"The idea that human history is approaching a singularity - that ordinary humans will someday be overtaken by artificially intelligent machines or cognitively enhanced biological intelligence, or both - has moved from the realm of science fiction to serious debate. Some singularity theorists predict that if the field of artificial intelligence continues to develop at its current dizzying rate, the singularity could come about in the middle of the present century. Murray Shanahan offers an introduction to the idea of the (...) singularity and considers the ramifications of such a potentially seismic event. Shanahan's aim is not to make predictions but rather to investigate a range of scenarios. Whether we believe that singularity is near or far, likely or impossible, apocalypse or utopia, the very idea raises crucial philosophical and pragmatic questions, forcing us to think seriously about what we want as a species. Shanahan describes technological advances in AI, both biologically inspired and engineered from scratch. Once human-level AI - theoretically possible, but difficult to accomplish - has been achieved, he explains, the transition to superintelligent AI could be very rapid. Shanahan considers what the existence of superintelligent machines could mean for such matters as personhood, responsibility, rights, and identity. Some superhuman AI agents might be created to benefit humankind; some might go rogue. The singularity presents both an existential threat to humanity and an existential opportunity for humanity to transcend its limitations. Shanahan makes it clear that we need to imagine both possibilities if we want to bring about the better outcome. (shrink)

Global health research partnerships have many benefits, including the development of research capacity and improving the production and use of evidence to improve global health equity. These partnerships also include many challenges, with power and resource differences often leading to inequitable and unethical partnership dynamics. Responding to these challenges and to important gaps in partnership scholarship, the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research conducted a three-year, multi-regional consultation to capture the research partnership experiences of stakeholders in South Asia, Latin America, (...) and sub-Saharan Africa. The consultation participants described persistent inequities in the conduct of global health research partnerships and called for a mechanism through which to improve accountability for ethical conduct within partnerships. They also called for a commitment by the global health research community to research partnership ethics. The Partnership Assessment Toolkit is a practical tool that enables partners to openly discuss the ethics of their partnership and to put in place structures that create ethical accountability. Clear mechanisms such as the PAT are essential to guide ethical conduct to ensure that global health research partnerships are beneficial to all collaborators, that they reflect the values of the global health endeavor more broadly, and that they ultimately lead to improvements in health outcomes and health equity. (shrink)

The Judeo-Christian tradition testifies to a God that cries out, demanding that justice "roll down like waters, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:24). Christians agree that being advocates for justice is critical to the Christian witness. And yet one need not look widely to see that Christians disagree about what social justice entails. What does justice have to do with healthcare reform, illegal immigration, and same-sex marriage? Should Christians support tax policies that effectively require wealthy individuals to fund programs (...) that benefit the poor? Does justice require that we acknowledge and address the inequalities borne out of histories of gender and ethnic exclusivity? Is the Christian vision distinct from non-Christian visions of social justice? Christians disagree over the proper answer to these questions. In short, Christians agree that justice is important but disagree about what a commitment to justice means. Christian Faith and Social Justice makes sense of the disagreements among Christians over the meaning of justice by bringing together five highly regarded Christian philosophers to introduce and defend rival perspectives on social justice in the Christian tradition. While it aspires to offer a lucid introduction to these theories, the purpose of this book is more than informative. It is purposefully dialogical and is structured so that contributors are able to model for the reader reasoned exchange among philosophers who disagree about the meaning of social justice. The hope is that the reader is left with a better understanding of range of perspectives in the Christian tradition about social justice. (shrink)

To appear in the Cambridge Handbook to Cognitive Science, eds. Ramsey and Frankish.

