Anthropology diffracted : originary humanicity -- Just figures?: forensic clairvoyance, mathematics, and the language question -- Enumerating language : "The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" -- Natural convers(at)ions : or, what if culture was really nature all along? -- (Con)founding "the human" : rethinking the incest taboo -- Culpability and the double-cross : Irigaray with Merleau-Ponty.

This comprehensively updated and expanded revision of the successful second edition continues to provide detailed coverage of the ever-growing range of research topics in vision. In Part I, the treatment of visual physiology has been extensively revised with an updated account of retinal processing, a new section explaining the principles of spatial and temporal filtering which underlie discussions in later chapters, and an up-to-date account of the primate visual pathway. Part II contains four largely new chapters which cover recent psychophysical (...) evidence and computational model of early vision: edge detection, perceptual grouping, depth perception, and motion perception. The models discussed are extensively integrated with physiological evidence. All other chapters in Parts II, III, and IV have also been thoroughly updated. (shrink)

A considerable body of evidence now documents, beyond reasonable doubt, biological and health risk factors for crime and violence. Nevertheless, intervention and prevention efforts with offenders have avoided biological interventions, in part due to past misuses of biological research and the challenges that biological predispositions to crime raise. This article reviews the empirical literature on two biological intervention approaches, omega-3 supplementation and transcranial direct current stimulation. Emerging research on these relatively benign interventions suggests that increased omega-3 intake through dietary intervention (...) and prefrontal upregulation using non-invasive brain stimulation may show some initial promise in reducing antisocial behavior. The ethical issues related to mandated and offered biological interventions within the criminal justice system are discussed. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making frameworks assist in identifying the issues at stake in a particular setting and thinking through, in a methodical manner, the ethical issues that require consideration as well as the values that need to be considered and promoted. Decisions made about the use, sharing, and re-use of big data are complex and laden with values. This paper sets out an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health and Research developed by a working group convened by the Science, Health and (...) Policy-relevant Ethics in Singapore Initiative. It presents the aim and rationale for this framework supported by the underlying ethical concerns that relate to all health and research contexts. It also describes a set of substantive and procedural values that can be weighed up in addressing these concerns, and a step-by-step process for identifying, considering, and resolving the ethical issues arising from big data uses in health and research. This Framework is subsequently applied in the papers published in this Special Issue. These papers each address one of six domains where big data is currently employed: openness in big data and data repositories, precision medicine and big data, real-world data to generate evidence about healthcare interventions, AI-assisted decision-making in healthcare, public-private partnerships in healthcare and research, and cross-sectoral big data. (shrink)

A selection of speeches and essays from the author's second decade as president of Yale University.

Phosphoinositides modulate a plethora of functions including signal transduction and membrane trafficking. PtdInsPs are thought to consist of seven interconvertible species that localize to a specific organelle, to which they recruit a set of cognate effector proteins. Here, in reviewing the literature, we argue that this model needs revision. First, PtdInsPs can carry a variety of acyl chains, greatly boosting their molecular diversity. Second, PtdInsPs are more promiscuous in their localization than is usually acknowledged. Third, PtdInsP interconversion is likely achieved (...) through kinase-phosphatase enzyme complexes that coordinate their activities and channel substrates without affecting bulk substrate population. Additionally, we contend that despite hundreds of PtdInsP effectors, our attention is biased toward few proteins. Lastly, we recognize that PtdInsPs can act to nucleate coincidence detection at the effector level, as in PDK1 and Akt. Overall, better integrated models of PtdInsP regulation and function are not only possible but needed. Phosphoinositides are lipids that control many cellular functions. However, the field of PtdInsP signaling is dominated by several dogmatic notions. Here, we offer an updated glimpse on the current state of the field regarding molecular diversity, localization, organization of modifying enzymes, effector types, and effector organization. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has both exposed and created deep rifts in society. It has thrust us into deep ethical thinking to help justify the difficult decisions many will be called upon to make and to protect from decisions that lack ethical underpinnings. This paper aims to highlight ethical issues in six different areas of life highlighting the enormity of the task we are faced with globally. In the context of COVID-19, we consider health inequity, dilemmas in triage and allocation of (...) scarce resources, ethical issues associated with research, ethical considerations relating to tracing apps, and exit strategies such as immunity passports and COVID-19 vaccines. Finally, we consider environmental issues in light of COVID-19. The paper also offers some ethical reflection on these areas as many parts of the world contemplate the recovery phase. (shrink)

