Some experts and advocates propose environmental biotechnologies such as genetic engineering, gene drive systems, and synthetic biology as potential solutions to accelerating rates of species loss. While these tools may offer hope for a seemingly intractable problem, they also present potential governance challenges for which innovative decision‐making systems are required. Two of the perennial governance challenges include, when are broader stakeholder groups involved in these decisions and who exactly should be involved? We propose the decision phases framework—which includes research and (...) development, regulatory review, and deployment, management, and monitoring—as a framework for identifying which stakeholders might be best suited for different phases throughout the innovation and deployment of emerging environmental biotechnologies for species protection. (shrink)

The framing of the risks of experiencing mild traumatic brain injury in American football and ice hockey has an enormous impact in defining the scope of the problem and the remedies that are prioritized. According to the prevailing risk frame, an acceptable level of safety can be maintained in these contact sports through the application of technology, rule changes, and laws. An alternative frame acknowledging that these sports carry significant risks would produce very different ethical, political, and social debates.

Children in North America, some as young as eleven or twelve, routinely don helmets and pads and are trained to move at high-speed for the purpose of engaging in repeated full-body collisions with each other. The evidence suggests that the forces generated by such impacts are sufficient to cause traumatic brain injury among children. Moreover, there is only limited evidence supporting the efficacy of interventions typically used to reduce the risks of such hazards. What kind of risk assessment enables such (...) activities to be a relatively common feature of childhood in Canadian and American society?In order to understand this state of affairs, we must examine the particular risk frame under which such hazards are commonly assumed. Risk assessments are embedded in the cultures in which they are situated and must be evaluated in their social contexts. (shrink)

This book is an empirical study of global citizenship education in ten secondary schools in the United States and Asia. Proponents seek to equip students with the consciousness and competencies necessary to make a world of universal benevolence, peace, and prosperity. However, many of the moral assumptions of global citizenship education are more complex and contradict these goals, and are just as likely to have the unintended consequence of reinforcing a more particular Western individualism. Dill argues that global citizenship education (...) in its current forms has significant limits that proponents have not yet acknowledged, which may very well undermine it in the long run. (shrink)

During the past two decades Metaphysics of Natural Complexes has exerted a strong a growing influence on the continuing development of contemporary philosophy. This new and expanded edition acknowledges this influence and brings together much material. Included are the previously published articles “On the Concept of ‘the World,’” and “Probing the Idea of Nature,” which Buchler wrote subsequent to Metaphysics of Natural Complexes as extensions and completions of the system. Previously unpublished work on the key concept of contour has also (...) been added. In addition there are excerpts from Buchler’s replies to his critics, a set of editors’ notes to facilitate cross-referencing, and an updated index. This work presents a bold and forceful metaphysics and general ontology. It provides a systematic framework for understanding the broadest features of the world and nature, and for locating our understanding of human nature, selfhood, and society as complexes in and of nature. Buchler’s detailed analysis of identity, ordinality, nature, world, and validation advance our understanding of the basic categories to be used in defining and exploring whatever is. Unlike other contemporary philosophers that confine themselves to narrowly defined problems in hermeneutics or theory of knowledge, Buchler is unrelenting in his drive toward a more encompassing perspective, simultaneously combining interpretive precision with sheer breadth of vision. (shrink)

This report describes the attributional styles of women university students in Taiwan and compares these patterns to those of men students in Taiwan and women students in the United States. Using a self-presentational perspective on attributions and drawing on data involving audience reactions to attributional accounts in Taiwan and the United States, the author explains the patterns in terms of two sociocultural factors: cultural norms and gender-role stereotypes. Women students in Taiwan are more self-effacing than Taiwan men students and are (...) more external and self-effacing than American women students. They are relatively external because they are Chinese; they are self-effacing and modest because they conform to Chinese cultural values and, more important, to gender-role stereotypes within that culture. Both attributional styles and gender-role stereotypes characterize women as socially responsible and likable but relatively incompetent. (shrink)

