Patient outcome after serious brain injury is highly variable. Following a period of coma, some patients recover while others progress into a vegetative state (unresponsive wakefulness syndrome) or minimally conscious state. In both cases, assessment is difficult and misdiagnosis may be as high as 43%. Recent advances in neuroimaging suggest a solution. Both functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography have been used to detect residual cognitive function in vegetative and minimally conscious patients. Neuroimaging may improve diagnosis and prognostication. These techniques (...) are beginning to be applied to comatose patients soon after injury. Evidence of preserved cognitive function may predict recovery, and this information would help families and health providers. Complex ethical issues arise due to the vulnerability of patients and families, difficulties interpreting negative results, restriction of communication to “yes” or “no” answers, and cost. We seek to investigate ethical issues in the use of neuroimaging in behaviorally nonresponsive patients who have suffered serious brain injury. The objectives of this research are to: (1) create an approach to capacity assessment using neuroimaging; (2) develop an ethics of welfare framework to guide considerations of quality of life; (3) explore the impact of neuroimaging on families; and, (4) analyze the ethics of the use of neuroimaging in comatose patients. (shrink)

In this paper Modern Essentialism is used to solve a problem of individuation of spacetime points in General Relativity that has been raised by a New Leibnizian Argument against spacetime substantivalism, elaborated by Earman and Norton. An earlier essentialistic solution, proposed by Maudlin, is criticized as being against both the spirit of metrical essentialism and the fundamental principles of General Relativity. I argue for a modified essentialistic account of spacetime points that avoids those obstacles.

Concepts and methods coming from the formal logic of science have played only a very subordinated role in the philosophical analysis of thought experiments so far. The present article, therefore, takes a look at thought experimenting from the perspective of the logic of science in a Carnapian spirit. To this end, the widely discussed refutation of Aristotle′s theory of free falling bodies by Galilei will be investigated. Further, two prominent approaches to thought experimenting are subjected to a closer investigation: first, (...) the empiricist interpretation by John D. Norton , and second, the use of mental models by Nancy J. Nersessian . The existence of creative abductions, which introduce theoretical concepts, will be found to pose a seemingly insurmountable problem for the empiricist approach. The use of mental models, by contrast, proves to exhibit very interesting connections to the semantics of theoretical concepts. Such models can be shown to determine, in part, the meaning of theoretical concepts in cases where the understanding of such concepts is not entirely founded on explicit axioms. (shrink)

The paper discusses three different ways of explaining the referential stability of concepts of physics. In order to be successful, an approach to referential stability has to provide resources to understand what constitutes the difference between the birth of a new concept with a history of its own, and an innovative step occurring within the lifetime of a persisting concept with stable reference. According to Theodore Arabatzis' 'biographical' approach (Representing Electrons 2006), the historical continuity of representations of the electron manifests (...) itself by the numerical stability of experimental parameters like the charge-to-mass ratio, and the continued acceptance of earlier experiments as manifestations of electron properties. I argue, against Arabatzis' approach, that the stability of experimental parameters justifies the assumption that there exists a chain of representations of a unique theoretical entity only if this stability occurs against the background of evidence for theoretical continuity. The Bain/Norton approach proposes to add exactly this element to the picture, but fails to reach its aim by focusing on formal similarities of Hamiltonians as an indicator of theoretical continuity. I shall argue that theoretical continuity has to be demonstrated rather on the level of particular solutions. This task is accomplished by the semantic embedding approach by means of defining a co-reference criterion for theoretical terms requiring the existence of semantic embedding relations between the terms that occur in particular solutions of different theories. (shrink)

Citizen science models of public participation in scientific research represent a growing area of opportunity for health and biomedical research, as well as new impetus for more collaborative forms of engagement in large-scale research. However, this also surfaces a variety of ethical issues that both fall outside of and build upon the standard human subjects concerns in bioethics. This article provides background on citizen science, examples of current projects in the field, and discussion of established and emerging ethical issues for (...) citizen science in health and biomedical research. (shrink)

This interview seeks to highlight some of the main characteristics of the new pandemic world, besides the main contradictions the philosophical thought runs into in this difficult time. Between a political world which is unable to react and the scientific world which is usually moved by political aims, this work tries to understand if there is any room for a role of a long range philosophical thought, which is able to defend its clarity prerogatives but it is also able to (...) speak with other disciplines which seem increasingly deafer. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 36 Heft: 2 Seiten: 286-304.