The paper questions the effectiveness of the United Kingdom Central Council's (UKCC's) Code of Professional Conduct upon the moral climate of nursing. It challenges the claim that the empowerment of nurses is significantly enhanced by the Code or that it necessarily makes them more accountable for their practice. The position is taken that the Code, in the absence of an effective support network for whistle-blowers, places an unreasonable burden upon nurses in its exhortations to report unprofessional conduct. The paper acknowledges (...) the need to retain the Code, but with more modest claims being made concerning its empowering qualities. It is argued that unless more attention is focused on ways to support potential whistle-blowers, the Code will come to be seen as an irrelevance. Cet article met en question l'effet du Code du UKCC sur le climat moral des soins infirmiers. Il conteste l'affirmation que les infirmiers/ères sont considérablement plus fort à cause du Code ou qu'il les rend plus responsables dans leur pratique. La position est prise que le Code, en l'absence d'un réseau efficace de soutien pour les 'Whistleblowers' (personnes qui dévoilent un système), met un fardeau excessif sur les infirmiers/ères dans ses exhortations de signaler une conduite contraire au Code professionnel. Cet article reconnâit la nécessité de retenir le Code, mais avec des demandes plus modestes concernant ses pouvoirs de rendre fort. Il est soutenu que si non plus d'attention est concentré sur les moyens de soutenir les 'Whistlebowers', le Code va devenir hors de propos. Dieser Artikel bezweifelt die Wirksamkeit des Kodex des UKCC über das moralische Klima der Krankenpflege. Er stellt die Behauptung in Frage, dass der Kodex das Pflegepersonal bedeutend ermächtigt, oder dass er es mehr verantwortlich macht für seine Praxis. Die Position ist hier, dass der Kodex, in der Abwesenheit von effektiver Unterstützung für 'Whistleblowers' (d.h. Leute, die ein System verpfeifen), zu viel vom Pflegepersonal verlangt, in seiner Ermahnung, berufswidrige Praxis zu melden. Dieser Artikel anerkennt die Notwendigkeit, den Kodex zu behalten, aber mit kleineren Ansprüchen für seine ermächtigenden Qualitäten. Wenn nicht mehr Aufmerksamkeit gelegt wird, auf welche Weise die 'Whistleblowers' unterstützt werden können, dann wird der Kodex als eine Nebensächlichkeit verurteilt. (shrink)

A majority of Americans say they are Christians. In fact, when you ask what they really believe about God you find that almost half are really deists. Let’s look at the data. A 2006 Pew survey reports that about 50 percent of Americans are Protestants and another 25 percent Catholics, which would indicate a strong Christian majority of 75 percent. Like most such surveys, however, Pew simply asked people to state their religious affiliations. A 2005 survey by Baylor University tried (...) something different and questioned people about what they actually believe. The results were surprising and have great significance in properly comprehending religious belief in the U.S. For some reason, they have received little attention. (shrink)

A balance needs to be struck between facilitating compassionate access to innovative treatments for those in desperate need, and the duty to protect such vulnerable individuals from the harms of untested/unlicensed treatments. We introduced a principle-based framework to evaluate such requests and describe its application in the context of recently evolved UK, US and European regulatory processes. 24 referrals were received by our quaternary children's hospital Clinical Ethics Committee over the 5-year period. The CEC-rapid response group evaluated individual cases within (...) 48-hours; the main referrers being haematology/oncology, immunology or transplant services. Most requests were for drug/vaccine/pre-trial access or biological/cellular therapies. The majority of individual requests were approved ; neutral or negative opinions were given in 5, including 3 group requests. Recently evolved regulatory processes share common criteria and conditions to our framework including: demonstration of clinical need; sound scientific basis with lack of viable alternative; risks-benefit/best interests evaluation; arrangements for fully informed consent; no compromise of arrangements to test treatment for licensing purposes; consideration of resource implications. There are differences between individual processes and with our framework, with respect to procedures, scope, application format, costs and obligation to make available all outcome data. Our experience has emphasized the need for an independent, principled, consistent, fair and transparent response to the increasing demand for innovative treatment on a compassionate basis. We believe that there is a need for harmonization of the recent proliferation of regulation and legislation in this area. (shrink)