Academia-intelligence agency collaborations are on the rise for a variety of reasons. These can take many forms, one of which is in the classroom, using students to stand in for intelligence analysts. Classrooms, however, are ethically complex spaces, with students considered vulnerable populations, and become even more complex when layering multiple goals, activities, tools, and stakeholders over those traditionally present. This does not necessarily mean one must shy away from academia-intelligence agency partnerships in classrooms, but that these must be conducted (...) carefully and reflexively. This paper hopes to contribute to this conversation by describing one purposeful classroom encounter that occurred between a professor, students, and intelligence practitioners in the fall of 2015 at North Carolina State University: an experiment conducted as part of a graduate-level political science class that involved students working with a prototype analytic technology, a type of participatory sensing/self-tracking device, developed by the National Security Agency. This experiment opened up the following questions that this paper will explore: What social, ethical, and pedagogical considerations arise with the deployment of a prototype intelligence technology in the college classroom, and how can they be addressed? How can academia-intelligence agency collaboration in the classroom be conducted in ways that provide benefits to all parties, while minimizing disruptions and negative consequences? This paper will discuss the experimental findings in the context of ethical perspectives involved in values in design and participatory/self-tracking data practices, and discuss lessons learned for the ethics of future academia-intelligence agency partnerships in the classroom. (shrink)

Perhaps none of the words Augustus, the first sole ruler of Rome who reigned from 27 BCE to 14 CE, actually said are quite as memorable as the ones Cassius Dio has attributed to him: "I found Rome built of clay and I leave it to you in marble" .1 Suetonius too discusses Augustus's building program, offering an alleged quote along with an explanation of his motivation: "Since the city was not adorned as the dignity of the empire demanded, and (...) was exposed to flood and fire, he so beautified it that he could justly boast that he had found it built of brick and left it in marble" . Though Suetonius's explanation is practical, Dio argues Augustus's "city of brick" had a more metaphoric or . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"A City of Brick":Visual Rhetoric in Roman Rhetorical Theory and PracticeKathleen S. LampPerhaps none of the words Augustus, the first sole ruler of Rome who reigned from 27 BCE to 14 CE, actually said are quite as memorable as the ones Cassius Dio has attributed to him: "I found Rome built of clay and I leave it to you in marble" (1987, 56.30).1 Suetonius too discusses Augustus's building program, (...) offering an alleged quote along with an explanation of his motivation: "Since the city was not adorned as the dignity of the empire demanded, and was exposed to flood and fire, he so beautified it that he could justly boast that he had found it built of brick and left it in marble" (1998, Aug.28.3). Though Suetonius's explanation is practical, Dio argues Augustus's "city of brick" had a more metaphoric or symbolic meaning: "In saying this he was not referring literally to the state of the buildings, but rather to the strength of the empire" (1987, 56.30).Both historians, then, perceive a connection between the physical appearance of the city and Rome's place at the head of the (Roman) world. Maecenas, Augustus's right-hand man who was essentially the minister of culture, explicitly draws attention to this strategy in a speech fabricated by Dio. Maecenas advises Augustus, "Make this capital beautiful, spare no expense in doing so, and enhance its magnificence with festivals of every kind. It is right for us who rule over so many peoples to excel all others in every field of endeavor, and even display of this kind tends to implant [End Page 171] respect for us in our allies and to strike terror into our enemies" (1987, 52.30). Here Dio suggests, albeit in hindsight, that Augustus's building program was a conscious "display" of Rome's supremacy meant to elicit a reaction, particularly from those who dwelled outside the city.Though from this passage of Dio's it is possible to argue that the physical appearance of the city of Rome was meant to persuade, or at least elicit some response, the passage does not provide support for the claim that architecture, monuments, and city planning functioned rhetorically in ancient Rome. After all, Quintilian reminds us that "many other things have the power of persuasion" (1970, 2.15.6-9). Nonetheless, this passage does generate questions about the relationship between the Augustan building program, or more broadly the Augustan cultural campaigns, and rhetoric in the principate—specifically about the way in which the cultural campaigns functioned rhetorically to help Augustus gain and maintain power.Recently, I have argued that the Ara pacis Augustae, an Augustan monument commissioned in 13 BCE, functioned as a visual example of a rhetorical text, meant not only to celebrate Augustus's successful campaigns is Spain and Gaul but also to garner public support for Augustus's heir and the process of dynastic succession. Because specific rhetorical techniques often associated with the epideictic genre clearly function on the altar, the Ara pacis demonstrates that Augustus and/or his ministers were thinking rhetorically when constructing at least some Augustan monuments (Lamp 2009). Similarly, architectural historian Diana Favro has argued that certain aspects of Augustan architecture made use of rhetorical techniques related to the canon of memory (1996). These findings are perhaps not surprising given that George Kennedy, writing nearly forty years ago, acknowledged that Augustus, a figure he called "the greatest rhetorician of antiquity, " "developed new techniques of verbal and visual persuasion which took over some of the functions and adapted some of the methods of traditional oratory" (1972, 378, 382).Still, very little attention has been paid to Augustus as a rhetorical figure, which is not to say that scholars of rhetoric have paid no attention to Roman rhetoric. While the classicist Theodore Mommsen, writing in the latter half of the nineteenth century, went as far as to refer to the principate as the "end to the entire discipline of rhetoric" (1992, 125), the decline narrative in regards to Roman rhetoric is shifting. Traditionally, this decline narrative suggested that following the assassination of Cicero, traditional oratory retreated into... (shrink)

