Despite the presumed frequency of conflicts of interest in scientific peer review, there is a paucity of data in the literature reporting on the frequency and type of conflicts that occur, particularly with regard to the peer review of basic science applications. To address this gap, the American Institute of Biological Sciences conducted a retrospective analysis of conflict of interest data from the peer review of 282 biomedical research applications via several onsite review panels. The overall conflicted-ness of these panels (...) was significantly lower than that reported for regulatory review. In addition, the majority of identified conflicts were institutional or collaborative in nature. No direct financial conflicts were identified, although this is likely due to the relatively basic science nature of the research. It was also found that 65 % of identified conflicts were manually detected by AIBS staff searching reviewer CVs and application documents, with the remaining 35 % resulting from self-reporting. The lack of self-reporting may be in part attributed to a lack of perceived risk of the conflict. This result indicates that many potential conflicts go unreported in peer review, underscoring the importance of improving detection methods and standardizing the reporting of reviewer and applicant conflict of interest information. (shrink)

In this article we explore ethical issues arising in a study of home Internet use by low-income families. We consider questions of our responsibility as educational researchers and discuss the ethical implications of some unanticipated consequences of our study. We illustrate ways in which the principles of research ethics for use of human subjects can be ambiguous and possibly inadequate for anticipating potential harm in educational research. In this exploratory research of personal communication technologies, participants experienced changes that were personal (...) and relational. These unanticipated changes in their way of being complicated our research relationships, testing the boundaries of our commitment to the principle of trustworthiness and forcing us to reevaluate our responsibilities. (shrink)

'The Person at the Crossroads: A Philosophical Approach' brings together scholars from around the world who share a common interest in the nature and activity of the human person. Personhood is examined from a variety of perspectives, both philosophical and theological, drawing on the rich traditions of both Western and Eastern thought. Readers will find themselves on a journey through the works of past and current scholars including, Confucius, Augustine, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Horace Bushnell, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michael Polanyi, (...) Rudolf Carnap, Karol Wojtyla, Erazim Kohak, and many other authors who touch upon the personalist tradition and the human person. This volume will be of particular interest to readers interested in the nature of the human person, as well as philosophy and theology undergraduate and graduate students and professors teaching in these areas. -- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Most analysis of the metaphors of AIDS has considered lay rather than scientific discourse. In general, that analysis has uncovered linguistic strategies that tend to distance the disease from people who are healthy. Moreover, it has criticized those strategies insofar as they categorize and dehumanize the AIDS patient. My own analysis, however, focuses on the writing of Robert Gallo, one of the virologists who claimed credit for isolating the HIV as the cause of AIDS. By examining Gallo's popular (...) and scientific writing, I uncover the metaphor system that underlies his work — and perhaps the work of other virologists studying the HIV. I find in Gallo's writing a system of metaphor that personifies and humanizes the HIV (or the HTLV-III as he originally named it). This system differs significantly from lay systems that tend to objectify AIDS. I argue that the metaphor system that underlies Gallo's work is in fact productive, but that it might preclude other ways of conceptualizing the disease and its causes. The co-factor theory, for instance, entails a different metaphoric system entirely. I suggest that AIDS researchers might examine their own language in an effort to critique the metaphors they use and explore the possibility of using new metaphors. (shrink)

This book defends a form of ethical intuitionism, according to which (i) there are objective moral truths; (ii) we know some of these truths through a kind of immediate, intellectual awareness, or "intuition"; and (iii) our knowledge of moral truths gives us reasons for action independent of our desires. The author rebuts all the major objections to this theory and shows that the alternative theories about the nature of ethics all face grave difficulties.

The first edition of The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy took the dialogue of science and philosophy from Aristotle through to Newton. This second edition adds eight chapters, taking the dialogue through the Enlightenment and up to Darwin. This anthology is an attempt to help bridge the gap between the history of science and the history of philosophy.

Part I: The representation of life -- Can life be given a real definition? -- The representation of the living individual -- The representation of the life-form itself -- Part II: Naive action theory -- Types of practical explanation -- Naive explanation of action -- Action and time -- Part III: Practical generality -- Two tendencies in practical philosophy -- Practices and dispositions as sources of the goodness of individual actions -- Practice and disposition as sources of individual action.

Forming implementation intentions has been consistently shown to be a powerful self-regulatory strategy. As the self-regulation of thoughts is important for the experience of involuntariness in the hypnotic context, investigating the effectiveness of implementation intentions on the suppression of thoughts was the focus of the present study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions . Results showed that participants who received information included in the “Carleton Skill Training Program” and in addition formed implementation intentions improved their hypnotic responsiveness (...) as compared to all of the other three groups on measures of objective responding and involuntary responding. Thus, in line with the nonstate or cognitive social–psychological view of hypnosis stating that an individual’s hypnotic suggestibility is not dispositional but modifiable, our results suggest that hypnotic responsiveness can be heightened by furnishing hypnotic instructions with ad hoc implementation intentions. (shrink)

