Depression is a widespread concern in the United States. Neuromodulation treatments are becoming more common but there is emerging concern for racial disparities in neuromodulation treatment utilization. This study focuses on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), a treatment for depression, and the structural and attitudinal barriers that racialized individuals face in accessing it. In January 2023 participants from the Twin Cities, Minnesota engaged in focus groups, coupled with an educational video intervention. Individuals self identified as non-white who had no previous TMS (...) exposure but had tried at least one treatment for their depression. Results revealed that the intervention did not notably change knowledge or stigma about TMS, but attitudes surrounding traveling for treatment changed. Notably, barriers like affordability, frequency of treatment, and lack of knowledge persist. Participants expressed a desire for more information, personal connection, and a tailored educational approach. The study suggests a need for multifaceted strategies to reduce disparities, focusing on education, community-based resources, and policy interventions. Immediate actions that can be taken include the creation of a TMS education program focused on patient engagement and awareness about TMS. (shrink)

To contribute to the continuing challenge of explaining how managers identify stakeholders and assess their salience, in this article, we chronicle the history, assess the impact, and evaluate the possibilities opened by Mitchell, Agle, and Wood (MAW-1997). We do so through two types of qualitative analysis, and also through utilizing a quantitative network analysis tool. The first qualitative analysis categorizes the major contributions of the most influential papers succeeding MAW-1997; the second identifies and compares the relevant issues with MAW-1997 at (...) the time of initial publication and today. We apply main path analysis, a quantitative tool, to map how this scholarly domain has evolved. These three analyses robustly depict the impact of MAW-1997 and the ensuing scholarly conversation, and they enable us to illustrate the current state and trajectory of stakeholder identification and salience scholarship. We close by discussing pressing topics related to the broader body of stakeholder theory literature. (shrink)

Given the growing public concern and attention placed on cases of research misconduct, government agencies and research institutions have increased their efforts to develop and improve ethics education programs for scientists. The present study sought to assess the impact of these increased efforts by sampling empirical studies published since the year 2000. Studies published prior to 2000 examined in other meta-analytic work were also included to provide a baseline for assessing gains in ethics training effectiveness over time. In total, this (...) quantitative review consisted of 66 empirical studies, 106 ethics courses, 150 effect sizes, and 10,069 training participants. Overall, the findings indicated that ethics instruction resulted in sizable benefits to participants and has improved considerably within the last decade. A number of specific findings also emerged regarding moderators of instructional effectiveness. Recommendations are discussed for improving the development, delivery, and evaluation of ethics instruction in the sciences. (shrink)

As scientific and engineering efforts become increasingly global in nature, the need to understand differences in perceptions of research ethics issues across countries and cultures is imperative. However, investigations into the connection between nationality and ethical decision-making in the sciences have largely generated mixed results. In Study 1 of this paper, a measure of biases and compensatory strategies that could influence ethical decisions was administered. Results from this study indicated that graduate students from the United States and international graduate students (...) studying in the US are prone to different biases. Based on these findings, recommendations are made for developing ethics education interventions to target these decision-making biases. In Study 2, we employed an ethics training intervention based on ethical sensemaking and used a well-established measure of ethical decision-making that more fully captures the content of ethical judgment. Similar to Study 1, the results obtained in this study suggest differences do exist between graduate students from the US and international graduate students in ethical decision-making prior to taking the research ethics training. However, similar effects were observed for both groups following the completion of the ethics training intervention. (shrink)

A dual-processing model of moral whistleblowing in organizations is proposed. In this theory paper, moral whistleblowing is described as a unique type of whistleblowing that is undertaken by individuals that see themselves as moral agents and are primarily motivated to blow the whistle by a sense of moral duty. At the individual level, the model expands on traditional, rational models of whistleblowing by exploring how moral intuition and deliberative reasoning processes might interact to influence the whistleblowing behavior of moral agents. (...) The model combines individual variables, organizational variables, and external, societal variables to explain the moral whistleblowing process and the impact of moral agents on organizations and society. (shrink)