Evolutionary game theory and public goods games offer an important framework to understand cooperation during pandemics. From this perspective, the COVID-19 situation can be conceptualized as a dilemma where people who neglect safety precautions act as free riders, because they get to enjoy the benefits of decreased health risk from others’ compliance with policies despite not contributing to or even undermining public safety themselves. At the same time, humans appear to carry a suite of evolved psychological mechanisms aimed at curbing (...) free riding in order to ensure the continued provision of public goods, which can be leveraged to develop more effective measures to promote compliance with regulations. We also highlight factors beyond free riding that reduce compliance rates, such as the emergence of conspiratorial thinking, which seriously undermine the effectiveness of measures to suppress free riding. Together, the current paper outlines the social dynamics that occur in public goods dilemmas involving the spread of infectious disease, highlights the utility and limits of evolutionary game-theoretic approaches for COVID-19 management, and suggests novel directions based on emerging challenges to cooperation. (shrink)

Darwin the writer -- Learning to see : Darwin's prophetic apprenticeship on the Beagle voyage -- The prose of On the origin of species -- Surprise and paradox : Darwin's artful legacy -- Darwinian mind and Wildean paradox -- Hardy's Woodlanders and the Darwinian grotesque -- Coda : the comic Darwin.

If Savulescu and Kahane’s Principle of Procreative Beneficence were implemented regarding cognitive enhancement, the result would be highly impoverishing for future children. For, apart from being inadequate to rationality itself, advocates’ accounts of cognitive enhancement sever reason from the input to judgments and decision-making that other faculties provide. When handling desire, supporters of cognitive enhancement frame conflicts between reason and the nonrational in terms of self-governance or akratic failure, depending on which one triumphs. Further, so-called negative emotions are treated as (...) simply deleterious and hostile to the rational. Alliances of the nonrational with reason toward shared ends are hence unthinkable. Having critiqued advocates’ views directly, I amplify my assessment through engagement with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Per Savulescu and Kahane, to know how to direct enhancement endeavors, “we need to form reasonable opinions on difficult questions about the nature of well-being and the good life.” Thus far, however, enhancement supporters have been largely silent on this crucial matter. Because the debate over enhancement is ultimately over what values our views of flourishing embody, it should be recast so that this crux is squarely at the fore. What is more, for our own and our children’s sakes, as we embark on this reframing, we would do well to bear in mind Aristotle’s insights about the nonrational in relation to reason and his unwavering focus on the human “that for the sake of which” (hou heneka) all that we do is, perforce, undertaken. (shrink)

The tropical rain-forest regions in Borneo Island have in place various tough environmental policies to manage the economic use of natural resources sustainably. Nevertheless, their biological landscapes are struggling against unprecedented ecological assault amid rapid industrial transformations which have involved massive and irreversible exploitation of land resources. The main reason behind this mismatch of sustainable resource management vis-à-vis unsustainable resource use is the failure on the part of the policy makers to act under the guidance of certain ethical virtues when (...) attempting to translate environmental rhetoric in print to concrete actions in reality. Ethical engagement with nature is pivotal in helping to stimulate genuine efforts in environmental conservation. Field research in the Borneo tropical rain-forest state of Sarawak, Malaysia is able to identify and evaluate the distinctive environmental attitudes, values, and practices of the indigenous communities, and their implications on Sarawak’s sustainable land-resource use and to reinforce the importance of ethical leadership in addressing a myriad of today’s environmental challenges. (shrink)

How we assess current calls for vigorous, or “radical”, enhancement through befitting procreative choices depends in part on the plausibility of supporters’ rejecting all substantive ties between their views and earlier eugenics. When denying such connections, today’s advocates of vigorous enhancement routinely emphasize that enhancement decisions would stem from individuals and families, not the state. In a multipronged critique, I show the untenability of transhumanists’ denials.