"Empires speak to each other across time" is the sentence that opens Chain of Gold and frames the impetus for the book. Chain of Gold considers Greek rhetoric in the postclassical Roman world of the Second Sophistic during the Pax Romana from the perspective of the postmodern United States during the Pax Americana. In using this framing, it considers what political rhetoric looks like under the significant, though often unrecognized, constraints of empire. Jarratt's approach depends largely on analyzing epideictic texts (...) to show that the rhetors of the Second Sophistic continued to critique the Roman Empire through "figured speech" that an educated listener could recognize. In... (shrink)

A substantial portion of the developed world's population is increasingly dependent on machines to make their way in the everyday world. For certain privileged groups, computers, cell phones, PDAs, Blackberries, and IPODs, all permitting the faster processing of information, are commonplace. In these populations, even exercise can be automated as persons try to achieve good physical fitness by riding stationary bikes, running on treadmills, and working out on cross-trainers that send information about performance and heart rate.

Who gets to decide what it means to live a healthy lifestyle, and how important a healthy lifestyle is to a good life? As more governments make preventing obesity and diet-related illness a priority, it's become more important to consider the ethics and acceptability of their efforts. When it comes to laws and policies that promote healthy eating--such as special taxes on sugary drinks and the banning of food deemed unhealthy--critics argue that these policies are paternalistic, and that they limit (...) individual autonomy over food choices. In Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach, Anne Barnhill and Matteo Bonotti show that both paternalistic justifications for healthy eating efforts and anti-paternalistic arguments against them can be grounded in perfectionist views that overly prioritize some values over others. The authors therefore propose a more inclusive, public reason approach to healthy eating policy that will be appealing to those who take pluralism and cultural diversity seriously, by providing a framework through which different kinds of values, including but not limited to autonomy and health, can be factored into the public justification for healthy eating efforts. Additionally, the book adopts a 'farm to fork' approach to the ethics of healthy eating efforts: it engages with theories and debates in political philosophy, considers the implications of different theoretical positions for healthy eating efforts, and then develops a concrete tool for assessing policies that will be of interest to both scholars and policymakers. As well as offering a novel normative analysis of healthy eating policy, the authors offer a new theoretical framework that will be applicable to a wide range of public policy scenarios. (shrink)

Mechanical devices implanted in the body present implications for broad themes in religious thought and experience, including the nature and destiny of the human person, the significance of a person's embodied experience, including the experiences of pain and suffering, the person's relationship to ultimate reality, the divine or the sacred, and the vocation of medicine. Community-constituting convictions and narratives inform the method and content of reasoning about such conceptual questions as whether a moral line should be drawn between therapeutic or (...) enhancement interventions and/or between somatic and neural/cognitive interventions. By attending to these broader community-forming concepts, it is possible to identify three general orienting themes in religious perspectives on incorporated mechanical devices, which we shall designate as perspectives of “appropriation,” “ambivalence,” and “resistance.”. (shrink)

