Self‐care, or self‐management, is presented in healthcare policy as a precursor to patient empowerment and improved patient outcomes. Alternatively, critiques of the self‐care agenda suggest that it represents an over‐reliance on individual autonomy and responsibility, without adequate support, whereby ‘self‐care’ is potentially unachievable and becomes ‘care left undone’. In this sense, self‐care contributes to a blame culture where ill‐health is attributed to personal behaviours or lack thereof. Furthermore, self‐care may represent a covert form of rationing, as the fiscal means to (...) enable effective self‐care and supplement, or replace, self‐care capacities, is not provided. This paper explores these arguments through a contemporary ethical analysis of the self‐care agenda. The terms self‐care and self‐management are used interchangeably throughout whereby self‐management is understood as a point in the wider self‐care continuum. (shrink)

Ethical debates around genetic enhancement tend to include an argument that the technology will eventually be fairly accessible once available. That we can fairly distribute genetic enhancement has become a moral defence of genetic enhancement. Two distribution solutions are argued for, the first being equal distribution. Equality of access is generally believed to be the fairest and most just method of distribution. Second, equitable distribution: providing genetic enhancements to reduce social inequalities. In this paper, I make two claims. I first (...) argue that the very assumption that genetic enhancements can be distributed fairly is problematic when considering our understanding of gene–environment interactions, for example, epigenetics. I then argue that arguments that genetic enhancements are permissible because the intended benefits can be distributed fairly as intended are misinformed. My first claim rests on the assertion that genetic enhancements do not enhance traits in a vacuum; genes are dependent on conducive environments for expression. If society cannot guarantee fair environments, then any benefit conferred from being genetically enhanced will be undermined. Thus, any argument that the distribution of genetic enhancements will be fair and that the technology is therefore morally permissible, is mistaken. (shrink)

Parents influence the development of their offspring in many ways beyond the transmission of DNA. This includes transfer of epigenetic states, nutrients, antibodies and hormones, and behavioural interactions after birth. While the evolutionary consequences of such nongenetic inheritance are increasingly well understood, less is known about how inheritance mechanisms evolve. Here, we present a simple but versatile model to explore the adaptive evolution of non-genetic inheritance. Our model is based on a switch mechanism that produces alternative phenotypes in response to (...) different inputs, including genes and non-genetic factors transmitted from parents and the environment experienced during development. This framework shows how genetic and non-genetic inheritance mechanisms and environmental conditions can act as cues by carrying correlational information about future selective conditions. Differential use of these cues is manifested as different degrees of genetic, parental or environmental morph determination. We use this framework to evaluate the conditions favouring non-genetic inheritance, as opposed to genetic determination of phenotype or within-generation plasticity, by applying it to two putative examples of adaptive non-genetic inheritance: maternal effects on seed germination in plants and transgenerational phase shift in desert locusts. Our simulation models show how the adaptive value of non-genetic inheritance depends on its mechanism, the pace of environmental change, and life history characteristics. (shrink)

Historically, farmers have been amongst the most innovative people in the world. However, agriculture now lags behind other sectors in its uptake of new information technologies for the control and automation of farming systems. In spite of decades of research into innovation, we still do not have a good understanding as to why this is the case. With the globalisation of food markets, IT adoption in agricultural communities is perceived to be increasingly important by policy makers. As the most marginalised (...) of rural communities, it is self-evident that agricultural communities in less developed countries are most in need of these systems. This paper proposes a new integral systems framework of e-agricultural adoption and innovation in less developed countries. It opens up a new avenue of research for control and automation systems theory and practice, which informs policy in respect of e-readiness of rural communities. (shrink)

Food Deserts have recently beenidentified in the United Kingdom. They havebeen defined by Tessa Jowell, UK GovernmentHealth Minister, as an area ``where people donot have easy access to healthy, fresh foods,particularly if they are poor and have limitedmobility.'' The above definition is particularlyrelevant in Northern Ireland, where it isestimated that 32% of households do not haveeasy access to a car and it is recognized thatcertain groups in Northern Ireland are amongstthe poorest consumers in the United Kingdom.The phenomenon has been further (...) exacerbated bythe effect of large grocery retailers locatingon the periphery of towns and the subsequentdisplacement effect of independent retailers inthe town center. The resultant effect is suchthat disadvantaged consumers cannot accessfresh, quality, nutritious foods at anaffordable price. Preliminary researchindicates that certain consumer groups areexcluded from equitable shopping provision –possibly to the detriment of their healthstatus. Research methodology includes aconsumer questionnaire, consumer focus groups,interviews, and comparative shopping exercisesthat confirm an inability among vulnerableconsumer groups to achieve an affordable,healthy diet. This was further complicated bynon-car owners' and lower-income family unitsneeding to shop locally and more frequentlythan their higher-income, car-ownercounterparts. This was demonstrated with theuse of shopping diaries. Future research to beconducted includes a large-scale survey acrossNorthern Ireland to ascertain accessibility,availability, and affordability of qualityfresh foods and to distinguish the consumergroups who are most vulnerable. (shrink)