Predictive modeling in education draws on data from past courses to forecast the effectiveness of future courses. The present effort sought to identify such a model of instructional effectiveness in scientific ethics. Drawing on data from 235 courses in the responsible conduct of research, structural equation modeling techniques were used to test a predictive model of RCR course effectiveness. Fit statistics indicated the model fit the data well, with the instructional characteristics included in the model explaining approximately 85% of the (...) variance in RCR instructional effectiveness. Implications for using the model to develop and improve future RCR courses are discussed. (shrink)

This paper argues that international development research should be submitted to the oversight of research ethics committees from the countries where data will be collected. This includes research conducted by individuals who may fall outside the jurisdictions of most ethics guidelines or policies, such as individuals contracted by non-governmental organizations. The argument is grounded in an understanding of social justice that recognizes that not seeking local ethics approval can be an affront to the decolonization movement, and may lead to significant (...) direct harms to participants. Local ethics oversight can help ensure projects appropriately take into consideration local laws, regulations, priorities and context. For example, a local research ethics committee may be in a better position than a foreign one to assess whether any given proposed project carries context-specific risks. In addition, submitting to a local research ethics committee is to acknowledge the legitimacy of local authorities, thereby taking a stance against the history of colonizing disempowerment. Local oversight is a mechanism to increase the accountability of researchers working abroad: if respect for local authority and tailoring to local context are to be upheld, there must be mechanisms to ensure that research that does not meet these requirements does not proceed. Objections based on the limited oversight capacity in some countries and on concerns related to the politicization of the review process are discussed. Finally, the roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders in the implementation of greater local ethics oversight are laid out. (shrink)

King develops a syntax-based account of propositions based on the idea that propositional unity is grounded in the syntactic structure of the sentence. This account faces two objections: a Benacerraf objection and a grain-size objection. I argue that the syntax-based account survives both objections, as they have been put forward in the existing literature. I go on to show, however, that King equivocates between two distinct notions of ‘propositional structure ’ when explaining his account. Once the confusion is resolved, it (...) is clear that the syntax-based account suffers from both Benacerraf and grain-size problems after all. I conclude by showing that King's account can be revised to avoid these problems, but only if it abandons its motivating idea that it is syntax that unifies the proposition. (shrink)

Practical reasoners are resource-bounded—in particular they require time to derive consequences of their knowledge. Building on the Timed Reasoning Logics (TRL) framework introduced in [1], we show how to represent the time required by an agent to reach a given conclusion. TRL allows us to model the kinds of rule application and conflict resolution strategies commonly found in rule-based agents, and we show how the choice of strategy can influence the information an agent can take into account when making decisions (...) at a particular point in time. We prove general completeness and decidability results for TRL, and analyse the impact of communication in an example system consisting of two agents which use different conflict resolution strategies. (shrink)

Our aim in this article is to attempt to discuss propagating organization of process, a poorly articulated union of matter, energy, work, constraints and that vexed concept, “information”, which unite in far from equilibrium living physical systems. Our hope is to stimulate discussions by philosophers of biology and biologists to further clarify the concepts we discuss here. We place our discussion in the broad context of a “general biology”, properties that might well be found in life anywhere in the cosmos, (...) freed from the specific examples of terrestrial life after 3.8 billion years of evolution. By placing the discussion in this wider, if still hypothetical, context, we also try to place in context some of the extant discussion of information as intimately related to DNA, RNA and protein transcription and translation processes. While characteristic of current terrestrial life, there are no compelling grounds to suppose the same mechanisms would be involved in any life form able to evolve by heritable variation and natural selection. In turn, this allows us to discuss at least briefly, the focus of much of the philosophy of biology on population genetics, which, of course, assumes DNA, RNA, proteins, and other features of terrestrial life. Presumably, evolution by natural selection—and perhaps self-organization—could occur on many worlds via different causal mechanisms. Here we seek a non-reductionist explanation for the synthesis, accumulation, and propagation of information, work, and constraint, which we hope will provide some insight into both the biotic and abiotic universe, in terms of both molecular self reproduction and the basic work energy cycle where work is the constrained release of energy into a few degrees of freedom. The typical requirement for work itself is to construct those very constraints on the release of energy that then constitute further work. Information creation, we argue, arises in two ways: first information as natural selection assembling the very constraints on the release of energy that then constitutes work and the propagation of organization. Second, information in a more extended sense is “semiotic”, that is about the world or internal state of the organism and requires appropriate response. The idea is to combine ideas from biology, physics, and computer science, to formulate explanatory hypotheses on how information can be captured and rendered in the expected physical manifestation, which can then participate in the propagation of the organization of process in the expected biological work cycles to create the diversity in our observable biosphere. Our conclusions, to date, of this enquiry suggest a foundation which views information as the construction of constraints, which, in their physical manifestation, partially underlie the processes of evolution to dynamically determine the fitness of organisms within the context of a biotic universe. (shrink)