In a recent article in this Journal, Shlomo Cohen and Haim Shapiro introduce the concept of “comparable placebo treatments” —placebo treatments with biological effects similar to the drugs they replace—and argue that doctors are not being deceptive when they prescribe or administer CPTs without revealing that they are placebos. We critique two of Cohen and Shapiro’s primary arguments. First, Cohen and Shapiro argue that offering undisclosed placebos is not lying to the patient, but rather is making a self-fulfilling prophecy—telling a (...) “lie” that, ideally, will become true. We argue that offering undisclosed placebos is not a “lie” but is a straightforward case of deceptively misleading the patient. Second, Cohen and Shapiro argue that offering undisclosed CPTs is not equivocation. We argue that it typically is equivocation or deception of another sort. If justifiable, undisclosed placebo use will have to be justified as a practice that is deceptive in most instances. (shrink)

PurposeAdolescents develop their decision-making ability as they transition from childhood to adulthood. Participation in their medical care should be encouraged through obtaining assent, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). In this research, we aim to define the current knowledge of AAP recommendations and surgeon practices regarding assent for elective reconstructive procedures.MethodsAn anonymous electronic survey was distributed to North American paediatric surgeons and fellows through the American Pediatric Surgical Association (n=1353).ResultsIn total, 220 surgeons and trainees responded (16.3%). Fifty (...) per cent of the surgeons who are familiar with the concept of assent had received formal training; 12% of the respondents had not heard of assent before the survey. Forty-seven per cent were aware of the 2016 AAP policy statement regarding assent in paediatric patients. Eighty-nine per cent always include adolescents as part of the consent discussion. Seventy-seven per cent solicit an expression of willingness to accept the proposed care from the patient. The majority (74%) of the surgeons perceived patient cooperation/understanding as the biggest barrier to obtaining assent. Over half of the respondents would consider proceeding with elective surgery despite the adolescent patient’s refusal. Reasons cited for proceeding with elective surgery include surgeons’ perception of medical necessity, perceptions of disease urgency, and lack of patient maturity.ConclusionPaediatric surgeons largely acknowledge the importance of assent, but variably practice the principles of obtaining assent from adolescent patients undergoing elective reconstructive procedures. Fewer surgeons are explicitly aware of formal policy statements or received formal training. Additional surgeon education and institutional policies are warranted to maximise inclusion of adolescents in their medical care. (shrink)

Scientists depend on complex computational systems that are often ineliminably opaque, to the detriment of our ability to give scientific explanations and detect artifacts. Some philosophers have s...

Feminized care work occupations have traditionally paid lower wages compared to non–care work occupations when controlling for human capital. However, when men enter feminized occupations, they often experience a “glass escalator,” leading to higher wages and career mobility as compared to their female counterparts. In this study, we examine whether men experience a “wage penalty” for performing care work in today’s economy, or whether the glass escalator helps to mitigate the devaluation of care work occupations. Using data from the Survey (...) of Income and Program Participation for the years 1996-2011, we examine the career patterns of low- and middle-skill men in health care occupations. We found that men in occupations that provide the most hands-on direct care did experience lower earnings compared to men in other occupations after controlling for demographic characteristics. However, men in more technical allied health occupations did not have significantly lower earnings, suggesting that these occupations may be part of the glass escalator for men in the health care sector. Minority men were significantly more likely than white men to be in direct care occupations, but not in frontline allied health occupations. Male direct care workers were less likely to transition to unemployment compared to men in other occupations. (shrink)

This exploratory study assessed the use of functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine hemodynamic response patterns during sentence processing. Four groups of participants: monolingual English children, bilingual Chinese-English children, bilingual Chinese-English adults and monolingual English adults were given an agent selection syntactic processing task. Bilingual child participants were classified as simultaneous or sequential bilinguals to examine the impact of first language, age of second-language acquisition (AoL2A), and the length of second language experience on behavioral performance and cortical activation. Participants (...) were asked to select the agent of four types of sentences: subject-verb-object (SVO), passive (PAS), subject-extracted relative clause (SR), and object-extracted relative clause (OR) adopted from the “Whatdunit” task by Montgomery et al. (2016). Semantic cues were removed by using inanimate nouns for agents and patients, which constrained participants to make decisions based on syntactic knowledge. Behavioral results showed greater accuracy for canonical SVO and SR sentence types than for noncanonical OR and PAS sentence types, which aligns with prior studies. Neuroimaging results revealed greater hemodynamic responses to relative clauses (i.e., SR and OR sentences) than to simple sentences (SVO and PAS), especially for Chinese-English bilinguals suggesting first-language transfer influencing sentence processing in English. The effects AoL2A and the length of second language experience showed no significant differences between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals or between bilingual adults and children for identifying the correct agent in each sentence. However, neuroimaging results demonstrated greater hemodynamic responses in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) in simultaneous bilinguals compared to sequential bilinguals and greater hemodynamic responses in left and right DLPFC and left IPL among bilingual adults. Different behavioral and neural hemodynamic response patterns afford new insights into the effects of syntactic knowledge on sentence processing. (shrink)

