Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 4, Page 434-444, May 2022.

Asymptomatic COVID‐19 testing programmes are being introduced in higher education institutions, but stakeholder views regarding the acceptability of mandating or incentivizing participation remain little understood. A mixed‐method study (semi‐structured interviews and a survey including open and closed questions) was undertaken in a case study university with a student testing programme. Survey data were analysed descriptively; analysis for interviews was based on the framework method. Two hundred and thirty‐nine people participated in the study: 213 in the survey (189 students, 24 staff), (...) and 26 in interviews (19 students, 7 staff). There was majority (62%) but not universal support for voluntary participation, with a range of concerns expressed about the potentially negative effects of mandating testing. Those who supported mandatory testing tended to do so on the grounds that it would protect others. There was also majority (64%) opposition to penalties for refusing to test. Views on restricting access to face‐to‐face teaching for non‐participants were polarized. Three‐quarters (75%) supported incentives, though there were some concerns about effectiveness and unintended consequences. Participants emphasized the importance of communication about the potential benefits of testing. Preserving the voluntariness of participation in student asymptomatic testing programmes is likely to be the most ethically sound policy unless circumstances change. (shrink)

Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing is a technology which provides information about fetal genetic characteristics very early in pregnancy by examining fetal DNA obtained from a sample of maternal blood. NIPT is a morally complex technology that has advanced quickly to market with a strong push from industry developers, leaving many areas of uncertainty still to be resolved, and creating a strong need for health policy that reflects women’s social and ethical values. We approach the need for ethical policy-making by studying the (...) use of NIPT and emerging policy in the province of Ontario, Canada. Using an adapted version of constructivist grounded theory, we conducted interviews with 38 women who have had personal experiences with NIPT. We used an iterative process of data collection and analysis and a staged coding strategy to conduct a descriptive analysis of ethics issues identified implicitly and explicitly by women who have been affected by this technology. The findings of this paper focus on current ethical issues for women seeking NIPT, including place in the prenatal pathway, health care provider counselling about the test, industry influence on the diffusion of NIPT, consequences of availability of test results. Other issues gain relevance in the context of future policy decisions regarding NIPT, including funding of NIPT and principles that may govern the expansion of the scope of NIPT. These findings are not an exhaustive list of all the potential ethical issues related to NIPT, but rather a representation of the issues which concern women who have personal experience with this test. Women who have had personal experience with NIPT have concerns and priorities which sometimes contrast dramatically with the theoretical ethics literature. These findings suggest the importance of engaging patients in ethical deliberation about morally complex technologies, and point to the need for more deliberative patient engagement work in this area. (shrink)

The paper is divided into two parts, each with subsections. In the first part, I shall discuss some matters that have been extensively examined by Kim, namely what the basic types of supervenience are and how they are pairwise logically related; in the course of this discussion, I shall distinguish a weak from a strong notion of global supervenience. In the second part, I shall examine supervenience in a context in which Kim has not: I shall attempt to solve a (...) puzzle that arises when we consider supervenience relations involving vague properties and/or predicates. This is, of course, not a special case of property/predicate super- venience, but the typical one: for virtually all properties/predicates are vague. The two parts of the paper stand independently of each other. Of the discussion in the first part, essentially all that is presupposed in the second is the notion of “world strong supervenience” defined in section 1 of part I. (shrink)

Doig, Meredith The promise from new Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, to make Victoria the 'education state' is welcome and timely.

There are clear associations between the overall quantity of input children are exposed to and their vocabulary acquisition. However, by uncovering specific features of the input that matter, we can better understand the mechanisms involved in vocabulary learning. We examine whether exposure to wh-questions, a challenging quality of the communicative input, is associated with toddlers' vocabulary and later verbal reasoning skills in a sample of low-income, African-American fathers and their 24-month-old children. Dyads were videotaped in free play sessions at home. (...) Videotapes were transcribed and reliably coded for sheer quantity of fathers' input as well as the number of wh-questions fathers produce. Children's productive vocabulary was measured at 24 months using the McArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory MCDI, and children's verbal reasoning skills were measured 1 year later using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Results indicate that the overall quantity of father talk did not relate to children's vocabulary or reasoning skills. However, fathers' use of wh-questions related to both vocabulary and reasoning outcomes. Children's responses to wh-questions were more frequent and more syntactically complex, measured using the mean length of utterance, than their responses to other questions. Thus, posing wh-questions to 2-year-olds is a challenging type of input, which elicits a verbal response from the child that likely helps build vocabulary and foster verbal reasoning abilities. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 105 Heft: 4 Seiten: 554-572.

_Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning_ offers a provocative re-reading of Wittgenstein's later writings on language and mind, and explores the tensions between Wittgenstein's ideas and contemporary cognitivist conceptions of the mental. This book addresses both Wittgenstein's later works as well as contemporary issues in philosophy of mind. It provides fresh insight into the later Wittgenstein and raises vital questions about the foundations of cognitivism and its wider implications for psychology and cognitive science.

This book addresses how Plato, Kant, and Iris Murdoch view the connection aesthetic experience has to morality. While offering an examination of Iris Murdoch’s philosophy, it analyses deeply the suggestive links between Plato’s and Kant’s philosophies. Meredith Trexler Drees considers not only Iris Murdoch’s concept of unselfing, but also its relationship with Kant’s view of Achtung and Plato’s view of Eros. In addition, Trexler Drees suggests an extended, and partially amended, version of Murdoch’s view, arguing that it is more (...) compatible with a religious way of life than Murdoch herself realized. This leads to an expansion of the overall argument to include Kant’s affirmation of religion as an area of life that can be improved through Plato’s and Murdoch’s vision of how being good and being beautiful can be part of the same life-task. (shrink)

Introduction -- Hillbilly as American Indian -- Appalachian woman as mammy -- Mountain migrant as Mexican migrant -- Appalachia and documentary -- Appendix: Appalachian types in cinema.

