In 2014, Lord Saatchi launched his ultimately unsuccessful Medical Innovation Bill in the UK. Its laudable aim was to free doctors from the shackles that prevented them from providing responsible innovative treatment. Lord Saatchi’s principal contention was that current law was the unsurmountable barrier that prevented clinicians from delivering innovative treatments to cancer patients when conventional options had failed. This was because doctors feared that they might be sued or tried and convicted of gross negligence manslaughter if they deviated from (...) standard practice. Concerns about fear of the law and potential negative effects on medical practice are not new. Fear of litigation has been suggested as the reason for doctors practising “defensive medicine,” by opting for treatments regarded as “grievance-resistant,” rather than clinically indicated, for example, by ordering diagnostic tests or performing certain procedures, which are not strictly medically necessary. Whilst this claim is plausible and apparently accepted by the courts, there is limited empirical evidence in support of it so far as practitioners in the UK are concerned. In this paper, we report on our empirical research which provides a snapshot of medical opinion to begin to rectify this gap. We ran focus groups of different medical specialties, asking what these medical practitioners thought the barriers to medical innovation to be. We found that fear of the law was not the principal barrier to be lowered, and that the answer was far more multifaceted. (shrink)

When communicating scientific information, experts often face difficult choices about how to promote public understanding while also maintaining an appropriate level of objectivity. We argue that one way for scientists and others involved in communicating scientific information to alleviate these tensions is to pay closer attention to the major frames employed in the contexts in which they work. By doing so, they can ideally employ useful frames while also enabling the recipients of information to “backtrack” to relatively uncontroversial facts and (...) recognize how these frames relate to their own values and perspectives. Important strategies for promoting this sort of backtracking include identifying the weaknesses of particular frames, preventing misunderstanding of them, differentiating well-supported findings from more speculative claims, and acknowledging major alternative frames. (shrink)

Our understanding of human visual perception generally rests on the assumption that conscious visual states represent the interaction of spatial structures in the environment and our nervous system. This assumption is questioned by circumstances where conscious visual states can be triggered by external stimulation which is not primarily spatially defined. Here, subjective colors and forms are evoked by flickering light while the precise nature of those experiences varies over flicker frequency and phase. What’s more, the occurrence of one subjective experience (...) appears to be associated with the occurrence of others. While these data indicate that conscious visual experience may be evoked directly by particular variations in the flow of spatially unstructured light over time, it must be assumed that the systems responsible are essentially temporal in character and capable of representing a variety of visual forms and colors, coded in different frequencies or at different phases of the same processing rhythm. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers of science have taken renewed interest in pursuing scholarship that is “socially engaged.” As a result, this scholarship has become increasingly relevant to public policy. In order to illustrate the ways in which the philosophy of science can inform public policy, this chapter focuses specifically on environmental research and policy. It shows how philosophy can assist with environmental policy making in three ways: clarifying the roles of values in policy-relevant science; addressing scientific dissent, especially in response (...) to “hot-button” policy issues; and responding thoughtfully to scientific uncertainty. (shrink)

This volume is intended for professional philosophers and laymen with an interest in East-West studies and comparative philosophy and religion. The central focus is the concept of comparing perspectives from both the Eastern and the Western philosophical traditions on harmony and strife. The unique and happy result is an East-West anthology which is directed at analyzing a single philosophical problem which is of importance to both traditions. Unlike many anthologies which tend to be collections of isolated and unrelated essays, the (...) Editors' focus on a single theme has resulted in a unified volume which maintains a high continuity of interest throughout. The Editors have carefully culled and organized essays from a select group of philosophers from the United States, West Germany, Japan, Australia, Beijing, Taipei and Hong Kong. Harmony and strife are analyzed as systematic concepts in Western philosophy, as parts of classical Chinese thought, as central concepts in Buddhism, as metaphysical concepts, as dialectical concepts and even as null concepts. The Editors have taken great care so that a continuity and a coherence of presentation is achieved despite the striking variety of perspectives from which harmony and strife are analyzed. It is both unusual and important to have such a systematic and thorough investigation of a topic of paramount social and philosophical significance by some of the leading minds of the day. Besides, the essays included are eminently readable. The volume is likely to become a standard work in this area for some years to come. (shrink)

Epistemologists have recently debated how we should respond to apparent cases of rational disagreement. Is it possible for two people to disagree and have both people still be rational? Those involved in this debate make use of the idea of epistemic peers. Two people are epistemic peers if they share the same knowledge of a given topic and have similar epistemic virtues. My paper argues that we have different kinds of epistemic peers; close peers who think similarly to ourselves, and (...) remote peers who think very differently. I argue that remote peers are genuine peers, but that we should respond to disagreement from remote peers differently than disagreement from close peers. (shrink)