John Christman has argued that constitutively relational accounts of autonomy, as defended by some feminist theorists, are problematically perfectionist about the human good. I argue that autonomy is constitutively relational, but not in a way that implies perfectionism: autonomy depends on a dialogical disposition to hold oneself answerable to external, critical perspectives on one's action-guiding commitments. This type of relationality carries no substantive value commitments, yet it does answer to core feminist concerns about autonomy.

Clarifying the nature of possibility is crucial for an evaluation of the phenomenological approach to ontology. From a phenomenological perspective, it is ontological possibility, and not spatiotemporal existence, that has pre-eminent ontological status. Since the sphere of phenomenological being and the sphere of experienceability turn out to be overlapping, this makes room for two perspectives. We can confer foundational priority to the acts of consciousness over possibilities, or to pre-set possibilities over the activity of consciousness. Husserl’s position on this issue (...) seems to change over time. Ultimately, the establishment of a phenomenological perspective must involve a rejection of any hypostatization of pre-set possibilities, but not all implications of this theoretical step seem to be drawn in Husserl’s texts. This paper is devoted to an illustration of how the phenomenological notion of possibility should change when we reject the hypostatization of possibility, that is, when we reject the idea that all acts of consciousness are to be conceived as realizations of pre-set “ideal forms”. We examine this question, first, by trying to clarify the conceptual constellation of “possibility” in Husserl’s texts. This leads to an overall classification of the features of constituted possibilities. Then we distinguish such constituted possibilities from their constituting conditions, which outlines a different sense of “possibility”. In the last instance two “possibilizing” dimensions are shown to lie at the root of all ontic possibilities. This leads to a final suggestion on the nature of the relation between experience and possibility. Actual experiences create the room for possibility: they are possibilizations. In this sense, experience is to be taken as a generative sphere which goes beyond the customary boundary between epistemic and ontological. From this point of view all experience is to be conceived as emergence. (shrink)

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

Specific studies of the “situated ethics” of international surrogacy that address the structural conditions and local moral economies that sustain the trade are needed. In this essay, I describe the intimate industry of surrogacy in Thailand, exploring the local moral economy in which surrogacy is described as a form of Buddhist merit making and an opportunity to provide for one’s own children. This offers a further example of how other ethical values beyond the strictly economic are negotiated in commercial surrogacy (...) relationships. Situated ethics allow us to locate and understand the tensions, competing logics, and contradictions within ethical practices. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a conception of joint practical deliberation as a special type of shared cooperative activity, through which co-deliberators jointly accept reasons as applying to them as a pair or group. I argue, moreover, that the aspiration to deliberative “pairhood” is distinguished by a special concern for mutuality that guides each deliberator’s readiness to accept a given consideration as a reason-for-us. It matters to each of us, as joint deliberators, that each party’s (individual) reasons for accepting something (...) as a reason-for-us support a conception of our relationship as one characterized by mutual, non-instrumental concern for one another. (shrink)

Especially after the disasters of WWII, the relationship between human nature and technology has mainly been discussed in “Promethean” terms. That is to say, it has been discussed as it concerns the capacity, and perhaps the necessity, of humans to think and act technically, i.e., by means of technical devices, as well as to technically transform the environment. Now, as a consequence of the more recent, impressive advancements and achievements in biotechnology, pharmaceutics, etc. the new questions in this field seem (...) more reminiscent of the story of Icarus. The enigmatic core of this myth concerns the capacity to somehow change the human nature, the need to do so, and, aside from just the risks, what the goals of such modifications would be. In this article, a simultaneously conceptual and phenomenological analysis will be carried out regarding the relationship between technical capacities, technical products, human needs, and human desires. Although such an analysis should allow one to better frame also current questions concerning the ethical sides of technical (self-)interventions into human “nature”, the aim of this article is just to contribute to the clarification of the link between being human and technology. (shrink)