Over the last two decades our understanding of the relationship of gender, politics and the state has been transformed almost beyond recognition by the mutual interrogation of feminism and political science. This volume provides an overview of this dynamic and growing field, which reflects both its expanding empirical scope and the accompanying theoretical development and debate. The first three essays focus primarily on conceptual and theoretical issues: the meaning of 'gender'; the state's role in the construction of gender within the (...) public and private sphere; and the political representation of gender differences within liberal democracy. The remaining six provide analyses of more concrete issues of state policy and participation in differeing national political contexts: abortion politics in Ireland; the local politics of prostitution in Britain, the impact on women's political participation of economic change in China, Latin America and political change in Russia, and the gender impact of state programmes of land reform. (shrink)

A key ethical issue arising in data linkage research relates to consent requirements. Patients’ consent preferences in the context of health research have been explored but their consent preferences regarding data linkage specifically have been under-explored. In addition, the views on data linkage are often those of patient groups. As a result, little is known about lay people’s views and their preferences about consent requirements in the context of data linkage. This study explores lay people’s views and justifications regarding the (...) acceptability of conducting data linkage research without obtaining consent. (shrink)

There is a growing expectation, or even requirement, for researchers to deposit a variety of research data in data repositories as a condition of funding or publication. This expectation recognizes the enormous benefits of data collected and created for research purposes being made available for secondary uses, as open science gains increasing support. This is particularly so in the context of big data, especially where health data is involved. There are, however, also challenges relating to the collection, storage, and re-use (...) of research data. This paper gives a brief overview of the landscape of data sharing via data repositories and discusses some of the key ethical issues raised by the sharing of health-related research data, including expectations of privacy and confidentiality, the transparency of repository governance structures, access restrictions, as well as data ownership and the fair attribution of credit. To consider these issues and the values that are pertinent, the paper applies the deliberative balancing approach articulated in the Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health and Research to the domain of Openness in Big Data and Data Repositories. Please refer to that article for more information on how this framework is to be used, including a full explanation of the key values involved and the balancing approach used in the case study at the end. (shrink)