In the UK an increasing number of Clinical Ethics Committees (CECs) have been developed mainly in response to local need and interest. Their functions include education of health professionals, of policy and guideline development, and case review (both retrospective analysis of topics and advice on acute cases). The UK Clinical Ethics Network, a charitable foundation provides CEC s with help, support and advice and enables them to share their experience The legal status of UK CECs is unclear but some legal (...) commentators have suggested that CECs lack competencies and procedural rules necessary for acute case review. The UKCEN has proposed core competencies for CECs that lists the ethical, operational and procedural skills, knowledge and personal attributes required and how they may be acquired, assessed and maintained. Their implementation might lead to the development of ethical and legal governance which should benefit to future patient care. (shrink)

This essay considers more closely Nigel Biggar’s account of the role love plays in orienting and qualifying the moral experience of just warriors. The evidence that Biggar employs is highly selective and belies a more complex picture of the motivations of soldiers, the experience of killing, and the moral ends of training for modern warfare. This essay argues that a more ambivalent account of love can be reconciled more easily with recent research on the experience of moral injury among combat (...) veterans and is a more useful starting point for grounding the Christian community’s service to combat veterans. (shrink)

WHAT DOES RESPECT REQUIRE OF RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED CITIZENS AS they support coercive public policies? In his recent work, Christopher Eberle argues against the doctrine of restraint, a norm that requires citizens to refrain from supporting laws for which public reasons are unavailable. Against Eberle, I defend the doctrine of restraint as a necessary corollary to liberal democratic respect. For this defense, I draw from one imaginary case, Robert Audi's example of "sacred dandelions" and laws banning lawn maintenance, and one real-world (...) dispute, current debates about same-sex marriage policies. I argue that the doctrine of restraint when coupled with an inclusive definition of public reason better accords with our intuitive sense of what respect requires in both cases. (shrink)

Provides the theoretical and psychological framework to the philosophy of sounds and audition. I address auditory scene analysis, spatial hearing, the audible qualities, and cross-modal interactions.

Several cognitive accounts of human communication argue for a language-independent, prelinguistic basis of human communication and language. The current study provides evidence for the universality of a prelinguistic gestural basis for human communication. We used a standardized, semi-natural elicitation procedure in seven very different cultures around the world to test for the existence of preverbal pointing in infants and their caregivers. Results were that by 10–14 months of age, infants and their caregivers pointed in all cultures in the same basic (...) situation with similar frequencies and the same proto-typical morphology of the extended index finger. Infants’ pointing was best predicted by age and caregiver pointing, but not by cultural group. Further analyses revealed a strong relation between the temporal unfolding of caregivers’ and infants’ pointing events, uncovering a structure of early prelinguistic gestural conversation. Findings support the existence of a gestural, language-independent universal of human communication that forms a culturally shared, prelinguistic basis for diversified linguistic communication. (shrink)

John Beaumont has attempted to revitalize the official Roman Catholic position against the use of artificial contraception by reinvigorating the argument against such from natural law. Maintaining that sexual acts are essentially reproductive acts, he holds that the use of contraceptives by married couples reduces intercourse to the same moral level as homosexual acts. He further argues that acceptance of birth control has directly led to the legitimization of homosexual acts in American society. However, his analysis fails to distinguish between (...) historical connections between the various elements of the sexual revolution and deep moral relationships. His dependency on the natural law tradition also results in an impoverished theological vision, which fails to relate human sexuality and the unitive drive to the divine image in mankind. Only an anthropology which takes account of the Holy Trinity as the paradigm for human being can adequately ground sexuality. This theological context, which is supplied in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, grounds human sexuality in interpersonal communion in love. It finds in the unitive drive the need to realize the fullness of humanity in this experience of communion, which directly reflects the Trinitarian nature of God. From such a perspective, the moral equation of marital acts to homosexual indulgences is revealed as a gross distortion. Furthermore, the moral gulf that Beaumont seeks to establish between natural family planning and the use of contraceptives collapses, as does the usefulness of natural law tradition in general to combat the secularization of human sexuality. (shrink)

Caplan has argued that the philosophy of medicine does not exist. Although I will not deny the points he makes, I will argue that the philosophy of medicine has characteristics of a developing field with the potential to meet all of Caplan's criteria. The argument is based on Dewey's established views on logical development for a field of inquiry, as well as pointing out how other criteria Caplan imposes can be fulfilled.