In the present article, we aimed at describing the diagnostic process in Psychiatry through a phenomenological perspective. We have identified 4 core concepts which may represent the joints of a phenomenologically oriented diagnosis. The "tightrope walking" attitude refers to the psychiatrist's ability to swing between 2 different and sometimes contrasting tendencies (e.g., engagement and disengagement). The "holistic experience" includes all those intuitive, nonverbal, and pre-thematic elements that emerge in the early stages of the clinical encounter as an emanation of the (...) atmospheric quality of the intersubjective space. The "co-construction of symptoms" regards the hermeneutic process behind psychiatric symptoms, involving both the patient as a self-interpreting agent and the clinician as a translator of his/her experience. Finally, by the "evolving typification" we mean that the closer the relationship becomes with the patient, the more specific and nuanced becomes the typification behind psychiatric diagnosis. Each of these concepts will be accompanied by an extract from a clinical case deriving from one of the authors' most recent clinical experiences. (shrink)

Many arguments are affected by context sensitivity, because they include sentences that have different truth conditions in different contexts. Therefore, it is natural to think that a general criterion for evaluating arguments must take context sensitivity into account. One way to give substance to that thought is provided by the definition of validity offered by David Kaplan within his theory of indexicals. However, the route indicated by Kaplan is hindered by a problem whose importance is often underestimated. This paper explores (...) a different route, and outlines a definition of validity that does not run into that problem. Its moral is that Kaplan's definition is not the only plausible definition. This is not to say that the definition outlined is the only plausible definition or that it is correct in some absolute sense. There might be equally important problems with it that the paper does not take into account. But until such problems are found and brought up, the departure from Kaplan's route remains a viable option. (shrink)

She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg, if there was a draught, she sat in it—in short, she was so constituted that she never had a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathise always with the minds and wishes of others. — Virginia Woolf (1979, 59).

The theoretical perspectives of intersectionality and poststructuralism have contributed meaningfully to advancing issues of social injustice within the realm of women's health research. However, the question of whether the two approaches are epistemologically commensurate has been at the heart of a polarized debate within third‐ and fourth‐wave feminist literature in recent years. In this paper, we draw on the extant literature to explore existing dilemmas within this debate and critically reflect on points of epistemological tension and congruence between the two (...) perspectives. It will be demonstrated that intersectionality and poststructuralism, especially feminist poststructuralism, represent concordant theoretical perspectives and a synthesized theoretical framework for application in qualitative research into women's health will be proposed. We argue that an intersectional feminist poststructuralist framework contributes to a deepened analysis of women's disparate healthcare experiences, and the social mechanisms, power relations, and discourses that mediate these experiences, while offering avenues for advocacy and political praxis on a multitude of levels. (shrink)

For addressing the problem of negotiating social orders in a way that protects one’s humanity, I have considered Deleuze and Guattari’s intriguing claim in Anti-Oedipus that “a schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst’s couch‘. I outlined the associated principles of schizoid living developed in Anti-Oedipus via a critique that reverses the value of two Freudian concepts, namely, ”neurosis’ and ”psychosis’. I then cited some of the book’s eulogising ”praise poetry’, which (...) describes the ”schizo’ and connected it to a contemporaneous text, J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K, that addresses the same ethical problem of negotiating social orders. Through the activities and reflections of the novel’s protagonist, Michael K, who might be thought of as “a schizophrenic out for a walk‘, I showed that Coetzee explores various forms of resistance. He investigates the impotence of resistance as the active construction of an alternative story from the alienated position of the ”other’. I pointed out that this strategy fails because it remains within the neurotic desire to construct a coherent narrative. Similarly, I indicated that resistance fails as a gesture of pure refusal akin to schizophrenic antiproduction, because the neurotic response re-appropriates this extremity through self-serving gestures of externalisation. Finally, I pointed out how Coetzee alludes to a kind of resistance that might be called schizoid and that changes the rules of the game. In the novel, K experiments with the first and second options, but cannot make life possible, either as a servant to a social order, on his own terms, or on the absolute outside. Echoing the question posed by Deleuze and Guattari of whether the schizoid ”men of desire’ they praise exist yet, K only dreams of the third option in the novel’s final lines, which detail the thoughts of a man dying of starvation. (shrink)

