BackgroundAn increasing number of studies utilize intracranial electrophysiology in human subjects to advance basic neuroscience knowledge. However, the use of neurosurgical patients as human research subjects raises important ethical considerations, particularly regarding informed consent and undue influence, as well as subjects’ motivations for participation. Yet a thorough empirical examination of these issues in a participant population has been lacking. The present study therefore aimed to empirically investigate ethical concerns regarding informed consent and voluntariness in Parkinson’s disease patients undergoing deep brain (...) stimulator (DBS) placement who participated in an intraoperative neuroscience study.MethodsTwo semi-structured 30-minute interviews were conducted preoperatively and postoperatively via telephone. Interviews assessed participants’ motivations for participation in the parent intraoperative study, recall of information presented during the informed consent process, and participants’ postoperative reflections on the research study.ResultsTwenty-two participants (mean age = 60.9) completed preoperative interviews at a mean of 7.8 days following informed consent and a mean of 5.2 days prior to DBS surgery. Twenty participants completed postoperative interviews at a mean of 5 weeks following surgery. All participants cited altruism or advancing medical science as “very important” or “important” in their decision to participate in the study. Only 22.7% (n = 5) correctly recalled one of the two risks of the study. Correct recall of other aspects of the informed consent was poor (36.4% for study purpose; 50.0% for study protocol; 36.4% for study benefits). All correctly understood that the study would not confer a direct therapeutic benefit to them.ConclusionEven though research coordinators were properly trained and the informed consent was administered according to protocol, participants demonstrated poor retention of study information. While intraoperative studies that aim to advance neuroscience knowledge represent a unique opportunity to gain fundamental scientific knowledge, improved standards for the informed consent process can help facilitate their ethical implementation. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse the intersections between care and place in mundane spaces not explicitly designed for the provision of care, and where digital technologies are used to mediate ecologies of distress in the city. We locate our analysis alongside studies of how digital technologies impact the experience of care within non-clinical spaces, whilst noting that much research on the use of technologies for care remains haunted by clinical imaginaries. Bringing together ideas of multi-sited therapeutic assemblages, technogeographies of care, (...) and how places-by-proxy can act as conduits for care, we explore an example of an online app being used in public space to manage experiences of anxiety in an everyday urban environment. We reflect on this illustrative example to trace the movement of care as it is mediated through digital technologies—out of the clinic, beyond the home, and into the ordinary spaces of the city. We conclude that the entanglements of digital technologies and ordinary urban places prompt us to entirely reconsider questions of the where of care. (shrink)

Wathāʾiq madīnat al-Qaṣr bi-l-wāḥāt al-Dakhla: Maṣdarān li-taʾrīkh Miṣr fī l-ʿaṣr al-ʿuthmānī. Silsilat Dirāsāt Wathāʾiqiyya. By Rudolph Peters. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-ʿĀmma li-Dār al-Kutub wa-l-Wathāʾiq al-Qawmiyya, 2011. Pp. 610.

Commentary on Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyaṇa, based on Viśiṣṭādvaita philosophy.

An outline of the life of Heraclides and his fragmentary writings (on the theory of matter, astronomy, ethical and religious topics) is followed by an attempt to reconstruct his thought. He emerges as not so much a profound thinker as a many-sided writer of considerable literary gifts and occasional flashes of brilliance.

The following analysis has been undertaken mainly for the purpose of presenting a sample of a method which, as the writer holds, would, if widely and consistently applied, tend considerably to reduce the number and the significance of epistemological problems. The presuppositions characteristic of this method might be summarized in these five statements: 1)You cannot make discoveries by changing the meaning of terms.2)There is wisdom in common sense since it represents the accumulated experience of the race.3)It cannot be impossible to (...) work out common sense into a consistent terminology.4)It is when we lack the patience to do this that epistemological problems seem to arise.5)But when such a terminology is worked out, it will prove rather disappointing since it will just express, in a somewhat clarified form, what all the world has always been aware of. (shrink)