Childbearing trans and nonbinary people are confronted with the heteronormative and cisgender frameworks that underpin “maternity” services. We explored the educational needs of 108 perinatal staff in the United Kingdom as related to the needs of trans and nonbinary service users. Participants were most confident in formulating care plans and least confident about the provision of colleagues’ perinatal care in this context. While the majority of participants were positive toward the trans and nonbinary communities, they considered that those communities remain (...) marginalized in perinatal services. Transphobic, anti-trans, and nonbinary attitudes were highlighted by our respondents. Our findings suggest that caregivers witnessed transphobia among colleagues and were apprehensive themselves about providing care to childbearing trans and nonbinary people. They reported a cisheteronormative model of care that lacked awareness of trans and nonbinary issues. The educational needs identified included information about the practicalities of childbearing as a trans or nonbinary person, how to use inclusive language effectively, and creating policies and processes for supporting childbearing trans and nonbinary people. These caregivers’ preferences included hearing from trans and nonbinary people and sharing best practices among themselves, with open discussions about how to be inclusive. (shrink)

The management of child protection concerns arouses strong emotions and controversies and creates ethical tensions for all concerned. This paper provides a rational analysis of some of the issues involved and suggests responses to them. The ethical and legal duties of health-care professionals are to act in the best interests of the child by safeguarding children and reporting concerns. But this may involve conflicts with parents and produce reluctance of professionals to become involved, especially in controversial types of abuse. Mandatory (...) reporting of concerns might overcome such reluctance, but may be ineffective in the face of diagnostic uncertainties. Assembly of a stronger diagnostic evidence base would seem ethically justified, but organization of the necessary case controlled studies might be problematic. Even with a comprehensive evidence base, individual diagnoses of abuse will always involve value judgements that should be underpinned by effective training and assessment of core competencies of professionals. These manoeuvres are unlikely to prevent both justified and vexatious complaints, often in relation to breaches in professional duties or concerning professional misconduct. The tendency to blame experts may have contributed to a reluctance of other professionals to become involved, despite proposals for reforms in the expert witness and court systems. Current approaches to child protection may neither promote greater understanding nor be in the best interests of children. A revised social contract for the effective protection of children could include: a duty of care that adequately addresses the primacy of the child's welfare; the acquisition of a sound evidence base; professional transparency and accountability (but with protection from malicious and vexatious complaints); and a shift emphasis towards a more inquisitorial system that embraced the principles of truth and reconciliation. (shrink)

To discover a unifying theory of biology, it is necessary first to believe in its existence and second to seek its elements. Such a theory would explain the regulation of the cell cycle, differentiation and the origin of life. Some elements of the theory may be obtained by considering both eukaryotic and prokaryotic cell cycles. These elements include cytoskeletal proteins, calcium, cyclins, protein kinase C, phosphorylation, transcriptional sensing, autocatalytic gene expression and the physical properties of lipids. Other more exotic candidate (...) elements include the dynamic enzoskeleton, ATP generation, mechanotransduction, the piezoelectric effect and resonance. Bringing these disparate elements together — and discovering others — will require extensive collaborations between specialists from different sciences. This can only be achieved within the context of an integrated approach to biology. (shrink)