Phenomenology has been defined by Husserl as “theory of the essences of pure phenomena,” yet the ontological status of essences in Husserlian phenomenology is far from a settled issue. The late Husserlian emphasis on genetic constitution and the historicity of the lifeworld is not immediately reconcilablewith the ‘unchangeable’ nature that is prima facie attributed to essences. However, the problem of the nature of ideality cannot be dropped from phenomenological accounts without jeopardizing the phenomenological enterprise as such. Through an immanent analysis (...) of Husserl’s meditation on essences a positive account of their ontological status is provided. Essences are interpreted as ontological thresholds, primordially rooted in our motivated confrontation with sensuous transcendence. Essences appear as emergent ontological features, which are not reducible to their particular realizations and which exhibit a fundamental continuity between consciousness and being. They manifest themselves as prospectively a priori (a precondition for further experiences), but retrospectively a posteriori (they are founded in experience). Finally, essences manifest the ‘co-essential’ nature of consciousness and sensuous transcendence: they are the way in which we are motivated and constitutively bound to articulate being, which in turn is apt to be thus articulated. (shrink)

Literary Nonfiction. Translated from the German by Michael Eskin. Graced with lyricism, THE WAITING GAME is an engaging meditation on the ways in which human beings are forced—and choose—to mark time, from earliest childhood to the final moments of life. This is an unsparing, yet often poetic, essay on the ordeals and pleasures inherent in the universal experience of waiting.

Currently much debate surrounds the significance of cross-cultural variation in mother-infant attachment. Is only one form of attachment “healthy,” or are different types of attachment adaptations to local socioecological conditions? Juvenile mortality rates have been promoted as important features of local environments that shape attachment, which in turn affects later reproductive strategies. To this we add fertility. Fertility changes the environment of a child by influencing the number of potential caregivers and competitors for care, and the cultural ethos regarding the (...) rights of children. Different combinations of fertility and mortality will likely give rise to different attachment forms, and only under one regime (low fertility and mortality) do we expect exclusivity in attachment. (shrink)

Philosophia brings together, for the first time, the work of three major women thinkers of this century, producing a developing commentary on the human condition as an alternative to the mainstream, masculine, philosophical tradition.

Volumes 1 and 2 of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, first published in January 1739, were soon after publication the subject of five notices and four reviews. Volume 3, published at the end of October 1740, received no notices and was reviewed only in the Bibliothèque raisonnée. This anonymous review of vol. 3 is of interest not only for David Norton is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, McGill University, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of Victoria. His address is 8-4305 (...) Maltwood Lane, Victoria, BC, Canada V8X 5G9. what it says about Hume’s views as set out in the third book of the Treatise, but also because of questions that have arisen about the authorship of this and an earlier review of vol. 1 of the Treatise published in the same journal. In Part I of this paper we begin by reviewing the grounds for attributing to Pierre Des Maizeaux the notice of vols. 1 and 2 of the Treatise published by the Bibliothèque raisonnée in its April–June, 1739 issue. We then focus principally on the question of the authorship of the review of vol. 3 of the Treatise published by the Bibliothèque raisonnée in its April–June, 1741 issue, but we also consider in passing the grounds that have been offered for attributing to Francis Hutcheson the critical components of the Bibliothèque raisonnée review of vol. 1 of the Treatise. In Part II of the paper we present a transcription of the French text, never before reprinted, of this review. Part III is a new English translation of this text. In an effort to show the differences between the sense of the Treatise presented by translated quotations of it and Hume’s original texts, Part IV offers some three-column comparisons of three relatively lengthy French “quotations” of Treatise 3 found in the review, our back-translations of these texts, and the versions of these texts found in the Treatise. It then offers in a similar format, comparisons of the present and earlier translations of passages of the review of vol. 3. (shrink)