By analyzing the feminist debates on Hans-Georg Gadamer, the author shows that feminist critics point to the need either to supplement or to replace Gadamer's philosophy with a greater sensitivity to the historical implications of women's experience. Thus, they are of the view either that Gadamer's philosophy has yet to come to terms with specific historical situations or that Gadamer's philosophy cannot come to terms with historical situatedness per se. The author contends that Gadamer's femi-nist critics do not locate the (...) source of his residual transcendentalism where it should be located: in the account of aesthetic judgment as a "pure feeling" that underpins his entire philosophy. This has the effect, of appearing to preserve aesthetic judgment as "pure feeling" as an apparently innocent remedy, to which some of his feminist critics actually appeal in opposition to his transcendentalism. The author argues, to the contrary, that aesthetic judgment, as a "pure feeling," is at once too com-plicit in the tradition that feminists seek to engage with, traditionally too insubstantial to make a rich resource for a feminist critique of that tradition, and ultimately too traditionally male-centered to be easily coopted by a feminist philosopher. (shrink)

These fifteen essays on Nietzsche's indebtedness to the Classical Tradition were composed by scholars in the fields of philosophy, theology, German and Classics. The essays roughly cover the following epochs: the age of the Fathers of the Western Church, medieval scholasticism, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Weimar Classicism, Romanticism and the several other intellectual trends and movements in the nineteenth century. Collection includes three essays comparing Nietzsche's perceptions of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates with those (respectively) of Augustine, Aquinas, and Hamann. Three (...) essays treat Nietzsche's relationship to Goethe, Schiller, and Heine. Three deal with Nietzsche and French literature or thought, one explores possible parallels between Nietzsche and Dante, another the extent of his debt to Byron. Four contributions center on Nietzsche's view of tragedy, and an older study has been expanded to show the underlying harmony of Nietzsche's conception with that of the French classical tragedians. This book affirms and fulfills the need for serious scholarship by the student of Nietzsche unable to work in German, while presenting a readable cross-section of the work being done relating Nietzsche to the intellectual tradition from which he sprang. (shrink)

Adapting gross motor movement to match the tempo of auditory rhythmic stimulation is a complex skill with a long developmental trajectory. Drumming tasks have previously been employed with infants and young children to measure the emergence of rhythmic entrainment, and may provide a tool for identification of those with atypical rhythm perception and production. Here we describe a new protocol for measuring infant rhythmic movement that can be employed at scale. In the current study, 50 two-year-olds drummed along with the (...) audiovisual presentation of four steady rhythms, using videos of isochronous drumming at 400, 500, 600, and 700 ms IOI, and provided their spontaneous motor tempo by drumming in silence. Toddlers’ drumming is observed from video recordings made in participants’ own homes, obtained via the Lookit platform for online infant studies. We use OpenPose deep-learning model to generate wireframe estimates of hand and body location for each video. The vertical displacement of the hand was extracted, and the power and frequency of infants’ rhythmic entrainment quantified using Fast Fourier Transforms. We find evidence for age-appropriate tempo-flexibility in our sample. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of a fully digital approach to measuring rhythmic entrainment from within the participant’s home, from early in development. (shrink)

This essay addresses the relationship between home, belonging and the maternal in feminist theory and fiction. Feminist discourse isoften typified by its critique of home: analysing the gendered assumptions underlying the depiction of home as nurturing, or exposing the regressive and essentialist connotations of the search for safe homes. A number of recent feminist theorists (Probyn, Bammer, Young) have, however, pointed to thepersistence of ‘retrograde’ desires for safety and belonging, particularly in an era of widespread dislocations. At the same time, (...) feminist critics such as Roberta Rubenstein have re-invoked the contested relationship between home and the maternal by arguing that the desire for home speaks to our earliest needs for security: a desire that ultimately maps on to a longing for the (idealized) mother as the ‘original safe home’ (Rubenstein, 2001). This essay draws upon the work of Rubenstein, Bammer and Young in order to examine the relationship between home and the maternal in a recent Irish novel, Mary Morrissy’s Mother of Pearl. The plot of this novel, dealing with the events surrounding an incident of baby snatching, suggests both the persistence of (the maternal) home as a desire and the impossibility of identifying an original or authentic maternal/home. By exploring how the protagonists of this novel negotiate the demands and appeals of home and motherhood, this essay will ask to what extent it may be possible for feminism to recuperate, or re-envision, the maternal/home as utopian ideal. (shrink)

This richly suggestive book challenges many of our fundamental assumptions about ourselves and our world."—Mark C. Taylor, New York Times Book Review "Dazzling analysis. . .

