Dear Editor, -/- One of the recent changes in the UK cabinet, after Liz Truss became the Prime Minister, was that Dr Therese Coffey become the new Health Secretary. Some news outlets were quick to point out her anti-abortion stance (see e.g. (1–3)) and that this, according to them, might be a problem. While pro-lifers might not completely rejoice over this situation as Coffey stated that ‘she wouldn’t “seek to undo” abortion laws’(3), I do not wish to focus here on (...) speculating on the future status of UK abortion legislation. Rather, I wish to focus on some statements quoted by the media as made by Clare Murphy, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), who stated that: (2,4) -/- ‘Earlier this year, our new Health Secretary voted to revoke access to at-home abortion care, and recriminalise women who end their own pregnancies without the approval of two doctors.’ ‘In doing so, Therese Coffey voted against the advice of leading medical bodies.’ ‘To have a health secretary who would place their personal beliefs above expert clinical guidance is deeply concerning.’ -/- Coffey is a Catholic, and this brings back to mind some of the aspects of the debate surrounding conflicts of interest in bioethics. There have been, for example, discussions and proposals that having a religious belief should be declared as a conflict of interest.(5,6) But something seems to be missing in these portrayals of conflict of interest and the disagreement between Coffey and these ‘leading medical bodies’. If we regard financial conflicts of interests as the classical case of such conflicts that is used as a reference to other types of conflicts of interest,(5,6) then why do we not see the media complaining that ‘leading medical bodies’ support procedures that will give them more work oppor-tunities and improve their financial stability? To paraphrase Murphy who (according to the BBC 'said while politicians were entitled to their own views on abortion, what mattered was whether their "personal convictions stand in the way of women's ability to act on their own”. (4) perhaps ‘BPAS and the leading medical bodies are entitled to considerations of their financial interests, but what matters is whether the advice they give is clinically sound and founded in the principles of ethical clinical practice. In Matthew 6:24 Our Lord said that one cannot serve two masters, so perhaps we should not be so concerned with Coffey consulting her conscience, but rather scrutinise clinical institutions. (shrink)

Il magistero aristotelico nella zoologia comparata rimane saldo fino a tempi di scienza moderna, perché non muta in sostanza nei secoli il metodo aristotelico costituito dalla combinazione dei dati anatomici con quelli fisiologici. Pertanto la straordinaria stabilità assunta dalla biologia aristotelica richiede una riflessione sulle fonti storiche di essa e sui fondamenti del metodo scientifico impiegato da Aristotele nel quadro del suo pensiero biologico presentato in maniera complessiva nelle opere De partibus animalium e Historia Animalium. La riflessione su alcuni aspetti (...) del suo pensiero biologico, ovvero sulla questione della causalità, della sostanza, del metodo dicotomico e comparativo, possa spiegare anche come esse abbiano a un certo punto svolto un ruolo di stimolo e di verifica anche per i temi più generali del suo pensiero filosofico. In effetti, con Aristotele il sapere teoretico della biologia ha conquistato per la prima volta in modo sistematico il grande terreno della natura vivente. Un grande merito di Aristotele filosofo e biologo è quello di aver fondato la scienza della biologia e la filosofia della biologia. (shrink)

One of the greatest challenges of consciousness research is to understand the relationship between consciousness and its implementing substrate. Current research into the neural correlates of consciousness regards the biological brain as being this substrate, but largely fails to clarify the nature of the brain-consciousness connection. A popular approach within this research is to construe brain-consciousness correlations in causal terms: the neural correlates of consciousness are the causes of states of consciousness. After introducing the notion of the neural correlate of (...) consciousness, we argue (in section 2) that this causal strategy is misguided. It implicitly involves an undesirable dualism of matter and mind and should thus be avoided. A non-causal account of the brain-mind correlations is to be preferred. We favor the theory of the identity of mind and brain, according to which states of phenomenal consciousness are identical with their neural correlates. Research into the neural correlates of consciousness and the theory of identity (in the philosophy of mind) are two major research paradigms that hitherto have had very little mutual contact. We aim to demonstrate that they can enrich each other. This is the task of the third part of the paper in which we show that the identity theory must work with a suitably defined concept of type. Surprisingly, neither philosophers nor neuroscientists have taken much care in defining this central concept; more often than not, the term is used only implicitly and vaguely. We attempt to open a debate on this subject and remedy this unhappy state of affairs, proposing a tentative hierarchical classification of phenomenal and neurophysiological types, spanning multiple levels of varying degrees of generality. The fourth part of the paper compares the theory of identity with other prominent conceptions of the mind-body connection. We conclude by stressing that scientists working on consciousness should engage more with metaphysical issues concerning the relation of brain processes and states of consciousness. Without this, the ultimate goals of consciousness research can hardly be fulfilled. (shrink)

Babylon 5, like other great sci-fi franchises, touched on important ethical questions. Two ethical conundrums relating to the series’ main characters included providing life-saving treatment to a c...