Neurosensory hearing loss is a growing problem of super‐aged societies. Cochlear implants can restore some hearing, but rebuilding a lost hearing organ would be superior. Research has discovered many cellular and molecular steps to develop a hearing organ but translating those insights into hearing organ restoration remains unclear. For example, we cannot make various hair cell types and arrange them into their specific patterns surrounded by the right type of supporting cells in the right numbers. Our overview of the topologically (...) highly organized and functionally diversified cellular mosaic of the mammalian hearing organ highlights what is known and unknown about its development. Following this analysis, we suggest critical steps to guide future attempts toward restoration of a functional organ of Corti. We argue that generating mutant mouse lines that mimic human pathology to fine‐tune attempts toward long‐term functional restoration are needed to go beyond the hope generated by restoring single hair cells in postnatal sensory epithelia. (shrink)

A virtual reality translation of Philippa Foot's original "Trolley Problem." These modules are free to download and use in the classroom and for research/x-phi purposes. -/- *Requires an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive and VR capable computer. To open the files, uncompress the downloaded .zip folder and run the executable (.exe) file.

Evolutionary gradualism, the randomness of mutations, and the hypothesis that natural selection exerts a pervasive and substantial influence on evolutionary outcomes are pair-wise logically independent. Can the claims about selection and mutation be used to formulate an argument for gradualism? In his Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, R.A. Fisher made an important start at this project in his famous “geometric argument” by showing that a random mutation that has a smaller effect on two or more phenotypes will have a higher (...) average fitness than a random mutation that has a larger phenotypic effect. Motoo Kimura’s demonstration that a gene’s probability of fixation depends on both the selection coefficient and the effective population size shows that Fisher’s argument for gradualism was mistaken. Here we analyze Fisher’s argument and explain how Kimura’s theory leads to a conclusion that Fisher did not anticipate. We identify a fallacy that reasoning about fitness differences and their evolutionary consequences should avoid. We then distinguish forward-directed from backward-directed versions of gradualism. The backward-directed thesis about a single mutation may be correct, but the forward-directed thesis is not. After that we consider a sequence of random mutations that all affect the same cluster of phenotypes and Allen Orr’s idea that there is an optimal sequence of mutation sizes, moving from larger to smaller as the population approaches a fixed optimum. This provides a likelihood justification for a forward-directed version of gradualism when there is a fixed optimum, but it also provides an argument against forward-directed gradualism if the optimum shifts substantially as the population evolves. Finally, we consider whether genome-wide association studies (GWASs) can furnish empirical evidence that bears on the truth of gradualism. The version of gradualism that GWASs directly bear on concerns the phenotypic effect size of a gene after it arises by mutation and has reached an appreciable frequency, not the phenotypic size of the mutation event itself. (shrink)

In this paper we present an empirical case study into the effects of attending a philosophy conference on social skill development in 15- to 18-year-old students. We focus on the impact that the conference had on their communication skills, sociability, cooperation and teamwork skills, self-confidence, determination, social responsibility, and empathy. These are social skills previously studied in 2017 by Siddiqui et al. who found student development in these areas as a result of Philosophy for Children (P4C) sessions in primary schools. (...) In this paper, we ask whether our conference—Pursuit of Knowledge—brought about comparable results. Overall, attendees reported that they felt that the conference had improved their communication skills, sociability, cooperation and teamwork, self-confidence, determination, social responsibility and empathy. We conclude that further research into the potential of models of philosophy akin to the model employed by the conference should be conducted. We discuss the potential of this model as a means of educating for social skills. (shrink)

In recent articles, Daniel Gannon argues that, according to Catholic morality, morally good decision making about life-sustaining treatment is intrinsically based on in-the-moment circumstances. Measured against this moral criterion, Gannon finds physician orders for life-sustaining treatment to be morally unacceptable and proposes his own medical order form. The authors argue here that Catholic moral teaching and tradition do not reduce the role of circumstances to those in the present moment and that such a reductive criterion undermines many of the sources (...) of morality, including conscience, prudence, and moral principles such as the principle of ethically proportionate and disproportionate means. The authors also show that Gannon’s criterion and form generate conceptual and practical contradictions, that POLST is not intrinsically evil, and that when properly implemented, POLST can be morally acceptable. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 15.1 : 53–61. (shrink)