This article reconstructs the historical and philosophical contexts of William Paley’s Natural theology. In the wake of the French Revolution, widely believed to be the embodiment of an atheistic political credo, the refutation of the transmutational biological theories of Buffon and Erasmus Darwin was naturally high on Paley’s agenda. But he was also responding to challenges arising from his own moral philosophy, principally the psychological quandary of how men were to be kept in mind of the Creator. It is argued (...) here that Natural theology was the culmination of a complex rhetorical scheme for instilling religious impressions that would increase both the virtue and happiness of mankind. Philosophy formed an integral part of this strategy, but it did not comprise the whole of it. Equally vital were those purely rhetorical aspects of the discourse which, according to Paley, were more concerned with creating ‘impression’. This facet of his writing is explored in part one of this two-part article. Turning to the argumentative side of the scheme, part two examines Paley’s responses to David Hume and Erasmus Darwin in the light of the wider strategy of inculcation at work throughout all his writings.Keywords: William Paley; Natural theology; David Hume; Rhetorical strategy. (shrink)

For at least the past several decades, judges around the world have been looking beyond their own states' jurisprudence to international law and the decisions of foreign courts in order to apply domestic law, part of a phenomenon Anne-Marie Slaughter calls "judicial globalization.".

The healthcare industry generates significant waste and carbon emissions that negatively impact the environment. Intensive care units are a major contributor to the production of waste, due t...

Limited research has been done among pregnant people participating in investigational drug trials. To enhance the ethical understanding of pregnant people’s perspectives on research participation, we sought to describe motives and risk perceptions of participants in a phase 1 trial of ledipasvir/sofosbuvir treatment for chronic Hepatitis C virus during pregnancy. Pregnant people with chronic HCV infection enrolled in an open-label, phase 1 study of LDV/SOF participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews to explore their reasons for participation and experiences within the study. (...) Pregnant people took 12 weeks of LDV/SOF and were interviewed at enrollment and at the end of study. We recorded the interviews, transcribed them verbatim, coded them using NVivo software, and performed inductive thematic analysis. Nine women completed the study yielding 18 interview transcripts. We identified two themes regarding motives and one regarding risk perception. Motives— Women conceptualized study participation as part of the caregiving role they associate with motherhood; participating was viewed as an act of caregiving for their infants, their families, themselves, and other pregnant women with chronic HCV. Women also noted that they faced multiple barriers to treatment prior to pregnancy that created a desire to receive therapy through trial participation. Risk perception— Women acknowledged personal and fetal risk associated with participation. Acceptance of risk was influenced by women’s concepts of motherhood, preexisting knowledge of HCV and medical research, family members, intimate partners, or by the study design. Women enrolled in a phase 1 trial for chronic HCV therapy during pregnancy acknowledged risks of participation and were motivated by hopes for fetal and personal benefit and by lack of prenatal access to treatment. Ethical inclusion of pregnant people in research should acknowledge structural factors that contribute to vulnerability and data deficiencies for treatment in pregnancy. (shrink)

The overlap of representations of past and future is not a completely new idea. Suddendorf & Corballis (S&C) usefully discuss the problems of testing the existence of such representations. Our taxonomy of memory differs from theirs, emphasizing the late evolutionary emergence of notions of time in memory.

Research Ethics, Volume 18, Issue 2, Page 132-150, April 2022. Limited research has been done among pregnant people participating in investigational drug trials. To enhance the ethical understanding of pregnant people’s perspectives on research participation, we sought to describe motives and risk perceptions of participants in a phase 1 trial of ledipasvir/sofosbuvir treatment for chronic Hepatitis C virus during pregnancy. Pregnant people with chronic HCV infection enrolled in an open-label, phase 1 study of LDV/SOF participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews to (...) explore their reasons for participation and experiences within the study. Pregnant people took 12 weeks of LDV/SOF and were interviewed at enrollment and at the end of study. We recorded the interviews, transcribed them verbatim, coded them using NVivo software, and performed inductive thematic analysis. Nine women completed the study yielding 18 interview transcripts. We identified two themes regarding motives and one regarding risk perception. Motives— Women conceptualized study participation as part of the caregiving role they associate with motherhood; participating was viewed as an act of caregiving for their infants, their families, themselves, and other pregnant women with chronic HCV. Women also noted that they faced multiple barriers to treatment prior to pregnancy that created a desire to receive therapy through trial participation. Risk perception— Women acknowledged personal and fetal risk associated with participation. Acceptance of risk was influenced by women’s concepts of motherhood, preexisting knowledge of HCV and medical research, family members, intimate partners, or by the study design. Women enrolled in a phase 1 trial for chronic HCV therapy during pregnancy acknowledged risks of participation and were motivated by hopes for fetal and personal benefit and by lack of prenatal access to treatment. Ethical inclusion of pregnant people in research should acknowledge structural factors that contribute to vulnerability and data deficiencies for treatment in pregnancy. (shrink)