Giubilini and Savulescu in their recent Journal of Bioethical Inquiry symposium article presented an account of conscientious objection that argues for its recognition as a non-financial conflict of interest. In this short commentary, I highlight some problems with their account. First, I discuss their solicitor analogy. Second, I discuss some problems surrounding their objectivity claim about standards of medical care. Next, I discuss some issues arising from consistently applying their approach. Finally, I highlight that conscientious objection should be viewed not (...) as a conflict of interest but as something that society has an interest in preserving. I conclude by arguing that clinicians who have a conscientious objection can be treated in the same way as those who decide to subspecialize and do not need to give up work in their specialty. While Giubilini and Savulescu present an interesting argument about conscientious objection, theirs is not a compelling view. Indeed, the way we approach conscientious objection has more to teach us about conflicts of interest than the other way around. (shrink)

Abortion pill reversal treatment aims to halt an initiated medical abortion, wherein a pregnant woman takes progesterone after having taken the first of the two consecutive abortion pills, ty...

There is an ethical dilemma present when considering updating predictive clinical artificial intelligence (AI) models, which should be part of the departmental quality improvement process. One needs to consider whether withdrawing the AI model is necessary to obtain the relevant information from a naive patient population or whether to use causal inference techniques to obtain this information. Withdrawing an AI model from patient care might pose challenges if the AI model is considered standard of care, while use of causal inference (...) will not be reliable if the relevant statistical assumptions do not hold true. Hence, each of these two updating strategies is associated with patient risks, but lack of reliable data might endanger future patients. Similarly, not withdrawing an outdated AI might also expose patients to risk. Here I propose a high level ethical framework – epistemic risk management - that provides guidance for which route of model updating should be taken based on the likelihood of the assumptions used during the creation of the original AI model and the assumptions required for causal inference holding true. This approach balances our uncertainty about the status of the AI as standard of care with the risk of not obtaining the necessary data, so as to increase the probability of benefiting current and future patients for whose care the AI is being used. (shrink)

In their article, Sahan and colleagues have presented ethical dilemmas faced by clinical scientists working in genomics.1 This is a welcome development since thus far little has been published on the ethical issues faced by clinical scientists in general. In their article, the authors present the three themes which emerged from discussions with clinical scientists in respect to three case studies: ‘(1) the redistribution of labour and responsibilities resulting from the practice of genomic medicine; (2) the interpretation and certainty of (...) results and (3) the proposal that better standardisation and consistency of ethical approaches (for example, more guidelines and policy) could resolve some of the challenges arising’.1 One theme which appeared not to emerge is that of ethics education received by clinical scientists during their training, and this is the theme on which this commentary will focus. As noted elsewhere, ‘Clinical Scientists receive some lectures on clinical and research ethics as part of their training, but it amounts to only to a couple of hours of lectures (references omitted)’.2 The usual route to becoming a clinical scientist involves undertaking the 3-year postgraduate Scientist Training Programme (STP), though the ‘equivalence’ route is quite commonly taken by clinical scientists working in …. (shrink)

This paper follows on from a brief debate about the role of conscientious objection in healthcare, where the issue arose as to whether conscientious objection is (or can) be a tool of resistance against systemic injustice. The paper contributes to this debate by highlighting that some authors generally opposed to conscientious objection in healthcare have shown some support to this idea. Perhaps if there is one area in which all can agree, it is that in healthcare conscientious objection should be (...) allowed so as to prevent cases of systemic injustice. (shrink)

Medical resource allocation is a controversial topic, because in the end it prioritises some peoples’ medical problems over those of others. This is less controversial when there is a clear clinical reason for such a prioritisation, but when such a reason is not available people might perceive it as deeming certain individuals more important than others. This article looks at the role of social utility in medical resource allocation, in a situation where the clinical outcome would be identical if either (...) person received the treatment. This situation is explored with a focus on the United Kingdom, but its conclusions have wider applications to any system where healthcare is tax-payer funded. The article proposes an experience adjusted life years system, and discusses its strengths and weaknesses. (shrink)