Background: Depression is the largest cause of mental ill health worldwide. Although interventions such as Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) may offer interesting and acceptable treatment options, current clinical guidelines do not include these interventions in their recommendations mainly because of what is perceived as insufficient research evidence. The 2015 Cochrane review on DMT for depression includes only three RCTs leading to inconclusive results. It is therefore, necessary to also look beyond such designs in order to identify and assess the range (...) of current evidence. Methods: We therefore, conducted a systematic review of studies that aimed to explore the effectiveness in the use of DMT with people with depression. This led to a qualitative narrative synthesis followed by a subgroup analysis and a sensitivity analysis. In all meta-analyses a random effects model was used with Standardised Mean Differences (SMD) to accommodate for the heterogeneity of studies and outcome measures. Results: From the 817 studies reviewed, eight studies met our inclusion criteria. 351 people with depression (mild to severe) participated, 192 of whom attended DMT groups while receiving treatment as usual (TAU) and 159 received TAU only. Qualitative findings suggest there was a decrease in depression scores in favour of DMT groups in all studies. Subgroup analysis performed on depression scores before and three months after the completion of DMT groups suggested changes in favour of the DMT groups. When sensitivity analysis was performed, RCTs at high risk of bias were excluded, leaving only studies with adult clients up to the age of 65. In these studies, the highest effect size was found favouring DMT plus TAU for adults with depression, when compared to TAU only. Conclusions: Based on studies with moderate to high quality, we concluded that DMT is an effective intervention in the treatment of depression with adults. Furthermore, by drawing on a wide range of designs with diverse quality, we were able to compile a comprehensive picture of relevant trends. Despite the fact that there remains a paucity of high-quality studies, the results have relevance to both policy-making and clinical practice, and become a platform for further research. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of the Australian Institute of Criminology in monitoring inmate deaths in custody on a national basis. It also provides a descriptive overview of Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous inmate deaths in custody during the eighteen-year period between 1980 and 1998.In October 1987, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody commenced investigating the deaths of Australia's Indigenous people in custody throughout Australia between January 1, 1980 and May 31, 1989. RCIADIC's task was to examine the circumstances (...) of the deaths; the actions taken by authorities; and the underlying causes of Indigenous deaths in custody, including social, cultural, and legal factors. The investigation found that the major factor contributing to the high number of Indigenous deaths in custody was the disproportionately higher rates at which Indigenous people come into contact with the criminal justice system. RCIADIC concluded that the most significant reason for this contact was the severely disadvantaged social, economic, and cultural position of many Indigenous people. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of the Australian Institute of Criminology in monitoring inmate deaths in custody on a national basis. It also provides a descriptive overview of Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous inmate deaths in custody during the eighteen-year period between 1980 and 1998.In October 1987, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody commenced investigating the deaths of Australia's Indigenous people in custody throughout Australia between January 1, 1980 and May 31, 1989. RCIADIC's task was to examine the circumstances (...) of the deaths; the actions taken by authorities; and the underlying causes of Indigenous deaths in custody, including social, cultural, and legal factors. The investigation found that the major factor contributing to the high number of Indigenous deaths in custody was the disproportionately higher rates at which Indigenous people come into contact with the criminal justice system. RCIADIC concluded that the most significant reason for this contact was the severely disadvantaged social, economic, and cultural position of many Indigenous people. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact globally. Most affected, however, are those individuals and groups routinely disadvantaged by the social injustice created by the misdistribution of power, money, and resources. Simple measures that prevent the spread of COVID-19, such as frequent hand washing and social distancing, are unavailable to millions of people in the wealthiest of nations and in the poorest of nations. Disadvantaged groups are impacted more directly and in disproportionately higher numbers due to existing poor health, (...) and the disruption of services central to securing an income and an education will have lasting consequences for their futures. The unintended effect of exclusionary government policies is that privileged citizens and healthcare systems are also at greater risk. This paper seeks to highlight the impact of COVID-19 on those already suffering health inequities through consideration of some of the social determinants of health on groups in affluent and poorer nations. It also highlights some of the factors that may assist in tackling health inequities as we emerge from this pandemic. (shrink)

In many spheres, the law takes the legal concept of causation to correspond to the folk concept (the correspondence assumption). Courts, including the US Supreme Court, tend to insist on the "common understanding" and that which is "natural to say" (Burrage v. United States) when it comes to expressions relating to causation, and frequently refuse to clarify the expression to juries. As recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy has uncovered, lay attributions of causation are susceptible to a great number (...) of unexpected factors, some of which seem rather peripheral to causation. One of those is the norm effect (Knobe & Fraser, 2008): Agents who, in acting as they do, break a salient norm, are more likely to be considered as having caused a certain consequence than when they do not violate a norm. According to some (e.g., Alicke, 1992) this constitutes a bias. According to others (e.g., Sytsma, 2020), the folk concept of causation is sensitive to normative factors, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In this paper, we explore the question whether the norm effect should be considered a bias from the legal perspective on the one hand, and from the psychological perspective on the other. To do this, we test whether norms which are nonpertinent to the consequences or outright silly also impact causation judgements. The data from two preregistered experiments (total N=593) clearly show they do. This, we argue, makes the bias interpretation plausible from the psychological perspective, and both plausible and problematic from the legal perspective. It also shows that the law should abstain from unreflectively assuming conceptual correspondence between legal and ordinary language concepts. (shrink)

In this contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Fuzzy Studies,” the authors, all of whom work in the field of science, technology, and society, begin from the assumption that, as Bruno Latour has put it, “we have never been modern.” They accept the STS thesis that, while modern practices purport to be entirely rational and coherent, on closer inspection they turn out to be as much noncoherent as coherent. This article poses the question of what forms “noncoherences” take and how (...) they are managed. The basic argument is that there is a range of styles of noncoherence or “modes of syncretism.” In small case studies, the authors identify six such modes or styles, which they term denial, domestication, separation, care, conflict, and collapse. Given that consistency and coherence seem less important now than they were once taken to be — and given that the conditions of possibility for purity are, in any case, in decline — this list and its supporting case studies, while not meant to be definitive, are offered as a way of understanding how practices that do not cohere may still function and fit together admirably. (shrink)