This is a paper based on research with the LGBTIQ+ community in South Australia, the likes of which has not been conducted previously in the state. The paper, which utilized both quantitative and qualitative research methods identifies the key issues that the LGBTIQ+ community face with respect to sporting involvement. There were a range of themes that emerged in relation to a variety of topics including homophobia, sexism and gender discrimination, gender roles and gender stereotypes. This paper provides data and (...) discussion around this important part of the research, which has implications pertaining to sporting organizations and the LGBTIQ+ community. (shrink)

The broad purpose of this article is to explore the theoretical conditions for understanding the new individualist configurations of imagination and identity in contemporary culture and critical discourse. The article begins with a sketch of recent debates in social theory on identity, individualization and new individualism, focusing on the work of Giddens, Beck, and Bauman, as well as Lemert and Elliott. The second part of the article turns to consider, in some detail, the path breaking contributions of Cornelius Castoriadis (...) on the demise of the social imaginary in conditions of advanced capitalism or what he termed the spread of ‘generalized conformism’. Whilst making the argument that the notion of ‘generalized conformism’ is of key importance in grasping the subjective and cultural dynamics promoted by the global electronic economy, the article also underscores the limitations of Castoriadis’s psychoanalytic and political position. The third section of the article offers a pathway beyond such constraint by examining the recent social-theoretical contributions of Julia Kristeva on ‘new maladies of the soul’. Like Castoriadis, Kristeva focuses on the atrophy of imagination in contemporary times, but does so from a more complex psychoanalytic prism. The article concludes that the work of both Castoriadis and Kristeva are essential to grasping contemporary shifts in the new individualism. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers and psychologists seek the roots of ethically sound forms of behavior, including altruism and a sense of fairness, in the basic structure of cooperative action. I argue that recent work on cooperation in both philosophy and psychology has been hampered by what I call “the mutualistic paradigm.” The mutualistic paradigm treats one kind of cooperative situation—what I call a “mutualistic situation”—as paradigmatic of cooperation in general. In mutualistic situations, such as the primeval stag hunt described by Brian Skyrms, (...) every partner in a cooperative action has to do his part in order for the action as a whole to succeed. But many familiar cooperative situations—for example, serving on an academic committee—do not have this structure. Contemporary philosophers and psychologists are right that thinking about cooperation can shed light on how and why ethically sound behavior happens in human beings. But the deep connections between ethics and cooperation only come into view once we have a richer conception of our capacities for cooperation than the mutualistic paradigm provides. (shrink)

This article traces recent developments in European social theory and psychoanalysis on the theory of the human subject. Critically examining the recent psychoanalytic departures of Julia Kristeva and Jean Laplanche on the status of primary repression as a condition for the constitution of subjectivity, an analysis is presented of the state of the subject in its unconscious relational world. The article suggests ways in which the analyses set out by Kristeva and Laplanche can be further refined and developed, partly through (...) a reconsideration of the intertwining of unconscious representation and repression as developed in the writings of Cornelius Castoriadis, Thomas Ogden and others. For existing psychoanalytical accounts the article suggests we should substitute the concept of ‘rolling identification’, the psychical basis of the shift from self-referential representational activity to an elementary form of inter-subjectivity. Rolling identifications are defined as a representational flux that permits human subjects to create a relation to the self-as-object and pre-object relations. Such primal identification, the article suggests, operates through a ‘representational wrapping of self and others’. The article concludes with a consideration of the cultural significance of primary repression, and the politicization of identification. (shrink)

Portland, Oregon enjoys a growing reputation as a beacon of urban sustainability. Its modern planning history has seen effectve efforts to curb urban sprawl and introduce a comprehensive mass transit system. More recently, the city has also become a hub for a “makers” movement involving a plethora of local, small-scale craft production. Within this context, Portland is also home to a thriving urban agriculture scene, featuring community gardens, community-assisted agriculture, farmers’ markets, food co-ops, and various farm-based education and outreach programs. (...) While recent case studies of Portland insist that the social sustainability case made for urban agriculture (UA) remains open, this position is arguably unwarranted and lacks an adequate grasp of the critical urban geography perspective developed in the work of David Harvey and Neil Smith. Following the lead of what Chiara Tornaghi calls “the critical geography of urban agriculture,” Portland’s urban agriculture should, on the whole, be seen as an adjunct to rather than a resistance movement against advanced neo­liberal urban governance. (shrink)

Several lines of evidence indicate that the on-line control of rapid target-aiming movements can be influenced by the visual context in which the movements are performed. Although this may result in movement error when an illusory context is introduced, there are many situations in which the control system must know about context in order to get the limb to the target rapidly and safely.

Review of The Nietzschean Self: Moral Psychology, Agency, and the Unconscious by Paul Katsafanas.