SummaryThe incidence of family breakdown and stress has been examined in an unselected group of 92 South Wales families, each containing a patient suffering from Huntington's chorea, and related to the onset and duration of the disease, age of the patient, and behavioural symptoms shown. The frequency of actual and attempted suicide is analysed and the effects of the disorder on the primary care agent for the patient discussed. Some of the effects on children and the needs of the families (...) for support and practical help are outlined. It is concluded that family support is an essential factor in any programme aimed at the long-term alleviation and prevention of Huntington's chorea. (shrink)

Paper edition (0492-7), $24.95. (RC) An anthology of both original and reprinted essays on the work of philosopher Justus Buchler (b. 1914), intended not as a festschrift but as a study in ordinal metaphysics for philosophers and scholars.

As concerns about the negative health effects of unhealthy eating, overweight and obesity have increased, so too have policy efforts to promote healthy eating. Federal, state, and local governments have proposed and implemented a variety of healthy eating policies. Many of these policies are controversial, facing objections that range from the practical (e.g., the policy won’t succeed at improving people’s diets) to the ethical (e.g., the policy is paternalistic or inequitable). Especially controversial have been policies limiting the options offered in (...) the marketplace, limiting access to certain options, or providing disincentives for the purchase of certain options. Examples of such policies include proposed .. (shrink)

Osiurak and Reynaud offer a unified cognitive approach to cumulative technological culture, arguing that it begins with non-social cognitive skills that allow humans to learn and develop new technical information. Drawing on research focusing on how children acquire knowledge through interactions others, we argue that social learning is essential for humans to acquire technical information.