International research guidance has shifted towards an increasingly proactive inclusion of children and adolescents in health research in recognition of the need for more evidence-based treatment. Strong calls have been made for the active involvement of children and adolescents in developing research proposals and policies, including in decision-making about research participation. Much evidence and debate on this topic has focused on high-income settings, while the greatest health burdens and research gaps occur in low-middle income countries, highlighting the need to take (...) account of voices from more diverse contexts. Between January and March 2014, 56 community representatives and secondary school students were involved in eight group discussions to explore views on the acceptability of involving children and adolescents in research, and how these groups should be involved in decision-making about their own participation. Discussions were voice-recorded and transcriptions analyzed using Framework Analysis, combining deductive and inductive approaches. Across these discussions, the idea of involving children and adolescents in decision-making about research participation was strongly supported given similar levels of responsibility carried in everyday life; existing capacity that should be recognized; the opportunity for learning involved; varying levels of parental control; and generational shifts towards greater understanding of science for adolescents than their parents. Joint decision-making processes were supported for older children and adolescents, with parental control influenced by perceptions of the risks involved in participation. Moves towards more active involvement of children and adolescents in planning studies and in making decisions about their participation are supported by these findings from Kenya. Important emerging considerations include the need to take account of the nature of proposed studies and prevailing attitudes and understanding of research in identifying children’s and adolescents’ roles. More research is needed to expand diversity and develop approaches to joint assent and consent processes that would fairly represent children’s and adolescents’ wishes and interests, towards their long term benefit. (shrink)

This paper recommends that experimental analysts of language development abandon for the purposes of experimental inquiry both the term "language" and the concept it designates. In support of this recommendation, the paper dis cusses the multiple meanings of "language," the proposal that "language" refers to behavior, the implicit acceptance by behavior analysts of psycholinguistic thought despite their ostensible rejection of it, and the nature of language as a subject matter. In addition, the nature of common-sense psychology, the domain of behavior (...) analysis, the formal nature of Chomskyan linguistics, and the rela tion between psychology and behavior analysis are discussed. (shrink)

BackgroundCarefully planned research is critical to developing policies and interventions that counter physical, psychological and social challenges faced by young people living with HIV/aids, without increasing burdens. Such studies, however, must navigate a ‘vulnerability paradox’, since including potentially vulnerable groups also risks unintentionally worsening their situation. Through embedded social science research, linked to a cohort study involving Adolescents Living with HIV/aids (ALH) in Kenya, we develop an account of researchers’ responsibilities towards young people, incorporating concepts of vulnerability, resilience, and agency (...) as ‘interacting layers’.MethodsUsing a qualitative, iterative approach across three linked data collection phases including interviews, group discussions, observations and a participatory workshop, we explored stakeholders’ perspectives on vulnerability and resilience of young people living with HIV/aids, in relation to home and community, school, health care and health research participation. A total of 62 policy, provider, research, and community-based stakeholders were involved, including 27 ALH participating in a longitudinal cohort study. Data analysis drew on a Framework Analysis approach; ethical analysis adapts Luna’s layered account of vulnerability.ResultsALH experienced forms of vulnerability and resilience in their daily lives in which socioeconomic context, institutional policies, organisational systems and interpersonal relations were key, interrelated influences. Anticipated and experienced forms of stigma and discrimination in schools, health clinics and communities were linked to actions undermining ART adherence, worsening physical and mental health, and poor educational outcomes, indicating cascading forms of vulnerability, resulting in worsened vulnerabilities. Positive inputs within and across sectors could build resilience, improve outcomes, and support positive research experiences.ConclusionsThe most serious forms of vulnerability faced by ALH in the cohort study were related to structural, inter-sectoral influences, unrelated to study participation and underscored by constraints to their agency. Vulnerabilities, including cascading forms, were potentially responsive to policy-based and interpersonal actions. Stakeholder engagement supported cohort design and implementation, building privacy, stakeholder understanding, interpersonal relations and ancillary care policies. Structural forms of vulnerability underscore researchers’ responsibilities to work within multi-sectoral partnerships to plan and implement studies involving ALH, share findings in a timely way and contribute to policies addressing known causes of vulnerabilities. (shrink)

The book complements standard course texts in cognition by providing a series of articles which emphasize particularly what we do not understand, rather than ...