Healthcare professionals often need to make clinical decisions that carry profound ethical implications. As such, they require a tool that will make decision-making intuitive. While the discussion about the principles that should guide clinical ethics has been going on for over two thousand years, it does not seem that making such decisions is becoming any more straight forward. With an abundance of competing ethical systems and frameworks for their application in real life, the clinician is still often not sure how (...) to proceed in the face of ethical dilemmas, either due to a lack of background ethical knowledge or experience in applying it. This paper will discuss whether considering what one would expect one’s friend to do if one was the patient, or what would one think they would do for a friend if they were the patient, can be a helpful, more intuitive, tool for clinical decision-making that can produce outcomes that are congruent with major ethical systems. (shrink)

Informed consent, when given by proxy, has limitations: chiefly, it must be made in the interest of the patient. Here we critique the standard approach to parental consent, as present in Canada and the UK. Parents are often asked for consent, but are not given the authority to refuse medically beneficial treatment in many situations. This prompts the question of whether it is possible for someone to consent if they cannot refuse. We present two alternative and philosophically more consistent frameworks (...) for paediatric proxy consent. The first allows meaningful consent (parents may say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to treatment), provided that parents are medically informed/competent and intend the health and well-being of their child. In the second solution, medical practitioners or the state consent for treatment, with parents only being consulted to help give insight to the child’s circumstances. While we contend that either of these two options is superior to the insincerity of the present paradigm, we suggest that the first solution is preferable. (shrink)

There have been repeated calls to ensure that clinical artificial intelligence (AI) is not discriminatory, that is, it provides its intended benefit to all members of society irrespective of the status of any protected characteristics of individuals in whose healthcare the AI might participate. There have also been repeated calls to ensure that any clinical AI is tailored to the local population in which it is being used to ensure that it is fit-for-purpose. Yet, there might be a clash between (...) these two calls since tailoring an AI to a local population might reduce its effectiveness when the AI is used in the care of individuals who have characteristics which are not represented in the local population. Here, I explore the bioethical concept of local fairness as applied to clinical AI. I first introduce the discussion concerning fairness and inequalities in healthcare and how this problem has continued in attempts to develop AI-enhanced healthcare. I then discuss various technical aspects which might affect the implementation of local fairness. Next, I introduce some rule of law considerations into the discussion to contextualise the issue better by drawing key parallels. I then discuss some potential technical solutions which have been proposed to address the issue of local fairness. Finally, I outline which solutions I consider most likely to contribute to a fit-for-purpose and fair AI. (shrink)

In his ‘When conscientious objection runs amok: A physician refusing human immunodeficiency virus preventative to a bisexual patient’, Brummett has argued that Catholic physicians should not be able to raise conscientious objections to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis for bisexual patients, as this constitutes discrimination. Brummett argues that such a conscientious objection represents an instance of conscience creep, which he argues is undesirable. Here I re-analyse the case presented by Brummett using a teleological framework and making reference to Catholic teaching on cooperation (...) with evil. While I agree with Brummett that in this case the physician should not have had the right to conscientiously object, I argue that the teleological framework offers advantages over the argument Brummett has presented. I also comment on why only considering empirically measurable harm as a publicly defensible reason for one to hold a conscientious objection is problematic, as well as on the difficulties associated with cases of discrimination in a pluralistic society. (shrink)

We agree with Clarke and Beck that the approximate number system represents rational numbers, and we demonstrate our support by highlighting the case of the empty set – the non-symbolic manifestation of zero. It is particularly interesting because of its perceptual and semantic uniqueness, and its exploration reveals fundamental new insights about how numerical information is represented.

This extended study presents a hybridization of particle swarm optimization with complex network construction and analysis. A partial population restart is performed in certain moments of the run of the algorithm based on the information obtained from a complex network analysis. The complex network structure represents the communication in the population. We present experimental results of the method alongside with statistical evaluation and discuss future possibilities of this approach. The main goal of the work is not to propose a new (...) highly competitive PSO variant but to present the possibility of using the unconventional tool as an alternative to conventional diversity measures. The main benefit of the network analysis is that it has same-time requirements regardless of the dimension of the problem. (shrink)

The author presents a criticism of the modern concept of power and, specifically, of the concept of ’sovereignty’ as articulated by Michel Foucault. What does it consist in, and what meaning does the undermining, by a French philosopher, of the idea of the legitimisation of power have for a modern state? A polemic with Foucault’s views, by Charles Taylor, serves as a departure point for the aforesaid considerations.