The connection between William of Ockham's philosophy and his politics has long been a subject of debate among scholars. Many have seen his nominalist epistemology, which asserts that the individual thing is the object of knowledge, as contributing towards his focus on the individual in his political thought. In her most recent article, ‘Ockham’s Right Reason and the Genesis of the Political as „Absolutist”’, Janet Coleman supports this argument concerning the influence of Ockham's philosophical individualism upon his political individualism. But (...) she also provides a different and, I believe, more important argument as to how Ockham's philosophical epistemology is connected to his politics: that what man can know about himself and others through right reason is Ockham's starting point for analysing human authority. This article attempts to support Coleman's argument that the role of right reason in the life of the individual has significant consequences for Ockham's notion of political rule. This is done through a detailed analysis of the specific role of right reason in Ockham's theory of the virtuous act, and how this treatment of right reason can be said to influence Ockham's notion of the purpose and methodology of political rule. Specifically, Ockham's notion of right reason in his ethical theory plays out in his political theory by defining the limitations of political knowledge, and thereby creating a pronounced discontinuity between the function of the individual as a self-ruler and the function of the political ruler. (shrink)

SummaryThe ethical fundaments of research are objectivity and logic. The subjective and objective elements in the procedure: formulation of a problem — hypothesis — experimentation — selection of arguments — theory are discussed with examples from experimental biology, foremost plant physiology. A certain amount of subjectivity is essential in research, but violations of ethical rules beyond that are not uncommon. The importance of a paradigm is emphasized; research ethics may be low under pre‐paradigm conditions. The reasons for lacking ethics are (...) discussed, and the difficulty for publishing media to control research ethics is emphasized. (shrink)

The speed and scale of the COVID‐19 pandemic has highlighted the limits of current health systems and the potential promise of non‐establishment research such as “DIY” research. We consider one example of how DIY research is responding to the pandemic, discuss the challenges faced by DIY research more generally, and suggest that a “trust architecture” should be developed now to contribute to successful future DIY efforts.

In this article I deal with difficulties, textual and exegetical, in ten passages of the Agamemnon. In some passages there is wide agreement on the sense required, but not on the remedies proposed for a corrupt reading: here I venture to put forward fresh proposals that seem to possess a reasonable1 degree of palaeo-graphical probability . In another passage I argue for a new interpretation with its appropriate emendation . In some cases where the sense is hardly in doubt and (...) the text not certainly corrupt, I propose what seems on linguistic or other grounds a preferable reading , or I argue in favour of some other scholar's proposal . Finally, where there can be little, if any, likelihood of successful restoration, I offer a tentative suggestion which may give at least an approximation to the original text. (shrink)

The author presents a critical discussion and review of the book entitled "new essays in philosophical theology" which takes account of various forms of philosophical interest in religion. (staff).

In a symposium with Roger Trigg, Renford Bambrough remarks that in discussing the difference between reason and faith philosophers too often raise the issue in a misleading form.1 The form is that of the ‘treacherous singular’. In other words, they assume that there is a single difference between reason and faith, that a line may be drawn with faith entirely on one side and reason entirely on the other. Against this, Bambrough argues that there is no sharp difference between the (...) two, that they are related in many ways and that within the network of our discourse they come to different things at different points. Philosophers too often look only at one or two points, assume a radical divergence and produce a caricature alike of reason and of faith. A more extensive view will reveal no such radical incompatibility; rather it will enable us to see faith as a mode of reason. (shrink)

On Islamic philosophy in the light of Koran.

This book offers a Wittgensteinian study of concept possession and of the nature of conceptual investigation in philosophy. It is both an ideal advanced introduction to Wittgenstein's philosophy and an original treatment of some of its most crucial yet least developed regions. The book is written as a Socratic dialogue, which frames the discussion within a backward glance to Plato's Theory of Forms. In so doing it makes a bold claim as to Wittgenstein's place in Western philosophy.