Empirical bioethics research has become an established field of study, with its own unique goals, vocabulary, and methods, and wi...

This paper responds to the commentaries from Stacy Carter and Alan Cribb. We pick up on two main themes in our response. First, we reflect on how the process of setting standards for empirical bioethics research entails drawing boundaries around what research counts as empirical bioethics research, and we discuss whether the standards agreed in the consensus process draw these boundaries correctly. Second, we expand on the discussion in the original paper of the role and significance of the concept of (...) ‘integrating’ empirical methods and ethical argument as a standard for research practice within empirical bioethics. (shrink)

In this essay I will try to show that there are what would appear to be some unnoticed consequences of the doctrine of divine foreknowledge. For the purposes of this discussion I will simply assume that future events are possible objects of knowledge and, hence, that foreknowledge is possible. Accordingly, I will not be concerned with discussing such questions as the status of truth-values for future contingent propositions or whether knowledge is justified true belief. Furthermore, I will not be concerned (...) with the issues involved in the claim that the doctrine of divine foreknowledge conflicts with doctrines concerning the properties of created beings, e.g., the doctrine of voluntary human action. (shrink)

Large-scale sequencing tests, including whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing, are rapidly moving into clinical use. Sequencing is already being used clinically to identify therapeutic opportunities for cancer patients who have run out of conventional treatment options, to help diagnose children with puzzling neurodevelopmental conditions, and to clarify appropriate drug choices and dosing in individuals. To evaluate and support clinical applications of these technologies, the National Human Genome Research Institute and National Cancer Institute have funded studies on clinical and research sequencing under (...) the Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research program as well as studies on return of results. Most of these studies use sequencing in real-world clinical settings and collect data on both the application of sequencing and the impact of receiving genomic findings on study participants. They are occurring in the context of controversy over how to obtain consent for exome and genome sequencing. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 51-58, January/February 2022.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopædia (1728) and the Tradition of CommonplacesRichard YeoIn the fifth volume (1755) of the Encyclopédie in his entry on “En-cyclopædia,” Denis Diderot forecast a time in which the sheer number of books would require a division of intellectual labor. Some people, he said, will not do much rea ding but rather “devote themselves to investigation which will be new, or which they will believe to be new.” (...) The majority, unable to produce anything of their own, “will be busy night and day leafing through these books, taking out of them the fragments they consider worthy of being collected and preserved.” 1 Although Diderot set this prospect in the future, he believed the signs were already visible and offered his encyclo-pædia as a response. Part of this image, however—the selection of passages from a range of authors—was already a familiar one. Re commended by the Ancients, it was widely practised during the Renaissance by the educated elite who kept commonplace books for recording quotations on various themes from Classical authors. Even the epigram from Horace on the title page of the Encyclop édie suggests this lineage: “What grace may be added to commonplace matters by the power of order and connection.” 2In the classical period, the Latin term, locus communis, referred to a general argument capable of being used in different situations. In his Institutiones Oratoriae Quintilian discussed the notion of copia verborum in connection with the ability of a good orator to produce copious illustrations [End Page 157] and embellishments from particular ideas. Renaissance writers thought this facility was enhanced by a record of similar ideas in the same place in a notebook. This practice had been followed in the medieval period, but it became more systematically taugh t as part of rhetoric from the sixteenth century. Commenting on this, R. R. Bolgar wrote:The whole purpose of the Humanists in transmogrifying Greek and Latin literature into a series of notes was to produce a body of material which could be easily retained and repeated. They made titanic efforts to remember the contents of the note-books the y compiled. 3Quintilian’s work, and more immediately, that of the German humanist, Rudolph Agricola, influenced Erasmus in his De Copia, first published in 1512 as De Duplici Copia Verborum ac Rerum Commentarii Duo. This offered advice on how to collect words and passages under various topoi or loci (places) as a means of storing extracts from books that could later be brought together and embellished in either writing or conversation. The set of ideas or themes grouped under one “Head” wer e known as “common-places,” and the notebooks kept for this purpose were commonplace books. 4 These were also called “copie” books in the sense of collections enabling copia, or free flow of material for oratory. Versions of this practice continued into the nineteenth century: figures such as John Milton, George Berkeley, Robert Southey, R obert Burns, and David Thoreau kept commonplace books, some of which were subsequently published. Some of these included less than elevated content: Kenneth Lockridge has uncovered a string of misogynist remarks and anecdotes in the commonplace book of Th omas Jefferson. 5In the only major study of the commonplace tradition, Sister Joan Marie Lechner analyzed its status in Renaissance rhetorical training from the sixteenth to the early seventeenth century, identifying some confusion and [End Page 158] tensions, partly as result of dissatisfaction with the “doctrine of places” taught by classical writers, and also because “commonplace” had come to refer both to a “locus or seat of arguments” and a “speech-within-a-speech.” 6 Her work shows that commonplace books were kept as aids to recall reading and as storehouses (thesauri) of topics and phrases suitable for speeches and conversation, as recommended by Erasmus and other writers. However, Lechner noted a new need pa rtly satisfied by the commonplace collections, which was that they accommodated Renaissance passions for “accumulating universal knowledge.” Thus, in her words:The commonplace book with its encyclopaedic array of topics or places was thought of as a compend of knowledge displayed in a systematic pattern... (shrink)

