mind processing. However, there is a dearth of literature investigating the neural basis of these differences in ToM and at what age they emerge. This study aimed to test for differences in the neural correlates of ToM processes in young women with AN, and young women weight-restored from AN, as compared to healthy control participants. Based (...) on previous findings in AN, we hypothesized that young women with current or prior AN, as compared to HCs, would exhibit a reduced neural response in the medial prefrontal cortex, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the temporo-parietal junction whilst completing a ToM task. We recruited 73 young women with AN, 45 WR young women, and 70 young women without a history of AN to take part in the current study. Whilst undergoing a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan, participants completed the Frith-Happé task, which is a commonly used measure of ToM with demonstrated reliability and validity in adult populations. In this task, participants viewed the movements of triangles, which depicted either action movements, simple interactions, or complex social interactions. Viewing trials with more complex social interactions in the Frith-Happé task was associated with increased brain activation in regions including the right TPJ, the bilateral mPFC, the cerebellum, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. There were no group differences in neural activation in response to the ToM contrast. Overall, these results suggest that the neural basis of spontaneous mentalizing is preserved in most young women with AN. (shrink)

Attention Restoration Theory proposes that exposure to natural environments helps to restore attention. For sustained attention—the ongoing application of focus to a task, the effect appears to be modest, and the underlying mechanisms of attention restoration remain unclear. Exposure to nature may improve attention performance through many means: modulation of alertness and one’s connection to nature were investigated here, in two separate studies. In both studies, participants performed the Sustained Attention to Response Task before and immediately after viewing a meadow, (...) ocean, or urban image for 40 s, and then completed the Perceived Restorativeness Scale. In Study 1, an eye-tracker recorded the participants’ tonic pupil diameter during the SARTs, providing a measure of alertness. In Study 2, the effects of connectedness to nature on SART performance and perceived restoration were studied. In both studies, the image viewed was not associated with participants’ sustained attention performance; both nature images were perceived as equally restorative, and more restorative than the urban image. The image viewed was not associated with changes in alertness. Connectedness to nature was not associated with sustained attention performance, but it did moderate the relation between viewing the natural images and perceived restorativeness; participants reporting a higher connection to nature also reported feeling more restored after viewing the nature, but not the urban, images. Dissociation was found between the physiological and behavioral measures and the perceived restorativeness of the images. The results suggest that restoration associated with nature exposure is not associated with modulation of alertness but is associated with connectedness with nature. (shrink)

There is a complexity of entities and happenings embodied within the pillars that frame the doorways in our homes and support the broad flat spaces that form supermarkets and department stores. Each pillar speaks to the mythology encircling the origins of Gothic architecture; the ideas surrounding the shift from the trunks and boughs of the sacred grove toward the columns, arches, and vaults of church and cathedral. Each pillar embodies the evolution of life and the history of the Earth. Awakening (...) toward the relational agency at play within the “humanly derived” allows us to recognize this agency as akin to wildness and as William Cronon asserts, this kinship draws us closer to recognizing and responding to the wild in all that surrounds us. It also produces a shift in how we understand the concept of wilderness. It is not, as Cronon contends, a cultural construct, but a fluxing and complex gestalt that includes both human and more-than-human agency. (shrink)

There is a complexity of entities and happenings embodied within the pillars that frame the doorways in our homes and support the broad flat spaces that form supermarkets and department stores. Each pillar speaks to the mythology encircling the origins of Gothic architecture; the ideas surrounding the shift from the trunks and boughs of the sacred grove toward the columns, arches, and vaults of church and cathedral. Each pillar embodies the evolution of life and the history of the Earth. Awakening (...) toward the relational agency at play within the “humanly derived” allows us to recognize this agency as akin to wildness and as William Cronon asserts, this kinship draws us closer to recognizing and responding to the wild in all that surrounds us. It also produces a shift in how we understand the concept of wilderness. It is not, as Cronon contends, a cultural construct, but a fluxing and complex gestalt that includes both human and more-than-human agency. (shrink)

An illustrated exploration of fandom that combines academic essays with artist pages and experimental texts. Fandom as Methodology examines fandom as a set of practices for approaching and writing about art. The collection includes experimental texts, autobiography, fiction, and new academic perspectives on fandom in and as art. Key to the idea of “fandom as methodology” is a focus on the potential for fandom in art to create oppositional spaces, communities, and practices, particularly from queer perspectives, but also through transnational, (...) feminist and artist-of-color fandoms. The book provides a range of examples of artists and writers working in this vein, as well as academic essays that explore the ways in which fandom can be theorized as a methodology for art practice and art history. Fandom as Methodology proposes that many artists and art writers already draw on affective strategies found in fandom. With the current focus in many areas of art history, art writing, and performance studies around affective engagement with artworks and imaginative potentials, fandom is a key methodology that has yet to be explored. Interwoven into the academic essays are lavishly designed artist pages in which artists offer an introduction to their use of fandom as methodology. Contributors Taylor J. Acosta, Catherine Grant, Dominic Johnson, Kate Random Love, Maud Lavin, Owen G. Parry, Alice Butler, SooJin Lee, Jenny Lin, Judy Batalion, Ika Willis. Artists featured in the artist pages Jeremy Deller, Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Anna Bunting-Branch, Maria Fusco, Cathy Lomax, Kamau Amu Patton, Holly Pester, Dawn Mellor, Michelle Williams Gamaker, The Women of Colour Index Reading Group, Liv Wynter, Zhiyuan Yang. (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