Selective conscientious objection, a refusal to participate in a specific war due to reasons of conscience, has recently gained attention. A combatant confronted with such a decision needs guidance to help decide whether and how to object. Furthermore, those judging a combatant’s objection or failure to object need guidance. After introducing the prima facie duty override criteria, I will apply the criteria to the case of selective conscientious objection. Ultimately, I argue that the jus ad bellum criteria rebranded as the (...) prima facie duty override criteria can help provide guidance regarding selective conscientious objection. (shrink)

Science studies scholars often study up to high-tech elites who produce and design scientific knowledge and technology. Methodological tension begins when you pair a desire to study down to less economically developed countries, with the desire to study up to high-tech elites within them. This becomes further complicated when the ethnographer and his/her informants share professional interests and credentials. In these situations, the researcher has high status because of geopolitical privilege. However, the researcher is neither a high-tech elite nor a (...) local cultural elite. How might the ethnographer successfully access and navigate field sites imbued with these unseen power differentials? There are currently no visual mapping tools to enhance the process of reflexivity by feminist ethnographers, as they consider their globally embedded multiple, hierarchical, and situated positionality. This reflection methodology piece provides a tool to consider this phenomenon, as it exists across the Global North/south divide of power. Such a tool would be useful to northern ethnographers to better strategize ethics and access while avoiding complicity with structures of inequality and empowering their southern interlocutors. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there are patterns of innovation occurring in less economically developed countries (LEDCs) that have been historically overlooked by the innovation studies literature, including the literature on innovation systems and the triple helix. This paper briefly surveys cases in agriculture, banking, biomedicine and information and communications technologies that demonstrate organizational, scientific and technological innovation in Africa, South Asia, and Brazil. In particular, we track new developments in two distinctive patterns within LEDCs: (1) civil society as (...) a site of innovation and; (2) innovation through appropriation. By systematically uncovering patterns of innovation in LEDCs, science and technology policy scholars may make new theoretical gains in innovation studies that can potentially contribute to innovation policies in the global South. (shrink)

When discussing well-being, subject-relative concerns are intuitively important ones. In this article, I argue that Immanuel Kant's theory of well-being can be satisfactorily subject-relative, despite his emphasis on objective moral well-being. Because the specifics of agents’ situations affect agents’ moral endowments, duties regarding moral well-being can be altered for subject-relative reasons. When it comes to thinking about the well-being of others, the important Kantian notion of respect for rational agents ensures that this will be decidedly subject-relative, too, and, what is (...) more, that this will be aimed specifically at natural well-being (happiness). (shrink)

This case study explores the ethical dimensions of the South Korean news media's coverage of the Dr. Woo Suk Hwang scandal and the extant journalism criticism. The study discusses the ethical issues associated with claims that Korean journalists acted too humanely, overemphasized scientific evidence, and were too culturally sensitive in their coverage of the Hwang scandal, and notes the broader implications for journalism ethical theory and criticism suggested by the study's findings. The case explores the differences in the ethical foundations (...) that underlay the press' efforts and the Korean-based criticism of the news media. Among other conclusions, the Hwang scandal illustrates the challenges of universalizing ethical standards in international journalism criticism. (shrink)

Nietzsche commits himself to a practice of honesty (Ehrlichkeit) in Schopenhauer as Educator. This article argues that this practice is an adaptation of Diogenes’s parrhēsia, the Cynic virtue of outspokenness, and that Nietzsche’s commitment to Ehrlichkeit increases from 1874 to 1888. The article emphasizes the interpersonal dimensions of Ehrlichkeit and parrhēsia and the author resists the widespread tendency to conflate Nietzsche and Diogenes in terms of shamelessness. The article demonstrates that, using Diogenes as an exemplar, Nietzsche gradually renounces the scholarly (...) pretense of hiding the personal significance of his opinions behind needlessly theoretical language. This development culminates in his explosive autobiography, Ecce Homo, which the author interprets, against the grain of Nietzsche scholarship, as the book of Ehrlichkeit, not Redlichkeit, par excellence. (shrink)