Recent mutagenesis studies have demonstrated that the chemotherapeutic agent, chlorambucll (CHL), is highly mutagenic in male germ cells of the mouse. Post‐melotic germ cells, and especially early spermatids, are the most sensitive to the cytotoxic and mutagenic effects of this agent. Genetic, cytogenetic and molecular analyses of many induced mutations have shown that, in these germ‐cell stages, CHL induces predominantly chromosomal rearrangements (deletions and translocations), and mutation‐rate studies show that, in terms of tolerated doses, CHL is perhaps five to ten (...) times more efficient in inducing rearrangements than is radiation exposure. Appropriate breeding protocols, along with knowledge of the advantages and limitations associated with the use of CHL, can be used to expand the current resource of chromosomal rearrangements in the mouse and to provide new phenotype‐associated mutations amenable to positional‐cloning techniques. The analysis of CHL‐induced mutations has also contributed to understanding the factors that affect the yield and nature of chemically induced germline mutations in mammals. (shrink)

This collection of essays is a sequel to the editors' 1976 volume Studies in Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition. Philosophers, theologians, and literary historians discuss important aspects of Nietzsche's attack on Judaism and Christianity. The book contains studies of his view of biblical figures, Luther and Pascal as well as comparisons of his thought with that of Spinoza, Lessing, Heine, and Kierkegaard. Nietzsche's critique of the Old Testament, the Jewish religion of the diaspora, and historical Christianity are also investigated. Of (...) the eighteen articles included here, thirteen were prepared expressly for this volume--five were translated from German, one from French, and one from Hebrew. Contributors to this volume are: Eugen Biser, Harry Neumann, Israel Eldad, Charles Lewis, Jorg Salaquarda, Joan Stambaugh, Max L. Baeumer, Brendan Donellan, Diana Behler, Sander L. Gilman, Gerd-Gunther Grau, Josef Simon, James C. O'Flaherty, Bernd Magnus, Georges Goedert, Hans Lung, and Karl Barth. (shrink)

This is the first book-length study of one of the most influential traditions in eighteenth-century Anglophone moral and political thought, 'theological utilitarianism'. Niall O'Flaherty charts its development from its formulation by Anglican disciples of Locke in the 1730s to its culmination in William Paley's work. Few works of moral and political thought had such a profound impact on political discourse as Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. His arguments were at the forefront of debates about the constitution, the (...) judicial system, slavery and poverty. By placing Paley's moral thought in the context of theological debate, this book establishes his genuine commitment to a worldly theology and to a programme of human advancement. It thus raises serious doubts about histories which treat the Enlightenment as an entirely secular enterprise, as well as those which see English thought as being markedly out of step with wider European intellectual developments. (shrink)

In his Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language , Saul Kripke presents his influential reading of Wittgenstein’s later writings on language. One of the largely unexplored features of that reading is that Kripke makes a small number of suggestive remarks concerning the possible threat that Wittgenstein’s arguments pose for Chomsky’s linguistic project. In this paper, we attempt to characterise the relevance of Wittgenstein’s later work on meaning and rule-following for transformational linguistics, and in particular to identify the potentially negative impact (...) it has on that project. Although we use Kripke’s remarks to articulate some of the pertinent issues, we return to Wittgenstein’s later writings to address them. We argue that Wittgenstein’s main target in the relevant sections of the Philosophical Investigations is the notion of ‘logical compulsion’, which involves assuming that there is more to applying a word or rule than how we are naturally or “psychologically” compelled to apply. We characterise two of the main lines of argument in the Investigations in terms of the rejection of logical compulsion. We thus propose to address the relevance of Wittgenstein’s writings for Chomsky by considering whether Chomsky’s linguistics presupposes the targeted notion of logical compulsion. We argue that Chomsky’s conception of linguistic competence in terms of successive states of the “language faculty” (containing the principles of universal grammar) does presuppose this problematic notion. Chomsky responded to Kripke by devoting a chapter of his Knowledge of Language to defending this conception of linguistic competence against the Wittgensteinian arguments. We evaluate his response and argue that he has misidentified the threat to his linguistic project as consisting in the attack on its ‘individual psychology’ standpoint, rather than its commitment to logical compulsion. We conclude by arguing that Chomsky’s attempts at defending his individualist or non-communitarian standpoint are undermined by his inability to give a decisive response to Wittgenstein’s attack on logical compulsion. (shrink)