“One is not born a woman, but becomes one”, Simone de Beauvoir A symbol of liberated womanhood, Simone de Beauvoir's unconventional relationships inspired and scandalised her generation. A philosopher, writer, and feminist icon, she won prestigious literary prizes and transformed the way we think about gender with The Second Sex. But despite her successes, she wondered if she had sold herself short. Her liaison with Jean-Paul Sartre has been billed as one of the most legendary love affairs of the twentieth (...) century. But for Beauvoir it came at a cost: for decades she was dismissed as an unoriginal thinker who 'applied' Sartre's ideas. In recent years new material has come to light revealing the ingenuity of Beauvoir's own philosophy and the importance of other lovers in her life. This ground-breaking biography draws on never-before-published diaries and letters to tell the fascinating story of how Simone de Beauvoir became herself. (shrink)

Down Girl is a broad, original, and far ranging analysis of what misogyny really is, how it works, its purpose, and how to fight it. The philosopher Kate Manne argues that modern society's failure to recognize women's full humanity and autonomy is not actually the problem. She argues instead that it is women's manifestations of human capacities -- autonomy, agency, political engagement -- is what engenders misogynist hostility.

Subversive Pedagogies draws attention to creative and critical pedagogies as a resource for engaging pressing problems in global politics. The collection explores the radical potential of pedagogy to transform students, scholars, citizens and institutions. It brings together scholars and students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including international relations, political science, indigenous studies, feminist theory and theatre studies, as well as practitioners in theatre and the arts. These diverse voices explore innovative pedagogical practices that extend our understanding of where pedagogy (...) happens, invite critical assessment of the ways the neoliberal university shapes and restricts pedagogical engagement, and offer both theoretical and practical tools to explore more creative and broader understandings of what pedagogy can and should do. (shrink)

In The Emergent Self, William Hasker joins one of the most heated debates in contemporary analytic philosophy, that over the nature of mind.

Toward theory a homuncular of believing For years and years, philosophers took thoughts and beliefs to be modifications of incorporeal Cartesian egos. ...

Calling into question all structural rules and principles relating to language, Joshua Kates presents a radical new path for interpreting this every day, taken-for-granted tool of communication. Traversing theory, literary criticism, philosophy, and the philosophy of language, the book speaks to contemporary debates on analytical and humanistic modes of inquiry. Language and texts are thought of as active 'events', replete with allusions to history, context and tradition that are always in the making. This emphasis makes the case for a rigorous (...) inquiry of text and talk in all their forms, bridging the continental and analytical divide in the process. (shrink)

One variety of love is familiar in everyday life and qualifies in every reasonable sense as a reactive attitude. ‘Reactive love’ is paradigmatically (a) an affectionate attachment to another person, (b) appropriately felt as a non-self-interested response to particular kinds of morally laudable features of character expressed by the loved one in interaction with the lover, and (c) paradigmatically manifested in certain kinds of acts of goodwill and characteristic affective, desiderative and other motivational responses (including other-regarding concern and a desire (...) to be with the beloved). ‘Virtues of intimacy’ as expressed in interaction with the lover are agent-relative reasons for reactive love, and like other reactive attitudes, reactive love generates reasons in its own right. Within a broad conception of the virtues, reactive love sheds light on the reactive attitudes more generally. (shrink)

Evidence suggests that the incidence of research misconduct is not in decline despite efforts to improve awareness, education and governance mechanisms. Two responses to this problem are favoured: first, the promotion of an agent-centred ethics approach to enhance researchers’ personal responsibility and accountability, and second, a change in research culture to relieve perceived pressures to engage in misconduct. This article discusses the challenges for both responses and explains how normative coherence through values alignment might assist. We argue that research integrity (...) and research ethics convey mixed messages, which are likely to contribute to a form of normative confusion. For the successful adoption of an agent-centred approach, normative coherence is needed between the two. To facilitate normative coherence, we propose that research ethics and research integrity be underpinned by a shared set of moral values that can be enacted via codes and guidelines and imbue research environments. Furthermore, to facilitate culture change, the same normative coherence is necessary at all levels of an institution. Only via values alignment between institutional aims, management, institutional practices and researchers can an ethical culture become truly embedded in research institutions. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 209-229, June 2022.