In many animal species, the early development of the embryo follows a stereotypic pattern of cell cleavage, lineage allocation and generation of tissue asymmetry leading to delineation of the body plan with three primary embryonic axes. The mammalian embryo has been regarded as an exception and primary body axes of the mouse embryo were thought to develop after implantation. However, recent findings have challenged this view. Asymmetry in the fertilised oocyte, as defined by the position of the second polar body (...) and the sperm entry point, can be correlated with the orientation of the animal–vegetal and the embryonic–abembryonic axes in the preimplantation blastocyst. Studies of the pattern of morphogenetic movement of cells and genetic activity in the peri‐implantation embryo suggest that the animal–vegetal axis of the blastocyst might presage the orientation of the anterior–posterior axis of the gastrula. This suggests that the asymmetry of the zygote that is established at fertilisation and early cleavage has a lasting impact on the delineation of body axes during embryogenesis. BioEssays 23:508–517, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Good listening is an essential element in the provision of quality healthcare (Attree 2001). Good listening also supports accurate diagnosis, patient adherence to medical recommendations, and stron...

Hume's is/ought distinction has long limited the role of empirical research in ethics, saying that data about what something is cannot yield conclusions about the way things ought to be. However, interest in empirical research in ethics has been growing despite this countervailing principle. We attribute some of this increased interest to a conceptual breakdown of the is/ought distinction. MacIntyre, in reviewing the history of the is/ought distinction, argues that is and ought are not strictly separate realms but exist in (...) a close relationship that is clarified by adopting a teleological orientation. We propose that, instead of recovering a teleological orientation, society tends to generate its own goals via democratic methods like those described by Rousseau or adopt agnosticism about teleology such as described by Richard Rorty. In both latter scenarios, the distinction between is and ought is obscured, and the role for empirical research grows, but for controversial reasons. MacIntyre warns that the is/ought distinction should remain, but reminds ethicists to make careful arguments about when and why it is legitimate to move from is to ought. (shrink)

Deputy Editor Richard Ashcroft introduces four papers on drugs and autonomyIn this symposium we bring together four papers which consider novel approaches to the use and response to what are popularly known as “drugs”. The language available here is not altogether helpful—the drugs discussed have very different pharmacological effects, social acceptability, long and short term psychological effects, medical uses, and legal status.1 Arguably, the way these three drugs are considered as constituting a unified medical field can only be understood (...) as a rather specific social and historical phenomenon, rather than being based on a coherent concept of “drugs”. Nevertheless a major part of international health and foreign policy turns on this social construction, and as doctors, ethicists, or policy makers we are obliged to work within this social reality, even as we criticise its basis.2A central consideration in all four papers is the role …. (shrink)

Academic freedom and tenure, both cherished institutions of higher education, are currently under attack by many both outside and within the academy. Richard DeGeorge argues that they can be defended on ethical grounds only if they are joined with appropriate accountability, publicly articulated and defended standards, and conscientious enforcement of these standards by academic institutions and the members of the academic community.