Logic: the Basics is an accessible introduction to the core philosophy topic of standard logic. Focussing on traditional Classical Logic the book deals with topics such as mathematical preliminaries, propositional logic, monadic quantified logic, polyadic quantified logic, and English and standard ‘symbolic transitions’. With exercises and sample answers throughout this thoroughly revised new edition not only comprehensively covers the core topics at introductory level but also gives the reader an idea of how they can take their knowledge further and the (...) philosophical questions around logic. -/- Logic: the Basics is essential reading for first-year undergraduate philosophy students on standard introductory logic courses. (shrink)

It is still a live question in epistemology and philosophy of science as to what exactly evidence is. In my view, evidence consists in experiences called “seemings.” This view is a version of the phenomenal conception of evidence, the position that evidence consists in nonfactive mental states with propositional content. This conception is opposed by sense-data theorists, disjunctivists, and those who think evidence consists in physical objects or publicly observable states of affairs—call it the courtroom conception of evidence. Thomas Kelly (...) has recently argued that the phenomenal conception cannot play all the roles evidence plays and is thus inadequate. Having first explained the nature of seemings, in this essay I utilize Kelly’s own understanding of the four major roles of evidence and argue that the phenomenal conception can play each one. Experience is a good candidate for evidence. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine a number of relevant logics’ variable sharing properties from the perspective of theories of topic or subject-matter. We take cues from Franz Berto’s recent work on topic to show an alignment between families of variable sharing properties and responses to the topic transparency of relevant implication and negation. We then introduce and defend novel variable sharing properties stronger than strong depth relevance—which we call cn-relevance and lossless cn-relevance—showing that the properties are satisfied by the weak (...) relevant logics and , respectively. We argue that such properties address a sort of semantic lossiness of strong depth relevance. (shrink)

Purpose Existing algorithms for predicting suicide risk rely solely on data from electronic health records, but such models could be improved through the incorporation of publicly available socioeconomic data – such as financial, legal, life event and sociodemographic data. The purpose of this study is to understand the complex ethical and privacy implications of incorporating sociodemographic data within the health context. This paper presents results from a survey exploring what the general public’s knowledge and concerns are about such publicly available (...) data and the appropriateness of using it in suicide risk prediction algorithms. Design/methodology/approach A survey was developed to measure public opinion about privacy concerns with using socioeconomic data across different contexts. This paper presented respondents with multiple vignettes that described scenarios situated in medical, private business and social media contexts, and asked participants to rate their level of concern over the context and what factor contributed most to their level of concern. Specific to suicide prediction, this paper presented respondents with various data attributes that could potentially be used in the context of a suicide risk algorithm and asked participants to rate how concerned they would be if each attribute was used for this purpose. Findings The authors found considerable concern across the various contexts represented in their vignettes, with greatest concern in vignettes that focused on the use of personal information within the medical context. Specific to the question of incorporating socioeconomic data within suicide risk prediction models, the results of this study show a clear concern from all participants in data attributes related to income, crime and court records, and assets. Data about one’s household were also particularly concerns for the respondents, suggesting that even if one might be comfortable with their own being used for risk modeling, data about other household members is more problematic. Originality/value Previous studies on the privacy concerns that arise when integrating data pertaining to various contexts of people’s lives into algorithmic and related computational models have approached these questions from individual contexts. This study differs in that it captured the variation in privacy concerns across multiple contexts. Also, this study specifically assessed the ethical concerns related to a suicide prediction model and determining people’s awareness of the publicness of select data attributes, as well as which of these data attributes generated the most concern in such a context. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to pursue this question. (shrink)