An account of a mission to help the Warsaw insurgents by Home Army soldiers from Mińsk Mazowiecki, a small town near Warsaw, and from the county of Mińsk. The mission was called to a forced halt and disarmed by the Red Army, depriving the Warsaw insurgents of the help they needed so badly. Eventually, many of the participants of the mission were sent to the labor camps in the Soviet Union.

Argumentace Tomáše Hříbka proti fenomenálnímu charakteru se opírá především o Dennettova stanoviska. Dennettem dlouhodobě preferovaná strategie při vypořádání se s tímto problémem je metodologický naturalismus. Tato strategie jistě přinesla své ovoce, zejména je-li řeč o otevření skutečně kritické diskuse na téma kválií. Problém vědomí je však v současnosti traktován spíše v rámci materialistické metafyziky, než z pohledu Dennettova metodologického naturalismu. Tato preference má své empirické, ale i filosofické důvody, o nichž jsme hovořili s Tomášem Marvanem v knize Vědomí a jeho (...) teorie. Protože Hříbkova monografie reaguje na některé názory z této knihy, komentuji Hříbkovy reakce a upřesňuji naše postoje. Zároveň se vyjadřuji k zařazení naší pozice v rámci materialistické metafyziky k materialismu typu B. V druhé části statě se zabývám problémem fenomenálního charakteru vědomé zkušenosti a snažím se argumentovat, že tento těžký problém nelze odstranit pouze tím, že se prokáže neudržitelnost tradičního chápání kválií. (shrink)

The book Chronicle of Separation is an attempt to write on Derrida, to Derrida and from Derrida on the basis of a pathetic experience, which, in various ways, describes and enacts the pathetic experience of deconstruction itself. The book tackles the weight of emotions that is at the heart of deconstructive reading, treating deconstruction's weak, fragile and parasitic mode of thinking as a deconstruction of emotion, on emotion and as emotion. Chronicle of Separation examines these themes beginning with a descriptive (...) and an analytic reading of Derrida's Memoirs: For Paul de Man and The Post Card, as embodiments of deconstruction's melancholic friendship which inscribes its disillusioned love in what it calls the 'postal condition'. The book then moves on to a feminization of Derrida, experimenting in different modes of writing. It firstly discusses Fred Zinneman's film Julia about a mournful friendship between women. Then it performs a deconstructive meditation on the anorexic person suggesting that anorexia constitutes a paradoxical embodiment of deconstruction. The concluding chapter presents a complete incorporation of Derrida into a fictional text that re-writes the biblical Book of Ruth. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 44, Issue 4, Page 433-460, December 2021.

Certainly principles of criminal liability may be understood as rules or norms outlining orders or prohibitions and standing out among other norms with their weight, for legal culture, legal doctrine, etc. In such a classic approach they are norms defining basic rights and obligations in the applicable criminal law. However, is it the only possible and cognitively interesting meaning of the word “principle” in jurisprudence? From the semiotic point of view, they can occur in three forms: special-kind norms, teleological directives, (...) rules which constitute valid performance of conventional activities. In an extra-directival sense these principles may be understood as models-descriptions of shaping the system of criminal law. From a theoretical and practical point of view principles addressed to the legislator are extremely weighty—they can be called rules constructing the system of criminal liability. These all problems are discussed in the article. (shrink)

A class of quantum probabilities is reformulated in terms of non-Newtonian calculus and projective arithmetic. The model generalizes spin-1/2 singlet state probabilities discussed in Czachor (Acta Physica Polonica:139 70–83, 2021) to arbitrary spins _s_. For \(s\rightarrow \infty\) the formalism reduces to ordinary arithmetic and calculus. Accordingly, the limit “non-Newtonian to Newtonian” becomes analogous to the classical limit of a quantum theory.

The paper contains a comment on the criticism of the author's book Początek jest wszędzie (Prószynski i S-ka, 2002) by Marek Lagosz ("Przegląd Filozoficzny - Nowa Seria, 14, 2005, 121-133). The comment focuses on the following issues: (1) the conception of philosophy of physics; (2) some methodological questions, especially the role of models in physics; (3) some explanations concerning the model proposed by the present author and his coworkers. A few "ideological remarks" are also made.