The results of recent community epidemiological research are reviewed, documenting that major depressive disorder (MDD) is a highly prevalent, persistent, and often seriously impairing disorder, and that bipolar disorder (BPD) is less prevalent but more persistent and more impairing than MDD. The higher persistence and severity of BPD results in a substantial proportion of all seriously impairing depressive episodes being due to threshold or subthreshold BPD rather than to MDD. Although the percentage of people with mood disorders in treatment has (...) increased substantially since the early 1990s, a majority of cases remain either untreated or undertreated. An especially serious concern is the misdiagnosis of depressive episodes due to BPD as due to MDD because the majority of depression treatment involves medication provided by primary care doctors in the absence of psychotherapy. The article closes with a discussion of future directions for research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Good Work:An Engaged Buddhist Response to the Dilemmas of ConsumerismDavid Landis BarnhillConsumerism is such an ingrained part of our culture, it is paradoxically difficult to avoid and easy to ignore. Sometimes it seems like the water we modern fish swim in.But the Buddhist call to awareness of our state of mind and the nature of reality leads us to reflect on it, to encounter it as directly as possible. (...) When we do, it is all too clear that consumerism goes directly against virtually everything Buddhism stands for. In thinking about a Buddhist response to it, what first comes to mind is the rich monastic tradition, with its trenchant analysis of the pervasiveness of desires, the ideal of life lifted free of craving, and the inviting simplicity of the communal life. But as an engaged Buddhist, I almost immediately feel that, compelling as it is, this monastic tradition is insufficient, particularly at a time when consumerism has become so devastating on a global scale. While the monastic tradition offers a model of a nonconsumer lifestyle, it does little to affect the industrialized world's accelerating exhaustion of natural resources. I sometimes put this point in mythical Buddhist imagery by saying that we live in a culture of hungry ghosts.1 But that would be optimistic. While hungry ghosts have a bloated stomach of insatiable cravings, their throats are as thin as pins. Modern culture has a gargantuan mouth and throat, and yet we still act as if our bellies are empty.So what can we as Buddhists do about such a destructive culture? Engaged Buddhism is a way of confronting social, political, and psychological poisons that threaten our world, and it offers an effective counter to consumer culture in at least three main ways. There is the extension of the Buddhist analysis of reality beyond the psychological and the metaphysical to the social, structural dimension of life of economic systems and political institutions. In the social context, the Buddhist truth of the mutual co-arising of phenomena takes on a more immense scope than the mere conditioning of consciousness, and a more concrete—and thus soiled—quality than Huayan Buddhism's mesmerizing metaphysics of Indra's net. The interpenetration of life (pratītya-samutpāda) includes billboards and boardrooms, peasants uprooted from their land as coffee is planted in their place. I live not just in interrelationship with the postglacial hills of Wisconsin but also with the mountains of toxins spewed [End Page 55] into the air to give us cheap, but very costly, energy. As Stephen Batchelor has said, "the contemporary social engagement of Dharma practice is rooted in awareness of how self-centered confusion and craving can no longer be adequately understood only as psychological drives that manifest themselves in subjective states of anguish. We find these drives embodied in the very economic, military, and political structures that influence the lives of the majority of the people on Earth."2 Engaged Buddhism gives us an incisive way to comprehend and critique our situation, and we stand on more solid ground as we view the vast and painful interconnections.Second, engaged Buddhism also can give us a vision of a social and political alternative, one that is based not on the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion but on generosity, compassion, and wisdom. But in doing so Buddhism must go beyond the limits of its own tradition and draw on the insights of contemporary social and environmental philosophies, from anarchism to bioregionalism. A creative merging of Buddhism and such ecosocial thought can help us work toward a modern life of communalism rather than consumerism, of contentment rather than self-perpetuating desire.3Third, engaged Buddhism gives us a basis for directly responding to a world of craving and suffering. Activism against the rising tide of consumerism—and against the social, political, and military structures and the deafening ideologies that support it—can emerge from a meditational steadiness. Contemplative activism avoids rage, burnout, and psychic numbness and allows us to meet greed and hatred with peace in a spirituality of resistance. Such a religiously based activism, however, needs to join hands4 with social philosophy and... (shrink)

States are increasingly implementing policies aimed at changing people's dietary habits, such as fat taxes, food bans, and nudges. In this article, we ask whether healthy eating policies are consistent with public reason, the view that state laws and policies should be justified on the basis of reasons that all citizens can accept at some level of idealisation despite their different conceptions of the good. What we intend to explore is an ‘if…, then…’ line of thought: if one is committed (...) to public reason, then may one consistently endorse healthy eating policies? First, we illustrate multiple ways in which contemporary societies are characterised by a reasonable pluralism concerning conceptions of health and values attached to eating practices. Second, we critically assess the implications of three main conceptions of the structure of public reason, i.e. ‘shareability’, ‘intelligibility’ and ‘accessibility’, for the public justifiability of healthy eating policies. We conclude that healthy eating policies are only consistent with public reason under the ‘accessibility’ conception, i.e. if they are based on reasons grounded in shared epistemic and moral evaluative standards, as long as such reasons reflect a reasonable balance of political values and do not overly prioritise or neglect any of these values. (shrink)

The American Medical Association's Code of Ethics prohibits physicians from giving substances they believe are placebos to their patients unless the patient is informed of and agrees to use of the substance. Various questions surround the AMA policy, however. One of these has to do with what should be disclosed. The AMA holds that any treatment that the physician believes is a placebo should be identified as such to the patient. But consider a more restrictive policy that requires physicians to (...) defer to the medical community's consensus view about which treatments have a specific effect on the condition being treated. In light of the ethical goals that the AMA identifies—namely, concerns about patient trust, autonomy, and benefit—there are potential advantages to the more restrictive policy. (shrink)

A popular approach to defining fictive utterance says that, necessarily, it is intended to produce imagining. I shall argue that this is not falsified by the fact that some fictive utterances are intended to be believed, or are non-accidentally true. That this is so becomes apparent given a proper understanding of the relation of what one imagines to one's belief set. In light of this understanding, I shall then argue that being intended to produce imagining is sufficient for fictive utterance (...) as well. (shrink)