Can video games teach students about the history and philosophy of science? This paper reports the results of a study investigating the effects of playing an educational video game on students’ knowledge of Galileo’s life and times, the nature of scientific evidence, and Aristotle’s and Galileo’s views of the cosmos. In the game, students were immersed in a computer simulation of 16th century Venice where they interacted with an avatar of Galileo and other characters. Over a period of two weeks, (...) 71 undergraduates were exposed to lectures about Galileo and the Copernican revolution in a traditional classroom setting. However, only half of the students also played the game. The other half were only exposed to lectures. The knowledge of both groups was assessed at the beginning and end of the two-week period. The results demonstrated objective improvements in knowledge for the experimental group while the control group showed virtually no change. Implications of these findings for teaching and learning the history and philosophy of science are discussed. (shrink)

For some years now, Michael Bergmann has urged a dilemma against internalist theories of epistemic justification. For reasons I explain below, some epistemologists have thought that Michael Huemer’s principle of Phenomenal Conservatism can split the horns of Bergmann’s dilemma. Bergmann has recently argued, however, that PC must inevitably, like all other internalist views, fall prey to his dilemma. In this paper, I explain the nature of Bergmann’s dilemma and his reasons for thinking that PC cannot escape it before arguing that (...) he is mistaken: PC can indeed split its horns. (shrink)

. Declaring life at the crossroads of death: Victims’ anti‐death penalty views and prosecutors’ charging decisions. Criminal Justice Ethics: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 41-57.

Presenting traditional views alongside new critical approaches, the chapters in this book present fresh perspectives on the poetics of the 12th-century author, Marie de France, the first woman of letters to write in French.

Despite the growing body of literature on training in the responsible conduct of research, few studies have examined the effectiveness of delivery formats used in ethics courses. The present effort sought to address this gap in the literature through a meta-analytic review of 66 empirical studies, representing 106 ethics courses and 10,069 participants. The frequency and effectiveness of 67 instructional and process-based content areas were also assessed for each delivery format. Process-based contents were best delivered face-to-face, whereas contents delivered online (...) were most effective when restricted to compliance-based instructional contents. Overall, hybrid courses were found to be most effective, suggesting that ethics courses are best delivered using a blend of formats and content areas. Implications and recommendations for future development of ethics education courses in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

Behavioural flexibility is often treated as the gold standard of evidence for more sophisticated or complex forms of animal cognition, such as planning, metacognition and mindreading. However, the evidential link between behavioural flexibility and complex cognition has not been explicitly or systematically defended. Such a defence is particularly pressing because observed flexible behaviours can frequently be explained by putatively simpler cognitive mechanisms. This leaves complex cognition hypotheses open to ‘deflationary’ challenges that are accorded greater evidential weight precisely because they offer (...) putatively simpler explanations of equal explanatory power. This paper challenges the blanket preference for simpler explanations, and shows that once this preference is dispensed with, and the full spectrum of evidence—including evolutionary, ecological and phylogenetic data—is accorded its proper weight, an argument in support of the prevailing assumption that behavioural flexibility can serve as evidence for complex cognitive mechanisms may begin to take shape. An adaptive model of cognitive-behavioural evolution is proposed, according to which the existence of convergent trait–environment clusters in phylogenetically disparate lineages may serve as evidence for the same trait–environment clusters in other lineages. This, in turn, could permit inferences of cognitive complexity in cases of experimental underdetermination, thereby placing the common view that behavioural flexibility can serve as evidence for complex cognition on firmer grounds. (shrink)

Schmidt’s game and other similar intersection games have played an important role in recent years in applications to number theory, dynamics, and Diophantine approximation theory. These games are real games, that is, games in which the players make moves from a complete separable metric space. The determinacy of these games trivially follows from the axiom of determinacy for real games, $\mathsf {AD}_{\mathbb R}$, which is a much stronger axiom than that asserting all integer games are determined, $\mathsf {AD}$. One of (...) our main results is a general theorem which under the hypothesis $\mathsf {AD}$ implies the determinacy of intersection games which have a property allowing strategies to be simplified. In particular, we show that Schmidt’s $(\alpha,\beta,\rho )$ game on $\mathbb R$ is determined from $\mathsf {AD}$ alone, but on $\mathbb R^n$ for $n \geq 3$ we show that $\mathsf {AD}$ does not imply the determinacy of this game. We then give an application of simple strategies and prove that the winning player in Schmidt’s $(\alpha, \beta, \rho )$ game on $\mathbb {R}$ has a winning positional strategy, without appealing to the axiom of choice. We also prove several other results specifically related to the determinacy of Schmidt’s game. These results highlight the obstacles in obtaining the determinacy of Schmidt’s game from $\mathsf {AD}$. (shrink)

We introduce the notion of -determinacy for Γ a pointclass and E an equivalence relation on a Polish space X. A case of particular interest is the case when E = EG is the shift-action o...