This collection of essays aims to mark a place for American philosophy as it moves into the twenty-first century. Taking their cue from the work of Peirce, James, Santayana, Dewey, Mead, Buchler, and others, the contributors assess and employ philosophy as an activity taking place within experience and culture. Within the broad background of the American tradition, the essays reveal a variety of approaches to the transition in which American philosophy is currently engaged. Some of the pieces argue from an (...) historical dialogue with the tradition, some are more polemically involved with American philosophy’s current status among the contemporary philosophical "schools," and still others seek to reveal the possibilities for the future of American philosophy. In thus addressing past, present, and future, the pieces, taken together, outline a trajectory for American philosophy that reinvents its importance from a new angle of vision. (shrink)

Did science and philosophy develop differently in ancient Greece and ancient China? If so, can we say why? This book consists of a series of detailed studies of cosmology, natural philosophy, mathematics and medicine that suggest the answer to the first question is yes. To answer the second, the author relates the science produced in each ancient civilization first to the values of the society in question and then to the institutions within which the scientists and philosophers worked.

All disciplines must define their basic units and core processes. In evolutionary biology, the core process is natural selection and the basic unit of selection and adaptation is the individual. To operationalize the theory of natural selection we must count individuals, as they are the bearers of fitness. While canonical individuals have often been taken to be multicellular organisms, the hierarchy of life shows that new kinds of individuals have evolved. A variety of criteria have been used to define biological (...) individuality. Some criteria rely on the presence/absence of a particular property while others advocate an approach that reflects the process of natural selection. The plethora of approaches to classifying individuality has resulted in confusion regarding how to study individuality in a given taxon. (shrink)

Psychedelics have been recognized as model interventions for studying altered states of consciousness. However, few empirical studies of the shamanic state of consciousness, which is anecdotally similar to the psychedelic state, exist. We investigated the neural correlates of shamanic trance using high-density electroencephalography (EEG) in 24 shamanic practitioners and 24 healthy controls during rest, shamanic drumming, and classical music listening, followed by an assessment of altered states of consciousness. EEG data were used to assess changes in absolute power, connectivity, signal (...) diversity, and criticality, which were correlated with assessment measures. We also compared assessment scores to those of individuals in a previous study under the influence of psychedelics. Shamanic practitioners were significantly different from controls in several domains of altered states of consciousness, with scores comparable to or exceeding that of healthy volunteers under the influence of psychedelics. Practitioners also displayed increased gamma power during drumming that positively correlated with elementary visual alterations. Furthermore, shamanic practitioners had decreased low alpha and increased low beta connectivity during drumming and classical music and decreased neural signal diversity in the gamma band during drumming that inversely correlated with insightfulness. Finally, criticality in practitioners was increased during drumming in the low and high beta and gamma bands, with increases in the low beta band correlating with complex imagery and elementary visual alterations. These findings suggest that psychedelic drug-induced and non-pharmacologic alterations in consciousness have overlapping phenomenal traits but are distinct states of consciousness, as reflected by the unique brain-related changes during shamanic trance compared to previous literature investigating the psychedelic state. (shrink)

Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality have been responsible for the major transitions in levels of selection and individuality in natural history, such as the origins of prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, multicellular organisms, and eusocial insects. The integrated hierarchical organization of life thereby emerged as groups of individuals repeatedly evolved into new and more complex kinds of individuals. The Social Protocell Hypothesis proposes that the integrated hierarchical organization of human culture can also be understood as the outcome of an ETI—one that produced (...) a “cultural organism” from a substrate of socially learned traditions that were contained in growing and dividing social communities. The SPH predicts that a threshold degree of evolutionary individuality would have been achieved by 2.0–2.5 Mya, followed by an increasing degree of evolutionary individuality as the ETI unfolded. We here assess the SPH by applying a battery of criteria—developed to assess evolutionary individuality in biological units—to cultural units across the evolutionary history of Homo. We find an increasing agreement with these criteria, which buttresses the claim that an ETI occurred in the cultural realm. (shrink)

These two companion volumes provide a comprehensive review and critical evaluation of the major DSM-III and DSM-III-R child disorders. Their major goal is to provide diagnostic and assessment guidelines that are based on scientific literature in specific clinical domains. Each chapter contains a discussion of the historical background of a particular diagnosis, definitional issues, a critical but selective review of the literature addressing the diagnosis in question, proposed changes in the diagnostic criteria based on the available literature, and proposed assessment (...) models and methods based on the designated criteria. Given the scientific bases for many of these discussions of diagnostic criteria, these two volumes will serve professionals and graduate students in a wide variety of fields: clinical child psychology, child psychiatry, pediatrics, pediatric and school psychology, special education, social work, and other child mental health specialties. (shrink)