What is biological complexity? How many sorts exist? Are there levels of complexity? How are they related to one another? How is complexity related to the emergence of new phenotypes? To try to get to grips with these questions, we consider the archetype of a complex biological system, Escherichia coli. We take the position that E. coli has been selected to survive adverse conditions and to grow in favourable ones and that many other complex systems undergo similar selection. We invoke (...) the concept of hyperstructures which constitute a level of organisation intermediate between macromolecules and cells. We also invoke a new concept, competitive coherence, to describe how phenotypes are created by a competition between maintaining a consistent story over time and creating a response that is coherent with respect to both internal and external conditions. We suggest how these concepts lead to parameters suitable for describing the rich form of complexity termed hypercomplexity and we propose a relationship between competitive coherence and emergence. (shrink)

As do all forms of science, medical theories have a factual as well as a logical basis. New information is presented in medical research articles. These papers have three separate arguments: the argument of the hypothesis, the argument of the experimental protocol, and the argument of the hypothesis's judgment. These arguments may be examples of the hypothetico-deductive or confirmational model of scientific inference. The logical form of these arguments are informal and inductive rather than formal and deductive. Understanding the nature (...) of the logic of the medical research article may help avoid erroneous conclusions. (shrink)

We outline a process, undertaken at a large tertiary children's hospital, intended to provide practical guidance and support for those involved in the management of children with life-limiting conditions. Initial discussions with representatives of clinical and support services identified communication problems and ethical dilemmas as key issues. These were further explored in multidisciplinary hospital meetings, culminating in a conference (Living Well, Dying Well) where individual perspectives - clinical, multi-faith, parental and legal - and cases were presented. Communication problems were found (...) to involve unrealistic expectations, failures of anticipation and difficulties in discussing sensitive issues, while ethical dilemmas arose from balancing burdens and benefits, clinical uncertainty, respecting autonomy and achieving equity and justice in delivery of care. An integrated service has been developed that is intended to provide clinical and spiritual care, psychosocial and ethical support, advice and mediation for children, families and staff, and to address the latter's educational and training needs. (shrink)

... ISBN0199215928 ... -/- Abstract: Vision dominates philosophical thinking about perception, and theorizing about experience in cognitive science traditionally has focused on a visual model. This book presents a systematic treatment of sounds and auditory experience. It demonstrates how thinking about audition and appreciating the relationships among multiple sense modalities enriches our understanding of perception. It articulates the central questions that comprise the philosophy of sound, and proposes a novel theory of sounds and their perception. Against the widely accepted philosophical (...) view that sounds are among the secondary or sensible qualities, and against the scientific view that sounds are waves that propagate through a medium such as air or water, the book argues that sounds are events in which objects or interacting bodies disturb a surrounding medium. This does not imply that sounds propagate through a medium, such as air or water. Rather, sounds are events that take place in one's environment at or near their sources. This account captures the way in which sounds essentially are creatures of time and situates sounds in the world. Sounds are not ethereal, mysterious entities. It also provides a powerful account of echoes, interference, reverberation, Doppler effects, and perceptual constancies that surpasses the explanatory richness of alternative theories. Investigating sounds and audition demonstrates that considering other sense modalities teaches what we could not otherwise learn from thinking exclusively about the visual. This book concludes by arguing that a surprising class of cross-modal perceptual illusions demonstrates that the perceptual modalities cannot be completely understood in isolation, and that a visuocentric model for theorizing about perception — according to which perceptual modalities are discrete modes of experience and autonomous domains of philosophical and scientific inquiry — ought to be abandoned. -/- . (shrink)

Nearly every theory of perception just focuses on one sense at a time; but most of the time we perceive using multiple senses. Casey O'Callaghan offers a revisionist multisensory philosophy of perception: he explores how our senses work together and influence each other, leading to surprising perceptual illusions and novel forms of experience.