Weak enough relevant logics are often closed under depth substitutions. To determine the breadth of logics with this feature, we show there is a largest sublogic of R closed under depth substitutions and that this logic can be recursively axiomatized.

Requirements for business ethics education and organizational ethics trainings mark an important step in encouraging ethical behavior among business students and professionals. However, the lack of specificity in these guidelines as to how, what, and where business ethics should be taught has led to stark differences in approaches and content. The present effort uses meta-analytic procedures to examine the effectiveness of current approaches across organizational ethics trainings and business school courses. to provide practical suggestions for business ethics interventions and research. (...) Thus, the primary questions driving this research are as follows: what course characteristics moderate the effectiveness of ethics instruction?, and have ethics education and training efforts improved? Findings suggest that professional, focused, and workshop-based training programs are especially effective for improving business ethics. However, results also reveal considerable problems with many of the criteria used to evaluate the effectiveness of business ethics interventions. Practical suggestions for course design and evaluation in business ethics efforts are discussed along with future research needs. (shrink)

First, thank you Flo and Joe for this initiative. I would love to make contact with more people interested and active in the use, place, impact and potential of computing in our society.

In this chapter, we argue for a phenomenal conservative perspective on religious epistemology and attempt to answer some common criticisms of this perspective.

The role of certitude in our mental lives is, to put it mildly, controversial. Many current epistemologists (including epistemologists of religion) eschew certitude altogether. Given his emphasis on certitude, some have maintained that John Henry Newman was an infallibilist about knowledge. In this paper, we argue that a careful examination of his thought (especially as seen in the Grammar of Assent) reveals that he was an epistemic fallibilist. We first clarify what we mean by fallibilism and infallibilism. Second, we explain (...) why some have read Newman as an infallibilist. Third, we offer two arguments that Newman is at least a fallibilist in a weak sense. In particular, the paradox he seeks to resolve in the Grammar and his dispute with John Locke both indicate that he is at least a weak fallibilist. We close with a consideration of whether Newman is a fallibilist in a much stronger sense as well. (shrink)

We all have an intuitive grasp of the concept of evidence. Evidence makes beliefs reasonable, justifies jury verdicts, and helps resolve our disagreements. Yet getting clear about what evidence is is surprisingly difficult. Among other possibilities, evidence might consist in physical objects like a candlestick found at the crime scene, propositions like ‘a candlestick was found at the crime scene,’ or experiences like the experience of witnessing a candlestick at the crime scene. This dissertation is a defense of the latter (...) view. Evidence, we will argue, consists in experiences or mental states called ‘seeming states.’ We begin with a look at why the logical positivists came to abandon the experiential or “phenomenal” conception of evidence and adopted what I call “the courtroom conception.” Despite its appeal, we argue that this latter view is too objective; it has trouble playing the role of subjective reasons-provider. Being more subjective, the phenomenal conception deserves another look. However, many have thought that the phenomenal conception itself is unable to fulfill other important roles of evidence. In chapter two we dispute this, arguing that the phenomenal conception can play all four of the chief roles of evidence. Examining the religious epistemology of Alvin Plantinga in chapter three we come to see that the phenomenal conception, while attractive, is in danger of being too subjective. If the phenomenal conception of evidence is to be tenable, it must be offered in conjunction with a conservative epistemic principle which tethers together experiences with the beliefs they evidence in an epistemically appropriate manner. Hence in chapter four we consider a number of conservative epistemic principles and argue for the superiority of one in particular. But these principles have themselves been subject to criticism. For this reason, in chapter five we close by responding to a recent and pressing challenge to conservative principles in epistemology (Michael Bergmann’s dilemma for internalism) which might prevent their deployment alongside the phenomenal conception. If our arguments are correct, the phenomenal conception of evidence is still an attractive account of evidence today. (shrink)

A discussion of several tensions between Thomistic philosophy and modern Darwinian theory as well as several recent Thomistic criticisms of intelligent design.