Without trust there is no credible human health research (HHR). This article accepts this truism and addresses a crucial question that arises: how can trust continually be promoted in an ever-changing and uncertain HHR environment? The article analyses long-standing mechanisms that are designed to elicit trust—such as consent, anonymization, and transparency—and argues that these are best understood as trust represented by proxies of trustworthiness, i.e., regulatory attempts to convey the trustworthiness of the HHR system and/or its actors. Often, such proxies (...) are assumed to operate as markers that trust exists or, at least, has not been lost. But, since trust can neither be “built” nor “secured,” this is a precarious assumption. Worryingly, there is no existing theoretical account of how to understand and evaluate these proxies of trustworthiness as part of a trusted HHR ecosystem. To remedy this, the paper argues for a radical reimagining of trust and trustworthiness as performative acts that ought to be understood in relation to each other and by reference to the common values at stake. It is shown that proxies of trustworthiness are the operational tools used to perform trustworthiness. It advocates for a values-based approach to understanding the relationship between trust and trustworthiness. This establishes a strong basis for an evaluative framework for proxies of trustworthiness, i.e., to determine how to perform trustworthiness well. Five common proxies in HHR are scrutinized from a values perspective. The contribution is to provide a far-reaching normative and practical framework by which existing and future proxies of trustworthiness can be identified, assessed, maintained, or replaced in rapidly changing HHR regulatory ecosystems where trust itself is crucial to the success of the entire HHR enterprise. (shrink)

For this 1897 publication, the American philosopher William James brought together ten essays, some of which were originally talks given to Ivy League societies. Accessible to a broader audience, these non-technical essays illustrate the author's pragmatic approach to belief and morality, arguing for faith and action in spite of uncertainty. James thought his audiences suffered 'paralysis of their native capacity for faith' while awaiting scientific grounds for belief. His response consisted in an attitude of 'radical empiricism', which deals practically rather (...) than ideologically with real-world phenomena. When facing a 'momentous' decision about belief, he says, we both can and must choose the best hypothesis. The first four essays apply this principle to religious faith, and the rest explore the pragmatic approach to such topics as determinism, ethics and individual achievement. James developed his ideas further in The Varieties of Religious Experience and Pragmatism, both of which are reissued in this series. (shrink)

The French existentialists Simone de Beauvoir and Jean‐Paul Sartre are renowned philosophers of freedom. But what “existentialist freedom” is is a matter of disagreement amongst their interpreters and, some argue, between Beauvoir and Sartre themselves. Since the late 1980s several scholars have argued that a Sartrean conception of freedom cannot justify the ethics of existentialism, adequately account for situations of oppression, or serve feminist ends. On these readings, Beauvoir disagreed with Sartre about freedom—making existentialist ethics, resistance to oppression, and feminism (...) coherently defensible. This article identifies four conceptions of freedom in order to clarify the questions of whether and how they disagreed, arguing that some incompatibilist readings of Sartre and Beauvoir conflate or confuse these conceptions in ways that render their conclusions unconvincing. However, there are stronger grounds on which to claim that Beauvoir disagreed with Sartre about morality—and the conditions of its possibility. (shrink)

By looking at the politics of classification within machine learning systems, this article demonstrates why the automated interpretation of images is an inherently social and political project. We begin by asking what work images do in computer vision systems, and what is meant by the claim that computers can “recognize” an image? Next, we look at the method for introducing images into computer systems and look at how taxonomies order the foundational concepts that will determine how a system interprets the (...) world. Then we turn to the question of labeling: how humans tell computers which words will relate to a given image. What is at stake in the way AI systems use these labels to classify humans, including by race, gender, emotions, ability, sexuality, and personality? Finally, we turn to the purposes that computer vision is meant to serve in our society—the judgments, choices, and consequences of providing computers with these capacities. Methodologically, we call this an archeology of datasets: studying the material layers of training images and labels, cataloguing the principles and values by which taxonomies are constructed, and analyzing how these taxonomies create the parameters of intelligibility for an AI system. By doing this, we can critically engage with the underlying politics and values of a system, and analyze which normative patterns of life are assumed, supported, and reproduced. (shrink)

Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'. His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical motives for (...) his search. With acute insight, he demonstrates how Descartes' _Meditations _are not merely a description but the very enactment of philosophical thought and discovery. Williams covers all of the key areas of Descartes' thought, including God, the will, the possibility of knowledge, and the mind and its place in nature. He also makes profound contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and philosophy generally. With a new foreword by John Cottingham. (shrink)

There are growing discontinuities between the research practices of data science and established tools of research ethics regulation. Some of the core commitments of existing research ethics regulations, such as the distinction between research and practice, cannot be cleanly exported from biomedical research to data science research. Such discontinuities have led some data science practitioners and researchers to move toward rejecting ethics regulations outright. These shifts occur at the same time as a proposal for major revisions to the Common Rule—the (...) primary regulation governing human-subjects research in the USA—is under consideration for the first time in decades. We contextualize these revisions in long-running complaints about regulation of social science research and argue data science should be understood as continuous with social sciences in this regard. The proposed regulations are more flexible and scalable to the methods of non-biomedical research, yet problematically largely exclude data science methods from human-subjects regulation, particularly uses of public datasets. The ethical frameworks for Big Data research are highly contested and in flux, and the potential harms of data science research are unpredictable. We examine several contentious cases of research harms in data science, including the 2014 Facebook emotional contagion study and the 2016 use of geographical data techniques to identify the pseudonymous artist Banksy. To address disputes about application of human-subjects research ethics in data science, critical data studies should offer a historically nuanced theory of “data subjectivity” responsive to the epistemic methods, harms and benefits of data science and commerce. (shrink)