Object perception deploys a suite of perceptual capacities that constrains attention, guides reidentification, subserves recognition, and anchors demonstrative thought. Objects for perception—perceptual objects—are the targets of such capacities. Characterizing perceptual objects for multisensory perception faces two puzzles. First is the diversity of objects across sensory modalities. Second is the unity of multisensory perceptual objects. This paper resolves the puzzles. Objects for perception are structured mereologically complex individuals. Perceptual objects are items that bear perceptible features and have perceptible parts arranged to (...) form a unified whole. This circumscribes the targets of object perception where neutral talk concerning intentional objects and objects of perception cannot. Nonetheless, it is more permissive than identifying perceptual objects with material bodies, which excludes too much and leans too heavily on vision. The account thus is tailored to capture the role of objects in perception beyond vision: tactual, auditory, and olfactory objects are individuals with differing structures. Its flexibility also enables the account to accommodate shared objects for multisensory perception: multisensory perceptual objects are mereologically complex individuals with hybrid structure. For instance, one can bimodally perceive a common whole with parts accessible to one but not both modalities. Each sense provides a partial perspective on a complex whole that is perceptible through the coordinated use of multiple senses. Understanding perceptual objects as structured mereologically complex individuals thus provides a theoretically useful notion of an object for multisensory perception that resolves the puzzles of diversity and of unity. (shrink)

Listening to speech in a language you know differs phenomenologically from listening to speech in an unfamiliar language, a fact often exploited in debates about the phenomenology of thought and cognition. It is plausible that the difference is partly perceptual. Some contend that hearing familiar language involves auditory perceptual awareness of meanings or semantic properties of spoken utterances; but if this were so, there must be something distinctive it is like auditorily to perceptually experience specific meanings of spoken utterances. However, (...) an argument from homophony shows that auditory experiences do not resolve differences in meaning not marked by differences in sound. I propose an alternative explanation of the perceptual phenomenal difference in terms of perceptual awareness of language-specific but non-semantic features. (shrink)

We present the case of a six-year-old child with a fatal brainstem tumour, who was left in a ‘locked-in state’ post-decompressive biopsy. A discussion of the ethical dilemma this situation presents, together with the deliberations of the ethics service when consulted about the optimal course of action, follow. The issues raised highlight an important conflict between the parental view of what is in the child's best interests and what may appear, prima facie, to clinical staff, to be in that child's (...) best interests. We discuss how creative ethical thinking may facilitate resolution of seemingly insoluble situations. (shrink)

Vision has been the primary focus of naturalistic philosophical research concerning perception and perceptual experience. Guided by visual experience and vision science, many philosophers have focused upon theoretical issues dealing with the perception of objects. Recently, however, hearing researchers have discussed auditory objects. I present the case for object perception in vision, and argue that an analog of object perception occurs in auditory perception. I propose a notion of an auditory object that is stronger than just that of an intentional (...) object of audition, but that does not identify auditory objects with the ordinary material objects we see. (shrink)

Philosophers and cognitive scientists of perception by custom have investigated individual sense modalities in relative isolation from each other. However, perceiving is, in a number of respects, multimodal. The traditional sense modalities should not be treated as explanatorily independent. Attention to the multimodal aspects of perception challenges common assumptions about the content and phenomenology of perception, and about the individuation and psychological nature of sense modalities. Multimodal perception thus presents a valuable opportunity for a case study in mature interdisciplinary cognitive (...) science. This chapter aims to raise these issues against the background of unimodal approaches in the study of perception. It presents some of the central empirical findings concerning multimodality, and it explains the philosophical implications of these findings. Foremost, it aims to encourage and open avenues for future research. (shrink)

My thesis is that perceptual awareness is richly multisensory. I argue for this conclusion on the grounds that certain forms of multisensory perceptual experience are incompatible with the claim that each aspect of a perceptual experience is associated with some specific sensory modality or another. First, I explicate what it is for some feature of a conscious perceptual episode to be modality specific. Then, I argue based on philosophical and experimental evidence that some novel intermodal features are perceptible only through (...) the coordinated use of multiple senses. I appeal to cases that involve consciously perceptible feature instances and feature types that could not be perceptually experienced through the use of individual sense modalities working on their own or simply in parallel and co-consciously. Finally, I offer an account of how to type perceptual experiences by modality that makes room for richly multisensory experiences. (shrink)