Virtually all philosophers agree that for a belief to be epistemically justified, it must satisfy certain conditions. Perhaps it must be supported by evidence. Or perhaps it must be reliably formed. Or perhaps there are some other "good-making" features it must have. But does a belief's justification also require some sort of awareness of its good-making features? The answer to this question has been hotly contested in contemporary epistemology, creating a deep divide among its practitioners. Internalists, who tend to focus (...) on scientific or theoretical beliefs as the ideal, insist that such awareness is required for justification. Externalists, who think children's ordinary beliefs in obvious facts are paradigm cases of justified belief, say it isn't required. Michael Bergmann's book offers a decisive refutation of internalism and a sustained defense of externalism. (shrink)

Externalist theories of justification create the possibility of cases in which everything appears to one relevantly similar with respect to two propositions, yet one proposition is justified while the other is not. Internalists find this difficult to accept, because it seems irrational in such a case to affirm one proposition and not the other. The underlying internalist intuition supports a specific internalist theory, Phenomenal Conservatism, on which epistemic justification is conferred by appearances.

L’État constitue, pour Levinas, l’institution d’une limite à la responsabilité infinie. Mais il soutient aussi que le politique fondé sur la justice peut virer à la violence lorsque s’impose une logique autonome, où le pouvoir s’exerce en vue de lui-même, à travers un système abstrait et impersonnel, qui conduit à une logique totalitaire lorsqu’elle oublie l’expérience concrète d’autrui dont la société est issue. Il revient alors à l’anarchie éthique d’opérer un contrôle sur l’État, ce qui nous ramène à une impossibilité (...) de retrancher la socialité, cette source vive qui inspire la politique et continue de l’inspirer, mais qui reste aussi à sa marge. (shrink)

La conocida teoría de la intersubjetividad, desarrollada por Husserl en sus Meditaciones Cartesianas, ha sido objeto de innumerables críticas. La virtud de estas críticas es que son precisamente ellas las que han ofrecido la posibilidad de renovar la fenomenología como teoría social. Nuestro propósito es confrontar la Quinta meditación cartesiana con otros textos del corpus husserliano para proponer tres nuevas entradas críticas a su teoría de la intersubjetividad en relación a la cuestión del lenguaje, el mundo y la cultura, y (...) las insuficiencias que la Quinta meditación cartesiana encierra frente a esos presupuestos. (shrink)

Si pour Husserl la conscience est la source du sens, la phénoménologie semble ainsi revenir à une pure analyse du travail constitutif de la conscience qui détermine la constitution du monde. Ce sens de la phénoménologie est bien différent de celui de Hegel. En effet, la Phénoménologie de l’Esprit rappelle une véritable conjonction de la conscience avec le contexte qui l’entoure et montre comment le développement de la conscience émerge de sa relation avec son contexte ainsi qu’avec l’histoire. Bien que (...) Levinas s’inscrive ouvertement dans la tradition de Husserl et que plusieurs de ses textes engagent ouvertement un dialogue avec Husserl, le but de cet article est de montrer que la conception de la conscience de Levinas implique une distance avec Husserl en engageant dans sa conception de la phénoménologie une conception hégélienne, selon une approche où la conscience n’est pas donnée comme point de départ pour la description des phénomènes, mais émerge en même temps qu’elle se rapporte à ses phénomènes. Par conséquent, nous soutenons qu’il est possible de démontrer que dans un certain sens dans Totalité et infini, il est possible de parler d’une Phénoménologie de l’Esprit qui est en cours. (shrink)

At the University of Sheffield during 2011 and 2012, a leading group of philosophers, psychologists, and others gathered to explore the nature and significance of implicit bias. The two volumes of Implicit Bias and Philosophy emerge from these workshops. Each volume philosophically examines core areas of psychological research on implicit bias as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume I: Metaphysics and Epistemology is comprised of two parts: “The Nature of Implicit Attitudes, Implicit Bias, (...) and Stereotype Threat,” and “Skepticism, Social Knowledge, and Rationality.” The first part contains chapters examining the relationship between implicit attitudes and “dual process” models of the mind; the role of affect in the formation and change of implicit associations; the unity (or disunity) of implicit attitudes; whether implicit biases are mental states at all; and whether performances on stereotype-relevant tasks are automatic and unconscious or intentional and strategic. The second part contains chapters examining implicit bias and skepticism; the effects of implicit bias on scientific research; the accessibility of social stereotypes in epistemic environments; the effects of implicit bias on the self-perception of members of stigmatized social groups as rational agents; the role of gender stereotypes in philosophy; and the role of heuristics in biased reasoning. (shrink)

The Earth is facing pressing societal grand challenges that require urgent managerial action. Responsible management learning has emerged as a discipline to prepare managers to act as responsible leaders that can effectively address such pressing challenges. This article aims to extend current knowledge on RML in the domain of corporate sustainability through the application of threshold concepts, novel ideas which provide a doorway to new knowledge and transform a learner’s mindset. Specifically, after conducting a systematic review of the management literature, (...) we identify 33 CS threshold concepts that are useful for mainstream managers and practitioners in their RML process. We group them into six CS threshold concept themes that can help managers understand the complexities and interconnectedness that characterize CS. Finally, we map CS threshold concepts with key competences for effective RML. Therefore, our contribution relies on translating existing CS theoretical frameworks into transformative, specific, understandable and applicable pieces of knowledge that might help mainstream managers to embed CS principles in their daily management practices. (shrink)