Vulnerabilities often characterize the availability of immigrant populations of interest in social behavioral science, public health, and medical research. Refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants present unique vulnerabilities relevant to protocol development as well as ethics review procedures and criteria. This paper describes vulnerable populations in relation to the Belmont Report and US federal regulations for the protection of human subjects, both of which are commonly used in international research contexts. It argues for safeguards for immigrants comparable to protections for (...) such populations as pregnant women, prisoners, and children. The paper further presents a two-part model for the review of protocols that involve immigrants. The model is intended to help identify the risks to immigrants associated with participation in research, and to suggest how researchers can responsibly frame studies and access to research participant immigrants through community-based, and/or non-governmental organizations that serve immigrants and immigrant communities. (shrink)

Psychological essentialism is the belief that some internal, unseen essence or force determines the common outward appearances and behaviors of category members. We investigated whether reasoning about transplants of bodily elements showed evidence of essentialist thinking. Both Americans and Indians endorsed the possibility of transplants conferring donors' personality, behavior, and luck on recipients, consistent with essentialism. Respondents also endorsed essentialist effects even when denying that transplants would change a recipient's category membership (e.g., predicting that a recipient of a pig's heart (...) would act more pig-like but denying that the recipient would become a pig). This finding runs counter to predictions from the strongest version of the “minimalist” position (Strevens,2000), an alternative to essentialism. Finally, studies asking about a broader range of donor-to-recipient transfers indicated that Indians essentialized more types of transfers than Americans, but neither sample essentialized monetary transfer. This suggests that results from bodily transplant conditions reflect genuine essentialism rather than broader magical thinking. (shrink)

A review of the literature on corporate governance serves to demonstrate the applicability of many governance solutions to the university setting. Based on a review of university scandals, most of which are recent but some of which took place decades ago, it is possible to categorize them as follows: sex scandals, drugs, cheating, hazing, admissions and diplomas, on-the-job consumption, athletics, and murder. Several examples are provided in the paper, along with their impact on various stakeholders. The paper then discusses a (...) variety of solutions designed to either preempt the activities potentially leading to scandal, to deter them or to punish perpetrators. Some of these involve structural changes, institutional policies and procedures, fines, terminations, and sanctions. The paper emphasizes the proactive safeguards which govern and monitor to make sure that universities do not suffer on the back end and that their reputations do not suffer into the future. (shrink)

There is currently a debate over whether cognitive architecture is classical or connectionist in nature. One finds the following three comparisons between classical architecture and connectionist architecture made in the pro-connectionist literature in this debate: (1) connectionist architecture is neurally plausible and classical architecture is not; (2) connectionist architecture is far better suited to model pattern recognition capacities than is classical architecture; and (3) connectionist architecture is far better suited to model the acquisition of pattern recognition capacities by learning than (...) is classical architecture. If true, (1)-(3) would yield a compelling case against the view that cognitive architecture is classical, and would offer some reason to think that cognitive architecture may be connectionist. We first present the case for (1)-(3) in the very words of connectionist enthusiasts. We then argue that the currently available evidence fails to support any of (1)-(3). (shrink)

Humour is a prevalent feature in any form of human interaction, regardless of language modality. This article explores in detail how humour is negotiated in conversations among deafblind Australians who are fluent users of tactile Australian Sign Language. Without access to the visual or auditory cues that are normally associated with humour, there is a risk that deafblind interactants will misconstrue humorous utterances as serious, or be unsure whether their conversation partner has got the joke. In this article, we explore (...) how humorous utterances unfold in tactile signed interactions. Drawing on Conversation Analytic principles, we outline the ad hoc and more conventionalised signals deafblind signers use to signal amusement. Looking at humour in these conversations contributes to a greater understanding of how humour is conveyed across language modalities and further support for humour’s centrality to interactional solidarity. (shrink)

Despite great advances in understanding genetic mechanisms, there still exists a bias toward equating genes with innate modules that determine important developmental events. But genes are equally relevant to understanding developmental plasticity shaped by ecological events. In other words, the term 'genetic inheritance' does not specify ontogenetic mechanisms. Here we present a case history of a species assumed to be under the control of prespecified genetic wiring to direct critical behavioral events such as communication and mating. We show, however, that (...) exogenetic processes stemming from the species's ontogenetic niche provide an alternative view of the flexibility of development especially with respect to behavioral performance. (shrink)

A classic problem in cognitive science concerns how listeners perceive and understand speech as comprised of discrete words. We propose a Syllable Inference account of spoken word recognition and segmentation, under which alternative hierarchical models of syllables, words, and phonemes are dynamically posited from cues that include current and past speech rate, with a goal of maximal prediction of sensory input. Three experiments using the Visual World eye‐tracking paradigm provide evidence supporting our proposal.

T H McLaughlin; Parental Rights and the Religious Upbringing of Children, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 75–83, http.

I discuss Peter Singer’s claim that the interests of animals merit equal consideration with those of human beings. I show that there are morally relevant differences between humans and animals that Singer’s rather narrow utilitarian conception of morality fails to capture. Further, I argue that Singer’s formal conception of moral equality is so thin as to be virtually vacuous and that his attempts to give it moresubstance point to just the kind of differences between humans and animals that undermine his (...) equalitarian thesis. (shrink)

T H McLaughlin; Parental Rights and the Religious Upbringing of Children, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 75–83, http.