'...as an introductory text, the book is admirable: it sets out the questions clearly and specifies the terms of the debate at every juncture.' - Ann Oakley, British Book News.

Unmet legal needs contribute to housing, income, and food insecurity, along with other conditions that harm health and drive health inequity. Addressing health injustice requires new tools for the next generations of lawyers, doctors, and other healthcare professionals. An interprofessional group of co-authors argue that law and medical schools and other university partners should develop and cultivate Academic Medical-Legal Partnerships (A-MLPs), which are uniquely positioned to leverage service, education, and research resources, to advance health justice.

This review of Madhav Kkhosla’s book, India’s Founding Moment, sees his approach as one of “best lights” understandings, that is, an effort to identify and explain the conceptual underpinnings of India’s founding constitution in their best lights. Khosla emphasizes as key the ways in which the constitution’s requirements of full adult suffrage, its intense specificity of language, and its strongly centralized government form, all contribute conceptually to the creation of the democratic citizen of India—a citizen whose rights across the country (...) were secured by a common constitution and central government, whose knowledge of and ability to exercise rights were enhanced by the constitution’s codified approach, and a citizen whose capacities to participate in democratic processes would be developed by the exercise of democratic rights. The review focuses attention on choices about suffrage, comparing India’s with the less inclusionary founding impulses of the United States constitution. It explores nuances of how codification would and would not promote exercises of citizenship rights, noting the importance of adjudication in the construction of the “common knowledge” to which the founders aspired. And the review argues that today, as more illiberal, authoritarian regimes are on the rise, the book’s emphasis on the importance of ideas, words, and common knowledge in constructing liberal, democratic politics is of urgent contemporary importance. (shrink)

In this chapter, the author shows that the affinity between the two thinkers is far greater than interpreters like Farrell allow. He focuses on evaluating the argument that Richard Rorty is not able to get past the dichotomies ‐ although he will have cause to comment on the first one as well. In the context of a continued anti‐representationalism, Rorty comes to admit that there is a “truth in realism” and that our relations to the world are not just causal (...) but also normative. The author argues that with these admissions Rorty comes to articulate a view that can, with some plausibility, be said to have gotten beyond the dichotomies of scheme and content, subject and object, and realism and antirealism. D. Davidson agrees with Rorty that truth is not definable by simpler and more transparent concepts. Davidson has a pronged attack on the concept of representation. (shrink)

This article aims to present a Žižekian reading of the British author David Herbert Lawrence. The contemporary continental philosopher has tackled each of the British author’s reoccurring themes individually and thus may be used as a keystone for a valid literary interpretatio n. The paper begins by shedding light on the representation of Western ideology, moves further into the comprehension of the impacts of modern cultural capital and the limitations of industrialization. While at the same time the dissertation targets another (...) component of the romantic poet’s many writings which are characterized by the regeneration of the subject’s carnal presence as a defense mechanism against the prevalent culture of de-humanization. The argument at hand is that the reconstruction of the bodily image rendered through Lawrence’s erotic literature is not one that portrays promiscuity, but rather demonstrates a transgression of the Lacanian symbolic and the attainment of a partial rendition of a Hegelian totality. Lawrence’s six novels and set of poems are thoroughly analyzed from a strictly Žižekian p erspective to demonstrate that th e two authors share thematic representations, a common worldview and propose a manifestation of how literary analyses may be conveyed using Žižek as a philosophical lens for literary interpretation. (shrink)

We amplify possible complications to the tidy division between early vision and later categorisation which arise when we consider the perception of human faces. Although a primitive face-detecting system, used for social attention, may indeed be integral to “early vision,” the relationship between this and diverse other uses made of information from faces is far from clear.